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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/15759-8.txt b/15759-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c535b62 --- /dev/null +++ b/15759-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,19296 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Crowds, by Gerald Stanley Lee + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Crowds + A Moving-Picture of Democracy + +Author: Gerald Stanley Lee + +Release Date: May 3, 2005 [EBook #15759] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CROWDS *** + + + + +Produced by Rick Niles, Cori Samuel and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team. + + + + + + +CROWDS + +A MOVING-PICTURE +OF DEMOCRACY + +BY + +GERALD STANLEY LEE + +_Editor of "Mount Tom"_ + +IN FIVE BOOKS +CROWDS AND MACHINES +LETTING THE CROWD BE GOOD +LETTING THE CROWD BE BEAUTIFUL +CROWDS AND HEROES +GOOD NEWS AND HARD WORK + + +GARDEN CITY NEW YORK +DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY + + +_Copyright, 1913, by_ +DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY +_All rights reserved, including that of +translation into foreign languages, +including the Scandinavian_ + + +COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY THE RIDGWAY COMPANY +COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY MITCHELL KENNERLEY +COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY CO. +COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY THE OUTLOOK COMPANY +COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY THE INDEPENDENT WEEKLY, INCORPORATED + +BOOKS + +By GERALD STANLEY LEE + +THE LOST ART OF READING + _A Sketch of Civilization_ + +THE CHILD AND THE BOOK + _A Constructive Criticism of Education_ + +THE SHADOW CHRIST + _A Study of the Hebrew Men of Genius_ + +THE VOICE OF THE MACHINES + _An Introduction to the Twentieth Century_ + +INSPIRED MILLIONAIRES + _A Study of the Man of Genius in Business_ + +CROWDS + _A Moving Picture of Democracy_ + + + _Gratefully inscribed to a little Mountain, + a great Meadow, and a Woman. + To the Mountain for the sense of time, to + the Meadow for the sense of space, and + to the Woman for the sense of everything._ + + +TABLE OF CONTENTS + +BOOK ONE + +CROWDS AND MACHINES + + +I. WHERE ARE WE GOING? 3 + +II. THE CROWD SCARE 19 + +III. THE MACHINE SCARE 34 + +IV. THE STRIKE--AN INVENTION FOR MAKING CROWDS THINK 49 + +V. THE CROWD-MAN--AN INVENTION FOR MAKING CROWDS SEE 58 + +VI. THE IMAGINATION OF CROWDS 65 + +VII. IMAGINATION ABOUT THE UNSEEN 66 + +VIII. THE CROWD'S IMAGINATION ABOUT THE FUTURE 69 + +IX. THE CROWD'S IMAGINATION ABOUT PEOPLE 74 + +X. A DEMOCRATIC THEORY OF HUMAN NATURE 76 + +XI. DOING AS ONE WOULD WISH ONE HAD DONE IN TWENTY YEARS 80 + +XII. NEW KINDS AND NEW SIZES OF MEN 86 + + +BOOK TWO + +LETTING THE CROWDS BE GOOD + + +I. SPEAKING AS ONE OF THE CROWD 93 + +II. IS IT WRONG FOR GOOD PEOPLE TO BE EFFICIENT? 96 + +III. IS IT WRONG FOR GOOD PEOPLE TO BE INTERESTING? 103 + +IV. PROSPECTS OF THE LIAR 107 + +V. PROSPECTS OF THE BULLY 111 + +VI. GOODNESS AS A CROWD-PROCESS 114 + +VII. THOUGHTS ON BEING IMPROVED BY OTHER PEOPLE 116 + +VIII. MAKING GOODNESS HURRY 125 + +IX. TOUCHING THE IMAGINATION OF CROWDS 128 + +X. THE STUPENDOUS, THE UNUSUAL, THE MONOTONOUS AND THE SUCCESSFUL 142 + +XI. THE SUCCESSFUL 146 + +XII. THE NECKS OF THE WICKED 154 + +XIII. IS IT WRONG FOR GOOD PEOPLE TO BE SUCCESSFUL? 163 + +XIV. IS IT SECOND RATE FOR GOOD PEOPLE TO BE SUCCESSFUL? 167 + +XV. THE SUCCESSFUL TEMPERAMENT 173 + +XVI. THE MEN AHEAD PULL 178 + +XVII. THE CROWDS PUSH 184 + +XVIII. THE MAN WHO SAYS HOW, SAYS HOW 186 + +XIX. AND THE MACHINE STARTS! 194 + + +BOOK THREE + +LETTING THE CROWD BE BEAUTIFUL + + +PART I. WISTFUL MILLIONAIRES + +I. MR. CARNEGIE SPEAKS UP 205 + +II. MR. CARNEGIE TRIES TO MAKE PEOPLE READ 208 + +III. MR. NOBEL TRIES TO MAKE PEOPLE WRITE 211 + +IV. PAPER BOOKS, MARBLE PILLARS, AND WOODEN BOYS 221 + +V. THE HUMDRUM FACTORY AND THE TUMPTY-TUM THEATRE 227 + +PART II. IRON MACHINES + +I. STEEPLES AND CHIMNEYS 236 + +II. BELLS AND WHEELS 240 + +III. DEW AND ENGINES 243 + +IV. DEAD AS A DOOR NAIL! 245 + +V. AN OXFORD MAN AND AN INCH OF IRON 248 + +VI. THE MACHINES' MACHINES 250 + +VII. THE MEN'S MACHINES 252 + +VIII. THE BASEMENT OF THE WORLD 256 + +IX. THE GROUND FLOOR FOLKS 262 + +X. THE MACHINE-TRAINERS 266 + +XI. MACHINES, CROWDS, AND ARTISTS 269 + +PART III. PEOPLE-MACHINES + +I. NOW! 280 + +II. COMMITTEES AND COMMITTEES 288 + +III. THE INCONVENIENCE OF BEING HUMAN 286 + +IV. LETTING THE CROWD HAVE PEOPLE IN IT 290 + + +BOOK FOUR + +CROWDS AND HEROES + + +I. THE SOCIALIST AND THE HERO 297 + +II. THE CROWD AND THE HERO 301 + +III. THE CROWD AND THE AVERAGE PERSON 303 + +IV. THE CROWD AND PIERPONT MORGAN 307 + +V. THE CROWD AND TOM MANN 313 + +VI. AN OPENING FOR THE NEXT PIERPONT MORGAN 323 + +VII. AN OPENING FOR THE NEXT TOM MANN 327 + +VIII. THE MEN WHO LOOK 331 + +IX. WHO IS AFRAID? 337 + +X. RULES FOR TELLING A HERO--WHEN ONE SEES ONE 343 + +XI. THE TECHNIQUE OF COURAGE 346 + +XII. THE MEN WHO WANT THINGS 349 + +XIII. MEN WHO GET THINGS 356 + +XIV. SOURCES OF COURAGE FOR OTHERS--TOLERATION 364 + +XV. CONVERSION 371 + +XVI. EXCEPTION 380 + +XVII. INVENTION 383 + +XVIII. THE MAN WHO PULLS THE WORLD TOGETHER 397 + +XIX. THE MAN WHO STANDS BY 400 + +XX. THE STRIKE OF THE SAVIOURS 402 + +XXI. THE LEAGUE OF THE MEN WHO ARE NOT AFRAID 404 + + +BOOK FIVE + +GOOD NEWS AND HARD WORK + + +PART I. NEWS AND LABOUR 413 + +PART II. NEWS AND MONEY 422 + +PART III. NEWS AND GOVERNMENT + +I. OXFORD STREET AND THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 431 + +II. OXFORD STREET HUMS, THE HOUSE HEMS 440 + +III. PRESIDENT WILSON AND MOSES 449 + +IV. THE PRESIDENT SAYS YES AND NO 455 + +V. THE PRESIDENT SAYS "LOOK!" 463 + +VI. THE PEOPLE SAY "WHO ARE YOU?" 469 + +VII. THE PEOPLE SAY "WHO ARE WE?" 472 + +VIII. NEWS ABOUT US TO THE PRESIDENT 474 + +IX. NEWS-MEN 476 + +X. AMERICAN TEMPERAMENT AND GOVERNMENT 483 + +XI-XII. NEWS-BOOKS 505-513 + +XIII. NEWS-PAPERS 517 + +XIV. NEWS-MACHINES 524 + +XV. NEWS-CROWDS 527 + +XVI. CROWD-MEN 550 + +EPILOGUE 539 + + + + +BOOK ONE + +CROWDS AND MACHINES + + +TO CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS + + _"A battered, wrecked old man + Thrown on this savage shore far, far from home, + Pent by the sea and dark rebellious brows twelve dreary months + ... The end I know not, it is all in Thee, + Or small or great I know not--haply what broad fields, what + lands!... + + And these things I see suddenly, what mean they + As if some miracle, some hand divine unsealed my eyes, + Shadowy vast shapes smile through the air and sky, + And on the distant waves sail countless ships, + And anthems in new tongues I hear saluting me."_ + + + + +CHAPTER I + +WHERE ARE WE GOING? + + +The best picture I know of my religion is Ludgate Hill as one sees it +going down the foot of Fleet Street. It would seem to many perhaps like +a rather strange half-heathen altar, but it has in it the three things +with which I worship most my Maker in this present world--the three +things which it would be the breath of religion to me to offer to a God +together--Cathedrals, Crowds, and Machines. + +With the railway bridge reaching over, all the little still locomotives +in the din whispering across the street; with the wide black crowd +streaming up and streaming down, and the big, faraway, other-worldly +church above, I am strangely glad. It is like having a picture of one's +whole world taken up deftly, and done in miniature and hung up for one +against the sky--the white steam which is the breath of modern life, the +vast hurrying of our feet, and that Great Finger pointing toward heaven +day and night for us all.... + +I never tire of walking out a moment from my nook in Clifford's Inn and +stealing a glimpse and coming back to my fireplace. I sit still a moment +before going to work and look in the flames and think. The great roar +outside the Court gathers it all up--that huge, boundless, tiny, +summed-up world out there; flings it faintly against my quiet windows +while I sit and think. + +And when one thinks of it a minute, it sends one half-fearfully, +half-triumphantly back to one's work--the very thought of it. The Crowd +hurrying, the Crowd's flurrying Machines, and the Crowd's God, send one +back to one's work! + +In the afternoon I go out again, slip my way through the crowds along +the Strand, toward Charing Cross. + +I never tire of watching the drays, the horses, the streaming taxis, all +these little, fearful, gliding crowds of men and women, when a little +space of street is left, flowing swiftly, flowing like globules, like +mercury, between the cabs. + +But most of all I like looking up at that vast second story of the +street, coming in over one like waves, like seas--all these happy, +curious tops of 'buses; these dear, funny, way-up people on benches; +these world-worshippers, sight-worshippers, and Americans--all these +little scurrying congregations, hundreds of them, rolling past. + +I sit on the front seat of a horse 'bus elbow to elbow with the driver, +staring down over the brink of the abyss upon ears and necks--that low, +distant space where the horses look so tiny and so ineffectual and so +gone-by below. + +The street is the true path of the spirit. To walk through it, or roll +or swing on top of a 'bus through it--the miles of faces, all these +tottering, toddling, swinging miles of legs and stomachs; and on all +sides of you, and in the windows and along the walks, the things they +wear, and the things they eat, and the things they pour down their +little throats, and the things they pray to and curse and worship and +swindle in! It is like being out in the middle of a great ocean of +living, or like climbing up some great mountain-height of people, their +abysses and their clouds about them, their precipices and jungles and +heavens, the great high roads of their souls reaching off.... I can +never say why, but so strange is it, so full of awe is it, and of +splendour and pity, that there are times when, rolling and swinging +along on top of a 'bus, with all this strange, fearful joy of life about +me, within me ... it is as if on top of my 'bus I had been far away in +some infinite place, and had felt Heaven and Hell sweep past. + +One of the first things that strikes an American when he slips over from +New York, and finds himself, almost before he had thought of it--walking +down the Strand, suddenly, instead of Broadway, is the way +things--thousands of things at once; begin happening to him. + +Of course, with all the things that are happening to him--the 'buses, +the taxis, the Wren steeples, the great streams of new sights in the +streets, the things that happen to his eyes and to his ears, to his feet +and his hands, and to his body lunging through the ground and swimming +up in space on top of a 'bus through this huge, glorious, yellow mist of +people ... there are all the things besides that begin happening to his +mind. + +In New York, of course, he rushes along through the city, in a kind of +tunnel of his own thoughts, of his own affairs, and drives on to his +point, and New York does not--at least it does not very often--make +things happen to his mind. He is not in London five minutes before he +begins to notice how London does his thinking for him. The streets of +the city set him to thinking, mile after mile, miles of comparing, miles +of expecting. + +And above the streets that he walks through and drives through he finds +in London another complete set of streets that interest him: the +greater, silenter streets of England--the streets of people's thoughts. +And he reads the great newspapers, those huge highways on which the +English people are really going somewhere.... "_Where are they going?_" +He goes through the editorials, he stumbles through the news, "_Where +are the English people going?_" + + * * * * * + +An American thinks of the English people in the third person--at first, +of course. + +After three days or so, he begins, half-unconsciously, slipping over +every now and then into what seems to be a vague, loose first person +plural. + +Then the first person plural grows. + +He finds at last that his thinking has settled down into a kind of +happy, easy-going, international, editorial "We." New York and London, +Chicago and Sheffield, go drifting together through his thoughts, and +even Paris, glimmering faintly over there, and a dim round world, and he +asks, as the people of a world stream by, "_Where are WE going?_" + +Thus it is that London, looming, teeming, world-suggesting, gets its +grip upon a man, a fresh American, and stretches him, stretches him +before his own eyes, makes him cosmopolitan, does his thinking for him. + + * * * * * + +There was a great sea to still his soul and lay down upon his spirit +that big, quiet roundness of the earth. + +Nothing is quite the same after that wide strip of sea--sleeping out +there alone night by night--the gentle round earth sloping away down +from under one on both sides, in the midst of space.... Then, suddenly, +almost before one knows, that quiet Space still lingering round one, +perhaps one finds oneself thrust up out of the ground in the night into +that big yellow roar of Trafalgar Square. + +And here are the swift sudden crowds of people, one's own fellow-men +hurrying past. One looks into the faces of the people hurrying past: +"_Where are we going?_" One looks at the stars: "WHERE ARE WE GOING?" + + * * * * * + +That night, when I was thrust up out of the ground and stood dazed in +the Square, I was told in a minute that this London where I was was a +besieged and conquered city. Some men had risen up in a day and said to +London: "No one shall go in. No one shall go out." + +I was in the great proud city at last, the capital of the world, her +big, new, self-assured inventions all about her, all around her, and +soldiers camping out with her locomotives! + +With her long trains for endless belts of people going in and coming +out, with her air-brakes, electric lights, and motor-cars and aerial +mails, it seemed passing strange to be told that her great stations were +all choked up with a queer, funny, old, gone-by, clanky piece of +machinery, an invention for making people good, like soldiers! + +And I stood in the middle of the roar of Trafalgar Square and asked, as +all England was asking that night: "Where are we going?" + +And I looked in the faces of the people hurrying past. + +And nobody knew. + +And the next day I went through the silenter streets of the city, the +great crowded dailies where all the world troops through, and then the +more quiet weeklies, then the monthlies, more dignified and like private +parks; and the quarterlies, too, thoughtful, high-minded, a little +absent, now and then a footfall passing through. + +And I found them all full of the same strange questioning: "Where are we +going?" + +And nobody knew. + +It was the same questioning I had just left in New York, going up all +about me, out of the skyscrapers. + +New York did not know. + +Now London did not know. + + * * * * * + +And after I had tried the journals and the magazines, I thought of +books. + +I could not but look about--how could I do otherwise than look about?--a +lonely American walking at last past all these nobly haunted doorways +and windows--for your idealists or interpreters, your men who bring in +the sea upon your streets and the mountains on your roof-tops; who +still see the wide, still reaches of the souls of men beyond the faint +and tiny roar of London. + +I could not but look for your men of imagination, your poets; for the +men who build the dreams and shape the destinies of nations because they +mould their thoughts. + +I do not like to say it. How shall an American, coming to you out of his +long, flat, literary desert, dare to say it?... Here, where Shakespeare +played mightily, and like a great boy with the world; where Milton, +Keats, Wordsworth, Browning, Shelley, and even Dickens flooded the lives +and refreshed the hearts of the people; here, in these selfsame streets, +going past these same old, gentle, smoky temples where Charles Lamb +walked and loved a world, and laughed at a world, and even made +one--lifted over his London forever into the hearts of men.... + +I can only say what I saw those first few fresh days: John Galsworthy +out with his camera--his beautiful, sad, foggy camera; Arnold Bennett +stitching and stitching faithfully twenty-four hours a day--big, curious +tapestries of little things; H.G. Wells, with his retorts, his +experiments about him, his pots and kettles of humanity in a great stew +of steam, half-hopeful, half-dismayed, mixing up his great, new, queer +messes of human nature; and (when I could look up again) G.K. +Chesterton, divinely swearing, chanting, gloriously contradicting, +rolled lustily through the wide, sunny spaces of His Own Mind; and +Bernard Shaw (all civilization trooping by), the eternal boy, on the +eternal curbstone of the world, threw stones; and the Bishop of +Birmingham preached a fine, helpless sermon.... + + * * * * * + +When a new American, coming from his own big, hurried, formless, +speechless country, finds himself in what he had always supposed to be +this trim, arranged, grown-up, articulate England, and when, thrust up +out of the ground in Trafalgar Square, he finds himself looking at that +vast yellow mist of people, that vast bewilderment of faces, of the +poor, of the rich, coming and going they cannot say where--he naturally +thinks at first it must be because they cannot speak; and when he looks +to those who speak for them, to their writers or interpreters, and when +he finds that they are bewildered, that they are asking the same +question over and over that we in America are asking too, "Where are we +going?" he is brought abruptly up, front to front with the great +broadside of modern life. London, his last resort, is as bewildered as +New York; and so, at last, here it is. It has to be faced now and here, +as if it were some great scare-head or billboard on the world, "WHERE +ARE WE GOING?" + + * * * * * + +The most stupendous feat for the artist or man of imagination in modern +times is to conceive a picture or vision for our Society--our present +machine-civilization--a common expectation for people which will make +them want to live. + +If Leonardo were living now, he would probably slight for the time being +his building bridges, and skimp his work on Mona Lisa, and write a +book--an exultant book about common people. He would focus and express +democracy as only the great and true aristocrat or genius or artist will +ever do it. A great society must be expressed as a vision or expectation +before men can see it together, and go to work on it together, and make +it a fact. What makes a society great is that it is full of people who +have something to live for and who know what it is. It is because nobody +knows, now, that our present society is not great. The different kinds +of people in it have not made up their minds what they are for, and some +kinds have particularly failed to make up their minds what the other +kinds are for. + +We are all making our particular contribution to the common vision, and +some of us are able to say in one way and some in another what this +vision is; but it is going to take a supreme catholic, summing-up +individualist, a great man or artist--a man who is all of us in one--to +express for Crowds, and for all of us together, where we want to go, +what we think we are for, and what kind of a world we want. + +This will have to be done first in a book. The modern world is +collecting its thoughts. It is trying to write its bible. + +The Bible of the Hebrews (which had to be borrowed by the rest of the +world if they were to have one) is the one great outstanding fact and +result of the Hebrew genius. They did not produce a civilization, but +they produced a book for the rest of the world to make civilizations out +of, a book which has made all other nations the moral passengers of the +Hebrews for two thousand years. + +And the whole spirit and aim of this book, the thing about it that made +it great, was that it was the sublimest, most persistent, most colossal, +masterful attempt ever made by men to look forth upon the earth, to see +all the men in it, like spirits hurrying past, and to answer the +question, "WHERE ARE WE GOING?" + +I would not have any one suppose that in these present tracings and +outlines of thought I am making an attempt to look upon the world and +say where the people are going, and where they think they are going, and +where they want to go. I have attempted to find out, and put down what +might seem at first sight (at least it did to me) the answer to a very +small and unimportant question--"Where is it that I really want to go +myself?" "What kind of a world is it, all the facts about me being duly +considered, I really want to be in?" + +No man living in a world as interesting as this ever writes a book if he +can help it. If Mr. Bernard Shaw or Mr. Chesterton or Mr. Wells had been +so good as to write a book for me in which they had given the answer to +my question, in which they had said more or less authoritatively for me +what kind of a world it is that I want to be in, this book would never +have been written. The book is not put forward as an attempt to arrange +a world, or as a system or a chart, or as a nation-machine, or even as +an argument. The one thing that any one can fairly claim for this book +is that one man's life has been saved with it. It is the record of one +man fighting up through story after story of crowds and of crowds' +machines to the great steel and iron floor on the top of the world, +until he had found the manhole in it, and broken through and caught a +breath of air and looked at the light. The book is merely a +life-preserver--that is all; and one man's life-preserver. Perhaps the +man is representative, and perhaps he is not. At all events, here it is. +Anybody else who can use it is welcome to it. + + * * * * * + +The first and most practical step in getting what one wants in this +world is wanting it. One would think that the next step would be +expressing what one wants. But it almost never is. It generally consists +in wanting it still harder and still harder until one can express it. + +This is particularly true when the thing one wants is a new world. Here +are all these other people who have to be asked. And until one wants it +hard enough to say it, to get it outside one's self, possibly make it +catching, nothing happens. + +If one were to point out one trait rather than another that makes +Bernard Shaw, for so brilliant a man, so ineffective as a leader, or +literary statesman, or social reformer, it would be his modesty. He has +never wanted anything. + +If I could have found a book by Bernard Shaw in which Mr. Shaw had +merely said what he wanted himself, it is quite possible this book would +not have been written. Even if Mr. Shaw, without saying what he wanted, +had ever shown in any corner of any book that one man's wanting +something in this world amounted to anything, or could make any one else +want it, or could make any difference in him, or in the world around +him, perhaps I would not have written this book. + +Everywhere, as I have looked about me among the bookmen in America, in +England, I have found, not the things that they wanted in their books, +but always these same deadly lists or bleak inventories--these prairies +of things that they did not want. + +Now, as a matter of fact, I knew already, with an almost despairing +distinctness, nearly all these things I did not want and it has not +helped me (with all due courtesy and admiration) having John Galsworthy +out photographing them day after day, so that I merely did not want them +harder. And Mr. Wells's measles and children's diseases, too. I knew +already that I did not want them. And Mr. Shaw's entire, heroic, almost +noble collection of things he does not want does not supply me--nor +could it supply any other man with furniture to make a world with--even +if it were not this real, big world, with rain and sunshine and wind and +people in it, and were only that little, wonderful world a man lives +within his own heart. There have been times, and there will be more of +them, when I could not otherwise than speak as the champion of Bernard +Shaw; but, after all, what single piece of furniture is there that +George Bernard Shaw, living with his great attic of not-things all +around him, is able to offer to furnish me for me single, little, warm, +lighted room to keep my thoughts in? Nor has he furnished me with one +thing with which I would care to sit down in my little room and +think--looking into the cold, perfect hygienic ashes he has left upon my +hearth. Even if I were a revolutionist, and not a mere, plain human +being, loving life and wanting to live more abundantly, I am bound to +say I do not see what there is in Mr. Galsworthy's photographs, or in +Mr. Wells's rich, bottomless murk of humanity to make a revolution for. +And Mr. Bernard Shaw, with all his bottles of disinfectants and shelves +of sterilized truths, his hard well-being and his glittering comforts, +has presented the vision of a world in which at the very best--even if +it all comes out as he says it will--a man would merely have things +without wanting them, and without wanting anything. + + * * * * * + +And so it has seemed to me that even if he is quite unimportant, any man +to-day who, in some public place, like a book, shall paint the picture +of his heart's desire, who shall throw up, as upon a screen, where all +men may see them, his most immediate and most pressing ideals, would +perform an important service. If a man's sole interest were to find out +what all men in the world want, the best way to do it would be for him +to say quite definitely, so that we could all compare notes, what he +wanted himself. Speaking for a planet has gone by, but possibly, if a +few of us but speak for ourselves, the planet will talk back, and we +shall find out at last what it really is that it wants. + +The thing that many of us want most in the present grayness and din of +the world is some one to play with, or if the word "play" is not quite +the right word, some one with whom we can work with freedom and +self-expressiveness and joy. Nine men out of ten one meets to-day talk +with one as it were with their watches in their hands. The people who +are rich one sees everywhere, being run away with by their motor-cars; +and the people who are poor one sees struggling pitifully and for their +very souls, under great wheels and beneath machines. + +Of course, I can only speak for myself. I do not deny that a little +while at a time I can sit by a brook in the woods and be happy; but if, +as it happens, I would rather have other people about me--people who do +not spoil things, I find that the machines about me everywhere have made +most people very strange and pathetic in the woods. They cannot sit by +brooks, many of them; and when they come out to the sky, it looks to +them like some mere, big, blue lead roof up over their lives. Perhaps I +am selfish about it, but I cannot bear to see people looking at the sky +in this way.... + + * * * * * + +So, as I have watched my fellow human beings, what I have come to want +most of all in this world is the inspired employer--or what I have +called the inspired millionaire or organizer; the man who can take the +machines off the backs of the people and take the machines out of their +wits, and make the machines free their bodies and serve their souls. + +If we ever have the inspired employer, he will have to be made by the +social imagination of the people, by creating the spirit of expectation +and challenge toward the rich among the masses of the people. + +I believe that the time has come when the world is to make its last +stand for idealism, great men, and crowds. + +I believe that great men can be really great, that they can represent +crowds. I believe that crowds can be really great, that they can know +great men. + +The most natural kind of great man for crowds to know first will +probably be a kind of everyday great man or business statesman, the man +who represents all classes, and who proves it in the way he conducts his +business. + +I have called this man the Crowdman. + +I do not say that I have met precisely the type of inspired millionaire +I have in mind, but I have known scores of men who have reminded me of +him and of what he is going to be, and I am prepared to say that in +spirit, or latent at least, he is all about me in the world to-day. If +it is proved to me that no such man exists, I am here to say there will +be one. If it is proved to me that there cannot be one, _I will make +one_. If it is proved to me that by lifting up Desire in the faces of +young men and of boys, and in the faces of true fathers and young +mothers, and by ringing up my challenge on the great doors of the +schools, I cannot make one, then I will invoke the men that shall write +the books, that shall sing the songs that shall make one! I say this +with all reverence for other men's desires and with all respect for +natural prejudgments. As I have conceived it, the one business of the +world to-day is to find out what we are for and to find out what men in +the world--on the whole--really want. When men know what they want they +get it. Every wrong thing we have to face in modern industrial life is +due to men who know what they want, and who therefore get it, due to the +passions and the dreams of men; and the one single way in which these +wrong things will ever be overcome is with more passions and with more +and mightier dreams of men. + +Nothing is more visionary than trying to run a world without dreams, +especially an economic world. It is because even bad dreams are better +in this world than having no dreams at all that bad people so called are +so largely allowed to run it. + +In the final and practical sense, the one factor in economics to be +reckoned with is Desire. + +The next move in economics is going to be the statement of a shrewd, +dogged, realizable ideal. It is only ideals that have aroused the wrong +passions, and it is only ideals that will arouse the right ones. + +It will have to be, I imagine, when it comes, not a mere statement of +principles, an analysis, or a criticism, but a moving-picture, a +portrait of the human race, that shall reveal man's heart to himself. +What we want is a vast white canvas, spread, as it were, over the end of +the world, before which we shall all sit together, the audience of the +nations, of the poor, of the rich, as in some still, thoughtful +place--all of us together; and then we will throw up before us on the +vast white screen in the dark the vivid picture of our vast desires, +flame up upon it the hopes, the passions of human lives, and the grim, +silent wills of men. _"What do we want?" "Where are we going?"_ + +In place of the literature of criticism we have come now to the +literature of Desire. + +This literature will have to come slowly, and I have come to believe +that the first book, when it comes, will be perhaps a book that does not +prove anything, a book that is a mere cry, a prayer, or challenge; the +story of what one man with these streetfuls of the faces of men and the +faces of women pouring their dullness and pouring their weariness over +him, has desired, and of what, God helping him, he will have. + +There is a certain sense in which merely praying to God has gone by. In +the present desperate crisis of a world plunging on in the dark to a +catastrophe or a glory that we cannot guess, it is a time for men to +pray a prayer, a standing-up prayer, to one another. + +I believe that it is going to be this huge gathering-in of public +desire, this imperious challenge of what men want, this standing-up +prayer of men to one another, which alone shall make men go forth with +faith and singing once more into the battle of life. Sometimes it has +seemed to me I have already heard it--this song of men's desires about +me--faintly. But I have seen that the time is at hand when it shall come +as a vast chorus of cities, of fields, of men's voices, filling the dome +of the world--a chorus in the glory and the shame of which no +millionaire who merely wants to make money, no artist who is not +expressing the souls and freeing the bodies of men, no statesman who is +not gathering up the desires of crowds, and going daily through the +world hewing out the will of the people, shall dare to live. + + * * * * * + +But while this is the vision of my belief, I would not have any one +suppose that I am the bearer of easy and gracious tidings. + +It is rather of a great daily adventure one has with the world. + +There have been times when it seemed as if it had to begin all over +again every morning. + +Day by day I walk down Fleet Street toward Ludgate Hill. + +I look once more every morning at that great picture of any religion; I +look at the quiet, soaring, hopeful dome--that little touch of singing +or praying that men have lifted up against heaven. "Will the Dome bring +the Man to me?" + +I look up at the machines, strange and eager, hurrying across the +bridge. "Will the Machines bring the Man to me?" + +I look in the faces of the crowd hurrying past. "Will the Crowd bring +the Man to me?" + +With the picture of my religion--or perhaps three religions or three +stories of religion--I walk on and on through the crowd, past the +railway, past the Cathedral, past the Mansion House, and over the Tower +Bridge. I walk fast and eagerly and blindly, as though a man would walk +away from the world. + +Suddenly I find myself, throngs of voices all about me, standing +half-unconsciously by a high iron fence in Bermondsey watching that +smooth asphalt playground where one sees the very dead (for once) +crowded by the living--pushed over to the edges--their gravestones +tilted calmly up against the walls. I stand and look through the pickets +and watch the children run and shout--the little funny, mockingly +dressed, frowzily frumpily happy children, the stored-up sunshine of a +thousand years all shining faintly out through the dirt, out through the +generations in their little faces--"Will the Man come to me out of +these?" + +The tombstones lean against the wall and the children run and shout. As +I watch them with my hopes and fears and the tombstones tilted against +the walls--as I peer through the railings at the children, I face my +three religions. What will the three religions do with the children? +What will the children do with the three religions? + +And now I will tell the truth. I will not cheat nor run away as +sometimes I seem to have tried to do for years. I will no longer let +myself be tricked by the mere glamour and bigness of our modern life +nor swooned into good-will by the roll and liturgy of revolution, "of +the people," "for the people," "by the people," nor will I be longer +awed by those huge phrase-idols, constitutions, routines, that have +roared around me "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity"--those imperious, +thoughtless, stupid tra-la-las of the People. Do the People see truth? +Can the People see truth? Can all the crowd, and can all the machines, +and all the cathedrals piled up together produce the Man, the Crowd-man +or great man who sees truth? + +And so with my three religions, I have three fears, one for each of +them. There is the Machine fear, lest the crowd should be overswept by +its machines and become like them; and the Crowd fear, lest the crowd +should overlook its mighty innumerable and personal need of great men; +and there is also the daily fear for the Church, lest the Church should +not understand crowds and machines and grapple with crowds and machines, +interpret them and glory in them and appropriate them for her own use +and for God's--lest the Church should turn away from the crowds and the +machines and graciously and idly bow down to Herself. + +And now I am going to try to express these three fears that go with the +three religions as well as I can, so that I can turn on them and face +them and, God helping me, look them out of countenance. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +THE CROWD SCARE + + +Time was when a man was born upon this planet in a somewhat lonely +fashion. A few human beings out of all infinity stood by to care for +him. He was brought up with hills and stars and a neighbour or so, until +he grew to man's estate. He climbed at last over the farthest hill, and +there, on the rim of things, standing on the boundary line of sky and +earth that had always been the edge of life to him before, he looked +forth upon the freedom of the world, and said in his soul, "What shall I +be in this world I see, and whither shall I go in it?" And the sky and +the earth and the rivers and the seas and the nights and the days +beckoned to him, and the voices of life rose around him, and they all +said, "Come!" + +On a corner in New York, around a Street Department wagon, not so very +long ago, five thousand men were fighting for shovels, fifty men to a +shovel--a tool for living a little longer. + +The problem of living in this modern world is the problem of finding +room in it. The crowd principle is so universally at work through modern +life that the geography of the world has been changed to conform to it. +We live in crowds. We get our living in crowds. We are amused in herds. +Civilization is a list of cities. Cities are the huge central dynamos of +all being. The power of a man can be measured to-day by the mile, the +number of miles between him and the city; that is, between him and what +the city stands for--the centre of mass. + +The crowd principle is the first principle of production. The producer +who can get the most men together and the most dollars together controls +the market; and when he once controls the market, instead of merely +getting the most men and the most dollars, he can get all the men and +all the dollars. Hence the corporation in production. + +The crowd principle is the first principle of distribution. The man who +can get the most men to buy a particular thing from him can buy the most +of it, and therefore buy it the cheapest, and therefore get more men to +buy from him; and having bought this particular thing cheaper than all +men could buy it, it is only a step to selling it to all men; and then, +having all the men on one thing and all the dollars on one thing, he is +able to buy other things for nothing, for everybody, and sell them for a +little more than nothing to everybody. Hence the department store--the +syndicate of department stores--the crowd principle in commerce. + +The value of a piece of land is the number of footsteps passing by it in +twenty-four hours. The value of a railroad is the number of people near +it who cannot keep still. If there are a great many of these people, the +railroad runs its trains for them. If there are only a few, though they +be heroes and prophets, Dantes, Savonarolas, and George Washingtons, +trains shall not be run for them. The railroad is the characteristic +property and symbol of property in this modern age, and the entire value +of a railroad depends upon its getting control of a crowd--either a +crowd that wants to be where some other crowd is, or a crowd that wants +a great many tons of something that some other crowd has. + +When we turn from commerce to philosophy, we find the same principle +running through them both. The main thing in the philosophy of to-day is +the extraordinary emphasis of environment and heredity. A man's destiny +is the way the crowd of his ancestors ballot for his life. His soul--if +he has a soul--is an atom acted upon by a majority of other atoms. + +When we turn to religion in its different phases, we find the same +emphasis upon them all--the emphasis of mass, of majority. Not that the +church exists for the masses--no one claims this--but that, such as it +is, it is a mass church. While the promise of Scripture, as a last +resort, is often heard in the church about two or three gathered +together in God's name, the Church is run on the working conviction that +unless the minister and the elders can gather two or three hundred in +God's name, He will not pay any particular attention to them, or, if He +does, He will not pay the bills. The church of our forefathers, founded +on personality, is exchanged for the church of democracy, founded on +crowds; and the church of the moment is the institutional church, in +which the standing of the clergyman is exchanged for the standing of the +congregation. The inevitable result, the crowd clergyman, is seen on +every hand amongst us--the agent of an audience, who, instead of telling +an audience what they ought to do, runs errands for them morning and +noon and night. With coddling for majorities and tact for whims, he +carefully picks his way. He does his people as much good as they will +let him, tells them as much truth as they will hear, until he dies at +last, and goes to take his place with Puritan parsons who mastered +majorities, with martyrs who would not live and be mastered by +majorities, and with apostles who managed to make a new world without +the help of majorities at all. + +Theology reveals the same tendency. The measuring by numbers is found in +all belief, the same cringing before masses of little facts instead of +conceiving the few immeasurable ones. Helpless individuals mastered by +crowds are bound to believe in a kind of infinitely helpless God. He +stands in the midst of the crowds of His laws and the systems of His +worlds: to those who are not religious, a pale First Cause; and to those +who are, a Great Sentimentality far away in the heavens, who, in a kind +of vast weak-mindedness (a Puritan would say), seems to want everybody +to be good and hopes they will, but does not quite know what to do +about it if they are not. + +Every age has its typical idea of heaven and its typical idea of hell +(in some of them it would be hard to tell which is which), and every +civilization, has its typical idea of God. A civilization with sovereign +men in it has a sovereign God; and a crowd civilization, reflecting its +mood on the heavens, is inclined to a pleasant, large-minded God, +eternally considering everybody and considering everything, but +inefficient withal, a kind of legislature of Deity, typical of +representative institutions at their best and at their worst. + +If we pass from our theology to our social science we come to the most +characteristic result of the crowd principle that the times afford. We +are brought face to face with Socialism, the millennium machine, the +Corliss engine of progress. It were idle to deny to the Socialist that +he is right--and more right, indeed, than most of us, in seeing that +there is a great wrong somewhere; but it would be impossible beyond this +point to make any claim for him, except that he is honestly trying to +create in the world a wrong we do not have as yet, that shall be large +enough to swallow the wrong we have. The term "Socialism" stands for +many things, in its present state; but so far as the average Socialist +is concerned, he may be defined as an idealist who turns to materialism, +that is, to mass, to carry his idealism out. The world having discovered +two great ideals in the New Testament, the service of all men by all +other men, and the infinite value of the individual, the Socialist +expects to carry out one of these ideals by destroying the other. + +The principle that an infinitely helpful society can be produced by +setting up a row of infinitely helpless individuals is Socialism, as the +average Socialist practises it. The average Socialist is the type of the +eager but effeminate reformer of all ages, because he seeks to gain by +machinery things nine tenths of the value of which to men is in gaining +them for themselves. Socialism is the attempt to invent conveniences +for heroes, to pass a law that will make being a man unnecessary, to do +away with sin by framing a world in which it would be worthless to do +right because it would be impossible to do wrong. It is a philosophy of +helplessness, which, even if it succeeds in helplessly carrying its +helplessness out--in doing away with suffering, for instance--can only +do it by bringing to pass a man not alive enough to be capable of +suffering, and putting him in a world where suffering and joy alike +would be a bore to him. + +But the main importance of Socialism in this connection lies in the fact +that it does not confine itself to sociology. It has become a complete +philosophy of life, and can be seen penetrating with its subtle satire +on human nature almost everything about us. We have the cash register to +educate our clerks into pure and honest character, and the souls of +conductors can be seen being nurtured, mile after mile, by +fare-recorders. Corporations buy consciences by the gross. They are hung +over the door of every street car. Consciences are worked by pulling a +strap. Liverymen have cyclometres to help customers to tell the truth, +and the Australian ballot is invented to help men to be manly enough to +vote the way they think. And when, in the course of human events, we +came to the essentially moral and spiritual reform of a woman's right to +dress in good taste--that is, appropriately for what she is doing, what +did we proceed to do to bring it about? Conventions were held year after +year, and over and over, to get women to dress as they wanted to; dress +reform associations were founded, syndicates of courage were established +all over the land--all in vain; and finally,--Heaven help us!--how was +this great moral and spiritual reform accomplished? By an invention of +two wheels, one in front of the other. It was brought about by the Pope +Manufacturing Company of Hartford, Connecticut in two short years. + +Everything is brought about by manufacturing companies. It is the +socialist spirit; the idea that, if we can only find it, there is some +machine that can surely be invented that will take the place of men: not +only of hands and feet, but of all the old-fashioned and lumbering +virtues, courage, patience, vision, common sense, and religion itself, +out of which they are made. + +But we depend upon machinery not only for the things that we want, but +for the brains with which we decide what we want. If a man wants to know +what he thinks, he starts a club; and if he wants to be very sure, he +calls a convention. From the National Undertakers' Association and the +Launderers' League to the Christian Endeavour Tournament and the World's +Congress--the Midway Pleasance of Piety--the Convention strides the +world with vociferousness. The silence that descends from the hills is +filled with its ceaseless din. The smallest hamlet in the land has +learned to listen reverent from afar to the vast insistent roar of It, +as the Voice of the Spirit of the Times. + +Every idea we have is run into a constitution. We cannot think without a +chairman. Our whims have secretaries; our fads have by-laws. Literature +is a club. Philosophy is a society. Our reforms are mass meetings. Our +culture is a summer school. We cannot mourn our mighty dead without +Carnegie hall and forty vice-presidents. We remember our poets with +trustees, and the immortality of a genius is watched by a standing +committee. Charity is an Association. Theology is a set of resolutions. +Religion is an endeavour to be numerous and communicative. We awe the +impenitent with crowds, convert the world with boards, and save the lost +with delegates; and how Jesus of Nazareth could have done so great a +work without being on a committee is beyond our ken. What Socrates and +Solomon would have come to if they had only had the advantage of +conventions it would be hard to say; but in these days, when the +excursion train is applied to wisdom; when, having little enough, we try +to make it more by pulling it about; when secretaries urge us, +treasurers dun us, programs unfold out of every mail--where is the man +who, guileless-eyed, can look in his brother's face; can declare upon +his honour that he has never been a delegate, never belonged to +anything, never been nominated, elected, imposed on, in his life? + +Everything convenes, revolves, petitions, adjourns. Nothing stays +adjourned. We have reports that think for us, committees that do right +for us, and platforms that spread their wooden lengths over all the +things we love, until there is hardly an inch of the dear old earth to +stand on, where, fresh and sweet and from day to day, we can live our +lives ourselves, pick the flowers, look at the stars, guess at God, +garner our grain, and die. Every new and fresh human being that comes +upon the earth is manufactured into a coward or crowded into a machine +as soon as we get at him. We have already come to the point where we do +not expect to interest anybody in anything without a constitution. And +the Eugenic Society is busy now on by-laws for falling in love. + +What this means with regard to the typical modern man is, not that he +does not think, but that it takes ten thousand men to make him think. He +has a crowd soul, a crowd creed. Charged with convictions, galvanized +from one convention to another, he contrives to live, and with a sense +of multitude, applause, and cheers he warms his thoughts. When they have +been warmed enough he exhorts, dictates, goes hither and thither on the +crutch of the crowd, and places his crutch on the world, and pries on +it, if perchance it may be stirred to something. To the bigotry of the +man who knows because he speaks for himself has been added a new bigotry +on the earth--the bigotry of the man who speaks for the nation; who, +with a more colossal prejudice than he had before, returns from a mass +meeting of himself, and, with the effrontery that only a crowd can give, +backs his opinions with forty states, and walks the streets of his +native town in the uniform of all humanity. This is a kind of fool that +has never been possible until these latter days. Only a very great many +people, all of them working on him at once, and all of them watching +every one else working at once, can produce this kind. + +Indeed, the crowd habit has become so strong upon us, has so mastered +the mood of the hour, that even you and I, gentle reader, have found +ourselves for one brief moment, perhaps, in a certain sheepish feeling +at being caught in a small audience. Being caught in a small audience at +a lecture is no insignificant experience. You will see people looking +furtively about, counting one another. You will make comparisons. You +will recall the self-congratulatory air of the last large audience you +had the honour to belong to, sitting in the same seats, buzzing +confidently to itself before the lecture began. The hush of +disappointment in a small audience all alone with itself, the mutual +shame of it, the chill in it, that spreads softly through the room, +every identical shiver of which the lecturer is hired to warm +through--all these are signs of the times. People look at the empty +chairs as if every modest, unassuming chair there were some great +personality saying to each and all of us: "Why are you here? Did you not +make a mistake? Are you not ashamed to be a party to--to--as small a +crowd as this?" Thus do we sit, poor mortals, doing obeisance to Empty +Chairs--we who are to be lectured to--until the poor lecturer who is to +lecture to us comes in, and the struggle with the Chairs begins. + +When we turn to education as it stands to-day, the same self-satisfied, +inflexible smile of the crowd is upon it all. We see little but the +massing of machinery, the crowding together of numbers of teachers and +numbers of courses and numbers of students, and the practical total +submergence of personality, except by accident, in all educated life. + +The infinite value of the individual, the innumerable consequences of +one single great teaching man, penetrating every pupil who knows him, +becoming a part of the universe, a part of the fibre of thought and +existence to every pupil who knows him--this is a thing that belongs to +the past and to the inevitable future. With all our great institutions, +the crowds of men who teach in them, the crowds of men who learn in +them, we are still unable to produce out of all the men they graduate +enough college presidents to go around. The fact that at almost any +given time there may be seen, in this American land of ours, half a +score of colleges standing and waiting, wondering if they will ever find +a president again, is the climax of what the universities have failed to +do. The university will be justified only when a man with a university +in him, a whole campus in his soul, comes out of it, to preside over it, +and the soul that has room for more than one chair in it comes out of it +to teach in it. + +When we turn from education to journalism, the pressure of the crowd is +still more in evidence. To have the largest circulation is to have the +most advertising, and to have the most advertising means to have the +most money, and to have the most money means to be able to buy the most +ability, and to have the most ability means to keep all that one gains +and get more. The degradation of many of our great journals in the last +twenty years is but the inevitable carrying out of the syndicate method +in letters--a mass of contributors, a mass of subscribers, and a mass of +advertisers. So long as it gives itself over to the circulation idea, +the worse a newspaper is, the more logical it is. There may be a certain +point where it is bound to stop some time, because there will not be +enough bad people who are bad enough to go around; but we have not come +to it yet, and in the meantime about everything that can be thought of +is being printed to make bad people. If it be asserted that there are +not enough bad people to go around even now, it may be added that there +are plenty of good people to take their places as fast as they fail to +be bad enough, and that the good people who take the bad papers to find +fault with them are the ones who make such papers possible. + +The result of the crowd principle is the inevitable result. Our journals +have fallen off as a matter of course, not only in moral ideals (which +everybody realizes), but in brain force, power of expression, +imagination, and foresight--the things that give distinction and results +to utterance and that make a journal worth while. The editorial page has +been practically abandoned by most journals, because most journals have +been abandoned by their editors: they have become printed +counting-rooms. With all their greatness, their crowds of writers, and +masses of readers, and piles of cablegrams, they are not able to produce +the kind of man who is able to say a thing the kind of way that will +make everybody stop and listen to him, cablegrams and all. Horace +Greeley and Samuel Bowles and Charles A. Dana have passed from the +press, and the march of the crowd through the miles of their columns +every day is trampling on their graves. The newspaper is the mass +machine, the crowd thinker. To and fro, from week to week and from year +to year, its flaming headlines sway, now hither and now thither, where +the greatest numbers go, or the best guess of where they are going to +go; and Personality, creative, triumphant, masterful, imperious +Personality--is it not at an end? It were a dazzling sight, perhaps, to +gaze at night upon a huge building, thinking with telegraph under the +wide sky around the world, the hurrying of its hundred pens upon the +desks, and the trembling of its floors with the mighty coming of a Day +out of the grip of the press; but even this huge bewildering pile of +power, this aggregation, this corporation of forces, machines of souls, +glittering down the Night--does any one suppose It stands by Itself, +that It is its own master, that It can do its own will in the world? In +all its splendour It stands, weaving the thoughts of the world in the +dark; but that very night, that very moment, It lies in the power of a +little ticking-thing behind its doors. It belongs to that legislature of +information and telegraph, that owner of what happens in a day, called +the Associated Press. + +If the One who called Himself a man and a God had not been born in a +crowd, if he had not loved and grappled with it, and been crucified and +worshipped by it, He might have been a Redeemer for the silent, stately, +ancient world that was before He came, but He would have failed to be a +Redeemer for this modern world--a world where the main inspiration and +the main discouragement is the crowd, where every great problem and +every great hope is one that deals with crowds. It is a world where, +from the first day a man looks forth to move, he finds his feet and +hands held by crowds. The sun rises over crowds for him, and sets over +crowds; and having presumed to be born, when he presumes to die at last, +in a crowd of graves he is left not even alone with God. Ten human lives +deep they have them--the graves in Paris; and whether men live their +lives piled upon other men's lives, in blocks in cities or in the +apparent loneliness of town or country what they shall do or shall not +do, or shall have or shall not have--is it not determined by crowds, by +the movement of crowds? The farmer is lonely enough, one would say, as +he rests by his fire in the plains, his barns bursting with wheat; but +the murmur of the telegraph almost any moment is the voice of the crowd +to him, thousands of miles away, shouting in the Stock Exchange: "You +shall not sell your wheat! Let it lie! Let it rot in your barns!" + +And yet, if a man were to go around the earth with a surveyor's chain, +there would seem to be plenty of room for all who are born upon it. The +fact that there are enough square miles of the planet for every human +being on it to have several square miles to himself does not prove that +a man can avoid the crowd--that it is not a crowded world. If what a man +could be were determined by the square mile, it would indeed be a gentle +and graceful earth to live on. But an acre of Nowhere satisfies no one; +and how many square miles does a man want to be a nobody in? He can do +it better in a crowd, where every one else is doing it. + +In the ancient world, when a human being found something in the wrong +place and wanted to put it where it belonged, he found himself face to +face with a few men. He found he had to deal with these few men. To-day, +if he wants anything put where it belongs, he finds himself face to face +with a crowd. He finds that he has to deal with a crowd. The world has +telephones and newspapers now, and it has railroads; and if a man +proposes to do a certain thing in it, the telephones tell the few, and +the newspapers tell the crowd, and the crowd gets on to the railroad; +and before he rises from his sleep, behold the crowd in his front yard; +and if he can get as far as his own front gate in the thing he is going +for, he must be--either a statesman? a hero? or a great genius? None of +these. Let him be a corporation--of ideas or of dollars; let him be some +complex, solid, crowded thing, would he do anything for himself, or for +anybody else, or for everybody else, in a world too crowded to tell the +truth without breaking something, or to find room for it, when it is +told, without breaking something. + +This is the Crowd's World. + + * * * * * + +What I have written I have written. + +I have been sitting and reading it. It is a mood. But there is an +implacable truth in it, I believe, that must be gotten out and used. + +As I have been reading I have looked up. I see the quiet little mountain +through my window standing out there in the sun. It looks around the +world as if nothing had happened; and the bobolinks out in the great +meadow are all flying and singing in the same breath and rowing through +the air, thousands of them, miles of them. They do not stop a minute. + +A moment ago while I was writing I heard the Child outside on the +piazza, four years old, going by my window back and forth, listening to +the crunch of her new shoes as if it were the music of the spheres. Why +should not I do as well? I thought. The Child is merely seeing her shoes +as they are with as many senses and as many thoughts and desires at once +as she can muster, and with all her might. + +What if I were to see the world like the Child? + +Yesterday I went to Robert's Meadow. I saw three small city boys, with +their splendid shining rubber boots and their beautiful bamboo poles. +They were on their way home. They had only the one trout between them, +and that had been fondled, examined, and poked over and bragged about +until it was fairly stiff and brown with those boys--looked as if it had +been stolen out of a dried-herring box. They put it reverently back, +when I saw it, into their big basket. I smiled a little as I walked on +and thought how they felt about it. + +Then suddenly it was as if I had forgotten something. I turned and +looked back; saw those three boys--a little retinue to that solitary +fish--trudging down the road in the yellow sun. And I stood there and +wanted to be in it! Then I saw them going round the bend in the road +thirty years away. + +I still want to be one of those boys. + +And I am going to try. Perhaps, Heaven helping me, I will yet grow up to +them! + +I know that the way those three boys felt about the fish--the way they +folded it around with something, the way they made the most of it, is +the way to feel about the world. + +I side with the three boys. I am ready to admit that as regards +technical and comparatively unimportant details or as regards +perspective on the fish the boys may not have been right. It is possible +that they had not taken a point of view, measured in inches or volts or +foot-pounds, that was right and could last forever; but I know that the +spirit of their point of view was right--the spirit that hovered around +the three boys and around the fish that day was right and could last +forever. + +It is the spirit in which the world was made, and the spirit in which +new worlds in all ages, and even before our eyes by Boys and Girls +and--God, are being made. + +It is only the boys and the girls (all sizes) who know about worlds. And +it is only boys and girls who are right. + +I heard a robin in the apple tree this morning out in the rain singing, +_"I believe! I believe!"_ + + * * * * * + +At the same time, I am glad that I have known and faced, and that I +shall have to know and face, the Crowd Fear. + +I know in some dogged, submerged, and speechless way that it is not a +true fear. And yet I want to move along the sheer edge of it all my +life. I want it. I want all men to have it, and to keep having it, and +to keep conquering it. I have seen that no man who has not felt it, who +does not know this huge numbing, numberless fear before the crowd, and +who may not know it again almost any moment, will ever be able to lead +the crowd, glory in it, die for it, or help it. Nor will any man who has +not defied it, and lifted his soul up naked and alone before it and +cried to God, ever interpret the crowd or express the will of the crowd, +or hew out of earth and heaven what the crowd wants. + +We want to help to express and fulfil a crowd civilization, we want to +share the crowd life, to express what people in crowds feel--the great +crowd sensations, excitements, the inspirations and depressions of those +who live and struggle with crowds. + +We want to face, and face grimly, implacably, the main facts, the main +emotions men are having to-day. And the main emotion men are having +to-day about our modern world is that it is a crowded world, that in the +nature of the case its civilization is a crowd civilization. Every other +important thing for this present age to know must be worked out from +this one. It is the main thing with which our religion has to deal, the +thing our literature is about, and the thing our arts will be obliged +to express. Any man who makes the attempt to consider or interpret +anything either in art or life without a true understanding of the crowd +principle as it is working to-day, without a due sense of its central +place in all that goes on around us, is a spectator in the blur and +bewilderment of this modern world, as helpless in it, and as childish +and superficial in it, as a Greek god at the World's Fair, gazing out of +his still Olympian eyes at the Midway Pleasance. + + * * * * * + +After the Crowd Fear there comes to most of us the machine fear. +Machines are the huge limbs or tentacles of crowds. As the crowds grow +the machines grow; grasping at the little strip of sky over us, at the +little patch of ground beneath our feet, they swing out before us and +beckon daily to us new hells and new heavens in our eyes. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +THE MACHINE SCARE + + +I have had occasion nearly every day for the past two weeks to pass by +an ancient churchyard on a great hillside not far from London. Most of +the stones are very old, and seem to have been thoughtfully and +reverently, flake by flake, wrought into their final form by +long-vanished hands. As I stand and watch them, with the yews and +cypresses flocking round them, it is as if in some sort of way they had +been surely wrought by the hand of love, so full are they of grief and +of joy, of devotion, of the very singing of the dead and of those who +loved them. + +When I walk on a little farther, and come to a small and new addition to +the churchyard, and look about me at the stones, I find myself suddenly +in quite a new company. So far as one could observe, looking at the +gravestones in the new churchyard, the people who died there died rather +thoughtlessly and mechanically, and as if nobody cared very much. Of +course, when one thinks a little further, one knows that this cannot be +true, and that the men and the women who gathered by these glib, trim, +capable-looking modern tombstones were as full of love and tenderness +and reverence before their dead as the others were--but the lines on the +stones give no sign. One never stops to read an epitaph on one of them; +one knows it would not be interesting, or really whisper to one the +strange, happy, human things of another world--even of this world, that +make the old tombstones such good company and so friendly to us. One +gives a glance at the stone and passes on. It was made by machinery, +apparently; a machine might have designed it, a machine might have died +and been buried under it. One looks beyond it at all the others like +it--all the glib, competent-looking white stones. Were the silenced +people all machines under them, all mechanical, all made to a pattern +like their stones, like these strangely hard, brief tombstones standing +here at their heads, summing up their lives before us curtly, +heartlessly, on this gentle old hillside? + +I wondered. + +I looked back to the old eloquent cemetery that almost seemed to be +breathing things, and looked once more at the new. + +And as I stood and thought, they seemed to me to be two worlds--one the +world the people all about me are always saying sadly is going by, and +the other--well, the one we will have to have. + + * * * * * + +As I look off from the hilltop at the great sloping countryside about +me, which stretches miles and miles, with its green fields, and bushy +treetops, its red roofs, its banners of steam from twenty railways, its +huge, grim, furious chimneys, its still, sleepy steeples, I also see two +worlds, the same two worlds over again that I saw in the churchyard, +except that they are all jumbled together--the complacent, capable, +cut-out, homeless-looking houses, the little snuggled-down old ones with +their happy trees about them and trails of cooking smoke. I see the same +two worlds standing and facing each other before me whichever way I +turn. + +And when I slip out of the churchyard from those two little separate +worlds of the dead, and move slowly down the long bustling village +street, and look into the faces of the living, the same two worlds that +were in the churchyard and on the hills seem to look at me out of the +faces of the living too. + +The faces go hurrying past me, worlds apart. Most people, I imagine, who +read these pages must have noticed the people's faces in the streets +nowadays--how they seem to have come out of separate worlds into the +street a moment, and hurry past, and seem to be going back in a moment +more to separate worlds. + +There is hardly even a village footway left anywhere to-day where one +cannot see these two worlds, or the spirit of these two worlds, flitting +past one through the streets in people's faces, and nightly before our +eyes, struggling with each other to possess, to swallow away into itself +human souls, to master the fate of man upon the earth. + +One of these is the World of the Hand-made; the other is the +Machine-made World. + + * * * * * + +As day by day I watch these two worlds with all their people in them +flocking past me, I have come to have certain momentary but recurrent +resentments and attractions, unaccountable strong emotions; and when I +try afterward to rationalize my emotions, as a man should, and give an +account of them to myself, and get them ready to use and face my age +with, and make myself strong and fit to live in an age, I find myself +with a great task before me. And yet one must do it; one cannot live in +an age strongly and fitly if one would rather be living in some other +age, or if it is an age with two worlds in it and one cannot make up +one's mind which is the world one wants and settle down quietly and live +in it. Then a strange thing happens, and always happens the moment I +begin to try to decide which of the two--the Hand-made World or the +Machine-made World--I will choose. I find that in an odd, confused, +groping, obstinate way I am bound to choose them both. In spite of all +its ugly ways--a kind of vast indifference it has to me, to everybody, +its magnificent heartlessness--I find I have come to take in the +Machine-made World a kind of boundless, half-secret pride and joy, for a +terrible and strange beauty there is in it. And then, too, even if I +wanted to give it up, I could not: neither I nor any man, nor all the +world combined, could unthink to-day a hundred years, fold up a hundred +thousand miles of railway, tuck modern life all neatly up again in a +little, old, snug, safe, lovable Hand-made World. There must be some way +out, some connecting link between the Hand-made and the Machine-made. We +have merely lost it for a moment. + +Which way shall we turn? And so at last to the little Thing through +which the whole world whispers to me on my desk, to the mighty railways +that beckon past my door, to the airships that cannot be stilled, and to +the rolling mills that will not be silenced, I turn at last! I turn to +the Machines Themselves. Half-singing and half-cursing, I have faced +them. There is some way in which they can answer and can be made to +answer--can be made to give me and the men about me the kind of world we +want. I try to analyze it and think it out. What is the thing, the real +thing in the Hand-made World, that fills me with pride and joy, and that +I cannot and will not give up? Is not the real thing that is in it +something that can be or might be freed from it, exhaled from it, +something that might be in some new form saved, made an atmosphere or a +spirit and passed on? And what is it in the new Machine-made World +which, in spite of the splendid joy, a rough new, wild religion there is +in it, keeps daily filling me as I go past machines with this +contradictory obstinate dread of them? After a time I have made a little +cleared space in my mind, a little breathing room. It has come to me +from thinking that what is beautiful in the Hand-made World perhaps is +not these particular Hand-made things themselves at which I so delight, +but the Hand-made spirit of the men who made them which the men put into +the things. And perhaps what is full of death and fear in the +Machine-made World is not the machines themselves, but the Machine-made +spirit in which the men who run the machines have made the machines +work. Perhaps the Hand-made spirit is pervasive, eternal. Perhaps it can +escape like a spirit, and can live where it will live, and do what it +will do, like a spirit, and possess the body that it wills to possess. +Perhaps the Hand-made spirit is still living around me to-day, and is +not only living, but is living in a more unspeakable, unbounded body +than any spirit has ever lived in before, and is to-day before our eyes, +laying its huge iron fingers around our little earth, and holding the +oceans in its hand, and brushing away mountains with a breath, until we +have Man at last playing all night through the sky, with visions and +airships and telescopes. His very words walk on the air with soft and +unseen feet. + +It is the Hand-made spirit that creates machines. The machines +themselves are still the mighty children of the men who move and work in +the Hand-made spirit; and the men who glory in them, the men who bring +them forth, who think them out, and who create them, and who do the +great and mighty things with them, are still the Hand-made men. + + * * * * * + +This leads us up to the question we are all asking ourselves every day. +"How can a machine-made world be run in the spirit of a hand-made +world?" The particular form in which the question has been put, which is +taken from "Inspired Millionaires" is as follows: + +"The idea that there is something in a machine simply as a machine which +makes it inherently unspiritual is based upon the experience of the +world; but it is, after all, a rather amateur and juvenile world with +machines as yet. Its ideas are in their first stages, and are based for +the most part upon the world's experience with second-rate men, working +in second-rate factories--men who have been bullied, and could be +bullied, by the machines they worked with into being machines +themselves. No one would think of denying that men who let machines get +the better of them, either in their minds or their bodies, in any walk +of life, grow unspiritual and mechanical. But it does not take a machine +to make a machine out of a man. Anything will do it if the man will let +it. Even the farmer who is out under the great free dome of heaven, and +working in wonder every day of his life, grows like a clod if he buries +his soul alive in the soil. But farming has been tried many thousands of +years, and the other kind of farmer is known by everybody--the farmer +who is master over the soil; who, instead of becoming an expression of +the soil himself, makes the soil express him. The next thing that is +going to happen is that every one is going to know the other kind of +mechanic. It is cheerfully admitted that the kind of mechanic we largely +have now, who allows himself to be a watcher of a machine, a +turner-of-something for forty years, can hardly be classed as vegetable +life. He is not even organic matter except in a very small part of +himself. + +"But it is not the mechanical machine which makes the man unspiritual. +It is the mechanical man beside the machine. A master at a piano (which +is a machine) makes it a spiritual thing; and a master at a +printing-press, like William Morris, makes it a free and artistic and +self-expressive thing." + +I spent a day a little while ago in walking through a factory. I went +past miles of machines--great glass roofs of sunshine over them--and +looked in the faces of thousands of men. As I went through the machines +I kept looking to and fro between the machines and the men who stood +beside them, and sometimes I came back and looked again at the machines +and the men beside them; and every machine, or nearly every machine, I +saw (any one could see it in that factory) was making a man of somebody. +One could see the spirit of the man who invented the machine, and the +spirit of the man who worked with it, and the spirit of the man who +owned it and who placed it there with the man, all softly, powerfully +running together. There were exceptions, and every now and then one +came, of course, upon the man who seemed to be simply another and +somewhat different contrivance or attachment to his machine--some part +that had been left over and thought of last, and had not been done as +well as the others; but the factory, taken as a whole, from the +manager's offices and the great counting-room, and from the tall +chimneys to the dump, seemed to me to have something fresh and human and +unwonted about it. It seemed to be a factory that had a look, a look of +its own. It was like a vast countenance. It had features, an expression. +It had an air--well, one must say it, of course, if one is driven to it: +the factory had a soul, and was humming it. Any one could have seen why +by going into his office and talking a little while with the owner, or +by even not talking to him--by seeing him look up from his desk. After +walking through several miles of his personality, and up and down and +down and up the corridors of his mind, one did not really need to meet +him except as a matter of form and as a finishing touch. One had been +visiting with him all along: to look in his face was merely to sum it +up, to see it all, the whole place, over again in one look. One did not +need to be surprised; one might have known what such a man would be +like--that such a factory could only be conceived and wrought by a man +of genius, a kind of lighted-up man. A man who had put not only +skylights in his buildings, but skylights in his men, would have to have +a skylight in himself (a skylight with a motor attachment, of course). + +If one were to try to think in nature or in art of something that would +be like him--well, some kind of transcendental engine, I should say, +running softly, smoothly outdoors in a great sunshine, would have given +one a good idea of him. But, however this may be, it certainly would +have been quite impossible to go through his factory and ever say again +that machines do not and could not have souls, or at least over-souls, +and that men who worked with machines did not and could not have souls +as fast as they were allowed to. + +A few days later I went through another factory, and I came out weary +and spent at night, feeling as unreasonable and almost as hateful about +machines, and as discouraged about the people who had to work with them +as John Ruskin did in those first early days when the Factory Chimney +first lifted its long black flag upon our earth, and bullied great +cities into cowards and slaves, and all the great, quiet-hearted +nations, and began making for us--all around us, before our eyes, as +though in a kind of jeer at us, and at our queer, pretty, helpless +little religions--the hell we had ceased to believe in. + +The hell is here, and is going to be here apparently as long as may be +necessary for us to see it and believe in it once more. If a hell on our +own premises, shut down hard over our lives here and now, is what is +necessary to make us religious and human once more, if we are reduced to +it, and if having a hard, literal hell--one of our own--is our only way +of seeing things, of fighting our way through to the truth, and of +getting once more decisive, manful, commanding ideas of good and evil, I +for one can only be glad we have Pittsburgs and Sheffields to hurry us +along and soon have it over with. + +But while, like Ruskin, any one can look about the machines and see +hell, he can see hell to-day, unlike Ruskin, with heaven lined up close +beside it. The machines have come to have souls. The machines we can see +all about us have taken sides. We can all of us see the machines about +us to-day like vast looms, weaving in and weaving out the fate of the +world, the fate of the churches, the fate of the women and the little +children, and the very fate of God; and everything about us we can see +turning at last on what we are doing with the machines that are about +us, and what we are letting our machines do with us. + + * * * * * + +It has cleared my mind, and at least helped me to live side by side with +machines better from day to day, to consider what these two souls or +spirits in the machines are, and what they are doing and likely to do. +If one knows them and one sees them, and sees how they are working, it +is easier to take sides and join in and help. + +It would seem to me that there are two spirits in machinery--the spirit +of weariness, weakness, of inventing ways of getting out of work; and +there is the spirit in the machines, too, of moving mountains, +conquering the sea and air, of working harder and lifting one's work +over to more heroic, to more splendid and difficult, and almost +impossible things. It is these two spirits that are fighting for the +possession and control of our machine civilization. I watch the machines +and the men beside them and see which side they are on. The labourer who +is doing as little work as he dares for his wages and the capitalist who +is giving as little service as he dares for his money are on the one +side (the vast, lazy, mean majority of employers and employees), and +there may be seen standing on the other side against them, battling for +our world, another small but mighty group made up of the labourer who +loves his work more than his wages, and the capitalist who loves the +thing he makes more than the profit. In other words, the fate of our +modern civilization, with all its marvellous machines on it, its art +galleries and its churches, is all hanging to-day on the battle between +the spirit of achievement, the spirit of creating things, and the spirit +of weariness or the spirit of thinking of ways of getting out of things. + +It does not take very long to see which one prefers when one considers +the problem of living in one world or the other. If we are to take our +choice between living in a world run by tired men and a world run by +inspired ones, most of us will have little difficulty in deciding which +we would prefer, and which one we are bound to have. I have been moved +to come forward with the idea of inspired employers--or, as I have +called it, "Inspired Millionaires"--because it would seem to me inspired +employers are the very least we can ask for; for certainly if even our +employers cannot be inspired or rested and strong, we cannot expect +their overworked workmen to be. There is no hope for us but to write +our books and to live our lives in such a way as to help put the world +in the hands of the Strong, and to help keep its institutions and +customs out of the hands of the overworked. Overworked mechanical +employers and overworked labourers are the last men to solve the problem +of the overworked, except in a small, tired, mean, resentful, temporary +way. + +And so, as I look about me and watch the machines and the men who are +working with the machines, or owning them, it is on this principle that +I find myself taking sides. I will not live, if I can help it, in a +world that is conceived and arranged and managed by tired and overworked +and mechanical men. Have I not seen tired, mechanical men, whole +generations of them, vast mobs of them, the men who have let the +machines mow down their souls? The first thing I have come to ask of a +man, if he is to be at the head of a machine--whether it is a machine +called a factory, or a machine called a Government or a city, or a +machine called a nation--is, _Is he tired?_ I have cast my lot once for +all--and as it seems to me, too, the lot of the world--with those men +who are rested, with the surplus men, the men who want to work more not +less, who are still and gentle and strong in their hearts, steady in +their imaginations, great men--men who are not driven to being +self-centred or driven to being class-centred, who can be world-centred +and inspired. + + * * * * * + +When one has made this decision, that one will work for a world in +control of men who are strong, one suddenly is brought face to face with +a fact in our machine civilization which probably is quite new, and +which the spirit of man has never had to face in any age before. + +For the first time in the history of the world, machinery has made it +possible for the world to get into the hands of the weak. + +The Gun began it--the gun in a coward's hands may side with the weak, +and the machine in the hands of the weak may temporarily give the world +a list or a trend, and leave it leaning on the wrong side. + +The Trust, for instance, which is really an extremely valuable +invention, and perhaps, on the whole, the most important machine of +modern times when it is used to defend the rights of the people, is a +very different thing when it is pointed at them. We have to-day, not +unnaturally, the spectacle of perhaps nine people out of ten getting up +and saying in chorus all through the world that Trusts ought to be +abolished; and yet it cannot honestly be said that there is really +anything about the trust-machine--any more than any other machine--that +is inherently wicked, or mechanical and heartless. Our real objection to +the trust-machines is not to the machines themselves, but to the fact +that they are, or happen to be (judging each Trust by itself), in the +hands of the weak and of the tired--of men, that is, who have no spirit, +no imagination about people; mechanical-minded men, who, at least in the +past, have taken the easiest and laziest course in business--that of +making all the money they can. + +The moment we see the Trusts in the hands of the strong men, the men who +are unwilling to slump back into mere money-making, and who face daily +with hardihood and with joy the feat of weaving into business several +strands of value at once, making things and making money and making men +together, the Trust will become a vast machine of human happiness, +lifting up and pulling on the world for all of us day and night. + +If our labouring men to-day are to be got out from under the machines, +we can only bring it to pass by doing everything we can in directors' +meetings or in labor unions or as buyers or as journalists--whatever we +may be--to keep the trust-machines in this world out of the hands of the +tired, weak, and mechanical-minded men. + +And the things that have been happening to the trust-machines, or are +about to happen to them, have happened and are beginning to happen +before our eyes to the machines themselves. The machines of flame and +iron wheels and men in monstrous factories which the philosophers and +the poets and the very preachers have doomed our world with are passing +through the same evolution as the trust-machines, and shall be seen at +last through the dim struggle yielding themselves, bending their iron +wills to the same indomitable human spirit, the same slow, stern, +implacable will of the soul of man. They shall be inspired machines. + +Now for a long time we have seen (for the most part) the weak and +mechanical-minded employer, the man who takes the line of least +resistance in business, on every hand about us, making his employees +mechanical-minded. The men have not been able to work without machines +to work with, and as they have been obliged to come to him to get the +machines, he has adopted the policy of letting himself fall into the +weakest and easiest way of keeping his men under his own control. He +takes the machines the men have come to him to get, and turns them back +against them, points them at their lives, stops their minds with them, +their intelligence and manhood, the very hope and religion with which +they live; and of course, when men have had machines pointed at them +long enough, one sees them on every hand being mowed down in rows into +machines themselves--as deadly and as hopeless to make a civilization +out of, or a nation out of, or to give votes to, or to have for fathers +as machines would be, as iron or leather or wood. + +In the meantime, however, we seem to have been developing--partly by +competition and partly by combination and by experience--employers who +are not mechanical-minded, who have spirit themselves, and who believe +in it and can use it in others; who find ways of adjusting the hours, +the wages, and the conditions of work for the men, so that what is most +valuable in them, their spirit, their imaginations, their hourly +good-will, can all be turned into the business, can all daily be used as +the most important part of the working equipment of the factory. These +employers have found (by believing it long enough to try it) that live +men can do better and more marketable work than dead ones. If the great +slow-moving majority of our modern machine employers were not +mechanical-minded, it would not be necessary to prove to them +categorically the little platitude (which even people who have observed +cab-horses know) that the living is more valuable than the half-dead, +and that live men can do better and more marketable work than half-dead +ones. + +But, of course, if they are not convinced by imagination or by arguments +or by figures, they may have to be convinced by losing their business; +for the most spirited employers, those who take the more difficult and +creative course of making money and men together, are sure to be the +employers who will get and keep the most spirited men, and are sure to +crowd out of the market in their own special line employers who can only +get and keep mechanical-minded ones. + + * * * * * + +It would be hard to overstate the importance of the battle now going on +among the trades unions between the spirited labourers and the tired +ones, and among the manufacturers between the inspired employers and the +mechanical-minded ones. + +For the time being, at least, it is the inspired employers who have most +power to change the conditions of labour and to free the +mechanical-minded slaves. It is they who are standing to-day on the +great strategical ground of our time. They hold the pass of human life. +People cannot expect to be inspired in crowds. Crowds are too unwieldy +and too inconvenient to act quickly. The people can only concentrate +their energies on getting and demanding inspired employers, on +insisting that the men who for eight or nine hours a day are pouring in +with their wages their thoughts, and their motives, the very hope with +which they live, into their lives, shall be the champions of the people, +shall represent them and act for them, as they are not placed to act for +themselves, and with more imagination than they can yet expect to have +for themselves. If our labouring men of to-day are going to struggle out +from under the machines, they can only do it by doing all that they can +in labour unions and in the press and at the polls to keep the machines +in this world out of the hands of tired and mechanical-minded owners. + +But probably the more immediate rescue from the evil or mechanicalness +in machines is not going to come from the employers on the one hand or +the employees on the other, but from having the employees in the Trades +Unions and the employers in the directors' meetings combining together +to keep in subordinate places where they cannot hurt others all men, +whether directors or employees, who do not work harder than they have +to, and who have not the brains to do their work for something besides +money. The men who are like this will of course be pitied and duly +considered, but they will be kept where they will not have power to +control other men, or where by force of position or by mere majority +they will be able to bully other men to work as mechanically as they do. +Workmen who do not want to become machines can only better conditions by +combination with so-called inspired employers--employers who work harder +than they have to, who dote on the great human difficulties of work, who +choose not the easiest but the most perfect way of doing things, who are +never mechanical themselves, and will not let their men be if they can +help it. I have liked to call these employers inspired millionaires. I +would rather have the machine owner or employer a millionaire, because +the more machines an inspired employer can own, the more he can buy and +get away from the uninspired ones, the sooner will the right of labour +and the will of the people be accomplished. When the machines are in +the hands of inspired and strong and spirited men--men of real +competence or genius for business, the machines will be seen on every +hand around us as the engines of war against evil, against slavery, the +whirling weapons of the Spirit. + +Even now, in dreams have I stood and watched them--the will of the +people like a flail in their mighty hands--this vast army of +machines--go thundering past, driving the uninspired and mechanical off +the face of the earth. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +THE STRIKE--AN INVENTION FOR MAKING CROWDS THINK + + +When I was arranging to slip over from New York and get something I very +much wanted in England last spring, I found myself held up suddenly in +all my plans because some men on the docks had decided that there was +something that they wanted too. They decided that I and thousands of +other people in New York would have to wait over on the shores of +America until they got it. + +After postponing my plans until things had settled down, I took passage, +and in due time found myself standing on English soil, only to be +informed that, while I might be allowed perhaps at least to stand on +English soil, that was really as much as I could expect. I could not go +anywhere because a number of men on the railways had decided that there +was something they wanted and that I would have to wait till they got +it. + +I could go down and look at the silent, cold locomotives on the rails, +and I could be as wistful and hopeful as I liked about getting up to +London, but these men had decided that there was something that they +wanted and I must wait. + +I could not think of anything I had ever done to these men, and what had +Liverpool and London done to them? + +After I was duly settled in London, and had begun to get into its little +ways, and was busily driving about and attending to my business as I had +planned, 6,000 more men suddenly wanted something, brought me up to a +full stop one rainy day, and said that they had decided that if I wanted +to ride I would have to walk, or that I would have to poke dismally +about in a 'bus, or worm my way through under the ground. As I +understood it, there was something that they wanted and something that +they were going to get; and while of course in a way, they recognized +that there might be something that I wanted too, I would have to wait +till they got theirs. + +I could not think of anything I had ever done to them, nor could I see +what the thousands of other good people in London that I saw walking and +puddling about, or watched waiting twenty minutes or so with long, +hopeful, dogged whistles for cabs, had done to them. + +A few days more, and my morning paper tells me suddenly of some more men +who wanted something--this time up in Lancashire. They had decided that +they wouldn't let some two or three hundred thousand other men go to +their work until they got it. They hushed cities to have their own way. +Day by day I watched them throwing the silence of the cities in their +employers' faces, closing shops, closing up railroads, telling the world +it must pay more for the clothes on its back, and all because--a certain +Mr. and Mrs. Riley of Accrington, North Lancashire did not like or did +not think that they liked, the North Lancashire Trades Union. (The +general idea seemed to be to have all the others join in, +everywhere--fifty-four million spindles, and four hundred and forty +thousand looms--and wait and keep perfectly still until Mr. and Mrs. +Riley could make up their minds.) + +And now this present week, morning after morning I take up my paper and +read that 500,000 miners want something. I look in my fire dubiously day +by day. I may have to go home to America in a few weeks to get warm. + +Of course it is only fair to say at the outset that this little series +of impressions, or sketches, as one may say, of Civilization as I have +seen it since arriving in England are of such a nature that I need not +have come over to England to observe them. I would be the last to deny +that the same conveniences for being disagreeable and for getting in the +way and for making a general muss of Life can be offered almost any +time in my own hopeful and blundering country. + +What more immediately concerns me in these things is that, having +happened, there can be no doubt that they have some valuable and worthy +meaning for me and for other people that I ought to get out of them. + +One cannot stand by and see a great civilization like our +English-speaking civilization, with its ocean liners, cathedrals, and +aeroplanes, being undignified and inefficient before one's eyes and even +a little ridiculous, without trying to see if it does not serve some +purpose. There must be something beyond, something further and deeper, +something newborn about it, which shall be worth our while. Strikes seem +to be common people's way of thinking things out. If they had more +imagination, they would know what they were going to think beforehand, +without so much trouble perhaps; but so long as they have not, and so +long as it is really true perhaps that all these millions of levers and +wheels and engines will have to be stopped, so that the rich +mechanical-minded people who own them and the poor mechanical-minded +people who work with them can think better, we will have to be glad at +least that they are thinking, and we will have to hope that they are +thinking fast, and will soon have it over with. In the meantime, while +they are thinking, we can think too. + +It is never fair to lump people together, and there are always +exceptions and special reasons to consider; but, speaking roughly, it is +fair to lay it down as a general principle that it is apt to be the more +common kind of employers and employees who find it difficult to think, +and who need strikes to think with. When we see 175,000 weavers striking +in Lancashire, and the Trades Unions insisting on the discharge of +Non-Union men, and employers being willing to recognize the Unions but +being unwilling to be controlled by them, most of us find ourselves +taking sides very quickly. We are often amazed to see how quickly we +take sides, and what amazes some of us most is our apparent +inconsistency. We find ourselves now on the Union side and now on the +employer side in the dispute between Capital and Labour. We never know +when we take up the morning paper, some of us, which side will be our +next; and very often, if we were suddenly asked why, on reading quietly +about a new dispute in the morning paper, we had taken promptly one side +rather than the other, almost unconsciously, before we knew it we would +not perhaps be able to say at once. The other day I became a little +alarmed at myself at what looked at first like a kind of moral weakness, +and inability to stand still on one side or the other in the contest +between Labour and Capital; and I tried to think my way sternly through, +and decide why it was my mind seemed to waver from one side to the +other, and seemed so inconsistent and inefficient. + +It seems to me I have just discovered a certain thread of consistency, +as I look back over many disputes. + +As near as I can remember, I find the side that uses force, or that uses +the most force, invariably turns me against it. If, as I read, I find +that both sides are using force, I find myself against both sides. I +find myself wishing, in spite of my dislike of Socialism, that the +nation had the power, when a quarrelsome industry turns to the people in +the street and stops them in what they are doing, and tells the people +in the street that they cannot ride, or that they shall not sleep, or +that they cannot eat--when a quarrelsome industry insists on keeping the +whole world up all night because it has a Stomach Ache, I feel suddenly +that the people ought to be able to take the industry away and put it +into such hands that the people in the streets will be protected; into +hands that will make the industry behave so that it won't have a stomach +ache. An industry with a stomach ache always has it because somebody in +it has been over-eating and getting more than their share, and is +incompetent and unfit; and obviously it should have its freedom, its +privilege of selecting its food, taken away from it until it behaves. + +Always allowing for exceptions, we may put it down as a general truth +that, when we find a cause using force or mere advantage of position, it +is because there is incompetence or lack of brains in those who conduct +it, and the cure lies, not in more force, but in more brains. One cannot +help being angered by force, because one knows that it is not only not a +remedy, but is itself the cause of all incompetence and blindness in +business. Force merely heaps the incompetence and blindness up, +postpones coöperation, defeats the mutual interest which is the very +substance of business efficiency in a nation. Force is itself the injury +mounting up more and more, which it seeks to cure. + +The most likely way to prevent industrial trouble would seem to be to +have employers and managers and foremen who have a genius for getting +men to trust and believe in them. We are getting smoke-consumers, +computing machines, and the next contrivance is going to be the employer +who has the understanding spirit, and who sees the cash value of human +genius, the value in the market of genius for being fair and getting on +with people. Arbitration boards are at best (as they themselves would +say) stupid and negative things, and though better than nothing, as a +rule merely postpone evil or change symptoms. No one can ever really +arbitrate for any one else either in industry or marriage except for a +moment. The trouble lies deep down inside the people who keep needing +arbitration. As long as these people are still there, and as long as +incompetent employers or employees are there, there is bound to be +trouble. + +Turning out incompetent employers and incompetent labourers is the only +way. We are getting rid of them as rapidly as possible. All business in +the last resort turns on brains for being human and understanding +people. Business, as people say, is partly business and business is +partly economics, but more than anything else, in modern times, business +is psychology. + +Success is the science of being believed in. Incompetent employers and +incompetent labourers are already being turned out, and are bound to be +turned out implacably more and more, by the competitive nature of modern +business. Under present conditions, if we have in each industry one +single competent employing firm, with brains for being fair and brains +for being far-sighted, and for being thoughtful of others--in short, +with brains for being believed in--the control of that industry soon +falls into their hands. People who use force instead of brains are +second-rate, are out of the spirit of the times, and are going by. And +this seems to be the spirit, too, which is to govern the more efficient +Labour Unions as well as the more efficient Trusts. + +If it were possible to collect the names in England and America of the +men in each industry where brains were being personally believed in, we +would have a list of the leaders of England and America for the next +fifty years. Having a soul in business pays, not because it affords a +fine motive power, but because it affords a practical and conclusive +method of driving the devil out of business. He is being driven out of +industry, one industry at a time, by men who get on better without him; +and this is going to go on until the ability to do this--to crowd out +the devil, to get the devil out of machines and factories, out of the +machinery of organization--the power to keep the devil out of things and +out of people, is recognized by everybody as the greatest, most subtle, +most victorious and universal market-value in the world. The men who can +be believed in most will get the most business, and, what is still more +important, the men who can make men believe in them most will be able to +hire the employees who can be believed in most, and will get a monopoly +of the efficiency of the world; and though the men who can be believed +in less may be able to continue for a time to do their work and go +through all their old motions as well as they can, with all their old +lumbering, pathetic machinery of watching each other and suspecting each +other and fighting each other humped up on their backs, they can never +hope to compete with free-moving, honest men, who deal directly and +openly and in a few words for their employees, jobbers, consumers, and +the public, without any vast machinery of suspicion to bother with. It +is a most curious, local, temporary, back-county idea, the idea that, +for sheer industrial economy, for simple cheap conclusive finance, there +is anything on earth in business that will take the place of +old-fashioned human personal prestige--the prestige of the man who has a +genius for being believed in. + +In a way, perhaps the recent strike among the London cabmen is an +instance of what is really the essential issue in every strike. The +bottom fact about the taxi chauffeurs, stated simply, was that they did +not believe in their employers. They believed that, if the precise +figures were known, their employers were getting more than their share. +On the other hand, the bottom fact about the employers was that they did +not and could not believe that, if the precise figures were known, the +cabmen were not getting more than their share. They insisted that the +cabmen should publish, or make known, the precise figures of their +extras. The cabmen declined to do it, and it made them look for the +moment perhaps as if they were wrong. But were they necessarily wrong? +Was it really true that they had any more reason to trust their +employers than their employers had to trust them? The cabmen might quite +honestly and justly have said to the owners: "What we want is an honest, +impeccable little dividend-recorder fastened on the back of every owner, +as well as on our machines and on us. Then we will publish our extras." + +The determining and important fact of economics in the last analysis +always turns out to be some human fact, some fact about people. It is +really true that just now, in the present half-stage of +machine-industry, employers should nearly all be compelled to go about +in this world with fare-recorders on their backs. Employees too. This +would be the logical thing to do; and as it is impracticable, and as +every business must have certain elements of secrecy in it in order to +be competent, the only alternative is to have in charge men with enough +genius for being believed in and for taking measures to be believed +in--to keep employees believing in them, in spite of secrecy. Under +these conditions, it cannot be long before we will see in every business +the men being put forward on both sides who have a genius for being +believed in. Managers and superintendents will be put in office +everywhere who see the cash value, the economy, of the simple, +old-fashioned power in a man of a genius for being believed in; +employers with the power of inspiring more and better work from their +workmen; Labour men with the power of inspiring employers to believe in +them, of inspiring their employers to put up money, stock, or profits on +their belief--on the belief that workmen are capable of the highest +qualities of manhood: hard work, loyalty, persistence, and faith toward +a common end. I have preferred to have this inspired employer a +millionaire, because the more capital he has the more men he can employ, +and the more rapidly the other kind of millionaire, the blind, +old-fashioned butter of Labour, will be driven out of business. + +Little can be done with one book, but at this special juncture, this +psychological moment for copartnership and the spirit of copartnership, +when all the world is touched to the quick by great strikes--at a time +when one can sit still and almost hear the nations think--there are some +of us who hope that the case we are trying to make out for copartnership +between Capital and Labour will be of use to those who are trying to do +things, and who for the moment find themselves foiled at every point by +men who have given up believing in human nature. We wish to put +ourselves on record, and to say that we do believe in human nature, and +that we believe not only that the inspired employer is going to be +evolved by the Crowd, but that the Crowd is going to recognize him and +is going to take sides with him, and that the Crowd is going to justify +him, make him succeed, is going to make his success its own success. In +other words, we believe in heroes, crowds, and goodness; in men of +heroic gifts--who are fit and meet to interpret the wills and desires +of crowds--who are great men or Crowd-Men, crowds in spirit themselves. + +I would like to try to express the type of modern man who, as it seems +to me, is about to prove himself the real ruler of our modern world, the +silent master of what the crowds shall think. It has seemed to me that +it is going to be a man of a marked type, and of a particular +temperament, to whom we will have to look in our new and crowded world +for the crowd-interpreter, or man who touches the imagination of crowds. + +As our whole labour problem to-day turns on our being able to touch the +imagination of Crowds, it may not be uninteresting in the next chapter +to consider what a man who can do this will probably be like and the +spirit in which he will do it. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +THE CROWD-MAN--AN INVENTION FOR MAKING CROWDS SEE + + +When Wilbur Wright flew around the Statue of Liberty in New York the +other day, his doing it was a big event; but a still bigger event, as it +seems to some of us, was the way he felt about New York when he did it. +All New York could not make him show off. Hundreds of thousands of +people on roofs could look up at the sky over New York, for him to go +by, all that they liked. He slipped down to Washington without saying +anything, on the 3:25 train, to attend to flying as part of the serious +business of the world. + +Why fly around a little town like New York, or show your bright wings in +the light, or circle the Statue of Liberty for fun, when you are +reconstructing civilization, and binding a whole planet together, and +wrapping the heavens close down around the earth, and making railroads +everywhere out of the air? New York is always a little superficial and +funny about itself. All it needs to do, it seems to think, is to snap +its fingers at a man of genius anywhere on this broad world, whisper to +him pleasantly, and he will trot promptly up, of course, and do his +little turn for it. + +But not Wilbur Wright. Wilbur Wright would not give two million people +an encore, or even come back to bow. As one looked over from Mount Tom +one could see all New York black and solid on the tops of its roofs and +houses looking up into a great hole of air for him, and Wilbur Wright +slipping quietly off down to Washington and leaving them there, a whole +great city under the sky, with its heads up! + +A little experience like this has been what New York has needed for a +long time. It takes a scientist to do these things. I wish there were +some poet who would do as well. Even a prophet up above New York--or +seer of men and of years--glinting his wings in the light, the New York +_Sun_ and the _World_ and the _Times_ down below, all their opera-glasses +trained on him, and all those little funny reporters running helplessly +about, all the people pouring out from Doctor Parkhurst's church to +look up.... It would be something. + +Probably there are very few capitals in the world--Paris, Berlin, or +London--that would not be profoundly stirred and possibly much improved +by having some man suddenly appear up over them, who would be so +interested in what he was doing that he would forget to notice whether +anybody was looking--who would be capable of slipping off quietly and +leaving an entire city with its heads up, and going on and attending to +business. + +There have been times when we would have been relieved, some of us, if +the North Pole could have been discovered in this way and without large +audiences tagging. There are some of us who will never cease to regret +as long as we live that the North Pole could not have waited a little. +We would rather have had Wilbur Wright discover it. One can imagine how +he would do it: fly gracefully up to it all by himself, and discover it +some pleasant evening, and have it over with, and slip back on his soft +wings in the night, and not say anything about it. It is this Wilbur +Wright spirit that I would like to dwell on in these pages. It seems to +me it is a true modern spirit, the spirit which alone could make our +civilization great, and the spirit which alone could make crowds great. +It was the crowd that spoiled the way the Pole was discovered--all the +millions of people, vast, thoughtless audiences piling in and making a +show of it. Many people in America, all the vast crowds reading about +it, seemed to feel that they were more important than the Pole; and when +Captain Peary came back, vast crowds of these same people paid as much +as five dollars apiece for the privilege of being in the same room with +him. It was quite impossible not to contrast Captain Peary in his +attitude toward the crowd and Wilbur Wright. There seemed to be, and +there will always remain, a certain vulgarity in the way the North Pole +was discovered, and the way the whole world behaved in regard to it, and +the secret seems to have been in Captain Peary's failure to be a Wilbur +Wright. He allowed the Pole to be a Crowd affair. All the while as he +went about the country holding his little exhibits of the tip of the +planet we could not help wishing, many of us who were in the Audience, +that this man who sat there before us, the man who had the Thing in his +hand, who had collected the North Pole, would not notice us, would snub +us if need be a little, and would leave these people, these millions of +people, with their heads up and go quietly on to the South Pole and +collect that. It is because there are thousands of men who understand +just how Wilbur Wright felt when he slipped away the other day in New +York and left the entire city with its heads up that we have every +reason to expect that the crowd is to produce great leaders, and is to +become a great crowd, great and humble in spirit before God, before the +stars, and the atoms, and the microbes, and before Itself. In the +meantime, however, we see all about us in the world countless would-be +leaders of the crowd, who would perhaps not quite understand the way +Wilbur Wright felt that day when he slipped away from New York and left +the entire city with its heads up. Most newspaper men--men who are in +the habit of writing for a crowd and regarding a crowd quite +respectfully--will have wondered a little why Wilbur Wright could have +let such a crowd go by. Most actors and theatrical people would have +stayed over a train or so and given one more little performance with all +those wistful people on the roof-tops. There are only a very few +clergymen in England or America to-day who, with a great audience like +that and so many men in it, would ever have thought of slipping off on +the 3:25 train in the way Wilbur Wright did. The ministers and the +politicians of all countries are still wondering a little--if they ever +thought of it--how Wright did it. Most of the other people in the world +wonder a little, too, but I imagine that the great inventors of the +world who read about it the next morning did not wonder. The true +scientists, in this country and in Germany and in France, all understood +just how Wilbur Wright felt when he left New York with its heads up. The +great artists of the world, in literature, in painting, and +architecture; the great railroad builders, the city builders, the nation +builders, the great statesmen, the great biologists, and chemists, +understood. James J. Hill, with his face toward the Pacific, understood. +Alexander Graham Bell, out abroad doing the listening and talking and +thinking the thoughts of eighty million people, understood. Marconi, +making the ships whisper across the sea, and William G. McAdoo, shooting +a hundred and seventy thousand people a day through a hole under the +Hudson--understood. + +And God, when He made the world. And Columbus when he discovered +America. And Jesus Christ when He was so happy and so preoccupied over +His vision of a new world, over inventing Christianity, that it seemed a +very small and incidental thing to die on the Cross--He understood. + +Wilbur Wright's secret was that he had a vision. His vision was that a +human being could be greater and more powerful than the world had ever +believed before. + +Just to be there was a great thought, to be allowed to be one of those +admitted, to be present at the first faint beginning, the first still +alighting of the human spirit from the earth upon the sky. Wilbur Wright +made the most ordinary man a genius a minute. He made him wonder softly +who he was--and the people all about him--who were they? and what would +they think, and what would they do next? The first flash of light on the +wings was a thousand years. It was as if almost for a moment he saw at +last the whole earth about him. History, churches, factories on it, +slipping out of its cocoon at last--its little, old, faded, tied-down +cocoon, and sailing upon the air--sailing with him, sailing with the +churches, with the factories, and with the schools, with History, +through the Invisible, through the Intangible--out to the Sun.... + + * * * * * + +Perhaps the reason that New York was a great city a few minutes the +other day when Wilbur Wright was there was that Wilbur Wright had a new +vision in the presence of all those men of something that they could do. +He touched the imagination of men about themselves. They were profoundly +moved because they saw him in their presence inventing a new kind and +new size of human being. He raised the standard of impossibility, and +built an annex on to the planet while they looked; took a great strip +off of space three miles wide and folded it softly on to the planet all +the way round before their eyes. For three miles more--three miles +farther up above the ground--there was a space where human beings would +have to stop saying, "I can't," and "You can't," and "We can't." If +people want to say "I can't," and "You can't," they will have to say it +farther and farther away from this planet now. Let them try Mars. The +modern imagination takes to impossibilities naturally with Wilbur Wright +against the horizon. The thing we next cannot believe is the next thing +to expect. + +Nobody would have believed ten years ago that an architect could be +invented who would tell a man that his house would cost him thirty +thousand dollars, and then hand him back two thousand dollars when he +had finished it. But the man had been invented--he invented himself. + +He represents the owner, and does as the owner would be done by if he +did it himself--if he had the technical knowledge and the time to do it. + +Nobody would have believed a few years ago that a railway president, +when he had occasion to reduce the wages of several thousand employees +10 per cent., would begin by reducing his own salary 30 per cent., and +the salary of all the officials all the way down 15 per cent., or 20 per +cent. + +Nobody would have believed some time ago that an organizing inventor +would be evolved who would meet his directors and tell them that, if +they would have their work done in their mills in three shifts instead +of two, the men would work so much better that it would not cost the +Company more than 10 per cent. more to offer the better conditions. But +such an organizing inventor has been invented, and has proved his case. + +Luther Burbank has made a chestnut tree eighteen months old bear +chestnuts; and it has always taken from ten to twenty-five years to make +a tree furnish its first chestnut before. About the same time that +Luther Burbank had succeeded in doing this with chestnuts a similar type +of man, who was not particularly interested in chestnuts and wanted to +do something with human nature, who believed that human nature could +really be made to work, found a certain staple article that everybody +needs every day in a state of anarchy in the market. The producers were +not making anything on it. The wholesalers dealt in it without a profit, +and the retailers sold it without a profit, and merely because the other +things they sold were worthless without it. + +----, who was the leading wholesale dealer and in the best position to +act, pointed out that, if the business was organized and everybody in it +would combine with everybody else and make it a monopoly, the price +could be made lower, and everybody would make money. + +Of course this was a platitude. + +It was also a platitude that human nature was not good enough, and could +not be trusted to work properly in a monopoly. + +---- then proceeded to invent a monopoly--a kind of monopoly in which +human nature could be trusted. + +He used a very simple device. + +He began by being trusted himself. + +Having personally and directly proved that human nature in a monopoly +could be trusted by being trusted himself, all he had to do was to +capitalize his knowledge of human nature, use the enormous market value +of the trust people had in him to gather people about him in the +business who had a good practical business genius for being trusted too +and for keeping trusted: everybody else was shut out. + +The letter with which the monopoly was started (after dealing duly with +the technical details of the business) ended like this: + +"... the soundest lines of business--_viz._, fair prices, fair profits, +fair division of profits, fair recognition of service, do as you would be +done by, money back where it is practicable, one's profit so small as to +make competition not worth while, open dealing, and open books." + +He had invented a monopoly which shared its profits with the people, and +which the people trusted. He was a Luther Burbank in money and people +instead of chestnuts. He raised the standard of impossibility in people, +and invented a new way for human nature to work. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +THE IMAGINATION OF CROWDS + + +The modern imagination takes, speaking roughly, three characteristic +forms: + +1. Imagination about the unseen or intangible--the spiritual--as +especially typified in electricity, in the wireless telegraph, the +aeroplane: a new and extraordinary sense of the invisible and the +unproved as an energy to be used and reckoned with. + +2. Imagination about the future--a new and extraordinary sense of what +is going to happen next in the world. + +3. Imagination about people. We are not only inventing new machines, but +our new machines have turned upon us and are creating new men. The +telephone changes the structure of the brain. Men live in wider +distances, and think in larger figures, and become eligible to nobler +and wider motives. + +Imagination about the unseen is going to give us in an incredible degree +the mastery of the spirit over matter. + +Imagination about the future is going to make the next few hundred years +an organic part of every man's life to-day. + +The imagination of men about themselves and other people is going to +give us a race of men with new motives; or, to put it differently, it is +going to give us not only new sizes but new kinds of men. People are +going to achieve impossibilities in goodness, and our inventions in +human nature are going to keep up with our other inventions. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +IMAGINATION ABOUT THE UNSEEN + + +The most distinctively modern thing that ever happened was when Benjamin +Franklin went out one day and called down lightning from heaven. Before +that, power had always been dug up, or scraped off the ground. The more +power you wanted the more you had to get hold of the ground and dig for +it; and the more solid you were, the more heavy, solid things you could +get, the more you could pull solid, heavy things round in this world +where you wanted them. Franklin turned to the sky, and turned power on +from above, and decided that the real and the solid and the substantial +in this world was to be pulled about by the Invisible. + +Copernicus had the same idea, of course, when he fared forth into space, +and discovered the centre of all power to be in the sun. It grieved +people a good deal to find how much more important the sky was than they +were, and their whole little planet with all of them on it. The idea +that that big blue field up there, empty by day and with such crowds of +little faint dots in it all night, was the real thing--the big, final, +and important thing--and that they and their churches and popes and +pyramids and nations should just dance about it for millions of years +like a mote in a sunbeam, hurt their feelings at first. But it did them +good. It started them looking Up, and looking the other way for power. + +Very soon afterward Columbus enlarged upon the same idea by starting the +world toward very far things, on the ground; and he bored through the +skylines, a thousand skylines, and spread the nations upon the sea. +Columbus was the typical modern man led by the invisible, the +intangible; and on the great waters somewhere between Spain and New +York, between the old and the new, Columbus discovered the Future Tense, +the centrifugal tense, the tense that sweeps in the unknown, and gathers +in, out of space, out of hope, out of faith, the lives of men. The mere +fastened-down stable things, the mere actual facts, stopped being the +world with Columbus, and the air and the sky began to be swung in, and +to be swept through the thoughts and acts of men and of women.... Then +miners, mariners, explorers, inventors--the impossible steamship, the +railway, the impossible cotton-gin and sewing-machine and reaper, Hoosac +tunnels and Atlantic cables. The impossible became one of the habits of +modern life. + +Of course the sky and the air and the unknown and the future had been +recognized before, but only a little and in a rather patronizing way. +But when a world has made a great, solid continent by following a +horizon line, it begins to take things just beyond very seriously. And +so our Time has been fulfilled. We have had the stone age; we have had +the iron age; and now we have the sky age, and the sky telegraph, and +sky men, and sky cities. Mountains of stone are built out of men's +visions, towers and skyscrapers swing up out of their wills and up out +of their hearts. + + * * * * * + +Not long ago, as I was coming away from New York in the Springfield +Express, which was running at fifty-five miles an hour, I saw suddenly +some smoke coming up apparently out of a satchel on the floor, belonging +to the man in the chair in front of me. I moved the satchel away, and +the smoke came up through the carpet. I spoke to the Pullman conductor +who was passing through, and in a second the train had stopped, and the +great wild roaring Thing had ceased, and we stood in a long, wide, white +silence in the fields. We got off the car--some of us--to see what had +happened, and to see if there was a hot box on the wheels. We found +that the entire underside of the floor of the car was on fire, and what +had happened? Nothing except a new impossibility; nothing except that a +human being had invented an electrical locomotive so powerful that it +was pulling that train fifty-five miles an hour while the brakes on the +car were set--twelve brakes all grinding twenty miles on those twelve +wheels; and the locomotive paid no more attention to the brakes of that +heavy Pullman than it would to a feather or to a small boy, all the way +from New York to Stamford, hanging on behind. As I came in I looked +again at the train--the long dull train that had been pulled along by +the Invisible, by the kingdom of the air and the sky--the long, dull, +heavy Train! And the spirit of the far-off sun was in it! + +In Count Zeppelin's new airship the new social spirit has a symbol, and +in the gyroscopic train the inspired millionaire is on a firm +foundation. The power of the new kind and new size of capitalist is his +power of keeping an equilibrium with the people, and the men of real +genius in modern affairs are men who have motor genius and light genius +over other men's wills. They are allied to the X-ray and the airship, +and gain their pre-eminence by their power of forecast and +invention--their power of riding upon the unseen, upon the thoughts of +men and the spirit of the time. Even the painters have caught this +spirit. The plein air painters are painting the light, and the sculptors +are carving shadows and haloes, and we have not an art left which does +not lean out into the Invisible. And religion is full of this spirit and +theosophy and Christian Science. The playwrights are touched by it; and +the action, instead of being all on the stage, is thrown out into the +spirit of the audience. The play in a modern theatre is not on the stage +but in the stalls. Maeterlinck, Ibsen, Shaw, merely use the stage as a +kind of magic-lantern or suggestion-centre for the real things that, out +behind us in the dark, are happening in the audience. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +THE CROWD'S IMAGINATION ABOUT THE FUTURE + + +I remember looking over with H.G. Wells one night some time ago a set of +pictures or photographs of the future in America, which he had brought +home with him. They were largely skyscrapers, big bridges, Niagaras, and +things; and I could not help thinking, as I came home that night, how +much more Mr. Wells had of the future of America in his own mind than he +could possibly buy in his photographs. What funny little films they were +after all, how faint and pathetic, how almost tragically dull, those +pictures of the future of my country were! H.G. Wells himself, standing +in his own doorway, was more like America, and more like the future of +America, than the pictures were. + +The future in America cannot be pictured. The only place it can be seen +is in people's faces. Go out into the street, in New York, in Chicago, +in San Francisco, in Seattle; look eagerly as you go into the faces of +the men who pass, and you feel hundreds of years--the next hundred +years--like a breath, swept past. America, with all its forty-story +buildings, its little Play Niagaras, its great dumb Rockies, is the +unseen country. It can only as yet be seen in people's eyes. Some days, +flowing sublime and silent through our noisy streets, and through the +vast panorama of our towers, I have heard the footfalls of the unborn, +like sunshine around me. + +This feeling America gives one in the streets is the real America. The +solidity, the finality, the substantial fact in America, is the daily +sense in the streets of the future. And it has seemed to me that this +fact--whether one observes it in Americans in America, in Americans in +England and in other nations--is what one might call, for lack of a +better name, the American temperament in all peoples is the most +outstanding typical and important fact with which our modern world and +our philosophy about the world have now to reckon. Nothing can be seen +as it really is if this amazing pervasive hourly sense of the future is +left out of it. + +All power is rapidly coming to be based on news--news about human +nature, and about what is soon to be done by people. This news travels +by express in boxes, by newspapers, by telephone, by word of mouth, and +by wireless telegraph. Most of the wireless news is not only wireless, +but it is in cipher--hence prophets, or men who have great +sensitiveness; men whose souls and bodies are films for the future, +platinum plates for the lights and shadows of events; men who are +world-poets, sensitive to the air-waves and the light-waves of truth, to +the faintest vibrations from To-morrow, or from the next hundred years +hovering just ahead. As a matter of course, it is already coming to be +true that the most practical man to-day is the prophet. In the older +days, men used to look back for wisdom, and the practical man was the +man who spoke from experience, and they crucified the prophet. But +to-day, the practical man is the man who can make the best guess on +to-morrow. The cross has gone by; at least, the cross is being pushed +farther along. A prophet in business or politics gets a large salary +now; he is a recognized force. Being a prophet is getting to be almost +smug and respectable. + +We live so in the future in our modern life, and our rewards are so +great for men who can live in the future, that a man who can be a +ten-year prophet, or a twenty-five-year prophet, like James J. Hill, is +put on a pedestal, or rather is not wasted on a pedestal, and is made +President of a railroad. He swings the country as if it were his hat. We +see great cities tagging Wilbur Wright, and emperors clinging to the +skirts of Count Zeppelin. We only crucify a prophet now if he is a +hundred, or two hundred or five hundred years ahead. Even then, we +would not be apt to crucify; we would merely not use him much, except +the first twenty-five years of him. + +The theory is no longer tenable that prophets must be necessarily +crucified. As a matter of history, most prophets have been crucified by +people; but it was not so much because of their prophecy as because +their prophecy did not have any first twenty-five years in it. They were +crucified because of a blank place or hiatus, not necessarily in their +own minds, but at least in other people's. People would have been very +glad to have their first twenty-five years' worth if they could have got +it. It is this first twenty-five years, or joining-on part, which is +most important in prophecy, and which has become our specialty in the +Western World. One might say, in a general way, that the idea of having +a first twenty-five years' section in truth for a prophet is a modern, +an almost American, invention. We are temperamentally a country of the +future, and think instinctively in futures; and perhaps it is not too +much to say (considering all the faults that go with it for which we are +criticized) that we have led the way in futures as a specialty, as a +national habit of mind; and though with terrific blunders perhaps have +been really the first people _en masse_ to put being a prophet on a +practical basis--that is, to supply the first twenty-five years' +section, or the next-thing-to-do section to Truth, to put in a kind of +coupling between this world and the next. This is what America is for, +perhaps--to put in the coupling between this world and the next. + +In the former days, the strength of a man, or of an estate, or a +business, was its stability. In the new world, instead of stability, we +have the idea of persistence, and power lies not so much in solid +brittle foundation quality as in conductivity. Socially, men can be +divided into conductors--men who connect powers--and non-conductors--men +who do not; and power lies in persistence, in dogged flexibility, +adaptableness, and impressionableness. The set conservative class of +people, in three hundred years, are going to be the dreamers, +inventors--those who demonstrate their capacity to dream true, and who +hit shrewdly upon probabilities and trends and futures; and the power of +a man is coming to be the power of observing atmospheres, of being +sensitive to the intangible and the unknown. People are more likely to +be crucified two thousand years from now for wanting to stay as they +are. There used to be the inertia of rest; and now in its place, working +reciprocally in a new astonishing equilibrium, we step up calmly on our +vast moving sidewalk of civilization and swing into the inertia of +motion. + +The inertia of men, instead of being that of foundations, conventions, +customs, facts, sogginess, and heaviness, is getting to be an inertia +now toward the future, or the next-thing-to-do. Most of us can prove +this by simply looking inward and taking a glimpse of our own +consciousness. Let a man draw up before his own mind the contents of his +own consciousness (if he has a motor consciousness), and we find that +the future in his life looms up, both in its motives and its character, +and takes about three quarters of the room of his consciousness; and +when it is not looming up, it is woven into everything he does. Even if +all the future were for was to help one understand the present and act +this immediate moment as one should, nine tenths of the power of seeing +a thing as it is, turns out to be one's power of seeing it as it is +going to be. In any normal man's life, it is really the future and his +sense of the future that make his present what it is. + +History is losing its monopoly. It is only absorbed in men's minds--in +the minds of those who are making more of it--in parts or rather in +elements of all its parts. + +The trouble with history seems to have been, thus far, that people have +been under the illusion that history should be taken as a solid. They +seem to think it should be taken in bulk. They take it, some of them, a +solid hundred years of it or so, and gulp it down. The advantage of +prophecy is that it cannot be taken as a solid by people who would take +everything so if they could. Prophecy is protected. People have to +breathe it, assimilate it, and get it into their circulation and make a +solid out of it personally, and do it all themselves. It is this process +which is making our modern men spiritual, interpretative, and powerful +toward the present and toward the past, and which is giving a body and +soul to knowledge, and is making knowledge lively and human, the kind of +knowledge (when men get it) that makes things happen. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +THE CROWD'S IMAGINATION ABOUT PEOPLE + + +I would like to propose, as a basis for the judgment of men and events, +and as a basis for forecasting the next men and next events, and +arriving at a vision of action, a Theory of the World. + +Every man has one. + +Every man one knows can be seen doing his work in this world on a great +background, a kind of panorama or stage setting in his mind, made up of +history and books, newspapers, people, and experiences, which might be +called his Theory of the World. + +It is his theory of the world which makes him what he is--his personal +judgment or personal interpretation of what the world is like, and what +works in it, and what does not work. + +A man's theory as to why people do or do not do wrong is not a theory he +might in some brief disinterested moment, possibly at luncheon, take +time to discuss. His theory of what is wrong and of what is right, and +of how they work, touches the efficiency with which he works intimately +and permanently at every point every minute of his business day. + +If he does not know, in the middle of his business day, what his theory +of the world--of human nature--is, let him stop and find out. + +A man's theory of the world is the skylight or manhole over his work. It +becomes his hell or heaven--his day and night. He breathes his theory of +the world and breathes his idea of the people in it; and everything he +does may be made or may be marred by what, for instance, he thinks in +the long-run about what I am saying now on this next page. Whether he +is writing for people, or doing business with them over a counter, or +launching books at them, everything he does will be steeped in what he +believes about what I am saying now--it shall be the colour of the world +to him, the sound or timbre of his voice--what he thinks or can make up +his mind to think, of what I am saying--on this next page. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +A DEMOCRATIC THEORY OF HUMAN NATURE + + +If the men who were crucifying Jesus could have been suddenly stopped at +the last moment, and if they could have been kept perfectly still for +ten minutes and could have thought about it, some of them would have +refused to go on with the crucifixion when the ten minutes were over. If +they could have been stopped for twenty minutes, there would have been +still more of them who would have refused to have gone on with it. They +would have stolen away and wondered about The Man in their hearts. There +were others who were there who would have needed twenty days of being +still and of thinking. There were some who would have had to have twenty +years to see what they really wanted, in all the circumstances, to do. + +People crucified Christ because they were in a hurry. + +They did what they wanted to do at the moment. So far as we know, there +were only two men who did what they would have wished they had done in +twenty years: there was the thief on the other cross, who showed The Man +he knew who He was; and there was the disciple John, who kept as close +as he could. John perhaps was thinking of the past--of all the things +that Christ had said to him; and the man on the other cross was thinking +what was going to happen next. The other people who had to do with the +crucifixion were all thinking about the thing they were doing at the +moment and the way they felt about it. But the Man was Thinking, not of +His suffering, but of the men in front of Him, and of what they could be +thinking about, and what they would be thinking about afterward--in ten +minutes, in twenty minutes, in twenty days, or in twenty years; and +suddenly His heart was flooded with pity at what they would be thinking +about afterward, and in the midst of the pain in His arms and the pain +in His feet He made that great cry to Heaven: "Father, forgive them; +they know not what they do!" + +It is because Christians have never quite believed that The Man really +meant this when He said it that they have persecuted the Jews for two +thousand years. It is because they do not believe it now that they blame +Mr. Rockefeller for doing what most of them twenty years ago would have +done themselves. It was one of the hardest things to do and say that any +one ever said in the world, and it was said at the hardest possible time +to say it. It was strange that one almost swooning with pain should have +said the gentlest-hearted and truest thing about human nature that has +ever been said since the world began. It has seemed to me the most +literal, and perhaps the most practical, truth that has been said since +the world began. + +It goes straight to the point about people. It gives one one's +definition of goodness both for one's self and for others. It gives one +a program for action. + +Except in our more joyous and free moments, we assume that when people +do us a wrong, they know what they are about. They look at the right +thing to do and they look at the wrong one, and they choose the wrong +one because they like it better. Nine people out of ten one meets in the +streets coming out of church on Sunday morning, if one asked them the +question plainly, "Do you ever do wrong when you know it is wrong?" +would say that they did. If you ask them what a sin is, they will tell +you that it is something you do when you know you ought not to do it. + +But The Man Himself, in speaking of the most colossal sin that has ever +been committed, seemed to think that when men committed a sin, it was +because they did not really see what it was that they were doing. They +did what they wanted to do at the moment. They did not do what they +would have wished they had done in twenty years. + +I would define goodness as doing what one would wish one had done in +twenty years--twenty years, twenty days, twenty minutes, or twenty +seconds, according to the time the action takes to get ripe. + +It would be far more true and more to the point instead of scolding or +admiring Mr. Rockefeller's skilled labour at getting too rich, to point +out mildly that he has done something that in the long-run he would not +have wanted to do; that he has lacked the social imagination for a great +permanently successful business. His sin has consisted in his not taking +pains to act accurately and permanently, in his not concentrating his +mind and finding out what he really wanted to do. It would seem to be +better and truer and more accurate in the tremendous crisis of our +modern life to judge Mr. Rockefeller, not as monster of wickedness, but +merely as an inefficient, morally underwitted man. There are things that +he has not thought of that every one else has. + +We see that in all those qualities that really go to make a great +business house in a great nation John D. Rockefeller stands as the most +colossal failure as yet that our American business life has produced. To +point his incompetence out quietly and calmly and without scolding would +seem to be the only fair way to deal with Mr. Rockefeller. He merely has +not done what he would have wished he had done in twenty, well, possibly +two hundred years, or as long a time as it would be necessary to allow +for Mr. Rockefeller to see. The one thing that the world could accept +gracefully from Mr. Rockefeller now would be the establishment of a +great endowment of research and education to help other people to see in +time how they can keep from being like him. If Mr. Rockefeller leads in +this great work and sees it soon enough, perhaps he will stop suddenly +being the world's most lonely man. + +Many men have been lonely before in the presence of a few fellow human +beings; but to be lonely with a whole nation--eighty million people; to +feel a whole human race standing there outside of your life and softly +wondering about you, staring at you in the showcase of your money, +peering in as out of a thousand newspapers upon you as a kind of moral +curiosity under glass, studying you as the man who has performed the +most athletic feat of not seeing what he was really doing and how he +really looked in all the world--this has been Mr. Rockefeller's +experience. He has not done what he would wish he had done in twenty +years. + +Goodness may be defined as getting one's own attention, as boning down +to find the best and most efficient way of finding out what one wants to +do. Any man who will make adequate arrangements with himself at suitable +times for getting his own attention will be good. Any one else from +outside who can make such arrangements for him, such arrangements of +expression or--of advertising goodness as to get his attention, will +make him good. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +DOING AS ONE WOULD WISH ONE HAD DONE IN TWENTY YEARS + + +If two great shops could stand side by side on the Main Street of the +World, and all the vices could be put in the show window of one of them +and all the virtues in the show windows the other, and all the people +could go by all day, all night, and see the windowful of virtues as they +were, and the windowful of vices as they were, all the world would be +good in the morning. + +It would stay good as long as people remembered how the windows looked. +Or if they could not remember, all they would need to do, most people, +when a vice tempted them would be to step out, look at it in its window +a minute--possibly take a look too at the other window--and they would +be good. + +If a man were to take a fancy to any particular vice, and would take a +step up to The Window, and take one firm look at it in The Window--see +it lying there, its twenty years' evil, its twenty days', its twenty +minutes' evil, all branching up out of it--he would be good. + +When we see the wrong on one side and the right on the other and really +see the right as vividly as we do the wrong, we do right automatically. +Wild horses cannot drag a man away from doing right if he sees what the +right is. + +A little while ago in a New England city where the grade crossings had +just been abolished, and where the railroad wound its way on a huge +yellow sandbank through the most beautiful part of the town, a +prominent, public-spirited citizen wrote a letter to the President of +the Company suggesting that the railroad (for a comparatively small +sum, which he mentioned) plant its sandbanks with trees and shrubs. A +letter came the next day saying that the railroad was unwilling to do +it. He might quite justifiably have been indignant and flung himself +into print and made a little scene in the papers, which would have been +the regular and conventional thing to do under the circumstances. But it +occurred to him instead, being a man of a curious and practical mind, +that possibly he did not know how to express himself to railroad +presidents, and that his letter had not said what he meant. He thought +he would try again, and see what would happen if he expressed himself +more fully and adequately. He took for it this second time a box seven +feet long. The box contained two long rolls of paper, one a picture by a +landscape gardener of the embankment as it would look when planted with +trees and with shrubs, and the other a photograph--a long panorama of +the same embankment as it then stood with its two great broadsides of +yellowness trailing through the city. The box containing the rolls was +sent without comment and with photographs and estimates of cost on the +bottom of the pictures. + +A letter from the railroad came next day thanking him for his +suggestion, and promising to have the embankment made into a park at +once. + +If God had arranged from the beginning, slides of the virtues, and had +furnished every man with a stereopticon inside, and if all a man had to +do at any particular time of temptation was to take out just the right +slide or possibly try three or four up there on his canvas a second, no +one would ever have any trouble in doing right. + + * * * * * + +It is not too much to say that this way of looking at evil and good--at +the latent capacities of evil and good in men, if a man once believes +it, and if a man once practises it as a part of his daily practical +interpretation and mastery of men, will soon put a new face for him on +nearly every great human problem with which he finds his time +confronted. We shall watch the men in the world about us--each for their +little day--trying their funny, pathetic, curious little moral +experiments, and we shall see the men--all of the men and all of the +good and the evil in the men this moment--daily before our eyes working +out with an implacable hopefulness the fate of the world. We know that, +in spite of self-deceived syndicalism and self-deceived trusts, in spite +of coal strikes and all the vain, comic little troops of warships around +the earth, peace and righteousness in a vast overtone are singing toward +us. + +We are not only going to have new and better motives in our modern men, +but the new and better motives are going to be thrust upon us. Every man +who reads these pages is having, at the present moment, motives in his +life which he would not have been capable of at first. Why should not a +human race have motives which it was not capable of at first? If one +takes up two or three motives of one's own--the small motives and the +large ones--and holds them up in one's hand and looks at them quietly +from the point of view of what one would wish one had done in twenty +years, there is scarcely one of us who would choose the small ones. +People who are really modern, that is, who look beyond themselves in +what they do to others, who live their lives as one might say six people +away, or sixty people farther out from themselves, or sixty million +people farther, are becoming more common everywhere; and people who look +beyond the moment in what they do to another day, who are getting more +and more to live their lives twenty years ahead, and to have motives +that will last twenty years, are driven to better and more permanent +motives. + +Thinking of more people when we act for ourselves means ethical +consciousness or goodness, and better and more permanent motives. + +In the last analysis, the men who permanently succeed in business will +have to see farther than the other people do. + +Men like John D. Rockefeller, who have made failures of their lives, and +have not been able to conduct a business so as to keep it out of the +courts, have failed because they have had imagination about Things but +not imagination about people. + +The man who is just at hand will not do over again what Mr. Rockefeller +has done. He will at least have made some advance in imagination over +Rockefeller. + +Mr. Rockefeller became rich by coöperating with other rich men to +exploit the public. The man of the immediate future is going to get +rich, as rich as he cares to be, by coöperating not merely with his +competitors--which is as far as Rockefeller got--but by coöperating with +the people. + +It is a mere matter of social imagination, of seeing what succeeds most +permanently, and honourably, of putting what has been called "goodness" +and what is going to be called "Business" together. In other words, +social imagination is going to make a man gravitate toward mutual +interest or coöperation, which is the new and inevitable level of +efficiency and success in business. Success is being transferred from +men of millionaire genius to men of social and human genius. The men who +are going to compete most successfully in modern competitive business +are competing by knowing how to coöperate better than their competitors +do. Employers, employees, consumers, partners, become irresistible by +coöperation; only employers, employees, consumers, and partners who +coöperate better than they do can hope to compete with them. The Trusts +have already crowded out many small rivals because, while their +coöperation has been one-sided, they have coöperated with more people +than their rivals could; and the good Trusts, in the same way are going +to crowd out the bad Trusts, because the good ones will know how to +coöperate with more people than the bad ones do. They will have the +human genius to see how they can coöperate with the people instead of +against them. + +They are going to invent ways of winning and keeping the confidence of +the people, of taking to this end a smaller and more just share of +profits. And they are going to gain their leadership through the wisdom +and power that goes with their money, and not through the money itself. +It is the spiritual power of their money that is going to count; and +wealth, instead of being a millionaire disease, is going to become a +great social energy in democracy. We are going to let men be rich +because they represent us, not because they hold us up, and because the +hold-up has gone by, that is: getting all one can, and service--getting +what we have earned--has come in. + +The new kind and new size of politician will win his power by his faith, +like U. Ren of Oregon; the new kind and new size of editor is going to +hire with brains a millionaire to help him run his paper; and the new +kind and new size of author, instead of tagging a publisher, will be +paid royalties for supplying him with new ideas and creating for him new +publics. Power in modern life is to be light and heat and motion, and +not a gift of being heavy and solid. Even Money shall lose its inertia. + +We are in this way being driven into having new kinds and new sizes of +men; and some of them will be rich ones, and some of them will be poor, +and no one will care. We will simply look at the man and at what size he +is. + +If our preachers are not saving us, our business men will. Sometimes one +suspects that the reason goodness is not more popular in modern life is +that it has been taken hold of the wrong way. Perhaps when we stop +teasing people, and take goodness seriously and calmly, and see that +goodness is essentially imagination, that it is brains, that it is +thinking down through to what one really wants, goodness will begin to +be more coveted. Except among people with almost no brains or +imagination at all, it will be popular. + +Perhaps it is unnecessary to say that these things that I have been +saying, or trying to say, about the flexibility and the potentiality of +the human race in its present crisis, in its present struggle to +maintain and add to its glory on the earth, are all beyond the range of +possibility, and the present strength of manhood. But I can only hope +that these objections that people make will turn out like mine. I have +been making objections all my life, as all idealists must--only to watch +with dismay and joy the old-time, happy obdurate way objections have of +going by. + +People began by saying they would never use automobiles because they +were so noisy and ill-odoured and ugly. Presto! The automobile becomes +silent and shapes itself in lines of beauty. + +Some of us had decided against balloons. "Even if the balloon succeeds," +we said, "there will be no way of going just where and when you want +to." And then, presto! regular channels of wind are discovered, and the +balloon goes on. + +"Aeroplanes," we said, "may be successful, but the more successful they +are, the more dangerous, and the more danger there will be of +collisions--collisions in the dark and up in the great sky at night." And, +presto! man invents the wireless telegraph, and the entire sky can be +full of whispers telling every airship where all the other airships are. + +Some of us have decided that we will never have anything to do with +monopoly. Presto! there is suddenly evolved an entirely new type of +monopolist--the man who can be rich and good; the millionaire who has +invented a monopoly that serves the owners, the producers and employees, +the distributors and the consumers alike. An American railway President +has been saying lately that America would not have enough to eat in +2050, but it would not do to try to prove this just yet. Some one, +almost any day, will invent a food that is as highly concentrated as +dynamite, and the whole food supply of New York--who knows?--shall be +carried around in one railway President's vest pocket. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +NEW KINDS AND NEW SIZES OF MEN + + +It would be hard to overestimate the weariness and cynicism and despair +that have been caused in the world by its more recklessly hopeful +men--the men who plump down happily anywhere and hope, the optimists who +are merely slovenly in their minds about evil. But the optimism that +consists in putting evil facts up into a kind of outdoors in our minds +and in giving them room to exercise in our thoughts and feelings, the +optimism that consists in having one's brain move vigorously through +disagreeable facts--organize them into the other facts with which they +belong and with which they work--is worthy of consideration. Many of us, +who have tried optimism and pessimism both, have noticed certain things. + +When one is being pessimistic, one almost always has the feeling of +being rather clever. It is forced upon one a little, of course, having +all those other people about one stodgily standing up for people and not +really seeing through them! + +So, though one ought not to, one does feel a little superior--even with +the best intentions--when one is being discouraged. + +But the trouble with pessimism is that it is only at the moment when one +is having it that one really enjoys it, or feels in this way about it. + +Perhaps I should not undertake to speak for others, and should only +speak for myself; but I can only bear witness, for one, that every time +in my life that I have broken through the surface a little, and seen +through to the evil, and found myself suddenly and astutely discouraged, +I have found afterward that all I had to do was to see the same thing a +little farther over, set it in the light beyond it, and look at it in +larger or more full relations, and I was no longer astutely discouraged. + +So I have come to believe slowly and grimly that feeling discouraged +about the world is not quite clever. I have noticed it, too, in watching +other people--men I know. If I could take all the men I know who are +living and acting as if they believed big things about people to-day, +men who are daily taking for granted great things in human nature, and +put them in one group by themselves all together, and if I could then +take all the men I know who are taking little things for granted in one +another and in human nature, I do not believe very many people would +find it hard to tell which group would be more clever. Possibly the +reason more of us do not spend more time in being hopeful about the +world is that it takes more brains usually than we happen to have at the +moment. Hope may be said to be an act of the brain in which it sees +facts in relations large enough to see what they are for, an act in +which it insists in a given case upon giving the facts room enough to +turn around and to relate themselves to one another, and settle down +where they belong in one's mind, the way they would in real time. + +So now, at last, Gentle Reader, having looked back and having looked +forward, I know the way I am going. + +I am going to hope. + +It is the only way to see through things. The only way to dare to see +through ones' self; the only way to see through other people and to see +past them, and to see with them and for them--is to hope. + +So I am putting the challenge to the reader, in this book, as I have put +it to myself. + +There are four questions with which day by day we stand face to face: + +1. Does human nature change? + +2. Does it change toward a larger and longer vision? + +3. Will not a larger and longer vision mean new kinds and +new sizes of men? + +4. Will not new sizes of men make new-sized ethics practical +and make a new world? + +Everything depends for every man upon this planet, at this moment, on +how he decides these questions. If he says Yes, he will live one kind of +life, he will live up to his world. If he says No, he will have a mean +world, smaller-minded than he is himself, and he will live down to it. + +This is what the common run of men about us--the men of less creative +type in literature, in business, and in politics--are doing. They do not +believe human nature is changing. They are living down to a world that +is going by. They are living down to a world that is smaller than they +are themselves. They are trying to make others do it. They answer the +question "Does human nature change?" by "No!" Wilbur Wright, when he +flew around over the heads of the people in New York a few years ago, a +black speck above a whole city with its heads up, answered "Yes!" + +But the real importance of the flying machine has not stopped short with +a little delicate, graceful thing like walking on the air instead of the +ground. + +The big and really revolutionary thing about Wilbur Wright's flying was +that he changed the minds of the whole human race in a few minutes about +one thing. There was one particular thing that for forty thousand years +they knew they could not do. And now they knew they could. + +It naturally follows--and it lies in the mind of every man who +lives--that there must be other particular things. And as nine men out +of ten are in business, most of these particular things are going to be +done in business. + +The Wilbur Wright spirit is catching. + +It is as if a Lid had been lifted off the world. + +One sees everywhere business men going about the street expecting new +things of themselves. They expect things of the very ground, and of the +air, and of one another they had not dared expect before. + +The other day in a New England city I saw a man, who had been the +president of an Electric Light Company for twenty years, who had +invented a public service corporation that worked. Since he took office +and dictated the policy of the Company, every single overture for more +expensive equipment in the electric lighting of the city has come from +the Company, and every single overture for reducing the rate to +consumers has come from the company. + +The consumption of electricity in the city is the largest _per capita_ +in the world, and the rate is the cheapest in the country; and, +incidentally, the Company so trusts the people that they let them have +electricity without metres, and the people so trust the Company that +they save its electricity as they would their own. + +Even the man without a conscience, who would be mean if he could, is +brought to terms, and knows that if he refrains from leaving his lights +burning all night when he goes to bed he is not merely saving the +Company's electricity but his own. He knows that he is reducing his own +and everybody's price for electricity, and not merely increasing the +profits of the Company. + +It makes another kind of man slowly out of thousands of men every day, +every night, turning on and turning off their lights. + +The Electric Light Company has come to have a daily, an almost hourly, +influence on the way men do business and go about their work in that +city--the motives and assumptions with which they bargain with one +another--that might be envied by twenty churches. + +All that had happened was that a man with a powerful, quietly wilful +personality--the kind that went on crusades and took cities in other +ages--had appeared at last, and proposed to do the same sort of thing in +business. He proposed to express his soul, just as it was, in business +the way other people had expressed theirs for a few hundred years in +poetry or more easy and conventional ways. + +If he could not have made the electric light business say the things +about people and about himself that he liked and that he believed, he +would have had to make some other business say them. + +One of the things he had most wanted to say and prove in business was +the economic value of being human, the enormous business saving that +could be effected by being believed in. + +He preferred being believed in himself, in business, and he knew other +people would prefer it; and he was sure that if, as people said, "being +believed in did not pay," it must be because ways of inventing faith in +people, the technique of trust, had not been invented. + +He found himself invited to take charge of the Electric Light Company at +a time when it was insolvent and in disgrace with the people, and he +took the Corporation in hand on the specific understanding that he +should be allowed to put his soul into it, that he should be allowed his +own way for three years--in believing in people, and in inventing ways +of getting believed in as much as he liked. + +The last time I saw him, though he is old and nearly blind, and while as +he talked there lay a darkness on his eyes, there was a great light in +his face. + +He had besieged a city with the shrewdness of his faith, and conquered a +hundred thousand men by believing in them more than they could. + +By believing in them shrewdly, and by thinking out ways of expressing +that belief, he had invented a Corporation--a Public Service +Corporation--that had a soul, and consequently worked. + + + + +BOOK TWO + +LETTING THE CROWDS BE GOOD + +TO ABRAHAM LINCOLN + + They stay not in their hold + These stokers, + Stooping to hell + To feed a ship. + Below the ocean floors. + Before their awful doors + Bathed in flame, + I hear their human lives + Drip--drip. + + Through the lolling aisles of comrades + In and out of sleep, + Troops of faces + To and fro of happy feet, + They haunt my eyes. + Their murky faces beckon me + From the spaces of the coolness of the sea + Their fitful bodies away against the skies. + + + + + +CHAPTER I + +SPEAKING AS ONE OF THE CROWD + + +It is a little awkward to say what I am going to say now. + +Probably it will be still more awkward afterward. + +But I find as I go up and down the world and look in the faces of the +crowds in it, that it is true, and I can only tell as it is. + +_I want to be good._ + +And I do not want to go up on a mountain to do it, or to slink off and +live all alone on an island in the sea. + +I go a step further. + +I believe that the crowds want to be good. + +But I cannot prove that people want to be good in crowds, and so for the +sake of the argument, and to make the case as simple as possible, I am +going to give up speaking for crowds, and speak for myself as one member +of the crowd and for Lim. Lim and I (and Lim is a business man and not a +mere author) have had long talks in which we have confided to each other +what we think this world, in spite of appearances, is really like, and +we have come to a kind of provisional program and to a definite +agreement on our two main points. + +1. We want to be good. + +2. We want other people to be good, partly as a matter of convenience +for us, partly for morally aesthetic reasons, and partly because we want +to be in a kind of world where what is good in us works. + +The next point in our confession follows from this. It is an awkward and +exposed thing to say out loud to people in general, but + +3. Lim and I want to make over the earth. + +4. Sitting down grimly by ourselves, all alone, and believing in a world +hard, with our eyes shut, does not interest us. It is this particular +planet just as it is that interests us, in its present hopeful, +squirming state. + +It does not seem to us to the point just now to conceive some brand new, +clean, slick planet up in space, with crowds of perfect and convenient +people on it, and then expect to lay it down in the night like a great, +soft, beautiful dew or ideal on this one. We want to take this heavy, +inconvenient, cumbersome, real planet that we have, and see what can be +done with it, and by the people on it, what can be done by these same +people, whose signs one goes by down the street, with Smith & Smith, +Gowns, with Clapp & Clapp, Butchers, with W.H. Riley & Co., Plumbers and +Gas Fitters, and with things that real people are really doing. + +The things that real people are really doing, when one thinks of it, are +Soap, Tooth-brushes, Subsoil Pipes, Wall Papers, Razors, Mattresses, +Suspenders, Tiles, Shoes, Pots, and Kettles. Of course the first thing +that happened to us, to Lim and to me (as any one might guess, in a +little quiet job like making over the earth), was that we found we had +to begin with ourselves. + +We did. + +We are obliged to admit that, as a matter of fact, we began, owing to +circumstances, in a kind of rudimentary way with the idea of getting +people to take up goodness by talking about it. + +But we are reformed preachers now. We seldom backslide into talking to +people about goodness. + +We have made up our minds to lie low and keep still and show them some. + +Of course one ought to have some of one's own to show. But the trouble +always is, if it is really good, one is sure not to know it, or at least +one does not know which it is. The best we can do with goodness, some of +us, if we want it to show more quickly or to hurry people along in +goodness more, is to show them other people's. + +I sometimes think that if everybody in the world could know my plumber +or pay a bill to him, the world would soon begin slowly but surely to be +a very different place. + +My plumber is a genius. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +IS IT WRONG FOR GOOD PEOPLE TO BE EFFICIENT? + + +Perhaps it will seem a pity to spoil a book--one that might have been +really rather interesting--by putting the word "goodness" down flatly in +this way in the middle of it. + +And in a book which deals with crowds, too, and with business. + +I would not yield first place to any one in being tired of the word. I +think, for one, that unless there is something we can do to it, and +something we can do to it now, it had better be dropped. + +But I have sometimes discovered when I had thought I was tired of a +word, that what I was really tired of was somebody who was using it. + +I do not mind it when my plumber uses it. I have heard him use it (and +swearing softly, I regret to say) when it affected me like a Hymn Tune. + +And there is Non, too. + +I first made Non's acquaintance as our train pulled out of New York, and +we found ourselves going down together on Friday afternoon to spend +Sunday with M---- in North Carolina. The first thing he said was, when +we were seated in the Pullman comfortably watching that big, still world +under glass roll by outside, that he had broken an engagement with his +wife to come. She was giving a Tea, he said, that afternoon, and he had +faithfully promised to be there. But a weekend in North Carolina +appealed to him, and afternoon tea--well, he explained to me, crossing +his legs and beaming at me all over as if he were a whole genial, +successful afternoon tea all by himself--afternoon tea did not appeal to +him. + +He thought probably he was a Non-Gregarious Person. + +As he was the gusto of our little party and fairly reeked with +sociability, and was in a kind of orgy of gregariousness every minute +all the way to Wilmington (even when he was asleep we heard from him), +we called him the Non-Gregarious Person, and every time he piled on one +more story, we reminded him how non-gregarious he was. We called him +Non-Gregarious all the way after that--Non for short. + +This is the way I became acquainted with Non. It has been Non ever +since. + + * * * * * + +I found in the course of the next three days that when Non was not being +the life of the party or the party did not need any more life for a +while, and we had gone off by ourselves, he became, like most people who +let themselves go, a very serious person. When he talked about his +business, he was even religious. Not that he had any particular +vocabulary for being religious, but there was something about him when +he spoke of business--his own business--that almost startled me at first. +He always seemed to be regarding his business when he spoke of it as +being, for all practical purposes, a kind of little religion by itself. + +Now Non is a builder or contractor. + + * * * * * + +For many years now the best way to make a pessimist or a confirmed +infidel out of anybody has been to get him to build a house. No better +arrangement for not believing in more people, and for not believing in +more kinds of people at once and for life, has ever been invented +probably than building a house. No man has been educated, or has been +really tested in this world, until he has built a house. I submit this +proposition to anybody who has tried it, or to any one who is going to +try it. There is not a single kind or type of man who sooner or later +will not build himself, and nearly everything that is the matter with +him, into your house. The house becomes a kind of miniature model (such +as they have in expositions) of what is the matter with people. You +enter the door, you walk inside and brood over them. Everything you come +upon, from the white cellar floor to the timbers you bump your head on +in the roof, reminds you of something or of rows of people and of what +is the matter with them. It is the new houses that are haunted now. Any +man who is sensitive to houses and to people and who would sit down in +his house when it is finished and look about in it seriously, and think +of all the people that have been built, in solid wood and stone, into +it, would get up softly and steal out of it, out of the front door of +it, and never enter that house again. + +This is what Non saw. He saw how people felt about their houses, and how +they lived in them helplessly and angrily year after year, and felt +hateful about the world. + +I gradually drew out of him the way he felt about it. I found he was not +as good as some people are at talking about himself, but the subject was +interesting. He began his career building houses for people, as nearly +every one does. The general idea is that everybody is expected to exact +commissions from everybody else, and the owner is expected to pay each +man his own commission and then pay all the commissions that each man +has charged the other man. Every house that got built in this way seemed +to be a kind of network or conspiracy of not doing as you would be done +by. Non did not see any way out at first, just for one man. He merely +noticed how things were going, and he noticed that nearly every person +that he had dealings with, from the bottom to the top of the house, +seemed to make him feel that he either was, or would be, or ought to be, +a grafter. He could not so much as look at a house he had built, through +the trees when he was going by, without wishing he could be a better +man, and studying on how it could be managed. His own first houses made +him see things. They proved to be the making of him, and if similar +houses have not made similar men, it is their fault. It might not be +reassuring to the men who are now living in these first houses to dwell +too much on this (and I might say he did not build them alone), but it +seems to be necessary to bring out the most striking thing about Non in +his first stage as a business man, _viz._: He hated his business. He +made up his mind he either would make the business the kind of business +he liked or get out of it. I did not gather from the way he talked about +it that he had any idea of being an uplifter. He merely had, apparently, +an obstinate, doggedly comfortable idea about himself, and about what a +thing would have to be, in this world, if he was connected with it. He +proposed to enjoy his business. He was spending most of his time at it. + +Other people have had this same happy thought, but they seem to manage +to keep on being patient. Non could not fall back on being patient, and +it made him think harder. + +The first thing he thought of was that doing his business as he thought +he ought to, if he once worked his idea out, and worked it down through +and organized it, might pay. He almost had the belief that people might +pay a man a little extra, perhaps, for enjoying his business. It cannot +be said that he believed this immediately. He merely wanted to, and +worked toward it, and merely contrived new shrewd ways at first of being +able to afford it. Gradually he began to notice that the more he enjoyed +his business, the more he enjoyed it with his whole soul and body, +enjoyed it down to the very toes of his conscience, the more people +there were who stepped into his office and wanted him to enjoy his +business on their houses. It was what they had been looking for for +years--for some builder who was really enjoying his business. And the +more he enjoyed his business in his own particular way--that of building +a house for a man in less time than he said he would, and for less +money, not infrequently sending him a check at the end of it--the more +his business grew. + +I do not know that there would be any special harm in speaking of Non's +idea--of just doing as you would be done by--in more moral or religious +language, but it is not necessary. And I find I take an almost religious +joy in looking at the Golden Rule at last as a plain business +proposition. All that happened was that Non was original, saw something +that everybody thought they knew, and acted as if it were so. +Theoretically one would not have said that it would be original to take +an old platitudinous law like the law of supply and demand, and act as +if it were so; but it was. At the time Non was beginning his career +there was nothing in the building-market people found harder to hire +than honesty. Here was something, he saw at last, that thousands of busy +and important men who did not have time to be detectives, wanted. There +did not seem to be any one very actively supplying the demand. A big +market, a small supply, and almost no competition. Non stepped in and +proposed to represent a man's interest who is building a house as +literally as the man would represent his interests himself, if he knew +all about houses. Everything has followed from this. What Non's business +is now, when a man is building a house, is to step quietly into the +man's shoes, let him put on another pair, and go about his business. It +is not necessary to go into the details. Any reader who has ever built a +house knows the details. Just take them and turn them around. + +What those of us who know Non best like about him is that he is a plain +business man, and that he has acted in this particular matter without +any fine moral frills or remarks. He has done the thing because he liked +it and believed in it. + +But the most efficient thing to me about Non is not the way he is making +money out of saving money for other people, but the way the fact that he +can do it makes people feel about the world. Whenever I have a little +space of discouragement or of impatience about the world because it does +not hurry more, I fall to thinking of Non. "Perhaps next week"--I say +to myself cheerfully--"I can go down to New York and slip into Non's +office and get the latest news as to how religion is getting on. Or he +will take me out with him to lunch, and I will stop scolding or +idealizing, and we will get down to business, and I will take a good +long look into that steady-lighted, unsentimental face of his while he +tells me across the little corner table at Delmonico's for three hours +how shrewd the Golden Rule is, and how it works." Sometimes when I have +just been in New York, and have come home and am sitting in my still +study, with the big idle mountain just outside, and the great meadow and +all the world, like some great, calm gentle spirit or picture of itself, +lying out there about me, and I fall to thinking of Non, and of how he +is working in wood and stone inside of people's houses, and inside of +their lives day after day, and of how he is touching people at a +thousand points all the weeks, being a writer, making lights and shadows +and little visions of words fall together just so, seems, suddenly a +very trivial occupation--like amusing one's self with a pretty little +safe kaleidoscope, holding it up, aiming it and shaking softly one's +coloured bits of phrases at a world! Of course, it need not be so. But +there are moments when I think of Non when it seems so. + +In our regular Sunday religion we do not seem to be quite at our best +just now. + +At least (perhaps I should speak for one) I know I am not. + +Being a saint of late is getting to be a kind of homely, modest, +informal, almost menial everyday thing. It makes one more hopeful about +religion. Perhaps people who once get the habit, and who are being good +all the week, can even be good on Sunday. + +There are many ways of resting or leaning back upon one's instincts and +getting over to one's religion or perspective about the world. Mount Tom +(which is in my front yard, in Massachusetts) helps sometimes--with a +single look. + +When I go down to New York, I look at the Metropolitan Tower, the +Pennsylvania Station, the McAdoo Tunnels, and at Non. + +If I wanted to make anybody religious, I would try to get him to work in +Non's office, or work with anybody who ever worked with him, or who ever +saw him; or I would have him live in a house built by him, or pay a bill +made out by him. + +It has seemed to me that his succeeding and making himself succeed in +this way is a great spiritual adventure, a pure religion, a difficult, +fresh, and stupendous religion. + +Now these many days have I watched him going up and down through all the +empty reputations, the unmeaning noises of the world, living his life +like some low, old-fashioned, modest Hymn Tune he keeps whistling--and I +have seen him in fear, and in danger, and in gladness being shrewder and +shrewder for God, now grimly, now radiantly, hour by hour, day by day +getting rich with the Holy Ghost! + + + + +CHAPTER III + +IS IT WRONG FOR GOOD PEOPLE TO BE INTERESTING? + + +People are acquiring automobiles, Oriental rugs, five-hundred-dollar +gowns, more rapidly just now than they are goodness, because +advertisements in this present generation are more readable than +sermons, and because the shop windows on Fifth Avenue can attract more +attention than the churches. The shop windows make people covetous. + +If the goodness that one sees, hears about, or goes by does not make +other people covetous, does not make them wish they had it or some just +like it, it must be because there is something the matter with it, or +something the matter with the way it is displayed. + +If the church shop windows, for instance, were to make displays of +goodness up and down the great Moral Fifth Avenue of the world--well, +one does not know; but there are some of us who would rather expect to +see the Goodness Display in the windows consisting largely of Things +People Ought Not to Want. + +There would be rows and tiers of Not-Things piled up--Things for People +Not to Be, and Things for People Not to Do. + +Goodness displayed in this way is not interesting. Perhaps this is one +of the reasons why the word Goodness spoils a thing for people--so many +people--when it is allowed in it. + +Possibly it is because we are apt to think of the good people, and of +the people who are being good, as largely keeping from doing something, +or as keeping other people from doing something--as negative. Their +goodness seems to consist in being morally accurate, and in being very +particular just in time, and in a kind of general holding in. + +We do not naturally or off-hand--any of us--think of goodness as having +much of a lunge to it. It is tired-looking and discouraged, and pulls +back kindly and gently. Or it teases and says, "Please"--God knows how +helpless it is, and I for one am frank to say that, as far as I have +observed, He has not been paying very much attention to good people of +late. + +I do not believe I am alone in this. There must be thousands of others +who have this same half-guilty, half-defiant feeling of suspiciousness +toward what people seem to think should be called goodness. Not that we +say anything. We merely keep wondering--we cannot see what it is, +exactly, about goodness that should make it so depressing. + +In the meantime we hold on. We do not propose to give up believing in +it. Perhaps, after all, all that is the matter with goodness in the +United States is the people who have taken hold of it. + +They do not seem to be the kind of people who can make it interesting. +We cannot help thinking, if these same bad people about us, or people +who are called bad, would only take up goodness awhile, how they would +make it hum! + +I can only speak for one, but I do not deny that when I have been +sitting (in some churches), or associating, owing to circumstances, with +very good people a little longer than usual, and come out into the +street, I feel like stepping up sometimes to the first fine, brisk, +businesslike man I see going by, and saying, "My dear sir, I do wish +that _you_ would take up goodness awhile and see if, after all, +something cannot really be done. I keep on trying to be hopeful, but +these dear good people in here, it seems to me, are making a terrible +mess of it!" + +And, to make a long story short, Lim happened to be going by one day, +and this practically is what I did. I had done it before with other +business men in spirit or in a general way, but with him I was more +particular. I went straight to the point. "Here are at least sixteen +valuable efficient brands of goodness in America," I said, "all worth +their weight in gold for a big business career, that no one is really +using, that no one quite believes in or can get on the market, and yet I +believe with my whole soul in them all, and I believe thousands of other +men do, or are ready to, the moment some one makes a start." + +I pulled out a little list of items which I had made out and put down on +a piece of paper, and handed them over to him, and said I wished he +would take a few of them--the first five or six or so--and make them +work. + +He already had, I found, made two or three of the harder ones work. + +I would not have any one suppose for a moment that I am presenting Lim +as a kind of business angel. + +No one who knows Lim thinks of him, or would let anybody else think of +him, as being a Select Person, as being particularly or egregiously what +he ought to be. This is one reason I have picked him out. Being good in +a small private way, just as a small private end in itself, may be +practicable perhaps without dragging in people who are not quite what +they ought to be. But the moment one tries to make goodness work, one +comes to the fact that it must be made to work with what we have. We +have a great crowd of unselected people, people both good and bad, and +the first principle in making goodness work (instead of being merely +good) seems to be to believe that goodness is not too good for anybody. +Anybody who can make it work can have it, and what goodness seems to +need, especially in America and England just now, is people who do not +feel that they must at all hazards look good. Whatever happens, whatever +else we do in any general investment or movement we may be making with +goodness, we must let these people in. If there is one thing rather than +another that those of us who know Lim all rely on and like, it is that +nothing can ever make him slump down into looking good. We often find +him hard to make out--everything is left open and loose and unlabelled +in Lim's moral nature. The only really sure way any one can tell when +Lim is being good is, that whenever he is being good he becomes suddenly +and unexpectedly interesting. His goodness is daring, unexpected, and +original. One has the feeling that it may break out anywhere. It is +always doing things that everybody said could not be done before. It is +true that some people are dazed, and no one can ever seem to feel sure +he knows what it is that is going on in Lim when he is being good, or +that it is goodness. He merely keeps watching it. There is a certain +element of news, of freshness, of gentle sensation, in his goodness. It +leads to consequences. And there always seems to be something about +Lim's goodness which attracts the attention of people, and makes people +who see it want it. So when I speak of goodness in this book, and put it +down as the basis of the power of getting men to do as one likes, I do +not deny that I am taking the word away and moving it over from its +usual associations. I do not mean by a good act, a good-looking act, but +an act so constituted that it makes good. For the purpose of this book I +would define goodness as efficiency. Goodness is the quality in a thing +that makes the thing go, and that makes it go so that it will not run +down, and that nothing can stop it. + +There is the inefficiency of lying, for instance, and the inefficiency +of force, or bullying. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +PROSPECTS OF THE LIAR + + +My theory about the Liar is that it is of no use to scold him or blame +him. It merely makes him feel superior. He should be looked upon quietly +and without saying anything as a case of arrested development. What has +happened to him is that he merely is not quite bright about himself, and +has failed to see how bright (in the long run) other people are. + +When a man lies or does any other wrong thing, his real failure consists +not in the wrongdoing itself, but in his failure to take pains to focus +his mind on the facts in himself, and in the people about him, and see +what it really is that he would wish he had done, say in twenty years. +It seems to be possible, after a clumsy fashion, to find out by a study +of ourselves, and of our own lives and of other men's lives, what we +would wish we had done afterward. Everything we have learned so far we +have learned by guessing wrong on what we have thought we would want +afterward. We have gradually guessed what we wanted better. We began our +lives as children with all sorts of interesting sins or moral guesses +and experiments. We find there are certain sins or moral experiments we +almost never use any more because we found that they never worked. We +had been deceived about them. Most of us have tried lying. Since we were +very small we have tried in every possible fashion--now in one way, now +in another--to see if lying could not be made to work. By far the +majority of us, and all of us who are the most intelligent, are not +deceived now by our desire to tell lies. Perhaps we have not learned +that all lies do not pay. A child tells a lie at first as if a lie had +never been thought of before. It is as if lying had just been invented, +and he had just thought what a great convenience it was, and how many +things there were that he could do in that way. He discovers that the +particular thing he wants at the moment, he gets very often by lying. +But the next time he lies, he cannot get anything. If he keeps on lying +for a long time, he learns that while, after a fashion, he is getting +things, he is losing people. Finally, he finds he cannot even get +things. Nobody believes in him or trusts him. He cannot be efficient. He +then decides that being trusted, and having people who feel safe to +associate with him and to do business with him, is the thing he really +wants most; and that he must have first, even if it is only a way to get +the other things he wants. It need not be wondered that the Trusts, +those huge raw youngsters of the modern spirit, have had to go through +with most of the things other boys have. The Trusts have had to go +through, one after the other, all their children's diseases, and try +their funny little moral experiments on the world. They thought they +could lie at first. They thought it would be cunning, and that it would +work. They did not realize at once that the bigger a boy you were, even +if you were anonymous, the more your lie showed and the more people +there were who suffered from it who would be bound sooner or later to +call you to account for it. + +The Trusts have been guessing wrong on what they would wish they had +done in twenty years, and the best of them now are trying to guess +better. They are trying to acquire prestige by being far-sighted for +themselves and far-sighted for the people who deal with them, and are +resting their policy on winning confidence and on keeping faith with the +people. + +They not only tried lying, like all young children, but they tried +stealing. For years the big corporations could be seen going around from +one big innocent city in this country to another, and standing by +quietly and without saying a word, putting the streets in their pockets. + +But no big corporation of the first class to-day would begin its +connection with a city in this fashion. Beginning a permanent business +relation with a customer by making him sorry afterward he has had any +dealings with you, has gone by as a method of getting business in +England and America. + +One of our big American magazines not long ago, which had gained +especially high rates from its advertisers because they believed in it, +lied about its circulation. The man who was responsible was not +precisely sure, gave nominal figures in round numbers, and did what +magazines very commonly did under the circumstances; but when the +magazine owner looked up details afterward and learned precisely what +the circulation was for the particular issue concerned, he sent out +announcements to every firm in the country that had anything in the +columns of that issue, saying that the firm had lied, and enclosing a +check for the difference in value represented. Of course it was a good +stroke of business, eating national humble pie so, and it was a cheap +stroke of business too, doing some one, sudden, striking thing that no +one would forget. Not an advertisement could be inserted and paid for in +the magazine for years without having that action, and the prestige of +that action, back of it. Every shred of virtue there was in the action +could have been set one side, and was set one side by many people, +because it paid so well. Every one saw suddenly, and with a faint breath +of astonishment, how honesty worked. But the main point about the +magazine in distinction from its competitors seems to have been that it +not merely saw how honesty worked, but it saw it first and it had the +originality, the moral shrewdness and courage, to put up money on it. It +believed in honesty so hard that suddenly one morning, before all the +world, it risked its entire fortune on it. Now that it has been done +once, the new level or standard of candour may be said to have been +established which others will have to follow. But it does not seem to me +that the kind of man who has the moral originality to dare do a thing +like this first need ever have any serious trouble with competitors. In +the last analysis, in the competition of modern business to get the +crowd, the big success is bound to come to men in the one region of +competition where competition still has some give in it--the region of +moral originality. Other things in competition nowadays have all been +thought of except being good. Any man who can and will to-day think out +new and unlooked-for ways of being good can get ahead, in the United +States of practically everybody. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +PROSPECTS OF THE BULLY + + +The stage properties that go with a bully change as we grow older. When +one thinks of a bully, one usually sees a picture at once in one's mind. +It is a big boy lording it over a little one, or getting him down and +sitting on him. + +Everybody recognizes what is going on immediately, pitches in nobly and +beautifully, and licks the big boy. + +The trouble with the bully in business has been that he is not so simple +and easy to recognize. He is apt to be more or less anonymous and +impersonal, and it is harder to hit him in the right place. + +But when one thinks of it perhaps this pleasant and inspiring duty is +not so impracticable as it looks, and is presently to be attended to. + +Any man who relies, in getting what he wants, on being big instead of +being right, is a bully. + +Modern business is done over a wide area, with thousands of persons +looking on, and for a long time and with thousands of people coming +back. The man who relies on being big instead of being right, and who +takes advantage of his position instead of his inherent superiority, is +soon seen through. His customers go over to the enemy. A show of force +or a hold-up works very well at the moment. Being bigger may be more +showy than being right, and it may down the Little Boy, but the Little +Boy wins the crowd. + +Business to-day consists in persuading crowds. + +The Little Boy can prove he is right. All the bully can prove is that he +is bigger. + +The Liar in Business is already going by. + +Now it is the turn of the bully. + +Not long ago a few advertisers in a big American city wanted unfairly +low rates for advertisements and tried to use force with the newspapers. +Three or four of the biggest shops combined and gave notice that they +would take their advertising away unless the rates came down. After a +little, they drew in a few other lines of business with them, and +suddenly one morning five or six full pages of advertisements were +withdrawn from every newspaper in the city. The newspapers went on +publishing all the news of the city except news as to what people could +buy in department stores, and waited. They made no counter-move of any +kind, and said nothing and seven days slipped past. They held to the +claim that the service they performed in connecting the great stores +with the people of the city was a real service, that it represented +market value which could be proved and paid for. They kept on for +another week publishing for the people all the news of the city except +the news as to how they could spend their money. They wondered how long +it would take the great shops with acres of things to sell to see how it +would work not to let anybody know what the things were. + +The great shops tried other ways of letting people know. They tried +handbills, a huge helpless patter of them over all the city. They used +billboards, and posted huge lists of items for people to stop and read +in the streets, if they wanted to, while they rushed by. For three whole +weeks they held on tight to the idea that the newspapers were striking +employees of department stores. One would have thought that they would +have seen that the newspapers were the representatives of the +people--almost the homes of the people--and that it would pay to treat +them respectfully. One would have thought they would have seen that if +they wanted space in the homes of the people--places at their very +breakfast tables--space that the newspapers had earned and acquired +there, they would have to pay their share of what it had cost the +newspapers to get it. + +One would have thought that the department shops would have seen that +the more they could make the newspapers prosper, the more influence the +newspapers would have in the homes of the people, and the more business +they could get through them. But it was not until the shopowners had +come down and gazed day after day on the big, white, lonely floors of +their shops that they saw the truth. Crowds stayed away, and proved it +to them. Namely: a store, if it uses a great newspaper, instead of +having a few feet of show windows on a street for people to walk by, +gets practically miles of show windows for people--in their own +houses--sells its goods almost any morning to the people--to a whole +city--before anybody gets up from breakfast--has its duties as well as +its rights. + +Of course, when the shopkeepers really saw that this was what the +newspapers had been doing for them, they wanted to do what was right, +and wanted to pay for it. One would have thought, looking at it +theoretically, that the department stores in any city would have +imagination enough to see, without practically having to shut their +stores up for three weeks, what advertising was worth. But if great +department stores do not have imagination to see what they would wish +they had done in twenty years, in one year, or three weeks, and have to +spell out the experience morning by morning and see what works, word by +word, they do learn in the end that being right works, and that bullying +does not. Gradually the level or standard of right in business is bound +to rise, until people have generally come to take the Golden Rule with +the literalness and seriousness that the best and biggest men are +already taking it. Department stores that have the moral originality and +imagination to guess what people would wish they had bought of them and +what they would wish they had sold to them afterward are going to win. +Department stores that deal with their customers three or four years +ahead are the ones that win first. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +GOODNESS AS A CROWD-PROCESS + + +The basis of successful business is imagination about other people. The +best way to train one's imagination about other people is to try +different ways of being of service to them. Trying different ways of +merely getting money out of them does not train the imagination. It is +too easy. + +Business is going to be before long among the noblest of the +professions, because it takes the highest order of imagination to +succeed in it. Goodness is no longer a Sunday school. The whole world, +in a rough way, is its own Sunday school. + +To have the most brains render the most service--render services people +had never dreamed of before. + +Why bother to tell people to be good? It bores us. It bores them. +Presently we will tell them over our shoulders, as we go by, to use +their brains. Goodness is a by-product of efficiency. + +Being good every day in business stands in no need of being stood up +for, or apologized for, or even helped. All of these things may be +expedient and human and natural, because one cannot help being +interested in particular people and in a particular generation; but they +are not really necessary to goodness. It is only when we are tired, or +when we only half believe in it, that we feel to-day that goodness needs +to be stood up for. In a day when men make vast crowds of things, so +that the things are seen everywhere, and when the things are made to +stand the test of crowds--crowds of days, or crowds of years--and when +they make them for crowds of people, goodness does not need scared and +helpful people defending it. I have seen that goodness is a thing to be +sung about like a sunset. I have seen that goodness is organic, and +grounded in the nature of things and in the nature of man. I have seen +that being good is the one great adventure of the world, the huge daily +passionate moral experiment of the human heart--that all men are at work +on it, that goodness is an implacable crowd process, and that nothing +can stop it. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +THOUGHTS ON BEING IMPROVED BY OTHER PEOPLE + + +But Fate has so arranged our lives that we all have to live cooped up in +one particular generation. Living in all of them, especially the ages +just ahead, and seeing as one looks out upon them how goodness wins, may +be well enough when one is tired or discouraged and is driven to it, but +in the meantime all the while we are living in this one. The faces of +the people we know flit past us; the gaunt, grim face of the crowd +haunts us--the crowd that will slip softly off the earth very soon and +drop into the Darkness--a whole generation of it, without seeing how +things are coming out; and there is something about the streets, about +the look of women as they go by, something about the faces of the little +children, that makes one wish goodness would hurry. One cannot think +with any real pleasure of goodness as a huge, slow, implacable moral +glacier, a kind of human force of gravity, grinding out truths and +grinding under people, generation after generation, down toward some +vast, beautiful, happy valley with flowers and children in it and +majestic old men thousands of years away. One wishes goodness would +hurry. We are not content, some of us, with having the good people climb +over the so-called evil ones and gain the supremacy of the world, and +all because the evil people do not see what they really want to do or +would have wished they had done afterward. We want the evil ones, so +called, to see what they really want now. We cannot help believing that +there is some way of attracting their attention to what they really want +now. + +I have seen, or seemed to see, in my time that there is almost no limit +to what people can do if they can get their own attention, or if some +person or some event will happen by that can get their attention for +them. + +Paralytics jumped from their beds at the time of the San Francisco +earthquake and ran for blocks. The whole earth had to shake them in +order to get their attention; but it did it, and they saw what it was +they wanted, and they ran for it at once, whether they were paralytics +or not. In the fire that followed the earthquake, people that had been +sick in bed for weeks were seen, scores of them, dragging their trunks +through the streets. + +I have seen, too, in my time scores of people doing great feats of +goodness in this way, things that they knew they could not do, dragging +huge moral trunks after them, or swinging them up on their shoulders. I +have seen men who thought they were old in their hearts, and who thought +they were wicked, running like boys, with shouts and cheers, to do +right. It was all a matter of attention. The question with most of us +would seem to be: How can one get one's attention to what one would wish +one had done in twenty years, and how can one get other people's--all +the people with whom we are living and working--to do with us what they +would wish they had done, in twenty minutes, twenty days, or twenty +years? + +Letting the Crowd be Good, all turns in the long run upon touching the +imagination of Crowds. + +In the last analysis, the coming of the kingdom of heaven, as it has +been called, is going to be the coming slowly, and from unsuspected +quarters, of a new piety and of new kinds of saints into the forefront +of modern life--saints who can attract attention, saints who can make +crowds think what they really want. + +Using the word in its more special sense, the time has come when it is +being keenly realized that if goodness is to be properly appreciated by +crowds, it must be properly advertised. + +How can goodness be advertised to Crowds? + +Who are the people that can touch the imagination of Crowds? + +The best and most suggestive truths that most of us could come to with +regard to doing right, would come from a study of the people who have +tried to make us do it. Most of us, if we were asked to name the people +most prominently connected with the virtues that we have studied and +wondered about most, would mention, probably, either our parents or our +preachers. Many of us feel quite expert about parents. We have studied +vividly, and sometimes with almost a breathless interest, all their +little ways of getting us to be good, and there is hardly any one who +has not come to quite definite conclusions of how he should be preached +to. I have thought it would be not unfruitful to consider in this +connection either our parents or our preachers. I have decided to +consider the preachers who try to make me good, because they are a +little less complicated than parents. + +Preachers can only be put into classes in a general way. They often +overlap, and many of them change over from one class into another every +now and then on some special subject, or on some special line of +experience which they have had. But for the most part, at least as +regards emphasis, preachers may be said to divide off into three +classes: + +Those who tease us to do right. + +Those who make us see that doing right, if any one wants to do it, is +really an excellent thing. + +Those who make us want to do it. + + * * * * * + +I never go to hear a second time, if I can help it, a preacher who has +teased me to do right. I used to hope at first that perhaps a clergyman +who was teasing people might incidentally slip off the track a minute, +and say something or see something interesting and alive. But, +apparently, preachers who do not see that people should not be teased to +do right, do not see other things, and I have gradually given up having +hopeful moments about them. Why, in a world like this, with the right +and the wrong in it all lying so eloquent and plain and beautiful in the +lives of the people about us, and just waiting to be uncovered a little, +waiting to be looked at hard a minute, should audiences be gathered +together and teased to do right? + +If the right were merely to be had in sermons or on paper, it might be +different. My own experience with the right has been, if I may speak for +one, that when I get out of the way of the people who are doing it, and +let the right they are doing be seen by people, everybody wants it. When +people who are doing right are quietly revealed, uncovered a little +further by a preacher, everybody envies them, and teasing becomes +superfluous. People sit in their seats and think of them, and become +covetous to be like them. If, this very day, all the ministers of the +world were to agree that, on next Sunday morning at half-past ten +o'clock, they all with one accord would preach a sermon teasing people +to be rich, it would not be more absurd, or more pathetic, or more away +from the point, than it would be to preach a sermon teasing people to be +good. They want to be good now; they envy the people that they see going +about the world not leaning on others to be good--self-poised, +independent, free, rich, spiritually self-supporting persons. + +The men and women that we know may be more or less muddled in their +minds with philosophy or with theology, or perhaps they are being +deceived by expediency or being bullied by their environment, but they +are not wicked; they are out of focus, and what they desire when they go +to church on Sunday morning is to get a good look at beautiful and +refreshing things that they want, and for an hour and a half, if +possible, with slow steadied thought see their own lives in perspective. +It is a criminal waste of time to get hundreds of people to come into +church on a Sunday morning and seat them all together in a great room +where they cannot get out, and then tease them and tell them they ought +to be good. They knew it before they came. They are already agreed, all +of them, that they want to be good. They even want to be good in +business--as good as they can afford to. The question is how to manage +to do it. The thing that is troubling them is the technique. How can +they be good in their business--more good than their employers want them +to be, for instance--and keep their positions? Doing as one would wish +one had done afterward, or knowing what one is about, or "being good" as +it is sometimes called, is a thing that all really clever people have +agreed upon. They simply cannot manage some of the details--details like +time and place, a detail like being good now, for instance, or like +being good here. It is the more practical things like these that trouble +people, or they grow mixed in their thoughts about the big goods and the +little ones--which shall be first in order of importance or which in the +order of time. And when one sees that people are really like this in +their hearts, and when one sees them, all these poor, helpless people, +sitting cooped up in a church for an hour and a half being teased to be +good, it is small wonder that it seems, or is coming to seem, to the +clean-cut morally businesslike men and women we have to-day, a pitiful +waste of time. + + * * * * * + +I come to the second class of preachers I had in mind with more +diffidence. My feelings about them are not so simple and rudimentary as +my feelings about those who have teased me to be good. + +Any man who travels about, or who drops into churches wherever he +happens to be from Sunday to Sunday, is almost sure to find in every +city of considerable size at least one imperious capable baffling +clergyman. If one is strictly honest and fair toward him, to say nothing +of being a well-meant and hopeful human being who is living in the same +world with him and who feels very imperfect too, finding any serious and +honest fault with the sermon, or at least laying one's finger upon what +the fault is, seems to be almost impossible. One simply comes out of +the church in a nice, neat little glow of good-will and admiration, and +with a strange, soothing, happy sense of new, fresh, convenient wisdom. + +The only fair way to criticise the preacher who belongs in this class +seems to be to take ten years for it, go in regularly and get a little +practice every Sunday. There are preachers who preach so well that the +only way one can ever find what is the matter with their sermons is to +sit quietly while they are preaching them, and look around at the +people. One thinks as one looks around, "These people are what this man +has done." + +They are the same people they were ten years ago. + +I often hear other sermons that are far easier to criticise. They are +one-sided or narrow, but they make new people. + +I might not always like to be in a congregation when a man is preaching +a sermon that makes new people, because he may be making people or kinds +of people that at the time at least I do not need to be. But I naturally +prefer, at least part of the time, a preacher who puts in, before he is +through, some good work on me. There is a preacher in B---- who always +arouses in me, whenever I am in the city, the same old, curious, hopeful +feeling about him that this next one more time he is going to get to me, +that I am going to be attended to. I cannot say how many times I have +dropped in upon him in his big plain church, seen him with his hushed +congregation all about him, all listening to him up to the last minute, +each of them sitting all alone with his own soul, and with him, and with +the ticking of the clock. And the sermon is always about the same. You +see him narrowing the truth down wonderfully, ruthlessly, to You. You +begin to see everything--to see all the arguments, all the +circumstances, all the principles. You see them narrowing you down +grimly, closing in upon you, converging you and all your little, mean +life, driving you apparently at last into one helpless beautiful corner +of doing right. You feel while you listen the old sermon-thrill you have +felt before, a kind of intellectual joy in God, in the very brains of +God; you think of how He has arranged right and wrong so cunningly, laid +them all out so plain and so close beside each other for you to choose +to be good. Then the benediction is pronounced over you, the sevenfold +amen dies away over you, and you go home and do as you like. + +One sees the sermon for days afterward lying out there in calm and +orderly memory, all so complete and perfect by itself. There does not +really seem to be any need of doing anything more to it. It is what +people mean probably by a "finished sermon." It is as if goodness had +been put under a glass globe in a parlour. You go home proud to think of +it, and proud of course to have such a sermon by you. But you would +never think of touching such a complete and perfect thing during the +week the way you would a poorer sermon, disturbing it hopefully or +mussing it over, trying to work some of it into your own life. + + * * * * * + +So much for the first two types of preachers: the preachers who stand +before us Sunday morning with goodness placed beside them in a dense +darkness while they talk, and who tease us to look at it in the darkness +and to take some; and those who stand, a cold white light all about +them, and use pointers and blackboards and things--maps of goodness, +great charts of what people ought to be like--and who make one see each +virtue just where it belongs as a kind of dot, like cities in a +geography, and who leave us with the pleasant feeling of how sweet and +reasonable God is, or rather would be if anybody would pay any attention +to Him. + + * * * * * + +I have already hinted at the qualities of the third class of +preachers--those who make me want to be good. They seem to throw +goodness as upon a screen, some vast screen of the world, of this real +world about me. They turn their souls, like still stereopticons, upon +the faces of men--men who are like the men and women I know. I go about +afterward all the week seeing their sermons in the street. Everybody I +see, everything that comes up Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, the very +patterns of the days and nights, of my duties and failures, keep coming +up, reminding me to be good. I may start in--I often do--with such a +preacher, criticising him, but he soon gets me so occupied criticising +myself and so lost in wondering how this something that he has and sees +just beyond us, just beyond him, just beyond me, can be had for other +people, and how I can have some of it for myself, that I forget to +criticise. He searches my soul, makes me a new being in my presence +before my eyes--that is, a new being toward some one subject, or some +one possibility in the world. He helps me while in his presence to +accomplish the supreme thing that one man can ever do for another. He +helps me to get my own attention. He makes me see a set of particular +things that I immediately, before his next sentence, am trying to find +means to do. He does not attract my attention toward what he wants, like +a preacher who teases; nor does he attract my attention to what God +wants, like the preacher with the charts of goodness. He succeeds in +attracting and holding down my attention to what I really want for +myself or others, and to what I propose to get. + +The imagination of crowds is convinced only by men who have real genius +for expression, for making word-pictures of real things, men who have +what might be called moving-picture minds, and who are so picturesque +and vivid that when they talk to people about goodness they have seen, +everybody feels as if they had been there. It has to be admitted that +this type of preacher, who has a kind of genius, and has developed an +art form for expressing goodness in words, is necessarily an exceptional +man. And it is unreasonable and unfair in the public to expect a man to +get up in the pulpit and, with no costume and no accessories, merely +with a kind of shrewd holiness or divination into human nature, present +goodness so that we seem to be there. It is small wonder that a man who +finds he is expected to be a kind of combination of biograph, brother, +spiritual detective, and angel all in one, in order to do his work +successfully has days of feeling that he has joined the ranks of The +Impossible Profession. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +MAKING GOODNESS HURRY + + +Perhaps it has leaked out to those who have been following these pages +thus far, that I am merely at best, if the truth were known, a kind of +reformed preacher. + +I admit it. Many other people are. We began, owing to circumstances, +with the idea of getting people to take up goodness by talking about it. + +But we have grown discouraged in talking to people about goodness. More +and more, year by year, we have made up our minds, as I have hinted, to +lie low and to keep still and show them some. + +And I can only say it again, as I have said it before, if everybody in +the world could know my plumber or pay a bill to him, the world would +soon begin, slowly but surely, to be a very different place. + +The first time I saw B---- I had asked him to come over to arrange with +regard to putting in new waterpipes from the street to my house. The old +ones had been put in no one could remember how many years before, and +the pressure of water in the house, apparently from rust in the pipes, +had become very weak. After a minute's conversation I at once engaged +B---- to put in the new and larger pipes, and he agreed to dig open the +trench (about two hundred feet long, and three feet deep) and put the +pipes in the next day for thirty-five dollars. The next morning he +appeared as promised, but, instead of going to work, he came into my +study, stood there a moment before my eyes, and quietly but firmly threw +himself out of his job! + +There was no use in spending thirty-five dollars, he said. He had gone +to the City Water Works Office and told them to look into the matter and +see if the connection they had put in at the junction of my pipe with +the main in the street did not need attention. They had found that a new +connection was necessary. They would see that a new one was put in at +once. They were obliged to do it for nothing, he said; and then, +slipping (figuratively speaking) thirty-five dollars into my pocket, he +bowed gravely and was gone. + +B---- knew absolutely and conclusively (as any one would with a look) +that I was not the sort of person who would ever have heard of that +blessed little joint out in the street, or who ever would hear of it or +who would know what to do with it if he did. + + * * * * * + +Sometimes I sit and think of B---- in church, or at least I used to, +especially when his bill had just come in. It was always a pleasure to +think of paying one of B----'s bills--even if it was sometimes a +postponed one. You always knew, with B----, that he had made that bill +out to you as if he had been making out a bill to himself. + +Not such a bad thing to think about during a sermon. + +I do not deny that I do lose a sentence now and then in sermons; and +while, as every one knows, the sermons I have been provided with in the +old stone church have been of a rare and high order, there have, I do +acknowledge, been bad moments--little sudden bare spots or streaks of +abstraction--and I do not deny that there have been times when I could +not help feeling, as I sat listening, like sending around Monday morning +to the parsonage--my plumber. One could not help thinking what Dr. ---- +if he once got started on a plumber like B---- (had had him around +working all the week during a sermon) could do with him. + +I have a shoemaker, too, who would help most ministers. I imagine he +would point up their sermons a good deal--if they had his shoes on. + +Perhaps shoes and pipes and things like these will be looked upon soon +to-day as constituting the great, slow, modest, implacable spiritual +forces of our time. + +At all events, this is the most economical, sensible, thorough way (when +one thinks of it) that goodness can be advertised. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +TOUCHING THE IMAGINATION OF CROWDS + + +A man's success in business to-day turns upon his power of getting +people to believe he has something that they want. + +Success in business, in the last analysis, turns upon touching the +imagination of crowds. The reason that preachers in this present +generation are less successful in getting people to want goodness than +business men are in getting them to want motor-cars, hats, and pianolas, +is that business men as a class are more close and desperate students of +human nature, and have boned down harder to the art of touching the +imaginations of crowds. + +When one considers what it is that touches a crowd's imagination and how +it does it, one is bound is admit that there is not a city anywhere +which has not hundreds of men in it who could do more to touch the +imagination of crowds with goodness than any clergyman could. A man of +very great gifts in the pulpit, a man of genius, even an immortal +clergyman, could be outwitted in the art of touching the imagination of +crowds with goodness by a comparatively ordinary man in any one of +several hundred of our modern business occupations. + +There is a certain nation I have in mind as I write, which I do not like +to call by name, because it is struggling with its faults as the rest of +us are with ours. But I do not think it would be too much to say that +this particular nation I have in mind--and I leave the reader to fill in +one for himself, has been determined in its national character for +hundreds of years, and is being determined to-day--every day, nearly +every minute of every day, except when all the people are asleep--by a +certain personal habit that the people have. I am persuaded that this +habit of itself alone would have been enough to determine the fate of +the nation as a third-rate power, that it would have made it always do +things with small pullings and haulings, in short breaths, and +hand-to-mouth insights--a little jerk of idealism one day, and a little +jerk of materialism the next--a kind of national palavering, and +see-sawing and gesturing, and talking excitedly and with little +flourishes. It is a nation that is always shrugging its shoulders, that +almost never seems to be capable of doing a thing with fine directness, +with long rhythms of purpose or sustained feeling; and all because every +man, woman, and child in the country--scores of generations of them for +hundreds of years--has been taught that the great spiritual truth or +principle at the bottom of correctly and beautifully buying a turnip is +to begin by saying that you do not want a turnip at all, that you never +eat turnips, and none of your family, and that they never would. The +other man begins by pointing out that he is never going to sell another +turnip as long as he lives, if he can help it. Gradually the facts are +allowed to edge in until at last, and when each man has taken off God +knows how much from the value of his soul, and spent two shillings' +worth of time on keeping a halfpenny in his pocket, both parties +separate courteously, only to carry out the same spiritual truth on a +radish perhaps or a spool of thread, or it may be even a house and lot, +or a battleship, or a war, or a rumour of a war, with somebody. + +The United States, speaking broadly, is not like this. But it might have +been. + +In the United States some forty years ago, being a new country, and +being a country where everything a man did was in the nature of things, +felt to be a first experiment, everybody felt democratic and +independent, and as if he were making the laws of the universe just for +himself as he went along. + +There was a period of ten years or so in which every spool of thread and +bit of dress goods--everything that people wore on their bodies or put +in their months, and everything that they read, came up and had to be +considered as an original first proposition, as if there never had been +a spool of thread before, as if each bit of dress goods was, or was +capable of being, a new fresh experiment, with an adventurous price on +it; and before we knew it a moral nagging and edging and hitching had +set in, and was fast becoming in America an American trait, and fixing +itself by daily repetition upon the imagination of the people. + +The shopping of a country is, on the whole, from a psychologist's point +of view, the most spiritual energy, the most irrevocable, most +implacable meter there can ever be of the religion a country really has. + +There was no clergyman in America who could have made the slightest +impression on this great national list or trend of always getting things +for less than they were worth--this rut of never doing as one would be +done by. What was there that could be done with an obstinate, pervasive, +unceasing habit of the people like this? + +What was there that could be done to touch the imagination of the crowd? + +Six thousand women a day were going in and out of A.T. Stewart's great +store on Broadway at that time. A.T. Stewart announced to New York +suddenly in huge letters one day, that from that day forward there +should be one price for everything sold in his store, and that that +price would be paid for it by everybody. + +A.T. Stewart's store was the largest, most successful, original, and +most closely watched store in America. + +The six thousand women became one thousand. + +Then two thousand. Some of them had found that they finished their +shopping sooner; the better class of women, those whose time was worth +the most, and whose custom was the largest, gradually found they did not +want to shop anywhere else. The two thousand became three thousand, four +thousand, six thousand, ten thousand, twelve thousand. + +Other department stores wanted the twelve thousand to come to them. They +announced the one price. + +Hardware stores did it. Groceries announced one price. Then everybody. + +Not all the clergymen in America, preaching every Sunday for months, +could have done very much in the way of seriously touching the +imagination of the crowd on the moral unworthiness, the intellectual +degradation, the national danger of picking out the one thing that +nearly all the people all do, and had to do, all day, every day, and +making that thing mean, incompetent, and small. No one had thought out +what it would lead to, and how monstrous and absurd it was and would +always be to have a nation have all its people taking every little thing +all day, every day, that they were buying, or that they were +selling--taking a spool of thread, for instance--and packing it, or +packing their action with it, as full of adulterated motives and of +fresh and original ways of not doing as they would be done by as they +could think up--a little innocent spool of thread--wreaking all their +sins and kinds of sins on it, breaking every one of the ten commandments +on it as an offering.... + +It was A.T. Stewart, a very ordinary-looking, practical man in a plain, +everyday business, who arrested the attention of a nation and changed +the habit of thought and trend of mind of a great people, and made them +a candid, direct people, a people that went with great sunny prairies +and high mountains, a yea and nay people, straightforward, and free from +palavering forever. A.T. Stewart was accustomed, in his own personal +dealings from day to day, to cut people short when they tried to heckle +with him. He liked to take things for granted, drive through to the +point, and go on to the next one. This might have ended, of course, in a +kind of _cul de sac_ of being a merely personal trait in a clean-cut, +manful, straightforward American gentleman; and if Stewart had been a +snob or a Puritan, or had felt superior, or if he had thought other +people--the great crowds of them who flocked through his store--could +never expect to be as good as he was, nothing would ever have come of +it. + +It is not likely that he was conscious of the long train of spiritual +results he had set in motion; of the way he had taken the habit of mind, +the daily, hourly psychology of a great people, and had wrought it +through with his own spirit; or of the way he had saved up, and set +where it could be used, everyday religion in America, and had freed the +business genius of a nation for its most characteristic and most +effective self-expression. + +He merely was conscious that he could not endure palavering in doing +business himself, and that he would not submit to being obliged to +endure it, and he believed millions of people in America were as +clean-cut and straightforward as he was. + +And the millions of people stood by him. + +Perhaps A.T. Stewart touched the imagination of the crowd because he had +let the crowd touch his and had seen what crowds, in spite of +appearances, were really like. + +The enterprise of touching the imagination of the crowd with goodness, +which is being conducted every day on an enormous scale around us, has +to be carried on, like all huge enterprises, by men who are in a large +degree unconscious of it. There are few department stores in England or +America that would expect to be called pious, but if one is deeply and +obstinately interested in the Golden Rule, and in getting crowds of +people to believe in it at a time, it is impossible not to think what +sweeps of opportunity department stores would have with it--with the +Golden Rule. With thousands of people flowing in and out all the week, +and with hundreds of clerks to attend to it, eight hours a day, there +would hardly seem to be any limit to what such a store could do in +making the Golden Rule a direct, a pointed and personal thing, a thing +that could not be evaded and could not be forgotten by thousands of +people. The same people all going in and out of department stores, vast +congregations of them, eight hours a day, which ministers can only get +at in small lots, three hundred or so, twenty minutes a week, and can +only get at with words even then--all of them being convinced in terms +they understand, and in terms they keenly feel, convinced in hats that +they will see over and over again, convinced in velvets that they are +going to put on and off for years, in laces, in waistcoats, shoes, in +dining-room chairs, convinced in the very underclothes next to their +skins, the clothes they sleep in all night, in the very plates on which +they eat, while all the time they keep remembering, or being reminded, +just how the things were bought, and just what was claimed for them and +what was not claimed for them, and thinking how the claims came true or +how they did not. + + * * * * * + +I just saw lying on the table as I came through the hall a moment ago a +hat which (out of all the long rows of hats I can see faintly reaching +across the years) will always be to me a memorable hat. I am free to say +that, after all the ladies it has been taken off to, my great memory of +that hat is now and always will be, as long as I live, the department +store at which I bought it, and the things the department store, before +I got through with it, managed to make the hat say. + +I had been in the store the day before and selected, in broad daylight, +with a big mirror staring me out of countenance, a hat which was a +quarter of a size too large. To clinch the matter, I had ordered four +ventilating holes to be punched in it, and had it sent to my rooms to be +my hat--implacably my hat as I supposed, for better for worse, for +richer for poorer--always. The next morning, after standing before a +mirror and trying hopefully for a few minutes to see if I could not look +more intelligent in the hat, I returned to the store firmly. I had made +up my mind that I would keep from looking the way that that hat made me +look, at any cost. The store was not responsible according to the letter +either for the hat or for the way I looked in it. I had deliberately +chosen it, looked at myself in cold blood in it, had those dreadful, +irremovable, eternal air-holes dug into it. I would buy a new one. I +jumped into a cab, and a moment after I arrived I found myself before +the clerk from whom I had bought it, with a new one on my head, and was +just reaching into my pocket for my purse when, to my astonishment, I +heard, or seemed to hear, the great Department Store Itself, in the +gentle accents of a young man with a yellow moustache, saying: "I'm +sorry"--all seven storys of it gathering itself up softly, apparently, +and saying "I'm sorry!" The young man explained that he was afraid the +hat was wrong the day before, and thought he ought to have told me so, +that the store would not want me to pay for the mistake. + +I came home a changed man. I had been hit by the Golden Rule before in +department stores, but always rather subtly--never with such a broad, +beautiful flourish! I made some faint acknowledgment, I have forgotten +what, and rushed out of the store. + +But I have never gone past the store since, on a 'bus, or in a taxi, or +sliding through the walkers on the street, but I have looked up to +it--to its big, quiet windows, its broad, honest pillars fronting a +world. + +I take off my hat to it. + +But it gave me more than a hat. + +I think what a thousand department stores, stationed in a thousand +places on this old planet, could do in touching the imagination of the +world--every day, day by day, cityfuls at a time. + +I had found a department store that had absolutely identified itself +with my interests, that could act about a hat the way a wife would--a +department store that looked forward to a permanent relation with me--a +great live machine that could be glad and sorry--that really took me in, +knew how I felt about things, cared how I looked as I walked down the +street. Sometimes I think of the poor, wounded, useless thing I took +back to them, those pitiless holes punched in it--just where no one +else would ever have had them. I am human. I always feel about the +store, that great marble and glass Face, when I go by it now as if, in +spite of all the difficulties, it wanted me--to be beautiful! I at least +feel and know that the people who were the brain, the daily moving +consciousness behind the face--wanted me to be a becoming customer to +them. They did not want to see me coming in, if it could possibly be +helped, in that hat any more! + + * * * * * + +I have told this little history of a gray hat, not because it is in any +way extraordinary, but because it is not. The same thing, or something +quite like it, expressing the same spirit, might have happened in any +one of the best hundred department stores in the world. + +Most people can remember a time, only a very little while ago, when +clerks in our huge department stores or selling machines were not +expected to be people who would think of things like this to do, or who +would know how, or who would think to consider them good business if +they did. + +The department store that based its success on selecting clerks of a +high order of human insight, that paid higher wages to its clerks for +their power of being believed in, for their personal qualities and their +shrewdness in helping people and a gift for discovering mutual interests +with everybody and for founding permanent human relations with the +public, had not been thought of a little while ago. + +All that had been thought of was the appearance of these things. It was +an employer's business, speaking generally, to get all he could out of +his clerks and have them get as little as possible out of him. It was +their business in their turn to get as much money out of the public as +they could get, and to give the public as little in return as they +dared. + +The type of employer who liked to do business in this way, and who +believed in it, crowed over the world nearly everywhere as the Practical +Man. And for the time being certainly it has to be admitted that he +seemed the most successful. Naturally there came to be a general +impression among the people that only certain lower orders of life and +character could be employed, or could stand being employed, in the great +department stores. + +I used often to go into ----'s. Everybody remembers it. I went in, as a +rule, in a helpless, waiting, married way, and as a mere attaché of the +truly wise and good. All I ever did or was expected to do was to stand +by and look wise and discriminating a minute about dress goods, when +spoken to. I used to put in my time looking behind the counters--all +those busy, pale, yellow-lighted people in little holes or stalls trying +to be human and natural in that long, low, indoor street of theirs, +crowds of women staring by them and picking at things. Always that +moving sidewalk of questions--that dull, eager stream of consciousness +sweeping by. No sunlight--just the crowds of covetousness and +shrewdness. I used to wonder about the clerks, many of them, and what +they would be like at home or under an apple tree or each with a bit of +blue sky to go with them. They used to seem in those days, as I looked, +mostly poor, underground creatures living in a sort of Subway of Things +in a hateful, hard, little world of clothes, each with his little study +or trick or knack of appearances, standing there and selling people +their good looks day after day at so much a yard. + +To-day, in a hundred cities one can go into department shops where one +would get, standing and looking on idly, totally different impressions. +There are hundreds of thousands of young men and women who have made +being a clerk a new thing in the world. The public has already had its +imagination touched by them, and is beginning to deal with clerks, as a +class, on a different level. + +This has been brought to pass because the employer has been thought of, +or has thought of himself, who engages and pays for in clerks the +highest qualities in human nature that he can get. He picks out and puts +in power, and persuades to be clerks, people who would have felt +superior to it in days gone by--men and women who habitually depend for +their efficiency in showing and selling goods upon their more generous +emotions and insights, their imaginations about other people. They +gather in their new customers, and keep up their long lists of old and +regular customers, through shrewd visions of service to people, and +through a technical gift for making the Golden Rule work. + +When one looks at it practically, and from the point of view of all the +consequences, a bargain is the most spiritual, conclusive, most +self-revealing experience that people can have together. Every bargain +is a cross-section in three tenses of a man. A bargain tells everything +about people--who they are, and what they are like. It also tells what +they are going to be like unless they take pains; and it tells what they +are not going to be like too sometimes, and why. + +The man who comes nearest in modern life to being a Pope, is the man who +determines in what spirit and by what method the people under him shall +conduct his bargains and deal with his customers. ----, at the head of +his department store, has a parish behind his counters of twenty-five +hundred men and women. He is in the business of determining their +religion, the way they make their religion work, eight hours a day, six +days a week. He seems to me to be engaged in the most ceaseless, most +penetrating, most powerful, and most spiritual activity of the world. He +is really getting at the imaginations of people with his idea of +goodness. If he does not work his way through to a man's imagination one +minute or one day, he does the next. If he cannot open up a man's +imagination with one line of goods, he does it with another. If he +cannot make him see things, and do as he would be done by, with one kind +of customer, another is moved in front of him presently, and another, +and another--the man's inner substance is being attacked and changed +nearly every minute every day. There is nothing he can do, or keep from +doing, in which his employer's idea of goodness does not surround, +besiege, or pursue him. Every officer of the staff, every customer who +slips softly up to the counter in front of him makes him think of the +Golden Rule in a new way or in some shading of a new way--confronts him +with the will, with the expectation, with the religion of his employer. + +In ----'s store (where I looked in a moment yesterday) one thousand of +the two thousand five hundred clerks are men. If I were a minister +wondering nearly every day how to work in for my religion a fair chance +at men, I should often look wistfully from over the edge of my pulpit, I +imagine, to the head of ----'s department store, sitting at that quiet, +calm, empty looking desk of his in his little office at the top of his +big building in ---- Street, with nothing but those little six or seven +buttons he softly puts his thumbs on connecting him with a thousand +men. + +And he does not even need the buttons. Every man knows and feels, +personally and intimately, what the man at the desk is asking him to do +with a particular customer who stands before him at the moment. As soon +as the customer is there, the man at the desk practically is there too. +His religion works by wireless, and goes automatically, and as from a +huge stored-up reservoir, to all that happens in the place. He makes +regularly with his idea of goodness anywhere from twenty to sixty +pastoral calls (with every sale they make) on a thousand men a day. He +is not dependent, as the ordinary minister often is, on their dying, or +on their babies, or on their wives, for a chance to get at men with his +religion. + +If I wanted to take a spiritual census of modern civilization and get at +the actual scientific facts, what we would have to call, probably the +foot-tons of religion in the world to-day, I would not look for them in +the year-books of the churches, I would get them by going about in the +great department stores, by moving among the men and women in them day +after day, and standing by and looking on invisibly. Like a shadow or a +light I would watch them registering their goodness daily, hourly, on +their counters, over their counters, measuring out their souls before +God in dress goods, shoes, boas, hats, silk, and bread and butter! + +This may not be true of the Orient, but it is true, and getting to be +more true every day, of Europe and America. + +It is especially true of America. In the things which we borrow in +America, we are far behind the rest of the world. It is to the things +that we create, that we must look alone, for our larger destiny, and our +world-service. + +Naturally, in so far as civilization is a race of borrowing, nations +like England and France and Germany a few hundred miles apart from one +another, set the pace for a nation that is three thousand miles away +from where it can borrow, like the United States. It is a far cry from +the land of the Greeks with their still sunny temples and dreams, and +from England with its quiet-singing churches, to New York with its +practical sky-scraping hewing prayer! + +New York--scooping its will out of the very heavens! + +New York--the World's last, most stern, perhaps most manful prayer of +all--half-asking and half-grasping out of the hand of God! + +Here is America's religion! Half afraid at first, half glad, slowly, +solemnly triumphant, as on the edge of an abyss, I have seen America's +religion! I have seen my brother Americans hewing it out--day by day, +night by night, have I seen them--in these huge steel sub-cellars of the +sky! + +I have accepted the challenge. + +If it is not a religion, then it shall be to us a religion to make it a +religion. + +The Metropolitan Tower with its big clock dial, with its three stories +of telling what time it is, and its great bell singing hymns above the +dizzy flocks of the skyscrapers, is the soul of New York, to me. + +If one could see a soul--if one could see the soul of New York, it would +look more like the Metropolitan Tower than anything else. + +It seems to be trying to speak away up there in the whiteness and the +light, the very soul of the young resistless iron-hearted city. + +I write as an American. To me there is something about it as I come up +the harbour that fills my heart with a big ringing, as if all the world +were ringing, ringing once more--ringing all over again--up in this +white tower of ours in its new bit of blue sky! I glory in England with +it, in Greece, in Bethlehem. It is as an outpost on Space and Time, for +all of us gathering up all history in it softly--once more and pointing +it to God! + +It is the last, the youngest-minded, the most buoyant tower--the mighty +Child among the steeples of the world. The lonely towers of Cologne +stretching with that grave and empty nave against the sky, out of that +old and faded region of religion, far away, tremulously send greetings +to it--to this white tower in the west--to where it goes up with its +crowds of people in it, with business and with daily living and hoping +and dying in it, and strikes heaven! + +It may be perhaps only the American blood in me. Perhaps it is raw and +new to be so happy. I do not know. I only know that to me the +Metropolitan Tower is saying something that has been never quite said +before--something that has been given in some special sense to us as a +trust from the world. It is to me the steeple of democracy--of our +democracy, England's democracy--the world's democracy. The hollow domes +of Sts. Peter and Paul, and all the rest with their vague, airy +other-worldliness, all soaring and tugging like so many balloons of +religion and goodness, trying to get away from this world--are not to me +so splendid, so magnificently wilful as the Metropolitan Tower--as the +souls of these modern, heaven-striking men, taking the world itself, at +last, its streets of stone, of steel, its very tunnels and lifting them +up as blind offerings, as unbounded instincts, as prayers, as songs to +heaven! + +I worship my country, my people, my city when I hear the big bell in it +and when I look up to where the tower is in that still place like a +sea--look up to where that little white country belfry sits in the +light, in the dark above the vast and roaring city! + +To me, the Metropolitan Tower, sweeping up its prayer out of the streets +the way it does, and doing it, too, right beside that little safe, +tucked-in, trim, Sunday religion of the Madison Square Presbyterian +Church, lifts itself up as one of the mighty signs and portents of our +time. Have I not heard the bell tolling to the people in the midst of +business and singing great hymns? A great city lifts itself and prays in +it--prays while it sings and clangs so absent-looking below. + +I like to go out before going to sleep and take a look at it--one more +look before I sleep, upon the tower, strong, unyielding, alive, sinewy, +imperturbable, lifting up within itself the steel and soul of the world. +I am content to go to sleep. + +It is a kind of steeple of the business of this world. I would rather +have said that business needed a steeple before until I saw the +Metropolitan Tower and heard it singing above the streets. But I had +always wanted (without knowing it), in a modern office building, a great +solemn bell to remind us what the common day was. I like to hear it +striking a common hour and what can be done in it. I stop in the street +to listen--to listen while that great hive of people tolls--tolls not the +reveries of monks above the roofs of the skyscrapers, but the religion +of business--of the real and daily things, the seriousness of the mighty +street and the faces of the men and the women. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +THE STUPENDOUS, THE UNUSUAL, THE MONOTONOUS, AND THE SUCCESSFUL + + +The imagination of crowds may be said to be touched most successfully +when it is appealed to in one of four ways: + + THE STUPENDOUS. THE UNUSUAL. THE MONOTONOUS. THE SUCCESSFUL. + +Of these four ways, the stupendous, or the unusual, or the successful +are the most in evidence, and have something showy about them, so that +we can look at them afterward, and point out at a glance what they have +done. But probably the underhold on the crowd, the real grip on its +imagination, the one which does the plain, hard, everyday work on a +crowd's ideals, which determines what crowds expect and what crowds are +like inside--is the Monotonous. + +The man who tells the most people what they shall be like in this world +is not the great man or the unusual man. He is the monotonous man. + +He is the man, to each of us, who determines the unconscious beat and +rhythm with which we live our daily lives. + +If we wanted to touch the imaginations of crowds, or of any particular +crowd, with goodness, the best way to do it would probably be, not to go +to the crowd itself, but to the man who is so placed that he determines +the crowd's monotony, the daily rhythm with which it lives--the man, if +we can find him, who arranges the crowd's heart-beat. + +It need not take one very long to decide who the man is who determines +the crowd's heart-beat. The man who has the most dominion over the +imaginations of most of us, who stands up high before us out in front of +our lives, the man who, as with a great baton, day after day, night +after night, conducts, as some great symphony, the fate of the world +above our heads, who determines the deep, unconscious thoughts and +motives, the inner music or sing-song, in which we live our lives, is +the man to whom we look for our daily bread. + +It is the men with whom we earn our money who are telling us all +relentlessly, silently, what we will have to be like. The men with whom +we spend it, who sell things to us, like the department stores, those +huge machines of attention, may succeed in getting great sweeps of +attention out of crowds at special times, by appealing to men through +the unusual and through the stupendous or the successful. But what +really counts, and what finally decides what men and what women shall +be, what really gets their attention unfathomably, unconsciously, is the +way they earn their money. The feeling men come to have about a fact, of +its being what it is, helplessly or whether or no--the feeling that they +come to have about something, of its being immemorially and innumerably +the same everywhere and forever, comes from what they are thinking and +the way they think while they are earning their money. It is out of the +subconscious and the monotonous that all our little heavens and hells +are made. It is our daily work that becomes to us the real floor and +roof of living, hugs up under us like the ground, fits itself down over +us, and is our earth and sky. The man with whom we earn our money, the +man who employs us, his thinking or not thinking, his "I will" and "I +won't," are the iron boundaries of the world to us. He is the skylight +and the manhole of life. + +The monotonous, the innumerable and over and over again, one's desk, +one's typewriter, one's machine, one's own particular factory window, +the tall chimney, the little forever motion with one's hand--it is +these, godlike, inscrutable, speechless, out of the depths of our +unconsciousness and down through our dreams, that become the very breath +and rumble of living to us, domineer over our imaginations and rule our +lives. It is decreed that what our Employers think and let us know +enough to think shall be a part of the inner substance of our being. It +shall be a part of growing of the grass to us, and shall be as water and +food and sleep. It shall be to us as the shouts of boys at play in the +field and as the crying of our children in the night. To most men +Employers are the great doors that creak at the end of the world. + +It is not the houses that people live in, or the theatres that they go +to, or the churches to which they belong, or the street and number--the +East End look or the West End look the great city carves on the faces of +these men I see in the street--that determines what the men are like. + +Their daily work lies deeper in them than their faces. One finds one's +self as one flashes by being told things in their walk, in the way they +hold their hands and swing their feet. + +And what is it their hands and feet, umbrellas, bundles, and the +wrinkles in their clothes tell us about them? + +They tell us how they earn their money. Their hopes, their sorrow, their +fears and curses, their convictions, their very religions are the +silent, irrevocable, heavenly minded, diabolical by-products of what +their Employers think they can afford to let them know enough to think. + + "Fight for yourselves. Your masters hate you. They would shoot + you down like rabbits, but they need your labour for their + huge profits. Don't go in till you get your minimum. No Royal + Commission, no promise in the future. Leaders only want your + votes; they will sell you. They lie. Parliament lies, and will + not help you, but is trying to sell you. Don't touch a tool + till you get your minimum. Win, win, win! It is up to all + workers to support the miners." + +If a man happens to be an employer, and happens to know that he is not +this sort of man, and finds that he cannot successfully carry on his +business unless he can make five hundred men in his factory believe it, +what can he do? How can he touch their imaginations? What language is +there, either of words or of action, that will lead them to see that he +is a really a fair-minded, competent employer, a representative of the +interests of all, a fellow-citizen, a Crowdman, and that his men can +afford to believe in him and coöperate with them? + +If they think he would shoot them down like rabbits, it is because they +have not the remotest idea what he is really like. They have not noticed +him. They have no imagination about him, have not put themselves in his +place. How can he get their attention? + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +THE SUCCESSFUL + + +A little while ago I saw in Paris an American woman, the President of a +Woman's Club (I imagined), who was doing as she should, and was going +about in a cab appreciating Paris, drive up to the Louvre. Leaving her +cab, though I wondered a little why she did, at the door, she hurried up +the steps and swept into the gallery, taking her eleven-year-old boy +with her. I came upon her several times. The Louvre did not interest the +boy, and he seemed to be bothering and troubling his mother, and of +course he kept trying very hard, as any really nice boy would, to get +out; but she would not let him, and he wandered about dolefully, looking +at his feet and at the floor, or at the guards, and doing the best he +could. Finally she came over to him; there was a Murillo he must see--it +was the opportunity of his life; she brought him over to it, and stood +him up in front of it, and he would not look; she took his small brown +head in her hands and steered it to the great masterpiece and held it +there--on that poor, silent, helpless Murillo--until.... + +I observed that she could steer his head; but I could not help thinking +how much more she would have done if she had known how to steer it +inside. + +The invention of the Megaphone, of the Cinema, and the _London Times_, +and of the Bible, are all a part of the great, happy, hopeful effort of +one part of this world to get the attention of the other part of it, and +steer heads inside. + +This art of steering heads inside, which has come to be the secret art +of all the other arts, the secret religion of all the religions, is +also the secret of building and maintaining a civilization and a +successful and permanent business. It is hard to believe how largely, +for the last twenty years, it has been overlooked by employers as the +real key of the labour problem--this art of steering people's heads +inside. + +We have seen part of the truth. We have put in a good deal of time in +finding fault with labouring men for thinking too much about themselves +and about their class, and for emphasizing their wages more than their +work, and for not having more noble and disinterested characters. +Parliaments, clergymen, and employers have all been troubled for years +about Labour, and they have been trying very hard on Sundays and through +reports of speeches by members of Parliament in the daily press, and +through laws, and through employers' associations, and through factory +rules and fines, to get the attention of labouring men and lift their +thoughts to higher things. + +A great many wise things have been said to Labour--masterpieces, miles +of them as it were, whole Louvres of words have been hung upon their +walls. + +But in vain! + +And all because we have merely taken the outside of the boy's head in +our hands. We have not thought what was really going on in it. We have +not tried to steer it inside. We have been superficial. + +It is superficial for a comfortable man with a bun in his pocket to talk +to a starving man about having some higher motive than getting something +to eat. Everybody sees that this is superficial, if we mean by it that +his body is starving. But if we mean something more real and more +terrible than that--that he is starving inside, that his soul is +starving, that he has nothing to live for, no real object in getting +something to eat--if we mean by it, in other words, that the man's +imagination is not touched even by his own life, people take it very +lightly. + +And it is the most important thing in the world. The one thing now +necessary to society, to industry, is to get hold of the men who are in +it, one by one, and touch their imaginations about themselves. We have +millions of men working without their thoughts and expectations being +ventilated or passed along, year after year. + +One sees these men everywhere one goes, in thousands of factories, doing +their work without any draught. We already have tall chimneys for our +coal furnaces; we have next to see the value of tall chimneys, great +flues to the sky, on the lives and thought and the inner energies of +men. The most obvious way to get a draught on a man, to get him to glow +up and work is to cut through an opening in the top of his life. + +Just where to cut this opening, and just how to cut it in each man's +life--each man considered as a problem by himself--is the Labour +problem. + +There are certain general principles that might be put down in passing. +To begin with, we must not feel ashamed to begin implacably with the +actual man just as he is, and with the wants and the motives that he +actually has. We should feel ashamed rather to begin in any other way. +It would not be bright or thoughtful to begin on him with motives he is +going to have; and it certainly would not be religious or worthy of us +to try to make him begin with ours. Perhaps ours are better--for us. +Perhaps, too, ours will be better for him when he is like us (if we can +give him any reason to want to be). In the meantime, what is there that +can honestly be called base in taking human nature as it is and in +allowing a sliding scale of motives in people? Starving people and +slaves, or people who are ugly and hateful, _i.e._, not really quite +bright toward others, who impute mean, inaccurate motives to them, can +only be patiently expected to have a very small area or even mote of +unselfishness at first. A cross-section of our society to-day represents +the entire geological formation of human nature for 40,000 years. We +need but look on the faces of the men about us as we go down the street. +All history is here this minute. + +We wish that Labour had better motives. We wish to get our workmen to +understand us better and believe in us more and work for us harder. + +We agree that we must begin with them, if we propose to do this, where +they are. + +Where are they? + +There are certain general observations that might seem to the point. + +1. If a man is a sane and sound man and works hard, he must feel that +everything he does, every minute, is definitely connected with the main +through-train purpose in his life. + +2. If the main purpose in his life is domestic and consists in having +his family live well and giving his children a chance, he must feel and +be absolutely sure when he is working better or working worse for his +employer that he is working better or worse for himself and for those +for whom he lives. + +3. In the ordinary labourer this domestic unselfishness or house +patriotism is a kind of miniature public spirit. It is the elementary +form of his national or human enthusiasm. It is the form of +disinterestedness that has to be attended to in men first; and the way +for society to get the labouring man to be public-spirited, to have the +habit of considering the rights of others, is for society to have the +habit of considering his rights in his daily work. An intelligent, live +man must be allowed a little margin to practise being unselfish on, if +only in the privacy of his own family. Unselfishness begins in small +circles. The starving man must be allowed a smaller range of +unselfishness than the man who has enough. It is not uncomplimentary or +unworthy in human nature to admit that this is so--to demand that the +human being who is starving must be allowed to be selfish. If he is not +bright enough to be selfish when he is hungry he is dangerous to +society. We ought to insist upon his being selfish, and help him in it. +Virtue is a surplus. + +4. This is the first humble, stuttering speech the competent modern +employer who proposes to express himself to his men, and get them to +understand him and work with him, is going to make. He is going to pick +out one by one every man in his works who has a decent, modest, manly +desire to be selfish, and help him in it. He is going to do something or +say something that will make the man see, that will make him believe for +life, that the most powerful, the most trustworthy, the most far-sighted +man he can find in the world to be his partner in being decently, +soundly, and respectfully selfish--is his employer. + +No employer can expect to get the best work out of a man except by +working down through to the inner organic desire in the man as a man, +except by waking his selfishness up and by making it a larger, fuller, +nobler, weightier selfishness, and turning the full weight of it every +minute, every hour, on his daily work. + +The best language an employer can find to express this desire at first +to his workmen, is some form of faithful, honest copartnership. + +5. The ordinary wage labourer has little imagination about other people +because he is not allowed any about himself. The moment he is, and the +moment his employer arranges his work so that he sees every minute all +day that the work which he does for the firm 30 per cent. better counts. +30 per cent. more on his own main purpose in life, his imagination is +touched about himself and he begins to work like a human being. When a +man has been allowed to work awhile as a human being he will begin to be +human with a wider range. Being a partner touches the imagination and +wakes the man's humanness up. He not only works better, but he loves his +family better when he sees he can do something for them. He serves his +town better and his lodge better when he sees he can do something for +them. + +6. Being a partner wakes the man's imagination toward those who work +with him, and toward the public and the markets and the goods and the +cities where the goods go. He reads newspapers with a new eye. He +becomes interested in people who buy the goods, and in people who do +not. Why do they not? He gropes toward a general interest in human +nature, and begins to live. + +7. A man who is being paid wages one night in a week, has his +imagination touched about his work one night in the week. He is merely +being a wage-earner. In being a partner he is being paid, and feels his +pay coming in, every thirty seconds, in the better way he moves his +hands or does not move his hands. This makes him a man. + +8. And, finally, as he knows he is being paid, and that he always will +be paid, what he earns, he stops thinking of the sick, tired side of his +work--the pay he gets out of it, and begins to love the work itself, and +begins to be perfect in it for its own sake. This makes him a gentleman. + +9. Being a partner makes a man actively and keenly reasonable and +practical, not only about his own labour, but about the superior value +of other people with whom he works. He wants the best people in the best +places. He begins to have a practical partner's imagination about the +men who are over him, and about their knowing more than he does. If he +is merely paid wages, he is superstitious, and jealous toward those who +know more than he does. If he is paid profits, he is glad that they do, +and strikes in and helps. + +10. Another complete range of motives is soon offered to the employee +who is a partner. He feels the joy of being a part of a big, splendid +whole, a disinterested delight and pride in others. He grows young with +it, like a boy in school. + +Here is the factory over him, around him--his own vast hockey team--and +over that is the nation, and over that is the world! + +An employer can touch the imagination of most men, of the rank and file +of the people, ninety-nine times where other people can touch it once. +And every time he touches it, he touches it to the point. + +If men in general do not believe to-day in religion and do not want it, +it is because they have employers who have not seen any place in their +business where they could get their religion in, and have kept the +people (in the one place where they could really learn what religion is) +from learning anything about it. The moment the more common employers +see what the great ones see now, that business is the one particular +place in this world where religion really works, works the hardest, the +longest, and the best, works as it had never been dreamed a religion +could be made to work before--the day school teachers of the world, put +the Golden Rule in the Course everybody will know it. + +It only takes a moment's thought to see what the employers of the world +could do with the Golden Rule the moment they take hold of it. + +One has but to consider what they have done with it already. + +One has but to consider the astounding way in the last fifteen years +they have made everybody not believe in it. + +The employers of the world have been saying ten hours a day to everybody +that the Golden Rule is a foolish, pleasant, inefficient, worsted motto +on a parlour wall. + +Everybody has believed it. + +And now that the big employers are setting the pace and are saying +exactly the opposite thing about the Golden Rule, now that all the +employers are trying to get their employees to be efficient (to do by +their employers as they would be done by), and now that they are trying +to be efficient themselves (are trying to do to their employees as they +would have their employees do to them), the Golden Rule is touching the +imagination of crowds, and the crowd is seeing that the Golden Rule +works. They watch it working every day in the things they know about. +Then they believe in it for other things. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +THE NECKS OF THE WICKED + + +A letter lies before me, one out of many others asking me how the author +of "The Shadow Christ," which is a study of the religious values in +suffering and self-sacrifice in this world, takes the low ground that +honesty is the best policy. + +I know two kinds of men who believe that honesty is the best policy. + +These two men use exactly the same words "Honesty is the best policy." + +One man says it. + +The other man sings it. + +One man is honest because it pays. + +The other man is honest because he likes it. + +"Honesty is the best policy" as a motive cannot be called religious, but +"Honesty is the best policy" as a Te Deum, as something a man sings in +his heart every day about God, something he sings about human nature is +religious, and believing it the way some men believe it, is an act of +worship. + +It is like a great gentle mass. + +It is like taking softly up one's own planet and offering it to God. + +Here it is--the planet. Honesty is organized in the rocks on it and in +the oak trees on it and in the people. The rivers flow to the sea and +the heart of Man flows to God. On this one planet, at least, God is a +success. + +Possibly it is because many other people beside myself have been slow in +clearly making this distinction between "Honesty is the best policy" as +a motive or a Te Deum, that I have come upon so many religious men and +women in the last two or three years, who, in the finest spirit, have +seemed to me to be doing all that they could to discourage everybody +especially to discourage me, about the Golden Rule. + +The first objection which they put forward to the Golden Rule is that it +is a failure. + +When I try to deal with this or try to tell them about Non-Gregarious, +the second objection that they put forward is, that it is a success. + +If they cannot discourage me with one of these objections they try to +discourage me with the other. + +They point to the Cross. + +Some days I cannot help wondering what Christ would think if He were to +come back and find people, all these good Christian people everywhere +using the Cross--the Cross of all things in the world as an objection to +the Golden Rule and to its working properly, or as a general argument +against expecting anything of anybody. + +I do not know that I have any philosophy about it that would be of any +value to others. + +I only know that I am angry all through when I hear a certain sort of +man saying, and apparently proving, that the Golden Rule does not work. + +And I am angry at other people who are listening with me because they +are not angry too. + +Why are people so complacent about crosses? And why are they willing to +keep on having and expecting to have in this world all the good people +on crosses? Why do they keep on treating these crosses year after year, +century after century, in a dull tired way as if they had become a kind +of conventionality of God's, a kind of good old church custom, something +that He and the Church by this time, after two thousand years, could not +really expect to try to get over or improve upon? + +I do not know that I ought to feel as I do. + +I only know that the moment I see evil triumphing in this world, there +is one thing that that evil comes up against. + +It comes up against my will. + +My will, so far as it goes, is a spiritual fact. + +I do not argue about it, nor do I know that I wish to justify it. I +merely accept my will as it is, as one spiritual fact. + +I propose to know what to do with it next. + +The first thing that I have done, of course, has been to find out that +there are millions of other so-called Christian people who have +encountered this same fact that I have encountered. + +There are at least some of us who stand together. Our wills are set +against having any more people die on crosses in this world than can be +helped. If there is any kind of skill, craftmanship, technique, +psychology, knowledge of human nature which can be brought to bear, +which will keep the best people in this world not only from being, but +from belonging on crosses in it, we propose to bring these things to +bear. We are not willing to believe that crowds are not inclined to +Goodness. We are not willing to slump down on any general slovenly +assumption about the world that goodness cannot be made to work in it. + +If goodness is not efficient in this world we will make it efficient. + +Our reason for saying this is that we honestly glory in this world. We +believe that at this moment while we are still on it, it is in the act +of being a great world, that it is God's world, and in God's Name we +will defend its reputation. + +We do not deny that it may be better spiritual etiquette, more heroic +looking and may have a certain moral grace, so far as a man himself is +concerned, if the world makes him suffer for being honest. But after all +he is only one man, and whether he dislikes his suffering or likes it +and feels fine and spiritual over it, it is only one man's suffering. + +But why is it that when the world makes a man suffer, everybody should +seem always to be thinking of the man? Why does not anybody think of the +world? + +Is not the fact that a whole world, eternal and innumerable, is supposed +to be such a mean, dishonest sort of a world that it will make a man +suffer for being good a more important fact than the man's suffering is? +It seems to me to be taking not lower but higher ground when one insists +on believing in the race one belongs to and in believing that it is a +human race that can be believed in. After two thousand years of Christ, +it is a lazy, tired, anæmic slander on the world to believe that it does +not pay to be good in it. The man who believes it, and acts as if he +believed it, is to-day and has been from the beginning of time the +supreme enemy of us all. He is guilty before heaven and before us all +and in all nations of high treason to the human race. One of the next +most important things to do in modern religion is going to be to get all +these morally dressed-up, noble-looking people who enjoy feeling how +good they are because they have failed, to examine their hearts, stop +enjoying themselves and think. + +For hundreds of years we have religiously run after martyrs and we have +learned in a way, most of us, to have a kind of cooped-up patriotism for +our own nation, but why are there not more people who are patriotic +toward the whole human race? One has been used to seeing it now for +centuries, good people all over the world hanging their harps on willow +trees, or snuggling down together by the cold sluggish stream of their +lives, and gossiping about how the world has abused them, when they +would be far better occupied, nine out of ten of them--in doing +something that would make it stop. There was a poet and soldier some +thousands of years ago who put more real religion (and put it too, into +his imprecatory psalms), than has been put, I believe, into all the +sweet whinings and the spiritual droopings of the world in three +thousand years. I do not deny that I would quarrel, as a matter of form, +with the lack of urbanity, with a certain ill-nature in the imprecatory +Psalms; but with the spirit in them, with the motive and mighty desire, +with the necessity in the man's heart that was poured into them, I have +the profoundest sympathy. + +David had a manly, downright belief. His belief was that if sin is +allowed to get to the top in this world of ours, it is our fault. David +felt that it was partly his--and being a king--very much his, and as he +was trying to do something about it, he naturally wanted the world to +help. + +What he really meant--what lay in the background of his petition--the +real spirit that made him speak out in that naïve bold way before the +Lord, and before everybody--that made him ask the great God in heaven +all looking so white and so indifferent, to come right down please and +jump on the necks of the wicked, was a vivid, live vision of his own for +his own use that he was going to make the world more decent. He was +spirited about it. If God did not, He would, and naturally when he came +to expressing how he felt in prayer, he wanted God to stand by him. To +put it in good plain soldier-like Hebrew, He wanted God to jump on the +necks of his enemies. + +Speaking strictly for ourselves, in our more modern spirit of course, we +would want to modulate this, we admit that we would not ask God to do a +little thing like jumping on the necks of the wicked--just for us--nor +would we care to break away from the other things we are doing and +attend to it ourselves, nor would we even favour their necks being +jumped on by others, but while we do not agree with David's particular +request, we do profoundly agree with the way he felt when he made it. We +would not make our flank movement on the wicked in quite the same way +and according to our more modern and more scientific manner of thought, +we would want to do something more practical with the wicked, but we +would want to do something with them and we would want to do it now. + +As we look at it, it ought not to be necessary to jump on the necks of +the wicked to make them good, that is, to make them understand what they +would wish they had done in twenty years. We live in a more reasoning +and precise age and what more particularly concerns us in the wicked is +not their necks, but their heads and their hearts. It seems to us that +they are not using them very much and that the moment they do and we can +get them to, they will be good. Possibly it was a mere matter of +language, a concession to the then state of the language--David's +wanting their necks to be jumped on so that he could get their attention +at first and make them stop and think and understand. More subtle ways +of expressing things to the wicked have been thought of to-day than of +jumping on their necks, but the principle David had in mind has not +changed, the principle of being loyal to the human race, the principle +of standing up for people and insisting that they were really meant to +be better than they were or than they thought they could be--a kind of +holy patriotism David had for this world. The main fact about David +seems to be that he believed he belonged to a great human race. +Incidentally he believed he belonged to a human race that was really +quite bright, bright enough at least to make people sorry for doing +wrong in it--a human race that was getting so shrewd and so just and so +honest that it took stupider and stupider people every year to be +wicked, and when he found, judging from recent events in Judea, that +this for the time being was not so, he had a hateful feeling about it, +which it seems to some of us, vastly improved him and would improve many +of us. We do not claim that the imprecatory Psalms were David's best, +but they must have helped him immensely in writing the other ones. + + * * * * * + +We may be wrong. But it has come to be an important religious duty to +some of us, or rather religious joy, to hate the prosperity of the +wicked. We hate the prosperity of the wicked, not because it is their +prosperity and not ours, but because their prosperity constitutes a +sneer or slander on the world. We have no idea of wanting to go about +faithfully jumping upon the necks of the wicked. What we want is to feel +that we are in a world where the good people are happy and are making +goodness reasonable, successful, profitable and practical in it. We want +an earth with crowds on it who see things as they are, and who guess so +well on what they want (_i.e._, who are good) that other people who do +not know what they want and are not good, will be lonesome. + +We have made up our minds to live in a world not where the wicked will +feel that their necks are going to be jumped on (which is really a +rather interesting and prominent feeling on the whole), but a world +where the wicked will be made to feel that nobody notices their necks, +that they are not worth being jumped on, a world where nobody will have +time to go out back and jump on them, a world where the wicked will not +be able to think of anything important to do, and where the wicked +things that are left to do will be so small and so stupid that nobody +will notice. They will be ignored like boys with catcalls in the street. +When we can make people who do wrong feel unimportant enough, there is +going to be some chance for the good. + +If we could find some sweet, proper, gentle, Christian-looking way of +conveying to these people for a few swift, keen minutes how little +difference it makes when they and people like them do wrong, they would +steal over in a body and do right. + +This is our program. We are making preliminary arrangements for a world +in which after this, very soon now, righteousness is going to attend +strictly to its own business and unrighteousness is going to be crowded +out. No one will feel that he has time in two or three hundred years +from now to go out of his way into some obscure corner of the world and +jump on the necks of the wicked. + +But this is a matter of form. The main fundamental manful instinct David +had--the idea that there should not be any more people dying on crosses +than could be helped--that collective society should take hold of Evil +and set it down hard in its chair and make it cry seems to many of us +absolutely sound. Of course, we feel that it is not for us, those who +love righteousness, to jump on the necks of the wicked. We prefer to +have it attended to in a more dignified, impersonal way by Society as a +whole. So we believe that Society should proceed to making goodness and +honesty pay. If Society will not do it _we_ will do it. The world may be +against us at first but we will at least clear off a small place on +it--in our own business for instance--where our goodness can command the +most shrewdness and the most technique--and we will do what we can +slowly--one industry at a time, to remove the slander on goodness that +goodness is not inefficient, and the slander on the world that goodness +cannot be self-supporting, self-respecting (and without disgrace), even +comfortable in it. + +The old hymn with which many of us are familiar is well and true enough. +But it does not seem that standing up for Jesus is the most important +point in the world just now. A great many people are doing it. What we +need more is people who will stand up for the world. When people who are +standing up for the world stand and sing "Stand up for Jesus" it will +begin to count. Let four hundred Nons sing it; and we will all go to +church. + +If nine of the people out of ten who are singing "Stand up for Jesus" +would stand up for the world, that is, if they would stop trading with +their grocer when they find he slides in regularly one bad orange out of +twelve and promptly look up a grocer who does not do such things, and +trade with him, it would not be necessary for people to do as they so +often do nowadays, fall back on a little wistful half discouraged last +resort like "standing up for Jesus." + +Standing up for the world means standing by men who believe in it, +standing by men who make everything they do in business a declaration of +their faith in God and their faith in the credit of human nature, men +who put up money daily in their advertising, their buying and selling, +on the loyalty, common sense, brains, courage, goodness, and righteous +indignation of the people. + +The idea that goodness is sweet and helpless and that Jesus was meek and +lowly and has to be stood up for is now and always has been a slander. +It does not seem to some of us that He would want to be stood up for and +we do not like the way some people call Him meek and lowly. It would be +more true to say that He merely looks meek and lowly; that is, if most +men had done or not done or had said or not said things in the way he +did, they would have been considered meek and lowly for it. He had a way +of using a soft answer to turn away wrath. But there was not anything +really meek and lowly about his giving the soft answer. No meek and +lowly man would ever have thought of such a thing as turning away wrath +with a soft answer. He would have been afraid of looking weak. He would +not have had the energy or the honesty or the spiritual address to know +or to think of a soft answer that would do it. + +The spirit of fighting evil with good--a kind of glorious self-will for +goodness, for doing a thing the higher and nobler way and making it +work, the spirit of successful implacably efficient righteousness is the +last and most modern interpretation of the New Testament, the crowd's +latest cry to its God. Crowds will always crucify and crosses will never +go by. But we are going to have a higher ideal for crosses. We are not +going (out of sheer shame for the world), to think seriously any longer +of dying on a cross, or letting any one else die on one for a little +rudimentary platitude, a quiet, sensible, everyday business motto for +any competent business man like "Do unto others as you would have them +do unto you." + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +IS IT WRONG FOR GOOD PEOPLE TO BE SUCCESSFUL? + + +We are having and are about to have notably and truly successful men who +have the humility and faithfulness, the spiritual distinction of true +and great success. + +I want to interpret, if I can, these men. I would like to put with the +great martyrs, with the immortal heroes of failure, these modern silent, +unspoken, unsung mighty men, the heroes of success. I look forward to +seeing them placed among the trophies of religion, in the heart of +mankind at last. + +I cannot stand by and watch these men being looked upon by good people +as men the New Testament made no room for, secretly disapproved of by +religious men and women, as being successes, as being little, noisy, +disturbing, contradictions of the New Testament as talking back to the +Cross. + +These things I have been trying to say about the Cross as a means of +expressing goodness to crowds have brought me as time goes on into close +quarters with many men to whom I pay grateful tribute, men of high +spirit, who strenuously disagree with me. + +I am not content unless I can find common ground with men like these. + +They are wont to tell me when we argue about it that whatever I may be +able to say for success as a means of touching the imaginations of +crowds with goodness, great or attractive or enthralling characters are +not produced by success. Success does not produce great characters. It +is now and always has been failure that develops the characters of the +men who a truly great. + +Perhaps failure is not the only way. + + * * * * * + +When I was talking with ---- a little while ago about Non-Gregarious's +goodness and how it succeeded, he was afraid that if his goodness +succeeded there must have been something the matter with it. + +I could see that he was wondering what it was. + +Non's success troubled him. He did not think it was exactly religious. +"Real religion" he said, "was self-sacrifice. There always had to be +something of the Cross about real religion." + +I said that Non's religion was touched at every point with the Cross. + +It seemed to me that it was the spirit of eagerness in it that was the +great thing about the Cross. If Non would all but have died to make the +Golden Rule work in this world, if he daily faced ruin and risked the +loss of everything he had in this life to prove that the Golden Rule was +a success, that is if he really had a Cross and if he really faced +it--dying on it, or not dying on it, could not have made him one whit +more religious or less religious than he was. What Non was willing to +die for, was his belief in the world, and scores of good Christian +people tried in those early days of his business struggle to keep him +from believing in the world. There was hardly a day at first but some +good Christian would step into Non's office and tell him the world would +make him suffer for it if he kept on recklessly believing in it and +doing all those unexpected, unconventional, honest things that somehow, +apparently, he could not help doing. + +They all told him he could not succeed. They said he was a failure. He +would suffer for it. + +I would like to express if I can, what seems to be Non's point of view +toward success and failure. + +If Non were trying to express his idea of the suffering of Christ, I +imagine he would say that in the hardest time of all when his body was +hanging on the Cross, the thing that was really troubling Christ was not +that he was being killed. The thing that was troubling him was that the +world really seemed, at least for the time being, the sort of world that +could do such things. He did not take his own cross too personally or +too literally as the world's permanent or fixed attitude toward goodness +or every degree of goodness. There was a sense in which he did not +believe except temporarily in his own cross. He did not think that the +world meant it or that it would ever own up that it meant it. + +Probably if we had crosses to-day the hard part of dying on one would +be, not dying on it, but thinking while one was dying on it that one was +in the sort of world that could do such things. + +It is Non's religion not to believe every morning as he goes down to his +office that he is in a mean world, a world that would want to crucify +him for doing his work as well as he could. + +Perhaps this was the spirit of the first Cross, too. We have every +reason to believe that if Christ could have come back in the flesh three +days after the crucifixion and lived thirty-three years longer in it, he +would have occupied himself exclusively in standing up for the world +that had crucified him, in saying that it was a small party in a small +province that did it, that it was temporary and that they did it because +they were in a hurry. + +It was not Christ, but the comparatively faint-believing, worldly minded +saints that have enjoyed dying on crosses since, who have been proud of +being martyrs. + +Among those who have tried the martyr way of doing things Jesus is +almost the only one who has not in his heart abused the world. Most +martyrs have made a kind of religion out of not expecting anything of it +and of trying to get out of it. "And ye, all ye people, are ye suitable +or possible people for me to be religious with?" the typical martyr +exclaims to all the cities, to all the inventors, to the scientists and +to the earth-redeemers, to his neighbours and his fellow men. It was +not until science in the person of Galileo came to the rescue of +Christianity and began slowly to bring it back to where Christ started +it--as a noble, happy enterprise of standing up for this world and of +asserting that these men who were in it are good enough to be religious +here and to be the sons of God now--that Christianity began to function. +Religion has been making apparently a side trip for nearly twelve +hundred years, a side trip into space or into the air or into the grave +for holiness for the eternal, and for the infinite. + +Doubtless very often people on crosses really have been holier than the +people who knew how to be good without being crucified. Sometimes it has +been the other way. It would have been just as holy in Non to make the +gospel work in New York as to make a blaze, a show or advertisement of +how wicked the world was, and of how inefficient the gospel was--by +going into insolvency. + +He has had his cross, but instead of dying on it, he has taken it up and +carried it. Scores of risks and difficulties that he has grappled with +would have become crosses at once if equally good, but less resourceful +men, had had them. Letting one's self be threatened with the cross a +thousand times is quite as brave as dying on one once. The spirit, or at +least the shadow, of a cross must always fall daily on any life that is +stretching the world, that is freeing the lives of other men against +their wills. The whole issue of whether there will be a cross or the +threat of a cross turns on a man's insight into human nature and his +quiet and practical imagination concentrated upon his work. + +Not dying on a cross is a matter of technique. One sees how not to, and +one does not. It might be said that the world has two kinds of +redeemers, its cross-redeemers and its success-redeemers. The very best +are on crosses, many of them. Perhaps in the development of the truth +the cross-redeemers come first; they are the pioneers. Then come the +success-redeemers, then everybody! + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +IS IT SECOND RATE FOR GOOD PEOPLE TO BE SUCCESSFUL? + + +Of course the most stupendous success that has ever been made--the +world's most successful undertaking from a technical point of view as an +adaptation of means to ends was the attempt that was made by a man in +Galilee years and years ago to get not only the attention of a whole +world, but to get the attention of a whole world for two thousand years. + +This purpose of arresting the attention of a world and of holding it for +two thousand years was accomplished by the use of success and of failure +alternately. + +Christ tried success or failure according to which method (time and +place considered) would seem to work best. + +His first success was with the doctors. + +His next success was based on His instinct for psychology, His power of +divining people's minds, which made possible to Him those extraordinary +feats in the way of telling short stories that would arrest and hold the +attention of crowds so that they would think and live with them for +weeks to come. + +His next success was a success based on the power of His personality, +and His knowledge of the human spirit and his victory over His own +spirit--his success in curing people's diseases and His extraordinary +roll of miracles. + +He finally tried failure at the end, or what looked like failure, +because the Cross completed what he had had to say. + +It made His success seem greater. + +The world had put to death the man who had had such great successes. + +People thought of His successes when they thought of Him on the Cross, +and they have kept thinking of them for thousands of years. + +But the Cross itself, or the use of failure was a sowing of the seed, a +taking the truth out of the light and the sunshine and putting it in the +dark ground. + +The Cross was promptly contradicted with the Resurrection. All this, it +seems to some of us, is the most stupendous and successful undertaking +from a purely technical point of view that the world has seen. In the +last analysis it was not His ideas or His character merely, but it was +His technique that made Christ the Son of God and the Master of the +Nations of the Earth. + + * * * * * + +I think that while Christ would not have understood Frederick Taylor's +technique, his tables of figures or foot-tons or logarithms he would +have understood Frederick Taylor. + +Nearly all the time that could be said to have been spent in his life in +dealing with other men he spent in doing for them on a nobler scale the +thing that Frederick Taylor did. He went up to men--to hundreds of men a +day, that he saw humdrumming along, despising themselves and despising +their work and expecting nothing of themselves and nothing of any one +else and asked them to put their lives in his hands and let him show +what could be done with them. + +This is Frederick Taylor's profession. + +The Sermon on the Mount began with telling people that they would be +successful if they knew how--if they had a vision. It proceeded to give +them the vision. It began with giving them a vision for the things that +they had, told them how even the very things that they had always +thought before were what was the matter with the world they could make a +great use of. "Blessed are the peacemakers. Blessed are those that +hunger; blessed are the meek." + +And He then went on to tell them how much finer, and nobler and more +free from the cares and weights of this earth they could be if they +wanted to be, than they had dared to believe. He told the people who +were around Him bigger things about human nature, how successful it was +or could be than any one had ever claimed for people in this world +before. They put Him up on a Cross at last and crucified Him because +they thought He was too hopeful about them, and about human nature or +because, as they would have put it, He was blasphemous and said every +man was a Son of God. + +As human nature then was and in the then spirit of the world, no better +means than a Cross could have been employed to get the attention of all +men, to make a two thousand year advertisement for all nations of what a +success human nature was, of what men really could be like. + +But I think that if Christ were to come to us again and if he were to +try to get the attention of the whole world once more to precisely the +same ideas and principles that he stood for before, the enterprise would +be conducted in a very different manner. + +There is a picture of Albert Durer's which hangs near my desk, and once +more as I write these lines my eyes have fallen on it. It is the +familiar one with the lion and the lamb in it, lying down together, and +with the big room with the implements of knowledge scattered about in it +and at the other end in the window at the table with a book, an old, +bent-over scientist with a halo over his head. + +If Christ were to appear suddenly in this modern world to-morrow, the +first thing He would see and would go toward, would be the halo over the +scientist's head. + +There is nothing especially picturesque or religious looking, nothing, +at least, that could be put in a stained-glass window in Frederick +Taylor's tables and charts and diagrams of the number of foot-tons a +pig-iron handler can lift with his arms in a day. + +But if Christ returned to the world to-morrow and if what He wanted to +do to-morrow was to get the universal, profound, convinced attention of +all men to the Golden Rule, I believe He would begin the way Frederick +Taylor did, by--being concrete. If He wanted to get men in general, men +in business, to love one another He would begin by trying to work out +some technical, practical way in which certain particular men in a +certain particular place could afford to love one another. + +He would find a practical way for instance for the employers and +pig-iron handlers in the Midvale Steel Works to come to some sort of +common understanding and to work cheerfully and with a free spirit +together. I think he would proceed very much in the way that Frederick +Taylor did. + +He would not say much about the Golden Rule. He would give each man a +vision for his work, and of the way it lapped over into other men's work +and leave the Golden Rule a chance to take care of itself. This is all +the Golden Rule, as a truth or as a remark needs just now. + +For two thousand years men have devoted themselves Sunday day after +Sunday to saying over and over again that men should love one another. +The idea is a perfectly familiar one. When Christ said it two thousand +years ago, it was so original and so sensational that just of itself and +as a mere remark it had a carrying power over the whole earth. + +Everybody believes it now--that it is a true remark--but like a score of +other remarks that have been made and some of the noblest Christ made, +is it not possible that it has long since in its mere capacity of being +a remark, gone by? There is no one who has not heard about our loving +one another. The remark we want now is how we can do it. This is the +remark that Mr. Frederick Taylor has made. It is not very eloquent. It +is a mere statement of fact. It has taken him nearly thirty-three years +to make it. + +The gist of it is that for thirty-three years, the employers and the +pig-iron handlers in the Midvale Steel Works, Pennsylvania, have been +devoted to one another and to one another's interests and acting all day +every day as if of course their interests were the same, and it has been +found that employees when their employers coöperated with them could +lift forty-seven tons instead of twelve and a half a day, and were +getting 60 per cent. more wages. + +Everybody listens. Everybody sees at a glance that when it comes to +making remarks about doing as one would be done by, this is the one +remark that we have all been waiting to hear some one make for two +thousand years. + + * * * * * + +The Cross or the last-resort type of religion was as far as St. +Augustine or St. Francis in their world could get. It was all that the +Middle Ages were ready for or that could be claimed for people who had +to live in ages without a printing press, in which no one in the crowd +could expect to know anything and in which there were no ways of letting +crowds know things. + +To-day there is no reason why the Cross as a contrivance for attracting +the attention of all people to goodness should be exclusively relied +upon. + +Possibly the Cross was intended, at the time, as the best possible way +of starting a religion, when there was none, or possibly for keeping it +up when there was very little of it. + +But now that Christianity has been occupied two thousand years in +putting in the groundwork, in laying down the principles of success, and +in organizing them into the world, has been slowly making it possible +with crowds that could not be long deceived for success to be decent. +The leaven has worked into human nature and Christianity has produced +The Successful Temperament. + +Success has become a spiritual institution. In other words, the hour of +the Scientist, of the man with a technique, of the man who sees how, the +man of The Successful Temperament is at hand. + +Everything we plan for the world, including goodness, from this +day--must reckon with him--with the Man Who Sees How. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + +THE SUCCESSFUL TEMPERAMENT + + +I also, Gentle Reader, have despised and do despise "success." + +I also have stood, like you, perhaps, and I am standing now in that +ancient, outer court, where I can keep seeing every day The Little Great +Men with all their funny trappings on,--their hoods, and their ribbons, +and their train-bearers, drive up before us all and go in to The Great +Door. I have gone by in the night and have heard the buzz of their +voices there. I have looked, like you, up at the great lighted windows +of Prosperity from the street. + +And in the broad daylight I have seen them too. I have stood on the curb +in the public way with all the others and watched silently the parade of +The Little Great go by. + +I have waited like you, Gentle Reader, and smiled or I have turned on my +heel sadly, or wearily or bitterly or gayly and walked away down my own +side street of the world and with the huzzahs of the crowd echoing +faintly in my ears have gone my way. + +But I keep coming back to the curb again. + +I keep coming back because, every now and then among all the gilt +carriages and the bowing faces in them, or among all the big yellow vans +or cages with the great beasts of success in them, the literary foxes, +the journalist-juggernauts, the Jack Johnsons of finance, the contented, +gurgling, wallowing millionaires--I cannot help standing once more and +looking among them, for one, or for possibly two, or three or four who +may be truly successful men. Some of them are merely successful-looking. +I often find as I see them more closely, that they are undeceived, or +humble, or are at least not being any more successful-looking than +they can help, and are trying to do better. + +They are the men who have defied success to succeed and who will defy it +again and again. + +They are the great men. + +The great man is the man who can get himself made and who will get +himself made out of anything he finds at hand. + +If success cannot do it, he makes failure do it. If he cannot make +success express the greatness or the vision that is in him, he makes +failure express it. + +But this book is not about great men and goodness. It is about touching +the imagination of crowds with goodness, about making goodness +democratic and making goodness available for common people. + + * * * * * + +A stupendous success in goodness will advertise it as well as a +stupendous failure. + +Goodness has had its cross-redeemers to attract the attention of half a +world. + +Possibly it is having now its success-redeemers to attract the attention +of the other half. + +The people the success-redeemers reach would turn out to be, possibly, +very much more than half. + +The Cross, as a means of getting the attention of crowds, or of the more +common people in our modern, practical-minded Western world, was +apparently adapted to its purpose as long as it was used for church +purposes or as long as it was kept dramatic or sensational or remote, or +as long as it was a cross for some one else, but as a means of +attracting the attention of crowds of ordinary men and women to goodness +in common everyday things, it is very doubtful if failure--in the power +of steady daily pulling on men's minds, has done as much for goodness as +success. + +It is doubtful if, except as an ideal or conventional symbol the cross +has ever been or ever could be what might be called a spiritually +middle-class institution. It has been reserved for men of genius, +pioneers and world-designers to have those colossal and glorious crosses +that have been worshipped in all ages, and must be worshipped in all +ages as the great memorials of the human race. + +But the more common and numerous types of men, the men who do not design +worlds, but who execute them, build them, who carry the new designs of +goodness out, who work through the details and conceive the technique of +goodness are men in whom the spiritual and religious power takes the +natural form of success. + +It seems to be the nature of the modern and the western type of man to +challenge fatalism, to defy a cross. He would almost boast that nobody +could make him die on it. This spirit in men too is a religious spirit. +It is the next hail of goodness. Goodness posts up its next huge notice +on the world: + + [SUCCESS] + +It is going to make the more rudimentary everyday people notice it, and +it is going to make them notice it in everyday things. It does not admit +that goodness is merely for the spiritual aristocrats for those greater +souls that can search out and appreciate the spiritual values in +failure. + +It believes that goodness is for crowds. It has discovered that crosses, +to common people in common things, seem oriental and mystical. The +common people of the western world instead of being born with dreamy +imaginations are born with pointed and applied ones. It is not +impossible that the comparative failure of the Christian religion in the +western world and in the later generations is that it has been trying to +be oriental and aristocratic in appealing to what is really a new type +of man in the world--the scientific and practical type as we see it in +the western nations all about us to-day. + +We can die on crosses in our Western world as well as any one and we can +do it in crowds too as they do in India, but we propose if crosses are +expected of us to know why in crowds. Knowing why makes us think of +things and makes us do things. It is the keynote of our temperament. + +And it is not fair to say of us when we make this distinction that we do +not believe in the cross. But there are times when some of us wish that +we could get other people to stop believing in it. We would all but die +on the cross to get other people to stop dying on one for platitudes, to +get them to work their way down to the facts and focus their minds on +the practical details of not dying on a cross, of forming a vision of +action which will work. It goes without saying that as long as crowds +are in the world crosses will not go by, but it is wicked not to make +them go by as fast as possible, one by one. They were meant to be moved +up higher. We are eager not to die on the same cross for the same thing +year after year and century after century. It seems to us that the +eagerness that always goes with the cross always was and always will be +the essential, powerful and beautiful thing in it. + +And it is this new eagerness in the modern spirit, a kind of hurrying up +of the souls of the world that is inspiring us to employ our western +genius in inventing and defending and applying the means of goodness and +in finding ways of making goodness work. We will not admit that men were +intended to die on crosses from a sheer, beautiful, heavenly +shiftlessness, vague-mindedness, mere unwillingness to take pains to +express themselves or unwillingness to think things out and to make +things plain to crowds. It does not seem to us that it is wicked to +employ success as well as failure, to state our religion to people. It +seems to us that it goes naturally with the scientific and technical +temperament of the people that we should do this. It is not superior and +it is not inferior. It is temperamental and it is based upon the study +of the psychology of attention, on a knowledge of what impresses a +certain kind of man and of what really is conclusive with crowds and +with average men and women. It is the distinctive point of view of the +pragmatic temperament, of the inductive mind. The modern mind is +interested in facts and cannot make a religion out of not knowing them. +There was a time once when people used to take their bodily diseases as +acts of God. We have made up our minds not to have these same bodily +diseases now. We have discovered by hard work and constant study that +they are not necessary. The same is true of our moral diseases and of +our great social maladies. + +It is going to be the same with crosses. It is a sin and a slander and +affront to human nature and to God to die on a cross if it can be helped +by hard work and close thinking, or by touching the imaginations of +others. + +Most of us acting in most things are not good enough to die on crosses. +We are not worthy, it would not be humble in us to. Crosses are only +reserved for the newest and most rare truths, and for the newest and +most rare men. They are still, and they still can be made to be, a means +of grace and of perfection to people who have gifts of learning things +by suffering, but as a means of making other people and people in crowds +see things, the right to use a cross is not for those of us who are +merely lumbering spiritually along, trying to catch up to a plain, +simple-hearted old platitude, eighteen hundred years late like the +Golden Rule. The right to a cross is reserved for those who are up on +the higher reaches, those great bleak stretches or moors of truth where +men go forth and walk alone with God hundreds of years ahead. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + +THE MEN AHEAD PULL + + +Writing a hopeful book about the human race with the New York _Sun_, +Wall Street, Downing Street and Bernard Shaw looking on is uphill work. + +Sometimes I wish there were another human race I could refer to when I +am writing about this one, one every one knows. The one on Mars, for +instance, if one could calmly point to it in the middle of an argument, +shut people off with a wave of one's hand and say, "Mars this" and "Mars +that" would be convenient. + +The trouble with the human race is that when one is talking to it about +itself, it thinks it is It. + +It is not It yet. + +The earth and everything on it is a huge Acorn, tumbling softly through +the sky. + +Our boasted Christianity (crosses, and resurrections and cathedrals and +all) is a Child crying in the night. + + * * * * * + +It is not necessary for me to prove to the satisfaction of the New York +_Sun_ and Bernard Shaw that the Golden Rule has not reached the superior +moral stage of being taken as a platitude by all of our people who are +engaged in business. It is enough to submit that the most creative and +forceful business men--the men who set the pace, the foremen of the +world, are taking it so, and that others are trying to be as much like +them as they can. Wickedness in this world is not going to stop with a +jerk. It is merely being better distributed. Possibly this is all there +is to the problem, getting sin better distributed. The Devil has never +had a very great outfit or any great weight, but he has always known +where to throw it, and he has always done an immense business on a small +capital and the only way he has managed to get on at all, is by +organizing, and by getting the attention of a few people at the top. Now +that the moral sense of the world has become quickened, and that rapid +transit and newspapers and science and the fact-spirit have gained their +hold, the sins of the world are being rapidly distributed, not so much +among the men who determine things as among those who cannot. + +Everything is following the fact-spirit. The modern world and everything +in it, is falling into the hands of the men who cannot be cheated about +facts, who get the facts first and who get them right. + +The world cannot help falling, from now on, slowly--a little ponderously +perhaps at first--into the hands of good men. To say that the world is +falling into the hands of men who cannot be cheated and to say that it +is falling into the hands of good men is to say the same thing. + +The men who get the things that they want, get them by seeing the things +as they are. Goodness and efficiency both boil down to the same quality +in the modern man, his faculty for not being a romantic person and for +not being cheated. + +A good man may be said to be a man who has formed a habit, an intimate +personal habit of not being cheated. Everything he does is full of this +habit. The sinful man, as he is usually called, is a man who is off in +his facts, a man who does not know what he really wants even for +himself. In a matter-of-fact civilization like ours, he cannot hope to +keep up. If a man can be cheated, even by himself--of course other +people can cheat him and everybody can take advantage of him. He +naturally grows more incompetent every day he lives. The men who are +slow or inefficient in finding out what they really want and slow in +dealing with themselves are necessarily inefficient and behind hand in +dealing with other people. They cannot be men who determine what other +people shall do. + +It is true that for the moment, it still seems--now that science has +only just come to the rescue of religion, that evil men in a large +degree are the men who still are standing in the gate and determining +opportunities and letting in and letting out Civilization as they +please. But their time is limited. + +The fact-spirit is in the people. We enjoy facts. Facts are the modern +man's hunting, his adventure and sport. The men who are ahead are +getting into a kind of two-and-two-are-four habit that is like music, +like rhythm. It becomes almost a passion, almost a self-indulgence in +their lives. Being honest with things, having a distaste for being +cheated by things, having a distaste for being cheated by one's self and +for cheating other people, runs in the blood in modern men. The nations +can be seen going round and round the earth and looking one another long +and earnestly in the eyes. The poet is turning his imagination upon the +world about him and upon the fact that really works in it. The +scientific man has taken hold of religion and righteousness is being +proved, melted down in the laboratory, welded together before us all and +riveted on to the every day, on to what really happens, and on to what +really works. Goodness in its baser form already pays. Only the biggest +men may have found it out, but everybody is watching them. The most +important spiritual service that any man can render the present age is +to make goodness pay at the top (in the most noticeable place) in some +business where nobody has made it pay before. Anybody can see that it +almost pays already, that it pays now here, now there. At all events, +anybody can see that it is very noticeable that the part of the world +that is most spiritual is not merely the part that is whining or hanging +on crosses. It is also the part that is successful. One knows scores of +saints with ruddy cheeks. It is getting to be a matter of principle +almost in a modern saint--to have ruddy cheeks. + +I submit this fact respectfully to Bernard Shaw, Wall Street, Downing +Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, and even to the New York _Sun_, that +vast machine for laughing at a world down in its snug quarters in Park +Row--that the saint with ruddy cheeks is a totally new and disconcerting +fact in our modern life. He is the next fact the honest pessimist will +have to face. + +I submit that this saint with ruddy cheeks is here, that he is lovable, +imperturbable, imperious, irrepressible, as interesting as sin, as +catching as the Devil and that he has come to stay. + +He stays because he is successful and can afford to stay. + +He is successful because he is good. + +Only religion works. + +I am aware that the New York _Sun_ might quarrel with just exactly this +way of putting it. + +I might put it another way or possibly try to say it again after saying +something else first. _Viz._: The man who is successful in business is +the man who can get people to do as much as they can do and a great deal +more than they think they can do. + +Only a very lively goodness, almost a religion in a man, can do this. He +has to have something in him very like the power of inventing people or +of making people over. + +To be specific: In some big department stores, as one goes down the +aisle, one will see over and over again the clerks making fun of +customers. + +One by one the customers find it out and the more permanent ones, those +who would keep coming and who have the best trade, go to other stores. + +How could such a thing be stopped in a department store by a practical +employer? Can he stop it successfully by turning on his politeness? + +Of course he can make his clerks polite-looking by turning on his +politeness. But politeness in a department store does not consist in +being polite-looking. Being polite-looking does not work, does not grip +the customer or strike in and do things and make the customer do things. + +A machine like a department store, made up of twenty-five hundred human +beings, which is carving out its will, its nature, stamping its pattern +on a city, on a million men, or on a nation, cannot be made to work +without religion. If the clerks are making fun of people, only religion +can stop it. + +Perhaps you have been made fun of yourself, Gentle Reader? You have +observed, perhaps, that in making fun of people (making fun of you, for +instance), the assumption almost always is, that you are trying to be +like the Standard Person, and that this (they look at you pleasantly as +you go by) is as near as you can get to it! If an employer wishes to +make his clerk an especially valuable clerk, if he wishes to make his +clerk an expert in human nature or a good salesman, one who sees a +customer when he comes along as he really is, and as he is trying to be, +he will only be able to do it by touching something deep down in the +clerk's nature, something very like his religion--his power of putting +himself in the place of others. He can only do it by making a clerk feel +that this power in him of doing as he would be done by, and seeing how +to do it, _i.e._, the religion in him, is what he is hired for. + +It is visionary to try to run a great department store, a great machine +of twenty-five hundred souls, a machine of human emotions, of five +thousand eyes and ears, a huge loom of enthusiasm, of love, hate, +covetousness, sorrow, disappointment, and joy without having it full of +clerks who are experts in human nature, putting themselves in the place +of crowds of other people, clerks who are essentially religious. + +So we watch the men who are ahead driving one another into goodness. The +man who is not able to create, distribute or turn on, in his business +establishment, goodness, social insight, and customer-insight in it, can +only hope to-day to keep ahead in business by having competitors as +inefficient as he is. + +The man who is ahead has discovered himself. Everything the man ahead +is doing eight hours a day, is seen at last narrowing him down, +cornering him into goodness. + +Of course as long as people looked upon goodness as a Sunday affair, a +few hours a week put in on it, we were naturally discouraged about it. + +It is still a little too fresh looking and it may be still a little too +clever for everybody, but slowly, irrevocably, we see it coming. We can +look up almost any day and watch some goodness--now--at least one +specimen or so, in every branch of business. + +We watch daily the men who are ahead, pulling on the goodness of the +world and the Crowds pushing on it. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + +THE CROWDS PUSH + + +The men who are ahead make goodness start, but it is the crowds that +make it irresistible. + +The final, slow, long, imperious lift on goodness is the one the crowd +gives. Of course, for the most part, modern business is largely done +with crowds. Crowds are doing it and crowds are nearly always watching +it. + +The factory is slower than the department store in being good because +the men in it deal with crowds of things and crowds of wheels and not +with crowds of people. + +All responsible people are forced to be good, with crowds around them, +expecting it of them. + +Crowds at the very least are a kind of vast, insinuating, penetrating, +omnipresent, permeating police force of righteousness. + +In a department store, the crowds, twelve thousand a day, are like some +huge coil of hose or vacuum cleaner, lying about the place, sucking up, +drawing out, and demanding goodness from the clerks. Clerks develop +human insight and powers faster in department stores than machinists do +in factories because they are exposed to more people and to larger +crowds. The stream clears itself. + +The last forms of business to yield to the new spirit are to be the +lonely ones, the ones where light, air, human emotions, and crowds are +shut out. + +The lonely forms of business will at last be vitalized and socialized by +men of organizing genius, who will invent the equivalent of crowds going +by, who will contrive ways of putting a few responsible persons in +sight or in a position where they will feel crowds going by their souls, +looking into them as if they were shop windows. Crowds can keep track of +a few. The crowds will see that these few are the kind of men who will +keep track of all. + +Crowds in the end will not accept less than the best. With crowds of +people and crowds of places and crowds of times we are good. In all +things crowds can see or be made to see we are safe. Progress lies in +making crowds see through people, making crowds go past them. While they +are going past them, they lure their goodness on. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + +THE MAN WHO SAYS HOW, SAYS HOW + + +The people who are worried and discouraged about goodness in this world, +one finds when one studies them a little, are almost always worried in a +kind of general way. They do not worry about anything in particular. +Their religion seems to be a kind of good-hearted, pained vagueness. + +The religion of the people who never worry at all, the thoughtless +optimists, is quite the same too, except that they have a kind of happy, +rosy-lighted vagueness instead. + +For about two thousand years now, goodness has been in the hands of +vague people. Some of them have used their vagueness to cry with softly, +and some of them have used it to praise God with and to have many fine, +brave, general feelings about God. + +I have tried faithfully, speaking for one, to be religious with both of +these sets of people. + +They make one feel rather lonesome. + +If one goes about and takes a grim happiness, a kind of iron joy in +seeing how successful a locomotive is, or if one watches a great, +worshipful ocean liner with delight, or if, down in New York, one looks +up and sees a new skyscraper going slowly up, unfolding into the sky +before one, lifting up its gigantic, restless, resistless face to God; +there comes to seem to be something about churches and about good people +and about the way they have of acting and thinking about goodness and +doing things with goodness, that makes one unhappy. + +Perhaps one has just come from it and one's soul is filled with the +stern, glad singing of a great foundry, of the religious, victorious +praising spirit of man, dipping up steel in mighty spoonfuls--the stuff +the inside of the earth is made of, and flinging it together into a +great network or crust for the planet--into mighty floors or sidewalks +all round the earth for cities to tread on and there comes to seem +something so successful, so manlike, so godlike about it, about the way +these men who do these things do them and do what they set out to do, +that when I find myself suddenly, all in a few minutes on a Sunday +morning, thrown out of this atmosphere into a Christian church, find +myself sitting all still and waiting, with all these good people about +me, and when I find them offering me their religion so gravely, so +hopefully, it all comes to me with a great rush sometimes--comes to me +as out of great deeps of resentment, that religion could possibly be +made in a church to seem something so faint, so beautifully weary, so +dreamy, and as if it were humming softly, absently to itself. + +I wonder in the presence of a Christianity like this whether I am a +Christian or not--the quartet choirs, confections, the little, dainty, +faintly sweet sermons--it is as if--no I will not say it.... + +I have this moment crossed the words out before my eyes. It is as if, +after all, religion, instead of being as I supposed down at the foundry, +the stern and splendid music of man conquering all things for God, were, +after all, some huge, sublime and holy vagueness, as if the service and +the things I saw about me were not hard true realities--as if going to +Church were like sitting in a cloud--some soft musical cloud or floating +island of goodness and drifting and drifting.... + + * * * * * + +Not all churches are alike, but I am speaking of something that must +have happened to many men. I but record this blank space on this page, +as a spiritual fact, as a part of the religious experience of a man +trying to be good. + +When this little experience of which the words have to be crossed out +after going to Church--finally settles down, there is still a grim truth +left in it. + +The vagueness of the man who is good, who locks himself up in a Church +and says, "Oh God! Oh God! Oh God!" and the vigour and incisiveness of +the man who says nothing about it and who goes out of doors and acts +like a god all the week--these remain with me as a daily and abiding +sense. + +And when I find myself myself, I, who have gloried in cathedrals since I +was a little child, looking ahead for a God upon the earth, and when I +see the foundries, the airships, the ocean liners beckoning the soul of +man upon the skies, and the victory of the soul over the dust and over +the water and over the air and when I see the Cathedrals beside them, +those vast, faint, grave, happy, floating islands of the Saved, drifting +backward down the years, it does not seem as if I could bear the +foundries saying one thing about my God and the cathedrals saying +another. + +I have tried to see a way out. Why should it be so? + +I have seen that the foundries, the ocean liners, and the airships are +in the hands of men who say How. + +Perhaps we will take goodness and cathedrals, very soon now, and put +them for a while in the hands of the men who say how. If St. Francis, +for instance, to-day, were to be suddenly more like Bessemer, or if Dr. +Henry Van Dyke were more like Edison or if the Reverend R.J. Campbell +were more like Sir Joseph Lister or if the Bishop of London were to go +at London the way Marconi goes at the sky, what would begin to happen to +goodness? One likes to imagine what would happen if that same spirit, +the spirit of "how" were brought to bear upon a great engineering +enterprise like goodness in this world. + +Perhaps the spirit of "how" is the spirit of God. + +Perhaps religion in the twentieth century is Technique. + +Technique in the twentieth century is the Holy Ghost. + +Technique is the very last thing that has been thought of in religion. +Religion is being converted before our eyes. It is becoming touched with +the temper of science, with the thoroughness, the doggedness, the +inconsolableness of science until it is seeing how and until it is +saying how. + +When the inventors, in our machine age, get to work on goodness in the +way that they are getting to work on other things, things will begin to +happen to goodness that the vague, sweet saints of two thousand years +have never dreamed of yet. + +In London and New York, in this first quarter of the twentieth century +Christianity will not be put off as a spirit. The right of Christianity +to be a spirit has lapsed. + +Christianity is a Method. + +What Christ meant when He said He was the Truth and the Life, has been +understood, on the whole, very well. What He meant by saying He was the +Way, we are now beginning, to work out. + + * * * * * + +A thousand or two years ago, when two men stood by the roadside and made +a bargain, it was their affair. + +When two men stand on the sidewalk now and make a bargain, say in New +York, they have to deal and to deal very thoughtfully and accurately +with ninety million people who are not there. They do this as well as +they can by imagining what the ninety million people would do and say, +and how they would like to be done by, if they were there. + +The facilities for finding out what the ninety million people would do +and say, and what they would want, the general conveniences for assuring +the two men on the sidewalk that they will be able to conduct their +bargain, and to get the other ninety million in, accurately, that they +will be able to do by them as they would be done by--these have scarcely +been arranged for yet. + +In our machine age, with our railroads, and our telephones suddenly +heaping our lives up on one another's lives, almost before we have +noticed it, our religious machinery to go with our other machinery, our +machinery that we are going to be Christians with, has not been +invented yet. + +Religion two-men size, or man and woman size, or one family or two +family size or village size has been worked out. Religion as long as it +has been concerned with a few people and was a matter of love between +neighbours, or of skill in being neighbourly, has had no special or +imperative need for science or the scientific man. + +Now that religion is obliged to be an intimate, a confiding relation +between ninety million people, the spiritual genius, devotion, and +holiness of the scientific man, of the man who says "how" has come to be +the modern man's almost only access to his God. + +A ninety million man-power religion is an enterprise of spiritual +engineering, a feat in national and international statesmanship, a +gigantic structural constructive achievement in human nature. Doing as +one would be done by, with a few people, is a thing that any man can sit +down and read his Bible a few minutes and arrange for himself. He can +manage to do as he would be done by, fairly well in the next yard. But +how about doing as one would be done by with ninety million people--all +sizes, all climates, all religions, Buffalo, New Orleans, Seattle? How +about doing as one would be done by three thousand miles? + +It is an understatement to say, as we look about our modern world, that +Christianity has not been tried yet. + +Christianity has not been invented yet. + +What was invented two thousand years ago was the spirit of Christianity. + +Christianity has been for two thousand years a spirit. + +It is almost like a new religion to me just of itself to think of it. It +is like being presented suddenly with a new world to think of it, to +think that all we have really done with Christianity as yet is to use it +as a breath or spirit. + +I look at the vision of the earth to-day, of the great cities rushing +together at last and running around the world like children running +around a house--great cities shouting on the seas, suddenly sliding up +and down the globe, playing hopscotch on the equator, scrambling up the +poles--all these colossal children!... Here we all are!--a whiff of +steam from the Watts's steam kettle and a wave of Marconi across the air +and we have crept up from our little separate sunsets, all our little +private national bedrooms of light and darkness into the one single same +cunning dooryard of a world! Our religion, our politics, our Bibles, +kings, millionaires, crowds, bombs, prophets and railroads all hurling, +sweeping, crashing our lives together in a kind of vast international +collision of intimacy. + +All the Christianity we can bring to bear or that we can use to run this +crash of intimacy with is a spirit, a breath. + +We do not well to berate one another or to berate one another's motives +or to assail human nature or to grow satirical about God with all our +little battered helpless Christians about us and our unadjusted +religions. + +We are a new human race grappling with a new world. Our Christianity has +not been invented yet and if we want a God, we will work like chemists, +like airmen, turn the inside of the earth out, dump the sky, move +mountains, face cities, love one another, and find Him! + +In the meantime until we have done this, until we have worked as +chemists and airmen work, Christianity is a spirit. + +It explains all this eager jumble of the world, brushes away our +objections, frees our hearts, gives us our program, makes us know what +we are for, to stop and think a moment of this--that Christianity is a +spirit. + +Everything that is passing wonderful is a spirit at first. God begins +building a world as a world-spirit, out of a spirit brooding upon the +waters. Then for a long while the vague waters, then for a long while a +little vague land or spirit-of-planet before a real world. + +And every real belief that man has had, has begun as a spirit. + +For two thousand years Man has had the spirit of immortality. Homer had +it. Homer had moments when improvising his mighty song all alone, of +hearing or seeming to hear, faintly, choruses of men's voices singing +his songs after him, a thousand years away. + +As he groped his way up in his singing, he felt them in spirit, perhaps, +the lonely wandering minstrels in little closed-in valleys, or on the +vast quiet hills, filling the world with his voice when he was dead, +going about with his singing, breaking it in upon the souls of children, +of the new boys and girls, and building new worlds and rebuilding old +worlds in the hearts of men. Homer had the spirit of hearing his own +voice forever, but the technique of it, the important point of seeing +how the thing could really be done, of seeing how people, instead of +listening to imitations or copies or awkward echoes of Homer, should +listen to Homer's voice itself--the timbre, the intimacy, the subtlety, +the strength of it--the depth of his heart singing out of it. All this +has had to wait to be thought out by Thomas A. Edison. + +Man has not only for thousands of years had the spirit of immortality, +of keeping his voice filed away if any one wanted it on the earth, +forever, but he has had all the other spirits or ghosts of his mightier +self. He has had the spirit of being imperious and wilful with the sea, +of faring forth on a planet and playing with oceans, and now he has +worked out the details in ocean liners, in boats that fly up from the +water, and in boats which dive and swim beneath the sea. For thousands +of years he has had the spirit of the locomotive working through, troops +of runners or of dim men groping defiantly with camels through deserts, +or sweeping on on horses through the plains, and now with his banners of +steam at last he has great public trains of cars carrying cities. + +For hundreds of years man has had the spirit of the motor-car--of having +his own private locomotive or his own special train drive up to his +door--the spirit of making every road his railway. For a great many +years he has had the spirit of the wireless telegraph and of using the +sky. Franklin tried using the sky years ago but all he got was +electricity. Marconi knew how better. Marconi has got ghosts of men's +voices out of the clouds, has made heaven a sounding board for great +congregations of cities, and faraway nations wrapped in darkness and +silence whisper round the rolling earth. Man has long had the spirit of +defying the seas. Now he has the technique and the motor-boat. He has +had the spirit of removing oceans and of building huge, underground +cities, the spirit of caves in the ground and mansions in the sky, and +now he has subways and skyscrapers. For a thousand years he has had the +spirit of Christ and now there is Frederick Taylor, Louis Brandeis, +Westfield Pure Food, Doctor Carrel, Jane Addams, and Filene's Store. +Vast networks--huge spiritual machines of goodness are crowding and +penetrating to-day, fifteen pounds to the square inch, the atmosphere of +the gospel into the very core of the matter of the world, into the +everyday things, into the solids of the lives of men. + +It takes two great spirits of humanity to bring a great truth or a new +goodness into this world; one spirit creates it, the other conceives it, +gathers the earth about it and gives it birth. These two spirits seem to +be the spirits of the poet and the scientist. + +We are taking to-day, many of us, an almost religious delight in them +both. We make no comparisons. + +We note that the poet's inspiration comes first and consists in saying +something that is true, that cannot be proved. + +A few people with imagination, here and there, believe it. + +The scientist's inspiration comes second and consists in seeing ways of +proving it, of making it matter of fact. + +He proves it by seeing how to do it. + +Crowds believe it. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + +AND THE MACHINE STARTS + + +One of the things that makes one thoughtful in going about from city to +city and dropping into the churches is the way the people do not sing in +them and will not pray in them. In every new strange city where one +stops on a Sunday morning, one looks hopefully--while one hears the +chimes of bells--at the row of steeples down the street. One looks for +people going in who seem to go with chimes of bells. And when one goes +in, one finds them again and again, inside, all these bolt-up-right, +faintly sing-song congregations. + +One wonders about the churches. + +What is there that is being said in them that should make any one feel +like singing? + +The one thing that the churches are for is news--news that would be +suitable to sing about, and that would naturally make one want to sing +and pray after one had heard it. + +There is very little occasion to sing or to pray over old news. + +Worship would take care of itself in our churches if people got the +latest and biggest news in them. + +News is the latest faith men have in one another, the last thing they +have dared to get from God. + +It is not impossible that just at the present moment, and for some +little time to come, there is really very little worth while that can be +said about Christianity, until Christianity has been tried. I cannot +conceive of Christ's coming back and saying anything just at the moment. +He would merely wonder why, in all these two thousand years, we had not +arranged to do anything about what He had said before. He would wonder +how we could keep on so, making his great faith for us so poetic, +visionary, and inefficient. + +It is in the unconscious recognition of this and of the present +spiritual crisis of the world, that our best men, so many of them, +instead of going into preaching are going into laboratories and into +business where what the gospel really is and what it is really made of, +is being at last revealed to people--where news is being created. + +Perhaps it would not be precisely true--what I have said, about Christ's +not saying anything. He probably would. But he would not say these same +merely rudimentary things. He would go on to the truths and applications +we have never heard or guessed. The rest of his time he would put in in +proving that the things that had been merely said two thousand years +ago, could be done now. And He would do what He could toward having them +dropped forever, taken for granted and acted on as a part of the morally +automatic and of-course machinery of the world. + +The Golden Rule takes or ought to take, very soon now, in real religion, +somewhat the same position that table manners take in morals. + +All good manners are good in proportion as they become automatic. In +saying that honesty pays we are merely moving religion on to its more +creative and newer levels. We are asserting that the literal belief in +honesty, after this, ought to be attended to practically by machinery. +People ought to be honest automatically and by assumption, by dismissing +it in business in particular, as a thing to be taken for granted. + +This is what is going to happen. + +Without the printing press a book would cost about ten thousand dollars, +each copy. + +With the printing press, the first copy of a book costs perhaps about +six hundred dollars. + +The second costs--twenty-nine cents. + +The same principle holds good under the law of moral automatics. + +Let the plates be cast. Everything follows. The fire in the Iroquois +Theatre in Chicago cost six hundred dead bodies. + +Within a few months outward opening doors flew open to the streets +around a world. + +Everybody knew about outward opening doors before. + +They had the spirit of outward opening doors. But the machinery for +making everybody know that they knew it--the moral and spiritual +machinery for lifting over the doors of a world and making them all +swing suddenly generation after generation the other way, had not been +set up. + +Of course it would have been better if there had been three hundred dead +bodies or three dead bodies--but the principle holds good--let the moral +plates be cast and the huge moral values follow with comparatively +little individual moral hand labour. The moral hand labour moves on to +more original things. + +The same principle holds good in letting an American city be good in +seeing how to make goodness in a city work. + +Let the plates be once cast--say Galveston, Texas; or De Moines, Iowa, +and goodness after you have your first specimen gets national +automatically. + +Two hundred and five cities have adopted the Galveston or commission +government in three years. + + * * * * * + +The failure for the time being apparently of the more noble and +aggressive kinds of goodness against the forces of evil is a matter of +technique. Our failure is not due to our failure to know what evil +really is, but due to our wasteful way of tunnelling through it. + +Our religious inventors have failed to use the most scientific method. +We have gone at the matter of butting through evil without thinking +enough. Less butting and more thinking is our religion now. We will not +try any longer to butt a whole planet when we try to keep one man from +doing wrong. + +We will butt our way through to the man who sees where to butt and how +to butt. Then all together! + +Very few of the wrongs that are done to society by individuals would be +done if civilization were supplied with the slightest adequate machinery +or conveniences for bringing home to people vividly who the people are +they are wronging, how they are wronging them, and how the people feel +about it. This machinery for moral and social insight, this +intelligence-engine or apparatus of sympathy for a planet to-day, before +our eyes is being invented and set up. + + * * * * * + +Sometimes I almost think that history as a study or particularly as a +habit of mind ought to be partitioned off and not allowed to people in +general to-day. Only men of genius have imagination enough for handling +history so that it is not a nuisance, a provincialism and an +impertinence in the serene presence to-day of what is happening before +our eyes. History makes common people stop thinking or makes them think +wrong, about nine tenths of the area of human nature, particularly about +the next important things that are going to happen to it. + +Our modern life is not an historian's problem. It is an inventor's +problem. The historian can stand by and can be consulted. But things +that seem to an historian quite reasonably impossible in human nature +are true and we must all of us act every day as if they were true. We +but change the temperature of human nature and in one moment new levels +and possibilities open up on every side. + +Things that are true about water stop being true the moment it is heated +212 degrees Fahrenheit. It begins suddenly to act like a cloud and when +it is cooled off enough a cloud acts like a stone. Railroad trains are +run for hundreds of miles every year in Siberia across clouds that are +cold enough. We raise the temperature of human nature and the motives +with which men cannot act to-day suddenly around a world are the motives +with which they cannot help acting to-morrow. + +The theory of raised temperatures alone, in human nature, will make +possible to us ranges of goodness, of social passion and vision, that +only a few men have been capable of before. + +All the new inventions have new sins, even new manners that go with +them, new virtues and new faculties. The telephone, the motor-car, the +wireless telegraph, the airship and the motor-boat all make men act with +different insights, longer distances, and higher speeds. + +Men who, like our modern men, have a going consciousness, see things +deeper by going faster. + +They see how more clearly by going faster. + +They see farther by going faster. + +If a man is driving a motor-car three miles an hour all he needs to +attend to with his imagination is a few feet of the road ahead. + +If he is driving his car thirty miles an hour and trying to get on by +anticipating his road a few feet ahead, he dies. + +The faster a man goes--if he has the brains for it--the more people and +the more things in the way, his mind covers in a minute--the more +magnificently he sees how. + +On a railway train any ordinary man any day in the year (if he goes fast +enough) can see through a board fence. It may be made of vertical slats +five inches across and half an inch apart. He sees through the slits +between the slats the whole country for miles. If he goes fast enough a +man can see through a solid freight train. + +All our modern industrial social problems are problems of gearing people +up. Ordinary men are living on trains now--on moral trains. + +Their social consciousness is being geared up. They are seeing more +other people and more other things and more things beyond the Fence. + +The increased vibration in human nature and in the human brain and heart +that go with the motor-car habit, the increased speed of the human +motor, the gearing up of the central power house in society everywhere +is going to make men capable of unheard-of social technique. The social +consciousness is becoming the common man's daily habit. Laws of social +technique and laws of human nature which were theories once are habits +now. + +There is a certain sense in which it may be said that the modern man +enjoys daily his moral imagination. He is angered and delighted with his +social consciousness. He boils with rage or sings when he hears of all +the new machines of good and machines of evil that people are setting up +in our modern world. + +There is a sense in which he glories in the Golden Rule. The +moral-machinist's joy is in him. He is not content to watch it go round +and round like some smooth-running Corliss engine which is not connected +up yet--that nobody really uses except as a kind of model under glass or +a miniature for theological schools. He cannot bear the Golden Rule +under glass. He wants to see it going round and round, look up at it, +immense, silent, masterful, running a world. He delights in the Golden +Rule as a part of his love of nature. It is as the falling of apples to +him. He delights in it as he delights in frost and fire and in the +glorious, modest, implacable, hushed way they work! + +We are in an age in which a Golden Rule can sing. The men around us are +in a new temper. They have the passion, almost, the religion of +precision that goes with machines. + +While I have been sitting at my desk and writing these last words, the +two half-past-eight trains, at full speed, have met in the meadow. + +There is something a little impersonal, almost abstracted, about the way +the trains meet out here on their lonely sidewalk through the meadow, +twenty inches apart--morning after morning. It always seems as if this +time--this one next time--they would not do it right. One argues it all +out unconsciously that of course there is a kind of understanding +between them as they come bearing down on each other and it's all been +arranged beforehand when they left their stations; and yet somehow as I +watch them flying up out of the distance, those two still, swift +thoughts, or shots of cities--dark, monstrous (it's as if Springfield +and Northampton had caught some people up and were firing them at each +other)--I am always wondering if this particular time there will not be +a report, after all, a clang on the landscape, on all the hills, and a +long story in the _Republican_ the next morning. + +Then they softly crash together and pass on--two or three quiet whiffs +at each other--as if nothing had happened. + +I always feel afterward as if something splendid, some great human act +of faith, had been done in my presence. Those two looming, mighty +engines, bearing down on each other, making an aim so, at twenty inches +from death, and nothing to depend on but those two gleaming dainty +strips or ribbons of iron--a few eighths of an inch on the edge of a +wheel--I never can get used to it: the two great glowing creatures, full +of thunder and trust, leaping up the telegraph poles through the still +valley, each of them with its little streak of souls behind it; immortal +souls, children, fathers, mothers, smiling, chattering along through +Infinity--it all keeps on being boundless to me, and full of a glad +boyish terror and faith. And under and through it all there is a kind of +stern singing. + +I know well enough, of course, that it is a platitude, this meeting of +two trains in a meadow, but it never acts like one. I sometimes stand +and watch the engineer afterward. I wonder if he knows he enjoys it. +Perhaps he would have to stop to know how happy he was, and not meet +trains for a while. Then he would miss something, I think; he would miss +his deep joyous daily acts of faith, his daily habits of believing in +things--in steam, and in air, and in himself, and in the switchman, and +in God. + +I see him in his cab window, he swings out his blue sleeve at me! I like +the way he stakes everything on what he believes. Nothing between him +and death but a few telegraph ticks--the flange of a wheel.... Suddenly +the swing of his train comes up like the swing and the rhythm of a great +creed. It sounds like a chant down between the mountains. I come into +the house lifted with it. I have heard a man believing, believing mile +after mile down the valley. I have heard a man believing in a +Pennsylvania rolling mill, in a white vapour, in compressed air and a +whistle, the way Calvin believed in God. + + + + +BOOK THREE + +LETTING THE CROWD BE BEAUTIFUL + + +TO WILBUR WRIGHT AND WILLIAM MARCONI + + _"Great Spirit--Thou who in my being's burning mesh + Hath wrought the shining of the mist through and through the flesh, + Who, through the double-wondered glory of the dust + Hast thrust + Habits of skies upon me, souls of days and nights, + Where are the deeds that needs must be, + The dreams, the high delights, + That I once more may hear my voice + From cloudy door to door rejoice-- + May stretch the boundaries of love + Beyond the mumbling, mock horizons of my fears + To the faint-remembered glory of those years-- + May lift my soul + And reach this Heaven of thine + With mine?" + + "Come up here, dear little Child + To fly in the clouds and winds with me, + and play with the measureless light!"_ + + + + + +PART ONE + +WISTFUL MILLIONAIRES + + + + +CHAPTER I + +MR. CARNEGIE SPEAKS UP + + +As I was wandering through space the other day--just aeroplaning past on +my way over from Mars--I came suddenly upon a neat, snug little +property, with a huge sign stuck in the middle of it: + + THE EARTH: THIS DESIRABLE PROPERTY TO LET. Rockefeller, + Carnegie, Morgan & Co. + +I was just about to pass it by, inferring naturally that it must be a +mere bank, or wholesale house, or something, when it occurred to me it +might do no harm to stop over on it, and see. I thought I might at least +drop in and inquire what kind of a firm it was that was handling it, and +what was their idea, and what, if anything, they thought their little +planet was for, and what they proposed to do with it. + +I found, on meeting Mr. Rockefeller and Mr. Carnegie and Mr. Morgan, to +my astonishment, that they did not propose to do anything with it at +all. They had merely got it; that was as far as they had thought the +thing out apparently--to get it. They seemed to be depending, so far as +I could judge, in a vague, pained way, on somebody's happening along who +would think perhaps of something that could be done with it. + +Of course, as Mr. Carnegie (who was the talking member of the firm) +pointed out, if they only owned a part of it, and could sell one part of +it to the other part there would still be something left that they could +do, at least it would be their line; but merely owning all of it, so, as +they did, was embarrassing. He had tried, Mr. Carnegie told me, to think +of a few things himself, but was discouraged; and he intimated he was +devoting his life just now to pulling himself together at the end, and +dying a poor man. But that was not much, he admitted, and it was really +not a very great service on his part to a world, he thought--his merely +dying poor in it. + +When I asked him if there was anything else he had been able to think of +to do for the world-- + +"No," he said, "nothing really; nothing except chucking down libraries +on it--safes for old books." + +"And Mr. Morgan?" I said. + +"Oh! He is chucking down old china on it, old pictures, and things." + +"And Mr. Rockefeller?" + +"Mussing with colleges, some," he said, "just now. But he doesn't, as a +matter of fact, see anything--not of his own--that can really be done +with them, except to make them more systematized and businesslike, make +them over into sort of Standard Oil Spiritual Refineries, fill them with +millions more of little Rockefellers--and they won't let him do that. Of +course, as you might see, what they want to do practically is to take +the Rockefeller money and leave the Rockefeller out. Nobody will really +let him do anything. Everything goes this way when we seriously try to +do things. The fact is, it is a pretty small, helpless business, owning +a world," sighed Mr. Carnegie. + +"This is why we are selling out, if anybody happens along. Anybody, that +is, who really sees what this piece of property is for and how to +develop it, can have it," said Mr. Carnegie, "and have it cheap." + +Mr. Carnegie spoke these last words very slowly and wearily, and with +his most wistful look; and then, recalling himself suddenly, and handing +me a glass to look at New York with and see what I thought of it, he +asked to be excused for a moment, and saying, "I have fourteen libraries +to give away before a quarter past twelve," he hurried out of the room. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +MR. CARNEGIE TRIES TO MAKE PEOPLE READ + + +I found, as I was studying the general view of New York as seen from the +top through Mr. Carnegie's glass, that there appeared to be a great many +dots--long rows of dots for the most part--possibly very high buildings, +but there was one building, wide and white and low, and more spread-out +and important-looking than any of the others, which especially attracted +my attention. It looked as if it might be a kind of monument or +mausoleum to somebody. On looking again I found that it was filled with +books, and was the Carnegie Public Library. There were forty more +Libraries for New York Mr. Carnegie was having put up, I was told, and +he had dotted them--thousands of them almost everywhere one could look, +apparently, on his own particular part of the planet. + +A few days later, when I began to do things at a closer range, I took a +little trip to New York, and visited the Library; and I asked the man +who seemed to have it in charge, who there was who was writing books for +Mr. Carnegie's Libraries just now, or if there was any really adequate +arrangement Mr. Carnegie had made for having a few great books written +for all these fine buildings--all these really noble book-racks, he had +had put up. The man seemed rather taken aback, and hesitated. Finally, I +asked him point blank to give me the name of the supposed greatest +living author who had written anything for all these miles of Carnegie +Libraries, and he mentioned doubtfully a certain Mr. Rudyard Kipling. I +at once asked for his books, of course, and sat down without delay to +find out if he was the greatest living author the planet had, what it +was he had to say for it and about it, and more particularly, of course, +what he had to to say it was for. + +I found among his books some beautiful and quite refined interpretations +of tigers and serpents, a really noble interpretation or conception of +what the beasts were for all the glorious gentlemanly beasts--and of +what machines were for--all the young, fresh, mighty, worshipful +engines--and what soldiers were for. But when I looked at what he +thought men were for, at what the planet was for, there was practically +almost nothing. The nearest I came to it was a remark, apparently in a +magazine interview which I cannot quote correctly now, but which +amounted to something like this: "We will never have a great world until +we have some one great artist or poet in it, who sees it as a whole, +focuses it, composes it, makes a picture of it, and gives the men who +are in it a vision to live for." + + * * * * * + +Since then I have been trying to see what Messrs. Rockefeller, Carnegie, +and Morgan could do to produce and arrange what seemed to me the one +most important, imperative, and immediate convenience their planet could +have, namely, as Mr. Kipling intimated, some man on it, some great +creative genius, who would gather it all up in his imagination--the +beasts, and the people, and the sciences, and the machines--in short, +the planet as a whole, and say what it was for. It is from this point of +view that I have been drawn into writing the following pages on the next +important improvements--what one might call the spiritual Unreal-Estate +Improvements, for Messrs. Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Morgan's property +which will have to be installed. I have been going over the property +more or less carefully in my own way since, studying it and noting what +had been done by the owners, and what possibly might be done toward +arranging authors, inventors, seers, artists, or engineers or other +efficient persons who would be able to inquire, to think out for a +world, to express for it, some faint idea of what it was for. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +MR. NOBEL TRIES TO MAKE PEOPLE WRITE + + +Not unnaturally, of course, I turned to see what had already been done +by the more powerful men the planet had produced, in the way of +arranging for the necessary seers and geniuses to run the world with, +and I soon found that by far the most intelligent and far-seeing attempt +that had been made yet in this direction had been made by an inspired, +or semi-inspired, millionaire in Sweden, named Alfred Nobel, an +idealist, who had made a large but unhappy fortune out of an explosive +to stop war with. His general idea had been that dynamite would make war +so terrible that it would shock people into not fighting any more, and +that gradually people, not having to spend their time in thinking of +ways of killing one another, would have more time than they had ever had +before to think of other and more important things. It was the +disappointment of his life that his invention, instead of being used +creatively, used to free men from fighting and make men think of things, +had been used largely as an arrangement for making people so afraid of +war that they could not think of anything else. Whichever way he turned +he saw the world in a kind of panic, all the old and gentle-minded +nations with their fair fields, their factories and art galleries, all +hard at work piling up explosives around themselves until they could +hardly see over them. As this was the precise contrary of what he had +intended, and he had not managed to do what he had meant to do with +making his money, he thought he would try to see if he could not yet do +what he had meant to do in spending it. He sat down to write his Will, +and in this Will, writing as an inventor and a man of genius, he tried +to express, in the terms of money, his five great desires for the world. +He wished to spend forty thousand dollars a year, every year forever, +after he was dead, on each of these five great desires. There were five +great Inventors that he wanted, and he wanted the whole world searched +through for them, for each of them, once more every year, to see if they +could be found. Mr. Nobel expressed his desire for these five Inventors +as people often manage to express things in wills, in such a way that +not everybody had been sure what he meant. There seems to have been +comparatively little trouble, from year to year, in awarding the prizes +to some adequate inventor in the domain of Peace, of Physics, of +Chemistry, and of Medicine; but the Nobel Prize Trustees, in trying to +pick out an award each year to some man who could be regarded as a true +inventor in Literature, have met with considerable difficulty in +deciding just what sort of a man Alfred Nobel had in mind, and had set +aside his forty thousand dollars for when he directed that it should +go--to quote from the Will--"To the person who shall have produced in +the field of Literature the most distinguished work of an idealistic +tendency." + +Allen Upward, for instance, an Englishman unknown in Stockholm, invented +and published a book four years ago, called the "New Word," which was so +idealistic and distinguished a book, and so full of new ideas and of new +combinations of old ideas, that there was scarcely a publisher in +England who did not instinctively recognize it, who did not see that it +would not pay at once, and that therefore it was too strange and +original and too important a book for him to publish, and after a long +delay the book was finally printed in Geneva. + +A copy was sent to the Nobel Prize Trustees. + +One would have thought, looking at it theoretically, that here was +precisely the sort of situation that Alfred Nobel, who had been the +struggling inventor of a great invention that would not pay at once +himself, would have been looking for. A book so inventive, so far ahead, +that publishers praised it and would not invest in it, one would have +imagined to be the one book of all others for which Alfred Nobel stood +ready and waiting to put down his forty thousand dollars. + +But Mr. Nobel's forty thousand dollars did not go to a comparatively +obscure and uncapitalized inventor who had written a book to build a +world with, or at least a great preliminary design, or sketch, toward a +world. The Nobel Prize Trustees, instead of giving the forty thousand +dollars to Allen Upward, looked carefully about through all the nations +until their eyes fell on a certain Mr. Rudyard Kipling. And when they +saw Mr. Rudyard Kipling, piled high with fame and five dollars a word, +they came over quietly to where he was and put softly down on him forty +thousand dollars more. + +I do not know, but it is not inconceivable, that Kipling himself would +rather have had Allen Upward have it. + +I am not quarrelling with the Trustees, and am merely trying to think +things out and understand. But it certainly is a question that cannot +but keep recurring to one's mind--the unfortunate, and perhaps rather +unlooked-for, way in which Mr. Nobel's Will works. And I have been +wondering what there is that might be done, the world being the kind of +world it is, which would enable the Nobel Prize Trustees to so +administer the Will that its practical weight on the side of Idealism, +and especially upon the crisis of idealism in young authors, would be +where Mr. Nobel meant to have it. + +One must hasten to admit that Mr. Upward's book is open to question; +that, in fact, it is the main trait of Mr. Upward's book that it raises +a thousand questions; and that it would be a particularly hard book for +most men to give a prize to, quietly go home, and sleep that night. I +must hasten to admit also that, judging from their own point of view, +the Nobel Prize Trustees have so far done quite well. They have +attained a kind of triumph of doing safe things--things that they could +not be criticised for; and they could well reply to this present +criticism that there was no other course that they could take. Unless +they had a large fund for butting through all nations for obscure +geniuses, and for turning up stones everywhere to look for embryo +authors--unless they had a fund for going about among the great +newspapers, the big magazines, and peeping under them through all the +world for geniuses--and unless they had still another large fund for +guaranteeing their decision when they had found one, a fund for +convincing the world that they were right, and that they were not +wasting their forty thousand dollars--the Trustees have taken a fairly +plausible position. Their position being that, in default of perfectly +fresh, brand-new, great men, and in view of the fact, in a world like +this that geniuses in it are almost invariably, and, as a matter of +course, lost or mislaid until they are dead, much the best and safest +thing that Trustees of Idealism could do was to watch the drift of +public opinion in the different nations, to adopt the course of noting +carefully what the world thought were really its great men, and then (at +a discreet and dignified distance, of course) tagging the public, and +wherever they saw a crowd, a rather nice crowd, round a man, standing up +softly at the last moment and handing him over his forty thousand +dollars. This has been the history of the Nobel Trustees of Idealism, +thus far. + +But in a way, we are all the trustees of idealism, and the problem of +the Nobel Prize Trustees is more or less the problem of all of us. We +are interested as well as they in trying to find out how to recognize +and reward men of genius. What would we do ourselves if we were Nobel +Prize Trustees? Precisely what was it that Alfred Nobel intended to +achieve for Literature when he made this bequest of forty thousand +dollars a year in his Will, for a work of Literature of an idealistic +tendency? + +To take a concrete case, I can only record that it has seemed to me +that if Alfred Nobel himself could have been on hand that particular +year, and could have read Mr. Upward's book, he would have given the +prize of forty thousand dollars to Allen Upward. He would not have given +the prize to Mr. Kipling--he would have given it twenty years before; +but in this particular year of which I am writing, when he saw these two +men together, I believe he would have given the prize to Allen Upward, +and he would have hurried. + +I would like to put forward at this point two inquiries. First, why did +the Trustees not award the prize to Allen Upward? And second, what would +have happened if they had? + +First, the Trustees could not be sure that Mr. Upward in his work of +genius was telling the truth. + +Second, they could not be sure that the world would approve of his +having forty thousand dollars for telling the truth. Perhaps the world +would have rather had him paid forty thousand dollars for not telling +it. + +Third, Mr. Kipling was safe. No creative work had to be done on Kipling; +all they had to do was to send him the cheque. Great crowds had swept in +from all over the world, and nominated Mr. Kipling; the Committee merely +had to confirm the nomination. + +Fourth, Mr. Upward, like all idealists, like all men who have the power +of throwing this world into the melting-pot and bringing it out new +again partly unrecognizable (which, of course, is the regular +historical, almost conventional, thing for an idealist to do with a +world), bewildered the Nobel Prize Committee. They could not be sure but +that Mr. Upward's next book would be thought in the wrong, and make +their having given him forty thousand dollars to write it ridiculous. + + * * * * * + +What would have happened if the Trustees had given the prize to Mr. +Upward? + +First, practically no one would have known who he was, and twenty-five +nations would have been reading his book in a week, to see why the prize +was given to him. The book would have been given the most widespread, +highly stimulated, forty-thousand-dollar-power attention that any book +in any age has had. + +Only now and then would a man go over and take down his old Kiplings +from the shelf and read them, because he had heard that Mr. Kipling had +forty thousand dollars more than he had had before. + +Secondly, Mr. Upward's new book would have the stimulus of his knowing +while he was writing it that every word would be read by everybody. All +the draught on the fire of his genius of the whole listening world would +result in a work that even Mr. Upward himself perhaps would hardly +believe he had written. As events turned out, and Mr. Upward did not get +the prize there might be many reasons to believe that his next book +might be out of focus, might be a mere petulant, scolding book, his +exultation spent or dwindled, because his last tremendous wager--that +the world wanted the truth--was lost. + +Scolding in a book means, as a rule, either juvenility or it means +relapse into conscious degeneration of the soul--the focussing and +fusing power in a man. I have sometimes wondered if even Christ, if He +had not died in His thirty-third year, made His great dare for the world +on the cross early, would not have stopped believing so magnificently in +other people at about forty or forty-five or so, and would not have +spent the rest of His days in railing at them, and in being very bitter +and helpless and eloquent about Rome and Jerusalem. I have caught myself +once or twice being glad Abraham Lincoln died suddenly just when he did, +his great faith and love all warm in him, and his great oath for the +world--that it was good--still fresh upon his lips! + +Writing a book like Allen Upward's for a planet with a vision of a +thousand years singing splendidly through it, and then just reading it +all alone afterward when he has written it, and going over the score all +alone by himself, would seem to be a good deal of a strain. To be +contradicted out loud and gloriously by a world might be inspiring, but +to be contradicted by a solid phalanx of silent nations, trooping up +behind one another, unanimous, impervious, is enough to make any +radiant, long-accumulated genius pause in full career, question himself, +question his vision as a chimera, as some faintly lighted Northern +Lights upon the world, that would never mean anything, that was an +illusion, that would just flicker in the great dark once more and go +out. + +I do not say that this is true, or that it would be true of Allen +Upward. + +But I have read his book. I should think it might be true. + +What Alfred Nobel had in mind, his whole idea in his Will, it seems to +some of us, was to put in his forty thousand dollars at the working end +of some man's mind, at the end of the man's mind where the forty +thousand dollars would itself be creative, where the forty thousand +dollars would get into the man, and work out through the man and through +his genius into the world. It does not seem to me that he wanted to put +his forty thousand dollars at the idle, old remembering end of a man's +mind; that he meant it should be used as a mere reward for idealism. I +doubt if it even so much as occurred to Alfred Nobel, who was an +idealist himself, that idealism, after a man had managed to have some in +this world, would be rewarded, or could possibly be paid for, by any +one. He knew, if ever a man knew, that idealism was its own reward, and +that it was priceless, and that any attempt to reward it with money, to +pay a man for it after he had had it, and after it was all over, would +make forty thousand dollars look shabby, or at least pathetic and +ridiculous. What he wanted to do was to build his forty thousand dollars +over into a Man. He wanted to feel that this money that he had made out +of dynamite, out of destruction, would be wrought, through this man, +into exultation, into life. He had proposed that this forty thousand +dollars should become poetry in this man's book, that it should become +light and heat, a power-house of thought, of great events. What Alfred +Nobel had in mind, I think, with his little forty thousand dollars, was +that it should be given a chance to become an intimate part of some +man's genius; that it should become perhaps at last a Great Book--that +great foundry of men's souls, where the moulds of History are patterned +out, and where the hopes of nations and the prayers of women and +children and of great men are, and where the ideals of men--those huge +drive-wheels of the world--are cast in a strange light and silence. + +I wondered if they could have thought of this when they voted on Allen +Upward's book that day three years ago--those twenty grave, quiet +gentlemen in frockcoats in Stockholm! + + * * * * * + +I have picked out Mr. Upward's book because it is the most difficult, +the most hazardous, and the least fortunate one I know, to make my point +with; and because a great many people will get the reaction of +disagreeing with me, and feeling about it probably, the way the Nobel +Prizes Trustees did. I have wanted to take a book which has the traits +in it for which men of genius are persecuted or crucified or +ignored--our more modern timid or anonymous form of the cross. If Mr. +Upward had been given the Prize by the Nobel Prize Trustees, it will +have to be admitted a howl would have gone up round the world that would +not have quieted down yet; and it is this howl that Mr. Nobel intended +his Prize for, and that he thought a man would need about forty thousand +dollars to meet. + +I might have taken any one of several other books, and they would have +illustrated my point snugly and more conveniently; but just that right +touch of craziness that Nobel had in mind, and that goes with great +experiment of spirit--the chill, Nietzsche-like wildness, that bravado +before God and man and before Time, that swinging one's self out on +Eternity, which make Upward a typical man of genius, would have been +lacking. K---- (whose criticisms of books are the most creative ones I +know) said of Upward's book that he felt very happy and strangely +emancipated when he read it, but that it was an uncanny experience, as +if he had been made of thin air, had become a kind of aerated being, a +psychic effect that genius often has; and K---- admitted to me +confidentially that he felt that possibly he and Upward were being a +little crazy and happy together by themselves, breaking out into +infinite space so, and he took the book over to W----, and left it on +his desk slinkingly and half-ashamed and without saying anything about +it. He said he was enormously relieved next time he saw W----, felt as +if he had just been pulled out of Bedlam to find that there was at least +one other man in the world apparently in his right mind, who valued the +book as he did. + +This is the precise feeling, it seems to me, that the Nobel Prize was +intended to champion and to stand by and temporarily defend in a new +author--the feeling he gives us of being in the presence of unseen +forces, of incalculableness. It was this way Allen Upward has of taking +his reader apart or up into a high place (like the Devil), and dizzying +him, taking away his breath with Truth, that Nobel had in mind. He +wanted to spend eight thousand pounds a year on providing for the world +one more book which would give the ordinary man the personal feeling of +being with a genius, cold, lonely, cosmic genius, the sense of a chill +wind of All Space Outside blowing through--a book which is a sort of +God's Wilderness, in which ordinary men with their ordinary plain senses +round them move about dazed a little and as trees walking--a great, +gaunt, naked book. + +Alfred Nobel was the inventor of an explosive, a rearranger of things +assumed and things unbedded, and it was this same expansive, +half-terrible, half-sublime power in other men and other men's books he +wanted to endow--the power to free and mobilize the elements in a world, +make it budge over a little toward a new one. He wanted to spend forty +thousand dollars a year on the man in literature who had the pent-up +power in him to crash the world's mind open once more every year like a +Seed, and send groping up out of it once more its hidden thought. + +I may not be right in anticipating the eventual opinion of Allen +Upward's book; but even if I am wrong, it will have helped perhaps to +call attention to the essential failure of the Nobel Prize Trustees to +side with the darers and experimenters in literature, to take a serious +part in those great creative, centrifugal movements in the souls of men +in which new worlds and the sense of new worlds are swept in upon us. +For the Sciences, which are more matter of fact and tangible, the Nobel +Prize is functioning more or less as Mr. Nobel intended, but certainly +in Literature it will have to be classed as one more of our humdrum +regular millionaire arrangements for patting successful people +expensively on the back. It acts twenty years too late, falls into line +with our usual worldly ornamental D.D., LL.D. habit, and has become, so +far as Literature is concerned, a mere colossal, kindly, doddering Old +Age Pension from a few gentlemen in Stockholm. It adds itself as one +more futile effort of men of wealth--or world owners to be creative and +lively with money, very much on the premises with money, after they are +dead. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +PAPER BOOKS, MARBLE PILLARS, AND WOODEN BOYS + + +I have sometimes wished that Mr. Carnegie would post the following sign +up on his Libraries, on the outside where people are passing, and on the +inside in the room where people sit and think: + + A MILLION DOLLARS REWARD. + + WANTED, A GREAT LIVING AMERICAN AUTHOR FOR MY LIBRARIES IN THE + UNITED STATES. AT PRESENT OUR GREAT AUTHOR IN AMERICA APPEARS + TO HAVE BEEN LOST OR MISLAID; ANY ONE FINDING HIM, OR ANY ONE + THAT MIGHT DO FOR HIM TEMPORARILY, PLEASE COMMUNICATE WITH ME. + + ANDREW CARNEGIE. + +Mr. Carnegie's Libraries must be a source of constant regret to the +author of "Triumphant Democracy." They are generally made up of books +written in the Old World. It would be interesting to know what are the +real reasons great Libraries are not being written for Mr. Carnegie in +America, and what there is that Mr. Carnegie or other people can do +about it. They are certainly going to be written in America some time, +and certainly, unless the best and greatest part of the Carnegie Library +of the future is to be the American part of it, the best our Carnegie +Libraries will do for America will be to remind us of what we are not. +Unless we can make the American part of Mr. Carnegie's Libraries loom in +the world as big as Mr. Carnegie's chimneys, America--which is the last +newest experiment station of the world--is a failure. + +It has occurred to me to try to express, for what it may be worth, a +point of view toward Triumphant Democracy Mr. Carnegie may have +inadvertently overlooked. + +If Mr. Carnegie would establish in every town where he has put a +Library, by endowment or otherwise, a Commission, or what might be +called perhaps a Searching Party, in that community, made up of men of +inventive and creative temperament, who instinctively know this +temperament in others--men in all specialities, in all walks of life, +who are doing things better than any one wants to pay them to do +them--and if Mr. Carnegie would set these men to work, in one way and +another, looking up boys who are like them, boys about the town, who are +doing things better than any one wants to pay them to do them--he would +soon get a monopoly of the idealism of the world; he would collect in +thirty-five years, or in one generation, an array of living great men, +of national figures, men who would be monuments to Andrew Carnegie, as +compared with which his present libraries, big, thoughtless, +innumerable, humdrum, sogging down into the past, would be as nothing. +Mr. Carnegie has given forty libraries to New York; and I venture to say +that there is at this very moment, running round the streets of the +great city, one single boy, who has it in him to conceive, to imagine, +and hammer together a new world; and if Mr. Carnegie would invest his +fortune, not in buildings or in books, but in buying brains enough to +find that boy, and if the whole city of New York were to devote itself +for one hour every day for years to searching about and finding that +boy, to seeing just which he is, to going over all the other boys five +hours a day to pick him out, it would be--well, all I can say is, all +those forty libraries of Mr. Carnegie's, those great proud buildings, +would do well if they did not do one thing for six years but find that +boy! + +There is a boy at this very moment with strings and marbles and a nation +in his pocket, a system of railroads--a boy with a national cure for +tuberculosis, with sun-engines for everybody--there is a boy with +cathedrals in him too, no doubt or some boy like young Pinchot, with +mountainsful of forests in his heart. + +This is what Mr. Carnegie himself would like to do, but with his big, +stiff, clumsy libraries trailing their huge, senseless brick-and-mortar +bodies, their white pillars and things, about the country, unmanned, +inert, eyeless, all those great gates and forts of knowledge, Coliseums +of paper, and with the mechanical people behind the counters, the +policemen of the books, all standing about protecting them--with all +this formidable array, how can such a boy be hunted out or drawn in, or +how would he dare go tramping in through the great gates and hunting +about for himself? He could only be hunted out by people all wrought +through with human experience, men and women who would give the world to +find him, who are on the daily lookout for such a boy--by some special +kind of eager librarian, or by disguised teachers, anonymous poets, or +by diviners, by expert geniuses in boys. If Mr. Carnegie could go about +and look up and buy up wherever he went these men who have this +boy-genius in them, deliver them from empty, helpless, mere +getting-a-living lives; and if he could set these men, and set them +about thickly, among the books in his libraries--those huge anatomies +and bones of knowledge he has established everywhere, all his great +literary steel-works--men would soon begin to be discovered, to be +created, to be built in libraries ... but as it is now.... + +Gentle Reader, have you ever stood in front of one of them, looked up at +the windows, thought of all those great tiers, those moulds and blocks +of learning on the shelves; and have you never watched the weary people +that dribble in from the streets and wander coldly about, or sit down +listless in them--in those mighty, silent empires of the past? have you +never thought that somewhere all about them, somewhere in this same +library, there must be some white, silent, sunny country of the future, +full of children and of singing, full of something very different from +these iron walls of wisdom? And have you never thought what it would +mean if Mr. Carnegie would spend his money on search parties for people +among the books, or what it would mean if the entire library, if all the +books in it, became, as it were, wired throughout with live, splendid, +delighted men and women, to make connections, to establish the current +between the people and the books, to discover the people one by one and +follow them to their homes, and follow them in their lives, and take out +the latent geniuses, and the listless engineers and poets, and the +Kossuths, Cæsars, the Florence Nightingales...? + +It is only by employing forces that can be made extremely small, +invisible, personal, penetrating, and spiritual, that this sort of work +can be done. It must be delicate and wonderful workmanship, like the +magnet, like the mighty thistledown in the wind, like electricity, like +love, like hope--sheer, happy, warm human vision going about and casting +itself, casting all its still and tiny might, its boundless seed, upon +the earth: but it would pay. + +The same people too, specialists in detecting and developing inventors, +could be supplied also to all other possible callings. They would +constitute a universal profession, penetrating all the others. They +would go hunting among foremen and in machine shops for the misplaced +geniuses, tried by wrong standards, underpaid for having other gifts. +They would keep a lookout through all the schools and colleges, looking +over the shoulders of scolding teachers and absent professors. They +would go about studying the playgrounds and mastering the streets. + +We do not a little for the Submerged Tenth and the sons of the poor, and +we have schools or missions for the sons of the rich, but one of the +things we need next to-day is that something should be done for the +sons of the great neglected respectable classes. Far more important than +one more library--say in Denver, for instance would be a Denver Bureau +of Investigation, to be appointed, of high-priced, spirited men, of +expert humanists, to study difficulties, and devise methods and missions +for putting all society in Denver through filters or placers, and +finding out the rich human ore, finding out where everybody really +belonged, and what all the clever misplaced people were really for. Of +course it would take money to do all this, and flocks of free people who +are doing the work they love. But it is not book-racks, nor paper, nor +ink, nor stone steps, nor white pillars--it is free men and free women +America and England are asking of their Andrew Carnegies to-day. + +Mr. Carnegie has not touched this human problem in his libraries. If +Society were fitted up all through with electric connections, men with a +genius for discovering continents in people, Columbuses, boy-geniuses; +and if there were established everywhere a current between every boy and +the great world, this would be something on which Mr. Carnegie could +make a great beginning with the little mite of his fortune. If we were +to have even one city fitted up in this way, it would be hard to say how +much it would mean--one city with enough people in it who were free to +do beautiful things, free to be curious about the others, free to follow +clues of greatness, free to go up the streams of Society to the still, +faint little springs and beginnings of things. It would soon be a +memorable city. A world would watch it, and other cities would grope +toward it. Instead of this we have these big, hollow, unmanned libraries +of Mr. Carnegie's everywhere, with no people practically to go with +them, no great hive of happy living men and women in and out all day +cross-fertilizing boys and books. + +There seems to be something unfinished and stolid and brutal about a +Carnegie Library now. The spirit of the garden and the sea, of the +spring and the light, and of the child, is not in it. They have come to +seem to some of us mere huge Pittsburgs of brains--all these impervious, +unwieldy, rolling-mills of knowledge. I should think it would be a +terrible prospect to grow old with, just to sit and see them flocking +across the country from your window, all these huge smoke-stacks of +books in their weary, sordid cities; and the boys who might be great +men, the small Lincolns with nations in their pockets, the little Bells +with worlds in their ears, the Pinchots with their forests, the McAdoos +and Roosevelts, the young Carnegies and Marconis in the streets! + + + + +CHAPTER V + +THE HUMDRUM FACTORY AND THE TUMPTY-TUM THEATRE + + +Mr. Israel Zangwill in presiding at the meeting of the Sociological +Society the other night remarked, in referring to inspired millionaires, +that as a rule in the minds of most people nowadays a millionaire seemed +to be a kind of broken-off person, or possibly two persons. There always +seemed to have to be a violent change in a millionaire somewhere along +the middle of his life. The change seemed to be associated in some way, +Mr. Zangwill thought with his money. He reminded one of the +patent-medicine advertisements, "Before and After Taking." + +I have been trying to think why it is that the average millionaire +reminds people--as Mr. Zangwill says he does--of a patent-medicine +advertisement, "Before and After Taking." + +I have thought, since Mr. Zangwill made this remark, of getting together +a small collection of pictures of millionaires--two pictures of each, +one before and the other after taking--and having them mounted in the +most approved patent-medicine style, and taking them down to Far End and +asking Mr. Zangwill to look them over with me and see if he thought--he, +Israel Zangwill, the novelist, the play-wright, the psychologist--really +thought, that millionaires "Before and After" were as different as they +looked. + +I imagine he would say--and practically without looking at the +pictures--that of course to him or to me perhaps, or to any especially +interested student of human nature, millionaires are not really +different at all "Before and After Taking"; that they merely had a +slightly different outer look. They would merely look different, Mr. +Zangwill would say, to the common run or majority of people--the people +one meets in the streets. + +But would they? + +One of the most hopeful things that I have been thinking of lately is +that the people--the ordinary people one meets in the streets--are +beginning quite generally to see through their millionaires, and to see +that their money almost never really cures them. Most very rich men, +indeed, are having their times now, of even seeing through themselves; +and it brings me up abruptly with a shock to think that the ordinary +people who pass in the streets would be deceived by these simple little +pictures Before and After. They have been deceived until lately, but are +they being deceived now? I would like to see the matter tested, and I +have thought it would be a good idea to take my small collection of +pictures of millionaires--two pictures of each, one Before and the other +After Taking--to a millionaire--of course some really reformed or cured +one--and ask him to pay the necessary expenses in the columns of the +_Times_, and of the _Westminster Gazette_, and the _Daily Chronicle_, +and other representative London journals (all on the same morning), of +having the pictures published. We could then take what might be called a +social, human, economic inventory of London: ask people to send in their +honest opinions, on looking at the pictures, as to whether Money, Before +and After Taking, does or does not produce these remarkable cures in +millionaires. I very much doubt if Mr. Zangwill would be found to be +right in his estimate of our common people to-day. + +I venture to believe that it is precisely because our common people are +seeing that millionaires are not changed Before and After Taking that +the majority of time millionaires we have to-day have come to be looked +upon as one of the charges--one of the great spiritual charges and +burdens modern Society has to carry. + +Society has always had to do what it could for the poor, but in our +modern civilization, in a new and big sense, we have to see now what +there is, if possibly anything, that can be done for the rich. + +We have come to have them now almost everywhere about us--these great +spiritual orphans, with their pathetic, blind, useless fortunes piled up +around them; and Society has to support them, to keep them up morally, +keep them doing as little damage as possible, and has to allow day by +day besides for the strain and structural weakness they bring upon the +girders of the world--the faith of men in men, and the credit of God, +which alone can hold a world together. + +It is not denied that the average millionaire, when he has made his +money, does different-looking things, and gathers different-looking +objects about him, and is seen in different-looking places. And it is +not denied that he changes in more important particulars than things. He +quite often changes people, the people he is seen with but he never or +almost never changes himself. He is not one man when he is putting money +into his pocket and another when he is taking it out. + +We keep hoping at first with each new mere millionaire that when he gets +all the money he has wanted it will change him; but we find it almost +never does. + +Merely reversing the motion with a pocket does not make a man a new and +beautiful creature, and one soon sees that the typical millionaire is +governed by the same bargain principles, is bullied and domineered over +by the same personal limitations, the same old something-for-nothing +habits. If he had the habit, while getting money out of people, of +getting the better of them, he still insists on getting the better of +people when he gives it to them or to their causes. He takes it out of +their souls. There never has been a millionaire who runs his business +on the old humdrum principle of merely making all the money he can who +does not run his very philanthropies afterward on the same general +principle of oppressing everybody, of outwitting everybody--and of doing +people good in a way that makes them wish they were dead. Philanthropy +as a philosophy, and even as an institution, is getting to be nearly +futile to-day, for the reason that millionaires--valid, authentic cases +of millionaires who are really cured--who are changed either in their +motives or their methods with regard to what they do with money, except +in rare cases, do not exist. + +The New Theatre in New York, which was started as a kind of Polar +Expedition to discover and rescue Dramatic Art in America, failed +because two hundred and forty millionaires tried to help it. If enough +millionaires could have been staved off from that enterprise, or if it +could have been taken in hand either by fewer or more select +millionaires coöperating with the public and with artists of all +classes, New Theatre of New York would not have been obliged, as it has +been since, to start all over again on a new basis. The blunders in +creative public work that men who get rich in the wrong way are always +sure to make had to be made first. They nearly always have to be made +first. There is hardly a single enterprise of higher social value in +which the world is interested to-day which is not being gravely +threatened in efficient service by letting in too many millionaires, and +by paying too much attention to what they think. If our people were +generally alive to the terrific sameness and monotony of a millionaire's +life "before and after," and if millionaires were looked over +discriminatingly before being allowed to take part in great public +enterprises like the cinema, for instance, the newspapers, the +hospitals, the theatres, there is hardly any limit to the new things +that public enterprises would begin to make happen in the world, and the +new men that would begin to function in them. + +Of course, if what a great vision for the people--_i.e._, a public +enterprise is for, is to make money, it would be different. The mere +millionaire might understand, and his understanding might help. But if +an institution is founded (like a great theatre) to be a superb and +noble masterpiece of understanding and changing human nature; if it is +founded to be a creative and dominating influence, to build up the +ideals and fire the enthusiasm of a city, to lay the foundations of the +daily thoughts and the daily motives of a great people, the mere +millionaire finds, if he tries to manage it, that he is getting in +beyond his depth. A man who has made his money by exploiting and taking +advantage of the public can only be expected, in conducting a Theatre, +to be an authority on how to exploit a public and take advantage of it +still more, and how to make it go to the play that merely looks like the +play that it wants. + +Millionaires as a class, unless they are men who have made their money +in the artist's or the inventor's spirit, really ought to be expected by +this time, except in the size of their cheques, to be modest and +thoughtful, to stand back a little and watch other people. The +millionaires themselves, if they thought about it, would be the first to +advise us not to pay too much attention to them. They are used to large +things, and they know that the only way to do, in conducting great +enterprises, is to select and use men (whether millionaires or not) for +the particular efficiencies they have developed. If we are conducting +what is called a charity, we will not expect that a millionaire can do +good things unless he is a good man. He spoils them by picking out the +wrong people. And we will not expect him to do artistic things unless he +has lived his life and done his business in the spirit and the +temperament of the artist. He will not know which the artists are or +what the artists are like inside; and he will not like them and they +will not like him, nor will they be interested in him or interested in +working with him. Everything that artists or men of creative temperament +try to do with the common run of millionaires--all these huge, blind, +imponderable megatheriums, stamping along through life, ordering people +about--ends in the same way--in irksomeness, bewildered vision, fear, +compromise, and failure, as seen from the inside. Seen on the outside or +before the public, of course, the Institution will have the same old, +bland, familiar air of looking successful and of looking intelligent, +and yet of being uninteresting, and of not changing the world by a +hair's breadth. + +The only millionaires who should be allowed to have a controlling +interest in public enterprises are millionaires who do not need to be +different before and after making their money. Everybody is coming to +see this, sooner or later. It is already getting very hard to raise +money for any public enterprise in which mere millionaires or +bewildered, unhappy rich men are known to have a controlling interest. +The most efficient and far-sighted men do not expect anything very +decided or of marked character from such enterprises, and will no longer +lend to them either their brains or their money. Mere millionaires will +soon have to conduct their public enterprises quite by themselves, and +they will then soon fall of their own weight. The moment men are put in +control of public enterprises by the size of their brains instead of the +size of their cheques, the whole complexion of what are known as our +public enterprises will change, and churches, theatres, hospitals, +settlements, art galleries, and all other great public causes, instead +of boring everybody and teasing everybody, will be attracting everybody +and attracting everybody's money. They will be full of character, +courage, and vision. Our present great, vague, helpless, plaintive +public enterprises--one third art, one third millionaire, one third +deficit--drag along financially because they are listless compromises, +because they have no souls or vision, and are not interesting--not even +interesting to themselves. + +Men with creative or imaginative quality, and courage, and insight into +ordinary human nature, and far-sightedness of what can be expected of +people, do not get on with the ordinary millionaire. It cannot be denied +that millionaires and artists get together in time; but the particular +point that seems to be interesting to consider is how the millionaires +and artists can be got together before the artists are dead, and before +the millionaires stop growing and stop being creative and understanding +creative men. + +It might be well to consider the present situation in the concrete--the +theatre, for instance--and see how the situation lies, and where one +would have to begin, and how one would have to go to work to change it. + +The present failure of the theatre to encourage what is best in modern +art is due to the fact that the public is unimaginative and inartistic. + +If a public is unimaginative and inartistic, the only way the best +things that are offered can succeed with them is by having these best +things held before them long and steadily enough for them slowly to +compare them with other things, and see that they are better than the +other things, and that they are what they want. + +Unimaginative and inartistic people do not know what they want. If +things are tried long enough with them they do. When they have been +tried long enough with them they support them themselves. + +The only way fine things can be tried long enough is with sufficient +capital. + +The only way sufficient capital for fine things can be obtained is by +having millionaires who appreciate fine things, and believe in them, and +believe the public in time will believe in them. + +The only way in which a millionaire can recognize and believe in the +fine things and in the best artists is by being, in spirit and +temperament at least, an artist himself. + +The only way in which a millionaire can be an artist is to work every +day in the spirit in which the artist works. + +This means the artist in business. + +(1) The artist in business is the man who makes things people already +want enough to make money, and who makes things he is going to make +people want enough to make new values and to be of some use. + +(2) The artist in business is the employer who makes new things and men +together. He lets the men who make new things with him become new men; +and when the things are made, they go forth in their turn and make new +men and make new publics. New publics have had to be made for +everything: for the first umbrellas, for the first telephones, the first +typewriters. New publics have had to be made for Wagner, for Sunlight +Soap, for Bernard Shaw; and it is the men who make new publics--be it +for big or little things--who are artists. They are in spirit, prophets, +kings, and world-builders. + +(3) Incidentally, the artist in business--the employer who creates new +values and is creative himself--will like creative men in his factory, +and will treat them so that they will put their creativeness into his +business; he not only will be an artist himself, but he will have, +comparatively speaking, a factory full of artists working with him. And +when the factories pour out the men at night, and the smoke and the +murmur cease, and the windows are dark, they will go to creative and +live men's plays. + +So it has come to pass that the modern business man of the artist sort +holds the arts of modern times in the hollow of his hand. He is a +past-master of creating new publics. + +(4) The artist in business is the man who educates and draws out, at +every point where his business touches them, every day, all day, the men +with whom he works. He educates and develops the men who make the +things. He educates and develops the men who buy them. Even the people +who wish they had bought them, are educated or secreted, by the artist +in business. He is a maker of new publics, a world-builder, whichever +way he turns. A business man who merely makes for people what they want, +and who does not get the prestige with men of making for them things +that they did not know they wanted, is a failure and falls behind in his +business. All the big men in business work in future tenses. They are +prophets, historians, and they are Now-men, men who work by seeing the +truth all round the present moment, the present persons, and the present +market, and before it and behind it. Millionaires who are making their +money in this spirit will understand and believe in plays that are +written in this spirit, and the people who work for such employers will +like to go to such plays, and the theatre managers, instead of being the +bullies and tyrants of the world of art, will be held in the power of +the men who see things and who make things--men who in vast sweeps +called audiences, night after night, make new men upon the earth. + + + + +PART TWO + +IRON MACHINES + + + + +CHAPTER I + +STEEPLES AND CHIMNEYS + + +I went to the Durbar the other night in cinema colour and saw the King +and Queen through India. I had found my way, with hundreds of others, +into the gallery of the Scala Theatre, and out of that big, still rim of +watchful darkness where I sat I saw--there must have been thousands of +them--crowds of camels running. + +And crowds of elephants went swinging past. + +I watched them like a boy, like a boy standing on the edge of a thousand +years and looking off at a world. + +It was stately and strange, and like far music to sit quite still and +watch civilizations swinging past. + +Then suddenly it became near and human--the spirit of playgrounds and of +shouting and boyish laughter ran through it. And we watched the +elephants, naked and untrimmed, lolling down to the lake and lying down +to be scrubbed in it with comfortable low snorting and slow rolling in +the water, and the men standing by all the while like little play-nurses +and tending them, their big bungling babies, at the bath. A few minutes +later we watched the same elephants, hundreds of them, their mighty +toilets made, pacing slowly past, swinging their gorgeous trappings in +our eyes, rolling their huge hoodahs at us, and all the time still those +little funny dots of men beside them, moving them silently, moving them +invisibly as by a spirit, as by a kind of awful wireless--those great +engines of the flesh! I shall never forget it or live without it, that +slow pantomime of those mighty, silent Eastern nations, their religions, +their philosophies, their wills, their souls, moving their elephants +past--the long panorama of it, of their little awful human wills, all +those little black, helpless-looking slits of Human Will astride those +mighty necks! + +I have the same feeling when I see Count Zeppelin with his airship, or +Grahame-White at Hendon, riding his vast cosmic pigeon up the sky; and +it is the same feeling I have with the locomotives--those unconscious, +forbidding, coldly obedient terrible fellows! Have I not lain awake and +listened to them storming through the night, heard them out there ahead +working our wills on the blackness, on the thick night, on the stars, on +Space, and on Time while we slept? + +My main feeling at the Durbar while I watched those splendid beasts--the +crowds of camels, the crowds of elephants--all being driven along by the +little, faint, dreamy, sleepy-looking people was, "Why don't their +elephants turn around on them and chase them?" + +I kept thinking at first that they would, almost any minute. + +Our elephants chase us--most of us. Who has not seen locomotives coming +quietly out of their roundhouses in New York and begin chasing people, +chasing whole towns, tearing along with them, making everybody hurry +whether or no, speeding up and ordering around by the clock great +cities, everybody alike, the rich and the poor, the just and the unjust, +for hundreds of miles around? In the same way I have seen, hundreds of +times, motor cars turning around on their owners and chasing +them--chasing them fairly out of their lives. And hundreds of thousands +of little wood-and-rubber Things with nickel bells whirring, may be seen +ordering around people--who pay them for it--in any city of our modern +world. + +Now and then one comes on a man who keeps a telephone, who is a +gentleman with it, and who keeps it in its place, but not often. + +There are certain questions to be asked and to be settled in any +civilization that would be called great. + +First: Do the elephants chase the men in it? Second: And if--as in our +Western civilization--the men have made their own elephants, why should +they be chased by them? + +There are some of us who have wondered a little at the comparative +inferiority of organ music. We have come to the conclusion that perhaps +organ music is inferior because it has been largely composed by +organists, by men who sit at organ machines many hours a day, and who +have let their organ machines with all their stops and pedals, and with +all their stop-and-pedal-mindedness, select out of their minds the tones +that organs can do best--the music that machines like. + +Wagner has come to be recognized as a great and original composer for a +machine age because he would not let his imagination be cowed by the +mere technical limitations, the narrow-mindedness of brass horns, wooden +flutes, and catgut; he made up his mind that he would not sing violins. +He made violins sing him. + +Perhaps this is the whole secret of art in a machine civilization. + +Perhaps a machine civilization is capable of a greater art than has ever +been dreamed in the world before, the moment it stops being chased by +its elephants. The question of letting the crowd be beautiful in our +world of machines and crowds to-day turns on our producing +Machine-Trainers. + +Men possessed by watches in their vest pockets cannot be inspired, men +possessed by churches or religion-machines cannot be prophets, men +possessed by school-machines cannot be educators. + +The reason that we find the poet, or at least the minor poet, +discouraged in a machine age probably is, that there is nothing a minor +poet can do in it. Why should nightingales, poppies, and dells expect, +in a main trial of strength, to compete with machines? And why should +human beings running for their souls in a race with locomotives expect +to keep very long from losing their souls? + +The reason that most people are discouraged about machinery to-day is +that this is what they think a machine civilization is. They whine at +the machines. They blame the locomotive. + +A better way for a man to do would be to stop blaming the locomotive, +and stop running along out of breath beside it, and climb up into the +cab. + +This is the whole issue of art in our modern civilization--climbing up +into the cab. + +First come the Machine-Trainers, or poets who can tame engines. Then the +other poets. + +In the meantime, the less we hear about nightingales and poppies and +dells and love and above, the better. + +Poetry must make a few iron-handed, gentle-hearted, mighty men next. It +is because we demand and expect the beautiful that we say that poetry +must make men next. + +The elephants have been running around in the garden long enough. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +BELLS AND WHEELS + + +We are living in a day of the great rebellion of the machines. Out of a +thousand thousand roundhouses and factories, vast cities and nations of +machines on the land and on the sea have risen before the soul of man +and said, "We have served you; now, you serve us." + +A million million vulgar, swaggering Goliaths, one sees them everywhere; +they wave their arms at us around the world, they puff their white +breath at us, they spit smoke in our eyes, line up in a row before the +great cities, before the mighty-hearted nations, and say it again and +again, all in chorus, _"We have served you, now, you serve us!"_ + +It has come to sound to some of us as a kind of chant around our lives. + +But why should we serve them? + +I have seen crowds of minor poets running, their little boxes of perfume +and poetry, their cologne water, their smelling-salts, in their hands. + +And, of course, if the world were all minor poets the situation would be +serious. + +And I have seen flocks of faint-hearted temples, of big, sulky, +beautiful, absent-minded colleges, looking afraid. Every now and then +perhaps one sees a professor run out, throw a book at the machines, and +run back again. Oxford still looks at science, at matter itself, +tremulously, with that same old, still, dreamy air of dignity, of +gentlemanly disappointment. + +And if the world were all Oxford the situation would be serious. + +When Oxford with its hundred spires, its little beautiful boy choirs of +professors, draws me one side from the Great Western Railway Station, +and intones in those still, solemn, lonely spaces the great truth in my +ears, that machines and ideals cannot go together, that the only way to +deal with ideals is to keep them away from machines, my only reply is +that ideals that are so tired that they are merely devoted to defending +themselves, ideals that will not and cannot go forth and be the breath +of the machines, ideals that cannot and will not master the machines, +that will not ride the machines as the wind, overrun matter, and conquer +the earth, are not ideals for gentlemen. + +At least they are not ideals that can keep up the standard of the Oxford +gentleman. + +A gentleman is a man who is engaged in expressing his best and noblest +self in every fibre of his mind and every fibre of his body. He makes +the very force of gravity pulling on his clothes express him, and the +movements of his feet and his hands. He gathers up his rooms into his +will and all the appointments of his life and crowds into them the full +meaning of his soul. He makes all these things say him. + +The main attribute of a man who is not a gentleman is that he does not +do these things, that he cannot inform his body with his spirit. + +I go back to the Great Western Railway, ugly as it still is. I go alone, +and sadly if I must, and for a little time--without the deep bells and +without the stained-glass windows, without all that dear, familiar +beauty I have loved in the old and quiet quadrangles--I take my stand +beside the Great Western Railway! I claim the Great Western Railway for +the spirit of man and for the will of God! + +With its vast shuttle of steam and shining engines, its little, +whispering telegraph office, the Great Western Railway is a part of my +body. I lay my will on the heart of London with it, or I sleep in the +old house in Lynmouth with it. I am the Great Western Railway, and the +Great Western Railway is ME. And from the heart of the roar of London +to the slow, sleepy surge of the sea in my window at Lynmouth it is +mine! Though it be iron and wood, switches, whistles, and white steam, +it is my body, and I inform it with my spirit, or I die. With the will +of God I endow it, with the glory of the world, with the desires of my +heart, and with the prayers of the hurrying men and women. + +I declare that that same glory I have known before, and that I will +always know, and will never give up, in the old quiet quadrangles of +Oxford and in the deep bells and in the still waters, as in some +strange, new, and mighty Child, is in the Great Western Railway too. + +When I am in the train it sings. Strangely and hoarsely It sings! I lie +down to rest. It whistles on ahead my ideals down the slope of the +world. It roars softly, while I sleep, my religion in my ears. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +DEW AND ENGINES + + +When I was small, and wanted suddenly to play tag or duck-on-the-rock I +had a little square half-mile of boys near by to play with. + +My daughter plays tag or plays dolls, any minute she likes, with a whole +city. She is not surprised at the telephone; she takes it for granted +like sunshine and milk. It is a part of the gray matter in her brain--a +whole city, six or seven square miles of it. A little mouthpiece on a +desk, a number, and two hundred little girls are hers in a minute, to +play dolls with. She thinks in miles when she plays, where I thought in +door-yards. The whole city is a part of the daily, hourly furniture of +her mind. The little gray molecules in the structure of her brain are +different from those in mine. + +I have seen that Man moves over with each new generation into a bigger +body, more awful, more reverent and free than he has had before. + +A few minutes ago, here where I am writing, an engine all in bright, +soft, lit-up green with little lines of yellow on it and flashing silver +feet, like a vision, swept past--through my still glass window, through +the quiet green fields--like a great, swift, gleaming whisper of London. +And now, all in six seconds, this great quiet air about me is waked to +vast vibrations of the mighty city. Out over the red pines, the lonely +gorse fields, I have seen passing the spirit of the Strand. I have seen +the great flocking bridges and the roar about St. Paul's in communion +with the treetops and with the hedgerows and with the little brooks, all +in six seconds, when an engine, with its vision like a cloud of glory +swept past. + +And yet there are people in Oxford who tell me that an engine when it is +in the very act of expressing such stupendous and boundless thoughts, of +making such mighty and beautiful things happen, is not beautiful, that +it has nothing to do with art. They can but watch the machines, the +earth black with them, going about everywhere mowing down great nations +and rolling under the souls of men. + +I cannot see it so. I see a thousand thousand engines carrying dew and +green fields to the stones of London. I see the desires of the earth +hastening. The ships and the wireless telegraph beckon the wills of +cities on the seas and on the sky. With the machines I have taken a +whole planet to me for my feet and for my hands. I gesture with the +earth. I hand up oceans to my God. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +DEAD AS A DOOR NAIL! + + +There are people who say that machines cannot be beautiful, and cannot +make for beauty, because machines are dead. + +I would agree with them if I thought that machines were dead. + +I have watched in spirit, hundreds of years, the machines grow out of +Man like nails, like vast antennæ--a kind of enormous, more unconscious +sub-body. They are apparently of less lively and less sensitive tissue +than tongues or eyes or flesh; and like all bones they do not renew, of +course, as often or as rapidly as flesh. But the difference between live +and dead machines is quite as grave and quite as important as the +difference between live and dead men. The generally accepted idea a live +thing is, that it is a thing that keeps dying and being born again every +minute; it is seen to be alive by its responsiveness to the spirit, to +the intelligence that created it and that keeps re-creating it. I have +known thousands of factories; and every factory I have known that is +really strong or efficient has scales like a snake, and casts off its +old self. All the people in it, and all the iron and wood in it, month +by month are being renewed and shedding themselves. Any live factory can +always be seen moulting year after year. A live spirit goes all through +the machinery, a kind of nervous tissue of invention, of thought. + +We already speak of live and dead iron, of live and dead engines or +half-dead and half-sick engines, and we have learned that there is such +a thing as tired steel. What people do to steel makes a difference to +it. Steel is sensitive to people. My human spirit grows my arm and moves +it and guides it and expresses itself in it, keeps re-creating it and +destroying it; and daily my soul keeps rubbing out and writing in new +lines upon my face; and in the same way my typewriter, in a slow, more +stolid fashion, responds to my spirit too. Two men changing typewriters +or motor-cars are, though more subtly, like two men changing boots. +Sewing machines, pianos, and fiddles grow intimate with the people who +use them, and they come to express those particular people and the ways +in which they are different from others. A Titian-haired typewriter girl +makes her machine move differently every day from a blue-eyed one. +Typewriters never like to have their people take the liberty of lending +them. Steel bars and wooden levers all have little mannerisms, little +expressions, small souls of their own, habits of people that they have +lived with, which have grasped the little wood and iron levers of their +wills and made them what they are. + +It is somewhere in the region of this fact that we are going to discover +the great determining secret of modern life, of the mastery of man over +his machines. Man, at the present moment, with all his new machines +about him, is engaged in becoming as self-controlled, as +self-expressive, with his new machines, with his wireless telegraph arms +and his railway legs, as he is with his flesh and blood ones. The force +in man that is doing this is the spiritual genius in him that created +the machine, the genius of imperious and implacable self-expression, of +glorious self-assertion in matter, the genius for being human, for being +spiritual, and for overflowing everything we touch and everything we use +with our own wills and with the ideals and desires of our souls. The +Dutchman has expressed himself in Dutch architecture and in Dutch art; +the American has expressed himself in the motor-car; the Englishman has +expressed himself, has carved his will and his poetry upon the hills, +and made his landscape a masterpiece by a great nation. He has made his +walls and winding roads, his rivers, his very treetops express his deep, +silent joy in the earth. So the great, fresh young nations to-day, with +a kind of new, stern gladness, implacableness, and hope, have appointed +to their souls expression through machinery. Our Engines and our radium +shall cry to God! Our wheels sing in the sun! + +Machinery is our new art-form. A man expresses himself first in his +hands and feet, then in his clothes, and then in his rooms or in his +house, and then on the ground about him; the very hills grow like him, +and the ground in the fields becomes his countenance; and now, last and +furthest of all, requiring the liveliest and noblest grasp of his soul, +the finest circulation of will of all, he begins expressing himself in +his vast machines, in his three-thousand-mile railways, in his vast, +cold-looking looms and dull steel hammers. With telescopes for Mars-eyes +for his spirit, he walks up the skies; he expresses his soul in deep and +dark mines, and in mighty foundries melting and re-moulding the world. +He is making these things intimate, sensitive, and colossal expressions +of his soul. They have become the subconscious body, the abysmal, +semi-infinite body of the man, sacred as the body of the man is sacred, +and as full of light or of darkness. + +So I have seen the machines go swinging through the world. Like +archangels, like demons, they mount up our desires on the mountains. We +do as we will with them. We build Winchester Cathedral all over again, +on water. We dive down with our steel wheels and nose for +knowledge--like a great Fish--along the bottom of the sea. We beat up +our wills through the air. We fling up, with our religion, with our +faith, our bodies on the clouds. We fly reverently and strangely, our +hearts all still and happy, in the face of God! + + + + +CHAPTER V + +AN OXFORD MAN AND AN INCH OF IRON + + +The whole process of machine-invention is itself the most colossal, +spiritual achievement of history. The bare idea we have had of +unravelling all creation, and of doing it up again to express our own +souls--the idea of subduing matter, of making our ideals get their way +with matter, with radium, ether, antiseptics, is itself a religion, a +poetry, a ritual, a cry to heaven. The supreme, spiritual adventure of +the world has become this task that man has set himself, of breaking +down and casting away forever the idea that there is such a thing as +matter belonging to matter--matter that keeps on in a dead, stupid way, +just being matter. The idea that matter is not all alive with our souls, +with our desires and prayers, with hope, terror, worship, with the +little terrible wills of men and the spirit of God, is already +irreligious to us. Is not every cubic inch of iron (the coldest-blooded +scientist admits it) like a kind of little temple, its million million +little atoms in it going round and round and round dancing before the +Lord? + +And why should an Oxford man be afraid of a cubic inch of iron, or +afraid of becoming like it? + +I daily thank God that I have been allowed to belong to this generation. +I have looked at last a little cubic inch of iron out of countenance. I +can sit and watch it, the little cubic inch of iron, in its still +coldness, in all its little funny play-deadness, and laugh! I know that +to a telescope or a god, or to me, to us, the little cubic inch of iron +is all alive inside, that it is whirling with will, that it is sensitive +in a rather dead-looking but lively cosmic way, sensitive like another +kind of more slowly quivering flesh, sensitive to moons and to stars +and to heat and cold, to time and space and to human souls. It is +singing every minute low and strange, night and day, in its little grim +blackness, of the glory of Things. I am filled with the same feeling, +the same sense of kindred, of triumphant companionship, when I go out +among them and watch the majestic family of the machines, of the +engines, those mighty Innocents, those new awful sons of God, going +abroad through all the world, looking back at us when we have made them, +unblinking and without sin! + +Like rain and sunshine, like chemicals, and like all the other innocent, +godlike things, and like waves of water and waves of air, rainbows, +starlight, they say what we make them say. They are alive with the life +that is in us. + +The first element of power in a man, in getting control of his life in +our modern era, is to have spirit enough to know what matter is like. + +The Machine-Trainer is the man who sees what the machines are like. He +is the man who conceives of iron-and-wood machines, in his daily habit +of thought, as alive. He has discovered ways in which he can produce an +impression upon iron and wood with his desires, and with his will. He +goes about making iron-and-wood machines do live things. + +It is never the machines that are dead. + +It is only mechanical-minded men that are dead. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +THE MACHINES' MACHINES + + +The fate of civilization is not going to be determined by people who are +morbidly like machines on the one hand, or by people who are morbidly +unmechanical, on the other. + +People in a machine civilization who try to live without being automatic +and mechanical-minded part of the time and in some things, people who +try to make everything they do artistic and self-expressive and +hand-made, who attend to all their own thoughts and finish off all their +actions by hand themselves, soon wish they were dead. + +People who do everything they do mechanically, or by machinery, are dead +already. + +It is bad enough for those of us who are trying to live our lives +ourselves--real, true, hand-made individual lives--to have to fight all +these machines about us trying daily to roar and roll us down into +humdrum and nothingness, without having to fight besides all these dear +people we have about us too, who have turned machines, even one's own +flesh and blood. Does not one see them--see them everywhere--one's own +flesh and blood, going about like stone-crushers, road-rollers, lifts, +lawn-mowers? + +Between the morbidly mechanical people and the morbidly unmechanical +people, modern civilization hangs in the balance. + +There must be some way of being just mechanical enough, and at the right +time and right place, and of being just unmechanical enough at the right +time and right place. And there must be some way in which men can be +mechanical and unmechanical at will. + +The fate of civilization turns on men who recognize the nature of +machinery, who make machines serve them, who add the machines to their +souls, like telephones and wireless telegraph, or to their bodies, like +radium and railroads, and who know when and when not and how and how not +to use them who are so used to using machines quietly and powerfully, +that they do not let the machines outwit them and unman them. + +Who are these men? + +How do they do it? + +They are the Machine-Trainers. The men who understand people-machines, +who understand iron machines, and who understand how to make +people-machines and iron machines run softly together. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +THE MEN'S MACHINES + + +There was a time once in the old simple individual days when drygoods +stores could be human. They expressed, in a quiet, easy way, the souls +of the people who owned them. + +When machinery was invented and when organization was invented--machines +of people--drygoods stores became vast selling machines. + +We then faced the problem of making a drygoods store with twenty-five +hundred clerks in it as human as a drygoods store with fifteen. + +This problem has been essentially and in principle solved. At least we +know it is about to be solved. We are ready to admit--most of us--that +it is practicable for a department store to be human. Everything the man +at the top does expresses his human nature and his personality to his +clerks. His clerks become twenty-five hundred more of him in miniature. +What is more, the very stuff in which the clerks in department stores +work--the thing that passes through their hands, is human, and +everything about it is human, or can be made human; and all the while +vast currents of human beings, huge Mississippis of human feeling, flow +past the clerks--thousands and thousands of souls a day, and pour over +their souls, making them and keeping them human. The stream clears +itself. + +But what can we say about human beings in a mine, about the +practicability of keeping human twenty-five hundred men in a hole in the +ground? And how can a mine-owner reach down to the men in the hole, make +himself felt as a human being on the bottom floor of the hole in the +ground? + +In a department store the employer expresses himself to his clerks +through every one of the other twenty-five hundred; they mingle and stir +their souls and hopes and fears together, and he expresses himself to +all of them through them all. + +But in a mine, two men work all alone down in the dark hole in the +ground. Thousands of other men, all in dark holes, are near by, with +nothing but the dull sound of picks to come between. In thousands of +other holes men work, each with his helper, all alone. The utmost the +helper can do is to grow like the man he works with, or like his own +pick, or like the coal he chips out, or like the black hole. The utmost +the man who mines coal can do, in the way of being human, is with his +helper. + +In a factory, for the most part, the only way, during working hours, an +employer can express himself and his humanness to his workman is through +the steel machine he works with--through its being a new, good, fair +machine or a poor one. He can only smile and frown at him with steel, be +good to him in wheels and levers, or now and then perhaps through a +foreman pacing down the aisles. + +The question the modern business man in a factory has to face is very +largely this: "I have acres of machines all roaring my will at my men. I +have leather belts, printed rules, white steam, pistons, roar, air, +water and fire and silence to express myself to my workmen in. I have +long monotonous swings and sweeps of cold steel, buckets of melted iron, +strips of wood, bells, whistles, clocks--to express myself, to express +my human spirit to my men. Is there, or is there not, any possible way +in which my factory with its machines can be made as human and as +expressive of the human as a department store?" + +This is the question that our machine civilization has set itself to +answer. + +All the men with good honest working imaginations, the geniuses and the +freemen of the world, are setting themselves the task of answering it. + +Some say, "Machines are on the necks of the men. We will take the +machines away." + +Others say, "We will make our men as good as our machines. We will make +our inventions in men catch up with our inventions in machines." + +We naturally turn to the employer first as having the first chance. What +is there an employer can do to draw out the latent force in the men, +evoke the divine, incalculable passion sleeping beneath in the +machine-walled minds, the padlocked wills, the dull unmined desires of +men? How can he touch and wake the solar plexus of labour? + +If any employer desires to get into the inner substance of the most +common type of workman, be an artist with him, express himself with him +and change the nature of that substance, give it a different colour or +light or movement so that he will work three times as fast, ten times as +cheerfully and healthfully, and with his whole body and soul, spirit, +and how is he going to do it? + +Most employers wish they could do this. If they could persuade their men +to believe in them, to begin to be willing to work with them instead of +against them, they would do it. + +What form of language is there, whether of words or of actions, that an +employer can use to make the men who work nine hours a day for him and +to whom he has to express himself across acres of machines, believe in +him and understand him? + +The modern employer finds himself set sternly face to face, every day of +his life, with this question. All civilization seems crowding up day by +day, seems standing outside his office door as he goes in and as he goes +out, and asking him--now with despair, now with a kind of grim, +implacable hope, "Do you believe, or do you not believe, a factory can +be made as human as a department store?" + +This question is going to be answered first by men who know what iron +machines really are, and what they are really for, and how they +work--who know what people-machines really are, and what they are really +for, and how they work. They will base all that they do upon certain +resemblances and certain differences between people and machines. + +They will work the machines of iron according to the laws of iron. + +They will work the machines of men according to the laws of human +nature. + +There are certain facts in human nature, feelings, enthusiasms and +general principles concerning the natural working relation between men +and machines, that it may be well to consider in the next chapter as a +basis for a possible solution. + +What are our machines after all? How are the machines like us? And on +what theory of their relation to us can machines and men expect in a +world like this to run softly together? These are the questions men are +going to answer next. In the meantime, I venture to believe that no man +who is morose to-day about the machines, or who is afraid of machines in +our civilization--because they are machines--is likely to be able to do +much to save the men in it. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +THE BASEMENT OF THE WORLD + + +Every man has, according to the scientists, a place in the small of his +back which might be called roughly, perhaps, the soul of his body. All +the little streets of the senses or avenues of knowledge, the spiritual +conduits through which he lives in this world, meet in this little +mighty brain in the small of a man's back. + +About nine hundred millions of his grandfathers apparently make their +headquarters in this little place in the small of his back. + +It is in this one little modest unnoticed place that he is supposed to +keep his race-consciousness, his subconscious memory of a whole human +race, and it is here that the desires and the delights and labours of +thousands of years of other people are turned off and turned on in him. +It is the brain that has been given to every man for the heavy everyday +hard work of living. The other brain, the one with which he does his +thinking and which is kept in an honoured place up in the cupola of his +being, is a comparatively light-working organ, merely his own private +personal brain--a conscious, small, and supposably controllable affair. +He holds on to his own particular identity with it. The great lower +brain in the small of his back is merely lent to him, as it were, out of +eternity--while he goes by. + +It is like a great engine which he has been allowed the use of as long +as he can keep it connected up properly with his cerebral arrangements. + +This appears to be mainly what the cerebral brain is for, this keeping +the man connected up. It acts as a kind of stopcock for one's infinity, +for screwing on or screwing off one's vast race-consciousness, one's +all-humanityness, all those unsounded deeps or reservoirs of human +energy, of hope and memory, of love, of passionate thought, of earthly +and heavenly desire that are lent to each of us as we slip softly by for +seventy years, by a whole human race. + +A human being is a kind of factory. The engine and the works and all the +various machines are kept in the basement, and he sends down orders to +them from time to time, and they do the work which has been conceived up +in the headquarters. He expects the works down below to keep on doing +these things without his taking any particular notice of them, while he +occupies his mind, as the competent head of a factory should, with the +things that are new and different and special and that his mind alone +can do--the things which, at least in their present initial formative or +creative stage, no machines as yet have been developed to do, and that +can only be worked out by the man up in the headquarters himself +personally, by the handiwork of his own thought. + +The more a human being develops, the more delicate, sensitive, strong, +and efficient, the more spirit-informed once for all the machines in the +basement are. As he grows, the various subconscious arrangements for +discriminating, assimilating and classifying material, for pumping up +power, light, and heat to headquarters, all of which can be turned on at +will, grow more masterful every year. They are found all slaving away +for him dimly down in the dark while he sleeps. They hand him up in his +very dreams new and strange powers to live and know with. + +The men who have been the most developed of all, in this regard, +civilization has always selected and set apart from the others. It calls +these men, in their generation, men of genius. + +Ordinary men do not try to compete with men of genius. + +The reason that people set the genius apart and do not try to compete +with him is that he has more and better machinery than they have. It is +always the first thing one notices about a man of genius--the incredible +number of things that he manages to get done for him, apparently the +things that he never takes any time off, like the rest of us, to do +himself. The subconscious, automatic, mechanical equipment of his +senses, the extraordinary intelligence and refinement of his body, the +way his senses keep his spirit informed automatically and convey outer +knowledge to him, the power he has in return of informing this outer +knowledge with his spirit, with his will, with his choices, once for all, +so that he is always able afterward to rely on his senses to work out +things beautifully for him quite by themselves, and to hand up to him, +when he wants them, rare, deep, unconscious knowledge--all the things he +wants to use for what his soul is doing at the moment--it is these that +make the man of genius what he is. He has a larger and better factory +than others, and has developed a huge subconscious service in mind and +body. Having all these things done for him, he is naturally more free +than others and has more vision and more originality, his spirit is +swung free to build new worlds--to take walks with God, until at last we +come to look upon him, upon the man of genius, a little superstitiously. +We look up every little while from doing the things ourselves that he +gets done for him by his subconscious machinery, and we wonder at him, +we wonder at the strange, the mighty feats he does, at his +thousand-leagued boots, at his apparent everywhereness. His songs and +joys, sometimes, to us, his very sorrows, look miraculous. + +And yet it is all merely because he has a factory, a great automatic +equipment, a thousand employee-sense perceptions, down in the basement +of his being, doing things for him that the rest of us do, or think we +are obliged to do ourselves, and give up all of our time to. He is not +held back as we are, and moves freely. So he dives under the sea +familiarly, or takes peeps at the farther side of the stars, or he flies +in the air, or he builds unspeakable railroads or thinks out ships or +sea-cities, or he builds books, or he builds little new +still-undreamed-of worlds out of chemistry, or he unravels history out +of rocks, or plants new cities and mighty states without seeming to try, +or perhaps he proceeds quietly to be interested in men, in all these +funny little dots of men about him; and out of the earth and sky, out of +the same old earth and sky everybody else had had, he makes new kinds +and new sizes of men with a thought like some mighty, serene child +playing with dolls! + +It is generally supposed that the man of genius rules history and +dictates the ideals, the activities of the next generation, writes out +the specifications for the joys and sorrows of a world, and lays the +ground-plans of nations because he has an inspired mind. It is really +because he has an inspired body, a body that has received its orders +once for all, from his spirit. We would never wonder that everything a +genius does has that vivid and strange reality it has, if we realized +what his body is doing for him, how he has a body which is at work +automatically drinking up the earth into everything he thinks, drinking +up practicability, art and technique for him into everything he sees and +everything he hopes and desires. And every year he keeps on adding a new +body, keeps on handing down to his basement new sets, every day, of +finer and yet finer things to do automatically. The great spiritual +genius becomes great by economizing his consciousness in one direction +and letting it fare forth in another. He converts his old inspirations +into his new machines. He converts heat into power, and power into +light, and comes to live at last as almost any man of genius can really +be seen living--in a kind of transfigured or lighted-up body. The poet +transmutes his subconscious or machine body into words; and the artist, +into colour or sound or into carved stone. The engineer transmutes his +subconscious body into long buildings, into aisles of windows, into +stories of thoughtful machines. Every great spiritual and imaginative +genius is seen, sooner or later, to be the transmuted genius of some +man's body. The things in Leonardo da Vinci that his unconscious, +high-spirited, automatic senses gathered together for him, piled up in +his mind for him, and handed over to him for the use of his soul, would +have made a genius out of anybody. It is not as if he had had to work +out every day all the old details of being a genius, himself. + +The miracles he seems to work are all made possible to him because of +his thousand man-power, deep subconscious body, his tremendous factory +of sensuous machinery. It is as if he had practically a thousand men all +working for him, for dear life, down in his basement, and the things +that he can get these men to attend to for him give him a start with +which none of the rest of us could ever hope to compete. We call him +inspired because he is more mechanical than we are, and because his real +spiritual life begins where our lives leave off. + +So the poets who have filled the world with glory and beauty have been +free to do it because they have had more perfect, more healthful and +improved subconscious senses handing up wonder to them than the rest of +us have. + +And so the engineers, living, as they always live, with that fierce, +silent, implacable curiosity of theirs, woven through their bodies and +through their senses and through their souls, have tagged the Creator's +footsteps under the earth, and along the sky, every now and then +throwing up new little worlds to Him like His worlds, saying, "Look, O +God, look at THIS!"--the engineers whose poetry is too deep to look +poetic have all done what they have done because the unconscious and +automatic gifts of their senses, of the powers of their observation, +have swung their souls free, given them long still reaches of thought +and vast new orbits of desire, like gods. + +All the great men of the world have always had machinery. + +Now, everybody is having it. The power to get little things, +innumerable, omnipresent, for-ever-and-ever things, tiny just-so things, +done for us automatically so that we can go on to our inspirations is no +longer to-day the special prerogative of men of genius. It is for all +of us. Machinery is the stored-up spirit, the old saved-up inspiration +of the world turned on for every man. And as the greatness of a man +turns on his command over machinery, on his power to free his soul by +making his body work for him, the greatness of a civilization turns upon +its getting machines to do its work. The more of our living we can learn +to do to-day, automatically, the more inspired and creative and godlike +and unmechanical our civilization becomes. + +Machinery is the subconscious mind of the world. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +THE GROUND FLOOR FOLKS + + +I would not have, if I could afford it, a thing in my house that is not +hand-made. I have come to believe that machinery is going to make it +possible for everybody to have hand-made things in their homes, things +that have been made by people who love to make them, and by people who, +thinks to the machines, are soon bound to have time to make them. Some +will have gifts for hand-made furniture, others for hand-made ideas. +Perhaps people will even have time for sitting down to enjoy hand-made +ideas, to enjoy hand-made books--and enjoy reading books by hand. We may +have time for following an author in a book in the slow, old, deep, +loving, happy, hand-made fashion we used to know--when we have enough +machines. + +It looks as if it might be something like this. + +Every man is going to spend his mornings in the basement of society, +taking orders and being a servant and executing automatically, like a +machine if need be, the will of the world, making what the world wants +in the way it wants it, expressing society and subordinating himself. In +the afternoon he shall come up out of the basement, and take his stand +on the ground floor of the world, stop being a part of the machinery, +and be a man, express himself and give orders to himself and do some +work he loves to do in the way he loves to do it, express his soul in +his labour, and be an artist. He will not select his work in the +morning, or select his employer, or say how the work shall be done. He +will himself be selected, like a young tree or like an iron nail, +because he is the best made and best fitted thing at hand to be used in +a certain place and in a certain way. + +When the man has been selected for his latent capacities, his employer +sets to work on him scientifically and according to the laws of physics, +hygiene, conservation of energy, the laws of philosophy, human nature, +heredity, psychology, and even metaphysics, teaches the man how to hold +his hands, how to lift, how to sit down, how to rest, and how to +breathe, so that three times as much work can be got out of him as he +could get out of himself. A mind of the highest rank and, if necessary, +thirty minds of the highest rank, shall be at his disposal, shall be +lent him to show him how his work can be done. The accumulated science +and genius, the imagination and experience, of hundreds of years, of all +climates, of all countries, of all temperaments shall be heaped up by +his employers, gathered about the man's mind, wrought through his limbs, +and help him to do his work. + +All labour down in the basement of society shall be skilled labour. The +brains of men of genius and of experts shall be pumped into labour from +above until every man in the basement shall earn as much money in three +hours a day as he formerly had earned in nine. + +Between the time a man saves by having machinery and the time he saves +by having the brains of great men and geniuses to work with, it will be +possible for men to do enough work for other people down in the basement +of the world in a few hours to shut the whole basement up, if we want +to, by three o'clock. Every man who is fit for it shall spend the rest +of his time in planning his work himself and in expressing himself, and +in creating hand-made and beautiful, inspired and wilful things like an +artist, or like a slowed-down genius, or at least like a man or like a +human being. + +Every man owes it to society to spend part of his time in expressing his +own soul. The world needs him. Society cannot afford to let him merely +give to it his feet and his hands. It wants the joy in him, the +creative desire in him, the slow, stupid, hopeful initiative, in him to +help run the world. Society wants to use the man's soul too--the man's +will. It is going to demand the soul in a man, the essence or good-will +in him, if only to protect itself, and to keep the man from being +dangerous. Men who have lost or suppressed their souls, and who go about +cursing at the world every day they live in it, are not a safe, social +investment. + +But while every man is going to see that he owes it to society to use a +part of his time in it in expressing himself, his own desires, in his +own way, he is going to see also that he owes it to society to spend +part of his time in expressing others and in expressing the desires and +the needs of others. The two processes could be best effected at first +probably by alternating, by keeping the man in equilibrium, balancing +the mechanical and the spiritual in his life. Eventually and ideally, he +will manage to have time in a higher state of society to put them +together, to express in the same act at the same time, and not +alternating or reciprocally, himself and others. And he will succeed in +doing what the great and free artist does already. He will make his +individual self-expression so great and so generous that it is also the +expression of the universal self. Every man will be treated according to +his own nature. Doubtless some men have not brains enough in a week to +supply them for one hour a day of self-directed work. It would take them +five hours a day to think how to do one hour's worth of work. Men who +prefer, as many will, not to think, and who like the basement better, +can substitute in the basement for their sons, and buy if they like, the +freedom of sons who prefer thinking, who would like to work harder than +their fathers would care to work, up on the ground floor of the world. +But as time goes on, it is to be hoped that every man will climb up +slowly, and will belong less and less of his time to the staff that +borrows brains, and more and more of his time to the staff that hands +brains down, and that directs the machinery of the world. The time of +alternation in dealing with different callings will probably be adjusted +differently, and might be made weeks instead of days, but the principle +would be the same. The forces that are going to help, apparently, in +this evolution will be the labour exchange--the centre for the +mobilization of labour, the produce exchange, the inventor's spirit in +the labour unions and employers' associations, and the gradual +organization by inventors of the common vision of all men, and setting +it at work on the supreme task of modern life--the task of drawing out, +evoking each particular man in the world, and in behalf of all, freeing +him for his own particular place. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +THE MACHINE-TRAINERS + + +The fundamental failure of humanity so far is in self-assertion. + +The essential distinctive trait of modern civilization is machinery. + +Machinery logically and irrevocably involves the coöperative action of +individuals. + +If we make levers and iron wheels work by putting them together +according to their nature, we can only make vast masses of men work by +putting them together according to their nature. + +So far we have been trying to make vast masses of men work together in +precisely the same way we make levers and iron wheels work together. We +have thought we could make diabolically, foolishly, insanely inflexible +men-machines which violate at every point the natural qualities and +instincts of the materials of which they are made. + +We have failed to assert ourselves against our iron machines. We have +let our iron machines assert themselves against us. We have let our iron +machines be models for us. We have overlooked the difference in the +nature of the materials in machines of iron and machines of men. + +A man is a self-reproducing machine, and an iron machine is one that has +to be reproduced by somebody else. + +In a man-machine arrangements must be made so that each man can be +allowed to be the father of his own children and the author of his own +acts. + +In society or the man-machine, if it is to work, men are individuals. +Society is organically, irrevocably dependent upon each man, and upon +what each man chooses according to his own nature to do himself. + +The result is, the first principle of success in constructing and +running a social machine is to ask and to get an answer out of each man +who is, as we look him over and take him up, and propose to put him into +it, "What are you like?" "What are you especially for?" "What do you +want?" "How can you get it?" + +Our success in getting him properly into our machine turns upon a loyal, +patient, imperious attention on our part to what there is inside him, +inside the particular individual man, and how we can get him to let us +know what is inside, get him to decide voluntarily to let us have it, +and let us work it into the common end. + +In this amazing, impromptu, new, and hurried machine civilization which +we have been piling up around us for a hundred years we have made +machines out of everything, and our one consummate and glaring failure +in the machines we have made is the machine we have made out of +ourselves. + +Mineral machines are made by putting comparatively dead, or at least +dead-looking, matter together; vegetable machines or gardens, are made +by studying little unconscious seeds that we can persuade to come up and +to reproduce themselves. Man-machines are produced by putting up +possible lives before particular individual men, and letting them find +out (and finding out for ourselves, too), day by day, into which life +they will grow up. + +Everything in a social machine, if it is a machine that really works, is +based on the profound and special study of individuals: upon drawing out +the aptitudes and motives, choices and genius in each man; the passion, +if he has any; the creative desire, the self-expressing, +self-reproducing, inner manhood; the happy strength there is in him. + +Trades unions overlook this, and treat all men alike and all employers +alike. Employers have very largely overlooked it. + +It is the industrial, social, and religious secret of our modern machine +civilization. We need not be discouraged about machines, because the +secret of the machine civilization has as yet barely been noticed. + +The elephants are running around in the garden. But they have merely +taken us by surprise. It is their first and their last chance. The men +about us are seeing what to do. We are to get control of the elephants, +first, by getting control of ourselves. We are beginning to organize our +people-machines as if they were made of people; so that the people in +them can keep on being people, and being better ones. And as our +people-machines begin to become machines that really work, our iron +machines will no longer be feared. They will reach over and help. As we +look about us we shall see our iron machines at last, about all the +world, all joining in, all hard at work for us, a million, million +machines a day making the crowd beautiful. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +MACHINES, CROWDS, AND ARTISTS + + +A crowd civilization produces, as a matter of course, crowd art and art +for crowded conditions. This fact is at once the glory and the weakness +of the kind of art a democracy is bound to have. + +The most natural evidence to turn to first, of the crowd in a crowd age, +is such as can be found in its literature, especially in its +masterpieces. + +The significance of shaking hands with a Senator of the United States is +that it is a convenient and labour-saving way of shaking hands with two +or three million people. The impressiveness of the Senator's Washington +voice, the voice on the floor of the Senate, consists in the mystical +undertone--the chorus in it--multitudes in smoking cities, men and +women, rich and poor, who are speaking when this man speaks, and who are +silent when he is silent, in the government of the United States. + +The typical fact that the Senator stands for in modern life has a +corresponding typical fact in modern literature. The typical fact in +modern literature is the epigram, the senatorial sentence, the sentence +that immeasurably represents what it does not say. The difference +between democracy in Washington and democracy in Athens may be said to +be that in Washington we have an epigram government, a government in +which ninety million people are crowded into two rooms to consider what +to do, and in which ninety million people are made to sit in one chair +to see that it is done. In Athens every man represented himself. + +It may be said to be a good working distinction between modern and +classic art that in modern art words and colours and sounds stand for +things, and in classic art they said them. In the art of the Greek, +things were what they seemed, and they were all there. Hence simplicity. +It is a quality of the art of to-day that things are not what they seem +in it. If they were, we should not call it art at all. Everything stands +not only for itself and for what it says, but for an immeasurable +something that cannot be said. Every sound in music is the senator of a +thousand sounds, thoughts, and associations, and in literature every +word that is allowed to appear is the representative in three syllables +of three pages of a dictionary. The whistle of the locomotive, and the +ring of the telephone, and the still, swift rush of the elevator are +making themselves felt in the ideal world. They are proclaiming to the +ideal world that the real world is outstripping it. The twelve thousand +horsepower steamer does not find itself accurately expressed in iambics +on the leisurely fleet of Ulysses. It is seeking new expression. The +command has gone forth over all the beauty and over all the art of the +present world, crowded for time and crowded for space. "Telegraph!" To +the nine Muses the order flies. One can hear it on every side. +"Telegraph!" The result is symbolism, the Morse alphabet of art and +"types," the epigrams of human nature, crowding us all into ten or +twelve people. The epic is telescoped into the sonnet, and the sonnet is +compressed into quatrains or Tabbs of poetry, and couplets are signed as +masterpieces. The novel has come into being--several hundred pages of +crowded people in crowded sentences, jostling each other to oblivion; +and now the novel, jostled into oblivion by the next novel, is becoming +the short story. Kipling's short stories sum the situation up. So far as +skeleton or plot is concerned, they are built up out of a bit of nothing +put with an infinity of Kipling; so far as meat is concerned, they are +the Liebig Beef Extract of fiction. A single jar of Kipling contains a +whole herd of old-time novels lowing on a hundred hills. + +The classic of any given world is a work of art that has passed through +the same process in being a work of art that that world has passed +through in being a world. Mr. Kipling represents a crowd age, because he +is crowded with it; because, above all others, he is the man who +produces art in the way the age he lives in is producing everything +else. + +This is no mere circumstance of democracy. It is its manifest destiny +that it shall produce art for crowded conditions, that it shall have +crowd art. The kind of beauty that can be indefinitely multiplied is the +kind of beauty in which, in the nature of things, we have made our most +characteristic and most important progress. Our most considerable +success in pictures could not be otherwise than in black and white. +Black-and-white art is printing-press art; and art that can be produced +in endless copies, that can be subscribed for by crowds, finds an +extraordinary demand, and artists have applied themselves to supplying +it. All the improvements, moving on through the use of wood and steel +and copper, and the process of etching, to the photogravure, the +lithograph, the moving picture, and the latest photograph in colour, +whatever else may be said of them from the point of view of Titian or +Michael Angelo, constitute a most amazing and triumphant advance from +the point of view of making art a democracy, of making the rare and the +beautiful minister day and night to crowds. The fact that the mechanical +arts are so prominent in their relation to the fine arts may not seem to +argue a high ideal amongst us; but as the mechanical arts are the body +of beauty, and the fine arts are the soul of it, it is a necessary part +of the ideal to keep body and soul together until we can do better. +Mourning with Ruskin is not so much to the point as going to work with +William Morris. If we have deeper feelings about wall-papers than we +have about other things, it is going to the root of the matter to begin +with wall-papers, to make machinery say something as beautiful as +possible, inasmuch as it is bound to have, for a long time at least, +about all the say there is. The photograph does not go about the world +doing Murillos everywhere by pressing a button, but the camera habit is +doing more in the way of steady daily hydraulic lifting of great masses +of men to where they enjoy beauty in the world than Leonardo da Vinci +would have dared to dream in his far-off day; and Leonardo's pictures, +thanks to the same photograph, and everybody's pictures, films of paper, +countless spirits of themselves, pass around the world to every home in +Christendom. The printing press made literature a democracy, and +machinery is making all the arts democracies. The symphony piano, an +invention for making vast numbers of people who can play only a few very +poor things play very poorly a great many good ones, is a consummate +instance both of the limitation and the value of our contemporary +tendency in the arts. The pipe organ, though on a much higher plane, is +an equally characteristic contrivance making it possible for a man to be +a complete orchestra and a conductor all by himself, playing on a crowd +of instruments, to a crowd of people, with two hands and one pair of +feet. It is a crowd invention. The orchestra--a most distinctively +modern institution, a kind of republic of sound, the unseen spirit of +the many in one--is the sublimest expression yet attained of the crowd +music, which is, and must be, the supreme music of this modern day, the +symphony. Richard Wagner comes to his triumph because his music is the +voice of multitudes. The opera, a crowd of sounds accompanied by a crowd +of sights, presented by one crowd of people on the stage to another +crowd of people in the galleries, stands for the same tendency in art +that the syndicate stands for in commerce. It is syndicate music; and in +proportion as a musical composition in this present day is an +aggregation of multitudinous moods, in proportion as it is suggestive, +complex, paradoxical, the way a crowd is complex, suggestive, and +paradoxical--provided it be wrought at the same time into some vast and +splendid unity--just in this proportion is it modern music. It gives +itself to the counterpoints of the spirit, the passion of variety in +modern life. The legacy of all the ages, is it not descended upon +us?--the spirit of a thousand nations? All our arts are thousand-nation +arts, shadows and echoes of dead worlds playing upon our own. Italian +music, out of its feudal kingdoms, comes to us as essentially solo +music--melody; and the civilization of Greece, being a civilization of +heroes, individuals, comes to us in its noble array with its solo arts, +its striding heroes everywhere in front of all, and with nothing nearer +to the people in it than the Greek Chorus, which, out of limbo, pale and +featureless across all ages, sounds to us as the first far faint coming +of the crowd to the arts of this groping world. Modern art, inheriting +each of these and each of all things, is revealed to us as the struggle +to express all things at once. Democracy is democracy for this very +reason, and for no other: that all things may be expressed at once in +it, and that all things may be given a chance to be expressed at once in +it. Being a race of hero-worshippers, the Greeks said the best, perhaps, +what could be said in sculpture; but the marbles and bronzes of a +democracy, having average men for subjects, and being done by average +men, are average marbles and bronzes. We express what we have. We are in +a transition stage. It is not without its significance, however, that we +have perfected the plaster cast--the establishment of democracy among +statues, and mobs of Greek gods mingling with the people can be seen +almost any day in every considerable city of the world. The same +principle is working itself out in our architecture. It is idle to +contend against the principle. The way out is the way through. However +eagerly we gaze at Parthenons on their ruined hills, if thirty-one-story +blocks are in our souls thirty-one-story blocks will be our +masterpieces, whether we like it or not. They will be our masterpieces +because they tell the truth about us; and while truth may not be +beautiful, it is the thing that must be told first before beauty can +begin. The beauty we are to have shall only be worked out from the truth +we have. Living as we do in a new era, not to see that the +thirty-one-story block is the expression of a new truth is to turn +ourselves away from the one way that beauty can ever be found by men, in +this era or in any other. + +What is it that the thirty-one-story block is trying to say about us? +The thirty-one-story block is the masterpiece of mass, of immensity, of +numbers; with its 2427 windows and its 779 offices, and its crowds of +lives piled upon lives, it is expressing the one supreme and +characteristic thing that is taking place in the era in which we live. +The city is the main fact that modern civilization stands for, and +crowding is the logical architectural form of the city idea. The +thirty-one-story block is the statue of a crowd. It stands for a +spiritual fact, and it will never be beautiful until that fact is +beautiful. The only way to make the thirty-one-story block beautiful +(the crowd expressed by the crowd) is to make the crowd beautiful. The +most artistic, the only artistic, thing the world can do next is to make +the crowd beautiful. + +The typical city blocks, with their garrets in the lower stories of the +sky, were not possible in the ancient world, because steel had not been +invented; and the invention of steel, which is not the least of our +triumphs in the mechanical arts, is in many ways the most +characteristic. Steel is republican for stone. Putting whole quarries +into a single girder, it makes room for crowds; and what is more +significant than this, inasmuch as the steel pillar is an invention that +makes it possible to put floors up first, and build the walls around the +floors, instead of putting the walls up first and supporting the floors +upon the walls, as in the ancient world, it has come to pass that the +modern world being the ancient world turned upside down, modern +architecture is ancient architecture turned inside out, a symbol of many +things. The ancient world was a wall of individuals, supporting floor +after floor and stage after stage of society, from the lowest to the +highest; and it is a typical fact in this modern democratic world that +it grows from the inside, and that it supports itself from the inside. +When the mass in the centre has been finished, an ornamental stone +facing of great individuals will be built around it and supported by it, +and the work will be considered done. + +The modern spirit has much to boast of in its mechanical arts, and in +its fine arts almost nothing, because the mechanical arts are studying +what men are needing to-day, and the fine arts are studying what the +Greeks needed three thousand years ago. To be a real classic is, first, +to be a contemporary of one's own time; second, to be a contemporary of +one's own time so deeply and widely as to be a contemporary of all time. +The true Greek is a man who is doing with his own age what the Greeks +did with theirs, bringing all ages to bear upon it, and interpreting it. +As long as the fine arts miss the fundamental principle of this present +age--the crowd principle, and the mechanical arts do not, the mechanical +arts are bound to have their way with us. And it were vastly better that +they should. Sincere and straightforward mechanical arts are not only +more beautiful than affected fine ones, but they are more to the point: +they are the one sure sign we have of where we are going to be beautiful +next. It is impossible to love the fine arts in the year 1913 without +studying the mechanical ones; without finding one's self looking for +artistic material in the things that people are using, and that they are +obliged to use. The determining law of a thing of beauty being, in the +nature of things, what it is for, the very essence of the classic +attitude in a utilitarian age is to make the beautiful follow the useful +and inspire the useful with its spirit. The fine art of the next +thousand years shall be the transfiguring of the mechanical arts. The +modern hotel, having been made necessary by great natural forces in +modern life, and having been made possible by new mechanical arts, now +puts itself forward as the next great opportunity of the fine arts. One +of the characteristic achievements of the immediate future shall be the +twentieth-century Parthenon--a Parthenon not of the great and of the few +and of the gods, but of the great many, where, through mighty corridors, +day and night, democracy wanders and sleeps and chatters and is sad and +lives and dies, streets rumbling below. The hotel--the crowd +fireside--being more than any other one thing, perhaps, the thing that +this civilization is about, the token of what it loves and of how it +lives, is bound to be a masterpiece sooner or later that shall express +democracy. The hotel rotunda, the parlour for multitudes, is bound to be +made beautiful in ways we do not guess. Why should we guess? Multitudes +have never wanted parlours before. The idea of a parlour has been to get +out of a multitude. All the inevitable problems that come of having a +whole city of families live in one house have yet to be solved by the +fine arts as well as by the mechanical ones. We have barely begun. The +time is bound to come when the radiator, the crowd's fireplace-in-a-pipe, +shall be made beautiful; and when the electric light shall be taught +the secret of the candle; and when the especial problem of modern +life--of how to make two rooms as good as twelve--shall be mastered +æsthetically as well as mathematically; and when even the piano-folding, +bed-bookcase-toilet-stand-writing-desk--a crowd invention for living +in a crowd--shall either take beauty to itself or lead to beauty that +serves the same end. + +While for the time being it seems to be true that the fine arts are +looking to the past, the mechanical arts are producing conditions in the +future that will bring the fine arts to terms, whether they want to be +brought to terms or not. The mechanical arts hold the situation in their +hands. It is decreed that people who cannot begin by making the things +they use beautiful shall be allowed no beauty in other things. We may +wish that Parthenons and cathedrals were within our souls; but what the +cathedral said of an age that had the cathedral mood, that had a +cathedral civilization and thrones and popes in it, we are bound to say +in some stupendous fashion of our own--something which, when it is built +at last, will be left worshipping upon the ground beneath the sky when +we are dead, as a memorial that we too have lived. The great cathedrals, +with the feet of the huddled and dreary poor upon their floors, and +saints and heroes shining on their pillars, and priests behind the +chancel with God to themselves, and the vast and vacant nave, symbol of +the heaven glimmering above that few could reach--it is not to these +that we shall look to get ourselves said to the nations that are now +unborn; rather, though it be strange to say it, we shall look to +something like the ocean steamship--cathedral of this huge unresting +modern world--under the wide heaven, on the infinite seas, with spars +for towers and the empty nave reversed filled with human beings' +souls--the cathedral of crowds hurrying to crowds. There are hundreds of +them throbbing and gleaming in the night--this very moment--lonely +cities in the hollow of the stars, bringing together the nations of the +earth. + +When the spirit of our modern way of living, the idea in it, the bare +facts about our modern human nature have been noticed at last by our +modern artists, masterpieces shall come to us out of every great and +living activity in our lives. Art shall tell the things these lives are +about. When this is once realized in America as it was in Greece, the +fine arts shall cover the other arts as the waters cover the sea. The +Brooklyn Bridge, swinging its web for immortal souls across sky and sea, +comes nearer to being a work of art than almost anything we possess +to-day, because it tells the truth, because it is the material form of a +spiritual idea, because it is a sublime and beautiful expression of New +York in the way that the Acropolis was a sublime and beautiful +expression of Athens. The Acropolis was beautiful because it was the +abode of heroes, of great individuals; and the Brooklyn Bridge, because +it expresses the bringing together of millions of men. It is the +architecture of crowds--this Brooklyn Bridge--with winds and sunsets and +the dark and the tides of souls upon it; it is the type and symbol of +the kind of thing that our modern genius is bound to make beautiful and +immortal before it dies. The very word "bridge" is the symbol of the +future of art and of everything else, the bringing together of things +that are apart--democracy. The bridge, which makes land across the +water, and the boat, which makes land on the water, and the cable, which +makes land and water alike--these are the physical forms of the spirit +of modern life, the democracy of matter. But the spirit has countless +forms. They are all new and they are all waiting to be made beautiful. +The dumb crowd waits in them. We have electricity--the life current of +the republican idea--characteristically our foremost invention, because +it takes all power that belongs to individual places and puts it on a +wire and carries it to all places. We have the telephone, an invention +which makes it possible for a man to live on a back street and be a +next-door neighbour to boulevards; and we have the trolley, the modern +reduction of the private carriage to its lowest terms, so that any man +for five cents can have as much carriage power as Napoleon with all his +chariots. We have the phonograph, an invention which gives a man a +thousand voices; which sets him to singing a thousand songs at the same +time to a thousand crowds; which makes it possible for the commonest man +to hear the whisper of Bismarck or Gladstone, to unwind crowds of great +men by the firelight of his own house. We have the elevator, an +invention for making the many as well off as the few, an approximate +arrangement for giving first floors to everybody, and putting all men on +a level at the same price--one more of a thousand instances of the +extraordinary manner in which the mechanical arts have devoted +themselves from first to last to the Constitution of the United States. +While it cannot be said of many of these tools of existence that they +are beautiful now, it is enough to affirm that when they are perfected +they will be beautiful; and that if we cannot make beautiful the things +that we need, we cannot expect to make beautiful the things that we +merely want. When the beauty of these things is at last brought out, we +shall have attained the most characteristic and original and expressive +and beautiful art that is in our power. It will be unprecedented +because it will tell unprecedented truths. It was the mission of +ancient art to express states of being and individuals, and it may be +said to be in a general way the mission of our modern art to express the +beautiful in endless change, the movement of masses, coming to its +sublimity and immortality at last by revealing the beauty of the things +that move and that have to do with motion, the bringing of all things +and of all souls together on the earth. + +The fulfillment of the word that has been written, "Your valleys shall +be exalted, and your mountains shall be made low," is by no means a +beautiful process. Democracy is the grading principle of the beautiful. +The natural tendency the arts have had from the first to rise from the +level of the world, to make themselves into Switzerlands in it, is +finding itself confronted with the Constitution of the United States--a +Constitution which, whatever it may be said to mean in the years to +come, has placed itself on record up to the present time, at least, as +standing for the tableland. + +The very least that can be granted to this Constitution is that it is so +consummate a political document that it has made itself the creed of our +theology, philosophy, and sociology; the principle of our commerce and +industry; the law of production, education, and journalism; the method +of our life; the controlling characteristic and the significant force in +our literature; and the thing our religion and our arts are about. + + + + +PART THREE + +PEOPLE-MACHINES + +CHAPTER I + +NOW! + + +This outlook or glimmer of vision I have tried to trace, for the art of +crowds is something we want, and want daily, in the future. We want +daily a future. But, after all, it is a future. + +I speak in this present chapter as one of the crowd who wants something +now. + +I find myself in a world in which apparently some vast anonymous +arrangement was made about me and about my life, before I was born. This +arrangement seems to be, as I understand it, that if I want to live +while I am on this planet a certain sort of life or be a certain sort of +person, I am expected practically to take out a permit for it from the +proper authorities. + +In the previous chapter I made a request of the authorities, as perhaps +the reader will remember. I said, "I want to be good now." + +In this one I have a further request to make of the authorities: "I want +to be beautiful." + +I want to be beautiful now. + +I find thousands of other people about me on every hand making these +same two requests. I find that the authorities do not seem to notice +their requests any more than they have noticed mine. + +Some of us have begun to suspect that we must have made the request in +the wrong way. Perhaps we should not ask a world--a great, vague thing +like the world in general--to make any slight arrangement we may need +for being beautiful. We have come to feel that we must ask somebody in +particular, and do something in particular, and find some one in +particular with whom we can do it. There is getting to be but one course +open to a man if he wants to be beautiful. He must bone down and work +hard with his soul, make himself see precisely what it is and who it is +standing between him and a beautiful world. He must ask particular +persons in particular positions if they do not think he ought to be +allowed to be beautiful. He must ask some millionaire probably +first--his employer, for instance--to stop getting in his way, and at +least to step one side and let him reason with him. And when he cannot +ask his millionaire--his own particular humdrum millionaire--to step one +side and reason with him, he must ask iron-machines to step one side and +reason with him. After this he must ask crowds to please to step one +side and reason with him. + +Whatever happens, he is sure to find always these same three great, +imponderable obstructions in the way of his being beautiful--the humdrum +millionaires, the iron-machines, and crowds. + +In the old days when any one wanted to be beautiful he found it more +convenient. There was very likely some one who was more beautiful than +he was nearby, some one who found him craving the same thing that he had +craved, and who recognized it and delighted in it, and who could make +room and help. + +Nowadays, if one wants to be beautiful one must ask everybody. Every man +finds it the same. He must ask millions of people to let him be +something, one after the other in rows, that they do not want him to be +or do not care whether he is or not. He has to ask more people than he +could count, before he dies, to let him be beautiful. Many of them that +he has to ask, sometimes most of them, are his inferiors. + +I have tried to deal with how it is going to be possible for a man to +break through to being beautiful, past millionaires and past +iron-machines. I would like now to deal with the people-machines or +crowds, and how perhaps to break past them and be beautiful in behalf of +them, in spite of them. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +COMMITTEES AND COMMITTEES + + +The problem seems to be something like this. One finds one has been born +and put here whether or no, and that one is inextricably alive in a +state of society in which men are coming to live in a kind of vast +disease of being obliged to do everything together. + +We are still old-fashioned enough to be born one at a time, but we are +educated in litters and we do our work in the world in herds and gangs. +Even the upper classes do their work in gangs, and with overseers and +little crowds called committees. Our latest idea consists in putting +parts of a great many different men together to make one great +one--forming a committee to make a man of genius. + +There is no denying that, in a way, a committee does things; but what +becomes of the committee? + +And the lower in the scale of life we go the more committees it takes to +do the work of one man and the more impossible it becomes to find +anything but parts of men to do things. I put it frankly to the reader. +The chances are nine out of ten that when you meet a man nowadays and +look at him hard or try to do something with him you find he is not a +man at all but is some subsection of a committee. You cannot even talk +with such a man without selecting some subsection of some subject which +interests him; and if you select any other subsection than his +subsection he will think you a bore; and if you select his subsection he +will think that you do not know anything. + +And if you want to get anything done that is different, or that is the +least bit interesting, and want to get some one to do it, how will you +go about it? You will find yourself being sent from one person to +another; and before you know it you find yourself mixed up with nine or +ten subdivisions of nine or ten committees; and after you have got your +nine or ten subsections of nine or ten committees to get together to +consider what it is you want done, they will tell you, after due +deliberation, that it is not worth doing, or that you had better do it +yourself. Then every subsection of every committee will go home +muttering under its breath to every other subsection that a man who +wants slightly different and interesting things done in society is a +public nuisance; and that the man who does not know what subsection he +is in and what subsection of a man he was intended to be, and who tries +to do things, carries dismay and anger on every side around him. Drop +into your pigeonhole and be filed away, O Gentle Reader! Do you think +you are a soul? No; you are Series B. No. 2574, top row on the left. + +In my morning paper the other day I read that in a factory whose long +windows I often pass in the train, they have their machinery so +perfected that it takes sixty-four machines to make one shoe. + +Query--If it takes sixty-four machines run by sixty-four men who do +nothing else to make one shoe, how many machines would it take, and how +many shoes, to make one man? + +Query--And when an employer in a shoe factory deals with his employee, +can it really be said, after all, that he is dealing with _him_? He is +dealing with _It_--with Nine Hours a Day, of one sixty-fourth of a man. + +The natural effect of crowds and of machines is to make a man feel that +he is, and always was, and always will be, immemorially, unanimously, +innumerably nobody. + +Sometimes we are allowed a little faint numeral to dangle up over our +oblivion. Not long ago I saw a notice or letter in the _West +Bulletin_--probably from a member of something--ending like this: "... +I hope the readers of the _Bulletin_ will ponder over this suggestion of +_Number_ 29,619.--Sincerely yours, _No._ 11, 175." + + + + +CHAPTER III + +THE INCONVENIENCE OF BEING HUMAN + + +I shall never forget one day I spent in New York some years ago--more +years than I thought at first. It was a wrong-headed day, but I cannot +help remembering it as a symbol of a dread I still feel at times in New +York--a feeling of being suddenly lifted, of being swept out under (it +is like the undertow of the sea) into a kind of vast deep of +impersonality--swept out of myself into a wide, imperious waste or +emptiness of people. I had come fresh from my still country meadow and +mountain, my own trees and my own bobolinks and my own little island of +sky up over me, and in the vast and desolate solitude of men and women I +wandered about up and down the streets. Every block I saw, every window, +skyline, engine, street-car, every human face, made me feel as if I +belonged to another world. Here was a great conspiracy in stone and iron +against my own life with myself. Was there a soul in all this huge roar +and spectacle of glass and stone and passion that cared for the things +that I cared for, or the things that I loved, or that would care one +shuffle of all the feet upon the stones for any thought or word or +desire of mine? The rain swept in my face, and I spent the day walking +up and down the streets looking at stones and glass and people. _"Here +we are!"_ say the great buildings crowding on the sky. _"Who are +you?"_....all the stone and the glass and the walls, the mighty +syndicate of matter everywhere, surrounded me--one little, shivering, +foolish mote of being fighting foolishly for its own little foolish mote +of identity! + +And I do not believe that I was all wrong. New York, like some vast, +implacable cone of ether, some merciless anæsthetic, was thrust down +over me and my breathing, and I still had a kind of left-over prejudice +that I wanted to be myself, with my own private self-respect, with my +own private, temporarily finished-off, provisionally complete +personality. I felt then, and I still feel to-day, that every man, as he +fights for his breath, must stand out at least part of his time for the +right of being self-contained. It is, and always will be, one of the +appalling sights of New York to me--the spectacle of the helplessness, +the wistfulness, of all those poor New York people without one another. +Sometimes the city seems to be a kind of huge monument or idol or shrine +of crowds. It seems to be a part of the ceaseless crowd action or crowd +corrosion on the sense of identity in the human spirit that the man who +lives in crowds should grow more dull and more literal about himself +every day. He becomes a mere millionth of something. All these other +people he sees about him hurrying to and fro are mere millionths too. He +grows more and more obliged to live with a vast bulk of people if he is +to notice people at all. Unless he sees all the different kinds of +people and forms of life with his own eye, and feels human beings with +his hands, as it were, he does not know and sympathize with them. The +crowd-craving or love of continual city life on the part of many people +comes to be a sheer lack of imagination, an inability to live in +qualities instead of quantities in men. To live merely in a city is not +to know the real flavour of life any more than the daily paper knows +it--the daily paper, the huge dull monster of observation, the seer of +outsides. The whole effect of crowds on the individual man is to +emphasize scareheads and appearances, advertisements, and the huge +general showing off. The ride in the train from New Haven to New York is +the true portrait of a crowd. Crowds of soaps and patent medicines +straining on trees and signboard out of the gentle fields toward crowds +of men, culminating at last in Woodlawn Cemetery, where the marble +signposts of death flaunt themselves. Oblivion itself is advertised, and +the end of the show of a show world is placarded on our graves. Men buy +space in papers for cards, and bits of country scenery by the great +railroads to put up signboards, and they spend money and make constant +efforts to advertise that they are alive, and then they build expensive +monuments to advertise that they are dead.... + +The same craving for piled-up appearances is brought to bear by crowds +upon their arts. Even a gentle soul like Paderewski, full of a personal +and strange beauty that he could lend to everything he touched, finds +himself swept out of himself at last by the huge undertow of crowds. +Scarcely a season but his playing has become worn down at the end of it +into shrieks and hushes. Have I not watched him at the end of a tour, +when, one audience after the other, those huge Svengalis had hypnotized +him--thundering his very subtleties at them, hour after hour, in +Carnegie Hall? One could only wonder what had happened, sit by +helplessly, watch the crowd--thousands of headlong human beings lunging +their souls and their bodies through the music, weeping, gasping, +huzzaing, and clapping to one another. After every crash of new +crescendo, after every precipice of silence, they seemed to be crying, +"This is Soul! Oh, this is Soul!" The feeling of a vast audience holding +its breath, no matter why it does it or whether it ought to do it or +not, seems to have become almost a religious rite of itself. Vistas of +faces gallery after gallery hanging on a note, two or three thousand +souls suspended in space all on one tiny little ivory lever at the end +of one man's forefinger ... dim lights shining on them and soft +vibrations floating round them ... going to hear Paderewski play at the +end of his season was going to hear a crowd at a piano singing with its +own hands and having a kind of orgy with itself. One could only remember +that there had been a Paderewski once who hypnotized and possessed his +audience by being hypnotized and possessed by his own music. One liked +to remember him--the Paderewski who was really an artist and who +performed the function of the artist showering imperiously his own +visions on the hearts of the people. + +And what is true in music one finds still truer in the other arts. One +keeps coming on it everywhere--the egotism of cities, the +self-complacency of the crowds swerving the finer and the truer artists +from their functions, making them sing in hoarse crowd-voices instead of +singing in their own and giving us themselves. Nearly all our acting has +been corroded by crowds. Some of us have been obliged almost to give up +going to the theatre except to very little ones, and we are wondering if +churches cannot possibly be made small enough to believe great things, +or if galleries cannot be arranged with few enough people in them to +allow us great paintings, or if there will not be an author so well +known to a few men that he will live forever, or if some newspaper will +not yet be great enough to advertise that it has a circulation small +enough to tell the truth. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +LETTING THE CROWD HAVE PEOPLE IN IT + + +So we face the issue. + +Nothing beautiful can be accomplished in a crowd civilization, by the +crowd for the crowd, unless the crowd is beautiful. No man who is +engaged in looking under the lives about him, who wishes to face the +facts of these lives as they are lived to-day, will find himself able to +avoid this last and most important fact in the history of the world--the +fact that, whatever it may mean, or whether it is for better or worse, +the world has staked all that it is and has been, and all that it is +capable of being, on the one supreme issue, "How can the crowd be made +beautiful?" + +The answer to this question involves two difficulties: (1) A crowd +cannot make itself beautiful. (2) A crowd will not let any one else make +it beautiful. + +The men who have been on the whole the most eager democrats of +history--the real-idealists--the men who love the crowd and the +beautiful too, and who can have no honest or human pleasure in either of +them except as they are being drawn together, are obliged to admit that +living in a democratic country, a country where politics and æsthetics +can no longer be kept apart, is an ordeal that can only be faced a large +part of the time with heavy hearts. We are obliged to admit that it is a +country where paintings have little but the Constitution of the United +States wrought into them; where sculpture is voted and paid for by the +common people; where music is composed for majorities; where poetry is +sung to a circulation; where literature itself is scaled to +subscription lists; where all the creators of the True and the Beautiful +and the Good may be seen almost any day tramping the tableland of the +average man, fed by the average man, allowed to live by the average man, +plodding along with weary and dusty steps to the average man's +forgetfulness. And, indeed, it is not the least trait of this same +average man that he forgets, that he is forgotten, that his slaves are +forgotten, that the world remembers only those who have been his +masters. + +On the other hand, the literature of finding fault with the average man +(which is what the larger part of our more ambitious literature really +is) is not a kind of literature that can do anything to mend matters. +The art of finding fault with the average man, with the fact that the +world is made convenient for him, is inferior art because it is helpless +art. The world is made convenient for the average man because it has to +be, to get him to live in it; and if the world were not made convenient +for him, the man of genius would find living with him a great deal more +uncomfortable than he does. He would not even be allowed the comfort of +saying how uncomfortable. The world belongs to the average man, and, +excepting the stars and other things that are too big to belong to him, +the moment the average man deserves anything better in it or more +beautiful in it than he is getting, some man of genius rises by his +side, in spite of him, and claims it for him. Then he slowly claims it +for himself. The last thing to do, to make the world a good place for +the average man, would be to make it a world with nothing but average +men in it. If it is the ideal of democracy that there shall be a slow +massive lifting, a grading up of all things at once; that whatever is +highest in the true and the beautiful, and whatever is lowest in them +shall be graded down and graded up to the middle height of human life, +where the greatest numbers shall make their home and live upon it; if +the ideal of democracy is tableland--that is--mountains for +everybody--a few mountains must be kept on hand to make tableland out +of. + +Two solutions, then, of a crowd civilization--having the extraordinary +men crowded out of it as a convenience to the average ones, and having +the average men crowded out of it as a convenience to the extraordinary +ones--are equally impracticable. + +This brings us to the horns of our dilemma. If the crowd cannot be made +beautiful by itself, and if the crowd will not allow itself to be made +beautiful by any one else, the crowd can only be made beautiful by a man +who lives so great a life in it that he can make a crowd beautiful +whether it allows him to or not. + +When this man is born to us and looks out on the conditions around him, +he will find that to be born in a crowd civilization is to be born in a +civilization, first, in which every man can do as he pleases; second, in +which nobody does. Every man is given by the Government absolute +freedom; and when it has given him absolute freedom the Government says +to him, "Now if you can get enough other men, with their absolute +freedom, to put their absolute freedom with your absolute freedom, you +can use your absolute freedom in any way you want." Democracy, seeking +to free a man from being a slave to one master, has simply increased the +number of masters a man shall have. He is hemmed in with crowds of +masters. He cannot see his master's huge amorphous face. He cannot go to +his master and reason with him. He cannot even plead with him. You can +cry your heart out to one of these modern ballot-boxes. You have but one +ballot. They will not count tears. The ultimate question in a crowd +civilization becomes, not "What does a thing mean?" or "What is it +worth?" but "How much is there of it?" "If thou art a great man," says +civilization, "get thou a crowd for thy greatness. Then come with thy +crowd and we will deal with thee. It shall be even as thou wilt." The +pressure has become so great, as is obvious on every side, that men who +are of small or ordinary calibre can only be more pressed by it. They +are pressed smaller and smaller--the more they are civilized, the +smaller they are pressed; and we are being daily brought face to face +with the fact that the one solution a crowd civilization can have for +the evil of being a crowd civilization is the man in the crowd who can +withstand the pressure of the crowd; that is to say, the one solution of +a crowd civilization is the great-man solution--a solution which is none +the less true because by name, at least, it leaves most of us out or +because it is so familiar that we have forgotten it. The one method by +which a crowd can be freed and can be made to realize itself is the +great-man method--the method of crucifying and worshipping great men, +until by crucifying and worshipping great men enough, inch by inch, and +era by era, it is lifted to greatness itself. + +Not very many years ago, certain great and good men, who, at the cost of +infinite pains, were standing at the time on a safe and lofty rock +protected from the fury of their kind by the fury of the sea, contrived +to say to the older nations of the earth, "All men are created equal." +It is a thing to be borne in mind, that if these men, who declared that +all men were created equal, had not been some several hundred per cent. +better men than the men they said they were created equal to, it would +not have made any difference to us or to any one else whether they had +said that all men were created equal or not, or whether the Republic had +ever been started or not, in which every man, for hundreds of years, +should look up to these men and worship them as the kind of men that +every man in America was free to try to be equal to. A civilization by +numbers, a crowd civilization, if it had not been started by heroes, +could never have been started at all. Shall this civilization attempt to +live by the crowd principle, without men in it who are living by the +hero principle? On our answer to this question hangs the question +whether this civilization, with all its crowds, shall stand or fall +among the civilizations of the earth. The main difference between the +heroes of Plymouth Rock, the heroes who proclaimed freedom in 1776, and +the heroes who must contrive to proclaim freedom now, is that tyranny +now is crowding around the Rock, and climbing up on the Rock, +eighty-seven million strong, and that tyranny then was a half-idiot king +three thousand miles away. + + * * * * * + +We know or think we know, some of us--at least we have taken a certain +joy in working it out in our minds, and live with it every day--how +people in crowds are going to be beautiful by and by. + +The difficulty of being beautiful now, I have tried to express. It seems +better to express, if possible, what a difficulty is before trying to +meet it. + +And now we would like to try to meet it. How can we determine what is +the most practical and natural way for crowds of people to try to be +beautiful now? + +It would seem to be a matter of crowd psychology, of crowd technique, +and of determining how human nature works. + +All thoughtful people are agreed as to the aim. + +Everything turns on the method. + +In the following chapters we will try to consider the technique of being +beautiful in crowds. + + + + +BOOK FOUR + +CROWDS AND HEROES + + +TO WALT WHITMAN + + _"And I saw the free souls of poets, + The loftiest bards of all ages strode before me + Strange large men, long unwaked, undisclosed, were disclosed to me + ... O my rapt verse, my call, mock me not! + ... I will not be outfaced by irrational things, + I will penetrate what is sarcastic upon me, + I will make cities and civilizations defer to me + This is what I have learnt from America-- + + I will confront these shows of the day and night + I will know if I am to be less than they, + I will see if I am not as majestic as they, + I will see if I am not as subtle and real as they, + I will see if I have no meaning while the houses and + ships have meaning, + + ... I am for those that have never been mastered, + For men and women whose tempers have never been mastered, + For those whom laws, theories, conventions can never master. + + I am for those who walk abreast of the whole earth + Who inaugurate one to inaugurate all."_ + + + + + +CHAPTER I + +THE SOCIALIST AND THE HERO + + +I was spending a little time not long ago with a man of singularly +devoted and noble spirit who had dedicated his life and his fortune to +the Socialist movement. We had had several talks before, and always with +a little flurry at first of hopefulness toward one another's ideas. We +both felt that the other, for a mere Socialist or for a mere +Individualist, was really rather reasonable. We admitted great tracts of +things to one another, and we always felt as if by this one next +argument, perchance, or by one further illustration, we would convince +the other and rescue him like a brand from the burning. + +The last time I saw him he started in at once at the station as we +climbed up into the car by telling me what he was doing. He was studying +up the heroes of the American Revolution, and was writing something to +show that they were not really heroes after all. All manner of things +were the matter with them. They had always troubled him, he said. He +knew there was something wrong, and he was glad to have the matter +settled. He said he did not, and never had believed in heroes, and +thought they did a great deal of harm--even dead ones. Heroes, he said, +always deceived the people. They kept people from seeing that nothing +could be done in our modern society by any one man. Only crowds could do +things, he intimated--each man, like one little wave on the world, +wavering up to the shore and dying away. + +As the evening wore on our conversation became more concrete, and I +began to drag in, of course, every now and then, naturally, an inspired +or semi-inspired millionaire or so. + +I cannot say that these gentlemen were received with enthusiasm. + +Finally, I turned on him. "What is it that makes you so angry (and +nearly all the Socialists) every time you hear something good, something +you cannot deny is good, about a successful business man? If I brought a +row of inspired millionaires, say ten or twelve of them one after the +other, into your library this minute, you would get hotter and hotter +with every one, wouldn't you? You would scarcely speak to me." + +---- intimated that he was afraid I was deceived; he was afraid that I +was going about deceiving other people about its being possible for mere +individual men to be good; he was afraid I was doing a great deal of +damage. + +He then confided to me that not so very long ago he dropped in one +Monday morning into his guest-chamber just after his guest had gone and +found a copy of "Inspired Millionaires," which his guest had obviously +been reading over Sunday, lying on the little reading-table at the head +of the bed. + +He said that he took the book back to his library, took out two or three +encyclopædias from the shelf in the corner, put my inspired millionaires +in behind them, put the encyclopædias back, and that they had been there +to this day. + +With this very generous and kindly introduction we went on to a frank +talk on the general attitude of Socialists toward the instinct of +hero-worship in human nature. + +A Socialist had said only a few days before, speaking of a certain +municipal movement in which the people were interested, that he thought +it really had a very good chance to succeed "if only the heroes could be +staved off a little longer." He deprecated the almost incurable idea +people seemed to have that nothing could ever be done in this world +without being all mixed up with heroes. + +My mind kept recurring in a perplexed way to this remark for a few days +after I had heard it, and I soon came on the following letter from a +prominent Socialist which had been read at a dinner the night before: + + "I am glad to join with others of my comrades in conveying + greetings to Comrade Cahan on the occasion of the fiftieth + anniversary of his birth and in recognition of the eminent + services that he has rendered in the Socialist movement. + + "Yet my gladness is not untinged with a certain note of + apprehension lest in expressing so conspicuously our esteem of + an honoured comrade we obscure the broader scene which, if + equally illumined, would disclose tens of thousands of other + comrades, labouring with equal devotion, and each no less + worthy of praise.... + + "In our rejoicing over the services of Comrade Cahan let us + not forget that the facilities that he and that each of us + enjoy are the products of thousands of other men and women, + and sometimes of children too. + + "In our rejoicing let us recall that we cannot safely assume + that any comrade's services to the movement have been greater + than the movement's services to him; that we are but + fellow-workers together, deriving help and perhaps inspiration + one from another and each from all. + + "In our rejoicing let us place the emphasis rather upon the + services of the many to each, than upon the services of any + one of the many." + +I have not quoted from this letter because I disagree with the idea in +it. I am ready to admit that though the idea is a somewhat dampening one +perhaps for a banquet, that it is true and important. + +What I object to in the letter is the Fear in it. + +In spite of the fineness and truth of the motive that lies, I know, +underneath every line, the letter is baleful, sinister, and weary. + +I accuse the letter of being, in a kind of nobly sick way, visionary, +unpractical, and socially destructive. + +I would heartily agree with the writer of the letter about the quality +of many heroes, possibly about most heroes. I would agree in a large +measure that the heroes the crowds choose are the wrong ones. + +But there is a great difference between his belief and mine as to our +practical working policy in getting the things for crowds that we both +want for them. It seems to me that he does not believe in crowds. He is +filled with fear that they would select the wrong heroes. He says they +must not have heroes, or must be allowed as few as possible. + +I believe in crowds, and I believe that the more they have the +hero-habit, the more heroes they have to compare and select from, the +finer, longer, and truer heroes they will select, the more deeply, +truly, and concretely the crowds will think, and the more nobly they +will express themselves. + +But the great argument for the hero as a social method is that the crowd +in a clumsy, wistful way, deep down in its heart, in the long run, loves +the beautiful. Appealing to the crowd's ideal of the beautiful in +conduct, its sense of the heroic, or semi-heroic, is the only practical, +hard-headed understanding way of getting out of the crowd, for the +crowd, what the crowd wants. + +I saw the other day in Boston several thousand schoolboys in the street +keeping step. It was a band that held them together. A band is a +practical thing. + +Is it not about time, in our dreary, drab, listless procession of +economics, stringing helplessly across the world, that we have a band of +music? What economics needs now is a march. + +We have to-day a thousand men who can tell people what to do where we +have one who can touch the music, the dance, the hurrah, the cry, the +worship in them, and make them want to do something. The hero is the man +who makes people want to do something, and strangely and subtly, all +through the blood, while they watch him, he makes them believe they can. + +It is socially destructive to throw away the overpowering instinct of +human nature which we have called hero-worship. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +THE CROWD AND THE HERO + + +But it is not only socially destructive. It is dumb and helpless for +crowds to try to get on without heroes. Big events and big men are crowd +expressions. Heroes, World Fairs, and Titanic disasters are crowd words, +the crowd's way of seeing and saying things. + +Crowds think in great men, or they think in simple, big, broadly drawn +events, or words of one syllable, like coal strikes. + +A whole world works through to an entirely new idea, the idea that +England is not necessarily impregnable, in the Boer war. And we see +England, by way of South Africa, searching her own heart. The Meat +Trust, by raising prices for a few trial weeks, makes half a nation +think its way over into vegetarianism or semi-vegetarianism. + +In the American war with Spain modern thought attacked the last pathetic +citadel in modern life of polite illusion, of lie-poetry, and in that +one little flash of war between the Spain spirit and the American +spirit, in our modern world, the nations got their final and conclusive +sense of what the Spanish civilization really was, of the old Don +Quixote thinking, of the delightful, brave, courtly blindness, of the +world's last stronghold of pomposity, of vague, empty prettiness, of +talking grand and shooting crooked. + +Japan and Russia fight with guns, but the real fight is not between +their guns, but between two great national conceptions of human life. +Like two vast national searchlights we saw them turned on each other, +two huge, grim, naked civilizations, and now in an awful light and roar, +and now in stately sudden silence, while we all looked on, all +breathless and concentrated, we saw them, as on some strange vast stage +of the world, all lit up, exposed, penetrated by the minds of men +forever. While they fought before us we saw the last two thousand years +flash up once more and fade away, and then the next two thousand years +on its slide, with one click before our faces was fastened into place. + +Men see great spiritual conceptions or ideals for a world when the great +ideals are dramatized, when they stalk out before us, are acted out +before our eyes by mighty nations. Before the stage we sit silently and +think and watch the ideals of a world, the souls of the nations +struggling together, and as we watch we discover our souls for +ourselves, we define our ideals for ourselves. We make up our minds. We +see what we want. We begin to live. + +I have come to believe that the hero, in the same way, is the common +man's desire and prayer writ large. It is his way of keeping it +refreshed before him so that he sees it, recalls it, suns himself in it, +lifts up his life to it, every day. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +THE CROWD AND THE AVERAGE PERSON + + +To state still further my difference with the typical Socialist point of +view, as expressed in the letter from which I have quoted, I am obliged +to confess that I not only believe in having heroes on behalf of crowds, +but in having as a regular method of democracy little crowds of heroes, +or an aristocracy. In other words, I am a democrat. I believe that +crowds can produce, and are bound to produce by a natural crowd-process, +a real aristocracy--an aristocracy which will be truly aristocratic and +noble in spirit and action, and which will express the best ideas in the +best way that a crowd can have. + +The main business of a democracy is to find out which these people are +in it and put them where they will represent it. The trouble seems to +have been in democracies so far, that we find out who these people are a +generation too late. The great and rare moments of history have been +those in which we have found out who they were in time, as when we found +in America Abraham Lincoln, an unaristocratic-looking and ungainly man, +and saw suddenly that he was the first gentleman in the United States. + +The next great task of democracy is to determine the best means it can +of finding out who its aristocrats are, its all-men, and determining who +they are in time, men who have vision, courage, individuality, +imagination enough to face real things, and to know real people, and to +put real things and real people together. + +It is what an aristocracy in a democratic form of government is for, to +furnish imagination to crowds. A real aristocracy is the only +clear-headed, practical means a great nation can have of distributing, +classifying, and digesting and evoking hordes of men and women. People +do not have imagination in hordes, and imagination is latent and +unorganized in masses of people. The crowd problem is the problem of +having leaders who can fertilize the imagination and organize the will +of crowds. Nothing but worship or great desire has ever been able to +focus a crowd, and only the great man, rich and various in his elements, +abounding, great as the crowd is great, can ever hope to do it. + +Every man in a crowd knows that he is or is in danger of being a mere +Me-man, or a mere class-man, and he knows that his neighbour is, and he +wishes to be in a world that is saved from his own mere me-ness and his +own mere classness. His hero-worship is his way of worshipping his +larger self. He communes with his possible or completed self, his self +of the best moments in the official great man or crowd man. + +The average man in a crowd does not want to be an average man, and the +last thing he wants is to have an average man to represent him. He wants +a man to represent him as he would like to be. + +He cannot express himself--his best self, in the State, to all the +others in the State, without a lifted-up man or crowd man to do it. + +It is as if he said--as if the average man said, "I want a certain sort +of world, I want to be able to point to a man, to a particular man, and +say, as I look at him and ask others to look at him, 'This is the sort +of world I want.'" + +Then everybody knows. + +The great world that lies in all men's hearts is expressed in miniature, +in the great man. + +Crowds speak in heroes. + + * * * * * + +I have often heard Socialists wondering among themselves why a movement +that had so many fine insights and so many noble motives behind it had +produced so few artists. + +It has seemed to me that it might be because Socialists as a class, +speaking roughly, are generalizers. They do not see vividly and deeply +the universal in the particular, the universal in the individual, the +national in the local. They are convinced by counting, and are moved by +masses, and are prone to overlook the Spirit of the Little, the +immensity of the seed and of the individual. They are prone to look past +the next single thing to be done. They look past the next single man to +be fulfilled. + +They feel a bit superior to Individualists for the way they have of +seeing the universal in the particular, and of being picturesque and +personal. + +Socialists are not picturesque and personal. They do not think in +pictures. + +Then they wonder why they do not make more headway. + +Crowds and great men and children think in pictures. + +A hero pictures greatness to them. Then they want it for themselves. + +From the practical, political point of view of getting things for +crowds, perhaps the trouble lies, not in our common popular idea of +having heroes, but in the heroes. And perhaps the cure lies not in +abolishing heroes, but in making our heroes move on and in insisting on +more and better ones. + +Any man who looks may watch the crowd to-day making its heroes move on. + +If they do not move on, the crowd picks up the next hero at hand who is +moving--and drops them. + +One can watch in every civilized country to-day crowds picking up +heroes, comparing, sorting, selecting, seeing the ones that wear the +longest, and one by one taking the old ones down. + +The crowd takes a hero up in its huge rough hand, gazes through him at +the world, sees what it wants through him. Then it takes up another, and +then another. + +Heroes are crowd spy-glasses. + +Pierpont Morgan and Tom Mann for example. + +Pierpont Morgan is a typical American business man raised to the n-th +or hero power. + +The crowd thinks it is interesting to take up Pierpont Morgan, the Tom +Mann of the banks. It will see what it wants, through him. + +And the crowd thinks it is interesting to take up Tom Mann, too, the +Pierpont Morgan of the Trades Unions. It will see what it wants, through +him. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +THE CROWD AND PIERPONT MORGAN + + +One keeps turning back every now and then, in reading the "Life of +Pierpont Morgan," to the portrait which Carl Hovey has placed at the +beginning of the book. If one were to look at the portrait long enough, +one would not need to read the book. The portrait puts into a few square +inches of space what Mr. Hovey takes half an acre of paper for. And all +that he really does on the half-acre of paper is to bring back to one +again and again that set and focused look one sees in Mr. Morgan's +eyes--the remoteness, the silence, the amazing, dogged, implacable +concentration, and, when all is said, a certain terrible, inexplicable +blindness. + +The blindness keeps one looking again. One cannot quite believe it. The +portrait has something so strong, so almost noble and commanding, about +it that one cannot but stand back with one's little judgments and give +the man who can hurl together out of the bewilderment of the world a +personality like this, and fix it here--all in one small human face--the +benefit of the doubt. This is the way the crowd has always taken +Pierpont Morgan at first. The bare spectacle of a man so magnificently +set, so imperiously preoccupied, silences our judgments. It seems as if, +of course, he must be seeing things--things that we and others possibly +do not and cannot see. The blindness in the eyes is so complete and set +in such a full array that it acts at first on one almost like a kind of +vision. The eyes hold themselves like pictures of eyes, like little +walls, as if real eyes were in behind them. One wonders if there is any +one who could ever manage to break through them, fleck up little +ordinary human things--personality, for instance, atmosphere, or +light--against them. If Shakespeare, whose folios he has, and Keats, +whose "Endymion" he owns, or Milton, whose "Paradise Lost" he keeps in +his safe, were all to assail him at once, were to bear down upon that +set look in Pierpont Morgan's eyes--try to get them to turn one side a +second and notice that they--Shakespeare and Milton and Keats--were +there, there would not be a flicker or shadow of movement. They are eyes +that are set like jaws, like magnificent spiritual muscles, on +Something. Neither do they reveal light or receive it. + + * * * * * + +It will be some time before the crowd will find it possible to hand in +an account and render a full estimate of the value of the service that +Pierpont Morgan has rendered to our modern world; but the service has +been for the most part rendered now and while the world, in its mingled +dismay and gratitude at the way he has hammered it together, is +distributing its praise and blame, there are some of us who would like +to step one side a little and think quietly, if we may, not about what +Pierpont Morgan has done, which we admit duly, but about the blindness +in his eyes. It is Pierpont Morgan's blindness that interests the crowd +more than anything else about him interests them now. It is his +blindness--and the chance to find out just what it is that is making +people read his book. His blindness (if we can fix just what it is) is +the thing that we are going to make our next Pierpont Morgan out of. The +next Pierpont Morgan--the one the crowd is getting ready now--will be +made out of the things that this Pierpont Morgan did not see. What are +these things? We have been looking for the things in Carl Hovey's book, +peering in between the lines on every page, and turning up his +adjectives and looking under them, his adverbs and qualifications, his +shrewdness and carefulness for the things that Pierpont Morgan did not +see. Pierpont Morgan himself would not have tried to hide them, and +neither has his biographer. His whole book breathes throughout with a +just-mindedness, a spirit of truth, a necessary and inevitable honesty, +which of itself is not the least testimony to the essential validity and +soundness of Morgan's career. Pierpont Morgan's attitude toward his +biography (if, in spite of his reticence, it became one of the +necessities--even one of the industrial necessities, of the world that +he should have one) was probably a good deal the attitude of Walt +Whitman when he told Traubel, "Whatever you do with me, don't prettify +me"; and if there were things in Mr. Morgan's career which he +imperturbably failed to see, Mr. Morgan himself would be the last man +not to try to help people to find out what they are. But living has been +to Mr. Morgan as it is to us (as I write these lines he is seventy-four +years old) a serious, bottomless business. He does not know which the +things are he has not seen. His eyes are magnificently set. They cannot +help us. We must do our own looking. + + * * * * * + +If I were called upon to speak very quickly and without warning; if any +one suddenly expected me in my first sentence to hit the bull's-eye of +Mr. Morgan's blindness, I think I would try socialism. When the Emperor +William was giving himself the treat of talking with the man who runs, +or is supposed to run, the economics of a world, he found that he was +talking with a man who had not noticed socialism yet, and who was not +interested in it. Most people would probably have said that Morgan was +not interested in socialism enough; but there are very few people who +would not be as surprised as Emperor William was to know that he, +Pierpont Morgan, was not informed about the greatest and, to some of us, +the most threatening, omnipresent, and significant spectre in modern +industrial life. + +But when one thinks of it, and, when more particularly, one looks again +at that set look in his eyes, I cannot see how it could possibly have +been otherwise. If Morgan's eyes had suddenly begun seeing all sorts of +human things--the bewildering welter of the individual minds, the +tragedy of the individual interests around him; if he had lost his +imperious sense of a whole--had tried to potter over and piece together, +like the good people and the wonderers, the innumerable entangled wires +of the world, his eyes might have been filled perhaps with the beautiful +and helpless light of the philosophers, with the fire of the prophets, +or with the gentle paralysis of the poets, but he never would have had +the courage to do the great work of his life--to turn down forever those +iron shutters on his eyes and smite a world together. + +There was one thing this poor, dizzied, scattered planet needed. With +its quarrelling and its peevish industries, its sick poets and its tired +religions, the one thing this planet needed was a Blow; it needed a man +that could hammer it together. To find fault with this man for not being +a seer, or to feel superior to him for not being an idealist, or to +heckle him for not being a sociologist, when here he was all the time +with this mighty frenzy or heat in him that could melt down the chaos of +a world while we looked, weld it to his will, and then lift his arm and +smite it, though all men said him nay--back into a world again--to +heckle over this man's not being a complete sociologist or professor is +not worthy of thoughtful and manful men. + +I cannot express it, but I can only declare, living as I do in a day +like this, that to me there is a kind of colossal naked poetry in what +Pierpont Morgan has done which I cannot but acknowledge with gratitude +and hope. Though there be in it, as in all massive things, a brutality +perhaps like that of the moving glaciers, like the making and boiling of +coal in the earth, like death, like childbirth, like the impersonality +of the sea, my imagination can never get past a kind of elemental, +almost heathen poetry or heathen-god poetry in Pierpont Morgan's Blow or +shock upon our world. There may be reason to doubt as to whether it is +to be called a heaven-poetry or a hell-poetry--something so gaunt and +simple is there about it; but here we are with all our machines around +us, with our young, rough, fresh nations in the act of starting a great +civilization once more on this old and gentle earth, and I can only say +that poetry (though it be new, or different, or even a little terrible) +is the one thing that now, or in any other age, men begin great +civilizations with. + + * * * * * + +I have tried to express the spirit of what Morgan's genius seized +unconsciously by the grim, resistless will of his age, has wrought into +his career. + +But in the background of my mind as I see Pierpont Morgan, there is +always the man who will take his place, and if I did not see the man +coming, and coming rapidly, who is to take Mr. Morgan's place, I admit +that Mr. Morgan himself would be a failure, a disaster, a closed wall at +the end of the world. + +No one man will take Mr. Morgan's place, but the typical man in the +group of men that will take his place will justify Mr. Morgan's work, by +taking this world in his hand and riveting his vision on where Morgan's +vision leaves off. As Morgan has fused railroads, iron, coal, +steamships, seas, and cities, the next industrial genius shall fuse the +spirits and the wills of men. The Individualists and the Socialists, the +aristocracies and democracies, the capitalists and the labourers shall +be welded together, shall be fused and transfused by the next Morgan +into their ultimate, inevitable, inextricable, mutual interests. + +The chief characteristic of the new industrial leader is coming to be +social imagination or the power of seeing the larger industrial values +in human gifts and efficiencies, the more human and intellectual +energies of workmen, the market value of their spirits, their +imaginations, and their good-will. The underpinning and Morganizing work +has been done; the power of instant decision which Mr. Morgan has had, +has been very often based on a lack of imagination about the things that +got in his way; but the things that get in the way now, the big, +little-looking things--are the things on which the new and inspired +millionaires' imagination will find its skill and accumulate its power. +It is men's spirits that are now in the way; they have been piling up +and accumulating under Morgan's régime long enough, and it is now their +turn. Perhaps men's spirits have always been beyond Mr. Morgan, and +perhaps his imagination has been worked largely as a kind of cerebellum +imagination: it is a kind of imagination that sees related and +articulated the physical body of things, the grip on the material tools, +on the gigantic limbs of a world. The man who succeeds Mr. Morgan, and +for whom Mr. Morgan has made the world ready, is the man who has his +imagination in the upper part of his brain, and instead of doing things +by not seeing, and by not being seen, he will swing a light. He will be +himself in his own personality, a little of the nature of a searchlight, +and he will work the way a searchlight works, and will have his will +with things by seeing and lighting, by X-raying his way through them and +not by a kind of colossal world-butting, which is Morgan's way, both +eyes imperiously, implacably shut, his whole being all bent, all crowded +into his vast machine of men, his huge will lifted ... and excavating +blindly, furiously, as through some groping force he knew not, great +sub-cellars for a new heaven and new earth. + +The Crowd gets its heroes one at a time. Heroes are the Crowd's tools. +Some are dredges, some are telescopes. The Crowd, by a kind of +instinct--an oversoul or undersoul of which it knows not until +afterward, takes up each tool gropingly--sometimes even against its will +and against its conscience, uses it and drops it. + +Then it sees why, suddenly, it has used it. + +Then God hands it Another One. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +THE CROWD AND TOM MANN + + +I dropped into the London Opera House the other night to see Tom Mann +(the English Bill Heywood), another hero or crowd spy-glass that people +have taken up awhile--thousands of them--to see through to what they +really want. I wanted to hear him speak, and see, if I could, why the +crowd had taken him up, and what it was they were seeing through him. + +I am apt to take a dead set at liking a man I do not agree with, if I +can. It gives one a better start in understanding him and in not +agreeing with him to some purpose. + +But it was not necessary to try to like Tom Mann or to make arrangements +for being fair to him. He came up on the platform (it was at Mr. +Hyndmann's Socialist rally) in that fine manly glow of his of having +just come out of jail (and a jail, whatever else may be said about it, +is certainly a fine taking place to come out of--to blossom up out of, +like a night-blooming cereus before a vast, lighted-up, uproarious +audience). It is wonderful how becoming a jail is to some people! Had I +not seen Mrs. Pethick Lawrence with the flush of Old Bailey on her cheek +only a little while before in Albert Hall? + +If Tom Mann had had, like Elisha, that night, a fiery chariot at his +disposal, and had come down, landed plump out of heaven on his audience, +he could not have done half as well with it as he did with that little +gray, modest, demure Salford Jail the kind Home Secretary gave him. + +He tucked the jail under his arm, stood there silently before us in a +blaze of light. Everybody clapped for five minutes. + +Then he waved the air into silence and began to speak. I found I had +come to hear a simple-minded, thoughtless, whole-hearted, noisy, +self-deceived, hopelessly sincere person. He was a mere huge pulse or +muscle of a man. All we could do was to watch him up there on the +platform (it was all so simple!) taking up the world before everybody in +his big hands and whacking on it with a great rapping and sounding +before us all, as if it were Tommy's own little drum mother gave him. He +stood there for some fifteen minutes, I should think, making it--making +the whole world rat-a-tat-tat to his music, to Tommy's own music, as if +it were the music of the spheres. + +Mr. Mann's gospel of hope for mankind seemed to be to have all the +workers of the world all at once refuse to work. Have the workers starve +and silence a planet, and take over and confiscate the properties and +plants of capital, dismiss the employers of all nations and run the +earth themselves. + + + * * * * * + + +I sat in silence. The audience about me broke out into wild, happy +appreciation. + +It acted as if it had been in the presence of a vision. It was as if, +while they sat there before Tom Mann, they had seen being made, being +hammered out before them, a new world. + +I rubbed my eyes. + +It seemed to me precisely like the old one. And all the trouble for +nothing. All the disaster, the proposed starvation, and panic for +nothing. + +There was one single possible difference in it. + +We had had before, Pierpont Morgan, the Tom Mann of the banks, riding +astride the planet, riding it out with us--with all the rest of us +helpless on it, holding on for dear life, riding out into the +Blackness. + +And now we were having instead, Tom Mann, the Pierpont Morgan of the +Trades Unions, riding astride the planet, riding it out with us, with +all the rest of us helpless on it, holding on for dear life, riding out +into the Blackness. + +Of course Pierpont Morgan and Tom Mann are both very useful as crowd +spy-glasses for us all to see what we want through. + +But is this what we want? + +Is it worth while to us, to the crowd, to all classes of us, to have our +world turned upside down so that we can be bullied on it by one set of +men instead of being bullied on it by another? + +This is the thing that the Crowd, as it takes up one hero after the +other, and looks at the world through him, is seeing next. + +Some of us have seen sooner than the others. But we are nearly all of us +seeing to-day. We have stood by now these many years through strikes and +rumours of strikes, and we have watched the railway hold-ups, the +Lawrence Mill strike, and the great English coal strike. We have seen, +in a kind of dumb, hopeful astonishment, everybody about us piling into +the fray, some fighting for the rights of labour and some for the rights +of capital, and we have kept wondering if possibly a little something +could not be done before long, possibly next year, in behalf of the +huge, battered, helpless Public, that dear amorphous old ladylike Person +doddering along the Main Street of the World, now being knocked down by +one side and now by the other. It has almost looked, some days, as if +both sides in the quarrel--Capital and Labour, really thought that the +Public ought not to expect to be allowed to be out in the streets at +all. Both sides in the contest are so sure they are right, and feel so +noble and Christian, that we know they will take care of themselves; but +the poor old Lady!--some of us wonder, in the turmoil of Civilization +and the scuffle of Christianity, what is to become of Her. + +Is it not about time that somebody appeared very soon now who will make +a stand once and for all in behalf of this Dear Old Lady-Like Person? + +Is it really true that no one has noticed Her and is really going to +stand up for Her--for the old gentle-hearted Planet as a Whole? + +We have our Tom Mann for the workers, and we have the Daily +Newspaper--the Tom Mann of Capital, but where is our Tom Mann for +Everybody? Where is the man who shall come boldly out to Her, into the +great crowded highway, where the bullies of wealth have tripped up her +feet, and the bullies of poverty have thrown mud in her face, where all +the little mean herds or classes one after the other hold Her up--the +scorners, and haters, and cowards, and fearers for themselves, fighting +as cowards always have to fight, in herds ... where is the man who is +going to climb up alone before the bullies of wealth and the bullies of +poverty, take his stand against them all--against both sides, and dare +them to touch the dear helpless old Lady again? + +When this man arises--this Tom Mann for Everybody--whether he slips up +into immortality out of the crowd at his feet, and stands up against +them in overalls or in a silk hat, he will take his stand in history as +a man beside whom Napoleon and Alexander the Great will look as toys in +the childhood of the world. + + * * * * * + +We are living in a day when not only all competent-minded students of +affairs, but the crowd itself, the very passers-by in the streets, have +come to see that the very essence of the labour problem is the problem +of getting the classes to work together. And when the crowd watches the +labour leader and sees that he is not thinking correctly and cannot +think correctly of the other classes, of the consumers and the +employers, it drops him. Unless a leader has a class consciousness that +is capable of thinking of the other classes--the consumers and +employers, so shrewdly and so close to the facts that the other classes, +the consumers and the employers, will be compelled to take him +seriously, tolerate him, welcome him, and coöperate with him, the crowd +has come at last to recognize promptly that he is only of temporary +importance as a leader. He is the by-product of one of the illusions of +labour. When the illusion goes he goes. + +Capital has been for some time developing its class consciousness. +Labour has lately been developing in a large degree a class +consciousness. + +The most striking aspect of the present moment is that at last, in the +history of the world, the Public is developing a class consciousness. + +The Crowd thinks. + +And as from day to day the Crowd thinks--holds up its little class +heroes, its Tom Manns and Pierpont Morgans, and sees its world through +them--it comes more and more to see implacably what it wants. + +It has been watching the Tom Mann, or Bill Heywood type of Labour +leader, for some time. + +There are certain general principles with regard to labour leaders that +the crowd has come to see by holding up its heroes and looking through +them, at what it wants. The first great principle is that no man needs +to be taken very seriously, as a competent leader of a great labour +movement who is merely thinking of the interest of his own class. + +The second general principle the Crowd has come to see, and to insist +upon--when it is appealed to (as it always is, in the long run) is that +no labour leader needs to be taken very seriously or regarded as very +dangerous or very useful--who believes in force. + +A labour leader who has such a poor idea that a hold-up is the only way +he can express it--the Crowd suspects. The only labour leaders that the +Crowd, or people as a whole, take seriously are those that get things +by thinking and by making other people think. + +The Crowd wants to think. + +The Crowd wants to decide. + +And It has decided to decide by being made to think and not by being +knocked down. + +It is not precisely because the Crowd is not willing to be knocked down, +and has not shown itself to be over and over again, when it thought its +being knocked down might possibly help in a just cause. + +But it has not been through coal strikes, Industrial Workers of the +World, and syndicalist outbreaks for nothing. + +It is not the knocking down indulged in by labour and by capital that +the Crowd fears. + +It is the not-thinking. + +The Crowd has noticed that the knocking-down disposition and the +not-thinking disposition go together. + +The Crowd has watched Force and Force-people, and has seen what always +happens after a time. + +It has come to see that people who have to get things by force and not +by thinking will not be able to think of anything to do with the things +when they get them. + +So the Crowd does not want them to get them. + +The Crowd has learned all this even from the present owners of things. +It does not want to learn them all over again from new ones. The present +owners of things have got them half by force, and that is why they only +half understand how to run them. + +But they do half understand because they only half believe in force. The +crowd has seen them get their supremacy by the use of the +employment-hold-up, or by starving or threatening to starve the workers. +And now it sees the Syndicalist workers proposing to get control by +starving or threatening to starve everybody. Of the two, those who +propose to starve all the people to get their own way, and those who +threaten to starve part of the people, it has seemed to the Crowd, +naturally, that those who only half believe in starving, and who only +starve a part of us, would be likely to be more intelligent as +world-runners. + +In other words (accepting for the sake of argument the worst possible +interpretation of the capitalist class), they have spent several years +in learning, and have already half learned that force in industry is +inefficient and cannot be made to work. + +Now when the Crowd sees the Syndicalists swinging their hats in a +hundred nations, with one big hoarse hurrah around a world, with five +minutes' experience, come rushing in, and propose to take up the +world--the whole world in two minutes more and run it in the same old +bygone way--the way that the capitalists are just giving up--by +force--it knows what it thinks. + +It thinks it will fight Class Syndicalism. It makes up its mind it will +fight Class Syndicalism with Crowd Syndicalism. It has decided that, in +the interests of all of us, of a crowd civilization, of what we call the +world or Crowd Syndicate, its industries should be controlled, not by +the owners and not by the workers, but by those men, whoever they are, +who can control them with the most skill and efficiency. + +The Crowd has come to see that the present owners--judging from current +events, and taking them as a whole, and speaking impersonally and +historically--have proved themselves, on the whole, incompetent to +control industries with skill and efficiency, because they have treated +labour as the natural enemy of capital and have quarrelled with it. It +sees that the present workers, acting as syndicates or otherwise, are +incompetent to own and control and manage industry because they propose +to treat capital as the natural enemy of the workers. There has been but +one conclusion possible. If Civilization or the Crowd Syndicate has a +right to have its industries managed in the interests of all, and if +the present owners have proved themselves to be mentally incompetent to +control industry because they fight labour, and if the present labourers +as a class have proved themselves to be mentally incompetent because +they propose to fight capital, there is naturally but one question the +crowd syndicate is asking to-day, namely, _"Are there any mentally +competent business firms at all in the world, any firms whose owners and +labourers have thought out a way of not fighting?"_ From the point of +view of the Crowd, the men who are competent, who know how to do their +work, do not have to lay down their tools and find out all over again +how to do their work. They know it and keep doing it. + +So the Crowd keeps coming back with the question, "Are there or are +there not any competent business establishments in our modern life? +Which are they, and where are they?" We want to know about them. We want +to study them. We want to focus the thought of the world on them and see +how they do it. + +The answering of this question is what the next Pierpont Morgan and the +next Tom Mann are for. + +What the next Pierpont Morgan is for is to find out for us who the +competent employers are--the employers who can get twice as much work +out of their labour as other employers do--recognize them, stand by them +and put up money on them. The next Pierpont Morgan will find out also +who the incompetent employers are, recognize them, stand out against +them, and unless they have brains enough or can get brains enough to +coöperate with their own workmen, refuse to lend money to them. + +This would make a banker a statesman, would make banking a great and +creative profession, shaping the destinies of civilizations, determining +with coins back and forth over a counter the prayers and the songs, the +very religions of nations, and swinging like a pendulum the fate of the +world. + +The first Pierpont Morgan has made himself, in a necessary transitional +movement, a hero in the business world because of a certain moral energy +there is in him. He has insisted in expressing his own character in +business. He would not send money to capitalists fighting capitalists, +and in a general way he has compelled capitalists to coöperate. The new +hero of the business world is going to compel capital not merely to +coöperate with capital, but to coöperate with labour and with the +public. And as Morgan compelled the railroads of the United States to +coöperate with one another by getting money for those that showed the +most genius for coöperation, and by not getting money for railroads that +showed less genius for it, so the next Pierpont Morgan will throw the +weight of his capital at critical times in favour of companies that show +the largest genius for building the mutual interests of capitalists, +employees, and the public inextricably into one body. He is going to +recognize as a banker that the most permanent, long-headed, practical, +and competent employers are those whose business genius is essentially +social genius, the genius for being human, for discovering the mutual +interests of men, and for making human machinery work. + +There is a great position ahead for this hero when he comes. And I have +seen in my mind to-day thousands of men, young and old in every +business, in every country of the world, pressing forward to get the +place. + +It is what the next Tom Mann is for--to find out for the Trades Unions +and for the public who the most competent workmen are in every line of +business, the workmen who are the least mechanical-minded, who have +shown the most brains in educating and being educated by their +employers, the most power in touching the imaginations of their +employers with their lives and with their work, and in coöperating with +them. + +When the next Tom Mann has searched out and found the workmen in every +line of business who are capable of working with their superiors, and of +becoming more and more like them, he will make known to all other +workmen and to all other Trades Unions who these workmen are, and how +they have managed to do it. He will see that all Trades Unions are +informed, in night-schools and otherwise, how they have done it. He will +see that the principles, motives, and conditions that these men have +employed in making themselves more like their superiors, in making +themselves more and more fit to take the place of their superiors, in +making their work a daily, creative, spirited part of a great business, +are made so familiar to all Trades Unions that the policies of all our +labour organizations everywhere shall change and shall be infected with +a new spirit; and labouring men, instead of going to their shops the +world over, to spend nine hours a day in fighting the business in which +they are engaged, to spend nine hours a day in trying to get themselves +nothing to do, nine hours a day in getting nobody to want to employ +them, will work the way they would like to work, and the way they would +all work to-morrow morning if they knew the things about capital and +about labour that they have a right to know, and that only incompetent +employers and incompetent labor leaders year by year have kept them from +knowing. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +AN OPENING FOR THE NEXT PIERPONT MORGAN + + +Christ said once, "He that is greatest among you let him be your +servant." + +Most people have taken it as if He had said: + +"He that is greatest among you let him be your valet. + +"He that is greatest among you let him be your butler. + +"He that is greatest among you let him be your hostler, porter, +footman." + +They cling to a mediæval Morality-Play, Servant-in-the-House idea, a +kind of head-waiter idea of what Christ meant. + +This seems to some of us a literal-minded, Western way of interpreting +an Oriental metaphor. We do not believe that Christ meant servanthood. +It seems to us that He meant something deeper, that He meant service; +that He might have said as well: + +"He that is greatest among you let him be your Duke of Wellington. + +"He that is greatest among you let him be your Lincoln. + +"He that is greatest among you let him be your Edison, your Marconi." + +At all events, it is extremely unlikely that He meant looking and acting +like a servant. + +He meant really being one, whether one looked like a servant or not. If +looking independent and being independent makes the service better, if +defying the appearance of a servant makes the service more efficient, we +believe the appearance should be defied. + +It troubles us when we see the Czar of Russia in the presence of the +civilized world, once a year taking such great pains to look like a +servant and to wash his peasants' feet. + +We are not willing, if we ever have any relations with the public, to be +Czars and look like servants. + +We would prefer to look like czars and be servants. + +We are inclined to believe that no man who is rendering his utmost +service to the crowd ever thinks in the ordinary servant sense of being +obedient to it. He is thinking of his service, and of its being the most +high and perfect and most complete thing that he can render--the thing +that he, out of all men, could think of and do, and that the crowd would +want him to do. He is busy in being obedient to the crowd, in fulfilling +daily its spirit, and not in taking orders from it. + +The reason that the larger number of men who go into politics to-day are +inefficient and do not get the things done that crowds want, is that +they are the kind of men who feel that they must talk and act like +servants. Even the most independent-looking and efficient men, who look +as if they really saw something and had something to give, often prove +disappointing. When one comes to know a man of this type more +intimately, one is apt to find that he is really a flunkey in his +thoughts; that he feels hired in his mind; that he is the valet of a +crowd, and often, too, the valet of some particular crowd--some little, +safe, shut-in crowd, party, or special interest that wants to own, or to +keep, or to take away a world. + +Whichever way to-day one looks, one finds this illusion as to what a +public servant really is, for the moment, corrupting our public life. + +But Christ did not say, "He that is greatest among you, let him be your +valet." + +The man who is greatest among us, neither in this age nor in any other, +ever will or ever can be a valet. He faces the crowd the way Christ +did--with his life, with his soul, with his God. + +He will not be afraid of the Crowd.... + +He will be the Greatest, he will be a Servant. + +In the meantime--in the hour of the valets, only the little crowds, +speak. The People wait. + +The Crowd is dumb, massive, and silent. There seems to be no one in the +world to express it, to express its indomitable desire, its prayer, to +lay at last its huge, terrible, beautiful will upon the earth. + +It is the classes or little crowds--the little pulling and pushing, +helpless, lonely, mean, separated crowds--blind, hateful, and afraid, +who are running about trying to lay their little wills upon the earth. + +The Crowd waits and is not afraid. + +The little, separated crowds are afraid. + +The world, for the moment, is being interpreted, expressed, and managed +by People Who Are Afraid. + +It is the same in all the nations. In the coal strike in England one +finds the miners in the trades unions afraid to vote except in secret +because they are afraid of one another. One finds the miners' leaders +afraid of the men under them and of what they might do, so that they +have no policy except to fight. One finds the miners' leaders afraid of +the mine-managers and of what they might do, so that they have no policy +except to fight. One finds the mine-managers afraid of one another, +afraid of their stockholders, afraid of the miners' leaders, and afraid +of the newspapers and afraid of the Government. + +One finds the Government afraid of everybody. + +Everybody is afraid of the Government. + +Everybody fights because everybody is afraid. + +And everybody is afraid because everybody sees that it is mere crowds +that are running the world. + +There is another reason why everybody is afraid. Everybody is afraid +because everybody is shut in with some little separated crowd. + +People who are never Outside, who only see a little way out over the +edge of the little crowd in which they are penned up, are naturally +afraid. + +A world that is run by little shut-in crowds is necessarily a world that +is run by People Who Are Afraid. + +And so now we have come to the fulness of the time. The cities and the +nations, the prairies, and the seas and the mines, the very skies about +us can be seen by all to-day to be full of a dull groping and of a great +asking, "_Who Are The Men Who Are not Afraid?_" + +The moment these men appear who are not afraid, and it is seen by all +that they are not afraid, the world (and all the little blind, helpless +crowds in it) will be placed in their hands. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +AN OPENING FOR THE NEXT TOM MANN + + +I am aware that Tom Mann is not a world figure. But he is a world type. +And as the editor of the _Syndicalist_, the leader of the most imposing +and revealing labour rally the world has seen, he is of universal +interest. Those of us who believe in crowds are deeply interested in +finding, recognizing, creating, and in seeing set free out of the ranks +of men the labour leaders who shall express the nobility and dignity of +modern labour, who shall express the bigness of spirit, the +brawny-heartedness, the composure, the common-sense, the patriotism, the +faithfulness and courage of the People. + +I indict Tom Mann before the bar of the world as not expressing the will +and the spirit of the People. + +I do this as a labouring man. I decline, because I spend my time daily +tracing out little crooked lines on paper with a pen, because I have +wrought day and night to make little patterns of ink and little +stretches of words reach men together round a world, because I have +sweat blood to believe, because in weariness and sorrow I have wrought +out at last my little faith for a world ... I decline not to be numbered +with the labourers I see in the streets. I claim my right before all men +this day, with my unbent body and with my unsoiled hands, to be enrolled +among the toilers of the earth. + +I speak as a labouring man. I say Tom Mann is incompetent as a true +leader of Labour. + +The first reason that he is incompetent is that he does not observe +facts. He merely observes facts that everybody can see, that everybody +has seen for years. He does not observe the new and exceptional facts +about capital that only a few can see, the seeing of which, and the +seeing of which first, should alone ever constitute a man a true leader +in dealing with capital. He merely believes facts that nearly everybody +has caught up to believing--facts about human nature, about what works +in business. The crowd is not content with this. It has become +accustomed to seeing that the men who lead in business, and who make +others follow them, whether masters or workmen, are men who do it by +observing certain new and exceptional facts and acting upon them. If +these men cannot observe them, we have seen them create them. It is the +men who make new things true wherever they go that the crowd is coming +to recognize and to take seriously and permanently as the real leaders +of Labour and of Capital to-day. Tom Mann is incompetent as a labour +leader in dealing with capital to-day, because the things that he +proposes to do all turn on three facts which, looked at on the outside, +merely have or might be said to have a true look: + +First, employers are all alike; + +Second, none of them ever work; + +Third, they are all the enemies of Labour. + +Tom Mann is incompetent to grapple with Capital in behalf of Labour as +any great labour leader would have to do, because he has his facts wrong +about Capital, is simple-minded and rudimentary and undiscriminating +about the men with whom he deals, and sees them all alike. + +This is a poor beginning even for fighting with them. + +The second reason that Tom Mann is incompetent is, not that he has his +facts wrong and does not think, but that he carries not-thinking about +the employing class still further, has come to make a kind of religion +out of not-thinking about them. And instead of thinking how to make +labouring men think better than their employers think, and making them +think so well that they can crowd their way into their employers' +places, he proposes to have labour get into their places without +thinking, and run a world without thinking. All that is necessary in +order to have workmen run the world, is to get workmen to stop working, +to stop thinking, and then as rapidly as possible to get everybody else +to stop thinking. Then the world will fall into their hands. + +The third reason that Tom Mann is incompetent is that he is unpractical +and full of scorn. And scorn, from the point of view of the +practical-minded man, is a sentimental and useless emotion. We have +learned that it almost always has to be used by a man who has his facts +wrong, that is, who does not see what he himself is really like, and who +has not noticed what other people are really like. No man who sees +himself as he is, feels at liberty to use scorn. And no man who sees +others as they are, sees any occasion for it. Tom Mann uses hate also, +and hate has been found to be, as directed toward classes of persons as +a means of getting them to do things, archaic and inefficient. It is not +quite bright. It need not be denied that hate and scorn both impress +some people, but they never seem to impress the people that see things +to do and who find ways to do them. And the people who use scorn are all +too narrow, too class-bound, and too self-regarding to do things in a +huge world problem like the present one. + +The fourth reason that Tom Mann as a labour leader is incompetent is +that he is afraid; he is afraid of capital, so afraid that he has to +fight it instead of grappling with it and coöperating with it. He is +afraid to believe in labour--so afraid that he takes orders from it +instead of seeing for it, and seeing ahead for it. He is afraid of his +employers' brains, of their having brains enough to understand and to to +be convinced as to the position of the labourer. He is afraid to believe +in his own brains, in his own brains being good enough to convince them. + +So he backs down and fights. + +If any reader who is interested to do so will kindly turn back at this +point a page or so, and read this chapter we have just gone through +together, over again, and if he will kindly, wherever it occurs, insert +for Tom Mann, labour leader, "D.A. Thomas, leader of mine-owners," he +will save much time for both of us, and he will kindly make one chapter +in this book which is already much too long, as good as two. Tom Mann +(unless he is changed) is about to be dropped as a typical modern leader +of Labour because he is afraid, and what he expresses in the labouring +class is its fear of Capital. + +And what D.A. Thomas expresses for Capital is its fear of Labour. + +There are thousands of capitalists and hundreds of thousands of labour +men who have something better they want expressed by their leaders, than +their Fear. + +Out of these men the new leaders will be chosen. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +THE MEN WHO LOOK + + +During the recent coal strike in England, as at all times in the world, +heroes abounded. + +The trouble with most of us during the coal strike was not in our not +having heroes, but in our not being quite sure which they were. + +Davy McEwen, a miner who stood out against the whole countryside, and +went to his work every day in defiance of thousands of men on the hills +about him trying to stop him, and hundreds of thousands of men all over +England trying to scare him, was not a hero to Mr. Josiah Wedgewood. Mr. +Josiah Wedgewood one day in the height of the conflict, from his seat in +the House of Commons, rose in his might--and before the face of the +nation called Davy McEwen a traitor to his class. + +Sir Arthur Markham, one of the largest of the mine-owners, in the height +of the conflict between the mine-owners and the miners over wages, rose +in the House and declared that, in his opinion as a mine-owner, the +mine-owners were wrong and the miners were right, and that the +mine-owners could afford to pay better wages, and should yield to the +men. + +He was called a traitor to his class. + +At the last moment in the coal strike, when the Government had done its +best, and when the labour leaders still proposed to hold up England and +defy the Government until they got their way, Stephen Walsh, one of the +leaders of the miners, stood up in the face of a million miners and said +he would not go on with the others against the Government. "It is now +time for the trades union men to return to work. We have done what we +could. Our citizenship should be higher than our trades unionship, and +with me, as long as I am a trades union man, it will be." + +He was called a traitor to his class. + +I am an unwilling and unfit person, as a sojourner and an American, to +take any position on the merits of the question as to the +disestablishment of the Church in Wales. But when I saw Bishop Gore +standing up and looking unblinkingly at facts or what he thought were +facts which he would rather not have seen and which were not on his +side, and when I saw him voting deliberately for the disestablishment of +his own Church, I greeted with joy, as if I had seen a cathedral, +another traitor to his class. I almost believe that a Church that could +produce and supply a man like this for a great nation looking through +every city and county year by year for men to go with it ... a Church +that could produce and keep producing Bishop Gores, would be entitled, +from a great nation to anything it liked. + + * * * * * + +Men seem to be capable of three stages of courage. Courage is graded to +the man. + +There is the man who is so tired, or mechanical-minded, that he can only +think of himself. + +There is the man who is so tired that he can only think of his class. + +And there is the man that one has watched being moved over slowly from a +Me-man into a Class-man, who has begun to show the first faint +beginnings of being a Crowd-man. + +One man has courage for himself because he knows what he wants for +himself. Another has courage for his class because he knows what he +wants for his class. Another has courage for God and for the world +because there are things he sees that he wants for God and for the +world, and he sees them so clearly that he sees ways to get them. + +Lack of courage is a lack of vision or clear-headedness about what one +wants. I do not know, but I can only say that it has seemed to me that +Bishop Gore has a vision or clear-headedness about what he wants for +democracy, and that he uses his vision of what he wants for democracy to +true his vision for his class. Perhaps also he has a vision for his +class for the church people that it is for the interest church people to +be the class that is, out of all the world, supremely considerate, big, +leisurely, unfretful in its dealings with others. Perhaps also he has a +vision for himself and is clear-headed for himself, and has seen that +though the steeples fall about him, and though the altars go up in +smoke, he will keep the spirit of God still within his reach. The +gentleness, the grim hope for the world and the patience that built the +cathedrals, shall be in his heart day and night. + +I hold no brief for Bishop Gore. + +I know there must be others like him who voted on the other side. + +I know there are hundreds of thousands of employers who in their hearts +are like him. I know there are hundreds of thousands of men in the +trades unions who are like him. + +I am not sure that Bishop Gore, on the merits of the case, was right. I +wish this day I knew that he was wrong. I wish that I had spent the last +six months in fighting him, in fighting against his vision, that I might +be more free to-day to point to him with joy when I go up and down the +streets with men and look at the churches with men--the rows of +churches--and try to tell them what they are for. I have seen that the +cathedrals scattered about under the sky in England are but God's little +tools to make great cities on the earth, and to build softly out of the +hearts of men and women men who shall be cathedrals too--men buttressed +against the world, men who can stand alone. + +And it has seemed to me that Tom Mann and D.A. Thomas are incompetent as +leaders of industry because they do not see that Labour is full of men +who can do things like this. I am proud, over in my country across the +sea, to be cousin to a nation that is still the headquarters--the +international citadel--of individualism upon the earth. The world knows +if England does not, that this kind of individualism is the most +characteristic, the most mighty and impregnable Dreadnought against that +England has produced. + +But England knows it too. + +I have seen thousands of men in England in their dull brown clothes pass +by me in the street who know and respond to the spirit that is in Bishop +Gore, and who have the courage to show it themselves. And the vision is +in them, but it is not waked. The moment it is waked we will have a new +world. It is because Tom Mann and D.A. Thomas are not leaders of men who +have this spirit that they are about to be dropped as typical leaders of +Labour and Capital in modern times. No man will be accepted by the Crowd +to-day as a competent leader of his class who is afraid of the other +classes. No man will be said to be a true leader, to be competent to +make things move in the world, who does not have three gears of courage: +courage for himself, courage for his own people, courage for other +people; and who does not dare to deal with other people as if they +really might be dealt with, after all, as fellow human beings capable of +acting like fellow human beings, capable of finer and of truer things, +of more manly and patient, more shrewdly generous, more far-sighted +things, than might appear at first. + + * * * * * + +Was Mr. Josiah Wedgewood right when he called Davy McEwen a traitor to +his class? + +I do not want to judge Davy McEwen. Such things are matters of personal +interpretation, and of standing with a man face to face for a moment and +looking him in the eyes. + +Of course, if I had done this, I might have been tempted and despised +him. + +And I might now. The thing that I would have tried to look down through +to in him, if I had looked him in the eye, would have been something +like this: "Are you or are you not, Davy McEwen, standing out day after +day against your class because you can see less than your class sees, +because you are a mere me-man? Do you go by here grimly day by day, past +all these people lined up on the hills, sternly thinking of yourself?" + +If I found that this was true, as it might well be, and often is, I +would say that Davy McEwen was a traitor to his class. But if I found +Davy McEwen going past hills-ful of workmen because he had a larger, +fairer vision of what his class is than they had, if it proved to be +true that the crowd-man in him was keeping the class-man in place, and +holding true his vision for his class, I would say that it was his class +that was being a traitor to him; I would say that sooner or later his +class would see in some quiet day that it had been a traitor to him and +to the world, and a traitor to itself. + + * * * * * + +If socialism and individualism cannot work together, and if (like the +masculine and feminine in spirit) each cannot make itself the means and +the method of fulfilling the other, there is no reason why either of +them should be fulfilled. + +In the meantime, there is a kind of self-will that seems to me, as its +shadow comes across my path, like God himself walking on the earth. And +I have seen it in the rich and I have seen it in the poor, and in people +who were being wrong and in people who were being right. + +It is like hearing great bells in the dark, singing in the solemn night +to so much as hear of a man somewhere, I might go and see, who stands +alone. + +If we want to stand together, let us begin with these men who can stand +alone. + +There is a sense in which Christ died on the cross because He could +find at the time no other way of saying this. There is a sense in which +the decline of individualism is what he died for. + +Or we might call it the beginning of individualism. He died for the +principle of doing what he thought was right before anybody else did it, +and whether anybody else did it or not. The self-will of Jesus was half +the New Testament. He crucified himself, his mother, and a dozen +disciples that His own vision for all might be fulfilled. Socialism +itself, what is good in it, would not exist to-day if Jesus, the Christ, +had not practised socialism, in the best sense, by being an +individualist. + +If we are going to get to socialism by giving up individualism, by +abolishing heroes, why get to it? + +This more glorious self-will is not, of course, of a kind that all men +can expect to have. Most of us have not the vision that equips us, and +that gives us the right, to have it. But we can exact of our leaders +that they shall have it--that they shall see more for us than we can see +for ourselves, that they shall hold their vision up before us and let us +see it, and let us have the use of it, that they shall be true to us, +that they shall be the big brothers of the people. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +RULES FOR TELLING A HERO--WHEN ONE SEES ONE + + +I have sometimes hoped that the modern world was about to produce at +last some man somewhere with a big-hearted, easy powerful mind, who +could protect the French Revolution. What we need most of all just now +in our present crisis is some man who could take up the French +Revolution without half trying, all the world looking on and wondering +softly how he dares to do it, and put it gently but firmly, and once for +all, up high somewhere where no one except geniuses, or at least the +very tallest-minded people, could ever again get at it. + +As it is, hardly a day passes but one sees new little nobodies +everywhere all about one reaching up without half thinking to it--to the +French Revolution--grabbing it calmly, and then using it deliberately +before our eyes as a general free-for-all analogy for anything that +comes into their heads. The Syndicalists and Industrial Workers of the +World have had the use of it last. The fact that the French Revolution +was French and that it worked fairly well a hundred years ago and with a +Louis Sixteenth sort of person, and as a kind of first rough sketch, or +draft of just what a revolution might be for once, and what it would +have to get over being afterward, as soon as possible, never seems to +have occurred to many people. One sees them rushing about the world +trying to get up exact duplicates, little fussy replicas of a +revolution, and of a kind of revolution that the real world put quietly +away in the attic seventy years ago. The real world, and all the men in +it who are facing real facts to-day, are getting what they want in +precisely the opposite of the violent, theatrical French-Revolution +way. The fact that people are quite different now, and that it is more +effective and practical to get new ideas into their heads by keeping +their heads on than it is by taking their heads off--some of us seem to +have passed over. Living as we do in a world to-day with our new +explosives, our new antiseptics, our new biology, bacteriology, our new +storage batteries, our habit of getting everything we get and changing +everything we change by quietly and coolly looking at facts, the old +lumbering fashion of having a beautiful, showy, emotional revolution now +on one side, and then waiting to have another beautiful, showy, +emotional revolution on the other, each oscillating back and forth year +by year until people finally settle down, look at facts together, become +scientific, and see things as they are--has gone by. We have not time +for revolutions nowadays. They may be amusing, but they are not +practical, and evolution or revolution-without-knowing-it, or evolution +all together, suit us better. We are in a world in which we are seeing +men almost being made over before our eyes by the scientific habit of +thought--by the new, slow, imperious way we have come to have of making +ourselves look at things at which we would rather not look, until we see +them as they are. The man of scientific spirit, the quiet-minded, +implacable man who gets what he wants for himself and for others by +merely turning on the light, who makes a new world for us by just +showing us more plainly the one we really have, possesses the earth. + +There is no reason why revolutionists should feel that they are +particularly courageous, that they are the particularly high-minded, +romantic, adventurous, uncompromising and superior people. The real +adventure, the abiding emotion and wonder of living in the twentieth +century, lies in the high, patient, slow, quiet, silent enterprise of +seeing facts as they are, and without any fuss, and inexorably and with +good cheer, acting on them. The human race has a new temperament. The +way to fight now is to look, to look first, to look longest, and to +look for the most people. The way we win a revolution or bring the +enemy to terms to-day is by battering the enemy with coöperation, with +understanding him and being understood by him, by being impregnably, +obstinately his brother, by piling up huge happy citadels of good-will, +of services rendered, services deserved, and services returned. We had +an idea once that the way to conquer a man was by hitting the outside of +him. We conquer men now by getting inside of them, and by getting inside +first and then dealing with outside things together. + +We see the inside. It is the modern note to see the inside, to attack +the essence, the spirit, and to work everything out from that. + +The modern method of being courageous and of defending what we want is a +kind of chemistry. + +Hercules is a bust now. + +We prefer still little women like Madame Curie, or a man like Sir Joseph +Lister, or like Wilbur Wright--the courage that faces material facts, +that deals with the elements of things, whether in a bottle, or in the +heaven above us, or in the earth, or in a man, or in an enemy. + +When the subject-matter is human nature and the courage we have to have +is the courage that can deal with people, we ask ourselves: "What are +the most difficult facts to face in people?" + +They are: + + The facts about how they are different from us. The facts + about their being like us. The facts as to what we can do + about it. + +So it has come to seem to me to be the greatest, the most typical and +difficult courage of modern life and of a crowd civilization, the +courage to look at actual facts in people and to see how the people can +be made to go together. + +A man's courage is his sense of identity. + +A man's courage toward nature, heat, cold, mountains, seas, deserts, +chemistry, geology, is his sense of identity with God and of his right +to share with God in the creating of His world. + +His courage toward people is his sense of identity with men who seem +different from him, of all races, all classes, and all nations. He sees +the differences in their big relations alongside the resemblances. Then +he fits the differences into the resemblances and knows what to do. + +There is a statue of Sir George Livesey, one of the early presidents of +the South Metropolitan Gas Company, placed at the entrance of the works +where thousands of workmen day and night pass in and pass out. + +Sir George Livesey was the man who, in the early days of the South +Metropolitan Gas Company, stood out against all his workmen, for six +long weeks, to get the workmen to believe that they were as good as he +was. He believed that they were capable, or should be capable, of being +identified with him and working with him as partners, of sharing in the +direction of the business, of sharing in the profits, and coöperating +all day, every day, with him and the other partners, to make the +business a success. + +He did not propose to be locked up in a business, if he could help it, +with men who did not feel identified with him, who were not his +partners, or who did not want to be. + +He thought it was not good business to engage five thousand men and pay +them deliberately so much a day to fight his business on the inside of +the works. Being obliged to do his business as a fight against people +who helped him all the time, watching and outwitting them as if he were +dealing with five thousand intelligent gorillas instead of with fellow +human beings, did not interest him. + +He did not believe that the men themselves, in spite of the way they +talked, when they came to think of it, really enjoyed being intelligent +gorillas, any more than he did. + +The Trades Unions passed a resolution that it was safer for the men in +dealing with Sir George Livesey to keep on being gorillas. + +Sir George Livesey proposed that they should all try being fellow human +beings and being in partnership for a little while and see how it +worked. + +The Trades Unions were afraid to let them try. Even if it worked very +well, and if it turned out that being men was safer, in this one +particular case, than being gorillas, it would set a bad example, the +Trades Unions thought. They took the ground that it was safer to have +all men treated alike, whether they were gorillas or not. + +They instructed the men to strike. The South Metropolitan Gas Company +was almost closed up, but it did not yield. + +Sir George Livesey took the ground that if the Trades Unions believed +that his men were not good enough for him, and that he was not good +enough for his men, he would wait until they did. + +The bronze statue of Sir George Livesey that the men have raised, and +that thousands of men go by every day, day after day, and look up to at +their work, was raised to a man who had stood out against his workmen +for weeks to prove that they were as good as he was, and could be +trusted to be loyal to him, and that he was as good as they were, and +that he could be trusted to be loyal to them. + +He had the courage to insist on being, whether anybody wanted it for the +moment or not, a new kind and new size of man. He preferred being +allowed to be a new kind and new size himself, and he preferred allowing +his men to be new kinds and new sizes of men, and he made a shrewd, +dogged guess that when they tried it they would like it. They were +merely afraid to be new sizes, as we all are at first. + + * * * * * + +There are possibly three ways in which, in the confusion of our modern +world, one can tell a hero when one sees one. + +One knows a hero first by his originality. He invents a new kind and new +size of man. He finishes off one sample. There he is. + +The next thing one notices about this man (when he is invented) is his +humility. He never seems to feel--having invented himself--how original +he is. The more original people think he is, and the more they try to +set him one side as an exception, the more he resents it. + +And then, of course, the final way one knows a man is a hero is always +by his courage, by his masterful way of driving through, when he meets a +man, to his sense of identity with him. + +One always sees a hero going about quietly everywhere, treating every +other man as if he were a hero too. + +He gets so in the habit, from day to day (living with himself), of +believing in human nature, that when he finds himself suddenly up +against other people he cannot stop. + +It is not that he is deceived about the other people, though it might +seem so sometimes. He merely sees further into them and further for +them. + +Has he not invented himself? Is he not at this very moment a better kind +of man than he thought he could be once? Is he not going to be a better +kind to-morrow than he is now? + +So, quietly, he keeps on year by year and day by day, treating other +people as if they were, or were meant to be, the same kind of man that +he is, until they are. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +WHO IS AFRAID? + + +When Christ turned the other cheek, the last thing He would have wanted +any one to think was that He was backing down, or that He was merely +being a sweet, gentle, grieved person. He was inventing before +everybody, and before His enemies, promptly and with great presence of +mind, a new kind and new size of man. It was a more spirited, more +original, more unconquerable and bewildering way of fighting than +anybody had thought of before. To be suddenly in an enemy's presence a +new kind and new size of man--colossal, baffling--to turn into +invisibility before him, into intangibility, into another kind of being +before the enemy's eyes, so that he could not possibly tell what to do, +and so that none of the things that he had thought of to do would +work.... This is what Christ was doing, it seems to some of us, and it +is apparently the way He felt about it when He did it. + +Turning the other cheek is a kind of moral jiu-jitsu. + + * * * * * + +The last thing that many of us who are interested in the modern world +really want is to have war, or fighting, stop. We glory in courage, in +the power of facing danger, in adventuresomeness of spirit, in every +single one of the qualities that always have made, and always will make, +every true man a fighter. + +We contend that fighting, as at present conducted, is based on fear and +lazy-mindedness; that it is lacking in the manlier qualities, that the +biggest and newest kind of men are not willing to be in it, and that it +does not work. + +We would rather see the world abolished than to see war abolished. + +We want to see war brought up to date. + +The best way to fight was invented some two thousand years ago, and the +innocent, conventional persons who still believe in a kind of routine, +or humdrum, of shooting, who have not caught up with this +two-thousand-year-old invention, are about to be irrevocably displaced +in our modern life by men who have a livelier, more far-seeing, more +practical, more modern kind of courage. From this time on we have made +up our minds, we, the people of this world, that the only men we are +going to allow to fight for us are the men who can fight the way Christ +did. + +Men who have not the courage to fight the way Christ did are about to be +shut up by society; no one will harm them, of course, innocent, afraid +persons, who have to protect themselves with gunpowder, but they will +merely be set one side after this, where they will not be in a position +to spoil the fighting of the men who are not afraid. + +And who are the men who are not afraid? + +To search your enemy's heart, to amputate, as by a kind of spiritual +surgery, the very desire for fighting in him, to untangle his own life +before his eyes and suddenly make him see what it is he really wants, to +have him standing there quietly, radiantly disarmed, gentle-hearted, and +like a child before you; if you are able, Gentle Reader, or ever have +been able, to do this, you are not afraid! Why should any one ever have +supposed that it takes a backing down, giving up, teary, weak, and +grieved person to do this? + +Christ expressed His idea of courage very mildly when He said, in +effect: "Blessed are those who dare to be meek, for they shall inherit +the earth." + +It takes a bolder front to step up to a man one knows is one's enemy +and coöperate with him than it does to do a little, simple, thoughtless, +outside thing like stepping up to him and knocking him down. + +Coöperating with a man in spite of him, moving over to where he is, +winning a victory over him by getting at his most rooted, most +protected, secret, instinctive feelings, literally striking him through +to the heart and making a new kind of man out of him before his own +eyes, by being a new kind of man to him, takes a bigger, stiller +courage, is a more exposed and dangerous thing to do than to fall on him +and fight him. + +It is also more practical. The one cool, practical, hard-headed way to +win a victory over an enemy is to do the thing that makes him the most +afraid. And there is no man people are more afraid of than the man who +stands up to them, quietly looks at them, and will not fight with them. +He is doing the one thing of all others to them that they would not dare +to do. They wonder what such a man thinks. If he dares stand up before +them and face them with nothing but thinking, what is he thinking? + +What he thinks, if it makes him able to do a thing like this, must have +some man-stuff in it. They prefer to wait and see what he thinks. + +Courage consists in not being afraid of one's own mind and of other +people's minds. When men become so afraid of one another's minds and of +their own minds that they cannot think, they have to back down and +fight. They are cowards. + +They do not know what they think. + +They do not know what they want. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +THE TECHNIQUE OF COURAGE + + +I have never known a coward. + +I have known men who did cowardly things and who were capable of +cowardly thoughts, but I have never known a man who could be fairly and +finally classified as a coward. + +Courage is a process. + +If people are cowards it is because they are in a hurry. + +They have not taken the pains to see what they think. + +The man who has taken the time to think down through to what he really +wants and to what he is bound to get, is always (and sometimes very +suddenly and unexpectedly) a courageous man. + +It is the man who is half wondering whether he really wants what he +thinks he wants or not, or whether he can get it or not, who is a +coward. + +The coward is a half man. He is slovenly minded about himself. He gets +out of the hard work of seeing through himself, of driving on through +what he supposes he wants, to what he knows he wants. + +So, after all, it is a long, slow, patient pull, being a courageous man. +Few men have the nerve to take the time to attend to it. + +The first part of courage consists in all this hard work one has to put +in on one's soul day after day, and over and over again, doggedly, going +back to it. _What is it that I really want?_ + +The second, or more brilliant-looking part of courage, the courageous +act itself (like Roosevelt's when he is shot), which everybody notices, +is easy. The real courage is over then. + +Courage consists in seeing so clearly something that one wants to get +that one is more afraid of not getting it than one is of anything that +can get in the way. + +The first thing that society is ever able to do with the lowest type of +labouring man seems to be to get him to want something. It has to think +out ways of getting him waked up, of getting him to be decently selfish, +and to want something for himself. He only wants a little at first; he +wants something for himself to-day and he has courage for to-day. Then +perhaps he wants something for himself for to-morrow, or next week, or +next year, and he has courage for next week, or for next year. Then he +wants something for his family, or for his wife, and he has courage for +his family, or for his wife. + +Gradually he sees further and wants something for his class. His courage +mounts up by leaps and bounds when he is liberated into his class. Then +he discovers the implacable mutual interest of his class with the other +classes, and he thinks of things he wants for all the classes. He thinks +the classes together into a world, and becomes a man. He has courage for +the world. + +When men see, whether they are rich or poor, what they want, what they +believe they can get, they are not afraid. + +The next great work of the best employers is to get labour to want +enough. Labour is tired and mechanical-minded. The next work of the +better class of labourer, or the stronger kind of Trades Union, is to +get capital to want enough. Capital is tired, too. It does not see +really big, worth-while things that can be done with capital, and has no +courage for these things. + +The larger the range and the larger the variety of social desire the +greater the courage. + +The problem in modern industry is the arousing of the imaginations of +capitalists and labourers so that they see something that gives them +courage for themselves and for one another, and courage for the world. + +The world belongs to the men of vision--the men who are not afraid--the +men who see things that they have made up their minds to get. + +Who are the men to-day, in all walks of life, who want the most things +for the most people, and who have made up their minds to get them? + +There is just one man we will follow to-day--those of us who belong to +the crowd--the man who is alive all over, who is deeply and gloriously +covetous, the man who sees things he wants for himself, and who +therefore has courage for himself, and who sees things he wants and is +bound to get for other people, and who therefore has courage for other +people. + +This is the hardest kind of courage to have--courage for other people. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +THE MEN WHO WANT THINGS + + +During the coal strike I took up my morning paper and read from a speech +by Vernon Hartshorn, the miners' leader: "In a week's time, by tying up +the railways and other means of transportation, we could so paralyze the +country that the government would come to us on their knees and beg us +to go to work on terms they are now flouting as impossible." + +During the dockers' strike I took up my morning paper and read Ben +Tillett's speech, at the meeting the day before, to fifty thousand +strikers on Tower Hill. "'I am going to ask you to join me in a prayer,' +Tillett said. 'Lord Devonport has contributed to the murder, by +starvation, of your children, your women, and your men. I am not going +to ask you to do it, but I am going to call on God to strike Lord +Devonport dead,' He asked those who were prepared to repeat the 'prayer' +to hold up their hands. Countless hands were held up, and cries: 'Strike +him doubly stone dead!' The men then repeated the following 'prayer', +word for word, after Tillett: + + "'O God, strike Lord Devonport dead.' + +"Afterward the strikers chanted the words: 'He shall die! He shall +die!'" + +There are times when it is very hard to have courage for other people. + +It is when one watches people doing cowardly things that one finds it +hardest to have courage for them. + +I felt the same way both mornings at first when I held my paper in my +hand and thought about what I had read, about the government's going +down on its knees, and about God's striking Lord Devonport dead. + +The first feeling was one of profound resentment, shame--a huge, +helpless, muddle-headed anger. + +I had not the slightest trace of courage for the miners; I did not see +how the government could have any courage for them. And I had no courage +for the dockers, or for what could be expected of the dockers. I did not +see how Lord Devonport could have any courage for them. + +I repeated their prayer to myself. + +The dockers were cowards. I was not going to try to sympathize with +them, or try to be reasonable about them. It was nothing that they were +desperate and had prayed. Was I not desperate too? Would not the very +thought that fifty thousand men could pray a prayer like that make any +man desperate? It was as if I had stood and heard fifty thousand beasts +roaring to their god. + +"They are desperate," I said to myself: "I will not take what they think +seriously. It does not matter what desperate people think." + +Then I waited a minute. "But I am desperate, too," I said; "I must not +take what I think seriously. It does not matter what desperate people +think." + +I thought about this a little, and drove it in. + +"What I think will matter more a little later, perhaps, when I get over +being desperate." + +"Perhaps what the dockers think will matter more a little later, too." + +In the meantime are not their scared and hateful opinions as good as my +scared and hateful opinions? + +The important and final opinions, the ones to be taken seriously, that +can be acted on, will be the opinions of those who get over being scared +and hateful first. + +Then I stood up for myself. + +I had a reason for being scared and hateful. They and their prayer drove +me to be scared and hateful. + +I thought again. + +Perhaps they had a reason, too. + +Then it all came over me. I became a human being all in a minute when I +thought of it. + +I became suddenly full of courage for the hateful dockers. + +I thought how much more discouraging it would be if they had not been +hateful at all. + + * * * * * + +I do not imagine God was sorry when He heard those fifty thousand +dockers asking Him to strike Lord Devonport dead. + +Not that He would have approved of it. + +It was not the last word of wisdom or reasonableness. It was lacking in +beauty and distinction as a petition, as being just the right form of +prayer for those fifty thousand faultless dockers up on Tower Hill that +afternoon (the whole of London listening, in that shocked and proper way +that London has). + +But I have not lost all courage for the dockers who made it. + +They still want something! They still are men! They still stand up when +they speak to Heaven! There is some stuff in them yet! They make heaven +and earth ring to get a word with God! + +This all means something to God, probably. + +Perhaps it might mean something to us. + +We are superior persons, it is true. We do not pray the way they pray. + +We believe in being more self-controlled. We take our breakfasts +quietly, and with high collars and silk hats, and with gilt prayer-books +we go into the presence of our Maker. We believe in being calm and +reasonable. + +But if men who have not enough to eat are so half-dead and so worthless +that they can feel calm and reasonable about it, and can always be +precisely right and always say precisely the right thing--if, with their +wives fainting in their arms and their babies crying for food, all that +those dockers had character enough to do, up on Tower Hill, was to make +a polite, smooth, Anglican prayer to God--a prayer like a kind of +blessing before not having any meat, and not that awful, fateful, husky +cry to Heaven, a roar or rending of their hearts up to the black and +empty sky--what would such men have been good for? What hope or courage +could any one have for them, for such men at such a time, if they would +not, if they could not, come thundering and breaking into His presence, +fifty thousand strong, to get what they want? + +I may not know God, but whatever else He is, I feel sure that He is not +a precise stickler-god, that He is not pompous about spiritual manners, +a huge, literal-minded, Proper Person, who cannot make allowances for +human nature, who cannot hear what humble, rough men like these, hewing +their vast desires for Him out of darkness, and out of little foolish +words, are trying to say to Him. + +And perhaps we, too, do not need to be literal-minded about a prayer +that we may hear, or that we may overhear, roaring its way up past our +smooth, beautiful lives rudely to Heaven. + +What is the gist of the prayer to God, and to us? + +What is it that the men are trying to say in this awful, flaming, +blackening metaphor of wishing Lord Devonport dead? + +The gist of it is that they mean to say, whether they are right or wrong +(like us, as we would say, whether we were right or wrong), they mean to +say that they have a right to live. + +In other words, the gist of it is that we are like them, and that they +are like us. + +I, too, in my hour of deepest trial, with no silk hat, with no gloves, +with no gilt prayer-book, as I should, have flashed out my will upon my +God. I, too, have cried with Paul, with Job, across my sin--my sin that +very moment heaped up upon my lips--have broken wildly in upon that +still, white floor of Heaven! + +And when the dockers break up through, fling themselves upon their God, +what is it, after all, but another way of saying, "I am persuaded that +neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor +things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other +creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God...." + +It may have been wicked in the dockers to address God in this way, but +it would have been more wicked in them not to think He could understand. + +I believe, for one, that when Jacob wrestled with the angel, God looked +on and liked it. + +The angel was a mere representative at best, and Jacob was really +wrestling with God. + +And God knew it and liked it. + +Praying to strike Lord Devonport dead was the dockers' way of saying to +God that there was something on their minds that simply could not be +said. + +I can imagine that this would interest a God, a prayer like the dockers' +prayer, so spent, so desperate, so unreasonable, breaking through to +that still, white floor of Heaven! + +And it does seem as if, in our more humble, homely, and useful capacity +as fellow human beings, it might interest us. + +It seems as if, possibly, we might stop criticising people who pray +harder than we do, pointing out that wrestling with God is really rather +rude--as if we might stop and see what it means to God and what it means +to us, and what there is that we might do, you and I, oh, Gentle Reader, +to make it possible for the dockers on Tower Hill to be more polite, +perhaps, more polished, as it were, when they speak to God next time. + +Perhaps nothing the dockers could do in the way of being violent could +be more stupid and wicked than having all these sleek, beautiful, +perfect people, twenty-six million of them, all expecting them not to be +violent. + +In my own quiet, gentle, implacable beauty of spirit, in my own ruthless +wisdom on a full stomach, I do not deny that I do most sternly +disapprove of the dockers and their violence. + +But it is better than nothing, thank God! + +They want something. + +It gives me something to hope for, and to have courage for, about +them--that they want something. + +Possibly if we could get them started wanting something, even some +little narrow and rather mean thing, like having enough to eat--possibly +they will go on to art galleries, to peace societies, and cathedrals +next, and to making very beautiful prayers (alas, Gentle Reader, how can +I say it?) like you--Heaven help us!--and like me! + +I would have but one objection to letting the dockers have their full +way, and to letting the control of the situation be put into their +hands. + +They do not hunger enough. + +They are merely hungering for themselves. + +This may be a reason for not letting the world get entirely into their +hands, but in the meantime we have every reason to be appreciative of +the good the dockers are doing (so far as it goes) in hungering for +themselves. + +It would be strange indeed if one could not tolerate in dockers a little +thing like this. Babies do it. It is the first decency in all of us. It +is the first condition of our knowing enough, or amounting to enough, to +ever hunger for any one else. Everybody has to make a beginning +somewhere. Even a Saint Francis, the man who hungers and thirsts for +righteousness, who rises to the heights of social-mindedness, who +hungers and thirsts for everybody, begins all alone, at the breast. + +Which is there of us who, if we had not begun our own hungering and +thirsting for righteousness, our tugging on God, in this old, lonely, +preoccupied, selfish-looking way, would ever have grown up, would ever +have wanted enough things to belong to a Church of England, for +instance, or to a Congregational Home Missionary Society? + +It is true that the dockers are, for the moment (alas, fifty or sixty +years or so!), merely wanting things for themselves, or wanting things +for their own class. And so would we if we had been born, brought up, +and embedded in a society which allowed us so little for ourselves that +not growing up morally--keeping on over and over again, year after year, +just wanting things for ourselves, and not really being weaned yet--was +all that was left to us. + +There is really considerable spiritual truth in having enough to eat. + +Sometimes I have thought it would be not unhelpful, would make a little +ring of gentle-heartedness around us, some of us--those of us who live +protected lives and pray such rich, versatile prayers, if we would stop +and think what a docker would have to do, what arrangements a docker +would have to make before he could enjoy praying with us--falling back +into our beautiful, soft, luxurious wanting things for others. + +Possibly these arrangements, such as they are, are the ones the dockers +are trying to make with Lord Devonport now. + +The docker is trying to get through hungering for something to eat, to +arrange gradually to have his hungers move on. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +MEN WHO GET THINGS + + +All the virtues are hungers. A vice is the failure of desire. A vice is +a man's failure to have enough big hungers at hand, sternly within +reach, to control his little ones. + +A man who is doing wrong is essentially bored. He has let himself drop +into doing rows of half-things, or things which he can only half do. He +forgets, for the moment, what it really is that he wants, or possibly +that he wants anything. Then it is that the one little, mean Lonely +Hunger--a glass of liquor, a second piece of pie, another man's wife, or +a million dollars, runs away with him. + +When a man sins it is because his appetites fail him. Self-control lies +in maintaining checks and balances of desire, centripetals, and +centrifugals of desire. The worst thing that could happen to the world +would be to have it placed in the hands of men who only have a gift of +hungering for certain sorts of things, or hungering for certain classes +of people, or hungering for themselves. + +We do not want the man who is merely hungering for himself to rule the +world--not because we feel superior to him, but because a man who is +merely hungering for himself cannot be taken seriously as an authority +on worlds. People can take him seriously as an authority on his own +hunger. But what he thinks about everything beyond that point cannot be +taken seriously. What he thinks about how the world should be run, about +what other people want, what labour and capital want, cannot be taken +seriously. + +I will not yield place to any one in my sympathy with the dockers. + +I like to think that I too, given the same grandfathers, the same +sleeping rooms and neighbours, the same milk, the same tincture of +religion, would dare to do what they have done. + +But I cannot be content, as I take my stand by the dockers, with +sympathizing in general. I want to sympathize to the point. + +And on the practical side of what to do next in behalf of the dockers, +or of what to let them do, I find myself facing two facts: + +First, the dockers are desperate. I take their desperation as conclusive +and imperative. It must be obeyed. + +Second, I do not care what they think. + +What they think must not be obeyed. Men who are in the act of being +scared or hateful, whether it be for five minutes, jive months, or sixty +years, who have given up their courage for others, or for their enemies, +are not practical. What a man who despairs of everybody except himself +thinks, does not work and cannot be made to work. The fact that the +dockers have no courage about their employers may be largely the +employers' fault. It is largely the fault of society, of the churches, +the schools, the daily press. But the fact remains, and whichever side +in the contest has, or is able to have, first, the most courage for the +other side, whichever side wants the most for the other side, will be +the side that will get the most control. + +If Labour, in the form of syndicalism, wants to grasp the raw materials, +machinery, and management of modern industry out of the hands of the +capitalists and run the world, the one shrewd, invincible way for Labour +to do it is going to be to want more things for more people than +capitalists can want. + +The only people, to-day, who are going to be competent to run a world, +or who can get hold of even one end of it to try to run it, are going to +be the people who want a world, who have a habit, who may be said to be +almost in a rut, of wanting things all day, every day, for a world--men +who cannot keep narrowed down very long at a time to wanting things for +themselves. + +There will be little need of our all falling into a panic, or all being +obliged to rely on policemen, or to call out troops to stave off an +uprising of the labour classes as long as the labour classes are merely +wanting things for themselves. It is the men who have the bigger hungers +who are getting the bigger sorts of things--things like worlds into +their hands. The me-man and the class-man, under our modern conditions, +are being more and more kept back and held under in the smaller places, +the me-places and class-places, by the men who want more things than +they can want, who lap over into wanting things for others. + +The me-man often may see what he wants clearly and may say what he +wants. + +But he does not get it. It is the class-man who gets it for him. + +The class-man may see what he wants for his class clearly and may say +what he wants. + +But he does not get it. It is the crowd-man who gets it for him. + +It is a little startling, the grim, brilliant, beautiful way that God +has worked it out! + +It is one of His usual paradoxes. + +The thing in a man that makes it possible for him to get things more +than other people can get them is his margin of unselfishness. + +He gets things by seeing with the thing that he wants all that lies +around it. With equal clearness he is seeing all the time the people and +the things that are in the way of what he wants; how the people look or +try to look, how they feel or try to make him think they feel, what they +believe and do not believe or can be made to believe; he sees what he +wants in a vast setting of what he cannot get with people, and of what +he can--in a huge moving picture of the interests of others. + +The man who, in fulfilling and making the most of himself, can get +outside of himself into his class, who, in being a good class-man, can +overflow into being a man of the world, is the man who gets what he +wants. + +I am hopeful about Labour and Capital to-day because in the industrial +world, as at present constituted in our coöperative age, the men who can +get what they want, who get results out of other people, are the men who +have the largest, most sensitive outfits for wanting things for other +people. + +If there is one thing rather than another that fills one with courage +for the outlook of labouring men to-day it is the colossal failure Ben +Tillett makes in leading them in prayer. + +Even the dockers, perhaps the most casually employed, the most spent and +desperate class of Labour of all, only prayed Ben Tillet's prayer a +minute and they were sorry the day after. + +And it was Ben Tillett's prayer in the end that lost them their cause--a +prayer that filled all England on the next day with the rage of +Labour--that a man like Ben Tillett, with such a mean, scared, narrow +little prayer, should dare to represent Labour. + +In the same way, after the shooting in the Lawrence strike, when all +those men (Syndicalists) had streamed through the streets, showing off +before everybody their fine, brave-looking thoughtless, superficial, +guillotine feelings and their furious little banner, "No God and no +Master"--it did one good, only a day or so later, to see a vast crowd of +Lawrence workers, thirty thousand strong, tramping through the streets, +singing, with bands of music, and with banners, "In God we trust" and +"One is our Master, even Christ"--thousands of men who had never been +inside a church, thousands of men who could never have looked up a verse +in the Bible, still found themselves marching in a procession, snatching +up these old and pious mottoes and joining in hymns they did not know, +all to contradict, and to contradict thirty thousand strong, the idea +that the blood and froth, the fear and unbelief, of the Industrial +Workers of the World represented or could ever be supposed to represent +for one moment the manhood and the courage, the faithfulness and (even +in the hour of their extremity) the quiet-heartedness, the human loyalty +and self-forgetfulness, the moral dignity of the American workingman. + +It cannot truly be said that the typical modern labouring man, whether +in America or England, is a coward; that he has no desire, no courage, +for any one except for himself and for his own class. Mr. O'Connor of +the Dockers' Organization in the East of Scotland, said at the time of +the strike of the dockers in London: "This kind of business of the +bureaucratic labour men in London, issuing orders for men to stop work +all over the country, is against the spirit of the trades unions of +England. It is a thing we cannot possibly stand. We have an agreement +with the employers, and we have no intention of breaking it." + +It cannot be said that the typical modern labourer is listening +seriously to the Syndicalist or to the Industrial Worker of the World +when he tells him that Labour alone can save itself, and that Labour +alone can save the world. He knows that any scheme of social and +industrial reform which leaves any class out, rich or poor, which does +not see that everybody is to blame, which does not see that everybody is +responsible, which does not arrange or begin to arrange opportunity and +expectation for every man and every degree and kind of man, and does not +do it just where that man is, and do it now, is superficial. + +If we are going to have a society that is for all of us, it will take +all of us, and all of us together, to make it. Mutual expectation alone +can make a great society. Mutual expectation, or courage for others, +persistently and patiently and flexibly applied--applied to details by +small men, applied to wholes by bigger ones--is going to be the next big +serious, unsentimental, practical industrial achievement. And I do not +believe that for sheer sentiment's sake we are going to begin by rooting +up millionaires and, with one glorious thoughtless sweep, saying, "We +will have a new world," without asking at least some of the owners of +it to help, or at least letting them in on good behaviour. Nor are we +going to begin by rooting up trade unions and labour leaders. + +The great organizations of Capital in the world to-day are daily +engaged, through competition and experiment and observation, in +educating one another and finding out what they really want and what +they can really do; and it is equally true that the great organizations +of labour, in the same way, are educating one another. + +The real fight of modern industry to-day is an educational fight. And +the fight is being conducted, not between Labour and Capital, but +between the labouring men who have courage for Capital and labouring men +who have not, and between capitalists who have courage for Labour and +those who have not. To put it briefly, the real industrial fight to-day +is between those who have courage and those who have not. + +It is not hard to tell, in a fight between men who have courage and men +who have not, which will win. + +Probably, whatever else is the matter with them, the world will be the +most safe in the hands of the men who have the most courage. + +There are four items of courage I would like to see duly discussed in +the meetings of the trades unions in America and England. + +First, A discussion of trades unions. Why is it that, when the leaders +of trades unions come to know employers better than the other men do and +begin to see the other side and to have some courage about employers and +to become practicable and reasonable, the unions drop them? + +Second, Why is it that, in a large degree, the big employers, when they +succeed in getting skilled representatives or managers who come to know +and to understand their labouring men better than they do, do _not_ drop +them? Why is it that, day by day, on all sides in America and England, +one sees the employing class advancing men who have a genius for being +believed in, to at first questioned, and then to almost unquestioned, +control of their business? If this is true, does it not seem on the +whole that industry is safer in the hands of employers who have courage +for both sides and who see both sides than of employees who do not? Does +not the remedy for trades unions and employees, if they want to get +control, seem to be, instead of fighting, to see if they cannot see both +sides quicker, and see them better, than their employers do? + +Third, A discussion of efficiency in a National Labour Party from the +point of view of the trend of national efficiency in business. +Apparently the most efficient and shrewd business men in England and +America are the men who are running what might be called lubricated +industries--who are making their industries succeed on the principle of +sympathetic, smooth-running, mutual interests. If the successful modern +business man who owns factories is not running each factory as a small +civil war, is it not true that the only practical and successful Labour +Party in England, the only party that can get things done for labour and +that can hold power, is bound to be the party that succeeds in having +the most courage for both sides, in seeing the most mutual interests, +and in seeing how these interests can be put together, and in seeing it +first and acting on it before any other merely one-sided party would be +able to think it out? + +Fourth, A discussion of the selection of the best labour leaders to +place at the head of the unions. + +Nearly every man who succeeds in business notably, succeeds in believing +something about the people with whom he deals that the men around him +have not believed before, or in believing something which, if they did +believe it, they had not applied or acted as if they had believed +before. If, in order to succeed, a business man does not believe +something that needs to be believed before other people believe it, he +hires somebody who does believe it to believe it for him. + +Perhaps Labour would find it profitable to act on this principle too, +and to see to it that the leaders chosen to act for them are not the +noisiest minded, but the most creative men, the men who can express +original, shrewd faiths in the men with whom they have to deal--faiths +that the men around them will be grateful (after a second thought) to +have expressed next. + + * * * * * + +In the meantime, whether among the labourers or the capitalists, however +long it may take, it is not hard to see, on every hand to-day, the world +about us slowly, implacably getting into the hands of the men, poor or +rich, who have the most keen, patient courage about other people, the +men who are "good" (God save the word!), the men who have practical, +working human sympathies and a sense of possibilities in those above +them and beneath them with whom they work--the men who most clearly, +eagerly, and doggedly want things for others, who have the most courage +for others. + +I have thought that if we could find out what this courage is, how it +works, how it can be had, and where it comes from, it might be more +worth our while to know than any other one thing in the world. + +I would like to try to consider a few of the sources of this courage for +others. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +SOURCES OF COURAGE FOR OTHERS--TOLERATION + + +After making an address on inspired millionaires one night before the +Sociological Society in their quarters in John Street, I found myself +the next day--a six-penny day--standing thoughtfully in the quarters of +the Zoölogical Society in Regent's Park. + +The Zoölogical Society makes one feel more humble, I think, than the +Sociological Society does. + +All sociologists, members of Parliament, eugenists, professors, and +others, ought to be compelled by law to spend one day every two weeks +with the Zoölogical Society in Regent's Park. + +All reformers who essay to make over human nature, all idealists, should +be required by law to visit menageries--to go to see them faithfully or +to be put in them a while until they have observed life and thought +things out. + + A GREEN BENCH, THE ZOO, REGENT'S PARK, 1911. + +For orienting a man and making him reasonable, there is nothing, I find, +like coming out and putting in a day here, making one's self gaze firmly +and doggedly at the other animals. + +We have every reason to believe that Noah was a good psychologist, or +judge of human nature, before he went into the ark, but if he was not, +he certainly would have come out one. + +There is nothing like a menagerie to limber one up. + +Especially an idealist. + +Take a pelican, for instance. What possible personal ideal was it that +could make a pelican want to be a pelican or that could ever have made +a pelican take being a pelican seriously for one minute? + +And the camel with his lopsided hump. "Why, oh, why," cries the +idealist, wringing his hands. "Oh, why----?" + +I have come out here this afternoon, in the middle of my book, in the +middle of a chapter against the syndicalists, but it ill beseems me, +after spending half a day looking calmly at peacocks, at giraffes, at +hippopotamuses, at all these tails, necks, legs and mouths, at this +stretch or bird's eye view--this vast landscape of God's toleration--to +criticise any man, woman or child of this world for blossoming out, for +living up, or fleshing up, or paring down, to what he is really like +inside. + +Possibly what each man stands for is well enough for him to stand for. +It is only when what a man says, comes to being repeated, to being made +universal, to being jammed down on the rest of us, that the lie in it +begins to work out. + +Let us let everybody alone and be ready to find things out just for +ourselves. + +Here is this big, frivolous, gentle elephant, for instance, poking his +huge, inquiring trunk into baby carriages. He is certainly too glorious, +too profound, a personage to do such things! It does seem a little +unworthy to me, as I have been sitting here and watching him from this +park bench, for a noble, solemn being like the elephant--a kind of +cathedral of a beast, to be as deeply interested as he is in peanuts. + +He looms up before me once more. I look up a little closer--look into +his little, shrewd eyes--and, after all, what do I know about him? + +And I watch the camels with the happy, dazed children on their backs, go +by with soft and drifting feet. Do I suppose I understand camels? Or I +follow the crowd. I find myself at last with that huge, hushed, +sympathetic congregation at the 4 P.M. service, watching the lions eat. + +Everything does seem very much mixed up when one brings one's +Sociological Society dogmas, and one's little neat, impeccable row of +principles to the test of watching the lions eat! + +Possibly people are as different from one another inside--in their souls +at least--as different as these animals are. + +It is true, of course, that as we go about, people do have a plausible +way in this world--all these other people, of looking like us. + +But they are different inside. + +If one could stand on a platform as one was about to speak and could +really see the souls of any audience--say of a thousand people--lying +out there before one, they would be a menagerie beside which, O Gentle +Reader, I dare to believe, Barnum and Bailey's menagerie would pale in +comparison. + +But in a menagerie (perhaps you have noticed it, Gentle Reader) one +treats the animals seriously, and as if they were Individuals. + +They are what they are. + +Why not treat people's souls seriously? + +It is true that people's souls, like the animals, are alike in a general +way. They all have in common (in spiritual things) organs of +observation, appropriation, digestion and organs of self-reproduction. + +But these spiritual organs of digestion which they have are theirs. + +And these organs of self-reproduction are for the purpose of reproducing +themselves and not us. + +These are my reflections, or these try to be my reflections when I +consider the Syndicalist--how he grows or when I look up and see a +class-war socialist--an Upton Sinclair banging loosely about the world. + +My first wild, aboriginal impulse with Upton Sinclair when I come up to +him as I do sometimes--violent, vociferous roaring behind his bars, is +to whisk him right over from being an Upton Sinclair into being me. I do +not deny it. + +Then I remember softly, suddenly, how I felt when I was watching the +lions eat. + +I remember the pelican. + +Thus I save my soul in time. + +Incidentally, of course, Upton Sinclair's insides are saved also. + +It is beautiful the way the wild beasts in their cages persuade one +almost to be a Christian! + +Of course when one gets smoothed down one always sees people very +differently. In being tolerant the rub comes usually (with me) in being +tolerant in time. I am tempted at first, when I am with Upton Sinclair, +to act as if he were a whole world of Upton Sinclairs and of course +(anybody would admit it) if he really were a whole world of Upton +Sinclairs he would have to be wiped out. There would be nothing else to +do. But he is not and it is not fair to him or fair to the world to act +as if he were. + +The moment I see he is confining himself to just being Upton Sinclair I +rather like him. + +It is the same with Ella Wheeler Wilcox. It is when I fall to thinking +of her as if she were, or were in danger of being, a whole world of Ella +Wheeler Wilcoxes that I grow intolerant of her. Ella Wheeler Wilcox as a +Tincture, which is what she really is, of course, is well enough. I do +not mind. + +The real truth about a man like Upton Sinclair, when one has worked down +through to it, is that while from my point of view a class-war +socialist--a man who proposes to put society together by keeping men +apart--is wrong and is sure to do a great deal of harm to some people, +there are other people to whom he does a great deal of good. + +There really are people who need Upton Sinclair. It may be a hard fact +to face perhaps, but when one faces it one is glad there is one. Some of +the millionaires need Sinclair. There are others whose attention would +be attracted better in more subtle ways. + +The class-war socialist, though I may be at this moment in the very act +of trying to make him impossible, to put him out of date, has been and +is, in his own place and his own time, I gratefully acknowledge, of +incalculable value. + +Any man who can, by saying violent and noisy things, make rich, tired, +mechanical-minded people, and poor, tired mechanical-minded people wake +up enough to feel hateful has performed a public service. The +hatefulness is the beginning of their being covetous for other things +than the things they have. If a man has a habit of hunger he gets better +and better hungers as a matter of course; bread and milk, ribbons, +geraniums, millinery, bathtubs, Bibles, copartnership associations. And +in the meantime the one precious thing to be looked out for in a man, +and to be held sacred, is his hunger. + +The one important religious value in the world is hunger and to all the +men to-day who are contributing to the process of moving on hungers; +whether the hungers happen to be our hungers or not or our stages of +hunger or not, we say Godspeed. + +There are times when the sudden sense one comes to have that the world +is a struggle, a great prayer toward the sun, a tumult and groping of +desire, the sense that every kind and type of desire has its time and +its place in it and every kind and type of man, gives a whole new +meaning to life. This sense of a now possible toleration which we come +to have, some of us, opens up to us always when it comes a new world of +courage about people. It makes all these dear, clumsy people about us +suddenly mean something. It makes them all suddenly belong somewhere. +They become, as by a kind of miracle, bathed in a new light, +wrong-headed, intolerable though they be, one still sees them flowing +out into the great endless stream of becoming--all these dots of the +vast desire, all these queer, funny, struggling little sons of God! + +It has been overlooked that social reform primarily is not a matter of +legislation or of industrial or political systems, or of machinery, but +a matter, of psychology, of insight into human nature and of expert +reading and interpretation of the minds of men. What are they thinking +about? What do they think they want? + +The trades unions and employers' associations, extreme socialists and +extreme Tories have so far been very bad psychologists. If the Single +Tax people were as good at being intuitionalists or idea-salesmen as +they are at being philosophers in ideas they would long before this have +turned everything their way. They would have begun with people's hungers +and worked out from them. They would have listened to people to find out +what their hungers were. The people who will stop being theoretical and +logical about each other and who will look hard into each other's eyes +will be the people whose ideas will first come to pass. Everything we +try to do or say or bring to pass in England or America is going to +begin after this, not in talking, but in listening. If social reformers +and industrial leaders had been good listeners, the social +deadlock--England with its House of Lords and railroads both on strike +and America with its great industries quarrelling--would have been +arranged for and got out of the way over twenty years ago. + +We have overlooked the first step of industrial reform, the rather +extreme step of listening. The most hard-headed and conclusive man to +settle any given industrial difficulty is the man who has the gift of +divining what is going on in other people's minds, a gift for being +human, a gift for treating everybody who disagrees with him as if they +might possibly be human too, though they are very poor, even though they +are very rich. Practical psychology has come to be not only the only +solution but also the only method of our modern industrial questions. +Being so human that one can guess what any possible human being would +think is the one hard-headed and practical way to meet the modern labour +problem. + +The first symptom of being human in a man is his range and power of +shrewd, happy toleration, or courage for people who know as little now +as he knew once. + +A man's sense of toleration is based primarily upon the range and power +of his knowledge of himself, upon his power of remembering and +anticipating himself, upon his laughing with God at himself, upon his +habit in darkness, weariness or despair, or in silent victory and joy, +of falling on his knees. + +Toleration is reverence. It is the first source of courage for other +people. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + +CONVERSION + + +Some people think of the world as if it were made all through, people +and all, of reinforced concrete, as if everything in it--men, women, +children, churches, colleges, and parties, were solidly, inextricably +imbedded in it. + +Every age in history has had to get on as well as it could with two sets +of totally impracticable people, our two great orders of Philistines in +this world, the people who put their trust in Portland Cement and the +people who put their trust in Explosives. + +There has not been a single great movement in history yet that every +thoughtful man has not had to watch being held up by these people--by +millions of worthy, simple, rudimentary creatures who consent to be mere +conservatives or mere radicals. + +One set says, "People cannot be converted so we will blow them up." + +The other set says, "We are going to be blown up, so let us put on +Plaster of Paris as a garment, we will array ourselves before the Lord +in Portland Cement." + +Both of these classes of people believe alike on one main point. + +They do not believe in Conversion. + +If the conservatives believed in conversion they would not be so afraid +that they feel obliged to resort to Portland Cement. If the radicals +believed in conversion they would not be so afraid that they feel +obliged to resort to Explosives. + +In our machine civilization to these two great standard classes of +scared people, there has been added what seems to be a third class--the +people who have responded to a kind of motor spirit in the time, who +have modulated a little their unbelief in human nature. They have +substituted for their reinforced concrete Unbelief, a kind of Whirling +Unbelief, called machinery. + +They admit that in our modern life men are not made of reinforced +concrete. We may move, but we move as wheels move, they tell us. We arc +whirlingly imbedded. We are cogs and wheels in an Economic Machine. + +I would like to consider for a moment this Whirling Unbelief. + +There was a time once when I took the Economic Machine very seriously. + +I looked up when I went by, at the Economic Machine as the last and the +most terrific of the inventions among the machines. The machine that +mocked all the other machines, that made all our machines look pathetic +and ridiculous, was the Economic Machine. There were days when I heard +it or seemed to hear it--this Economic Machine closing in around my +life, around all our lives like the last hoarse mocking laugh of +civilization. + +I said I will love every machine that runs except the Economic +Machine--the machine for making people into machines. + +But one day when I had waited or dared to wait, I know not why, a little +longer than usual before the Whirling Unbelief, I heard the hoarse +mocking laugh die away. I became very quiet. I began to think, I +reflected on my experiences. I began to notice things. + +I noted that every time I had found myself being discouraged about +people, I had caught myself thinking of people as Cogs and Wheels. + +Were they really Cogs and Wheels? + +Possibly it was merely the easiest, most mechanical-minded thing to do +to think of people (with all this machinery around one) as cogs and +wheels in an economic machine. + +Then it began to occur to me that it was because I had looked upon the +economic machine a little lazily, a little innocently that I had been +awed and terrific--and had been swept away with it into the Whirling +Unbelief. + +Then I stood quietly and calmly for days, for weeks, for years before +it. I watched it Go Round. + +I then discovered under close observation that what had looked to me +like an economic machine was not an economic machine at all. + +The modern economic world has innumerable mechanical elements in it, but +it is not an economic machine. + +It is a biological engine. + +It is the biology in it that conceives, desires, and determines the +machinery in it. + +The most important parts of the machine are not the very mechanical +parts. They are the very biological parts. + +The economic machine is full of made-people, but it does not make very +much difference about the made-people. I find that as a plain, practical +matter of fact I do not need to watch the made-people so very much to +understand the world, or to get ready for what is happening to it. + +In prospecting for a world, I watch the born people. + +I watch especially the people who have been born twice. + +As one watches the way the world is going round one finds that what is +really making it go round, is not its being an economic machine, but its +being a biological engine. + +Industrial reform is a branch of biology. + +The main fact of biology as regards a man is that he can be born. + +The main fact of biology as regards society--that is, the main fact of +social biology--is that a man can be born twice. + +As long as a man is born to go with a father and a mother it is well +enough to have been born once, but the moment a man deals with other +people or with the world, he has to be born again. + +This is the main fact about the biological engine we call the world. + +The main fact about the Engine is the biology in it. + +Every other fact for a man has to be worked out from this--that is: out +of being born once if one wants to belong merely to a father and mother, +and out of being born twice if one wants to belong to a world. + +A man does not need to enter again into his mother's womb and come out a +child. He enters into the World's Womb and comes out a man. + + * * * * * + +The world is being placed to-day before our eyes in the hands of the men +who are born twice. + +Not all men are cogs and wheels. + +The first day I discovered this and believed this I went out into the +streets and looked into the faces of the men and the women and I looked +up at the factories and the churches and I was not afraid. + +I do not deny that cogs and wheels are very common. + +But I do not believe that an economic system or industrial scheme based +on the general principle of arranging a world for cogs and wheels would +work. I believe in arranging the world on the principle that there are +now and are going to be always enough men in it who are born, and enough +who are born twice to keep cogs and wheels doing the things men who have +been born twice, who have visions for worlds, want done, and to keep +people who prefer being cogs and wheels where they will work best and +where they will help the running gear of the planet most--by going round +and round, in the way they like--going round and round and round and +round. + +But why is it, one cannot help wondering, that the moment a man rises up +suddenly in this modern world and bases or seeks to base an industrial +or social reform frankly on courage for other people, on believing in +the inherent and eternal power of men of changing their minds, of being +put up in new kinds and new sizes of men, in other words, on +conversion--why is it that clergymen, atheists, ethical societies, +politicians, socialists will all unite, will all flock together and +descend upon him, shout and laugh him away, bully him with dead +millionaires, bad corporations and humdrum business men, overawe him +with mere history, argue him with statistics, and thunder him with +sermons out of the world--if he puts up a faint little chirrup of hope +that men can be converted? + +It is not that the synods, ethical societies, anarchists, the bishops +and Bernard Shaw, have merely given up expecting individual men to be +converted. There would be a measure of plausibility in giving up on a +few particular men's being born again. It is worse than that. What seems +to have happened to nearly all the people who have schemes of industrial +reform is that they have really given up at one fell swoop a whole new +generation's being born again. It is going to be just like this one, +they tell us, the new generation--the same old things the same old +foolish ways of deceiving the world, that any child can see have not +worked--Bernard Shaw and the bishops whisper to us, are coming around +and around again. They must be planned for. All these young men of +wealth about us who read the papers and who are ashamed of their fathers +are going to be just like their fathers. The atheists, the socialists, +and the single taxers, missionaries and evangelists have given up their +last loophole of hope in the new business generation and they trust only +to machines to save us, or to professors, or to paper-treatises on +eugenics! + +And yet, after all, if we were going to start an absolute, decisive, and +practical scheme of eugenics to-morrow with whom would we begin, with +which particular people would we begin? We would have to go back, +Bernard Shaw and the bishops and all of us, to the New Testament--to the +old idea of being born again. + +I have watched now these many years the professors, caught in their +culture-machines going round and round, and the priests caught in their +religion-machines going round and round, and the business men caught in +their economic machine, and I have heard them all saying over and over +in a kind of terrible sing-song day and night, the silly, lazy words of +a glorious old roue four thousand years ago, "The thing that hath been +is the thing which shall be, and that which is done is that which shall +be done and there is no new thing under the sun." + +There are some of us who do not believe this. We defy the +culture-machines. We believe that even professors can be converted, can +be educated. + +We defy the bishops. We believe that business men can be converted. + +We defy the business men. We believe the bishops can be converted. + +I speak for a thousand, thousand men. + +In the hum and drive of the wheels and the great roar around me of the +Whirling Unbelief. I speak for these men--for all of us. _We are not +cogs and wheels. We are men. We are born again ourselves. Other men can +be born again._ + +Men shall not look each other in the eyes wisely and nod their heads and +say that human nature will not change. + +We will change it. If we cannot get but two or three together to change +it, then two or three by just being two or three and by daring to be two +or three, or even one if necessary shall change it. + +The moment ninety million people in a great nation have welded out a +vision of the kind of man of wealth--the kind of employer they want, the +moment they set the millionaire in the vise of some great national +expectation, carve upon him firmly, implacably the will of the people, +the people will have the millionaire they want. If a nation really wants +a great man it invents him. We have hut to see we really want him, and +that no other machinery will work, and we will invent him. + +Necessity is the mother of invention. Here in these United States sixty +years ago were we not all at work on a man named Abraham Lincoln? We had +been at work on him for years trying to make him into a Lincoln. He +could not have begun to be what he was without us, without the daily +thought, the responsibility, the tragical national hope and fear, the +sense of crisis in a great people. All these had been set to work on +him, on making him a Lincoln. + +Lincoln would not have dared not to be a great man, an all-people man +with a whole mighty nation, with all those millions of watchful, +believing people laying their lives softly, silently, their very sons' +lives in his hands. He did not have the smallest possible chance from +the day he was named for President, to be a second-rate man or to betray +a nation, or to back down out of being himself. He had been filled night +and day with the vision of a great nation struggling, with the grim +glory of it. He was free to make mistakes for it, but there was no way +he could have kept from being a true, mighty, single-hearted man for it, +if he had tried. We had clinched Lincoln in 1862. He was caught fast in +the vise of our hopes. + +Perhaps it is because, at certain times in history, nations seem to be +siding with the worst in their public men and expecting the worst in +them that they get them. + +If a crowd wants to be represented, wants to touch to the quick and +kindle the man in it, the man filled with vision, the man who is born +again into its desire, the crowd-man, they have but to surround him and +overshadow him. They will create him, in scorn and joy will they +conceive him, and before he knows who he is, they will bring him forth. + +It would not be hard, I imagine, to be a great man, with a true, +steadied, colossal, single-heartedness, if one were caught fast in the +vision, the expectation of a great nation. + +To be born again is simple with ninety million people to help. We have +all been born again in little things with a few people to help. We have +been swung over from little short motives to big, long-levered +controlling ones. We have known in a small way what Conversion is. We +have seen how naturally it works out in little things. + +There is nothing new about it. There is not a man who does not know what +it is to get over a small motive. We have seen, when we looked back, +what it was that happened. + +The way to get over a small motive is to let it get lost in a big one. + +A man does not stop to pick up a penny or a million dollars when he is +running to save his life. + +A man does not stop to pick up two pennies, or two thousand dollars, or +two million dollars when he is running to save ten thousand lives or +running to save ninety million lives, when he is running to save a city +or a nation. + +This is Conversion--entering into the World's Womb, the world's vision +or expectation and being born again. + + * * * * * + +It is not for nothing that I have seen the sun lifting up the faces of +the flowers, and crumbling the countenances of the hills. And I have +seen music stirring faintly in the bones of old men. And I have heard +the dead Beethoven singing in the feet of children. + +And I have watched the Little Earth in its little round of seasons +dancing before the Lord. + +And I have believed that music is wrought into all things, and that the +people I see about me have not one of them been left out. + +I believe in sunshine and in hothouses. I believe in burning glasses. I +believe in focusing light into heat and heat into white fire, and +turning white fire into little flowing brooks of steel. + +And I believe in focusing men upon men. + +I believe in Conversion. + +Of course it would all be different--focusing men upon men, if men were +cogs and wheels, or if the men they were focused on were made of stones. + +I stand and look at this stone and believe it is all rubber and +whalebone inside. + +But what of it? + +It does not get true. + +While I am looking at a man and believing a certain thing about the man, +it gets true. + +What is going on in my mind while I look at him effects actual +mechanical changes in him, affects the flow of blood in his veins. A +look colours him, whitens him, twists and turns the muscles and tissues +in his body. I draw lines upon his inmost being. I lay down a new face +upon his face. A moment after I look upon the man's face it has become, +as it were, or may have become, a new little landscape. I have seen a +great country opened up in him of what he might be like. While I look I +have been ushered softly, for a second, into the presence of a man who +was not there before. + +Such things have happened. + +Beatrice looked at Dante once. Ten silent centuries began singing. + +A man named Stephen, one day, while he was dying, gave a look at a man +named Paul. Paul came away quietly and hewed out history for two +thousand years. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + +EXCEPTION + + +A bicycle, the other day, a little outside Paris as it was running along +quietly, lifted itself off the ground suddenly, and flew three yards and +seven inches. + +There are nine million seven hundred and eighty nine thousand nine +hundred and seventy-nine bicycles that have not flown three yards and +seven inches. + +But what of it? Why count them up? Why bother about them? The important, +conclusive, massive, irresistible, crushing, material fact is that one +bicycle has flown three yards seven inches. + +The nine million seven hundred and eighty-nine thousand nine hundred and +seventy-nine bicycles that can not fly yet are negligible. So are nine +out of ten business firms. + +If there is one exceptional man in modern industry who is running his +business in the right way and who has made a success of it and has +proved it--he may look visionary to class-socialists and to other people +who decide by measuring off masses of fact, and counting up rows of +people and who see what anybody can see, but he is after all in +arranging our social programme the only man of any material importance +for us to consider. It would be visionary to take the past, dump it +around in front of one, and try to make a future out of it. I do not +deny what people tell me about millionaires and about factory slaves. I +have not mooned or lied or turned away my face. I stand by time one +live, right, implacable, irrevocable, prolific exception. I stand by the +one bicycle out of them all that has flown three yards and seven inches. +I lay out my program, conceive my world on that. Piles of facts +arranged in dead layers high against heaven, rows of figures, miles of +factory slaves, acres of cemeteries of dead millionaires, going-by +streetfuls of going-by people, shall not cow me. + +My heart has been broken long enough by counting truths on my fingers, +by numbering grains of sand, men, and mountains, bombs, acorns and +marbles alike. + +Which truth matters? + +Which man is right? + +Where is Nazareth? + + * * * * * + +Nazareth is our only really important town now. I will see what is going +on in Nazareth. On every subject that comes up, in every line of +thought, I will go to the city of implacable exceptions. All the +inventors flock there--the man with the one bicycle which flies, the one +great industrial organizer, the man with the man-machine, and the +man--the great boy who carries new great beautiful cities in his pocket +like strings and nails and knives, they are all there. + +Nazareth is the city, the one mighty little city of the spirit where all +the really worth-while men wherever they may seem to be, all day, all +night, do their living. + +Other cities may make things, in Nazareth they make worlds. One can see +a new one almost any day in Nazareth. Men go up and down the streets +there with their new worlds in their eyes. + +Some of them have them almost in their hands or are looking down and +working on them. + +It does not seem to me that any of us can make ourselves strong and fit +to lay out a sound program or vision for a world, who do not watch with +critical expectation and with fierce joy these men of Nazareth, who do +not take at least a little time off every day, in spirit, in Nazareth, +and spend it in watching bicycles fly three feet and seven inches. To +watch these men, it seems to me, is our one natural, economical way to +get at essential facts, at the set-one-side truths, at the exceptions +that worlds and all-around programs for worlds are made out of. To watch +these men is the one way I know not to be lost in great museums and +storehouses of facts that do not matter, in the streetfuls and +skyscraperfuls of men that go by. + +I regret to record that professors of political economy, social +philosophers, industrial big-wigs, presidents of boards of trade have +not been often met with on the streets of this silent, crowded, mighty, +invisible little town that rules the destinies of men. + +Not during the last twenty years, but one is meeting them there to-day. + +All these things that people are saying to me are mere history. I have +seen the one live exception. One telephone was enough. And one Galileo +was enough, with his little planet turning round and round, with all of +us on it who were obliged to agree with him about it. It kept turning +round and round with us until we did. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + +INVENTION + + +If I were a Noah and wanted to get a fair selection of people in London +to be saved to start a new world, I would go out and look over the crowd +who are watching the flying machines at Hendon, and select from them. + +The Hendon crowd will not last forever. People who would be far less +desirable to start worlds with would gradually work their way in, but it +is only fair to say that these first few thousand men and women of all +classes who responded to the flying machine would be possessed, as any +one could see with a look, of special qualifications for running worlds. + +I shall never quite forget the sense I had the first day of the crowd at +Hendon--those thousands of faces that had gathered up in some way out of +themselves a kind of huge crowd-face before one--that imperturbable +happiness on it and that look of hard sense and hope, half poetry, half +science ... it was like gazing at some portrait, or some vast +countenance of the future--watching the crowd at Hendon. Scores of times +I looked away from the machines swinging up past me into the sky to +watch the faces of the men and the women that belonged with sky +machines; these men and women who stood on the precipice of a new world +of air, of sunshine, and of darkness, and were not afraid. + +One was in a little special civilization for the time being, all the new +people in it sorted out from the old ones. One felt a vast +light-heartedness all about. One was in the presence of the picked +people who had come to see this first vast initiative of man toward +Space, toward the stars, the people who had waited for four thousand +years to see it; to see at last Little Man (as it would seem to God) in +this his first clumsy, beautiful childlike tottering up the sky. + +One was with the people on the planet who were the first to see the +practical, personal value, the market value, of all these huge idle +fields of air that go with planets. They were the first people to feel +identified with the air, to have courage for the air, the lovers of +initiative, the men and women that one felt might really get a new world +if they wanted one and who would know what to do with it when they got +it. + + * * * * * + +The other day in London near Charing Cross, as the crowds were streaming +down the Strand, a heavy box joggled off over the end of a dray, crashed +to the pavement, flew open and sent twenty-four hundred pennies rolling +under the feet of the men and of the women and of the boys along the +street. + +Traffic was stopped and a thousand men and women and boys began picking +the pennies up. They all crowded up around the dray and put the pennies +in the box. + +The next day the brewer to whom the pennies belonged had a letter in the +_Times_ saying that not one of the twenty-four hundred pennies was +missing. + +He closed his letter with a few moral remarks, announced that he had +sent the twenty-four hundred pennies as a kind of tribute to people--to +anybody Who Happened Along the Strand--to a Foundling Hospital. + + * * * * * + +The man who told me this (it was at a business men's dinner), told it +because he knew I was trying to believe pleasant things about human +nature. He thought he ought to encourage me. + +I will not record the conversation, I merely record my humble opinion. + +I think it would have been better to have had just a few of those +pennies in the Strand say seven or eight missing. + +On Broadway probably eleven or twelve out of twenty-four hundred would +have been missing--I hope. + +And I am not unhopeful about England, or about the Strand. + +There are two ways to get relief from this story. + +First, the brewer lied. There were fewer pennies stolen than he would +have thought, and when he figured it out and found just a few pennies +between him and a good story, he put the pennies in. And so the dear +little foundlings got them--the letter in the _Times_ said. They were +presented to them, as it were, by the Good Little Boys in the Strand. + +Second, somebody else put the pennies in, some person standing by with a +sense of humour, who knew the letters that people write to the _Times_ +and the kind, serious, grave way English people read them. He put the +pennies grimly in at one end, then he waited grimly for the letter in +the _Times_ to come out at the other. + +Either of these theories would work very well and let the crowd off. + +But if they are disproved to me, I have one more to fall back upon. + +If the story is true and not a soul in that memorable crowd on that +memorable day stole a penny, it was because they had all, as it happened +in that particular crowd, stolen their pennies before, and got over it. +It would seem a great pity if there had not been some one boy with +enough initiative in him, enough faculty for moral experiment, to try +stealing a penny just once, to see what it would be like. + +The same boy would have seen at once what it was like, tried feeling +ashamed of it promptly, and would never have had to bother to do it +again. He would have felt that penny burning in his pocket past cash +drawers, past banks, past bonds, until he became President of the United +States. + +At all events the last thing that I would be willing to believe is that +either America or England would be capable of producing a chance crowd +in the street that out of sheer laziness or moral thoughtlessness would +not be able to work up at least one boy in it who would have a sudden +flash of imagination about a penny rolling around a man's leg--if he +picked it up and--did not put it in the box. + +The crowd in the Strand, of course, like any other real crowd, was a +stew of development, a huge laboratory of people. All stages of +experience were in it. + +Some of the people in the crowd that day had a new refreshing thought, +when they saw those pennies rolling around everybody. They thought they +would try and see what stealing a penny was like. Then they did it. + +Others in the crowd thought of stealing a penny too, and then they had +still another thought. They thought of not stealing it. And this second +thought interested them more. + +Others did not think of stealing a penny at all because they had thought +of it so often before had got used to it and had got used to dismissing +it. + +Others thought of stealing a penny and then they thought how ashamed +they were of having thought of it. Others looked thoughtfully at the +pennies and thought they would wait for guineas. + +But whatever it was or may have been that was taking place in that crowd +that day--they all thought. + +And after all what is really important to a nation is that the people in +it--any chance crowd in a street in it should think. I confess I care +very little one way or the other about the pennies being saved, or about +the brewer's little touch of moral poetry, his idea that this particular +crowd was solid Sunday-school from one end to the other, all through. +Whether it was a crowd that thought of stealing a penny and did or did +not, if the pennies rolling around among their feet made them think, +made them experiment, played upon the initiative, the individuality or +invention in them, the personal self-control, the social responsibility +in them, it was a crowd to be proud of. And I am glad, for one, that the +box of pennies was dumped in the street. + +I would like to see shillings tried next time. + +Then guineas might be used. + +A box of guineas dumped in the street would do more good than a box of +pennies because there are many people who would think more with the +guineas rolling around out of sight around a man's legs than they would +with a penny's doing it. + +In this way a box of guineas would do more good. + + * * * * * + +Thousands of men and women that we have sent to India from this Western +World have been trying with Bibles, and good deeds, and kind faces, and +Sunday-schools to get the Hindoos to believe that it would not be a sin +to kill the rats and stop the bubonic plague. + +Nothing came of it. + +In due time General Booth-Tucker appeared on the scene. + +He came too, of course, with a Bible and with his kind face like the +others, and of course, too, he went to Sunday-school regularly. + +And while he was watching the bubonic plague sweeping up cities, he +tried too, like the others, to tell the people about a God who would not +be displeased if they killed the rats and stopped the plague. + +But he could not convince anybody, or at best a few here and there. + +The next thing that was known about General Booth-Tucker's work in India +was, that he had (still with his Bible, of course, and with his kind +look) slipped away and established in the south of France a factory for +the manufacture of gloves. + +He then returned to his poor superstitious people in India who would not +believe him, and told them that he knew and knew absolutely that they +would not be punished for killing the rats, that the rats were not +sacred, and that he could prove it. + +He offered the people so much apiece for the skins of the rats. + +The poorest and most desperate of the natives then began killing the +rats secretly and bringing in the skins. + +They waited for the wrath of Heaven to fall upon them. Nothing happened, +then they told others. The others are telling everybody. + +General Booth-Tucker's factory to-day in the south of France is very +busy making money for the Salvation Army, turning out Christian gloves +for the West and turning out Christians or the beginnings of Christians +for the East, and the ancient, obstinate theological idea of the +holiness of the rats which the Hindoos have had is being ceaselessly, +happily, and stupendously, all day and all night, disproved. + +Incidentally the little religious glove factory of General +Booth-Tucker's in the south of France is giving India the first serious +and fair chance it has ever had to stop being a pest house on the world, +and to bring the bubonic plague with its threat at a planet to an end. + +General Booth-Tucker's Bible was just like anybody else's Bible. But +there must have been something about the way he read his Bible that made +him think of things. And there must have been something about his kind +look. He looked kindly at something in particular, and he was determined +to make that something in particular do. He had the rats, and he had the +gloves, and he had the Hindoo's--and he made them do, and before he knew +it (I doubt if he knows it now) he became a saviour or inventor. + +In the big, desolate, darkened heart of a nation he had wedged in a God. + + * * * * * + +I wonder if General Booth-Tucker--that is, the original, very small +edition of General Booth-Tucker--had been in that memorable crowd, that +memorable day in the Strand when nobody (with a report that was heard +around the world) stole a penny--I wonder if General Booth-Tucker would +have been A Very Good Little Boy. + +One of the pennies might have been missing. + +I have no prejudice against the Very Good Little Boy. It is not his +goodness that is what is the matter with him. But I am very much afraid +that if there were any way of getting all the facts, it would not be +hard to prove categorically that what has been holding the world back +the last twenty-five years in its religious ideals, its business ethics, +its liberty, candour, its courage, and its skill in social engineering, +is the Very Good Little Boy. He may be comparatively harmless at first +and before his moustache is grown, but the moment he becomes a grown-up +or the moment he sits on committees with his quiet, careful, snug, +proper fear of experiment, of bold initiative, his disease of never +running a risk, his moral anæmia, he blocks all progress in churches, in +legislatures, in directors' meetings, in trades unions, in slums and +May-fairs. One sees The Good Little Boys weighing down everything the +moment they are grown up. + +They have all been brought up each with his one faint, polite little +hunger, his one ambition, his one pale downy desire in life, looking +forward day by day, year by year, to the fine frenzy, to the fierce joy +of Never Making a Mistake. + +If I had been given the appointment and were about to set to work +to-morrow morning to make a new world, I would begin by getting together +all the people in this one that I knew, or had noticed anywhere, who +seemed to have in them the spirit of experiment. Any boy or girl or man +or woman that I had seen having the curiosity to try the different kinds +and different sizes of right and wrong, or that I had seen boldly and +faithfully experimenting with the beautiful and the ugly so that they +really knew about them for themselves--would be let in. I would put +these people for a time in a place by themselves where the people who +want to keep them from trying or learning, could not get at them. + +Then I would let them try. + +I would put the humdrum people in another place by themselves and let +them humdrum, the respectable people by themselves and let them +respectabilize. + +Then after my try-world had tried, and got well started and the people +in it had finished off some things and knew what they wanted, I would +allow the humdrums and the respectabilities to be let in--to do what +they were told. + +Doing what they are told is what they like. So they would be happy. + +Of course doing what they are told is what is the matter with them. But +what is the matter with them would be useful. + +And everybody would be happy. + + * * * * * + +When the Titanic went down a little while ago and those few quiet men on +deck began their duty in that soft, gracious moonlit night, of sorting +out the people who should die from the people who should live--if one +was a woman one could live. If one was a man one could die. + +No one will quarrel with the division as the only possible or endurable +one that could have been made. + +But if God himself could have made the division or some super-man ship's +officer who could have represented God, could have made it, it is not +hard to believe that a less superficial, a more profound and human +difference between people would have been used in sorting out the people +who should live from the people who should die than a difference in +organs of reproduction. + +The women were saved first because the men were men and because it was +the way the men felt. It expressed the men who were on the deck that +night that the women should be saved first; it was the last chance they +had to express themselves like men and they wanted to do it. + +But if God himself could have made the division with the immediate and +conclusive knowledge of who everybody was, of what they really were in +their hearts, and of what they and their children and their children's +children would do for the world if they lived no one would have +quarrelled with God for making what would have seemed at the moment, no +doubt, very unreasonable and ungallant and impossible-looking +discriminations in sorting out the people who should live from the +people who should die. + +Possibly even Man (using the word with a capital), acting from the point +of view of history and of the race and from the point of view of making +a kind of world where _Titanic_ disasters could not happen, would have +chosen on the deck of the _Titanic_ that night, very much the way God +would. + +From the point of view of Man there would have been no discrimination in +favour of a woman because she was a woman. + +The last cry of the last man that the still listening life-boats heard +coming up out of the sea that night might have been the cry of the man +who had invented a ship that could not sink. + +There would not have been a woman in a life-boat or a woman sinking in +the sea who would not have had this man saved before a woman. + +If we could absolutely know all about the people, who are the people in +this world that we should want to have saved first, that we would want +to have taken to the life-boats and saved first at sea? + +The women who are with child. + +And the men who are about to have ideas. + +And the men who man the boats for them, who in God's name and in the +name of a world protect its women who are with child, and its men who +are about to have ideas. + +The world is different from the _Titanic_. We do not need to line up our +immortal fellow human beings, sort them out in a minute on a world and +say to them, "Go here and die!" "Go there and live!" We are able to +spend on a world at least an average of thirty-five years apiece on all +these immortal human beings we are with, in seeing what they are like, +in guessing on what they are for and on their relative value, and in +deciding where they belong and what a world can do with them. + +We ought to do better in saving people on a world. We have more time to +think. + +What would we try to do if we took the time to think? Would there be any +way of fixing upon an order for saving people on a world? What would be +the most noble, the most universal, the most Godlike and democratic +schedule for souls to be saved on--on a world? + +I think the man that would save the most other people should be saved +first. It would not be democratic to save an ordinary man, a man who +could just save himself, just think for himself, when saving the man +next to him instead would be saving a man who would save a thousand +ordinary men, or men who have gifts for thinking only of themselves. + +Of course one man who thinks merely of himself is as good as another man +who thinks merely of himself, but from the point of view of a democracy +every common man has an inalienable right--the right to have the man who +saves common men saved first. + +And the moment we get in this world, our first democracy, the moment the +common man really believes in democracy, this aristocracy or people who +save others (the common man himself will see to it) will be saved first. + +He will make mistakes in applying the principle of democracy, that is in +collecting his aristocracies, his strategic men, his linchpins of +society, but he will believe in the principle all through. It will be +not merely in his brain, but in his instincts, in his unconscious +hero-worship, in his sinews and his bones, and it will stir in his +blood, that some men should be saved before others. + +But if the world is not a _Titanic_, and if we have on the average +thirty-five years apiece to decide about men on a world and put them +where they belong, it might not be amiss to try to unite for the time +being on a few fundamental principles. What would seem to us to be a few +fundamental principles for the act of world-assimilation, that vast, +slow, unconscious crowd-process, that peristaltic action of society of +gathering up and stowing away men--all these little numberless cells of +humanity where they belong? + +No one cell can have much to say about it. But we can watch. + +And as we watch it seems to us that men may be said to be dividing +themselves roughly and flowingly at all times into three great streams +or classes. + +They are either Inventors, or they are Artists, or they are Hewers. + +Of course in classifying men it is necessary to bear in mind that their +getting out of their classifications is what the classifications are +for. + +And it is also necessary to bear in mind that men can only be classified +with regard to their emphasis and may belong in one class in regard to +one thing and in another class with regard to another, but in any +particular place, or at any particular time a man is doing a thing in +this world, he is probably for the time being, while he is doing it, +doing it as an Inventor (or genius), as an Artist (or organizer), or as +a Hewer. Most men, it must be said, settle down in their +classifications. They are very apt to decide for life whether they are +Inventors or Artists or Hewers. + +But as has been said before, being on a world and not on a _Titanic_, we +have time to think. + +On what principles could we make out a schedule or inventory of human +nature, and decide on world-values in men? + +When I was a boy I played in the hollow of a great butternut tree--the +one my mother was married under. When I was in college I used to go back +to it. I used to wonder a little that it was still there. When we had +all grown up we all came back and got together under it one happy day +and there it still stood, its great arms from out of the sky bent over +lovers and over children on its little island, its wide river singing +round it, still that glorious old hollow in it, full of dreams and +childhood and mystery, and that old sudden sunshine in it through the +knots like portholes ... then we stood there all of us together. And the +mother watched her daughter married under it. + +I can remember many days standing beneath it as a small boy (my small +insides full of butternuts, a thousand more butternuts up on the tree), +and I used to look up in its branches and wonder about it, wonder how it +could keep on so with its butternuts and with its leaves, with its +winters and with its summers, its cool shadows and sunshines, still +being a butternut tree, with that huge hollow in it. + +I have learned since that if a few ounces or whittlings of wood in a +tree are chipped out in a ring around it under the bark, cords of wood +in the limbs all up across the sky would die in a week--if one chips out +those few little ounces of wood. + +Cords of wood can be taken out of the inside of the tree and it will not +mind. + +It is that little half-inch rim of the tree where the juice runs up to +the sun that makes the tree alive or dead. + +The part that must be saved first and provided for first is that +slippery little shiny streak under the bark. + +One could dig out a huge brush-heap of roots and the tree would live. +One could pick off millions of leaves, could cut cords of branches out +of it, or one could make long hollows up to the sun, tubes to the sky +out of trees, and they would live, if one still managed to save those +little delicate pipe lines for Sap, running up and running down, day and +night, night and day, between the light in heaven and the darkness in +the ground. + +Perhaps Men are valuable in proportion as it would be difficult to +produce promptly other men to perform their functions, or to take their +places. + +If we cut away in society men of genius, leaves, and blossoms, in trees, +men who reach down Heaven to us, they grow out again. + +If we cut away in society great masses of roots, common men who hew out +the earth in the ground and get earth ready to be heaved up to the +sky--the roots grow out again. + +But if we cut a little faint rim around it of artists, of inventive +men-controllers, of the Sap-conductors, the men who make the Hewers run +up to the sky and who make the geniuses come down to the ground, the men +who run the tree together, who out of dark earth and bright sunshine +build it softly--if we destroy these, this little rim of great men or +men who save others, a totally new tree has to be begun. + +It is the essence of a democracy to acknowledge that some men for the +time being are more important in it than others, and that these men, +whosoever they are, in whatever order of society they may be--poor, +rich, famous, obscure--these men who think for others, who save others +and invent others, who make it possible for others to invent themselves, +these men shall be saved first. + + * * * * * + +One always thinks at first that one would like to make a diagram of +human nature. It would be neat and convenient. + +Then one discovers that no diagram one can make of human nature--unless +one makes what might be called a kind of squirming diagram will really +work. + +Then one tries to imagine what a flowing diagram would be like. + +Then it occurs to one, one has seen a flowing diagram. + +A Tree is a flowing diagram. + +So I am putting down on this page for what it may be worth, what I have +called A Family Tree of Folks. + +_Read across_: + +=INVENTORS= =ARTISTS= =HEWERS= + +Inventors Organizers Labourers + +Imagination Applied Imagination Tool or Mechanism + +Fecundity Control Activity + +Seer Poet Actor + + { The Man who Sees the } +The Man who Generalizes {General in the Particular} Action + +The Deeper Permanent {The Immediate Significance} Hewing +Significance { or Meaning } + +Light Applied Light or Heat Applied Heat or + Motion + +Stevenson and Wall James J. Hill Railway Hands + +Creating Creative Selecting Hewing + +The Democrat {The Aristocrat or} The Crowd + { Crowdman } + +Gods Heroes Men + +Centrifugal Power Equilibrium Centripetal Power + +The Whirl-Out People The Centre People The Whirl-In People + +Alexander Graham Bell Telephone-Vail Hands + +Architect Contractor Carpenter + +Genius Artist Workmen + +Columbus Columbus Isabella and the + sailors + +The Prospector The Engineer }Scoopers, Grabbers + }(in mind or body), + }Hewers + +David the poet David the king David the soldier + +Shakespeare Shakespeare Shakespeare + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + +THE MAN WHO PULLS THE WORLD TOGETHER + + +The typical mighty man or man of valour in our modern life is the +Organizer or Artist. + +If a man has succeeded in being a great organizer, it is because he has +succeeded in organizing himself. + +A man who has organized himself is a man who has built a personality. +The main fact about a man who has succeeded in being an organized man or +personality is, that he has ordered himself around. + +Naturally, when other people have to be ordered around, being +full-head-on in the habit of ordering, even ordering himself, the +hardest feat of all, he is the man who has to be picked out to order +other people. As a rule the man who orders himself around successfully, +who makes his whole nature or all parts of himself work together, does +it because he takes pains to find out who he is and what he is like. If +he orders other men successfully and makes them work together it is +because he knows what they are like. + +A man knows what other people are like and bow they feel by having times +of being a little like them and by being a big, latent all-possible, +all-round kind of man. + +Leadership follows. + +Modern business consists in getting Inventors' minds and Hewers' minds +to work together. The ruler of modern business is the man who by +experience or imagination is half an Inventor himself, and half a Hewer +himself. He knows how inventing feels and how hewing feels. + +He has a southern exposure toward Hewers and makes Hewers feel +identified with him. He has what might be called an eastern exposure +toward men of genius, understands the inventive temperament, has the +kind of personality that evokes inventiveness in others. + +Incidentally he has what might be called a northern exposure which keeps +him scientific, cool, and close to the spirit of facts. + +And there has to be something very like a western exposure in him too, a +touch of the homely seer, a habit of having reflections and afterglows, +a sense of principles, and of the philosophy of men and things. + +If I were to try to sum up all these qualities in a man and call it by +one name, I would call it Glorified-commonsense. + +If I were asked to define Glorified-commonsense I would say it is a +glory which works. It belongs to the man who has a vision or coinage for +others because he sees them as they are, and sees how the glory buried +in them (_i.e._, the inspiration or source of hard work in them) can be +got out. + +Everywhere that the Artist in business, or Organizer, with his Inventors +on one side of him and his Hewers on the other, can be seen to-day +competing with the man who has the mere millionaire or owning type of +mind, he is crowding him from the market. + +It is because he understands how Inventors and Hewers feel and what they +think and when he turns on Inventors he makes them invent and when he +turns on Hewers he makes them hew. + +The Hewer often thinks because he is rich or because he owns a business, +that he can take the place of the artist, but he can be seen every day +in every business around us, being passed relentlessly out of power +because he cannot make his Inventors invent and cannot make his Hewers +hew as well as some other man. The moment his Inventors and Hewers think +of him, hear about him, or have any dealing with him--with the mere +millionaire, the mere owner kind of person, his Inventors invent as +little as they can, and his Hewers hew as softly as they dare. + +This is called the Modern Industrial Problem. + +And no man but the artist, the man with the inventing and the hewing +spirit both in him, who daily puts the inventing spirit and the hewing +spirit together in himself, can get it together in others. + +Only the man who has kept and saved both the inventing and hewing spirit +in himself can save it in others--can be a saviour or artist. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + +THE MAN WHO STANDS BY + + +I have been trying to say in this book that goodness in daily life, or +in business, in common world-running or world housekeeping, is by an +implacable crowd-process working slowly out of the hands of the wrong +men into the hands of the right ones. + +If this is not true, I am ready to declare myself as a last resort, in +favour of a strike. + +There is only one strike that would be practical. + +I would declare for a strike of the saviours. + + * * * * * + +By a saviour I do not mean a man who stoops down to me and saves me. A +saviour to me is a man who stands by and lets me save myself. + +I am afraid we cannot expect much of men who can bear the idea of being +saved by other people, or by saviours who have a stooping feeling. + +I rejoice daily in the spirit of our modern laboring men, in that holy +defiance in their eyes, in the way they will not say "please" to their +employers and announce that they will save themselves. + +The only saviour who can do things for labouring men is the saviour who +proposes to do things with them, who stands by, who helps to keep +oppressors and stooping saviours off--who sees that they have a fair +chance and room to save themselves. + +I define a true saviour as a man who is trying to save himself. + +It was because Christ, Savonarola, and John Bunyan were all trying to +save themselves that it ever so much as occurred to them to save worlds. +Saving a world was the only way to do it. + +The Cross was Christ's final stand for his own companionableness, his +stand for being like other people, for having other people to share his +life with, his faith in others and his joy in the world. + +The world was saved incidentally when Christ died on the Cross. He +wanted to live more abundantly--and he had to have certain sorts of +people to live more abundantly with. He did not want to live unless he +could live more abundantly. + +We live in a world in which inventors want to die if they cannot invent +and in which Hewers want to die if they cannot hew. + +I am not proud. I am willing to be saved. Any saviour may save me if he +wants to, if his saving me is a part of his saving himself. + +If the inventor saves me and saves us all because he wants to be in a +world where an inventor can invent, wants some one to invent to; if the +artist saves me because it is part of his worship of God to have me +saved and wants to use me every day to rejoice about the world with--if +the Hewer comes over and hews out a place in the world for me because he +wants to hew, I am willing. + +All that I demand is, that if a man take the liberty of being a saviour +to me that he refrain from stooping, that he come up to me and save me +like a man, that he stand before me and tell me that here is something +that we, he and I, shoulder to shoulder, can do, something that neither +of us could do alone. Then he will fall to with me and I will fall to +with him, and we will do it. + +This is what I mean by a saviour. + + + + +CHAPTER XX + +THE STRIKE OF THE SAVIOURS + + +A factory in ---- some ten years ago employed one hundred men. Three of +these men were in the office and ninety-seven were hands in the works. +To-day this same factory which is doing a very much larger business is +still employing one hundred men, but thirty of the men are employed in +the office and seventy in the works. + +Ten years, ago to put it in other words, the factory provided places for +one artist or manager and two inventors and places for ninety-seven +Hewers. + +To-day the factory has made room for thirty inventors, one manager and +twenty-nine men who spend their entire time in thinking of things that +will help the Hewers hew. + +It has seventy Hewers who are helping the Inventors invent by hewing +three times as hard and three times as skilfully or three times as much +as without the Inventors to help them, they had dreamed they could hew +before. + +The Artist or Organizer who made this change in the factory found that +among the ninety-seven Hewers that were employed a number of Hewers were +hewing very poorly, because though hewing was the best they could do, +they could not even hew. He found certain others who were hewing poorly +because they were not Hewers, but Inventors. These he set to work--some +of them inventing in the office. + +On closer examination the two Inventors in the office were found to be +not Inventors at all. One of them was a fine Hewer who liked to hew and +who hated inventing and the other was merely a rich Hewer who was an +owner in the business who saw suddenly that he would have to stop +inventing and stop very soon if he wanted the business to make any more +money. + +There are four things that the Artist has to do with a factory like this +before he can make it efficient. + +Each of these things is an art. One art is the art of compelling the +mere owner, the man with the merely hewing mind, to confine himself to +the one thing he knows how to do, namely to shovelling, to shovelling +his money in when and where he was told it was needed, and to shovelling +his money out when it has been made for him. + +The art of compelling a mere owner to know his place, of keeping him +shovelling money in and shovelling money out silently and modestly, +consists as a rule in having the Artist or Organizer tell him that +unless the business is placed completely in his hands he will not +undertake to run it. + +This is the first art. The second art consists in having an +understanding with the inventors that they will invent ways of helping +the Hewers hew. + +The third art consists in having an understanding with the Hewers that +they will accept the help of the Inventors and hew with it. The fourth +art is the art of representing the consumer with the Hewer and with the +Inventor and with the Owner and seeing that he shares in the benefits of +all economies and improvements. + +These are all human arts and turn on the power in a man of being a true +artist, of being a man-inventor, a man-developer and a man-mixer, daily +taking part of himself and using these parts in putting other men +together. + +These organizers or artists, being the men who see how--are the men who +are not afraid. + + + + +CHAPTER XXI + +THE LEAGUE OF THE MEN WHO ARE NOT AFRAID + + +If all the unbrained money in the world to-day and the men that go with +it could be isolated, could be taken by men of imagination and put in a +few ships and sent off to an island in the sea--if New York and London +and all the other important places could be left in the hands of the men +who have imagination, poor and rich, they would soon have the world in +shape to make the men with merely owning minds, the mere owners off on +their island, beg to come back to it, to be allowed to have a share in +it on any terms. + +In order to be fair, of course, their island would have to be a +furnished island--mines, woods, and everything they could want. It would +become a kind of brute wilderness or desert in twenty-five years. We +could, now and then, some of us, take happy little trips, go out and +look them over on their little furnished island. It would do us good to +watch them--these men with merely owning or holding-on minds, really +noticing at last how unimportant they are. + +But it is not necessary to resort to a furnished island as a device, as +a mirror for making mere millionaires see themselves. + +This is a thing that could be done for millionaires now, most of them, +here just where they are. + +All that is necessary is to have the brains of the world so organized +that the millionaires who expect merely because they are millionaires to +be run after by brains, cannot get any brains to run after them. + +I am in favour of organizing the brains of the world into a trades +union. + +One of the next things that is going to happen is that the managing and +creating minds of the world to-day are going to organize, are going to +see suddenly their real power and use it. The brains are about to have, +as labour and capital already have, a class consciousness. + +I would not claim that there is going to be an international strike of +the brains of the world, but it will not be long before the managing +class as a class will be organized so that they can strike if they want +to. + +The Artists or Organizers and Managers of business will not need +probably, in order to accomplish their purpose, to strike against the +uncreative millionaires. They will make a stand (which the best of them +have already made now) for the balance of power in any business that +they furnish their brains to. The brains that create the profits for the +owners and that create the labour for the labourers, will make terms for +their brains and will withhold their brains if necessary to this end. +But it is far more likely that they will accomplish their purpose sooner +by using their brains for the millionaires and for the labourers--by +coöperating with the millionaires and labourers than they will by +striking against them or keeping their brains back. + +They are in a position to make the millionaires see how little money +they can make without them even in a few days. They will let them try. A +very little trying will prove it. + +Where hand labour would have to strike for weeks and months to prove its +value, brain labour would have to strike hours and days. + +This is what is going to be done in modern business in one business at a +time, the brains insisting in each firm upon full control. + +Then, of course, the firms that have the brains in most full control +will drive the firms in which brains are in less control out of +competition. + +Then brains will spread from one business to another. The Managers, +Artists, and Organizers of the world will have formed at last a Brain +Syndicate, and they will put themselves in a position to determine in +their own interests and in the interests of society at large the terms +on which all men--all men who have no brains to put with their +money--shall be allowed to have the use of theirs. They will monopolize +the brain supply of the world. + +Then they will act. Under our present régime money hires men; under the +régime of the Brain Syndicate men will hire money. Money--_i.e._, saved +up or canned labour, is going to be hired by Managers, Organizers, and +Engineers with as much discrimination and with as deep a study of its +efficiency, as new labour is hired. The millionaires are going to be +seen standing with their money bags and their little hats in their hands +like office boys asking for positions for their money before the doors +of the really serious and important men, the men who toil out the ideas +and the ways and the means of carrying out ideas--the men who do the +real work of the world, who see things that they want and see how to get +them--the men of imagination, the inventors of ideas, organizers of +facts, generals and engineers in human nature. + +It is these men who are going to allow people who merely have +thoughtless labour and people who merely have thoughtless money to be +let in with them. The world's quarrel with the rich man is not his being +a rich man, but his being rich without brains, and its quarrel with the +poor labourer is not his being a poor labourer, but his being a poor +labourer without brains. The only way that either of these men can have +a chance to be of any value is in letting themselves be used by the man +who will supply them with what they lack. They will try to get this man +to see if he cannot think of some way of getting some good out of them +for themselves, and for others. + +We have a Frederick Taylor for furnishing brains to labour. + +We are going to have a Frederick Taylor to attend to the brain-supply of +millionaires, to idea-outfits for directors. + +Every big firm is going to have a large group of specialists working on +the problem of how to make millionaires--its own particular millionaires +think, devising ways of keeping idle and thoughtless capitalists out of +the way. If the experts fail in making millionaires think, they may be +succeeded by experts in getting rid of them and in finding thoughtful +money, possibly made up of many small sums, to take their place. + +The real question the Artist or Organizer is going to ask about any man +with capital will be, "Is it the man who is making the money valuable +and important or is it the money that is making this man important for +the time being and a little noticeable or important-looking?" + +The only really serious question we have to face about money to-day is +the unimportance of the men who have it. The Hewers or Scoopers, or +Grabbers, who have assumed the places of the Artist and the Inventor +because they have the money, are about to be crowded over to the silent, +modest back seats in directors' meetings. If they want their profits, +they must give up their votes. They are going to be snubbed. They are +going to beg to be noticed. The preferred stock or voting stock will be +kept entirely in the hands of the men of working imagination, of +clear-headedness about things that are not quite seen, the things that +constitute the true values in any business situation, the men who have +the sense of the way things work and of the way they will have to go. + +Mere millionaires who do not know their place in a great business will +be crowded into small ones. They will be confronted by the organized +refusal of men with brains to work for their inferiors, to be under +control of men of second-rate order. Men with mere owning and grabbing +minds will only be able to find men as stupid as they are to invest and +manage their money for them. In a really big creative business their +only chance will be cash and silence. They will be very glad at last to +get in on any terms, if the men of brains will let their money edge into +their business without votes and be carried along with it as a favour. + +It is because things are not like this now, that we have an industrial +problem. + +Managers who have already hired labour as a matter of course are going +to hire the kind of capital they like, the kind of capital that thinks +and that can work with thinking men. + +There will gradually evolve a general recognition in business on the +part of men who run it and on the part of managers, of the moral or +human value of money. The successful manager is no longer going to grab +thoughtlessly at any old, idle, foolish pot of money that may be offered +to him. He is going to study the man who goes with it, see how he will +vote and see whether he knows his place, whether he is a Hewer, for +instance, who thinks he is an Inventor. Does he or does he not know +which he is, an Inventor, an Artist, or a Hewer? + +Capitalists will expect as a matter of course to be looked over and to +be hired in a great business enterprise as carefully as labourers are +being hired now. + +The moment it is generally realized that the managers of every big +modern business have become as particular about letting in the right +kind of directors as they have been before about letting in the right +kind of labour, we will stop having an upside-down business world. + +An upside-down business world is one in which any man who has money +thinks he can be a director almost anywhere, a world in which on every +hand we find managers who are not touching the imagination of the public +and getting it to buy, and not touching the imagination of labour and +getting it to work, because they are not free to carry out their ideas +without submitting them to incompetent and scared owners. + +The incompetent and scared owners--the men who cannot think--are about +to be shut out. Then they will be compelled to hire incompetent and +scared managers. Then they will lose their money. Then the world will +slip out of their hands. + +The problem of modern industry is to be not the distribution of the +money supply, but the distribution of the man-supply. + +Money follows men. + +Free men. Free money. + + + + +BOOK FIVE + +GOOD NEWS AND HARD WORK + + +TO ANYBODY + + "_I know that all men ever born are also my brothers.... + Limitless leaves too, stiff or drooping in the fields, + And brown ants in the little wells beneath them + And mossy scabs of the worm fence, heaped stones, elders, + mulleins and poke weed._" + +_A Child said, "What is grass?" fetching it to me with full hands. + +How could I answer the Child?_ + + * * * * * + + _"I want to trust the sky and the grass! + I want to believe the songs I hear from the fenceposts! + Why should a maple-bud mislead me?"_ + + + + +PART ONE + +NEWS AND LABOUR + + +A big New England factory, not long ago, wanted to get nearer its raw +material and moved to Georgia. + +All the machine considerations, better water-power, cheaper labour, +smaller freight bills, and new markets had argued for moving to Georgia. + +Long rows of new mills were built and thousands of negroes were moved in +and thousands of shanties were put up, and the men and the women stood +between the wheels. And the wheels turned. + +There was not a thing that had not been thought of except the men and +women that stood between the wheels. + +The men and women that stood between the wheels were, for the most part, +strong and hearty persons and they never looked anxious or abused and +did as they were told. + +And when Saturday night came, crowds of them with their black faces, of +the men and of the women, of the boys and girls, might have been seen +filing out of the works with their week's wages. + +Monday morning a few of them dribbled back. There were enough who would +come to run three mills. All the others in the long row of mills were +silent. Tuesday morning, Number Four started up, Wednesday, Number Five. +By Thursday noon they were all going. + +The same thing happened the week after, and the week after, and the week +after that. + +The management tried everything they could think of with their people, +scolding, discharging, making their work harder, making their work +easier, paying them less, paying them more, two Baptist ministers and +even a little Roman Catholic Church. + +As long as the negroes saw enough to eat for three days, they would not +work. + +It began to look as if the mills would have to move back to +Massachusetts, where people looked anxious and where people felt poor, +got up at 5 A.M. Mondays and worked. + +Suddenly one day, the son of one of the owners, a very new-looking young +man who had never seen a business college, and who had run through +Harvard almost without looking at a book, and who really did not seem to +know or to care anything about anything--except folks--appeared on the +scene with orders from his father that he be set to work. + +The manager could not imagine what to do with him at first, but finally, +being a boy who made people like him more than they ought to, he found +himself placed in charge of the Company Store. The company owned the +village, and the Company Store, which had been treated as a mere +necessity in the lonely village, had been located, or rather dumped, at +the time, into a building with rows of little house-windows in it, a +kind of extra storehouse on the premises. + +The first thing the young man did was to stove four holes in the +building, all along the front and around the corners on the two sides, +and put in four big plate-glass windows. The store was mysteriously +closed up in front for a few days to do this, and no one could see what +was happening, and the negroes slunk around into a back room to buy +their meal and molasses. And finally one morning, one Sunday morning, +the store opened up bravely and flew open in front. + +The windows on the right contained three big purple hats with blue +feathers, and some pink parasols. + +The windows on the left were full of white waistcoats, silver-headed +canes, patent-leather shoes and other things to live up to. + +Monday morning more of the mills were running than usual. + +Later in the week there appeared in the windows melodions, phonographs, +big gilt family Bibles, bread machines, sewing machines, and Morris +chairs. Only a few hands took their Mondays off after this. + +All the mills began running all the week. + + * * * * * + +Of course there are better things to live for than purple hats and blue +feathers, and silver-headed canes, and patent leather shoes. But if +people can be got to live six days ahead, or thirty days, or sixty days +ahead, instead of three days ahead, by purple hats and blue feathers and +white waistcoats, and if it is necessary to use purple hats and blue +feathers to start people thinking in months instead of minutes, or to +budge them over to where they can have a touch of idealism or of +religion or of living beyond the moment, I say for one, with all my +heart, "God bless purple hats and blue feathers!" + + * * * * * + +The great problem of modern charity, the one society is largely occupied +with to-day, is: "What is there that we can possibly do for our +millionaires?" + +The next thing Society is going to do, perhaps, is to design and set up +purple hats with blue feathers for millionaires. + +The moment our millionaires have placed before them something to live +for, a few real, live, satisfying ideals, or splendid lasting things +they can do, things that everybody else would want to do, and that +everybody else would envy them for doing, it will bore them to run a +great business merely to make money. They will find it more interesting, +harder, and calling for greater genius, to be great and capable +employers. When our millionaires once begin to enter into competition +with one another in being the greatest and most successful employers of +labour on earth, our industrial wars will cease. + +Millionaires who get as much work out of their employees as they dare, +and pay them as little as they can, and who give the public as small +values as they dare, and take as much money as they can, only do such +stupid, humdrum, conventional things because they are bored, because +they cannot really think of anything to live for. + +Labourers whose daily, hourly occupation consists in seeing how much +less work a day than they ought to do, they can do, and how much more +money they can get out of their employers than they earn, only do such +things because they are tired or bored and discouraged, and because they +cannot think of anything that is truly big and fine and worth working +for. + +The industrial question is not an economic question. It is a question of +supplying a nation with ideals. It is a problem which only an American +National Ideal Supply Company could hope to handle. The very first +moment three or four purple hats with blue feathers for millionaires and +for labourers have been found and set up in the great show window of the +world, the industrial unrest of this century begins to end. + + * * * * * + +As I went by, one day not long ago, I saw two small boys playing +house--marking off rooms--sitting-rooms and bedrooms, with rows of +stones on the ground. When I came up they had just taken hold of a big +stone they wanted to lift over into line a little. They were tugging on +it hopefully and with very red faces, and it did not budge. I picked up +a small beam about five feet long on my side of the road, that I thought +would do for a crowbar, stepped over to the boys, fixed a fulcrum for +them, and went on with my walk. When I came back after my walk that +night to the place where the boys had been playing, I found the boys had +given up working on their house. And as I looked about, every big stone +for yards around--every one that was the right size--seemed subtly out +of place. The top of the stone wall, too, was very crooked. + +They had given up playing house and had played crowbar all day instead. + +I should think it would have been a rather wonderful day, those boys' +first day, seven or eight hours of it spent, with just a little time off +for luncheon, in seeing how a crowbar worked! + +I have forgotten just how much larger part of a ton one inch more on a +crowbar lifts. I never know figures very well. But I know people and I +know that a man with only three day's worth of things ahead to live for +does not get one hundredth part of the purchase power on what he is +doing that the man gets who works with thirty days ahead of things to +live for, all of them nerving him up, keeping him in training, and +inspiring him. And I know that the man who does his work with a longer +lever still, with thirty or forty years worth' of things he wants, all +crowding in upon him and backing him up, can lift things so easily, so +even jauntily, sometimes, that he seems to many of us sometimes to be a +new size and a new kind of man. + + * * * * * + +The general conventional idea of business is, that if you give a man +more wages to work for, he will work more, but of course if a business +man has the brains, knows how to fire up an employee, knows how to give +him something or suggest something in his life that will make him want +to live twenty times as much, it would not only be cheaper, but it would +work better than paying him twice as much wages. + +Efficiency is based on news. Put before a man's life twenty times as +much to live for and to work for, and he will do at least, well--twice +as much work. + +If a man has a big man's thing or object in view, he can do three times +as much work. If the little thing he has to do, and keep doing, is seen +daily by him as a part of a big thing, the power and drive of the big +thing is in it, the little thing becomes the big thing, seems big while +he is doing it every minute. It makes it easier to do it because it +seems big. + +The little man becomes a big man. + +From the plain, practical point of view, it is the idealist in +business, the shrewd, accurate, patient idealist in modern business who +is the man of economic sense. The employer who can put out ideals in +front of his people, who can make his people efficient with the least +expense, is the employer who has the most economic sense. + +The employer who is a master at supplying motives to people, who manages +to cut down through to the quick in his employees, to the daily motives, +to the hourly ideals, the hourly expectations with which they work, is +the employer who already takes the lead, who is already setting the pace +in the twentieth-century business world. + +Possibly you have noticed this trait in the great employers or, at +least, in the great managers of employers? + +You are going, for instance, through a confectionery shop. As you move +down the long aisles of candy machines you hear the clock strike eleven. +Suddenly music starts up all around you and before your eyes four +hundred girls swing off into each other's arms. They dance between their +machines five minutes, and then, demurely, they drop back to their work. +You see them sitting quietly in long white rows, folding up sweet-meats +with flushed and glowing cheeks. + +Is this sentiment or is it cold businesslike efficiency? + +The more sentiment there is in it, I think, the more efficient it is and +the better it works. + +"Business is not business." + +One need not quarrel about words, but certainly, whatever else business +is, it is not business. It would be closer to the facts to call business +an art or a religion, a kind of homely, inspired, applied piety, based +upon gifts in men which are essentially religious gifts; the power of +communion in the human heart, the genius for cultivating companionship, +of getting people to understand you and understand one another and do +team work. The bed-rock, the hard pan of business success lies in the +fundamental, daily conviction--the personal habit in a man of looking +upon business as a hard, accurate, closely studied, shrewd human art, a +science of mutual expectation. + +I am not saying that I would favour all employers of young women having +them, to-morrow morning at eleven o'clock, swing off into each other's +arms and dance for five minutes. The value of the dance in this +particular case was that the Firm thought of the dancing itself and was +always doing things like it, that everybody knew that the Firm, up in +its glass office, felt glad, joined in the dance in spirit, enjoyed +seeing the girls caught up for five minutes in the joy and swing of a +big happy world full of sunshine and music outside, full of buoyant and +gentle things, of ideals around them which belonged to them and of which +they and their lives were a part. + +When we admit that business success to-day turns or is beginning to turn +on a man's power of getting work out of people, we admit that a man's +power of getting work out of people, his business efficiency, turns on +his power of supplying his people with ideals. + +Ideals are news. + +You come on a man who thinks he is out of breath and that he cannot +possibly run. You happen to be able to tell him that some dynamite in +the quarry across the road is going to blow the side of the hill out in +forty-five seconds and he will run like a gazelle. + +You tell a man the news, the true news that his employees are literally +and honestly finding increased pay or promotion, either in their own +establishment or elsewhere for every man they employ, as fast as he +makes himself fit, and you have created a man three times his own size +before your own eyes, all in a minute. And he begins working for you +like a man three times his own size, and not because he is getting more +for it, but because he suddenly believes in you, suddenly believes in +the world and in the human race he belongs to. + +To make a man work, say something to him or do something to him which +will make him swing his hat for humanity, and give three cheers (like a +meeting of workmen the other day): "Three cheers for God!" + +There is a well-known firm in England which has the best labour of its +kind in the world, because the moment the Firm finds that a man's skill +has reached the uttermost point in his work, where it would be to the +Firm's immediate interests to keep him and where the Firm could keep on +making money out of him and where the man could not keep on growing, +they have a way of stepping up to such a man (and such things happen +every few days), and telling him that he ought to go elsewhere, finding +him a better place and sending him to it. This is a regular system and +highly organized. The factory is known or looked upon as a big family or +school. There are hundreds of young men and young women who, in order to +get in and get started, and merely be on the premises of such a factory, +would offer to work for the firm for nothing. The Factory, to them, is +like a great Gate on the World. + +It is its ideals that have made the factory a great gate on the World. + +And ideals are news. Ideals are news to a man about himself. News to a +man about himself and about what he can be, is gospel. + +And a factory with men at the top who have the brains about human nature +to do things like this, men who can tell people news about themselves, +all day, every day, all the week, like a church--let such a factory, I +say, for one, have a steeple with chimes in it, if it wants to, and be +counted with the other churches! + +People have a fashion of speaking of a man's ideals in a kind of weak, +pale way, as if ideals were clouds, done in water-colour by schoolgirls, +as if they were pretty, innocent things, instead of being fierce, +splendid, terrific energies, victorious, irrevocable in human history, +trampling the earth like unicorns, breathing wonder, deaths, births upon +the world, carrying everything before them, everywhere they go. These +are ideals! This may not be the way ideals work in a moment or in a +year, but it is the way they work in history, and it is the way they +make a man feel when he is working on them. It is what they are for, to +make him feel like this, when he is working on them. With the men who +are most alive and who live the longest, the men who live farther ahead +and think in longer periods of time, the energies in ideals function as +an everyday matter of course. + +I wish people would speak oftener of a man's motives, what he lives for, +as his motive powers. They generally speak of motives in a man as if +they were a mere kind of dead chart or spiritual geography in him, or +clock-hand on him or map of his soul. The motives and desires in a man +are the motors or engines in him, the central power house in a man, the +thing in him that makes him go. + +All a man has to do to live suddenly and unexpectedly a big life is to +have suddenly a big motive. + +Anybody who has ever tried, for five minutes, a big motive, ever tried +working a little happiness for other people into what he is doing for +himself, for instance, if he stopped to think about it and how it worked +and how happy it made him himself, would never do anything in any other +way all his life. It is the big motives that are efficient. + + + + +PART TWO + +NEWS AND MONEY + + +I think it was Sir William Lever who remarked (but I have heard in the +last two years so many pearls dropped from the lips of millionaires that +I am not quite sure) that the way to tell a millionaire, when one saw +one, was by his lack of ready money. He added that perhaps a surer way +of knowing a millionaire, when one saw one, was by his lack of ideas. + +My own experience is that neither of these ways works as well as it used +to. I very often meet a man now--a real live millionaire, no one would +think it of. + +One of them--one of the last ones--telegraphed me from down in the +country one morning, swung up to London on a quick train, cooped me up +with him at a little corner table in his hotel, and gave me more ideas +in two hours than I had had in a week. + +I came away very curious about him--whoever he was. + +Not many days afterward I found myself motoring up a long, slow hill, +full of wind and heather, and there in a stately park with all his +treetops around him, and his own blue sky, in a big, beautiful, serene +room, I saw him again. + +He began at once, "Do you think Christ would have approved of my house?" + +His five grown sons were sitting around him but he spoke vividly and +directly and like a child, and as if he had just brushed sixty years +away, and could, any time. + +I said I did not think it fair to Christ, two thousand years off, to ask +what he would have thought of a house like his, now. The only fair +thing to do would be to ask what Christ would think if He were living +here to-day. + +"Well, suppose He had motored over here with you this afternoon from +---- Manor, and spent last night with you there, and talked with you and +with ---- and had seen the pictures, and the great music room and +wandered through the gardens, and suppose that then He had come through +on his way up, all those two miles of slums down in ---- seen all those +poor, driven, crowded people, and had finally come up here with you to +this big, still, restful place two thousand people could live in, and +which I keep all to myself. You don't really mean to say, do you, that +He would approve of my living in a house like this?" + +I said that I did not think that Christ would be tipped over by a house +or lose his bearings with a human soul because he lived in a park. I +thought He would look him straight in the eyes. + +"But Christ said, 'He that loseth his life shall save it!'" + +"Yes, but He did not intend it as a mere remark about people's houses." + +It did not seem to me that Christ meant simply giving up to other people +easy and ordinary things like houses or like money, but that He meant +giving up to others our motives, giving up the deepest, hardest things +in us, our very selves to other people. + +"And so you really think that if Christ came and looked at this house +and looked at me in it, He would not mind?" + +"I do not know. I think that after He had looked at your house He would +go down and look at your factory, possibly. How many men do you employ?" + +"Sixteen hundred." + +"I think He would look at them, the sixteen hundred men, and then He +would move about a little. Very likely He would look at their wives and +the little children." + +He thought a moment. I could see that he was not as afraid of having +Christ see the factory as he was of having Him see the house. + +I was not quite sure but I thought there was a little faint gleam in his +eye when I mentioned the factory. + +"What do you make?" I asked. + +He named something that everybody knows. + +Then I remembered suddenly who he was. He was one of the men I had first +been told about in England, and the name had slipped from me. He had +managed to do and do together the three things one goes about looking +for everywhere in business--what might be called the Three R's of great +business (though not necessarily R's). (1) He had raised the wages of +his employees. (2) He had reduced prices to consumers. (3) He had +reduced his proportion of profit and raised the income of the works, by +inventing new classes of customers, and increasing the volume of the +business. + +He had found himself, one day, as most men do, sooner or later, with a +demand for wages that he could not pay. + +At first he told the men he could not pay them more, said that he would +have to close the works if he did. + +He was a very busy man to be confronted with a crisis like this. The +market was trouble enough. + +One morning, when he was up early, and the house was all still and he +was sitting alone with himself, the thought slipped into his mind that +there had been several times before in his life when he had sat thinking +about certain things that could not be done. And then he had got up from +thinking they could not be done and gone out and done them. + +He wondered if he could not get up and go out and do this one. + +As he sat in the stillness with a clear road before his mind and not a +soul in the world up, the thought occurred to him, with not a thing in +sight to stop it, that he had not really trained himself to be quite +such an expert in raising wages as he had in some other things. + +Perhaps he did not know about raising wages. + +Perhaps if he concentrated his imagination as much on getting higher +wages for his workmen as he had in those early days years before on +making over all his obstinate raw material into the best cases of ---- +on earth, he might find it possible to get more wages for his men by +persuading them to earn more and by getting their coöperation in finding +ways to earn more. + +As he sat in the stillness, gradually (perhaps it was the stillness that +did it) the idea grew on him. + +He made up his mind to see what would happen if he worked as hard at +paying higher wages for three months as he had for three years at making +raw material into cases of the best----on earth. + +Then things began happening every day. One of the most important +happened to him. + +He found that higher wages were as interesting a thing to work on as any +other raw material had ever been. + +He found that a cheap workman as raw material to make a high-priced +workman out of was as interesting as a case of----. + +A year or so after this, there was a strike (in his particular industry) +of all the workmen in England. They struck to be paid the wages his men +were paid. + +He had been able to do three things he thought he thought he could not +do. He had succeeded in doing the first, in raising the wages of his +employees, by thinking up original ways of expressing himself to them, +and of getting them to believe in him and of making them want to work a +third harder. At the same time he succeeded in doing the second, in +reducing the prices to consumers, by inventing new by-products out of +waste. + +He had succeeded in doing the third, in reducing his per cent. of +profits and increasing his income from the works at the same time, by +thinking up ways of creating new habits and new needs in his customers. + +He had fulfilled, as it seems, the three requisites of a great business +career. He had created new workmen, invented new things for men and +women to want, and had then created some new men and women who could +want them. + +Incidentally all the while, day by day, while he was doing these things, +he had distributed a large and more or less unexpected sum of money +among all these three classes of people. + +Some of this extra money went to his workmen, and some to himself, and +some to his customers, but it was largely spent, of course, in getting +business for other manufacturers and in getting people to buy all over +England, from other manufacturers, things that such people as they had +never been able before to afford to buy. + + * * * * * + +All these things that I have been saying and which I have duly confided +to the reader flashed through my mind as I stood with my back to the +fire, realizing suddenly that the man who had done them was the man with +whom I was talking. + +Possibly some little thing was said. I do not remember what. The next +thing I knew was that, with his five grown sons around him, he returned +to his attack on his house. + +He said some days he was glad it was so far away. He did not want his +workmen to see it. He did not go to the mill often in his motor-car, not +when he could help it. + +I said that I thought that a man who was doing extraordinary things for +other people, things that other men could not get time or strength or +freedom or boldness of mind or initiative to do, that any particular +thing he could have that gave him any advantage or immunity for doing +the extraordinary things better, that would give him more of a chance to +give other people a chance, that the other people, if they were in their +senses, would insist upon his having these things. + +"I think there are hundreds of men in my mill who think that they ought +to have my motor-car and three or four rooms in this house." + +"Are they the most efficient ones?" + +"No." + +If a man gives over to other people his deepest motives, and if he +really identifies himself--the very inside of himself with them and +treats their interests as his interests, the more money he has, the more +people like it. + +"Take me, for instance," I said. + +"I have hoped every minute since I knew you, that you were a prosperous +man. I saw the house and looked around in the park as I motored up with +joy. And when I came to the big gate I wanted to give three cheers! I +wish you had stock in the Meat Trust in America, that you could pierce +your way like a microbe into the vitals, into the inside of the Meat +Trust in my own country, make a stand in a Directors' Meeting for ninety +million people over there, say your say for them, vote your stock for +them, say how you want a Meat Trust you belong to, to behave, how you +want it to be a big, serious, business institution and not a humdrum, +mechanical-minded hold-up anybody could think of--in charge of a few +uninteresting, inglorious men--men nobody really cares to know and that +nobody wants to be like ... when I think of what a man like you with +money can do ...! + +"Am I not tired every day, are you not tired, yourself, of going about +everywhere and seeing money in the hands of all these second-class, +socially feeble-minded men, of seeing columns in the papers of what such +men think, of having college presidents, great universities, domes, +churches and thousands of steeples all deferring to them and bowing to +them, and all the superior, live, interested people ringing their door +bells for their money waiting outside on benches for what they think?" + +I do not believe that Christ came into the world, two thousand years +ago, to say that only the men who have minds of the second class, men +who are not far-sighted enough in business to be decently unselfish in +this world, should be allowed to have control of the money and of the +peoples' means of living in it. + +We are living in an age of big machines and big, inevitable +aggregations, and to say in an age like this, and above all, to get it +out of a Bible, or put it into a hymn book or make a religion of it, +that all the first class minds of the world--the men who see far enough +to be unselfish, should give over their money to second-class men, is +the most monstrous, most unbelieving, unfaithful, unbiblical, +irreligious thing a world can be guilty of. The one thing that is now +the matter with money, is that the second-class people have most of it. + +"What would happen if we applied asceticism or a tired, discouraged +unbelief to having children that we do to having pounds and pence and +dollars and cents? You would not stand for that would you?" + +I looked at his five sons. + +"Suppose all the good families of to-day were to take the ground that +having children is a self-indulgence unworthy of good people; suppose +the good people leave having children in this world almost entirely to +bad ones? + +"This is what has been happening to money. + +"Unbelief in money is unbelief in the spirit. It is paying too much +attention to wealth to say that one must or that one must not have it." + +I cannot recall precisely what was said after this in that long evening +talk of ours but what I tried to say perhaps might have been something +like this: + +The essence of the New Testament seems to be the emphasis of a man's +spirit with or without money. Whether a man should be rich or get out of +being rich and earn the right to be poor (which some very true and big +men, artists and inventors in this world will always prefer) turns on a +man's temperament. If a man has a money genius and can so handle money +that he can make money, and if he can, at the same time, and all in one +bargain, express his own spirit, if he can free the spirits of other men +with money and express his religion in it, he should be ostracized by +all thoughtful, Christian people, if in the desperate crisis of an age +like this, he tries to get out of being rich. + +The one thing a man can be said to be for in this world, is to express +the goodness--the religion in him, in something, and if he is not the +kind of man who can express his religion in money and in employing +labour, then let him find something--say music or radium or painting in +which he can. It is this bounding off in a world, this making a bare +spot in life and saying "This is not God, this cannot be God!"--it is +this alone that is sacriligious. + + * * * * * + +It may be that I am merely speaking for myself, but I did discover a man +on Fleet Street the other day who quite agreed with me apparently, that +if the thing a man has in him is religion he can put it up or express it +in almost anything. + +This man had tried to express his idea in a window. + +He had done a Leonardo da Vinci's "Last Supper," in sugar--a kind of +bas-relief in sugar. + +I do not claim that this kind of foolish, helpless caricature of a great +spiritual truth filled me with a great reverence or that it does now. + +But it did make me think how things were. + +If sugar with this man, like money with a banker, was the one logical +thing the man had to express his religion in, or if what he had had to +express had been really true and fine, or if there had been a true or +fine or great man to express, I do not doubt sugar could have been made +to do it. + +One single man with enough money and enough religions skill in human +nature, who would get into the Sugar Trust with some good, fighting, +voting stock, who could make the Sugar Trust do as it would be done by, +would make over American industry in twenty years. + +He would have thrown up as on a high mountain, before all American men, +one great specimen, enviable business. He would have revealed as in a +kind of deep, sober apocalypse, American business to itself. He would +have revealed American business as a new national art form, as an +expression of the practical religion, the genius for real things, that +is our real modern temperament in America and the real modern +temperament in all the nations. + +Of course it may not need to be done precisely with the Sugar Trust. + +The Meat Trust might do it first, or the Steel Trust. + +But it will be done. + +Then the Golden Rule, one great Golden Rule-machine having been +installed in our trust that knew the most, and was most known, it could +be installed in the others. + +Religion can be expressed much better to-day in a stock-holder's meeting +than it can in a prayer-meeting. + +Charles Cabot, of Boston, walked in quietly to the Stock-holder's +Meeting of the Steel Trust one day and with a little touch of +money--$2,900 in one hand, and a copy of the _American Magazine_ in the +other, made (with $2,900) $1,468,000,000 do right. + + + + +PART THREE + +NEWS AND GOVERNMENT + + + + +CHAPTER I + +OXFORD STREET AND THE HOUSE OF COMMONS + + +Every now and then when I am in London (at the instigation of some +business man who takes the time off to belong to it), I drop into a +pleasant but other-worldly and absent-minded place called the House of +Commons. + +I sit in the windows in the smoking-room and watch the faces of the +members all about me and watch the steamships, strangely, softly, +suddenly--Shakespeare and Pepys, outside on the river, slip gravely by +under glass. + +Or I go in and sit down under the gallery, face to face with the +Speaker, looking across those profiles of world-makers in their seats; +and I watch and listen in the House itself. There is a kind of pleasant, +convenient, appropriate hush upon the world there. + +Wisdom. + +The decorous, orderly machinery of knowledge rolls over one--one listens +to It, to the soft clatter of the endless belt of words. + +Every now and then one sees a member in the middle of a speech, or +possibly in the middle of a sentence, slip up quietly and take a look +(under glass) at The People, or he uses a microscope, perhaps, or a +reading glass on The People, Mr. Bonar Law's, Mr. Lloyd George's, Ramsay +MacDonald's, Will Crook's, or somebody's. Then he comes back gravely as +if he had got the people attended to now, and finishes what he was +saying. + +It is a very queer feeling one has about the People in the House of +Commons. + +I mean the feeling of their being under glass; they all seem so +manageable, so quiet and so remote, a kind of glazed-over picture in +still life, of themselves. Every now and then, of course one takes a +member seriously when he steps up to the huge showcase of specimen +crowds, which members are always referring to in their speeches. But +nothing comes of it. + +The crowds seem very remote there under the glass. One feels like +smashing something--getting down to closer terms with them--one longs +for a Department Store or a bridge or a 'bus--something that rattles and +bangs and is. + +All the while outside the mighty street--that huge megaphone of the +crowd, goes shouting past. One wishes the House would notice it. But no +one does. There is always just the House Itself and that hush or ring of +silence around it, all England listening, all the little country papers +far away with their hands up to their ears and the great serious-minded +Dailies, and the witty Weeklies, the stately Monthlies, and Quarterlies +all acting as if it mattered.... + +Even during the coal strike nothing really happened in the House of +Commons. There was a sense of the great serious people, of the crowds on +Westminster Bridge surging softly through glass outside, but nothing got +in. Big Ben boomed down the river, across the pavements, over the +hurrying crowds and over all the men and the women, the real business +men and women. The only thing about the House that seemed to have +anything to do with anybody was Big Ben. + +Finally one goes up to Harrod's to get relief, or one takes a 'bus, or +one tries Trafalgar Square, or one sees if one can really get across the +Strand or one does something--almost anything to recall one's self to +real life. + +And then, of course, there is Oxford Street. + +Almost always after watching the English people express themselves or +straining to express themselves in the House of Commons, I try Oxford +Street. + +I know, of course, that as an art-form for expressing a great people, +Oxford Street is not all that it should be, but there is certainly +something, after all the mooniness and the dim droniness, and +lawyer-mindedness in the way the English people express themselves or +think that they ought to express themselves in their house of +Commons--there is certainly something that makes Oxford Street seem +suddenly a fine, free, candid way for a great people to talk! And there +is all the gusto, too, the 'busses, the taxies, the hundreds of +thousands of men and women saying things and buying things they believe. + +Taking in the shops on both sides or the street, and taking in the +things the people are doing behind the counters, and in the aisles, and +up in the office windows three blocks of Oxford Street really express +what the English people really want and what they really think and what +they believe and put up money on, more than three years of the house of +Commons. + +If I were an Englishman I would rather be elected to walk up and down +Oxford Street and read what I saw there than to be elected to a seat in +the House of Commons, and I could accomplish more and learn more for a +nation, with three blocks of Oxford Street, with what I could gather up +and read there, and with what I could resent and believe there, than I +could with three years of the House of Commons. + +I know that anybody, of course, could be elected to walk up and down +Oxford Street. But it is enough for me. + +So I almost always try it after the house of Commons. + +And when I have taken a little swing down Oxford Street and got the +House of Commons out of my system a little, perhaps I go down to the +Embankment, and drop into my club. + +Then I sit in the window and mull. + +If the English people express themselves and express what they want and +what they are bound to have, on Oxford Street and put their money down +for it, so much better than they do in the House of Commons, why should +they not do it there? + +Why should elaborate, roundabout, mysterious things like governments, +that have to be spoken of in whispers (and that express themselves +usually in a kind of lawyer-minded way, in picked and dried words like +wills), be looked upon so seriously, and be taken on the whole, as the +main reliance the people have, in a great nation, for expressing +themselves? + +Why should not a great people be allowed to say what they are like and +to say what they want and what they are bound to get, in the way Oxford +Street says things, in a few straight, clean-cut, ordinary words, in +long quiet rows of deeds, of buying and selling and acting? + +Pounds, shillings, and silence. + +Then on to the next thing. + +If the House of Commons were more like Oxford Street or even if it had +suddenly something of the tone of Oxford Street, if suddenly it were to +begin some fine morning to express England the way Oxford Street does, +would not one see, in less than three months, new kinds and new sizes of +men all over England, wanting to belong to it? + +Big, powerful, uncompromising, creative men who have no time for +twiddling, who never would have dreamed of being tucked away in the +house of Commons before, would want to belong to it. + +In the meantime, of course, the men of England who have empires to +express, are not unnaturally expressing them in more simple language +like foundries, soap factories around a world, tungsten mines, +department stores, banks, subways, railroads for seventy nations, and +ships on seven seas, Winnipeg trolleys and little New York skyscrapers. + +Business men of the more usual or humdrum kind could not do it, but +certainly, the first day that business men like these, of the first or +world-size class, once find the House of Commons a place they like to be +in, once begin expressing the genius of the English people in government +as they are already expressing the genius of the English people in +owning the earth, in buying and selling, in inventing things and in +inventing corporations, the House of Commons will cease to be a bog of +words, an abyss of committees, and legislation will begin to be run like +a railroad--on a block signal system, rows of things taken up, gone +over, and finished. The click of the signal. Then the next thing. + +I sit in my club and look out of the window and think. Just outside +thousands of taxies shooting all these little mighty wills of men across +my window, across London, across England, across the world ... the huge, +imperious street ... all these men hurling themselves about in it, +joining their wills on to telephone wires, to mighty trains and little +quiet country roads, hitching up cables to their wills, and +ships--hitching up the very clouds over the sea to their wills and +running a world--why are not men like these--men who have the +street-spirit in them, this motor genius of driving through to what they +want, taking seats in the House of Commons? + +Perhaps Oxford Street is more efficient and more characteristic in +expressing the genius and the will of the English people than the House +of Commons is because of the way in which the people select the men they +want to express them in Oxford Street. + +It may be that the men the people have selected to be at the top of the +nation's law-making are not selected by as skillful, painstaking, or +thorough a process as the men who have been selected to be placed at the +top of the nation's buying and selling. + +Possibly the reason the House of Commons does not express the will of +the people is, that its members are merely selected in a loose, vague +way and by merely counting noses. + +Possibly, too, the men who are selected by a true, honest, direct, +natural selection to be the leaders and to free the energies and steer +the work of the people, the men who are selected to lead by being seen +and lived with and worked with all day, every day, are better selected +men than men who having been voted on on slips of paper, and having been +seen in newspaper paragraphs, travel up to London and begin +thoughtlessly running a world. + +The business man drops into the House of Commons after the meeting of +his firm in Bond Street, Lombard Street, or Oxford Street and takes a +look at it. He sees before him a huge tool or piece of machinery--a body +of men intended to work together and to get certain grave, particular, +and important things done, that the people want done, and he does not +see how a great good-hearted chaos or welter, a kind of chance national +Weather of Human Nature like the House of Commons, can get the things +done. + +So he confines himself more and more to business where he loses less +time in wondering what other people think or if they think at all, cuts +out the work he sees, and does it. + +He thinks how it would be if things were turned around and if people +tried to get expressed in business in the loose way, the thoughtless +reverie of voting that they use in trying to get themselves expressed in +politics. + +He thinks the stockholders of the Sunlight Soap Company, Limited, would +be considerably alarmed to have the president and superintendent and +treasurer and the buyers and salesmen of the company elected at the +polls by the people in the county or by popular suffrage. He thinks that +thousands of the hands as well as the stockholders would be alarmed too. +It does not seem to him that anybody, poor or rich, employer or +employee, in matters of grave personal concern, would be willing to +trust his interest or would really expect the people, all the people as +a whole, to be represented or to get what they wanted, to act definitely +and efficiently through the vague generalizations of the polls. Perhaps +a natural selection, a dead-earnest rigorous, selection that men work +on nine hours a day, an implacable, unremitting process during working +hours, of sorting men out (which we call business), is the crowd's most +reliable way of registering what it definitely thinks about the men it +wants to represent it. Business is the crowd's, big, serious, daily +voting in pounds, shillings, and pence--its hour to hour, unceasing, +intimate, detailed labour in picking men out, in putting at the top the +men it can work with best, the men who most express it, who have the +most genius to serve crowds, to reveal to crowds their own minds, and +supply to them what they want. + +As full as it is--like all broad, honest expressions, of human +shortcomings and of things that are soon to be stopped, it does remain +to be said that business, in a huge, rough way, daily expressing the +crowds as far as they have got--the best in them and the worst in them, +is, after all, their most faithful and true record, their handwriting. +Business is the crowds' autograph--its huge, slow, clumsy signature upon +our world. + +Buying and selling is the life blood of the crowds' thought, its big, +brutal daily confiding to us of its view of human life. What do the +crowds, poor and rich, really believe about life? Property is the last +will and testament of Crowds. + +The man-sorting that goes on in distributing and producing property is +the Crowd's most unremitting, most normal, temperamental way of +determining and selecting its most efficient and valuable leaders--its +men who can express it, and who can act for it. + +This is the first reason I would give against letting the people rely on +having a House of Commons compel business men to be good. + +Men who meet now and again during the year, afternoons or evenings, who +have been picked out to be at the top of the nation's talking, by a +loose absent-minded and illogical paper-process, cannot expect to +control men who have been picked out to be at the top of a nation's +buying and selling, by a hard-working, closely fitting, logical +process--the men that all the people by everything they do, every day, +all day, have picked out to represent them. + +Any chance three blocks of Oxford Street could be relied on to do +better. + +Keeping the polls open once in so often, a few hours, and using hearsay +and little slips of paper--anybody dropping in--seems a rather fluttery +and uncertain way to pick out the representatives of the people, after +one has considered three blocks of Oxford Street. + +The next thing the crowd is going to do in getting what it wants from +business men is to deal directly with the business men themselves and +stop feeling, what many people feel partly from habit, perhaps, that the +only way the crowd can get to what it wants is to go way over or way +back or way around by Robin Hood's barn or the House of Commons. + +But there is a second reason: + +The trouble is not merely in the way men who sit in the House of Commons +are selected. The real deep-seated trouble with the men who sit in the +House of Commons is that they like it. The difficulty (as in the +American Congress too) seems to be something in the men themselves. It +lies in what might be called, for lack of a better name, perhaps, the +Hem and Haw or Parliament Temperament. + +The dominating type of man in all the world's legislative bodies, for +the time being, seems to be the considerer or reconsiderer, the man who +dotes on the little and tiddly sides of great problems. The greatness of +the problem furnishes, of course, the pleasant, pale glow, the happy +sense of importance to a man, and then there is all the jolly littleness +of the little things besides--the little things that a little man can +make look big by getting them in the way of big ones--a great nation +looking on and waiting.... For such a man there always seems to be a +certain coziness and hominess in a Legislative Body.... + +As a seat in the House of Commons not unnaturally--every year it is +hemmed or hawed in, gets farther and farther away from the people, it is +becoming more and more apparent to the people every year that the +Members of their House of Commons as a class are unlikely to do anything +of a very striking or important or lasting value in the way of getting +business men to be good. + +The more efficient and practical business men are coming to suspect that +the members of the House of Commons, speaking broadly, do not know the +will of the people, and that they could not express it in creative, +straightforward and affirmative laws if they did. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +OXFORD STREET HUMS. THE HOUSE HEMS + + +But it is not only because the members of the House of Commons are +selected in a vague way or because they are a vague kind of men, that +they fail to represent the people. + +The third reason against having a House of Commons try to compel +business men to be good, by law, is its out-of-the-way position. + +The out-of-the-way position that a Parliament occupies in getting +business men to be good, can be best considered, perhaps, by admitting +at the outset that a government really is one very real and genuine way +a great people may have of expressing themselves, of expressing what +they are like and what they want, and that business is another way. + +Then the question narrows down. Which way of expressing the people is +the one that expresses them the most to the point, and which expresses +them where their being expressed counts the most? + +The people have a Government. And the people have Business. + +What is a Government for? + +What is Business for? + +Business is the occupation of finding out and anticipating what the +wants of the English people really are and of finding out ways of +supplying them. + +The business men on Oxford Street hire twenty or thirty thousand men and +women, keep them at work eight or nine hours a day, five or six days in +a week, finding out what the things are that the English people want +and reporting on them and supplying them. + +They are naturally in a strategic position to find out, not only what +kinds of things the people want, but to find out, too, just how they +want the things placed before them, what kind of storekeepers and +manufacturers, salesmen and saleswomen they tolerate, like to deal with +and prefer to have prosper. + +And the business men are not only in the most strategic and competent +position to find out what the people who buy want, but to find out too, +what the people who sell want. They are in the best position to know, +and to know intimately, what the salesmen and saleswomen want and what +they want to be and what they want to do or not do. + +They are in a close and watchful position, too, with regard to the +conditions in the factories from which their goods come and with regard +to what the employers, stockholders, foremen and workmen in those +factories want. + +What is more to the point, these same business men, when they have once +found out just what it is the people want, are the only men who are in a +position, all in the same breath, without asking anybody and without +arguing with anybody, without meddling or convincing anybody--to get it +for them. + +Finding out what people want and getting it for them is what may be +called, controlling business. + +The question not unnaturally arises with all these business men and +their twenty or thirty thousand people working with them, eight or nine +hours a day, five or six days a week, in controlling business, why +should the members of the House of Commons expect, by taking a few +afternoons or evenings off for it, to control business for them? + +If I were an employee and if what I wanted to do was to improve the +conditions of labour in my own calling, I do not think I would want to +take the time to wait several months, probably, to convince my member of +Parliament, and then wait a few months more for him to convince the +other members of Parliament, and then vote his one vote. I would rather +deal directly with my employer. + +If my employer is on my back and if I can once get the attention of my +employer himself, as to where he is and as to how he is interrupting +what I am doing for him--if I once get his attention and once get him to +notice my back, he can get down. No one else can get down for him and no +one else, except by turning a whole nation all around, can make him get +down. Why should a man bother with T.P.'s _Weekly_ or with Horatio +Bottomley or with the _Daily Mail_ or the _Times_, with a score of other +people's by-elections all over England to lift his own employer off his +back? + +There is a very simple rule for it. + +The way to lift one's employer off one's back is to make one's back so +efficient that he cannot afford to be on it. + +The first thing I would do would be to see if I could not persuade my +employer to take steps to train me and to make me efficient, himself. +And perhaps the second thing I would try to do would be to wake my +trades union up, to get my trades union to consent to let me want to try +to be efficient and work as hard as I can, or to consent to my +employer's hiring engineers to make me efficient. I would try to get my +trades union to be interested in hiring itself some special expert like +Frederick Taylor, some specialist in making a man do three times as much +work with the same strength, making him three times as valuable for his +employer and three times as fit and strong for himself. + +This is what I would do if I wanted to make my employer good. I would be +so good that he could not afford not being good too. + +If I were an employer, on the other hand, and understood human nature, +and knew enough about psychology to found a great business house and +wanted to make my employee good, or make him work three times as hard +for me, with three times the normal strength, day by day, and have a +normal old age to look forward to, I do not think I would wait for the +House of Commons to butt in and pension him. It seems to me that I would +be in a position to do it more adequately, more rapidly, and do it with +more intimate knowledge of economy than the House of Commons could. And +I would not have to convince several hundred men, men from rural +counties, how I could improve my factory and get them to let me improve +it. I could do it quietly by myself. + +In any given industrial difficulty, there is and must be a vision for +every man, a vision either borrowed for him or made for him by some one +else, or a vision he has made for himself, that fits in just where he +is. In the last analysis our industrial success is going to lie in the +sense of Here, and Me, and Now, raised to the n-th power, in what might +be called a kind of larger syndicalism. + +The typical syndicalist, instead of saying, as he does to-day, "We will +take the factories out of our employers hands and run them ourselves," +is going to say, "We will make ourselves fit to run the factories +ourselves." + +What would please the employers more, give them a general, or national +confidence in trying to run business and improve the conditions of work +to-day, than to have their employees, suddenly, all over the nation, +begin doing their work so well that they would be fit to run the +factories? + +What is true of employers and employees in factories is still more true +of the employers and employees in the great retail stores. If there is +one thing rather than another the business men and women on Oxford +Street, the managers, floor walkers and clerks all up and down the +street are really engaged in all day all their lives, it is what might +be called a daily nine-hour drill in understanding people. Why should +employers and employees like these--experts in human nature--men who +make their profession a success by studying human nature, and by working +in it daily, call in a few drifting gentlemen from the House of Commons +and expect them to work out their human problems better than they can do +it? + +Employers and clerks in retail stores are the two sets of people in all +the world most competent to study together the working details of human +nature, to act for themselves in self-respecting man-fashion and without +whining at a nation. + +Who that they could hope to deal with and get what they want from, could +know more about human nature than they do? Are they not the men of all +others, all up and down that little strip of Oxford Street, who devote +their entire time to human nature? They are in the daily profession of +knowing the soonest and knowing the most about what people are like, and +about what people will probably think. They are intimate with their +peccadillos in what they want to wear and in what they want to eat; they +have learned their likes and dislikes in human nature; they know what +they will support and what they will defy in human nature, in clerks, +and in stores, and in storekeepers. + +And these things that they have learned about human nature (in +themselves and other people) they have learned not by talking about +human nature but by a grim daily doing things with it. + +These things being so, it would almost seem that these people and people +like them were qualified to act, and as they happen to be in the one +strategic position, both employers and employees alike, to act and to +act for themselves and act directly and act together, it will not be +very long, probably, before the nation will be very glad to have them do +it. + +It is likely to be seen very soon (at least by all skilled Labour and +all skilled Capital) that running out into the street and crying "Help!" +and calling in some third person to settle family difficulties that can +be better settled by being faced and thought out in private, is an +inefficient and incompetent thing to do. + +And for the most part it is going to be only in the more superficial, +inefficient, thoughtless industry that men, either employers or +employed, will be inclined to leave their daily work, run out wildly and +drag in a House of Commons to help them to do right. + +I am only speaking for myself but certainly if I were an employer or an +employee, I would not want to wait for an election a year away or to +wait for the great engineering problem of compelling my member of +Parliament by my one vote to act for me. + +Perhaps workingmen in England and America are deceived about the value +of voting as a means of improving conditions of workingmen. Possibly +women are deceived about the value of voting as a means of improving the +conditions of working women. + +Possibly a woman could do more behind a counter or by buying a store +than by voting to have some man she has read about in a paper, improve +business by talking about it in the House of Commons. + + * * * * * + +There is also a kind of program or vision of action one can use as a +customer as well as an employer or employee. + + +I might speak for myself. + +I have about so much money I spend every year in buying things. I have +proposed to study with my money every firm on which I spend it. I +propose to take away my trade from the firm that does the least as it +should and give it to the firm that does the most as it should. I will +vote with my entire income and with every penny I save for the kind of +employers I believe in and that I want, for the kind of employers who +can earn and deserve and enjoy and keep the kind of salesmen and +saleswomen I choose to do business with. + +All the year round, every firm with which I deal, I am going to study +not only with my mind but with my money. I will proceed to take my +trade away from the big employers who think that I want shoddy goods or +who think that I want or am willing to trade with saleswomen who would +let an employer impose on them, saleswomen that he thinks he can afford +to impose upon. I will proceed to vote with my money, with every penny I +have in the world, and I will earn more that I may vote more, for the +kind of employer with whom I like to trade. And there shall not be a +man, woman, or child of my acquaintance, if I can help it, or of my +family's acquaintance who shall not know who these employers are by name +and by address, the employers that I will trade with and the employers +that I will not. + +This is my idea as a customer, as a member of the public, of the way for +a people to express itself and to get what it wants. + +What I want may be said to be a kind of news, news about me so far as I +go, as one member of the public. As I am only one person every item of +the news about me must be put where it works. I will deal directly with +the news of what I want and I will convey that news, not to the House of +Commons but to the men who have what I want and who can give it to me +when they know it. + +News is the real government now and always of this world. + +When one has made up one's mind to tell this news, obviously the best +art-form for telling news to employers and business men--the news of +what we want and what we do not want and of what we want in them as well +as in the things they sell, is to tell them the news in the language +they have studied most, tell it to them in pounds, shillings, dollars, +and cents, and by trading somewhere else. + +The gospel-bearing value, the news that one can get into a man's mind +with one dollar, the news that he can be made to see and act on for one +dollar--well, thinking of this some days, makes for me, at least, going +up and down the Main Street of the World feeling my purse snuggling in +my pocket, and all the people I can step up to with my purse and tell +so many dollars' worth of news to, tell that dollar's worth of gospel to +about the world--makes going up and down with a dollar on a big business +street, and spending it or not spending it, feel like a kind of chronic, +easy, happy, going to Church. One always has a little money in one's +pocket that one spends or that one won't spend, and sometimes even not +spending a dollar, practised by some people, at just the right moment +and in just the right way, can be made to mean as much and do as much +with a world as spending a thousand dollars would without any meaning +put into it. + +Sometimes I even go into a store on purpose, a certain kind of store I +know will try to cheat me in a certain way, let them look a minute at +the dollar they cannot have. Then I walk out with it quietly. + +I have said that the life-blood of my convictions shall circulate in my +money and if I cannot express my soul, my religion, my gospel or news +for this world, news about what I want and about what I will have in a +world, if I cannot make every dollar, every shilling I earn, go through +the world and sing my own little world-song in it, may I never have +another shilling or earn another dollar as long as I live! + +The very sight of a dollar now whenever I see one once more, fills me +with deep, hopeful working joy, thinking of what a bargain it is and how +I can use it twice over, thinking of the dollar's worth of news, to say +nothing of the dollar's worth of things that belong with a dollar! + + * * * * * + +For some generations, now, we have tried to make people good in a vague, +general way, by using priests, sacraments and confessional boxes. For +some centuries we have been trying to make people good with lawyers and +juries and ballot boxes. We are now to try, at last, religion or gospel +or news or ideals--practical, shrewd aimed ideals, that is, news to a +man about himself or news about the man from the man himself to us. In +everything a man does he is expressing to us this news about himself, +and about his world, and about his God. We are all telling news about +the world and about ourselves all the time and we are all in a position +for news all the time. + +What is it from hour to hour and day to day that we will do and we will +not do? + +This news about us is the religion in us. + +The average man is coming to have very accurate ideas of late as to just +where his religion is located. He has come to see that real religion in +a man, very conveniently located (immediately at hand in him and +personally directed), is his own action, his own divine "I will" or "I +won't." + +He has come to be deeply attracted by this idea of a religion for every +man just where he is, fitted on patiently, cheerfully, to just where he +is, every day all day, his glorious, still, practical, good-natured, +godlike "I will" and "I won't "--or News about himself. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +PRESIDENT WILSON AND MOSES + + +We are deeply interested in the United States just now, in seeing what +will be the fate of President Wilson's government in getting men to be +good. The fate of a government in 1913 may be said to stand on the +government's psychology or knowledge of human nature or of what might be +called human engineering, its mastery of the principles of lifting over +in great masses heavy spiritual bodies, like people, swinging great +masses of people's minds over as on some huge national derrick up on The +White House, from one lookout on life to another. + +There are certain aspects of human nature when power is being applied to +it in this way, and when it is being got to be good, that may not be +beside the point. + +If one could drop in on a government and have a little neighbourly chat +with it, as one was going by, I think I would rather talk with it +(especially our government, just now), about Human Nature than about +anything. + +I would have to do it, of course, in what might seem to a government to +be a plain and homely way. + +I would ask the government what it thought of two or three observations +I have come to lately about the way that human nature works, when people +are getting it to be good. What a government thinks about them might +possibly prove before many months to be quite important to It. + +The first observation is this: + +The reason that the average bachelor is a bachelor is that he spends the +first forty-five years of his life in picking out women he will not +marry. + +Possibly it is because many people are following the same principle in +trying to be good and in getting other people to be good that they make +such poor work of it. + +Possibly the main reason why there are so many wicked people or seem to +be, in proportion, among the Hebrews in the Old Testament, is that Moses +was a lawyer and that he tried to start off a great people with the Ten +Commandments, that is, a list of nine things they must never do any +more, and of one that they must. + +Some of us who have tried being good, have noticed that when we have hit +it off, being good (at least with us) consists in being focused, in +getting concentrated, in getting one's attention to what one really +wants to do. + +Moses' idea when he started his government, the idea of getting people +concentrated on not getting concentrated on nine things, was not +conducive to goodness. The fundamental principle Moses tried to make the +people good with was a contradiction in terms. It is a principle that +would make wicked people out of almost anybody. It is not a practicable +principle for a government to rely on in getting people to be good. It +did not work with the people in the Old Testament and it has never +worked with people since. + +It does not call people out, in getting them to take up goodness, to +point out to them nine places not to take hold of and one where they +will be allowed to take hold, if they know how. + +All that one has to do to see how true this is, is to observe the groups +or classes of people who are especially not what they should be. The +people who never get on morally (as different as they may be in most +things and in the fields of their activity) all have one illusion in +common. There is one thing they always keep saying when any new hopeful +person tries once more to get them to be good. + +They say (almost as if they had a phonograph) that they try to be good +and cannot do it. + +And this is not true. + +When a man says he tries to be good and cannot do it, if he sits down +and thinks it over he finds, generally, he is not trying to be good at +all. He is trying to be not bad. + +A man cannot get himself reformed, by a negative process, by being not +bad, and it is still harder for him and for everybody, when other people +try to do it--those who are near him, and it is still, still harder for +a President down in Washington to do it. + +An intelligent, live man or business corporation cannot be got to keep +up an interest very long in being not bad. Being not bad is a glittering +generality. It is like being not extravagant or economical. + +Most people who have ever tried to attain in a respectable degree to a +pale little neuter virtue like economy, and who have reflected upon +their experiences, have come to conclusions that may not be very far +from the point in a fine art like getting one's self to be good or +getting other people to be good. + +To concentrate on being economical by going grimly down the street, +looking at the shop windows, looking hard at miles of things one will +not buy, cannot be said to be a practicable method of attaining economy. + +The real artist, in getting himself to be good, proceeds to upon the +opposite principle. Even if the good thing he tries for is merely a +negative good thing like economy, he instinctively seeks out some +positive way of getting it. + +A man who is cultivating the art of getting himself to be economical, or +of getting his wife to be economical, does not make a start by sitting +down with a pencil and making out a list, by concentrating his mind on +rows of things that he and his family must get along without. He knows a +better way. He goes downtown with his entire family, takes them into a +big shop and sits down with them and listens to a Steinway Grand he +cannot get. As he listens to it long enough, he thinks he will get it. + +Then a subtle, spiritual change passes over him and over his family +while they listen. He would not have said before he started that sitting +down and thinking of things he could get along without--making lists in +his mind of things that he must not have--could ever be in this world a +happy, even an almost thrilling experience. But as a matter of fact, as +he sits by the piano and listens, he finds himself counting off +economies like strings of pearls, and he greets each new self-sacrifice +he can think of with a cheer. While the Steinway Grand fills the room +with melody all around him, there he actually is sitting, and having the +time of his life dreaming of the things he can get along without! + +When he goes home, he goes home thinking. And the family all go home +thinking. + +Then economy sets in. The reason most people make a failure of their +economy is that they are not artistic with it, they do not enjoy it. +They do not pick out anything to enjoy their economy with. + +With some people an automobile would work better than a Steinway Grand +and there are as many ways, of course, of practising the Steinway Grand +principle in not being bad as there are people, but they all consist +apparently in selecting some big, positive thing that one wants to do, +which logically includes and bundles all together where they are +attended to in a lump, all the things that one ought not to do. + +Most sins (every one who has ever tried them knows this) most sins are +not really worth bothering with, each in detail, even the not-doing them +and the most practical, firm method of getting them out of the way +(thousands of them at once, sometimes, with one hand) is to have +something so big to live for that all the things that would like to get +in the way, and would like to look important, look, when one thinks of +it, suddenly small. + +The distinctive, preëminent, official business for the next four years, +of making small things in this country look small and of gently, +quietly making small men feel small, has been assigned by our people +recently, to Mr. Woodrow Wilson. + +Now it naturally seems to some of us, the best way for Mr. Wilson's +government to do in getting the Trusts to give up lying and stealing, is +going to be to place before them quietly a few really big, interesting, +equally exciting things that Trusts can do, and then dare them, as in +some great game or tournament of skill--all the people looking on--dare +them, challenge them like great men, to do them. + +There are three ideas President Wilson may have of the government's +getting people to be good. + +First, not letting people be bad. (Moses.) + +Second, being good for them. (Karl Marx.) + +Third, letting them be good themselves. (Any Democrat.) + +The first of these ideas means government by Prison. The second, means +government by Usurpation, that is, the moment a man amounts to enough to +choose to do right or do wrong of his own free will, the moment he is a +man, in other words, being so afraid of him and of his being a man, that +we all, in a kind of panic, shove into his life and live it for +him--this is Socialism, a scared machine that scared people have +invented for not letting people choose to do right because they may +choose to do wrong. + +The third, letting people be good themselves, letting them be +self-controlling, self-respecting, self-expressing or voluntarily good +people, is democracy, a machine for letting men be men by trying it. + +Moses was the inventor of a kind of national moral-brake system, a +machine for stopping people nine times out of ten. The question that +faces President Wilson just now, while the world looks on is, "Is a +government or is it not a moral-brake system--a machine for stopping +people nine times out of ten?" + +There is a considerable resemblance between Moses' position and the new +President's in the United States. When Moses looked around on the things +he saw the men around him doing, and took the ground that at least nine +out of ten of the things should be stopped, he was academically correct. +And so, also, President Wilson, gazing at the business of this country +to-day, at nine out of ten of the humdrum thoughtless things that trusts +and corporations have been doing, will be academically correct in +telling them to stop, in having his little, new, helpless, unproved, +adolescent government stand up before all the people and speak in loud, +beautiful, clear accents and (with its left fist full of prisons, fines, +lawyers, of forty-eight legislatures all talking at once) bring down its +right fist as a kind of gavel on the world and say to these men, before +all the nations, that nine of the things they are doing must be stopped +and that one of the things, if they happen to able be to think out some +way of keeping on doing it--nobody will hurt them. + +But the question before President Wilson, to-day, with all our world +looking on, is not whether he would be right in entering upon a career +of stopping people. The real and serious question is, does stopping +people stop them? And if stopping people does not stop them, what will? + +Perhaps the way for a government to stop people from doing things they +are doing, is to tell them the things it wants done. A government that +does not express what it wants, that has not given a masterful, clear, +inspired statement of what it wants--a government that has only tried to +say what it does not want, is not a government. + +The next business of a government is a statement of what it wants. + +The problem of a government is essentially a problem of statement. + +How shall this statement be made? + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +THE PRESIDENT SAYS YES AND NO + + +It was not merely because the seventh commandment was negative, but +because it was abstract that David found it so hard to keep. If the +seventh commandment (like Uriah's wife) could have had deep blue eyes or +could have been beautiful to look upon, and, on a particular day in a +particular place, could have been bathing in a garden, David would have +found keeping it a very different matter. The tendency to make a statue +of purity as a lovely female figure carries us a little further in moral +evolution, than the moral statement that Moses had managed to get, and +it was further toward the concrete, but it was not far enough for a real +artist or man who does things. + +One of the things about the real artist that makes him an artist, is +that he is always and always has been and always will be profoundly +dissatisfied with a statue of a female figure as an emblem of purity. He +challenges the world, he challenges God, he challenges himself, he +challenges the men and women about him when he is being put off with a +Statue as an emblem of purity. He demands, searches out, interprets, +creates something concrete and living to express his idea of purity. + +How can President Wilson, in getting the Trusts not to be corrupt, in +trying to win them--how can President Wilson make the law alluring? How +can he make the People have a Low Voice? + +A great deal if not nearly everything depends in tempting business men +to be good, upon the tone in which they are addressed. Every government, +like every man, soon comes to have its own characteristic tone in +addressing the people. And, as a matter of fact, it is almost always the +tone in a government, like the voice in a man, which tells us the most +definitely what it is like, and is the most intimate and effective +expression of what it wants and is the most practical way of getting +what it wants. Everybody has noticed that a man's voice works harder for +him, works more to the point for him in getting what he wants than his +words do. It is his voice that makes people know him, that makes them +know he means what he says. It is his voice that tells them whether he +is in the habit of meaning what he says, and it is his voice that tells +them whether he is in habit of getting what he wants, and of knowing +what to do with what he wants when he gets it. + +A government does not need to say very much if it has the right tone. + +The tone of a government is the government. + +If President Wilson is going to succeed in tempting business men to be +good, he is going to do it, some of us think, by depending on three +principles. + +These three principles, like all live, active principles, may be stated +as three principles or as three personal traits. + +First, by being affirmative. (Isaiah, in distinction from Moses.) + +Second, by being concrete. (Bathsheba.) + +Third, by being specific, by seeing the universal in the particular. +(Like any artist or man who does things.) + +The value of being affirmative and the value of being concrete have +already been touched upon. There remains the value of being specific. + +Possibly, in this present happy hour, when our country has grown +suddenly sensible and has become practical enough to pick out at last, +once more, a President with a real serious working sense of humour, even +a sense of humour about himself, it may not be considered disrespectful +if I continue a little longer dropping in on the Government, and saying +what I have to say in a few plain and homely words. + +The trouble with most people in being economical with their money is, +that when they spend it, they spend it on something in particular, and +when they save it, they try to save it in a kind of general way. The +same principle applies to doing right. It is because when people do +right, they do it in a kind of general pleasant, abstract way, and when +they do wrong they always do something in particular, that they are so +Wicked. + +A man will do almost anything to save his life at a particular place and +at a particular time, say at ten o'clock to-morrow morning, if he is +drowning, but if he has a year to save it in, a year of controlling his +appetites, of daily, detailed mastering of his spirit, of not taking a +piece of mince pie, of stopping his work in time and of going to bed +early, he will die. + +It is easier when one is going under water for the third time and sees a +rope, to stretch just one inch more and grasp the rope, reach up to +forty more years of one's life, all concentrated for one on the tip of a +rope, than it is to spread out saving one's life over a whole year, 365 +breakfasts, 365 luncheons, 365 dinners, 33,365 moments of anger, of +reckless worry, of remorse, of self-pity, 40,000 of despair and round up +with a swing at the end of one's year at the tiptop of one's being, as +if it had only taken five minutes. And yet it is only an act of the +creative imagination of seeing the whole, of having a happy, daily, +detailed spectacle of the end in view, that is, of the part in its +setting of the whole--going without a piece of mince pie. If one could +only make one's self see the piece of mince pie as it is, it would not +be difficult. If one could see it on the plate there and see the not +taking it as a little wedge-shaped rivet, a little triangular link of +coupling in the chain that keeps one holding on forty years longer to +this planet, a piece of mince pie left on a plate would become a Vision. + +This seems to be the principle that works best in getting other people +to be good. + +Perhaps the President will succeed in getting Trusts to be good, by +taking hold of specific Trusts, one by one, and setting them--all +mankind looking on--in the nation's vision, setting them even in their +own vision--taking the Trusts that thought they had got what they +wanted, making them stand up and look (in some great public lighted +place) at what pathetic, tragical failures they are, letting them see +that what their Trust had wanted all along, if it had only thought about +it, was not success one went to jail for--success by getting the best +out of the most people, but success by serving the most people the best. + +A great many of us in America have been exercising our minds for a long +time now about the eagerness of the Trusts, and the trouble we were +going to have in curbing the eagerness of the Trusts. + +Sometimes I have wondered if, after all, it was our minds we were +exercising, for when one sits down seriously to think of it, it is the +eagerness of the Trusts that is the most hopeful thing about them. + +What is the matter with our American Trusts, perhaps, is not and never +has been, their eagerness, but their eagerness for things that they did +not want, and for things that almost everybody is coming to see that +they did not want. + +The moment that the eagerness of our American Trusts is an eagerness for +things that they really want, the Trusts will be seen piling over each +other's heels, asking the government to please investigate them. The +more they can get the people to know about them and about their +eagerness, the more the people will trust them and deal with them. + +All that we have been waiting for is a government that sees the part +from the point of view of the whole, which will take up a few specific +Trusts and be specific enough with them to make them think, think hard +what they really want, and what their real eagerness is about, and the +entire face of modern business will change. First the expression will +change and then the face itself. + +The moment it is found that the government is a specific government, +all the trusts that know what they really want and know what they really +are doing, will want to be investigated, because they will want +everybody to know that they know. In case of the trusts that do not know +what they want and that do not know what they are doing, the government +will just step in, of course, and investigate them until they find out. + +A specific government will not need to be specific many times. + +It takes up a particular Trust in its hand, turns it over quietly, +empties its contents out before the people and says to everybody, "This +particular Trust you see here has tried to be a kind of Trust, which it +found out afterward, it did not want to be. It is the kind of Trust +whose officers hide their faces when they think of what it was that they +thought that they thought that they wanted.... + +"These men you see here, forty silent nations looking on, hundreds and +thousands of self-respecting, self-supporting, public-serving, creative, +successful business men, whom all the world envies looking on, do hereby +beg to declare to all business men who know them and to the people, that +they did not ever really want these things for themselves that their +business says or seems to say they wanted. + +"They wish to ask the public to put themselves in their places and to +refuse to believe that they deliberately sat down, seriously thought it +all out, that they had planned to express to everybody what their +natures really were in a blind, brutal, foolish business like this which +we have just been showing you. They beg to have it believed that their +business misrepresents them, that it misrepresents what they want, and +they ask to be again admitted to the good-will, the hope and +forgiveness, the companionship of a great people. + +"They declare" (the government will go on) "that they are not the men +they seem. They are merely men in a hurry. They want it understood that +they have merely hurried so fast and hurried so long that they now wake +up at last only to see, see with this terrific plainness what it really +is that has been happening to them all their lives, _viz._: for forty, +fifty, or sixty years they have merely forgot who they were and +overlooked what they were like. + +"In hurrying, too, it is only fair to say they have had to use machines +to hurry with and unconsciously, year by year, associating almost +exclusively with machines, their machines (pump handles, trip-hammers, +hydraulic drills, steam shovels and cranes and cash registers) have +grown into them. + +"This is the way it has happened. 'Let the nation be merciful to them,' +the government will then say, and dismiss the subject." + + * * * * * + +What our President seems to be for in America, is to do up a nation in +one specific, particular man who expresses everybody. + +This man deals with each other specific man, his aggressions and +services, as a nation would if a nation could be one specific man. + +The President of the United States is the Comptroller of the people's +vision, by seeing a part and dealing with a part as a part of a whole, +he governs the people. + +He is the Chancellor of the People's Attention. + +The business of being a President is the business of focusing the +vision, of flooding the whole desire or will of a people around a man +and letting him have the light of it, to see what he is doing by, and to +be seen by, while he is doing it. + +The corporations have expressed or focused the employers of labour. The +Labour Unions have focused or expressed the will of the labourers, and +the government focuses and expresses the will of the consumers, of the +people as a whole, rich and poor, so that Labour and Capital, both +listen to It, understand It and act on It. + +The way to deal with a specific sin is to flood it around with the +general vision. Then it does not need to be dealt with. Then strangely, +softly, and almost before we know--out there in the Light, it +automatically deals with itself. + +When the Government takes hold quietly of the National Cash Register +Company, turns it up, empties its contents out,--all its methods and its +motives--and all the things It thought It wanted, and then proceeds to +put its president and twenty-nine of its officers into jail, my readers +will perhaps point out to me that this action of the government as a +method of tempting people to be good, while it may have the virtue of +being concrete and the virtue of being specific, certainly does not have +the other virtue that I have laid down, the virtue of being affirmative. +"Certainly" they will say "there is not anything affirmative about +putting twenty-nine big business men in jail." Many people would call it +the most magnificently negative thing a President could have done. Moses +himself would have done it. + +It does not seem to me that Moses would have done it, or that it was +essentially negative. It could not unfairly be claimed that in spite of +its negative look on the surface, it was the most massive, significant, +crushing affirmation that a great people has made for years. + +By putting the twenty-nine officers of the National Cash Register +Company in jail, the American people affirmed around the world the +nation's championship of the men that had been defeated in the +competition with the National Cash Register Company. They affirmed that +these men who were not afraid of the National Cash Register Company +because they were bigger, and who stood up to them and fought them, were +the kind of men Americans wanted to be like, and that the officers of +the National Cash Register Company were the kind of men Americans did +not want to be like, would not do business with, would not tolerate, +would not envy, would not live on the same continent with, unless they +were kept in jail. + +The President of the United States, sitting in Washington, at the head +of this vast affirmative and assertive continent, indicted the Cash +Register Company, that is, by a slight pointed negative action, by +pushing back a button he turned on the great chandelier of a nation and +flooded a nation with light. We, the American people, suddenly, all in a +flash, looked into each other's faces and knew what we were like. + +We had hoped we believed in human nature, and in brave men and in men +against machines but we could not prove it. + +Suddenly, we stood in a blaze of truth about ourselves. Suddenly, we +could again look with our old stir of joy at our national Flag. If we +liked, we could swing our hats. + +Perhaps I should speak for myself, but I had been trying to get this +news for years. It is news I have wanted to live with and do business +with. I have been trying to get my question answered. What are the +American people really like? + +The President points at the National Cash Register Company and I find +out. All the people find out. + +In the last analysis, the masterful, shrewd, practical, and constructive +part of being a President of the United States--the thing in the +business of being a President that keeps the position from being a +position which only the second rate or No type of man would have time to +take, is the fact that the President is the Head Advertising Manager of +the United States, conducting a huge advertising campaign of what +Americans really want. + +He takes up the National Cash Register Company, picks out its +twenty-nine officers, makes it a bill board sky-high across the country. +"Here are the kind of business men that the people of the United States +do not want, and here are the kind of men that we do!" + +The thing that makes indicting a trust a positive and affirmative act is +the advertising in it. + +Gladstone once wrote a postcard about a little book of Marie +Bashkirtseff's. + +Twenty nations read the little book. + +Every now and then one watches a man or sees a truth that would make a +nation. One wishes one had some way of being the sort of person or +being in the kind of place where one could make a nation out of it. + +One thinks it would be passing wonderful to be President of the United +States. It would be like having a great bell up over the world that one +could reach up to and ring! But it is better than that. One touches a +button at one's desk if one is President of the United States, a nation +looks up. He whispers to twenty thousand newspapers, "Take your eyes +away a minute," he says, "from Jack Johnson and Miss Elkin's engagement, +and look, oh, look, ye People, here is a man in this world like this! He +has been in the world all this while without our suspecting it. Did you +know there was or could be anywhere a man like THIS? And here is a man +like this! Which do you prefer? Which are you really like?" + +There is nothing really regal or imperial in a man, nothing that makes a +man feel suddenly like a whole Roman Empire all by himself, in 1913, +like saying "Look! Look!" + +Sometimes I think about it. Of course I could take a great reel of paper +and sit down with my fountain pen, say Look for a mile, "Look! look! +look! look!!!--President Wilson says it once and without exclamation +points. Skyscrapers listen to him! Great cities rise and lift themselves +and smite the world. And the faint, sleepy little villages stir in their +dreams." + +Moses said, "Thou shalt not!" President Wilson says, "Look!" + +Perhaps if Moses had had twenty thousand newspapers like twenty thousand +field-glasses that he could hand out every morning and lend to people to +look through--he would not have had to say, "Thou shalt not." + +The precise measure of the governing power a man can get out of the +position of being President of the United States to-day is the amount of +advertising for the people, of the people, and by the people he can +crowd every morning, every week, into the papers of the country. + +A President becomes a great President in proportion as he acts +authoritatively, tactfully, economically, and persistently as the Head +Advertising Manager of the ideals of the people. He is the great +central, official editor of what the people are trying to find out--of a +nation's news about itself. + +By his being the President of what people think, by his dictating the +subjects the people shall take up, by his sorting out the men whom the +people shall notice, this great ceaseless Meeting of ninety million men +we call the United States--comes to order. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +THE PRESIDENT SAYS "LOOK!" + + +Our American President, if one merely reads what the Constitution says +about him, is a rather weak-looking character. + +The founders of the country did not intend him to be anybody in +particular--if it could be helped. They were discouraged about allowing +governments to be efficient. Not very much that was constructive to do +was handed over to him. And the most important power they thought it +would do for him to have was the veto or power to say "No." + +Possibly if our fathers had believed in liberty more they would have +allowed more people to have some; or if they had believed in democracy +more, or trusted the people more, they would have thought it would do to +let them have leaders, but they had just got away. They felt timid about +human nature and decided that the less constructive the government was +and the less chance the government had to be concrete, to interpret a +people, to make opportunities and turn out events, the better. + +Looked at at first sight no more elaborate, impenetrable, water-tight +arrangement for keeping a government from letting in an idea or ever +having one of its own or ever doing anything for anybody, could have +been conceived than the Constitution of the United States, as the +average President interprets it. + +Each branch of the government is arranged carefully to keep any other +branch from doing anything, and then the people, every four years, look +the whole country over for some new man they think will probably leave +them alone more than anybody--and put him in for President. + +Looking at it narrowly and by itself, all that a President selected like +this could ever expect in America to put in his time on, would seem to +be--being the country's most importantly helpless man--the man who has +been given the honour of being a somewhat more prominent failure in +America than any one else would be allowed to be. + +He stops people for four years. Other people stop him for four years. +Then with a long happy sigh, at the end of his term, he slips back into +real life and begins to do things. + +This has been the more or less sedately disguised career of the typical +American President. Merely reading the Constitution or the lives of the +Presidents, without looking at what has been happening to the habits of +the people in the last few years, we might all be asking to-day, "What +is there that is really constructive that President Wilson can do?" What +is there that is going to prevent him, with all that moral earnestness +dammed up in him, that sense of duty, that Presbyterian sense of other +people's duties--what is there that is going to prevent him, with his +school-book habits, his ideals, his volumes of American history, from +being a teachery or preachery person--a kind of Schoolmaster or Official +Clergyman to Business? + +News. + +The one really important and imperative thing to the people of this +country to-day is News. In spite of newspapers, authors, College +presidents, Bank presidents, Socialist agitators, Bill Heywoods, and +Trusts, the people are bound to get this news, and any man who is so +placed by his prominence that he can scoop up the news of a country, +hammer its news together into events the papers will report, express +news in the laws, build news into men who can make laws and unmake laws, +any man who is so placed that directly or indirectly he takes news, +forces it in by hydraulic pressure where people see it doing things, who +takes news and crowds it into courts, crowds news into lawyers and into +legislatures, pries some of it even into newspapers, can have, the +ordinary American says to-day, as much leeway in this government as he +likes. + +The ordinary American has never been able to understand the objection +important people have--that nearly everybody has (except ordinary +people) to news--especially editors and publishers. + +It is an old story. Every one must have noticed it. One set of people in +this world, always from the beginning, trying to climb up on the +housetops to tell news, and another set of people hurrying up always and +saying, "Hush, Hush!" Some days it seems, when I read the papers, that I +hear half the world saying under its breath, a vast, stentorian, "Shoo! +shoo! SHSH! SHSH!" + +Then I realize I live in an editor's world. I am expected to be in the +world that editors have decided on the whole to let me be in. + +Of course I did not know what to do at first when this came over me. + +I naturally began to try to think of some way of cutting across lots, of +climbing up to News. + +I looked at all the neat little park paths, with all those artistic +curves of truth on them the editors have laid out for me and for all of +us. Then I looked at the world and asked myself, "Who are the men in +this world, if any, who are able to walk on the Grass, who cut across +the little park paths when they like?" + +And as fate would have it (it was during the Roosevelt administration), +the first two men I came on who seemed to be stamping about in the +newspapers quite a little as they liked were the Prime Minister of +England and the President of the United States. + +Just how much governing can a President do? + +How many columns a day is he good for, how many acres of attention every +morning in the papers of the country--all these white fields of +attention, these acres of other people's thoughts, can he cover? + +How many sticks a day can he make compositors set up of what he thinks? + +How many square miles of the people's thoughts can he spread out at +breakfast tables, lift up in a thousand thousand trolleys before their +faces? + +I have seen the white fields of attention filled with the footprints of +his thoughts, of his will, of his desires! + +I have seen that the President is the Editor of that vast, anonymous, +silent newspaper, written all the night, written all the day, and softly +published across a country--the newspaper of people's thoughts. + +I have seen the vision of the forests he has cast down, ground into +headlines, into editorials, into news. Mountains and hills are laid bare +to say what he thinks. Thousands of presses throb softly and the white +reels of wood pulp fly into speech. Thousands of miles of paper wet with +the thoughts of a people roll dimly under ground in the night. + +The President is saying Look! in the night! + +The newsboys hasten out in the dawn. They cry in the streets! + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +THE PEOPLE SAY "WHO ARE YOU?" + + +If news is governing, how does the President do his governing? + +By being News, himself. + +By using his appointing power and putting other men who are News +Themselves, news about American human nature--where all the people will +see it. + +By telling the people directly (when he feels especially asked) news +about what is happening in his mind--news about what he believes. + +By telling the people sometimes (as candidly as he can without giving +the people's enemies a chance to stop him), what he is going to do next, +sketching out in order of time, and in order of importance, his program +of issues. + +By telling the people news about their best business men, the business +men and inventors who, in their daily business, free the energies, +unshackle the minds and emancipate the genius of the people. + +By telling these business men news about the people--and interpreting +the people to them. + + * * * * * + +It is by being news to the people himself that all the other news a +President can get into his government counts. + +A man is a man according to the amount of news there is in him. + +There are twenty personal traits in a President which of themselves +would all be national news of the first importance if he had them. The +bare fact that a President could have certain traits at all and still +get to be a President in this country, would be news. + +One of the most important facts about news is that while it can be +distributed by machines, machines cannot make it, and as a rule they do +not understand it. Important and critical news is almost always fresh +and made by hand the first time. Most of the popular news as to what is +practical in American polities for the last forty years has been +produced by political machines, and of course men who were a good deal +like machines were the best men to finish the ideas off and to carry +them out. + +As a result of course, all the really big leaders for the last forty +years, our most powerful and interesting personalities have been shut +out from being President of the United States. The White House was +merely being run as machinery and did not interest them. They watched it +grinding its ideas faithfully out from year to year of what America was +like and what American politicians were like, and finally at last in the +clatter of the machines there rings out suddenly across the land a shot +that no machinery had allowed for. Before any one knows almost there +slips suddenly by the side door into the White House a really +interesting man, and suddenly, all in one minute, almost, this man makes +being President of the United States the most interesting lively and +athletic feat in the country. And now, apparently that the idea has been +worked out in public before everybody, by hand, as it were, that a man +can be alive and interesting all over, can have at least a little touch +of news about him and still be a President in this country, another man +with some news in him has been allowed to us and suddenly politics +throughout all America has become a totally new revealing profession, +and men, instead of being selected because they were blurred +personalities, the ghosts of compromises, would-be everybodies--men who +had not decided who they were, and who could not settle down and let +people know which of their characters they had hit on at last to be +really theirs, men who had no cutting edge to do things, screw-drivers +trying to be chisels--were revealed to our people at last as vague, +mean, other-worldly persons, not fitting into our real American world at +all, and hopelessly visionary and impracticable in American politics. + +And now one more hand-made man has been allowed to us. + +The machines run very still in the White House. + +The people of this country no longer go by the White House on their way +to their business and just hear it humdrumming and humdrumming behind +the windows as of yore. The nation stands in crowds around the gates and +would like to see in. The people wonder. They wonder a million columns a +day what is inside. + +What is inside? + +An American who governs by being news, himself. + +The first thing that the people demand from our President now is that he +shall be news himself. The news that they have selected to know first +during the next four years--have put into the White House to know first +is Woodrow Wilson. + +"Who are you, Woodrow Wilson, in God's name?" the steeples and smoking +chimneys, the bells and whistles, the Yales and Harvards, and the little +country schools, the crowds in the streets, and the corn in the fields +all say, "Who Are You?" + +Then the people listen. They listen to his "I wills" and "I won'ts" for +news about him. They look for news about him in the headlines he steers +into the papers every morning, in the events he makes happen, in the +editorials he makes men think of, in the men he calls up and puts on the +National Wire--in all these, slowly, daily, hourly they drink up their +long, patient, hopeful answer to their question, "Who Are You, Woodrow +Wilson?" + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +THE PEOPLE SAY "WHO ARE WE?" + + +But if the President governs first by being news himself, he governs +second by his appointments, by gathering about him other men who are +news to people, too. + +One need not divide people into good and bad, because the true line of +division between good and bad instead of being between one man and +another, is apt to be as a matter of fact and experience cut down +through the middle of each of us. + +But for the purposes of public action and decision and getting good +things done, this line does seem to be cut farther over in the middle of +some of us, than it is in others. Taking a life-average in any moral or +social engineering feat, in any correct calculation of structural +strain, how far over this line cuts through in a man, has to be reckoned +with. + +The president by appointing certain men to office, saying "I will" and +"I won't" to certain types of men, in saying who shall be studied by the +people, who shall be read as documents of our national life, puts, if +not the most important, at least the most lively and telling news about +his administration into print. + +We watch our President acting for us, telling us news about what we are +like, sorting men out around him the way ninety million people would +sort them out if they were there to do it. + +The President's appointments may be said to be in a way the breath of +the nation. + +A nation has to breathe, and the plain fact seems to be that certain +kinds of people have to be breathed out of a nation and other kinds of +people have to be breathed in. The way a President appoints men to +office is his way of letting a nation breathe. + +With all his attractive qualities, perhaps it is because Mr. Taft did +not quite let the nation breathe, and suffocated it a little that there +came such an outbreak at the end. Perhaps it is because Mr. Taft looked +at Mr. Ballinger and then looked at Mr. Pinchot, all the people of the +country all the while looking on, and said, "Ballinger is the kind of +man our people prefer, and Pinchot is not," that the people broke out so +amazingly, so incredibly, and decided by such an enormous majority that +a man who could pick out men for them like this would not do--as things +are just now anyway--for a President of the United States. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +NEWS ABOUT US TO THE PRESIDENT + + +A nation wakes up every morning and for one minute before it runs to its +work it says to its President, "HERE WE ARE!" + +The best a President can do in the way of a plain, everyday +acknowledgment of the presence of the people is News. + +The news that the people are demanding from the President to-day is +intensely personal. It is a kind of rough, butting, good-natured +familiarity a great people has with its President, a little heedless, +relentless, like some splendid Child, ready to forgive and expecting to +be forgiven, it jostles in upon him daily, "Here we are! What are you +believing this morning? Did you believe in us yesterday? Did you act as +if you believed in us? Did you get anybody to believe in us? Who are the +men you say are like us? What are they like this morning? + +"We have asked a hundred times; we can only ask it once more. How do you +think you are turning out yourself, Mr. President? Are you what you +thought you would be? Do you think it is a good time for us to decide +this morning what you are really like? And, after all, Mr. President--if +you please--who _are_ you? And once more, Mr. President, in God's name, +_who are we?_" + +This is always the gist of what it says, "Who are we?" + +It is the people's main point, after all, asking a President who they +are, wondering if he can interpret them. + +Then he shuts his door and thinks, or he calls his Cabinet and thinks. + +Rows of little-great men file by all day. They stand each a few minutes +with his little Speck or Dot of the People in his hands, and they say, +"This is the People." + +He listens. + +It is very hard to be always President of the People when one is +listening and the little-great go by. + +One has to go back a little, in the night perhaps, or when one is quite +alone. He sees again the Child; it is what he is in the White House for, +he remembers, to express this dumb giant, this mighty Child, half weary, +half glad, standing there by day by night, saying, "Who are we?" One +would think it would be hard to be glib with the Child. + +Sometimes it is so deep and silent! + +Once when It broke in on Lincoln in this way and said, "_Who are we?_" +he prayed. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +NEWS-MEN + + +It seems very difficult to get news through as to who we really are to a +President. When I look about me and see what the President's ways are of +telling news about himself to us, I see that he is not without his +advantages. But when I look about to see what conveniences we have as a +people for telling our President news about us, I note some curious +things. The fears of the American people, the fears and threats of +labour and capital are organized and expressed, but their faiths, their +wills, the things in them that make them go and that make them American, +are not organized and are not expressed. + +The labour unions are afraid and say, "We will not work," to their +employers, "You cannot make us work." The President hears this. It is +about all they say. + +The capitalists and employers are afraid and they say, "We will not +pay," "You cannot make us pay." + +Shall the President act as if these men represent Labor and Capital? + +We say, "No." + +Neither of these groups of men express real live American labour or real +live characteristic American money. + +American money is free, bold, manful, generous and courageous to a +fault. American money swings out in mighty enterprises, shrewdly +believing things, imperiously singing things out of its way. + +A singing people want a singing government. How is our President going +to hear our labour and our money sing? + +Pinchot expressed us, not Ballinger. + +Mr. Pinchot is no mere uplifter or missionary. He is an artist in +expressing America to a President. If we have a President who will not +listen to a man like Pinchot, let us try a President that will. + +Pinchot--an American millionaire with a fortune made out of forests, who +is spending the fortune in protecting the forests for the nation, is the +kind of American Americans like to set up before a President to say what +Americans are like. Millions of men stand by Pinchot. We like the way he +makes money sing. + +Tom L. Johnson--an American millionaire who made his money in the +ordinary humdrum way, by getting valuable street railway franchises out +of a city for nothing--has the courage to turn around, spend his fortune +and spend it all, in keeping other people from doing it. + +America presents Tom L. Johnson to a President with its compliments and +says, "This is what America is like." + +It may not look always as if Tom L. Johnson were America--America in +miniature. But millions of us say he is. He makes money sing. + +We want a President--millions of us want him--and this is the most +important news about us, who expects money in this country to sing. + +We want our money and expect our money in this country to stop saying +mean things about us, things that make us ashamed to look a true +newspaper in the face, or one another in the face, and that humiliate us +before the world. + + * * * * * + +And now I have come to an awkward place in this book where I hope the +reader will help me all he can. + +There is nothing to do but to let out the real truth and face the music. +The fact is, Gentle Reader--perhaps you have suspected it all +along--that if it had not been for fear of mixing my book all up with +him and making it a kind of arena or tournament instead of a book, I +would have mentioned ex-President Roosevelt before this. He has been +getting in or nearly getting in to nearly every chapter so far, but of +course I knew, as any one would, that he would spoil all the calm +equipoise, the quiet onward flowing of the Stream of Thought, and with +one chapter after the other, with each as the crisis came up, though I +scarcely know how, I have managed to keep him out. And now, oh, Gentle +Reader, here he is! I know very well that he is in everything, and right +in the middle of everything, and that in a kind of splendid mixed happy +uproarious way, there somehow has to be a great to-do the moment he +appears. The beautiful clear water, the lucid depth of Thought--will all +become (ah, I know it too well, Gentle Reader) all thunder and spray and +underneath the mighty grinding of the wheels--the wheels of the Nation +and the Mowing Machine of Time, and in the background--in the red +background of the Dawn, there will be the face of Theodore--just the +face of Theodore in this book shining at us--readers and writer and +all--out of a huge rosy mist! + +But I have been driven to it. The fact seems to be that I must find at +just this point in the book, if I can, a word. And the word will have to +be a word, too, that everybody knows, and that conveys a lively sense to +everybody the moment it is used--of a certain tone or quality, or hum or +murmur of being. No one regrets this more than I, because it is so +unwieldy and inconvenient and always bulges out in a sentence or a book +or a nation more than it was meant to, but the word ROOSEVELT, R O O S E +V E L T, happens to be the word that people in this country, and very +largely in other nations, and in all languages have chosen and are using +every day to express to one another a certain American quality or tone +now abroad in our world--a certain hum, as one might say, or whirr of +goodness. + +This particular hum, or whirr of goodness, which is instantly associated +with the word Roosevelt, expresses, except that of course it +over-expresses, a part of the news to-day about America which we want +our President to read. + +One cannot help wondering why it is that if one wanted to express to the +largest number of people in the world a certain quality of goodness, the +word Roosevelt would do it best. + +I am not dealing for the purpose of this book in what Mr. Roosevelt's +goodness is or whether it is what he thinks it is. We might all disagree +about that. I am dealing quite strictly in this connection with what +even his enemies would say is his almost egregious success in +advertising goodness. While we might all disagree as to his goodness +being the kind that he or any one ought to love, we would not fail to +agree that it is his love of his own goodness, such as it is, and his +holding on to it, and his love of other people's and his love of getting +his goodness and their goodness together, that has made him the most +unconcealed person in modern life. These qualities have established him, +with his ability raised to the n-th power of attracting attention to +anything he likes, as the world's greatest News Man--the world's +greatest living energy to-day in advertising what is good and what is +had in our American temperament. + +Even the people who disagree with him or dislike him--many of them would +have to fall back on using the word roosevelt, or rather the verb to +roosevelt. + +It does not seem to be because his goodness in itself is extraordinary. +It is even, for that matter, in the sense that anybody could have it, or +some more just like it, a little common. + +What seems to be uncommon and really distinguished about Mr. Roosevelt +is the way he feels about his goodness, and the way he grips hold of it, +and the way he makes it grip hold of other people--practically anybody +almost, who is standing by. Even if they are merely going by in +automobiles, sometimes they catch some. I do not imagine that his worst +enemies, however seriously they may question the general desirability or +safety of having so much goodness roosevelting around, would fail to +admit his own real enthusiasm about goodness anywhere he finds it +indiscriminately, whether it is his own or other people's. He grips hold +of it, and grips like a cable car--instantly. + +His enthusiasm is so great that many people are nonplussed by it. The +enthusiasm must really be in spite of appearances about something else, +something wicked in behind, they think, and not really about goodness. +An entire stranger would not quite believe it. It would be too original +in him, they would say, or in anybody, to care so about goodness. + +If one could watch the expression in Mr. Roosevelt's face or his manner +while he is in the act of having a virtue and if one could not see +plainly from where one was, just what it was he was doing, one would at +once conclude that it must be some vice he is having. He looks happy and +as if it were some stolen secret. There is always that manner of his +when he is caught doing right, as if one were to say "Now, at last, I +have got it!" He does right like a boy with his mouth full of jam, and +this seems to be true not only when, with a whole public following and +two or three nations besides, and all the newspapers, he goes off on an +orgy of righteousness, makes the grand tour of Europe, and has the time +of his life. It is the steady-burning under enthusiasm with him all the +while. The spectacle of a good man doing a tremendous good thing affects +Theodore Roosevelt like one of the great forces of nature, like Niagara +Falls, like the screws of the _Mauritania_, or any other huge, happy +thing that is having its way against fear; against weakness, or against +small terrified goodness. + +Mr. Roosevelt in doing right conveys the sense of enjoying it so himself +that he has made almost an art form of public righteousness. He has +found his most complete, his most naïve, instinctive self-expression in +it, and while we have had goodness in public men before, we have had no +man who has been such an international chromo for goodness, who has made +such a big, comfortable "He-who-runs-may-read" bill-poster for doing +right as Roosevelt. Other men have done things that were good to do, but +the very inmost muscle and marrow of goodness itself, goodness with +teeth, with a fist, goodness that smiled, that ha-ha'd, and that leaped +and danced--perpetual motion of goodness, goodness that reeked--has been +reserved for Theodore Roosevelt. We have had goodness that was bland or +proper, and goodness that was pious or sentimental and sang, "Nearer My +God to Thee," or goodness that was kind and mushy, but this goodness +with a glad look and bounding heart, goodness with an iron hand, we have +not had before. It is Mr. Roosevelt's goodness that has made him +interesting in Cairo, Paris, Rome, and Berlin. He has been conducting a +grand tour of goodness. He has been a colossal drummer of goodness, +conducting an advertising campaign. He has proved himself a master +salesman for moral values. And he has put the American character, its +hope, its energy, on the markets and on the credits of the world. + +With all his faults, those big, daring, yawning fissures in him, he is +news about us, faults and all. Though I may be, as I certainly am much +of the time, standing and looking across at him, across an abyss of +temperament that God cut down between us thousands of years ago, and +while he may have a score of traits I would not like and others that no +one would like in any one else, there he is storming out at me with his +goodness! It is his way--God help him!--God be praised for him! There he +is! + +I know an American when I see one. He is a man who is singing. + +A man who is singing is a man who is so shrewd about people that he sees +more in them than they see in themselves and who does things so shrewdly +in behalf of God, that when God looks upon him he delights in him. Then +God falls to of course and helps him do them. + +When American men saw that there was a man among them who was taking a +thing like the Presidency of the United States (that most people never +run risks with) and putting it up before everybody, and using it grimly +as a magnificent bet on the people, they looked up. Millions of men +leaped in their hearts and as they saw him they knew that they were like +him! + +So did Theodore Roosevelt become news about Us. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +AMERICAN TEMPERAMENT AND GOVERNMENT + + +I would like to say more specifically what I mean by an American or +singing government. + +The thing that counts the most in a government is its temperament. A +German government succeeds by having the German temperament. An American +government must have the American temperament. + +If we are fortunate enough to have in America a government with an +American temperament what would it be like? And how would it differ from +the traditional or conventional temperament, governments are usually +allowed to have? + +If I were confined to one or two words I would put it like this: + +If a government has the conventional temperament, it says "NO." + +If it has the American Temperament it says, "YES, BUT ..." + +The whole policy and temper of a true American government is summed up +in its saying as it looks about it--now to this business man and now to +that, just in time, "YES BUT." + +Louis Brandeis, of Boston, when he was made attorney for the Gas Company +of Boston to defend the company from the criticisms of the people, sent +suddenly scores of men all about canvassing the city and looking up +people to find fault with the gas. + +He spent thousands of dollars a month of the Gas Company's money for a +while in helping people to be disagreeable, until they had it attended +to and got over it. + +The Gas Company had the canvassers show the people how they could burn +less gas for what they got for it, and tried to help them cut their +bills in two. Incidentally, of course, they got to thinking about gas +and about what they got for it, and about other ways they could afford +to use it, and began to have the gas habit--used it for cooking and +heating. + +The people found they wanted to use four times as much gas. + +The Boston Gas Company smiled sweetly. + +Boston smiled sweetly. + +Not many months had passed and two things had happened in Boston. + +The Boston Gas Company, with precisely the same directors in it, had +made over the directors into new men, and all the people in Boston (all +who used gas) apparently had been made over into new people. + +What had happened was Brandeis--a man with an American temperament. + +Mr. Brandeis had defended his company from the people by going the +people's way and helping them until they helped him. + +Mr. Brandeis gave gas a soul in Boston. + +Before a gas corporation has a soul, it would be American for a +government to treat it in one way. After it has one it would be American +to treat it in another. There are two complete sets of conduct, +principles, and visions in dealing with a corporation before and after +its having a soul. + +Preserving the females of the species and killing males as a method of +discrimination has been applied to all animals except human beings. This +is suggestive of a method of discrimination in dealing with +corporations. A corporation that has a soul and that is the most likely +to keep reproducing souls in others should be treated in one way, and a +corporation that has not should be treated in another. + +There are two assumptions underneath everybody's thought, underneath +every action of our government: Which is the American assumption? + +People are going to be bad if they can. + +People are going to be good if they can. + +Men who want to arrange laws and adjust life on the assumption that +business men will be bad if they can, it seems to some of us, are +inefficient and unscientific. It seems to us that they are off on the +main and controlling facts in American human nature. It is not true that +American business men will be bad if they can. They will be good if they +can. + +This is my assertion. I cannot prove it. + +What we seem to need next in this country in order to be clear-headed +and to go ahead, is to prove it. We want a competent census of human +nature. + +Lacking a census of human nature, the next best thing we can do is to +watch the men who seem to know the most about human nature. + +We put ourselves in their hands. + +These men seem to believe, judging from their actions, that there is +really nothing that suits our temperament better in America than being +good. If we can manage to have some way of being good that we have +thought of ourselves, we like it still better. We dote on goodness when +it is ours and when we are allowed to put some punch into it. We want to +be good, to express our practical, our doing-idealism, but we will not +be driven to being good and people who think they can drive us to being +good in a government or out of it are incompetent people. They do not +know who we are. + +We say they shall not have their way with us. + +Let them get us right first. Then they can do other things. + +What is our American temperament? + +Here are a few American reflections. + +The government of the next boys' school of importance in this country is +going to determine the cuts and free hours, and privileges not by marks, +but by its genius for seeing through boys. + +And instead of making rules for two hundred pupils because just twenty +pupils need them, they will make the rules for just twenty pupils. + +Pupils who can use their souls and can do better by telling themselves +what to do, will be allowed to do better. Why should two hundred boys +who want to be men be bullied into being babies by twenty infants who +can scare a school government into rules, _i.e._, scare their teachers +into being small and mean and second-rate? + +A government that goes on this principle with business men, and that +does it in a spirit of mutual understanding for those who are not yet +free from rules, and in a spirit of confidence and expectation and of +talking it over, will be a government with an American temperament. + +The first trait of a great government is going to be that it will +recognize that the basis of a true government in a democracy is +privilege and not treating all people alike. It is going to see that is +it a cowardly, lazy, brutal, and mechanical-minded thing for a +government which is trying to serve a great people--to treat all the +people alike. The basis of a great government like the basis of a great +man (or even the basis of a good digestion) is discrimination, and the +habit of acting according to facts. We will have rules or laws for +people who need them, and men in the same business who amount to enough +and are American enough to be safe as laws to themselves, will continue +to have their initiative and to make their business a profession, a +mould, an art form into which they pour their lives. The pouring of the +lives of men like this into their business is the one thing that the +business and the government want. + +Several things are going to happen when what a good government seeks +each for a man's business, is to let him express himself in it. + +When a man has proved conclusively that he has a higher level of +motives, and a higher level of abilities to make his motives work, the +government is going to give him a higher level of rights, liberties, and +immunities. The government will give special liberties on a sliding +scale and with shrewd provision for the future. The government will not +give special liberties to the man with higher motives than other men +have, who has not higher abilities to make his motives work, nor will it +give special liberties to the man who has higher abilities which could +make higher motives work, but who has not the higher motives. + +Men who are new kinds and new sizes of men and who have proved that they +can make new kinds and new sizes of bargains, that they can make (for +the same money) new kinds and new sizes of goods, and who incidentally +make new kinds and new sizes of people out of the people who buy the +goods, men who have achieved all these supposed visionary feats by their +own initiative, will be allowed by the government to have all the +initiative they want, and immunities from fretful rules as long as they +resemble themselves and keep on doing what they have shown they can do. +The government will deal with each man according to the facts, the +scientific facts, that he has proved about himself. + +The government acts according to scientific facts in everything except +men, in pure food, in cholera, and the next thing the government is +going to do is to be equally efficient in dealing with scientific facts +in men. + +It is going to give some men inspected liberty. If these men say they +can be more efficient, as a railroad sometimes is, by being a monopoly, +by being a vast, self-visioned, self-controlled body the government will +have enough character, expert courage and shrewdness about human nature +to provide a way for them to try it. + +When the other people come up and ask why they cannot have these +special immunities and why they cannot be a monopoly, or nearly a +monopoly, too, the government will tell them why. + +Telling them why will be governing them. + +When we once reckon with new kinds and new sizes of men, everything +follows. The first man who organizes a true monopoly for public service +and who does it better than any state could do it, because he thinks of +it himself, glories in it and has a genius for it, will be given a +peerage in England perhaps. But he would not really care. The thing +itself would be a peerage enough and either in America or England he +would rather be rewarded by being singled out by the government for +special rights and distinctions in conducting his business. The best way +a democracy can honour a man who has served it is not to give him a +title or to make a frivolous, idle monument of bronze for him, but to +let him have his own way. + +The way to honour any artist or any creative man, any man a country is +in need of especially, is to let him have his own way. + + * * * * * + +We are told that the way to govern trusts is to untrammel competition. + +But the way to untrammel competition is not to try to untrammel it in +its details with lists of things men shall not do. + +This is cumbersome. + +We would probably find it very much more convenient in specifying 979 +detailed things trusts cannot do, if we could think of certain +sum-totals of details. + +Then we could deal with the details in a lump. + +The best sum totals of details in this world that have ever been +invented yet, are men. + +We will pick out a man who has a definite, marked character, who is a +fine, convenient sum-total that any one can see, of things not to do. + +We will pick out another man in the same line of business who is a fine, +convenient sum-total of things that people ought to do. + +The government will find ways, as the Coach of Business as the Referee +of the Game for the people, to stand by this man until he whips the +other, drives him out of business or makes him play as good a game as he +does. + + * * * * * + +When a child finds suddenly that his father is not merely keeping him +from doing things, that his father has a soul, the father begins to get +results out of the child. + +As a rule a child discovers first that his father has a soul by noticing +that he insists on treating him as if he had one. + +Of course a corporation that has not a soul yet does not propose to be +dictated to by a government that has not a soul yet. When corporations +without souls see overwhelmingly that a government has a soul, they will +be filled with a wholesome fear. They will always try at first to +prevent it from having a soul if they can. + +But the moment it gets one and shows it, they will be glad. They will +feel on firm ground. They will know what they know. They will act. + +In the hospital on the hill not far from my house, one often sees one +attendant going out to walk with twelve insane men. One would think it +would not be safe for twelve insane men to go out to walk with one sane +man, with one man who has his soul on. + +The reason it is safe, is, that the moment one insane man or man who has +not his soul on, attacks the man who has a soul, all of the other eleven +men throw themselves upon him and fling him to the ground. Men whose +souls are not on, protect, every time, the man who has his soul on +because the man who has a soul is the only defence they have from the +men who have not. + +It is going to be the same with governments. We believe in a +government's having as much courage in America as a ten-dollar-a-week +attendant in an insane asylum. We want a government that sees how +courage works. + +We are told in the New Testament that we are all members one of another. + +If society has a soul and if every member of it has a soul, what is the +relation of the social soul to the individual soul? + +A man's soul is the faculty in him for seeing the Whole in relation to +the part--his vision for others in relation to his vision for himself. + +My forefinger's soul in writing with this fountain pen is the sense my +forefinger has of its relation to my arm, my spinal column, and my +brain. The ability and efficiency of my forefinger depends upon its +soul, that is, its sense of relation to the other members of the body. +If my forefinger tries to act like a brain all by itself, as it +sometimes does, nobody reads my writing. + +The government in a society is the soul of all the members and it treats +them according to their souls. + +The one compulsion a government will use if it has a soul, will be +granting charters in business in such a way as to fix definite +responsibility and definite publicity upon a few men. + +If a corporation has a soul, it must show. It must have a face. Anybody +can tell a face off-hand or while going by. Anybody can keep track of a +corporation if it has a face. + +The trouble with the average corporation is that all that anybody can +see is its stomach. Even this is anonymous. + +Whose Stomach is it? Who is responsible for it? If we hit it, whom will +we hit? Let the government find out. If the time the government is now +spending in making impossibly minute laws for impossibly minute men, +were spent in finding out what size men were, and who they were and then +giving them just as many rights from the people, as they are the right +kind and the right size to handle for the people, it would be an +American government. + +If there is one thing rather than another that an American or an +Englishman loves, it is asserting himself or expressing his character in +what he does. The typical dominating Englishman or American is not as +successful as a Frenchman or as an Italian in expressing other things, +as he is in expressing his character. + +He cares more about expressing his character and asserting it. If he is +dealing with things, he makes them take the stamp of who he is. If he is +dealing with people, he makes them see and acknowledge who he is. They +must take in the facts about what he is like when they are with him. +They must deal with him as he is. + +This trait may have its disadvantages, but if an Englishman or an +American is on this earth for anything, this is what he is for--to +express his character in what he does--in strong, vigorous, manly lines +draw a portrait of himself and show what he is like in what he does. +This may be called on both sides of the sea to-day as we stand front to +front with the more graceful nations, Anglo-Saxon Art. + +It is because this particular art in the present crisis of human nature +on this planet is the desperate, the almost reckless need of a world +that the other nations of the world with all their dislike of us and +their superiorities to us, with all our ugliness and heaviness and our +galumphing in the arts, have been compelled in this huge, modern thicket +of machines and crowds to give us the lead. + +And now we are threading a way for nations through the moral wilderness +of the earth. + +This position has been accorded us because it goes with our temperament, +because we can be depended upon to insist on asserting ourselves and on +expressing ourselves in what we do. If the present impromptu industrial +machinery which has been handed over to us thoughtlessly and in a hurry, +does not express us, everybody knows that we can be depended on to +assert ourselves and that we will insist on one that will. The nations +that are more polite and that can dance and bow more nicely than we can +in a crisis like this would be dangerous. It is known about us +throughout a world that we are not going to be cowed by wood or by iron +or by steel and that we are not going to be cowed by men who are all +wood and iron and steel inside. If wood, iron, or steel does not express +us, we are Englishmen and we are Americans. We will butt our character +into it until it does. + + * * * * * + +If the American workman were to insist upon butting his American +temperament into his labour union machinery, what would his labour +machinery in America soon begin to show that an American labourer was +like? + +I imagine it might work out something like this: + +The thoughtful workman looks about him. He discovers that the workman +pays at least two times as much for coal as he needs to because miners +down in Pennsylvania work one third as hard as they might for the money. + +When he comes to think of it, all the labouring men of America are +paying high prices because they have to pay all the other workmen in +America for working as little as they can. He is working one third less +than he can and making his own class pay for it. He sees every workman +about him paying high prices because every other workman in making +things for him to eat and for him to wear, is cheating him--doing a +third less a day for him than he ought. + +At this point the capitalists pile in and help. They shove the prices up +still higher because capital is not interested in an industry in which +the workmen do six hours' work in nine. It demands extra profits. So +while the workmen put up the prices by not working, the capitalists put +up the prices because they are afraid the workmen will not work. Half +work, high prices. + +Then the American workman thinks. He begins to suppose. + +Suppose that the millers' workmen and the workmen in the woollen mills +in America see how prices of supplies for labouring men are going up and +suppose they agree to work as hard as they can? Suppose the wool workers +of the world want cheap bread. The flour mill workers want cheap +clothes. We will say to the bread people, "We will bring down the price +of wool for you if you will bring down the price of bread for us." + +Then let Meat and Potatoes do the same for one another. Then two +industries at a time, industries getting brains in pairs, until like the +animals going into the ark, little by little (or rather very fast, +almost piling in, in fact, after the first pair have tried it), at last +our true, spirited, practical minded American workmen will have made +their labour machines as natural and as human and as American as they +are. They will stop trying to lower prices by not working, each workman +joining (in a factory) the leisure classes and making the other workmen +pay for it. + + * * * * * + +The American workman, as things are organized now, finds himself +confronted with two main problems. One is himself. How can he get +himself to work hard enough to make his food and clothes cheap? The +other is his employer. + +What will the American workman do to express his American temperament +through his labour union to his employer? The American workmen will go +to their employers and say: "Instead of doing six hours' work in nine +hours, we will do nine hours' work in nine hours." The millers, for +instance, will say to the flour mill owners: "We will do a third more +work for you, make you a third more profit on our labour if you will +divide your third more profit like this: + +"First, by bringing down the price of flour to everybody; + +"Second, by bringing up our wages. Third, by taking more money +yourselves." + +American labouring men who did this would be acting like Americans. It +is the American temperament. + +They will insist on it: The labour men will continue to say to their +employers, "We will divide the proceeds of our extra work into three +sums of money--ours, yours, and everybody's." In return we will soon +find the employers saying the same thing to the labour men. Employers +would like to arrange to be good. If they can get men who earn more, +they want to pay them more. + +The labourers would like to be good, _i.e._, work more for employers who +want to pay them more. + +But being good has to be arranged for. + +Being good is a matter of mutual understanding, a matter of +organization, a matter of butting our American temperament into our +industrial machines. + +All that is the matter with these industrial machines is that they are +not like us. + +Our machines are acting just now for all the world as if they were the +Americans and as if we were the machines. + +Are we for the machines, or are the machines for us? + +All that the American labourers and that the American capitalists have +to do is to show what they are really like, organize their news about +themselves so that they get it through to one another, and our present +great daily occupation in America (which each man calls his "business") +all the workmen going down to the mills and all the employers going down +to their offices, and then for six, eight, nine hours a day being chewed +on by machines, will cease. + +We make our industrial machines. We are Americans. Our machines must +have our American temperament. + + * * * * * + +If an American employer were to insist on butting his American +temperament into his industrial machine, what would his industrial +machine, when it is well at work at last, show an American employer's +temperament to be like? + +The first thing that would show in his machine, I think, would be its +courage, its acting with boldness and initiative, originality and +freedom, without being cluttered up by precedents or running and asking +Mama, its clear-headedness in what it wants, its short-cut in getting to +it, and above all a kind of ruthless faith in human nature, in the +American people, in its goods and in itself. + +The typical American business man of the highest class--the man who is +expressing his American temperament best in his business--is the one who +is expressing in it the most courage for himself and for others and for +his government. He has big beliefs every few minutes a day, and he acts +on them with nonchalance. + +If he is running a trust--our most characteristic, recklessly difficult +American invention for a man to show through, and if he tries to get his +American temperament to show through in it, tries to make his trust like +a vast portrait, like a kind of countenance on a country, of what a big +American business is like, what will he do? + +He will take a little axiom like this and act as if it were so. + +_If in any given case the producers by collusion and combination can be +efficient in lowering wages to employees and raising prices and cheating +the public, this same combination or collusion would be efficient in +raising the wages of employees, lowering prices and serving the public._ + +He will then, being an American, turn to his government and say "I am a +certain sort of man. If I am allowed to be an exception and to combine +in this matter, I can prove that I can raise wages, lower prices for a +whole nation in these things that I make. I am a certain sort of man. Do +you think I am, or do you think that I am not? I want to know." + +The government looks noncommittally at him. It says it cannot +discriminate. + +He says nothing for a time, but he thinks in his heart that it is +incompetent and cowardly to run a great government of a great nation as +a vast national sweep or flourish of getting out of brains and of +evading vision. It seems to him lazy and effeminate in a government to +treat all combinations and all monopolies alike. He says: "Look me in +the eyes! I demand of you as a citizen of this country the right to be +looked by my government in the eyes. What sort of man am I? Here are all +my doors open. My safes are your safes and my books are your books. Am I +or am I not a man who can conduct his business as a great profession, +one of the dignities and energies and joys of a great people? + +"What am I like inside? Is what I am like inside--my having a small size +or a big size of motive, my having a right kind or a wrong kind of +ability of no consequence to this government? Does the government of +this country really mean that the most important things a country like +this can produce, the daily, ruling motives of the men who are living in +it, have no weight with the government? Am I to understand that the +government does not propose to avail itself of new sizes and new kinds +of men and new sizes and new kinds of abilities in men? What I am trying +to do in my product is to lower the prices and raise the wages for a +nation. Will you let me do it? Will you watch me while I do it?" + +This will be the American trust of to-morrow. The average trust of this +country has not yet found itself, but the moral and spiritual history, +the religious message to a government of The Trust That Has Found Itself +will be something like this. + +Perhaps when we have a trust that has found itself, we will have a +government that has dared to find itself, that has the courage to use +its insight, its sense of difference between men, as it means of getting +what it wants for the people. + +As it is now, the government has not found itself and it falls back on +complex rules or machines for getting out of seeing through people. + +Where courage is required, it proceeds as it proceeds with automobile +speeding laws. Everybody knows that one man driving his car three miles +an hour may be more dangerous than another kind of man who is driving +his car thirty. + +When our government begins to be a government, begins to express the +American temperament, it will be a government that will devote its +energy, its men, and its money to being expert in divining, and using +differences between men. It will govern as any father, teacher, or +competent business man does by treating some people in one way and +others in another, by giving graded speed licenses in business, to +labour unions, trusts, and business men. + +The government will be able to do this by demanding, acquiring, and +employing as the servants of the people, men who are experts in human +nature, masters in not treating men alike--Crowbars, lemonade-straws, +chisels, and marshmallows, powerhouses and Æolian harps by the people, +for the people, and of the people, will be rated for what they are and +will be used for what they are for. + +This will be democracy. It will be the American temperament in +government. + + * * * * * + +Is President Wilson or is he not going to fall back into a mere lawyer +Moseslike way of getting people to be good, or is he going to be a man +like David, half poet, half soldier, who got his way with the nation +half by appreciating the men in it and being a fellow human being with +them, and half by fighting them when they would not let him be a fellow +human being with them, and would not let him appreciate them? + +Almost any nation or government can get some kind of Moses to-day but +the men that America is producing would not particularly notice a Moses +probably now. A Moses might do for a Rockefeller, but he could not +really do anything with a man like Theodore N. Vail who has the +telephones and telegraphs of a country talking and ticking to us all, +all night, all day, what kind of a man he is. + +A big affirmative, inspirational man like David or even Napoleon who +inspires people with one breath and fights hard with the next, a man who +swings his hat for the world, a man who goes on ahead and says "Come!" +is the only man who can be practical in America to-day in helping real +live American men like McAdoo, like Edison and Acheson,--men who can +express a people in a business--to express them. + +The people have spoken. A man in the White House who cannot say "Come" +goes. + +We want a poet in the White House. If we can not have a poet for the +White House soon, we want a poet who will make us a poet for the White +House. + +I do not believe it is too much to expect a President to be a poet. We +have had a poet for President once in one supreme crisis of this nation +and the crisis that is coming now is so much deeper, so much more human +and world-wide than Lincoln's was that it would almost seem as if a +place like the White House (where one's poetry could really work) would +make a poet out of anybody. + +A President who has not a kind of plain, still, homely poetry in him, a +belief about people that sings, in the present appalling crisis of the +world is impracticable or visionary. + +So we do not say, "Have we a President that can get our Bells, Edisons, +McAdoos, Achesons to be good by toeing a line?" + +We say, "Have we a President who can swing into step, who can join in +the singing, who can catch up?" + +Tunnel McAdoo, when he lifted up his will against the sea and against +the seers of Wall Street, was singing. When he conceived those steel +cars, those roaring yellow streaks of light ringing through rocks +beneath the river, streets of people flashing through under the slime +and under the fish and under the ships and under the wide sunshine on +the water, he was singing! He raised millions of dollars singing. + +Of course he sang the way Americans usually sing, and had to do as well +as he could in talking to bankers and investors not to look as if he +were singing, but there it all was singing inside him, the seven years +of digging, the seven years of dull thundering on rocks under the city, +and at last the happy steel cars all green and gold, the streams of +people all yellow light hissing and pouring through--those vast pipes +for people beneath the sea! + +If we have a President, let him sing like McAdoo, or like Luther +Burbank, or like Theodore N. Vail, or like Colonel Goethals, picking up +a little isthmus like Panama, a string between two continents, playing +on it as if it were a harp; or like Edward Ripley playing with the Santa +Fé Railroad for all the world like Homer with a lute, all his seven +thousand men, all his workmen, all their wives and their children, all +the cities along the line striking up and joining in the chorus or like +Carborundum Acheson, backed up by his little Niagara Falls oiling the +wheels of a world, weaving diamonds into steel, hardening the bones of +the earth into skyscrapers, into railroads, into the mighty thighs of +flying locomotives.... + +Any man who is seen acting in this world with a thing, as if he believed +in the thing, as if he believed in himself and believed in other people, +is singing. + +Moses striking out with a rod, as we are told, a path along the sea for +his people may have done a more showy thing from a religious point of +view, hitting the water on top so, making a great splash with an empty +place in it for people to march through, but he was not essentially more +religious than McAdoo, with all those modest but mighty columns of +figures piling up behind him, with all those splendid, dumb, still +glowing engineers behind him, lifting up his will against cities, +lifting up his will against herds of politicians, haughty newspapers, +against the flocks of silly complacent old ferry-boats waddling in the +bay, against the wind and the rain and the cold on the water, and all +the banks of Wall Street.... + +When we want to tell News to our President about ourselves in America, +we point to William G. McAdoo. + +The first news that we, the American people, must contrive to get into +the White House about ourselves is that we do not want to be improved, +and that we do not like an improving tone in our government. We want to +be expressed the way McAdoos express us. We want a government that +expresses our faith in one another, in what we are doing, and in +ourselves, and in the world. + +We are singing over here on this continent. We would not all of us put +it in just this way. But our singing is the main thing we can do, and a +government that is trying to improve us feebly, that is looking askance +at us and looking askance at our money, and at our labour, and that does +not believe in us and join in with us in our singing does not know what +we are like. + +Our next national business in America is to get the real news over to +the President of what we are like. + +It is news that we want in the White House. A missionary in the White +House, be he ever so humble, will not do. + +Mr. Roosevelt, himself, with the word Duty on every milepost as he +whirled past, with suggestions of things for other people to do buzzing +like bees about his head, acquired his tremendous and incredible power +with us as a people because, in spite of his violent way of breaking out +into a missionary every morning and every evening when he talked, it was +not his talking but his singing that made him powerful--his singing, or +doing things as if he believed in people, his I wills and I won'ts, his +assuming every day, his acting every day, as if American men were men. +He sang his way roughly, hoarsely, even a little comically at times into +the hearts of people, stirred up in the nation a mighty heat, put a +great crackling fire under it, put two great parties into the pot, +boiled them, drew off all that was good in them, and at last, to-day, as +I write (February 1913), the prospect of a good square meal in the White +House (with some one else to say grace) is before the people. + +The people are waiting to sit down once more in the White House and +refresh themselves. + +At least, the soup course is on the table. + +Who did it, please? Who bullied the cook and got everybody ready? + +Theodore Roosevelt, singing a little roughly, possibly hurrahing "_I +will, I will, I won't, I won't_," and acting as if he believed in the +world. + +Bryan in the village of Chicago sitting by at a reporter's table saw him +doing it. + +Bryan saw how it worked. + +Bryan had it in him too. + +Bryan heard the shouts of the people across the land as they gloried in +the fight. He saw the signals from the nations over the sea. + +Then Armageddon moved to Baltimore. + + * * * * * + +And now table is about to be spread. + +It is to be Mr. Wilson's soup. + +But the soup will have a Roosevelt flavour or tang to it. And we will +wait to see what Mr. Wilson will do with the other courses. + + * * * * * + +A poet in words, with two or three exceptions, America has not produced. + +The only touch of poetry or art as yet that we have in America +is--acting as if we believed in people. This particular art is ours. +Other people may have it, but it is all we have. + +This is what makes or may make any moment the common American a poet or +artist. + +Speaking in this sense, Mr. Roosevelt is the first poet America has +produced that European peoples and European governments have noticed for +forty years, or had any reason to notice. We respectfully place Mr. +Roosevelt with Mr. McAdoo (and if Mr. Brandeis will pardon us, with Mr. +Brandeis) as a typical American before the eyes of the new President. +We ask him to take Mr. Roosevelt as a very important part of the latest +news about us. + +The true imaginative men of our modern life, the poets of crowds and +cities are not to-day our authors, preachers, professors or lawyers or +philosophers. The poets of crowds are our men like this, our +vision-doers, the men who have seen visions and dreamed dreams in the +real and daily things, the daring Governors like Wilson and like Hughes, +the daring inventors of great business houses, the men who have invented +the foundations on which nations can stand, on which railroads can run, +the men whose imaginations, in the name of heaven, have played with the +earth mightily, watered deserts, sailed cities on the seas, the men who +have whistled and who have said "Come!" to empires, who have thought +hundred-year thoughts, taken out nine hundred and ninety-nine year +leases, who have thought of mighty ways for cities to live, for cities +to be cool, to be light, to be dark, who have conceived ways for nations +to talk, who have grasped the earth and the sky like music, like words, +and put them in the hands of the people, and made the people say, "O +earth," and "O sky, thou art great, but we also are great! Come earth +and sky, thou shalt praise God with us!" + +Who are these men? + +Let the President catch up! + +Who are these men? Here is Edward A. Filene, who takes up the pride, +joy, beauty, self-respect, and righteousness of a city, swings it into a +Store, and makes that Store sing about the city up and down the world! +Here is Alexander Cassatt, imperturbable, irrepressible, and like a +great Boy playing leapfrog with a Railroad--Cassatt who makes +quick-hearted, dreamy Philadelphia duck under the Sea, bob up serenely +in the middle of New York and leap across Hell Gate to get to Boston! +Let the parliaments droning on their benches, the Congresses pile out of +their doors and catch up. + +Let the lawyers--the little swarms of dark-minded lawyers, wondering and +running to and fro, creeping in offices, who have tried to run our +world, blurred our governments, and buzzed, who have filled the world +with piles of old paper, Congressional Records, with technicalities, +words, droning, weariness, despair, and fear ... let them come out and +look! Let them catch up! + +Let a man in this day in the presence of men like these sing. If a man +cannot sing, let him be silent. Only men who are singing things shall do +them. + +I go out into the street, I go out and look almost anywhere, listen +anywhere, and the singing rises round me! + +It was singing that spread the wireless telegraph like a great web +across the sky. + +It was singing that dug the subways under the streets in New York. + +It was singing, a kind of iron gladness, hope and faith in men, that has +flung up our skyscrapers into the lower stories of the clouds, and made +them say, "_I will! I will! I will!_" to God. + +Ah, how often have I seen them from the harbour, those flocking, crowded +skyscrapers under that little heaven in New York, lifting themselves in +the sunlight and in the starlight, lifting themselves before me, +sometimes, it seems, like crowds of great states, like a great country +piled up, like a nation reaching, like the plains and the hills and the +cities of my people standing up against heaven day by day--all those +flocks of the skyscrapers saying, "_I will! I will! I will!_" to God. + +The skyscrapers are news about us to our President. He shall reckon with +skyscraper men. He shall interpret men that belong with skyscrapers. + +And as he does so, I shall watch the people answer him, now with a glad +and mighty silence and now with a great solemn shout. + +The skyscrapers are their skyscrapers. + +The courage, the reaching-up, the steadfastness that is in them is in +the hearts of the people. + +If the President does not know us yet in America, does not know McAdoo +as a representative American, we will thunder on the doors of the White +House until he does. + +My impression is he would be out in the yard by the gate asking us to +come in. + +We are America. We are expressing our joy in the world, our faith in +God, and our love of the sun and the wind in the hearts of our people. + +In America the free air breathes about us, and daily the great sun +climbs our hillsides, swings daily past our work. There are ninety +million men with this sun and this wind woven into their bodies, into +their souls. They stand with us. + +The skyscrapers stand with us. + +All singing stands with us. + +Ah, I have waked in the dawn and in the sun and the wind have I seen +them! + +That sun and that wind, I say before God, are America! They are the +American temperament. + +I will have laws for free men, laws with the sun and the wind in them! + +I have waked in the dawn and my heart has been glad with the iron and +poetry in the skyscrapers. + +I will have laws for men and for American men, laws with iron and poetry +in them! + +The way for a government to get the poetry in is to say "Yes" to +somebody. + +The way for a government to get the iron in is not by saying "No." It is +not American in a government to keep saying "No." The best way for our +government in America to say "No" to a man, is to let him stand by and +watch us saying "Yes" to some one else. + +Then he will ask why. + +Then he will stand face to face with America. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +NEWS-BOOKS + + +The most practical thing that could happen now in the economic world in +America would be a sudden, a great national, contemporary literature. + +America, unlike England, has no recognized cultured class, and has no +aristocracy, so called, with which to keep mere rich men suitably +miserable--at least a little humble and wistful. Our greatest need for a +long time has been some big serene, easy way, without half trying, of +snubbing rich men in America. All these overgrown, naughty fellows one +sees everywhere like street boys on the corners or on the curbstones of +society, calling society names and taking liberties with it, tripping +people up; hoodlums with dollars, all these micks of money!--O, that +society had some big, calm, serene way like some huge hearty London +policeman, of taking hold of them--taking hold of them by the seats of +their little trousers if need be, and taking them home to Mother--some +way of setting them down hard in their chairs and making them +thoughtful! Nothing but a national literature will do this. "Life," +(which is, with one exception, perhaps, the only religious weekly we +have left in America) succeeds a little and has some spiritual value +because it succeeds in making American millionaires look funny, and in +making them want to get away and live in Europe. But "Life" is not +enough; it merely hitches us along from day to day and keeps our courage +up. We want in America a literature, we want the thing done thoroughly +and forever and once for all. We want an Aristophanes, a master who +shall go gloriously laughing through our world, through our chimneys +and blind machines, pot-bellied fortunes, empty successes, all these +tiny, queer little men of wind and bladder, until we have a nation +filled with a divine laughter, with strong, manful, happy visions of +what men are for. + +All we have to do is to have a News-book--a bookful of the kind of rich +men we want, then we will have them. We will see men piling over each +other all day to be them. Men have wanted to make money because making +money has been supposed to mean certain things about a man. The moment +it ceases to mean them, they will want to make other things. + +Where is the news about what we really want? + +----, when I took him to the train yesterday, spoke glowingly of the way +the Standard Oil Trust had reduced oil from twenty-nine cents to eleven +cents. + +There was not time to say anything. I just thought a minute of how they +did it. + +Why is it that people--so many good people will speak of oil at eleven +cents in this way, as if it were a kind of little kingdom of heaven? + +I admit that eleven cents from twenty-nine cents leaves eighteen cents. + +I do not deny that the Standard Oil Trust has saved me eighteen cents. +But what have they taken away out of my life and taken out of my sense +of the world and of the way things go in it and out of my faith in human +nature to toss me eighteen cents? + +If I could have for myself and others the sense of the world that I had +before, would I not to-day, day after day, over and over, gallon by +gallon, be handing them their eighteen cents back? + +What difference does it make to us if we are in a world where we can buy +oil for eleven cents a gallon instead of twenty-nine, if we do not care +whether we are alive or dead in it and do not expect anything from +ourselves or expect anything of anybody else? I submit it to your own +common sense, Gentle Reader. Is it any comfort to buy oil to light a +room in which you do not want to sit, in which you would rather not see +anything, in which you would rather not remember who you are, what you +do, and what your business is like, and what you are afraid your +business is going to be like? + +I have passed through all this during the last fifteen years and I have +come out on the other side. But millions of lives of other men are +passing through it now, passing through it daily, bitterly, as they go +to their work and as they fall asleep at night. + +The next thing in this world is not reducing the price of oil. It is +raising the price of men and putting a market-value on life. + +What makes a man a man is that he knows himself, knows who he is, what +he is for and what he wants. Knowing who he is and knowing what he is +about, he naturally acts like a man, knows what he is about like a man, +and gets things done. + +A nation that does not know itself shall not be itself. + +A nation that has a muddle-headed literature, a nation that to say +nothing of not being able to express what it has, has not even made a +beginning at expressing what it wants; a nation that has not a great, +eager, glowing literature, a sublime clear-headedness about what it is +for--a nation that cannot put itself into a great book, a nation that +cannot weave itself together even in words into a book that can be +unfurled before the people like a flag where everybody can see it and +everybody can share it, look up to it, live for it, sleep for it, get up +in the morning and work for it--work for the vision of what it wants to +be--cannot be a great nation. + +A masterpiece is a book that has a thousand years in it. No man has a +right to say where these thousand years in it shall lie, whether in the +past or in the future. It is the thousand years' worth in it that makes +a masterpiece a masterpiece. In America we may not have the literature +of what we are or of what we have been, but the literature of what we +are bound to be, the literature of what WE WILL, we will have, and we +will have to have it before we can begin being it. + +First the Specifications, then the House. + +From the practical or literary point of view the one sign we have given +in this country so far, that the stuff of masterpieces is in us and that +we are capable of a great literature, is that America is bored by its +own books. + +We let a French parson write a book for us on the simple life. We let a +poor suppressed Russian with one foot in hell reach over and write books +for us about liberty which we greedily read and daily use. We let a +sublimely obstinate Norwegian, breaking away with his life, pulling +himself up out of the beautiful, gloomy, morose bog of romance he was +born in--express our American outbreak for facts, for frank realism in +human nature. + +America is bored by its own books because every day it is demanding +gloriously from its authors a literature--books that answer our real +questions, the questions the people are asking every night as they go to +sleep and every morning when they crowd out into the streets--Where are +we going? Who are we? What are we like? What are we for? + + * * * * * + +A---- C----, the little stoopy cobbler on ---- street in ----, bought +some machines to help him last year before I went away and added two or +three slaves to do the work. I find on coming back that he has moved and +has two show windows now, one with the cobbling slaves in it cobbling, +and the other (a kind of sudden, impromptu room with a show window in +it) seems to be straining to be a shoe store. When you go in and show +C---- in his shirt sleeves,--your old shoes hopefully, he slips over +from his shining leather bench to the shoe-store side and shows you at +the psychological moment a new pair of shoes. + +He is in the train now with me this morning, across the aisle, looking +out of the window for dear life, poor fellow, for all the world as if he +could suck up dollars and customers--and people who need shoes--out of +the fields as he goes by, the way the man does mists, by looking hard at +them. + +I watched him walking up and down the station platform before I got on, +with that bent, concentrated, meek, ready-to-die-getting-on look. I saw +his future while I looked. I saw, or thought I saw, windows full of +bright black shoes, I saw the cobbler's shop moved out into the ell at +the back, and two great show windows in front. A---- C---- looks like an +edged tool. + +Millions of Americans are like A---- C----, like chisels, adzes, saws, +scoops. You talk with them, and if you talk about anything except +scooping and adzing, you are not talking with just a man, but a man who +is for something and who is not for anything else. He is not for being +talked with certainly, and alas! not for being loved. At best he is a +mere feminine convenience--a father or a cash secreter; until he wears +out at last, buzzes softly into a grave. + +An Englishman of this type is a little better, would be more like one of +these screw-driver, cork-screw arrangements--a big hollow handle with +all sorts of tools inside. + +Is this man a typical American? Does he need to be? + +What I want is news about us. + +All an American like C---- needs is news. His eagerness is the making of +him. He is merely eager for what he will not want. + +All he needs is the world's news about people, about new inventions in +human beings, news about the different and happier kinds of newly +invented men, news about how they were thought of, and how they are +made, and news about how they work. + +I demand three things for A---- C----: + +I want a novel that he will read which will make him see himself as I +see him. + +I want a moving picture of him that he will go to and like and go to +again and again. + +I want a play that will send him home from the theatre and keep him +awake with what he might be all that night. + +I want a news-book for A---- C----, a news-book for all of us. + + * * * * * + +I read a book some years ago that seemed a true news-book and which was +the first suggestion I had ever received that a book can be an act of +colossal statesmanship, the making or remaking of a people--a +masterpiece of modern literature, laying the ground plan for the +greatness of a nation. + +When I had read it, I wanted to rush outdoors and go down the street +stopping people I met and telling them about it. Once in a very great +while one does come on a book like this. One wants to write letters to +the reviews. One does not know what one would not do to go down the long +aimless Midway Plaisance of the modern books, to call attention to it. +One wishes there were a great bell up over the world.... One would reach +up to it, and would say to all the men and the women and to the flocks +of the smoking cities, "Where are you all?" The bell would boom out, +"What are you doing? Why are you not reading this book?" One wonders if +one could not get a coloured page in the middle of the _Atlantic_ or the +_North American Review_ or _Everybody's_ and at least make a great book +as prominent as a great soap--almost make it loom up in a country like a +Felt Mattress or a Toothbrush. + +The book that has made me feel like this the most is Charles Ferguson's +"Religion of Democracy." I have always wondered why only people here and +there responded to it. The things it made me vaguely see, all those huge +masses of real things, gigantic, half-godlike, looming like towers or +mountains in a mist.... Well, it must have been a little like this that +Columbus felt that first morning! + +But as Columbus went on, what he struck after all was real land, some +piece of real land in particular. The mist of vision did precipitate +into something one could walk on, and I found as I went on with Mr. +Ferguson's book that if there was going to be any real land, somebody +would have to make some. + +But for the time being Charles Ferguson's book--all those glorious +generalizings in behalf of being individual, all those beautiful, +intoned, chanted abstractions in behalf of being concrete--came to me in +my speechless, happy gratitude as a kind of first sign in the heavens, +as a pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night, up over the place in +the waste of water where land, Land! At last! Land again! will have to +be. + +If we ever have a literature in America, it will be found somewhere when +the mist rolls away, right under Charles Ferguson's book. + +It may be too soon just now in this time of transition in our land of +piles and of derricks against the sky, for the book. All we are +competent for now is to say that we want such a book, that we see what +it will do for us. + +When we want it, we will get it. Let the American people put in their +order now. + +In the meantime the Piles and the Derricks. + +All these young and mighty derricks against the sky, all these soaring +steel girders with the blue through them--America! + +Ah, my God! is it not a hoping nation? Three thousand miles of Hope, +from Eastport, Maine, to San Francisco--does not the very sun itself +racing across it take three hours to get one look at our Hope? + +Here it is!--Our World. + +Let me, for one, say what I want. + +It is already as if I had seen it--one big, heroic imagination at work +at last like a sea upon our world, poetry grappling with the great +cities, with their labour, with their creative might, full of their vast +joys and sorrows, full of their tussle with the sea and with the powers +of the air and with the iron in the earth!--the big, speechless cities +that no one has spoken for yet, so splendid, and so eager, and so silent +about their souls! + +It is true we are crude and young. + +Behold the Derricks like mighty Youths! + +In our glorious adolescence so sublime, so ugly, so believing, will no +one sing a hymn to the Derricks? + +Where are the dear little Poets? Where are they hiding? + +Playing Indian perhaps, or making Parthenons out of blocks. + +Perhaps they might begin faintly and modestly at first. + +Some dear, hopeful, modest American poet might creep up from under them, +out from under the great believing, dumb Derricks standing on tiptoe of +faith against the sky, and write a book and call it "Beliefs American +Poets Would Like to Believe if They Could." + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +NEWS-BOOKS II + + +A nation's religion is its shrewdness about its ideals, its genius for +stating its ideals or news about itself, in the terms of its everyday +life. + +A nation's literature is its power of so stating its ideals that we will +not need to be shrewd for them--its power of expressing its ideals in +words, of tracing out ideals on white paper, so that ideals shall +enthrall the people, so that ideals shall be contagious, shall breathe +and be breathed into us, so that ideals shall be caught up in the voices +of men and sung in the streets. + +Ideals, intangible, electric, implacable irresistible, all-enfolding +ideals, shall hold and grip a continent the way a climate grips a +continent, like sunshine around a helpless thing, in the hollow of its +hand, and possess the hearts of the people. + +What our government needs now is a National band in Washington. + +America is a Tune. + +America is not a formula. America is not statistics, even graphic +statistics. A great nation cannot be made, cannot be discovered, and +then be laid coldly together like a census. America is a Tune. It must +be sung together. + +The next thing statesmen are going to learn in this country is that from +a practical point of view in making a great nation only our Tune in +America and only our singing our Tune can save us. A great nation can be +made out of the truth about us. The truth may be--must be +probably,--plain. But the truth must sing. + +It will not be the government that first gets the truth that will govern +us. The government that gets the truth big enough to sing first, and +sings it, will be the government that will govern us. The political +party in this country that will first be practical with the people, and +that will first get what it wants, will be the political party that +first takes Literature seriously. Our first great practical government +is going to see how a great book, searching the heart of a nation, +expressing and singing the men in it, governs a people. Being a +President in a day like this, if it does not consist in being a poet, +consists in being the kind of President who can be, at least, in +partnership with a poet. + +It is not every President who can be his own David, who can rule with +one hand and write psalms and chants for his people with the other. + +The call is out, the people have put in their order to the authors of +America, to the boys in the colleges, and to the young women in the +great schools--Our President wants a book. + +Before much time has passed, he is going to have one. + +Being a President in this country has never been expressed in a book. + +The President is going to have a book that expresses him to the people +and that says what he is trying to do. He will live confidentially with +the book. It shall be in his times of trial and loneliness like a great +people coming to him softly. He shall feel with such a book, be it day +or night, the nation by him, by his desk, by his bedside, by his +silence, by his questioning, standing by, and lifting. + +In the book the people shall sing to the President. He shall be kept +reminded that we are there. He shall feel daily what America is like. +America shall be focussed into melody. We shall have a literature once +more and the singers, as in Greece, as in all happy lands and in all +great ages, shall go singing through the streets. + +There is no singing for a President now. All a President can do when he +is inaugurated, when he begins now, is to kiss helplessly some singing +four thousand years old in a Bible by another nation. + +When David sang to his people, he sang the news, the latest news, the +news of what was happening to people about him from week to week. + +Why is no one singing 1913, our own American 1913? + +Why is no one stuttering out our Bible--one the President could have to +refer to, our own Bible in our own tongue from morning to morning in the +symbols that breathe to us out of the sounds in the street, out of the +air, out of the fresh, bright American sky, and out of the new ground +beneath our feet? + + * * * * * + +It is easy for a President to pile up three columns a morning of news +about himself to us, show each man his face in the morning, but what is +there he can do with twenty thousand newspapers at his breakfast table, +to pick out the real news about us? Who shall paint the portrait of a +people? + +One could go about in the White House and study the portraits of the +presidents, but where is the portrait of the people? The portrait of the +people comes in little bits to the president like a puzzle picture. Each +man brings in his little crooked piece, jig-sawed out from Iowa, South +Dakota, Oklahoma or Aroostook County, Maine. This picture or vision of a +nation, this wilderness of pieces, can be seen every day when one goes +in, lying in heaps on the floor of the White House. + +A literature is the expression on the face of a nation. A literature is +the eyes of a great people looking at one. + +It seems to be as we look, looking out of the past and faraway into the +future. + +A newspaper can set a nation's focus for a morning, adjusting it one way +or the other. A President can set the focus for four years. But only a +book can set the focus for a nation's next hundred years so that it can +act intelligently and steadfastly on its main line from week to week and +morning to morning. Only a book can make a vast, inspiring, steadfast, +stage-setting for a nation. Only a book, strong, slow, reflective, alone +with each man, and before all men, can set in vast still array the +perspective, the vision of the people, can give that magnificent +self-consciousness which alone makes a great nation, or a mighty man. At +last humble, imperious, exalted, it shall see Itself, its vision of its +daily life lying out before it, threading its way to God! + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +NEWS-PAPERS + + +I went one day six months ago to the Mansion House and heard Lord Grey, +and Lord Robert Cecil, and Mr. T.C. Taylor and others address the annual +meeting of the Labour Copartnership Association. + +I found myself in the presence of a body of men who believe that +Englishmen are capable of bigger and better things than many men believe +they are capable of. They refuse to evade the issue of the coal strike +and to agree with the socialists who have given up believing that +English employers can be competent and who merely believe that we will +have to rely on our governments now to be employers, and they refuse to +agree with the syndicalists, who believe in human nature still less and +have given up on employers and on governments both. + +I have retained three impressions as a result of the meeting. + +The first was that it was the most significant and impressive event +since the coal strike, that it brought the whole industrial issue to a +point and summed the coal strike up. + +The second impression was one of surprise that the hall was not full. + +The third impression came the next day when I looked through the papers +for accounts of what had been said and of what it stood for. + +It was noted pleasantly and hurriedly as one of the day's events. It was +just one more of those shadowy things that flicker on the big foolish, +drifting, rolling attention of a world a second and are gone. + +People were given a few inches. + +I read in the papers that same day a quite long account of a discussion +of nine bishops for five hours (meeting at the same time) on a matter of +proper clothes for clergymen. + +I would have said of that meeting of the Labour Copartnership +Association--that it was a meeting of a Society for Defence and +Protection of Longer Possible Religion on the Earth--but the clergy out +of all the invitations, did not seem very largely to have had time to be +there. + +I wondered too a little about the papers, as I hunted through them. + +It set one to thinking if anything serious to the nation would have +happened, if possibly during the coal strike the London papers had +devoted as much attention to T.C. Taylor--a mutual interest +employer--and to how he runs his business--as to Horatio Bottomley? + +Possibly too what Mr. Sandow prefers to have people drink is not so +important--perhaps whole pages of it at a time--as Amos Mann and how he +runs his shoe business without strikes, or as Joseph Bibby and how he +makes oil cakes and loyal workmen together. + +I read the other day of a clergyman in New Jersey--who was organizing a +league of all the left-handed men in the world. Everything is being +organized, whether or no. Some one has financed him. There will be some +one very soon now who will pay the bill for organizing the attention of +a world and for deciding the fate of human nature. It would be worth +while spending possibly one fortune on getting human nature to settle +decisively and once for all whether it has any reason to believe in +itself or not. Why have a world at all--one like this? Do we want it? +Who wants it? What do we want instead? We will advertise and find out. +We will spend millions of pounds and Dreadnoughts, even national +beer-bills on it, if necessary, on making everybody know that mentally +competent business men--mutual-interest employers, and mentally +competent workmen--mutual-interest workmen, can be produced by the +human race. When everybody knows that this is true, nine out of ten +Parliamentary questions would be settled, the Churches would again have +a chance to be noticed, and education and even religion could be taken +seriously. There would be some object in being a teacher perhaps once +more and in making teaching again a great profession. There would be +some object perhaps in even being an artist. The world would start off +on a decent, self-respecting theory or vision about itself. Things could +begin to be done in society once more, soundly, permanently, humanly and +from the bottom up. + +We would go out on the streets again--rich and poor--and look in each +other's faces. We would take up our morning papers without a sinking at +the heart. + +And the men who have stopped believing in men and who merely believe in +machines would be indicted before the bar of mankind. We would see them +slowly filing back, one by one, to where they belong--on the back seats +of the world. + +The newspapers in England and America seem to think that in their +business of rolling the world along, what they find themselves +confronted with just now is an economic problem. + +The problem that the newspapers are really confronted with, as a matter +of fact, is one with which newspaper men big and little are more +competent to deal than they would be with an expert problem in +economics. The real problem that newspapers are confronted with every +night, every morning, to-day, is a problem in human nature. + +Some people believe that human nature can be believed in, and others do +not. The socialists, the syndicalists, the trades unionists, as a class, +and the capitalists as a class, are acting as if they did not. A great +many inventors, and a great many workmen, all the more bold and +inventive workmen, and many capitalists and great organizers of facts +and of men, are acting as if they believed in human nature. + +Which are right? Can a mutual-interest employer, can a mutual-interest +worker, be produced by the human race? There are some of us who answer +that this is a matter of fact, that this type of man can be produced, is +already produced, and is about to be reproduced indefinitely. + +The moment we can convince trades unions and convince employers that +this is true we will change the face of the earth. + +Why not change the face of the earth now? + +In this connection I respectfully submit three considerations: + +1st. If all employers of the world to-morrow morning knew what Lord Grey +(as President of the Labour Copartnership Association) knows to-day +about copartnership--the hard facts about the way copartnership works in +calling out human nature--in nerving and organizing labour, every +employer in the world to-morrow would begin to take an attitude toward +labour which would result in making strikes and lockouts as +impracticable, as incredible, as moony, as visionary forever as ideals +of a world without strikes look now. + +2nd. If all the workmen of the world to-morrow morning knew what +Frederick Taylor (the American engineer) knows about planning workmen's +work so that they receive, for the same expenditure of strength, a third +more wages every day, the whole attitude of labour in every nation and +of the trades unions of the world--the attitude of doing as little work +as possible, of labouring and studying and slaving away to discover ways +of not being of any use to employers--would face about in a day. + +3rd. What Lord Grey knows about copartnership and the way it works is in +the form of ascertainable, communicable, and demonstrable facts. What +Frederick Taylor knows and what he has been doing with human beings and +with steel and pig iron and with bricks and other real things is in the +form of history that has been making for thirty years--and that can be +looked up and proved. + +Why should not everybody who employs labour know what Lord Grey knows? + +And why should not all workmen know what a few thousand workmen who have +been trained under Frederick Taylor to work under better conditions and +with more wages, know? + +If I were an inspired millionaire the first thing I would do to-morrow +would be to supply the funds and find the men who should take up what +Lord Grey knows about employers, and what Frederick Taylor knows about +workmen, and put it where all who live shall see it and know it. I would +spend my fortune in proving to the world, in making everybody know and +believe that the mutual-interest business man and the mutual-interest +workman have been produced and can be produced and shall be produced by +the human race. + +The problem of the fate of the world in its essential nature and in its +spiritual elements and gifts--has come to be in this age of the press a +huge advertising problem--a great adventure in human attention. + +The most characteristic and human and natural way, and the only profound +and permanent way to handle the quarrel between Capital and Labour is by +placing certain facts--certain rights-of-all-men-to-know, into the hands +of some disinterested and powerful statesman of publicity--some great +organizer of the attention of a world. He would have to be a practical +passionate psychologist, a man gifted with a bird's-eye view of +publics--a discoverer of geniuses and crowds, a natural diviner or +reader of the hearts of men. He shall search out and employ twenty men +to write as many books addressed to as many classes and types of +employers and workers. He shall arrange pamphlets for every dooryard +that cannot help being read. + +He shall reach trades unions by using the cinema, by having some master +of human appeal take the fate of labour, study it out in pictures--and +the truth shall be thrown night after night and day after day on a +hundred thousand screens around a world. He shall organize and employ +wide publicity or rely on secret and careful means on different aspects +of the issue according to the nature of the issue, human nature and +common sense, and organize his campaign to reach every type of person, +every temperament, and order of circumstance, each in its own way. + +What Lord Grey knows and what Frederick Taylor's workmen know shall be +put where all who live shall see it where every employer, every workman, +every workman's wife and every growing boy and girl that is passing by, +as on some vast billboard above the world, shall see it--shall see and +know and believe that employers that are worth believing in--and that +workmen who can work and who are skilled and clever enough to love to +work--can still be produced by the human race. + +If I were a newspaper man I would start what might be called Pull +Together Clubs in every community, men in all walks of life, little +groups of crowdmen or men in the community who could not bear not to see +a town do team work. + +I would use these Pull Together Clubs in every community as means of +gathering and distributing news--as local committees on the national +campaign of touching the imagination of labour and touching the +imagination of capital. + +"_Without Vision the People perish_." + +I would begin with spending five million dollars on a vision for the +people. + +What would I do with a five-million-dollar fund for touching the +imagination of labour and touching the imagination of capital? + +First: preliminary announcement in all papers and in all public ways, +asking names and addresses of workmen who have already proved and +established their belief in copartnership. + +Names and addresses of employers in the same way. + +Second: names and addresses of workmen who would believe in it if they +could; who believe in the principle theoretically and would be +interested in seeing how it could be practically and technically +proved. + +Names and addresses of employers in the same way. + +Third: selection of one firm in each industry, the best and most +strategically placed to carry it out in that industry, and placing the +facts before them. + +Selection of the leading workmen out of all the workmen in the nation +employed in that industry, who would be willing to work with such a +firm. + +Fourth: a selection of travelling secretaries to visit trades unions and +get provisional permission and toleration for these workmen so that they +can take copartnership places under such a firm with the consent of +their fellows and he set one side for experimental purposes, under the +protection of the trades union rules. + +Fifth: I would find the most promising trades-union branch in each +industry and I would try to get this branch to take it up with the other +branches until all trades unions were brought to admit copartnership +members on special terms. + +Sixth: after getting copartnership tolerated for certain workmen +employed in certain firms I would try to make copartnership a +trades-union movement. + +I would then let the trades unions educate the employers. + +Seventh: I would prepare a list of apparent exceptions to copartnership +as a working principle. I would investigate and try to see why they were +exceptions and why copartnership would not work, and I would find and +set inventors at work, and find in what way the spirit that is back of +copartnership could be applied. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +NEWS-MACHINES + + +We want to be good and the one thing we need to do is to tell each +other. Then we will be good. Our conveniences for being good in crowds +are not finished yet. + +We have invented machines for crowds to see one another with and to use +in getting about in the dark. One engine whirls round and round all +night so that half a million people can be going about anywhere after +sunset without running into each other. + +Crowds have vast machines for being somewhere else--run in somewhat the +same way all from one unpretentious building they put up called a Power +House. + +A great many of our machines for allowing crowds of people to move their +bodies around with have been attended to, but our Intelligence-Machine, +our machine for knowing what other people really think, and what they +are like in their hearts so that we can know enough to be good to them, +and have brains enough to get them to be good to us, is not finished and +set up yet. + +The industrial problem instead of being primarily an economic problem is +a news problem. + +If a President were to appoint a Secretary of Labour and were to give +him as one of his conveniences, a news engineer--an expert at attracting +and holding the attention of labour unions and driving through news to +them about themselves that they do not know yet, who would be +practically at the head of the department in two years? The Secretary or +the Secretary's news engineer? News is all there is to such a +department, finding out what it is and distributing it. Any one can +think of scores of labour-union fallacies, news they do not know about +themselves that they will want to know at once when their attention is +called to it. + +If nine members of the President's Cabinet were national news agents, +experts in nationalizing news, one member could do with his subordinates +all the other things that Cabinet members do. + +The real problem before each Cabinet member is a problem of news. If the +Secretary of Commerce, for instance, could get people to know certain +things, he would not need to do at all most of the things that he is +doing now. Neither would the Attorney General. + +If everything in a Cabinet position turns on getting people to know +things, why not get them to know them? Why not take that job instead? +Why not take the job of throwing one's self out of a job? Every powerful +man has done it--thrown himself out of what he was doing, by making up +something bigger to do from the beginning of the world. + +In every business it is the man who can recognize, focus, organize, and +apply news, and who can get news through to people, who soon becomes the +head of the business. + +The man who can get news through to directors and to employees and make +them see themselves and see one another and the facts as they are, soon +gets to be Head of the factory. + +The man who can get news through to the public, the salesman of news to +people about what they want to buy and about how they are to spend their +money--very personal, intimate news to every man--soon rises to be Head +of the Head of the factory and of the entire business. + +It will probably be the same in a cabinet or in a government. If the +Secretary of the Department of Commerce has a news engineer as a +subordinate in his department and begins to study and observe how to do +his work best, how to solve his problem in the nation, we will soon see +the head of the department, if he really is the head of the department, +quietly taking over his news engineer's job and letting his news +engineer have his. + +It is a news engineering job, being a Secretary of Commerce. + +Every member of the Cabinet has a news engineering job. + +And the fact seems to be that the moment the news is attended to in each +member's department--applied news, special and private news, turned on +and set to work where it is called for--most members of cabinets, +secretaries of making people do things, and for that matter, the +Presidents of making people do things will be thrown out of employment. +The Secretaries of What People Think, and the President of What People +Think--the engineers of the news in this nation--will be the men who +govern it. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + +NEWS-CROWDS + + +I have tried to express in the last chapter, some kind of tentative +working vision or hope of what authors and of what newspaper men can do +in governing a country. + +This chapter is for anybody, any plain human being. + +Governments all over the world to-day are groping to find out what plain +human beings are like. + +It does not matter very long what other things a government gets wrong, +if it gets the people right. + +This suggests something that each of us can do. + +I was calling on ----, Treasurer of ----, in his new bank, not long +ago--a hushed, reverent place with a dome up over it and no windows on +this wicked world--a kind of heavenly minded way of being lighted from +above. It seemed to be a kind of Church for Money. + +"This is new," I said, "since I've been away. Who built it?" + +---- mentioned the name of Non-Gregarious as if I had never heard of +him. + +I said nothing. And he began to tell me how Non built the bank. He said +he had wanted Non from the first, but that the directors had been set +against it. + +And the more he told the directors about Non, he said, the more set they +were. They kept offering a good many rather vague objections, and for a +long time he could not really make them out. + +Finally he got it. All the objections boiled down to one. + +Non was too good to be true. If there was a man like Non in this world, +they said, they would have heard about it before. + + * * * * * + +When I was telling ex-Mayor ----, in ----, about Non, the first time, he +interrupted me and asked me if I would mind his ringing for his +stenographer. He was a trustee and responsible, either directly or +indirectly, for hundreds of buildings, and he wanted the news in +writing. + +Of course there must be something the matter with it, he said, but he +wanted it to be true, if it could, and as the bare chance of its being +true would be very important to him, he was going to have it looked up. + +Now ex-Mayor ---- is precisely the kind of man (as half the world knows) +who, if he had been a contractor, instead of what he had happened to be, +would have been precisely the kind of contractor Non is. He has the same +difficult, heroic blend of shrewd faiths in him, of high motives and +getting what he wants. + +But the moment ex-Mayor ---- found these same motives put up to be +believed in at one remove, and in somebody else, he thought they were +too good to be true. + +I have found myself constantly confronted in the last few years of +observation with a very singular and interesting fact about business +men. + +Nine business men out of ten I know, who have high motives, (in a rather +bluff simple way, without particularly thinking about it, one way or the +other) seem to feel a little superior to other people. They begin, as a +rule, apparently, by feeling a little superior to themselves, by trying +to keep from seeing how high their motives are, and when, in the stern +scuffle of life, they are unable any longer to keep from suspecting how +high their motives are themselves, they fall back on trying to keep +other people from suspecting it. + +In ----'s factory in ----, the workers in brass, a few years ago, could +not be kept alive more than two years because they breathed brass +filings. When ---- installed, at great expense, suction machines to +place beside the men to keep them from breathing brass, some one said, +"Well surely you will admit this time, that this is philanthropy?" + +"Not at all." + +The saving in brass air alone, gathered up from in front of the men's +mouths, paid for the machines. What is more he said that after he had +gone to the expense of educating some fine workmen, if a mere little +sucking machine like that could make the best workmen he had, work for +him twenty years instead of two years, it was poor economy to let them +die. + +Nearly all of the really creative business men make it a point, until +they get a bit intimate with people, to talk in this tone about +business. One can talk with them for hours, for days at a time, about +their business--some of them, without being able a single time to corner +them into being decent or into admitting that they care about anybody. + +Now I will not yield an inch to ---- or to anybody else in my desire to +displace and crowd out altruism in our modern life. I believe that +altruism is a feeble and discouraged thing from a religious point of +view. I have believed that the big, difficult and glorious thing in +religion is mutualism, a spiritual genius for finding identities, for +putting people's interests together-you-and-I-ness, and we-ness, letting +people crowd in and help themselves. + +And why not believe this and drop it? Why should nearly every business +man one meets to-day, try to keep up this desperate show, of avoiding +the appearance of good, of not wanting to seem mixed up in any way with +goodness--either his own or other people's? + +In the present desperate crisis of the world, when all our governments +everywhere are groping to find out what business men are really like and +what they propose to be like, if a man is good (far more than if he is +bad) everybody has a right to know it. The President has a right to know +it. The party leaders have a right to know it. + +It is a big businesslike thing for a man to make goodness pay, but what +is the man's real, deep, happy, creative, achieving motive in making +goodness pay? What is it in the man that fills him with this fierce +desire, this almost business-fanaticism for making goodness pay? + +It is a big daily grim love of human nature in him, his love of being in +a human world, his passion for human economy, for world efficiency and +world-self-respect. This is what it is in him that makes him force +goodness to pay. + +The business men of the bigger type who let themselves talk in this tone +to-day, do not mean it, they are letting themselves be insensibly drawn +into the tone of the men around them. + +We have gone skulking about with our virtues so long, saying that we +have none, that we have believed it. We all know men finer than we are +who say they have none. So we have not, probably. + +And so it goes on. I grow more and more tired every year of going about +the business world, at boards of trade and at clubs and at dinners, and +finding all this otherwise plain and manly world, all dotted over +everywhere with all these simple, good, self-deceived blundering prigs +of evil, putting on airs before everybody day and night, of being worse +than they are! + +It is not exactly a lie. It is a Humdrum. People do not deliberately lie +about human nature. They merely say pianola-minded things. + +One goes down any business street, Oxford Street, Bond Street, or +Broadway. One hears the same great ragtime tune of business, dinging +like a kind of street piano, through men's minds, "Sh-sh-sh-sh-Oh, +SH-SH! Oh, do not let anybody know I'm being good!" + + +=II= + +I am not going to try any longer to worm out of my virtues or to keep up +an appearance of having as low motives as other people are trying to +make me believe they have. + +They have lied long enough. + +I have lied long enough. + +My motives are really rather high and I am going to admit it. + +And the higher they are (when I have hustled about and got the necessary +brains to go with them) the better they have worked. + +Nine times out of ten when they have not worked, it has been my fault. + +Sometimes it is John Doe's fault. + +I am going to speak to John Doe about it. I am going to tell him what I +am driving at. I have turned over a new leaf. In the crisis of a great +nation and as an act of last desperate patriotism, I am going to give up +looking modest. + +For a long time now I have wanted to dare to come out and stand up +before this Modesty Bug-a-boo and have it out with it and say what I +think of it, as one of the great, still, sinister threats against our +having or getting a real national life in America. + +I knew a boy once who grew so fast that his mother always kept him +wearing shoes three sizes too large, and big, hopeful-looking coats and +trousers. Except for a few moments a year he never caught up. Nobody +ever saw that boy and his long shoes when he was not butting bravely +about, stubbing his toes on the world and turning up his sleeves. + +It was a great relief to him and everybody, finally, when he grew up. + +I am going to let myself go around, for a while now, at least until our +present national crisis is over in business and in politics, like that +boy. + +There are millions of other men in this country who want to be like +that boy. Nations may smile at us if they want to. We will smile +too--rather stiffly and soberly, but for better or worse we propose from +to-day on, to let people see what we are trying to be daily, grimly, +right along side of what we are! + +I have come to the conclusion that the only way, for me, at least, to +keep modest and kind, is to have my ideals all on. When one is going +around in sight of everybody with one's moral sleeves rolled up, and +one's great wistful, broad trousers that do not look as if they would +ever get filled out, it is awkward to find fault with other people for +not filling out their moral clothes. It may be a severe measure to take +with one's self hut the surest way to be kind is to live an exposed +life. + +I propose to live the next few years in a glass house. There are +millions of other men who want to. We want to see if we cannot at last +live confidentially with a world, live naïvely and simply with a world +like boys and like great men and like dogs! + +What I have written, I have written. I propose to run the risk of being +good. When driven to it, I will run the risk of saying I am good. + +My motives are fairly high. See! here is my scale of one hundred! I had +rather stand forty-five on my scale than ninety-eight on yours! + +If there is any discrepancy between my vision and my action, I am not +going to be bullied out of my life and out of living my life the way I +want to, by the way I look. Though it mock me, I will not haul down my +flag. I will haul up my life! + +Here it is right here in this paragraph, in black and white. I take it +up and look at it, I read it once more and lay it down. + +What I have written, I have written. + + +=III= + +People do not seem to agree in the present crisis of our American +industrial and national life, about the necessity of getting at the +facts and at the real news in this country about how good we are. + +Last November in the national election, four and a half million men +(Republicans) said to Theodore Roosevelt, "Theodore! do not be good so +loud!" + +Four and a half million other men, also Republicans, told him not to +mind what anybody said, but to keep right on being good as loud as he +liked, for as long as it seemed necessary. + +They wanted to be sure our goodness in America such as we had, was being +loud enough to be heard, believed in, and acted on in public. + +The other set of men, last November (who were really very good too, of +course), were more sedate and liked to see goodness modulated more. They +stood out for what might be called a kind of moral elegance. + +The governing difference between the Roosevelt type and the Taft type in +America has not been a mere difference of temperament but a difference +in news-sense, in a sense of crisis in the nation. + +Thousands of men of all parties, with the nicest, easiest stand-pat Taft +temperaments in the world, with soft, low voices and with the most +beautiful moral manners, have let themselves join in a national attempt +to shock this nation into seeing how good it is. A great temporary +crisis can only be met by a great temporary loudness. + +This is what has been happening in America during the last six months. +At last, all men in all parties are engaged in trying to find out: Is it +true or not true that we want to be good? + +We are trying to get the news through. It may not be very becoming to us +and we know as well as any one, that loudness, except when morally deaf +people drive us to it is in bad taste. We are looking forward, every one +of us, to being as elegant as any one is, and the very first minute we +get the morally deaf people out of office where we will not have to go +about shouting out at them we will tone down in our goodness. We will +modulate beautifully! + + +=IV= + +There are three other bug-a-boos, besides the Modesty Bug-a-boo that +America will have to face and drive out of the way before it can be +truly said to have a national character or to have grown up and found +itself. There is the Goody-good Bug-a-boo, the Consistency Bug-a-boo, +and the Bug-a-boo that Thomas Jefferson if he were living now, would +never never ride in a carriage. + +Each of these bug-a-boos in the general mistiness and muddle-headiness +of the time can be seen going about, saying, "Boo! Boo!" to this +democracy from day to day and year to year, keeping it scared into not +getting what it wants. + +There is not one of them that will not evaporate in ten minutes the +first morning we get some real news through in this country about +ourselves and about what we are like. + +What is the real news about us, for instance, as regards being +goody-good? + +I can only begin with the news for one. + +For years, I have held myself back from taking a plain or possibly loud +stand for goodness as a shrewd, worldly-wise program for American +business and public life, because I was afraid of people, and afraid +people would think I was trying to improve them. + +What was worse, I was afraid of myself too. I was afraid I really would. + +I am afraid now, or rather I would be, if I had not drilled through to +the news about myself and about other people and about human nature that +I am putting into this chapter. + + * * * * * + +I have written five hundred pages in this book on an awkward and +dangerous subject like the Golden Rule, and I appeal to the reader--I +ask him humbly, hopefully, gratefully if he can honestly say (except for +a minute here and there when I have been tired and slipped up), if he +has really felt improved or felt that I was trying to improve him in +this book. + +On your honour, Gentle Reader--you who have been with me five hundred +pages! + +You say "Yes"? + +Then I appeal to your sense of fairness. If you truly feel I have been +trying to improve you in this book, turn this leaf down here and stop. +It is only fair to me. Close the book with your improved and being +improved feeling and never open it again until it passes over. You have +no right to go on page after page calling me names, as it were, right in +the middle of my own book in this way behind my back, you!--hundreds and +thousands of miles away from me, by your own lamp, by your own +window--you come to me here between these two helpless pasteboard covers +where I cannot get out at you, where I cannot answer back, and you say +that I am trying to improve you! + +Ah, Gentle Reader, forgive me! God forgive me! Believe me, I never +meant, not if it could possibly be helped, to improve you! If you insist +on it and keep saying that I have been improving you, all I can say is +that I was merely looking as if I were improving you. _You_ did it. I +did not. God help me if I am trying to improve you! I am trying to find +out in this book who I am. If, incidentally, while I am quietly working +away on this for five hundred pages, you find out who you are yourself, +and then drop into a gentle glowing improved feeling all by yourself, do +not mix me up in it. I deny that I have tried to improve you or anybody. +I have written this book to get my own way, to express my America. I +have written it to say "i," to say "I," to say (the first minute you let +me), "you and I," to say we, WE about America--to drive the news through +to a President of what America is like. + +I am not improving you. I am telling you what may or may not be news +about you. + +Take it or leave it. + + +=V= + +I want to be good. + +I do not feel superior to other men. + +And I do not propose, if there is anything I can do about it, to be +compelled to feel superior. + +I believe we all want to be good. + +The one thing I want in this world is to prove it. I want my own way. + +I am not going to slump into being a beautiful character. I have written +this book to get my own way. + +I have said I will not be mixed up in the fate of people who do not know +where they are going, who have not decided what they are like, who do +not know who they are. What do the people want? Some people tell me they +want nothing. They tell me it would only make things worse and stir +things up for me to want to be good. + +Or perhaps they think it is beautiful to lower the price of oil. They +want oil at seven cents a gallon. + +Do they? Do you? Do I? + +I say no. Let oil wait. I want to raise the price of men and to put a +market value on human life. I find as I look about me that there are two +classes of statesmen offering to be helpful in making life worth living +in America. + +There are the statesmen who think we are going to be good and who +believe in a program which trusts and exalts the people and the leaders +of the people. + +There are the statesmen who seem to believe that American human nature +does not amount to enough to be good. They are planning a program on the +principle that the best that can be done with human nature in America in +business and public life is to have it expurgated. + +Which class of statesmen do we want? + +In some of our state prisons men who are not considered fit to reproduce +themselves are sterilized. The question that is now up before this +country is, Do we or do we not want American business sterilized? Are we +or are we not going to put a national penalty on all initiative in all +business men because some men abuse it? + +There is but one thing that can save us, namely, proving to one another +and to our public men, that we are good, that we are going to be good +and that we know how. We face the issue to-day. Two definite programs +are before the country. + +Those who have put their faith in being afraid of one another as a +national policy have devised several By-laws for an Expurgated America. + +They say, eliminate the right of a man to do wrong. Deny him the right +of moral experiment because some of his experiments do not work. We say +let him try. We can look out for ourselves or we will have bigger men +than he is, to look out for us. + +They say, eliminate the right of a man to be an owner, because nobody +has the courage to believe that a man can express his best self in +property. We say that property may express a man's religion, and that +the way a man has of being rich or of being poor may be an art-form. + +Most men can express themselves better in property than in anything +else. + +They say, eliminate all monopoly indiscriminately and the occasional +logical efficiency of monopoly because it has not worked well for the +people the first few times and because we have not learned how to handle +it. We say learn how to handle it. + +They say eliminate the middleman. They say that the one strategic man in +every industry who can represent everybody if he wants to, who can be a +great man and who can make a great industry serve everybody, must be +eliminated because nobody believes America can produce a middleman. We +say instead of weakly and helplessly giving up a great spiritual and +morally-engineering institution like the middleman because the average +middleman does not know his job, we say: Exalt the middleman raise him +to the n-th power, make him--well--do you remember, Gentle Reader, the +walking beams on the old sidewheel steamers? We say do not eliminate +him--lift him up--make him what he naturally is and is in position to +be--the walking beam of Business! + +If the average middleman does not know how to be a real middleman we +will make one who does. + +And all the other eliminations that we have watched people being scared +into, one by one, we will turn into exaltations--each in its own kind +and place. There is not one of our fears that is not the suggestion, the +mighty outline, the inspiration for the world's next new size and new +kind of American man. We say place the position before the man--with its +fears, with its songs, with its challenge. We say, tell him what we +expect of him and demand of him. Put him in a high place on a platform +before the world! There with the truth about him written on his forehead +in the sight of all the people, call him by name, glorify him or behead +him! We are men and we are Americans. We will stand up to each of our +dangers one by one. Each and every danger of them is a romance, a +sublime adventure, a nation-maker. Our threats, our very by-words and +despairs, we will take up, and, in the sight of the world, forge them +into shrewd faiths and into mighty men! + +This is my news or vision. I say that this is where we are going in +America. I compel no man to follow my news but I will pursue him with my +news until he gives me his! + + * * * * * + +This news, I am telling, Gentle Reader, is perhaps news about you. + +If it is not true news, say so. Say what is. We all have a right to +know. The one compulsion of modern life is our right to know, our right +to compel people who live on the same continent or who live in the same +country with us, to open up their hearts, to furnish us with their share +of the materials for a mutual understanding, or for a definite mutual +misunderstanding, on which to live. + +It is the one compulsion of which we will be guilty. All liberty is in +it. These people who have to live with us and that we have to live with, +these people who breathe the same moral air with us, drink the same +water with us, these people who have their moral dumps, who throw away +their moral garbage with us--these people who will not help provide some +daily, mutual understanding for these common decencies for our souls to +live together these people we defy and challenge! We will compel them to +reveal themselves. We will drive them away, or we will drive them into +driving us away, if they will not yield to us what is in their +hearts--Mars, hell, anywhere we go, it matters not to us where we go, +except that we cannot and we will not live with men about us who thrust +down their true feelings and their real desires into a kind of manhole +under them, and sit on the lid and smile. Some seem to have manholes and +some have safes or spiritual banks, and there are others who have +convenient, dim, beautiful clouds in the sky to hide their feelings in. +But whatever their real feelings are, and wherever they keep them, they +belong to us. + +We insist on having or on making mutual arrangements to have, if we live +in crowds, some kind of spiritual rapid transit system for getting our +minds through to one another. We demand a system for having the streets +of our souls decently lighted, some provision for moral sewers, for air +or atmosphere--and all the common conveniences for having decent and +self-respecting souls in crowds--all the intelligence-machines, the +love-machines, the hope-machines, and the believing-machines that the +crowds must have for living decently, for living with beauty, living +with considerateness and respect in this awful daily sublime presence of +one another's lives! + +We shall still have our splendid isolations when we need them, some of +us, and our little solitudes of meanness, but the main common fund of +motives for living together, for growing up into a world together, the +desires, motives, and intentions in men's hearts, their desires toward +us and ours toward them, we are going to know and compel to be made +known. We will fight men to the death to know them. + +Have we not fought, you and I, Gentle Reader, all of us, each man of us, +all our years, all our days, to drive through to some sort of mutual +understanding with our own selves? Now we will fight through to some +mutual understanding with one another and with the world. + +We will knock on every door, make a house to house canvass of the souls +of the world, pursue every man, sing under his windows. We will +undergird his consciousness and his dreams. We will make the birds sing +to him in the morning, "_Where are you going_?" We will put up a sign at +the foot of his bed for his eyes to fall on when he awakes, "_Where are +you going_?" + +Whatever it is that works best, if we blow it out of you with dynamite +or love or fear or draw it out of you with some mighty singing going +past--ah, brother, we will have it out of you! You shall be our brother! +We will be your brother though we die! + +We will live together or we will die together. + +What do you really want? What do you really like? _Who are you_? + +We may pile together all our funny, fearful, little Dreadnoughts, our +stodgy dead lumps of men called armies, and what are they? And what do +they amount to and what can they do, as compared with truth, the real +news about what people want in this world, and about where we are going? + +I say--they shall be as nothing as a rending force, as a glory to tear +down and rebuild a world, as compared with the truth, with the news +about us, that shall come out at last (God hasten the day!) from the +open--the pried-open hearts of men! And I have seen that men shall go +forth with shouts in that day and with glad and solemn silence, to build +a world! + + * * * * * + +I wonder if I have faced down the Goody-good Bug-a-boo. + +I speak for five million men. + +We have got this book written between us (under the name of one of us), +because we want our own way. We are not improving people. We are not +even trying to improve ourselves. Many of us started in on it once and +the first improvement we thought of was not to try any more. + +It is a great deal harder to try to live. Few people want us to--most +people get in the way. And when people get in the way we lay about us a +little--We hit them. We have written this book, because we want to hit a +great many people at once. We find them everywhere about us, in monster +cities, huge thoughtless anthills of them, and they will not let us live +a larger and a richer life. We say to them, We resent your houses your +shoes, your voices, your fears, your motives, your wills, the diseases +you make us walk past every day, the rows of things you seem to think +will do, and that you think we must get used to, and we do not propose, +if we can help it, to get used to what you think will do for Churches; +nor to what you think will do for a government or to the little lonely, +scattered, toyschool-houses, that when you come into the world, fresh +and strange and happy you all proceed solemnly to coop your souls in. +Nor do we want to get used to your hem-and-haw parliaments and your +funny little perfumed prophets--your prophets lying down or propped up +with pillows or your poets wringing their hands. Nor will we be put off +with all your gracefully feeble, watery, lovely little pastel religions +for this grim and mighty modern world. We are American men. We do not +propose to be driven out to sea, to stand face to face every day with +what is true and full of beauty and magic, or to have skies and +mountains and stars palmed off on us as companions instead of men! + +This is what five million men are trying to express in writing this +book. If people deny that I have the right to give the news about +America for five million men; if they say that this is not true about +American human nature, that this is not the news, then I will say, _I am +the news_! I am this sort of an American! God helping me, I say it! +"Look at _me_!" I am this sort of man of whom I am writing! If I am not +this sort of man this afternoon, I will be in the morning! Though I go +down as a hiss and as laughter and as a by-word and a mocking to the end +of my days--_I_ am this sort of man! I say, "Look at _me_!" + +If you will not believe me--that this is an American, if you say that I +cannot prove that there are five million of men like this in America, +then I will still say, "Here is _one_! What will you do with ME?" Though +I die in laughter, all my desires and all my professions in a tumult +about my soul, I say it to this nation, "Your laws, your programs, your +philosophies, your I wills, and I won'ts, I say, shall reckon with _me_! +Your presidents and your legislatures shall reckon with Me!" + +Here I am. The man is here. He is in this book! + +I will break through to the five million men. I will make the five +million men look at me until they recognize themselves. If no one else +will attend to it for me, and if there shall be no other way, I will +have a brass band go through the streets of New York and of a thousand +cities, with banners and floats and great hymns to the people, and they +shall go up and down the streets of the people with signs saying, "Have +you read Crowds?" I will have the Boston Symphony Orchestra tour the +country singing--singing from kettledrums to violins to a thousand +silent audiences, "_Have yon read 'CROWDS'_?" + +I live in a nation in which we are butting through into our sense of our +national character, working our way up into a huge mutual working +understanding. In our beautiful, vague, patriotic, muddleheadedness +about what we want and whether we really want to be good, and about what +being good is like and I say, for one, half-laughing, half-praying, God +helping me--_Look at_ =ME=! + + +=VI= + +I was much interested some time ago when I had not been long landed in +England, and was still trying in the hopeful American way to understand +it--to see the various attitudes of Englishmen toward the discussions +which were going on at that time in the _Spectator_ and elsewhere, of +Mr. Cadbury's inconsistency; and while I had no reason, as an American, +fresh-landed from New York, to be interested in Mr. Cadbury himself, I +found that his inconsistency interested me very much. It insisted on +coming back into my mind, in spite of what I would have thought, as a +strangely important subject--not merely as regards Mr. Cadbury, which +might or might not be important, but as regards England and as regards +America, as regards the way a modern man struggling day by day with a +huge, heavy machine civilization like ours, can still manage to be a +live, useful, and possibly even a human, being in it. + +There are two astonishing facts that stand face to face with all of us +to-day, who are labouring with civilization. + +The first fact is that almost without exception all the men in it who +mean the most in it to us and to other people for good or for evil--who +stir us deeply and do things--all fall into the inconsistent class. + +The second fact is that this is a very small, select distinguished, and +astonishingly capable class. + +A man who is in a grim, serious business like being good, must expect to +give up many of his little self-indulgences in the way of looking good. +Looking inconsistent, possibly even inconsistency itself, may be +sometimes, temporarily, a man's most important public service to his +time. + +One needs but a little glance at history, or even at one's own personal +history. It is by being inconsistent that people grow, and without +meaning to, give other people materials for growing. For the particular +purpose of making the best things grow, of pointing up truths, of giving +definite edges to right and wrong, an inconsistent man--a man who is +trying to pry himself out a little at a time from an impossible +situation in an impossible world, is likely to do the world more good +than a very large crowd of angels who have made up their minds that they +are going to be consistent and going to keep up a consistent look in +this same world--whatever happens to it. + + * * * * * + +If one is marking people on consistency, and if one takes a scale of 100 +as perfect, perhaps one should not always insist on 98. One does not +always insist on 98 for one's self. And when one does and does not get +it, one feels forgiving sometimes. + +In dealing with public men and with other people that we know less than +we know ourselves--if they really do things, it is well to make +allowances, and let them off at 65. + +In some cases, in fact, when men are doing something that no one else +volunteers to do for a world, I find I get on very well with letting +them off at 51. I have sometimes wished, when I have been in England, +that Tories and Liberals and Socialists and the Wise and the Good would +consider letting George Cadbury off at 51. + +Perhaps people are being more safely educated by George Cadbury in his +journals than they might be by other people in what seem to seem to many +of us unfamiliar and dangerous ideas. + +Perhaps posterity, in 1953, looking down this precipice of revolution +England did not fall into in 1913, may mark George Cadbury 73--possibly +89. + +If, in any way, in the crisis of England, George Cadbury can crowd in +and can keep thousands and thousands of Englishmen and women from being +educated by John Bottomley Bull or by Mrs. John Bottomley Bull and hosts +of other would-be friends of the people--by Tom Mann, Ben Tillett, and +Vernon Hartshorn, does it really seem after all a matter of grave +national importance that George Cadbury--a professional non-better--in +educating these people should allow them to keep on in his paper, having +a betting column? + +So long as he really helps stave off John Bottomley Bull and Mrs. John +Bottomley Bull, let him slump into being a millionaire, if he cannot +very well help it! We say, some of us, let him even make cocoa! or have +family prayers! or be a Liberal! + +At least this is the way one American visiting England feels about it, +if he may be permitted. + +Perhaps I would not, if I were an angel. + +I do not want to be an angel. + +I am more ambitious. I want my ideals to do things, and I want to stand +by people who are doing things with their ideals, whether their ideals +are my ideals or not. + + * * * * * + +Let us suppose. Suppose the reader were in Mr. Cadbury's place. What +would he do? Here are two things, let us suppose, he wishes very much. +He wishes a certain class of people would not bet, and he also wishes to +convince these same people of certain important social and political +ideas for which he stands. If he told them that he would have nothing to +do with them unless they stopped betting, there would be no object in +his publishing their paper at all. There would be nothing that they +would let him tell them. If, on the other hand, he begins merely as one +more humble, fellow-human being, and puts himself definitely on record +as not betting himself, and still more definitely as wishing other +people would not bet, and then admits honestly that these other people +have as good a right to decide to bet as he has to decide not to; and if +he then deliberately proceeds to do what every real gentleman who does +not smoke and wishes other people did not, does without +question--namely, offers them the facilities for doing it why should +people call him inconsistent? + +Perhaps a man's consistency consists in his relation to his own smoking +and betting and not in his rushing his consistency over into the smoking +and betting of other people. Perhaps being consistent does not need to +mean being a little pharisaical, or using force, or cutting people off +and having no argument with them, in one matter, because one cannot +agree with them in another. Of course, I admit it would be better if Mr. +Cadbury would publish in a parallel column (if he could get a genius to +write it) an extremely tolerant, human, comrade-like series of +objections to betting, which people could read alongside, and which +would persuade people as much as possible not to read the best betting +tips in the world in the column next door, but certainly the act of +furnishing the tips in the meantime and of being sure that they are the +best tips in the world, is a very real, human, courageous act. It even +has a kind of rough and ready religion in it. It may be too much to +expect, but even in our goodness perhaps we ought to do as we would be +done by. We must be righteous, but on the whole, must we not be +righteous toward others as we would have them righteous toward us? + +What many of us find ourselves wishing most of all, when we come upon +some specially attractive man is, that we could discover some way, or +that he could discover some way, in which the idealist in him, and the +realist in him could be got to act together. + +There are some of us who have come to believe that in the dead earnest, +daily, almost desperate struggle of modern life, the real solid idealist +will have to care enough about his ideals to arrange to have two +complete sets, one set which he calls his personal ideals, which are of +such a nature that he can carry them out alone and rigidly and quite by +himself, and another which he calls his bending or coöperative ideals, +geared a little lower and adjusted to more gradual usage, which he uses +when he asks other men to act with him. + +It may take a very single-hearted and strong man to keep before his own +mind and before other people's his two sets of ideals, his "I" faiths, +and his you-and-I faiths, keeping each in strict proportion, but it +would certainly be a great human adventure to do it. Saying "God and I," +and saying "God and you and I" are two different arts. And it is +clear-headedness and not inconsistency in a man that keeps him so. + +This is not a mere defence of Mr. Cadbury; it is a defence of a type of +man, of a temperament in our modern life, of men like Edward A. Filene, +of Boston, of a man like Hugh Mac Rae, one of the institutions of North +Carolina, of Tom L. Johnson of Cleveland, of nine men out of ten of the +bigger and more creative sort who are helping cities to get their way +and nations to express themselves. I have believed that the principle at +stake, the great principle for real life in England and in America, of +letting a man be inconsistent if he knows how--must have a stand made +for it. + +There is no one thing, whether in history, or literature, or science, or +politics that can be more crucial in the fate of a nation to-day than +the correct, just, and constructive judgment of Contemporary +Inconsistent People. + + +=VII= + +If I could have managed it, I would have had this book printed and +written--every page of it--in three parallel columns. + +The first column would be for the reader who believes it, who keeps +writing a book more or less like it as he goes along. I would put in one +sentence at the top for him and then let him have the rest of the space +to write in himself. In other words I would say 2 plus 2 equals 4 and +drop it. + +The second column would be for the reader who would like to believe it +if he could, and I would branch out a little more--about half a column. + + 2 + 2 = 4 + + 20 + 20 = 40 + +The third column would be for the reader who is not going to believe it +if it can be helped. It would be in fine type, bitterly detailed and +statistical and take nothing for granted. + + 2 + 2 = 4 + + 20 + 20 = 40 + + 200 + 200 = 400 + + 2,000 + 2,000 = 4,000 + + 20,000 + 20,000 = 40,000 + + etc. + +This arrangement would make the book what might be called a Moving +Sidewalk of Truth. First sidewalk rather quick (six miles an hour). +Second, four miles an hour. Third, two miles an hour. People could move +over from one sidewalk to the other in the middle of an idea any time, +and go faster or slower as they liked to, needed to. + +No one would accuse me--though I might like or need for my own personal +use at one time or another, a slower sidewalk or a faster one than +others--no one would accuse me of being inconsistent if I supplied extra +sidewalks for people of different temperaments to move over to suddenly +any time they wanted to. I have come to some of my truth by a bitterly +slow sidewalk--slower than other people need, and sometimes I have come +by a fast one (or what some would say was no sidewalk at all!) but it +cannot fairly be claimed that there is anything inconsistent in my +offering people every possible convenience I can think of--for believing +me. + +Mr. Cadbury is not inconsistent if he tells truth at a different rate to +different people, or if he chooses to put truths before people in Indian +file. + +A man is not inconsistent who does not tell all the news he knows to all +kinds of people, all at once, all the time. + +There is nothing disingenuous about having an order for truth. + +It is not considered compromising to have an order in moving railway +trains. Why not allow an order in moving trains of thought? And why +should a schedule for moving around people's bodies be considered any +more reasonable than a schedule or timetable or order for moving around +their souls? + +Truth in action must always be in an order. Nine idealists out of ten +who fight against News-men, or men who are trying to make the beautiful +work, and who call them hypocrites, would not do it if they were trying +desperately to make the beautiful work themselves. It is more +comfortable and has a fine free look, to be blunt with the +beautiful--the way a Poet is--to dump all one's ideals down before +people and walk off. But it seems to some of us a cold, sentimental, +lazy, and ignoble thing to do with ideals if one loves them--to give +everybody all of them all the time without considering what becomes of +the ideals or what becomes of the people. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + +CROWD-MEN + +MARCH 4, 1913. + + +As I write these words, I look out upon the great meadow. I see the +poles and the wires in the sun, that long trail of poles and wires I am +used to, stalking across the meadow. I know what they are doing. + +They are telling a thousand cities and villages about our new President, +the one they are making this minute, down in Washington, for these +United States. With his hand lifted up he has just taken his oath, has +sworn before God and before his people to serve the destinies of a +nation. And now along a hundred thousand miles of wire on dumb wooden +poles, a hope, a prayer, a kind of quiet, stern singing of a mighty +people goes by. And I am sitting here in my study window wondering what +he will be like, what he will think, and what he will believe about us. + +What will our new President do with these hundreds of miles of prayer, +of crying to God, stretched up to him out of the hills and out of the +plains? + +Does he really overhear it--that huge, dumb, half-helpless, half-defiant +prayer going up past him, out of the eager, hoarse cities, out of the +slow, patient fields, to God? + +Does he overhear it, I wonder? What does he make out that we are like? + +I should think it would sound like music to him. + +It would come to seem, I should think, when he is alone with his God +(and will he not please be alone with his God sometimes?), like some +vast ocean of people singing, a kind of multitudinous, faraway singing, +like the wind--ah, how often have I heard the wind like some strange and +mighty people in the pine treetops go singing by! + +I do not see how a President could help growing a little like a +poet--down in his heart--as he listens. + +If he does, he may do as he will with us. + +We will let him be an artist in a nation. + +As Winslow Homer takes the sea, as Millet takes the peasants in the +fields, as Frank Brangwyn lifts up the labour in the mills and makes it +colossal and sublime, the President is an artist, in touching the +crowd's imagination with itself--in making a nation self-conscious. + +He shall be the artist, the composer, the portrait painter of the +people--their faith, their cry, their anger, and their love shall be in +him. In him shall be seen the panorama of the crowd, focused into a +single face. In him there shall be put in the foreground of this +nation's countenance the things that belong in the foreground. And the +things that belong in the background shall be put in the background, and +the little ideas and little men shall look little in it, and the big +ones shall look big. + +They do not look so now. This is the one thing that is the matter with +America. The countenence of the nation is not a composed countenance. +All that we want is latent in us, everything is there in our Washington +face. The face merely lacks features and an expression. + +This is what a President is for--to give at last the Face of the United +States an expression! + +If he is a shrewd poet and believes in us, we shall accept him as the +official mind reader of the nation. He focuses our desires. In the +weariness of the day he looks away--he looks up--he leans his head upon +his hand--through the corridors of his brain, that little silent Main +street of America, the thoughts and the crowds and the jostling wills of +the people go. + +If he is a shrewd poet about us, he becomes the organic function, the +organizer of the news about our people to ourselves. He is the public +made visible, the public made one. He is a moving picture of us. He +speaks and gestures the United States--if he is a poet about us--when he +beckons or points or when he puts his finger on his lips, or when he +says, "Hush!" or when he says, "Wait a moment!" he is the voice of the +people of the United States. + + * * * * * + +I am sitting and correcting, one by one, as they are brought to me, +these last page proofs in the factory. The low thunder on the floors of +the mighty presses, crashing down into paper words I can never cross +out--rises around me. In a minute more--minute by minute that I am +counting, that low thunder will overtake me, will roar down and fold +away these last guilty, hopeful, tucked-in words with you, Gentle +Reader, and you will get away! And the book will get away! + +There is no time to try to hold up that low thunder now, and to say what +I have meant to say about false simplicity and democracy, and about our +all being bullied into being little old faded Thomas Jeffersons a +hundred years after he is dead. + +But I will try to suggest what I hope that some one who has no +printing-presses rolling over him--will say: + +One cannot help wishing that our socialists to-day would outgrow Karl +Marx, and that our individualists would outgrow Emerson. Democrats by +this time ought to grow a little, too, and outgrow Jefferson, and +Republicans ought to be able by this time to outgrow Hamilton. + +Why not drop Karl Marx and Emerson and run the gamut of both of them, on +a continent 3,000 miles wide? Why should we live Thomas Jefferson's and +Alexander Hamilton's lives? Why not drop Jefferson and Hamilton and live +ours? + +The last thing that Jefferson would do, if he were here, would be to be +Jefferson over again. It is not fair to Jefferson for anybody to take +the liberty of being like him, when he would not even do it himself. If +Jefferson were here, he would break away from everybody, lawyers, +statesmen and Congress and go outdoors and look at 1913 for himself. + +I like to imagine how it would strike him. I am not troubled about what +he would do. Let Jefferson go out and listen to that vast machine, to +the New York Central Railway smoothing out and roaring down crowds, +rolling and rolling and rolling men all day and all night into machines. +Let Jefferson go out and face the New York Central Railway! Jefferson in +his time had not faced nor looked down through those great fissures or +chasms of inefficiency in what he chose to call democracy, the haughty, +tyrannical aimlessness and meaninglessness of crowds, too mean-spirited +and full of fear and machines to dare to have leaders! + +He had not faced that blank staring hell of anonymousness, that +bottomless, weak, watery muck of irresponsibility--that terrific, +devilish vagueness which a crowd is and which a crowd has to be without +leaders. + +Jefferson did not know about or reckon with Inventors, as a means of +governing, as a means of getting the will of the people. + +A whole new age of invention, of creation, has flooded the world since +Jefferson. This is the main fact about the modern man, that he is +gloriously self-made. He is practising democracy, inventing his own +life, making his own soul before our eyes. + +If we have a poet in the White House, this is the main fact he is going +to reckon with: He will not be seen taking sides with the Alexander +Hamilton model or with the Thomas Jefferson model or with Karl Marx or +Emerson. We will see him taking Karl Marx and Emerson and Hamilton and +Jefferson and melting them down, glowing them and fusing them together +into one man--the Crowd-Man--who shall be more aristocratic than +Hamilton ever dreamed, and be filled with a genius for democracy that +Jefferson never guessed. America to-day, on the face of the earth and +in the hearts of men, is a new democracy, as new as Radium, Copernicus, +the Wireless Telegraph, as new and just beginning to be noticed and +guessed at as Jesus Christ! + +Copernicus, Marconi, Wilbur Wright, and Christianity have turned men's +hearts outward. Men live for the first time in a wide daily +consciousness of one another. + +Alexander Hamilton, had really a rather timid and polite idea of what an +aristocrat was and Jefferson had merely sketched out a ground plan for a +democrat. If Hamilton had been aristocratic in the modern sense, he +would have devoted half his career to expressing a man like Jefferson; +and if Jefferson had been more of a democrat, he would have had room in +himself to tuck in several Alexander Hamiltons. Either one of them would +have been a Crowd-Man. + +By a Crowd-Man I do not mean a pull-and-haul man, a balance of +equilibrium between these two men, I mean a fusion, a glowed together +interpenetration of them both. They did not either of them believe in +the people as much as a man made out of both of them would--a really +wrought-through aristocrat, a really wrought-through democrat or +Crowd-Man, or Hero or Saviour. + + * * * * * + +I am afraid that some of us do not like the word Saviour as people think +we ought to. There seems to be something about the way many people use +the word Saviour which makes it seem as if it had been dropped off over +the edge of the world--of a real world, of a man's world. + +I do not believe that Christ spent five minutes in His whole life in +feeling like a Saviour. He would have felt hurt if He had found any one +saying He was a Saviour in the tone people often use. He wanted people +to feel as if they were like Him. And the way He served them was by +making them feel that they were. + +I do not believe that Thomas Jefferson, if he were here to-day, would +object to a hero, or aristocrat, a special expert or a genius in +expressing crowds, if he lived and wrought in this spirit. + +The final objection that people commonly make to heroes or to men of +marked and special vision or courage is that they are not good for +people, because people put them on pedestals and worship them. They look +up at them wistfully. And then they look down on themselves. + +But I have never seen a hero on a pedestal. + +It is only the Carlyle kind of hero who could ever be put on a pedestal, +or who would stay there if put there. + +And Carlyle--with all honour be it said--never quite knew what a hero +was. A hero is either a gentleman, or a philosopher, or an inventor. + +The gentleman--on a pedestal--feels hurt and slips down. + +The philosopher laughs. + +The inventor thinks up some way of having somebody else get up so that +it will not really be a pedestal at all. + +I agree with all the socialists' objections to heroes, if they mean by a +hero the kind of man that Thomas Carlyle, with all his little glorious +hells, all his little cold, lonesome, select heavens, his thunderclub +view of life, and his Old Testament imagination, called a hero. There is +always something a little strained and competitive about Carlyle's +heroes as he conceives them except possibly one or two. + +Being a hero with Carlyle consisted in conquering and displacing other +heroes. Even if you were a poet, being a hero consisted in a kind of +spiritual standing on some other poet's neck. According to Carlyle, one +must always be a hero against other men. Modern heroism consists in +being a hero with other men. The hero Against comes in the Twentieth +Century to be the hero With, and the modern hero is known, not by +cutting his enemies down, but by his absorbing and understanding them. +He drinks up what they wish they could do into what he does, or he +states what they believe better than they can state it. Combination or +coöperation is the tremendous heroism of our present life. + +I admit that I would be afraid of Carlyle's heroes having pedestals. +They have already--many of them--done a good deal of harm because they +have had pedestals, and because they would not get down from them. + +But mine would. + +With a man who is being a hero by coöperation, getting down is part of +the heroism. And there is never any real danger in allowing a pedestal +for a real hero. He never has time to sit on it. + +One sees him always over and over again kicking his pedestal out from +under him and using it to batter a world with. As the world does not +take to enjoying its heroes' pedestals in this way, a pedestal is quite +safe. Most people feel the same about a hero's halo. They prefer to have +him wear it like a kind of glare around his head, and if he uses it as a +searchlight upon them, if he makes his halo really practical and lights +up the world a little around him instead, he is not likely to be +spoiled, is almost always safe from any danger of having any more halo +crowded upon him than he wants, or than anybody wants him to have. One +might put it down as a motto for heroes, "Keep your halo busy and it +won't hurt you." Modern democracy will never have a chance of being what +it wants to be as long as it keeps on throwing away great natural forces +like halos and pedestals. There is no reason why we should not believe +in halos and pedestals, not to wear or stand on, but when used strictly +for butting and seeing purposes. + +We may know a real hero by the fact that we always have to keep +rediscovering him. One knows the real hero by the fact that in his +relation to people who put him on a pedestal he is always kicking his +pedestal away and substituting his vision. + +There is something about any real heroism that we see to-day which makes +heroes out of the people who see it, A real hero has his back to the +people and the crowd looks over his shoulders with him at his work and +he feels behind him daily, with joy and strength, thousands of heroes +pressing up to take his place. And he is daily happy with a strange, +mighty, impersonal joy in all these other people who could do it, too. +He lives with a great hurrah for the world in his heart. The hero he +worships is the hero he sees in others. A man like this would feel +cramped if he were merely being himself, or if he were being imprisoned +by the people in his own glory, or were being cooped up into a hero. + +It is in this sense that I have finally come again to believe that hero +worship is safe, that in some form as one of the great elemental +energies in human nature it must be saved, that it must be regulated and +used, that it has an incalculable power which was meant to be turned on +to run a nation with. + +And I believe that Thomas Jefferson, confronted in this desperate, +sublime 1913, with the new socialized spirit of our time, placed face to +face at last with a Christian aristocrat or Crowd-Man, would want him +saved and emphasized too. + +It is because in democracies saviours are being kept by crowds and by +millionaires and by machines very largely in the position of hired men, +or of ordered about men, that ninety-nine one-hundredths of the saving +or of the man-inventing and man-freeing in crowds, is not being attended +to. + +I have wanted to suggest in this book that the moment the Saviours in +any nation will organize quietly and save themselves first, the less +difficult thing (with men to attend to it) like saving the rest of us, +will be a mere matter of detail. + +The only thing that stands in the way is the Thomas Jefferson bug-a-boo. +People seem to have a kind of left-over fear that the moment these +saviours or experts or inventors or heroes, call them what you will, get +the chance that they have been working to get to save us, they will not +want to use it. + +It does not seem to me that anything will be allowed to interfere with +it--with their saving us, or making detailed arrangements for our saving +ourselves. + +Being a great man (if as democracies seem to think being a great man is +a disease) is at least a self-limiting disease. Inventors when they get +their first chance are going to save us, because they could not endure +living with us unless we were saved. + +Inventors could not enjoy inventing--inventing their greater, more noble +inventions, until they had attended to a little rudimentary thing in the +world like having people half alive on it to live with and to invent +for. + +It does not interest a really inspired man--inventing flying machines +for people who have not time to notice the sky, wireless telegraph for +people who have nothing to say, symphonies for tone-deaf crowds, or +ambrosia for people who prefer potatoes. + +This is the whole issue in a nutshell. When people say that our +inventors, or Crowd-Men or saviours, when they have fulfilled or saved +themselves, cannot be trusted to save us, the reply that will have to be +made is that only people who do not know how inventors feel or how they +are made or what it is in them that drives them to do things, or how +they do them, will be afraid to let men who give us worlds and who +express worlds for us and who make us express ourselves in worlds the +freedom to help shape them and run them. + +Men who have the automatic courage, the helpless bigness and +disinterestedness that always goes with invention, with creative power, +can be trusted by crowds. + +The prejudice against the hero is due to the fact that heroes in days +gone by have been by a very large majority fighters, expressing +themselves against the world, or expressing one part of the world +against another. + +The moment the hero becomes the artist and begins expressing himself and +expressing the crowd together, the crowd will no longer be touched with +fear and driven back upon itself by the Thomas Jefferson bug-a-boo. + + + + +EPILOGUE + + +France is threatened by her childless women, Germany by her machines, +Russia is beginning the Nineteenth Century. It is to England and +America, struggling still sublimely with their sins, the nations +look--for the time being--for the next big free lift upon the world. + +Looked at in the large, in their historic import and their effect on the +time, the English temperament and the American temperament are +essentially the same. As between ourselves, England and America are apt +to seem different, but as between us and the world, we blend together. +One could go through in what I have been saying about Oxford Street and +the House of Commons in this book, strike out all after Oxford Street +and read Broadway, and all after the House of Commons and read Congress, +and it would be essentially true with the necessary English or American +modulation. In the same way it would be possible to go through and +strike out all after the President and read Prime Minister or the +Government. + +England and America have the individualistic temperament, and if we +cannot make a self-expressive individualism noble, and if we are not men +enough to sing up our individualism into the social and the universal, +we perish. + +It is our native way. We are to be crowdmen or nobodies. + +The English temperament or the American temperament, whichever we may +call it, is the same tune, but played with a different and almost +contrasting expression. + +England is being played gravely and massively like a violoncello, and +America--played more lightly, is full of the sweeps and the lulls, the +ecstasy, the overriding glory of the violins. + +But it is the same tune, and God helping us, we will not and we shall +not be overwhelmed under the great dome of the world, by Germany with +all her faithful pianolas, or by France with her cold sweet flutes, or +by Russia with her shrieks and her pauses, pounding her splendid +kettledrums in that awful silence! + +Our song is ours--England and America, the 'cello, and the bright +violins! + +And no one shall sing it for us. + +And no one shall keep us from singing it. + +The skyscrapers are singing, "I will, I will!" to God, and Manchester +and London and Port Sunlight are singing, "I will, I will!" to God. I +have heard even Westminister Abbey and York--those beautiful old +fellows--altering, "I will, I will!" to God! + +And I have seen, as I was going by, Trinity Church at the head of Wall +Street repenting her sins and holding noonday prayer meetings for +millionaires. + +Our genius is a moral genius, the genius of each man for fulfilling +himself. Our religion is the finding of a way to do it beautifully. + +Let Russian men be an army if they like--death and obedience. Let German +men keep on with their faithful, plodding, moral machines if they want +to, and let all French men be artists, go tra-la-laing up and down the +Time to the beautiful--furnishing nudes, clothes, and academies to a +world. + +But we--England and America--will stand up on this planet in the way we +like to stand on a planet and sing, "I will, I will!" to God. + +If we cannot do better, we will sing, "I won't, I won't!" to God. Our +wills and our won'ts are our genius among the sons of men. They are what +we are for. With England and America I will and I won't are an art form, +our means of expressing ourselves, our way of invention and creation, +of begetting an age, of begetting a nation upon a world. + +We do not know (like great men and children) who we are at first. We +begin saying vaguely--will--will! + +Then i will! + +Then I will! + +Then WE WILL! + + +THE BEGINNING. + + + + +THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N.Y. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Crowds, by Gerald Stanley Lee + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CROWDS *** + +***** This file should be named 15759-8.txt or 15759-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/5/7/5/15759/ + +Produced by Rick Niles, Cori Samuel and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team. + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Crowds + A Moving-Picture of Democracy + +Author: Gerald Stanley Lee + +Release Date: May 3, 2005 [EBook #15759] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CROWDS *** + + + + +Produced by Rick Niles, Cori Samuel and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team. + + + + + + +</pre> + +<h1>CROWDS</h1> + +<h3>A MOVING-PICTURE +OF DEMOCRACY</h3> + +<h4>BY</h4> + +<h2>GERALD STANLEY LEE</h2> + +<h5><i>Editor of "Mount Tom"</i></h5> + +<h5>IN FIVE BOOKS<br /> +CROWDS AND MACHINES<br /> +LETTING THE CROWD BE GOOD<br /> +LETTING THE CROWD BE BEAUTIFUL<br /> +CROWDS AND HEROES<br /> +GOOD NEWS AND HARD WORK</h5> + + +<p class="center">GARDEN CITY NEW YORK +DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY</p> + + +<p class="center"><i>Copyright, 1913, by</i><br /> +DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY<br /> +<i>All rights reserved, including that of +translation into foreign languages, +including the Scandinavian</i></p> + +<p class="center"><br />COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY THE RIDGWAY COMPANY<br /> +COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY MITCHELL KENNERLEY<br /> +COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY CO.<br /> +COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY THE OUTLOOK COMPANY<br /> +COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY THE INDEPENDENT WEEKLY, INCORPORATED<br /> +<br /> +<br /> + +BOOKS<br /> +<br /> +By GERALD STANLEY LEE<br /> +<br /> +THE LOST ART OF READING<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i>A Sketch of Civilization</i></span><br /> +<br /> +THE CHILD AND THE BOOK<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i>A Constructive Criticism of Education</i></span><br /> +<br /> +THE SHADOW CHRIST<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i>A Study of the Hebrew Men of Genius</i></span><br /> +<br /> +THE VOICE OF THE MACHINES<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i>An Introduction to the Twentieth Century</i></span><br /> +<br /> +INSPIRED MILLIONAIRES<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i>A Study of the Man of Genius in Business</i></span><br /> +<br /> +CROWDS<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i>A Moving Picture of Democracy</i></span><br /> +</p> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"><br /><i> +<span>Gratefully inscribed to a little Mountain,<br /></span> +<span class="i3">a great Meadow, and a Woman.<br /></span> +<span>To the Mountain for the sense of time, to<br /></span> +<span class="i3">the Meadow for the sense of space, and<br /></span> +<span class="i3">to the Woman for the sense of everything.</span> +</i></div></div> + +<hr /> + +<h4>TABLE OF CONTENTS</h4> + +<ul> +<li><b>BOOK ONE</b><br /><br /> +<b>CROWDS AND MACHINES</b><br /> +<ul> +<li><a href="#Page_3">I.</a> WHERE ARE WE GOING?<br /> </li> +<li><a href="#Page_19">II.</a> THE CROWD SCARE<br /> </li> +<li><a href="#Page_34">III.</a> THE MACHINE SCARE<br /> </li> +<li><a href="#Page_49">IV.</a> THE STRIKE—AN INVENTION FOR MAKING CROWDS THINK<br /> </li> +<li><a href="#Page_58">V.</a> THE CROWD-MAN—AN INVENTION FOR MAKING CROWDS SEE<br /> </li> +<li><a href="#Page_65">VI.</a> THE IMAGINATION OF CROWDS<br /> </li> +<li><a href="#Page_66">VII.</a> IMAGINATION ABOUT THE UNSEEN<br /> </li> +<li><a href="#Page_69">VIII.</a> THE CROWD'S IMAGINATION ABOUT THE FUTURE<br /> </li> +<li><a href="#Page_74">IX.</a> THE CROWD'S IMAGINATION ABOUT PEOPLE<br /> </li> +<li><a href="#Page_76">X.</a> A DEMOCRATIC THEORY OF HUMAN NATURE<br /> </li> +<li><a href="#Page_80">XI.</a> DOING AS ONE WOULD WISH ONE HAD DONE IN TWENTY YEARS<br /> </li> +<li><a href="#Page_86">XII.</a> NEW KINDS AND NEW SIZES OF MEN<br /> </li> +</ul><br /> </li> + +<li><b>BOOK TWO</b><br /><br /> +<b>LETTING THE CROWDS BE GOOD</b><br /> +<ul> +<li><a href="#Page_93">I.</a> SPEAKING AS ONE OF THE CROWD<br /> </li> +<li><a href="#Page_96">II.</a> IS IT WRONG FOR GOOD PEOPLE TO BE EFFICIENT?<br /> </li> +<li><a href="#Page_103">III.</a> IS IT WRONG FOR GOOD PEOPLE TO BE INTERESTING?<br /> </li> +<li><a href="#Page_107">IV.</a> PROSPECTS OF THE LIAR<br /> </li> +<li><a href="#Page_111">V.</a> PROSPECTS OF THE BULLY<br /> </li> +<li><a href="#Page_114">VI.</a> GOODNESS AS A CROWD-PROCESS<br /> </li> +<li><a href="#Page_116">VII.</a> THOUGHTS ON BEING IMPROVED BY OTHER PEOPLE<br /> </li> +<li><a href="#Page_125">VIII.</a> MAKING GOODNESS HURRY<br /> </li> +<li><a href="#Page_128">IX.</a> TOUCHING THE IMAGINATION OF CROWDS<br /> </li> +<li><a href="#Page_142">X.</a> THE STUPENDOUS, THE UNUSUAL, THE MONOTONOUS AND THE SUCCESSFUL<br /> </li> +<li><a href="#Page_146">XI.</a> THE SUCCESSFUL<br /> </li> +<li><a href="#Page_154">XII.</a> THE NECKS OF THE WICKED<br /> </li> +<li><a href="#Page_163">XIII.</a> IS IT WRONG FOR GOOD PEOPLE TO BE SUCCESSFUL?<br /> </li> +<li><a href="#Page_167">XIV.</a> IS IT SECOND RATE FOR GOOD PEOPLE TO BE SUCCESSFUL?<br /> </li> +<li><a href="#Page_173">XV.</a> THE SUCCESSFUL TEMPERAMENT<br /> </li> +<li><a href="#Page_178">XVI.</a> THE MEN AHEAD PULL<br /> </li> +<li><a href="#Page_184">XVII.</a> THE CROWDS PUSH<br /> </li> +<li><a href="#Page_186">XVIII.</a> THE MAN WHO SAYS HOW, SAYS HOW<br /> </li> +<li><a href="#Page_194">XIX.</a> AND THE MACHINE STARTS!<br /> </li> +</ul><br /> </li> + +<li><b>BOOK THREE</b><br /><br /> +<b>LETTING THE CROWD BE BEAUTIFUL</b><br /><br /> +<ul> +<li style="list-style-type: square"><b>PART I. WISTFUL MILLIONAIRES</b><br /> </li> +<li><a href="#Page_205">I.</a> MR. CARNEGIE SPEAKS UP<br /> </li> +<li><a href="#Page_208">II.</a> MR. CARNEGIE TRIES TO MAKE PEOPLE READ<br /> </li> +<li><a href="#Page_211">III.</a> MR. NOBEL TRIES TO MAKE PEOPLE WRITE<br /> </li> +<li><a href="#Page_221">IV.</a> PAPER BOOKS, MARBLE PILLARS, AND WOODEN BOYS<br /> </li> +<li><a href="#Page_227">V.</a> THE HUMDRUM FACTORY AND THE TUMPTY-TUM THEATRE<br /> </li> + +<li style="list-style-type: square"><b>PART II. IRON MACHINES</b><br /> </li> +<li><a href="#Page_236">I.</a> STEEPLES AND CHIMNEYS<br /> </li> +<li><a href="#Page_240">II.</a> BELLS AND WHEELS<br /> </li> +<li><a href="#Page_243">III.</a> DEW AND ENGINES<br /> </li> +<li><a href="#Page_245">IV.</a> DEAD AS A DOOR NAIL!<br /> </li> +<li><a href="#Page_248">V.</a> AN OXFORD MAN AND AN INCH OF IRON<br /> </li> +<li><a href="#Page_250">VI.</a> THE MACHINES' MACHINES<br /> </li> +<li><a href="#Page_252">VII.</a> THE MEN'S MACHINES<br /> </li> +<li><a href="#Page_256">VIII.</a> THE BASEMENT OF THE WORLD<br /> </li> +<li><a href="#Page_262">IX.</a> THE GROUND FLOOR FOLKS<br /> </li> +<li><a href="#Page_266">X.</a> THE MACHINE-TRAINERS<br /> </li> +<li><a href="#Page_269">XI.</a> MACHINES, CROWDS, AND ARTISTS<br /> </li> + +<li style="list-style-type: square"><b>PART III. PEOPLE-MACHINES</b><br /> </li> +<li><a href="#Page_280">I.</a> NOW!<br /> </li> +<li><a href="#Page_285">II.</a> COMMITTEES AND COMMITTEES<br /> </li> +<li><a href="#Page_286">III.</a> THE INCONVENIENCE OF BEING HUMAN<br /> </li> +<li><a href="#Page_290">IV.</a> LETTING THE CROWD HAVE PEOPLE IN IT<br /> </li> +</ul><br /> </li> + +<li><b>BOOK FOUR</b><br /><br /> +<b>CROWDS AND HEROES</b><br /> +<ul> +<li><a href="#Page_297">I.</a> THE SOCIALIST AND THE HERO<br /> </li> +<li><a href="#Page_301">II.</a> THE CROWD AND THE HERO<br /> </li> +<li><a href="#Page_303">III.</a> THE CROWD AND THE AVERAGE PERSON<br /> </li> +<li><a href="#Page_307">IV.</a> THE CROWD AND PIERPONT MORGAN<br /> </li> +<li><a href="#Page_313">V.</a> THE CROWD AND TOM MANN<br /> </li> +<li><a href="#Page_323">VI.</a> AN OPENING FOR THE NEXT PIERPONT MORGAN<br /> </li> +<li><a href="#Page_327">VII.</a> AN OPENING FOR THE NEXT TOM MANN<br /> </li> +<li><a href="#Page_331">VIII.</a> THE MEN WHO LOOK<br /> </li> +<li><a href="#Page_337">IX.</a> WHO IS AFRAID?<br /> </li> +<li><a href="#Page_343">X.</a> RULES FOR TELLING A HERO—WHEN ONE SEES ONE<br /> </li> +<li><a href="#Page_346">XI.</a> THE TECHNIQUE OF COURAGE<br /> </li> +<li><a href="#Page_349">XII.</a> THE MEN WHO WANT THINGS<br /> </li> +<li><a href="#Page_356">XIII.</a> MEN WHO GET THINGS<br /> </li> +<li><a href="#Page_364">XIV.</a> SOURCES OF COURAGE FOR OTHERS—TOLERATION<br /> </li> +<li><a href="#Page_371">XV.</a> CONVERSION<br /> </li> +<li><a href="#Page_380">XVI.</a> EXCEPTION<br /> </li> +<li><a href="#Page_383">XVII.</a> INVENTION<br /> </li> +<li><a href="#Page_397">XVIII.</a> THE MAN WHO PULLS THE WORLD TOGETHER<br /> </li> +<li><a href="#Page_400">XIX.</a> THE MAN WHO STANDS BY<br /> </li> +<li><a href="#Page_402">XX.</a> THE STRIKE OF THE SAVIOURS<br /> </li> +<li><a href="#Page_404">XXI.</a> THE LEAGUE OF THE MEN WHO ARE NOT AFRAID<br /> </li> +</ul><br /> </li> + +<li><b>BOOK FIVE</b><br /><br /> +<b>GOOD NEWS AND HARD WORK</b><br /><br /> +<ul> +<li style="list-style-type: square"><b><a href="#Page_413">PART I.</a> NEWS AND LABOUR</b><br /> </li> +<li style="list-style-type: square"><b><a href="#Page_422">PART II.</a> NEWS AND MONEY</b><br /> </li> +<li style="list-style-type: square"><b>PART III. NEWS AND GOVERNMENT</b><br /> </li> +<li><a href="#Page_431">I.</a> OXFORD STREET AND THE HOUSE OF COMMONS<br /> </li> +<li><a href="#Page_440">II.</a> OXFORD STREET HUMS, THE HOUSE HEMS<br /> </li> +<li><a href="#Page_449">III.</a> PRESIDENT WILSON AND MOSES<br /> </li> +<li><a href="#Page_455">IV.</a> THE PRESIDENT SAYS YES AND NO<br /> </li> +<li><a href="#Page_463">V.</a> THE PRESIDENT SAYS "LOOK!"<br /> </li> +<li><a href="#Page_469">VI.</a> THE PEOPLE SAY "WHO ARE YOU?"<br /> </li> +<li><a href="#Page_472">VII.</a> THE PEOPLE SAY "WHO ARE WE?"<br /> </li> +<li><a href="#Page_474">VIII.</a> NEWS ABOUT US TO THE PRESIDENT<br /> </li> +<li><a href="#Page_476">IX.</a> NEWS-MEN<br /> </li> +<li><a href="#Page_483">X.</a> AMERICAN TEMPERAMENT AND GOVERNMENT<br /> </li> +<li><a href="#Page_505">XI</a>-<a href="#Page_513">XII.</a> NEWS-BOOKS<br /> </li> +<li><a href="#Page_517">XIII.</a> NEWS-PAPERS<br /> </li> +<li><a href="#Page_524">XIV.</a> NEWS-MACHINES<br /> </li> +<li><a href="#Page_527">XV.</a> NEWS-CROWDS<br /> </li> +<li><a href="#Page_550">XVI.</a> CROWD-MEN<br /> </li> +<li><a href="#Page_539">EPILOGUE</a></li> +</ul></li></ul> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1"></a>BOOK ONE</h2> + +<h3>CROWDS AND MACHINES</h3> + + +<p>TO CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"><i> +<span class="i4">"A battered, wrecked old man<br /></span> +<span>Thrown on this savage shore far, far from home,<br /></span> +<span>Pent by the sea and dark rebellious brows twelve dreary months<br /></span> +<span>... The end I know not, it is all in Thee,<br /></span> +<span>Or small or great I know not—haply what broad fields, what<br /></span> +<span>lands!...<br /></span></i> +</div><div class="stanza"><i> +<span class="i4">And these things I see suddenly, what mean they<br /></span> +<span>As if some miracle, some hand divine unsealed my eyes,<br /></span> +<span>Shadowy vast shapes smile through the air and sky,<br /></span> +<span>And on the distant waves sail countless ships,<br /></span> +<span>And anthems in new tongues I hear saluting me."<br /></span> +</i></div></div> + + + +<h2><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2"></a><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3"></a>CHAPTER I</h2> + +<h3>WHERE ARE WE GOING?</h3> + + +<p>The best picture I know of my religion is Ludgate Hill as one sees it +going down the foot of Fleet Street. It would seem to many perhaps like +a rather strange half-heathen altar, but it has in it the three things +with which I worship most my Maker in this present world—the three +things which it would be the breath of religion to me to offer to a God +together—Cathedrals, Crowds, and Machines.</p> + +<p>With the railway bridge reaching over, all the little still locomotives +in the din whispering across the street; with the wide black crowd +streaming up and streaming down, and the big, faraway, other-worldly +church above, I am strangely glad. It is like having a picture of one's +whole world taken up deftly, and done in miniature and hung up for one +against the sky—the white steam which is the breath of modern life, the +vast hurrying of our feet, and that Great Finger pointing toward heaven +day and night for us all....</p> + +<p>I never tire of walking out a moment from my nook in Clifford's Inn and +stealing a glimpse and coming back to my fireplace. I sit still a moment +before going to work and look in the flames and think. The great roar +outside the Court gathers it all up—that huge, boundless, tiny, +summed-up world out there; flings it faintly against my quiet windows +while I sit and think.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4"></a>And when one thinks of it a minute, it sends one half-fearfully, +half-triumphantly back to one's work—the very thought of it. The Crowd +hurrying, the Crowd's flurrying Machines, and the Crowd's God, send one +back to one's work!</p> + +<p>In the afternoon I go out again, slip my way through the crowds along +the Strand, toward Charing Cross.</p> + +<p>I never tire of watching the drays, the horses, the streaming taxis, all +these little, fearful, gliding crowds of men and women, when a little +space of street is left, flowing swiftly, flowing like globules, like +mercury, between the cabs.</p> + +<p>But most of all I like looking up at that vast second story of the +street, coming in over one like waves, like seas—all these happy, +curious tops of 'buses; these dear, funny, way-up people on benches; +these world-worshippers, sight-worshippers, and Americans—all these +little scurrying congregations, hundreds of them, rolling past.</p> + +<p>I sit on the front seat of a horse 'bus elbow to elbow with the driver, +staring down over the brink of the abyss upon ears and necks—that low, +distant space where the horses look so tiny and so ineffectual and so +gone-by below.</p> + +<p>The street is the true path of the spirit. To walk through it, or roll +or swing on top of a 'bus through it—the miles of faces, all these +tottering, toddling, swinging miles of legs and stomachs; and on all +sides of you, and in the windows and along the walks, the things they +wear, and the things they eat, and the things they pour down their +little throats, and the things they pray to and curse and worship and +swindle in! It is like being out in the middle of a great ocean of +living, or like climbing up some great mountain-height of people, their +abysses and their clouds about them, their precipices and jungles and +heavens, the great high roads of their souls reaching off.... I can +never say why, but so strange is it, so full of awe is it, and of +splendour and pity, that there are times when, rolling and swinging +along on top of a 'bus, with all this strange, fearful joy of life about +me, within me ... it is as if on top of my 'bus <a name="Page_5" id="Page_5"></a>I had been far away in +some infinite place, and had felt Heaven and Hell sweep past.</p> + +<p>One of the first things that strikes an American when he slips over from +New York, and finds himself, almost before he had thought of it—walking +down the Strand, suddenly, instead of Broadway, is the way +things—thousands of things at once; begin happening to him.</p> + +<p>Of course, with all the things that are happening to him—the 'buses, +the taxis, the Wren steeples, the great streams of new sights in the +streets, the things that happen to his eyes and to his ears, to his feet +and his hands, and to his body lunging through the ground and swimming +up in space on top of a 'bus through this huge, glorious, yellow mist of +people ... there are all the things besides that begin happening to his +mind.</p> + +<p>In New York, of course, he rushes along through the city, in a kind of +tunnel of his own thoughts, of his own affairs, and drives on to his +point, and New York does not—at least it does not very often—make +things happen to his mind. He is not in London five minutes before he +begins to notice how London does his thinking for him. The streets of +the city set him to thinking, mile after mile, miles of comparing, miles +of expecting.</p> + +<p>And above the streets that he walks through and drives through he finds +in London another complete set of streets that interest him: the +greater, silenter streets of England—the streets of people's thoughts. +And he reads the great newspapers, those huge highways on which the +English people are really going somewhere.... "<i>Where are they going?</i>" +He goes through the editorials, he stumbles through the news, "<i>Where +are the English people going?</i>"</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>An American thinks of the English people in the third person—at first, +of course.</p> + +<p>After three days or so, he begins, half-unconsciously, slipping <a name="Page_6" id="Page_6"></a>over +every now and then into what seems to be a vague, loose first person +plural.</p> + +<p>Then the first person plural grows.</p> + +<p>He finds at last that his thinking has settled down into a kind of +happy, easy-going, international, editorial "We." New York and London, +Chicago and Sheffield, go drifting together through his thoughts, and +even Paris, glimmering faintly over there, and a dim round world, and he +asks, as the people of a world stream by, "<i>Where are WE going?</i>"</p> + +<p>Thus it is that London, looming, teeming, world-suggesting, gets its +grip upon a man, a fresh American, and stretches him, stretches him +before his own eyes, makes him cosmopolitan, does his thinking for him.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>There was a great sea to still his soul and lay down upon his spirit +that big, quiet roundness of the earth.</p> + +<p>Nothing is quite the same after that wide strip of sea—sleeping out +there alone night by night—the gentle round earth sloping away down +from under one on both sides, in the midst of space.... Then, suddenly, +almost before one knows, that quiet Space still lingering round one, +perhaps one finds oneself thrust up out of the ground in the night into +that big yellow roar of Trafalgar Square.</p> + +<p>And here are the swift sudden crowds of people, one's own fellow-men +hurrying past. One looks into the faces of the people hurrying past: +"<i>Where are we going?</i>" One looks at the stars: "WHERE ARE WE GOING?"</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>That night, when I was thrust up out of the ground and stood dazed in +the Square, I was told in a minute that this London where I was was a +besieged and conquered city. Some men had risen up in a day and said to +London: "No one shall go in. No one shall go out."</p> + +<p><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7"></a>I was in the great proud city at last, the capital of the world, her +big, new, self-assured inventions all about her, all around her, and +soldiers camping out with her locomotives!</p> + +<p>With her long trains for endless belts of people going in and coming +out, with her air-brakes, electric lights, and motor-cars and aerial +mails, it seemed passing strange to be told that her great stations were +all choked up with a queer, funny, old, gone-by, clanky piece of +machinery, an invention for making people good, like soldiers!</p> + +<p>And I stood in the middle of the roar of Trafalgar Square and asked, as +all England was asking that night: "Where are we going?"</p> + +<p>And I looked in the faces of the people hurrying past.</p> + +<p>And nobody knew.</p> + +<p>And the next day I went through the silenter streets of the city, the +great crowded dailies where all the world troops through, and then the +more quiet weeklies, then the monthlies, more dignified and like private +parks; and the quarterlies, too, thoughtful, high-minded, a little +absent, now and then a footfall passing through.</p> + +<p>And I found them all full of the same strange questioning: "Where are we +going?"</p> + +<p>And nobody knew.</p> + +<p>It was the same questioning I had just left in New York, going up all +about me, out of the skyscrapers.</p> + +<p>New York did not know.</p> + +<p>Now London did not know.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>And after I had tried the journals and the magazines, I thought of +books.</p> + +<p>I could not but look about—how could I do otherwise than look about?—a +lonely American walking at last past all these nobly haunted doorways +and windows—for your idealists or interpreters, your men who bring in +the sea upon your streets <a name="Page_8" id="Page_8"></a>and the mountains on your roof-tops; who +still see the wide, still reaches of the souls of men beyond the faint +and tiny roar of London.</p> + +<p>I could not but look for your men of imagination, your poets; for the +men who build the dreams and shape the destinies of nations because they +mould their thoughts.</p> + +<p>I do not like to say it. How shall an American, coming to you out of his +long, flat, literary desert, dare to say it?... Here, where Shakespeare +played mightily, and like a great boy with the world; where Milton, +Keats, Wordsworth, Browning, Shelley, and even Dickens flooded the lives +and refreshed the hearts of the people; here, in these selfsame streets, +going past these same old, gentle, smoky temples where Charles Lamb +walked and loved a world, and laughed at a world, and even made +one—lifted over his London forever into the hearts of men....</p> + +<p>I can only say what I saw those first few fresh days: John Galsworthy +out with his camera—his beautiful, sad, foggy camera; Arnold Bennett +stitching and stitching faithfully twenty-four hours a day—big, curious +tapestries of little things; H.G. Wells, with his retorts, his +experiments about him, his pots and kettles of humanity in a great stew +of steam, half-hopeful, half-dismayed, mixing up his great, new, queer +messes of human nature; and (when I could look up again) G.K. +Chesterton, divinely swearing, chanting, gloriously contradicting, +rolled lustily through the wide, sunny spaces of His Own Mind; and +Bernard Shaw (all civilization trooping by), the eternal boy, on the +eternal curbstone of the world, threw stones; and the Bishop of +Birmingham preached a fine, helpless sermon....</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>When a new American, coming from his own big, hurried, formless, +speechless country, finds himself in what he had always supposed to be +this trim, arranged, grown-up, articulate <a name="Page_9" id="Page_9"></a>England, and when, thrust up +out of the ground in Trafalgar Square, he finds himself looking at that +vast yellow mist of people, that vast bewilderment of faces, of the +poor, of the rich, coming and going they cannot say where—he naturally +thinks at first it must be because they cannot speak; and when he looks +to those who speak for them, to their writers or interpreters, and when +he finds that they are bewildered, that they are asking the same +question over and over that we in America are asking too, "Where are we +going?" he is brought abruptly up, front to front with the great +broadside of modern life. London, his last resort, is as bewildered as +New York; and so, at last, here it is. It has to be faced now and here, +as if it were some great scare-head or billboard on the world, "WHERE +ARE WE GOING?"</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>The most stupendous feat for the artist or man of imagination in modern +times is to conceive a picture or vision for our Society—our present +machine-civilization—a common expectation for people which will make +them want to live.</p> + +<p>If Leonardo were living now, he would probably slight for the time being +his building bridges, and skimp his work on Mona Lisa, and write a +book—an exultant book about common people. He would focus and express +democracy as only the great and true aristocrat or genius or artist will +ever do it. A great society must be expressed as a vision or expectation +before men can see it together, and go to work on it together, and make +it a fact. What makes a society great is that it is full of people who +have something to live for and who know what it is. It is because nobody +knows, now, that our present society is not great. The different kinds +of people in it have not made up their minds what they are for, and some +kinds have particularly failed to make up their minds what the other +kinds are for.</p> + +<p>We are all making our particular contribution to the common <a name="Page_10" id="Page_10"></a>vision, and +some of us are able to say in one way and some in another what this +vision is; but it is going to take a supreme catholic, summing-up +individualist, a great man or artist—a man who is all of us in one—to +express for Crowds, and for all of us together, where we want to go, +what we think we are for, and what kind of a world we want.</p> + +<p>This will have to be done first in a book. The modern world is +collecting its thoughts. It is trying to write its bible.</p> + +<p>The Bible of the Hebrews (which had to be borrowed by the rest of the +world if they were to have one) is the one great outstanding fact and +result of the Hebrew genius. They did not produce a civilization, but +they produced a book for the rest of the world to make civilizations out +of, a book which has made all other nations the moral passengers of the +Hebrews for two thousand years.</p> + +<p>And the whole spirit and aim of this book, the thing about it that made +it great, was that it was the sublimest, most persistent, most colossal, +masterful attempt ever made by men to look forth upon the earth, to see +all the men in it, like spirits hurrying past, and to answer the +question, "WHERE ARE WE GOING?"</p> + +<p>I would not have any one suppose that in these present tracings and +outlines of thought I am making an attempt to look upon the world and +say where the people are going, and where they think they are going, and +where they want to go. I have attempted to find out, and put down what +might seem at first sight (at least it did to me) the answer to a very +small and unimportant question—"Where is it that I really want to go +myself?" "What kind of a world is it, all the facts about me being duly +considered, I really want to be in?"</p> + +<p>No man living in a world as interesting as this ever writes a book if he +can help it. If Mr. Bernard Shaw or Mr. Chesterton or Mr. Wells had been +so good as to write a book for me in which they had given the answer to +my question, in which they had said more or less authoritatively for me +what kind of a <a name="Page_11" id="Page_11"></a>world it is that I want to be in, this book would never +have been written. The book is not put forward as an attempt to arrange +a world, or as a system or a chart, or as a nation-machine, or even as +an argument. The one thing that any one can fairly claim for this book +is that one man's life has been saved with it. It is the record of one +man fighting up through story after story of crowds and of crowds' +machines to the great steel and iron floor on the top of the world, +until he had found the manhole in it, and broken through and caught a +breath of air and looked at the light. The book is merely a +life-preserver—that is all; and one man's life-preserver. Perhaps the +man is representative, and perhaps he is not. At all events, here it is. +Anybody else who can use it is welcome to it.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>The first and most practical step in getting what one wants in this +world is wanting it. One would think that the next step would be +expressing what one wants. But it almost never is. It generally consists +in wanting it still harder and still harder until one can express it.</p> + +<p>This is particularly true when the thing one wants is a new world. Here +are all these other people who have to be asked. And until one wants it +hard enough to say it, to get it outside one's self, possibly make it +catching, nothing happens.</p> + +<p>If one were to point out one trait rather than another that makes +Bernard Shaw, for so brilliant a man, so ineffective as a leader, or +literary statesman, or social reformer, it would be his modesty. He has +never wanted anything.</p> + +<p>If I could have found a book by Bernard Shaw in which Mr. Shaw had +merely said what he wanted himself, it is quite possible this book would +not have been written. Even if Mr. Shaw, without saying what he wanted, +had ever shown in any corner of any book that one man's wanting +something in this world amounted to anything, or could make any one else +want it, or could make any difference in him, or in <a name="Page_12" id="Page_12"></a>the world around +him, perhaps I would not have written this book.</p> + +<p>Everywhere, as I have looked about me among the bookmen in America, in +England, I have found, not the things that they wanted in their books, +but always these same deadly lists or bleak inventories—these prairies +of things that they did not want.</p> + +<p>Now, as a matter of fact, I knew already, with an almost despairing +distinctness, nearly all these things I did not want and it has not +helped me (with all due courtesy and admiration) having John Galsworthy +out photographing them day after day, so that I merely did not want them +harder. And Mr. Wells's measles and children's diseases, too. I knew +already that I did not want them. And Mr. Shaw's entire, heroic, almost +noble collection of things he does not want does not supply me—nor +could it supply any other man with furniture to make a world with—even +if it were not this real, big world, with rain and sunshine and wind and +people in it, and were only that little, wonderful world a man lives +within his own heart. There have been times, and there will be more of +them, when I could not otherwise than speak as the champion of Bernard +Shaw; but, after all, what single piece of furniture is there that +George Bernard Shaw, living with his great attic of not-things all +around him, is able to offer to furnish me for me single, little, warm, +lighted room to keep my thoughts in? Nor has he furnished me with one +thing with which I would care to sit down in my little room and +think—looking into the cold, perfect hygienic ashes he has left upon my +hearth. Even if I were a revolutionist, and not a mere, plain human +being, loving life and wanting to live more abundantly, I am bound to +say I do not see what there is in Mr. Galsworthy's photographs, or in +Mr. Wells's rich, bottomless murk of humanity to make a revolution for. +And Mr. Bernard Shaw, with all his bottles of disinfectants and shelves +of sterilized truths, his hard well-being and his glittering comforts, +has presented the vision <a name="Page_13" id="Page_13"></a>of a world in which at the very best—even if +it all comes out as he says it will—a man would merely have things +without wanting them, and without wanting anything.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>And so it has seemed to me that even if he is quite unimportant, any man +to-day who, in some public place, like a book, shall paint the picture +of his heart's desire, who shall throw up, as upon a screen, where all +men may see them, his most immediate and most pressing ideals, would +perform an important service. If a man's sole interest were to find out +what all men in the world want, the best way to do it would be for him +to say quite definitely, so that we could all compare notes, what he +wanted himself. Speaking for a planet has gone by, but possibly, if a +few of us but speak for ourselves, the planet will talk back, and we +shall find out at last what it really is that it wants.</p> + +<p>The thing that many of us want most in the present grayness and din of +the world is some one to play with, or if the word "play" is not quite +the right word, some one with whom we can work with freedom and +self-expressiveness and joy. Nine men out of ten one meets to-day talk +with one as it were with their watches in their hands. The people who +are rich one sees everywhere, being run away with by their motor-cars; +and the people who are poor one sees struggling pitifully and for their +very souls, under great wheels and beneath machines.</p> + +<p>Of course, I can only speak for myself. I do not deny that a little +while at a time I can sit by a brook in the woods and be happy; but if, +as it happens, I would rather have other people about me—people who do +not spoil things, I find that the machines about me everywhere have made +most people very strange and pathetic in the woods. They cannot sit by +brooks, many of them; and when they come out to the sky, it looks to +them like some mere, big, blue lead roof up over their lives. <a name="Page_14" id="Page_14"></a>Perhaps I +am selfish about it, but I cannot bear to see people looking at the sky +in this way....</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>So, as I have watched my fellow human beings, what I have come to want +most of all in this world is the inspired employer—or what I have +called the inspired millionaire or organizer; the man who can take the +machines off the backs of the people and take the machines out of their +wits, and make the machines free their bodies and serve their souls.</p> + +<p>If we ever have the inspired employer, he will have to be made by the +social imagination of the people, by creating the spirit of expectation +and challenge toward the rich among the masses of the people.</p> + +<p>I believe that the time has come when the world is to make its last +stand for idealism, great men, and crowds.</p> + +<p>I believe that great men can be really great, that they can represent +crowds. I believe that crowds can be really great, that they can know +great men.</p> + +<p>The most natural kind of great man for crowds to know first will +probably be a kind of everyday great man or business statesman, the man +who represents all classes, and who proves it in the way he conducts his +business.</p> + +<p>I have called this man the Crowdman.</p> + +<p>I do not say that I have met precisely the type of inspired millionaire +I have in mind, but I have known scores of men who have reminded me of +him and of what he is going to be, and I am prepared to say that in +spirit, or latent at least, he is all about me in the world to-day. If +it is proved to me that no such man exists, I am here to say there will +be one. If it is proved to me that there cannot be one, <i>I will make +one</i>. If it is proved to me that by lifting up Desire in the faces of +young men and of boys, and in the faces of true fathers and young +mothers, and by ringing up my challenge on the great doors of the +schools, I cannot make one, then I will invoke the men that shall write +<a name="Page_15" id="Page_15"></a>the books, that shall sing the songs that shall make one! I say this +with all reverence for other men's desires and with all respect for +natural prejudgments. As I have conceived it, the one business of the +world to-day is to find out what we are for and to find out what men in +the world—on the whole—really want. When men know what they want they +get it. Every wrong thing we have to face in modern industrial life is +due to men who know what they want, and who therefore get it, due to the +passions and the dreams of men; and the one single way in which these +wrong things will ever be overcome is with more passions and with more +and mightier dreams of men.</p> + +<p>Nothing is more visionary than trying to run a world without dreams, +especially an economic world. It is because even bad dreams are better +in this world than having no dreams at all that bad people so called are +so largely allowed to run it.</p> + +<p>In the final and practical sense, the one factor in economics to be +reckoned with is Desire.</p> + +<p>The next move in economics is going to be the statement of a shrewd, +dogged, realizable ideal. It is only ideals that have aroused the wrong +passions, and it is only ideals that will arouse the right ones.</p> + +<p>It will have to be, I imagine, when it comes, not a mere statement of +principles, an analysis, or a criticism, but a moving-picture, a +portrait of the human race, that shall reveal man's heart to himself. +What we want is a vast white canvas, spread, as it were, over the end of +the world, before which we shall all sit together, the audience of the +nations, of the poor, of the rich, as in some still, thoughtful +place—all of us together; and then we will throw up before us on the +vast white screen in the dark the vivid picture of our vast desires, +flame up upon it the hopes, the passions of human lives, and the grim, +silent wills of men. <i>"What do we want?" "Where are we going?"</i></p> + +<p>In place of the literature of criticism we have come now to the +literature of Desire.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16"></a>This literature will have to come slowly, and I have come to believe +that the first book, when it comes, will be perhaps a book that does not +prove anything, a book that is a mere cry, a prayer, or challenge; the +story of what one man with these streetfuls of the faces of men and the +faces of women pouring their dullness and pouring their weariness over +him, has desired, and of what, God helping him, he will have.</p> + +<p>There is a certain sense in which merely praying to God has gone by. In +the present desperate crisis of a world plunging on in the dark to a +catastrophe or a glory that we cannot guess, it is a time for men to +pray a prayer, a standing-up prayer, to one another.</p> + +<p>I believe that it is going to be this huge gathering-in of public +desire, this imperious challenge of what men want, this standing-up +prayer of men to one another, which alone shall make men go forth with +faith and singing once more into the battle of life. Sometimes it has +seemed to me I have already heard it—this song of men's desires about +me—faintly. But I have seen that the time is at hand when it shall come +as a vast chorus of cities, of fields, of men's voices, filling the dome +of the world—a chorus in the glory and the shame of which no +millionaire who merely wants to make money, no artist who is not +expressing the souls and freeing the bodies of men, no statesman who is +not gathering up the desires of crowds, and going daily through the +world hewing out the will of the people, shall dare to live.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>But while this is the vision of my belief, I would not have any one +suppose that I am the bearer of easy and gracious tidings.</p> + +<p>It is rather of a great daily adventure one has with the world.</p> + +<p>There have been times when it seemed as if it had to begin all over +again every morning.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17"></a>Day by day I walk down Fleet Street toward Ludgate Hill.</p> + +<p>I look once more every morning at that great picture of any religion; I +look at the quiet, soaring, hopeful dome—that little touch of singing +or praying that men have lifted up against heaven. "Will the Dome bring +the Man to me?"</p> + +<p>I look up at the machines, strange and eager, hurrying across the +bridge. "Will the Machines bring the Man to me?"</p> + +<p>I look in the faces of the crowd hurrying past. "Will the Crowd bring +the Man to me?"</p> + +<p>With the picture of my religion—or perhaps three religions or three +stories of religion—I walk on and on through the crowd, past the +railway, past the Cathedral, past the Mansion House, and over the Tower +Bridge. I walk fast and eagerly and blindly, as though a man would walk +away from the world.</p> + +<p>Suddenly I find myself, throngs of voices all about me, standing +half-unconsciously by a high iron fence in Bermondsey watching that +smooth asphalt playground where one sees the very dead (for once) +crowded by the living—pushed over to the edges—their gravestones +tilted calmly up against the walls. I stand and look through the pickets +and watch the children run and shout—the little funny, mockingly +dressed, frowzily frumpily happy children, the stored-up sunshine of a +thousand years all shining faintly out through the dirt, out through the +generations in their little faces—"Will the Man come to me out of +these?"</p> + +<p>The tombstones lean against the wall and the children run and shout. As +I watch them with my hopes and fears and the tombstones tilted against +the walls—as I peer through the railings at the children, I face my +three religions. What will the three religions do with the children? +What will the children do with the three religions?</p> + +<p>And now I will tell the truth. I will not cheat nor run away as +sometimes I seem to have tried to do for years. I will no longer let +myself be tricked by the mere glamour and <a name="Page_18" id="Page_18"></a>bigness of our modern life +nor swooned into good-will by the roll and liturgy of revolution, "of +the people," "for the people," "by the people," nor will I be longer +awed by those huge phrase-idols, constitutions, routines, that have +roared around me "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity"—those imperious, +thoughtless, stupid tra-la-las of the People. Do the People see truth? +Can the People see truth? Can all the crowd, and can all the machines, +and all the cathedrals piled up together produce the Man, the Crowd-man +or great man who sees truth?</p> + +<p>And so with my three religions, I have three fears, one for each of +them. There is the Machine fear, lest the crowd should be overswept by +its machines and become like them; and the Crowd fear, lest the crowd +should overlook its mighty innumerable and personal need of great men; +and there is also the daily fear for the Church, lest the Church should +not understand crowds and machines and grapple with crowds and machines, +interpret them and glory in them and appropriate them for her own use +and for God's—lest the Church should turn away from the crowds and the +machines and graciously and idly bow down to Herself.</p> + +<p>And now I am going to try to express these three fears that go with the +three religions as well as I can, so that I can turn on them and face +them and, God helping me, look them out of countenance.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19"></a>CHAPTER II</h2> + +<h3>THE CROWD SCARE</h3> + + +<p>Time was when a man was born upon this planet in a somewhat lonely +fashion. A few human beings out of all infinity stood by to care for +him. He was brought up with hills and stars and a neighbour or so, until +he grew to man's estate. He climbed at last over the farthest hill, and +there, on the rim of things, standing on the boundary line of sky and +earth that had always been the edge of life to him before, he looked +forth upon the freedom of the world, and said in his soul, "What shall I +be in this world I see, and whither shall I go in it?" And the sky and +the earth and the rivers and the seas and the nights and the days +beckoned to him, and the voices of life rose around him, and they all +said, "Come!"</p> + +<p>On a corner in New York, around a Street Department wagon, not so very +long ago, five thousand men were fighting for shovels, fifty men to a +shovel—a tool for living a little longer.</p> + +<p>The problem of living in this modern world is the problem of finding +room in it. The crowd principle is so universally at work through modern +life that the geography of the world has been changed to conform to it. +We live in crowds. We get our living in crowds. We are amused in herds. +Civilization is a list of cities. Cities are the huge central dynamos of +all being. The power of a man can be measured to-day by the mile, the +number of miles between him and the city; that is, between him and what +the city stands for—the centre of mass.</p> + +<p>The crowd principle is the first principle of production. <a name="Page_20" id="Page_20"></a>The producer +who can get the most men together and the most dollars together controls +the market; and when he once controls the market, instead of merely +getting the most men and the most dollars, he can get all the men and +all the dollars. Hence the corporation in production.</p> + +<p>The crowd principle is the first principle of distribution. The man who +can get the most men to buy a particular thing from him can buy the most +of it, and therefore buy it the cheapest, and therefore get more men to +buy from him; and having bought this particular thing cheaper than all +men could buy it, it is only a step to selling it to all men; and then, +having all the men on one thing and all the dollars on one thing, he is +able to buy other things for nothing, for everybody, and sell them for a +little more than nothing to everybody. Hence the department store—the +syndicate of department stores—the crowd principle in commerce.</p> + +<p>The value of a piece of land is the number of footsteps passing by it in +twenty-four hours. The value of a railroad is the number of people near +it who cannot keep still. If there are a great many of these people, the +railroad runs its trains for them. If there are only a few, though they +be heroes and prophets, Dantes, Savonarolas, and George Washingtons, +trains shall not be run for them. The railroad is the characteristic +property and symbol of property in this modern age, and the entire value +of a railroad depends upon its getting control of a crowd—either a +crowd that wants to be where some other crowd is, or a crowd that wants +a great many tons of something that some other crowd has.</p> + +<p>When we turn from commerce to philosophy, we find the same principle +running through them both. The main thing in the philosophy of to-day is +the extraordinary emphasis of environment and heredity. A man's destiny +is the way the crowd of his ancestors ballot for his life. His soul—if +he has a soul—is an atom acted upon by a majority of other atoms.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21"></a>When we turn to religion in its different phases, we find the same +emphasis upon them all—the emphasis of mass, of majority. Not that the +church exists for the masses—no one claims this—but that, such as it +is, it is a mass church. While the promise of Scripture, as a last +resort, is often heard in the church about two or three gathered +together in God's name, the Church is run on the working conviction that +unless the minister and the elders can gather two or three hundred in +God's name, He will not pay any particular attention to them, or, if He +does, He will not pay the bills. The church of our forefathers, founded +on personality, is exchanged for the church of democracy, founded on +crowds; and the church of the moment is the institutional church, in +which the standing of the clergyman is exchanged for the standing of the +congregation. The inevitable result, the crowd clergyman, is seen on +every hand amongst us—the agent of an audience, who, instead of telling +an audience what they ought to do, runs errands for them morning and +noon and night. With coddling for majorities and tact for whims, he +carefully picks his way. He does his people as much good as they will +let him, tells them as much truth as they will hear, until he dies at +last, and goes to take his place with Puritan parsons who mastered +majorities, with martyrs who would not live and be mastered by +majorities, and with apostles who managed to make a new world without +the help of majorities at all.</p> + +<p>Theology reveals the same tendency. The measuring by numbers is found in +all belief, the same cringing before masses of little facts instead of +conceiving the few immeasurable ones. Helpless individuals mastered by +crowds are bound to believe in a kind of infinitely helpless God. He +stands in the midst of the crowds of His laws and the systems of His +worlds: to those who are not religious, a pale First Cause; and to those +who are, a Great Sentimentality far away in the heavens, who, in a kind +of vast weak-mindedness (a Puritan would say), seems to want everybody +to be good and hopes <a name="Page_22" id="Page_22"></a>they will, but does not quite know what to do +about it if they are not.</p> + +<p>Every age has its typical idea of heaven and its typical idea of hell +(in some of them it would be hard to tell which is which), and every +civilization, has its typical idea of God. A civilization with sovereign +men in it has a sovereign God; and a crowd civilization, reflecting its +mood on the heavens, is inclined to a pleasant, large-minded God, +eternally considering everybody and considering everything, but +inefficient withal, a kind of legislature of Deity, typical of +representative institutions at their best and at their worst.</p> + +<p>If we pass from our theology to our social science we come to the most +characteristic result of the crowd principle that the times afford. We +are brought face to face with Socialism, the millennium machine, the +Corliss engine of progress. It were idle to deny to the Socialist that +he is right—and more right, indeed, than most of us, in seeing that +there is a great wrong somewhere; but it would be impossible beyond this +point to make any claim for him, except that he is honestly trying to +create in the world a wrong we do not have as yet, that shall be large +enough to swallow the wrong we have. The term "Socialism" stands for +many things, in its present state; but so far as the average Socialist +is concerned, he may be defined as an idealist who turns to materialism, +that is, to mass, to carry his idealism out. The world having discovered +two great ideals in the New Testament, the service of all men by all +other men, and the infinite value of the individual, the Socialist +expects to carry out one of these ideals by destroying the other.</p> + +<p>The principle that an infinitely helpful society can be produced by +setting up a row of infinitely helpless individuals is Socialism, as the +average Socialist practises it. The average Socialist is the type of the +eager but effeminate reformer of all ages, because he seeks to gain by +machinery things nine tenths of the value of which to men is in gaining +them for themselves. <a name="Page_23" id="Page_23"></a>Socialism is the attempt to invent conveniences +for heroes, to pass a law that will make being a man unnecessary, to do +away with sin by framing a world in which it would be worthless to do +right because it would be impossible to do wrong. It is a philosophy of +helplessness, which, even if it succeeds in helplessly carrying its +helplessness out—in doing away with suffering, for instance—can only +do it by bringing to pass a man not alive enough to be capable of +suffering, and putting him in a world where suffering and joy alike +would be a bore to him.</p> + +<p>But the main importance of Socialism in this connection lies in the fact +that it does not confine itself to sociology. It has become a complete +philosophy of life, and can be seen penetrating with its subtle satire +on human nature almost everything about us. We have the cash register to +educate our clerks into pure and honest character, and the souls of +conductors can be seen being nurtured, mile after mile, by +fare-recorders. Corporations buy consciences by the gross. They are hung +over the door of every street car. Consciences are worked by pulling a +strap. Liverymen have cyclometres to help customers to tell the truth, +and the Australian ballot is invented to help men to be manly enough to +vote the way they think. And when, in the course of human events, we +came to the essentially moral and spiritual reform of a woman's right to +dress in good taste—that is, appropriately for what she is doing, what +did we proceed to do to bring it about? Conventions were held year after +year, and over and over, to get women to dress as they wanted to; dress +reform associations were founded, syndicates of courage were established +all over the land—all in vain; and finally,—Heaven help us!—how was +this great moral and spiritual reform accomplished? By an invention of +two wheels, one in front of the other. It was brought about by the Pope +Manufacturing Company of Hartford, Connecticut in two short years.</p> + +<p>Everything is brought about by manufacturing companies. <a name="Page_24" id="Page_24"></a>It is the +socialist spirit; the idea that, if we can only find it, there is some +machine that can surely be invented that will take the place of men: not +only of hands and feet, but of all the old-fashioned and lumbering +virtues, courage, patience, vision, common sense, and religion itself, +out of which they are made.</p> + +<p>But we depend upon machinery not only for the things that we want, but +for the brains with which we decide what we want. If a man wants to know +what he thinks, he starts a club; and if he wants to be very sure, he +calls a convention. From the National Undertakers' Association and the +Launderers' League to the Christian Endeavour Tournament and the World's +Congress—the Midway Pleasance of Piety—the Convention strides the +world with vociferousness. The silence that descends from the hills is +filled with its ceaseless din. The smallest hamlet in the land has +learned to listen reverent from afar to the vast insistent roar of It, +as the Voice of the Spirit of the Times.</p> + +<p>Every idea we have is run into a constitution. We cannot think without a +chairman. Our whims have secretaries; our fads have by-laws. Literature +is a club. Philosophy is a society. Our reforms are mass meetings. Our +culture is a summer school. We cannot mourn our mighty dead without +Carnegie hall and forty vice-presidents. We remember our poets with +trustees, and the immortality of a genius is watched by a standing +committee. Charity is an Association. Theology is a set of resolutions. +Religion is an endeavour to be numerous and communicative. We awe the +impenitent with crowds, convert the world with boards, and save the lost +with delegates; and how Jesus of Nazareth could have done so great a +work without being on a committee is beyond our ken. What Socrates and +Solomon would have come to if they had only had the advantage of +conventions it would be hard to say; but in these days, when the +excursion train is applied to wisdom; when, having little enough, we try +to make it more by <a name="Page_25" id="Page_25"></a>pulling it about; when secretaries urge us, +treasurers dun us, programs unfold out of every mail—where is the man +who, guileless-eyed, can look in his brother's face; can declare upon +his honour that he has never been a delegate, never belonged to +anything, never been nominated, elected, imposed on, in his life?</p> + +<p>Everything convenes, revolves, petitions, adjourns. Nothing stays +adjourned. We have reports that think for us, committees that do right +for us, and platforms that spread their wooden lengths over all the +things we love, until there is hardly an inch of the dear old earth to +stand on, where, fresh and sweet and from day to day, we can live our +lives ourselves, pick the flowers, look at the stars, guess at God, +garner our grain, and die. Every new and fresh human being that comes +upon the earth is manufactured into a coward or crowded into a machine +as soon as we get at him. We have already come to the point where we do +not expect to interest anybody in anything without a constitution. And +the Eugenic Society is busy now on by-laws for falling in love.</p> + +<p>What this means with regard to the typical modern man is, not that he +does not think, but that it takes ten thousand men to make him think. He +has a crowd soul, a crowd creed. Charged with convictions, galvanized +from one convention to another, he contrives to live, and with a sense +of multitude, applause, and cheers he warms his thoughts. When they have +been warmed enough he exhorts, dictates, goes hither and thither on the +crutch of the crowd, and places his crutch on the world, and pries on +it, if perchance it may be stirred to something. To the bigotry of the +man who knows because he speaks for himself has been added a new bigotry +on the earth—the bigotry of the man who speaks for the nation; who, +with a more colossal prejudice than he had before, returns from a mass +meeting of himself, and, with the effrontery that only a crowd can give, +backs his opinions with forty states, and walks the streets of his +native town in the uniform of all humanity. <a name="Page_26" id="Page_26"></a>This is a kind of fool that +has never been possible until these latter days. Only a very great many +people, all of them working on him at once, and all of them watching +every one else working at once, can produce this kind.</p> + +<p>Indeed, the crowd habit has become so strong upon us, has so mastered +the mood of the hour, that even you and I, gentle reader, have found +ourselves for one brief moment, perhaps, in a certain sheepish feeling +at being caught in a small audience. Being caught in a small audience at +a lecture is no insignificant experience. You will see people looking +furtively about, counting one another. You will make comparisons. You +will recall the self-congratulatory air of the last large audience you +had the honour to belong to, sitting in the same seats, buzzing +confidently to itself before the lecture began. The hush of +disappointment in a small audience all alone with itself, the mutual +shame of it, the chill in it, that spreads softly through the room, +every identical shiver of which the lecturer is hired to warm +through—all these are signs of the times. People look at the empty +chairs as if every modest, unassuming chair there were some great +personality saying to each and all of us: "Why are you here? Did you not +make a mistake? Are you not ashamed to be a party to—to—as small a +crowd as this?" Thus do we sit, poor mortals, doing obeisance to Empty +Chairs—we who are to be lectured to—until the poor lecturer who is to +lecture to us comes in, and the struggle with the Chairs begins.</p> + +<p>When we turn to education as it stands to-day, the same self-satisfied, +inflexible smile of the crowd is upon it all. We see little but the +massing of machinery, the crowding together of numbers of teachers and +numbers of courses and numbers of students, and the practical total +submergence of personality, except by accident, in all educated life.</p> + +<p>The infinite value of the individual, the innumerable consequences of +one single great teaching man, penetrating every pupil who knows him, +becoming a part of the universe, a part <a name="Page_27" id="Page_27"></a>of the fibre of thought and +existence to every pupil who knows him—this is a thing that belongs to +the past and to the inevitable future. With all our great institutions, +the crowds of men who teach in them, the crowds of men who learn in +them, we are still unable to produce out of all the men they graduate +enough college presidents to go around. The fact that at almost any +given time there may be seen, in this American land of ours, half a +score of colleges standing and waiting, wondering if they will ever find +a president again, is the climax of what the universities have failed to +do. The university will be justified only when a man with a university +in him, a whole campus in his soul, comes out of it, to preside over it, +and the soul that has room for more than one chair in it comes out of it +to teach in it.</p> + +<p>When we turn from education to journalism, the pressure of the crowd is +still more in evidence. To have the largest circulation is to have the +most advertising, and to have the most advertising means to have the +most money, and to have the most money means to be able to buy the most +ability, and to have the most ability means to keep all that one gains +and get more. The degradation of many of our great journals in the last +twenty years is but the inevitable carrying out of the syndicate method +in letters—a mass of contributors, a mass of subscribers, and a mass of +advertisers. So long as it gives itself over to the circulation idea, +the worse a newspaper is, the more logical it is. There may be a certain +point where it is bound to stop some time, because there will not be +enough bad people who are bad enough to go around; but we have not come +to it yet, and in the meantime about everything that can be thought of +is being printed to make bad people. If it be asserted that there are +not enough bad people to go around even now, it may be added that there +are plenty of good people to take their places as fast as they fail to +be bad enough, and that the good people who take the bad papers to find +fault with them are the ones who make such papers possible.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28"></a>The result of the crowd principle is the inevitable result. Our journals +have fallen off as a matter of course, not only in moral ideals (which +everybody realizes), but in brain force, power of expression, +imagination, and foresight—the things that give distinction and results +to utterance and that make a journal worth while. The editorial page has +been practically abandoned by most journals, because most journals have +been abandoned by their editors: they have become printed +counting-rooms. With all their greatness, their crowds of writers, and +masses of readers, and piles of cablegrams, they are not able to produce +the kind of man who is able to say a thing the kind of way that will +make everybody stop and listen to him, cablegrams and all. Horace +Greeley and Samuel Bowles and Charles A. Dana have passed from the +press, and the march of the crowd through the miles of their columns +every day is trampling on their graves. The newspaper is the mass +machine, the crowd thinker. To and fro, from week to week and from year +to year, its flaming headlines sway, now hither and now thither, where +the greatest numbers go, or the best guess of where they are going to +go; and Personality, creative, triumphant, masterful, imperious +Personality—is it not at an end? It were a dazzling sight, perhaps, to +gaze at night upon a huge building, thinking with telegraph under the +wide sky around the world, the hurrying of its hundred pens upon the +desks, and the trembling of its floors with the mighty coming of a Day +out of the grip of the press; but even this huge bewildering pile of +power, this aggregation, this corporation of forces, machines of souls, +glittering down the Night—does any one suppose It stands by Itself, +that It is its own master, that It can do its own will in the world? In +all its splendour It stands, weaving the thoughts of the world in the +dark; but that very night, that very moment, It lies in the power of a +little ticking-thing behind its doors. It belongs to that legislature of +information and telegraph, that owner of what happens in a day, called +the Associated Press.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29"></a>If the One who called Himself a man and a God had not been born in a +crowd, if he had not loved and grappled with it, and been crucified and +worshipped by it, He might have been a Redeemer for the silent, stately, +ancient world that was before He came, but He would have failed to be a +Redeemer for this modern world—a world where the main inspiration and +the main discouragement is the crowd, where every great problem and +every great hope is one that deals with crowds. It is a world where, +from the first day a man looks forth to move, he finds his feet and +hands held by crowds. The sun rises over crowds for him, and sets over +crowds; and having presumed to be born, when he presumes to die at last, +in a crowd of graves he is left not even alone with God. Ten human lives +deep they have them—the graves in Paris; and whether men live their +lives piled upon other men's lives, in blocks in cities or in the +apparent loneliness of town or country what they shall do or shall not +do, or shall have or shall not have—is it not determined by crowds, by +the movement of crowds? The farmer is lonely enough, one would say, as +he rests by his fire in the plains, his barns bursting with wheat; but +the murmur of the telegraph almost any moment is the voice of the crowd +to him, thousands of miles away, shouting in the Stock Exchange: "You +shall not sell your wheat! Let it lie! Let it rot in your barns!"</p> + +<p>And yet, if a man were to go around the earth with a surveyor's chain, +there would seem to be plenty of room for all who are born upon it. The +fact that there are enough square miles of the planet for every human +being on it to have several square miles to himself does not prove that +a man can avoid the crowd—that it is not a crowded world. If what a man +could be were determined by the square mile, it would indeed be a gentle +and graceful earth to live on. But an acre of Nowhere satisfies no one; +and how many square miles does a man want to be a nobody in? He can do +it better in a crowd, where every one else is doing it.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30"></a>In the ancient world, when a human being found something in the wrong +place and wanted to put it where it belonged, he found himself face to +face with a few men. He found he had to deal with these few men. To-day, +if he wants anything put where it belongs, he finds himself face to face +with a crowd. He finds that he has to deal with a crowd. The world has +telephones and newspapers now, and it has railroads; and if a man +proposes to do a certain thing in it, the telephones tell the few, and +the newspapers tell the crowd, and the crowd gets on to the railroad; +and before he rises from his sleep, behold the crowd in his front yard; +and if he can get as far as his own front gate in the thing he is going +for, he must be—either a statesman? a hero? or a great genius? None of +these. Let him be a corporation—of ideas or of dollars; let him be some +complex, solid, crowded thing, would he do anything for himself, or for +anybody else, or for everybody else, in a world too crowded to tell the +truth without breaking something, or to find room for it, when it is +told, without breaking something.</p> + +<p>This is the Crowd's World.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>What I have written I have written.</p> + +<p>I have been sitting and reading it. It is a mood. But there is an +implacable truth in it, I believe, that must be gotten out and used.</p> + +<p>As I have been reading I have looked up. I see the quiet little mountain +through my window standing out there in the sun. It looks around the +world as if nothing had happened; and the bobolinks out in the great +meadow are all flying and singing in the same breath and rowing through +the air, thousands of them, miles of them. They do not stop a minute.</p> + +<p>A moment ago while I was writing I heard the Child outside on the +piazza, four years old, going by my window back and forth, listening to +the crunch of her new shoes as if it were the <a name="Page_31" id="Page_31"></a>music of the spheres. Why +should not I do as well? I thought. The Child is merely seeing her shoes +as they are with as many senses and as many thoughts and desires at once +as she can muster, and with all her might.</p> + +<p>What if I were to see the world like the Child?</p> + +<p>Yesterday I went to Robert's Meadow. I saw three small city boys, with +their splendid shining rubber boots and their beautiful bamboo poles. +They were on their way home. They had only the one trout between them, +and that had been fondled, examined, and poked over and bragged about +until it was fairly stiff and brown with those boys—looked as if it had +been stolen out of a dried-herring box. They put it reverently back, +when I saw it, into their big basket. I smiled a little as I walked on +and thought how they felt about it.</p> + +<p>Then suddenly it was as if I had forgotten something. I turned and +looked back; saw those three boys—a little retinue to that solitary +fish—trudging down the road in the yellow sun. And I stood there and +wanted to be in it! Then I saw them going round the bend in the road +thirty years away.</p> + +<p>I still want to be one of those boys.</p> + +<p>And I am going to try. Perhaps, Heaven helping me, I will yet grow up to +them!</p> + +<p>I know that the way those three boys felt about the fish—the way they +folded it around with something, the way they made the most of it, is +the way to feel about the world.</p> + +<p>I side with the three boys. I am ready to admit that as regards +technical and comparatively unimportant details or as regards +perspective on the fish the boys may not have been right. It is possible +that they had not taken a point of view, measured in inches or volts or +foot-pounds, that was right and could last forever; but I know that the +spirit of their point of view was right—the spirit that hovered around +the three boys and around the fish that day was right and could last +forever.</p> + +<p>It is the spirit in which the world was made, and the spirit <a name="Page_32" id="Page_32"></a>in which +new worlds in all ages, and even before our eyes by Boys and Girls +and—God, are being made.</p> + +<p>It is only the boys and the girls (all sizes) who know about worlds. And +it is only boys and girls who are right.</p> + +<p>I heard a robin in the apple tree this morning out in the rain singing, +<i>"I believe! I believe!"</i></p> + +<hr /> + +<p>At the same time, I am glad that I have known and faced, and that I +shall have to know and face, the Crowd Fear.</p> + +<p>I know in some dogged, submerged, and speechless way that it is not a +true fear. And yet I want to move along the sheer edge of it all my +life. I want it. I want all men to have it, and to keep having it, and +to keep conquering it. I have seen that no man who has not felt it, who +does not know this huge numbing, numberless fear before the crowd, and +who may not know it again almost any moment, will ever be able to lead +the crowd, glory in it, die for it, or help it. Nor will any man who has +not defied it, and lifted his soul up naked and alone before it and +cried to God, ever interpret the crowd or express the will of the crowd, +or hew out of earth and heaven what the crowd wants.</p> + +<p>We want to help to express and fulfil a crowd civilization, we want to +share the crowd life, to express what people in crowds feel—the great +crowd sensations, excitements, the inspirations and depressions of those +who live and struggle with crowds.</p> + +<p>We want to face, and face grimly, implacably, the main facts, the main +emotions men are having to-day. And the main emotion men are having +to-day about our modern world is that it is a crowded world, that in the +nature of the case its civilization is a crowd civilization. Every other +important thing for this present age to know must be worked out from +this one. It is the main thing with which our religion has to deal, the +thing our literature is about, and the thing our arts <a name="Page_33" id="Page_33"></a>will be obliged +to express. Any man who makes the attempt to consider or interpret +anything either in art or life without a true understanding of the crowd +principle as it is working to-day, without a due sense of its central +place in all that goes on around us, is a spectator in the blur and +bewilderment of this modern world, as helpless in it, and as childish +and superficial in it, as a Greek god at the World's Fair, gazing out of +his still Olympian eyes at the Midway Pleasance.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>After the Crowd Fear there comes to most of us the machine fear. +Machines are the huge limbs or tentacles of crowds. As the crowds grow +the machines grow; grasping at the little strip of sky over us, at the +little patch of ground beneath our feet, they swing out before us and +beckon daily to us new hells and new heavens in our eyes.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34"></a>CHAPTER III</h2> + +<h3>THE MACHINE SCARE</h3> + + +<p>I have had occasion nearly every day for the past two weeks to pass by +an ancient churchyard on a great hillside not far from London. Most of +the stones are very old, and seem to have been thoughtfully and +reverently, flake by flake, wrought into their final form by +long-vanished hands. As I stand and watch them, with the yews and +cypresses flocking round them, it is as if in some sort of way they had +been surely wrought by the hand of love, so full are they of grief and +of joy, of devotion, of the very singing of the dead and of those who +loved them.</p> + +<p>When I walk on a little farther, and come to a small and new addition to +the churchyard, and look about me at the stones, I find myself suddenly +in quite a new company. So far as one could observe, looking at the +gravestones in the new churchyard, the people who died there died rather +thoughtlessly and mechanically, and as if nobody cared very much. Of +course, when one thinks a little further, one knows that this cannot be +true, and that the men and the women who gathered by these glib, trim, +capable-looking modern tombstones were as full of love and tenderness +and reverence before their dead as the others were—but the lines on the +stones give no sign. One never stops to read an epitaph on one of them; +one knows it would not be interesting, or really whisper to one the +strange, happy, human things of another world—even of this world, that +make the old tombstones such good company and so friendly to us. One +gives a glance at the stone and passes on. It was made by machinery, +apparently; a machine might have designed it, a machine might have died +and been <a name="Page_35" id="Page_35"></a>buried under it. One looks beyond it at all the others like +it—all the glib, competent-looking white stones. Were the silenced +people all machines under them, all mechanical, all made to a pattern +like their stones, like these strangely hard, brief tombstones standing +here at their heads, summing up their lives before us curtly, +heartlessly, on this gentle old hillside?</p> + +<p>I wondered.</p> + +<p>I looked back to the old eloquent cemetery that almost seemed to be +breathing things, and looked once more at the new.</p> + +<p>And as I stood and thought, they seemed to me to be two worlds—one the +world the people all about me are always saying sadly is going by, and +the other—well, the one we will have to have.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>As I look off from the hilltop at the great sloping countryside about +me, which stretches miles and miles, with its green fields, and bushy +treetops, its red roofs, its banners of steam from twenty railways, its +huge, grim, furious chimneys, its still, sleepy steeples, I also see two +worlds, the same two worlds over again that I saw in the churchyard, +except that they are all jumbled together—the complacent, capable, +cut-out, homeless-looking houses, the little snuggled-down old ones with +their happy trees about them and trails of cooking smoke. I see the same +two worlds standing and facing each other before me whichever way I +turn.</p> + +<p>And when I slip out of the churchyard from those two little separate +worlds of the dead, and move slowly down the long bustling village +street, and look into the faces of the living, the same two worlds that +were in the churchyard and on the hills seem to look at me out of the +faces of the living too.</p> + +<p>The faces go hurrying past me, worlds apart. Most people, I imagine, who +read these pages must have noticed the people's faces in the streets +nowadays—how they seem to have come <a name="Page_36" id="Page_36"></a>out of separate worlds into the +street a moment, and hurry past, and seem to be going back in a moment +more to separate worlds.</p> + +<p>There is hardly even a village footway left anywhere to-day where one +cannot see these two worlds, or the spirit of these two worlds, flitting +past one through the streets in people's faces, and nightly before our +eyes, struggling with each other to possess, to swallow away into itself +human souls, to master the fate of man upon the earth.</p> + +<p>One of these is the World of the Hand-made; the other is the +Machine-made World.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>As day by day I watch these two worlds with all their people in them +flocking past me, I have come to have certain momentary but recurrent +resentments and attractions, unaccountable strong emotions; and when I +try afterward to rationalize my emotions, as a man should, and give an +account of them to myself, and get them ready to use and face my age +with, and make myself strong and fit to live in an age, I find myself +with a great task before me. And yet one must do it; one cannot live in +an age strongly and fitly if one would rather be living in some other +age, or if it is an age with two worlds in it and one cannot make up +one's mind which is the world one wants and settle down quietly and live +in it. Then a strange thing happens, and always happens the moment I +begin to try to decide which of the two—the Hand-made World or the +Machine-made World—I will choose. I find that in an odd, confused, +groping, obstinate way I am bound to choose them both. In spite of all +its ugly ways—a kind of vast indifference it has to me, to everybody, +its magnificent heartlessness—I find I have come to take in the +Machine-made World a kind of boundless, half-secret pride and joy, for a +terrible and strange beauty there is in it. And then, too, even if I +wanted to give it up, I could not: neither I nor any man, nor all the +world <a name="Page_37" id="Page_37"></a>combined, could unthink to-day a hundred years, fold up a hundred +thousand miles of railway, tuck modern life all neatly up again in a +little, old, snug, safe, lovable Hand-made World. There must be some way +out, some connecting link between the Hand-made and the Machine-made. We +have merely lost it for a moment.</p> + +<p>Which way shall we turn? And so at last to the little Thing through +which the whole world whispers to me on my desk, to the mighty railways +that beckon past my door, to the airships that cannot be stilled, and to +the rolling mills that will not be silenced, I turn at last! I turn to +the Machines Themselves. Half-singing and half-cursing, I have faced +them. There is some way in which they can answer and can be made to +answer—can be made to give me and the men about me the kind of world we +want. I try to analyze it and think it out. What is the thing, the real +thing in the Hand-made World, that fills me with pride and joy, and that +I cannot and will not give up? Is not the real thing that is in it +something that can be or might be freed from it, exhaled from it, +something that might be in some new form saved, made an atmosphere or a +spirit and passed on? And what is it in the new Machine-made World +which, in spite of the splendid joy, a rough new, wild religion there is +in it, keeps daily filling me as I go past machines with this +contradictory obstinate dread of them? After a time I have made a little +cleared space in my mind, a little breathing room. It has come to me +from thinking that what is beautiful in the Hand-made World perhaps is +not these particular Hand-made things themselves at which I so delight, +but the Hand-made spirit of the men who made them which the men put into +the things. And perhaps what is full of death and fear in the +Machine-made World is not the machines themselves, but the Machine-made +spirit in which the men who run the machines have made the machines +work. Perhaps the Hand-made spirit is pervasive, eternal. Perhaps it can +escape like a spirit, and can live where <a name="Page_38" id="Page_38"></a>it will live, and do what it +will do, like a spirit, and possess the body that it wills to possess. +Perhaps the Hand-made spirit is still living around me to-day, and is +not only living, but is living in a more unspeakable, unbounded body +than any spirit has ever lived in before, and is to-day before our eyes, +laying its huge iron fingers around our little earth, and holding the +oceans in its hand, and brushing away mountains with a breath, until we +have Man at last playing all night through the sky, with visions and +airships and telescopes. His very words walk on the air with soft and +unseen feet.</p> + +<p>It is the Hand-made spirit that creates machines. The machines +themselves are still the mighty children of the men who move and work in +the Hand-made spirit; and the men who glory in them, the men who bring +them forth, who think them out, and who create them, and who do the +great and mighty things with them, are still the Hand-made men.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>This leads us up to the question we are all asking ourselves every day. +"How can a machine-made world be run in the spirit of a hand-made +world?" The particular form in which the question has been put, which is +taken from "Inspired Millionaires" is as follows:</p> + +<p>"The idea that there is something in a machine simply as a machine which +makes it inherently unspiritual is based upon the experience of the +world; but it is, after all, a rather amateur and juvenile world with +machines as yet. Its ideas are in their first stages, and are based for +the most part upon the world's experience with second-rate men, working +in second-rate factories—men who have been bullied, and could be +bullied, by the machines they worked with into being machines +themselves. No one would think of denying that men who let machines get +the better of them, either in their minds or their bodies, in any walk +of life, grow unspiritual and mechanical. But it does not take a machine +to make a machine out of <a name="Page_39" id="Page_39"></a>a man. Anything will do it if the man will let +it. Even the farmer who is out under the great free dome of heaven, and +working in wonder every day of his life, grows like a clod if he buries +his soul alive in the soil. But farming has been tried many thousands of +years, and the other kind of farmer is known by everybody—the farmer +who is master over the soil; who, instead of becoming an expression of +the soil himself, makes the soil express him. The next thing that is +going to happen is that every one is going to know the other kind of +mechanic. It is cheerfully admitted that the kind of mechanic we largely +have now, who allows himself to be a watcher of a machine, a +turner-of-something for forty years, can hardly be classed as vegetable +life. He is not even organic matter except in a very small part of +himself.</p> + +<p>"But it is not the mechanical machine which makes the man unspiritual. +It is the mechanical man beside the machine. A master at a piano (which +is a machine) makes it a spiritual thing; and a master at a +printing-press, like William Morris, makes it a free and artistic and +self-expressive thing."</p> + +<p>I spent a day a little while ago in walking through a factory. I went +past miles of machines—great glass roofs of sunshine over them—and +looked in the faces of thousands of men. As I went through the machines +I kept looking to and fro between the machines and the men who stood +beside them, and sometimes I came back and looked again at the machines +and the men beside them; and every machine, or nearly every machine, I +saw (any one could see it in that factory) was making a man of somebody. +One could see the spirit of the man who invented the machine, and the +spirit of the man who worked with it, and the spirit of the man who +owned it and who placed it there with the man, all softly, powerfully +running together. There were exceptions, and every now and then one +came, of course, upon the man who seemed to be simply another and +somewhat different contrivance or attachment to his machine—some part +that had been left over and thought of last, and <a name="Page_40" id="Page_40"></a>had not been done as +well as the others; but the factory, taken as a whole, from the +manager's offices and the great counting-room, and from the tall +chimneys to the dump, seemed to me to have something fresh and human and +unwonted about it. It seemed to be a factory that had a look, a look of +its own. It was like a vast countenance. It had features, an expression. +It had an air—well, one must say it, of course, if one is driven to it: +the factory had a soul, and was humming it. Any one could have seen why +by going into his office and talking a little while with the owner, or +by even not talking to him—by seeing him look up from his desk. After +walking through several miles of his personality, and up and down and +down and up the corridors of his mind, one did not really need to meet +him except as a matter of form and as a finishing touch. One had been +visiting with him all along: to look in his face was merely to sum it +up, to see it all, the whole place, over again in one look. One did not +need to be surprised; one might have known what such a man would be +like—that such a factory could only be conceived and wrought by a man +of genius, a kind of lighted-up man. A man who had put not only +skylights in his buildings, but skylights in his men, would have to have +a skylight in himself (a skylight with a motor attachment, of course).</p> + +<p>If one were to try to think in nature or in art of something that would +be like him—well, some kind of transcendental engine, I should say, +running softly, smoothly outdoors in a great sunshine, would have given +one a good idea of him. But, however this may be, it certainly would +have been quite impossible to go through his factory and ever say again +that machines do not and could not have souls, or at least over-souls, +and that men who worked with machines did not and could not have souls +as fast as they were allowed to.</p> + +<p>A few days later I went through another factory, and I came out weary +and spent at night, feeling as unreasonable and almost as hateful about +machines, and as discouraged <a name="Page_41" id="Page_41"></a>about the people who had to work with them +as John Ruskin did in those first early days when the Factory Chimney +first lifted its long black flag upon our earth, and bullied great +cities into cowards and slaves, and all the great, quiet-hearted +nations, and began making for us—all around us, before our eyes, as +though in a kind of jeer at us, and at our queer, pretty, helpless +little religions—the hell we had ceased to believe in.</p> + +<p>The hell is here, and is going to be here apparently as long as may be +necessary for us to see it and believe in it once more. If a hell on our +own premises, shut down hard over our lives here and now, is what is +necessary to make us religious and human once more, if we are reduced to +it, and if having a hard, literal hell—one of our own—is our only way +of seeing things, of fighting our way through to the truth, and of +getting once more decisive, manful, commanding ideas of good and evil, I +for one can only be glad we have Pittsburgs and Sheffields to hurry us +along and soon have it over with.</p> + +<p>But while, like Ruskin, any one can look about the machines and see +hell, he can see hell to-day, unlike Ruskin, with heaven lined up close +beside it. The machines have come to have souls. The machines we can see +all about us have taken sides. We can all of us see the machines about +us to-day like vast looms, weaving in and weaving out the fate of the +world, the fate of the churches, the fate of the women and the little +children, and the very fate of God; and everything about us we can see +turning at last on what we are doing with the machines that are about +us, and what we are letting our machines do with us.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>It has cleared my mind, and at least helped me to live side by side with +machines better from day to day, to consider what these two souls or +spirits in the machines are, and what they are doing and likely to do. +If one knows them and one <a name="Page_42" id="Page_42"></a>sees them, and sees how they are working, it +is easier to take sides and join in and help.</p> + +<p>It would seem to me that there are two spirits in machinery—the spirit +of weariness, weakness, of inventing ways of getting out of work; and +there is the spirit in the machines, too, of moving mountains, +conquering the sea and air, of working harder and lifting one's work +over to more heroic, to more splendid and difficult, and almost +impossible things. It is these two spirits that are fighting for the +possession and control of our machine civilization. I watch the machines +and the men beside them and see which side they are on. The labourer who +is doing as little work as he dares for his wages and the capitalist who +is giving as little service as he dares for his money are on the one +side (the vast, lazy, mean majority of employers and employees), and +there may be seen standing on the other side against them, battling for +our world, another small but mighty group made up of the labourer who +loves his work more than his wages, and the capitalist who loves the +thing he makes more than the profit. In other words, the fate of our +modern civilization, with all its marvellous machines on it, its art +galleries and its churches, is all hanging to-day on the battle between +the spirit of achievement, the spirit of creating things, and the spirit +of weariness or the spirit of thinking of ways of getting out of things.</p> + +<p>It does not take very long to see which one prefers when one considers +the problem of living in one world or the other. If we are to take our +choice between living in a world run by tired men and a world run by +inspired ones, most of us will have little difficulty in deciding which +we would prefer, and which one we are bound to have. I have been moved +to come forward with the idea of inspired employers—or, as I have +called it, "Inspired Millionaires"—because it would seem to me inspired +employers are the very least we can ask for; for certainly if even our +employers cannot be inspired or rested and strong, we cannot expect +their overworked workmen to be. <a name="Page_43" id="Page_43"></a>There is no hope for us but to write +our books and to live our lives in such a way as to help put the world +in the hands of the Strong, and to help keep its institutions and +customs out of the hands of the overworked. Overworked mechanical +employers and overworked labourers are the last men to solve the problem +of the overworked, except in a small, tired, mean, resentful, temporary +way.</p> + +<p>And so, as I look about me and watch the machines and the men who are +working with the machines, or owning them, it is on this principle that +I find myself taking sides. I will not live, if I can help it, in a +world that is conceived and arranged and managed by tired and overworked +and mechanical men. Have I not seen tired, mechanical men, whole +generations of them, vast mobs of them, the men who have let the +machines mow down their souls? The first thing I have come to ask of a +man, if he is to be at the head of a machine—whether it is a machine +called a factory, or a machine called a Government or a city, or a +machine called a nation—is, <i>Is he tired?</i> I have cast my lot once for +all—and as it seems to me, too, the lot of the world—with those men +who are rested, with the surplus men, the men who want to work more not +less, who are still and gentle and strong in their hearts, steady in +their imaginations, great men—men who are not driven to being +self-centred or driven to being class-centred, who can be world-centred +and inspired.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>When one has made this decision, that one will work for a world in +control of men who are strong, one suddenly is brought face to face with +a fact in our machine civilization which probably is quite new, and +which the spirit of man has never had to face in any age before.</p> + +<p>For the first time in the history of the world, machinery has made it +possible for the world to get into the hands of the weak.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44"></a>The Gun began it—the gun in a coward's hands may side with the weak, +and the machine in the hands of the weak may temporarily give the world +a list or a trend, and leave it leaning on the wrong side.</p> + +<p>The Trust, for instance, which is really an extremely valuable +invention, and perhaps, on the whole, the most important machine of +modern times when it is used to defend the rights of the people, is a +very different thing when it is pointed at them. We have to-day, not +unnaturally, the spectacle of perhaps nine people out of ten getting up +and saying in chorus all through the world that Trusts ought to be +abolished; and yet it cannot honestly be said that there is really +anything about the trust-machine—any more than any other machine—that +is inherently wicked, or mechanical and heartless. Our real objection to +the trust-machines is not to the machines themselves, but to the fact +that they are, or happen to be (judging each Trust by itself), in the +hands of the weak and of the tired—of men, that is, who have no spirit, +no imagination about people; mechanical-minded men, who, at least in the +past, have taken the easiest and laziest course in business—that of +making all the money they can.</p> + +<p>The moment we see the Trusts in the hands of the strong men, the men who +are unwilling to slump back into mere money-making, and who face daily +with hardihood and with joy the feat of weaving into business several +strands of value at once, making things and making money and making men +together, the Trust will become a vast machine of human happiness, +lifting up and pulling on the world for all of us day and night.</p> + +<p>If our labouring men to-day are to be got out from under the machines, +we can only bring it to pass by doing everything we can in directors' +meetings or in labor unions or as buyers or as journalists—whatever we +may be—to keep the trust-machines in this world out of the hands of the +tired, weak, and mechanical-minded men.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45"></a>And the things that have been happening to the trust-machines, or are +about to happen to them, have happened and are beginning to happen +before our eyes to the machines themselves. The machines of flame and +iron wheels and men in monstrous factories which the philosophers and +the poets and the very preachers have doomed our world with are passing +through the same evolution as the trust-machines, and shall be seen at +last through the dim struggle yielding themselves, bending their iron +wills to the same indomitable human spirit, the same slow, stern, +implacable will of the soul of man. They shall be inspired machines.</p> + +<p>Now for a long time we have seen (for the most part) the weak and +mechanical-minded employer, the man who takes the line of least +resistance in business, on every hand about us, making his employees +mechanical-minded. The men have not been able to work without machines +to work with, and as they have been obliged to come to him to get the +machines, he has adopted the policy of letting himself fall into the +weakest and easiest way of keeping his men under his own control. He +takes the machines the men have come to him to get, and turns them back +against them, points them at their lives, stops their minds with them, +their intelligence and manhood, the very hope and religion with which +they live; and of course, when men have had machines pointed at them +long enough, one sees them on every hand being mowed down in rows into +machines themselves—as deadly and as hopeless to make a civilization +out of, or a nation out of, or to give votes to, or to have for fathers +as machines would be, as iron or leather or wood.</p> + +<p>In the meantime, however, we seem to have been developing—partly by +competition and partly by combination and by experience—employers who +are not mechanical-minded, who have spirit themselves, and who believe +in it and can use it in others; who find ways of adjusting the hours, +the wages, and the conditions of work for the men, so that what is most +valuable <a name="Page_46" id="Page_46"></a>in them, their spirit, their imaginations, their hourly +good-will, can all be turned into the business, can all daily be used as +the most important part of the working equipment of the factory. These +employers have found (by believing it long enough to try it) that live +men can do better and more marketable work than dead ones. If the great +slow-moving majority of our modern machine employers were not +mechanical-minded, it would not be necessary to prove to them +categorically the little platitude (which even people who have observed +cab-horses know) that the living is more valuable than the half-dead, +and that live men can do better and more marketable work than half-dead +ones.</p> + +<p>But, of course, if they are not convinced by imagination or by arguments +or by figures, they may have to be convinced by losing their business; +for the most spirited employers, those who take the more difficult and +creative course of making money and men together, are sure to be the +employers who will get and keep the most spirited men, and are sure to +crowd out of the market in their own special line employers who can only +get and keep mechanical-minded ones.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>It would be hard to overstate the importance of the battle now going on +among the trades unions between the spirited labourers and the tired +ones, and among the manufacturers between the inspired employers and the +mechanical-minded ones.</p> + +<p>For the time being, at least, it is the inspired employers who have most +power to change the conditions of labour and to free the +mechanical-minded slaves. It is they who are standing to-day on the +great strategical ground of our time. They hold the pass of human life. +People cannot expect to be inspired in crowds. Crowds are too unwieldy +and too inconvenient to act quickly. The people can only concentrate +their energies on getting and demanding inspired employers, on +<a name="Page_47" id="Page_47"></a>insisting that the men who for eight or nine hours a day are pouring in +with their wages their thoughts, and their motives, the very hope with +which they live, into their lives, shall be the champions of the people, +shall represent them and act for them, as they are not placed to act for +themselves, and with more imagination than they can yet expect to have +for themselves. If our labouring men of to-day are going to struggle out +from under the machines, they can only do it by doing all that they can +in labour unions and in the press and at the polls to keep the machines +in this world out of the hands of tired and mechanical-minded owners.</p> + +<p>But probably the more immediate rescue from the evil or mechanicalness +in machines is not going to come from the employers on the one hand or +the employees on the other, but from having the employees in the Trades +Unions and the employers in the directors' meetings combining together +to keep in subordinate places where they cannot hurt others all men, +whether directors or employees, who do not work harder than they have +to, and who have not the brains to do their work for something besides +money. The men who are like this will of course be pitied and duly +considered, but they will be kept where they will not have power to +control other men, or where by force of position or by mere majority +they will be able to bully other men to work as mechanically as they do. +Workmen who do not want to become machines can only better conditions by +combination with so-called inspired employers—employers who work harder +than they have to, who dote on the great human difficulties of work, who +choose not the easiest but the most perfect way of doing things, who are +never mechanical themselves, and will not let their men be if they can +help it. I have liked to call these employers inspired millionaires. I +would rather have the machine owner or employer a millionaire, because +the more machines an inspired employer can own, the more he can buy and +get away from the uninspired ones, the sooner will the right of labour +<a name="Page_48" id="Page_48"></a>and the will of the people be accomplished. When the machines are in +the hands of inspired and strong and spirited men—men of real +competence or genius for business, the machines will be seen on every +hand around us as the engines of war against evil, against slavery, the +whirling weapons of the Spirit.</p> + +<p>Even now, in dreams have I stood and watched them—the will of the +people like a flail in their mighty hands—this vast army of +machines—go thundering past, driving the uninspired and mechanical off +the face of the earth.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2> + +<h3>THE STRIKE—AN INVENTION FOR MAKING CROWDS THINK</h3> + + +<p>When I was arranging to slip over from New York and get something I very +much wanted in England last spring, I found myself held up suddenly in +all my plans because some men on the docks had decided that there was +something that they wanted too. They decided that I and thousands of +other people in New York would have to wait over on the shores of +America until they got it.</p> + +<p>After postponing my plans until things had settled down, I took passage, +and in due time found myself standing on English soil, only to be +informed that, while I might be allowed perhaps at least to stand on +English soil, that was really as much as I could expect. I could not go +anywhere because a number of men on the railways had decided that there +was something they wanted and that I would have to wait till they got +it.</p> + +<p>I could go down and look at the silent, cold locomotives on the rails, +and I could be as wistful and hopeful as I liked about getting up to +London, but these men had decided that there was something that they +wanted and I must wait.</p> + +<p>I could not think of anything I had ever done to these men, and what had +Liverpool and London done to them?</p> + +<p>After I was duly settled in London, and had begun to get into its little +ways, and was busily driving about and attending to my business as I had +planned, 6,000 more men suddenly wanted something, brought me up to a +full stop one rainy day, and said that they had decided that if I wanted +to ride I would have to walk, or that I would have to poke dismally +about in a 'bus, or <a name="Page_50" id="Page_50"></a>worm my way through under the ground. As I +understood it, there was something that they wanted and something that +they were going to get; and while of course in a way, they recognized +that there might be something that I wanted too, I would have to wait +till they got theirs.</p> + +<p>I could not think of anything I had ever done to them, nor could I see +what the thousands of other good people in London that I saw walking and +puddling about, or watched waiting twenty minutes or so with long, +hopeful, dogged whistles for cabs, had done to them.</p> + +<p>A few days more, and my morning paper tells me suddenly of some more men +who wanted something—this time up in Lancashire. They had decided that +they wouldn't let some two or three hundred thousand other men go to +their work until they got it. They hushed cities to have their own way. +Day by day I watched them throwing the silence of the cities in their +employers' faces, closing shops, closing up railroads, telling the world +it must pay more for the clothes on its back, and all because—a certain +Mr. and Mrs. Riley of Accrington, North Lancashire did not like or did +not think that they liked, the North Lancashire Trades Union. (The +general idea seemed to be to have all the others join in, +everywhere—fifty-four million spindles, and four hundred and forty +thousand looms—and wait and keep perfectly still until Mr. and Mrs. +Riley could make up their minds.)</p> + +<p>And now this present week, morning after morning I take up my paper and +read that 500,000 miners want something. I look in my fire dubiously day +by day. I may have to go home to America in a few weeks to get warm.</p> + +<p>Of course it is only fair to say at the outset that this little series +of impressions, or sketches, as one may say, of Civilization as I have +seen it since arriving in England are of such a nature that I need not +have come over to England to observe them. I would be the last to deny +that the same conveniences for being disagreeable and for getting in the +way and for making a <a name="Page_51" id="Page_51"></a>general muss of Life can be offered almost any +time in my own hopeful and blundering country.</p> + +<p>What more immediately concerns me in these things is that, having +happened, there can be no doubt that they have some valuable and worthy +meaning for me and for other people that I ought to get out of them.</p> + +<p>One cannot stand by and see a great civilization like our +English-speaking civilization, with its ocean liners, cathedrals, and +aeroplanes, being undignified and inefficient before one's eyes and even +a little ridiculous, without trying to see if it does not serve some +purpose. There must be something beyond, something further and deeper, +something newborn about it, which shall be worth our while. Strikes seem +to be common people's way of thinking things out. If they had more +imagination, they would know what they were going to think beforehand, +without so much trouble perhaps; but so long as they have not, and so +long as it is really true perhaps that all these millions of levers and +wheels and engines will have to be stopped, so that the rich +mechanical-minded people who own them and the poor mechanical-minded +people who work with them can think better, we will have to be glad at +least that they are thinking, and we will have to hope that they are +thinking fast, and will soon have it over with. In the meantime, while +they are thinking, we can think too.</p> + +<p>It is never fair to lump people together, and there are always +exceptions and special reasons to consider; but, speaking roughly, it is +fair to lay it down as a general principle that it is apt to be the more +common kind of employers and employees who find it difficult to think, +and who need strikes to think with. When we see 175,000 weavers striking +in Lancashire, and the Trades Unions insisting on the discharge of +Non-Union men, and employers being willing to recognize the Unions but +being unwilling to be controlled by them, most of us find ourselves +taking sides very quickly. We are often amazed to see how quickly we +take sides, and what amazes some of us most is our apparent +<a name="Page_52" id="Page_52"></a>inconsistency. We find ourselves now on the Union side and now on the +employer side in the dispute between Capital and Labour. We never know +when we take up the morning paper, some of us, which side will be our +next; and very often, if we were suddenly asked why, on reading quietly +about a new dispute in the morning paper, we had taken promptly one side +rather than the other, almost unconsciously, before we knew it we would +not perhaps be able to say at once. The other day I became a little +alarmed at myself at what looked at first like a kind of moral weakness, +and inability to stand still on one side or the other in the contest +between Labour and Capital; and I tried to think my way sternly through, +and decide why it was my mind seemed to waver from one side to the +other, and seemed so inconsistent and inefficient.</p> + +<p>It seems to me I have just discovered a certain thread of consistency, +as I look back over many disputes.</p> + +<p>As near as I can remember, I find the side that uses force, or that uses +the most force, invariably turns me against it. If, as I read, I find +that both sides are using force, I find myself against both sides. I +find myself wishing, in spite of my dislike of Socialism, that the +nation had the power, when a quarrelsome industry turns to the people in +the street and stops them in what they are doing, and tells the people +in the street that they cannot ride, or that they shall not sleep, or +that they cannot eat—when a quarrelsome industry insists on keeping the +whole world up all night because it has a Stomach Ache, I feel suddenly +that the people ought to be able to take the industry away and put it +into such hands that the people in the streets will be protected; into +hands that will make the industry behave so that it won't have a stomach +ache. An industry with a stomach ache always has it because somebody in +it has been over-eating and getting more than their share, and is +incompetent and unfit; and obviously it should have its freedom, its +privilege of selecting its food, taken away from it until it behaves.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53"></a>Always allowing for exceptions, we may put it down as a general truth +that, when we find a cause using force or mere advantage of position, it +is because there is incompetence or lack of brains in those who conduct +it, and the cure lies, not in more force, but in more brains. One cannot +help being angered by force, because one knows that it is not only not a +remedy, but is itself the cause of all incompetence and blindness in +business. Force merely heaps the incompetence and blindness up, +postpones coöperation, defeats the mutual interest which is the very +substance of business efficiency in a nation. Force is itself the injury +mounting up more and more, which it seeks to cure.</p> + +<p>The most likely way to prevent industrial trouble would seem to be to +have employers and managers and foremen who have a genius for getting +men to trust and believe in them. We are getting smoke-consumers, +computing machines, and the next contrivance is going to be the employer +who has the understanding spirit, and who sees the cash value of human +genius, the value in the market of genius for being fair and getting on +with people. Arbitration boards are at best (as they themselves would +say) stupid and negative things, and though better than nothing, as a +rule merely postpone evil or change symptoms. No one can ever really +arbitrate for any one else either in industry or marriage except for a +moment. The trouble lies deep down inside the people who keep needing +arbitration. As long as these people are still there, and as long as +incompetent employers or employees are there, there is bound to be +trouble.</p> + +<p>Turning out incompetent employers and incompetent labourers is the only +way. We are getting rid of them as rapidly as possible. All business in +the last resort turns on brains for being human and understanding +people. Business, as people say, is partly business and business is +partly economics, but more than anything else, in modern times, business +is psychology.</p> + +<p>Success is the science of being believed in. Incompetent <a name="Page_54" id="Page_54"></a>employers and +incompetent labourers are already being turned out, and are bound to be +turned out implacably more and more, by the competitive nature of modern +business. Under present conditions, if we have in each industry one +single competent employing firm, with brains for being fair and brains +for being far-sighted, and for being thoughtful of others—in short, +with brains for being believed in—the control of that industry soon +falls into their hands. People who use force instead of brains are +second-rate, are out of the spirit of the times, and are going by. And +this seems to be the spirit, too, which is to govern the more efficient +Labour Unions as well as the more efficient Trusts.</p> + +<p>If it were possible to collect the names in England and America of the +men in each industry where brains were being personally believed in, we +would have a list of the leaders of England and America for the next +fifty years. Having a soul in business pays, not because it affords a +fine motive power, but because it affords a practical and conclusive +method of driving the devil out of business. He is being driven out of +industry, one industry at a time, by men who get on better without him; +and this is going to go on until the ability to do this—to crowd out +the devil, to get the devil out of machines and factories, out of the +machinery of organization—the power to keep the devil out of things and +out of people, is recognized by everybody as the greatest, most subtle, +most victorious and universal market-value in the world. The men who can +be believed in most will get the most business, and, what is still more +important, the men who can make men believe in them most will be able to +hire the employees who can be believed in most, and will get a monopoly +of the efficiency of the world; and though the men who can be believed +in less may be able to continue for a time to do their work and go +through all their old motions as well as they can, with all their old +lumbering, pathetic machinery of watching each other and suspecting each +other and fighting each other humped up on their backs, they can never +hope to compete with free-moving, honest men, who deal directly and +<a name="Page_55" id="Page_55"></a>openly and in a few words for their employees, jobbers, consumers, and +the public, without any vast machinery of suspicion to bother with. It +is a most curious, local, temporary, back-county idea, the idea that, +for sheer industrial economy, for simple cheap conclusive finance, there +is anything on earth in business that will take the place of +old-fashioned human personal prestige—the prestige of the man who has a +genius for being believed in.</p> + +<p>In a way, perhaps the recent strike among the London cabmen is an +instance of what is really the essential issue in every strike. The +bottom fact about the taxi chauffeurs, stated simply, was that they did +not believe in their employers. They believed that, if the precise +figures were known, their employers were getting more than their share. +On the other hand, the bottom fact about the employers was that they did +not and could not believe that, if the precise figures were known, the +cabmen were not getting more than their share. They insisted that the +cabmen should publish, or make known, the precise figures of their +extras. The cabmen declined to do it, and it made them look for the +moment perhaps as if they were wrong. But were they necessarily wrong? +Was it really true that they had any more reason to trust their +employers than their employers had to trust them? The cabmen might quite +honestly and justly have said to the owners: "What we want is an honest, +impeccable little dividend-recorder fastened on the back of every owner, +as well as on our machines and on us. Then we will publish our extras."</p> + +<p>The determining and important fact of economics in the last analysis +always turns out to be some human fact, some fact about people. It is +really true that just now, in the present half-stage of +machine-industry, employers should nearly all be compelled to go about +in this world with fare-recorders on their backs. Employees too. This +would be the logical thing to do; and as it is impracticable, and as +every business must have certain elements of secrecy in it in order to +be competent, the <a name="Page_56" id="Page_56"></a>only alternative is to have in charge men with enough +genius for being believed in and for taking measures to be believed +in—to keep employees believing in them, in spite of secrecy. Under +these conditions, it cannot be long before we will see in every business +the men being put forward on both sides who have a genius for being +believed in. Managers and superintendents will be put in office +everywhere who see the cash value, the economy, of the simple, +old-fashioned power in a man of a genius for being believed in; +employers with the power of inspiring more and better work from their +workmen; Labour men with the power of inspiring employers to believe in +them, of inspiring their employers to put up money, stock, or profits on +their belief—on the belief that workmen are capable of the highest +qualities of manhood: hard work, loyalty, persistence, and faith toward +a common end. I have preferred to have this inspired employer a +millionaire, because the more capital he has the more men he can employ, +and the more rapidly the other kind of millionaire, the blind, +old-fashioned butter of Labour, will be driven out of business.</p> + +<p>Little can be done with one book, but at this special juncture, this +psychological moment for copartnership and the spirit of copartnership, +when all the world is touched to the quick by great strikes—at a time +when one can sit still and almost hear the nations think—there are some +of us who hope that the case we are trying to make out for copartnership +between Capital and Labour will be of use to those who are trying to do +things, and who for the moment find themselves foiled at every point by +men who have given up believing in human nature. We wish to put +ourselves on record, and to say that we do believe in human nature, and +that we believe not only that the inspired employer is going to be +evolved by the Crowd, but that the Crowd is going to recognize him and +is going to take sides with him, and that the Crowd is going to justify +him, make him succeed, is going to make his success its own success. In +other words, we believe in heroes, crowds, and goodness; in men of +<a name="Page_57" id="Page_57"></a>heroic gifts—who are fit and meet to interpret the wills and desires +of crowds—who are great men or Crowd-Men, crowds in spirit themselves.</p> + +<p>I would like to try to express the type of modern man who, as it seems +to me, is about to prove himself the real ruler of our modern world, the +silent master of what the crowds shall think. It has seemed to me that +it is going to be a man of a marked type, and of a particular +temperament, to whom we will have to look in our new and crowded world +for the crowd-interpreter, or man who touches the imagination of crowds.</p> + +<p>As our whole labour problem to-day turns on our being able to touch the +imagination of Crowds, it may not be uninteresting in the next chapter +to consider what a man who can do this will probably be like and the +spirit in which he will do it.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58"></a>CHAPTER V</h2> + +<h3>THE CROWD-MAN—AN INVENTION FOR MAKING CROWDS SEE</h3> + + +<p>When Wilbur Wright flew around the Statue of Liberty in New York the +other day, his doing it was a big event; but a still bigger event, as it +seems to some of us, was the way he felt about New York when he did it. +All New York could not make him show off. Hundreds of thousands of +people on roofs could look up at the sky over New York, for him to go +by, all that they liked. He slipped down to Washington without saying +anything, on the 3:25 train, to attend to flying as part of the serious +business of the world.</p> + +<p>Why fly around a little town like New York, or show your bright wings in +the light, or circle the Statue of Liberty for fun, when you are +reconstructing civilization, and binding a whole planet together, and +wrapping the heavens close down around the earth, and making railroads +everywhere out of the air? New York is always a little superficial and +funny about itself. All it needs to do, it seems to think, is to snap +its fingers at a man of genius anywhere on this broad world, whisper to +him pleasantly, and he will trot promptly up, of course, and do his +little turn for it.</p> + +<p>But not Wilbur Wright. Wilbur Wright would not give two million people +an encore, or even come back to bow. As one looked over from Mount Tom +one could see all New York black and solid on the tops of its roofs and +houses looking up into a great hole of air for him, and Wilbur Wright +slipping quietly off down to Washington and leaving them there, a whole +great city under the sky, with its heads up!</p> + +<p><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59"></a>A little experience like this has been what New York has needed for a +long time. It takes a scientist to do these things. I wish there were +some poet who would do as well. Even a prophet up above New York—or +seer of men and of years—glinting his wings in the light, the New York +<i>Sun</i> and the <i>World</i> and the <i>Times</i> down below, all their opera-glasses +trained on him, and all those little funny reporters running helplessly +about, all the people pouring out from Doctor Parkhurst's church to +look up.... It would be something.</p> + +<p>Probably there are very few capitals in the world—Paris, Berlin, or +London—that would not be profoundly stirred and possibly much improved +by having some man suddenly appear up over them, who would be so +interested in what he was doing that he would forget to notice whether +anybody was looking—who would be capable of slipping off quietly and +leaving an entire city with its heads up, and going on and attending to +business.</p> + +<p>There have been times when we would have been relieved, some of us, if +the North Pole could have been discovered in this way and without large +audiences tagging. There are some of us who will never cease to regret +as long as we live that the North Pole could not have waited a little. +We would rather have had Wilbur Wright discover it. One can imagine how +he would do it: fly gracefully up to it all by himself, and discover it +some pleasant evening, and have it over with, and slip back on his soft +wings in the night, and not say anything about it. It is this Wilbur +Wright spirit that I would like to dwell on in these pages. It seems to +me it is a true modern spirit, the spirit which alone could make our +civilization great, and the spirit which alone could make crowds great. +It was the crowd that spoiled the way the Pole was discovered—all the +millions of people, vast, thoughtless audiences piling in and making a +show of it. Many people in America, all the vast crowds reading about +it, seemed to feel that they were more important than the Pole; and when +Captain Peary came back, vast crowds of these <a name="Page_60" id="Page_60"></a>same people paid as much +as five dollars apiece for the privilege of being in the same room with +him. It was quite impossible not to contrast Captain Peary in his +attitude toward the crowd and Wilbur Wright. There seemed to be, and +there will always remain, a certain vulgarity in the way the North Pole +was discovered, and the way the whole world behaved in regard to it, and +the secret seems to have been in Captain Peary's failure to be a Wilbur +Wright. He allowed the Pole to be a Crowd affair. All the while as he +went about the country holding his little exhibits of the tip of the +planet we could not help wishing, many of us who were in the Audience, +that this man who sat there before us, the man who had the Thing in his +hand, who had collected the North Pole, would not notice us, would snub +us if need be a little, and would leave these people, these millions of +people, with their heads up and go quietly on to the South Pole and +collect that. It is because there are thousands of men who understand +just how Wilbur Wright felt when he slipped away the other day in New +York and left the entire city with its heads up that we have every +reason to expect that the crowd is to produce great leaders, and is to +become a great crowd, great and humble in spirit before God, before the +stars, and the atoms, and the microbes, and before Itself. In the +meantime, however, we see all about us in the world countless would-be +leaders of the crowd, who would perhaps not quite understand the way +Wilbur Wright felt that day when he slipped away from New York and left +the entire city with its heads up. Most newspaper men—men who are in +the habit of writing for a crowd and regarding a crowd quite +respectfully—will have wondered a little why Wilbur Wright could have +let such a crowd go by. Most actors and theatrical people would have +stayed over a train or so and given one more little performance with all +those wistful people on the roof-tops. There are only a very few +clergymen in England or America to-day who, with a great audience like +that and so many men in it, would ever have thought of slipping off on +the 3:25 train in the way Wilbur <a name="Page_61" id="Page_61"></a>Wright did. The ministers and the +politicians of all countries are still wondering a little—if they ever +thought of it—how Wright did it. Most of the other people in the world +wonder a little, too, but I imagine that the great inventors of the +world who read about it the next morning did not wonder. The true +scientists, in this country and in Germany and in France, all understood +just how Wilbur Wright felt when he left New York with its heads up. The +great artists of the world, in literature, in painting, and +architecture; the great railroad builders, the city builders, the nation +builders, the great statesmen, the great biologists, and chemists, +understood. James J. Hill, with his face toward the Pacific, understood. +Alexander Graham Bell, out abroad doing the listening and talking and +thinking the thoughts of eighty million people, understood. Marconi, +making the ships whisper across the sea, and William G. McAdoo, shooting +a hundred and seventy thousand people a day through a hole under the +Hudson—understood.</p> + +<p>And God, when He made the world. And Columbus when he discovered +America. And Jesus Christ when He was so happy and so preoccupied over +His vision of a new world, over inventing Christianity, that it seemed a +very small and incidental thing to die on the Cross—He understood.</p> + +<p>Wilbur Wright's secret was that he had a vision. His vision was that a +human being could be greater and more powerful than the world had ever +believed before.</p> + +<p>Just to be there was a great thought, to be allowed to be one of those +admitted, to be present at the first faint beginning, the first still +alighting of the human spirit from the earth upon the sky. Wilbur Wright +made the most ordinary man a genius a minute. He made him wonder softly +who he was—and the people all about him—who were they? and what would +they think, and what would they do next? The first flash of light on the +wings was a thousand years. It was as if almost for a moment he saw at +last the whole earth about him. History, churches, factories on it, +slipping out of its cocoon at last—its <a name="Page_62" id="Page_62"></a>little, old, faded, tied-down +cocoon, and sailing upon the air—sailing with him, sailing with the +churches, with the factories, and with the schools, with History, +through the Invisible, through the Intangible—out to the Sun....</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>Perhaps the reason that New York was a great city a few minutes the +other day when Wilbur Wright was there was that Wilbur Wright had a new +vision in the presence of all those men of something that they could do. +He touched the imagination of men about themselves. They were profoundly +moved because they saw him in their presence inventing a new kind and +new size of human being. He raised the standard of impossibility, and +built an annex on to the planet while they looked; took a great strip +off of space three miles wide and folded it softly on to the planet all +the way round before their eyes. For three miles more—three miles +farther up above the ground—there was a space where human beings would +have to stop saying, "I can't," and "You can't," and "We can't." If +people want to say "I can't," and "You can't," they will have to say it +farther and farther away from this planet now. Let them try Mars. The +modern imagination takes to impossibilities naturally with Wilbur Wright +against the horizon. The thing we next cannot believe is the next thing +to expect.</p> + +<p>Nobody would have believed ten years ago that an architect could be +invented who would tell a man that his house would cost him thirty +thousand dollars, and then hand him back two thousand dollars when he +had finished it. But the man had been invented—he invented himself.</p> + +<p>He represents the owner, and does as the owner would be done by if he +did it himself—if he had the technical knowledge and the time to do it.</p> + +<p>Nobody would have believed a few years ago that a railway president, +when he had occasion to reduce the wages of several thousand employees +10 per cent., would begin by reducing his <a name="Page_63" id="Page_63"></a>own salary 30 per cent., and +the salary of all the officials all the way down 15 per cent., or 20 per +cent.</p> + +<p>Nobody would have believed some time ago that an organizing inventor +would be evolved who would meet his directors and tell them that, if +they would have their work done in their mills in three shifts instead +of two, the men would work so much better that it would not cost the +Company more than 10 per cent. more to offer the better conditions. But +such an organizing inventor has been invented, and has proved his case.</p> + +<p>Luther Burbank has made a chestnut tree eighteen months old bear +chestnuts; and it has always taken from ten to twenty-five years to make +a tree furnish its first chestnut before. About the same time that +Luther Burbank had succeeded in doing this with chestnuts a similar type +of man, who was not particularly interested in chestnuts and wanted to +do something with human nature, who believed that human nature could +really be made to work, found a certain staple article that everybody +needs every day in a state of anarchy in the market. The producers were +not making anything on it. The wholesalers dealt in it without a profit, +and the retailers sold it without a profit, and merely because the other +things they sold were worthless without it.</p> + +<p>——, who was the leading wholesale dealer and in the best position to +act, pointed out that, if the business was organized and everybody in it +would combine with everybody else and make it a monopoly, the price +could be made lower, and everybody would make money.</p> + +<p>Of course this was a platitude.</p> + +<p>It was also a platitude that human nature was not good enough, and could +not be trusted to work properly in a monopoly.</p> + +<p>—— then proceeded to invent a monopoly—a kind of monopoly in which +human nature could be trusted.</p> + +<p>He used a very simple device.</p> + +<p>He began by being trusted himself.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64"></a>Having personally and directly proved that human nature in a monopoly +could be trusted by being trusted himself, all he had to do was to +capitalize his knowledge of human nature, use the enormous market value +of the trust people had in him to gather people about him in the +business who had a good practical business genius for being trusted too +and for keeping trusted: everybody else was shut out.</p> + +<p>The letter with which the monopoly was started (after dealing duly with +the technical details of the business) ended like this:</p> + +<p>"... the soundest lines of business—<i>viz.</i>, fair prices, fair profits, +fair division of profits, fair recognition of service, do as you would be +done by, money back where it is practicable, one's profit so small as to +make competition not worth while, open dealing, and open books."</p> + +<p>He had invented a monopoly which shared its profits with the people, and +which the people trusted. He was a Luther Burbank in money and people +instead of chestnuts. He raised the standard of impossibility in people, +and invented a new way for human nature to work.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65"></a>CHAPTER VI</h2> + +<h3>THE IMAGINATION OF CROWDS</h3> + + +<p>The modern imagination takes, speaking roughly, three characteristic +forms:</p> + +<p>1. Imagination about the unseen or intangible—the spiritual—as +especially typified in electricity, in the wireless telegraph, the +aeroplane: a new and extraordinary sense of the invisible and the +unproved as an energy to be used and reckoned with.</p> + +<p>2. Imagination about the future—a new and extraordinary sense of what +is going to happen next in the world.</p> + +<p>3. Imagination about people. We are not only inventing new machines, but +our new machines have turned upon us and are creating new men. The +telephone changes the structure of the brain. Men live in wider +distances, and think in larger figures, and become eligible to nobler +and wider motives.</p> + +<p>Imagination about the unseen is going to give us in an incredible degree +the mastery of the spirit over matter.</p> + +<p>Imagination about the future is going to make the next few hundred years +an organic part of every man's life to-day.</p> + +<p>The imagination of men about themselves and other people is going to +give us a race of men with new motives; or, to put it differently, it is +going to give us not only new sizes but new kinds of men. People are +going to achieve impossibilities in goodness, and our inventions in +human nature are going to keep up with our other inventions.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66"></a>CHAPTER VII</h2> + +<h3>IMAGINATION ABOUT THE UNSEEN</h3> + + +<p>The most distinctively modern thing that ever happened was when Benjamin +Franklin went out one day and called down lightning from heaven. Before +that, power had always been dug up, or scraped off the ground. The more +power you wanted the more you had to get hold of the ground and dig for +it; and the more solid you were, the more heavy, solid things you could +get, the more you could pull solid, heavy things round in this world +where you wanted them. Franklin turned to the sky, and turned power on +from above, and decided that the real and the solid and the substantial +in this world was to be pulled about by the Invisible.</p> + +<p>Copernicus had the same idea, of course, when he fared forth into space, +and discovered the centre of all power to be in the sun. It grieved +people a good deal to find how much more important the sky was than they +were, and their whole little planet with all of them on it. The idea +that that big blue field up there, empty by day and with such crowds of +little faint dots in it all night, was the real thing—the big, final, +and important thing—and that they and their churches and popes and +pyramids and nations should just dance about it for millions of years +like a mote in a sunbeam, hurt their feelings at first. But it did them +good. It started them looking Up, and looking the other way for power.</p> + +<p>Very soon afterward Columbus enlarged upon the same idea by starting the +world toward very far things, on the ground; and he bored through the +skylines, a thousand skylines, and spread the nations upon the sea. +Columbus was the typical modern <a name="Page_67" id="Page_67"></a>man led by the invisible, the +intangible; and on the great waters somewhere between Spain and New +York, between the old and the new, Columbus discovered the Future Tense, +the centrifugal tense, the tense that sweeps in the unknown, and gathers +in, out of space, out of hope, out of faith, the lives of men. The mere +fastened-down stable things, the mere actual facts, stopped being the +world with Columbus, and the air and the sky began to be swung in, and +to be swept through the thoughts and acts of men and of women.... Then +miners, mariners, explorers, inventors—the impossible steamship, the +railway, the impossible cotton-gin and sewing-machine and reaper, Hoosac +tunnels and Atlantic cables. The impossible became one of the habits of +modern life.</p> + +<p>Of course the sky and the air and the unknown and the future had been +recognized before, but only a little and in a rather patronizing way. +But when a world has made a great, solid continent by following a +horizon line, it begins to take things just beyond very seriously. And +so our Time has been fulfilled. We have had the stone age; we have had +the iron age; and now we have the sky age, and the sky telegraph, and +sky men, and sky cities. Mountains of stone are built out of men's +visions, towers and skyscrapers swing up out of their wills and up out +of their hearts.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>Not long ago, as I was coming away from New York in the Springfield +Express, which was running at fifty-five miles an hour, I saw suddenly +some smoke coming up apparently out of a satchel on the floor, belonging +to the man in the chair in front of me. I moved the satchel away, and +the smoke came up through the carpet. I spoke to the Pullman conductor +who was passing through, and in a second the train had stopped, and the +great wild roaring Thing had ceased, and we stood in a long, wide, white +silence in the fields. We got off the car—some of us—to see what had +happened, and to see if there was a hot box <a name="Page_68" id="Page_68"></a>on the wheels. We found +that the entire underside of the floor of the car was on fire, and what +had happened? Nothing except a new impossibility; nothing except that a +human being had invented an electrical locomotive so powerful that it +was pulling that train fifty-five miles an hour while the brakes on the +car were set—twelve brakes all grinding twenty miles on those twelve +wheels; and the locomotive paid no more attention to the brakes of that +heavy Pullman than it would to a feather or to a small boy, all the way +from New York to Stamford, hanging on behind. As I came in I looked +again at the train—the long dull train that had been pulled along by +the Invisible, by the kingdom of the air and the sky—the long, dull, +heavy Train! And the spirit of the far-off sun was in it!</p> + +<p>In Count Zeppelin's new airship the new social spirit has a symbol, and +in the gyroscopic train the inspired millionaire is on a firm +foundation. The power of the new kind and new size of capitalist is his +power of keeping an equilibrium with the people, and the men of real +genius in modern affairs are men who have motor genius and light genius +over other men's wills. They are allied to the X-ray and the airship, +and gain their pre-eminence by their power of forecast and +invention—their power of riding upon the unseen, upon the thoughts of +men and the spirit of the time. Even the painters have caught this +spirit. The plein air painters are painting the light, and the sculptors +are carving shadows and haloes, and we have not an art left which does +not lean out into the Invisible. And religion is full of this spirit and +theosophy and Christian Science. The playwrights are touched by it; and +the action, instead of being all on the stage, is thrown out into the +spirit of the audience. The play in a modern theatre is not on the stage +but in the stalls. Maeterlinck, Ibsen, Shaw, merely use the stage as a +kind of magic-lantern or suggestion-centre for the real things that, out +behind us in the dark, are happening in the audience.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h2> + +<h3>THE CROWD'S IMAGINATION ABOUT THE FUTURE</h3> + + +<p>I remember looking over with H.G. Wells one night some time ago a set of +pictures or photographs of the future in America, which he had brought +home with him. They were largely skyscrapers, big bridges, Niagaras, and +things; and I could not help thinking, as I came home that night, how +much more Mr. Wells had of the future of America in his own mind than he +could possibly buy in his photographs. What funny little films they were +after all, how faint and pathetic, how almost tragically dull, those +pictures of the future of my country were! H.G. Wells himself, standing +in his own doorway, was more like America, and more like the future of +America, than the pictures were.</p> + +<p>The future in America cannot be pictured. The only place it can be seen +is in people's faces. Go out into the street, in New York, in Chicago, +in San Francisco, in Seattle; look eagerly as you go into the faces of +the men who pass, and you feel hundreds of years—the next hundred +years—like a breath, swept past. America, with all its forty-story +buildings, its little Play Niagaras, its great dumb Rockies, is the +unseen country. It can only as yet be seen in people's eyes. Some days, +flowing sublime and silent through our noisy streets, and through the +vast panorama of our towers, I have heard the footfalls of the unborn, +like sunshine around me.</p> + +<p>This feeling America gives one in the streets is the real America. The +solidity, the finality, the substantial fact in America, is the daily +sense in the streets of the future. And it has seemed to me that this +fact—whether one observes it in <a name="Page_70" id="Page_70"></a>Americans in America, in Americans in +England and in other nations—is what one might call, for lack of a +better name, the American temperament in all peoples is the most +outstanding typical and important fact with which our modern world and +our philosophy about the world have now to reckon. Nothing can be seen +as it really is if this amazing pervasive hourly sense of the future is +left out of it.</p> + +<p>All power is rapidly coming to be based on news—news about human +nature, and about what is soon to be done by people. This news travels +by express in boxes, by newspapers, by telephone, by word of mouth, and +by wireless telegraph. Most of the wireless news is not only wireless, +but it is in cipher—hence prophets, or men who have great +sensitiveness; men whose souls and bodies are films for the future, +platinum plates for the lights and shadows of events; men who are +world-poets, sensitive to the air-waves and the light-waves of truth, to +the faintest vibrations from To-morrow, or from the next hundred years +hovering just ahead. As a matter of course, it is already coming to be +true that the most practical man to-day is the prophet. In the older +days, men used to look back for wisdom, and the practical man was the +man who spoke from experience, and they crucified the prophet. But +to-day, the practical man is the man who can make the best guess on +to-morrow. The cross has gone by; at least, the cross is being pushed +farther along. A prophet in business or politics gets a large salary +now; he is a recognized force. Being a prophet is getting to be almost +smug and respectable.</p> + +<p>We live so in the future in our modern life, and our rewards are so +great for men who can live in the future, that a man who can be a +ten-year prophet, or a twenty-five-year prophet, like James J. Hill, is +put on a pedestal, or rather is not wasted on a pedestal, and is made +President of a railroad. He swings the country as if it were his hat. We +see great cities tagging Wilbur Wright, and emperors clinging to the +skirts of Count Zeppelin. We only crucify a prophet now if he is a +hundred, or two hun<a name="Page_71" id="Page_71"></a>dred or five hundred years ahead. Even then, we +would not be apt to crucify; we would merely not use him much, except +the first twenty-five years of him.</p> + +<p>The theory is no longer tenable that prophets must be necessarily +crucified. As a matter of history, most prophets have been crucified by +people; but it was not so much because of their prophecy as because +their prophecy did not have any first twenty-five years in it. They were +crucified because of a blank place or hiatus, not necessarily in their +own minds, but at least in other people's. People would have been very +glad to have their first twenty-five years' worth if they could have got +it. It is this first twenty-five years, or joining-on part, which is +most important in prophecy, and which has become our specialty in the +Western World. One might say, in a general way, that the idea of having +a first twenty-five years' section in truth for a prophet is a modern, +an almost American, invention. We are temperamentally a country of the +future, and think instinctively in futures; and perhaps it is not too +much to say (considering all the faults that go with it for which we are +criticized) that we have led the way in futures as a specialty, as a +national habit of mind; and though with terrific blunders perhaps have +been really the first people <i>en masse</i> to put being a prophet on a +practical basis—that is, to supply the first twenty-five years' +section, or the next-thing-to-do section to Truth, to put in a kind of +coupling between this world and the next. This is what America is for, +perhaps—to put in the coupling between this world and the next.</p> + +<p>In the former days, the strength of a man, or of an estate, or a +business, was its stability. In the new world, instead of stability, we +have the idea of persistence, and power lies not so much in solid +brittle foundation quality as in conductivity. Socially, men can be +divided into conductors—men who connect powers—and non-conductors—men +who do not; and power lies in persistence, in dogged flexibility, +adaptableness, and impressionableness. The set conservative class of +people, <a name="Page_72" id="Page_72"></a>in three hundred years, are going to be the dreamers, +inventors—those who demonstrate their capacity to dream true, and who +hit shrewdly upon probabilities and trends and futures; and the power of +a man is coming to be the power of observing atmospheres, of being +sensitive to the intangible and the unknown. People are more likely to +be crucified two thousand years from now for wanting to stay as they +are. There used to be the inertia of rest; and now in its place, working +reciprocally in a new astonishing equilibrium, we step up calmly on our +vast moving sidewalk of civilization and swing into the inertia of +motion.</p> + +<p>The inertia of men, instead of being that of foundations, conventions, +customs, facts, sogginess, and heaviness, is getting to be an inertia +now toward the future, or the next-thing-to-do. Most of us can prove +this by simply looking inward and taking a glimpse of our own +consciousness. Let a man draw up before his own mind the contents of his +own consciousness (if he has a motor consciousness), and we find that +the future in his life looms up, both in its motives and its character, +and takes about three quarters of the room of his consciousness; and +when it is not looming up, it is woven into everything he does. Even if +all the future were for was to help one understand the present and act +this immediate moment as one should, nine tenths of the power of seeing +a thing as it is, turns out to be one's power of seeing it as it is +going to be. In any normal man's life, it is really the future and his +sense of the future that make his present what it is.</p> + +<p>History is losing its monopoly. It is only absorbed in men's minds—in +the minds of those who are making more of it—in parts or rather in +elements of all its parts.</p> + +<p>The trouble with history seems to have been, thus far, that people have +been under the illusion that history should be taken as a solid. They +seem to think it should be taken in bulk. They take it, some of them, a +solid hundred years of it or so, and gulp it down. The advantage of +prophecy is that it can<a name="Page_73" id="Page_73"></a>not be taken as a solid by people who would take +everything so if they could. Prophecy is protected. People have to +breathe it, assimilate it, and get it into their circulation and make a +solid out of it personally, and do it all themselves. It is this process +which is making our modern men spiritual, interpretative, and powerful +toward the present and toward the past, and which is giving a body and +soul to knowledge, and is making knowledge lively and human, the kind of +knowledge (when men get it) that makes things happen.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74"></a>CHAPTER IX</h2> + +<h3>THE CROWD'S IMAGINATION ABOUT PEOPLE</h3> + + +<p>I would like to propose, as a basis for the judgment of men and events, +and as a basis for forecasting the next men and next events, and +arriving at a vision of action, a Theory of the World.</p> + +<p>Every man has one.</p> + +<p>Every man one knows can be seen doing his work in this world on a great +background, a kind of panorama or stage setting in his mind, made up of +history and books, newspapers, people, and experiences, which might be +called his Theory of the World.</p> + +<p>It is his theory of the world which makes him what he is—his personal +judgment or personal interpretation of what the world is like, and what +works in it, and what does not work.</p> + +<p>A man's theory as to why people do or do not do wrong is not a theory he +might in some brief disinterested moment, possibly at luncheon, take +time to discuss. His theory of what is wrong and of what is right, and +of how they work, touches the efficiency with which he works intimately +and permanently at every point every minute of his business day.</p> + +<p>If he does not know, in the middle of his business day, what his theory +of the world—of human nature—is, let him stop and find out.</p> + +<p>A man's theory of the world is the skylight or manhole over his work. It +becomes his hell or heaven—his day and night. He breathes his theory of +the world and breathes his idea of the people in it; and everything he +does may be made or may be marred by what, for instance, he thinks in +the long-run about <a name="Page_75" id="Page_75"></a>what I am saying now on this next page. Whether he +is writing for people, or doing business with them over a counter, or +launching books at them, everything he does will be steeped in what he +believes about what I am saying now—it shall be the colour of the world +to him, the sound or timbre of his voice—what he thinks or can make up +his mind to think, of what I am saying—on this next page.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76"></a>CHAPTER X</h2> + +<h3>A DEMOCRATIC THEORY OF HUMAN NATURE</h3> + + +<p>If the men who were crucifying Jesus could have been suddenly stopped at +the last moment, and if they could have been kept perfectly still for +ten minutes and could have thought about it, some of them would have +refused to go on with the crucifixion when the ten minutes were over. If +they could have been stopped for twenty minutes, there would have been +still more of them who would have refused to have gone on with it. They +would have stolen away and wondered about The Man in their hearts. There +were others who were there who would have needed twenty days of being +still and of thinking. There were some who would have had to have twenty +years to see what they really wanted, in all the circumstances, to do.</p> + +<p>People crucified Christ because they were in a hurry.</p> + +<p>They did what they wanted to do at the moment. So far as we know, there +were only two men who did what they would have wished they had done in +twenty years: there was the thief on the other cross, who showed The Man +he knew who He was; and there was the disciple John, who kept as close +as he could. John perhaps was thinking of the past—of all the things +that Christ had said to him; and the man on the other cross was thinking +what was going to happen next. The other people who had to do with the +crucifixion were all thinking about the thing they were doing at the +moment and the way they felt about it. But the Man was Thinking, not of +His suffering, but of the men in front of Him, and of what they could be +thinking about, and what they would be thinking about afterward—in ten +minutes, in twenty minutes, in twenty days, or in twenty <a name="Page_77" id="Page_77"></a>years; and +suddenly His heart was flooded with pity at what they would be thinking +about afterward, and in the midst of the pain in His arms and the pain +in His feet He made that great cry to Heaven: "Father, forgive them; +they know not what they do!"</p> + +<p>It is because Christians have never quite believed that The Man really +meant this when He said it that they have persecuted the Jews for two +thousand years. It is because they do not believe it now that they blame +Mr. Rockefeller for doing what most of them twenty years ago would have +done themselves. It was one of the hardest things to do and say that any +one ever said in the world, and it was said at the hardest possible time +to say it. It was strange that one almost swooning with pain should have +said the gentlest-hearted and truest thing about human nature that has +ever been said since the world began. It has seemed to me the most +literal, and perhaps the most practical, truth that has been said since +the world began.</p> + +<p>It goes straight to the point about people. It gives one one's +definition of goodness both for one's self and for others. It gives one +a program for action.</p> + +<p>Except in our more joyous and free moments, we assume that when people +do us a wrong, they know what they are about. They look at the right +thing to do and they look at the wrong one, and they choose the wrong +one because they like it better. Nine people out of ten one meets in the +streets coming out of church on Sunday morning, if one asked them the +question plainly, "Do you ever do wrong when you know it is wrong?" +would say that they did. If you ask them what a sin is, they will tell +you that it is something you do when you know you ought not to do it.</p> + +<p>But The Man Himself, in speaking of the most colossal sin that has ever +been committed, seemed to think that when men committed a sin, it was +because they did not really see what it was that they were doing. They +did what they wanted to do <a name="Page_78" id="Page_78"></a>at the moment. They did not do what they +would have wished they had done in twenty years.</p> + +<p>I would define goodness as doing what one would wish one had done in +twenty years—twenty years, twenty days, twenty minutes, or twenty +seconds, according to the time the action takes to get ripe.</p> + +<p>It would be far more true and more to the point instead of scolding or +admiring Mr. Rockefeller's skilled labour at getting too rich, to point +out mildly that he has done something that in the long-run he would not +have wanted to do; that he has lacked the social imagination for a great +permanently successful business. His sin has consisted in his not taking +pains to act accurately and permanently, in his not concentrating his +mind and finding out what he really wanted to do. It would seem to be +better and truer and more accurate in the tremendous crisis of our +modern life to judge Mr. Rockefeller, not as monster of wickedness, but +merely as an inefficient, morally underwitted man. There are things that +he has not thought of that every one else has.</p> + +<p>We see that in all those qualities that really go to make a great +business house in a great nation John D. Rockefeller stands as the most +colossal failure as yet that our American business life has produced. To +point his incompetence out quietly and calmly and without scolding would +seem to be the only fair way to deal with Mr. Rockefeller. He merely has +not done what he would have wished he had done in twenty, well, possibly +two hundred years, or as long a time as it would be necessary to allow +for Mr. Rockefeller to see. The one thing that the world could accept +gracefully from Mr. Rockefeller now would be the establishment of a +great endowment of research and education to help other people to see in +time how they can keep from being like him. If Mr. Rockefeller leads in +this great work and sees it soon enough, perhaps he will stop suddenly +being the world's most lonely man.</p> + +<p>Many men have been lonely before in the presence of a few <a name="Page_79" id="Page_79"></a>fellow human +beings; but to be lonely with a whole nation—eighty million people; to +feel a whole human race standing there outside of your life and softly +wondering about you, staring at you in the showcase of your money, +peering in as out of a thousand newspapers upon you as a kind of moral +curiosity under glass, studying you as the man who has performed the +most athletic feat of not seeing what he was really doing and how he +really looked in all the world—this has been Mr. Rockefeller's +experience. He has not done what he would wish he had done in twenty +years.</p> + +<p>Goodness may be defined as getting one's own attention, as boning down +to find the best and most efficient way of finding out what one wants to +do. Any man who will make adequate arrangements with himself at suitable +times for getting his own attention will be good. Any one else from +outside who can make such arrangements for him, such arrangements of +expression or—of advertising goodness as to get his attention, will +make him good.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80"></a>CHAPTER XI</h2> + +<h3>DOING AS ONE WOULD WISH ONE HAD DONE IN TWENTY YEARS</h3> + + +<p>If two great shops could stand side by side on the Main Street of the +World, and all the vices could be put in the show window of one of them +and all the virtues in the show windows the other, and all the people +could go by all day, all night, and see the windowful of virtues as they +were, and the windowful of vices as they were, all the world would be +good in the morning.</p> + +<p>It would stay good as long as people remembered how the windows looked. +Or if they could not remember, all they would need to do, most people, +when a vice tempted them would be to step out, look at it in its window +a minute—possibly take a look too at the other window—and they would +be good.</p> + +<p>If a man were to take a fancy to any particular vice, and would take a +step up to The Window, and take one firm look at it in The Window—see +it lying there, its twenty years' evil, its twenty days', its twenty +minutes' evil, all branching up out of it—he would be good.</p> + +<p>When we see the wrong on one side and the right on the other and really +see the right as vividly as we do the wrong, we do right automatically. +Wild horses cannot drag a man away from doing right if he sees what the +right is.</p> + +<p>A little while ago in a New England city where the grade crossings had +just been abolished, and where the railroad wound its way on a huge +yellow sandbank through the most beautiful part of the town, a +prominent, public-spirited citizen wrote a letter to the President of +the Company suggesting that the <a name="Page_81" id="Page_81"></a>railroad (for a comparatively small +sum, which he mentioned) plant its sandbanks with trees and shrubs. A +letter came the next day saying that the railroad was unwilling to do +it. He might quite justifiably have been indignant and flung himself +into print and made a little scene in the papers, which would have been +the regular and conventional thing to do under the circumstances. But it +occurred to him instead, being a man of a curious and practical mind, +that possibly he did not know how to express himself to railroad +presidents, and that his letter had not said what he meant. He thought +he would try again, and see what would happen if he expressed himself +more fully and adequately. He took for it this second time a box seven +feet long. The box contained two long rolls of paper, one a picture by a +landscape gardener of the embankment as it would look when planted with +trees and with shrubs, and the other a photograph—a long panorama of +the same embankment as it then stood with its two great broadsides of +yellowness trailing through the city. The box containing the rolls was +sent without comment and with photographs and estimates of cost on the +bottom of the pictures.</p> + +<p>A letter from the railroad came next day thanking him for his +suggestion, and promising to have the embankment made into a park at +once.</p> + +<p>If God had arranged from the beginning, slides of the virtues, and had +furnished every man with a stereopticon inside, and if all a man had to +do at any particular time of temptation was to take out just the right +slide or possibly try three or four up there on his canvas a second, no +one would ever have any trouble in doing right.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>It is not too much to say that this way of looking at evil and good—at +the latent capacities of evil and good in men, if a man once believes +it, and if a man once practises it as a part of his daily practical +interpretation and mastery of men, will <a name="Page_82" id="Page_82"></a>soon put a new face for him on +nearly every great human problem with which he finds his time +confronted. We shall watch the men in the world about us—each for their +little day—trying their funny, pathetic, curious little moral +experiments, and we shall see the men—all of the men and all of the +good and the evil in the men this moment—daily before our eyes working +out with an implacable hopefulness the fate of the world. We know that, +in spite of self-deceived syndicalism and self-deceived trusts, in spite +of coal strikes and all the vain, comic little troops of warships around +the earth, peace and righteousness in a vast overtone are singing toward +us.</p> + +<p>We are not only going to have new and better motives in our modern men, +but the new and better motives are going to be thrust upon us. Every man +who reads these pages is having, at the present moment, motives in his +life which he would not have been capable of at first. Why should not a +human race have motives which it was not capable of at first? If one +takes up two or three motives of one's own—the small motives and the +large ones—and holds them up in one's hand and looks at them quietly +from the point of view of what one would wish one had done in twenty +years, there is scarcely one of us who would choose the small ones. +People who are really modern, that is, who look beyond themselves in +what they do to others, who live their lives as one might say six people +away, or sixty people farther out from themselves, or sixty million +people farther, are becoming more common everywhere; and people who look +beyond the moment in what they do to another day, who are getting more +and more to live their lives twenty years ahead, and to have motives +that will last twenty years, are driven to better and more permanent +motives.</p> + +<p>Thinking of more people when we act for ourselves means ethical +consciousness or goodness, and better and more permanent motives.</p> + +<p>In the last analysis, the men who permanently succeed in business will +have to see farther than the other people do.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83"></a>Men like John D. Rockefeller, who have made failures of their lives, and +have not been able to conduct a business so as to keep it out of the +courts, have failed because they have had imagination about Things but +not imagination about people.</p> + +<p>The man who is just at hand will not do over again what Mr. Rockefeller +has done. He will at least have made some advance in imagination over +Rockefeller.</p> + +<p>Mr. Rockefeller became rich by coöperating with other rich men to +exploit the public. The man of the immediate future is going to get +rich, as rich as he cares to be, by coöperating not merely with his +competitors—which is as far as Rockefeller got—but by coöperating with +the people.</p> + +<p>It is a mere matter of social imagination, of seeing what succeeds most +permanently, and honourably, of putting what has been called "goodness" +and what is going to be called "Business" together. In other words, +social imagination is going to make a man gravitate toward mutual +interest or coöperation, which is the new and inevitable level of +efficiency and success in business. Success is being transferred from +men of millionaire genius to men of social and human genius. The men who +are going to compete most successfully in modern competitive business +are competing by knowing how to coöperate better than their competitors +do. Employers, employees, consumers, partners, become irresistible by +coöperation; only employers, employees, consumers, and partners who +coöperate better than they do can hope to compete with them. The Trusts +have already crowded out many small rivals because, while their +coöperation has been one-sided, they have coöperated with more people +than their rivals could; and the good Trusts, in the same way are going +to crowd out the bad Trusts, because the good ones will know how to +coöperate with more people than the bad ones do. They will have the +human genius to see how they can coöperate with the people instead of +against them.</p> + +<p>They are going to invent ways of winning and keeping the <a name="Page_84" id="Page_84"></a>confidence of +the people, of taking to this end a smaller and more just share of +profits. And they are going to gain their leadership through the wisdom +and power that goes with their money, and not through the money itself. +It is the spiritual power of their money that is going to count; and +wealth, instead of being a millionaire disease, is going to become a +great social energy in democracy. We are going to let men be rich +because they represent us, not because they hold us up, and because the +hold-up has gone by, that is: getting all one can, and service—getting +what we have earned—has come in.</p> + +<p>The new kind and new size of politician will win his power by his faith, +like U. Ren of Oregon; the new kind and new size of editor is going to +hire with brains a millionaire to help him run his paper; and the new +kind and new size of author, instead of tagging a publisher, will be +paid royalties for supplying him with new ideas and creating for him new +publics. Power in modern life is to be light and heat and motion, and +not a gift of being heavy and solid. Even Money shall lose its inertia.</p> + +<p>We are in this way being driven into having new kinds and new sizes of +men; and some of them will be rich ones, and some of them will be poor, +and no one will care. We will simply look at the man and at what size he +is.</p> + +<p>If our preachers are not saving us, our business men will. Sometimes one +suspects that the reason goodness is not more popular in modern life is +that it has been taken hold of the wrong way. Perhaps when we stop +teasing people, and take goodness seriously and calmly, and see that +goodness is essentially imagination, that it is brains, that it is +thinking down through to what one really wants, goodness will begin to +be more coveted. Except among people with almost no brains or +imagination at all, it will be popular.</p> + +<p>Perhaps it is unnecessary to say that these things that I have been +saying, or trying to say, about the flexibility and the potentiality of +the human race in its present crisis, in its present struggle to +maintain and add to its glory on the earth, <a name="Page_85" id="Page_85"></a>are all beyond the range of +possibility, and the present strength of manhood. But I can only hope +that these objections that people make will turn out like mine. I have +been making objections all my life, as all idealists must—only to watch +with dismay and joy the old-time, happy obdurate way objections have of +going by.</p> + +<p>People began by saying they would never use automobiles because they +were so noisy and ill-odoured and ugly. Presto! The automobile becomes +silent and shapes itself in lines of beauty.</p> + +<p>Some of us had decided against balloons. "Even if the balloon succeeds," +we said, "there will be no way of going just where and when you want +to." And then, presto! regular channels of wind are discovered, and the +balloon goes on.</p> + +<p>"Aeroplanes," we said, "may be successful, but the more successful they +are, the more dangerous, and the more danger there will be of +collisions—collisions in the dark and up in the great sky at night." And, +presto! man invents the wireless telegraph, and the entire sky can be +full of whispers telling every airship where all the other airships are.</p> + +<p>Some of us have decided that we will never have anything to do with +monopoly. Presto! there is suddenly evolved an entirely new type of +monopolist—the man who can be rich and good; the millionaire who has +invented a monopoly that serves the owners, the producers and employees, +the distributors and the consumers alike. An American railway President +has been saying lately that America would not have enough to eat in +2050, but it would not do to try to prove this just yet. Some one, +almost any day, will invent a food that is as highly concentrated as +dynamite, and the whole food supply of New York—who knows?—shall be +carried around in one railway President's vest pocket.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86"></a>CHAPTER XII</h2> + +<h3>NEW KINDS AND NEW SIZES OF MEN</h3> + + +<p>It would be hard to overestimate the weariness and cynicism and despair +that have been caused in the world by its more recklessly hopeful +men—the men who plump down happily anywhere and hope, the optimists who +are merely slovenly in their minds about evil. But the optimism that +consists in putting evil facts up into a kind of outdoors in our minds +and in giving them room to exercise in our thoughts and feelings, the +optimism that consists in having one's brain move vigorously through +disagreeable facts—organize them into the other facts with which they +belong and with which they work—is worthy of consideration. Many of us, +who have tried optimism and pessimism both, have noticed certain things.</p> + +<p>When one is being pessimistic, one almost always has the feeling of +being rather clever. It is forced upon one a little, of course, having +all those other people about one stodgily standing up for people and not +really seeing through them!</p> + +<p>So, though one ought not to, one does feel a little superior—even with +the best intentions—when one is being discouraged.</p> + +<p>But the trouble with pessimism is that it is only at the moment when one +is having it that one really enjoys it, or feels in this way about it.</p> + +<p>Perhaps I should not undertake to speak for others, and should only +speak for myself; but I can only bear witness, for one, that every time +in my life that I have broken through the surface a little, and seen +through to the evil, and found myself suddenly and astutely discouraged, +I have found afterward that all I had to do was to see the same thing a +little farther over, <a name="Page_87" id="Page_87"></a>set it in the light beyond it, and look at it in +larger or more full relations, and I was no longer astutely discouraged.</p> + +<p>So I have come to believe slowly and grimly that feeling discouraged +about the world is not quite clever. I have noticed it, too, in watching +other people—men I know. If I could take all the men I know who are +living and acting as if they believed big things about people to-day, +men who are daily taking for granted great things in human nature, and +put them in one group by themselves all together, and if I could then +take all the men I know who are taking little things for granted in one +another and in human nature, I do not believe very many people would +find it hard to tell which group would be more clever. Possibly the +reason more of us do not spend more time in being hopeful about the +world is that it takes more brains usually than we happen to have at the +moment. Hope may be said to be an act of the brain in which it sees +facts in relations large enough to see what they are for, an act in +which it insists in a given case upon giving the facts room enough to +turn around and to relate themselves to one another, and settle down +where they belong in one's mind, the way they would in real time.</p> + +<p>So now, at last, Gentle Reader, having looked back and having looked +forward, I know the way I am going.</p> + +<p>I am going to hope.</p> + +<p>It is the only way to see through things. The only way to dare to see +through ones' self; the only way to see through other people and to see +past them, and to see with them and for them—is to hope.</p> + +<p>So I am putting the challenge to the reader, in this book, as I have put +it to myself.</p> + +<p>There are four questions with which day by day we stand face to face:</p> + +<p> +1. Does human nature change?<br /> +<br /> +2. Does it change toward a larger and longer vision?<br /> +<br /> +3. Will not a larger and longer vision mean new kinds and<br /> +new sizes of men?<br /> +<br /> +4. Will not new sizes of men make new-sized ethics practical<br /><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88"></a> +and make a new world?<br /> +</p> + +<p>Everything depends for every man upon this planet, at this moment, on +how he decides these questions. If he says Yes, he will live one kind of +life, he will live up to his world. If he says No, he will have a mean +world, smaller-minded than he is himself, and he will live down to it.</p> + +<p>This is what the common run of men about us—the men of less creative +type in literature, in business, and in politics—are doing. They do not +believe human nature is changing. They are living down to a world that +is going by. They are living down to a world that is smaller than they +are themselves. They are trying to make others do it. They answer the +question "Does human nature change?" by "No!" Wilbur Wright, when he +flew around over the heads of the people in New York a few years ago, a +black speck above a whole city with its heads up, answered "Yes!"</p> + +<p>But the real importance of the flying machine has not stopped short with +a little delicate, graceful thing like walking on the air instead of the +ground.</p> + +<p>The big and really revolutionary thing about Wilbur Wright's flying was +that he changed the minds of the whole human race in a few minutes about +one thing. There was one particular thing that for forty thousand years +they knew they could not do. And now they knew they could.</p> + +<p>It naturally follows—and it lies in the mind of every man who +lives—that there must be other particular things. And as nine men out +of ten are in business, most of these particular things are going to be +done in business.</p> + +<p>The Wilbur Wright spirit is catching.</p> + +<p>It is as if a Lid had been lifted off the world.</p> + +<p>One sees everywhere business men going about the street expecting new +things of themselves. They expect things of the very ground, and of the +air, and of one another they had not dared expect before.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89"></a>The other day in a New England city I saw a man, who had been the +president of an Electric Light Company for twenty years, who had +invented a public service corporation that worked. Since he took office +and dictated the policy of the Company, every single overture for more +expensive equipment in the electric lighting of the city has come from +the Company, and every single overture for reducing the rate to +consumers has come from the company.</p> + +<p>The consumption of electricity in the city is the largest <i>per capita</i> +in the world, and the rate is the cheapest in the country; and, +incidentally, the Company so trusts the people that they let them have +electricity without metres, and the people so trust the Company that +they save its electricity as they would their own.</p> + +<p>Even the man without a conscience, who would be mean if he could, is +brought to terms, and knows that if he refrains from leaving his lights +burning all night when he goes to bed he is not merely saving the +Company's electricity but his own. He knows that he is reducing his own +and everybody's price for electricity, and not merely increasing the +profits of the Company.</p> + +<p>It makes another kind of man slowly out of thousands of men every day, +every night, turning on and turning off their lights.</p> + +<p>The Electric Light Company has come to have a daily, an almost hourly, +influence on the way men do business and go about their work in that +city—the motives and assumptions with which they bargain with one +another—that might be envied by twenty churches.</p> + +<p>All that had happened was that a man with a powerful, quietly wilful +personality—the kind that went on crusades and took cities in other +ages—had appeared at last, and proposed to do the same sort of thing in +business. He proposed to express his soul, just as it was, in business +the way other people had expressed theirs for a few hundred years in +poetry or more easy and conventional ways.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90"></a>If he could not have made the electric light business say the things +about people and about himself that he liked and that he believed, he +would have had to make some other business say them.</p> + +<p>One of the things he had most wanted to say and prove in business was +the economic value of being human, the enormous business saving that +could be effected by being believed in.</p> + +<p>He preferred being believed in himself, in business, and he knew other +people would prefer it; and he was sure that if, as people said, "being +believed in did not pay," it must be because ways of inventing faith in +people, the technique of trust, had not been invented.</p> + +<p>He found himself invited to take charge of the Electric Light Company at +a time when it was insolvent and in disgrace with the people, and he +took the Corporation in hand on the specific understanding that he +should be allowed to put his soul into it, that he should be allowed his +own way for three years—in believing in people, and in inventing ways +of getting believed in as much as he liked.</p> + +<p>The last time I saw him, though he is old and nearly blind, and while as +he talked there lay a darkness on his eyes, there was a great light in +his face.</p> + +<p>He had besieged a city with the shrewdness of his faith, and conquered a +hundred thousand men by believing in them more than they could.</p> + +<p>By believing in them shrewdly, and by thinking out ways of expressing +that belief, he had invented a Corporation—a Public Service +Corporation—that had a soul, and consequently worked.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91"></a>BOOK TWO</h2> + +<h3>LETTING THE CROWDS BE GOOD</h3> + +<p>TO ABRAHAM LINCOLN</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span>They stay not in their hold<br /></span> +<span>These stokers,<br /></span> +<span>Stooping to hell<br /></span> +<span>To feed a ship.<br /></span> +<span>Below the ocean floors.<br /></span> +<span>Before their awful doors<br /></span> +<span>Bathed in flame,<br /></span> +<span>I hear their human lives<br /></span> +<span>Drip—drip.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span>Through the lolling aisles of comrades<br /></span> +<span>In and out of sleep,<br /></span> +<span>Troops of faces<br /></span> +<span>To and fro of happy feet,<br /></span> +<span>They haunt my eyes.<br /></span> +<span>Their murky faces beckon me<br /></span> +<span>From the spaces of the coolness of the sea<br /></span> +<span>Their fitful bodies away against the skies.<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92"></a><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93"></a>CHAPTER I</h2> + +<h3>SPEAKING AS ONE OF THE CROWD</h3> + + +<p>It is a little awkward to say what I am going to say now.</p> + +<p>Probably it will be still more awkward afterward.</p> + +<p>But I find as I go up and down the world and look in the faces of the +crowds in it, that it is true, and I can only tell as it is.</p> + +<p><i>I want to be good.</i></p> + +<p>And I do not want to go up on a mountain to do it, or to slink off and +live all alone on an island in the sea.</p> + +<p>I go a step further.</p> + +<p>I believe that the crowds want to be good.</p> + +<p>But I cannot prove that people want to be good in crowds, and so for the +sake of the argument, and to make the case as simple as possible, I am +going to give up speaking for crowds, and speak for myself as one member +of the crowd and for Lim. Lim and I (and Lim is a business man and not a +mere author) have had long talks in which we have confided to each other +what we think this world, in spite of appearances, is really like, and +we have come to a kind of provisional program and to a definite +agreement on our two main points.</p> + +<p>1. We want to be good.</p> + +<p>2. We want other people to be good, partly as a matter of convenience +for us, partly for morally aesthetic reasons, and partly because we want +to be in a kind of world where what is good in us works.</p> + +<p>The next point in our confession follows from this. It is an awkward and +exposed thing to say out loud to people in general, but</p> + +<p><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94"></a>3. Lim and I want to make over the earth.</p> + +<p>4. Sitting down grimly by ourselves, all alone, and believing in a world +hard, with our eyes shut, does not interest us. It is this particular +planet just as it is that interests us, in its present hopeful, +squirming state.</p> + +<p>It does not seem to us to the point just now to conceive some brand new, +clean, slick planet up in space, with crowds of perfect and convenient +people on it, and then expect to lay it down in the night like a great, +soft, beautiful dew or ideal on this one. We want to take this heavy, +inconvenient, cumbersome, real planet that we have, and see what can be +done with it, and by the people on it, what can be done by these same +people, whose signs one goes by down the street, with Smith & Smith, +Gowns, with Clapp & Clapp, Butchers, with W.H. Riley & Co., Plumbers and +Gas Fitters, and with things that real people are really doing.</p> + +<p>The things that real people are really doing, when one thinks of it, are +Soap, Tooth-brushes, Subsoil Pipes, Wall Papers, Razors, Mattresses, +Suspenders, Tiles, Shoes, Pots, and Kettles. Of course the first thing +that happened to us, to Lim and to me (as any one might guess, in a +little quiet job like making over the earth), was that we found we had +to begin with ourselves.</p> + +<p>We did.</p> + +<p>We are obliged to admit that, as a matter of fact, we began, owing to +circumstances, in a kind of rudimentary way with the idea of getting +people to take up goodness by talking about it.</p> + +<p>But we are reformed preachers now. We seldom backslide into talking to +people about goodness.</p> + +<p>We have made up our minds to lie low and keep still and show them some.</p> + +<p>Of course one ought to have some of one's own to show. But the trouble +always is, if it is really good, one is sure not to know it, or at least +one does not know which it is. The best we can do with goodness, some of +us, if we want it to show more quickly <a name="Page_95" id="Page_95"></a>or to hurry people along in +goodness more, is to show them other people's.</p> + +<p>I sometimes think that if everybody in the world could know my plumber +or pay a bill to him, the world would soon begin slowly but surely to be +a very different place.</p> + +<p>My plumber is a genius.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96"></a>CHAPTER II</h2> + +<h3>IS IT WRONG FOR GOOD PEOPLE TO BE EFFICIENT?</h3> + + +<p>Perhaps it will seem a pity to spoil a book—one that might have been +really rather interesting—by putting the word "goodness" down flatly in +this way in the middle of it.</p> + +<p>And in a book which deals with crowds, too, and with business.</p> + +<p>I would not yield first place to any one in being tired of the word. I +think, for one, that unless there is something we can do to it, and +something we can do to it now, it had better be dropped.</p> + +<p>But I have sometimes discovered when I had thought I was tired of a +word, that what I was really tired of was somebody who was using it.</p> + +<p>I do not mind it when my plumber uses it. I have heard him use it (and +swearing softly, I regret to say) when it affected me like a Hymn Tune.</p> + +<p>And there is Non, too.</p> + +<p>I first made Non's acquaintance as our train pulled out of New York, and +we found ourselves going down together on Friday afternoon to spend +Sunday with M—— in North Carolina. The first thing he said was, when +we were seated in the Pullman comfortably watching that big, still world +under glass roll by outside, that he had broken an engagement with his +wife to come. She was giving a Tea, he said, that afternoon, and he had +faithfully promised to be there. But a weekend in North Carolina +appealed to him, and afternoon tea—well, he explained to me, crossing +his legs and beaming at me <a name="Page_97" id="Page_97"></a>all over as if he were a whole genial, +successful afternoon tea all by himself—afternoon tea did not appeal to +him.</p> + +<p>He thought probably he was a Non-Gregarious Person.</p> + +<p>As he was the gusto of our little party and fairly reeked with +sociability, and was in a kind of orgy of gregariousness every minute +all the way to Wilmington (even when he was asleep we heard from him), +we called him the Non-Gregarious Person, and every time he piled on one +more story, we reminded him how non-gregarious he was. We called him +Non-Gregarious all the way after that—Non for short.</p> + +<p>This is the way I became acquainted with Non. It has been Non ever +since.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>I found in the course of the next three days that when Non was not being +the life of the party or the party did not need any more life for a +while, and we had gone off by ourselves, he became, like most people who +let themselves go, a very serious person. When he talked about his +business, he was even religious. Not that he had any particular +vocabulary for being religious, but there was something about him when +he spoke of business—his own business—that almost startled me at first. +He always seemed to be regarding his business when he spoke of it as +being, for all practical purposes, a kind of little religion by itself.</p> + +<p>Now Non is a builder or contractor.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>For many years now the best way to make a pessimist or a confirmed +infidel out of anybody has been to get him to build a house. No better +arrangement for not believing in more people, and for not believing in +more kinds of people at once and for life, has ever been invented +probably than building a house. No man has been educated, or has been +really tested in this world, until he has built a house. I submit this +proposition to <a name="Page_98" id="Page_98"></a>anybody who has tried it, or to any one who is going to +try it. There is not a single kind or type of man who sooner or later +will not build himself, and nearly everything that is the matter with +him, into your house. The house becomes a kind of miniature model (such +as they have in expositions) of what is the matter with people. You +enter the door, you walk inside and brood over them. Everything you come +upon, from the white cellar floor to the timbers you bump your head on +in the roof, reminds you of something or of rows of people and of what +is the matter with them. It is the new houses that are haunted now. Any +man who is sensitive to houses and to people and who would sit down in +his house when it is finished and look about in it seriously, and think +of all the people that have been built, in solid wood and stone, into +it, would get up softly and steal out of it, out of the front door of +it, and never enter that house again.</p> + +<p>This is what Non saw. He saw how people felt about their houses, and how +they lived in them helplessly and angrily year after year, and felt +hateful about the world.</p> + +<p>I gradually drew out of him the way he felt about it. I found he was not +as good as some people are at talking about himself, but the subject was +interesting. He began his career building houses for people, as nearly +every one does. The general idea is that everybody is expected to exact +commissions from everybody else, and the owner is expected to pay each +man his own commission and then pay all the commissions that each man +has charged the other man. Every house that got built in this way seemed +to be a kind of network or conspiracy of not doing as you would be done +by. Non did not see any way out at first, just for one man. He merely +noticed how things were going, and he noticed that nearly every person +that he had dealings with, from the bottom to the top of the house, +seemed to make him feel that he either was, or would be, or ought to be, +a grafter. He could not so much as look at a house he had built, through +the trees when he was going by, without wishing he could be a <a name="Page_99" id="Page_99"></a>better +man, and studying on how it could be managed. His own first houses made +him see things. They proved to be the making of him, and if similar +houses have not made similar men, it is their fault. It might not be +reassuring to the men who are now living in these first houses to dwell +too much on this (and I might say he did not build them alone), but it +seems to be necessary to bring out the most striking thing about Non in +his first stage as a business man, <i>viz.</i>: He hated his business. He +made up his mind he either would make the business the kind of business +he liked or get out of it. I did not gather from the way he talked about +it that he had any idea of being an uplifter. He merely had, apparently, +an obstinate, doggedly comfortable idea about himself, and about what a +thing would have to be, in this world, if he was connected with it. He +proposed to enjoy his business. He was spending most of his time at it.</p> + +<p>Other people have had this same happy thought, but they seem to manage +to keep on being patient. Non could not fall back on being patient, and +it made him think harder.</p> + +<p>The first thing he thought of was that doing his business as he thought +he ought to, if he once worked his idea out, and worked it down through +and organized it, might pay. He almost had the belief that people might +pay a man a little extra, perhaps, for enjoying his business. It cannot +be said that he believed this immediately. He merely wanted to, and +worked toward it, and merely contrived new shrewd ways at first of being +able to afford it. Gradually he began to notice that the more he enjoyed +his business, the more he enjoyed it with his whole soul and body, +enjoyed it down to the very toes of his conscience, the more people +there were who stepped into his office and wanted him to enjoy his +business on their houses. It was what they had been looking for for +years—for some builder who was really enjoying his business. And the +more he enjoyed his business in his own particular way—that of building +a house for a man in less time than he said he would, and <a name="Page_100" id="Page_100"></a>for less +money, not infrequently sending him a check at the end of it—the more +his business grew.</p> + +<p>I do not know that there would be any special harm in speaking of Non's +idea—of just doing as you would be done by—in more moral or religious +language, but it is not necessary. And I find I take an almost religious +joy in looking at the Golden Rule at last as a plain business +proposition. All that happened was that Non was original, saw something +that everybody thought they knew, and acted as if it were so. +Theoretically one would not have said that it would be original to take +an old platitudinous law like the law of supply and demand, and act as +if it were so; but it was. At the time Non was beginning his career +there was nothing in the building-market people found harder to hire +than honesty. Here was something, he saw at last, that thousands of busy +and important men who did not have time to be detectives, wanted. There +did not seem to be any one very actively supplying the demand. A big +market, a small supply, and almost no competition. Non stepped in and +proposed to represent a man's interest who is building a house as +literally as the man would represent his interests himself, if he knew +all about houses. Everything has followed from this. What Non's business +is now, when a man is building a house, is to step quietly into the +man's shoes, let him put on another pair, and go about his business. It +is not necessary to go into the details. Any reader who has ever built a +house knows the details. Just take them and turn them around.</p> + +<p>What those of us who know Non best like about him is that he is a plain +business man, and that he has acted in this particular matter without +any fine moral frills or remarks. He has done the thing because he liked +it and believed in it.</p> + +<p>But the most efficient thing to me about Non is not the way he is making +money out of saving money for other people, but the way the fact that he +can do it makes people feel about the world. Whenever I have a little +space of discouragement or of impatience about the world because it does +not hurry more, I <a name="Page_101" id="Page_101"></a>fall to thinking of Non. "Perhaps next week"—I say +to myself cheerfully—"I can go down to New York and slip into Non's +office and get the latest news as to how religion is getting on. Or he +will take me out with him to lunch, and I will stop scolding or +idealizing, and we will get down to business, and I will take a good +long look into that steady-lighted, unsentimental face of his while he +tells me across the little corner table at Delmonico's for three hours +how shrewd the Golden Rule is, and how it works." Sometimes when I have +just been in New York, and have come home and am sitting in my still +study, with the big idle mountain just outside, and the great meadow and +all the world, like some great, calm gentle spirit or picture of itself, +lying out there about me, and I fall to thinking of Non, and of how he +is working in wood and stone inside of people's houses, and inside of +their lives day after day, and of how he is touching people at a +thousand points all the weeks, being a writer, making lights and shadows +and little visions of words fall together just so, seems, suddenly a +very trivial occupation—like amusing one's self with a pretty little +safe kaleidoscope, holding it up, aiming it and shaking softly one's +coloured bits of phrases at a world! Of course, it need not be so. But +there are moments when I think of Non when it seems so.</p> + +<p>In our regular Sunday religion we do not seem to be quite at our best +just now.</p> + +<p>At least (perhaps I should speak for one) I know I am not.</p> + +<p>Being a saint of late is getting to be a kind of homely, modest, +informal, almost menial everyday thing. It makes one more hopeful about +religion. Perhaps people who once get the habit, and who are being good +all the week, can even be good on Sunday.</p> + +<p>There are many ways of resting or leaning back upon one's instincts and +getting over to one's religion or perspective about the world. Mount Tom +(which is in my front yard, in Massachusetts) helps sometimes—with a +single look.</p> + +<p>When I go down to New York, I look at the Metropolitan <a name="Page_102" id="Page_102"></a>Tower, the +Pennsylvania Station, the McAdoo Tunnels, and at Non.</p> + +<p>If I wanted to make anybody religious, I would try to get him to work in +Non's office, or work with anybody who ever worked with him, or who ever +saw him; or I would have him live in a house built by him, or pay a bill +made out by him.</p> + +<p>It has seemed to me that his succeeding and making himself succeed in +this way is a great spiritual adventure, a pure religion, a difficult, +fresh, and stupendous religion.</p> + +<p>Now these many days have I watched him going up and down through all the +empty reputations, the unmeaning noises of the world, living his life +like some low, old-fashioned, modest Hymn Tune he keeps whistling—and I +have seen him in fear, and in danger, and in gladness being shrewder and +shrewder for God, now grimly, now radiantly, hour by hour, day by day +getting rich with the Holy Ghost!</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103"></a>CHAPTER III</h2> + +<h3>IS IT WRONG FOR GOOD PEOPLE TO BE INTERESTING?</h3> + + +<p>People are acquiring automobiles, Oriental rugs, five-hundred-dollar +gowns, more rapidly just now than they are goodness, because +advertisements in this present generation are more readable than +sermons, and because the shop windows on Fifth Avenue can attract more +attention than the churches. The shop windows make people covetous.</p> + +<p>If the goodness that one sees, hears about, or goes by does not make +other people covetous, does not make them wish they had it or some just +like it, it must be because there is something the matter with it, or +something the matter with the way it is displayed.</p> + +<p>If the church shop windows, for instance, were to make displays of +goodness up and down the great Moral Fifth Avenue of the world—well, +one does not know; but there are some of us who would rather expect to +see the Goodness Display in the windows consisting largely of Things +People Ought Not to Want.</p> + +<p>There would be rows and tiers of Not-Things piled up—Things for People +Not to Be, and Things for People Not to Do.</p> + +<p>Goodness displayed in this way is not interesting. Perhaps this is one +of the reasons why the word Goodness spoils a thing for people—so many +people—when it is allowed in it.</p> + +<p>Possibly it is because we are apt to think of the good people, and of +the people who are being good, as largely keeping from <a name="Page_104" id="Page_104"></a>doing something, +or as keeping other people from doing something—as negative. Their +goodness seems to consist in being morally accurate, and in being very +particular just in time, and in a kind of general holding in.</p> + +<p>We do not naturally or off-hand—any of us—think of goodness as having +much of a lunge to it. It is tired-looking and discouraged, and pulls +back kindly and gently. Or it teases and says, "Please"—God knows how +helpless it is, and I for one am frank to say that, as far as I have +observed, He has not been paying very much attention to good people of +late.</p> + +<p>I do not believe I am alone in this. There must be thousands of others +who have this same half-guilty, half-defiant feeling of suspiciousness +toward what people seem to think should be called goodness. Not that we +say anything. We merely keep wondering—we cannot see what it is, +exactly, about goodness that should make it so depressing.</p> + +<p>In the meantime we hold on. We do not propose to give up believing in +it. Perhaps, after all, all that is the matter with goodness in the +United States is the people who have taken hold of it.</p> + +<p>They do not seem to be the kind of people who can make it interesting. +We cannot help thinking, if these same bad people about us, or people +who are called bad, would only take up goodness awhile, how they would +make it hum!</p> + +<p>I can only speak for one, but I do not deny that when I have been +sitting (in some churches), or associating, owing to circumstances, with +very good people a little longer than usual, and come out into the +street, I feel like stepping up sometimes to the first fine, brisk, +businesslike man I see going by, and saying, "My dear sir, I do wish +that <i>you</i> would take up goodness awhile and see if, after all, +something cannot really be done. I keep on trying to be hopeful, but +these dear good people in here, it seems to me, are making a terrible +mess of it!"</p> + +<p>And, to make a long story short, Lim happened to be going by one day, +and this practically is what I did. I had done it <a name="Page_105" id="Page_105"></a>before with other +business men in spirit or in a general way, but with him I was more +particular. I went straight to the point. "Here are at least sixteen +valuable efficient brands of goodness in America," I said, "all worth +their weight in gold for a big business career, that no one is really +using, that no one quite believes in or can get on the market, and yet I +believe with my whole soul in them all, and I believe thousands of other +men do, or are ready to, the moment some one makes a start."</p> + +<p>I pulled out a little list of items which I had made out and put down on +a piece of paper, and handed them over to him, and said I wished he +would take a few of them—the first five or six or so—and make them +work.</p> + +<p>He already had, I found, made two or three of the harder ones work.</p> + +<p>I would not have any one suppose for a moment that I am presenting Lim +as a kind of business angel.</p> + +<p>No one who knows Lim thinks of him, or would let anybody else think of +him, as being a Select Person, as being particularly or egregiously what +he ought to be. This is one reason I have picked him out. Being good in +a small private way, just as a small private end in itself, may be +practicable perhaps without dragging in people who are not quite what +they ought to be. But the moment one tries to make goodness work, one +comes to the fact that it must be made to work with what we have. We +have a great crowd of unselected people, people both good and bad, and +the first principle in making goodness work (instead of being merely +good) seems to be to believe that goodness is not too good for anybody. +Anybody who can make it work can have it, and what goodness seems to +need, especially in America and England just now, is people who do not +feel that they must at all hazards look good. Whatever happens, whatever +else we do in any general investment or movement we may be making with +goodness, we must let these people in. If there is one thing rather than +another that those of us who know Lim all rely on and like, it is that +nothing can ever make him <a name="Page_106" id="Page_106"></a>slump down into looking good. We often find +him hard to make out—everything is left open and loose and unlabelled +in Lim's moral nature. The only really sure way any one can tell when +Lim is being good is, that whenever he is being good he becomes suddenly +and unexpectedly interesting. His goodness is daring, unexpected, and +original. One has the feeling that it may break out anywhere. It is +always doing things that everybody said could not be done before. It is +true that some people are dazed, and no one can ever seem to feel sure +he knows what it is that is going on in Lim when he is being good, or +that it is goodness. He merely keeps watching it. There is a certain +element of news, of freshness, of gentle sensation, in his goodness. It +leads to consequences. And there always seems to be something about +Lim's goodness which attracts the attention of people, and makes people +who see it want it. So when I speak of goodness in this book, and put it +down as the basis of the power of getting men to do as one likes, I do +not deny that I am taking the word away and moving it over from its +usual associations. I do not mean by a good act, a good-looking act, but +an act so constituted that it makes good. For the purpose of this book I +would define goodness as efficiency. Goodness is the quality in a thing +that makes the thing go, and that makes it go so that it will not run +down, and that nothing can stop it.</p> + +<p>There is the inefficiency of lying, for instance, and the inefficiency +of force, or bullying.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2> + +<h3>PROSPECTS OF THE LIAR</h3> + + +<p>My theory about the Liar is that it is of no use to scold him or blame +him. It merely makes him feel superior. He should be looked upon quietly +and without saying anything as a case of arrested development. What has +happened to him is that he merely is not quite bright about himself, and +has failed to see how bright (in the long run) other people are.</p> + +<p>When a man lies or does any other wrong thing, his real failure consists +not in the wrongdoing itself, but in his failure to take pains to focus +his mind on the facts in himself, and in the people about him, and see +what it really is that he would wish he had done, say in twenty years. +It seems to be possible, after a clumsy fashion, to find out by a study +of ourselves, and of our own lives and of other men's lives, what we +would wish we had done afterward. Everything we have learned so far we +have learned by guessing wrong on what we have thought we would want +afterward. We have gradually guessed what we wanted better. We began our +lives as children with all sorts of interesting sins or moral guesses +and experiments. We find there are certain sins or moral experiments we +almost never use any more because we found that they never worked. We +had been deceived about them. Most of us have tried lying. Since we were +very small we have tried in every possible fashion—now in one way, now +in another—to see if lying could not be made to work. By far the +majority of us, and all of us who are the most intelligent, are not +deceived now by our desire to tell lies. Perhaps we have not learned +that all lies do not pay. A child tells a lie at first as if a lie had +never been thought of be<a name="Page_108" id="Page_108"></a>fore. It is as if lying had just been invented, +and he had just thought what a great convenience it was, and how many +things there were that he could do in that way. He discovers that the +particular thing he wants at the moment, he gets very often by lying. +But the next time he lies, he cannot get anything. If he keeps on lying +for a long time, he learns that while, after a fashion, he is getting +things, he is losing people. Finally, he finds he cannot even get +things. Nobody believes in him or trusts him. He cannot be efficient. He +then decides that being trusted, and having people who feel safe to +associate with him and to do business with him, is the thing he really +wants most; and that he must have first, even if it is only a way to get +the other things he wants. It need not be wondered that the Trusts, +those huge raw youngsters of the modern spirit, have had to go through +with most of the things other boys have. The Trusts have had to go +through, one after the other, all their children's diseases, and try +their funny little moral experiments on the world. They thought they +could lie at first. They thought it would be cunning, and that it would +work. They did not realize at once that the bigger a boy you were, even +if you were anonymous, the more your lie showed and the more people +there were who suffered from it who would be bound sooner or later to +call you to account for it.</p> + +<p>The Trusts have been guessing wrong on what they would wish they had +done in twenty years, and the best of them now are trying to guess +better. They are trying to acquire prestige by being far-sighted for +themselves and far-sighted for the people who deal with them, and are +resting their policy on winning confidence and on keeping faith with the +people.</p> + +<p>They not only tried lying, like all young children, but they tried +stealing. For years the big corporations could be seen going around from +one big innocent city in this country to another, and standing by +quietly and without saying a word, putting the streets in their pockets.</p> + +<p>But no big corporation of the first class to-day would begin <a name="Page_109" id="Page_109"></a>its +connection with a city in this fashion. Beginning a permanent business +relation with a customer by making him sorry afterward he has had any +dealings with you, has gone by as a method of getting business in +England and America.</p> + +<p>One of our big American magazines not long ago, which had gained +especially high rates from its advertisers because they believed in it, +lied about its circulation. The man who was responsible was not +precisely sure, gave nominal figures in round numbers, and did what +magazines very commonly did under the circumstances; but when the +magazine owner looked up details afterward and learned precisely what +the circulation was for the particular issue concerned, he sent out +announcements to every firm in the country that had anything in the +columns of that issue, saying that the firm had lied, and enclosing a +check for the difference in value represented. Of course it was a good +stroke of business, eating national humble pie so, and it was a cheap +stroke of business too, doing some one, sudden, striking thing that no +one would forget. Not an advertisement could be inserted and paid for in +the magazine for years without having that action, and the prestige of +that action, back of it. Every shred of virtue there was in the action +could have been set one side, and was set one side by many people, +because it paid so well. Every one saw suddenly, and with a faint breath +of astonishment, how honesty worked. But the main point about the +magazine in distinction from its competitors seems to have been that it +not merely saw how honesty worked, but it saw it first and it had the +originality, the moral shrewdness and courage, to put up money on it. It +believed in honesty so hard that suddenly one morning, before all the +world, it risked its entire fortune on it. Now that it has been done +once, the new level or standard of candour may be said to have been +established which others will have to follow. But it does not seem to me +that the kind of man who has the moral originality to dare do a thing +like this first need ever have any serious trouble with competitors. In +the last analysis, in the competition of modern <a name="Page_110" id="Page_110"></a>business to get the +crowd, the big success is bound to come to men in the one region of +competition where competition still has some give in it—the region of +moral originality. Other things in competition nowadays have all been +thought of except being good. Any man who can and will to-day think out +new and unlooked-for ways of being good can get ahead, in the United +States of practically everybody.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111"></a>CHAPTER V</h2> + +<h3>PROSPECTS OF THE BULLY</h3> + + +<p>The stage properties that go with a bully change as we grow older. When +one thinks of a bully, one usually sees a picture at once in one's mind. +It is a big boy lording it over a little one, or getting him down and +sitting on him.</p> + +<p>Everybody recognizes what is going on immediately, pitches in nobly and +beautifully, and licks the big boy.</p> + +<p>The trouble with the bully in business has been that he is not so simple +and easy to recognize. He is apt to be more or less anonymous and +impersonal, and it is harder to hit him in the right place.</p> + +<p>But when one thinks of it perhaps this pleasant and inspiring duty is +not so impracticable as it looks, and is presently to be attended to.</p> + +<p>Any man who relies, in getting what he wants, on being big instead of +being right, is a bully.</p> + +<p>Modern business is done over a wide area, with thousands of persons +looking on, and for a long time and with thousands of people coming +back. The man who relies on being big instead of being right, and who +takes advantage of his position instead of his inherent superiority, is +soon seen through. His customers go over to the enemy. A show of force +or a hold-up works very well at the moment. Being bigger may be more +showy than being right, and it may down the Little Boy, but the Little +Boy wins the crowd.</p> + +<p>Business to-day consists in persuading crowds.</p> + +<p>The Little Boy can prove he is right. All the bully can prove is that he +is bigger.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112"></a>The Liar in Business is already going by.</p> + +<p>Now it is the turn of the bully.</p> + +<p>Not long ago a few advertisers in a big American city wanted unfairly +low rates for advertisements and tried to use force with the newspapers. +Three or four of the biggest shops combined and gave notice that they +would take their advertising away unless the rates came down. After a +little, they drew in a few other lines of business with them, and +suddenly one morning five or six full pages of advertisements were +withdrawn from every newspaper in the city. The newspapers went on +publishing all the news of the city except news as to what people could +buy in department stores, and waited. They made no counter-move of any +kind, and said nothing and seven days slipped past. They held to the +claim that the service they performed in connecting the great stores +with the people of the city was a real service, that it represented +market value which could be proved and paid for. They kept on for +another week publishing for the people all the news of the city except +the news as to how they could spend their money. They wondered how long +it would take the great shops with acres of things to sell to see how it +would work not to let anybody know what the things were.</p> + +<p>The great shops tried other ways of letting people know. They tried +handbills, a huge helpless patter of them over all the city. They used +billboards, and posted huge lists of items for people to stop and read +in the streets, if they wanted to, while they rushed by. For three whole +weeks they held on tight to the idea that the newspapers were striking +employees of department stores. One would have thought that they would +have seen that the newspapers were the representatives of the +people—almost the homes of the people—and that it would pay to treat +them respectfully. One would have thought they would have seen that if +they wanted space in the homes of the people—places at their very +breakfast tables—space that the newspapers had earned and acquired +there, they would <a name="Page_113" id="Page_113"></a>have to pay their share of what it had cost the +newspapers to get it.</p> + +<p>One would have thought that the department shops would have seen that +the more they could make the newspapers prosper, the more influence the +newspapers would have in the homes of the people, and the more business +they could get through them. But it was not until the shopowners had +come down and gazed day after day on the big, white, lonely floors of +their shops that they saw the truth. Crowds stayed away, and proved it +to them. Namely: a store, if it uses a great newspaper, instead of +having a few feet of show windows on a street for people to walk by, +gets practically miles of show windows for people—in their own +houses—sells its goods almost any morning to the people—to a whole +city—before anybody gets up from breakfast—has its duties as well as +its rights.</p> + +<p>Of course, when the shopkeepers really saw that this was what the +newspapers had been doing for them, they wanted to do what was right, +and wanted to pay for it. One would have thought, looking at it +theoretically, that the department stores in any city would have +imagination enough to see, without practically having to shut their +stores up for three weeks, what advertising was worth. But if great +department stores do not have imagination to see what they would wish +they had done in twenty years, in one year, or three weeks, and have to +spell out the experience morning by morning and see what works, word by +word, they do learn in the end that being right works, and that bullying +does not. Gradually the level or standard of right in business is bound +to rise, until people have generally come to take the Golden Rule with +the literalness and seriousness that the best and biggest men are +already taking it. Department stores that have the moral originality and +imagination to guess what people would wish they had bought of them and +what they would wish they had sold to them afterward are going to win. +Department stores that deal with their customers three or four years +ahead are the ones that win first.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114"></a>CHAPTER VI</h2> + +<h3>GOODNESS AS A CROWD-PROCESS</h3> + + +<p>The basis of successful business is imagination about other people. The +best way to train one's imagination about other people is to try +different ways of being of service to them. Trying different ways of +merely getting money out of them does not train the imagination. It is +too easy.</p> + +<p>Business is going to be before long among the noblest of the +professions, because it takes the highest order of imagination to +succeed in it. Goodness is no longer a Sunday school. The whole world, +in a rough way, is its own Sunday school.</p> + +<p>To have the most brains render the most service—render services people +had never dreamed of before.</p> + +<p>Why bother to tell people to be good? It bores us. It bores them. +Presently we will tell them over our shoulders, as we go by, to use +their brains. Goodness is a by-product of efficiency.</p> + +<p>Being good every day in business stands in no need of being stood up +for, or apologized for, or even helped. All of these things may be +expedient and human and natural, because one cannot help being +interested in particular people and in a particular generation; but they +are not really necessary to goodness. It is only when we are tired, or +when we only half believe in it, that we feel to-day that goodness needs +to be stood up for. In a day when men make vast crowds of things, so +that the things are seen everywhere, and when the things are made to +stand the test of crowds—crowds of days, or crowds of years—and when +they make them for crowds of people, goodness does not need scared and +helpful people defending it. <a name="Page_115" id="Page_115"></a>I have seen that goodness is a thing to be +sung about like a sunset. I have seen that goodness is organic, and +grounded in the nature of things and in the nature of man. I have seen +that being good is the one great adventure of the world, the huge daily +passionate moral experiment of the human heart—that all men are at work +on it, that goodness is an implacable crowd process, and that nothing +can stop it.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116"></a>CHAPTER VII</h2> + +<h3>THOUGHTS ON BEING IMPROVED BY OTHER PEOPLE</h3> + + +<p>But Fate has so arranged our lives that we all have to live cooped up in +one particular generation. Living in all of them, especially the ages +just ahead, and seeing as one looks out upon them how goodness wins, may +be well enough when one is tired or discouraged and is driven to it, but +in the meantime all the while we are living in this one. The faces of +the people we know flit past us; the gaunt, grim face of the crowd +haunts us—the crowd that will slip softly off the earth very soon and +drop into the Darkness—a whole generation of it, without seeing how +things are coming out; and there is something about the streets, about +the look of women as they go by, something about the faces of the little +children, that makes one wish goodness would hurry. One cannot think +with any real pleasure of goodness as a huge, slow, implacable moral +glacier, a kind of human force of gravity, grinding out truths and +grinding under people, generation after generation, down toward some +vast, beautiful, happy valley with flowers and children in it and +majestic old men thousands of years away. One wishes goodness would +hurry. We are not content, some of us, with having the good people climb +over the so-called evil ones and gain the supremacy of the world, and +all because the evil people do not see what they really want to do or +would have wished they had done afterward. We want the evil ones, so +called, to see what they really want now. We cannot help believing that +there is some way of attracting their attention to what they really want +now.</p> + +<p>I have seen, or seemed to see, in my time that there is almost <a name="Page_117" id="Page_117"></a>no limit +to what people can do if they can get their own attention, or if some +person or some event will happen by that can get their attention for +them.</p> + +<p>Paralytics jumped from their beds at the time of the San Francisco +earthquake and ran for blocks. The whole earth had to shake them in +order to get their attention; but it did it, and they saw what it was +they wanted, and they ran for it at once, whether they were paralytics +or not. In the fire that followed the earthquake, people that had been +sick in bed for weeks were seen, scores of them, dragging their trunks +through the streets.</p> + +<p>I have seen, too, in my time scores of people doing great feats of +goodness in this way, things that they knew they could not do, dragging +huge moral trunks after them, or swinging them up on their shoulders. I +have seen men who thought they were old in their hearts, and who thought +they were wicked, running like boys, with shouts and cheers, to do +right. It was all a matter of attention. The question with most of us +would seem to be: How can one get one's attention to what one would wish +one had done in twenty years, and how can one get other people's—all +the people with whom we are living and working—to do with us what they +would wish they had done, in twenty minutes, twenty days, or twenty +years?</p> + +<p>Letting the Crowd be Good, all turns in the long run upon touching the +imagination of Crowds.</p> + +<p>In the last analysis, the coming of the kingdom of heaven, as it has +been called, is going to be the coming slowly, and from unsuspected +quarters, of a new piety and of new kinds of saints into the forefront +of modern life—saints who can attract attention, saints who can make +crowds think what they really want.</p> + +<p>Using the word in its more special sense, the time has come when it is +being keenly realized that if goodness is to be properly appreciated by +crowds, it must be properly advertised.</p> + +<p>How can goodness be advertised to Crowds?</p> + +<p><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118"></a>Who are the people that can touch the imagination of Crowds?</p> + +<p>The best and most suggestive truths that most of us could come to with +regard to doing right, would come from a study of the people who have +tried to make us do it. Most of us, if we were asked to name the people +most prominently connected with the virtues that we have studied and +wondered about most, would mention, probably, either our parents or our +preachers. Many of us feel quite expert about parents. We have studied +vividly, and sometimes with almost a breathless interest, all their +little ways of getting us to be good, and there is hardly any one who +has not come to quite definite conclusions of how he should be preached +to. I have thought it would be not unfruitful to consider in this +connection either our parents or our preachers. I have decided to +consider the preachers who try to make me good, because they are a +little less complicated than parents.</p> + +<p>Preachers can only be put into classes in a general way. They often +overlap, and many of them change over from one class into another every +now and then on some special subject, or on some special line of +experience which they have had. But for the most part, at least as +regards emphasis, preachers may be said to divide off into three +classes:</p> + +<p>Those who tease us to do right.</p> + +<p>Those who make us see that doing right, if any one wants to do it, is +really an excellent thing.</p> + +<p>Those who make us want to do it.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>I never go to hear a second time, if I can help it, a preacher who has +teased me to do right. I used to hope at first that perhaps a clergyman +who was teasing people might incidentally slip off the track a minute, +and say something or see something interesting and alive. But, +apparently, preachers who do not see that people should not be teased to +do right, do not see other things, and I have gradually given up having +hopeful moments <a name="Page_119" id="Page_119"></a>about them. Why, in a world like this, with the right +and the wrong in it all lying so eloquent and plain and beautiful in the +lives of the people about us, and just waiting to be uncovered a little, +waiting to be looked at hard a minute, should audiences be gathered +together and teased to do right?</p> + +<p>If the right were merely to be had in sermons or on paper, it might be +different. My own experience with the right has been, if I may speak for +one, that when I get out of the way of the people who are doing it, and +let the right they are doing be seen by people, everybody wants it. When +people who are doing right are quietly revealed, uncovered a little +further by a preacher, everybody envies them, and teasing becomes +superfluous. People sit in their seats and think of them, and become +covetous to be like them. If, this very day, all the ministers of the +world were to agree that, on next Sunday morning at half-past ten +o'clock, they all with one accord would preach a sermon teasing people +to be rich, it would not be more absurd, or more pathetic, or more away +from the point, than it would be to preach a sermon teasing people to be +good. They want to be good now; they envy the people that they see going +about the world not leaning on others to be good—self-poised, +independent, free, rich, spiritually self-supporting persons.</p> + +<p>The men and women that we know may be more or less muddled in their +minds with philosophy or with theology, or perhaps they are being +deceived by expediency or being bullied by their environment, but they +are not wicked; they are out of focus, and what they desire when they go +to church on Sunday morning is to get a good look at beautiful and +refreshing things that they want, and for an hour and a half, if +possible, with slow steadied thought see their own lives in perspective. +It is a criminal waste of time to get hundreds of people to come into +church on a Sunday morning and seat them all together in a great room +where they cannot get out, and then tease them and tell them they ought +to be good. They knew it before <a name="Page_120" id="Page_120"></a>they came. They are already agreed, all +of them, that they want to be good. They even want to be good in +business—as good as they can afford to. The question is how to manage +to do it. The thing that is troubling them is the technique. How can +they be good in their business—more good than their employers want them +to be, for instance—and keep their positions? Doing as one would wish +one had done afterward, or knowing what one is about, or "being good" as +it is sometimes called, is a thing that all really clever people have +agreed upon. They simply cannot manage some of the details—details like +time and place, a detail like being good now, for instance, or like +being good here. It is the more practical things like these that trouble +people, or they grow mixed in their thoughts about the big goods and the +little ones—which shall be first in order of importance or which in the +order of time. And when one sees that people are really like this in +their hearts, and when one sees them, all these poor, helpless people, +sitting cooped up in a church for an hour and a half being teased to be +good, it is small wonder that it seems, or is coming to seem, to the +clean-cut morally businesslike men and women we have to-day, a pitiful +waste of time.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>I come to the second class of preachers I had in mind with more +diffidence. My feelings about them are not so simple and rudimentary as +my feelings about those who have teased me to be good.</p> + +<p>Any man who travels about, or who drops into churches wherever he +happens to be from Sunday to Sunday, is almost sure to find in every +city of considerable size at least one imperious capable baffling +clergyman. If one is strictly honest and fair toward him, to say nothing +of being a well-meant and hopeful human being who is living in the same +world with him and who feels very imperfect too, finding any serious and +honest fault with the sermon, or at least laying one's finger upon what +the fault <a name="Page_121" id="Page_121"></a>is, seems to be almost impossible. One simply comes out of +the church in a nice, neat little glow of good-will and admiration, and +with a strange, soothing, happy sense of new, fresh, convenient wisdom.</p> + +<p>The only fair way to criticise the preacher who belongs in this class +seems to be to take ten years for it, go in regularly and get a little +practice every Sunday. There are preachers who preach so well that the +only way one can ever find what is the matter with their sermons is to +sit quietly while they are preaching them, and look around at the +people. One thinks as one looks around, "These people are what this man +has done."</p> + +<p>They are the same people they were ten years ago.</p> + +<p>I often hear other sermons that are far easier to criticise. They are +one-sided or narrow, but they make new people.</p> + +<p>I might not always like to be in a congregation when a man is preaching +a sermon that makes new people, because he may be making people or kinds +of people that at the time at least I do not need to be. But I naturally +prefer, at least part of the time, a preacher who puts in, before he is +through, some good work on me. There is a preacher in B—— who always +arouses in me, whenever I am in the city, the same old, curious, hopeful +feeling about him that this next one more time he is going to get to me, +that I am going to be attended to. I cannot say how many times I have +dropped in upon him in his big plain church, seen him with his hushed +congregation all about him, all listening to him up to the last minute, +each of them sitting all alone with his own soul, and with him, and with +the ticking of the clock. And the sermon is always about the same. You +see him narrowing the truth down wonderfully, ruthlessly, to You. You +begin to see everything—to see all the arguments, all the +circumstances, all the principles. You see them narrowing you down +grimly, closing in upon you, converging you and all your little, mean +life, driving you apparently at last into one helpless beautiful corner +of doing right. You feel while you listen the old sermon-thrill you have +felt before, a kind of <a name="Page_122" id="Page_122"></a>intellectual joy in God, in the very brains of +God; you think of how He has arranged right and wrong so cunningly, laid +them all out so plain and so close beside each other for you to choose +to be good. Then the benediction is pronounced over you, the sevenfold +amen dies away over you, and you go home and do as you like.</p> + +<p>One sees the sermon for days afterward lying out there in calm and +orderly memory, all so complete and perfect by itself. There does not +really seem to be any need of doing anything more to it. It is what +people mean probably by a "finished sermon." It is as if goodness had +been put under a glass globe in a parlour. You go home proud to think of +it, and proud of course to have such a sermon by you. But you would +never think of touching such a complete and perfect thing during the +week the way you would a poorer sermon, disturbing it hopefully or +mussing it over, trying to work some of it into your own life.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>So much for the first two types of preachers: the preachers who stand +before us Sunday morning with goodness placed beside them in a dense +darkness while they talk, and who tease us to look at it in the darkness +and to take some; and those who stand, a cold white light all about +them, and use pointers and blackboards and things—maps of goodness, +great charts of what people ought to be like—and who make one see each +virtue just where it belongs as a kind of dot, like cities in a +geography, and who leave us with the pleasant feeling of how sweet and +reasonable God is, or rather would be if anybody would pay any attention +to Him.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>I have already hinted at the qualities of the third class of +preachers—those who make me want to be good. They seem to throw +goodness as upon a screen, some vast screen of the world, <a name="Page_123" id="Page_123"></a>of this real +world about me. They turn their souls, like still stereopticons, upon +the faces of men—men who are like the men and women I know. I go about +afterward all the week seeing their sermons in the street. Everybody I +see, everything that comes up Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, the very +patterns of the days and nights, of my duties and failures, keep coming +up, reminding me to be good. I may start in—I often do—with such a +preacher, criticising him, but he soon gets me so occupied criticising +myself and so lost in wondering how this something that he has and sees +just beyond us, just beyond him, just beyond me, can be had for other +people, and how I can have some of it for myself, that I forget to +criticise. He searches my soul, makes me a new being in my presence +before my eyes—that is, a new being toward some one subject, or some +one possibility in the world. He helps me while in his presence to +accomplish the supreme thing that one man can ever do for another. He +helps me to get my own attention. He makes me see a set of particular +things that I immediately, before his next sentence, am trying to find +means to do. He does not attract my attention toward what he wants, like +a preacher who teases; nor does he attract my attention to what God +wants, like the preacher with the charts of goodness. He succeeds in +attracting and holding down my attention to what I really want for +myself or others, and to what I propose to get.</p> + +<p>The imagination of crowds is convinced only by men who have real genius +for expression, for making word-pictures of real things, men who have +what might be called moving-picture minds, and who are so picturesque +and vivid that when they talk to people about goodness they have seen, +everybody feels as if they had been there. It has to be admitted that +this type of preacher, who has a kind of genius, and has developed an +art form for expressing goodness in words, is necessarily an exceptional +man. And it is unreasonable and unfair in the public to expect a man to +get up in the pulpit and, with no costume and no accessories, merely +with a kind of <a name="Page_124" id="Page_124"></a>shrewd holiness or divination into human nature, present +goodness so that we seem to be there. It is small wonder that a man who +finds he is expected to be a kind of combination of biograph, brother, +spiritual detective, and angel all in one, in order to do his work +successfully has days of feeling that he has joined the ranks of The +Impossible Profession.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h2> + +<h3>MAKING GOODNESS HURRY</h3> + + +<p>Perhaps it has leaked out to those who have been following these pages +thus far, that I am merely at best, if the truth were known, a kind of +reformed preacher.</p> + +<p>I admit it. Many other people are. We began, owing to circumstances, +with the idea of getting people to take up goodness by talking about it.</p> + +<p>But we have grown discouraged in talking to people about goodness. More +and more, year by year, we have made up our minds, as I have hinted, to +lie low and to keep still and show them some.</p> + +<p>And I can only say it again, as I have said it before, if everybody in +the world could know my plumber or pay a bill to him, the world would +soon begin, slowly but surely, to be a very different place.</p> + +<p>The first time I saw B—— I had asked him to come over to arrange with +regard to putting in new waterpipes from the street to my house. The old +ones had been put in no one could remember how many years before, and +the pressure of water in the house, apparently from rust in the pipes, +had become very weak. After a minute's conversation I at once engaged +B—— to put in the new and larger pipes, and he agreed to dig open the +trench (about two hundred feet long, and three feet deep) and put the +pipes in the next day for thirty-five dollars. The next morning he +appeared as promised, but, instead of going to work, he came into my +study, stood there a moment before my eyes, and quietly but firmly threw +himself out of his job!</p> + +<p><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126"></a>There was no use in spending thirty-five dollars, he said. He had gone +to the City Water Works Office and told them to look into the matter and +see if the connection they had put in at the junction of my pipe with +the main in the street did not need attention. They had found that a new +connection was necessary. They would see that a new one was put in at +once. They were obliged to do it for nothing, he said; and then, +slipping (figuratively speaking) thirty-five dollars into my pocket, he +bowed gravely and was gone.</p> + +<p>B—— knew absolutely and conclusively (as any one would with a look) +that I was not the sort of person who would ever have heard of that +blessed little joint out in the street, or who ever would hear of it or +who would know what to do with it if he did.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>Sometimes I sit and think of B—— in church, or at least I used to, +especially when his bill had just come in. It was always a pleasure to +think of paying one of B——'s bills—even if it was sometimes a +postponed one. You always knew, with B——, that he had made that bill +out to you as if he had been making out a bill to himself.</p> + +<p>Not such a bad thing to think about during a sermon.</p> + +<p>I do not deny that I do lose a sentence now and then in sermons; and +while, as every one knows, the sermons I have been provided with in the +old stone church have been of a rare and high order, there have, I do +acknowledge, been bad moments—little sudden bare spots or streaks of +abstraction—and I do not deny that there have been times when I could +not help feeling, as I sat listening, like sending around Monday morning +to the parsonage—my plumber. One could not help thinking what Dr. —— +if he once got started on a plumber like B—— (had had him around +working all the week during a sermon) could do with him.</p> + +<p>I have a shoemaker, too, who would help most ministers. <a name="Page_127" id="Page_127"></a>I imagine he +would point up their sermons a good deal—if they had his shoes on.</p> + +<p>Perhaps shoes and pipes and things like these will be looked upon soon +to-day as constituting the great, slow, modest, implacable spiritual +forces of our time.</p> + +<p>At all events, this is the most economical, sensible, thorough way (when +one thinks of it) that goodness can be advertised.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128"></a>CHAPTER IX</h2> + +<h3>TOUCHING THE IMAGINATION OF CROWDS</h3> + + +<p>A man's success in business to-day turns upon his power of getting +people to believe he has something that they want.</p> + +<p>Success in business, in the last analysis, turns upon touching the +imagination of crowds. The reason that preachers in this present +generation are less successful in getting people to want goodness than +business men are in getting them to want motor-cars, hats, and pianolas, +is that business men as a class are more close and desperate students of +human nature, and have boned down harder to the art of touching the +imaginations of crowds.</p> + +<p>When one considers what it is that touches a crowd's imagination and how +it does it, one is bound is admit that there is not a city anywhere +which has not hundreds of men in it who could do more to touch the +imagination of crowds with goodness than any clergyman could. A man of +very great gifts in the pulpit, a man of genius, even an immortal +clergyman, could be outwitted in the art of touching the imagination of +crowds with goodness by a comparatively ordinary man in any one of +several hundred of our modern business occupations.</p> + +<p>There is a certain nation I have in mind as I write, which I do not like +to call by name, because it is struggling with its faults as the rest of +us are with ours. But I do not think it would be too much to say that +this particular nation I have in mind—and I leave the reader to fill in +one for himself, has been determined in its national character for +hundreds of years, and is being determined to-day—every day, nearly +every minute of every day, except when all the people are asleep—by a +certain personal habit that the people have. I am persuaded that this +<a name="Page_129" id="Page_129"></a>habit of itself alone would have been enough to determine the fate of +the nation as a third-rate power, that it would have made it always do +things with small pullings and haulings, in short breaths, and +hand-to-mouth insights—a little jerk of idealism one day, and a little +jerk of materialism the next—a kind of national palavering, and +see-sawing and gesturing, and talking excitedly and with little +flourishes. It is a nation that is always shrugging its shoulders, that +almost never seems to be capable of doing a thing with fine directness, +with long rhythms of purpose or sustained feeling; and all because every +man, woman, and child in the country—scores of generations of them for +hundreds of years—has been taught that the great spiritual truth or +principle at the bottom of correctly and beautifully buying a turnip is +to begin by saying that you do not want a turnip at all, that you never +eat turnips, and none of your family, and that they never would. The +other man begins by pointing out that he is never going to sell another +turnip as long as he lives, if he can help it. Gradually the facts are +allowed to edge in until at last, and when each man has taken off God +knows how much from the value of his soul, and spent two shillings' +worth of time on keeping a halfpenny in his pocket, both parties +separate courteously, only to carry out the same spiritual truth on a +radish perhaps or a spool of thread, or it may be even a house and lot, +or a battleship, or a war, or a rumour of a war, with somebody.</p> + +<p>The United States, speaking broadly, is not like this. But it might have +been.</p> + +<p>In the United States some forty years ago, being a new country, and +being a country where everything a man did was in the nature of things, +felt to be a first experiment, everybody felt democratic and +independent, and as if he were making the laws of the universe just for +himself as he went along.</p> + +<p>There was a period of ten years or so in which every spool of thread and +bit of dress goods—everything that people wore on their bodies or put +in their months, and everything that <a name="Page_130" id="Page_130"></a>they read, came up and had to be +considered as an original first proposition, as if there never had been +a spool of thread before, as if each bit of dress goods was, or was +capable of being, a new fresh experiment, with an adventurous price on +it; and before we knew it a moral nagging and edging and hitching had +set in, and was fast becoming in America an American trait, and fixing +itself by daily repetition upon the imagination of the people.</p> + +<p>The shopping of a country is, on the whole, from a psychologist's point +of view, the most spiritual energy, the most irrevocable, most +implacable meter there can ever be of the religion a country really has.</p> + +<p>There was no clergyman in America who could have made the slightest +impression on this great national list or trend of always getting things +for less than they were worth—this rut of never doing as one would be +done by. What was there that could be done with an obstinate, pervasive, +unceasing habit of the people like this?</p> + +<p>What was there that could be done to touch the imagination of the crowd?</p> + +<p>Six thousand women a day were going in and out of A.T. Stewart's great +store on Broadway at that time. A.T. Stewart announced to New York +suddenly in huge letters one day, that from that day forward there +should be one price for everything sold in his store, and that that +price would be paid for it by everybody.</p> + +<p>A.T. Stewart's store was the largest, most successful, original, and +most closely watched store in America.</p> + +<p>The six thousand women became one thousand.</p> + +<p>Then two thousand. Some of them had found that they finished their +shopping sooner; the better class of women, those whose time was worth +the most, and whose custom was the largest, gradually found they did not +want to shop anywhere else. The two thousand became three thousand, four +thousand, six thousand, ten thousand, twelve thousand.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131"></a>Other department stores wanted the twelve thousand to come to them. They +announced the one price.</p> + +<p>Hardware stores did it. Groceries announced one price. Then everybody.</p> + +<p>Not all the clergymen in America, preaching every Sunday for months, +could have done very much in the way of seriously touching the +imagination of the crowd on the moral unworthiness, the intellectual +degradation, the national danger of picking out the one thing that +nearly all the people all do, and had to do, all day, every day, and +making that thing mean, incompetent, and small. No one had thought out +what it would lead to, and how monstrous and absurd it was and would +always be to have a nation have all its people taking every little thing +all day, every day, that they were buying, or that they were +selling—taking a spool of thread, for instance—and packing it, or +packing their action with it, as full of adulterated motives and of +fresh and original ways of not doing as they would be done by as they +could think up—a little innocent spool of thread—wreaking all their +sins and kinds of sins on it, breaking every one of the ten commandments +on it as an offering....</p> + +<p>It was A.T. Stewart, a very ordinary-looking, practical man in a plain, +everyday business, who arrested the attention of a nation and changed +the habit of thought and trend of mind of a great people, and made them +a candid, direct people, a people that went with great sunny prairies +and high mountains, a yea and nay people, straightforward, and free from +palavering forever. A.T. Stewart was accustomed, in his own personal +dealings from day to day, to cut people short when they tried to heckle +with him. He liked to take things for granted, drive through to the +point, and go on to the next one. This might have ended, of course, in a +kind of <i>cul de sac</i> of being a merely personal trait in a clean-cut, +manful, straightforward American gentleman; and if Stewart had been a +snob or a Puritan, or had felt superior, or if he had thought other +people—the great <a name="Page_132" id="Page_132"></a>crowds of them who flocked through his store—could +never expect to be as good as he was, nothing would ever have come of +it.</p> + +<p>It is not likely that he was conscious of the long train of spiritual +results he had set in motion; of the way he had taken the habit of mind, +the daily, hourly psychology of a great people, and had wrought it +through with his own spirit; or of the way he had saved up, and set +where it could be used, everyday religion in America, and had freed the +business genius of a nation for its most characteristic and most +effective self-expression.</p> + +<p>He merely was conscious that he could not endure palavering in doing +business himself, and that he would not submit to being obliged to +endure it, and he believed millions of people in America were as +clean-cut and straightforward as he was.</p> + +<p>And the millions of people stood by him.</p> + +<p>Perhaps A.T. Stewart touched the imagination of the crowd because he had +let the crowd touch his and had seen what crowds, in spite of +appearances, were really like.</p> + +<p>The enterprise of touching the imagination of the crowd with goodness, +which is being conducted every day on an enormous scale around us, has +to be carried on, like all huge enterprises, by men who are in a large +degree unconscious of it. There are few department stores in England or +America that would expect to be called pious, but if one is deeply and +obstinately interested in the Golden Rule, and in getting crowds of +people to believe in it at a time, it is impossible not to think what +sweeps of opportunity department stores would have with it—with the +Golden Rule. With thousands of people flowing in and out all the week, +and with hundreds of clerks to attend to it, eight hours a day, there +would hardly seem to be any limit to what such a store could do in +making the Golden Rule a direct, a pointed and personal thing, a thing +that could not be evaded and could not be forgotten by thousands of +people. The same people all going in and out of department stores, vast +<a name="Page_133" id="Page_133"></a>congregations of them, eight hours a day, which ministers can only get +at in small lots, three hundred or so, twenty minutes a week, and can +only get at with words even then—all of them being convinced in terms +they understand, and in terms they keenly feel, convinced in hats that +they will see over and over again, convinced in velvets that they are +going to put on and off for years, in laces, in waistcoats, shoes, in +dining-room chairs, convinced in the very underclothes next to their +skins, the clothes they sleep in all night, in the very plates on which +they eat, while all the time they keep remembering, or being reminded, +just how the things were bought, and just what was claimed for them and +what was not claimed for them, and thinking how the claims came true or +how they did not.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>I just saw lying on the table as I came through the hall a moment ago a +hat which (out of all the long rows of hats I can see faintly reaching +across the years) will always be to me a memorable hat. I am free to say +that, after all the ladies it has been taken off to, my great memory of +that hat is now and always will be, as long as I live, the department +store at which I bought it, and the things the department store, before +I got through with it, managed to make the hat say.</p> + +<p>I had been in the store the day before and selected, in broad daylight, +with a big mirror staring me out of countenance, a hat which was a +quarter of a size too large. To clinch the matter, I had ordered four +ventilating holes to be punched in it, and had it sent to my rooms to be +my hat—implacably my hat as I supposed, for better for worse, for +richer for poorer—always. The next morning, after standing before a +mirror and trying hopefully for a few minutes to see if I could not look +more intelligent in the hat, I returned to the store firmly. I had made +up my mind that I would keep from looking the way that that hat made me +look, at any cost. The store was not responsible according to the letter +either for the hat or for the <a name="Page_134" id="Page_134"></a>way I looked in it. I had deliberately +chosen it, looked at myself in cold blood in it, had those dreadful, +irremovable, eternal air-holes dug into it. I would buy a new one. I +jumped into a cab, and a moment after I arrived I found myself before +the clerk from whom I had bought it, with a new one on my head, and was +just reaching into my pocket for my purse when, to my astonishment, I +heard, or seemed to hear, the great Department Store Itself, in the +gentle accents of a young man with a yellow moustache, saying: "I'm +sorry"—all seven storys of it gathering itself up softly, apparently, +and saying "I'm sorry!" The young man explained that he was afraid the +hat was wrong the day before, and thought he ought to have told me so, +that the store would not want me to pay for the mistake.</p> + +<p>I came home a changed man. I had been hit by the Golden Rule before in +department stores, but always rather subtly—never with such a broad, +beautiful flourish! I made some faint acknowledgment, I have forgotten +what, and rushed out of the store.</p> + +<p>But I have never gone past the store since, on a 'bus, or in a taxi, or +sliding through the walkers on the street, but I have looked up to +it—to its big, quiet windows, its broad, honest pillars fronting a +world.</p> + +<p>I take off my hat to it.</p> + +<p>But it gave me more than a hat.</p> + +<p>I think what a thousand department stores, stationed in a thousand +places on this old planet, could do in touching the imagination of the +world—every day, day by day, cityfuls at a time.</p> + +<p>I had found a department store that had absolutely identified itself +with my interests, that could act about a hat the way a wife would—a +department store that looked forward to a permanent relation with me—a +great live machine that could be glad and sorry—that really took me in, +knew how I felt about things, cared how I looked as I walked down the +street. Sometimes I think of the poor, wounded, useless thing I took +<a name="Page_135" id="Page_135"></a>back to them, those pitiless holes punched in it—just where no one +else would ever have had them. I am human. I always feel about the +store, that great marble and glass Face, when I go by it now as if, in +spite of all the difficulties, it wanted me—to be beautiful! I at least +feel and know that the people who were the brain, the daily moving +consciousness behind the face—wanted me to be a becoming customer to +them. They did not want to see me coming in, if it could possibly be +helped, in that hat any more!</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>I have told this little history of a gray hat, not because it is in any +way extraordinary, but because it is not. The same thing, or something +quite like it, expressing the same spirit, might have happened in any +one of the best hundred department stores in the world.</p> + +<p>Most people can remember a time, only a very little while ago, when +clerks in our huge department stores or selling machines were not +expected to be people who would think of things like this to do, or who +would know how, or who would think to consider them good business if +they did.</p> + +<p>The department store that based its success on selecting clerks of a +high order of human insight, that paid higher wages to its clerks for +their power of being believed in, for their personal qualities and their +shrewdness in helping people and a gift for discovering mutual interests +with everybody and for founding permanent human relations with the +public, had not been thought of a little while ago.</p> + +<p>All that had been thought of was the appearance of these things. It was +an employer's business, speaking generally, to get all he could out of +his clerks and have them get as little as possible out of him. It was +their business in their turn to get as much money out of the public as +they could get, and to give the public as little in return as they +dared.</p> + +<p>The type of employer who liked to do business in this way, <a name="Page_136" id="Page_136"></a>and who +believed in it, crowed over the world nearly everywhere as the Practical +Man. And for the time being certainly it has to be admitted that he +seemed the most successful. Naturally there came to be a general +impression among the people that only certain lower orders of life and +character could be employed, or could stand being employed, in the great +department stores.</p> + +<p>I used often to go into ——'s. Everybody remembers it. I went in, as a +rule, in a helpless, waiting, married way, and as a mere attaché of the +truly wise and good. All I ever did or was expected to do was to stand +by and look wise and discriminating a minute about dress goods, when +spoken to. I used to put in my time looking behind the counters—all +those busy, pale, yellow-lighted people in little holes or stalls trying +to be human and natural in that long, low, indoor street of theirs, +crowds of women staring by them and picking at things. Always that +moving sidewalk of questions—that dull, eager stream of consciousness +sweeping by. No sunlight—just the crowds of covetousness and +shrewdness. I used to wonder about the clerks, many of them, and what +they would be like at home or under an apple tree or each with a bit of +blue sky to go with them. They used to seem in those days, as I looked, +mostly poor, underground creatures living in a sort of Subway of Things +in a hateful, hard, little world of clothes, each with his little study +or trick or knack of appearances, standing there and selling people +their good looks day after day at so much a yard.</p> + +<p>To-day, in a hundred cities one can go into department shops where one +would get, standing and looking on idly, totally different impressions. +There are hundreds of thousands of young men and women who have made +being a clerk a new thing in the world. The public has already had its +imagination touched by them, and is beginning to deal with clerks, as a +class, on a different level.</p> + +<p>This has been brought to pass because the employer has been <a name="Page_137" id="Page_137"></a>thought of, +or has thought of himself, who engages and pays for in clerks the +highest qualities in human nature that he can get. He picks out and puts +in power, and persuades to be clerks, people who would have felt +superior to it in days gone by—men and women who habitually depend for +their efficiency in showing and selling goods upon their more generous +emotions and insights, their imaginations about other people. They +gather in their new customers, and keep up their long lists of old and +regular customers, through shrewd visions of service to people, and +through a technical gift for making the Golden Rule work.</p> + +<p>When one looks at it practically, and from the point of view of all the +consequences, a bargain is the most spiritual, conclusive, most +self-revealing experience that people can have together. Every bargain +is a cross-section in three tenses of a man. A bargain tells everything +about people—who they are, and what they are like. It also tells what +they are going to be like unless they take pains; and it tells what they +are not going to be like too sometimes, and why.</p> + +<p>The man who comes nearest in modern life to being a Pope, is the man who +determines in what spirit and by what method the people under him shall +conduct his bargains and deal with his customers. ——, at the head of +his department store, has a parish behind his counters of twenty-five +hundred men and women. He is in the business of determining their +religion, the way they make their religion work, eight hours a day, six +days a week. He seems to me to be engaged in the most ceaseless, most +penetrating, most powerful, and most spiritual activity of the world. He +is really getting at the imaginations of people with his idea of +goodness. If he does not work his way through to a man's imagination one +minute or one day, he does the next. If he cannot open up a man's +imagination with one line of goods, he does it with another. If he +cannot make him see things, and do as he would be done by, with one kind +of customer, another is moved in front of him presently, and another, +and another—the man's inner substance is being attacked and changed +nearly <a name="Page_138" id="Page_138"></a>every minute every day. There is nothing he can do, or keep from +doing, in which his employer's idea of goodness does not surround, +besiege, or pursue him. Every officer of the staff, every customer who +slips softly up to the counter in front of him makes him think of the +Golden Rule in a new way or in some shading of a new way—confronts him +with the will, with the expectation, with the religion of his employer.</p> + +<p>In ——'s store (where I looked in a moment yesterday) one thousand of +the two thousand five hundred clerks are men. If I were a minister +wondering nearly every day how to work in for my religion a fair chance +at men, I should often look wistfully from over the edge of my pulpit, I +imagine, to the head of ——'s department store, sitting at that quiet, +calm, empty looking desk of his in his little office at the top of his +big building in —— Street, with nothing but those little six or seven +buttons he softly puts his thumbs on connecting him with a thousand +men.</p> + +<p>And he does not even need the buttons. Every man knows and feels, +personally and intimately, what the man at the desk is asking him to do +with a particular customer who stands before him at the moment. As soon +as the customer is there, the man at the desk practically is there too. +His religion works by wireless, and goes automatically, and as from a +huge stored-up reservoir, to all that happens in the place. He makes +regularly with his idea of goodness anywhere from twenty to sixty +pastoral calls (with every sale they make) on a thousand men a day. He +is not dependent, as the ordinary minister often is, on their dying, or +on their babies, or on their wives, for a chance to get at men with his +religion.</p> + +<p>If I wanted to take a spiritual census of modern civilization and get at +the actual scientific facts, what we would have to call, probably the +foot-tons of religion in the world to-day, I would not look for them in +the year-books of the churches, I would get them by going about in the +great department stores, by moving among the men and women in them day +after day, <a name="Page_139" id="Page_139"></a>and standing by and looking on invisibly. Like a shadow or a +light I would watch them registering their goodness daily, hourly, on +their counters, over their counters, measuring out their souls before +God in dress goods, shoes, boas, hats, silk, and bread and butter!</p> + +<p>This may not be true of the Orient, but it is true, and getting to be +more true every day, of Europe and America.</p> + +<p>It is especially true of America. In the things which we borrow in +America, we are far behind the rest of the world. It is to the things +that we create, that we must look alone, for our larger destiny, and our +world-service.</p> + +<p>Naturally, in so far as civilization is a race of borrowing, nations +like England and France and Germany a few hundred miles apart from one +another, set the pace for a nation that is three thousand miles away +from where it can borrow, like the United States. It is a far cry from +the land of the Greeks with their still sunny temples and dreams, and +from England with its quiet-singing churches, to New York with its +practical sky-scraping hewing prayer!</p> + +<p>New York—scooping its will out of the very heavens!</p> + +<p>New York—the World's last, most stern, perhaps most manful prayer of +all—half-asking and half-grasping out of the hand of God!</p> + +<p>Here is America's religion! Half afraid at first, half glad, slowly, +solemnly triumphant, as on the edge of an abyss, I have seen America's +religion! I have seen my brother Americans hewing it out—day by day, +night by night, have I seen them—in these huge steel sub-cellars of the +sky!</p> + +<p>I have accepted the challenge.</p> + +<p>If it is not a religion, then it shall be to us a religion to make it a +religion.</p> + +<p>The Metropolitan Tower with its big clock dial, with its three stories +of telling what time it is, and its great bell singing hymns above the +dizzy flocks of the skyscrapers, is the soul of New York, to me.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140"></a>If one could see a soul—if one could see the soul of New York, it would +look more like the Metropolitan Tower than anything else.</p> + +<p>It seems to be trying to speak away up there in the whiteness and the +light, the very soul of the young resistless iron-hearted city.</p> + +<p>I write as an American. To me there is something about it as I come up +the harbour that fills my heart with a big ringing, as if all the world +were ringing, ringing once more—ringing all over again—up in this +white tower of ours in its new bit of blue sky! I glory in England with +it, in Greece, in Bethlehem. It is as an outpost on Space and Time, for +all of us gathering up all history in it softly—once more and pointing +it to God!</p> + +<p>It is the last, the youngest-minded, the most buoyant tower—the mighty +Child among the steeples of the world. The lonely towers of Cologne +stretching with that grave and empty nave against the sky, out of that +old and faded region of religion, far away, tremulously send greetings +to it—to this white tower in the west—to where it goes up with its +crowds of people in it, with business and with daily living and hoping +and dying in it, and strikes heaven!</p> + +<p>It may be perhaps only the American blood in me. Perhaps it is raw and +new to be so happy. I do not know. I only know that to me the +Metropolitan Tower is saying something that has been never quite said +before—something that has been given in some special sense to us as a +trust from the world. It is to me the steeple of democracy—of our +democracy, England's democracy—the world's democracy. The hollow domes +of Sts. Peter and Paul, and all the rest with their vague, airy +other-worldliness, all soaring and tugging like so many balloons of +religion and goodness, trying to get away from this world—are not to me +so splendid, so magnificently wilful as the Metropolitan Tower—as the +souls of these modern, heaven-striking men, taking the world itself, at +last, its streets of stone, of steel, its very tunnels and lifting them +up as blind <a name="Page_141" id="Page_141"></a>offerings, as unbounded instincts, as prayers, as songs to +heaven!</p> + +<p>I worship my country, my people, my city when I hear the big bell in it +and when I look up to where the tower is in that still place like a +sea—look up to where that little white country belfry sits in the +light, in the dark above the vast and roaring city!</p> + +<p>To me, the Metropolitan Tower, sweeping up its prayer out of the streets +the way it does, and doing it, too, right beside that little safe, +tucked-in, trim, Sunday religion of the Madison Square Presbyterian +Church, lifts itself up as one of the mighty signs and portents of our +time. Have I not heard the bell tolling to the people in the midst of +business and singing great hymns? A great city lifts itself and prays in +it—prays while it sings and clangs so absent-looking below.</p> + +<p>I like to go out before going to sleep and take a look at it—one more +look before I sleep, upon the tower, strong, unyielding, alive, sinewy, +imperturbable, lifting up within itself the steel and soul of the world. +I am content to go to sleep.</p> + +<p>It is a kind of steeple of the business of this world. I would rather +have said that business needed a steeple before until I saw the +Metropolitan Tower and heard it singing above the streets. But I had +always wanted (without knowing it), in a modern office building, a great +solemn bell to remind us what the common day was. I like to hear it +striking a common hour and what can be done in it. I stop in the street +to listen—to listen while that great hive of people tolls—tolls not the +reveries of monks above the roofs of the skyscrapers, but the religion +of business—of the real and daily things, the seriousness of the mighty +street and the faces of the men and the women.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142"></a>CHAPTER X</h2> + +<h3>THE STUPENDOUS, THE UNUSUAL, THE MONOTONOUS, AND THE SUCCESSFUL</h3> + + +<p>The imagination of crowds may be said to be touched most successfully +when it is appealed to in one of four ways:</p> + +<blockquote><p>THE STUPENDOUS. THE UNUSUAL. THE MONOTONOUS. THE SUCCESSFUL.</p></blockquote> + +<p>Of these four ways, the stupendous, or the unusual, or the successful +are the most in evidence, and have something showy about them, so that +we can look at them afterward, and point out at a glance what they have +done. But probably the underhold on the crowd, the real grip on its +imagination, the one which does the plain, hard, everyday work on a +crowd's ideals, which determines what crowds expect and what crowds are +like inside—is the Monotonous.</p> + +<p>The man who tells the most people what they shall be like in this world +is not the great man or the unusual man. He is the monotonous man.</p> + +<p>He is the man, to each of us, who determines the unconscious beat and +rhythm with which we live our daily lives.</p> + +<p>If we wanted to touch the imaginations of crowds, or of any particular +crowd, with goodness, the best way to do it would probably be, not to go +to the crowd itself, but to the man who is so placed that he determines +the crowd's monotony, the daily rhythm with which it lives—the man, if +we can find him, who arranges the crowd's heart-beat.</p> + +<p>It need not take one very long to decide who the man is <a name="Page_143" id="Page_143"></a>who determines +the crowd's heart-beat. The man who has the most dominion over the +imaginations of most of us, who stands up high before us out in front of +our lives, the man who, as with a great baton, day after day, night +after night, conducts, as some great symphony, the fate of the world +above our heads, who determines the deep, unconscious thoughts and +motives, the inner music or sing-song, in which we live our lives, is +the man to whom we look for our daily bread.</p> + +<p>It is the men with whom we earn our money who are telling us all +relentlessly, silently, what we will have to be like. The men with whom +we spend it, who sell things to us, like the department stores, those +huge machines of attention, may succeed in getting great sweeps of +attention out of crowds at special times, by appealing to men through +the unusual and through the stupendous or the successful. But what +really counts, and what finally decides what men and what women shall +be, what really gets their attention unfathomably, unconsciously, is the +way they earn their money. The feeling men come to have about a fact, of +its being what it is, helplessly or whether or no—the feeling that they +come to have about something, of its being immemorially and innumerably +the same everywhere and forever, comes from what they are thinking and +the way they think while they are earning their money. It is out of the +subconscious and the monotonous that all our little heavens and hells +are made. It is our daily work that becomes to us the real floor and +roof of living, hugs up under us like the ground, fits itself down over +us, and is our earth and sky. The man with whom we earn our money, the +man who employs us, his thinking or not thinking, his "I will" and "I +won't," are the iron boundaries of the world to us. He is the skylight +and the manhole of life.</p> + +<p>The monotonous, the innumerable and over and over again, one's desk, +one's typewriter, one's machine, one's own particular factory window, +the tall chimney, the little forever <a name="Page_144" id="Page_144"></a>motion with one's hand—it is +these, godlike, inscrutable, speechless, out of the depths of our +unconsciousness and down through our dreams, that become the very breath +and rumble of living to us, domineer over our imaginations and rule our +lives. It is decreed that what our Employers think and let us know +enough to think shall be a part of the inner substance of our being. It +shall be a part of growing of the grass to us, and shall be as water and +food and sleep. It shall be to us as the shouts of boys at play in the +field and as the crying of our children in the night. To most men +Employers are the great doors that creak at the end of the world.</p> + +<p>It is not the houses that people live in, or the theatres that they go +to, or the churches to which they belong, or the street and number—the +East End look or the West End look the great city carves on the faces of +these men I see in the street—that determines what the men are like.</p> + +<p>Their daily work lies deeper in them than their faces. One finds one's +self as one flashes by being told things in their walk, in the way they +hold their hands and swing their feet.</p> + +<p>And what is it their hands and feet, umbrellas, bundles, and the +wrinkles in their clothes tell us about them?</p> + +<p>They tell us how they earn their money. Their hopes, their sorrow, their +fears and curses, their convictions, their very religions are the +silent, irrevocable, heavenly minded, diabolical by-products of what +their Employers think they can afford to let them know enough to think.</p> + +<blockquote><p>"Fight for yourselves. Your masters hate you. They would shoot + you down like rabbits, but they need your labour for their + huge profits. Don't go in till you get your minimum. No Royal + Commission, no promise in the future. Leaders only want your + votes; they will sell you. They lie. Parliament lies, and will + not help you, but is trying to sell you. Don't touch a tool + till you get your minimum. Win, win, win! It is up to all + workers to support the miners."</p></blockquote> + +<p>If a man happens to be an employer, and happens to know that he is not +this sort of man, and finds that he cannot successfully carry on his +business unless he can make five hun<a name="Page_145" id="Page_145"></a>dred men in his factory believe it, +what can he do? How can he touch their imaginations? What language is +there, either of words or of action, that will lead them to see that he +is a really a fair-minded, competent employer, a representative of the +interests of all, a fellow-citizen, a Crowdman, and that his men can +afford to believe in him and coöperate with them?</p> + +<p>If they think he would shoot them down like rabbits, it is because they +have not the remotest idea what he is really like. They have not noticed +him. They have no imagination about him, have not put themselves in his +place. How can he get their attention?</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146"></a>CHAPTER XI</h2> + +<h3>THE SUCCESSFUL</h3> + + +<p>A little while ago I saw in Paris an American woman, the President of a +Woman's Club (I imagined), who was doing as she should, and was going +about in a cab appreciating Paris, drive up to the Louvre. Leaving her +cab, though I wondered a little why she did, at the door, she hurried up +the steps and swept into the gallery, taking her eleven-year-old boy +with her. I came upon her several times. The Louvre did not interest the +boy, and he seemed to be bothering and troubling his mother, and of +course he kept trying very hard, as any really nice boy would, to get +out; but she would not let him, and he wandered about dolefully, looking +at his feet and at the floor, or at the guards, and doing the best he +could. Finally she came over to him; there was a Murillo he must see—it +was the opportunity of his life; she brought him over to it, and stood +him up in front of it, and he would not look; she took his small brown +head in her hands and steered it to the great masterpiece and held it +there—on that poor, silent, helpless Murillo—until....</p> + +<p>I observed that she could steer his head; but I could not help thinking +how much more she would have done if she had known how to steer it +inside.</p> + +<p>The invention of the Megaphone, of the Cinema, and the <i>London Times</i>, +and of the Bible, are all a part of the great, happy, hopeful effort of +one part of this world to get the attention of the other part of it, and +steer heads inside.</p> + +<p>This art of steering heads inside, which has come to be the secret art +of all the other arts, the secret religion of all the re<a name="Page_147" id="Page_147"></a>ligions, is +also the secret of building and maintaining a civilization and a +successful and permanent business. It is hard to believe how largely, +for the last twenty years, it has been overlooked by employers as the +real key of the labour problem—this art of steering people's heads +inside.</p> + +<p>We have seen part of the truth. We have put in a good deal of time in +finding fault with labouring men for thinking too much about themselves +and about their class, and for emphasizing their wages more than their +work, and for not having more noble and disinterested characters. +Parliaments, clergymen, and employers have all been troubled for years +about Labour, and they have been trying very hard on Sundays and through +reports of speeches by members of Parliament in the daily press, and +through laws, and through employers' associations, and through factory +rules and fines, to get the attention of labouring men and lift their +thoughts to higher things.</p> + +<p>A great many wise things have been said to Labour—masterpieces, miles +of them as it were, whole Louvres of words have been hung upon their +walls.</p> + +<p>But in vain!</p> + +<p>And all because we have merely taken the outside of the boy's head in +our hands. We have not thought what was really going on in it. We have +not tried to steer it inside. We have been superficial.</p> + +<p>It is superficial for a comfortable man with a bun in his pocket to talk +to a starving man about having some higher motive than getting something +to eat. Everybody sees that this is superficial, if we mean by it that +his body is starving. But if we mean something more real and more +terrible than that—that he is starving inside, that his soul is +starving, that he has nothing to live for, no real object in getting +something to eat—if we mean by it, in other words, that the man's +imagination is not touched even by his own life, people take it very +lightly.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148"></a>And it is the most important thing in the world. The one thing now +necessary to society, to industry, is to get hold of the men who are in +it, one by one, and touch their imaginations about themselves. We have +millions of men working without their thoughts and expectations being +ventilated or passed along, year after year.</p> + +<p>One sees these men everywhere one goes, in thousands of factories, doing +their work without any draught. We already have tall chimneys for our +coal furnaces; we have next to see the value of tall chimneys, great +flues to the sky, on the lives and thought and the inner energies of +men. The most obvious way to get a draught on a man, to get him to glow +up and work is to cut through an opening in the top of his life.</p> + +<p>Just where to cut this opening, and just how to cut it in each man's +life—each man considered as a problem by himself—is the Labour +problem.</p> + +<p>There are certain general principles that might be put down in passing. +To begin with, we must not feel ashamed to begin implacably with the +actual man just as he is, and with the wants and the motives that he +actually has. We should feel ashamed rather to begin in any other way. +It would not be bright or thoughtful to begin on him with motives he is +going to have; and it certainly would not be religious or worthy of us +to try to make him begin with ours. Perhaps ours are better—for us. +Perhaps, too, ours will be better for him when he is like us (if we can +give him any reason to want to be). In the meantime, what is there that +can honestly be called base in taking human nature as it is and in +allowing a sliding scale of motives in people? Starving people and +slaves, or people who are ugly and hateful, <i>i.e.</i>, not really quite +bright toward others, who impute mean, inaccurate motives to them, can +only be patiently expected to have a very small area or even mote of +unselfishness at first. A cross-section of our society to-day represents +the <a name="Page_149" id="Page_149"></a>entire geological formation of human nature for 40,000 years. We +need but look on the faces of the men about us as we go down the street. +All history is here this minute.</p> + +<p>We wish that Labour had better motives. We wish to get our workmen to +understand us better and believe in us more and work for us harder.</p> + +<p>We agree that we must begin with them, if we propose to do this, where +they are.</p> + +<p>Where are they?</p> + +<p>There are certain general observations that might seem to the point.</p> + +<p>1. If a man is a sane and sound man and works hard, he must feel that +everything he does, every minute, is definitely connected with the main +through-train purpose in his life.</p> + +<p>2. If the main purpose in his life is domestic and consists in having +his family live well and giving his children a chance, he must feel and +be absolutely sure when he is working better or working worse for his +employer that he is working better or worse for himself and for those +for whom he lives.</p> + +<p>3. In the ordinary labourer this domestic unselfishness or house +patriotism is a kind of miniature public spirit. It is the elementary +form of his national or human enthusiasm. It is the form of +disinterestedness that has to be attended to in men first; and the way +for society to get the labouring man to be public-spirited, to have the +habit of considering the rights of others, is for society to have the +habit of considering his rights in his daily work. An intelligent, live +man must be allowed a little margin to practise being unselfish on, if +only in the privacy of his own family. Unselfishness begins in small +circles. The starving man must be allowed a smaller range of +unselfishness than the man who has enough. It is not uncomplimentary or +unworthy in human nature to admit that this is so—to demand that the +human being who is starving must be allowed to be selfish. If he is not +<a name="Page_150" id="Page_150"></a>bright enough to be selfish when he is hungry he is dangerous to +society. We ought to insist upon his being selfish, and help him in it. +Virtue is a surplus.</p> + +<p>4. This is the first humble, stuttering speech the competent modern +employer who proposes to express himself to his men, and get them to +understand him and work with him, is going to make. He is going to pick +out one by one every man in his works who has a decent, modest, manly +desire to be selfish, and help him in it. He is going to do something or +say something that will make the man see, that will make him believe for +life, that the most powerful, the most trustworthy, the most far-sighted +man he can find in the world to be his partner in being decently, +soundly, and respectfully selfish—is his employer.</p> + +<p>No employer can expect to get the best work out of a man except by +working down through to the inner organic desire in the man as a man, +except by waking his selfishness up and by making it a larger, fuller, +nobler, weightier selfishness, and turning the full weight of it every +minute, every hour, on his daily work.</p> + +<p>The best language an employer can find to express this desire at first +to his workmen, is some form of faithful, honest co-partnership.</p> + +<p>5. The ordinary wage labourer has little imagination about other people +because he is not allowed any about himself. The moment he is, and the +moment his employer arranges his work so that he sees every minute all +day that the work which he does for the firm 30 per cent. better counts. +30 per cent. more on his own main purpose in life, his imagination is +touched about himself and he begins to work like a human being. When a +man has been allowed to work awhile as a human being he will begin to be +human with a wider range. Being a partner touches the imagination and +wakes the man's humanness up. He not only works better, but he loves his +family better when he sees he can do something <a name="Page_151" id="Page_151"></a>for them. He serves his +town better and his lodge better when he sees he can do something for +them.</p> + +<p>6. Being a partner wakes the man's imagination toward those who work +with him, and toward the public and the markets and the goods and the +cities where the goods go. He reads newspapers with a new eye. He +becomes interested in people who buy the goods, and in people who do +not. Why do they not? He gropes toward a general interest in human +nature, and begins to live.</p> + +<p>7. A man who is being paid wages one night in a week, has his +imagination touched about his work one night in the week. He is merely +being a wage-earner. In being a partner he is being paid, and feels his +pay coming in, every thirty seconds, in the better way he moves his +hands or does not move his hands. This makes him a man.</p> + +<p>8. And, finally, as he knows he is being paid, and that he always will +be paid, what he earns, he stops thinking of the sick, tired side of his +work—the pay he gets out of it, and begins to love the work itself, and +begins to be perfect in it for its own sake. This makes him a gentleman.</p> + +<p>9. Being a partner makes a man actively and keenly reasonable and +practical, not only about his own labour, but about the superior value +of other people with whom he works. He wants the best people in the best +places. He begins to have a practical partner's imagination about the +men who are over him, and about their knowing more than he does. If he +is merely paid wages, he is superstitious, and jealous toward those who +know more than he does. If he is paid profits, he is glad that they do, +and strikes in and helps.</p> + +<p>10. Another complete range of motives is soon offered to the employee +who is a partner. He feels the joy of being a part of a big, splendid +whole, a disinterested delight and pride in others. He grows young with +it, like a boy in school.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152"></a>Here is the factory over him, around him—his own vast hockey team—and +over that is the nation, and over that is the world!</p> + +<p>An employer can touch the imagination of most men, of the rank and file +of the people, ninety-nine times where other people can touch it once. +And every time he touches it, he touches it to the point.</p> + +<p>If men in general do not believe to-day in religion and do not want it, +it is because they have employers who have not seen any place in their +business where they could get their religion in, and have kept the +people (in the one place where they could really learn what religion is) +from learning anything about it. The moment the more common employers +see what the great ones see now, that business is the one particular +place in this world where religion really works, works the hardest, the +longest, and the best, works as it had never been dreamed a religion +could be made to work before—the day school teachers of the world, put +the Golden Rule in the Course everybody will know it.</p> + +<p>It only takes a moment's thought to see what the employers of the world +could do with the Golden Rule the moment they take hold of it.</p> + +<p>One has but to consider what they have done with it already.</p> + +<p>One has but to consider the astounding way in the last fifteen years +they have made everybody not believe in it.</p> + +<p>The employers of the world have been saying ten hours a day to everybody +that the Golden Rule is a foolish, pleasant, inefficient, worsted motto +on a parlour wall.</p> + +<p>Everybody has believed it.</p> + +<p>And now that the big employers are setting the pace and are saying +exactly the opposite thing about the Golden Rule, now that all the +employers are trying to get their employees to be efficient (to do by +their employers as they would be done by), and now that they are trying +to be efficient themselves (are <a name="Page_153" id="Page_153"></a>trying to do to their employees as they +would have their employees do to them), the Golden Rule is touching the +imagination of crowds, and the crowd is seeing that the Golden Rule +works. They watch it working every day in the things they know about. +Then they believe in it for other things.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154"></a>CHAPTER XII</h2> + +<h3>THE NECKS OF THE WICKED</h3> + + +<p>A letter lies before me, one out of many others asking me how the author +of "The Shadow Christ," which is a study of the religious values in +suffering and self-sacrifice in this world, takes the low ground that +honesty is the best policy.</p> + +<p>I know two kinds of men who believe that honesty is the best policy.</p> + +<p>These two men use exactly the same words "Honesty is the best policy."</p> + +<p>One man says it.</p> + +<p>The other man sings it.</p> + +<p>One man is honest because it pays.</p> + +<p>The other man is honest because he likes it.</p> + +<p>"Honesty is the best policy" as a motive cannot be called religious, but +"Honesty is the best policy" as a Te Deum, as something a man sings in +his heart every day about God, something he sings about human nature is +religious, and believing it the way some men believe it, is an act of +worship.</p> + +<p>It is like a great gentle mass.</p> + +<p>It is like taking softly up one's own planet and offering it to God.</p> + +<p>Here it is—the planet. Honesty is organized in the rocks on it and in +the oak trees on it and in the people. The rivers flow to the sea and +the heart of Man flows to God. On this one planet, at least, God is a +success.</p> + +<p>Possibly it is because many other people beside myself have been slow in +clearly making this distinction between "Honesty is the best policy" as +a motive or a Te Deum, that <a name="Page_155" id="Page_155"></a>I have come upon so many religious men and +women in the last two or three years, who, in the finest spirit, have +seemed to me to be doing all that they could to discourage everybody +especially to discourage me, about the Golden Rule.</p> + +<p>The first objection which they put forward to the Golden Rule is that it +is a failure.</p> + +<p>When I try to deal with this or try to tell them about Non-Gregarious, +the second objection that they put forward is, that it is a success.</p> + +<p>If they cannot discourage me with one of these objections they try to +discourage me with the other.</p> + +<p>They point to the Cross.</p> + +<p>Some days I cannot help wondering what Christ would think if He were to +come back and find people, all these good Christian people everywhere +using the Cross—the Cross of all things in the world as an objection to +the Golden Rule and to its working properly, or as a general argument +against expecting anything of anybody.</p> + +<p>I do not know that I have any philosophy about it that would be of any +value to others.</p> + +<p>I only know that I am angry all through when I hear a certain sort of +man saying, and apparently proving, that the Golden Rule does not work.</p> + +<p>And I am angry at other people who are listening with me because they +are not angry too.</p> + +<p>Why are people so complacent about crosses? And why are they willing to +keep on having and expecting to have in this world all the good people +on crosses? Why do they keep on treating these crosses year after year, +century after century, in a dull tired way as if they had become a kind +of conventionality of God's, a kind of good old church custom, something +that He and the Church by this time, after two thousand years, could not +really expect to try to get over or improve upon?</p> + +<p>I do not know that I ought to feel as I do.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156"></a>I only know that the moment I see evil triumphing in this world, there +is one thing that that evil comes up against.</p> + +<p>It comes up against my will.</p> + +<p>My will, so far as it goes, is a spiritual fact.</p> + +<p>I do not argue about it, nor do I know that I wish to justify it. I +merely accept my will as it is, as one spiritual fact.</p> + +<p>I propose to know what to do with it next.</p> + +<p>The first thing that I have done, of course, has been to find out that +there are millions of other so-called Christian people who have +encountered this same fact that I have encountered.</p> + +<p>There are at least some of us who stand together. Our wills are set +against having any more people die on crosses in this world than can be +helped. If there is any kind of skill, craftmanship, technique, +psychology, knowledge of human nature which can be brought to bear, +which will keep the best people in this world not only from being, but +from belonging on crosses in it, we propose to bring these things to +bear. We are not willing to believe that crowds are not inclined to +Goodness. We are not willing to slump down on any general slovenly +assumption about the world that goodness cannot be made to work in it.</p> + +<p>If goodness is not efficient in this world we will make it efficient.</p> + +<p>Our reason for saying this is that we honestly glory in this world. We +believe that at this moment while we are still on it, it is in the act +of being a great world, that it is God's world, and in God's Name we +will defend its reputation.</p> + +<p>We do not deny that it may be better spiritual etiquette, more heroic +looking and may have a certain moral grace, so far as a man himself is +concerned, if the world makes him suffer for being honest. But after all +he is only one man, and whether he dislikes his suffering or likes it +and feels fine and spiritual over it, it is only one man's suffering.</p> + +<p>But why is it that when the world makes a man suffer, <a name="Page_157" id="Page_157"></a>everybody should +seem always to be thinking of the man? Why does not anybody think of the +world?</p> + +<p>Is not the fact that a whole world, eternal and innumerable, is supposed +to be such a mean, dishonest sort of a world that it will make a man +suffer for being good a more important fact than the man's suffering is? +It seems to me to be taking not lower but higher ground when one insists +on believing in the race one belongs to and in believing that it is a +human race that can be believed in. After two thousand years of Christ, +it is a lazy, tired, anæmic slander on the world to believe that it does +not pay to be good in it. The man who believes it, and acts as if he +believed it, is to-day and has been from the beginning of time the +supreme enemy of us all. He is guilty before heaven and before us all +and in all nations of high treason to the human race. One of the next +most important things to do in modern religion is going to be to get all +these morally dressed-up, noble-looking people who enjoy feeling how +good they are because they have failed, to examine their hearts, stop +enjoying themselves and think.</p> + +<p>For hundreds of years we have religiously run after martyrs and we have +learned in a way, most of us, to have a kind of cooped-up patriotism for +our own nation, but why are there not more people who are patriotic +toward the whole human race? One has been used to seeing it now for +centuries, good people all over the world hanging their harps on willow +trees, or snuggling down together by the cold sluggish stream of their +lives, and gossiping about how the world has abused them, when they +would be far better occupied, nine out of ten of them—in doing +something that would make it stop. There was a poet and soldier some +thousands of years ago who put more real religion (and put it too, into +his imprecatory psalms), than has been put, I believe, into all the +sweet whinings and the spiritual droopings of the world in three +thousand years. I do not deny that I would quarrel, as a matter of form, +with the lack of urbanity, with a certain ill-nature in the imprecatory +Psalms; <a name="Page_158" id="Page_158"></a>but with the spirit in them, with the motive and mighty desire, +with the necessity in the man's heart that was poured into them, I have +the profoundest sympathy.</p> + +<p>David had a manly, downright belief. His belief was that if sin is +allowed to get to the top in this world of ours, it is our fault. David +felt that it was partly his—and being a king—very much his, and as he +was trying to do something about it, he naturally wanted the world to +help.</p> + +<p>What he really meant—what lay in the background of his petition—the +real spirit that made him speak out in that naïve bold way before the +Lord, and before everybody—that made him ask the great God in heaven +all looking so white and so indifferent, to come right down please and +jump on the necks of the wicked, was a vivid, live vision of his own for +his own use that he was going to make the world more decent. He was +spirited about it. If God did not, He would, and naturally when he came +to expressing how he felt in prayer, he wanted God to stand by him. To +put it in good plain soldier-like Hebrew, He wanted God to jump on the +necks of his enemies.</p> + +<p>Speaking strictly for ourselves, in our more modern spirit of course, we +would want to modulate this, we admit that we would not ask God to do a +little thing like jumping on the necks of the wicked—just for us—nor +would we care to break away from the other things we are doing and +attend to it ourselves, nor would we even favour their necks being +jumped on by others, but while we do not agree with David's particular +request, we do profoundly agree with the way he felt when he made it. We +would not make our flank movement on the wicked in quite the same way +and according to our more modern and more scientific manner of thought, +we would want to do something more practical with the wicked, but we +would want to do something with them and we would want to do it now.</p> + +<p>As we look at it, it ought not to be necessary to jump on <a name="Page_159" id="Page_159"></a>the necks of +the wicked to make them good, that is, to make them understand what they +would wish they had done in twenty years. We live in a more reasoning +and precise age and what more particularly concerns us in the wicked is +not their necks, but their heads and their hearts. It seems to us that +they are not using them very much and that the moment they do and we can +get them to, they will be good. Possibly it was a mere matter of +language, a concession to the then state of the language—David's +wanting their necks to be jumped on so that he could get their attention +at first and make them stop and think and understand. More subtle ways +of expressing things to the wicked have been thought of to-day than of +jumping on their necks, but the principle David had in mind has not +changed, the principle of being loyal to the human race, the principle +of standing up for people and insisting that they were really meant to +be better than they were or than they thought they could be—a kind of +holy patriotism David had for this world. The main fact about David +seems to be that he believed he belonged to a great human race. +Incidentally he believed he belonged to a human race that was really +quite bright, bright enough at least to make people sorry for doing +wrong in it—a human race that was getting so shrewd and so just and so +honest that it took stupider and stupider people every year to be +wicked, and when he found, judging from recent events in Judea, that +this for the time being was not so, he had a hateful feeling about it, +which it seems to some of us, vastly improved him and would improve many +of us. We do not claim that the imprecatory Psalms were David's best, +but they must have helped him immensely in writing the other ones.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>We may be wrong. But it has come to be an important religious duty to +some of us, or rather religious joy, to hate the prosperity of the +wicked. We hate the prosperity of <a name="Page_160" id="Page_160"></a>the wicked, not because it is their +prosperity and not ours, but because their prosperity constitutes a +sneer or slander on the world. We have no idea of wanting to go about +faithfully jumping upon the necks of the wicked. What we want is to feel +that we are in a world where the good people are happy and are making +goodness reasonable, successful, profitable and practical in it. We want +an earth with crowds on it who see things as they are, and who guess so +well on what they want (<i>i.e.</i>, who are good) that other people who do +not know what they want and are not good, will be lonesome.</p> + +<p>We have made up our minds to live in a world not where the wicked will +feel that their necks are going to be jumped on (which is really a +rather interesting and prominent feeling on the whole), but a world +where the wicked will be made to feel that nobody notices their necks, +that they are not worth being jumped on, a world where nobody will have +time to go out back and jump on them, a world where the wicked will not +be able to think of anything important to do, and where the wicked +things that are left to do will be so small and so stupid that nobody +will notice. They will be ignored like boys with catcalls in the street. +When we can make people who do wrong feel unimportant enough, there is +going to be some chance for the good.</p> + +<p>If we could find some sweet, proper, gentle, Christian-looking way of +conveying to these people for a few swift, keen minutes how little +difference it makes when they and people like them do wrong, they would +steal over in a body and do right.</p> + +<p>This is our program. We are making preliminary arrangements for a world +in which after this, very soon now, righteousness is going to attend +strictly to its own business and unrighteousness is going to be crowded +out. No one will feel that he has time in two or three hundred years +from now to go out of his way into some obscure corner of the world and +jump on the necks of the wicked.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161"></a>But this is a matter of form. The main fundamental manful instinct David +had—the idea that there should not be any more people dying on crosses +than could be helped—that collective society should take hold of Evil +and set it down hard in its chair and make it cry seems to many of us +absolutely sound. Of course, we feel that it is not for us, those who +love righteousness, to jump on the necks of the wicked. We prefer to +have it attended to in a more dignified, impersonal way by Society as a +whole. So we believe that Society should proceed to making goodness and +honesty pay. If Society will not do it <i>we</i> will do it. The world may be +against it at first but we will at least clear off a small place on +it—in our own business for instance—where our goodness can command the +most shrewdness and the most technique—and we will do what we can +slowly—one industry at a time, to remove the slander on goodness that +goodness is not inefficient, and the slander on the world that goodness +cannot be self-supporting, self-respecting (and without disgrace), even +comfortable in it.</p> + +<p>The old hymn with which many of us are familiar is well and true enough. +But it does not seem that standing up for Jesus is the most important +point in the world just now. A great many people are doing it. What we +need more is people who will stand up for the world. When people who are +standing up for the world stand and sing "Stand up for Jesus" it will +begin to count. Let four hundred Nons sing it; and we will all go to +church.</p> + +<p>If nine of the people out of ten who are singing "Stand up for Jesus" +would stand up for the world, that is, if they would stop trading with +their grocer when they find he slides in regularly one bad orange out of +twelve and promptly look up a grocer who does not do such things, and +trade with him, it would not be necessary for people to do as they so +often do nowadays, fall back on a little wistful half discouraged last +resort like "standing up for Jesus."</p> + +<p><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162"></a>Standing up for the world means standing by men who believe in it, +standing by men who make everything they do in business a declaration of +their faith in God and their faith in the credit of human nature, men +who put up money daily in their advertising, their buying and selling, +on the loyalty, common sense, brains, courage, goodness, and righteous +indignation of the people.</p> + +<p>The idea that goodness is sweet and helpless and that Jesus was meek and +lowly and has to be stood up for is now and always has been a slander. +It does not seem to some of us that He would want to be stood up for and +we do not like the way some people call Him meek and lowly. It would be +more true to say that He merely looks meek and lowly; that is, if most +men had done or not done or had said or not said things in the way he +did, they would have been considered meek and lowly for it. He had a way +of using a soft answer to turn away wrath. But there was not anything +really meek and lowly about his giving the soft answer. No meek and +lowly man would ever have thought of such a thing as turning away wrath +with a soft answer. He would have been afraid of looking weak. He would +not have had the energy or the honesty or the spiritual address to know +or to think of a soft answer that would do it.</p> + +<p>The spirit of fighting evil with good—a kind of glorious self-will for +goodness, for doing a thing the higher and nobler way and making it +work, the spirit of successful implacably efficient righteousness is the +last and most modern interpretation of the New Testament, the crowd's +latest cry to its God. Crowds will always crucify and crosses will never +go by. But we are going to have a higher ideal for crosses. We are not +going (out of sheer shame for the world), to think seriously any longer +of dying on a cross, or letting any one else die on one for a little +rudimentary platitude, a quiet, sensible, everyday business motto for +any competent business man like "Do unto others as you would have them +do unto you."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163"></a>CHAPTER XIII</h2> + +<h3>IS IT WRONG FOR GOOD PEOPLE TO BE SUCCESSFUL?</h3> + + +<p>We are having and are about to have notably and truly successful men who +have the humility and faithfulness, the spiritual distinction of true +and great success.</p> + +<p>I want to interpret, if I can, these men. I would like to put with the +great martyrs, with the immortal heroes of failure, these modern silent, +unspoken, unsung mighty men, the heroes of success. I look forward to +seeing them placed among the trophies of religion, in the heart of +mankind at last.</p> + +<p>I cannot stand by and watch these men being looked upon by good people +as men the New Testament made no room for, secretly disapproved of by +religious men and women, as being successes, as being little, noisy, +disturbing, contradictions of the New Testament as talking back to the +Cross.</p> + +<p>These things I have been trying to say about the Cross as a means of +expressing goodness to crowds have brought me as time goes on into close +quarters with many men to whom I pay grateful tribute, men of high +spirit, who strenuously disagree with me.</p> + +<p>I am not content unless I can find common ground with men like these.</p> + +<p>They are wont to tell me when we argue about it that whatever I may be +able to say for success as a means of touching the imaginations of +crowds with goodness, great or attractive or enthralling characters are +not produced by success. Success does not produce great characters. It +is now and always has <a name="Page_164" id="Page_164"></a>been failure that develops the characters of the +men who a truly great.</p> + +<p>Perhaps failure is not the only way.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>When I was talking with —— a little while ago about Non-Gregarious's +goodness and how it succeeded, he was afraid that if his goodness +succeeded there must have been something the matter with it.</p> + +<p>I could see that he was wondering what it was.</p> + +<p>Non's success troubled him. He did not think it was exactly religious. +"Real religion" he said, "was self-sacrifice. There always had to be +something of the Cross about real religion."</p> + +<p>I said that Non's religion was touched at every point with the Cross.</p> + +<p>It seemed to me that it was the spirit of eagerness in it that was the +great thing about the Cross. If Non would all but have died to make the +Golden Rule work in this world, if he daily faced ruin and risked the +loss of everything he had in this life to prove that the Golden Rule was +a success, that is if he really had a Cross and if he really faced +it—dying on it, or not dying on it, could not have made him one whit +more religious or less religious than he was. What Non was willing to +die for, was his belief in the world, and scores of good Christian +people tried in those early days of his business struggle to keep him +from believing in the world. There was hardly a day at first but some +good Christian would step into Non's office and tell him the world would +make him suffer for it if he kept on recklessly believing in it and +doing all those unexpected, unconventional, honest things that somehow, +apparently, he could not help doing.</p> + +<p>They all told him he could not succeed. They said he was a failure. He +would suffer for it.</p> + +<p>I would like to express if I can, what seems to be Non's point of view +toward success and failure.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165"></a>If Non were trying to express his idea of the suffering of Christ, I +imagine he would say that in the hardest time of all when his body was +hanging on the Cross, the thing that was really troubling Christ was not +that he was being killed. The thing that was troubling him was that the +world really seemed, at least for the time being, the sort of world that +could do such things. He did not take his own cross too personally or +too literally as the world's permanent or fixed attitude toward goodness +or every degree of goodness. There was a sense in which he did not +believe except temporarily in his own cross. He did not think that the +world meant it or that it would ever own up that it meant it.</p> + +<p>Probably if we had crosses to-day the hard part of dying on one would +be, not dying on it, but thinking while one was dying on it that one was +in the sort of world that could do such things.</p> + +<p>It is Non's religion not to believe every morning as he goes down to his +office that he is in a mean world, a world that would want to crucify +him for doing his work as well as he could.</p> + +<p>Perhaps this was the spirit of the first Cross, too. We have every +reason to believe that if Christ could have come back in the flesh three +days after the crucifixion and lived thirty-three years longer in it, he +would have occupied himself exclusively in standing up for the world +that had crucified him, in saying that it was a small party in a small +province that did it, that it was temporary and that they did it because +they were in a hurry.</p> + +<p>It was not Christ, but the comparatively faint-believing, worldly minded +saints that have enjoyed dying on crosses since, who have been proud of +being martyrs.</p> + +<p>Among those who have tried the martyr way of doing things Jesus is +almost the only one who has not in his heart abused the world. Most +martyrs have made a kind of religion out of not expecting anything of it +and of trying to get out of it. "And ye, all ye people, are ye suitable +or possible people for me to be religious with?" the typical martyr +exclaims to all the cities, to all the inventors, to the scientists and +to the earth-<a name="Page_166" id="Page_166"></a>redeemers, to his neighbours and his fellow men. It was +not until science in the person of Gallileo came to the rescue of +Christianity and began slowly to bring it back to where Christ started +it—as a noble, happy enterprise of standing up for this world and of +asserting that these men who were in it are good enough to be religious +here and to be the sons of God now—that Christianity began to function. +Religion has been making apparently a side trip for nearly twelve +hundred years, a side trip into space or into the air or into the grave +for holiness for the eternal, and for the infinite.</p> + +<p>Doubtless very often people on crosses really have been holier than the +people who knew how to be good without being crucified. Sometimes it has +been the other way. It would have been just as holy in Non to make the +gospel work in New York as to make a blaze, a show or advertisement of +how wicked the world was, and of how inefficient the gospel was—by +going into insolvency.</p> + +<p>He has had his cross, but instead of dying on it, he has taken it up and +carried it. Scores of risks and difficulties that he has grappled with +would have become crosses at once if equally good, but less resourceful +men, had had them. Letting one's self be threatened with the cross a +thousand times is quite as brave as dying on one once. The spirit, or at +least the shadow, of a cross must always fall daily on any life that is +stretching the world, that is freeing the lives of other men against +their wills. The whole issue of whether there will be a cross or the +threat of a cross turns on a man's insight into human nature and his +quiet and practical imagination concentrated upon his work.</p> + +<p>Not dying on a cross is a matter of technique. One sees how not to, and +one does not. It might be said that the world has two kinds of +redeemers, its cross-redeemers and its success-redeemers. The very best +are on crosses, many of them. Perhaps in the development of the truth +the cross-redeemers come first; they are the pioneers. Then come the +success-redeemers, then everybody!</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167"></a>CHAPTER XIV</h2> + +<h3>IS IT SECOND RATE FOR GOOD PEOPLE TO BE SUCCESSFUL?</h3> + + +<p>Of course the most stupendous success that has ever been made—the +world's most successful undertaking from a technical point of view as an +adaptation of means to ends was the attempt that was made by a man in +Galilee years and years ago to get not only the attention of a whole +world, but to get the attention of a whole world for two thousand years.</p> + +<p>This purpose of arresting the attention of a world and of holding it for +two thousand years was accomplished by the use of success and of failure +alternately.</p> + +<p>Christ tried success or failure according to which method (time and +place considered) would seem to work best.</p> + +<p>His first success was with the doctors.</p> + +<p>His next success was based on His instinct for psychology, His power of +divining people's minds, which made possible to Him those extraordinary +feats in the way of telling short stories that would arrest and hold the +attention of crowds so that they would think and live with them for +weeks to come.</p> + +<p>His next success was a success based on the power of His personality, +and His knowledge of the human spirit and his victory over His own +spirit—his success in curing people's diseases and His extraordinary +roll of miracles.</p> + +<p>He finally tried failure at the end, or what looked like failure, +because the Cross completed what he had had to say.</p> + +<p>It made His success seem greater.</p> + +<p>The world had put to death the man who had had such great successes.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168"></a>People thought of His successes when they thought of Him on the Cross, +and they have kept thinking of them for thousands of years.</p> + +<p>But the Cross itself, or the use of failure was a sowing of the seed, a +taking the truth out of the light and the sunshine and putting it in the +dark ground.</p> + +<p>The Cross was promptly contradicted with the Resurrection. All this, it +seems to some of us, is the most stupendous and successful undertaking +from a purely technical point of view that the world has seen. In the +last analysis it was not His ideas or His character merely, but it was +His technique that made Christ the Son of God and the Master of the +Nations of the Earth.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>I think that while Christ would not have understood Frederick Taylor's +technique, his tables of figures or foot-tons or logarithms he would +have understood Frederick Taylor.</p> + +<p>Nearly all the time that could be said to have been spent in his life in +dealing with other men he spent in doing for them on a nobler scale the +thing that Frederick Taylor did. He went up to men—to hundreds of men a +day, that he saw humdrumming along, despising themselves and despising +their work and expecting nothing of themselves and nothing of any one +else and asked them to put their lives in his hands and let him show +what could be done with them.</p> + +<p>This is Frederick Taylor's profession.</p> + +<p>The Sermon on the Mount began with telling people that they would be +successful if they knew how—if they had a vision. It proceeded to give +them the vision. It began with giving them a vision for the things that +they had, told them how even the very things that they had always +thought before were what was the matter with the world they could make a +great use of. "Blessed are the peacemakers. Blessed are those that +hunger; blessed are the meek."</p> + +<p><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169"></a>And He then went on to tell them how much finer, and nobler and more +free from the cares and weights of this earth they could be if they +wanted to be, than they had dared to believe. He told the people who +were around Him bigger things about human nature, how successful it was +or could be than any one had ever claimed for people in this world +before. They put Him up on a Cross at last and crucified Him because +they thought He was too hopeful about them, and about human nature or +because, as they would have put it, He was blasphemous and said every +man was a Son of God.</p> + +<p>As human nature then was and in the then spirit of the world, no better +means than a Cross could have been employed to get the attention of all +men, to make a two thousand year advertisement for all nations of what a +success human nature was, of what men really could be like.</p> + +<p>But I think that if Christ were to come to us again and if he were to +try to get the attention of the whole world once more to precisely the +same ideas and principles that he stood for before, the enterprise would +be conducted in a very different manner.</p> + +<p>There is a picture of Albert Durer's which hangs near my desk, and once +more as I write these lines my eyes have fallen on it. It is the +familiar one with the lion and the lamb in it, lying down together, and +with the big room with the implements of knowledge scattered about in it +and at the other end in the window at the table with a book, an old, +bent-over scientist with a halo over his head.</p> + +<p>If Christ were to appear suddenly in this modern world to-morrow, the +first thing He would see and would go toward, would be the halo over the +scientist's head.</p> + +<p>There is nothing especially picturesque or religious looking, nothing, +at least, that could be put in a stained-glass window in Frederick +Taylor's tables and charts and diagrams of the number of foot-tons a +pig-iron handler can lift with his arms in a day.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170"></a>But if Christ returned to the world to-morrow and if what He wanted to +do to-morrow was to get the universal, profound, convinced attention of +all men to the Golden Rule, I believe He would begin the way Frederick +Taylor did, by—being concrete. If He wanted to get men in general, men +in business, to love one another He would begin by trying to work out +some technical, practical way in which certain particular men in a +certain particular place could afford to love one another.</p> + +<p>He would find a practical way for instance for the employers and +pig-iron handlers in the Midvale Steel Works to come to some sort of +common understanding and to work cheerfully and with a free spirit +together. I think he would proceed very much in the way that Frederick +Taylor did.</p> + +<p>He would not say much about the Golden Rule. He would give each man a +vision for his work, and of the way it lapped over into other men's work +and leave the Golden Rule a chance to take care of itself. This is all +the Golden Rule, as a truth or as a remark needs just now.</p> + +<p>For two thousand years men have devoted themselves Sunday day after +Sunday to saying over and over again that men should love one another. +The idea is a perfectly familiar one. When Christ said it two thousand +years ago, it was so original and so sensational that just of itself and +as a mere remark it had a carrying power over the whole earth.</p> + +<p>Everybody believes it now—that it is a true remark—but like a score of +other remarks that have been made and some of the noblest Christ made, +is it not possible that it has long since in its mere capacity of being +a remark, gone by? There is no one who has not heard about our loving +one another. The remark we want now is how we can do it. This is the +remark that Mr. Frederick Taylor has made. It is not very eloquent. It +is a mere statement of fact. It has taken him nearly thirty-three years +to make it.</p> + +<p>The gist of it is that for thirty-three years, the employers and <a name="Page_171" id="Page_171"></a>the +pig-iron handlers in the Midvale Steel Works, Pennsylvania, have been +devoted to one another and to one another's interests and acting all day +every day as if of course their interests were the same, and it has been +found that employees when their employers coöperated with them could +lift forty-seven tons instead of twelve and a half a day, and were +getting 60 per cent. more wages.</p> + +<p>Everybody listens. Everybody sees at a glance that when it comes to +making remarks about doing as one would be done by, this is the one +remark that we have all been waiting to hear some one make for two +thousand years.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>The Cross or the last-resort type of religion was as far as St. +Augustine or St. Francis in their world could get. It was all that the +Middle Ages were ready for or that could be claimed for people who had +to live in ages without a printing press, in which no one in the crowd +could expect to know anything and in which there were no ways of letting +crowds know things.</p> + +<p>To-day there is no reason why the Cross as a contrivance for attracting +the attention of all people to goodness should be exclusively relied +upon.</p> + +<p>Possibly the Cross was intended, at the time, as the best possible way +of starting a religion, when there was none, or possibly for keeping it +up when there was very little of it.</p> + +<p>But now that Christianity has been occupied two thousand years in +putting in the groundwork, in laying down the principles of success, and +in organizing them into the world, has been slowly making it possible +with crowds that could not be long deceived for success to be decent. +The leaven has worked into human nature and Christianity has produced +The Successful Temperament.</p> + +<p>Success has become a spiritual institution. In other words, <a name="Page_172" id="Page_172"></a>the hour of +the Scientist, of the man with a technique, of the man who sees how, the +man of The Successful Temperament is at hand.</p> + +<p>Everything we plan for the world, including goodness, from this +day—must reckon with him—with the Man Who Sees How.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173"></a>CHAPTER XV</h2> + +<h3>THE SUCCESSFUL TEMPERAMENT</h3> + + +<p>I also, Gentle Reader, have despised and do despise "success."</p> + +<p>I also have stood, like you, perhaps, and I am standing now in that +ancient, outer court, where I can keep seeing every day The Little Great +Men with all their funny trappings on,—their hoods, and their ribbons, +and their train-bearers, drive up before us all and go in to The Great +Door. I have gone by in the night and have heard the buzz of their +voices there. I have looked, like you, up at the great lighted windows +of Prosperity from the street.</p> + +<p>And in the broad daylight I have seen them too. I have stood on the curb +in the public way with all the others and watched silently the parade of +The Little Great go by.</p> + +<p>I have waited like you, Gentle Reader, and smiled or I have turned on my +heel sadly, or wearily or bitterly or gayly and walked away down my own +side street of the world and with the huzzahs of the crowd echoing +faintly in my ears have gone my way.</p> + +<p>But I keep coming back to the curb again.</p> + +<p>I keep coming back because, every now and then among all the gilt +carriages and the bowing faces in them, or among all the big yellow vans +or cages with the great beasts of success in them, the literary foxes, +the journalist-juggernauts, the Jack Johnsons of finance, the contented, +gurgling, wallowing millionaires—I cannot help standing once more and +looking among them, for one, or for possibly two, or three or four who +may be truly successful men. Some of them are merely successful-looking. +<a name="Page_174" id="Page_174"></a>I often find as I see them more closely, that they are undeceived, or +humble, or are at least not being any more successful-looking than +they can help, and are trying to do better.</p> + +<p>They are the men who have defied success to succeed and who will defy it +again and again.</p> + +<p>They are the great men.</p> + +<p>The great man is the man who can get himself made and who will get +himself made out of anything he finds at hand.</p> + +<p>If success cannot do it, he makes failure do it. If he cannot make +success express the greatness or the vision that is in him, he makes +failure express it.</p> + +<p>But this book is not about great men and goodness. It is about touching +the imagination of crowds with goodness, about making goodness +democratic and making goodness available for common people.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>A stupendous success in goodness will advertise it as well as a +stupendous failure.</p> + +<p>Goodness has had its cross-redeemers to attract the attention of half a +world.</p> + +<p>Possibly it is having now its success-redeemers to attract the attention +of the other half.</p> + +<p>The people the success-redeemers reach would turn out to be, possibly, +very much more than half.</p> + +<p>The Cross, as a means of getting the attention of crowds, or of the more +common people in our modern, practical-minded Western world, was +apparently adapted to its purpose as long as it was used for church +purposes or as long as it was kept dramatic or sensational or remote, or +as long as it was a cross for some one else, but as a means of +attracting the attention of crowds of ordinary men and women to goodness +in common everyday things, it is very doubtful if failure—in the power +of steady daily pulling on men's minds, has done as much for goodness as +success.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175"></a>It is doubtful if, except as an ideal or conventional symbol the cross +has ever been or ever could be what might be called a spiritually +middle-class institution. It has been reserved for men of genius, +pioneers and world-designers to have those colossal and glorious crosses +that have been worshipped in all ages, and must be worshipped in all +ages as the great memorials of the human race.</p> + +<p>But the more common and numerous types of men, the men who do not design +worlds, but who execute them, build them, who carry the new designs of +goodness out, who work through the details and conceive the technique of +goodness are men in whom the spiritual and religious power takes the +natural form of success.</p> + +<p>It seems to be the nature of the modern and the western type of man to +challenge fatalism, to defy a cross. He would almost boast that nobody +could make him die on it. This spirit in men too is a religious spirit. +It is the next hail of goodness. Goodness posts up its next huge notice +on the world:</p> + +<table border="1" cellpadding="10" class="center"><tr><td style="border-style: none">SUCCESS</td></tr></table> + +<p>It is going to make the more rudimentary everyday people notice it, and +it is going to make them notice it in everyday things. It does not admit +that goodness is merely for the spiritual aristocrats for those greater +souls that can search out and appreciate the spiritual values in +failure.</p> + +<p>It believes that goodness is for crowds. It has discovered that crosses, +to common people in common things, seem oriental and mystical. The +common people of the western world instead of being born with dreamy +imaginations are born with pointed and applied ones. It is not +impossible that the comparative failure of the Christian religion in the +western world and in the later generations is that it has been trying to +be oriental and aristocratic in appealing to what is really a new type +of man <a name="Page_176" id="Page_176"></a>in the world—the scientific and practical type as we see it in +the western nations all about us to-day.</p> + +<p>We can die on crosses in our Western world as well as any one and we can +do it in crowds too as they do in India, but we propose if crosses are +expected of us to know why in crowds. Knowing why makes us think of +things and makes us do things. It is the keynote of our temperament.</p> + +<p>And it is not fair to say of us when we make this distinction that we do +not believe in the cross. But there are times when some of us wish that +we could get other people to stop believing in it. We would all but die +on the cross to get other people to stop dying on one for platitudes, to +get them to work their way down to the facts and focus their minds on +the practical details of not dying on a cross, of forming a vision of +action which will work. It goes without saying that as long as crowds +are in the world crosses will not go by, but it is wicked not to make +them go by as fast as possible, one by one. They were meant to be moved +up higher. We are eager not to die on the same cross for the same thing +year after year and century after century. It seems to us that the +eagerness that always goes with the cross always was and always will be +the essential, powerful and beautiful thing in it.</p> + +<p>And it is this new eagerness in the modern spirit, a kind of hurrying up +of the souls of the world that is inspiring us to employ our western +genius in inventing and defending and applying the means of goodness and +in finding ways of making goodness work. We will not admit that men were +intended to die on crosses from a sheer, beautiful, heavenly +shiftlessness, vague-mindedness, mere unwillingness to take pains to +express themselves or unwillingness to think things out and to make +things plain to crowds. It does not seem to us that it is wicked to +employ success as well as failure, to state our religion to people. It +seems to us that it goes naturally with the scientific and technical +temperament of the people that we should do this. It is not superior and +it is not inferior. It is <a name="Page_177" id="Page_177"></a>temperamental and it is based upon the study +of the psychology of attention, on a knowledge of what impresses a +certain kind of man and of what really is conclusive with crowds and +with average men and women. It is the distinctive point of view of the +pragmatic temperament, of the inductive mind. The modern mind is +interested in facts and cannot make a religion out of not knowing them. +There was a time once when people used to take their bodily diseases as +acts of God. We have made up our minds not to have these same bodily +diseases now. We have discovered by hard work and constant study that +they are not necessary. The same is true of our moral diseases and of +our great social maladies.</p> + +<p>It is going to be the same with crosses. It is a sin and a slander and +affront to human nature and to God to die on a cross if it can be helped +by hard work and close thinking, or by touching the imaginations of +others.</p> + +<p>Most of us acting in most things are not good enough to die on crosses. +We are not worthy, it would not be humble in us to. Crosses are only +reserved for the newest and most rare truths, and for the newest and +most rare men. They are still, and they still can be made to be, a means +of grace and of perfection to people who have gifts of learning things +by suffering, but as a means of making other people and people in crowds +see things, the right to use a cross is not for those of us who are +merely lumbering spiritually along, trying to catch up to a plain, +simple-hearted old platitude, eighteen hundred years late like the +Golden Rule. The right to a cross is reserved for those who are up on +the higher reaches, those great bleak stretches or moors of truth where +men go forth and walk alone with God hundreds of years ahead.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178"></a>CHAPTER XVI</h2> + +<h3>THE MEN AHEAD PULL</h3> + + +<p>Writing a hopeful book about the human race with the New York <i>Sun</i>, +Wall Street, Downing Street and Bernard Shaw looking on is uphill work.</p> + +<p>Sometimes I wish there were another human race I could refer to when I +am writing about this one, one every one knows. The one on Mars, for +instance, if one could calmly point to it in the middle of an argument, +shut people off with a wave of one's hand and say, "Mars this" and "Mars +that" would be convenient.</p> + +<p>The trouble with the human race is that when one is talking to it about +itself, it thinks it is It.</p> + +<p>It is not It yet.</p> + +<p>The earth and everything on it is a huge Acorn, tumbling softly through +the sky.</p> + +<p>Our boasted Christianity (crosses, and resurrections and cathedrals and +all) is a Child crying in the night.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>It is not necessary for me to prove to the satisfaction of the New York +<i>Sun</i> and Bernard Shaw that the Golden Rule has not reached the superior +moral stage of being taken as a platitude by all of our people who are +engaged in business. It is enough to submit that the most creative and +forceful business men—the men who set the pace, the foremen of the +world, are taking it so, and that others are trying to be as much like +them as they can. Wickedness in this world is not going to stop with a +jerk. It is merely being better distributed. Possibly this is <a name="Page_179" id="Page_179"></a>all there +is to the problem, getting sin better distributed. The Devil has never +had a very great outfit or any great weight, but he has always known +where to throw it, and he has always done an immense business on a small +capital and the only way he has managed to get on at all, is by +organizing, and by getting the attention of a few people at the top. Now +that the moral sense of the world has become quickened, and that rapid +transit and newspapers and science and the fact-spirit have gained their +hold, the sins of the world are being rapidly distributed, not so much +among the men who determine things as among those who cannot.</p> + +<p>Everything is following the fact-spirit. The modern world and everything +in it, is falling into the hands of the men who cannot be cheated about +facts, who get the facts first and who get them right.</p> + +<p>The world cannot help falling, from now on, slowly—a little ponderously +perhaps at first—into the hands of good men. To say that the world is +falling into the hands of men who cannot be cheated and to say that it +is falling into the hands of good men is to say the same thing.</p> + +<p>The men who get the things that they want, get them by seeing the things +as they are. Goodness and efficiency both boil down to the same quality +in the modern man, his faculty for not being a romantic person and for +not being cheated.</p> + +<p>A good man may be said to be a man who has formed a habit, an intimate +personal habit of not being cheated. Everything he does is full of this +habit. The sinful man, as he is usually called, is a man who is off in +his facts, a man who does not know what he really wants even for +himself. In a matter-of-fact civilization like ours, he cannot hope to +keep up. If a man can be cheated, even by himself—of course other +people can cheat him and everybody can take advantage of him. He +naturally grows more incompetent every day he lives. The men who are +slow or inefficient in finding out what they really want and slow in +dealing with themselves are necessarily inefficient and behind <a name="Page_180" id="Page_180"></a>hand in +dealing with other people. They cannot be men who determine what other +people shall do.</p> + +<p>It is true that for the moment, it still seems—now that science has +only just come to the rescue of religion, that evil men in a large +degree are the men who still are standing in the gate and determining +opportunities and letting in and letting out Civilization as they +please. But their time is limited.</p> + +<p>The fact-spirit is in the people. We enjoy facts. Facts are the modern +man's hunting, his adventure and sport. The men who are ahead are +getting into a kind of two-and-two-are-four habit that is like music, +like rhythm. It becomes almost a passion, almost a self-indulgence in +their lives. Being honest with things, having a distaste for being +cheated by things, having a distaste for being cheated by one's self and +for cheating other people, runs in the blood in modern men. The nations +can be seen going round and round the earth and looking one another long +and earnestly in the eyes. The poet is turning his imagination upon the +world about him and upon the fact that really works in it. The +scientific man has taken hold of religion and righteousness is being +proved, melted down in the laboratory, welded together before us all and +riveted on to the every day, on to what really happens, and on to what +really works. Goodness in its baser form already pays. Only the biggest +men may have found it out, but everybody is watching them. The most +important spiritual service that any man can render the present age is +to make goodness pay at the top (in the most noticeable place) in some +business where nobody has made it pay before. Anybody can see that it +almost pays already, that it pays now here, now there. At all events, +anybody can see that it is very noticeable that the part of the world +that is most spiritual is not merely the part that is whining or hanging +on crosses. It is also the part that is successful. One knows scores of +saints with ruddy cheeks. It is getting to be a matter of principle +almost in a modern saint—to have ruddy cheeks.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181"></a>I submit this fact respectfully to Bernard Shaw, Wall Street, Downing +Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, and even to the New York <i>Sun</i>, that +vast machine for laughing at a world down in its snug quarters in Park +Row—that the saint with ruddy cheeks is a totally new and disconcerting +fact in our modern life. He is the next fact the honest pessimist will +have to face.</p> + +<p>I submit that this saint with ruddy cheeks is here, that he is lovable, +imperturbable, imperious, irrepressible, as interesting as sin, as +catching as the Devil and that he has come to stay.</p> + +<p>He stays because he is successful and can afford to stay.</p> + +<p>He is successful because he is good.</p> + +<p>Only religion works.</p> + +<p>I am aware that the New York <i>Sun</i> might quarrel with just exactly this +way of putting it.</p> + +<p>I might put it another way or possibly try to say it again after saying +something else first. <i>Viz.</i>: The man who is successful in business is +the man who can get people to do as much as they can do and a great deal +more than they think they can do.</p> + +<p>Only a very lively goodness, almost a religion in a man, can do this. He +has to have something in him very like the power of inventing people or +of making people over.</p> + +<p>To be specific: In some big department stores, as one goes down the +aisle, one will see over and over again the clerks making fun of +customers.</p> + +<p>One by one the customers find it out and the more permanent ones, those +who would keep coming and who have the best trade, go to other stores.</p> + +<p>How could such a thing be stopped in a department store by a practical +employer? Can he stop it successfully by turning on his politeness?</p> + +<p>Of course he can make his clerks polite-looking by turning on his +politeness. But politeness in a department store does not consist in +being polite-looking. Being polite-looking does not <a name="Page_182" id="Page_182"></a>work, does not grip +the customer or strike in and do things and make the customer do things.</p> + +<p>A machine like a department store, made up of twenty-five hundred human +beings, which is carving out its will, its nature, stamping its pattern +on a city, on a million men, or on a nation, cannot be made to work +without religion. If the clerks are making fun of people, only religion +can stop it.</p> + +<p>Perhaps you have been made fun of yourself, Gentle Reader? You have +observed, perhaps, that in making fun of people (making fun of you, for +instance), the assumption almost always is, that you are trying to be +like the Standard Person, and that this (they look at you pleasantly as +you go by) is as near as you can get to it! If an employer wishes to +make his clerk an especially valuable clerk, if he wishes to make his +clerk an expert in human nature or a good salesman, one who sees a +customer when he comes along as he really is, and as he is trying to be, +he will only be able to do it by touching something deep down in the +clerk's nature, something very like his religion—his power of putting +himself in the place of others. He can only do it by making a clerk feel +that this power in him of doing as he would be done by, and seeing how +to do it, <i>i.e.</i>, the religion in him, is what he is hired for.</p> + +<p>It is visionary to try to run a great department store, a great machine +of twenty-five hundred souls, a machine of human emotions, of five +thousand eyes and ears, a huge loom of enthusiasm, of love, hate, +covetousness, sorrow, disappointment, and joy without having it full of +clerks who are experts in human nature, putting themselves in the place +of crowds of other people, clerks who are essentially religious.</p> + +<p>So we watch the men who are ahead driving one another into goodness. The +man who is not able to create, distribute or turn on, in his business +establishment, goodness, social insight, and customer-insight in it, can +only hope to-day to keep ahead in business by having competitors as +inefficient as he is.</p> + +<p>The man who is ahead has discovered himself. Everything <a name="Page_183" id="Page_183"></a>the man ahead +is doing eight hours a day, is seen at last narrowing him down, +cornering him into goodness.</p> + +<p>Of course as long as people looked upon goodness as a Sunday affair, a +few hours a week put in on it, we were naturally discouraged about it.</p> + +<p>It is still a little too fresh looking and it may be still a little too +clever for everybody, but slowly, irrevocably, we see it coming. We can +look up almost any day and watch some goodness—now—at least one +specimen or so, in every branch of business.</p> + +<p>We watch daily the men who are ahead, pulling on the goodness of the +world and the Crowds pushing on it.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184"></a>CHAPTER XVII</h2> + +<h3>THE CROWDS PUSH</h3> + + +<p>The men who are ahead make goodness start, but it is the crowds that +make it irresistible.</p> + +<p>The final, slow, long, imperious lift on goodness is the one the crowd +gives. Of course, for the most part, modern business is largely done +with crowds. Crowds are doing it and crowds are nearly always watching +it.</p> + +<p>The factory is slower than the department store in being good because +the men in it deal with crowds of things and crowds of wheels and not +with crowds of people.</p> + +<p>All responsible people are forced to be good, with crowds around them, +expecting it of them.</p> + +<p>Crowds at the very least are a kind of vast, insinuating, penetrating, +omnipresent, permeating police force of righteousness.</p> + +<p>In a department store, the crowds, twelve thousand a day, are like some +huge coil of hose or vacuum cleaner, lying about the place, sucking up, +drawing out, and demanding goodness from the clerks. Clerks develop +human insight and powers faster in department stores than machinists do +in factories because they are exposed to more people and to larger +crowds. The stream clears itself.</p> + +<p>The last forms of business to yield to the new spirit are to be the +lonely ones, the ones where light, air, human emotions, and crowds are +shut out.</p> + +<p>The lonely forms of business will at last be vitalized and socialized by +men of organizing genius, who will invent the equivalent of crowds going +by, who will contrive ways of putting <a name="Page_185" id="Page_185"></a>a few responsible persons in +sight or in a position where they will feel crowds going by their souls, +looking into them as if they were shop windows. Crowds can keep track of +a few. The crowds will see that these few are the kind of men who will +keep track of all.</p> + +<p>Crowds in the end will not accept less than the best. With crowds of +people and crowds of places and crowds of times we are good. In all +things crowds can see or be made to see we are safe. Progress lies in +making crowds see through people, making crowds go past them. While they +are going past them, they lure their goodness on.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186"></a>CHAPTER XVIII</h2> + +<h3>THE MAN WHO SAYS HOW, SAYS HOW</h3> + + +<p>The people who are worried and discouraged about goodness in this world, +one finds when one studies them a little, are almost always worried in a +kind of general way. They do not worry about anything in particular. +Their religion seems to be a kind of good-hearted, pained vagueness.</p> + +<p>The religion of the people who never worry at all, the thoughtless +optimists, is quite the same too, except that they have a kind of happy, +rosy-lighted vagueness instead.</p> + +<p>For about two thousand years now, goodness has been in the hands of +vague people. Some of them have used their vagueness to cry with softly, +and some of them have used it to praise God with and to have many fine, +brave, general feelings about God.</p> + +<p>I have tried faithfully, speaking for one, to be religious with both of +these sets of people.</p> + +<p>They make one feel rather lonesome.</p> + +<p>If one goes about and takes a grim happiness, a kind of iron joy in +seeing how successful a locomotive is, or if one watches a great, +worshipful ocean liner with delight, or if, down in New York, one looks +up and sees a new skyscraper going slowly up, unfolding into the sky +before one, lifting up its gigantic, restless, resistless face to God; +there comes to seem to be something about churches and about good people +and about the way they have of acting and thinking about goodness and +doing things with goodness, that makes one unhappy.</p> + +<p>Perhaps one has just come from it and one's soul is filled with the +stern, glad singing of a great foundry, of the religious, <a name="Page_187" id="Page_187"></a>victorious +praising spirit of man, dipping up steel in mighty spoonfuls—the stuff +the inside of the earth is made of, and flinging it together into a +great network or crust for the planet—into mighty floors or sidewalks +all round the earth for cities to tread on and there comes to seem +something so successful, so manlike, so godlike about it, about the way +these men who do these things do them and do what they set out to do, +that when I find myself suddenly, all in a few minutes on a Sunday +morning, thrown out of this atmosphere into a Christian church, find +myself sitting all still and waiting, with all these good people about +me, and when I find them offering me their religion so gravely, so +hopefully, it all comes to me with a great rush sometimes—comes to me +as out of great deeps of resentment, that religion could possibly be +made in a church to seem something so faint, so beautifully weary, so +dreamy, and as if it were humming softly, absently to itself.</p> + +<p>I wonder in the presence of a Christianity like this whether I am a +Christian or not—the quartet choirs, confections, the little, dainty, +faintly sweet sermons—it is as if—no I will not say it....</p> + +<p>I have this moment crossed the words out before my eyes. It is as if, +after all, religion, instead of being as I supposed down at the foundry, +the stern and splendid music of man conquering all things for God, were, +after all, some huge, sublime and holy vagueness, as if the service and +the things I saw about me were not hard true realities—as if going to +Church were like sitting in a cloud—some soft musical cloud or floating +island of goodness and drifting and drifting....</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>Not all churches are alike, but I am speaking of something that must +have happened to many men. I but record this blank space on this page, +as a spiritual fact, as a part of the religious experience of a man +trying to be good.</p> + +<p>When this little experience of which the words have to be <a name="Page_188" id="Page_188"></a>crossed out +after going to Church—finally settles down, there is still a grim truth +left in it.</p> + +<p>The vagueness of the man who is good, who locks himself up in a Church +and says, "Oh God! Oh God! Oh God!" and the vigour and incisiveness of +the man who says nothing about it and who goes out of doors and acts +like a god all the week—these remain with me as a daily and abiding +sense.</p> + +<p>And when I find myself myself, I, who have gloried in cathedrals since I +was a little child, looking ahead for a God upon the earth, and when I +see the foundries, the airships, the ocean liners beckoning the soul of +man upon the skies, and the victory of the soul over the dust and over +the water and over the air and when I see the Cathedrals beside them, +those vast, faint, grave, happy, floating islands of the Saved, drifting +backward down the years, it does not seem as if I could bear the +foundries saying one thing about my God and the cathedrals saying +another.</p> + +<p>I have tried to see a way out. Why should it be so?</p> + +<p>I have seen that the foundries, the ocean liners, and the airships are +in the hands of men who say How.</p> + +<p>Perhaps we will take goodness and cathedrals, very soon now, and put +them for a while in the hands of the men who say how. If St. Francis, +for instance, to-day, were to be suddenly more like Bessemer, or if Dr. +Henry Van Dyke were more like Edison or if the Reverend R.J. Campbell +were more like Sir Joseph Lister or if the Bishop of London were to go +at London the way Marconi goes at the sky, what would begin to happen to +goodness? One likes to imagine what would happen if that same spirit, +the spirit of "how" were brought to bear upon a great engineering +enterprise like goodness in this world.</p> + +<p>Perhaps the spirit of "how" is the spirit of God.</p> + +<p>Perhaps religion in the twentieth century is Technique.</p> + +<p>Technique in the twentieth century is the Holy Ghost.</p> + +<p>Technique is the very last thing that has been thought of in religion. +Religion is being converted before our eyes. It is becoming touched with +the temper of science, with the thorough<a name="Page_189" id="Page_189"></a>ness, the doggedness, the +inconsolableness of science until it is seeing how and until it is +saying how.</p> + +<p>When the inventors, in our machine age, get to work on goodness in the +way that they are getting to work on other things, things will begin to +happen to goodness that the vague, sweet saints of two thousand years +have never dreamed of yet.</p> + +<p>In London and New York, in this first quarter of the twentieth century +Christianity will not be put off as a spirit. The right of Christianity +to be a spirit has lapsed.</p> + +<p>Christianity is a Method.</p> + +<p>What Christ meant when He said He was the Truth and the Life, has been +understood, on the whole, very well. What He meant by saying He was the +Way, we are now beginning, to work out.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>A thousand or two years ago, when two men stood by the roadside and made +a bargain, it was their affair.</p> + +<p>When two men stand on the sidewalk now and make a bargain, say in New +York, they have to deal and to deal very thoughtfully and accurately +with ninety million people who are not there. They do this as well as +they can by imagining what the ninety million people would do and say, +and how they would like to be done by, if they were there.</p> + +<p>The facilities for finding out what the ninety million people would do +and say, and what they would want, the general conveniences for assuring +the two men on the sidewalk that they will be able to conduct their +bargain, and to get the other ninety million in, accurately, that they +will be able to do by them as they would be done by—these have scarcely +been arranged for yet.</p> + +<p>In our machine age, with our railroads, and our telephones suddenly +heaping our lives up on one another's lives, almost before we have +noticed it, our religious machinery to go with our other machinery, our +machinery <a name="Page_190" id="Page_190"></a>that we are going to be Christians with, has not been +invented yet.</p> + +<p>Religion two-men size, or man and woman size, or one family or two +family size or village size has been worked out. Religion as long as it +has been concerned with a few people and was a matter of love between +neighbours, or of skill in being neighbourly, has had no special or +imperative need for science or the scientific man.</p> + +<p>Now that religion is obliged to be an intimate, a confiding relation +between ninety million people, the spiritual genius, devotion, and +holiness of the scientific man, of the man who says "how" has come to be +the modern man's almost only access to his God.</p> + +<p>A ninety million man-power religion is an enterprise of spiritual +engineering, a feat in national and international statesmanship, a +gigantic structural constructive achievement in human nature. Doing as +one would be done by, with a few people, is a thing that any man can sit +down and read his Bible a few minutes and arrange for himself. He can +manage to do as he would be done by, fairly well in the next yard. But +how about doing as one would be done by with ninety million people—all +sizes, all climates, all religions, Buffalo, New Orleans, Seattle? How +about doing as one would be done by three thousand miles?</p> + +<p>It is an understatement to say, as we look about our modern world, that +Christianity has not been tried yet.</p> + +<p>Christianity has not been invented yet.</p> + +<p>What was invented two thousand years ago was the spirit of Christianity.</p> + +<p>Christianity has been for two thousand years a spirit.</p> + +<p>It is almost like a new religion to me just of itself to think of it. It +is like being presented suddenly with a new world to think of it, to +think that all we have really done with Christianity as yet is to use it +as a breath or spirit.</p> + +<p>I look at the vision of the earth to-day, of the great cities <a name="Page_191" id="Page_191"></a>rushing +together at last and running around the world like children running +around a house—great cities shouting on the seas, suddenly sliding up +and down the globe, playing hopscotch on the equator, scrambling up the +poles—all these colossal children!... Here we all are!—a whiff of +steam from the Watts's steam kettle and a wave of Marconi across the air +and we have crept up from our little separate sunsets, all our little +private national bedrooms of light and darkness into the one single same +cunning dooryard of a world! Our religion, our politics, our Bibles, +kings, millionaires, crowds, bombs, prophets and railroads all hurling, +sweeping, crashing our lives together in a kind of vast international +collision of intimacy.</p> + +<p>All the Christianity we can bring to bear or that we can use to run this +crash of intimacy with is a spirit, a breath.</p> + +<p>We do not well to berate one another or to berate one another's motives +or to assail human nature or to grow satirical about God with all our +little battered helpless Christians about us and our unadjusted +religions.</p> + +<p>We are a new human race grappling with a new world. Our Christianity has +not been invented yet and if we want a God, we will work like chemists, +like airmen, turn the inside of the earth out, dump the sky, move +mountains, face cities, love one another, and find Him!</p> + +<p>In the meantime until we have done this, until we have worked as +chemists and airmen work, Christianity is a spirit.</p> + +<p>It explains all this eager jumble of the world, brushes away our +objections, frees our hearts, gives us our program, makes us know what +we are for, to stop and think a moment of this—that Christianity is a +spirit.</p> + +<p>Everything that is passing wonderful is a spirit at first. God begins +building a world as a world-spirit, out of a spirit brooding upon the +waters. Then for a long while the vague waters, then for a long while a +little vague land or spirit-of-planet before a real world.</p> + +<p>And every real belief that man has had, has begun as a spirit.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192"></a>For two thousand years Man has had the spirit of immortality. Homer had +it. Homer had moments when improvising his mighty song all alone, of +hearing or seeming to hear, faintly, choruses of men's voices singing +his songs after him, a thousand years away.</p> + +<p>As he groped his way up in his singing, he felt them in spirit, perhaps, +the lonely wandering minstrels in little closed-in valleys, or on the +vast quiet hills, filling the world with his voice when he was dead, +going about with his singing, breaking it in upon the souls of children, +of the new boys and girls, and building new worlds and rebuilding old +worlds in the hearts of men. Homer had the spirit of hearing his own +voice forever, but the technique of it, the important point of seeing +how the thing could really be done, of seeing how people, instead of +listening to imitations or copies or awkward echoes of Homer, should +listen to Homer's voice itself—the timbre, the intimacy, the subtlety, +the strength of it—the depth of his heart singing out of it. All this +has had to wait to be thought out by Thomas A. Edison.</p> + +<p>Man has not only for thousands of years had the spirit of immortality, +of keeping his voice filed away if any one wanted it on the earth, +forever, but he has had all the other spirits or ghosts of his mightier +self. He has had the spirit of being imperious and wilful with the sea, +of faring forth on a planet and playing with oceans, and now he has +worked out the details in ocean liners, in boats that fly up from the +water, and in boats which dive and swim beneath the sea. For thousands +of years he has had the spirit of the locomotive working through, troops +of runners or of dim men groping defiantly with camels through deserts, +or sweeping on on horses through the plains, and now with his banners of +steam at last he has great public trains of cars carrying cities.</p> + +<p>For hundreds of years man has had the spirit of the motor-car—of having +his own private locomotive or his own special train drive up to his +door—the spirit of making every road his <a name="Page_193" id="Page_193"></a>railway. For a great many +years he has had the spirit of the wireless telegraph and of using the +sky. Franklin tried using the sky years ago but all he got was +electricity. Marconi knew how better. Marconi has got ghosts of men's +voices out of the clouds, has made heaven a sounding board for great +congregations of cities, and faraway nations wrapped in darkness and +silence whisper round the rolling earth. Man has long had the spirit of +defying the seas. Now he has the technique and the motor-boat. He has +had the spirit of removing oceans and of building huge, underground +cities, the spirit of caves in the ground and mansions in the sky, and +now he has subways and skyscrapers. For a thousand years he has had the +spirit of Christ and now there is Frederick Taylor, Louis Brandeis, +Westfield Pure Food, Doctor Carrel, Jane Addams, and Filene's Store. +Vast networks—huge spiritual machines of goodness are crowding and +penetrating to-day, fifteen pounds to the square inch, the atmosphere of +the gospel into the very core of the matter of the world, into the +everyday things, into the solids of the lives of men.</p> + +<p>It takes two great spirits of humanity to bring a great truth or a new +goodness into this world; one spirit creates it, the other conceives it, +gathers the earth about it and gives it birth. These two spirits seem to +be the spirits of the poet and the scientist.</p> + +<p>We are taking to-day, many of us, an almost religious delight in them +both. We make no comparisons.</p> + +<p>We note that the poet's inspiration comes first and consists in saying +something that is true, that cannot be proved.</p> + +<p>A few people with imagination, here and there, believe it.</p> + +<p>The scientist's inspiration comes second and consists in seeing ways of +proving it, of making it matter of fact.</p> + +<p>He proves it by seeing how to do it.</p> + +<p>Crowds believe it.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194"></a>CHAPTER XIX</h2> + +<h3>AND THE MACHINE STARTS</h3> + + +<p>One of the things that makes one thoughtful in going about from city to +city and dropping into the churches is the way the people do not sing in +them and will not pray in them. In every new strange city where one +stops on a Sunday morning, one looks hopefully—while one hears the +chimes of bells—at the row of steeples down the street. One looks for +people going in who seem to go with chimes of bells. And when one goes +in, one finds them again and again, inside, all these bolt-up-right, +faintly sing-song congregations.</p> + +<p>One wonders about the churches.</p> + +<p>What is there that is being said in them that should make any one feel +like singing?</p> + +<p>The one thing that the churches are for is news—news that would be +suitable to sing about, and that would naturally make one want to sing +and pray after one had heard it.</p> + +<p>There is very little occasion to sing or to pray over old news.</p> + +<p>Worship would take care of itself in our churches if people got the +latest and biggest news in them.</p> + +<p>News is the latest faith men have in one another, the last thing they +have dared to get from God.</p> + +<p>It is not impossible that just at the present moment, and for some +little time to come, there is really very little worth while that can be +said about Christianity, until Christianity has been tried. I cannot +conceive of Christ's coming back and saying anything just at the moment. +He would merely wonder why, in all these two thousand years, we had not +arranged to do anything about what He had said before. He would wonder +how <a name="Page_195" id="Page_195"></a>we could keep on so, making his great faith for us so poetic, +visionary, and inefficient.</p> + +<p>It is in the unconscious recognition of this and of the present +spiritual crisis of the world, that our best men, so many of them, +instead of going into preaching are going into laboratories and into +business where what the gospel really is and what it is really made of, +is being at last revealed to people—where news is being created.</p> + +<p>Perhaps it would not be precisely true—what I have said, about Christ's +not saying anything. He probably would. But he would not say these same +merely rudimentary things. He would go on to the truths and applications +we have never heard or guessed. The rest of his time he would put in in +proving that the things that had been merely said two thousand years +ago, could be done now. And He would do what He could toward having them +dropped forever, taken for granted and acted on as a part of the morally +automatic and of-course machinery of the world.</p> + +<p>The Golden Rule takes or ought to take, very soon now, in real religion, +somewhat the same position that table manners take in morals.</p> + +<p>All good manners are good in proportion as they become automatic. In +saying that honesty pays we are merely moving religion on to its more +creative and newer levels. We are asserting that the literal belief in +honesty, after this, ought to be attended to practically by machinery. +People ought to be honest automatically and by assumption, by dismissing +it in business in particular, as a thing to be taken for granted.</p> + +<p>This is what is going to happen.</p> + +<p>Without the printing press a book would cost about ten thousand dollars, +each copy.</p> + +<p>With the printing press, the first copy of a book costs perhaps about +six hundred dollars.</p> + +<p>The second costs—twenty-nine cents.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196"></a>The same principle holds good under the law of moral automatics.</p> + +<p>Let the plates be cast. Everything follows. The fire in the Iroquois +Theatre in Chicago cost six hundred dead bodies.</p> + +<p>Within a few months outward opening doors flew open to the streets +around a world.</p> + +<p>Everybody knew about outward opening doors before.</p> + +<p>They had the spirit of outward opening doors. But the machinery for +making everybody know that they knew it—the moral and spiritual +machinery for lifting over the doors of a world and making them all +swing suddenly generation after generation the other way, had not been +set up.</p> + +<p>Of course it would have been better if there had been three hundred dead +bodies or three dead bodies—but the principle holds good—let the moral +plates be cast and the huge moral values follow with comparatively +little individual moral hand labour. The moral hand labour moves on to +more original things.</p> + +<p>The same principle holds good in letting an American city be good in +seeing how to make goodness in a city work.</p> + +<p>Let the plates be once cast—say Galveston, Texas; or De Moines, Iowa, +and goodness after you have your first specimen gets national +automatically.</p> + +<p>Two hundred and five cities have adopted the Galveston or commission +government in three years.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>The failure for the time being apparently of the more noble and +aggressive kinds of goodness against the forces of evil is a matter of +technique. Our failure is not due to our failure to know what evil +really is, but due to our wasteful way of tunnelling through it.</p> + +<p>Our religious inventors have failed to use the most scientific method. +We have gone at the matter of butting through evil without thinking +enough. Less butting and more thinking <a name="Page_197" id="Page_197"></a>is our religion now. We will not +try any longer to butt a whole planet when we try to keep one man from +doing wrong.</p> + +<p>We will butt our way through to the man who sees where to butt and how +to butt. Then all together!</p> + +<p>Very few of the wrongs that are done to society by individuals would be +done if civilization were supplied with the slightest adequate machinery +or conveniences for bringing home to people vividly who the people are +they are wronging, how they are wronging them, and how the people feel +about it. This machinery for moral and social insight, this +intelligence-engine or apparatus of sympathy for a planet to-day, before +our eyes is being invented and set up.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>Sometimes I almost think that history as a study or particularly as a +habit of mind ought to be partitioned off and not allowed to people in +general to-day. Only men of genius have imagination enough for handling +history so that it is not a nuisance, a provincialism and an +impertinence in the serene presence to-day of what is happening before +our eyes. History makes common people stop thinking or makes them think +wrong, about nine tenths of the area of human nature, particularly about +the next important things that are going to happen to it.</p> + +<p>Our modern life is not an historian's problem. It is an inventor's +problem. The historian can stand by and can be consulted. But things +that seem to an historian quite reasonably impossible in human nature +are true and we must all of us act every day as if they were true. We +but change the temperature of human nature and in one moment new levels +and possibilities open up on every side.</p> + +<p>Things that are true about water stop being true the moment it is heated +212 degrees Fahrenheit. It begins suddenly to act like a cloud and when +it is cooled off enough a cloud acts like a stone. Railroad trains are +run for hundreds of miles every <a name="Page_198" id="Page_198"></a>year in Siberia across clouds that are +cold enough. We raise the temperature of human nature and the motives +with which men cannot act to-day suddenly around a world are the motives +with which they cannot help acting to-morrow.</p> + +<p>The theory of raised temperatures alone, in human nature, will make +possible to us ranges of goodness, of social passion and vision, that +only a few men have been capable of before.</p> + +<p>All the new inventions have new sins, even new manners that go with +them, new virtues and new faculties. The telephone, the motor-car, the +wireless telegraph, the airship and the motor-boat all make men act with +different insights, longer distances, and higher speeds.</p> + +<p>Men who, like our modern men, have a going consciousness, see things +deeper by going faster.</p> + +<p>They see how more clearly by going faster.</p> + +<p>They see farther by going faster.</p> + +<p>If a man is driving a motor-car three miles an hour all he needs to +attend to with his imagination is a few feet of the road ahead.</p> + +<p>If he is driving his car thirty miles an hour and trying to get on by +anticipating his road a few feet ahead, he dies.</p> + +<p>The faster a man goes—if he has the brains for it—the more people and +the more things in the way, his mind covers in a minute—the more +magnificently he sees how.</p> + +<p>On a railway train any ordinary man any day in the year (if he goes fast +enough) can see through a board fence. It may be made of vertical slats +five inches across and half an inch apart. He sees through the slits +between the slats the whole country for miles. If he goes fast enough a +man can see through a solid freight train.</p> + +<p>All our modern industrial social problems are problems of gearing people +up. Ordinary men are living on trains now—on moral trains.</p> + +<p>Their social consciousness is being geared up. They are see<a name="Page_199" id="Page_199"></a>ing more +other people and more other things and more things beyond the Fence.</p> + +<p>The increased vibration in human nature and in the human brain and heart +that go with the motor-car habit, the increased speed of the human +motor, the gearing up of the central power house in society everywhere +is going to make men capable of unheard-of social technique. The social +consciousness is becoming the common man's daily habit. Laws of social +technique and laws of human nature which were theories once are habits +now.</p> + +<p>There is a certain sense in which it may be said that the modern man +enjoys daily his moral imagination. He is angered and delighted with his +social consciousness. He boils with rage or sings when he hears of all +the new machines of good and machines of evil that people are setting up +in our modern world.</p> + +<p>There is a sense in which he glories in the Golden Rule. The +moral-machinist's joy is in him. He is not content to watch it go round +and round like some smooth-running Corliss engine which is not connected +up yet—that nobody really uses except as a kind of model under glass or +a miniature for theological schools. He cannot bear the Golden Rule +under glass. He wants to see it going round and round, look up at it, +immense, silent, masterful, running a world. He delights in the Golden +Rule as a part of his love of nature. It is as the falling of apples to +him. He delights in it as he delights in frost and fire and in the +glorious, modest, implacable, hushed way they work!</p> + +<p>We are in an age in which a Golden Rule can sing. The men around us are +in a new temper. They have the passion, almost, the religion of +precision that goes with machines.</p> + +<p>While I have been sitting at my desk and writing these last words, the +two half-past-eight trains, at full speed, have met in the meadow.</p> + +<p>There is something a little impersonal, almost abstracted, about the way +the trains meet out here on their lonely sidewalk <a name="Page_200" id="Page_200"></a>through the meadow, +twenty inches apart—morning after morning. It always seems as if this +time—this one next time—they would not do it right. One argues it all +out unconsciously that of course there is a kind of understanding +between them as they come bearing down on each other and it's all been +arranged beforehand when they left their stations; and yet somehow as I +watch them flying up out of the distance, those two still, swift +thoughts, or shots of cities—dark, monstrous (it's as if Springfield +and Northampton had caught some people up and were firing them at each +other)—I am always wondering if this particular time there will not be +a report, after all, a clang on the landscape, on all the hills, and a +long story in the <i>Republican</i> the next morning.</p> + +<p>Then they softly crash together and pass on—two or three quiet whiffs +at each other—as if nothing had happened.</p> + +<p>I always feel afterward as if something splendid, some great human act +of faith, had been done in my presence. Those two looming, mighty +engines, bearing down on each other, making an aim so, at twenty inches +from death, and nothing to depend on but those two gleaming dainty +strips or ribbons of iron—a few eighths of an inch on the edge of a +wheel—I never can get used to it: the two great glowing creatures, full +of thunder and trust, leaping up the telegraph poles through the still +valley, each of them with its little streak of souls behind it; immortal +souls, children, fathers, mothers, smiling, chattering along through +Infinity—it all keeps on being boundless to me, and full of a glad +boyish terror and faith. And under and through it all there is a kind of +stern singing.</p> + +<p>I know well enough, of course, that it is a platitude, this meeting of +two trains in a meadow, but it never acts like one. I sometimes stand +and watch the engineer afterward. I wonder if he knows he enjoys it. +Perhaps he would have to stop to know how happy he was, and not meet +trains for a while. Then he would miss something, I think; he would miss +his deep joyous daily acts of faith, his daily habits of believing in +things—<a name="Page_201" id="Page_201"></a>in steam, and in air, and in himself, and in the switchman, and +in God.</p> + +<p>I see him in his cab window, he swings out his blue sleeve at me! I like +the way he stakes everything on what he believes. Nothing between him +and death but a few telegraph ticks—the flange of a wheel.... Suddenly +the swing of his train comes up like the swing and the rhythm of a great +creed. It sounds like a chant down between the mountains. I come into +the house lifted with it. I have heard a man believing, believing mile +after mile down the valley. I have heard a man believing in a +Pennsylvania rolling mill, in a white vapour, in compressed air and a +whistle, the way Calvin believed in God.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202"></a><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203"></a>BOOK THREE</h2> + +<h3>LETTING THE CROWD BE BEAUTIFUL</h3> + + +<p>TO WILBUR WRIGHT AND WILLIAM MARCONI</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"><i> +<span>"Great Spirit—Thou who in my being's burning mesh<br /></span> +<span>Hath wrought the shining of the mist through and through the flesh,<br /></span> +<span>Who, through the double-wondered glory of the dust<br /></span> +<span>Hast thrust<br /></span> +<span>Habits of skies upon me, souls of days and nights,<br /></span> +<span>Where are the deeds that needs must be,<br /></span> +<span>The dreams, the high delights,<br /></span> +<span>That I once more may hear my voice<br /></span> +<span>From cloudy door to door rejoice—<br /></span> +<span>May stretch the boundaries of love<br /></span> +<span>Beyond the mumbling, mock horizons of my fears<br /></span> +<span>To the faint-remembered glory of those years—<br /></span> +<span>May lift my soul<br /></span> +<span>And reach this Heaven of thine<br /></span> +<span>With mine?"<br /></span></i> +</div><div class="stanza"><i> +<span>"Come up here, dear little Child<br /></span> +<span class="i2">To fly in the clouds and winds with me,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">and play with the measureless light!"<br /></span> +</i></div></div> + + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204"></a><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205"></a>PART ONE</h2> + +<h3>WISTFUL MILLIONAIRES</h3> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>CHAPTER I</h2> + +<h3>MR. CARNEGIE SPEAKS UP</h3> + + +<p>As I was wandering through space the other day—just aeroplaning past on +my way over from Mars—I came suddenly upon a neat, snug little +property, with a huge sign stuck in the middle of it:</p> + +<blockquote><p>THE EARTH: THIS DESIRABLE PROPERTY TO LET. Rockefeller, + Carnegie, Morgan & Co.</p></blockquote> + +<p>I was just about to pass it by, inferring naturally that it must be a +mere bank, or wholesale house, or something, when it occurred to me it +might do no harm to stop over on it, and see. I thought I might at least +drop in and inquire what kind of a firm it was that was handling it, and +what was their idea, and what, if anything, they thought their little +planet was for, and what they proposed to do with it.</p> + +<p>I found, on meeting Mr. Rockefeller and Mr. Carnegie and Mr. Morgan, to +my astonishment, that they did not propose to do anything with it at +all. They had merely got it; that was as far as they had thought the +thing out apparently—to get it. They seemed to be depending, so far as +I could judge, in a vague, pained way, on somebody's happening along who +would think perhaps of something that could be done with it.</p> + +<p>Of course, as Mr. Carnegie (who was the talking mem<a name="Page_206" id="Page_206"></a>ber of the firm) +pointed out, if they only owned a part of it, and could sell one part of +it to the other part there would still be something left that they could +do, at least it would be their line; but merely owning all of it, so, as +they did, was embarrassing. He had tried, Mr. Carnegie told me, to think +of a few things himself, but was discouraged; and he intimated he was +devoting his life just now to pulling himself together at the end, and +dying a poor man. But that was not much, he admitted, and it was really +not a very great service on his part to a world, he thought—his merely +dying poor in it.</p> + +<p>When I asked him if there was anything else he had been able to think of +to do for the world—</p> + +<p>"No," he said, "nothing really; nothing except chucking down libraries +on it—safes for old books."</p> + +<p>"And Mr. Morgan?" I said.</p> + +<p>"Oh! He is chucking down old china on it, old pictures, and things."</p> + +<p>"And Mr. Rockefeller?"</p> + +<p>"Mussing with colleges, some," he said, "just now. But he doesn't, as a +matter of fact, see anything—not of his own—that can really be done +with them, except to make them more systematized and businesslike, make +them over into sort of Standard Oil Spiritual Refineries, fill them with +millions more of little Rockefellers—and they won't let him do that. Of +course, as you might see, what they want to do practically is to take +the Rockefeller money and leave the Rockefeller out. Nobody will really +let him do anything. Everything goes this way when we seriously try to +do things. The fact is, it is a pretty small, helpless business, owning +a world," sighed Mr. Carnegie.</p> + +<p>"This is why we are selling out, if anybody happens along. Anybody, that +is, who really sees what this piece of property is for and how to +develop it, can have it," said Mr. Carnegie, "and have it cheap."</p> + +<p><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207"></a>Mr. Carnegie spoke these last words very slowly and wearily, and with +his most wistful look; and then, recalling himself suddenly, and handing +me a glass to look at New York with and see what I thought of it, he +asked to be excused for a moment, and saying, "I have fourteen libraries +to give away before a quarter past twelve," he hurried out of the room.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208"></a>CHAPTER II</h2> + +<h3>MR. CARNEGIE TRIES TO MAKE PEOPLE READ</h3> + + +<p>I found, as I was studying the general view of New York as seen from the +top through Mr. Carnegie's glass, that there appeared to be a great many +dots—long rows of dots for the most part—possibly very high buildings, +but there was one building, wide and white and low, and more spread-out +and important-looking than any of the others, which especially attracted +my attention. It looked as if it might be a kind of monument or +mausoleum to somebody. On looking again I found that it was filled with +books, and was the Carnegie Public Library. There were forty more +Libraries for New York Mr. Carnegie was having put up, I was told, and +he had dotted them—thousands of them almost everywhere one could look, +apparently, on his own particular part of the planet.</p> + +<p>A few days later, when I began to do things at a closer range, I took a +little trip to New York, and visited the Library; and I asked the man +who seemed to have it in charge, who there was who was writing books for +Mr. Carnegie's Libraries just now, or if there was any really adequate +arrangement Mr. Carnegie had made for having a few great books written +for all these fine buildings—all these really noble book-racks, he had +had put up. The man seemed rather taken aback, and hesitated. Finally, I +asked him point blank to give me the name of the supposed greatest +living author who had written anything for all these miles of Carnegie +Libraries, and he mentioned doubtfully a certain Mr. Rudyard Kipling. I +at once asked for his books, of course, and sat <a name="Page_209" id="Page_209"></a>down without delay to +find out if he was the greatest living author the planet had, what it +was he had to say for it and about it, and more particularly, of course, +what he had to to say it was for.</p> + +<p>I found among his books some beautiful and quite refined interpretations +of tigers and serpents, a really noble interpretation or conception of +what the beasts were for all the glorious gentlemanly beasts—and of +what machines were for—all the young, fresh, mighty, worshipful +engines—and what soldiers were for. But when I looked at what he +thought men were for, at what the planet was for, there was practically +almost nothing. The nearest I came to it was a remark, apparently in a +magazine interview which I cannot quote correctly now, but which +amounted to something like this: "We will never have a great world until +we have some one great artist or poet in it, who sees it as a whole, +focuses it, composes it, makes a picture of it, and gives the men who +are in it a vision to live for."</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>Since then I have been trying to see what Messrs. Rockefeller, Carnegie, +and Morgan could do to produce and arrange what seemed to me the one +most important, imperative, and immediate convenience their planet could +have, namely, as Mr. Kipling intimated, some man on it, some great +creative genius, who would gather it all up in his imagination—the +beasts, and the people, and the sciences, and the machines—in short, +the planet as a whole, and say what it was for. It is from this point of +view that I have been drawn into writing the following pages on the next +important improvements—what one might call the spiritual Unreal-Estate +Improvements, for Messrs. Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Morgan's property +which will have to be installed. I have been going over the property +more or less carefully in my own way <a name="Page_210" id="Page_210"></a>since, studying it and noting what +had been done by the owners, and what possibly might be done toward +arranging authors, inventors, seers, artists, or engineers or other +efficient persons who would be able to inquire, to think out for a +world, to express for it, some faint idea of what it was for.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211"></a>CHAPTER III</h2> + +<h3>MR. NOBEL TRIES TO MAKE PEOPLE WRITE</h3> + + +<p>Not unnaturally, of course, I turned to see what had already been done +by the more powerful men the planet had produced, in the way of +arranging for the necessary seers and geniuses to run the world with, +and I soon found that by far the most intelligent and far-seeing attempt +that had been made yet in this direction had been made by an inspired, +or semi-inspired, millionaire in Sweden, named Alfred Nobel, an +idealist, who had made a large but unhappy fortune out of an explosive +to stop war with. His general idea had been that dynamite would make war +so terrible that it would shock people into not fighting any more, and +that gradually people, not having to spend their time in thinking of +ways of killing one another, would have more time than they had ever had +before to think of other and more important things. It was the +disappointment of his life that his invention, instead of being used +creatively, used to free men from fighting and make men think of things, +had been used largely as an arrangement for making people so afraid of +war that they could not think of anything else. Whichever way he turned +he saw the world in a kind of panic, all the old and gentle-minded +nations with their fair fields, their factories and art galleries, all +hard at work piling up explosives around themselves until they could +hardly see over them. As this was the precise contrary of what he had +intended, and he had not managed to do what he had meant to do with +making his money, he thought he would try to see if he could not yet do +what he had meant to do in spending it. He sat down to write <a name="Page_212" id="Page_212"></a>his Will, +and in this Will, writing as an inventor and a man of genius, he tried +to express, in the terms of money, his five great desires for the world. +He wished to spend forty thousand dollars a year, every year forever, +after he was dead, on each of these five great desires. There were five +great Inventors that he wanted, and he wanted the whole world searched +through for them, for each of them, once more every year, to see if they +could be found. Mr. Nobel expressed his desire for these five Inventors +as people often manage to express things in wills, in such a way that +not everybody had been sure what he meant. There seems to have been +comparatively little trouble, from year to year, in awarding the prizes +to some adequate inventor in the domain of Peace, of Physics, of +Chemistry, and of Medicine; but the Nobel Prize Trustees, in trying to +pick out an award each year to some man who could be regarded as a true +inventor in Literature, have met with considerable difficulty in +deciding just what sort of a man Alfred Nobel had in mind, and had set +aside his forty thousand dollars for when he directed that it should +go—to quote from the Will—"To the person who shall have produced in +the field of Literature the most distinguished work of an idealistic +tendency."</p> + +<p>Allen Upward, for instance, an Englishman unknown in Stockholm, invented +and published a book four years ago, called the "New Word," which was so +idealistic and distinguished a book, and so full of new ideas and of new +combinations of old ideas, that there was scarcely a publisher in +England who did not instinctively recognize it, who did not see that it +would not pay at once, and that therefore it was too strange and +original and too important a book for him to publish, and after a long +delay the book was finally printed in Geneva.</p> + +<p>A copy was sent to the Nobel Prize Trustees.</p> + +<p>One would have thought, looking at it theoretically, that here was +precisely the sort of situation that Alfred Nobel, who had been the +struggling inventor of a great invention <a name="Page_213" id="Page_213"></a>that would not pay at once +himself, would have been looking for. A book so inventive, so far ahead, +that publishers praised it and would not invest in it, one would have +imagined to be the one book of all others for which Alfred Nobel stood +ready and waiting to put down his forty thousand dollars.</p> + +<p>But Mr. Nobel's forty thousand dollars did not go to a comparatively +obscure and uncapitalized inventor who had written a book to build a +world with, or at least a great preliminary design, or sketch, toward a +world. The Nobel Prize Trustees, instead of giving the forty thousand +dollars to Allen Upward, looked carefully about through all the nations +until their eyes fell on a certain Mr. Rudyard Kipling. And when they +saw Mr. Rudyard Kipling, piled high with fame and five dollars a word, +they came over quietly to where he was and put softly down on him forty +thousand dollars more.</p> + +<p>I do not know, but it is not inconceivable, that Kipling himself would +rather have had Allen Upward have it.</p> + +<p>I am not quarrelling with the Trustees, and am merely trying to think +things out and understand. But it certainly is a question that cannot +but keep recurring to one's mind—the unfortunate, and perhaps rather +unlooked-for, way in which Mr. Nobel's Will works. And I have been +wondering what there is that might be done, the world being the kind of +world it is, which would enable the Nobel Prize Trustees to so +administer the Will that its practical weight on the side of Idealism, +and especially upon the crisis of idealism in young authors, would be +where Mr. Nobel meant to have it.</p> + +<p>One must hasten to admit that Mr. Upward's book is open to question; +that, in fact, it is the main trait of Mr. Upward's book that it raises +a thousand questions; and that it would be a particularly hard book for +most men to give a prize to, quietly go home, and sleep that night. I +must hasten to admit also that, judging from their own point of view, +the Nobel Prize Trustees have so far done quite well. They <a name="Page_214" id="Page_214"></a>have +attained a kind of triumph of doing safe things—things that they could +not be criticised for; and they could well reply to this present +criticism that there was no other course that they could take. Unless +they had a large fund for butting through all nations for obscure +geniuses, and for turning up stones everywhere to look for embryo +authors—unless they had a fund for going about among the great +newspapers, the big magazines, and peeping under them through all the +world for geniuses—and unless they had still another large fund for +guaranteeing their decision when they had found one, a fund for +convincing the world that they were right, and that they were not +wasting their forty thousand dollars—the Trustees have taken a fairly +plausible position. Their position being that, in default of perfectly +fresh, brand-new, great men, and in view of the fact, in a world like +this that geniuses in it are almost invariably, and, as a matter of +course, lost or mislaid until they are dead, much the best and safest +thing that Trustees of Idealism could do was to watch the drift of +public opinion in the different nations, to adopt the course of noting +carefully what the world thought were really its great men, and then (at +a discreet and dignified distance, of course) tagging the public, and +wherever they saw a crowd, a rather nice crowd, round a man, standing up +softly at the last moment and handing him over his forty thousand +dollars. This has been the history of the Nobel Trustees of Idealism, +thus far.</p> + +<p>But in a way, we are all the trustees of idealism, and the problem of +the Nobel Prize Trustees is more or less the problem of all of us. We +are interested as well as they in trying to find out how to recognize +and reward men of genius. What would we do ourselves if we were Nobel +Prize Trustees? Precisely what was it that Alfred Nobel intended to +achieve for Literature when he made this bequest of forty thousand +dollars a year in his Will, for a work of Literature of an idealistic +tendency?</p> + +<p>To take a concrete case, I can only record that it has seemed <a name="Page_215" id="Page_215"></a>to me +that if Alfred Nobel himself could have been on hand that particular +year, and could have read Mr. Upward's book, he would have given the +prize of forty thousand dollars to Allen Upward. He would not have given +the prize to Mr. Kipling—he would have given it twenty years before; +but in this particular year of which I am writing, when he saw these two +men together, I believe he would have given the prize to Allen Upward, +and he would have hurried.</p> + +<p>I would like to put forward at this point two inquiries. First, why did +the Trustees not award the prize to Allen Upward? And second, what would +have happened if they had?</p> + +<p>First, the Trustees could not be sure that Mr. Upward in his work of +genius was telling the truth.</p> + +<p>Second, they could not be sure that the world would approve of his +having forty thousand dollars for telling the truth. Perhaps the world +would have rather had him paid forty thousand dollars for not telling +it.</p> + +<p>Third, Mr. Kipling was safe. No creative work had to be done on Kipling; +all they had to do was to send him the cheque. Great crowds had swept in +from all over the world, and nominated Mr. Kipling; the Committee merely +had to confirm the nomination.</p> + +<p>Fourth, Mr. Upward, like all idealists, like all men who have the power +of throwing this world into the melting-pot and bringing it out new +again partly unrecognizable (which, of course, is the regular +historical, almost conventional, thing for an idealist to do with a +world), bewildered the Nobel Prize Committee. They could not be sure but +that Mr. Upward's next book would be thought in the wrong, and make +their having given him forty thousand dollars to write it ridiculous.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>What would have happened if the Trustees had given the prize to Mr. +Upward?</p> + +<p><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216"></a>First, practically no one would have known who he was, and twenty-five +nations would have been reading his book in a week, to see why the prize +was given to him. The book would have been given the most widespread, +highly stimulated, forty-thousand-dollar-power attention that any book +in any age has had.</p> + +<p>Only now and then would a man go over and take down his old Kiplings +from the shelf and read them, because he had heard that Mr. Kipling had +forty thousand dollars more than he had had before.</p> + +<p>Secondly, Mr. Upward's new book would have the stimulus of his knowing +while he was writing it that every word would be read by everybody. All +the draught on the fire of his genius of the whole listening world would +result in a work that even Mr. Upward himself perhaps would hardly +believe he had written. As events turned out, and Mr. Upward did not get +the prize there might be many reasons to believe that his next book +might be out of focus, might be a mere petulant, scolding book, his +exultation spent or dwindled, because his last tremendous wager—that +the world wanted the truth—was lost.</p> + +<p>Scolding in a book means, as a rule, either juvenility or it means +relapse into conscious degeneration of the soul—the focussing and +fusing power in a man. I have sometimes wondered if even Christ, if He +had not died in His thirty-third year, made His great dare for the world +on the cross early, would not have stopped believing so magnificently in +other people at about forty or forty-five or so, and would not have +spent the rest of His days in railing at them, and in being very bitter +and helpless and eloquent about Rome and Jerusalem. I have caught myself +once or twice being glad Abraham Lincoln died suddenly just when he did, +his great faith and love all warm in him, and his great oath for the +world—that it was good—still fresh upon his lips!</p> + +<p>Writing a book like Allen Upward's for a planet with a <a name="Page_217" id="Page_217"></a>vision of a +thousand years singing splendidly through it, and then just reading it +all alone afterward when he has written it, and going over the score all +alone by himself, would seem to be a good deal of a strain. To be +contradicted out loud and gloriously by a world might be inspiring, but +to be contradicted by a solid phalanx of silent nations, trooping up +behind one another, unanimous, impervious, is enough to make any +radiant, long-accumulated genius pause in full career, question himself, +question his vision as a chimera, as some faintly lighted Northern +Lights upon the world, that would never mean anything, that was an +illusion, that would just flicker in the great dark once more and go +out.</p> + +<p>I do not say that this is true, or that it would be true of Allen +Upward.</p> + +<p>But I have read his book. I should think it might be true.</p> + +<p>What Alfred Nobel had in mind, his whole idea in his Will, it seems to +some of us, was to put in his forty thousand dollars at the working end +of some man's mind, at the end of the man's mind where the forty +thousand dollars would itself be creative, where the forty thousand +dollars would get into the man, and work out through the man and through +his genius into the world. It does not seem to me that he wanted to put +his forty thousand dollars at the idle, old remembering end of a man's +mind; that he meant it should be used as a mere reward for idealism. I +doubt if it even so much as occurred to Alfred Nobel, who was an +idealist himself, that idealism, after a man had managed to have some in +this world, would be rewarded, or could possibly be paid for, by any +one. He knew, if ever a man knew, that idealism was its own reward, and +that it was priceless, and that any attempt to reward it with money, to +pay a man for it after he had had it, and after it was all over, would +make forty thousand dollars look shabby, or at least pathetic and +ridiculous. What he wanted to do was to build his forty thousand dollars +over into a Man. He wanted to feel that this money that he had <a name="Page_218" id="Page_218"></a>made out +of dynamite, out of destruction, would be wrought, through this man, +into exultation, into life. He had proposed that this forty thousand +dollars should become poetry in this man's book, that it should become +light and heat, a power-house of thought, of great events. What Alfred +Nobel had in mind, I think, with his little forty thousand dollars, was +that it should be given a chance to become an intimate part of some +man's genius; that it should become perhaps at last a Great Book—that +great foundry of men's souls, where the moulds of History are patterned +out, and where the hopes of nations and the prayers of women and +children and of great men are, and where the ideals of men—those huge +drive-wheels of the world—are cast in a strange light and silence.</p> + +<p>I wondered if they could have thought of this when they voted on Allen +Upward's book that day three years ago—those twenty grave, quiet +gentlemen in frockcoats in Stockholm!</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>I have picked out Mr. Upward's book because it is the most difficult, +the most hazardous, and the least fortunate one I know, to make my point +with; and because a great many people will get the reaction of +disagreeing with me, and feeling about it probably, the way the Nobel +Prizes Trustees did. I have wanted to take a book which has the traits +in it for which men of genius are persecuted or crucified or +ignored—our more modern timid or anonymous form of the cross. If Mr. +Upward had been given the Prize by the Nobel Prize Trustees, it will +have to be admitted a howl would have gone up round the world that would +not have quieted down yet; and it is this howl that Mr. Nobel intended +his Prize for, and that he thought a man would need about forty thousand +dollars to meet.</p> + +<p>I might have taken any one of several other books, and they would have +illustrated my point snugly and more con<a name="Page_219" id="Page_219"></a>veniently; but just that right +touch of craziness that Nobel had in mind, and that goes with great +experiment of spirit—the chill, Nietzsche-like wildness, that bravado +before God and man and before Time, that swinging one's self out on +Eternity, which make Upward a typical man of genius, would have been +lacking. K—— (whose criticisms of books are the most creative ones I +know) said of Upward's book that he felt very happy and strangely +emancipated when he read it, but that it was an uncanny experience, as +if he had been made of thin air, had become a kind of aerated being, a +psychic effect that genius often has; and K—— admitted to me +confidentially that he felt that possibly he and Upward were being a +little crazy and happy together by themselves, breaking out into +infinite space so, and he took the book over to W——, and left it on +his desk slinkingly and half-ashamed and without saying anything about +it. He said he was enormously relieved next time he saw W——, felt as +if he had just been pulled out of Bedlam to find that there was at least +one other man in the world apparently in his right mind, who valued the +book as he did.</p> + +<p>This is the precise feeling, it seems to me, that the Nobel Prize was +intended to champion and to stand by and temporarily defend in a new +author—the feeling he gives us of being in the presence of unseen +forces, of incalculableness. It was this way Allen Upward has of taking +his reader apart or up into a high place (like the Devil), and dizzying +him, taking away his breath with Truth, that Nobel had in mind. He +wanted to spend eight thousand pounds a year on providing for the world +one more book which would give the ordinary man the personal feeling of +being with a genius, cold, lonely, cosmic genius, the sense of a chill +wind of All Space Outside blowing through—a book which is a sort of +God's Wilderness, in which ordinary men with their ordinary plain senses +round them move about dazed a little and as trees walking—a great, +gaunt, naked book.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220"></a>Alfred Nobel was the inventor of an explosive, a rearranger of things +assumed and things unbedded, and it was this same expansive, +half-terrible, half-sublime power in other men and other men's books he +wanted to endow—the power to free and mobilize the elements in a world, +make it budge over a little toward a new one. He wanted to spend forty +thousand dollars a year on the man in literature who had the pent-up +power in him to crash the world's mind open once more every year like a +Seed, and send groping up out of it once more its hidden thought.</p> + +<p>I may not be right in anticipating the eventual opinion of Allen +Upward's book; but even if I am wrong, it will have helped perhaps to +call attention to the essential failure of the Nobel Prize Trustees to +side with the darers and experimenters in literature, to take a serious +part in those great creative, centrifugal movements in the souls of men +in which new worlds and the sense of new worlds are swept in upon us. +For the Sciences, which are more matter of fact and tangible, the Nobel +Prize is functioning more or less as Mr. Nobel intended, but certainly +in Literature it will have to be classed as one more of our humdrum +regular millionaire arrangements for patting successful people +expensively on the back. It acts twenty years too late, falls into line +with our usual worldly ornamental D.D., LL.D. habit, and has become, so +far as Literature is concerned, a mere colossal, kindly, doddering Old +Age Pension from a few gentlemen in Stockholm. It adds itself as one +more futile effort of men of wealth—or world owners to be creative and +lively with money, very much on the premises with money, after they are +dead.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2> + +<h3>PAPER BOOKS, MARBLE PILLARS, AND WOODEN BOYS</h3> + + +<p>I have sometimes wished that Mr. Carnegie would post the following sign +up on his Libraries, on the outside where people are passing, and on the +inside in the room where people sit and think:</p> + +<blockquote><p>A MILLION DOLLARS REWARD.</p> + +<p> WANTED, A GREAT LIVING AMERICAN AUTHOR FOR MY LIBRARIES IN THE + UNITED STATES. AT PRESENT OUR GREAT AUTHOR IN AMERICA APPEARS + TO HAVE BEEN LOST OR MISLAID; ANY ONE FINDING HIM, OR ANY ONE + THAT MIGHT DO FOR HIM TEMPORARILY, PLEASE COMMUNICATE WITH ME.</p> + +<p> ANDREW CARNEGIE.</p></blockquote> + +<p>Mr. Carnegie's Libraries must be a source of constant regret to the +author of "Triumphant Democracy." They are generally made up of books +written in the Old World. It would be interesting to know what are the +real reasons great Libraries are not being written for Mr. Carnegie in +America, and what there is that Mr. Carnegie or other people can do +about it. They are certainly going to be written in America some time, +and certainly, unless the best and greatest part of the Carnegie Library +of the future is to be the American part of it, the best our Carnegie +Libraries will do for America will be to remind us of what we are not. +Unless we can make the American part of Mr. Carnegie's Libraries loom in +the world as big as Mr. Carnegie's chimneys, America—which is the last +newest experiment station of the world—is a failure.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222"></a>It has occurred to me to try to express, for what it may be worth, a +point of view toward Triumphant Democracy Mr. Carnegie may have +inadvertently overlooked.</p> + +<p>If Mr. Carnegie would establish in every town where he has put a +Library, by endowment or otherwise, a Commission, or what might be +called perhaps a Searching Party, in that community, made up of men of +inventive and creative temperament, who instinctively know this +temperament in others—men in all specialities, in all walks of life, +who are doing things better than any one wants to pay them to do +them—and if Mr. Carnegie would set these men to work, in one way and +another, looking up boys who are like them, boys about the town, who are +doing things better than any one wants to pay them to do them—he would +soon get a monopoly of the idealism of the world; he would collect in +thirty-five years, or in one generation, an array of living great men, +of national figures, men who would be monuments to Andrew Carnegie, as +compared with which his present libraries, big, thoughtless, +innumerable, humdrum, sogging down into the past, would be as nothing. +Mr. Carnegie has given forty libraries to New York; and I venture to say +that there is at this very moment, running round the streets of the +great city, one single boy, who has it in him to conceive, to imagine, +and hammer together a new world; and if Mr. Carnegie would invest his +fortune, not in buildings or in books, but in buying brains enough to +find that boy, and if the whole city of New York were to devote itself +for one hour every day for years to searching about and finding that +boy, to seeing just which he is, to going over all the other boys five +hours a day to pick him out, it would be—well, all I can say is, all +those forty libraries of Mr. Carnegie's, those great proud buildings, +would do well if they did not do one thing for six years but find that +boy!</p> + +<p>There is a boy at this very moment with strings and marbles and a nation +in his pocket, a system of railroads—a boy <a name="Page_223" id="Page_223"></a>with a national cure for +tuberculosis, with sun-engines for everybody—there is a boy with +cathedrals in him too, no doubt or some boy like young Pinchot, with +mountainsful of forests in his heart.</p> + +<p>This is what Mr. Carnegie himself would like to do, but with his big, +stiff, clumsy libraries trailing their huge, senseless brick-and-mortar +bodies, their white pillars and things, about the country, unmanned, +inert, eyeless, all those great gates and forts of knowledge, Coliseums +of paper, and with the mechanical people behind the counters, the +policemen of the books, all standing about protecting them—with all +this formidable array, how can such a boy be hunted out or drawn in, or +how would he dare go tramping in through the great gates and hunting +about for himself? He could only be hunted out by people all wrought +through with human experience, men and women who would give the world to +find him, who are on the daily lookout for such a boy—by some special +kind of eager librarian, or by disguised teachers, anonymous poets, or +by diviners, by expert geniuses in boys. If Mr. Carnegie could go about +and look up and buy up wherever he went these men who have this +boy-genius in them, deliver them from empty, helpless, mere +getting-a-living lives; and if he could set these men, and set them +about thickly, among the books in his libraries—those huge anatomies +and bones of knowledge he has established everywhere, all his great +literary steel-works—men would soon begin to be discovered, to be +created, to be built in libraries ... but as it is now....</p> + +<p>Gentle Reader, have you ever stood in front of one of them, looked up at +the windows, thought of all those great tiers, those moulds and blocks +of learning on the shelves; and have you never watched the weary people +that dribble in from the streets and wander coldly about, or sit down +listless in them—in those mighty, silent empires of the past? have you +never thought that somewhere all about them, <a name="Page_224" id="Page_224"></a>somewhere in this same +library, there must be some white, silent, sunny country of the future, +full of children and of singing, full of something very different from +these iron walls of wisdom? And have you never thought what it would +mean if Mr. Carnegie would spend his money on search parties for people +among the books, or what it would mean if the entire library, if all the +books in it, became, as it were, wired throughout with live, splendid, +delighted men and women, to make connections, to establish the current +between the people and the books, to discover the people one by one and +follow them to their homes, and follow them in their lives, and take out +the latent geniuses, and the listless engineers and poets, and the +Kossuths, Cæsars, the Florence Nightingales...?</p> + +<p>It is only by employing forces that can be made extremely small, +invisible, personal, penetrating, and spiritual, that this sort of work +can be done. It must be delicate and wonderful workmanship, like the +magnet, like the mighty thistledown in the wind, like electricity, like +love, like hope—sheer, happy, warm human vision going about and casting +itself, casting all its still and tiny might, its boundless seed, upon +the earth: but it would pay.</p> + +<p>The same people too, specialists in detecting and developing inventors, +could be supplied also to all other possible callings. They would +constitute a universal profession, penetrating all the others. They +would go hunting among foremen and in machine shops for the misplaced +geniuses, tried by wrong standards, underpaid for having other gifts. +They would keep a lookout through all the schools and colleges, looking +over the shoulders of scolding teachers and absent professors. They +would go about studying the playgrounds and mastering the streets.</p> + +<p>We do not a little for the Submerged Tenth and the sons of the poor, and +we have schools or missions for the sons of the rich, but one of the +things we need next to-day is that <a name="Page_225" id="Page_225"></a>something should be done for the +sons of the great neglected respectable classes. Far more important than +one more library—say in Denver, for instance would be a Denver Bureau +of Investigation, to be appointed, of high-priced, spirited men, of +expert humanists, to study difficulties, and devise methods and missions +for putting all society in Denver through filters or placers, and +finding out the rich human ore, finding out where everybody really +belonged, and what all the clever misplaced people were really for. Of +course it would take money to do all this, and flocks of free people who +are doing the work they love. But it is not book-racks, nor paper, nor +ink, nor stone steps, nor white pillars—it is free men and free women +America and England are asking of their Andrew Carnegies to-day.</p> + +<p>Mr. Carnegie has not touched this human problem in his libraries. If +Society were fitted up all through with electric connections, men with a +genius for discovering continents in people, Columbuses, boy-geniuses; +and if there were established everywhere a current between every boy and +the great world, this would be something on which Mr. Carnegie could +make a great beginning with the little mite of his fortune. If we were +to have even one city fitted up in this way, it would be hard to say how +much it would mean—one city with enough people in it who were free to +do beautiful things, free to be curious about the others, free to follow +clues of greatness, free to go up the streams of Society to the still, +faint little springs and beginnings of things. It would soon be a +memorable city. A world would watch it, and other cities would grope +toward it. Instead of this we have these big, hollow, unmanned libraries +of Mr. Carnegie's everywhere, with no people practically to go with +them, no great hive of happy living men and women in and out all day +cross-fertilizing boys and books.</p> + +<p>There seems to be something unfinished and stolid and brutal about a +Carnegie Library now. The spirit of the <a name="Page_226" id="Page_226"></a>garden and the sea, of the +spring and the light, and of the child, is not in it. They have come to +seem to some of us mere huge Pittsburgs of brains—all these impervious, +unwieldy, rolling-mills of knowledge. I should think it would be a +terrible prospect to grow old with, just to sit and see them flocking +across the country from your window, all these huge smoke-stacks of +books in their weary, sordid cities; and the boys who might be great +men, the small Lincolns with nations in their pockets, the little Bells +with worlds in their ears, the Pinchots with their forests, the McAdoos +and Roosevelts, the young Carnegies and Marconis in the streets!</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227"></a>CHAPTER V</h2> + +<h3>THE HUMDRUM FACTORY AND THE TUMPTY-TUM THEATRE</h3> + + +<p>Mr. Israel Zangwill in presiding at the meeting of the Sociological +Society the other night remarked, in referring to inspired millionaires, +that as a rule in the minds of most people nowadays a millionaire seemed +to be a kind of broken-off person, or possibly two persons. There always +seemed to have to be a violent change in a millionaire somewhere along +the middle of his life. The change seemed to be associated in some way, +Mr. Zangwill thought with his money. He reminded one of the +patent-medicine advertisements, "Before and After Taking."</p> + +<p>I have been trying to think why it is that the average millionaire +reminds people—as Mr. Zangwill says he does—of a patent-medicine +advertisement, "Before and After Taking."</p> + +<p>I have thought, since Mr. Zangwill made this remark, of getting together +a small collection of pictures of millionaires—two pictures of each, +one before and the other after taking—and having them mounted in the +most approved patent-medicine style, and taking them down to Far End and +asking Mr. Zangwill to look them over with me and see if he thought—he, +Israel Zangwill, the novelist, the play-wright, the psychologist—really +thought, that millionaires "Before and After" were as different as they +looked.</p> + +<p>I imagine he would say—and practically without looking at the +pictures—that of course to him or to me perhaps, or to any especially +interested student of human nature, millionaires are not really +different at all "Before and After <a name="Page_228" id="Page_228"></a>Taking"; that they merely had a +slightly different outer look. They would merely look different, Mr. +Zangwill would say, to the common run or majority of people—the people +one meets in the streets.</p> + +<p>But would they?</p> + +<p>One of the most hopeful things that I have been thinking of lately is +that the people—the ordinary people one meets in the streets—are +beginning quite generally to see through their millionaires, and to see +that their money almost never really cures them. Most very rich men, +indeed, are having their times now, of even seeing through themselves; +and it brings me up abruptly with a shock to think that the ordinary +people who pass in the streets would be deceived by these simple little +pictures Before and After. They have been deceived until lately, but are +they being deceived now? I would like to see the matter tested, and I +have thought it would be a good idea to take my small collection of +pictures of millionaires—two pictures of each, one Before and the other +After Taking—to a millionaire—of course some really reformed or cured +one—and ask him to pay the necessary expenses in the columns of the +<i>Times</i>, and of the <i>Westminster Gazette</i>, and the <i>Daily Chronicle</i>, +and other representative London journals (all on the same morning), of +having the pictures published. We could then take what might be called a +social, human, economic inventory of London: ask people to send in their +honest opinions, on looking at the pictures, as to whether Money, Before +and After Taking, does or does not produce these remarkable cures in +millionaires. I very much doubt if Mr. Zangwill would be found to be +right in his estimate of our common people to-day.</p> + +<p>I venture to believe that it is precisely because our common people are +seeing that millionaires are not changed Before and After Taking that +the majority of time millionaires we have to-day have come to be looked +upon as one of the charges—<a name="Page_229" id="Page_229"></a>one of the great spiritual charges and +burdens modern Society has to carry.</p> + +<p>Society has always had to do what it could for the poor, but in our +modern civilization, in a new and big sense, we have to see now what +there is, if possibly anything, that can be done for the rich.</p> + +<p>We have come to have them now almost everywhere about us—these great +spiritual orphans, with their pathetic, blind, useless fortunes piled up +around them; and Society has to support them, to keep them up morally, +keep them doing as little damage as possible, and has to allow day by +day besides for the strain and structural weakness they bring upon the +girders of the world—the faith of men in men, and the credit of God, +which alone can hold a world together.</p> + +<p>It is not denied that the average millionaire, when he has made his +money, does different-looking things, and gathers different-looking +objects about him, and is seen in different-looking places. And it is +not denied that he changes in more important particulars than things. He +quite often changes people, the people he is seen with but he never or +almost never changes himself. He is not one man when he is putting money +into his pocket and another when he is taking it out.</p> + +<p>We keep hoping at first with each new mere millionaire that when he gets +all the money he has wanted it will change him; but we find it almost +never does.</p> + +<p>Merely reversing the motion with a pocket does not make a man a new and +beautiful creature, and one soon sees that the typical millionaire is +governed by the same bargain principles, is bullied and domineered over +by the same personal limitations, the same old something-for-nothing +habits. If he had the habit, while getting money out of people, of +getting the better of them, he still insists on getting the better of +people when he gives it to them or to their causes. He takes it out of +their souls. There never has been a million<a name="Page_230" id="Page_230"></a>aire who runs his business +on the old humdrum principle of merely making all the money he can who +does not run his very philanthropies afterward on the same general +principle of oppressing everybody, of outwitting everybody—and of doing +people good in a way that makes them wish they were dead. Philanthropy +as a philosophy, and even as an institution, is getting to be nearly +futile to-day, for the reason that millionaires—valid, authentic cases +of millionaires who are really cured—who are changed either in their +motives or their methods with regard to what they do with money, except +in rare cases, do not exist.</p> + +<p>The New Theatre in New York, which was started as a kind of Polar +Expedition to discover and rescue Dramatic Art in America, failed +because two hundred and forty millionaires tried to help it. If enough +millionaires could have been staved off from that enterprise, or if it +could have been taken in hand either by fewer or more select +millionaires coöperating with the public and with artists of all +classes, New Theatre of New York would not have been obliged, as it has +been since, to start all over again on a new basis. The blunders in +creative public work that men who get rich in the wrong way are always +sure to make had to be made first. They nearly always have to be made +first. There is hardly a single enterprise of higher social value in +which the world is interested to-day which is not being gravely +threatened in efficient service by letting in too many millionaires, and +by paying too much attention to what they think. If our people were +generally alive to the terrific sameness and monotony of a millionaire's +life "before and after," and if millionaires were looked over +discriminatingly before being allowed to take part in great public +enterprises like the cinema, for instance, the newspapers, the +hospitals, the theatres, there is hardly any limit to the new things +that public enterprises would begin to make happen in the world, and the +new men that would begin to function in them.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231"></a>Of course, if what a great vision for the people—<i>i.e.</i>, a public +enterprise is for, is to make money, it would be different. The mere +millionaire might understand, and his understanding might help. But if +an institution is founded (like a great theatre) to be a superb and +noble masterpiece of understanding and changing human nature; if it is +founded to be a creative and dominating influence, to build up the +ideals and fire the enthusiasm of a city, to lay the foundations of the +daily thoughts and the daily motives of a great people, the mere +millionaire finds, if he tries to manage it, that he is getting in +beyond his depth. A man who has made his money by exploiting and taking +advantage of the public can only be expected, in conducting a Theatre, +to be an authority on how to exploit a public and take advantage of it +still more, and how to make it go to the play that merely looks like the +play that it wants.</p> + +<p>Millionaires as a class, unless they are men who have made their money +in the artist's or the inventor's spirit, really ought to be expected by +this time, except in the size of their cheques, to be modest and +thoughtful, to stand back a little and watch other people. The +millionaires themselves, if they thought about it, would be the first to +advise us not to pay too much attention to them. They are used to large +things, and they know that the only way to do, in conducting great +enterprises, is to select and use men (whether millionaires or not) for +the particular efficiencies they have developed. If we are conducting +what is called a charity, we will not expect that a millionaire can do +good things unless he is a good man. He spoils them by picking out the +wrong people. And we will not expect him to do artistic things unless he +has lived his life and done his business in the spirit and the +temperament of the artist. He will not know which the artists are or +what the artists are like inside; and he will not like them and they +will not like him, nor will they be <a name="Page_232" id="Page_232"></a>interested in him or interested in +working with him. Everything that artists or men of creative temperament +try to do with the common run of millionaires—all these huge, blind, +imponderable megatheriums, stamping along through life, ordering people +about—ends in the same way—in irksomeness, bewildered vision, fear, +compromise, and failure, as seen from the inside. Seen on the outside or +before the public, of course, the Institution will have the same old, +bland, familiar air of looking successful and of looking intelligent, +and yet of being uninteresting, and of not changing the world by a +hair's breadth.</p> + +<p>The only millionaires who should be allowed to have a controlling +interest in public enterprises are millionaires who do not need to be +different before and after making their money. Everybody is coming to +see this, sooner or later. It is already getting very hard to raise +money for any public enterprise in which mere millionaires or +bewildered, unhappy rich men are known to have a controlling interest. +The most efficient and far-sighted men do not expect anything very +decided or of marked character from such enterprises, and will no longer +lend to them either their brains or their money. Mere millionaires will +soon have to conduct their public enterprises quite by themselves, and +they will then soon fall of their own weight. The moment men are put in +control of public enterprises by the size of their brains instead of the +size of their cheques, the whole complexion of what are known as our +public enterprises will change, and churches, theatres, hospitals, +settlements, art galleries, and all other great public causes, instead +of boring everybody and teasing everybody, will be attracting everybody +and attracting everybody's money. They will be full of character, +courage, and vision. Our present great, vague, helpless, plaintive +public enterprises—one third art, one third millionaire, one third +deficit—drag along financially because they are listless compromises, +because they have <a name="Page_233" id="Page_233"></a>no souls or vision, and are not interesting—not even +interesting to themselves.</p> + +<p>Men with creative or imaginative quality, and courage, and insight into +ordinary human nature, and far-sightedness of what can be expected of +people, do not get on with the ordinary millionaire. It cannot be denied +that millionaires and artists get together in time; but the particular +point that seems to be interesting to consider is how the millionaires +and artists can be got together before the artists are dead, and before +the millionaires stop growing and stop being creative and understanding +creative men.</p> + +<p>It might be well to consider the present situation in the concrete—the +theatre, for instance—and see how the situation lies, and where one +would have to begin, and how one would have to go to work to change it.</p> + +<p>The present failure of the theatre to encourage what is best in modern +art is due to the fact that the public is unimaginative and inartistic.</p> + +<p>If a public is unimaginative and inartistic, the only way the best +things that are offered can succeed with them is by having these best +things held before them long and steadily enough for them slowly to +compare them with other things, and see that they are better than the +other things, and that they are what they want.</p> + +<p>Unimaginative and inartistic people do not know what they want. If +things are tried long enough with them they do. When they have been +tried long enough with them they support them themselves.</p> + +<p>The only way fine things can be tried long enough is with sufficient +capital.</p> + +<p>The only way sufficient capital for fine things can be obtained is by +having millionaires who appreciate fine things, and believe in them, and +believe the public in time will believe in them.</p> + +<p>The only way in which a millionaire can recognize and be<a name="Page_234" id="Page_234"></a>lieve in the +fine things and in the best artists is by being, in spirit and +temperament at least, an artist himself.</p> + +<p>The only way in which a millionaire can be an artist is to work every +day in the spirit in which the artist works.</p> + +<p>This means the artist in business.</p> + +<p>(1) The artist in business is the man who makes things people already +want enough to make money, and who makes things he is going to make +people want enough to make new values and to be of some use.</p> + +<p>(2) The artist in business is the employer who makes new things and men +together. He lets the men who make new things with him become new men; +and when the things are made, they go forth in their turn and make new +men and make new publics. New publics have had to be made for +everything: for the first umbrellas, for the first telephones, the first +typewriters. New publics have had to be made for Wagner, for Sunlight +Soap, for Bernard Shaw; and it is the men who make new publics—be it +for big or little things—who are artists. They are in spirit, prophets, +kings, and world-builders.</p> + +<p>(3) Incidentally, the artist in business—the employer who creates new +values and is creative himself—will like creative men in his factory, +and will treat them so that they will put their creativeness into his +business; he not only will be an artist himself, but he will have, +comparatively speaking, a factory full of artists working with him. And +when the factories pour out the men at night, and the smoke and the +murmur cease, and the windows are dark, they will go to creative and +live men's plays.</p> + +<p>So it has come to pass that the modern business man of the artist sort +holds the arts of modern times in the hollow of his hand. He is a +past-master of creating new publics.</p> + +<p>(4) The artist in business is the man who educates and draws out, at +every point where his business touches them, every day, all day, the men +with whom he works. He educates and develops the men who make the +things. He edu<a name="Page_235" id="Page_235"></a>cates and develops the men who buy them. Even the people +who wish they had bought them, are educated or secreted, by the artist +in business. He is a maker of new publics, a world-builder, whichever +way he turns. A business man who merely makes for people what they want, +and who does not get the prestige with men of making for them things +that they did not know they wanted, is a failure and falls behind in his +business. All the big men in business work in future tenses. They are +prophets, historians, and they are Now-men, men who work by seeing the +truth all round the present moment, the present persons, and the present +market, and before it and behind it. Millionaires who are making their +money in this spirit will understand and believe in plays that are +written in this spirit, and the people who work for such employers will +like to go to such plays, and the theatre managers, instead of being the +bullies and tyrants of the world of art, will be held in the power of +the men who see things and who make things—men who in vast sweeps +called audiences, night after night, make new men upon the earth.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236"></a>PART TWO</h2> + +<h3>IRON MACHINES</h3> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>CHAPTER I</h2> + +<h3>STEEPLES AND CHIMNEYS</h3> + + +<p>I went to the Durbar the other night in cinema colour and saw the King +and Queen through India. I had found my way, with hundreds of others, +into the gallery of the Scala Theatre, and out of that big, still rim of +watchful darkness where I sat I saw—there must have been thousands of +them—crowds of camels running.</p> + +<p>And crowds of elephants went swinging past.</p> + +<p>I watched them like a boy, like a boy standing on the edge of a thousand +years and looking off at a world.</p> + +<p>It was stately and strange, and like far music to sit quite still and +watch civilizations swinging past.</p> + +<p>Then suddenly it became near and human—the spirit of playgrounds and of +shouting and boyish laughter ran through it. And we watched the +elephants, naked and untrimmed, lolling down to the lake and lying down +to be scrubbed in it with comfortable low snorting and slow rolling in +the water, and the men standing by all the while like little play-nurses +and tending them, their big bungling babies, at the bath. A few minutes +later we watched the same elephants, hundreds of them, their mighty +toilets made, pacing slowly past, swinging their gorgeous trappings in +our eyes, rolling their huge hoodahs at us, and all the time still those +little funny dots of men beside them, moving them silently, moving them +invisibly as by a spirit, as by a kind <a name="Page_237" id="Page_237"></a>of awful wireless—those great +engines of the flesh! I shall never forget it or live without it, that +slow pantomime of those mighty, silent Eastern nations, their religions, +their philosophies, their wills, their souls, moving their elephants +past—the long panorama of it, of their little awful human wills, all +those little black, helpless-looking slits of Human Will astride those +mighty necks!</p> + +<p>I have the same feeling when I see Count Zeppelin with his airship, or +Grahame-White at Hendon, riding his vast cosmic pigeon up the sky; and +it is the same feeling I have with the locomotives—those unconscious, +forbidding, coldly obedient terrible fellows! Have I not lain awake and +listened to them storming through the night, heard them out there ahead +working our wills on the blackness, on the thick night, on the stars, on +Space, and on Time while we slept?</p> + +<p>My main feeling at the Durbar while I watched those splendid beasts—the +crowds of camels, the crowds of elephants—all being driven along by the +little, faint, dreamy, sleepy-looking people was, "Why don't their +elephants turn around on them and chase them?"</p> + +<p>I kept thinking at first that they would, almost any minute.</p> + +<p>Our elephants chase us—most of us. Who has not seen locomotives coming +quietly out of their roundhouses in New York and begin chasing people, +chasing whole towns, tearing along with them, making everybody hurry +whether or no, speeding up and ordering around by the clock great +cities, everybody alike, the rich and the poor, the just and the unjust, +for hundreds of miles around? In the same way I have seen, hundreds of +times, motor cars turning around on their owners and chasing +them—chasing them fairly out of their lives. And hundreds of thousands +of little wood-and-rubber Things with nickel bells whirring, may be seen +ordering around people—who pay them for it—in any city of our modern +world.</p> + +<p>Now and then one comes on a man who keeps a telephone, <a name="Page_238" id="Page_238"></a>who is a +gentleman with it, and who keeps it in its place, but not often.</p> + +<p>There are certain questions to be asked and to be settled in any +civilization that would be called great.</p> + +<p>First: Do the elephants chase the men in it? Second: And if—as in our +Western civilization—the men have made their own elephants, why should +they be chased by them?</p> + +<p>There are some of us who have wondered a little at the comparative +inferiority of organ music. We have come to the conclusion that perhaps +organ music is inferior because it has been largely composed by +organists, by men who sit at organ machines many hours a day, and who +have let their organ machines with all their stops and pedals, and with +all their stop-and-pedal-mindedness, select out of their minds the tones +that organs can do best—the music that machines like.</p> + +<p>Wagner has come to be recognized as a great and original composer for a +machine age because he would not let his imagination be cowed by the +mere technical limitations, the narrow-mindedness of brass horns, wooden +flutes, and catgut; he made up his mind that he would not sing violins. +He made violins sing him.</p> + +<p>Perhaps this is the whole secret of art in a machine civilization.</p> + +<p>Perhaps a machine civilization is capable of a greater art than has ever +been dreamed in the world before, the moment it stops being chased by +its elephants. The question of letting the crowd be beautiful in our +world of machines and crowds to-day turns on our producing +Machine-Trainers.</p> + +<p>Men possessed by watches in their vest pockets cannot be inspired, men +possessed by churches or religion-machines cannot be prophets, men +possessed by school-machines cannot be educators.</p> + +<p>The reason that we find the poet, or at least the minor poet, +discouraged in a machine age probably is, that there is nothing a minor +poet can do in it. Why should nightingales, poppies, <a name="Page_239" id="Page_239"></a>and dells expect, +in a main trial of strength, to compete with machines? And why should +human beings running for their souls in a race with locomotives expect +to keep very long from losing their souls?</p> + +<p>The reason that most people are discouraged about machinery to-day is +that this is what they think a machine civilization is. They whine at +the machines. They blame the locomotive.</p> + +<p>A better way for a man to do would be to stop blaming the locomotive, +and stop running along out of breath beside it, and climb up into the +cab.</p> + +<p>This is the whole issue of art in our modern civilization—climbing up +into the cab.</p> + +<p>First come the Machine-Trainers, or poets who can tame engines. Then the +other poets.</p> + +<p>In the meantime, the less we hear about nightingales and poppies and +dells and love and above, the better.</p> + +<p>Poetry must make a few iron-handed, gentle-hearted, mighty men next. It +is because we demand and expect the beautiful that we say that poetry +must make men next.</p> + +<p>The elephants have been running around in the garden long enough.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240"></a>CHAPTER II</h2> + +<h3>BELLS AND WHEELS</h3> + + +<p>We are living in a day of the great rebellion of the machines. Out of a +thousand thousand roundhouses and factories, vast cities and nations of +machines on the land and on the sea have risen before the soul of man +and said, "We have served you; now, you serve us."</p> + +<p>A million million vulgar, swaggering Goliaths, one sees them everywhere; +they wave their arms at us around the world, they puff their white +breath at us, they spit smoke in our eyes, line up in a row before the +great cities, before the mighty-hearted nations, and say it again and +again, all in chorus, <i>"We have served you, now, you serve us!"</i></p> + +<p>It has come to sound to some of us as a kind of chant around our lives.</p> + +<p>But why should we serve them?</p> + +<p>I have seen crowds of minor poets running, their little boxes of perfume +and poetry, their cologne water, their smelling-salts, in their hands.</p> + +<p>And, of course, if the world were all minor poets the situation would be +serious.</p> + +<p>And I have seen flocks of faint-hearted temples, of big, sulky, +beautiful, absent-minded colleges, looking afraid. Every now and then +perhaps one sees a professor run out, throw a book at the machines, and +run back again. Oxford still looks at science, at matter itself, +tremulously, with that same old, still, dreamy air of dignity, of +gentlemanly disappointment.</p> + +<p>And if the world were all Oxford the situation would be serious.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241"></a>When Oxford with its hundred spires, its little beautiful boy choirs of +professors, draws me one side from the Great Western Railway Station, +and intones in those still, solemn, lonely spaces the great truth in my +ears, that machines and ideals cannot go together, that the only way to +deal with ideals is to keep them away from machines, my only reply is +that ideals that are so tired that they are merely devoted to defending +themselves, ideals that will not and cannot go forth and be the breath +of the machines, ideals that cannot and will not master the machines, +that will not ride the machines as the wind, overrun matter, and conquer +the earth, are not ideals for gentlemen.</p> + +<p>At least they are not ideals that can keep up the standard of the Oxford +gentleman.</p> + +<p>A gentleman is a man who is engaged in expressing his best and noblest +self in every fibre of his mind and every fibre of his body. He makes +the very force of gravity pulling on his clothes express him, and the +movements of his feet and his hands. He gathers up his rooms into his +will and all the appointments of his life and crowds into them the full +meaning of his soul. He makes all these things say him.</p> + +<p>The main attribute of a man who is not a gentleman is that he does not +do these things, that he cannot inform his body with his spirit.</p> + +<p>I go back to the Great Western Railway, ugly as it still is. I go alone, +and sadly if I must, and for a little time—without the deep bells and +without the stained-glass windows, without all that dear, familiar +beauty I have loved in the old and quiet quadrangles—I take my stand +beside the Great Western Railway! I claim the Great Western Railway for +the spirit of man and for the will of God!</p> + +<p>With its vast shuttle of steam and shining engines, its little, +whispering telegraph office, the Great Western Railway is a part of my +body. I lay my will on the heart of London with it, or I sleep in the +old house in Lynmouth with it. I am the Great Western Railway, and the +Great Western Railway is ME. <a name="Page_242" id="Page_242"></a>And from the heart of the roar of London +to the slow, sleepy surge of the sea in my window at Lynmouth it is +mine! Though it be iron and wood, switches, whistles, and white steam, +it is my body, and I inform it with my spirit, or I die. With the will +of God I endow it, with the glory of the world, with the desires of my +heart, and with the prayers of the hurrying men and women.</p> + +<p>I declare that that same glory I have known before, and that I will +always know, and will never give up, in the old quiet quadrangles of +Oxford and in the deep bells and in the still waters, as in some +strange, new, and mighty Child, is in the Great Western Railway too.</p> + +<p>When I am in the train it sings. Strangely and hoarsely It sings! I lie +down to rest. It whistles on ahead my ideals down the slope of the +world. It roars softly, while I sleep, my religion in my ears.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243"></a>CHAPTER III</h2> + +<h3>DEW AND ENGINES</h3> + + +<p>When I was small, and wanted suddenly to play tag or duck-on-the-rock I +had a little square half-mile of boys near by to play with.</p> + +<p>My daughter plays tag or plays dolls, any minute she likes, with a whole +city. She is not surprised at the telephone; she takes it for granted +like sunshine and milk. It is a part of the gray matter in her brain—a +whole city, six or seven square miles of it. A little mouthpiece on a +desk, a number, and two hundred little girls are hers in a minute, to +play dolls with. She thinks in miles when she plays, where I thought in +door-yards. The whole city is a part of the daily, hourly furniture of +her mind. The little gray molecules in the structure of her brain are +different from those in mine.</p> + +<p>I have seen that Man moves over with each new generation into a bigger +body, more awful, more reverent and free than he has had before.</p> + +<p>A few minutes ago, here where I am writing, an engine all in bright, +soft, lit-up green with little lines of yellow on it and flashing silver +feet, like a vision, swept past—through my still glass window, through +the quiet green fields—like a great, swift, gleaming whisper of London. +And now, all in six seconds, this great quiet air about me is waked to +vast vibrations of the mighty city. Out over the red pines, the lonely +gorse fields, I have seen passing the spirit of the Strand. I have seen +the great flocking bridges and the roar about St. Paul's in communion +with the treetops and with the hedgerows and with the little brooks, all +in six seconds, <a name="Page_244" id="Page_244"></a>when an engine, with its vision like a cloud of glory +swept past.</p> + +<p>And yet there are people in Oxford who tell me that an engine when it is +in the very act of expressing such stupendous and boundless thoughts, of +making such mighty and beautiful things happen, is not beautiful, that +it has nothing to do with art. They can but watch the machines, the +earth black with them, going about everywhere mowing down great nations +and rolling under the souls of men.</p> + +<p>I cannot see it so. I see a thousand thousand engines carrying dew and +green fields to the stones of London. I see the desires of the earth +hastening. The ships and the wireless telegraph beckon the wills of +cities on the seas and on the sky. With the machines I have taken a +whole planet to me for my feet and for my hands. I gesture with the +earth. I hand up oceans to my God.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2> + +<h3>DEAD AS A DOOR NAIL!</h3> + + +<p>There are people who say that machines cannot be beautiful, and cannot +make for beauty, because machines are dead.</p> + +<p>I would agree with them if I thought that machines were dead.</p> + +<p>I have watched in spirit, hundreds of years, the machines grow out of +Man like nails, like vast antennæ—a kind of enormous, more unconscious +sub-body. They are apparently of less lively and less sensitive tissue +than tongues or eyes or flesh; and like all bones they do not renew, of +course, as often or as rapidly as flesh. But the difference between live +and dead machines is quite as grave and quite as important as the +difference between live and dead men. The generally accepted idea a live +thing is, that it is a thing that keeps dying and being born again every +minute; it is seen to be alive by its responsiveness to the spirit, to +the intelligence that created it and that keeps re-creating it. I have +known thousands of factories; and every factory I have known that is +really strong or efficient has scales like a snake, and casts off its +old self. All the people in it, and all the iron and wood in it, month +by month are being renewed and shedding themselves. Any live factory can +always be seen moulting year after year. A live spirit goes all through +the machinery, a kind of nervous tissue of invention, of thought.</p> + +<p>We already speak of live and dead iron, of live and dead engines or +half-dead and half-sick engines, and we have learned that there is such +a thing as tired steel. What people do to steel makes a difference to +it. Steel is sensitive to people. My human spirit grows my arm and moves +it and guides it and <a name="Page_246" id="Page_246"></a>expresses itself in it, keeps re-creating it and +destroying it; and daily my soul keeps rubbing out and writing in new +lines upon my face; and in the same way my typewriter, in a slow, more +stolid fashion, responds to my spirit too. Two men changing typewriters +or motor-cars are, though more subtly, like two men changing boots. +Sewing machines, pianos, and fiddles grow intimate with the people who +use them, and they come to express those particular people and the ways +in which they are different from others. A Titian-haired typewriter girl +makes her machine move differently every day from a blue-eyed one. +Typewriters never like to have their people take the liberty of lending +them. Steel bars and wooden levers all have little mannerisms, little +expressions, small souls of their own, habits of people that they have +lived with, which have grasped the little wood and iron levers of their +wills and made them what they are.</p> + +<p>It is somewhere in the region of this fact that we are going to discover +the great determining secret of modern life, of the mastery of man over +his machines. Man, at the present moment, with all his new machines +about him, is engaged in becoming as self-controlled, as +self-expressive, with his new machines, with his wireless telegraph arms +and his railway legs, as he is with his flesh and blood ones. The force +in man that is doing this is the spiritual genius in him that created +the machine, the genius of imperious and implacable self-expression, of +glorious self-assertion in matter, the genius for being human, for being +spiritual, and for overflowing everything we touch and everything we use +with our own wills and with the ideals and desires of our souls. The +Dutchman has expressed himself in Dutch architecture and in Dutch art; +the American has expressed himself in the motor-car; the Englishman has +expressed himself, has carved his will and his poetry upon the hills, +and made his landscape a masterpiece by a great nation. He has made his +walls and winding roads, his rivers, his very treetops express his deep, +silent joy in the earth. So <a name="Page_247" id="Page_247"></a>the great, fresh young nations to-day, with +a kind of new, stern gladness, implacableness, and hope, have appointed +to their souls expression through machinery. Our Engines and our radium +shall cry to God! Our wheels sing in the sun!</p> + +<p>Machinery is our new art-form. A man expresses himself first in his +hands and feet, then in his clothes, and then in his rooms or in his +house, and then on the ground about him; the very hills grow like him, +and the ground in the fields becomes his countenance; and now, last and +furthest of all, requiring the liveliest and noblest grasp of his soul, +the finest circulation of will of all, he begins expressing himself in +his vast machines, in his three-thousand-mile railways, in his vast, +cold-looking looms and dull steel hammers. With telescopes for Mars-eyes +for his spirit, he walks up the skies; he expresses his soul in deep and +dark mines, and in mighty foundries melting and re-moulding the world. +He is making these things intimate, sensitive, and colossal expressions +of his soul. They have become the subconscious body, the abysmal, +semi-infinite body of the man, sacred as the body of the man is sacred, +and as full of light or of darkness.</p> + +<p>So I have seen the machines go swinging through the world. Like +archangels, like demons, they mount up our desires on the mountains. We +do as we will with them. We build Winchester Cathedral all over again, +on water. We dive down with our steel wheels and nose for +knowledge—like a great Fish—along the bottom of the sea. We beat up +our wills through the air. We fling up, with our religion, with our +faith, our bodies on the clouds. We fly reverently and strangely, our +hearts all still and happy, in the face of God!</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248"></a>CHAPTER V</h2> + +<h3>AN OXFORD MAN AND AN INCH OF IRON</h3> + + +<p>The whole process of machine-invention is itself the most colossal, +spiritual achievement of history. The bare idea we have had of +unravelling all creation, and of doing it up again to express our own +souls—the idea of subduing matter, of making our ideals get their way +with matter, with radium, ether, antiseptics, is itself a religion, a +poetry, a ritual, a cry to heaven. The supreme, spiritual adventure of +the world has become this task that man has set himself, of breaking +down and casting away forever the idea that there is such a thing as +matter belonging to matter—matter that keeps on in a dead, stupid way, +just being matter. The idea that matter is not all alive with our souls, +with our desires and prayers, with hope, terror, worship, with the +little terrible wills of men and the spirit of God, is already +irreligious to us. Is not every cubic inch of iron (the coldest-blooded +scientist admits it) like a kind of little temple, its million million +little atoms in it going round and round and round dancing before the +Lord?</p> + +<p>And why should an Oxford man be afraid of a cubic inch of iron, or +afraid of becoming like it?</p> + +<p>I daily thank God that I have been allowed to belong to this generation. +I have looked at last a little cubic inch of iron out of countenance. I +can sit and watch it, the little cubic inch of iron, in its still +coldness, in all its little funny play-deadness, and laugh! I know that +to a telescope or a god, or to me, to us, the little cubic inch of iron +is all alive inside, that it is whirling with will, that it is sensitive +in a rather dead-looking but lively cosmic way, sensitive like another +kind of more slowly quivering <a name="Page_249" id="Page_249"></a>flesh, sensitive to moons and to stars +and to heat and cold, to time and space and to human souls. It is +singing every minute low and strange, night and day, in its little grim +blackness, of the glory of Things. I am filled with the same feeling, +the same sense of kindred, of triumphant companionship, when I go out +among them and watch the majestic family of the machines, of the +engines, those mighty Innocents, those new awful sons of God, going +abroad through all the world, looking back at us when we have made them, +unblinking and without sin!</p> + +<p>Like rain and sunshine, like chemicals, and like all the other innocent, +godlike things, and like waves of water and waves of air, rainbows, +starlight, they say what we make them say. They are alive with the life +that is in us.</p> + +<p>The first element of power in a man, in getting control of his life in +our modern era, is to have spirit enough to know what matter is like.</p> + +<p>The Machine-Trainer is the man who sees what the machines are like. He +is the man who conceives of iron-and-wood machines, in his daily habit +of thought, as alive. He has discovered ways in which he can produce an +impression upon iron and wood with his desires, and with his will. He +goes about making iron-and-wood machines do live things.</p> + +<p>It is never the machines that are dead.</p> + +<p>It is only mechanical-minded men that are dead.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250"></a>CHAPTER VI</h2> + +<h3>THE MACHINES' MACHINES</h3> + + +<p>The fate of civilization is not going to be determined by people who are +morbidly like machines on the one hand, or by people who are morbidly +unmechanical, on the other.</p> + +<p>People in a machine civilization who try to live without being automatic +and mechanical-minded part of the time and in some things, people who +try to make everything they do artistic and self-expressive and +hand-made, who attend to all their own thoughts and finish off all their +actions by hand themselves, soon wish they were dead.</p> + +<p>People who do everything they do mechanically, or by machinery, are dead +already.</p> + +<p>It is bad enough for those of us who are trying to live our lives +ourselves—real, true, hand-made individual lives—to have to fight all +these machines about us trying daily to roar and roll us down into +humdrum and nothingness, without having to fight besides all these dear +people we have about us too, who have turned machines, even one's own +flesh and blood. Does not one see them—see them everywhere—one's own +flesh and blood, going about like stone-crushers, road-rollers, lifts, +lawn-mowers?</p> + +<p>Between the morbidly mechanical people and the morbidly unmechanical +people, modern civilization hangs in the balance.</p> + +<p>There must be some way of being just mechanical enough, and at the right +time and right place, and of being just unmechanical enough at the right +time and right place. And there must be some way in which men can be +mechanical and unmechanical at will.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251"></a>The fate of civilization turns on men who recognize the nature of +machinery, who make machines serve them, who add the machines to their +souls, like telephones and wireless telegraph, or to their bodies, like +radium and railroads, and who know when and when not and how and how not +to use them who are so used to using machines quietly and powerfully, +that they do not let the machines outwit them and unman them.</p> + +<p>Who are these men?</p> + +<p>How do they do it?</p> + +<p>They are the Machine-Trainers. The men who understand people-machines, +who understand iron machines, and who understand how to make +people-machines and iron machines run softly together.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252"></a>CHAPTER VII</h2> + +<h3>THE MEN'S MACHINES</h3> + + +<p>There was a time once in the old simple individual days when drygoods +stores could be human. They expressed, in a quiet, easy way, the souls +of the people who owned them.</p> + +<p>When machinery was invented and when organization was invented—machines +of people—drygoods stores became vast selling machines.</p> + +<p>We then faced the problem of making a drygoods store with twenty-five +hundred clerks in it as human as a drygoods store with fifteen.</p> + +<p>This problem has been essentially and in principle solved. At least we +know it is about to be solved. We are ready to admit—most of us—that +it is practicable for a department store to be human. Everything the man +at the top does expresses his human nature and his personality to his +clerks. His clerks become twenty-five hundred more of him in miniature. +What is more, the very stuff in which the clerks in department stores +work—the thing that passes through their hands, is human, and +everything about it is human, or can be made human; and all the while +vast currents of human beings, huge Mississippis of human feeling, flow +past the clerks—thousands and thousands of souls a day, and pour over +their souls, making them and keeping them human. The stream clears +itself.</p> + +<p>But what can we say about human beings in a mine, about the +practicability of keeping human twenty-five hundred men in a hole in the +ground? And how can a mine-owner reach down to the men in the hole, make +himself felt as a human being on the bottom floor of the hole in the +ground?</p> + +<p><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253"></a>In a department store the employer expresses himself to his clerks +through every one of the other twenty-five hundred; they mingle and stir +their souls and hopes and fears together, and he expresses himself to +all of them through them all.</p> + +<p>But in a mine, two men work all alone down in the dark hole in the +ground. Thousands of other men, all in dark holes, are near by, with +nothing but the dull sound of picks to come between. In thousands of +other holes men work, each with his helper, all alone. The utmost the +helper can do is to grow like the man he works with, or like his own +pick, or like the coal he chips out, or like the black hole. The utmost +the man who mines coal can do, in the way of being human, is with his +helper.</p> + +<p>In a factory, for the most part, the only way, during working hours, an +employer can express himself and his humanness to his workman is through +the steel machine he works with—through its being a new, good, fair +machine or a poor one. He can only smile and frown at him with steel, be +good to him in wheels and levers, or now and then perhaps through a +foreman pacing down the aisles.</p> + +<p>The question the modern business man in a factory has to face is very +largely this: "I have acres of machines all roaring my will at my men. I +have leather belts, printed rules, white steam, pistons, roar, air, +water and fire and silence to express myself to my workmen in. I have +long monotonous swings and sweeps of cold steel, buckets of melted iron, +strips of wood, bells, whistles, clocks—to express myself, to express +my human spirit to my men. Is there, or is there not, any possible way +in which my factory with its machines can be made as human and as +expressive of the human as a department store?"</p> + +<p>This is the question that our machine civilization has set itself to +answer.</p> + +<p>All the men with good honest working imaginations, the geniuses and the +freemen of the world, are setting themselves the task of answering it.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254"></a>Some say, "Machines are on the necks of the men. We will take the +machines away."</p> + +<p>Others say, "We will make our men as good as our machines. We will make +our inventions in men catch up with our inventions in machines."</p> + +<p>We naturally turn to the employer first as having the first chance. What +is there an employer can do to draw out the latent force in the men, +evoke the divine, incalculable passion sleeping beneath in the +machine-walled minds, the padlocked wills, the dull unmined desires of +men? How can he touch and wake the solar plexus of labour?</p> + +<p>If any employer desires to get into the inner substance of the most +common type of workman, be an artist with him, express himself with him +and change the nature of that substance, give it a different colour or +light or movement so that he will work three times as fast, ten times as +cheerfully and healthfully, and with his whole body and soul, spirit, +and how is he going to do it?</p> + +<p>Most employers wish they could do this. If they could persuade their men +to believe in them, to begin to be willing to work with them instead of +against them, they would do it.</p> + +<p>What form of language is there, whether of words or of actions, that an +employer can use to make the men who work nine hours a day for him and +to whom he has to express himself across acres of machines, believe in +him and understand him?</p> + +<p>The modern employer finds himself set sternly face to face, every day of +his life, with this question. All civilization seems crowding up day by +day, seems standing outside his office door as he goes in and as he goes +out, and asking him—now with despair, now with a kind of grim, +implacable hope, "Do you believe, or do you not believe, a factory can +be made as human as a department store?"</p> + +<p>This question is going to be answered first by men who know what iron +machines really are, and what they are really for, <a name="Page_255" id="Page_255"></a>and how they +work—who know what people-machines really are, and what they are really +for, and how they work. They will base all that they do upon certain +resemblances and certain differences between people and machines.</p> + +<p>They will work the machines of iron according to the laws of iron.</p> + +<p>They will work the machines of men according to the laws of human +nature.</p> + +<p>There are certain facts in human nature, feelings, enthusiasms and +general principles concerning the natural working relation between men +and machines, that it may be well to consider in the next chapter as a +basis for a possible solution.</p> + +<p>What are our machines after all? How are the machines like us? And on +what theory of their relation to us can machines and men expect in a +world like this to run softly together? These are the questions men are +going to answer next. In the meantime, I venture to believe that no man +who is morose to-day about the machines, or who is afraid of machines in +our civilization—because they are machines—is likely to be able to do +much to save the men in it.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h2> + +<h3>THE BASEMENT OF THE WORLD</h3> + + +<p>Every man has, according to the scientists, a place in the small of his +back which might be called roughly, perhaps, the soul of his body. All +the little streets of the senses or avenues of knowledge, the spiritual +conduits through which he lives in this world, meet in this little +mighty brain in the small of a man's back.</p> + +<p>About nine hundred millions of his grandfathers apparently make their +headquarters in this little place in the small of his back.</p> + +<p>It is in this one little modest unnoticed place that he is supposed to +keep his race-consciousness, his subconscious memory of a whole human +race, and it is here that the desires and the delights and labours of +thousands of years of other people are turned off and turned on in him. +It is the brain that has been given to every man for the heavy everyday +hard work of living. The other brain, the one with which he does his +thinking and which is kept in an honoured place up in the cupola of his +being, is a comparatively light-working organ, merely his own private +personal brain—a conscious, small, and supposably controllable affair. +He holds on to his own particular identity with it. The great lower +brain in the small of his back is merely lent to him, as it were, out of +eternity—while he goes by.</p> + +<p>It is like a great engine which he has been allowed the use of as long +as he can keep it connected up properly with his cerebral arrangements.</p> + +<p>This appears to be mainly what the cerebral brain is for, <a name="Page_257" id="Page_257"></a>this keeping +the man connected up. It acts as a kind of stopcock for one's infinity, +for screwing on or screwing off one's vast race-consciousness, one's +all-humanityness, all those unsounded deeps or reservoirs of human +energy, of hope and memory, of love, of passionate thought, of earthly +and heavenly desire that are lent to each of us as we slip softly by for +seventy years, by a whole human race.</p> + +<p>A human being is a kind of factory. The engine and the works and all the +various machines are kept in the basement, and he sends down orders to +them from time to time, and they do the work which has been conceived up +in the headquarters. He expects the works down below to keep on doing +these things without his taking any particular notice of them, while he +occupies his mind, as the competent head of a factory should, with the +things that are new and different and special and that his mind alone +can do—the things which, at least in their present initial formative or +creative stage, no machines as yet have been developed to do, and that +can only be worked out by the man up in the headquarters himself +personally, by the handiwork of his own thought.</p> + +<p>The more a human being develops, the more delicate, sensitive, strong, +and efficient, the more spirit-informed once for all the machines in the +basement are. As he grows, the various subconscious arrangements for +discriminating, assimilating and classifying material, for pumping up +power, light, and heat to headquarters, all of which can be turned on at +will, grow more masterful every year. They are found all slaving away +for him dimly down in the dark while he sleeps. They hand him up in his +very dreams new and strange powers to live and know with.</p> + +<p>The men who have been the most developed of all, in this regard, +civilization has always selected and set apart from the others. It calls +these men, in their generation, men of genius.</p> + +<p>Ordinary men do not try to compete with men of genius.</p> + +<p>The reason that people set the genius apart and do not try <a name="Page_258" id="Page_258"></a>to compete +with him is that he has more and better machinery than they have. It is +always the first thing one notices about a man of genius—the incredible +number of things that he manages to get done for him, apparently the +things that he never takes any time off, like the rest of us, to do +himself. The subconscious, automatic, mechanical equipment of his +senses, the extraordinary intelligence and refinement of his body, the +way his senses keep his spirit informed automatically and convey outer +knowledge to him, the power he has in return of informing this outer +knowledge with his spirit, with his will, with his choices, once for all, +so that he is always able afterward to rely on his senses to work out +things beautifully for him quite by themselves, and to hand up to him, +when he wants them, rare, deep, unconscious knowledge—all the things he +wants to use for what his soul is doing at the moment—it is these that +make the man of genius what he is. He has a larger and better factory +than others, and has developed a huge subconscious service in mind and +body. Having all these things done for him, he is naturally more free +than others and has more vision and more originality, his spirit is +swung free to build new worlds—to take walks with God, until at last we +come to look upon him, upon the man of genius, a little superstitiously. +We look up every little while from doing the things ourselves that he +gets done for him by his subconscious machinery, and we wonder at him, +we wonder at the strange, the mighty feats he does, at his +thousand-leagued boots, at his apparent everywhereness. His songs and +joys, sometimes, to us, his very sorrows, look miraculous.</p> + +<p>And yet it is all merely because he has a factory, a great automatic +equipment, a thousand employee-sense perceptions, down in the basement +of his being, doing things for him that the rest of us do, or think we +are obliged to do ourselves, and give up all of our time to. He is not +held back as we are, and moves freely. So he dives under the sea +familiarly, or takes peeps at the farther side of the stars, or he flies +in the air, or <a name="Page_259" id="Page_259"></a>he builds unspeakable railroads or thinks out ships or +sea-cities, or he builds books, or he builds little new +still-undreamed-of worlds out of chemistry, or he unravels history out +of rocks, or plants new cities and mighty states without seeming to try, +or perhaps he proceeds quietly to be interested in men, in all these +funny little dots of men about him; and out of the earth and sky, out of +the same old earth and sky everybody else had had, he makes new kinds +and new sizes of men with a thought like some mighty, serene child +playing with dolls!</p> + +<p>It is generally supposed that the man of genius rules history and +dictates the ideals, the activities of the next generation, writes out +the specifications for the joys and sorrows of a world, and lays the +ground-plans of nations because he has an inspired mind. It is really +because he has an inspired body, a body that has received its orders +once for all, from his spirit. We would never wonder that everything a +genius does has that vivid and strange reality it has, if we realized +what his body is doing for him, how he has a body which is at work +automatically drinking up the earth into everything he thinks, drinking +up practicability, art and technique for him into everything he sees and +everything he hopes and desires. And every year he keeps on adding a new +body, keeps on handing down to his basement new sets, every day, of +finer and yet finer things to do automatically. The great spiritual +genius becomes great by economizing his consciousness in one direction +and letting it fare forth in another. He converts his old inspirations +into his new machines. He converts heat into power, and power into +light, and comes to live at last as almost any man of genius can really +be seen living—in a kind of transfigured or lighted-up body. The poet +transmutes his subconscious or machine body into words; and the artist, +into colour or sound or into carved stone. The engineer transmutes his +subconscious body into long buildings, into aisles of windows, into +stories of thoughtful machines. Every great spiritual and imaginative +genius is seen, sooner or later, to be the transmuted genius of some +man's <a name="Page_260" id="Page_260"></a>body. The things in Leonardo da Vinci that his unconscious, +high-spirited, automatic senses gathered together for him, piled up in +his mind for him, and handed over to him for the use of his soul, would +have made a genius out of anybody. It is not as if he had had to work +out every day all the old details of being a genius, himself.</p> + +<p>The miracles he seems to work are all made possible to him because of +his thousand man-power, deep subconscious body, his tremendous factory +of sensuous machinery. It is as if he had practically a thousand men all +working for him, for dear life, down in his basement, and the things +that he can get these men to attend to for him give him a start with +which none of the rest of us could ever hope to compete. We call him +inspired because he is more mechanical than we are, and because his real +spiritual life begins where our lives leave off.</p> + +<p>So the poets who have filled the world with glory and beauty have been +free to do it because they have had more perfect, more healthful and +improved subconscious senses handing up wonder to them than the rest of +us have.</p> + +<p>And so the engineers, living, as they always live, with that fierce, +silent, implacable curiosity of theirs, woven through their bodies and +through their senses and through their souls, have tagged the Creator's +footsteps under the earth, and along the sky, every now and then +throwing up new little worlds to Him like His worlds, saying, "Look, O +God, look at THIS!"—the engineers whose poetry is too deep to look +poetic have all done what they have done because the unconscious and +automatic gifts of their senses, of the powers of their observation, +have swung their souls free, given them long still reaches of thought +and vast new orbits of desire, like gods.</p> + +<p>All the great men of the world have always had machinery.</p> + +<p>Now, everybody is having it. The power to get little things, +innumerable, omnipresent, for-ever-and-ever things, tiny just-so things, +done for us automatically so that we can go on to our inspirations is no +longer to-day the special prerogative of men <a name="Page_261" id="Page_261"></a>of genius. It is for all +of us. Machinery is the stored-up spirit, the old saved-up inspiration +of the world turned on for every man. And as the greatness of a man +turns on his command over machinery, on his power to free his soul by +making his body work for him, the greatness of a civilization turns upon +its getting machines to do its work. The more of our living we can learn +to do to-day, automatically, the more inspired and creative and godlike +and unmechanical our civilization becomes.</p> + +<p>Machinery is the subconscious mind of the world.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262"></a>CHAPTER IX</h2> + +<h3>THE GROUND FLOOR FOLKS</h3> + + +<p>I would not have, if I could afford it, a thing in my house that is not +hand-made. I have come to believe that machinery is going to make it +possible for everybody to have hand-made things in their homes, things +that have been made by people who love to make them, and by people who, +thinks to the machines, are soon bound to have time to make them. Some +will have gifts for hand-made furniture, others for hand-made ideas. +Perhaps people will even have time for sitting down to enjoy hand-made +ideas, to enjoy hand-made books—and enjoy reading books by hand. We may +have time for following an author in a book in the slow, old, deep, +loving, happy, hand-made fashion we used to know—when we have enough +machines.</p> + +<p>It looks as if it might be something like this.</p> + +<p>Every man is going to spend his mornings in the basement of society, +taking orders and being a servant and executing automatically, like a +machine if need be, the will of the world, making what the world wants +in the way it wants it, expressing society and subordinating himself. In +the afternoon he shall come up out of the basement, and take his stand +on the ground floor of the world, stop being a part of the machinery, +and be a man, express himself and give orders to himself and do some +work he loves to do in the way he loves to do it, express his soul in +his labour, and be an artist. He will not select his work in the +morning, or select his employer, or say how the work shall be done. He +will himself be selected, like a young tree or like an iron nail, +because he is the best made and best fitted <a name="Page_263" id="Page_263"></a>thing at hand to be used in +a certain place and in a certain way.</p> + +<p>When the man has been selected for his latent capacities, his employer +sets to work on him scientifically and according to the laws of physics, +hygiene, conservation of energy, the laws of philosophy, human nature, +heredity, psychology, and even metaphysics, teaches the man how to hold +his hands, how to lift, how to sit down, how to rest, and how to +breathe, so that three times as much work can be got out of him as he +could get out of himself. A mind of the highest rank and, if necessary, +thirty minds of the highest rank, shall be at his disposal, shall be +lent him to show him how his work can be done. The accumulated science +and genius, the imagination and experience, of hundreds of years, of all +climates, of all countries, of all temperaments shall be heaped up by +his employers, gathered about the man's mind, wrought through his limbs, +and help him to do his work.</p> + +<p>All labour down in the basement of society shall be skilled labour. The +brains of men of genius and of experts shall be pumped into labour from +above until every man in the basement shall earn as much money in three +hours a day as he formerly had earned in nine.</p> + +<p>Between the time a man saves by having machinery and the time he saves +by having the brains of great men and geniuses to work with, it will be +possible for men to do enough work for other people down in the basement +of the world in a few hours to shut the whole basement up, if we want +to, by three o'clock. Every man who is fit for it shall spend the rest +of his time in planning his work himself and in expressing himself, and +in creating hand-made and beautiful, inspired and wilful things like an +artist, or like a slowed-down genius, or at least like a man or like a +human being.</p> + +<p>Every man owes it to society to spend part of his time in expressing his +own soul. The world needs him. Society cannot afford to let him merely +give to it his feet and his hands. <a name="Page_264" id="Page_264"></a>It wants the joy in him, the +creative desire in him, the slow, stupid, hopeful initiative, in him to +help run the world. Society wants to use the man's soul too—the man's +will. It is going to demand the soul in a man, the essence or good-will +in him, if only to protect itself, and to keep the man from being +dangerous. Men who have lost or suppressed their souls, and who go about +cursing at the world every day they live in it, are not a safe, social +investment.</p> + +<p>But while every man is going to see that he owes it to society to use a +part of his time in it in expressing himself, his own desires, in his +own way, he is going to see also that he owes it to society to spend +part of his time in expressing others and in expressing the desires and +the needs of others. The two processes could be best effected at first +probably by alternating, by keeping the man in equilibrium, balancing +the mechanical and the spiritual in his life. Eventually and ideally, he +will manage to have time in a higher state of society to put them +together, to express in the same act at the same time, and not +alternating or reciprocally, himself and others. And he will succeed in +doing what the great and free artist does already. He will make his +individual self-expression so great and so generous that it is also the +expression of the universal self. Every man will be treated according to +his own nature. Doubtless some men have not brains enough in a week to +supply them for one hour a day of self-directed work. It would take them +five hours a day to think how to do one hour's worth of work. Men who +prefer, as many will, not to think, and who like the basement better, +can substitute in the basement for their sons, and buy if they like, the +freedom of sons who prefer thinking, who would like to work harder than +their fathers would care to work, up on the ground floor of the world. +But as time goes on, it is to be hoped that every man will climb up +slowly, and will belong less and less of his time to the staff that +borrows brains, and more and more of his time to the staff that hands +brains down, and that directs the machinery of the <a name="Page_265" id="Page_265"></a>world. The time of +alternation in dealing with different callings will probably be adjusted +differently, and might be made weeks instead of days, but the principle +would be the same. The forces that are going to help, apparently, in +this evolution will be the labour exchange—the centre for the +mobilization of labour, the produce exchange, the inventor's spirit in +the labour unions and employers' associations, and the gradual +organization by inventors of the common vision of all men, and setting +it at work on the supreme task of modern life—the task of drawing out, +evoking each particular man in the world, and in behalf of all, freeing +him for his own particular place.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266"></a>CHAPTER X</h2> + +<h3>THE MACHINE-TRAINERS</h3> + + +<p>The fundamental failure of humanity so far is in self-assertion.</p> + +<p>The essential distinctive trait of modern civilization is machinery.</p> + +<p>Machinery logically and irrevocably involves the coöperative action of +individuals.</p> + +<p>If we make levers and iron wheels work by putting them together +according to their nature, we can only make vast masses of men work by +putting them together according to their nature.</p> + +<p>So far we have been trying to make vast masses of men work together in +precisely the same way we make levers and iron wheels work together. We +have thought we could make diabolically, foolishly, insanely inflexible +men-machines which violate at every point the natural qualities and +instincts of the materials of which they are made.</p> + +<p>We have failed to assert ourselves against our iron machines. We have +let our iron machines assert themselves against us. We have let our iron +machines be models for us. We have overlooked the difference in the +nature of the materials in machines of iron and machines of men.</p> + +<p>A man is a self-reproducing machine, and an iron machine is one that has +to be reproduced by somebody else.</p> + +<p>In a man-machine arrangements must be made so that each man can be +allowed to be the father of his own children and the author of his own +acts.</p> + +<p>In society or the man-machine, if it is to work, men are <a name="Page_267" id="Page_267"></a>individuals. +Society is organically, irrevocably dependent upon each man, and upon +what each man chooses according to his own nature to do himself.</p> + +<p>The result is, the first principle of success in constructing and +running a social machine is to ask and to get an answer out of each man +who is, as we look him over and take him up, and propose to put him into +it, "What are you like?" "What are you especially for?" "What do you +want?" "How can you get it?"</p> + +<p>Our success in getting him properly into our machine turns upon a loyal, +patient, imperious attention on our part to what there is inside him, +inside the particular individual man, and how we can get him to let us +know what is inside, get him to decide voluntarily to let us have it, +and let us work it into the common end.</p> + +<p>In this amazing, impromptu, new, and hurried machine civilization which +we have been piling up around us for a hundred years we have made +machines out of everything, and our one consummate and glaring failure +in the machines we have made is the machine we have made out of +ourselves.</p> + +<p>Mineral machines are made by putting comparatively dead, or at least +dead-looking, matter together; vegetable machines or gardens, are made +by studying little unconscious seeds that we can persuade to come up and +to reproduce themselves. Man-machines are produced by putting up +possible lives before particular individual men, and letting them find +out (and finding out for ourselves, too), day by day, into which life +they will grow up.</p> + +<p>Everything in a social machine, if it is a machine that really works, is +based on the profound and special study of individuals: upon drawing out +the aptitudes and motives, choices and genius in each man; the passion, +if he has any; the creative desire, the self-expressing, +self-reproducing, inner manhood; the happy strength there is in him.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268"></a>Trades unions overlook this, and treat all men alike and all employers +alike. Employers have very largely overlooked it.</p> + +<p>It is the industrial, social, and religious secret of our modern machine +civilization. We need not be discouraged about machines, because the +secret of the machine civilization has as yet barely been noticed.</p> + +<p>The elephants are running around in the garden. But they have merely +taken us by surprise. It is their first and their last chance. The men +about us are seeing what to do. We are to get control of the elephants, +first, by getting control of ourselves. We are beginning to organize our +people-machines as if they were made of people; so that the people in +them can keep on being people, and being better ones. And as our +people-machines begin to become machines that really work, our iron +machines will no longer be feared. They will reach over and help. As we +look about us we shall see our iron machines at last, about all the +world, all joining in, all hard at work for us, a million, million +machines a day making the crowd beautiful.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269"></a>CHAPTER XI</h2> + +<h3>MACHINES, CROWDS, AND ARTISTS</h3> + + +<p>A crowd civilization produces, as a matter of course, crowd art and art +for crowded conditions. This fact is at once the glory and the weakness +of the kind of art a democracy is bound to have.</p> + +<p>The most natural evidence to turn to first, of the crowd in a crowd age, +is such as can be found in its literature, especially in its +masterpieces.</p> + +<p>The significance of shaking hands with a Senator of the United States is +that it is a convenient and labour-saving way of shaking hands with two +or three million people. The impressiveness of the Senator's Washington +voice, the voice on the floor of the Senate, consists in the mystical +undertone—the chorus in it—multitudes in smoking cities, men and +women, rich and poor, who are speaking when this man speaks, and who are +silent when he is silent, in the government of the United States.</p> + +<p>The typical fact that the Senator stands for in modern life has a +corresponding typical fact in modern literature. The typical fact in +modern literature is the epigram, the senatorial sentence, the sentence +that immeasurably represents what it does not say. The difference +between democracy in Washington and democracy in Athens may be said to +be that in Washington we have an epigram government, a government in +which ninety million people are crowded into two rooms to consider what +to do, and in which ninety million people are made to sit in one chair +to see that it is done. In Athens every man represented himself.</p> + +<p>It may be said to be a good working distinction between <a name="Page_270" id="Page_270"></a>modern and +classic art that in modern art words and colours and sounds stand for +things, and in classic art they said them. In the art of the Greek, +things were what they seemed, and they were all there. Hence simplicity. +It is a quality of the art of to-day that things are not what they seem +in it. If they were, we should not call it art at all. Everything stands +not only for itself and for what it says, but for an immeasurable +something that cannot be said. Every sound in music is the senator of a +thousand sounds, thoughts, and associations, and in literature every +word that is allowed to appear is the representative in three syllables +of three pages of a dictionary. The whistle of the locomotive, and the +ring of the telephone, and the still, swift rush of the elevator are +making themselves felt in the ideal world. They are proclaiming to the +ideal world that the real world is outstripping it. The twelve thousand +horsepower steamer does not find itself accurately expressed in iambics +on the leisurely fleet of Ulysses. It is seeking new expression. The +command has gone forth over all the beauty and over all the art of the +present world, crowded for time and crowded for space. "Telegraph!" To +the nine Muses the order flies. One can hear it on every side. +"Telegraph!" The result is symbolism, the Morse alphabet of art and +"types," the epigrams of human nature, crowding us all into ten or +twelve people. The epic is telescoped into the sonnet, and the sonnet is +compressed into quatrains or Tabbs of poetry, and couplets are signed as +masterpieces. The novel has come into being—several hundred pages of +crowded people in crowded sentences, jostling each other to oblivion; +and now the novel, jostled into oblivion by the next novel, is becoming +the short story. Kipling's short stories sum the situation up. So far as +skeleton or plot is concerned, they are built up out of a bit of nothing +put with an infinity of Kipling; so far as meat is concerned, they are +the Liebig Beef Extract of fiction. A single jar of Kipling contains a +whole herd of old-time novels lowing on a hundred hills.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271"></a>The classic of any given world is a work of art that has passed through +the same process in being a work of art that that world has passed +through in being a world. Mr. Kipling represents a crowd age, because he +is crowded with it; because, above all others, he is the man who +produces art in the way the age he lives in is producing everything +else.</p> + +<p>This is no mere circumstance of democracy. It is its manifest destiny +that it shall produce art for crowded conditions, that it shall have +crowd art. The kind of beauty that can be indefinitely multiplied is the +kind of beauty in which, in the nature of things, we have made our most +characteristic and most important progress. Our most considerable +success in pictures could not be otherwise than in black and white. +Black-and-white art is printing-press art; and art that can be produced +in endless copies, that can be subscribed for by crowds, finds an +extraordinary demand, and artists have applied themselves to supplying +it. All the improvements, moving on through the use of wood and steel +and copper, and the process of etching, to the photogravure, the +lithograph, the moving picture, and the latest photograph in colour, +whatever else may be said of them from the point of view of Titian or +Michael Angelo, constitute a most amazing and triumphant advance from +the point of view of making art a democracy, of making the rare and the +beautiful minister day and night to crowds. The fact that the mechanical +arts are so prominent in their relation to the fine arts may not seem to +argue a high ideal amongst us; but as the mechanical arts are the body +of beauty, and the fine arts are the soul of it, it is a necessary part +of the ideal to keep body and soul together until we can do better. +Mourning with Ruskin is not so much to the point as going to work with +William Morris. If we have deeper feelings about wall-papers than we +have about other things, it is going to the root of the matter to begin +with wall-papers, to make machinery say something as beautiful as +possible, inasmuch as it is bound to have, for a long time at least, +about all the say there is. The photograph <a name="Page_272" id="Page_272"></a>does not go about the world +doing Murillos everywhere by pressing a button, but the camera habit is +doing more in the way of steady daily hydraulic lifting of great masses +of men to where they enjoy beauty in the world than Leonardo da Vinci +would have dared to dream in his far-off day; and Leonardo's pictures, +thanks to the same photograph, and everybody's pictures, films of paper, +countless spirits of themselves, pass around the world to every home in +Christendom. The printing press made literature a democracy, and +machinery is making all the arts democracies. The symphony piano, an +invention for making vast numbers of people who can play only a few very +poor things play very poorly a great many good ones, is a consummate +instance both of the limitation and the value of our contemporary +tendency in the arts. The pipe organ, though on a much higher plane, is +an equally characteristic contrivance making it possible for a man to be +a complete orchestra and a conductor all by himself, playing on a crowd +of instruments, to a crowd of people, with two hands and one pair of +feet. It is a crowd invention. The orchestra—a most distinctively +modern institution, a kind of republic of sound, the unseen spirit of +the many in one—is the sublimest expression yet attained of the crowd +music, which is, and must be, the supreme music of this modern day, the +symphony. Richard Wagner comes to his triumph because his music is the +voice of multitudes. The opera, a crowd of sounds accompanied by a crowd +of sights, presented by one crowd of people on the stage to another +crowd of people in the galleries, stands for the same tendency in art +that the syndicate stands for in commerce. It is syndicate music; and in +proportion as a musical composition in this present day is an +aggregation of multitudinous moods, in proportion as it is suggestive, +complex, paradoxical, the way a crowd is complex, suggestive, and +paradoxical—provided it be wrought at the same time into some vast and +splendid unity—just in this proportion is it modern music. It gives +itself to the counterpoints of the spirit, the passion of variety in +modern <a name="Page_273" id="Page_273"></a>life. The legacy of all the ages, is it not descended upon +us?—the spirit of a thousand nations? All our arts are thousand-nation +arts, shadows and echoes of dead worlds playing upon our own. Italian +music, out of its feudal kingdoms, comes to us as essentially solo +music—melody; and the civilization of Greece, being a civilization of +heroes, individuals, comes to us in its noble array with its solo arts, +its striding heroes everywhere in front of all, and with nothing nearer +to the people in it than the Greek Chorus, which, out of limbo, pale and +featureless across all ages, sounds to us as the first far faint coming +of the crowd to the arts of this groping world. Modern art, inheriting +each of these and each of all things, is revealed to us as the struggle +to express all things at once. Democracy is democracy for this very +reason, and for no other: that all things may be expressed at once in +it, and that all things may be given a chance to be expressed at once in +it. Being a race of hero-worshippers, the Greeks said the best, perhaps, +what could be said in sculpture; but the marbles and bronzes of a +democracy, having average men for subjects, and being done by average +men, are average marbles and bronzes. We express what we have. We are in +a transition stage. It is not without its significance, however, that we +have perfected the plaster cast—the establishment of democracy among +statues, and mobs of Greek gods mingling with the people can be seen +almost any day in every considerable city of the world. The same +principle is working itself out in our architecture. It is idle to +contend against the principle. The way out is the way through. However +eagerly we gaze at Parthenons on their ruined hills, if thirty-one-story +blocks are in our souls thirty-one-story blocks will be our +masterpieces, whether we like it or not. They will be our masterpieces +because they tell the truth about us; and while truth may not be +beautiful, it is the thing that must be told first before beauty can +begin. The beauty we are to have shall only be worked out from the truth +we have. Living as we do in a new era, not to see that the +thirty-one-story <a name="Page_274" id="Page_274"></a>block is the expression of a new truth is to turn +ourselves away from the one way that beauty can ever be found by men, in +this era or in any other.</p> + +<p>What is it that the thirty-one-story block is trying to say about us? +The thirty-one-story block is the masterpiece of mass, of immensity, of +numbers; with its 2427 windows and its 779 offices, and its crowds of +lives piled upon lives, it is expressing the one supreme and +characteristic thing that is taking place in the era in which we live. +The city is the main fact that modern civilization stands for, and +crowding is the logical architectural form of the city idea. The +thirty-one-story block is the statue of a crowd. It stands for a +spiritual fact, and it will never be beautiful until that fact is +beautiful. The only way to make the thirty-one-story block beautiful +(the crowd expressed by the crowd) is to make the crowd beautiful. The +most artistic, the only artistic, thing the world can do next is to make +the crowd beautiful.</p> + +<p>The typical city blocks, with their garrets in the lower stories of the +sky, were not possible in the ancient world, because steel had not been +invented; and the invention of steel, which is not the least of our +triumphs in the mechanical arts, is in many ways the most +characteristic. Steel is republican for stone. Putting whole quarries +into a single girder, it makes room for crowds; and what is more +significant than this, inasmuch as the steel pillar is an invention that +makes it possible to put floors up first, and build the walls around the +floors, instead of putting the walls up first and supporting the floors +upon the walls, as in the ancient world, it has come to pass that the +modern world being the ancient world turned upside down, modern +architecture is ancient architecture turned inside out, a symbol of many +things. The ancient world was a wall of individuals, supporting floor +after floor and stage after stage of society, from the lowest to the +highest; and it is a typical fact in this modern democratic world that +it grows from the inside, and that it supports itself from the inside. +When the mass in the centre has been <a name="Page_275" id="Page_275"></a>finished, an ornamental stone +facing of great individuals will be built around it and supported by it, +and the work will be considered done.</p> + +<p>The modern spirit has much to boast of in its mechanical arts, and in +its fine arts almost nothing, because the mechanical arts are studying +what men are needing to-day, and the fine arts are studying what the +Greeks needed three thousand years ago. To be a real classic is, first, +to be a contemporary of one's own time; second, to be a contemporary of +one's own time so deeply and widely as to be a contemporary of all time. +The true Greek is a man who is doing with his own age what the Greeks +did with theirs, bringing all ages to bear upon it, and interpreting it. +As long as the fine arts miss the fundamental principle of this present +age—the crowd principle, and the mechanical arts do not, the mechanical +arts are bound to have their way with us. And it were vastly better that +they should. Sincere and straightforward mechanical arts are not only +more beautiful than affected fine ones, but they are more to the point: +they are the one sure sign we have of where we are going to be beautiful +next. It is impossible to love the fine arts in the year 1913 without +studying the mechanical ones; without finding one's self looking for +artistic material in the things that people are using, and that they are +obliged to use. The determining law of a thing of beauty being, in the +nature of things, what it is for, the very essence of the classic +attitude in a utilitarian age is to make the beautiful follow the useful +and inspire the useful with its spirit. The fine art of the next +thousand years shall be the transfiguring of the mechanical arts. The +modern hotel, having been made necessary by great natural forces in +modern life, and having been made possible by new mechanical arts, now +puts itself forward as the next great opportunity of the fine arts. One +of the characteristic achievements of the immediate future shall be the +twentieth-century Parthenon—a Parthenon not of the great and of the few +and of the gods, but of the great many, where, through mighty corridors, +day and night, democ<a name="Page_276" id="Page_276"></a>racy wanders and sleeps and chatters and is sad and +lives and dies, streets rumbling below. The hotel—the crowd +fireside—being more than any other one thing, perhaps, the thing that +this civilization is about, the token of what it loves and of how it +lives, is bound to be a masterpiece sooner or later that shall express +democracy. The hotel rotunda, the parlour for multitudes, is bound to be +made beautiful in ways we do not guess. Why should we guess? Multitudes +have never wanted parlours before. The idea of a parlour has been to get +out of a multitude. All the inevitable problems that come of having a +whole city of families live in one house have yet to be solved by the +fine arts as well as by the mechanical ones. We have barely begun. The +time is bound to come when the radiator, the crowd's fireplace-in-a-pipe, +shall be made beautiful; and when the electric light shall be taught +the secret of the candle; and when the especial problem of modern +life—of how to make two rooms as good as twelve—shall be mastered +æsthetically as well as mathematically; and when even the piano-folding, +bed-bookcase-toilet-stand-writing-desk—a crowd invention for living +in a crowd—shall either take beauty to itself or lead to beauty that +serves the same end.</p> + +<p>While for the time being it seems to be true that the fine arts are +looking to the past, the mechanical arts are producing conditions in the +future that will bring the fine arts to terms, whether they want to be +brought to terms or not. The mechanical arts hold the situation in their +hands. It is decreed that people who cannot begin by making the things +they use beautiful shall be allowed no beauty in other things. We may +wish that Parthenons and cathedrals were within our souls; but what the +cathedral said of an age that had the cathedral mood, that had a +cathedral civilization and thrones and popes in it, we are bound to say +in some stupendous fashion of our own—something which, when it is built +at last, will be left worshipping upon the ground beneath the sky when +we are dead, as a memorial that we too have lived. The great cathedrals, +with the <a name="Page_277" id="Page_277"></a>feet of the huddled and dreary poor upon their floors, and +saints and heroes shining on their pillars, and priests behind the +chancel with God to themselves, and the vast and vacant nave, symbol of +the heaven glimmering above that few could reach—it is not to these +that we shall look to get ourselves said to the nations that are now +unborn; rather, though it be strange to say it, we shall look to +something like the ocean steamship—cathedral of this huge unresting +modern world—under the wide heaven, on the infinite seas, with spars +for towers and the empty nave reversed filled with human beings' +souls—the cathedral of crowds hurrying to crowds. There are hundreds of +them throbbing and gleaming in the night—this very moment—lonely +cities in the hollow of the stars, bringing together the nations of the +earth.</p> + +<p>When the spirit of our modern way of living, the idea in it, the bare +facts about our modern human nature have been noticed at last by our +modern artists, masterpieces shall come to us out of every great and +living activity in our lives. Art shall tell the things these lives are +about. When this is once realized in America as it was in Greece, the +fine arts shall cover the other arts as the waters cover the sea. The +Brooklyn Bridge, swinging its web for immortal souls across sky and sea, +comes nearer to being a work of art than almost anything we possess +to-day, because it tells the truth, because it is the material form of a +spiritual idea, because it is a sublime and beautiful expression of New +York in the way that the Acropolis was a sublime and beautiful +expression of Athens. The Acropolis was beautiful because it was the +abode of heroes, of great individuals; and the Brooklyn Bridge, because +it expresses the bringing together of millions of men. It is the +architecture of crowds—this Brooklyn Bridge—with winds and sunsets and +the dark and the tides of souls upon it; it is the type and symbol of +the kind of thing that our modern genius is bound to make beautiful and +immortal before it dies. The very word "bridge" is the symbol of the +future of <a name="Page_278" id="Page_278"></a>art and of everything else, the bringing together of things +that are apart—democracy. The bridge, which makes land across the +water, and the boat, which makes land on the water, and the cable, which +makes land and water alike—these are the physical forms of the spirit +of modern life, the democracy of matter. But the spirit has countless +forms. They are all new and they are all waiting to be made beautiful. +The dumb crowd waits in them. We have electricity—the life current of +the republican idea—characteristically our foremost invention, because +it takes all power that belongs to individual places and puts it on a +wire and carries it to all places. We have the telephone, an invention +which makes it possible for a man to live on a back street and be a +next-door neighbour to boulevards; and we have the trolley, the modern +reduction of the private carriage to its lowest terms, so that any man +for five cents can have as much carriage power as Napoleon with all his +chariots. We have the phonograph, an invention which gives a man a +thousand voices; which sets him to singing a thousand songs at the same +time to a thousand crowds; which makes it possible for the commonest man +to hear the whisper of Bismarck or Gladstone, to unwind crowds of great +men by the firelight of his own house. We have the elevator, an +invention for making the many as well off as the few, an approximate +arrangement for giving first floors to everybody, and putting all men on +a level at the same price—one more of a thousand instances of the +extraordinary manner in which the mechanical arts have devoted +themselves from first to last to the Constitution of the United States. +While it cannot be said of many of these tools of existence that they +are beautiful now, it is enough to affirm that when they are perfected +they will be beautiful; and that if we cannot make beautiful the things +that we need, we cannot expect to make beautiful the things that we +merely want. When the beauty of these things is at last brought out, we +shall have attained the most characteristic and original and expressive +and beautiful art that is in our power. It will be unprecedented +<a name="Page_279" id="Page_279"></a>because it will tell unprecedented truths. It was the mission of +ancient art to express states of being and individuals, and it may be +said to be in a general way the mission of our modern art to express the +beautiful in endless change, the movement of masses, coming to its +sublimity and immortality at last by revealing the beauty of the things +that move and that have to do with motion, the bringing of all things +and of all souls together on the earth.</p> + +<p>The fulfillment of the word that has been written, "Your valleys shall +be exalted, and your mountains shall be made low," is by no means a +beautiful process. Democracy is the grading principle of the beautiful. +The natural tendency the arts have had from the first to rise from the +level of the world, to make themselves into Switzerlands in it, is +finding itself confronted with the Constitution of the United States—a +Constitution which, whatever it may be said to mean in the years to +come, has placed itself on record up to the present time, at least, as +standing for the tableland.</p> + +<p>The very least that can be granted to this Constitution is that it is so +consummate a political document that it has made itself the creed of our +theology, philosophy, and sociology; the principle of our commerce and +industry; the law of production, education, and journalism; the method +of our life; the controlling characteristic and the significant force in +our literature; and the thing our religion and our arts are about.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280"></a>PART THREE</h2> + +<h3>PEOPLE-MACHINES</h3> + +<h2>CHAPTER I</h2> + +<h3>NOW!</h3> + + +<p>This outlook or glimmer of vision I have tried to trace, for the art of +crowds is something we want, and want daily, in the future. We want +daily a future. But, after all, it is a future.</p> + +<p>I speak in this present chapter as one of the crowd who wants something +now.</p> + +<p>I find myself in a world in which apparently some vast anonymous +arrangement was made about me and about my life, before I was born. This +arrangement seems to be, as I understand it, that if I want to live +while I am on this planet a certain sort of life or be a certain sort of +person, I am expected practically to take out a permit for it from the +proper authorities.</p> + +<p>In the previous chapter I made a request of the authorities, as perhaps +the reader will remember. I said, "I want to be good now."</p> + +<p>In this one I have a further request to make of the authorities: "I want +to be beautiful."</p> + +<p>I want to be beautiful now.</p> + +<p>I find thousands of other people about me on every hand making these +same two requests. I find that the authorities do not seem to notice +their requests any more than they have noticed mine.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281"></a>Some of us have begun to suspect that we must have made the request in +the wrong way. Perhaps we should not ask a world—a great, vague thing +like the world in general—to make any slight arrangement we may need +for being beautiful. We have come to feel that we must ask somebody in +particular, and do something in particular, and find some one in +particular with whom we can do it. There is getting to be but one course +open to a man if he wants to be beautiful. He must bone down and work +hard with his soul, make himself see precisely what it is and who it is +standing between him and a beautiful world. He must ask particular +persons in particular positions if they do not think he ought to be +allowed to be beautiful. He must ask some millionaire probably +first—his employer, for instance—to stop getting in his way, and at +least to step one side and let him reason with him. And when he cannot +ask his millionaire—his own particular humdrum millionaire—to step one +side and reason with him, he must ask iron-machines to step one side and +reason with him. After this he must ask crowds to please to step one +side and reason with him.</p> + +<p>Whatever happens, he is sure to find always these same three great, +imponderable obstructions in the way of his being beautiful—the humdrum +millionaires, the iron-machines, and crowds.</p> + +<p>In the old days when any one wanted to be beautiful he found it more +convenient. There was very likely some one who was more beautiful than +he was nearby, some one who found him craving the same thing that he had +craved, and who recognized it and delighted in it, and who could make +room and help.</p> + +<p>Nowadays, if one wants to be beautiful one must ask everybody. Every man +finds it the same. He must ask millions of people to let him be +something, one after the other in rows, that they do not want him to be +or do not care whether he is or not. He has to ask more people than he +could count, <a name="Page_282" id="Page_282"></a>before he dies, to let him be beautiful. Many of them that +he has to ask, sometimes most of them, are his inferiors.</p> + +<p>I have tried to deal with how it is going to be possible for a man to +break through to being beautiful, past millionaires and past +iron-machines. I would like now to deal with the people-machines or +crowds, and how perhaps to break past them and be beautiful in behalf of +them, in spite of them.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283"></a>CHAPTER II</h2> + +<h3>COMMITTEES AND COMMITTEES</h3> + + +<p>The problem seems to be something like this. One finds one has been born +and put here whether or no, and that one is inextricably alive in a +state of society in which men are coming to live in a kind of vast +disease of being obliged to do everything together.</p> + +<p>We are still old-fashioned enough to be born one at a time, but we are +educated in litters and we do our work in the world in herds and gangs. +Even the upper classes do their work in gangs, and with overseers and +little crowds called committees. Our latest idea consists in putting +parts of a great many different men together to make one great +one—forming a committee to make a man of genius.</p> + +<p>There is no denying that, in a way, a committee does things; but what +becomes of the committee?</p> + +<p>And the lower in the scale of life we go the more committees it takes to +do the work of one man and the more impossible it becomes to find +anything but parts of men to do things. I put it frankly to the reader. +The chances are nine out of ten that when you meet a man nowadays and +look at him hard or try to do something with him you find he is not a +man at all but is some subsection of a committee. You cannot even talk +with such a man without selecting some subsection of some subject which +interests him; and if you select any other subsection than his +subsection he will think you a bore; and if you select his subsection he +will think that you do not know anything.</p> + +<p>And if you want to get anything done that is different, <a name="Page_284" id="Page_284"></a>or that is the +least bit interesting, and want to get some one to do it, how will you +go about it? You will find yourself being sent from one person to +another; and before you know it you find yourself mixed up with nine or +ten subdivisions of nine or ten committees; and after you have got your +nine or ten subsections of nine or ten committees to get together to +consider what it is you want done, they will tell you, after due +deliberation, that it is not worth doing, or that you had better do it +yourself. Then every subsection of every committee will go home +muttering under its breath to every other subsection that a man who +wants slightly different and interesting things done in society is a +public nuisance; and that the man who does not know what subsection he +is in and what subsection of a man he was intended to be, and who tries +to do things, carries dismay and anger on every side around him. Drop +into your pigeonhole and be filed away, O Gentle Reader! Do you think +you are a soul? No; you are Series B. No. 2574, top row on the left.</p> + +<p>In my morning paper the other day I read that in a factory whose long +windows I often pass in the train, they have their machinery so +perfected that it takes sixty-four machines to make one shoe.</p> + +<p>Query—If it takes sixty-four machines run by sixty-four men who do +nothing else to make one shoe, how many machines would it take, and how +many shoes, to make one man?</p> + +<p>Query—And when an employer in a shoe factory deals with his employee, +can it really be said, after all, that he is dealing with <i>him</i>? He is +dealing with <i>It</i>—with Nine Hours a Day, of one sixty-fourth of a man.</p> + +<p>The natural effect of crowds and of machines is to make a man feel that +he is, and always was, and always will be, immemorially, unanimously, +innumerably nobody.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285"></a>Sometimes we are allowed a little faint numeral to dangle up over our +oblivion. Not long ago I saw a notice or letter in the <i>West +Bulletin</i>—probably from a member of something—ending like this: "... +I hope the readers of the <i>Bulletin</i> will ponder over this suggestion of +<i>Number</i> 29,619.—Sincerely yours, <i>No.</i> 11, 175."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286"></a>CHAPTER III</h2> + +<h3>THE INCONVENIENCE OF BEING HUMAN</h3> + + +<p>I shall never forget one day I spent in New York some years ago—more +years than I thought at first. It was a wrong-headed day, but I cannot +help remembering it as a symbol of a dread I still feel at times in New +York—a feeling of being suddenly lifted, of being swept out under (it +is like the undertow of the sea) into a kind of vast deep of +impersonality—swept out of myself into a wide, imperious waste or +emptiness of people. I had come fresh from my still country meadow and +mountain, my own trees and my own bobolinks and my own little island of +sky up over me, and in the vast and desolate solitude of men and women I +wandered about up and down the streets. Every block I saw, every window, +skyline, engine, street-car, every human face, made me feel as if I +belonged to another world. Here was a great conspiracy in stone and iron +against my own life with myself. Was there a soul in all this huge roar +and spectacle of glass and stone and passion that cared for the things +that I cared for, or the things that I loved, or that would care one +shuffle of all the feet upon the stones for any thought or word or +desire of mine? The rain swept in my face, and I spent the day walking +up and down the streets looking at stones and glass and people. <i>"Here +we are!"</i> say the great buildings crowding on the sky. <i>"Who are +you?"</i>....all the stone and the glass and the walls, the mighty +syndicate of matter everywhere, surrounded me—one little, shivering, +foolish mote of being fighting foolishly for its own little foolish mote +of identity!</p> + +<p><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287"></a>And I do not believe that I was all wrong. New York, like some vast, +implacable cone of ether, some merciless anæsthetic, was thrust down +over me and my breathing, and I still had a kind of left-over prejudice +that I wanted to be myself, with my own private self-respect, with my +own private, temporarily finished-off, provisionally complete +personality. I felt then, and I still feel to-day, that every man, as he +fights for his breath, must stand out at least part of his time for the +right of being self-contained. It is, and always will be, one of the +appalling sights of New York to me—the spectacle of the helplessness, +the wistfulness, of all those poor New York people without one another. +Sometimes the city seems to be a kind of huge monument or idol or shrine +of crowds. It seems to be a part of the ceaseless crowd action or crowd +corrosion on the sense of identity in the human spirit that the man who +lives in crowds should grow more dull and more literal about himself +every day. He becomes a mere millionth of something. All these other +people he sees about him hurrying to and fro are mere millionths too. He +grows more and more obliged to live with a vast bulk of people if he is +to notice people at all. Unless he sees all the different kinds of +people and forms of life with his own eye, and feels human beings with +his hands, as it were, he does not know and sympathize with them. The +crowd-craving or love of continual city life on the part of many people +comes to be a sheer lack of imagination, an inability to live in +qualities instead of quantities in men. To live merely in a city is not +to know the real flavour of life any more than the daily paper knows +it—the daily paper, the huge dull monster of observation, the seer of +outsides. The whole effect of crowds on the individual man is to +emphasize scareheads and appearances, advertisements, and the huge +general showing off. The ride in the train from New Haven to New York is +the true portrait of a crowd. Crowds of soaps and patent medicines +straining on trees and signboard out of the gentle fields <a name="Page_288" id="Page_288"></a>toward crowds +of men, culminating at last in Woodlawn Cemetery, where the marble +signposts of death flaunt themselves. Oblivion itself is advertised, and +the end of the show of a show world is placarded on our graves. Men buy +space in papers for cards, and bits of country scenery by the great +railroads to put up signboards, and they spend money and make constant +efforts to advertise that they are alive, and then they build expensive +monuments to advertise that they are dead....</p> + +<p>The same craving for piled-up appearances is brought to bear by crowds +upon their arts. Even a gentle soul like Paderewski, full of a personal +and strange beauty that he could lend to everything he touched, finds +himself swept out of himself at last by the huge undertow of crowds. +Scarcely a season but his playing has become worn down at the end of it +into shrieks and hushes. Have I not watched him at the end of a tour, +when, one audience after the other, those huge Svengalis had hypnotized +him—thundering his very subtleties at them, hour after hour, in +Carnegie Hall? One could only wonder what had happened, sit by +helplessly, watch the crowd—thousands of headlong human beings lunging +their souls and their bodies through the music, weeping, gasping, +huzzaing, and clapping to one another. After every crash of new +crescendo, after every precipice of silence, they seemed to be crying, +"This is Soul! Oh, this is Soul!" The feeling of a vast audience holding +its breath, no matter why it does it or whether it ought to do it or +not, seems to have become almost a religious rite of itself. Vistas of +faces gallery after gallery hanging on a note, two or three thousand +souls suspended in space all on one tiny little ivory lever at the end +of one man's forefinger ... dim lights shining on them and soft +vibrations floating round them ... going to hear Paderewski play at the +end of his season was going to hear a crowd at a piano singing with its +own hands and having a kind of orgy with itself. One could only remember +that <a name="Page_289" id="Page_289"></a>there had been a Paderewski once who hypnotized and possessed his +audience by being hypnotized and possessed by his own music. One liked +to remember him—the Paderewski who was really an artist and who +performed the function of the artist showering imperiously his own +visions on the hearts of the people.</p> + +<p>And what is true in music one finds still truer in the other arts. One +keeps coming on it everywhere—the egotism of cities, the +self-complacency of the crowds swerving the finer and the truer artists +from their functions, making them sing in hoarse crowd-voices instead of +singing in their own and giving us themselves. Nearly all our acting has +been corroded by crowds. Some of us have been obliged almost to give up +going to the theatre except to very little ones, and we are wondering if +churches cannot possibly be made small enough to believe great things, +or if galleries cannot be arranged with few enough people in them to +allow us great paintings, or if there will not be an author so well +known to a few men that he will live forever, or if some newspaper will +not yet be great enough to advertise that it has a circulation small +enough to tell the truth.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2> + +<h3>LETTING THE CROWD HAVE PEOPLE IN IT</h3> + + +<p>So we face the issue.</p> + +<p>Nothing beautiful can be accomplished in a crowd civilization, by the +crowd for the crowd, unless the crowd is beautiful. No man who is +engaged in looking under the lives about him, who wishes to face the +facts of these lives as they are lived to-day, will find himself able to +avoid this last and most important fact in the history of the world—the +fact that, whatever it may mean, or whether it is for better or worse, +the world has staked all that it is and has been, and all that it is +capable of being, on the one supreme issue, "How can the crowd be made +beautiful?"</p> + +<p>The answer to this question involves two difficulties: (1) A crowd +cannot make itself beautiful. (2) A crowd will not let any one else make +it beautiful.</p> + +<p>The men who have been on the whole the most eager democrats of +history—the real-idealists—the men who love the crowd and the +beautiful too, and who can have no honest or human pleasure in either of +them except as they are being drawn together, are obliged to admit that +living in a democratic country, a country where politics and æsthetics +can no longer be kept apart, is an ordeal that can only be faced a large +part of the time with heavy hearts. We are obliged to admit that it is a +country where paintings have little but the Constitution of the United +States wrought into them; where sculpture is voted and paid for by the +common people; where music is composed for majorities; where poetry is +sung to a circulation; where literature itself is scaled <a name="Page_291" id="Page_291"></a>to +subscription lists; where all the creators of the True and the Beautiful +and the Good may be seen almost any day tramping the tableland of the +average man, fed by the average man, allowed to live by the average man, +plodding along with weary and dusty steps to the average man's +forgetfulness. And, indeed, it is not the least trait of this same +average man that he forgets, that he is forgotten, that his slaves are +forgotten, that the world remembers only those who have been his +masters.</p> + +<p>On the other hand, the literature of finding fault with the average man +(which is what the larger part of our more ambitious literature really +is) is not a kind of literature that can do anything to mend matters. +The art of finding fault with the average man, with the fact that the +world is made convenient for him, is inferior art because it is helpless +art. The world is made convenient for the average man because it has to +be, to get him to live in it; and if the world were not made convenient +for him, the man of genius would find living with him a great deal more +uncomfortable than he does. He would not even be allowed the comfort of +saying how uncomfortable. The world belongs to the average man, and, +excepting the stars and other things that are too big to belong to him, +the moment the average man deserves anything better in it or more +beautiful in it than he is getting, some man of genius rises by his +side, in spite of him, and claims it for him. Then he slowly claims it +for himself. The last thing to do, to make the world a good place for +the average man, would be to make it a world with nothing but average +men in it. If it is the ideal of democracy that there shall be a slow +massive lifting, a grading up of all things at once; that whatever is +highest in the true and the beautiful, and whatever is lowest in them +shall be graded down and graded up to the middle height of human life, +where the greatest numbers shall make their home and live upon it; if +the ideal of democracy is tableland—that is—mountains for +every<a name="Page_292" id="Page_292"></a>body—a few mountains must be kept on hand to make tableland out +of.</p> + +<p>Two solutions, then, of a crowd civilization—having the extraordinary +men crowded out of it as a convenience to the average ones, and having +the average men crowded out of it as a convenience to the extraordinary +ones—are equally impracticable.</p> + +<p>This brings us to the horns of our dilemma. If the crowd cannot be made +beautiful by itself, and if the crowd will not allow itself to be made +beautiful by any one else, the crowd can only be made beautiful by a man +who lives so great a life in it that he can make a crowd beautiful +whether it allows him to or not.</p> + +<p>When this man is born to us and looks out on the conditions around him, +he will find that to be born in a crowd civilization is to be born in a +civilization, first, in which every man can do as he pleases; second, in +which nobody does. Every man is given by the Government absolute +freedom; and when it has given him absolute freedom the Government says +to him, "Now if you can get enough other men, with their absolute +freedom, to put their absolute freedom with your absolute freedom, you +can use your absolute freedom in any way you want." Democracy, seeking +to free a man from being a slave to one master, has simply increased the +number of masters a man shall have. He is hemmed in with crowds of +masters. He cannot see his master's huge amorphous face. He cannot go to +his master and reason with him. He cannot even plead with him. You can +cry your heart out to one of these modern ballot-boxes. You have but one +ballot. They will not count tears. The ultimate question in a crowd +civilization becomes, not "What does a thing mean?" or "What is it +worth?" but "How much is there of it?" "If thou art a great man," says +civilization, "get thou a crowd for thy greatness. Then come with thy +crowd and we will deal with thee. It shall be even as thou wilt." <a name="Page_293" id="Page_293"></a>The +pressure has become so great, as is obvious on every side, that men who +are of small or ordinary calibre can only be more pressed by it. They +are pressed smaller and smaller—the more they are civilized, the +smaller they are pressed; and we are being daily brought face to face +with the fact that the one solution a crowd civilization can have for +the evil of being a crowd civilization is the man in the crowd who can +withstand the pressure of the crowd; that is to say, the one solution of +a crowd civilization is the great-man solution—a solution which is none +the less true because by name, at least, it leaves most of us out or +because it is so familiar that we have forgotten it. The one method by +which a crowd can be freed and can be made to realize itself is the +great-man method—the method of crucifying and worshipping great men, +until by crucifying and worshipping great men enough, inch by inch, and +era by era, it is lifted to greatness itself.</p> + +<p>Not very many years ago, certain great and good men, who, at the cost of +infinite pains, were standing at the time on a safe and lofty rock +protected from the fury of their kind by the fury of the sea, contrived +to say to the older nations of the earth, "All men are created equal." +It is a thing to be borne in mind, that if these men, who declared that +all men were created equal, had not been some several hundred per cent. +better men than the men they said they were created equal to, it would +not have made any difference to us or to any one else whether they had +said that all men were created equal or not, or whether the Republic had +ever been started or not, in which every man, for hundreds of years, +should look up to these men and worship them as the kind of men that +every man in America was free to try to be equal to. A civilization by +numbers, a crowd civilization, if it had not been started by heroes, +could never have been started at all. Shall this civilization attempt to +live by the crowd principle, without men in it who are living by the +hero principle? On our <a name="Page_294" id="Page_294"></a>answer to this question hangs the question +whether this civilization, with all its crowds, shall stand or fall +among the civilizations of the earth. The main difference between the +heroes of Plymouth Rock, the heroes who proclaimed freedom in 1776, and +the heroes who must contrive to proclaim freedom now, is that tyranny +now is crowding around the Rock, and climbing up on the Rock, +eighty-seven million strong, and that tyranny then was a half-idiot king +three thousand miles away.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>We know or think we know, some of us—at least we have taken a certain +joy in working it out in our minds, and live with it every day—how +people in crowds are going to be beautiful by and by.</p> + +<p>The difficulty of being beautiful now, I have tried to express. It seems +better to express, if possible, what a difficulty is before trying to +meet it.</p> + +<p>And now we would like to try to meet it. How can we determine what is +the most practical and natural way for crowds of people to try to be +beautiful now?</p> + +<p>It would seem to be a matter of crowd psychology, of crowd technique, +and of determining how human nature works.</p> + +<p>All thoughtful people are agreed as to the aim.</p> + +<p>Everything turns on the method.</p> + +<p>In the following chapters we will try to consider the technique of being +beautiful in crowds.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295"></a>BOOK FOUR</h2> + +<h3>CROWDS AND HEROES</h3> + + +<p>TO WALT WHITMAN</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"><i> +<span>"And I saw the free souls of poets,<br /></span> +<span>The loftiest bards of all ages strode before me<br /></span> +<span>Strange large men, long unwaked, undisclosed, were disclosed to me<br /></span> +<span>... O my rapt verse, my call, mock me not!<br /></span> +<span>... I will not be outfaced by irrational things,<br /></span> +<span>I will penetrate what is sarcastic upon me,<br /></span> +<span>I will make cities and civilizations defer to me<br /></span> +<span>This is what I have learnt from America—<br /></span></i> +</div><div class="stanza"><i> +<span>I will confront these shows of the day and night<br /></span> +<span>I will know if I am to be less than they,<br /></span> +<span>I will see if I am not as majestic as they,<br /></span> +<span>I will see if I am not as subtle and real as they,<br /></span> +<span>I will see if I have no meaning while the houses and<br /></span> +<span class="i4">ships have meaning,<br /></span></i> +</div><div class="stanza"><i> +<span>... I am for those that have never been mastered,<br /></span> +<span>For men and women whose tempers have never been mastered,<br /></span> +<span>For those whom laws, theories, conventions can never master.<br /></span></i> +</div><div class="stanza"><i> +<span>I am for those who walk abreast of the whole earth<br /></span> +<span>Who inaugurate one to inaugurate all."<br /></span></i> +</div></div> + + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296"></a><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297"></a>CHAPTER I</h2> + +<h3>THE SOCIALIST AND THE HERO</h3> + + +<p>I was spending a little time not long ago with a man of singularly +devoted and noble spirit who had dedicated his life and his fortune to +the Socialist movement. We had had several talks before, and always with +a little flurry at first of hopefulness toward one another's ideas. We +both felt that the other, for a mere Socialist or for a mere +Individualist, was really rather reasonable. We admitted great tracts of +things to one another, and we always felt as if by this one next +argument, perchance, or by one further illustration, we would convince +the other and rescue him like a brand from the burning.</p> + +<p>The last time I saw him he started in at once at the station as we +climbed up into the car by telling me what he was doing. He was studying +up the heroes of the American Revolution, and was writing something to +show that they were not really heroes after all. All manner of things +were the matter with them. They had always troubled him, he said. He +knew there was something wrong, and he was glad to have the matter +settled. He said he did not, and never had believed in heroes, and +thought they did a great deal of harm—even dead ones. Heroes, he said, +always deceived the people. They kept people from seeing that nothing +could be done in our modern society by any one man. Only crowds could do +things, he intimated—each man, like one little wave on the world, +wavering up to the shore and dying away.</p> + +<p>As the evening wore on our conversation became more concrete, and I +began to drag in, of course, every now and then, naturally, an inspired +or semi-inspired millionaire or so.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298"></a>I cannot say that these gentlemen were received with enthusiasm.</p> + +<p>Finally, I turned on him. "What is it that makes you so angry (and +nearly all the Socialists) every time you hear something good, something +you cannot deny is good, about a successful business man? If I brought a +row of inspired millionaires, say ten or twelve of them one after the +other, into your library this minute, you would get hotter and hotter +with every one, wouldn't you? You would scarcely speak to me."</p> + +<p>—— intimated that he was afraid I was deceived; he was afraid that I +was going about deceiving other people about its being possible for mere +individual men to be good; he was afraid I was doing a great deal of +damage.</p> + +<p>He then confided to me that not so very long ago he dropped in one +Monday morning into his guest-chamber just after his guest had gone and +found a copy of "Inspired Millionaires," which his guest had obviously +been reading over Sunday, lying on the little reading-table at the head +of the bed.</p> + +<p>He said that he took the book back to his library, took out two or three +encyclopædias from the shelf in the corner, put my inspired millionaires +in behind them, put the encyclopædias back, and that they had been there +to this day.</p> + +<p>With this very generous and kindly introduction we went on to a frank +talk on the general attitude of Socialists toward the instinct of +hero-worship in human nature.</p> + +<p>A Socialist had said only a few days before, speaking of a certain +municipal movement in which the people were interested, that he thought +it really had a very good chance to succeed "if only the heroes could be +staved off a little longer." He deprecated the almost incurable idea +people seemed to have that nothing could ever be done in this world +without being all mixed up with heroes.</p> + +<p>My mind kept recurring in a perplexed way to this remark for a few days +after I had heard it, and I soon came on the fol<a name="Page_299" id="Page_299"></a>lowing letter from a +prominent Socialist which had been read at a dinner the night before:</p> + +<blockquote><p>"I am glad to join with others of my comrades in conveying + greetings to Comrade Cahan on the occasion of the fiftieth + anniversary of his birth and in recognition of the eminent + services that he has rendered in the Socialist movement.</p> + +<p> "Yet my gladness is not untinged with a certain note of + apprehension lest in expressing so conspicuously our esteem of + an honoured comrade we obscure the broader scene which, if + equally illumined, would disclose tens of thousands of other + comrades, labouring with equal devotion, and each no less + worthy of praise....</p> + +<p> "In our rejoicing over the services of Comrade Cahan let us + not forget that the facilities that he and that each of us + enjoy are the products of thousands of other men and women, + and sometimes of children too.</p> + +<p> "In our rejoicing let us recall that we cannot safely assume + that any comrade's services to the movement have been greater + than the movement's services to him; that we are but + fellow-workers together, deriving help and perhaps inspiration + one from another and each from all.</p> + +<p> "In our rejoicing let us place the emphasis rather upon the + services of the many to each, than upon the services of any + one of the many."</p></blockquote> + +<p>I have not quoted from this letter because I disagree with the idea in +it. I am ready to admit that though the idea is a somewhat dampening one +perhaps for a banquet, that it is true and important.</p> + +<p>What I object to in the letter is the Fear in it.</p> + +<p>In spite of the fineness and truth of the motive that lies, I know, +underneath every line, the letter is baleful, sinister, and weary.</p> + +<p>I accuse the letter of being, in a kind of nobly sick way, visionary, +unpractical, and socially destructive.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300"></a>I would heartily agree with the writer of the letter about the quality +of many heroes, possibly about most heroes. I would agree in a large +measure that the heroes the crowds choose are the wrong ones.</p> + +<p>But there is a great difference between his belief and mine as to our +practical working policy in getting the things for crowds that we both +want for them. It seems to me that he does not believe in crowds. He is +filled with fear that they would select the wrong heroes. He says they +must not have heroes, or must be allowed as few as possible.</p> + +<p>I believe in crowds, and I believe that the more they have the +hero-habit, the more heroes they have to compare and select from, the +finer, longer, and truer heroes they will select, the more deeply, +truly, and concretely the crowds will think, and the more nobly they +will express themselves.</p> + +<p>But the great argument for the hero as a social method is that the crowd +in a clumsy, wistful way, deep down in its heart, in the long run, loves +the beautiful. Appealing to the crowd's ideal of the beautiful in +conduct, its sense of the heroic, or semi-heroic, is the only practical, +hard-headed understanding way of getting out of the crowd, for the +crowd, what the crowd wants.</p> + +<p>I saw the other day in Boston several thousand schoolboys in the street +keeping step. It was a band that held them together. A band is a +practical thing.</p> + +<p>Is it not about time, in our dreary, drab, listless procession of +economics, stringing helplessly across the world, that we have a band of +music? What economics needs now is a march.</p> + +<p>We have to-day a thousand men who can tell people what to do where we +have one who can touch the music, the dance, the hurrah, the cry, the +worship in them, and make them want to do something. The hero is the man +who makes people want to do something, and strangely and subtly, all +through the blood, while they watch him, he makes them believe they can.</p> + +<p>It is socially destructive to throw away the overpowering instinct of +human nature which we have called hero-worship.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301"></a>CHAPTER II</h2> + +<h3>THE CROWD AND THE HERO</h3> + + +<p>But it is not only socially destructive. It is dumb and helpless for +crowds to try to get on without heroes. Big events and big men are crowd +expressions. Heroes, World Fairs, and Titanic disasters are crowd words, +the crowd's way of seeing and saying things.</p> + +<p>Crowds think in great men, or they think in simple, big, broadly drawn +events, or words of one syllable, like coal strikes.</p> + +<p>A whole world works through to an entirely new idea, the idea that +England is not necessarily impregnable, in the Boer war. And we see +England, by way of South Africa, searching her own heart. The Meat +Trust, by raising prices for a few trial weeks, makes half a nation +think its way over into vegetarianism or semi-vegetarianism.</p> + +<p>In the American war with Spain modern thought attacked the last pathetic +citadel in modern life of polite illusion, of lie-poetry, and in that +one little flash of war between the Spain spirit and the American +spirit, in our modern world, the nations got their final and conclusive +sense of what the Spanish civilization really was, of the old Don +Quixote thinking, of the delightful, brave, courtly blindness, of the +world's last stronghold of pomposity, of vague, empty prettiness, of +talking grand and shooting crooked.</p> + +<p>Japan and Russia fight with guns, but the real fight is not between +their guns, but between two great national conceptions of human life. +Like two vast national searchlights we saw them turned on each other, +two huge, grim, naked civilizations, and now in an awful light and roar, +and now in stately <a name="Page_302" id="Page_302"></a>sudden silence, while we all looked on, all +breathless and concentrated, we saw them, as on some strange vast stage +of the world, all lit up, exposed, penetrated by the minds of men +forever. While they fought before us we saw the last two thousand years +flash up once more and fade away, and then the next two thousand years +on its slide, with one click before our faces was fastened into place.</p> + +<p>Men see great spiritual conceptions or ideals for a world when the great +ideals are dramatized, when they stalk out before us, are acted out +before our eyes by mighty nations. Before the stage we sit silently and +think and watch the ideals of a world, the souls of the nations +struggling together, and as we watch we discover our souls for +ourselves, we define our ideals for ourselves. We make up our minds. We +see what we want. We begin to live.</p> + +<p>I have come to believe that the hero, in the same way, is the common +man's desire and prayer writ large. It is his way of keeping it +refreshed before him so that he sees it, recalls it, suns himself in it, +lifts up his life to it, every day.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303"></a>CHAPTER III</h2> + +<h3>THE CROWD AND THE AVERAGE PERSON</h3> + + +<p>To state still further my difference with the typical Socialist point of +view, as expressed in the letter from which I have quoted, I am obliged +to confess that I not only believe in having heroes on behalf of crowds, +but in having as a regular method of democracy little crowds of heroes, +or an aristocracy. In other words, I am a democrat. I believe that +crowds can produce, and are bound to produce by a natural crowd-process, +a real aristocracy—an aristocracy which will be truly aristocratic and +noble in spirit and action, and which will express the best ideas in the +best way that a crowd can have.</p> + +<p>The main business of a democracy is to find out which these people are +in it and put them where they will represent it. The trouble seems to +have been in democracies so far, that we find out who these people are a +generation too late. The great and rare moments of history have been +those in which we have found out who they were in time, as when we found +in America Abraham Lincoln, an unaristocratic-looking and ungainly man, +and saw suddenly that he was the first gentleman in the United States.</p> + +<p>The next great task of democracy is to determine the best means it can +of finding out who its aristocrats are, its all-men, and determining who +they are in time, men who have vision, courage, individuality, +imagination enough to face real things, and to know real people, and to +put real things and real people together.</p> + +<p>It is what an aristocracy in a democratic form of government is for, to +furnish imagination to crowds. A real aristocracy is the only +clear-headed, practical means a great nation can have <a name="Page_304" id="Page_304"></a>of distributing, +classifying, and digesting and evoking hordes of men and women. People +do not have imagination in hordes, and imagination is latent and +unorganized in masses of people. The crowd problem is the problem of +having leaders who can fertilize the imagination and organize the will +of crowds. Nothing but worship or great desire has ever been able to +focus a crowd, and only the great man, rich and various in his elements, +abounding, great as the crowd is great, can ever hope to do it.</p> + +<p>Every man in a crowd knows that he is or is in danger of being a mere +Me-man, or a mere class-man, and he knows that his neighbour is, and he +wishes to be in a world that is saved from his own mere me-ness and his +own mere classness. His hero-worship is his way of worshipping his +larger self. He communes with his possible or completed self, his self +of the best moments in the official great man or crowd man.</p> + +<p>The average man in a crowd does not want to be an average man, and the +last thing he wants is to have an average man to represent him. He wants +a man to represent him as he would like to be.</p> + +<p>He cannot express himself—his best self, in the State, to all the +others in the State, without a lifted-up man or crowd man to do it.</p> + +<p>It is as if he said—as if the average man said, "I want a certain sort +of world, I want to be able to point to a man, to a particular man, and +say, as I look at him and ask others to look at him, 'This is the sort +of world I want.'"</p> + +<p>Then everybody knows.</p> + +<p>The great world that lies in all men's hearts is expressed in miniature, +in the great man.</p> + +<p>Crowds speak in heroes.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>I have often heard Socialists wondering among themselves why a movement +that had so many fine insights and so many noble motives behind it had +produced so few artists.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305"></a>It has seemed to me that it might be because Socialists as a class, +speaking roughly, are generalizers. They do not see vividly and deeply +the universal in the particular, the universal in the individual, the +national in the local. They are convinced by counting, and are moved by +masses, and are prone to overlook the Spirit of the Little, the +immensity of the seed and of the individual. They are prone to look past +the next single thing to be done. They look past the next single man to +be fulfilled.</p> + +<p>They feel a bit superior to Individualists for the way they have of +seeing the universal in the particular, and of being picturesque and +personal.</p> + +<p>Socialists are not picturesque and personal. They do not think in +pictures.</p> + +<p>Then they wonder why they do not make more headway.</p> + +<p>Crowds and great men and children think in pictures.</p> + +<p>A hero pictures greatness to them. Then they want it for themselves.</p> + +<p>From the practical, political point of view of getting things for +crowds, perhaps the trouble lies, not in our common popular idea of +having heroes, but in the heroes. And perhaps the cure lies not in +abolishing heroes, but in making our heroes move on and in insisting on +more and better ones.</p> + +<p>Any man who looks may watch the crowd to-day making its heroes move on.</p> + +<p>If they do not move on, the crowd picks up the next hero at hand who is +moving—and drops them.</p> + +<p>One can watch in every civilized country to-day crowds picking up +heroes, comparing, sorting, selecting, seeing the ones that wear the +longest, and one by one taking the old ones down.</p> + +<p>The crowd takes a hero up in its huge rough hand, gazes through him at +the world, sees what it wants through him. Then it takes up another, and +then another.</p> + +<p>Heroes are crowd spy-glasses.</p> + +<p>Pierpont Morgan and Tom Mann for example.</p> + +<p>Pierpont Morgan is a typical American business man raised to the <sup>n</sup>th<a name="Page_306" id="Page_306"></a> +or hero power.</p> + +<p>The crowd thinks it is interesting to take up Pierpont Morgan, the Tom +Mann of the banks. It will see what it wants, through him.</p> + +<p>And the crowd thinks it is interesting to take up Tom Mann, too, the +Pierpont Morgan of the Trades Unions. It will see what it wants, through +him.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2> + +<h3>THE CROWD AND PIERPONT MORGAN</h3> + + +<p>One keeps turning back every now and then, in reading the "Life of +Pierpont Morgan," to the portrait which Carl Hovey has placed at the +beginning of the book. If one were to look at the portrait long enough, +one would not need to read the book. The portrait puts into a few square +inches of space what Mr. Hovey takes half an acre of paper for. And all +that he really does on the half-acre of paper is to bring back to one +again and again that set and focused look one sees in Mr. Morgan's +eyes—the remoteness, the silence, the amazing, dogged, implacable +concentration, and, when all is said, a certain terrible, inexplicable +blindness.</p> + +<p>The blindness keeps one looking again. One cannot quite believe it. The +portrait has something so strong, so almost noble and commanding, about +it that one cannot but stand back with one's little judgments and give +the man who can hurl together out of the bewilderment of the world a +personality like this, and fix it here—all in one small human face—the +benefit of the doubt. This is the way the crowd has always taken +Pierpont Morgan at first. The bare spectacle of a man so magnificently +set, so imperiously preoccupied, silences our judgments. It seems as if, +of course, he must be seeing things—things that we and others possibly +do not and cannot see. The blindness in the eyes is so complete and set +in such a full array that it acts at first on one almost like a kind of +vision. The eyes hold themselves like pictures of eyes, like little +walls, as if real eyes were in behind them. One wonders if there is any +one who could ever manage to break through them, fleck up little +<a name="Page_308" id="Page_308"></a>ordinary human things—personality, for instance, atmosphere, or +light—against them. If Shakespeare, whose folios he has, and Keats, +whose "Endymion" he owns, or Milton, whose "Paradise Lost" he keeps in +his safe, were all to assail him at once, were to bear down upon that +set look in Pierpont Morgan's eyes—try to get them to turn one side a +second and notice that they—Shakespeare and Milton and Keats—were +there, there would not be a flicker or shadow of movement. They are eyes +that are set like jaws, like magnificent spiritual muscles, on +Something. Neither do they reveal light or receive it.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>It will be some time before the crowd will find it possible to hand in +an account and render a full estimate of the value of the service that +Pierpont Morgan has rendered to our modern world; but the service has +been for the most part rendered now and while the world, in its mingled +dismay and gratitude at the way he has hammered it together, is +distributing its praise and blame, there are some of us who would like +to step one side a little and think quietly, if we may, not about what +Pierpont Morgan has done, which we admit duly, but about the blindness +in his eyes. It is Pierpont Morgan's blindness that interests the crowd +more than anything else about him interests them now. It is his +blindness—and the chance to find out just what it is that is making +people read his book. His blindness (if we can fix just what it is) is +the thing that we are going to make our next Pierpont Morgan out of. The +next Pierpont Morgan—the one the crowd is getting ready now—will be +made out of the things that this Pierpont Morgan did not see. What are +these things? We have been looking for the things in Carl Hovey's book, +peering in between the lines on every page, and turning up his +adjectives and looking under them, his adverbs and qualifications, his +shrewdness and carefulness for the things that Pierpont Morgan did not +see. Pierpont Morgan himself would not have tried to hide them, and +neither has his biog<a name="Page_309" id="Page_309"></a>rapher. His whole book breathes throughout with a +just-mindedness, a spirit of truth, a necessary and inevitable honesty, +which of itself is not the least testimony to the essential validity and +soundness of Morgan's career. Pierpont Morgan's attitude toward his +biography (if, in spite of his reticence, it became one of the +necessities—even one of the industrial necessities, of the world that +he should have one) was probably a good deal the attitude of Walt +Whitman when he told Traubel, "Whatever you do with me, don't prettify +me"; and if there were things in Mr. Morgan's career which he +imperturbably failed to see, Mr. Morgan himself would be the last man +not to try to help people to find out what they are. But living has been +to Mr. Morgan as it is to us (as I write these lines he is seventy-four +years old) a serious, bottomless business. He does not know which the +things are he has not seen. His eyes are magnificently set. They cannot +help us. We must do our own looking.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>If I were called upon to speak very quickly and without warning; if any +one suddenly expected me in my first sentence to hit the bull's-eye of +Mr. Morgan's blindness, I think I would try socialism. When the Emperor +William was giving himself the treat of talking with the man who runs, +or is supposed to run, the economics of a world, he found that he was +talking with a man who had not noticed socialism yet, and who was not +interested in it. Most people would probably have said that Morgan was +not interested in socialism enough; but there are very few people who +would not be as surprised as Emperor William was to know that he, +Pierpont Morgan, was not informed about the greatest and, to some of us, +the most threatening, omnipresent, and significant spectre in modern +industrial life.</p> + +<p>But when one thinks of it, and, when more particularly, one looks again +at that set look in his eyes, I cannot see how it could possibly have +been otherwise. If Morgan's eyes had <a name="Page_310" id="Page_310"></a>suddenly begun seeing all sorts of +human things—the bewildering welter of the individual minds, the +tragedy of the individual interests around him; if he had lost his +imperious sense of a whole—had tried to potter over and piece together, +like the good people and the wonderers, the innumerable entangled wires +of the world, his eyes might have been filled perhaps with the beautiful +and helpless light of the philosophers, with the fire of the prophets, +or with the gentle paralysis of the poets, but he never would have had +the courage to do the great work of his life—to turn down forever those +iron shutters on his eyes and smite a world together.</p> + +<p>There was one thing this poor, dizzied, scattered planet needed. With +its quarrelling and its peevish industries, its sick poets and its tired +religions, the one thing this planet needed was a Blow; it needed a man +that could hammer it together. To find fault with this man for not being +a seer, or to feel superior to him for not being an idealist, or to +heckle him for not being a sociologist, when here he was all the time +with this mighty frenzy or heat in him that could melt down the chaos of +a world while we looked, weld it to his will, and then lift his arm and +smite it, though all men said him nay—back into a world again—to +heckle over this man's not being a complete sociologist or professor is +not worthy of thoughtful and manful men.</p> + +<p>I cannot express it, but I can only declare, living as I do in a day +like this, that to me there is a kind of colossal naked poetry in what +Pierpont Morgan has done which I cannot but acknowledge with gratitude +and hope. Though there be in it, as in all massive things, a brutality +perhaps like that of the moving glaciers, like the making and boiling of +coal in the earth, like death, like childbirth, like the impersonality +of the sea, my imagination can never get past a kind of elemental, +almost heathen poetry or heathen-god poetry in Pierpont Morgan's Blow or +shock upon our world. There may be reason to doubt as to whether it is +to be called a heaven-poetry or a hell-poetry—<a name="Page_311" id="Page_311"></a>something so gaunt and +simple is there about it; but here we are with all our machines around +us, with our young, rough, fresh nations in the act of starting a great +civilization once more on this old and gentle earth, and I can only say +that poetry (though it be new, or different, or even a little terrible) +is the one thing that now, or in any other age, men begin great +civilizations with.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>I have tried to express the spirit of what Morgan's genius seized +unconsciously by the grim, resistless will of his age, has wrought into +his career.</p> + +<p>But in the background of my mind as I see Pierpont Morgan, there is +always the man who will take his place, and if I did not see the man +coming, and coming rapidly, who is to take Mr. Morgan's place, I admit +that Mr. Morgan himself would be a failure, a disaster, a closed wall at +the end of the world.</p> + +<p>No one man will take Mr. Morgan's place, but the typical man in the +group of men that will take his place will justify Mr. Morgan's work, by +taking this world in his hand and riveting his vision on where Morgan's +vision leaves off. As Morgan has fused railroads, iron, coal, +steamships, seas, and cities, the next industrial genius shall fuse the +spirits and the wills of men. The Individualists and the Socialists, the +aristocracies and democracies, the capitalists and the labourers shall +be welded together, shall be fused and transfused by the next Morgan +into their ultimate, inevitable, inextricable, mutual interests.</p> + +<p>The chief characteristic of the new industrial leader is coming to be +social imagination or the power of seeing the larger industrial values +in human gifts and efficiencies, the more human and intellectual +energies of workmen, the market value of their spirits, their +imaginations, and their good-will. The underpinning and Morganizing work +has been done; the power of instant decision which Mr. Morgan has had, +has been very often based on a lack of imagination about the things that +got in his <a name="Page_312" id="Page_312"></a>way; but the things that get in the way now, the big, +little-looking things—are the things on which the new and inspired +millionaires' imagination will find its skill and accumulate its power. +It is men's spirits that are now in the way; they have been piling up +and accumulating under Morgan's régime long enough, and it is now their +turn. Perhaps men's spirits have always been beyond Mr. Morgan, and +perhaps his imagination has been worked largely as a kind of cerebellum +imagination: it is a kind of imagination that sees related and +articulated the physical body of things, the grip on the material tools, +on the gigantic limbs of a world. The man who succeeds Mr. Morgan, and +for whom Mr. Morgan has made the world ready, is the man who has his +imagination in the upper part of his brain, and instead of doing things +by not seeing, and by not being seen, he will swing a light. He will be +himself in his own personality, a little of the nature of a searchlight, +and he will work the way a searchlight works, and will have his will +with things by seeing and lighting, by X-raying his way through them and +not by a kind of colossal world-butting, which is Morgan's way, both +eyes imperiously, implacably shut, his whole being all bent, all crowded +into his vast machine of men, his huge will lifted ... and excavating +blindly, furiously, as through some groping force he knew not, great +sub-cellars for a new heaven and new earth.</p> + +<p>The Crowd gets its heroes one at a time. Heroes are the Crowd's tools. +Some are dredges, some are telescopes. The Crowd, by a kind of +instinct—an oversoul or undersoul of which it knows not until +afterward, takes up each tool gropingly—sometimes even against its will +and against its conscience, uses it and drops it.</p> + +<p>Then it sees why, suddenly, it has used it.</p> + +<p>Then God hands it Another One.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313"></a>CHAPTER V</h2> + +<h3>THE CROWD AND TOM MANN</h3> + + +<p>I dropped into the London Opera House the other night to see Tom Mann +(the English Bill Heywood), another hero or crowd spy-glass that people +have taken up awhile—thousands of them—to see through to what they +really want. I wanted to hear him speak, and see, if I could, why the +crowd had taken him up, and what it was they were seeing through him.</p> + +<p>I am apt to take a dead set at liking a man I do not agree with, if I +can. It gives one a better start in understanding him and in not +agreeing with him to some purpose.</p> + +<p>But it was not necessary to try to like Tom Mann or to make arrangements +for being fair to him. He came up on the platform (it was at Mr. +Hyndmann's Socialist rally) in that fine manly glow of his of having +just come out of jail (and a jail, whatever else may be said about it, +is certainly a fine taking place to come out of—to blossom up out of, +like a night-blooming cereus before a vast, lighted-up, uproarious +audience). It is wonderful how becoming a jail is to some people! Had I +not seen Mrs. Pethick Lawrence with the flush of Old Bailey on her cheek +only a little while before in Albert Hall?</p> + +<p>If Tom Mann had had, like Elisha, that night, a fiery chariot at his +disposal, and had come down, landed plump out of heaven on his audience, +he could not have done half as well with it as he did with that little +gray, modest, demure Salford Jail the kind Home Secretary gave him.</p> + +<p>He tucked the jail under his arm, stood there silently <a name="Page_314" id="Page_314"></a>before us in a +blaze of light. Everybody clapped for five minutes.</p> + +<p>Then he waved the air into silence and began to speak. I found I had +come to hear a simple-minded, thoughtless, whole-hearted, noisy, +self-deceived, hopelessly sincere person. He was a mere huge pulse or +muscle of a man. All we could do was to watch him up there on the +platform (it was all so simple!) taking up the world before everybody in +his big hands and whacking on it with a great rapping and sounding +before us all, as if it were Tommy's own little drum mother gave him. He +stood there for some fifteen minutes, I should think, making it—making +the whole world rat-a-tat-tat to his music, to Tommy's own music, as if +it were the music of the spheres.</p> + +<p>Mr. Mann's gospel of hope for mankind seemed to be to have all the +workers of the world all at once refuse to work. Have the workers starve +and silence a planet, and take over and confiscate the properties and +plants of capital, dismiss the employers of all nations and run the +earth themselves.</p> + + +<hr /> + + +<p>I sat in silence. The audience about me broke out into wild, happy +appreciation.</p> + +<p>It acted as if it had been in the presence of a vision. It was as if, +while they sat there before Tom Mann, they had seen being made, being +hammered out before them, a new world.</p> + +<p>I rubbed my eyes.</p> + +<p>It seemed to me precisely like the old one. And all the trouble for +nothing. All the disaster, the proposed starvation, and panic for +nothing.</p> + +<p>There was one single possible difference in it.</p> + +<p>We had had before, Pierpont Morgan, the Tom Mann of the banks, riding +astride the planet, riding it out with us—with all the rest of us +helpless on it, holding on for dear life, riding out into the +Blackness.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315"></a>And now we were having instead, Tom Mann, the Pierpont Morgan of the +Trades Unions, riding astride the planet, riding it out with us, with +all the rest of us helpless on it, holding on for dear life, riding out +into the Blackness.</p> + +<p>Of course Pierpont Morgan and Tom Mann are both very useful as crowd +spy-glasses for us all to see what we want through.</p> + +<p>But is this what we want?</p> + +<p>Is it worth while to us, to the crowd, to all classes of us, to have our +world turned upside down so that we can be bullied on it by one set of +men instead of being bullied on it by another?</p> + +<p>This is the thing that the Crowd, as it takes up one hero after the +other, and looks at the world through him, is seeing next.</p> + +<p>Some of us have seen sooner than the others. But we are nearly all of us +seeing to-day. We have stood by now these many years through strikes and +rumours of strikes, and we have watched the railway hold-ups, the +Lawrence Mill strike, and the great English coal strike. We have seen, +in a kind of dumb, hopeful astonishment, everybody about us piling into +the fray, some fighting for the rights of labour and some for the rights +of capital, and we have kept wondering if possibly a little something +could not be done before long, possibly next year, in behalf of the +huge, battered, helpless Public, that dear amorphous old ladylike Person +doddering along the Main Street of the World, now being knocked down by +one side and now by the other. It has almost looked, some days, as if +both sides in the quarrel—Capital and Labour, really thought that the +Public ought not to expect to be allowed to be out in the streets at +all. Both sides in the contest are so sure they are right, and feel so +noble and Christian, that we know they will take care of themselves; but +the poor old Lady!—some of us wonder, in the turmoil of Civilization +and the scuffle of Christianity, what is to become of Her.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316"></a>Is it not about time that somebody appeared very soon now who will make +a stand once and for all in behalf of this Dear Old Lady-Like Person?</p> + +<p>Is it really true that no one has noticed Her and is really going to +stand up for Her—for the old gentle-hearted Planet as a Whole?</p> + +<p>We have our Tom Mann for the workers, and we have the Daily +Newspaper—the Tom Mann of Capital, but where is our Tom Mann for +Everybody? Where is the man who shall come boldly out to Her, into the +great crowded highway, where the bullies of wealth have tripped up her +feet, and the bullies of poverty have thrown mud in her face, where all +the little mean herds or classes one after the other hold Her up—the +scorners, and haters, and cowards, and fearers for themselves, fighting +as cowards always have to fight, in herds ... where is the man who is +going to climb up alone before the bullies of wealth and the bullies of +poverty, take his stand against them all—against both sides, and dare +them to touch the dear helpless old Lady again?</p> + +<p>When this man arises—this Tom Mann for Everybody—whether he slips up +into immortality out of the crowd at his feet, and stands up against +them in overalls or in a silk hat, he will take his stand in history as +a man beside whom Napoleon and Alexander the Great will look as toys in +the childhood of the world.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>We are living in a day when not only all competent-minded students of +affairs, but the crowd itself, the very passers-by in the streets, have +come to see that the very essence of the labour problem is the problem +of getting the classes to work together. And when the crowd watches the +labour leader and sees that he is not thinking correctly and cannot +think correctly of the other classes, of the consumers and the +employers, it drops him. Unless a leader has a class <a name="Page_317" id="Page_317"></a>consciousness that +is capable of thinking of the other classes—the consumers and +employers, so shrewdly and so close to the facts that the other classes, +the consumers and the employers, will be compelled to take him +seriously, tolerate him, welcome him, and coöperate with him, the crowd +has come at last to recognize promptly that he is only of temporary +importance as a leader. He is the by-product of one of the illusions of +labour. When the illusion goes he goes.</p> + +<p>Capital has been for some time developing its class consciousness. +Labour has lately been developing in a large degree a class +consciousness.</p> + +<p>The most striking aspect of the present moment is that at last, in the +history of the world, the Public is developing a class consciousness.</p> + +<p>The Crowd thinks.</p> + +<p>And as from day to day the Crowd thinks—holds up its little class +heroes, its Tom Manns and Pierpont Morgans, and sees its world through +them—it comes more and more to see implacably what it wants.</p> + +<p>It has been watching the Tom Mann, or Bill Heywood type of Labour +leader, for some time.</p> + +<p>There are certain general principles with regard to labour leaders that +the crowd has come to see by holding up its heroes and looking through +them, at what it wants. The first great principle is that no man needs +to be taken very seriously, as a competent leader of a great labour +movement who is merely thinking of the interest of his own class.</p> + +<p>The second general principle the Crowd has come to see, and to insist +upon—when it is appealed to (as it always is, in the long run) is that +no labour leader needs to be taken very seriously or regarded as very +dangerous or very useful—who believes in force.</p> + +<p>A labour leader who has such a poor idea that a hold-up is the only way +he can express it—the Crowd suspects. The only labour leaders that the +Crowd, or people as a whole, <a name="Page_318" id="Page_318"></a>take seriously are those that get things +by thinking and by making other people think.</p> + +<p>The Crowd wants to think.</p> + +<p>The Crowd wants to decide.</p> + +<p>And It has decided to decide by being made to think and not by being +knocked down.</p> + +<p>It is not precisely because the Crowd is not willing to be knocked down, +and has not shown itself to be over and over again, when it thought its +being knocked down might possibly help in a just cause.</p> + +<p>But it has not been through coal strikes, Industrial Workers of the +World, and syndicalist outbreaks for nothing.</p> + +<p>It is not the knocking down indulged in by labour and by capital that +the Crowd fears.</p> + +<p>It is the not-thinking.</p> + +<p>The Crowd has noticed that the knocking-down disposition and the +not-thinking disposition go together.</p> + +<p>The Crowd has watched Force and Force-people, and has seen what always +happens after a time.</p> + +<p>It has come to see that people who have to get things by force and not +by thinking will not be able to think of anything to do with the things +when they get them.</p> + +<p>So the Crowd does not want them to get them.</p> + +<p>The Crowd has learned all this even from the present owners of things. +It does not want to learn them all over again from new ones. The present +owners of things have got them half by force, and that is why they only +half understand how to run them.</p> + +<p>But they do half understand because they only half believe in force. The +crowd has seen them get their supremacy by the use of the +employment-hold-up, or by starving or threatening to starve the workers. +And now it sees the Syndicalist workers proposing to get control by +starving or threatening to starve everybody. Of the two, those who +propose to starve all the people to get their own way, and <a name="Page_319" id="Page_319"></a>those who +threaten to starve part of the people, it has seemed to the Crowd, +naturally, that those who only half believe in starving, and who only +starve a part of us, would be likely to be more intelligent as +world-runners.</p> + +<p>In other words (accepting for the sake of argument the worst possible +interpretation of the capitalist class), they have spent several years +in learning, and have already half learned that force in industry is +inefficient and cannot be made to work.</p> + +<p>Now when the Crowd sees the Syndicalists swinging their hats in a +hundred nations, with one big hoarse hurrah around a world, with five +minutes' experience, come rushing in, and propose to take up the +world—the whole world in two minutes more and run it in the same old +bygone way—the way that the capitalists are just giving up—by +force—it knows what it thinks.</p> + +<p>It thinks it will fight Class Syndicalism. It makes up its mind it will +fight Class Syndicalism with Crowd Syndicalism. It has decided that, in +the interests of all of us, of a crowd civilization, of what we call the +world or Crowd Syndicate, its industries should be controlled, not by +the owners and not by the workers, but by those men, whoever they are, +who can control them with the most skill and efficiency.</p> + +<p>The Crowd has come to see that the present owners—judging from current +events, and taking them as a whole, and speaking impersonally and +historically—have proved themselves, on the whole, incompetent to +control industries with skill and efficiency, because they have treated +labour as the natural enemy of capital and have quarrelled with it. It +sees that the present workers, acting as syndicates or otherwise, are +incompetent to own and control and manage industry because they propose +to treat capital as the natural enemy of the workers. There has been but +one conclusion possible. If Civilization or the Crowd Syndicate has a +right <a name="Page_320" id="Page_320"></a>to have its industries managed in the interests of all, and if +the present owners have proved themselves to be mentally incompetent to +control industry because they fight labour, and if the present labourers +as a class have proved themselves to be mentally incompetent because +they propose to fight capital, there is naturally but one question the +crowd syndicate is asking to-day, namely, <i>"Are there any mentally +competent business firms at all in the world, any firms whose owners and +labourers have thought out a way of not fighting?"</i> From the point of +view of the Crowd, the men who are competent, who know how to do their +work, do not have to lay down their tools and find out all over again +how to do their work. They know it and keep doing it.</p> + +<p>So the Crowd keeps coming back with the question, "Are there or are +there not any competent business establishments in our modern life? +Which are they, and where are they?" We want to know about them. We want +to study them. We want to focus the thought of the world on them and see +how they do it.</p> + +<p>The answering of this question is what the next Pierpont Morgan and the +next Tom Mann are for.</p> + +<p>What the next Pierpont Morgan is for is to find out for us who the +competent employers are—the employers who can get twice as much work +out of their labour as other employers do—recognize them, stand by them +and put up money on them. The next Pierpont Morgan will find out also +who the incompetent employers are, recognize them, stand out against +them, and unless they have brains enough or can get brains enough to +coöperate with their own workmen, refuse to lend money to them.</p> + +<p>This would make a banker a statesman, would make banking a great and +creative profession, shaping the destinies of civilizations, determining +with coins back and forth over a counter the prayers and the songs, the +very religions of nations, and swinging like a pendulum the fate of the +world.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321"></a>The first Pierpont Morgan has made himself, in a necessary transitional +movement, a hero in the business world because of a certain moral energy +there is in him. He has insisted in expressing his own character in +business. He would not send money to capitalists fighting capitalists, +and in a general way he has compelled capitalists to coöperate. The new +hero of the business world is going to compel capital not merely to +coöperate with capital, but to coöperate with labour and with the +public. And as Morgan compelled the railroads of the United States to +coöperate with one another by getting money for those that showed the +most genius for coöperation, and by not getting money for railroads that +showed less genius for it, so the next Pierpont Morgan will throw the +weight of his capital at critical times in favour of companies that show +the largest genius for building the mutual interests of capitalists, +employees, and the public inextricably into one body. He is going to +recognize as a banker that the most permanent, long-headed, practical, +and competent employers are those whose business genius is essentially +social genius, the genius for being human, for discovering the mutual +interests of men, and for making human machinery work.</p> + +<p>There is a great position ahead for this hero when he comes. And I have +seen in my mind to-day thousands of men, young and old in every +business, in every country of the world, pressing forward to get the +place.</p> + +<p>It is what the next Tom Mann is for—to find out for the Trades Unions +and for the public who the most competent workmen are in every line of +business, the workmen who are the least mechanical-minded, who have +shown the most brains in educating and being educated by their +employers, the most power in touching the imaginations of their +employers with their lives and with their work, and in coöperating with +them.</p> + +<p>When the next Tom Mann has searched out and found <a name="Page_322" id="Page_322"></a>the workmen in every +line of business who are capable of working with their superiors, and of +becoming more and more like them, he will make known to all other +workmen and to all other Trades Unions who these workmen are, and how +they have managed to do it. He will see that all Trades Unions are +informed, in night-schools and otherwise, how they have done it. He will +see that the principles, motives, and conditions that these men have +employed in making themselves more like their superiors, in making +themselves more and more fit to take the place of their superiors, in +making their work a daily, creative, spirited part of a great business, +are made so familiar to all Trades Unions that the policies of all our +labour organizations everywhere shall change and shall be infected with +a new spirit; and labouring men, instead of going to their shops the +world over, to spend nine hours a day in fighting the business in which +they are engaged, to spend nine hours a day in trying to get themselves +nothing to do, nine hours a day in getting nobody to want to employ +them, will work the way they would like to work, and the way they would +all work to-morrow morning if they knew the things about capital and +about labour that they have a right to know, and that only incompetent +employers and incompetent labor leaders year by year have kept them from +knowing.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323"></a>CHAPTER VI</h2> + +<h3>AN OPENING FOR THE NEXT PIERPONT MORGAN</h3> + + +<p>Christ said once, "He that is greatest among you let him be your +servant."</p> + +<p>Most people have taken it as if He had said:</p> + +<p>"He that is greatest among you let him be your valet.</p> + +<p>"He that is greatest among you let him be your butler.</p> + +<p>"He that is greatest among you let him be your hostler, porter, +footman."</p> + +<p>They cling to a mediæval Morality-Play, Servant-in-the-House idea, a +kind of head-waiter idea of what Christ meant.</p> + +<p>This seems to some of us a literal-minded, Western way of interpreting +an Oriental metaphor. We do not believe that Christ meant servanthood. +It seems to us that He meant something deeper, that He meant service; +that He might have said as well:</p> + +<p>"He that is greatest among you let him be your Duke of Wellington.</p> + +<p>"He that is greatest among you let him be your Lincoln.</p> + +<p>"He that is greatest among you let him be your Edison, your Marconi."</p> + +<p>At all events, it is extremely unlikely that He meant looking and acting +like a servant.</p> + +<p>He meant really being one, whether one looked like a servant or not. If +looking independent and being independent makes the service better, if +defying the appearance of a servant makes the service more efficient, we +believe the appearance should be defied.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324"></a>It troubles us when we see the Czar of Russia in the presence of the +civilized world, once a year taking such great pains to look like a +servant and to wash his peasants' feet.</p> + +<p>We are not willing, if we ever have any relations with the public, to be +Czars and look like servants.</p> + +<p>We would prefer to look like czars and be servants.</p> + +<p>We are inclined to believe that no man who is rendering his utmost +service to the crowd ever thinks in the ordinary servant sense of being +obedient to it. He is thinking of his service, and of its being the most +high and perfect and most complete thing that he can render—the thing +that he, out of all men, could think of and do, and that the crowd would +want him to do. He is busy in being obedient to the crowd, in fulfilling +daily its spirit, and not in taking orders from it.</p> + +<p>The reason that the larger number of men who go into politics to-day are +inefficient and do not get the things done that crowds want, is that +they are the kind of men who feel that they must talk and act like +servants. Even the most independent-looking and efficient men, who look +as if they really saw something and had something to give, often prove +disappointing. When one comes to know a man of this type more +intimately, one is apt to find that he is really a flunkey in his +thoughts; that he feels hired in his mind; that he is the valet of a +crowd, and often, too, the valet of some particular crowd—some little, +safe, shut-in crowd, party, or special interest that wants to own, or to +keep, or to take away a world.</p> + +<p>Whichever way to-day one looks, one finds this illusion as to what a +public servant really is, for the moment, corrupting our public life.</p> + +<p>But Christ did not say, "He that is greatest among you, let him be your +valet."</p> + +<p>The man who is greatest among us, neither in this age nor in any other, +ever will or ever can be a valet. He faces the crowd the way Christ +did—with his life, with his soul, with his God.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325"></a>He will not be afraid of the Crowd....</p> + +<p>He will be the Greatest, he will be a Servant.</p> + +<p>In the meantime—in the hour of the valets, only the little crowds, +speak. The People wait.</p> + +<p>The Crowd is dumb, massive, and silent. There seems to be no one in the +world to express it, to express its indomitable desire, its prayer, to +lay at last its huge, terrible, beautiful will upon the earth.</p> + +<p>It is the classes or little crowds—the little pulling and pushing, +helpless, lonely, mean, separated crowds—blind, hateful, and afraid, +who are running about trying to lay their little wills upon the earth.</p> + +<p>The Crowd waits and is not afraid.</p> + +<p>The little, separated crowds are afraid.</p> + +<p>The world, for the moment, is being interpreted, expressed, and managed +by People Who Are Afraid.</p> + +<p>It is the same in all the nations. In the coal strike in England one +finds the miners in the trades unions afraid to vote except in secret +because they are afraid of one another. One finds the miners' leaders +afraid of the men under them and of what they might do, so that they +have no policy except to fight. One finds the miners' leaders afraid of +the mine-managers and of what they might do, so that they have no policy +except to fight. One finds the mine-managers afraid of one another, +afraid of their stockholders, afraid of the miners' leaders, and afraid +of the newspapers and afraid of the Government.</p> + +<p>One finds the Government afraid of everybody.</p> + +<p>Everybody is afraid of the Government.</p> + +<p>Everybody fights because everybody is afraid.</p> + +<p>And everybody is afraid because everybody sees that it is mere crowds +that are running the world.</p> + +<p>There is another reason why everybody is afraid. Everybody is afraid +because everybody is shut in with some little separated crowd.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326"></a>People who are never Outside, who only see a little way out over the +edge of the little crowd in which they are penned up, are naturally +afraid.</p> + +<p>A world that is run by little shut-in crowds is necessarily a world that +is run by People Who Are Afraid.</p> + +<p>And so now we have come to the fulness of the time. The cities and the +nations, the prairies, and the seas and the mines, the very skies about +us can be seen by all to-day to be full of a dull groping and of a great +asking, "<i>Who Are The Men Who Are not Afraid?</i>"</p> + +<p>The moment these men appear who are not afraid, and it is seen by all +that they are not afraid, the world (and all the little blind, helpless +crowds in it) will be placed in their hands.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327"></a>CHAPTER VII</h2> + +<h3>AN OPENING FOR THE NEXT TOM MANN</h3> + + +<p>I am aware that Tom Mann is not a world figure. But he is a world type. +And as the editor of the <i>Syndicalist</i>, the leader of the most imposing +and revealing labour rally the world has seen, he is of universal +interest. Those of us who believe in crowds are deeply interested in +finding, recognizing, creating, and in seeing set free out of the ranks +of men the labour leaders who shall express the nobility and dignity of +modern labour, who shall express the bigness of spirit, the +brawny-heartedness, the composure, the common-sense, the patriotism, the +faithfulness and courage of the People.</p> + +<p>I indict Tom Mann before the bar of the world as not expressing the will +and the spirit of the People.</p> + +<p>I do this as a labouring man. I decline, because I spend my time daily +tracing out little crooked lines on paper with a pen, because I have +wrought day and night to make little patterns of ink and little +stretches of words reach men together round a world, because I have +sweat blood to believe, because in weariness and sorrow I have wrought +out at last my little faith for a world ... I decline not to be numbered +with the labourers I see in the streets. I claim my right before all men +this day, with my unbent body and with my unsoiled hands, to be enrolled +among the toilers of the earth.</p> + +<p>I speak as a labouring man. I say Tom Mann is incompetent as a true +leader of Labour.</p> + +<p>The first reason that he is incompetent is that he does not observe +facts. He merely observes facts that everybody can see, that everybody +has seen for years. He does not observe <a name="Page_328" id="Page_328"></a>the new and exceptional facts +about capital that only a few can see, the seeing of which, and the +seeing of which first, should alone ever constitute a man a true leader +in dealing with capital. He merely believes facts that nearly everybody +has caught up to believing—facts about human nature, about what works +in business. The crowd is not content with this. It has become +accustomed to seeing that the men who lead in business, and who make +others follow them, whether masters or workmen, are men who do it by +observing certain new and exceptional facts and acting upon them. If +these men cannot observe them, we have seen them create them. It is the +men who make new things true wherever they go that the crowd is coming +to recognize and to take seriously and permanently as the real leaders +of Labour and of Capital to-day. Tom Mann is incompetent as a labour +leader in dealing with capital to-day, because the things that he +proposes to do all turn on three facts which, looked at on the outside, +merely have or might be said to have a true look:</p> + +<p>First, employers are all alike;</p> + +<p>Second, none of them ever work;</p> + +<p>Third, they are all the enemies of Labour.</p> + +<p>Tom Mann is incompetent to grapple with Capital in behalf of Labour as +any great labour leader would have to do, because he has his facts wrong +about Capital, is simple-minded and rudimentary and undiscriminating +about the men with whom he deals, and sees them all alike.</p> + +<p>This is a poor beginning even for fighting with them.</p> + +<p>The second reason that Tom Mann is incompetent is, not that he has his +facts wrong and does not think, but that he carries not-thinking about +the employing class still further, has come to make a kind of religion +out of not-thinking about them. And instead of thinking how to make +labouring men think better than their employers think, and making them +think so well that they can crowd their way into their employers' +places, <a name="Page_329" id="Page_329"></a>he proposes to have labour get into their places without +thinking, and run a world without thinking. All that is necessary in +order to have workmen run the world, is to get workmen to stop working, +to stop thinking, and then as rapidly as possible to get everybody else +to stop thinking. Then the world will fall into their hands.</p> + +<p>The third reason that Tom Mann is incompetent is that he is unpractical +and full of scorn. And scorn, from the point of view of the +practical-minded man, is a sentimental and useless emotion. We have +learned that it almost always has to be used by a man who has his facts +wrong, that is, who does not see what he himself is really like, and who +has not noticed what other people are really like. No man who sees +himself as he is, feels at liberty to use scorn. And no man who sees +others as they are, sees any occasion for it. Tom Mann uses hate also, +and hate has been found to be, as directed toward classes of persons as +a means of getting them to do things, archaic and inefficient. It is not +quite bright. It need not be denied that hate and scorn both impress +some people, but they never seem to impress the people that see things +to do and who find ways to do them. And the people who use scorn are all +too narrow, too class-bound, and too self-regarding to do things in a +huge world problem like the present one.</p> + +<p>The fourth reason that Tom Mann as a labour leader is incompetent is +that he is afraid; he is afraid of capital, so afraid that he has to +fight it instead of grappling with it and coöperating with it. He is +afraid to believe in labour—so afraid that he takes orders from it +instead of seeing for it, and seeing ahead for it. He is afraid of his +employers' brains, of their having brains enough to understand and to to +be convinced as to the position of the labourer. He is afraid to believe +in his own brains, in his own brains being good enough to convince them.</p> + +<p>So he backs down and fights.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330"></a>If any reader who is interested to do so will kindly turn back at this +point a page or so, and read this chapter we have just gone through +together, over again, and if he will kindly, wherever it occurs, insert +for Tom Mann, labour leader, "D.A. Thomas, leader of mine-owners," he +will save much time for both of us, and he will kindly make one chapter +in this book which is already much too long, as good as two. Tom Mann +(unless he is changed) is about to be dropped as a typical modern leader +of Labour because he is afraid, and what he expresses in the labouring +class is its fear of Capital.</p> + +<p>And what D.A. Thomas expresses for Capital is its fear of Labour.</p> + +<p>There are thousands of capitalists and hundreds of thousands of labour +men who have something better they want expressed by their leaders, than +their Fear.</p> + +<p>Out of these men the new leaders will be chosen.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h2> + +<h3>THE MEN WHO LOOK</h3> + + +<p>During the recent coal strike in England, as at all times in the world, +heroes abounded.</p> + +<p>The trouble with most of us during the coal strike was not in our not +having heroes, but in our not being quite sure which they were.</p> + +<p>Davy McEwen, a miner who stood out against the whole countryside, and +went to his work every day in defiance of thousands of men on the hills +about him trying to stop him, and hundreds of thousands of men all over +England trying to scare him, was not a hero to Mr. Josiah Wedgewood. Mr. +Josiah Wedgewood one day in the height of the conflict, from his seat in +the House of Commons, rose in his might—and before the face of the +nation called Davy McEwen a traitor to his class.</p> + +<p>Sir Arthur Markham, one of the largest of the mine-owners, in the height +of the conflict between the mine-owners and the miners over wages, rose +in the House and declared that, in his opinion as a mine-owner, the +mine-owners were wrong and the miners were right, and that the +mine-owners could afford to pay better wages, and should yield to the +men.</p> + +<p>He was called a traitor to his class.</p> + +<p>At the last moment in the coal strike, when the Government had done its +best, and when the labour leaders still proposed to hold up England and +defy the Government until they got their way, Stephen Walsh, one of the +leaders of the miners, stood up in the face of a million miners and said +he would not go on with the others against the Government. "It is now +time for the <a name="Page_332" id="Page_332"></a>trades union men to return to work. We have done what we +could. Our citizenship should be higher than our trades unionship, and +with me, as long as I am a trades union man, it will be."</p> + +<p>He was called a traitor to his class.</p> + +<p>I am an unwilling and unfit person, as a sojourner and an American, to +take any position on the merits of the question as to the +disestablishment of the Church in Wales. But when I saw Bishop Gore +standing up and looking unblinkingly at facts or what he thought were +facts which he would rather not have seen and which were not on his +side, and when I saw him voting deliberately for the disestablishment of +his own Church, I greeted with joy, as if I had seen a cathedral, +another traitor to his class. I almost believe that a Church that could +produce and supply a man like this for a great nation looking through +every city and county year by year for men to go with it ... a Church +that could produce and keep producing Bishop Gores, would be entitled, +from a great nation to anything it liked.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>Men seem to be capable of three stages of courage. Courage is graded to +the man.</p> + +<p>There is the man who is so tired, or mechanical-minded, that he can only +think of himself.</p> + +<p>There is the man who is so tired that he can only think of his class.</p> + +<p>And there is the man that one has watched being moved over slowly from a +Me-man into a Class-man, who has begun to show the first faint +beginnings of being a Crowd-man.</p> + +<p>One man has courage for himself because he knows what he wants for +himself. Another has courage for his class because he knows what he +wants for his class. Another has courage for God and for the world +because there are things he sees that he wants for God and for the +world, and he sees them so clearly that he sees ways to get them.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333"></a>Lack of courage is a lack of vision or clear-headedness about what one +wants. I do not know, but I can only say that it has seemed to me that +Bishop Gore has a vision or clear-headedness about what he wants for +democracy, and that he uses his vision of what he wants for democracy to +true his vision for his class. Perhaps also he has a vision for his +class for the church people that it is for the interest church people to +be the class that is, out of all the world, supremely considerate, big, +leisurely, unfretful in its dealings with others. Perhaps also he has a +vision for himself and is clear-headed for himself, and has seen that +though the steeples fall about him, and though the altars go up in +smoke, he will keep the spirit of God still within his reach. The +gentleness, the grim hope for the world and the patience that built the +cathedrals, shall be in his heart day and night.</p> + +<p>I hold no brief for Bishop Gore.</p> + +<p>I know there must be others like him who voted on the other side.</p> + +<p>I know there are hundreds of thousands of employers who in their hearts +are like him. I know there are hundreds of thousands of men in the +trades unions who are like him.</p> + +<p>I am not sure that Bishop Gore, on the merits of the case, was right. I +wish this day I knew that he was wrong. I wish that I had spent the last +six months in fighting him, in fighting against his vision, that I might +be more free to-day to point to him with joy when I go up and down the +streets with men and look at the churches with men—the rows of +churches—and try to tell them what they are for. I have seen that the +cathedrals scattered about under the sky in England are but God's little +tools to make great cities on the earth, and to build softly out of the +hearts of men and women men who shall be cathedrals too—men buttressed +against the world, men who can stand alone.</p> + +<p>And it has seemed to me that Tom Mann and D.A. Thomas are incompetent as +leaders of industry because they do not <a name="Page_334" id="Page_334"></a>see that Labour is full of men +who can do things like this. I am proud, over in my country across the +sea, to be cousin to a nation that is still the headquarters—the +international citadel—of individualism upon the earth. The world knows +if England does not, that this kind of individualism is the most +characteristic, the most mighty and impregnable Dreadnought against that +England has produced.</p> + +<p>But England knows it too.</p> + +<p>I have seen thousands of men in England in their dull brown clothes pass +by me in the street who know and respond to the spirit that is in Bishop +Gore, and who have the courage to show it themselves. And the vision is +in them, but it is not waked. The moment it is waked we will have a new +world. It is because Tom Mann and D.A. Thomas are not leaders of men who +have this spirit that they are about to be dropped as typical leaders of +Labour and Capital in modern times. No man will be accepted by the Crowd +to-day as a competent leader of his class who is afraid of the other +classes. No man will be said to be a true leader, to be competent to +make things move in the world, who does not have three gears of courage: +courage for himself, courage for his own people, courage for other +people; and who does not dare to deal with other people as if they +really might be dealt with, after all, as fellow human beings capable of +acting like fellow human beings, capable of finer and of truer things, +of more manly and patient, more shrewdly generous, more far-sighted +things, than might appear at first.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>Was Mr. Josiah Wedgewood right when he called Davy McEwen a traitor to +his class?</p> + +<p>I do not want to judge Davy McEwen. Such things are matters of personal +interpretation, and of standing with a man face to face for a moment and +looking him in the eyes.</p> + +<p>Of course, if I had done this, I might have been tempted and despised +him.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335"></a>And I might now. The thing that I would have tried to look down through +to in him, if I had looked him in the eye, would have been something +like this: "Are you or are you not, Davy McEwen, standing out day after +day against your class because you can see less than your class sees, +because you are a mere me-man? Do you go by here grimly day by day, past +all these people lined up on the hills, sternly thinking of yourself?"</p> + +<p>If I found that this was true, as it might well be, and often is, I +would say that Davy McEwen was a traitor to his class. But if I found +Davy McEwen going past hills-ful of workmen because he had a larger, +fairer vision of what his class is than they had, if it proved to be +true that the crowd-man in him was keeping the class-man in place, and +holding true his vision for his class, I would say that it was his class +that was being a traitor to him; I would say that sooner or later his +class would see in some quiet day that it had been a traitor to him and +to the world, and a traitor to itself.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>If socialism and individualism cannot work together, and if (like the +masculine and feminine in spirit) each cannot make itself the means and +the method of fulfilling the other, there is no reason why either of +them should be fulfilled.</p> + +<p>In the meantime, there is a kind of self-will that seems to me, as its +shadow comes across my path, like God himself walking on the earth. And +I have seen it in the rich and I have seen it in the poor, and in people +who were being wrong and in people who were being right.</p> + +<p>It is like hearing great bells in the dark, singing in the solemn night +to so much as hear of a man somewhere, I might go and see, who stands +alone.</p> + +<p>If we want to stand together, let us begin with these men who can stand +alone.</p> + +<p>There is a sense in which Christ died on the cross because <a name="Page_336" id="Page_336"></a>He could +find at the time no other way of saying this. There is a sense in which +the decline of individualism is what he died for.</p> + +<p>Or we might call it the beginning of individualism. He died for the +principle of doing what he thought was right before anybody else did it, +and whether anybody else did it or not. The self-will of Jesus was half +the New Testament. He crucified himself, his mother, and a dozen +disciples that His own vision for all might be fulfilled. Socialism +itself, what is good in it, would not exist to-day if Jesus, the Christ, +had not practised socialism, in the best sense, by being an +individualist.</p> + +<p>If we are going to get to socialism by giving up individualism, by +abolishing heroes, why get to it?</p> + +<p>This more glorious self-will is not, of course, of a kind that all men +can expect to have. Most of us have not the vision that equips us, and +that gives us the right, to have it. But we can exact of our leaders +that they shall have it—that they shall see more for us than we can see +for ourselves, that they shall hold their vision up before us and let us +see it, and let us have the use of it, that they shall be true to us, +that they shall be the big brothers of the people.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337"></a>CHAPTER IX</h2> + +<h3>RULES FOR TELLING A HERO—WHEN ONE SEES ONE</h3> + + +<p>I have sometimes hoped that the modern world was about to produce at +last some man somewhere with a big-hearted, easy powerful mind, who +could protect the French Revolution. What we need most of all just now +in our present crisis is some man who could take up the French +Revolution without half trying, all the world looking on and wondering +softly how he dares to do it, and put it gently but firmly, and once for +all, up high somewhere where no one except geniuses, or at least the +very tallest-minded people, could ever again get at it.</p> + +<p>As it is, hardly a day passes but one sees new little nobodies +everywhere all about one reaching up without half thinking to it—to the +French Revolution—grabbing it calmly, and then using it deliberately +before our eyes as a general free-for-all analogy for anything that +comes into their heads. The Syndicalists and Industrial Workers of the +World have had the use of it last. The fact that the French Revolution +was French and that it worked fairly well a hundred years ago and with a +Louis Sixteenth sort of person, and as a kind of first rough sketch, or +draft of just what a revolution might be for once, and what it would +have to get over being afterward, as soon as possible, never seems to +have occurred to many people. One sees them rushing about the world +trying to get up exact duplicates, little fussy replicas of a +revolution, and of a kind of revolution that the real world put quietly +away in the attic seventy years ago. The real world, and all the men in +it who are facing real facts to-day, are getting what they want in +precisely the opposite of the <a name="Page_338" id="Page_338"></a>violent, theatrical French-Revolution +way. The fact that people are quite different now, and that it is more +effective and practical to get new ideas into their heads by keeping +their heads on than it is by taking their heads off—some of us seem to +have passed over. Living as we do in a world to-day with our new +explosives, our new antiseptics, our new biology, bacteriology, our new +storage batteries, our habit of getting everything we get and changing +everything we change by quietly and coolly looking at facts, the old +lumbering fashion of having a beautiful, showy, emotional revolution now +on one side, and then waiting to have another beautiful, showy, +emotional revolution on the other, each oscillating back and forth year +by year until people finally settle down, look at facts together, become +scientific, and see things as they are—has gone by. We have not time +for revolutions nowadays. They may be amusing, but they are not +practical, and evolution or revolution-without-knowing-it, or evolution +all together, suit us better. We are in a world in which we are seeing +men almost being made over before our eyes by the scientific habit of +thought—by the new, slow, imperious way we have come to have of making +ourselves look at things at which we would rather not look, until we see +them as they are. The man of scientific spirit, the quiet-minded, +implacable man who gets what he wants for himself and for others by +merely turning on the light, who makes a new world for us by just +showing us more plainly the one we really have, possesses the earth.</p> + +<p>There is no reason why revolutionists should feel that they are +particularly courageous, that they are the particularly high-minded, +romantic, adventurous, uncompromising and superior people. The real +adventure, the abiding emotion and wonder of living in the twentieth +century, lies in the high, patient, slow, quiet, silent enterprise of +seeing facts as they are, and without any fuss, and inexorably and with +good cheer, acting on them. The human race has a new temperament. The +way to fight now is to look, to look first, to look longest, and to +<a name="Page_339" id="Page_339"></a>look for the most people. The way we win a revolution or bring the +enemy to terms to-day is by battering the enemy with coöperation, with +understanding him and being understood by him, by being impregnably, +obstinately his brother, by piling up huge happy citadels of good-will, +of services rendered, services deserved, and services returned. We had +an idea once that the way to conquer a man was by hitting the outside of +him. We conquer men now by getting inside of them, and by getting inside +first and then dealing with outside things together.</p> + +<p>We see the inside. It is the modern note to see the inside, to attack +the essence, the spirit, and to work everything out from that.</p> + +<p>The modern method of being courageous and of defending what we want is a +kind of chemistry.</p> + +<p>Hercules is a bust now.</p> + +<p>We prefer still little women like Madame Curie, or a man like Sir Joseph +Lister, or like Wilbur Wright—the courage that faces material facts, +that deals with the elements of things, whether in a bottle, or in the +heaven above us, or in the earth, or in a man, or in an enemy.</p> + +<p>When the subject-matter is human nature and the courage we have to have +is the courage that can deal with people, we ask ourselves: "What are +the most difficult facts to face in people?"</p> + +<p>They are:</p> + +<blockquote><p>The facts about how they are different from us. The facts + about their being like us. The facts as to what we can do + about it.</p></blockquote> + +<p>So it has come to seem to me to be the greatest, the most typical and +difficult courage of modern life and of a crowd civilization, the +courage to look at actual facts in people and to see how the people can +be made to go together.</p> + +<p>A man's courage is his sense of identity.</p> + +<p>A man's courage toward nature, heat, cold, mountains, seas, <a name="Page_340" id="Page_340"></a>deserts, +chemistry, geology, is his sense of identity with God and of his right +to share with God in the creating of His world.</p> + +<p>His courage toward people is his sense of identity with men who seem +different from him, of all races, all classes, and all nations. He sees +the differences in their big relations alongside the resemblances. Then +he fits the differences into the resemblances and knows what to do.</p> + +<p>There is a statue of Sir George Livesey, one of the early presidents of +the South Metropolitan Gas Company, placed at the entrance of the works +where thousands of workmen day and night pass in and pass out.</p> + +<p>Sir George Livesey was the man who, in the early days of the South +Metropolitan Gas Company, stood out against all his workmen, for six +long weeks, to get the workmen to believe that they were as good as he +was. He believed that they were capable, or should be capable, of being +identified with him and working with him as partners, of sharing in the +direction of the business, of sharing in the profits, and coöperating +all day, every day, with him and the other partners, to make the +business a success.</p> + +<p>He did not propose to be locked up in a business, if he could help it, +with men who did not feel identified with him, who were not his +partners, or who did not want to be.</p> + +<p>He thought it was not good business to engage five thousand men and pay +them deliberately so much a day to fight his business on the inside of +the works. Being obliged to do his business as a fight against people +who helped him all the time, watching and outwitting them as if he were +dealing with five thousand intelligent gorillas instead of with fellow +human beings, did not interest him.</p> + +<p>He did not believe that the men themselves, in spite of the way they +talked, when they came to think of it, really enjoyed being intelligent +gorillas, any more than he did.</p> + +<p>The Trades Unions passed a resolution that it was safer for <a name="Page_341" id="Page_341"></a>the men in +dealing with Sir George Livesey to keep on being gorillas.</p> + +<p>Sir George Livesey proposed that they should all try being fellow human +beings and being in partnership for a little while and see how it +worked.</p> + +<p>The Trades Unions were afraid to let them try. Even if it worked very +well, and if it turned out that being men was safer, in this one +particular case, than being gorillas, it would set a bad example, the +Trades Unions thought. They took the ground that it was safer to have +all men treated alike, whether they were gorillas or not.</p> + +<p>They instructed the men to strike. The South Metropolitan Gas Company +was almost closed up, but it did not yield.</p> + +<p>Sir George Livesey took the ground that if the Trades Unions believed +that his men were not good enough for him, and that he was not good +enough for his men, he would wait until they did.</p> + +<p>The bronze statue of Sir George Livesey that the men have raised, and +that thousands of men go by every day, day after day, and look up to at +their work, was raised to a man who had stood out against his workmen +for weeks to prove that they were as good as he was, and could be +trusted to be loyal to him, and that he was as good as they were, and +that he could be trusted to be loyal to them.</p> + +<p>He had the courage to insist on being, whether anybody wanted it for the +moment or not, a new kind and new size of man. He preferred being +allowed to be a new kind and new size himself, and he preferred allowing +his men to be new kinds and new sizes of men, and he made a shrewd, +dogged guess that when they tried it they would like it. They were +merely afraid to be new sizes, as we all are at first.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>There are possibly three ways in which, in the confusion of our modern +world, one can tell a hero when one sees one.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342"></a>One knows a hero first by his originality. He invents a new kind and new +size of man. He finishes off one sample. There he is.</p> + +<p>The next thing one notices about this man (when he is invented) is his +humility. He never seems to feel—having invented himself—how original +he is. The more original people think he is, and the more they try to +set him one side as an exception, the more he resents it.</p> + +<p>And then, of course, the final way one knows a man is a hero is always +by his courage, by his masterful way of driving through, when he meets a +man, to his sense of identity with him.</p> + +<p>One always sees a hero going about quietly everywhere, treating every +other man as if he were a hero too.</p> + +<p>He gets so in the habit, from day to day (living with himself), of +believing in human nature, that when he finds himself suddenly up +against other people he cannot stop.</p> + +<p>It is not that he is deceived about the other people, though it might +seem so sometimes. He merely sees further into them and further for +them.</p> + +<p>Has he not invented himself? Is he not at this very moment a better kind +of man than he thought he could be once? Is he not going to be a better +kind to-morrow than he is now?</p> + +<p>So, quietly, he keeps on year by year and day by day, treating other +people as if they were, or were meant to be, the same kind of man that +he is, until they are.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343"></a>CHAPTER X</h2> + +<h3>WHO IS AFRAID?</h3> + + +<p>When Christ turned the other cheek, the last thing He would have wanted +any one to think was that He was backing down, or that He was merely +being a sweet, gentle, grieved person. He was inventing before +everybody, and before His enemies, promptly and with great presence of +mind, a new kind and new size of man. It was a more spirited, more +original, more unconquerable and bewildering way of fighting than +anybody had thought of before. To be suddenly in an enemy's presence a +new kind and new size of man—colossal, baffling—to turn into +invisibility before him, into intangibility, into another kind of being +before the enemy's eyes, so that he could not possibly tell what to do, +and so that none of the things that he had thought of to do would +work.... This is what Christ was doing, it seems to some of us, and it +is apparently the way He felt about it when He did it.</p> + +<p>Turning the other cheek is a kind of moral jiu-jitsu.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>The last thing that many of us who are interested in the modern world +really want is to have war, or fighting, stop. We glory in courage, in +the power of facing danger, in adventuresomeness of spirit, in every +single one of the qualities that always have made, and always will make, +every true man a fighter.</p> + +<p>We contend that fighting, as at present conducted, is based on fear and +lazy-mindedness; that it is lacking in the manlier <a name="Page_344" id="Page_344"></a>qualities, that the +biggest and newest kind of men are not willing to be in it, and that it +does not work.</p> + +<p>We would rather see the world abolished than to see war abolished.</p> + +<p>We want to see war brought up to date.</p> + +<p>The best way to fight was invented some two thousand years ago, and the +innocent, conventional persons who still believe in a kind of routine, +or humdrum, of shooting, who have not caught up with this +two-thousand-year-old invention, are about to be irrevocably displaced +in our modern life by men who have a livelier, more far-seeing, more +practical, more modern kind of courage. From this time on we have made +up our minds, we, the people of this world, that the only men we are +going to allow to fight for us are the men who can fight the way Christ +did.</p> + +<p>Men who have not the courage to fight the way Christ did are about to be +shut up by society; no one will harm them, of course, innocent, afraid +persons, who have to protect themselves with gunpowder, but they will +merely be set one side after this, where they will not be in a position +to spoil the fighting of the men who are not afraid.</p> + +<p>And who are the men who are not afraid?</p> + +<p>To search your enemy's heart, to amputate, as by a kind of spiritual +surgery, the very desire for fighting in him, to untangle his own life +before his eyes and suddenly make him see what it is he really wants, to +have him standing there quietly, radiantly disarmed, gentle-hearted, and +like a child before you; if you are able, Gentle Reader, or ever have +been able, to do this, you are not afraid! Why should any one ever have +supposed that it takes a backing down, giving up, teary, weak, and +grieved person to do this?</p> + +<p>Christ expressed His idea of courage very mildly when He said, in +effect: "Blessed are those who dare to be meek, for they shall inherit +the earth."</p> + +<p>It takes a bolder front to step up to a man one knows is one's <a name="Page_345" id="Page_345"></a>enemy +and coöperate with him than it does to do a little, simple, thoughtless, +outside thing like stepping up to him and knocking him down.</p> + +<p>Coöperating with a man in spite of him, moving over to where he is, +winning a victory over him by getting at his most rooted, most +protected, secret, instinctive feelings, literally striking him through +to the heart and making a new kind of man out of him before his own +eyes, by being a new kind of man to him, takes a bigger, stiller +courage, is a more exposed and dangerous thing to do than to fall on him +and fight him.</p> + +<p>It is also more practical. The one cool, practical, hard-headed way to +win a victory over an enemy is to do the thing that makes him the most +afraid. And there is no man people are more afraid of than the man who +stands up to them, quietly looks at them, and will not fight with them. +He is doing the one thing of all others to them that they would not dare +to do. They wonder what such a man thinks. If he dares stand up before +them and face them with nothing but thinking, what is he thinking?</p> + +<p>What he thinks, if it makes him able to do a thing like this, must have +some man-stuff in it. They prefer to wait and see what he thinks.</p> + +<p>Courage consists in not being afraid of one's own mind and of other +people's minds. When men become so afraid of one another's minds and of +their own minds that they cannot think, they have to back down and +fight. They are cowards.</p> + +<p>They do not know what they think.</p> + +<p>They do not know what they want.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346"></a>CHAPTER XI</h2> + +<h3>THE TECHNIQUE OF COURAGE</h3> + + +<p>I have never known a coward.</p> + +<p>I have known men who did cowardly things and who were capable of +cowardly thoughts, but I have never known a man who could be fairly and +finally classified as a coward.</p> + +<p>Courage is a process.</p> + +<p>If people are cowards it is because they are in a hurry.</p> + +<p>They have not taken the pains to see what they think.</p> + +<p>The man who has taken the time to think down through to what he really +wants and to what he is bound to get, is always (and sometimes very +suddenly and unexpectedly) a courageous man.</p> + +<p>It is the man who is half wondering whether he really wants what he +thinks he wants or not, or whether he can get it or not, who is a +coward.</p> + +<p>The coward is a half man. He is slovenly minded about himself. He gets +out of the hard work of seeing through himself, of driving on through +what he supposes he wants, to what he knows he wants.</p> + +<p>So, after all, it is a long, slow, patient pull, being a courageous man. +Few men have the nerve to take the time to attend to it.</p> + +<p>The first part of courage consists in all this hard work one has to put +in on one's soul day after day, and over and over again, doggedly, going +back to it. <i>What is it that I really want?</i></p> + +<p>The second, or more brilliant-looking part of courage, the courageous +act itself (like Roosevelt's when he is shot), which everybody notices, +is easy. The real courage is over then.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347"></a>Courage consists in seeing so clearly something that one wants to get +that one is more afraid of not getting it than one is of anything that +can get in the way.</p> + +<p>The first thing that society is ever able to do with the lowest type of +labouring man seems to be to get him to want something. It has to think +out ways of getting him waked up, of getting him to be decently selfish, +and to want something for himself. He only wants a little at first; he +wants something for himself to-day and he has courage for to-day. Then +perhaps he wants something for himself for to-morrow, or next week, or +next year, and he has courage for next week, or for next year. Then he +wants something for his family, or for his wife, and he has courage for +his family, or for his wife.</p> + +<p>Gradually he sees further and wants something for his class. His courage +mounts up by leaps and bounds when he is liberated into his class. Then +he discovers the implacable mutual interest of his class with the other +classes, and he thinks of things he wants for all the classes. He thinks +the classes together into a world, and becomes a man. He has courage for +the world.</p> + +<p>When men see, whether they are rich or poor, what they want, what they +believe they can get, they are not afraid.</p> + +<p>The next great work of the best employers is to get labour to want +enough. Labour is tired and mechanical-minded. The next work of the +better class of labourer, or the stronger kind of Trades Union, is to +get capital to want enough. Capital is tired, too. It does not see +really big, worth-while things that can be done with capital, and has no +courage for these things.</p> + +<p>The larger the range and the larger the variety of social desire the +greater the courage.</p> + +<p>The problem in modern industry is the arousing of the imaginations of +capitalists and labourers so that they see something that gives them +courage for themselves and for one another, and courage for the world.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348"></a>The world belongs to the men of vision—the men who are not afraid—the +men who see things that they have made up their minds to get.</p> + +<p>Who are the men to-day, in all walks of life, who want the most things +for the most people, and who have made up their minds to get them?</p> + +<p>There is just one man we will follow to-day—those of us who belong to +the crowd—the man who is alive all over, who is deeply and gloriously +covetous, the man who sees things he wants for himself, and who +therefore has courage for himself, and who sees things he wants and is +bound to get for other people, and who therefore has courage for other +people.</p> + +<p>This is the hardest kind of courage to have—courage for other people.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349"></a>CHAPTER XII</h2> + +<h3>THE MEN WHO WANT THINGS</h3> + + +<p>During the coal strike I took up my morning paper and read from a speech +by Vernon Hartshorn, the miners' leader: "In a week's time, by tying up +the railways and other means of transportation, we could so paralyze the +country that the government would come to us on their knees and beg us +to go to work on terms they are now flouting as impossible."</p> + +<p>During the dockers' strike I took up my morning paper and read Ben +Tillett's speech, at the meeting the day before, to fifty thousand +strikers on Tower Hill. "'I am going to ask you to join me in a prayer,' +Tillett said. 'Lord Devonport has contributed to the murder, by +starvation, of your children, your women, and your men. I am not going +to ask you to do it, but I am going to call on God to strike Lord +Devonport dead,' He asked those who were prepared to repeat the 'prayer' +to hold up their hands. Countless hands were held up, and cries: 'Strike +him doubly stone dead!' The men then repeated the following 'prayer', +word for word, after Tillett:</p> + +<blockquote><p>"'O God, strike Lord Devonport dead.'</p></blockquote> + +<p>"Afterward the strikers chanted the words: 'He shall die! He shall +die!'"</p> + +<p>There are times when it is very hard to have courage for other people.</p> + +<p>It is when one watches people doing cowardly things that one finds it +hardest to have courage for them.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350"></a>I felt the same way both mornings at first when I held my paper in my +hand and thought about what I had read, about the government's going +down on its knees, and about God's striking Lord Devonport dead.</p> + +<p>The first feeling was one of profound resentment, shame—a huge, +helpless, muddle-headed anger.</p> + +<p>I had not the slightest trace of courage for the miners; I did not see +how the government could have any courage for them. And I had no courage +for the dockers, or for what could be expected of the dockers. I did not +see how Lord Devonport could have any courage for them.</p> + +<p>I repeated their prayer to myself.</p> + +<p>The dockers were cowards. I was not going to try to sympathize with +them, or try to be reasonable about them. It was nothing that they were +desperate and had prayed. Was I not desperate too? Would not the very +thought that fifty thousand men could pray a prayer like that make any +man desperate? It was as if I had stood and heard fifty thousand beasts +roaring to their god.</p> + +<p>"They are desperate," I said to myself: "I will not take what they think +seriously. It does not matter what desperate people think."</p> + +<p>Then I waited a minute. "But I am desperate, too," I said; "I must not +take what I think seriously. It does not matter what desperate people +think."</p> + +<p>I thought about this a little, and drove it in.</p> + +<p>"What I think will matter more a little later, perhaps, when I get over +being desperate."</p> + +<p>"Perhaps what the dockers think will matter more a little later, too."</p> + +<p>In the meantime are not their scared and hateful opinions as good as my +scared and hateful opinions?</p> + +<p>The important and final opinions, the ones to be taken seriously, that +can be acted on, will be the opinions of those who get over being scared +and hateful first.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351"></a>Then I stood up for myself.</p> + +<p>I had a reason for being scared and hateful. They and their prayer drove +me to be scared and hateful.</p> + +<p>I thought again.</p> + +<p>Perhaps they had a reason, too.</p> + +<p>Then it all came over me. I became a human being all in a minute when I +thought of it.</p> + +<p>I became suddenly full of courage for the hateful dockers.</p> + +<p>I thought how much more discouraging it would be if they had not been +hateful at all.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>I do not imagine God was sorry when He heard those fifty thousand +dockers asking Him to strike Lord Devonport dead.</p> + +<p>Not that He would have approved of it.</p> + +<p>It was not the last word of wisdom or reasonableness. It was lacking in +beauty and distinction as a petition, as being just the right form of +prayer for those fifty thousand faultless dockers up on Tower Hill that +afternoon (the whole of London listening, in that shocked and proper way +that London has).</p> + +<p>But I have not lost all courage for the dockers who made it.</p> + +<p>They still want something! They still are men! They still stand up when +they speak to Heaven! There is some stuff in them yet! They make heaven +and earth ring to get a word with God!</p> + +<p>This all means something to God, probably.</p> + +<p>Perhaps it might mean something to us.</p> + +<p>We are superior persons, it is true. We do not pray the way they pray.</p> + +<p>We believe in being more self-controlled. We take our breakfasts +quietly, and with high collars and silk hats, and with gilt prayer-books +we go into the presence of our Maker. We believe in being calm and +reasonable.</p> + +<p>But if men who have not enough to eat are so half-dead and <a name="Page_352" id="Page_352"></a>so worthless +that they can feel calm and reasonable about it, and can always be +precisely right and always say precisely the right thing—if, with their +wives fainting in their arms and their babies crying for food, all that +those dockers had character enough to do, up on Tower Hill, was to make +a polite, smooth, Anglican prayer to God—a prayer like a kind of +blessing before not having any meat, and not that awful, fateful, husky +cry to Heaven, a roar or rending of their hearts up to the black and +empty sky—what would such men have been good for? What hope or courage +could any one have for them, for such men at such a time, if they would +not, if they could not, come thundering and breaking into His presence, +fifty thousand strong, to get what they want?</p> + +<p>I may not know God, but whatever else He is, I feel sure that He is not +a precise stickler-god, that He is not pompous about spiritual manners, +a huge, literal-minded, Proper Person, who cannot make allowances for +human nature, who cannot hear what humble, rough men like these, hewing +their vast desires for Him out of darkness, and out of little foolish +words, are trying to say to Him.</p> + +<p>And perhaps we, too, do not need to be literal-minded about a prayer +that we may hear, or that we may overhear, roaring its way up past our +smooth, beautiful lives rudely to Heaven.</p> + +<p>What is the gist of the prayer to God, and to us?</p> + +<p>What is it that the men are trying to say in this awful, flaming, +blackening metaphor of wishing Lord Devonport dead?</p> + +<p>The gist of it is that they mean to say, whether they are right or wrong +(like us, as we would say, whether we were right or wrong), they mean to +say that they have a right to live.</p> + +<p>In other words, the gist of it is that we are like them, and that they +are like us.</p> + +<p>I, too, in my hour of deepest trial, with no silk hat, with no gloves, +with no gilt prayer-book, as I should, have flashed out my will upon my +God. I, too, have cried with Paul, with Job, <a name="Page_353" id="Page_353"></a>across my sin—my sin that +very moment heaped up upon my lips—have broken wildly in upon that +still, white floor of Heaven!</p> + +<p>And when the dockers break up through, fling themselves upon their God, +what is it, after all, but another way of saying, "I am persuaded that +neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor +things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other +creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God...."</p> + +<p>It may have been wicked in the dockers to address God in this way, but +it would have been more wicked in them not to think He could understand.</p> + +<p>I believe, for one, that when Jacob wrestled with the angel, God looked +on and liked it.</p> + +<p>The angel was a mere representative at best, and Jacob was really +wrestling with God.</p> + +<p>And God knew it and liked it.</p> + +<p>Praying to strike Lord Devonport dead was the dockers' way of saying to +God that there was something on their minds that simply could not be +said.</p> + +<p>I can imagine that this would interest a God, a prayer like the dockers' +prayer, so spent, so desperate, so unreasonable, breaking through to +that still, white floor of Heaven!</p> + +<p>And it does seem as if, in our more humble, homely, and useful capacity +as fellow human beings, it might interest us.</p> + +<p>It seems as if, possibly, we might stop criticising people who pray +harder than we do, pointing out that wrestling with God is really rather +rude—as if we might stop and see what it means to God and what it means +to us, and what there is that we might do, you and I, oh, Gentle Reader, +to make it possible for the dockers on Tower Hill to be more polite, +perhaps, more polished, as it were, when they speak to God next time.</p> + +<p>Perhaps nothing the dockers could do in the way of being violent could +be more stupid and wicked than having all these <a name="Page_354" id="Page_354"></a>sleek, beautiful, +perfect people, twenty-six million of them, all expecting them not to be +violent.</p> + +<p>In my own quiet, gentle, implacable beauty of spirit, in my own ruthless +wisdom on a full stomach, I do not deny that I do most sternly +disapprove of the dockers and their violence.</p> + +<p>But it is better than nothing, thank God!</p> + +<p>They want something.</p> + +<p>It gives me something to hope for, and to have courage for, about +them—that they want something.</p> + +<p>Possibly if we could get them started wanting something, even some +little narrow and rather mean thing, like having enough to eat—possibly +they will go on to art galleries, to peace societies, and cathedrals +next, and to making very beautiful prayers (alas, Gentle Reader, how can +I say it?) like you—Heaven help us!—and like me!</p> + +<p>I would have but one objection to letting the dockers have their full +way, and to letting the control of the situation be put into their +hands.</p> + +<p>They do not hunger enough.</p> + +<p>They are merely hungering for themselves.</p> + +<p>This may be a reason for not letting the world get entirely into their +hands, but in the meantime we have every reason to be appreciative of +the good the dockers are doing (so far as it goes) in hungering for +themselves.</p> + +<p>It would be strange indeed if one could not tolerate in dockers a little +thing like this. Babies do it. It is the first decency in all of us. It +is the first condition of our knowing enough, or amounting to enough, to +ever hunger for any one else. Everybody has to make a beginning +somewhere. Even a Saint Francis, the man who hungers and thirsts for +righteousness, who rises to the heights of social-mindedness, who +hungers and thirsts for everybody, begins all alone, at the breast.</p> + +<p>Which is there of us who, if we had not begun our own hungering and +thirsting for righteousness, our tugging on God, <a name="Page_355" id="Page_355"></a>in this old, lonely, +preoccupied, selfish-looking way, would ever have grown up, would ever +have wanted enough things to belong to a Church of England, for +instance, or to a Congregational Home Missionary Society?</p> + +<p>It is true that the dockers are, for the moment (alas, fifty or sixty +years or so!), merely wanting things for themselves, or wanting things +for their own class. And so would we if we had been born, brought up, +and embedded in a society which allowed us so little for ourselves that +not growing up morally—keeping on over and over again, year after year, +just wanting things for ourselves, and not really being weaned yet—was +all that was left to us.</p> + +<p>There is really considerable spiritual truth in having enough to eat.</p> + +<p>Sometimes I have thought it would be not unhelpful, would make a little +ring of gentle-heartedness around us, some of us—those of us who live +protected lives and pray such rich, versatile prayers, if we would stop +and think what a docker would have to do, what arrangements a docker +would have to make before he could enjoy praying with us—falling back +into our beautiful, soft, luxurious wanting things for others.</p> + +<p>Possibly these arrangements, such as they are, are the ones the dockers +are trying to make with Lord Devonport now.</p> + +<p>The docker is trying to get through hungering for something to eat, to +arrange gradually to have his hungers move on.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356"></a>CHAPTER XIII</h2> + +<h3>MEN WHO GET THINGS</h3> + + +<p>All the virtues are hungers. A vice is the failure of desire. A vice is +a man's failure to have enough big hungers at hand, sternly within +reach, to control his little ones.</p> + +<p>A man who is doing wrong is essentially bored. He has let himself drop +into doing rows of half-things, or things which he can only half do. He +forgets, for the moment, what it really is that he wants, or possibly +that he wants anything. Then it is that the one little, mean Lonely +Hunger—a glass of liquor, a second piece of pie, another man's wife, or +a million dollars, runs away with him.</p> + +<p>When a man sins it is because his appetites fail him. Self-control lies +in maintaining checks and balances of desire, centripetals, and +centrifugals of desire. The worst thing that could happen to the world +would be to have it placed in the hands of men who only have a gift of +hungering for certain sorts of things, or hungering for certain classes +of people, or hungering for themselves.</p> + +<p>We do not want the man who is merely hungering for himself to rule the +world—not because we feel superior to him, but because a man who is +merely hungering for himself cannot be taken seriously as an authority +on worlds. People can take him seriously as an authority on his own +hunger. But what he thinks about everything beyond that point cannot be +taken seriously. What he thinks about how the world should be run, about +what other people want, what labour and capital want, cannot be taken +seriously.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_357" id="Page_357"></a>I will not yield place to any one in my sympathy with the dockers.</p> + +<p>I like to think that I too, given the same grandfathers, the same +sleeping rooms and neighbours, the same milk, the same tincture of +religion, would dare to do what they have done.</p> + +<p>But I cannot be content, as I take my stand by the dockers, with +sympathizing in general. I want to sympathize to the point.</p> + +<p>And on the practical side of what to do next in behalf of the dockers, +or of what to let them do, I find myself facing two facts:</p> + +<p>First, the dockers are desperate. I take their desperation as conclusive +and imperative. It must be obeyed.</p> + +<p>Second, I do not care what they think.</p> + +<p>What they think must not be obeyed. Men who are in the act of being +scared or hateful, whether it be for five minutes, jive months, or sixty +years, who have given up their courage for others, or for their enemies, +are not practical. What a man who despairs of everybody except himself +thinks, does not work and cannot be made to work. The fact that the +dockers have no courage about their employers may be largely the +employers' fault. It is largely the fault of society, of the churches, +the schools, the daily press. But the fact remains, and whichever side +in the contest has, or is able to have, first, the most courage for the +other side, whichever side wants the most for the other side, will be +the side that will get the most control.</p> + +<p>If Labour, in the form of syndicalism, wants to grasp the raw materials, +machinery, and management of modern industry out of the hands of the +capitalists and run the world, the one shrewd, invincible way for Labour +to do it is going to be to want more things for more people than +capitalists can want.</p> + +<p>The only people, to-day, who are going to be competent to run a world, +or who can get hold of even one end of it to try to run it, are going to +be the people who want a world, who have a habit, who may be said to be +almost in a rut, of wanting things all day, every day, for a world—men +who cannot keep <a name="Page_358" id="Page_358"></a>narrowed down very long at a time to wanting things for +themselves.</p> + +<p>There will be little need of our all falling into a panic, or all being +obliged to rely on policemen, or to call out troops to stave off an +uprising of the labour classes as long as the labour classes are merely +wanting things for themselves. It is the men who have the bigger hungers +who are getting the bigger sorts of things—things like worlds into +their hands. The me-man and the class-man, under our modern conditions, +are being more and more kept back and held under in the smaller places, +the me-places and class-places, by the men who want more things than +they can want, who lap over into wanting things for others.</p> + +<p>The me-man often may see what he wants clearly and may say what he +wants.</p> + +<p>But he does not get it. It is the class-man who gets it for him.</p> + +<p>The class-man may see what he wants for his class clearly and may say +what he wants.</p> + +<p>But he does not get it. It is the crowd-man who gets it for him.</p> + +<p>It is a little startling, the grim, brilliant, beautiful way that God +has worked it out!</p> + +<p>It is one of His usual paradoxes.</p> + +<p>The thing in a man that makes it possible for him to get things more +than other people can get them is his margin of unselfishness.</p> + +<p>He gets things by seeing with the thing that he wants all that lies +around it. With equal clearness he is seeing all the time the people and +the things that are in the way of what he wants; how the people look or +try to look, how they feel or try to make him think they feel, what they +believe and do not believe or can be made to believe; he sees what he +wants in a vast setting of what he cannot get with people, and of what +he can—in a huge moving picture of the interests of others.</p> + +<p>The man who, in fulfilling and making the most of himself, <a name="Page_359" id="Page_359"></a>can get +outside of himself into his class, who, in being a good class-man, can +overflow into being a man of the world, is the man who gets what he +wants.</p> + +<p>I am hopeful about Labour and Capital to-day because in the industrial +world, as at present constituted in our coöperative age, the men who can +get what they want, who get results out of other people, are the men who +have the largest, most sensitive outfits for wanting things for other +people.</p> + +<p>If there is one thing rather than another that fills one with courage +for the outlook of labouring men to-day it is the colossal failure Ben +Tillett makes in leading them in prayer.</p> + +<p>Even the dockers, perhaps the most casually employed, the most spent and +desperate class of Labour of all, only prayed Ben Tillet's prayer a +minute and they were sorry the day after.</p> + +<p>And it was Ben Tillett's prayer in the end that lost them their cause—a +prayer that filled all England on the next day with the rage of +Labour—that a man like Ben Tillett, with such a mean, scared, narrow +little prayer, should dare to represent Labour.</p> + +<p>In the same way, after the shooting in the Lawrence strike, when all +those men (Syndicalists) had streamed through the streets, showing off +before everybody their fine, brave-looking thoughtless, superficial, +guillotine feelings and their furious little banner, "No God and no +Master"—it did one good, only a day or so later, to see a vast crowd of +Lawrence workers, thirty thousand strong, tramping through the streets, +singing, with bands of music, and with banners, "In God we trust" and +"One is our Master, even Christ"—thousands of men who had never been +inside a church, thousands of men who could never have looked up a verse +in the Bible, still found themselves marching in a procession, snatching +up these old and pious mottoes and joining in hymns they did not know, +all to contradict, and to contradict thirty thousand strong, the idea +that the blood and froth, the fear and unbelief, of the Industrial +<a name="Page_360" id="Page_360"></a>Workers of the World represented or could ever be supposed to represent +for one moment the manhood and the courage, the faithfulness and (even +in the hour of their extremity) the quiet-heartedness, the human loyalty +and self-forgetfulness, the moral dignity of the American workingman.</p> + +<p>It cannot truly be said that the typical modern labouring man, whether +in America or England, is a coward; that he has no desire, no courage, +for any one except for himself and for his own class. Mr. O'Connor of +the Dockers' Organization in the East of Scotland, said at the time of +the strike of the dockers in London: "This kind of business of the +bureaucratic labour men in London, issuing orders for men to stop work +all over the country, is against the spirit of the trades unions of +England. It is a thing we cannot possibly stand. We have an agreement +with the employers, and we have no intention of breaking it."</p> + +<p>It cannot be said that the typical modern labourer is listening +seriously to the Syndicalist or to the Industrial Worker of the World +when he tells him that Labour alone can save itself, and that Labour +alone can save the world. He knows that any scheme of social and +industrial reform which leaves any class out, rich or poor, which does +not see that everybody is to blame, which does not see that everybody is +responsible, which does not arrange or begin to arrange opportunity and +expectation for every man and every degree and kind of man, and does not +do it just where that man is, and do it now, is superficial.</p> + +<p>If we are going to have a society that is for all of us, it will take +all of us, and all of us together, to make it. Mutual expectation alone +can make a great society. Mutual expectation, or courage for others, +persistently and patiently and flexibly applied—applied to details by +small men, applied to wholes by bigger ones—is going to be the next big +serious, unsentimental, practical industrial achievement. And I do not +believe that for sheer sentiment's sake we are going to begin by rooting +up millionaires and, with one glorious thoughtless sweep, saying, "We +will have a new world," without asking at least some of <a name="Page_361" id="Page_361"></a>the owners of +it to help, or at least letting them in on good behaviour. Nor are we +going to begin by rooting up trade unions and labour leaders.</p> + +<p>The great organizations of Capital in the world to-day are daily +engaged, through competition and experiment and observation, in +educating one another and finding out what they really want and what +they can really do; and it is equally true that the great organizations +of labour, in the same way, are educating one another.</p> + +<p>The real fight of modern industry to-day is an educational fight. And +the fight is being conducted, not between Labour and Capital, but +between the labouring men who have courage for Capital and labouring men +who have not, and between capitalists who have courage for Labour and +those who have not. To put it briefly, the real industrial fight to-day +is between those who have courage and those who have not.</p> + +<p>It is not hard to tell, in a fight between men who have courage and men +who have not, which will win.</p> + +<p>Probably, whatever else is the matter with them, the world will be the +most safe in the hands of the men who have the most courage.</p> + +<p>There are four items of courage I would like to see duly discussed in +the meetings of the trades unions in America and England.</p> + +<p>First, A discussion of trades unions. Why is it that, when the leaders +of trades unions come to know employers better than the other men do and +begin to see the other side and to have some courage about employers and +to become practicable and reasonable, the unions drop them?</p> + +<p>Second, Why is it that, in a large degree, the big employers, when they +succeed in getting skilled representatives or managers who come to know +and to understand their labouring men better than they do, do <i>not</i> drop +them? Why is it that, day by day, on all sides in America and England, +one sees the employing class advancing men who have a genius for being +<a name="Page_362" id="Page_362"></a>believed in, to at first questioned, and then to almost unquestioned, +control of their business? If this is true, does it not seem on the +whole that industry is safer in the hands of employers who have courage +for both sides and who see both sides than of employees who do not? Does +not the remedy for trades unions and employees, if they want to get +control, seem to be, instead of fighting, to see if they cannot see both +sides quicker, and see them better, than their employers do?</p> + +<p>Third, A discussion of efficiency in a National Labour Party from the +point of view of the trend of national efficiency in business. +Apparently the most efficient and shrewd business men in England and +America are the men who are running what might be called lubricated +industries—who are making their industries succeed on the principle of +sympathetic, smooth-running, mutual interests. If the successful modern +business man who owns factories is not running each factory as a small +civil war, is it not true that the only practical and successful Labour +Party in England, the only party that can get things done for labour and +that can hold power, is bound to be the party that succeeds in having +the most courage for both sides, in seeing the most mutual interests, +and in seeing how these interests can be put together, and in seeing it +first and acting on it before any other merely one-sided party would be +able to think it out?</p> + +<p>Fourth, A discussion of the selection of the best labour leaders to +place at the head of the unions.</p> + +<p>Nearly every man who succeeds in business notably, succeeds in believing +something about the people with whom he deals that the men around him +have not believed before, or in believing something which, if they did +believe it, they had not applied or acted as if they had believed +before. If, in order to succeed, a business man does not believe +something that needs to be believed before other people believe it, he +hires somebody who does believe it to believe it for him.</p> + +<p>Perhaps Labour would find it profitable to act on this prin<a name="Page_363" id="Page_363"></a>ciple too, +and to see to it that the leaders chosen to act for them are not the +noisiest minded, but the most creative men, the men who can express +original, shrewd faiths in the men with whom they have to deal—faiths +that the men around them will be grateful (after a second thought) to +have expressed next.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>In the meantime, whether among the labourers or the capitalists, however +long it may take, it is not hard to see, on every hand to-day, the world +about us slowly, implacably getting into the hands of the men, poor or +rich, who have the most keen, patient courage about other people, the +men who are "good" (God save the word!), the men who have practical, +working human sympathies and a sense of possibilities in those above +them and beneath them with whom they work—the men who most clearly, +eagerly, and doggedly want things for others, who have the most courage +for others.</p> + +<p>I have thought that if we could find out what this courage is, how it +works, how it can be had, and where it comes from, it might be more +worth our while to know than any other one thing in the world.</p> + +<p>I would like to try to consider a few of the sources of this courage for +others.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_364" id="Page_364"></a>CHAPTER XIV</h2> + +<h3>SOURCES OF COURAGE FOR OTHERS—TOLERATION</h3> + + +<p>After making an address on inspired millionaires one night before the +Sociological Society in their quarters in John Street, I found myself +the next day—a six-penny day—standing thoughtfully in the quarters of +the Zoölogical Society in Regent's Park.</p> + +<p>The Zoölogical Society makes one feel more humble, I think, than the +Sociological Society does.</p> + +<p>All sociologists, members of Parliament, eugenists, professors, and +others, ought to be compelled by law to spend one day every two weeks +with the Zoölogical Society in Regent's Park.</p> + +<p>All reformers who essay to make over human nature, all idealists, should +be required by law to visit menageries—to go to see them faithfully or +to be put in them a while until they have observed life and thought +things out.</p> + +<blockquote><p>A GREEN BENCH, THE ZOO, REGENT'S PARK, 1911.</p></blockquote> + +<p>For orienting a man and making him reasonable, there is nothing, I find, +like coming out and putting in a day here, making one's self gaze firmly +and doggedly at the other animals.</p> + +<p>We have every reason to believe that Noah was a good psychologist, or +judge of human nature, before he went into the ark, but if he was not, +he certainly would have come out one.</p> + +<p>There is nothing like a menagerie to limber one up.</p> + +<p>Especially an idealist.</p> + +<p>Take a pelican, for instance. What possible personal ideal was it that +could make a pelican want to be a pelican or that <a name="Page_365" id="Page_365"></a>could ever have made +a pelican take being a pelican seriously for one minute?</p> + +<p>And the camel with his lopsided hump. "Why, oh, why," cries the +idealist, wringing his hands. "Oh, why——?"</p> + +<p>I have come out here this afternoon, in the middle of my book, in the +middle of a chapter against the syndicalists, but it ill beseems me, +after spending half a day looking calmly at peacocks, at giraffes, at +hippopotamuses, at all these tails, necks, legs and mouths, at this +stretch or bird's eye view—this vast landscape of God's toleration—to +criticise any man, woman or child of this world for blossoming out, for +living up, or fleshing up, or paring down, to what he is really like +inside.</p> + +<p>Possibly what each man stands for is well enough for him to stand for. +It is only when what a man says, comes to being repeated, to being made +universal, to being jammed down on the rest of us, that the lie in it +begins to work out.</p> + +<p>Let us let everybody alone and be ready to find things out just for +ourselves.</p> + +<p>Here is this big, frivolous, gentle elephant, for instance, poking his +huge, inquiring trunk into baby carriages. He is certainly too glorious, +too profound, a personage to do such things! It does seem a little +unworthy to me, as I have been sitting here and watching him from this +park bench, for a noble, solemn being like the elephant—a kind of +cathedral of a beast, to be as deeply interested as he is in peanuts.</p> + +<p>He looms up before me once more. I look up a little closer—look into +his little, shrewd eyes—and, after all, what do I know about him?</p> + +<p>And I watch the camels with the happy, dazed children on their backs, go +by with soft and drifting feet. Do I suppose I understand camels? Or I +follow the crowd. I find myself at last with that huge, hushed, +sympathetic congregation at the 4 P.M. service, watching the lions eat.</p> + +<p>Everything does seem very much mixed up when one brings <a name="Page_366" id="Page_366"></a>one's +Sociological Society dogmas, and one's little neat, impeccable row of +principles to the test of watching the lions eat!</p> + +<p>Possibly people are as different from one another inside—in their souls +at least—as different as these animals are.</p> + +<p>It is true, of course, that as we go about, people do have a plausible +way in this world—all these other people, of looking like us.</p> + +<p>But they are different inside.</p> + +<p>If one could stand on a platform as one was about to speak and could +really see the souls of any audience—say of a thousand people—lying +out there before one, they would be a menagerie beside which, O Gentle +Reader, I dare to believe, Barnum and Bailey's menagerie would pale in +comparison.</p> + +<p>But in a menagerie (perhaps you have noticed it, Gentle Reader) one +treats the animals seriously, and as if they were Individuals.</p> + +<p>They are what they are.</p> + +<p>Why not treat people's souls seriously?</p> + +<p>It is true that people's souls, like the animals, are alike in a general +way. They all have in common (in spiritual things) organs of +observation, appropriation, digestion and organs of self-reproduction.</p> + +<p>But these spiritual organs of digestion which they have are theirs.</p> + +<p>And these organs of self-reproduction are for the purpose of reproducing +themselves and not us.</p> + +<p>These are my reflections, or these try to be my reflections when I +consider the Syndicalist—how he grows or when I look up and see a +class-war socialist—an Upton Sinclair banging loosely about the world.</p> + +<p>My first wild, aboriginal impulse with Upton Sinclair when I come up to +him as I do sometimes—violent, vociferous roaring behind his bars, is +to whisk him right over from being an Upton Sinclair into being me. I do +not deny it.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_367" id="Page_367"></a>Then I remember softly, suddenly, how I felt when I was watching the +lions eat.</p> + +<p>I remember the pelican.</p> + +<p>Thus I save my soul in time.</p> + +<p>Incidentally, of course, Upton Sinclair's insides are saved also.</p> + +<p>It is beautiful the way the wild beasts in their cages persuade one +almost to be a Christian!</p> + +<p>Of course when one gets smoothed down one always sees people very +differently. In being tolerant the rub comes usually (with me) in being +tolerant in time. I am tempted at first, when I am with Upton Sinclair, +to act as if he were a whole world of Upton Sinclairs and of course +(anybody would admit it) if he really were a whole world of Upton +Sinclairs he would have to be wiped out. There would be nothing else to +do. But he is not and it is not fair to him or fair to the world to act +as if he were.</p> + +<p>The moment I see he is confining himself to just being Upton Sinclair I +rather like him.</p> + +<p>It is the same with Ella Wheeler Wilcox. It is when I fall to thinking +of her as if she were, or were in danger of being, a whole world of Ella +Wheeler Wilcoxes that I grow intolerant of her. Ella Wheeler Wilcox as a +Tincture, which is what she really is, of course, is well enough. I do +not mind.</p> + +<p>The real truth about a man like Upton Sinclair, when one has worked down +through to it, is that while from my point of view a class-war +socialist—a man who proposes to put society together by keeping men +apart—is wrong and is sure to do a great deal of harm to some people, +there are other people to whom he does a great deal of good.</p> + +<p>There really are people who need Upton Sinclair. It may be a hard fact +to face perhaps, but when one faces it one is glad there is one. Some of +the millionaires need Sinclair. There are others whose attention would +be attracted better in more subtle ways.</p> + +<p>The class-war socialist, though I may be at this moment in <a name="Page_368" id="Page_368"></a>the very act +of trying to make him impossible, to put him out of date, has been and +is, in his own place and his own time, I gratefully acknowledge, of +incalculable value.</p> + +<p>Any man who can, by saying violent and noisy things, make rich, tired, +mechanical-minded people, and poor, tired mechanical-minded people wake +up enough to feel hateful has performed a public service. The +hatefulness is the beginning of their being covetous for other things +than the things they have. If a man has a habit of hunger he gets better +and better hungers as a matter of course; bread and milk, ribbons, +geraniums, millinery, bathtubs, Bibles, copartnership associations. And +in the meantime the one precious thing to be looked out for in a man, +and to be held sacred, is his hunger.</p> + +<p>The one important religious value in the world is hunger and to all the +men to-day who are contributing to the process of moving on hungers; +whether the hungers happen to be our hungers or not or our stages of +hunger or not, we say Godspeed.</p> + +<p>There are times when the sudden sense one comes to have that the world +is a struggle, a great prayer toward the sun, a tumult and groping of +desire, the sense that every kind and type of desire has its time and +its place in it and every kind and type of man, gives a whole new +meaning to life. This sense of a now possible toleration which we come +to have, some of us, opens up to us always when it comes a new world of +courage about people. It makes all these dear, clumsy people about us +suddenly mean something. It makes them all suddenly belong somewhere. +They become, as by a kind of miracle, bathed in a new light, +wrong-headed, intolerable though they be, one still sees them flowing +out into the great endless stream of becoming—all these dots of the +vast desire, all these queer, funny, struggling little sons of God!</p> + +<p>It has been overlooked that social reform primarily is not a matter of +legislation or of industrial or political systems, or of machinery, but +a matter, of psychology, of insight into human nature and of expert +reading and interpretation of the minds of <a name="Page_369" id="Page_369"></a>men. What are they thinking +about? What do they think they want?</p> + +<p>The trades unions and employers' associations, extreme socialists and +extreme Tories have so far been very bad psychologists. If the Single +Tax people were as good at being intuitionalists or idea-salesmen as +they are at being philosophers in ideas they would long before this have +turned everything their way. They would have begun with people's hungers +and worked out from them. They would have listened to people to find out +what their hungers were. The people who will stop being theoretical and +logical about each other and who will look hard into each other's eyes +will be the people whose ideas will first come to pass. Everything we +try to do or say or bring to pass in England or America is going to +begin after this, not in talking, but in listening. If social reformers +and industrial leaders had been good listeners, the social +deadlock—England with its House of Lords and railroads both on strike +and America with its great industries quarrelling—would have been +arranged for and got out of the way over twenty years ago.</p> + +<p>We have overlooked the first step of industrial reform, the rather +extreme step of listening. The most hard-headed and conclusive man to +settle any given industrial difficulty is the man who has the gift of +divining what is going on in other people's minds, a gift for being +human, a gift for treating everybody who disagrees with him as if they +might possibly be human too, though they are very poor, even though they +are very rich. Practical psychology has come to be not only the only +solution but also the only method of our modern industrial questions. +Being so human that one can guess what any possible human being would +think is the one hard-headed and practical way to meet the modern labour +problem.</p> + +<p>The first symptom of being human in a man is his range and power of +shrewd, happy toleration, or courage for people who know as little now +as he knew once.</p> + +<p>A man's sense of toleration is based primarily upon the range <a name="Page_370" id="Page_370"></a>and power +of his knowledge of himself, upon his power of remembering and +anticipating himself, upon his laughing with God at himself, upon his +habit in darkness, weariness or despair, or in silent victory and joy, +of falling on his knees.</p> + +<p>Toleration is reverence. It is the first source of courage for other +people.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_371" id="Page_371"></a>CHAPTER XV</h2> + +<h3>CONVERSION</h3> + + +<p>Some people think of the world as if it were made all through, people +and all, of reinforced concrete, as if everything in it—men, women, +children, churches, colleges, and parties, were solidly, inextricably +imbedded in it.</p> + +<p>Every age in history has had to get on as well as it could with two sets +of totally impracticable people, our two great orders of Philistines in +this world, the people who put their trust in Portland Cement and the +people who put their trust in Explosives.</p> + +<p>There has not been a single great movement in history yet that every +thoughtful man has not had to watch being held up by these people—by +millions of worthy, simple, rudimentary creatures who consent to be mere +conservatives or mere radicals.</p> + +<p>One set says, "People cannot be converted so we will blow them up."</p> + +<p>The other set says, "We are going to be blown up, so let us put on +Plaster of Paris as a garment, we will array ourselves before the Lord +in Portland Cement."</p> + +<p>Both of these classes of people believe alike on one main point.</p> + +<p>They do not believe in Conversion.</p> + +<p>If the conservatives believed in conversion they would not be so afraid +that they feel obliged to resort to Portland Cement. If the radicals +believed in conversion they would not be so afraid that they feel +obliged to resort to Explosives.</p> + +<p>In our machine civilization to these two great standard <a name="Page_372" id="Page_372"></a>classes of +scared people, there has been added what seems to be a third class—the +people who have responded to a kind of motor spirit in the time, who +have modulated a little their unbelief in human nature. They have +substituted for their reinforced concrete Unbelief, a kind of Whirling +Unbelief, called machinery.</p> + +<p>They admit that in our modern life men are not made of reinforced +concrete. We may move, but we move as wheels move, they tell us. We arc +whirlingly imbedded. We are cogs and wheels in an Economic Machine.</p> + +<p>I would like to consider for a moment this Whirling Unbelief.</p> + +<p>There was a time once when I took the Economic Machine very seriously.</p> + +<p>I looked up when I went by, at the Economic Machine as the last and the +most terrific of the inventions among the machines. The machine that +mocked all the other machines, that made all our machines look pathetic +and ridiculous, was the Economic Machine. There were days when I heard +it or seemed to hear it—this Economic Machine closing in around my +life, around all our lives like the last hoarse mocking laugh of +civilization.</p> + +<p>I said I will love every machine that runs except the Economic +Machine—the machine for making people into machines.</p> + +<p>But one day when I had waited or dared to wait, I know not why, a little +longer than usual before the Whirling Unbelief, I heard the hoarse +mocking laugh die away. I became very quiet. I began to think, I +reflected on my experiences. I began to notice things.</p> + +<p>I noted that every time I had found myself being discouraged about +people, I had caught myself thinking of people as Cogs and Wheels.</p> + +<p>Were they really Cogs and Wheels?</p> + +<p>Possibly it was merely the easiest, most mechanical-minded thing to do +to think of people (with all this machinery around one) as cogs and +wheels in an economic machine.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_373" id="Page_373"></a>Then it began to occur to me that it was because I had looked upon the +economic machine a little lazily, a little innocently that I had been +awed and terrific—and had been swept away with it into the Whirling +Unbelief.</p> + +<p>Then I stood quietly and calmly for days, for weeks, for years before +it. I watched it Go Round.</p> + +<p>I then discovered under close observation that what had looked to me +like an economic machine was not an economic machine at all.</p> + +<p>The modern economic world has innumerable mechanical elements in it, but +it is not an economic machine.</p> + +<p>It is a biological engine.</p> + +<p>It is the biology in it that conceives, desires, and determines the +machinery in it.</p> + +<p>The most important parts of the machine are not the very mechanical +parts. They are the very biological parts.</p> + +<p>The economic machine is full of made-people, but it does not make very +much difference about the made-people. I find that as a plain, practical +matter of fact I do not need to watch the made-people so very much to +understand the world, or to get ready for what is happening to it.</p> + +<p>In prospecting for a world, I watch the born people.</p> + +<p>I watch especially the people who have been born twice.</p> + +<p>As one watches the way the world is going round one finds that what is +really making it go round, is not its being an economic machine, but its +being a biological engine.</p> + +<p>Industrial reform is a branch of biology.</p> + +<p>The main fact of biology as regards a man is that he can be born.</p> + +<p>The main fact of biology as regards society—that is, the main fact of +social biology—is that a man can be born twice.</p> + +<p>As long as a man is born to go with a father and a mother it is well +enough to have been born once, but the moment a man deals with other +people or with the world, he has to be born again.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_374" id="Page_374"></a>This is the main fact about the biological engine we call the world.</p> + +<p>The main fact about the Engine is the biology in it.</p> + +<p>Every other fact for a man has to be worked out from this—that is: out +of being born once if one wants to belong merely to a father and mother, +and out of being born twice if one wants to belong to a world.</p> + +<p>A man does not need to enter again into his mother's womb and come out a +child. He enters into the World's Womb and comes out a man.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>The world is being placed to-day before our eyes in the hands of the men +who are born twice.</p> + +<p>Not all men are cogs and wheels.</p> + +<p>The first day I discovered this and believed this I went out into the +streets and looked into the faces of the men and the women and I looked +up at the factories and the churches and I was not afraid.</p> + +<p>I do not deny that cogs and wheels are very common.</p> + +<p>But I do not believe that an economic system or industrial scheme based +on the general principle of arranging a world for cogs and wheels would +work. I believe in arranging the world on the principle that there are +now and are going to be always enough men in it who are born, and enough +who are born twice to keep cogs and wheels doing the things men who have +been born twice, who have visions for worlds, want done, and to keep +people who prefer being cogs and wheels where they will work best and +where they will help the running gear of the planet most—by going round +and round, in the way they like—going round and round and round and +round.</p> + +<p>But why is it, one cannot help wondering, that the moment a man rises up +suddenly in this modern world and bases or seeks to base an industrial +or social reform frankly on courage for other people, on believing in +the inherent and eternal <a name="Page_375" id="Page_375"></a>power of men of changing their minds, of being +put up in new kinds and new sizes of men, in other words, on +conversion—why is it that clergymen, atheists, ethical societies, +politicians, socialists will all unite, will all flock together and +descend upon him, shout and laugh him away, bully him with dead +millionaires, bad corporations and humdrum business men, overawe him +with mere history, argue him with statistics, and thunder him with +sermons out of the world—if he puts up a faint little chirrup of hope +that men can be converted?</p> + +<p>It is not that the synods, ethical societies, anarchists, the bishops +and Bernard Shaw, have merely given up expecting individual men to be +converted. There would be a measure of plausibility in giving up on a +few particular men's being born again. It is worse than that. What seems +to have happened to nearly all the people who have schemes of industrial +reform is that they have really given up at one fell swoop a whole new +generation's being born again. It is going to be just like this one, +they tell us, the new generation—the same old things the same old +foolish ways of deceiving the world, that any child can see have not +worked—Bernard Shaw and the bishops whisper to us, are coming around +and around again. They must be planned for. All these young men of +wealth about us who read the papers and who are ashamed of their fathers +are going to be just like their fathers. The atheists, the socialists, +and the single taxers, missionaries and evangelists have given up their +last loophole of hope in the new business generation and they trust only +to machines to save us, or to professors, or to paper-treatises on +eugenics!</p> + +<p>And yet, after all, if we were going to start an absolute, decisive, and +practical scheme of eugenics to-morrow with whom would we begin, with +which particular people would we begin? We would have to go back, +Bernard Shaw and the bishops and all of us, to the New Testament—to the +old idea of being born again.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_376" id="Page_376"></a>I have watched now these many years the professors, caught in their +culture-machines going round and round, and the priests caught in their +religion-machines going round and round, and the business men caught in +their economic machine, and I have heard them all saying over and over +in a kind of terrible sing-song day and night, the silly, lazy words of +a glorious old roue four thousand years ago, "The thing that hath been +is the thing which shall be, and that which is done is that which shall +be done and there is no new thing under the sun."</p> + +<p>There are some of us who do not believe this. We defy the +culture-machines. We believe that even professors can be converted, can +be educated.</p> + +<p>We defy the bishops. We believe that business men can be converted.</p> + +<p>We defy the business men. We believe the bishops can be converted.</p> + +<p>I speak for a thousand, thousand men.</p> + +<p>In the hum and drive of the wheels and the great roar around me of the +Whirling Unbelief. I speak for these men—for all of us. <i>We are not +cogs and wheels. We are men. We are born again ourselves. Other men can +be born again.</i></p> + +<p>Men shall not look each other in the eyes wisely and nod their heads and +say that human nature will not change.</p> + +<p>We will change it. If we cannot get but two or three together to change +it, then two or three by just being two or three and by daring to be two +or three, or even one if necessary shall change it.</p> + +<p>The moment ninety million people in a great nation have welded out a +vision of the kind of man of wealth—the kind of employer they want, the +moment they set the millionaire in the vise of some great national +expectation, carve upon him firmly, implacably the will of the people, +the people will have the millionaire they want. If a nation really wants +a great man it invents him. We have hut to see we really want him, and +that no other machinery will work, and we will invent him.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_377" id="Page_377"></a>Necessity is the mother of invention. Here in these United States sixty +years ago were we not all at work on a man named Abraham Lincoln? We had +been at work on him for years trying to make him into a Lincoln. He +could not have begun to be what he was without us, without the daily +thought, the responsibility, the tragical national hope and fear, the +sense of crisis in a great people. All these had been set to work on +him, on making him a Lincoln.</p> + +<p>Lincoln would not have dared not to be a great man, an all-people man +with a whole mighty nation, with all those millions of watchful, +believing people laying their lives softly, silently, their very sons' +lives in his hands. He did not have the smallest possible chance from +the day he was named for President, to be a second-rate man or to betray +a nation, or to back down out of being himself. He had been filled night +and day with the vision of a great nation struggling, with the grim +glory of it. He was free to make mistakes for it, but there was no way +he could have kept from being a true, mighty, single-hearted man for it, +if he had tried. We had clinched Lincoln in 1862. He was caught fast in +the vise of our hopes.</p> + +<p>Perhaps it is because, at certain times in history, nations seem to be +siding with the worst in their public men and expecting the worst in +them that they get them.</p> + +<p>If a crowd wants to be represented, wants to touch to the quick and +kindle the man in it, the man filled with vision, the man who is born +again into its desire, the crowd-man, they have but to surround him and +overshadow him. They will create him, in scorn and joy will they +conceive him, and before he knows who he is, they will bring him forth.</p> + +<p>It would not be hard, I imagine, to be a great man, with a true, +steadied, colossal, single-heartedness, if one were caught fast in the +vision, the expectation of a great nation.</p> + +<p>To be born again is simple with ninety million people to help. We have +all been born again in little things with a few <a name="Page_378" id="Page_378"></a>people to help. We have +been swung over from little short motives to big, long-levered +controlling ones. We have known in a small way what Conversion is. We +have seen how naturally it works out in little things.</p> + +<p>There is nothing new about it. There is not a man who does not know what +it is to get over a small motive. We have seen, when we looked back, +what it was that happened.</p> + +<p>The way to get over a small motive is to let it get lost in a big one.</p> + +<p>A man does not stop to pick up a penny or a million dollars when he is +running to save his life.</p> + +<p>A man does not stop to pick up two pennies, or two thousand dollars, or +two million dollars when he is running to save ten thousand lives or +running to save ninety million lives, when he is running to save a city +or a nation.</p> + +<p>This is Conversion—entering into the World's Womb, the world's vision +or expectation and being born again.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>It is not for nothing that I have seen the sun lifting up the faces of +the flowers, and crumbling the countenances of the hills. And I have +seen music stirring faintly in the bones of old men. And I have heard +the dead Beethoven singing in the feet of children.</p> + +<p>And I have watched the Little Earth in its little round of seasons +dancing before the Lord.</p> + +<p>And I have believed that music is wrought into all things, and that the +people I see about me have not one of them been left out.</p> + +<p>I believe in sunshine and in hothouses. I believe in burning glasses. I +believe in focusing light into heat and heat into white fire, and +turning white fire into little flowing brooks of steel.</p> + +<p>And I believe in focusing men upon men.</p> + +<p>I believe in Conversion.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_379" id="Page_379"></a>Of course it would all be different—focusing men upon men, if men were +cogs and wheels, or if the men they were focused on were made of stones.</p> + +<p>I stand and look at this stone and believe it is all rubber and +whalebone inside.</p> + +<p>But what of it?</p> + +<p>It does not get true.</p> + +<p>While I am looking at a man and believing a certain thing about the man, +it gets true.</p> + +<p>What is going on in my mind while I look at him effects actual +mechanical changes in him, affects the flow of blood in his veins. A +look colours him, whitens him, twists and turns the muscles and tissues +in his body. I draw lines upon his inmost being. I lay down a new face +upon his face. A moment after I look upon the man's face it has become, +as it were, or may have become, a new little landscape. I have seen a +great country opened up in him of what he might be like. While I look I +have been ushered softly, for a second, into the presence of a man who +was not there before.</p> + +<p>Such things have happened.</p> + +<p>Beatrice looked at Dante once. Ten silent centuries began singing.</p> + +<p>A man named Stephen, one day, while he was dying, gave a look at a man +named Paul. Paul came away quietly and hewed out history for two +thousand years.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_380" id="Page_380"></a>CHAPTER XVI</h2> + +<h3>EXCEPTION</h3> + + +<p>A bicycle, the other day, a little outside Paris as it was running along +quietly, lifted itself off the ground suddenly, and flew three yards and +seven inches.</p> + +<p>There are nine million seven hundred and eighty nine thousand nine +hundred and seventy-nine bicycles that have not flown three yards and +seven inches.</p> + +<p>But what of it? Why count them up? Why bother about them? The important, +conclusive, massive, irresistible, crushing, material fact is that one +bicycle has flown three yards seven inches.</p> + +<p>The nine million seven hundred and eighty-nine thousand nine hundred and +seventy-nine bicycles that can not fly yet are negligible. So are nine +out of ten business firms.</p> + +<p>If there is one exceptional man in modern industry who is running his +business in the right way and who has made a success of it and has +proved it—he may look visionary to class-socialists and to other people +who decide by measuring off masses of fact, and counting up rows of +people and who see what anybody can see, but he is after all in +arranging our social programme the only man of any material importance +for us to consider. It would be visionary to take the past, dump it +around in front of one, and try to make a future out of it. I do not +deny what people tell me about millionaires and about factory slaves. I +have not mooned or lied or turned away my face. I stand by time one +live, right, implacable, irrevocable, prolific exception. I stand by the +one bicycle out of them all that has flown three yards and seven inches. +I lay out my <a name="Page_381" id="Page_381"></a>program, conceive my world on that. Piles of facts +arranged in dead layers high against heaven, rows of figures, miles of +factory slaves, acres of cemeteries of dead millionaires, going-by +streetfuls of going-by people, shall not cow me.</p> + +<p>My heart has been broken long enough by counting truths on my fingers, +by numbering grains of sand, men, and mountains, bombs, acorns and +marbles alike.</p> + +<p>Which truth matters?</p> + +<p>Which man is right?</p> + +<p>Where is Nazareth?</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>Nazareth is our only really important town now. I will see what is going +on in Nazareth. On every subject that comes up, in every line of +thought, I will go to the city of implacable exceptions. All the +inventors flock there—the man with the one bicycle which flies, the one +great industrial organizer, the man with the man-machine, and the +man—the great boy who carries new great beautiful cities in his pocket +like strings and nails and knives, they are all there.</p> + +<p>Nazareth is the city, the one mighty little city of the spirit where all +the really worth-while men wherever they may seem to be, all day, all +night, do their living.</p> + +<p>Other cities may make things, in Nazareth they make worlds. One can see +a new one almost any day in Nazareth. Men go up and down the streets +there with their new worlds in their eyes.</p> + +<p>Some of them have them almost in their hands or are looking down and +working on them.</p> + +<p>It does not seem to me that any of us can make ourselves strong and fit +to lay out a sound program or vision for a world, who do not watch with +critical expectation and with fierce joy these men of Nazareth, who do +not take at least a little time off every day, in spirit, in Nazareth, +and spend it in watching bicycles fly three feet and seven inches. To +watch <a name="Page_382" id="Page_382"></a>these men, it seems to me, is our one natural, economical way to +get at essential facts, at the set-one-side truths, at the exceptions +that worlds and all-around programs for worlds are made out of. To watch +these men is the one way I know not to be lost in great museums and +storehouses of facts that do not matter, in the streetfuls and +skyscraperfuls of men that go by.</p> + +<p>I regret to record that professors of political economy, social +philosophers, industrial big-wigs, presidents of boards of trade have +not been often met with on the streets of this silent, crowded, mighty, +invisible little town that rules the destinies of men.</p> + +<p>Not during the last twenty years, but one is meeting them there to-day.</p> + +<p>All these things that people are saying to me are mere history. I have +seen the one live exception. One telephone was enough. And one Galileo +was enough, with his little planet turning round and round, with all of +us on it who were obliged to agree with him about it. It kept turning +round and round with us until we did.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_383" id="Page_383"></a>CHAPTER XVII</h2> + +<h3>INVENTION</h3> + + +<p>If I were a Noah and wanted to get a fair selection of people in London +to be saved to start a new world, I would go out and look over the crowd +who are watching the flying machines at Hendon, and select from them.</p> + +<p>The Hendon crowd will not last forever. People who would be far less +desirable to start worlds with would gradually work their way in, but it +is only fair to say that these first few thousand men and women of all +classes who responded to the flying machine would be possessed, as any +one could see with a look, of special qualifications for running worlds.</p> + +<p>I shall never quite forget the sense I had the first day of the crowd at +Hendon—those thousands of faces that had gathered up in some way out of +themselves a kind of huge crowd-face before one—that imperturbable +happiness on it and that look of hard sense and hope, half poetry, half +science ... it was like gazing at some portrait, or some vast +countenance of the future—watching the crowd at Hendon. Scores of times +I looked away from the machines swinging up past me into the sky to +watch the faces of the men and the women that belonged with sky +machines; these men and women who stood on the precipice of a new world +of air, of sunshine, and of darkness, and were not afraid.</p> + +<p>One was in a little special civilization for the time being, all the new +people in it sorted out from the old ones. One felt a vast +light-heartedness all about. One was in the presence of the picked +people who had come to see this first vast initiative of man toward +Space, toward the stars, the people who had <a name="Page_384" id="Page_384"></a>waited for four thousand +years to see it; to see at last Little Man (as it would seem to God) in +this his first clumsy, beautiful childlike tottering up the sky.</p> + +<p>One was with the people on the planet who were the first to see the +practical, personal value, the market value, of all these huge idle +fields of air that go with planets. They were the first people to feel +identified with the air, to have courage for the air, the lovers of +initiative, the men and women that one felt might really get a new world +if they wanted one and who would know what to do with it when they got +it.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>The other day in London near Charing Cross, as the crowds were streaming +down the Strand, a heavy box joggled off over the end of a dray, crashed +to the pavement, flew open and sent twenty-four hundred pennies rolling +under the feet of the men and of the women and of the boys along the +street.</p> + +<p>Traffic was stopped and a thousand men and women and boys began picking +the pennies up. They all crowded up around the dray and put the pennies +in the box.</p> + +<p>The next day the brewer to whom the pennies belonged had a letter in the +<i>Times</i> saying that not one of the twenty-four hundred pennies was +missing.</p> + +<p>He closed his letter with a few moral remarks, announced that he had +sent the twenty-four hundred pennies as a kind of tribute to people—to +anybody Who Happened Along the Strand—to a Foundling Hospital.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>The man who told me this (it was at a business men's dinner), told it +because he knew I was trying to believe pleasant things about human +nature. He thought he ought to encourage me.</p> + +<p>I will not record the conversation, I merely record my humble opinion.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_385" id="Page_385"></a>I think it would have been better to have had just a few of those +pennies in the Strand say seven or eight missing.</p> + +<p>On Broadway probably eleven or twelve out of twenty-four hundred would +have been missing—I hope.</p> + +<p>And I am not unhopeful about England, or about the Strand.</p> + +<p>There are two ways to get relief from this story.</p> + +<p>First, the brewer lied. There were fewer pennies stolen than he would +have thought, and when he figured it out and found just a few pennies +between him and a good story, he put the pennies in. And so the dear +little foundlings got them—the letter in the <i>Times</i> said. They were +presented to them, as it were, by the Good Little Boys in the Strand.</p> + +<p>Second, somebody else put the pennies in, some person standing by with a +sense of humour, who knew the letters that people write to the <i>Times</i> +and the kind, serious, grave way English people read them. He put the +pennies grimly in at one end, then he waited grimly for the letter in +the <i>Times</i> to come out at the other.</p> + +<p>Either of these theories would work very well and let the crowd off.</p> + +<p>But if they are disproved to me, I have one more to fall back upon.</p> + +<p>If the story is true and not a soul in that memorable crowd on that +memorable day stole a penny, it was because they had all, as it happened +in that particular crowd, stolen their pennies before, and got over it. +It would seem a great pity if there had not been some one boy with +enough initiative in him, enough faculty for moral experiment, to try +stealing a penny just once, to see what it would be like.</p> + +<p>The same boy would have seen at once what it was like, tried feeling +ashamed of it promptly, and would never have had to bother to do it +again. He would have felt that penny burning in his pocket past cash +drawers, past banks, past bonds, until he became President of the United +States.</p> + +<p>At all events the last thing that I would be willing to believe <a name="Page_386" id="Page_386"></a>is that +either America or England would be capable of producing a chance crowd +in the street that out of sheer laziness or moral thoughtlessness would +not be able to work up at least one boy in it who would have a sudden +flash of imagination about a penny rolling around a man's leg—if he +picked it up and—did not put it in the box.</p> + +<p>The crowd in the Strand, of course, like any other real crowd, was a +stew of development, a huge laboratory of people. All stages of +experience were in it.</p> + +<p>Some of the people in the crowd that day had a new refreshing thought, +when they saw those pennies rolling around everybody. They thought they +would try and see what stealing a penny was like. Then they did it.</p> + +<p>Others in the crowd thought of stealing a penny too, and then they had +still another thought. They thought of not stealing it. And this second +thought interested them more.</p> + +<p>Others did not think of stealing a penny at all because they had thought +of it so often before had got used to it and had got used to dismissing +it.</p> + +<p>Others thought of stealing a penny and then they thought how ashamed +they were of having thought of it. Others looked thoughtfully at the +pennies and thought they would wait for guineas.</p> + +<p>But whatever it was or may have been that was taking place in that crowd +that day—they all thought.</p> + +<p>And after all what is really important to a nation is that the people in +it—any chance crowd in a street in it should think. I confess I care +very little one way or the other about the pennies being saved, or about +the brewer's little touch of moral poetry, his idea that this particular +crowd was solid Sunday-school from one end to the other, all through. +Whether it was a crowd that thought of stealing a penny and did or did +not, if the pennies rolling around among their feet made them think, +made them experiment, played upon the initiative, the individuality or +invention in them, the personal self-control, the <a name="Page_387" id="Page_387"></a>social responsibility +in them, it was a crowd to be proud of. And I am glad, for one, that the +box of pennies was dumped in the street.</p> + +<p>I would like to see shillings tried next time.</p> + +<p>Then guineas might be used.</p> + +<p>A box of guineas dumped in the street would do more good than a box of +pennies because there are many people who would think more with the +guineas rolling around out of sight around a man's legs than they would +with a penny's doing it.</p> + +<p>In this way a box of guineas would do more good.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>Thousands of men and women that we have sent to India from this Western +World have been trying with Bibles, and good deeds, and kind faces, and +Sunday-schools to get the Hindoos to believe that it would not be a sin +to kill the rats and stop the bubonic plague.</p> + +<p>Nothing came of it.</p> + +<p>In due time General Booth-Tucker appeared on the scene.</p> + +<p>He came too, of course, with a Bible and with his kind face like the +others, and of course, too, he went to Sunday-school regularly.</p> + +<p>And while he was watching the bubonic plague sweeping up cities, he +tried too, like the others, to tell the people about a God who would not +be displeased if they killed the rats and stopped the plague.</p> + +<p>But he could not convince anybody, or at best a few here and there.</p> + +<p>The next thing that was known about General Booth-Tucker's work in India +was, that he had (still with his Bible, of course, and with his kind +look) slipped away and established in the south of France a factory for +the manufacture of gloves.</p> + +<p>He then returned to his poor superstitious people in India who would not +believe him, and told them that he knew and knew absolutely that they +would not be punished for killing <a name="Page_388" id="Page_388"></a>the rats, that the rats were not +sacred, and that he could prove it.</p> + +<p>He offered the people so much apiece for the skins of the rats.</p> + +<p>The poorest and most desperate of the natives then began killing the +rats secretly and bringing in the skins.</p> + +<p>They waited for the wrath of Heaven to fall upon them. Nothing happened, +then they told others. The others are telling everybody.</p> + +<p>General Booth-Tucker's factory to-day in the south of France is very +busy making money for the Salvation Army, turning out Christian gloves +for the West and turning out Christians or the beginnings of Christians +for the East, and the ancient, obstinate theological idea of the +holiness of the rats which the Hindoos have had is being ceaselessly, +happily, and stupendously, all day and all night, disproved.</p> + +<p>Incidentally the little religious glove factory of General +Booth-Tucker's in the south of France is giving India the first serious +and fair chance it has ever had to stop being a pest house on the world, +and to bring the bubonic plague with its threat at a planet to an end.</p> + +<p>General Booth-Tucker's Bible was just like anybody else's Bible. But +there must have been something about the way he read his Bible that made +him think of things. And there must have been something about his kind +look. He looked kindly at something in particular, and he was determined +to make that something in particular do. He had the rats, and he had the +gloves, and he had the Hindoo's—and he made them do, and before he knew +it (I doubt if he knows it now) he became a saviour or inventor.</p> + +<p>In the big, desolate, darkened heart of a nation he had wedged in a God.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>I wonder if General Booth-Tucker—that is, the original, very small +edition of General Booth-Tucker—had been in that <a name="Page_389" id="Page_389"></a>memorable crowd, that +memorable day in the Strand when nobody (with a report that was heard +around the world) stole a penny—I wonder if General Booth-Tucker would +have been A Very Good Little Boy.</p> + +<p>One of the pennies might have been missing.</p> + +<p>I have no prejudice against the Very Good Little Boy. It is not his +goodness that is what is the matter with him. But I am very much afraid +that if there were any way of getting all the facts, it would not be +hard to prove categorically that what has been holding the world back +the last twenty-five years in its religious ideals, its business ethics, +its liberty, candour, its courage, and its skill in social engineering, +is the Very Good Little Boy. He may be comparatively harmless at first +and before his moustache is grown, but the moment he becomes a grown-up +or the moment he sits on committees with his quiet, careful, snug, +proper fear of experiment, of bold initiative, his disease of never +running a risk, his moral anæmia, he blocks all progress in churches, in +legislatures, in directors' meetings, in trades unions, in slums and +May-fairs. One sees The Good Little Boys weighing down everything the +moment they are grown up.</p> + +<p>They have all been brought up each with his one faint, polite little +hunger, his one ambition, his one pale downy desire in life, looking +forward day by day, year by year, to the fine frenzy, to the fierce joy +of Never Making a Mistake.</p> + +<p>If I had been given the appointment and were about to set to work +to-morrow morning to make a new world, I would begin by getting together +all the people in this one that I knew, or had noticed anywhere, who +seemed to have in them the spirit of experiment. Any boy or girl or man +or woman that I had seen having the curiosity to try the different kinds +and different sizes of right and wrong, or that I had seen boldly and +faithfully experimenting with the beautiful and the ugly so that they +really knew about them for themselves—would be let in. I would put +these people for a time in a place by them<a name="Page_390" id="Page_390"></a>selves where the people who +want to keep them from trying or learning, could not get at them.</p> + +<p>Then I would let them try.</p> + +<p>I would put the humdrum people in another place by themselves and let +them humdrum, the respectable people by themselves and let them +respectabilize.</p> + +<p>Then after my try-world had tried, and got well started and the people +in it had finished off some things and knew what they wanted, I would +allow the humdrums and the respectabilities to be let in—to do what +they were told.</p> + +<p>Doing what they are told is what they like. So they would be happy.</p> + +<p>Of course doing what they are told is what is the matter with them. But +what is the matter with them would be useful.</p> + +<p>And everybody would be happy.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>When the Titanic went down a little while ago and those few quiet men on +deck began their duty in that soft, gracious moonlit night, of sorting +out the people who should die from the people who should live—if one +was a woman one could live. If one was a man one could die.</p> + +<p>No one will quarrel with the division as the only possible or endurable +one that could have been made.</p> + +<p>But if God himself could have made the division or some super-man ship's +officer who could have represented God, could have made it, it is not +hard to believe that a less superficial, a more profound and human +difference between people would have been used in sorting out the people +who should live from the people who should die than a difference in +organs of reproduction.</p> + +<p>The women were saved first because the men were men and because it was +the way the men felt. It expressed the men who were on the deck that +night that the women should be <a name="Page_391" id="Page_391"></a>saved first; it was the last chance they +had to express themselves like men and they wanted to do it.</p> + +<p>But if God himself could have made the division with the immediate and +conclusive knowledge of who everybody was, of what they really were in +their hearts, and of what they and their children and their children's +children would do for the world if they lived no one would have +quarrelled with God for making what would have seemed at the moment, no +doubt, very unreasonable and ungallant and impossible-looking +discriminations in sorting out the people who should live from the +people who should die.</p> + +<p>Possibly even Man (using the word with a capital), acting from the point +of view of history and of the race and from the point of view of making +a kind of world where <i>Titanic</i> disasters could not happen, would have +chosen on the deck of the <i>Titanic</i> that night, very much the way God +would.</p> + +<p>From the point of view of Man there would have been no discrimination in +favour of a woman because she was a woman.</p> + +<p>The last cry of the last man that the still listening life-boats heard +coming up out of the sea that night might have been the cry of the man +who had invented a ship that could not sink.</p> + +<p>There would not have been a woman in a life-boat or a woman sinking in +the sea who would not have had this man saved before a woman.</p> + +<p>If we could absolutely know all about the people, who are the people in +this world that we should want to have saved first, that we would want +to have taken to the life-boats and saved first at sea?</p> + +<p>The women who are with child.</p> + +<p>And the men who are about to have ideas.</p> + +<p>And the men who man the boats for them, who in God's name and in the +name of a world protect its women who are with child, and its men who +are about to have ideas.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_392" id="Page_392"></a>The world is different from the <i>Titanic</i>. We do not need to line up our +immortal fellow human beings, sort them out in a minute on a world and +say to them, "Go here and die!" "Go there and live!" We are able to +spend on a world at least an average of thirty-five years apiece on all +these immortal human beings we are with, in seeing what they are like, +in guessing on what they are for and on their relative value, and in +deciding where they belong and what a world can do with them.</p> + +<p>We ought to do better in saving people on a world. We have more time to +think.</p> + +<p>What would we try to do if we took the time to think? Would there be any +way of fixing upon an order for saving people on a world? What would be +the most noble, the most universal, the most Godlike and democratic +schedule for souls to be saved on—on a world?</p> + +<p>I think the man that would save the most other people should be saved +first. It would not be democratic to save an ordinary man, a man who +could just save himself, just think for himself, when saving the man +next to him instead would be saving a man who would save a thousand +ordinary men, or men who have gifts for thinking only of themselves.</p> + +<p>Of course one man who thinks merely of himself is as good as another man +who thinks merely of himself, but from the point of view of a democracy +every common man has an inalienable right—the right to have the man who +saves common men saved first.</p> + +<p>And the moment we get in this world, our first democracy, the moment the +common man really believes in democracy, this aristocracy or people who +save others (the common man himself will see to it) will be saved first.</p> + +<p>He will make mistakes in applying the principle of democracy, that is in +collecting his aristocracies, his strategic men, his linchpins of +society, but he will believe in the principle all through. It will be +not merely in his brain, but in his in<a name="Page_393" id="Page_393"></a>stincts, in his unconscious +hero-worship, in his sinews and his bones, and it will stir in his +blood, that some men should be saved before others.</p> + +<p>But if the world is not a <i>Titanic</i>, and if we have on the average +thirty-five years apiece to decide about men on a world and put them +where they belong, it might not be amiss to try to unite for the time +being on a few fundamental principles. What would seem to us to be a few +fundamental principles for the act of world-assimilation, that vast, +slow, unconscious crowd-process, that peristaltic action of society of +gathering up and stowing away men—all these little numberless cells of +humanity where they belong?</p> + +<p>No one cell can have much to say about it. But we can watch.</p> + +<p>And as we watch it seems to us that men may be said to be dividing +themselves roughly and flowingly at all times into three great streams +or classes.</p> + +<p>They are either Inventors, or they are Artists, or they are Hewers.</p> + +<p>Of course in classifying men it is necessary to bear in mind that their +getting out of their classifications is what the classifications are +for.</p> + +<p>And it is also necessary to bear in mind that men can only be classified +with regard to their emphasis and may belong in one class in regard to +one thing and in another class with regard to another, but in any +particular place, or at any particular time a man is doing a thing in +this world, he is probably for the time being, while he is doing it, +doing it as an Inventor (or genius), as an Artist (or organizer), or as +a Hewer. Most men, it must be said, settle down in their +classifications. They are very apt to decide for life whether they are +Inventors or Artists or Hewers.</p> + +<p>But as has been said before, being on a world and not on a <i>Titanic</i>, we +have time to think.</p> + +<p>On what principles could we make out a schedule or inventory of human +nature, and decide on world-values in men?</p> + +<p><a name="Page_394" id="Page_394"></a>When I was a boy I played in the hollow of a great butternut tree—the +one my mother was married under. When I was in college I used to go back +to it. I used to wonder a little that it was still there. When we had +all grown up we all came back and got together under it one happy day +and there it still stood, its great arms from out of the sky bent over +lovers and over children on its little island, its wide river singing +round it, still that glorious old hollow in it, full of dreams and +childhood and mystery, and that old sudden sunshine in it through the +knots like portholes ... then we stood there all of us together. And the +mother watched her daughter married under it.</p> + +<p>I can remember many days standing beneath it as a small boy (my small +insides full of butternuts, a thousand more butternuts up on the tree), +and I used to look up in its branches and wonder about it, wonder how it +could keep on so with its butternuts and with its leaves, with its +winters and with its summers, its cool shadows and sunshines, still +being a butternut tree, with that huge hollow in it.</p> + +<p>I have learned since that if a few ounces or whittlings of wood in a +tree are chipped out in a ring around it under the bark, cords of wood +in the limbs all up across the sky would die in a week—if one chips out +those few little ounces of wood.</p> + +<p>Cords of wood can be taken out of the inside of the tree and it will not +mind.</p> + +<p>It is that little half-inch rim of the tree where the juice runs up to +the sun that makes the tree alive or dead.</p> + +<p>The part that must be saved first and provided for first is that +slippery little shiny streak under the bark.</p> + +<p>One could dig out a huge brush-heap of roots and the tree would live. +One could pick off millions of leaves, could cut cords of branches out +of it, or one could make long hollows up to the sun, tubes to the sky +out of trees, and they would live, if one still managed to save those +little delicate pipe lines for Sap, running up and running down, day and +night, night and <a name="Page_395" id="Page_395"></a>day, between the light in heaven and the darkness in +the ground.</p> + +<p>Perhaps Men are valuable in proportion as it would be difficult to +produce promptly other men to perform their functions, or to take their +places.</p> + +<p>If we cut away in society men of genius, leaves, and blossoms, in trees, +men who reach down Heaven to us, they grow out again.</p> + +<p>If we cut away in society great masses of roots, common men who hew out +the earth in the ground and get earth ready to be heaved up to the +sky—the roots grow out again.</p> + +<p>But if we cut a little faint rim around it of artists, of inventive +men-controllers, of the Sap-conductors, the men who make the Hewers run +up to the sky and who make the geniuses come down to the ground, the men +who run the tree together, who out of dark earth and bright sunshine +build it softly—if we destroy these, this little rim of great men or +men who save others, a totally new tree has to be begun.</p> + +<p>It is the essence of a democracy to acknowledge that some men for the +time being are more important in it than others, and that these men, +whosoever they are, in whatever order of society they may be—poor, +rich, famous, obscure—these men who think for others, who save others +and invent others, who make it possible for others to invent themselves, +these men shall be saved first.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>One always thinks at first that one would like to make a diagram of +human nature. It would be neat and convenient.</p> + +<p>Then one discovers that no diagram one can make of human nature—unless +one makes what might be called a kind of squirming diagram will really +work.</p> + +<p>Then one tries to imagine what a flowing diagram would be like.</p> + +<p>Then it occurs to one, one has seen a flowing diagram.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_396" id="Page_396"></a>A Tree is a flowing diagram.</p> + +<p>So I am putting down on this page for what it may be worth, what I have +called A Family Tree of Folks.</p> + +<p><i>Read across</i>:</p> + +<table border="1" summary="A Family Tree of Folks"> +<tr><td><b>INVENTORS</b></td><td><b>ARTISTS</b></td><td><b>HEWERS</b></td></tr> +<tr><td>Inventors</td><td>Organizers</td><td>Labourers</td></tr> +<tr><td>Imagination</td><td>Applied Imagination</td><td>Tool or Mechanism</td></tr> +<tr><td>Fecundity</td><td>Control</td><td>Activity</td></tr> +<tr><td>Seer</td><td>Poet</td><td>Actor</td></tr> +<tr><td>The Man who Generalizes</td><td>The Man who Sees the General in the Particular</td><td>Action</td></tr> +<tr><td>The Deeper Permanent Significance</td><td>The Immediate Significance or Meaning</td><td>Hewing</td></tr> +<tr><td>Light</td><td>Applied Light or Heat</td><td>Applied Heat or Motion</td></tr> +<tr><td>Stevenson and Watt</td><td>James J. Hill</td><td>Railway Hands</td></tr> +<tr><td>Creating</td><td>Creative Selecting</td><td>Hewing</td></tr> +<tr><td>The Democrat</td><td>The Aristocrat or Crowdman</td><td>The Crowd</td></tr> +<tr><td>Gods</td><td>Heroes</td><td>Men</td></tr> +<tr><td>Centrifugal Power</td><td>Equilibrium</td><td>Centripetal Power</td></tr> +<tr><td>The Whirl-Out People</td><td>The Centre People</td><td>The Whirl-In People</td></tr> +<tr><td>Alexander Graham Bell</td><td>Telephone-Vail</td><td>Hands</td></tr> +<tr><td>Architect</td><td>Contractor</td><td>Carpenter</td></tr> +<tr><td>Genius</td><td>Artist</td><td>Workmen</td></tr> +<tr><td>Columbus</td><td>Columbus</td><td>Isabella and the sailors</td></tr> +<tr><td>The Prospector</td><td>The Engineer</td><td>Scoopers, Grabbers (in mind or body), Hewers</td></tr> +<tr><td>David the poet</td><td>David the king</td><td>David the soldier</td></tr> +<tr><td>Shakespeare</td><td>Shakespeare</td><td>Shakespeare</td></tr> +</table> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_397" id="Page_397"></a>CHAPTER XVIII</h2> + +<h3>THE MAN WHO PULLS THE WORLD TOGETHER</h3> + + +<p>The typical mighty man or man of valour in our modern life is the +Organizer or Artist.</p> + +<p>If a man has succeeded in being a great organizer, it is because he has +succeeded in organizing himself.</p> + +<p>A man who has organized himself is a man who has built a personality. +The main fact about a man who has succeeded in being an organized man or +personality is, that he has ordered himself around.</p> + +<p>Naturally, when other people have to be ordered around, being +full-head-on in the habit of ordering, even ordering himself, the +hardest feat of all, he is the man who has to be picked out to order +other people. As a rule the man who orders himself around successfully, +who makes his whole nature or all parts of himself work together, does +it because he takes pains to find out who he is and what he is like. If +he orders other men successfully and makes them work together it is +because he knows what they are like.</p> + +<p>A man knows what other people are like and bow they feel by having times +of being a little like them and by being a big, latent all-possible, +all-round kind of man.</p> + +<p>Leadership follows.</p> + +<p>Modern business consists in getting Inventors' minds and Hewers' minds +to work together. The ruler of modern business is the man who by +experience or imagination is half an Inventor himself, and half a Hewer +himself. He knows how inventing feels and how hewing feels.</p> + +<p>He has a southern exposure toward Hewers and makes <a name="Page_398" id="Page_398"></a>Hewers feel +identified with him. He has what might be called an eastern exposure +toward men of genius, understands the inventive temperament, has the +kind of personality that evokes inventiveness in others.</p> + +<p>Incidentally he has what might be called a northern exposure which keeps +him scientific, cool, and close to the spirit of facts.</p> + +<p>And there has to be something very like a western exposure in him too, a +touch of the homely seer, a habit of having reflections and afterglows, +a sense of principles, and of the philosophy of men and things.</p> + +<p>If I were to try to sum up all these qualities in a man and call it by +one name, I would call it Glorified-commonsense.</p> + +<p>If I were asked to define Glorified-commonsense I would say it is a +glory which works. It belongs to the man who has a vision or coinage for +others because he sees them as they are, and sees how the glory buried +in them (<i>i.e.</i>, the inspiration or source of hard work in them) can be +got out.</p> + +<p>Everywhere that the Artist in business, or Organizer, with his Inventors +on one side of him and his Hewers on the other, can be seen to-day +competing with the man who has the mere millionaire or owning type of +mind, he is crowding him from the market.</p> + +<p>It is because he understands how Inventors and Hewers feel and what they +think and when he turns on Inventors he makes them invent and when he +turns on Hewers he makes them hew.</p> + +<p>The Hewer often thinks because he is rich or because he owns a business, +that he can take the place of the artist, but he can be seen every day +in every business around us, being passed relentlessly out of power +because he cannot make his Inventors invent and cannot make his Hewers +hew as well as some other man. The moment his Inventors and Hewers think +of him, hear about him, or have any dealing with him—with the mere +millionaire, the mere owner kind of person, his Inventors invent as +little as they can, and his Hewers hew as softly as they dare.</p> + +<p>This is called the Modern Industrial Problem.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_399" id="Page_399"></a>And no man but the artist, the man with the inventing and the hewing +spirit both in him, who daily puts the inventing spirit and the hewing +spirit together in himself, can get it together in others.</p> + +<p>Only the man who has kept and saved both the inventing and hewing spirit +in himself can save it in others—can be a saviour or artist.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_400" id="Page_400"></a>CHAPTER XIX</h2> + +<h3>THE MAN WHO STANDS BY</h3> + + +<p>I have been trying to say in this book that goodness in daily life, or +in business, in common world-running or world housekeeping, is by an +implacable crowd-process working slowly out of the hands of the wrong +men into the hands of the right ones.</p> + +<p>If this is not true, I am ready to declare myself as a last resort, in +favour of a strike.</p> + +<p>There is only one strike that would be practical.</p> + +<p>I would declare for a strike of the saviours.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>By a saviour I do not mean a man who stoops down to me and saves me. A +saviour to me is a man who stands by and lets me save myself.</p> + +<p>I am afraid we cannot expect much of men who can bear the idea of being +saved by other people, or by saviours who have a stooping feeling.</p> + +<p>I rejoice daily in the spirit of our modern laboring men, in that holy +defiance in their eyes, in the way they will not say "please" to their +employers and announce that they will save themselves.</p> + +<p>The only saviour who can do things for labouring men is the saviour who +proposes to do things with them, who stands by, who helps to keep +oppressors and stooping saviours off—who sees that they have a fair +chance and room to save themselves.</p> + +<p>I define a true saviour as a man who is trying to save himself.</p> + +<p>It was because Christ, Savonarola, and John Bunyan were <a name="Page_401" id="Page_401"></a>all trying to +save themselves that it ever so much as occurred to them to save worlds. +Saving a world was the only way to do it.</p> + +<p>The Cross was Christ's final stand for his own companionableness, his +stand for being like other people, for having other people to share his +life with, his faith in others and his joy in the world.</p> + +<p>The world was saved incidentally when Christ died on the Cross. He +wanted to live more abundantly—and he had to have certain sorts of +people to live more abundantly with. He did not want to live unless he +could live more abundantly.</p> + +<p>We live in a world in which inventors want to die if they cannot invent +and in which Hewers want to die if they cannot hew.</p> + +<p>I am not proud. I am willing to be saved. Any saviour may save me if he +wants to, if his saving me is a part of his saving himself.</p> + +<p>If the inventor saves me and saves us all because he wants to be in a +world where an inventor can invent, wants some one to invent to; if the +artist saves me because it is part of his worship of God to have me +saved and wants to use me every day to rejoice about the world with—if +the Hewer comes over and hews out a place in the world for me because he +wants to hew, I am willing.</p> + +<p>All that I demand is, that if a man take the liberty of being a saviour +to me that he refrain from stooping, that he come up to me and save me +like a man, that he stand before me and tell me that here is something +that we, he and I, shoulder to shoulder, can do, something that neither +of us could do alone. Then he will fall to with me and I will fall to +with him, and we will do it.</p> + +<p>This is what I mean by a saviour.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_402" id="Page_402"></a>CHAPTER XX</h2> + +<h3>THE STRIKE OF THE SAVIOURS</h3> + + +<p>A factory in —— some ten years ago employed one hundred men. Three of +these men were in the office and ninety-seven were hands in the works. +To-day this same factory which is doing a very much larger business is +still employing one hundred men, but thirty of the men are employed in +the office and seventy in the works.</p> + +<p>Ten years, ago to put it in other words, the factory provided places for +one artist or manager and two inventors and places for ninety-seven +Hewers.</p> + +<p>To-day the factory has made room for thirty inventors, one manager and +twenty-nine men who spend their entire time in thinking of things that +will help the Hewers hew.</p> + +<p>It has seventy Hewers who are helping the Inventors invent by hewing +three times as hard and three times as skilfully or three times as much +as without the Inventors to help them, they had dreamed they could hew +before.</p> + +<p>The Artist or Organizer who made this change in the factory found that +among the ninety-seven Hewers that were employed a number of Hewers were +hewing very poorly, because though hewing was the best they could do, +they could not even hew. He found certain others who were hewing poorly +because they were not Hewers, but Inventors. These he set to work—some +of them inventing in the office.</p> + +<p>On closer examination the two Inventors in the office were found to be +not Inventors at all. One of them was a fine Hewer who liked to hew and +who hated inventing and the other was merely a rich Hewer who was an +owner in the business <a name="Page_403" id="Page_403"></a>who saw suddenly that he would have to stop +inventing and stop very soon if he wanted the business to make any more +money.</p> + +<p>There are four things that the Artist has to do with a factory like this +before he can make it efficient.</p> + +<p>Each of these things is an art. One art is the art of compelling the +mere owner, the man with the merely hewing mind, to confine himself to +the one thing he knows how to do, namely to shovelling, to shovelling +his money in when and where he was told it was needed, and to shovelling +his money out when it has been made for him.</p> + +<p>The art of compelling a mere owner to know his place, of keeping him +shovelling money in and shovelling money out silently and modestly, +consists as a rule in having the Artist or Organizer tell him that +unless the business is placed completely in his hands he will not +undertake to run it.</p> + +<p>This is the first art. The second art consists in having an +understanding with the inventors that they will invent ways of helping +the Hewers hew.</p> + +<p>The third art consists in having an understanding with the Hewers that +they will accept the help of the Inventors and hew with it. The fourth +art is the art of representing the consumer with the Hewer and with the +Inventor and with the Owner and seeing that he shares in the benefits of +all economies and improvements.</p> + +<p>These are all human arts and turn on the power in a man of being a true +artist, of being a man-inventor, a man-developer and a man-mixer, daily +taking part of himself and using these parts in putting other men +together.</p> + +<p>These organizers or artists, being the men who see how—are the men who +are not afraid.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_404" id="Page_404"></a>CHAPTER XXI</h2> + +<h3>THE LEAGUE OF THE MEN WHO ARE NOT AFRAID</h3> + + +<p>If all the unbrained money in the world to-day and the men that go with +it could be isolated, could be taken by men of imagination and put in a +few ships and sent off to an island in the sea—if New York and London +and all the other important places could be left in the hands of the men +who have imagination, poor and rich, they would soon have the world in +shape to make the men with merely owning minds, the mere owners off on +their island, beg to come back to it, to be allowed to have a share in +it on any terms.</p> + +<p>In order to be fair, of course, their island would have to be a +furnished island—mines, woods, and everything they could want. It would +become a kind of brute wilderness or desert in twenty-five years. We +could, now and then, some of us, take happy little trips, go out and +look them over on their little furnished island. It would do us good to +watch them—these men with merely owning or holding-on minds, really +noticing at last how unimportant they are.</p> + +<p>But it is not necessary to resort to a furnished island as a device, as +a mirror for making mere millionaires see themselves.</p> + +<p>This is a thing that could be done for millionaires now, most of them, +here just where they are.</p> + +<p>All that is necessary is to have the brains of the world so organized +that the millionaires who expect merely because they are millionaires to +be run after by brains, cannot get any brains to run after them.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_405" id="Page_405"></a>I am in favour of organizing the brains of the world into a trades +union.</p> + +<p>One of the next things that is going to happen is that the managing and +creating minds of the world to-day are going to organize, are going to +see suddenly their real power and use it. The brains are about to have, +as labour and capital already have, a class consciousness.</p> + +<p>I would not claim that there is going to be an international strike of +the brains of the world, but it will not be long before the managing +class as a class will be organized so that they can strike if they want +to.</p> + +<p>The Artists or Organizers and Managers of business will not need +probably, in order to accomplish their purpose, to strike against the +uncreative millionaires. They will make a stand (which the best of them +have already made now) for the balance of power in any business that +they furnish their brains to. The brains that create the profits for the +owners and that create the labour for the labourers, will make terms for +their brains and will withhold their brains if necessary to this end. +But it is far more likely that they will accomplish their purpose sooner +by using their brains for the millionaires and for the labourers—by +coöperating with the millionaires and labourers than they will by +striking against them or keeping their brains back.</p> + +<p>They are in a position to make the millionaires see how little money +they can make without them even in a few days. They will let them try. A +very little trying will prove it.</p> + +<p>Where hand labour would have to strike for weeks and months to prove its +value, brain labour would have to strike hours and days.</p> + +<p>This is what is going to be done in modern business in one business at a +time, the brains insisting in each firm upon full control.</p> + +<p>Then, of course, the firms that have the brains in most full control +will drive the firms in which brains are in less control out of +competition.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_406" id="Page_406"></a>Then brains will spread from one business to another. The Managers, +Artists, and Organizers of the world will have formed at last a Brain +Syndicate, and they will put themselves in a position to determine in +their own interests and in the interests of society at large the terms +on which all men—all men who have no brains to put with their +money—shall be allowed to have the use of theirs. They will monopolize +the brain supply of the world.</p> + +<p>Then they will act. Under our present régime money hires men; under the +régime of the Brain Syndicate men will hire money. Money—<i>i.e.</i>, saved +up or canned labour, is going to be hired by Managers, Organizers, and +Engineers with as much discrimination and with as deep a study of its +efficiency, as new labour is hired. The millionaires are going to be +seen standing with their money bags and their little hats in their hands +like office boys asking for positions for their money before the doors +of the really serious and important men, the men who toil out the ideas +and the ways and the means of carrying out ideas—the men who do the +real work of the world, who see things that they want and see how to get +them—the men of imagination, the inventors of ideas, organizers of +facts, generals and engineers in human nature.</p> + +<p>It is these men who are going to allow people who merely have +thoughtless labour and people who merely have thoughtless money to be +let in with them. The world's quarrel with the rich man is not his being +a rich man, but his being rich without brains, and its quarrel with the +poor labourer is not his being a poor labourer, but his being a poor +labourer without brains. The only way that either of these men can have +a chance to be of any value is in letting themselves be used by the man +who will supply them with what they lack. They will try to get this man +to see if he cannot think of some way of getting some good out of them +for themselves, and for others.</p> + +<p>We have a Frederick Taylor for furnishing brains to labour.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_407" id="Page_407"></a>We are going to have a Frederick Taylor to attend to the brain-supply of +millionaires, to idea-outfits for directors.</p> + +<p>Every big firm is going to have a large group of specialists working on +the problem of how to make millionaires—its own particular millionaires +think, devising ways of keeping idle and thoughtless capitalists out of +the way. If the experts fail in making millionaires think, they may be +succeeded by experts in getting rid of them and in finding thoughtful +money, possibly made up of many small sums, to take their place.</p> + +<p>The real question the Artist or Organizer is going to ask about any man +with capital will be, "Is it the man who is making the money valuable +and important or is it the money that is making this man important for +the time being and a little noticeable or important-looking?"</p> + +<p>The only really serious question we have to face about money to-day is +the unimportance of the men who have it. The Hewers or Scoopers, or +Grabbers, who have assumed the places of the Artist and the Inventor +because they have the money, are about to be crowded over to the silent, +modest back seats in directors' meetings. If they want their profits, +they must give up their votes. They are going to be snubbed. They are +going to beg to be noticed. The preferred stock or voting stock will be +kept entirely in the hands of the men of working imagination, of +clear-headedness about things that are not quite seen, the things that +constitute the true values in any business situation, the men who have +the sense of the way things work and of the way they will have to go.</p> + +<p>Mere millionaires who do not know their place in a great business will +be crowded into small ones. They will be confronted by the organized +refusal of men with brains to work for their inferiors, to be under +control of men of second-rate order. Men with mere owning and grabbing +minds will only be able to find men as stupid as they are to invest and +manage their money for them. In a really big creative business their +only chance will be cash and silence. They will be very glad at last <a name="Page_408" id="Page_408"></a>to +get in on any terms, if the men of brains will let their money edge into +their business without votes and be carried along with it as a favour.</p> + +<p>It is because things are not like this now, that we have an industrial +problem.</p> + +<p>Managers who have already hired labour as a matter of course are going +to hire the kind of capital they like, the kind of capital that thinks +and that can work with thinking men.</p> + +<p>There will gradually evolve a general recognition in business on the +part of men who run it and on the part of managers, of the moral or +human value of money. The successful manager is no longer going to grab +thoughtlessly at any old, idle, foolish pot of money that may be offered +to him. He is going to study the man who goes with it, see how he will +vote and see whether he knows his place, whether he is a Hewer, for +instance, who thinks he is an Inventor. Does he or does he not know +which he is, an Inventor, an Artist, or a Hewer?</p> + +<p>Capitalists will expect as a matter of course to be looked over and to +be hired in a great business enterprise as carefully as labourers are +being hired now.</p> + +<p>The moment it is generally realized that the managers of every big +modern business have become as particular about letting in the right +kind of directors as they have been before about letting in the right +kind of labour, we will stop having an upside-down business world.</p> + +<p>An upside-down business world is one in which any man who has money +thinks he can be a director almost anywhere, a world in which on every +hand we find managers who are not touching the imagination of the public +and getting it to buy, and not touching the imagination of labour and +getting it to work, because they are not free to carry out their ideas +without submitting them to incompetent and scared owners.</p> + +<p>The incompetent and scared owners—the men who cannot think—are about +to be shut out. Then they will be compelled to hire incompetent and +scared managers. Then they <a name="Page_409" id="Page_409"></a>will lose their money. Then the world will +slip out of their hands.</p> + +<p>The problem of modern industry is to be not the distribution of the +money supply, but the distribution of the man-supply.</p> + +<p>Money follows men.</p> + +<p>Free men. Free money.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_410" id="Page_410"></a><a name="Page_411" id="Page_411"></a>BOOK FIVE</h2> + +<h3>GOOD NEWS AND HARD WORK</h3> + + +<p>TO ANYBODY</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"><i> +<span class="i3">"I know that all men ever born are also my brothers....<br /></span> +<span>Limitless leaves too, stiff or drooping in the fields,<br /></span> +<span class="i3">And brown ants in the little wells beneath them<br /></span> +<span class="i3">And mossy scabs of the worm fence, heaped stones, elders, mulleins and poke weed."<br /></span></i> +</div></div> + +<p><i>A Child said, "What is grass?" fetching it to me with full hands.<br /> +<br /> +How could I answer the Child?</i></p> + +<hr /> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"><i> +<span>"I want to trust the sky and the grass!<br /></span> +<span>I want to believe the songs I hear from the fenceposts!<br /></span> +<span>Why should a maple-bud mislead me?"<br /></span></i> +</div></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_412" id="Page_412"></a><a name="Page_413" id="Page_413"></a>PART ONE</h2> + +<h3>NEWS AND LABOUR</h3> + + +<p>A big New England factory, not long ago, wanted to get nearer its raw +material and moved to Georgia.</p> + +<p>All the machine considerations, better water-power, cheaper labour, +smaller freight bills, and new markets had argued for moving to Georgia.</p> + +<p>Long rows of new mills were built and thousands of negroes were moved in +and thousands of shanties were put up, and the men and the women stood +between the wheels. And the wheels turned.</p> + +<p>There was not a thing that had not been thought of except the men and +women that stood between the wheels.</p> + +<p>The men and women that stood between the wheels were, for the most part, +strong and hearty persons and they never looked anxious or abused and +did as they were told.</p> + +<p>And when Saturday night came, crowds of them with their black faces, of +the men and of the women, of the boys and girls, might have been seen +filing out of the works with their week's wages.</p> + +<p>Monday morning a few of them dribbled back. There were enough who would +come to run three mills. All the others in the long row of mills were +silent. Tuesday morning, Number Four started up, Wednesday, Number Five. +By Thursday noon they were all going.</p> + +<p>The same thing happened the week after, and the week after, and the week +after that.</p> + +<p>The management tried everything they could think of with their people, +scolding, discharging, making their work harder, <a name="Page_414" id="Page_414"></a>making their work +easier, paying them less, paying them more, two Baptist ministers and +even a little Roman Catholic Church.</p> + +<p>As long as the negroes saw enough to eat for three days, they would not +work.</p> + +<p>It began to look as if the mills would have to move back to +Massachusetts, where people looked anxious and where people felt poor, +got up at 5 A.M. Mondays and worked.</p> + +<p>Suddenly one day, the son of one of the owners, a very new-looking young +man who had never seen a business college, and who had run through +Harvard almost without looking at a book, and who really did not seem to +know or to care anything about anything—except folks—appeared on the +scene with orders from his father that he be set to work.</p> + +<p>The manager could not imagine what to do with him at first, but finally, +being a boy who made people like him more than they ought to, he found +himself placed in charge of the Company Store. The company owned the +village, and the Company Store, which had been treated as a mere +necessity in the lonely village, had been located, or rather dumped, at +the time, into a building with rows of little house-windows in it, a +kind of extra storehouse on the premises.</p> + +<p>The first thing the young man did was to stove four holes in the +building, all along the front and around the corners on the two sides, +and put in four big plate-glass windows. The store was mysteriously +closed up in front for a few days to do this, and no one could see what +was happening, and the negroes slunk around into a back room to buy +their meal and molasses. And finally one morning, one Sunday morning, +the store opened up bravely and flew open in front.</p> + +<p>The windows on the right contained three big purple hats with blue +feathers, and some pink parasols.</p> + +<p>The windows on the left were full of white waistcoats, silver-headed +canes, patent-leather shoes and other things to live up to.</p> + +<p>Monday morning more of the mills were running than usual.</p> + +<p>Later in the week there appeared in the windows melodions, <a name="Page_415" id="Page_415"></a>phonographs, +big gilt family Bibles, bread machines, sewing machines, and Morris +chairs. Only a few hands took their Mondays off after this.</p> + +<p>All the mills began running all the week.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>Of course there are better things to live for than purple hats and blue +feathers, and silver-headed canes, and patent leather shoes. But if +people can be got to live six days ahead, or thirty days, or sixty days +ahead, instead of three days ahead, by purple hats and blue feathers and +white waistcoats, and if it is necessary to use purple hats and blue +feathers to start people thinking in months instead of minutes, or to +budge them over to where they can have a touch of idealism or of +religion or of living beyond the moment, I say for one, with all my +heart, "God bless purple hats and blue feathers!"</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>The great problem of modern charity, the one society is largely occupied +with to-day, is: "What is there that we can possibly do for our +millionaires?"</p> + +<p>The next thing Society is going to do, perhaps, is to design and set up +purple hats with blue feathers for millionaires.</p> + +<p>The moment our millionaires have placed before them something to live +for, a few real, live, satisfying ideals, or splendid lasting things +they can do, things that everybody else would want to do, and that +everybody else would envy them for doing, it will bore them to run a +great business merely to make money. They will find it more interesting, +harder, and calling for greater genius, to be great and capable +employers. When our millionaires once begin to enter into competition +with one another in being the greatest and most successful employers of +labour on earth, our industrial wars will cease.</p> + +<p>Millionaires who get as much work out of their employees as they dare, +and pay them as little as they can, and who give <a name="Page_416" id="Page_416"></a>the public as small +values as they dare, and take as much money as they can, only do such +stupid, humdrum, conventional things because they are bored, because +they cannot really think of anything to live for.</p> + +<p>Labourers whose daily, hourly occupation consists in seeing how much +less work a day than they ought to do, they can do, and how much more +money they can get out of their employers than they earn, only do such +things because they are tired or bored and discouraged, and because they +cannot think of anything that is truly big and fine and worth working +for.</p> + +<p>The industrial question is not an economic question. It is a question of +supplying a nation with ideals. It is a problem which only an American +National Ideal Supply Company could hope to handle. The very first +moment three or four purple hats with blue feathers for millionaires and +for labourers have been found and set up in the great show window of the +world, the industrial unrest of this century begins to end.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>As I went by, one day not long ago, I saw two small boys playing +house—marking off rooms—sitting-rooms and bedrooms, with rows of +stones on the ground. When I came up they had just taken hold of a big +stone they wanted to lift over into line a little. They were tugging on +it hopefully and with very red faces, and it did not budge. I picked up +a small beam about five feet long on my side of the road, that I thought +would do for a crowbar, stepped over to the boys, fixed a fulcrum for +them, and went on with my walk. When I came back after my walk that +night to the place where the boys had been playing, I found the boys had +given up working on their house. And as I looked about, every big stone +for yards around—every one that was the right size—seemed subtly out +of place. The top of the stone wall, too, was very crooked.</p> + +<p>They had given up playing house and had played crowbar all day instead.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_417" id="Page_417"></a>I should think it would have been a rather wonderful day, those boys' +first day, seven or eight hours of it spent, with just a little time off +for luncheon, in seeing how a crowbar worked!</p> + +<p>I have forgotten just how much larger part of a ton one inch more on a +crowbar lifts. I never know figures very well. But I know people and I +know that a man with only three day's worth of things ahead to live for +does not get one hundredth part of the purchase power on what he is +doing that the man gets who works with thirty days ahead of things to +live for, all of them nerving him up, keeping him in training, and +inspiring him. And I know that the man who does his work with a longer +lever still, with thirty or forty years worth' of things he wants, all +crowding in upon him and backing him up, can lift things so easily, so +even jauntily, sometimes, that he seems to many of us sometimes to be a +new size and a new kind of man.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>The general conventional idea of business is, that if you give a man +more wages to work for, he will work more, but of course if a business +man has the brains, knows how to fire up an employee, knows how to give +him something or suggest something in his life that will make him want +to live twenty times as much, it would not only be cheaper, but it would +work better than paying him twice as much wages.</p> + +<p>Efficiency is based on news. Put before a man's life twenty times as +much to live for and to work for, and he will do at least, well—twice +as much work.</p> + +<p>If a man has a big man's thing or object in view, he can do three times +as much work. If the little thing he has to do, and keep doing, is seen +daily by him as a part of a big thing, the power and drive of the big +thing is in it, the little thing becomes the big thing, seems big while +he is doing it every minute. It makes it easier to do it because it +seems big.</p> + +<p>The little man becomes a big man.</p> + +<p>From the plain, practical point of view, it is the idealist in +<a name="Page_418" id="Page_418"></a>business, the shrewd, accurate, patient idealist in modern business who +is the man of economic sense. The employer who can put out ideals in +front of his people, who can make his people efficient with the least +expense, is the employer who has the most economic sense.</p> + +<p>The employer who is a master at supplying motives to people, who manages +to cut down through to the quick in his employees, to the daily motives, +to the hourly ideals, the hourly expectations with which they work, is +the employer who already takes the lead, who is already setting the pace +in the twentieth-century business world.</p> + +<p>Possibly you have noticed this trait in the great employers or, at +least, in the great managers of employers?</p> + +<p>You are going, for instance, through a confectionery shop. As you move +down the long aisles of candy machines you hear the clock strike eleven. +Suddenly music starts up all around you and before your eyes four +hundred girls swing off into each other's arms. They dance between their +machines five minutes, and then, demurely, they drop back to their work. +You see them sitting quietly in long white rows, folding up sweet-meats +with flushed and glowing cheeks.</p> + +<p>Is this sentiment or is it cold businesslike efficiency?</p> + +<p>The more sentiment there is in it, I think, the more efficient it is and +the better it works.</p> + +<p>"Business is not business."</p> + +<p>One need not quarrel about words, but certainly, whatever else business +is, it is not business. It would be closer to the facts to call business +an art or a religion, a kind of homely, inspired, applied piety, based +upon gifts in men which are essentially religious gifts; the power of +communion in the human heart, the genius for cultivating companionship, +of getting people to understand you and understand one another and do +team work. The bed-rock, the hard pan of business success lies in the +fundamental, daily conviction—the personal habit in a man of looking +upon business as a hard, ac<a name="Page_419" id="Page_419"></a>curate, closely studied, shrewd human art, a +science of mutual expectation.</p> + +<p>I am not saying that I would favour all employers of young women having +them, to-morrow morning at eleven o'clock, swing off into each other's +arms and dance for five minutes. The value of the dance in this +particular case was that the Firm thought of the dancing itself and was +always doing things like it, that everybody knew that the Firm, up in +its glass office, felt glad, joined in the dance in spirit, enjoyed +seeing the girls caught up for five minutes in the joy and swing of a +big happy world full of sunshine and music outside, full of buoyant and +gentle things, of ideals around them which belonged to them and of which +they and their lives were a part.</p> + +<p>When we admit that business success to-day turns or is beginning to turn +on a man's power of getting work out of people, we admit that a man's +power of getting work out of people, his business efficiency, turns on +his power of supplying his people with ideals.</p> + +<p>Ideals are news.</p> + +<p>You come on a man who thinks he is out of breath and that he cannot +possibly run. You happen to be able to tell him that some dynamite in +the quarry across the road is going to blow the side of the hill out in +forty-five seconds and he will run like a gazelle.</p> + +<p>You tell a man the news, the true news that his employees are literally +and honestly finding increased pay or promotion, either in their own +establishment or elsewhere for every man they employ, as fast as he +makes himself fit, and you have created a man three times his own size +before your own eyes, all in a minute. And he begins working for you +like a man three times his own size, and not because he is getting more +for it, but because he suddenly believes in you, suddenly believes in +the world and in the human race he belongs to.</p> + +<p>To make a man work, say something to him or do something to him which +will make him swing his hat for humanity, and <a name="Page_420" id="Page_420"></a>give three cheers (like a +meeting of workmen the other day): "Three cheers for God!"</p> + +<p>There is a well-known firm in England which has the best labour of its +kind in the world, because the moment the Firm finds that a man's skill +has reached the uttermost point in his work, where it would be to the +Firm's immediate interests to keep him and where the Firm could keep on +making money out of him and where the man could not keep on growing, +they have a way of stepping up to such a man (and such things happen +every few days), and telling him that he ought to go elsewhere, finding +him a better place and sending him to it. This is a regular system and +highly organized. The factory is known or looked upon as a big family or +school. There are hundreds of young men and young women who, in order to +get in and get started, and merely be on the premises of such a factory, +would offer to work for the firm for nothing. The Factory, to them, is +like a great Gate on the World.</p> + +<p>It is its ideals that have made the factory a great gate on the World.</p> + +<p>And ideals are news. Ideals are news to a man about himself. News to a +man about himself and about what he can be, is gospel.</p> + +<p>And a factory with men at the top who have the brains about human nature +to do things like this, men who can tell people news about themselves, +all day, every day, all the week, like a church—let such a factory, I +say, for one, have a steeple with chimes in it, if it wants to, and be +counted with the other churches!</p> + +<p>People have a fashion of speaking of a man's ideals in a kind of weak, +pale way, as if ideals were clouds, done in water-colour by schoolgirls, +as if they were pretty, innocent things, instead of being fierce, +splendid, terrific energies, victorious, irrevocable in human history, +trampling the earth like unicorns, breathing wonder, deaths, births upon +the world, carrying everything before them, everywhere they go. These +are ideals! This <a name="Page_421" id="Page_421"></a>may not be the way ideals work in a moment or in a +year, but it is the way they work in history, and it is the way they +make a man feel when he is working on them. It is what they are for, to +make him feel like this, when he is working on them. With the men who +are most alive and who live the longest, the men who live farther ahead +and think in longer periods of time, the energies in ideals function as +an everyday matter of course.</p> + +<p>I wish people would speak oftener of a man's motives, what he lives for, +as his motive powers. They generally speak of motives in a man as if +they were a mere kind of dead chart or spiritual geography in him, or +clock-hand on him or map of his soul. The motives and desires in a man +are the motors or engines in him, the central power house in a man, the +thing in him that makes him go.</p> + +<p>All a man has to do to live suddenly and unexpectedly a big life is to +have suddenly a big motive.</p> + +<p>Anybody who has ever tried, for five minutes, a big motive, ever tried +working a little happiness for other people into what he is doing for +himself, for instance, if he stopped to think about it and how it worked +and how happy it made him himself, would never do anything in any other +way all his life. It is the big motives that are efficient.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_422" id="Page_422"></a>PART TWO</h2> + +<h3>NEWS AND MONEY</h3> + + +<p>I think it was Sir William Lever who remarked (but I have heard in the +last two years so many pearls dropped from the lips of millionaires that +I am not quite sure) that the way to tell a millionaire, when one saw +one, was by his lack of ready money. He added that perhaps a surer way +of knowing a millionaire, when one saw one, was by his lack of ideas.</p> + +<p>My own experience is that neither of these ways works as well as it used +to. I very often meet a man now—a real live millionaire, no one would +think it of.</p> + +<p>One of them—one of the last ones—telegraphed me from down in the +country one morning, swung up to London on a quick train, cooped me up +with him at a little corner table in his hotel, and gave me more ideas +in two hours than I had had in a week.</p> + +<p>I came away very curious about him—whoever he was.</p> + +<p>Not many days afterward I found myself motoring up a long, slow hill, +full of wind and heather, and there in a stately park with all his +treetops around him, and his own blue sky, in a big, beautiful, serene +room, I saw him again.</p> + +<p>He began at once, "Do you think Christ would have approved of my house?"</p> + +<p>His five grown sons were sitting around him but he spoke vividly and +directly and like a child, and as if he had just brushed sixty years +away, and could, any time.</p> + +<p>I said I did not think it fair to Christ, two thousand years off, to ask +what he would have thought of a house like his, now. <a name="Page_423" id="Page_423"></a>The only fair +thing to do would be to ask what Christ would think if He were living +here to-day.</p> + +<p>"Well, suppose He had motored over here with you this afternoon from +—— Manor, and spent last night with you there, and talked with you and +with —— and had seen the pictures, and the great music room and +wandered through the gardens, and suppose that then He had come through +on his way up, all those two miles of slums down in —— seen all those +poor, driven, crowded people, and had finally come up here with you to +this big, still, restful place two thousand people could live in, and +which I keep all to myself. You don't really mean to say, do you, that +He would approve of my living in a house like this?"</p> + +<p>I said that I did not think that Christ would be tipped over by a house +or lose his bearings with a human soul because he lived in a park. I +thought He would look him straight in the eyes.</p> + +<p>"But Christ said, 'He that loseth his life shall save it!'"</p> + +<p>"Yes, but He did not intend it as a mere remark about people's houses."</p> + +<p>It did not seem to me that Christ meant simply giving up to other people +easy and ordinary things like houses or like money, but that He meant +giving up to others our motives, giving up the deepest, hardest things +in us, our very selves to other people.</p> + +<p>"And so you really think that if Christ came and looked at this house +and looked at me in it, He would not mind?"</p> + +<p>"I do not know. I think that after He had looked at your house He would +go down and look at your factory, possibly. How many men do you employ?"</p> + +<p>"Sixteen hundred."</p> + +<p>"I think He would look at them, the sixteen hundred men, and then He +would move about a little. Very likely He would look at their wives and +the little children."</p> + +<p>He thought a moment. I could see that he was not as afraid <a name="Page_424" id="Page_424"></a>of having +Christ see the factory as he was of having Him see the house.</p> + +<p>I was not quite sure but I thought there was a little faint gleam in his +eye when I mentioned the factory.</p> + +<p>"What do you make?" I asked.</p> + +<p>He named something that everybody knows.</p> + +<p>Then I remembered suddenly who he was. He was one of the men I had first +been told about in England, and the name had slipped from me. He had +managed to do and do together the three things one goes about looking +for everywhere in business—what might be called the Three R's of great +business (though not necessarily R's). (1) He had raised the wages of +his employees. (2) He had reduced prices to consumers. (3) He had +reduced his proportion of profit and raised the income of the works, by +inventing new classes of customers, and increasing the volume of the +business.</p> + +<p>He had found himself, one day, as most men do, sooner or later, with a +demand for wages that he could not pay.</p> + +<p>At first he told the men he could not pay them more, said that he would +have to close the works if he did.</p> + +<p>He was a very busy man to be confronted with a crisis like this. The +market was trouble enough.</p> + +<p>One morning, when he was up early, and the house was all still and he +was sitting alone with himself, the thought slipped into his mind that +there had been several times before in his life when he had sat thinking +about certain things that could not be done. And then he had got up from +thinking they could not be done and gone out and done them.</p> + +<p>He wondered if he could not get up and go out and do this one.</p> + +<p>As he sat in the stillness with a clear road before his mind and not a +soul in the world up, the thought occurred to him, with not a thing in +sight to stop it, that he had not really trained himself to be quite +such an expert in raising wages as he had in some other things.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_425" id="Page_425"></a>Perhaps he did not know about raising wages.</p> + +<p>Perhaps if he concentrated his imagination as much on getting higher +wages for his workmen as he had in those early days years before on +making over all his obstinate raw material into the best cases of —— +on earth, he might find it possible to get more wages for his men by +persuading them to earn more and by getting their coöperation in finding +ways to earn more.</p> + +<p>As he sat in the stillness, gradually (perhaps it was the stillness that +did it) the idea grew on him.</p> + +<p>He made up his mind to see what would happen if he worked as hard at +paying higher wages for three months as he had for three years at making +raw material into cases of the best——on earth.</p> + +<p>Then things began happening every day. One of the most important +happened to him.</p> + +<p>He found that higher wages were as interesting a thing to work on as any +other raw material had ever been.</p> + +<p>He found that a cheap workman as raw material to make a high-priced +workman out of was as interesting as a case of——.</p> + +<p>A year or so after this, there was a strike (in his particular industry) +of all the workmen in England. They struck to be paid the wages his men +were paid.</p> + +<p>He had been able to do three things he thought he thought he could not +do. He had succeeded in doing the first, in raising the wages of his +employees, by thinking up original ways of expressing himself to them, +and of getting them to believe in him and of making them want to work a +third harder. At the same time he succeeded in doing the second, in +reducing the prices to consumers, by inventing new by-products out of +waste.</p> + +<p>He had succeeded in doing the third, in reducing his per cent. of +profits and increasing his income from the works at the same time, by +thinking up ways of creating new habits and new needs in his customers.</p> + +<p>He had fulfilled, as it seems, the three requisites of a great business +career. He had created new workmen, invented new <a name="Page_426" id="Page_426"></a>things for men and +women to want, and had then created some new men and women who could +want them.</p> + +<p>Incidentally all the while, day by day, while he was doing these things, +he had distributed a large and more or less unexpected sum of money +among all these three classes of people.</p> + +<p>Some of this extra money went to his workmen, and some to himself, and +some to his customers, but it was largely spent, of course, in getting +business for other manufacturers and in getting people to buy all over +England, from other manufacturers, things that such people as they had +never been able before to afford to buy.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>All these things that I have been saying and which I have duly confided +to the reader flashed through my mind as I stood with my back to the +fire, realizing suddenly that the man who had done them was the man with +whom I was talking.</p> + +<p>Possibly some little thing was said. I do not remember what. The next +thing I knew was that, with his five grown sons around him, he returned +to his attack on his house.</p> + +<p>He said some days he was glad it was so far away. He did not want his +workmen to see it. He did not go to the mill often in his motor-car, not +when he could help it.</p> + +<p>I said that I thought that a man who was doing extraordinary things for +other people, things that other men could not get time or strength or +freedom or boldness of mind or initiative to do, that any particular +thing he could have that gave him any advantage or immunity for doing +the extraordinary things better, that would give him more of a chance to +give other people a chance, that the other people, if they were in their +senses, would insist upon his having these things.</p> + +<p>"I think there are hundreds of men in my mill who think that they ought +to have my motor-car and three or four rooms in this house."</p> + +<p>"Are they the most efficient ones?"</p> + +<p>"<a name="Page_427" id="Page_427"></a>No."</p> + +<p>If a man gives over to other people his deepest motives, and if he +really identifies himself—the very inside of himself with them and +treats their interests as his interests, the more money he has, the more +people like it.</p> + +<p>"Take me, for instance," I said.</p> + +<p>"I have hoped every minute since I knew you, that you were a prosperous +man. I saw the house and looked around in the park as I motored up with +joy. And when I came to the big gate I wanted to give three cheers! I +wish you had stock in the Meat Trust in America, that you could pierce +your way like a microbe into the vitals, into the inside of the Meat +Trust in my own country, make a stand in a Directors' Meeting for ninety +million people over there, say your say for them, vote your stock for +them, say how you want a Meat Trust you belong to, to behave, how you +want it to be a big, serious, business institution and not a humdrum, +mechanical-minded hold-up anybody could think of—in charge of a few +uninteresting, inglorious men—men nobody really cares to know and that +nobody wants to be like ... when I think of what a man like you with +money can do ...!</p> + +<p>"Am I not tired every day, are you not tired, yourself, of going about +everywhere and seeing money in the hands of all these second-class, +socially feeble-minded men, of seeing columns in the papers of what such +men think, of having college presidents, great universities, domes, +churches and thousands of steeples all deferring to them and bowing to +them, and all the superior, live, interested people ringing their door +bells for their money waiting outside on benches for what they think?"</p> + +<p>I do not believe that Christ came into the world, two thousand years +ago, to say that only the men who have minds of the second class, men +who are not far-sighted enough in business to be decently unselfish in +this world, should be allowed to have control of the money and of the +peoples' means of living in it.</p> + +<p>We are living in an age of big machines and big, inevitable +<a name="Page_428" id="Page_428"></a>aggregations, and to say in an age like this, and above all, to get it +out of a Bible, or put it into a hymn book or make a religion of it, +that all the first class minds of the world—the men who see far enough +to be unselfish, should give over their money to second-class men, is +the most monstrous, most unbelieving, unfaithful, unbiblical, +irreligious thing a world can be guilty of. The one thing that is now +the matter with money, is that the second-class people have most of it.</p> + +<p>"What would happen if we applied asceticism or a tired, discouraged +unbelief to having children that we do to having pounds and pence and +dollars and cents? You would not stand for that would you?"</p> + +<p>I looked at his five sons.</p> + +<p>"Suppose all the good families of to-day were to take the ground that +having children is a self-indulgence unworthy of good people; suppose +the good people leave having children in this world almost entirely to +bad ones?</p> + +<p>"This is what has been happening to money.</p> + +<p>"Unbelief in money is unbelief in the spirit. It is paying too much +attention to wealth to say that one must or that one must not have it."</p> + +<p>I cannot recall precisely what was said after this in that long evening +talk of ours but what I tried to say perhaps might have been something +like this:</p> + +<p>The essence of the New Testament seems to be the emphasis of a man's +spirit with or without money. Whether a man should be rich or get out of +being rich and earn the right to be poor (which some very true and big +men, artists and inventors in this world will always prefer) turns on a +man's temperament. If a man has a money genius and can so handle money +that he can make money, and if he can, at the same time, and all in one +bargain, express his own spirit, if he can free the spirits of other men +with money and express his religion in it, he should be ostracized by +all thoughtful, Christian people, if in the desperate crisis of an age +like this, he tries to get out of being rich.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_429" id="Page_429"></a>The one thing a man can be said to be for in this world, is to express +the goodness—the religion in him, in something, and if he is not the +kind of man who can express his religion in money and in employing +labour, then let him find something—say music or radium or painting in +which he can. It is this bounding off in a world, this making a bare +spot in life and saying "This is not God, this cannot be God!"—it is +this alone that is sacriligious.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>It may be that I am merely speaking for myself, but I did discover a man +on Fleet Street the other day who quite agreed with me apparently, that +if the thing a man has in him is religion he can put it up or express it +in almost anything.</p> + +<p>This man had tried to express his idea in a window.</p> + +<p>He had done a Leonardo da Vinci's "Last Supper," in sugar—a kind of +bas-relief in sugar.</p> + +<p>I do not claim that this kind of foolish, helpless caricature of a great +spiritual truth filled me with a great reverence or that it does now.</p> + +<p>But it did make me think how things were.</p> + +<p>If sugar with this man, like money with a banker, was the one logical +thing the man had to express his religion in, or if what he had had to +express had been really true and fine, or if there had been a true or +fine or great man to express, I do not doubt sugar could have been made +to do it.</p> + +<p>One single man with enough money and enough religions skill in human +nature, who would get into the Sugar Trust with some good, fighting, +voting stock, who could make the Sugar Trust do as it would be done by, +would make over American industry in twenty years.</p> + +<p>He would have thrown up as on a high mountain, before all American men, +one great specimen, enviable business. He would have revealed as in a +kind of deep, sober apocalypse, American business to itself. He would +have revealed American <a name="Page_430" id="Page_430"></a>business as a new national art form, as an +expression of the practical religion, the genius for real things, that +is our real modern temperament in America and the real modern +temperament in all the nations.</p> + +<p>Of course it may not need to be done precisely with the Sugar Trust.</p> + +<p>The Meat Trust might do it first, or the Steel Trust.</p> + +<p>But it will be done.</p> + +<p>Then the Golden Rule, one great Golden Rule-machine having been +installed in our trust that knew the most, and was most known, it could +be installed in the others.</p> + +<p>Religion can be expressed much better to-day in a stock-holder's meeting +than it can in a prayer-meeting.</p> + +<p>Charles Cabot, of Boston, walked in quietly to the Stock-holder's +Meeting of the Steel Trust one day and with a little touch of +money—$2,900 in one hand, and a copy of the <i>American Magazine</i> in the +other, made (with $2,900) $1,468,000,000 do right.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_431" id="Page_431"></a>PART THREE</h2> + +<h3>NEWS AND GOVERNMENT</h3> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>CHAPTER I</h2> + +<h3>OXFORD STREET AND THE HOUSE OF COMMONS</h3> + + +<p>Every now and then when I am in London (at the instigation of some +business man who takes the time off to belong to it), I drop into a +pleasant but other-worldly and absent-minded place called the House of +Commons.</p> + +<p>I sit in the windows in the smoking-room and watch the faces of the +members all about me and watch the steamships, strangely, softly, +suddenly—Shakespeare and Pepys, outside on the river, slip gravely by +under glass.</p> + +<p>Or I go in and sit down under the gallery, face to face with the +Speaker, looking across those profiles of world-makers in their seats; +and I watch and listen in the House itself. There is a kind of pleasant, +convenient, appropriate hush upon the world there.</p> + +<p>Wisdom.</p> + +<p>The decorous, orderly machinery of knowledge rolls over one—one listens +to It, to the soft clatter of the endless belt of words.</p> + +<p>Every now and then one sees a member in the middle of a speech, or +possibly in the middle of a sentence, slip up quietly and take a look +(under glass) at The People, or he uses a microscope, perhaps, or a +reading glass on The People, Mr. Bonar Law's, Mr. Lloyd George's, Ramsay +MacDonald's, Will Crook's, or somebody's. Then he comes back gravely as +if he had <a name="Page_432" id="Page_432"></a>got the people attended to now, and finishes what he was +saying.</p> + +<p>It is a very queer feeling one has about the People in the House of +Commons.</p> + +<p>I mean the feeling of their being under glass; they all seem so +manageable, so quiet and so remote, a kind of glazed-over picture in +still life, of themselves. Every now and then, of course one takes a +member seriously when he steps up to the huge showcase of specimen +crowds, which members are always referring to in their speeches. But +nothing comes of it.</p> + +<p>The crowds seem very remote there under the glass. One feels like +smashing something—getting down to closer terms with them—one longs +for a Department Store or a bridge or a 'bus—something that rattles and +bangs and is.</p> + +<p>All the while outside the mighty street—that huge megaphone of the +crowd, goes shouting past. One wishes the House would notice it. But no +one does. There is always just the House Itself and that hush or ring of +silence around it, all England listening, all the little country papers +far away with their hands up to their ears and the great serious-minded +Dailies, and the witty Weeklies, the stately Monthlies, and Quarterlies +all acting as if it mattered....</p> + +<p>Even during the coal strike nothing really happened in the House of +Commons. There was a sense of the great serious people, of the crowds on +Westminster Bridge surging softly through glass outside, but nothing got +in. Big Ben boomed down the river, across the pavements, over the +hurrying crowds and over all the men and the women, the real business +men and women. The only thing about the House that seemed to have +anything to do with anybody was Big Ben.</p> + +<p>Finally one goes up to Harrod's to get relief, or one takes a 'bus, or +one tries Trafalgar Square, or one sees if one can really get across the +Strand or one does something—almost anything to recall one's self to +real life.</p> + +<p>And then, of course, there is Oxford Street.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_433" id="Page_433"></a>Almost always after watching the English people express themselves or +straining to express themselves in the House of Commons, I try Oxford +Street.</p> + +<p>I know, of course, that as an art-form for expressing a great people, +Oxford Street is not all that it should be, but there is certainly +something, after all the mooniness and the dim droniness, and +lawyer-mindedness in the way the English people express themselves or +think that they ought to express themselves in their house of +Commons—there is certainly something that makes Oxford Street seem +suddenly a fine, free, candid way for a great people to talk! And there +is all the gusto, too, the 'busses, the taxies, the hundreds of +thousands of men and women saying things and buying things they believe.</p> + +<p>Taking in the shops on both sides or the street, and taking in the +things the people are doing behind the counters, and in the aisles, and +up in the office windows three blocks of Oxford Street really express +what the English people really want and what they really think and what +they believe and put up money on, more than three years of the house of +Commons.</p> + +<p>If I were an Englishman I would rather be elected to walk up and down +Oxford Street and read what I saw there than to be elected to a seat in +the House of Commons, and I could accomplish more and learn more for a +nation, with three blocks of Oxford Street, with what I could gather up +and read there, and with what I could resent and believe there, than I +could with three years of the House of Commons.</p> + +<p>I know that anybody, of course, could be elected to walk up and down +Oxford Street. But it is enough for me.</p> + +<p>So I almost always try it after the house of Commons.</p> + +<p>And when I have taken a little swing down Oxford Street and got the +House of Commons out of my system a little, perhaps I go down to the +Embankment, and drop into my club.</p> + +<p>Then I sit in the window and mull.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_434" id="Page_434"></a>If the English people express themselves and express what they want and +what they are bound to have, on Oxford Street and put their money down +for it, so much better than they do in the House of Commons, why should +they not do it there?</p> + +<p>Why should elaborate, roundabout, mysterious things like governments, +that have to be spoken of in whispers (and that express themselves +usually in a kind of lawyer-minded way, in picked and dried words like +wills), be looked upon so seriously, and be taken on the whole, as the +main reliance the people have, in a great nation, for expressing +themselves?</p> + +<p>Why should not a great people be allowed to say what they are like and +to say what they want and what they are bound to get, in the way Oxford +Street says things, in a few straight, clean-cut, ordinary words, in +long quiet rows of deeds, of buying and selling and acting?</p> + +<p>Pounds, shillings, and silence.</p> + +<p>Then on to the next thing.</p> + +<p>If the House of Commons were more like Oxford Street or even if it had +suddenly something of the tone of Oxford Street, if suddenly it were to +begin some fine morning to express England the way Oxford Street does, +would not one see, in less than three months, new kinds and new sizes of +men all over England, wanting to belong to it?</p> + +<p>Big, powerful, uncompromising, creative men who have no time for +twiddling, who never would have dreamed of being tucked away in the +house of Commons before, would want to belong to it.</p> + +<p>In the meantime, of course, the men of England who have empires to +express, are not unnaturally expressing them in more simple language +like foundries, soap factories around a world, tungsten mines, +department stores, banks, subways, railroads for seventy nations, and +ships on seven seas, Winnipeg trolleys and little New York skyscrapers.</p> + +<p>Business men of the more usual or humdrum kind could not do it, but +certainly, the first day that business men like these, <a name="Page_435" id="Page_435"></a>of the first or +world-size class, once find the House of Commons a place they like to be +in, once begin expressing the genius of the English people in government +as they are already expressing the genius of the English people in +owning the earth, in buying and selling, in inventing things and in +inventing corporations, the House of Commons will cease to be a bog of +words, an abyss of committees, and legislation will begin to be run like +a railroad—on a block signal system, rows of things taken up, gone +over, and finished. The click of the signal. Then the next thing.</p> + +<p>I sit in my club and look out of the window and think. Just outside +thousands of taxies shooting all these little mighty wills of men across +my window, across London, across England, across the world ... the huge, +imperious street ... all these men hurling themselves about in it, +joining their wills on to telephone wires, to mighty trains and little +quiet country roads, hitching up cables to their wills, and +ships—hitching up the very clouds over the sea to their wills and +running a world—why are not men like these—men who have the +street-spirit in them, this motor genius of driving through to what they +want, taking seats in the House of Commons?</p> + +<p>Perhaps Oxford Street is more efficient and more characteristic in +expressing the genius and the will of the English people than the House +of Commons is because of the way in which the people select the men they +want to express them in Oxford Street.</p> + +<p>It may be that the men the people have selected to be at the top of the +nation's law-making are not selected by as skillful, painstaking, or +thorough a process as the men who have been selected to be placed at the +top of the nation's buying and selling.</p> + +<p>Possibly the reason the House of Commons does not express the will of +the people is, that its members are merely selected in a loose, vague +way and by merely counting noses.</p> + +<p>Possibly, too, the men who are selected by a true, honest, <a name="Page_436" id="Page_436"></a>direct, +natural selection to be the leaders and to free the energies and steer +the work of the people, the men who are selected to lead by being seen +and lived with and worked with all day, every day, are better selected +men than men who having been voted on on slips of paper, and having been +seen in newspaper paragraphs, travel up to London and begin +thoughtlessly running a world.</p> + +<p>The business man drops into the House of Commons after the meeting of +his firm in Bond Street, Lombard Street, or Oxford Street and takes a +look at it. He sees before him a huge tool or piece of machinery—a body +of men intended to work together and to get certain grave, particular, +and important things done, that the people want done, and he does not +see how a great good-hearted chaos or welter, a kind of chance national +Weather of Human Nature like the House of Commons, can get the things +done.</p> + +<p>So he confines himself more and more to business where he loses less +time in wondering what other people think or if they think at all, cuts +out the work he sees, and does it.</p> + +<p>He thinks how it would be if things were turned around and if people +tried to get expressed in business in the loose way, the thoughtless +reverie of voting that they use in trying to get themselves expressed in +politics.</p> + +<p>He thinks the stockholders of the Sunlight Soap Company, Limited, would +be considerably alarmed to have the president and superintendent and +treasurer and the buyers and salesmen of the company elected at the +polls by the people in the county or by popular suffrage. He thinks that +thousands of the hands as well as the stockholders would be alarmed too. +It does not seem to him that anybody, poor or rich, employer or +employee, in matters of grave personal concern, would be willing to +trust his interest or would really expect the people, all the people as +a whole, to be represented or to get what they wanted, to act definitely +and efficiently through the vague generalizations of the polls. Perhaps +a natural selection, a dead-earnest rigorous, <a name="Page_437" id="Page_437"></a>selection that men work +on nine hours a day, an implacable, unremitting process during working +hours, of sorting men out (which we call business), is the crowd's most +reliable way of registering what it definitely thinks about the men it +wants to represent it. Business is the crowd's, big, serious, daily +voting in pounds, shillings, and pence—its hour to hour, unceasing, +intimate, detailed labour in picking men out, in putting at the top the +men it can work with best, the men who most express it, who have the +most genius to serve crowds, to reveal to crowds their own minds, and +supply to them what they want.</p> + +<p>As full as it is—like all broad, honest expressions, of human +shortcomings and of things that are soon to be stopped, it does remain +to be said that business, in a huge, rough way, daily expressing the +crowds as far as they have got—the best in them and the worst in them, +is, after all, their most faithful and true record, their handwriting. +Business is the crowds' autograph—its huge, slow, clumsy signature upon +our world.</p> + +<p>Buying and selling is the life blood of the crowds' thought, its big, +brutal daily confiding to us of its view of human life. What do the +crowds, poor and rich, really believe about life? Property is the last +will and testament of Crowds.</p> + +<p>The man-sorting that goes on in distributing and producing property is +the Crowd's most unremitting, most normal, temperamental way of +determining and selecting its most efficient and valuable leaders—its +men who can express it, and who can act for it.</p> + +<p>This is the first reason I would give against letting the people rely on +having a House of Commons compel business men to be good.</p> + +<p>Men who meet now and again during the year, afternoons or evenings, who +have been picked out to be at the top of the nation's talking, by a +loose absent-minded and illogical paper-process, cannot expect to +control men who have been picked out to be at the top of a nation's +buying and <a name="Page_438" id="Page_438"></a>selling, by a hard-working, closely fitting, logical +process—the men that all the people by everything they do, every day, +all day, have picked out to represent them.</p> + +<p>Any chance three blocks of Oxford Street could be relied on to do +better.</p> + +<p>Keeping the polls open once in so often, a few hours, and using hearsay +and little slips of paper—anybody dropping in—seems a rather fluttery +and uncertain way to pick out the representatives of the people, after +one has considered three blocks of Oxford Street.</p> + +<p>The next thing the crowd is going to do in getting what it wants from +business men is to deal directly with the business men themselves and +stop feeling, what many people feel partly from habit, perhaps, that the +only way the crowd can get to what it wants is to go way over or way +back or way around by Robin Hood's barn or the House of Commons.</p> + +<p>But there is a second reason:</p> + +<p>The trouble is not merely in the way men who sit in the House of Commons +are selected. The real deep-seated trouble with the men who sit in the +House of Commons is that they like it. The difficulty (as in the +American Congress too) seems to be something in the men themselves. It +lies in what might be called, for lack of a better name, perhaps, the +Hem and Haw or Parliament Temperament.</p> + +<p>The dominating type of man in all the world's legislative bodies, for +the time being, seems to be the considerer or reconsiderer, the man who +dotes on the little and tiddly sides of great problems. The greatness of +the problem furnishes, of course, the pleasant, pale glow, the happy +sense of importance to a man, and then there is all the jolly littleness +of the little things besides—the little things that a little man can +make look big by getting them in the way of big ones—a great nation +looking on and waiting.... For such a man there always seems to be a +certain coziness and hominess in a Legislative Body....</p> + +<p><a name="Page_439" id="Page_439"></a>As a seat in the House of Commons not unnaturally—every year it is +hemmed or hawed in, gets farther and farther away from the people, it is +becoming more and more apparent to the people every year that the +Members of their House of Commons as a class are unlikely to do anything +of a very striking or important or lasting value in the way of getting +business men to be good.</p> + +<p>The more efficient and practical business men are coming to suspect that +the members of the House of Commons, speaking broadly, do not know the +will of the people, and that they could not express it in creative, +straightforward and affirmative laws if they did.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_440" id="Page_440"></a>CHAPTER II</h2> + +<h3>OXFORD STREET HUMS. THE HOUSE HEMS</h3> + + +<p>But it is not only because the members of the House of Commons are +selected in a vague way or because they are a vague kind of men, that +they fail to represent the people.</p> + +<p>The third reason against having a House of Commons try to compel +business men to be good, by law, is its out-of-the-way position.</p> + +<p>The out-of-the-way position that a Parliament occupies in getting +business men to be good, can be best considered, perhaps, by admitting +at the outset that a government really is one very real and genuine way +a great people may have of expressing themselves, of expressing what +they are like and what they want, and that business is another way.</p> + +<p>Then the question narrows down. Which way of expressing the people is +the one that expresses them the most to the point, and which expresses +them where their being expressed counts the most?</p> + +<p>The people have a Government. And the people have Business.</p> + +<p>What is a Government for?</p> + +<p>What is Business for?</p> + +<p>Business is the occupation of finding out and anticipating what the +wants of the English people really are and of finding out ways of +supplying them.</p> + +<p>The business men on Oxford Street hire twenty or thirty thousand men and +women, keep them at work eight or nine hours a day, five or six days in +a week, finding out what the <a name="Page_441" id="Page_441"></a>things are that the English people want +and reporting on them and supplying them.</p> + +<p>They are naturally in a strategic position to find out, not only what +kinds of things the people want, but to find out, too, just how they +want the things placed before them, what kind of storekeepers and +manufacturers, salesmen and saleswomen they tolerate, like to deal with +and prefer to have prosper.</p> + +<p>And the business men are not only in the most strategic and competent +position to find out what the people who buy want, but to find out too, +what the people who sell want. They are in the best position to know, +and to know intimately, what the salesmen and saleswomen want and what +they want to be and what they want to do or not do.</p> + +<p>They are in a close and watchful position, too, with regard to the +conditions in the factories from which their goods come and with regard +to what the employers, stockholders, foremen and workmen in those +factories want.</p> + +<p>What is more to the point, these same business men, when they have once +found out just what it is the people want, are the only men who are in a +position, all in the same breath, without asking anybody and without +arguing with anybody, without meddling or convincing anybody—to get it +for them.</p> + +<p>Finding out what people want and getting it for them is what may be +called, controlling business.</p> + +<p>The question not unnaturally arises with all these business men and +their twenty or thirty thousand people working with them, eight or nine +hours a day, five or six days a week, in controlling business, why +should the members of the House of Commons expect, by taking a few +afternoons or evenings off for it, to control business for them?</p> + +<p>If I were an employee and if what I wanted to do was to improve the +conditions of labour in my own calling, I do not think I would want to +take the time to wait several months, probably, to convince my member of +Parliament, and then <a name="Page_442" id="Page_442"></a>wait a few months more for him to convince the +other members of Parliament, and then vote his one vote. I would rather +deal directly with my employer.</p> + +<p>If my employer is on my back and if I can once get the attention of my +employer himself, as to where he is and as to how he is interrupting +what I am doing for him—if I once get his attention and once get him to +notice my back, he can get down. No one else can get down for him and no +one else, except by turning a whole nation all around, can make him get +down. Why should a man bother with T.P.'s <i>Weekly</i> or with Horatio +Bottomley or with the <i>Daily Mail</i> or the <i>Times</i>, with a score of other +people's by-elections all over England to lift his own employer off his +back?</p> + +<p>There is a very simple rule for it.</p> + +<p>The way to lift one's employer off one's back is to make one's back so +efficient that he cannot afford to be on it.</p> + +<p>The first thing I would do would be to see if I could not persuade my +employer to take steps to train me and to make me efficient, himself. +And perhaps the second thing I would try to do would be to wake my +trades union up, to get my trades union to consent to let me want to try +to be efficient and work as hard as I can, or to consent to my +employer's hiring engineers to make me efficient. I would try to get my +trades union to be interested in hiring itself some special expert like +Frederick Taylor, some specialist in making a man do three times as much +work with the same strength, making him three times as valuable for his +employer and three times as fit and strong for himself.</p> + +<p>This is what I would do if I wanted to make my employer good. I would be +so good that he could not afford not being good too.</p> + +<p>If I were an employer, on the other hand, and understood human nature, +and knew enough about psychology to found a great business house and +wanted to make my employee good, or make him work three times as hard +for me, with three times <a name="Page_443" id="Page_443"></a>the normal strength, day by day, and have a +normal old age to look forward to, I do not think I would wait for the +House of Commons to butt in and pension him. It seems to me that I would +be in a position to do it more adequately, more rapidly, and do it with +more intimate knowledge of economy than the House of Commons could. And +I would not have to convince several hundred men, men from rural +counties, how I could improve my factory and get them to let me improve +it. I could do it quietly by myself.</p> + +<p>In any given industrial difficulty, there is and must be a vision for +every man, a vision either borrowed for him or made for him by some one +else, or a vision he has made for himself, that fits in just where he +is. In the last analysis our industrial success is going to lie in the +sense of Here, and Me, and Now, raised to the n<sup>th</sup> power, in what might +be called a kind of larger syndicalism.</p> + +<p>The typical syndicalist, instead of saying, as he does to-day, "We will +take the factories out of our employers hands and run them ourselves," +is going to say, "We will make ourselves fit to run the factories +ourselves."</p> + +<p>What would please the employers more, give them a general, or national +confidence in trying to run business and improve the conditions of work +to-day, than to have their employees, suddenly, all over the nation, +begin doing their work so well that they would be fit to run the +factories?</p> + +<p>What is true of employers and employees in factories is still more true +of the employers and employees in the great retail stores. If there is +one thing rather than another the business men and women on Oxford +Street, the managers, floor walkers and clerks all up and down the +street are really engaged in all day all their lives, it is what might +be called a daily nine-hour drill in understanding people. Why should +employers and employees like these—experts in human nature—men who +make their profession a success by studying human nature, and by working +in it daily, call in a few drifting gentlemen from <a name="Page_444" id="Page_444"></a>the House of Commons +and expect them to work out their human problems better than they can do +it?</p> + +<p>Employers and clerks in retail stores are the two sets of people in all +the world most competent to study together the working details of human +nature, to act for themselves in self-respecting man-fashion and without +whining at a nation.</p> + +<p>Who that they could hope to deal with and get what they want from, could +know more about human nature than they do? Are they not the men of all +others, all up and down that little strip of Oxford Street, who devote +their entire time to human nature? They are in the daily profession of +knowing the soonest and knowing the most about what people are like, and +about what people will probably think. They are intimate with their +peccadillos in what they want to wear and in what they want to eat; they +have learned their likes and dislikes in human nature; they know what +they will support and what they will defy in human nature, in clerks, +and in stores, and in storekeepers.</p> + +<p>And these things that they have learned about human nature (in +themselves and other people) they have learned not by talking about +human nature but by a grim daily doing things with it.</p> + +<p>These things being so, it would almost seem that these people and people +like them were qualified to act, and as they happen to be in the one +strategic position, both employers and employees alike, to act and to +act for themselves and act directly and act together, it will not be +very long, probably, before the nation will be very glad to have them do +it.</p> + +<p>It is likely to be seen very soon (at least by all skilled Labour and +all skilled Capital) that running out into the street and crying "Help!" +and calling in some third person to settle family difficulties that can +be better settled by being faced and thought out in private, is an +inefficient and incompetent thing to do.</p> + +<p>And for the most part it is going to be only in the more <a name="Page_445" id="Page_445"></a>superficial, +inefficient, thoughtless industry that men, either employers or +employed, will be inclined to leave their daily work, run out wildly and +drag in a House of Commons to help them to do right.</p> + +<p>I am only speaking for myself but certainly if I were an employer or an +employee, I would not want to wait for an election a year away or to +wait for the great engineering problem of compelling my member of +Parliament by my one vote to act for me.</p> + +<p>Perhaps workingmen in England and America are deceived about the value +of voting as a means of improving conditions of workingmen. Possibly +women are deceived about the value of voting as a means of improving the +conditions of working women.</p> + +<p>Possibly a woman could do more behind a counter or by buying a store +than by voting to have some man she has read about in a paper, improve +business by talking about it in the House of Commons.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>There is also a kind of program or vision of action one can use as a +customer as well as an employer or employee.</p> + + +<p>I might speak for myself.</p> + +<p>I have about so much money I spend every year in buying things. I have +proposed to study with my money every firm on which I spend it. I +propose to take away my trade from the firm that does the least as it +should and give it to the firm that does the most as it should. I will +vote with my entire income and with every penny I save for the kind of +employers I believe in and that I want, for the kind of employers who +can earn and deserve and enjoy and keep the kind of salesmen and +saleswomen I choose to do business with.</p> + +<p>All the year round, every firm with which I deal, I am going to study +not only with my mind but with my money. I will <a name="Page_446" id="Page_446"></a>proceed to take my +trade away from the big employers who think that I want shoddy goods or +who think that I want or am willing to trade with saleswomen who would +let an employer impose on them, saleswomen that he thinks he can afford +to impose upon. I will proceed to vote with my money, with every penny I +have in the world, and I will earn more that I may vote more, for the +kind of employer with whom I like to trade. And there shall not be a +man, woman, or child of my acquaintance, if I can help it, or of my +family's acquaintance who shall not know who these employers are by name +and by address, the employers that I will trade with and the employers +that I will not.</p> + +<p>This is my idea as a customer, as a member of the public, of the way for +a people to express itself and to get what it wants.</p> + +<p>What I want may be said to be a kind of news, news about me so far as I +go, as one member of the public. As I am only one person every item of +the news about me must be put where it works. I will deal directly with +the news of what I want and I will convey that news, not to the House of +Commons but to the men who have what I want and who can give it to me +when they know it.</p> + +<p>News is the real government now and always of this world.</p> + +<p>When one has made up one's mind to tell this news, obviously the best +art-form for telling news to employers and business men—the news of +what we want and what we do not want and of what we want in them as well +as in the things they sell, is to tell them the news in the language +they have studied most, tell it to them in pounds, shillings, dollars, +and cents, and by trading somewhere else.</p> + +<p>The gospel-bearing value, the news that one can get into a man's mind +with one dollar, the news that he can be made to see and act on for one +dollar—well, thinking of this some days, makes for me, at least, going +up and down the Main Street of the World feeling my purse snuggling in +my pocket, and all <a name="Page_447" id="Page_447"></a>the people I can step up to with my purse and tell +so many dollars' worth of news to, tell that dollar's worth of gospel to +about the world—makes going up and down with a dollar on a big business +street, and spending it or not spending it, feel like a kind of chronic, +easy, happy, going to Church. One always has a little money in one's +pocket that one spends or that one won't spend, and sometimes even not +spending a dollar, practised by some people, at just the right moment +and in just the right way, can be made to mean as much and do as much +with a world as spending a thousand dollars would without any meaning +put into it.</p> + +<p>Sometimes I even go into a store on purpose, a certain kind of store I +know will try to cheat me in a certain way, let them look a minute at +the dollar they cannot have. Then I walk out with it quietly.</p> + +<p>I have said that the life-blood of my convictions shall circulate in my +money and if I cannot express my soul, my religion, my gospel or news +for this world, news about what I want and about what I will have in a +world, if I cannot make every dollar, every shilling I earn, go through +the world and sing my own little world-song in it, may I never have +another shilling or earn another dollar as long as I live!</p> + +<p>The very sight of a dollar now whenever I see one once more, fills me +with deep, hopeful working joy, thinking of what a bargain it is and how +I can use it twice over, thinking of the dollar's worth of news, to say +nothing of the dollar's worth of things that belong with a dollar!</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>For some generations, now, we have tried to make people good in a vague, +general way, by using priests, sacraments and confessional boxes. For +some centuries we have been trying to make people good with lawyers and +juries and ballot boxes. We are now to try, at last, religion or gospel +or news or ideals—practical, shrewd aimed ideals, that is, news to a +man about <a name="Page_448" id="Page_448"></a>himself or news about the man from the man himself to us. In +everything a man does he is expressing to us this news about himself, +and about his world, and about his God. We are all telling news about +the world and about ourselves all the time and we are all in a position +for news all the time.</p> + +<p>What is it from hour to hour and day to day that we will do and we will +not do?</p> + +<p>This news about us is the religion in us.</p> + +<p>The average man is coming to have very accurate ideas of late as to just +where his religion is located. He has come to see that real religion in +a man, very conveniently located (immediately at hand in him and +personally directed), is his own action, his own divine "I will" or "I +won't."</p> + +<p>He has come to be deeply attracted by this idea of a religion for every +man just where he is, fitted on patiently, cheerfully, to just where he +is, every day all day, his glorious, still, practical, good-natured, +godlike "I will" and "I won't "—or News about himself.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_449" id="Page_449"></a>CHAPTER III</h2> + +<h3>PRESIDENT WILSON AND MOSES</h3> + + +<p>We are deeply interested in the United States just now, in seeing what +will be the fate of President Wilson's government in getting men to be +good. The fate of a government in 1913 may be said to stand on the +government's psychology or knowledge of human nature or of what might be +called human engineering, its mastery of the principles of lifting over +in great masses heavy spiritual bodies, like people, swinging great +masses of people's minds over as on some huge national derrick up on The +White House, from one lookout on life to another.</p> + +<p>There are certain aspects of human nature when power is being applied to +it in this way, and when it is being got to be good, that may not be +beside the point.</p> + +<p>If one could drop in on a government and have a little neighbourly chat +with it, as one was going by, I think I would rather talk with it +(especially our government, just now), about Human Nature than about +anything.</p> + +<p>I would have to do it, of course, in what might seem to a government to +be a plain and homely way.</p> + +<p>I would ask the government what it thought of two or three observations +I have come to lately about the way that human nature works, when people +are getting it to be good. What a government thinks about them might +possibly prove before many months to be quite important to It.</p> + +<p>The first observation is this:</p> + +<p>The reason that the average bachelor is a bachelor is that he spends the +first forty-five years of his life in picking out women he will not +marry.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_450" id="Page_450"></a>Possibly it is because many people are following the same principle in +trying to be good and in getting other people to be good that they make +such poor work of it.</p> + +<p>Possibly the main reason why there are so many wicked people or seem to +be, in proportion, among the Hebrews in the Old Testament, is that Moses +was a lawyer and that he tried to start off a great people with the Ten +Commandments, that is, a list of nine things they must never do any +more, and of one that they must.</p> + +<p>Some of us who have tried being good, have noticed that when we have hit +it off, being good (at least with us) consists in being focused, in +getting concentrated, in getting one's attention to what one really +wants to do.</p> + +<p>Moses' idea when he started his government, the idea of getting people +concentrated on not getting concentrated on nine things, was not +conducive to goodness. The fundamental principle Moses tried to make the +people good with was a contradiction in terms. It is a principle that +would make wicked people out of almost anybody. It is not a practicable +principle for a government to rely on in getting people to be good. It +did not work with the people in the Old Testament and it has never +worked with people since.</p> + +<p>It does not call people out, in getting them to take up goodness, to +point out to them nine places not to take hold of and one where they +will be allowed to take hold, if they know how.</p> + +<p>All that one has to do to see how true this is, is to observe the groups +or classes of people who are especially not what they should be. The +people who never get on morally (as different as they may be in most +things and in the fields of their activity) all have one illusion in +common. There is one thing they always keep saying when any new hopeful +person tries once more to get them to be good.</p> + +<p>They say (almost as if they had a phonograph) that they try to be good +and cannot do it.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_451" id="Page_451"></a>And this is not true.</p> + +<p>When a man says he tries to be good and cannot do it, if he sits down +and thinks it over he finds, generally, he is not trying to be good at +all. He is trying to be not bad.</p> + +<p>A man cannot get himself reformed, by a negative process, by being not +bad, and it is still harder for him and for everybody, when other people +try to do it—those who are near him, and it is still, still harder for +a President down in Washington to do it.</p> + +<p>An intelligent, live man or business corporation cannot be got to keep +up an interest very long in being not bad. Being not bad is a glittering +generality. It is like being not extravagant or economical.</p> + +<p>Most people who have ever tried to attain in a respectable degree to a +pale little neuter virtue like economy, and who have reflected upon +their experiences, have come to conclusions that may not be very far +from the point in a fine art like getting one's self to be good or +getting other people to be good.</p> + +<p>To concentrate on being economical by going grimly down the street, +looking at the shop windows, looking hard at miles of things one will +not buy, cannot be said to be a practicable method of attaining economy.</p> + +<p>The real artist, in getting himself to be good, proceeds to upon the +opposite principle. Even if the good thing he tries for is merely a +negative good thing like economy, he instinctively seeks out some +positive way of getting it.</p> + +<p>A man who is cultivating the art of getting himself to be economical, or +of getting his wife to be economical, does not make a start by sitting +down with a pencil and making out a list, by concentrating his mind on +rows of things that he and his family must get along without. He knows a +better way. He goes downtown with his entire family, takes them into a +big shop and sits down with them and listens to a Steinway Grand he +cannot get. As he listens to it long enough, he thinks he will get it.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_452" id="Page_452"></a>Then a subtle, spiritual change passes over him and over his family +while they listen. He would not have said before he started that sitting +down and thinking of things he could get along without—making lists in +his mind of things that he must not have—could ever be in this world a +happy, even an almost thrilling experience. But as a matter of fact, as +he sits by the piano and listens, he finds himself counting off +economies like strings of pearls, and he greets each new self-sacrifice +he can think of with a cheer. While the Steinway Grand fills the room +with melody all around him, there he actually is sitting, and having the +time of his life dreaming of the things he can get along without!</p> + +<p>When he goes home, he goes home thinking. And the family all go home +thinking.</p> + +<p>Then economy sets in. The reason most people make a failure of their +economy is that they are not artistic with it, they do not enjoy it. +They do not pick out anything to enjoy their economy with.</p> + +<p>With some people an automobile would work better than a Steinway Grand +and there are as many ways, of course, of practising the Steinway Grand +principle in not being bad as there are people, but they all consist +apparently in selecting some big, positive thing that one wants to do, +which logically includes and bundles all together where they are +attended to in a lump, all the things that one ought not to do.</p> + +<p>Most sins (every one who has ever tried them knows this) most sins are +not really worth bothering with, each in detail, even the not-doing them +and the most practical, firm method of getting them out of the way +(thousands of them at once, sometimes, with one hand) is to have +something so big to live for that all the things that would like to get +in the way, and would like to look important, look, when one thinks of +it, suddenly small.</p> + +<p>The distinctive, preëminent, official business for the next four years, +of making small things in this country look small <a name="Page_453" id="Page_453"></a>and of gently, +quietly making small men feel small, has been assigned by our people +recently, to Mr. Woodrow Wilson.</p> + +<p>Now it naturally seems to some of us, the best way for Mr. Wilson's +government to do in getting the Trusts to give up lying and stealing, is +going to be to place before them quietly a few really big, interesting, +equally exciting things that Trusts can do, and then dare them, as in +some great game or tournament of skill—all the people looking on—dare +them, challenge them like great men, to do them.</p> + +<p>There are three ideas President Wilson may have of the government's +getting people to be good.</p> + +<p>First, not letting people be bad. (Moses.)</p> + +<p>Second, being good for them. (Karl Marx.)</p> + +<p>Third, letting them be good themselves. (Any Democrat.)</p> + +<p>The first of these ideas means government by Prison. The second, means +government by Usurpation, that is, the moment a man amounts to enough to +choose to do right or do wrong of his own free will, the moment he is a +man, in other words, being so afraid of him and of his being a man, that +we all, in a kind of panic, shove into his life and live it for +him—this is Socialism, a scared machine that scared people have +invented for not letting people choose to do right because they may +choose to do wrong.</p> + +<p>The third, letting people be good themselves, letting them be +self-controlling, self-respecting, self-expressing or voluntarily good +people, is democracy, a machine for letting men be men by trying it.</p> + +<p>Moses was the inventor of a kind of national moral-brake system, a +machine for stopping people nine times out of ten. The question that +faces President Wilson just now, while the world looks on is, "Is a +government or is it not a moral-brake system—a machine for stopping +people nine times out of ten?"</p> + +<p>There is a considerable resemblance between Moses' position and the new +President's in the United States. When Moses looked around on the things +he saw the men around him <a name="Page_454" id="Page_454"></a>doing, and took the ground that at least nine +out of ten of the things should be stopped, he was academically correct. +And so, also, President Wilson, gazing at the business of this country +to-day, at nine out of ten of the humdrum thoughtless things that trusts +and corporations have been doing, will be academically correct in +telling them to stop, in having his little, new, helpless, unproved, +adolescent government stand up before all the people and speak in loud, +beautiful, clear accents and (with its left fist full of prisons, fines, +lawyers, of forty-eight legislatures all talking at once) bring down its +right fist as a kind of gavel on the world and say to these men, before +all the nations, that nine of the things they are doing must be stopped +and that one of the things, if they happen to able be to think out some +way of keeping on doing it—nobody will hurt them.</p> + +<p>But the question before President Wilson, to-day, with all our world +looking on, is not whether he would be right in entering upon a career +of stopping people. The real and serious question is, does stopping +people stop them? And if stopping people does not stop them, what will?</p> + +<p>Perhaps the way for a government to stop people from doing things they +are doing, is to tell them the things it wants done. A government that +does not express what it wants, that has not given a masterful, clear, +inspired statement of what it wants—a government that has only tried to +say what it does not want, is not a government.</p> + +<p>The next business of a government is a statement of what it wants.</p> + +<p>The problem of a government is essentially a problem of statement.</p> + +<p>How shall this statement be made?</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_455" id="Page_455"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2> + +<h3>THE PRESIDENT SAYS YES AND NO</h3> + + +<p>It was not merely because the seventh commandment was negative, but +because it was abstract that David found it so hard to keep. If the +seventh commandment (like Uriah's wife) could have had deep blue eyes or +could have been beautiful to look upon, and, on a particular day in a +particular place, could have been bathing in a garden, David would have +found keeping it a very different matter. The tendency to make a statue +of purity as a lovely female figure carries us a little further in moral +evolution, than the moral statement that Moses had managed to get, and +it was further toward the concrete, but it was not far enough for a real +artist or man who does things.</p> + +<p>One of the things about the real artist that makes him an artist, is +that he is always and always has been and always will be profoundly +dissatisfied with a statue of a female figure as an emblem of purity. He +challenges the world, he challenges God, he challenges himself, he +challenges the men and women about him when he is being put off with a +Statue as an emblem of purity. He demands, searches out, interprets, +creates something concrete and living to express his idea of purity.</p> + +<p>How can President Wilson, in getting the Trusts not to be corrupt, in +trying to win them—how can President Wilson make the law alluring? How +can he make the People have a Low Voice?</p> + +<p>A great deal if not nearly everything depends in tempting business men +to be good, upon the tone in which they are addressed. Every government, +like every man, soon comes to <a name="Page_456" id="Page_456"></a>have its own characteristic tone in +addressing the people. And, as a matter of fact, it is almost always the +tone in a government, like the voice in a man, which tells us the most +definitely what it is like, and is the most intimate and effective +expression of what it wants and is the most practical way of getting +what it wants. Everybody has noticed that a man's voice works harder for +him, works more to the point for him in getting what he wants than his +words do. It is his voice that makes people know him, that makes them +know he means what he says. It is his voice that tells them whether he +is in the habit of meaning what he says, and it is his voice that tells +them whether he is in habit of getting what he wants, and of knowing +what to do with what he wants when he gets it.</p> + +<p>A government does not need to say very much if it has the right tone.</p> + +<p>The tone of a government is the government.</p> + +<p>If President Wilson is going to succeed in tempting business men to be +good, he is going to do it, some of us think, by depending on three +principles.</p> + +<p>These three principles, like all live, active principles, may be stated +as three principles or as three personal traits.</p> + +<p>First, by being affirmative. (Isaiah, in distinction from Moses.)</p> + +<p>Second, by being concrete. (Bathsheba.)</p> + +<p>Third, by being specific, by seeing the universal in the particular. +(Like any artist or man who does things.)</p> + +<p>The value of being affirmative and the value of being concrete have +already been touched upon. There remains the value of being specific.</p> + +<p>Possibly, in this present happy hour, when our country has grown +suddenly sensible and has become practical enough to pick out at last, +once more, a President with a real serious working sense of humour, even +a sense of humour about himself, it may not be considered disrespectful +if I continue a little longer <a name="Page_457" id="Page_457"></a>dropping in on the Government, and saying +what I have to say in a few plain and homely words.</p> + +<p>The trouble with most people in being economical with their money is, +that when they spend it, they spend it on something in particular, and +when they save it, they try to save it in a kind of general way. The +same principle applies to doing right. It is because when people do +right, they do it in a kind of general pleasant, abstract way, and when +they do wrong they always do something in particular, that they are so +Wicked.</p> + +<p>A man will do almost anything to save his life at a particular place and +at a particular time, say at ten o'clock to-morrow morning, if he is +drowning, but if he has a year to save it in, a year of controlling his +appetites, of daily, detailed mastering of his spirit, of not taking a +piece of mince pie, of stopping his work in time and of going to bed +early, he will die.</p> + +<p>It is easier when one is going under water for the third time and sees a +rope, to stretch just one inch more and grasp the rope, reach up to +forty more years of one's life, all concentrated for one on the tip of a +rope, than it is to spread out saving one's life over a whole year, 365 +breakfasts, 365 luncheons, 365 dinners, 33,365 moments of anger, of +reckless worry, of remorse, of self-pity, 40,000 of despair and round up +with a swing at the end of one's year at the tiptop of one's being, as +if it had only taken five minutes. And yet it is only an act of the +creative imagination of seeing the whole, of having a happy, daily, +detailed spectacle of the end in view, that is, of the part in its +setting of the whole—going without a piece of mince pie. If one could +only make one's self see the piece of mince pie as it is, it would not +be difficult. If one could see it on the plate there and see the not +taking it as a little wedge-shaped rivet, a little triangular link of +coupling in the chain that keeps one holding on forty years longer to +this planet, a piece of mince pie left on a plate would become a Vision.</p> + +<p>This seems to be the principle that works best in getting other people +to be good.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_458" id="Page_458"></a>Perhaps the President will succeed in getting Trusts to be good, by +taking hold of specific Trusts, one by one, and setting them—all +mankind looking on—in the nation's vision, setting them even in their +own vision—taking the Trusts that thought they had got what they +wanted, making them stand up and look (in some great public lighted +place) at what pathetic, tragical failures they are, letting them see +that what their Trust had wanted all along, if it had only thought about +it, was not success one went to jail for—success by getting the best +out of the most people, but success by serving the most people the best.</p> + +<p>A great many of us in America have been exercising our minds for a long +time now about the eagerness of the Trusts, and the trouble we were +going to have in curbing the eagerness of the Trusts.</p> + +<p>Sometimes I have wondered if, after all, it was our minds we were +exercising, for when one sits down seriously to think of it, it is the +eagerness of the Trusts that is the most hopeful thing about them.</p> + +<p>What is the matter with our American Trusts, perhaps, is not and never +has been, their eagerness, but their eagerness for things that they did +not want, and for things that almost everybody is coming to see that +they did not want.</p> + +<p>The moment that the eagerness of our American Trusts is an eagerness for +things that they really want, the Trusts will be seen piling over each +other's heels, asking the government to please investigate them. The +more they can get the people to know about them and about their +eagerness, the more the people will trust them and deal with them.</p> + +<p>All that we have been waiting for is a government that sees the part +from the point of view of the whole, which will take up a few specific +Trusts and be specific enough with them to make them think, think hard +what they really want, and what their real eagerness is about, and the +entire face of modern business will change. First the expression will +change and then the face itself.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_459" id="Page_459"></a>The moment it is found that the government is a specific government, +all the trusts that know what they really want and know what they really +are doing, will want to be investigated, because they will want +everybody to know that they know. In case of the trusts that do not know +what they want and that do not know what they are doing, the government +will just step in, of course, and investigate them until they find out.</p> + +<p>A specific government will not need to be specific many times.</p> + +<p>It takes up a particular Trust in its hand, turns it over quietly, +empties its contents out before the people and says to everybody, "This +particular Trust you see here has tried to be a kind of Trust, which it +found out afterward, it did not want to be. It is the kind of Trust +whose officers hide their faces when they think of what it was that they +thought that they thought that they wanted....</p> + +<p>"These men you see here, forty silent nations looking on, hundreds and +thousands of self-respecting, self-supporting, public-serving, creative, +successful business men, whom all the world envies looking on, do hereby +beg to declare to all business men who know them and to the people, that +they did not ever really want these things for themselves that their +business says or seems to say they wanted.</p> + +<p>"They wish to ask the public to put themselves in their places and to +refuse to believe that they deliberately sat down, seriously thought it +all out, that they had planned to express to everybody what their +natures really were in a blind, brutal, foolish business like this which +we have just been showing you. They beg to have it believed that their +business misrepresents them, that it misrepresents what they want, and +they ask to be again admitted to the good-will, the hope and +forgiveness, the companionship of a great people.</p> + +<p>"They declare" (the government will go on) "that they are not the men +they seem. They are merely men in a hurry. They want it understood that +they have merely hurried so fast and hurried so long that they now wake +up at last only to <a name="Page_460" id="Page_460"></a>see, see with this terrific plainness what it really +is that has been happening to them all their lives, <i>viz.</i>: for forty, +fifty, or sixty years they have merely forgot who they were and +overlooked what they were like.</p> + +<p>"In hurrying, too, it is only fair to say they have had to use machines +to hurry with and unconsciously, year by year, associating almost +exclusively with machines, their machines (pump handles, trip-hammers, +hydraulic drills, steam shovels and cranes and cash registers) have +grown into them.</p> + +<p>"This is the way it has happened. 'Let the nation be merciful to them,' +the government will then say, and dismiss the subject."</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>What our President seems to be for in America, is to do up a nation in +one specific, particular man who expresses everybody.</p> + +<p>This man deals with each other specific man, his aggressions and +services, as a nation would if a nation could be one specific man.</p> + +<p>The President of the United States is the Comptroller of the people's +vision, by seeing a part and dealing with a part as a part of a whole, +he governs the people.</p> + +<p>He is the Chancellor of the People's Attention.</p> + +<p>The business of being a President is the business of focusing the +vision, of flooding the whole desire or will of a people around a man +and letting him have the light of it, to see what he is doing by, and to +be seen by, while he is doing it.</p> + +<p>The corporations have expressed or focused the employers of labour. The +Labour Unions have focused or expressed the will of the labourers, and +the government focuses and expresses the will of the consumers, of the +people as a whole, rich and poor, so that Labour and Capital, both +listen to It, understand It and act on It.</p> + +<p>The way to deal with a specific sin is to flood it around with the +general vision. Then it does not need to be dealt with. <a name="Page_461" id="Page_461"></a>Then strangely, +softly, and almost before we know—out there in the Light, it +automatically deals with itself.</p> + +<p>When the Government takes hold quietly of the National Cash Register +Company, turns it up, empties its contents out,—all its methods and its +motives—and all the things It thought It wanted, and then proceeds to +put its president and twenty-nine of its officers into jail, my readers +will perhaps point out to me that this action of the government as a +method of tempting people to be good, while it may have the virtue of +being concrete and the virtue of being specific, certainly does not have +the other virtue that I have laid down, the virtue of being affirmative. +"Certainly" they will say "there is not anything affirmative about +putting twenty-nine big business men in jail." Many people would call it +the most magnificently negative thing a President could have done. Moses +himself would have done it.</p> + +<p>It does not seem to me that Moses would have done it, or that it was +essentially negative. It could not unfairly be claimed that in spite of +its negative look on the surface, it was the most massive, significant, +crushing affirmation that a great people has made for years.</p> + +<p>By putting the twenty-nine officers of the National Cash Register +Company in jail, the American people affirmed around the world the +nation's championship of the men that had been defeated in the +competition with the National Cash Register Company. They affirmed that +these men who were not afraid of the National Cash Register Company +because they were bigger, and who stood up to them and fought them, were +the kind of men Americans wanted to be like, and that the officers of +the National Cash Register Company were the kind of men Americans did +not want to be like, would not do business with, would not tolerate, +would not envy, would not live on the same continent with, unless they +were kept in jail.</p> + +<p>The President of the United States, sitting in Washington, at the head +of this vast affirmative and assertive continent, indicted the Cash +Register Company, that is, by a slight pointed <a name="Page_462" id="Page_462"></a>negative action, by +pushing back a button he turned on the great chandelier of a nation and +flooded a nation with light. We, the American people, suddenly, all in a +flash, looked into each other's faces and knew what we were like.</p> + +<p>We had hoped we believed in human nature, and in brave men and in men +against machines but we could not prove it.</p> + +<p>Suddenly, we stood in a blaze of truth about ourselves. Suddenly, we +could again look with our old stir of joy at our national Flag. If we +liked, we could swing our hats.</p> + +<p>Perhaps I should speak for myself, but I had been trying to get this +news for years. It is news I have wanted to live with and do business +with. I have been trying to get my question answered. What are the +American people really like?</p> + +<p>The President points at the National Cash Register Company and I find +out. All the people find out.</p> + +<p>In the last analysis, the masterful, shrewd, practical, and constructive +part of being a President of the United States—the thing in the +business of being a President that keeps the position from being a +position which only the second rate or No type of man would have time to +take, is the fact that the President is the Head Advertising Manager of +the United States, conducting a huge advertising campaign of what +Americans really want.</p> + +<p>He takes up the National Cash Register Company, picks out its +twenty-nine officers, makes it a bill board sky-high across the country. +"Here are the kind of business men that the people of the United States +do not want, and here are the kind of men that we do!"</p> + +<p>The thing that makes indicting a trust a positive and affirmative act is +the advertising in it.</p> + +<p>Gladstone once wrote a postcard about a little book of Marie +Bashkirtseff's.</p> + +<p>Twenty nations read the little book.</p> + +<p>Every now and then one watches a man or sees a truth that would make a +nation. One wishes one had some way of being <a name="Page_463" id="Page_463"></a>the sort of person or +being in the kind of place where one could make a nation out of it.</p> + +<p>One thinks it would be passing wonderful to be President of the United +States. It would be like having a great bell up over the world that one +could reach up to and ring! But it is better than that. One touches a +button at one's desk if one is President of the United States, a nation +looks up. He whispers to twenty thousand newspapers, "Take your eyes +away a minute," he says, "from Jack Johnson and Miss Elkin's engagement, +and look, oh, look, ye People, here is a man in this world like this! He +has been in the world all this while without our suspecting it. Did you +know there was or could be anywhere a man like THIS? And here is a man +like this! Which do you prefer? Which are you really like?"</p> + +<p>There is nothing really regal or imperial in a man, nothing that makes a +man feel suddenly like a whole Roman Empire all by himself, in 1913, +like saying "Look! Look!"</p> + +<p>Sometimes I think about it. Of course I could take a great reel of paper +and sit down with my fountain pen, say Look for a mile, "Look! look! +look! look!!!—President Wilson says it once and without exclamation +points. Skyscrapers listen to him! Great cities rise and lift themselves +and smite the world. And the faint, sleepy little villages stir in their +dreams."</p> + +<p>Moses said, "Thou shalt not!" President Wilson says, "Look!"</p> + +<p>Perhaps if Moses had had twenty thousand newspapers like twenty thousand +field-glasses that he could hand out every morning and lend to people to +look through—he would not have had to say, "Thou shalt not."</p> + +<p>The precise measure of the governing power a man can get out of the +position of being President of the United States to-day is the amount of +advertising for the people, of the people, and by the people he can +crowd every morning, every week, into the papers of the country.</p> + +<p>A President becomes a great President in proportion as he <a name="Page_464" id="Page_464"></a>acts +authoritatively, tactfully, economically, and persistently as the Head +Advertising Manager of the ideals of the people. He is the great +central, official editor of what the people are trying to find out—of a +nation's news about itself.</p> + +<p>By his being the President of what people think, by his dictating the +subjects the people shall take up, by his sorting out the men whom the +people shall notice, this great ceaseless Meeting of ninety million men +we call the United States—comes to order.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_465" id="Page_465"></a>CHAPTER V</h2> + +<h3>THE PRESIDENT SAYS "LOOK!"</h3> + + +<p>Our American President, if one merely reads what the Constitution says +about him, is a rather weak-looking character.</p> + +<p>The founders of the country did not intend him to be anybody in +particular—if it could be helped. They were discouraged about allowing +governments to be efficient. Not very much that was constructive to do +was handed over to him. And the most important power they thought it +would do for him to have was the veto or power to say "No."</p> + +<p>Possibly if our fathers had believed in liberty more they would have +allowed more people to have some; or if they had believed in democracy +more, or trusted the people more, they would have thought it would do to +let them have leaders, but they had just got away. They felt timid about +human nature and decided that the less constructive the government was +and the less chance the government had to be concrete, to interpret a +people, to make opportunities and turn out events, the better.</p> + +<p>Looked at at first sight no more elaborate, impenetrable, water-tight +arrangement for keeping a government from letting in an idea or ever +having one of its own or ever doing anything for anybody, could have +been conceived than the Constitution of the United States, as the +average President interprets it.</p> + +<p>Each branch of the government is arranged carefully to keep any other +branch from doing anything, and then the people, every four years, look +the whole country over for some new man they think will probably leave +them alone more than anybody—and put him in for President.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_466" id="Page_466"></a>Looking at it narrowly and by itself, all that a President selected like +this could ever expect in America to put in his time on, would seem to +be—being the country's most importantly helpless man—the man who has +been given the honour of being a somewhat more prominent failure in +America than any one else would be allowed to be.</p> + +<p>He stops people for four years. Other people stop him for four years. +Then with a long happy sigh, at the end of his term, he slips back into +real life and begins to do things.</p> + +<p>This has been the more or less sedately disguised career of the typical +American President. Merely reading the Constitution or the lives of the +Presidents, without looking at what has been happening to the habits of +the people in the last few years, we might all be asking to-day, "What +is there that is really constructive that President Wilson can do?" What +is there that is going to prevent him, with all that moral earnestness +dammed up in him, that sense of duty, that Presbyterian sense of other +people's duties—what is there that is going to prevent him, with his +school-book habits, his ideals, his volumes of American history, from +being a teachery or preachery person—a kind of Schoolmaster or Official +Clergyman to Business?</p> + +<p>News.</p> + +<p>The one really important and imperative thing to the people of this +country to-day is News. In spite of newspapers, authors, College +presidents, Bank presidents, Socialist agitators, Bill Heywoods, and +Trusts, the people are bound to get this news, and any man who is so +placed by his prominence that he can scoop up the news of a country, +hammer its news together into events the papers will report, express +news in the laws, build news into men who can make laws and unmake laws, +any man who is so placed that directly or indirectly he takes news, +forces it in by hydraulic pressure where people see it doing things, who +takes news and crowds it into courts, crowds news into lawyers and into +legislatures, pries some <a name="Page_467" id="Page_467"></a>of it even into newspapers, can have, the +ordinary American says to-day, as much leeway in this government as he +likes.</p> + +<p>The ordinary American has never been able to understand the objection +important people have—that nearly everybody has (except ordinary +people) to news—especially editors and publishers.</p> + +<p>It is an old story. Every one must have noticed it. One set of people in +this world, always from the beginning, trying to climb up on the +housetops to tell news, and another set of people hurrying up always and +saying, "Hush, Hush!" Some days it seems, when I read the papers, that I +hear half the world saying under its breath, a vast, stentorian, "Shoo! +shoo! SHSH! SHSH!"</p> + +<p>Then I realize I live in an editor's world. I am expected to be in the +world that editors have decided on the whole to let me be in.</p> + +<p>Of course I did not know what to do at first when this came over me.</p> + +<p>I naturally began to try to think of some way of cutting across lots, of +climbing up to News.</p> + +<p>I looked at all the neat little park paths, with all those artistic +curves of truth on them the editors have laid out for me and for all of +us. Then I looked at the world and asked myself, "Who are the men in +this world, if any, who are able to walk on the Grass, who cut across +the little park paths when they like?"</p> + +<p>And as fate would have it (it was during the Roosevelt administration), +the first two men I came on who seemed to be stamping about in the +newspapers quite a little as they liked were the Prime Minister of +England and the President of the United States.</p> + +<p>Just how much governing can a President do?</p> + +<p>How many columns a day is he good for, how many acres of attention every +morning in the papers of the country—all these white fields of +attention, these acres of other people's thoughts, can he cover?</p> + +<p><a name="Page_468" id="Page_468"></a>How many sticks a day can he make compositors set up of what he thinks?</p> + +<p>How many square miles of the people's thoughts can he spread out at +breakfast tables, lift up in a thousand thousand trolleys before their +faces?</p> + +<p>I have seen the white fields of attention filled with the footprints of +his thoughts, of his will, of his desires!</p> + +<p>I have seen that the President is the Editor of that vast, anonymous, +silent newspaper, written all the night, written all the day, and softly +published across a country—the newspaper of people's thoughts.</p> + +<p>I have seen the vision of the forests he has cast down, ground into +headlines, into editorials, into news. Mountains and hills are laid bare +to say what he thinks. Thousands of presses throb softly and the white +reels of wood pulp fly into speech. Thousands of miles of paper wet with +the thoughts of a people roll dimly under ground in the night.</p> + +<p>The President is saying Look! in the night!</p> + +<p>The newsboys hasten out in the dawn. They cry in the streets!</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_469" id="Page_469"></a>CHAPTER VI</h2> + +<h3>THE PEOPLE SAY "WHO ARE YOU?"</h3> + + +<p>If news is governing, how does the President do his governing?</p> + +<p>By being News, himself.</p> + +<p>By using his appointing power and putting other men who are News +Themselves, news about American human nature—where all the people will +see it.</p> + +<p>By telling the people directly (when he feels especially asked) news +about what is happening in his mind—news about what he believes.</p> + +<p>By telling the people sometimes (as candidly as he can without giving +the people's enemies a chance to stop him), what he is going to do next, +sketching out in order of time, and in order of importance, his program +of issues.</p> + +<p>By telling the people news about their best business men, the business +men and inventors who, in their daily business, free the energies, +unshackle the minds and emancipate the genius of the people.</p> + +<p>By telling these business men news about the people—and interpreting +the people to them.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>It is by being news to the people himself that all the other news a +President can get into his government counts.</p> + +<p>A man is a man according to the amount of news there is in him.</p> + +<p>There are twenty personal traits in a President which of themselves +would all be national news of the first importance if he had them. The +bare fact that a President could have <a name="Page_470" id="Page_470"></a>certain traits at all and still +get to be a President in this country, would be news.</p> + +<p>One of the most important facts about news is that while it can be +distributed by machines, machines cannot make it, and as a rule they do +not understand it. Important and critical news is almost always fresh +and made by hand the first time. Most of the popular news as to what is +practical in American polities for the last forty years has been +produced by political machines, and of course men who were a good deal +like machines were the best men to finish the ideas off and to carry +them out.</p> + +<p>As a result of course, all the really big leaders for the last forty +years, our most powerful and interesting personalities have been shut +out from being President of the United States. The White House was +merely being run as machinery and did not interest them. They watched it +grinding its ideas faithfully out from year to year of what America was +like and what American politicians were like, and finally at last in the +clatter of the machines there rings out suddenly across the land a shot +that no machinery had allowed for. Before any one knows almost there +slips suddenly by the side door into the White House a really +interesting man, and suddenly, all in one minute, almost, this man makes +being President of the United States the most interesting lively and +athletic feat in the country. And now, apparently that the idea has been +worked out in public before everybody, by hand, as it were, that a man +can be alive and interesting all over, can have at least a little touch +of news about him and still be a President in this country, another man +with some news in him has been allowed to us and suddenly politics +throughout all America has become a totally new revealing profession, +and men, instead of being selected because they were blurred +personalities, the ghosts of compromises, would-be everybodies—men who +had not decided who they were, and who could not settle down and let +people know which of their characters they had hit on at last to be +really theirs, men who had no <a name="Page_471" id="Page_471"></a>cutting edge to do things, screw-drivers +trying to be chisels—were revealed to our people at last as vague, +mean, other-worldly persons, not fitting into our real American world at +all, and hopelessly visionary and impracticable in American politics.</p> + +<p>And now one more hand-made man has been allowed to us.</p> + +<p>The machines run very still in the White House.</p> + +<p>The people of this country no longer go by the White House on their way +to their business and just hear it humdrumming and humdrumming behind +the windows as of yore. The nation stands in crowds around the gates and +would like to see in. The people wonder. They wonder a million columns a +day what is inside.</p> + +<p>What is inside?</p> + +<p>An American who governs by being news, himself.</p> + +<p>The first thing that the people demand from our President now is that he +shall be news himself. The news that they have selected to know first +during the next four years—have put into the White House to know first +is Woodrow Wilson.</p> + +<p>"Who are you, Woodrow Wilson, in God's name?" the steeples and smoking +chimneys, the bells and whistles, the Yales and Harvards, and the little +country schools, the crowds in the streets, and the corn in the fields +all say, "Who Are You?"</p> + +<p>Then the people listen. They listen to his "I wills" and "I won'ts" for +news about him. They look for news about him in the headlines he steers +into the papers every morning, in the events he makes happen, in the +editorials he makes men think of, in the men he calls up and puts on the +National Wire—in all these, slowly, daily, hourly they drink up their +long, patient, hopeful answer to their question, "Who Are You, Woodrow +Wilson?"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_472" id="Page_472"></a>CHAPTER VII</h2> + +<h3>THE PEOPLE SAY "WHO ARE WE?"</h3> + + +<p>But if the President governs first by being news himself, he governs +second by his appointments, by gathering about him other men who are +news to people, too.</p> + +<p>One need not divide people into good and bad, because the true line of +division between good and bad instead of being between one man and +another, is apt to be as a matter of fact and experience cut down +through the middle of each of us.</p> + +<p>But for the purposes of public action and decision and getting good +things done, this line does seem to be cut farther over in the middle of +some of us, than it is in others. Taking a life-average in any moral or +social engineering feat, in any correct calculation of structural +strain, how far over this line cuts through in a man, has to be reckoned +with.</p> + +<p>The president by appointing certain men to office, saying "I will" and +"I won't" to certain types of men, in saying who shall be studied by the +people, who shall be read as documents of our national life, puts, if +not the most important, at least the most lively and telling news about +his administration into print.</p> + +<p>We watch our President acting for us, telling us news about what we are +like, sorting men out around him the way ninety million people would +sort them out if they were there to do it.</p> + +<p>The President's appointments may be said to be in a way the breath of +the nation.</p> + +<p>A nation has to breathe, and the plain fact seems to be that certain +kinds of people have to be breathed out of a nation and <a name="Page_473" id="Page_473"></a>other kinds of +people have to be breathed in. The way a President appoints men to +office is his way of letting a nation breathe.</p> + +<p>With all his attractive qualities, perhaps it is because Mr. Taft did +not quite let the nation breathe, and suffocated it a little that there +came such an outbreak at the end. Perhaps it is because Mr. Taft looked +at Mr. Ballinger and then looked at Mr. Pinchot, all the people of the +country all the while looking on, and said, "Ballinger is the kind of +man our people prefer, and Pinchot is not," that the people broke out so +amazingly, so incredibly, and decided by such an enormous majority that +a man who could pick out men for them like this would not do—as things +are just now anyway—for a President of the United States.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_474" id="Page_474"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h2> + +<h3>NEWS ABOUT US TO THE PRESIDENT</h3> + + +<p>A nation wakes up every morning and for one minute before it runs to its +work it says to its President, "HERE WE ARE!"</p> + +<p>The best a President can do in the way of a plain, everyday +acknowledgment of the presence of the people is News.</p> + +<p>The news that the people are demanding from the President to-day is +intensely personal. It is a kind of rough, butting, good-natured +familiarity a great people has with its President, a little heedless, +relentless, like some splendid Child, ready to forgive and expecting to +be forgiven, it jostles in upon him daily, "Here we are! What are you +believing this morning? Did you believe in us yesterday? Did you act as +if you believed in us? Did you get anybody to believe in us? Who are the +men you say are like us? What are they like this morning?</p> + +<p>"We have asked a hundred times; we can only ask it once more. How do you +think you are turning out yourself, Mr. President? Are you what you +thought you would be? Do you think it is a good time for us to decide +this morning what you are really like? And, after all, Mr. President—if +you please—who <i>are</i> you? And once more, Mr. President, in God's name, +<i>who are we?</i>"</p> + +<p>This is always the gist of what it says, "Who are we?"</p> + +<p>It is the people's main point, after all, asking a President who they +are, wondering if he can interpret them.</p> + +<p>Then he shuts his door and thinks, or he calls his Cabinet and thinks.</p> + +<p>Rows of little-great men file by all day. They stand each <a name="Page_475" id="Page_475"></a>a few minutes +with his little Speck or Dot of the People in his hands, and they say, +"This is the People."</p> + +<p>He listens.</p> + +<p>It is very hard to be always President of the People when one is +listening and the little-great go by.</p> + +<p>One has to go back a little, in the night perhaps, or when one is quite +alone. He sees again the Child; it is what he is in the White House for, +he remembers, to express this dumb giant, this mighty Child, half weary, +half glad, standing there by day by night, saying, "Who are we?" One +would think it would be hard to be glib with the Child.</p> + +<p>Sometimes it is so deep and silent!</p> + +<p>Once when It broke in on Lincoln in this way and said, "<i>Who are we?</i>" +he prayed.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_476" id="Page_476"></a>CHAPTER IX</h2> + +<h3>NEWS-MEN</h3> + + +<p>It seems very difficult to get news through as to who we really are to a +President. When I look about me and see what the President's ways are of +telling news about himself to us, I see that he is not without his +advantages. But when I look about to see what conveniences we have as a +people for telling our President news about us, I note some curious +things. The fears of the American people, the fears and threats of +labour and capital are organized and expressed, but their faiths, their +wills, the things in them that make them go and that make them American, +are not organized and are not expressed.</p> + +<p>The labour unions are afraid and say, "We will not work," to their +employers, "You cannot make us work." The President hears this. It is +about all they say.</p> + +<p>The capitalists and employers are afraid and they say, "We will not +pay," "You cannot make us pay."</p> + +<p>Shall the President act as if these men represent Labor and Capital?</p> + +<p>We say, "No."</p> + +<p>Neither of these groups of men express real live American labour or real +live characteristic American money.</p> + +<p>American money is free, bold, manful, generous and courageous to a +fault. American money swings out in mighty enterprises, shrewdly +believing things, imperiously singing things out of its way.</p> + +<p>A singing people want a singing government. How is our President going +to hear our labour and our money sing?</p> + +<p>Pinchot expressed us, not Ballinger.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_477" id="Page_477"></a>Mr. Pinchot is no mere uplifter or missionary. He is an artist in +expressing America to a President. If we have a President who will not +listen to a man like Pinchot, let us try a President that will.</p> + +<p>Pinchot—an American millionaire with a fortune made out of forests, who +is spending the fortune in protecting the forests for the nation, is the +kind of American Americans like to set up before a President to say what +Americans are like. Millions of men stand by Pinchot. We like the way he +makes money sing.</p> + +<p>Tom L. Johnson—an American millionaire who made his money in the +ordinary humdrum way, by getting valuable street railway franchises out +of a city for nothing—has the courage to turn around, spend his fortune +and spend it all, in keeping other people from doing it.</p> + +<p>America presents Tom L. Johnson to a President with its compliments and +says, "This is what America is like."</p> + +<p>It may not look always as if Tom L. Johnson were America—America in +miniature. But millions of us say he is. He makes money sing.</p> + +<p>We want a President—millions of us want him—and this is the most +important news about us, who expects money in this country to sing.</p> + +<p>We want our money and expect our money in this country to stop saying +mean things about us, things that make us ashamed to look a true +newspaper in the face, or one another in the face, and that humiliate us +before the world.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>And now I have come to an awkward place in this book where I hope the +reader will help me all he can.</p> + +<p>There is nothing to do but to let out the real truth and face the music. +The fact is, Gentle Reader—perhaps you have suspected it all +along—that if it had not been for fear of mixing my book all up with +him and making it a kind of arena <a name="Page_478" id="Page_478"></a>or tournament instead of a book, I +would have mentioned ex-President Roosevelt before this. He has been +getting in or nearly getting in to nearly every chapter so far, but of +course I knew, as any one would, that he would spoil all the calm +equipoise, the quiet onward flowing of the Stream of Thought, and with +one chapter after the other, with each as the crisis came up, though I +scarcely know how, I have managed to keep him out. And now, oh, Gentle +Reader, here he is! I know very well that he is in everything, and right +in the middle of everything, and that in a kind of splendid mixed happy +uproarious way, there somehow has to be a great to-do the moment he +appears. The beautiful clear water, the lucid depth of Thought—will all +become (ah, I know it too well, Gentle Reader) all thunder and spray and +underneath the mighty grinding of the wheels—the wheels of the Nation +and the Mowing Machine of Time, and in the background—in the red +background of the Dawn, there will be the face of Theodore—just the +face of Theodore in this book shining at us—readers and writer and +all—out of a huge rosy mist!</p> + +<p>But I have been driven to it. The fact seems to be that I must find at +just this point in the book, if I can, a word. And the word will have to +be a word, too, that everybody knows, and that conveys a lively sense to +everybody the moment it is used—of a certain tone or quality, or hum or +murmur of being. No one regrets this more than I, because it is so +unwieldy and inconvenient and always bulges out in a sentence or a book +or a nation more than it was meant to, but the word ROOSEVELT, R O O S E +V E L T, happens to be the word that people in this country, and very +largely in other nations, and in all languages have chosen and are using +every day to express to one another a certain American quality or tone +now abroad in our world—a certain hum, as one might say, or whirr of +goodness.</p> + +<p>This particular hum, or whirr of goodness, which is instantly associated +with the word Roosevelt, expresses, except that of <a name="Page_479" id="Page_479"></a>course it +over-expresses, a part of the news to-day about America which we want +our President to read.</p> + +<p>One cannot help wondering why it is that if one wanted to express to the +largest number of people in the world a certain quality of goodness, the +word Roosevelt would do it best.</p> + +<p>I am not dealing for the purpose of this book in what Mr. Roosevelt's +goodness is or whether it is what he thinks it is. We might all disagree +about that. I am dealing quite strictly in this connection with what +even his enemies would say is his almost egregious success in +advertising goodness. While we might all disagree as to his goodness +being the kind that he or any one ought to love, we would not fail to +agree that it is his love of his own goodness, such as it is, and his +holding on to it, and his love of other people's and his love of getting +his goodness and their goodness together, that has made him the most +unconcealed person in modern life. These qualities have established him, +with his ability raised to the n<sup>th</sup> power of attracting attention to +anything he likes, as the world's greatest News Man—the world's +greatest living energy to-day in advertising what is good and what is +had in our American temperament.</p> + +<p>Even the people who disagree with him or dislike him—many of them would +have to fall back on using the word roosevelt, or rather the verb to +roosevelt.</p> + +<p>It does not seem to be because his goodness in itself is extraordinary. +It is even, for that matter, in the sense that anybody could have it, or +some more just like it, a little common.</p> + +<p>What seems to be uncommon and really distinguished about Mr. Roosevelt +is the way he feels about his goodness, and the way he grips hold of it, +and the way he makes it grip hold of other people—practically anybody +almost, who is standing by. Even if they are merely going by in +automobiles, sometimes they catch some. I do not imagine that his worst +enemies, however seriously they may question the general desirability or +safety of having so much goodness roosevelting around, <a name="Page_480" id="Page_480"></a>would fail to +admit his own real enthusiasm about goodness anywhere he finds it +indiscriminately, whether it is his own or other people's. He grips hold +of it, and grips like a cable car—instantly.</p> + +<p>His enthusiasm is so great that many people are nonplussed by it. The +enthusiasm must really be in spite of appearances about something else, +something wicked in behind, they think, and not really about goodness. +An entire stranger would not quite believe it. It would be too original +in him, they would say, or in anybody, to care so about goodness.</p> + +<p>If one could watch the expression in Mr. Roosevelt's face or his manner +while he is in the act of having a virtue and if one could not see +plainly from where one was, just what it was he was doing, one would at +once conclude that it must be some vice he is having. He looks happy and +as if it were some stolen secret. There is always that manner of his +when he is caught doing right, as if one were to say "Now, at last, I +have got it!" He does right like a boy with his mouth full of jam, and +this seems to be true not only when, with a whole public following and +two or three nations besides, and all the newspapers, he goes off on an +orgy of righteousness, makes the grand tour of Europe, and has the time +of his life. It is the steady-burning under enthusiasm with him all the +while. The spectacle of a good man doing a tremendous good thing affects +Theodore Roosevelt like one of the great forces of nature, like Niagara +Falls, like the screws of the <i>Mauritania</i>, or any other huge, happy +thing that is having its way against fear; against weakness, or against +small terrified goodness.</p> + +<p>Mr. Roosevelt in doing right conveys the sense of enjoying it so himself +that he has made almost an art form of public righteousness. He has +found his most complete, his most naïve, instinctive self-expression in +it, and while we have had goodness in public men before, we have had no +man who has been such an international chromo for goodness, who has made +such a big, comfortable "He-who-runs-may-read" bill-poster <a name="Page_481" id="Page_481"></a>for doing +right as Roosevelt. Other men have done things that were good to do, but +the very inmost muscle and marrow of goodness itself, goodness with +teeth, with a fist, goodness that smiled, that ha-ha'd, and that leaped +and danced—perpetual motion of goodness, goodness that reeked—has been +reserved for Theodore Roosevelt. We have had goodness that was bland or +proper, and goodness that was pious or sentimental and sang, "Nearer My +God to Thee," or goodness that was kind and mushy, but this goodness +with a glad look and bounding heart, goodness with an iron hand, we have +not had before. It is Mr. Roosevelt's goodness that has made him +interesting in Cairo, Paris, Rome, and Berlin. He has been conducting a +grand tour of goodness. He has been a colossal drummer of goodness, +conducting an advertising campaign. He has proved himself a master +salesman for moral values. And he has put the American character, its +hope, its energy, on the markets and on the credits of the world.</p> + +<p>With all his faults, those big, daring, yawning fissures in him, he is +news about us, faults and all. Though I may be, as I certainly am much +of the time, standing and looking across at him, across an abyss of +temperament that God cut down between us thousands of years ago, and +while he may have a score of traits I would not like and others that no +one would like in any one else, there he is storming out at me with his +goodness! It is his way—God help him!—God be praised for him! There he +is!</p> + +<p>I know an American when I see one. He is a man who is singing.</p> + +<p>A man who is singing is a man who is so shrewd about people that he sees +more in them than they see in themselves and who does things so shrewdly +in behalf of God, that when God looks upon him he delights in him. Then +God falls to of course and helps him do them.</p> + +<p>When American men saw that there was a man among them <a name="Page_482" id="Page_482"></a>who was taking a +thing like the Presidency of the United States (that most people never +run risks with) and putting it up before everybody, and using it grimly +as a magnificent bet on the people, they looked up. Millions of men +leaped in their hearts and as they saw him they knew that they were like +him!</p> + +<p>So did Theodore Roosevelt become news about Us.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_483" id="Page_483"></a>CHAPTER X</h2> + +<h3>AMERICAN TEMPERAMENT AND GOVERNMENT</h3> + + +<p>I would like to say more specifically what I mean by an American or +singing government.</p> + +<p>The thing that counts the most in a government is its temperament. A +German government succeeds by having the German temperament. An American +government must have the American temperament.</p> + +<p>If we are fortunate enough to have in America a government with an +American temperament what would it be like? And how would it differ from +the traditional or conventional temperament, governments are usually +allowed to have?</p> + +<p>If I were confined to one or two words I would put it like this:</p> + +<p>If a government has the conventional temperament, it says "NO."</p> + +<p>If it has the American Temperament it says, "YES, BUT ..."</p> + +<p>The whole policy and temper of a true American government is summed up +in its saying as it looks about it—now to this business man and now to +that, just in time, "YES BUT."</p> + +<p>Louis Brandeis, of Boston, when he was made attorney for the Gas Company +of Boston to defend the company from the criticisms of the people, sent +suddenly scores of men all about canvassing the city and looking up +people to find fault with the gas.</p> + +<p>He spent thousands of dollars a month of the Gas Company's money for a +while in helping people to be disagreeable, until they had it attended +to and got over it.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_484" id="Page_484"></a>The Gas Company had the canvassers show the people how they could burn +less gas for what they got for it, and tried to help them cut their +bills in two. Incidentally, of course, they got to thinking about gas +and about what they got for it, and about other ways they could afford +to use it, and began to have the gas habit—used it for cooking and +heating.</p> + +<p>The people found they wanted to use four times as much gas.</p> + +<p>The Boston Gas Company smiled sweetly.</p> + +<p>Boston smiled sweetly.</p> + +<p>Not many months had passed and two things had happened in Boston.</p> + +<p>The Boston Gas Company, with precisely the same directors in it, had +made over the directors into new men, and all the people in Boston (all +who used gas) apparently had been made over into new people.</p> + +<p>What had happened was Brandeis—a man with an American temperament.</p> + +<p>Mr. Brandeis had defended his company from the people by going the +people's way and helping them until they helped him.</p> + +<p>Mr. Brandeis gave gas a soul in Boston.</p> + +<p>Before a gas corporation has a soul, it would be American for a +government to treat it in one way. After it has one it would be American +to treat it in another. There are two complete sets of conduct, +principles, and visions in dealing with a corporation before and after +its having a soul.</p> + +<p>Preserving the females of the species and killing males as a method of +discrimination has been applied to all animals except human beings. This +is suggestive of a method of discrimination in dealing with +corporations. A corporation that has a soul and that is the most likely +to keep reproducing souls in others should be treated in one way, and a +corporation that has not should be treated in another.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_485" id="Page_485"></a>There are two assumptions underneath everybody's thought, underneath +every action of our government: Which is the American assumption?</p> + +<p>People are going to be bad if they can.</p> + +<p>People are going to be good if they can.</p> + +<p>Men who want to arrange laws and adjust life on the assumption that +business men will be bad if they can, it seems to some of us, are +inefficient and unscientific. It seems to us that they are off on the +main and controlling facts in American human nature. It is not true that +American business men will be bad if they can. They will be good if they +can.</p> + +<p>This is my assertion. I cannot prove it.</p> + +<p>What we seem to need next in this country in order to be clear-headed +and to go ahead, is to prove it. We want a competent census of human +nature.</p> + +<p>Lacking a census of human nature, the next best thing we can do is to +watch the men who seem to know the most about human nature.</p> + +<p>We put ourselves in their hands.</p> + +<p>These men seem to believe, judging from their actions, that there is +really nothing that suits our temperament better in America than being +good. If we can manage to have some way of being good that we have +thought of ourselves, we like it still better. We dote on goodness when +it is ours and when we are allowed to put some punch into it. We want to +be good, to express our practical, our doing-idealism, but we will not +be driven to being good and people who think they can drive us to being +good in a government or out of it are incompetent people. They do not +know who we are.</p> + +<p>We say they shall not have their way with us.</p> + +<p>Let them get us right first. Then they can do other things.</p> + +<p>What is our American temperament?</p> + +<p>Here are a few American reflections.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_486" id="Page_486"></a>The government of the next boys' school of importance in this country is +going to determine the cuts and free hours, and privileges not by marks, +but by its genius for seeing through boys.</p> + +<p>And instead of making rules for two hundred pupils because just twenty +pupils need them, they will make the rules for just twenty pupils.</p> + +<p>Pupils who can use their souls and can do better by telling themselves +what to do, will be allowed to do better. Why should two hundred boys +who want to be men be bullied into being babies by twenty infants who +can scare a school government into rules, <i>i.e.</i>, scare their teachers +into being small and mean and second-rate?</p> + +<p>A government that goes on this principle with business men, and that +does it in a spirit of mutual understanding for those who are not yet +free from rules, and in a spirit of confidence and expectation and of +talking it over, will be a government with an American temperament.</p> + +<p>The first trait of a great government is going to be that it will +recognize that the basis of a true government in a democracy is +privilege and not treating all people alike. It is going to see that is +it a cowardly, lazy, brutal, and mechanical-minded thing for a +government which is trying to serve a great people—to treat all the +people alike. The basis of a great government like the basis of a great +man (or even the basis of a good digestion) is discrimination, and the +habit of acting according to facts. We will have rules or laws for +people who need them, and men in the same business who amount to enough +and are American enough to be safe as laws to themselves, will continue +to have their initiative and to make their business a profession, a +mould, an art form into which they pour their lives. The pouring of the +lives of men like this into their business is the one thing that the +business and the government want.</p> + +<p>Several things are going to happen when what a good govern<a name="Page_487" id="Page_487"></a>ment seeks +each for a man's business, is to let him express himself in it.</p> + +<p>When a man has proved conclusively that he has a higher level of +motives, and a higher level of abilities to make his motives work, the +government is going to give him a higher level of rights, liberties, and +immunities. The government will give special liberties on a sliding +scale and with shrewd provision for the future. The government will not +give special liberties to the man with higher motives than other men +have, who has not higher abilities to make his motives work, nor will it +give special liberties to the man who has higher abilities which could +make higher motives work, but who has not the higher motives.</p> + +<p>Men who are new kinds and new sizes of men and who have proved that they +can make new kinds and new sizes of bargains, that they can make (for +the same money) new kinds and new sizes of goods, and who incidentally +make new kinds and new sizes of people out of the people who buy the +goods, men who have achieved all these supposed visionary feats by their +own initiative, will be allowed by the government to have all the +initiative they want, and immunities from fretful rules as long as they +resemble themselves and keep on doing what they have shown they can do. +The government will deal with each man according to the facts, the +scientific facts, that he has proved about himself.</p> + +<p>The government acts according to scientific facts in everything except +men, in pure food, in cholera, and the next thing the government is +going to do is to be equally efficient in dealing with scientific facts +in men.</p> + +<p>It is going to give some men inspected liberty. If these men say they +can be more efficient, as a railroad sometimes is, by being a monopoly, +by being a vast, self-visioned, self-controlled body the government will +have enough character, expert courage and shrewdness about human nature +to provide a way for them to try it.</p> + +<p>When the other people come up and ask why they cannot have <a name="Page_488" id="Page_488"></a>these +special immunities and why they cannot be a monopoly, or nearly a +monopoly, too, the government will tell them why.</p> + +<p>Telling them why will be governing them.</p> + +<p>When we once reckon with new kinds and new sizes of men, everything +follows. The first man who organizes a true monopoly for public service +and who does it better than any state could do it, because he thinks of +it himself, glories in it and has a genius for it, will be given a +peerage in England perhaps. But he would not really care. The thing +itself would be a peerage enough and either in America or England he +would rather be rewarded by being singled out by the government for +special rights and distinctions in conducting his business. The best way +a democracy can honour a man who has served it is not to give him a +title or to make a frivolous, idle monument of bronze for him, but to +let him have his own way.</p> + +<p>The way to honour any artist or any creative man, any man a country is +in need of especially, is to let him have his own way.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>We are told that the way to govern trusts is to untrammel competition.</p> + +<p>But the way to untrammel competition is not to try to untrammel it in +its details with lists of things men shall not do.</p> + +<p>This is cumbersome.</p> + +<p>We would probably find it very much more convenient in specifying 979 +detailed things trusts cannot do, if we could think of certain +sum-totals of details.</p> + +<p>Then we could deal with the details in a lump.</p> + +<p>The best sum totals of details in this world that have ever been +invented yet, are men.</p> + +<p>We will pick out a man who has a definite, marked character, who is a +fine, convenient sum-total that any one can see, of things not to do.</p> + +<p>We will pick out another man in the same line of business who is a fine, +convenient sum-total of things that people ought to do.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_489" id="Page_489"></a>The government will find ways, as the Coach of Business as the Referee +of the Game for the people, to stand by this man until he whips the +other, drives him out of business or makes him play as good a game as he +does.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>When a child finds suddenly that his father is not merely keeping him +from doing things, that his father has a soul, the father begins to get +results out of the child.</p> + +<p>As a rule a child discovers first that his father has a soul by noticing +that he insists on treating him as if he had one.</p> + +<p>Of course a corporation that has not a soul yet does not propose to be +dictated to by a government that has not a soul yet. When corporations +without souls see overwhelmingly that a government has a soul, they will +be filled with a wholesome fear. They will always try at first to +prevent it from having a soul if they can.</p> + +<p>But the moment it gets one and shows it, they will be glad. They will +feel on firm ground. They will know what they know. They will act.</p> + +<p>In the hospital on the hill not far from my house, one often sees one +attendant going out to walk with twelve insane men. One would think it +would not be safe for twelve insane men to go out to walk with one sane +man, with one man who has his soul on.</p> + +<p>The reason it is safe, is, that the moment one insane man or man who has +not his soul on, attacks the man who has a soul, all of the other eleven +men throw themselves upon him and fling him to the ground. Men whose +souls are not on, protect, every time, the man who has his soul on +because the man who has a soul is the only defence they have from the +men who have not.</p> + +<p>It is going to be the same with governments. We believe in a +government's having as much courage in America as a ten-dollar-a-week +attendant in an insane asylum. We want a government that sees how +courage works.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_490" id="Page_490"></a>We are told in the New Testament that we are all members one of another.</p> + +<p>If society has a soul and if every member of it has a soul, what is the +relation of the social soul to the individual soul?</p> + +<p>A man's soul is the faculty in him for seeing the Whole in relation to +the part—his vision for others in relation to his vision for himself.</p> + +<p>My forefinger's soul in writing with this fountain pen is the sense my +forefinger has of its relation to my arm, my spinal column, and my +brain. The ability and efficiency of my forefinger depends upon its +soul, that is, its sense of relation to the other members of the body. +If my forefinger tries to act like a brain all by itself, as it +sometimes does, nobody reads my writing.</p> + +<p>The government in a society is the soul of all the members and it treats +them according to their souls.</p> + +<p>The one compulsion a government will use if it has a soul, will be +granting charters in business in such a way as to fix definite +responsibility and definite publicity upon a few men.</p> + +<p>If a corporation has a soul, it must show. It must have a face. Anybody +can tell a face off-hand or while going by. Anybody can keep track of a +corporation if it has a face.</p> + +<p>The trouble with the average corporation is that all that anybody can +see is its stomach. Even this is anonymous.</p> + +<p>Whose Stomach is it? Who is responsible for it? If we hit it, whom will +we hit? Let the government find out. If the time the government is now +spending in making impossibly minute laws for impossibly minute men, +were spent in finding out what size men were, and who they were and then +giving them just as many rights from the people, as they are the right +kind and the right size to handle for the people, it would be an +American government.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_491" id="Page_491"></a>If there is one thing rather than another that an American or an +Englishman loves, it is asserting himself or expressing his character in +what he does. The typical dominating Englishman or American is not as +successful as a Frenchman or as an Italian in expressing other things, +as he is in expressing his character.</p> + +<p>He cares more about expressing his character and asserting it. If he is +dealing with things, he makes them take the stamp of who he is. If he is +dealing with people, he makes them see and acknowledge who he is. They +must take in the facts about what he is like when they are with him. +They must deal with him as he is.</p> + +<p>This trait may have its disadvantages, but if an Englishman or an +American is on this earth for anything, this is what he is for—to +express his character in what he does—in strong, vigorous, manly lines +draw a portrait of himself and show what he is like in what he does. +This may be called on both sides of the sea to-day as we stand front to +front with the more graceful nations, Anglo-Saxon Art.</p> + +<p>It is because this particular art in the present crisis of human nature +on this planet is the desperate, the almost reckless need of a world +that the other nations of the world with all their dislike of us and +their superiorities to us, with all our ugliness and heaviness and our +galumphing in the arts, have been compelled in this huge, modern thicket +of machines and crowds to give us the lead.</p> + +<p>And now we are threading a way for nations through the moral wilderness +of the earth.</p> + +<p>This position has been accorded us because it goes with our temperament, +because we can be depended upon to insist on asserting ourselves and on +expressing ourselves in what we do. If the present impromptu industrial +machinery which has been handed over to us thoughtlessly and in a hurry, +does not express us, everybody knows that we can be depended on to +assert ourselves and that we will insist on one that will. The nations +<a name="Page_492" id="Page_492"></a>that are more polite and that can dance and bow more nicely than we can +in a crisis like this would be dangerous. It is known about us +throughout a world that we are not going to be cowed by wood or by iron +or by steel and that we are not going to be cowed by men who are all +wood and iron and steel inside. If wood, iron, or steel does not express +us, we are Englishmen and we are Americans. We will butt our character +into it until it does.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>If the American workman were to insist upon butting his American +temperament into his labour union machinery, what would his labour +machinery in America soon begin to show that an American labourer was +like?</p> + +<p>I imagine it might work out something like this:</p> + +<p>The thoughtful workman looks about him. He discovers that the workman +pays at least two times as much for coal as he needs to because miners +down in Pennsylvania work one third as hard as they might for the money.</p> + +<p>When he comes to think of it, all the labouring men of America are +paying high prices because they have to pay all the other workmen in +America for working as little as they can. He is working one third less +than he can and making his own class pay for it. He sees every workman +about him paying high prices because every other workman in making +things for him to eat and for him to wear, is cheating him—doing a +third less a day for him than he ought.</p> + +<p>At this point the capitalists pile in and help. They shove the prices up +still higher because capital is not interested in an industry in which +the workmen do six hours' work in nine. It demands extra profits. So +while the workmen put up the prices by not working, the capitalists put +up the prices because they are afraid the workmen will not work. Half +work, high prices.</p> + +<p>Then the American workman thinks. He begins to suppose.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_493" id="Page_493"></a>Suppose that the millers' workmen and the workmen in the woollen mills +in America see how prices of supplies for labouring men are going up and +suppose they agree to work as hard as they can? Suppose the wool workers +of the world want cheap bread. The flour mill workers want cheap +clothes. We will say to the bread people, "We will bring down the price +of wool for you if you will bring down the price of bread for us."</p> + +<p>Then let Meat and Potatoes do the same for one another. Then two +industries at a time, industries getting brains in pairs, until like the +animals going into the ark, little by little (or rather very fast, +almost piling in, in fact, after the first pair have tried it), at last +our true, spirited, practical minded American workmen will have made +their labour machines as natural and as human and as American as they +are. They will stop trying to lower prices by not working, each workman +joining (in a factory) the leisure classes and making the other workmen +pay for it.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>The American workman, as things are organized now, finds himself +confronted with two main problems. One is himself. How can he get +himself to work hard enough to make his food and clothes cheap? The +other is his employer.</p> + +<p>What will the American workman do to express his American temperament +through his labour union to his employer? The American workmen will go +to their employers and say: "Instead of doing six hours' work in nine +hours, we will do nine hours' work in nine hours." The millers, for +instance, will say to the flour mill owners: "We will do a third more +work for you, make you a third more profit on our labour if you will +divide your third more profit like this:</p> + +<p>"First, by bringing down the price of flour to everybody;</p> + +<p>"Second, by bringing up our wages. Third, by taking more money +yourselves."</p> + +<p><a name="Page_494" id="Page_494"></a>American labouring men who did this would be acting like Americans. It +is the American temperament.</p> + +<p>They will insist on it: The labour men will continue to say to their +employers, "We will divide the proceeds of our extra work into three +sums of money—ours, yours, and everybody's." In return we will soon +find the employers saying the same thing to the labour men. Employers +would like to arrange to be good. If they can get men who earn more, +they want to pay them more.</p> + +<p>The labourers would like to be good, <i>i.e.</i>, work more for employers who +want to pay them more.</p> + +<p>But being good has to be arranged for.</p> + +<p>Being good is a matter of mutual understanding, a matter of +organization, a matter of butting our American temperament into our +industrial machines.</p> + +<p>All that is the matter with these industrial machines is that they are +not like us.</p> + +<p>Our machines are acting just now for all the world as if they were the +Americans and as if we were the machines.</p> + +<p>Are we for the machines, or are the machines for us?</p> + +<p>All that the American labourers and that the American capitalists have +to do is to show what they are really like, organize their news about +themselves so that they get it through to one another, and our present +great daily occupation in America (which each man calls his "business") +all the workmen going down to the mills and all the employers going down +to their offices, and then for six, eight, nine hours a day being chewed +on by machines, will cease.</p> + +<p>We make our industrial machines. We are Americans. Our machines must +have our American temperament.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>If an American employer were to insist on butting his American +temperament into his industrial machine, what would his industrial +machine, when it is well at work at last, show an American employer's +temperament to be like?</p> + +<p><a name="Page_495" id="Page_495"></a>The first thing that would show in his machine, I think, would be its +courage, its acting with boldness and initiative, originality and +freedom, without being cluttered up by precedents or running and asking +Mama, its clear-headedness in what it wants, its short-cut in getting to +it, and above all a kind of ruthless faith in human nature, in the +American people, in its goods and in itself.</p> + +<p>The typical American business man of the highest class—the man who is +expressing his American temperament best in his business—is the one who +is expressing in it the most courage for himself and for others and for +his government. He has big beliefs every few minutes a day, and he acts +on them with nonchalance.</p> + +<p>If he is running a trust—our most characteristic, recklessly difficult +American invention for a man to show through, and if he tries to get his +American temperament to show through in it, tries to make his trust like +a vast portrait, like a kind of countenance on a country, of what a big +American business is like, what will he do?</p> + +<p>He will take a little axiom like this and act as if it were so.</p> + +<p><i>If in any given case the producers by collusion and combination can be +efficient in lowering wages to employees and raising prices and cheating +the public, this same combination or collusion would be efficient in +raising the wages of employees, lowering prices and serving the public.</i></p> + +<p>He will then, being an American, turn to his government and say "I am a +certain sort of man. If I am allowed to be an exception and to combine +in this matter, I can prove that I can raise wages, lower prices for a +whole nation in these things that I make. I am a certain sort of man. Do +you think I am, or do you think that I am not? I want to know."</p> + +<p>The government looks noncommittally at him. It says it cannot +discriminate.</p> + +<p>He says nothing for a time, but he thinks in his heart that it is +incompetent and cowardly to run a great government of a <a name="Page_496" id="Page_496"></a>great nation as +a vast national sweep or flourish of getting out of brains and of +evading vision. It seems to him lazy and effeminate in a government to +treat all combinations and all monopolies alike. He says: "Look me in +the eyes! I demand of you as a citizen of this country the right to be +looked by my government in the eyes. What sort of man am I? Here are all +my doors open. My safes are your safes and my books are your books. Am I +or am I not a man who can conduct his business as a great profession, +one of the dignities and energies and joys of a great people?</p> + +<p>"What am I like inside? Is what I am like inside—my having a small size +or a big size of motive, my having a right kind or a wrong kind of +ability of no consequence to this government? Does the government of +this country really mean that the most important things a country like +this can produce, the daily, ruling motives of the men who are living in +it, have no weight with the government? Am I to understand that the +government does not propose to avail itself of new sizes and new kinds +of men and new sizes and new kinds of abilities in men? What I am trying +to do in my product is to lower the prices and raise the wages for a +nation. Will you let me do it? Will you watch me while I do it?"</p> + +<p>This will be the American trust of to-morrow. The average trust of this +country has not yet found itself, but the moral and spiritual history, +the religious message to a government of The Trust That Has Found Itself +will be something like this.</p> + +<p>Perhaps when we have a trust that has found itself, we will have a +government that has dared to find itself, that has the courage to use +its insight, its sense of difference between men, as it means of getting +what it wants for the people.</p> + +<p>As it is now, the government has not found itself and it falls back on +complex rules or machines for getting out of seeing through people.</p> + +<p>Where courage is required, it proceeds as it proceeds with automobile +speeding laws. Everybody knows that one man <a name="Page_497" id="Page_497"></a>driving his car three miles +an hour may be more dangerous than another kind of man who is driving +his car thirty.</p> + +<p>When our government begins to be a government, begins to express the +American temperament, it will be a government that will devote its +energy, its men, and its money to being expert in divining, and using +differences between men. It will govern as any father, teacher, or +competent business man does by treating some people in one way and +others in another, by giving graded speed licenses in business, to +labour unions, trusts, and business men.</p> + +<p>The government will be able to do this by demanding, acquiring, and +employing as the servants of the people, men who are experts in human +nature, masters in not treating men alike—Crowbars, lemonade-straws, +chisels, and marshmallows, powerhouses and Æolian harps by the people, +for the people, and of the people, will be rated for what they are and +will be used for what they are for.</p> + +<p>This will be democracy. It will be the American temperament in +government.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>Is President Wilson or is he not going to fall back into a mere lawyer +Moseslike way of getting people to be good, or is he going to be a man +like David, half poet, half soldier, who got his way with the nation +half by appreciating the men in it and being a fellow human being with +them, and half by fighting them when they would not let him be a fellow +human being with them, and would not let him appreciate them?</p> + +<p>Almost any nation or government can get some kind of Moses to-day but +the men that America is producing would not particularly notice a Moses +probably now. A Moses might do for a Rockefeller, but he could not +really do anything with a man like Theodore N. Vail who has the +telephones and telegraphs of a country talking and ticking to us all, +all night, all day, what kind of a man he is.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_498" id="Page_498"></a>A big affirmative, inspirational man like David or even Napoleon who +inspires people with one breath and fights hard with the next, a man who +swings his hat for the world, a man who goes on ahead and says "Come!" +is the only man who can be practical in America to-day in helping real +live American men like McAdoo, like Edison and Acheson,—men who can +express a people in a business—to express them.</p> + +<p>The people have spoken. A man in the White House who cannot say "Come" +goes.</p> + +<p>We want a poet in the White House. If we can not have a poet for the +White House soon, we want a poet who will make us a poet for the White +House.</p> + +<p>I do not believe it is too much to expect a President to be a poet. We +have had a poet for President once in one supreme crisis of this nation +and the crisis that is coming now is so much deeper, so much more human +and world-wide than Lincoln's was that it would almost seem as if a +place like the White House (where one's poetry could really work) would +make a poet out of anybody.</p> + +<p>A President who has not a kind of plain, still, homely poetry in him, a +belief about people that sings, in the present appalling crisis of the +world is impracticable or visionary.</p> + +<p>So we do not say, "Have we a President that can get our Bells, Edisons, +McAdoos, Achesons to be good by toeing a line?"</p> + +<p>We say, "Have we a President who can swing into step, who can join in +the singing, who can catch up?"</p> + +<p>Tunnel McAdoo, when he lifted up his will against the sea and against +the seers of Wall Street, was singing. When he conceived those steel +cars, those roaring yellow streaks of light ringing through rocks +beneath the river, streets of people flashing through under the slime +and under the fish and under the ships and under the wide sunshine on +the water, he was singing! He raised millions of dollars singing.</p> + +<p>Of course he sang the way Americans usually sing, and had to do as well +as he could in talking to bankers and investors <a name="Page_499" id="Page_499"></a>not to look as if he +were singing, but there it all was singing inside him, the seven years +of digging, the seven years of dull thundering on rocks under the city, +and at last the happy steel cars all green and gold, the streams of +people all yellow light hissing and pouring through—those vast pipes +for people beneath the sea!</p> + +<p>If we have a President, let him sing like McAdoo, or like Luther +Burbank, or like Theodore N. Vail, or like Colonel Goethals, picking up +a little isthmus like Panama, a string between two continents, playing +on it as if it were a harp; or like Edward Ripley playing with the Santa +Fé Railroad for all the world like Homer with a lute, all his seven +thousand men, all his workmen, all their wives and their children, all +the cities along the line striking up and joining in the chorus or like +Carborundum Acheson, backed up by his little Niagara Falls oiling the +wheels of a world, weaving diamonds into steel, hardening the bones of +the earth into skyscrapers, into railroads, into the mighty thighs of +flying locomotives....</p> + +<p>Any man who is seen acting in this world with a thing, as if he believed +in the thing, as if he believed in himself and believed in other people, +is singing.</p> + +<p>Moses striking out with a rod, as we are told, a path along the sea for +his people may have done a more showy thing from a religious point of +view, hitting the water on top so, making a great splash with an empty +place in it for people to march through, but he was not essentially more +religious than McAdoo, with all those modest but mighty columns of +figures piling up behind him, with all those splendid, dumb, still +glowing engineers behind him, lifting up his will against cities, +lifting up his will against herds of politicians, haughty newspapers, +against the flocks of silly complacent old ferry-boats waddling in the +bay, against the wind and the rain and the cold on the water, and all +the banks of Wall Street....</p> + +<p>When we want to tell News to our President about ourselves in America, +we point to William G. McAdoo.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_500" id="Page_500"></a>The first news that we, the American people, must contrive to get into +the White House about ourselves is that we do not want to be improved, +and that we do not like an improving tone in our government. We want to +be expressed the way McAdoos express us. We want a government that +expresses our faith in one another, in what we are doing, and in +ourselves, and in the world.</p> + +<p>We are singing over here on this continent. We would not all of us put +it in just this way. But our singing is the main thing we can do, and a +government that is trying to improve us feebly, that is looking askance +at us and looking askance at our money, and at our labour, and that does +not believe in us and join in with us in our singing does not know what +we are like.</p> + +<p>Our next national business in America is to get the real news over to +the President of what we are like.</p> + +<p>It is news that we want in the White House. A missionary in the White +House, be he ever so humble, will not do.</p> + +<p>Mr. Roosevelt, himself, with the word Duty on every milepost as he +whirled past, with suggestions of things for other people to do buzzing +like bees about his head, acquired his tremendous and incredible power +with us as a people because, in spite of his violent way of breaking out +into a missionary every morning and every evening when he talked, it was +not his talking but his singing that made him powerful—his singing, or +doing things as if he believed in people, his I wills and I won'ts, his +assuming every day, his acting every day, as if American men were men. +He sang his way roughly, hoarsely, even a little comically at times into +the hearts of people, stirred up in the nation a mighty heat, put a +great crackling fire under it, put two great parties into the pot, +boiled them, drew off all that was good in them, and at last, to-day, as +I write (February 1913), the prospect of a good square meal in the White +House (with some one else to say grace) is before the people.</p> + +<p>The people are waiting to sit down once more in the White House and +refresh themselves.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_501" id="Page_501"></a>At least, the soup course is on the table.</p> + +<p>Who did it, please? Who bullied the cook and got everybody ready?</p> + +<p>Theodore Roosevelt, singing a little roughly, possibly hurrahing "<i>I +will, I will, I won't, I won't</i>," and acting as if he believed in the +world.</p> + +<p>Bryan in the village of Chicago sitting by at a reporter's table saw him +doing it.</p> + +<p>Bryan saw how it worked.</p> + +<p>Bryan had it in him too.</p> + +<p>Bryan heard the shouts of the people across the land as they gloried in +the fight. He saw the signals from the nations over the sea.</p> + +<p>Then Armageddon moved to Baltimore.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>And now table is about to be spread.</p> + +<p>It is to be Mr. Wilson's soup.</p> + +<p>But the soup will have a Roosevelt flavour or tang to it. And we will +wait to see what Mr. Wilson will do with the other courses.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>A poet in words, with two or three exceptions, America has not produced.</p> + +<p>The only touch of poetry or art as yet that we have in America +is—acting as if we believed in people. This particular art is ours. +Other people may have it, but it is all we have.</p> + +<p>This is what makes or may make any moment the common American a poet or +artist.</p> + +<p>Speaking in this sense, Mr. Roosevelt is the first poet America has +produced that European peoples and European governments have noticed for +forty years, or had any reason to notice. We respectfully place Mr. +Roosevelt with Mr. McAdoo (and if Mr. Brandeis will pardon us, with Mr. +Brandeis) as a typical <a name="Page_502" id="Page_502"></a>American before the eyes of the new President. +We ask him to take Mr. Roosevelt as a very important part of the latest +news about us.</p> + +<p>The true imaginative men of our modern life, the poets of crowds and +cities are not to-day our authors, preachers, professors or lawyers or +philosophers. The poets of crowds are our men like this, our +vision-doers, the men who have seen visions and dreamed dreams in the +real and daily things, the daring Governors like Wilson and like Hughes, +the daring inventors of great business houses, the men who have invented +the foundations on which nations can stand, on which railroads can run, +the men whose imaginations, in the name of heaven, have played with the +earth mightily, watered deserts, sailed cities on the seas, the men who +have whistled and who have said "Come!" to empires, who have thought +hundred-year thoughts, taken out nine hundred and ninety-nine year +leases, who have thought of mighty ways for cities to live, for cities +to be cool, to be light, to be dark, who have conceived ways for nations +to talk, who have grasped the earth and the sky like music, like words, +and put them in the hands of the people, and made the people say, "O +earth," and "O sky, thou art great, but we also are great! Come earth +and sky, thou shalt praise God with us!"</p> + +<p>Who are these men?</p> + +<p>Let the President catch up!</p> + +<p>Who are these men? Here is Edward A. Filene, who takes up the pride, +joy, beauty, self-respect, and righteousness of a city, swings it into a +Store, and makes that Store sing about the city up and down the world! +Here is Alexander Cassatt, imperturbable, irrepressible, and like a +great Boy playing leapfrog with a Railroad—Cassatt who makes +quick-hearted, dreamy Philadelphia duck under the Sea, bob up serenely +in the middle of New York and leap across Hell Gate to get to Boston! +Let the parliaments droning on their benches, the Congresses pile out of +their doors and catch up.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_503" id="Page_503"></a>Let the lawyers—the little swarms of dark-minded lawyers, wondering and +running to and fro, creeping in offices, who have tried to run our +world, blurred our governments, and buzzed, who have filled the world +with piles of old paper, Congressional Records, with technicalities, +words, droning, weariness, despair, and fear ... let them come out and +look! Let them catch up!</p> + +<p>Let a man in this day in the presence of men like these sing. If a man +cannot sing, let him be silent. Only men who are singing things shall do +them.</p> + +<p>I go out into the street, I go out and look almost anywhere, listen +anywhere, and the singing rises round me!</p> + +<p>It was singing that spread the wireless telegraph like a great web +across the sky.</p> + +<p>It was singing that dug the subways under the streets in New York.</p> + +<p>It was singing, a kind of iron gladness, hope and faith in men, that has +flung up our skyscrapers into the lower stories of the clouds, and made +them say, "<i>I will! I will! I will!</i>" to God.</p> + +<p>Ah, how often have I seen them from the harbour, those flocking, crowded +skyscrapers under that little heaven in New York, lifting themselves in +the sunlight and in the starlight, lifting themselves before me, +sometimes, it seems, like crowds of great states, like a great country +piled up, like a nation reaching, like the plains and the hills and the +cities of my people standing up against heaven day by day—all those +flocks of the skyscrapers saying, "<i>I will! I will! I will!</i>" to God.</p> + +<p>The skyscrapers are news about us to our President. He shall reckon with +skyscraper men. He shall interpret men that belong with skyscrapers.</p> + +<p>And as he does so, I shall watch the people answer him, now with a glad +and mighty silence and now with a great solemn shout.</p> + +<p>The skyscrapers are their skyscrapers.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_504" id="Page_504"></a>The courage, the reaching-up, the steadfastness that is in them is in +the hearts of the people.</p> + +<p>If the President does not know us yet in America, does not know McAdoo +as a representative American, we will thunder on the doors of the White +House until he does.</p> + +<p>My impression is he would be out in the yard by the gate asking us to +come in.</p> + +<p>We are America. We are expressing our joy in the world, our faith in +God, and our love of the sun and the wind in the hearts of our people.</p> + +<p>In America the free air breathes about us, and daily the great sun +climbs our hillsides, swings daily past our work. There are ninety +million men with this sun and this wind woven into their bodies, into +their souls. They stand with us.</p> + +<p>The skyscrapers stand with us.</p> + +<p>All singing stands with us.</p> + +<p>Ah, I have waked in the dawn and in the sun and the wind have I seen +them!</p> + +<p>That sun and that wind, I say before God, are America! They are the +American temperament.</p> + +<p>I will have laws for free men, laws with the sun and the wind in them!</p> + +<p>I have waked in the dawn and my heart has been glad with the iron and +poetry in the skyscrapers.</p> + +<p>I will have laws for men and for American men, laws with iron and poetry +in them!</p> + +<p>The way for a government to get the poetry in is to say "Yes" to +somebody.</p> + +<p>The way for a government to get the iron in is not by saying "No." It is +not American in a government to keep saying "No." The best way for our +government in America to say "No" to a man, is to let him stand by and +watch us saying "Yes" to some one else.</p> + +<p>Then he will ask why.</p> + +<p>Then he will stand face to face with America.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_505" id="Page_505"></a>CHAPTER XI</h2> + +<h3>NEWS-BOOKS</h3> + + +<p>The most practical thing that could happen now in the economic world in +America would be a sudden, a great national, contemporary literature.</p> + +<p>America, unlike England, has no recognized cultured class, and has no +aristocracy, so called, with which to keep mere rich men suitably +miserable—at least a little humble and wistful. Our greatest need for a +long time has been some big serene, easy way, without half trying, of +snubbing rich men in America. All these overgrown, naughty fellows one +sees everywhere like street boys on the corners or on the curbstones of +society, calling society names and taking liberties with it, tripping +people up; hoodlums with dollars, all these micks of money!—O, that +society had some big, calm, serene way like some huge hearty London +policeman, of taking hold of them—taking hold of them by the seats of +their little trousers if need be, and taking them home to Mother—some +way of setting them down hard in their chairs and making them +thoughtful! Nothing but a national literature will do this. "Life," +(which is, with one exception, perhaps, the only religious weekly we +have left in America) succeeds a little and has some spiritual value +because it succeeds in making American millionaires look funny, and in +making them want to get away and live in Europe. But "Life" is not +enough; it merely hitches us along from day to day and keeps our courage +up. We want in America a literature, we want the thing done thoroughly +and forever and once for all. We want an Aristophanes, a master who +shall go gloriously laughing through our world, <a name="Page_506" id="Page_506"></a>through our chimneys +and blind machines, pot-bellied fortunes, empty successes, all these +tiny, queer little men of wind and bladder, until we have a nation +filled with a divine laughter, with strong, manful, happy visions of +what men are for.</p> + +<p>All we have to do is to have a News-book—a bookful of the kind of rich +men we want, then we will have them. We will see men piling over each +other all day to be them. Men have wanted to make money because making +money has been supposed to mean certain things about a man. The moment +it ceases to mean them, they will want to make other things.</p> + +<p>Where is the news about what we really want?</p> + +<p>——, when I took him to the train yesterday, spoke glowingly of the way +the Standard Oil Trust had reduced oil from twenty-nine cents to eleven +cents.</p> + +<p>There was not time to say anything. I just thought a minute of how they +did it.</p> + +<p>Why is it that people—so many good people will speak of oil at eleven +cents in this way, as if it were a kind of little kingdom of heaven?</p> + +<p>I admit that eleven cents from twenty-nine cents leaves eighteen cents.</p> + +<p>I do not deny that the Standard Oil Trust has saved me eighteen cents. +But what have they taken away out of my life and taken out of my sense +of the world and of the way things go in it and out of my faith in human +nature to toss me eighteen cents?</p> + +<p>If I could have for myself and others the sense of the world that I had +before, would I not to-day, day after day, over and over, gallon by +gallon, be handing them their eighteen cents back?</p> + +<p>What difference does it make to us if we are in a world where we can buy +oil for eleven cents a gallon instead of twenty-nine, if we do not care +whether we are alive or dead in it and do not expect anything from +ourselves or expect anything of anybody else? I submit it to your own +common sense, Gentle Reader. <a name="Page_507" id="Page_507"></a>Is it any comfort to buy oil to light a +room in which you do not want to sit, in which you would rather not see +anything, in which you would rather not remember who you are, what you +do, and what your business is like, and what you are afraid your +business is going to be like?</p> + +<p>I have passed through all this during the last fifteen years and I have +come out on the other side. But millions of lives of other men are +passing through it now, passing through it daily, bitterly, as they go +to their work and as they fall asleep at night.</p> + +<p>The next thing in this world is not reducing the price of oil. It is +raising the price of men and putting a market-value on life.</p> + +<p>What makes a man a man is that he knows himself, knows who he is, what +he is for and what he wants. Knowing who he is and knowing what he is +about, he naturally acts like a man, knows what he is about like a man, +and gets things done.</p> + +<p>A nation that does not know itself shall not be itself.</p> + +<p>A nation that has a muddle-headed literature, a nation that to say +nothing of not being able to express what it has, has not even made a +beginning at expressing what it wants; a nation that has not a great, +eager, glowing literature, a sublime clear-headedness about what it is +for—a nation that cannot put itself into a great book, a nation that +cannot weave itself together even in words into a book that can be +unfurled before the people like a flag where everybody can see it and +everybody can share it, look up to it, live for it, sleep for it, get up +in the morning and work for it—work for the vision of what it wants to +be—cannot be a great nation.</p> + +<p>A masterpiece is a book that has a thousand years in it. No man has a +right to say where these thousand years in it shall lie, whether in the +past or in the future. It is the thousand years' worth in it that makes +a masterpiece a masterpiece. In America we may not have the literature +of what we are or of what we have been, but the literature of what we +are bound to <a name="Page_508" id="Page_508"></a>be, the literature of what WE WILL, we will have, and we +will have to have it before we can begin being it.</p> + +<p>First the Specifications, then the House.</p> + +<p>From the practical or literary point of view the one sign we have given +in this country so far, that the stuff of masterpieces is in us and that +we are capable of a great literature, is that America is bored by its +own books.</p> + +<p>We let a French parson write a book for us on the simple life. We let a +poor suppressed Russian with one foot in hell reach over and write books +for us about liberty which we greedily read and daily use. We let a +sublimely obstinate Norwegian, breaking away with his life, pulling +himself up out of the beautiful, gloomy, morose bog of romance he was +born in—express our American outbreak for facts, for frank realism in +human nature.</p> + +<p>America is bored by its own books because every day it is demanding +gloriously from its authors a literature—books that answer our real +questions, the questions the people are asking every night as they go to +sleep and every morning when they crowd out into the streets—Where are +we going? Who are we? What are we like? What are we for?</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>A—— C——, the little stoopy cobbler on —— street in ——, bought +some machines to help him last year before I went away and added two or +three slaves to do the work. I find on coming back that he has moved and +has two show windows now, one with the cobbling slaves in it cobbling, +and the other (a kind of sudden, impromptu room with a show window in +it) seems to be straining to be a shoe store. When you go in and show +C—— in his shirt sleeves,—your old shoes hopefully, he slips over +from his shining leather bench to the shoe-store side and shows you at +the psychological moment a new pair of shoes.</p> + +<p>He is in the train now with me this morning, across the aisle, <a name="Page_509" id="Page_509"></a>looking +out of the window for dear life, poor fellow, for all the world as if he +could suck up dollars and customers—and people who need shoes—out of +the fields as he goes by, the way the man does mists, by looking hard at +them.</p> + +<p>I watched him walking up and down the station platform before I got on, +with that bent, concentrated, meek, ready-to-die-getting-on look. I saw +his future while I looked. I saw, or thought I saw, windows full of +bright black shoes, I saw the cobbler's shop moved out into the ell at +the back, and two great show windows in front. A—— C—— looks like an +edged tool.</p> + +<p>Millions of Americans are like A—— C——, like chisels, adzes, saws, +scoops. You talk with them, and if you talk about anything except +scooping and adzing, you are not talking with just a man, but a man who +is for something and who is not for anything else. He is not for being +talked with certainly, and alas! not for being loved. At best he is a +mere feminine convenience—a father or a cash secreter; until he wears +out at last, buzzes softly into a grave.</p> + +<p>An Englishman of this type is a little better, would be more like one of +these screw-driver, cork-screw arrangements—a big hollow handle with +all sorts of tools inside.</p> + +<p>Is this man a typical American? Does he need to be?</p> + +<p>What I want is news about us.</p> + +<p>All an American like C—— needs is news. His eagerness is the making of +him. He is merely eager for what he will not want.</p> + +<p>All he needs is the world's news about people, about new inventions in +human beings, news about the different and happier kinds of newly +invented men, news about how they were thought of, and how they are +made, and news about how they work.</p> + +<p>I demand three things for A—— C——:</p> + +<p>I want a novel that he will read which will make him see himself as I +see him.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_510" id="Page_510"></a>I want a moving picture of him that he will go to and like and go to +again and again.</p> + +<p>I want a play that will send him home from the theatre and keep him +awake with what he might be all that night.</p> + +<p>I want a news-book for A—— C——, a news-book for all of us.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>I read a book some years ago that seemed a true news-book and which was +the first suggestion I had ever received that a book can be an act of +colossal statesmanship, the making or remaking of a people—a +masterpiece of modern literature, laying the ground plan for the +greatness of a nation.</p> + +<p>When I had read it, I wanted to rush outdoors and go down the street +stopping people I met and telling them about it. Once in a very great +while one does come on a book like this. One wants to write letters to +the reviews. One does not know what one would not do to go down the long +aimless Midway Plaisance of the modern books, to call attention to it. +One wishes there were a great bell up over the world.... One would reach +up to it, and would say to all the men and the women and to the flocks +of the smoking cities, "Where are you all?" The bell would boom out, +"What are you doing? Why are you not reading this book?" One wonders if +one could not get a coloured page in the middle of the <i>Atlantic</i> or the +<i>North American Review</i> or <i>Everybody's</i> and at least make a great book +as prominent as a great soap—almost make it loom up in a country like a +Felt Mattress or a Toothbrush.</p> + +<p>The book that has made me feel like this the most is Charles Ferguson's +"Religion of Democracy." I have always wondered why only people here and +there responded to it. The things it made me vaguely see, all those huge +masses of real things, gigantic, half-godlike, looming like towers or +mountains in a mist.... Well, it must have been a little like this that +Columbus felt that first morning!</p> + +<p>But as Columbus went on, what he struck after all was real land, some +piece of real land in particular. The mist of vision <a name="Page_511" id="Page_511"></a>did precipitate +into something one could walk on, and I found as I went on with Mr. +Ferguson's book that if there was going to be any real land, somebody +would have to make some.</p> + +<p>But for the time being Charles Ferguson's book—all those glorious +generalizings in behalf of being individual, all those beautiful, +intoned, chanted abstractions in behalf of being concrete—came to me in +my speechless, happy gratitude as a kind of first sign in the heavens, +as a pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night, up over the place in +the waste of water where land, Land! At last! Land again! will have to +be.</p> + +<p>If we ever have a literature in America, it will be found somewhere when +the mist rolls away, right under Charles Ferguson's book.</p> + +<p>It may be too soon just now in this time of transition in our land of +piles and of derricks against the sky, for the book. All we are +competent for now is to say that we want such a book, that we see what +it will do for us.</p> + +<p>When we want it, we will get it. Let the American people put in their +order now.</p> + +<p>In the meantime the Piles and the Derricks.</p> + +<p>All these young and mighty derricks against the sky, all these soaring +steel girders with the blue through them—America!</p> + +<p>Ah, my God! is it not a hoping nation? Three thousand miles of Hope, +from Eastport, Maine, to San Francisco—does not the very sun itself +racing across it take three hours to get one look at our Hope?</p> + +<p>Here it is!—Our World.</p> + +<p>Let me, for one, say what I want.</p> + +<p>It is already as if I had seen it—one big, heroic imagination at work +at last like a sea upon our world, poetry grappling with the great +cities, with their labour, with their creative might, full of their vast +joys and sorrows, full of their tussle with the sea and with the powers +of the air and with the iron in the earth!—the big, speechless cities +that no one has spoken for yet, so splendid, and so eager, and so silent +about their souls!</p> + +<p><a name="Page_512" id="Page_512"></a>It is true we are crude and young.</p> + +<p>Behold the Derricks like mighty Youths!</p> + +<p>In our glorious adolescence so sublime, so ugly, so believing, will no +one sing a hymn to the Derricks?</p> + +<p>Where are the dear little Poets? Where are they hiding?</p> + +<p>Playing Indian perhaps, or making Parthenons out of blocks.</p> + +<p>Perhaps they might begin faintly and modestly at first.</p> + +<p>Some dear, hopeful, modest American poet might creep up from under them, +out from under the great believing, dumb Derricks standing on tiptoe of +faith against the sky, and write a book and call it "Beliefs American +Poets Would Like to Believe if They Could."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_513" id="Page_513"></a>CHAPTER XII</h2> + +<h3>NEWS-BOOKS II</h3> + + +<p>A nation's religion is its shrewdness about its ideals, its genius for +stating its ideals or news about itself, in the terms of its everyday +life.</p> + +<p>A nation's literature is its power of so stating its ideals that we will +not need to be shrewd for them—its power of expressing its ideals in +words, of tracing out ideals on white paper, so that ideals shall +enthrall the people, so that ideals shall be contagious, shall breathe +and be breathed into us, so that ideals shall be caught up in the voices +of men and sung in the streets.</p> + +<p>Ideals, intangible, electric, implacable irresistible, all-enfolding +ideals, shall hold and grip a continent the way a climate grips a +continent, like sunshine around a helpless thing, in the hollow of its +hand, and possess the hearts of the people.</p> + +<p>What our government needs now is a National band in Washington.</p> + +<p>America is a Tune.</p> + +<p>America is not a formula. America is not statistics, even graphic +statistics. A great nation cannot be made, cannot be discovered, and +then be laid coldly together like a census. America is a Tune. It must +be sung together.</p> + +<p>The next thing statesmen are going to learn in this country is that from +a practical point of view in making a great nation only our Tune in +America and only our singing our Tune can save us. A great nation can be +made out of the truth about us. The truth may be—must be +probably,—plain. But the truth must sing.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_514" id="Page_514"></a>It will not be the government that first gets the truth that will govern +us. The government that gets the truth big enough to sing first, and +sings it, will be the government that will govern us. The political +party in this country that will first be practical with the people, and +that will first get what it wants, will be the political party that +first takes Literature seriously. Our first great practical government +is going to see how a great book, searching the heart of a nation, +expressing and singing the men in it, governs a people. Being a +President in a day like this, if it does not consist in being a poet, +consists in being the kind of President who can be, at least, in +partnership with a poet.</p> + +<p>It is not every President who can be his own David, who can rule with +one hand and write psalms and chants for his people with the other.</p> + +<p>The call is out, the people have put in their order to the authors of +America, to the boys in the colleges, and to the young women in the +great schools—Our President wants a book.</p> + +<p>Before much time has passed, he is going to have one.</p> + +<p>Being a President in this country has never been expressed in a book.</p> + +<p>The President is going to have a book that expresses him to the people +and that says what he is trying to do. He will live confidentially with +the book. It shall be in his times of trial and loneliness like a great +people coming to him softly. He shall feel with such a book, be it day +or night, the nation by him, by his desk, by his bedside, by his +silence, by his questioning, standing by, and lifting.</p> + +<p>In the book the people shall sing to the President. He shall be kept +reminded that we are there. He shall feel daily what America is like. +America shall be focussed into melody. We shall have a literature once +more and the singers, as in Greece, as in all happy lands and in all +great ages, shall go singing through the streets.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_515" id="Page_515"></a>There is no singing for a President now. All a President can do when he +is inaugurated, when he begins now, is to kiss helplessly some singing +four thousand years old in a Bible by another nation.</p> + +<p>When David sang to his people, he sang the news, the latest news, the +news of what was happening to people about him from week to week.</p> + +<p>Why is no one singing 1913, our own American 1913?</p> + +<p>Why is no one stuttering out our Bible—one the President could have to +refer to, our own Bible in our own tongue from morning to morning in the +symbols that breathe to us out of the sounds in the street, out of the +air, out of the fresh, bright American sky, and out of the new ground +beneath our feet?</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>It is easy for a President to pile up three columns a morning of news +about himself to us, show each man his face in the morning, but what is +there he can do with twenty thousand newspapers at his breakfast table, +to pick out the real news about us? Who shall paint the portrait of a +people?</p> + +<p>One could go about in the White House and study the portraits of the +presidents, but where is the portrait of the people? The portrait of the +people comes in little bits to the president like a puzzle picture. Each +man brings in his little crooked piece, jig-sawed out from Iowa, South +Dakota, Oklahoma or Aroostook County, Maine. This picture or vision of a +nation, this wilderness of pieces, can be seen every day when one goes +in, lying in heaps on the floor of the White House.</p> + +<p>A literature is the expression on the face of a nation. A literature is +the eyes of a great people looking at one.</p> + +<p>It seems to be as we look, looking out of the past and faraway into the +future.</p> + +<p>A newspaper can set a nation's focus for a morning, adjusting it one way +or the other. A President can set the focus for four years. But only a +book can set the focus for a nation's next <a name="Page_516" id="Page_516"></a>hundred years so that it can +act intelligently and steadfastly on its main line from week to week and +morning to morning. Only a book can make a vast, inspiring, steadfast, +stage-setting for a nation. Only a book, strong, slow, reflective, alone +with each man, and before all men, can set in vast still array the +perspective, the vision of the people, can give that magnificent +self-consciousness which alone makes a great nation, or a mighty man. At +last humble, imperious, exalted, it shall see Itself, its vision of its +daily life lying out before it, threading its way to God!</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_517" id="Page_517"></a>CHAPTER XIII</h2> + +<h3>NEWS-PAPERS</h3> + + +<p>I went one day six months ago to the Mansion House and heard Lord Grey, +and Lord Robert Cecil, and Mr. T.C. Taylor and others address the annual +meeting of the Labour Copartnership Association.</p> + +<p>I found myself in the presence of a body of men who believe that +Englishmen are capable of bigger and better things than many men believe +they are capable of. They refuse to evade the issue of the coal strike +and to agree with the socialists who have given up believing that +English employers can be competent and who merely believe that we will +have to rely on our governments now to be employers, and they refuse to +agree with the syndicalists, who believe in human nature still less and +have given up on employers and on governments both.</p> + +<p>I have retained three impressions as a result of the meeting.</p> + +<p>The first was that it was the most significant and impressive event +since the coal strike, that it brought the whole industrial issue to a +point and summed the coal strike up.</p> + +<p>The second impression was one of surprise that the hall was not full.</p> + +<p>The third impression came the next day when I looked through the papers +for accounts of what had been said and of what it stood for.</p> + +<p>It was noted pleasantly and hurriedly as one of the day's events. It was +just one more of those shadowy things that flicker on the big foolish, +drifting, rolling attention of a world a second and are gone.</p> + +<p>People were given a few inches.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_518" id="Page_518"></a>I read in the papers that same day a quite long account of a discussion +of nine bishops for five hours (meeting at the same time) on a matter of +proper clothes for clergymen.</p> + +<p>I would have said of that meeting of the Labour Copartnership +Association—that it was a meeting of a Society for Defence and +Protection of Longer Possible Religion on the Earth—but the clergy out +of all the invitations, did not seem very largely to have had time to be +there.</p> + +<p>I wondered too a little about the papers, as I hunted through them.</p> + +<p>It set one to thinking if anything serious to the nation would have +happened, if possibly during the coal strike the London papers had +devoted as much attention to T.C. Taylor—a mutual interest +employer—and to how he runs his business—as to Horatio Bottomley?</p> + +<p>Possibly too what Mr. Sandow prefers to have people drink is not so +important—perhaps whole pages of it at a time—as Amos Mann and how he +runs his shoe business without strikes, or as Joseph Bibby and how he +makes oil cakes and loyal workmen together.</p> + +<p>I read the other day of a clergyman in New Jersey—who was organizing a +league of all the left-handed men in the world. Everything is being +organized, whether or no. Some one has financed him. There will be some +one very soon now who will pay the bill for organizing the attention of +a world and for deciding the fate of human nature. It would be worth +while spending possibly one fortune on getting human nature to settle +decisively and once for all whether it has any reason to believe in +itself or not. Why have a world at all—one like this? Do we want it? +Who wants it? What do we want instead? We will advertise and find out. +We will spend millions of pounds and Dreadnoughts, even national +beer-bills on it, if necessary, on making everybody know that mentally +competent business men—mutual-interest employers, and mentally +competent workmen—mutual-interest workmen, can <a name="Page_519" id="Page_519"></a>be produced by the +human race. When everybody knows that this is true, nine out of ten +Parliamentary questions would be settled, the Churches would again have +a chance to be noticed, and education and even religion could be taken +seriously. There would be some object in being a teacher perhaps once +more and in making teaching again a great profession. There would be +some object perhaps in even being an artist. The world would start off +on a decent, self-respecting theory or vision about itself. Things could +begin to be done in society once more, soundly, permanently, humanly and +from the bottom up.</p> + +<p>We would go out on the streets again—rich and poor—and look in each +other's faces. We would take up our morning papers without a sinking at +the heart.</p> + +<p>And the men who have stopped believing in men and who merely believe in +machines would be indicted before the bar of mankind. We would see them +slowly filing back, one by one, to where they belong—on the back seats +of the world.</p> + +<p>The newspapers in England and America seem to think that in their +business of rolling the world along, what they find themselves +confronted with just now is an economic problem.</p> + +<p>The problem that the newspapers are really confronted with, as a matter +of fact, is one with which newspaper men big and little are more +competent to deal than they would be with an expert problem in +economics. The real problem that newspapers are confronted with every +night, every morning, to-day, is a problem in human nature.</p> + +<p>Some people believe that human nature can be believed in, and others do +not. The socialists, the syndicalists, the trades unionists, as a class, +and the capitalists as a class, are acting as if they did not. A great +many inventors, and a great many workmen, all the more bold and +inventive workmen, and many capitalists and great organizers of facts +and of men, are acting as if they believed in human nature.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_520" id="Page_520"></a>Which are right? Can a mutual-interest employer, can a mutual-interest +worker, be produced by the human race? There are some of us who answer +that this is a matter of fact, that this type of man can be produced, is +already produced, and is about to be reproduced indefinitely.</p> + +<p>The moment we can convince trades unions and convince employers that +this is true we will change the face of the earth.</p> + +<p>Why not change the face of the earth now?</p> + +<p>In this connection I respectfully submit three considerations:</p> + +<p>1st. If all employers of the world to-morrow morning knew what Lord Grey +(as President of the Labour Copartnership Association) knows to-day +about copartnership—the hard facts about the way copartnership works in +calling out human nature—in nerving and organizing labour, every +employer in the world to-morrow would begin to take an attitude toward +labour which would result in making strikes and lockouts as +impracticable, as incredible, as moony, as visionary forever as ideals +of a world without strikes look now.</p> + +<p>2nd. If all the workmen of the world to-morrow morning knew what +Frederick Taylor (the American engineer) knows about planning workmen's +work so that they receive, for the same expenditure of strength, a third +more wages every day, the whole attitude of labour in every nation and +of the trades unions of the world—the attitude of doing as little work +as possible, of labouring and studying and slaving away to discover ways +of not being of any use to employers—would face about in a day.</p> + +<p>3rd. What Lord Grey knows about copartnership and the way it works is in +the form of ascertainable, communicable, and demonstrable facts. What +Frederick Taylor knows and what he has been doing with human beings and +with steel and pig iron and with bricks and other real things is in the +form of history that has been making for thirty years—and that can be +looked up and proved.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_521" id="Page_521"></a>Why should not everybody who employs labour know what Lord Grey knows?</p> + +<p>And why should not all workmen know what a few thousand workmen who have +been trained under Frederick Taylor to work under better conditions and +with more wages, know?</p> + +<p>If I were an inspired millionaire the first thing I would do to-morrow +would be to supply the funds and find the men who should take up what +Lord Grey knows about employers, and what Frederick Taylor knows about +workmen, and put it where all who live shall see it and know it. I would +spend my fortune in proving to the world, in making everybody know and +believe that the mutual-interest business man and the mutual-interest +workman have been produced and can be produced and shall be produced by +the human race.</p> + +<p>The problem of the fate of the world in its essential nature and in its +spiritual elements and gifts—has come to be in this age of the press a +huge advertising problem—a great adventure in human attention.</p> + +<p>The most characteristic and human and natural way, and the only profound +and permanent way to handle the quarrel between Capital and Labour is by +placing certain facts—certain rights-of-all-men-to-know, into the hands +of some disinterested and powerful statesman of publicity—some great +organizer of the attention of a world. He would have to be a practical +passionate psychologist, a man gifted with a bird's-eye view of +publics—a discoverer of geniuses and crowds, a natural diviner or +reader of the hearts of men. He shall search out and employ twenty men +to write as many books addressed to as many classes and types of +employers and workers. He shall arrange pamphlets for every dooryard +that cannot help being read.</p> + +<p>He shall reach trades unions by using the cinema, by having some master +of human appeal take the fate of labour, study it out in pictures—and +the truth shall be thrown night after night and day after day on a +hundred thousand screens around <a name="Page_522" id="Page_522"></a>a world. He shall organize and employ +wide publicity or rely on secret and careful means on different aspects +of the issue according to the nature of the issue, human nature and +common sense, and organize his campaign to reach every type of person, +every temperament, and order of circumstance, each in its own way.</p> + +<p>What Lord Grey knows and what Frederick Taylor's workmen know shall be +put where all who live shall see it where every employer, every workman, +every workman's wife and every growing boy and girl that is passing by, +as on some vast billboard above the world, shall see it—shall see and +know and believe that employers that are worth believing in—and that +workmen who can work and who are skilled and clever enough to love to +work—can still be produced by the human race.</p> + +<p>If I were a newspaper man I would start what might be called Pull +Together Clubs in every community, men in all walks of life, little +groups of crowdmen or men in the community who could not bear not to see +a town do team work.</p> + +<p>I would use these Pull Together Clubs in every community as means of +gathering and distributing news—as local committees on the national +campaign of touching the imagination of labour and touching the +imagination of capital.</p> + +<p>"<i>Without Vision the People perish</i>."</p> + +<p>I would begin with spending five million dollars on a vision for the +people.</p> + +<p>What would I do with a five-million-dollar fund for touching the +imagination of labour and touching the imagination of capital?</p> + +<p>First: preliminary announcement in all papers and in all public ways, +asking names and addresses of workmen who have already proved and +established their belief in copartnership.</p> + +<p>Names and addresses of employers in the same way.</p> + +<p>Second: names and addresses of workmen who would believe in it if they +could; who believe in the principle theoretically and <a name="Page_523" id="Page_523"></a>would be +interested in seeing how it could be practically and technically +proved.</p> + +<p>Names and addresses of employers in the same way.</p> + +<p>Third: selection of one firm in each industry, the best and most +strategically placed to carry it out in that industry, and placing the +facts before them.</p> + +<p>Selection of the leading workmen out of all the workmen in the nation +employed in that industry, who would be willing to work with such a +firm.</p> + +<p>Fourth: a selection of travelling secretaries to visit trades unions and +get provisional permission and toleration for these workmen so that they +can take copartnership places under such a firm with the consent of +their fellows and he set one side for experimental purposes, under the +protection of the trades union rules.</p> + +<p>Fifth: I would find the most promising trades-union branch in each +industry and I would try to get this branch to take it up with the other +branches until all trades unions were brought to admit copartnership +members on special terms.</p> + +<p>Sixth: after getting copartnership tolerated for certain workmen +employed in certain firms I would try to make copartnership a +trades-union movement.</p> + +<p>I would then let the trades unions educate the employers.</p> + +<p>Seventh: I would prepare a list of apparent exceptions to copartnership +as a working principle. I would investigate and try to see why they were +exceptions and why copartnership would not work, and I would find and +set inventors at work, and find in what way the spirit that is back of +copartnership could be applied.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_524" id="Page_524"></a>CHAPTER XIV</h2> + +<h3>NEWS-MACHINES</h3> + + +<p>We want to be good and the one thing we need to do is to tell each +other. Then we will be good. Our conveniences for being good in crowds +are not finished yet.</p> + +<p>We have invented machines for crowds to see one another with and to use +in getting about in the dark. One engine whirls round and round all +night so that half a million people can be going about anywhere after +sunset without running into each other.</p> + +<p>Crowds have vast machines for being somewhere else—run in somewhat the +same way all from one unpretentious building they put up called a Power +House.</p> + +<p>A great many of our machines for allowing crowds of people to move their +bodies around with have been attended to, but our Intelligence-Machine, +our machine for knowing what other people really think, and what they +are like in their hearts so that we can know enough to be good to them, +and have brains enough to get them to be good to us, is not finished and +set up yet.</p> + +<p>The industrial problem instead of being primarily an economic problem is +a news problem.</p> + +<p>If a President were to appoint a Secretary of Labour and were to give +him as one of his conveniences, a news engineer—an expert at attracting +and holding the attention of labour unions and driving through news to +them about themselves that they do not know yet, who would be +practically at the head of the department in two years? The Secretary or +the Secretary's news engineer? News is all there is to such a +department, finding out what it is and distributing it. Any <a name="Page_525" id="Page_525"></a>one can +think of scores of labour-union fallacies, news they do not know about +themselves that they will want to know at once when their attention is +called to it.</p> + +<p>If nine members of the President's Cabinet were national news agents, +experts in nationalizing news, one member could do with his subordinates +all the other things that Cabinet members do.</p> + +<p>The real problem before each Cabinet member is a problem of news. If the +Secretary of Commerce, for instance, could get people to know certain +things, he would not need to do at all most of the things that he is +doing now. Neither would the Attorney General.</p> + +<p>If everything in a Cabinet position turns on getting people to know +things, why not get them to know them? Why not take that job instead? +Why not take the job of throwing one's self out of a job? Every powerful +man has done it—thrown himself out of what he was doing, by making up +something bigger to do from the beginning of the world.</p> + +<p>In every business it is the man who can recognize, focus, organize, and +apply news, and who can get news through to people, who soon becomes the +head of the business.</p> + +<p>The man who can get news through to directors and to employees and make +them see themselves and see one another and the facts as they are, soon +gets to be Head of the factory.</p> + +<p>The man who can get news through to the public, the salesman of news to +people about what they want to buy and about how they are to spend their +money—very personal, intimate news to every man—soon rises to be Head +of the Head of the factory and of the entire business.</p> + +<p>It will probably be the same in a cabinet or in a government. If the +Secretary of the Department of Commerce has a news engineer as a +subordinate in his department and begins to study and observe how to do +his work best, how to solve his problem in the nation, we will soon see +the head of the department, if he <a name="Page_526" id="Page_526"></a>really is the head of the department, +quietly taking over his news engineer's job and letting his news +engineer have his.</p> + +<p>It is a news engineering job, being a Secretary of Commerce.</p> + +<p>Every member of the Cabinet has a news engineering job.</p> + +<p>And the fact seems to be that the moment the news is attended to in each +member's department—applied news, special and private news, turned on +and set to work where it is called for—most members of cabinets, +secretaries of making people do things, and for that matter, the +Presidents of making people do things will be thrown out of employment. +The Secretaries of What People Think, and the President of What People +Think—the engineers of the news in this nation—will be the men who +govern it.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_527" id="Page_527"></a>CHAPTER XV</h2> + +<h3>NEWS-CROWDS</h3> + + +<p>I have tried to express in the last chapter, some kind of tentative +working vision or hope of what authors and of what newspaper men can do +in governing a country.</p> + +<p>This chapter is for anybody, any plain human being.</p> + +<p>Governments all over the world to-day are groping to find out what plain +human beings are like.</p> + +<p>It does not matter very long what other things a government gets wrong, +if it gets the people right.</p> + +<p>This suggests something that each of us can do.</p> + +<p>I was calling on ——, Treasurer of ——, in his new bank, not long +ago—a hushed, reverent place with a dome up over it and no windows on +this wicked world—a kind of heavenly minded way of being lighted from +above. It seemed to be a kind of Church for Money.</p> + +<p>"This is new," I said, "since I've been away. Who built it?"</p> + +<p>—— mentioned the name of Non-Gregarious as if I had never heard of +him.</p> + +<p>I said nothing. And he began to tell me how Non built the bank. He said +he had wanted Non from the first, but that the directors had been set +against it.</p> + +<p>And the more he told the directors about Non, he said, the more set they +were. They kept offering a good many rather vague objections, and for a +long time he could not really make them out.</p> + +<p>Finally he got it. All the objections boiled down to one.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_528" id="Page_528"></a>Non was too good to be true. If there was a man like Non in this world, +they said, they would have heard about it before.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>When I was telling ex-Mayor ——, in ——, about Non, the first time, he +interrupted me and asked me if I would mind his ringing for his +stenographer. He was a trustee and responsible, either directly or +indirectly, for hundreds of buildings, and he wanted the news in +writing.</p> + +<p>Of course there must be something the matter with it, he said, but he +wanted it to be true, if it could, and as the bare chance of its being +true would be very important to him, he was going to have it looked up.</p> + +<p>Now ex-Mayor —— is precisely the kind of man (as half the world knows) +who, if he had been a contractor, instead of what he had happened to be, +would have been precisely the kind of contractor Non is. He has the same +difficult, heroic blend of shrewd faiths in him, of high motives and +getting what he wants.</p> + +<p>But the moment ex-Mayor —— found these same motives put up to be +believed in at one remove, and in somebody else, he thought they were +too good to be true.</p> + +<p>I have found myself constantly confronted in the last few years of +observation with a very singular and interesting fact about business +men.</p> + +<p>Nine business men out of ten I know, who have high motives, (in a rather +bluff simple way, without particularly thinking about it, one way or the +other) seem to feel a little superior to other people. They begin, as a +rule, apparently, by feeling a little superior to themselves, by trying +to keep from seeing how high their motives are, and when, in the stern +scuffle of life, they are unable any longer to keep from suspecting how +high their motives are themselves, they fall back on trying to keep +other people from suspecting it.</p> + +<p>In ——'s factory in ——, the workers in brass, a few <a name="Page_529" id="Page_529"></a>years ago, could +not be kept alive more than two years because they breathed brass +filings. When —— installed, at great expense, suction machines to +place beside the men to keep them from breathing brass, some one said, +"Well surely you will admit this time, that this is philanthropy?"</p> + +<p>"Not at all."</p> + +<p>The saving in brass air alone, gathered up from in front of the men's +mouths, paid for the machines. What is more he said that after he had +gone to the expense of educating some fine workmen, if a mere little +sucking machine like that could make the best workmen he had, work for +him twenty years instead of two years, it was poor economy to let them +die.</p> + +<p>Nearly all of the really creative business men make it a point, until +they get a bit intimate with people, to talk in this tone about +business. One can talk with them for hours, for days at a time, about +their business—some of them, without being able a single time to corner +them into being decent or into admitting that they care about anybody.</p> + +<p>Now I will not yield an inch to —— or to anybody else in my desire to +displace and crowd out altruism in our modern life. I believe that +altruism is a feeble and discouraged thing from a religious point of +view. I have believed that the big, difficult and glorious thing in +religion is mutualism, a spiritual genius for finding identities, for +putting people's interests together-you-and-I-ness, and we-ness, letting +people crowd in and help themselves.</p> + +<p>And why not believe this and drop it? Why should nearly every business +man one meets to-day, try to keep up this desperate show, of avoiding +the appearance of good, of not wanting to seem mixed up in any way with +goodness—either his own or other people's?</p> + +<p>In the present desperate crisis of the world, when all our governments +everywhere are groping to find out what business men are really like and +what they propose to be like, if a man is <a name="Page_530" id="Page_530"></a>good (far more than if he is +bad) everybody has a right to know it. The President has a right to know +it. The party leaders have a right to know it.</p> + +<p>It is a big businesslike thing for a man to make goodness pay, but what +is the man's real, deep, happy, creative, achieving motive in making +goodness pay? What is it in the man that fills him with this fierce +desire, this almost business-fanaticism for making goodness pay?</p> + +<p>It is a big daily grim love of human nature in him, his love of being in +a human world, his passion for human economy, for world efficiency and +world-self-respect. This is what it is in him that makes him force +goodness to pay.</p> + +<p>The business men of the bigger type who let themselves talk in this tone +to-day, do not mean it, they are letting themselves be insensibly drawn +into the tone of the men around them.</p> + +<p>We have gone skulking about with our virtues so long, saying that we +have none, that we have believed it. We all know men finer than we are +who say they have none. So we have not, probably.</p> + +<p>And so it goes on. I grow more and more tired every year of going about +the business world, at boards of trade and at clubs and at dinners, and +finding all this otherwise plain and manly world, all dotted over +everywhere with all these simple, good, self-deceived blundering prigs +of evil, putting on airs before everybody day and night, of being worse +than they are!</p> + +<p>It is not exactly a lie. It is a Humdrum. People do not deliberately lie +about human nature. They merely say pianola-minded things.</p> + +<p>One goes down any business street, Oxford Street, Bond Street, or +Broadway. One hears the same great ragtime tune of business, dinging +like a kind of street piano, through men's minds, "Sh-sh-sh-sh-Oh, +SH-SH! Oh, do not let anybody know I'm being good!"</p> + + +<p><a name="Page_531" id="Page_531"></a><b>II</b></p> + +<p>I am not going to try any longer to worm out of my virtues or to keep up +an appearance of having as low motives as other people are trying to +make me believe they have.</p> + +<p>They have lied long enough.</p> + +<p>I have lied long enough.</p> + +<p>My motives are really rather high and I am going to admit it.</p> + +<p>And the higher they are (when I have hustled about and got the necessary +brains to go with them) the better they have worked.</p> + +<p>Nine times out of ten when they have not worked, it has been my fault.</p> + +<p>Sometimes it is John Doe's fault.</p> + +<p>I am going to speak to John Doe about it. I am going to tell him what I +am driving at. I have turned over a new leaf. In the crisis of a great +nation and as an act of last desperate patriotism, I am going to give up +looking modest.</p> + +<p>For a long time now I have wanted to dare to come out and stand up +before this Modesty Bug-a-boo and have it out with it and say what I +think of it, as one of the great, still, sinister threats against our +having or getting a real national life in America.</p> + +<p>I knew a boy once who grew so fast that his mother always kept him +wearing shoes three sizes too large, and big, hopeful-looking coats and +trousers. Except for a few moments a year he never caught up. Nobody +ever saw that boy and his long shoes when he was not butting bravely +about, stubbing his toes on the world and turning up his sleeves.</p> + +<p>It was a great relief to him and everybody, finally, when he grew up.</p> + +<p>I am going to let myself go around, for a while now, at least until our +present national crisis is over in business and in politics, like that +boy.</p> + +<p>There are millions of other men in this country who want <a name="Page_532" id="Page_532"></a>to be like +that boy. Nations may smile at us if they want to. We will smile +too—rather stiffly and soberly, but for better or worse we propose from +to-day on, to let people see what we are trying to be daily, grimly, +right along side of what we are!</p> + +<p>I have come to the conclusion that the only way, for me, at least, to +keep modest and kind, is to have my ideals all on. When one is going +around in sight of everybody with one's moral sleeves rolled up, and +one's great wistful, broad trousers that do not look as if they would +ever get filled out, it is awkward to find fault with other people for +not filling out their moral clothes. It may be a severe measure to take +with one's self hut the surest way to be kind is to live an exposed +life.</p> + +<p>I propose to live the next few years in a glass house. There are +millions of other men who want to. We want to see if we cannot at last +live confidentially with a world, live naïvely and simply with a world +like boys and like great men and like dogs!</p> + +<p>What I have written, I have written. I propose to run the risk of being +good. When driven to it, I will run the risk of saying I am good.</p> + +<p>My motives are fairly high. See! here is my scale of one hundred! I had +rather stand forty-five on my scale than ninety-eight on yours!</p> + +<p>If there is any discrepancy between my vision and my action, I am not +going to be bullied out of my life and out of living my life the way I +want to, by the way I look. Though it mock me, I will not haul down my +flag. I will haul up my life!</p> + +<p>Here it is right here in this paragraph, in black and white. I take it +up and look at it, I read it once more and lay it down.</p> + +<p>What I have written, I have written.</p> + + +<p><b>III</b></p> + +<p>People do not seem to agree in the present crisis of our American +industrial and national life, about the necessity of getting at <a name="Page_533" id="Page_533"></a>the +facts and at the real news in this country about how good we are.</p> + +<p>Last November in the national election, four and a half million men +(Republicans) said to Theodore Roosevelt, "Theodore! do not be good so +loud!"</p> + +<p>Four and a half million other men, also Republicans, told him not to +mind what anybody said, but to keep right on being good as loud as he +liked, for as long as it seemed necessary.</p> + +<p>They wanted to be sure our goodness in America such as we had, was being +loud enough to be heard, believed in, and acted on in public.</p> + +<p>The other set of men, last November (who were really very good too, of +course), were more sedate and liked to see goodness modulated more. They +stood out for what might be called a kind of moral elegance.</p> + +<p>The governing difference between the Roosevelt type and the Taft type in +America has not been a mere difference of temperament but a difference +in news-sense, in a sense of crisis in the nation.</p> + +<p>Thousands of men of all parties, with the nicest, easiest stand-pat Taft +temperaments in the world, with soft, low voices and with the most +beautiful moral manners, have let themselves join in a national attempt +to shock this nation into seeing how good it is. A great temporary +crisis can only be met by a great temporary loudness.</p> + +<p>This is what has been happening in America during the last six months. +At last, all men in all parties are engaged in trying to find out: Is it +true or not true that we want to be good?</p> + +<p>We are trying to get the news through. It may not be very becoming to us +and we know as well as any one, that loudness, except when morally deaf +people drive us to it is in bad taste. We are looking forward, every one +of us, to being as elegant as any one is, and the very first minute we +get the morally deaf people out of office where we will not have to go +about shouting <a name="Page_534" id="Page_534"></a>out at them we will tone down in our goodness. We will +modulate beautifully!</p> + + +<p><b>IV</b></p> + +<p>There are three other bug-a-boos, besides the Modesty Bug-a-boo that +America will have to face and drive out of the way before it can be +truly said to have a national character or to have grown up and found +itself. There is the Goody-good Bug-a-boo, the Consistency Bug-a-boo, +and the Bug-a-boo that Thomas Jefferson if he were living now, would +never never ride in a carriage.</p> + +<p>Each of these bug-a-boos in the general mistiness and muddle-headiness +of the time can be seen going about, saying, "Boo! Boo!" to this +democracy from day to day and year to year, keeping it scared into not +getting what it wants.</p> + +<p>There is not one of them that will not evaporate in ten minutes the +first morning we get some real news through in this country about +ourselves and about what we are like.</p> + +<p>What is the real news about us, for instance, as regards being +goody-good?</p> + +<p>I can only begin with the news for one.</p> + +<p>For years, I have held myself back from taking a plain or possibly loud +stand for goodness as a shrewd, worldly-wise program for American +business and public life, because I was afraid of people, and afraid +people would think I was trying to improve them.</p> + +<p>What was worse, I was afraid of myself too. I was afraid I really would.</p> + +<p>I am afraid now, or rather I would be, if I had not drilled through to +the news about myself and about other people and about human nature that +I am putting into this chapter.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>I have written five hundred pages in this book on an awkward and +dangerous subject like the Golden Rule, and <a name="Page_535" id="Page_535"></a>I appeal to the reader—I +ask him humbly, hopefully, gratefully if he can honestly say (except for +a minute here and there when I have been tired and slipped up), if he +has really felt improved or felt that I was trying to improve him in +this book.</p> + +<p>On your honour, Gentle Reader—you who have been with me five hundred +pages!</p> + +<p>You say "Yes"?</p> + +<p>Then I appeal to your sense of fairness. If you truly feel I have been +trying to improve you in this book, turn this leaf down here and stop. +It is only fair to me. Close the book with your improved and being +improved feeling and never open it again until it passes over. You have +no right to go on page after page calling me names, as it were, right in +the middle of my own book in this way behind my back, you!—hundreds and +thousands of miles away from me, by your own lamp, by your own +window—you come to me here between these two helpless pasteboard covers +where I cannot get out at you, where I cannot answer back, and you say +that I am trying to improve you!</p> + +<p>Ah, Gentle Reader, forgive me! God forgive me! Believe me, I never +meant, not if it could possibly be helped, to improve you! If you insist +on it and keep saying that I have been improving you, all I can say is +that I was merely looking as if I were improving you. <i>You</i> did it. I +did not. God help me if I am trying to improve you! I am trying to find +out in this book who I am. If, incidentally, while I am quietly working +away on this for five hundred pages, you find out who you are yourself, +and then drop into a gentle glowing improved feeling all by yourself, do +not mix me up in it. I deny that I have tried to improve you or anybody. +I have written this book to get my own way, to express my America. I +have written it to say "i," to say "I," to say (the first minute you let +me), "you and I," to say we, WE about America—to drive the news through +to a President of what America is like.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_536" id="Page_536"></a>I am not improving you. I am telling you what may or may not be news +about you.</p> + +<p>Take it or leave it.</p> + + +<p><b>V</b></p> + +<p>I want to be good.</p> + +<p>I do not feel superior to other men.</p> + +<p>And I do not propose, if there is anything I can do about it, to be +compelled to feel superior.</p> + +<p>I believe we all want to be good.</p> + +<p>The one thing I want in this world is to prove it. I want my own way.</p> + +<p>I am not going to slump into being a beautiful character. I have written +this book to get my own way.</p> + +<p>I have said I will not be mixed up in the fate of people who do not know +where they are going, who have not decided what they are like, who do +not know who they are. What do the people want? Some people tell me they +want nothing. They tell me it would only make things worse and stir +things up for me to want to be good.</p> + +<p>Or perhaps they think it is beautiful to lower the price of oil. They +want oil at seven cents a gallon.</p> + +<p>Do they? Do you? Do I?</p> + +<p>I say no. Let oil wait. I want to raise the price of men and to put a +market value on human life. I find as I look about me that there are two +classes of statesmen offering to be helpful in making life worth living +in America.</p> + +<p>There are the statesmen who think we are going to be good and who +believe in a program which trusts and exalts the people and the leaders +of the people.</p> + +<p>There are the statesmen who seem to believe that American human nature +does not amount to enough to be good. They are planning a program on the +principle that the best that can be done with human nature in America in +business and public life is to have it expurgated.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_537" id="Page_537"></a>Which class of statesmen do we want?</p> + +<p>In some of our state prisons men who are not considered fit to reproduce +themselves are sterilized. The question that is now up before this +country is, Do we or do we not want American business sterilized? Are we +or are we not going to put a national penalty on all initiative in all +business men because some men abuse it?</p> + +<p>There is but one thing that can save us, namely, proving to one another +and to our public men, that we are good, that we are going to be good +and that we know how. We face the issue to-day. Two definite programs +are before the country.</p> + +<p>Those who have put their faith in being afraid of one another as a +national policy have devised several By-laws for an Expurgated America.</p> + +<p>They say, eliminate the right of a man to do wrong. Deny him the right +of moral experiment because some of his experiments do not work. We say +let him try. We can look out for ourselves or we will have bigger men +than he is, to look out for us.</p> + +<p>They say, eliminate the right of a man to be an owner, because nobody +has the courage to believe that a man can express his best self in +property. We say that property may express a man's religion, and that +the way a man has of being rich or of being poor may be an art-form.</p> + +<p>Most men can express themselves better in property than in anything +else.</p> + +<p>They say, eliminate all monopoly indiscriminately and the occasional +logical efficiency of monopoly because it has not worked well for the +people the first few times and because we have not learned how to handle +it. We say learn how to handle it.</p> + +<p>They say eliminate the middleman. They say that the one strategic man in +every industry who can represent everybody if he wants to, who can be a +great man and who can make a great industry serve everybody, must be +eliminated because nobody believes America can produce a middleman. We +say <a name="Page_538" id="Page_538"></a>instead of weakly and helplessly giving up a great spiritual and +morally-engineering institution like the middleman because the average +middleman does not know his job, we say: Exalt the middleman raise him +to the n<sup>th</sup> power, make him—well—do you remember, Gentle Reader, the +walking beams on the old sidewheel steamers? We say do not eliminate +him—lift him up—make him what he naturally is and is in position to +be—the walking beam of Business!</p> + +<p>If the average middleman does not know how to be a real middleman we +will make one who does.</p> + +<p>And all the other eliminations that we have watched people being scared +into, one by one, we will turn into exaltations—each in its own kind +and place. There is not one of our fears that is not the suggestion, the +mighty outline, the inspiration for the world's next new size and new +kind of American man. We say place the position before the man—with its +fears, with its songs, with its challenge. We say, tell him what we +expect of him and demand of him. Put him in a high place on a platform +before the world! There with the truth about him written on his forehead +in the sight of all the people, call him by name, glorify him or behead +him! We are men and we are Americans. We will stand up to each of our +dangers one by one. Each and every danger of them is a romance, a +sublime adventure, a nation-maker. Our threats, our very by-words and +despairs, we will take up, and, in the sight of the world, forge them +into shrewd faiths and into mighty men!</p> + +<p>This is my news or vision. I say that this is where we are going in +America. I compel no man to follow my news but I will pursue him with my +news until he gives me his!</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>This news, I am telling, Gentle Reader, is perhaps news about you.</p> + +<p>If it is not true news, say so. Say what is. We all have a right to +know. The one compulsion of modern life is our right <a name="Page_539" id="Page_539"></a>to know, our right +to compel people who live on the same continent or who live in the same +country with us, to open up their hearts, to furnish us with their share +of the materials for a mutual understanding, or for a definite mutual +misunderstanding, on which to live.</p> + +<p>It is the one compulsion of which we will be guilty. All liberty is in +it. These people who have to live with us and that we have to live with, +these people who breathe the same moral air with us, drink the same +water with us, these people who have their moral dumps, who throw away +their moral garbage with us—these people who will not help provide some +daily, mutual understanding for these common decencies for our souls to +live together these people we defy and challenge! We will compel them to +reveal themselves. We will drive them away, or we will drive them into +driving us away, if they will not yield to us what is in their +hearts—Mars, hell, anywhere we go, it matters not to us where we go, +except that we cannot and we will not live with men about us who thrust +down their true feelings and their real desires into a kind of manhole +under them, and sit on the lid and smile. Some seem to have manholes and +some have safes or spiritual banks, and there are others who have +convenient, dim, beautiful clouds in the sky to hide their feelings in. +But whatever their real feelings are, and wherever they keep them, they +belong to us.</p> + +<p>We insist on having or on making mutual arrangements to have, if we live +in crowds, some kind of spiritual rapid transit system for getting our +minds through to one another. We demand a system for having the streets +of our souls decently lighted, some provision for moral sewers, for air +or atmosphere—and all the common conveniences for having decent and +self-respecting souls in crowds—all the intelligence-machines, the +love-machines, the hope-machines, and the believing-machines that the +crowds must have for living decently, for living with beauty, living +with considerateness and respect in this awful daily sublime presence of +one another's lives!</p> + +<p><a name="Page_540" id="Page_540"></a>We shall still have our splendid isolations when we need them, some of +us, and our little solitudes of meanness, but the main common fund of +motives for living together, for growing up into a world together, the +desires, motives, and intentions in men's hearts, their desires toward +us and ours toward them, we are going to know and compel to be made +known. We will fight men to the death to know them.</p> + +<p>Have we not fought, you and I, Gentle Reader, all of us, each man of us, +all our years, all our days, to drive through to some sort of mutual +understanding with our own selves? Now we will fight through to some +mutual understanding with one another and with the world.</p> + +<p>We will knock on every door, make a house to house canvass of the souls +of the world, pursue every man, sing under his windows. We will +undergird his consciousness and his dreams. We will make the birds sing +to him in the morning, "<i>Where are you going</i>?" We will put up a sign at +the foot of his bed for his eyes to fall on when he awakes, "<i>Where are +you going</i>?"</p> + +<p>Whatever it is that works best, if we blow it out of you with dynamite +or love or fear or draw it out of you with some mighty singing going +past—ah, brother, we will have it out of you! You shall be our brother! +We will be your brother though we die!</p> + +<p>We will live together or we will die together.</p> + +<p>What do you really want? What do you really like? <i>Who are you</i>?</p> + +<p>We may pile together all our funny, fearful, little Dreadnoughts, our +stodgy dead lumps of men called armies, and what are they? And what do +they amount to and what can they do, as compared with truth, the real +news about what people want in this world, and about where we are going?</p> + +<p>I say—they shall be as nothing as a rending force, as a glory to tear +down and rebuild a world, as compared with the truth, with the news +about us, that shall come out at last (God hasten the day!) from the +open—the pried-open hearts of men! <a name="Page_541" id="Page_541"></a>And I have seen that men shall go +forth with shouts in that day and with glad and solemn silence, to build +a world!</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>I wonder if I have faced down the Goody-good Bug-a-boo.</p> + +<p>I speak for five million men.</p> + +<p>We have got this book written between us (under the name of one of us), +because we want our own way. We are not improving people. We are not +even trying to improve ourselves. Many of us started in on it once and +the first improvement we thought of was not to try any more.</p> + +<p>It is a great deal harder to try to live. Few people want us to—most +people get in the way. And when people get in the way we lay about us a +little—We hit them. We have written this book, because we want to hit a +great many people at once. We find them everywhere about us, in monster +cities, huge thoughtless anthills of them, and they will not let us live +a larger and a richer life. We say to them, We resent your houses your +shoes, your voices, your fears, your motives, your wills, the diseases +you make us walk past every day, the rows of things you seem to think +will do, and that you think we must get used to, and we do not propose, +if we can help it, to get used to what you think will do for Churches; +nor to what you think will do for a government or to the little lonely, +scattered, toyschool-houses, that when you come into the world, fresh +and strange and happy you all proceed solemnly to coop your souls in. +Nor do we want to get used to your hem-and-haw parliaments and your +funny little perfumed prophets—your prophets lying down or propped up +with pillows or your poets wringing their hands. Nor will we be put off +with all your gracefully feeble, watery, lovely little pastel religions +for this grim and mighty modern world. We are American men. We do not +propose to be driven out to sea, to stand face to face every day with +what is true and full of beauty and magic, or to have skies and +<a name="Page_542" id="Page_542"></a>mountains and stars palmed off on us as companions instead of men!</p> + +<p>This is what five million men are trying to express in writing this +book. If people deny that I have the right to give the news about +America for five million men; if they say that this is not true about +American human nature, that this is not the news, then I will say, <i>I am +the news</i>! I am this sort of an American! God helping me, I say it! +"Look at <i>me</i>!" I am this sort of man of whom I am writing! If I am not +this sort of man this afternoon, I will be in the morning! Though I go +down as a hiss and as laughter and as a by-word and a mocking to the end +of my days—<i>I</i> am this sort of man! I say, "Look at <i>me</i>!"</p> + +<p>If you will not believe me—that this is an American, if you say that I +cannot prove that there are five million of men like this in America, +then I will still say, "Here is <i>one</i>! What will you do with ME?" Though +I die in laughter, all my desires and all my professions in a tumult +about my soul, I say it to this nation, "Your laws, your programs, your +philosophies, your I wills, and I won'ts, I say, shall reckon with <i>me</i>! +Your presidents and your legislatures shall reckon with Me!"</p> + +<p>Here I am. The man is here. He is in this book!</p> + +<p>I will break through to the five million men. I will make the five +million men look at me until they recognize themselves. If no one else +will attend to it for me, and if there shall be no other way, I will +have a brass band go through the streets of New York and of a thousand +cities, with banners and floats and great hymns to the people, and they +shall go up and down the streets of the people with signs saying, "Have +you read Crowds?" I will have the Boston Symphony Orchestra tour the +country singing—singing from kettledrums to violins to a thousand +silent audiences, "<i>Have yon read 'CROWDS'</i>?"</p> + +<p>I live in a nation in which we are butting through into our sense of our +national character, working our way up into a huge mutual working +understanding. In our beautiful, vague, <a name="Page_543" id="Page_543"></a>patriotic, muddleheadedness +about what we want and whether we really want to be good, and about what +being good is like and I say, for one, half-laughing, half-praying, God +helping me—<i>Look at</i> <b>ME</b>!</p> + + +<p><b>VI</b></p> + +<p>I was much interested some time ago when I had not been long landed in +England, and was still trying in the hopeful American way to understand +it—to see the various attitudes of Englishmen toward the discussions +which were going on at that time in the <i>Spectator</i> and elsewhere, of +Mr. Cadbury's inconsistency; and while I had no reason, as an American, +fresh-landed from New York, to be interested in Mr. Cadbury himself, I +found that his inconsistency interested me very much. It insisted on +coming back into my mind, in spite of what I would have thought, as a +strangely important subject—not merely as regards Mr. Cadbury, which +might or might not be important, but as regards England and as regards +America, as regards the way a modern man struggling day by day with a +huge, heavy machine civilization like ours, can still manage to be a +live, useful, and possibly even a human, being in it.</p> + +<p>There are two astonishing facts that stand face to face with all of us +to-day, who are labouring with civilization.</p> + +<p>The first fact is that almost without exception all the men in it who +mean the most in it to us and to other people for good or for evil—who +stir us deeply and do things—all fall into the inconsistent class.</p> + +<p>The second fact is that this is a very small, select distinguished, and +astonishingly capable class.</p> + +<p>A man who is in a grim, serious business like being good, must expect to +give up many of his little self-indulgences in the way of looking good. +Looking inconsistent, possibly even inconsistency itself, may be +sometimes, temporarily, a man's most important public service to his +time.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_544" id="Page_544"></a>One needs but a little glance at history, or even at one's own personal +history. It is by being inconsistent that people grow, and without +meaning to, give other people materials for growing. For the particular +purpose of making the best things grow, of pointing up truths, of giving +definite edges to right and wrong, an inconsistent man—a man who is +trying to pry himself out a little at a time from an impossible +situation in an impossible world, is likely to do the world more good +than a very large crowd of angels who have made up their minds that they +are going to be consistent and going to keep up a consistent look in +this same world—whatever happens to it.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>If one is marking people on consistency, and if one takes a scale of 100 +as perfect, perhaps one should not always insist on 98. One does not +always insist on 98 for one's self. And when one does and does not get +it, one feels forgiving sometimes.</p> + +<p>In dealing with public men and with other people that we know less than +we know ourselves—if they really do things, it is well to make +allowances, and let them off at 65.</p> + +<p>In some cases, in fact, when men are doing something that no one else +volunteers to do for a world, I find I get on very well with letting +them off at 51. I have sometimes wished, when I have been in England, +that Tories and Liberals and Socialists and the Wise and the Good would +consider letting George Cadbury off at 51.</p> + +<p>Perhaps people are being more safely educated by George Cadbury in his +journals than they might be by other people in what seem to seem to many +of us unfamiliar and dangerous ideas.</p> + +<p>Perhaps posterity, in 1953, looking down this precipice of revolution +England did not fall into in 1913, may mark George Cadbury 73—possibly +89.</p> + +<p>If, in any way, in the crisis of England, George Cadbury can crowd in +and can keep thousands and thousands of Englishmen <a name="Page_545" id="Page_545"></a>and women from being +educated by John Bottomley Bull or by Mrs. John Bottomley Bull and hosts +of other would-be friends of the people—by Tom Mann, Ben Tillett, and +Vernon Hartshorn, does it really seem after all a matter of grave +national importance that George Cadbury—a professional non-better—in +educating these people should allow them to keep on in his paper, having +a betting column?</p> + +<p>So long as he really helps stave off John Bottomley Bull and Mrs. John +Bottomley Bull, let him slump into being a millionaire, if he cannot +very well help it! We say, some of us, let him even make cocoa! or have +family prayers! or be a Liberal!</p> + +<p>At least this is the way one American visiting England feels about it, +if he may be permitted.</p> + +<p>Perhaps I would not, if I were an angel.</p> + +<p>I do not want to be an angel.</p> + +<p>I am more ambitious. I want my ideals to do things, and I want to stand +by people who are doing things with their ideals, whether their ideals +are my ideals or not.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>Let us suppose. Suppose the reader were in Mr. Cadbury's place. What +would he do? Here are two things, let us suppose, he wishes very much. +He wishes a certain class of people would not bet, and he also wishes to +convince these same people of certain important social and political +ideas for which he stands. If he told them that he would have nothing to +do with them unless they stopped betting, there would be no object in +his publishing their paper at all. There would be nothing that they +would let him tell them. If, on the other hand, he begins merely as one +more humble, fellow-human being, and puts himself definitely on record +as not betting himself, and still more definitely as wishing other +people would not bet, and then admits honestly that these other people +have as good a right to decide to bet as he has to decide not to; and if +he then <a name="Page_546" id="Page_546"></a>deliberately proceeds to do what every real gentleman who does +not smoke and wishes other people did not, does without +question—namely, offers them the facilities for doing it why should +people call him inconsistent?</p> + +<p>Perhaps a man's consistency consists in his relation to his own smoking +and betting and not in his rushing his consistency over into the smoking +and betting of other people. Perhaps being consistent does not need to +mean being a little pharisaical, or using force, or cutting people off +and having no argument with them, in one matter, because one cannot +agree with them in another. Of course, I admit it would be better if Mr. +Cadbury would publish in a parallel column (if he could get a genius to +write it) an extremely tolerant, human, comrade-like series of +objections to betting, which people could read alongside, and which +would persuade people as much as possible not to read the best betting +tips in the world in the column next door, but certainly the act of +furnishing the tips in the meantime and of being sure that they are the +best tips in the world, is a very real, human, courageous act. It even +has a kind of rough and ready religion in it. It may be too much to +expect, but even in our goodness perhaps we ought to do as we would be +done by. We must be righteous, but on the whole, must we not be +righteous toward others as we would have them righteous toward us?</p> + +<p>What many of us find ourselves wishing most of all, when we come upon +some specially attractive man is, that we could discover some way, or +that he could discover some way, in which the idealist in him, and the +realist in him could be got to act together.</p> + +<p>There are some of us who have come to believe that in the dead earnest, +daily, almost desperate struggle of modern life, the real solid idealist +will have to care enough about his ideals to arrange to have two +complete sets, one set which he calls his personal ideals, which are of +such a nature that he can carry them out alone and rigidly and quite by +himself, and another <a name="Page_547" id="Page_547"></a>which he calls his bending or coöperative ideals, +geared a little lower and adjusted to more gradual usage, which he uses +when he asks other men to act with him.</p> + +<p>It may take a very single-hearted and strong man to keep before his own +mind and before other people's his two sets of ideals, his "I" faiths, +and his you-and-I faiths, keeping each in strict proportion, but it +would certainly be a great human adventure to do it. Saying "God and I," +and saying "God and you and I" are two different arts. And it is +clear-headedness and not inconsistency in a man that keeps him so.</p> + +<p>This is not a mere defence of Mr. Cadbury; it is a defence of a type of +man, of a temperament in our modern life, of men like Edward A. Filene, +of Boston, of a man like Hugh Mac Rae, one of the institutions of North +Carolina, of Tom L. Johnson of Cleveland, of nine men out of ten of the +bigger and more creative sort who are helping cities to get their way +and nations to express themselves. I have believed that the principle at +stake, the great principle for real life in England and in America, of +letting a man be inconsistent if he knows how—must have a stand made +for it.</p> + +<p>There is no one thing, whether in history, or literature, or science, or +politics that can be more crucial in the fate of a nation to-day than +the correct, just, and constructive judgment of Contemporary +Inconsistent People.</p> + + +<p><b>VII</b></p> + +<p>If I could have managed it, I would have had this book printed and +written—every page of it—in three parallel columns.</p> + +<p>The first column would be for the reader who believes it, who keeps +writing a book more or less like it as he goes along. I would put in one +sentence at the top for him and then let him have the rest of the space +to write in himself. In other words I would say 2 plus 2 equals 4 and +drop it.</p> + +<p>The second column would be for the reader who would like <a name="Page_548" id="Page_548"></a>to believe it +if he could, and I would branch out a little more—about half a column.</p> + +<blockquote><p>2 + 2 = 4</p> + +<p> 20 + 20 = 40</p></blockquote> + +<p>The third column would be for the reader who is not going to believe it +if it can be helped. It would be in fine type, bitterly detailed and +statistical and take nothing for granted.</p> + +<blockquote><p>2 + 2 = 4</p> + +<p> 20 + 20 = 40</p> + +<p> 200 + 200 = 400</p> + +<p> 2,000 + 2,000 = 4,000</p> + +<p> 20,000 + 20,000 = 40,000</p> + +<p> etc.</p></blockquote> + +<p>This arrangement would make the book what might be called a Moving +Sidewalk of Truth. First sidewalk rather quick (six miles an hour). +Second, four miles an hour. Third, two miles an hour. People could move +over from one sidewalk to the other in the middle of an idea any time, +and go faster or slower as they liked to, needed to.</p> + +<p>No one would accuse me—though I might like or need for my own personal +use at one time or another, a slower sidewalk or a faster one than +others—no one would accuse me of being inconsistent if I supplied extra +sidewalks for people of different temperaments to move over to suddenly +any time they wanted to. I have come to some of my truth by a bitterly +slow sidewalk—slower than other people need, and sometimes I have come +by a fast one (or what some would say was no sidewalk at all!) but it +cannot fairly be claimed that there is anything inconsistent in my +offering people every possible convenience I can think of—for believing +me.</p> + +<p>Mr. Cadbury is not inconsistent if he tells truth at a different rate to +different people, or if he chooses to put truths before people in Indian +file.</p> + +<p>A man is not inconsistent who does not tell all the news he knows to all +kinds of people, all at once, all the time.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_549" id="Page_549"></a>There is nothing disingenuous about having an order for truth.</p> + +<p>It is not considered compromising to have an order in moving railway +trains. Why not allow an order in moving trains of thought? And why +should a schedule for moving around people's bodies be considered any +more reasonable than a schedule or timetable or order for moving around +their souls?</p> + +<p>Truth in action must always be in an order. Nine idealists out of ten +who fight against News-men, or men who are trying to make the beautiful +work, and who call them hypocrites, would not do it if they were trying +desperately to make the beautiful work themselves. It is more +comfortable and has a fine free look, to be blunt with the +beautiful—the way a Poet is—to dump all one's ideals down before +people and walk off. But it seems to some of us a cold, sentimental, +lazy, and ignoble thing to do with ideals if one loves them—to give +everybody all of them all the time without considering what becomes of +the ideals or what becomes of the people.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_550" id="Page_550"></a>CHAPTER XVI</h2> + +<h3>CROWD-MEN</h3> + +<p>MARCH 4, 1913.</p> + + +<p>As I write these words, I look out upon the great meadow. I see the +poles and the wires in the sun, that long trail of poles and wires I am +used to, stalking across the meadow. I know what they are doing.</p> + +<p>They are telling a thousand cities and villages about our new President, +the one they are making this minute, down in Washington, for these +United States. With his hand lifted up he has just taken his oath, has +sworn before God and before his people to serve the destinies of a +nation. And now along a hundred thousand miles of wire on dumb wooden +poles, a hope, a prayer, a kind of quiet, stern singing of a mighty +people goes by. And I am sitting here in my study window wondering what +he will be like, what he will think, and what he will believe about us.</p> + +<p>What will our new President do with these hundreds of miles of prayer, +of crying to God, stretched up to him out of the hills and out of the +plains?</p> + +<p>Does he really overhear it—that huge, dumb, half-helpless, half-defiant +prayer going up past him, out of the eager, hoarse cities, out of the +slow, patient fields, to God?</p> + +<p>Does he overhear it, I wonder? What does he make out that we are like?</p> + +<p>I should think it would sound like music to him.</p> + +<p>It would come to seem, I should think, when he is alone with his God +(and will he not please be alone with his God sometimes?), like some +vast ocean of people singing, a kind of multi<a name="Page_551" id="Page_551"></a>tudinous, faraway singing, +like the wind—ah, how often have I heard the wind like some strange and +mighty people in the pine treetops go singing by!</p> + +<p>I do not see how a President could help growing a little like a +poet—down in his heart—as he listens.</p> + +<p>If he does, he may do as he will with us.</p> + +<p>We will let him be an artist in a nation.</p> + +<p>As Winslow Homer takes the sea, as Millet takes the peasants in the +fields, as Frank Brangwyn lifts up the labour in the mills and makes it +colossal and sublime, the President is an artist, in touching the +crowd's imagination with itself—in making a nation self-conscious.</p> + +<p>He shall be the artist, the composer, the portrait painter of the +people—their faith, their cry, their anger, and their love shall be in +him. In him shall be seen the panorama of the crowd, focused into a +single face. In him there shall be put in the foreground of this +nation's countenance the things that belong in the foreground. And the +things that belong in the background shall be put in the background, and +the little ideas and little men shall look little in it, and the big +ones shall look big.</p> + +<p>They do not look so now. This is the one thing that is the matter with +America. The countenence of the nation is not a composed countenance. +All that we want is latent in us, everything is there in our Washington +face. The face merely lacks features and an expression.</p> + +<p>This is what a President is for—to give at last the Face of the United +States an expression!</p> + +<p>If he is a shrewd poet and believes in us, we shall accept him as the +official mind reader of the nation. He focuses our desires. In the +weariness of the day he looks away—he looks up—he leans his head upon +his hand—through the corridors of his brain, that little silent Main +street of America, the thoughts and the crowds and the jostling wills of +the people go.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_552" id="Page_552"></a>If he is a shrewd poet about us, he becomes the organic function, the +organizer of the news about our people to ourselves. He is the public +made visible, the public made one. He is a moving picture of us. He +speaks and gestures the United States—if he is a poet about us—when he +beckons or points or when he puts his finger on his lips, or when he +says, "Hush!" or when he says, "Wait a moment!" he is the voice of the +people of the United States.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>I am sitting and correcting, one by one, as they are brought to me, +these last page proofs in the factory. The low thunder on the floors of +the mighty presses, crashing down into paper words I can never cross +out—rises around me. In a minute more—minute by minute that I am +counting, that low thunder will overtake me, will roar down and fold +away these last guilty, hopeful, tucked-in words with you, Gentle +Reader, and you will get away! And the book will get away!</p> + +<p>There is no time to try to hold up that low thunder now, and to say what +I have meant to say about false simplicity and democracy, and about our +all being bullied into being little old faded Thomas Jeffersons a +hundred years after he is dead.</p> + +<p>But I will try to suggest what I hope that some one who has no +printing-presses rolling over him—will say:</p> + +<p>One cannot help wishing that our socialists to-day would outgrow Karl +Marx, and that our individualists would outgrow Emerson. Democrats by +this time ought to grow a little, too, and outgrow Jefferson, and +Republicans ought to be able by this time to outgrow Hamilton.</p> + +<p>Why not drop Karl Marx and Emerson and run the gamut of both of them, on +a continent 3,000 miles wide? Why should we live Thomas Jefferson's and +Alexander Hamilton's lives? Why not drop Jefferson and Hamilton and live +ours?</p> + +<p>The last thing that Jefferson would do, if he were here, would be to be +Jefferson over again. It is not fair to Jefferson for <a name="Page_553" id="Page_553"></a>anybody to take +the liberty of being like him, when he would not even do it himself. If +Jefferson were here, he would break away from everybody, lawyers, +statesmen and Congress and go outdoors and look at 1913 for himself.</p> + +<p>I like to imagine how it would strike him. I am not troubled about what +he would do. Let Jefferson go out and listen to that vast machine, to +the New York Central Railway smoothing out and roaring down crowds, +rolling and rolling and rolling men all day and all night into machines. +Let Jefferson go out and face the New York Central Railway! Jefferson in +his time had not faced nor looked down through those great fissures or +chasms of inefficiency in what he chose to call democracy, the haughty, +tyrannical aimlessness and meaninglessness of crowds, too mean-spirited +and full of fear and machines to dare to have leaders!</p> + +<p>He had not faced that blank staring hell of anonymousness, that +bottomless, weak, watery muck of irresponsibility—that terrific, +devilish vagueness which a crowd is and which a crowd has to be without +leaders.</p> + +<p>Jefferson did not know about or reckon with Inventors, as a means of +governing, as a means of getting the will of the people.</p> + +<p>A whole new age of invention, of creation, has flooded the world since +Jefferson. This is the main fact about the modern man, that he is +gloriously self-made. He is practising democracy, inventing his own +life, making his own soul before our eyes.</p> + +<p>If we have a poet in the White House, this is the main fact he is going +to reckon with: He will not be seen taking sides with the Alexander +Hamilton model or with the Thomas Jefferson model or with Karl Marx or +Emerson. We will see him taking Karl Marx and Emerson and Hamilton and +Jefferson and melting them down, glowing them and fusing them together +into one man—the Crowd-Man—who shall be more aristocratic than +Hamilton ever dreamed, and be filled with a genius for democracy that +Jefferson never guessed. <a name="Page_554" id="Page_554"></a>America to-day, on the face of the earth and +in the hearts of men, is a new democracy, as new as Radium, Copernicus, +the Wireless Telegraph, as new and just beginning to be noticed and +guessed at as Jesus Christ!</p> + +<p>Copernicus, Marconi, Wilbur Wright, and Christianity have turned men's +hearts outward. Men live for the first time in a wide daily +consciousness of one another.</p> + +<p>Alexander Hamilton, had really a rather timid and polite idea of what an +aristocrat was and Jefferson had merely sketched out a ground plan for a +democrat. If Hamilton had been aristocratic in the modern sense, he +would have devoted half his career to expressing a man like Jefferson; +and if Jefferson had been more of a democrat, he would have had room in +himself to tuck in several Alexander Hamiltons. Either one of them would +have been a Crowd-Man.</p> + +<p>By a Crowd-Man I do not mean a pull-and-haul man, a balance of +equilibrium between these two men, I mean a fusion, a glowed together +interpenetration of them both. They did not either of them believe in +the people as much as a man made out of both of them would—a really +wrought-through aristocrat, a really wrought-through democrat or +Crowd-Man, or Hero or Saviour.</p> + +<hr /> + +<p>I am afraid that some of us do not like the word Saviour as people think +we ought to. There seems to be something about the way many people use +the word Saviour which makes it seem as if it had been dropped off over +the edge of the world—of a real world, of a man's world.</p> + +<p>I do not believe that Christ spent five minutes in His whole life in +feeling like a Saviour. He would have felt hurt if He had found any one +saying He was a Saviour in the tone people often use. He wanted people +to feel as if they were like Him. And the way He served them was by +making them feel that they were.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_555" id="Page_555"></a>I do not believe that Thomas Jefferson, if he were here to-day, would +object to a hero, or aristocrat, a special expert or a genius in +expressing crowds, if he lived and wrought in this spirit.</p> + +<p>The final objection that people commonly make to heroes or to men of +marked and special vision or courage is that they are not good for +people, because people put them on pedestals and worship them. They look +up at them wistfully. And then they look down on themselves.</p> + +<p>But I have never seen a hero on a pedestal.</p> + +<p>It is only the Carlyle kind of hero who could ever be put on a pedestal, +or who would stay there if put there.</p> + +<p>And Carlyle—with all honour be it said—never quite knew what a hero +was. A hero is either a gentleman, or a philosopher, or an inventor.</p> + +<p>The gentleman—on a pedestal—feels hurt and slips down.</p> + +<p>The philosopher laughs.</p> + +<p>The inventor thinks up some way of having somebody else get up so that +it will not really be a pedestal at all.</p> + +<p>I agree with all the socialists' objections to heroes, if they mean by a +hero the kind of man that Thomas Carlyle, with all his little glorious +hells, all his little cold, lonesome, select heavens, his thunderclub +view of life, and his Old Testament imagination, called a hero. There is +always something a little strained and competitive about Carlyle's +heroes as he conceives them except possibly one or two.</p> + +<p>Being a hero with Carlyle consisted in conquering and displacing other +heroes. Even if you were a poet, being a hero consisted in a kind of +spiritual standing on some other poet's neck. According to Carlyle, one +must always be a hero against other men. Modern heroism consists in +being a hero with other men. The hero Against comes in the Twentieth +Century to be the hero With, and the modern hero is known, not by +cutting his enemies down, but by his absorbing and understanding them. +He drinks up what they wish they could do into what he does, <a name="Page_556" id="Page_556"></a>or he +states what they believe better than they can state it. Combination or +coöperation is the tremendous heroism of our present life.</p> + +<p>I admit that I would be afraid of Carlyle's heroes having pedestals. +They have already—many of them—done a good deal of harm because they +have had pedestals, and because they would not get down from them.</p> + +<p>But mine would.</p> + +<p>With a man who is being a hero by coöperation, getting down is part of +the heroism. And there is never any real danger in allowing a pedestal +for a real hero. He never has time to sit on it.</p> + +<p>One sees him always over and over again kicking his pedestal out from +under him and using it to batter a world with. As the world does not +take to enjoying its heroes' pedestals in this way, a pedestal is quite +safe. Most people feel the same about a hero's halo. They prefer to have +him wear it like a kind of glare around his head, and if he uses it as a +searchlight upon them, if he makes his halo really practical and lights +up the world a little around him instead, he is not likely to be +spoiled, is almost always safe from any danger of having any more halo +crowded upon him than he wants, or than anybody wants him to have. One +might put it down as a motto for heroes, "Keep your halo busy and it +won't hurt you." Modern democracy will never have a chance of being what +it wants to be as long as it keeps on throwing away great natural forces +like halos and pedestals. There is no reason why we should not believe +in halos and pedestals, not to wear or stand on, but when used strictly +for butting and seeing purposes.</p> + +<p>We may know a real hero by the fact that we always have to keep +rediscovering him. One knows the real hero by the fact that in his +relation to people who put him on a pedestal he is always kicking his +pedestal away and substituting his vision.</p> + +<p>There is something about any real heroism that we see to-day which makes +heroes out of the people who see it, A real hero <a name="Page_557" id="Page_557"></a>has his back to the +people and the crowd looks over his shoulders with him at his work and +he feels behind him daily, with joy and strength, thousands of heroes +pressing up to take his place. And he is daily happy with a strange, +mighty, impersonal joy in all these other people who could do it, too. +He lives with a great hurrah for the world in his heart. The hero he +worships is the hero he sees in others. A man like this would feel +cramped if he were merely being himself, or if he were being imprisoned +by the people in his own glory, or were being cooped up into a hero.</p> + +<p>It is in this sense that I have finally come again to believe that hero +worship is safe, that in some form as one of the great elemental +energies in human nature it must be saved, that it must be regulated and +used, that it has an incalculable power which was meant to be turned on +to run a nation with.</p> + +<p>And I believe that Thomas Jefferson, confronted in this desperate, +sublime 1913, with the new socialized spirit of our time, placed face to +face at last with a Christian aristocrat or Crowd-Man, would want him +saved and emphasized too.</p> + +<p>It is because in democracies saviours are being kept by crowds and by +millionaires and by machines very largely in the position of hired men, +or of ordered about men, that ninety-nine one-hundredths of the saving +or of the man-inventing and man-freeing in crowds, is not being attended +to.</p> + +<p>I have wanted to suggest in this book that the moment the Saviours in +any nation will organize quietly and save themselves first, the less +difficult thing (with men to attend to it) like saving the rest of us, +will be a mere matter of detail.</p> + +<p>The only thing that stands in the way is the Thomas Jefferson bug-a-boo. +People seem to have a kind of left-over fear that the moment these +saviours or experts or inventors or heroes, call them what you will, get +the chance that they have been working to get to save us, they will not +want to use it.</p> + +<p>It does not seem to me that anything will be allowed to interfere with +it—with their saving us, or making detailed arrangements for our saving +ourselves.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_558" id="Page_558"></a>Being a great man (if as democracies seem to think being a great man is +a disease) is at least a self-limiting disease. Inventors when they get +their first chance are going to save us, because they could not endure +living with us unless we were saved.</p> + +<p>Inventors could not enjoy inventing—inventing their greater, more noble +inventions, until they had attended to a little rudimentary thing in the +world like having people half alive on it to live with and to invent +for.</p> + +<p>It does not interest a really inspired man—inventing flying machines +for people who have not time to notice the sky, wireless telegraph for +people who have nothing to say, symphonies for tone-deaf crowds, or +ambrosia for people who prefer potatoes.</p> + +<p>This is the whole issue in a nutshell. When people say that our +inventors, or Crowd-Men or saviours, when they have fulfilled or saved +themselves, cannot be trusted to save us, the reply that will have to be +made is that only people who do not know how inventors feel or how they +are made or what it is in them that drives them to do things, or how +they do them, will be afraid to let men who give us worlds and who +express worlds for us and who make us express ourselves in worlds the +freedom to help shape them and run them.</p> + +<p>Men who have the automatic courage, the helpless bigness and +disinterestedness that always goes with invention, with creative power, +can be trusted by crowds.</p> + +<p>The prejudice against the hero is due to the fact that heroes in days +gone by have been by a very large majority fighters, expressing +themselves against the world, or expressing one part of the world +against another.</p> + +<p>The moment the hero becomes the artist and begins expressing himself and +expressing the crowd together, the crowd will no longer be touched with +fear and driven back upon itself by the Thomas Jefferson bug-a-boo.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_559" id="Page_559"></a>EPILOGUE</h2> + + +<p>France is threatened by her childless women, Germany by her machines, +Russia is beginning the Nineteenth Century. It is to England and +America, struggling still sublimely with their sins, the nations +look—for the time being—for the next big free lift upon the world.</p> + +<p>Looked at in the large, in their historic import and their effect on the +time, the English temperament and the American temperament are +essentially the same. As between ourselves, England and America are apt +to seem different, but as between us and the world, we blend together. +One could go through in what I have been saying about Oxford Street and +the House of Commons in this book, strike out all after Oxford Street +and read Broadway, and all after the House of Commons and read Congress, +and it would be essentially true with the necessary English or American +modulation. In the same way it would be possible to go through and +strike out all after the President and read Prime Minister or the +Government.</p> + +<p>England and America have the individualistic temperament, and if we +cannot make a self-expressive individualism noble, and if we are not men +enough to sing up our individualism into the social and the universal, +we perish.</p> + +<p>It is our native way. We are to be crowdmen or nobodies.</p> + +<p>The English temperament or the American temperament, whichever we may +call it, is the same tune, but played with a different and almost +contrasting expression.</p> + +<p>England is being played gravely and massively like a violoncello, and +America—played more lightly, is full of the sweeps and the lulls, the +ecstasy, the overriding glory of the violins.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_560" id="Page_560"></a>But it is the same tune, and God helping us, we will not and we shall +not be overwhelmed under the great dome of the world, by Germany with +all her faithful pianolas, or by France with her cold sweet flutes, or +by Russia with her shrieks and her pauses, pounding her splendid +kettledrums in that awful silence!</p> + +<p>Our song is ours—England and America, the 'cello, and the bright +violins!</p> + +<p>And no one shall sing it for us.</p> + +<p>And no one shall keep us from singing it.</p> + +<p>The skyscrapers are singing, "I will, I will!" to God, and Manchester +and London and Port Sunlight are singing, "I will, I will!" to God. I +have heard even Westminister Abbey and York—those beautiful old +fellows—altering, "I will, I will!" to God!</p> + +<p>And I have seen, as I was going by, Trinity Church at the head of Wall +Street repenting her sins and holding noonday prayer meetings for +millionaires.</p> + +<p>Our genius is a moral genius, the genius of each man for fulfilling +himself. Our religion is the finding of a way to do it beautifully.</p> + +<p>Let Russian men be an army if they like—death and obedience. Let German +men keep on with their faithful, plodding, moral machines if they want +to, and let all French men be artists, go tra-la-laing up and down the +Time to the beautiful—furnishing nudes, clothes, and academies to a +world.</p> + +<p>But we—England and America—will stand up on this planet in the way we +like to stand on a planet and sing, "I will, I will!" to God.</p> + +<p>If we cannot do better, we will sing, "I won't, I won't!" to God. Our +wills and our won'ts are our genius among the sons of men. They are what +we are for. With England and America I will and I won't are an art form, +our means of expressing ourselves, our way of invention <a name="Page_561" id="Page_561"></a>and creation, +of begetting an age, of begetting a nation upon a world.</p> + +<p>We do not know (like great men and children) who we are at first. We +begin saying vaguely—will—will!</p> + +<p>Then i will!</p> + +<p>Then I will!</p> + +<p>Then WE WILL!</p> + + +<h3>THE BEGINNING.</h3> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h4>THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N.Y.</h4> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Crowds, by Gerald Stanley Lee + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CROWDS *** + +***** This file should be named 15759-h.htm or 15759-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/5/7/5/15759/ + +Produced by Rick Niles, Cori Samuel and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team. + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Crowds + A Moving-Picture of Democracy + +Author: Gerald Stanley Lee + +Release Date: May 3, 2005 [EBook #15759] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CROWDS *** + + + + +Produced by Rick Niles, Cori Samuel and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team. + + + + + + +CROWDS + +A MOVING-PICTURE +OF DEMOCRACY + +BY + +GERALD STANLEY LEE + +_Editor of "Mount Tom"_ + +IN FIVE BOOKS +CROWDS AND MACHINES +LETTING THE CROWD BE GOOD +LETTING THE CROWD BE BEAUTIFUL +CROWDS AND HEROES +GOOD NEWS AND HARD WORK + + +GARDEN CITY NEW YORK +DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY + + +_Copyright, 1913, by_ +DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY +_All rights reserved, including that of +translation into foreign languages, +including the Scandinavian_ + + +COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY THE RIDGWAY COMPANY +COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY MITCHELL KENNERLEY +COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY CO. +COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY THE OUTLOOK COMPANY +COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY THE INDEPENDENT WEEKLY, INCORPORATED + +BOOKS + +By GERALD STANLEY LEE + +THE LOST ART OF READING + _A Sketch of Civilization_ + +THE CHILD AND THE BOOK + _A Constructive Criticism of Education_ + +THE SHADOW CHRIST + _A Study of the Hebrew Men of Genius_ + +THE VOICE OF THE MACHINES + _An Introduction to the Twentieth Century_ + +INSPIRED MILLIONAIRES + _A Study of the Man of Genius in Business_ + +CROWDS + _A Moving Picture of Democracy_ + + + _Gratefully inscribed to a little Mountain, + a great Meadow, and a Woman. + To the Mountain for the sense of time, to + the Meadow for the sense of space, and + to the Woman for the sense of everything._ + + +TABLE OF CONTENTS + +BOOK ONE + +CROWDS AND MACHINES + + +I. WHERE ARE WE GOING? 3 + +II. THE CROWD SCARE 19 + +III. THE MACHINE SCARE 34 + +IV. THE STRIKE--AN INVENTION FOR MAKING CROWDS THINK 49 + +V. THE CROWD-MAN--AN INVENTION FOR MAKING CROWDS SEE 58 + +VI. THE IMAGINATION OF CROWDS 65 + +VII. IMAGINATION ABOUT THE UNSEEN 66 + +VIII. THE CROWD'S IMAGINATION ABOUT THE FUTURE 69 + +IX. THE CROWD'S IMAGINATION ABOUT PEOPLE 74 + +X. A DEMOCRATIC THEORY OF HUMAN NATURE 76 + +XI. DOING AS ONE WOULD WISH ONE HAD DONE IN TWENTY YEARS 80 + +XII. NEW KINDS AND NEW SIZES OF MEN 86 + + +BOOK TWO + +LETTING THE CROWDS BE GOOD + + +I. SPEAKING AS ONE OF THE CROWD 93 + +II. IS IT WRONG FOR GOOD PEOPLE TO BE EFFICIENT? 96 + +III. IS IT WRONG FOR GOOD PEOPLE TO BE INTERESTING? 103 + +IV. PROSPECTS OF THE LIAR 107 + +V. PROSPECTS OF THE BULLY 111 + +VI. GOODNESS AS A CROWD-PROCESS 114 + +VII. THOUGHTS ON BEING IMPROVED BY OTHER PEOPLE 116 + +VIII. MAKING GOODNESS HURRY 125 + +IX. TOUCHING THE IMAGINATION OF CROWDS 128 + +X. THE STUPENDOUS, THE UNUSUAL, THE MONOTONOUS AND THE SUCCESSFUL 142 + +XI. THE SUCCESSFUL 146 + +XII. THE NECKS OF THE WICKED 154 + +XIII. IS IT WRONG FOR GOOD PEOPLE TO BE SUCCESSFUL? 163 + +XIV. IS IT SECOND RATE FOR GOOD PEOPLE TO BE SUCCESSFUL? 167 + +XV. THE SUCCESSFUL TEMPERAMENT 173 + +XVI. THE MEN AHEAD PULL 178 + +XVII. THE CROWDS PUSH 184 + +XVIII. THE MAN WHO SAYS HOW, SAYS HOW 186 + +XIX. AND THE MACHINE STARTS! 194 + + +BOOK THREE + +LETTING THE CROWD BE BEAUTIFUL + + +PART I. WISTFUL MILLIONAIRES + +I. MR. CARNEGIE SPEAKS UP 205 + +II. MR. CARNEGIE TRIES TO MAKE PEOPLE READ 208 + +III. MR. NOBEL TRIES TO MAKE PEOPLE WRITE 211 + +IV. PAPER BOOKS, MARBLE PILLARS, AND WOODEN BOYS 221 + +V. THE HUMDRUM FACTORY AND THE TUMPTY-TUM THEATRE 227 + +PART II. IRON MACHINES + +I. STEEPLES AND CHIMNEYS 236 + +II. BELLS AND WHEELS 240 + +III. DEW AND ENGINES 243 + +IV. DEAD AS A DOOR NAIL! 245 + +V. AN OXFORD MAN AND AN INCH OF IRON 248 + +VI. THE MACHINES' MACHINES 250 + +VII. THE MEN'S MACHINES 252 + +VIII. THE BASEMENT OF THE WORLD 256 + +IX. THE GROUND FLOOR FOLKS 262 + +X. THE MACHINE-TRAINERS 266 + +XI. MACHINES, CROWDS, AND ARTISTS 269 + +PART III. PEOPLE-MACHINES + +I. NOW! 280 + +II. COMMITTEES AND COMMITTEES 288 + +III. THE INCONVENIENCE OF BEING HUMAN 286 + +IV. LETTING THE CROWD HAVE PEOPLE IN IT 290 + + +BOOK FOUR + +CROWDS AND HEROES + + +I. THE SOCIALIST AND THE HERO 297 + +II. THE CROWD AND THE HERO 301 + +III. THE CROWD AND THE AVERAGE PERSON 303 + +IV. THE CROWD AND PIERPONT MORGAN 307 + +V. THE CROWD AND TOM MANN 313 + +VI. AN OPENING FOR THE NEXT PIERPONT MORGAN 323 + +VII. AN OPENING FOR THE NEXT TOM MANN 327 + +VIII. THE MEN WHO LOOK 331 + +IX. WHO IS AFRAID? 337 + +X. RULES FOR TELLING A HERO--WHEN ONE SEES ONE 343 + +XI. THE TECHNIQUE OF COURAGE 346 + +XII. THE MEN WHO WANT THINGS 349 + +XIII. MEN WHO GET THINGS 356 + +XIV. SOURCES OF COURAGE FOR OTHERS--TOLERATION 364 + +XV. CONVERSION 371 + +XVI. EXCEPTION 380 + +XVII. INVENTION 383 + +XVIII. THE MAN WHO PULLS THE WORLD TOGETHER 397 + +XIX. THE MAN WHO STANDS BY 400 + +XX. THE STRIKE OF THE SAVIOURS 402 + +XXI. THE LEAGUE OF THE MEN WHO ARE NOT AFRAID 404 + + +BOOK FIVE + +GOOD NEWS AND HARD WORK + + +PART I. NEWS AND LABOUR 413 + +PART II. NEWS AND MONEY 422 + +PART III. NEWS AND GOVERNMENT + +I. OXFORD STREET AND THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 431 + +II. OXFORD STREET HUMS, THE HOUSE HEMS 440 + +III. PRESIDENT WILSON AND MOSES 449 + +IV. THE PRESIDENT SAYS YES AND NO 455 + +V. THE PRESIDENT SAYS "LOOK!" 463 + +VI. THE PEOPLE SAY "WHO ARE YOU?" 469 + +VII. THE PEOPLE SAY "WHO ARE WE?" 472 + +VIII. NEWS ABOUT US TO THE PRESIDENT 474 + +IX. NEWS-MEN 476 + +X. AMERICAN TEMPERAMENT AND GOVERNMENT 483 + +XI-XII. NEWS-BOOKS 505-513 + +XIII. NEWS-PAPERS 517 + +XIV. NEWS-MACHINES 524 + +XV. NEWS-CROWDS 527 + +XVI. CROWD-MEN 550 + +EPILOGUE 539 + + + + +BOOK ONE + +CROWDS AND MACHINES + + +TO CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS + + _"A battered, wrecked old man + Thrown on this savage shore far, far from home, + Pent by the sea and dark rebellious brows twelve dreary months + ... The end I know not, it is all in Thee, + Or small or great I know not--haply what broad fields, what + lands!... + + And these things I see suddenly, what mean they + As if some miracle, some hand divine unsealed my eyes, + Shadowy vast shapes smile through the air and sky, + And on the distant waves sail countless ships, + And anthems in new tongues I hear saluting me."_ + + + + +CHAPTER I + +WHERE ARE WE GOING? + + +The best picture I know of my religion is Ludgate Hill as one sees it +going down the foot of Fleet Street. It would seem to many perhaps like +a rather strange half-heathen altar, but it has in it the three things +with which I worship most my Maker in this present world--the three +things which it would be the breath of religion to me to offer to a God +together--Cathedrals, Crowds, and Machines. + +With the railway bridge reaching over, all the little still locomotives +in the din whispering across the street; with the wide black crowd +streaming up and streaming down, and the big, faraway, other-worldly +church above, I am strangely glad. It is like having a picture of one's +whole world taken up deftly, and done in miniature and hung up for one +against the sky--the white steam which is the breath of modern life, the +vast hurrying of our feet, and that Great Finger pointing toward heaven +day and night for us all.... + +I never tire of walking out a moment from my nook in Clifford's Inn and +stealing a glimpse and coming back to my fireplace. I sit still a moment +before going to work and look in the flames and think. The great roar +outside the Court gathers it all up--that huge, boundless, tiny, +summed-up world out there; flings it faintly against my quiet windows +while I sit and think. + +And when one thinks of it a minute, it sends one half-fearfully, +half-triumphantly back to one's work--the very thought of it. The Crowd +hurrying, the Crowd's flurrying Machines, and the Crowd's God, send one +back to one's work! + +In the afternoon I go out again, slip my way through the crowds along +the Strand, toward Charing Cross. + +I never tire of watching the drays, the horses, the streaming taxis, all +these little, fearful, gliding crowds of men and women, when a little +space of street is left, flowing swiftly, flowing like globules, like +mercury, between the cabs. + +But most of all I like looking up at that vast second story of the +street, coming in over one like waves, like seas--all these happy, +curious tops of 'buses; these dear, funny, way-up people on benches; +these world-worshippers, sight-worshippers, and Americans--all these +little scurrying congregations, hundreds of them, rolling past. + +I sit on the front seat of a horse 'bus elbow to elbow with the driver, +staring down over the brink of the abyss upon ears and necks--that low, +distant space where the horses look so tiny and so ineffectual and so +gone-by below. + +The street is the true path of the spirit. To walk through it, or roll +or swing on top of a 'bus through it--the miles of faces, all these +tottering, toddling, swinging miles of legs and stomachs; and on all +sides of you, and in the windows and along the walks, the things they +wear, and the things they eat, and the things they pour down their +little throats, and the things they pray to and curse and worship and +swindle in! It is like being out in the middle of a great ocean of +living, or like climbing up some great mountain-height of people, their +abysses and their clouds about them, their precipices and jungles and +heavens, the great high roads of their souls reaching off.... I can +never say why, but so strange is it, so full of awe is it, and of +splendour and pity, that there are times when, rolling and swinging +along on top of a 'bus, with all this strange, fearful joy of life about +me, within me ... it is as if on top of my 'bus I had been far away in +some infinite place, and had felt Heaven and Hell sweep past. + +One of the first things that strikes an American when he slips over from +New York, and finds himself, almost before he had thought of it--walking +down the Strand, suddenly, instead of Broadway, is the way +things--thousands of things at once; begin happening to him. + +Of course, with all the things that are happening to him--the 'buses, +the taxis, the Wren steeples, the great streams of new sights in the +streets, the things that happen to his eyes and to his ears, to his feet +and his hands, and to his body lunging through the ground and swimming +up in space on top of a 'bus through this huge, glorious, yellow mist of +people ... there are all the things besides that begin happening to his +mind. + +In New York, of course, he rushes along through the city, in a kind of +tunnel of his own thoughts, of his own affairs, and drives on to his +point, and New York does not--at least it does not very often--make +things happen to his mind. He is not in London five minutes before he +begins to notice how London does his thinking for him. The streets of +the city set him to thinking, mile after mile, miles of comparing, miles +of expecting. + +And above the streets that he walks through and drives through he finds +in London another complete set of streets that interest him: the +greater, silenter streets of England--the streets of people's thoughts. +And he reads the great newspapers, those huge highways on which the +English people are really going somewhere.... "_Where are they going?_" +He goes through the editorials, he stumbles through the news, "_Where +are the English people going?_" + + * * * * * + +An American thinks of the English people in the third person--at first, +of course. + +After three days or so, he begins, half-unconsciously, slipping over +every now and then into what seems to be a vague, loose first person +plural. + +Then the first person plural grows. + +He finds at last that his thinking has settled down into a kind of +happy, easy-going, international, editorial "We." New York and London, +Chicago and Sheffield, go drifting together through his thoughts, and +even Paris, glimmering faintly over there, and a dim round world, and he +asks, as the people of a world stream by, "_Where are WE going?_" + +Thus it is that London, looming, teeming, world-suggesting, gets its +grip upon a man, a fresh American, and stretches him, stretches him +before his own eyes, makes him cosmopolitan, does his thinking for him. + + * * * * * + +There was a great sea to still his soul and lay down upon his spirit +that big, quiet roundness of the earth. + +Nothing is quite the same after that wide strip of sea--sleeping out +there alone night by night--the gentle round earth sloping away down +from under one on both sides, in the midst of space.... Then, suddenly, +almost before one knows, that quiet Space still lingering round one, +perhaps one finds oneself thrust up out of the ground in the night into +that big yellow roar of Trafalgar Square. + +And here are the swift sudden crowds of people, one's own fellow-men +hurrying past. One looks into the faces of the people hurrying past: +"_Where are we going?_" One looks at the stars: "WHERE ARE WE GOING?" + + * * * * * + +That night, when I was thrust up out of the ground and stood dazed in +the Square, I was told in a minute that this London where I was was a +besieged and conquered city. Some men had risen up in a day and said to +London: "No one shall go in. No one shall go out." + +I was in the great proud city at last, the capital of the world, her +big, new, self-assured inventions all about her, all around her, and +soldiers camping out with her locomotives! + +With her long trains for endless belts of people going in and coming +out, with her air-brakes, electric lights, and motor-cars and aerial +mails, it seemed passing strange to be told that her great stations were +all choked up with a queer, funny, old, gone-by, clanky piece of +machinery, an invention for making people good, like soldiers! + +And I stood in the middle of the roar of Trafalgar Square and asked, as +all England was asking that night: "Where are we going?" + +And I looked in the faces of the people hurrying past. + +And nobody knew. + +And the next day I went through the silenter streets of the city, the +great crowded dailies where all the world troops through, and then the +more quiet weeklies, then the monthlies, more dignified and like private +parks; and the quarterlies, too, thoughtful, high-minded, a little +absent, now and then a footfall passing through. + +And I found them all full of the same strange questioning: "Where are we +going?" + +And nobody knew. + +It was the same questioning I had just left in New York, going up all +about me, out of the skyscrapers. + +New York did not know. + +Now London did not know. + + * * * * * + +And after I had tried the journals and the magazines, I thought of +books. + +I could not but look about--how could I do otherwise than look about?--a +lonely American walking at last past all these nobly haunted doorways +and windows--for your idealists or interpreters, your men who bring in +the sea upon your streets and the mountains on your roof-tops; who +still see the wide, still reaches of the souls of men beyond the faint +and tiny roar of London. + +I could not but look for your men of imagination, your poets; for the +men who build the dreams and shape the destinies of nations because they +mould their thoughts. + +I do not like to say it. How shall an American, coming to you out of his +long, flat, literary desert, dare to say it?... Here, where Shakespeare +played mightily, and like a great boy with the world; where Milton, +Keats, Wordsworth, Browning, Shelley, and even Dickens flooded the lives +and refreshed the hearts of the people; here, in these selfsame streets, +going past these same old, gentle, smoky temples where Charles Lamb +walked and loved a world, and laughed at a world, and even made +one--lifted over his London forever into the hearts of men.... + +I can only say what I saw those first few fresh days: John Galsworthy +out with his camera--his beautiful, sad, foggy camera; Arnold Bennett +stitching and stitching faithfully twenty-four hours a day--big, curious +tapestries of little things; H.G. Wells, with his retorts, his +experiments about him, his pots and kettles of humanity in a great stew +of steam, half-hopeful, half-dismayed, mixing up his great, new, queer +messes of human nature; and (when I could look up again) G.K. +Chesterton, divinely swearing, chanting, gloriously contradicting, +rolled lustily through the wide, sunny spaces of His Own Mind; and +Bernard Shaw (all civilization trooping by), the eternal boy, on the +eternal curbstone of the world, threw stones; and the Bishop of +Birmingham preached a fine, helpless sermon.... + + * * * * * + +When a new American, coming from his own big, hurried, formless, +speechless country, finds himself in what he had always supposed to be +this trim, arranged, grown-up, articulate England, and when, thrust up +out of the ground in Trafalgar Square, he finds himself looking at that +vast yellow mist of people, that vast bewilderment of faces, of the +poor, of the rich, coming and going they cannot say where--he naturally +thinks at first it must be because they cannot speak; and when he looks +to those who speak for them, to their writers or interpreters, and when +he finds that they are bewildered, that they are asking the same +question over and over that we in America are asking too, "Where are we +going?" he is brought abruptly up, front to front with the great +broadside of modern life. London, his last resort, is as bewildered as +New York; and so, at last, here it is. It has to be faced now and here, +as if it were some great scare-head or billboard on the world, "WHERE +ARE WE GOING?" + + * * * * * + +The most stupendous feat for the artist or man of imagination in modern +times is to conceive a picture or vision for our Society--our present +machine-civilization--a common expectation for people which will make +them want to live. + +If Leonardo were living now, he would probably slight for the time being +his building bridges, and skimp his work on Mona Lisa, and write a +book--an exultant book about common people. He would focus and express +democracy as only the great and true aristocrat or genius or artist will +ever do it. A great society must be expressed as a vision or expectation +before men can see it together, and go to work on it together, and make +it a fact. What makes a society great is that it is full of people who +have something to live for and who know what it is. It is because nobody +knows, now, that our present society is not great. The different kinds +of people in it have not made up their minds what they are for, and some +kinds have particularly failed to make up their minds what the other +kinds are for. + +We are all making our particular contribution to the common vision, and +some of us are able to say in one way and some in another what this +vision is; but it is going to take a supreme catholic, summing-up +individualist, a great man or artist--a man who is all of us in one--to +express for Crowds, and for all of us together, where we want to go, +what we think we are for, and what kind of a world we want. + +This will have to be done first in a book. The modern world is +collecting its thoughts. It is trying to write its bible. + +The Bible of the Hebrews (which had to be borrowed by the rest of the +world if they were to have one) is the one great outstanding fact and +result of the Hebrew genius. They did not produce a civilization, but +they produced a book for the rest of the world to make civilizations out +of, a book which has made all other nations the moral passengers of the +Hebrews for two thousand years. + +And the whole spirit and aim of this book, the thing about it that made +it great, was that it was the sublimest, most persistent, most colossal, +masterful attempt ever made by men to look forth upon the earth, to see +all the men in it, like spirits hurrying past, and to answer the +question, "WHERE ARE WE GOING?" + +I would not have any one suppose that in these present tracings and +outlines of thought I am making an attempt to look upon the world and +say where the people are going, and where they think they are going, and +where they want to go. I have attempted to find out, and put down what +might seem at first sight (at least it did to me) the answer to a very +small and unimportant question--"Where is it that I really want to go +myself?" "What kind of a world is it, all the facts about me being duly +considered, I really want to be in?" + +No man living in a world as interesting as this ever writes a book if he +can help it. If Mr. Bernard Shaw or Mr. Chesterton or Mr. Wells had been +so good as to write a book for me in which they had given the answer to +my question, in which they had said more or less authoritatively for me +what kind of a world it is that I want to be in, this book would never +have been written. The book is not put forward as an attempt to arrange +a world, or as a system or a chart, or as a nation-machine, or even as +an argument. The one thing that any one can fairly claim for this book +is that one man's life has been saved with it. It is the record of one +man fighting up through story after story of crowds and of crowds' +machines to the great steel and iron floor on the top of the world, +until he had found the manhole in it, and broken through and caught a +breath of air and looked at the light. The book is merely a +life-preserver--that is all; and one man's life-preserver. Perhaps the +man is representative, and perhaps he is not. At all events, here it is. +Anybody else who can use it is welcome to it. + + * * * * * + +The first and most practical step in getting what one wants in this +world is wanting it. One would think that the next step would be +expressing what one wants. But it almost never is. It generally consists +in wanting it still harder and still harder until one can express it. + +This is particularly true when the thing one wants is a new world. Here +are all these other people who have to be asked. And until one wants it +hard enough to say it, to get it outside one's self, possibly make it +catching, nothing happens. + +If one were to point out one trait rather than another that makes +Bernard Shaw, for so brilliant a man, so ineffective as a leader, or +literary statesman, or social reformer, it would be his modesty. He has +never wanted anything. + +If I could have found a book by Bernard Shaw in which Mr. Shaw had +merely said what he wanted himself, it is quite possible this book would +not have been written. Even if Mr. Shaw, without saying what he wanted, +had ever shown in any corner of any book that one man's wanting +something in this world amounted to anything, or could make any one else +want it, or could make any difference in him, or in the world around +him, perhaps I would not have written this book. + +Everywhere, as I have looked about me among the bookmen in America, in +England, I have found, not the things that they wanted in their books, +but always these same deadly lists or bleak inventories--these prairies +of things that they did not want. + +Now, as a matter of fact, I knew already, with an almost despairing +distinctness, nearly all these things I did not want and it has not +helped me (with all due courtesy and admiration) having John Galsworthy +out photographing them day after day, so that I merely did not want them +harder. And Mr. Wells's measles and children's diseases, too. I knew +already that I did not want them. And Mr. Shaw's entire, heroic, almost +noble collection of things he does not want does not supply me--nor +could it supply any other man with furniture to make a world with--even +if it were not this real, big world, with rain and sunshine and wind and +people in it, and were only that little, wonderful world a man lives +within his own heart. There have been times, and there will be more of +them, when I could not otherwise than speak as the champion of Bernard +Shaw; but, after all, what single piece of furniture is there that +George Bernard Shaw, living with his great attic of not-things all +around him, is able to offer to furnish me for me single, little, warm, +lighted room to keep my thoughts in? Nor has he furnished me with one +thing with which I would care to sit down in my little room and +think--looking into the cold, perfect hygienic ashes he has left upon my +hearth. Even if I were a revolutionist, and not a mere, plain human +being, loving life and wanting to live more abundantly, I am bound to +say I do not see what there is in Mr. Galsworthy's photographs, or in +Mr. Wells's rich, bottomless murk of humanity to make a revolution for. +And Mr. Bernard Shaw, with all his bottles of disinfectants and shelves +of sterilized truths, his hard well-being and his glittering comforts, +has presented the vision of a world in which at the very best--even if +it all comes out as he says it will--a man would merely have things +without wanting them, and without wanting anything. + + * * * * * + +And so it has seemed to me that even if he is quite unimportant, any man +to-day who, in some public place, like a book, shall paint the picture +of his heart's desire, who shall throw up, as upon a screen, where all +men may see them, his most immediate and most pressing ideals, would +perform an important service. If a man's sole interest were to find out +what all men in the world want, the best way to do it would be for him +to say quite definitely, so that we could all compare notes, what he +wanted himself. Speaking for a planet has gone by, but possibly, if a +few of us but speak for ourselves, the planet will talk back, and we +shall find out at last what it really is that it wants. + +The thing that many of us want most in the present grayness and din of +the world is some one to play with, or if the word "play" is not quite +the right word, some one with whom we can work with freedom and +self-expressiveness and joy. Nine men out of ten one meets to-day talk +with one as it were with their watches in their hands. The people who +are rich one sees everywhere, being run away with by their motor-cars; +and the people who are poor one sees struggling pitifully and for their +very souls, under great wheels and beneath machines. + +Of course, I can only speak for myself. I do not deny that a little +while at a time I can sit by a brook in the woods and be happy; but if, +as it happens, I would rather have other people about me--people who do +not spoil things, I find that the machines about me everywhere have made +most people very strange and pathetic in the woods. They cannot sit by +brooks, many of them; and when they come out to the sky, it looks to +them like some mere, big, blue lead roof up over their lives. Perhaps I +am selfish about it, but I cannot bear to see people looking at the sky +in this way.... + + * * * * * + +So, as I have watched my fellow human beings, what I have come to want +most of all in this world is the inspired employer--or what I have +called the inspired millionaire or organizer; the man who can take the +machines off the backs of the people and take the machines out of their +wits, and make the machines free their bodies and serve their souls. + +If we ever have the inspired employer, he will have to be made by the +social imagination of the people, by creating the spirit of expectation +and challenge toward the rich among the masses of the people. + +I believe that the time has come when the world is to make its last +stand for idealism, great men, and crowds. + +I believe that great men can be really great, that they can represent +crowds. I believe that crowds can be really great, that they can know +great men. + +The most natural kind of great man for crowds to know first will +probably be a kind of everyday great man or business statesman, the man +who represents all classes, and who proves it in the way he conducts his +business. + +I have called this man the Crowdman. + +I do not say that I have met precisely the type of inspired millionaire +I have in mind, but I have known scores of men who have reminded me of +him and of what he is going to be, and I am prepared to say that in +spirit, or latent at least, he is all about me in the world to-day. If +it is proved to me that no such man exists, I am here to say there will +be one. If it is proved to me that there cannot be one, _I will make +one_. If it is proved to me that by lifting up Desire in the faces of +young men and of boys, and in the faces of true fathers and young +mothers, and by ringing up my challenge on the great doors of the +schools, I cannot make one, then I will invoke the men that shall write +the books, that shall sing the songs that shall make one! I say this +with all reverence for other men's desires and with all respect for +natural prejudgments. As I have conceived it, the one business of the +world to-day is to find out what we are for and to find out what men in +the world--on the whole--really want. When men know what they want they +get it. Every wrong thing we have to face in modern industrial life is +due to men who know what they want, and who therefore get it, due to the +passions and the dreams of men; and the one single way in which these +wrong things will ever be overcome is with more passions and with more +and mightier dreams of men. + +Nothing is more visionary than trying to run a world without dreams, +especially an economic world. It is because even bad dreams are better +in this world than having no dreams at all that bad people so called are +so largely allowed to run it. + +In the final and practical sense, the one factor in economics to be +reckoned with is Desire. + +The next move in economics is going to be the statement of a shrewd, +dogged, realizable ideal. It is only ideals that have aroused the wrong +passions, and it is only ideals that will arouse the right ones. + +It will have to be, I imagine, when it comes, not a mere statement of +principles, an analysis, or a criticism, but a moving-picture, a +portrait of the human race, that shall reveal man's heart to himself. +What we want is a vast white canvas, spread, as it were, over the end of +the world, before which we shall all sit together, the audience of the +nations, of the poor, of the rich, as in some still, thoughtful +place--all of us together; and then we will throw up before us on the +vast white screen in the dark the vivid picture of our vast desires, +flame up upon it the hopes, the passions of human lives, and the grim, +silent wills of men. _"What do we want?" "Where are we going?"_ + +In place of the literature of criticism we have come now to the +literature of Desire. + +This literature will have to come slowly, and I have come to believe +that the first book, when it comes, will be perhaps a book that does not +prove anything, a book that is a mere cry, a prayer, or challenge; the +story of what one man with these streetfuls of the faces of men and the +faces of women pouring their dullness and pouring their weariness over +him, has desired, and of what, God helping him, he will have. + +There is a certain sense in which merely praying to God has gone by. In +the present desperate crisis of a world plunging on in the dark to a +catastrophe or a glory that we cannot guess, it is a time for men to +pray a prayer, a standing-up prayer, to one another. + +I believe that it is going to be this huge gathering-in of public +desire, this imperious challenge of what men want, this standing-up +prayer of men to one another, which alone shall make men go forth with +faith and singing once more into the battle of life. Sometimes it has +seemed to me I have already heard it--this song of men's desires about +me--faintly. But I have seen that the time is at hand when it shall come +as a vast chorus of cities, of fields, of men's voices, filling the dome +of the world--a chorus in the glory and the shame of which no +millionaire who merely wants to make money, no artist who is not +expressing the souls and freeing the bodies of men, no statesman who is +not gathering up the desires of crowds, and going daily through the +world hewing out the will of the people, shall dare to live. + + * * * * * + +But while this is the vision of my belief, I would not have any one +suppose that I am the bearer of easy and gracious tidings. + +It is rather of a great daily adventure one has with the world. + +There have been times when it seemed as if it had to begin all over +again every morning. + +Day by day I walk down Fleet Street toward Ludgate Hill. + +I look once more every morning at that great picture of any religion; I +look at the quiet, soaring, hopeful dome--that little touch of singing +or praying that men have lifted up against heaven. "Will the Dome bring +the Man to me?" + +I look up at the machines, strange and eager, hurrying across the +bridge. "Will the Machines bring the Man to me?" + +I look in the faces of the crowd hurrying past. "Will the Crowd bring +the Man to me?" + +With the picture of my religion--or perhaps three religions or three +stories of religion--I walk on and on through the crowd, past the +railway, past the Cathedral, past the Mansion House, and over the Tower +Bridge. I walk fast and eagerly and blindly, as though a man would walk +away from the world. + +Suddenly I find myself, throngs of voices all about me, standing +half-unconsciously by a high iron fence in Bermondsey watching that +smooth asphalt playground where one sees the very dead (for once) +crowded by the living--pushed over to the edges--their gravestones +tilted calmly up against the walls. I stand and look through the pickets +and watch the children run and shout--the little funny, mockingly +dressed, frowzily frumpily happy children, the stored-up sunshine of a +thousand years all shining faintly out through the dirt, out through the +generations in their little faces--"Will the Man come to me out of +these?" + +The tombstones lean against the wall and the children run and shout. As +I watch them with my hopes and fears and the tombstones tilted against +the walls--as I peer through the railings at the children, I face my +three religions. What will the three religions do with the children? +What will the children do with the three religions? + +And now I will tell the truth. I will not cheat nor run away as +sometimes I seem to have tried to do for years. I will no longer let +myself be tricked by the mere glamour and bigness of our modern life +nor swooned into good-will by the roll and liturgy of revolution, "of +the people," "for the people," "by the people," nor will I be longer +awed by those huge phrase-idols, constitutions, routines, that have +roared around me "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity"--those imperious, +thoughtless, stupid tra-la-las of the People. Do the People see truth? +Can the People see truth? Can all the crowd, and can all the machines, +and all the cathedrals piled up together produce the Man, the Crowd-man +or great man who sees truth? + +And so with my three religions, I have three fears, one for each of +them. There is the Machine fear, lest the crowd should be overswept by +its machines and become like them; and the Crowd fear, lest the crowd +should overlook its mighty innumerable and personal need of great men; +and there is also the daily fear for the Church, lest the Church should +not understand crowds and machines and grapple with crowds and machines, +interpret them and glory in them and appropriate them for her own use +and for God's--lest the Church should turn away from the crowds and the +machines and graciously and idly bow down to Herself. + +And now I am going to try to express these three fears that go with the +three religions as well as I can, so that I can turn on them and face +them and, God helping me, look them out of countenance. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +THE CROWD SCARE + + +Time was when a man was born upon this planet in a somewhat lonely +fashion. A few human beings out of all infinity stood by to care for +him. He was brought up with hills and stars and a neighbour or so, until +he grew to man's estate. He climbed at last over the farthest hill, and +there, on the rim of things, standing on the boundary line of sky and +earth that had always been the edge of life to him before, he looked +forth upon the freedom of the world, and said in his soul, "What shall I +be in this world I see, and whither shall I go in it?" And the sky and +the earth and the rivers and the seas and the nights and the days +beckoned to him, and the voices of life rose around him, and they all +said, "Come!" + +On a corner in New York, around a Street Department wagon, not so very +long ago, five thousand men were fighting for shovels, fifty men to a +shovel--a tool for living a little longer. + +The problem of living in this modern world is the problem of finding +room in it. The crowd principle is so universally at work through modern +life that the geography of the world has been changed to conform to it. +We live in crowds. We get our living in crowds. We are amused in herds. +Civilization is a list of cities. Cities are the huge central dynamos of +all being. The power of a man can be measured to-day by the mile, the +number of miles between him and the city; that is, between him and what +the city stands for--the centre of mass. + +The crowd principle is the first principle of production. The producer +who can get the most men together and the most dollars together controls +the market; and when he once controls the market, instead of merely +getting the most men and the most dollars, he can get all the men and +all the dollars. Hence the corporation in production. + +The crowd principle is the first principle of distribution. The man who +can get the most men to buy a particular thing from him can buy the most +of it, and therefore buy it the cheapest, and therefore get more men to +buy from him; and having bought this particular thing cheaper than all +men could buy it, it is only a step to selling it to all men; and then, +having all the men on one thing and all the dollars on one thing, he is +able to buy other things for nothing, for everybody, and sell them for a +little more than nothing to everybody. Hence the department store--the +syndicate of department stores--the crowd principle in commerce. + +The value of a piece of land is the number of footsteps passing by it in +twenty-four hours. The value of a railroad is the number of people near +it who cannot keep still. If there are a great many of these people, the +railroad runs its trains for them. If there are only a few, though they +be heroes and prophets, Dantes, Savonarolas, and George Washingtons, +trains shall not be run for them. The railroad is the characteristic +property and symbol of property in this modern age, and the entire value +of a railroad depends upon its getting control of a crowd--either a +crowd that wants to be where some other crowd is, or a crowd that wants +a great many tons of something that some other crowd has. + +When we turn from commerce to philosophy, we find the same principle +running through them both. The main thing in the philosophy of to-day is +the extraordinary emphasis of environment and heredity. A man's destiny +is the way the crowd of his ancestors ballot for his life. His soul--if +he has a soul--is an atom acted upon by a majority of other atoms. + +When we turn to religion in its different phases, we find the same +emphasis upon them all--the emphasis of mass, of majority. Not that the +church exists for the masses--no one claims this--but that, such as it +is, it is a mass church. While the promise of Scripture, as a last +resort, is often heard in the church about two or three gathered +together in God's name, the Church is run on the working conviction that +unless the minister and the elders can gather two or three hundred in +God's name, He will not pay any particular attention to them, or, if He +does, He will not pay the bills. The church of our forefathers, founded +on personality, is exchanged for the church of democracy, founded on +crowds; and the church of the moment is the institutional church, in +which the standing of the clergyman is exchanged for the standing of the +congregation. The inevitable result, the crowd clergyman, is seen on +every hand amongst us--the agent of an audience, who, instead of telling +an audience what they ought to do, runs errands for them morning and +noon and night. With coddling for majorities and tact for whims, he +carefully picks his way. He does his people as much good as they will +let him, tells them as much truth as they will hear, until he dies at +last, and goes to take his place with Puritan parsons who mastered +majorities, with martyrs who would not live and be mastered by +majorities, and with apostles who managed to make a new world without +the help of majorities at all. + +Theology reveals the same tendency. The measuring by numbers is found in +all belief, the same cringing before masses of little facts instead of +conceiving the few immeasurable ones. Helpless individuals mastered by +crowds are bound to believe in a kind of infinitely helpless God. He +stands in the midst of the crowds of His laws and the systems of His +worlds: to those who are not religious, a pale First Cause; and to those +who are, a Great Sentimentality far away in the heavens, who, in a kind +of vast weak-mindedness (a Puritan would say), seems to want everybody +to be good and hopes they will, but does not quite know what to do +about it if they are not. + +Every age has its typical idea of heaven and its typical idea of hell +(in some of them it would be hard to tell which is which), and every +civilization, has its typical idea of God. A civilization with sovereign +men in it has a sovereign God; and a crowd civilization, reflecting its +mood on the heavens, is inclined to a pleasant, large-minded God, +eternally considering everybody and considering everything, but +inefficient withal, a kind of legislature of Deity, typical of +representative institutions at their best and at their worst. + +If we pass from our theology to our social science we come to the most +characteristic result of the crowd principle that the times afford. We +are brought face to face with Socialism, the millennium machine, the +Corliss engine of progress. It were idle to deny to the Socialist that +he is right--and more right, indeed, than most of us, in seeing that +there is a great wrong somewhere; but it would be impossible beyond this +point to make any claim for him, except that he is honestly trying to +create in the world a wrong we do not have as yet, that shall be large +enough to swallow the wrong we have. The term "Socialism" stands for +many things, in its present state; but so far as the average Socialist +is concerned, he may be defined as an idealist who turns to materialism, +that is, to mass, to carry his idealism out. The world having discovered +two great ideals in the New Testament, the service of all men by all +other men, and the infinite value of the individual, the Socialist +expects to carry out one of these ideals by destroying the other. + +The principle that an infinitely helpful society can be produced by +setting up a row of infinitely helpless individuals is Socialism, as the +average Socialist practises it. The average Socialist is the type of the +eager but effeminate reformer of all ages, because he seeks to gain by +machinery things nine tenths of the value of which to men is in gaining +them for themselves. Socialism is the attempt to invent conveniences +for heroes, to pass a law that will make being a man unnecessary, to do +away with sin by framing a world in which it would be worthless to do +right because it would be impossible to do wrong. It is a philosophy of +helplessness, which, even if it succeeds in helplessly carrying its +helplessness out--in doing away with suffering, for instance--can only +do it by bringing to pass a man not alive enough to be capable of +suffering, and putting him in a world where suffering and joy alike +would be a bore to him. + +But the main importance of Socialism in this connection lies in the fact +that it does not confine itself to sociology. It has become a complete +philosophy of life, and can be seen penetrating with its subtle satire +on human nature almost everything about us. We have the cash register to +educate our clerks into pure and honest character, and the souls of +conductors can be seen being nurtured, mile after mile, by +fare-recorders. Corporations buy consciences by the gross. They are hung +over the door of every street car. Consciences are worked by pulling a +strap. Liverymen have cyclometres to help customers to tell the truth, +and the Australian ballot is invented to help men to be manly enough to +vote the way they think. And when, in the course of human events, we +came to the essentially moral and spiritual reform of a woman's right to +dress in good taste--that is, appropriately for what she is doing, what +did we proceed to do to bring it about? Conventions were held year after +year, and over and over, to get women to dress as they wanted to; dress +reform associations were founded, syndicates of courage were established +all over the land--all in vain; and finally,--Heaven help us!--how was +this great moral and spiritual reform accomplished? By an invention of +two wheels, one in front of the other. It was brought about by the Pope +Manufacturing Company of Hartford, Connecticut in two short years. + +Everything is brought about by manufacturing companies. It is the +socialist spirit; the idea that, if we can only find it, there is some +machine that can surely be invented that will take the place of men: not +only of hands and feet, but of all the old-fashioned and lumbering +virtues, courage, patience, vision, common sense, and religion itself, +out of which they are made. + +But we depend upon machinery not only for the things that we want, but +for the brains with which we decide what we want. If a man wants to know +what he thinks, he starts a club; and if he wants to be very sure, he +calls a convention. From the National Undertakers' Association and the +Launderers' League to the Christian Endeavour Tournament and the World's +Congress--the Midway Pleasance of Piety--the Convention strides the +world with vociferousness. The silence that descends from the hills is +filled with its ceaseless din. The smallest hamlet in the land has +learned to listen reverent from afar to the vast insistent roar of It, +as the Voice of the Spirit of the Times. + +Every idea we have is run into a constitution. We cannot think without a +chairman. Our whims have secretaries; our fads have by-laws. Literature +is a club. Philosophy is a society. Our reforms are mass meetings. Our +culture is a summer school. We cannot mourn our mighty dead without +Carnegie hall and forty vice-presidents. We remember our poets with +trustees, and the immortality of a genius is watched by a standing +committee. Charity is an Association. Theology is a set of resolutions. +Religion is an endeavour to be numerous and communicative. We awe the +impenitent with crowds, convert the world with boards, and save the lost +with delegates; and how Jesus of Nazareth could have done so great a +work without being on a committee is beyond our ken. What Socrates and +Solomon would have come to if they had only had the advantage of +conventions it would be hard to say; but in these days, when the +excursion train is applied to wisdom; when, having little enough, we try +to make it more by pulling it about; when secretaries urge us, +treasurers dun us, programs unfold out of every mail--where is the man +who, guileless-eyed, can look in his brother's face; can declare upon +his honour that he has never been a delegate, never belonged to +anything, never been nominated, elected, imposed on, in his life? + +Everything convenes, revolves, petitions, adjourns. Nothing stays +adjourned. We have reports that think for us, committees that do right +for us, and platforms that spread their wooden lengths over all the +things we love, until there is hardly an inch of the dear old earth to +stand on, where, fresh and sweet and from day to day, we can live our +lives ourselves, pick the flowers, look at the stars, guess at God, +garner our grain, and die. Every new and fresh human being that comes +upon the earth is manufactured into a coward or crowded into a machine +as soon as we get at him. We have already come to the point where we do +not expect to interest anybody in anything without a constitution. And +the Eugenic Society is busy now on by-laws for falling in love. + +What this means with regard to the typical modern man is, not that he +does not think, but that it takes ten thousand men to make him think. He +has a crowd soul, a crowd creed. Charged with convictions, galvanized +from one convention to another, he contrives to live, and with a sense +of multitude, applause, and cheers he warms his thoughts. When they have +been warmed enough he exhorts, dictates, goes hither and thither on the +crutch of the crowd, and places his crutch on the world, and pries on +it, if perchance it may be stirred to something. To the bigotry of the +man who knows because he speaks for himself has been added a new bigotry +on the earth--the bigotry of the man who speaks for the nation; who, +with a more colossal prejudice than he had before, returns from a mass +meeting of himself, and, with the effrontery that only a crowd can give, +backs his opinions with forty states, and walks the streets of his +native town in the uniform of all humanity. This is a kind of fool that +has never been possible until these latter days. Only a very great many +people, all of them working on him at once, and all of them watching +every one else working at once, can produce this kind. + +Indeed, the crowd habit has become so strong upon us, has so mastered +the mood of the hour, that even you and I, gentle reader, have found +ourselves for one brief moment, perhaps, in a certain sheepish feeling +at being caught in a small audience. Being caught in a small audience at +a lecture is no insignificant experience. You will see people looking +furtively about, counting one another. You will make comparisons. You +will recall the self-congratulatory air of the last large audience you +had the honour to belong to, sitting in the same seats, buzzing +confidently to itself before the lecture began. The hush of +disappointment in a small audience all alone with itself, the mutual +shame of it, the chill in it, that spreads softly through the room, +every identical shiver of which the lecturer is hired to warm +through--all these are signs of the times. People look at the empty +chairs as if every modest, unassuming chair there were some great +personality saying to each and all of us: "Why are you here? Did you not +make a mistake? Are you not ashamed to be a party to--to--as small a +crowd as this?" Thus do we sit, poor mortals, doing obeisance to Empty +Chairs--we who are to be lectured to--until the poor lecturer who is to +lecture to us comes in, and the struggle with the Chairs begins. + +When we turn to education as it stands to-day, the same self-satisfied, +inflexible smile of the crowd is upon it all. We see little but the +massing of machinery, the crowding together of numbers of teachers and +numbers of courses and numbers of students, and the practical total +submergence of personality, except by accident, in all educated life. + +The infinite value of the individual, the innumerable consequences of +one single great teaching man, penetrating every pupil who knows him, +becoming a part of the universe, a part of the fibre of thought and +existence to every pupil who knows him--this is a thing that belongs to +the past and to the inevitable future. With all our great institutions, +the crowds of men who teach in them, the crowds of men who learn in +them, we are still unable to produce out of all the men they graduate +enough college presidents to go around. The fact that at almost any +given time there may be seen, in this American land of ours, half a +score of colleges standing and waiting, wondering if they will ever find +a president again, is the climax of what the universities have failed to +do. The university will be justified only when a man with a university +in him, a whole campus in his soul, comes out of it, to preside over it, +and the soul that has room for more than one chair in it comes out of it +to teach in it. + +When we turn from education to journalism, the pressure of the crowd is +still more in evidence. To have the largest circulation is to have the +most advertising, and to have the most advertising means to have the +most money, and to have the most money means to be able to buy the most +ability, and to have the most ability means to keep all that one gains +and get more. The degradation of many of our great journals in the last +twenty years is but the inevitable carrying out of the syndicate method +in letters--a mass of contributors, a mass of subscribers, and a mass of +advertisers. So long as it gives itself over to the circulation idea, +the worse a newspaper is, the more logical it is. There may be a certain +point where it is bound to stop some time, because there will not be +enough bad people who are bad enough to go around; but we have not come +to it yet, and in the meantime about everything that can be thought of +is being printed to make bad people. If it be asserted that there are +not enough bad people to go around even now, it may be added that there +are plenty of good people to take their places as fast as they fail to +be bad enough, and that the good people who take the bad papers to find +fault with them are the ones who make such papers possible. + +The result of the crowd principle is the inevitable result. Our journals +have fallen off as a matter of course, not only in moral ideals (which +everybody realizes), but in brain force, power of expression, +imagination, and foresight--the things that give distinction and results +to utterance and that make a journal worth while. The editorial page has +been practically abandoned by most journals, because most journals have +been abandoned by their editors: they have become printed +counting-rooms. With all their greatness, their crowds of writers, and +masses of readers, and piles of cablegrams, they are not able to produce +the kind of man who is able to say a thing the kind of way that will +make everybody stop and listen to him, cablegrams and all. Horace +Greeley and Samuel Bowles and Charles A. Dana have passed from the +press, and the march of the crowd through the miles of their columns +every day is trampling on their graves. The newspaper is the mass +machine, the crowd thinker. To and fro, from week to week and from year +to year, its flaming headlines sway, now hither and now thither, where +the greatest numbers go, or the best guess of where they are going to +go; and Personality, creative, triumphant, masterful, imperious +Personality--is it not at an end? It were a dazzling sight, perhaps, to +gaze at night upon a huge building, thinking with telegraph under the +wide sky around the world, the hurrying of its hundred pens upon the +desks, and the trembling of its floors with the mighty coming of a Day +out of the grip of the press; but even this huge bewildering pile of +power, this aggregation, this corporation of forces, machines of souls, +glittering down the Night--does any one suppose It stands by Itself, +that It is its own master, that It can do its own will in the world? In +all its splendour It stands, weaving the thoughts of the world in the +dark; but that very night, that very moment, It lies in the power of a +little ticking-thing behind its doors. It belongs to that legislature of +information and telegraph, that owner of what happens in a day, called +the Associated Press. + +If the One who called Himself a man and a God had not been born in a +crowd, if he had not loved and grappled with it, and been crucified and +worshipped by it, He might have been a Redeemer for the silent, stately, +ancient world that was before He came, but He would have failed to be a +Redeemer for this modern world--a world where the main inspiration and +the main discouragement is the crowd, where every great problem and +every great hope is one that deals with crowds. It is a world where, +from the first day a man looks forth to move, he finds his feet and +hands held by crowds. The sun rises over crowds for him, and sets over +crowds; and having presumed to be born, when he presumes to die at last, +in a crowd of graves he is left not even alone with God. Ten human lives +deep they have them--the graves in Paris; and whether men live their +lives piled upon other men's lives, in blocks in cities or in the +apparent loneliness of town or country what they shall do or shall not +do, or shall have or shall not have--is it not determined by crowds, by +the movement of crowds? The farmer is lonely enough, one would say, as +he rests by his fire in the plains, his barns bursting with wheat; but +the murmur of the telegraph almost any moment is the voice of the crowd +to him, thousands of miles away, shouting in the Stock Exchange: "You +shall not sell your wheat! Let it lie! Let it rot in your barns!" + +And yet, if a man were to go around the earth with a surveyor's chain, +there would seem to be plenty of room for all who are born upon it. The +fact that there are enough square miles of the planet for every human +being on it to have several square miles to himself does not prove that +a man can avoid the crowd--that it is not a crowded world. If what a man +could be were determined by the square mile, it would indeed be a gentle +and graceful earth to live on. But an acre of Nowhere satisfies no one; +and how many square miles does a man want to be a nobody in? He can do +it better in a crowd, where every one else is doing it. + +In the ancient world, when a human being found something in the wrong +place and wanted to put it where it belonged, he found himself face to +face with a few men. He found he had to deal with these few men. To-day, +if he wants anything put where it belongs, he finds himself face to face +with a crowd. He finds that he has to deal with a crowd. The world has +telephones and newspapers now, and it has railroads; and if a man +proposes to do a certain thing in it, the telephones tell the few, and +the newspapers tell the crowd, and the crowd gets on to the railroad; +and before he rises from his sleep, behold the crowd in his front yard; +and if he can get as far as his own front gate in the thing he is going +for, he must be--either a statesman? a hero? or a great genius? None of +these. Let him be a corporation--of ideas or of dollars; let him be some +complex, solid, crowded thing, would he do anything for himself, or for +anybody else, or for everybody else, in a world too crowded to tell the +truth without breaking something, or to find room for it, when it is +told, without breaking something. + +This is the Crowd's World. + + * * * * * + +What I have written I have written. + +I have been sitting and reading it. It is a mood. But there is an +implacable truth in it, I believe, that must be gotten out and used. + +As I have been reading I have looked up. I see the quiet little mountain +through my window standing out there in the sun. It looks around the +world as if nothing had happened; and the bobolinks out in the great +meadow are all flying and singing in the same breath and rowing through +the air, thousands of them, miles of them. They do not stop a minute. + +A moment ago while I was writing I heard the Child outside on the +piazza, four years old, going by my window back and forth, listening to +the crunch of her new shoes as if it were the music of the spheres. Why +should not I do as well? I thought. The Child is merely seeing her shoes +as they are with as many senses and as many thoughts and desires at once +as she can muster, and with all her might. + +What if I were to see the world like the Child? + +Yesterday I went to Robert's Meadow. I saw three small city boys, with +their splendid shining rubber boots and their beautiful bamboo poles. +They were on their way home. They had only the one trout between them, +and that had been fondled, examined, and poked over and bragged about +until it was fairly stiff and brown with those boys--looked as if it had +been stolen out of a dried-herring box. They put it reverently back, +when I saw it, into their big basket. I smiled a little as I walked on +and thought how they felt about it. + +Then suddenly it was as if I had forgotten something. I turned and +looked back; saw those three boys--a little retinue to that solitary +fish--trudging down the road in the yellow sun. And I stood there and +wanted to be in it! Then I saw them going round the bend in the road +thirty years away. + +I still want to be one of those boys. + +And I am going to try. Perhaps, Heaven helping me, I will yet grow up to +them! + +I know that the way those three boys felt about the fish--the way they +folded it around with something, the way they made the most of it, is +the way to feel about the world. + +I side with the three boys. I am ready to admit that as regards +technical and comparatively unimportant details or as regards +perspective on the fish the boys may not have been right. It is possible +that they had not taken a point of view, measured in inches or volts or +foot-pounds, that was right and could last forever; but I know that the +spirit of their point of view was right--the spirit that hovered around +the three boys and around the fish that day was right and could last +forever. + +It is the spirit in which the world was made, and the spirit in which +new worlds in all ages, and even before our eyes by Boys and Girls +and--God, are being made. + +It is only the boys and the girls (all sizes) who know about worlds. And +it is only boys and girls who are right. + +I heard a robin in the apple tree this morning out in the rain singing, +_"I believe! I believe!"_ + + * * * * * + +At the same time, I am glad that I have known and faced, and that I +shall have to know and face, the Crowd Fear. + +I know in some dogged, submerged, and speechless way that it is not a +true fear. And yet I want to move along the sheer edge of it all my +life. I want it. I want all men to have it, and to keep having it, and +to keep conquering it. I have seen that no man who has not felt it, who +does not know this huge numbing, numberless fear before the crowd, and +who may not know it again almost any moment, will ever be able to lead +the crowd, glory in it, die for it, or help it. Nor will any man who has +not defied it, and lifted his soul up naked and alone before it and +cried to God, ever interpret the crowd or express the will of the crowd, +or hew out of earth and heaven what the crowd wants. + +We want to help to express and fulfil a crowd civilization, we want to +share the crowd life, to express what people in crowds feel--the great +crowd sensations, excitements, the inspirations and depressions of those +who live and struggle with crowds. + +We want to face, and face grimly, implacably, the main facts, the main +emotions men are having to-day. And the main emotion men are having +to-day about our modern world is that it is a crowded world, that in the +nature of the case its civilization is a crowd civilization. Every other +important thing for this present age to know must be worked out from +this one. It is the main thing with which our religion has to deal, the +thing our literature is about, and the thing our arts will be obliged +to express. Any man who makes the attempt to consider or interpret +anything either in art or life without a true understanding of the crowd +principle as it is working to-day, without a due sense of its central +place in all that goes on around us, is a spectator in the blur and +bewilderment of this modern world, as helpless in it, and as childish +and superficial in it, as a Greek god at the World's Fair, gazing out of +his still Olympian eyes at the Midway Pleasance. + + * * * * * + +After the Crowd Fear there comes to most of us the machine fear. +Machines are the huge limbs or tentacles of crowds. As the crowds grow +the machines grow; grasping at the little strip of sky over us, at the +little patch of ground beneath our feet, they swing out before us and +beckon daily to us new hells and new heavens in our eyes. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +THE MACHINE SCARE + + +I have had occasion nearly every day for the past two weeks to pass by +an ancient churchyard on a great hillside not far from London. Most of +the stones are very old, and seem to have been thoughtfully and +reverently, flake by flake, wrought into their final form by +long-vanished hands. As I stand and watch them, with the yews and +cypresses flocking round them, it is as if in some sort of way they had +been surely wrought by the hand of love, so full are they of grief and +of joy, of devotion, of the very singing of the dead and of those who +loved them. + +When I walk on a little farther, and come to a small and new addition to +the churchyard, and look about me at the stones, I find myself suddenly +in quite a new company. So far as one could observe, looking at the +gravestones in the new churchyard, the people who died there died rather +thoughtlessly and mechanically, and as if nobody cared very much. Of +course, when one thinks a little further, one knows that this cannot be +true, and that the men and the women who gathered by these glib, trim, +capable-looking modern tombstones were as full of love and tenderness +and reverence before their dead as the others were--but the lines on the +stones give no sign. One never stops to read an epitaph on one of them; +one knows it would not be interesting, or really whisper to one the +strange, happy, human things of another world--even of this world, that +make the old tombstones such good company and so friendly to us. One +gives a glance at the stone and passes on. It was made by machinery, +apparently; a machine might have designed it, a machine might have died +and been buried under it. One looks beyond it at all the others like +it--all the glib, competent-looking white stones. Were the silenced +people all machines under them, all mechanical, all made to a pattern +like their stones, like these strangely hard, brief tombstones standing +here at their heads, summing up their lives before us curtly, +heartlessly, on this gentle old hillside? + +I wondered. + +I looked back to the old eloquent cemetery that almost seemed to be +breathing things, and looked once more at the new. + +And as I stood and thought, they seemed to me to be two worlds--one the +world the people all about me are always saying sadly is going by, and +the other--well, the one we will have to have. + + * * * * * + +As I look off from the hilltop at the great sloping countryside about +me, which stretches miles and miles, with its green fields, and bushy +treetops, its red roofs, its banners of steam from twenty railways, its +huge, grim, furious chimneys, its still, sleepy steeples, I also see two +worlds, the same two worlds over again that I saw in the churchyard, +except that they are all jumbled together--the complacent, capable, +cut-out, homeless-looking houses, the little snuggled-down old ones with +their happy trees about them and trails of cooking smoke. I see the same +two worlds standing and facing each other before me whichever way I +turn. + +And when I slip out of the churchyard from those two little separate +worlds of the dead, and move slowly down the long bustling village +street, and look into the faces of the living, the same two worlds that +were in the churchyard and on the hills seem to look at me out of the +faces of the living too. + +The faces go hurrying past me, worlds apart. Most people, I imagine, who +read these pages must have noticed the people's faces in the streets +nowadays--how they seem to have come out of separate worlds into the +street a moment, and hurry past, and seem to be going back in a moment +more to separate worlds. + +There is hardly even a village footway left anywhere to-day where one +cannot see these two worlds, or the spirit of these two worlds, flitting +past one through the streets in people's faces, and nightly before our +eyes, struggling with each other to possess, to swallow away into itself +human souls, to master the fate of man upon the earth. + +One of these is the World of the Hand-made; the other is the +Machine-made World. + + * * * * * + +As day by day I watch these two worlds with all their people in them +flocking past me, I have come to have certain momentary but recurrent +resentments and attractions, unaccountable strong emotions; and when I +try afterward to rationalize my emotions, as a man should, and give an +account of them to myself, and get them ready to use and face my age +with, and make myself strong and fit to live in an age, I find myself +with a great task before me. And yet one must do it; one cannot live in +an age strongly and fitly if one would rather be living in some other +age, or if it is an age with two worlds in it and one cannot make up +one's mind which is the world one wants and settle down quietly and live +in it. Then a strange thing happens, and always happens the moment I +begin to try to decide which of the two--the Hand-made World or the +Machine-made World--I will choose. I find that in an odd, confused, +groping, obstinate way I am bound to choose them both. In spite of all +its ugly ways--a kind of vast indifference it has to me, to everybody, +its magnificent heartlessness--I find I have come to take in the +Machine-made World a kind of boundless, half-secret pride and joy, for a +terrible and strange beauty there is in it. And then, too, even if I +wanted to give it up, I could not: neither I nor any man, nor all the +world combined, could unthink to-day a hundred years, fold up a hundred +thousand miles of railway, tuck modern life all neatly up again in a +little, old, snug, safe, lovable Hand-made World. There must be some way +out, some connecting link between the Hand-made and the Machine-made. We +have merely lost it for a moment. + +Which way shall we turn? And so at last to the little Thing through +which the whole world whispers to me on my desk, to the mighty railways +that beckon past my door, to the airships that cannot be stilled, and to +the rolling mills that will not be silenced, I turn at last! I turn to +the Machines Themselves. Half-singing and half-cursing, I have faced +them. There is some way in which they can answer and can be made to +answer--can be made to give me and the men about me the kind of world we +want. I try to analyze it and think it out. What is the thing, the real +thing in the Hand-made World, that fills me with pride and joy, and that +I cannot and will not give up? Is not the real thing that is in it +something that can be or might be freed from it, exhaled from it, +something that might be in some new form saved, made an atmosphere or a +spirit and passed on? And what is it in the new Machine-made World +which, in spite of the splendid joy, a rough new, wild religion there is +in it, keeps daily filling me as I go past machines with this +contradictory obstinate dread of them? After a time I have made a little +cleared space in my mind, a little breathing room. It has come to me +from thinking that what is beautiful in the Hand-made World perhaps is +not these particular Hand-made things themselves at which I so delight, +but the Hand-made spirit of the men who made them which the men put into +the things. And perhaps what is full of death and fear in the +Machine-made World is not the machines themselves, but the Machine-made +spirit in which the men who run the machines have made the machines +work. Perhaps the Hand-made spirit is pervasive, eternal. Perhaps it can +escape like a spirit, and can live where it will live, and do what it +will do, like a spirit, and possess the body that it wills to possess. +Perhaps the Hand-made spirit is still living around me to-day, and is +not only living, but is living in a more unspeakable, unbounded body +than any spirit has ever lived in before, and is to-day before our eyes, +laying its huge iron fingers around our little earth, and holding the +oceans in its hand, and brushing away mountains with a breath, until we +have Man at last playing all night through the sky, with visions and +airships and telescopes. His very words walk on the air with soft and +unseen feet. + +It is the Hand-made spirit that creates machines. The machines +themselves are still the mighty children of the men who move and work in +the Hand-made spirit; and the men who glory in them, the men who bring +them forth, who think them out, and who create them, and who do the +great and mighty things with them, are still the Hand-made men. + + * * * * * + +This leads us up to the question we are all asking ourselves every day. +"How can a machine-made world be run in the spirit of a hand-made +world?" The particular form in which the question has been put, which is +taken from "Inspired Millionaires" is as follows: + +"The idea that there is something in a machine simply as a machine which +makes it inherently unspiritual is based upon the experience of the +world; but it is, after all, a rather amateur and juvenile world with +machines as yet. Its ideas are in their first stages, and are based for +the most part upon the world's experience with second-rate men, working +in second-rate factories--men who have been bullied, and could be +bullied, by the machines they worked with into being machines +themselves. No one would think of denying that men who let machines get +the better of them, either in their minds or their bodies, in any walk +of life, grow unspiritual and mechanical. But it does not take a machine +to make a machine out of a man. Anything will do it if the man will let +it. Even the farmer who is out under the great free dome of heaven, and +working in wonder every day of his life, grows like a clod if he buries +his soul alive in the soil. But farming has been tried many thousands of +years, and the other kind of farmer is known by everybody--the farmer +who is master over the soil; who, instead of becoming an expression of +the soil himself, makes the soil express him. The next thing that is +going to happen is that every one is going to know the other kind of +mechanic. It is cheerfully admitted that the kind of mechanic we largely +have now, who allows himself to be a watcher of a machine, a +turner-of-something for forty years, can hardly be classed as vegetable +life. He is not even organic matter except in a very small part of +himself. + +"But it is not the mechanical machine which makes the man unspiritual. +It is the mechanical man beside the machine. A master at a piano (which +is a machine) makes it a spiritual thing; and a master at a +printing-press, like William Morris, makes it a free and artistic and +self-expressive thing." + +I spent a day a little while ago in walking through a factory. I went +past miles of machines--great glass roofs of sunshine over them--and +looked in the faces of thousands of men. As I went through the machines +I kept looking to and fro between the machines and the men who stood +beside them, and sometimes I came back and looked again at the machines +and the men beside them; and every machine, or nearly every machine, I +saw (any one could see it in that factory) was making a man of somebody. +One could see the spirit of the man who invented the machine, and the +spirit of the man who worked with it, and the spirit of the man who +owned it and who placed it there with the man, all softly, powerfully +running together. There were exceptions, and every now and then one +came, of course, upon the man who seemed to be simply another and +somewhat different contrivance or attachment to his machine--some part +that had been left over and thought of last, and had not been done as +well as the others; but the factory, taken as a whole, from the +manager's offices and the great counting-room, and from the tall +chimneys to the dump, seemed to me to have something fresh and human and +unwonted about it. It seemed to be a factory that had a look, a look of +its own. It was like a vast countenance. It had features, an expression. +It had an air--well, one must say it, of course, if one is driven to it: +the factory had a soul, and was humming it. Any one could have seen why +by going into his office and talking a little while with the owner, or +by even not talking to him--by seeing him look up from his desk. After +walking through several miles of his personality, and up and down and +down and up the corridors of his mind, one did not really need to meet +him except as a matter of form and as a finishing touch. One had been +visiting with him all along: to look in his face was merely to sum it +up, to see it all, the whole place, over again in one look. One did not +need to be surprised; one might have known what such a man would be +like--that such a factory could only be conceived and wrought by a man +of genius, a kind of lighted-up man. A man who had put not only +skylights in his buildings, but skylights in his men, would have to have +a skylight in himself (a skylight with a motor attachment, of course). + +If one were to try to think in nature or in art of something that would +be like him--well, some kind of transcendental engine, I should say, +running softly, smoothly outdoors in a great sunshine, would have given +one a good idea of him. But, however this may be, it certainly would +have been quite impossible to go through his factory and ever say again +that machines do not and could not have souls, or at least over-souls, +and that men who worked with machines did not and could not have souls +as fast as they were allowed to. + +A few days later I went through another factory, and I came out weary +and spent at night, feeling as unreasonable and almost as hateful about +machines, and as discouraged about the people who had to work with them +as John Ruskin did in those first early days when the Factory Chimney +first lifted its long black flag upon our earth, and bullied great +cities into cowards and slaves, and all the great, quiet-hearted +nations, and began making for us--all around us, before our eyes, as +though in a kind of jeer at us, and at our queer, pretty, helpless +little religions--the hell we had ceased to believe in. + +The hell is here, and is going to be here apparently as long as may be +necessary for us to see it and believe in it once more. If a hell on our +own premises, shut down hard over our lives here and now, is what is +necessary to make us religious and human once more, if we are reduced to +it, and if having a hard, literal hell--one of our own--is our only way +of seeing things, of fighting our way through to the truth, and of +getting once more decisive, manful, commanding ideas of good and evil, I +for one can only be glad we have Pittsburgs and Sheffields to hurry us +along and soon have it over with. + +But while, like Ruskin, any one can look about the machines and see +hell, he can see hell to-day, unlike Ruskin, with heaven lined up close +beside it. The machines have come to have souls. The machines we can see +all about us have taken sides. We can all of us see the machines about +us to-day like vast looms, weaving in and weaving out the fate of the +world, the fate of the churches, the fate of the women and the little +children, and the very fate of God; and everything about us we can see +turning at last on what we are doing with the machines that are about +us, and what we are letting our machines do with us. + + * * * * * + +It has cleared my mind, and at least helped me to live side by side with +machines better from day to day, to consider what these two souls or +spirits in the machines are, and what they are doing and likely to do. +If one knows them and one sees them, and sees how they are working, it +is easier to take sides and join in and help. + +It would seem to me that there are two spirits in machinery--the spirit +of weariness, weakness, of inventing ways of getting out of work; and +there is the spirit in the machines, too, of moving mountains, +conquering the sea and air, of working harder and lifting one's work +over to more heroic, to more splendid and difficult, and almost +impossible things. It is these two spirits that are fighting for the +possession and control of our machine civilization. I watch the machines +and the men beside them and see which side they are on. The labourer who +is doing as little work as he dares for his wages and the capitalist who +is giving as little service as he dares for his money are on the one +side (the vast, lazy, mean majority of employers and employees), and +there may be seen standing on the other side against them, battling for +our world, another small but mighty group made up of the labourer who +loves his work more than his wages, and the capitalist who loves the +thing he makes more than the profit. In other words, the fate of our +modern civilization, with all its marvellous machines on it, its art +galleries and its churches, is all hanging to-day on the battle between +the spirit of achievement, the spirit of creating things, and the spirit +of weariness or the spirit of thinking of ways of getting out of things. + +It does not take very long to see which one prefers when one considers +the problem of living in one world or the other. If we are to take our +choice between living in a world run by tired men and a world run by +inspired ones, most of us will have little difficulty in deciding which +we would prefer, and which one we are bound to have. I have been moved +to come forward with the idea of inspired employers--or, as I have +called it, "Inspired Millionaires"--because it would seem to me inspired +employers are the very least we can ask for; for certainly if even our +employers cannot be inspired or rested and strong, we cannot expect +their overworked workmen to be. There is no hope for us but to write +our books and to live our lives in such a way as to help put the world +in the hands of the Strong, and to help keep its institutions and +customs out of the hands of the overworked. Overworked mechanical +employers and overworked labourers are the last men to solve the problem +of the overworked, except in a small, tired, mean, resentful, temporary +way. + +And so, as I look about me and watch the machines and the men who are +working with the machines, or owning them, it is on this principle that +I find myself taking sides. I will not live, if I can help it, in a +world that is conceived and arranged and managed by tired and overworked +and mechanical men. Have I not seen tired, mechanical men, whole +generations of them, vast mobs of them, the men who have let the +machines mow down their souls? The first thing I have come to ask of a +man, if he is to be at the head of a machine--whether it is a machine +called a factory, or a machine called a Government or a city, or a +machine called a nation--is, _Is he tired?_ I have cast my lot once for +all--and as it seems to me, too, the lot of the world--with those men +who are rested, with the surplus men, the men who want to work more not +less, who are still and gentle and strong in their hearts, steady in +their imaginations, great men--men who are not driven to being +self-centred or driven to being class-centred, who can be world-centred +and inspired. + + * * * * * + +When one has made this decision, that one will work for a world in +control of men who are strong, one suddenly is brought face to face with +a fact in our machine civilization which probably is quite new, and +which the spirit of man has never had to face in any age before. + +For the first time in the history of the world, machinery has made it +possible for the world to get into the hands of the weak. + +The Gun began it--the gun in a coward's hands may side with the weak, +and the machine in the hands of the weak may temporarily give the world +a list or a trend, and leave it leaning on the wrong side. + +The Trust, for instance, which is really an extremely valuable +invention, and perhaps, on the whole, the most important machine of +modern times when it is used to defend the rights of the people, is a +very different thing when it is pointed at them. We have to-day, not +unnaturally, the spectacle of perhaps nine people out of ten getting up +and saying in chorus all through the world that Trusts ought to be +abolished; and yet it cannot honestly be said that there is really +anything about the trust-machine--any more than any other machine--that +is inherently wicked, or mechanical and heartless. Our real objection to +the trust-machines is not to the machines themselves, but to the fact +that they are, or happen to be (judging each Trust by itself), in the +hands of the weak and of the tired--of men, that is, who have no spirit, +no imagination about people; mechanical-minded men, who, at least in the +past, have taken the easiest and laziest course in business--that of +making all the money they can. + +The moment we see the Trusts in the hands of the strong men, the men who +are unwilling to slump back into mere money-making, and who face daily +with hardihood and with joy the feat of weaving into business several +strands of value at once, making things and making money and making men +together, the Trust will become a vast machine of human happiness, +lifting up and pulling on the world for all of us day and night. + +If our labouring men to-day are to be got out from under the machines, +we can only bring it to pass by doing everything we can in directors' +meetings or in labor unions or as buyers or as journalists--whatever we +may be--to keep the trust-machines in this world out of the hands of the +tired, weak, and mechanical-minded men. + +And the things that have been happening to the trust-machines, or are +about to happen to them, have happened and are beginning to happen +before our eyes to the machines themselves. The machines of flame and +iron wheels and men in monstrous factories which the philosophers and +the poets and the very preachers have doomed our world with are passing +through the same evolution as the trust-machines, and shall be seen at +last through the dim struggle yielding themselves, bending their iron +wills to the same indomitable human spirit, the same slow, stern, +implacable will of the soul of man. They shall be inspired machines. + +Now for a long time we have seen (for the most part) the weak and +mechanical-minded employer, the man who takes the line of least +resistance in business, on every hand about us, making his employees +mechanical-minded. The men have not been able to work without machines +to work with, and as they have been obliged to come to him to get the +machines, he has adopted the policy of letting himself fall into the +weakest and easiest way of keeping his men under his own control. He +takes the machines the men have come to him to get, and turns them back +against them, points them at their lives, stops their minds with them, +their intelligence and manhood, the very hope and religion with which +they live; and of course, when men have had machines pointed at them +long enough, one sees them on every hand being mowed down in rows into +machines themselves--as deadly and as hopeless to make a civilization +out of, or a nation out of, or to give votes to, or to have for fathers +as machines would be, as iron or leather or wood. + +In the meantime, however, we seem to have been developing--partly by +competition and partly by combination and by experience--employers who +are not mechanical-minded, who have spirit themselves, and who believe +in it and can use it in others; who find ways of adjusting the hours, +the wages, and the conditions of work for the men, so that what is most +valuable in them, their spirit, their imaginations, their hourly +good-will, can all be turned into the business, can all daily be used as +the most important part of the working equipment of the factory. These +employers have found (by believing it long enough to try it) that live +men can do better and more marketable work than dead ones. If the great +slow-moving majority of our modern machine employers were not +mechanical-minded, it would not be necessary to prove to them +categorically the little platitude (which even people who have observed +cab-horses know) that the living is more valuable than the half-dead, +and that live men can do better and more marketable work than half-dead +ones. + +But, of course, if they are not convinced by imagination or by arguments +or by figures, they may have to be convinced by losing their business; +for the most spirited employers, those who take the more difficult and +creative course of making money and men together, are sure to be the +employers who will get and keep the most spirited men, and are sure to +crowd out of the market in their own special line employers who can only +get and keep mechanical-minded ones. + + * * * * * + +It would be hard to overstate the importance of the battle now going on +among the trades unions between the spirited labourers and the tired +ones, and among the manufacturers between the inspired employers and the +mechanical-minded ones. + +For the time being, at least, it is the inspired employers who have most +power to change the conditions of labour and to free the +mechanical-minded slaves. It is they who are standing to-day on the +great strategical ground of our time. They hold the pass of human life. +People cannot expect to be inspired in crowds. Crowds are too unwieldy +and too inconvenient to act quickly. The people can only concentrate +their energies on getting and demanding inspired employers, on +insisting that the men who for eight or nine hours a day are pouring in +with their wages their thoughts, and their motives, the very hope with +which they live, into their lives, shall be the champions of the people, +shall represent them and act for them, as they are not placed to act for +themselves, and with more imagination than they can yet expect to have +for themselves. If our labouring men of to-day are going to struggle out +from under the machines, they can only do it by doing all that they can +in labour unions and in the press and at the polls to keep the machines +in this world out of the hands of tired and mechanical-minded owners. + +But probably the more immediate rescue from the evil or mechanicalness +in machines is not going to come from the employers on the one hand or +the employees on the other, but from having the employees in the Trades +Unions and the employers in the directors' meetings combining together +to keep in subordinate places where they cannot hurt others all men, +whether directors or employees, who do not work harder than they have +to, and who have not the brains to do their work for something besides +money. The men who are like this will of course be pitied and duly +considered, but they will be kept where they will not have power to +control other men, or where by force of position or by mere majority +they will be able to bully other men to work as mechanically as they do. +Workmen who do not want to become machines can only better conditions by +combination with so-called inspired employers--employers who work harder +than they have to, who dote on the great human difficulties of work, who +choose not the easiest but the most perfect way of doing things, who are +never mechanical themselves, and will not let their men be if they can +help it. I have liked to call these employers inspired millionaires. I +would rather have the machine owner or employer a millionaire, because +the more machines an inspired employer can own, the more he can buy and +get away from the uninspired ones, the sooner will the right of labour +and the will of the people be accomplished. When the machines are in +the hands of inspired and strong and spirited men--men of real +competence or genius for business, the machines will be seen on every +hand around us as the engines of war against evil, against slavery, the +whirling weapons of the Spirit. + +Even now, in dreams have I stood and watched them--the will of the +people like a flail in their mighty hands--this vast army of +machines--go thundering past, driving the uninspired and mechanical off +the face of the earth. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +THE STRIKE--AN INVENTION FOR MAKING CROWDS THINK + + +When I was arranging to slip over from New York and get something I very +much wanted in England last spring, I found myself held up suddenly in +all my plans because some men on the docks had decided that there was +something that they wanted too. They decided that I and thousands of +other people in New York would have to wait over on the shores of +America until they got it. + +After postponing my plans until things had settled down, I took passage, +and in due time found myself standing on English soil, only to be +informed that, while I might be allowed perhaps at least to stand on +English soil, that was really as much as I could expect. I could not go +anywhere because a number of men on the railways had decided that there +was something they wanted and that I would have to wait till they got +it. + +I could go down and look at the silent, cold locomotives on the rails, +and I could be as wistful and hopeful as I liked about getting up to +London, but these men had decided that there was something that they +wanted and I must wait. + +I could not think of anything I had ever done to these men, and what had +Liverpool and London done to them? + +After I was duly settled in London, and had begun to get into its little +ways, and was busily driving about and attending to my business as I had +planned, 6,000 more men suddenly wanted something, brought me up to a +full stop one rainy day, and said that they had decided that if I wanted +to ride I would have to walk, or that I would have to poke dismally +about in a 'bus, or worm my way through under the ground. As I +understood it, there was something that they wanted and something that +they were going to get; and while of course in a way, they recognized +that there might be something that I wanted too, I would have to wait +till they got theirs. + +I could not think of anything I had ever done to them, nor could I see +what the thousands of other good people in London that I saw walking and +puddling about, or watched waiting twenty minutes or so with long, +hopeful, dogged whistles for cabs, had done to them. + +A few days more, and my morning paper tells me suddenly of some more men +who wanted something--this time up in Lancashire. They had decided that +they wouldn't let some two or three hundred thousand other men go to +their work until they got it. They hushed cities to have their own way. +Day by day I watched them throwing the silence of the cities in their +employers' faces, closing shops, closing up railroads, telling the world +it must pay more for the clothes on its back, and all because--a certain +Mr. and Mrs. Riley of Accrington, North Lancashire did not like or did +not think that they liked, the North Lancashire Trades Union. (The +general idea seemed to be to have all the others join in, +everywhere--fifty-four million spindles, and four hundred and forty +thousand looms--and wait and keep perfectly still until Mr. and Mrs. +Riley could make up their minds.) + +And now this present week, morning after morning I take up my paper and +read that 500,000 miners want something. I look in my fire dubiously day +by day. I may have to go home to America in a few weeks to get warm. + +Of course it is only fair to say at the outset that this little series +of impressions, or sketches, as one may say, of Civilization as I have +seen it since arriving in England are of such a nature that I need not +have come over to England to observe them. I would be the last to deny +that the same conveniences for being disagreeable and for getting in the +way and for making a general muss of Life can be offered almost any +time in my own hopeful and blundering country. + +What more immediately concerns me in these things is that, having +happened, there can be no doubt that they have some valuable and worthy +meaning for me and for other people that I ought to get out of them. + +One cannot stand by and see a great civilization like our +English-speaking civilization, with its ocean liners, cathedrals, and +aeroplanes, being undignified and inefficient before one's eyes and even +a little ridiculous, without trying to see if it does not serve some +purpose. There must be something beyond, something further and deeper, +something newborn about it, which shall be worth our while. Strikes seem +to be common people's way of thinking things out. If they had more +imagination, they would know what they were going to think beforehand, +without so much trouble perhaps; but so long as they have not, and so +long as it is really true perhaps that all these millions of levers and +wheels and engines will have to be stopped, so that the rich +mechanical-minded people who own them and the poor mechanical-minded +people who work with them can think better, we will have to be glad at +least that they are thinking, and we will have to hope that they are +thinking fast, and will soon have it over with. In the meantime, while +they are thinking, we can think too. + +It is never fair to lump people together, and there are always +exceptions and special reasons to consider; but, speaking roughly, it is +fair to lay it down as a general principle that it is apt to be the more +common kind of employers and employees who find it difficult to think, +and who need strikes to think with. When we see 175,000 weavers striking +in Lancashire, and the Trades Unions insisting on the discharge of +Non-Union men, and employers being willing to recognize the Unions but +being unwilling to be controlled by them, most of us find ourselves +taking sides very quickly. We are often amazed to see how quickly we +take sides, and what amazes some of us most is our apparent +inconsistency. We find ourselves now on the Union side and now on the +employer side in the dispute between Capital and Labour. We never know +when we take up the morning paper, some of us, which side will be our +next; and very often, if we were suddenly asked why, on reading quietly +about a new dispute in the morning paper, we had taken promptly one side +rather than the other, almost unconsciously, before we knew it we would +not perhaps be able to say at once. The other day I became a little +alarmed at myself at what looked at first like a kind of moral weakness, +and inability to stand still on one side or the other in the contest +between Labour and Capital; and I tried to think my way sternly through, +and decide why it was my mind seemed to waver from one side to the +other, and seemed so inconsistent and inefficient. + +It seems to me I have just discovered a certain thread of consistency, +as I look back over many disputes. + +As near as I can remember, I find the side that uses force, or that uses +the most force, invariably turns me against it. If, as I read, I find +that both sides are using force, I find myself against both sides. I +find myself wishing, in spite of my dislike of Socialism, that the +nation had the power, when a quarrelsome industry turns to the people in +the street and stops them in what they are doing, and tells the people +in the street that they cannot ride, or that they shall not sleep, or +that they cannot eat--when a quarrelsome industry insists on keeping the +whole world up all night because it has a Stomach Ache, I feel suddenly +that the people ought to be able to take the industry away and put it +into such hands that the people in the streets will be protected; into +hands that will make the industry behave so that it won't have a stomach +ache. An industry with a stomach ache always has it because somebody in +it has been over-eating and getting more than their share, and is +incompetent and unfit; and obviously it should have its freedom, its +privilege of selecting its food, taken away from it until it behaves. + +Always allowing for exceptions, we may put it down as a general truth +that, when we find a cause using force or mere advantage of position, it +is because there is incompetence or lack of brains in those who conduct +it, and the cure lies, not in more force, but in more brains. One cannot +help being angered by force, because one knows that it is not only not a +remedy, but is itself the cause of all incompetence and blindness in +business. Force merely heaps the incompetence and blindness up, +postpones cooeperation, defeats the mutual interest which is the very +substance of business efficiency in a nation. Force is itself the injury +mounting up more and more, which it seeks to cure. + +The most likely way to prevent industrial trouble would seem to be to +have employers and managers and foremen who have a genius for getting +men to trust and believe in them. We are getting smoke-consumers, +computing machines, and the next contrivance is going to be the employer +who has the understanding spirit, and who sees the cash value of human +genius, the value in the market of genius for being fair and getting on +with people. Arbitration boards are at best (as they themselves would +say) stupid and negative things, and though better than nothing, as a +rule merely postpone evil or change symptoms. No one can ever really +arbitrate for any one else either in industry or marriage except for a +moment. The trouble lies deep down inside the people who keep needing +arbitration. As long as these people are still there, and as long as +incompetent employers or employees are there, there is bound to be +trouble. + +Turning out incompetent employers and incompetent labourers is the only +way. We are getting rid of them as rapidly as possible. All business in +the last resort turns on brains for being human and understanding +people. Business, as people say, is partly business and business is +partly economics, but more than anything else, in modern times, business +is psychology. + +Success is the science of being believed in. Incompetent employers and +incompetent labourers are already being turned out, and are bound to be +turned out implacably more and more, by the competitive nature of modern +business. Under present conditions, if we have in each industry one +single competent employing firm, with brains for being fair and brains +for being far-sighted, and for being thoughtful of others--in short, +with brains for being believed in--the control of that industry soon +falls into their hands. People who use force instead of brains are +second-rate, are out of the spirit of the times, and are going by. And +this seems to be the spirit, too, which is to govern the more efficient +Labour Unions as well as the more efficient Trusts. + +If it were possible to collect the names in England and America of the +men in each industry where brains were being personally believed in, we +would have a list of the leaders of England and America for the next +fifty years. Having a soul in business pays, not because it affords a +fine motive power, but because it affords a practical and conclusive +method of driving the devil out of business. He is being driven out of +industry, one industry at a time, by men who get on better without him; +and this is going to go on until the ability to do this--to crowd out +the devil, to get the devil out of machines and factories, out of the +machinery of organization--the power to keep the devil out of things and +out of people, is recognized by everybody as the greatest, most subtle, +most victorious and universal market-value in the world. The men who can +be believed in most will get the most business, and, what is still more +important, the men who can make men believe in them most will be able to +hire the employees who can be believed in most, and will get a monopoly +of the efficiency of the world; and though the men who can be believed +in less may be able to continue for a time to do their work and go +through all their old motions as well as they can, with all their old +lumbering, pathetic machinery of watching each other and suspecting each +other and fighting each other humped up on their backs, they can never +hope to compete with free-moving, honest men, who deal directly and +openly and in a few words for their employees, jobbers, consumers, and +the public, without any vast machinery of suspicion to bother with. It +is a most curious, local, temporary, back-county idea, the idea that, +for sheer industrial economy, for simple cheap conclusive finance, there +is anything on earth in business that will take the place of +old-fashioned human personal prestige--the prestige of the man who has a +genius for being believed in. + +In a way, perhaps the recent strike among the London cabmen is an +instance of what is really the essential issue in every strike. The +bottom fact about the taxi chauffeurs, stated simply, was that they did +not believe in their employers. They believed that, if the precise +figures were known, their employers were getting more than their share. +On the other hand, the bottom fact about the employers was that they did +not and could not believe that, if the precise figures were known, the +cabmen were not getting more than their share. They insisted that the +cabmen should publish, or make known, the precise figures of their +extras. The cabmen declined to do it, and it made them look for the +moment perhaps as if they were wrong. But were they necessarily wrong? +Was it really true that they had any more reason to trust their +employers than their employers had to trust them? The cabmen might quite +honestly and justly have said to the owners: "What we want is an honest, +impeccable little dividend-recorder fastened on the back of every owner, +as well as on our machines and on us. Then we will publish our extras." + +The determining and important fact of economics in the last analysis +always turns out to be some human fact, some fact about people. It is +really true that just now, in the present half-stage of +machine-industry, employers should nearly all be compelled to go about +in this world with fare-recorders on their backs. Employees too. This +would be the logical thing to do; and as it is impracticable, and as +every business must have certain elements of secrecy in it in order to +be competent, the only alternative is to have in charge men with enough +genius for being believed in and for taking measures to be believed +in--to keep employees believing in them, in spite of secrecy. Under +these conditions, it cannot be long before we will see in every business +the men being put forward on both sides who have a genius for being +believed in. Managers and superintendents will be put in office +everywhere who see the cash value, the economy, of the simple, +old-fashioned power in a man of a genius for being believed in; +employers with the power of inspiring more and better work from their +workmen; Labour men with the power of inspiring employers to believe in +them, of inspiring their employers to put up money, stock, or profits on +their belief--on the belief that workmen are capable of the highest +qualities of manhood: hard work, loyalty, persistence, and faith toward +a common end. I have preferred to have this inspired employer a +millionaire, because the more capital he has the more men he can employ, +and the more rapidly the other kind of millionaire, the blind, +old-fashioned butter of Labour, will be driven out of business. + +Little can be done with one book, but at this special juncture, this +psychological moment for copartnership and the spirit of copartnership, +when all the world is touched to the quick by great strikes--at a time +when one can sit still and almost hear the nations think--there are some +of us who hope that the case we are trying to make out for copartnership +between Capital and Labour will be of use to those who are trying to do +things, and who for the moment find themselves foiled at every point by +men who have given up believing in human nature. We wish to put +ourselves on record, and to say that we do believe in human nature, and +that we believe not only that the inspired employer is going to be +evolved by the Crowd, but that the Crowd is going to recognize him and +is going to take sides with him, and that the Crowd is going to justify +him, make him succeed, is going to make his success its own success. In +other words, we believe in heroes, crowds, and goodness; in men of +heroic gifts--who are fit and meet to interpret the wills and desires +of crowds--who are great men or Crowd-Men, crowds in spirit themselves. + +I would like to try to express the type of modern man who, as it seems +to me, is about to prove himself the real ruler of our modern world, the +silent master of what the crowds shall think. It has seemed to me that +it is going to be a man of a marked type, and of a particular +temperament, to whom we will have to look in our new and crowded world +for the crowd-interpreter, or man who touches the imagination of crowds. + +As our whole labour problem to-day turns on our being able to touch the +imagination of Crowds, it may not be uninteresting in the next chapter +to consider what a man who can do this will probably be like and the +spirit in which he will do it. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +THE CROWD-MAN--AN INVENTION FOR MAKING CROWDS SEE + + +When Wilbur Wright flew around the Statue of Liberty in New York the +other day, his doing it was a big event; but a still bigger event, as it +seems to some of us, was the way he felt about New York when he did it. +All New York could not make him show off. Hundreds of thousands of +people on roofs could look up at the sky over New York, for him to go +by, all that they liked. He slipped down to Washington without saying +anything, on the 3:25 train, to attend to flying as part of the serious +business of the world. + +Why fly around a little town like New York, or show your bright wings in +the light, or circle the Statue of Liberty for fun, when you are +reconstructing civilization, and binding a whole planet together, and +wrapping the heavens close down around the earth, and making railroads +everywhere out of the air? New York is always a little superficial and +funny about itself. All it needs to do, it seems to think, is to snap +its fingers at a man of genius anywhere on this broad world, whisper to +him pleasantly, and he will trot promptly up, of course, and do his +little turn for it. + +But not Wilbur Wright. Wilbur Wright would not give two million people +an encore, or even come back to bow. As one looked over from Mount Tom +one could see all New York black and solid on the tops of its roofs and +houses looking up into a great hole of air for him, and Wilbur Wright +slipping quietly off down to Washington and leaving them there, a whole +great city under the sky, with its heads up! + +A little experience like this has been what New York has needed for a +long time. It takes a scientist to do these things. I wish there were +some poet who would do as well. Even a prophet up above New York--or +seer of men and of years--glinting his wings in the light, the New York +_Sun_ and the _World_ and the _Times_ down below, all their opera-glasses +trained on him, and all those little funny reporters running helplessly +about, all the people pouring out from Doctor Parkhurst's church to +look up.... It would be something. + +Probably there are very few capitals in the world--Paris, Berlin, or +London--that would not be profoundly stirred and possibly much improved +by having some man suddenly appear up over them, who would be so +interested in what he was doing that he would forget to notice whether +anybody was looking--who would be capable of slipping off quietly and +leaving an entire city with its heads up, and going on and attending to +business. + +There have been times when we would have been relieved, some of us, if +the North Pole could have been discovered in this way and without large +audiences tagging. There are some of us who will never cease to regret +as long as we live that the North Pole could not have waited a little. +We would rather have had Wilbur Wright discover it. One can imagine how +he would do it: fly gracefully up to it all by himself, and discover it +some pleasant evening, and have it over with, and slip back on his soft +wings in the night, and not say anything about it. It is this Wilbur +Wright spirit that I would like to dwell on in these pages. It seems to +me it is a true modern spirit, the spirit which alone could make our +civilization great, and the spirit which alone could make crowds great. +It was the crowd that spoiled the way the Pole was discovered--all the +millions of people, vast, thoughtless audiences piling in and making a +show of it. Many people in America, all the vast crowds reading about +it, seemed to feel that they were more important than the Pole; and when +Captain Peary came back, vast crowds of these same people paid as much +as five dollars apiece for the privilege of being in the same room with +him. It was quite impossible not to contrast Captain Peary in his +attitude toward the crowd and Wilbur Wright. There seemed to be, and +there will always remain, a certain vulgarity in the way the North Pole +was discovered, and the way the whole world behaved in regard to it, and +the secret seems to have been in Captain Peary's failure to be a Wilbur +Wright. He allowed the Pole to be a Crowd affair. All the while as he +went about the country holding his little exhibits of the tip of the +planet we could not help wishing, many of us who were in the Audience, +that this man who sat there before us, the man who had the Thing in his +hand, who had collected the North Pole, would not notice us, would snub +us if need be a little, and would leave these people, these millions of +people, with their heads up and go quietly on to the South Pole and +collect that. It is because there are thousands of men who understand +just how Wilbur Wright felt when he slipped away the other day in New +York and left the entire city with its heads up that we have every +reason to expect that the crowd is to produce great leaders, and is to +become a great crowd, great and humble in spirit before God, before the +stars, and the atoms, and the microbes, and before Itself. In the +meantime, however, we see all about us in the world countless would-be +leaders of the crowd, who would perhaps not quite understand the way +Wilbur Wright felt that day when he slipped away from New York and left +the entire city with its heads up. Most newspaper men--men who are in +the habit of writing for a crowd and regarding a crowd quite +respectfully--will have wondered a little why Wilbur Wright could have +let such a crowd go by. Most actors and theatrical people would have +stayed over a train or so and given one more little performance with all +those wistful people on the roof-tops. There are only a very few +clergymen in England or America to-day who, with a great audience like +that and so many men in it, would ever have thought of slipping off on +the 3:25 train in the way Wilbur Wright did. The ministers and the +politicians of all countries are still wondering a little--if they ever +thought of it--how Wright did it. Most of the other people in the world +wonder a little, too, but I imagine that the great inventors of the +world who read about it the next morning did not wonder. The true +scientists, in this country and in Germany and in France, all understood +just how Wilbur Wright felt when he left New York with its heads up. The +great artists of the world, in literature, in painting, and +architecture; the great railroad builders, the city builders, the nation +builders, the great statesmen, the great biologists, and chemists, +understood. James J. Hill, with his face toward the Pacific, understood. +Alexander Graham Bell, out abroad doing the listening and talking and +thinking the thoughts of eighty million people, understood. Marconi, +making the ships whisper across the sea, and William G. McAdoo, shooting +a hundred and seventy thousand people a day through a hole under the +Hudson--understood. + +And God, when He made the world. And Columbus when he discovered +America. And Jesus Christ when He was so happy and so preoccupied over +His vision of a new world, over inventing Christianity, that it seemed a +very small and incidental thing to die on the Cross--He understood. + +Wilbur Wright's secret was that he had a vision. His vision was that a +human being could be greater and more powerful than the world had ever +believed before. + +Just to be there was a great thought, to be allowed to be one of those +admitted, to be present at the first faint beginning, the first still +alighting of the human spirit from the earth upon the sky. Wilbur Wright +made the most ordinary man a genius a minute. He made him wonder softly +who he was--and the people all about him--who were they? and what would +they think, and what would they do next? The first flash of light on the +wings was a thousand years. It was as if almost for a moment he saw at +last the whole earth about him. History, churches, factories on it, +slipping out of its cocoon at last--its little, old, faded, tied-down +cocoon, and sailing upon the air--sailing with him, sailing with the +churches, with the factories, and with the schools, with History, +through the Invisible, through the Intangible--out to the Sun.... + + * * * * * + +Perhaps the reason that New York was a great city a few minutes the +other day when Wilbur Wright was there was that Wilbur Wright had a new +vision in the presence of all those men of something that they could do. +He touched the imagination of men about themselves. They were profoundly +moved because they saw him in their presence inventing a new kind and +new size of human being. He raised the standard of impossibility, and +built an annex on to the planet while they looked; took a great strip +off of space three miles wide and folded it softly on to the planet all +the way round before their eyes. For three miles more--three miles +farther up above the ground--there was a space where human beings would +have to stop saying, "I can't," and "You can't," and "We can't." If +people want to say "I can't," and "You can't," they will have to say it +farther and farther away from this planet now. Let them try Mars. The +modern imagination takes to impossibilities naturally with Wilbur Wright +against the horizon. The thing we next cannot believe is the next thing +to expect. + +Nobody would have believed ten years ago that an architect could be +invented who would tell a man that his house would cost him thirty +thousand dollars, and then hand him back two thousand dollars when he +had finished it. But the man had been invented--he invented himself. + +He represents the owner, and does as the owner would be done by if he +did it himself--if he had the technical knowledge and the time to do it. + +Nobody would have believed a few years ago that a railway president, +when he had occasion to reduce the wages of several thousand employees +10 per cent., would begin by reducing his own salary 30 per cent., and +the salary of all the officials all the way down 15 per cent., or 20 per +cent. + +Nobody would have believed some time ago that an organizing inventor +would be evolved who would meet his directors and tell them that, if +they would have their work done in their mills in three shifts instead +of two, the men would work so much better that it would not cost the +Company more than 10 per cent. more to offer the better conditions. But +such an organizing inventor has been invented, and has proved his case. + +Luther Burbank has made a chestnut tree eighteen months old bear +chestnuts; and it has always taken from ten to twenty-five years to make +a tree furnish its first chestnut before. About the same time that +Luther Burbank had succeeded in doing this with chestnuts a similar type +of man, who was not particularly interested in chestnuts and wanted to +do something with human nature, who believed that human nature could +really be made to work, found a certain staple article that everybody +needs every day in a state of anarchy in the market. The producers were +not making anything on it. The wholesalers dealt in it without a profit, +and the retailers sold it without a profit, and merely because the other +things they sold were worthless without it. + +----, who was the leading wholesale dealer and in the best position to +act, pointed out that, if the business was organized and everybody in it +would combine with everybody else and make it a monopoly, the price +could be made lower, and everybody would make money. + +Of course this was a platitude. + +It was also a platitude that human nature was not good enough, and could +not be trusted to work properly in a monopoly. + +---- then proceeded to invent a monopoly--a kind of monopoly in which +human nature could be trusted. + +He used a very simple device. + +He began by being trusted himself. + +Having personally and directly proved that human nature in a monopoly +could be trusted by being trusted himself, all he had to do was to +capitalize his knowledge of human nature, use the enormous market value +of the trust people had in him to gather people about him in the +business who had a good practical business genius for being trusted too +and for keeping trusted: everybody else was shut out. + +The letter with which the monopoly was started (after dealing duly with +the technical details of the business) ended like this: + +"... the soundest lines of business--_viz._, fair prices, fair profits, +fair division of profits, fair recognition of service, do as you would be +done by, money back where it is practicable, one's profit so small as to +make competition not worth while, open dealing, and open books." + +He had invented a monopoly which shared its profits with the people, and +which the people trusted. He was a Luther Burbank in money and people +instead of chestnuts. He raised the standard of impossibility in people, +and invented a new way for human nature to work. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +THE IMAGINATION OF CROWDS + + +The modern imagination takes, speaking roughly, three characteristic +forms: + +1. Imagination about the unseen or intangible--the spiritual--as +especially typified in electricity, in the wireless telegraph, the +aeroplane: a new and extraordinary sense of the invisible and the +unproved as an energy to be used and reckoned with. + +2. Imagination about the future--a new and extraordinary sense of what +is going to happen next in the world. + +3. Imagination about people. We are not only inventing new machines, but +our new machines have turned upon us and are creating new men. The +telephone changes the structure of the brain. Men live in wider +distances, and think in larger figures, and become eligible to nobler +and wider motives. + +Imagination about the unseen is going to give us in an incredible degree +the mastery of the spirit over matter. + +Imagination about the future is going to make the next few hundred years +an organic part of every man's life to-day. + +The imagination of men about themselves and other people is going to +give us a race of men with new motives; or, to put it differently, it is +going to give us not only new sizes but new kinds of men. People are +going to achieve impossibilities in goodness, and our inventions in +human nature are going to keep up with our other inventions. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +IMAGINATION ABOUT THE UNSEEN + + +The most distinctively modern thing that ever happened was when Benjamin +Franklin went out one day and called down lightning from heaven. Before +that, power had always been dug up, or scraped off the ground. The more +power you wanted the more you had to get hold of the ground and dig for +it; and the more solid you were, the more heavy, solid things you could +get, the more you could pull solid, heavy things round in this world +where you wanted them. Franklin turned to the sky, and turned power on +from above, and decided that the real and the solid and the substantial +in this world was to be pulled about by the Invisible. + +Copernicus had the same idea, of course, when he fared forth into space, +and discovered the centre of all power to be in the sun. It grieved +people a good deal to find how much more important the sky was than they +were, and their whole little planet with all of them on it. The idea +that that big blue field up there, empty by day and with such crowds of +little faint dots in it all night, was the real thing--the big, final, +and important thing--and that they and their churches and popes and +pyramids and nations should just dance about it for millions of years +like a mote in a sunbeam, hurt their feelings at first. But it did them +good. It started them looking Up, and looking the other way for power. + +Very soon afterward Columbus enlarged upon the same idea by starting the +world toward very far things, on the ground; and he bored through the +skylines, a thousand skylines, and spread the nations upon the sea. +Columbus was the typical modern man led by the invisible, the +intangible; and on the great waters somewhere between Spain and New +York, between the old and the new, Columbus discovered the Future Tense, +the centrifugal tense, the tense that sweeps in the unknown, and gathers +in, out of space, out of hope, out of faith, the lives of men. The mere +fastened-down stable things, the mere actual facts, stopped being the +world with Columbus, and the air and the sky began to be swung in, and +to be swept through the thoughts and acts of men and of women.... Then +miners, mariners, explorers, inventors--the impossible steamship, the +railway, the impossible cotton-gin and sewing-machine and reaper, Hoosac +tunnels and Atlantic cables. The impossible became one of the habits of +modern life. + +Of course the sky and the air and the unknown and the future had been +recognized before, but only a little and in a rather patronizing way. +But when a world has made a great, solid continent by following a +horizon line, it begins to take things just beyond very seriously. And +so our Time has been fulfilled. We have had the stone age; we have had +the iron age; and now we have the sky age, and the sky telegraph, and +sky men, and sky cities. Mountains of stone are built out of men's +visions, towers and skyscrapers swing up out of their wills and up out +of their hearts. + + * * * * * + +Not long ago, as I was coming away from New York in the Springfield +Express, which was running at fifty-five miles an hour, I saw suddenly +some smoke coming up apparently out of a satchel on the floor, belonging +to the man in the chair in front of me. I moved the satchel away, and +the smoke came up through the carpet. I spoke to the Pullman conductor +who was passing through, and in a second the train had stopped, and the +great wild roaring Thing had ceased, and we stood in a long, wide, white +silence in the fields. We got off the car--some of us--to see what had +happened, and to see if there was a hot box on the wheels. We found +that the entire underside of the floor of the car was on fire, and what +had happened? Nothing except a new impossibility; nothing except that a +human being had invented an electrical locomotive so powerful that it +was pulling that train fifty-five miles an hour while the brakes on the +car were set--twelve brakes all grinding twenty miles on those twelve +wheels; and the locomotive paid no more attention to the brakes of that +heavy Pullman than it would to a feather or to a small boy, all the way +from New York to Stamford, hanging on behind. As I came in I looked +again at the train--the long dull train that had been pulled along by +the Invisible, by the kingdom of the air and the sky--the long, dull, +heavy Train! And the spirit of the far-off sun was in it! + +In Count Zeppelin's new airship the new social spirit has a symbol, and +in the gyroscopic train the inspired millionaire is on a firm +foundation. The power of the new kind and new size of capitalist is his +power of keeping an equilibrium with the people, and the men of real +genius in modern affairs are men who have motor genius and light genius +over other men's wills. They are allied to the X-ray and the airship, +and gain their pre-eminence by their power of forecast and +invention--their power of riding upon the unseen, upon the thoughts of +men and the spirit of the time. Even the painters have caught this +spirit. The plein air painters are painting the light, and the sculptors +are carving shadows and haloes, and we have not an art left which does +not lean out into the Invisible. And religion is full of this spirit and +theosophy and Christian Science. The playwrights are touched by it; and +the action, instead of being all on the stage, is thrown out into the +spirit of the audience. The play in a modern theatre is not on the stage +but in the stalls. Maeterlinck, Ibsen, Shaw, merely use the stage as a +kind of magic-lantern or suggestion-centre for the real things that, out +behind us in the dark, are happening in the audience. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +THE CROWD'S IMAGINATION ABOUT THE FUTURE + + +I remember looking over with H.G. Wells one night some time ago a set of +pictures or photographs of the future in America, which he had brought +home with him. They were largely skyscrapers, big bridges, Niagaras, and +things; and I could not help thinking, as I came home that night, how +much more Mr. Wells had of the future of America in his own mind than he +could possibly buy in his photographs. What funny little films they were +after all, how faint and pathetic, how almost tragically dull, those +pictures of the future of my country were! H.G. Wells himself, standing +in his own doorway, was more like America, and more like the future of +America, than the pictures were. + +The future in America cannot be pictured. The only place it can be seen +is in people's faces. Go out into the street, in New York, in Chicago, +in San Francisco, in Seattle; look eagerly as you go into the faces of +the men who pass, and you feel hundreds of years--the next hundred +years--like a breath, swept past. America, with all its forty-story +buildings, its little Play Niagaras, its great dumb Rockies, is the +unseen country. It can only as yet be seen in people's eyes. Some days, +flowing sublime and silent through our noisy streets, and through the +vast panorama of our towers, I have heard the footfalls of the unborn, +like sunshine around me. + +This feeling America gives one in the streets is the real America. The +solidity, the finality, the substantial fact in America, is the daily +sense in the streets of the future. And it has seemed to me that this +fact--whether one observes it in Americans in America, in Americans in +England and in other nations--is what one might call, for lack of a +better name, the American temperament in all peoples is the most +outstanding typical and important fact with which our modern world and +our philosophy about the world have now to reckon. Nothing can be seen +as it really is if this amazing pervasive hourly sense of the future is +left out of it. + +All power is rapidly coming to be based on news--news about human +nature, and about what is soon to be done by people. This news travels +by express in boxes, by newspapers, by telephone, by word of mouth, and +by wireless telegraph. Most of the wireless news is not only wireless, +but it is in cipher--hence prophets, or men who have great +sensitiveness; men whose souls and bodies are films for the future, +platinum plates for the lights and shadows of events; men who are +world-poets, sensitive to the air-waves and the light-waves of truth, to +the faintest vibrations from To-morrow, or from the next hundred years +hovering just ahead. As a matter of course, it is already coming to be +true that the most practical man to-day is the prophet. In the older +days, men used to look back for wisdom, and the practical man was the +man who spoke from experience, and they crucified the prophet. But +to-day, the practical man is the man who can make the best guess on +to-morrow. The cross has gone by; at least, the cross is being pushed +farther along. A prophet in business or politics gets a large salary +now; he is a recognized force. Being a prophet is getting to be almost +smug and respectable. + +We live so in the future in our modern life, and our rewards are so +great for men who can live in the future, that a man who can be a +ten-year prophet, or a twenty-five-year prophet, like James J. Hill, is +put on a pedestal, or rather is not wasted on a pedestal, and is made +President of a railroad. He swings the country as if it were his hat. We +see great cities tagging Wilbur Wright, and emperors clinging to the +skirts of Count Zeppelin. We only crucify a prophet now if he is a +hundred, or two hundred or five hundred years ahead. Even then, we +would not be apt to crucify; we would merely not use him much, except +the first twenty-five years of him. + +The theory is no longer tenable that prophets must be necessarily +crucified. As a matter of history, most prophets have been crucified by +people; but it was not so much because of their prophecy as because +their prophecy did not have any first twenty-five years in it. They were +crucified because of a blank place or hiatus, not necessarily in their +own minds, but at least in other people's. People would have been very +glad to have their first twenty-five years' worth if they could have got +it. It is this first twenty-five years, or joining-on part, which is +most important in prophecy, and which has become our specialty in the +Western World. One might say, in a general way, that the idea of having +a first twenty-five years' section in truth for a prophet is a modern, +an almost American, invention. We are temperamentally a country of the +future, and think instinctively in futures; and perhaps it is not too +much to say (considering all the faults that go with it for which we are +criticized) that we have led the way in futures as a specialty, as a +national habit of mind; and though with terrific blunders perhaps have +been really the first people _en masse_ to put being a prophet on a +practical basis--that is, to supply the first twenty-five years' +section, or the next-thing-to-do section to Truth, to put in a kind of +coupling between this world and the next. This is what America is for, +perhaps--to put in the coupling between this world and the next. + +In the former days, the strength of a man, or of an estate, or a +business, was its stability. In the new world, instead of stability, we +have the idea of persistence, and power lies not so much in solid +brittle foundation quality as in conductivity. Socially, men can be +divided into conductors--men who connect powers--and non-conductors--men +who do not; and power lies in persistence, in dogged flexibility, +adaptableness, and impressionableness. The set conservative class of +people, in three hundred years, are going to be the dreamers, +inventors--those who demonstrate their capacity to dream true, and who +hit shrewdly upon probabilities and trends and futures; and the power of +a man is coming to be the power of observing atmospheres, of being +sensitive to the intangible and the unknown. People are more likely to +be crucified two thousand years from now for wanting to stay as they +are. There used to be the inertia of rest; and now in its place, working +reciprocally in a new astonishing equilibrium, we step up calmly on our +vast moving sidewalk of civilization and swing into the inertia of +motion. + +The inertia of men, instead of being that of foundations, conventions, +customs, facts, sogginess, and heaviness, is getting to be an inertia +now toward the future, or the next-thing-to-do. Most of us can prove +this by simply looking inward and taking a glimpse of our own +consciousness. Let a man draw up before his own mind the contents of his +own consciousness (if he has a motor consciousness), and we find that +the future in his life looms up, both in its motives and its character, +and takes about three quarters of the room of his consciousness; and +when it is not looming up, it is woven into everything he does. Even if +all the future were for was to help one understand the present and act +this immediate moment as one should, nine tenths of the power of seeing +a thing as it is, turns out to be one's power of seeing it as it is +going to be. In any normal man's life, it is really the future and his +sense of the future that make his present what it is. + +History is losing its monopoly. It is only absorbed in men's minds--in +the minds of those who are making more of it--in parts or rather in +elements of all its parts. + +The trouble with history seems to have been, thus far, that people have +been under the illusion that history should be taken as a solid. They +seem to think it should be taken in bulk. They take it, some of them, a +solid hundred years of it or so, and gulp it down. The advantage of +prophecy is that it cannot be taken as a solid by people who would take +everything so if they could. Prophecy is protected. People have to +breathe it, assimilate it, and get it into their circulation and make a +solid out of it personally, and do it all themselves. It is this process +which is making our modern men spiritual, interpretative, and powerful +toward the present and toward the past, and which is giving a body and +soul to knowledge, and is making knowledge lively and human, the kind of +knowledge (when men get it) that makes things happen. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +THE CROWD'S IMAGINATION ABOUT PEOPLE + + +I would like to propose, as a basis for the judgment of men and events, +and as a basis for forecasting the next men and next events, and +arriving at a vision of action, a Theory of the World. + +Every man has one. + +Every man one knows can be seen doing his work in this world on a great +background, a kind of panorama or stage setting in his mind, made up of +history and books, newspapers, people, and experiences, which might be +called his Theory of the World. + +It is his theory of the world which makes him what he is--his personal +judgment or personal interpretation of what the world is like, and what +works in it, and what does not work. + +A man's theory as to why people do or do not do wrong is not a theory he +might in some brief disinterested moment, possibly at luncheon, take +time to discuss. His theory of what is wrong and of what is right, and +of how they work, touches the efficiency with which he works intimately +and permanently at every point every minute of his business day. + +If he does not know, in the middle of his business day, what his theory +of the world--of human nature--is, let him stop and find out. + +A man's theory of the world is the skylight or manhole over his work. It +becomes his hell or heaven--his day and night. He breathes his theory of +the world and breathes his idea of the people in it; and everything he +does may be made or may be marred by what, for instance, he thinks in +the long-run about what I am saying now on this next page. Whether he +is writing for people, or doing business with them over a counter, or +launching books at them, everything he does will be steeped in what he +believes about what I am saying now--it shall be the colour of the world +to him, the sound or timbre of his voice--what he thinks or can make up +his mind to think, of what I am saying--on this next page. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +A DEMOCRATIC THEORY OF HUMAN NATURE + + +If the men who were crucifying Jesus could have been suddenly stopped at +the last moment, and if they could have been kept perfectly still for +ten minutes and could have thought about it, some of them would have +refused to go on with the crucifixion when the ten minutes were over. If +they could have been stopped for twenty minutes, there would have been +still more of them who would have refused to have gone on with it. They +would have stolen away and wondered about The Man in their hearts. There +were others who were there who would have needed twenty days of being +still and of thinking. There were some who would have had to have twenty +years to see what they really wanted, in all the circumstances, to do. + +People crucified Christ because they were in a hurry. + +They did what they wanted to do at the moment. So far as we know, there +were only two men who did what they would have wished they had done in +twenty years: there was the thief on the other cross, who showed The Man +he knew who He was; and there was the disciple John, who kept as close +as he could. John perhaps was thinking of the past--of all the things +that Christ had said to him; and the man on the other cross was thinking +what was going to happen next. The other people who had to do with the +crucifixion were all thinking about the thing they were doing at the +moment and the way they felt about it. But the Man was Thinking, not of +His suffering, but of the men in front of Him, and of what they could be +thinking about, and what they would be thinking about afterward--in ten +minutes, in twenty minutes, in twenty days, or in twenty years; and +suddenly His heart was flooded with pity at what they would be thinking +about afterward, and in the midst of the pain in His arms and the pain +in His feet He made that great cry to Heaven: "Father, forgive them; +they know not what they do!" + +It is because Christians have never quite believed that The Man really +meant this when He said it that they have persecuted the Jews for two +thousand years. It is because they do not believe it now that they blame +Mr. Rockefeller for doing what most of them twenty years ago would have +done themselves. It was one of the hardest things to do and say that any +one ever said in the world, and it was said at the hardest possible time +to say it. It was strange that one almost swooning with pain should have +said the gentlest-hearted and truest thing about human nature that has +ever been said since the world began. It has seemed to me the most +literal, and perhaps the most practical, truth that has been said since +the world began. + +It goes straight to the point about people. It gives one one's +definition of goodness both for one's self and for others. It gives one +a program for action. + +Except in our more joyous and free moments, we assume that when people +do us a wrong, they know what they are about. They look at the right +thing to do and they look at the wrong one, and they choose the wrong +one because they like it better. Nine people out of ten one meets in the +streets coming out of church on Sunday morning, if one asked them the +question plainly, "Do you ever do wrong when you know it is wrong?" +would say that they did. If you ask them what a sin is, they will tell +you that it is something you do when you know you ought not to do it. + +But The Man Himself, in speaking of the most colossal sin that has ever +been committed, seemed to think that when men committed a sin, it was +because they did not really see what it was that they were doing. They +did what they wanted to do at the moment. They did not do what they +would have wished they had done in twenty years. + +I would define goodness as doing what one would wish one had done in +twenty years--twenty years, twenty days, twenty minutes, or twenty +seconds, according to the time the action takes to get ripe. + +It would be far more true and more to the point instead of scolding or +admiring Mr. Rockefeller's skilled labour at getting too rich, to point +out mildly that he has done something that in the long-run he would not +have wanted to do; that he has lacked the social imagination for a great +permanently successful business. His sin has consisted in his not taking +pains to act accurately and permanently, in his not concentrating his +mind and finding out what he really wanted to do. It would seem to be +better and truer and more accurate in the tremendous crisis of our +modern life to judge Mr. Rockefeller, not as monster of wickedness, but +merely as an inefficient, morally underwitted man. There are things that +he has not thought of that every one else has. + +We see that in all those qualities that really go to make a great +business house in a great nation John D. Rockefeller stands as the most +colossal failure as yet that our American business life has produced. To +point his incompetence out quietly and calmly and without scolding would +seem to be the only fair way to deal with Mr. Rockefeller. He merely has +not done what he would have wished he had done in twenty, well, possibly +two hundred years, or as long a time as it would be necessary to allow +for Mr. Rockefeller to see. The one thing that the world could accept +gracefully from Mr. Rockefeller now would be the establishment of a +great endowment of research and education to help other people to see in +time how they can keep from being like him. If Mr. Rockefeller leads in +this great work and sees it soon enough, perhaps he will stop suddenly +being the world's most lonely man. + +Many men have been lonely before in the presence of a few fellow human +beings; but to be lonely with a whole nation--eighty million people; to +feel a whole human race standing there outside of your life and softly +wondering about you, staring at you in the showcase of your money, +peering in as out of a thousand newspapers upon you as a kind of moral +curiosity under glass, studying you as the man who has performed the +most athletic feat of not seeing what he was really doing and how he +really looked in all the world--this has been Mr. Rockefeller's +experience. He has not done what he would wish he had done in twenty +years. + +Goodness may be defined as getting one's own attention, as boning down +to find the best and most efficient way of finding out what one wants to +do. Any man who will make adequate arrangements with himself at suitable +times for getting his own attention will be good. Any one else from +outside who can make such arrangements for him, such arrangements of +expression or--of advertising goodness as to get his attention, will +make him good. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +DOING AS ONE WOULD WISH ONE HAD DONE IN TWENTY YEARS + + +If two great shops could stand side by side on the Main Street of the +World, and all the vices could be put in the show window of one of them +and all the virtues in the show windows the other, and all the people +could go by all day, all night, and see the windowful of virtues as they +were, and the windowful of vices as they were, all the world would be +good in the morning. + +It would stay good as long as people remembered how the windows looked. +Or if they could not remember, all they would need to do, most people, +when a vice tempted them would be to step out, look at it in its window +a minute--possibly take a look too at the other window--and they would +be good. + +If a man were to take a fancy to any particular vice, and would take a +step up to The Window, and take one firm look at it in The Window--see +it lying there, its twenty years' evil, its twenty days', its twenty +minutes' evil, all branching up out of it--he would be good. + +When we see the wrong on one side and the right on the other and really +see the right as vividly as we do the wrong, we do right automatically. +Wild horses cannot drag a man away from doing right if he sees what the +right is. + +A little while ago in a New England city where the grade crossings had +just been abolished, and where the railroad wound its way on a huge +yellow sandbank through the most beautiful part of the town, a +prominent, public-spirited citizen wrote a letter to the President of +the Company suggesting that the railroad (for a comparatively small +sum, which he mentioned) plant its sandbanks with trees and shrubs. A +letter came the next day saying that the railroad was unwilling to do +it. He might quite justifiably have been indignant and flung himself +into print and made a little scene in the papers, which would have been +the regular and conventional thing to do under the circumstances. But it +occurred to him instead, being a man of a curious and practical mind, +that possibly he did not know how to express himself to railroad +presidents, and that his letter had not said what he meant. He thought +he would try again, and see what would happen if he expressed himself +more fully and adequately. He took for it this second time a box seven +feet long. The box contained two long rolls of paper, one a picture by a +landscape gardener of the embankment as it would look when planted with +trees and with shrubs, and the other a photograph--a long panorama of +the same embankment as it then stood with its two great broadsides of +yellowness trailing through the city. The box containing the rolls was +sent without comment and with photographs and estimates of cost on the +bottom of the pictures. + +A letter from the railroad came next day thanking him for his +suggestion, and promising to have the embankment made into a park at +once. + +If God had arranged from the beginning, slides of the virtues, and had +furnished every man with a stereopticon inside, and if all a man had to +do at any particular time of temptation was to take out just the right +slide or possibly try three or four up there on his canvas a second, no +one would ever have any trouble in doing right. + + * * * * * + +It is not too much to say that this way of looking at evil and good--at +the latent capacities of evil and good in men, if a man once believes +it, and if a man once practises it as a part of his daily practical +interpretation and mastery of men, will soon put a new face for him on +nearly every great human problem with which he finds his time +confronted. We shall watch the men in the world about us--each for their +little day--trying their funny, pathetic, curious little moral +experiments, and we shall see the men--all of the men and all of the +good and the evil in the men this moment--daily before our eyes working +out with an implacable hopefulness the fate of the world. We know that, +in spite of self-deceived syndicalism and self-deceived trusts, in spite +of coal strikes and all the vain, comic little troops of warships around +the earth, peace and righteousness in a vast overtone are singing toward +us. + +We are not only going to have new and better motives in our modern men, +but the new and better motives are going to be thrust upon us. Every man +who reads these pages is having, at the present moment, motives in his +life which he would not have been capable of at first. Why should not a +human race have motives which it was not capable of at first? If one +takes up two or three motives of one's own--the small motives and the +large ones--and holds them up in one's hand and looks at them quietly +from the point of view of what one would wish one had done in twenty +years, there is scarcely one of us who would choose the small ones. +People who are really modern, that is, who look beyond themselves in +what they do to others, who live their lives as one might say six people +away, or sixty people farther out from themselves, or sixty million +people farther, are becoming more common everywhere; and people who look +beyond the moment in what they do to another day, who are getting more +and more to live their lives twenty years ahead, and to have motives +that will last twenty years, are driven to better and more permanent +motives. + +Thinking of more people when we act for ourselves means ethical +consciousness or goodness, and better and more permanent motives. + +In the last analysis, the men who permanently succeed in business will +have to see farther than the other people do. + +Men like John D. Rockefeller, who have made failures of their lives, and +have not been able to conduct a business so as to keep it out of the +courts, have failed because they have had imagination about Things but +not imagination about people. + +The man who is just at hand will not do over again what Mr. Rockefeller +has done. He will at least have made some advance in imagination over +Rockefeller. + +Mr. Rockefeller became rich by cooeperating with other rich men to +exploit the public. The man of the immediate future is going to get +rich, as rich as he cares to be, by cooeperating not merely with his +competitors--which is as far as Rockefeller got--but by cooeperating with +the people. + +It is a mere matter of social imagination, of seeing what succeeds most +permanently, and honourably, of putting what has been called "goodness" +and what is going to be called "Business" together. In other words, +social imagination is going to make a man gravitate toward mutual +interest or cooeperation, which is the new and inevitable level of +efficiency and success in business. Success is being transferred from +men of millionaire genius to men of social and human genius. The men who +are going to compete most successfully in modern competitive business +are competing by knowing how to cooeperate better than their competitors +do. Employers, employees, consumers, partners, become irresistible by +cooeperation; only employers, employees, consumers, and partners who +cooeperate better than they do can hope to compete with them. The Trusts +have already crowded out many small rivals because, while their +cooeperation has been one-sided, they have cooeperated with more people +than their rivals could; and the good Trusts, in the same way are going +to crowd out the bad Trusts, because the good ones will know how to +cooeperate with more people than the bad ones do. They will have the +human genius to see how they can cooeperate with the people instead of +against them. + +They are going to invent ways of winning and keeping the confidence of +the people, of taking to this end a smaller and more just share of +profits. And they are going to gain their leadership through the wisdom +and power that goes with their money, and not through the money itself. +It is the spiritual power of their money that is going to count; and +wealth, instead of being a millionaire disease, is going to become a +great social energy in democracy. We are going to let men be rich +because they represent us, not because they hold us up, and because the +hold-up has gone by, that is: getting all one can, and service--getting +what we have earned--has come in. + +The new kind and new size of politician will win his power by his faith, +like U. Ren of Oregon; the new kind and new size of editor is going to +hire with brains a millionaire to help him run his paper; and the new +kind and new size of author, instead of tagging a publisher, will be +paid royalties for supplying him with new ideas and creating for him new +publics. Power in modern life is to be light and heat and motion, and +not a gift of being heavy and solid. Even Money shall lose its inertia. + +We are in this way being driven into having new kinds and new sizes of +men; and some of them will be rich ones, and some of them will be poor, +and no one will care. We will simply look at the man and at what size he +is. + +If our preachers are not saving us, our business men will. Sometimes one +suspects that the reason goodness is not more popular in modern life is +that it has been taken hold of the wrong way. Perhaps when we stop +teasing people, and take goodness seriously and calmly, and see that +goodness is essentially imagination, that it is brains, that it is +thinking down through to what one really wants, goodness will begin to +be more coveted. Except among people with almost no brains or +imagination at all, it will be popular. + +Perhaps it is unnecessary to say that these things that I have been +saying, or trying to say, about the flexibility and the potentiality of +the human race in its present crisis, in its present struggle to +maintain and add to its glory on the earth, are all beyond the range of +possibility, and the present strength of manhood. But I can only hope +that these objections that people make will turn out like mine. I have +been making objections all my life, as all idealists must--only to watch +with dismay and joy the old-time, happy obdurate way objections have of +going by. + +People began by saying they would never use automobiles because they +were so noisy and ill-odoured and ugly. Presto! The automobile becomes +silent and shapes itself in lines of beauty. + +Some of us had decided against balloons. "Even if the balloon succeeds," +we said, "there will be no way of going just where and when you want +to." And then, presto! regular channels of wind are discovered, and the +balloon goes on. + +"Aeroplanes," we said, "may be successful, but the more successful they +are, the more dangerous, and the more danger there will be of +collisions--collisions in the dark and up in the great sky at night." And, +presto! man invents the wireless telegraph, and the entire sky can be +full of whispers telling every airship where all the other airships are. + +Some of us have decided that we will never have anything to do with +monopoly. Presto! there is suddenly evolved an entirely new type of +monopolist--the man who can be rich and good; the millionaire who has +invented a monopoly that serves the owners, the producers and employees, +the distributors and the consumers alike. An American railway President +has been saying lately that America would not have enough to eat in +2050, but it would not do to try to prove this just yet. Some one, +almost any day, will invent a food that is as highly concentrated as +dynamite, and the whole food supply of New York--who knows?--shall be +carried around in one railway President's vest pocket. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +NEW KINDS AND NEW SIZES OF MEN + + +It would be hard to overestimate the weariness and cynicism and despair +that have been caused in the world by its more recklessly hopeful +men--the men who plump down happily anywhere and hope, the optimists who +are merely slovenly in their minds about evil. But the optimism that +consists in putting evil facts up into a kind of outdoors in our minds +and in giving them room to exercise in our thoughts and feelings, the +optimism that consists in having one's brain move vigorously through +disagreeable facts--organize them into the other facts with which they +belong and with which they work--is worthy of consideration. Many of us, +who have tried optimism and pessimism both, have noticed certain things. + +When one is being pessimistic, one almost always has the feeling of +being rather clever. It is forced upon one a little, of course, having +all those other people about one stodgily standing up for people and not +really seeing through them! + +So, though one ought not to, one does feel a little superior--even with +the best intentions--when one is being discouraged. + +But the trouble with pessimism is that it is only at the moment when one +is having it that one really enjoys it, or feels in this way about it. + +Perhaps I should not undertake to speak for others, and should only +speak for myself; but I can only bear witness, for one, that every time +in my life that I have broken through the surface a little, and seen +through to the evil, and found myself suddenly and astutely discouraged, +I have found afterward that all I had to do was to see the same thing a +little farther over, set it in the light beyond it, and look at it in +larger or more full relations, and I was no longer astutely discouraged. + +So I have come to believe slowly and grimly that feeling discouraged +about the world is not quite clever. I have noticed it, too, in watching +other people--men I know. If I could take all the men I know who are +living and acting as if they believed big things about people to-day, +men who are daily taking for granted great things in human nature, and +put them in one group by themselves all together, and if I could then +take all the men I know who are taking little things for granted in one +another and in human nature, I do not believe very many people would +find it hard to tell which group would be more clever. Possibly the +reason more of us do not spend more time in being hopeful about the +world is that it takes more brains usually than we happen to have at the +moment. Hope may be said to be an act of the brain in which it sees +facts in relations large enough to see what they are for, an act in +which it insists in a given case upon giving the facts room enough to +turn around and to relate themselves to one another, and settle down +where they belong in one's mind, the way they would in real time. + +So now, at last, Gentle Reader, having looked back and having looked +forward, I know the way I am going. + +I am going to hope. + +It is the only way to see through things. The only way to dare to see +through ones' self; the only way to see through other people and to see +past them, and to see with them and for them--is to hope. + +So I am putting the challenge to the reader, in this book, as I have put +it to myself. + +There are four questions with which day by day we stand face to face: + +1. Does human nature change? + +2. Does it change toward a larger and longer vision? + +3. Will not a larger and longer vision mean new kinds and +new sizes of men? + +4. Will not new sizes of men make new-sized ethics practical +and make a new world? + +Everything depends for every man upon this planet, at this moment, on +how he decides these questions. If he says Yes, he will live one kind of +life, he will live up to his world. If he says No, he will have a mean +world, smaller-minded than he is himself, and he will live down to it. + +This is what the common run of men about us--the men of less creative +type in literature, in business, and in politics--are doing. They do not +believe human nature is changing. They are living down to a world that +is going by. They are living down to a world that is smaller than they +are themselves. They are trying to make others do it. They answer the +question "Does human nature change?" by "No!" Wilbur Wright, when he +flew around over the heads of the people in New York a few years ago, a +black speck above a whole city with its heads up, answered "Yes!" + +But the real importance of the flying machine has not stopped short with +a little delicate, graceful thing like walking on the air instead of the +ground. + +The big and really revolutionary thing about Wilbur Wright's flying was +that he changed the minds of the whole human race in a few minutes about +one thing. There was one particular thing that for forty thousand years +they knew they could not do. And now they knew they could. + +It naturally follows--and it lies in the mind of every man who +lives--that there must be other particular things. And as nine men out +of ten are in business, most of these particular things are going to be +done in business. + +The Wilbur Wright spirit is catching. + +It is as if a Lid had been lifted off the world. + +One sees everywhere business men going about the street expecting new +things of themselves. They expect things of the very ground, and of the +air, and of one another they had not dared expect before. + +The other day in a New England city I saw a man, who had been the +president of an Electric Light Company for twenty years, who had +invented a public service corporation that worked. Since he took office +and dictated the policy of the Company, every single overture for more +expensive equipment in the electric lighting of the city has come from +the Company, and every single overture for reducing the rate to +consumers has come from the company. + +The consumption of electricity in the city is the largest _per capita_ +in the world, and the rate is the cheapest in the country; and, +incidentally, the Company so trusts the people that they let them have +electricity without metres, and the people so trust the Company that +they save its electricity as they would their own. + +Even the man without a conscience, who would be mean if he could, is +brought to terms, and knows that if he refrains from leaving his lights +burning all night when he goes to bed he is not merely saving the +Company's electricity but his own. He knows that he is reducing his own +and everybody's price for electricity, and not merely increasing the +profits of the Company. + +It makes another kind of man slowly out of thousands of men every day, +every night, turning on and turning off their lights. + +The Electric Light Company has come to have a daily, an almost hourly, +influence on the way men do business and go about their work in that +city--the motives and assumptions with which they bargain with one +another--that might be envied by twenty churches. + +All that had happened was that a man with a powerful, quietly wilful +personality--the kind that went on crusades and took cities in other +ages--had appeared at last, and proposed to do the same sort of thing in +business. He proposed to express his soul, just as it was, in business +the way other people had expressed theirs for a few hundred years in +poetry or more easy and conventional ways. + +If he could not have made the electric light business say the things +about people and about himself that he liked and that he believed, he +would have had to make some other business say them. + +One of the things he had most wanted to say and prove in business was +the economic value of being human, the enormous business saving that +could be effected by being believed in. + +He preferred being believed in himself, in business, and he knew other +people would prefer it; and he was sure that if, as people said, "being +believed in did not pay," it must be because ways of inventing faith in +people, the technique of trust, had not been invented. + +He found himself invited to take charge of the Electric Light Company at +a time when it was insolvent and in disgrace with the people, and he +took the Corporation in hand on the specific understanding that he +should be allowed to put his soul into it, that he should be allowed his +own way for three years--in believing in people, and in inventing ways +of getting believed in as much as he liked. + +The last time I saw him, though he is old and nearly blind, and while as +he talked there lay a darkness on his eyes, there was a great light in +his face. + +He had besieged a city with the shrewdness of his faith, and conquered a +hundred thousand men by believing in them more than they could. + +By believing in them shrewdly, and by thinking out ways of expressing +that belief, he had invented a Corporation--a Public Service +Corporation--that had a soul, and consequently worked. + + + + +BOOK TWO + +LETTING THE CROWDS BE GOOD + +TO ABRAHAM LINCOLN + + They stay not in their hold + These stokers, + Stooping to hell + To feed a ship. + Below the ocean floors. + Before their awful doors + Bathed in flame, + I hear their human lives + Drip--drip. + + Through the lolling aisles of comrades + In and out of sleep, + Troops of faces + To and fro of happy feet, + They haunt my eyes. + Their murky faces beckon me + From the spaces of the coolness of the sea + Their fitful bodies away against the skies. + + + + + +CHAPTER I + +SPEAKING AS ONE OF THE CROWD + + +It is a little awkward to say what I am going to say now. + +Probably it will be still more awkward afterward. + +But I find as I go up and down the world and look in the faces of the +crowds in it, that it is true, and I can only tell as it is. + +_I want to be good._ + +And I do not want to go up on a mountain to do it, or to slink off and +live all alone on an island in the sea. + +I go a step further. + +I believe that the crowds want to be good. + +But I cannot prove that people want to be good in crowds, and so for the +sake of the argument, and to make the case as simple as possible, I am +going to give up speaking for crowds, and speak for myself as one member +of the crowd and for Lim. Lim and I (and Lim is a business man and not a +mere author) have had long talks in which we have confided to each other +what we think this world, in spite of appearances, is really like, and +we have come to a kind of provisional program and to a definite +agreement on our two main points. + +1. We want to be good. + +2. We want other people to be good, partly as a matter of convenience +for us, partly for morally aesthetic reasons, and partly because we want +to be in a kind of world where what is good in us works. + +The next point in our confession follows from this. It is an awkward and +exposed thing to say out loud to people in general, but + +3. Lim and I want to make over the earth. + +4. Sitting down grimly by ourselves, all alone, and believing in a world +hard, with our eyes shut, does not interest us. It is this particular +planet just as it is that interests us, in its present hopeful, +squirming state. + +It does not seem to us to the point just now to conceive some brand new, +clean, slick planet up in space, with crowds of perfect and convenient +people on it, and then expect to lay it down in the night like a great, +soft, beautiful dew or ideal on this one. We want to take this heavy, +inconvenient, cumbersome, real planet that we have, and see what can be +done with it, and by the people on it, what can be done by these same +people, whose signs one goes by down the street, with Smith & Smith, +Gowns, with Clapp & Clapp, Butchers, with W.H. Riley & Co., Plumbers and +Gas Fitters, and with things that real people are really doing. + +The things that real people are really doing, when one thinks of it, are +Soap, Tooth-brushes, Subsoil Pipes, Wall Papers, Razors, Mattresses, +Suspenders, Tiles, Shoes, Pots, and Kettles. Of course the first thing +that happened to us, to Lim and to me (as any one might guess, in a +little quiet job like making over the earth), was that we found we had +to begin with ourselves. + +We did. + +We are obliged to admit that, as a matter of fact, we began, owing to +circumstances, in a kind of rudimentary way with the idea of getting +people to take up goodness by talking about it. + +But we are reformed preachers now. We seldom backslide into talking to +people about goodness. + +We have made up our minds to lie low and keep still and show them some. + +Of course one ought to have some of one's own to show. But the trouble +always is, if it is really good, one is sure not to know it, or at least +one does not know which it is. The best we can do with goodness, some of +us, if we want it to show more quickly or to hurry people along in +goodness more, is to show them other people's. + +I sometimes think that if everybody in the world could know my plumber +or pay a bill to him, the world would soon begin slowly but surely to be +a very different place. + +My plumber is a genius. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +IS IT WRONG FOR GOOD PEOPLE TO BE EFFICIENT? + + +Perhaps it will seem a pity to spoil a book--one that might have been +really rather interesting--by putting the word "goodness" down flatly in +this way in the middle of it. + +And in a book which deals with crowds, too, and with business. + +I would not yield first place to any one in being tired of the word. I +think, for one, that unless there is something we can do to it, and +something we can do to it now, it had better be dropped. + +But I have sometimes discovered when I had thought I was tired of a +word, that what I was really tired of was somebody who was using it. + +I do not mind it when my plumber uses it. I have heard him use it (and +swearing softly, I regret to say) when it affected me like a Hymn Tune. + +And there is Non, too. + +I first made Non's acquaintance as our train pulled out of New York, and +we found ourselves going down together on Friday afternoon to spend +Sunday with M---- in North Carolina. The first thing he said was, when +we were seated in the Pullman comfortably watching that big, still world +under glass roll by outside, that he had broken an engagement with his +wife to come. She was giving a Tea, he said, that afternoon, and he had +faithfully promised to be there. But a weekend in North Carolina +appealed to him, and afternoon tea--well, he explained to me, crossing +his legs and beaming at me all over as if he were a whole genial, +successful afternoon tea all by himself--afternoon tea did not appeal to +him. + +He thought probably he was a Non-Gregarious Person. + +As he was the gusto of our little party and fairly reeked with +sociability, and was in a kind of orgy of gregariousness every minute +all the way to Wilmington (even when he was asleep we heard from him), +we called him the Non-Gregarious Person, and every time he piled on one +more story, we reminded him how non-gregarious he was. We called him +Non-Gregarious all the way after that--Non for short. + +This is the way I became acquainted with Non. It has been Non ever +since. + + * * * * * + +I found in the course of the next three days that when Non was not being +the life of the party or the party did not need any more life for a +while, and we had gone off by ourselves, he became, like most people who +let themselves go, a very serious person. When he talked about his +business, he was even religious. Not that he had any particular +vocabulary for being religious, but there was something about him when +he spoke of business--his own business--that almost startled me at first. +He always seemed to be regarding his business when he spoke of it as +being, for all practical purposes, a kind of little religion by itself. + +Now Non is a builder or contractor. + + * * * * * + +For many years now the best way to make a pessimist or a confirmed +infidel out of anybody has been to get him to build a house. No better +arrangement for not believing in more people, and for not believing in +more kinds of people at once and for life, has ever been invented +probably than building a house. No man has been educated, or has been +really tested in this world, until he has built a house. I submit this +proposition to anybody who has tried it, or to any one who is going to +try it. There is not a single kind or type of man who sooner or later +will not build himself, and nearly everything that is the matter with +him, into your house. The house becomes a kind of miniature model (such +as they have in expositions) of what is the matter with people. You +enter the door, you walk inside and brood over them. Everything you come +upon, from the white cellar floor to the timbers you bump your head on +in the roof, reminds you of something or of rows of people and of what +is the matter with them. It is the new houses that are haunted now. Any +man who is sensitive to houses and to people and who would sit down in +his house when it is finished and look about in it seriously, and think +of all the people that have been built, in solid wood and stone, into +it, would get up softly and steal out of it, out of the front door of +it, and never enter that house again. + +This is what Non saw. He saw how people felt about their houses, and how +they lived in them helplessly and angrily year after year, and felt +hateful about the world. + +I gradually drew out of him the way he felt about it. I found he was not +as good as some people are at talking about himself, but the subject was +interesting. He began his career building houses for people, as nearly +every one does. The general idea is that everybody is expected to exact +commissions from everybody else, and the owner is expected to pay each +man his own commission and then pay all the commissions that each man +has charged the other man. Every house that got built in this way seemed +to be a kind of network or conspiracy of not doing as you would be done +by. Non did not see any way out at first, just for one man. He merely +noticed how things were going, and he noticed that nearly every person +that he had dealings with, from the bottom to the top of the house, +seemed to make him feel that he either was, or would be, or ought to be, +a grafter. He could not so much as look at a house he had built, through +the trees when he was going by, without wishing he could be a better +man, and studying on how it could be managed. His own first houses made +him see things. They proved to be the making of him, and if similar +houses have not made similar men, it is their fault. It might not be +reassuring to the men who are now living in these first houses to dwell +too much on this (and I might say he did not build them alone), but it +seems to be necessary to bring out the most striking thing about Non in +his first stage as a business man, _viz._: He hated his business. He +made up his mind he either would make the business the kind of business +he liked or get out of it. I did not gather from the way he talked about +it that he had any idea of being an uplifter. He merely had, apparently, +an obstinate, doggedly comfortable idea about himself, and about what a +thing would have to be, in this world, if he was connected with it. He +proposed to enjoy his business. He was spending most of his time at it. + +Other people have had this same happy thought, but they seem to manage +to keep on being patient. Non could not fall back on being patient, and +it made him think harder. + +The first thing he thought of was that doing his business as he thought +he ought to, if he once worked his idea out, and worked it down through +and organized it, might pay. He almost had the belief that people might +pay a man a little extra, perhaps, for enjoying his business. It cannot +be said that he believed this immediately. He merely wanted to, and +worked toward it, and merely contrived new shrewd ways at first of being +able to afford it. Gradually he began to notice that the more he enjoyed +his business, the more he enjoyed it with his whole soul and body, +enjoyed it down to the very toes of his conscience, the more people +there were who stepped into his office and wanted him to enjoy his +business on their houses. It was what they had been looking for for +years--for some builder who was really enjoying his business. And the +more he enjoyed his business in his own particular way--that of building +a house for a man in less time than he said he would, and for less +money, not infrequently sending him a check at the end of it--the more +his business grew. + +I do not know that there would be any special harm in speaking of Non's +idea--of just doing as you would be done by--in more moral or religious +language, but it is not necessary. And I find I take an almost religious +joy in looking at the Golden Rule at last as a plain business +proposition. All that happened was that Non was original, saw something +that everybody thought they knew, and acted as if it were so. +Theoretically one would not have said that it would be original to take +an old platitudinous law like the law of supply and demand, and act as +if it were so; but it was. At the time Non was beginning his career +there was nothing in the building-market people found harder to hire +than honesty. Here was something, he saw at last, that thousands of busy +and important men who did not have time to be detectives, wanted. There +did not seem to be any one very actively supplying the demand. A big +market, a small supply, and almost no competition. Non stepped in and +proposed to represent a man's interest who is building a house as +literally as the man would represent his interests himself, if he knew +all about houses. Everything has followed from this. What Non's business +is now, when a man is building a house, is to step quietly into the +man's shoes, let him put on another pair, and go about his business. It +is not necessary to go into the details. Any reader who has ever built a +house knows the details. Just take them and turn them around. + +What those of us who know Non best like about him is that he is a plain +business man, and that he has acted in this particular matter without +any fine moral frills or remarks. He has done the thing because he liked +it and believed in it. + +But the most efficient thing to me about Non is not the way he is making +money out of saving money for other people, but the way the fact that he +can do it makes people feel about the world. Whenever I have a little +space of discouragement or of impatience about the world because it does +not hurry more, I fall to thinking of Non. "Perhaps next week"--I say +to myself cheerfully--"I can go down to New York and slip into Non's +office and get the latest news as to how religion is getting on. Or he +will take me out with him to lunch, and I will stop scolding or +idealizing, and we will get down to business, and I will take a good +long look into that steady-lighted, unsentimental face of his while he +tells me across the little corner table at Delmonico's for three hours +how shrewd the Golden Rule is, and how it works." Sometimes when I have +just been in New York, and have come home and am sitting in my still +study, with the big idle mountain just outside, and the great meadow and +all the world, like some great, calm gentle spirit or picture of itself, +lying out there about me, and I fall to thinking of Non, and of how he +is working in wood and stone inside of people's houses, and inside of +their lives day after day, and of how he is touching people at a +thousand points all the weeks, being a writer, making lights and shadows +and little visions of words fall together just so, seems, suddenly a +very trivial occupation--like amusing one's self with a pretty little +safe kaleidoscope, holding it up, aiming it and shaking softly one's +coloured bits of phrases at a world! Of course, it need not be so. But +there are moments when I think of Non when it seems so. + +In our regular Sunday religion we do not seem to be quite at our best +just now. + +At least (perhaps I should speak for one) I know I am not. + +Being a saint of late is getting to be a kind of homely, modest, +informal, almost menial everyday thing. It makes one more hopeful about +religion. Perhaps people who once get the habit, and who are being good +all the week, can even be good on Sunday. + +There are many ways of resting or leaning back upon one's instincts and +getting over to one's religion or perspective about the world. Mount Tom +(which is in my front yard, in Massachusetts) helps sometimes--with a +single look. + +When I go down to New York, I look at the Metropolitan Tower, the +Pennsylvania Station, the McAdoo Tunnels, and at Non. + +If I wanted to make anybody religious, I would try to get him to work in +Non's office, or work with anybody who ever worked with him, or who ever +saw him; or I would have him live in a house built by him, or pay a bill +made out by him. + +It has seemed to me that his succeeding and making himself succeed in +this way is a great spiritual adventure, a pure religion, a difficult, +fresh, and stupendous religion. + +Now these many days have I watched him going up and down through all the +empty reputations, the unmeaning noises of the world, living his life +like some low, old-fashioned, modest Hymn Tune he keeps whistling--and I +have seen him in fear, and in danger, and in gladness being shrewder and +shrewder for God, now grimly, now radiantly, hour by hour, day by day +getting rich with the Holy Ghost! + + + + +CHAPTER III + +IS IT WRONG FOR GOOD PEOPLE TO BE INTERESTING? + + +People are acquiring automobiles, Oriental rugs, five-hundred-dollar +gowns, more rapidly just now than they are goodness, because +advertisements in this present generation are more readable than +sermons, and because the shop windows on Fifth Avenue can attract more +attention than the churches. The shop windows make people covetous. + +If the goodness that one sees, hears about, or goes by does not make +other people covetous, does not make them wish they had it or some just +like it, it must be because there is something the matter with it, or +something the matter with the way it is displayed. + +If the church shop windows, for instance, were to make displays of +goodness up and down the great Moral Fifth Avenue of the world--well, +one does not know; but there are some of us who would rather expect to +see the Goodness Display in the windows consisting largely of Things +People Ought Not to Want. + +There would be rows and tiers of Not-Things piled up--Things for People +Not to Be, and Things for People Not to Do. + +Goodness displayed in this way is not interesting. Perhaps this is one +of the reasons why the word Goodness spoils a thing for people--so many +people--when it is allowed in it. + +Possibly it is because we are apt to think of the good people, and of +the people who are being good, as largely keeping from doing something, +or as keeping other people from doing something--as negative. Their +goodness seems to consist in being morally accurate, and in being very +particular just in time, and in a kind of general holding in. + +We do not naturally or off-hand--any of us--think of goodness as having +much of a lunge to it. It is tired-looking and discouraged, and pulls +back kindly and gently. Or it teases and says, "Please"--God knows how +helpless it is, and I for one am frank to say that, as far as I have +observed, He has not been paying very much attention to good people of +late. + +I do not believe I am alone in this. There must be thousands of others +who have this same half-guilty, half-defiant feeling of suspiciousness +toward what people seem to think should be called goodness. Not that we +say anything. We merely keep wondering--we cannot see what it is, +exactly, about goodness that should make it so depressing. + +In the meantime we hold on. We do not propose to give up believing in +it. Perhaps, after all, all that is the matter with goodness in the +United States is the people who have taken hold of it. + +They do not seem to be the kind of people who can make it interesting. +We cannot help thinking, if these same bad people about us, or people +who are called bad, would only take up goodness awhile, how they would +make it hum! + +I can only speak for one, but I do not deny that when I have been +sitting (in some churches), or associating, owing to circumstances, with +very good people a little longer than usual, and come out into the +street, I feel like stepping up sometimes to the first fine, brisk, +businesslike man I see going by, and saying, "My dear sir, I do wish +that _you_ would take up goodness awhile and see if, after all, +something cannot really be done. I keep on trying to be hopeful, but +these dear good people in here, it seems to me, are making a terrible +mess of it!" + +And, to make a long story short, Lim happened to be going by one day, +and this practically is what I did. I had done it before with other +business men in spirit or in a general way, but with him I was more +particular. I went straight to the point. "Here are at least sixteen +valuable efficient brands of goodness in America," I said, "all worth +their weight in gold for a big business career, that no one is really +using, that no one quite believes in or can get on the market, and yet I +believe with my whole soul in them all, and I believe thousands of other +men do, or are ready to, the moment some one makes a start." + +I pulled out a little list of items which I had made out and put down on +a piece of paper, and handed them over to him, and said I wished he +would take a few of them--the first five or six or so--and make them +work. + +He already had, I found, made two or three of the harder ones work. + +I would not have any one suppose for a moment that I am presenting Lim +as a kind of business angel. + +No one who knows Lim thinks of him, or would let anybody else think of +him, as being a Select Person, as being particularly or egregiously what +he ought to be. This is one reason I have picked him out. Being good in +a small private way, just as a small private end in itself, may be +practicable perhaps without dragging in people who are not quite what +they ought to be. But the moment one tries to make goodness work, one +comes to the fact that it must be made to work with what we have. We +have a great crowd of unselected people, people both good and bad, and +the first principle in making goodness work (instead of being merely +good) seems to be to believe that goodness is not too good for anybody. +Anybody who can make it work can have it, and what goodness seems to +need, especially in America and England just now, is people who do not +feel that they must at all hazards look good. Whatever happens, whatever +else we do in any general investment or movement we may be making with +goodness, we must let these people in. If there is one thing rather than +another that those of us who know Lim all rely on and like, it is that +nothing can ever make him slump down into looking good. We often find +him hard to make out--everything is left open and loose and unlabelled +in Lim's moral nature. The only really sure way any one can tell when +Lim is being good is, that whenever he is being good he becomes suddenly +and unexpectedly interesting. His goodness is daring, unexpected, and +original. One has the feeling that it may break out anywhere. It is +always doing things that everybody said could not be done before. It is +true that some people are dazed, and no one can ever seem to feel sure +he knows what it is that is going on in Lim when he is being good, or +that it is goodness. He merely keeps watching it. There is a certain +element of news, of freshness, of gentle sensation, in his goodness. It +leads to consequences. And there always seems to be something about +Lim's goodness which attracts the attention of people, and makes people +who see it want it. So when I speak of goodness in this book, and put it +down as the basis of the power of getting men to do as one likes, I do +not deny that I am taking the word away and moving it over from its +usual associations. I do not mean by a good act, a good-looking act, but +an act so constituted that it makes good. For the purpose of this book I +would define goodness as efficiency. Goodness is the quality in a thing +that makes the thing go, and that makes it go so that it will not run +down, and that nothing can stop it. + +There is the inefficiency of lying, for instance, and the inefficiency +of force, or bullying. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +PROSPECTS OF THE LIAR + + +My theory about the Liar is that it is of no use to scold him or blame +him. It merely makes him feel superior. He should be looked upon quietly +and without saying anything as a case of arrested development. What has +happened to him is that he merely is not quite bright about himself, and +has failed to see how bright (in the long run) other people are. + +When a man lies or does any other wrong thing, his real failure consists +not in the wrongdoing itself, but in his failure to take pains to focus +his mind on the facts in himself, and in the people about him, and see +what it really is that he would wish he had done, say in twenty years. +It seems to be possible, after a clumsy fashion, to find out by a study +of ourselves, and of our own lives and of other men's lives, what we +would wish we had done afterward. Everything we have learned so far we +have learned by guessing wrong on what we have thought we would want +afterward. We have gradually guessed what we wanted better. We began our +lives as children with all sorts of interesting sins or moral guesses +and experiments. We find there are certain sins or moral experiments we +almost never use any more because we found that they never worked. We +had been deceived about them. Most of us have tried lying. Since we were +very small we have tried in every possible fashion--now in one way, now +in another--to see if lying could not be made to work. By far the +majority of us, and all of us who are the most intelligent, are not +deceived now by our desire to tell lies. Perhaps we have not learned +that all lies do not pay. A child tells a lie at first as if a lie had +never been thought of before. It is as if lying had just been invented, +and he had just thought what a great convenience it was, and how many +things there were that he could do in that way. He discovers that the +particular thing he wants at the moment, he gets very often by lying. +But the next time he lies, he cannot get anything. If he keeps on lying +for a long time, he learns that while, after a fashion, he is getting +things, he is losing people. Finally, he finds he cannot even get +things. Nobody believes in him or trusts him. He cannot be efficient. He +then decides that being trusted, and having people who feel safe to +associate with him and to do business with him, is the thing he really +wants most; and that he must have first, even if it is only a way to get +the other things he wants. It need not be wondered that the Trusts, +those huge raw youngsters of the modern spirit, have had to go through +with most of the things other boys have. The Trusts have had to go +through, one after the other, all their children's diseases, and try +their funny little moral experiments on the world. They thought they +could lie at first. They thought it would be cunning, and that it would +work. They did not realize at once that the bigger a boy you were, even +if you were anonymous, the more your lie showed and the more people +there were who suffered from it who would be bound sooner or later to +call you to account for it. + +The Trusts have been guessing wrong on what they would wish they had +done in twenty years, and the best of them now are trying to guess +better. They are trying to acquire prestige by being far-sighted for +themselves and far-sighted for the people who deal with them, and are +resting their policy on winning confidence and on keeping faith with the +people. + +They not only tried lying, like all young children, but they tried +stealing. For years the big corporations could be seen going around from +one big innocent city in this country to another, and standing by +quietly and without saying a word, putting the streets in their pockets. + +But no big corporation of the first class to-day would begin its +connection with a city in this fashion. Beginning a permanent business +relation with a customer by making him sorry afterward he has had any +dealings with you, has gone by as a method of getting business in +England and America. + +One of our big American magazines not long ago, which had gained +especially high rates from its advertisers because they believed in it, +lied about its circulation. The man who was responsible was not +precisely sure, gave nominal figures in round numbers, and did what +magazines very commonly did under the circumstances; but when the +magazine owner looked up details afterward and learned precisely what +the circulation was for the particular issue concerned, he sent out +announcements to every firm in the country that had anything in the +columns of that issue, saying that the firm had lied, and enclosing a +check for the difference in value represented. Of course it was a good +stroke of business, eating national humble pie so, and it was a cheap +stroke of business too, doing some one, sudden, striking thing that no +one would forget. Not an advertisement could be inserted and paid for in +the magazine for years without having that action, and the prestige of +that action, back of it. Every shred of virtue there was in the action +could have been set one side, and was set one side by many people, +because it paid so well. Every one saw suddenly, and with a faint breath +of astonishment, how honesty worked. But the main point about the +magazine in distinction from its competitors seems to have been that it +not merely saw how honesty worked, but it saw it first and it had the +originality, the moral shrewdness and courage, to put up money on it. It +believed in honesty so hard that suddenly one morning, before all the +world, it risked its entire fortune on it. Now that it has been done +once, the new level or standard of candour may be said to have been +established which others will have to follow. But it does not seem to me +that the kind of man who has the moral originality to dare do a thing +like this first need ever have any serious trouble with competitors. In +the last analysis, in the competition of modern business to get the +crowd, the big success is bound to come to men in the one region of +competition where competition still has some give in it--the region of +moral originality. Other things in competition nowadays have all been +thought of except being good. Any man who can and will to-day think out +new and unlooked-for ways of being good can get ahead, in the United +States of practically everybody. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +PROSPECTS OF THE BULLY + + +The stage properties that go with a bully change as we grow older. When +one thinks of a bully, one usually sees a picture at once in one's mind. +It is a big boy lording it over a little one, or getting him down and +sitting on him. + +Everybody recognizes what is going on immediately, pitches in nobly and +beautifully, and licks the big boy. + +The trouble with the bully in business has been that he is not so simple +and easy to recognize. He is apt to be more or less anonymous and +impersonal, and it is harder to hit him in the right place. + +But when one thinks of it perhaps this pleasant and inspiring duty is +not so impracticable as it looks, and is presently to be attended to. + +Any man who relies, in getting what he wants, on being big instead of +being right, is a bully. + +Modern business is done over a wide area, with thousands of persons +looking on, and for a long time and with thousands of people coming +back. The man who relies on being big instead of being right, and who +takes advantage of his position instead of his inherent superiority, is +soon seen through. His customers go over to the enemy. A show of force +or a hold-up works very well at the moment. Being bigger may be more +showy than being right, and it may down the Little Boy, but the Little +Boy wins the crowd. + +Business to-day consists in persuading crowds. + +The Little Boy can prove he is right. All the bully can prove is that he +is bigger. + +The Liar in Business is already going by. + +Now it is the turn of the bully. + +Not long ago a few advertisers in a big American city wanted unfairly +low rates for advertisements and tried to use force with the newspapers. +Three or four of the biggest shops combined and gave notice that they +would take their advertising away unless the rates came down. After a +little, they drew in a few other lines of business with them, and +suddenly one morning five or six full pages of advertisements were +withdrawn from every newspaper in the city. The newspapers went on +publishing all the news of the city except news as to what people could +buy in department stores, and waited. They made no counter-move of any +kind, and said nothing and seven days slipped past. They held to the +claim that the service they performed in connecting the great stores +with the people of the city was a real service, that it represented +market value which could be proved and paid for. They kept on for +another week publishing for the people all the news of the city except +the news as to how they could spend their money. They wondered how long +it would take the great shops with acres of things to sell to see how it +would work not to let anybody know what the things were. + +The great shops tried other ways of letting people know. They tried +handbills, a huge helpless patter of them over all the city. They used +billboards, and posted huge lists of items for people to stop and read +in the streets, if they wanted to, while they rushed by. For three whole +weeks they held on tight to the idea that the newspapers were striking +employees of department stores. One would have thought that they would +have seen that the newspapers were the representatives of the +people--almost the homes of the people--and that it would pay to treat +them respectfully. One would have thought they would have seen that if +they wanted space in the homes of the people--places at their very +breakfast tables--space that the newspapers had earned and acquired +there, they would have to pay their share of what it had cost the +newspapers to get it. + +One would have thought that the department shops would have seen that +the more they could make the newspapers prosper, the more influence the +newspapers would have in the homes of the people, and the more business +they could get through them. But it was not until the shopowners had +come down and gazed day after day on the big, white, lonely floors of +their shops that they saw the truth. Crowds stayed away, and proved it +to them. Namely: a store, if it uses a great newspaper, instead of +having a few feet of show windows on a street for people to walk by, +gets practically miles of show windows for people--in their own +houses--sells its goods almost any morning to the people--to a whole +city--before anybody gets up from breakfast--has its duties as well as +its rights. + +Of course, when the shopkeepers really saw that this was what the +newspapers had been doing for them, they wanted to do what was right, +and wanted to pay for it. One would have thought, looking at it +theoretically, that the department stores in any city would have +imagination enough to see, without practically having to shut their +stores up for three weeks, what advertising was worth. But if great +department stores do not have imagination to see what they would wish +they had done in twenty years, in one year, or three weeks, and have to +spell out the experience morning by morning and see what works, word by +word, they do learn in the end that being right works, and that bullying +does not. Gradually the level or standard of right in business is bound +to rise, until people have generally come to take the Golden Rule with +the literalness and seriousness that the best and biggest men are +already taking it. Department stores that have the moral originality and +imagination to guess what people would wish they had bought of them and +what they would wish they had sold to them afterward are going to win. +Department stores that deal with their customers three or four years +ahead are the ones that win first. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +GOODNESS AS A CROWD-PROCESS + + +The basis of successful business is imagination about other people. The +best way to train one's imagination about other people is to try +different ways of being of service to them. Trying different ways of +merely getting money out of them does not train the imagination. It is +too easy. + +Business is going to be before long among the noblest of the +professions, because it takes the highest order of imagination to +succeed in it. Goodness is no longer a Sunday school. The whole world, +in a rough way, is its own Sunday school. + +To have the most brains render the most service--render services people +had never dreamed of before. + +Why bother to tell people to be good? It bores us. It bores them. +Presently we will tell them over our shoulders, as we go by, to use +their brains. Goodness is a by-product of efficiency. + +Being good every day in business stands in no need of being stood up +for, or apologized for, or even helped. All of these things may be +expedient and human and natural, because one cannot help being +interested in particular people and in a particular generation; but they +are not really necessary to goodness. It is only when we are tired, or +when we only half believe in it, that we feel to-day that goodness needs +to be stood up for. In a day when men make vast crowds of things, so +that the things are seen everywhere, and when the things are made to +stand the test of crowds--crowds of days, or crowds of years--and when +they make them for crowds of people, goodness does not need scared and +helpful people defending it. I have seen that goodness is a thing to be +sung about like a sunset. I have seen that goodness is organic, and +grounded in the nature of things and in the nature of man. I have seen +that being good is the one great adventure of the world, the huge daily +passionate moral experiment of the human heart--that all men are at work +on it, that goodness is an implacable crowd process, and that nothing +can stop it. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +THOUGHTS ON BEING IMPROVED BY OTHER PEOPLE + + +But Fate has so arranged our lives that we all have to live cooped up in +one particular generation. Living in all of them, especially the ages +just ahead, and seeing as one looks out upon them how goodness wins, may +be well enough when one is tired or discouraged and is driven to it, but +in the meantime all the while we are living in this one. The faces of +the people we know flit past us; the gaunt, grim face of the crowd +haunts us--the crowd that will slip softly off the earth very soon and +drop into the Darkness--a whole generation of it, without seeing how +things are coming out; and there is something about the streets, about +the look of women as they go by, something about the faces of the little +children, that makes one wish goodness would hurry. One cannot think +with any real pleasure of goodness as a huge, slow, implacable moral +glacier, a kind of human force of gravity, grinding out truths and +grinding under people, generation after generation, down toward some +vast, beautiful, happy valley with flowers and children in it and +majestic old men thousands of years away. One wishes goodness would +hurry. We are not content, some of us, with having the good people climb +over the so-called evil ones and gain the supremacy of the world, and +all because the evil people do not see what they really want to do or +would have wished they had done afterward. We want the evil ones, so +called, to see what they really want now. We cannot help believing that +there is some way of attracting their attention to what they really want +now. + +I have seen, or seemed to see, in my time that there is almost no limit +to what people can do if they can get their own attention, or if some +person or some event will happen by that can get their attention for +them. + +Paralytics jumped from their beds at the time of the San Francisco +earthquake and ran for blocks. The whole earth had to shake them in +order to get their attention; but it did it, and they saw what it was +they wanted, and they ran for it at once, whether they were paralytics +or not. In the fire that followed the earthquake, people that had been +sick in bed for weeks were seen, scores of them, dragging their trunks +through the streets. + +I have seen, too, in my time scores of people doing great feats of +goodness in this way, things that they knew they could not do, dragging +huge moral trunks after them, or swinging them up on their shoulders. I +have seen men who thought they were old in their hearts, and who thought +they were wicked, running like boys, with shouts and cheers, to do +right. It was all a matter of attention. The question with most of us +would seem to be: How can one get one's attention to what one would wish +one had done in twenty years, and how can one get other people's--all +the people with whom we are living and working--to do with us what they +would wish they had done, in twenty minutes, twenty days, or twenty +years? + +Letting the Crowd be Good, all turns in the long run upon touching the +imagination of Crowds. + +In the last analysis, the coming of the kingdom of heaven, as it has +been called, is going to be the coming slowly, and from unsuspected +quarters, of a new piety and of new kinds of saints into the forefront +of modern life--saints who can attract attention, saints who can make +crowds think what they really want. + +Using the word in its more special sense, the time has come when it is +being keenly realized that if goodness is to be properly appreciated by +crowds, it must be properly advertised. + +How can goodness be advertised to Crowds? + +Who are the people that can touch the imagination of Crowds? + +The best and most suggestive truths that most of us could come to with +regard to doing right, would come from a study of the people who have +tried to make us do it. Most of us, if we were asked to name the people +most prominently connected with the virtues that we have studied and +wondered about most, would mention, probably, either our parents or our +preachers. Many of us feel quite expert about parents. We have studied +vividly, and sometimes with almost a breathless interest, all their +little ways of getting us to be good, and there is hardly any one who +has not come to quite definite conclusions of how he should be preached +to. I have thought it would be not unfruitful to consider in this +connection either our parents or our preachers. I have decided to +consider the preachers who try to make me good, because they are a +little less complicated than parents. + +Preachers can only be put into classes in a general way. They often +overlap, and many of them change over from one class into another every +now and then on some special subject, or on some special line of +experience which they have had. But for the most part, at least as +regards emphasis, preachers may be said to divide off into three +classes: + +Those who tease us to do right. + +Those who make us see that doing right, if any one wants to do it, is +really an excellent thing. + +Those who make us want to do it. + + * * * * * + +I never go to hear a second time, if I can help it, a preacher who has +teased me to do right. I used to hope at first that perhaps a clergyman +who was teasing people might incidentally slip off the track a minute, +and say something or see something interesting and alive. But, +apparently, preachers who do not see that people should not be teased to +do right, do not see other things, and I have gradually given up having +hopeful moments about them. Why, in a world like this, with the right +and the wrong in it all lying so eloquent and plain and beautiful in the +lives of the people about us, and just waiting to be uncovered a little, +waiting to be looked at hard a minute, should audiences be gathered +together and teased to do right? + +If the right were merely to be had in sermons or on paper, it might be +different. My own experience with the right has been, if I may speak for +one, that when I get out of the way of the people who are doing it, and +let the right they are doing be seen by people, everybody wants it. When +people who are doing right are quietly revealed, uncovered a little +further by a preacher, everybody envies them, and teasing becomes +superfluous. People sit in their seats and think of them, and become +covetous to be like them. If, this very day, all the ministers of the +world were to agree that, on next Sunday morning at half-past ten +o'clock, they all with one accord would preach a sermon teasing people +to be rich, it would not be more absurd, or more pathetic, or more away +from the point, than it would be to preach a sermon teasing people to be +good. They want to be good now; they envy the people that they see going +about the world not leaning on others to be good--self-poised, +independent, free, rich, spiritually self-supporting persons. + +The men and women that we know may be more or less muddled in their +minds with philosophy or with theology, or perhaps they are being +deceived by expediency or being bullied by their environment, but they +are not wicked; they are out of focus, and what they desire when they go +to church on Sunday morning is to get a good look at beautiful and +refreshing things that they want, and for an hour and a half, if +possible, with slow steadied thought see their own lives in perspective. +It is a criminal waste of time to get hundreds of people to come into +church on a Sunday morning and seat them all together in a great room +where they cannot get out, and then tease them and tell them they ought +to be good. They knew it before they came. They are already agreed, all +of them, that they want to be good. They even want to be good in +business--as good as they can afford to. The question is how to manage +to do it. The thing that is troubling them is the technique. How can +they be good in their business--more good than their employers want them +to be, for instance--and keep their positions? Doing as one would wish +one had done afterward, or knowing what one is about, or "being good" as +it is sometimes called, is a thing that all really clever people have +agreed upon. They simply cannot manage some of the details--details like +time and place, a detail like being good now, for instance, or like +being good here. It is the more practical things like these that trouble +people, or they grow mixed in their thoughts about the big goods and the +little ones--which shall be first in order of importance or which in the +order of time. And when one sees that people are really like this in +their hearts, and when one sees them, all these poor, helpless people, +sitting cooped up in a church for an hour and a half being teased to be +good, it is small wonder that it seems, or is coming to seem, to the +clean-cut morally businesslike men and women we have to-day, a pitiful +waste of time. + + * * * * * + +I come to the second class of preachers I had in mind with more +diffidence. My feelings about them are not so simple and rudimentary as +my feelings about those who have teased me to be good. + +Any man who travels about, or who drops into churches wherever he +happens to be from Sunday to Sunday, is almost sure to find in every +city of considerable size at least one imperious capable baffling +clergyman. If one is strictly honest and fair toward him, to say nothing +of being a well-meant and hopeful human being who is living in the same +world with him and who feels very imperfect too, finding any serious and +honest fault with the sermon, or at least laying one's finger upon what +the fault is, seems to be almost impossible. One simply comes out of +the church in a nice, neat little glow of good-will and admiration, and +with a strange, soothing, happy sense of new, fresh, convenient wisdom. + +The only fair way to criticise the preacher who belongs in this class +seems to be to take ten years for it, go in regularly and get a little +practice every Sunday. There are preachers who preach so well that the +only way one can ever find what is the matter with their sermons is to +sit quietly while they are preaching them, and look around at the +people. One thinks as one looks around, "These people are what this man +has done." + +They are the same people they were ten years ago. + +I often hear other sermons that are far easier to criticise. They are +one-sided or narrow, but they make new people. + +I might not always like to be in a congregation when a man is preaching +a sermon that makes new people, because he may be making people or kinds +of people that at the time at least I do not need to be. But I naturally +prefer, at least part of the time, a preacher who puts in, before he is +through, some good work on me. There is a preacher in B---- who always +arouses in me, whenever I am in the city, the same old, curious, hopeful +feeling about him that this next one more time he is going to get to me, +that I am going to be attended to. I cannot say how many times I have +dropped in upon him in his big plain church, seen him with his hushed +congregation all about him, all listening to him up to the last minute, +each of them sitting all alone with his own soul, and with him, and with +the ticking of the clock. And the sermon is always about the same. You +see him narrowing the truth down wonderfully, ruthlessly, to You. You +begin to see everything--to see all the arguments, all the +circumstances, all the principles. You see them narrowing you down +grimly, closing in upon you, converging you and all your little, mean +life, driving you apparently at last into one helpless beautiful corner +of doing right. You feel while you listen the old sermon-thrill you have +felt before, a kind of intellectual joy in God, in the very brains of +God; you think of how He has arranged right and wrong so cunningly, laid +them all out so plain and so close beside each other for you to choose +to be good. Then the benediction is pronounced over you, the sevenfold +amen dies away over you, and you go home and do as you like. + +One sees the sermon for days afterward lying out there in calm and +orderly memory, all so complete and perfect by itself. There does not +really seem to be any need of doing anything more to it. It is what +people mean probably by a "finished sermon." It is as if goodness had +been put under a glass globe in a parlour. You go home proud to think of +it, and proud of course to have such a sermon by you. But you would +never think of touching such a complete and perfect thing during the +week the way you would a poorer sermon, disturbing it hopefully or +mussing it over, trying to work some of it into your own life. + + * * * * * + +So much for the first two types of preachers: the preachers who stand +before us Sunday morning with goodness placed beside them in a dense +darkness while they talk, and who tease us to look at it in the darkness +and to take some; and those who stand, a cold white light all about +them, and use pointers and blackboards and things--maps of goodness, +great charts of what people ought to be like--and who make one see each +virtue just where it belongs as a kind of dot, like cities in a +geography, and who leave us with the pleasant feeling of how sweet and +reasonable God is, or rather would be if anybody would pay any attention +to Him. + + * * * * * + +I have already hinted at the qualities of the third class of +preachers--those who make me want to be good. They seem to throw +goodness as upon a screen, some vast screen of the world, of this real +world about me. They turn their souls, like still stereopticons, upon +the faces of men--men who are like the men and women I know. I go about +afterward all the week seeing their sermons in the street. Everybody I +see, everything that comes up Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, the very +patterns of the days and nights, of my duties and failures, keep coming +up, reminding me to be good. I may start in--I often do--with such a +preacher, criticising him, but he soon gets me so occupied criticising +myself and so lost in wondering how this something that he has and sees +just beyond us, just beyond him, just beyond me, can be had for other +people, and how I can have some of it for myself, that I forget to +criticise. He searches my soul, makes me a new being in my presence +before my eyes--that is, a new being toward some one subject, or some +one possibility in the world. He helps me while in his presence to +accomplish the supreme thing that one man can ever do for another. He +helps me to get my own attention. He makes me see a set of particular +things that I immediately, before his next sentence, am trying to find +means to do. He does not attract my attention toward what he wants, like +a preacher who teases; nor does he attract my attention to what God +wants, like the preacher with the charts of goodness. He succeeds in +attracting and holding down my attention to what I really want for +myself or others, and to what I propose to get. + +The imagination of crowds is convinced only by men who have real genius +for expression, for making word-pictures of real things, men who have +what might be called moving-picture minds, and who are so picturesque +and vivid that when they talk to people about goodness they have seen, +everybody feels as if they had been there. It has to be admitted that +this type of preacher, who has a kind of genius, and has developed an +art form for expressing goodness in words, is necessarily an exceptional +man. And it is unreasonable and unfair in the public to expect a man to +get up in the pulpit and, with no costume and no accessories, merely +with a kind of shrewd holiness or divination into human nature, present +goodness so that we seem to be there. It is small wonder that a man who +finds he is expected to be a kind of combination of biograph, brother, +spiritual detective, and angel all in one, in order to do his work +successfully has days of feeling that he has joined the ranks of The +Impossible Profession. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +MAKING GOODNESS HURRY + + +Perhaps it has leaked out to those who have been following these pages +thus far, that I am merely at best, if the truth were known, a kind of +reformed preacher. + +I admit it. Many other people are. We began, owing to circumstances, +with the idea of getting people to take up goodness by talking about it. + +But we have grown discouraged in talking to people about goodness. More +and more, year by year, we have made up our minds, as I have hinted, to +lie low and to keep still and show them some. + +And I can only say it again, as I have said it before, if everybody in +the world could know my plumber or pay a bill to him, the world would +soon begin, slowly but surely, to be a very different place. + +The first time I saw B---- I had asked him to come over to arrange with +regard to putting in new waterpipes from the street to my house. The old +ones had been put in no one could remember how many years before, and +the pressure of water in the house, apparently from rust in the pipes, +had become very weak. After a minute's conversation I at once engaged +B---- to put in the new and larger pipes, and he agreed to dig open the +trench (about two hundred feet long, and three feet deep) and put the +pipes in the next day for thirty-five dollars. The next morning he +appeared as promised, but, instead of going to work, he came into my +study, stood there a moment before my eyes, and quietly but firmly threw +himself out of his job! + +There was no use in spending thirty-five dollars, he said. He had gone +to the City Water Works Office and told them to look into the matter and +see if the connection they had put in at the junction of my pipe with +the main in the street did not need attention. They had found that a new +connection was necessary. They would see that a new one was put in at +once. They were obliged to do it for nothing, he said; and then, +slipping (figuratively speaking) thirty-five dollars into my pocket, he +bowed gravely and was gone. + +B---- knew absolutely and conclusively (as any one would with a look) +that I was not the sort of person who would ever have heard of that +blessed little joint out in the street, or who ever would hear of it or +who would know what to do with it if he did. + + * * * * * + +Sometimes I sit and think of B---- in church, or at least I used to, +especially when his bill had just come in. It was always a pleasure to +think of paying one of B----'s bills--even if it was sometimes a +postponed one. You always knew, with B----, that he had made that bill +out to you as if he had been making out a bill to himself. + +Not such a bad thing to think about during a sermon. + +I do not deny that I do lose a sentence now and then in sermons; and +while, as every one knows, the sermons I have been provided with in the +old stone church have been of a rare and high order, there have, I do +acknowledge, been bad moments--little sudden bare spots or streaks of +abstraction--and I do not deny that there have been times when I could +not help feeling, as I sat listening, like sending around Monday morning +to the parsonage--my plumber. One could not help thinking what Dr. ---- +if he once got started on a plumber like B---- (had had him around +working all the week during a sermon) could do with him. + +I have a shoemaker, too, who would help most ministers. I imagine he +would point up their sermons a good deal--if they had his shoes on. + +Perhaps shoes and pipes and things like these will be looked upon soon +to-day as constituting the great, slow, modest, implacable spiritual +forces of our time. + +At all events, this is the most economical, sensible, thorough way (when +one thinks of it) that goodness can be advertised. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +TOUCHING THE IMAGINATION OF CROWDS + + +A man's success in business to-day turns upon his power of getting +people to believe he has something that they want. + +Success in business, in the last analysis, turns upon touching the +imagination of crowds. The reason that preachers in this present +generation are less successful in getting people to want goodness than +business men are in getting them to want motor-cars, hats, and pianolas, +is that business men as a class are more close and desperate students of +human nature, and have boned down harder to the art of touching the +imaginations of crowds. + +When one considers what it is that touches a crowd's imagination and how +it does it, one is bound is admit that there is not a city anywhere +which has not hundreds of men in it who could do more to touch the +imagination of crowds with goodness than any clergyman could. A man of +very great gifts in the pulpit, a man of genius, even an immortal +clergyman, could be outwitted in the art of touching the imagination of +crowds with goodness by a comparatively ordinary man in any one of +several hundred of our modern business occupations. + +There is a certain nation I have in mind as I write, which I do not like +to call by name, because it is struggling with its faults as the rest of +us are with ours. But I do not think it would be too much to say that +this particular nation I have in mind--and I leave the reader to fill in +one for himself, has been determined in its national character for +hundreds of years, and is being determined to-day--every day, nearly +every minute of every day, except when all the people are asleep--by a +certain personal habit that the people have. I am persuaded that this +habit of itself alone would have been enough to determine the fate of +the nation as a third-rate power, that it would have made it always do +things with small pullings and haulings, in short breaths, and +hand-to-mouth insights--a little jerk of idealism one day, and a little +jerk of materialism the next--a kind of national palavering, and +see-sawing and gesturing, and talking excitedly and with little +flourishes. It is a nation that is always shrugging its shoulders, that +almost never seems to be capable of doing a thing with fine directness, +with long rhythms of purpose or sustained feeling; and all because every +man, woman, and child in the country--scores of generations of them for +hundreds of years--has been taught that the great spiritual truth or +principle at the bottom of correctly and beautifully buying a turnip is +to begin by saying that you do not want a turnip at all, that you never +eat turnips, and none of your family, and that they never would. The +other man begins by pointing out that he is never going to sell another +turnip as long as he lives, if he can help it. Gradually the facts are +allowed to edge in until at last, and when each man has taken off God +knows how much from the value of his soul, and spent two shillings' +worth of time on keeping a halfpenny in his pocket, both parties +separate courteously, only to carry out the same spiritual truth on a +radish perhaps or a spool of thread, or it may be even a house and lot, +or a battleship, or a war, or a rumour of a war, with somebody. + +The United States, speaking broadly, is not like this. But it might have +been. + +In the United States some forty years ago, being a new country, and +being a country where everything a man did was in the nature of things, +felt to be a first experiment, everybody felt democratic and +independent, and as if he were making the laws of the universe just for +himself as he went along. + +There was a period of ten years or so in which every spool of thread and +bit of dress goods--everything that people wore on their bodies or put +in their months, and everything that they read, came up and had to be +considered as an original first proposition, as if there never had been +a spool of thread before, as if each bit of dress goods was, or was +capable of being, a new fresh experiment, with an adventurous price on +it; and before we knew it a moral nagging and edging and hitching had +set in, and was fast becoming in America an American trait, and fixing +itself by daily repetition upon the imagination of the people. + +The shopping of a country is, on the whole, from a psychologist's point +of view, the most spiritual energy, the most irrevocable, most +implacable meter there can ever be of the religion a country really has. + +There was no clergyman in America who could have made the slightest +impression on this great national list or trend of always getting things +for less than they were worth--this rut of never doing as one would be +done by. What was there that could be done with an obstinate, pervasive, +unceasing habit of the people like this? + +What was there that could be done to touch the imagination of the crowd? + +Six thousand women a day were going in and out of A.T. Stewart's great +store on Broadway at that time. A.T. Stewart announced to New York +suddenly in huge letters one day, that from that day forward there +should be one price for everything sold in his store, and that that +price would be paid for it by everybody. + +A.T. Stewart's store was the largest, most successful, original, and +most closely watched store in America. + +The six thousand women became one thousand. + +Then two thousand. Some of them had found that they finished their +shopping sooner; the better class of women, those whose time was worth +the most, and whose custom was the largest, gradually found they did not +want to shop anywhere else. The two thousand became three thousand, four +thousand, six thousand, ten thousand, twelve thousand. + +Other department stores wanted the twelve thousand to come to them. They +announced the one price. + +Hardware stores did it. Groceries announced one price. Then everybody. + +Not all the clergymen in America, preaching every Sunday for months, +could have done very much in the way of seriously touching the +imagination of the crowd on the moral unworthiness, the intellectual +degradation, the national danger of picking out the one thing that +nearly all the people all do, and had to do, all day, every day, and +making that thing mean, incompetent, and small. No one had thought out +what it would lead to, and how monstrous and absurd it was and would +always be to have a nation have all its people taking every little thing +all day, every day, that they were buying, or that they were +selling--taking a spool of thread, for instance--and packing it, or +packing their action with it, as full of adulterated motives and of +fresh and original ways of not doing as they would be done by as they +could think up--a little innocent spool of thread--wreaking all their +sins and kinds of sins on it, breaking every one of the ten commandments +on it as an offering.... + +It was A.T. Stewart, a very ordinary-looking, practical man in a plain, +everyday business, who arrested the attention of a nation and changed +the habit of thought and trend of mind of a great people, and made them +a candid, direct people, a people that went with great sunny prairies +and high mountains, a yea and nay people, straightforward, and free from +palavering forever. A.T. Stewart was accustomed, in his own personal +dealings from day to day, to cut people short when they tried to heckle +with him. He liked to take things for granted, drive through to the +point, and go on to the next one. This might have ended, of course, in a +kind of _cul de sac_ of being a merely personal trait in a clean-cut, +manful, straightforward American gentleman; and if Stewart had been a +snob or a Puritan, or had felt superior, or if he had thought other +people--the great crowds of them who flocked through his store--could +never expect to be as good as he was, nothing would ever have come of +it. + +It is not likely that he was conscious of the long train of spiritual +results he had set in motion; of the way he had taken the habit of mind, +the daily, hourly psychology of a great people, and had wrought it +through with his own spirit; or of the way he had saved up, and set +where it could be used, everyday religion in America, and had freed the +business genius of a nation for its most characteristic and most +effective self-expression. + +He merely was conscious that he could not endure palavering in doing +business himself, and that he would not submit to being obliged to +endure it, and he believed millions of people in America were as +clean-cut and straightforward as he was. + +And the millions of people stood by him. + +Perhaps A.T. Stewart touched the imagination of the crowd because he had +let the crowd touch his and had seen what crowds, in spite of +appearances, were really like. + +The enterprise of touching the imagination of the crowd with goodness, +which is being conducted every day on an enormous scale around us, has +to be carried on, like all huge enterprises, by men who are in a large +degree unconscious of it. There are few department stores in England or +America that would expect to be called pious, but if one is deeply and +obstinately interested in the Golden Rule, and in getting crowds of +people to believe in it at a time, it is impossible not to think what +sweeps of opportunity department stores would have with it--with the +Golden Rule. With thousands of people flowing in and out all the week, +and with hundreds of clerks to attend to it, eight hours a day, there +would hardly seem to be any limit to what such a store could do in +making the Golden Rule a direct, a pointed and personal thing, a thing +that could not be evaded and could not be forgotten by thousands of +people. The same people all going in and out of department stores, vast +congregations of them, eight hours a day, which ministers can only get +at in small lots, three hundred or so, twenty minutes a week, and can +only get at with words even then--all of them being convinced in terms +they understand, and in terms they keenly feel, convinced in hats that +they will see over and over again, convinced in velvets that they are +going to put on and off for years, in laces, in waistcoats, shoes, in +dining-room chairs, convinced in the very underclothes next to their +skins, the clothes they sleep in all night, in the very plates on which +they eat, while all the time they keep remembering, or being reminded, +just how the things were bought, and just what was claimed for them and +what was not claimed for them, and thinking how the claims came true or +how they did not. + + * * * * * + +I just saw lying on the table as I came through the hall a moment ago a +hat which (out of all the long rows of hats I can see faintly reaching +across the years) will always be to me a memorable hat. I am free to say +that, after all the ladies it has been taken off to, my great memory of +that hat is now and always will be, as long as I live, the department +store at which I bought it, and the things the department store, before +I got through with it, managed to make the hat say. + +I had been in the store the day before and selected, in broad daylight, +with a big mirror staring me out of countenance, a hat which was a +quarter of a size too large. To clinch the matter, I had ordered four +ventilating holes to be punched in it, and had it sent to my rooms to be +my hat--implacably my hat as I supposed, for better for worse, for +richer for poorer--always. The next morning, after standing before a +mirror and trying hopefully for a few minutes to see if I could not look +more intelligent in the hat, I returned to the store firmly. I had made +up my mind that I would keep from looking the way that that hat made me +look, at any cost. The store was not responsible according to the letter +either for the hat or for the way I looked in it. I had deliberately +chosen it, looked at myself in cold blood in it, had those dreadful, +irremovable, eternal air-holes dug into it. I would buy a new one. I +jumped into a cab, and a moment after I arrived I found myself before +the clerk from whom I had bought it, with a new one on my head, and was +just reaching into my pocket for my purse when, to my astonishment, I +heard, or seemed to hear, the great Department Store Itself, in the +gentle accents of a young man with a yellow moustache, saying: "I'm +sorry"--all seven storys of it gathering itself up softly, apparently, +and saying "I'm sorry!" The young man explained that he was afraid the +hat was wrong the day before, and thought he ought to have told me so, +that the store would not want me to pay for the mistake. + +I came home a changed man. I had been hit by the Golden Rule before in +department stores, but always rather subtly--never with such a broad, +beautiful flourish! I made some faint acknowledgment, I have forgotten +what, and rushed out of the store. + +But I have never gone past the store since, on a 'bus, or in a taxi, or +sliding through the walkers on the street, but I have looked up to +it--to its big, quiet windows, its broad, honest pillars fronting a +world. + +I take off my hat to it. + +But it gave me more than a hat. + +I think what a thousand department stores, stationed in a thousand +places on this old planet, could do in touching the imagination of the +world--every day, day by day, cityfuls at a time. + +I had found a department store that had absolutely identified itself +with my interests, that could act about a hat the way a wife would--a +department store that looked forward to a permanent relation with me--a +great live machine that could be glad and sorry--that really took me in, +knew how I felt about things, cared how I looked as I walked down the +street. Sometimes I think of the poor, wounded, useless thing I took +back to them, those pitiless holes punched in it--just where no one +else would ever have had them. I am human. I always feel about the +store, that great marble and glass Face, when I go by it now as if, in +spite of all the difficulties, it wanted me--to be beautiful! I at least +feel and know that the people who were the brain, the daily moving +consciousness behind the face--wanted me to be a becoming customer to +them. They did not want to see me coming in, if it could possibly be +helped, in that hat any more! + + * * * * * + +I have told this little history of a gray hat, not because it is in any +way extraordinary, but because it is not. The same thing, or something +quite like it, expressing the same spirit, might have happened in any +one of the best hundred department stores in the world. + +Most people can remember a time, only a very little while ago, when +clerks in our huge department stores or selling machines were not +expected to be people who would think of things like this to do, or who +would know how, or who would think to consider them good business if +they did. + +The department store that based its success on selecting clerks of a +high order of human insight, that paid higher wages to its clerks for +their power of being believed in, for their personal qualities and their +shrewdness in helping people and a gift for discovering mutual interests +with everybody and for founding permanent human relations with the +public, had not been thought of a little while ago. + +All that had been thought of was the appearance of these things. It was +an employer's business, speaking generally, to get all he could out of +his clerks and have them get as little as possible out of him. It was +their business in their turn to get as much money out of the public as +they could get, and to give the public as little in return as they +dared. + +The type of employer who liked to do business in this way, and who +believed in it, crowed over the world nearly everywhere as the Practical +Man. And for the time being certainly it has to be admitted that he +seemed the most successful. Naturally there came to be a general +impression among the people that only certain lower orders of life and +character could be employed, or could stand being employed, in the great +department stores. + +I used often to go into ----'s. Everybody remembers it. I went in, as a +rule, in a helpless, waiting, married way, and as a mere attache of the +truly wise and good. All I ever did or was expected to do was to stand +by and look wise and discriminating a minute about dress goods, when +spoken to. I used to put in my time looking behind the counters--all +those busy, pale, yellow-lighted people in little holes or stalls trying +to be human and natural in that long, low, indoor street of theirs, +crowds of women staring by them and picking at things. Always that +moving sidewalk of questions--that dull, eager stream of consciousness +sweeping by. No sunlight--just the crowds of covetousness and +shrewdness. I used to wonder about the clerks, many of them, and what +they would be like at home or under an apple tree or each with a bit of +blue sky to go with them. They used to seem in those days, as I looked, +mostly poor, underground creatures living in a sort of Subway of Things +in a hateful, hard, little world of clothes, each with his little study +or trick or knack of appearances, standing there and selling people +their good looks day after day at so much a yard. + +To-day, in a hundred cities one can go into department shops where one +would get, standing and looking on idly, totally different impressions. +There are hundreds of thousands of young men and women who have made +being a clerk a new thing in the world. The public has already had its +imagination touched by them, and is beginning to deal with clerks, as a +class, on a different level. + +This has been brought to pass because the employer has been thought of, +or has thought of himself, who engages and pays for in clerks the +highest qualities in human nature that he can get. He picks out and puts +in power, and persuades to be clerks, people who would have felt +superior to it in days gone by--men and women who habitually depend for +their efficiency in showing and selling goods upon their more generous +emotions and insights, their imaginations about other people. They +gather in their new customers, and keep up their long lists of old and +regular customers, through shrewd visions of service to people, and +through a technical gift for making the Golden Rule work. + +When one looks at it practically, and from the point of view of all the +consequences, a bargain is the most spiritual, conclusive, most +self-revealing experience that people can have together. Every bargain +is a cross-section in three tenses of a man. A bargain tells everything +about people--who they are, and what they are like. It also tells what +they are going to be like unless they take pains; and it tells what they +are not going to be like too sometimes, and why. + +The man who comes nearest in modern life to being a Pope, is the man who +determines in what spirit and by what method the people under him shall +conduct his bargains and deal with his customers. ----, at the head of +his department store, has a parish behind his counters of twenty-five +hundred men and women. He is in the business of determining their +religion, the way they make their religion work, eight hours a day, six +days a week. He seems to me to be engaged in the most ceaseless, most +penetrating, most powerful, and most spiritual activity of the world. He +is really getting at the imaginations of people with his idea of +goodness. If he does not work his way through to a man's imagination one +minute or one day, he does the next. If he cannot open up a man's +imagination with one line of goods, he does it with another. If he +cannot make him see things, and do as he would be done by, with one kind +of customer, another is moved in front of him presently, and another, +and another--the man's inner substance is being attacked and changed +nearly every minute every day. There is nothing he can do, or keep from +doing, in which his employer's idea of goodness does not surround, +besiege, or pursue him. Every officer of the staff, every customer who +slips softly up to the counter in front of him makes him think of the +Golden Rule in a new way or in some shading of a new way--confronts him +with the will, with the expectation, with the religion of his employer. + +In ----'s store (where I looked in a moment yesterday) one thousand of +the two thousand five hundred clerks are men. If I were a minister +wondering nearly every day how to work in for my religion a fair chance +at men, I should often look wistfully from over the edge of my pulpit, I +imagine, to the head of ----'s department store, sitting at that quiet, +calm, empty looking desk of his in his little office at the top of his +big building in ---- Street, with nothing but those little six or seven +buttons he softly puts his thumbs on connecting him with a thousand +men. + +And he does not even need the buttons. Every man knows and feels, +personally and intimately, what the man at the desk is asking him to do +with a particular customer who stands before him at the moment. As soon +as the customer is there, the man at the desk practically is there too. +His religion works by wireless, and goes automatically, and as from a +huge stored-up reservoir, to all that happens in the place. He makes +regularly with his idea of goodness anywhere from twenty to sixty +pastoral calls (with every sale they make) on a thousand men a day. He +is not dependent, as the ordinary minister often is, on their dying, or +on their babies, or on their wives, for a chance to get at men with his +religion. + +If I wanted to take a spiritual census of modern civilization and get at +the actual scientific facts, what we would have to call, probably the +foot-tons of religion in the world to-day, I would not look for them in +the year-books of the churches, I would get them by going about in the +great department stores, by moving among the men and women in them day +after day, and standing by and looking on invisibly. Like a shadow or a +light I would watch them registering their goodness daily, hourly, on +their counters, over their counters, measuring out their souls before +God in dress goods, shoes, boas, hats, silk, and bread and butter! + +This may not be true of the Orient, but it is true, and getting to be +more true every day, of Europe and America. + +It is especially true of America. In the things which we borrow in +America, we are far behind the rest of the world. It is to the things +that we create, that we must look alone, for our larger destiny, and our +world-service. + +Naturally, in so far as civilization is a race of borrowing, nations +like England and France and Germany a few hundred miles apart from one +another, set the pace for a nation that is three thousand miles away +from where it can borrow, like the United States. It is a far cry from +the land of the Greeks with their still sunny temples and dreams, and +from England with its quiet-singing churches, to New York with its +practical sky-scraping hewing prayer! + +New York--scooping its will out of the very heavens! + +New York--the World's last, most stern, perhaps most manful prayer of +all--half-asking and half-grasping out of the hand of God! + +Here is America's religion! Half afraid at first, half glad, slowly, +solemnly triumphant, as on the edge of an abyss, I have seen America's +religion! I have seen my brother Americans hewing it out--day by day, +night by night, have I seen them--in these huge steel sub-cellars of the +sky! + +I have accepted the challenge. + +If it is not a religion, then it shall be to us a religion to make it a +religion. + +The Metropolitan Tower with its big clock dial, with its three stories +of telling what time it is, and its great bell singing hymns above the +dizzy flocks of the skyscrapers, is the soul of New York, to me. + +If one could see a soul--if one could see the soul of New York, it would +look more like the Metropolitan Tower than anything else. + +It seems to be trying to speak away up there in the whiteness and the +light, the very soul of the young resistless iron-hearted city. + +I write as an American. To me there is something about it as I come up +the harbour that fills my heart with a big ringing, as if all the world +were ringing, ringing once more--ringing all over again--up in this +white tower of ours in its new bit of blue sky! I glory in England with +it, in Greece, in Bethlehem. It is as an outpost on Space and Time, for +all of us gathering up all history in it softly--once more and pointing +it to God! + +It is the last, the youngest-minded, the most buoyant tower--the mighty +Child among the steeples of the world. The lonely towers of Cologne +stretching with that grave and empty nave against the sky, out of that +old and faded region of religion, far away, tremulously send greetings +to it--to this white tower in the west--to where it goes up with its +crowds of people in it, with business and with daily living and hoping +and dying in it, and strikes heaven! + +It may be perhaps only the American blood in me. Perhaps it is raw and +new to be so happy. I do not know. I only know that to me the +Metropolitan Tower is saying something that has been never quite said +before--something that has been given in some special sense to us as a +trust from the world. It is to me the steeple of democracy--of our +democracy, England's democracy--the world's democracy. The hollow domes +of Sts. Peter and Paul, and all the rest with their vague, airy +other-worldliness, all soaring and tugging like so many balloons of +religion and goodness, trying to get away from this world--are not to me +so splendid, so magnificently wilful as the Metropolitan Tower--as the +souls of these modern, heaven-striking men, taking the world itself, at +last, its streets of stone, of steel, its very tunnels and lifting them +up as blind offerings, as unbounded instincts, as prayers, as songs to +heaven! + +I worship my country, my people, my city when I hear the big bell in it +and when I look up to where the tower is in that still place like a +sea--look up to where that little white country belfry sits in the +light, in the dark above the vast and roaring city! + +To me, the Metropolitan Tower, sweeping up its prayer out of the streets +the way it does, and doing it, too, right beside that little safe, +tucked-in, trim, Sunday religion of the Madison Square Presbyterian +Church, lifts itself up as one of the mighty signs and portents of our +time. Have I not heard the bell tolling to the people in the midst of +business and singing great hymns? A great city lifts itself and prays in +it--prays while it sings and clangs so absent-looking below. + +I like to go out before going to sleep and take a look at it--one more +look before I sleep, upon the tower, strong, unyielding, alive, sinewy, +imperturbable, lifting up within itself the steel and soul of the world. +I am content to go to sleep. + +It is a kind of steeple of the business of this world. I would rather +have said that business needed a steeple before until I saw the +Metropolitan Tower and heard it singing above the streets. But I had +always wanted (without knowing it), in a modern office building, a great +solemn bell to remind us what the common day was. I like to hear it +striking a common hour and what can be done in it. I stop in the street +to listen--to listen while that great hive of people tolls--tolls not the +reveries of monks above the roofs of the skyscrapers, but the religion +of business--of the real and daily things, the seriousness of the mighty +street and the faces of the men and the women. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +THE STUPENDOUS, THE UNUSUAL, THE MONOTONOUS, AND THE SUCCESSFUL + + +The imagination of crowds may be said to be touched most successfully +when it is appealed to in one of four ways: + + THE STUPENDOUS. THE UNUSUAL. THE MONOTONOUS. THE SUCCESSFUL. + +Of these four ways, the stupendous, or the unusual, or the successful +are the most in evidence, and have something showy about them, so that +we can look at them afterward, and point out at a glance what they have +done. But probably the underhold on the crowd, the real grip on its +imagination, the one which does the plain, hard, everyday work on a +crowd's ideals, which determines what crowds expect and what crowds are +like inside--is the Monotonous. + +The man who tells the most people what they shall be like in this world +is not the great man or the unusual man. He is the monotonous man. + +He is the man, to each of us, who determines the unconscious beat and +rhythm with which we live our daily lives. + +If we wanted to touch the imaginations of crowds, or of any particular +crowd, with goodness, the best way to do it would probably be, not to go +to the crowd itself, but to the man who is so placed that he determines +the crowd's monotony, the daily rhythm with which it lives--the man, if +we can find him, who arranges the crowd's heart-beat. + +It need not take one very long to decide who the man is who determines +the crowd's heart-beat. The man who has the most dominion over the +imaginations of most of us, who stands up high before us out in front of +our lives, the man who, as with a great baton, day after day, night +after night, conducts, as some great symphony, the fate of the world +above our heads, who determines the deep, unconscious thoughts and +motives, the inner music or sing-song, in which we live our lives, is +the man to whom we look for our daily bread. + +It is the men with whom we earn our money who are telling us all +relentlessly, silently, what we will have to be like. The men with whom +we spend it, who sell things to us, like the department stores, those +huge machines of attention, may succeed in getting great sweeps of +attention out of crowds at special times, by appealing to men through +the unusual and through the stupendous or the successful. But what +really counts, and what finally decides what men and what women shall +be, what really gets their attention unfathomably, unconsciously, is the +way they earn their money. The feeling men come to have about a fact, of +its being what it is, helplessly or whether or no--the feeling that they +come to have about something, of its being immemorially and innumerably +the same everywhere and forever, comes from what they are thinking and +the way they think while they are earning their money. It is out of the +subconscious and the monotonous that all our little heavens and hells +are made. It is our daily work that becomes to us the real floor and +roof of living, hugs up under us like the ground, fits itself down over +us, and is our earth and sky. The man with whom we earn our money, the +man who employs us, his thinking or not thinking, his "I will" and "I +won't," are the iron boundaries of the world to us. He is the skylight +and the manhole of life. + +The monotonous, the innumerable and over and over again, one's desk, +one's typewriter, one's machine, one's own particular factory window, +the tall chimney, the little forever motion with one's hand--it is +these, godlike, inscrutable, speechless, out of the depths of our +unconsciousness and down through our dreams, that become the very breath +and rumble of living to us, domineer over our imaginations and rule our +lives. It is decreed that what our Employers think and let us know +enough to think shall be a part of the inner substance of our being. It +shall be a part of growing of the grass to us, and shall be as water and +food and sleep. It shall be to us as the shouts of boys at play in the +field and as the crying of our children in the night. To most men +Employers are the great doors that creak at the end of the world. + +It is not the houses that people live in, or the theatres that they go +to, or the churches to which they belong, or the street and number--the +East End look or the West End look the great city carves on the faces of +these men I see in the street--that determines what the men are like. + +Their daily work lies deeper in them than their faces. One finds one's +self as one flashes by being told things in their walk, in the way they +hold their hands and swing their feet. + +And what is it their hands and feet, umbrellas, bundles, and the +wrinkles in their clothes tell us about them? + +They tell us how they earn their money. Their hopes, their sorrow, their +fears and curses, their convictions, their very religions are the +silent, irrevocable, heavenly minded, diabolical by-products of what +their Employers think they can afford to let them know enough to think. + + "Fight for yourselves. Your masters hate you. They would shoot + you down like rabbits, but they need your labour for their + huge profits. Don't go in till you get your minimum. No Royal + Commission, no promise in the future. Leaders only want your + votes; they will sell you. They lie. Parliament lies, and will + not help you, but is trying to sell you. Don't touch a tool + till you get your minimum. Win, win, win! It is up to all + workers to support the miners." + +If a man happens to be an employer, and happens to know that he is not +this sort of man, and finds that he cannot successfully carry on his +business unless he can make five hundred men in his factory believe it, +what can he do? How can he touch their imaginations? What language is +there, either of words or of action, that will lead them to see that he +is a really a fair-minded, competent employer, a representative of the +interests of all, a fellow-citizen, a Crowdman, and that his men can +afford to believe in him and cooeperate with them? + +If they think he would shoot them down like rabbits, it is because they +have not the remotest idea what he is really like. They have not noticed +him. They have no imagination about him, have not put themselves in his +place. How can he get their attention? + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +THE SUCCESSFUL + + +A little while ago I saw in Paris an American woman, the President of a +Woman's Club (I imagined), who was doing as she should, and was going +about in a cab appreciating Paris, drive up to the Louvre. Leaving her +cab, though I wondered a little why she did, at the door, she hurried up +the steps and swept into the gallery, taking her eleven-year-old boy +with her. I came upon her several times. The Louvre did not interest the +boy, and he seemed to be bothering and troubling his mother, and of +course he kept trying very hard, as any really nice boy would, to get +out; but she would not let him, and he wandered about dolefully, looking +at his feet and at the floor, or at the guards, and doing the best he +could. Finally she came over to him; there was a Murillo he must see--it +was the opportunity of his life; she brought him over to it, and stood +him up in front of it, and he would not look; she took his small brown +head in her hands and steered it to the great masterpiece and held it +there--on that poor, silent, helpless Murillo--until.... + +I observed that she could steer his head; but I could not help thinking +how much more she would have done if she had known how to steer it +inside. + +The invention of the Megaphone, of the Cinema, and the _London Times_, +and of the Bible, are all a part of the great, happy, hopeful effort of +one part of this world to get the attention of the other part of it, and +steer heads inside. + +This art of steering heads inside, which has come to be the secret art +of all the other arts, the secret religion of all the religions, is +also the secret of building and maintaining a civilization and a +successful and permanent business. It is hard to believe how largely, +for the last twenty years, it has been overlooked by employers as the +real key of the labour problem--this art of steering people's heads +inside. + +We have seen part of the truth. We have put in a good deal of time in +finding fault with labouring men for thinking too much about themselves +and about their class, and for emphasizing their wages more than their +work, and for not having more noble and disinterested characters. +Parliaments, clergymen, and employers have all been troubled for years +about Labour, and they have been trying very hard on Sundays and through +reports of speeches by members of Parliament in the daily press, and +through laws, and through employers' associations, and through factory +rules and fines, to get the attention of labouring men and lift their +thoughts to higher things. + +A great many wise things have been said to Labour--masterpieces, miles +of them as it were, whole Louvres of words have been hung upon their +walls. + +But in vain! + +And all because we have merely taken the outside of the boy's head in +our hands. We have not thought what was really going on in it. We have +not tried to steer it inside. We have been superficial. + +It is superficial for a comfortable man with a bun in his pocket to talk +to a starving man about having some higher motive than getting something +to eat. Everybody sees that this is superficial, if we mean by it that +his body is starving. But if we mean something more real and more +terrible than that--that he is starving inside, that his soul is +starving, that he has nothing to live for, no real object in getting +something to eat--if we mean by it, in other words, that the man's +imagination is not touched even by his own life, people take it very +lightly. + +And it is the most important thing in the world. The one thing now +necessary to society, to industry, is to get hold of the men who are in +it, one by one, and touch their imaginations about themselves. We have +millions of men working without their thoughts and expectations being +ventilated or passed along, year after year. + +One sees these men everywhere one goes, in thousands of factories, doing +their work without any draught. We already have tall chimneys for our +coal furnaces; we have next to see the value of tall chimneys, great +flues to the sky, on the lives and thought and the inner energies of +men. The most obvious way to get a draught on a man, to get him to glow +up and work is to cut through an opening in the top of his life. + +Just where to cut this opening, and just how to cut it in each man's +life--each man considered as a problem by himself--is the Labour +problem. + +There are certain general principles that might be put down in passing. +To begin with, we must not feel ashamed to begin implacably with the +actual man just as he is, and with the wants and the motives that he +actually has. We should feel ashamed rather to begin in any other way. +It would not be bright or thoughtful to begin on him with motives he is +going to have; and it certainly would not be religious or worthy of us +to try to make him begin with ours. Perhaps ours are better--for us. +Perhaps, too, ours will be better for him when he is like us (if we can +give him any reason to want to be). In the meantime, what is there that +can honestly be called base in taking human nature as it is and in +allowing a sliding scale of motives in people? Starving people and +slaves, or people who are ugly and hateful, _i.e._, not really quite +bright toward others, who impute mean, inaccurate motives to them, can +only be patiently expected to have a very small area or even mote of +unselfishness at first. A cross-section of our society to-day represents +the entire geological formation of human nature for 40,000 years. We +need but look on the faces of the men about us as we go down the street. +All history is here this minute. + +We wish that Labour had better motives. We wish to get our workmen to +understand us better and believe in us more and work for us harder. + +We agree that we must begin with them, if we propose to do this, where +they are. + +Where are they? + +There are certain general observations that might seem to the point. + +1. If a man is a sane and sound man and works hard, he must feel that +everything he does, every minute, is definitely connected with the main +through-train purpose in his life. + +2. If the main purpose in his life is domestic and consists in having +his family live well and giving his children a chance, he must feel and +be absolutely sure when he is working better or working worse for his +employer that he is working better or worse for himself and for those +for whom he lives. + +3. In the ordinary labourer this domestic unselfishness or house +patriotism is a kind of miniature public spirit. It is the elementary +form of his national or human enthusiasm. It is the form of +disinterestedness that has to be attended to in men first; and the way +for society to get the labouring man to be public-spirited, to have the +habit of considering the rights of others, is for society to have the +habit of considering his rights in his daily work. An intelligent, live +man must be allowed a little margin to practise being unselfish on, if +only in the privacy of his own family. Unselfishness begins in small +circles. The starving man must be allowed a smaller range of +unselfishness than the man who has enough. It is not uncomplimentary or +unworthy in human nature to admit that this is so--to demand that the +human being who is starving must be allowed to be selfish. If he is not +bright enough to be selfish when he is hungry he is dangerous to +society. We ought to insist upon his being selfish, and help him in it. +Virtue is a surplus. + +4. This is the first humble, stuttering speech the competent modern +employer who proposes to express himself to his men, and get them to +understand him and work with him, is going to make. He is going to pick +out one by one every man in his works who has a decent, modest, manly +desire to be selfish, and help him in it. He is going to do something or +say something that will make the man see, that will make him believe for +life, that the most powerful, the most trustworthy, the most far-sighted +man he can find in the world to be his partner in being decently, +soundly, and respectfully selfish--is his employer. + +No employer can expect to get the best work out of a man except by +working down through to the inner organic desire in the man as a man, +except by waking his selfishness up and by making it a larger, fuller, +nobler, weightier selfishness, and turning the full weight of it every +minute, every hour, on his daily work. + +The best language an employer can find to express this desire at first +to his workmen, is some form of faithful, honest copartnership. + +5. The ordinary wage labourer has little imagination about other people +because he is not allowed any about himself. The moment he is, and the +moment his employer arranges his work so that he sees every minute all +day that the work which he does for the firm 30 per cent. better counts. +30 per cent. more on his own main purpose in life, his imagination is +touched about himself and he begins to work like a human being. When a +man has been allowed to work awhile as a human being he will begin to be +human with a wider range. Being a partner touches the imagination and +wakes the man's humanness up. He not only works better, but he loves his +family better when he sees he can do something for them. He serves his +town better and his lodge better when he sees he can do something for +them. + +6. Being a partner wakes the man's imagination toward those who work +with him, and toward the public and the markets and the goods and the +cities where the goods go. He reads newspapers with a new eye. He +becomes interested in people who buy the goods, and in people who do +not. Why do they not? He gropes toward a general interest in human +nature, and begins to live. + +7. A man who is being paid wages one night in a week, has his +imagination touched about his work one night in the week. He is merely +being a wage-earner. In being a partner he is being paid, and feels his +pay coming in, every thirty seconds, in the better way he moves his +hands or does not move his hands. This makes him a man. + +8. And, finally, as he knows he is being paid, and that he always will +be paid, what he earns, he stops thinking of the sick, tired side of his +work--the pay he gets out of it, and begins to love the work itself, and +begins to be perfect in it for its own sake. This makes him a gentleman. + +9. Being a partner makes a man actively and keenly reasonable and +practical, not only about his own labour, but about the superior value +of other people with whom he works. He wants the best people in the best +places. He begins to have a practical partner's imagination about the +men who are over him, and about their knowing more than he does. If he +is merely paid wages, he is superstitious, and jealous toward those who +know more than he does. If he is paid profits, he is glad that they do, +and strikes in and helps. + +10. Another complete range of motives is soon offered to the employee +who is a partner. He feels the joy of being a part of a big, splendid +whole, a disinterested delight and pride in others. He grows young with +it, like a boy in school. + +Here is the factory over him, around him--his own vast hockey team--and +over that is the nation, and over that is the world! + +An employer can touch the imagination of most men, of the rank and file +of the people, ninety-nine times where other people can touch it once. +And every time he touches it, he touches it to the point. + +If men in general do not believe to-day in religion and do not want it, +it is because they have employers who have not seen any place in their +business where they could get their religion in, and have kept the +people (in the one place where they could really learn what religion is) +from learning anything about it. The moment the more common employers +see what the great ones see now, that business is the one particular +place in this world where religion really works, works the hardest, the +longest, and the best, works as it had never been dreamed a religion +could be made to work before--the day school teachers of the world, put +the Golden Rule in the Course everybody will know it. + +It only takes a moment's thought to see what the employers of the world +could do with the Golden Rule the moment they take hold of it. + +One has but to consider what they have done with it already. + +One has but to consider the astounding way in the last fifteen years +they have made everybody not believe in it. + +The employers of the world have been saying ten hours a day to everybody +that the Golden Rule is a foolish, pleasant, inefficient, worsted motto +on a parlour wall. + +Everybody has believed it. + +And now that the big employers are setting the pace and are saying +exactly the opposite thing about the Golden Rule, now that all the +employers are trying to get their employees to be efficient (to do by +their employers as they would be done by), and now that they are trying +to be efficient themselves (are trying to do to their employees as they +would have their employees do to them), the Golden Rule is touching the +imagination of crowds, and the crowd is seeing that the Golden Rule +works. They watch it working every day in the things they know about. +Then they believe in it for other things. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +THE NECKS OF THE WICKED + + +A letter lies before me, one out of many others asking me how the author +of "The Shadow Christ," which is a study of the religious values in +suffering and self-sacrifice in this world, takes the low ground that +honesty is the best policy. + +I know two kinds of men who believe that honesty is the best policy. + +These two men use exactly the same words "Honesty is the best policy." + +One man says it. + +The other man sings it. + +One man is honest because it pays. + +The other man is honest because he likes it. + +"Honesty is the best policy" as a motive cannot be called religious, but +"Honesty is the best policy" as a Te Deum, as something a man sings in +his heart every day about God, something he sings about human nature is +religious, and believing it the way some men believe it, is an act of +worship. + +It is like a great gentle mass. + +It is like taking softly up one's own planet and offering it to God. + +Here it is--the planet. Honesty is organized in the rocks on it and in +the oak trees on it and in the people. The rivers flow to the sea and +the heart of Man flows to God. On this one planet, at least, God is a +success. + +Possibly it is because many other people beside myself have been slow in +clearly making this distinction between "Honesty is the best policy" as +a motive or a Te Deum, that I have come upon so many religious men and +women in the last two or three years, who, in the finest spirit, have +seemed to me to be doing all that they could to discourage everybody +especially to discourage me, about the Golden Rule. + +The first objection which they put forward to the Golden Rule is that it +is a failure. + +When I try to deal with this or try to tell them about Non-Gregarious, +the second objection that they put forward is, that it is a success. + +If they cannot discourage me with one of these objections they try to +discourage me with the other. + +They point to the Cross. + +Some days I cannot help wondering what Christ would think if He were to +come back and find people, all these good Christian people everywhere +using the Cross--the Cross of all things in the world as an objection to +the Golden Rule and to its working properly, or as a general argument +against expecting anything of anybody. + +I do not know that I have any philosophy about it that would be of any +value to others. + +I only know that I am angry all through when I hear a certain sort of +man saying, and apparently proving, that the Golden Rule does not work. + +And I am angry at other people who are listening with me because they +are not angry too. + +Why are people so complacent about crosses? And why are they willing to +keep on having and expecting to have in this world all the good people +on crosses? Why do they keep on treating these crosses year after year, +century after century, in a dull tired way as if they had become a kind +of conventionality of God's, a kind of good old church custom, something +that He and the Church by this time, after two thousand years, could not +really expect to try to get over or improve upon? + +I do not know that I ought to feel as I do. + +I only know that the moment I see evil triumphing in this world, there +is one thing that that evil comes up against. + +It comes up against my will. + +My will, so far as it goes, is a spiritual fact. + +I do not argue about it, nor do I know that I wish to justify it. I +merely accept my will as it is, as one spiritual fact. + +I propose to know what to do with it next. + +The first thing that I have done, of course, has been to find out that +there are millions of other so-called Christian people who have +encountered this same fact that I have encountered. + +There are at least some of us who stand together. Our wills are set +against having any more people die on crosses in this world than can be +helped. If there is any kind of skill, craftmanship, technique, +psychology, knowledge of human nature which can be brought to bear, +which will keep the best people in this world not only from being, but +from belonging on crosses in it, we propose to bring these things to +bear. We are not willing to believe that crowds are not inclined to +Goodness. We are not willing to slump down on any general slovenly +assumption about the world that goodness cannot be made to work in it. + +If goodness is not efficient in this world we will make it efficient. + +Our reason for saying this is that we honestly glory in this world. We +believe that at this moment while we are still on it, it is in the act +of being a great world, that it is God's world, and in God's Name we +will defend its reputation. + +We do not deny that it may be better spiritual etiquette, more heroic +looking and may have a certain moral grace, so far as a man himself is +concerned, if the world makes him suffer for being honest. But after all +he is only one man, and whether he dislikes his suffering or likes it +and feels fine and spiritual over it, it is only one man's suffering. + +But why is it that when the world makes a man suffer, everybody should +seem always to be thinking of the man? Why does not anybody think of the +world? + +Is not the fact that a whole world, eternal and innumerable, is supposed +to be such a mean, dishonest sort of a world that it will make a man +suffer for being good a more important fact than the man's suffering is? +It seems to me to be taking not lower but higher ground when one insists +on believing in the race one belongs to and in believing that it is a +human race that can be believed in. After two thousand years of Christ, +it is a lazy, tired, anaemic slander on the world to believe that it does +not pay to be good in it. The man who believes it, and acts as if he +believed it, is to-day and has been from the beginning of time the +supreme enemy of us all. He is guilty before heaven and before us all +and in all nations of high treason to the human race. One of the next +most important things to do in modern religion is going to be to get all +these morally dressed-up, noble-looking people who enjoy feeling how +good they are because they have failed, to examine their hearts, stop +enjoying themselves and think. + +For hundreds of years we have religiously run after martyrs and we have +learned in a way, most of us, to have a kind of cooped-up patriotism for +our own nation, but why are there not more people who are patriotic +toward the whole human race? One has been used to seeing it now for +centuries, good people all over the world hanging their harps on willow +trees, or snuggling down together by the cold sluggish stream of their +lives, and gossiping about how the world has abused them, when they +would be far better occupied, nine out of ten of them--in doing +something that would make it stop. There was a poet and soldier some +thousands of years ago who put more real religion (and put it too, into +his imprecatory psalms), than has been put, I believe, into all the +sweet whinings and the spiritual droopings of the world in three +thousand years. I do not deny that I would quarrel, as a matter of form, +with the lack of urbanity, with a certain ill-nature in the imprecatory +Psalms; but with the spirit in them, with the motive and mighty desire, +with the necessity in the man's heart that was poured into them, I have +the profoundest sympathy. + +David had a manly, downright belief. His belief was that if sin is +allowed to get to the top in this world of ours, it is our fault. David +felt that it was partly his--and being a king--very much his, and as he +was trying to do something about it, he naturally wanted the world to +help. + +What he really meant--what lay in the background of his petition--the +real spirit that made him speak out in that naive bold way before the +Lord, and before everybody--that made him ask the great God in heaven +all looking so white and so indifferent, to come right down please and +jump on the necks of the wicked, was a vivid, live vision of his own for +his own use that he was going to make the world more decent. He was +spirited about it. If God did not, He would, and naturally when he came +to expressing how he felt in prayer, he wanted God to stand by him. To +put it in good plain soldier-like Hebrew, He wanted God to jump on the +necks of his enemies. + +Speaking strictly for ourselves, in our more modern spirit of course, we +would want to modulate this, we admit that we would not ask God to do a +little thing like jumping on the necks of the wicked--just for us--nor +would we care to break away from the other things we are doing and +attend to it ourselves, nor would we even favour their necks being +jumped on by others, but while we do not agree with David's particular +request, we do profoundly agree with the way he felt when he made it. We +would not make our flank movement on the wicked in quite the same way +and according to our more modern and more scientific manner of thought, +we would want to do something more practical with the wicked, but we +would want to do something with them and we would want to do it now. + +As we look at it, it ought not to be necessary to jump on the necks of +the wicked to make them good, that is, to make them understand what they +would wish they had done in twenty years. We live in a more reasoning +and precise age and what more particularly concerns us in the wicked is +not their necks, but their heads and their hearts. It seems to us that +they are not using them very much and that the moment they do and we can +get them to, they will be good. Possibly it was a mere matter of +language, a concession to the then state of the language--David's +wanting their necks to be jumped on so that he could get their attention +at first and make them stop and think and understand. More subtle ways +of expressing things to the wicked have been thought of to-day than of +jumping on their necks, but the principle David had in mind has not +changed, the principle of being loyal to the human race, the principle +of standing up for people and insisting that they were really meant to +be better than they were or than they thought they could be--a kind of +holy patriotism David had for this world. The main fact about David +seems to be that he believed he belonged to a great human race. +Incidentally he believed he belonged to a human race that was really +quite bright, bright enough at least to make people sorry for doing +wrong in it--a human race that was getting so shrewd and so just and so +honest that it took stupider and stupider people every year to be +wicked, and when he found, judging from recent events in Judea, that +this for the time being was not so, he had a hateful feeling about it, +which it seems to some of us, vastly improved him and would improve many +of us. We do not claim that the imprecatory Psalms were David's best, +but they must have helped him immensely in writing the other ones. + + * * * * * + +We may be wrong. But it has come to be an important religious duty to +some of us, or rather religious joy, to hate the prosperity of the +wicked. We hate the prosperity of the wicked, not because it is their +prosperity and not ours, but because their prosperity constitutes a +sneer or slander on the world. We have no idea of wanting to go about +faithfully jumping upon the necks of the wicked. What we want is to feel +that we are in a world where the good people are happy and are making +goodness reasonable, successful, profitable and practical in it. We want +an earth with crowds on it who see things as they are, and who guess so +well on what they want (_i.e._, who are good) that other people who do +not know what they want and are not good, will be lonesome. + +We have made up our minds to live in a world not where the wicked will +feel that their necks are going to be jumped on (which is really a +rather interesting and prominent feeling on the whole), but a world +where the wicked will be made to feel that nobody notices their necks, +that they are not worth being jumped on, a world where nobody will have +time to go out back and jump on them, a world where the wicked will not +be able to think of anything important to do, and where the wicked +things that are left to do will be so small and so stupid that nobody +will notice. They will be ignored like boys with catcalls in the street. +When we can make people who do wrong feel unimportant enough, there is +going to be some chance for the good. + +If we could find some sweet, proper, gentle, Christian-looking way of +conveying to these people for a few swift, keen minutes how little +difference it makes when they and people like them do wrong, they would +steal over in a body and do right. + +This is our program. We are making preliminary arrangements for a world +in which after this, very soon now, righteousness is going to attend +strictly to its own business and unrighteousness is going to be crowded +out. No one will feel that he has time in two or three hundred years +from now to go out of his way into some obscure corner of the world and +jump on the necks of the wicked. + +But this is a matter of form. The main fundamental manful instinct David +had--the idea that there should not be any more people dying on crosses +than could be helped--that collective society should take hold of Evil +and set it down hard in its chair and make it cry seems to many of us +absolutely sound. Of course, we feel that it is not for us, those who +love righteousness, to jump on the necks of the wicked. We prefer to +have it attended to in a more dignified, impersonal way by Society as a +whole. So we believe that Society should proceed to making goodness and +honesty pay. If Society will not do it _we_ will do it. The world may be +against us at first but we will at least clear off a small place on +it--in our own business for instance--where our goodness can command the +most shrewdness and the most technique--and we will do what we can +slowly--one industry at a time, to remove the slander on goodness that +goodness is not inefficient, and the slander on the world that goodness +cannot be self-supporting, self-respecting (and without disgrace), even +comfortable in it. + +The old hymn with which many of us are familiar is well and true enough. +But it does not seem that standing up for Jesus is the most important +point in the world just now. A great many people are doing it. What we +need more is people who will stand up for the world. When people who are +standing up for the world stand and sing "Stand up for Jesus" it will +begin to count. Let four hundred Nons sing it; and we will all go to +church. + +If nine of the people out of ten who are singing "Stand up for Jesus" +would stand up for the world, that is, if they would stop trading with +their grocer when they find he slides in regularly one bad orange out of +twelve and promptly look up a grocer who does not do such things, and +trade with him, it would not be necessary for people to do as they so +often do nowadays, fall back on a little wistful half discouraged last +resort like "standing up for Jesus." + +Standing up for the world means standing by men who believe in it, +standing by men who make everything they do in business a declaration of +their faith in God and their faith in the credit of human nature, men +who put up money daily in their advertising, their buying and selling, +on the loyalty, common sense, brains, courage, goodness, and righteous +indignation of the people. + +The idea that goodness is sweet and helpless and that Jesus was meek and +lowly and has to be stood up for is now and always has been a slander. +It does not seem to some of us that He would want to be stood up for and +we do not like the way some people call Him meek and lowly. It would be +more true to say that He merely looks meek and lowly; that is, if most +men had done or not done or had said or not said things in the way he +did, they would have been considered meek and lowly for it. He had a way +of using a soft answer to turn away wrath. But there was not anything +really meek and lowly about his giving the soft answer. No meek and +lowly man would ever have thought of such a thing as turning away wrath +with a soft answer. He would have been afraid of looking weak. He would +not have had the energy or the honesty or the spiritual address to know +or to think of a soft answer that would do it. + +The spirit of fighting evil with good--a kind of glorious self-will for +goodness, for doing a thing the higher and nobler way and making it +work, the spirit of successful implacably efficient righteousness is the +last and most modern interpretation of the New Testament, the crowd's +latest cry to its God. Crowds will always crucify and crosses will never +go by. But we are going to have a higher ideal for crosses. We are not +going (out of sheer shame for the world), to think seriously any longer +of dying on a cross, or letting any one else die on one for a little +rudimentary platitude, a quiet, sensible, everyday business motto for +any competent business man like "Do unto others as you would have them +do unto you." + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +IS IT WRONG FOR GOOD PEOPLE TO BE SUCCESSFUL? + + +We are having and are about to have notably and truly successful men who +have the humility and faithfulness, the spiritual distinction of true +and great success. + +I want to interpret, if I can, these men. I would like to put with the +great martyrs, with the immortal heroes of failure, these modern silent, +unspoken, unsung mighty men, the heroes of success. I look forward to +seeing them placed among the trophies of religion, in the heart of +mankind at last. + +I cannot stand by and watch these men being looked upon by good people +as men the New Testament made no room for, secretly disapproved of by +religious men and women, as being successes, as being little, noisy, +disturbing, contradictions of the New Testament as talking back to the +Cross. + +These things I have been trying to say about the Cross as a means of +expressing goodness to crowds have brought me as time goes on into close +quarters with many men to whom I pay grateful tribute, men of high +spirit, who strenuously disagree with me. + +I am not content unless I can find common ground with men like these. + +They are wont to tell me when we argue about it that whatever I may be +able to say for success as a means of touching the imaginations of +crowds with goodness, great or attractive or enthralling characters are +not produced by success. Success does not produce great characters. It +is now and always has been failure that develops the characters of the +men who a truly great. + +Perhaps failure is not the only way. + + * * * * * + +When I was talking with ---- a little while ago about Non-Gregarious's +goodness and how it succeeded, he was afraid that if his goodness +succeeded there must have been something the matter with it. + +I could see that he was wondering what it was. + +Non's success troubled him. He did not think it was exactly religious. +"Real religion" he said, "was self-sacrifice. There always had to be +something of the Cross about real religion." + +I said that Non's religion was touched at every point with the Cross. + +It seemed to me that it was the spirit of eagerness in it that was the +great thing about the Cross. If Non would all but have died to make the +Golden Rule work in this world, if he daily faced ruin and risked the +loss of everything he had in this life to prove that the Golden Rule was +a success, that is if he really had a Cross and if he really faced +it--dying on it, or not dying on it, could not have made him one whit +more religious or less religious than he was. What Non was willing to +die for, was his belief in the world, and scores of good Christian +people tried in those early days of his business struggle to keep him +from believing in the world. There was hardly a day at first but some +good Christian would step into Non's office and tell him the world would +make him suffer for it if he kept on recklessly believing in it and +doing all those unexpected, unconventional, honest things that somehow, +apparently, he could not help doing. + +They all told him he could not succeed. They said he was a failure. He +would suffer for it. + +I would like to express if I can, what seems to be Non's point of view +toward success and failure. + +If Non were trying to express his idea of the suffering of Christ, I +imagine he would say that in the hardest time of all when his body was +hanging on the Cross, the thing that was really troubling Christ was not +that he was being killed. The thing that was troubling him was that the +world really seemed, at least for the time being, the sort of world that +could do such things. He did not take his own cross too personally or +too literally as the world's permanent or fixed attitude toward goodness +or every degree of goodness. There was a sense in which he did not +believe except temporarily in his own cross. He did not think that the +world meant it or that it would ever own up that it meant it. + +Probably if we had crosses to-day the hard part of dying on one would +be, not dying on it, but thinking while one was dying on it that one was +in the sort of world that could do such things. + +It is Non's religion not to believe every morning as he goes down to his +office that he is in a mean world, a world that would want to crucify +him for doing his work as well as he could. + +Perhaps this was the spirit of the first Cross, too. We have every +reason to believe that if Christ could have come back in the flesh three +days after the crucifixion and lived thirty-three years longer in it, he +would have occupied himself exclusively in standing up for the world +that had crucified him, in saying that it was a small party in a small +province that did it, that it was temporary and that they did it because +they were in a hurry. + +It was not Christ, but the comparatively faint-believing, worldly minded +saints that have enjoyed dying on crosses since, who have been proud of +being martyrs. + +Among those who have tried the martyr way of doing things Jesus is +almost the only one who has not in his heart abused the world. Most +martyrs have made a kind of religion out of not expecting anything of it +and of trying to get out of it. "And ye, all ye people, are ye suitable +or possible people for me to be religious with?" the typical martyr +exclaims to all the cities, to all the inventors, to the scientists and +to the earth-redeemers, to his neighbours and his fellow men. It was +not until science in the person of Galileo came to the rescue of +Christianity and began slowly to bring it back to where Christ started +it--as a noble, happy enterprise of standing up for this world and of +asserting that these men who were in it are good enough to be religious +here and to be the sons of God now--that Christianity began to function. +Religion has been making apparently a side trip for nearly twelve +hundred years, a side trip into space or into the air or into the grave +for holiness for the eternal, and for the infinite. + +Doubtless very often people on crosses really have been holier than the +people who knew how to be good without being crucified. Sometimes it has +been the other way. It would have been just as holy in Non to make the +gospel work in New York as to make a blaze, a show or advertisement of +how wicked the world was, and of how inefficient the gospel was--by +going into insolvency. + +He has had his cross, but instead of dying on it, he has taken it up and +carried it. Scores of risks and difficulties that he has grappled with +would have become crosses at once if equally good, but less resourceful +men, had had them. Letting one's self be threatened with the cross a +thousand times is quite as brave as dying on one once. The spirit, or at +least the shadow, of a cross must always fall daily on any life that is +stretching the world, that is freeing the lives of other men against +their wills. The whole issue of whether there will be a cross or the +threat of a cross turns on a man's insight into human nature and his +quiet and practical imagination concentrated upon his work. + +Not dying on a cross is a matter of technique. One sees how not to, and +one does not. It might be said that the world has two kinds of +redeemers, its cross-redeemers and its success-redeemers. The very best +are on crosses, many of them. Perhaps in the development of the truth +the cross-redeemers come first; they are the pioneers. Then come the +success-redeemers, then everybody! + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +IS IT SECOND RATE FOR GOOD PEOPLE TO BE SUCCESSFUL? + + +Of course the most stupendous success that has ever been made--the +world's most successful undertaking from a technical point of view as an +adaptation of means to ends was the attempt that was made by a man in +Galilee years and years ago to get not only the attention of a whole +world, but to get the attention of a whole world for two thousand years. + +This purpose of arresting the attention of a world and of holding it for +two thousand years was accomplished by the use of success and of failure +alternately. + +Christ tried success or failure according to which method (time and +place considered) would seem to work best. + +His first success was with the doctors. + +His next success was based on His instinct for psychology, His power of +divining people's minds, which made possible to Him those extraordinary +feats in the way of telling short stories that would arrest and hold the +attention of crowds so that they would think and live with them for +weeks to come. + +His next success was a success based on the power of His personality, +and His knowledge of the human spirit and his victory over His own +spirit--his success in curing people's diseases and His extraordinary +roll of miracles. + +He finally tried failure at the end, or what looked like failure, +because the Cross completed what he had had to say. + +It made His success seem greater. + +The world had put to death the man who had had such great successes. + +People thought of His successes when they thought of Him on the Cross, +and they have kept thinking of them for thousands of years. + +But the Cross itself, or the use of failure was a sowing of the seed, a +taking the truth out of the light and the sunshine and putting it in the +dark ground. + +The Cross was promptly contradicted with the Resurrection. All this, it +seems to some of us, is the most stupendous and successful undertaking +from a purely technical point of view that the world has seen. In the +last analysis it was not His ideas or His character merely, but it was +His technique that made Christ the Son of God and the Master of the +Nations of the Earth. + + * * * * * + +I think that while Christ would not have understood Frederick Taylor's +technique, his tables of figures or foot-tons or logarithms he would +have understood Frederick Taylor. + +Nearly all the time that could be said to have been spent in his life in +dealing with other men he spent in doing for them on a nobler scale the +thing that Frederick Taylor did. He went up to men--to hundreds of men a +day, that he saw humdrumming along, despising themselves and despising +their work and expecting nothing of themselves and nothing of any one +else and asked them to put their lives in his hands and let him show +what could be done with them. + +This is Frederick Taylor's profession. + +The Sermon on the Mount began with telling people that they would be +successful if they knew how--if they had a vision. It proceeded to give +them the vision. It began with giving them a vision for the things that +they had, told them how even the very things that they had always +thought before were what was the matter with the world they could make a +great use of. "Blessed are the peacemakers. Blessed are those that +hunger; blessed are the meek." + +And He then went on to tell them how much finer, and nobler and more +free from the cares and weights of this earth they could be if they +wanted to be, than they had dared to believe. He told the people who +were around Him bigger things about human nature, how successful it was +or could be than any one had ever claimed for people in this world +before. They put Him up on a Cross at last and crucified Him because +they thought He was too hopeful about them, and about human nature or +because, as they would have put it, He was blasphemous and said every +man was a Son of God. + +As human nature then was and in the then spirit of the world, no better +means than a Cross could have been employed to get the attention of all +men, to make a two thousand year advertisement for all nations of what a +success human nature was, of what men really could be like. + +But I think that if Christ were to come to us again and if he were to +try to get the attention of the whole world once more to precisely the +same ideas and principles that he stood for before, the enterprise would +be conducted in a very different manner. + +There is a picture of Albert Durer's which hangs near my desk, and once +more as I write these lines my eyes have fallen on it. It is the +familiar one with the lion and the lamb in it, lying down together, and +with the big room with the implements of knowledge scattered about in it +and at the other end in the window at the table with a book, an old, +bent-over scientist with a halo over his head. + +If Christ were to appear suddenly in this modern world to-morrow, the +first thing He would see and would go toward, would be the halo over the +scientist's head. + +There is nothing especially picturesque or religious looking, nothing, +at least, that could be put in a stained-glass window in Frederick +Taylor's tables and charts and diagrams of the number of foot-tons a +pig-iron handler can lift with his arms in a day. + +But if Christ returned to the world to-morrow and if what He wanted to +do to-morrow was to get the universal, profound, convinced attention of +all men to the Golden Rule, I believe He would begin the way Frederick +Taylor did, by--being concrete. If He wanted to get men in general, men +in business, to love one another He would begin by trying to work out +some technical, practical way in which certain particular men in a +certain particular place could afford to love one another. + +He would find a practical way for instance for the employers and +pig-iron handlers in the Midvale Steel Works to come to some sort of +common understanding and to work cheerfully and with a free spirit +together. I think he would proceed very much in the way that Frederick +Taylor did. + +He would not say much about the Golden Rule. He would give each man a +vision for his work, and of the way it lapped over into other men's work +and leave the Golden Rule a chance to take care of itself. This is all +the Golden Rule, as a truth or as a remark needs just now. + +For two thousand years men have devoted themselves Sunday day after +Sunday to saying over and over again that men should love one another. +The idea is a perfectly familiar one. When Christ said it two thousand +years ago, it was so original and so sensational that just of itself and +as a mere remark it had a carrying power over the whole earth. + +Everybody believes it now--that it is a true remark--but like a score of +other remarks that have been made and some of the noblest Christ made, +is it not possible that it has long since in its mere capacity of being +a remark, gone by? There is no one who has not heard about our loving +one another. The remark we want now is how we can do it. This is the +remark that Mr. Frederick Taylor has made. It is not very eloquent. It +is a mere statement of fact. It has taken him nearly thirty-three years +to make it. + +The gist of it is that for thirty-three years, the employers and the +pig-iron handlers in the Midvale Steel Works, Pennsylvania, have been +devoted to one another and to one another's interests and acting all day +every day as if of course their interests were the same, and it has been +found that employees when their employers cooeperated with them could +lift forty-seven tons instead of twelve and a half a day, and were +getting 60 per cent. more wages. + +Everybody listens. Everybody sees at a glance that when it comes to +making remarks about doing as one would be done by, this is the one +remark that we have all been waiting to hear some one make for two +thousand years. + + * * * * * + +The Cross or the last-resort type of religion was as far as St. +Augustine or St. Francis in their world could get. It was all that the +Middle Ages were ready for or that could be claimed for people who had +to live in ages without a printing press, in which no one in the crowd +could expect to know anything and in which there were no ways of letting +crowds know things. + +To-day there is no reason why the Cross as a contrivance for attracting +the attention of all people to goodness should be exclusively relied +upon. + +Possibly the Cross was intended, at the time, as the best possible way +of starting a religion, when there was none, or possibly for keeping it +up when there was very little of it. + +But now that Christianity has been occupied two thousand years in +putting in the groundwork, in laying down the principles of success, and +in organizing them into the world, has been slowly making it possible +with crowds that could not be long deceived for success to be decent. +The leaven has worked into human nature and Christianity has produced +The Successful Temperament. + +Success has become a spiritual institution. In other words, the hour of +the Scientist, of the man with a technique, of the man who sees how, the +man of The Successful Temperament is at hand. + +Everything we plan for the world, including goodness, from this +day--must reckon with him--with the Man Who Sees How. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + +THE SUCCESSFUL TEMPERAMENT + + +I also, Gentle Reader, have despised and do despise "success." + +I also have stood, like you, perhaps, and I am standing now in that +ancient, outer court, where I can keep seeing every day The Little Great +Men with all their funny trappings on,--their hoods, and their ribbons, +and their train-bearers, drive up before us all and go in to The Great +Door. I have gone by in the night and have heard the buzz of their +voices there. I have looked, like you, up at the great lighted windows +of Prosperity from the street. + +And in the broad daylight I have seen them too. I have stood on the curb +in the public way with all the others and watched silently the parade of +The Little Great go by. + +I have waited like you, Gentle Reader, and smiled or I have turned on my +heel sadly, or wearily or bitterly or gayly and walked away down my own +side street of the world and with the huzzahs of the crowd echoing +faintly in my ears have gone my way. + +But I keep coming back to the curb again. + +I keep coming back because, every now and then among all the gilt +carriages and the bowing faces in them, or among all the big yellow vans +or cages with the great beasts of success in them, the literary foxes, +the journalist-juggernauts, the Jack Johnsons of finance, the contented, +gurgling, wallowing millionaires--I cannot help standing once more and +looking among them, for one, or for possibly two, or three or four who +may be truly successful men. Some of them are merely successful-looking. +I often find as I see them more closely, that they are undeceived, or +humble, or are at least not being any more successful-looking than +they can help, and are trying to do better. + +They are the men who have defied success to succeed and who will defy it +again and again. + +They are the great men. + +The great man is the man who can get himself made and who will get +himself made out of anything he finds at hand. + +If success cannot do it, he makes failure do it. If he cannot make +success express the greatness or the vision that is in him, he makes +failure express it. + +But this book is not about great men and goodness. It is about touching +the imagination of crowds with goodness, about making goodness +democratic and making goodness available for common people. + + * * * * * + +A stupendous success in goodness will advertise it as well as a +stupendous failure. + +Goodness has had its cross-redeemers to attract the attention of half a +world. + +Possibly it is having now its success-redeemers to attract the attention +of the other half. + +The people the success-redeemers reach would turn out to be, possibly, +very much more than half. + +The Cross, as a means of getting the attention of crowds, or of the more +common people in our modern, practical-minded Western world, was +apparently adapted to its purpose as long as it was used for church +purposes or as long as it was kept dramatic or sensational or remote, or +as long as it was a cross for some one else, but as a means of +attracting the attention of crowds of ordinary men and women to goodness +in common everyday things, it is very doubtful if failure--in the power +of steady daily pulling on men's minds, has done as much for goodness as +success. + +It is doubtful if, except as an ideal or conventional symbol the cross +has ever been or ever could be what might be called a spiritually +middle-class institution. It has been reserved for men of genius, +pioneers and world-designers to have those colossal and glorious crosses +that have been worshipped in all ages, and must be worshipped in all +ages as the great memorials of the human race. + +But the more common and numerous types of men, the men who do not design +worlds, but who execute them, build them, who carry the new designs of +goodness out, who work through the details and conceive the technique of +goodness are men in whom the spiritual and religious power takes the +natural form of success. + +It seems to be the nature of the modern and the western type of man to +challenge fatalism, to defy a cross. He would almost boast that nobody +could make him die on it. This spirit in men too is a religious spirit. +It is the next hail of goodness. Goodness posts up its next huge notice +on the world: + + [SUCCESS] + +It is going to make the more rudimentary everyday people notice it, and +it is going to make them notice it in everyday things. It does not admit +that goodness is merely for the spiritual aristocrats for those greater +souls that can search out and appreciate the spiritual values in +failure. + +It believes that goodness is for crowds. It has discovered that crosses, +to common people in common things, seem oriental and mystical. The +common people of the western world instead of being born with dreamy +imaginations are born with pointed and applied ones. It is not +impossible that the comparative failure of the Christian religion in the +western world and in the later generations is that it has been trying to +be oriental and aristocratic in appealing to what is really a new type +of man in the world--the scientific and practical type as we see it in +the western nations all about us to-day. + +We can die on crosses in our Western world as well as any one and we can +do it in crowds too as they do in India, but we propose if crosses are +expected of us to know why in crowds. Knowing why makes us think of +things and makes us do things. It is the keynote of our temperament. + +And it is not fair to say of us when we make this distinction that we do +not believe in the cross. But there are times when some of us wish that +we could get other people to stop believing in it. We would all but die +on the cross to get other people to stop dying on one for platitudes, to +get them to work their way down to the facts and focus their minds on +the practical details of not dying on a cross, of forming a vision of +action which will work. It goes without saying that as long as crowds +are in the world crosses will not go by, but it is wicked not to make +them go by as fast as possible, one by one. They were meant to be moved +up higher. We are eager not to die on the same cross for the same thing +year after year and century after century. It seems to us that the +eagerness that always goes with the cross always was and always will be +the essential, powerful and beautiful thing in it. + +And it is this new eagerness in the modern spirit, a kind of hurrying up +of the souls of the world that is inspiring us to employ our western +genius in inventing and defending and applying the means of goodness and +in finding ways of making goodness work. We will not admit that men were +intended to die on crosses from a sheer, beautiful, heavenly +shiftlessness, vague-mindedness, mere unwillingness to take pains to +express themselves or unwillingness to think things out and to make +things plain to crowds. It does not seem to us that it is wicked to +employ success as well as failure, to state our religion to people. It +seems to us that it goes naturally with the scientific and technical +temperament of the people that we should do this. It is not superior and +it is not inferior. It is temperamental and it is based upon the study +of the psychology of attention, on a knowledge of what impresses a +certain kind of man and of what really is conclusive with crowds and +with average men and women. It is the distinctive point of view of the +pragmatic temperament, of the inductive mind. The modern mind is +interested in facts and cannot make a religion out of not knowing them. +There was a time once when people used to take their bodily diseases as +acts of God. We have made up our minds not to have these same bodily +diseases now. We have discovered by hard work and constant study that +they are not necessary. The same is true of our moral diseases and of +our great social maladies. + +It is going to be the same with crosses. It is a sin and a slander and +affront to human nature and to God to die on a cross if it can be helped +by hard work and close thinking, or by touching the imaginations of +others. + +Most of us acting in most things are not good enough to die on crosses. +We are not worthy, it would not be humble in us to. Crosses are only +reserved for the newest and most rare truths, and for the newest and +most rare men. They are still, and they still can be made to be, a means +of grace and of perfection to people who have gifts of learning things +by suffering, but as a means of making other people and people in crowds +see things, the right to use a cross is not for those of us who are +merely lumbering spiritually along, trying to catch up to a plain, +simple-hearted old platitude, eighteen hundred years late like the +Golden Rule. The right to a cross is reserved for those who are up on +the higher reaches, those great bleak stretches or moors of truth where +men go forth and walk alone with God hundreds of years ahead. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + +THE MEN AHEAD PULL + + +Writing a hopeful book about the human race with the New York _Sun_, +Wall Street, Downing Street and Bernard Shaw looking on is uphill work. + +Sometimes I wish there were another human race I could refer to when I +am writing about this one, one every one knows. The one on Mars, for +instance, if one could calmly point to it in the middle of an argument, +shut people off with a wave of one's hand and say, "Mars this" and "Mars +that" would be convenient. + +The trouble with the human race is that when one is talking to it about +itself, it thinks it is It. + +It is not It yet. + +The earth and everything on it is a huge Acorn, tumbling softly through +the sky. + +Our boasted Christianity (crosses, and resurrections and cathedrals and +all) is a Child crying in the night. + + * * * * * + +It is not necessary for me to prove to the satisfaction of the New York +_Sun_ and Bernard Shaw that the Golden Rule has not reached the superior +moral stage of being taken as a platitude by all of our people who are +engaged in business. It is enough to submit that the most creative and +forceful business men--the men who set the pace, the foremen of the +world, are taking it so, and that others are trying to be as much like +them as they can. Wickedness in this world is not going to stop with a +jerk. It is merely being better distributed. Possibly this is all there +is to the problem, getting sin better distributed. The Devil has never +had a very great outfit or any great weight, but he has always known +where to throw it, and he has always done an immense business on a small +capital and the only way he has managed to get on at all, is by +organizing, and by getting the attention of a few people at the top. Now +that the moral sense of the world has become quickened, and that rapid +transit and newspapers and science and the fact-spirit have gained their +hold, the sins of the world are being rapidly distributed, not so much +among the men who determine things as among those who cannot. + +Everything is following the fact-spirit. The modern world and everything +in it, is falling into the hands of the men who cannot be cheated about +facts, who get the facts first and who get them right. + +The world cannot help falling, from now on, slowly--a little ponderously +perhaps at first--into the hands of good men. To say that the world is +falling into the hands of men who cannot be cheated and to say that it +is falling into the hands of good men is to say the same thing. + +The men who get the things that they want, get them by seeing the things +as they are. Goodness and efficiency both boil down to the same quality +in the modern man, his faculty for not being a romantic person and for +not being cheated. + +A good man may be said to be a man who has formed a habit, an intimate +personal habit of not being cheated. Everything he does is full of this +habit. The sinful man, as he is usually called, is a man who is off in +his facts, a man who does not know what he really wants even for +himself. In a matter-of-fact civilization like ours, he cannot hope to +keep up. If a man can be cheated, even by himself--of course other +people can cheat him and everybody can take advantage of him. He +naturally grows more incompetent every day he lives. The men who are +slow or inefficient in finding out what they really want and slow in +dealing with themselves are necessarily inefficient and behind hand in +dealing with other people. They cannot be men who determine what other +people shall do. + +It is true that for the moment, it still seems--now that science has +only just come to the rescue of religion, that evil men in a large +degree are the men who still are standing in the gate and determining +opportunities and letting in and letting out Civilization as they +please. But their time is limited. + +The fact-spirit is in the people. We enjoy facts. Facts are the modern +man's hunting, his adventure and sport. The men who are ahead are +getting into a kind of two-and-two-are-four habit that is like music, +like rhythm. It becomes almost a passion, almost a self-indulgence in +their lives. Being honest with things, having a distaste for being +cheated by things, having a distaste for being cheated by one's self and +for cheating other people, runs in the blood in modern men. The nations +can be seen going round and round the earth and looking one another long +and earnestly in the eyes. The poet is turning his imagination upon the +world about him and upon the fact that really works in it. The +scientific man has taken hold of religion and righteousness is being +proved, melted down in the laboratory, welded together before us all and +riveted on to the every day, on to what really happens, and on to what +really works. Goodness in its baser form already pays. Only the biggest +men may have found it out, but everybody is watching them. The most +important spiritual service that any man can render the present age is +to make goodness pay at the top (in the most noticeable place) in some +business where nobody has made it pay before. Anybody can see that it +almost pays already, that it pays now here, now there. At all events, +anybody can see that it is very noticeable that the part of the world +that is most spiritual is not merely the part that is whining or hanging +on crosses. It is also the part that is successful. One knows scores of +saints with ruddy cheeks. It is getting to be a matter of principle +almost in a modern saint--to have ruddy cheeks. + +I submit this fact respectfully to Bernard Shaw, Wall Street, Downing +Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, and even to the New York _Sun_, that +vast machine for laughing at a world down in its snug quarters in Park +Row--that the saint with ruddy cheeks is a totally new and disconcerting +fact in our modern life. He is the next fact the honest pessimist will +have to face. + +I submit that this saint with ruddy cheeks is here, that he is lovable, +imperturbable, imperious, irrepressible, as interesting as sin, as +catching as the Devil and that he has come to stay. + +He stays because he is successful and can afford to stay. + +He is successful because he is good. + +Only religion works. + +I am aware that the New York _Sun_ might quarrel with just exactly this +way of putting it. + +I might put it another way or possibly try to say it again after saying +something else first. _Viz._: The man who is successful in business is +the man who can get people to do as much as they can do and a great deal +more than they think they can do. + +Only a very lively goodness, almost a religion in a man, can do this. He +has to have something in him very like the power of inventing people or +of making people over. + +To be specific: In some big department stores, as one goes down the +aisle, one will see over and over again the clerks making fun of +customers. + +One by one the customers find it out and the more permanent ones, those +who would keep coming and who have the best trade, go to other stores. + +How could such a thing be stopped in a department store by a practical +employer? Can he stop it successfully by turning on his politeness? + +Of course he can make his clerks polite-looking by turning on his +politeness. But politeness in a department store does not consist in +being polite-looking. Being polite-looking does not work, does not grip +the customer or strike in and do things and make the customer do things. + +A machine like a department store, made up of twenty-five hundred human +beings, which is carving out its will, its nature, stamping its pattern +on a city, on a million men, or on a nation, cannot be made to work +without religion. If the clerks are making fun of people, only religion +can stop it. + +Perhaps you have been made fun of yourself, Gentle Reader? You have +observed, perhaps, that in making fun of people (making fun of you, for +instance), the assumption almost always is, that you are trying to be +like the Standard Person, and that this (they look at you pleasantly as +you go by) is as near as you can get to it! If an employer wishes to +make his clerk an especially valuable clerk, if he wishes to make his +clerk an expert in human nature or a good salesman, one who sees a +customer when he comes along as he really is, and as he is trying to be, +he will only be able to do it by touching something deep down in the +clerk's nature, something very like his religion--his power of putting +himself in the place of others. He can only do it by making a clerk feel +that this power in him of doing as he would be done by, and seeing how +to do it, _i.e._, the religion in him, is what he is hired for. + +It is visionary to try to run a great department store, a great machine +of twenty-five hundred souls, a machine of human emotions, of five +thousand eyes and ears, a huge loom of enthusiasm, of love, hate, +covetousness, sorrow, disappointment, and joy without having it full of +clerks who are experts in human nature, putting themselves in the place +of crowds of other people, clerks who are essentially religious. + +So we watch the men who are ahead driving one another into goodness. The +man who is not able to create, distribute or turn on, in his business +establishment, goodness, social insight, and customer-insight in it, can +only hope to-day to keep ahead in business by having competitors as +inefficient as he is. + +The man who is ahead has discovered himself. Everything the man ahead +is doing eight hours a day, is seen at last narrowing him down, +cornering him into goodness. + +Of course as long as people looked upon goodness as a Sunday affair, a +few hours a week put in on it, we were naturally discouraged about it. + +It is still a little too fresh looking and it may be still a little too +clever for everybody, but slowly, irrevocably, we see it coming. We can +look up almost any day and watch some goodness--now--at least one +specimen or so, in every branch of business. + +We watch daily the men who are ahead, pulling on the goodness of the +world and the Crowds pushing on it. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + +THE CROWDS PUSH + + +The men who are ahead make goodness start, but it is the crowds that +make it irresistible. + +The final, slow, long, imperious lift on goodness is the one the crowd +gives. Of course, for the most part, modern business is largely done +with crowds. Crowds are doing it and crowds are nearly always watching +it. + +The factory is slower than the department store in being good because +the men in it deal with crowds of things and crowds of wheels and not +with crowds of people. + +All responsible people are forced to be good, with crowds around them, +expecting it of them. + +Crowds at the very least are a kind of vast, insinuating, penetrating, +omnipresent, permeating police force of righteousness. + +In a department store, the crowds, twelve thousand a day, are like some +huge coil of hose or vacuum cleaner, lying about the place, sucking up, +drawing out, and demanding goodness from the clerks. Clerks develop +human insight and powers faster in department stores than machinists do +in factories because they are exposed to more people and to larger +crowds. The stream clears itself. + +The last forms of business to yield to the new spirit are to be the +lonely ones, the ones where light, air, human emotions, and crowds are +shut out. + +The lonely forms of business will at last be vitalized and socialized by +men of organizing genius, who will invent the equivalent of crowds going +by, who will contrive ways of putting a few responsible persons in +sight or in a position where they will feel crowds going by their souls, +looking into them as if they were shop windows. Crowds can keep track of +a few. The crowds will see that these few are the kind of men who will +keep track of all. + +Crowds in the end will not accept less than the best. With crowds of +people and crowds of places and crowds of times we are good. In all +things crowds can see or be made to see we are safe. Progress lies in +making crowds see through people, making crowds go past them. While they +are going past them, they lure their goodness on. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + +THE MAN WHO SAYS HOW, SAYS HOW + + +The people who are worried and discouraged about goodness in this world, +one finds when one studies them a little, are almost always worried in a +kind of general way. They do not worry about anything in particular. +Their religion seems to be a kind of good-hearted, pained vagueness. + +The religion of the people who never worry at all, the thoughtless +optimists, is quite the same too, except that they have a kind of happy, +rosy-lighted vagueness instead. + +For about two thousand years now, goodness has been in the hands of +vague people. Some of them have used their vagueness to cry with softly, +and some of them have used it to praise God with and to have many fine, +brave, general feelings about God. + +I have tried faithfully, speaking for one, to be religious with both of +these sets of people. + +They make one feel rather lonesome. + +If one goes about and takes a grim happiness, a kind of iron joy in +seeing how successful a locomotive is, or if one watches a great, +worshipful ocean liner with delight, or if, down in New York, one looks +up and sees a new skyscraper going slowly up, unfolding into the sky +before one, lifting up its gigantic, restless, resistless face to God; +there comes to seem to be something about churches and about good people +and about the way they have of acting and thinking about goodness and +doing things with goodness, that makes one unhappy. + +Perhaps one has just come from it and one's soul is filled with the +stern, glad singing of a great foundry, of the religious, victorious +praising spirit of man, dipping up steel in mighty spoonfuls--the stuff +the inside of the earth is made of, and flinging it together into a +great network or crust for the planet--into mighty floors or sidewalks +all round the earth for cities to tread on and there comes to seem +something so successful, so manlike, so godlike about it, about the way +these men who do these things do them and do what they set out to do, +that when I find myself suddenly, all in a few minutes on a Sunday +morning, thrown out of this atmosphere into a Christian church, find +myself sitting all still and waiting, with all these good people about +me, and when I find them offering me their religion so gravely, so +hopefully, it all comes to me with a great rush sometimes--comes to me +as out of great deeps of resentment, that religion could possibly be +made in a church to seem something so faint, so beautifully weary, so +dreamy, and as if it were humming softly, absently to itself. + +I wonder in the presence of a Christianity like this whether I am a +Christian or not--the quartet choirs, confections, the little, dainty, +faintly sweet sermons--it is as if--no I will not say it.... + +I have this moment crossed the words out before my eyes. It is as if, +after all, religion, instead of being as I supposed down at the foundry, +the stern and splendid music of man conquering all things for God, were, +after all, some huge, sublime and holy vagueness, as if the service and +the things I saw about me were not hard true realities--as if going to +Church were like sitting in a cloud--some soft musical cloud or floating +island of goodness and drifting and drifting.... + + * * * * * + +Not all churches are alike, but I am speaking of something that must +have happened to many men. I but record this blank space on this page, +as a spiritual fact, as a part of the religious experience of a man +trying to be good. + +When this little experience of which the words have to be crossed out +after going to Church--finally settles down, there is still a grim truth +left in it. + +The vagueness of the man who is good, who locks himself up in a Church +and says, "Oh God! Oh God! Oh God!" and the vigour and incisiveness of +the man who says nothing about it and who goes out of doors and acts +like a god all the week--these remain with me as a daily and abiding +sense. + +And when I find myself myself, I, who have gloried in cathedrals since I +was a little child, looking ahead for a God upon the earth, and when I +see the foundries, the airships, the ocean liners beckoning the soul of +man upon the skies, and the victory of the soul over the dust and over +the water and over the air and when I see the Cathedrals beside them, +those vast, faint, grave, happy, floating islands of the Saved, drifting +backward down the years, it does not seem as if I could bear the +foundries saying one thing about my God and the cathedrals saying +another. + +I have tried to see a way out. Why should it be so? + +I have seen that the foundries, the ocean liners, and the airships are +in the hands of men who say How. + +Perhaps we will take goodness and cathedrals, very soon now, and put +them for a while in the hands of the men who say how. If St. Francis, +for instance, to-day, were to be suddenly more like Bessemer, or if Dr. +Henry Van Dyke were more like Edison or if the Reverend R.J. Campbell +were more like Sir Joseph Lister or if the Bishop of London were to go +at London the way Marconi goes at the sky, what would begin to happen to +goodness? One likes to imagine what would happen if that same spirit, +the spirit of "how" were brought to bear upon a great engineering +enterprise like goodness in this world. + +Perhaps the spirit of "how" is the spirit of God. + +Perhaps religion in the twentieth century is Technique. + +Technique in the twentieth century is the Holy Ghost. + +Technique is the very last thing that has been thought of in religion. +Religion is being converted before our eyes. It is becoming touched with +the temper of science, with the thoroughness, the doggedness, the +inconsolableness of science until it is seeing how and until it is +saying how. + +When the inventors, in our machine age, get to work on goodness in the +way that they are getting to work on other things, things will begin to +happen to goodness that the vague, sweet saints of two thousand years +have never dreamed of yet. + +In London and New York, in this first quarter of the twentieth century +Christianity will not be put off as a spirit. The right of Christianity +to be a spirit has lapsed. + +Christianity is a Method. + +What Christ meant when He said He was the Truth and the Life, has been +understood, on the whole, very well. What He meant by saying He was the +Way, we are now beginning, to work out. + + * * * * * + +A thousand or two years ago, when two men stood by the roadside and made +a bargain, it was their affair. + +When two men stand on the sidewalk now and make a bargain, say in New +York, they have to deal and to deal very thoughtfully and accurately +with ninety million people who are not there. They do this as well as +they can by imagining what the ninety million people would do and say, +and how they would like to be done by, if they were there. + +The facilities for finding out what the ninety million people would do +and say, and what they would want, the general conveniences for assuring +the two men on the sidewalk that they will be able to conduct their +bargain, and to get the other ninety million in, accurately, that they +will be able to do by them as they would be done by--these have scarcely +been arranged for yet. + +In our machine age, with our railroads, and our telephones suddenly +heaping our lives up on one another's lives, almost before we have +noticed it, our religious machinery to go with our other machinery, our +machinery that we are going to be Christians with, has not been +invented yet. + +Religion two-men size, or man and woman size, or one family or two +family size or village size has been worked out. Religion as long as it +has been concerned with a few people and was a matter of love between +neighbours, or of skill in being neighbourly, has had no special or +imperative need for science or the scientific man. + +Now that religion is obliged to be an intimate, a confiding relation +between ninety million people, the spiritual genius, devotion, and +holiness of the scientific man, of the man who says "how" has come to be +the modern man's almost only access to his God. + +A ninety million man-power religion is an enterprise of spiritual +engineering, a feat in national and international statesmanship, a +gigantic structural constructive achievement in human nature. Doing as +one would be done by, with a few people, is a thing that any man can sit +down and read his Bible a few minutes and arrange for himself. He can +manage to do as he would be done by, fairly well in the next yard. But +how about doing as one would be done by with ninety million people--all +sizes, all climates, all religions, Buffalo, New Orleans, Seattle? How +about doing as one would be done by three thousand miles? + +It is an understatement to say, as we look about our modern world, that +Christianity has not been tried yet. + +Christianity has not been invented yet. + +What was invented two thousand years ago was the spirit of Christianity. + +Christianity has been for two thousand years a spirit. + +It is almost like a new religion to me just of itself to think of it. It +is like being presented suddenly with a new world to think of it, to +think that all we have really done with Christianity as yet is to use it +as a breath or spirit. + +I look at the vision of the earth to-day, of the great cities rushing +together at last and running around the world like children running +around a house--great cities shouting on the seas, suddenly sliding up +and down the globe, playing hopscotch on the equator, scrambling up the +poles--all these colossal children!... Here we all are!--a whiff of +steam from the Watts's steam kettle and a wave of Marconi across the air +and we have crept up from our little separate sunsets, all our little +private national bedrooms of light and darkness into the one single same +cunning dooryard of a world! Our religion, our politics, our Bibles, +kings, millionaires, crowds, bombs, prophets and railroads all hurling, +sweeping, crashing our lives together in a kind of vast international +collision of intimacy. + +All the Christianity we can bring to bear or that we can use to run this +crash of intimacy with is a spirit, a breath. + +We do not well to berate one another or to berate one another's motives +or to assail human nature or to grow satirical about God with all our +little battered helpless Christians about us and our unadjusted +religions. + +We are a new human race grappling with a new world. Our Christianity has +not been invented yet and if we want a God, we will work like chemists, +like airmen, turn the inside of the earth out, dump the sky, move +mountains, face cities, love one another, and find Him! + +In the meantime until we have done this, until we have worked as +chemists and airmen work, Christianity is a spirit. + +It explains all this eager jumble of the world, brushes away our +objections, frees our hearts, gives us our program, makes us know what +we are for, to stop and think a moment of this--that Christianity is a +spirit. + +Everything that is passing wonderful is a spirit at first. God begins +building a world as a world-spirit, out of a spirit brooding upon the +waters. Then for a long while the vague waters, then for a long while a +little vague land or spirit-of-planet before a real world. + +And every real belief that man has had, has begun as a spirit. + +For two thousand years Man has had the spirit of immortality. Homer had +it. Homer had moments when improvising his mighty song all alone, of +hearing or seeming to hear, faintly, choruses of men's voices singing +his songs after him, a thousand years away. + +As he groped his way up in his singing, he felt them in spirit, perhaps, +the lonely wandering minstrels in little closed-in valleys, or on the +vast quiet hills, filling the world with his voice when he was dead, +going about with his singing, breaking it in upon the souls of children, +of the new boys and girls, and building new worlds and rebuilding old +worlds in the hearts of men. Homer had the spirit of hearing his own +voice forever, but the technique of it, the important point of seeing +how the thing could really be done, of seeing how people, instead of +listening to imitations or copies or awkward echoes of Homer, should +listen to Homer's voice itself--the timbre, the intimacy, the subtlety, +the strength of it--the depth of his heart singing out of it. All this +has had to wait to be thought out by Thomas A. Edison. + +Man has not only for thousands of years had the spirit of immortality, +of keeping his voice filed away if any one wanted it on the earth, +forever, but he has had all the other spirits or ghosts of his mightier +self. He has had the spirit of being imperious and wilful with the sea, +of faring forth on a planet and playing with oceans, and now he has +worked out the details in ocean liners, in boats that fly up from the +water, and in boats which dive and swim beneath the sea. For thousands +of years he has had the spirit of the locomotive working through, troops +of runners or of dim men groping defiantly with camels through deserts, +or sweeping on on horses through the plains, and now with his banners of +steam at last he has great public trains of cars carrying cities. + +For hundreds of years man has had the spirit of the motor-car--of having +his own private locomotive or his own special train drive up to his +door--the spirit of making every road his railway. For a great many +years he has had the spirit of the wireless telegraph and of using the +sky. Franklin tried using the sky years ago but all he got was +electricity. Marconi knew how better. Marconi has got ghosts of men's +voices out of the clouds, has made heaven a sounding board for great +congregations of cities, and faraway nations wrapped in darkness and +silence whisper round the rolling earth. Man has long had the spirit of +defying the seas. Now he has the technique and the motor-boat. He has +had the spirit of removing oceans and of building huge, underground +cities, the spirit of caves in the ground and mansions in the sky, and +now he has subways and skyscrapers. For a thousand years he has had the +spirit of Christ and now there is Frederick Taylor, Louis Brandeis, +Westfield Pure Food, Doctor Carrel, Jane Addams, and Filene's Store. +Vast networks--huge spiritual machines of goodness are crowding and +penetrating to-day, fifteen pounds to the square inch, the atmosphere of +the gospel into the very core of the matter of the world, into the +everyday things, into the solids of the lives of men. + +It takes two great spirits of humanity to bring a great truth or a new +goodness into this world; one spirit creates it, the other conceives it, +gathers the earth about it and gives it birth. These two spirits seem to +be the spirits of the poet and the scientist. + +We are taking to-day, many of us, an almost religious delight in them +both. We make no comparisons. + +We note that the poet's inspiration comes first and consists in saying +something that is true, that cannot be proved. + +A few people with imagination, here and there, believe it. + +The scientist's inspiration comes second and consists in seeing ways of +proving it, of making it matter of fact. + +He proves it by seeing how to do it. + +Crowds believe it. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + +AND THE MACHINE STARTS + + +One of the things that makes one thoughtful in going about from city to +city and dropping into the churches is the way the people do not sing in +them and will not pray in them. In every new strange city where one +stops on a Sunday morning, one looks hopefully--while one hears the +chimes of bells--at the row of steeples down the street. One looks for +people going in who seem to go with chimes of bells. And when one goes +in, one finds them again and again, inside, all these bolt-up-right, +faintly sing-song congregations. + +One wonders about the churches. + +What is there that is being said in them that should make any one feel +like singing? + +The one thing that the churches are for is news--news that would be +suitable to sing about, and that would naturally make one want to sing +and pray after one had heard it. + +There is very little occasion to sing or to pray over old news. + +Worship would take care of itself in our churches if people got the +latest and biggest news in them. + +News is the latest faith men have in one another, the last thing they +have dared to get from God. + +It is not impossible that just at the present moment, and for some +little time to come, there is really very little worth while that can be +said about Christianity, until Christianity has been tried. I cannot +conceive of Christ's coming back and saying anything just at the moment. +He would merely wonder why, in all these two thousand years, we had not +arranged to do anything about what He had said before. He would wonder +how we could keep on so, making his great faith for us so poetic, +visionary, and inefficient. + +It is in the unconscious recognition of this and of the present +spiritual crisis of the world, that our best men, so many of them, +instead of going into preaching are going into laboratories and into +business where what the gospel really is and what it is really made of, +is being at last revealed to people--where news is being created. + +Perhaps it would not be precisely true--what I have said, about Christ's +not saying anything. He probably would. But he would not say these same +merely rudimentary things. He would go on to the truths and applications +we have never heard or guessed. The rest of his time he would put in in +proving that the things that had been merely said two thousand years +ago, could be done now. And He would do what He could toward having them +dropped forever, taken for granted and acted on as a part of the morally +automatic and of-course machinery of the world. + +The Golden Rule takes or ought to take, very soon now, in real religion, +somewhat the same position that table manners take in morals. + +All good manners are good in proportion as they become automatic. In +saying that honesty pays we are merely moving religion on to its more +creative and newer levels. We are asserting that the literal belief in +honesty, after this, ought to be attended to practically by machinery. +People ought to be honest automatically and by assumption, by dismissing +it in business in particular, as a thing to be taken for granted. + +This is what is going to happen. + +Without the printing press a book would cost about ten thousand dollars, +each copy. + +With the printing press, the first copy of a book costs perhaps about +six hundred dollars. + +The second costs--twenty-nine cents. + +The same principle holds good under the law of moral automatics. + +Let the plates be cast. Everything follows. The fire in the Iroquois +Theatre in Chicago cost six hundred dead bodies. + +Within a few months outward opening doors flew open to the streets +around a world. + +Everybody knew about outward opening doors before. + +They had the spirit of outward opening doors. But the machinery for +making everybody know that they knew it--the moral and spiritual +machinery for lifting over the doors of a world and making them all +swing suddenly generation after generation the other way, had not been +set up. + +Of course it would have been better if there had been three hundred dead +bodies or three dead bodies--but the principle holds good--let the moral +plates be cast and the huge moral values follow with comparatively +little individual moral hand labour. The moral hand labour moves on to +more original things. + +The same principle holds good in letting an American city be good in +seeing how to make goodness in a city work. + +Let the plates be once cast--say Galveston, Texas; or De Moines, Iowa, +and goodness after you have your first specimen gets national +automatically. + +Two hundred and five cities have adopted the Galveston or commission +government in three years. + + * * * * * + +The failure for the time being apparently of the more noble and +aggressive kinds of goodness against the forces of evil is a matter of +technique. Our failure is not due to our failure to know what evil +really is, but due to our wasteful way of tunnelling through it. + +Our religious inventors have failed to use the most scientific method. +We have gone at the matter of butting through evil without thinking +enough. Less butting and more thinking is our religion now. We will not +try any longer to butt a whole planet when we try to keep one man from +doing wrong. + +We will butt our way through to the man who sees where to butt and how +to butt. Then all together! + +Very few of the wrongs that are done to society by individuals would be +done if civilization were supplied with the slightest adequate machinery +or conveniences for bringing home to people vividly who the people are +they are wronging, how they are wronging them, and how the people feel +about it. This machinery for moral and social insight, this +intelligence-engine or apparatus of sympathy for a planet to-day, before +our eyes is being invented and set up. + + * * * * * + +Sometimes I almost think that history as a study or particularly as a +habit of mind ought to be partitioned off and not allowed to people in +general to-day. Only men of genius have imagination enough for handling +history so that it is not a nuisance, a provincialism and an +impertinence in the serene presence to-day of what is happening before +our eyes. History makes common people stop thinking or makes them think +wrong, about nine tenths of the area of human nature, particularly about +the next important things that are going to happen to it. + +Our modern life is not an historian's problem. It is an inventor's +problem. The historian can stand by and can be consulted. But things +that seem to an historian quite reasonably impossible in human nature +are true and we must all of us act every day as if they were true. We +but change the temperature of human nature and in one moment new levels +and possibilities open up on every side. + +Things that are true about water stop being true the moment it is heated +212 degrees Fahrenheit. It begins suddenly to act like a cloud and when +it is cooled off enough a cloud acts like a stone. Railroad trains are +run for hundreds of miles every year in Siberia across clouds that are +cold enough. We raise the temperature of human nature and the motives +with which men cannot act to-day suddenly around a world are the motives +with which they cannot help acting to-morrow. + +The theory of raised temperatures alone, in human nature, will make +possible to us ranges of goodness, of social passion and vision, that +only a few men have been capable of before. + +All the new inventions have new sins, even new manners that go with +them, new virtues and new faculties. The telephone, the motor-car, the +wireless telegraph, the airship and the motor-boat all make men act with +different insights, longer distances, and higher speeds. + +Men who, like our modern men, have a going consciousness, see things +deeper by going faster. + +They see how more clearly by going faster. + +They see farther by going faster. + +If a man is driving a motor-car three miles an hour all he needs to +attend to with his imagination is a few feet of the road ahead. + +If he is driving his car thirty miles an hour and trying to get on by +anticipating his road a few feet ahead, he dies. + +The faster a man goes--if he has the brains for it--the more people and +the more things in the way, his mind covers in a minute--the more +magnificently he sees how. + +On a railway train any ordinary man any day in the year (if he goes fast +enough) can see through a board fence. It may be made of vertical slats +five inches across and half an inch apart. He sees through the slits +between the slats the whole country for miles. If he goes fast enough a +man can see through a solid freight train. + +All our modern industrial social problems are problems of gearing people +up. Ordinary men are living on trains now--on moral trains. + +Their social consciousness is being geared up. They are seeing more +other people and more other things and more things beyond the Fence. + +The increased vibration in human nature and in the human brain and heart +that go with the motor-car habit, the increased speed of the human +motor, the gearing up of the central power house in society everywhere +is going to make men capable of unheard-of social technique. The social +consciousness is becoming the common man's daily habit. Laws of social +technique and laws of human nature which were theories once are habits +now. + +There is a certain sense in which it may be said that the modern man +enjoys daily his moral imagination. He is angered and delighted with his +social consciousness. He boils with rage or sings when he hears of all +the new machines of good and machines of evil that people are setting up +in our modern world. + +There is a sense in which he glories in the Golden Rule. The +moral-machinist's joy is in him. He is not content to watch it go round +and round like some smooth-running Corliss engine which is not connected +up yet--that nobody really uses except as a kind of model under glass or +a miniature for theological schools. He cannot bear the Golden Rule +under glass. He wants to see it going round and round, look up at it, +immense, silent, masterful, running a world. He delights in the Golden +Rule as a part of his love of nature. It is as the falling of apples to +him. He delights in it as he delights in frost and fire and in the +glorious, modest, implacable, hushed way they work! + +We are in an age in which a Golden Rule can sing. The men around us are +in a new temper. They have the passion, almost, the religion of +precision that goes with machines. + +While I have been sitting at my desk and writing these last words, the +two half-past-eight trains, at full speed, have met in the meadow. + +There is something a little impersonal, almost abstracted, about the way +the trains meet out here on their lonely sidewalk through the meadow, +twenty inches apart--morning after morning. It always seems as if this +time--this one next time--they would not do it right. One argues it all +out unconsciously that of course there is a kind of understanding +between them as they come bearing down on each other and it's all been +arranged beforehand when they left their stations; and yet somehow as I +watch them flying up out of the distance, those two still, swift +thoughts, or shots of cities--dark, monstrous (it's as if Springfield +and Northampton had caught some people up and were firing them at each +other)--I am always wondering if this particular time there will not be +a report, after all, a clang on the landscape, on all the hills, and a +long story in the _Republican_ the next morning. + +Then they softly crash together and pass on--two or three quiet whiffs +at each other--as if nothing had happened. + +I always feel afterward as if something splendid, some great human act +of faith, had been done in my presence. Those two looming, mighty +engines, bearing down on each other, making an aim so, at twenty inches +from death, and nothing to depend on but those two gleaming dainty +strips or ribbons of iron--a few eighths of an inch on the edge of a +wheel--I never can get used to it: the two great glowing creatures, full +of thunder and trust, leaping up the telegraph poles through the still +valley, each of them with its little streak of souls behind it; immortal +souls, children, fathers, mothers, smiling, chattering along through +Infinity--it all keeps on being boundless to me, and full of a glad +boyish terror and faith. And under and through it all there is a kind of +stern singing. + +I know well enough, of course, that it is a platitude, this meeting of +two trains in a meadow, but it never acts like one. I sometimes stand +and watch the engineer afterward. I wonder if he knows he enjoys it. +Perhaps he would have to stop to know how happy he was, and not meet +trains for a while. Then he would miss something, I think; he would miss +his deep joyous daily acts of faith, his daily habits of believing in +things--in steam, and in air, and in himself, and in the switchman, and +in God. + +I see him in his cab window, he swings out his blue sleeve at me! I like +the way he stakes everything on what he believes. Nothing between him +and death but a few telegraph ticks--the flange of a wheel.... Suddenly +the swing of his train comes up like the swing and the rhythm of a great +creed. It sounds like a chant down between the mountains. I come into +the house lifted with it. I have heard a man believing, believing mile +after mile down the valley. I have heard a man believing in a +Pennsylvania rolling mill, in a white vapour, in compressed air and a +whistle, the way Calvin believed in God. + + + + +BOOK THREE + +LETTING THE CROWD BE BEAUTIFUL + + +TO WILBUR WRIGHT AND WILLIAM MARCONI + + _"Great Spirit--Thou who in my being's burning mesh + Hath wrought the shining of the mist through and through the flesh, + Who, through the double-wondered glory of the dust + Hast thrust + Habits of skies upon me, souls of days and nights, + Where are the deeds that needs must be, + The dreams, the high delights, + That I once more may hear my voice + From cloudy door to door rejoice-- + May stretch the boundaries of love + Beyond the mumbling, mock horizons of my fears + To the faint-remembered glory of those years-- + May lift my soul + And reach this Heaven of thine + With mine?" + + "Come up here, dear little Child + To fly in the clouds and winds with me, + and play with the measureless light!"_ + + + + + +PART ONE + +WISTFUL MILLIONAIRES + + + + +CHAPTER I + +MR. CARNEGIE SPEAKS UP + + +As I was wandering through space the other day--just aeroplaning past on +my way over from Mars--I came suddenly upon a neat, snug little +property, with a huge sign stuck in the middle of it: + + THE EARTH: THIS DESIRABLE PROPERTY TO LET. Rockefeller, + Carnegie, Morgan & Co. + +I was just about to pass it by, inferring naturally that it must be a +mere bank, or wholesale house, or something, when it occurred to me it +might do no harm to stop over on it, and see. I thought I might at least +drop in and inquire what kind of a firm it was that was handling it, and +what was their idea, and what, if anything, they thought their little +planet was for, and what they proposed to do with it. + +I found, on meeting Mr. Rockefeller and Mr. Carnegie and Mr. Morgan, to +my astonishment, that they did not propose to do anything with it at +all. They had merely got it; that was as far as they had thought the +thing out apparently--to get it. They seemed to be depending, so far as +I could judge, in a vague, pained way, on somebody's happening along who +would think perhaps of something that could be done with it. + +Of course, as Mr. Carnegie (who was the talking member of the firm) +pointed out, if they only owned a part of it, and could sell one part of +it to the other part there would still be something left that they could +do, at least it would be their line; but merely owning all of it, so, as +they did, was embarrassing. He had tried, Mr. Carnegie told me, to think +of a few things himself, but was discouraged; and he intimated he was +devoting his life just now to pulling himself together at the end, and +dying a poor man. But that was not much, he admitted, and it was really +not a very great service on his part to a world, he thought--his merely +dying poor in it. + +When I asked him if there was anything else he had been able to think of +to do for the world-- + +"No," he said, "nothing really; nothing except chucking down libraries +on it--safes for old books." + +"And Mr. Morgan?" I said. + +"Oh! He is chucking down old china on it, old pictures, and things." + +"And Mr. Rockefeller?" + +"Mussing with colleges, some," he said, "just now. But he doesn't, as a +matter of fact, see anything--not of his own--that can really be done +with them, except to make them more systematized and businesslike, make +them over into sort of Standard Oil Spiritual Refineries, fill them with +millions more of little Rockefellers--and they won't let him do that. Of +course, as you might see, what they want to do practically is to take +the Rockefeller money and leave the Rockefeller out. Nobody will really +let him do anything. Everything goes this way when we seriously try to +do things. The fact is, it is a pretty small, helpless business, owning +a world," sighed Mr. Carnegie. + +"This is why we are selling out, if anybody happens along. Anybody, that +is, who really sees what this piece of property is for and how to +develop it, can have it," said Mr. Carnegie, "and have it cheap." + +Mr. Carnegie spoke these last words very slowly and wearily, and with +his most wistful look; and then, recalling himself suddenly, and handing +me a glass to look at New York with and see what I thought of it, he +asked to be excused for a moment, and saying, "I have fourteen libraries +to give away before a quarter past twelve," he hurried out of the room. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +MR. CARNEGIE TRIES TO MAKE PEOPLE READ + + +I found, as I was studying the general view of New York as seen from the +top through Mr. Carnegie's glass, that there appeared to be a great many +dots--long rows of dots for the most part--possibly very high buildings, +but there was one building, wide and white and low, and more spread-out +and important-looking than any of the others, which especially attracted +my attention. It looked as if it might be a kind of monument or +mausoleum to somebody. On looking again I found that it was filled with +books, and was the Carnegie Public Library. There were forty more +Libraries for New York Mr. Carnegie was having put up, I was told, and +he had dotted them--thousands of them almost everywhere one could look, +apparently, on his own particular part of the planet. + +A few days later, when I began to do things at a closer range, I took a +little trip to New York, and visited the Library; and I asked the man +who seemed to have it in charge, who there was who was writing books for +Mr. Carnegie's Libraries just now, or if there was any really adequate +arrangement Mr. Carnegie had made for having a few great books written +for all these fine buildings--all these really noble book-racks, he had +had put up. The man seemed rather taken aback, and hesitated. Finally, I +asked him point blank to give me the name of the supposed greatest +living author who had written anything for all these miles of Carnegie +Libraries, and he mentioned doubtfully a certain Mr. Rudyard Kipling. I +at once asked for his books, of course, and sat down without delay to +find out if he was the greatest living author the planet had, what it +was he had to say for it and about it, and more particularly, of course, +what he had to to say it was for. + +I found among his books some beautiful and quite refined interpretations +of tigers and serpents, a really noble interpretation or conception of +what the beasts were for all the glorious gentlemanly beasts--and of +what machines were for--all the young, fresh, mighty, worshipful +engines--and what soldiers were for. But when I looked at what he +thought men were for, at what the planet was for, there was practically +almost nothing. The nearest I came to it was a remark, apparently in a +magazine interview which I cannot quote correctly now, but which +amounted to something like this: "We will never have a great world until +we have some one great artist or poet in it, who sees it as a whole, +focuses it, composes it, makes a picture of it, and gives the men who +are in it a vision to live for." + + * * * * * + +Since then I have been trying to see what Messrs. Rockefeller, Carnegie, +and Morgan could do to produce and arrange what seemed to me the one +most important, imperative, and immediate convenience their planet could +have, namely, as Mr. Kipling intimated, some man on it, some great +creative genius, who would gather it all up in his imagination--the +beasts, and the people, and the sciences, and the machines--in short, +the planet as a whole, and say what it was for. It is from this point of +view that I have been drawn into writing the following pages on the next +important improvements--what one might call the spiritual Unreal-Estate +Improvements, for Messrs. Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Morgan's property +which will have to be installed. I have been going over the property +more or less carefully in my own way since, studying it and noting what +had been done by the owners, and what possibly might be done toward +arranging authors, inventors, seers, artists, or engineers or other +efficient persons who would be able to inquire, to think out for a +world, to express for it, some faint idea of what it was for. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +MR. NOBEL TRIES TO MAKE PEOPLE WRITE + + +Not unnaturally, of course, I turned to see what had already been done +by the more powerful men the planet had produced, in the way of +arranging for the necessary seers and geniuses to run the world with, +and I soon found that by far the most intelligent and far-seeing attempt +that had been made yet in this direction had been made by an inspired, +or semi-inspired, millionaire in Sweden, named Alfred Nobel, an +idealist, who had made a large but unhappy fortune out of an explosive +to stop war with. His general idea had been that dynamite would make war +so terrible that it would shock people into not fighting any more, and +that gradually people, not having to spend their time in thinking of +ways of killing one another, would have more time than they had ever had +before to think of other and more important things. It was the +disappointment of his life that his invention, instead of being used +creatively, used to free men from fighting and make men think of things, +had been used largely as an arrangement for making people so afraid of +war that they could not think of anything else. Whichever way he turned +he saw the world in a kind of panic, all the old and gentle-minded +nations with their fair fields, their factories and art galleries, all +hard at work piling up explosives around themselves until they could +hardly see over them. As this was the precise contrary of what he had +intended, and he had not managed to do what he had meant to do with +making his money, he thought he would try to see if he could not yet do +what he had meant to do in spending it. He sat down to write his Will, +and in this Will, writing as an inventor and a man of genius, he tried +to express, in the terms of money, his five great desires for the world. +He wished to spend forty thousand dollars a year, every year forever, +after he was dead, on each of these five great desires. There were five +great Inventors that he wanted, and he wanted the whole world searched +through for them, for each of them, once more every year, to see if they +could be found. Mr. Nobel expressed his desire for these five Inventors +as people often manage to express things in wills, in such a way that +not everybody had been sure what he meant. There seems to have been +comparatively little trouble, from year to year, in awarding the prizes +to some adequate inventor in the domain of Peace, of Physics, of +Chemistry, and of Medicine; but the Nobel Prize Trustees, in trying to +pick out an award each year to some man who could be regarded as a true +inventor in Literature, have met with considerable difficulty in +deciding just what sort of a man Alfred Nobel had in mind, and had set +aside his forty thousand dollars for when he directed that it should +go--to quote from the Will--"To the person who shall have produced in +the field of Literature the most distinguished work of an idealistic +tendency." + +Allen Upward, for instance, an Englishman unknown in Stockholm, invented +and published a book four years ago, called the "New Word," which was so +idealistic and distinguished a book, and so full of new ideas and of new +combinations of old ideas, that there was scarcely a publisher in +England who did not instinctively recognize it, who did not see that it +would not pay at once, and that therefore it was too strange and +original and too important a book for him to publish, and after a long +delay the book was finally printed in Geneva. + +A copy was sent to the Nobel Prize Trustees. + +One would have thought, looking at it theoretically, that here was +precisely the sort of situation that Alfred Nobel, who had been the +struggling inventor of a great invention that would not pay at once +himself, would have been looking for. A book so inventive, so far ahead, +that publishers praised it and would not invest in it, one would have +imagined to be the one book of all others for which Alfred Nobel stood +ready and waiting to put down his forty thousand dollars. + +But Mr. Nobel's forty thousand dollars did not go to a comparatively +obscure and uncapitalized inventor who had written a book to build a +world with, or at least a great preliminary design, or sketch, toward a +world. The Nobel Prize Trustees, instead of giving the forty thousand +dollars to Allen Upward, looked carefully about through all the nations +until their eyes fell on a certain Mr. Rudyard Kipling. And when they +saw Mr. Rudyard Kipling, piled high with fame and five dollars a word, +they came over quietly to where he was and put softly down on him forty +thousand dollars more. + +I do not know, but it is not inconceivable, that Kipling himself would +rather have had Allen Upward have it. + +I am not quarrelling with the Trustees, and am merely trying to think +things out and understand. But it certainly is a question that cannot +but keep recurring to one's mind--the unfortunate, and perhaps rather +unlooked-for, way in which Mr. Nobel's Will works. And I have been +wondering what there is that might be done, the world being the kind of +world it is, which would enable the Nobel Prize Trustees to so +administer the Will that its practical weight on the side of Idealism, +and especially upon the crisis of idealism in young authors, would be +where Mr. Nobel meant to have it. + +One must hasten to admit that Mr. Upward's book is open to question; +that, in fact, it is the main trait of Mr. Upward's book that it raises +a thousand questions; and that it would be a particularly hard book for +most men to give a prize to, quietly go home, and sleep that night. I +must hasten to admit also that, judging from their own point of view, +the Nobel Prize Trustees have so far done quite well. They have +attained a kind of triumph of doing safe things--things that they could +not be criticised for; and they could well reply to this present +criticism that there was no other course that they could take. Unless +they had a large fund for butting through all nations for obscure +geniuses, and for turning up stones everywhere to look for embryo +authors--unless they had a fund for going about among the great +newspapers, the big magazines, and peeping under them through all the +world for geniuses--and unless they had still another large fund for +guaranteeing their decision when they had found one, a fund for +convincing the world that they were right, and that they were not +wasting their forty thousand dollars--the Trustees have taken a fairly +plausible position. Their position being that, in default of perfectly +fresh, brand-new, great men, and in view of the fact, in a world like +this that geniuses in it are almost invariably, and, as a matter of +course, lost or mislaid until they are dead, much the best and safest +thing that Trustees of Idealism could do was to watch the drift of +public opinion in the different nations, to adopt the course of noting +carefully what the world thought were really its great men, and then (at +a discreet and dignified distance, of course) tagging the public, and +wherever they saw a crowd, a rather nice crowd, round a man, standing up +softly at the last moment and handing him over his forty thousand +dollars. This has been the history of the Nobel Trustees of Idealism, +thus far. + +But in a way, we are all the trustees of idealism, and the problem of +the Nobel Prize Trustees is more or less the problem of all of us. We +are interested as well as they in trying to find out how to recognize +and reward men of genius. What would we do ourselves if we were Nobel +Prize Trustees? Precisely what was it that Alfred Nobel intended to +achieve for Literature when he made this bequest of forty thousand +dollars a year in his Will, for a work of Literature of an idealistic +tendency? + +To take a concrete case, I can only record that it has seemed to me +that if Alfred Nobel himself could have been on hand that particular +year, and could have read Mr. Upward's book, he would have given the +prize of forty thousand dollars to Allen Upward. He would not have given +the prize to Mr. Kipling--he would have given it twenty years before; +but in this particular year of which I am writing, when he saw these two +men together, I believe he would have given the prize to Allen Upward, +and he would have hurried. + +I would like to put forward at this point two inquiries. First, why did +the Trustees not award the prize to Allen Upward? And second, what would +have happened if they had? + +First, the Trustees could not be sure that Mr. Upward in his work of +genius was telling the truth. + +Second, they could not be sure that the world would approve of his +having forty thousand dollars for telling the truth. Perhaps the world +would have rather had him paid forty thousand dollars for not telling +it. + +Third, Mr. Kipling was safe. No creative work had to be done on Kipling; +all they had to do was to send him the cheque. Great crowds had swept in +from all over the world, and nominated Mr. Kipling; the Committee merely +had to confirm the nomination. + +Fourth, Mr. Upward, like all idealists, like all men who have the power +of throwing this world into the melting-pot and bringing it out new +again partly unrecognizable (which, of course, is the regular +historical, almost conventional, thing for an idealist to do with a +world), bewildered the Nobel Prize Committee. They could not be sure but +that Mr. Upward's next book would be thought in the wrong, and make +their having given him forty thousand dollars to write it ridiculous. + + * * * * * + +What would have happened if the Trustees had given the prize to Mr. +Upward? + +First, practically no one would have known who he was, and twenty-five +nations would have been reading his book in a week, to see why the prize +was given to him. The book would have been given the most widespread, +highly stimulated, forty-thousand-dollar-power attention that any book +in any age has had. + +Only now and then would a man go over and take down his old Kiplings +from the shelf and read them, because he had heard that Mr. Kipling had +forty thousand dollars more than he had had before. + +Secondly, Mr. Upward's new book would have the stimulus of his knowing +while he was writing it that every word would be read by everybody. All +the draught on the fire of his genius of the whole listening world would +result in a work that even Mr. Upward himself perhaps would hardly +believe he had written. As events turned out, and Mr. Upward did not get +the prize there might be many reasons to believe that his next book +might be out of focus, might be a mere petulant, scolding book, his +exultation spent or dwindled, because his last tremendous wager--that +the world wanted the truth--was lost. + +Scolding in a book means, as a rule, either juvenility or it means +relapse into conscious degeneration of the soul--the focussing and +fusing power in a man. I have sometimes wondered if even Christ, if He +had not died in His thirty-third year, made His great dare for the world +on the cross early, would not have stopped believing so magnificently in +other people at about forty or forty-five or so, and would not have +spent the rest of His days in railing at them, and in being very bitter +and helpless and eloquent about Rome and Jerusalem. I have caught myself +once or twice being glad Abraham Lincoln died suddenly just when he did, +his great faith and love all warm in him, and his great oath for the +world--that it was good--still fresh upon his lips! + +Writing a book like Allen Upward's for a planet with a vision of a +thousand years singing splendidly through it, and then just reading it +all alone afterward when he has written it, and going over the score all +alone by himself, would seem to be a good deal of a strain. To be +contradicted out loud and gloriously by a world might be inspiring, but +to be contradicted by a solid phalanx of silent nations, trooping up +behind one another, unanimous, impervious, is enough to make any +radiant, long-accumulated genius pause in full career, question himself, +question his vision as a chimera, as some faintly lighted Northern +Lights upon the world, that would never mean anything, that was an +illusion, that would just flicker in the great dark once more and go +out. + +I do not say that this is true, or that it would be true of Allen +Upward. + +But I have read his book. I should think it might be true. + +What Alfred Nobel had in mind, his whole idea in his Will, it seems to +some of us, was to put in his forty thousand dollars at the working end +of some man's mind, at the end of the man's mind where the forty +thousand dollars would itself be creative, where the forty thousand +dollars would get into the man, and work out through the man and through +his genius into the world. It does not seem to me that he wanted to put +his forty thousand dollars at the idle, old remembering end of a man's +mind; that he meant it should be used as a mere reward for idealism. I +doubt if it even so much as occurred to Alfred Nobel, who was an +idealist himself, that idealism, after a man had managed to have some in +this world, would be rewarded, or could possibly be paid for, by any +one. He knew, if ever a man knew, that idealism was its own reward, and +that it was priceless, and that any attempt to reward it with money, to +pay a man for it after he had had it, and after it was all over, would +make forty thousand dollars look shabby, or at least pathetic and +ridiculous. What he wanted to do was to build his forty thousand dollars +over into a Man. He wanted to feel that this money that he had made out +of dynamite, out of destruction, would be wrought, through this man, +into exultation, into life. He had proposed that this forty thousand +dollars should become poetry in this man's book, that it should become +light and heat, a power-house of thought, of great events. What Alfred +Nobel had in mind, I think, with his little forty thousand dollars, was +that it should be given a chance to become an intimate part of some +man's genius; that it should become perhaps at last a Great Book--that +great foundry of men's souls, where the moulds of History are patterned +out, and where the hopes of nations and the prayers of women and +children and of great men are, and where the ideals of men--those huge +drive-wheels of the world--are cast in a strange light and silence. + +I wondered if they could have thought of this when they voted on Allen +Upward's book that day three years ago--those twenty grave, quiet +gentlemen in frockcoats in Stockholm! + + * * * * * + +I have picked out Mr. Upward's book because it is the most difficult, +the most hazardous, and the least fortunate one I know, to make my point +with; and because a great many people will get the reaction of +disagreeing with me, and feeling about it probably, the way the Nobel +Prizes Trustees did. I have wanted to take a book which has the traits +in it for which men of genius are persecuted or crucified or +ignored--our more modern timid or anonymous form of the cross. If Mr. +Upward had been given the Prize by the Nobel Prize Trustees, it will +have to be admitted a howl would have gone up round the world that would +not have quieted down yet; and it is this howl that Mr. Nobel intended +his Prize for, and that he thought a man would need about forty thousand +dollars to meet. + +I might have taken any one of several other books, and they would have +illustrated my point snugly and more conveniently; but just that right +touch of craziness that Nobel had in mind, and that goes with great +experiment of spirit--the chill, Nietzsche-like wildness, that bravado +before God and man and before Time, that swinging one's self out on +Eternity, which make Upward a typical man of genius, would have been +lacking. K---- (whose criticisms of books are the most creative ones I +know) said of Upward's book that he felt very happy and strangely +emancipated when he read it, but that it was an uncanny experience, as +if he had been made of thin air, had become a kind of aerated being, a +psychic effect that genius often has; and K---- admitted to me +confidentially that he felt that possibly he and Upward were being a +little crazy and happy together by themselves, breaking out into +infinite space so, and he took the book over to W----, and left it on +his desk slinkingly and half-ashamed and without saying anything about +it. He said he was enormously relieved next time he saw W----, felt as +if he had just been pulled out of Bedlam to find that there was at least +one other man in the world apparently in his right mind, who valued the +book as he did. + +This is the precise feeling, it seems to me, that the Nobel Prize was +intended to champion and to stand by and temporarily defend in a new +author--the feeling he gives us of being in the presence of unseen +forces, of incalculableness. It was this way Allen Upward has of taking +his reader apart or up into a high place (like the Devil), and dizzying +him, taking away his breath with Truth, that Nobel had in mind. He +wanted to spend eight thousand pounds a year on providing for the world +one more book which would give the ordinary man the personal feeling of +being with a genius, cold, lonely, cosmic genius, the sense of a chill +wind of All Space Outside blowing through--a book which is a sort of +God's Wilderness, in which ordinary men with their ordinary plain senses +round them move about dazed a little and as trees walking--a great, +gaunt, naked book. + +Alfred Nobel was the inventor of an explosive, a rearranger of things +assumed and things unbedded, and it was this same expansive, +half-terrible, half-sublime power in other men and other men's books he +wanted to endow--the power to free and mobilize the elements in a world, +make it budge over a little toward a new one. He wanted to spend forty +thousand dollars a year on the man in literature who had the pent-up +power in him to crash the world's mind open once more every year like a +Seed, and send groping up out of it once more its hidden thought. + +I may not be right in anticipating the eventual opinion of Allen +Upward's book; but even if I am wrong, it will have helped perhaps to +call attention to the essential failure of the Nobel Prize Trustees to +side with the darers and experimenters in literature, to take a serious +part in those great creative, centrifugal movements in the souls of men +in which new worlds and the sense of new worlds are swept in upon us. +For the Sciences, which are more matter of fact and tangible, the Nobel +Prize is functioning more or less as Mr. Nobel intended, but certainly +in Literature it will have to be classed as one more of our humdrum +regular millionaire arrangements for patting successful people +expensively on the back. It acts twenty years too late, falls into line +with our usual worldly ornamental D.D., LL.D. habit, and has become, so +far as Literature is concerned, a mere colossal, kindly, doddering Old +Age Pension from a few gentlemen in Stockholm. It adds itself as one +more futile effort of men of wealth--or world owners to be creative and +lively with money, very much on the premises with money, after they are +dead. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +PAPER BOOKS, MARBLE PILLARS, AND WOODEN BOYS + + +I have sometimes wished that Mr. Carnegie would post the following sign +up on his Libraries, on the outside where people are passing, and on the +inside in the room where people sit and think: + + A MILLION DOLLARS REWARD. + + WANTED, A GREAT LIVING AMERICAN AUTHOR FOR MY LIBRARIES IN THE + UNITED STATES. AT PRESENT OUR GREAT AUTHOR IN AMERICA APPEARS + TO HAVE BEEN LOST OR MISLAID; ANY ONE FINDING HIM, OR ANY ONE + THAT MIGHT DO FOR HIM TEMPORARILY, PLEASE COMMUNICATE WITH ME. + + ANDREW CARNEGIE. + +Mr. Carnegie's Libraries must be a source of constant regret to the +author of "Triumphant Democracy." They are generally made up of books +written in the Old World. It would be interesting to know what are the +real reasons great Libraries are not being written for Mr. Carnegie in +America, and what there is that Mr. Carnegie or other people can do +about it. They are certainly going to be written in America some time, +and certainly, unless the best and greatest part of the Carnegie Library +of the future is to be the American part of it, the best our Carnegie +Libraries will do for America will be to remind us of what we are not. +Unless we can make the American part of Mr. Carnegie's Libraries loom in +the world as big as Mr. Carnegie's chimneys, America--which is the last +newest experiment station of the world--is a failure. + +It has occurred to me to try to express, for what it may be worth, a +point of view toward Triumphant Democracy Mr. Carnegie may have +inadvertently overlooked. + +If Mr. Carnegie would establish in every town where he has put a +Library, by endowment or otherwise, a Commission, or what might be +called perhaps a Searching Party, in that community, made up of men of +inventive and creative temperament, who instinctively know this +temperament in others--men in all specialities, in all walks of life, +who are doing things better than any one wants to pay them to do +them--and if Mr. Carnegie would set these men to work, in one way and +another, looking up boys who are like them, boys about the town, who are +doing things better than any one wants to pay them to do them--he would +soon get a monopoly of the idealism of the world; he would collect in +thirty-five years, or in one generation, an array of living great men, +of national figures, men who would be monuments to Andrew Carnegie, as +compared with which his present libraries, big, thoughtless, +innumerable, humdrum, sogging down into the past, would be as nothing. +Mr. Carnegie has given forty libraries to New York; and I venture to say +that there is at this very moment, running round the streets of the +great city, one single boy, who has it in him to conceive, to imagine, +and hammer together a new world; and if Mr. Carnegie would invest his +fortune, not in buildings or in books, but in buying brains enough to +find that boy, and if the whole city of New York were to devote itself +for one hour every day for years to searching about and finding that +boy, to seeing just which he is, to going over all the other boys five +hours a day to pick him out, it would be--well, all I can say is, all +those forty libraries of Mr. Carnegie's, those great proud buildings, +would do well if they did not do one thing for six years but find that +boy! + +There is a boy at this very moment with strings and marbles and a nation +in his pocket, a system of railroads--a boy with a national cure for +tuberculosis, with sun-engines for everybody--there is a boy with +cathedrals in him too, no doubt or some boy like young Pinchot, with +mountainsful of forests in his heart. + +This is what Mr. Carnegie himself would like to do, but with his big, +stiff, clumsy libraries trailing their huge, senseless brick-and-mortar +bodies, their white pillars and things, about the country, unmanned, +inert, eyeless, all those great gates and forts of knowledge, Coliseums +of paper, and with the mechanical people behind the counters, the +policemen of the books, all standing about protecting them--with all +this formidable array, how can such a boy be hunted out or drawn in, or +how would he dare go tramping in through the great gates and hunting +about for himself? He could only be hunted out by people all wrought +through with human experience, men and women who would give the world to +find him, who are on the daily lookout for such a boy--by some special +kind of eager librarian, or by disguised teachers, anonymous poets, or +by diviners, by expert geniuses in boys. If Mr. Carnegie could go about +and look up and buy up wherever he went these men who have this +boy-genius in them, deliver them from empty, helpless, mere +getting-a-living lives; and if he could set these men, and set them +about thickly, among the books in his libraries--those huge anatomies +and bones of knowledge he has established everywhere, all his great +literary steel-works--men would soon begin to be discovered, to be +created, to be built in libraries ... but as it is now.... + +Gentle Reader, have you ever stood in front of one of them, looked up at +the windows, thought of all those great tiers, those moulds and blocks +of learning on the shelves; and have you never watched the weary people +that dribble in from the streets and wander coldly about, or sit down +listless in them--in those mighty, silent empires of the past? have you +never thought that somewhere all about them, somewhere in this same +library, there must be some white, silent, sunny country of the future, +full of children and of singing, full of something very different from +these iron walls of wisdom? And have you never thought what it would +mean if Mr. Carnegie would spend his money on search parties for people +among the books, or what it would mean if the entire library, if all the +books in it, became, as it were, wired throughout with live, splendid, +delighted men and women, to make connections, to establish the current +between the people and the books, to discover the people one by one and +follow them to their homes, and follow them in their lives, and take out +the latent geniuses, and the listless engineers and poets, and the +Kossuths, Caesars, the Florence Nightingales...? + +It is only by employing forces that can be made extremely small, +invisible, personal, penetrating, and spiritual, that this sort of work +can be done. It must be delicate and wonderful workmanship, like the +magnet, like the mighty thistledown in the wind, like electricity, like +love, like hope--sheer, happy, warm human vision going about and casting +itself, casting all its still and tiny might, its boundless seed, upon +the earth: but it would pay. + +The same people too, specialists in detecting and developing inventors, +could be supplied also to all other possible callings. They would +constitute a universal profession, penetrating all the others. They +would go hunting among foremen and in machine shops for the misplaced +geniuses, tried by wrong standards, underpaid for having other gifts. +They would keep a lookout through all the schools and colleges, looking +over the shoulders of scolding teachers and absent professors. They +would go about studying the playgrounds and mastering the streets. + +We do not a little for the Submerged Tenth and the sons of the poor, and +we have schools or missions for the sons of the rich, but one of the +things we need next to-day is that something should be done for the +sons of the great neglected respectable classes. Far more important than +one more library--say in Denver, for instance would be a Denver Bureau +of Investigation, to be appointed, of high-priced, spirited men, of +expert humanists, to study difficulties, and devise methods and missions +for putting all society in Denver through filters or placers, and +finding out the rich human ore, finding out where everybody really +belonged, and what all the clever misplaced people were really for. Of +course it would take money to do all this, and flocks of free people who +are doing the work they love. But it is not book-racks, nor paper, nor +ink, nor stone steps, nor white pillars--it is free men and free women +America and England are asking of their Andrew Carnegies to-day. + +Mr. Carnegie has not touched this human problem in his libraries. If +Society were fitted up all through with electric connections, men with a +genius for discovering continents in people, Columbuses, boy-geniuses; +and if there were established everywhere a current between every boy and +the great world, this would be something on which Mr. Carnegie could +make a great beginning with the little mite of his fortune. If we were +to have even one city fitted up in this way, it would be hard to say how +much it would mean--one city with enough people in it who were free to +do beautiful things, free to be curious about the others, free to follow +clues of greatness, free to go up the streams of Society to the still, +faint little springs and beginnings of things. It would soon be a +memorable city. A world would watch it, and other cities would grope +toward it. Instead of this we have these big, hollow, unmanned libraries +of Mr. Carnegie's everywhere, with no people practically to go with +them, no great hive of happy living men and women in and out all day +cross-fertilizing boys and books. + +There seems to be something unfinished and stolid and brutal about a +Carnegie Library now. The spirit of the garden and the sea, of the +spring and the light, and of the child, is not in it. They have come to +seem to some of us mere huge Pittsburgs of brains--all these impervious, +unwieldy, rolling-mills of knowledge. I should think it would be a +terrible prospect to grow old with, just to sit and see them flocking +across the country from your window, all these huge smoke-stacks of +books in their weary, sordid cities; and the boys who might be great +men, the small Lincolns with nations in their pockets, the little Bells +with worlds in their ears, the Pinchots with their forests, the McAdoos +and Roosevelts, the young Carnegies and Marconis in the streets! + + + + +CHAPTER V + +THE HUMDRUM FACTORY AND THE TUMPTY-TUM THEATRE + + +Mr. Israel Zangwill in presiding at the meeting of the Sociological +Society the other night remarked, in referring to inspired millionaires, +that as a rule in the minds of most people nowadays a millionaire seemed +to be a kind of broken-off person, or possibly two persons. There always +seemed to have to be a violent change in a millionaire somewhere along +the middle of his life. The change seemed to be associated in some way, +Mr. Zangwill thought with his money. He reminded one of the +patent-medicine advertisements, "Before and After Taking." + +I have been trying to think why it is that the average millionaire +reminds people--as Mr. Zangwill says he does--of a patent-medicine +advertisement, "Before and After Taking." + +I have thought, since Mr. Zangwill made this remark, of getting together +a small collection of pictures of millionaires--two pictures of each, +one before and the other after taking--and having them mounted in the +most approved patent-medicine style, and taking them down to Far End and +asking Mr. Zangwill to look them over with me and see if he thought--he, +Israel Zangwill, the novelist, the play-wright, the psychologist--really +thought, that millionaires "Before and After" were as different as they +looked. + +I imagine he would say--and practically without looking at the +pictures--that of course to him or to me perhaps, or to any especially +interested student of human nature, millionaires are not really +different at all "Before and After Taking"; that they merely had a +slightly different outer look. They would merely look different, Mr. +Zangwill would say, to the common run or majority of people--the people +one meets in the streets. + +But would they? + +One of the most hopeful things that I have been thinking of lately is +that the people--the ordinary people one meets in the streets--are +beginning quite generally to see through their millionaires, and to see +that their money almost never really cures them. Most very rich men, +indeed, are having their times now, of even seeing through themselves; +and it brings me up abruptly with a shock to think that the ordinary +people who pass in the streets would be deceived by these simple little +pictures Before and After. They have been deceived until lately, but are +they being deceived now? I would like to see the matter tested, and I +have thought it would be a good idea to take my small collection of +pictures of millionaires--two pictures of each, one Before and the other +After Taking--to a millionaire--of course some really reformed or cured +one--and ask him to pay the necessary expenses in the columns of the +_Times_, and of the _Westminster Gazette_, and the _Daily Chronicle_, +and other representative London journals (all on the same morning), of +having the pictures published. We could then take what might be called a +social, human, economic inventory of London: ask people to send in their +honest opinions, on looking at the pictures, as to whether Money, Before +and After Taking, does or does not produce these remarkable cures in +millionaires. I very much doubt if Mr. Zangwill would be found to be +right in his estimate of our common people to-day. + +I venture to believe that it is precisely because our common people are +seeing that millionaires are not changed Before and After Taking that +the majority of time millionaires we have to-day have come to be looked +upon as one of the charges--one of the great spiritual charges and +burdens modern Society has to carry. + +Society has always had to do what it could for the poor, but in our +modern civilization, in a new and big sense, we have to see now what +there is, if possibly anything, that can be done for the rich. + +We have come to have them now almost everywhere about us--these great +spiritual orphans, with their pathetic, blind, useless fortunes piled up +around them; and Society has to support them, to keep them up morally, +keep them doing as little damage as possible, and has to allow day by +day besides for the strain and structural weakness they bring upon the +girders of the world--the faith of men in men, and the credit of God, +which alone can hold a world together. + +It is not denied that the average millionaire, when he has made his +money, does different-looking things, and gathers different-looking +objects about him, and is seen in different-looking places. And it is +not denied that he changes in more important particulars than things. He +quite often changes people, the people he is seen with but he never or +almost never changes himself. He is not one man when he is putting money +into his pocket and another when he is taking it out. + +We keep hoping at first with each new mere millionaire that when he gets +all the money he has wanted it will change him; but we find it almost +never does. + +Merely reversing the motion with a pocket does not make a man a new and +beautiful creature, and one soon sees that the typical millionaire is +governed by the same bargain principles, is bullied and domineered over +by the same personal limitations, the same old something-for-nothing +habits. If he had the habit, while getting money out of people, of +getting the better of them, he still insists on getting the better of +people when he gives it to them or to their causes. He takes it out of +their souls. There never has been a millionaire who runs his business +on the old humdrum principle of merely making all the money he can who +does not run his very philanthropies afterward on the same general +principle of oppressing everybody, of outwitting everybody--and of doing +people good in a way that makes them wish they were dead. Philanthropy +as a philosophy, and even as an institution, is getting to be nearly +futile to-day, for the reason that millionaires--valid, authentic cases +of millionaires who are really cured--who are changed either in their +motives or their methods with regard to what they do with money, except +in rare cases, do not exist. + +The New Theatre in New York, which was started as a kind of Polar +Expedition to discover and rescue Dramatic Art in America, failed +because two hundred and forty millionaires tried to help it. If enough +millionaires could have been staved off from that enterprise, or if it +could have been taken in hand either by fewer or more select +millionaires cooeperating with the public and with artists of all +classes, New Theatre of New York would not have been obliged, as it has +been since, to start all over again on a new basis. The blunders in +creative public work that men who get rich in the wrong way are always +sure to make had to be made first. They nearly always have to be made +first. There is hardly a single enterprise of higher social value in +which the world is interested to-day which is not being gravely +threatened in efficient service by letting in too many millionaires, and +by paying too much attention to what they think. If our people were +generally alive to the terrific sameness and monotony of a millionaire's +life "before and after," and if millionaires were looked over +discriminatingly before being allowed to take part in great public +enterprises like the cinema, for instance, the newspapers, the +hospitals, the theatres, there is hardly any limit to the new things +that public enterprises would begin to make happen in the world, and the +new men that would begin to function in them. + +Of course, if what a great vision for the people--_i.e._, a public +enterprise is for, is to make money, it would be different. The mere +millionaire might understand, and his understanding might help. But if +an institution is founded (like a great theatre) to be a superb and +noble masterpiece of understanding and changing human nature; if it is +founded to be a creative and dominating influence, to build up the +ideals and fire the enthusiasm of a city, to lay the foundations of the +daily thoughts and the daily motives of a great people, the mere +millionaire finds, if he tries to manage it, that he is getting in +beyond his depth. A man who has made his money by exploiting and taking +advantage of the public can only be expected, in conducting a Theatre, +to be an authority on how to exploit a public and take advantage of it +still more, and how to make it go to the play that merely looks like the +play that it wants. + +Millionaires as a class, unless they are men who have made their money +in the artist's or the inventor's spirit, really ought to be expected by +this time, except in the size of their cheques, to be modest and +thoughtful, to stand back a little and watch other people. The +millionaires themselves, if they thought about it, would be the first to +advise us not to pay too much attention to them. They are used to large +things, and they know that the only way to do, in conducting great +enterprises, is to select and use men (whether millionaires or not) for +the particular efficiencies they have developed. If we are conducting +what is called a charity, we will not expect that a millionaire can do +good things unless he is a good man. He spoils them by picking out the +wrong people. And we will not expect him to do artistic things unless he +has lived his life and done his business in the spirit and the +temperament of the artist. He will not know which the artists are or +what the artists are like inside; and he will not like them and they +will not like him, nor will they be interested in him or interested in +working with him. Everything that artists or men of creative temperament +try to do with the common run of millionaires--all these huge, blind, +imponderable megatheriums, stamping along through life, ordering people +about--ends in the same way--in irksomeness, bewildered vision, fear, +compromise, and failure, as seen from the inside. Seen on the outside or +before the public, of course, the Institution will have the same old, +bland, familiar air of looking successful and of looking intelligent, +and yet of being uninteresting, and of not changing the world by a +hair's breadth. + +The only millionaires who should be allowed to have a controlling +interest in public enterprises are millionaires who do not need to be +different before and after making their money. Everybody is coming to +see this, sooner or later. It is already getting very hard to raise +money for any public enterprise in which mere millionaires or +bewildered, unhappy rich men are known to have a controlling interest. +The most efficient and far-sighted men do not expect anything very +decided or of marked character from such enterprises, and will no longer +lend to them either their brains or their money. Mere millionaires will +soon have to conduct their public enterprises quite by themselves, and +they will then soon fall of their own weight. The moment men are put in +control of public enterprises by the size of their brains instead of the +size of their cheques, the whole complexion of what are known as our +public enterprises will change, and churches, theatres, hospitals, +settlements, art galleries, and all other great public causes, instead +of boring everybody and teasing everybody, will be attracting everybody +and attracting everybody's money. They will be full of character, +courage, and vision. Our present great, vague, helpless, plaintive +public enterprises--one third art, one third millionaire, one third +deficit--drag along financially because they are listless compromises, +because they have no souls or vision, and are not interesting--not even +interesting to themselves. + +Men with creative or imaginative quality, and courage, and insight into +ordinary human nature, and far-sightedness of what can be expected of +people, do not get on with the ordinary millionaire. It cannot be denied +that millionaires and artists get together in time; but the particular +point that seems to be interesting to consider is how the millionaires +and artists can be got together before the artists are dead, and before +the millionaires stop growing and stop being creative and understanding +creative men. + +It might be well to consider the present situation in the concrete--the +theatre, for instance--and see how the situation lies, and where one +would have to begin, and how one would have to go to work to change it. + +The present failure of the theatre to encourage what is best in modern +art is due to the fact that the public is unimaginative and inartistic. + +If a public is unimaginative and inartistic, the only way the best +things that are offered can succeed with them is by having these best +things held before them long and steadily enough for them slowly to +compare them with other things, and see that they are better than the +other things, and that they are what they want. + +Unimaginative and inartistic people do not know what they want. If +things are tried long enough with them they do. When they have been +tried long enough with them they support them themselves. + +The only way fine things can be tried long enough is with sufficient +capital. + +The only way sufficient capital for fine things can be obtained is by +having millionaires who appreciate fine things, and believe in them, and +believe the public in time will believe in them. + +The only way in which a millionaire can recognize and believe in the +fine things and in the best artists is by being, in spirit and +temperament at least, an artist himself. + +The only way in which a millionaire can be an artist is to work every +day in the spirit in which the artist works. + +This means the artist in business. + +(1) The artist in business is the man who makes things people already +want enough to make money, and who makes things he is going to make +people want enough to make new values and to be of some use. + +(2) The artist in business is the employer who makes new things and men +together. He lets the men who make new things with him become new men; +and when the things are made, they go forth in their turn and make new +men and make new publics. New publics have had to be made for +everything: for the first umbrellas, for the first telephones, the first +typewriters. New publics have had to be made for Wagner, for Sunlight +Soap, for Bernard Shaw; and it is the men who make new publics--be it +for big or little things--who are artists. They are in spirit, prophets, +kings, and world-builders. + +(3) Incidentally, the artist in business--the employer who creates new +values and is creative himself--will like creative men in his factory, +and will treat them so that they will put their creativeness into his +business; he not only will be an artist himself, but he will have, +comparatively speaking, a factory full of artists working with him. And +when the factories pour out the men at night, and the smoke and the +murmur cease, and the windows are dark, they will go to creative and +live men's plays. + +So it has come to pass that the modern business man of the artist sort +holds the arts of modern times in the hollow of his hand. He is a +past-master of creating new publics. + +(4) The artist in business is the man who educates and draws out, at +every point where his business touches them, every day, all day, the men +with whom he works. He educates and develops the men who make the +things. He educates and develops the men who buy them. Even the people +who wish they had bought them, are educated or secreted, by the artist +in business. He is a maker of new publics, a world-builder, whichever +way he turns. A business man who merely makes for people what they want, +and who does not get the prestige with men of making for them things +that they did not know they wanted, is a failure and falls behind in his +business. All the big men in business work in future tenses. They are +prophets, historians, and they are Now-men, men who work by seeing the +truth all round the present moment, the present persons, and the present +market, and before it and behind it. Millionaires who are making their +money in this spirit will understand and believe in plays that are +written in this spirit, and the people who work for such employers will +like to go to such plays, and the theatre managers, instead of being the +bullies and tyrants of the world of art, will be held in the power of +the men who see things and who make things--men who in vast sweeps +called audiences, night after night, make new men upon the earth. + + + + +PART TWO + +IRON MACHINES + + + + +CHAPTER I + +STEEPLES AND CHIMNEYS + + +I went to the Durbar the other night in cinema colour and saw the King +and Queen through India. I had found my way, with hundreds of others, +into the gallery of the Scala Theatre, and out of that big, still rim of +watchful darkness where I sat I saw--there must have been thousands of +them--crowds of camels running. + +And crowds of elephants went swinging past. + +I watched them like a boy, like a boy standing on the edge of a thousand +years and looking off at a world. + +It was stately and strange, and like far music to sit quite still and +watch civilizations swinging past. + +Then suddenly it became near and human--the spirit of playgrounds and of +shouting and boyish laughter ran through it. And we watched the +elephants, naked and untrimmed, lolling down to the lake and lying down +to be scrubbed in it with comfortable low snorting and slow rolling in +the water, and the men standing by all the while like little play-nurses +and tending them, their big bungling babies, at the bath. A few minutes +later we watched the same elephants, hundreds of them, their mighty +toilets made, pacing slowly past, swinging their gorgeous trappings in +our eyes, rolling their huge hoodahs at us, and all the time still those +little funny dots of men beside them, moving them silently, moving them +invisibly as by a spirit, as by a kind of awful wireless--those great +engines of the flesh! I shall never forget it or live without it, that +slow pantomime of those mighty, silent Eastern nations, their religions, +their philosophies, their wills, their souls, moving their elephants +past--the long panorama of it, of their little awful human wills, all +those little black, helpless-looking slits of Human Will astride those +mighty necks! + +I have the same feeling when I see Count Zeppelin with his airship, or +Grahame-White at Hendon, riding his vast cosmic pigeon up the sky; and +it is the same feeling I have with the locomotives--those unconscious, +forbidding, coldly obedient terrible fellows! Have I not lain awake and +listened to them storming through the night, heard them out there ahead +working our wills on the blackness, on the thick night, on the stars, on +Space, and on Time while we slept? + +My main feeling at the Durbar while I watched those splendid beasts--the +crowds of camels, the crowds of elephants--all being driven along by the +little, faint, dreamy, sleepy-looking people was, "Why don't their +elephants turn around on them and chase them?" + +I kept thinking at first that they would, almost any minute. + +Our elephants chase us--most of us. Who has not seen locomotives coming +quietly out of their roundhouses in New York and begin chasing people, +chasing whole towns, tearing along with them, making everybody hurry +whether or no, speeding up and ordering around by the clock great +cities, everybody alike, the rich and the poor, the just and the unjust, +for hundreds of miles around? In the same way I have seen, hundreds of +times, motor cars turning around on their owners and chasing +them--chasing them fairly out of their lives. And hundreds of thousands +of little wood-and-rubber Things with nickel bells whirring, may be seen +ordering around people--who pay them for it--in any city of our modern +world. + +Now and then one comes on a man who keeps a telephone, who is a +gentleman with it, and who keeps it in its place, but not often. + +There are certain questions to be asked and to be settled in any +civilization that would be called great. + +First: Do the elephants chase the men in it? Second: And if--as in our +Western civilization--the men have made their own elephants, why should +they be chased by them? + +There are some of us who have wondered a little at the comparative +inferiority of organ music. We have come to the conclusion that perhaps +organ music is inferior because it has been largely composed by +organists, by men who sit at organ machines many hours a day, and who +have let their organ machines with all their stops and pedals, and with +all their stop-and-pedal-mindedness, select out of their minds the tones +that organs can do best--the music that machines like. + +Wagner has come to be recognized as a great and original composer for a +machine age because he would not let his imagination be cowed by the +mere technical limitations, the narrow-mindedness of brass horns, wooden +flutes, and catgut; he made up his mind that he would not sing violins. +He made violins sing him. + +Perhaps this is the whole secret of art in a machine civilization. + +Perhaps a machine civilization is capable of a greater art than has ever +been dreamed in the world before, the moment it stops being chased by +its elephants. The question of letting the crowd be beautiful in our +world of machines and crowds to-day turns on our producing +Machine-Trainers. + +Men possessed by watches in their vest pockets cannot be inspired, men +possessed by churches or religion-machines cannot be prophets, men +possessed by school-machines cannot be educators. + +The reason that we find the poet, or at least the minor poet, +discouraged in a machine age probably is, that there is nothing a minor +poet can do in it. Why should nightingales, poppies, and dells expect, +in a main trial of strength, to compete with machines? And why should +human beings running for their souls in a race with locomotives expect +to keep very long from losing their souls? + +The reason that most people are discouraged about machinery to-day is +that this is what they think a machine civilization is. They whine at +the machines. They blame the locomotive. + +A better way for a man to do would be to stop blaming the locomotive, +and stop running along out of breath beside it, and climb up into the +cab. + +This is the whole issue of art in our modern civilization--climbing up +into the cab. + +First come the Machine-Trainers, or poets who can tame engines. Then the +other poets. + +In the meantime, the less we hear about nightingales and poppies and +dells and love and above, the better. + +Poetry must make a few iron-handed, gentle-hearted, mighty men next. It +is because we demand and expect the beautiful that we say that poetry +must make men next. + +The elephants have been running around in the garden long enough. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +BELLS AND WHEELS + + +We are living in a day of the great rebellion of the machines. Out of a +thousand thousand roundhouses and factories, vast cities and nations of +machines on the land and on the sea have risen before the soul of man +and said, "We have served you; now, you serve us." + +A million million vulgar, swaggering Goliaths, one sees them everywhere; +they wave their arms at us around the world, they puff their white +breath at us, they spit smoke in our eyes, line up in a row before the +great cities, before the mighty-hearted nations, and say it again and +again, all in chorus, _"We have served you, now, you serve us!"_ + +It has come to sound to some of us as a kind of chant around our lives. + +But why should we serve them? + +I have seen crowds of minor poets running, their little boxes of perfume +and poetry, their cologne water, their smelling-salts, in their hands. + +And, of course, if the world were all minor poets the situation would be +serious. + +And I have seen flocks of faint-hearted temples, of big, sulky, +beautiful, absent-minded colleges, looking afraid. Every now and then +perhaps one sees a professor run out, throw a book at the machines, and +run back again. Oxford still looks at science, at matter itself, +tremulously, with that same old, still, dreamy air of dignity, of +gentlemanly disappointment. + +And if the world were all Oxford the situation would be serious. + +When Oxford with its hundred spires, its little beautiful boy choirs of +professors, draws me one side from the Great Western Railway Station, +and intones in those still, solemn, lonely spaces the great truth in my +ears, that machines and ideals cannot go together, that the only way to +deal with ideals is to keep them away from machines, my only reply is +that ideals that are so tired that they are merely devoted to defending +themselves, ideals that will not and cannot go forth and be the breath +of the machines, ideals that cannot and will not master the machines, +that will not ride the machines as the wind, overrun matter, and conquer +the earth, are not ideals for gentlemen. + +At least they are not ideals that can keep up the standard of the Oxford +gentleman. + +A gentleman is a man who is engaged in expressing his best and noblest +self in every fibre of his mind and every fibre of his body. He makes +the very force of gravity pulling on his clothes express him, and the +movements of his feet and his hands. He gathers up his rooms into his +will and all the appointments of his life and crowds into them the full +meaning of his soul. He makes all these things say him. + +The main attribute of a man who is not a gentleman is that he does not +do these things, that he cannot inform his body with his spirit. + +I go back to the Great Western Railway, ugly as it still is. I go alone, +and sadly if I must, and for a little time--without the deep bells and +without the stained-glass windows, without all that dear, familiar +beauty I have loved in the old and quiet quadrangles--I take my stand +beside the Great Western Railway! I claim the Great Western Railway for +the spirit of man and for the will of God! + +With its vast shuttle of steam and shining engines, its little, +whispering telegraph office, the Great Western Railway is a part of my +body. I lay my will on the heart of London with it, or I sleep in the +old house in Lynmouth with it. I am the Great Western Railway, and the +Great Western Railway is ME. And from the heart of the roar of London +to the slow, sleepy surge of the sea in my window at Lynmouth it is +mine! Though it be iron and wood, switches, whistles, and white steam, +it is my body, and I inform it with my spirit, or I die. With the will +of God I endow it, with the glory of the world, with the desires of my +heart, and with the prayers of the hurrying men and women. + +I declare that that same glory I have known before, and that I will +always know, and will never give up, in the old quiet quadrangles of +Oxford and in the deep bells and in the still waters, as in some +strange, new, and mighty Child, is in the Great Western Railway too. + +When I am in the train it sings. Strangely and hoarsely It sings! I lie +down to rest. It whistles on ahead my ideals down the slope of the +world. It roars softly, while I sleep, my religion in my ears. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +DEW AND ENGINES + + +When I was small, and wanted suddenly to play tag or duck-on-the-rock I +had a little square half-mile of boys near by to play with. + +My daughter plays tag or plays dolls, any minute she likes, with a whole +city. She is not surprised at the telephone; she takes it for granted +like sunshine and milk. It is a part of the gray matter in her brain--a +whole city, six or seven square miles of it. A little mouthpiece on a +desk, a number, and two hundred little girls are hers in a minute, to +play dolls with. She thinks in miles when she plays, where I thought in +door-yards. The whole city is a part of the daily, hourly furniture of +her mind. The little gray molecules in the structure of her brain are +different from those in mine. + +I have seen that Man moves over with each new generation into a bigger +body, more awful, more reverent and free than he has had before. + +A few minutes ago, here where I am writing, an engine all in bright, +soft, lit-up green with little lines of yellow on it and flashing silver +feet, like a vision, swept past--through my still glass window, through +the quiet green fields--like a great, swift, gleaming whisper of London. +And now, all in six seconds, this great quiet air about me is waked to +vast vibrations of the mighty city. Out over the red pines, the lonely +gorse fields, I have seen passing the spirit of the Strand. I have seen +the great flocking bridges and the roar about St. Paul's in communion +with the treetops and with the hedgerows and with the little brooks, all +in six seconds, when an engine, with its vision like a cloud of glory +swept past. + +And yet there are people in Oxford who tell me that an engine when it is +in the very act of expressing such stupendous and boundless thoughts, of +making such mighty and beautiful things happen, is not beautiful, that +it has nothing to do with art. They can but watch the machines, the +earth black with them, going about everywhere mowing down great nations +and rolling under the souls of men. + +I cannot see it so. I see a thousand thousand engines carrying dew and +green fields to the stones of London. I see the desires of the earth +hastening. The ships and the wireless telegraph beckon the wills of +cities on the seas and on the sky. With the machines I have taken a +whole planet to me for my feet and for my hands. I gesture with the +earth. I hand up oceans to my God. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +DEAD AS A DOOR NAIL! + + +There are people who say that machines cannot be beautiful, and cannot +make for beauty, because machines are dead. + +I would agree with them if I thought that machines were dead. + +I have watched in spirit, hundreds of years, the machines grow out of +Man like nails, like vast antennae--a kind of enormous, more unconscious +sub-body. They are apparently of less lively and less sensitive tissue +than tongues or eyes or flesh; and like all bones they do not renew, of +course, as often or as rapidly as flesh. But the difference between live +and dead machines is quite as grave and quite as important as the +difference between live and dead men. The generally accepted idea a live +thing is, that it is a thing that keeps dying and being born again every +minute; it is seen to be alive by its responsiveness to the spirit, to +the intelligence that created it and that keeps re-creating it. I have +known thousands of factories; and every factory I have known that is +really strong or efficient has scales like a snake, and casts off its +old self. All the people in it, and all the iron and wood in it, month +by month are being renewed and shedding themselves. Any live factory can +always be seen moulting year after year. A live spirit goes all through +the machinery, a kind of nervous tissue of invention, of thought. + +We already speak of live and dead iron, of live and dead engines or +half-dead and half-sick engines, and we have learned that there is such +a thing as tired steel. What people do to steel makes a difference to +it. Steel is sensitive to people. My human spirit grows my arm and moves +it and guides it and expresses itself in it, keeps re-creating it and +destroying it; and daily my soul keeps rubbing out and writing in new +lines upon my face; and in the same way my typewriter, in a slow, more +stolid fashion, responds to my spirit too. Two men changing typewriters +or motor-cars are, though more subtly, like two men changing boots. +Sewing machines, pianos, and fiddles grow intimate with the people who +use them, and they come to express those particular people and the ways +in which they are different from others. A Titian-haired typewriter girl +makes her machine move differently every day from a blue-eyed one. +Typewriters never like to have their people take the liberty of lending +them. Steel bars and wooden levers all have little mannerisms, little +expressions, small souls of their own, habits of people that they have +lived with, which have grasped the little wood and iron levers of their +wills and made them what they are. + +It is somewhere in the region of this fact that we are going to discover +the great determining secret of modern life, of the mastery of man over +his machines. Man, at the present moment, with all his new machines +about him, is engaged in becoming as self-controlled, as +self-expressive, with his new machines, with his wireless telegraph arms +and his railway legs, as he is with his flesh and blood ones. The force +in man that is doing this is the spiritual genius in him that created +the machine, the genius of imperious and implacable self-expression, of +glorious self-assertion in matter, the genius for being human, for being +spiritual, and for overflowing everything we touch and everything we use +with our own wills and with the ideals and desires of our souls. The +Dutchman has expressed himself in Dutch architecture and in Dutch art; +the American has expressed himself in the motor-car; the Englishman has +expressed himself, has carved his will and his poetry upon the hills, +and made his landscape a masterpiece by a great nation. He has made his +walls and winding roads, his rivers, his very treetops express his deep, +silent joy in the earth. So the great, fresh young nations to-day, with +a kind of new, stern gladness, implacableness, and hope, have appointed +to their souls expression through machinery. Our Engines and our radium +shall cry to God! Our wheels sing in the sun! + +Machinery is our new art-form. A man expresses himself first in his +hands and feet, then in his clothes, and then in his rooms or in his +house, and then on the ground about him; the very hills grow like him, +and the ground in the fields becomes his countenance; and now, last and +furthest of all, requiring the liveliest and noblest grasp of his soul, +the finest circulation of will of all, he begins expressing himself in +his vast machines, in his three-thousand-mile railways, in his vast, +cold-looking looms and dull steel hammers. With telescopes for Mars-eyes +for his spirit, he walks up the skies; he expresses his soul in deep and +dark mines, and in mighty foundries melting and re-moulding the world. +He is making these things intimate, sensitive, and colossal expressions +of his soul. They have become the subconscious body, the abysmal, +semi-infinite body of the man, sacred as the body of the man is sacred, +and as full of light or of darkness. + +So I have seen the machines go swinging through the world. Like +archangels, like demons, they mount up our desires on the mountains. We +do as we will with them. We build Winchester Cathedral all over again, +on water. We dive down with our steel wheels and nose for +knowledge--like a great Fish--along the bottom of the sea. We beat up +our wills through the air. We fling up, with our religion, with our +faith, our bodies on the clouds. We fly reverently and strangely, our +hearts all still and happy, in the face of God! + + + + +CHAPTER V + +AN OXFORD MAN AND AN INCH OF IRON + + +The whole process of machine-invention is itself the most colossal, +spiritual achievement of history. The bare idea we have had of +unravelling all creation, and of doing it up again to express our own +souls--the idea of subduing matter, of making our ideals get their way +with matter, with radium, ether, antiseptics, is itself a religion, a +poetry, a ritual, a cry to heaven. The supreme, spiritual adventure of +the world has become this task that man has set himself, of breaking +down and casting away forever the idea that there is such a thing as +matter belonging to matter--matter that keeps on in a dead, stupid way, +just being matter. The idea that matter is not all alive with our souls, +with our desires and prayers, with hope, terror, worship, with the +little terrible wills of men and the spirit of God, is already +irreligious to us. Is not every cubic inch of iron (the coldest-blooded +scientist admits it) like a kind of little temple, its million million +little atoms in it going round and round and round dancing before the +Lord? + +And why should an Oxford man be afraid of a cubic inch of iron, or +afraid of becoming like it? + +I daily thank God that I have been allowed to belong to this generation. +I have looked at last a little cubic inch of iron out of countenance. I +can sit and watch it, the little cubic inch of iron, in its still +coldness, in all its little funny play-deadness, and laugh! I know that +to a telescope or a god, or to me, to us, the little cubic inch of iron +is all alive inside, that it is whirling with will, that it is sensitive +in a rather dead-looking but lively cosmic way, sensitive like another +kind of more slowly quivering flesh, sensitive to moons and to stars +and to heat and cold, to time and space and to human souls. It is +singing every minute low and strange, night and day, in its little grim +blackness, of the glory of Things. I am filled with the same feeling, +the same sense of kindred, of triumphant companionship, when I go out +among them and watch the majestic family of the machines, of the +engines, those mighty Innocents, those new awful sons of God, going +abroad through all the world, looking back at us when we have made them, +unblinking and without sin! + +Like rain and sunshine, like chemicals, and like all the other innocent, +godlike things, and like waves of water and waves of air, rainbows, +starlight, they say what we make them say. They are alive with the life +that is in us. + +The first element of power in a man, in getting control of his life in +our modern era, is to have spirit enough to know what matter is like. + +The Machine-Trainer is the man who sees what the machines are like. He +is the man who conceives of iron-and-wood machines, in his daily habit +of thought, as alive. He has discovered ways in which he can produce an +impression upon iron and wood with his desires, and with his will. He +goes about making iron-and-wood machines do live things. + +It is never the machines that are dead. + +It is only mechanical-minded men that are dead. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +THE MACHINES' MACHINES + + +The fate of civilization is not going to be determined by people who are +morbidly like machines on the one hand, or by people who are morbidly +unmechanical, on the other. + +People in a machine civilization who try to live without being automatic +and mechanical-minded part of the time and in some things, people who +try to make everything they do artistic and self-expressive and +hand-made, who attend to all their own thoughts and finish off all their +actions by hand themselves, soon wish they were dead. + +People who do everything they do mechanically, or by machinery, are dead +already. + +It is bad enough for those of us who are trying to live our lives +ourselves--real, true, hand-made individual lives--to have to fight all +these machines about us trying daily to roar and roll us down into +humdrum and nothingness, without having to fight besides all these dear +people we have about us too, who have turned machines, even one's own +flesh and blood. Does not one see them--see them everywhere--one's own +flesh and blood, going about like stone-crushers, road-rollers, lifts, +lawn-mowers? + +Between the morbidly mechanical people and the morbidly unmechanical +people, modern civilization hangs in the balance. + +There must be some way of being just mechanical enough, and at the right +time and right place, and of being just unmechanical enough at the right +time and right place. And there must be some way in which men can be +mechanical and unmechanical at will. + +The fate of civilization turns on men who recognize the nature of +machinery, who make machines serve them, who add the machines to their +souls, like telephones and wireless telegraph, or to their bodies, like +radium and railroads, and who know when and when not and how and how not +to use them who are so used to using machines quietly and powerfully, +that they do not let the machines outwit them and unman them. + +Who are these men? + +How do they do it? + +They are the Machine-Trainers. The men who understand people-machines, +who understand iron machines, and who understand how to make +people-machines and iron machines run softly together. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +THE MEN'S MACHINES + + +There was a time once in the old simple individual days when drygoods +stores could be human. They expressed, in a quiet, easy way, the souls +of the people who owned them. + +When machinery was invented and when organization was invented--machines +of people--drygoods stores became vast selling machines. + +We then faced the problem of making a drygoods store with twenty-five +hundred clerks in it as human as a drygoods store with fifteen. + +This problem has been essentially and in principle solved. At least we +know it is about to be solved. We are ready to admit--most of us--that +it is practicable for a department store to be human. Everything the man +at the top does expresses his human nature and his personality to his +clerks. His clerks become twenty-five hundred more of him in miniature. +What is more, the very stuff in which the clerks in department stores +work--the thing that passes through their hands, is human, and +everything about it is human, or can be made human; and all the while +vast currents of human beings, huge Mississippis of human feeling, flow +past the clerks--thousands and thousands of souls a day, and pour over +their souls, making them and keeping them human. The stream clears +itself. + +But what can we say about human beings in a mine, about the +practicability of keeping human twenty-five hundred men in a hole in the +ground? And how can a mine-owner reach down to the men in the hole, make +himself felt as a human being on the bottom floor of the hole in the +ground? + +In a department store the employer expresses himself to his clerks +through every one of the other twenty-five hundred; they mingle and stir +their souls and hopes and fears together, and he expresses himself to +all of them through them all. + +But in a mine, two men work all alone down in the dark hole in the +ground. Thousands of other men, all in dark holes, are near by, with +nothing but the dull sound of picks to come between. In thousands of +other holes men work, each with his helper, all alone. The utmost the +helper can do is to grow like the man he works with, or like his own +pick, or like the coal he chips out, or like the black hole. The utmost +the man who mines coal can do, in the way of being human, is with his +helper. + +In a factory, for the most part, the only way, during working hours, an +employer can express himself and his humanness to his workman is through +the steel machine he works with--through its being a new, good, fair +machine or a poor one. He can only smile and frown at him with steel, be +good to him in wheels and levers, or now and then perhaps through a +foreman pacing down the aisles. + +The question the modern business man in a factory has to face is very +largely this: "I have acres of machines all roaring my will at my men. I +have leather belts, printed rules, white steam, pistons, roar, air, +water and fire and silence to express myself to my workmen in. I have +long monotonous swings and sweeps of cold steel, buckets of melted iron, +strips of wood, bells, whistles, clocks--to express myself, to express +my human spirit to my men. Is there, or is there not, any possible way +in which my factory with its machines can be made as human and as +expressive of the human as a department store?" + +This is the question that our machine civilization has set itself to +answer. + +All the men with good honest working imaginations, the geniuses and the +freemen of the world, are setting themselves the task of answering it. + +Some say, "Machines are on the necks of the men. We will take the +machines away." + +Others say, "We will make our men as good as our machines. We will make +our inventions in men catch up with our inventions in machines." + +We naturally turn to the employer first as having the first chance. What +is there an employer can do to draw out the latent force in the men, +evoke the divine, incalculable passion sleeping beneath in the +machine-walled minds, the padlocked wills, the dull unmined desires of +men? How can he touch and wake the solar plexus of labour? + +If any employer desires to get into the inner substance of the most +common type of workman, be an artist with him, express himself with him +and change the nature of that substance, give it a different colour or +light or movement so that he will work three times as fast, ten times as +cheerfully and healthfully, and with his whole body and soul, spirit, +and how is he going to do it? + +Most employers wish they could do this. If they could persuade their men +to believe in them, to begin to be willing to work with them instead of +against them, they would do it. + +What form of language is there, whether of words or of actions, that an +employer can use to make the men who work nine hours a day for him and +to whom he has to express himself across acres of machines, believe in +him and understand him? + +The modern employer finds himself set sternly face to face, every day of +his life, with this question. All civilization seems crowding up day by +day, seems standing outside his office door as he goes in and as he goes +out, and asking him--now with despair, now with a kind of grim, +implacable hope, "Do you believe, or do you not believe, a factory can +be made as human as a department store?" + +This question is going to be answered first by men who know what iron +machines really are, and what they are really for, and how they +work--who know what people-machines really are, and what they are really +for, and how they work. They will base all that they do upon certain +resemblances and certain differences between people and machines. + +They will work the machines of iron according to the laws of iron. + +They will work the machines of men according to the laws of human +nature. + +There are certain facts in human nature, feelings, enthusiasms and +general principles concerning the natural working relation between men +and machines, that it may be well to consider in the next chapter as a +basis for a possible solution. + +What are our machines after all? How are the machines like us? And on +what theory of their relation to us can machines and men expect in a +world like this to run softly together? These are the questions men are +going to answer next. In the meantime, I venture to believe that no man +who is morose to-day about the machines, or who is afraid of machines in +our civilization--because they are machines--is likely to be able to do +much to save the men in it. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +THE BASEMENT OF THE WORLD + + +Every man has, according to the scientists, a place in the small of his +back which might be called roughly, perhaps, the soul of his body. All +the little streets of the senses or avenues of knowledge, the spiritual +conduits through which he lives in this world, meet in this little +mighty brain in the small of a man's back. + +About nine hundred millions of his grandfathers apparently make their +headquarters in this little place in the small of his back. + +It is in this one little modest unnoticed place that he is supposed to +keep his race-consciousness, his subconscious memory of a whole human +race, and it is here that the desires and the delights and labours of +thousands of years of other people are turned off and turned on in him. +It is the brain that has been given to every man for the heavy everyday +hard work of living. The other brain, the one with which he does his +thinking and which is kept in an honoured place up in the cupola of his +being, is a comparatively light-working organ, merely his own private +personal brain--a conscious, small, and supposably controllable affair. +He holds on to his own particular identity with it. The great lower +brain in the small of his back is merely lent to him, as it were, out of +eternity--while he goes by. + +It is like a great engine which he has been allowed the use of as long +as he can keep it connected up properly with his cerebral arrangements. + +This appears to be mainly what the cerebral brain is for, this keeping +the man connected up. It acts as a kind of stopcock for one's infinity, +for screwing on or screwing off one's vast race-consciousness, one's +all-humanityness, all those unsounded deeps or reservoirs of human +energy, of hope and memory, of love, of passionate thought, of earthly +and heavenly desire that are lent to each of us as we slip softly by for +seventy years, by a whole human race. + +A human being is a kind of factory. The engine and the works and all the +various machines are kept in the basement, and he sends down orders to +them from time to time, and they do the work which has been conceived up +in the headquarters. He expects the works down below to keep on doing +these things without his taking any particular notice of them, while he +occupies his mind, as the competent head of a factory should, with the +things that are new and different and special and that his mind alone +can do--the things which, at least in their present initial formative or +creative stage, no machines as yet have been developed to do, and that +can only be worked out by the man up in the headquarters himself +personally, by the handiwork of his own thought. + +The more a human being develops, the more delicate, sensitive, strong, +and efficient, the more spirit-informed once for all the machines in the +basement are. As he grows, the various subconscious arrangements for +discriminating, assimilating and classifying material, for pumping up +power, light, and heat to headquarters, all of which can be turned on at +will, grow more masterful every year. They are found all slaving away +for him dimly down in the dark while he sleeps. They hand him up in his +very dreams new and strange powers to live and know with. + +The men who have been the most developed of all, in this regard, +civilization has always selected and set apart from the others. It calls +these men, in their generation, men of genius. + +Ordinary men do not try to compete with men of genius. + +The reason that people set the genius apart and do not try to compete +with him is that he has more and better machinery than they have. It is +always the first thing one notices about a man of genius--the incredible +number of things that he manages to get done for him, apparently the +things that he never takes any time off, like the rest of us, to do +himself. The subconscious, automatic, mechanical equipment of his +senses, the extraordinary intelligence and refinement of his body, the +way his senses keep his spirit informed automatically and convey outer +knowledge to him, the power he has in return of informing this outer +knowledge with his spirit, with his will, with his choices, once for all, +so that he is always able afterward to rely on his senses to work out +things beautifully for him quite by themselves, and to hand up to him, +when he wants them, rare, deep, unconscious knowledge--all the things he +wants to use for what his soul is doing at the moment--it is these that +make the man of genius what he is. He has a larger and better factory +than others, and has developed a huge subconscious service in mind and +body. Having all these things done for him, he is naturally more free +than others and has more vision and more originality, his spirit is +swung free to build new worlds--to take walks with God, until at last we +come to look upon him, upon the man of genius, a little superstitiously. +We look up every little while from doing the things ourselves that he +gets done for him by his subconscious machinery, and we wonder at him, +we wonder at the strange, the mighty feats he does, at his +thousand-leagued boots, at his apparent everywhereness. His songs and +joys, sometimes, to us, his very sorrows, look miraculous. + +And yet it is all merely because he has a factory, a great automatic +equipment, a thousand employee-sense perceptions, down in the basement +of his being, doing things for him that the rest of us do, or think we +are obliged to do ourselves, and give up all of our time to. He is not +held back as we are, and moves freely. So he dives under the sea +familiarly, or takes peeps at the farther side of the stars, or he flies +in the air, or he builds unspeakable railroads or thinks out ships or +sea-cities, or he builds books, or he builds little new +still-undreamed-of worlds out of chemistry, or he unravels history out +of rocks, or plants new cities and mighty states without seeming to try, +or perhaps he proceeds quietly to be interested in men, in all these +funny little dots of men about him; and out of the earth and sky, out of +the same old earth and sky everybody else had had, he makes new kinds +and new sizes of men with a thought like some mighty, serene child +playing with dolls! + +It is generally supposed that the man of genius rules history and +dictates the ideals, the activities of the next generation, writes out +the specifications for the joys and sorrows of a world, and lays the +ground-plans of nations because he has an inspired mind. It is really +because he has an inspired body, a body that has received its orders +once for all, from his spirit. We would never wonder that everything a +genius does has that vivid and strange reality it has, if we realized +what his body is doing for him, how he has a body which is at work +automatically drinking up the earth into everything he thinks, drinking +up practicability, art and technique for him into everything he sees and +everything he hopes and desires. And every year he keeps on adding a new +body, keeps on handing down to his basement new sets, every day, of +finer and yet finer things to do automatically. The great spiritual +genius becomes great by economizing his consciousness in one direction +and letting it fare forth in another. He converts his old inspirations +into his new machines. He converts heat into power, and power into +light, and comes to live at last as almost any man of genius can really +be seen living--in a kind of transfigured or lighted-up body. The poet +transmutes his subconscious or machine body into words; and the artist, +into colour or sound or into carved stone. The engineer transmutes his +subconscious body into long buildings, into aisles of windows, into +stories of thoughtful machines. Every great spiritual and imaginative +genius is seen, sooner or later, to be the transmuted genius of some +man's body. The things in Leonardo da Vinci that his unconscious, +high-spirited, automatic senses gathered together for him, piled up in +his mind for him, and handed over to him for the use of his soul, would +have made a genius out of anybody. It is not as if he had had to work +out every day all the old details of being a genius, himself. + +The miracles he seems to work are all made possible to him because of +his thousand man-power, deep subconscious body, his tremendous factory +of sensuous machinery. It is as if he had practically a thousand men all +working for him, for dear life, down in his basement, and the things +that he can get these men to attend to for him give him a start with +which none of the rest of us could ever hope to compete. We call him +inspired because he is more mechanical than we are, and because his real +spiritual life begins where our lives leave off. + +So the poets who have filled the world with glory and beauty have been +free to do it because they have had more perfect, more healthful and +improved subconscious senses handing up wonder to them than the rest of +us have. + +And so the engineers, living, as they always live, with that fierce, +silent, implacable curiosity of theirs, woven through their bodies and +through their senses and through their souls, have tagged the Creator's +footsteps under the earth, and along the sky, every now and then +throwing up new little worlds to Him like His worlds, saying, "Look, O +God, look at THIS!"--the engineers whose poetry is too deep to look +poetic have all done what they have done because the unconscious and +automatic gifts of their senses, of the powers of their observation, +have swung their souls free, given them long still reaches of thought +and vast new orbits of desire, like gods. + +All the great men of the world have always had machinery. + +Now, everybody is having it. The power to get little things, +innumerable, omnipresent, for-ever-and-ever things, tiny just-so things, +done for us automatically so that we can go on to our inspirations is no +longer to-day the special prerogative of men of genius. It is for all +of us. Machinery is the stored-up spirit, the old saved-up inspiration +of the world turned on for every man. And as the greatness of a man +turns on his command over machinery, on his power to free his soul by +making his body work for him, the greatness of a civilization turns upon +its getting machines to do its work. The more of our living we can learn +to do to-day, automatically, the more inspired and creative and godlike +and unmechanical our civilization becomes. + +Machinery is the subconscious mind of the world. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +THE GROUND FLOOR FOLKS + + +I would not have, if I could afford it, a thing in my house that is not +hand-made. I have come to believe that machinery is going to make it +possible for everybody to have hand-made things in their homes, things +that have been made by people who love to make them, and by people who, +thinks to the machines, are soon bound to have time to make them. Some +will have gifts for hand-made furniture, others for hand-made ideas. +Perhaps people will even have time for sitting down to enjoy hand-made +ideas, to enjoy hand-made books--and enjoy reading books by hand. We may +have time for following an author in a book in the slow, old, deep, +loving, happy, hand-made fashion we used to know--when we have enough +machines. + +It looks as if it might be something like this. + +Every man is going to spend his mornings in the basement of society, +taking orders and being a servant and executing automatically, like a +machine if need be, the will of the world, making what the world wants +in the way it wants it, expressing society and subordinating himself. In +the afternoon he shall come up out of the basement, and take his stand +on the ground floor of the world, stop being a part of the machinery, +and be a man, express himself and give orders to himself and do some +work he loves to do in the way he loves to do it, express his soul in +his labour, and be an artist. He will not select his work in the +morning, or select his employer, or say how the work shall be done. He +will himself be selected, like a young tree or like an iron nail, +because he is the best made and best fitted thing at hand to be used in +a certain place and in a certain way. + +When the man has been selected for his latent capacities, his employer +sets to work on him scientifically and according to the laws of physics, +hygiene, conservation of energy, the laws of philosophy, human nature, +heredity, psychology, and even metaphysics, teaches the man how to hold +his hands, how to lift, how to sit down, how to rest, and how to +breathe, so that three times as much work can be got out of him as he +could get out of himself. A mind of the highest rank and, if necessary, +thirty minds of the highest rank, shall be at his disposal, shall be +lent him to show him how his work can be done. The accumulated science +and genius, the imagination and experience, of hundreds of years, of all +climates, of all countries, of all temperaments shall be heaped up by +his employers, gathered about the man's mind, wrought through his limbs, +and help him to do his work. + +All labour down in the basement of society shall be skilled labour. The +brains of men of genius and of experts shall be pumped into labour from +above until every man in the basement shall earn as much money in three +hours a day as he formerly had earned in nine. + +Between the time a man saves by having machinery and the time he saves +by having the brains of great men and geniuses to work with, it will be +possible for men to do enough work for other people down in the basement +of the world in a few hours to shut the whole basement up, if we want +to, by three o'clock. Every man who is fit for it shall spend the rest +of his time in planning his work himself and in expressing himself, and +in creating hand-made and beautiful, inspired and wilful things like an +artist, or like a slowed-down genius, or at least like a man or like a +human being. + +Every man owes it to society to spend part of his time in expressing his +own soul. The world needs him. Society cannot afford to let him merely +give to it his feet and his hands. It wants the joy in him, the +creative desire in him, the slow, stupid, hopeful initiative, in him to +help run the world. Society wants to use the man's soul too--the man's +will. It is going to demand the soul in a man, the essence or good-will +in him, if only to protect itself, and to keep the man from being +dangerous. Men who have lost or suppressed their souls, and who go about +cursing at the world every day they live in it, are not a safe, social +investment. + +But while every man is going to see that he owes it to society to use a +part of his time in it in expressing himself, his own desires, in his +own way, he is going to see also that he owes it to society to spend +part of his time in expressing others and in expressing the desires and +the needs of others. The two processes could be best effected at first +probably by alternating, by keeping the man in equilibrium, balancing +the mechanical and the spiritual in his life. Eventually and ideally, he +will manage to have time in a higher state of society to put them +together, to express in the same act at the same time, and not +alternating or reciprocally, himself and others. And he will succeed in +doing what the great and free artist does already. He will make his +individual self-expression so great and so generous that it is also the +expression of the universal self. Every man will be treated according to +his own nature. Doubtless some men have not brains enough in a week to +supply them for one hour a day of self-directed work. It would take them +five hours a day to think how to do one hour's worth of work. Men who +prefer, as many will, not to think, and who like the basement better, +can substitute in the basement for their sons, and buy if they like, the +freedom of sons who prefer thinking, who would like to work harder than +their fathers would care to work, up on the ground floor of the world. +But as time goes on, it is to be hoped that every man will climb up +slowly, and will belong less and less of his time to the staff that +borrows brains, and more and more of his time to the staff that hands +brains down, and that directs the machinery of the world. The time of +alternation in dealing with different callings will probably be adjusted +differently, and might be made weeks instead of days, but the principle +would be the same. The forces that are going to help, apparently, in +this evolution will be the labour exchange--the centre for the +mobilization of labour, the produce exchange, the inventor's spirit in +the labour unions and employers' associations, and the gradual +organization by inventors of the common vision of all men, and setting +it at work on the supreme task of modern life--the task of drawing out, +evoking each particular man in the world, and in behalf of all, freeing +him for his own particular place. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +THE MACHINE-TRAINERS + + +The fundamental failure of humanity so far is in self-assertion. + +The essential distinctive trait of modern civilization is machinery. + +Machinery logically and irrevocably involves the cooeperative action of +individuals. + +If we make levers and iron wheels work by putting them together +according to their nature, we can only make vast masses of men work by +putting them together according to their nature. + +So far we have been trying to make vast masses of men work together in +precisely the same way we make levers and iron wheels work together. We +have thought we could make diabolically, foolishly, insanely inflexible +men-machines which violate at every point the natural qualities and +instincts of the materials of which they are made. + +We have failed to assert ourselves against our iron machines. We have +let our iron machines assert themselves against us. We have let our iron +machines be models for us. We have overlooked the difference in the +nature of the materials in machines of iron and machines of men. + +A man is a self-reproducing machine, and an iron machine is one that has +to be reproduced by somebody else. + +In a man-machine arrangements must be made so that each man can be +allowed to be the father of his own children and the author of his own +acts. + +In society or the man-machine, if it is to work, men are individuals. +Society is organically, irrevocably dependent upon each man, and upon +what each man chooses according to his own nature to do himself. + +The result is, the first principle of success in constructing and +running a social machine is to ask and to get an answer out of each man +who is, as we look him over and take him up, and propose to put him into +it, "What are you like?" "What are you especially for?" "What do you +want?" "How can you get it?" + +Our success in getting him properly into our machine turns upon a loyal, +patient, imperious attention on our part to what there is inside him, +inside the particular individual man, and how we can get him to let us +know what is inside, get him to decide voluntarily to let us have it, +and let us work it into the common end. + +In this amazing, impromptu, new, and hurried machine civilization which +we have been piling up around us for a hundred years we have made +machines out of everything, and our one consummate and glaring failure +in the machines we have made is the machine we have made out of +ourselves. + +Mineral machines are made by putting comparatively dead, or at least +dead-looking, matter together; vegetable machines or gardens, are made +by studying little unconscious seeds that we can persuade to come up and +to reproduce themselves. Man-machines are produced by putting up +possible lives before particular individual men, and letting them find +out (and finding out for ourselves, too), day by day, into which life +they will grow up. + +Everything in a social machine, if it is a machine that really works, is +based on the profound and special study of individuals: upon drawing out +the aptitudes and motives, choices and genius in each man; the passion, +if he has any; the creative desire, the self-expressing, +self-reproducing, inner manhood; the happy strength there is in him. + +Trades unions overlook this, and treat all men alike and all employers +alike. Employers have very largely overlooked it. + +It is the industrial, social, and religious secret of our modern machine +civilization. We need not be discouraged about machines, because the +secret of the machine civilization has as yet barely been noticed. + +The elephants are running around in the garden. But they have merely +taken us by surprise. It is their first and their last chance. The men +about us are seeing what to do. We are to get control of the elephants, +first, by getting control of ourselves. We are beginning to organize our +people-machines as if they were made of people; so that the people in +them can keep on being people, and being better ones. And as our +people-machines begin to become machines that really work, our iron +machines will no longer be feared. They will reach over and help. As we +look about us we shall see our iron machines at last, about all the +world, all joining in, all hard at work for us, a million, million +machines a day making the crowd beautiful. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +MACHINES, CROWDS, AND ARTISTS + + +A crowd civilization produces, as a matter of course, crowd art and art +for crowded conditions. This fact is at once the glory and the weakness +of the kind of art a democracy is bound to have. + +The most natural evidence to turn to first, of the crowd in a crowd age, +is such as can be found in its literature, especially in its +masterpieces. + +The significance of shaking hands with a Senator of the United States is +that it is a convenient and labour-saving way of shaking hands with two +or three million people. The impressiveness of the Senator's Washington +voice, the voice on the floor of the Senate, consists in the mystical +undertone--the chorus in it--multitudes in smoking cities, men and +women, rich and poor, who are speaking when this man speaks, and who are +silent when he is silent, in the government of the United States. + +The typical fact that the Senator stands for in modern life has a +corresponding typical fact in modern literature. The typical fact in +modern literature is the epigram, the senatorial sentence, the sentence +that immeasurably represents what it does not say. The difference +between democracy in Washington and democracy in Athens may be said to +be that in Washington we have an epigram government, a government in +which ninety million people are crowded into two rooms to consider what +to do, and in which ninety million people are made to sit in one chair +to see that it is done. In Athens every man represented himself. + +It may be said to be a good working distinction between modern and +classic art that in modern art words and colours and sounds stand for +things, and in classic art they said them. In the art of the Greek, +things were what they seemed, and they were all there. Hence simplicity. +It is a quality of the art of to-day that things are not what they seem +in it. If they were, we should not call it art at all. Everything stands +not only for itself and for what it says, but for an immeasurable +something that cannot be said. Every sound in music is the senator of a +thousand sounds, thoughts, and associations, and in literature every +word that is allowed to appear is the representative in three syllables +of three pages of a dictionary. The whistle of the locomotive, and the +ring of the telephone, and the still, swift rush of the elevator are +making themselves felt in the ideal world. They are proclaiming to the +ideal world that the real world is outstripping it. The twelve thousand +horsepower steamer does not find itself accurately expressed in iambics +on the leisurely fleet of Ulysses. It is seeking new expression. The +command has gone forth over all the beauty and over all the art of the +present world, crowded for time and crowded for space. "Telegraph!" To +the nine Muses the order flies. One can hear it on every side. +"Telegraph!" The result is symbolism, the Morse alphabet of art and +"types," the epigrams of human nature, crowding us all into ten or +twelve people. The epic is telescoped into the sonnet, and the sonnet is +compressed into quatrains or Tabbs of poetry, and couplets are signed as +masterpieces. The novel has come into being--several hundred pages of +crowded people in crowded sentences, jostling each other to oblivion; +and now the novel, jostled into oblivion by the next novel, is becoming +the short story. Kipling's short stories sum the situation up. So far as +skeleton or plot is concerned, they are built up out of a bit of nothing +put with an infinity of Kipling; so far as meat is concerned, they are +the Liebig Beef Extract of fiction. A single jar of Kipling contains a +whole herd of old-time novels lowing on a hundred hills. + +The classic of any given world is a work of art that has passed through +the same process in being a work of art that that world has passed +through in being a world. Mr. Kipling represents a crowd age, because he +is crowded with it; because, above all others, he is the man who +produces art in the way the age he lives in is producing everything +else. + +This is no mere circumstance of democracy. It is its manifest destiny +that it shall produce art for crowded conditions, that it shall have +crowd art. The kind of beauty that can be indefinitely multiplied is the +kind of beauty in which, in the nature of things, we have made our most +characteristic and most important progress. Our most considerable +success in pictures could not be otherwise than in black and white. +Black-and-white art is printing-press art; and art that can be produced +in endless copies, that can be subscribed for by crowds, finds an +extraordinary demand, and artists have applied themselves to supplying +it. All the improvements, moving on through the use of wood and steel +and copper, and the process of etching, to the photogravure, the +lithograph, the moving picture, and the latest photograph in colour, +whatever else may be said of them from the point of view of Titian or +Michael Angelo, constitute a most amazing and triumphant advance from +the point of view of making art a democracy, of making the rare and the +beautiful minister day and night to crowds. The fact that the mechanical +arts are so prominent in their relation to the fine arts may not seem to +argue a high ideal amongst us; but as the mechanical arts are the body +of beauty, and the fine arts are the soul of it, it is a necessary part +of the ideal to keep body and soul together until we can do better. +Mourning with Ruskin is not so much to the point as going to work with +William Morris. If we have deeper feelings about wall-papers than we +have about other things, it is going to the root of the matter to begin +with wall-papers, to make machinery say something as beautiful as +possible, inasmuch as it is bound to have, for a long time at least, +about all the say there is. The photograph does not go about the world +doing Murillos everywhere by pressing a button, but the camera habit is +doing more in the way of steady daily hydraulic lifting of great masses +of men to where they enjoy beauty in the world than Leonardo da Vinci +would have dared to dream in his far-off day; and Leonardo's pictures, +thanks to the same photograph, and everybody's pictures, films of paper, +countless spirits of themselves, pass around the world to every home in +Christendom. The printing press made literature a democracy, and +machinery is making all the arts democracies. The symphony piano, an +invention for making vast numbers of people who can play only a few very +poor things play very poorly a great many good ones, is a consummate +instance both of the limitation and the value of our contemporary +tendency in the arts. The pipe organ, though on a much higher plane, is +an equally characteristic contrivance making it possible for a man to be +a complete orchestra and a conductor all by himself, playing on a crowd +of instruments, to a crowd of people, with two hands and one pair of +feet. It is a crowd invention. The orchestra--a most distinctively +modern institution, a kind of republic of sound, the unseen spirit of +the many in one--is the sublimest expression yet attained of the crowd +music, which is, and must be, the supreme music of this modern day, the +symphony. Richard Wagner comes to his triumph because his music is the +voice of multitudes. The opera, a crowd of sounds accompanied by a crowd +of sights, presented by one crowd of people on the stage to another +crowd of people in the galleries, stands for the same tendency in art +that the syndicate stands for in commerce. It is syndicate music; and in +proportion as a musical composition in this present day is an +aggregation of multitudinous moods, in proportion as it is suggestive, +complex, paradoxical, the way a crowd is complex, suggestive, and +paradoxical--provided it be wrought at the same time into some vast and +splendid unity--just in this proportion is it modern music. It gives +itself to the counterpoints of the spirit, the passion of variety in +modern life. The legacy of all the ages, is it not descended upon +us?--the spirit of a thousand nations? All our arts are thousand-nation +arts, shadows and echoes of dead worlds playing upon our own. Italian +music, out of its feudal kingdoms, comes to us as essentially solo +music--melody; and the civilization of Greece, being a civilization of +heroes, individuals, comes to us in its noble array with its solo arts, +its striding heroes everywhere in front of all, and with nothing nearer +to the people in it than the Greek Chorus, which, out of limbo, pale and +featureless across all ages, sounds to us as the first far faint coming +of the crowd to the arts of this groping world. Modern art, inheriting +each of these and each of all things, is revealed to us as the struggle +to express all things at once. Democracy is democracy for this very +reason, and for no other: that all things may be expressed at once in +it, and that all things may be given a chance to be expressed at once in +it. Being a race of hero-worshippers, the Greeks said the best, perhaps, +what could be said in sculpture; but the marbles and bronzes of a +democracy, having average men for subjects, and being done by average +men, are average marbles and bronzes. We express what we have. We are in +a transition stage. It is not without its significance, however, that we +have perfected the plaster cast--the establishment of democracy among +statues, and mobs of Greek gods mingling with the people can be seen +almost any day in every considerable city of the world. The same +principle is working itself out in our architecture. It is idle to +contend against the principle. The way out is the way through. However +eagerly we gaze at Parthenons on their ruined hills, if thirty-one-story +blocks are in our souls thirty-one-story blocks will be our +masterpieces, whether we like it or not. They will be our masterpieces +because they tell the truth about us; and while truth may not be +beautiful, it is the thing that must be told first before beauty can +begin. The beauty we are to have shall only be worked out from the truth +we have. Living as we do in a new era, not to see that the +thirty-one-story block is the expression of a new truth is to turn +ourselves away from the one way that beauty can ever be found by men, in +this era or in any other. + +What is it that the thirty-one-story block is trying to say about us? +The thirty-one-story block is the masterpiece of mass, of immensity, of +numbers; with its 2427 windows and its 779 offices, and its crowds of +lives piled upon lives, it is expressing the one supreme and +characteristic thing that is taking place in the era in which we live. +The city is the main fact that modern civilization stands for, and +crowding is the logical architectural form of the city idea. The +thirty-one-story block is the statue of a crowd. It stands for a +spiritual fact, and it will never be beautiful until that fact is +beautiful. The only way to make the thirty-one-story block beautiful +(the crowd expressed by the crowd) is to make the crowd beautiful. The +most artistic, the only artistic, thing the world can do next is to make +the crowd beautiful. + +The typical city blocks, with their garrets in the lower stories of the +sky, were not possible in the ancient world, because steel had not been +invented; and the invention of steel, which is not the least of our +triumphs in the mechanical arts, is in many ways the most +characteristic. Steel is republican for stone. Putting whole quarries +into a single girder, it makes room for crowds; and what is more +significant than this, inasmuch as the steel pillar is an invention that +makes it possible to put floors up first, and build the walls around the +floors, instead of putting the walls up first and supporting the floors +upon the walls, as in the ancient world, it has come to pass that the +modern world being the ancient world turned upside down, modern +architecture is ancient architecture turned inside out, a symbol of many +things. The ancient world was a wall of individuals, supporting floor +after floor and stage after stage of society, from the lowest to the +highest; and it is a typical fact in this modern democratic world that +it grows from the inside, and that it supports itself from the inside. +When the mass in the centre has been finished, an ornamental stone +facing of great individuals will be built around it and supported by it, +and the work will be considered done. + +The modern spirit has much to boast of in its mechanical arts, and in +its fine arts almost nothing, because the mechanical arts are studying +what men are needing to-day, and the fine arts are studying what the +Greeks needed three thousand years ago. To be a real classic is, first, +to be a contemporary of one's own time; second, to be a contemporary of +one's own time so deeply and widely as to be a contemporary of all time. +The true Greek is a man who is doing with his own age what the Greeks +did with theirs, bringing all ages to bear upon it, and interpreting it. +As long as the fine arts miss the fundamental principle of this present +age--the crowd principle, and the mechanical arts do not, the mechanical +arts are bound to have their way with us. And it were vastly better that +they should. Sincere and straightforward mechanical arts are not only +more beautiful than affected fine ones, but they are more to the point: +they are the one sure sign we have of where we are going to be beautiful +next. It is impossible to love the fine arts in the year 1913 without +studying the mechanical ones; without finding one's self looking for +artistic material in the things that people are using, and that they are +obliged to use. The determining law of a thing of beauty being, in the +nature of things, what it is for, the very essence of the classic +attitude in a utilitarian age is to make the beautiful follow the useful +and inspire the useful with its spirit. The fine art of the next +thousand years shall be the transfiguring of the mechanical arts. The +modern hotel, having been made necessary by great natural forces in +modern life, and having been made possible by new mechanical arts, now +puts itself forward as the next great opportunity of the fine arts. One +of the characteristic achievements of the immediate future shall be the +twentieth-century Parthenon--a Parthenon not of the great and of the few +and of the gods, but of the great many, where, through mighty corridors, +day and night, democracy wanders and sleeps and chatters and is sad and +lives and dies, streets rumbling below. The hotel--the crowd +fireside--being more than any other one thing, perhaps, the thing that +this civilization is about, the token of what it loves and of how it +lives, is bound to be a masterpiece sooner or later that shall express +democracy. The hotel rotunda, the parlour for multitudes, is bound to be +made beautiful in ways we do not guess. Why should we guess? Multitudes +have never wanted parlours before. The idea of a parlour has been to get +out of a multitude. All the inevitable problems that come of having a +whole city of families live in one house have yet to be solved by the +fine arts as well as by the mechanical ones. We have barely begun. The +time is bound to come when the radiator, the crowd's fireplace-in-a-pipe, +shall be made beautiful; and when the electric light shall be taught +the secret of the candle; and when the especial problem of modern +life--of how to make two rooms as good as twelve--shall be mastered +aesthetically as well as mathematically; and when even the piano-folding, +bed-bookcase-toilet-stand-writing-desk--a crowd invention for living +in a crowd--shall either take beauty to itself or lead to beauty that +serves the same end. + +While for the time being it seems to be true that the fine arts are +looking to the past, the mechanical arts are producing conditions in the +future that will bring the fine arts to terms, whether they want to be +brought to terms or not. The mechanical arts hold the situation in their +hands. It is decreed that people who cannot begin by making the things +they use beautiful shall be allowed no beauty in other things. We may +wish that Parthenons and cathedrals were within our souls; but what the +cathedral said of an age that had the cathedral mood, that had a +cathedral civilization and thrones and popes in it, we are bound to say +in some stupendous fashion of our own--something which, when it is built +at last, will be left worshipping upon the ground beneath the sky when +we are dead, as a memorial that we too have lived. The great cathedrals, +with the feet of the huddled and dreary poor upon their floors, and +saints and heroes shining on their pillars, and priests behind the +chancel with God to themselves, and the vast and vacant nave, symbol of +the heaven glimmering above that few could reach--it is not to these +that we shall look to get ourselves said to the nations that are now +unborn; rather, though it be strange to say it, we shall look to +something like the ocean steamship--cathedral of this huge unresting +modern world--under the wide heaven, on the infinite seas, with spars +for towers and the empty nave reversed filled with human beings' +souls--the cathedral of crowds hurrying to crowds. There are hundreds of +them throbbing and gleaming in the night--this very moment--lonely +cities in the hollow of the stars, bringing together the nations of the +earth. + +When the spirit of our modern way of living, the idea in it, the bare +facts about our modern human nature have been noticed at last by our +modern artists, masterpieces shall come to us out of every great and +living activity in our lives. Art shall tell the things these lives are +about. When this is once realized in America as it was in Greece, the +fine arts shall cover the other arts as the waters cover the sea. The +Brooklyn Bridge, swinging its web for immortal souls across sky and sea, +comes nearer to being a work of art than almost anything we possess +to-day, because it tells the truth, because it is the material form of a +spiritual idea, because it is a sublime and beautiful expression of New +York in the way that the Acropolis was a sublime and beautiful +expression of Athens. The Acropolis was beautiful because it was the +abode of heroes, of great individuals; and the Brooklyn Bridge, because +it expresses the bringing together of millions of men. It is the +architecture of crowds--this Brooklyn Bridge--with winds and sunsets and +the dark and the tides of souls upon it; it is the type and symbol of +the kind of thing that our modern genius is bound to make beautiful and +immortal before it dies. The very word "bridge" is the symbol of the +future of art and of everything else, the bringing together of things +that are apart--democracy. The bridge, which makes land across the +water, and the boat, which makes land on the water, and the cable, which +makes land and water alike--these are the physical forms of the spirit +of modern life, the democracy of matter. But the spirit has countless +forms. They are all new and they are all waiting to be made beautiful. +The dumb crowd waits in them. We have electricity--the life current of +the republican idea--characteristically our foremost invention, because +it takes all power that belongs to individual places and puts it on a +wire and carries it to all places. We have the telephone, an invention +which makes it possible for a man to live on a back street and be a +next-door neighbour to boulevards; and we have the trolley, the modern +reduction of the private carriage to its lowest terms, so that any man +for five cents can have as much carriage power as Napoleon with all his +chariots. We have the phonograph, an invention which gives a man a +thousand voices; which sets him to singing a thousand songs at the same +time to a thousand crowds; which makes it possible for the commonest man +to hear the whisper of Bismarck or Gladstone, to unwind crowds of great +men by the firelight of his own house. We have the elevator, an +invention for making the many as well off as the few, an approximate +arrangement for giving first floors to everybody, and putting all men on +a level at the same price--one more of a thousand instances of the +extraordinary manner in which the mechanical arts have devoted +themselves from first to last to the Constitution of the United States. +While it cannot be said of many of these tools of existence that they +are beautiful now, it is enough to affirm that when they are perfected +they will be beautiful; and that if we cannot make beautiful the things +that we need, we cannot expect to make beautiful the things that we +merely want. When the beauty of these things is at last brought out, we +shall have attained the most characteristic and original and expressive +and beautiful art that is in our power. It will be unprecedented +because it will tell unprecedented truths. It was the mission of +ancient art to express states of being and individuals, and it may be +said to be in a general way the mission of our modern art to express the +beautiful in endless change, the movement of masses, coming to its +sublimity and immortality at last by revealing the beauty of the things +that move and that have to do with motion, the bringing of all things +and of all souls together on the earth. + +The fulfillment of the word that has been written, "Your valleys shall +be exalted, and your mountains shall be made low," is by no means a +beautiful process. Democracy is the grading principle of the beautiful. +The natural tendency the arts have had from the first to rise from the +level of the world, to make themselves into Switzerlands in it, is +finding itself confronted with the Constitution of the United States--a +Constitution which, whatever it may be said to mean in the years to +come, has placed itself on record up to the present time, at least, as +standing for the tableland. + +The very least that can be granted to this Constitution is that it is so +consummate a political document that it has made itself the creed of our +theology, philosophy, and sociology; the principle of our commerce and +industry; the law of production, education, and journalism; the method +of our life; the controlling characteristic and the significant force in +our literature; and the thing our religion and our arts are about. + + + + +PART THREE + +PEOPLE-MACHINES + +CHAPTER I + +NOW! + + +This outlook or glimmer of vision I have tried to trace, for the art of +crowds is something we want, and want daily, in the future. We want +daily a future. But, after all, it is a future. + +I speak in this present chapter as one of the crowd who wants something +now. + +I find myself in a world in which apparently some vast anonymous +arrangement was made about me and about my life, before I was born. This +arrangement seems to be, as I understand it, that if I want to live +while I am on this planet a certain sort of life or be a certain sort of +person, I am expected practically to take out a permit for it from the +proper authorities. + +In the previous chapter I made a request of the authorities, as perhaps +the reader will remember. I said, "I want to be good now." + +In this one I have a further request to make of the authorities: "I want +to be beautiful." + +I want to be beautiful now. + +I find thousands of other people about me on every hand making these +same two requests. I find that the authorities do not seem to notice +their requests any more than they have noticed mine. + +Some of us have begun to suspect that we must have made the request in +the wrong way. Perhaps we should not ask a world--a great, vague thing +like the world in general--to make any slight arrangement we may need +for being beautiful. We have come to feel that we must ask somebody in +particular, and do something in particular, and find some one in +particular with whom we can do it. There is getting to be but one course +open to a man if he wants to be beautiful. He must bone down and work +hard with his soul, make himself see precisely what it is and who it is +standing between him and a beautiful world. He must ask particular +persons in particular positions if they do not think he ought to be +allowed to be beautiful. He must ask some millionaire probably +first--his employer, for instance--to stop getting in his way, and at +least to step one side and let him reason with him. And when he cannot +ask his millionaire--his own particular humdrum millionaire--to step one +side and reason with him, he must ask iron-machines to step one side and +reason with him. After this he must ask crowds to please to step one +side and reason with him. + +Whatever happens, he is sure to find always these same three great, +imponderable obstructions in the way of his being beautiful--the humdrum +millionaires, the iron-machines, and crowds. + +In the old days when any one wanted to be beautiful he found it more +convenient. There was very likely some one who was more beautiful than +he was nearby, some one who found him craving the same thing that he had +craved, and who recognized it and delighted in it, and who could make +room and help. + +Nowadays, if one wants to be beautiful one must ask everybody. Every man +finds it the same. He must ask millions of people to let him be +something, one after the other in rows, that they do not want him to be +or do not care whether he is or not. He has to ask more people than he +could count, before he dies, to let him be beautiful. Many of them that +he has to ask, sometimes most of them, are his inferiors. + +I have tried to deal with how it is going to be possible for a man to +break through to being beautiful, past millionaires and past +iron-machines. I would like now to deal with the people-machines or +crowds, and how perhaps to break past them and be beautiful in behalf of +them, in spite of them. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +COMMITTEES AND COMMITTEES + + +The problem seems to be something like this. One finds one has been born +and put here whether or no, and that one is inextricably alive in a +state of society in which men are coming to live in a kind of vast +disease of being obliged to do everything together. + +We are still old-fashioned enough to be born one at a time, but we are +educated in litters and we do our work in the world in herds and gangs. +Even the upper classes do their work in gangs, and with overseers and +little crowds called committees. Our latest idea consists in putting +parts of a great many different men together to make one great +one--forming a committee to make a man of genius. + +There is no denying that, in a way, a committee does things; but what +becomes of the committee? + +And the lower in the scale of life we go the more committees it takes to +do the work of one man and the more impossible it becomes to find +anything but parts of men to do things. I put it frankly to the reader. +The chances are nine out of ten that when you meet a man nowadays and +look at him hard or try to do something with him you find he is not a +man at all but is some subsection of a committee. You cannot even talk +with such a man without selecting some subsection of some subject which +interests him; and if you select any other subsection than his +subsection he will think you a bore; and if you select his subsection he +will think that you do not know anything. + +And if you want to get anything done that is different, or that is the +least bit interesting, and want to get some one to do it, how will you +go about it? You will find yourself being sent from one person to +another; and before you know it you find yourself mixed up with nine or +ten subdivisions of nine or ten committees; and after you have got your +nine or ten subsections of nine or ten committees to get together to +consider what it is you want done, they will tell you, after due +deliberation, that it is not worth doing, or that you had better do it +yourself. Then every subsection of every committee will go home +muttering under its breath to every other subsection that a man who +wants slightly different and interesting things done in society is a +public nuisance; and that the man who does not know what subsection he +is in and what subsection of a man he was intended to be, and who tries +to do things, carries dismay and anger on every side around him. Drop +into your pigeonhole and be filed away, O Gentle Reader! Do you think +you are a soul? No; you are Series B. No. 2574, top row on the left. + +In my morning paper the other day I read that in a factory whose long +windows I often pass in the train, they have their machinery so +perfected that it takes sixty-four machines to make one shoe. + +Query--If it takes sixty-four machines run by sixty-four men who do +nothing else to make one shoe, how many machines would it take, and how +many shoes, to make one man? + +Query--And when an employer in a shoe factory deals with his employee, +can it really be said, after all, that he is dealing with _him_? He is +dealing with _It_--with Nine Hours a Day, of one sixty-fourth of a man. + +The natural effect of crowds and of machines is to make a man feel that +he is, and always was, and always will be, immemorially, unanimously, +innumerably nobody. + +Sometimes we are allowed a little faint numeral to dangle up over our +oblivion. Not long ago I saw a notice or letter in the _West +Bulletin_--probably from a member of something--ending like this: "... +I hope the readers of the _Bulletin_ will ponder over this suggestion of +_Number_ 29,619.--Sincerely yours, _No._ 11, 175." + + + + +CHAPTER III + +THE INCONVENIENCE OF BEING HUMAN + + +I shall never forget one day I spent in New York some years ago--more +years than I thought at first. It was a wrong-headed day, but I cannot +help remembering it as a symbol of a dread I still feel at times in New +York--a feeling of being suddenly lifted, of being swept out under (it +is like the undertow of the sea) into a kind of vast deep of +impersonality--swept out of myself into a wide, imperious waste or +emptiness of people. I had come fresh from my still country meadow and +mountain, my own trees and my own bobolinks and my own little island of +sky up over me, and in the vast and desolate solitude of men and women I +wandered about up and down the streets. Every block I saw, every window, +skyline, engine, street-car, every human face, made me feel as if I +belonged to another world. Here was a great conspiracy in stone and iron +against my own life with myself. Was there a soul in all this huge roar +and spectacle of glass and stone and passion that cared for the things +that I cared for, or the things that I loved, or that would care one +shuffle of all the feet upon the stones for any thought or word or +desire of mine? The rain swept in my face, and I spent the day walking +up and down the streets looking at stones and glass and people. _"Here +we are!"_ say the great buildings crowding on the sky. _"Who are +you?"_....all the stone and the glass and the walls, the mighty +syndicate of matter everywhere, surrounded me--one little, shivering, +foolish mote of being fighting foolishly for its own little foolish mote +of identity! + +And I do not believe that I was all wrong. New York, like some vast, +implacable cone of ether, some merciless anaesthetic, was thrust down +over me and my breathing, and I still had a kind of left-over prejudice +that I wanted to be myself, with my own private self-respect, with my +own private, temporarily finished-off, provisionally complete +personality. I felt then, and I still feel to-day, that every man, as he +fights for his breath, must stand out at least part of his time for the +right of being self-contained. It is, and always will be, one of the +appalling sights of New York to me--the spectacle of the helplessness, +the wistfulness, of all those poor New York people without one another. +Sometimes the city seems to be a kind of huge monument or idol or shrine +of crowds. It seems to be a part of the ceaseless crowd action or crowd +corrosion on the sense of identity in the human spirit that the man who +lives in crowds should grow more dull and more literal about himself +every day. He becomes a mere millionth of something. All these other +people he sees about him hurrying to and fro are mere millionths too. He +grows more and more obliged to live with a vast bulk of people if he is +to notice people at all. Unless he sees all the different kinds of +people and forms of life with his own eye, and feels human beings with +his hands, as it were, he does not know and sympathize with them. The +crowd-craving or love of continual city life on the part of many people +comes to be a sheer lack of imagination, an inability to live in +qualities instead of quantities in men. To live merely in a city is not +to know the real flavour of life any more than the daily paper knows +it--the daily paper, the huge dull monster of observation, the seer of +outsides. The whole effect of crowds on the individual man is to +emphasize scareheads and appearances, advertisements, and the huge +general showing off. The ride in the train from New Haven to New York is +the true portrait of a crowd. Crowds of soaps and patent medicines +straining on trees and signboard out of the gentle fields toward crowds +of men, culminating at last in Woodlawn Cemetery, where the marble +signposts of death flaunt themselves. Oblivion itself is advertised, and +the end of the show of a show world is placarded on our graves. Men buy +space in papers for cards, and bits of country scenery by the great +railroads to put up signboards, and they spend money and make constant +efforts to advertise that they are alive, and then they build expensive +monuments to advertise that they are dead.... + +The same craving for piled-up appearances is brought to bear by crowds +upon their arts. Even a gentle soul like Paderewski, full of a personal +and strange beauty that he could lend to everything he touched, finds +himself swept out of himself at last by the huge undertow of crowds. +Scarcely a season but his playing has become worn down at the end of it +into shrieks and hushes. Have I not watched him at the end of a tour, +when, one audience after the other, those huge Svengalis had hypnotized +him--thundering his very subtleties at them, hour after hour, in +Carnegie Hall? One could only wonder what had happened, sit by +helplessly, watch the crowd--thousands of headlong human beings lunging +their souls and their bodies through the music, weeping, gasping, +huzzaing, and clapping to one another. After every crash of new +crescendo, after every precipice of silence, they seemed to be crying, +"This is Soul! Oh, this is Soul!" The feeling of a vast audience holding +its breath, no matter why it does it or whether it ought to do it or +not, seems to have become almost a religious rite of itself. Vistas of +faces gallery after gallery hanging on a note, two or three thousand +souls suspended in space all on one tiny little ivory lever at the end +of one man's forefinger ... dim lights shining on them and soft +vibrations floating round them ... going to hear Paderewski play at the +end of his season was going to hear a crowd at a piano singing with its +own hands and having a kind of orgy with itself. One could only remember +that there had been a Paderewski once who hypnotized and possessed his +audience by being hypnotized and possessed by his own music. One liked +to remember him--the Paderewski who was really an artist and who +performed the function of the artist showering imperiously his own +visions on the hearts of the people. + +And what is true in music one finds still truer in the other arts. One +keeps coming on it everywhere--the egotism of cities, the +self-complacency of the crowds swerving the finer and the truer artists +from their functions, making them sing in hoarse crowd-voices instead of +singing in their own and giving us themselves. Nearly all our acting has +been corroded by crowds. Some of us have been obliged almost to give up +going to the theatre except to very little ones, and we are wondering if +churches cannot possibly be made small enough to believe great things, +or if galleries cannot be arranged with few enough people in them to +allow us great paintings, or if there will not be an author so well +known to a few men that he will live forever, or if some newspaper will +not yet be great enough to advertise that it has a circulation small +enough to tell the truth. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +LETTING THE CROWD HAVE PEOPLE IN IT + + +So we face the issue. + +Nothing beautiful can be accomplished in a crowd civilization, by the +crowd for the crowd, unless the crowd is beautiful. No man who is +engaged in looking under the lives about him, who wishes to face the +facts of these lives as they are lived to-day, will find himself able to +avoid this last and most important fact in the history of the world--the +fact that, whatever it may mean, or whether it is for better or worse, +the world has staked all that it is and has been, and all that it is +capable of being, on the one supreme issue, "How can the crowd be made +beautiful?" + +The answer to this question involves two difficulties: (1) A crowd +cannot make itself beautiful. (2) A crowd will not let any one else make +it beautiful. + +The men who have been on the whole the most eager democrats of +history--the real-idealists--the men who love the crowd and the +beautiful too, and who can have no honest or human pleasure in either of +them except as they are being drawn together, are obliged to admit that +living in a democratic country, a country where politics and aesthetics +can no longer be kept apart, is an ordeal that can only be faced a large +part of the time with heavy hearts. We are obliged to admit that it is a +country where paintings have little but the Constitution of the United +States wrought into them; where sculpture is voted and paid for by the +common people; where music is composed for majorities; where poetry is +sung to a circulation; where literature itself is scaled to +subscription lists; where all the creators of the True and the Beautiful +and the Good may be seen almost any day tramping the tableland of the +average man, fed by the average man, allowed to live by the average man, +plodding along with weary and dusty steps to the average man's +forgetfulness. And, indeed, it is not the least trait of this same +average man that he forgets, that he is forgotten, that his slaves are +forgotten, that the world remembers only those who have been his +masters. + +On the other hand, the literature of finding fault with the average man +(which is what the larger part of our more ambitious literature really +is) is not a kind of literature that can do anything to mend matters. +The art of finding fault with the average man, with the fact that the +world is made convenient for him, is inferior art because it is helpless +art. The world is made convenient for the average man because it has to +be, to get him to live in it; and if the world were not made convenient +for him, the man of genius would find living with him a great deal more +uncomfortable than he does. He would not even be allowed the comfort of +saying how uncomfortable. The world belongs to the average man, and, +excepting the stars and other things that are too big to belong to him, +the moment the average man deserves anything better in it or more +beautiful in it than he is getting, some man of genius rises by his +side, in spite of him, and claims it for him. Then he slowly claims it +for himself. The last thing to do, to make the world a good place for +the average man, would be to make it a world with nothing but average +men in it. If it is the ideal of democracy that there shall be a slow +massive lifting, a grading up of all things at once; that whatever is +highest in the true and the beautiful, and whatever is lowest in them +shall be graded down and graded up to the middle height of human life, +where the greatest numbers shall make their home and live upon it; if +the ideal of democracy is tableland--that is--mountains for +everybody--a few mountains must be kept on hand to make tableland out +of. + +Two solutions, then, of a crowd civilization--having the extraordinary +men crowded out of it as a convenience to the average ones, and having +the average men crowded out of it as a convenience to the extraordinary +ones--are equally impracticable. + +This brings us to the horns of our dilemma. If the crowd cannot be made +beautiful by itself, and if the crowd will not allow itself to be made +beautiful by any one else, the crowd can only be made beautiful by a man +who lives so great a life in it that he can make a crowd beautiful +whether it allows him to or not. + +When this man is born to us and looks out on the conditions around him, +he will find that to be born in a crowd civilization is to be born in a +civilization, first, in which every man can do as he pleases; second, in +which nobody does. Every man is given by the Government absolute +freedom; and when it has given him absolute freedom the Government says +to him, "Now if you can get enough other men, with their absolute +freedom, to put their absolute freedom with your absolute freedom, you +can use your absolute freedom in any way you want." Democracy, seeking +to free a man from being a slave to one master, has simply increased the +number of masters a man shall have. He is hemmed in with crowds of +masters. He cannot see his master's huge amorphous face. He cannot go to +his master and reason with him. He cannot even plead with him. You can +cry your heart out to one of these modern ballot-boxes. You have but one +ballot. They will not count tears. The ultimate question in a crowd +civilization becomes, not "What does a thing mean?" or "What is it +worth?" but "How much is there of it?" "If thou art a great man," says +civilization, "get thou a crowd for thy greatness. Then come with thy +crowd and we will deal with thee. It shall be even as thou wilt." The +pressure has become so great, as is obvious on every side, that men who +are of small or ordinary calibre can only be more pressed by it. They +are pressed smaller and smaller--the more they are civilized, the +smaller they are pressed; and we are being daily brought face to face +with the fact that the one solution a crowd civilization can have for +the evil of being a crowd civilization is the man in the crowd who can +withstand the pressure of the crowd; that is to say, the one solution of +a crowd civilization is the great-man solution--a solution which is none +the less true because by name, at least, it leaves most of us out or +because it is so familiar that we have forgotten it. The one method by +which a crowd can be freed and can be made to realize itself is the +great-man method--the method of crucifying and worshipping great men, +until by crucifying and worshipping great men enough, inch by inch, and +era by era, it is lifted to greatness itself. + +Not very many years ago, certain great and good men, who, at the cost of +infinite pains, were standing at the time on a safe and lofty rock +protected from the fury of their kind by the fury of the sea, contrived +to say to the older nations of the earth, "All men are created equal." +It is a thing to be borne in mind, that if these men, who declared that +all men were created equal, had not been some several hundred per cent. +better men than the men they said they were created equal to, it would +not have made any difference to us or to any one else whether they had +said that all men were created equal or not, or whether the Republic had +ever been started or not, in which every man, for hundreds of years, +should look up to these men and worship them as the kind of men that +every man in America was free to try to be equal to. A civilization by +numbers, a crowd civilization, if it had not been started by heroes, +could never have been started at all. Shall this civilization attempt to +live by the crowd principle, without men in it who are living by the +hero principle? On our answer to this question hangs the question +whether this civilization, with all its crowds, shall stand or fall +among the civilizations of the earth. The main difference between the +heroes of Plymouth Rock, the heroes who proclaimed freedom in 1776, and +the heroes who must contrive to proclaim freedom now, is that tyranny +now is crowding around the Rock, and climbing up on the Rock, +eighty-seven million strong, and that tyranny then was a half-idiot king +three thousand miles away. + + * * * * * + +We know or think we know, some of us--at least we have taken a certain +joy in working it out in our minds, and live with it every day--how +people in crowds are going to be beautiful by and by. + +The difficulty of being beautiful now, I have tried to express. It seems +better to express, if possible, what a difficulty is before trying to +meet it. + +And now we would like to try to meet it. How can we determine what is +the most practical and natural way for crowds of people to try to be +beautiful now? + +It would seem to be a matter of crowd psychology, of crowd technique, +and of determining how human nature works. + +All thoughtful people are agreed as to the aim. + +Everything turns on the method. + +In the following chapters we will try to consider the technique of being +beautiful in crowds. + + + + +BOOK FOUR + +CROWDS AND HEROES + + +TO WALT WHITMAN + + _"And I saw the free souls of poets, + The loftiest bards of all ages strode before me + Strange large men, long unwaked, undisclosed, were disclosed to me + ... O my rapt verse, my call, mock me not! + ... I will not be outfaced by irrational things, + I will penetrate what is sarcastic upon me, + I will make cities and civilizations defer to me + This is what I have learnt from America-- + + I will confront these shows of the day and night + I will know if I am to be less than they, + I will see if I am not as majestic as they, + I will see if I am not as subtle and real as they, + I will see if I have no meaning while the houses and + ships have meaning, + + ... I am for those that have never been mastered, + For men and women whose tempers have never been mastered, + For those whom laws, theories, conventions can never master. + + I am for those who walk abreast of the whole earth + Who inaugurate one to inaugurate all."_ + + + + + +CHAPTER I + +THE SOCIALIST AND THE HERO + + +I was spending a little time not long ago with a man of singularly +devoted and noble spirit who had dedicated his life and his fortune to +the Socialist movement. We had had several talks before, and always with +a little flurry at first of hopefulness toward one another's ideas. We +both felt that the other, for a mere Socialist or for a mere +Individualist, was really rather reasonable. We admitted great tracts of +things to one another, and we always felt as if by this one next +argument, perchance, or by one further illustration, we would convince +the other and rescue him like a brand from the burning. + +The last time I saw him he started in at once at the station as we +climbed up into the car by telling me what he was doing. He was studying +up the heroes of the American Revolution, and was writing something to +show that they were not really heroes after all. All manner of things +were the matter with them. They had always troubled him, he said. He +knew there was something wrong, and he was glad to have the matter +settled. He said he did not, and never had believed in heroes, and +thought they did a great deal of harm--even dead ones. Heroes, he said, +always deceived the people. They kept people from seeing that nothing +could be done in our modern society by any one man. Only crowds could do +things, he intimated--each man, like one little wave on the world, +wavering up to the shore and dying away. + +As the evening wore on our conversation became more concrete, and I +began to drag in, of course, every now and then, naturally, an inspired +or semi-inspired millionaire or so. + +I cannot say that these gentlemen were received with enthusiasm. + +Finally, I turned on him. "What is it that makes you so angry (and +nearly all the Socialists) every time you hear something good, something +you cannot deny is good, about a successful business man? If I brought a +row of inspired millionaires, say ten or twelve of them one after the +other, into your library this minute, you would get hotter and hotter +with every one, wouldn't you? You would scarcely speak to me." + +---- intimated that he was afraid I was deceived; he was afraid that I +was going about deceiving other people about its being possible for mere +individual men to be good; he was afraid I was doing a great deal of +damage. + +He then confided to me that not so very long ago he dropped in one +Monday morning into his guest-chamber just after his guest had gone and +found a copy of "Inspired Millionaires," which his guest had obviously +been reading over Sunday, lying on the little reading-table at the head +of the bed. + +He said that he took the book back to his library, took out two or three +encyclopaedias from the shelf in the corner, put my inspired millionaires +in behind them, put the encyclopaedias back, and that they had been there +to this day. + +With this very generous and kindly introduction we went on to a frank +talk on the general attitude of Socialists toward the instinct of +hero-worship in human nature. + +A Socialist had said only a few days before, speaking of a certain +municipal movement in which the people were interested, that he thought +it really had a very good chance to succeed "if only the heroes could be +staved off a little longer." He deprecated the almost incurable idea +people seemed to have that nothing could ever be done in this world +without being all mixed up with heroes. + +My mind kept recurring in a perplexed way to this remark for a few days +after I had heard it, and I soon came on the following letter from a +prominent Socialist which had been read at a dinner the night before: + + "I am glad to join with others of my comrades in conveying + greetings to Comrade Cahan on the occasion of the fiftieth + anniversary of his birth and in recognition of the eminent + services that he has rendered in the Socialist movement. + + "Yet my gladness is not untinged with a certain note of + apprehension lest in expressing so conspicuously our esteem of + an honoured comrade we obscure the broader scene which, if + equally illumined, would disclose tens of thousands of other + comrades, labouring with equal devotion, and each no less + worthy of praise.... + + "In our rejoicing over the services of Comrade Cahan let us + not forget that the facilities that he and that each of us + enjoy are the products of thousands of other men and women, + and sometimes of children too. + + "In our rejoicing let us recall that we cannot safely assume + that any comrade's services to the movement have been greater + than the movement's services to him; that we are but + fellow-workers together, deriving help and perhaps inspiration + one from another and each from all. + + "In our rejoicing let us place the emphasis rather upon the + services of the many to each, than upon the services of any + one of the many." + +I have not quoted from this letter because I disagree with the idea in +it. I am ready to admit that though the idea is a somewhat dampening one +perhaps for a banquet, that it is true and important. + +What I object to in the letter is the Fear in it. + +In spite of the fineness and truth of the motive that lies, I know, +underneath every line, the letter is baleful, sinister, and weary. + +I accuse the letter of being, in a kind of nobly sick way, visionary, +unpractical, and socially destructive. + +I would heartily agree with the writer of the letter about the quality +of many heroes, possibly about most heroes. I would agree in a large +measure that the heroes the crowds choose are the wrong ones. + +But there is a great difference between his belief and mine as to our +practical working policy in getting the things for crowds that we both +want for them. It seems to me that he does not believe in crowds. He is +filled with fear that they would select the wrong heroes. He says they +must not have heroes, or must be allowed as few as possible. + +I believe in crowds, and I believe that the more they have the +hero-habit, the more heroes they have to compare and select from, the +finer, longer, and truer heroes they will select, the more deeply, +truly, and concretely the crowds will think, and the more nobly they +will express themselves. + +But the great argument for the hero as a social method is that the crowd +in a clumsy, wistful way, deep down in its heart, in the long run, loves +the beautiful. Appealing to the crowd's ideal of the beautiful in +conduct, its sense of the heroic, or semi-heroic, is the only practical, +hard-headed understanding way of getting out of the crowd, for the +crowd, what the crowd wants. + +I saw the other day in Boston several thousand schoolboys in the street +keeping step. It was a band that held them together. A band is a +practical thing. + +Is it not about time, in our dreary, drab, listless procession of +economics, stringing helplessly across the world, that we have a band of +music? What economics needs now is a march. + +We have to-day a thousand men who can tell people what to do where we +have one who can touch the music, the dance, the hurrah, the cry, the +worship in them, and make them want to do something. The hero is the man +who makes people want to do something, and strangely and subtly, all +through the blood, while they watch him, he makes them believe they can. + +It is socially destructive to throw away the overpowering instinct of +human nature which we have called hero-worship. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +THE CROWD AND THE HERO + + +But it is not only socially destructive. It is dumb and helpless for +crowds to try to get on without heroes. Big events and big men are crowd +expressions. Heroes, World Fairs, and Titanic disasters are crowd words, +the crowd's way of seeing and saying things. + +Crowds think in great men, or they think in simple, big, broadly drawn +events, or words of one syllable, like coal strikes. + +A whole world works through to an entirely new idea, the idea that +England is not necessarily impregnable, in the Boer war. And we see +England, by way of South Africa, searching her own heart. The Meat +Trust, by raising prices for a few trial weeks, makes half a nation +think its way over into vegetarianism or semi-vegetarianism. + +In the American war with Spain modern thought attacked the last pathetic +citadel in modern life of polite illusion, of lie-poetry, and in that +one little flash of war between the Spain spirit and the American +spirit, in our modern world, the nations got their final and conclusive +sense of what the Spanish civilization really was, of the old Don +Quixote thinking, of the delightful, brave, courtly blindness, of the +world's last stronghold of pomposity, of vague, empty prettiness, of +talking grand and shooting crooked. + +Japan and Russia fight with guns, but the real fight is not between +their guns, but between two great national conceptions of human life. +Like two vast national searchlights we saw them turned on each other, +two huge, grim, naked civilizations, and now in an awful light and roar, +and now in stately sudden silence, while we all looked on, all +breathless and concentrated, we saw them, as on some strange vast stage +of the world, all lit up, exposed, penetrated by the minds of men +forever. While they fought before us we saw the last two thousand years +flash up once more and fade away, and then the next two thousand years +on its slide, with one click before our faces was fastened into place. + +Men see great spiritual conceptions or ideals for a world when the great +ideals are dramatized, when they stalk out before us, are acted out +before our eyes by mighty nations. Before the stage we sit silently and +think and watch the ideals of a world, the souls of the nations +struggling together, and as we watch we discover our souls for +ourselves, we define our ideals for ourselves. We make up our minds. We +see what we want. We begin to live. + +I have come to believe that the hero, in the same way, is the common +man's desire and prayer writ large. It is his way of keeping it +refreshed before him so that he sees it, recalls it, suns himself in it, +lifts up his life to it, every day. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +THE CROWD AND THE AVERAGE PERSON + + +To state still further my difference with the typical Socialist point of +view, as expressed in the letter from which I have quoted, I am obliged +to confess that I not only believe in having heroes on behalf of crowds, +but in having as a regular method of democracy little crowds of heroes, +or an aristocracy. In other words, I am a democrat. I believe that +crowds can produce, and are bound to produce by a natural crowd-process, +a real aristocracy--an aristocracy which will be truly aristocratic and +noble in spirit and action, and which will express the best ideas in the +best way that a crowd can have. + +The main business of a democracy is to find out which these people are +in it and put them where they will represent it. The trouble seems to +have been in democracies so far, that we find out who these people are a +generation too late. The great and rare moments of history have been +those in which we have found out who they were in time, as when we found +in America Abraham Lincoln, an unaristocratic-looking and ungainly man, +and saw suddenly that he was the first gentleman in the United States. + +The next great task of democracy is to determine the best means it can +of finding out who its aristocrats are, its all-men, and determining who +they are in time, men who have vision, courage, individuality, +imagination enough to face real things, and to know real people, and to +put real things and real people together. + +It is what an aristocracy in a democratic form of government is for, to +furnish imagination to crowds. A real aristocracy is the only +clear-headed, practical means a great nation can have of distributing, +classifying, and digesting and evoking hordes of men and women. People +do not have imagination in hordes, and imagination is latent and +unorganized in masses of people. The crowd problem is the problem of +having leaders who can fertilize the imagination and organize the will +of crowds. Nothing but worship or great desire has ever been able to +focus a crowd, and only the great man, rich and various in his elements, +abounding, great as the crowd is great, can ever hope to do it. + +Every man in a crowd knows that he is or is in danger of being a mere +Me-man, or a mere class-man, and he knows that his neighbour is, and he +wishes to be in a world that is saved from his own mere me-ness and his +own mere classness. His hero-worship is his way of worshipping his +larger self. He communes with his possible or completed self, his self +of the best moments in the official great man or crowd man. + +The average man in a crowd does not want to be an average man, and the +last thing he wants is to have an average man to represent him. He wants +a man to represent him as he would like to be. + +He cannot express himself--his best self, in the State, to all the +others in the State, without a lifted-up man or crowd man to do it. + +It is as if he said--as if the average man said, "I want a certain sort +of world, I want to be able to point to a man, to a particular man, and +say, as I look at him and ask others to look at him, 'This is the sort +of world I want.'" + +Then everybody knows. + +The great world that lies in all men's hearts is expressed in miniature, +in the great man. + +Crowds speak in heroes. + + * * * * * + +I have often heard Socialists wondering among themselves why a movement +that had so many fine insights and so many noble motives behind it had +produced so few artists. + +It has seemed to me that it might be because Socialists as a class, +speaking roughly, are generalizers. They do not see vividly and deeply +the universal in the particular, the universal in the individual, the +national in the local. They are convinced by counting, and are moved by +masses, and are prone to overlook the Spirit of the Little, the +immensity of the seed and of the individual. They are prone to look past +the next single thing to be done. They look past the next single man to +be fulfilled. + +They feel a bit superior to Individualists for the way they have of +seeing the universal in the particular, and of being picturesque and +personal. + +Socialists are not picturesque and personal. They do not think in +pictures. + +Then they wonder why they do not make more headway. + +Crowds and great men and children think in pictures. + +A hero pictures greatness to them. Then they want it for themselves. + +From the practical, political point of view of getting things for +crowds, perhaps the trouble lies, not in our common popular idea of +having heroes, but in the heroes. And perhaps the cure lies not in +abolishing heroes, but in making our heroes move on and in insisting on +more and better ones. + +Any man who looks may watch the crowd to-day making its heroes move on. + +If they do not move on, the crowd picks up the next hero at hand who is +moving--and drops them. + +One can watch in every civilized country to-day crowds picking up +heroes, comparing, sorting, selecting, seeing the ones that wear the +longest, and one by one taking the old ones down. + +The crowd takes a hero up in its huge rough hand, gazes through him at +the world, sees what it wants through him. Then it takes up another, and +then another. + +Heroes are crowd spy-glasses. + +Pierpont Morgan and Tom Mann for example. + +Pierpont Morgan is a typical American business man raised to the n-th +or hero power. + +The crowd thinks it is interesting to take up Pierpont Morgan, the Tom +Mann of the banks. It will see what it wants, through him. + +And the crowd thinks it is interesting to take up Tom Mann, too, the +Pierpont Morgan of the Trades Unions. It will see what it wants, through +him. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +THE CROWD AND PIERPONT MORGAN + + +One keeps turning back every now and then, in reading the "Life of +Pierpont Morgan," to the portrait which Carl Hovey has placed at the +beginning of the book. If one were to look at the portrait long enough, +one would not need to read the book. The portrait puts into a few square +inches of space what Mr. Hovey takes half an acre of paper for. And all +that he really does on the half-acre of paper is to bring back to one +again and again that set and focused look one sees in Mr. Morgan's +eyes--the remoteness, the silence, the amazing, dogged, implacable +concentration, and, when all is said, a certain terrible, inexplicable +blindness. + +The blindness keeps one looking again. One cannot quite believe it. The +portrait has something so strong, so almost noble and commanding, about +it that one cannot but stand back with one's little judgments and give +the man who can hurl together out of the bewilderment of the world a +personality like this, and fix it here--all in one small human face--the +benefit of the doubt. This is the way the crowd has always taken +Pierpont Morgan at first. The bare spectacle of a man so magnificently +set, so imperiously preoccupied, silences our judgments. It seems as if, +of course, he must be seeing things--things that we and others possibly +do not and cannot see. The blindness in the eyes is so complete and set +in such a full array that it acts at first on one almost like a kind of +vision. The eyes hold themselves like pictures of eyes, like little +walls, as if real eyes were in behind them. One wonders if there is any +one who could ever manage to break through them, fleck up little +ordinary human things--personality, for instance, atmosphere, or +light--against them. If Shakespeare, whose folios he has, and Keats, +whose "Endymion" he owns, or Milton, whose "Paradise Lost" he keeps in +his safe, were all to assail him at once, were to bear down upon that +set look in Pierpont Morgan's eyes--try to get them to turn one side a +second and notice that they--Shakespeare and Milton and Keats--were +there, there would not be a flicker or shadow of movement. They are eyes +that are set like jaws, like magnificent spiritual muscles, on +Something. Neither do they reveal light or receive it. + + * * * * * + +It will be some time before the crowd will find it possible to hand in +an account and render a full estimate of the value of the service that +Pierpont Morgan has rendered to our modern world; but the service has +been for the most part rendered now and while the world, in its mingled +dismay and gratitude at the way he has hammered it together, is +distributing its praise and blame, there are some of us who would like +to step one side a little and think quietly, if we may, not about what +Pierpont Morgan has done, which we admit duly, but about the blindness +in his eyes. It is Pierpont Morgan's blindness that interests the crowd +more than anything else about him interests them now. It is his +blindness--and the chance to find out just what it is that is making +people read his book. His blindness (if we can fix just what it is) is +the thing that we are going to make our next Pierpont Morgan out of. The +next Pierpont Morgan--the one the crowd is getting ready now--will be +made out of the things that this Pierpont Morgan did not see. What are +these things? We have been looking for the things in Carl Hovey's book, +peering in between the lines on every page, and turning up his +adjectives and looking under them, his adverbs and qualifications, his +shrewdness and carefulness for the things that Pierpont Morgan did not +see. Pierpont Morgan himself would not have tried to hide them, and +neither has his biographer. His whole book breathes throughout with a +just-mindedness, a spirit of truth, a necessary and inevitable honesty, +which of itself is not the least testimony to the essential validity and +soundness of Morgan's career. Pierpont Morgan's attitude toward his +biography (if, in spite of his reticence, it became one of the +necessities--even one of the industrial necessities, of the world that +he should have one) was probably a good deal the attitude of Walt +Whitman when he told Traubel, "Whatever you do with me, don't prettify +me"; and if there were things in Mr. Morgan's career which he +imperturbably failed to see, Mr. Morgan himself would be the last man +not to try to help people to find out what they are. But living has been +to Mr. Morgan as it is to us (as I write these lines he is seventy-four +years old) a serious, bottomless business. He does not know which the +things are he has not seen. His eyes are magnificently set. They cannot +help us. We must do our own looking. + + * * * * * + +If I were called upon to speak very quickly and without warning; if any +one suddenly expected me in my first sentence to hit the bull's-eye of +Mr. Morgan's blindness, I think I would try socialism. When the Emperor +William was giving himself the treat of talking with the man who runs, +or is supposed to run, the economics of a world, he found that he was +talking with a man who had not noticed socialism yet, and who was not +interested in it. Most people would probably have said that Morgan was +not interested in socialism enough; but there are very few people who +would not be as surprised as Emperor William was to know that he, +Pierpont Morgan, was not informed about the greatest and, to some of us, +the most threatening, omnipresent, and significant spectre in modern +industrial life. + +But when one thinks of it, and, when more particularly, one looks again +at that set look in his eyes, I cannot see how it could possibly have +been otherwise. If Morgan's eyes had suddenly begun seeing all sorts of +human things--the bewildering welter of the individual minds, the +tragedy of the individual interests around him; if he had lost his +imperious sense of a whole--had tried to potter over and piece together, +like the good people and the wonderers, the innumerable entangled wires +of the world, his eyes might have been filled perhaps with the beautiful +and helpless light of the philosophers, with the fire of the prophets, +or with the gentle paralysis of the poets, but he never would have had +the courage to do the great work of his life--to turn down forever those +iron shutters on his eyes and smite a world together. + +There was one thing this poor, dizzied, scattered planet needed. With +its quarrelling and its peevish industries, its sick poets and its tired +religions, the one thing this planet needed was a Blow; it needed a man +that could hammer it together. To find fault with this man for not being +a seer, or to feel superior to him for not being an idealist, or to +heckle him for not being a sociologist, when here he was all the time +with this mighty frenzy or heat in him that could melt down the chaos of +a world while we looked, weld it to his will, and then lift his arm and +smite it, though all men said him nay--back into a world again--to +heckle over this man's not being a complete sociologist or professor is +not worthy of thoughtful and manful men. + +I cannot express it, but I can only declare, living as I do in a day +like this, that to me there is a kind of colossal naked poetry in what +Pierpont Morgan has done which I cannot but acknowledge with gratitude +and hope. Though there be in it, as in all massive things, a brutality +perhaps like that of the moving glaciers, like the making and boiling of +coal in the earth, like death, like childbirth, like the impersonality +of the sea, my imagination can never get past a kind of elemental, +almost heathen poetry or heathen-god poetry in Pierpont Morgan's Blow or +shock upon our world. There may be reason to doubt as to whether it is +to be called a heaven-poetry or a hell-poetry--something so gaunt and +simple is there about it; but here we are with all our machines around +us, with our young, rough, fresh nations in the act of starting a great +civilization once more on this old and gentle earth, and I can only say +that poetry (though it be new, or different, or even a little terrible) +is the one thing that now, or in any other age, men begin great +civilizations with. + + * * * * * + +I have tried to express the spirit of what Morgan's genius seized +unconsciously by the grim, resistless will of his age, has wrought into +his career. + +But in the background of my mind as I see Pierpont Morgan, there is +always the man who will take his place, and if I did not see the man +coming, and coming rapidly, who is to take Mr. Morgan's place, I admit +that Mr. Morgan himself would be a failure, a disaster, a closed wall at +the end of the world. + +No one man will take Mr. Morgan's place, but the typical man in the +group of men that will take his place will justify Mr. Morgan's work, by +taking this world in his hand and riveting his vision on where Morgan's +vision leaves off. As Morgan has fused railroads, iron, coal, +steamships, seas, and cities, the next industrial genius shall fuse the +spirits and the wills of men. The Individualists and the Socialists, the +aristocracies and democracies, the capitalists and the labourers shall +be welded together, shall be fused and transfused by the next Morgan +into their ultimate, inevitable, inextricable, mutual interests. + +The chief characteristic of the new industrial leader is coming to be +social imagination or the power of seeing the larger industrial values +in human gifts and efficiencies, the more human and intellectual +energies of workmen, the market value of their spirits, their +imaginations, and their good-will. The underpinning and Morganizing work +has been done; the power of instant decision which Mr. Morgan has had, +has been very often based on a lack of imagination about the things that +got in his way; but the things that get in the way now, the big, +little-looking things--are the things on which the new and inspired +millionaires' imagination will find its skill and accumulate its power. +It is men's spirits that are now in the way; they have been piling up +and accumulating under Morgan's regime long enough, and it is now their +turn. Perhaps men's spirits have always been beyond Mr. Morgan, and +perhaps his imagination has been worked largely as a kind of cerebellum +imagination: it is a kind of imagination that sees related and +articulated the physical body of things, the grip on the material tools, +on the gigantic limbs of a world. The man who succeeds Mr. Morgan, and +for whom Mr. Morgan has made the world ready, is the man who has his +imagination in the upper part of his brain, and instead of doing things +by not seeing, and by not being seen, he will swing a light. He will be +himself in his own personality, a little of the nature of a searchlight, +and he will work the way a searchlight works, and will have his will +with things by seeing and lighting, by X-raying his way through them and +not by a kind of colossal world-butting, which is Morgan's way, both +eyes imperiously, implacably shut, his whole being all bent, all crowded +into his vast machine of men, his huge will lifted ... and excavating +blindly, furiously, as through some groping force he knew not, great +sub-cellars for a new heaven and new earth. + +The Crowd gets its heroes one at a time. Heroes are the Crowd's tools. +Some are dredges, some are telescopes. The Crowd, by a kind of +instinct--an oversoul or undersoul of which it knows not until +afterward, takes up each tool gropingly--sometimes even against its will +and against its conscience, uses it and drops it. + +Then it sees why, suddenly, it has used it. + +Then God hands it Another One. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +THE CROWD AND TOM MANN + + +I dropped into the London Opera House the other night to see Tom Mann +(the English Bill Heywood), another hero or crowd spy-glass that people +have taken up awhile--thousands of them--to see through to what they +really want. I wanted to hear him speak, and see, if I could, why the +crowd had taken him up, and what it was they were seeing through him. + +I am apt to take a dead set at liking a man I do not agree with, if I +can. It gives one a better start in understanding him and in not +agreeing with him to some purpose. + +But it was not necessary to try to like Tom Mann or to make arrangements +for being fair to him. He came up on the platform (it was at Mr. +Hyndmann's Socialist rally) in that fine manly glow of his of having +just come out of jail (and a jail, whatever else may be said about it, +is certainly a fine taking place to come out of--to blossom up out of, +like a night-blooming cereus before a vast, lighted-up, uproarious +audience). It is wonderful how becoming a jail is to some people! Had I +not seen Mrs. Pethick Lawrence with the flush of Old Bailey on her cheek +only a little while before in Albert Hall? + +If Tom Mann had had, like Elisha, that night, a fiery chariot at his +disposal, and had come down, landed plump out of heaven on his audience, +he could not have done half as well with it as he did with that little +gray, modest, demure Salford Jail the kind Home Secretary gave him. + +He tucked the jail under his arm, stood there silently before us in a +blaze of light. Everybody clapped for five minutes. + +Then he waved the air into silence and began to speak. I found I had +come to hear a simple-minded, thoughtless, whole-hearted, noisy, +self-deceived, hopelessly sincere person. He was a mere huge pulse or +muscle of a man. All we could do was to watch him up there on the +platform (it was all so simple!) taking up the world before everybody in +his big hands and whacking on it with a great rapping and sounding +before us all, as if it were Tommy's own little drum mother gave him. He +stood there for some fifteen minutes, I should think, making it--making +the whole world rat-a-tat-tat to his music, to Tommy's own music, as if +it were the music of the spheres. + +Mr. Mann's gospel of hope for mankind seemed to be to have all the +workers of the world all at once refuse to work. Have the workers starve +and silence a planet, and take over and confiscate the properties and +plants of capital, dismiss the employers of all nations and run the +earth themselves. + + + * * * * * + + +I sat in silence. The audience about me broke out into wild, happy +appreciation. + +It acted as if it had been in the presence of a vision. It was as if, +while they sat there before Tom Mann, they had seen being made, being +hammered out before them, a new world. + +I rubbed my eyes. + +It seemed to me precisely like the old one. And all the trouble for +nothing. All the disaster, the proposed starvation, and panic for +nothing. + +There was one single possible difference in it. + +We had had before, Pierpont Morgan, the Tom Mann of the banks, riding +astride the planet, riding it out with us--with all the rest of us +helpless on it, holding on for dear life, riding out into the +Blackness. + +And now we were having instead, Tom Mann, the Pierpont Morgan of the +Trades Unions, riding astride the planet, riding it out with us, with +all the rest of us helpless on it, holding on for dear life, riding out +into the Blackness. + +Of course Pierpont Morgan and Tom Mann are both very useful as crowd +spy-glasses for us all to see what we want through. + +But is this what we want? + +Is it worth while to us, to the crowd, to all classes of us, to have our +world turned upside down so that we can be bullied on it by one set of +men instead of being bullied on it by another? + +This is the thing that the Crowd, as it takes up one hero after the +other, and looks at the world through him, is seeing next. + +Some of us have seen sooner than the others. But we are nearly all of us +seeing to-day. We have stood by now these many years through strikes and +rumours of strikes, and we have watched the railway hold-ups, the +Lawrence Mill strike, and the great English coal strike. We have seen, +in a kind of dumb, hopeful astonishment, everybody about us piling into +the fray, some fighting for the rights of labour and some for the rights +of capital, and we have kept wondering if possibly a little something +could not be done before long, possibly next year, in behalf of the +huge, battered, helpless Public, that dear amorphous old ladylike Person +doddering along the Main Street of the World, now being knocked down by +one side and now by the other. It has almost looked, some days, as if +both sides in the quarrel--Capital and Labour, really thought that the +Public ought not to expect to be allowed to be out in the streets at +all. Both sides in the contest are so sure they are right, and feel so +noble and Christian, that we know they will take care of themselves; but +the poor old Lady!--some of us wonder, in the turmoil of Civilization +and the scuffle of Christianity, what is to become of Her. + +Is it not about time that somebody appeared very soon now who will make +a stand once and for all in behalf of this Dear Old Lady-Like Person? + +Is it really true that no one has noticed Her and is really going to +stand up for Her--for the old gentle-hearted Planet as a Whole? + +We have our Tom Mann for the workers, and we have the Daily +Newspaper--the Tom Mann of Capital, but where is our Tom Mann for +Everybody? Where is the man who shall come boldly out to Her, into the +great crowded highway, where the bullies of wealth have tripped up her +feet, and the bullies of poverty have thrown mud in her face, where all +the little mean herds or classes one after the other hold Her up--the +scorners, and haters, and cowards, and fearers for themselves, fighting +as cowards always have to fight, in herds ... where is the man who is +going to climb up alone before the bullies of wealth and the bullies of +poverty, take his stand against them all--against both sides, and dare +them to touch the dear helpless old Lady again? + +When this man arises--this Tom Mann for Everybody--whether he slips up +into immortality out of the crowd at his feet, and stands up against +them in overalls or in a silk hat, he will take his stand in history as +a man beside whom Napoleon and Alexander the Great will look as toys in +the childhood of the world. + + * * * * * + +We are living in a day when not only all competent-minded students of +affairs, but the crowd itself, the very passers-by in the streets, have +come to see that the very essence of the labour problem is the problem +of getting the classes to work together. And when the crowd watches the +labour leader and sees that he is not thinking correctly and cannot +think correctly of the other classes, of the consumers and the +employers, it drops him. Unless a leader has a class consciousness that +is capable of thinking of the other classes--the consumers and +employers, so shrewdly and so close to the facts that the other classes, +the consumers and the employers, will be compelled to take him +seriously, tolerate him, welcome him, and cooeperate with him, the crowd +has come at last to recognize promptly that he is only of temporary +importance as a leader. He is the by-product of one of the illusions of +labour. When the illusion goes he goes. + +Capital has been for some time developing its class consciousness. +Labour has lately been developing in a large degree a class +consciousness. + +The most striking aspect of the present moment is that at last, in the +history of the world, the Public is developing a class consciousness. + +The Crowd thinks. + +And as from day to day the Crowd thinks--holds up its little class +heroes, its Tom Manns and Pierpont Morgans, and sees its world through +them--it comes more and more to see implacably what it wants. + +It has been watching the Tom Mann, or Bill Heywood type of Labour +leader, for some time. + +There are certain general principles with regard to labour leaders that +the crowd has come to see by holding up its heroes and looking through +them, at what it wants. The first great principle is that no man needs +to be taken very seriously, as a competent leader of a great labour +movement who is merely thinking of the interest of his own class. + +The second general principle the Crowd has come to see, and to insist +upon--when it is appealed to (as it always is, in the long run) is that +no labour leader needs to be taken very seriously or regarded as very +dangerous or very useful--who believes in force. + +A labour leader who has such a poor idea that a hold-up is the only way +he can express it--the Crowd suspects. The only labour leaders that the +Crowd, or people as a whole, take seriously are those that get things +by thinking and by making other people think. + +The Crowd wants to think. + +The Crowd wants to decide. + +And It has decided to decide by being made to think and not by being +knocked down. + +It is not precisely because the Crowd is not willing to be knocked down, +and has not shown itself to be over and over again, when it thought its +being knocked down might possibly help in a just cause. + +But it has not been through coal strikes, Industrial Workers of the +World, and syndicalist outbreaks for nothing. + +It is not the knocking down indulged in by labour and by capital that +the Crowd fears. + +It is the not-thinking. + +The Crowd has noticed that the knocking-down disposition and the +not-thinking disposition go together. + +The Crowd has watched Force and Force-people, and has seen what always +happens after a time. + +It has come to see that people who have to get things by force and not +by thinking will not be able to think of anything to do with the things +when they get them. + +So the Crowd does not want them to get them. + +The Crowd has learned all this even from the present owners of things. +It does not want to learn them all over again from new ones. The present +owners of things have got them half by force, and that is why they only +half understand how to run them. + +But they do half understand because they only half believe in force. The +crowd has seen them get their supremacy by the use of the +employment-hold-up, or by starving or threatening to starve the workers. +And now it sees the Syndicalist workers proposing to get control by +starving or threatening to starve everybody. Of the two, those who +propose to starve all the people to get their own way, and those who +threaten to starve part of the people, it has seemed to the Crowd, +naturally, that those who only half believe in starving, and who only +starve a part of us, would be likely to be more intelligent as +world-runners. + +In other words (accepting for the sake of argument the worst possible +interpretation of the capitalist class), they have spent several years +in learning, and have already half learned that force in industry is +inefficient and cannot be made to work. + +Now when the Crowd sees the Syndicalists swinging their hats in a +hundred nations, with one big hoarse hurrah around a world, with five +minutes' experience, come rushing in, and propose to take up the +world--the whole world in two minutes more and run it in the same old +bygone way--the way that the capitalists are just giving up--by +force--it knows what it thinks. + +It thinks it will fight Class Syndicalism. It makes up its mind it will +fight Class Syndicalism with Crowd Syndicalism. It has decided that, in +the interests of all of us, of a crowd civilization, of what we call the +world or Crowd Syndicate, its industries should be controlled, not by +the owners and not by the workers, but by those men, whoever they are, +who can control them with the most skill and efficiency. + +The Crowd has come to see that the present owners--judging from current +events, and taking them as a whole, and speaking impersonally and +historically--have proved themselves, on the whole, incompetent to +control industries with skill and efficiency, because they have treated +labour as the natural enemy of capital and have quarrelled with it. It +sees that the present workers, acting as syndicates or otherwise, are +incompetent to own and control and manage industry because they propose +to treat capital as the natural enemy of the workers. There has been but +one conclusion possible. If Civilization or the Crowd Syndicate has a +right to have its industries managed in the interests of all, and if +the present owners have proved themselves to be mentally incompetent to +control industry because they fight labour, and if the present labourers +as a class have proved themselves to be mentally incompetent because +they propose to fight capital, there is naturally but one question the +crowd syndicate is asking to-day, namely, _"Are there any mentally +competent business firms at all in the world, any firms whose owners and +labourers have thought out a way of not fighting?"_ From the point of +view of the Crowd, the men who are competent, who know how to do their +work, do not have to lay down their tools and find out all over again +how to do their work. They know it and keep doing it. + +So the Crowd keeps coming back with the question, "Are there or are +there not any competent business establishments in our modern life? +Which are they, and where are they?" We want to know about them. We want +to study them. We want to focus the thought of the world on them and see +how they do it. + +The answering of this question is what the next Pierpont Morgan and the +next Tom Mann are for. + +What the next Pierpont Morgan is for is to find out for us who the +competent employers are--the employers who can get twice as much work +out of their labour as other employers do--recognize them, stand by them +and put up money on them. The next Pierpont Morgan will find out also +who the incompetent employers are, recognize them, stand out against +them, and unless they have brains enough or can get brains enough to +cooeperate with their own workmen, refuse to lend money to them. + +This would make a banker a statesman, would make banking a great and +creative profession, shaping the destinies of civilizations, determining +with coins back and forth over a counter the prayers and the songs, the +very religions of nations, and swinging like a pendulum the fate of the +world. + +The first Pierpont Morgan has made himself, in a necessary transitional +movement, a hero in the business world because of a certain moral energy +there is in him. He has insisted in expressing his own character in +business. He would not send money to capitalists fighting capitalists, +and in a general way he has compelled capitalists to cooeperate. The new +hero of the business world is going to compel capital not merely to +cooeperate with capital, but to cooeperate with labour and with the +public. And as Morgan compelled the railroads of the United States to +cooeperate with one another by getting money for those that showed the +most genius for cooeperation, and by not getting money for railroads that +showed less genius for it, so the next Pierpont Morgan will throw the +weight of his capital at critical times in favour of companies that show +the largest genius for building the mutual interests of capitalists, +employees, and the public inextricably into one body. He is going to +recognize as a banker that the most permanent, long-headed, practical, +and competent employers are those whose business genius is essentially +social genius, the genius for being human, for discovering the mutual +interests of men, and for making human machinery work. + +There is a great position ahead for this hero when he comes. And I have +seen in my mind to-day thousands of men, young and old in every +business, in every country of the world, pressing forward to get the +place. + +It is what the next Tom Mann is for--to find out for the Trades Unions +and for the public who the most competent workmen are in every line of +business, the workmen who are the least mechanical-minded, who have +shown the most brains in educating and being educated by their +employers, the most power in touching the imaginations of their +employers with their lives and with their work, and in cooeperating with +them. + +When the next Tom Mann has searched out and found the workmen in every +line of business who are capable of working with their superiors, and of +becoming more and more like them, he will make known to all other +workmen and to all other Trades Unions who these workmen are, and how +they have managed to do it. He will see that all Trades Unions are +informed, in night-schools and otherwise, how they have done it. He will +see that the principles, motives, and conditions that these men have +employed in making themselves more like their superiors, in making +themselves more and more fit to take the place of their superiors, in +making their work a daily, creative, spirited part of a great business, +are made so familiar to all Trades Unions that the policies of all our +labour organizations everywhere shall change and shall be infected with +a new spirit; and labouring men, instead of going to their shops the +world over, to spend nine hours a day in fighting the business in which +they are engaged, to spend nine hours a day in trying to get themselves +nothing to do, nine hours a day in getting nobody to want to employ +them, will work the way they would like to work, and the way they would +all work to-morrow morning if they knew the things about capital and +about labour that they have a right to know, and that only incompetent +employers and incompetent labor leaders year by year have kept them from +knowing. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +AN OPENING FOR THE NEXT PIERPONT MORGAN + + +Christ said once, "He that is greatest among you let him be your +servant." + +Most people have taken it as if He had said: + +"He that is greatest among you let him be your valet. + +"He that is greatest among you let him be your butler. + +"He that is greatest among you let him be your hostler, porter, +footman." + +They cling to a mediaeval Morality-Play, Servant-in-the-House idea, a +kind of head-waiter idea of what Christ meant. + +This seems to some of us a literal-minded, Western way of interpreting +an Oriental metaphor. We do not believe that Christ meant servanthood. +It seems to us that He meant something deeper, that He meant service; +that He might have said as well: + +"He that is greatest among you let him be your Duke of Wellington. + +"He that is greatest among you let him be your Lincoln. + +"He that is greatest among you let him be your Edison, your Marconi." + +At all events, it is extremely unlikely that He meant looking and acting +like a servant. + +He meant really being one, whether one looked like a servant or not. If +looking independent and being independent makes the service better, if +defying the appearance of a servant makes the service more efficient, we +believe the appearance should be defied. + +It troubles us when we see the Czar of Russia in the presence of the +civilized world, once a year taking such great pains to look like a +servant and to wash his peasants' feet. + +We are not willing, if we ever have any relations with the public, to be +Czars and look like servants. + +We would prefer to look like czars and be servants. + +We are inclined to believe that no man who is rendering his utmost +service to the crowd ever thinks in the ordinary servant sense of being +obedient to it. He is thinking of his service, and of its being the most +high and perfect and most complete thing that he can render--the thing +that he, out of all men, could think of and do, and that the crowd would +want him to do. He is busy in being obedient to the crowd, in fulfilling +daily its spirit, and not in taking orders from it. + +The reason that the larger number of men who go into politics to-day are +inefficient and do not get the things done that crowds want, is that +they are the kind of men who feel that they must talk and act like +servants. Even the most independent-looking and efficient men, who look +as if they really saw something and had something to give, often prove +disappointing. When one comes to know a man of this type more +intimately, one is apt to find that he is really a flunkey in his +thoughts; that he feels hired in his mind; that he is the valet of a +crowd, and often, too, the valet of some particular crowd--some little, +safe, shut-in crowd, party, or special interest that wants to own, or to +keep, or to take away a world. + +Whichever way to-day one looks, one finds this illusion as to what a +public servant really is, for the moment, corrupting our public life. + +But Christ did not say, "He that is greatest among you, let him be your +valet." + +The man who is greatest among us, neither in this age nor in any other, +ever will or ever can be a valet. He faces the crowd the way Christ +did--with his life, with his soul, with his God. + +He will not be afraid of the Crowd.... + +He will be the Greatest, he will be a Servant. + +In the meantime--in the hour of the valets, only the little crowds, +speak. The People wait. + +The Crowd is dumb, massive, and silent. There seems to be no one in the +world to express it, to express its indomitable desire, its prayer, to +lay at last its huge, terrible, beautiful will upon the earth. + +It is the classes or little crowds--the little pulling and pushing, +helpless, lonely, mean, separated crowds--blind, hateful, and afraid, +who are running about trying to lay their little wills upon the earth. + +The Crowd waits and is not afraid. + +The little, separated crowds are afraid. + +The world, for the moment, is being interpreted, expressed, and managed +by People Who Are Afraid. + +It is the same in all the nations. In the coal strike in England one +finds the miners in the trades unions afraid to vote except in secret +because they are afraid of one another. One finds the miners' leaders +afraid of the men under them and of what they might do, so that they +have no policy except to fight. One finds the miners' leaders afraid of +the mine-managers and of what they might do, so that they have no policy +except to fight. One finds the mine-managers afraid of one another, +afraid of their stockholders, afraid of the miners' leaders, and afraid +of the newspapers and afraid of the Government. + +One finds the Government afraid of everybody. + +Everybody is afraid of the Government. + +Everybody fights because everybody is afraid. + +And everybody is afraid because everybody sees that it is mere crowds +that are running the world. + +There is another reason why everybody is afraid. Everybody is afraid +because everybody is shut in with some little separated crowd. + +People who are never Outside, who only see a little way out over the +edge of the little crowd in which they are penned up, are naturally +afraid. + +A world that is run by little shut-in crowds is necessarily a world that +is run by People Who Are Afraid. + +And so now we have come to the fulness of the time. The cities and the +nations, the prairies, and the seas and the mines, the very skies about +us can be seen by all to-day to be full of a dull groping and of a great +asking, "_Who Are The Men Who Are not Afraid?_" + +The moment these men appear who are not afraid, and it is seen by all +that they are not afraid, the world (and all the little blind, helpless +crowds in it) will be placed in their hands. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +AN OPENING FOR THE NEXT TOM MANN + + +I am aware that Tom Mann is not a world figure. But he is a world type. +And as the editor of the _Syndicalist_, the leader of the most imposing +and revealing labour rally the world has seen, he is of universal +interest. Those of us who believe in crowds are deeply interested in +finding, recognizing, creating, and in seeing set free out of the ranks +of men the labour leaders who shall express the nobility and dignity of +modern labour, who shall express the bigness of spirit, the +brawny-heartedness, the composure, the common-sense, the patriotism, the +faithfulness and courage of the People. + +I indict Tom Mann before the bar of the world as not expressing the will +and the spirit of the People. + +I do this as a labouring man. I decline, because I spend my time daily +tracing out little crooked lines on paper with a pen, because I have +wrought day and night to make little patterns of ink and little +stretches of words reach men together round a world, because I have +sweat blood to believe, because in weariness and sorrow I have wrought +out at last my little faith for a world ... I decline not to be numbered +with the labourers I see in the streets. I claim my right before all men +this day, with my unbent body and with my unsoiled hands, to be enrolled +among the toilers of the earth. + +I speak as a labouring man. I say Tom Mann is incompetent as a true +leader of Labour. + +The first reason that he is incompetent is that he does not observe +facts. He merely observes facts that everybody can see, that everybody +has seen for years. He does not observe the new and exceptional facts +about capital that only a few can see, the seeing of which, and the +seeing of which first, should alone ever constitute a man a true leader +in dealing with capital. He merely believes facts that nearly everybody +has caught up to believing--facts about human nature, about what works +in business. The crowd is not content with this. It has become +accustomed to seeing that the men who lead in business, and who make +others follow them, whether masters or workmen, are men who do it by +observing certain new and exceptional facts and acting upon them. If +these men cannot observe them, we have seen them create them. It is the +men who make new things true wherever they go that the crowd is coming +to recognize and to take seriously and permanently as the real leaders +of Labour and of Capital to-day. Tom Mann is incompetent as a labour +leader in dealing with capital to-day, because the things that he +proposes to do all turn on three facts which, looked at on the outside, +merely have or might be said to have a true look: + +First, employers are all alike; + +Second, none of them ever work; + +Third, they are all the enemies of Labour. + +Tom Mann is incompetent to grapple with Capital in behalf of Labour as +any great labour leader would have to do, because he has his facts wrong +about Capital, is simple-minded and rudimentary and undiscriminating +about the men with whom he deals, and sees them all alike. + +This is a poor beginning even for fighting with them. + +The second reason that Tom Mann is incompetent is, not that he has his +facts wrong and does not think, but that he carries not-thinking about +the employing class still further, has come to make a kind of religion +out of not-thinking about them. And instead of thinking how to make +labouring men think better than their employers think, and making them +think so well that they can crowd their way into their employers' +places, he proposes to have labour get into their places without +thinking, and run a world without thinking. All that is necessary in +order to have workmen run the world, is to get workmen to stop working, +to stop thinking, and then as rapidly as possible to get everybody else +to stop thinking. Then the world will fall into their hands. + +The third reason that Tom Mann is incompetent is that he is unpractical +and full of scorn. And scorn, from the point of view of the +practical-minded man, is a sentimental and useless emotion. We have +learned that it almost always has to be used by a man who has his facts +wrong, that is, who does not see what he himself is really like, and who +has not noticed what other people are really like. No man who sees +himself as he is, feels at liberty to use scorn. And no man who sees +others as they are, sees any occasion for it. Tom Mann uses hate also, +and hate has been found to be, as directed toward classes of persons as +a means of getting them to do things, archaic and inefficient. It is not +quite bright. It need not be denied that hate and scorn both impress +some people, but they never seem to impress the people that see things +to do and who find ways to do them. And the people who use scorn are all +too narrow, too class-bound, and too self-regarding to do things in a +huge world problem like the present one. + +The fourth reason that Tom Mann as a labour leader is incompetent is +that he is afraid; he is afraid of capital, so afraid that he has to +fight it instead of grappling with it and cooeperating with it. He is +afraid to believe in labour--so afraid that he takes orders from it +instead of seeing for it, and seeing ahead for it. He is afraid of his +employers' brains, of their having brains enough to understand and to to +be convinced as to the position of the labourer. He is afraid to believe +in his own brains, in his own brains being good enough to convince them. + +So he backs down and fights. + +If any reader who is interested to do so will kindly turn back at this +point a page or so, and read this chapter we have just gone through +together, over again, and if he will kindly, wherever it occurs, insert +for Tom Mann, labour leader, "D.A. Thomas, leader of mine-owners," he +will save much time for both of us, and he will kindly make one chapter +in this book which is already much too long, as good as two. Tom Mann +(unless he is changed) is about to be dropped as a typical modern leader +of Labour because he is afraid, and what he expresses in the labouring +class is its fear of Capital. + +And what D.A. Thomas expresses for Capital is its fear of Labour. + +There are thousands of capitalists and hundreds of thousands of labour +men who have something better they want expressed by their leaders, than +their Fear. + +Out of these men the new leaders will be chosen. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +THE MEN WHO LOOK + + +During the recent coal strike in England, as at all times in the world, +heroes abounded. + +The trouble with most of us during the coal strike was not in our not +having heroes, but in our not being quite sure which they were. + +Davy McEwen, a miner who stood out against the whole countryside, and +went to his work every day in defiance of thousands of men on the hills +about him trying to stop him, and hundreds of thousands of men all over +England trying to scare him, was not a hero to Mr. Josiah Wedgewood. Mr. +Josiah Wedgewood one day in the height of the conflict, from his seat in +the House of Commons, rose in his might--and before the face of the +nation called Davy McEwen a traitor to his class. + +Sir Arthur Markham, one of the largest of the mine-owners, in the height +of the conflict between the mine-owners and the miners over wages, rose +in the House and declared that, in his opinion as a mine-owner, the +mine-owners were wrong and the miners were right, and that the +mine-owners could afford to pay better wages, and should yield to the +men. + +He was called a traitor to his class. + +At the last moment in the coal strike, when the Government had done its +best, and when the labour leaders still proposed to hold up England and +defy the Government until they got their way, Stephen Walsh, one of the +leaders of the miners, stood up in the face of a million miners and said +he would not go on with the others against the Government. "It is now +time for the trades union men to return to work. We have done what we +could. Our citizenship should be higher than our trades unionship, and +with me, as long as I am a trades union man, it will be." + +He was called a traitor to his class. + +I am an unwilling and unfit person, as a sojourner and an American, to +take any position on the merits of the question as to the +disestablishment of the Church in Wales. But when I saw Bishop Gore +standing up and looking unblinkingly at facts or what he thought were +facts which he would rather not have seen and which were not on his +side, and when I saw him voting deliberately for the disestablishment of +his own Church, I greeted with joy, as if I had seen a cathedral, +another traitor to his class. I almost believe that a Church that could +produce and supply a man like this for a great nation looking through +every city and county year by year for men to go with it ... a Church +that could produce and keep producing Bishop Gores, would be entitled, +from a great nation to anything it liked. + + * * * * * + +Men seem to be capable of three stages of courage. Courage is graded to +the man. + +There is the man who is so tired, or mechanical-minded, that he can only +think of himself. + +There is the man who is so tired that he can only think of his class. + +And there is the man that one has watched being moved over slowly from a +Me-man into a Class-man, who has begun to show the first faint +beginnings of being a Crowd-man. + +One man has courage for himself because he knows what he wants for +himself. Another has courage for his class because he knows what he +wants for his class. Another has courage for God and for the world +because there are things he sees that he wants for God and for the +world, and he sees them so clearly that he sees ways to get them. + +Lack of courage is a lack of vision or clear-headedness about what one +wants. I do not know, but I can only say that it has seemed to me that +Bishop Gore has a vision or clear-headedness about what he wants for +democracy, and that he uses his vision of what he wants for democracy to +true his vision for his class. Perhaps also he has a vision for his +class for the church people that it is for the interest church people to +be the class that is, out of all the world, supremely considerate, big, +leisurely, unfretful in its dealings with others. Perhaps also he has a +vision for himself and is clear-headed for himself, and has seen that +though the steeples fall about him, and though the altars go up in +smoke, he will keep the spirit of God still within his reach. The +gentleness, the grim hope for the world and the patience that built the +cathedrals, shall be in his heart day and night. + +I hold no brief for Bishop Gore. + +I know there must be others like him who voted on the other side. + +I know there are hundreds of thousands of employers who in their hearts +are like him. I know there are hundreds of thousands of men in the +trades unions who are like him. + +I am not sure that Bishop Gore, on the merits of the case, was right. I +wish this day I knew that he was wrong. I wish that I had spent the last +six months in fighting him, in fighting against his vision, that I might +be more free to-day to point to him with joy when I go up and down the +streets with men and look at the churches with men--the rows of +churches--and try to tell them what they are for. I have seen that the +cathedrals scattered about under the sky in England are but God's little +tools to make great cities on the earth, and to build softly out of the +hearts of men and women men who shall be cathedrals too--men buttressed +against the world, men who can stand alone. + +And it has seemed to me that Tom Mann and D.A. Thomas are incompetent as +leaders of industry because they do not see that Labour is full of men +who can do things like this. I am proud, over in my country across the +sea, to be cousin to a nation that is still the headquarters--the +international citadel--of individualism upon the earth. The world knows +if England does not, that this kind of individualism is the most +characteristic, the most mighty and impregnable Dreadnought against that +England has produced. + +But England knows it too. + +I have seen thousands of men in England in their dull brown clothes pass +by me in the street who know and respond to the spirit that is in Bishop +Gore, and who have the courage to show it themselves. And the vision is +in them, but it is not waked. The moment it is waked we will have a new +world. It is because Tom Mann and D.A. Thomas are not leaders of men who +have this spirit that they are about to be dropped as typical leaders of +Labour and Capital in modern times. No man will be accepted by the Crowd +to-day as a competent leader of his class who is afraid of the other +classes. No man will be said to be a true leader, to be competent to +make things move in the world, who does not have three gears of courage: +courage for himself, courage for his own people, courage for other +people; and who does not dare to deal with other people as if they +really might be dealt with, after all, as fellow human beings capable of +acting like fellow human beings, capable of finer and of truer things, +of more manly and patient, more shrewdly generous, more far-sighted +things, than might appear at first. + + * * * * * + +Was Mr. Josiah Wedgewood right when he called Davy McEwen a traitor to +his class? + +I do not want to judge Davy McEwen. Such things are matters of personal +interpretation, and of standing with a man face to face for a moment and +looking him in the eyes. + +Of course, if I had done this, I might have been tempted and despised +him. + +And I might now. The thing that I would have tried to look down through +to in him, if I had looked him in the eye, would have been something +like this: "Are you or are you not, Davy McEwen, standing out day after +day against your class because you can see less than your class sees, +because you are a mere me-man? Do you go by here grimly day by day, past +all these people lined up on the hills, sternly thinking of yourself?" + +If I found that this was true, as it might well be, and often is, I +would say that Davy McEwen was a traitor to his class. But if I found +Davy McEwen going past hills-ful of workmen because he had a larger, +fairer vision of what his class is than they had, if it proved to be +true that the crowd-man in him was keeping the class-man in place, and +holding true his vision for his class, I would say that it was his class +that was being a traitor to him; I would say that sooner or later his +class would see in some quiet day that it had been a traitor to him and +to the world, and a traitor to itself. + + * * * * * + +If socialism and individualism cannot work together, and if (like the +masculine and feminine in spirit) each cannot make itself the means and +the method of fulfilling the other, there is no reason why either of +them should be fulfilled. + +In the meantime, there is a kind of self-will that seems to me, as its +shadow comes across my path, like God himself walking on the earth. And +I have seen it in the rich and I have seen it in the poor, and in people +who were being wrong and in people who were being right. + +It is like hearing great bells in the dark, singing in the solemn night +to so much as hear of a man somewhere, I might go and see, who stands +alone. + +If we want to stand together, let us begin with these men who can stand +alone. + +There is a sense in which Christ died on the cross because He could +find at the time no other way of saying this. There is a sense in which +the decline of individualism is what he died for. + +Or we might call it the beginning of individualism. He died for the +principle of doing what he thought was right before anybody else did it, +and whether anybody else did it or not. The self-will of Jesus was half +the New Testament. He crucified himself, his mother, and a dozen +disciples that His own vision for all might be fulfilled. Socialism +itself, what is good in it, would not exist to-day if Jesus, the Christ, +had not practised socialism, in the best sense, by being an +individualist. + +If we are going to get to socialism by giving up individualism, by +abolishing heroes, why get to it? + +This more glorious self-will is not, of course, of a kind that all men +can expect to have. Most of us have not the vision that equips us, and +that gives us the right, to have it. But we can exact of our leaders +that they shall have it--that they shall see more for us than we can see +for ourselves, that they shall hold their vision up before us and let us +see it, and let us have the use of it, that they shall be true to us, +that they shall be the big brothers of the people. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +RULES FOR TELLING A HERO--WHEN ONE SEES ONE + + +I have sometimes hoped that the modern world was about to produce at +last some man somewhere with a big-hearted, easy powerful mind, who +could protect the French Revolution. What we need most of all just now +in our present crisis is some man who could take up the French +Revolution without half trying, all the world looking on and wondering +softly how he dares to do it, and put it gently but firmly, and once for +all, up high somewhere where no one except geniuses, or at least the +very tallest-minded people, could ever again get at it. + +As it is, hardly a day passes but one sees new little nobodies +everywhere all about one reaching up without half thinking to it--to the +French Revolution--grabbing it calmly, and then using it deliberately +before our eyes as a general free-for-all analogy for anything that +comes into their heads. The Syndicalists and Industrial Workers of the +World have had the use of it last. The fact that the French Revolution +was French and that it worked fairly well a hundred years ago and with a +Louis Sixteenth sort of person, and as a kind of first rough sketch, or +draft of just what a revolution might be for once, and what it would +have to get over being afterward, as soon as possible, never seems to +have occurred to many people. One sees them rushing about the world +trying to get up exact duplicates, little fussy replicas of a +revolution, and of a kind of revolution that the real world put quietly +away in the attic seventy years ago. The real world, and all the men in +it who are facing real facts to-day, are getting what they want in +precisely the opposite of the violent, theatrical French-Revolution +way. The fact that people are quite different now, and that it is more +effective and practical to get new ideas into their heads by keeping +their heads on than it is by taking their heads off--some of us seem to +have passed over. Living as we do in a world to-day with our new +explosives, our new antiseptics, our new biology, bacteriology, our new +storage batteries, our habit of getting everything we get and changing +everything we change by quietly and coolly looking at facts, the old +lumbering fashion of having a beautiful, showy, emotional revolution now +on one side, and then waiting to have another beautiful, showy, +emotional revolution on the other, each oscillating back and forth year +by year until people finally settle down, look at facts together, become +scientific, and see things as they are--has gone by. We have not time +for revolutions nowadays. They may be amusing, but they are not +practical, and evolution or revolution-without-knowing-it, or evolution +all together, suit us better. We are in a world in which we are seeing +men almost being made over before our eyes by the scientific habit of +thought--by the new, slow, imperious way we have come to have of making +ourselves look at things at which we would rather not look, until we see +them as they are. The man of scientific spirit, the quiet-minded, +implacable man who gets what he wants for himself and for others by +merely turning on the light, who makes a new world for us by just +showing us more plainly the one we really have, possesses the earth. + +There is no reason why revolutionists should feel that they are +particularly courageous, that they are the particularly high-minded, +romantic, adventurous, uncompromising and superior people. The real +adventure, the abiding emotion and wonder of living in the twentieth +century, lies in the high, patient, slow, quiet, silent enterprise of +seeing facts as they are, and without any fuss, and inexorably and with +good cheer, acting on them. The human race has a new temperament. The +way to fight now is to look, to look first, to look longest, and to +look for the most people. The way we win a revolution or bring the +enemy to terms to-day is by battering the enemy with cooeperation, with +understanding him and being understood by him, by being impregnably, +obstinately his brother, by piling up huge happy citadels of good-will, +of services rendered, services deserved, and services returned. We had +an idea once that the way to conquer a man was by hitting the outside of +him. We conquer men now by getting inside of them, and by getting inside +first and then dealing with outside things together. + +We see the inside. It is the modern note to see the inside, to attack +the essence, the spirit, and to work everything out from that. + +The modern method of being courageous and of defending what we want is a +kind of chemistry. + +Hercules is a bust now. + +We prefer still little women like Madame Curie, or a man like Sir Joseph +Lister, or like Wilbur Wright--the courage that faces material facts, +that deals with the elements of things, whether in a bottle, or in the +heaven above us, or in the earth, or in a man, or in an enemy. + +When the subject-matter is human nature and the courage we have to have +is the courage that can deal with people, we ask ourselves: "What are +the most difficult facts to face in people?" + +They are: + + The facts about how they are different from us. The facts + about their being like us. The facts as to what we can do + about it. + +So it has come to seem to me to be the greatest, the most typical and +difficult courage of modern life and of a crowd civilization, the +courage to look at actual facts in people and to see how the people can +be made to go together. + +A man's courage is his sense of identity. + +A man's courage toward nature, heat, cold, mountains, seas, deserts, +chemistry, geology, is his sense of identity with God and of his right +to share with God in the creating of His world. + +His courage toward people is his sense of identity with men who seem +different from him, of all races, all classes, and all nations. He sees +the differences in their big relations alongside the resemblances. Then +he fits the differences into the resemblances and knows what to do. + +There is a statue of Sir George Livesey, one of the early presidents of +the South Metropolitan Gas Company, placed at the entrance of the works +where thousands of workmen day and night pass in and pass out. + +Sir George Livesey was the man who, in the early days of the South +Metropolitan Gas Company, stood out against all his workmen, for six +long weeks, to get the workmen to believe that they were as good as he +was. He believed that they were capable, or should be capable, of being +identified with him and working with him as partners, of sharing in the +direction of the business, of sharing in the profits, and cooeperating +all day, every day, with him and the other partners, to make the +business a success. + +He did not propose to be locked up in a business, if he could help it, +with men who did not feel identified with him, who were not his +partners, or who did not want to be. + +He thought it was not good business to engage five thousand men and pay +them deliberately so much a day to fight his business on the inside of +the works. Being obliged to do his business as a fight against people +who helped him all the time, watching and outwitting them as if he were +dealing with five thousand intelligent gorillas instead of with fellow +human beings, did not interest him. + +He did not believe that the men themselves, in spite of the way they +talked, when they came to think of it, really enjoyed being intelligent +gorillas, any more than he did. + +The Trades Unions passed a resolution that it was safer for the men in +dealing with Sir George Livesey to keep on being gorillas. + +Sir George Livesey proposed that they should all try being fellow human +beings and being in partnership for a little while and see how it +worked. + +The Trades Unions were afraid to let them try. Even if it worked very +well, and if it turned out that being men was safer, in this one +particular case, than being gorillas, it would set a bad example, the +Trades Unions thought. They took the ground that it was safer to have +all men treated alike, whether they were gorillas or not. + +They instructed the men to strike. The South Metropolitan Gas Company +was almost closed up, but it did not yield. + +Sir George Livesey took the ground that if the Trades Unions believed +that his men were not good enough for him, and that he was not good +enough for his men, he would wait until they did. + +The bronze statue of Sir George Livesey that the men have raised, and +that thousands of men go by every day, day after day, and look up to at +their work, was raised to a man who had stood out against his workmen +for weeks to prove that they were as good as he was, and could be +trusted to be loyal to him, and that he was as good as they were, and +that he could be trusted to be loyal to them. + +He had the courage to insist on being, whether anybody wanted it for the +moment or not, a new kind and new size of man. He preferred being +allowed to be a new kind and new size himself, and he preferred allowing +his men to be new kinds and new sizes of men, and he made a shrewd, +dogged guess that when they tried it they would like it. They were +merely afraid to be new sizes, as we all are at first. + + * * * * * + +There are possibly three ways in which, in the confusion of our modern +world, one can tell a hero when one sees one. + +One knows a hero first by his originality. He invents a new kind and new +size of man. He finishes off one sample. There he is. + +The next thing one notices about this man (when he is invented) is his +humility. He never seems to feel--having invented himself--how original +he is. The more original people think he is, and the more they try to +set him one side as an exception, the more he resents it. + +And then, of course, the final way one knows a man is a hero is always +by his courage, by his masterful way of driving through, when he meets a +man, to his sense of identity with him. + +One always sees a hero going about quietly everywhere, treating every +other man as if he were a hero too. + +He gets so in the habit, from day to day (living with himself), of +believing in human nature, that when he finds himself suddenly up +against other people he cannot stop. + +It is not that he is deceived about the other people, though it might +seem so sometimes. He merely sees further into them and further for +them. + +Has he not invented himself? Is he not at this very moment a better kind +of man than he thought he could be once? Is he not going to be a better +kind to-morrow than he is now? + +So, quietly, he keeps on year by year and day by day, treating other +people as if they were, or were meant to be, the same kind of man that +he is, until they are. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +WHO IS AFRAID? + + +When Christ turned the other cheek, the last thing He would have wanted +any one to think was that He was backing down, or that He was merely +being a sweet, gentle, grieved person. He was inventing before +everybody, and before His enemies, promptly and with great presence of +mind, a new kind and new size of man. It was a more spirited, more +original, more unconquerable and bewildering way of fighting than +anybody had thought of before. To be suddenly in an enemy's presence a +new kind and new size of man--colossal, baffling--to turn into +invisibility before him, into intangibility, into another kind of being +before the enemy's eyes, so that he could not possibly tell what to do, +and so that none of the things that he had thought of to do would +work.... This is what Christ was doing, it seems to some of us, and it +is apparently the way He felt about it when He did it. + +Turning the other cheek is a kind of moral jiu-jitsu. + + * * * * * + +The last thing that many of us who are interested in the modern world +really want is to have war, or fighting, stop. We glory in courage, in +the power of facing danger, in adventuresomeness of spirit, in every +single one of the qualities that always have made, and always will make, +every true man a fighter. + +We contend that fighting, as at present conducted, is based on fear and +lazy-mindedness; that it is lacking in the manlier qualities, that the +biggest and newest kind of men are not willing to be in it, and that it +does not work. + +We would rather see the world abolished than to see war abolished. + +We want to see war brought up to date. + +The best way to fight was invented some two thousand years ago, and the +innocent, conventional persons who still believe in a kind of routine, +or humdrum, of shooting, who have not caught up with this +two-thousand-year-old invention, are about to be irrevocably displaced +in our modern life by men who have a livelier, more far-seeing, more +practical, more modern kind of courage. From this time on we have made +up our minds, we, the people of this world, that the only men we are +going to allow to fight for us are the men who can fight the way Christ +did. + +Men who have not the courage to fight the way Christ did are about to be +shut up by society; no one will harm them, of course, innocent, afraid +persons, who have to protect themselves with gunpowder, but they will +merely be set one side after this, where they will not be in a position +to spoil the fighting of the men who are not afraid. + +And who are the men who are not afraid? + +To search your enemy's heart, to amputate, as by a kind of spiritual +surgery, the very desire for fighting in him, to untangle his own life +before his eyes and suddenly make him see what it is he really wants, to +have him standing there quietly, radiantly disarmed, gentle-hearted, and +like a child before you; if you are able, Gentle Reader, or ever have +been able, to do this, you are not afraid! Why should any one ever have +supposed that it takes a backing down, giving up, teary, weak, and +grieved person to do this? + +Christ expressed His idea of courage very mildly when He said, in +effect: "Blessed are those who dare to be meek, for they shall inherit +the earth." + +It takes a bolder front to step up to a man one knows is one's enemy +and cooeperate with him than it does to do a little, simple, thoughtless, +outside thing like stepping up to him and knocking him down. + +Cooeperating with a man in spite of him, moving over to where he is, +winning a victory over him by getting at his most rooted, most +protected, secret, instinctive feelings, literally striking him through +to the heart and making a new kind of man out of him before his own +eyes, by being a new kind of man to him, takes a bigger, stiller +courage, is a more exposed and dangerous thing to do than to fall on him +and fight him. + +It is also more practical. The one cool, practical, hard-headed way to +win a victory over an enemy is to do the thing that makes him the most +afraid. And there is no man people are more afraid of than the man who +stands up to them, quietly looks at them, and will not fight with them. +He is doing the one thing of all others to them that they would not dare +to do. They wonder what such a man thinks. If he dares stand up before +them and face them with nothing but thinking, what is he thinking? + +What he thinks, if it makes him able to do a thing like this, must have +some man-stuff in it. They prefer to wait and see what he thinks. + +Courage consists in not being afraid of one's own mind and of other +people's minds. When men become so afraid of one another's minds and of +their own minds that they cannot think, they have to back down and +fight. They are cowards. + +They do not know what they think. + +They do not know what they want. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +THE TECHNIQUE OF COURAGE + + +I have never known a coward. + +I have known men who did cowardly things and who were capable of +cowardly thoughts, but I have never known a man who could be fairly and +finally classified as a coward. + +Courage is a process. + +If people are cowards it is because they are in a hurry. + +They have not taken the pains to see what they think. + +The man who has taken the time to think down through to what he really +wants and to what he is bound to get, is always (and sometimes very +suddenly and unexpectedly) a courageous man. + +It is the man who is half wondering whether he really wants what he +thinks he wants or not, or whether he can get it or not, who is a +coward. + +The coward is a half man. He is slovenly minded about himself. He gets +out of the hard work of seeing through himself, of driving on through +what he supposes he wants, to what he knows he wants. + +So, after all, it is a long, slow, patient pull, being a courageous man. +Few men have the nerve to take the time to attend to it. + +The first part of courage consists in all this hard work one has to put +in on one's soul day after day, and over and over again, doggedly, going +back to it. _What is it that I really want?_ + +The second, or more brilliant-looking part of courage, the courageous +act itself (like Roosevelt's when he is shot), which everybody notices, +is easy. The real courage is over then. + +Courage consists in seeing so clearly something that one wants to get +that one is more afraid of not getting it than one is of anything that +can get in the way. + +The first thing that society is ever able to do with the lowest type of +labouring man seems to be to get him to want something. It has to think +out ways of getting him waked up, of getting him to be decently selfish, +and to want something for himself. He only wants a little at first; he +wants something for himself to-day and he has courage for to-day. Then +perhaps he wants something for himself for to-morrow, or next week, or +next year, and he has courage for next week, or for next year. Then he +wants something for his family, or for his wife, and he has courage for +his family, or for his wife. + +Gradually he sees further and wants something for his class. His courage +mounts up by leaps and bounds when he is liberated into his class. Then +he discovers the implacable mutual interest of his class with the other +classes, and he thinks of things he wants for all the classes. He thinks +the classes together into a world, and becomes a man. He has courage for +the world. + +When men see, whether they are rich or poor, what they want, what they +believe they can get, they are not afraid. + +The next great work of the best employers is to get labour to want +enough. Labour is tired and mechanical-minded. The next work of the +better class of labourer, or the stronger kind of Trades Union, is to +get capital to want enough. Capital is tired, too. It does not see +really big, worth-while things that can be done with capital, and has no +courage for these things. + +The larger the range and the larger the variety of social desire the +greater the courage. + +The problem in modern industry is the arousing of the imaginations of +capitalists and labourers so that they see something that gives them +courage for themselves and for one another, and courage for the world. + +The world belongs to the men of vision--the men who are not afraid--the +men who see things that they have made up their minds to get. + +Who are the men to-day, in all walks of life, who want the most things +for the most people, and who have made up their minds to get them? + +There is just one man we will follow to-day--those of us who belong to +the crowd--the man who is alive all over, who is deeply and gloriously +covetous, the man who sees things he wants for himself, and who +therefore has courage for himself, and who sees things he wants and is +bound to get for other people, and who therefore has courage for other +people. + +This is the hardest kind of courage to have--courage for other people. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +THE MEN WHO WANT THINGS + + +During the coal strike I took up my morning paper and read from a speech +by Vernon Hartshorn, the miners' leader: "In a week's time, by tying up +the railways and other means of transportation, we could so paralyze the +country that the government would come to us on their knees and beg us +to go to work on terms they are now flouting as impossible." + +During the dockers' strike I took up my morning paper and read Ben +Tillett's speech, at the meeting the day before, to fifty thousand +strikers on Tower Hill. "'I am going to ask you to join me in a prayer,' +Tillett said. 'Lord Devonport has contributed to the murder, by +starvation, of your children, your women, and your men. I am not going +to ask you to do it, but I am going to call on God to strike Lord +Devonport dead,' He asked those who were prepared to repeat the 'prayer' +to hold up their hands. Countless hands were held up, and cries: 'Strike +him doubly stone dead!' The men then repeated the following 'prayer', +word for word, after Tillett: + + "'O God, strike Lord Devonport dead.' + +"Afterward the strikers chanted the words: 'He shall die! He shall +die!'" + +There are times when it is very hard to have courage for other people. + +It is when one watches people doing cowardly things that one finds it +hardest to have courage for them. + +I felt the same way both mornings at first when I held my paper in my +hand and thought about what I had read, about the government's going +down on its knees, and about God's striking Lord Devonport dead. + +The first feeling was one of profound resentment, shame--a huge, +helpless, muddle-headed anger. + +I had not the slightest trace of courage for the miners; I did not see +how the government could have any courage for them. And I had no courage +for the dockers, or for what could be expected of the dockers. I did not +see how Lord Devonport could have any courage for them. + +I repeated their prayer to myself. + +The dockers were cowards. I was not going to try to sympathize with +them, or try to be reasonable about them. It was nothing that they were +desperate and had prayed. Was I not desperate too? Would not the very +thought that fifty thousand men could pray a prayer like that make any +man desperate? It was as if I had stood and heard fifty thousand beasts +roaring to their god. + +"They are desperate," I said to myself: "I will not take what they think +seriously. It does not matter what desperate people think." + +Then I waited a minute. "But I am desperate, too," I said; "I must not +take what I think seriously. It does not matter what desperate people +think." + +I thought about this a little, and drove it in. + +"What I think will matter more a little later, perhaps, when I get over +being desperate." + +"Perhaps what the dockers think will matter more a little later, too." + +In the meantime are not their scared and hateful opinions as good as my +scared and hateful opinions? + +The important and final opinions, the ones to be taken seriously, that +can be acted on, will be the opinions of those who get over being scared +and hateful first. + +Then I stood up for myself. + +I had a reason for being scared and hateful. They and their prayer drove +me to be scared and hateful. + +I thought again. + +Perhaps they had a reason, too. + +Then it all came over me. I became a human being all in a minute when I +thought of it. + +I became suddenly full of courage for the hateful dockers. + +I thought how much more discouraging it would be if they had not been +hateful at all. + + * * * * * + +I do not imagine God was sorry when He heard those fifty thousand +dockers asking Him to strike Lord Devonport dead. + +Not that He would have approved of it. + +It was not the last word of wisdom or reasonableness. It was lacking in +beauty and distinction as a petition, as being just the right form of +prayer for those fifty thousand faultless dockers up on Tower Hill that +afternoon (the whole of London listening, in that shocked and proper way +that London has). + +But I have not lost all courage for the dockers who made it. + +They still want something! They still are men! They still stand up when +they speak to Heaven! There is some stuff in them yet! They make heaven +and earth ring to get a word with God! + +This all means something to God, probably. + +Perhaps it might mean something to us. + +We are superior persons, it is true. We do not pray the way they pray. + +We believe in being more self-controlled. We take our breakfasts +quietly, and with high collars and silk hats, and with gilt prayer-books +we go into the presence of our Maker. We believe in being calm and +reasonable. + +But if men who have not enough to eat are so half-dead and so worthless +that they can feel calm and reasonable about it, and can always be +precisely right and always say precisely the right thing--if, with their +wives fainting in their arms and their babies crying for food, all that +those dockers had character enough to do, up on Tower Hill, was to make +a polite, smooth, Anglican prayer to God--a prayer like a kind of +blessing before not having any meat, and not that awful, fateful, husky +cry to Heaven, a roar or rending of their hearts up to the black and +empty sky--what would such men have been good for? What hope or courage +could any one have for them, for such men at such a time, if they would +not, if they could not, come thundering and breaking into His presence, +fifty thousand strong, to get what they want? + +I may not know God, but whatever else He is, I feel sure that He is not +a precise stickler-god, that He is not pompous about spiritual manners, +a huge, literal-minded, Proper Person, who cannot make allowances for +human nature, who cannot hear what humble, rough men like these, hewing +their vast desires for Him out of darkness, and out of little foolish +words, are trying to say to Him. + +And perhaps we, too, do not need to be literal-minded about a prayer +that we may hear, or that we may overhear, roaring its way up past our +smooth, beautiful lives rudely to Heaven. + +What is the gist of the prayer to God, and to us? + +What is it that the men are trying to say in this awful, flaming, +blackening metaphor of wishing Lord Devonport dead? + +The gist of it is that they mean to say, whether they are right or wrong +(like us, as we would say, whether we were right or wrong), they mean to +say that they have a right to live. + +In other words, the gist of it is that we are like them, and that they +are like us. + +I, too, in my hour of deepest trial, with no silk hat, with no gloves, +with no gilt prayer-book, as I should, have flashed out my will upon my +God. I, too, have cried with Paul, with Job, across my sin--my sin that +very moment heaped up upon my lips--have broken wildly in upon that +still, white floor of Heaven! + +And when the dockers break up through, fling themselves upon their God, +what is it, after all, but another way of saying, "I am persuaded that +neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor +things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other +creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God...." + +It may have been wicked in the dockers to address God in this way, but +it would have been more wicked in them not to think He could understand. + +I believe, for one, that when Jacob wrestled with the angel, God looked +on and liked it. + +The angel was a mere representative at best, and Jacob was really +wrestling with God. + +And God knew it and liked it. + +Praying to strike Lord Devonport dead was the dockers' way of saying to +God that there was something on their minds that simply could not be +said. + +I can imagine that this would interest a God, a prayer like the dockers' +prayer, so spent, so desperate, so unreasonable, breaking through to +that still, white floor of Heaven! + +And it does seem as if, in our more humble, homely, and useful capacity +as fellow human beings, it might interest us. + +It seems as if, possibly, we might stop criticising people who pray +harder than we do, pointing out that wrestling with God is really rather +rude--as if we might stop and see what it means to God and what it means +to us, and what there is that we might do, you and I, oh, Gentle Reader, +to make it possible for the dockers on Tower Hill to be more polite, +perhaps, more polished, as it were, when they speak to God next time. + +Perhaps nothing the dockers could do in the way of being violent could +be more stupid and wicked than having all these sleek, beautiful, +perfect people, twenty-six million of them, all expecting them not to be +violent. + +In my own quiet, gentle, implacable beauty of spirit, in my own ruthless +wisdom on a full stomach, I do not deny that I do most sternly +disapprove of the dockers and their violence. + +But it is better than nothing, thank God! + +They want something. + +It gives me something to hope for, and to have courage for, about +them--that they want something. + +Possibly if we could get them started wanting something, even some +little narrow and rather mean thing, like having enough to eat--possibly +they will go on to art galleries, to peace societies, and cathedrals +next, and to making very beautiful prayers (alas, Gentle Reader, how can +I say it?) like you--Heaven help us!--and like me! + +I would have but one objection to letting the dockers have their full +way, and to letting the control of the situation be put into their +hands. + +They do not hunger enough. + +They are merely hungering for themselves. + +This may be a reason for not letting the world get entirely into their +hands, but in the meantime we have every reason to be appreciative of +the good the dockers are doing (so far as it goes) in hungering for +themselves. + +It would be strange indeed if one could not tolerate in dockers a little +thing like this. Babies do it. It is the first decency in all of us. It +is the first condition of our knowing enough, or amounting to enough, to +ever hunger for any one else. Everybody has to make a beginning +somewhere. Even a Saint Francis, the man who hungers and thirsts for +righteousness, who rises to the heights of social-mindedness, who +hungers and thirsts for everybody, begins all alone, at the breast. + +Which is there of us who, if we had not begun our own hungering and +thirsting for righteousness, our tugging on God, in this old, lonely, +preoccupied, selfish-looking way, would ever have grown up, would ever +have wanted enough things to belong to a Church of England, for +instance, or to a Congregational Home Missionary Society? + +It is true that the dockers are, for the moment (alas, fifty or sixty +years or so!), merely wanting things for themselves, or wanting things +for their own class. And so would we if we had been born, brought up, +and embedded in a society which allowed us so little for ourselves that +not growing up morally--keeping on over and over again, year after year, +just wanting things for ourselves, and not really being weaned yet--was +all that was left to us. + +There is really considerable spiritual truth in having enough to eat. + +Sometimes I have thought it would be not unhelpful, would make a little +ring of gentle-heartedness around us, some of us--those of us who live +protected lives and pray such rich, versatile prayers, if we would stop +and think what a docker would have to do, what arrangements a docker +would have to make before he could enjoy praying with us--falling back +into our beautiful, soft, luxurious wanting things for others. + +Possibly these arrangements, such as they are, are the ones the dockers +are trying to make with Lord Devonport now. + +The docker is trying to get through hungering for something to eat, to +arrange gradually to have his hungers move on. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +MEN WHO GET THINGS + + +All the virtues are hungers. A vice is the failure of desire. A vice is +a man's failure to have enough big hungers at hand, sternly within +reach, to control his little ones. + +A man who is doing wrong is essentially bored. He has let himself drop +into doing rows of half-things, or things which he can only half do. He +forgets, for the moment, what it really is that he wants, or possibly +that he wants anything. Then it is that the one little, mean Lonely +Hunger--a glass of liquor, a second piece of pie, another man's wife, or +a million dollars, runs away with him. + +When a man sins it is because his appetites fail him. Self-control lies +in maintaining checks and balances of desire, centripetals, and +centrifugals of desire. The worst thing that could happen to the world +would be to have it placed in the hands of men who only have a gift of +hungering for certain sorts of things, or hungering for certain classes +of people, or hungering for themselves. + +We do not want the man who is merely hungering for himself to rule the +world--not because we feel superior to him, but because a man who is +merely hungering for himself cannot be taken seriously as an authority +on worlds. People can take him seriously as an authority on his own +hunger. But what he thinks about everything beyond that point cannot be +taken seriously. What he thinks about how the world should be run, about +what other people want, what labour and capital want, cannot be taken +seriously. + +I will not yield place to any one in my sympathy with the dockers. + +I like to think that I too, given the same grandfathers, the same +sleeping rooms and neighbours, the same milk, the same tincture of +religion, would dare to do what they have done. + +But I cannot be content, as I take my stand by the dockers, with +sympathizing in general. I want to sympathize to the point. + +And on the practical side of what to do next in behalf of the dockers, +or of what to let them do, I find myself facing two facts: + +First, the dockers are desperate. I take their desperation as conclusive +and imperative. It must be obeyed. + +Second, I do not care what they think. + +What they think must not be obeyed. Men who are in the act of being +scared or hateful, whether it be for five minutes, jive months, or sixty +years, who have given up their courage for others, or for their enemies, +are not practical. What a man who despairs of everybody except himself +thinks, does not work and cannot be made to work. The fact that the +dockers have no courage about their employers may be largely the +employers' fault. It is largely the fault of society, of the churches, +the schools, the daily press. But the fact remains, and whichever side +in the contest has, or is able to have, first, the most courage for the +other side, whichever side wants the most for the other side, will be +the side that will get the most control. + +If Labour, in the form of syndicalism, wants to grasp the raw materials, +machinery, and management of modern industry out of the hands of the +capitalists and run the world, the one shrewd, invincible way for Labour +to do it is going to be to want more things for more people than +capitalists can want. + +The only people, to-day, who are going to be competent to run a world, +or who can get hold of even one end of it to try to run it, are going to +be the people who want a world, who have a habit, who may be said to be +almost in a rut, of wanting things all day, every day, for a world--men +who cannot keep narrowed down very long at a time to wanting things for +themselves. + +There will be little need of our all falling into a panic, or all being +obliged to rely on policemen, or to call out troops to stave off an +uprising of the labour classes as long as the labour classes are merely +wanting things for themselves. It is the men who have the bigger hungers +who are getting the bigger sorts of things--things like worlds into +their hands. The me-man and the class-man, under our modern conditions, +are being more and more kept back and held under in the smaller places, +the me-places and class-places, by the men who want more things than +they can want, who lap over into wanting things for others. + +The me-man often may see what he wants clearly and may say what he +wants. + +But he does not get it. It is the class-man who gets it for him. + +The class-man may see what he wants for his class clearly and may say +what he wants. + +But he does not get it. It is the crowd-man who gets it for him. + +It is a little startling, the grim, brilliant, beautiful way that God +has worked it out! + +It is one of His usual paradoxes. + +The thing in a man that makes it possible for him to get things more +than other people can get them is his margin of unselfishness. + +He gets things by seeing with the thing that he wants all that lies +around it. With equal clearness he is seeing all the time the people and +the things that are in the way of what he wants; how the people look or +try to look, how they feel or try to make him think they feel, what they +believe and do not believe or can be made to believe; he sees what he +wants in a vast setting of what he cannot get with people, and of what +he can--in a huge moving picture of the interests of others. + +The man who, in fulfilling and making the most of himself, can get +outside of himself into his class, who, in being a good class-man, can +overflow into being a man of the world, is the man who gets what he +wants. + +I am hopeful about Labour and Capital to-day because in the industrial +world, as at present constituted in our cooeperative age, the men who can +get what they want, who get results out of other people, are the men who +have the largest, most sensitive outfits for wanting things for other +people. + +If there is one thing rather than another that fills one with courage +for the outlook of labouring men to-day it is the colossal failure Ben +Tillett makes in leading them in prayer. + +Even the dockers, perhaps the most casually employed, the most spent and +desperate class of Labour of all, only prayed Ben Tillet's prayer a +minute and they were sorry the day after. + +And it was Ben Tillett's prayer in the end that lost them their cause--a +prayer that filled all England on the next day with the rage of +Labour--that a man like Ben Tillett, with such a mean, scared, narrow +little prayer, should dare to represent Labour. + +In the same way, after the shooting in the Lawrence strike, when all +those men (Syndicalists) had streamed through the streets, showing off +before everybody their fine, brave-looking thoughtless, superficial, +guillotine feelings and their furious little banner, "No God and no +Master"--it did one good, only a day or so later, to see a vast crowd of +Lawrence workers, thirty thousand strong, tramping through the streets, +singing, with bands of music, and with banners, "In God we trust" and +"One is our Master, even Christ"--thousands of men who had never been +inside a church, thousands of men who could never have looked up a verse +in the Bible, still found themselves marching in a procession, snatching +up these old and pious mottoes and joining in hymns they did not know, +all to contradict, and to contradict thirty thousand strong, the idea +that the blood and froth, the fear and unbelief, of the Industrial +Workers of the World represented or could ever be supposed to represent +for one moment the manhood and the courage, the faithfulness and (even +in the hour of their extremity) the quiet-heartedness, the human loyalty +and self-forgetfulness, the moral dignity of the American workingman. + +It cannot truly be said that the typical modern labouring man, whether +in America or England, is a coward; that he has no desire, no courage, +for any one except for himself and for his own class. Mr. O'Connor of +the Dockers' Organization in the East of Scotland, said at the time of +the strike of the dockers in London: "This kind of business of the +bureaucratic labour men in London, issuing orders for men to stop work +all over the country, is against the spirit of the trades unions of +England. It is a thing we cannot possibly stand. We have an agreement +with the employers, and we have no intention of breaking it." + +It cannot be said that the typical modern labourer is listening +seriously to the Syndicalist or to the Industrial Worker of the World +when he tells him that Labour alone can save itself, and that Labour +alone can save the world. He knows that any scheme of social and +industrial reform which leaves any class out, rich or poor, which does +not see that everybody is to blame, which does not see that everybody is +responsible, which does not arrange or begin to arrange opportunity and +expectation for every man and every degree and kind of man, and does not +do it just where that man is, and do it now, is superficial. + +If we are going to have a society that is for all of us, it will take +all of us, and all of us together, to make it. Mutual expectation alone +can make a great society. Mutual expectation, or courage for others, +persistently and patiently and flexibly applied--applied to details by +small men, applied to wholes by bigger ones--is going to be the next big +serious, unsentimental, practical industrial achievement. And I do not +believe that for sheer sentiment's sake we are going to begin by rooting +up millionaires and, with one glorious thoughtless sweep, saying, "We +will have a new world," without asking at least some of the owners of +it to help, or at least letting them in on good behaviour. Nor are we +going to begin by rooting up trade unions and labour leaders. + +The great organizations of Capital in the world to-day are daily +engaged, through competition and experiment and observation, in +educating one another and finding out what they really want and what +they can really do; and it is equally true that the great organizations +of labour, in the same way, are educating one another. + +The real fight of modern industry to-day is an educational fight. And +the fight is being conducted, not between Labour and Capital, but +between the labouring men who have courage for Capital and labouring men +who have not, and between capitalists who have courage for Labour and +those who have not. To put it briefly, the real industrial fight to-day +is between those who have courage and those who have not. + +It is not hard to tell, in a fight between men who have courage and men +who have not, which will win. + +Probably, whatever else is the matter with them, the world will be the +most safe in the hands of the men who have the most courage. + +There are four items of courage I would like to see duly discussed in +the meetings of the trades unions in America and England. + +First, A discussion of trades unions. Why is it that, when the leaders +of trades unions come to know employers better than the other men do and +begin to see the other side and to have some courage about employers and +to become practicable and reasonable, the unions drop them? + +Second, Why is it that, in a large degree, the big employers, when they +succeed in getting skilled representatives or managers who come to know +and to understand their labouring men better than they do, do _not_ drop +them? Why is it that, day by day, on all sides in America and England, +one sees the employing class advancing men who have a genius for being +believed in, to at first questioned, and then to almost unquestioned, +control of their business? If this is true, does it not seem on the +whole that industry is safer in the hands of employers who have courage +for both sides and who see both sides than of employees who do not? Does +not the remedy for trades unions and employees, if they want to get +control, seem to be, instead of fighting, to see if they cannot see both +sides quicker, and see them better, than their employers do? + +Third, A discussion of efficiency in a National Labour Party from the +point of view of the trend of national efficiency in business. +Apparently the most efficient and shrewd business men in England and +America are the men who are running what might be called lubricated +industries--who are making their industries succeed on the principle of +sympathetic, smooth-running, mutual interests. If the successful modern +business man who owns factories is not running each factory as a small +civil war, is it not true that the only practical and successful Labour +Party in England, the only party that can get things done for labour and +that can hold power, is bound to be the party that succeeds in having +the most courage for both sides, in seeing the most mutual interests, +and in seeing how these interests can be put together, and in seeing it +first and acting on it before any other merely one-sided party would be +able to think it out? + +Fourth, A discussion of the selection of the best labour leaders to +place at the head of the unions. + +Nearly every man who succeeds in business notably, succeeds in believing +something about the people with whom he deals that the men around him +have not believed before, or in believing something which, if they did +believe it, they had not applied or acted as if they had believed +before. If, in order to succeed, a business man does not believe +something that needs to be believed before other people believe it, he +hires somebody who does believe it to believe it for him. + +Perhaps Labour would find it profitable to act on this principle too, +and to see to it that the leaders chosen to act for them are not the +noisiest minded, but the most creative men, the men who can express +original, shrewd faiths in the men with whom they have to deal--faiths +that the men around them will be grateful (after a second thought) to +have expressed next. + + * * * * * + +In the meantime, whether among the labourers or the capitalists, however +long it may take, it is not hard to see, on every hand to-day, the world +about us slowly, implacably getting into the hands of the men, poor or +rich, who have the most keen, patient courage about other people, the +men who are "good" (God save the word!), the men who have practical, +working human sympathies and a sense of possibilities in those above +them and beneath them with whom they work--the men who most clearly, +eagerly, and doggedly want things for others, who have the most courage +for others. + +I have thought that if we could find out what this courage is, how it +works, how it can be had, and where it comes from, it might be more +worth our while to know than any other one thing in the world. + +I would like to try to consider a few of the sources of this courage for +others. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +SOURCES OF COURAGE FOR OTHERS--TOLERATION + + +After making an address on inspired millionaires one night before the +Sociological Society in their quarters in John Street, I found myself +the next day--a six-penny day--standing thoughtfully in the quarters of +the Zooelogical Society in Regent's Park. + +The Zooelogical Society makes one feel more humble, I think, than the +Sociological Society does. + +All sociologists, members of Parliament, eugenists, professors, and +others, ought to be compelled by law to spend one day every two weeks +with the Zooelogical Society in Regent's Park. + +All reformers who essay to make over human nature, all idealists, should +be required by law to visit menageries--to go to see them faithfully or +to be put in them a while until they have observed life and thought +things out. + + A GREEN BENCH, THE ZOO, REGENT'S PARK, 1911. + +For orienting a man and making him reasonable, there is nothing, I find, +like coming out and putting in a day here, making one's self gaze firmly +and doggedly at the other animals. + +We have every reason to believe that Noah was a good psychologist, or +judge of human nature, before he went into the ark, but if he was not, +he certainly would have come out one. + +There is nothing like a menagerie to limber one up. + +Especially an idealist. + +Take a pelican, for instance. What possible personal ideal was it that +could make a pelican want to be a pelican or that could ever have made +a pelican take being a pelican seriously for one minute? + +And the camel with his lopsided hump. "Why, oh, why," cries the +idealist, wringing his hands. "Oh, why----?" + +I have come out here this afternoon, in the middle of my book, in the +middle of a chapter against the syndicalists, but it ill beseems me, +after spending half a day looking calmly at peacocks, at giraffes, at +hippopotamuses, at all these tails, necks, legs and mouths, at this +stretch or bird's eye view--this vast landscape of God's toleration--to +criticise any man, woman or child of this world for blossoming out, for +living up, or fleshing up, or paring down, to what he is really like +inside. + +Possibly what each man stands for is well enough for him to stand for. +It is only when what a man says, comes to being repeated, to being made +universal, to being jammed down on the rest of us, that the lie in it +begins to work out. + +Let us let everybody alone and be ready to find things out just for +ourselves. + +Here is this big, frivolous, gentle elephant, for instance, poking his +huge, inquiring trunk into baby carriages. He is certainly too glorious, +too profound, a personage to do such things! It does seem a little +unworthy to me, as I have been sitting here and watching him from this +park bench, for a noble, solemn being like the elephant--a kind of +cathedral of a beast, to be as deeply interested as he is in peanuts. + +He looms up before me once more. I look up a little closer--look into +his little, shrewd eyes--and, after all, what do I know about him? + +And I watch the camels with the happy, dazed children on their backs, go +by with soft and drifting feet. Do I suppose I understand camels? Or I +follow the crowd. I find myself at last with that huge, hushed, +sympathetic congregation at the 4 P.M. service, watching the lions eat. + +Everything does seem very much mixed up when one brings one's +Sociological Society dogmas, and one's little neat, impeccable row of +principles to the test of watching the lions eat! + +Possibly people are as different from one another inside--in their souls +at least--as different as these animals are. + +It is true, of course, that as we go about, people do have a plausible +way in this world--all these other people, of looking like us. + +But they are different inside. + +If one could stand on a platform as one was about to speak and could +really see the souls of any audience--say of a thousand people--lying +out there before one, they would be a menagerie beside which, O Gentle +Reader, I dare to believe, Barnum and Bailey's menagerie would pale in +comparison. + +But in a menagerie (perhaps you have noticed it, Gentle Reader) one +treats the animals seriously, and as if they were Individuals. + +They are what they are. + +Why not treat people's souls seriously? + +It is true that people's souls, like the animals, are alike in a general +way. They all have in common (in spiritual things) organs of +observation, appropriation, digestion and organs of self-reproduction. + +But these spiritual organs of digestion which they have are theirs. + +And these organs of self-reproduction are for the purpose of reproducing +themselves and not us. + +These are my reflections, or these try to be my reflections when I +consider the Syndicalist--how he grows or when I look up and see a +class-war socialist--an Upton Sinclair banging loosely about the world. + +My first wild, aboriginal impulse with Upton Sinclair when I come up to +him as I do sometimes--violent, vociferous roaring behind his bars, is +to whisk him right over from being an Upton Sinclair into being me. I do +not deny it. + +Then I remember softly, suddenly, how I felt when I was watching the +lions eat. + +I remember the pelican. + +Thus I save my soul in time. + +Incidentally, of course, Upton Sinclair's insides are saved also. + +It is beautiful the way the wild beasts in their cages persuade one +almost to be a Christian! + +Of course when one gets smoothed down one always sees people very +differently. In being tolerant the rub comes usually (with me) in being +tolerant in time. I am tempted at first, when I am with Upton Sinclair, +to act as if he were a whole world of Upton Sinclairs and of course +(anybody would admit it) if he really were a whole world of Upton +Sinclairs he would have to be wiped out. There would be nothing else to +do. But he is not and it is not fair to him or fair to the world to act +as if he were. + +The moment I see he is confining himself to just being Upton Sinclair I +rather like him. + +It is the same with Ella Wheeler Wilcox. It is when I fall to thinking +of her as if she were, or were in danger of being, a whole world of Ella +Wheeler Wilcoxes that I grow intolerant of her. Ella Wheeler Wilcox as a +Tincture, which is what she really is, of course, is well enough. I do +not mind. + +The real truth about a man like Upton Sinclair, when one has worked down +through to it, is that while from my point of view a class-war +socialist--a man who proposes to put society together by keeping men +apart--is wrong and is sure to do a great deal of harm to some people, +there are other people to whom he does a great deal of good. + +There really are people who need Upton Sinclair. It may be a hard fact +to face perhaps, but when one faces it one is glad there is one. Some of +the millionaires need Sinclair. There are others whose attention would +be attracted better in more subtle ways. + +The class-war socialist, though I may be at this moment in the very act +of trying to make him impossible, to put him out of date, has been and +is, in his own place and his own time, I gratefully acknowledge, of +incalculable value. + +Any man who can, by saying violent and noisy things, make rich, tired, +mechanical-minded people, and poor, tired mechanical-minded people wake +up enough to feel hateful has performed a public service. The +hatefulness is the beginning of their being covetous for other things +than the things they have. If a man has a habit of hunger he gets better +and better hungers as a matter of course; bread and milk, ribbons, +geraniums, millinery, bathtubs, Bibles, copartnership associations. And +in the meantime the one precious thing to be looked out for in a man, +and to be held sacred, is his hunger. + +The one important religious value in the world is hunger and to all the +men to-day who are contributing to the process of moving on hungers; +whether the hungers happen to be our hungers or not or our stages of +hunger or not, we say Godspeed. + +There are times when the sudden sense one comes to have that the world +is a struggle, a great prayer toward the sun, a tumult and groping of +desire, the sense that every kind and type of desire has its time and +its place in it and every kind and type of man, gives a whole new +meaning to life. This sense of a now possible toleration which we come +to have, some of us, opens up to us always when it comes a new world of +courage about people. It makes all these dear, clumsy people about us +suddenly mean something. It makes them all suddenly belong somewhere. +They become, as by a kind of miracle, bathed in a new light, +wrong-headed, intolerable though they be, one still sees them flowing +out into the great endless stream of becoming--all these dots of the +vast desire, all these queer, funny, struggling little sons of God! + +It has been overlooked that social reform primarily is not a matter of +legislation or of industrial or political systems, or of machinery, but +a matter, of psychology, of insight into human nature and of expert +reading and interpretation of the minds of men. What are they thinking +about? What do they think they want? + +The trades unions and employers' associations, extreme socialists and +extreme Tories have so far been very bad psychologists. If the Single +Tax people were as good at being intuitionalists or idea-salesmen as +they are at being philosophers in ideas they would long before this have +turned everything their way. They would have begun with people's hungers +and worked out from them. They would have listened to people to find out +what their hungers were. The people who will stop being theoretical and +logical about each other and who will look hard into each other's eyes +will be the people whose ideas will first come to pass. Everything we +try to do or say or bring to pass in England or America is going to +begin after this, not in talking, but in listening. If social reformers +and industrial leaders had been good listeners, the social +deadlock--England with its House of Lords and railroads both on strike +and America with its great industries quarrelling--would have been +arranged for and got out of the way over twenty years ago. + +We have overlooked the first step of industrial reform, the rather +extreme step of listening. The most hard-headed and conclusive man to +settle any given industrial difficulty is the man who has the gift of +divining what is going on in other people's minds, a gift for being +human, a gift for treating everybody who disagrees with him as if they +might possibly be human too, though they are very poor, even though they +are very rich. Practical psychology has come to be not only the only +solution but also the only method of our modern industrial questions. +Being so human that one can guess what any possible human being would +think is the one hard-headed and practical way to meet the modern labour +problem. + +The first symptom of being human in a man is his range and power of +shrewd, happy toleration, or courage for people who know as little now +as he knew once. + +A man's sense of toleration is based primarily upon the range and power +of his knowledge of himself, upon his power of remembering and +anticipating himself, upon his laughing with God at himself, upon his +habit in darkness, weariness or despair, or in silent victory and joy, +of falling on his knees. + +Toleration is reverence. It is the first source of courage for other +people. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + +CONVERSION + + +Some people think of the world as if it were made all through, people +and all, of reinforced concrete, as if everything in it--men, women, +children, churches, colleges, and parties, were solidly, inextricably +imbedded in it. + +Every age in history has had to get on as well as it could with two sets +of totally impracticable people, our two great orders of Philistines in +this world, the people who put their trust in Portland Cement and the +people who put their trust in Explosives. + +There has not been a single great movement in history yet that every +thoughtful man has not had to watch being held up by these people--by +millions of worthy, simple, rudimentary creatures who consent to be mere +conservatives or mere radicals. + +One set says, "People cannot be converted so we will blow them up." + +The other set says, "We are going to be blown up, so let us put on +Plaster of Paris as a garment, we will array ourselves before the Lord +in Portland Cement." + +Both of these classes of people believe alike on one main point. + +They do not believe in Conversion. + +If the conservatives believed in conversion they would not be so afraid +that they feel obliged to resort to Portland Cement. If the radicals +believed in conversion they would not be so afraid that they feel +obliged to resort to Explosives. + +In our machine civilization to these two great standard classes of +scared people, there has been added what seems to be a third class--the +people who have responded to a kind of motor spirit in the time, who +have modulated a little their unbelief in human nature. They have +substituted for their reinforced concrete Unbelief, a kind of Whirling +Unbelief, called machinery. + +They admit that in our modern life men are not made of reinforced +concrete. We may move, but we move as wheels move, they tell us. We arc +whirlingly imbedded. We are cogs and wheels in an Economic Machine. + +I would like to consider for a moment this Whirling Unbelief. + +There was a time once when I took the Economic Machine very seriously. + +I looked up when I went by, at the Economic Machine as the last and the +most terrific of the inventions among the machines. The machine that +mocked all the other machines, that made all our machines look pathetic +and ridiculous, was the Economic Machine. There were days when I heard +it or seemed to hear it--this Economic Machine closing in around my +life, around all our lives like the last hoarse mocking laugh of +civilization. + +I said I will love every machine that runs except the Economic +Machine--the machine for making people into machines. + +But one day when I had waited or dared to wait, I know not why, a little +longer than usual before the Whirling Unbelief, I heard the hoarse +mocking laugh die away. I became very quiet. I began to think, I +reflected on my experiences. I began to notice things. + +I noted that every time I had found myself being discouraged about +people, I had caught myself thinking of people as Cogs and Wheels. + +Were they really Cogs and Wheels? + +Possibly it was merely the easiest, most mechanical-minded thing to do +to think of people (with all this machinery around one) as cogs and +wheels in an economic machine. + +Then it began to occur to me that it was because I had looked upon the +economic machine a little lazily, a little innocently that I had been +awed and terrific--and had been swept away with it into the Whirling +Unbelief. + +Then I stood quietly and calmly for days, for weeks, for years before +it. I watched it Go Round. + +I then discovered under close observation that what had looked to me +like an economic machine was not an economic machine at all. + +The modern economic world has innumerable mechanical elements in it, but +it is not an economic machine. + +It is a biological engine. + +It is the biology in it that conceives, desires, and determines the +machinery in it. + +The most important parts of the machine are not the very mechanical +parts. They are the very biological parts. + +The economic machine is full of made-people, but it does not make very +much difference about the made-people. I find that as a plain, practical +matter of fact I do not need to watch the made-people so very much to +understand the world, or to get ready for what is happening to it. + +In prospecting for a world, I watch the born people. + +I watch especially the people who have been born twice. + +As one watches the way the world is going round one finds that what is +really making it go round, is not its being an economic machine, but its +being a biological engine. + +Industrial reform is a branch of biology. + +The main fact of biology as regards a man is that he can be born. + +The main fact of biology as regards society--that is, the main fact of +social biology--is that a man can be born twice. + +As long as a man is born to go with a father and a mother it is well +enough to have been born once, but the moment a man deals with other +people or with the world, he has to be born again. + +This is the main fact about the biological engine we call the world. + +The main fact about the Engine is the biology in it. + +Every other fact for a man has to be worked out from this--that is: out +of being born once if one wants to belong merely to a father and mother, +and out of being born twice if one wants to belong to a world. + +A man does not need to enter again into his mother's womb and come out a +child. He enters into the World's Womb and comes out a man. + + * * * * * + +The world is being placed to-day before our eyes in the hands of the men +who are born twice. + +Not all men are cogs and wheels. + +The first day I discovered this and believed this I went out into the +streets and looked into the faces of the men and the women and I looked +up at the factories and the churches and I was not afraid. + +I do not deny that cogs and wheels are very common. + +But I do not believe that an economic system or industrial scheme based +on the general principle of arranging a world for cogs and wheels would +work. I believe in arranging the world on the principle that there are +now and are going to be always enough men in it who are born, and enough +who are born twice to keep cogs and wheels doing the things men who have +been born twice, who have visions for worlds, want done, and to keep +people who prefer being cogs and wheels where they will work best and +where they will help the running gear of the planet most--by going round +and round, in the way they like--going round and round and round and +round. + +But why is it, one cannot help wondering, that the moment a man rises up +suddenly in this modern world and bases or seeks to base an industrial +or social reform frankly on courage for other people, on believing in +the inherent and eternal power of men of changing their minds, of being +put up in new kinds and new sizes of men, in other words, on +conversion--why is it that clergymen, atheists, ethical societies, +politicians, socialists will all unite, will all flock together and +descend upon him, shout and laugh him away, bully him with dead +millionaires, bad corporations and humdrum business men, overawe him +with mere history, argue him with statistics, and thunder him with +sermons out of the world--if he puts up a faint little chirrup of hope +that men can be converted? + +It is not that the synods, ethical societies, anarchists, the bishops +and Bernard Shaw, have merely given up expecting individual men to be +converted. There would be a measure of plausibility in giving up on a +few particular men's being born again. It is worse than that. What seems +to have happened to nearly all the people who have schemes of industrial +reform is that they have really given up at one fell swoop a whole new +generation's being born again. It is going to be just like this one, +they tell us, the new generation--the same old things the same old +foolish ways of deceiving the world, that any child can see have not +worked--Bernard Shaw and the bishops whisper to us, are coming around +and around again. They must be planned for. All these young men of +wealth about us who read the papers and who are ashamed of their fathers +are going to be just like their fathers. The atheists, the socialists, +and the single taxers, missionaries and evangelists have given up their +last loophole of hope in the new business generation and they trust only +to machines to save us, or to professors, or to paper-treatises on +eugenics! + +And yet, after all, if we were going to start an absolute, decisive, and +practical scheme of eugenics to-morrow with whom would we begin, with +which particular people would we begin? We would have to go back, +Bernard Shaw and the bishops and all of us, to the New Testament--to the +old idea of being born again. + +I have watched now these many years the professors, caught in their +culture-machines going round and round, and the priests caught in their +religion-machines going round and round, and the business men caught in +their economic machine, and I have heard them all saying over and over +in a kind of terrible sing-song day and night, the silly, lazy words of +a glorious old roue four thousand years ago, "The thing that hath been +is the thing which shall be, and that which is done is that which shall +be done and there is no new thing under the sun." + +There are some of us who do not believe this. We defy the +culture-machines. We believe that even professors can be converted, can +be educated. + +We defy the bishops. We believe that business men can be converted. + +We defy the business men. We believe the bishops can be converted. + +I speak for a thousand, thousand men. + +In the hum and drive of the wheels and the great roar around me of the +Whirling Unbelief. I speak for these men--for all of us. _We are not +cogs and wheels. We are men. We are born again ourselves. Other men can +be born again._ + +Men shall not look each other in the eyes wisely and nod their heads and +say that human nature will not change. + +We will change it. If we cannot get but two or three together to change +it, then two or three by just being two or three and by daring to be two +or three, or even one if necessary shall change it. + +The moment ninety million people in a great nation have welded out a +vision of the kind of man of wealth--the kind of employer they want, the +moment they set the millionaire in the vise of some great national +expectation, carve upon him firmly, implacably the will of the people, +the people will have the millionaire they want. If a nation really wants +a great man it invents him. We have hut to see we really want him, and +that no other machinery will work, and we will invent him. + +Necessity is the mother of invention. Here in these United States sixty +years ago were we not all at work on a man named Abraham Lincoln? We had +been at work on him for years trying to make him into a Lincoln. He +could not have begun to be what he was without us, without the daily +thought, the responsibility, the tragical national hope and fear, the +sense of crisis in a great people. All these had been set to work on +him, on making him a Lincoln. + +Lincoln would not have dared not to be a great man, an all-people man +with a whole mighty nation, with all those millions of watchful, +believing people laying their lives softly, silently, their very sons' +lives in his hands. He did not have the smallest possible chance from +the day he was named for President, to be a second-rate man or to betray +a nation, or to back down out of being himself. He had been filled night +and day with the vision of a great nation struggling, with the grim +glory of it. He was free to make mistakes for it, but there was no way +he could have kept from being a true, mighty, single-hearted man for it, +if he had tried. We had clinched Lincoln in 1862. He was caught fast in +the vise of our hopes. + +Perhaps it is because, at certain times in history, nations seem to be +siding with the worst in their public men and expecting the worst in +them that they get them. + +If a crowd wants to be represented, wants to touch to the quick and +kindle the man in it, the man filled with vision, the man who is born +again into its desire, the crowd-man, they have but to surround him and +overshadow him. They will create him, in scorn and joy will they +conceive him, and before he knows who he is, they will bring him forth. + +It would not be hard, I imagine, to be a great man, with a true, +steadied, colossal, single-heartedness, if one were caught fast in the +vision, the expectation of a great nation. + +To be born again is simple with ninety million people to help. We have +all been born again in little things with a few people to help. We have +been swung over from little short motives to big, long-levered +controlling ones. We have known in a small way what Conversion is. We +have seen how naturally it works out in little things. + +There is nothing new about it. There is not a man who does not know what +it is to get over a small motive. We have seen, when we looked back, +what it was that happened. + +The way to get over a small motive is to let it get lost in a big one. + +A man does not stop to pick up a penny or a million dollars when he is +running to save his life. + +A man does not stop to pick up two pennies, or two thousand dollars, or +two million dollars when he is running to save ten thousand lives or +running to save ninety million lives, when he is running to save a city +or a nation. + +This is Conversion--entering into the World's Womb, the world's vision +or expectation and being born again. + + * * * * * + +It is not for nothing that I have seen the sun lifting up the faces of +the flowers, and crumbling the countenances of the hills. And I have +seen music stirring faintly in the bones of old men. And I have heard +the dead Beethoven singing in the feet of children. + +And I have watched the Little Earth in its little round of seasons +dancing before the Lord. + +And I have believed that music is wrought into all things, and that the +people I see about me have not one of them been left out. + +I believe in sunshine and in hothouses. I believe in burning glasses. I +believe in focusing light into heat and heat into white fire, and +turning white fire into little flowing brooks of steel. + +And I believe in focusing men upon men. + +I believe in Conversion. + +Of course it would all be different--focusing men upon men, if men were +cogs and wheels, or if the men they were focused on were made of stones. + +I stand and look at this stone and believe it is all rubber and +whalebone inside. + +But what of it? + +It does not get true. + +While I am looking at a man and believing a certain thing about the man, +it gets true. + +What is going on in my mind while I look at him effects actual +mechanical changes in him, affects the flow of blood in his veins. A +look colours him, whitens him, twists and turns the muscles and tissues +in his body. I draw lines upon his inmost being. I lay down a new face +upon his face. A moment after I look upon the man's face it has become, +as it were, or may have become, a new little landscape. I have seen a +great country opened up in him of what he might be like. While I look I +have been ushered softly, for a second, into the presence of a man who +was not there before. + +Such things have happened. + +Beatrice looked at Dante once. Ten silent centuries began singing. + +A man named Stephen, one day, while he was dying, gave a look at a man +named Paul. Paul came away quietly and hewed out history for two +thousand years. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + +EXCEPTION + + +A bicycle, the other day, a little outside Paris as it was running along +quietly, lifted itself off the ground suddenly, and flew three yards and +seven inches. + +There are nine million seven hundred and eighty nine thousand nine +hundred and seventy-nine bicycles that have not flown three yards and +seven inches. + +But what of it? Why count them up? Why bother about them? The important, +conclusive, massive, irresistible, crushing, material fact is that one +bicycle has flown three yards seven inches. + +The nine million seven hundred and eighty-nine thousand nine hundred and +seventy-nine bicycles that can not fly yet are negligible. So are nine +out of ten business firms. + +If there is one exceptional man in modern industry who is running his +business in the right way and who has made a success of it and has +proved it--he may look visionary to class-socialists and to other people +who decide by measuring off masses of fact, and counting up rows of +people and who see what anybody can see, but he is after all in +arranging our social programme the only man of any material importance +for us to consider. It would be visionary to take the past, dump it +around in front of one, and try to make a future out of it. I do not +deny what people tell me about millionaires and about factory slaves. I +have not mooned or lied or turned away my face. I stand by time one +live, right, implacable, irrevocable, prolific exception. I stand by the +one bicycle out of them all that has flown three yards and seven inches. +I lay out my program, conceive my world on that. Piles of facts +arranged in dead layers high against heaven, rows of figures, miles of +factory slaves, acres of cemeteries of dead millionaires, going-by +streetfuls of going-by people, shall not cow me. + +My heart has been broken long enough by counting truths on my fingers, +by numbering grains of sand, men, and mountains, bombs, acorns and +marbles alike. + +Which truth matters? + +Which man is right? + +Where is Nazareth? + + * * * * * + +Nazareth is our only really important town now. I will see what is going +on in Nazareth. On every subject that comes up, in every line of +thought, I will go to the city of implacable exceptions. All the +inventors flock there--the man with the one bicycle which flies, the one +great industrial organizer, the man with the man-machine, and the +man--the great boy who carries new great beautiful cities in his pocket +like strings and nails and knives, they are all there. + +Nazareth is the city, the one mighty little city of the spirit where all +the really worth-while men wherever they may seem to be, all day, all +night, do their living. + +Other cities may make things, in Nazareth they make worlds. One can see +a new one almost any day in Nazareth. Men go up and down the streets +there with their new worlds in their eyes. + +Some of them have them almost in their hands or are looking down and +working on them. + +It does not seem to me that any of us can make ourselves strong and fit +to lay out a sound program or vision for a world, who do not watch with +critical expectation and with fierce joy these men of Nazareth, who do +not take at least a little time off every day, in spirit, in Nazareth, +and spend it in watching bicycles fly three feet and seven inches. To +watch these men, it seems to me, is our one natural, economical way to +get at essential facts, at the set-one-side truths, at the exceptions +that worlds and all-around programs for worlds are made out of. To watch +these men is the one way I know not to be lost in great museums and +storehouses of facts that do not matter, in the streetfuls and +skyscraperfuls of men that go by. + +I regret to record that professors of political economy, social +philosophers, industrial big-wigs, presidents of boards of trade have +not been often met with on the streets of this silent, crowded, mighty, +invisible little town that rules the destinies of men. + +Not during the last twenty years, but one is meeting them there to-day. + +All these things that people are saying to me are mere history. I have +seen the one live exception. One telephone was enough. And one Galileo +was enough, with his little planet turning round and round, with all of +us on it who were obliged to agree with him about it. It kept turning +round and round with us until we did. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + +INVENTION + + +If I were a Noah and wanted to get a fair selection of people in London +to be saved to start a new world, I would go out and look over the crowd +who are watching the flying machines at Hendon, and select from them. + +The Hendon crowd will not last forever. People who would be far less +desirable to start worlds with would gradually work their way in, but it +is only fair to say that these first few thousand men and women of all +classes who responded to the flying machine would be possessed, as any +one could see with a look, of special qualifications for running worlds. + +I shall never quite forget the sense I had the first day of the crowd at +Hendon--those thousands of faces that had gathered up in some way out of +themselves a kind of huge crowd-face before one--that imperturbable +happiness on it and that look of hard sense and hope, half poetry, half +science ... it was like gazing at some portrait, or some vast +countenance of the future--watching the crowd at Hendon. Scores of times +I looked away from the machines swinging up past me into the sky to +watch the faces of the men and the women that belonged with sky +machines; these men and women who stood on the precipice of a new world +of air, of sunshine, and of darkness, and were not afraid. + +One was in a little special civilization for the time being, all the new +people in it sorted out from the old ones. One felt a vast +light-heartedness all about. One was in the presence of the picked +people who had come to see this first vast initiative of man toward +Space, toward the stars, the people who had waited for four thousand +years to see it; to see at last Little Man (as it would seem to God) in +this his first clumsy, beautiful childlike tottering up the sky. + +One was with the people on the planet who were the first to see the +practical, personal value, the market value, of all these huge idle +fields of air that go with planets. They were the first people to feel +identified with the air, to have courage for the air, the lovers of +initiative, the men and women that one felt might really get a new world +if they wanted one and who would know what to do with it when they got +it. + + * * * * * + +The other day in London near Charing Cross, as the crowds were streaming +down the Strand, a heavy box joggled off over the end of a dray, crashed +to the pavement, flew open and sent twenty-four hundred pennies rolling +under the feet of the men and of the women and of the boys along the +street. + +Traffic was stopped and a thousand men and women and boys began picking +the pennies up. They all crowded up around the dray and put the pennies +in the box. + +The next day the brewer to whom the pennies belonged had a letter in the +_Times_ saying that not one of the twenty-four hundred pennies was +missing. + +He closed his letter with a few moral remarks, announced that he had +sent the twenty-four hundred pennies as a kind of tribute to people--to +anybody Who Happened Along the Strand--to a Foundling Hospital. + + * * * * * + +The man who told me this (it was at a business men's dinner), told it +because he knew I was trying to believe pleasant things about human +nature. He thought he ought to encourage me. + +I will not record the conversation, I merely record my humble opinion. + +I think it would have been better to have had just a few of those +pennies in the Strand say seven or eight missing. + +On Broadway probably eleven or twelve out of twenty-four hundred would +have been missing--I hope. + +And I am not unhopeful about England, or about the Strand. + +There are two ways to get relief from this story. + +First, the brewer lied. There were fewer pennies stolen than he would +have thought, and when he figured it out and found just a few pennies +between him and a good story, he put the pennies in. And so the dear +little foundlings got them--the letter in the _Times_ said. They were +presented to them, as it were, by the Good Little Boys in the Strand. + +Second, somebody else put the pennies in, some person standing by with a +sense of humour, who knew the letters that people write to the _Times_ +and the kind, serious, grave way English people read them. He put the +pennies grimly in at one end, then he waited grimly for the letter in +the _Times_ to come out at the other. + +Either of these theories would work very well and let the crowd off. + +But if they are disproved to me, I have one more to fall back upon. + +If the story is true and not a soul in that memorable crowd on that +memorable day stole a penny, it was because they had all, as it happened +in that particular crowd, stolen their pennies before, and got over it. +It would seem a great pity if there had not been some one boy with +enough initiative in him, enough faculty for moral experiment, to try +stealing a penny just once, to see what it would be like. + +The same boy would have seen at once what it was like, tried feeling +ashamed of it promptly, and would never have had to bother to do it +again. He would have felt that penny burning in his pocket past cash +drawers, past banks, past bonds, until he became President of the United +States. + +At all events the last thing that I would be willing to believe is that +either America or England would be capable of producing a chance crowd +in the street that out of sheer laziness or moral thoughtlessness would +not be able to work up at least one boy in it who would have a sudden +flash of imagination about a penny rolling around a man's leg--if he +picked it up and--did not put it in the box. + +The crowd in the Strand, of course, like any other real crowd, was a +stew of development, a huge laboratory of people. All stages of +experience were in it. + +Some of the people in the crowd that day had a new refreshing thought, +when they saw those pennies rolling around everybody. They thought they +would try and see what stealing a penny was like. Then they did it. + +Others in the crowd thought of stealing a penny too, and then they had +still another thought. They thought of not stealing it. And this second +thought interested them more. + +Others did not think of stealing a penny at all because they had thought +of it so often before had got used to it and had got used to dismissing +it. + +Others thought of stealing a penny and then they thought how ashamed +they were of having thought of it. Others looked thoughtfully at the +pennies and thought they would wait for guineas. + +But whatever it was or may have been that was taking place in that crowd +that day--they all thought. + +And after all what is really important to a nation is that the people in +it--any chance crowd in a street in it should think. I confess I care +very little one way or the other about the pennies being saved, or about +the brewer's little touch of moral poetry, his idea that this particular +crowd was solid Sunday-school from one end to the other, all through. +Whether it was a crowd that thought of stealing a penny and did or did +not, if the pennies rolling around among their feet made them think, +made them experiment, played upon the initiative, the individuality or +invention in them, the personal self-control, the social responsibility +in them, it was a crowd to be proud of. And I am glad, for one, that the +box of pennies was dumped in the street. + +I would like to see shillings tried next time. + +Then guineas might be used. + +A box of guineas dumped in the street would do more good than a box of +pennies because there are many people who would think more with the +guineas rolling around out of sight around a man's legs than they would +with a penny's doing it. + +In this way a box of guineas would do more good. + + * * * * * + +Thousands of men and women that we have sent to India from this Western +World have been trying with Bibles, and good deeds, and kind faces, and +Sunday-schools to get the Hindoos to believe that it would not be a sin +to kill the rats and stop the bubonic plague. + +Nothing came of it. + +In due time General Booth-Tucker appeared on the scene. + +He came too, of course, with a Bible and with his kind face like the +others, and of course, too, he went to Sunday-school regularly. + +And while he was watching the bubonic plague sweeping up cities, he +tried too, like the others, to tell the people about a God who would not +be displeased if they killed the rats and stopped the plague. + +But he could not convince anybody, or at best a few here and there. + +The next thing that was known about General Booth-Tucker's work in India +was, that he had (still with his Bible, of course, and with his kind +look) slipped away and established in the south of France a factory for +the manufacture of gloves. + +He then returned to his poor superstitious people in India who would not +believe him, and told them that he knew and knew absolutely that they +would not be punished for killing the rats, that the rats were not +sacred, and that he could prove it. + +He offered the people so much apiece for the skins of the rats. + +The poorest and most desperate of the natives then began killing the +rats secretly and bringing in the skins. + +They waited for the wrath of Heaven to fall upon them. Nothing happened, +then they told others. The others are telling everybody. + +General Booth-Tucker's factory to-day in the south of France is very +busy making money for the Salvation Army, turning out Christian gloves +for the West and turning out Christians or the beginnings of Christians +for the East, and the ancient, obstinate theological idea of the +holiness of the rats which the Hindoos have had is being ceaselessly, +happily, and stupendously, all day and all night, disproved. + +Incidentally the little religious glove factory of General +Booth-Tucker's in the south of France is giving India the first serious +and fair chance it has ever had to stop being a pest house on the world, +and to bring the bubonic plague with its threat at a planet to an end. + +General Booth-Tucker's Bible was just like anybody else's Bible. But +there must have been something about the way he read his Bible that made +him think of things. And there must have been something about his kind +look. He looked kindly at something in particular, and he was determined +to make that something in particular do. He had the rats, and he had the +gloves, and he had the Hindoo's--and he made them do, and before he knew +it (I doubt if he knows it now) he became a saviour or inventor. + +In the big, desolate, darkened heart of a nation he had wedged in a God. + + * * * * * + +I wonder if General Booth-Tucker--that is, the original, very small +edition of General Booth-Tucker--had been in that memorable crowd, that +memorable day in the Strand when nobody (with a report that was heard +around the world) stole a penny--I wonder if General Booth-Tucker would +have been A Very Good Little Boy. + +One of the pennies might have been missing. + +I have no prejudice against the Very Good Little Boy. It is not his +goodness that is what is the matter with him. But I am very much afraid +that if there were any way of getting all the facts, it would not be +hard to prove categorically that what has been holding the world back +the last twenty-five years in its religious ideals, its business ethics, +its liberty, candour, its courage, and its skill in social engineering, +is the Very Good Little Boy. He may be comparatively harmless at first +and before his moustache is grown, but the moment he becomes a grown-up +or the moment he sits on committees with his quiet, careful, snug, +proper fear of experiment, of bold initiative, his disease of never +running a risk, his moral anaemia, he blocks all progress in churches, in +legislatures, in directors' meetings, in trades unions, in slums and +May-fairs. One sees The Good Little Boys weighing down everything the +moment they are grown up. + +They have all been brought up each with his one faint, polite little +hunger, his one ambition, his one pale downy desire in life, looking +forward day by day, year by year, to the fine frenzy, to the fierce joy +of Never Making a Mistake. + +If I had been given the appointment and were about to set to work +to-morrow morning to make a new world, I would begin by getting together +all the people in this one that I knew, or had noticed anywhere, who +seemed to have in them the spirit of experiment. Any boy or girl or man +or woman that I had seen having the curiosity to try the different kinds +and different sizes of right and wrong, or that I had seen boldly and +faithfully experimenting with the beautiful and the ugly so that they +really knew about them for themselves--would be let in. I would put +these people for a time in a place by themselves where the people who +want to keep them from trying or learning, could not get at them. + +Then I would let them try. + +I would put the humdrum people in another place by themselves and let +them humdrum, the respectable people by themselves and let them +respectabilize. + +Then after my try-world had tried, and got well started and the people +in it had finished off some things and knew what they wanted, I would +allow the humdrums and the respectabilities to be let in--to do what +they were told. + +Doing what they are told is what they like. So they would be happy. + +Of course doing what they are told is what is the matter with them. But +what is the matter with them would be useful. + +And everybody would be happy. + + * * * * * + +When the Titanic went down a little while ago and those few quiet men on +deck began their duty in that soft, gracious moonlit night, of sorting +out the people who should die from the people who should live--if one +was a woman one could live. If one was a man one could die. + +No one will quarrel with the division as the only possible or endurable +one that could have been made. + +But if God himself could have made the division or some super-man ship's +officer who could have represented God, could have made it, it is not +hard to believe that a less superficial, a more profound and human +difference between people would have been used in sorting out the people +who should live from the people who should die than a difference in +organs of reproduction. + +The women were saved first because the men were men and because it was +the way the men felt. It expressed the men who were on the deck that +night that the women should be saved first; it was the last chance they +had to express themselves like men and they wanted to do it. + +But if God himself could have made the division with the immediate and +conclusive knowledge of who everybody was, of what they really were in +their hearts, and of what they and their children and their children's +children would do for the world if they lived no one would have +quarrelled with God for making what would have seemed at the moment, no +doubt, very unreasonable and ungallant and impossible-looking +discriminations in sorting out the people who should live from the +people who should die. + +Possibly even Man (using the word with a capital), acting from the point +of view of history and of the race and from the point of view of making +a kind of world where _Titanic_ disasters could not happen, would have +chosen on the deck of the _Titanic_ that night, very much the way God +would. + +From the point of view of Man there would have been no discrimination in +favour of a woman because she was a woman. + +The last cry of the last man that the still listening life-boats heard +coming up out of the sea that night might have been the cry of the man +who had invented a ship that could not sink. + +There would not have been a woman in a life-boat or a woman sinking in +the sea who would not have had this man saved before a woman. + +If we could absolutely know all about the people, who are the people in +this world that we should want to have saved first, that we would want +to have taken to the life-boats and saved first at sea? + +The women who are with child. + +And the men who are about to have ideas. + +And the men who man the boats for them, who in God's name and in the +name of a world protect its women who are with child, and its men who +are about to have ideas. + +The world is different from the _Titanic_. We do not need to line up our +immortal fellow human beings, sort them out in a minute on a world and +say to them, "Go here and die!" "Go there and live!" We are able to +spend on a world at least an average of thirty-five years apiece on all +these immortal human beings we are with, in seeing what they are like, +in guessing on what they are for and on their relative value, and in +deciding where they belong and what a world can do with them. + +We ought to do better in saving people on a world. We have more time to +think. + +What would we try to do if we took the time to think? Would there be any +way of fixing upon an order for saving people on a world? What would be +the most noble, the most universal, the most Godlike and democratic +schedule for souls to be saved on--on a world? + +I think the man that would save the most other people should be saved +first. It would not be democratic to save an ordinary man, a man who +could just save himself, just think for himself, when saving the man +next to him instead would be saving a man who would save a thousand +ordinary men, or men who have gifts for thinking only of themselves. + +Of course one man who thinks merely of himself is as good as another man +who thinks merely of himself, but from the point of view of a democracy +every common man has an inalienable right--the right to have the man who +saves common men saved first. + +And the moment we get in this world, our first democracy, the moment the +common man really believes in democracy, this aristocracy or people who +save others (the common man himself will see to it) will be saved first. + +He will make mistakes in applying the principle of democracy, that is in +collecting his aristocracies, his strategic men, his linchpins of +society, but he will believe in the principle all through. It will be +not merely in his brain, but in his instincts, in his unconscious +hero-worship, in his sinews and his bones, and it will stir in his +blood, that some men should be saved before others. + +But if the world is not a _Titanic_, and if we have on the average +thirty-five years apiece to decide about men on a world and put them +where they belong, it might not be amiss to try to unite for the time +being on a few fundamental principles. What would seem to us to be a few +fundamental principles for the act of world-assimilation, that vast, +slow, unconscious crowd-process, that peristaltic action of society of +gathering up and stowing away men--all these little numberless cells of +humanity where they belong? + +No one cell can have much to say about it. But we can watch. + +And as we watch it seems to us that men may be said to be dividing +themselves roughly and flowingly at all times into three great streams +or classes. + +They are either Inventors, or they are Artists, or they are Hewers. + +Of course in classifying men it is necessary to bear in mind that their +getting out of their classifications is what the classifications are +for. + +And it is also necessary to bear in mind that men can only be classified +with regard to their emphasis and may belong in one class in regard to +one thing and in another class with regard to another, but in any +particular place, or at any particular time a man is doing a thing in +this world, he is probably for the time being, while he is doing it, +doing it as an Inventor (or genius), as an Artist (or organizer), or as +a Hewer. Most men, it must be said, settle down in their +classifications. They are very apt to decide for life whether they are +Inventors or Artists or Hewers. + +But as has been said before, being on a world and not on a _Titanic_, we +have time to think. + +On what principles could we make out a schedule or inventory of human +nature, and decide on world-values in men? + +When I was a boy I played in the hollow of a great butternut tree--the +one my mother was married under. When I was in college I used to go back +to it. I used to wonder a little that it was still there. When we had +all grown up we all came back and got together under it one happy day +and there it still stood, its great arms from out of the sky bent over +lovers and over children on its little island, its wide river singing +round it, still that glorious old hollow in it, full of dreams and +childhood and mystery, and that old sudden sunshine in it through the +knots like portholes ... then we stood there all of us together. And the +mother watched her daughter married under it. + +I can remember many days standing beneath it as a small boy (my small +insides full of butternuts, a thousand more butternuts up on the tree), +and I used to look up in its branches and wonder about it, wonder how it +could keep on so with its butternuts and with its leaves, with its +winters and with its summers, its cool shadows and sunshines, still +being a butternut tree, with that huge hollow in it. + +I have learned since that if a few ounces or whittlings of wood in a +tree are chipped out in a ring around it under the bark, cords of wood +in the limbs all up across the sky would die in a week--if one chips out +those few little ounces of wood. + +Cords of wood can be taken out of the inside of the tree and it will not +mind. + +It is that little half-inch rim of the tree where the juice runs up to +the sun that makes the tree alive or dead. + +The part that must be saved first and provided for first is that +slippery little shiny streak under the bark. + +One could dig out a huge brush-heap of roots and the tree would live. +One could pick off millions of leaves, could cut cords of branches out +of it, or one could make long hollows up to the sun, tubes to the sky +out of trees, and they would live, if one still managed to save those +little delicate pipe lines for Sap, running up and running down, day and +night, night and day, between the light in heaven and the darkness in +the ground. + +Perhaps Men are valuable in proportion as it would be difficult to +produce promptly other men to perform their functions, or to take their +places. + +If we cut away in society men of genius, leaves, and blossoms, in trees, +men who reach down Heaven to us, they grow out again. + +If we cut away in society great masses of roots, common men who hew out +the earth in the ground and get earth ready to be heaved up to the +sky--the roots grow out again. + +But if we cut a little faint rim around it of artists, of inventive +men-controllers, of the Sap-conductors, the men who make the Hewers run +up to the sky and who make the geniuses come down to the ground, the men +who run the tree together, who out of dark earth and bright sunshine +build it softly--if we destroy these, this little rim of great men or +men who save others, a totally new tree has to be begun. + +It is the essence of a democracy to acknowledge that some men for the +time being are more important in it than others, and that these men, +whosoever they are, in whatever order of society they may be--poor, +rich, famous, obscure--these men who think for others, who save others +and invent others, who make it possible for others to invent themselves, +these men shall be saved first. + + * * * * * + +One always thinks at first that one would like to make a diagram of +human nature. It would be neat and convenient. + +Then one discovers that no diagram one can make of human nature--unless +one makes what might be called a kind of squirming diagram will really +work. + +Then one tries to imagine what a flowing diagram would be like. + +Then it occurs to one, one has seen a flowing diagram. + +A Tree is a flowing diagram. + +So I am putting down on this page for what it may be worth, what I have +called A Family Tree of Folks. + +_Read across_: + +=INVENTORS= =ARTISTS= =HEWERS= + +Inventors Organizers Labourers + +Imagination Applied Imagination Tool or Mechanism + +Fecundity Control Activity + +Seer Poet Actor + + { The Man who Sees the } +The Man who Generalizes {General in the Particular} Action + +The Deeper Permanent {The Immediate Significance} Hewing +Significance { or Meaning } + +Light Applied Light or Heat Applied Heat or + Motion + +Stevenson and Wall James J. Hill Railway Hands + +Creating Creative Selecting Hewing + +The Democrat {The Aristocrat or} The Crowd + { Crowdman } + +Gods Heroes Men + +Centrifugal Power Equilibrium Centripetal Power + +The Whirl-Out People The Centre People The Whirl-In People + +Alexander Graham Bell Telephone-Vail Hands + +Architect Contractor Carpenter + +Genius Artist Workmen + +Columbus Columbus Isabella and the + sailors + +The Prospector The Engineer }Scoopers, Grabbers + }(in mind or body), + }Hewers + +David the poet David the king David the soldier + +Shakespeare Shakespeare Shakespeare + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + +THE MAN WHO PULLS THE WORLD TOGETHER + + +The typical mighty man or man of valour in our modern life is the +Organizer or Artist. + +If a man has succeeded in being a great organizer, it is because he has +succeeded in organizing himself. + +A man who has organized himself is a man who has built a personality. +The main fact about a man who has succeeded in being an organized man or +personality is, that he has ordered himself around. + +Naturally, when other people have to be ordered around, being +full-head-on in the habit of ordering, even ordering himself, the +hardest feat of all, he is the man who has to be picked out to order +other people. As a rule the man who orders himself around successfully, +who makes his whole nature or all parts of himself work together, does +it because he takes pains to find out who he is and what he is like. If +he orders other men successfully and makes them work together it is +because he knows what they are like. + +A man knows what other people are like and bow they feel by having times +of being a little like them and by being a big, latent all-possible, +all-round kind of man. + +Leadership follows. + +Modern business consists in getting Inventors' minds and Hewers' minds +to work together. The ruler of modern business is the man who by +experience or imagination is half an Inventor himself, and half a Hewer +himself. He knows how inventing feels and how hewing feels. + +He has a southern exposure toward Hewers and makes Hewers feel +identified with him. He has what might be called an eastern exposure +toward men of genius, understands the inventive temperament, has the +kind of personality that evokes inventiveness in others. + +Incidentally he has what might be called a northern exposure which keeps +him scientific, cool, and close to the spirit of facts. + +And there has to be something very like a western exposure in him too, a +touch of the homely seer, a habit of having reflections and afterglows, +a sense of principles, and of the philosophy of men and things. + +If I were to try to sum up all these qualities in a man and call it by +one name, I would call it Glorified-commonsense. + +If I were asked to define Glorified-commonsense I would say it is a +glory which works. It belongs to the man who has a vision or coinage for +others because he sees them as they are, and sees how the glory buried +in them (_i.e._, the inspiration or source of hard work in them) can be +got out. + +Everywhere that the Artist in business, or Organizer, with his Inventors +on one side of him and his Hewers on the other, can be seen to-day +competing with the man who has the mere millionaire or owning type of +mind, he is crowding him from the market. + +It is because he understands how Inventors and Hewers feel and what they +think and when he turns on Inventors he makes them invent and when he +turns on Hewers he makes them hew. + +The Hewer often thinks because he is rich or because he owns a business, +that he can take the place of the artist, but he can be seen every day +in every business around us, being passed relentlessly out of power +because he cannot make his Inventors invent and cannot make his Hewers +hew as well as some other man. The moment his Inventors and Hewers think +of him, hear about him, or have any dealing with him--with the mere +millionaire, the mere owner kind of person, his Inventors invent as +little as they can, and his Hewers hew as softly as they dare. + +This is called the Modern Industrial Problem. + +And no man but the artist, the man with the inventing and the hewing +spirit both in him, who daily puts the inventing spirit and the hewing +spirit together in himself, can get it together in others. + +Only the man who has kept and saved both the inventing and hewing spirit +in himself can save it in others--can be a saviour or artist. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + +THE MAN WHO STANDS BY + + +I have been trying to say in this book that goodness in daily life, or +in business, in common world-running or world housekeeping, is by an +implacable crowd-process working slowly out of the hands of the wrong +men into the hands of the right ones. + +If this is not true, I am ready to declare myself as a last resort, in +favour of a strike. + +There is only one strike that would be practical. + +I would declare for a strike of the saviours. + + * * * * * + +By a saviour I do not mean a man who stoops down to me and saves me. A +saviour to me is a man who stands by and lets me save myself. + +I am afraid we cannot expect much of men who can bear the idea of being +saved by other people, or by saviours who have a stooping feeling. + +I rejoice daily in the spirit of our modern laboring men, in that holy +defiance in their eyes, in the way they will not say "please" to their +employers and announce that they will save themselves. + +The only saviour who can do things for labouring men is the saviour who +proposes to do things with them, who stands by, who helps to keep +oppressors and stooping saviours off--who sees that they have a fair +chance and room to save themselves. + +I define a true saviour as a man who is trying to save himself. + +It was because Christ, Savonarola, and John Bunyan were all trying to +save themselves that it ever so much as occurred to them to save worlds. +Saving a world was the only way to do it. + +The Cross was Christ's final stand for his own companionableness, his +stand for being like other people, for having other people to share his +life with, his faith in others and his joy in the world. + +The world was saved incidentally when Christ died on the Cross. He +wanted to live more abundantly--and he had to have certain sorts of +people to live more abundantly with. He did not want to live unless he +could live more abundantly. + +We live in a world in which inventors want to die if they cannot invent +and in which Hewers want to die if they cannot hew. + +I am not proud. I am willing to be saved. Any saviour may save me if he +wants to, if his saving me is a part of his saving himself. + +If the inventor saves me and saves us all because he wants to be in a +world where an inventor can invent, wants some one to invent to; if the +artist saves me because it is part of his worship of God to have me +saved and wants to use me every day to rejoice about the world with--if +the Hewer comes over and hews out a place in the world for me because he +wants to hew, I am willing. + +All that I demand is, that if a man take the liberty of being a saviour +to me that he refrain from stooping, that he come up to me and save me +like a man, that he stand before me and tell me that here is something +that we, he and I, shoulder to shoulder, can do, something that neither +of us could do alone. Then he will fall to with me and I will fall to +with him, and we will do it. + +This is what I mean by a saviour. + + + + +CHAPTER XX + +THE STRIKE OF THE SAVIOURS + + +A factory in ---- some ten years ago employed one hundred men. Three of +these men were in the office and ninety-seven were hands in the works. +To-day this same factory which is doing a very much larger business is +still employing one hundred men, but thirty of the men are employed in +the office and seventy in the works. + +Ten years, ago to put it in other words, the factory provided places for +one artist or manager and two inventors and places for ninety-seven +Hewers. + +To-day the factory has made room for thirty inventors, one manager and +twenty-nine men who spend their entire time in thinking of things that +will help the Hewers hew. + +It has seventy Hewers who are helping the Inventors invent by hewing +three times as hard and three times as skilfully or three times as much +as without the Inventors to help them, they had dreamed they could hew +before. + +The Artist or Organizer who made this change in the factory found that +among the ninety-seven Hewers that were employed a number of Hewers were +hewing very poorly, because though hewing was the best they could do, +they could not even hew. He found certain others who were hewing poorly +because they were not Hewers, but Inventors. These he set to work--some +of them inventing in the office. + +On closer examination the two Inventors in the office were found to be +not Inventors at all. One of them was a fine Hewer who liked to hew and +who hated inventing and the other was merely a rich Hewer who was an +owner in the business who saw suddenly that he would have to stop +inventing and stop very soon if he wanted the business to make any more +money. + +There are four things that the Artist has to do with a factory like this +before he can make it efficient. + +Each of these things is an art. One art is the art of compelling the +mere owner, the man with the merely hewing mind, to confine himself to +the one thing he knows how to do, namely to shovelling, to shovelling +his money in when and where he was told it was needed, and to shovelling +his money out when it has been made for him. + +The art of compelling a mere owner to know his place, of keeping him +shovelling money in and shovelling money out silently and modestly, +consists as a rule in having the Artist or Organizer tell him that +unless the business is placed completely in his hands he will not +undertake to run it. + +This is the first art. The second art consists in having an +understanding with the inventors that they will invent ways of helping +the Hewers hew. + +The third art consists in having an understanding with the Hewers that +they will accept the help of the Inventors and hew with it. The fourth +art is the art of representing the consumer with the Hewer and with the +Inventor and with the Owner and seeing that he shares in the benefits of +all economies and improvements. + +These are all human arts and turn on the power in a man of being a true +artist, of being a man-inventor, a man-developer and a man-mixer, daily +taking part of himself and using these parts in putting other men +together. + +These organizers or artists, being the men who see how--are the men who +are not afraid. + + + + +CHAPTER XXI + +THE LEAGUE OF THE MEN WHO ARE NOT AFRAID + + +If all the unbrained money in the world to-day and the men that go with +it could be isolated, could be taken by men of imagination and put in a +few ships and sent off to an island in the sea--if New York and London +and all the other important places could be left in the hands of the men +who have imagination, poor and rich, they would soon have the world in +shape to make the men with merely owning minds, the mere owners off on +their island, beg to come back to it, to be allowed to have a share in +it on any terms. + +In order to be fair, of course, their island would have to be a +furnished island--mines, woods, and everything they could want. It would +become a kind of brute wilderness or desert in twenty-five years. We +could, now and then, some of us, take happy little trips, go out and +look them over on their little furnished island. It would do us good to +watch them--these men with merely owning or holding-on minds, really +noticing at last how unimportant they are. + +But it is not necessary to resort to a furnished island as a device, as +a mirror for making mere millionaires see themselves. + +This is a thing that could be done for millionaires now, most of them, +here just where they are. + +All that is necessary is to have the brains of the world so organized +that the millionaires who expect merely because they are millionaires to +be run after by brains, cannot get any brains to run after them. + +I am in favour of organizing the brains of the world into a trades +union. + +One of the next things that is going to happen is that the managing and +creating minds of the world to-day are going to organize, are going to +see suddenly their real power and use it. The brains are about to have, +as labour and capital already have, a class consciousness. + +I would not claim that there is going to be an international strike of +the brains of the world, but it will not be long before the managing +class as a class will be organized so that they can strike if they want +to. + +The Artists or Organizers and Managers of business will not need +probably, in order to accomplish their purpose, to strike against the +uncreative millionaires. They will make a stand (which the best of them +have already made now) for the balance of power in any business that +they furnish their brains to. The brains that create the profits for the +owners and that create the labour for the labourers, will make terms for +their brains and will withhold their brains if necessary to this end. +But it is far more likely that they will accomplish their purpose sooner +by using their brains for the millionaires and for the labourers--by +cooeperating with the millionaires and labourers than they will by +striking against them or keeping their brains back. + +They are in a position to make the millionaires see how little money +they can make without them even in a few days. They will let them try. A +very little trying will prove it. + +Where hand labour would have to strike for weeks and months to prove its +value, brain labour would have to strike hours and days. + +This is what is going to be done in modern business in one business at a +time, the brains insisting in each firm upon full control. + +Then, of course, the firms that have the brains in most full control +will drive the firms in which brains are in less control out of +competition. + +Then brains will spread from one business to another. The Managers, +Artists, and Organizers of the world will have formed at last a Brain +Syndicate, and they will put themselves in a position to determine in +their own interests and in the interests of society at large the terms +on which all men--all men who have no brains to put with their +money--shall be allowed to have the use of theirs. They will monopolize +the brain supply of the world. + +Then they will act. Under our present regime money hires men; under the +regime of the Brain Syndicate men will hire money. Money--_i.e._, saved +up or canned labour, is going to be hired by Managers, Organizers, and +Engineers with as much discrimination and with as deep a study of its +efficiency, as new labour is hired. The millionaires are going to be +seen standing with their money bags and their little hats in their hands +like office boys asking for positions for their money before the doors +of the really serious and important men, the men who toil out the ideas +and the ways and the means of carrying out ideas--the men who do the +real work of the world, who see things that they want and see how to get +them--the men of imagination, the inventors of ideas, organizers of +facts, generals and engineers in human nature. + +It is these men who are going to allow people who merely have +thoughtless labour and people who merely have thoughtless money to be +let in with them. The world's quarrel with the rich man is not his being +a rich man, but his being rich without brains, and its quarrel with the +poor labourer is not his being a poor labourer, but his being a poor +labourer without brains. The only way that either of these men can have +a chance to be of any value is in letting themselves be used by the man +who will supply them with what they lack. They will try to get this man +to see if he cannot think of some way of getting some good out of them +for themselves, and for others. + +We have a Frederick Taylor for furnishing brains to labour. + +We are going to have a Frederick Taylor to attend to the brain-supply of +millionaires, to idea-outfits for directors. + +Every big firm is going to have a large group of specialists working on +the problem of how to make millionaires--its own particular millionaires +think, devising ways of keeping idle and thoughtless capitalists out of +the way. If the experts fail in making millionaires think, they may be +succeeded by experts in getting rid of them and in finding thoughtful +money, possibly made up of many small sums, to take their place. + +The real question the Artist or Organizer is going to ask about any man +with capital will be, "Is it the man who is making the money valuable +and important or is it the money that is making this man important for +the time being and a little noticeable or important-looking?" + +The only really serious question we have to face about money to-day is +the unimportance of the men who have it. The Hewers or Scoopers, or +Grabbers, who have assumed the places of the Artist and the Inventor +because they have the money, are about to be crowded over to the silent, +modest back seats in directors' meetings. If they want their profits, +they must give up their votes. They are going to be snubbed. They are +going to beg to be noticed. The preferred stock or voting stock will be +kept entirely in the hands of the men of working imagination, of +clear-headedness about things that are not quite seen, the things that +constitute the true values in any business situation, the men who have +the sense of the way things work and of the way they will have to go. + +Mere millionaires who do not know their place in a great business will +be crowded into small ones. They will be confronted by the organized +refusal of men with brains to work for their inferiors, to be under +control of men of second-rate order. Men with mere owning and grabbing +minds will only be able to find men as stupid as they are to invest and +manage their money for them. In a really big creative business their +only chance will be cash and silence. They will be very glad at last to +get in on any terms, if the men of brains will let their money edge into +their business without votes and be carried along with it as a favour. + +It is because things are not like this now, that we have an industrial +problem. + +Managers who have already hired labour as a matter of course are going +to hire the kind of capital they like, the kind of capital that thinks +and that can work with thinking men. + +There will gradually evolve a general recognition in business on the +part of men who run it and on the part of managers, of the moral or +human value of money. The successful manager is no longer going to grab +thoughtlessly at any old, idle, foolish pot of money that may be offered +to him. He is going to study the man who goes with it, see how he will +vote and see whether he knows his place, whether he is a Hewer, for +instance, who thinks he is an Inventor. Does he or does he not know +which he is, an Inventor, an Artist, or a Hewer? + +Capitalists will expect as a matter of course to be looked over and to +be hired in a great business enterprise as carefully as labourers are +being hired now. + +The moment it is generally realized that the managers of every big +modern business have become as particular about letting in the right +kind of directors as they have been before about letting in the right +kind of labour, we will stop having an upside-down business world. + +An upside-down business world is one in which any man who has money +thinks he can be a director almost anywhere, a world in which on every +hand we find managers who are not touching the imagination of the public +and getting it to buy, and not touching the imagination of labour and +getting it to work, because they are not free to carry out their ideas +without submitting them to incompetent and scared owners. + +The incompetent and scared owners--the men who cannot think--are about +to be shut out. Then they will be compelled to hire incompetent and +scared managers. Then they will lose their money. Then the world will +slip out of their hands. + +The problem of modern industry is to be not the distribution of the +money supply, but the distribution of the man-supply. + +Money follows men. + +Free men. Free money. + + + + +BOOK FIVE + +GOOD NEWS AND HARD WORK + + +TO ANYBODY + + "_I know that all men ever born are also my brothers.... + Limitless leaves too, stiff or drooping in the fields, + And brown ants in the little wells beneath them + And mossy scabs of the worm fence, heaped stones, elders, + mulleins and poke weed._" + +_A Child said, "What is grass?" fetching it to me with full hands. + +How could I answer the Child?_ + + * * * * * + + _"I want to trust the sky and the grass! + I want to believe the songs I hear from the fenceposts! + Why should a maple-bud mislead me?"_ + + + + +PART ONE + +NEWS AND LABOUR + + +A big New England factory, not long ago, wanted to get nearer its raw +material and moved to Georgia. + +All the machine considerations, better water-power, cheaper labour, +smaller freight bills, and new markets had argued for moving to Georgia. + +Long rows of new mills were built and thousands of negroes were moved in +and thousands of shanties were put up, and the men and the women stood +between the wheels. And the wheels turned. + +There was not a thing that had not been thought of except the men and +women that stood between the wheels. + +The men and women that stood between the wheels were, for the most part, +strong and hearty persons and they never looked anxious or abused and +did as they were told. + +And when Saturday night came, crowds of them with their black faces, of +the men and of the women, of the boys and girls, might have been seen +filing out of the works with their week's wages. + +Monday morning a few of them dribbled back. There were enough who would +come to run three mills. All the others in the long row of mills were +silent. Tuesday morning, Number Four started up, Wednesday, Number Five. +By Thursday noon they were all going. + +The same thing happened the week after, and the week after, and the week +after that. + +The management tried everything they could think of with their people, +scolding, discharging, making their work harder, making their work +easier, paying them less, paying them more, two Baptist ministers and +even a little Roman Catholic Church. + +As long as the negroes saw enough to eat for three days, they would not +work. + +It began to look as if the mills would have to move back to +Massachusetts, where people looked anxious and where people felt poor, +got up at 5 A.M. Mondays and worked. + +Suddenly one day, the son of one of the owners, a very new-looking young +man who had never seen a business college, and who had run through +Harvard almost without looking at a book, and who really did not seem to +know or to care anything about anything--except folks--appeared on the +scene with orders from his father that he be set to work. + +The manager could not imagine what to do with him at first, but finally, +being a boy who made people like him more than they ought to, he found +himself placed in charge of the Company Store. The company owned the +village, and the Company Store, which had been treated as a mere +necessity in the lonely village, had been located, or rather dumped, at +the time, into a building with rows of little house-windows in it, a +kind of extra storehouse on the premises. + +The first thing the young man did was to stove four holes in the +building, all along the front and around the corners on the two sides, +and put in four big plate-glass windows. The store was mysteriously +closed up in front for a few days to do this, and no one could see what +was happening, and the negroes slunk around into a back room to buy +their meal and molasses. And finally one morning, one Sunday morning, +the store opened up bravely and flew open in front. + +The windows on the right contained three big purple hats with blue +feathers, and some pink parasols. + +The windows on the left were full of white waistcoats, silver-headed +canes, patent-leather shoes and other things to live up to. + +Monday morning more of the mills were running than usual. + +Later in the week there appeared in the windows melodions, phonographs, +big gilt family Bibles, bread machines, sewing machines, and Morris +chairs. Only a few hands took their Mondays off after this. + +All the mills began running all the week. + + * * * * * + +Of course there are better things to live for than purple hats and blue +feathers, and silver-headed canes, and patent leather shoes. But if +people can be got to live six days ahead, or thirty days, or sixty days +ahead, instead of three days ahead, by purple hats and blue feathers and +white waistcoats, and if it is necessary to use purple hats and blue +feathers to start people thinking in months instead of minutes, or to +budge them over to where they can have a touch of idealism or of +religion or of living beyond the moment, I say for one, with all my +heart, "God bless purple hats and blue feathers!" + + * * * * * + +The great problem of modern charity, the one society is largely occupied +with to-day, is: "What is there that we can possibly do for our +millionaires?" + +The next thing Society is going to do, perhaps, is to design and set up +purple hats with blue feathers for millionaires. + +The moment our millionaires have placed before them something to live +for, a few real, live, satisfying ideals, or splendid lasting things +they can do, things that everybody else would want to do, and that +everybody else would envy them for doing, it will bore them to run a +great business merely to make money. They will find it more interesting, +harder, and calling for greater genius, to be great and capable +employers. When our millionaires once begin to enter into competition +with one another in being the greatest and most successful employers of +labour on earth, our industrial wars will cease. + +Millionaires who get as much work out of their employees as they dare, +and pay them as little as they can, and who give the public as small +values as they dare, and take as much money as they can, only do such +stupid, humdrum, conventional things because they are bored, because +they cannot really think of anything to live for. + +Labourers whose daily, hourly occupation consists in seeing how much +less work a day than they ought to do, they can do, and how much more +money they can get out of their employers than they earn, only do such +things because they are tired or bored and discouraged, and because they +cannot think of anything that is truly big and fine and worth working +for. + +The industrial question is not an economic question. It is a question of +supplying a nation with ideals. It is a problem which only an American +National Ideal Supply Company could hope to handle. The very first +moment three or four purple hats with blue feathers for millionaires and +for labourers have been found and set up in the great show window of the +world, the industrial unrest of this century begins to end. + + * * * * * + +As I went by, one day not long ago, I saw two small boys playing +house--marking off rooms--sitting-rooms and bedrooms, with rows of +stones on the ground. When I came up they had just taken hold of a big +stone they wanted to lift over into line a little. They were tugging on +it hopefully and with very red faces, and it did not budge. I picked up +a small beam about five feet long on my side of the road, that I thought +would do for a crowbar, stepped over to the boys, fixed a fulcrum for +them, and went on with my walk. When I came back after my walk that +night to the place where the boys had been playing, I found the boys had +given up working on their house. And as I looked about, every big stone +for yards around--every one that was the right size--seemed subtly out +of place. The top of the stone wall, too, was very crooked. + +They had given up playing house and had played crowbar all day instead. + +I should think it would have been a rather wonderful day, those boys' +first day, seven or eight hours of it spent, with just a little time off +for luncheon, in seeing how a crowbar worked! + +I have forgotten just how much larger part of a ton one inch more on a +crowbar lifts. I never know figures very well. But I know people and I +know that a man with only three day's worth of things ahead to live for +does not get one hundredth part of the purchase power on what he is +doing that the man gets who works with thirty days ahead of things to +live for, all of them nerving him up, keeping him in training, and +inspiring him. And I know that the man who does his work with a longer +lever still, with thirty or forty years worth' of things he wants, all +crowding in upon him and backing him up, can lift things so easily, so +even jauntily, sometimes, that he seems to many of us sometimes to be a +new size and a new kind of man. + + * * * * * + +The general conventional idea of business is, that if you give a man +more wages to work for, he will work more, but of course if a business +man has the brains, knows how to fire up an employee, knows how to give +him something or suggest something in his life that will make him want +to live twenty times as much, it would not only be cheaper, but it would +work better than paying him twice as much wages. + +Efficiency is based on news. Put before a man's life twenty times as +much to live for and to work for, and he will do at least, well--twice +as much work. + +If a man has a big man's thing or object in view, he can do three times +as much work. If the little thing he has to do, and keep doing, is seen +daily by him as a part of a big thing, the power and drive of the big +thing is in it, the little thing becomes the big thing, seems big while +he is doing it every minute. It makes it easier to do it because it +seems big. + +The little man becomes a big man. + +From the plain, practical point of view, it is the idealist in +business, the shrewd, accurate, patient idealist in modern business who +is the man of economic sense. The employer who can put out ideals in +front of his people, who can make his people efficient with the least +expense, is the employer who has the most economic sense. + +The employer who is a master at supplying motives to people, who manages +to cut down through to the quick in his employees, to the daily motives, +to the hourly ideals, the hourly expectations with which they work, is +the employer who already takes the lead, who is already setting the pace +in the twentieth-century business world. + +Possibly you have noticed this trait in the great employers or, at +least, in the great managers of employers? + +You are going, for instance, through a confectionery shop. As you move +down the long aisles of candy machines you hear the clock strike eleven. +Suddenly music starts up all around you and before your eyes four +hundred girls swing off into each other's arms. They dance between their +machines five minutes, and then, demurely, they drop back to their work. +You see them sitting quietly in long white rows, folding up sweet-meats +with flushed and glowing cheeks. + +Is this sentiment or is it cold businesslike efficiency? + +The more sentiment there is in it, I think, the more efficient it is and +the better it works. + +"Business is not business." + +One need not quarrel about words, but certainly, whatever else business +is, it is not business. It would be closer to the facts to call business +an art or a religion, a kind of homely, inspired, applied piety, based +upon gifts in men which are essentially religious gifts; the power of +communion in the human heart, the genius for cultivating companionship, +of getting people to understand you and understand one another and do +team work. The bed-rock, the hard pan of business success lies in the +fundamental, daily conviction--the personal habit in a man of looking +upon business as a hard, accurate, closely studied, shrewd human art, a +science of mutual expectation. + +I am not saying that I would favour all employers of young women having +them, to-morrow morning at eleven o'clock, swing off into each other's +arms and dance for five minutes. The value of the dance in this +particular case was that the Firm thought of the dancing itself and was +always doing things like it, that everybody knew that the Firm, up in +its glass office, felt glad, joined in the dance in spirit, enjoyed +seeing the girls caught up for five minutes in the joy and swing of a +big happy world full of sunshine and music outside, full of buoyant and +gentle things, of ideals around them which belonged to them and of which +they and their lives were a part. + +When we admit that business success to-day turns or is beginning to turn +on a man's power of getting work out of people, we admit that a man's +power of getting work out of people, his business efficiency, turns on +his power of supplying his people with ideals. + +Ideals are news. + +You come on a man who thinks he is out of breath and that he cannot +possibly run. You happen to be able to tell him that some dynamite in +the quarry across the road is going to blow the side of the hill out in +forty-five seconds and he will run like a gazelle. + +You tell a man the news, the true news that his employees are literally +and honestly finding increased pay or promotion, either in their own +establishment or elsewhere for every man they employ, as fast as he +makes himself fit, and you have created a man three times his own size +before your own eyes, all in a minute. And he begins working for you +like a man three times his own size, and not because he is getting more +for it, but because he suddenly believes in you, suddenly believes in +the world and in the human race he belongs to. + +To make a man work, say something to him or do something to him which +will make him swing his hat for humanity, and give three cheers (like a +meeting of workmen the other day): "Three cheers for God!" + +There is a well-known firm in England which has the best labour of its +kind in the world, because the moment the Firm finds that a man's skill +has reached the uttermost point in his work, where it would be to the +Firm's immediate interests to keep him and where the Firm could keep on +making money out of him and where the man could not keep on growing, +they have a way of stepping up to such a man (and such things happen +every few days), and telling him that he ought to go elsewhere, finding +him a better place and sending him to it. This is a regular system and +highly organized. The factory is known or looked upon as a big family or +school. There are hundreds of young men and young women who, in order to +get in and get started, and merely be on the premises of such a factory, +would offer to work for the firm for nothing. The Factory, to them, is +like a great Gate on the World. + +It is its ideals that have made the factory a great gate on the World. + +And ideals are news. Ideals are news to a man about himself. News to a +man about himself and about what he can be, is gospel. + +And a factory with men at the top who have the brains about human nature +to do things like this, men who can tell people news about themselves, +all day, every day, all the week, like a church--let such a factory, I +say, for one, have a steeple with chimes in it, if it wants to, and be +counted with the other churches! + +People have a fashion of speaking of a man's ideals in a kind of weak, +pale way, as if ideals were clouds, done in water-colour by schoolgirls, +as if they were pretty, innocent things, instead of being fierce, +splendid, terrific energies, victorious, irrevocable in human history, +trampling the earth like unicorns, breathing wonder, deaths, births upon +the world, carrying everything before them, everywhere they go. These +are ideals! This may not be the way ideals work in a moment or in a +year, but it is the way they work in history, and it is the way they +make a man feel when he is working on them. It is what they are for, to +make him feel like this, when he is working on them. With the men who +are most alive and who live the longest, the men who live farther ahead +and think in longer periods of time, the energies in ideals function as +an everyday matter of course. + +I wish people would speak oftener of a man's motives, what he lives for, +as his motive powers. They generally speak of motives in a man as if +they were a mere kind of dead chart or spiritual geography in him, or +clock-hand on him or map of his soul. The motives and desires in a man +are the motors or engines in him, the central power house in a man, the +thing in him that makes him go. + +All a man has to do to live suddenly and unexpectedly a big life is to +have suddenly a big motive. + +Anybody who has ever tried, for five minutes, a big motive, ever tried +working a little happiness for other people into what he is doing for +himself, for instance, if he stopped to think about it and how it worked +and how happy it made him himself, would never do anything in any other +way all his life. It is the big motives that are efficient. + + + + +PART TWO + +NEWS AND MONEY + + +I think it was Sir William Lever who remarked (but I have heard in the +last two years so many pearls dropped from the lips of millionaires that +I am not quite sure) that the way to tell a millionaire, when one saw +one, was by his lack of ready money. He added that perhaps a surer way +of knowing a millionaire, when one saw one, was by his lack of ideas. + +My own experience is that neither of these ways works as well as it used +to. I very often meet a man now--a real live millionaire, no one would +think it of. + +One of them--one of the last ones--telegraphed me from down in the +country one morning, swung up to London on a quick train, cooped me up +with him at a little corner table in his hotel, and gave me more ideas +in two hours than I had had in a week. + +I came away very curious about him--whoever he was. + +Not many days afterward I found myself motoring up a long, slow hill, +full of wind and heather, and there in a stately park with all his +treetops around him, and his own blue sky, in a big, beautiful, serene +room, I saw him again. + +He began at once, "Do you think Christ would have approved of my house?" + +His five grown sons were sitting around him but he spoke vividly and +directly and like a child, and as if he had just brushed sixty years +away, and could, any time. + +I said I did not think it fair to Christ, two thousand years off, to ask +what he would have thought of a house like his, now. The only fair +thing to do would be to ask what Christ would think if He were living +here to-day. + +"Well, suppose He had motored over here with you this afternoon from +---- Manor, and spent last night with you there, and talked with you and +with ---- and had seen the pictures, and the great music room and +wandered through the gardens, and suppose that then He had come through +on his way up, all those two miles of slums down in ---- seen all those +poor, driven, crowded people, and had finally come up here with you to +this big, still, restful place two thousand people could live in, and +which I keep all to myself. You don't really mean to say, do you, that +He would approve of my living in a house like this?" + +I said that I did not think that Christ would be tipped over by a house +or lose his bearings with a human soul because he lived in a park. I +thought He would look him straight in the eyes. + +"But Christ said, 'He that loseth his life shall save it!'" + +"Yes, but He did not intend it as a mere remark about people's houses." + +It did not seem to me that Christ meant simply giving up to other people +easy and ordinary things like houses or like money, but that He meant +giving up to others our motives, giving up the deepest, hardest things +in us, our very selves to other people. + +"And so you really think that if Christ came and looked at this house +and looked at me in it, He would not mind?" + +"I do not know. I think that after He had looked at your house He would +go down and look at your factory, possibly. How many men do you employ?" + +"Sixteen hundred." + +"I think He would look at them, the sixteen hundred men, and then He +would move about a little. Very likely He would look at their wives and +the little children." + +He thought a moment. I could see that he was not as afraid of having +Christ see the factory as he was of having Him see the house. + +I was not quite sure but I thought there was a little faint gleam in his +eye when I mentioned the factory. + +"What do you make?" I asked. + +He named something that everybody knows. + +Then I remembered suddenly who he was. He was one of the men I had first +been told about in England, and the name had slipped from me. He had +managed to do and do together the three things one goes about looking +for everywhere in business--what might be called the Three R's of great +business (though not necessarily R's). (1) He had raised the wages of +his employees. (2) He had reduced prices to consumers. (3) He had +reduced his proportion of profit and raised the income of the works, by +inventing new classes of customers, and increasing the volume of the +business. + +He had found himself, one day, as most men do, sooner or later, with a +demand for wages that he could not pay. + +At first he told the men he could not pay them more, said that he would +have to close the works if he did. + +He was a very busy man to be confronted with a crisis like this. The +market was trouble enough. + +One morning, when he was up early, and the house was all still and he +was sitting alone with himself, the thought slipped into his mind that +there had been several times before in his life when he had sat thinking +about certain things that could not be done. And then he had got up from +thinking they could not be done and gone out and done them. + +He wondered if he could not get up and go out and do this one. + +As he sat in the stillness with a clear road before his mind and not a +soul in the world up, the thought occurred to him, with not a thing in +sight to stop it, that he had not really trained himself to be quite +such an expert in raising wages as he had in some other things. + +Perhaps he did not know about raising wages. + +Perhaps if he concentrated his imagination as much on getting higher +wages for his workmen as he had in those early days years before on +making over all his obstinate raw material into the best cases of ---- +on earth, he might find it possible to get more wages for his men by +persuading them to earn more and by getting their cooeperation in finding +ways to earn more. + +As he sat in the stillness, gradually (perhaps it was the stillness that +did it) the idea grew on him. + +He made up his mind to see what would happen if he worked as hard at +paying higher wages for three months as he had for three years at making +raw material into cases of the best----on earth. + +Then things began happening every day. One of the most important +happened to him. + +He found that higher wages were as interesting a thing to work on as any +other raw material had ever been. + +He found that a cheap workman as raw material to make a high-priced +workman out of was as interesting as a case of----. + +A year or so after this, there was a strike (in his particular industry) +of all the workmen in England. They struck to be paid the wages his men +were paid. + +He had been able to do three things he thought he thought he could not +do. He had succeeded in doing the first, in raising the wages of his +employees, by thinking up original ways of expressing himself to them, +and of getting them to believe in him and of making them want to work a +third harder. At the same time he succeeded in doing the second, in +reducing the prices to consumers, by inventing new by-products out of +waste. + +He had succeeded in doing the third, in reducing his per cent. of +profits and increasing his income from the works at the same time, by +thinking up ways of creating new habits and new needs in his customers. + +He had fulfilled, as it seems, the three requisites of a great business +career. He had created new workmen, invented new things for men and +women to want, and had then created some new men and women who could +want them. + +Incidentally all the while, day by day, while he was doing these things, +he had distributed a large and more or less unexpected sum of money +among all these three classes of people. + +Some of this extra money went to his workmen, and some to himself, and +some to his customers, but it was largely spent, of course, in getting +business for other manufacturers and in getting people to buy all over +England, from other manufacturers, things that such people as they had +never been able before to afford to buy. + + * * * * * + +All these things that I have been saying and which I have duly confided +to the reader flashed through my mind as I stood with my back to the +fire, realizing suddenly that the man who had done them was the man with +whom I was talking. + +Possibly some little thing was said. I do not remember what. The next +thing I knew was that, with his five grown sons around him, he returned +to his attack on his house. + +He said some days he was glad it was so far away. He did not want his +workmen to see it. He did not go to the mill often in his motor-car, not +when he could help it. + +I said that I thought that a man who was doing extraordinary things for +other people, things that other men could not get time or strength or +freedom or boldness of mind or initiative to do, that any particular +thing he could have that gave him any advantage or immunity for doing +the extraordinary things better, that would give him more of a chance to +give other people a chance, that the other people, if they were in their +senses, would insist upon his having these things. + +"I think there are hundreds of men in my mill who think that they ought +to have my motor-car and three or four rooms in this house." + +"Are they the most efficient ones?" + +"No." + +If a man gives over to other people his deepest motives, and if he +really identifies himself--the very inside of himself with them and +treats their interests as his interests, the more money he has, the more +people like it. + +"Take me, for instance," I said. + +"I have hoped every minute since I knew you, that you were a prosperous +man. I saw the house and looked around in the park as I motored up with +joy. And when I came to the big gate I wanted to give three cheers! I +wish you had stock in the Meat Trust in America, that you could pierce +your way like a microbe into the vitals, into the inside of the Meat +Trust in my own country, make a stand in a Directors' Meeting for ninety +million people over there, say your say for them, vote your stock for +them, say how you want a Meat Trust you belong to, to behave, how you +want it to be a big, serious, business institution and not a humdrum, +mechanical-minded hold-up anybody could think of--in charge of a few +uninteresting, inglorious men--men nobody really cares to know and that +nobody wants to be like ... when I think of what a man like you with +money can do ...! + +"Am I not tired every day, are you not tired, yourself, of going about +everywhere and seeing money in the hands of all these second-class, +socially feeble-minded men, of seeing columns in the papers of what such +men think, of having college presidents, great universities, domes, +churches and thousands of steeples all deferring to them and bowing to +them, and all the superior, live, interested people ringing their door +bells for their money waiting outside on benches for what they think?" + +I do not believe that Christ came into the world, two thousand years +ago, to say that only the men who have minds of the second class, men +who are not far-sighted enough in business to be decently unselfish in +this world, should be allowed to have control of the money and of the +peoples' means of living in it. + +We are living in an age of big machines and big, inevitable +aggregations, and to say in an age like this, and above all, to get it +out of a Bible, or put it into a hymn book or make a religion of it, +that all the first class minds of the world--the men who see far enough +to be unselfish, should give over their money to second-class men, is +the most monstrous, most unbelieving, unfaithful, unbiblical, +irreligious thing a world can be guilty of. The one thing that is now +the matter with money, is that the second-class people have most of it. + +"What would happen if we applied asceticism or a tired, discouraged +unbelief to having children that we do to having pounds and pence and +dollars and cents? You would not stand for that would you?" + +I looked at his five sons. + +"Suppose all the good families of to-day were to take the ground that +having children is a self-indulgence unworthy of good people; suppose +the good people leave having children in this world almost entirely to +bad ones? + +"This is what has been happening to money. + +"Unbelief in money is unbelief in the spirit. It is paying too much +attention to wealth to say that one must or that one must not have it." + +I cannot recall precisely what was said after this in that long evening +talk of ours but what I tried to say perhaps might have been something +like this: + +The essence of the New Testament seems to be the emphasis of a man's +spirit with or without money. Whether a man should be rich or get out of +being rich and earn the right to be poor (which some very true and big +men, artists and inventors in this world will always prefer) turns on a +man's temperament. If a man has a money genius and can so handle money +that he can make money, and if he can, at the same time, and all in one +bargain, express his own spirit, if he can free the spirits of other men +with money and express his religion in it, he should be ostracized by +all thoughtful, Christian people, if in the desperate crisis of an age +like this, he tries to get out of being rich. + +The one thing a man can be said to be for in this world, is to express +the goodness--the religion in him, in something, and if he is not the +kind of man who can express his religion in money and in employing +labour, then let him find something--say music or radium or painting in +which he can. It is this bounding off in a world, this making a bare +spot in life and saying "This is not God, this cannot be God!"--it is +this alone that is sacriligious. + + * * * * * + +It may be that I am merely speaking for myself, but I did discover a man +on Fleet Street the other day who quite agreed with me apparently, that +if the thing a man has in him is religion he can put it up or express it +in almost anything. + +This man had tried to express his idea in a window. + +He had done a Leonardo da Vinci's "Last Supper," in sugar--a kind of +bas-relief in sugar. + +I do not claim that this kind of foolish, helpless caricature of a great +spiritual truth filled me with a great reverence or that it does now. + +But it did make me think how things were. + +If sugar with this man, like money with a banker, was the one logical +thing the man had to express his religion in, or if what he had had to +express had been really true and fine, or if there had been a true or +fine or great man to express, I do not doubt sugar could have been made +to do it. + +One single man with enough money and enough religions skill in human +nature, who would get into the Sugar Trust with some good, fighting, +voting stock, who could make the Sugar Trust do as it would be done by, +would make over American industry in twenty years. + +He would have thrown up as on a high mountain, before all American men, +one great specimen, enviable business. He would have revealed as in a +kind of deep, sober apocalypse, American business to itself. He would +have revealed American business as a new national art form, as an +expression of the practical religion, the genius for real things, that +is our real modern temperament in America and the real modern +temperament in all the nations. + +Of course it may not need to be done precisely with the Sugar Trust. + +The Meat Trust might do it first, or the Steel Trust. + +But it will be done. + +Then the Golden Rule, one great Golden Rule-machine having been +installed in our trust that knew the most, and was most known, it could +be installed in the others. + +Religion can be expressed much better to-day in a stock-holder's meeting +than it can in a prayer-meeting. + +Charles Cabot, of Boston, walked in quietly to the Stock-holder's +Meeting of the Steel Trust one day and with a little touch of +money--$2,900 in one hand, and a copy of the _American Magazine_ in the +other, made (with $2,900) $1,468,000,000 do right. + + + + +PART THREE + +NEWS AND GOVERNMENT + + + + +CHAPTER I + +OXFORD STREET AND THE HOUSE OF COMMONS + + +Every now and then when I am in London (at the instigation of some +business man who takes the time off to belong to it), I drop into a +pleasant but other-worldly and absent-minded place called the House of +Commons. + +I sit in the windows in the smoking-room and watch the faces of the +members all about me and watch the steamships, strangely, softly, +suddenly--Shakespeare and Pepys, outside on the river, slip gravely by +under glass. + +Or I go in and sit down under the gallery, face to face with the +Speaker, looking across those profiles of world-makers in their seats; +and I watch and listen in the House itself. There is a kind of pleasant, +convenient, appropriate hush upon the world there. + +Wisdom. + +The decorous, orderly machinery of knowledge rolls over one--one listens +to It, to the soft clatter of the endless belt of words. + +Every now and then one sees a member in the middle of a speech, or +possibly in the middle of a sentence, slip up quietly and take a look +(under glass) at The People, or he uses a microscope, perhaps, or a +reading glass on The People, Mr. Bonar Law's, Mr. Lloyd George's, Ramsay +MacDonald's, Will Crook's, or somebody's. Then he comes back gravely as +if he had got the people attended to now, and finishes what he was +saying. + +It is a very queer feeling one has about the People in the House of +Commons. + +I mean the feeling of their being under glass; they all seem so +manageable, so quiet and so remote, a kind of glazed-over picture in +still life, of themselves. Every now and then, of course one takes a +member seriously when he steps up to the huge showcase of specimen +crowds, which members are always referring to in their speeches. But +nothing comes of it. + +The crowds seem very remote there under the glass. One feels like +smashing something--getting down to closer terms with them--one longs +for a Department Store or a bridge or a 'bus--something that rattles and +bangs and is. + +All the while outside the mighty street--that huge megaphone of the +crowd, goes shouting past. One wishes the House would notice it. But no +one does. There is always just the House Itself and that hush or ring of +silence around it, all England listening, all the little country papers +far away with their hands up to their ears and the great serious-minded +Dailies, and the witty Weeklies, the stately Monthlies, and Quarterlies +all acting as if it mattered.... + +Even during the coal strike nothing really happened in the House of +Commons. There was a sense of the great serious people, of the crowds on +Westminster Bridge surging softly through glass outside, but nothing got +in. Big Ben boomed down the river, across the pavements, over the +hurrying crowds and over all the men and the women, the real business +men and women. The only thing about the House that seemed to have +anything to do with anybody was Big Ben. + +Finally one goes up to Harrod's to get relief, or one takes a 'bus, or +one tries Trafalgar Square, or one sees if one can really get across the +Strand or one does something--almost anything to recall one's self to +real life. + +And then, of course, there is Oxford Street. + +Almost always after watching the English people express themselves or +straining to express themselves in the House of Commons, I try Oxford +Street. + +I know, of course, that as an art-form for expressing a great people, +Oxford Street is not all that it should be, but there is certainly +something, after all the mooniness and the dim droniness, and +lawyer-mindedness in the way the English people express themselves or +think that they ought to express themselves in their house of +Commons--there is certainly something that makes Oxford Street seem +suddenly a fine, free, candid way for a great people to talk! And there +is all the gusto, too, the 'busses, the taxies, the hundreds of +thousands of men and women saying things and buying things they believe. + +Taking in the shops on both sides or the street, and taking in the +things the people are doing behind the counters, and in the aisles, and +up in the office windows three blocks of Oxford Street really express +what the English people really want and what they really think and what +they believe and put up money on, more than three years of the house of +Commons. + +If I were an Englishman I would rather be elected to walk up and down +Oxford Street and read what I saw there than to be elected to a seat in +the House of Commons, and I could accomplish more and learn more for a +nation, with three blocks of Oxford Street, with what I could gather up +and read there, and with what I could resent and believe there, than I +could with three years of the House of Commons. + +I know that anybody, of course, could be elected to walk up and down +Oxford Street. But it is enough for me. + +So I almost always try it after the house of Commons. + +And when I have taken a little swing down Oxford Street and got the +House of Commons out of my system a little, perhaps I go down to the +Embankment, and drop into my club. + +Then I sit in the window and mull. + +If the English people express themselves and express what they want and +what they are bound to have, on Oxford Street and put their money down +for it, so much better than they do in the House of Commons, why should +they not do it there? + +Why should elaborate, roundabout, mysterious things like governments, +that have to be spoken of in whispers (and that express themselves +usually in a kind of lawyer-minded way, in picked and dried words like +wills), be looked upon so seriously, and be taken on the whole, as the +main reliance the people have, in a great nation, for expressing +themselves? + +Why should not a great people be allowed to say what they are like and +to say what they want and what they are bound to get, in the way Oxford +Street says things, in a few straight, clean-cut, ordinary words, in +long quiet rows of deeds, of buying and selling and acting? + +Pounds, shillings, and silence. + +Then on to the next thing. + +If the House of Commons were more like Oxford Street or even if it had +suddenly something of the tone of Oxford Street, if suddenly it were to +begin some fine morning to express England the way Oxford Street does, +would not one see, in less than three months, new kinds and new sizes of +men all over England, wanting to belong to it? + +Big, powerful, uncompromising, creative men who have no time for +twiddling, who never would have dreamed of being tucked away in the +house of Commons before, would want to belong to it. + +In the meantime, of course, the men of England who have empires to +express, are not unnaturally expressing them in more simple language +like foundries, soap factories around a world, tungsten mines, +department stores, banks, subways, railroads for seventy nations, and +ships on seven seas, Winnipeg trolleys and little New York skyscrapers. + +Business men of the more usual or humdrum kind could not do it, but +certainly, the first day that business men like these, of the first or +world-size class, once find the House of Commons a place they like to be +in, once begin expressing the genius of the English people in government +as they are already expressing the genius of the English people in +owning the earth, in buying and selling, in inventing things and in +inventing corporations, the House of Commons will cease to be a bog of +words, an abyss of committees, and legislation will begin to be run like +a railroad--on a block signal system, rows of things taken up, gone +over, and finished. The click of the signal. Then the next thing. + +I sit in my club and look out of the window and think. Just outside +thousands of taxies shooting all these little mighty wills of men across +my window, across London, across England, across the world ... the huge, +imperious street ... all these men hurling themselves about in it, +joining their wills on to telephone wires, to mighty trains and little +quiet country roads, hitching up cables to their wills, and +ships--hitching up the very clouds over the sea to their wills and +running a world--why are not men like these--men who have the +street-spirit in them, this motor genius of driving through to what they +want, taking seats in the House of Commons? + +Perhaps Oxford Street is more efficient and more characteristic in +expressing the genius and the will of the English people than the House +of Commons is because of the way in which the people select the men they +want to express them in Oxford Street. + +It may be that the men the people have selected to be at the top of the +nation's law-making are not selected by as skillful, painstaking, or +thorough a process as the men who have been selected to be placed at the +top of the nation's buying and selling. + +Possibly the reason the House of Commons does not express the will of +the people is, that its members are merely selected in a loose, vague +way and by merely counting noses. + +Possibly, too, the men who are selected by a true, honest, direct, +natural selection to be the leaders and to free the energies and steer +the work of the people, the men who are selected to lead by being seen +and lived with and worked with all day, every day, are better selected +men than men who having been voted on on slips of paper, and having been +seen in newspaper paragraphs, travel up to London and begin +thoughtlessly running a world. + +The business man drops into the House of Commons after the meeting of +his firm in Bond Street, Lombard Street, or Oxford Street and takes a +look at it. He sees before him a huge tool or piece of machinery--a body +of men intended to work together and to get certain grave, particular, +and important things done, that the people want done, and he does not +see how a great good-hearted chaos or welter, a kind of chance national +Weather of Human Nature like the House of Commons, can get the things +done. + +So he confines himself more and more to business where he loses less +time in wondering what other people think or if they think at all, cuts +out the work he sees, and does it. + +He thinks how it would be if things were turned around and if people +tried to get expressed in business in the loose way, the thoughtless +reverie of voting that they use in trying to get themselves expressed in +politics. + +He thinks the stockholders of the Sunlight Soap Company, Limited, would +be considerably alarmed to have the president and superintendent and +treasurer and the buyers and salesmen of the company elected at the +polls by the people in the county or by popular suffrage. He thinks that +thousands of the hands as well as the stockholders would be alarmed too. +It does not seem to him that anybody, poor or rich, employer or +employee, in matters of grave personal concern, would be willing to +trust his interest or would really expect the people, all the people as +a whole, to be represented or to get what they wanted, to act definitely +and efficiently through the vague generalizations of the polls. Perhaps +a natural selection, a dead-earnest rigorous, selection that men work +on nine hours a day, an implacable, unremitting process during working +hours, of sorting men out (which we call business), is the crowd's most +reliable way of registering what it definitely thinks about the men it +wants to represent it. Business is the crowd's, big, serious, daily +voting in pounds, shillings, and pence--its hour to hour, unceasing, +intimate, detailed labour in picking men out, in putting at the top the +men it can work with best, the men who most express it, who have the +most genius to serve crowds, to reveal to crowds their own minds, and +supply to them what they want. + +As full as it is--like all broad, honest expressions, of human +shortcomings and of things that are soon to be stopped, it does remain +to be said that business, in a huge, rough way, daily expressing the +crowds as far as they have got--the best in them and the worst in them, +is, after all, their most faithful and true record, their handwriting. +Business is the crowds' autograph--its huge, slow, clumsy signature upon +our world. + +Buying and selling is the life blood of the crowds' thought, its big, +brutal daily confiding to us of its view of human life. What do the +crowds, poor and rich, really believe about life? Property is the last +will and testament of Crowds. + +The man-sorting that goes on in distributing and producing property is +the Crowd's most unremitting, most normal, temperamental way of +determining and selecting its most efficient and valuable leaders--its +men who can express it, and who can act for it. + +This is the first reason I would give against letting the people rely on +having a House of Commons compel business men to be good. + +Men who meet now and again during the year, afternoons or evenings, who +have been picked out to be at the top of the nation's talking, by a +loose absent-minded and illogical paper-process, cannot expect to +control men who have been picked out to be at the top of a nation's +buying and selling, by a hard-working, closely fitting, logical +process--the men that all the people by everything they do, every day, +all day, have picked out to represent them. + +Any chance three blocks of Oxford Street could be relied on to do +better. + +Keeping the polls open once in so often, a few hours, and using hearsay +and little slips of paper--anybody dropping in--seems a rather fluttery +and uncertain way to pick out the representatives of the people, after +one has considered three blocks of Oxford Street. + +The next thing the crowd is going to do in getting what it wants from +business men is to deal directly with the business men themselves and +stop feeling, what many people feel partly from habit, perhaps, that the +only way the crowd can get to what it wants is to go way over or way +back or way around by Robin Hood's barn or the House of Commons. + +But there is a second reason: + +The trouble is not merely in the way men who sit in the House of Commons +are selected. The real deep-seated trouble with the men who sit in the +House of Commons is that they like it. The difficulty (as in the +American Congress too) seems to be something in the men themselves. It +lies in what might be called, for lack of a better name, perhaps, the +Hem and Haw or Parliament Temperament. + +The dominating type of man in all the world's legislative bodies, for +the time being, seems to be the considerer or reconsiderer, the man who +dotes on the little and tiddly sides of great problems. The greatness of +the problem furnishes, of course, the pleasant, pale glow, the happy +sense of importance to a man, and then there is all the jolly littleness +of the little things besides--the little things that a little man can +make look big by getting them in the way of big ones--a great nation +looking on and waiting.... For such a man there always seems to be a +certain coziness and hominess in a Legislative Body.... + +As a seat in the House of Commons not unnaturally--every year it is +hemmed or hawed in, gets farther and farther away from the people, it is +becoming more and more apparent to the people every year that the +Members of their House of Commons as a class are unlikely to do anything +of a very striking or important or lasting value in the way of getting +business men to be good. + +The more efficient and practical business men are coming to suspect that +the members of the House of Commons, speaking broadly, do not know the +will of the people, and that they could not express it in creative, +straightforward and affirmative laws if they did. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +OXFORD STREET HUMS. THE HOUSE HEMS + + +But it is not only because the members of the House of Commons are +selected in a vague way or because they are a vague kind of men, that +they fail to represent the people. + +The third reason against having a House of Commons try to compel +business men to be good, by law, is its out-of-the-way position. + +The out-of-the-way position that a Parliament occupies in getting +business men to be good, can be best considered, perhaps, by admitting +at the outset that a government really is one very real and genuine way +a great people may have of expressing themselves, of expressing what +they are like and what they want, and that business is another way. + +Then the question narrows down. Which way of expressing the people is +the one that expresses them the most to the point, and which expresses +them where their being expressed counts the most? + +The people have a Government. And the people have Business. + +What is a Government for? + +What is Business for? + +Business is the occupation of finding out and anticipating what the +wants of the English people really are and of finding out ways of +supplying them. + +The business men on Oxford Street hire twenty or thirty thousand men and +women, keep them at work eight or nine hours a day, five or six days in +a week, finding out what the things are that the English people want +and reporting on them and supplying them. + +They are naturally in a strategic position to find out, not only what +kinds of things the people want, but to find out, too, just how they +want the things placed before them, what kind of storekeepers and +manufacturers, salesmen and saleswomen they tolerate, like to deal with +and prefer to have prosper. + +And the business men are not only in the most strategic and competent +position to find out what the people who buy want, but to find out too, +what the people who sell want. They are in the best position to know, +and to know intimately, what the salesmen and saleswomen want and what +they want to be and what they want to do or not do. + +They are in a close and watchful position, too, with regard to the +conditions in the factories from which their goods come and with regard +to what the employers, stockholders, foremen and workmen in those +factories want. + +What is more to the point, these same business men, when they have once +found out just what it is the people want, are the only men who are in a +position, all in the same breath, without asking anybody and without +arguing with anybody, without meddling or convincing anybody--to get it +for them. + +Finding out what people want and getting it for them is what may be +called, controlling business. + +The question not unnaturally arises with all these business men and +their twenty or thirty thousand people working with them, eight or nine +hours a day, five or six days a week, in controlling business, why +should the members of the House of Commons expect, by taking a few +afternoons or evenings off for it, to control business for them? + +If I were an employee and if what I wanted to do was to improve the +conditions of labour in my own calling, I do not think I would want to +take the time to wait several months, probably, to convince my member of +Parliament, and then wait a few months more for him to convince the +other members of Parliament, and then vote his one vote. I would rather +deal directly with my employer. + +If my employer is on my back and if I can once get the attention of my +employer himself, as to where he is and as to how he is interrupting +what I am doing for him--if I once get his attention and once get him to +notice my back, he can get down. No one else can get down for him and no +one else, except by turning a whole nation all around, can make him get +down. Why should a man bother with T.P.'s _Weekly_ or with Horatio +Bottomley or with the _Daily Mail_ or the _Times_, with a score of other +people's by-elections all over England to lift his own employer off his +back? + +There is a very simple rule for it. + +The way to lift one's employer off one's back is to make one's back so +efficient that he cannot afford to be on it. + +The first thing I would do would be to see if I could not persuade my +employer to take steps to train me and to make me efficient, himself. +And perhaps the second thing I would try to do would be to wake my +trades union up, to get my trades union to consent to let me want to try +to be efficient and work as hard as I can, or to consent to my +employer's hiring engineers to make me efficient. I would try to get my +trades union to be interested in hiring itself some special expert like +Frederick Taylor, some specialist in making a man do three times as much +work with the same strength, making him three times as valuable for his +employer and three times as fit and strong for himself. + +This is what I would do if I wanted to make my employer good. I would be +so good that he could not afford not being good too. + +If I were an employer, on the other hand, and understood human nature, +and knew enough about psychology to found a great business house and +wanted to make my employee good, or make him work three times as hard +for me, with three times the normal strength, day by day, and have a +normal old age to look forward to, I do not think I would wait for the +House of Commons to butt in and pension him. It seems to me that I would +be in a position to do it more adequately, more rapidly, and do it with +more intimate knowledge of economy than the House of Commons could. And +I would not have to convince several hundred men, men from rural +counties, how I could improve my factory and get them to let me improve +it. I could do it quietly by myself. + +In any given industrial difficulty, there is and must be a vision for +every man, a vision either borrowed for him or made for him by some one +else, or a vision he has made for himself, that fits in just where he +is. In the last analysis our industrial success is going to lie in the +sense of Here, and Me, and Now, raised to the n-th power, in what might +be called a kind of larger syndicalism. + +The typical syndicalist, instead of saying, as he does to-day, "We will +take the factories out of our employers hands and run them ourselves," +is going to say, "We will make ourselves fit to run the factories +ourselves." + +What would please the employers more, give them a general, or national +confidence in trying to run business and improve the conditions of work +to-day, than to have their employees, suddenly, all over the nation, +begin doing their work so well that they would be fit to run the +factories? + +What is true of employers and employees in factories is still more true +of the employers and employees in the great retail stores. If there is +one thing rather than another the business men and women on Oxford +Street, the managers, floor walkers and clerks all up and down the +street are really engaged in all day all their lives, it is what might +be called a daily nine-hour drill in understanding people. Why should +employers and employees like these--experts in human nature--men who +make their profession a success by studying human nature, and by working +in it daily, call in a few drifting gentlemen from the House of Commons +and expect them to work out their human problems better than they can do +it? + +Employers and clerks in retail stores are the two sets of people in all +the world most competent to study together the working details of human +nature, to act for themselves in self-respecting man-fashion and without +whining at a nation. + +Who that they could hope to deal with and get what they want from, could +know more about human nature than they do? Are they not the men of all +others, all up and down that little strip of Oxford Street, who devote +their entire time to human nature? They are in the daily profession of +knowing the soonest and knowing the most about what people are like, and +about what people will probably think. They are intimate with their +peccadillos in what they want to wear and in what they want to eat; they +have learned their likes and dislikes in human nature; they know what +they will support and what they will defy in human nature, in clerks, +and in stores, and in storekeepers. + +And these things that they have learned about human nature (in +themselves and other people) they have learned not by talking about +human nature but by a grim daily doing things with it. + +These things being so, it would almost seem that these people and people +like them were qualified to act, and as they happen to be in the one +strategic position, both employers and employees alike, to act and to +act for themselves and act directly and act together, it will not be +very long, probably, before the nation will be very glad to have them do +it. + +It is likely to be seen very soon (at least by all skilled Labour and +all skilled Capital) that running out into the street and crying "Help!" +and calling in some third person to settle family difficulties that can +be better settled by being faced and thought out in private, is an +inefficient and incompetent thing to do. + +And for the most part it is going to be only in the more superficial, +inefficient, thoughtless industry that men, either employers or +employed, will be inclined to leave their daily work, run out wildly and +drag in a House of Commons to help them to do right. + +I am only speaking for myself but certainly if I were an employer or an +employee, I would not want to wait for an election a year away or to +wait for the great engineering problem of compelling my member of +Parliament by my one vote to act for me. + +Perhaps workingmen in England and America are deceived about the value +of voting as a means of improving conditions of workingmen. Possibly +women are deceived about the value of voting as a means of improving the +conditions of working women. + +Possibly a woman could do more behind a counter or by buying a store +than by voting to have some man she has read about in a paper, improve +business by talking about it in the House of Commons. + + * * * * * + +There is also a kind of program or vision of action one can use as a +customer as well as an employer or employee. + + +I might speak for myself. + +I have about so much money I spend every year in buying things. I have +proposed to study with my money every firm on which I spend it. I +propose to take away my trade from the firm that does the least as it +should and give it to the firm that does the most as it should. I will +vote with my entire income and with every penny I save for the kind of +employers I believe in and that I want, for the kind of employers who +can earn and deserve and enjoy and keep the kind of salesmen and +saleswomen I choose to do business with. + +All the year round, every firm with which I deal, I am going to study +not only with my mind but with my money. I will proceed to take my +trade away from the big employers who think that I want shoddy goods or +who think that I want or am willing to trade with saleswomen who would +let an employer impose on them, saleswomen that he thinks he can afford +to impose upon. I will proceed to vote with my money, with every penny I +have in the world, and I will earn more that I may vote more, for the +kind of employer with whom I like to trade. And there shall not be a +man, woman, or child of my acquaintance, if I can help it, or of my +family's acquaintance who shall not know who these employers are by name +and by address, the employers that I will trade with and the employers +that I will not. + +This is my idea as a customer, as a member of the public, of the way for +a people to express itself and to get what it wants. + +What I want may be said to be a kind of news, news about me so far as I +go, as one member of the public. As I am only one person every item of +the news about me must be put where it works. I will deal directly with +the news of what I want and I will convey that news, not to the House of +Commons but to the men who have what I want and who can give it to me +when they know it. + +News is the real government now and always of this world. + +When one has made up one's mind to tell this news, obviously the best +art-form for telling news to employers and business men--the news of +what we want and what we do not want and of what we want in them as well +as in the things they sell, is to tell them the news in the language +they have studied most, tell it to them in pounds, shillings, dollars, +and cents, and by trading somewhere else. + +The gospel-bearing value, the news that one can get into a man's mind +with one dollar, the news that he can be made to see and act on for one +dollar--well, thinking of this some days, makes for me, at least, going +up and down the Main Street of the World feeling my purse snuggling in +my pocket, and all the people I can step up to with my purse and tell +so many dollars' worth of news to, tell that dollar's worth of gospel to +about the world--makes going up and down with a dollar on a big business +street, and spending it or not spending it, feel like a kind of chronic, +easy, happy, going to Church. One always has a little money in one's +pocket that one spends or that one won't spend, and sometimes even not +spending a dollar, practised by some people, at just the right moment +and in just the right way, can be made to mean as much and do as much +with a world as spending a thousand dollars would without any meaning +put into it. + +Sometimes I even go into a store on purpose, a certain kind of store I +know will try to cheat me in a certain way, let them look a minute at +the dollar they cannot have. Then I walk out with it quietly. + +I have said that the life-blood of my convictions shall circulate in my +money and if I cannot express my soul, my religion, my gospel or news +for this world, news about what I want and about what I will have in a +world, if I cannot make every dollar, every shilling I earn, go through +the world and sing my own little world-song in it, may I never have +another shilling or earn another dollar as long as I live! + +The very sight of a dollar now whenever I see one once more, fills me +with deep, hopeful working joy, thinking of what a bargain it is and how +I can use it twice over, thinking of the dollar's worth of news, to say +nothing of the dollar's worth of things that belong with a dollar! + + * * * * * + +For some generations, now, we have tried to make people good in a vague, +general way, by using priests, sacraments and confessional boxes. For +some centuries we have been trying to make people good with lawyers and +juries and ballot boxes. We are now to try, at last, religion or gospel +or news or ideals--practical, shrewd aimed ideals, that is, news to a +man about himself or news about the man from the man himself to us. In +everything a man does he is expressing to us this news about himself, +and about his world, and about his God. We are all telling news about +the world and about ourselves all the time and we are all in a position +for news all the time. + +What is it from hour to hour and day to day that we will do and we will +not do? + +This news about us is the religion in us. + +The average man is coming to have very accurate ideas of late as to just +where his religion is located. He has come to see that real religion in +a man, very conveniently located (immediately at hand in him and +personally directed), is his own action, his own divine "I will" or "I +won't." + +He has come to be deeply attracted by this idea of a religion for every +man just where he is, fitted on patiently, cheerfully, to just where he +is, every day all day, his glorious, still, practical, good-natured, +godlike "I will" and "I won't "--or News about himself. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +PRESIDENT WILSON AND MOSES + + +We are deeply interested in the United States just now, in seeing what +will be the fate of President Wilson's government in getting men to be +good. The fate of a government in 1913 may be said to stand on the +government's psychology or knowledge of human nature or of what might be +called human engineering, its mastery of the principles of lifting over +in great masses heavy spiritual bodies, like people, swinging great +masses of people's minds over as on some huge national derrick up on The +White House, from one lookout on life to another. + +There are certain aspects of human nature when power is being applied to +it in this way, and when it is being got to be good, that may not be +beside the point. + +If one could drop in on a government and have a little neighbourly chat +with it, as one was going by, I think I would rather talk with it +(especially our government, just now), about Human Nature than about +anything. + +I would have to do it, of course, in what might seem to a government to +be a plain and homely way. + +I would ask the government what it thought of two or three observations +I have come to lately about the way that human nature works, when people +are getting it to be good. What a government thinks about them might +possibly prove before many months to be quite important to It. + +The first observation is this: + +The reason that the average bachelor is a bachelor is that he spends the +first forty-five years of his life in picking out women he will not +marry. + +Possibly it is because many people are following the same principle in +trying to be good and in getting other people to be good that they make +such poor work of it. + +Possibly the main reason why there are so many wicked people or seem to +be, in proportion, among the Hebrews in the Old Testament, is that Moses +was a lawyer and that he tried to start off a great people with the Ten +Commandments, that is, a list of nine things they must never do any +more, and of one that they must. + +Some of us who have tried being good, have noticed that when we have hit +it off, being good (at least with us) consists in being focused, in +getting concentrated, in getting one's attention to what one really +wants to do. + +Moses' idea when he started his government, the idea of getting people +concentrated on not getting concentrated on nine things, was not +conducive to goodness. The fundamental principle Moses tried to make the +people good with was a contradiction in terms. It is a principle that +would make wicked people out of almost anybody. It is not a practicable +principle for a government to rely on in getting people to be good. It +did not work with the people in the Old Testament and it has never +worked with people since. + +It does not call people out, in getting them to take up goodness, to +point out to them nine places not to take hold of and one where they +will be allowed to take hold, if they know how. + +All that one has to do to see how true this is, is to observe the groups +or classes of people who are especially not what they should be. The +people who never get on morally (as different as they may be in most +things and in the fields of their activity) all have one illusion in +common. There is one thing they always keep saying when any new hopeful +person tries once more to get them to be good. + +They say (almost as if they had a phonograph) that they try to be good +and cannot do it. + +And this is not true. + +When a man says he tries to be good and cannot do it, if he sits down +and thinks it over he finds, generally, he is not trying to be good at +all. He is trying to be not bad. + +A man cannot get himself reformed, by a negative process, by being not +bad, and it is still harder for him and for everybody, when other people +try to do it--those who are near him, and it is still, still harder for +a President down in Washington to do it. + +An intelligent, live man or business corporation cannot be got to keep +up an interest very long in being not bad. Being not bad is a glittering +generality. It is like being not extravagant or economical. + +Most people who have ever tried to attain in a respectable degree to a +pale little neuter virtue like economy, and who have reflected upon +their experiences, have come to conclusions that may not be very far +from the point in a fine art like getting one's self to be good or +getting other people to be good. + +To concentrate on being economical by going grimly down the street, +looking at the shop windows, looking hard at miles of things one will +not buy, cannot be said to be a practicable method of attaining economy. + +The real artist, in getting himself to be good, proceeds to upon the +opposite principle. Even if the good thing he tries for is merely a +negative good thing like economy, he instinctively seeks out some +positive way of getting it. + +A man who is cultivating the art of getting himself to be economical, or +of getting his wife to be economical, does not make a start by sitting +down with a pencil and making out a list, by concentrating his mind on +rows of things that he and his family must get along without. He knows a +better way. He goes downtown with his entire family, takes them into a +big shop and sits down with them and listens to a Steinway Grand he +cannot get. As he listens to it long enough, he thinks he will get it. + +Then a subtle, spiritual change passes over him and over his family +while they listen. He would not have said before he started that sitting +down and thinking of things he could get along without--making lists in +his mind of things that he must not have--could ever be in this world a +happy, even an almost thrilling experience. But as a matter of fact, as +he sits by the piano and listens, he finds himself counting off +economies like strings of pearls, and he greets each new self-sacrifice +he can think of with a cheer. While the Steinway Grand fills the room +with melody all around him, there he actually is sitting, and having the +time of his life dreaming of the things he can get along without! + +When he goes home, he goes home thinking. And the family all go home +thinking. + +Then economy sets in. The reason most people make a failure of their +economy is that they are not artistic with it, they do not enjoy it. +They do not pick out anything to enjoy their economy with. + +With some people an automobile would work better than a Steinway Grand +and there are as many ways, of course, of practising the Steinway Grand +principle in not being bad as there are people, but they all consist +apparently in selecting some big, positive thing that one wants to do, +which logically includes and bundles all together where they are +attended to in a lump, all the things that one ought not to do. + +Most sins (every one who has ever tried them knows this) most sins are +not really worth bothering with, each in detail, even the not-doing them +and the most practical, firm method of getting them out of the way +(thousands of them at once, sometimes, with one hand) is to have +something so big to live for that all the things that would like to get +in the way, and would like to look important, look, when one thinks of +it, suddenly small. + +The distinctive, preeminent, official business for the next four years, +of making small things in this country look small and of gently, +quietly making small men feel small, has been assigned by our people +recently, to Mr. Woodrow Wilson. + +Now it naturally seems to some of us, the best way for Mr. Wilson's +government to do in getting the Trusts to give up lying and stealing, is +going to be to place before them quietly a few really big, interesting, +equally exciting things that Trusts can do, and then dare them, as in +some great game or tournament of skill--all the people looking on--dare +them, challenge them like great men, to do them. + +There are three ideas President Wilson may have of the government's +getting people to be good. + +First, not letting people be bad. (Moses.) + +Second, being good for them. (Karl Marx.) + +Third, letting them be good themselves. (Any Democrat.) + +The first of these ideas means government by Prison. The second, means +government by Usurpation, that is, the moment a man amounts to enough to +choose to do right or do wrong of his own free will, the moment he is a +man, in other words, being so afraid of him and of his being a man, that +we all, in a kind of panic, shove into his life and live it for +him--this is Socialism, a scared machine that scared people have +invented for not letting people choose to do right because they may +choose to do wrong. + +The third, letting people be good themselves, letting them be +self-controlling, self-respecting, self-expressing or voluntarily good +people, is democracy, a machine for letting men be men by trying it. + +Moses was the inventor of a kind of national moral-brake system, a +machine for stopping people nine times out of ten. The question that +faces President Wilson just now, while the world looks on is, "Is a +government or is it not a moral-brake system--a machine for stopping +people nine times out of ten?" + +There is a considerable resemblance between Moses' position and the new +President's in the United States. When Moses looked around on the things +he saw the men around him doing, and took the ground that at least nine +out of ten of the things should be stopped, he was academically correct. +And so, also, President Wilson, gazing at the business of this country +to-day, at nine out of ten of the humdrum thoughtless things that trusts +and corporations have been doing, will be academically correct in +telling them to stop, in having his little, new, helpless, unproved, +adolescent government stand up before all the people and speak in loud, +beautiful, clear accents and (with its left fist full of prisons, fines, +lawyers, of forty-eight legislatures all talking at once) bring down its +right fist as a kind of gavel on the world and say to these men, before +all the nations, that nine of the things they are doing must be stopped +and that one of the things, if they happen to able be to think out some +way of keeping on doing it--nobody will hurt them. + +But the question before President Wilson, to-day, with all our world +looking on, is not whether he would be right in entering upon a career +of stopping people. The real and serious question is, does stopping +people stop them? And if stopping people does not stop them, what will? + +Perhaps the way for a government to stop people from doing things they +are doing, is to tell them the things it wants done. A government that +does not express what it wants, that has not given a masterful, clear, +inspired statement of what it wants--a government that has only tried to +say what it does not want, is not a government. + +The next business of a government is a statement of what it wants. + +The problem of a government is essentially a problem of statement. + +How shall this statement be made? + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +THE PRESIDENT SAYS YES AND NO + + +It was not merely because the seventh commandment was negative, but +because it was abstract that David found it so hard to keep. If the +seventh commandment (like Uriah's wife) could have had deep blue eyes or +could have been beautiful to look upon, and, on a particular day in a +particular place, could have been bathing in a garden, David would have +found keeping it a very different matter. The tendency to make a statue +of purity as a lovely female figure carries us a little further in moral +evolution, than the moral statement that Moses had managed to get, and +it was further toward the concrete, but it was not far enough for a real +artist or man who does things. + +One of the things about the real artist that makes him an artist, is +that he is always and always has been and always will be profoundly +dissatisfied with a statue of a female figure as an emblem of purity. He +challenges the world, he challenges God, he challenges himself, he +challenges the men and women about him when he is being put off with a +Statue as an emblem of purity. He demands, searches out, interprets, +creates something concrete and living to express his idea of purity. + +How can President Wilson, in getting the Trusts not to be corrupt, in +trying to win them--how can President Wilson make the law alluring? How +can he make the People have a Low Voice? + +A great deal if not nearly everything depends in tempting business men +to be good, upon the tone in which they are addressed. Every government, +like every man, soon comes to have its own characteristic tone in +addressing the people. And, as a matter of fact, it is almost always the +tone in a government, like the voice in a man, which tells us the most +definitely what it is like, and is the most intimate and effective +expression of what it wants and is the most practical way of getting +what it wants. Everybody has noticed that a man's voice works harder for +him, works more to the point for him in getting what he wants than his +words do. It is his voice that makes people know him, that makes them +know he means what he says. It is his voice that tells them whether he +is in the habit of meaning what he says, and it is his voice that tells +them whether he is in habit of getting what he wants, and of knowing +what to do with what he wants when he gets it. + +A government does not need to say very much if it has the right tone. + +The tone of a government is the government. + +If President Wilson is going to succeed in tempting business men to be +good, he is going to do it, some of us think, by depending on three +principles. + +These three principles, like all live, active principles, may be stated +as three principles or as three personal traits. + +First, by being affirmative. (Isaiah, in distinction from Moses.) + +Second, by being concrete. (Bathsheba.) + +Third, by being specific, by seeing the universal in the particular. +(Like any artist or man who does things.) + +The value of being affirmative and the value of being concrete have +already been touched upon. There remains the value of being specific. + +Possibly, in this present happy hour, when our country has grown +suddenly sensible and has become practical enough to pick out at last, +once more, a President with a real serious working sense of humour, even +a sense of humour about himself, it may not be considered disrespectful +if I continue a little longer dropping in on the Government, and saying +what I have to say in a few plain and homely words. + +The trouble with most people in being economical with their money is, +that when they spend it, they spend it on something in particular, and +when they save it, they try to save it in a kind of general way. The +same principle applies to doing right. It is because when people do +right, they do it in a kind of general pleasant, abstract way, and when +they do wrong they always do something in particular, that they are so +Wicked. + +A man will do almost anything to save his life at a particular place and +at a particular time, say at ten o'clock to-morrow morning, if he is +drowning, but if he has a year to save it in, a year of controlling his +appetites, of daily, detailed mastering of his spirit, of not taking a +piece of mince pie, of stopping his work in time and of going to bed +early, he will die. + +It is easier when one is going under water for the third time and sees a +rope, to stretch just one inch more and grasp the rope, reach up to +forty more years of one's life, all concentrated for one on the tip of a +rope, than it is to spread out saving one's life over a whole year, 365 +breakfasts, 365 luncheons, 365 dinners, 33,365 moments of anger, of +reckless worry, of remorse, of self-pity, 40,000 of despair and round up +with a swing at the end of one's year at the tiptop of one's being, as +if it had only taken five minutes. And yet it is only an act of the +creative imagination of seeing the whole, of having a happy, daily, +detailed spectacle of the end in view, that is, of the part in its +setting of the whole--going without a piece of mince pie. If one could +only make one's self see the piece of mince pie as it is, it would not +be difficult. If one could see it on the plate there and see the not +taking it as a little wedge-shaped rivet, a little triangular link of +coupling in the chain that keeps one holding on forty years longer to +this planet, a piece of mince pie left on a plate would become a Vision. + +This seems to be the principle that works best in getting other people +to be good. + +Perhaps the President will succeed in getting Trusts to be good, by +taking hold of specific Trusts, one by one, and setting them--all +mankind looking on--in the nation's vision, setting them even in their +own vision--taking the Trusts that thought they had got what they +wanted, making them stand up and look (in some great public lighted +place) at what pathetic, tragical failures they are, letting them see +that what their Trust had wanted all along, if it had only thought about +it, was not success one went to jail for--success by getting the best +out of the most people, but success by serving the most people the best. + +A great many of us in America have been exercising our minds for a long +time now about the eagerness of the Trusts, and the trouble we were +going to have in curbing the eagerness of the Trusts. + +Sometimes I have wondered if, after all, it was our minds we were +exercising, for when one sits down seriously to think of it, it is the +eagerness of the Trusts that is the most hopeful thing about them. + +What is the matter with our American Trusts, perhaps, is not and never +has been, their eagerness, but their eagerness for things that they did +not want, and for things that almost everybody is coming to see that +they did not want. + +The moment that the eagerness of our American Trusts is an eagerness for +things that they really want, the Trusts will be seen piling over each +other's heels, asking the government to please investigate them. The +more they can get the people to know about them and about their +eagerness, the more the people will trust them and deal with them. + +All that we have been waiting for is a government that sees the part +from the point of view of the whole, which will take up a few specific +Trusts and be specific enough with them to make them think, think hard +what they really want, and what their real eagerness is about, and the +entire face of modern business will change. First the expression will +change and then the face itself. + +The moment it is found that the government is a specific government, +all the trusts that know what they really want and know what they really +are doing, will want to be investigated, because they will want +everybody to know that they know. In case of the trusts that do not know +what they want and that do not know what they are doing, the government +will just step in, of course, and investigate them until they find out. + +A specific government will not need to be specific many times. + +It takes up a particular Trust in its hand, turns it over quietly, +empties its contents out before the people and says to everybody, "This +particular Trust you see here has tried to be a kind of Trust, which it +found out afterward, it did not want to be. It is the kind of Trust +whose officers hide their faces when they think of what it was that they +thought that they thought that they wanted.... + +"These men you see here, forty silent nations looking on, hundreds and +thousands of self-respecting, self-supporting, public-serving, creative, +successful business men, whom all the world envies looking on, do hereby +beg to declare to all business men who know them and to the people, that +they did not ever really want these things for themselves that their +business says or seems to say they wanted. + +"They wish to ask the public to put themselves in their places and to +refuse to believe that they deliberately sat down, seriously thought it +all out, that they had planned to express to everybody what their +natures really were in a blind, brutal, foolish business like this which +we have just been showing you. They beg to have it believed that their +business misrepresents them, that it misrepresents what they want, and +they ask to be again admitted to the good-will, the hope and +forgiveness, the companionship of a great people. + +"They declare" (the government will go on) "that they are not the men +they seem. They are merely men in a hurry. They want it understood that +they have merely hurried so fast and hurried so long that they now wake +up at last only to see, see with this terrific plainness what it really +is that has been happening to them all their lives, _viz._: for forty, +fifty, or sixty years they have merely forgot who they were and +overlooked what they were like. + +"In hurrying, too, it is only fair to say they have had to use machines +to hurry with and unconsciously, year by year, associating almost +exclusively with machines, their machines (pump handles, trip-hammers, +hydraulic drills, steam shovels and cranes and cash registers) have +grown into them. + +"This is the way it has happened. 'Let the nation be merciful to them,' +the government will then say, and dismiss the subject." + + * * * * * + +What our President seems to be for in America, is to do up a nation in +one specific, particular man who expresses everybody. + +This man deals with each other specific man, his aggressions and +services, as a nation would if a nation could be one specific man. + +The President of the United States is the Comptroller of the people's +vision, by seeing a part and dealing with a part as a part of a whole, +he governs the people. + +He is the Chancellor of the People's Attention. + +The business of being a President is the business of focusing the +vision, of flooding the whole desire or will of a people around a man +and letting him have the light of it, to see what he is doing by, and to +be seen by, while he is doing it. + +The corporations have expressed or focused the employers of labour. The +Labour Unions have focused or expressed the will of the labourers, and +the government focuses and expresses the will of the consumers, of the +people as a whole, rich and poor, so that Labour and Capital, both +listen to It, understand It and act on It. + +The way to deal with a specific sin is to flood it around with the +general vision. Then it does not need to be dealt with. Then strangely, +softly, and almost before we know--out there in the Light, it +automatically deals with itself. + +When the Government takes hold quietly of the National Cash Register +Company, turns it up, empties its contents out,--all its methods and its +motives--and all the things It thought It wanted, and then proceeds to +put its president and twenty-nine of its officers into jail, my readers +will perhaps point out to me that this action of the government as a +method of tempting people to be good, while it may have the virtue of +being concrete and the virtue of being specific, certainly does not have +the other virtue that I have laid down, the virtue of being affirmative. +"Certainly" they will say "there is not anything affirmative about +putting twenty-nine big business men in jail." Many people would call it +the most magnificently negative thing a President could have done. Moses +himself would have done it. + +It does not seem to me that Moses would have done it, or that it was +essentially negative. It could not unfairly be claimed that in spite of +its negative look on the surface, it was the most massive, significant, +crushing affirmation that a great people has made for years. + +By putting the twenty-nine officers of the National Cash Register +Company in jail, the American people affirmed around the world the +nation's championship of the men that had been defeated in the +competition with the National Cash Register Company. They affirmed that +these men who were not afraid of the National Cash Register Company +because they were bigger, and who stood up to them and fought them, were +the kind of men Americans wanted to be like, and that the officers of +the National Cash Register Company were the kind of men Americans did +not want to be like, would not do business with, would not tolerate, +would not envy, would not live on the same continent with, unless they +were kept in jail. + +The President of the United States, sitting in Washington, at the head +of this vast affirmative and assertive continent, indicted the Cash +Register Company, that is, by a slight pointed negative action, by +pushing back a button he turned on the great chandelier of a nation and +flooded a nation with light. We, the American people, suddenly, all in a +flash, looked into each other's faces and knew what we were like. + +We had hoped we believed in human nature, and in brave men and in men +against machines but we could not prove it. + +Suddenly, we stood in a blaze of truth about ourselves. Suddenly, we +could again look with our old stir of joy at our national Flag. If we +liked, we could swing our hats. + +Perhaps I should speak for myself, but I had been trying to get this +news for years. It is news I have wanted to live with and do business +with. I have been trying to get my question answered. What are the +American people really like? + +The President points at the National Cash Register Company and I find +out. All the people find out. + +In the last analysis, the masterful, shrewd, practical, and constructive +part of being a President of the United States--the thing in the +business of being a President that keeps the position from being a +position which only the second rate or No type of man would have time to +take, is the fact that the President is the Head Advertising Manager of +the United States, conducting a huge advertising campaign of what +Americans really want. + +He takes up the National Cash Register Company, picks out its +twenty-nine officers, makes it a bill board sky-high across the country. +"Here are the kind of business men that the people of the United States +do not want, and here are the kind of men that we do!" + +The thing that makes indicting a trust a positive and affirmative act is +the advertising in it. + +Gladstone once wrote a postcard about a little book of Marie +Bashkirtseff's. + +Twenty nations read the little book. + +Every now and then one watches a man or sees a truth that would make a +nation. One wishes one had some way of being the sort of person or +being in the kind of place where one could make a nation out of it. + +One thinks it would be passing wonderful to be President of the United +States. It would be like having a great bell up over the world that one +could reach up to and ring! But it is better than that. One touches a +button at one's desk if one is President of the United States, a nation +looks up. He whispers to twenty thousand newspapers, "Take your eyes +away a minute," he says, "from Jack Johnson and Miss Elkin's engagement, +and look, oh, look, ye People, here is a man in this world like this! He +has been in the world all this while without our suspecting it. Did you +know there was or could be anywhere a man like THIS? And here is a man +like this! Which do you prefer? Which are you really like?" + +There is nothing really regal or imperial in a man, nothing that makes a +man feel suddenly like a whole Roman Empire all by himself, in 1913, +like saying "Look! Look!" + +Sometimes I think about it. Of course I could take a great reel of paper +and sit down with my fountain pen, say Look for a mile, "Look! look! +look! look!!!--President Wilson says it once and without exclamation +points. Skyscrapers listen to him! Great cities rise and lift themselves +and smite the world. And the faint, sleepy little villages stir in their +dreams." + +Moses said, "Thou shalt not!" President Wilson says, "Look!" + +Perhaps if Moses had had twenty thousand newspapers like twenty thousand +field-glasses that he could hand out every morning and lend to people to +look through--he would not have had to say, "Thou shalt not." + +The precise measure of the governing power a man can get out of the +position of being President of the United States to-day is the amount of +advertising for the people, of the people, and by the people he can +crowd every morning, every week, into the papers of the country. + +A President becomes a great President in proportion as he acts +authoritatively, tactfully, economically, and persistently as the Head +Advertising Manager of the ideals of the people. He is the great +central, official editor of what the people are trying to find out--of a +nation's news about itself. + +By his being the President of what people think, by his dictating the +subjects the people shall take up, by his sorting out the men whom the +people shall notice, this great ceaseless Meeting of ninety million men +we call the United States--comes to order. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +THE PRESIDENT SAYS "LOOK!" + + +Our American President, if one merely reads what the Constitution says +about him, is a rather weak-looking character. + +The founders of the country did not intend him to be anybody in +particular--if it could be helped. They were discouraged about allowing +governments to be efficient. Not very much that was constructive to do +was handed over to him. And the most important power they thought it +would do for him to have was the veto or power to say "No." + +Possibly if our fathers had believed in liberty more they would have +allowed more people to have some; or if they had believed in democracy +more, or trusted the people more, they would have thought it would do to +let them have leaders, but they had just got away. They felt timid about +human nature and decided that the less constructive the government was +and the less chance the government had to be concrete, to interpret a +people, to make opportunities and turn out events, the better. + +Looked at at first sight no more elaborate, impenetrable, water-tight +arrangement for keeping a government from letting in an idea or ever +having one of its own or ever doing anything for anybody, could have +been conceived than the Constitution of the United States, as the +average President interprets it. + +Each branch of the government is arranged carefully to keep any other +branch from doing anything, and then the people, every four years, look +the whole country over for some new man they think will probably leave +them alone more than anybody--and put him in for President. + +Looking at it narrowly and by itself, all that a President selected like +this could ever expect in America to put in his time on, would seem to +be--being the country's most importantly helpless man--the man who has +been given the honour of being a somewhat more prominent failure in +America than any one else would be allowed to be. + +He stops people for four years. Other people stop him for four years. +Then with a long happy sigh, at the end of his term, he slips back into +real life and begins to do things. + +This has been the more or less sedately disguised career of the typical +American President. Merely reading the Constitution or the lives of the +Presidents, without looking at what has been happening to the habits of +the people in the last few years, we might all be asking to-day, "What +is there that is really constructive that President Wilson can do?" What +is there that is going to prevent him, with all that moral earnestness +dammed up in him, that sense of duty, that Presbyterian sense of other +people's duties--what is there that is going to prevent him, with his +school-book habits, his ideals, his volumes of American history, from +being a teachery or preachery person--a kind of Schoolmaster or Official +Clergyman to Business? + +News. + +The one really important and imperative thing to the people of this +country to-day is News. In spite of newspapers, authors, College +presidents, Bank presidents, Socialist agitators, Bill Heywoods, and +Trusts, the people are bound to get this news, and any man who is so +placed by his prominence that he can scoop up the news of a country, +hammer its news together into events the papers will report, express +news in the laws, build news into men who can make laws and unmake laws, +any man who is so placed that directly or indirectly he takes news, +forces it in by hydraulic pressure where people see it doing things, who +takes news and crowds it into courts, crowds news into lawyers and into +legislatures, pries some of it even into newspapers, can have, the +ordinary American says to-day, as much leeway in this government as he +likes. + +The ordinary American has never been able to understand the objection +important people have--that nearly everybody has (except ordinary +people) to news--especially editors and publishers. + +It is an old story. Every one must have noticed it. One set of people in +this world, always from the beginning, trying to climb up on the +housetops to tell news, and another set of people hurrying up always and +saying, "Hush, Hush!" Some days it seems, when I read the papers, that I +hear half the world saying under its breath, a vast, stentorian, "Shoo! +shoo! SHSH! SHSH!" + +Then I realize I live in an editor's world. I am expected to be in the +world that editors have decided on the whole to let me be in. + +Of course I did not know what to do at first when this came over me. + +I naturally began to try to think of some way of cutting across lots, of +climbing up to News. + +I looked at all the neat little park paths, with all those artistic +curves of truth on them the editors have laid out for me and for all of +us. Then I looked at the world and asked myself, "Who are the men in +this world, if any, who are able to walk on the Grass, who cut across +the little park paths when they like?" + +And as fate would have it (it was during the Roosevelt administration), +the first two men I came on who seemed to be stamping about in the +newspapers quite a little as they liked were the Prime Minister of +England and the President of the United States. + +Just how much governing can a President do? + +How many columns a day is he good for, how many acres of attention every +morning in the papers of the country--all these white fields of +attention, these acres of other people's thoughts, can he cover? + +How many sticks a day can he make compositors set up of what he thinks? + +How many square miles of the people's thoughts can he spread out at +breakfast tables, lift up in a thousand thousand trolleys before their +faces? + +I have seen the white fields of attention filled with the footprints of +his thoughts, of his will, of his desires! + +I have seen that the President is the Editor of that vast, anonymous, +silent newspaper, written all the night, written all the day, and softly +published across a country--the newspaper of people's thoughts. + +I have seen the vision of the forests he has cast down, ground into +headlines, into editorials, into news. Mountains and hills are laid bare +to say what he thinks. Thousands of presses throb softly and the white +reels of wood pulp fly into speech. Thousands of miles of paper wet with +the thoughts of a people roll dimly under ground in the night. + +The President is saying Look! in the night! + +The newsboys hasten out in the dawn. They cry in the streets! + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +THE PEOPLE SAY "WHO ARE YOU?" + + +If news is governing, how does the President do his governing? + +By being News, himself. + +By using his appointing power and putting other men who are News +Themselves, news about American human nature--where all the people will +see it. + +By telling the people directly (when he feels especially asked) news +about what is happening in his mind--news about what he believes. + +By telling the people sometimes (as candidly as he can without giving +the people's enemies a chance to stop him), what he is going to do next, +sketching out in order of time, and in order of importance, his program +of issues. + +By telling the people news about their best business men, the business +men and inventors who, in their daily business, free the energies, +unshackle the minds and emancipate the genius of the people. + +By telling these business men news about the people--and interpreting +the people to them. + + * * * * * + +It is by being news to the people himself that all the other news a +President can get into his government counts. + +A man is a man according to the amount of news there is in him. + +There are twenty personal traits in a President which of themselves +would all be national news of the first importance if he had them. The +bare fact that a President could have certain traits at all and still +get to be a President in this country, would be news. + +One of the most important facts about news is that while it can be +distributed by machines, machines cannot make it, and as a rule they do +not understand it. Important and critical news is almost always fresh +and made by hand the first time. Most of the popular news as to what is +practical in American polities for the last forty years has been +produced by political machines, and of course men who were a good deal +like machines were the best men to finish the ideas off and to carry +them out. + +As a result of course, all the really big leaders for the last forty +years, our most powerful and interesting personalities have been shut +out from being President of the United States. The White House was +merely being run as machinery and did not interest them. They watched it +grinding its ideas faithfully out from year to year of what America was +like and what American politicians were like, and finally at last in the +clatter of the machines there rings out suddenly across the land a shot +that no machinery had allowed for. Before any one knows almost there +slips suddenly by the side door into the White House a really +interesting man, and suddenly, all in one minute, almost, this man makes +being President of the United States the most interesting lively and +athletic feat in the country. And now, apparently that the idea has been +worked out in public before everybody, by hand, as it were, that a man +can be alive and interesting all over, can have at least a little touch +of news about him and still be a President in this country, another man +with some news in him has been allowed to us and suddenly politics +throughout all America has become a totally new revealing profession, +and men, instead of being selected because they were blurred +personalities, the ghosts of compromises, would-be everybodies--men who +had not decided who they were, and who could not settle down and let +people know which of their characters they had hit on at last to be +really theirs, men who had no cutting edge to do things, screw-drivers +trying to be chisels--were revealed to our people at last as vague, +mean, other-worldly persons, not fitting into our real American world at +all, and hopelessly visionary and impracticable in American politics. + +And now one more hand-made man has been allowed to us. + +The machines run very still in the White House. + +The people of this country no longer go by the White House on their way +to their business and just hear it humdrumming and humdrumming behind +the windows as of yore. The nation stands in crowds around the gates and +would like to see in. The people wonder. They wonder a million columns a +day what is inside. + +What is inside? + +An American who governs by being news, himself. + +The first thing that the people demand from our President now is that he +shall be news himself. The news that they have selected to know first +during the next four years--have put into the White House to know first +is Woodrow Wilson. + +"Who are you, Woodrow Wilson, in God's name?" the steeples and smoking +chimneys, the bells and whistles, the Yales and Harvards, and the little +country schools, the crowds in the streets, and the corn in the fields +all say, "Who Are You?" + +Then the people listen. They listen to his "I wills" and "I won'ts" for +news about him. They look for news about him in the headlines he steers +into the papers every morning, in the events he makes happen, in the +editorials he makes men think of, in the men he calls up and puts on the +National Wire--in all these, slowly, daily, hourly they drink up their +long, patient, hopeful answer to their question, "Who Are You, Woodrow +Wilson?" + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +THE PEOPLE SAY "WHO ARE WE?" + + +But if the President governs first by being news himself, he governs +second by his appointments, by gathering about him other men who are +news to people, too. + +One need not divide people into good and bad, because the true line of +division between good and bad instead of being between one man and +another, is apt to be as a matter of fact and experience cut down +through the middle of each of us. + +But for the purposes of public action and decision and getting good +things done, this line does seem to be cut farther over in the middle of +some of us, than it is in others. Taking a life-average in any moral or +social engineering feat, in any correct calculation of structural +strain, how far over this line cuts through in a man, has to be reckoned +with. + +The president by appointing certain men to office, saying "I will" and +"I won't" to certain types of men, in saying who shall be studied by the +people, who shall be read as documents of our national life, puts, if +not the most important, at least the most lively and telling news about +his administration into print. + +We watch our President acting for us, telling us news about what we are +like, sorting men out around him the way ninety million people would +sort them out if they were there to do it. + +The President's appointments may be said to be in a way the breath of +the nation. + +A nation has to breathe, and the plain fact seems to be that certain +kinds of people have to be breathed out of a nation and other kinds of +people have to be breathed in. The way a President appoints men to +office is his way of letting a nation breathe. + +With all his attractive qualities, perhaps it is because Mr. Taft did +not quite let the nation breathe, and suffocated it a little that there +came such an outbreak at the end. Perhaps it is because Mr. Taft looked +at Mr. Ballinger and then looked at Mr. Pinchot, all the people of the +country all the while looking on, and said, "Ballinger is the kind of +man our people prefer, and Pinchot is not," that the people broke out so +amazingly, so incredibly, and decided by such an enormous majority that +a man who could pick out men for them like this would not do--as things +are just now anyway--for a President of the United States. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +NEWS ABOUT US TO THE PRESIDENT + + +A nation wakes up every morning and for one minute before it runs to its +work it says to its President, "HERE WE ARE!" + +The best a President can do in the way of a plain, everyday +acknowledgment of the presence of the people is News. + +The news that the people are demanding from the President to-day is +intensely personal. It is a kind of rough, butting, good-natured +familiarity a great people has with its President, a little heedless, +relentless, like some splendid Child, ready to forgive and expecting to +be forgiven, it jostles in upon him daily, "Here we are! What are you +believing this morning? Did you believe in us yesterday? Did you act as +if you believed in us? Did you get anybody to believe in us? Who are the +men you say are like us? What are they like this morning? + +"We have asked a hundred times; we can only ask it once more. How do you +think you are turning out yourself, Mr. President? Are you what you +thought you would be? Do you think it is a good time for us to decide +this morning what you are really like? And, after all, Mr. President--if +you please--who _are_ you? And once more, Mr. President, in God's name, +_who are we?_" + +This is always the gist of what it says, "Who are we?" + +It is the people's main point, after all, asking a President who they +are, wondering if he can interpret them. + +Then he shuts his door and thinks, or he calls his Cabinet and thinks. + +Rows of little-great men file by all day. They stand each a few minutes +with his little Speck or Dot of the People in his hands, and they say, +"This is the People." + +He listens. + +It is very hard to be always President of the People when one is +listening and the little-great go by. + +One has to go back a little, in the night perhaps, or when one is quite +alone. He sees again the Child; it is what he is in the White House for, +he remembers, to express this dumb giant, this mighty Child, half weary, +half glad, standing there by day by night, saying, "Who are we?" One +would think it would be hard to be glib with the Child. + +Sometimes it is so deep and silent! + +Once when It broke in on Lincoln in this way and said, "_Who are we?_" +he prayed. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +NEWS-MEN + + +It seems very difficult to get news through as to who we really are to a +President. When I look about me and see what the President's ways are of +telling news about himself to us, I see that he is not without his +advantages. But when I look about to see what conveniences we have as a +people for telling our President news about us, I note some curious +things. The fears of the American people, the fears and threats of +labour and capital are organized and expressed, but their faiths, their +wills, the things in them that make them go and that make them American, +are not organized and are not expressed. + +The labour unions are afraid and say, "We will not work," to their +employers, "You cannot make us work." The President hears this. It is +about all they say. + +The capitalists and employers are afraid and they say, "We will not +pay," "You cannot make us pay." + +Shall the President act as if these men represent Labor and Capital? + +We say, "No." + +Neither of these groups of men express real live American labour or real +live characteristic American money. + +American money is free, bold, manful, generous and courageous to a +fault. American money swings out in mighty enterprises, shrewdly +believing things, imperiously singing things out of its way. + +A singing people want a singing government. How is our President going +to hear our labour and our money sing? + +Pinchot expressed us, not Ballinger. + +Mr. Pinchot is no mere uplifter or missionary. He is an artist in +expressing America to a President. If we have a President who will not +listen to a man like Pinchot, let us try a President that will. + +Pinchot--an American millionaire with a fortune made out of forests, who +is spending the fortune in protecting the forests for the nation, is the +kind of American Americans like to set up before a President to say what +Americans are like. Millions of men stand by Pinchot. We like the way he +makes money sing. + +Tom L. Johnson--an American millionaire who made his money in the +ordinary humdrum way, by getting valuable street railway franchises out +of a city for nothing--has the courage to turn around, spend his fortune +and spend it all, in keeping other people from doing it. + +America presents Tom L. Johnson to a President with its compliments and +says, "This is what America is like." + +It may not look always as if Tom L. Johnson were America--America in +miniature. But millions of us say he is. He makes money sing. + +We want a President--millions of us want him--and this is the most +important news about us, who expects money in this country to sing. + +We want our money and expect our money in this country to stop saying +mean things about us, things that make us ashamed to look a true +newspaper in the face, or one another in the face, and that humiliate us +before the world. + + * * * * * + +And now I have come to an awkward place in this book where I hope the +reader will help me all he can. + +There is nothing to do but to let out the real truth and face the music. +The fact is, Gentle Reader--perhaps you have suspected it all +along--that if it had not been for fear of mixing my book all up with +him and making it a kind of arena or tournament instead of a book, I +would have mentioned ex-President Roosevelt before this. He has been +getting in or nearly getting in to nearly every chapter so far, but of +course I knew, as any one would, that he would spoil all the calm +equipoise, the quiet onward flowing of the Stream of Thought, and with +one chapter after the other, with each as the crisis came up, though I +scarcely know how, I have managed to keep him out. And now, oh, Gentle +Reader, here he is! I know very well that he is in everything, and right +in the middle of everything, and that in a kind of splendid mixed happy +uproarious way, there somehow has to be a great to-do the moment he +appears. The beautiful clear water, the lucid depth of Thought--will all +become (ah, I know it too well, Gentle Reader) all thunder and spray and +underneath the mighty grinding of the wheels--the wheels of the Nation +and the Mowing Machine of Time, and in the background--in the red +background of the Dawn, there will be the face of Theodore--just the +face of Theodore in this book shining at us--readers and writer and +all--out of a huge rosy mist! + +But I have been driven to it. The fact seems to be that I must find at +just this point in the book, if I can, a word. And the word will have to +be a word, too, that everybody knows, and that conveys a lively sense to +everybody the moment it is used--of a certain tone or quality, or hum or +murmur of being. No one regrets this more than I, because it is so +unwieldy and inconvenient and always bulges out in a sentence or a book +or a nation more than it was meant to, but the word ROOSEVELT, R O O S E +V E L T, happens to be the word that people in this country, and very +largely in other nations, and in all languages have chosen and are using +every day to express to one another a certain American quality or tone +now abroad in our world--a certain hum, as one might say, or whirr of +goodness. + +This particular hum, or whirr of goodness, which is instantly associated +with the word Roosevelt, expresses, except that of course it +over-expresses, a part of the news to-day about America which we want +our President to read. + +One cannot help wondering why it is that if one wanted to express to the +largest number of people in the world a certain quality of goodness, the +word Roosevelt would do it best. + +I am not dealing for the purpose of this book in what Mr. Roosevelt's +goodness is or whether it is what he thinks it is. We might all disagree +about that. I am dealing quite strictly in this connection with what +even his enemies would say is his almost egregious success in +advertising goodness. While we might all disagree as to his goodness +being the kind that he or any one ought to love, we would not fail to +agree that it is his love of his own goodness, such as it is, and his +holding on to it, and his love of other people's and his love of getting +his goodness and their goodness together, that has made him the most +unconcealed person in modern life. These qualities have established him, +with his ability raised to the n-th power of attracting attention to +anything he likes, as the world's greatest News Man--the world's +greatest living energy to-day in advertising what is good and what is +had in our American temperament. + +Even the people who disagree with him or dislike him--many of them would +have to fall back on using the word roosevelt, or rather the verb to +roosevelt. + +It does not seem to be because his goodness in itself is extraordinary. +It is even, for that matter, in the sense that anybody could have it, or +some more just like it, a little common. + +What seems to be uncommon and really distinguished about Mr. Roosevelt +is the way he feels about his goodness, and the way he grips hold of it, +and the way he makes it grip hold of other people--practically anybody +almost, who is standing by. Even if they are merely going by in +automobiles, sometimes they catch some. I do not imagine that his worst +enemies, however seriously they may question the general desirability or +safety of having so much goodness roosevelting around, would fail to +admit his own real enthusiasm about goodness anywhere he finds it +indiscriminately, whether it is his own or other people's. He grips hold +of it, and grips like a cable car--instantly. + +His enthusiasm is so great that many people are nonplussed by it. The +enthusiasm must really be in spite of appearances about something else, +something wicked in behind, they think, and not really about goodness. +An entire stranger would not quite believe it. It would be too original +in him, they would say, or in anybody, to care so about goodness. + +If one could watch the expression in Mr. Roosevelt's face or his manner +while he is in the act of having a virtue and if one could not see +plainly from where one was, just what it was he was doing, one would at +once conclude that it must be some vice he is having. He looks happy and +as if it were some stolen secret. There is always that manner of his +when he is caught doing right, as if one were to say "Now, at last, I +have got it!" He does right like a boy with his mouth full of jam, and +this seems to be true not only when, with a whole public following and +two or three nations besides, and all the newspapers, he goes off on an +orgy of righteousness, makes the grand tour of Europe, and has the time +of his life. It is the steady-burning under enthusiasm with him all the +while. The spectacle of a good man doing a tremendous good thing affects +Theodore Roosevelt like one of the great forces of nature, like Niagara +Falls, like the screws of the _Mauritania_, or any other huge, happy +thing that is having its way against fear; against weakness, or against +small terrified goodness. + +Mr. Roosevelt in doing right conveys the sense of enjoying it so himself +that he has made almost an art form of public righteousness. He has +found his most complete, his most naive, instinctive self-expression in +it, and while we have had goodness in public men before, we have had no +man who has been such an international chromo for goodness, who has made +such a big, comfortable "He-who-runs-may-read" bill-poster for doing +right as Roosevelt. Other men have done things that were good to do, but +the very inmost muscle and marrow of goodness itself, goodness with +teeth, with a fist, goodness that smiled, that ha-ha'd, and that leaped +and danced--perpetual motion of goodness, goodness that reeked--has been +reserved for Theodore Roosevelt. We have had goodness that was bland or +proper, and goodness that was pious or sentimental and sang, "Nearer My +God to Thee," or goodness that was kind and mushy, but this goodness +with a glad look and bounding heart, goodness with an iron hand, we have +not had before. It is Mr. Roosevelt's goodness that has made him +interesting in Cairo, Paris, Rome, and Berlin. He has been conducting a +grand tour of goodness. He has been a colossal drummer of goodness, +conducting an advertising campaign. He has proved himself a master +salesman for moral values. And he has put the American character, its +hope, its energy, on the markets and on the credits of the world. + +With all his faults, those big, daring, yawning fissures in him, he is +news about us, faults and all. Though I may be, as I certainly am much +of the time, standing and looking across at him, across an abyss of +temperament that God cut down between us thousands of years ago, and +while he may have a score of traits I would not like and others that no +one would like in any one else, there he is storming out at me with his +goodness! It is his way--God help him!--God be praised for him! There he +is! + +I know an American when I see one. He is a man who is singing. + +A man who is singing is a man who is so shrewd about people that he sees +more in them than they see in themselves and who does things so shrewdly +in behalf of God, that when God looks upon him he delights in him. Then +God falls to of course and helps him do them. + +When American men saw that there was a man among them who was taking a +thing like the Presidency of the United States (that most people never +run risks with) and putting it up before everybody, and using it grimly +as a magnificent bet on the people, they looked up. Millions of men +leaped in their hearts and as they saw him they knew that they were like +him! + +So did Theodore Roosevelt become news about Us. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +AMERICAN TEMPERAMENT AND GOVERNMENT + + +I would like to say more specifically what I mean by an American or +singing government. + +The thing that counts the most in a government is its temperament. A +German government succeeds by having the German temperament. An American +government must have the American temperament. + +If we are fortunate enough to have in America a government with an +American temperament what would it be like? And how would it differ from +the traditional or conventional temperament, governments are usually +allowed to have? + +If I were confined to one or two words I would put it like this: + +If a government has the conventional temperament, it says "NO." + +If it has the American Temperament it says, "YES, BUT ..." + +The whole policy and temper of a true American government is summed up +in its saying as it looks about it--now to this business man and now to +that, just in time, "YES BUT." + +Louis Brandeis, of Boston, when he was made attorney for the Gas Company +of Boston to defend the company from the criticisms of the people, sent +suddenly scores of men all about canvassing the city and looking up +people to find fault with the gas. + +He spent thousands of dollars a month of the Gas Company's money for a +while in helping people to be disagreeable, until they had it attended +to and got over it. + +The Gas Company had the canvassers show the people how they could burn +less gas for what they got for it, and tried to help them cut their +bills in two. Incidentally, of course, they got to thinking about gas +and about what they got for it, and about other ways they could afford +to use it, and began to have the gas habit--used it for cooking and +heating. + +The people found they wanted to use four times as much gas. + +The Boston Gas Company smiled sweetly. + +Boston smiled sweetly. + +Not many months had passed and two things had happened in Boston. + +The Boston Gas Company, with precisely the same directors in it, had +made over the directors into new men, and all the people in Boston (all +who used gas) apparently had been made over into new people. + +What had happened was Brandeis--a man with an American temperament. + +Mr. Brandeis had defended his company from the people by going the +people's way and helping them until they helped him. + +Mr. Brandeis gave gas a soul in Boston. + +Before a gas corporation has a soul, it would be American for a +government to treat it in one way. After it has one it would be American +to treat it in another. There are two complete sets of conduct, +principles, and visions in dealing with a corporation before and after +its having a soul. + +Preserving the females of the species and killing males as a method of +discrimination has been applied to all animals except human beings. This +is suggestive of a method of discrimination in dealing with +corporations. A corporation that has a soul and that is the most likely +to keep reproducing souls in others should be treated in one way, and a +corporation that has not should be treated in another. + +There are two assumptions underneath everybody's thought, underneath +every action of our government: Which is the American assumption? + +People are going to be bad if they can. + +People are going to be good if they can. + +Men who want to arrange laws and adjust life on the assumption that +business men will be bad if they can, it seems to some of us, are +inefficient and unscientific. It seems to us that they are off on the +main and controlling facts in American human nature. It is not true that +American business men will be bad if they can. They will be good if they +can. + +This is my assertion. I cannot prove it. + +What we seem to need next in this country in order to be clear-headed +and to go ahead, is to prove it. We want a competent census of human +nature. + +Lacking a census of human nature, the next best thing we can do is to +watch the men who seem to know the most about human nature. + +We put ourselves in their hands. + +These men seem to believe, judging from their actions, that there is +really nothing that suits our temperament better in America than being +good. If we can manage to have some way of being good that we have +thought of ourselves, we like it still better. We dote on goodness when +it is ours and when we are allowed to put some punch into it. We want to +be good, to express our practical, our doing-idealism, but we will not +be driven to being good and people who think they can drive us to being +good in a government or out of it are incompetent people. They do not +know who we are. + +We say they shall not have their way with us. + +Let them get us right first. Then they can do other things. + +What is our American temperament? + +Here are a few American reflections. + +The government of the next boys' school of importance in this country is +going to determine the cuts and free hours, and privileges not by marks, +but by its genius for seeing through boys. + +And instead of making rules for two hundred pupils because just twenty +pupils need them, they will make the rules for just twenty pupils. + +Pupils who can use their souls and can do better by telling themselves +what to do, will be allowed to do better. Why should two hundred boys +who want to be men be bullied into being babies by twenty infants who +can scare a school government into rules, _i.e._, scare their teachers +into being small and mean and second-rate? + +A government that goes on this principle with business men, and that +does it in a spirit of mutual understanding for those who are not yet +free from rules, and in a spirit of confidence and expectation and of +talking it over, will be a government with an American temperament. + +The first trait of a great government is going to be that it will +recognize that the basis of a true government in a democracy is +privilege and not treating all people alike. It is going to see that is +it a cowardly, lazy, brutal, and mechanical-minded thing for a +government which is trying to serve a great people--to treat all the +people alike. The basis of a great government like the basis of a great +man (or even the basis of a good digestion) is discrimination, and the +habit of acting according to facts. We will have rules or laws for +people who need them, and men in the same business who amount to enough +and are American enough to be safe as laws to themselves, will continue +to have their initiative and to make their business a profession, a +mould, an art form into which they pour their lives. The pouring of the +lives of men like this into their business is the one thing that the +business and the government want. + +Several things are going to happen when what a good government seeks +each for a man's business, is to let him express himself in it. + +When a man has proved conclusively that he has a higher level of +motives, and a higher level of abilities to make his motives work, the +government is going to give him a higher level of rights, liberties, and +immunities. The government will give special liberties on a sliding +scale and with shrewd provision for the future. The government will not +give special liberties to the man with higher motives than other men +have, who has not higher abilities to make his motives work, nor will it +give special liberties to the man who has higher abilities which could +make higher motives work, but who has not the higher motives. + +Men who are new kinds and new sizes of men and who have proved that they +can make new kinds and new sizes of bargains, that they can make (for +the same money) new kinds and new sizes of goods, and who incidentally +make new kinds and new sizes of people out of the people who buy the +goods, men who have achieved all these supposed visionary feats by their +own initiative, will be allowed by the government to have all the +initiative they want, and immunities from fretful rules as long as they +resemble themselves and keep on doing what they have shown they can do. +The government will deal with each man according to the facts, the +scientific facts, that he has proved about himself. + +The government acts according to scientific facts in everything except +men, in pure food, in cholera, and the next thing the government is +going to do is to be equally efficient in dealing with scientific facts +in men. + +It is going to give some men inspected liberty. If these men say they +can be more efficient, as a railroad sometimes is, by being a monopoly, +by being a vast, self-visioned, self-controlled body the government will +have enough character, expert courage and shrewdness about human nature +to provide a way for them to try it. + +When the other people come up and ask why they cannot have these +special immunities and why they cannot be a monopoly, or nearly a +monopoly, too, the government will tell them why. + +Telling them why will be governing them. + +When we once reckon with new kinds and new sizes of men, everything +follows. The first man who organizes a true monopoly for public service +and who does it better than any state could do it, because he thinks of +it himself, glories in it and has a genius for it, will be given a +peerage in England perhaps. But he would not really care. The thing +itself would be a peerage enough and either in America or England he +would rather be rewarded by being singled out by the government for +special rights and distinctions in conducting his business. The best way +a democracy can honour a man who has served it is not to give him a +title or to make a frivolous, idle monument of bronze for him, but to +let him have his own way. + +The way to honour any artist or any creative man, any man a country is +in need of especially, is to let him have his own way. + + * * * * * + +We are told that the way to govern trusts is to untrammel competition. + +But the way to untrammel competition is not to try to untrammel it in +its details with lists of things men shall not do. + +This is cumbersome. + +We would probably find it very much more convenient in specifying 979 +detailed things trusts cannot do, if we could think of certain +sum-totals of details. + +Then we could deal with the details in a lump. + +The best sum totals of details in this world that have ever been +invented yet, are men. + +We will pick out a man who has a definite, marked character, who is a +fine, convenient sum-total that any one can see, of things not to do. + +We will pick out another man in the same line of business who is a fine, +convenient sum-total of things that people ought to do. + +The government will find ways, as the Coach of Business as the Referee +of the Game for the people, to stand by this man until he whips the +other, drives him out of business or makes him play as good a game as he +does. + + * * * * * + +When a child finds suddenly that his father is not merely keeping him +from doing things, that his father has a soul, the father begins to get +results out of the child. + +As a rule a child discovers first that his father has a soul by noticing +that he insists on treating him as if he had one. + +Of course a corporation that has not a soul yet does not propose to be +dictated to by a government that has not a soul yet. When corporations +without souls see overwhelmingly that a government has a soul, they will +be filled with a wholesome fear. They will always try at first to +prevent it from having a soul if they can. + +But the moment it gets one and shows it, they will be glad. They will +feel on firm ground. They will know what they know. They will act. + +In the hospital on the hill not far from my house, one often sees one +attendant going out to walk with twelve insane men. One would think it +would not be safe for twelve insane men to go out to walk with one sane +man, with one man who has his soul on. + +The reason it is safe, is, that the moment one insane man or man who has +not his soul on, attacks the man who has a soul, all of the other eleven +men throw themselves upon him and fling him to the ground. Men whose +souls are not on, protect, every time, the man who has his soul on +because the man who has a soul is the only defence they have from the +men who have not. + +It is going to be the same with governments. We believe in a +government's having as much courage in America as a ten-dollar-a-week +attendant in an insane asylum. We want a government that sees how +courage works. + +We are told in the New Testament that we are all members one of another. + +If society has a soul and if every member of it has a soul, what is the +relation of the social soul to the individual soul? + +A man's soul is the faculty in him for seeing the Whole in relation to +the part--his vision for others in relation to his vision for himself. + +My forefinger's soul in writing with this fountain pen is the sense my +forefinger has of its relation to my arm, my spinal column, and my +brain. The ability and efficiency of my forefinger depends upon its +soul, that is, its sense of relation to the other members of the body. +If my forefinger tries to act like a brain all by itself, as it +sometimes does, nobody reads my writing. + +The government in a society is the soul of all the members and it treats +them according to their souls. + +The one compulsion a government will use if it has a soul, will be +granting charters in business in such a way as to fix definite +responsibility and definite publicity upon a few men. + +If a corporation has a soul, it must show. It must have a face. Anybody +can tell a face off-hand or while going by. Anybody can keep track of a +corporation if it has a face. + +The trouble with the average corporation is that all that anybody can +see is its stomach. Even this is anonymous. + +Whose Stomach is it? Who is responsible for it? If we hit it, whom will +we hit? Let the government find out. If the time the government is now +spending in making impossibly minute laws for impossibly minute men, +were spent in finding out what size men were, and who they were and then +giving them just as many rights from the people, as they are the right +kind and the right size to handle for the people, it would be an +American government. + +If there is one thing rather than another that an American or an +Englishman loves, it is asserting himself or expressing his character in +what he does. The typical dominating Englishman or American is not as +successful as a Frenchman or as an Italian in expressing other things, +as he is in expressing his character. + +He cares more about expressing his character and asserting it. If he is +dealing with things, he makes them take the stamp of who he is. If he is +dealing with people, he makes them see and acknowledge who he is. They +must take in the facts about what he is like when they are with him. +They must deal with him as he is. + +This trait may have its disadvantages, but if an Englishman or an +American is on this earth for anything, this is what he is for--to +express his character in what he does--in strong, vigorous, manly lines +draw a portrait of himself and show what he is like in what he does. +This may be called on both sides of the sea to-day as we stand front to +front with the more graceful nations, Anglo-Saxon Art. + +It is because this particular art in the present crisis of human nature +on this planet is the desperate, the almost reckless need of a world +that the other nations of the world with all their dislike of us and +their superiorities to us, with all our ugliness and heaviness and our +galumphing in the arts, have been compelled in this huge, modern thicket +of machines and crowds to give us the lead. + +And now we are threading a way for nations through the moral wilderness +of the earth. + +This position has been accorded us because it goes with our temperament, +because we can be depended upon to insist on asserting ourselves and on +expressing ourselves in what we do. If the present impromptu industrial +machinery which has been handed over to us thoughtlessly and in a hurry, +does not express us, everybody knows that we can be depended on to +assert ourselves and that we will insist on one that will. The nations +that are more polite and that can dance and bow more nicely than we can +in a crisis like this would be dangerous. It is known about us +throughout a world that we are not going to be cowed by wood or by iron +or by steel and that we are not going to be cowed by men who are all +wood and iron and steel inside. If wood, iron, or steel does not express +us, we are Englishmen and we are Americans. We will butt our character +into it until it does. + + * * * * * + +If the American workman were to insist upon butting his American +temperament into his labour union machinery, what would his labour +machinery in America soon begin to show that an American labourer was +like? + +I imagine it might work out something like this: + +The thoughtful workman looks about him. He discovers that the workman +pays at least two times as much for coal as he needs to because miners +down in Pennsylvania work one third as hard as they might for the money. + +When he comes to think of it, all the labouring men of America are +paying high prices because they have to pay all the other workmen in +America for working as little as they can. He is working one third less +than he can and making his own class pay for it. He sees every workman +about him paying high prices because every other workman in making +things for him to eat and for him to wear, is cheating him--doing a +third less a day for him than he ought. + +At this point the capitalists pile in and help. They shove the prices up +still higher because capital is not interested in an industry in which +the workmen do six hours' work in nine. It demands extra profits. So +while the workmen put up the prices by not working, the capitalists put +up the prices because they are afraid the workmen will not work. Half +work, high prices. + +Then the American workman thinks. He begins to suppose. + +Suppose that the millers' workmen and the workmen in the woollen mills +in America see how prices of supplies for labouring men are going up and +suppose they agree to work as hard as they can? Suppose the wool workers +of the world want cheap bread. The flour mill workers want cheap +clothes. We will say to the bread people, "We will bring down the price +of wool for you if you will bring down the price of bread for us." + +Then let Meat and Potatoes do the same for one another. Then two +industries at a time, industries getting brains in pairs, until like the +animals going into the ark, little by little (or rather very fast, +almost piling in, in fact, after the first pair have tried it), at last +our true, spirited, practical minded American workmen will have made +their labour machines as natural and as human and as American as they +are. They will stop trying to lower prices by not working, each workman +joining (in a factory) the leisure classes and making the other workmen +pay for it. + + * * * * * + +The American workman, as things are organized now, finds himself +confronted with two main problems. One is himself. How can he get +himself to work hard enough to make his food and clothes cheap? The +other is his employer. + +What will the American workman do to express his American temperament +through his labour union to his employer? The American workmen will go +to their employers and say: "Instead of doing six hours' work in nine +hours, we will do nine hours' work in nine hours." The millers, for +instance, will say to the flour mill owners: "We will do a third more +work for you, make you a third more profit on our labour if you will +divide your third more profit like this: + +"First, by bringing down the price of flour to everybody; + +"Second, by bringing up our wages. Third, by taking more money +yourselves." + +American labouring men who did this would be acting like Americans. It +is the American temperament. + +They will insist on it: The labour men will continue to say to their +employers, "We will divide the proceeds of our extra work into three +sums of money--ours, yours, and everybody's." In return we will soon +find the employers saying the same thing to the labour men. Employers +would like to arrange to be good. If they can get men who earn more, +they want to pay them more. + +The labourers would like to be good, _i.e._, work more for employers who +want to pay them more. + +But being good has to be arranged for. + +Being good is a matter of mutual understanding, a matter of +organization, a matter of butting our American temperament into our +industrial machines. + +All that is the matter with these industrial machines is that they are +not like us. + +Our machines are acting just now for all the world as if they were the +Americans and as if we were the machines. + +Are we for the machines, or are the machines for us? + +All that the American labourers and that the American capitalists have +to do is to show what they are really like, organize their news about +themselves so that they get it through to one another, and our present +great daily occupation in America (which each man calls his "business") +all the workmen going down to the mills and all the employers going down +to their offices, and then for six, eight, nine hours a day being chewed +on by machines, will cease. + +We make our industrial machines. We are Americans. Our machines must +have our American temperament. + + * * * * * + +If an American employer were to insist on butting his American +temperament into his industrial machine, what would his industrial +machine, when it is well at work at last, show an American employer's +temperament to be like? + +The first thing that would show in his machine, I think, would be its +courage, its acting with boldness and initiative, originality and +freedom, without being cluttered up by precedents or running and asking +Mama, its clear-headedness in what it wants, its short-cut in getting to +it, and above all a kind of ruthless faith in human nature, in the +American people, in its goods and in itself. + +The typical American business man of the highest class--the man who is +expressing his American temperament best in his business--is the one who +is expressing in it the most courage for himself and for others and for +his government. He has big beliefs every few minutes a day, and he acts +on them with nonchalance. + +If he is running a trust--our most characteristic, recklessly difficult +American invention for a man to show through, and if he tries to get his +American temperament to show through in it, tries to make his trust like +a vast portrait, like a kind of countenance on a country, of what a big +American business is like, what will he do? + +He will take a little axiom like this and act as if it were so. + +_If in any given case the producers by collusion and combination can be +efficient in lowering wages to employees and raising prices and cheating +the public, this same combination or collusion would be efficient in +raising the wages of employees, lowering prices and serving the public._ + +He will then, being an American, turn to his government and say "I am a +certain sort of man. If I am allowed to be an exception and to combine +in this matter, I can prove that I can raise wages, lower prices for a +whole nation in these things that I make. I am a certain sort of man. Do +you think I am, or do you think that I am not? I want to know." + +The government looks noncommittally at him. It says it cannot +discriminate. + +He says nothing for a time, but he thinks in his heart that it is +incompetent and cowardly to run a great government of a great nation as +a vast national sweep or flourish of getting out of brains and of +evading vision. It seems to him lazy and effeminate in a government to +treat all combinations and all monopolies alike. He says: "Look me in +the eyes! I demand of you as a citizen of this country the right to be +looked by my government in the eyes. What sort of man am I? Here are all +my doors open. My safes are your safes and my books are your books. Am I +or am I not a man who can conduct his business as a great profession, +one of the dignities and energies and joys of a great people? + +"What am I like inside? Is what I am like inside--my having a small size +or a big size of motive, my having a right kind or a wrong kind of +ability of no consequence to this government? Does the government of +this country really mean that the most important things a country like +this can produce, the daily, ruling motives of the men who are living in +it, have no weight with the government? Am I to understand that the +government does not propose to avail itself of new sizes and new kinds +of men and new sizes and new kinds of abilities in men? What I am trying +to do in my product is to lower the prices and raise the wages for a +nation. Will you let me do it? Will you watch me while I do it?" + +This will be the American trust of to-morrow. The average trust of this +country has not yet found itself, but the moral and spiritual history, +the religious message to a government of The Trust That Has Found Itself +will be something like this. + +Perhaps when we have a trust that has found itself, we will have a +government that has dared to find itself, that has the courage to use +its insight, its sense of difference between men, as it means of getting +what it wants for the people. + +As it is now, the government has not found itself and it falls back on +complex rules or machines for getting out of seeing through people. + +Where courage is required, it proceeds as it proceeds with automobile +speeding laws. Everybody knows that one man driving his car three miles +an hour may be more dangerous than another kind of man who is driving +his car thirty. + +When our government begins to be a government, begins to express the +American temperament, it will be a government that will devote its +energy, its men, and its money to being expert in divining, and using +differences between men. It will govern as any father, teacher, or +competent business man does by treating some people in one way and +others in another, by giving graded speed licenses in business, to +labour unions, trusts, and business men. + +The government will be able to do this by demanding, acquiring, and +employing as the servants of the people, men who are experts in human +nature, masters in not treating men alike--Crowbars, lemonade-straws, +chisels, and marshmallows, powerhouses and AEolian harps by the people, +for the people, and of the people, will be rated for what they are and +will be used for what they are for. + +This will be democracy. It will be the American temperament in +government. + + * * * * * + +Is President Wilson or is he not going to fall back into a mere lawyer +Moseslike way of getting people to be good, or is he going to be a man +like David, half poet, half soldier, who got his way with the nation +half by appreciating the men in it and being a fellow human being with +them, and half by fighting them when they would not let him be a fellow +human being with them, and would not let him appreciate them? + +Almost any nation or government can get some kind of Moses to-day but +the men that America is producing would not particularly notice a Moses +probably now. A Moses might do for a Rockefeller, but he could not +really do anything with a man like Theodore N. Vail who has the +telephones and telegraphs of a country talking and ticking to us all, +all night, all day, what kind of a man he is. + +A big affirmative, inspirational man like David or even Napoleon who +inspires people with one breath and fights hard with the next, a man who +swings his hat for the world, a man who goes on ahead and says "Come!" +is the only man who can be practical in America to-day in helping real +live American men like McAdoo, like Edison and Acheson,--men who can +express a people in a business--to express them. + +The people have spoken. A man in the White House who cannot say "Come" +goes. + +We want a poet in the White House. If we can not have a poet for the +White House soon, we want a poet who will make us a poet for the White +House. + +I do not believe it is too much to expect a President to be a poet. We +have had a poet for President once in one supreme crisis of this nation +and the crisis that is coming now is so much deeper, so much more human +and world-wide than Lincoln's was that it would almost seem as if a +place like the White House (where one's poetry could really work) would +make a poet out of anybody. + +A President who has not a kind of plain, still, homely poetry in him, a +belief about people that sings, in the present appalling crisis of the +world is impracticable or visionary. + +So we do not say, "Have we a President that can get our Bells, Edisons, +McAdoos, Achesons to be good by toeing a line?" + +We say, "Have we a President who can swing into step, who can join in +the singing, who can catch up?" + +Tunnel McAdoo, when he lifted up his will against the sea and against +the seers of Wall Street, was singing. When he conceived those steel +cars, those roaring yellow streaks of light ringing through rocks +beneath the river, streets of people flashing through under the slime +and under the fish and under the ships and under the wide sunshine on +the water, he was singing! He raised millions of dollars singing. + +Of course he sang the way Americans usually sing, and had to do as well +as he could in talking to bankers and investors not to look as if he +were singing, but there it all was singing inside him, the seven years +of digging, the seven years of dull thundering on rocks under the city, +and at last the happy steel cars all green and gold, the streams of +people all yellow light hissing and pouring through--those vast pipes +for people beneath the sea! + +If we have a President, let him sing like McAdoo, or like Luther +Burbank, or like Theodore N. Vail, or like Colonel Goethals, picking up +a little isthmus like Panama, a string between two continents, playing +on it as if it were a harp; or like Edward Ripley playing with the Santa +Fe Railroad for all the world like Homer with a lute, all his seven +thousand men, all his workmen, all their wives and their children, all +the cities along the line striking up and joining in the chorus or like +Carborundum Acheson, backed up by his little Niagara Falls oiling the +wheels of a world, weaving diamonds into steel, hardening the bones of +the earth into skyscrapers, into railroads, into the mighty thighs of +flying locomotives.... + +Any man who is seen acting in this world with a thing, as if he believed +in the thing, as if he believed in himself and believed in other people, +is singing. + +Moses striking out with a rod, as we are told, a path along the sea for +his people may have done a more showy thing from a religious point of +view, hitting the water on top so, making a great splash with an empty +place in it for people to march through, but he was not essentially more +religious than McAdoo, with all those modest but mighty columns of +figures piling up behind him, with all those splendid, dumb, still +glowing engineers behind him, lifting up his will against cities, +lifting up his will against herds of politicians, haughty newspapers, +against the flocks of silly complacent old ferry-boats waddling in the +bay, against the wind and the rain and the cold on the water, and all +the banks of Wall Street.... + +When we want to tell News to our President about ourselves in America, +we point to William G. McAdoo. + +The first news that we, the American people, must contrive to get into +the White House about ourselves is that we do not want to be improved, +and that we do not like an improving tone in our government. We want to +be expressed the way McAdoos express us. We want a government that +expresses our faith in one another, in what we are doing, and in +ourselves, and in the world. + +We are singing over here on this continent. We would not all of us put +it in just this way. But our singing is the main thing we can do, and a +government that is trying to improve us feebly, that is looking askance +at us and looking askance at our money, and at our labour, and that does +not believe in us and join in with us in our singing does not know what +we are like. + +Our next national business in America is to get the real news over to +the President of what we are like. + +It is news that we want in the White House. A missionary in the White +House, be he ever so humble, will not do. + +Mr. Roosevelt, himself, with the word Duty on every milepost as he +whirled past, with suggestions of things for other people to do buzzing +like bees about his head, acquired his tremendous and incredible power +with us as a people because, in spite of his violent way of breaking out +into a missionary every morning and every evening when he talked, it was +not his talking but his singing that made him powerful--his singing, or +doing things as if he believed in people, his I wills and I won'ts, his +assuming every day, his acting every day, as if American men were men. +He sang his way roughly, hoarsely, even a little comically at times into +the hearts of people, stirred up in the nation a mighty heat, put a +great crackling fire under it, put two great parties into the pot, +boiled them, drew off all that was good in them, and at last, to-day, as +I write (February 1913), the prospect of a good square meal in the White +House (with some one else to say grace) is before the people. + +The people are waiting to sit down once more in the White House and +refresh themselves. + +At least, the soup course is on the table. + +Who did it, please? Who bullied the cook and got everybody ready? + +Theodore Roosevelt, singing a little roughly, possibly hurrahing "_I +will, I will, I won't, I won't_," and acting as if he believed in the +world. + +Bryan in the village of Chicago sitting by at a reporter's table saw him +doing it. + +Bryan saw how it worked. + +Bryan had it in him too. + +Bryan heard the shouts of the people across the land as they gloried in +the fight. He saw the signals from the nations over the sea. + +Then Armageddon moved to Baltimore. + + * * * * * + +And now table is about to be spread. + +It is to be Mr. Wilson's soup. + +But the soup will have a Roosevelt flavour or tang to it. And we will +wait to see what Mr. Wilson will do with the other courses. + + * * * * * + +A poet in words, with two or three exceptions, America has not produced. + +The only touch of poetry or art as yet that we have in America +is--acting as if we believed in people. This particular art is ours. +Other people may have it, but it is all we have. + +This is what makes or may make any moment the common American a poet or +artist. + +Speaking in this sense, Mr. Roosevelt is the first poet America has +produced that European peoples and European governments have noticed for +forty years, or had any reason to notice. We respectfully place Mr. +Roosevelt with Mr. McAdoo (and if Mr. Brandeis will pardon us, with Mr. +Brandeis) as a typical American before the eyes of the new President. +We ask him to take Mr. Roosevelt as a very important part of the latest +news about us. + +The true imaginative men of our modern life, the poets of crowds and +cities are not to-day our authors, preachers, professors or lawyers or +philosophers. The poets of crowds are our men like this, our +vision-doers, the men who have seen visions and dreamed dreams in the +real and daily things, the daring Governors like Wilson and like Hughes, +the daring inventors of great business houses, the men who have invented +the foundations on which nations can stand, on which railroads can run, +the men whose imaginations, in the name of heaven, have played with the +earth mightily, watered deserts, sailed cities on the seas, the men who +have whistled and who have said "Come!" to empires, who have thought +hundred-year thoughts, taken out nine hundred and ninety-nine year +leases, who have thought of mighty ways for cities to live, for cities +to be cool, to be light, to be dark, who have conceived ways for nations +to talk, who have grasped the earth and the sky like music, like words, +and put them in the hands of the people, and made the people say, "O +earth," and "O sky, thou art great, but we also are great! Come earth +and sky, thou shalt praise God with us!" + +Who are these men? + +Let the President catch up! + +Who are these men? Here is Edward A. Filene, who takes up the pride, +joy, beauty, self-respect, and righteousness of a city, swings it into a +Store, and makes that Store sing about the city up and down the world! +Here is Alexander Cassatt, imperturbable, irrepressible, and like a +great Boy playing leapfrog with a Railroad--Cassatt who makes +quick-hearted, dreamy Philadelphia duck under the Sea, bob up serenely +in the middle of New York and leap across Hell Gate to get to Boston! +Let the parliaments droning on their benches, the Congresses pile out of +their doors and catch up. + +Let the lawyers--the little swarms of dark-minded lawyers, wondering and +running to and fro, creeping in offices, who have tried to run our +world, blurred our governments, and buzzed, who have filled the world +with piles of old paper, Congressional Records, with technicalities, +words, droning, weariness, despair, and fear ... let them come out and +look! Let them catch up! + +Let a man in this day in the presence of men like these sing. If a man +cannot sing, let him be silent. Only men who are singing things shall do +them. + +I go out into the street, I go out and look almost anywhere, listen +anywhere, and the singing rises round me! + +It was singing that spread the wireless telegraph like a great web +across the sky. + +It was singing that dug the subways under the streets in New York. + +It was singing, a kind of iron gladness, hope and faith in men, that has +flung up our skyscrapers into the lower stories of the clouds, and made +them say, "_I will! I will! I will!_" to God. + +Ah, how often have I seen them from the harbour, those flocking, crowded +skyscrapers under that little heaven in New York, lifting themselves in +the sunlight and in the starlight, lifting themselves before me, +sometimes, it seems, like crowds of great states, like a great country +piled up, like a nation reaching, like the plains and the hills and the +cities of my people standing up against heaven day by day--all those +flocks of the skyscrapers saying, "_I will! I will! I will!_" to God. + +The skyscrapers are news about us to our President. He shall reckon with +skyscraper men. He shall interpret men that belong with skyscrapers. + +And as he does so, I shall watch the people answer him, now with a glad +and mighty silence and now with a great solemn shout. + +The skyscrapers are their skyscrapers. + +The courage, the reaching-up, the steadfastness that is in them is in +the hearts of the people. + +If the President does not know us yet in America, does not know McAdoo +as a representative American, we will thunder on the doors of the White +House until he does. + +My impression is he would be out in the yard by the gate asking us to +come in. + +We are America. We are expressing our joy in the world, our faith in +God, and our love of the sun and the wind in the hearts of our people. + +In America the free air breathes about us, and daily the great sun +climbs our hillsides, swings daily past our work. There are ninety +million men with this sun and this wind woven into their bodies, into +their souls. They stand with us. + +The skyscrapers stand with us. + +All singing stands with us. + +Ah, I have waked in the dawn and in the sun and the wind have I seen +them! + +That sun and that wind, I say before God, are America! They are the +American temperament. + +I will have laws for free men, laws with the sun and the wind in them! + +I have waked in the dawn and my heart has been glad with the iron and +poetry in the skyscrapers. + +I will have laws for men and for American men, laws with iron and poetry +in them! + +The way for a government to get the poetry in is to say "Yes" to +somebody. + +The way for a government to get the iron in is not by saying "No." It is +not American in a government to keep saying "No." The best way for our +government in America to say "No" to a man, is to let him stand by and +watch us saying "Yes" to some one else. + +Then he will ask why. + +Then he will stand face to face with America. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +NEWS-BOOKS + + +The most practical thing that could happen now in the economic world in +America would be a sudden, a great national, contemporary literature. + +America, unlike England, has no recognized cultured class, and has no +aristocracy, so called, with which to keep mere rich men suitably +miserable--at least a little humble and wistful. Our greatest need for a +long time has been some big serene, easy way, without half trying, of +snubbing rich men in America. All these overgrown, naughty fellows one +sees everywhere like street boys on the corners or on the curbstones of +society, calling society names and taking liberties with it, tripping +people up; hoodlums with dollars, all these micks of money!--O, that +society had some big, calm, serene way like some huge hearty London +policeman, of taking hold of them--taking hold of them by the seats of +their little trousers if need be, and taking them home to Mother--some +way of setting them down hard in their chairs and making them +thoughtful! Nothing but a national literature will do this. "Life," +(which is, with one exception, perhaps, the only religious weekly we +have left in America) succeeds a little and has some spiritual value +because it succeeds in making American millionaires look funny, and in +making them want to get away and live in Europe. But "Life" is not +enough; it merely hitches us along from day to day and keeps our courage +up. We want in America a literature, we want the thing done thoroughly +and forever and once for all. We want an Aristophanes, a master who +shall go gloriously laughing through our world, through our chimneys +and blind machines, pot-bellied fortunes, empty successes, all these +tiny, queer little men of wind and bladder, until we have a nation +filled with a divine laughter, with strong, manful, happy visions of +what men are for. + +All we have to do is to have a News-book--a bookful of the kind of rich +men we want, then we will have them. We will see men piling over each +other all day to be them. Men have wanted to make money because making +money has been supposed to mean certain things about a man. The moment +it ceases to mean them, they will want to make other things. + +Where is the news about what we really want? + +----, when I took him to the train yesterday, spoke glowingly of the way +the Standard Oil Trust had reduced oil from twenty-nine cents to eleven +cents. + +There was not time to say anything. I just thought a minute of how they +did it. + +Why is it that people--so many good people will speak of oil at eleven +cents in this way, as if it were a kind of little kingdom of heaven? + +I admit that eleven cents from twenty-nine cents leaves eighteen cents. + +I do not deny that the Standard Oil Trust has saved me eighteen cents. +But what have they taken away out of my life and taken out of my sense +of the world and of the way things go in it and out of my faith in human +nature to toss me eighteen cents? + +If I could have for myself and others the sense of the world that I had +before, would I not to-day, day after day, over and over, gallon by +gallon, be handing them their eighteen cents back? + +What difference does it make to us if we are in a world where we can buy +oil for eleven cents a gallon instead of twenty-nine, if we do not care +whether we are alive or dead in it and do not expect anything from +ourselves or expect anything of anybody else? I submit it to your own +common sense, Gentle Reader. Is it any comfort to buy oil to light a +room in which you do not want to sit, in which you would rather not see +anything, in which you would rather not remember who you are, what you +do, and what your business is like, and what you are afraid your +business is going to be like? + +I have passed through all this during the last fifteen years and I have +come out on the other side. But millions of lives of other men are +passing through it now, passing through it daily, bitterly, as they go +to their work and as they fall asleep at night. + +The next thing in this world is not reducing the price of oil. It is +raising the price of men and putting a market-value on life. + +What makes a man a man is that he knows himself, knows who he is, what +he is for and what he wants. Knowing who he is and knowing what he is +about, he naturally acts like a man, knows what he is about like a man, +and gets things done. + +A nation that does not know itself shall not be itself. + +A nation that has a muddle-headed literature, a nation that to say +nothing of not being able to express what it has, has not even made a +beginning at expressing what it wants; a nation that has not a great, +eager, glowing literature, a sublime clear-headedness about what it is +for--a nation that cannot put itself into a great book, a nation that +cannot weave itself together even in words into a book that can be +unfurled before the people like a flag where everybody can see it and +everybody can share it, look up to it, live for it, sleep for it, get up +in the morning and work for it--work for the vision of what it wants to +be--cannot be a great nation. + +A masterpiece is a book that has a thousand years in it. No man has a +right to say where these thousand years in it shall lie, whether in the +past or in the future. It is the thousand years' worth in it that makes +a masterpiece a masterpiece. In America we may not have the literature +of what we are or of what we have been, but the literature of what we +are bound to be, the literature of what WE WILL, we will have, and we +will have to have it before we can begin being it. + +First the Specifications, then the House. + +From the practical or literary point of view the one sign we have given +in this country so far, that the stuff of masterpieces is in us and that +we are capable of a great literature, is that America is bored by its +own books. + +We let a French parson write a book for us on the simple life. We let a +poor suppressed Russian with one foot in hell reach over and write books +for us about liberty which we greedily read and daily use. We let a +sublimely obstinate Norwegian, breaking away with his life, pulling +himself up out of the beautiful, gloomy, morose bog of romance he was +born in--express our American outbreak for facts, for frank realism in +human nature. + +America is bored by its own books because every day it is demanding +gloriously from its authors a literature--books that answer our real +questions, the questions the people are asking every night as they go to +sleep and every morning when they crowd out into the streets--Where are +we going? Who are we? What are we like? What are we for? + + * * * * * + +A---- C----, the little stoopy cobbler on ---- street in ----, bought +some machines to help him last year before I went away and added two or +three slaves to do the work. I find on coming back that he has moved and +has two show windows now, one with the cobbling slaves in it cobbling, +and the other (a kind of sudden, impromptu room with a show window in +it) seems to be straining to be a shoe store. When you go in and show +C---- in his shirt sleeves,--your old shoes hopefully, he slips over +from his shining leather bench to the shoe-store side and shows you at +the psychological moment a new pair of shoes. + +He is in the train now with me this morning, across the aisle, looking +out of the window for dear life, poor fellow, for all the world as if he +could suck up dollars and customers--and people who need shoes--out of +the fields as he goes by, the way the man does mists, by looking hard at +them. + +I watched him walking up and down the station platform before I got on, +with that bent, concentrated, meek, ready-to-die-getting-on look. I saw +his future while I looked. I saw, or thought I saw, windows full of +bright black shoes, I saw the cobbler's shop moved out into the ell at +the back, and two great show windows in front. A---- C---- looks like an +edged tool. + +Millions of Americans are like A---- C----, like chisels, adzes, saws, +scoops. You talk with them, and if you talk about anything except +scooping and adzing, you are not talking with just a man, but a man who +is for something and who is not for anything else. He is not for being +talked with certainly, and alas! not for being loved. At best he is a +mere feminine convenience--a father or a cash secreter; until he wears +out at last, buzzes softly into a grave. + +An Englishman of this type is a little better, would be more like one of +these screw-driver, cork-screw arrangements--a big hollow handle with +all sorts of tools inside. + +Is this man a typical American? Does he need to be? + +What I want is news about us. + +All an American like C---- needs is news. His eagerness is the making of +him. He is merely eager for what he will not want. + +All he needs is the world's news about people, about new inventions in +human beings, news about the different and happier kinds of newly +invented men, news about how they were thought of, and how they are +made, and news about how they work. + +I demand three things for A---- C----: + +I want a novel that he will read which will make him see himself as I +see him. + +I want a moving picture of him that he will go to and like and go to +again and again. + +I want a play that will send him home from the theatre and keep him +awake with what he might be all that night. + +I want a news-book for A---- C----, a news-book for all of us. + + * * * * * + +I read a book some years ago that seemed a true news-book and which was +the first suggestion I had ever received that a book can be an act of +colossal statesmanship, the making or remaking of a people--a +masterpiece of modern literature, laying the ground plan for the +greatness of a nation. + +When I had read it, I wanted to rush outdoors and go down the street +stopping people I met and telling them about it. Once in a very great +while one does come on a book like this. One wants to write letters to +the reviews. One does not know what one would not do to go down the long +aimless Midway Plaisance of the modern books, to call attention to it. +One wishes there were a great bell up over the world.... One would reach +up to it, and would say to all the men and the women and to the flocks +of the smoking cities, "Where are you all?" The bell would boom out, +"What are you doing? Why are you not reading this book?" One wonders if +one could not get a coloured page in the middle of the _Atlantic_ or the +_North American Review_ or _Everybody's_ and at least make a great book +as prominent as a great soap--almost make it loom up in a country like a +Felt Mattress or a Toothbrush. + +The book that has made me feel like this the most is Charles Ferguson's +"Religion of Democracy." I have always wondered why only people here and +there responded to it. The things it made me vaguely see, all those huge +masses of real things, gigantic, half-godlike, looming like towers or +mountains in a mist.... Well, it must have been a little like this that +Columbus felt that first morning! + +But as Columbus went on, what he struck after all was real land, some +piece of real land in particular. The mist of vision did precipitate +into something one could walk on, and I found as I went on with Mr. +Ferguson's book that if there was going to be any real land, somebody +would have to make some. + +But for the time being Charles Ferguson's book--all those glorious +generalizings in behalf of being individual, all those beautiful, +intoned, chanted abstractions in behalf of being concrete--came to me in +my speechless, happy gratitude as a kind of first sign in the heavens, +as a pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night, up over the place in +the waste of water where land, Land! At last! Land again! will have to +be. + +If we ever have a literature in America, it will be found somewhere when +the mist rolls away, right under Charles Ferguson's book. + +It may be too soon just now in this time of transition in our land of +piles and of derricks against the sky, for the book. All we are +competent for now is to say that we want such a book, that we see what +it will do for us. + +When we want it, we will get it. Let the American people put in their +order now. + +In the meantime the Piles and the Derricks. + +All these young and mighty derricks against the sky, all these soaring +steel girders with the blue through them--America! + +Ah, my God! is it not a hoping nation? Three thousand miles of Hope, +from Eastport, Maine, to San Francisco--does not the very sun itself +racing across it take three hours to get one look at our Hope? + +Here it is!--Our World. + +Let me, for one, say what I want. + +It is already as if I had seen it--one big, heroic imagination at work +at last like a sea upon our world, poetry grappling with the great +cities, with their labour, with their creative might, full of their vast +joys and sorrows, full of their tussle with the sea and with the powers +of the air and with the iron in the earth!--the big, speechless cities +that no one has spoken for yet, so splendid, and so eager, and so silent +about their souls! + +It is true we are crude and young. + +Behold the Derricks like mighty Youths! + +In our glorious adolescence so sublime, so ugly, so believing, will no +one sing a hymn to the Derricks? + +Where are the dear little Poets? Where are they hiding? + +Playing Indian perhaps, or making Parthenons out of blocks. + +Perhaps they might begin faintly and modestly at first. + +Some dear, hopeful, modest American poet might creep up from under them, +out from under the great believing, dumb Derricks standing on tiptoe of +faith against the sky, and write a book and call it "Beliefs American +Poets Would Like to Believe if They Could." + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +NEWS-BOOKS II + + +A nation's religion is its shrewdness about its ideals, its genius for +stating its ideals or news about itself, in the terms of its everyday +life. + +A nation's literature is its power of so stating its ideals that we will +not need to be shrewd for them--its power of expressing its ideals in +words, of tracing out ideals on white paper, so that ideals shall +enthrall the people, so that ideals shall be contagious, shall breathe +and be breathed into us, so that ideals shall be caught up in the voices +of men and sung in the streets. + +Ideals, intangible, electric, implacable irresistible, all-enfolding +ideals, shall hold and grip a continent the way a climate grips a +continent, like sunshine around a helpless thing, in the hollow of its +hand, and possess the hearts of the people. + +What our government needs now is a National band in Washington. + +America is a Tune. + +America is not a formula. America is not statistics, even graphic +statistics. A great nation cannot be made, cannot be discovered, and +then be laid coldly together like a census. America is a Tune. It must +be sung together. + +The next thing statesmen are going to learn in this country is that from +a practical point of view in making a great nation only our Tune in +America and only our singing our Tune can save us. A great nation can be +made out of the truth about us. The truth may be--must be +probably,--plain. But the truth must sing. + +It will not be the government that first gets the truth that will govern +us. The government that gets the truth big enough to sing first, and +sings it, will be the government that will govern us. The political +party in this country that will first be practical with the people, and +that will first get what it wants, will be the political party that +first takes Literature seriously. Our first great practical government +is going to see how a great book, searching the heart of a nation, +expressing and singing the men in it, governs a people. Being a +President in a day like this, if it does not consist in being a poet, +consists in being the kind of President who can be, at least, in +partnership with a poet. + +It is not every President who can be his own David, who can rule with +one hand and write psalms and chants for his people with the other. + +The call is out, the people have put in their order to the authors of +America, to the boys in the colleges, and to the young women in the +great schools--Our President wants a book. + +Before much time has passed, he is going to have one. + +Being a President in this country has never been expressed in a book. + +The President is going to have a book that expresses him to the people +and that says what he is trying to do. He will live confidentially with +the book. It shall be in his times of trial and loneliness like a great +people coming to him softly. He shall feel with such a book, be it day +or night, the nation by him, by his desk, by his bedside, by his +silence, by his questioning, standing by, and lifting. + +In the book the people shall sing to the President. He shall be kept +reminded that we are there. He shall feel daily what America is like. +America shall be focussed into melody. We shall have a literature once +more and the singers, as in Greece, as in all happy lands and in all +great ages, shall go singing through the streets. + +There is no singing for a President now. All a President can do when he +is inaugurated, when he begins now, is to kiss helplessly some singing +four thousand years old in a Bible by another nation. + +When David sang to his people, he sang the news, the latest news, the +news of what was happening to people about him from week to week. + +Why is no one singing 1913, our own American 1913? + +Why is no one stuttering out our Bible--one the President could have to +refer to, our own Bible in our own tongue from morning to morning in the +symbols that breathe to us out of the sounds in the street, out of the +air, out of the fresh, bright American sky, and out of the new ground +beneath our feet? + + * * * * * + +It is easy for a President to pile up three columns a morning of news +about himself to us, show each man his face in the morning, but what is +there he can do with twenty thousand newspapers at his breakfast table, +to pick out the real news about us? Who shall paint the portrait of a +people? + +One could go about in the White House and study the portraits of the +presidents, but where is the portrait of the people? The portrait of the +people comes in little bits to the president like a puzzle picture. Each +man brings in his little crooked piece, jig-sawed out from Iowa, South +Dakota, Oklahoma or Aroostook County, Maine. This picture or vision of a +nation, this wilderness of pieces, can be seen every day when one goes +in, lying in heaps on the floor of the White House. + +A literature is the expression on the face of a nation. A literature is +the eyes of a great people looking at one. + +It seems to be as we look, looking out of the past and faraway into the +future. + +A newspaper can set a nation's focus for a morning, adjusting it one way +or the other. A President can set the focus for four years. But only a +book can set the focus for a nation's next hundred years so that it can +act intelligently and steadfastly on its main line from week to week and +morning to morning. Only a book can make a vast, inspiring, steadfast, +stage-setting for a nation. Only a book, strong, slow, reflective, alone +with each man, and before all men, can set in vast still array the +perspective, the vision of the people, can give that magnificent +self-consciousness which alone makes a great nation, or a mighty man. At +last humble, imperious, exalted, it shall see Itself, its vision of its +daily life lying out before it, threading its way to God! + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +NEWS-PAPERS + + +I went one day six months ago to the Mansion House and heard Lord Grey, +and Lord Robert Cecil, and Mr. T.C. Taylor and others address the annual +meeting of the Labour Copartnership Association. + +I found myself in the presence of a body of men who believe that +Englishmen are capable of bigger and better things than many men believe +they are capable of. They refuse to evade the issue of the coal strike +and to agree with the socialists who have given up believing that +English employers can be competent and who merely believe that we will +have to rely on our governments now to be employers, and they refuse to +agree with the syndicalists, who believe in human nature still less and +have given up on employers and on governments both. + +I have retained three impressions as a result of the meeting. + +The first was that it was the most significant and impressive event +since the coal strike, that it brought the whole industrial issue to a +point and summed the coal strike up. + +The second impression was one of surprise that the hall was not full. + +The third impression came the next day when I looked through the papers +for accounts of what had been said and of what it stood for. + +It was noted pleasantly and hurriedly as one of the day's events. It was +just one more of those shadowy things that flicker on the big foolish, +drifting, rolling attention of a world a second and are gone. + +People were given a few inches. + +I read in the papers that same day a quite long account of a discussion +of nine bishops for five hours (meeting at the same time) on a matter of +proper clothes for clergymen. + +I would have said of that meeting of the Labour Copartnership +Association--that it was a meeting of a Society for Defence and +Protection of Longer Possible Religion on the Earth--but the clergy out +of all the invitations, did not seem very largely to have had time to be +there. + +I wondered too a little about the papers, as I hunted through them. + +It set one to thinking if anything serious to the nation would have +happened, if possibly during the coal strike the London papers had +devoted as much attention to T.C. Taylor--a mutual interest +employer--and to how he runs his business--as to Horatio Bottomley? + +Possibly too what Mr. Sandow prefers to have people drink is not so +important--perhaps whole pages of it at a time--as Amos Mann and how he +runs his shoe business without strikes, or as Joseph Bibby and how he +makes oil cakes and loyal workmen together. + +I read the other day of a clergyman in New Jersey--who was organizing a +league of all the left-handed men in the world. Everything is being +organized, whether or no. Some one has financed him. There will be some +one very soon now who will pay the bill for organizing the attention of +a world and for deciding the fate of human nature. It would be worth +while spending possibly one fortune on getting human nature to settle +decisively and once for all whether it has any reason to believe in +itself or not. Why have a world at all--one like this? Do we want it? +Who wants it? What do we want instead? We will advertise and find out. +We will spend millions of pounds and Dreadnoughts, even national +beer-bills on it, if necessary, on making everybody know that mentally +competent business men--mutual-interest employers, and mentally +competent workmen--mutual-interest workmen, can be produced by the +human race. When everybody knows that this is true, nine out of ten +Parliamentary questions would be settled, the Churches would again have +a chance to be noticed, and education and even religion could be taken +seriously. There would be some object in being a teacher perhaps once +more and in making teaching again a great profession. There would be +some object perhaps in even being an artist. The world would start off +on a decent, self-respecting theory or vision about itself. Things could +begin to be done in society once more, soundly, permanently, humanly and +from the bottom up. + +We would go out on the streets again--rich and poor--and look in each +other's faces. We would take up our morning papers without a sinking at +the heart. + +And the men who have stopped believing in men and who merely believe in +machines would be indicted before the bar of mankind. We would see them +slowly filing back, one by one, to where they belong--on the back seats +of the world. + +The newspapers in England and America seem to think that in their +business of rolling the world along, what they find themselves +confronted with just now is an economic problem. + +The problem that the newspapers are really confronted with, as a matter +of fact, is one with which newspaper men big and little are more +competent to deal than they would be with an expert problem in +economics. The real problem that newspapers are confronted with every +night, every morning, to-day, is a problem in human nature. + +Some people believe that human nature can be believed in, and others do +not. The socialists, the syndicalists, the trades unionists, as a class, +and the capitalists as a class, are acting as if they did not. A great +many inventors, and a great many workmen, all the more bold and +inventive workmen, and many capitalists and great organizers of facts +and of men, are acting as if they believed in human nature. + +Which are right? Can a mutual-interest employer, can a mutual-interest +worker, be produced by the human race? There are some of us who answer +that this is a matter of fact, that this type of man can be produced, is +already produced, and is about to be reproduced indefinitely. + +The moment we can convince trades unions and convince employers that +this is true we will change the face of the earth. + +Why not change the face of the earth now? + +In this connection I respectfully submit three considerations: + +1st. If all employers of the world to-morrow morning knew what Lord Grey +(as President of the Labour Copartnership Association) knows to-day +about copartnership--the hard facts about the way copartnership works in +calling out human nature--in nerving and organizing labour, every +employer in the world to-morrow would begin to take an attitude toward +labour which would result in making strikes and lockouts as +impracticable, as incredible, as moony, as visionary forever as ideals +of a world without strikes look now. + +2nd. If all the workmen of the world to-morrow morning knew what +Frederick Taylor (the American engineer) knows about planning workmen's +work so that they receive, for the same expenditure of strength, a third +more wages every day, the whole attitude of labour in every nation and +of the trades unions of the world--the attitude of doing as little work +as possible, of labouring and studying and slaving away to discover ways +of not being of any use to employers--would face about in a day. + +3rd. What Lord Grey knows about copartnership and the way it works is in +the form of ascertainable, communicable, and demonstrable facts. What +Frederick Taylor knows and what he has been doing with human beings and +with steel and pig iron and with bricks and other real things is in the +form of history that has been making for thirty years--and that can be +looked up and proved. + +Why should not everybody who employs labour know what Lord Grey knows? + +And why should not all workmen know what a few thousand workmen who have +been trained under Frederick Taylor to work under better conditions and +with more wages, know? + +If I were an inspired millionaire the first thing I would do to-morrow +would be to supply the funds and find the men who should take up what +Lord Grey knows about employers, and what Frederick Taylor knows about +workmen, and put it where all who live shall see it and know it. I would +spend my fortune in proving to the world, in making everybody know and +believe that the mutual-interest business man and the mutual-interest +workman have been produced and can be produced and shall be produced by +the human race. + +The problem of the fate of the world in its essential nature and in its +spiritual elements and gifts--has come to be in this age of the press a +huge advertising problem--a great adventure in human attention. + +The most characteristic and human and natural way, and the only profound +and permanent way to handle the quarrel between Capital and Labour is by +placing certain facts--certain rights-of-all-men-to-know, into the hands +of some disinterested and powerful statesman of publicity--some great +organizer of the attention of a world. He would have to be a practical +passionate psychologist, a man gifted with a bird's-eye view of +publics--a discoverer of geniuses and crowds, a natural diviner or +reader of the hearts of men. He shall search out and employ twenty men +to write as many books addressed to as many classes and types of +employers and workers. He shall arrange pamphlets for every dooryard +that cannot help being read. + +He shall reach trades unions by using the cinema, by having some master +of human appeal take the fate of labour, study it out in pictures--and +the truth shall be thrown night after night and day after day on a +hundred thousand screens around a world. He shall organize and employ +wide publicity or rely on secret and careful means on different aspects +of the issue according to the nature of the issue, human nature and +common sense, and organize his campaign to reach every type of person, +every temperament, and order of circumstance, each in its own way. + +What Lord Grey knows and what Frederick Taylor's workmen know shall be +put where all who live shall see it where every employer, every workman, +every workman's wife and every growing boy and girl that is passing by, +as on some vast billboard above the world, shall see it--shall see and +know and believe that employers that are worth believing in--and that +workmen who can work and who are skilled and clever enough to love to +work--can still be produced by the human race. + +If I were a newspaper man I would start what might be called Pull +Together Clubs in every community, men in all walks of life, little +groups of crowdmen or men in the community who could not bear not to see +a town do team work. + +I would use these Pull Together Clubs in every community as means of +gathering and distributing news--as local committees on the national +campaign of touching the imagination of labour and touching the +imagination of capital. + +"_Without Vision the People perish_." + +I would begin with spending five million dollars on a vision for the +people. + +What would I do with a five-million-dollar fund for touching the +imagination of labour and touching the imagination of capital? + +First: preliminary announcement in all papers and in all public ways, +asking names and addresses of workmen who have already proved and +established their belief in copartnership. + +Names and addresses of employers in the same way. + +Second: names and addresses of workmen who would believe in it if they +could; who believe in the principle theoretically and would be +interested in seeing how it could be practically and technically +proved. + +Names and addresses of employers in the same way. + +Third: selection of one firm in each industry, the best and most +strategically placed to carry it out in that industry, and placing the +facts before them. + +Selection of the leading workmen out of all the workmen in the nation +employed in that industry, who would be willing to work with such a +firm. + +Fourth: a selection of travelling secretaries to visit trades unions and +get provisional permission and toleration for these workmen so that they +can take copartnership places under such a firm with the consent of +their fellows and he set one side for experimental purposes, under the +protection of the trades union rules. + +Fifth: I would find the most promising trades-union branch in each +industry and I would try to get this branch to take it up with the other +branches until all trades unions were brought to admit copartnership +members on special terms. + +Sixth: after getting copartnership tolerated for certain workmen +employed in certain firms I would try to make copartnership a +trades-union movement. + +I would then let the trades unions educate the employers. + +Seventh: I would prepare a list of apparent exceptions to copartnership +as a working principle. I would investigate and try to see why they were +exceptions and why copartnership would not work, and I would find and +set inventors at work, and find in what way the spirit that is back of +copartnership could be applied. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +NEWS-MACHINES + + +We want to be good and the one thing we need to do is to tell each +other. Then we will be good. Our conveniences for being good in crowds +are not finished yet. + +We have invented machines for crowds to see one another with and to use +in getting about in the dark. One engine whirls round and round all +night so that half a million people can be going about anywhere after +sunset without running into each other. + +Crowds have vast machines for being somewhere else--run in somewhat the +same way all from one unpretentious building they put up called a Power +House. + +A great many of our machines for allowing crowds of people to move their +bodies around with have been attended to, but our Intelligence-Machine, +our machine for knowing what other people really think, and what they +are like in their hearts so that we can know enough to be good to them, +and have brains enough to get them to be good to us, is not finished and +set up yet. + +The industrial problem instead of being primarily an economic problem is +a news problem. + +If a President were to appoint a Secretary of Labour and were to give +him as one of his conveniences, a news engineer--an expert at attracting +and holding the attention of labour unions and driving through news to +them about themselves that they do not know yet, who would be +practically at the head of the department in two years? The Secretary or +the Secretary's news engineer? News is all there is to such a +department, finding out what it is and distributing it. Any one can +think of scores of labour-union fallacies, news they do not know about +themselves that they will want to know at once when their attention is +called to it. + +If nine members of the President's Cabinet were national news agents, +experts in nationalizing news, one member could do with his subordinates +all the other things that Cabinet members do. + +The real problem before each Cabinet member is a problem of news. If the +Secretary of Commerce, for instance, could get people to know certain +things, he would not need to do at all most of the things that he is +doing now. Neither would the Attorney General. + +If everything in a Cabinet position turns on getting people to know +things, why not get them to know them? Why not take that job instead? +Why not take the job of throwing one's self out of a job? Every powerful +man has done it--thrown himself out of what he was doing, by making up +something bigger to do from the beginning of the world. + +In every business it is the man who can recognize, focus, organize, and +apply news, and who can get news through to people, who soon becomes the +head of the business. + +The man who can get news through to directors and to employees and make +them see themselves and see one another and the facts as they are, soon +gets to be Head of the factory. + +The man who can get news through to the public, the salesman of news to +people about what they want to buy and about how they are to spend their +money--very personal, intimate news to every man--soon rises to be Head +of the Head of the factory and of the entire business. + +It will probably be the same in a cabinet or in a government. If the +Secretary of the Department of Commerce has a news engineer as a +subordinate in his department and begins to study and observe how to do +his work best, how to solve his problem in the nation, we will soon see +the head of the department, if he really is the head of the department, +quietly taking over his news engineer's job and letting his news +engineer have his. + +It is a news engineering job, being a Secretary of Commerce. + +Every member of the Cabinet has a news engineering job. + +And the fact seems to be that the moment the news is attended to in each +member's department--applied news, special and private news, turned on +and set to work where it is called for--most members of cabinets, +secretaries of making people do things, and for that matter, the +Presidents of making people do things will be thrown out of employment. +The Secretaries of What People Think, and the President of What People +Think--the engineers of the news in this nation--will be the men who +govern it. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + +NEWS-CROWDS + + +I have tried to express in the last chapter, some kind of tentative +working vision or hope of what authors and of what newspaper men can do +in governing a country. + +This chapter is for anybody, any plain human being. + +Governments all over the world to-day are groping to find out what plain +human beings are like. + +It does not matter very long what other things a government gets wrong, +if it gets the people right. + +This suggests something that each of us can do. + +I was calling on ----, Treasurer of ----, in his new bank, not long +ago--a hushed, reverent place with a dome up over it and no windows on +this wicked world--a kind of heavenly minded way of being lighted from +above. It seemed to be a kind of Church for Money. + +"This is new," I said, "since I've been away. Who built it?" + +---- mentioned the name of Non-Gregarious as if I had never heard of +him. + +I said nothing. And he began to tell me how Non built the bank. He said +he had wanted Non from the first, but that the directors had been set +against it. + +And the more he told the directors about Non, he said, the more set they +were. They kept offering a good many rather vague objections, and for a +long time he could not really make them out. + +Finally he got it. All the objections boiled down to one. + +Non was too good to be true. If there was a man like Non in this world, +they said, they would have heard about it before. + + * * * * * + +When I was telling ex-Mayor ----, in ----, about Non, the first time, he +interrupted me and asked me if I would mind his ringing for his +stenographer. He was a trustee and responsible, either directly or +indirectly, for hundreds of buildings, and he wanted the news in +writing. + +Of course there must be something the matter with it, he said, but he +wanted it to be true, if it could, and as the bare chance of its being +true would be very important to him, he was going to have it looked up. + +Now ex-Mayor ---- is precisely the kind of man (as half the world knows) +who, if he had been a contractor, instead of what he had happened to be, +would have been precisely the kind of contractor Non is. He has the same +difficult, heroic blend of shrewd faiths in him, of high motives and +getting what he wants. + +But the moment ex-Mayor ---- found these same motives put up to be +believed in at one remove, and in somebody else, he thought they were +too good to be true. + +I have found myself constantly confronted in the last few years of +observation with a very singular and interesting fact about business +men. + +Nine business men out of ten I know, who have high motives, (in a rather +bluff simple way, without particularly thinking about it, one way or the +other) seem to feel a little superior to other people. They begin, as a +rule, apparently, by feeling a little superior to themselves, by trying +to keep from seeing how high their motives are, and when, in the stern +scuffle of life, they are unable any longer to keep from suspecting how +high their motives are themselves, they fall back on trying to keep +other people from suspecting it. + +In ----'s factory in ----, the workers in brass, a few years ago, could +not be kept alive more than two years because they breathed brass +filings. When ---- installed, at great expense, suction machines to +place beside the men to keep them from breathing brass, some one said, +"Well surely you will admit this time, that this is philanthropy?" + +"Not at all." + +The saving in brass air alone, gathered up from in front of the men's +mouths, paid for the machines. What is more he said that after he had +gone to the expense of educating some fine workmen, if a mere little +sucking machine like that could make the best workmen he had, work for +him twenty years instead of two years, it was poor economy to let them +die. + +Nearly all of the really creative business men make it a point, until +they get a bit intimate with people, to talk in this tone about +business. One can talk with them for hours, for days at a time, about +their business--some of them, without being able a single time to corner +them into being decent or into admitting that they care about anybody. + +Now I will not yield an inch to ---- or to anybody else in my desire to +displace and crowd out altruism in our modern life. I believe that +altruism is a feeble and discouraged thing from a religious point of +view. I have believed that the big, difficult and glorious thing in +religion is mutualism, a spiritual genius for finding identities, for +putting people's interests together-you-and-I-ness, and we-ness, letting +people crowd in and help themselves. + +And why not believe this and drop it? Why should nearly every business +man one meets to-day, try to keep up this desperate show, of avoiding +the appearance of good, of not wanting to seem mixed up in any way with +goodness--either his own or other people's? + +In the present desperate crisis of the world, when all our governments +everywhere are groping to find out what business men are really like and +what they propose to be like, if a man is good (far more than if he is +bad) everybody has a right to know it. The President has a right to know +it. The party leaders have a right to know it. + +It is a big businesslike thing for a man to make goodness pay, but what +is the man's real, deep, happy, creative, achieving motive in making +goodness pay? What is it in the man that fills him with this fierce +desire, this almost business-fanaticism for making goodness pay? + +It is a big daily grim love of human nature in him, his love of being in +a human world, his passion for human economy, for world efficiency and +world-self-respect. This is what it is in him that makes him force +goodness to pay. + +The business men of the bigger type who let themselves talk in this tone +to-day, do not mean it, they are letting themselves be insensibly drawn +into the tone of the men around them. + +We have gone skulking about with our virtues so long, saying that we +have none, that we have believed it. We all know men finer than we are +who say they have none. So we have not, probably. + +And so it goes on. I grow more and more tired every year of going about +the business world, at boards of trade and at clubs and at dinners, and +finding all this otherwise plain and manly world, all dotted over +everywhere with all these simple, good, self-deceived blundering prigs +of evil, putting on airs before everybody day and night, of being worse +than they are! + +It is not exactly a lie. It is a Humdrum. People do not deliberately lie +about human nature. They merely say pianola-minded things. + +One goes down any business street, Oxford Street, Bond Street, or +Broadway. One hears the same great ragtime tune of business, dinging +like a kind of street piano, through men's minds, "Sh-sh-sh-sh-Oh, +SH-SH! Oh, do not let anybody know I'm being good!" + + +=II= + +I am not going to try any longer to worm out of my virtues or to keep up +an appearance of having as low motives as other people are trying to +make me believe they have. + +They have lied long enough. + +I have lied long enough. + +My motives are really rather high and I am going to admit it. + +And the higher they are (when I have hustled about and got the necessary +brains to go with them) the better they have worked. + +Nine times out of ten when they have not worked, it has been my fault. + +Sometimes it is John Doe's fault. + +I am going to speak to John Doe about it. I am going to tell him what I +am driving at. I have turned over a new leaf. In the crisis of a great +nation and as an act of last desperate patriotism, I am going to give up +looking modest. + +For a long time now I have wanted to dare to come out and stand up +before this Modesty Bug-a-boo and have it out with it and say what I +think of it, as one of the great, still, sinister threats against our +having or getting a real national life in America. + +I knew a boy once who grew so fast that his mother always kept him +wearing shoes three sizes too large, and big, hopeful-looking coats and +trousers. Except for a few moments a year he never caught up. Nobody +ever saw that boy and his long shoes when he was not butting bravely +about, stubbing his toes on the world and turning up his sleeves. + +It was a great relief to him and everybody, finally, when he grew up. + +I am going to let myself go around, for a while now, at least until our +present national crisis is over in business and in politics, like that +boy. + +There are millions of other men in this country who want to be like +that boy. Nations may smile at us if they want to. We will smile +too--rather stiffly and soberly, but for better or worse we propose from +to-day on, to let people see what we are trying to be daily, grimly, +right along side of what we are! + +I have come to the conclusion that the only way, for me, at least, to +keep modest and kind, is to have my ideals all on. When one is going +around in sight of everybody with one's moral sleeves rolled up, and +one's great wistful, broad trousers that do not look as if they would +ever get filled out, it is awkward to find fault with other people for +not filling out their moral clothes. It may be a severe measure to take +with one's self hut the surest way to be kind is to live an exposed +life. + +I propose to live the next few years in a glass house. There are +millions of other men who want to. We want to see if we cannot at last +live confidentially with a world, live naively and simply with a world +like boys and like great men and like dogs! + +What I have written, I have written. I propose to run the risk of being +good. When driven to it, I will run the risk of saying I am good. + +My motives are fairly high. See! here is my scale of one hundred! I had +rather stand forty-five on my scale than ninety-eight on yours! + +If there is any discrepancy between my vision and my action, I am not +going to be bullied out of my life and out of living my life the way I +want to, by the way I look. Though it mock me, I will not haul down my +flag. I will haul up my life! + +Here it is right here in this paragraph, in black and white. I take it +up and look at it, I read it once more and lay it down. + +What I have written, I have written. + + +=III= + +People do not seem to agree in the present crisis of our American +industrial and national life, about the necessity of getting at the +facts and at the real news in this country about how good we are. + +Last November in the national election, four and a half million men +(Republicans) said to Theodore Roosevelt, "Theodore! do not be good so +loud!" + +Four and a half million other men, also Republicans, told him not to +mind what anybody said, but to keep right on being good as loud as he +liked, for as long as it seemed necessary. + +They wanted to be sure our goodness in America such as we had, was being +loud enough to be heard, believed in, and acted on in public. + +The other set of men, last November (who were really very good too, of +course), were more sedate and liked to see goodness modulated more. They +stood out for what might be called a kind of moral elegance. + +The governing difference between the Roosevelt type and the Taft type in +America has not been a mere difference of temperament but a difference +in news-sense, in a sense of crisis in the nation. + +Thousands of men of all parties, with the nicest, easiest stand-pat Taft +temperaments in the world, with soft, low voices and with the most +beautiful moral manners, have let themselves join in a national attempt +to shock this nation into seeing how good it is. A great temporary +crisis can only be met by a great temporary loudness. + +This is what has been happening in America during the last six months. +At last, all men in all parties are engaged in trying to find out: Is it +true or not true that we want to be good? + +We are trying to get the news through. It may not be very becoming to us +and we know as well as any one, that loudness, except when morally deaf +people drive us to it is in bad taste. We are looking forward, every one +of us, to being as elegant as any one is, and the very first minute we +get the morally deaf people out of office where we will not have to go +about shouting out at them we will tone down in our goodness. We will +modulate beautifully! + + +=IV= + +There are three other bug-a-boos, besides the Modesty Bug-a-boo that +America will have to face and drive out of the way before it can be +truly said to have a national character or to have grown up and found +itself. There is the Goody-good Bug-a-boo, the Consistency Bug-a-boo, +and the Bug-a-boo that Thomas Jefferson if he were living now, would +never never ride in a carriage. + +Each of these bug-a-boos in the general mistiness and muddle-headiness +of the time can be seen going about, saying, "Boo! Boo!" to this +democracy from day to day and year to year, keeping it scared into not +getting what it wants. + +There is not one of them that will not evaporate in ten minutes the +first morning we get some real news through in this country about +ourselves and about what we are like. + +What is the real news about us, for instance, as regards being +goody-good? + +I can only begin with the news for one. + +For years, I have held myself back from taking a plain or possibly loud +stand for goodness as a shrewd, worldly-wise program for American +business and public life, because I was afraid of people, and afraid +people would think I was trying to improve them. + +What was worse, I was afraid of myself too. I was afraid I really would. + +I am afraid now, or rather I would be, if I had not drilled through to +the news about myself and about other people and about human nature that +I am putting into this chapter. + + * * * * * + +I have written five hundred pages in this book on an awkward and +dangerous subject like the Golden Rule, and I appeal to the reader--I +ask him humbly, hopefully, gratefully if he can honestly say (except for +a minute here and there when I have been tired and slipped up), if he +has really felt improved or felt that I was trying to improve him in +this book. + +On your honour, Gentle Reader--you who have been with me five hundred +pages! + +You say "Yes"? + +Then I appeal to your sense of fairness. If you truly feel I have been +trying to improve you in this book, turn this leaf down here and stop. +It is only fair to me. Close the book with your improved and being +improved feeling and never open it again until it passes over. You have +no right to go on page after page calling me names, as it were, right in +the middle of my own book in this way behind my back, you!--hundreds and +thousands of miles away from me, by your own lamp, by your own +window--you come to me here between these two helpless pasteboard covers +where I cannot get out at you, where I cannot answer back, and you say +that I am trying to improve you! + +Ah, Gentle Reader, forgive me! God forgive me! Believe me, I never +meant, not if it could possibly be helped, to improve you! If you insist +on it and keep saying that I have been improving you, all I can say is +that I was merely looking as if I were improving you. _You_ did it. I +did not. God help me if I am trying to improve you! I am trying to find +out in this book who I am. If, incidentally, while I am quietly working +away on this for five hundred pages, you find out who you are yourself, +and then drop into a gentle glowing improved feeling all by yourself, do +not mix me up in it. I deny that I have tried to improve you or anybody. +I have written this book to get my own way, to express my America. I +have written it to say "i," to say "I," to say (the first minute you let +me), "you and I," to say we, WE about America--to drive the news through +to a President of what America is like. + +I am not improving you. I am telling you what may or may not be news +about you. + +Take it or leave it. + + +=V= + +I want to be good. + +I do not feel superior to other men. + +And I do not propose, if there is anything I can do about it, to be +compelled to feel superior. + +I believe we all want to be good. + +The one thing I want in this world is to prove it. I want my own way. + +I am not going to slump into being a beautiful character. I have written +this book to get my own way. + +I have said I will not be mixed up in the fate of people who do not know +where they are going, who have not decided what they are like, who do +not know who they are. What do the people want? Some people tell me they +want nothing. They tell me it would only make things worse and stir +things up for me to want to be good. + +Or perhaps they think it is beautiful to lower the price of oil. They +want oil at seven cents a gallon. + +Do they? Do you? Do I? + +I say no. Let oil wait. I want to raise the price of men and to put a +market value on human life. I find as I look about me that there are two +classes of statesmen offering to be helpful in making life worth living +in America. + +There are the statesmen who think we are going to be good and who +believe in a program which trusts and exalts the people and the leaders +of the people. + +There are the statesmen who seem to believe that American human nature +does not amount to enough to be good. They are planning a program on the +principle that the best that can be done with human nature in America in +business and public life is to have it expurgated. + +Which class of statesmen do we want? + +In some of our state prisons men who are not considered fit to reproduce +themselves are sterilized. The question that is now up before this +country is, Do we or do we not want American business sterilized? Are we +or are we not going to put a national penalty on all initiative in all +business men because some men abuse it? + +There is but one thing that can save us, namely, proving to one another +and to our public men, that we are good, that we are going to be good +and that we know how. We face the issue to-day. Two definite programs +are before the country. + +Those who have put their faith in being afraid of one another as a +national policy have devised several By-laws for an Expurgated America. + +They say, eliminate the right of a man to do wrong. Deny him the right +of moral experiment because some of his experiments do not work. We say +let him try. We can look out for ourselves or we will have bigger men +than he is, to look out for us. + +They say, eliminate the right of a man to be an owner, because nobody +has the courage to believe that a man can express his best self in +property. We say that property may express a man's religion, and that +the way a man has of being rich or of being poor may be an art-form. + +Most men can express themselves better in property than in anything +else. + +They say, eliminate all monopoly indiscriminately and the occasional +logical efficiency of monopoly because it has not worked well for the +people the first few times and because we have not learned how to handle +it. We say learn how to handle it. + +They say eliminate the middleman. They say that the one strategic man in +every industry who can represent everybody if he wants to, who can be a +great man and who can make a great industry serve everybody, must be +eliminated because nobody believes America can produce a middleman. We +say instead of weakly and helplessly giving up a great spiritual and +morally-engineering institution like the middleman because the average +middleman does not know his job, we say: Exalt the middleman raise him +to the n-th power, make him--well--do you remember, Gentle Reader, the +walking beams on the old sidewheel steamers? We say do not eliminate +him--lift him up--make him what he naturally is and is in position to +be--the walking beam of Business! + +If the average middleman does not know how to be a real middleman we +will make one who does. + +And all the other eliminations that we have watched people being scared +into, one by one, we will turn into exaltations--each in its own kind +and place. There is not one of our fears that is not the suggestion, the +mighty outline, the inspiration for the world's next new size and new +kind of American man. We say place the position before the man--with its +fears, with its songs, with its challenge. We say, tell him what we +expect of him and demand of him. Put him in a high place on a platform +before the world! There with the truth about him written on his forehead +in the sight of all the people, call him by name, glorify him or behead +him! We are men and we are Americans. We will stand up to each of our +dangers one by one. Each and every danger of them is a romance, a +sublime adventure, a nation-maker. Our threats, our very by-words and +despairs, we will take up, and, in the sight of the world, forge them +into shrewd faiths and into mighty men! + +This is my news or vision. I say that this is where we are going in +America. I compel no man to follow my news but I will pursue him with my +news until he gives me his! + + * * * * * + +This news, I am telling, Gentle Reader, is perhaps news about you. + +If it is not true news, say so. Say what is. We all have a right to +know. The one compulsion of modern life is our right to know, our right +to compel people who live on the same continent or who live in the same +country with us, to open up their hearts, to furnish us with their share +of the materials for a mutual understanding, or for a definite mutual +misunderstanding, on which to live. + +It is the one compulsion of which we will be guilty. All liberty is in +it. These people who have to live with us and that we have to live with, +these people who breathe the same moral air with us, drink the same +water with us, these people who have their moral dumps, who throw away +their moral garbage with us--these people who will not help provide some +daily, mutual understanding for these common decencies for our souls to +live together these people we defy and challenge! We will compel them to +reveal themselves. We will drive them away, or we will drive them into +driving us away, if they will not yield to us what is in their +hearts--Mars, hell, anywhere we go, it matters not to us where we go, +except that we cannot and we will not live with men about us who thrust +down their true feelings and their real desires into a kind of manhole +under them, and sit on the lid and smile. Some seem to have manholes and +some have safes or spiritual banks, and there are others who have +convenient, dim, beautiful clouds in the sky to hide their feelings in. +But whatever their real feelings are, and wherever they keep them, they +belong to us. + +We insist on having or on making mutual arrangements to have, if we live +in crowds, some kind of spiritual rapid transit system for getting our +minds through to one another. We demand a system for having the streets +of our souls decently lighted, some provision for moral sewers, for air +or atmosphere--and all the common conveniences for having decent and +self-respecting souls in crowds--all the intelligence-machines, the +love-machines, the hope-machines, and the believing-machines that the +crowds must have for living decently, for living with beauty, living +with considerateness and respect in this awful daily sublime presence of +one another's lives! + +We shall still have our splendid isolations when we need them, some of +us, and our little solitudes of meanness, but the main common fund of +motives for living together, for growing up into a world together, the +desires, motives, and intentions in men's hearts, their desires toward +us and ours toward them, we are going to know and compel to be made +known. We will fight men to the death to know them. + +Have we not fought, you and I, Gentle Reader, all of us, each man of us, +all our years, all our days, to drive through to some sort of mutual +understanding with our own selves? Now we will fight through to some +mutual understanding with one another and with the world. + +We will knock on every door, make a house to house canvass of the souls +of the world, pursue every man, sing under his windows. We will +undergird his consciousness and his dreams. We will make the birds sing +to him in the morning, "_Where are you going_?" We will put up a sign at +the foot of his bed for his eyes to fall on when he awakes, "_Where are +you going_?" + +Whatever it is that works best, if we blow it out of you with dynamite +or love or fear or draw it out of you with some mighty singing going +past--ah, brother, we will have it out of you! You shall be our brother! +We will be your brother though we die! + +We will live together or we will die together. + +What do you really want? What do you really like? _Who are you_? + +We may pile together all our funny, fearful, little Dreadnoughts, our +stodgy dead lumps of men called armies, and what are they? And what do +they amount to and what can they do, as compared with truth, the real +news about what people want in this world, and about where we are going? + +I say--they shall be as nothing as a rending force, as a glory to tear +down and rebuild a world, as compared with the truth, with the news +about us, that shall come out at last (God hasten the day!) from the +open--the pried-open hearts of men! And I have seen that men shall go +forth with shouts in that day and with glad and solemn silence, to build +a world! + + * * * * * + +I wonder if I have faced down the Goody-good Bug-a-boo. + +I speak for five million men. + +We have got this book written between us (under the name of one of us), +because we want our own way. We are not improving people. We are not +even trying to improve ourselves. Many of us started in on it once and +the first improvement we thought of was not to try any more. + +It is a great deal harder to try to live. Few people want us to--most +people get in the way. And when people get in the way we lay about us a +little--We hit them. We have written this book, because we want to hit a +great many people at once. We find them everywhere about us, in monster +cities, huge thoughtless anthills of them, and they will not let us live +a larger and a richer life. We say to them, We resent your houses your +shoes, your voices, your fears, your motives, your wills, the diseases +you make us walk past every day, the rows of things you seem to think +will do, and that you think we must get used to, and we do not propose, +if we can help it, to get used to what you think will do for Churches; +nor to what you think will do for a government or to the little lonely, +scattered, toyschool-houses, that when you come into the world, fresh +and strange and happy you all proceed solemnly to coop your souls in. +Nor do we want to get used to your hem-and-haw parliaments and your +funny little perfumed prophets--your prophets lying down or propped up +with pillows or your poets wringing their hands. Nor will we be put off +with all your gracefully feeble, watery, lovely little pastel religions +for this grim and mighty modern world. We are American men. We do not +propose to be driven out to sea, to stand face to face every day with +what is true and full of beauty and magic, or to have skies and +mountains and stars palmed off on us as companions instead of men! + +This is what five million men are trying to express in writing this +book. If people deny that I have the right to give the news about +America for five million men; if they say that this is not true about +American human nature, that this is not the news, then I will say, _I am +the news_! I am this sort of an American! God helping me, I say it! +"Look at _me_!" I am this sort of man of whom I am writing! If I am not +this sort of man this afternoon, I will be in the morning! Though I go +down as a hiss and as laughter and as a by-word and a mocking to the end +of my days--_I_ am this sort of man! I say, "Look at _me_!" + +If you will not believe me--that this is an American, if you say that I +cannot prove that there are five million of men like this in America, +then I will still say, "Here is _one_! What will you do with ME?" Though +I die in laughter, all my desires and all my professions in a tumult +about my soul, I say it to this nation, "Your laws, your programs, your +philosophies, your I wills, and I won'ts, I say, shall reckon with _me_! +Your presidents and your legislatures shall reckon with Me!" + +Here I am. The man is here. He is in this book! + +I will break through to the five million men. I will make the five +million men look at me until they recognize themselves. If no one else +will attend to it for me, and if there shall be no other way, I will +have a brass band go through the streets of New York and of a thousand +cities, with banners and floats and great hymns to the people, and they +shall go up and down the streets of the people with signs saying, "Have +you read Crowds?" I will have the Boston Symphony Orchestra tour the +country singing--singing from kettledrums to violins to a thousand +silent audiences, "_Have yon read 'CROWDS'_?" + +I live in a nation in which we are butting through into our sense of our +national character, working our way up into a huge mutual working +understanding. In our beautiful, vague, patriotic, muddleheadedness +about what we want and whether we really want to be good, and about what +being good is like and I say, for one, half-laughing, half-praying, God +helping me--_Look at_ =ME=! + + +=VI= + +I was much interested some time ago when I had not been long landed in +England, and was still trying in the hopeful American way to understand +it--to see the various attitudes of Englishmen toward the discussions +which were going on at that time in the _Spectator_ and elsewhere, of +Mr. Cadbury's inconsistency; and while I had no reason, as an American, +fresh-landed from New York, to be interested in Mr. Cadbury himself, I +found that his inconsistency interested me very much. It insisted on +coming back into my mind, in spite of what I would have thought, as a +strangely important subject--not merely as regards Mr. Cadbury, which +might or might not be important, but as regards England and as regards +America, as regards the way a modern man struggling day by day with a +huge, heavy machine civilization like ours, can still manage to be a +live, useful, and possibly even a human, being in it. + +There are two astonishing facts that stand face to face with all of us +to-day, who are labouring with civilization. + +The first fact is that almost without exception all the men in it who +mean the most in it to us and to other people for good or for evil--who +stir us deeply and do things--all fall into the inconsistent class. + +The second fact is that this is a very small, select distinguished, and +astonishingly capable class. + +A man who is in a grim, serious business like being good, must expect to +give up many of his little self-indulgences in the way of looking good. +Looking inconsistent, possibly even inconsistency itself, may be +sometimes, temporarily, a man's most important public service to his +time. + +One needs but a little glance at history, or even at one's own personal +history. It is by being inconsistent that people grow, and without +meaning to, give other people materials for growing. For the particular +purpose of making the best things grow, of pointing up truths, of giving +definite edges to right and wrong, an inconsistent man--a man who is +trying to pry himself out a little at a time from an impossible +situation in an impossible world, is likely to do the world more good +than a very large crowd of angels who have made up their minds that they +are going to be consistent and going to keep up a consistent look in +this same world--whatever happens to it. + + * * * * * + +If one is marking people on consistency, and if one takes a scale of 100 +as perfect, perhaps one should not always insist on 98. One does not +always insist on 98 for one's self. And when one does and does not get +it, one feels forgiving sometimes. + +In dealing with public men and with other people that we know less than +we know ourselves--if they really do things, it is well to make +allowances, and let them off at 65. + +In some cases, in fact, when men are doing something that no one else +volunteers to do for a world, I find I get on very well with letting +them off at 51. I have sometimes wished, when I have been in England, +that Tories and Liberals and Socialists and the Wise and the Good would +consider letting George Cadbury off at 51. + +Perhaps people are being more safely educated by George Cadbury in his +journals than they might be by other people in what seem to seem to many +of us unfamiliar and dangerous ideas. + +Perhaps posterity, in 1953, looking down this precipice of revolution +England did not fall into in 1913, may mark George Cadbury 73--possibly +89. + +If, in any way, in the crisis of England, George Cadbury can crowd in +and can keep thousands and thousands of Englishmen and women from being +educated by John Bottomley Bull or by Mrs. John Bottomley Bull and hosts +of other would-be friends of the people--by Tom Mann, Ben Tillett, and +Vernon Hartshorn, does it really seem after all a matter of grave +national importance that George Cadbury--a professional non-better--in +educating these people should allow them to keep on in his paper, having +a betting column? + +So long as he really helps stave off John Bottomley Bull and Mrs. John +Bottomley Bull, let him slump into being a millionaire, if he cannot +very well help it! We say, some of us, let him even make cocoa! or have +family prayers! or be a Liberal! + +At least this is the way one American visiting England feels about it, +if he may be permitted. + +Perhaps I would not, if I were an angel. + +I do not want to be an angel. + +I am more ambitious. I want my ideals to do things, and I want to stand +by people who are doing things with their ideals, whether their ideals +are my ideals or not. + + * * * * * + +Let us suppose. Suppose the reader were in Mr. Cadbury's place. What +would he do? Here are two things, let us suppose, he wishes very much. +He wishes a certain class of people would not bet, and he also wishes to +convince these same people of certain important social and political +ideas for which he stands. If he told them that he would have nothing to +do with them unless they stopped betting, there would be no object in +his publishing their paper at all. There would be nothing that they +would let him tell them. If, on the other hand, he begins merely as one +more humble, fellow-human being, and puts himself definitely on record +as not betting himself, and still more definitely as wishing other +people would not bet, and then admits honestly that these other people +have as good a right to decide to bet as he has to decide not to; and if +he then deliberately proceeds to do what every real gentleman who does +not smoke and wishes other people did not, does without +question--namely, offers them the facilities for doing it why should +people call him inconsistent? + +Perhaps a man's consistency consists in his relation to his own smoking +and betting and not in his rushing his consistency over into the smoking +and betting of other people. Perhaps being consistent does not need to +mean being a little pharisaical, or using force, or cutting people off +and having no argument with them, in one matter, because one cannot +agree with them in another. Of course, I admit it would be better if Mr. +Cadbury would publish in a parallel column (if he could get a genius to +write it) an extremely tolerant, human, comrade-like series of +objections to betting, which people could read alongside, and which +would persuade people as much as possible not to read the best betting +tips in the world in the column next door, but certainly the act of +furnishing the tips in the meantime and of being sure that they are the +best tips in the world, is a very real, human, courageous act. It even +has a kind of rough and ready religion in it. It may be too much to +expect, but even in our goodness perhaps we ought to do as we would be +done by. We must be righteous, but on the whole, must we not be +righteous toward others as we would have them righteous toward us? + +What many of us find ourselves wishing most of all, when we come upon +some specially attractive man is, that we could discover some way, or +that he could discover some way, in which the idealist in him, and the +realist in him could be got to act together. + +There are some of us who have come to believe that in the dead earnest, +daily, almost desperate struggle of modern life, the real solid idealist +will have to care enough about his ideals to arrange to have two +complete sets, one set which he calls his personal ideals, which are of +such a nature that he can carry them out alone and rigidly and quite by +himself, and another which he calls his bending or cooeperative ideals, +geared a little lower and adjusted to more gradual usage, which he uses +when he asks other men to act with him. + +It may take a very single-hearted and strong man to keep before his own +mind and before other people's his two sets of ideals, his "I" faiths, +and his you-and-I faiths, keeping each in strict proportion, but it +would certainly be a great human adventure to do it. Saying "God and I," +and saying "God and you and I" are two different arts. And it is +clear-headedness and not inconsistency in a man that keeps him so. + +This is not a mere defence of Mr. Cadbury; it is a defence of a type of +man, of a temperament in our modern life, of men like Edward A. Filene, +of Boston, of a man like Hugh Mac Rae, one of the institutions of North +Carolina, of Tom L. Johnson of Cleveland, of nine men out of ten of the +bigger and more creative sort who are helping cities to get their way +and nations to express themselves. I have believed that the principle at +stake, the great principle for real life in England and in America, of +letting a man be inconsistent if he knows how--must have a stand made +for it. + +There is no one thing, whether in history, or literature, or science, or +politics that can be more crucial in the fate of a nation to-day than +the correct, just, and constructive judgment of Contemporary +Inconsistent People. + + +=VII= + +If I could have managed it, I would have had this book printed and +written--every page of it--in three parallel columns. + +The first column would be for the reader who believes it, who keeps +writing a book more or less like it as he goes along. I would put in one +sentence at the top for him and then let him have the rest of the space +to write in himself. In other words I would say 2 plus 2 equals 4 and +drop it. + +The second column would be for the reader who would like to believe it +if he could, and I would branch out a little more--about half a column. + + 2 + 2 = 4 + + 20 + 20 = 40 + +The third column would be for the reader who is not going to believe it +if it can be helped. It would be in fine type, bitterly detailed and +statistical and take nothing for granted. + + 2 + 2 = 4 + + 20 + 20 = 40 + + 200 + 200 = 400 + + 2,000 + 2,000 = 4,000 + + 20,000 + 20,000 = 40,000 + + etc. + +This arrangement would make the book what might be called a Moving +Sidewalk of Truth. First sidewalk rather quick (six miles an hour). +Second, four miles an hour. Third, two miles an hour. People could move +over from one sidewalk to the other in the middle of an idea any time, +and go faster or slower as they liked to, needed to. + +No one would accuse me--though I might like or need for my own personal +use at one time or another, a slower sidewalk or a faster one than +others--no one would accuse me of being inconsistent if I supplied extra +sidewalks for people of different temperaments to move over to suddenly +any time they wanted to. I have come to some of my truth by a bitterly +slow sidewalk--slower than other people need, and sometimes I have come +by a fast one (or what some would say was no sidewalk at all!) but it +cannot fairly be claimed that there is anything inconsistent in my +offering people every possible convenience I can think of--for believing +me. + +Mr. Cadbury is not inconsistent if he tells truth at a different rate to +different people, or if he chooses to put truths before people in Indian +file. + +A man is not inconsistent who does not tell all the news he knows to all +kinds of people, all at once, all the time. + +There is nothing disingenuous about having an order for truth. + +It is not considered compromising to have an order in moving railway +trains. Why not allow an order in moving trains of thought? And why +should a schedule for moving around people's bodies be considered any +more reasonable than a schedule or timetable or order for moving around +their souls? + +Truth in action must always be in an order. Nine idealists out of ten +who fight against News-men, or men who are trying to make the beautiful +work, and who call them hypocrites, would not do it if they were trying +desperately to make the beautiful work themselves. It is more +comfortable and has a fine free look, to be blunt with the +beautiful--the way a Poet is--to dump all one's ideals down before +people and walk off. But it seems to some of us a cold, sentimental, +lazy, and ignoble thing to do with ideals if one loves them--to give +everybody all of them all the time without considering what becomes of +the ideals or what becomes of the people. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + +CROWD-MEN + +MARCH 4, 1913. + + +As I write these words, I look out upon the great meadow. I see the +poles and the wires in the sun, that long trail of poles and wires I am +used to, stalking across the meadow. I know what they are doing. + +They are telling a thousand cities and villages about our new President, +the one they are making this minute, down in Washington, for these +United States. With his hand lifted up he has just taken his oath, has +sworn before God and before his people to serve the destinies of a +nation. And now along a hundred thousand miles of wire on dumb wooden +poles, a hope, a prayer, a kind of quiet, stern singing of a mighty +people goes by. And I am sitting here in my study window wondering what +he will be like, what he will think, and what he will believe about us. + +What will our new President do with these hundreds of miles of prayer, +of crying to God, stretched up to him out of the hills and out of the +plains? + +Does he really overhear it--that huge, dumb, half-helpless, half-defiant +prayer going up past him, out of the eager, hoarse cities, out of the +slow, patient fields, to God? + +Does he overhear it, I wonder? What does he make out that we are like? + +I should think it would sound like music to him. + +It would come to seem, I should think, when he is alone with his God +(and will he not please be alone with his God sometimes?), like some +vast ocean of people singing, a kind of multitudinous, faraway singing, +like the wind--ah, how often have I heard the wind like some strange and +mighty people in the pine treetops go singing by! + +I do not see how a President could help growing a little like a +poet--down in his heart--as he listens. + +If he does, he may do as he will with us. + +We will let him be an artist in a nation. + +As Winslow Homer takes the sea, as Millet takes the peasants in the +fields, as Frank Brangwyn lifts up the labour in the mills and makes it +colossal and sublime, the President is an artist, in touching the +crowd's imagination with itself--in making a nation self-conscious. + +He shall be the artist, the composer, the portrait painter of the +people--their faith, their cry, their anger, and their love shall be in +him. In him shall be seen the panorama of the crowd, focused into a +single face. In him there shall be put in the foreground of this +nation's countenance the things that belong in the foreground. And the +things that belong in the background shall be put in the background, and +the little ideas and little men shall look little in it, and the big +ones shall look big. + +They do not look so now. This is the one thing that is the matter with +America. The countenence of the nation is not a composed countenance. +All that we want is latent in us, everything is there in our Washington +face. The face merely lacks features and an expression. + +This is what a President is for--to give at last the Face of the United +States an expression! + +If he is a shrewd poet and believes in us, we shall accept him as the +official mind reader of the nation. He focuses our desires. In the +weariness of the day he looks away--he looks up--he leans his head upon +his hand--through the corridors of his brain, that little silent Main +street of America, the thoughts and the crowds and the jostling wills of +the people go. + +If he is a shrewd poet about us, he becomes the organic function, the +organizer of the news about our people to ourselves. He is the public +made visible, the public made one. He is a moving picture of us. He +speaks and gestures the United States--if he is a poet about us--when he +beckons or points or when he puts his finger on his lips, or when he +says, "Hush!" or when he says, "Wait a moment!" he is the voice of the +people of the United States. + + * * * * * + +I am sitting and correcting, one by one, as they are brought to me, +these last page proofs in the factory. The low thunder on the floors of +the mighty presses, crashing down into paper words I can never cross +out--rises around me. In a minute more--minute by minute that I am +counting, that low thunder will overtake me, will roar down and fold +away these last guilty, hopeful, tucked-in words with you, Gentle +Reader, and you will get away! And the book will get away! + +There is no time to try to hold up that low thunder now, and to say what +I have meant to say about false simplicity and democracy, and about our +all being bullied into being little old faded Thomas Jeffersons a +hundred years after he is dead. + +But I will try to suggest what I hope that some one who has no +printing-presses rolling over him--will say: + +One cannot help wishing that our socialists to-day would outgrow Karl +Marx, and that our individualists would outgrow Emerson. Democrats by +this time ought to grow a little, too, and outgrow Jefferson, and +Republicans ought to be able by this time to outgrow Hamilton. + +Why not drop Karl Marx and Emerson and run the gamut of both of them, on +a continent 3,000 miles wide? Why should we live Thomas Jefferson's and +Alexander Hamilton's lives? Why not drop Jefferson and Hamilton and live +ours? + +The last thing that Jefferson would do, if he were here, would be to be +Jefferson over again. It is not fair to Jefferson for anybody to take +the liberty of being like him, when he would not even do it himself. If +Jefferson were here, he would break away from everybody, lawyers, +statesmen and Congress and go outdoors and look at 1913 for himself. + +I like to imagine how it would strike him. I am not troubled about what +he would do. Let Jefferson go out and listen to that vast machine, to +the New York Central Railway smoothing out and roaring down crowds, +rolling and rolling and rolling men all day and all night into machines. +Let Jefferson go out and face the New York Central Railway! Jefferson in +his time had not faced nor looked down through those great fissures or +chasms of inefficiency in what he chose to call democracy, the haughty, +tyrannical aimlessness and meaninglessness of crowds, too mean-spirited +and full of fear and machines to dare to have leaders! + +He had not faced that blank staring hell of anonymousness, that +bottomless, weak, watery muck of irresponsibility--that terrific, +devilish vagueness which a crowd is and which a crowd has to be without +leaders. + +Jefferson did not know about or reckon with Inventors, as a means of +governing, as a means of getting the will of the people. + +A whole new age of invention, of creation, has flooded the world since +Jefferson. This is the main fact about the modern man, that he is +gloriously self-made. He is practising democracy, inventing his own +life, making his own soul before our eyes. + +If we have a poet in the White House, this is the main fact he is going +to reckon with: He will not be seen taking sides with the Alexander +Hamilton model or with the Thomas Jefferson model or with Karl Marx or +Emerson. We will see him taking Karl Marx and Emerson and Hamilton and +Jefferson and melting them down, glowing them and fusing them together +into one man--the Crowd-Man--who shall be more aristocratic than +Hamilton ever dreamed, and be filled with a genius for democracy that +Jefferson never guessed. America to-day, on the face of the earth and +in the hearts of men, is a new democracy, as new as Radium, Copernicus, +the Wireless Telegraph, as new and just beginning to be noticed and +guessed at as Jesus Christ! + +Copernicus, Marconi, Wilbur Wright, and Christianity have turned men's +hearts outward. Men live for the first time in a wide daily +consciousness of one another. + +Alexander Hamilton, had really a rather timid and polite idea of what an +aristocrat was and Jefferson had merely sketched out a ground plan for a +democrat. If Hamilton had been aristocratic in the modern sense, he +would have devoted half his career to expressing a man like Jefferson; +and if Jefferson had been more of a democrat, he would have had room in +himself to tuck in several Alexander Hamiltons. Either one of them would +have been a Crowd-Man. + +By a Crowd-Man I do not mean a pull-and-haul man, a balance of +equilibrium between these two men, I mean a fusion, a glowed together +interpenetration of them both. They did not either of them believe in +the people as much as a man made out of both of them would--a really +wrought-through aristocrat, a really wrought-through democrat or +Crowd-Man, or Hero or Saviour. + + * * * * * + +I am afraid that some of us do not like the word Saviour as people think +we ought to. There seems to be something about the way many people use +the word Saviour which makes it seem as if it had been dropped off over +the edge of the world--of a real world, of a man's world. + +I do not believe that Christ spent five minutes in His whole life in +feeling like a Saviour. He would have felt hurt if He had found any one +saying He was a Saviour in the tone people often use. He wanted people +to feel as if they were like Him. And the way He served them was by +making them feel that they were. + +I do not believe that Thomas Jefferson, if he were here to-day, would +object to a hero, or aristocrat, a special expert or a genius in +expressing crowds, if he lived and wrought in this spirit. + +The final objection that people commonly make to heroes or to men of +marked and special vision or courage is that they are not good for +people, because people put them on pedestals and worship them. They look +up at them wistfully. And then they look down on themselves. + +But I have never seen a hero on a pedestal. + +It is only the Carlyle kind of hero who could ever be put on a pedestal, +or who would stay there if put there. + +And Carlyle--with all honour be it said--never quite knew what a hero +was. A hero is either a gentleman, or a philosopher, or an inventor. + +The gentleman--on a pedestal--feels hurt and slips down. + +The philosopher laughs. + +The inventor thinks up some way of having somebody else get up so that +it will not really be a pedestal at all. + +I agree with all the socialists' objections to heroes, if they mean by a +hero the kind of man that Thomas Carlyle, with all his little glorious +hells, all his little cold, lonesome, select heavens, his thunderclub +view of life, and his Old Testament imagination, called a hero. There is +always something a little strained and competitive about Carlyle's +heroes as he conceives them except possibly one or two. + +Being a hero with Carlyle consisted in conquering and displacing other +heroes. Even if you were a poet, being a hero consisted in a kind of +spiritual standing on some other poet's neck. According to Carlyle, one +must always be a hero against other men. Modern heroism consists in +being a hero with other men. The hero Against comes in the Twentieth +Century to be the hero With, and the modern hero is known, not by +cutting his enemies down, but by his absorbing and understanding them. +He drinks up what they wish they could do into what he does, or he +states what they believe better than they can state it. Combination or +cooeperation is the tremendous heroism of our present life. + +I admit that I would be afraid of Carlyle's heroes having pedestals. +They have already--many of them--done a good deal of harm because they +have had pedestals, and because they would not get down from them. + +But mine would. + +With a man who is being a hero by cooeperation, getting down is part of +the heroism. And there is never any real danger in allowing a pedestal +for a real hero. He never has time to sit on it. + +One sees him always over and over again kicking his pedestal out from +under him and using it to batter a world with. As the world does not +take to enjoying its heroes' pedestals in this way, a pedestal is quite +safe. Most people feel the same about a hero's halo. They prefer to have +him wear it like a kind of glare around his head, and if he uses it as a +searchlight upon them, if he makes his halo really practical and lights +up the world a little around him instead, he is not likely to be +spoiled, is almost always safe from any danger of having any more halo +crowded upon him than he wants, or than anybody wants him to have. One +might put it down as a motto for heroes, "Keep your halo busy and it +won't hurt you." Modern democracy will never have a chance of being what +it wants to be as long as it keeps on throwing away great natural forces +like halos and pedestals. There is no reason why we should not believe +in halos and pedestals, not to wear or stand on, but when used strictly +for butting and seeing purposes. + +We may know a real hero by the fact that we always have to keep +rediscovering him. One knows the real hero by the fact that in his +relation to people who put him on a pedestal he is always kicking his +pedestal away and substituting his vision. + +There is something about any real heroism that we see to-day which makes +heroes out of the people who see it, A real hero has his back to the +people and the crowd looks over his shoulders with him at his work and +he feels behind him daily, with joy and strength, thousands of heroes +pressing up to take his place. And he is daily happy with a strange, +mighty, impersonal joy in all these other people who could do it, too. +He lives with a great hurrah for the world in his heart. The hero he +worships is the hero he sees in others. A man like this would feel +cramped if he were merely being himself, or if he were being imprisoned +by the people in his own glory, or were being cooped up into a hero. + +It is in this sense that I have finally come again to believe that hero +worship is safe, that in some form as one of the great elemental +energies in human nature it must be saved, that it must be regulated and +used, that it has an incalculable power which was meant to be turned on +to run a nation with. + +And I believe that Thomas Jefferson, confronted in this desperate, +sublime 1913, with the new socialized spirit of our time, placed face to +face at last with a Christian aristocrat or Crowd-Man, would want him +saved and emphasized too. + +It is because in democracies saviours are being kept by crowds and by +millionaires and by machines very largely in the position of hired men, +or of ordered about men, that ninety-nine one-hundredths of the saving +or of the man-inventing and man-freeing in crowds, is not being attended +to. + +I have wanted to suggest in this book that the moment the Saviours in +any nation will organize quietly and save themselves first, the less +difficult thing (with men to attend to it) like saving the rest of us, +will be a mere matter of detail. + +The only thing that stands in the way is the Thomas Jefferson bug-a-boo. +People seem to have a kind of left-over fear that the moment these +saviours or experts or inventors or heroes, call them what you will, get +the chance that they have been working to get to save us, they will not +want to use it. + +It does not seem to me that anything will be allowed to interfere with +it--with their saving us, or making detailed arrangements for our saving +ourselves. + +Being a great man (if as democracies seem to think being a great man is +a disease) is at least a self-limiting disease. Inventors when they get +their first chance are going to save us, because they could not endure +living with us unless we were saved. + +Inventors could not enjoy inventing--inventing their greater, more noble +inventions, until they had attended to a little rudimentary thing in the +world like having people half alive on it to live with and to invent +for. + +It does not interest a really inspired man--inventing flying machines +for people who have not time to notice the sky, wireless telegraph for +people who have nothing to say, symphonies for tone-deaf crowds, or +ambrosia for people who prefer potatoes. + +This is the whole issue in a nutshell. When people say that our +inventors, or Crowd-Men or saviours, when they have fulfilled or saved +themselves, cannot be trusted to save us, the reply that will have to be +made is that only people who do not know how inventors feel or how they +are made or what it is in them that drives them to do things, or how +they do them, will be afraid to let men who give us worlds and who +express worlds for us and who make us express ourselves in worlds the +freedom to help shape them and run them. + +Men who have the automatic courage, the helpless bigness and +disinterestedness that always goes with invention, with creative power, +can be trusted by crowds. + +The prejudice against the hero is due to the fact that heroes in days +gone by have been by a very large majority fighters, expressing +themselves against the world, or expressing one part of the world +against another. + +The moment the hero becomes the artist and begins expressing himself and +expressing the crowd together, the crowd will no longer be touched with +fear and driven back upon itself by the Thomas Jefferson bug-a-boo. + + + + +EPILOGUE + + +France is threatened by her childless women, Germany by her machines, +Russia is beginning the Nineteenth Century. It is to England and +America, struggling still sublimely with their sins, the nations +look--for the time being--for the next big free lift upon the world. + +Looked at in the large, in their historic import and their effect on the +time, the English temperament and the American temperament are +essentially the same. As between ourselves, England and America are apt +to seem different, but as between us and the world, we blend together. +One could go through in what I have been saying about Oxford Street and +the House of Commons in this book, strike out all after Oxford Street +and read Broadway, and all after the House of Commons and read Congress, +and it would be essentially true with the necessary English or American +modulation. In the same way it would be possible to go through and +strike out all after the President and read Prime Minister or the +Government. + +England and America have the individualistic temperament, and if we +cannot make a self-expressive individualism noble, and if we are not men +enough to sing up our individualism into the social and the universal, +we perish. + +It is our native way. We are to be crowdmen or nobodies. + +The English temperament or the American temperament, whichever we may +call it, is the same tune, but played with a different and almost +contrasting expression. + +England is being played gravely and massively like a violoncello, and +America--played more lightly, is full of the sweeps and the lulls, the +ecstasy, the overriding glory of the violins. + +But it is the same tune, and God helping us, we will not and we shall +not be overwhelmed under the great dome of the world, by Germany with +all her faithful pianolas, or by France with her cold sweet flutes, or +by Russia with her shrieks and her pauses, pounding her splendid +kettledrums in that awful silence! + +Our song is ours--England and America, the 'cello, and the bright +violins! + +And no one shall sing it for us. + +And no one shall keep us from singing it. + +The skyscrapers are singing, "I will, I will!" to God, and Manchester +and London and Port Sunlight are singing, "I will, I will!" to God. I +have heard even Westminister Abbey and York--those beautiful old +fellows--altering, "I will, I will!" to God! + +And I have seen, as I was going by, Trinity Church at the head of Wall +Street repenting her sins and holding noonday prayer meetings for +millionaires. + +Our genius is a moral genius, the genius of each man for fulfilling +himself. Our religion is the finding of a way to do it beautifully. + +Let Russian men be an army if they like--death and obedience. Let German +men keep on with their faithful, plodding, moral machines if they want +to, and let all French men be artists, go tra-la-laing up and down the +Time to the beautiful--furnishing nudes, clothes, and academies to a +world. + +But we--England and America--will stand up on this planet in the way we +like to stand on a planet and sing, "I will, I will!" to God. + +If we cannot do better, we will sing, "I won't, I won't!" to God. Our +wills and our won'ts are our genius among the sons of men. They are what +we are for. With England and America I will and I won't are an art form, +our means of expressing ourselves, our way of invention and creation, +of begetting an age, of begetting a nation upon a world. + +We do not know (like great men and children) who we are at first. We +begin saying vaguely--will--will! + +Then i will! + +Then I will! + +Then WE WILL! + + +THE BEGINNING. + + + + +THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N.Y. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Crowds, by Gerald Stanley Lee + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CROWDS *** + +***** This file should be named 15759.txt or 15759.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/5/7/5/15759/ + +Produced by Rick Niles, Cori Samuel and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team. + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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