{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_15759/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_15759","id":"gutenberg_15759","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/15759","summary":null,"tags":["Bestsellers, American, 1895-1923","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Category: Sociology","Crowds","Social problems"],"text":"Produced by Rick Niles, Cori Samuel and the Online Distributed\nProofreading Team.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCROWDS\n\nA MOVING-PICTURE\nOF DEMOCRACY\n\nBY\n\nGERALD STANLEY LEE\n\n_Editor of \"Mount Tom\"_\n\nIN FIVE BOOKS\nCROWDS AND MACHINES\nLETTING THE CROWD BE GOOD\nLETTING THE CROWD BE BEAUTIFUL\nCROWDS AND HEROES\nGOOD NEWS AND HARD WORK\n\n\nGARDEN CITY NEW YORK\nDOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY\n\n\n_Copyright, 1913, by_\nDOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY\n_All rights reserved, including that of\ntranslation into foreign languages,\nincluding the Scandinavian_\n\n\nCOPYRIGHT, 1912, BY THE RIDGWAY COMPANY\nCOPYRIGHT, 1912, BY MITCHELL KENNERLEY\nCOPYRIGHT, 1913, BY THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY CO.\nCOPYRIGHT, 1913, BY THE OUTLOOK COMPANY\nCOPYRIGHT, 1913, BY THE INDEPENDENT WEEKLY, INCORPORATED\n\nBOOKS\n\nBy GERALD STANLEY LEE\n\nTHE LOST ART OF READING\n  _A Sketch of Civilization_\n\nTHE CHILD AND THE BOOK\n  _A Constructive Criticism of Education_\n\nTHE SHADOW CHRIST\n  _A Study of the Hebrew Men of Genius_\n\nTHE VOICE OF THE MACHINES\n  _An Introduction to the Twentieth Century_\n\nINSPIRED MILLIONAIRES\n  _A Study of the Man of Genius in Business_\n\nCROWDS\n  _A Moving Picture of Democracy_\n\n\n    _Gratefully inscribed to a little Mountain,\n       a great Meadow, and a Woman.\n    To the Mountain for the sense of time, to\n       the Meadow for the sense of space, and\n       to the Woman for the sense of everything._\n\n\nTABLE OF CONTENTS\n\nBOOK ONE\n\nCROWDS AND MACHINES\n\n\nI. WHERE ARE WE GOING?      3\n\nII. THE CROWD SCARE      19\n\nIII. THE MACHINE SCARE      34\n\nIV. THE STRIKE--AN INVENTION FOR MAKING CROWDS THINK      49\n\nV. THE CROWD-MAN--AN INVENTION FOR MAKING CROWDS SEE      58\n\nVI. THE IMAGINATION OF CROWDS      65\n\nVII. IMAGINATION ABOUT THE UNSEEN      66\n\nVIII. THE CROWD'S IMAGINATION ABOUT THE FUTURE      69\n\nIX. THE CROWD'S IMAGINATION ABOUT PEOPLE      74\n\nX. A DEMOCRATIC THEORY OF HUMAN NATURE      76\n\nXI. DOING AS ONE WOULD WISH ONE HAD DONE IN TWENTY YEARS      80\n\nXII. NEW KINDS AND NEW SIZES OF MEN      86\n\n\nBOOK TWO\n\nLETTING THE CROWDS BE GOOD\n\n\nI. SPEAKING AS ONE OF THE CROWD      93\n\nII. IS IT WRONG FOR GOOD PEOPLE TO BE EFFICIENT?      96\n\nIII. IS IT WRONG FOR GOOD PEOPLE TO BE INTERESTING?      103\n\nIV. PROSPECTS OF THE LIAR      107\n\nV. PROSPECTS OF THE BULLY      111\n\nVI. GOODNESS AS A CROWD-PROCESS      114\n\nVII. THOUGHTS ON BEING IMPROVED BY OTHER PEOPLE      116\n\nVIII. MAKING GOODNESS HURRY      125\n\nIX. TOUCHING THE IMAGINATION OF CROWDS      128\n\nX. THE STUPENDOUS, THE UNUSUAL, THE MONOTONOUS AND THE SUCCESSFUL      142\n\nXI. THE SUCCESSFUL      146\n\nXII. THE NECKS OF THE WICKED      154\n\nXIII. IS IT WRONG FOR GOOD PEOPLE TO BE SUCCESSFUL?      163\n\nXIV. IS IT SECOND RATE FOR GOOD PEOPLE TO BE SUCCESSFUL?      167\n\nXV. THE SUCCESSFUL TEMPERAMENT      173\n\nXVI. THE MEN AHEAD PULL      178\n\nXVII. THE CROWDS PUSH      184\n\nXVIII. THE MAN WHO SAYS HOW, SAYS HOW      186\n\nXIX. AND THE MACHINE STARTS!      194\n\n\nBOOK THREE\n\nLETTING THE CROWD BE BEAUTIFUL\n\n\nPART I. WISTFUL MILLIONAIRES\n\nI. MR. CARNEGIE SPEAKS UP      205\n\nII. MR. CARNEGIE TRIES TO MAKE PEOPLE READ      208\n\nIII. MR. NOBEL TRIES TO MAKE PEOPLE WRITE      211\n\nIV. PAPER BOOKS, MARBLE PILLARS, AND WOODEN BOYS      221\n\nV. THE HUMDRUM FACTORY AND THE TUMPTY-TUM THEATRE      227\n\nPART II. IRON MACHINES\n\nI. STEEPLES AND CHIMNEYS      236\n\nII. BELLS AND WHEELS      240\n\nIII. DEW AND ENGINES      243\n\nIV. DEAD AS A DOOR NAIL!      245\n\nV. AN OXFORD MAN AND AN INCH OF IRON      248\n\nVI. THE MACHINES' MACHINES      250\n\nVII. THE MEN'S MACHINES      252\n\nVIII. THE BASEMENT OF THE WORLD      256\n\nIX. THE GROUND FLOOR FOLKS      262\n\nX. THE MACHINE-TRAINERS      266\n\nXI. MACHINES, CROWDS, AND ARTISTS      269\n\nPART III. PEOPLE-MACHINES\n\nI. NOW!      280\n\nII. COMMITTEES AND COMMITTEES       288\n\nIII. THE INCONVENIENCE OF BEING HUMAN       286\n\nIV. LETTING THE CROWD HAVE PEOPLE IN IT       290\n\n\nBOOK FOUR\n\nCROWDS AND HEROES\n\n\nI. THE SOCIALIST AND THE HERO       297\n\nII. THE CROWD AND THE HERO       301\n\nIII. THE CROWD AND THE AVERAGE PERSON       303\n\nIV. THE CROWD AND PIERPONT MORGAN         307\n\nV. THE CROWD AND TOM MANN       313\n\nVI. AN OPENING FOR THE NEXT PIERPONT MORGAN       323\n\nVII. AN OPENING FOR THE NEXT TOM MANN        327\n\nVIII. THE MEN WHO LOOK       331\n\nIX. WHO IS AFRAID?       337\n\nX. RULES FOR TELLING A HERO--WHEN ONE SEES ONE        343\n\nXI. THE TECHNIQUE OF COURAGE       346\n\nXII. THE MEN WHO WANT THINGS       349\n\nXIII. MEN WHO GET THINGS        356\n\nXIV. SOURCES OF COURAGE FOR OTHERS--TOLERATION        364\n\nXV. CONVERSION        371\n\nXVI. EXCEPTION        380\n\nXVII. INVENTION        383\n\nXVIII. THE MAN WHO PULLS THE WORLD TOGETHER       397\n\nXIX. THE MAN WHO STANDS BY        400\n\nXX. THE STRIKE OF THE SAVIOURS        402\n\nXXI. THE LEAGUE OF THE MEN WHO ARE NOT AFRAID       404\n\n\nBOOK FIVE\n\nGOOD NEWS AND HARD WORK\n\n\nPART I. NEWS AND LABOUR        413\n\nPART II. NEWS AND MONEY        422\n\nPART III. NEWS AND GOVERNMENT\n\nI. OXFORD STREET AND THE HOUSE OF COMMONS         431\n\nII. OXFORD STREET HUMS, THE HOUSE HEMS        440\n\nIII. PRESIDENT WILSON AND MOSES           449\n\nIV. THE PRESIDENT SAYS YES AND NO         455\n\nV. THE PRESIDENT SAYS \"LOOK!\"          463\n\nVI. THE PEOPLE SAY \"WHO ARE YOU?\"           469\n\nVII. THE PEOPLE SAY \"WHO ARE WE?\"        472\n\nVIII. NEWS ABOUT US TO THE PRESIDENT          474\n\nIX. NEWS-MEN           476\n\nX. AMERICAN TEMPERAMENT AND GOVERNMENT           483\n\nXI-XII. NEWS-BOOKS               505-513\n\nXIII. NEWS-PAPERS              517\n\nXIV. NEWS-MACHINES                 524\n\nXV. NEWS-CROWDS                527\n\nXVI. CROWD-MEN             550\n\nEPILOGUE                 539\n\n\n\n\nBOOK ONE\n\nCROWDS AND MACHINES\n\n\nTO CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS\n\n        _\"A battered, wrecked old man\n    Thrown on this savage shore far, far from home,\n    Pent by the sea and dark rebellious brows twelve dreary months\n    ... The end I know not, it is all in Thee,\n    Or small or great I know not--haply what broad fields, what\n    lands!...\n\n        And these things I see suddenly, what mean they\n    As if some miracle, some hand divine unsealed my eyes,\n    Shadowy vast shapes smile through the air and sky,\n    And on the distant waves sail countless ships,\n    And anthems in new tongues I hear saluting me.\"_\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER I\n\nWHERE ARE WE GOING?\n\n\nThe best picture I know of my religion is Ludgate Hill as one sees it\ngoing down the foot of Fleet Street. It would seem to many perhaps like\na rather strange half-heathen altar, but it has in it the three things\nwith which I worship most my Maker in this present world--the three\nthings which it would be the breath of religion to me to offer to a God\ntogether--Cathedrals, Crowds, and Machines.\n\nWith the railway bridge reaching over, all the little still locomotives\nin the din whispering across the street; with the wide black crowd\nstreaming up and streaming down, and the big, faraway, other-worldly\nchurch above, I am strangely glad. It is like having a picture of one's\nwhole world taken up deftly, and done in miniature and hung up for one\nagainst the sky--the white steam which is the breath of modern life, the\nvast hurrying of our feet, and that Great Finger pointing toward heaven\nday and night for us all....\n\nI never tire of walking out a moment from my nook in Clifford's Inn and\nstealing a glimpse and coming back to my fireplace. I sit still a moment\nbefore going to work and look in the flames and think. The great roar\noutside the Court gathers it all up--that huge, boundless, tiny,\nsummed-up world out there; flings it faintly against my quiet windows\nwhile I sit and think.\n\nAnd when one thinks of it a minute, it sends one half-fearfully,\nhalf-triumphantly back to one's work--the very thought of it. The Crowd\nhurrying, the Crowd's flurrying Machines, and the Crowd's God, send one\nback to one's work!\n\nIn the afternoon I go out again, slip my way through the crowds along\nthe Strand, toward Charing Cross.\n\nI never tire of watching the drays, the horses, the streaming taxis, all\nthese little, fearful, gliding crowds of men and women, when a little\nspace of street is left, flowing swiftly, flowing like globules, like\nmercury, between the cabs.\n\nBut most of all I like looking up at that vast second story of the\nstreet, coming in over one like waves, like seas--all these happy,\ncurious tops of 'buses; these dear, funny, way-up people on benches;\nthese world-worshippers, sight-worshippers, and Americans--all these\nlittle scurrying congregations, hundreds of them, rolling past.\n\nI sit on the front seat of a horse 'bus elbow to elbow with the driver,\nstaring down over the brink of the abyss upon ears and necks--that low,\ndistant space where the horses look so tiny and so ineffectual and so\ngone-by below.\n\nThe street is the true path of the spirit. To walk through it, or roll\nor swing on top of a 'bus through it--the miles of faces, all these\ntottering, toddling, swinging miles of legs and stomachs; and on all\nsides of you, and in the windows and along the walks, the things they\nwear, and the things they eat, and the things they pour down their\nlittle throats, and the things they pray to and curse and worship and\nswindle in! It is like being out in the middle of a great ocean of\nliving, or like climbing up some great mountain-height of people, their\nabysses and their clouds about them, their precipices and jungles and\nheavens, the great high roads of their souls reaching off.... I can\nnever say why, but so strange is it, so full of awe is it, and of\nsplendour and pity, that there are times when, rolling and swinging\nalong on top of a 'bus, with all this strange, fearful joy of life about\nme, within me ... it is as if on top of my 'bus I had been far away in\nsome infinite place, and had felt Heaven and Hell sweep past.\n\nOne of the first things that strikes an American when he slips over from\nNew York, and finds himself, almost before he had thought of it--walking\ndown the Strand, suddenly, instead of Broadway, is the way\nthings--thousands of things at once; begin happening to him.\n\nOf course, with all the things that are happening to him--the 'buses,\nthe taxis, the Wren steeples, the great streams of new sights in the\nstreets, the things that happen to his eyes and to his ears, to his feet\nand his hands, and to his body lunging through the ground and swimming\nup in space on top of a 'bus through this huge, glorious, yellow mist of\npeople ... there are all the things besides that begin happening to his\nmind.\n\nIn New York, of course, he rushes along through the city, in a kind of\ntunnel of his own thoughts, of his own affairs, and drives on to his\npoint, and New York does not--at least it does not very often--make\nthings happen to his mind. He is not in London five minutes before he\nbegins to notice how London does his thinking for him. The streets of\nthe city set him to thinking, mile after mile, miles of comparing, miles\nof expecting.\n\nAnd above the streets that he walks through and drives through he finds\nin London another complete set of streets that interest him: the\ngreater, silenter streets of England--the streets of people's thoughts.\nAnd he reads the great newspapers, those huge highways on which the\nEnglish people are really going somewhere.... \"_Where are they going?_\"\nHe goes through the editorials, he stumbles through the news, \"_Where\nare the English people going?_\"\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nAn American thinks of the English people in the third person--at first,\nof course.\n\nAfter three days or so, he begins, half-unconsciously, slipping over\nevery now and then into what seems to be a vague, loose first person\nplural.\n\nThen the first person plural grows.\n\nHe finds at last that his thinking has settled down into a kind of\nhappy, easy-going, international, editorial \"We.\" New York and London,\nChicago and Sheffield, go drifting together through his thoughts, and\neven Paris, glimmering faintly over there, and a dim round world, and he\nasks, as the people of a world stream by, \"_Where are WE going?_\"\n\nThus it is that London, looming, teeming, world-suggesting, gets its\ngrip upon a man, a fresh American, and stretches him, stretches him\nbefore his own eyes, makes him cosmopolitan, does his thinking for him.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThere was a great sea to still his soul and lay down upon his spirit\nthat big, quiet roundness of the earth.\n\nNothing is quite the same after that wide strip of sea--sleeping out\nthere alone night by night--the gentle round earth sloping away down\nfrom under one on both sides, in the midst of space.... Then, suddenly,\nalmost before one knows, that quiet Space still lingering round one,\nperhaps one finds oneself thrust up out of the ground in the night into\nthat big yellow roar of Trafalgar Square.\n\nAnd here are the swift sudden crowds of people, one's own fellow-men\nhurrying past. One looks into the faces of the people hurrying past:\n\"_Where are we going?_\" One looks at the stars: \"WHERE ARE WE GOING?\"\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThat night, when I was thrust up out of the ground and stood dazed in\nthe Square, I was told in a minute that this London where I was was a\nbesieged and conquered city. Some men had risen up in a day and said to\nLondon: \"No one shall go in. No one shall go out.\"\n\nI was in the great proud city at last, the capital of the world, her\nbig, new, self-assured inventions all about her, all around her, and\nsoldiers camping out with her locomotives!\n\nWith her long trains for endless belts of people going in and coming\nout, with her air-brakes, electric lights, and motor-cars and aerial\nmails, it seemed passing strange to be told that her great stations were\nall choked up with a queer, funny, old, gone-by, clanky piece of\nmachinery, an invention for making people good, like soldiers!\n\nAnd I stood in the middle of the roar of Trafalgar Square and asked, as\nall England was asking that night: \"Where are we going?\"\n\nAnd I looked in the faces of the people hurrying past.\n\nAnd nobody knew.\n\nAnd the next day I went through the silenter streets of the city, the\ngreat crowded dailies where all the world troops through, and then the\nmore quiet weeklies, then the monthlies, more dignified and like private\nparks; and the quarterlies, too, thoughtful, high-minded, a little\nabsent, now and then a footfall passing through.\n\nAnd I found them all full of the same strange questioning: \"Where are we\ngoing?\"\n\nAnd nobody knew.\n\nIt was the same questioning I had just left in New York, going up all\nabout me, out of the skyscrapers.\n\nNew York did not know.\n\nNow London did not know.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nAnd after I had tried the journals and the magazines, I thought of\nbooks.\n\nI could not but look about--how could I do otherwise than look about?--a\nlonely American walking at last past all these nobly haunted doorways\nand windows--for your idealists or interpreters, your men who bring in\nthe sea upon your streets and the mountains on your roof-tops; who\nstill see the wide, still reaches of the souls of men beyond the faint\nand tiny roar of London.\n\nI could not but look for your men of imagination, your poets; for the\nmen who build the dreams and shape the destinies of nations because they\nmould their thoughts.\n\nI do not like to say it. How shall an American, coming to you out of his\nlong, flat, literary desert, dare to say it?... Here, where Shakespeare\nplayed mightily, and like a great boy with the world; where Milton,\nKeats, Wordsworth, Browning, Shelley, and even Dickens flooded the lives\nand refreshed the hearts of the people; here, in these selfsame streets,\ngoing past these same old, gentle, smoky temples where Charles Lamb\nwalked and loved a world, and laughed at a world, and even made\none--lifted over his London forever into the hearts of men....\n\nI can only say what I saw those first few fresh days: John Galsworthy\nout with his camera--his beautiful, sad, foggy camera; Arnold Bennett\nstitching and stitching faithfully twenty-four hours a day--big, curious\ntapestries of little things; H.G. Wells, with his retorts, his\nexperiments about him, his pots and kettles of humanity in a great stew\nof steam, half-hopeful, half-dismayed, mixing up his great, new, queer\nmesses of human nature; and (when I could look up again) G.K.\nChesterton, divinely swearing, chanting, gloriously contradicting,\nrolled lustily through the wide, sunny spaces of His Own Mind; and\nBernard Shaw (all civilization trooping by), the eternal boy, on the\neternal curbstone of the world, threw stones; and the Bishop of\nBirmingham preached a fine, helpless sermon....\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nWhen a new American, coming from his own big, hurried, formless,\nspeechless country, finds himself in what he had always supposed to be\nthis trim, arranged, grown-up, articulate England, and when, thrust up\nout of the ground in Trafalgar Square, he finds himself looking at that\nvast yellow mist of people, that vast bewilderment of faces, of the\npoor, of the rich, coming and going they cannot say where--he naturally\nthinks at first it must be because they cannot speak; and when he looks\nto those who speak for them, to their writers or interpreters, and when\nhe finds that they are bewildered, that they are asking the same\nquestion over and over that we in America are asking too, \"Where are we\ngoing?\" he is brought abruptly up, front to front with the great\nbroadside of modern life. London, his last resort, is as bewildered as\nNew York; and so, at last, here it is. It has to be faced now and here,\nas if it were some great scare-head or billboard on the world, \"WHERE\nARE WE GOING?\"\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe most stupendous feat for the artist or man of imagination in modern\ntimes is to conceive a picture or vision for our Society--our present\nmachine-civilization--a common expectation for people which will make\nthem want to live.\n\nIf Leonardo were living now, he would probably slight for the time being\nhis building bridges, and skimp his work on Mona Lisa, and write a\nbook--an exultant book about common people. He would focus and express\ndemocracy as only the great and true aristocrat or genius or artist will\never do it. A great society must be expressed as a vision or expectation\nbefore men can see it together, and go to work on it together, and make\nit a fact. What makes a society great is that it is full of people who\nhave something to live for and who know what it is. It is because nobody\nknows, now, that our present society is not great. The different kinds\nof people in it have not made up their minds what they are for, and some\nkinds have particularly failed to make up their minds what the other\nkinds are for.\n\nWe are all making our particular contribution to the common vision, and\nsome of us are able to say in one way and some in another what this\nvision is; but it is going to take a supreme catholic, summing-up\nindividualist, a great man or artist--a man who is all of us in one--to\nexpress for Crowds, and for all of us together, where we want to go,\nwhat we think we are for, and what kind of a world we want.\n\nThis will have to be done first in a book. The modern world is\ncollecting its thoughts. It is trying to write its bible.\n\nThe Bible of the Hebrews (which had to be borrowed by the rest of the\nworld if they were to have one) is the one great outstanding fact and\nresult of the Hebrew genius. They did not produce a civilization, but\nthey produced a book for the rest of the world to make civilizations out\nof, a book which has made all other nations the moral passengers of the\nHebrews for two thousand years.\n\nAnd the whole spirit and aim of this book, the thing about it that made\nit great, was that it was the sublimest, most persistent, most colossal,\nmasterful attempt ever made by men to look forth upon the earth, to see\nall the men in it, like spirits hurrying past, and to answer the\nquestion, \"WHERE ARE WE GOING?\"\n\nI would not have any one suppose that in these present tracings and\noutlines of thought I am making an attempt to look upon the world and\nsay where the people are going, and where they think they are going, and\nwhere they want to go. I have attempted to find out, and put down what\nmight seem at first sight (at least it did to me) the answer to a very\nsmall and unimportant question--\"Where is it that I really want to go\nmyself?\" \"What kind of a world is it, all the facts about me being duly\nconsidered, I really want to be in?\"\n\nNo man living in a world as interesting as this ever writes a book if he\ncan help it. If Mr. Bernard Shaw or Mr. Chesterton or Mr. Wells had been\nso good as to write a book for me in which they had given the answer to\nmy question, in which they had said more or less authoritatively for me\nwhat kind of a world it is that I want to be in, this book would never\nhave been written. The book is not put forward as an attempt to arrange\na world, or as a system or a chart, or as a nation-machine, or even as\nan argument. The one thing that any one can fairly claim for this book\nis that one man's life has been saved with it. It is the record of one\nman fighting up through story after story of crowds and of crowds'\nmachines to the great steel and iron floor on the top of the world,\nuntil he had found the manhole in it, and broken through and caught a\nbreath of air and looked at the light. The book is merely a\nlife-preserver--that is all; and one man's life-preserver. Perhaps the\nman is representative, and perhaps he is not. At all events, here it is.\nAnybody else who can use it is welcome to it.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe first and most practical step in getting what one wants in this\nworld is wanting it. One would think that the next step would be\nexpressing what one wants. But it almost never is. It generally consists\nin wanting it still harder and still harder until one can express it.\n\nThis is particularly true when the thing one wants is a new world. Here\nare all these other people who have to be asked. And until one wants it\nhard enough to say it, to get it outside one's self, possibly make it\ncatching, nothing happens.\n\nIf one were to point out one trait rather than another that makes\nBernard Shaw, for so brilliant a man, so ineffective as a leader, or\nliterary statesman, or social reformer, it would be his modesty. He has\nnever wanted anything.\n\nIf I could have found a book by Bernard Shaw in which Mr. Shaw had\nmerely said what he wanted himself, it is quite possible this book would\nnot have been written. Even if Mr. Shaw, without saying what he wanted,\nhad ever shown in any corner of any book that one man's wanting\nsomething in this world amounted to anything, or could make any one else\nwant it, or could make any difference in him, or in the world around\nhim, perhaps I would not have written this book.\n\nEverywhere, as I have looked about me among the bookmen in America, in\nEngland, I have found, not the things that they wanted in their books,\nbut always these same deadly lists or bleak inventories--these prairies\nof things that they did not want.\n\nNow, as a matter of fact, I knew already, with an almost despairing\ndistinctness, nearly all these things I did not want and it has not\nhelped me (with all due courtesy and admiration) having John Galsworthy\nout photographing them day after day, so that I merely did not want them\nharder. And Mr. Wells's measles and children's diseases, too. I knew\nalready that I did not want them. And Mr. Shaw's entire, heroic, almost\nnoble collection of things he does not want does not supply me--nor\ncould it supply any other man with furniture to make a world with--even\nif it were not this real, big world, with rain and sunshine and wind and\npeople in it, and were only that little, wonderful world a man lives\nwithin his own heart. There have been times, and there will be more of\nthem, when I could not otherwise than speak as the champion of Bernard\nShaw; but, after all, what single piece of furniture is there that\nGeorge Bernard Shaw, living with his great attic of not-things all\naround him, is able to offer to furnish me for me single, little, warm,\nlighted room to keep my thoughts in? Nor has he furnished me with one\nthing with which I would care to sit down in my little room and\nthink--looking into the cold, perfect hygienic ashes he has left upon my\nhearth. Even if I were a revolutionist, and not a mere, plain human\nbeing, loving life and wanting to live more abundantly, I am bound to\nsay I do not see what there is in Mr. Galsworthy's photographs, or in\nMr. Wells's rich, bottomless murk of humanity to make a revolution for.\nAnd Mr. Bernard Shaw, with all his bottles of disinfectants and shelves\nof sterilized truths, his hard well-being and his glittering comforts,\nhas presented the vision of a world in which at the very best--even if\nit all comes out as he says it will--a man would merely have things\nwithout wanting them, and without wanting anything.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nAnd so it has seemed to me that even if he is quite unimportant, any man\nto-day who, in some public place, like a book, shall paint the picture\nof his heart's desire, who shall throw up, as upon a screen, where all\nmen may see them, his most immediate and most pressing ideals, would\nperform an important service. If a man's sole interest were to find out\nwhat all men in the world want, the best way to do it would be for him\nto say quite definitely, so that we could all compare notes, what he\nwanted himself. Speaking for a planet has gone by, but possibly, if a\nfew of us but speak for ourselves, the planet will talk back, and we\nshall find out at last what it really is that it wants.\n\nThe thing that many of us want most in the present grayness and din of\nthe world is some one to play with, or if the word \"play\" is not quite\nthe right word, some one with whom we can work with freedom and\nself-expressiveness and joy. Nine men out of ten one meets to-day talk\nwith one as it were with their watches in their hands. The people who\nare rich one sees everywhere, being run away with by their motor-cars;\nand the people who are poor one sees struggling pitifully and for their\nvery souls, under great wheels and beneath machines.\n\nOf course, I can only speak for myself. I do not deny that a little\nwhile at a time I can sit by a brook in the woods and be happy; but if,\nas it happens, I would rather have other people about me--people who do\nnot spoil things, I find that the machines about me everywhere have made\nmost people very strange and pathetic in the woods. They cannot sit by\nbrooks, many of them; and when they come out to the sky, it looks to\nthem like some mere, big, blue lead roof up over their lives. Perhaps I\nam selfish about it, but I cannot bear to see people looking at the sky\nin this way....\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nSo, as I have watched my fellow human beings, what I have come to want\nmost of all in this world is the inspired employer--or what I have\ncalled the inspired millionaire or organizer; the man who can take the\nmachines off the backs of the people and take the machines out of their\nwits, and make the machines free their bodies and serve their souls.\n\nIf we ever have the inspired employer, he will have to be made by the\nsocial imagination of the people, by creating the spirit of expectation\nand challenge toward the rich among the masses of the people.\n\nI believe that the time has come when the world is to make its last\nstand for idealism, great men, and crowds.\n\nI believe that great men can be really great, that they can represent\ncrowds. I believe that crowds can be really great, that they can know\ngreat men.\n\nThe most natural kind of great man for crowds to know first will\nprobably be a kind of everyday great man or business statesman, the man\nwho represents all classes, and who proves it in the way he conducts his\nbusiness.\n\nI have called this man the Crowdman.\n\nI do not say that I have met precisely the type of inspired millionaire\nI have in mind, but I have known scores of men who have reminded me of\nhim and of what he is going to be, and I am prepared to say that in\nspirit, or latent at least, he is all about me in the world to-day. If\nit is proved to me that no such man exists, I am here to say there will\nbe one. If it is proved to me that there cannot be one, _I will make\none_. If it is proved to me that by lifting up Desire in the faces of\nyoung men and of boys, and in the faces of true fathers and young\nmothers, and by ringing up my challenge on the great doors of the\nschools, I cannot make one, then I will invoke the men that shall write\nthe books, that shall sing the songs that shall make one! I say this\nwith all reverence for other men's desires and with all respect for\nnatural prejudgments. As I have conceived it, the one business of the\nworld to-day is to find out what we are for and to find out what men in\nthe world--on the whole--really want. When men know what they want they\nget it. Every wrong thing we have to face in modern industrial life is\ndue to men who know what they want, and who therefore get it, due to the\npassions and the dreams of men; and the one single way in which these\nwrong things will ever be overcome is with more passions and with more\nand mightier dreams of men.\n\nNothing is more visionary than trying to run a world without dreams,\nespecially an economic world. It is because even bad dreams are better\nin this world than having no dreams at all that bad people so called are\nso largely allowed to run it.\n\nIn the final and practical sense, the one factor in economics to be\nreckoned with is Desire.\n\nThe next move in economics is going to be the statement of a shrewd,\ndogged, realizable ideal. It is only ideals that have aroused the wrong\npassions, and it is only ideals that will arouse the right ones.\n\nIt will have to be, I imagine, when it comes, not a mere statement of\nprinciples, an analysis, or a criticism, but a moving-picture, a\nportrait of the human race, that shall reveal man's heart to himself.\nWhat we want is a vast white canvas, spread, as it were, over the end of\nthe world, before which we shall all sit together, the audience of the\nnations, of the poor, of the rich, as in some still, thoughtful\nplace--all of us together; and then we will throw up before us on the\nvast white screen in the dark the vivid picture of our vast desires,\nflame up upon it the hopes, the passions of human lives, and the grim,\nsilent wills of men. _\"What do we want?\" \"Where are we going?\"_\n\nIn place of the literature of criticism we have come now to the\nliterature of Desire.\n\nThis literature will have to come slowly, and I have come to believe\nthat the first book, when it comes, will be perhaps a book that does not\nprove anything, a book that is a mere cry, a prayer, or challenge; the\nstory of what one man with these streetfuls of the faces of men and the\nfaces of women pouring their dullness and pouring their weariness over\nhim, has desired, and of what, God helping him, he will have.\n\nThere is a certain sense in which merely praying to God has gone by. In\nthe present desperate crisis of a world plunging on in the dark to a\ncatastrophe or a glory that we cannot guess, it is a time for men to\npray a prayer, a standing-up prayer, to one another.\n\nI believe that it is going to be this huge gathering-in of public\ndesire, this imperious challenge of what men want, this standing-up\nprayer of men to one another, which alone shall make men go forth with\nfaith and singing once more into the battle of life. Sometimes it has\nseemed to me I have already heard it--this song of men's desires about\nme--faintly. But I have seen that the time is at hand when it shall come\nas a vast chorus of cities, of fields, of men's voices, filling the dome\nof the world--a chorus in the glory and the shame of which no\nmillionaire who merely wants to make money, no artist who is not\nexpressing the souls and freeing the bodies of men, no statesman who is\nnot gathering up the desires of crowds, and going daily through the\nworld hewing out the will of the people, shall dare to live.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nBut while this is the vision of my belief, I would not have any one\nsuppose that I am the bearer of easy and gracious tidings.\n\nIt is rather of a great daily adventure one has with the world.\n\nThere have been times when it seemed as if it had to begin all over\nagain every morning.\n\nDay by day I walk down Fleet Street toward Ludgate Hill.\n\nI look once more every morning at that great picture of any religion; I\nlook at the quiet, soaring, hopeful dome--that little touch of singing\nor praying that men have lifted up against heaven. \"Will the Dome bring\nthe Man to me?\"\n\nI look up at the machines, strange and eager, hurrying across the\nbridge. \"Will the Machines bring the Man to me?\"\n\nI look in the faces of the crowd hurrying past. \"Will the Crowd bring\nthe Man to me?\"\n\nWith the picture of my religion--or perhaps three religions or three\nstories of religion--I walk on and on through the crowd, past the\nrailway, past the Cathedral, past the Mansion House, and over the Tower\nBridge. I walk fast and eagerly and blindly, as though a man would walk\naway from the world.\n\nSuddenly I find myself, throngs of voices all about me, standing\nhalf-unconsciously by a high iron fence in Bermondsey watching that\nsmooth asphalt playground where one sees the very dead (for once)\ncrowded by the living--pushed over to the edges--their gravestones\ntilted calmly up against the walls. I stand and look through the pickets\nand watch the children run and shout--the little funny, mockingly\ndressed, frowzily frumpily happy children, the stored-up sunshine of a\nthousand years all shining faintly out through the dirt, out through the\ngenerations in their little faces--\"Will the Man come to me out of\nthese?\"\n\nThe tombstones lean against the wall and the children run and shout. As\nI watch them with my hopes and fears and the tombstones tilted against\nthe walls--as I peer through the railings at the children, I face my\nthree religions. What will the three religions do with the children?\nWhat will the children do with the three religions?\n\nAnd now I will tell the truth. I will not cheat nor run away as\nsometimes I seem to have tried to do for years. I will no longer let\nmyself be tricked by the mere glamour and bigness of our modern life\nnor swooned into good-will by the roll and liturgy of revolution, \"of\nthe people,\" \"for the people,\" \"by the people,\" nor will I be longer\nawed by those huge phrase-idols, constitutions, routines, that have\nroared around me \"Liberty, Equality, Fraternity\"--those imperious,\nthoughtless, stupid tra-la-las of the People. Do the People see truth?\nCan the People see truth? Can all the crowd, and can all the machines,\nand all the cathedrals piled up together produce the Man, the Crowd-man\nor great man who sees truth?\n\nAnd so with my three religions, I have three fears, one for each of\nthem. There is the Machine fear, lest the crowd should be overswept by\nits machines and become like them; and the Crowd fear, lest the crowd\nshould overlook its mighty innumerable and personal need of great men;\nand there is also the daily fear for the Church, lest the Church should\nnot understand crowds and machines and grapple with crowds and machines,\ninterpret them and glory in them and appropriate them for her own use\nand for God's--lest the Church should turn away from the crowds and the\nmachines and graciously and idly bow down to Herself.\n\nAnd now I am going to try to express these three fears that go with the\nthree religions as well as I can, so that I can turn on them and face\nthem and, God helping me, look them out of countenance.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER II\n\nTHE CROWD SCARE\n\n\nTime was when a man was born upon this planet in a somewhat lonely\nfashion. A few human beings out of all infinity stood by to care for\nhim. He was brought up with hills and stars and a neighbour or so, until\nhe grew to man's estate. He climbed at last over the farthest hill, and\nthere, on the rim of things, standing on the boundary line of sky and\nearth that had always been the edge of life to him before, he looked\nforth upon the freedom of the world, and said in his soul, \"What shall I\nbe in this world I see, and whither shall I go in it?\" And the sky and\nthe earth and the rivers and the seas and the nights and the days\nbeckoned to him, and the voices of life rose around him, and they all\nsaid, \"Come!\"\n\nOn a corner in New York, around a Street Department wagon, not so very\nlong ago, five thousand men were fighting for shovels, fifty men to a\nshovel--a tool for living a little longer.\n\nThe problem of living in this modern world is the problem of finding\nroom in it. The crowd principle is so universally at work through modern\nlife that the geography of the world has been changed to conform to it.\nWe live in crowds. We get our living in crowds. We are amused in herds.\nCivilization is a list of cities. Cities are the huge central dynamos of\nall being. The power of a man can be measured to-day by the mile, the\nnumber of miles between him and the city; that is, between him and what\nthe city stands for--the centre of mass.\n\nThe crowd principle is the first principle of production. The producer\nwho can get the most men together and the most dollars together controls\nthe market; and when he once controls the market, instead of merely\ngetting the most men and the most dollars, he can get all the men and\nall the dollars. Hence the corporation in production.\n\nThe crowd principle is the first principle of distribution. The man who\ncan get the most men to buy a particular thing from him can buy the most\nof it, and therefore buy it the cheapest, and therefore get more men to\nbuy from him; and having bought this particular thing cheaper than all\nmen could buy it, it is only a step to selling it to all men; and then,\nhaving all the men on one thing and all the dollars on one thing, he is\nable to buy other things for nothing, for everybody, and sell them for a\nlittle more than nothing to everybody. Hence the department store--the\nsyndicate of department stores--the crowd principle in commerce.\n\nThe value of a piece of land is the number of footsteps passing by it in\ntwenty-four hours. The value of a railroad is the number of people near\nit who cannot keep still. If there are a great many of these people, the\nrailroad runs its trains for them. If there are only a few, though they\nbe heroes and prophets, Dantes, Savonarolas, and George Washingtons,\ntrains shall not be run for them. The railroad is the characteristic\nproperty and symbol of property in this modern age, and the entire value\nof a railroad depends upon its getting control of a crowd--either a\ncrowd that wants to be where some other crowd is, or a crowd that wants\na great many tons of something that some other crowd has.\n\nWhen we turn from commerce to philosophy, we find the same principle\nrunning through them both. The main thing in the philosophy of to-day is\nthe extraordinary emphasis of environment and heredity. A man's destiny\nis the way the crowd of his ancestors ballot for his life. His soul--if\nhe has a soul--is an atom acted upon by a majority of other atoms.\n\nWhen we turn to religion in its different phases, we find the same\nemphasis upon them all--the emphasis of mass, of majority. Not that the\nchurch exists for the masses--no one claims this--but that, such as it\nis, it is a mass church. While the promise of Scripture, as a last\nresort, is often heard in the church about two or three gathered\ntogether in God's name, the Church is run on the working conviction that\nunless the minister and the elders can gather two or three hundred in\nGod's name, He will not pay any particular attention to them, or, if He\ndoes, He will not pay the bills. The church of our forefathers, founded\non personality, is exchanged for the church of democracy, founded on\ncrowds; and the church of the moment is the institutional church, in\nwhich the standing of the clergyman is exchanged for the standing of the\ncongregation. The inevitable result, the crowd clergyman, is seen on\nevery hand amongst us--the agent of an audience, who, instead of telling\nan audience what they ought to do, runs errands for them morning and\nnoon and night. With coddling for majorities and tact for whims, he\ncarefully picks his way. He does his people as much good as they will\nlet him, tells them as much truth as they will hear, until he dies at\nlast, and goes to take his place with Puritan parsons who mastered\nmajorities, with martyrs who would not live and be mastered by\nmajorities, and with apostles who managed to make a new world without\nthe help of majorities at all.\n\nTheology reveals the same tendency. The measuring by numbers is found in\nall belief, the same cringing before masses of little facts instead of\nconceiving the few immeasurable ones. Helpless individuals mastered by\ncrowds are bound to believe in a kind of infinitely helpless God. He\nstands in the midst of the crowds of His laws and the systems of His\nworlds: to those who are not religious, a pale First Cause; and to those\nwho are, a Great Sentimentality far away in the heavens, who, in a kind\nof vast weak-mindedness (a Puritan would say), seems to want everybody\nto be good and hopes they will, but does not quite know what to do\nabout it if they are not.\n\nEvery age has its typical idea of heaven and its typical idea of hell\n(in some of them it would be hard to tell which is which), and every\ncivilization, has its typical idea of God. A civilization with sovereign\nmen in it has a sovereign God; and a crowd civilization, reflecting its\nmood on the heavens, is inclined to a pleasant, large-minded God,\neternally considering everybody and considering everything, but\ninefficient withal, a kind of legislature of Deity, typical of\nrepresentative institutions at their best and at their worst.\n\nIf we pass from our theology to our social science we come to the most\ncharacteristic result of the crowd principle that the times afford. We\nare brought face to face with Socialism, the millennium machine, the\nCorliss engine of progress. It were idle to deny to the Socialist that\nhe is right--and more right, indeed, than most of us, in seeing that\nthere is a great wrong somewhere; but it would be impossible beyond this\npoint to make any claim for him, except that he is honestly trying to\ncreate in the world a wrong we do not have as yet, that shall be large\nenough to swallow the wrong we have. The term \"Socialism\" stands for\nmany things, in its present state; but so far as the average Socialist\nis concerned, he may be defined as an idealist who turns to materialism,\nthat is, to mass, to carry his idealism out. The world having discovered\ntwo great ideals in the New Testament, the service of all men by all\nother men, and the infinite value of the individual, the Socialist\nexpects to carry out one of these ideals by destroying the other.\n\nThe principle that an infinitely helpful society can be produced by\nsetting up a row of infinitely helpless individuals is Socialism, as the\naverage Socialist practises it. The average Socialist is the type of the\neager but effeminate reformer of all ages, because he seeks to gain by\nmachinery things nine tenths of the value of which to men is in gaining\nthem for themselves. Socialism is the attempt to invent conveniences\nfor heroes, to pass a law that will make being a man unnecessary, to do\naway with sin by framing a world in which it would be worthless to do\nright because it would be impossible to do wrong. It is a philosophy of\nhelplessness, which, even if it succeeds in helplessly carrying its\nhelplessness out--in doing away with suffering, for instance--can only\ndo it by bringing to pass a man not alive enough to be capable of\nsuffering, and putting him in a world where suffering and joy alike\nwould be a bore to him.\n\nBut the main importance of Socialism in this connection lies in the fact\nthat it does not confine itself to sociology. It has become a complete\nphilosophy of life, and can be seen penetrating with its subtle satire\non human nature almost everything about us. We have the cash register to\neducate our clerks into pure and honest character, and the souls of\nconductors can be seen being nurtured, mile after mile, by\nfare-recorders. Corporations buy consciences by the gross. They are hung\nover the door of every street car. Consciences are worked by pulling a\nstrap. Liverymen have cyclometres to help customers to tell the truth,\nand the Australian ballot is invented to help men to be manly enough to\nvote the way they think. And when, in the course of human events, we\ncame to the essentially moral and spiritual reform of a woman's right to\ndress in good taste--that is, appropriately for what she is doing, what\ndid we proceed to do to bring it about? Conventions were held year after\nyear, and over and over, to get women to dress as they wanted to; dress\nreform associations were founded, syndicates of courage were established\nall over the land--all in vain; and finally,--Heaven help us!--how was\nthis great moral and spiritual reform accomplished? By an invention of\ntwo wheels, one in front of the other. It was brought about by the Pope\nManufacturing Company of Hartford, Connecticut in two short years.\n\nEverything is brought about by manufacturing companies. It is the\nsocialist spirit; the idea that, if we can only find it, there is some\nmachine that can surely be invented that will take the place of men: not\nonly of hands and feet, but of all the old-fashioned and lumbering\nvirtues, courage, patience, vision, common sense, and religion itself,\nout of which they are made.\n\nBut we depend upon machinery not only for the things that we want, but\nfor the brains with which we decide what we want. If a man wants to know\nwhat he thinks, he starts a club; and if he wants to be very sure, he\ncalls a convention. From the National Undertakers' Association and the\nLaunderers' League to the Christian Endeavour Tournament and the World's\nCongress--the Midway Pleasance of Piety--the Convention strides the\nworld with vociferousness. The silence that descends from the hills is\nfilled with its ceaseless din. The smallest hamlet in the land has\nlearned to listen reverent from afar to the vast insistent roar of It,\nas the Voice of the Spirit of the Times.\n\nEvery idea we have is run into a constitution. We cannot think without a\nchairman. Our whims have secretaries; our fads have by-laws. Literature\nis a club. Philosophy is a society. Our reforms are mass meetings. Our\nculture is a summer school. We cannot mourn our mighty dead without\nCarnegie hall and forty vice-presidents. We remember our poets with\ntrustees, and the immortality of a genius is watched by a standing\ncommittee. Charity is an Association. Theology is a set of resolutions.\nReligion is an endeavour to be numerous and communicative. We awe the\nimpenitent with crowds, convert the world with boards, and save the lost\nwith delegates; and how Jesus of Nazareth could have done so great a\nwork without being on a committee is beyond our ken. What Socrates and\nSolomon would have come to if they had only had the advantage of\nconventions it would be hard to say; but in these days, when the\nexcursion train is applied to wisdom; when, having little enough, we try\nto make it more by pulling it about; when secretaries urge us,\ntreasurers dun us, programs unfold out of every mail--where is the man\nwho, guileless-eyed, can look in his brother's face; can declare upon\nhis honour that he has never been a delegate, never belonged to\nanything, never been nominated, elected, imposed on, in his life?\n\nEverything convenes, revolves, petitions, adjourns. Nothing stays\nadjourned. We have reports that think for us, committees that do right\nfor us, and platforms that spread their wooden lengths over all the\nthings we love, until there is hardly an inch of the dear old earth to\nstand on, where, fresh and sweet and from day to day, we can live our\nlives ourselves, pick the flowers, look at the stars, guess at God,\ngarner our grain, and die. Every new and fresh human being that comes\nupon the earth is manufactured into a coward or crowded into a machine\nas soon as we get at him. We have already come to the point where we do\nnot expect to interest anybody in anything without a constitution. And\nthe Eugenic Society is busy now on by-laws for falling in love.\n\nWhat this means with regard to the typical modern man is, not that he\ndoes not think, but that it takes ten thousand men to make him think. He\nhas a crowd soul, a crowd creed. Charged with convictions, galvanized\nfrom one convention to another, he contrives to live, and with a sense\nof multitude, applause, and cheers he warms his thoughts. When they have\nbeen warmed enough he exhorts, dictates, goes hither and thither on the\ncrutch of the crowd, and places his crutch on the world, and pries on\nit, if perchance it may be stirred to something. To the bigotry of the\nman who knows because he speaks for himself has been added a new bigotry\non the earth--the bigotry of the man who speaks for the nation; who,\nwith a more colossal prejudice than he had before, returns from a mass\nmeeting of himself, and, with the effrontery that only a crowd can give,\nbacks his opinions with forty states, and walks the streets of his\nnative town in the uniform of all humanity. This is a kind of fool that\nhas never been possible until these latter days. Only a very great many\npeople, all of them working on him at once, and all of them watching\nevery one else working at once, can produce this kind.\n\nIndeed, the crowd habit has become so strong upon us, has so mastered\nthe mood of the hour, that even you and I, gentle reader, have found\nourselves for one brief moment, perhaps, in a certain sheepish feeling\nat being caught in a small audience. Being caught in a small audience at\na lecture is no insignificant experience. You will see people looking\nfurtively about, counting one another. You will make comparisons. You\nwill recall the self-congratulatory air of the last large audience you\nhad the honour to belong to, sitting in the same seats, buzzing\nconfidently to itself before the lecture began. The hush of\ndisappointment in a small audience all alone with itself, the mutual\nshame of it, the chill in it, that spreads softly through the room,\nevery identical shiver of which the lecturer is hired to warm\nthrough--all these are signs of the times. People look at the empty\nchairs as if every modest, unassuming chair there were some great\npersonality saying to each and all of us: \"Why are you here? Did you not\nmake a mistake? Are you not ashamed to be a party to--to--as small a\ncrowd as this?\" Thus do we sit, poor mortals, doing obeisance to Empty\nChairs--we who are to be lectured to--until the poor lecturer who is to\nlecture to us comes in, and the struggle with the Chairs begins.\n\nWhen we turn to education as it stands to-day, the same self-satisfied,\ninflexible smile of the crowd is upon it all. We see little but the\nmassing of machinery, the crowding together of numbers of teachers and\nnumbers of courses and numbers of students, and the practical total\nsubmergence of personality, except by accident, in all educated life.\n\nThe infinite value of the individual, the innumerable consequences of\none single great teaching man, penetrating every pupil who knows him,\nbecoming a part of the universe, a part of the fibre of thought and\nexistence to every pupil who knows him--this is a thing that belongs to\nthe past and to the inevitable future. With all our great institutions,\nthe crowds of men who teach in them, the crowds of men who learn in\nthem, we are still unable to produce out of all the men they graduate\nenough college presidents to go around. The fact that at almost any\ngiven time there may be seen, in this American land of ours, half a\nscore of colleges standing and waiting, wondering if they will ever find\na president again, is the climax of what the universities have failed to\ndo. The university will be justified only when a man with a university\nin him, a whole campus in his soul, comes out of it, to preside over it,\nand the soul that has room for more than one chair in it comes out of it\nto teach in it.\n\nWhen we turn from education to journalism, the pressure of the crowd is\nstill more in evidence. To have the largest circulation is to have the\nmost advertising, and to have the most advertising means to have the\nmost money, and to have the most money means to be able to buy the most\nability, and to have the most ability means to keep all that one gains\nand get more. The degradation of many of our great journals in the last\ntwenty years is but the inevitable carrying out of the syndicate method\nin letters--a mass of contributors, a mass of subscribers, and a mass of\nadvertisers. So long as it gives itself over to the circulation idea,\nthe worse a newspaper is, the more logical it is. There may be a certain\npoint where it is bound to stop some time, because there will not be\nenough bad people who are bad enough to go around; but we have not come\nto it yet, and in the meantime about everything that can be thought of\nis being printed to make bad people. If it be asserted that there are\nnot enough bad people to go around even now, it may be added that there\nare plenty of good people to take their places as fast as they fail to\nbe bad enough, and that the good people who take the bad papers to find\nfault with them are the ones who make such papers possible.\n\nThe result of the crowd principle is the inevitable result. Our journals\nhave fallen off as a matter of course, not only in moral ideals (which\neverybody realizes), but in brain force, power of expression,\nimagination, and foresight--the things that give distinction and results\nto utterance and that make a journal worth while. The editorial page has\nbeen practically abandoned by most journals, because most journals have\nbeen abandoned by their editors: they have become printed\ncounting-rooms. With all their greatness, their crowds of writers, and\nmasses of readers, and piles of cablegrams, they are not able to produce\nthe kind of man who is able to say a thing the kind of way that will\nmake everybody stop and listen to him, cablegrams and all. Horace\nGreeley and Samuel Bowles and Charles A. Dana have passed from the\npress, and the march of the crowd through the miles of their columns\nevery day is trampling on their graves. The newspaper is the mass\nmachine, the crowd thinker. To and fro, from week to week and from year\nto year, its flaming headlines sway, now hither and now thither, where\nthe greatest numbers go, or the best guess of where they are going to\ngo; and Personality, creative, triumphant, masterful, imperious\nPersonality--is it not at an end? It were a dazzling sight, perhaps, to\ngaze at night upon a huge building, thinking with telegraph under the\nwide sky around the world, the hurrying of its hundred pens upon the\ndesks, and the trembling of its floors with the mighty coming of a Day\nout of the grip of the press; but even this huge bewildering pile of\npower, this aggregation, this corporation of forces, machines of souls,\nglittering down the Night--does any one suppose It stands by Itself,\nthat It is its own master, that It can do its own will in the world? In\nall its splendour It stands, weaving the thoughts of the world in the\ndark; but that very night, that very moment, It lies in the power of a\nlittle ticking-thing behind its doors. It belongs to that legislature of\ninformation and telegraph, that owner of what happens in a day, called\nthe Associated Press.\n\nIf the One who called Himself a man and a God had not been born in a\ncrowd, if he had not loved and grappled with it, and been crucified and\nworshipped by it, He might have been a Redeemer for the silent, stately,\nancient world that was before He came, but He would have failed to be a\nRedeemer for this modern world--a world where the main inspiration and\nthe main discouragement is the crowd, where every great problem and\nevery great hope is one that deals with crowds. It is a world where,\nfrom the first day a man looks forth to move, he finds his feet and\nhands held by crowds. The sun rises over crowds for him, and sets over\ncrowds; and having presumed to be born, when he presumes to die at last,\nin a crowd of graves he is left not even alone with God. Ten human lives\ndeep they have them--the graves in Paris; and whether men live their\nlives piled upon other men's lives, in blocks in cities or in the\napparent loneliness of town or country what they shall do or shall not\ndo, or shall have or shall not have--is it not determined by crowds, by\nthe movement of crowds? The farmer is lonely enough, one would say, as\nhe rests by his fire in the plains, his barns bursting with wheat; but\nthe murmur of the telegraph almost any moment is the voice of the crowd\nto him, thousands of miles away, shouting in the Stock Exchange: \"You\nshall not sell your wheat! Let it lie! Let it rot in your barns!\"\n\nAnd yet, if a man were to go around the earth with a surveyor's chain,\nthere would seem to be plenty of room for all who are born upon it. The\nfact that there are enough square miles of the planet for every human\nbeing on it to have several square miles to himself does not prove that\na man can avoid the crowd--that it is not a crowded world. If what a man\ncould be were determined by the square mile, it would indeed be a gentle\nand graceful earth to live on. But an acre of Nowhere satisfies no one;\nand how many square miles does a man want to be a nobody in? He can do\nit better in a crowd, where every one else is doing it.\n\nIn the ancient world, when a human being found something in the wrong\nplace and wanted to put it where it belonged, he found himself face to\nface with a few men. He found he had to deal with these few men. To-day,\nif he wants anything put where it belongs, he finds himself face to face\nwith a crowd. He finds that he has to deal with a crowd. The world has\ntelephones and newspapers now, and it has railroads; and if a man\nproposes to do a certain thing in it, the telephones tell the few, and\nthe newspapers tell the crowd, and the crowd gets on to the railroad;\nand before he rises from his sleep, behold the crowd in his front yard;\nand if he can get as far as his own front gate in the thing he is going\nfor, he must be--either a statesman? a hero? or a great genius? None of\nthese. Let him be a corporation--of ideas or of dollars; let him be some\ncomplex, solid, crowded thing, would he do anything for himself, or for\nanybody else, or for everybody else, in a world too crowded to tell the\ntruth without breaking something, or to find room for it, when it is\ntold, without breaking something.\n\nThis is the Crowd's World.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nWhat I have written I have written.\n\nI have been sitting and reading it. It is a mood. But there is an\nimplacable truth in it, I believe, that must be gotten out and used.\n\nAs I have been reading I have looked up. I see the quiet little mountain\nthrough my window standing out there in the sun. It looks around the\nworld as if nothing had happened; and the bobolinks out in the great\nmeadow are all flying and singing in the same breath and rowing through\nthe air, thousands of them, miles of them. They do not stop a minute.\n\nA moment ago while I was writing I heard the Child outside on the\npiazza, four years old, going by my window back and forth, listening to\nthe crunch of her new shoes as if it were the music of the spheres. Why\nshould not I do as well? I thought. The Child is merely seeing her shoes\nas they are with as many senses and as many thoughts and desires at once\nas she can muster, and with all her might.\n\nWhat if I were to see the world like the Child?\n\nYesterday I went to Robert's Meadow. I saw three small city boys, with\ntheir splendid shining rubber boots and their beautiful bamboo poles.\nThey were on their way home. They had only the one trout between them,\nand that had been fondled, examined, and poked over and bragged about\nuntil it was fairly stiff and brown with those boys--looked as if it had\nbeen stolen out of a dried-herring box. They put it reverently back,\nwhen I saw it, into their big basket. I smiled a little as I walked on\nand thought how they felt about it.\n\nThen suddenly it was as if I had forgotten something. I turned and\nlooked back; saw those three boys--a little retinue to that solitary\nfish--trudging down the road in the yellow sun. And I stood there and\nwanted to be in it! Then I saw them going round the bend in the road\nthirty years away.\n\nI still want to be one of those boys.\n\nAnd I am going to try. Perhaps, Heaven helping me, I will yet grow up to\nthem!\n\nI know that the way those three boys felt about the fish--the way they\nfolded it around with something, the way they made the most of it, is\nthe way to feel about the world.\n\nI side with the three boys. I am ready to admit that as regards\ntechnical and comparatively unimportant details or as regards\nperspective on the fish the boys may not have been right. It is possible\nthat they had not taken a point of view, measured in inches or volts or\nfoot-pounds, that was right and could last forever; but I know that the\nspirit of their point of view was right--the spirit that hovered around\nthe three boys and around the fish that day was right and could last\nforever.\n\nIt is the spirit in which the world was made, and the spirit in which\nnew worlds in all ages, and even before our eyes by Boys and Girls\nand--God, are being made.\n\nIt is only the boys and the girls (all sizes) who know about worlds. And\nit is only boys and girls who are right.\n\nI heard a robin in the apple tree this morning out in the rain singing,\n_\"I believe! I believe!\"_\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nAt the same time, I am glad that I have known and faced, and that I\nshall have to know and face, the Crowd Fear.\n\nI know in some dogged, submerged, and speechless way that it is not a\ntrue fear. And yet I want to move along the sheer edge of it all my\nlife. I want it. I want all men to have it, and to keep having it, and\nto keep conquering it. I have seen that no man who has not felt it, who\ndoes not know this huge numbing, numberless fear before the crowd, and\nwho may not know it again almost any moment, will ever be able to lead\nthe crowd, glory in it, die for it, or help it. Nor will any man who has\nnot defied it, and lifted his soul up naked and alone before it and\ncried to God, ever interpret the crowd or express the will of the crowd,\nor hew out of earth and heaven what the crowd wants.\n\nWe want to help to express and fulfil a crowd civilization, we want to\nshare the crowd life, to express what people in crowds feel--the great\ncrowd sensations, excitements, the inspirations and depressions of those\nwho live and struggle with crowds.\n\nWe want to face, and face grimly, implacably, the main facts, the main\nemotions men are having to-day. And the main emotion men are having\nto-day about our modern world is that it is a crowded world, that in the\nnature of the case its civilization is a crowd civilization. Every other\nimportant thing for this present age to know must be worked out from\nthis one. It is the main thing with which our religion has to deal, the\nthing our literature is about, and the thing our arts will be obliged\nto express. Any man who makes the attempt to consider or interpret\nanything either in art or life without a true understanding of the crowd\nprinciple as it is working to-day, without a due sense of its central\nplace in all that goes on around us, is a spectator in the blur and\nbewilderment of this modern world, as helpless in it, and as childish\nand superficial in it, as a Greek god at the World's Fair, gazing out of\nhis still Olympian eyes at the Midway Pleasance.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nAfter the Crowd Fear there comes to most of us the machine fear.\nMachines are the huge limbs or tentacles of crowds. As the crowds grow\nthe machines grow; grasping at the little strip of sky over us, at the\nlittle patch of ground beneath our feet, they swing out before us and\nbeckon daily to us new hells and new heavens in our eyes.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER III\n\nTHE MACHINE SCARE\n\n\nI have had occasion nearly every day for the past two weeks to pass by\nan ancient churchyard on a great hillside not far from London. Most of\nthe stones are very old, and seem to have been thoughtfully and\nreverently, flake by flake, wrought into their final form by\nlong-vanished hands. As I stand and watch them, with the yews and\ncypresses flocking round them, it is as if in some sort of way they had\nbeen surely wrought by the hand of love, so full are they of grief and\nof joy, of devotion, of the very singing of the dead and of those who\nloved them.\n\nWhen I walk on a little farther, and come to a small and new addition to\nthe churchyard, and look about me at the stones, I find myself suddenly\nin quite a new company. So far as one could observe, looking at the\ngravestones in the new churchyard, the people who died there died rather\nthoughtlessly and mechanically, and as if nobody cared very much. Of\ncourse, when one thinks a little further, one knows that this cannot be\ntrue, and that the men and the women who gathered by these glib, trim,\ncapable-looking modern tombstones were as full of love and tenderness\nand reverence before their dead as the others were--but the lines on the\nstones give no sign. One never stops to read an epitaph on one of them;\none knows it would not be interesting, or really whisper to one the\nstrange, happy, human things of another world--even of this world, that\nmake the old tombstones such good company and so friendly to us. One\ngives a glance at the stone and passes on. It was made by machinery,\napparently; a machine might have designed it, a machine might have died\nand been buried under it. One looks beyond it at all the others like\nit--all the glib, competent-looking white stones. Were the silenced\npeople all machines under them, all mechanical, all made to a pattern\nlike their stones, like these strangely hard, brief tombstones standing\nhere at their heads, summing up their lives before us curtly,\nheartlessly, on this gentle old hillside?\n\nI wondered.\n\nI looked back to the old eloquent cemetery that almost seemed to be\nbreathing things, and looked once more at the new.\n\nAnd as I stood and thought, they seemed to me to be two worlds--one the\nworld the people all about me are always saying sadly is going by, and\nthe other--well, the one we will have to have.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nAs I look off from the hilltop at the great sloping countryside about\nme, which stretches miles and miles, with its green fields, and bushy\ntreetops, its red roofs, its banners of steam from twenty railways, its\nhuge, grim, furious chimneys, its still, sleepy steeples, I also see two\nworlds, the same two worlds over again that I saw in the churchyard,\nexcept that they are all jumbled together--the complacent, capable,\ncut-out, homeless-looking houses, the little snuggled-down old ones with\ntheir happy trees about them and trails of cooking smoke. I see the same\ntwo worlds standing and facing each other before me whichever way I\nturn.\n\nAnd when I slip out of the churchyard from those two little separate\nworlds of the dead, and move slowly down the long bustling village\nstreet, and look into the faces of the living, the same two worlds that\nwere in the churchyard and on the hills seem to look at me out of the\nfaces of the living too.\n\nThe faces go hurrying past me, worlds apart. Most people, I imagine, who\nread these pages must have noticed the people's faces in the streets\nnowadays--how they seem to have come out of separate worlds into the\nstreet a moment, and hurry past, and seem to be going back in a moment\nmore to separate worlds.\n\nThere is hardly even a village footway left anywhere to-day where one\ncannot see these two worlds, or the spirit of these two worlds, flitting\npast one through the streets in people's faces, and nightly before our\neyes, struggling with each other to possess, to swallow away into itself\nhuman souls, to master the fate of man upon the earth.\n\nOne of these is the World of the Hand-made; the other is the\nMachine-made World.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nAs day by day I watch these two worlds with all their people in them\nflocking past me, I have come to have certain momentary but recurrent\nresentments and attractions, unaccountable strong emotions; and when I\ntry afterward to rationalize my emotions, as a man should, and give an\naccount of them to myself, and get them ready to use and face my age\nwith, and make myself strong and fit to live in an age, I find myself\nwith a great task before me. And yet one must do it; one cannot live in\nan age strongly and fitly if one would rather be living in some other\nage, or if it is an age with two worlds in it and one cannot make up\none's mind which is the world one wants and settle down quietly and live\nin it. Then a strange thing happens, and always happens the moment I\nbegin to try to decide which of the two--the Hand-made World or the\nMachine-made World--I will choose. I find that in an odd, confused,\ngroping, obstinate way I am bound to choose them both. In spite of all\nits ugly ways--a kind of vast indifference it has to me, to everybody,\nits magnificent heartlessness--I find I have come to take in the\nMachine-made World a kind of boundless, half-secret pride and joy, for a\nterrible and strange beauty there is in it. And then, too, even if I\nwanted to give it up, I could not: neither I nor any man, nor all the\nworld combined, could unthink to-day a hundred years, fold up a hundred\nthousand miles of railway, tuck modern life all neatly up again in a\nlittle, old, snug, safe, lovable Hand-made World. There must be some way\nout, some connecting link between the Hand-made and the Machine-made. We\nhave merely lost it for a moment.\n\nWhich way shall we turn? And so at last to the little Thing through\nwhich the whole world whispers to me on my desk, to the mighty railways\nthat beckon past my door, to the airships that cannot be stilled, and to\nthe rolling mills that will not be silenced, I turn at last! I turn to\nthe Machines Themselves. Half-singing and half-cursing, I have faced\nthem. There is some way in which they can answer and can be made to\nanswer--can be made to give me and the men about me the kind of world we\nwant. I try to analyze it and think it out. What is the thing, the real\nthing in the Hand-made World, that fills me with pride and joy, and that\nI cannot and will not give up? Is not the real thing that is in it\nsomething that can be or might be freed from it, exhaled from it,\nsomething that might be in some new form saved, made an atmosphere or a\nspirit and passed on? And what is it in the new Machine-made World\nwhich, in spite of the splendid joy, a rough new, wild religion there is\nin it, keeps daily filling me as I go past machines with this\ncontradictory obstinate dread of them? After a time I have made a little\ncleared space in my mind, a little breathing room. It has come to me\nfrom thinking that what is beautiful in the Hand-made World perhaps is\nnot these particular Hand-made things themselves at which I so delight,\nbut the Hand-made spirit of the men who made them which the men put into\nthe things. And perhaps what is full of death and fear in the\nMachine-made World is not the machines themselves, but the Machine-made\nspirit in which the men who run the machines have made the machines\nwork. Perhaps the Hand-made spirit is pervasive, eternal. Perhaps it can\nescape like a spirit, and can live where it will live, and do what it\nwill do, like a spirit, and possess the body that it wills to possess.\nPerhaps the Hand-made spirit is still living around me to-day, and is\nnot only living, but is living in a more unspeakable, unbounded body\nthan any spirit has ever lived in before, and is to-day before our eyes,\nlaying its huge iron fingers around our little earth, and holding the\noceans in its hand, and brushing away mountains with a breath, until we\nhave Man at last playing all night through the sky, with visions and\nairships and telescopes. His very words walk on the air with soft and\nunseen feet.\n\nIt is the Hand-made spirit that creates machines. The machines\nthemselves are still the mighty children of the men who move and work in\nthe Hand-made spirit; and the men who glory in them, the men who bring\nthem forth, who think them out, and who create them, and who do the\ngreat and mighty things with them, are still the Hand-made men.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThis leads us up to the question we are all asking ourselves every day.\n\"How can a machine-made world be run in the spirit of a hand-made\nworld?\" The particular form in which the question has been put, which is\ntaken from \"Inspired Millionaires\" is as follows:\n\n\"The idea that there is something in a machine simply as a machine which\nmakes it inherently unspiritual is based upon the experience of the\nworld; but it is, after all, a rather amateur and juvenile world with\nmachines as yet. Its ideas are in their first stages, and are based for\nthe most part upon the world's experience with second-rate men, working\nin second-rate factories--men who have been bullied, and could be\nbullied, by the machines they worked with into being machines\nthemselves. No one would think of denying that men who let machines get\nthe better of them, either in their minds or their bodies, in any walk\nof life, grow unspiritual and mechanical. But it does not take a machine\nto make a machine out of a man. Anything will do it if the man will let\nit. Even the farmer who is out under the great free dome of heaven, and\nworking in wonder every day of his life, grows like a clod if he buries\nhis soul alive in the soil. But farming has been tried many thousands of\nyears, and the other kind of farmer is known by everybody--the farmer\nwho is master over the soil; who, instead of becoming an expression of\nthe soil himself, makes the soil express him. The next thing that is\ngoing to happen is that every one is going to know the other kind of\nmechanic. It is cheerfully admitted that the kind of mechanic we largely\nhave now, who allows himself to be a watcher of a machine, a\nturner-of-something for forty years, can hardly be classed as vegetable\nlife. He is not even organic matter except in a very small part of\nhimself.\n\n\"But it is not the mechanical machine which makes the man unspiritual.\nIt is the mechanical man beside the machine. A master at a piano (which\nis a machine) makes it a spiritual thing; and a master at a\nprinting-press, like William Morris, makes it a free and artistic and\nself-expressive thing.\"\n\nI spent a day a little while ago in walking through a factory. I went\npast miles of machines--great glass roofs of sunshine over them--and\nlooked in the faces of thousands of men. As I went through the machines\nI kept looking to and fro between the machines and the men who stood\nbeside them, and sometimes I came back and looked again at the machines\nand the men beside them; and every machine, or nearly every machine, I\nsaw (any one could see it in that factory) was making a man of somebody.\nOne could see the spirit of the man who invented the machine, and the\nspirit of the man who worked with it, and the spirit of the man who\nowned it and who placed it there with the man, all softly, powerfully\nrunning together. There were exceptions, and every now and then one\ncame, of course, upon the man who seemed to be simply another and\nsomewhat different contrivance or attachment to his machine--some part\nthat had been left over and thought of last, and had not been done as\nwell as the others; but the factory, taken as a whole, from the\nmanager's offices and the great counting-room, and from the tall\nchimneys to the dump, seemed to me to have something fresh and human and\nunwonted about it. It seemed to be a factory that had a look, a look of\nits own. It was like a vast countenance. It had features, an expression.\nIt had an air--well, one must say it, of course, if one is driven to it:\nthe factory had a soul, and was humming it. Any one could have seen why\nby going into his office and talking a little while with the owner, or\nby even not talking to him--by seeing him look up from his desk. After\nwalking through several miles of his personality, and up and down and\ndown and up the corridors of his mind, one did not really need to meet\nhim except as a matter of form and as a finishing touch. One had been\nvisiting with him all along: to look in his face was merely to sum it\nup, to see it all, the whole place, over again in one look. One did not\nneed to be surprised; one might have known what such a man would be\nlike--that such a factory could only be conceived and wrought by a man\nof genius, a kind of lighted-up man. A man who had put not only\nskylights in his buildings, but skylights in his men, would have to have\na skylight in himself (a skylight with a motor attachment, of course).\n\nIf one were to try to think in nature or in art of something that would\nbe like him--well, some kind of transcendental engine, I should say,\nrunning softly, smoothly outdoors in a great sunshine, would have given\none a good idea of him. But, however this may be, it certainly would\nhave been quite impossible to go through his factory and ever say again\nthat machines do not and could not have souls, or at least over-souls,\nand that men who worked with machines did not and could not have souls\nas fast as they were allowed to.\n\nA few days later I went through another factory, and I came out weary\nand spent at night, feeling as unreasonable and almost as hateful about\nmachines, and as discouraged about the people who had to work with them\nas John Ruskin did in those first early days when the Factory Chimney\nfirst lifted its long black flag upon our earth, and bullied great\ncities into cowards and slaves, and all the great, quiet-hearted\nnations, and began making for us--all around us, before our eyes, as\nthough in a kind of jeer at us, and at our queer, pretty, helpless\nlittle religions--the hell we had ceased to believe in.\n\nThe hell is here, and is going to be here apparently as long as may be\nnecessary for us to see it and believe in it once more. If a hell on our\nown premises, shut down hard over our lives here and now, is what is\nnecessary to make us religious and human once more, if we are reduced to\nit, and if having a hard, literal hell--one of our own--is our only way\nof seeing things, of fighting our way through to the truth, and of\ngetting once more decisive, manful, commanding ideas of good and evil, I\nfor one can only be glad we have Pittsburgs and Sheffields to hurry us\nalong and soon have it over with.\n\nBut while, like Ruskin, any one can look about the machines and see\nhell, he can see hell to-day, unlike Ruskin, with heaven lined up close\nbeside it. The machines have come to have souls. The machines we can see\nall about us have taken sides. We can all of us see the machines about\nus to-day like vast looms, weaving in and weaving out the fate of the\nworld, the fate of the churches, the fate of the women and the little\nchildren, and the very fate of God; and everything about us we can see\nturning at last on what we are doing with the machines that are about\nus, and what we are letting our machines do with us.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIt has cleared my mind, and at least helped me to live side by side with\nmachines better from day to day, to consider what these two souls or\nspirits in the machines are, and what they are doing and likely to do.\nIf one knows them and one sees them, and sees how they are working, it\nis easier to take sides and join in and help.\n\nIt would seem to me that there are two spirits in machinery--the spirit\nof weariness, weakness, of inventing ways of getting out of work; and\nthere is the spirit in the machines, too, of moving mountains,\nconquering the sea and air, of working harder and lifting one's work\nover to more heroic, to more splendid and difficult, and almost\nimpossible things. It is these two spirits that are fighting for the\npossession and control of our machine civilization. I watch the machines\nand the men beside them and see which side they are on. The labourer who\nis doing as little work as he dares for his wages and the capitalist who\nis giving as little service as he dares for his money are on the one\nside (the vast, lazy, mean majority of employers and employees), and\nthere may be seen standing on the other side against them, battling for\nour world, another small but mighty group made up of the labourer who\nloves his work more than his wages, and the capitalist who loves the\nthing he makes more than the profit. In other words, the fate of our\nmodern civilization, with all its marvellous machines on it, its art\ngalleries and its churches, is all hanging to-day on the battle between\nthe spirit of achievement, the spirit of creating things, and the spirit\nof weariness or the spirit of thinking of ways of getting out of things.\n\nIt does not take very long to see which one prefers when one considers\nthe problem of living in one world or the other. If we are to take our\nchoice between living in a world run by tired men and a world run by\ninspired ones, most of us will have little difficulty in deciding which\nwe would prefer, and which one we are bound to have. I have been moved\nto come forward with the idea of inspired employers--or, as I have\ncalled it, \"Inspired Millionaires\"--because it would seem to me inspired\nemployers are the very least we can ask for; for certainly if even our\nemployers cannot be inspired or rested and strong, we cannot expect\ntheir overworked workmen to be. There is no hope for us but to write\nour books and to live our lives in such a way as to help put the world\nin the hands of the Strong, and to help keep its institutions and\ncustoms out of the hands of the overworked. Overworked mechanical\nemployers and overworked labourers are the last men to solve the problem\nof the overworked, except in a small, tired, mean, resentful, temporary\nway.\n\nAnd so, as I look about me and watch the machines and the men who are\nworking with the machines, or owning them, it is on this principle that\nI find myself taking sides. I will not live, if I can help it, in a\nworld that is conceived and arranged and managed by tired and overworked\nand mechanical men. Have I not seen tired, mechanical men, whole\ngenerations of them, vast mobs of them, the men who have let the\nmachines mow down their souls? The first thing I have come to ask of a\nman, if he is to be at the head of a machine--whether it is a machine\ncalled a factory, or a machine called a Government or a city, or a\nmachine called a nation--is, _Is he tired?_ I have cast my lot once for\nall--and as it seems to me, too, the lot of the world--with those men\nwho are rested, with the surplus men, the men who want to work more not\nless, who are still and gentle and strong in their hearts, steady in\ntheir imaginations, great men--men who are not driven to being\nself-centred or driven to being class-centred, who can be world-centred\nand inspired.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nWhen one has made this decision, that one will work for a world in\ncontrol of men who are strong, one suddenly is brought face to face with\na fact in our machine civilization which probably is quite new, and\nwhich the spirit of man has never had to face in any age before.\n\nFor the first time in the history of the world, machinery has made it\npossible for the world to get into the hands of the weak.\n\nThe Gun began it--the gun in a coward's hands may side with the weak,\nand the machine in the hands of the weak may temporarily give the world\na list or a trend, and leave it leaning on the wrong side.\n\nThe Trust, for instance, which is really an extremely valuable\ninvention, and perhaps, on the whole, the most important machine of\nmodern times when it is used to defend the rights of the people, is a\nvery different thing when it is pointed at them. We have to-day, not\nunnaturally, the spectacle of perhaps nine people out of ten getting up\nand saying in chorus all through the world that Trusts ought to be\nabolished; and yet it cannot honestly be said that there is really\nanything about the trust-machine--any more than any other machine--that\nis inherently wicked, or mechanical and heartless. Our real objection to\nthe trust-machines is not to the machines themselves, but to the fact\nthat they are, or happen to be (judging each Trust by itself), in the\nhands of the weak and of the tired--of men, that is, who have no spirit,\nno imagination about people; mechanical-minded men, who, at least in the\npast, have taken the easiest and laziest course in business--that of\nmaking all the money they can.\n\nThe moment we see the Trusts in the hands of the strong men, the men who\nare unwilling to slump back into mere money-making, and who face daily\nwith hardihood and with joy the feat of weaving into business several\nstrands of value at once, making things and making money and making men\ntogether, the Trust will become a vast machine of human happiness,\nlifting up and pulling on the world for all of us day and night.\n\nIf our labouring men to-day are to be got out from under the machines,\nwe can only bring it to pass by doing everything we can in directors'\nmeetings or in labor unions or as buyers or as journalists--whatever we\nmay be--to keep the trust-machines in this world out of the hands of the\ntired, weak, and mechanical-minded men.\n\nAnd the things that have been happening to the trust-machines, or are\nabout to happen to them, have happened and are beginning to happen\nbefore our eyes to the machines themselves. The machines of flame and\niron wheels and men in monstrous factories which the philosophers and\nthe poets and the very preachers have doomed our world with are passing\nthrough the same evolution as the trust-machines, and shall be seen at\nlast through the dim struggle yielding themselves, bending their iron\nwills to the same indomitable human spirit, the same slow, stern,\nimplacable will of the soul of man. They shall be inspired machines.\n\nNow for a long time we have seen (for the most part) the weak and\nmechanical-minded employer, the man who takes the line of least\nresistance in business, on every hand about us, making his employees\nmechanical-minded. The men have not been able to work without machines\nto work with, and as they have been obliged to come to him to get the\nmachines, he has adopted the policy of letting himself fall into the\nweakest and easiest way of keeping his men under his own control. He\ntakes the machines the men have come to him to get, and turns them back\nagainst them, points them at their lives, stops their minds with them,\ntheir intelligence and manhood, the very hope and religion with which\nthey live; and of course, when men have had machines pointed at them\nlong enough, one sees them on every hand being mowed down in rows into\nmachines themselves--as deadly and as hopeless to make a civilization\nout of, or a nation out of, or to give votes to, or to have for fathers\nas machines would be, as iron or leather or wood.\n\nIn the meantime, however, we seem to have been developing--partly by\ncompetition and partly by combination and by experience--employers who\nare not mechanical-minded, who have spirit themselves, and who believe\nin it and can use it in others; who find ways of adjusting the hours,\nthe wages, and the conditions of work for the men, so that what is most\nvaluable in them, their spirit, their imaginations, their hourly\ngood-will, can all be turned into the business, can all daily be used as\nthe most important part of the working equipment of the factory. These\nemployers have found (by believing it long enough to try it) that live\nmen can do better and more marketable work than dead ones. If the great\nslow-moving majority of our modern machine employers were not\nmechanical-minded, it would not be necessary to prove to them\ncategorically the little platitude (which even people who have observed\ncab-horses know) that the living is more valuable than the half-dead,\nand that live men can do better and more marketable work than half-dead\nones.\n\nBut, of course, if they are not convinced by imagination or by arguments\nor by figures, they may have to be convinced by losing their business;\nfor the most spirited employers, those who take the more difficult and\ncreative course of making money and men together, are sure to be the\nemployers who will get and keep the most spirited men, and are sure to\ncrowd out of the market in their own special line employers who can only\nget and keep mechanical-minded ones.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIt would be hard to overstate the importance of the battle now going on\namong the trades unions between the spirited labourers and the tired\nones, and among the manufacturers between the inspired employers and the\nmechanical-minded ones.\n\nFor the time being, at least, it is the inspired employers who have most\npower to change the conditions of labour and to free the\nmechanical-minded slaves. It is they who are standing to-day on the\ngreat strategical ground of our time. They hold the pass of human life.\nPeople cannot expect to be inspired in crowds. Crowds are too unwieldy\nand too inconvenient to act quickly. The people can only concentrate\ntheir energies on getting and demanding inspired employers, on\ninsisting that the men who for eight or nine hours a day are pouring in\nwith their wages their thoughts, and their motives, the very hope with\nwhich they live, into their lives, shall be the champions of the people,\nshall represent them and act for them, as they are not placed to act for\nthemselves, and with more imagination than they can yet expect to have\nfor themselves. If our labouring men of to-day are going to struggle out\nfrom under the machines, they can only do it by doing all that they can\nin labour unions and in the press and at the polls to keep the machines\nin this world out of the hands of tired and mechanical-minded owners.\n\nBut probably the more immediate rescue from the evil or mechanicalness\nin machines is not going to come from the employers on the one hand or\nthe employees on the other, but from having the employees in the Trades\nUnions and the employers in the directors' meetings combining together\nto keep in subordinate places where they cannot hurt others all men,\nwhether directors or employees, who do not work harder than they have\nto, and who have not the brains to do their work for something besides\nmoney. The men who are like this will of course be pitied and duly\nconsidered, but they will be kept where they will not have power to\ncontrol other men, or where by force of position or by mere majority\nthey will be able to bully other men to work as mechanically as they do.\nWorkmen who do not want to become machines can only better conditions by\ncombination with so-called inspired employers--employers who work harder\nthan they have to, who dote on the great human difficulties of work, who\nchoose not the easiest but the most perfect way of doing things, who are\nnever mechanical themselves, and will not let their men be if they can\nhelp it. I have liked to call these employers inspired millionaires. I\nwould rather have the machine owner or employer a millionaire, because\nthe more machines an inspired employer can own, the more he can buy and\nget away from the uninspired ones, the sooner will the right of labour\nand the will of the people be accomplished. When the machines are in\nthe hands of inspired and strong and spirited men--men of real\ncompetence or genius for business, the machines will be seen on every\nhand around us as the engines of war against evil, against slavery, the\nwhirling weapons of the Spirit.\n\nEven now, in dreams have I stood and watched them--the will of the\npeople like a flail in their mighty hands--this vast army of\nmachines--go thundering past, driving the uninspired and mechanical off\nthe face of the earth.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IV\n\nTHE STRIKE--AN INVENTION FOR MAKING CROWDS THINK\n\n\nWhen I was arranging to slip over from New York and get something I very\nmuch wanted in England last spring, I found myself held up suddenly in\nall my plans because some men on the docks had decided that there was\nsomething that they wanted too. They decided that I and thousands of\nother people in New York would have to wait over on the shores of\nAmerica until they got it.\n\nAfter postponing my plans until things had settled down, I took passage,\nand in due time found myself standing on English soil, only to be\ninformed that, while I might be allowed perhaps at least to stand on\nEnglish soil, that was really as much as I could expect. I could not go\nanywhere because a number of men on the railways had decided that there\nwas something they wanted and that I would have to wait till they got\nit.\n\nI could go down and look at the silent, cold locomotives on the rails,\nand I could be as wistful and hopeful as I liked about getting up to\nLondon, but these men had decided that there was something that they\nwanted and I must wait.\n\nI could not think of anything I had ever done to these men, and what had\nLiverpool and London done to them?\n\nAfter I was duly settled in London, and had begun to get into its little\nways, and was busily driving about and attending to my business as I had\nplanned, 6,000 more men suddenly wanted something, brought me up to a\nfull stop one rainy day, and said that they had decided that if I wanted\nto ride I would have to walk, or that I would have to poke dismally\nabout in a 'bus, or worm my way through under the ground. As I\nunderstood it, there was something that they wanted and something that\nthey were going to get; and while of course in a way, they recognized\nthat there might be something that I wanted too, I would have to wait\ntill they got theirs.\n\nI could not think of anything I had ever done to them, nor could I see\nwhat the thousands of other good people in London that I saw walking and\npuddling about, or watched waiting twenty minutes or so with long,\nhopeful, dogged whistles for cabs, had done to them.\n\nA few days more, and my morning paper tells me suddenly of some more men\nwho wanted something--this time up in Lancashire. They had decided that\nthey wouldn't let some two or three hundred thousand other men go to\ntheir work until they got it. They hushed cities to have their own way.\nDay by day I watched them throwing the silence of the cities in their\nemployers' faces, closing shops, closing up railroads, telling the world\nit must pay more for the clothes on its back, and all because--a certain\nMr. and Mrs. Riley of Accrington, North Lancashire did not like or did\nnot think that they liked, the North Lancashire Trades Union. (The\ngeneral idea seemed to be to have all the others join in,\neverywhere--fifty-four million spindles, and four hundred and forty\nthousand looms--and wait and keep perfectly still until Mr. and Mrs.\nRiley could make up their minds.)\n\nAnd now this present week, morning after morning I take up my paper and\nread that 500,000 miners want something. I look in my fire dubiously day\nby day. I may have to go home to America in a few weeks to get warm.\n\nOf course it is only fair to say at the outset that this little series\nof impressions, or sketches, as one may say, of Civilization as I have\nseen it since arriving in England are of such a nature that I need not\nhave come over to England to observe them. I would be the last to deny\nthat the same conveniences for being disagreeable and for getting in the\nway and for making a general muss of Life can be offered almost any\ntime in my own hopeful and blundering country.\n\nWhat more immediately concerns me in these things is that, having\nhappened, there can be no doubt that they have some valuable and worthy\nmeaning for me and for other people that I ought to get out of them.\n\nOne cannot stand by and see a great civilization like our\nEnglish-speaking civilization, with its ocean liners, cathedrals, and\naeroplanes, being undignified and inefficient before one's eyes and even\na little ridiculous, without trying to see if it does not serve some\npurpose. There must be something beyond, something further and deeper,\nsomething newborn about it, which shall be worth our while. Strikes seem\nto be common people's way of thinking things out. If they had more\nimagination, they would know what they were going to think beforehand,\nwithout so much trouble perhaps; but so long as they have not, and so\nlong as it is really true perhaps that all these millions of levers and\nwheels and engines will have to be stopped, so that the rich\nmechanical-minded people who own them and the poor mechanical-minded\npeople who work with them can think better, we will have to be glad at\nleast that they are thinking, and we will have to hope that they are\nthinking fast, and will soon have it over with. In the meantime, while\nthey are thinking, we can think too.\n\nIt is never fair to lump people together, and there are always\nexceptions and special reasons to consider; but, speaking roughly, it is\nfair to lay it down as a general principle that it is apt to be the more\ncommon kind of employers and employees who find it difficult to think,\nand who need strikes to think with. When we see 175,000 weavers striking\nin Lancashire, and the Trades Unions insisting on the discharge of\nNon-Union men, and employers being willing to recognize the Unions but\nbeing unwilling to be controlled by them, most of us find ourselves\ntaking sides very quickly. We are often amazed to see how quickly we\ntake sides, and what amazes some of us most is our apparent\ninconsistency. We find ourselves now on the Union side and now on the\nemployer side in the dispute between Capital and Labour. We never know\nwhen we take up the morning paper, some of us, which side will be our\nnext; and very often, if we were suddenly asked why, on reading quietly\nabout a new dispute in the morning paper, we had taken promptly one side\nrather than the other, almost unconsciously, before we knew it we would\nnot perhaps be able to say at once. The other day I became a little\nalarmed at myself at what looked at first like a kind of moral weakness,\nand inability to stand still on one side or the other in the contest\nbetween Labour and Capital; and I tried to think my way sternly through,\nand decide why it was my mind seemed to waver from one side to the\nother, and seemed so inconsistent and inefficient.\n\nIt seems to me I have just discovered a certain thread of consistency,\nas I look back over many disputes.\n\nAs near as I can remember, I find the side that uses force, or that uses\nthe most force, invariably turns me against it. If, as I read, I find\nthat both sides are using force, I find myself against both sides. I\nfind myself wishing, in spite of my dislike of Socialism, that the\nnation had the power, when a quarrelsome industry turns to the people in\nthe street and stops them in what they are doing, and tells the people\nin the street that they cannot ride, or that they shall not sleep, or\nthat they cannot eat--when a quarrelsome industry insists on keeping the\nwhole world up all night because it has a Stomach Ache, I feel suddenly\nthat the people ought to be able to take the industry away and put it\ninto such hands that the people in the streets will be protected; into\nhands that will make the industry behave so that it won't have a stomach\nache. An industry with a stomach ache always has it because somebody in\nit has been over-eating and getting more than their share, and is\nincompetent and unfit; and obviously it should have its freedom, its\nprivilege of selecting its food, taken away from it until it behaves.\n\nAlways allowing for exceptions, we may put it down as a general truth\nthat, when we find a cause using force or mere advantage of position, it\nis because there is incompetence or lack of brains in those who conduct\nit, and the cure lies, not in more force, but in more brains. One cannot\nhelp being angered by force, because one knows that it is not only not a\nremedy, but is itself the cause of all incompetence and blindness in\nbusiness. Force merely heaps the incompetence and blindness up,\npostpones cooeperation, defeats the mutual interest which is the very\nsubstance of business efficiency in a nation. Force is itself the injury\nmounting up more and more, which it seeks to cure.\n\nThe most likely way to prevent industrial trouble would seem to be to\nhave employers and managers and foremen who have a genius for getting\nmen to trust and believe in them. We are getting smoke-consumers,\ncomputing machines, and the next contrivance is going to be the employer\nwho has the understanding spirit, and who sees the cash value of human\ngenius, the value in the market of genius for being fair and getting on\nwith people. Arbitration boards are at best (as they themselves would\nsay) stupid and negative things, and though better than nothing, as a\nrule merely postpone evil or change symptoms. No one can ever really\narbitrate for any one else either in industry or marriage except for a\nmoment. The trouble lies deep down inside the people who keep needing\narbitration. As long as these people are still there, and as long as\nincompetent employers or employees are there, there is bound to be\ntrouble.\n\nTurning out incompetent employers and incompetent labourers is the only\nway. We are getting rid of them as rapidly as possible. All business in\nthe last resort turns on brains for being human and understanding\npeople. Business, as people say, is partly business and business is\npartly economics, but more than anything else, in modern times, business\nis psychology.\n\nSuccess is the science of being believed in. Incompetent employers and\nincompetent labourers are already being turned out, and are bound to be\nturned out implacably more and more, by the competitive nature of modern\nbusiness. Under present conditions, if we have in each industry one\nsingle competent employing firm, with brains for being fair and brains\nfor being far-sighted, and for being thoughtful of others--in short,\nwith brains for being believed in--the control of that industry soon\nfalls into their hands. People who use force instead of brains are\nsecond-rate, are out of the spirit of the times, and are going by. And\nthis seems to be the spirit, too, which is to govern the more efficient\nLabour Unions as well as the more efficient Trusts.\n\nIf it were possible to collect the names in England and America of the\nmen in each industry where brains were being personally believed in, we\nwould have a list of the leaders of England and America for the next\nfifty years. Having a soul in business pays, not because it affords a\nfine motive power, but because it affords a practical and conclusive\nmethod of driving the devil out of business. He is being driven out of\nindustry, one industry at a time, by men who get on better without him;\nand this is going to go on until the ability to do this--to crowd out\nthe devil, to get the devil out of machines and factories, out of the\nmachinery of organization--the power to keep the devil out of things and\nout of people, is recognized by everybody as the greatest, most subtle,\nmost victorious and universal market-value in the world. The men who can\nbe believed in most will get the most business, and, what is still more\nimportant, the men who can make men believe in them most will be able to\nhire the employees who can be believed in most, and will get a monopoly\nof the efficiency of the world; and though the men who can be believed\nin less may be able to continue for a time to do their work and go\nthrough all their old motions as well as they can, with all their old\nlumbering, pathetic machinery of watching each other and suspecting each\nother and fighting each other humped up on their backs, they can never\nhope to compete with free-moving, honest men, who deal directly and\nopenly and in a few words for their employees, jobbers, consumers, and\nthe public, without any vast machinery of suspicion to bother with. It\nis a most curious, local, temporary, back-county idea, the idea that,\nfor sheer industrial economy, for simple cheap conclusive finance, there\nis anything on earth in business that will take the place of\nold-fashioned human personal prestige--the prestige of the man who has a\ngenius for being believed in.\n\nIn a way, perhaps the recent strike among the London cabmen is an\ninstance of what is really the essential issue in every strike. The\nbottom fact about the taxi chauffeurs, stated simply, was that they did\nnot believe in their employers. They believed that, if the precise\nfigures were known, their employers were getting more than their share.\nOn the other hand, the bottom fact about the employers was that they did\nnot and could not believe that, if the precise figures were known, the\ncabmen were not getting more than their share. They insisted that the\ncabmen should publish, or make known, the precise figures of their\nextras. The cabmen declined to do it, and it made them look for the\nmoment perhaps as if they were wrong. But were they necessarily wrong?\nWas it really true that they had any more reason to trust their\nemployers than their employers had to trust them? The cabmen might quite\nhonestly and justly have said to the owners: \"What we want is an honest,\nimpeccable little dividend-recorder fastened on the back of every owner,\nas well as on our machines and on us. Then we will publish our extras.\"\n\nThe determining and important fact of economics in the last analysis\nalways turns out to be some human fact, some fact about people. It is\nreally true that just now, in the present half-stage of\nmachine-industry, employers should nearly all be compelled to go about\nin this world with fare-recorders on their backs. Employees too. This\nwould be the logical thing to do; and as it is impracticable, and as\nevery business must have certain elements of secrecy in it in order to\nbe competent, the only alternative is to have in charge men with enough\ngenius for being believed in and for taking measures to be believed\nin--to keep employees believing in them, in spite of secrecy. Under\nthese conditions, it cannot be long before we will see in every business\nthe men being put forward on both sides who have a genius for being\nbelieved in. Managers and superintendents will be put in office\neverywhere who see the cash value, the economy, of the simple,\nold-fashioned power in a man of a genius for being believed in;\nemployers with the power of inspiring more and better work from their\nworkmen; Labour men with the power of inspiring employers to believe in\nthem, of inspiring their employers to put up money, stock, or profits on\ntheir belief--on the belief that workmen are capable of the highest\nqualities of manhood: hard work, loyalty, persistence, and faith toward\na common end. I have preferred to have this inspired employer a\nmillionaire, because the more capital he has the more men he can employ,\nand the more rapidly the other kind of millionaire, the blind,\nold-fashioned butter of Labour, will be driven out of business.\n\nLittle can be done with one book, but at this special juncture, this\npsychological moment for copartnership and the spirit of copartnership,\nwhen all the world is touched to the quick by great strikes--at a time\nwhen one can sit still and almost hear the nations think--there are some\nof us who hope that the case we are trying to make out for copartnership\nbetween Capital and Labour will be of use to those who are trying to do\nthings, and who for the moment find themselves foiled at every point by\nmen who have given up believing in human nature. We wish to put\nourselves on record, and to say that we do believe in human nature, and\nthat we believe not only that the inspired employer is going to be\nevolved by the Crowd, but that the Crowd is going to recognize him and\nis going to take sides with him, and that the Crowd is going to justify\nhim, make him succeed, is going to make his success its own success. In\nother words, we believe in heroes, crowds, and goodness; in men of\nheroic gifts--who are fit and meet to interpret the wills and desires\nof crowds--who are great men or Crowd-Men, crowds in spirit themselves.\n\nI would like to try to express the type of modern man who, as it seems\nto me, is about to prove himself the real ruler of our modern world, the\nsilent master of what the crowds shall think. It has seemed to me that\nit is going to be a man of a marked type, and of a particular\ntemperament, to whom we will have to look in our new and crowded world\nfor the crowd-interpreter, or man who touches the imagination of crowds.\n\nAs our whole labour problem to-day turns on our being able to touch the\nimagination of Crowds, it may not be uninteresting in the next chapter\nto consider what a man who can do this will probably be like and the\nspirit in which he will do it.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER V\n\nTHE CROWD-MAN--AN INVENTION FOR MAKING CROWDS SEE\n\n\nWhen Wilbur Wright flew around the Statue of Liberty in New York the\nother day, his doing it was a big event; but a still bigger event, as it\nseems to some of us, was the way he felt about New York when he did it.\nAll New York could not make him show off. Hundreds of thousands of\npeople on roofs could look up at the sky over New York, for him to go\nby, all that they liked. He slipped down to Washington without saying\nanything, on the 3:25 train, to attend to flying as part of the serious\nbusiness of the world.\n\nWhy fly around a little town like New York, or show your bright wings in\nthe light, or circle the Statue of Liberty for fun, when you are\nreconstructing civilization, and binding a whole planet together, and\nwrapping the heavens close down around the earth, and making railroads\neverywhere out of the air? New York is always a little superficial and\nfunny about itself. All it needs to do, it seems to think, is to snap\nits fingers at a man of genius anywhere on this broad world, whisper to\nhim pleasantly, and he will trot promptly up, of course, and do his\nlittle turn for it.\n\nBut not Wilbur Wright. Wilbur Wright would not give two million people\nan encore, or even come back to bow. As one looked over from Mount Tom\none could see all New York black and solid on the tops of its roofs and\nhouses looking up into a great hole of air for him, and Wilbur Wright\nslipping quietly off down to Washington and leaving them there, a whole\ngreat city under the sky, with its heads up!\n\nA little experience like this has been what New York has needed for a\nlong time. It takes a scientist to do these things. I wish there were\nsome poet who would do as well. Even a prophet up above New York--or\nseer of men and of years--glinting his wings in the light, the New York\n_Sun_ and the _World_ and the _Times_ down below, all their opera-glasses\ntrained on him, and all those little funny reporters running helplessly\nabout, all the people pouring out from Doctor Parkhurst's church to\nlook up.... It would be something.\n\nProbably there are very few capitals in the world--Paris, Berlin, or\nLondon--that would not be profoundly stirred and possibly much improved\nby having some man suddenly appear up over them, who would be so\ninterested in what he was doing that he would forget to notice whether\nanybody was looking--who would be capable of slipping off quietly and\nleaving an entire city with its heads up, and going on and attending to\nbusiness.\n\nThere have been times when we would have been relieved, some of us, if\nthe North Pole could have been discovered in this way and without large\naudiences tagging. There are some of us who will never cease to regret\nas long as we live that the North Pole could not have waited a little.\nWe would rather have had Wilbur Wright discover it. One can imagine how\nhe would do it: fly gracefully up to it all by himself, and discover it\nsome pleasant evening, and have it over with, and slip back on his soft\nwings in the night, and not say anything about it. It is this Wilbur\nWright spirit that I would like to dwell on in these pages. It seems to\nme it is a true modern spirit, the spirit which alone could make our\ncivilization great, and the spirit which alone could make crowds great.\nIt was the crowd that spoiled the way the Pole was discovered--all the\nmillions of people, vast, thoughtless audiences piling in and making a\nshow of it. Many people in America, all the vast crowds reading about\nit, seemed to feel that they were more important than the Pole; and when\nCaptain Peary came back, vast crowds of these same people paid as much\nas five dollars apiece for the privilege of being in the same room with\nhim. It was quite impossible not to contrast Captain Peary in his\nattitude toward the crowd and Wilbur Wright. There seemed to be, and\nthere will always remain, a certain vulgarity in the way the North Pole\nwas discovered, and the way the whole world behaved in regard to it, and\nthe secret seems to have been in Captain Peary's failure to be a Wilbur\nWright. He allowed the Pole to be a Crowd affair. All the while as he\nwent about the country holding his little exhibits of the tip of the\nplanet we could not help wishing, many of us who were in the Audience,\nthat this man who sat there before us, the man who had the Thing in his\nhand, who had collected the North Pole, would not notice us, would snub\nus if need be a little, and would leave these people, these millions of\npeople, with their heads up and go quietly on to the South Pole and\ncollect that. It is because there are thousands of men who understand\njust how Wilbur Wright felt when he slipped away the other day in New\nYork and left the entire city with its heads up that we have every\nreason to expect that the crowd is to produce great leaders, and is to\nbecome a great crowd, great and humble in spirit before God, before the\nstars, and the atoms, and the microbes, and before Itself. In the\nmeantime, however, we see all about us in the world countless would-be\nleaders of the crowd, who would perhaps not quite understand the way\nWilbur Wright felt that day when he slipped away from New York and left\nthe entire city with its heads up. Most newspaper men--men who are in\nthe habit of writing for a crowd and regarding a crowd quite\nrespectfully--will have wondered a little why Wilbur Wright could have\nlet such a crowd go by. Most actors and theatrical people would have\nstayed over a train or so and given one more little performance with all\nthose wistful people on the roof-tops. There are only a very few\nclergymen in England or America to-day who, with a great audience like\nthat and so many men in it, would ever have thought of slipping off on\nthe 3:25 train in the way Wilbur Wright did. The ministers and the\npoliticians of all countries are still wondering a little--if they ever\nthought of it--how Wright did it. Most of the other people in the world\nwonder a little, too, but I imagine that the great inventors of the\nworld who read about it the next morning did not wonder. The true\nscientists, in this country and in Germany and in France, all understood\njust how Wilbur Wright felt when he left New York with its heads up. The\ngreat artists of the world, in literature, in painting, and\narchitecture; the great railroad builders, the city builders, the nation\nbuilders, the great statesmen, the great biologists, and chemists,\nunderstood. James J. Hill, with his face toward the Pacific, understood.\nAlexander Graham Bell, out abroad doing the listening and talking and\nthinking the thoughts of eighty million people, understood. Marconi,\nmaking the ships whisper across the sea, and William G. McAdoo, shooting\na hundred and seventy thousand people a day through a hole under the\nHudson--understood.\n\nAnd God, when He made the world. And Columbus when he discovered\nAmerica. And Jesus Christ when He was so happy and so preoccupied over\nHis vision of a new world, over inventing Christianity, that it seemed a\nvery small and incidental thing to die on the Cross--He understood.\n\nWilbur Wright's secret was that he had a vision. His vision was that a\nhuman being could be greater and more powerful than the world had ever\nbelieved before.\n\nJust to be there was a great thought, to be allowed to be one of those\nadmitted, to be present at the first faint beginning, the first still\nalighting of the human spirit from the earth upon the sky. Wilbur Wright\nmade the most ordinary man a genius a minute. He made him wonder softly\nwho he was--and the people all about him--who were they? and what would\nthey think, and what would they do next? The first flash of light on the\nwings was a thousand years. It was as if almost for a moment he saw at\nlast the whole earth about him. History, churches, factories on it,\nslipping out of its cocoon at last--its little, old, faded, tied-down\ncocoon, and sailing upon the air--sailing with him, sailing with the\nchurches, with the factories, and with the schools, with History,\nthrough the Invisible, through the Intangible--out to the Sun....\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nPerhaps the reason that New York was a great city a few minutes the\nother day when Wilbur Wright was there was that Wilbur Wright had a new\nvision in the presence of all those men of something that they could do.\nHe touched the imagination of men about themselves. They were profoundly\nmoved because they saw him in their presence inventing a new kind and\nnew size of human being. He raised the standard of impossibility, and\nbuilt an annex on to the planet while they looked; took a great strip\noff of space three miles wide and folded it softly on to the planet all\nthe way round before their eyes. For three miles more--three miles\nfarther up above the ground--there was a space where human beings would\nhave to stop saying, \"I can't,\" and \"You can't,\" and \"We can't.\" If\npeople want to say \"I can't,\" and \"You can't,\" they will have to say it\nfarther and farther away from this planet now. Let them try Mars. The\nmodern imagination takes to impossibilities naturally with Wilbur Wright\nagainst the horizon. The thing we next cannot believe is the next thing\nto expect.\n\nNobody would have believed ten years ago that an architect could be\ninvented who would tell a man that his house would cost him thirty\nthousand dollars, and then hand him back two thousand dollars when he\nhad finished it. But the man had been invented--he invented himself.\n\nHe represents the owner, and does as the owner would be done by if he\ndid it himself--if he had the technical knowledge and the time to do it.\n\nNobody would have believed a few years ago that a railway president,\nwhen he had occasion to reduce the wages of several thousand employees\n10 per cent., would begin by reducing his own salary 30 per cent., and\nthe salary of all the officials all the way down 15 per cent., or 20 per\ncent.\n\nNobody would have believed some time ago that an organizing inventor\nwould be evolved who would meet his directors and tell them that, if\nthey would have their work done in their mills in three shifts instead\nof two, the men would work so much better that it would not cost the\nCompany more than 10 per cent. more to offer the better conditions. But\nsuch an organizing inventor has been invented, and has proved his case.\n\nLuther Burbank has made a chestnut tree eighteen months old bear\nchestnuts; and it has always taken from ten to twenty-five years to make\na tree furnish its first chestnut before. About the same time that\nLuther Burbank had succeeded in doing this with chestnuts a similar type\nof man, who was not particularly interested in chestnuts and wanted to\ndo something with human nature, who believed that human nature could\nreally be made to work, found a certain staple article that everybody\nneeds every day in a state of anarchy in the market. The producers were\nnot making anything on it. The wholesalers dealt in it without a profit,\nand the retailers sold it without a profit, and merely because the other\nthings they sold were worthless without it.\n\n----, who was the leading wholesale dealer and in the best position to\nact, pointed out that, if the business was organized and everybody in it\nwould combine with everybody else and make it a monopoly, the price\ncould be made lower, and everybody would make money.\n\nOf course this was a platitude.\n\nIt was also a platitude that human nature was not good enough, and could\nnot be trusted to work properly in a monopoly.\n\n---- then proceeded to invent a monopoly--a kind of monopoly in which\nhuman nature could be trusted.\n\nHe used a very simple device.\n\nHe began by being trusted himself.\n\nHaving personally and directly proved that human nature in a monopoly\ncould be trusted by being trusted himself, all he had to do was to\ncapitalize his knowledge of human nature, use the enormous market value\nof the trust people had in him to gather people about him in the\nbusiness who had a good practical business genius for being trusted too\nand for keeping trusted: everybody else was shut out.\n\nThe letter with which the monopoly was started (after dealing duly with\nthe technical details of the business) ended like this:\n\n\"... the soundest lines of business--_viz._, fair prices, fair profits,\nfair division of profits, fair recognition of service, do as you would be\ndone by, money back where it is practicable, one's profit so small as to\nmake competition not worth while, open dealing, and open books.\"\n\nHe had invented a monopoly which shared its profits with the people, and\nwhich the people trusted. He was a Luther Burbank in money and people\ninstead of chestnuts. He raised the standard of impossibility in people,\nand invented a new way for human nature to work.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VI\n\nTHE IMAGINATION OF CROWDS\n\n\nThe modern imagination takes, speaking roughly, three characteristic\nforms:\n\n1. Imagination about the unseen or intangible--the spiritual--as\nespecially typified in electricity, in the wireless telegraph, the\naeroplane: a new and extraordinary sense of the invisible and the\nunproved as an energy to be used and reckoned with.\n\n2. Imagination about the future--a new and extraordinary sense of what\nis going to happen next in the world.\n\n3. Imagination about people. We are not only inventing new machines, but\nour new machines have turned upon us and are creating new men. The\ntelephone changes the structure of the brain. Men live in wider\ndistances, and think in larger figures, and become eligible to nobler\nand wider motives.\n\nImagination about the unseen is going to give us in an incredible degree\nthe mastery of the spirit over matter.\n\nImagination about the future is going to make the next few hundred years\nan organic part of every man's life to-day.\n\nThe imagination of men about themselves and other people is going to\ngive us a race of men with new motives; or, to put it differently, it is\ngoing to give us not only new sizes but new kinds of men. People are\ngoing to achieve impossibilities in goodness, and our inventions in\nhuman nature are going to keep up with our other inventions.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VII\n\nIMAGINATION ABOUT THE UNSEEN\n\n\nThe most distinctively modern thing that ever happened was when Benjamin\nFranklin went out one day and called down lightning from heaven. Before\nthat, power had always been dug up, or scraped off the ground. The more\npower you wanted the more you had to get hold of the ground and dig for\nit; and the more solid you were, the more heavy, solid things you could\nget, the more you could pull solid, heavy things round in this world\nwhere you wanted them. Franklin turned to the sky, and turned power on\nfrom above, and decided that the real and the solid and the substantial\nin this world was to be pulled about by the Invisible.\n\nCopernicus had the same idea, of course, when he fared forth into space,\nand discovered the centre of all power to be in the sun. It grieved\npeople a good deal to find how much more important the sky was than they\nwere, and their whole little planet with all of them on it. The idea\nthat that big blue field up there, empty by day and with such crowds of\nlittle faint dots in it all night, was the real thing--the big, final,\nand important thing--and that they and their churches and popes and\npyramids and nations should just dance about it for millions of years\nlike a mote in a sunbeam, hurt their feelings at first. But it did them\ngood. It started them looking Up, and looking the other way for power.\n\nVery soon afterward Columbus enlarged upon the same idea by starting the\nworld toward very far things, on the ground; and he bored through the\nskylines, a thousand skylines, and spread the nations upon the sea.\nColumbus was the typical modern man led by the invisible, the\nintangible; and on the great waters somewhere between Spain and New\nYork, between the old and the new, Columbus discovered the Future Tense,\nthe centrifugal tense, the tense that sweeps in the unknown, and gathers\nin, out of space, out of hope, out of faith, the lives of men. The mere\nfastened-down stable things, the mere actual facts, stopped being the\nworld with Columbus, and the air and the sky began to be swung in, and\nto be swept through the thoughts and acts of men and of women.... Then\nminers, mariners, explorers, inventors--the impossible steamship, the\nrailway, the impossible cotton-gin and sewing-machine and reaper, Hoosac\ntunnels and Atlantic cables. The impossible became one of the habits of\nmodern life.\n\nOf course the sky and the air and the unknown and the future had been\nrecognized before, but only a little and in a rather patronizing way.\nBut when a world has made a great, solid continent by following a\nhorizon line, it begins to take things just beyond very seriously. And\nso our Time has been fulfilled. We have had the stone age; we have had\nthe iron age; and now we have the sky age, and the sky telegraph, and\nsky men, and sky cities. Mountains of stone are built out of men's\nvisions, towers and skyscrapers swing up out of their wills and up out\nof their hearts.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nNot long ago, as I was coming away from New York in the Springfield\nExpress, which was running at fifty-five miles an hour, I saw suddenly\nsome smoke coming up apparently out of a satchel on the floor, belonging\nto the man in the chair in front of me. I moved the satchel away, and\nthe smoke came up through the carpet. I spoke to the Pullman conductor\nwho was passing through, and in a second the train had stopped, and the\ngreat wild roaring Thing had ceased, and we stood in a long, wide, white\nsilence in the fields. We got off the car--some of us--to see what had\nhappened, and to see if there was a hot box on the wheels. We found\nthat the entire underside of the floor of the car was on fire, and what\nhad happened? Nothing except a new impossibility; nothing except that a\nhuman being had invented an electrical locomotive so powerful that it\nwas pulling that train fifty-five miles an hour while the brakes on the\ncar were set--twelve brakes all grinding twenty miles on those twelve\nwheels; and the locomotive paid no more attention to the brakes of that\nheavy Pullman than it would to a feather or to a small boy, all the way\nfrom New York to Stamford, hanging on behind. As I came in I looked\nagain at the train--the long dull train that had been pulled along by\nthe Invisible, by the kingdom of the air and the sky--the long, dull,\nheavy Train! And the spirit of the far-off sun was in it!\n\nIn Count Zeppelin's new airship the new social spirit has a symbol, and\nin the gyroscopic train the inspired millionaire is on a firm\nfoundation. The power of the new kind and new size of capitalist is his\npower of keeping an equilibrium with the people, and the men of real\ngenius in modern affairs are men who have motor genius and light genius\nover other men's wills. They are allied to the X-ray and the airship,\nand gain their pre-eminence by their power of forecast and\ninvention--their power of riding upon the unseen, upon the thoughts of\nmen and the spirit of the time. Even the painters have caught this\nspirit. The plein air painters are painting the light, and the sculptors\nare carving shadows and haloes, and we have not an art left which does\nnot lean out into the Invisible. And religion is full of this spirit and\ntheosophy and Christian Science. The playwrights are touched by it; and\nthe action, instead of being all on the stage, is thrown out into the\nspirit of the audience. The play in a modern theatre is not on the stage\nbut in the stalls. Maeterlinck, Ibsen, Shaw, merely use the stage as a\nkind of magic-lantern or suggestion-centre for the real things that, out\nbehind us in the dark, are happening in the audience.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VIII\n\nTHE CROWD'S IMAGINATION ABOUT THE FUTURE\n\n\nI remember looking over with H.G. Wells one night some time ago a set of\npictures or photographs of the future in America, which he had brought\nhome with him. They were largely skyscrapers, big bridges, Niagaras, and\nthings; and I could not help thinking, as I came home that night, how\nmuch more Mr. Wells had of the future of America in his own mind than he\ncould possibly buy in his photographs. What funny little films they were\nafter all, how faint and pathetic, how almost tragically dull, those\npictures of the future of my country were! H.G. Wells himself, standing\nin his own doorway, was more like America, and more like the future of\nAmerica, than the pictures were.\n\nThe future in America cannot be pictured. The only place it can be seen\nis in people's faces. Go out into the street, in New York, in Chicago,\nin San Francisco, in Seattle; look eagerly as you go into the faces of\nthe men who pass, and you feel hundreds of years--the next hundred\nyears--like a breath, swept past. America, with all its forty-story\nbuildings, its little Play Niagaras, its great dumb Rockies, is the\nunseen country. It can only as yet be seen in people's eyes. Some days,\nflowing sublime and silent through our noisy streets, and through the\nvast panorama of our towers, I have heard the footfalls of the unborn,\nlike sunshine around me.\n\nThis feeling America gives one in the streets is the real America. The\nsolidity, the finality, the substantial fact in America, is the daily\nsense in the streets of the future. And it has seemed to me that this\nfact--whether one observes it in Americans in America, in Americans in\nEngland and in other nations--is what one might call, for lack of a\nbetter name, the American temperament in all peoples is the most\noutstanding typical and important fact with which our modern world and\nour philosophy about the world have now to reckon. Nothing can be seen\nas it really is if this amazing pervasive hourly sense of the future is\nleft out of it.\n\nAll power is rapidly coming to be based on news--news about human\nnature, and about what is soon to be done by people. This news travels\nby express in boxes, by newspapers, by telephone, by word of mouth, and\nby wireless telegraph. Most of the wireless news is not only wireless,\nbut it is in cipher--hence prophets, or men who have great\nsensitiveness; men whose souls and bodies are films for the future,\nplatinum plates for the lights and shadows of events; men who are\nworld-poets, sensitive to the air-waves and the light-waves of truth, to\nthe faintest vibrations from To-morrow, or from the next hundred years\nhovering just ahead. As a matter of course, it is already coming to be\ntrue that the most practical man to-day is the prophet. In the older\ndays, men used to look back for wisdom, and the practical man was the\nman who spoke from experience, and they crucified the prophet. But\nto-day, the practical man is the man who can make the best guess on\nto-morrow. The cross has gone by; at least, the cross is being pushed\nfarther along. A prophet in business or politics gets a large salary\nnow; he is a recognized force. Being a prophet is getting to be almost\nsmug and respectable.\n\nWe live so in the future in our modern life, and our rewards are so\ngreat for men who can live in the future, that a man who can be a\nten-year prophet, or a twenty-five-year prophet, like James J. Hill, is\nput on a pedestal, or rather is not wasted on a pedestal, and is made\nPresident of a railroad. He swings the country as if it were his hat. We\nsee great cities tagging Wilbur Wright, and emperors clinging to the\nskirts of Count Zeppelin. We only crucify a prophet now if he is a\nhundred, or two hundred or five hundred years ahead. Even then, we\nwould not be apt to crucify; we would merely not use him much, except\nthe first twenty-five years of him.\n\nThe theory is no longer tenable that prophets must be necessarily\ncrucified. As a matter of history, most prophets have been crucified by\npeople; but it was not so much because of their prophecy as because\ntheir prophecy did not have any first twenty-five years in it. They were\ncrucified because of a blank place or hiatus, not necessarily in their\nown minds, but at least in other people's. People would have been very\nglad to have their first twenty-five years' worth if they could have got\nit. It is this first twenty-five years, or joining-on part, which is\nmost important in prophecy, and which has become our specialty in the\nWestern World. One might say, in a general way, that the idea of having\na first twenty-five years' section in truth for a prophet is a modern,\nan almost American, invention. We are temperamentally a country of the\nfuture, and think instinctively in futures; and perhaps it is not too\nmuch to say (considering all the faults that go with it for which we are\ncriticized) that we have led the way in futures as a specialty, as a\nnational habit of mind; and though with terrific blunders perhaps have\nbeen really the first people _en masse_ to put being a prophet on a\npractical basis--that is, to supply the first twenty-five years'\nsection, or the next-thing-to-do section to Truth, to put in a kind of\ncoupling between this world and the next. This is what America is for,\nperhaps--to put in the coupling between this world and the next.\n\nIn the former days, the strength of a man, or of an estate, or a\nbusiness, was its stability. In the new world, instead of stability, we\nhave the idea of persistence, and power lies not so much in solid\nbrittle foundation quality as in conductivity. Socially, men can be\ndivided into conductors--men who connect powers--and non-conductors--men\nwho do not; and power lies in persistence, in dogged flexibility,\nadaptableness, and impressionableness. The set conservative class of\npeople, in three hundred years, are going to be the dreamers,\ninventors--those who demonstrate their capacity to dream true, and who\nhit shrewdly upon probabilities and trends and futures; and the power of\na man is coming to be the power of observing atmospheres, of being\nsensitive to the intangible and the unknown. People are more likely to\nbe crucified two thousand years from now for wanting to stay as they\nare. There used to be the inertia of rest; and now in its place, working\nreciprocally in a new astonishing equilibrium, we step up calmly on our\nvast moving sidewalk of civilization and swing into the inertia of\nmotion.\n\nThe inertia of men, instead of being that of foundations, conventions,\ncustoms, facts, sogginess, and heaviness, is getting to be an inertia\nnow toward the future, or the next-thing-to-do. Most of us can prove\nthis by simply looking inward and taking a glimpse of our own\nconsciousness. Let a man draw up before his own mind the contents of his\nown consciousness (if he has a motor consciousness), and we find that\nthe future in his life looms up, both in its motives and its character,\nand takes about three quarters of the room of his consciousness; and\nwhen it is not looming up, it is woven into everything he does. Even if\nall the future were for was to help one understand the present and act\nthis immediate moment as one should, nine tenths of the power of seeing\na thing as it is, turns out to be one's power of seeing it as it is\ngoing to be. In any normal man's life, it is really the future and his\nsense of the future that make his present what it is.\n\nHistory is losing its monopoly. It is only absorbed in men's minds--in\nthe minds of those who are making more of it--in parts or rather in\nelements of all its parts.\n\nThe trouble with history seems to have been, thus far, that people have\nbeen under the illusion that history should be taken as a solid. They\nseem to think it should be taken in bulk. They take it, some of them, a\nsolid hundred years of it or so, and gulp it down. The advantage of\nprophecy is that it cannot be taken as a solid by people who would take\neverything so if they could. Prophecy is protected. People have to\nbreathe it, assimilate it, and get it into their circulation and make a\nsolid out of it personally, and do it all themselves. It is this process\nwhich is making our modern men spiritual, interpretative, and powerful\ntoward the present and toward the past, and which is giving a body and\nsoul to knowledge, and is making knowledge lively and human, the kind of\nknowledge (when men get it) that makes things happen.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IX\n\nTHE CROWD'S IMAGINATION ABOUT PEOPLE\n\n\nI would like to propose, as a basis for the judgment of men and events,\nand as a basis for forecasting the next men and next events, and\narriving at a vision of action, a Theory of the World.\n\nEvery man has one.\n\nEvery man one knows can be seen doing his work in this world on a great\nbackground, a kind of panorama or stage setting in his mind, made up of\nhistory and books, newspapers, people, and experiences, which might be\ncalled his Theory of the World.\n\nIt is his theory of the world which makes him what he is--his personal\njudgment or personal interpretation of what the world is like, and what\nworks in it, and what does not work.\n\nA man's theory as to why people do or do not do wrong is not a theory he\nmight in some brief disinterested moment, possibly at luncheon, take\ntime to discuss. His theory of what is wrong and of what is right, and\nof how they work, touches the efficiency with which he works intimately\nand permanently at every point every minute of his business day.\n\nIf he does not know, in the middle of his business day, what his theory\nof the world--of human nature--is, let him stop and find out.\n\nA man's theory of the world is the skylight or manhole over his work. It\nbecomes his hell or heaven--his day and night. He breathes his theory of\nthe world and breathes his idea of the people in it; and everything he\ndoes may be made or may be marred by what, for instance, he thinks in\nthe long-run about what I am saying now on this next page. Whether he\nis writing for people, or doing business with them over a counter, or\nlaunching books at them, everything he does will be steeped in what he\nbelieves about what I am saying now--it shall be the colour of the world\nto him, the sound or timbre of his voice--what he thinks or can make up\nhis mind to think, of what I am saying--on this next page.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER X\n\nA DEMOCRATIC THEORY OF HUMAN NATURE\n\n\nIf the men who were crucifying Jesus could have been suddenly stopped at\nthe last moment, and if they could have been kept perfectly still for\nten minutes and could have thought about it, some of them would have\nrefused to go on with the crucifixion when the ten minutes were over. If\nthey could have been stopped for twenty minutes, there would have been\nstill more of them who would have refused to have gone on with it. They\nwould have stolen away and wondered about The Man in their hearts. There\nwere others who were there who would have needed twenty days of being\nstill and of thinking. There were some who would have had to have twenty\nyears to see what they really wanted, in all the circumstances, to do.\n\nPeople crucified Christ because they were in a hurry.\n\nThey did what they wanted to do at the moment. So far as we know, there\nwere only two men who did what they would have wished they had done in\ntwenty years: there was the thief on the other cross, who showed The Man\nhe knew who He was; and there was the disciple John, who kept as close\nas he could. John perhaps was thinking of the past--of all the things\nthat Christ had said to him; and the man on the other cross was thinking\nwhat was going to happen next. The other people who had to do with the\ncrucifixion were all thinking about the thing they were doing at the\nmoment and the way they felt about it. But the Man was Thinking, not of\nHis suffering, but of the men in front of Him, and of what they could be\nthinking about, and what they would be thinking about afterward--in ten\nminutes, in twenty minutes, in twenty days, or in twenty years; and\nsuddenly His heart was flooded with pity at what they would be thinking\nabout afterward, and in the midst of the pain in His arms and the pain\nin His feet He made that great cry to Heaven: \"Father, forgive them;\nthey know not what they do!\"\n\nIt is because Christians have never quite believed that The Man really\nmeant this when He said it that they have persecuted the Jews for two\nthousand years. It is because they do not believe it now that they blame\nMr. Rockefeller for doing what most of them twenty years ago would have\ndone themselves. It was one of the hardest things to do and say that any\none ever said in the world, and it was said at the hardest possible time\nto say it. It was strange that one almost swooning with pain should have\nsaid the gentlest-hearted and truest thing about human nature that has\never been said since the world began. It has seemed to me the most\nliteral, and perhaps the most practical, truth that has been said since\nthe world began.\n\nIt goes straight to the point about people. It gives one one's\ndefinition of goodness both for one's self and for others. It gives one\na program for action.\n\nExcept in our more joyous and free moments, we assume that when people\ndo us a wrong, they know what they are about. They look at the right\nthing to do and they look at the wrong one, and they choose the wrong\none because they like it better. Nine people out of ten one meets in the\nstreets coming out of church on Sunday morning, if one asked them the\nquestion plainly, \"Do you ever do wrong when you know it is wrong?\"\nwould say that they did. If you ask them what a sin is, they will tell\nyou that it is something you do when you know you ought not to do it.\n\nBut The Man Himself, in speaking of the most colossal sin that has ever\nbeen committed, seemed to think that when men committed a sin, it was\nbecause they did not really see what it was that they were doing. They\ndid what they wanted to do at the moment. They did not do what they\nwould have wished they had done in twenty years.\n\nI would define goodness as doing what one would wish one had done in\ntwenty years--twenty years, twenty days, twenty minutes, or twenty\nseconds, according to the time the action takes to get ripe.\n\nIt would be far more true and more to the point instead of scolding or\nadmiring Mr. Rockefeller's skilled labour at getting too rich, to point\nout mildly that he has done something that in the long-run he would not\nhave wanted to do; that he has lacked the social imagination for a great\npermanently successful business. His sin has consisted in his not taking\npains to act accurately and permanently, in his not concentrating his\nmind and finding out what he really wanted to do. It would seem to be\nbetter and truer and more accurate in the tremendous crisis of our\nmodern life to judge Mr. Rockefeller, not as monster of wickedness, but\nmerely as an inefficient, morally underwitted man. There are things that\nhe has not thought of that every one else has.\n\nWe see that in all those qualities that really go to make a great\nbusiness house in a great nation John D. Rockefeller stands as the most\ncolossal failure as yet that our American business life has produced. To\npoint his incompetence out quietly and calmly and without scolding would\nseem to be the only fair way to deal with Mr. Rockefeller. He merely has\nnot done what he would have wished he had done in twenty, well, possibly\ntwo hundred years, or as long a time as it would be necessary to allow\nfor Mr. Rockefeller to see. The one thing that the world could accept\ngracefully from Mr. Rockefeller now would be the establishment of a\ngreat endowment of research and education to help other people to see in\ntime how they can keep from being like him. If Mr. Rockefeller leads in\nthis great work and sees it soon enough, perhaps he will stop suddenly\nbeing the world's most lonely man.\n\nMany men have been lonely before in the presence of a few fellow human\nbeings; but to be lonely with a whole nation--eighty million people; to\nfeel a whole human race standing there outside of your life and softly\nwondering about you, staring at you in the showcase of your money,\npeering in as out of a thousand newspapers upon you as a kind of moral\ncuriosity under glass, studying you as the man who has performed the\nmost athletic feat of not seeing what he was really doing and how he\nreally looked in all the world--this has been Mr. Rockefeller's\nexperience. He has not done what he would wish he had done in twenty\nyears.\n\nGoodness may be defined as getting one's own attention, as boning down\nto find the best and most efficient way of finding out what one wants to\ndo. Any man who will make adequate arrangements with himself at suitable\ntimes for getting his own attention will be good. Any one else from\noutside who can make such arrangements for him, such arrangements of\nexpression or--of advertising goodness as to get his attention, will\nmake him good.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XI\n\nDOING AS ONE WOULD WISH ONE HAD DONE IN TWENTY YEARS\n\n\nIf two great shops could stand side by side on the Main Street of the\nWorld, and all the vices could be put in the show window of one of them\nand all the virtues in the show windows the other, and all the people\ncould go by all day, all night, and see the windowful of virtues as they\nwere, and the windowful of vices as they were, all the world would be\ngood in the morning.\n\nIt would stay good as long as people remembered how the windows looked.\nOr if they could not remember, all they would need to do, most people,\nwhen a vice tempted them would be to step out, look at it in its window\na minute--possibly take a look too at the other window--and they would\nbe good.\n\nIf a man were to take a fancy to any particular vice, and would take a\nstep up to The Window, and take one firm look at it in The Window--see\nit lying there, its twenty years' evil, its twenty days', its twenty\nminutes' evil, all branching up out of it--he would be good.\n\nWhen we see the wrong on one side and the right on the other and really\nsee the right as vividly as we do the wrong, we do right automatically.\nWild horses cannot drag a man away from doing right if he sees what the\nright is.\n\nA little while ago in a New England city where the grade crossings had\njust been abolished, and where the railroad wound its way on a huge\nyellow sandbank through the most beautiful part of the town, a\nprominent, public-spirited citizen wrote a letter to the President of\nthe Company suggesting that the railroad (for a comparatively small\nsum, which he mentioned) plant its sandbanks with trees and shrubs. A\nletter came the next day saying that the railroad was unwilling to do\nit. He might quite justifiably have been indignant and flung himself\ninto print and made a little scene in the papers, which would have been\nthe regular and conventional thing to do under the circumstances. But it\noccurred to him instead, being a man of a curious and practical mind,\nthat possibly he did not know how to express himself to railroad\npresidents, and that his letter had not said what he meant. He thought\nhe would try again, and see what would happen if he expressed himself\nmore fully and adequately. He took for it this second time a box seven\nfeet long. The box contained two long rolls of paper, one a picture by a\nlandscape gardener of the embankment as it would look when planted with\ntrees and with shrubs, and the other a photograph--a long panorama of\nthe same embankment as it then stood with its two great broadsides of\nyellowness trailing through the city. The box containing the rolls was\nsent without comment and with photographs and estimates of cost on the\nbottom of the pictures.\n\nA letter from the railroad came next day thanking him for his\nsuggestion, and promising to have the embankment made into a park at\nonce.\n\nIf God had arranged from the beginning, slides of the virtues, and had\nfurnished every man with a stereopticon inside, and if all a man had to\ndo at any particular time of temptation was to take out just the right\nslide or possibly try three or four up there on his canvas a second, no\none would ever have any trouble in doing right.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIt is not too much to say that this way of looking at evil and good--at\nthe latent capacities of evil and good in men, if a man once believes\nit, and if a man once practises it as a part of his daily practical\ninterpretation and mastery of men, will soon put a new face for him on\nnearly every great human problem with which he finds his time\nconfronted. We shall watch the men in the world about us--each for their\nlittle day--trying their funny, pathetic, curious little moral\nexperiments, and we shall see the men--all of the men and all of the\ngood and the evil in the men this moment--daily before our eyes working\nout with an implacable hopefulness the fate of the world. We know that,\nin spite of self-deceived syndicalism and self-deceived trusts, in spite\nof coal strikes and all the vain, comic little troops of warships around\nthe earth, peace and righteousness in a vast overtone are singing toward\nus.\n\nWe are not only going to have new and better motives in our modern men,\nbut the new and better motives are going to be thrust upon us. Every man\nwho reads these pages is having, at the present moment, motives in his\nlife which he would not have been capable of at first. Why should not a\nhuman race have motives which it was not capable of at first? If one\ntakes up two or three motives of one's own--the small motives and the\nlarge ones--and holds them up in one's hand and looks at them quietly\nfrom the point of view of what one would wish one had done in twenty\nyears, there is scarcely one of us who would choose the small ones.\nPeople who are really modern, that is, who look beyond themselves in\nwhat they do to others, who live their lives as one might say six people\naway, or sixty people farther out from themselves, or sixty million\npeople farther, are becoming more common everywhere; and people who look\nbeyond the moment in what they do to another day, who are getting more\nand more to live their lives twenty years ahead, and to have motives\nthat will last twenty years, are driven to better and more permanent\nmotives.\n\nThinking of more people when we act for ourselves means ethical\nconsciousness or goodness, and better and more permanent motives.\n\nIn the last analysis, the men who permanently succeed in business will\nhave to see farther than the other people do.\n\nMen like John D. Rockefeller, who have made failures of their lives, and\nhave not been able to conduct a business so as to keep it out of the\ncourts, have failed because they have had imagination about Things but\nnot imagination about people.\n\nThe man who is just at hand will not do over again what Mr. Rockefeller\nhas done. He will at least have made some advance in imagination over\nRockefeller.\n\nMr. Rockefeller became rich by cooeperating with other rich men to\nexploit the public. The man of the immediate future is going to get\nrich, as rich as he cares to be, by cooeperating not merely with his\ncompetitors--which is as far as Rockefeller got--but by cooeperating with\nthe people.\n\nIt is a mere matter of social imagination, of seeing what succeeds most\npermanently, and honourably, of putting what has been called \"goodness\"\nand what is going to be called \"Business\" together. In other words,\nsocial imagination is going to make a man gravitate toward mutual\ninterest or cooeperation, which is the new and inevitable level of\nefficiency and success in business. Success is being transferred from\nmen of millionaire genius to men of social and human genius. The men who\nare going to compete most successfully in modern competitive business\nare competing by knowing how to cooeperate better than their competitors\ndo. Employers, employees, consumers, partners, become irresistible by\ncooeperation; only employers, employees, consumers, and partners who\ncooeperate better than they do can hope to compete with them. The Trusts\nhave already crowded out many small rivals because, while their\ncooeperation has been one-sided, they have cooeperated with more people\nthan their rivals could; and the good Trusts, in the same way are going\nto crowd out the bad Trusts, because the good ones will know how to\ncooeperate with more people than the bad ones do. They will have the\nhuman genius to see how they can cooeperate with the people instead of\nagainst them.\n\nThey are going to invent ways of winning and keeping the confidence of\nthe people, of taking to this end a smaller and more just share of\nprofits. And they are going to gain their leadership through the wisdom\nand power that goes with their money, and not through the money itself.\nIt is the spiritual power of their money that is going to count; and\nwealth, instead of being a millionaire disease, is going to become a\ngreat social energy in democracy. We are going to let men be rich\nbecause they represent us, not because they hold us up, and because the\nhold-up has gone by, that is: getting all one can, and service--getting\nwhat we have earned--has come in.\n\nThe new kind and new size of politician will win his power by his faith,\nlike U. Ren of Oregon; the new kind and new size of editor is going to\nhire with brains a millionaire to help him run his paper; and the new\nkind and new size of author, instead of tagging a publisher, will be\npaid royalties for supplying him with new ideas and creating for him new\npublics. Power in modern life is to be light and heat and motion, and\nnot a gift of being heavy and solid. Even Money shall lose its inertia.\n\nWe are in this way being driven into having new kinds and new sizes of\nmen; and some of them will be rich ones, and some of them will be poor,\nand no one will care. We will simply look at the man and at what size he\nis.\n\nIf our preachers are not saving us, our business men will. Sometimes one\nsuspects that the reason goodness is not more popular in modern life is\nthat it has been taken hold of the wrong way. Perhaps when we stop\nteasing people, and take goodness seriously and calmly, and see that\ngoodness is essentially imagination, that it is brains, that it is\nthinking down through to what one really wants, goodness will begin to\nbe more coveted. Except among people with almost no brains or\nimagination at all, it will be popular.\n\nPerhaps it is unnecessary to say that these things that I have been\nsaying, or trying to say, about the flexibility and the potentiality of\nthe human race in its present crisis, in its present struggle to\nmaintain and add to its glory on the earth, are all beyond the range of\npossibility, and the present strength of manhood. But I can only hope\nthat these objections that people make will turn out like mine. I have\nbeen making objections all my life, as all idealists must--only to watch\nwith dismay and joy the old-time, happy obdurate way objections have of\ngoing by.\n\nPeople began by saying they would never use automobiles because they\nwere so noisy and ill-odoured and ugly. Presto! The automobile becomes\nsilent and shapes itself in lines of beauty.\n\nSome of us had decided against balloons. \"Even if the balloon succeeds,\"\nwe said, \"there will be no way of going just where and when you want\nto.\" And then, presto! regular channels of wind are discovered, and the\nballoon goes on.\n\n\"Aeroplanes,\" we said, \"may be successful, but the more successful they\nare, the more dangerous, and the more danger there will be of\ncollisions--collisions in the dark and up in the great sky at night.\" And,\npresto! man invents the wireless telegraph, and the entire sky can be\nfull of whispers telling every airship where all the other airships are.\n\nSome of us have decided that we will never have anything to do with\nmonopoly. Presto! there is suddenly evolved an entirely new type of\nmonopolist--the man who can be rich and good; the millionaire who has\ninvented a monopoly that serves the owners, the producers and employees,\nthe distributors and the consumers alike. An American railway President\nhas been saying lately that America would not have enough to eat in\n2050, but it would not do to try to prove this just yet. Some one,\nalmost any day, will invent a food that is as highly concentrated as\ndynamite, and the whole food supply of New York--who knows?--shall be\ncarried around in one railway President's vest pocket.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XII\n\nNEW KINDS AND NEW SIZES OF MEN\n\n\nIt would be hard to overestimate the weariness and cynicism and despair\nthat have been caused in the world by its more recklessly hopeful\nmen--the men who plump down happily anywhere and hope, the optimists who\nare merely slovenly in their minds about evil. But the optimism that\nconsists in putting evil facts up into a kind of outdoors in our minds\nand in giving them room to exercise in our thoughts and feelings, the\noptimism that consists in having one's brain move vigorously through\ndisagreeable facts--organize them into the other facts with which they\nbelong and with which they work--is worthy of consideration. Many of us,\nwho have tried optimism and pessimism both, have noticed certain things.\n\nWhen one is being pessimistic, one almost always has the feeling of\nbeing rather clever. It is forced upon one a little, of course, having\nall those other people about one stodgily standing up for people and not\nreally seeing through them!\n\nSo, though one ought not to, one does feel a little superior--even with\nthe best intentions--when one is being discouraged.\n\nBut the trouble with pessimism is that it is only at the moment when one\nis having it that one really enjoys it, or feels in this way about it.\n\nPerhaps I should not undertake to speak for others, and should only\nspeak for myself; but I can only bear witness, for one, that every time\nin my life that I have broken through the surface a little, and seen\nthrough to the evil, and found myself suddenly and astutely discouraged,\nI have found afterward that all I had to do was to see the same thing a\nlittle farther over, set it in the light beyond it, and look at it in\nlarger or more full relations, and I was no longer astutely discouraged.\n\nSo I have come to believe slowly and grimly that feeling discouraged\nabout the world is not quite clever. I have noticed it, too, in watching\nother people--men I know. If I could take all the men I know who are\nliving and acting as if they believed big things about people to-day,\nmen who are daily taking for granted great things in human nature, and\nput them in one group by themselves all together, and if I could then\ntake all the men I know who are taking little things for granted in one\nanother and in human nature, I do not believe very many people would\nfind it hard to tell which group would be more clever. Possibly the\nreason more of us do not spend more time in being hopeful about the\nworld is that it takes more brains usually than we happen to have at the\nmoment. Hope may be said to be an act of the brain in which it sees\nfacts in relations large enough to see what they are for, an act in\nwhich it insists in a given case upon giving the facts room enough to\nturn around and to relate themselves to one another, and settle down\nwhere they belong in one's mind, the way they would in real time.\n\nSo now, at last, Gentle Reader, having looked back and having looked\nforward, I know the way I am going.\n\nI am going to hope.\n\nIt is the only way to see through things. The only way to dare to see\nthrough ones' self; the only way to see through other people and to see\npast them, and to see with them and for them--is to hope.\n\nSo I am putting the challenge to the reader, in this book, as I have put\nit to myself.\n\nThere are four questions with which day by day we stand face to face:\n\n1. Does human nature change?\n\n2. Does it change toward a larger and longer vision?\n\n3. Will not a larger and longer vision mean new kinds and\nnew sizes of men?\n\n4. Will not new sizes of men make new-sized ethics practical\nand make a new world?\n\nEverything depends for every man upon this planet, at this moment, on\nhow he decides these questions. If he says Yes, he will live one kind of\nlife, he will live up to his world. If he says No, he will have a mean\nworld, smaller-minded than he is himself, and he will live down to it.\n\nThis is what the common run of men about us--the men of less creative\ntype in literature, in business, and in politics--are doing. They do not\nbelieve human nature is changing. They are living down to a world that\nis going by. They are living down to a world that is smaller than they\nare themselves. They are trying to make others do it. They answer the\nquestion \"Does human nature change?\" by \"No!\" Wilbur Wright, when he\nflew around over the heads of the people in New York a few years ago, a\nblack speck above a whole city with its heads up, answered \"Yes!\"\n\nBut the real importance of the flying machine has not stopped short with\na little delicate, graceful thing like walking on the air instead of the\nground.\n\nThe big and really revolutionary thing about Wilbur Wright's flying was\nthat he changed the minds of the whole human race in a few minutes about\none thing. There was one particular thing that for forty thousand years\nthey knew they could not do. And now they knew they could.\n\nIt naturally follows--and it lies in the mind of every man who\nlives--that there must be other particular things. And as nine men out\nof ten are in business, most of these particular things are going to be\ndone in business.\n\nThe Wilbur Wright spirit is catching.\n\nIt is as if a Lid had been lifted off the world.\n\nOne sees everywhere business men going about the street expecting new\nthings of themselves. They expect things of the very ground, and of the\nair, and of one another they had not dared expect before.\n\nThe other day in a New England city I saw a man, who had been the\npresident of an Electric Light Company for twenty years, who had\ninvented a public service corporation that worked. Since he took office\nand dictated the policy of the Company, every single overture for more\nexpensive equipment in the electric lighting of the city has come from\nthe Company, and every single overture for reducing the rate to\nconsumers has come from the company.\n\nThe consumption of electricity in the city is the largest _per capita_\nin the world, and the rate is the cheapest in the country; and,\nincidentally, the Company so trusts the people that they let them have\nelectricity without metres, and the people so trust the Company that\nthey save its electricity as they would their own.\n\nEven the man without a conscience, who would be mean if he could, is\nbrought to terms, and knows that if he refrains from leaving his lights\nburning all night when he goes to bed he is not merely saving the\nCompany's electricity but his own. He knows that he is reducing his own\nand everybody's price for electricity, and not merely increasing the\nprofits of the Company.\n\nIt makes another kind of man slowly out of thousands of men every day,\nevery night, turning on and turning off their lights.\n\nThe Electric Light Company has come to have a daily, an almost hourly,\ninfluence on the way men do business and go about their work in that\ncity--the motives and assumptions with which they bargain with one\nanother--that might be envied by twenty churches.\n\nAll that had happened was that a man with a powerful, quietly wilful\npersonality--the kind that went on crusades and took cities in other\nages--had appeared at last, and proposed to do the same sort of thing in\nbusiness. He proposed to express his soul, just as it was, in business\nthe way other people had expressed theirs for a few hundred years in\npoetry or more easy and conventional ways.\n\nIf he could not have made the electric light business say the things\nabout people and about himself that he liked and that he believed, he\nwould have had to make some other business say them.\n\nOne of the things he had most wanted to say and prove in business was\nthe economic value of being human, the enormous business saving that\ncould be effected by being believed in.\n\nHe preferred being believed in himself, in business, and he knew other\npeople would prefer it; and he was sure that if, as people said, \"being\nbelieved in did not pay,\" it must be because ways of inventing faith in\npeople, the technique of trust, had not been invented.\n\nHe found himself invited to take charge of the Electric Light Company at\na time when it was insolvent and in disgrace with the people, and he\ntook the Corporation in hand on the specific understanding that he\nshould be allowed to put his soul into it, that he should be allowed his\nown way for three years--in believing in people, and in inventing ways\nof getting believed in as much as he liked.\n\nThe last time I saw him, though he is old and nearly blind, and while as\nhe talked there lay a darkness on his eyes, there was a great light in\nhis face.\n\nHe had besieged a city with the shrewdness of his faith, and conquered a\nhundred thousand men by believing in them more than they could.\n\nBy believing in them shrewdly, and by thinking out ways of expressing\nthat belief, he had invented a Corporation--a Public Service\nCorporation--that had a soul, and consequently worked.\n\n\n\n\nBOOK TWO\n\nLETTING THE CROWDS BE GOOD\n\nTO ABRAHAM LINCOLN\n\n    They stay not in their hold\n    These stokers,\n    Stooping to hell\n    To feed a ship.\n    Below the ocean floors.\n    Before their awful doors\n    Bathed in flame,\n    I hear their human lives\n    Drip--drip.\n\n    Through the lolling aisles of comrades\n    In and out of sleep,\n    Troops of faces\n    To and fro of happy feet,\n    They haunt my eyes.\n    Their murky faces beckon me\n    From the spaces of the coolness of the sea\n    Their fitful bodies away against the skies.\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER I\n\nSPEAKING AS ONE OF THE CROWD\n\n\nIt is a little awkward to say what I am going to say now.\n\nProbably it will be still more awkward afterward.\n\nBut I find as I go up and down the world and look in the faces of the\ncrowds in it, that it is true, and I can only tell as it is.\n\n_I want to be good._\n\nAnd I do not want to go up on a mountain to do it, or to slink off and\nlive all alone on an island in the sea.\n\nI go a step further.\n\nI believe that the crowds want to be good.\n\nBut I cannot prove that people want to be good in crowds, and so for the\nsake of the argument, and to make the case as simple as possible, I am\ngoing to give up speaking for crowds, and speak for myself as one member\nof the crowd and for Lim. Lim and I (and Lim is a business man and not a\nmere author) have had long talks in which we have confided to each other\nwhat we think this world, in spite of appearances, is really like, and\nwe have come to a kind of provisional program and to a definite\nagreement on our two main points.\n\n1. We want to be good.\n\n2. We want other people to be good, partly as a matter of convenience\nfor us, partly for morally aesthetic reasons, and partly because we want\nto be in a kind of world where what is good in us works.\n\nThe next point in our confession follows from this. It is an awkward and\nexposed thing to say out loud to people in general, but\n\n3. Lim and I want to make over the earth.\n\n4. Sitting down grimly by ourselves, all alone, and believing in a world\nhard, with our eyes shut, does not interest us. It is this particular\nplanet just as it is that interests us, in its present hopeful,\nsquirming state.\n\nIt does not seem to us to the point just now to conceive some brand new,\nclean, slick planet up in space, with crowds of perfect and convenient\npeople on it, and then expect to lay it down in the night like a great,\nsoft, beautiful dew or ideal on this one. We want to take this heavy,\ninconvenient, cumbersome, real planet that we have, and see what can be\ndone with it, and by the people on it, what can be done by these same\npeople, whose signs one goes by down the street, with Smith & Smith,\nGowns, with Clapp & Clapp, Butchers, with W.H. Riley & Co., Plumbers and\nGas Fitters, and with things that real people are really doing.\n\nThe things that real people are really doing, when one thinks of it, are\nSoap, Tooth-brushes, Subsoil Pipes, Wall Papers, Razors, Mattresses,\nSuspenders, Tiles, Shoes, Pots, and Kettles. Of course the first thing\nthat happened to us, to Lim and to me (as any one might guess, in a\nlittle quiet job like making over the earth), was that we found we had\nto begin with ourselves.\n\nWe did.\n\nWe are obliged to admit that, as a matter of fact, we began, owing to\ncircumstances, in a kind of rudimentary way with the idea of getting\npeople to take up goodness by talking about it.\n\nBut we are reformed preachers now. We seldom backslide into talking to\npeople about goodness.\n\nWe have made up our minds to lie low and keep still and show them some.\n\nOf course one ought to have some of one's own to show. But the trouble\nalways is, if it is really good, one is sure not to know it, or at least\none does not know which it is. The best we can do with goodness, some of\nus, if we want it to show more quickly or to hurry people along in\ngoodness more, is to show them other people's.\n\nI sometimes think that if everybody in the world could know my plumber\nor pay a bill to him, the world would soon begin slowly but surely to be\na very different place.\n\nMy plumber is a genius.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER II\n\nIS IT WRONG FOR GOOD PEOPLE TO BE EFFICIENT?\n\n\nPerhaps it will seem a pity to spoil a book--one that might have been\nreally rather interesting--by putting the word \"goodness\" down flatly in\nthis way in the middle of it.\n\nAnd in a book which deals with crowds, too, and with business.\n\nI would not yield first place to any one in being tired of the word. I\nthink, for one, that unless there is something we can do to it, and\nsomething we can do to it now, it had better be dropped.\n\nBut I have sometimes discovered when I had thought I was tired of a\nword, that what I was really tired of was somebody who was using it.\n\nI do not mind it when my plumber uses it. I have heard him use it (and\nswearing softly, I regret to say) when it affected me like a Hymn Tune.\n\nAnd there is Non, too.\n\nI first made Non's acquaintance as our train pulled out of New York, and\nwe found ourselves going down together on Friday afternoon to spend\nSunday with M---- in North Carolina. The first thing he said was, when\nwe were seated in the Pullman comfortably watching that big, still world\nunder glass roll by outside, that he had broken an engagement with his\nwife to come. She was giving a Tea, he said, that afternoon, and he had\nfaithfully promised to be there. But a weekend in North Carolina\nappealed to him, and afternoon tea--well, he explained to me, crossing\nhis legs and beaming at me all over as if he were a whole genial,\nsuccessful afternoon tea all by himself--afternoon tea did not appeal to\nhim.\n\nHe thought probably he was a Non-Gregarious Person.\n\nAs he was the gusto of our little party and fairly reeked with\nsociability, and was in a kind of orgy of gregariousness every minute\nall the way to Wilmington (even when he was asleep we heard from him),\nwe called him the Non-Gregarious Person, and every time he piled on one\nmore story, we reminded him how non-gregarious he was. We called him\nNon-Gregarious all the way after that--Non for short.\n\nThis is the way I became acquainted with Non. It has been Non ever\nsince.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nI found in the course of the next three days that when Non was not being\nthe life of the party or the party did not need any more life for a\nwhile, and we had gone off by ourselves, he became, like most people who\nlet themselves go, a very serious person. When he talked about his\nbusiness, he was even religious. Not that he had any particular\nvocabulary for being religious, but there was something about him when\nhe spoke of business--his own business--that almost startled me at first.\nHe always seemed to be regarding his business when he spoke of it as\nbeing, for all practical purposes, a kind of little religion by itself.\n\nNow Non is a builder or contractor.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nFor many years now the best way to make a pessimist or a confirmed\ninfidel out of anybody has been to get him to build a house. No better\narrangement for not believing in more people, and for not believing in\nmore kinds of people at once and for life, has ever been invented\nprobably than building a house. No man has been educated, or has been\nreally tested in this world, until he has built a house. I submit this\nproposition to anybody who has tried it, or to any one who is going to\ntry it. There is not a single kind or type of man who sooner or later\nwill not build himself, and nearly everything that is the matter with\nhim, into your house. The house becomes a kind of miniature model (such\nas they have in expositions) of what is the matter with people. You\nenter the door, you walk inside and brood over them. Everything you come\nupon, from the white cellar floor to the timbers you bump your head on\nin the roof, reminds you of something or of rows of people and of what\nis the matter with them. It is the new houses that are haunted now. Any\nman who is sensitive to houses and to people and who would sit down in\nhis house when it is finished and look about in it seriously, and think\nof all the people that have been built, in solid wood and stone, into\nit, would get up softly and steal out of it, out of the front door of\nit, and never enter that house again.\n\nThis is what Non saw. He saw how people felt about their houses, and how\nthey lived in them helplessly and angrily year after year, and felt\nhateful about the world.\n\nI gradually drew out of him the way he felt about it. I found he was not\nas good as some people are at talking about himself, but the subject was\ninteresting. He began his career building houses for people, as nearly\nevery one does. The general idea is that everybody is expected to exact\ncommissions from everybody else, and the owner is expected to pay each\nman his own commission and then pay all the commissions that each man\nhas charged the other man. Every house that got built in this way seemed\nto be a kind of network or conspiracy of not doing as you would be done\nby. Non did not see any way out at first, just for one man. He merely\nnoticed how things were going, and he noticed that nearly every person\nthat he had dealings with, from the bottom to the top of the house,\nseemed to make him feel that he either was, or would be, or ought to be,\na grafter. He could not so much as look at a house he had built, through\nthe trees when he was going by, without wishing he could be a better\nman, and studying on how it could be managed. His own first houses made\nhim see things. They proved to be the making of him, and if similar\nhouses have not made similar men, it is their fault. It might not be\nreassuring to the men who are now living in these first houses to dwell\ntoo much on this (and I might say he did not build them alone), but it\nseems to be necessary to bring out the most striking thing about Non in\nhis first stage as a business man, _viz._: He hated his business. He\nmade up his mind he either would make the business the kind of business\nhe liked or get out of it. I did not gather from the way he talked about\nit that he had any idea of being an uplifter. He merely had, apparently,\nan obstinate, doggedly comfortable idea about himself, and about what a\nthing would have to be, in this world, if he was connected with it. He\nproposed to enjoy his business. He was spending most of his time at it.\n\nOther people have had this same happy thought, but they seem to manage\nto keep on being patient. Non could not fall back on being patient, and\nit made him think harder.\n\nThe first thing he thought of was that doing his business as he thought\nhe ought to, if he once worked his idea out, and worked it down through\nand organized it, might pay. He almost had the belief that people might\npay a man a little extra, perhaps, for enjoying his business. It cannot\nbe said that he believed this immediately. He merely wanted to, and\nworked toward it, and merely contrived new shrewd ways at first of being\nable to afford it. Gradually he began to notice that the more he enjoyed\nhis business, the more he enjoyed it with his whole soul and body,\nenjoyed it down to the very toes of his conscience, the more people\nthere were who stepped into his office and wanted him to enjoy his\nbusiness on their houses. It was what they had been looking for for\nyears--for some builder who was really enjoying his business. And the\nmore he enjoyed his business in his own particular way--that of building\na house for a man in less time than he said he would, and for less\nmoney, not infrequently sending him a check at the end of it--the more\nhis business grew.\n\nI do not know that there would be any special harm in speaking of Non's\nidea--of just doing as you would be done by--in more moral or religious\nlanguage, but it is not necessary. And I find I take an almost religious\njoy in looking at the Golden Rule at last as a plain business\nproposition. All that happened was that Non was original, saw something\nthat everybody thought they knew, and acted as if it were so.\nTheoretically one would not have said that it would be original to take\nan old platitudinous law like the law of supply and demand, and act as\nif it were so; but it was. At the time Non was beginning his career\nthere was nothing in the building-market people found harder to hire\nthan honesty. Here was something, he saw at last, that thousands of busy\nand important men who did not have time to be detectives, wanted. There\ndid not seem to be any one very actively supplying the demand. A big\nmarket, a small supply, and almost no competition. Non stepped in and\nproposed to represent a man's interest who is building a house as\nliterally as the man would represent his interests himself, if he knew\nall about houses. Everything has followed from this. What Non's business\nis now, when a man is building a house, is to step quietly into the\nman's shoes, let him put on another pair, and go about his business. It\nis not necessary to go into the details. Any reader who has ever built a\nhouse knows the details. Just take them and turn them around.\n\nWhat those of us who know Non best like about him is that he is a plain\nbusiness man, and that he has acted in this particular matter without\nany fine moral frills or remarks. He has done the thing because he liked\nit and believed in it.\n\nBut the most efficient thing to me about Non is not the way he is making\nmoney out of saving money for other people, but the way the fact that he\ncan do it makes people feel about the world. Whenever I have a little\nspace of discouragement or of impatience about the world because it does\nnot hurry more, I fall to thinking of Non. \"Perhaps next week\"--I say\nto myself cheerfully--\"I can go down to New York and slip into Non's\noffice and get the latest news as to how religion is getting on. Or he\nwill take me out with him to lunch, and I will stop scolding or\nidealizing, and we will get down to business, and I will take a good\nlong look into that steady-lighted, unsentimental face of his while he\ntells me across the little corner table at Delmonico's for three hours\nhow shrewd the Golden Rule is, and how it works.\" Sometimes when I have\njust been in New York, and have come home and am sitting in my still\nstudy, with the big idle mountain just outside, and the great meadow and\nall the world, like some great, calm gentle spirit or picture of itself,\nlying out there about me, and I fall to thinking of Non, and of how he\nis working in wood and stone inside of people's houses, and inside of\ntheir lives day after day, and of how he is touching people at a\nthousand points all the weeks, being a writer, making lights and shadows\nand little visions of words fall together just so, seems, suddenly a\nvery trivial occupation--like amusing one's self with a pretty little\nsafe kaleidoscope, holding it up, aiming it and shaking softly one's\ncoloured bits of phrases at a world! Of course, it need not be so. But\nthere are moments when I think of Non when it seems so.\n\nIn our regular Sunday religion we do not seem to be quite at our best\njust now.\n\nAt least (perhaps I should speak for one) I know I am not.\n\nBeing a saint of late is getting to be a kind of homely, modest,\ninformal, almost menial everyday thing. It makes one more hopeful about\nreligion. Perhaps people who once get the habit, and who are being good\nall the week, can even be good on Sunday.\n\nThere are many ways of resting or leaning back upon one's instincts and\ngetting over to one's religion or perspective about the world. Mount Tom\n(which is in my front yard, in Massachusetts) helps sometimes--with a\nsingle look.\n\nWhen I go down to New York, I look at the Metropolitan Tower, the\nPennsylvania Station, the McAdoo Tunnels, and at Non.\n\nIf I wanted to make anybody religious, I would try to get him to work in\nNon's office, or work with anybody who ever worked with him, or who ever\nsaw him; or I would have him live in a house built by him, or pay a bill\nmade out by him.\n\nIt has seemed to me that his succeeding and making himself succeed in\nthis way is a great spiritual adventure, a pure religion, a difficult,\nfresh, and stupendous religion.\n\nNow these many days have I watched him going up and down through all the\nempty reputations, the unmeaning noises of the world, living his life\nlike some low, old-fashioned, modest Hymn Tune he keeps whistling--and I\nhave seen him in fear, and in danger, and in gladness being shrewder and\nshrewder for God, now grimly, now radiantly, hour by hour, day by day\ngetting rich with the Holy Ghost!\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER III\n\nIS IT WRONG FOR GOOD PEOPLE TO BE INTERESTING?\n\n\nPeople are acquiring automobiles, Oriental rugs, five-hundred-dollar\ngowns, more rapidly just now than they are goodness, because\nadvertisements in this present generation are more readable than\nsermons, and because the shop windows on Fifth Avenue can attract more\nattention than the churches. The shop windows make people covetous.\n\nIf the goodness that one sees, hears about, or goes by does not make\nother people covetous, does not make them wish they had it or some just\nlike it, it must be because there is something the matter with it, or\nsomething the matter with the way it is displayed.\n\nIf the church shop windows, for instance, were to make displays of\ngoodness up and down the great Moral Fifth Avenue of the world--well,\none does not know; but there are some of us who would rather expect to\nsee the Goodness Display in the windows consisting largely of Things\nPeople Ought Not to Want.\n\nThere would be rows and tiers of Not-Things piled up--Things for People\nNot to Be, and Things for People Not to Do.\n\nGoodness displayed in this way is not interesting. Perhaps this is one\nof the reasons why the word Goodness spoils a thing for people--so many\npeople--when it is allowed in it.\n\nPossibly it is because we are apt to think of the good people, and of\nthe people who are being good, as largely keeping from doing something,\nor as keeping other people from doing something--as negative. Their\ngoodness seems to consist in being morally accurate, and in being very\nparticular just in time, and in a kind of general holding in.\n\nWe do not naturally or off-hand--any of us--think of goodness as having\nmuch of a lunge to it. It is tired-looking and discouraged, and pulls\nback kindly and gently. Or it teases and says, \"Please\"--God knows how\nhelpless it is, and I for one am frank to say that, as far as I have\nobserved, He has not been paying very much attention to good people of\nlate.\n\nI do not believe I am alone in this. There must be thousands of others\nwho have this same half-guilty, half-defiant feeling of suspiciousness\ntoward what people seem to think should be called goodness. Not that we\nsay anything. We merely keep wondering--we cannot see what it is,\nexactly, about goodness that should make it so depressing.\n\nIn the meantime we hold on. We do not propose to give up believing in\nit. Perhaps, after all, all that is the matter with goodness in the\nUnited States is the people who have taken hold of it.\n\nThey do not seem to be the kind of people who can make it interesting.\nWe cannot help thinking, if these same bad people about us, or people\nwho are called bad, would only take up goodness awhile, how they would\nmake it hum!\n\nI can only speak for one, but I do not deny that when I have been\nsitting (in some churches), or associating, owing to circumstances, with\nvery good people a little longer than usual, and come out into the\nstreet, I feel like stepping up sometimes to the first fine, brisk,\nbusinesslike man I see going by, and saying, \"My dear sir, I do wish\nthat _you_ would take up goodness awhile and see if, after all,\nsomething cannot really be done. I keep on trying to be hopeful, but\nthese dear good people in here, it seems to me, are making a terrible\nmess of it!\"\n\nAnd, to make a long story short, Lim happened to be going by one day,\nand this practically is what I did. I had done it before with other\nbusiness men in spirit or in a general way, but with him I was more\nparticular. I went straight to the point. \"Here are at least sixteen\nvaluable efficient brands of goodness in America,\" I said, \"all worth\ntheir weight in gold for a big business career, that no one is really\nusing, that no one quite believes in or can get on the market, and yet I\nbelieve with my whole soul in them all, and I believe thousands of other\nmen do, or are ready to, the moment some one makes a start.\"\n\nI pulled out a little list of items which I had made out and put down on\na piece of paper, and handed them over to him, and said I wished he\nwould take a few of them--the first five or six or so--and make them\nwork.\n\nHe already had, I found, made two or three of the harder ones work.\n\nI would not have any one suppose for a moment that I am presenting Lim\nas a kind of business angel.\n\nNo one who knows Lim thinks of him, or would let anybody else think of\nhim, as being a Select Person, as being particularly or egregiously what\nhe ought to be. This is one reason I have picked him out. Being good in\na small private way, just as a small private end in itself, may be\npracticable perhaps without dragging in people who are not quite what\nthey ought to be. But the moment one tries to make goodness work, one\ncomes to the fact that it must be made to work with what we have. We\nhave a great crowd of unselected people, people both good and bad, and\nthe first principle in making goodness work (instead of being merely\ngood) seems to be to believe that goodness is not too good for anybody.\nAnybody who can make it work can have it, and what goodness seems to\nneed, especially in America and England just now, is people who do not\nfeel that they must at all hazards look good. Whatever happens, whatever\nelse we do in any general investment or movement we may be making with\ngoodness, we must let these people in. If there is one thing rather than\nanother that those of us who know Lim all rely on and like, it is that\nnothing can ever make him slump down into looking good. We often find\nhim hard to make out--everything is left open and loose and unlabelled\nin Lim's moral nature. The only really sure way any one can tell when\nLim is being good is, that whenever he is being good he becomes suddenly\nand unexpectedly interesting. His goodness is daring, unexpected, and\noriginal. One has the feeling that it may break out anywhere. It is\nalways doing things that everybody said could not be done before. It is\ntrue that some people are dazed, and no one can ever seem to feel sure\nhe knows what it is that is going on in Lim when he is being good, or\nthat it is goodness. He merely keeps watching it. There is a certain\nelement of news, of freshness, of gentle sensation, in his goodness. It\nleads to consequences. And there always seems to be something about\nLim's goodness which attracts the attention of people, and makes people\nwho see it want it. So when I speak of goodness in this book, and put it\ndown as the basis of the power of getting men to do as one likes, I do\nnot deny that I am taking the word away and moving it over from its\nusual associations. I do not mean by a good act, a good-looking act, but\nan act so constituted that it makes good. For the purpose of this book I\nwould define goodness as efficiency. Goodness is the quality in a thing\nthat makes the thing go, and that makes it go so that it will not run\ndown, and that nothing can stop it.\n\nThere is the inefficiency of lying, for instance, and the inefficiency\nof force, or bullying.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IV\n\nPROSPECTS OF THE LIAR\n\n\nMy theory about the Liar is that it is of no use to scold him or blame\nhim. It merely makes him feel superior. He should be looked upon quietly\nand without saying anything as a case of arrested development. What has\nhappened to him is that he merely is not quite bright about himself, and\nhas failed to see how bright (in the long run) other people are.\n\nWhen a man lies or does any other wrong thing, his real failure consists\nnot in the wrongdoing itself, but in his failure to take pains to focus\nhis mind on the facts in himself, and in the people about him, and see\nwhat it really is that he would wish he had done, say in twenty years.\nIt seems to be possible, after a clumsy fashion, to find out by a study\nof ourselves, and of our own lives and of other men's lives, what we\nwould wish we had done afterward. Everything we have learned so far we\nhave learned by guessing wrong on what we have thought we would want\nafterward. We have gradually guessed what we wanted better. We began our\nlives as children with all sorts of interesting sins or moral guesses\nand experiments. We find there are certain sins or moral experiments we\nalmost never use any more because we found that they never worked. We\nhad been deceived about them. Most of us have tried lying. Since we were\nvery small we have tried in every possible fashion--now in one way, now\nin another--to see if lying could not be made to work. By far the\nmajority of us, and all of us who are the most intelligent, are not\ndeceived now by our desire to tell lies. Perhaps we have not learned\nthat all lies do not pay. A child tells a lie at first as if a lie had\nnever been thought of before. It is as if lying had just been invented,\nand he had just thought what a great convenience it was, and how many\nthings there were that he could do in that way. He discovers that the\nparticular thing he wants at the moment, he gets very often by lying.\nBut the next time he lies, he cannot get anything. If he keeps on lying\nfor a long time, he learns that while, after a fashion, he is getting\nthings, he is losing people. Finally, he finds he cannot even get\nthings. Nobody believes in him or trusts him. He cannot be efficient. He\nthen decides that being trusted, and having people who feel safe to\nassociate with him and to do business with him, is the thing he really\nwants most; and that he must have first, even if it is only a way to get\nthe other things he wants. It need not be wondered that the Trusts,\nthose huge raw youngsters of the modern spirit, have had to go through\nwith most of the things other boys have. The Trusts have had to go\nthrough, one after the other, all their children's diseases, and try\ntheir funny little moral experiments on the world. They thought they\ncould lie at first. They thought it would be cunning, and that it would\nwork. They did not realize at once that the bigger a boy you were, even\nif you were anonymous, the more your lie showed and the more people\nthere were who suffered from it who would be bound sooner or later to\ncall you to account for it.\n\nThe Trusts have been guessing wrong on what they would wish they had\ndone in twenty years, and the best of them now are trying to guess\nbetter. They are trying to acquire prestige by being far-sighted for\nthemselves and far-sighted for the people who deal with them, and are\nresting their policy on winning confidence and on keeping faith with the\npeople.\n\nThey not only tried lying, like all young children, but they tried\nstealing. For years the big corporations could be seen going around from\none big innocent city in this country to another, and standing by\nquietly and without saying a word, putting the streets in their pockets.\n\nBut no big corporation of the first class to-day would begin its\nconnection with a city in this fashion. Beginning a permanent business\nrelation with a customer by making him sorry afterward he has had any\ndealings with you, has gone by as a method of getting business in\nEngland and America.\n\nOne of our big American magazines not long ago, which had gained\nespecially high rates from its advertisers because they believed in it,\nlied about its circulation. The man who was responsible was not\nprecisely sure, gave nominal figures in round numbers, and did what\nmagazines very commonly did under the circumstances; but when the\nmagazine owner looked up details afterward and learned precisely what\nthe circulation was for the particular issue concerned, he sent out\nannouncements to every firm in the country that had anything in the\ncolumns of that issue, saying that the firm had lied, and enclosing a\ncheck for the difference in value represented. Of course it was a good\nstroke of business, eating national humble pie so, and it was a cheap\nstroke of business too, doing some one, sudden, striking thing that no\none would forget. Not an advertisement could be inserted and paid for in\nthe magazine for years without having that action, and the prestige of\nthat action, back of it. Every shred of virtue there was in the action\ncould have been set one side, and was set one side by many people,\nbecause it paid so well. Every one saw suddenly, and with a faint breath\nof astonishment, how honesty worked. But the main point about the\nmagazine in distinction from its competitors seems to have been that it\nnot merely saw how honesty worked, but it saw it first and it had the\noriginality, the moral shrewdness and courage, to put up money on it. It\nbelieved in honesty so hard that suddenly one morning, before all the\nworld, it risked its entire fortune on it. Now that it has been done\nonce, the new level or standard of candour may be said to have been\nestablished which others will have to follow. But it does not seem to me\nthat the kind of man who has the moral originality to dare do a thing\nlike this first need ever have any serious trouble with competitors. In\nthe last analysis, in the competition of modern business to get the\ncrowd, the big success is bound to come to men in the one region of\ncompetition where competition still has some give in it--the region of\nmoral originality. Other things in competition nowadays have all been\nthought of except being good. Any man who can and will to-day think out\nnew and unlooked-for ways of being good can get ahead, in the United\nStates of practically everybody.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER V\n\nPROSPECTS OF THE BULLY\n\n\nThe stage properties that go with a bully change as we grow older. When\none thinks of a bully, one usually sees a picture at once in one's mind.\nIt is a big boy lording it over a little one, or getting him down and\nsitting on him.\n\nEverybody recognizes what is going on immediately, pitches in nobly and\nbeautifully, and licks the big boy.\n\nThe trouble with the bully in business has been that he is not so simple\nand easy to recognize. He is apt to be more or less anonymous and\nimpersonal, and it is harder to hit him in the right place.\n\nBut when one thinks of it perhaps this pleasant and inspiring duty is\nnot so impracticable as it looks, and is presently to be attended to.\n\nAny man who relies, in getting what he wants, on being big instead of\nbeing right, is a bully.\n\nModern business is done over a wide area, with thousands of persons\nlooking on, and for a long time and with thousands of people coming\nback. The man who relies on being big instead of being right, and who\ntakes advantage of his position instead of his inherent superiority, is\nsoon seen through. His customers go over to the enemy. A show of force\nor a hold-up works very well at the moment. Being bigger may be more\nshowy than being right, and it may down the Little Boy, but the Little\nBoy wins the crowd.\n\nBusiness to-day consists in persuading crowds.\n\nThe Little Boy can prove he is right. All the bully can prove is that he\nis bigger.\n\nThe Liar in Business is already going by.\n\nNow it is the turn of the bully.\n\nNot long ago a few advertisers in a big American city wanted unfairly\nlow rates for advertisements and tried to use force with the newspapers.\nThree or four of the biggest shops combined and gave notice that they\nwould take their advertising away unless the rates came down. After a\nlittle, they drew in a few other lines of business with them, and\nsuddenly one morning five or six full pages of advertisements were\nwithdrawn from every newspaper in the city. The newspapers went on\npublishing all the news of the city except news as to what people could\nbuy in department stores, and waited. They made no counter-move of any\nkind, and said nothing and seven days slipped past. They held to the\nclaim that the service they performed in connecting the great stores\nwith the people of the city was a real service, that it represented\nmarket value which could be proved and paid for. They kept on for\nanother week publishing for the people all the news of the city except\nthe news as to how they could spend their money. They wondered how long\nit would take the great shops with acres of things to sell to see how it\nwould work not to let anybody know what the things were.\n\nThe great shops tried other ways of letting people know. They tried\nhandbills, a huge helpless patter of them over all the city. They used\nbillboards, and posted huge lists of items for people to stop and read\nin the streets, if they wanted to, while they rushed by. For three whole\nweeks they held on tight to the idea that the newspapers were striking\nemployees of department stores. One would have thought that they would\nhave seen that the newspapers were the representatives of the\npeople--almost the homes of the people--and that it would pay to treat\nthem respectfully. One would have thought they would have seen that if\nthey wanted space in the homes of the people--places at their very\nbreakfast tables--space that the newspapers had earned and acquired\nthere, they would have to pay their share of what it had cost the\nnewspapers to get it.\n\nOne would have thought that the department shops would have seen that\nthe more they could make the newspapers prosper, the more influence the\nnewspapers would have in the homes of the people, and the more business\nthey could get through them. But it was not until the shopowners had\ncome down and gazed day after day on the big, white, lonely floors of\ntheir shops that they saw the truth. Crowds stayed away, and proved it\nto them. Namely: a store, if it uses a great newspaper, instead of\nhaving a few feet of show windows on a street for people to walk by,\ngets practically miles of show windows for people--in their own\nhouses--sells its goods almost any morning to the people--to a whole\ncity--before anybody gets up from breakfast--has its duties as well as\nits rights.\n\nOf course, when the shopkeepers really saw that this was what the\nnewspapers had been doing for them, they wanted to do what was right,\nand wanted to pay for it. One would have thought, looking at it\ntheoretically, that the department stores in any city would have\nimagination enough to see, without practically having to shut their\nstores up for three weeks, what advertising was worth. But if great\ndepartment stores do not have imagination to see what they would wish\nthey had done in twenty years, in one year, or three weeks, and have to\nspell out the experience morning by morning and see what works, word by\nword, they do learn in the end that being right works, and that bullying\ndoes not. Gradually the level or standard of right in business is bound\nto rise, until people have generally come to take the Golden Rule with\nthe literalness and seriousness that the best and biggest men are\nalready taking it. Department stores that have the moral originality and\nimagination to guess what people would wish they had bought of them and\nwhat they would wish they had sold to them afterward are going to win.\nDepartment stores that deal with their customers three or four years\nahead are the ones that win first.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VI\n\nGOODNESS AS A CROWD-PROCESS\n\n\nThe basis of successful business is imagination about other people. The\nbest way to train one's imagination about other people is to try\ndifferent ways of being of service to them. Trying different ways of\nmerely getting money out of them does not train the imagination. It is\ntoo easy.\n\nBusiness is going to be before long among the noblest of the\nprofessions, because it takes the highest order of imagination to\nsucceed in it. Goodness is no longer a Sunday school. The whole world,\nin a rough way, is its own Sunday school.\n\nTo have the most brains render the most service--render services people\nhad never dreamed of before.\n\nWhy bother to tell people to be good? It bores us. It bores them.\nPresently we will tell them over our shoulders, as we go by, to use\ntheir brains. Goodness is a by-product of efficiency.\n\nBeing good every day in business stands in no need of being stood up\nfor, or apologized for, or even helped. All of these things may be\nexpedient and human and natural, because one cannot help being\ninterested in particular people and in a particular generation; but they\nare not really necessary to goodness. It is only when we are tired, or\nwhen we only half believe in it, that we feel to-day that goodness needs\nto be stood up for. In a day when men make vast crowds of things, so\nthat the things are seen everywhere, and when the things are made to\nstand the test of crowds--crowds of days, or crowds of years--and when\nthey make them for crowds of people, goodness does not need scared and\nhelpful people defending it. I have seen that goodness is a thing to be\nsung about like a sunset. I have seen that goodness is organic, and\ngrounded in the nature of things and in the nature of man. I have seen\nthat being good is the one great adventure of the world, the huge daily\npassionate moral experiment of the human heart--that all men are at work\non it, that goodness is an implacable crowd process, and that nothing\ncan stop it.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VII\n\nTHOUGHTS ON BEING IMPROVED BY OTHER PEOPLE\n\n\nBut Fate has so arranged our lives that we all have to live cooped up in\none particular generation. Living in all of them, especially the ages\njust ahead, and seeing as one looks out upon them how goodness wins, may\nbe well enough when one is tired or discouraged and is driven to it, but\nin the meantime all the while we are living in this one. The faces of\nthe people we know flit past us; the gaunt, grim face of the crowd\nhaunts us--the crowd that will slip softly off the earth very soon and\ndrop into the Darkness--a whole generation of it, without seeing how\nthings are coming out; and there is something about the streets, about\nthe look of women as they go by, something about the faces of the little\nchildren, that makes one wish goodness would hurry. One cannot think\nwith any real pleasure of goodness as a huge, slow, implacable moral\nglacier, a kind of human force of gravity, grinding out truths and\ngrinding under people, generation after generation, down toward some\nvast, beautiful, happy valley with flowers and children in it and\nmajestic old men thousands of years away. One wishes goodness would\nhurry. We are not content, some of us, with having the good people climb\nover the so-called evil ones and gain the supremacy of the world, and\nall because the evil people do not see what they really want to do or\nwould have wished they had done afterward. We want the evil ones, so\ncalled, to see what they really want now. We cannot help believing that\nthere is some way of attracting their attention to what they really want\nnow.\n\nI have seen, or seemed to see, in my time that there is almost no limit\nto what people can do if they can get their own attention, or if some\nperson or some event will happen by that can get their attention for\nthem.\n\nParalytics jumped from their beds at the time of the San Francisco\nearthquake and ran for blocks. The whole earth had to shake them in\norder to get their attention; but it did it, and they saw what it was\nthey wanted, and they ran for it at once, whether they were paralytics\nor not. In the fire that followed the earthquake, people that had been\nsick in bed for weeks were seen, scores of them, dragging their trunks\nthrough the streets.\n\nI have seen, too, in my time scores of people doing great feats of\ngoodness in this way, things that they knew they could not do, dragging\nhuge moral trunks after them, or swinging them up on their shoulders. I\nhave seen men who thought they were old in their hearts, and who thought\nthey were wicked, running like boys, with shouts and cheers, to do\nright. It was all a matter of attention. The question with most of us\nwould seem to be: How can one get one's attention to what one would wish\none had done in twenty years, and how can one get other people's--all\nthe people with whom we are living and working--to do with us what they\nwould wish they had done, in twenty minutes, twenty days, or twenty\nyears?\n\nLetting the Crowd be Good, all turns in the long run upon touching the\nimagination of Crowds.\n\nIn the last analysis, the coming of the kingdom of heaven, as it has\nbeen called, is going to be the coming slowly, and from unsuspected\nquarters, of a new piety and of new kinds of saints into the forefront\nof modern life--saints who can attract attention, saints who can make\ncrowds think what they really want.\n\nUsing the word in its more special sense, the time has come when it is\nbeing keenly realized that if goodness is to be properly appreciated by\ncrowds, it must be properly advertised.\n\nHow can goodness be advertised to Crowds?\n\nWho are the people that can touch the imagination of Crowds?\n\nThe best and most suggestive truths that most of us could come to with\nregard to doing right, would come from a study of the people who have\ntried to make us do it. Most of us, if we were asked to name the people\nmost prominently connected with the virtues that we have studied and\nwondered about most, would mention, probably, either our parents or our\npreachers. Many of us feel quite expert about parents. We have studied\nvividly, and sometimes with almost a breathless interest, all their\nlittle ways of getting us to be good, and there is hardly any one who\nhas not come to quite definite conclusions of how he should be preached\nto. I have thought it would be not unfruitful to consider in this\nconnection either our parents or our preachers. I have decided to\nconsider the preachers who try to make me good, because they are a\nlittle less complicated than parents.\n\nPreachers can only be put into classes in a general way. They often\noverlap, and many of them change over from one class into another every\nnow and then on some special subject, or on some special line of\nexperience which they have had. But for the most part, at least as\nregards emphasis, preachers may be said to divide off into three\nclasses:\n\nThose who tease us to do right.\n\nThose who make us see that doing right, if any one wants to do it, is\nreally an excellent thing.\n\nThose who make us want to do it.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nI never go to hear a second time, if I can help it, a preacher who has\nteased me to do right. I used to hope at first that perhaps a clergyman\nwho was teasing people might incidentally slip off the track a minute,\nand say something or see something interesting and alive. But,\napparently, preachers who do not see that people should not be teased to\ndo right, do not see other things, and I have gradually given up having\nhopeful moments about them. Why, in a world like this, with the right\nand the wrong in it all lying so eloquent and plain and beautiful in the\nlives of the people about us, and just waiting to be uncovered a little,\nwaiting to be looked at hard a minute, should audiences be gathered\ntogether and teased to do right?\n\nIf the right were merely to be had in sermons or on paper, it might be\ndifferent. My own experience with the right has been, if I may speak for\none, that when I get out of the way of the people who are doing it, and\nlet the right they are doing be seen by people, everybody wants it. When\npeople who are doing right are quietly revealed, uncovered a little\nfurther by a preacher, everybody envies them, and teasing becomes\nsuperfluous. People sit in their seats and think of them, and become\ncovetous to be like them. If, this very day, all the ministers of the\nworld were to agree that, on next Sunday morning at half-past ten\no'clock, they all with one accord would preach a sermon teasing people\nto be rich, it would not be more absurd, or more pathetic, or more away\nfrom the point, than it would be to preach a sermon teasing people to be\ngood. They want to be good now; they envy the people that they see going\nabout the world not leaning on others to be good--self-poised,\nindependent, free, rich, spiritually self-supporting persons.\n\nThe men and women that we know may be more or less muddled in their\nminds with philosophy or with theology, or perhaps they are being\ndeceived by expediency or being bullied by their environment, but they\nare not wicked; they are out of focus, and what they desire when they go\nto church on Sunday morning is to get a good look at beautiful and\nrefreshing things that they want, and for an hour and a half, if\npossible, with slow steadied thought see their own lives in perspective.\nIt is a criminal waste of time to get hundreds of people to come into\nchurch on a Sunday morning and seat them all together in a great room\nwhere they cannot get out, and then tease them and tell them they ought\nto be good. They knew it before they came. They are already agreed, all\nof them, that they want to be good. They even want to be good in\nbusiness--as good as they can afford to. The question is how to manage\nto do it. The thing that is troubling them is the technique. How can\nthey be good in their business--more good than their employers want them\nto be, for instance--and keep their positions? Doing as one would wish\none had done afterward, or knowing what one is about, or \"being good\" as\nit is sometimes called, is a thing that all really clever people have\nagreed upon. They simply cannot manage some of the details--details like\ntime and place, a detail like being good now, for instance, or like\nbeing good here. It is the more practical things like these that trouble\npeople, or they grow mixed in their thoughts about the big goods and the\nlittle ones--which shall be first in order of importance or which in the\norder of time. And when one sees that people are really like this in\ntheir hearts, and when one sees them, all these poor, helpless people,\nsitting cooped up in a church for an hour and a half being teased to be\ngood, it is small wonder that it seems, or is coming to seem, to the\nclean-cut morally businesslike men and women we have to-day, a pitiful\nwaste of time.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nI come to the second class of preachers I had in mind with more\ndiffidence. My feelings about them are not so simple and rudimentary as\nmy feelings about those who have teased me to be good.\n\nAny man who travels about, or who drops into churches wherever he\nhappens to be from Sunday to Sunday, is almost sure to find in every\ncity of considerable size at least one imperious capable baffling\nclergyman. If one is strictly honest and fair toward him, to say nothing\nof being a well-meant and hopeful human being who is living in the same\nworld with him and who feels very imperfect too, finding any serious and\nhonest fault with the sermon, or at least laying one's finger upon what\nthe fault is, seems to be almost impossible. One simply comes out of\nthe church in a nice, neat little glow of good-will and admiration, and\nwith a strange, soothing, happy sense of new, fresh, convenient wisdom.\n\nThe only fair way to criticise the preacher who belongs in this class\nseems to be to take ten years for it, go in regularly and get a little\npractice every Sunday. There are preachers who preach so well that the\nonly way one can ever find what is the matter with their sermons is to\nsit quietly while they are preaching them, and look around at the\npeople. One thinks as one looks around, \"These people are what this man\nhas done.\"\n\nThey are the same people they were ten years ago.\n\nI often hear other sermons that are far easier to criticise. They are\none-sided or narrow, but they make new people.\n\nI might not always like to be in a congregation when a man is preaching\na sermon that makes new people, because he may be making people or kinds\nof people that at the time at least I do not need to be. But I naturally\nprefer, at least part of the time, a preacher who puts in, before he is\nthrough, some good work on me. There is a preacher in B---- who always\narouses in me, whenever I am in the city, the same old, curious, hopeful\nfeeling about him that this next one more time he is going to get to me,\nthat I am going to be attended to. I cannot say how many times I have\ndropped in upon him in his big plain church, seen him with his hushed\ncongregation all about him, all listening to him up to the last minute,\neach of them sitting all alone with his own soul, and with him, and with\nthe ticking of the clock. And the sermon is always about the same. You\nsee him narrowing the truth down wonderfully, ruthlessly, to You. You\nbegin to see everything--to see all the arguments, all the\ncircumstances, all the principles. You see them narrowing you down\ngrimly, closing in upon you, converging you and all your little, mean\nlife, driving you apparently at last into one helpless beautiful corner\nof doing right. You feel while you listen the old sermon-thrill you have\nfelt before, a kind of intellectual joy in God, in the very brains of\nGod; you think of how He has arranged right and wrong so cunningly, laid\nthem all out so plain and so close beside each other for you to choose\nto be good. Then the benediction is pronounced over you, the sevenfold\namen dies away over you, and you go home and do as you like.\n\nOne sees the sermon for days afterward lying out there in calm and\norderly memory, all so complete and perfect by itself. There does not\nreally seem to be any need of doing anything more to it. It is what\npeople mean probably by a \"finished sermon.\" It is as if goodness had\nbeen put under a glass globe in a parlour. You go home proud to think of\nit, and proud of course to have such a sermon by you. But you would\nnever think of touching such a complete and perfect thing during the\nweek the way you would a poorer sermon, disturbing it hopefully or\nmussing it over, trying to work some of it into your own life.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nSo much for the first two types of preachers: the preachers who stand\nbefore us Sunday morning with goodness placed beside them in a dense\ndarkness while they talk, and who tease us to look at it in the darkness\nand to take some; and those who stand, a cold white light all about\nthem, and use pointers and blackboards and things--maps of goodness,\ngreat charts of what people ought to be like--and who make one see each\nvirtue just where it belongs as a kind of dot, like cities in a\ngeography, and who leave us with the pleasant feeling of how sweet and\nreasonable God is, or rather would be if anybody would pay any attention\nto Him.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nI have already hinted at the qualities of the third class of\npreachers--those who make me want to be good. They seem to throw\ngoodness as upon a screen, some vast screen of the world, of this real\nworld about me. They turn their souls, like still stereopticons, upon\nthe faces of men--men who are like the men and women I know. I go about\nafterward all the week seeing their sermons in the street. Everybody I\nsee, everything that comes up Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, the very\npatterns of the days and nights, of my duties and failures, keep coming\nup, reminding me to be good. I may start in--I often do--with such a\npreacher, criticising him, but he soon gets me so occupied criticising\nmyself and so lost in wondering how this something that he has and sees\njust beyond us, just beyond him, just beyond me, can be had for other\npeople, and how I can have some of it for myself, that I forget to\ncriticise. He searches my soul, makes me a new being in my presence\nbefore my eyes--that is, a new being toward some one subject, or some\none possibility in the world. He helps me while in his presence to\naccomplish the supreme thing that one man can ever do for another. He\nhelps me to get my own attention. He makes me see a set of particular\nthings that I immediately, before his next sentence, am trying to find\nmeans to do. He does not attract my attention toward what he wants, like\na preacher who teases; nor does he attract my attention to what God\nwants, like the preacher with the charts of goodness. He succeeds in\nattracting and holding down my attention to what I really want for\nmyself or others, and to what I propose to get.\n\nThe imagination of crowds is convinced only by men who have real genius\nfor expression, for making word-pictures of real things, men who have\nwhat might be called moving-picture minds, and who are so picturesque\nand vivid that when they talk to people about goodness they have seen,\neverybody feels as if they had been there. It has to be admitted that\nthis type of preacher, who has a kind of genius, and has developed an\nart form for expressing goodness in words, is necessarily an exceptional\nman. And it is unreasonable and unfair in the public to expect a man to\nget up in the pulpit and, with no costume and no accessories, merely\nwith a kind of shrewd holiness or divination into human nature, present\ngoodness so that we seem to be there. It is small wonder that a man who\nfinds he is expected to be a kind of combination of biograph, brother,\nspiritual detective, and angel all in one, in order to do his work\nsuccessfully has days of feeling that he has joined the ranks of The\nImpossible Profession.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VIII\n\nMAKING GOODNESS HURRY\n\n\nPerhaps it has leaked out to those who have been following these pages\nthus far, that I am merely at best, if the truth were known, a kind of\nreformed preacher.\n\nI admit it. Many other people are. We began, owing to circumstances,\nwith the idea of getting people to take up goodness by talking about it.\n\nBut we have grown discouraged in talking to people about goodness. More\nand more, year by year, we have made up our minds, as I have hinted, to\nlie low and to keep still and show them some.\n\nAnd I can only say it again, as I have said it before, if everybody in\nthe world could know my plumber or pay a bill to him, the world would\nsoon begin, slowly but surely, to be a very different place.\n\nThe first time I saw B---- I had asked him to come over to arrange with\nregard to putting in new waterpipes from the street to my house. The old\nones had been put in no one could remember how many years before, and\nthe pressure of water in the house, apparently from rust in the pipes,\nhad become very weak. After a minute's conversation I at once engaged\nB---- to put in the new and larger pipes, and he agreed to dig open the\ntrench (about two hundred feet long, and three feet deep) and put the\npipes in the next day for thirty-five dollars. The next morning he\nappeared as promised, but, instead of going to work, he came into my\nstudy, stood there a moment before my eyes, and quietly but firmly threw\nhimself out of his job!\n\nThere was no use in spending thirty-five dollars, he said. He had gone\nto the City Water Works Office and told them to look into the matter and\nsee if the connection they had put in at the junction of my pipe with\nthe main in the street did not need attention. They had found that a new\nconnection was necessary. They would see that a new one was put in at\nonce. They were obliged to do it for nothing, he said; and then,\nslipping (figuratively speaking) thirty-five dollars into my pocket, he\nbowed gravely and was gone.\n\nB---- knew absolutely and conclusively (as any one would with a look)\nthat I was not the sort of person who would ever have heard of that\nblessed little joint out in the street, or who ever would hear of it or\nwho would know what to do with it if he did.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nSometimes I sit and think of B---- in church, or at least I used to,\nespecially when his bill had just come in. It was always a pleasure to\nthink of paying one of B----'s bills--even if it was sometimes a\npostponed one. You always knew, with B----, that he had made that bill\nout to you as if he had been making out a bill to himself.\n\nNot such a bad thing to think about during a sermon.\n\nI do not deny that I do lose a sentence now and then in sermons; and\nwhile, as every one knows, the sermons I have been provided with in the\nold stone church have been of a rare and high order, there have, I do\nacknowledge, been bad moments--little sudden bare spots or streaks of\nabstraction--and I do not deny that there have been times when I could\nnot help feeling, as I sat listening, like sending around Monday morning\nto the parsonage--my plumber. One could not help thinking what Dr. ----\nif he once got started on a plumber like B---- (had had him around\nworking all the week during a sermon) could do with him.\n\nI have a shoemaker, too, who would help most ministers. I imagine he\nwould point up their sermons a good deal--if they had his shoes on.\n\nPerhaps shoes and pipes and things like these will be looked upon soon\nto-day as constituting the great, slow, modest, implacable spiritual\nforces of our time.\n\nAt all events, this is the most economical, sensible, thorough way (when\none thinks of it) that goodness can be advertised.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IX\n\nTOUCHING THE IMAGINATION OF CROWDS\n\n\nA man's success in business to-day turns upon his power of getting\npeople to believe he has something that they want.\n\nSuccess in business, in the last analysis, turns upon touching the\nimagination of crowds. The reason that preachers in this present\ngeneration are less successful in getting people to want goodness than\nbusiness men are in getting them to want motor-cars, hats, and pianolas,\nis that business men as a class are more close and desperate students of\nhuman nature, and have boned down harder to the art of touching the\nimaginations of crowds.\n\nWhen one considers what it is that touches a crowd's imagination and how\nit does it, one is bound is admit that there is not a city anywhere\nwhich has not hundreds of men in it who could do more to touch the\nimagination of crowds with goodness than any clergyman could. A man of\nvery great gifts in the pulpit, a man of genius, even an immortal\nclergyman, could be outwitted in the art of touching the imagination of\ncrowds with goodness by a comparatively ordinary man in any one of\nseveral hundred of our modern business occupations.\n\nThere is a certain nation I have in mind as I write, which I do not like\nto call by name, because it is struggling with its faults as the rest of\nus are with ours. But I do not think it would be too much to say that\nthis particular nation I have in mind--and I leave the reader to fill in\none for himself, has been determined in its national character for\nhundreds of years, and is being determined to-day--every day, nearly\nevery minute of every day, except when all the people are asleep--by a\ncertain personal habit that the people have. I am persuaded that this\nhabit of itself alone would have been enough to determine the fate of\nthe nation as a third-rate power, that it would have made it always do\nthings with small pullings and haulings, in short breaths, and\nhand-to-mouth insights--a little jerk of idealism one day, and a little\njerk of materialism the next--a kind of national palavering, and\nsee-sawing and gesturing, and talking excitedly and with little\nflourishes. It is a nation that is always shrugging its shoulders, that\nalmost never seems to be capable of doing a thing with fine directness,\nwith long rhythms of purpose or sustained feeling; and all because every\nman, woman, and child in the country--scores of generations of them for\nhundreds of years--has been taught that the great spiritual truth or\nprinciple at the bottom of correctly and beautifully buying a turnip is\nto begin by saying that you do not want a turnip at all, that you never\neat turnips, and none of your family, and that they never would. The\nother man begins by pointing out that he is never going to sell another\nturnip as long as he lives, if he can help it. Gradually the facts are\nallowed to edge in until at last, and when each man has taken off God\nknows how much from the value of his soul, and spent two shillings'\nworth of time on keeping a halfpenny in his pocket, both parties\nseparate courteously, only to carry out the same spiritual truth on a\nradish perhaps or a spool of thread, or it may be even a house and lot,\nor a battleship, or a war, or a rumour of a war, with somebody.\n\nThe United States, speaking broadly, is not like this. But it might have\nbeen.\n\nIn the United States some forty years ago, being a new country, and\nbeing a country where everything a man did was in the nature of things,\nfelt to be a first experiment, everybody felt democratic and\nindependent, and as if he were making the laws of the universe just for\nhimself as he went along.\n\nThere was a period of ten years or so in which every spool of thread and\nbit of dress goods--everything that people wore on their bodies or put\nin their months, and everything that they read, came up and had to be\nconsidered as an original first proposition, as if there never had been\na spool of thread before, as if each bit of dress goods was, or was\ncapable of being, a new fresh experiment, with an adventurous price on\nit; and before we knew it a moral nagging and edging and hitching had\nset in, and was fast becoming in America an American trait, and fixing\nitself by daily repetition upon the imagination of the people.\n\nThe shopping of a country is, on the whole, from a psychologist's point\nof view, the most spiritual energy, the most irrevocable, most\nimplacable meter there can ever be of the religion a country really has.\n\nThere was no clergyman in America who could have made the slightest\nimpression on this great national list or trend of always getting things\nfor less than they were worth--this rut of never doing as one would be\ndone by. What was there that could be done with an obstinate, pervasive,\nunceasing habit of the people like this?\n\nWhat was there that could be done to touch the imagination of the crowd?\n\nSix thousand women a day were going in and out of A.T. Stewart's great\nstore on Broadway at that time. A.T. Stewart announced to New York\nsuddenly in huge letters one day, that from that day forward there\nshould be one price for everything sold in his store, and that that\nprice would be paid for it by everybody.\n\nA.T. Stewart's store was the largest, most successful, original, and\nmost closely watched store in America.\n\nThe six thousand women became one thousand.\n\nThen two thousand. Some of them had found that they finished their\nshopping sooner; the better class of women, those whose time was worth\nthe most, and whose custom was the largest, gradually found they did not\nwant to shop anywhere else. The two thousand became three thousand, four\nthousand, six thousand, ten thousand, twelve thousand.\n\nOther department stores wanted the twelve thousand to come to them. They\nannounced the one price.\n\nHardware stores did it. Groceries announced one price. Then everybody.\n\nNot all the clergymen in America, preaching every Sunday for months,\ncould have done very much in the way of seriously touching the\nimagination of the crowd on the moral unworthiness, the intellectual\ndegradation, the national danger of picking out the one thing that\nnearly all the people all do, and had to do, all day, every day, and\nmaking that thing mean, incompetent, and small. No one had thought out\nwhat it would lead to, and how monstrous and absurd it was and would\nalways be to have a nation have all its people taking every little thing\nall day, every day, that they were buying, or that they were\nselling--taking a spool of thread, for instance--and packing it, or\npacking their action with it, as full of adulterated motives and of\nfresh and original ways of not doing as they would be done by as they\ncould think up--a little innocent spool of thread--wreaking all their\nsins and kinds of sins on it, breaking every one of the ten commandments\non it as an offering....\n\nIt was A.T. Stewart, a very ordinary-looking, practical man in a plain,\neveryday business, who arrested the attention of a nation and changed\nthe habit of thought and trend of mind of a great people, and made them\na candid, direct people, a people that went with great sunny prairies\nand high mountains, a yea and nay people, straightforward, and free from\npalavering forever. A.T. Stewart was accustomed, in his own personal\ndealings from day to day, to cut people short when they tried to heckle\nwith him. He liked to take things for granted, drive through to the\npoint, and go on to the next one. This might have ended, of course, in a\nkind of _cul de sac_ of being a merely personal trait in a clean-cut,\nmanful, straightforward American gentleman; and if Stewart had been a\nsnob or a Puritan, or had felt superior, or if he had thought other\npeople--the great crowds of them who flocked through his store--could\nnever expect to be as good as he was, nothing would ever have come of\nit.\n\nIt is not likely that he was conscious of the long train of spiritual\nresults he had set in motion; of the way he had taken the habit of mind,\nthe daily, hourly psychology of a great people, and had wrought it\nthrough with his own spirit; or of the way he had saved up, and set\nwhere it could be used, everyday religion in America, and had freed the\nbusiness genius of a nation for its most characteristic and most\neffective self-expression.\n\nHe merely was conscious that he could not endure palavering in doing\nbusiness himself, and that he would not submit to being obliged to\nendure it, and he believed millions of people in America were as\nclean-cut and straightforward as he was.\n\nAnd the millions of people stood by him.\n\nPerhaps A.T. Stewart touched the imagination of the crowd because he had\nlet the crowd touch his and had seen what crowds, in spite of\nappearances, were really like.\n\nThe enterprise of touching the imagination of the crowd with goodness,\nwhich is being conducted every day on an enormous scale around us, has\nto be carried on, like all huge enterprises, by men who are in a large\ndegree unconscious of it. There are few department stores in England or\nAmerica that would expect to be called pious, but if one is deeply and\nobstinately interested in the Golden Rule, and in getting crowds of\npeople to believe in it at a time, it is impossible not to think what\nsweeps of opportunity department stores would have with it--with the\nGolden Rule. With thousands of people flowing in and out all the week,\nand with hundreds of clerks to attend to it, eight hours a day, there\nwould hardly seem to be any limit to what such a store could do in\nmaking the Golden Rule a direct, a pointed and personal thing, a thing\nthat could not be evaded and could not be forgotten by thousands of\npeople. The same people all going in and out of department stores, vast\ncongregations of them, eight hours a day, which ministers can only get\nat in small lots, three hundred or so, twenty minutes a week, and can\nonly get at with words even then--all of them being convinced in terms\nthey understand, and in terms they keenly feel, convinced in hats that\nthey will see over and over again, convinced in velvets that they are\ngoing to put on and off for years, in laces, in waistcoats, shoes, in\ndining-room chairs, convinced in the very underclothes next to their\nskins, the clothes they sleep in all night, in the very plates on which\nthey eat, while all the time they keep remembering, or being reminded,\njust how the things were bought, and just what was claimed for them and\nwhat was not claimed for them, and thinking how the claims came true or\nhow they did not.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nI just saw lying on the table as I came through the hall a moment ago a\nhat which (out of all the long rows of hats I can see faintly reaching\nacross the years) will always be to me a memorable hat. I am free to say\nthat, after all the ladies it has been taken off to, my great memory of\nthat hat is now and always will be, as long as I live, the department\nstore at which I bought it, and the things the department store, before\nI got through with it, managed to make the hat say.\n\nI had been in the store the day before and selected, in broad daylight,\nwith a big mirror staring me out of countenance, a hat which was a\nquarter of a size too large. To clinch the matter, I had ordered four\nventilating holes to be punched in it, and had it sent to my rooms to be\nmy hat--implacably my hat as I supposed, for better for worse, for\nricher for poorer--always. The next morning, after standing before a\nmirror and trying hopefully for a few minutes to see if I could not look\nmore intelligent in the hat, I returned to the store firmly. I had made\nup my mind that I would keep from looking the way that that hat made me\nlook, at any cost. The store was not responsible according to the letter\neither for the hat or for the way I looked in it. I had deliberately\nchosen it, looked at myself in cold blood in it, had those dreadful,\nirremovable, eternal air-holes dug into it. I would buy a new one. I\njumped into a cab, and a moment after I arrived I found myself before\nthe clerk from whom I had bought it, with a new one on my head, and was\njust reaching into my pocket for my purse when, to my astonishment, I\nheard, or seemed to hear, the great Department Store Itself, in the\ngentle accents of a young man with a yellow moustache, saying: \"I'm\nsorry\"--all seven storys of it gathering itself up softly, apparently,\nand saying \"I'm sorry!\" The young man explained that he was afraid the\nhat was wrong the day before, and thought he ought to have told me so,\nthat the store would not want me to pay for the mistake.\n\nI came home a changed man. I had been hit by the Golden Rule before in\ndepartment stores, but always rather subtly--never with such a broad,\nbeautiful flourish! I made some faint acknowledgment, I have forgotten\nwhat, and rushed out of the store.\n\nBut I have never gone past the store since, on a 'bus, or in a taxi, or\nsliding through the walkers on the street, but I have looked up to\nit--to its big, quiet windows, its broad, honest pillars fronting a\nworld.\n\nI take off my hat to it.\n\nBut it gave me more than a hat.\n\nI think what a thousand department stores, stationed in a thousand\nplaces on this old planet, could do in touching the imagination of the\nworld--every day, day by day, cityfuls at a time.\n\nI had found a department store that had absolutely identified itself\nwith my interests, that could act about a hat the way a wife would--a\ndepartment store that looked forward to a permanent relation with me--a\ngreat live machine that could be glad and sorry--that really took me in,\nknew how I felt about things, cared how I looked as I walked down the\nstreet. Sometimes I think of the poor, wounded, useless thing I took\nback to them, those pitiless holes punched in it--just where no one\nelse would ever have had them. I am human. I always feel about the\nstore, that great marble and glass Face, when I go by it now as if, in\nspite of all the difficulties, it wanted me--to be beautiful! I at least\nfeel and know that the people who were the brain, the daily moving\nconsciousness behind the face--wanted me to be a becoming customer to\nthem. They did not want to see me coming in, if it could possibly be\nhelped, in that hat any more!\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nI have told this little history of a gray hat, not because it is in any\nway extraordinary, but because it is not. The same thing, or something\nquite like it, expressing the same spirit, might have happened in any\none of the best hundred department stores in the world.\n\nMost people can remember a time, only a very little while ago, when\nclerks in our huge department stores or selling machines were not\nexpected to be people who would think of things like this to do, or who\nwould know how, or who would think to consider them good business if\nthey did.\n\nThe department store that based its success on selecting clerks of a\nhigh order of human insight, that paid higher wages to its clerks for\ntheir power of being believed in, for their personal qualities and their\nshrewdness in helping people and a gift for discovering mutual interests\nwith everybody and for founding permanent human relations with the\npublic, had not been thought of a little while ago.\n\nAll that had been thought of was the appearance of these things. It was\nan employer's business, speaking generally, to get all he could out of\nhis clerks and have them get as little as possible out of him. It was\ntheir business in their turn to get as much money out of the public as\nthey could get, and to give the public as little in return as they\ndared.\n\nThe type of employer who liked to do business in this way, and who\nbelieved in it, crowed over the world nearly everywhere as the Practical\nMan. And for the time being certainly it has to be admitted that he\nseemed the most successful. Naturally there came to be a general\nimpression among the people that only certain lower orders of life and\ncharacter could be employed, or could stand being employed, in the great\ndepartment stores.\n\nI used often to go into ----'s. Everybody remembers it. I went in, as a\nrule, in a helpless, waiting, married way, and as a mere attache of the\ntruly wise and good. All I ever did or was expected to do was to stand\nby and look wise and discriminating a minute about dress goods, when\nspoken to. I used to put in my time looking behind the counters--all\nthose busy, pale, yellow-lighted people in little holes or stalls trying\nto be human and natural in that long, low, indoor street of theirs,\ncrowds of women staring by them and picking at things. Always that\nmoving sidewalk of questions--that dull, eager stream of consciousness\nsweeping by. No sunlight--just the crowds of covetousness and\nshrewdness. I used to wonder about the clerks, many of them, and what\nthey would be like at home or under an apple tree or each with a bit of\nblue sky to go with them. They used to seem in those days, as I looked,\nmostly poor, underground creatures living in a sort of Subway of Things\nin a hateful, hard, little world of clothes, each with his little study\nor trick or knack of appearances, standing there and selling people\ntheir good looks day after day at so much a yard.\n\nTo-day, in a hundred cities one can go into department shops where one\nwould get, standing and looking on idly, totally different impressions.\nThere are hundreds of thousands of young men and women who have made\nbeing a clerk a new thing in the world. The public has already had its\nimagination touched by them, and is beginning to deal with clerks, as a\nclass, on a different level.\n\nThis has been brought to pass because the employer has been thought of,\nor has thought of himself, who engages and pays for in clerks the\nhighest qualities in human nature that he can get. He picks out and puts\nin power, and persuades to be clerks, people who would have felt\nsuperior to it in days gone by--men and women who habitually depend for\ntheir efficiency in showing and selling goods upon their more generous\nemotions and insights, their imaginations about other people. They\ngather in their new customers, and keep up their long lists of old and\nregular customers, through shrewd visions of service to people, and\nthrough a technical gift for making the Golden Rule work.\n\nWhen one looks at it practically, and from the point of view of all the\nconsequences, a bargain is the most spiritual, conclusive, most\nself-revealing experience that people can have together. Every bargain\nis a cross-section in three tenses of a man. A bargain tells everything\nabout people--who they are, and what they are like. It also tells what\nthey are going to be like unless they take pains; and it tells what they\nare not going to be like too sometimes, and why.\n\nThe man who comes nearest in modern life to being a Pope, is the man who\ndetermines in what spirit and by what method the people under him shall\nconduct his bargains and deal with his customers. ----, at the head of\nhis department store, has a parish behind his counters of twenty-five\nhundred men and women. He is in the business of determining their\nreligion, the way they make their religion work, eight hours a day, six\ndays a week. He seems to me to be engaged in the most ceaseless, most\npenetrating, most powerful, and most spiritual activity of the world. He\nis really getting at the imaginations of people with his idea of\ngoodness. If he does not work his way through to a man's imagination one\nminute or one day, he does the next. If he cannot open up a man's\nimagination with one line of goods, he does it with another. If he\ncannot make him see things, and do as he would be done by, with one kind\nof customer, another is moved in front of him presently, and another,\nand another--the man's inner substance is being attacked and changed\nnearly every minute every day. There is nothing he can do, or keep from\ndoing, in which his employer's idea of goodness does not surround,\nbesiege, or pursue him. Every officer of the staff, every customer who\nslips softly up to the counter in front of him makes him think of the\nGolden Rule in a new way or in some shading of a new way--confronts him\nwith the will, with the expectation, with the religion of his employer.\n\nIn ----'s store (where I looked in a moment yesterday) one thousand of\nthe two thousand five hundred clerks are men. If I were a minister\nwondering nearly every day how to work in for my religion a fair chance\nat men, I should often look wistfully from over the edge of my pulpit, I\nimagine, to the head of ----'s department store, sitting at that quiet,\ncalm, empty looking desk of his in his little office at the top of his\nbig building in ---- Street, with nothing but those little six or seven\nbuttons he softly puts his thumbs on connecting him with a thousand\nmen.\n\nAnd he does not even need the buttons. Every man knows and feels,\npersonally and intimately, what the man at the desk is asking him to do\nwith a particular customer who stands before him at the moment. As soon\nas the customer is there, the man at the desk practically is there too.\nHis religion works by wireless, and goes automatically, and as from a\nhuge stored-up reservoir, to all that happens in the place. He makes\nregularly with his idea of goodness anywhere from twenty to sixty\npastoral calls (with every sale they make) on a thousand men a day. He\nis not dependent, as the ordinary minister often is, on their dying, or\non their babies, or on their wives, for a chance to get at men with his\nreligion.\n\nIf I wanted to take a spiritual census of modern civilization and get at\nthe actual scientific facts, what we would have to call, probably the\nfoot-tons of religion in the world to-day, I would not look for them in\nthe year-books of the churches, I would get them by going about in the\ngreat department stores, by moving among the men and women in them day\nafter day, and standing by and looking on invisibly. Like a shadow or a\nlight I would watch them registering their goodness daily, hourly, on\ntheir counters, over their counters, measuring out their souls before\nGod in dress goods, shoes, boas, hats, silk, and bread and butter!\n\nThis may not be true of the Orient, but it is true, and getting to be\nmore true every day, of Europe and America.\n\nIt is especially true of America. In the things which we borrow in\nAmerica, we are far behind the rest of the world. It is to the things\nthat we create, that we must look alone, for our larger destiny, and our\nworld-service.\n\nNaturally, in so far as civilization is a race of borrowing, nations\nlike England and France and Germany a few hundred miles apart from one\nanother, set the pace for a nation that is three thousand miles away\nfrom where it can borrow, like the United States. It is a far cry from\nthe land of the Greeks with their still sunny temples and dreams, and\nfrom England with its quiet-singing churches, to New York with its\npractical sky-scraping hewing prayer!\n\nNew York--scooping its will out of the very heavens!\n\nNew York--the World's last, most stern, perhaps most manful prayer of\nall--half-asking and half-grasping out of the hand of God!\n\nHere is America's religion! Half afraid at first, half glad, slowly,\nsolemnly triumphant, as on the edge of an abyss, I have seen America's\nreligion! I have seen my brother Americans hewing it out--day by day,\nnight by night, have I seen them--in these huge steel sub-cellars of the\nsky!\n\nI have accepted the challenge.\n\nIf it is not a religion, then it shall be to us a religion to make it a\nreligion.\n\nThe Metropolitan Tower with its big clock dial, with its three stories\nof telling what time it is, and its great bell singing hymns above the\ndizzy flocks of the skyscrapers, is the soul of New York, to me.\n\nIf one could see a soul--if one could see the soul of New York, it would\nlook more like the Metropolitan Tower than anything else.\n\nIt seems to be trying to speak away up there in the whiteness and the\nlight, the very soul of the young resistless iron-hearted city.\n\nI write as an American. To me there is something about it as I come up\nthe harbour that fills my heart with a big ringing, as if all the world\nwere ringing, ringing once more--ringing all over again--up in this\nwhite tower of ours in its new bit of blue sky! I glory in England with\nit, in Greece, in Bethlehem. It is as an outpost on Space and Time, for\nall of us gathering up all history in it softly--once more and pointing\nit to God!\n\nIt is the last, the youngest-minded, the most buoyant tower--the mighty\nChild among the steeples of the world. The lonely towers of Cologne\nstretching with that grave and empty nave against the sky, out of that\nold and faded region of religion, far away, tremulously send greetings\nto it--to this white tower in the west--to where it goes up with its\ncrowds of people in it, with business and with daily living and hoping\nand dying in it, and strikes heaven!\n\nIt may be perhaps only the American blood in me. Perhaps it is raw and\nnew to be so happy. I do not know. I only know that to me the\nMetropolitan Tower is saying something that has been never quite said\nbefore--something that has been given in some special sense to us as a\ntrust from the world. It is to me the steeple of democracy--of our\ndemocracy, England's democracy--the world's democracy. The hollow domes\nof Sts. Peter and Paul, and all the rest with their vague, airy\nother-worldliness, all soaring and tugging like so many balloons of\nreligion and goodness, trying to get away from this world--are not to me\nso splendid, so magnificently wilful as the Metropolitan Tower--as the\nsouls of these modern, heaven-striking men, taking the world itself, at\nlast, its streets of stone, of steel, its very tunnels and lifting them\nup as blind offerings, as unbounded instincts, as prayers, as songs to\nheaven!\n\nI worship my country, my people, my city when I hear the big bell in it\nand when I look up to where the tower is in that still place like a\nsea--look up to where that little white country belfry sits in the\nlight, in the dark above the vast and roaring city!\n\nTo me, the Metropolitan Tower, sweeping up its prayer out of the streets\nthe way it does, and doing it, too, right beside that little safe,\ntucked-in, trim, Sunday religion of the Madison Square Presbyterian\nChurch, lifts itself up as one of the mighty signs and portents of our\ntime. Have I not heard the bell tolling to the people in the midst of\nbusiness and singing great hymns? A great city lifts itself and prays in\nit--prays while it sings and clangs so absent-looking below.\n\nI like to go out before going to sleep and take a look at it--one more\nlook before I sleep, upon the tower, strong, unyielding, alive, sinewy,\nimperturbable, lifting up within itself the steel and soul of the world.\nI am content to go to sleep.\n\nIt is a kind of steeple of the business of this world. I would rather\nhave said that business needed a steeple before until I saw the\nMetropolitan Tower and heard it singing above the streets. But I had\nalways wanted (without knowing it), in a modern office building, a great\nsolemn bell to remind us what the common day was. I like to hear it\nstriking a common hour and what can be done in it. I stop in the street\nto listen--to listen while that great hive of people tolls--tolls not the\nreveries of monks above the roofs of the skyscrapers, but the religion\nof business--of the real and daily things, the seriousness of the mighty\nstreet and the faces of the men and the women.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER X\n\nTHE STUPENDOUS, THE UNUSUAL, THE MONOTONOUS, AND THE SUCCESSFUL\n\n\nThe imagination of crowds may be said to be touched most successfully\nwhen it is appealed to in one of four ways:\n\n    THE STUPENDOUS. THE UNUSUAL. THE MONOTONOUS. THE SUCCESSFUL.\n\nOf these four ways, the stupendous, or the unusual, or the successful\nare the most in evidence, and have something showy about them, so that\nwe can look at them afterward, and point out at a glance what they have\ndone. But probably the underhold on the crowd, the real grip on its\nimagination, the one which does the plain, hard, everyday work on a\ncrowd's ideals, which determines what crowds expect and what crowds are\nlike inside--is the Monotonous.\n\nThe man who tells the most people what they shall be like in this world\nis not the great man or the unusual man. He is the monotonous man.\n\nHe is the man, to each of us, who determines the unconscious beat and\nrhythm with which we live our daily lives.\n\nIf we wanted to touch the imaginations of crowds, or of any particular\ncrowd, with goodness, the best way to do it would probably be, not to go\nto the crowd itself, but to the man who is so placed that he determines\nthe crowd's monotony, the daily rhythm with which it lives--the man, if\nwe can find him, who arranges the crowd's heart-beat.\n\nIt need not take one very long to decide who the man is who determines\nthe crowd's heart-beat. The man who has the most dominion over the\nimaginations of most of us, who stands up high before us out in front of\nour lives, the man who, as with a great baton, day after day, night\nafter night, conducts, as some great symphony, the fate of the world\nabove our heads, who determines the deep, unconscious thoughts and\nmotives, the inner music or sing-song, in which we live our lives, is\nthe man to whom we look for our daily bread.\n\nIt is the men with whom we earn our money who are telling us all\nrelentlessly, silently, what we will have to be like. The men with whom\nwe spend it, who sell things to us, like the department stores, those\nhuge machines of attention, may succeed in getting great sweeps of\nattention out of crowds at special times, by appealing to men through\nthe unusual and through the stupendous or the successful. But what\nreally counts, and what finally decides what men and what women shall\nbe, what really gets their attention unfathomably, unconsciously, is the\nway they earn their money. The feeling men come to have about a fact, of\nits being what it is, helplessly or whether or no--the feeling that they\ncome to have about something, of its being immemorially and innumerably\nthe same everywhere and forever, comes from what they are thinking and\nthe way they think while they are earning their money. It is out of the\nsubconscious and the monotonous that all our little heavens and hells\nare made. It is our daily work that becomes to us the real floor and\nroof of living, hugs up under us like the ground, fits itself down over\nus, and is our earth and sky. The man with whom we earn our money, the\nman who employs us, his thinking or not thinking, his \"I will\" and \"I\nwon't,\" are the iron boundaries of the world to us. He is the skylight\nand the manhole of life.\n\nThe monotonous, the innumerable and over and over again, one's desk,\none's typewriter, one's machine, one's own particular factory window,\nthe tall chimney, the little forever motion with one's hand--it is\nthese, godlike, inscrutable, speechless, out of the depths of our\nunconsciousness and down through our dreams, that become the very breath\nand rumble of living to us, domineer over our imaginations and rule our\nlives. It is decreed that what our Employers think and let us know\nenough to think shall be a part of the inner substance of our being. It\nshall be a part of growing of the grass to us, and shall be as water and\nfood and sleep. It shall be to us as the shouts of boys at play in the\nfield and as the crying of our children in the night. To most men\nEmployers are the great doors that creak at the end of the world.\n\nIt is not the houses that people live in, or the theatres that they go\nto, or the churches to which they belong, or the street and number--the\nEast End look or the West End look the great city carves on the faces of\nthese men I see in the street--that determines what the men are like.\n\nTheir daily work lies deeper in them than their faces. One finds one's\nself as one flashes by being told things in their walk, in the way they\nhold their hands and swing their feet.\n\nAnd what is it their hands and feet, umbrellas, bundles, and the\nwrinkles in their clothes tell us about them?\n\nThey tell us how they earn their money. Their hopes, their sorrow, their\nfears and curses, their convictions, their very religions are the\nsilent, irrevocable, heavenly minded, diabolical by-products of what\ntheir Employers think they can afford to let them know enough to think.\n\n    \"Fight for yourselves. Your masters hate you. They would shoot\n    you down like rabbits, but they need your labour for their\n    huge profits. Don't go in till you get your minimum. No Royal\n    Commission, no promise in the future. Leaders only want your\n    votes; they will sell you. They lie. Parliament lies, and will\n    not help you, but is trying to sell you. Don't touch a tool\n    till you get your minimum. Win, win, win! It is up to all\n    workers to support the miners.\"\n\nIf a man happens to be an employer, and happens to know that he is not\nthis sort of man, and finds that he cannot successfully carry on his\nbusiness unless he can make five hundred men in his factory believe it,\nwhat can he do? How can he touch their imaginations? What language is\nthere, either of words or of action, that will lead them to see that he\nis a really a fair-minded, competent employer, a representative of the\ninterests of all, a fellow-citizen, a Crowdman, and that his men can\nafford to believe in him and cooeperate with them?\n\nIf they think he would shoot them down like rabbits, it is because they\nhave not the remotest idea what he is really like. They have not noticed\nhim. They have no imagination about him, have not put themselves in his\nplace. How can he get their attention?\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XI\n\nTHE SUCCESSFUL\n\n\nA little while ago I saw in Paris an American woman, the President of a\nWoman's Club (I imagined), who was doing as she should, and was going\nabout in a cab appreciating Paris, drive up to the Louvre. Leaving her\ncab, though I wondered a little why she did, at the door, she hurried up\nthe steps and swept into the gallery, taking her eleven-year-old boy\nwith her. I came upon her several times. The Louvre did not interest the\nboy, and he seemed to be bothering and troubling his mother, and of\ncourse he kept trying very hard, as any really nice boy would, to get\nout; but she would not let him, and he wandered about dolefully, looking\nat his feet and at the floor, or at the guards, and doing the best he\ncould. Finally she came over to him; there was a Murillo he must see--it\nwas the opportunity of his life; she brought him over to it, and stood\nhim up in front of it, and he would not look; she took his small brown\nhead in her hands and steered it to the great masterpiece and held it\nthere--on that poor, silent, helpless Murillo--until....\n\nI observed that she could steer his head; but I could not help thinking\nhow much more she would have done if she had known how to steer it\ninside.\n\nThe invention of the Megaphone, of the Cinema, and the _London Times_,\nand of the Bible, are all a part of the great, happy, hopeful effort of\none part of this world to get the attention of the other part of it, and\nsteer heads inside.\n\nThis art of steering heads inside, which has come to be the secret art\nof all the other arts, the secret religion of all the religions, is\nalso the secret of building and maintaining a civilization and a\nsuccessful and permanent business. It is hard to believe how largely,\nfor the last twenty years, it has been overlooked by employers as the\nreal key of the labour problem--this art of steering people's heads\ninside.\n\nWe have seen part of the truth. We have put in a good deal of time in\nfinding fault with labouring men for thinking too much about themselves\nand about their class, and for emphasizing their wages more than their\nwork, and for not having more noble and disinterested characters.\nParliaments, clergymen, and employers have all been troubled for years\nabout Labour, and they have been trying very hard on Sundays and through\nreports of speeches by members of Parliament in the daily press, and\nthrough laws, and through employers' associations, and through factory\nrules and fines, to get the attention of labouring men and lift their\nthoughts to higher things.\n\nA great many wise things have been said to Labour--masterpieces, miles\nof them as it were, whole Louvres of words have been hung upon their\nwalls.\n\nBut in vain!\n\nAnd all because we have merely taken the outside of the boy's head in\nour hands. We have not thought what was really going on in it. We have\nnot tried to steer it inside. We have been superficial.\n\nIt is superficial for a comfortable man with a bun in his pocket to talk\nto a starving man about having some higher motive than getting something\nto eat. Everybody sees that this is superficial, if we mean by it that\nhis body is starving. But if we mean something more real and more\nterrible than that--that he is starving inside, that his soul is\nstarving, that he has nothing to live for, no real object in getting\nsomething to eat--if we mean by it, in other words, that the man's\nimagination is not touched even by his own life, people take it very\nlightly.\n\nAnd it is the most important thing in the world. The one thing now\nnecessary to society, to industry, is to get hold of the men who are in\nit, one by one, and touch their imaginations about themselves. We have\nmillions of men working without their thoughts and expectations being\nventilated or passed along, year after year.\n\nOne sees these men everywhere one goes, in thousands of factories, doing\ntheir work without any draught. We already have tall chimneys for our\ncoal furnaces; we have next to see the value of tall chimneys, great\nflues to the sky, on the lives and thought and the inner energies of\nmen. The most obvious way to get a draught on a man, to get him to glow\nup and work is to cut through an opening in the top of his life.\n\nJust where to cut this opening, and just how to cut it in each man's\nlife--each man considered as a problem by himself--is the Labour\nproblem.\n\nThere are certain general principles that might be put down in passing.\nTo begin with, we must not feel ashamed to begin implacably with the\nactual man just as he is, and with the wants and the motives that he\nactually has. We should feel ashamed rather to begin in any other way.\nIt would not be bright or thoughtful to begin on him with motives he is\ngoing to have; and it certainly would not be religious or worthy of us\nto try to make him begin with ours. Perhaps ours are better--for us.\nPerhaps, too, ours will be better for him when he is like us (if we can\ngive him any reason to want to be). In the meantime, what is there that\ncan honestly be called base in taking human nature as it is and in\nallowing a sliding scale of motives in people? Starving people and\nslaves, or people who are ugly and hateful, _i.e._, not really quite\nbright toward others, who impute mean, inaccurate motives to them, can\nonly be patiently expected to have a very small area or even mote of\nunselfishness at first. A cross-section of our society to-day represents\nthe entire geological formation of human nature for 40,000 years. We\nneed but look on the faces of the men about us as we go down the street.\nAll history is here this minute.\n\nWe wish that Labour had better motives. We wish to get our workmen to\nunderstand us better and believe in us more and work for us harder.\n\nWe agree that we must begin with them, if we propose to do this, where\nthey are.\n\nWhere are they?\n\nThere are certain general observations that might seem to the point.\n\n1. If a man is a sane and sound man and works hard, he must feel that\neverything he does, every minute, is definitely connected with the main\nthrough-train purpose in his life.\n\n2. If the main purpose in his life is domestic and consists in having\nhis family live well and giving his children a chance, he must feel and\nbe absolutely sure when he is working better or working worse for his\nemployer that he is working better or worse for himself and for those\nfor whom he lives.\n\n3. In the ordinary labourer this domestic unselfishness or house\npatriotism is a kind of miniature public spirit. It is the elementary\nform of his national or human enthusiasm. It is the form of\ndisinterestedness that has to be attended to in men first; and the way\nfor society to get the labouring man to be public-spirited, to have the\nhabit of considering the rights of others, is for society to have the\nhabit of considering his rights in his daily work. An intelligent, live\nman must be allowed a little margin to practise being unselfish on, if\nonly in the privacy of his own family. Unselfishness begins in small\ncircles. The starving man must be allowed a smaller range of\nunselfishness than the man who has enough. It is not uncomplimentary or\nunworthy in human nature to admit that this is so--to demand that the\nhuman being who is starving must be allowed to be selfish. If he is not\nbright enough to be selfish when he is hungry he is dangerous to\nsociety. We ought to insist upon his being selfish, and help him in it.\nVirtue is a surplus.\n\n4. This is the first humble, stuttering speech the competent modern\nemployer who proposes to express himself to his men, and get them to\nunderstand him and work with him, is going to make. He is going to pick\nout one by one every man in his works who has a decent, modest, manly\ndesire to be selfish, and help him in it. He is going to do something or\nsay something that will make the man see, that will make him believe for\nlife, that the most powerful, the most trustworthy, the most far-sighted\nman he can find in the world to be his partner in being decently,\nsoundly, and respectfully selfish--is his employer.\n\nNo employer can expect to get the best work out of a man except by\nworking down through to the inner organic desire in the man as a man,\nexcept by waking his selfishness up and by making it a larger, fuller,\nnobler, weightier selfishness, and turning the full weight of it every\nminute, every hour, on his daily work.\n\nThe best language an employer can find to express this desire at first\nto his workmen, is some form of faithful, honest copartnership.\n\n5. The ordinary wage labourer has little imagination about other people\nbecause he is not allowed any about himself. The moment he is, and the\nmoment his employer arranges his work so that he sees every minute all\nday that the work which he does for the firm 30 per cent. better counts.\n30 per cent. more on his own main purpose in life, his imagination is\ntouched about himself and he begins to work like a human being. When a\nman has been allowed to work awhile as a human being he will begin to be\nhuman with a wider range. Being a partner touches the imagination and\nwakes the man's humanness up. He not only works better, but he loves his\nfamily better when he sees he can do something for them. He serves his\ntown better and his lodge better when he sees he can do something for\nthem.\n\n6. Being a partner wakes the man's imagination toward those who work\nwith him, and toward the public and the markets and the goods and the\ncities where the goods go. He reads newspapers with a new eye. He\nbecomes interested in people who buy the goods, and in people who do\nnot. Why do they not? He gropes toward a general interest in human\nnature, and begins to live.\n\n7. A man who is being paid wages one night in a week, has his\nimagination touched about his work one night in the week. He is merely\nbeing a wage-earner. In being a partner he is being paid, and feels his\npay coming in, every thirty seconds, in the better way he moves his\nhands or does not move his hands. This makes him a man.\n\n8. And, finally, as he knows he is being paid, and that he always will\nbe paid, what he earns, he stops thinking of the sick, tired side of his\nwork--the pay he gets out of it, and begins to love the work itself, and\nbegins to be perfect in it for its own sake. This makes him a gentleman.\n\n9. Being a partner makes a man actively and keenly reasonable and\npractical, not only about his own labour, but about the superior value\nof other people with whom he works. He wants the best people in the best\nplaces. He begins to have a practical partner's imagination about the\nmen who are over him, and about their knowing more than he does. If he\nis merely paid wages, he is superstitious, and jealous toward those who\nknow more than he does. If he is paid profits, he is glad that they do,\nand strikes in and helps.\n\n10. Another complete range of motives is soon offered to the employee\nwho is a partner. He feels the joy of being a part of a big, splendid\nwhole, a disinterested delight and pride in others. He grows young with\nit, like a boy in school.\n\nHere is the factory over him, around him--his own vast hockey team--and\nover that is the nation, and over that is the world!\n\nAn employer can touch the imagination of most men, of the rank and file\nof the people, ninety-nine times where other people can touch it once.\nAnd every time he touches it, he touches it to the point.\n\nIf men in general do not believe to-day in religion and do not want it,\nit is because they have employers who have not seen any place in their\nbusiness where they could get their religion in, and have kept the\npeople (in the one place where they could really learn what religion is)\nfrom learning anything about it. The moment the more common employers\nsee what the great ones see now, that business is the one particular\nplace in this world where religion really works, works the hardest, the\nlongest, and the best, works as it had never been dreamed a religion\ncould be made to work before--the day school teachers of the world, put\nthe Golden Rule in the Course everybody will know it.\n\nIt only takes a moment's thought to see what the employers of the world\ncould do with the Golden Rule the moment they take hold of it.\n\nOne has but to consider what they have done with it already.\n\nOne has but to consider the astounding way in the last fifteen years\nthey have made everybody not believe in it.\n\nThe employers of the world have been saying ten hours a day to everybody\nthat the Golden Rule is a foolish, pleasant, inefficient, worsted motto\non a parlour wall.\n\nEverybody has believed it.\n\nAnd now that the big employers are setting the pace and are saying\nexactly the opposite thing about the Golden Rule, now that all the\nemployers are trying to get their employees to be efficient (to do by\ntheir employers as they would be done by), and now that they are trying\nto be efficient themselves (are trying to do to their employees as they\nwould have their employees do to them), the Golden Rule is touching the\nimagination of crowds, and the crowd is seeing that the Golden Rule\nworks. They watch it working every day in the things they know about.\nThen they believe in it for other things.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XII\n\nTHE NECKS OF THE WICKED\n\n\nA letter lies before me, one out of many others asking me how the author\nof \"The Shadow Christ,\" which is a study of the religious values in\nsuffering and self-sacrifice in this world, takes the low ground that\nhonesty is the best policy.\n\nI know two kinds of men who believe that honesty is the best policy.\n\nThese two men use exactly the same words \"Honesty is the best policy.\"\n\nOne man says it.\n\nThe other man sings it.\n\nOne man is honest because it pays.\n\nThe other man is honest because he likes it.\n\n\"Honesty is the best policy\" as a motive cannot be called religious, but\n\"Honesty is the best policy\" as a Te Deum, as something a man sings in\nhis heart every day about God, something he sings about human nature is\nreligious, and believing it the way some men believe it, is an act of\nworship.\n\nIt is like a great gentle mass.\n\nIt is like taking softly up one's own planet and offering it to God.\n\nHere it is--the planet. Honesty is organized in the rocks on it and in\nthe oak trees on it and in the people. The rivers flow to the sea and\nthe heart of Man flows to God. On this one planet, at least, God is a\nsuccess.\n\nPossibly it is because many other people beside myself have been slow in\nclearly making this distinction between \"Honesty is the best policy\" as\na motive or a Te Deum, that I have come upon so many religious men and\nwomen in the last two or three years, who, in the finest spirit, have\nseemed to me to be doing all that they could to discourage everybody\nespecially to discourage me, about the Golden Rule.\n\nThe first objection which they put forward to the Golden Rule is that it\nis a failure.\n\nWhen I try to deal with this or try to tell them about Non-Gregarious,\nthe second objection that they put forward is, that it is a success.\n\nIf they cannot discourage me with one of these objections they try to\ndiscourage me with the other.\n\nThey point to the Cross.\n\nSome days I cannot help wondering what Christ would think if He were to\ncome back and find people, all these good Christian people everywhere\nusing the Cross--the Cross of all things in the world as an objection to\nthe Golden Rule and to its working properly, or as a general argument\nagainst expecting anything of anybody.\n\nI do not know that I have any philosophy about it that would be of any\nvalue to others.\n\nI only know that I am angry all through when I hear a certain sort of\nman saying, and apparently proving, that the Golden Rule does not work.\n\nAnd I am angry at other people who are listening with me because they\nare not angry too.\n\nWhy are people so complacent about crosses? And why are they willing to\nkeep on having and expecting to have in this world all the good people\non crosses? Why do they keep on treating these crosses year after year,\ncentury after century, in a dull tired way as if they had become a kind\nof conventionality of God's, a kind of good old church custom, something\nthat He and the Church by this time, after two thousand years, could not\nreally expect to try to get over or improve upon?\n\nI do not know that I ought to feel as I do.\n\nI only know that the moment I see evil triumphing in this world, there\nis one thing that that evil comes up against.\n\nIt comes up against my will.\n\nMy will, so far as it goes, is a spiritual fact.\n\nI do not argue about it, nor do I know that I wish to justify it. I\nmerely accept my will as it is, as one spiritual fact.\n\nI propose to know what to do with it next.\n\nThe first thing that I have done, of course, has been to find out that\nthere are millions of other so-called Christian people who have\nencountered this same fact that I have encountered.\n\nThere are at least some of us who stand together. Our wills are set\nagainst having any more people die on crosses in this world than can be\nhelped. If there is any kind of skill, craftmanship, technique,\npsychology, knowledge of human nature which can be brought to bear,\nwhich will keep the best people in this world not only from being, but\nfrom belonging on crosses in it, we propose to bring these things to\nbear. We are not willing to believe that crowds are not inclined to\nGoodness. We are not willing to slump down on any general slovenly\nassumption about the world that goodness cannot be made to work in it.\n\nIf goodness is not efficient in this world we will make it efficient.\n\nOur reason for saying this is that we honestly glory in this world. We\nbelieve that at this moment while we are still on it, it is in the act\nof being a great world, that it is God's world, and in God's Name we\nwill defend its reputation.\n\nWe do not deny that it may be better spiritual etiquette, more heroic\nlooking and may have a certain moral grace, so far as a man himself is\nconcerned, if the world makes him suffer for being honest. But after all\nhe is only one man, and whether he dislikes his suffering or likes it\nand feels fine and spiritual over it, it is only one man's suffering.\n\nBut why is it that when the world makes a man suffer, everybody should\nseem always to be thinking of the man? Why does not anybody think of the\nworld?\n\nIs not the fact that a whole world, eternal and innumerable, is supposed\nto be such a mean, dishonest sort of a world that it will make a man\nsuffer for being good a more important fact than the man's suffering is?\nIt seems to me to be taking not lower but higher ground when one insists\non believing in the race one belongs to and in believing that it is a\nhuman race that can be believed in. After two thousand years of Christ,\nit is a lazy, tired, anaemic slander on the world to believe that it does\nnot pay to be good in it. The man who believes it, and acts as if he\nbelieved it, is to-day and has been from the beginning of time the\nsupreme enemy of us all. He is guilty before heaven and before us all\nand in all nations of high treason to the human race. One of the next\nmost important things to do in modern religion is going to be to get all\nthese morally dressed-up, noble-looking people who enjoy feeling how\ngood they are because they have failed, to examine their hearts, stop\nenjoying themselves and think.\n\nFor hundreds of years we have religiously run after martyrs and we have\nlearned in a way, most of us, to have a kind of cooped-up patriotism for\nour own nation, but why are there not more people who are patriotic\ntoward the whole human race? One has been used to seeing it now for\ncenturies, good people all over the world hanging their harps on willow\ntrees, or snuggling down together by the cold sluggish stream of their\nlives, and gossiping about how the world has abused them, when they\nwould be far better occupied, nine out of ten of them--in doing\nsomething that would make it stop. There was a poet and soldier some\nthousands of years ago who put more real religion (and put it too, into\nhis imprecatory psalms), than has been put, I believe, into all the\nsweet whinings and the spiritual droopings of the world in three\nthousand years. I do not deny that I would quarrel, as a matter of form,\nwith the lack of urbanity, with a certain ill-nature in the imprecatory\nPsalms; but with the spirit in them, with the motive and mighty desire,\nwith the necessity in the man's heart that was poured into them, I have\nthe profoundest sympathy.\n\nDavid had a manly, downright belief. His belief was that if sin is\nallowed to get to the top in this world of ours, it is our fault. David\nfelt that it was partly his--and being a king--very much his, and as he\nwas trying to do something about it, he naturally wanted the world to\nhelp.\n\nWhat he really meant--what lay in the background of his petition--the\nreal spirit that made him speak out in that naive bold way before the\nLord, and before everybody--that made him ask the great God in heaven\nall looking so white and so indifferent, to come right down please and\njump on the necks of the wicked, was a vivid, live vision of his own for\nhis own use that he was going to make the world more decent. He was\nspirited about it. If God did not, He would, and naturally when he came\nto expressing how he felt in prayer, he wanted God to stand by him. To\nput it in good plain soldier-like Hebrew, He wanted God to jump on the\nnecks of his enemies.\n\nSpeaking strictly for ourselves, in our more modern spirit of course, we\nwould want to modulate this, we admit that we would not ask God to do a\nlittle thing like jumping on the necks of the wicked--just for us--nor\nwould we care to break away from the other things we are doing and\nattend to it ourselves, nor would we even favour their necks being\njumped on by others, but while we do not agree with David's particular\nrequest, we do profoundly agree with the way he felt when he made it. We\nwould not make our flank movement on the wicked in quite the same way\nand according to our more modern and more scientific manner of thought,\nwe would want to do something more practical with the wicked, but we\nwould want to do something with them and we would want to do it now.\n\nAs we look at it, it ought not to be necessary to jump on the necks of\nthe wicked to make them good, that is, to make them understand what they\nwould wish they had done in twenty years. We live in a more reasoning\nand precise age and what more particularly concerns us in the wicked is\nnot their necks, but their heads and their hearts. It seems to us that\nthey are not using them very much and that the moment they do and we can\nget them to, they will be good. Possibly it was a mere matter of\nlanguage, a concession to the then state of the language--David's\nwanting their necks to be jumped on so that he could get their attention\nat first and make them stop and think and understand. More subtle ways\nof expressing things to the wicked have been thought of to-day than of\njumping on their necks, but the principle David had in mind has not\nchanged, the principle of being loyal to the human race, the principle\nof standing up for people and insisting that they were really meant to\nbe better than they were or than they thought they could be--a kind of\nholy patriotism David had for this world. The main fact about David\nseems to be that he believed he belonged to a great human race.\nIncidentally he believed he belonged to a human race that was really\nquite bright, bright enough at least to make people sorry for doing\nwrong in it--a human race that was getting so shrewd and so just and so\nhonest that it took stupider and stupider people every year to be\nwicked, and when he found, judging from recent events in Judea, that\nthis for the time being was not so, he had a hateful feeling about it,\nwhich it seems to some of us, vastly improved him and would improve many\nof us. We do not claim that the imprecatory Psalms were David's best,\nbut they must have helped him immensely in writing the other ones.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nWe may be wrong. But it has come to be an important religious duty to\nsome of us, or rather religious joy, to hate the prosperity of the\nwicked. We hate the prosperity of the wicked, not because it is their\nprosperity and not ours, but because their prosperity constitutes a\nsneer or slander on the world. We have no idea of wanting to go about\nfaithfully jumping upon the necks of the wicked. What we want is to feel\nthat we are in a world where the good people are happy and are making\ngoodness reasonable, successful, profitable and practical in it. We want\nan earth with crowds on it who see things as they are, and who guess so\nwell on what they want (_i.e._, who are good) that other people who do\nnot know what they want and are not good, will be lonesome.\n\nWe have made up our minds to live in a world not where the wicked will\nfeel that their necks are going to be jumped on (which is really a\nrather interesting and prominent feeling on the whole), but a world\nwhere the wicked will be made to feel that nobody notices their necks,\nthat they are not worth being jumped on, a world where nobody will have\ntime to go out back and jump on them, a world where the wicked will not\nbe able to think of anything important to do, and where the wicked\nthings that are left to do will be so small and so stupid that nobody\nwill notice. They will be ignored like boys with catcalls in the street.\nWhen we can make people who do wrong feel unimportant enough, there is\ngoing to be some chance for the good.\n\nIf we could find some sweet, proper, gentle, Christian-looking way of\nconveying to these people for a few swift, keen minutes how little\ndifference it makes when they and people like them do wrong, they would\nsteal over in a body and do right.\n\nThis is our program. We are making preliminary arrangements for a world\nin which after this, very soon now, righteousness is going to attend\nstrictly to its own business and unrighteousness is going to be crowded\nout. No one will feel that he has time in two or three hundred years\nfrom now to go out of his way into some obscure corner of the world and\njump on the necks of the wicked.\n\nBut this is a matter of form. The main fundamental manful instinct David\nhad--the idea that there should not be any more people dying on crosses\nthan could be helped--that collective society should take hold of Evil\nand set it down hard in its chair and make it cry seems to many of us\nabsolutely sound. Of course, we feel that it is not for us, those who\nlove righteousness, to jump on the necks of the wicked. We prefer to\nhave it attended to in a more dignified, impersonal way by Society as a\nwhole. So we believe that Society should proceed to making goodness and\nhonesty pay. If Society will not do it _we_ will do it. The world may be\nagainst us at first but we will at least clear off a small place on\nit--in our own business for instance--where our goodness can command the\nmost shrewdness and the most technique--and we will do what we can\nslowly--one industry at a time, to remove the slander on goodness that\ngoodness is not inefficient, and the slander on the world that goodness\ncannot be self-supporting, self-respecting (and without disgrace), even\ncomfortable in it.\n\nThe old hymn with which many of us are familiar is well and true enough.\nBut it does not seem that standing up for Jesus is the most important\npoint in the world just now. A great many people are doing it. What we\nneed more is people who will stand up for the world. When people who are\nstanding up for the world stand and sing \"Stand up for Jesus\" it will\nbegin to count. Let four hundred Nons sing it; and we will all go to\nchurch.\n\nIf nine of the people out of ten who are singing \"Stand up for Jesus\"\nwould stand up for the world, that is, if they would stop trading with\ntheir grocer when they find he slides in regularly one bad orange out of\ntwelve and promptly look up a grocer who does not do such things, and\ntrade with him, it would not be necessary for people to do as they so\noften do nowadays, fall back on a little wistful half discouraged last\nresort like \"standing up for Jesus.\"\n\nStanding up for the world means standing by men who believe in it,\nstanding by men who make everything they do in business a declaration of\ntheir faith in God and their faith in the credit of human nature, men\nwho put up money daily in their advertising, their buying and selling,\non the loyalty, common sense, brains, courage, goodness, and righteous\nindignation of the people.\n\nThe idea that goodness is sweet and helpless and that Jesus was meek and\nlowly and has to be stood up for is now and always has been a slander.\nIt does not seem to some of us that He would want to be stood up for and\nwe do not like the way some people call Him meek and lowly. It would be\nmore true to say that He merely looks meek and lowly; that is, if most\nmen had done or not done or had said or not said things in the way he\ndid, they would have been considered meek and lowly for it. He had a way\nof using a soft answer to turn away wrath. But there was not anything\nreally meek and lowly about his giving the soft answer. No meek and\nlowly man would ever have thought of such a thing as turning away wrath\nwith a soft answer. He would have been afraid of looking weak. He would\nnot have had the energy or the honesty or the spiritual address to know\nor to think of a soft answer that would do it.\n\nThe spirit of fighting evil with good--a kind of glorious self-will for\ngoodness, for doing a thing the higher and nobler way and making it\nwork, the spirit of successful implacably efficient righteousness is the\nlast and most modern interpretation of the New Testament, the crowd's\nlatest cry to its God. Crowds will always crucify and crosses will never\ngo by. But we are going to have a higher ideal for crosses. We are not\ngoing (out of sheer shame for the world), to think seriously any longer\nof dying on a cross, or letting any one else die on one for a little\nrudimentary platitude, a quiet, sensible, everyday business motto for\nany competent business man like \"Do unto others as you would have them\ndo unto you.\"\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XIII\n\nIS IT WRONG FOR GOOD PEOPLE TO BE SUCCESSFUL?\n\n\nWe are having and are about to have notably and truly successful men who\nhave the humility and faithfulness, the spiritual distinction of true\nand great success.\n\nI want to interpret, if I can, these men. I would like to put with the\ngreat martyrs, with the immortal heroes of failure, these modern silent,\nunspoken, unsung mighty men, the heroes of success. I look forward to\nseeing them placed among the trophies of religion, in the heart of\nmankind at last.\n\nI cannot stand by and watch these men being looked upon by good people\nas men the New Testament made no room for, secretly disapproved of by\nreligious men and women, as being successes, as being little, noisy,\ndisturbing, contradictions of the New Testament as talking back to the\nCross.\n\nThese things I have been trying to say about the Cross as a means of\nexpressing goodness to crowds have brought me as time goes on into close\nquarters with many men to whom I pay grateful tribute, men of high\nspirit, who strenuously disagree with me.\n\nI am not content unless I can find common ground with men like these.\n\nThey are wont to tell me when we argue about it that whatever I may be\nable to say for success as a means of touching the imaginations of\ncrowds with goodness, great or attractive or enthralling characters are\nnot produced by success. Success does not produce great characters. It\nis now and always has been failure that develops the characters of the\nmen who a truly great.\n\nPerhaps failure is not the only way.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nWhen I was talking with ---- a little while ago about Non-Gregarious's\ngoodness and how it succeeded, he was afraid that if his goodness\nsucceeded there must have been something the matter with it.\n\nI could see that he was wondering what it was.\n\nNon's success troubled him. He did not think it was exactly religious.\n\"Real religion\" he said, \"was self-sacrifice. There always had to be\nsomething of the Cross about real religion.\"\n\nI said that Non's religion was touched at every point with the Cross.\n\nIt seemed to me that it was the spirit of eagerness in it that was the\ngreat thing about the Cross. If Non would all but have died to make the\nGolden Rule work in this world, if he daily faced ruin and risked the\nloss of everything he had in this life to prove that the Golden Rule was\na success, that is if he really had a Cross and if he really faced\nit--dying on it, or not dying on it, could not have made him one whit\nmore religious or less religious than he was. What Non was willing to\ndie for, was his belief in the world, and scores of good Christian\npeople tried in those early days of his business struggle to keep him\nfrom believing in the world. There was hardly a day at first but some\ngood Christian would step into Non's office and tell him the world would\nmake him suffer for it if he kept on recklessly believing in it and\ndoing all those unexpected, unconventional, honest things that somehow,\napparently, he could not help doing.\n\nThey all told him he could not succeed. They said he was a failure. He\nwould suffer for it.\n\nI would like to express if I can, what seems to be Non's point of view\ntoward success and failure.\n\nIf Non were trying to express his idea of the suffering of Christ, I\nimagine he would say that in the hardest time of all when his body was\nhanging on the Cross, the thing that was really troubling Christ was not\nthat he was being killed. The thing that was troubling him was that the\nworld really seemed, at least for the time being, the sort of world that\ncould do such things. He did not take his own cross too personally or\ntoo literally as the world's permanent or fixed attitude toward goodness\nor every degree of goodness. There was a sense in which he did not\nbelieve except temporarily in his own cross. He did not think that the\nworld meant it or that it would ever own up that it meant it.\n\nProbably if we had crosses to-day the hard part of dying on one would\nbe, not dying on it, but thinking while one was dying on it that one was\nin the sort of world that could do such things.\n\nIt is Non's religion not to believe every morning as he goes down to his\noffice that he is in a mean world, a world that would want to crucify\nhim for doing his work as well as he could.\n\nPerhaps this was the spirit of the first Cross, too. We have every\nreason to believe that if Christ could have come back in the flesh three\ndays after the crucifixion and lived thirty-three years longer in it, he\nwould have occupied himself exclusively in standing up for the world\nthat had crucified him, in saying that it was a small party in a small\nprovince that did it, that it was temporary and that they did it because\nthey were in a hurry.\n\nIt was not Christ, but the comparatively faint-believing, worldly minded\nsaints that have enjoyed dying on crosses since, who have been proud of\nbeing martyrs.\n\nAmong those who have tried the martyr way of doing things Jesus is\nalmost the only one who has not in his heart abused the world. Most\nmartyrs have made a kind of religion out of not expecting anything of it\nand of trying to get out of it. \"And ye, all ye people, are ye suitable\nor possible people for me to be religious with?\" the typical martyr\nexclaims to all the cities, to all the inventors, to the scientists and\nto the earth-redeemers, to his neighbours and his fellow men. It was\nnot until science in the person of Galileo came to the rescue of\nChristianity and began slowly to bring it back to where Christ started\nit--as a noble, happy enterprise of standing up for this world and of\nasserting that these men who were in it are good enough to be religious\nhere and to be the sons of God now--that Christianity began to function.\nReligion has been making apparently a side trip for nearly twelve\nhundred years, a side trip into space or into the air or into the grave\nfor holiness for the eternal, and for the infinite.\n\nDoubtless very often people on crosses really have been holier than the\npeople who knew how to be good without being crucified. Sometimes it has\nbeen the other way. It would have been just as holy in Non to make the\ngospel work in New York as to make a blaze, a show or advertisement of\nhow wicked the world was, and of how inefficient the gospel was--by\ngoing into insolvency.\n\nHe has had his cross, but instead of dying on it, he has taken it up and\ncarried it. Scores of risks and difficulties that he has grappled with\nwould have become crosses at once if equally good, but less resourceful\nmen, had had them. Letting one's self be threatened with the cross a\nthousand times is quite as brave as dying on one once. The spirit, or at\nleast the shadow, of a cross must always fall daily on any life that is\nstretching the world, that is freeing the lives of other men against\ntheir wills. The whole issue of whether there will be a cross or the\nthreat of a cross turns on a man's insight into human nature and his\nquiet and practical imagination concentrated upon his work.\n\nNot dying on a cross is a matter of technique. One sees how not to, and\none does not. It might be said that the world has two kinds of\nredeemers, its cross-redeemers and its success-redeemers. The very best\nare on crosses, many of them. Perhaps in the development of the truth\nthe cross-redeemers come first; they are the pioneers. Then come the\nsuccess-redeemers, then everybody!\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XIV\n\nIS IT SECOND RATE FOR GOOD PEOPLE TO BE SUCCESSFUL?\n\n\nOf course the most stupendous success that has ever been made--the\nworld's most successful undertaking from a technical point of view as an\nadaptation of means to ends was the attempt that was made by a man in\nGalilee years and years ago to get not only the attention of a whole\nworld, but to get the attention of a whole world for two thousand years.\n\nThis purpose of arresting the attention of a world and of holding it for\ntwo thousand years was accomplished by the use of success and of failure\nalternately.\n\nChrist tried success or failure according to which method (time and\nplace considered) would seem to work best.\n\nHis first success was with the doctors.\n\nHis next success was based on His instinct for psychology, His power of\ndivining people's minds, which made possible to Him those extraordinary\nfeats in the way of telling short stories that would arrest and hold the\nattention of crowds so that they would think and live with them for\nweeks to come.\n\nHis next success was a success based on the power of His personality,\nand His knowledge of the human spirit and his victory over His own\nspirit--his success in curing people's diseases and His extraordinary\nroll of miracles.\n\nHe finally tried failure at the end, or what looked like failure,\nbecause the Cross completed what he had had to say.\n\nIt made His success seem greater.\n\nThe world had put to death the man who had had such great successes.\n\nPeople thought of His successes when they thought of Him on the Cross,\nand they have kept thinking of them for thousands of years.\n\nBut the Cross itself, or the use of failure was a sowing of the seed, a\ntaking the truth out of the light and the sunshine and putting it in the\ndark ground.\n\nThe Cross was promptly contradicted with the Resurrection. All this, it\nseems to some of us, is the most stupendous and successful undertaking\nfrom a purely technical point of view that the world has seen. In the\nlast analysis it was not His ideas or His character merely, but it was\nHis technique that made Christ the Son of God and the Master of the\nNations of the Earth.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nI think that while Christ would not have understood Frederick Taylor's\ntechnique, his tables of figures or foot-tons or logarithms he would\nhave understood Frederick Taylor.\n\nNearly all the time that could be said to have been spent in his life in\ndealing with other men he spent in doing for them on a nobler scale the\nthing that Frederick Taylor did. He went up to men--to hundreds of men a\nday, that he saw humdrumming along, despising themselves and despising\ntheir work and expecting nothing of themselves and nothing of any one\nelse and asked them to put their lives in his hands and let him show\nwhat could be done with them.\n\nThis is Frederick Taylor's profession.\n\nThe Sermon on the Mount began with telling people that they would be\nsuccessful if they knew how--if they had a vision. It proceeded to give\nthem the vision. It began with giving them a vision for the things that\nthey had, told them how even the very things that they had always\nthought before were what was the matter with the world they could make a\ngreat use of. \"Blessed are the peacemakers. Blessed are those that\nhunger; blessed are the meek.\"\n\nAnd He then went on to tell them how much finer, and nobler and more\nfree from the cares and weights of this earth they could be if they\nwanted to be, than they had dared to believe. He told the people who\nwere around Him bigger things about human nature, how successful it was\nor could be than any one had ever claimed for people in this world\nbefore. They put Him up on a Cross at last and crucified Him because\nthey thought He was too hopeful about them, and about human nature or\nbecause, as they would have put it, He was blasphemous and said every\nman was a Son of God.\n\nAs human nature then was and in the then spirit of the world, no better\nmeans than a Cross could have been employed to get the attention of all\nmen, to make a two thousand year advertisement for all nations of what a\nsuccess human nature was, of what men really could be like.\n\nBut I think that if Christ were to come to us again and if he were to\ntry to get the attention of the whole world once more to precisely the\nsame ideas and principles that he stood for before, the enterprise would\nbe conducted in a very different manner.\n\nThere is a picture of Albert Durer's which hangs near my desk, and once\nmore as I write these lines my eyes have fallen on it. It is the\nfamiliar one with the lion and the lamb in it, lying down together, and\nwith the big room with the implements of knowledge scattered about in it\nand at the other end in the window at the table with a book, an old,\nbent-over scientist with a halo over his head.\n\nIf Christ were to appear suddenly in this modern world to-morrow, the\nfirst thing He would see and would go toward, would be the halo over the\nscientist's head.\n\nThere is nothing especially picturesque or religious looking, nothing,\nat least, that could be put in a stained-glass window in Frederick\nTaylor's tables and charts and diagrams of the number of foot-tons a\npig-iron handler can lift with his arms in a day.\n\nBut if Christ returned to the world to-morrow and if what He wanted to\ndo to-morrow was to get the universal, profound, convinced attention of\nall men to the Golden Rule, I believe He would begin the way Frederick\nTaylor did, by--being concrete. If He wanted to get men in general, men\nin business, to love one another He would begin by trying to work out\nsome technical, practical way in which certain particular men in a\ncertain particular place could afford to love one another.\n\nHe would find a practical way for instance for the employers and\npig-iron handlers in the Midvale Steel Works to come to some sort of\ncommon understanding and to work cheerfully and with a free spirit\ntogether. I think he would proceed very much in the way that Frederick\nTaylor did.\n\nHe would not say much about the Golden Rule. He would give each man a\nvision for his work, and of the way it lapped over into other men's work\nand leave the Golden Rule a chance to take care of itself. This is all\nthe Golden Rule, as a truth or as a remark needs just now.\n\nFor two thousand years men have devoted themselves Sunday day after\nSunday to saying over and over again that men should love one another.\nThe idea is a perfectly familiar one. When Christ said it two thousand\nyears ago, it was so original and so sensational that just of itself and\nas a mere remark it had a carrying power over the whole earth.\n\nEverybody believes it now--that it is a true remark--but like a score of\nother remarks that have been made and some of the noblest Christ made,\nis it not possible that it has long since in its mere capacity of being\na remark, gone by? There is no one who has not heard about our loving\none another. The remark we want now is how we can do it. This is the\nremark that Mr. Frederick Taylor has made. It is not very eloquent. It\nis a mere statement of fact. It has taken him nearly thirty-three years\nto make it.\n\nThe gist of it is that for thirty-three years, the employers and the\npig-iron handlers in the Midvale Steel Works, Pennsylvania, have been\ndevoted to one another and to one another's interests and acting all day\nevery day as if of course their interests were the same, and it has been\nfound that employees when their employers cooeperated with them could\nlift forty-seven tons instead of twelve and a half a day, and were\ngetting 60 per cent. more wages.\n\nEverybody listens. Everybody sees at a glance that when it comes to\nmaking remarks about doing as one would be done by, this is the one\nremark that we have all been waiting to hear some one make for two\nthousand years.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe Cross or the last-resort type of religion was as far as St.\nAugustine or St. Francis in their world could get. It was all that the\nMiddle Ages were ready for or that could be claimed for people who had\nto live in ages without a printing press, in which no one in the crowd\ncould expect to know anything and in which there were no ways of letting\ncrowds know things.\n\nTo-day there is no reason why the Cross as a contrivance for attracting\nthe attention of all people to goodness should be exclusively relied\nupon.\n\nPossibly the Cross was intended, at the time, as the best possible way\nof starting a religion, when there was none, or possibly for keeping it\nup when there was very little of it.\n\nBut now that Christianity has been occupied two thousand years in\nputting in the groundwork, in laying down the principles of success, and\nin organizing them into the world, has been slowly making it possible\nwith crowds that could not be long deceived for success to be decent.\nThe leaven has worked into human nature and Christianity has produced\nThe Successful Temperament.\n\nSuccess has become a spiritual institution. In other words, the hour of\nthe Scientist, of the man with a technique, of the man who sees how, the\nman of The Successful Temperament is at hand.\n\nEverything we plan for the world, including goodness, from this\nday--must reckon with him--with the Man Who Sees How.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XV\n\nTHE SUCCESSFUL TEMPERAMENT\n\n\nI also, Gentle Reader, have despised and do despise \"success.\"\n\nI also have stood, like you, perhaps, and I am standing now in that\nancient, outer court, where I can keep seeing every day The Little Great\nMen with all their funny trappings on,--their hoods, and their ribbons,\nand their train-bearers, drive up before us all and go in to The Great\nDoor. I have gone by in the night and have heard the buzz of their\nvoices there. I have looked, like you, up at the great lighted windows\nof Prosperity from the street.\n\nAnd in the broad daylight I have seen them too. I have stood on the curb\nin the public way with all the others and watched silently the parade of\nThe Little Great go by.\n\nI have waited like you, Gentle Reader, and smiled or I have turned on my\nheel sadly, or wearily or bitterly or gayly and walked away down my own\nside street of the world and with the huzzahs of the crowd echoing\nfaintly in my ears have gone my way.\n\nBut I keep coming back to the curb again.\n\nI keep coming back because, every now and then among all the gilt\ncarriages and the bowing faces in them, or among all the big yellow vans\nor cages with the great beasts of success in them, the literary foxes,\nthe journalist-juggernauts, the Jack Johnsons of finance, the contented,\ngurgling, wallowing millionaires--I cannot help standing once more and\nlooking among them, for one, or for possibly two, or three or four who\nmay be truly successful men. Some of them are merely successful-looking.\nI often find as I see them more closely, that they are undeceived, or\nhumble, or are at least not being any more successful-looking than\nthey can help, and are trying to do better.\n\nThey are the men who have defied success to succeed and who will defy it\nagain and again.\n\nThey are the great men.\n\nThe great man is the man who can get himself made and who will get\nhimself made out of anything he finds at hand.\n\nIf success cannot do it, he makes failure do it. If he cannot make\nsuccess express the greatness or the vision that is in him, he makes\nfailure express it.\n\nBut this book is not about great men and goodness. It is about touching\nthe imagination of crowds with goodness, about making goodness\ndemocratic and making goodness available for common people.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nA stupendous success in goodness will advertise it as well as a\nstupendous failure.\n\nGoodness has had its cross-redeemers to attract the attention of half a\nworld.\n\nPossibly it is having now its success-redeemers to attract the attention\nof the other half.\n\nThe people the success-redeemers reach would turn out to be, possibly,\nvery much more than half.\n\nThe Cross, as a means of getting the attention of crowds, or of the more\ncommon people in our modern, practical-minded Western world, was\napparently adapted to its purpose as long as it was used for church\npurposes or as long as it was kept dramatic or sensational or remote, or\nas long as it was a cross for some one else, but as a means of\nattracting the attention of crowds of ordinary men and women to goodness\nin common everyday things, it is very doubtful if failure--in the power\nof steady daily pulling on men's minds, has done as much for goodness as\nsuccess.\n\nIt is doubtful if, except as an ideal or conventional symbol the cross\nhas ever been or ever could be what might be called a spiritually\nmiddle-class institution. It has been reserved for men of genius,\npioneers and world-designers to have those colossal and glorious crosses\nthat have been worshipped in all ages, and must be worshipped in all\nages as the great memorials of the human race.\n\nBut the more common and numerous types of men, the men who do not design\nworlds, but who execute them, build them, who carry the new designs of\ngoodness out, who work through the details and conceive the technique of\ngoodness are men in whom the spiritual and religious power takes the\nnatural form of success.\n\nIt seems to be the nature of the modern and the western type of man to\nchallenge fatalism, to defy a cross. He would almost boast that nobody\ncould make him die on it. This spirit in men too is a religious spirit.\nIt is the next hail of goodness. Goodness posts up its next huge notice\non the world:\n\n    [SUCCESS]\n\nIt is going to make the more rudimentary everyday people notice it, and\nit is going to make them notice it in everyday things. It does not admit\nthat goodness is merely for the spiritual aristocrats for those greater\nsouls that can search out and appreciate the spiritual values in\nfailure.\n\nIt believes that goodness is for crowds. It has discovered that crosses,\nto common people in common things, seem oriental and mystical. The\ncommon people of the western world instead of being born with dreamy\nimaginations are born with pointed and applied ones. It is not\nimpossible that the comparative failure of the Christian religion in the\nwestern world and in the later generations is that it has been trying to\nbe oriental and aristocratic in appealing to what is really a new type\nof man in the world--the scientific and practical type as we see it in\nthe western nations all about us to-day.\n\nWe can die on crosses in our Western world as well as any one and we can\ndo it in crowds too as they do in India, but we propose if crosses are\nexpected of us to know why in crowds. Knowing why makes us think of\nthings and makes us do things. It is the keynote of our temperament.\n\nAnd it is not fair to say of us when we make this distinction that we do\nnot believe in the cross. But there are times when some of us wish that\nwe could get other people to stop believing in it. We would all but die\non the cross to get other people to stop dying on one for platitudes, to\nget them to work their way down to the facts and focus their minds on\nthe practical details of not dying on a cross, of forming a vision of\naction which will work. It goes without saying that as long as crowds\nare in the world crosses will not go by, but it is wicked not to make\nthem go by as fast as possible, one by one. They were meant to be moved\nup higher. We are eager not to die on the same cross for the same thing\nyear after year and century after century. It seems to us that the\neagerness that always goes with the cross always was and always will be\nthe essential, powerful and beautiful thing in it.\n\nAnd it is this new eagerness in the modern spirit, a kind of hurrying up\nof the souls of the world that is inspiring us to employ our western\ngenius in inventing and defending and applying the means of goodness and\nin finding ways of making goodness work. We will not admit that men were\nintended to die on crosses from a sheer, beautiful, heavenly\nshiftlessness, vague-mindedness, mere unwillingness to take pains to\nexpress themselves or unwillingness to think things out and to make\nthings plain to crowds. It does not seem to us that it is wicked to\nemploy success as well as failure, to state our religion to people. It\nseems to us that it goes naturally with the scientific and technical\ntemperament of the people that we should do this. It is not superior and\nit is not inferior. It is temperamental and it is based upon the study\nof the psychology of attention, on a knowledge of what impresses a\ncertain kind of man and of what really is conclusive with crowds and\nwith average men and women. It is the distinctive point of view of the\npragmatic temperament, of the inductive mind. The modern mind is\ninterested in facts and cannot make a religion out of not knowing them.\nThere was a time once when people used to take their bodily diseases as\nacts of God. We have made up our minds not to have these same bodily\ndiseases now. We have discovered by hard work and constant study that\nthey are not necessary. The same is true of our moral diseases and of\nour great social maladies.\n\nIt is going to be the same with crosses. It is a sin and a slander and\naffront to human nature and to God to die on a cross if it can be helped\nby hard work and close thinking, or by touching the imaginations of\nothers.\n\nMost of us acting in most things are not good enough to die on crosses.\nWe are not worthy, it would not be humble in us to. Crosses are only\nreserved for the newest and most rare truths, and for the newest and\nmost rare men. They are still, and they still can be made to be, a means\nof grace and of perfection to people who have gifts of learning things\nby suffering, but as a means of making other people and people in crowds\nsee things, the right to use a cross is not for those of us who are\nmerely lumbering spiritually along, trying to catch up to a plain,\nsimple-hearted old platitude, eighteen hundred years late like the\nGolden Rule. The right to a cross is reserved for those who are up on\nthe higher reaches, those great bleak stretches or moors of truth where\nmen go forth and walk alone with God hundreds of years ahead.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XVI\n\nTHE MEN AHEAD PULL\n\n\nWriting a hopeful book about the human race with the New York _Sun_,\nWall Street, Downing Street and Bernard Shaw looking on is uphill work.\n\nSometimes I wish there were another human race I could refer to when I\nam writing about this one, one every one knows. The one on Mars, for\ninstance, if one could calmly point to it in the middle of an argument,\nshut people off with a wave of one's hand and say, \"Mars this\" and \"Mars\nthat\" would be convenient.\n\nThe trouble with the human race is that when one is talking to it about\nitself, it thinks it is It.\n\nIt is not It yet.\n\nThe earth and everything on it is a huge Acorn, tumbling softly through\nthe sky.\n\nOur boasted Christianity (crosses, and resurrections and cathedrals and\nall) is a Child crying in the night.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIt is not necessary for me to prove to the satisfaction of the New York\n_Sun_ and Bernard Shaw that the Golden Rule has not reached the superior\nmoral stage of being taken as a platitude by all of our people who are\nengaged in business. It is enough to submit that the most creative and\nforceful business men--the men who set the pace, the foremen of the\nworld, are taking it so, and that others are trying to be as much like\nthem as they can. Wickedness in this world is not going to stop with a\njerk. It is merely being better distributed. Possibly this is all there\nis to the problem, getting sin better distributed. The Devil has never\nhad a very great outfit or any great weight, but he has always known\nwhere to throw it, and he has always done an immense business on a small\ncapital and the only way he has managed to get on at all, is by\norganizing, and by getting the attention of a few people at the top. Now\nthat the moral sense of the world has become quickened, and that rapid\ntransit and newspapers and science and the fact-spirit have gained their\nhold, the sins of the world are being rapidly distributed, not so much\namong the men who determine things as among those who cannot.\n\nEverything is following the fact-spirit. The modern world and everything\nin it, is falling into the hands of the men who cannot be cheated about\nfacts, who get the facts first and who get them right.\n\nThe world cannot help falling, from now on, slowly--a little ponderously\nperhaps at first--into the hands of good men. To say that the world is\nfalling into the hands of men who cannot be cheated and to say that it\nis falling into the hands of good men is to say the same thing.\n\nThe men who get the things that they want, get them by seeing the things\nas they are. Goodness and efficiency both boil down to the same quality\nin the modern man, his faculty for not being a romantic person and for\nnot being cheated.\n\nA good man may be said to be a man who has formed a habit, an intimate\npersonal habit of not being cheated. Everything he does is full of this\nhabit. The sinful man, as he is usually called, is a man who is off in\nhis facts, a man who does not know what he really wants even for\nhimself. In a matter-of-fact civilization like ours, he cannot hope to\nkeep up. If a man can be cheated, even by himself--of course other\npeople can cheat him and everybody can take advantage of him. He\nnaturally grows more incompetent every day he lives. The men who are\nslow or inefficient in finding out what they really want and slow in\ndealing with themselves are necessarily inefficient and behind hand in\ndealing with other people. They cannot be men who determine what other\npeople shall do.\n\nIt is true that for the moment, it still seems--now that science has\nonly just come to the rescue of religion, that evil men in a large\ndegree are the men who still are standing in the gate and determining\nopportunities and letting in and letting out Civilization as they\nplease. But their time is limited.\n\nThe fact-spirit is in the people. We enjoy facts. Facts are the modern\nman's hunting, his adventure and sport. The men who are ahead are\ngetting into a kind of two-and-two-are-four habit that is like music,\nlike rhythm. It becomes almost a passion, almost a self-indulgence in\ntheir lives. Being honest with things, having a distaste for being\ncheated by things, having a distaste for being cheated by one's self and\nfor cheating other people, runs in the blood in modern men. The nations\ncan be seen going round and round the earth and looking one another long\nand earnestly in the eyes. The poet is turning his imagination upon the\nworld about him and upon the fact that really works in it. The\nscientific man has taken hold of religion and righteousness is being\nproved, melted down in the laboratory, welded together before us all and\nriveted on to the every day, on to what really happens, and on to what\nreally works. Goodness in its baser form already pays. Only the biggest\nmen may have found it out, but everybody is watching them. The most\nimportant spiritual service that any man can render the present age is\nto make goodness pay at the top (in the most noticeable place) in some\nbusiness where nobody has made it pay before. Anybody can see that it\nalmost pays already, that it pays now here, now there. At all events,\nanybody can see that it is very noticeable that the part of the world\nthat is most spiritual is not merely the part that is whining or hanging\non crosses. It is also the part that is successful. One knows scores of\nsaints with ruddy cheeks. It is getting to be a matter of principle\nalmost in a modern saint--to have ruddy cheeks.\n\nI submit this fact respectfully to Bernard Shaw, Wall Street, Downing\nStreet and Pennsylvania Avenue, and even to the New York _Sun_, that\nvast machine for laughing at a world down in its snug quarters in Park\nRow--that the saint with ruddy cheeks is a totally new and disconcerting\nfact in our modern life. He is the next fact the honest pessimist will\nhave to face.\n\nI submit that this saint with ruddy cheeks is here, that he is lovable,\nimperturbable, imperious, irrepressible, as interesting as sin, as\ncatching as the Devil and that he has come to stay.\n\nHe stays because he is successful and can afford to stay.\n\nHe is successful because he is good.\n\nOnly religion works.\n\nI am aware that the New York _Sun_ might quarrel with just exactly this\nway of putting it.\n\nI might put it another way or possibly try to say it again after saying\nsomething else first. _Viz._: The man who is successful in business is\nthe man who can get people to do as much as they can do and a great deal\nmore than they think they can do.\n\nOnly a very lively goodness, almost a religion in a man, can do this. He\nhas to have something in him very like the power of inventing people or\nof making people over.\n\nTo be specific: In some big department stores, as one goes down the\naisle, one will see over and over again the clerks making fun of\ncustomers.\n\nOne by one the customers find it out and the more permanent ones, those\nwho would keep coming and who have the best trade, go to other stores.\n\nHow could such a thing be stopped in a department store by a practical\nemployer? Can he stop it successfully by turning on his politeness?\n\nOf course he can make his clerks polite-looking by turning on his\npoliteness. But politeness in a department store does not consist in\nbeing polite-looking. Being polite-looking does not work, does not grip\nthe customer or strike in and do things and make the customer do things.\n\nA machine like a department store, made up of twenty-five hundred human\nbeings, which is carving out its will, its nature, stamping its pattern\non a city, on a million men, or on a nation, cannot be made to work\nwithout religion. If the clerks are making fun of people, only religion\ncan stop it.\n\nPerhaps you have been made fun of yourself, Gentle Reader? You have\nobserved, perhaps, that in making fun of people (making fun of you, for\ninstance), the assumption almost always is, that you are trying to be\nlike the Standard Person, and that this (they look at you pleasantly as\nyou go by) is as near as you can get to it! If an employer wishes to\nmake his clerk an especially valuable clerk, if he wishes to make his\nclerk an expert in human nature or a good salesman, one who sees a\ncustomer when he comes along as he really is, and as he is trying to be,\nhe will only be able to do it by touching something deep down in the\nclerk's nature, something very like his religion--his power of putting\nhimself in the place of others. He can only do it by making a clerk feel\nthat this power in him of doing as he would be done by, and seeing how\nto do it, _i.e._, the religion in him, is what he is hired for.\n\nIt is visionary to try to run a great department store, a great machine\nof twenty-five hundred souls, a machine of human emotions, of five\nthousand eyes and ears, a huge loom of enthusiasm, of love, hate,\ncovetousness, sorrow, disappointment, and joy without having it full of\nclerks who are experts in human nature, putting themselves in the place\nof crowds of other people, clerks who are essentially religious.\n\nSo we watch the men who are ahead driving one another into goodness. The\nman who is not able to create, distribute or turn on, in his business\nestablishment, goodness, social insight, and customer-insight in it, can\nonly hope to-day to keep ahead in business by having competitors as\ninefficient as he is.\n\nThe man who is ahead has discovered himself. Everything the man ahead\nis doing eight hours a day, is seen at last narrowing him down,\ncornering him into goodness.\n\nOf course as long as people looked upon goodness as a Sunday affair, a\nfew hours a week put in on it, we were naturally discouraged about it.\n\nIt is still a little too fresh looking and it may be still a little too\nclever for everybody, but slowly, irrevocably, we see it coming. We can\nlook up almost any day and watch some goodness--now--at least one\nspecimen or so, in every branch of business.\n\nWe watch daily the men who are ahead, pulling on the goodness of the\nworld and the Crowds pushing on it.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XVII\n\nTHE CROWDS PUSH\n\n\nThe men who are ahead make goodness start, but it is the crowds that\nmake it irresistible.\n\nThe final, slow, long, imperious lift on goodness is the one the crowd\ngives. Of course, for the most part, modern business is largely done\nwith crowds. Crowds are doing it and crowds are nearly always watching\nit.\n\nThe factory is slower than the department store in being good because\nthe men in it deal with crowds of things and crowds of wheels and not\nwith crowds of people.\n\nAll responsible people are forced to be good, with crowds around them,\nexpecting it of them.\n\nCrowds at the very least are a kind of vast, insinuating, penetrating,\nomnipresent, permeating police force of righteousness.\n\nIn a department store, the crowds, twelve thousand a day, are like some\nhuge coil of hose or vacuum cleaner, lying about the place, sucking up,\ndrawing out, and demanding goodness from the clerks. Clerks develop\nhuman insight and powers faster in department stores than machinists do\nin factories because they are exposed to more people and to larger\ncrowds. The stream clears itself.\n\nThe last forms of business to yield to the new spirit are to be the\nlonely ones, the ones where light, air, human emotions, and crowds are\nshut out.\n\nThe lonely forms of business will at last be vitalized and socialized by\nmen of organizing genius, who will invent the equivalent of crowds going\nby, who will contrive ways of putting a few responsible persons in\nsight or in a position where they will feel crowds going by their souls,\nlooking into them as if they were shop windows. Crowds can keep track of\na few. The crowds will see that these few are the kind of men who will\nkeep track of all.\n\nCrowds in the end will not accept less than the best. With crowds of\npeople and crowds of places and crowds of times we are good. In all\nthings crowds can see or be made to see we are safe. Progress lies in\nmaking crowds see through people, making crowds go past them. While they\nare going past them, they lure their goodness on.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XVIII\n\nTHE MAN WHO SAYS HOW, SAYS HOW\n\n\nThe people who are worried and discouraged about goodness in this world,\none finds when one studies them a little, are almost always worried in a\nkind of general way. They do not worry about anything in particular.\nTheir religion seems to be a kind of good-hearted, pained vagueness.\n\nThe religion of the people who never worry at all, the thoughtless\noptimists, is quite the same too, except that they have a kind of happy,\nrosy-lighted vagueness instead.\n\nFor about two thousand years now, goodness has been in the hands of\nvague people. Some of them have used their vagueness to cry with softly,\nand some of them have used it to praise God with and to have many fine,\nbrave, general feelings about God.\n\nI have tried faithfully, speaking for one, to be religious with both of\nthese sets of people.\n\nThey make one feel rather lonesome.\n\nIf one goes about and takes a grim happiness, a kind of iron joy in\nseeing how successful a locomotive is, or if one watches a great,\nworshipful ocean liner with delight, or if, down in New York, one looks\nup and sees a new skyscraper going slowly up, unfolding into the sky\nbefore one, lifting up its gigantic, restless, resistless face to God;\nthere comes to seem to be something about churches and about good people\nand about the way they have of acting and thinking about goodness and\ndoing things with goodness, that makes one unhappy.\n\nPerhaps one has just come from it and one's soul is filled with the\nstern, glad singing of a great foundry, of the religious, victorious\npraising spirit of man, dipping up steel in mighty spoonfuls--the stuff\nthe inside of the earth is made of, and flinging it together into a\ngreat network or crust for the planet--into mighty floors or sidewalks\nall round the earth for cities to tread on and there comes to seem\nsomething so successful, so manlike, so godlike about it, about the way\nthese men who do these things do them and do what they set out to do,\nthat when I find myself suddenly, all in a few minutes on a Sunday\nmorning, thrown out of this atmosphere into a Christian church, find\nmyself sitting all still and waiting, with all these good people about\nme, and when I find them offering me their religion so gravely, so\nhopefully, it all comes to me with a great rush sometimes--comes to me\nas out of great deeps of resentment, that religion could possibly be\nmade in a church to seem something so faint, so beautifully weary, so\ndreamy, and as if it were humming softly, absently to itself.\n\nI wonder in the presence of a Christianity like this whether I am a\nChristian or not--the quartet choirs, confections, the little, dainty,\nfaintly sweet sermons--it is as if--no I will not say it....\n\nI have this moment crossed the words out before my eyes. It is as if,\nafter all, religion, instead of being as I supposed down at the foundry,\nthe stern and splendid music of man conquering all things for God, were,\nafter all, some huge, sublime and holy vagueness, as if the service and\nthe things I saw about me were not hard true realities--as if going to\nChurch were like sitting in a cloud--some soft musical cloud or floating\nisland of goodness and drifting and drifting....\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nNot all churches are alike, but I am speaking of something that must\nhave happened to many men. I but record this blank space on this page,\nas a spiritual fact, as a part of the religious experience of a man\ntrying to be good.\n\nWhen this little experience of which the words have to be crossed out\nafter going to Church--finally settles down, there is still a grim truth\nleft in it.\n\nThe vagueness of the man who is good, who locks himself up in a Church\nand says, \"Oh God! Oh God! Oh God!\" and the vigour and incisiveness of\nthe man who says nothing about it and who goes out of doors and acts\nlike a god all the week--these remain with me as a daily and abiding\nsense.\n\nAnd when I find myself myself, I, who have gloried in cathedrals since I\nwas a little child, looking ahead for a God upon the earth, and when I\nsee the foundries, the airships, the ocean liners beckoning the soul of\nman upon the skies, and the victory of the soul over the dust and over\nthe water and over the air and when I see the Cathedrals beside them,\nthose vast, faint, grave, happy, floating islands of the Saved, drifting\nbackward down the years, it does not seem as if I could bear the\nfoundries saying one thing about my God and the cathedrals saying\nanother.\n\nI have tried to see a way out. Why should it be so?\n\nI have seen that the foundries, the ocean liners, and the airships are\nin the hands of men who say How.\n\nPerhaps we will take goodness and cathedrals, very soon now, and put\nthem for a while in the hands of the men who say how. If St. Francis,\nfor instance, to-day, were to be suddenly more like Bessemer, or if Dr.\nHenry Van Dyke were more like Edison or if the Reverend R.J. Campbell\nwere more like Sir Joseph Lister or if the Bishop of London were to go\nat London the way Marconi goes at the sky, what would begin to happen to\ngoodness? One likes to imagine what would happen if that same spirit,\nthe spirit of \"how\" were brought to bear upon a great engineering\nenterprise like goodness in this world.\n\nPerhaps the spirit of \"how\" is the spirit of God.\n\nPerhaps religion in the twentieth century is Technique.\n\nTechnique in the twentieth century is the Holy Ghost.\n\nTechnique is the very last thing that has been thought of in religion.\nReligion is being converted before our eyes. It is becoming touched with\nthe temper of science, with the thoroughness, the doggedness, the\ninconsolableness of science until it is seeing how and until it is\nsaying how.\n\nWhen the inventors, in our machine age, get to work on goodness in the\nway that they are getting to work on other things, things will begin to\nhappen to goodness that the vague, sweet saints of two thousand years\nhave never dreamed of yet.\n\nIn London and New York, in this first quarter of the twentieth century\nChristianity will not be put off as a spirit. The right of Christianity\nto be a spirit has lapsed.\n\nChristianity is a Method.\n\nWhat Christ meant when He said He was the Truth and the Life, has been\nunderstood, on the whole, very well. What He meant by saying He was the\nWay, we are now beginning, to work out.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nA thousand or two years ago, when two men stood by the roadside and made\na bargain, it was their affair.\n\nWhen two men stand on the sidewalk now and make a bargain, say in New\nYork, they have to deal and to deal very thoughtfully and accurately\nwith ninety million people who are not there. They do this as well as\nthey can by imagining what the ninety million people would do and say,\nand how they would like to be done by, if they were there.\n\nThe facilities for finding out what the ninety million people would do\nand say, and what they would want, the general conveniences for assuring\nthe two men on the sidewalk that they will be able to conduct their\nbargain, and to get the other ninety million in, accurately, that they\nwill be able to do by them as they would be done by--these have scarcely\nbeen arranged for yet.\n\nIn our machine age, with our railroads, and our telephones suddenly\nheaping our lives up on one another's lives, almost before we have\nnoticed it, our religious machinery to go with our other machinery, our\nmachinery that we are going to be Christians with, has not been\ninvented yet.\n\nReligion two-men size, or man and woman size, or one family or two\nfamily size or village size has been worked out. Religion as long as it\nhas been concerned with a few people and was a matter of love between\nneighbours, or of skill in being neighbourly, has had no special or\nimperative need for science or the scientific man.\n\nNow that religion is obliged to be an intimate, a confiding relation\nbetween ninety million people, the spiritual genius, devotion, and\nholiness of the scientific man, of the man who says \"how\" has come to be\nthe modern man's almost only access to his God.\n\nA ninety million man-power religion is an enterprise of spiritual\nengineering, a feat in national and international statesmanship, a\ngigantic structural constructive achievement in human nature. Doing as\none would be done by, with a few people, is a thing that any man can sit\ndown and read his Bible a few minutes and arrange for himself. He can\nmanage to do as he would be done by, fairly well in the next yard. But\nhow about doing as one would be done by with ninety million people--all\nsizes, all climates, all religions, Buffalo, New Orleans, Seattle? How\nabout doing as one would be done by three thousand miles?\n\nIt is an understatement to say, as we look about our modern world, that\nChristianity has not been tried yet.\n\nChristianity has not been invented yet.\n\nWhat was invented two thousand years ago was the spirit of Christianity.\n\nChristianity has been for two thousand years a spirit.\n\nIt is almost like a new religion to me just of itself to think of it. It\nis like being presented suddenly with a new world to think of it, to\nthink that all we have really done with Christianity as yet is to use it\nas a breath or spirit.\n\nI look at the vision of the earth to-day, of the great cities rushing\ntogether at last and running around the world like children running\naround a house--great cities shouting on the seas, suddenly sliding up\nand down the globe, playing hopscotch on the equator, scrambling up the\npoles--all these colossal children!... Here we all are!--a whiff of\nsteam from the Watts's steam kettle and a wave of Marconi across the air\nand we have crept up from our little separate sunsets, all our little\nprivate national bedrooms of light and darkness into the one single same\ncunning dooryard of a world! Our religion, our politics, our Bibles,\nkings, millionaires, crowds, bombs, prophets and railroads all hurling,\nsweeping, crashing our lives together in a kind of vast international\ncollision of intimacy.\n\nAll the Christianity we can bring to bear or that we can use to run this\ncrash of intimacy with is a spirit, a breath.\n\nWe do not well to berate one another or to berate one another's motives\nor to assail human nature or to grow satirical about God with all our\nlittle battered helpless Christians about us and our unadjusted\nreligions.\n\nWe are a new human race grappling with a new world. Our Christianity has\nnot been invented yet and if we want a God, we will work like chemists,\nlike airmen, turn the inside of the earth out, dump the sky, move\nmountains, face cities, love one another, and find Him!\n\nIn the meantime until we have done this, until we have worked as\nchemists and airmen work, Christianity is a spirit.\n\nIt explains all this eager jumble of the world, brushes away our\nobjections, frees our hearts, gives us our program, makes us know what\nwe are for, to stop and think a moment of this--that Christianity is a\nspirit.\n\nEverything that is passing wonderful is a spirit at first. God begins\nbuilding a world as a world-spirit, out of a spirit brooding upon the\nwaters. Then for a long while the vague waters, then for a long while a\nlittle vague land or spirit-of-planet before a real world.\n\nAnd every real belief that man has had, has begun as a spirit.\n\nFor two thousand years Man has had the spirit of immortality. Homer had\nit. Homer had moments when improvising his mighty song all alone, of\nhearing or seeming to hear, faintly, choruses of men's voices singing\nhis songs after him, a thousand years away.\n\nAs he groped his way up in his singing, he felt them in spirit, perhaps,\nthe lonely wandering minstrels in little closed-in valleys, or on the\nvast quiet hills, filling the world with his voice when he was dead,\ngoing about with his singing, breaking it in upon the souls of children,\nof the new boys and girls, and building new worlds and rebuilding old\nworlds in the hearts of men. Homer had the spirit of hearing his own\nvoice forever, but the technique of it, the important point of seeing\nhow the thing could really be done, of seeing how people, instead of\nlistening to imitations or copies or awkward echoes of Homer, should\nlisten to Homer's voice itself--the timbre, the intimacy, the subtlety,\nthe strength of it--the depth of his heart singing out of it. All this\nhas had to wait to be thought out by Thomas A. Edison.\n\nMan has not only for thousands of years had the spirit of immortality,\nof keeping his voice filed away if any one wanted it on the earth,\nforever, but he has had all the other spirits or ghosts of his mightier\nself. He has had the spirit of being imperious and wilful with the sea,\nof faring forth on a planet and playing with oceans, and now he has\nworked out the details in ocean liners, in boats that fly up from the\nwater, and in boats which dive and swim beneath the sea. For thousands\nof years he has had the spirit of the locomotive working through, troops\nof runners or of dim men groping defiantly with camels through deserts,\nor sweeping on on horses through the plains, and now with his banners of\nsteam at last he has great public trains of cars carrying cities.\n\nFor hundreds of years man has had the spirit of the motor-car--of having\nhis own private locomotive or his own special train drive up to his\ndoor--the spirit of making every road his railway. For a great many\nyears he has had the spirit of the wireless telegraph and of using the\nsky. Franklin tried using the sky years ago but all he got was\nelectricity. Marconi knew how better. Marconi has got ghosts of men's\nvoices out of the clouds, has made heaven a sounding board for great\ncongregations of cities, and faraway nations wrapped in darkness and\nsilence whisper round the rolling earth. Man has long had the spirit of\ndefying the seas. Now he has the technique and the motor-boat. He has\nhad the spirit of removing oceans and of building huge, underground\ncities, the spirit of caves in the ground and mansions in the sky, and\nnow he has subways and skyscrapers. For a thousand years he has had the\nspirit of Christ and now there is Frederick Taylor, Louis Brandeis,\nWestfield Pure Food, Doctor Carrel, Jane Addams, and Filene's Store.\nVast networks--huge spiritual machines of goodness are crowding and\npenetrating to-day, fifteen pounds to the square inch, the atmosphere of\nthe gospel into the very core of the matter of the world, into the\neveryday things, into the solids of the lives of men.\n\nIt takes two great spirits of humanity to bring a great truth or a new\ngoodness into this world; one spirit creates it, the other conceives it,\ngathers the earth about it and gives it birth. These two spirits seem to\nbe the spirits of the poet and the scientist.\n\nWe are taking to-day, many of us, an almost religious delight in them\nboth. We make no comparisons.\n\nWe note that the poet's inspiration comes first and consists in saying\nsomething that is true, that cannot be proved.\n\nA few people with imagination, here and there, believe it.\n\nThe scientist's inspiration comes second and consists in seeing ways of\nproving it, of making it matter of fact.\n\nHe proves it by seeing how to do it.\n\nCrowds believe it.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XIX\n\nAND THE MACHINE STARTS\n\n\nOne of the things that makes one thoughtful in going about from city to\ncity and dropping into the churches is the way the people do not sing in\nthem and will not pray in them. In every new strange city where one\nstops on a Sunday morning, one looks hopefully--while one hears the\nchimes of bells--at the row of steeples down the street. One looks for\npeople going in who seem to go with chimes of bells. And when one goes\nin, one finds them again and again, inside, all these bolt-up-right,\nfaintly sing-song congregations.\n\nOne wonders about the churches.\n\nWhat is there that is being said in them that should make any one feel\nlike singing?\n\nThe one thing that the churches are for is news--news that would be\nsuitable to sing about, and that would naturally make one want to sing\nand pray after one had heard it.\n\nThere is very little occasion to sing or to pray over old news.\n\nWorship would take care of itself in our churches if people got the\nlatest and biggest news in them.\n\nNews is the latest faith men have in one another, the last thing they\nhave dared to get from God.\n\nIt is not impossible that just at the present moment, and for some\nlittle time to come, there is really very little worth while that can be\nsaid about Christianity, until Christianity has been tried. I cannot\nconceive of Christ's coming back and saying anything just at the moment.\nHe would merely wonder why, in all these two thousand years, we had not\narranged to do anything about what He had said before. He would wonder\nhow we could keep on so, making his great faith for us so poetic,\nvisionary, and inefficient.\n\nIt is in the unconscious recognition of this and of the present\nspiritual crisis of the world, that our best men, so many of them,\ninstead of going into preaching are going into laboratories and into\nbusiness where what the gospel really is and what it is really made of,\nis being at last revealed to people--where news is being created.\n\nPerhaps it would not be precisely true--what I have said, about Christ's\nnot saying anything. He probably would. But he would not say these same\nmerely rudimentary things. He would go on to the truths and applications\nwe have never heard or guessed. The rest of his time he would put in in\nproving that the things that had been merely said two thousand years\nago, could be done now. And He would do what He could toward having them\ndropped forever, taken for granted and acted on as a part of the morally\nautomatic and of-course machinery of the world.\n\nThe Golden Rule takes or ought to take, very soon now, in real religion,\nsomewhat the same position that table manners take in morals.\n\nAll good manners are good in proportion as they become automatic. In\nsaying that honesty pays we are merely moving religion on to its more\ncreative and newer levels. We are asserting that the literal belief in\nhonesty, after this, ought to be attended to practically by machinery.\nPeople ought to be honest automatically and by assumption, by dismissing\nit in business in particular, as a thing to be taken for granted.\n\nThis is what is going to happen.\n\nWithout the printing press a book would cost about ten thousand dollars,\neach copy.\n\nWith the printing press, the first copy of a book costs perhaps about\nsix hundred dollars.\n\nThe second costs--twenty-nine cents.\n\nThe same principle holds good under the law of moral automatics.\n\nLet the plates be cast. Everything follows. The fire in the Iroquois\nTheatre in Chicago cost six hundred dead bodies.\n\nWithin a few months outward opening doors flew open to the streets\naround a world.\n\nEverybody knew about outward opening doors before.\n\nThey had the spirit of outward opening doors. But the machinery for\nmaking everybody know that they knew it--the moral and spiritual\nmachinery for lifting over the doors of a world and making them all\nswing suddenly generation after generation the other way, had not been\nset up.\n\nOf course it would have been better if there had been three hundred dead\nbodies or three dead bodies--but the principle holds good--let the moral\nplates be cast and the huge moral values follow with comparatively\nlittle individual moral hand labour. The moral hand labour moves on to\nmore original things.\n\nThe same principle holds good in letting an American city be good in\nseeing how to make goodness in a city work.\n\nLet the plates be once cast--say Galveston, Texas; or De Moines, Iowa,\nand goodness after you have your first specimen gets national\nautomatically.\n\nTwo hundred and five cities have adopted the Galveston or commission\ngovernment in three years.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe failure for the time being apparently of the more noble and\naggressive kinds of goodness against the forces of evil is a matter of\ntechnique. Our failure is not due to our failure to know what evil\nreally is, but due to our wasteful way of tunnelling through it.\n\nOur religious inventors have failed to use the most scientific method.\nWe have gone at the matter of butting through evil without thinking\nenough. Less butting and more thinking is our religion now. We will not\ntry any longer to butt a whole planet when we try to keep one man from\ndoing wrong.\n\nWe will butt our way through to the man who sees where to butt and how\nto butt. Then all together!\n\nVery few of the wrongs that are done to society by individuals would be\ndone if civilization were supplied with the slightest adequate machinery\nor conveniences for bringing home to people vividly who the people are\nthey are wronging, how they are wronging them, and how the people feel\nabout it. This machinery for moral and social insight, this\nintelligence-engine or apparatus of sympathy for a planet to-day, before\nour eyes is being invented and set up.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nSometimes I almost think that history as a study or particularly as a\nhabit of mind ought to be partitioned off and not allowed to people in\ngeneral to-day. Only men of genius have imagination enough for handling\nhistory so that it is not a nuisance, a provincialism and an\nimpertinence in the serene presence to-day of what is happening before\nour eyes. History makes common people stop thinking or makes them think\nwrong, about nine tenths of the area of human nature, particularly about\nthe next important things that are going to happen to it.\n\nOur modern life is not an historian's problem. It is an inventor's\nproblem. The historian can stand by and can be consulted. But things\nthat seem to an historian quite reasonably impossible in human nature\nare true and we must all of us act every day as if they were true. We\nbut change the temperature of human nature and in one moment new levels\nand possibilities open up on every side.\n\nThings that are true about water stop being true the moment it is heated\n212 degrees Fahrenheit. It begins suddenly to act like a cloud and when\nit is cooled off enough a cloud acts like a stone. Railroad trains are\nrun for hundreds of miles every year in Siberia across clouds that are\ncold enough. We raise the temperature of human nature and the motives\nwith which men cannot act to-day suddenly around a world are the motives\nwith which they cannot help acting to-morrow.\n\nThe theory of raised temperatures alone, in human nature, will make\npossible to us ranges of goodness, of social passion and vision, that\nonly a few men have been capable of before.\n\nAll the new inventions have new sins, even new manners that go with\nthem, new virtues and new faculties. The telephone, the motor-car, the\nwireless telegraph, the airship and the motor-boat all make men act with\ndifferent insights, longer distances, and higher speeds.\n\nMen who, like our modern men, have a going consciousness, see things\ndeeper by going faster.\n\nThey see how more clearly by going faster.\n\nThey see farther by going faster.\n\nIf a man is driving a motor-car three miles an hour all he needs to\nattend to with his imagination is a few feet of the road ahead.\n\nIf he is driving his car thirty miles an hour and trying to get on by\nanticipating his road a few feet ahead, he dies.\n\nThe faster a man goes--if he has the brains for it--the more people and\nthe more things in the way, his mind covers in a minute--the more\nmagnificently he sees how.\n\nOn a railway train any ordinary man any day in the year (if he goes fast\nenough) can see through a board fence. It may be made of vertical slats\nfive inches across and half an inch apart. He sees through the slits\nbetween the slats the whole country for miles. If he goes fast enough a\nman can see through a solid freight train.\n\nAll our modern industrial social problems are problems of gearing people\nup. Ordinary men are living on trains now--on moral trains.\n\nTheir social consciousness is being geared up. They are seeing more\nother people and more other things and more things beyond the Fence.\n\nThe increased vibration in human nature and in the human brain and heart\nthat go with the motor-car habit, the increased speed of the human\nmotor, the gearing up of the central power house in society everywhere\nis going to make men capable of unheard-of social technique. The social\nconsciousness is becoming the common man's daily habit. Laws of social\ntechnique and laws of human nature which were theories once are habits\nnow.\n\nThere is a certain sense in which it may be said that the modern man\nenjoys daily his moral imagination. He is angered and delighted with his\nsocial consciousness. He boils with rage or sings when he hears of all\nthe new machines of good and machines of evil that people are setting up\nin our modern world.\n\nThere is a sense in which he glories in the Golden Rule. The\nmoral-machinist's joy is in him. He is not content to watch it go round\nand round like some smooth-running Corliss engine which is not connected\nup yet--that nobody really uses except as a kind of model under glass or\na miniature for theological schools. He cannot bear the Golden Rule\nunder glass. He wants to see it going round and round, look up at it,\nimmense, silent, masterful, running a world. He delights in the Golden\nRule as a part of his love of nature. It is as the falling of apples to\nhim. He delights in it as he delights in frost and fire and in the\nglorious, modest, implacable, hushed way they work!\n\nWe are in an age in which a Golden Rule can sing. The men around us are\nin a new temper. They have the passion, almost, the religion of\nprecision that goes with machines.\n\nWhile I have been sitting at my desk and writing these last words, the\ntwo half-past-eight trains, at full speed, have met in the meadow.\n\nThere is something a little impersonal, almost abstracted, about the way\nthe trains meet out here on their lonely sidewalk through the meadow,\ntwenty inches apart--morning after morning. It always seems as if this\ntime--this one next time--they would not do it right. One argues it all\nout unconsciously that of course there is a kind of understanding\nbetween them as they come bearing down on each other and it's all been\narranged beforehand when they left their stations; and yet somehow as I\nwatch them flying up out of the distance, those two still, swift\nthoughts, or shots of cities--dark, monstrous (it's as if Springfield\nand Northampton had caught some people up and were firing them at each\nother)--I am always wondering if this particular time there will not be\na report, after all, a clang on the landscape, on all the hills, and a\nlong story in the _Republican_ the next morning.\n\nThen they softly crash together and pass on--two or three quiet whiffs\nat each other--as if nothing had happened.\n\nI always feel afterward as if something splendid, some great human act\nof faith, had been done in my presence. Those two looming, mighty\nengines, bearing down on each other, making an aim so, at twenty inches\nfrom death, and nothing to depend on but those two gleaming dainty\nstrips or ribbons of iron--a few eighths of an inch on the edge of a\nwheel--I never can get used to it: the two great glowing creatures, full\nof thunder and trust, leaping up the telegraph poles through the still\nvalley, each of them with its little streak of souls behind it; immortal\nsouls, children, fathers, mothers, smiling, chattering along through\nInfinity--it all keeps on being boundless to me, and full of a glad\nboyish terror and faith. And under and through it all there is a kind of\nstern singing.\n\nI know well enough, of course, that it is a platitude, this meeting of\ntwo trains in a meadow, but it never acts like one. I sometimes stand\nand watch the engineer afterward. I wonder if he knows he enjoys it.\nPerhaps he would have to stop to know how happy he was, and not meet\ntrains for a while. Then he would miss something, I think; he would miss\nhis deep joyous daily acts of faith, his daily habits of believing in\nthings--in steam, and in air, and in himself, and in the switchman, and\nin God.\n\nI see him in his cab window, he swings out his blue sleeve at me! I like\nthe way he stakes everything on what he believes. Nothing between him\nand death but a few telegraph ticks--the flange of a wheel.... Suddenly\nthe swing of his train comes up like the swing and the rhythm of a great\ncreed. It sounds like a chant down between the mountains. I come into\nthe house lifted with it. I have heard a man believing, believing mile\nafter mile down the valley. I have heard a man believing in a\nPennsylvania rolling mill, in a white vapour, in compressed air and a\nwhistle, the way Calvin believed in God.\n\n\n\n\nBOOK THREE\n\nLETTING THE CROWD BE BEAUTIFUL\n\n\nTO WILBUR WRIGHT AND WILLIAM MARCONI\n\n    _\"Great Spirit--Thou who in my being's burning mesh\n    Hath wrought the shining of the mist through and through the flesh,\n    Who, through the double-wondered glory of the dust\n    Hast thrust\n    Habits of skies upon me, souls of days and nights,\n    Where are the deeds that needs must be,\n    The dreams, the high delights,\n    That I once more may hear my voice\n    From cloudy door to door rejoice--\n    May stretch the boundaries of love\n    Beyond the mumbling, mock horizons of my fears\n    To the faint-remembered glory of those years--\n    May lift my soul\n    And reach this Heaven of thine\n    With mine?\"\n\n    \"Come up here, dear little Child\n      To fly in the clouds and winds with me,\n          and play with the measureless light!\"_\n\n\n\n\n\nPART ONE\n\nWISTFUL MILLIONAIRES\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER I\n\nMR. CARNEGIE SPEAKS UP\n\n\nAs I was wandering through space the other day--just aeroplaning past on\nmy way over from Mars--I came suddenly upon a neat, snug little\nproperty, with a huge sign stuck in the middle of it:\n\n    THE EARTH: THIS DESIRABLE PROPERTY TO LET. Rockefeller,\n    Carnegie, Morgan & Co.\n\nI was just about to pass it by, inferring naturally that it must be a\nmere bank, or wholesale house, or something, when it occurred to me it\nmight do no harm to stop over on it, and see. I thought I might at least\ndrop in and inquire what kind of a firm it was that was handling it, and\nwhat was their idea, and what, if anything, they thought their little\nplanet was for, and what they proposed to do with it.\n\nI found, on meeting Mr. Rockefeller and Mr. Carnegie and Mr. Morgan, to\nmy astonishment, that they did not propose to do anything with it at\nall. They had merely got it; that was as far as they had thought the\nthing out apparently--to get it. They seemed to be depending, so far as\nI could judge, in a vague, pained way, on somebody's happening along who\nwould think perhaps of something that could be done with it.\n\nOf course, as Mr. Carnegie (who was the talking member of the firm)\npointed out, if they only owned a part of it, and could sell one part of\nit to the other part there would still be something left that they could\ndo, at least it would be their line; but merely owning all of it, so, as\nthey did, was embarrassing. He had tried, Mr. Carnegie told me, to think\nof a few things himself, but was discouraged; and he intimated he was\ndevoting his life just now to pulling himself together at the end, and\ndying a poor man. But that was not much, he admitted, and it was really\nnot a very great service on his part to a world, he thought--his merely\ndying poor in it.\n\nWhen I asked him if there was anything else he had been able to think of\nto do for the world--\n\n\"No,\" he said, \"nothing really; nothing except chucking down libraries\non it--safes for old books.\"\n\n\"And Mr. Morgan?\" I said.\n\n\"Oh! He is chucking down old china on it, old pictures, and things.\"\n\n\"And Mr. Rockefeller?\"\n\n\"Mussing with colleges, some,\" he said, \"just now. But he doesn't, as a\nmatter of fact, see anything--not of his own--that can really be done\nwith them, except to make them more systematized and businesslike, make\nthem over into sort of Standard Oil Spiritual Refineries, fill them with\nmillions more of little Rockefellers--and they won't let him do that. Of\ncourse, as you might see, what they want to do practically is to take\nthe Rockefeller money and leave the Rockefeller out. Nobody will really\nlet him do anything. Everything goes this way when we seriously try to\ndo things. The fact is, it is a pretty small, helpless business, owning\na world,\" sighed Mr. Carnegie.\n\n\"This is why we are selling out, if anybody happens along. Anybody, that\nis, who really sees what this piece of property is for and how to\ndevelop it, can have it,\" said Mr. Carnegie, \"and have it cheap.\"\n\nMr. Carnegie spoke these last words very slowly and wearily, and with\nhis most wistful look; and then, recalling himself suddenly, and handing\nme a glass to look at New York with and see what I thought of it, he\nasked to be excused for a moment, and saying, \"I have fourteen libraries\nto give away before a quarter past twelve,\" he hurried out of the room.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER II\n\nMR. CARNEGIE TRIES TO MAKE PEOPLE READ\n\n\nI found, as I was studying the general view of New York as seen from the\ntop through Mr. Carnegie's glass, that there appeared to be a great many\ndots--long rows of dots for the most part--possibly very high buildings,\nbut there was one building, wide and white and low, and more spread-out\nand important-looking than any of the others, which especially attracted\nmy attention. It looked as if it might be a kind of monument or\nmausoleum to somebody. On looking again I found that it was filled with\nbooks, and was the Carnegie Public Library. There were forty more\nLibraries for New York Mr. Carnegie was having put up, I was told, and\nhe had dotted them--thousands of them almost everywhere one could look,\napparently, on his own particular part of the planet.\n\nA few days later, when I began to do things at a closer range, I took a\nlittle trip to New York, and visited the Library; and I asked the man\nwho seemed to have it in charge, who there was who was writing books for\nMr. Carnegie's Libraries just now, or if there was any really adequate\narrangement Mr. Carnegie had made for having a few great books written\nfor all these fine buildings--all these really noble book-racks, he had\nhad put up. The man seemed rather taken aback, and hesitated. Finally, I\nasked him point blank to give me the name of the supposed greatest\nliving author who had written anything for all these miles of Carnegie\nLibraries, and he mentioned doubtfully a certain Mr. Rudyard Kipling. I\nat once asked for his books, of course, and sat down without delay to\nfind out if he was the greatest living author the planet had, what it\nwas he had to say for it and about it, and more particularly, of course,\nwhat he had to to say it was for.\n\nI found among his books some beautiful and quite refined interpretations\nof tigers and serpents, a really noble interpretation or conception of\nwhat the beasts were for all the glorious gentlemanly beasts--and of\nwhat machines were for--all the young, fresh, mighty, worshipful\nengines--and what soldiers were for. But when I looked at what he\nthought men were for, at what the planet was for, there was practically\nalmost nothing. The nearest I came to it was a remark, apparently in a\nmagazine interview which I cannot quote correctly now, but which\namounted to something like this: \"We will never have a great world until\nwe have some one great artist or poet in it, who sees it as a whole,\nfocuses it, composes it, makes a picture of it, and gives the men who\nare in it a vision to live for.\"\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nSince then I have been trying to see what Messrs. Rockefeller, Carnegie,\nand Morgan could do to produce and arrange what seemed to me the one\nmost important, imperative, and immediate convenience their planet could\nhave, namely, as Mr. Kipling intimated, some man on it, some great\ncreative genius, who would gather it all up in his imagination--the\nbeasts, and the people, and the sciences, and the machines--in short,\nthe planet as a whole, and say what it was for. It is from this point of\nview that I have been drawn into writing the following pages on the next\nimportant improvements--what one might call the spiritual Unreal-Estate\nImprovements, for Messrs. Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Morgan's property\nwhich will have to be installed. I have been going over the property\nmore or less carefully in my own way since, studying it and noting what\nhad been done by the owners, and what possibly might be done toward\narranging authors, inventors, seers, artists, or engineers or other\nefficient persons who would be able to inquire, to think out for a\nworld, to express for it, some faint idea of what it was for.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER III\n\nMR. NOBEL TRIES TO MAKE PEOPLE WRITE\n\n\nNot unnaturally, of course, I turned to see what had already been done\nby the more powerful men the planet had produced, in the way of\narranging for the necessary seers and geniuses to run the world with,\nand I soon found that by far the most intelligent and far-seeing attempt\nthat had been made yet in this direction had been made by an inspired,\nor semi-inspired, millionaire in Sweden, named Alfred Nobel, an\nidealist, who had made a large but unhappy fortune out of an explosive\nto stop war with. His general idea had been that dynamite would make war\nso terrible that it would shock people into not fighting any more, and\nthat gradually people, not having to spend their time in thinking of\nways of killing one another, would have more time than they had ever had\nbefore to think of other and more important things. It was the\ndisappointment of his life that his invention, instead of being used\ncreatively, used to free men from fighting and make men think of things,\nhad been used largely as an arrangement for making people so afraid of\nwar that they could not think of anything else. Whichever way he turned\nhe saw the world in a kind of panic, all the old and gentle-minded\nnations with their fair fields, their factories and art galleries, all\nhard at work piling up explosives around themselves until they could\nhardly see over them. As this was the precise contrary of what he had\nintended, and he had not managed to do what he had meant to do with\nmaking his money, he thought he would try to see if he could not yet do\nwhat he had meant to do in spending it. He sat down to write his Will,\nand in this Will, writing as an inventor and a man of genius, he tried\nto express, in the terms of money, his five great desires for the world.\nHe wished to spend forty thousand dollars a year, every year forever,\nafter he was dead, on each of these five great desires. There were five\ngreat Inventors that he wanted, and he wanted the whole world searched\nthrough for them, for each of them, once more every year, to see if they\ncould be found. Mr. Nobel expressed his desire for these five Inventors\nas people often manage to express things in wills, in such a way that\nnot everybody had been sure what he meant. There seems to have been\ncomparatively little trouble, from year to year, in awarding the prizes\nto some adequate inventor in the domain of Peace, of Physics, of\nChemistry, and of Medicine; but the Nobel Prize Trustees, in trying to\npick out an award each year to some man who could be regarded as a true\ninventor in Literature, have met with considerable difficulty in\ndeciding just what sort of a man Alfred Nobel had in mind, and had set\naside his forty thousand dollars for when he directed that it should\ngo--to quote from the Will--\"To the person who shall have produced in\nthe field of Literature the most distinguished work of an idealistic\ntendency.\"\n\nAllen Upward, for instance, an Englishman unknown in Stockholm, invented\nand published a book four years ago, called the \"New Word,\" which was so\nidealistic and distinguished a book, and so full of new ideas and of new\ncombinations of old ideas, that there was scarcely a publisher in\nEngland who did not instinctively recognize it, who did not see that it\nwould not pay at once, and that therefore it was too strange and\noriginal and too important a book for him to publish, and after a long\ndelay the book was finally printed in Geneva.\n\nA copy was sent to the Nobel Prize Trustees.\n\nOne would have thought, looking at it theoretically, that here was\nprecisely the sort of situation that Alfred Nobel, who had been the\nstruggling inventor of a great invention that would not pay at once\nhimself, would have been looking for. A book so inventive, so far ahead,\nthat publishers praised it and would not invest in it, one would have\nimagined to be the one book of all others for which Alfred Nobel stood\nready and waiting to put down his forty thousand dollars.\n\nBut Mr. Nobel's forty thousand dollars did not go to a comparatively\nobscure and uncapitalized inventor who had written a book to build a\nworld with, or at least a great preliminary design, or sketch, toward a\nworld. The Nobel Prize Trustees, instead of giving the forty thousand\ndollars to Allen Upward, looked carefully about through all the nations\nuntil their eyes fell on a certain Mr. Rudyard Kipling. And when they\nsaw Mr. Rudyard Kipling, piled high with fame and five dollars a word,\nthey came over quietly to where he was and put softly down on him forty\nthousand dollars more.\n\nI do not know, but it is not inconceivable, that Kipling himself would\nrather have had Allen Upward have it.\n\nI am not quarrelling with the Trustees, and am merely trying to think\nthings out and understand. But it certainly is a question that cannot\nbut keep recurring to one's mind--the unfortunate, and perhaps rather\nunlooked-for, way in which Mr. Nobel's Will works. And I have been\nwondering what there is that might be done, the world being the kind of\nworld it is, which would enable the Nobel Prize Trustees to so\nadminister the Will that its practical weight on the side of Idealism,\nand especially upon the crisis of idealism in young authors, would be\nwhere Mr. Nobel meant to have it.\n\nOne must hasten to admit that Mr. Upward's book is open to question;\nthat, in fact, it is the main trait of Mr. Upward's book that it raises\na thousand questions; and that it would be a particularly hard book for\nmost men to give a prize to, quietly go home, and sleep that night. I\nmust hasten to admit also that, judging from their own point of view,\nthe Nobel Prize Trustees have so far done quite well. They have\nattained a kind of triumph of doing safe things--things that they could\nnot be criticised for; and they could well reply to this present\ncriticism that there was no other course that they could take. Unless\nthey had a large fund for butting through all nations for obscure\ngeniuses, and for turning up stones everywhere to look for embryo\nauthors--unless they had a fund for going about among the great\nnewspapers, the big magazines, and peeping under them through all the\nworld for geniuses--and unless they had still another large fund for\nguaranteeing their decision when they had found one, a fund for\nconvincing the world that they were right, and that they were not\nwasting their forty thousand dollars--the Trustees have taken a fairly\nplausible position. Their position being that, in default of perfectly\nfresh, brand-new, great men, and in view of the fact, in a world like\nthis that geniuses in it are almost invariably, and, as a matter of\ncourse, lost or mislaid until they are dead, much the best and safest\nthing that Trustees of Idealism could do was to watch the drift of\npublic opinion in the different nations, to adopt the course of noting\ncarefully what the world thought were really its great men, and then (at\na discreet and dignified distance, of course) tagging the public, and\nwherever they saw a crowd, a rather nice crowd, round a man, standing up\nsoftly at the last moment and handing him over his forty thousand\ndollars. This has been the history of the Nobel Trustees of Idealism,\nthus far.\n\nBut in a way, we are all the trustees of idealism, and the problem of\nthe Nobel Prize Trustees is more or less the problem of all of us. We\nare interested as well as they in trying to find out how to recognize\nand reward men of genius. What would we do ourselves if we were Nobel\nPrize Trustees? Precisely what was it that Alfred Nobel intended to\nachieve for Literature when he made this bequest of forty thousand\ndollars a year in his Will, for a work of Literature of an idealistic\ntendency?\n\nTo take a concrete case, I can only record that it has seemed to me\nthat if Alfred Nobel himself could have been on hand that particular\nyear, and could have read Mr. Upward's book, he would have given the\nprize of forty thousand dollars to Allen Upward. He would not have given\nthe prize to Mr. Kipling--he would have given it twenty years before;\nbut in this particular year of which I am writing, when he saw these two\nmen together, I believe he would have given the prize to Allen Upward,\nand he would have hurried.\n\nI would like to put forward at this point two inquiries. First, why did\nthe Trustees not award the prize to Allen Upward? And second, what would\nhave happened if they had?\n\nFirst, the Trustees could not be sure that Mr. Upward in his work of\ngenius was telling the truth.\n\nSecond, they could not be sure that the world would approve of his\nhaving forty thousand dollars for telling the truth. Perhaps the world\nwould have rather had him paid forty thousand dollars for not telling\nit.\n\nThird, Mr. Kipling was safe. No creative work had to be done on Kipling;\nall they had to do was to send him the cheque. Great crowds had swept in\nfrom all over the world, and nominated Mr. Kipling; the Committee merely\nhad to confirm the nomination.\n\nFourth, Mr. Upward, like all idealists, like all men who have the power\nof throwing this world into the melting-pot and bringing it out new\nagain partly unrecognizable (which, of course, is the regular\nhistorical, almost conventional, thing for an idealist to do with a\nworld), bewildered the Nobel Prize Committee. They could not be sure but\nthat Mr. Upward's next book would be thought in the wrong, and make\ntheir having given him forty thousand dollars to write it ridiculous.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nWhat would have happened if the Trustees had given the prize to Mr.\nUpward?\n\nFirst, practically no one would have known who he was, and twenty-five\nnations would have been reading his book in a week, to see why the prize\nwas given to him. The book would have been given the most widespread,\nhighly stimulated, forty-thousand-dollar-power attention that any book\nin any age has had.\n\nOnly now and then would a man go over and take down his old Kiplings\nfrom the shelf and read them, because he had heard that Mr. Kipling had\nforty thousand dollars more than he had had before.\n\nSecondly, Mr. Upward's new book would have the stimulus of his knowing\nwhile he was writing it that every word would be read by everybody. All\nthe draught on the fire of his genius of the whole listening world would\nresult in a work that even Mr. Upward himself perhaps would hardly\nbelieve he had written. As events turned out, and Mr. Upward did not get\nthe prize there might be many reasons to believe that his next book\nmight be out of focus, might be a mere petulant, scolding book, his\nexultation spent or dwindled, because his last tremendous wager--that\nthe world wanted the truth--was lost.\n\nScolding in a book means, as a rule, either juvenility or it means\nrelapse into conscious degeneration of the soul--the focussing and\nfusing power in a man. I have sometimes wondered if even Christ, if He\nhad not died in His thirty-third year, made His great dare for the world\non the cross early, would not have stopped believing so magnificently in\nother people at about forty or forty-five or so, and would not have\nspent the rest of His days in railing at them, and in being very bitter\nand helpless and eloquent about Rome and Jerusalem. I have caught myself\nonce or twice being glad Abraham Lincoln died suddenly just when he did,\nhis great faith and love all warm in him, and his great oath for the\nworld--that it was good--still fresh upon his lips!\n\nWriting a book like Allen Upward's for a planet with a vision of a\nthousand years singing splendidly through it, and then just reading it\nall alone afterward when he has written it, and going over the score all\nalone by himself, would seem to be a good deal of a strain. To be\ncontradicted out loud and gloriously by a world might be inspiring, but\nto be contradicted by a solid phalanx of silent nations, trooping up\nbehind one another, unanimous, impervious, is enough to make any\nradiant, long-accumulated genius pause in full career, question himself,\nquestion his vision as a chimera, as some faintly lighted Northern\nLights upon the world, that would never mean anything, that was an\nillusion, that would just flicker in the great dark once more and go\nout.\n\nI do not say that this is true, or that it would be true of Allen\nUpward.\n\nBut I have read his book. I should think it might be true.\n\nWhat Alfred Nobel had in mind, his whole idea in his Will, it seems to\nsome of us, was to put in his forty thousand dollars at the working end\nof some man's mind, at the end of the man's mind where the forty\nthousand dollars would itself be creative, where the forty thousand\ndollars would get into the man, and work out through the man and through\nhis genius into the world. It does not seem to me that he wanted to put\nhis forty thousand dollars at the idle, old remembering end of a man's\nmind; that he meant it should be used as a mere reward for idealism. I\ndoubt if it even so much as occurred to Alfred Nobel, who was an\nidealist himself, that idealism, after a man had managed to have some in\nthis world, would be rewarded, or could possibly be paid for, by any\none. He knew, if ever a man knew, that idealism was its own reward, and\nthat it was priceless, and that any attempt to reward it with money, to\npay a man for it after he had had it, and after it was all over, would\nmake forty thousand dollars look shabby, or at least pathetic and\nridiculous. What he wanted to do was to build his forty thousand dollars\nover into a Man. He wanted to feel that this money that he had made out\nof dynamite, out of destruction, would be wrought, through this man,\ninto exultation, into life. He had proposed that this forty thousand\ndollars should become poetry in this man's book, that it should become\nlight and heat, a power-house of thought, of great events. What Alfred\nNobel had in mind, I think, with his little forty thousand dollars, was\nthat it should be given a chance to become an intimate part of some\nman's genius; that it should become perhaps at last a Great Book--that\ngreat foundry of men's souls, where the moulds of History are patterned\nout, and where the hopes of nations and the prayers of women and\nchildren and of great men are, and where the ideals of men--those huge\ndrive-wheels of the world--are cast in a strange light and silence.\n\nI wondered if they could have thought of this when they voted on Allen\nUpward's book that day three years ago--those twenty grave, quiet\ngentlemen in frockcoats in Stockholm!\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nI have picked out Mr. Upward's book because it is the most difficult,\nthe most hazardous, and the least fortunate one I know, to make my point\nwith; and because a great many people will get the reaction of\ndisagreeing with me, and feeling about it probably, the way the Nobel\nPrizes Trustees did. I have wanted to take a book which has the traits\nin it for which men of genius are persecuted or crucified or\nignored--our more modern timid or anonymous form of the cross. If Mr.\nUpward had been given the Prize by the Nobel Prize Trustees, it will\nhave to be admitted a howl would have gone up round the world that would\nnot have quieted down yet; and it is this howl that Mr. Nobel intended\nhis Prize for, and that he thought a man would need about forty thousand\ndollars to meet.\n\nI might have taken any one of several other books, and they would have\nillustrated my point snugly and more conveniently; but just that right\ntouch of craziness that Nobel had in mind, and that goes with great\nexperiment of spirit--the chill, Nietzsche-like wildness, that bravado\nbefore God and man and before Time, that swinging one's self out on\nEternity, which make Upward a typical man of genius, would have been\nlacking. K---- (whose criticisms of books are the most creative ones I\nknow) said of Upward's book that he felt very happy and strangely\nemancipated when he read it, but that it was an uncanny experience, as\nif he had been made of thin air, had become a kind of aerated being, a\npsychic effect that genius often has; and K---- admitted to me\nconfidentially that he felt that possibly he and Upward were being a\nlittle crazy and happy together by themselves, breaking out into\ninfinite space so, and he took the book over to W----, and left it on\nhis desk slinkingly and half-ashamed and without saying anything about\nit. He said he was enormously relieved next time he saw W----, felt as\nif he had just been pulled out of Bedlam to find that there was at least\none other man in the world apparently in his right mind, who valued the\nbook as he did.\n\nThis is the precise feeling, it seems to me, that the Nobel Prize was\nintended to champion and to stand by and temporarily defend in a new\nauthor--the feeling he gives us of being in the presence of unseen\nforces, of incalculableness. It was this way Allen Upward has of taking\nhis reader apart or up into a high place (like the Devil), and dizzying\nhim, taking away his breath with Truth, that Nobel had in mind. He\nwanted to spend eight thousand pounds a year on providing for the world\none more book which would give the ordinary man the personal feeling of\nbeing with a genius, cold, lonely, cosmic genius, the sense of a chill\nwind of All Space Outside blowing through--a book which is a sort of\nGod's Wilderness, in which ordinary men with their ordinary plain senses\nround them move about dazed a little and as trees walking--a great,\ngaunt, naked book.\n\nAlfred Nobel was the inventor of an explosive, a rearranger of things\nassumed and things unbedded, and it was this same expansive,\nhalf-terrible, half-sublime power in other men and other men's books he\nwanted to endow--the power to free and mobilize the elements in a world,\nmake it budge over a little toward a new one. He wanted to spend forty\nthousand dollars a year on the man in literature who had the pent-up\npower in him to crash the world's mind open once more every year like a\nSeed, and send groping up out of it once more its hidden thought.\n\nI may not be right in anticipating the eventual opinion of Allen\nUpward's book; but even if I am wrong, it will have helped perhaps to\ncall attention to the essential failure of the Nobel Prize Trustees to\nside with the darers and experimenters in literature, to take a serious\npart in those great creative, centrifugal movements in the souls of men\nin which new worlds and the sense of new worlds are swept in upon us.\nFor the Sciences, which are more matter of fact and tangible, the Nobel\nPrize is functioning more or less as Mr. Nobel intended, but certainly\nin Literature it will have to be classed as one more of our humdrum\nregular millionaire arrangements for patting successful people\nexpensively on the back. It acts twenty years too late, falls into line\nwith our usual worldly ornamental D.D., LL.D. habit, and has become, so\nfar as Literature is concerned, a mere colossal, kindly, doddering Old\nAge Pension from a few gentlemen in Stockholm. It adds itself as one\nmore futile effort of men of wealth--or world owners to be creative and\nlively with money, very much on the premises with money, after they are\ndead.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IV\n\nPAPER BOOKS, MARBLE PILLARS, AND WOODEN BOYS\n\n\nI have sometimes wished that Mr. Carnegie would post the following sign\nup on his Libraries, on the outside where people are passing, and on the\ninside in the room where people sit and think:\n\n    A MILLION DOLLARS REWARD.\n\n    WANTED, A GREAT LIVING AMERICAN AUTHOR FOR MY LIBRARIES IN THE\n    UNITED STATES. AT PRESENT OUR GREAT AUTHOR IN AMERICA APPEARS\n    TO HAVE BEEN LOST OR MISLAID; ANY ONE FINDING HIM, OR ANY ONE\n    THAT MIGHT DO FOR HIM TEMPORARILY, PLEASE COMMUNICATE WITH ME.\n\n    ANDREW CARNEGIE.\n\nMr. Carnegie's Libraries must be a source of constant regret to the\nauthor of \"Triumphant Democracy.\" They are generally made up of books\nwritten in the Old World. It would be interesting to know what are the\nreal reasons great Libraries are not being written for Mr. Carnegie in\nAmerica, and what there is that Mr. Carnegie or other people can do\nabout it. They are certainly going to be written in America some time,\nand certainly, unless the best and greatest part of the Carnegie Library\nof the future is to be the American part of it, the best our Carnegie\nLibraries will do for America will be to remind us of what we are not.\nUnless we can make the American part of Mr. Carnegie's Libraries loom in\nthe world as big as Mr. Carnegie's chimneys, America--which is the last\nnewest experiment station of the world--is a failure.\n\nIt has occurred to me to try to express, for what it may be worth, a\npoint of view toward Triumphant Democracy Mr. Carnegie may have\ninadvertently overlooked.\n\nIf Mr. Carnegie would establish in every town where he has put a\nLibrary, by endowment or otherwise, a Commission, or what might be\ncalled perhaps a Searching Party, in that community, made up of men of\ninventive and creative temperament, who instinctively know this\ntemperament in others--men in all specialities, in all walks of life,\nwho are doing things better than any one wants to pay them to do\nthem--and if Mr. Carnegie would set these men to work, in one way and\nanother, looking up boys who are like them, boys about the town, who are\ndoing things better than any one wants to pay them to do them--he would\nsoon get a monopoly of the idealism of the world; he would collect in\nthirty-five years, or in one generation, an array of living great men,\nof national figures, men who would be monuments to Andrew Carnegie, as\ncompared with which his present libraries, big, thoughtless,\ninnumerable, humdrum, sogging down into the past, would be as nothing.\nMr. Carnegie has given forty libraries to New York; and I venture to say\nthat there is at this very moment, running round the streets of the\ngreat city, one single boy, who has it in him to conceive, to imagine,\nand hammer together a new world; and if Mr. Carnegie would invest his\nfortune, not in buildings or in books, but in buying brains enough to\nfind that boy, and if the whole city of New York were to devote itself\nfor one hour every day for years to searching about and finding that\nboy, to seeing just which he is, to going over all the other boys five\nhours a day to pick him out, it would be--well, all I can say is, all\nthose forty libraries of Mr. Carnegie's, those great proud buildings,\nwould do well if they did not do one thing for six years but find that\nboy!\n\nThere is a boy at this very moment with strings and marbles and a nation\nin his pocket, a system of railroads--a boy with a national cure for\ntuberculosis, with sun-engines for everybody--there is a boy with\ncathedrals in him too, no doubt or some boy like young Pinchot, with\nmountainsful of forests in his heart.\n\nThis is what Mr. Carnegie himself would like to do, but with his big,\nstiff, clumsy libraries trailing their huge, senseless brick-and-mortar\nbodies, their white pillars and things, about the country, unmanned,\ninert, eyeless, all those great gates and forts of knowledge, Coliseums\nof paper, and with the mechanical people behind the counters, the\npolicemen of the books, all standing about protecting them--with all\nthis formidable array, how can such a boy be hunted out or drawn in, or\nhow would he dare go tramping in through the great gates and hunting\nabout for himself? He could only be hunted out by people all wrought\nthrough with human experience, men and women who would give the world to\nfind him, who are on the daily lookout for such a boy--by some special\nkind of eager librarian, or by disguised teachers, anonymous poets, or\nby diviners, by expert geniuses in boys. If Mr. Carnegie could go about\nand look up and buy up wherever he went these men who have this\nboy-genius in them, deliver them from empty, helpless, mere\ngetting-a-living lives; and if he could set these men, and set them\nabout thickly, among the books in his libraries--those huge anatomies\nand bones of knowledge he has established everywhere, all his great\nliterary steel-works--men would soon begin to be discovered, to be\ncreated, to be built in libraries ... but as it is now....\n\nGentle Reader, have you ever stood in front of one of them, looked up at\nthe windows, thought of all those great tiers, those moulds and blocks\nof learning on the shelves; and have you never watched the weary people\nthat dribble in from the streets and wander coldly about, or sit down\nlistless in them--in those mighty, silent empires of the past? have you\nnever thought that somewhere all about them, somewhere in this same\nlibrary, there must be some white, silent, sunny country of the future,\nfull of children and of singing, full of something very different from\nthese iron walls of wisdom? And have you never thought what it would\nmean if Mr. Carnegie would spend his money on search parties for people\namong the books, or what it would mean if the entire library, if all the\nbooks in it, became, as it were, wired throughout with live, splendid,\ndelighted men and women, to make connections, to establish the current\nbetween the people and the books, to discover the people one by one and\nfollow them to their homes, and follow them in their lives, and take out\nthe latent geniuses, and the listless engineers and poets, and the\nKossuths, Caesars, the Florence Nightingales...?\n\nIt is only by employing forces that can be made extremely small,\ninvisible, personal, penetrating, and spiritual, that this sort of work\ncan be done. It must be delicate and wonderful workmanship, like the\nmagnet, like the mighty thistledown in the wind, like electricity, like\nlove, like hope--sheer, happy, warm human vision going about and casting\nitself, casting all its still and tiny might, its boundless seed, upon\nthe earth: but it would pay.\n\nThe same people too, specialists in detecting and developing inventors,\ncould be supplied also to all other possible callings. They would\nconstitute a universal profession, penetrating all the others. They\nwould go hunting among foremen and in machine shops for the misplaced\ngeniuses, tried by wrong standards, underpaid for having other gifts.\nThey would keep a lookout through all the schools and colleges, looking\nover the shoulders of scolding teachers and absent professors. They\nwould go about studying the playgrounds and mastering the streets.\n\nWe do not a little for the Submerged Tenth and the sons of the poor, and\nwe have schools or missions for the sons of the rich, but one of the\nthings we need next to-day is that something should be done for the\nsons of the great neglected respectable classes. Far more important than\none more library--say in Denver, for instance would be a Denver Bureau\nof Investigation, to be appointed, of high-priced, spirited men, of\nexpert humanists, to study difficulties, and devise methods and missions\nfor putting all society in Denver through filters or placers, and\nfinding out the rich human ore, finding out where everybody really\nbelonged, and what all the clever misplaced people were really for. Of\ncourse it would take money to do all this, and flocks of free people who\nare doing the work they love. But it is not book-racks, nor paper, nor\nink, nor stone steps, nor white pillars--it is free men and free women\nAmerica and England are asking of their Andrew Carnegies to-day.\n\nMr. Carnegie has not touched this human problem in his libraries. If\nSociety were fitted up all through with electric connections, men with a\ngenius for discovering continents in people, Columbuses, boy-geniuses;\nand if there were established everywhere a current between every boy and\nthe great world, this would be something on which Mr. Carnegie could\nmake a great beginning with the little mite of his fortune. If we were\nto have even one city fitted up in this way, it would be hard to say how\nmuch it would mean--one city with enough people in it who were free to\ndo beautiful things, free to be curious about the others, free to follow\nclues of greatness, free to go up the streams of Society to the still,\nfaint little springs and beginnings of things. It would soon be a\nmemorable city. A world would watch it, and other cities would grope\ntoward it. Instead of this we have these big, hollow, unmanned libraries\nof Mr. Carnegie's everywhere, with no people practically to go with\nthem, no great hive of happy living men and women in and out all day\ncross-fertilizing boys and books.\n\nThere seems to be something unfinished and stolid and brutal about a\nCarnegie Library now. The spirit of the garden and the sea, of the\nspring and the light, and of the child, is not in it. They have come to\nseem to some of us mere huge Pittsburgs of brains--all these impervious,\nunwieldy, rolling-mills of knowledge. I should think it would be a\nterrible prospect to grow old with, just to sit and see them flocking\nacross the country from your window, all these huge smoke-stacks of\nbooks in their weary, sordid cities; and the boys who might be great\nmen, the small Lincolns with nations in their pockets, the little Bells\nwith worlds in their ears, the Pinchots with their forests, the McAdoos\nand Roosevelts, the young Carnegies and Marconis in the streets!\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER V\n\nTHE HUMDRUM FACTORY AND THE TUMPTY-TUM THEATRE\n\n\nMr. Israel Zangwill in presiding at the meeting of the Sociological\nSociety the other night remarked, in referring to inspired millionaires,\nthat as a rule in the minds of most people nowadays a millionaire seemed\nto be a kind of broken-off person, or possibly two persons. There always\nseemed to have to be a violent change in a millionaire somewhere along\nthe middle of his life. The change seemed to be associated in some way,\nMr. Zangwill thought with his money. He reminded one of the\npatent-medicine advertisements, \"Before and After Taking.\"\n\nI have been trying to think why it is that the average millionaire\nreminds people--as Mr. Zangwill says he does--of a patent-medicine\nadvertisement, \"Before and After Taking.\"\n\nI have thought, since Mr. Zangwill made this remark, of getting together\na small collection of pictures of millionaires--two pictures of each,\none before and the other after taking--and having them mounted in the\nmost approved patent-medicine style, and taking them down to Far End and\nasking Mr. Zangwill to look them over with me and see if he thought--he,\nIsrael Zangwill, the novelist, the play-wright, the psychologist--really\nthought, that millionaires \"Before and After\" were as different as they\nlooked.\n\nI imagine he would say--and practically without looking at the\npictures--that of course to him or to me perhaps, or to any especially\ninterested student of human nature, millionaires are not really\ndifferent at all \"Before and After Taking\"; that they merely had a\nslightly different outer look. They would merely look different, Mr.\nZangwill would say, to the common run or majority of people--the people\none meets in the streets.\n\nBut would they?\n\nOne of the most hopeful things that I have been thinking of lately is\nthat the people--the ordinary people one meets in the streets--are\nbeginning quite generally to see through their millionaires, and to see\nthat their money almost never really cures them. Most very rich men,\nindeed, are having their times now, of even seeing through themselves;\nand it brings me up abruptly with a shock to think that the ordinary\npeople who pass in the streets would be deceived by these simple little\npictures Before and After. They have been deceived until lately, but are\nthey being deceived now? I would like to see the matter tested, and I\nhave thought it would be a good idea to take my small collection of\npictures of millionaires--two pictures of each, one Before and the other\nAfter Taking--to a millionaire--of course some really reformed or cured\none--and ask him to pay the necessary expenses in the columns of the\n_Times_, and of the _Westminster Gazette_, and the _Daily Chronicle_,\nand other representative London journals (all on the same morning), of\nhaving the pictures published. We could then take what might be called a\nsocial, human, economic inventory of London: ask people to send in their\nhonest opinions, on looking at the pictures, as to whether Money, Before\nand After Taking, does or does not produce these remarkable cures in\nmillionaires. I very much doubt if Mr. Zangwill would be found to be\nright in his estimate of our common people to-day.\n\nI venture to believe that it is precisely because our common people are\nseeing that millionaires are not changed Before and After Taking that\nthe majority of time millionaires we have to-day have come to be looked\nupon as one of the charges--one of the great spiritual charges and\nburdens modern Society has to carry.\n\nSociety has always had to do what it could for the poor, but in our\nmodern civilization, in a new and big sense, we have to see now what\nthere is, if possibly anything, that can be done for the rich.\n\nWe have come to have them now almost everywhere about us--these great\nspiritual orphans, with their pathetic, blind, useless fortunes piled up\naround them; and Society has to support them, to keep them up morally,\nkeep them doing as little damage as possible, and has to allow day by\nday besides for the strain and structural weakness they bring upon the\ngirders of the world--the faith of men in men, and the credit of God,\nwhich alone can hold a world together.\n\nIt is not denied that the average millionaire, when he has made his\nmoney, does different-looking things, and gathers different-looking\nobjects about him, and is seen in different-looking places. And it is\nnot denied that he changes in more important particulars than things. He\nquite often changes people, the people he is seen with but he never or\nalmost never changes himself. He is not one man when he is putting money\ninto his pocket and another when he is taking it out.\n\nWe keep hoping at first with each new mere millionaire that when he gets\nall the money he has wanted it will change him; but we find it almost\nnever does.\n\nMerely reversing the motion with a pocket does not make a man a new and\nbeautiful creature, and one soon sees that the typical millionaire is\ngoverned by the same bargain principles, is bullied and domineered over\nby the same personal limitations, the same old something-for-nothing\nhabits. If he had the habit, while getting money out of people, of\ngetting the better of them, he still insists on getting the better of\npeople when he gives it to them or to their causes. He takes it out of\ntheir souls. There never has been a millionaire who runs his business\non the old humdrum principle of merely making all the money he can who\ndoes not run his very philanthropies afterward on the same general\nprinciple of oppressing everybody, of outwitting everybody--and of doing\npeople good in a way that makes them wish they were dead. Philanthropy\nas a philosophy, and even as an institution, is getting to be nearly\nfutile to-day, for the reason that millionaires--valid, authentic cases\nof millionaires who are really cured--who are changed either in their\nmotives or their methods with regard to what they do with money, except\nin rare cases, do not exist.\n\nThe New Theatre in New York, which was started as a kind of Polar\nExpedition to discover and rescue Dramatic Art in America, failed\nbecause two hundred and forty millionaires tried to help it. If enough\nmillionaires could have been staved off from that enterprise, or if it\ncould have been taken in hand either by fewer or more select\nmillionaires cooeperating with the public and with artists of all\nclasses, New Theatre of New York would not have been obliged, as it has\nbeen since, to start all over again on a new basis. The blunders in\ncreative public work that men who get rich in the wrong way are always\nsure to make had to be made first. They nearly always have to be made\nfirst. There is hardly a single enterprise of higher social value in\nwhich the world is interested to-day which is not being gravely\nthreatened in efficient service by letting in too many millionaires, and\nby paying too much attention to what they think. If our people were\ngenerally alive to the terrific sameness and monotony of a millionaire's\nlife \"before and after,\" and if millionaires were looked over\ndiscriminatingly before being allowed to take part in great public\nenterprises like the cinema, for instance, the newspapers, the\nhospitals, the theatres, there is hardly any limit to the new things\nthat public enterprises would begin to make happen in the world, and the\nnew men that would begin to function in them.\n\nOf course, if what a great vision for the people--_i.e._, a public\nenterprise is for, is to make money, it would be different. The mere\nmillionaire might understand, and his understanding might help. But if\nan institution is founded (like a great theatre) to be a superb and\nnoble masterpiece of understanding and changing human nature; if it is\nfounded to be a creative and dominating influence, to build up the\nideals and fire the enthusiasm of a city, to lay the foundations of the\ndaily thoughts and the daily motives of a great people, the mere\nmillionaire finds, if he tries to manage it, that he is getting in\nbeyond his depth. A man who has made his money by exploiting and taking\nadvantage of the public can only be expected, in conducting a Theatre,\nto be an authority on how to exploit a public and take advantage of it\nstill more, and how to make it go to the play that merely looks like the\nplay that it wants.\n\nMillionaires as a class, unless they are men who have made their money\nin the artist's or the inventor's spirit, really ought to be expected by\nthis time, except in the size of their cheques, to be modest and\nthoughtful, to stand back a little and watch other people. The\nmillionaires themselves, if they thought about it, would be the first to\nadvise us not to pay too much attention to them. They are used to large\nthings, and they know that the only way to do, in conducting great\nenterprises, is to select and use men (whether millionaires or not) for\nthe particular efficiencies they have developed. If we are conducting\nwhat is called a charity, we will not expect that a millionaire can do\ngood things unless he is a good man. He spoils them by picking out the\nwrong people. And we will not expect him to do artistic things unless he\nhas lived his life and done his business in the spirit and the\ntemperament of the artist. He will not know which the artists are or\nwhat the artists are like inside; and he will not like them and they\nwill not like him, nor will they be interested in him or interested in\nworking with him. Everything that artists or men of creative temperament\ntry to do with the common run of millionaires--all these huge, blind,\nimponderable megatheriums, stamping along through life, ordering people\nabout--ends in the same way--in irksomeness, bewildered vision, fear,\ncompromise, and failure, as seen from the inside. Seen on the outside or\nbefore the public, of course, the Institution will have the same old,\nbland, familiar air of looking successful and of looking intelligent,\nand yet of being uninteresting, and of not changing the world by a\nhair's breadth.\n\nThe only millionaires who should be allowed to have a controlling\ninterest in public enterprises are millionaires who do not need to be\ndifferent before and after making their money. Everybody is coming to\nsee this, sooner or later. It is already getting very hard to raise\nmoney for any public enterprise in which mere millionaires or\nbewildered, unhappy rich men are known to have a controlling interest.\nThe most efficient and far-sighted men do not expect anything very\ndecided or of marked character from such enterprises, and will no longer\nlend to them either their brains or their money. Mere millionaires will\nsoon have to conduct their public enterprises quite by themselves, and\nthey will then soon fall of their own weight. The moment men are put in\ncontrol of public enterprises by the size of their brains instead of the\nsize of their cheques, the whole complexion of what are known as our\npublic enterprises will change, and churches, theatres, hospitals,\nsettlements, art galleries, and all other great public causes, instead\nof boring everybody and teasing everybody, will be attracting everybody\nand attracting everybody's money. They will be full of character,\ncourage, and vision. Our present great, vague, helpless, plaintive\npublic enterprises--one third art, one third millionaire, one third\ndeficit--drag along financially because they are listless compromises,\nbecause they have no souls or vision, and are not interesting--not even\ninteresting to themselves.\n\nMen with creative or imaginative quality, and courage, and insight into\nordinary human nature, and far-sightedness of what can be expected of\npeople, do not get on with the ordinary millionaire. It cannot be denied\nthat millionaires and artists get together in time; but the particular\npoint that seems to be interesting to consider is how the millionaires\nand artists can be got together before the artists are dead, and before\nthe millionaires stop growing and stop being creative and understanding\ncreative men.\n\nIt might be well to consider the present situation in the concrete--the\ntheatre, for instance--and see how the situation lies, and where one\nwould have to begin, and how one would have to go to work to change it.\n\nThe present failure of the theatre to encourage what is best in modern\nart is due to the fact that the public is unimaginative and inartistic.\n\nIf a public is unimaginative and inartistic, the only way the best\nthings that are offered can succeed with them is by having these best\nthings held before them long and steadily enough for them slowly to\ncompare them with other things, and see that they are better than the\nother things, and that they are what they want.\n\nUnimaginative and inartistic people do not know what they want. If\nthings are tried long enough with them they do. When they have been\ntried long enough with them they support them themselves.\n\nThe only way fine things can be tried long enough is with sufficient\ncapital.\n\nThe only way sufficient capital for fine things can be obtained is by\nhaving millionaires who appreciate fine things, and believe in them, and\nbelieve the public in time will believe in them.\n\nThe only way in which a millionaire can recognize and believe in the\nfine things and in the best artists is by being, in spirit and\ntemperament at least, an artist himself.\n\nThe only way in which a millionaire can be an artist is to work every\nday in the spirit in which the artist works.\n\nThis means the artist in business.\n\n(1) The artist in business is the man who makes things people already\nwant enough to make money, and who makes things he is going to make\npeople want enough to make new values and to be of some use.\n\n(2) The artist in business is the employer who makes new things and men\ntogether. He lets the men who make new things with him become new men;\nand when the things are made, they go forth in their turn and make new\nmen and make new publics. New publics have had to be made for\neverything: for the first umbrellas, for the first telephones, the first\ntypewriters. New publics have had to be made for Wagner, for Sunlight\nSoap, for Bernard Shaw; and it is the men who make new publics--be it\nfor big or little things--who are artists. They are in spirit, prophets,\nkings, and world-builders.\n\n(3) Incidentally, the artist in business--the employer who creates new\nvalues and is creative himself--will like creative men in his factory,\nand will treat them so that they will put their creativeness into his\nbusiness; he not only will be an artist himself, but he will have,\ncomparatively speaking, a factory full of artists working with him. And\nwhen the factories pour out the men at night, and the smoke and the\nmurmur cease, and the windows are dark, they will go to creative and\nlive men's plays.\n\nSo it has come to pass that the modern business man of the artist sort\nholds the arts of modern times in the hollow of his hand. He is a\npast-master of creating new publics.\n\n(4) The artist in business is the man who educates and draws out, at\nevery point where his business touches them, every day, all day, the men\nwith whom he works. He educates and develops the men who make the\nthings. He educates and develops the men who buy them. Even the people\nwho wish they had bought them, are educated or secreted, by the artist\nin business. He is a maker of new publics, a world-builder, whichever\nway he turns. A business man who merely makes for people what they want,\nand who does not get the prestige with men of making for them things\nthat they did not know they wanted, is a failure and falls behind in his\nbusiness. All the big men in business work in future tenses. They are\nprophets, historians, and they are Now-men, men who work by seeing the\ntruth all round the present moment, the present persons, and the present\nmarket, and before it and behind it. Millionaires who are making their\nmoney in this spirit will understand and believe in plays that are\nwritten in this spirit, and the people who work for such employers will\nlike to go to such plays, and the theatre managers, instead of being the\nbullies and tyrants of the world of art, will be held in the power of\nthe men who see things and who make things--men who in vast sweeps\ncalled audiences, night after night, make new men upon the earth.\n\n\n\n\nPART TWO\n\nIRON MACHINES\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER I\n\nSTEEPLES AND CHIMNEYS\n\n\nI went to the Durbar the other night in cinema colour and saw the King\nand Queen through India. I had found my way, with hundreds of others,\ninto the gallery of the Scala Theatre, and out of that big, still rim of\nwatchful darkness where I sat I saw--there must have been thousands of\nthem--crowds of camels running.\n\nAnd crowds of elephants went swinging past.\n\nI watched them like a boy, like a boy standing on the edge of a thousand\nyears and looking off at a world.\n\nIt was stately and strange, and like far music to sit quite still and\nwatch civilizations swinging past.\n\nThen suddenly it became near and human--the spirit of playgrounds and of\nshouting and boyish laughter ran through it. And we watched the\nelephants, naked and untrimmed, lolling down to the lake and lying down\nto be scrubbed in it with comfortable low snorting and slow rolling in\nthe water, and the men standing by all the while like little play-nurses\nand tending them, their big bungling babies, at the bath. A few minutes\nlater we watched the same elephants, hundreds of them, their mighty\ntoilets made, pacing slowly past, swinging their gorgeous trappings in\nour eyes, rolling their huge hoodahs at us, and all the time still those\nlittle funny dots of men beside them, moving them silently, moving them\ninvisibly as by a spirit, as by a kind of awful wireless--those great\nengines of the flesh! I shall never forget it or live without it, that\nslow pantomime of those mighty, silent Eastern nations, their religions,\ntheir philosophies, their wills, their souls, moving their elephants\npast--the long panorama of it, of their little awful human wills, all\nthose little black, helpless-looking slits of Human Will astride those\nmighty necks!\n\nI have the same feeling when I see Count Zeppelin with his airship, or\nGrahame-White at Hendon, riding his vast cosmic pigeon up the sky; and\nit is the same feeling I have with the locomotives--those unconscious,\nforbidding, coldly obedient terrible fellows! Have I not lain awake and\nlistened to them storming through the night, heard them out there ahead\nworking our wills on the blackness, on the thick night, on the stars, on\nSpace, and on Time while we slept?\n\nMy main feeling at the Durbar while I watched those splendid beasts--the\ncrowds of camels, the crowds of elephants--all being driven along by the\nlittle, faint, dreamy, sleepy-looking people was, \"Why don't their\nelephants turn around on them and chase them?\"\n\nI kept thinking at first that they would, almost any minute.\n\nOur elephants chase us--most of us. Who has not seen locomotives coming\nquietly out of their roundhouses in New York and begin chasing people,\nchasing whole towns, tearing along with them, making everybody hurry\nwhether or no, speeding up and ordering around by the clock great\ncities, everybody alike, the rich and the poor, the just and the unjust,\nfor hundreds of miles around? In the same way I have seen, hundreds of\ntimes, motor cars turning around on their owners and chasing\nthem--chasing them fairly out of their lives. And hundreds of thousands\nof little wood-and-rubber Things with nickel bells whirring, may be seen\nordering around people--who pay them for it--in any city of our modern\nworld.\n\nNow and then one comes on a man who keeps a telephone, who is a\ngentleman with it, and who keeps it in its place, but not often.\n\nThere are certain questions to be asked and to be settled in any\ncivilization that would be called great.\n\nFirst: Do the elephants chase the men in it? Second: And if--as in our\nWestern civilization--the men have made their own elephants, why should\nthey be chased by them?\n\nThere are some of us who have wondered a little at the comparative\ninferiority of organ music. We have come to the conclusion that perhaps\norgan music is inferior because it has been largely composed by\norganists, by men who sit at organ machines many hours a day, and who\nhave let their organ machines with all their stops and pedals, and with\nall their stop-and-pedal-mindedness, select out of their minds the tones\nthat organs can do best--the music that machines like.\n\nWagner has come to be recognized as a great and original composer for a\nmachine age because he would not let his imagination be cowed by the\nmere technical limitations, the narrow-mindedness of brass horns, wooden\nflutes, and catgut; he made up his mind that he would not sing violins.\nHe made violins sing him.\n\nPerhaps this is the whole secret of art in a machine civilization.\n\nPerhaps a machine civilization is capable of a greater art than has ever\nbeen dreamed in the world before, the moment it stops being chased by\nits elephants. The question of letting the crowd be beautiful in our\nworld of machines and crowds to-day turns on our producing\nMachine-Trainers.\n\nMen possessed by watches in their vest pockets cannot be inspired, men\npossessed by churches or religion-machines cannot be prophets, men\npossessed by school-machines cannot be educators.\n\nThe reason that we find the poet, or at least the minor poet,\ndiscouraged in a machine age probably is, that there is nothing a minor\npoet can do in it. Why should nightingales, poppies, and dells expect,\nin a main trial of strength, to compete with machines? And why should\nhuman beings running for their souls in a race with locomotives expect\nto keep very long from losing their souls?\n\nThe reason that most people are discouraged about machinery to-day is\nthat this is what they think a machine civilization is. They whine at\nthe machines. They blame the locomotive.\n\nA better way for a man to do would be to stop blaming the locomotive,\nand stop running along out of breath beside it, and climb up into the\ncab.\n\nThis is the whole issue of art in our modern civilization--climbing up\ninto the cab.\n\nFirst come the Machine-Trainers, or poets who can tame engines. Then the\nother poets.\n\nIn the meantime, the less we hear about nightingales and poppies and\ndells and love and above, the better.\n\nPoetry must make a few iron-handed, gentle-hearted, mighty men next. It\nis because we demand and expect the beautiful that we say that poetry\nmust make men next.\n\nThe elephants have been running around in the garden long enough.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER II\n\nBELLS AND WHEELS\n\n\nWe are living in a day of the great rebellion of the machines. Out of a\nthousand thousand roundhouses and factories, vast cities and nations of\nmachines on the land and on the sea have risen before the soul of man\nand said, \"We have served you; now, you serve us.\"\n\nA million million vulgar, swaggering Goliaths, one sees them everywhere;\nthey wave their arms at us around the world, they puff their white\nbreath at us, they spit smoke in our eyes, line up in a row before the\ngreat cities, before the mighty-hearted nations, and say it again and\nagain, all in chorus, _\"We have served you, now, you serve us!\"_\n\nIt has come to sound to some of us as a kind of chant around our lives.\n\nBut why should we serve them?\n\nI have seen crowds of minor poets running, their little boxes of perfume\nand poetry, their cologne water, their smelling-salts, in their hands.\n\nAnd, of course, if the world were all minor poets the situation would be\nserious.\n\nAnd I have seen flocks of faint-hearted temples, of big, sulky,\nbeautiful, absent-minded colleges, looking afraid. Every now and then\nperhaps one sees a professor run out, throw a book at the machines, and\nrun back again. Oxford still looks at science, at matter itself,\ntremulously, with that same old, still, dreamy air of dignity, of\ngentlemanly disappointment.\n\nAnd if the world were all Oxford the situation would be serious.\n\nWhen Oxford with its hundred spires, its little beautiful boy choirs of\nprofessors, draws me one side from the Great Western Railway Station,\nand intones in those still, solemn, lonely spaces the great truth in my\nears, that machines and ideals cannot go together, that the only way to\ndeal with ideals is to keep them away from machines, my only reply is\nthat ideals that are so tired that they are merely devoted to defending\nthemselves, ideals that will not and cannot go forth and be the breath\nof the machines, ideals that cannot and will not master the machines,\nthat will not ride the machines as the wind, overrun matter, and conquer\nthe earth, are not ideals for gentlemen.\n\nAt least they are not ideals that can keep up the standard of the Oxford\ngentleman.\n\nA gentleman is a man who is engaged in expressing his best and noblest\nself in every fibre of his mind and every fibre of his body. He makes\nthe very force of gravity pulling on his clothes express him, and the\nmovements of his feet and his hands. He gathers up his rooms into his\nwill and all the appointments of his life and crowds into them the full\nmeaning of his soul. He makes all these things say him.\n\nThe main attribute of a man who is not a gentleman is that he does not\ndo these things, that he cannot inform his body with his spirit.\n\nI go back to the Great Western Railway, ugly as it still is. I go alone,\nand sadly if I must, and for a little time--without the deep bells and\nwithout the stained-glass windows, without all that dear, familiar\nbeauty I have loved in the old and quiet quadrangles--I take my stand\nbeside the Great Western Railway! I claim the Great Western Railway for\nthe spirit of man and for the will of God!\n\nWith its vast shuttle of steam and shining engines, its little,\nwhispering telegraph office, the Great Western Railway is a part of my\nbody. I lay my will on the heart of London with it, or I sleep in the\nold house in Lynmouth with it. I am the Great Western Railway, and the\nGreat Western Railway is ME. And from the heart of the roar of London\nto the slow, sleepy surge of the sea in my window at Lynmouth it is\nmine! Though it be iron and wood, switches, whistles, and white steam,\nit is my body, and I inform it with my spirit, or I die. With the will\nof God I endow it, with the glory of the world, with the desires of my\nheart, and with the prayers of the hurrying men and women.\n\nI declare that that same glory I have known before, and that I will\nalways know, and will never give up, in the old quiet quadrangles of\nOxford and in the deep bells and in the still waters, as in some\nstrange, new, and mighty Child, is in the Great Western Railway too.\n\nWhen I am in the train it sings. Strangely and hoarsely It sings! I lie\ndown to rest. It whistles on ahead my ideals down the slope of the\nworld. It roars softly, while I sleep, my religion in my ears.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER III\n\nDEW AND ENGINES\n\n\nWhen I was small, and wanted suddenly to play tag or duck-on-the-rock I\nhad a little square half-mile of boys near by to play with.\n\nMy daughter plays tag or plays dolls, any minute she likes, with a whole\ncity. She is not surprised at the telephone; she takes it for granted\nlike sunshine and milk. It is a part of the gray matter in her brain--a\nwhole city, six or seven square miles of it. A little mouthpiece on a\ndesk, a number, and two hundred little girls are hers in a minute, to\nplay dolls with. She thinks in miles when she plays, where I thought in\ndoor-yards. The whole city is a part of the daily, hourly furniture of\nher mind. The little gray molecules in the structure of her brain are\ndifferent from those in mine.\n\nI have seen that Man moves over with each new generation into a bigger\nbody, more awful, more reverent and free than he has had before.\n\nA few minutes ago, here where I am writing, an engine all in bright,\nsoft, lit-up green with little lines of yellow on it and flashing silver\nfeet, like a vision, swept past--through my still glass window, through\nthe quiet green fields--like a great, swift, gleaming whisper of London.\nAnd now, all in six seconds, this great quiet air about me is waked to\nvast vibrations of the mighty city. Out over the red pines, the lonely\ngorse fields, I have seen passing the spirit of the Strand. I have seen\nthe great flocking bridges and the roar about St. Paul's in communion\nwith the treetops and with the hedgerows and with the little brooks, all\nin six seconds, when an engine, with its vision like a cloud of glory\nswept past.\n\nAnd yet there are people in Oxford who tell me that an engine when it is\nin the very act of expressing such stupendous and boundless thoughts, of\nmaking such mighty and beautiful things happen, is not beautiful, that\nit has nothing to do with art. They can but watch the machines, the\nearth black with them, going about everywhere mowing down great nations\nand rolling under the souls of men.\n\nI cannot see it so. I see a thousand thousand engines carrying dew and\ngreen fields to the stones of London. I see the desires of the earth\nhastening. The ships and the wireless telegraph beckon the wills of\ncities on the seas and on the sky. With the machines I have taken a\nwhole planet to me for my feet and for my hands. I gesture with the\nearth. I hand up oceans to my God.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IV\n\nDEAD AS A DOOR NAIL!\n\n\nThere are people who say that machines cannot be beautiful, and cannot\nmake for beauty, because machines are dead.\n\nI would agree with them if I thought that machines were dead.\n\nI have watched in spirit, hundreds of years, the machines grow out of\nMan like nails, like vast antennae--a kind of enormous, more unconscious\nsub-body. They are apparently of less lively and less sensitive tissue\nthan tongues or eyes or flesh; and like all bones they do not renew, of\ncourse, as often or as rapidly as flesh. But the difference between live\nand dead machines is quite as grave and quite as important as the\ndifference between live and dead men. The generally accepted idea a live\nthing is, that it is a thing that keeps dying and being born again every\nminute; it is seen to be alive by its responsiveness to the spirit, to\nthe intelligence that created it and that keeps re-creating it. I have\nknown thousands of factories; and every factory I have known that is\nreally strong or efficient has scales like a snake, and casts off its\nold self. All the people in it, and all the iron and wood in it, month\nby month are being renewed and shedding themselves. Any live factory can\nalways be seen moulting year after year. A live spirit goes all through\nthe machinery, a kind of nervous tissue of invention, of thought.\n\nWe already speak of live and dead iron, of live and dead engines or\nhalf-dead and half-sick engines, and we have learned that there is such\na thing as tired steel. What people do to steel makes a difference to\nit. Steel is sensitive to people. My human spirit grows my arm and moves\nit and guides it and expresses itself in it, keeps re-creating it and\ndestroying it; and daily my soul keeps rubbing out and writing in new\nlines upon my face; and in the same way my typewriter, in a slow, more\nstolid fashion, responds to my spirit too. Two men changing typewriters\nor motor-cars are, though more subtly, like two men changing boots.\nSewing machines, pianos, and fiddles grow intimate with the people who\nuse them, and they come to express those particular people and the ways\nin which they are different from others. A Titian-haired typewriter girl\nmakes her machine move differently every day from a blue-eyed one.\nTypewriters never like to have their people take the liberty of lending\nthem. Steel bars and wooden levers all have little mannerisms, little\nexpressions, small souls of their own, habits of people that they have\nlived with, which have grasped the little wood and iron levers of their\nwills and made them what they are.\n\nIt is somewhere in the region of this fact that we are going to discover\nthe great determining secret of modern life, of the mastery of man over\nhis machines. Man, at the present moment, with all his new machines\nabout him, is engaged in becoming as self-controlled, as\nself-expressive, with his new machines, with his wireless telegraph arms\nand his railway legs, as he is with his flesh and blood ones. The force\nin man that is doing this is the spiritual genius in him that created\nthe machine, the genius of imperious and implacable self-expression, of\nglorious self-assertion in matter, the genius for being human, for being\nspiritual, and for overflowing everything we touch and everything we use\nwith our own wills and with the ideals and desires of our souls. The\nDutchman has expressed himself in Dutch architecture and in Dutch art;\nthe American has expressed himself in the motor-car; the Englishman has\nexpressed himself, has carved his will and his poetry upon the hills,\nand made his landscape a masterpiece by a great nation. He has made his\nwalls and winding roads, his rivers, his very treetops express his deep,\nsilent joy in the earth. So the great, fresh young nations to-day, with\na kind of new, stern gladness, implacableness, and hope, have appointed\nto their souls expression through machinery. Our Engines and our radium\nshall cry to God! Our wheels sing in the sun!\n\nMachinery is our new art-form. A man expresses himself first in his\nhands and feet, then in his clothes, and then in his rooms or in his\nhouse, and then on the ground about him; the very hills grow like him,\nand the ground in the fields becomes his countenance; and now, last and\nfurthest of all, requiring the liveliest and noblest grasp of his soul,\nthe finest circulation of will of all, he begins expressing himself in\nhis vast machines, in his three-thousand-mile railways, in his vast,\ncold-looking looms and dull steel hammers. With telescopes for Mars-eyes\nfor his spirit, he walks up the skies; he expresses his soul in deep and\ndark mines, and in mighty foundries melting and re-moulding the world.\nHe is making these things intimate, sensitive, and colossal expressions\nof his soul. They have become the subconscious body, the abysmal,\nsemi-infinite body of the man, sacred as the body of the man is sacred,\nand as full of light or of darkness.\n\nSo I have seen the machines go swinging through the world. Like\narchangels, like demons, they mount up our desires on the mountains. We\ndo as we will with them. We build Winchester Cathedral all over again,\non water. We dive down with our steel wheels and nose for\nknowledge--like a great Fish--along the bottom of the sea. We beat up\nour wills through the air. We fling up, with our religion, with our\nfaith, our bodies on the clouds. We fly reverently and strangely, our\nhearts all still and happy, in the face of God!\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER V\n\nAN OXFORD MAN AND AN INCH OF IRON\n\n\nThe whole process of machine-invention is itself the most colossal,\nspiritual achievement of history. The bare idea we have had of\nunravelling all creation, and of doing it up again to express our own\nsouls--the idea of subduing matter, of making our ideals get their way\nwith matter, with radium, ether, antiseptics, is itself a religion, a\npoetry, a ritual, a cry to heaven. The supreme, spiritual adventure of\nthe world has become this task that man has set himself, of breaking\ndown and casting away forever the idea that there is such a thing as\nmatter belonging to matter--matter that keeps on in a dead, stupid way,\njust being matter. The idea that matter is not all alive with our souls,\nwith our desires and prayers, with hope, terror, worship, with the\nlittle terrible wills of men and the spirit of God, is already\nirreligious to us. Is not every cubic inch of iron (the coldest-blooded\nscientist admits it) like a kind of little temple, its million million\nlittle atoms in it going round and round and round dancing before the\nLord?\n\nAnd why should an Oxford man be afraid of a cubic inch of iron, or\nafraid of becoming like it?\n\nI daily thank God that I have been allowed to belong to this generation.\nI have looked at last a little cubic inch of iron out of countenance. I\ncan sit and watch it, the little cubic inch of iron, in its still\ncoldness, in all its little funny play-deadness, and laugh! I know that\nto a telescope or a god, or to me, to us, the little cubic inch of iron\nis all alive inside, that it is whirling with will, that it is sensitive\nin a rather dead-looking but lively cosmic way, sensitive like another\nkind of more slowly quivering flesh, sensitive to moons and to stars\nand to heat and cold, to time and space and to human souls. It is\nsinging every minute low and strange, night and day, in its little grim\nblackness, of the glory of Things. I am filled with the same feeling,\nthe same sense of kindred, of triumphant companionship, when I go out\namong them and watch the majestic family of the machines, of the\nengines, those mighty Innocents, those new awful sons of God, going\nabroad through all the world, looking back at us when we have made them,\nunblinking and without sin!\n\nLike rain and sunshine, like chemicals, and like all the other innocent,\ngodlike things, and like waves of water and waves of air, rainbows,\nstarlight, they say what we make them say. They are alive with the life\nthat is in us.\n\nThe first element of power in a man, in getting control of his life in\nour modern era, is to have spirit enough to know what matter is like.\n\nThe Machine-Trainer is the man who sees what the machines are like. He\nis the man who conceives of iron-and-wood machines, in his daily habit\nof thought, as alive. He has discovered ways in which he can produce an\nimpression upon iron and wood with his desires, and with his will. He\ngoes about making iron-and-wood machines do live things.\n\nIt is never the machines that are dead.\n\nIt is only mechanical-minded men that are dead.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VI\n\nTHE MACHINES' MACHINES\n\n\nThe fate of civilization is not going to be determined by people who are\nmorbidly like machines on the one hand, or by people who are morbidly\nunmechanical, on the other.\n\nPeople in a machine civilization who try to live without being automatic\nand mechanical-minded part of the time and in some things, people who\ntry to make everything they do artistic and self-expressive and\nhand-made, who attend to all their own thoughts and finish off all their\nactions by hand themselves, soon wish they were dead.\n\nPeople who do everything they do mechanically, or by machinery, are dead\nalready.\n\nIt is bad enough for those of us who are trying to live our lives\nourselves--real, true, hand-made individual lives--to have to fight all\nthese machines about us trying daily to roar and roll us down into\nhumdrum and nothingness, without having to fight besides all these dear\npeople we have about us too, who have turned machines, even one's own\nflesh and blood. Does not one see them--see them everywhere--one's own\nflesh and blood, going about like stone-crushers, road-rollers, lifts,\nlawn-mowers?\n\nBetween the morbidly mechanical people and the morbidly unmechanical\npeople, modern civilization hangs in the balance.\n\nThere must be some way of being just mechanical enough, and at the right\ntime and right place, and of being just unmechanical enough at the right\ntime and right place. And there must be some way in which men can be\nmechanical and unmechanical at will.\n\nThe fate of civilization turns on men who recognize the nature of\nmachinery, who make machines serve them, who add the machines to their\nsouls, like telephones and wireless telegraph, or to their bodies, like\nradium and railroads, and who know when and when not and how and how not\nto use them who are so used to using machines quietly and powerfully,\nthat they do not let the machines outwit them and unman them.\n\nWho are these men?\n\nHow do they do it?\n\nThey are the Machine-Trainers. The men who understand people-machines,\nwho understand iron machines, and who understand how to make\npeople-machines and iron machines run softly together.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VII\n\nTHE MEN'S MACHINES\n\n\nThere was a time once in the old simple individual days when drygoods\nstores could be human. They expressed, in a quiet, easy way, the souls\nof the people who owned them.\n\nWhen machinery was invented and when organization was invented--machines\nof people--drygoods stores became vast selling machines.\n\nWe then faced the problem of making a drygoods store with twenty-five\nhundred clerks in it as human as a drygoods store with fifteen.\n\nThis problem has been essentially and in principle solved. At least we\nknow it is about to be solved. We are ready to admit--most of us--that\nit is practicable for a department store to be human. Everything the man\nat the top does expresses his human nature and his personality to his\nclerks. His clerks become twenty-five hundred more of him in miniature.\nWhat is more, the very stuff in which the clerks in department stores\nwork--the thing that passes through their hands, is human, and\neverything about it is human, or can be made human; and all the while\nvast currents of human beings, huge Mississippis of human feeling, flow\npast the clerks--thousands and thousands of souls a day, and pour over\ntheir souls, making them and keeping them human. The stream clears\nitself.\n\nBut what can we say about human beings in a mine, about the\npracticability of keeping human twenty-five hundred men in a hole in the\nground? And how can a mine-owner reach down to the men in the hole, make\nhimself felt as a human being on the bottom floor of the hole in the\nground?\n\nIn a department store the employer expresses himself to his clerks\nthrough every one of the other twenty-five hundred; they mingle and stir\ntheir souls and hopes and fears together, and he expresses himself to\nall of them through them all.\n\nBut in a mine, two men work all alone down in the dark hole in the\nground. Thousands of other men, all in dark holes, are near by, with\nnothing but the dull sound of picks to come between. In thousands of\nother holes men work, each with his helper, all alone. The utmost the\nhelper can do is to grow like the man he works with, or like his own\npick, or like the coal he chips out, or like the black hole. The utmost\nthe man who mines coal can do, in the way of being human, is with his\nhelper.\n\nIn a factory, for the most part, the only way, during working hours, an\nemployer can express himself and his humanness to his workman is through\nthe steel machine he works with--through its being a new, good, fair\nmachine or a poor one. He can only smile and frown at him with steel, be\ngood to him in wheels and levers, or now and then perhaps through a\nforeman pacing down the aisles.\n\nThe question the modern business man in a factory has to face is very\nlargely this: \"I have acres of machines all roaring my will at my men. I\nhave leather belts, printed rules, white steam, pistons, roar, air,\nwater and fire and silence to express myself to my workmen in. I have\nlong monotonous swings and sweeps of cold steel, buckets of melted iron,\nstrips of wood, bells, whistles, clocks--to express myself, to express\nmy human spirit to my men. Is there, or is there not, any possible way\nin which my factory with its machines can be made as human and as\nexpressive of the human as a department store?\"\n\nThis is the question that our machine civilization has set itself to\nanswer.\n\nAll the men with good honest working imaginations, the geniuses and the\nfreemen of the world, are setting themselves the task of answering it.\n\nSome say, \"Machines are on the necks of the men. We will take the\nmachines away.\"\n\nOthers say, \"We will make our men as good as our machines. We will make\nour inventions in men catch up with our inventions in machines.\"\n\nWe naturally turn to the employer first as having the first chance. What\nis there an employer can do to draw out the latent force in the men,\nevoke the divine, incalculable passion sleeping beneath in the\nmachine-walled minds, the padlocked wills, the dull unmined desires of\nmen? How can he touch and wake the solar plexus of labour?\n\nIf any employer desires to get into the inner substance of the most\ncommon type of workman, be an artist with him, express himself with him\nand change the nature of that substance, give it a different colour or\nlight or movement so that he will work three times as fast, ten times as\ncheerfully and healthfully, and with his whole body and soul, spirit,\nand how is he going to do it?\n\nMost employers wish they could do this. If they could persuade their men\nto believe in them, to begin to be willing to work with them instead of\nagainst them, they would do it.\n\nWhat form of language is there, whether of words or of actions, that an\nemployer can use to make the men who work nine hours a day for him and\nto whom he has to express himself across acres of machines, believe in\nhim and understand him?\n\nThe modern employer finds himself set sternly face to face, every day of\nhis life, with this question. All civilization seems crowding up day by\nday, seems standing outside his office door as he goes in and as he goes\nout, and asking him--now with despair, now with a kind of grim,\nimplacable hope, \"Do you believe, or do you not believe, a factory can\nbe made as human as a department store?\"\n\nThis question is going to be answered first by men who know what iron\nmachines really are, and what they are really for, and how they\nwork--who know what people-machines really are, and what they are really\nfor, and how they work. They will base all that they do upon certain\nresemblances and certain differences between people and machines.\n\nThey will work the machines of iron according to the laws of iron.\n\nThey will work the machines of men according to the laws of human\nnature.\n\nThere are certain facts in human nature, feelings, enthusiasms and\ngeneral principles concerning the natural working relation between men\nand machines, that it may be well to consider in the next chapter as a\nbasis for a possible solution.\n\nWhat are our machines after all? How are the machines like us? And on\nwhat theory of their relation to us can machines and men expect in a\nworld like this to run softly together? These are the questions men are\ngoing to answer next. In the meantime, I venture to believe that no man\nwho is morose to-day about the machines, or who is afraid of machines in\nour civilization--because they are machines--is likely to be able to do\nmuch to save the men in it.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VIII\n\nTHE BASEMENT OF THE WORLD\n\n\nEvery man has, according to the scientists, a place in the small of his\nback which might be called roughly, perhaps, the soul of his body. All\nthe little streets of the senses or avenues of knowledge, the spiritual\nconduits through which he lives in this world, meet in this little\nmighty brain in the small of a man's back.\n\nAbout nine hundred millions of his grandfathers apparently make their\nheadquarters in this little place in the small of his back.\n\nIt is in this one little modest unnoticed place that he is supposed to\nkeep his race-consciousness, his subconscious memory of a whole human\nrace, and it is here that the desires and the delights and labours of\nthousands of years of other people are turned off and turned on in him.\nIt is the brain that has been given to every man for the heavy everyday\nhard work of living. The other brain, the one with which he does his\nthinking and which is kept in an honoured place up in the cupola of his\nbeing, is a comparatively light-working organ, merely his own private\npersonal brain--a conscious, small, and supposably controllable affair.\nHe holds on to his own particular identity with it. The great lower\nbrain in the small of his back is merely lent to him, as it were, out of\neternity--while he goes by.\n\nIt is like a great engine which he has been allowed the use of as long\nas he can keep it connected up properly with his cerebral arrangements.\n\nThis appears to be mainly what the cerebral brain is for, this keeping\nthe man connected up. It acts as a kind of stopcock for one's infinity,\nfor screwing on or screwing off one's vast race-consciousness, one's\nall-humanityness, all those unsounded deeps or reservoirs of human\nenergy, of hope and memory, of love, of passionate thought, of earthly\nand heavenly desire that are lent to each of us as we slip softly by for\nseventy years, by a whole human race.\n\nA human being is a kind of factory. The engine and the works and all the\nvarious machines are kept in the basement, and he sends down orders to\nthem from time to time, and they do the work which has been conceived up\nin the headquarters. He expects the works down below to keep on doing\nthese things without his taking any particular notice of them, while he\noccupies his mind, as the competent head of a factory should, with the\nthings that are new and different and special and that his mind alone\ncan do--the things which, at least in their present initial formative or\ncreative stage, no machines as yet have been developed to do, and that\ncan only be worked out by the man up in the headquarters himself\npersonally, by the handiwork of his own thought.\n\nThe more a human being develops, the more delicate, sensitive, strong,\nand efficient, the more spirit-informed once for all the machines in the\nbasement are. As he grows, the various subconscious arrangements for\ndiscriminating, assimilating and classifying material, for pumping up\npower, light, and heat to headquarters, all of which can be turned on at\nwill, grow more masterful every year. They are found all slaving away\nfor him dimly down in the dark while he sleeps. They hand him up in his\nvery dreams new and strange powers to live and know with.\n\nThe men who have been the most developed of all, in this regard,\ncivilization has always selected and set apart from the others. It calls\nthese men, in their generation, men of genius.\n\nOrdinary men do not try to compete with men of genius.\n\nThe reason that people set the genius apart and do not try to compete\nwith him is that he has more and better machinery than they have. It is\nalways the first thing one notices about a man of genius--the incredible\nnumber of things that he manages to get done for him, apparently the\nthings that he never takes any time off, like the rest of us, to do\nhimself. The subconscious, automatic, mechanical equipment of his\nsenses, the extraordinary intelligence and refinement of his body, the\nway his senses keep his spirit informed automatically and convey outer\nknowledge to him, the power he has in return of informing this outer\nknowledge with his spirit, with his will, with his choices, once for all,\nso that he is always able afterward to rely on his senses to work out\nthings beautifully for him quite by themselves, and to hand up to him,\nwhen he wants them, rare, deep, unconscious knowledge--all the things he\nwants to use for what his soul is doing at the moment--it is these that\nmake the man of genius what he is. He has a larger and better factory\nthan others, and has developed a huge subconscious service in mind and\nbody. Having all these things done for him, he is naturally more free\nthan others and has more vision and more originality, his spirit is\nswung free to build new worlds--to take walks with God, until at last we\ncome to look upon him, upon the man of genius, a little superstitiously.\nWe look up every little while from doing the things ourselves that he\ngets done for him by his subconscious machinery, and we wonder at him,\nwe wonder at the strange, the mighty feats he does, at his\nthousand-leagued boots, at his apparent everywhereness. His songs and\njoys, sometimes, to us, his very sorrows, look miraculous.\n\nAnd yet it is all merely because he has a factory, a great automatic\nequipment, a thousand employee-sense perceptions, down in the basement\nof his being, doing things for him that the rest of us do, or think we\nare obliged to do ourselves, and give up all of our time to. He is not\nheld back as we are, and moves freely. So he dives under the sea\nfamiliarly, or takes peeps at the farther side of the stars, or he flies\nin the air, or he builds unspeakable railroads or thinks out ships or\nsea-cities, or he builds books, or he builds little new\nstill-undreamed-of worlds out of chemistry, or he unravels history out\nof rocks, or plants new cities and mighty states without seeming to try,\nor perhaps he proceeds quietly to be interested in men, in all these\nfunny little dots of men about him; and out of the earth and sky, out of\nthe same old earth and sky everybody else had had, he makes new kinds\nand new sizes of men with a thought like some mighty, serene child\nplaying with dolls!\n\nIt is generally supposed that the man of genius rules history and\ndictates the ideals, the activities of the next generation, writes out\nthe specifications for the joys and sorrows of a world, and lays the\nground-plans of nations because he has an inspired mind. It is really\nbecause he has an inspired body, a body that has received its orders\nonce for all, from his spirit. We would never wonder that everything a\ngenius does has that vivid and strange reality it has, if we realized\nwhat his body is doing for him, how he has a body which is at work\nautomatically drinking up the earth into everything he thinks, drinking\nup practicability, art and technique for him into everything he sees and\neverything he hopes and desires. And every year he keeps on adding a new\nbody, keeps on handing down to his basement new sets, every day, of\nfiner and yet finer things to do automatically. The great spiritual\ngenius becomes great by economizing his consciousness in one direction\nand letting it fare forth in another. He converts his old inspirations\ninto his new machines. He converts heat into power, and power into\nlight, and comes to live at last as almost any man of genius can really\nbe seen living--in a kind of transfigured or lighted-up body. The poet\ntransmutes his subconscious or machine body into words; and the artist,\ninto colour or sound or into carved stone. The engineer transmutes his\nsubconscious body into long buildings, into aisles of windows, into\nstories of thoughtful machines. Every great spiritual and imaginative\ngenius is seen, sooner or later, to be the transmuted genius of some\nman's body. The things in Leonardo da Vinci that his unconscious,\nhigh-spirited, automatic senses gathered together for him, piled up in\nhis mind for him, and handed over to him for the use of his soul, would\nhave made a genius out of anybody. It is not as if he had had to work\nout every day all the old details of being a genius, himself.\n\nThe miracles he seems to work are all made possible to him because of\nhis thousand man-power, deep subconscious body, his tremendous factory\nof sensuous machinery. It is as if he had practically a thousand men all\nworking for him, for dear life, down in his basement, and the things\nthat he can get these men to attend to for him give him a start with\nwhich none of the rest of us could ever hope to compete. We call him\ninspired because he is more mechanical than we are, and because his real\nspiritual life begins where our lives leave off.\n\nSo the poets who have filled the world with glory and beauty have been\nfree to do it because they have had more perfect, more healthful and\nimproved subconscious senses handing up wonder to them than the rest of\nus have.\n\nAnd so the engineers, living, as they always live, with that fierce,\nsilent, implacable curiosity of theirs, woven through their bodies and\nthrough their senses and through their souls, have tagged the Creator's\nfootsteps under the earth, and along the sky, every now and then\nthrowing up new little worlds to Him like His worlds, saying, \"Look, O\nGod, look at THIS!\"--the engineers whose poetry is too deep to look\npoetic have all done what they have done because the unconscious and\nautomatic gifts of their senses, of the powers of their observation,\nhave swung their souls free, given them long still reaches of thought\nand vast new orbits of desire, like gods.\n\nAll the great men of the world have always had machinery.\n\nNow, everybody is having it. The power to get little things,\ninnumerable, omnipresent, for-ever-and-ever things, tiny just-so things,\ndone for us automatically so that we can go on to our inspirations is no\nlonger to-day the special prerogative of men of genius. It is for all\nof us. Machinery is the stored-up spirit, the old saved-up inspiration\nof the world turned on for every man. And as the greatness of a man\nturns on his command over machinery, on his power to free his soul by\nmaking his body work for him, the greatness of a civilization turns upon\nits getting machines to do its work. The more of our living we can learn\nto do to-day, automatically, the more inspired and creative and godlike\nand unmechanical our civilization becomes.\n\nMachinery is the subconscious mind of the world.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IX\n\nTHE GROUND FLOOR FOLKS\n\n\nI would not have, if I could afford it, a thing in my house that is not\nhand-made. I have come to believe that machinery is going to make it\npossible for everybody to have hand-made things in their homes, things\nthat have been made by people who love to make them, and by people who,\nthinks to the machines, are soon bound to have time to make them. Some\nwill have gifts for hand-made furniture, others for hand-made ideas.\nPerhaps people will even have time for sitting down to enjoy hand-made\nideas, to enjoy hand-made books--and enjoy reading books by hand. We may\nhave time for following an author in a book in the slow, old, deep,\nloving, happy, hand-made fashion we used to know--when we have enough\nmachines.\n\nIt looks as if it might be something like this.\n\nEvery man is going to spend his mornings in the basement of society,\ntaking orders and being a servant and executing automatically, like a\nmachine if need be, the will of the world, making what the world wants\nin the way it wants it, expressing society and subordinating himself. In\nthe afternoon he shall come up out of the basement, and take his stand\non the ground floor of the world, stop being a part of the machinery,\nand be a man, express himself and give orders to himself and do some\nwork he loves to do in the way he loves to do it, express his soul in\nhis labour, and be an artist. He will not select his work in the\nmorning, or select his employer, or say how the work shall be done. He\nwill himself be selected, like a young tree or like an iron nail,\nbecause he is the best made and best fitted thing at hand to be used in\na certain place and in a certain way.\n\nWhen the man has been selected for his latent capacities, his employer\nsets to work on him scientifically and according to the laws of physics,\nhygiene, conservation of energy, the laws of philosophy, human nature,\nheredity, psychology, and even metaphysics, teaches the man how to hold\nhis hands, how to lift, how to sit down, how to rest, and how to\nbreathe, so that three times as much work can be got out of him as he\ncould get out of himself. A mind of the highest rank and, if necessary,\nthirty minds of the highest rank, shall be at his disposal, shall be\nlent him to show him how his work can be done. The accumulated science\nand genius, the imagination and experience, of hundreds of years, of all\nclimates, of all countries, of all temperaments shall be heaped up by\nhis employers, gathered about the man's mind, wrought through his limbs,\nand help him to do his work.\n\nAll labour down in the basement of society shall be skilled labour. The\nbrains of men of genius and of experts shall be pumped into labour from\nabove until every man in the basement shall earn as much money in three\nhours a day as he formerly had earned in nine.\n\nBetween the time a man saves by having machinery and the time he saves\nby having the brains of great men and geniuses to work with, it will be\npossible for men to do enough work for other people down in the basement\nof the world in a few hours to shut the whole basement up, if we want\nto, by three o'clock. Every man who is fit for it shall spend the rest\nof his time in planning his work himself and in expressing himself, and\nin creating hand-made and beautiful, inspired and wilful things like an\nartist, or like a slowed-down genius, or at least like a man or like a\nhuman being.\n\nEvery man owes it to society to spend part of his time in expressing his\nown soul. The world needs him. Society cannot afford to let him merely\ngive to it his feet and his hands. It wants the joy in him, the\ncreative desire in him, the slow, stupid, hopeful initiative, in him to\nhelp run the world. Society wants to use the man's soul too--the man's\nwill. It is going to demand the soul in a man, the essence or good-will\nin him, if only to protect itself, and to keep the man from being\ndangerous. Men who have lost or suppressed their souls, and who go about\ncursing at the world every day they live in it, are not a safe, social\ninvestment.\n\nBut while every man is going to see that he owes it to society to use a\npart of his time in it in expressing himself, his own desires, in his\nown way, he is going to see also that he owes it to society to spend\npart of his time in expressing others and in expressing the desires and\nthe needs of others. The two processes could be best effected at first\nprobably by alternating, by keeping the man in equilibrium, balancing\nthe mechanical and the spiritual in his life. Eventually and ideally, he\nwill manage to have time in a higher state of society to put them\ntogether, to express in the same act at the same time, and not\nalternating or reciprocally, himself and others. And he will succeed in\ndoing what the great and free artist does already. He will make his\nindividual self-expression so great and so generous that it is also the\nexpression of the universal self. Every man will be treated according to\nhis own nature. Doubtless some men have not brains enough in a week to\nsupply them for one hour a day of self-directed work. It would take them\nfive hours a day to think how to do one hour's worth of work. Men who\nprefer, as many will, not to think, and who like the basement better,\ncan substitute in the basement for their sons, and buy if they like, the\nfreedom of sons who prefer thinking, who would like to work harder than\ntheir fathers would care to work, up on the ground floor of the world.\nBut as time goes on, it is to be hoped that every man will climb up\nslowly, and will belong less and less of his time to the staff that\nborrows brains, and more and more of his time to the staff that hands\nbrains down, and that directs the machinery of the world. The time of\nalternation in dealing with different callings will probably be adjusted\ndifferently, and might be made weeks instead of days, but the principle\nwould be the same. The forces that are going to help, apparently, in\nthis evolution will be the labour exchange--the centre for the\nmobilization of labour, the produce exchange, the inventor's spirit in\nthe labour unions and employers' associations, and the gradual\norganization by inventors of the common vision of all men, and setting\nit at work on the supreme task of modern life--the task of drawing out,\nevoking each particular man in the world, and in behalf of all, freeing\nhim for his own particular place.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER X\n\nTHE MACHINE-TRAINERS\n\n\nThe fundamental failure of humanity so far is in self-assertion.\n\nThe essential distinctive trait of modern civilization is machinery.\n\nMachinery logically and irrevocably involves the cooeperative action of\nindividuals.\n\nIf we make levers and iron wheels work by putting them together\naccording to their nature, we can only make vast masses of men work by\nputting them together according to their nature.\n\nSo far we have been trying to make vast masses of men work together in\nprecisely the same way we make levers and iron wheels work together. We\nhave thought we could make diabolically, foolishly, insanely inflexible\nmen-machines which violate at every point the natural qualities and\ninstincts of the materials of which they are made.\n\nWe have failed to assert ourselves against our iron machines. We have\nlet our iron machines assert themselves against us. We have let our iron\nmachines be models for us. We have overlooked the difference in the\nnature of the materials in machines of iron and machines of men.\n\nA man is a self-reproducing machine, and an iron machine is one that has\nto be reproduced by somebody else.\n\nIn a man-machine arrangements must be made so that each man can be\nallowed to be the father of his own children and the author of his own\nacts.\n\nIn society or the man-machine, if it is to work, men are individuals.\nSociety is organically, irrevocably dependent upon each man, and upon\nwhat each man chooses according to his own nature to do himself.\n\nThe result is, the first principle of success in constructing and\nrunning a social machine is to ask and to get an answer out of each man\nwho is, as we look him over and take him up, and propose to put him into\nit, \"What are you like?\" \"What are you especially for?\" \"What do you\nwant?\" \"How can you get it?\"\n\nOur success in getting him properly into our machine turns upon a loyal,\npatient, imperious attention on our part to what there is inside him,\ninside the particular individual man, and how we can get him to let us\nknow what is inside, get him to decide voluntarily to let us have it,\nand let us work it into the common end.\n\nIn this amazing, impromptu, new, and hurried machine civilization which\nwe have been piling up around us for a hundred years we have made\nmachines out of everything, and our one consummate and glaring failure\nin the machines we have made is the machine we have made out of\nourselves.\n\nMineral machines are made by putting comparatively dead, or at least\ndead-looking, matter together; vegetable machines or gardens, are made\nby studying little unconscious seeds that we can persuade to come up and\nto reproduce themselves. Man-machines are produced by putting up\npossible lives before particular individual men, and letting them find\nout (and finding out for ourselves, too), day by day, into which life\nthey will grow up.\n\nEverything in a social machine, if it is a machine that really works, is\nbased on the profound and special study of individuals: upon drawing out\nthe aptitudes and motives, choices and genius in each man; the passion,\nif he has any; the creative desire, the self-expressing,\nself-reproducing, inner manhood; the happy strength there is in him.\n\nTrades unions overlook this, and treat all men alike and all employers\nalike. Employers have very largely overlooked it.\n\nIt is the industrial, social, and religious secret of our modern machine\ncivilization. We need not be discouraged about machines, because the\nsecret of the machine civilization has as yet barely been noticed.\n\nThe elephants are running around in the garden. But they have merely\ntaken us by surprise. It is their first and their last chance. The men\nabout us are seeing what to do. We are to get control of the elephants,\nfirst, by getting control of ourselves. We are beginning to organize our\npeople-machines as if they were made of people; so that the people in\nthem can keep on being people, and being better ones. And as our\npeople-machines begin to become machines that really work, our iron\nmachines will no longer be feared. They will reach over and help. As we\nlook about us we shall see our iron machines at last, about all the\nworld, all joining in, all hard at work for us, a million, million\nmachines a day making the crowd beautiful.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XI\n\nMACHINES, CROWDS, AND ARTISTS\n\n\nA crowd civilization produces, as a matter of course, crowd art and art\nfor crowded conditions. This fact is at once the glory and the weakness\nof the kind of art a democracy is bound to have.\n\nThe most natural evidence to turn to first, of the crowd in a crowd age,\nis such as can be found in its literature, especially in its\nmasterpieces.\n\nThe significance of shaking hands with a Senator of the United States is\nthat it is a convenient and labour-saving way of shaking hands with two\nor three million people. The impressiveness of the Senator's Washington\nvoice, the voice on the floor of the Senate, consists in the mystical\nundertone--the chorus in it--multitudes in smoking cities, men and\nwomen, rich and poor, who are speaking when this man speaks, and who are\nsilent when he is silent, in the government of the United States.\n\nThe typical fact that the Senator stands for in modern life has a\ncorresponding typical fact in modern literature. The typical fact in\nmodern literature is the epigram, the senatorial sentence, the sentence\nthat immeasurably represents what it does not say. The difference\nbetween democracy in Washington and democracy in Athens may be said to\nbe that in Washington we have an epigram government, a government in\nwhich ninety million people are crowded into two rooms to consider what\nto do, and in which ninety million people are made to sit in one chair\nto see that it is done. In Athens every man represented himself.\n\nIt may be said to be a good working distinction between modern and\nclassic art that in modern art words and colours and sounds stand for\nthings, and in classic art they said them. In the art of the Greek,\nthings were what they seemed, and they were all there. Hence simplicity.\nIt is a quality of the art of to-day that things are not what they seem\nin it. If they were, we should not call it art at all. Everything stands\nnot only for itself and for what it says, but for an immeasurable\nsomething that cannot be said. Every sound in music is the senator of a\nthousand sounds, thoughts, and associations, and in literature every\nword that is allowed to appear is the representative in three syllables\nof three pages of a dictionary. The whistle of the locomotive, and the\nring of the telephone, and the still, swift rush of the elevator are\nmaking themselves felt in the ideal world. They are proclaiming to the\nideal world that the real world is outstripping it. The twelve thousand\nhorsepower steamer does not find itself accurately expressed in iambics\non the leisurely fleet of Ulysses. It is seeking new expression. The\ncommand has gone forth over all the beauty and over all the art of the\npresent world, crowded for time and crowded for space. \"Telegraph!\" To\nthe nine Muses the order flies. One can hear it on every side.\n\"Telegraph!\" The result is symbolism, the Morse alphabet of art and\n\"types,\" the epigrams of human nature, crowding us all into ten or\ntwelve people. The epic is telescoped into the sonnet, and the sonnet is\ncompressed into quatrains or Tabbs of poetry, and couplets are signed as\nmasterpieces. The novel has come into being--several hundred pages of\ncrowded people in crowded sentences, jostling each other to oblivion;\nand now the novel, jostled into oblivion by the next novel, is becoming\nthe short story. Kipling's short stories sum the situation up. So far as\nskeleton or plot is concerned, they are built up out of a bit of nothing\nput with an infinity of Kipling; so far as meat is concerned, they are\nthe Liebig Beef Extract of fiction. A single jar of Kipling contains a\nwhole herd of old-time novels lowing on a hundred hills.\n\nThe classic of any given world is a work of art that has passed through\nthe same process in being a work of art that that world has passed\nthrough in being a world. Mr. Kipling represents a crowd age, because he\nis crowded with it; because, above all others, he is the man who\nproduces art in the way the age he lives in is producing everything\nelse.\n\nThis is no mere circumstance of democracy. It is its manifest destiny\nthat it shall produce art for crowded conditions, that it shall have\ncrowd art. The kind of beauty that can be indefinitely multiplied is the\nkind of beauty in which, in the nature of things, we have made our most\ncharacteristic and most important progress. Our most considerable\nsuccess in pictures could not be otherwise than in black and white.\nBlack-and-white art is printing-press art; and art that can be produced\nin endless copies, that can be subscribed for by crowds, finds an\nextraordinary demand, and artists have applied themselves to supplying\nit. All the improvements, moving on through the use of wood and steel\nand copper, and the process of etching, to the photogravure, the\nlithograph, the moving picture, and the latest photograph in colour,\nwhatever else may be said of them from the point of view of Titian or\nMichael Angelo, constitute a most amazing and triumphant advance from\nthe point of view of making art a democracy, of making the rare and the\nbeautiful minister day and night to crowds. The fact that the mechanical\narts are so prominent in their relation to the fine arts may not seem to\nargue a high ideal amongst us; but as the mechanical arts are the body\nof beauty, and the fine arts are the soul of it, it is a necessary part\nof the ideal to keep body and soul together until we can do better.\nMourning with Ruskin is not so much to the point as going to work with\nWilliam Morris. If we have deeper feelings about wall-papers than we\nhave about other things, it is going to the root of the matter to begin\nwith wall-papers, to make machinery say something as beautiful as\npossible, inasmuch as it is bound to have, for a long time at least,\nabout all the say there is. The photograph does not go about the world\ndoing Murillos everywhere by pressing a button, but the camera habit is\ndoing more in the way of steady daily hydraulic lifting of great masses\nof men to where they enjoy beauty in the world than Leonardo da Vinci\nwould have dared to dream in his far-off day; and Leonardo's pictures,\nthanks to the same photograph, and everybody's pictures, films of paper,\ncountless spirits of themselves, pass around the world to every home in\nChristendom. The printing press made literature a democracy, and\nmachinery is making all the arts democracies. The symphony piano, an\ninvention for making vast numbers of people who can play only a few very\npoor things play very poorly a great many good ones, is a consummate\ninstance both of the limitation and the value of our contemporary\ntendency in the arts. The pipe organ, though on a much higher plane, is\nan equally characteristic contrivance making it possible for a man to be\na complete orchestra and a conductor all by himself, playing on a crowd\nof instruments, to a crowd of people, with two hands and one pair of\nfeet. It is a crowd invention. The orchestra--a most distinctively\nmodern institution, a kind of republic of sound, the unseen spirit of\nthe many in one--is the sublimest expression yet attained of the crowd\nmusic, which is, and must be, the supreme music of this modern day, the\nsymphony. Richard Wagner comes to his triumph because his music is the\nvoice of multitudes. The opera, a crowd of sounds accompanied by a crowd\nof sights, presented by one crowd of people on the stage to another\ncrowd of people in the galleries, stands for the same tendency in art\nthat the syndicate stands for in commerce. It is syndicate music; and in\nproportion as a musical composition in this present day is an\naggregation of multitudinous moods, in proportion as it is suggestive,\ncomplex, paradoxical, the way a crowd is complex, suggestive, and\nparadoxical--provided it be wrought at the same time into some vast and\nsplendid unity--just in this proportion is it modern music. It gives\nitself to the counterpoints of the spirit, the passion of variety in\nmodern life. The legacy of all the ages, is it not descended upon\nus?--the spirit of a thousand nations? All our arts are thousand-nation\narts, shadows and echoes of dead worlds playing upon our own. Italian\nmusic, out of its feudal kingdoms, comes to us as essentially solo\nmusic--melody; and the civilization of Greece, being a civilization of\nheroes, individuals, comes to us in its noble array with its solo arts,\nits striding heroes everywhere in front of all, and with nothing nearer\nto the people in it than the Greek Chorus, which, out of limbo, pale and\nfeatureless across all ages, sounds to us as the first far faint coming\nof the crowd to the arts of this groping world. Modern art, inheriting\neach of these and each of all things, is revealed to us as the struggle\nto express all things at once. Democracy is democracy for this very\nreason, and for no other: that all things may be expressed at once in\nit, and that all things may be given a chance to be expressed at once in\nit. Being a race of hero-worshippers, the Greeks said the best, perhaps,\nwhat could be said in sculpture; but the marbles and bronzes of a\ndemocracy, having average men for subjects, and being done by average\nmen, are average marbles and bronzes. We express what we have. We are in\na transition stage. It is not without its significance, however, that we\nhave perfected the plaster cast--the establishment of democracy among\nstatues, and mobs of Greek gods mingling with the people can be seen\nalmost any day in every considerable city of the world. The same\nprinciple is working itself out in our architecture. It is idle to\ncontend against the principle. The way out is the way through. However\neagerly we gaze at Parthenons on their ruined hills, if thirty-one-story\nblocks are in our souls thirty-one-story blocks will be our\nmasterpieces, whether we like it or not. They will be our masterpieces\nbecause they tell the truth about us; and while truth may not be\nbeautiful, it is the thing that must be told first before beauty can\nbegin. The beauty we are to have shall only be worked out from the truth\nwe have. Living as we do in a new era, not to see that the\nthirty-one-story block is the expression of a new truth is to turn\nourselves away from the one way that beauty can ever be found by men, in\nthis era or in any other.\n\nWhat is it that the thirty-one-story block is trying to say about us?\nThe thirty-one-story block is the masterpiece of mass, of immensity, of\nnumbers; with its 2427 windows and its 779 offices, and its crowds of\nlives piled upon lives, it is expressing the one supreme and\ncharacteristic thing that is taking place in the era in which we live.\nThe city is the main fact that modern civilization stands for, and\ncrowding is the logical architectural form of the city idea. The\nthirty-one-story block is the statue of a crowd. It stands for a\nspiritual fact, and it will never be beautiful until that fact is\nbeautiful. The only way to make the thirty-one-story block beautiful\n(the crowd expressed by the crowd) is to make the crowd beautiful. The\nmost artistic, the only artistic, thing the world can do next is to make\nthe crowd beautiful.\n\nThe typical city blocks, with their garrets in the lower stories of the\nsky, were not possible in the ancient world, because steel had not been\ninvented; and the invention of steel, which is not the least of our\ntriumphs in the mechanical arts, is in many ways the most\ncharacteristic. Steel is republican for stone. Putting whole quarries\ninto a single girder, it makes room for crowds; and what is more\nsignificant than this, inasmuch as the steel pillar is an invention that\nmakes it possible to put floors up first, and build the walls around the\nfloors, instead of putting the walls up first and supporting the floors\nupon the walls, as in the ancient world, it has come to pass that the\nmodern world being the ancient world turned upside down, modern\narchitecture is ancient architecture turned inside out, a symbol of many\nthings. The ancient world was a wall of individuals, supporting floor\nafter floor and stage after stage of society, from the lowest to the\nhighest; and it is a typical fact in this modern democratic world that\nit grows from the inside, and that it supports itself from the inside.\nWhen the mass in the centre has been finished, an ornamental stone\nfacing of great individuals will be built around it and supported by it,\nand the work will be considered done.\n\nThe modern spirit has much to boast of in its mechanical arts, and in\nits fine arts almost nothing, because the mechanical arts are studying\nwhat men are needing to-day, and the fine arts are studying what the\nGreeks needed three thousand years ago. To be a real classic is, first,\nto be a contemporary of one's own time; second, to be a contemporary of\none's own time so deeply and widely as to be a contemporary of all time.\nThe true Greek is a man who is doing with his own age what the Greeks\ndid with theirs, bringing all ages to bear upon it, and interpreting it.\nAs long as the fine arts miss the fundamental principle of this present\nage--the crowd principle, and the mechanical arts do not, the mechanical\narts are bound to have their way with us. And it were vastly better that\nthey should. Sincere and straightforward mechanical arts are not only\nmore beautiful than affected fine ones, but they are more to the point:\nthey are the one sure sign we have of where we are going to be beautiful\nnext. It is impossible to love the fine arts in the year 1913 without\nstudying the mechanical ones; without finding one's self looking for\nartistic material in the things that people are using, and that they are\nobliged to use. The determining law of a thing of beauty being, in the\nnature of things, what it is for, the very essence of the classic\nattitude in a utilitarian age is to make the beautiful follow the useful\nand inspire the useful with its spirit. The fine art of the next\nthousand years shall be the transfiguring of the mechanical arts. The\nmodern hotel, having been made necessary by great natural forces in\nmodern life, and having been made possible by new mechanical arts, now\nputs itself forward as the next great opportunity of the fine arts. One\nof the characteristic achievements of the immediate future shall be the\ntwentieth-century Parthenon--a Parthenon not of the great and of the few\nand of the gods, but of the great many, where, through mighty corridors,\nday and night, democracy wanders and sleeps and chatters and is sad and\nlives and dies, streets rumbling below. The hotel--the crowd\nfireside--being more than any other one thing, perhaps, the thing that\nthis civilization is about, the token of what it loves and of how it\nlives, is bound to be a masterpiece sooner or later that shall express\ndemocracy. The hotel rotunda, the parlour for multitudes, is bound to be\nmade beautiful in ways we do not guess. Why should we guess? Multitudes\nhave never wanted parlours before. The idea of a parlour has been to get\nout of a multitude. All the inevitable problems that come of having a\nwhole city of families live in one house have yet to be solved by the\nfine arts as well as by the mechanical ones. We have barely begun. The\ntime is bound to come when the radiator, the crowd's fireplace-in-a-pipe,\nshall be made beautiful; and when the electric light shall be taught\nthe secret of the candle; and when the especial problem of modern\nlife--of how to make two rooms as good as twelve--shall be mastered\naesthetically as well as mathematically; and when even the piano-folding,\nbed-bookcase-toilet-stand-writing-desk--a crowd invention for living\nin a crowd--shall either take beauty to itself or lead to beauty that\nserves the same end.\n\nWhile for the time being it seems to be true that the fine arts are\nlooking to the past, the mechanical arts are producing conditions in the\nfuture that will bring the fine arts to terms, whether they want to be\nbrought to terms or not. The mechanical arts hold the situation in their\nhands. It is decreed that people who cannot begin by making the things\nthey use beautiful shall be allowed no beauty in other things. We may\nwish that Parthenons and cathedrals were within our souls; but what the\ncathedral said of an age that had the cathedral mood, that had a\ncathedral civilization and thrones and popes in it, we are bound to say\nin some stupendous fashion of our own--something which, when it is built\nat last, will be left worshipping upon the ground beneath the sky when\nwe are dead, as a memorial that we too have lived. The great cathedrals,\nwith the feet of the huddled and dreary poor upon their floors, and\nsaints and heroes shining on their pillars, and priests behind the\nchancel with God to themselves, and the vast and vacant nave, symbol of\nthe heaven glimmering above that few could reach--it is not to these\nthat we shall look to get ourselves said to the nations that are now\nunborn; rather, though it be strange to say it, we shall look to\nsomething like the ocean steamship--cathedral of this huge unresting\nmodern world--under the wide heaven, on the infinite seas, with spars\nfor towers and the empty nave reversed filled with human beings'\nsouls--the cathedral of crowds hurrying to crowds. There are hundreds of\nthem throbbing and gleaming in the night--this very moment--lonely\ncities in the hollow of the stars, bringing together the nations of the\nearth.\n\nWhen the spirit of our modern way of living, the idea in it, the bare\nfacts about our modern human nature have been noticed at last by our\nmodern artists, masterpieces shall come to us out of every great and\nliving activity in our lives. Art shall tell the things these lives are\nabout. When this is once realized in America as it was in Greece, the\nfine arts shall cover the other arts as the waters cover the sea. The\nBrooklyn Bridge, swinging its web for immortal souls across sky and sea,\ncomes nearer to being a work of art than almost anything we possess\nto-day, because it tells the truth, because it is the material form of a\nspiritual idea, because it is a sublime and beautiful expression of New\nYork in the way that the Acropolis was a sublime and beautiful\nexpression of Athens. The Acropolis was beautiful because it was the\nabode of heroes, of great individuals; and the Brooklyn Bridge, because\nit expresses the bringing together of millions of men. It is the\narchitecture of crowds--this Brooklyn Bridge--with winds and sunsets and\nthe dark and the tides of souls upon it; it is the type and symbol of\nthe kind of thing that our modern genius is bound to make beautiful and\nimmortal before it dies. The very word \"bridge\" is the symbol of the\nfuture of art and of everything else, the bringing together of things\nthat are apart--democracy. The bridge, which makes land across the\nwater, and the boat, which makes land on the water, and the cable, which\nmakes land and water alike--these are the physical forms of the spirit\nof modern life, the democracy of matter. But the spirit has countless\nforms. They are all new and they are all waiting to be made beautiful.\nThe dumb crowd waits in them. We have electricity--the life current of\nthe republican idea--characteristically our foremost invention, because\nit takes all power that belongs to individual places and puts it on a\nwire and carries it to all places. We have the telephone, an invention\nwhich makes it possible for a man to live on a back street and be a\nnext-door neighbour to boulevards; and we have the trolley, the modern\nreduction of the private carriage to its lowest terms, so that any man\nfor five cents can have as much carriage power as Napoleon with all his\nchariots. We have the phonograph, an invention which gives a man a\nthousand voices; which sets him to singing a thousand songs at the same\ntime to a thousand crowds; which makes it possible for the commonest man\nto hear the whisper of Bismarck or Gladstone, to unwind crowds of great\nmen by the firelight of his own house. We have the elevator, an\ninvention for making the many as well off as the few, an approximate\narrangement for giving first floors to everybody, and putting all men on\na level at the same price--one more of a thousand instances of the\nextraordinary manner in which the mechanical arts have devoted\nthemselves from first to last to the Constitution of the United States.\nWhile it cannot be said of many of these tools of existence that they\nare beautiful now, it is enough to affirm that when they are perfected\nthey will be beautiful; and that if we cannot make beautiful the things\nthat we need, we cannot expect to make beautiful the things that we\nmerely want. When the beauty of these things is at last brought out, we\nshall have attained the most characteristic and original and expressive\nand beautiful art that is in our power. It will be unprecedented\nbecause it will tell unprecedented truths. It was the mission of\nancient art to express states of being and individuals, and it may be\nsaid to be in a general way the mission of our modern art to express the\nbeautiful in endless change, the movement of masses, coming to its\nsublimity and immortality at last by revealing the beauty of the things\nthat move and that have to do with motion, the bringing of all things\nand of all souls together on the earth.\n\nThe fulfillment of the word that has been written, \"Your valleys shall\nbe exalted, and your mountains shall be made low,\" is by no means a\nbeautiful process. Democracy is the grading principle of the beautiful.\nThe natural tendency the arts have had from the first to rise from the\nlevel of the world, to make themselves into Switzerlands in it, is\nfinding itself confronted with the Constitution of the United States--a\nConstitution which, whatever it may be said to mean in the years to\ncome, has placed itself on record up to the present time, at least, as\nstanding for the tableland.\n\nThe very least that can be granted to this Constitution is that it is so\nconsummate a political document that it has made itself the creed of our\ntheology, philosophy, and sociology; the principle of our commerce and\nindustry; the law of production, education, and journalism; the method\nof our life; the controlling characteristic and the significant force in\nour literature; and the thing our religion and our arts are about.\n\n\n\n\nPART THREE\n\nPEOPLE-MACHINES\n\nCHAPTER I\n\nNOW!\n\n\nThis outlook or glimmer of vision I have tried to trace, for the art of\ncrowds is something we want, and want daily, in the future. We want\ndaily a future. But, after all, it is a future.\n\nI speak in this present chapter as one of the crowd who wants something\nnow.\n\nI find myself in a world in which apparently some vast anonymous\narrangement was made about me and about my life, before I was born. This\narrangement seems to be, as I understand it, that if I want to live\nwhile I am on this planet a certain sort of life or be a certain sort of\nperson, I am expected practically to take out a permit for it from the\nproper authorities.\n\nIn the previous chapter I made a request of the authorities, as perhaps\nthe reader will remember. I said, \"I want to be good now.\"\n\nIn this one I have a further request to make of the authorities: \"I want\nto be beautiful.\"\n\nI want to be beautiful now.\n\nI find thousands of other people about me on every hand making these\nsame two requests. I find that the authorities do not seem to notice\ntheir requests any more than they have noticed mine.\n\nSome of us have begun to suspect that we must have made the request in\nthe wrong way. Perhaps we should not ask a world--a great, vague thing\nlike the world in general--to make any slight arrangement we may need\nfor being beautiful. We have come to feel that we must ask somebody in\nparticular, and do something in particular, and find some one in\nparticular with whom we can do it. There is getting to be but one course\nopen to a man if he wants to be beautiful. He must bone down and work\nhard with his soul, make himself see precisely what it is and who it is\nstanding between him and a beautiful world. He must ask particular\npersons in particular positions if they do not think he ought to be\nallowed to be beautiful. He must ask some millionaire probably\nfirst--his employer, for instance--to stop getting in his way, and at\nleast to step one side and let him reason with him. And when he cannot\nask his millionaire--his own particular humdrum millionaire--to step one\nside and reason with him, he must ask iron-machines to step one side and\nreason with him. After this he must ask crowds to please to step one\nside and reason with him.\n\nWhatever happens, he is sure to find always these same three great,\nimponderable obstructions in the way of his being beautiful--the humdrum\nmillionaires, the iron-machines, and crowds.\n\nIn the old days when any one wanted to be beautiful he found it more\nconvenient. There was very likely some one who was more beautiful than\nhe was nearby, some one who found him craving the same thing that he had\ncraved, and who recognized it and delighted in it, and who could make\nroom and help.\n\nNowadays, if one wants to be beautiful one must ask everybody. Every man\nfinds it the same. He must ask millions of people to let him be\nsomething, one after the other in rows, that they do not want him to be\nor do not care whether he is or not. He has to ask more people than he\ncould count, before he dies, to let him be beautiful. Many of them that\nhe has to ask, sometimes most of them, are his inferiors.\n\nI have tried to deal with how it is going to be possible for a man to\nbreak through to being beautiful, past millionaires and past\niron-machines. I would like now to deal with the people-machines or\ncrowds, and how perhaps to break past them and be beautiful in behalf of\nthem, in spite of them.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER II\n\nCOMMITTEES AND COMMITTEES\n\n\nThe problem seems to be something like this. One finds one has been born\nand put here whether or no, and that one is inextricably alive in a\nstate of society in which men are coming to live in a kind of vast\ndisease of being obliged to do everything together.\n\nWe are still old-fashioned enough to be born one at a time, but we are\neducated in litters and we do our work in the world in herds and gangs.\nEven the upper classes do their work in gangs, and with overseers and\nlittle crowds called committees. Our latest idea consists in putting\nparts of a great many different men together to make one great\none--forming a committee to make a man of genius.\n\nThere is no denying that, in a way, a committee does things; but what\nbecomes of the committee?\n\nAnd the lower in the scale of life we go the more committees it takes to\ndo the work of one man and the more impossible it becomes to find\nanything but parts of men to do things. I put it frankly to the reader.\nThe chances are nine out of ten that when you meet a man nowadays and\nlook at him hard or try to do something with him you find he is not a\nman at all but is some subsection of a committee. You cannot even talk\nwith such a man without selecting some subsection of some subject which\ninterests him; and if you select any other subsection than his\nsubsection he will think you a bore; and if you select his subsection he\nwill think that you do not know anything.\n\nAnd if you want to get anything done that is different, or that is the\nleast bit interesting, and want to get some one to do it, how will you\ngo about it? You will find yourself being sent from one person to\nanother; and before you know it you find yourself mixed up with nine or\nten subdivisions of nine or ten committees; and after you have got your\nnine or ten subsections of nine or ten committees to get together to\nconsider what it is you want done, they will tell you, after due\ndeliberation, that it is not worth doing, or that you had better do it\nyourself. Then every subsection of every committee will go home\nmuttering under its breath to every other subsection that a man who\nwants slightly different and interesting things done in society is a\npublic nuisance; and that the man who does not know what subsection he\nis in and what subsection of a man he was intended to be, and who tries\nto do things, carries dismay and anger on every side around him. Drop\ninto your pigeonhole and be filed away, O Gentle Reader! Do you think\nyou are a soul? No; you are Series B. No. 2574, top row on the left.\n\nIn my morning paper the other day I read that in a factory whose long\nwindows I often pass in the train, they have their machinery so\nperfected that it takes sixty-four machines to make one shoe.\n\nQuery--If it takes sixty-four machines run by sixty-four men who do\nnothing else to make one shoe, how many machines would it take, and how\nmany shoes, to make one man?\n\nQuery--And when an employer in a shoe factory deals with his employee,\ncan it really be said, after all, that he is dealing with _him_? He is\ndealing with _It_--with Nine Hours a Day, of one sixty-fourth of a man.\n\nThe natural effect of crowds and of machines is to make a man feel that\nhe is, and always was, and always will be, immemorially, unanimously,\ninnumerably nobody.\n\nSometimes we are allowed a little faint numeral to dangle up over our\noblivion. Not long ago I saw a notice or letter in the _West\nBulletin_--probably from a member of something--ending like this: \"...\nI hope the readers of the _Bulletin_ will ponder over this suggestion of\n_Number_ 29,619.--Sincerely yours, _No._ 11, 175.\"\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER III\n\nTHE INCONVENIENCE OF BEING HUMAN\n\n\nI shall never forget one day I spent in New York some years ago--more\nyears than I thought at first. It was a wrong-headed day, but I cannot\nhelp remembering it as a symbol of a dread I still feel at times in New\nYork--a feeling of being suddenly lifted, of being swept out under (it\nis like the undertow of the sea) into a kind of vast deep of\nimpersonality--swept out of myself into a wide, imperious waste or\nemptiness of people. I had come fresh from my still country meadow and\nmountain, my own trees and my own bobolinks and my own little island of\nsky up over me, and in the vast and desolate solitude of men and women I\nwandered about up and down the streets. Every block I saw, every window,\nskyline, engine, street-car, every human face, made me feel as if I\nbelonged to another world. Here was a great conspiracy in stone and iron\nagainst my own life with myself. Was there a soul in all this huge roar\nand spectacle of glass and stone and passion that cared for the things\nthat I cared for, or the things that I loved, or that would care one\nshuffle of all the feet upon the stones for any thought or word or\ndesire of mine? The rain swept in my face, and I spent the day walking\nup and down the streets looking at stones and glass and people. _\"Here\nwe are!\"_ say the great buildings crowding on the sky. _\"Who are\nyou?\"_....all the stone and the glass and the walls, the mighty\nsyndicate of matter everywhere, surrounded me--one little, shivering,\nfoolish mote of being fighting foolishly for its own little foolish mote\nof identity!\n\nAnd I do not believe that I was all wrong. New York, like some vast,\nimplacable cone of ether, some merciless anaesthetic, was thrust down\nover me and my breathing, and I still had a kind of left-over prejudice\nthat I wanted to be myself, with my own private self-respect, with my\nown private, temporarily finished-off, provisionally complete\npersonality. I felt then, and I still feel to-day, that every man, as he\nfights for his breath, must stand out at least part of his time for the\nright of being self-contained. It is, and always will be, one of the\nappalling sights of New York to me--the spectacle of the helplessness,\nthe wistfulness, of all those poor New York people without one another.\nSometimes the city seems to be a kind of huge monument or idol or shrine\nof crowds. It seems to be a part of the ceaseless crowd action or crowd\ncorrosion on the sense of identity in the human spirit that the man who\nlives in crowds should grow more dull and more literal about himself\nevery day. He becomes a mere millionth of something. All these other\npeople he sees about him hurrying to and fro are mere millionths too. He\ngrows more and more obliged to live with a vast bulk of people if he is\nto notice people at all. Unless he sees all the different kinds of\npeople and forms of life with his own eye, and feels human beings with\nhis hands, as it were, he does not know and sympathize with them. The\ncrowd-craving or love of continual city life on the part of many people\ncomes to be a sheer lack of imagination, an inability to live in\nqualities instead of quantities in men. To live merely in a city is not\nto know the real flavour of life any more than the daily paper knows\nit--the daily paper, the huge dull monster of observation, the seer of\noutsides. The whole effect of crowds on the individual man is to\nemphasize scareheads and appearances, advertisements, and the huge\ngeneral showing off. The ride in the train from New Haven to New York is\nthe true portrait of a crowd. Crowds of soaps and patent medicines\nstraining on trees and signboard out of the gentle fields toward crowds\nof men, culminating at last in Woodlawn Cemetery, where the marble\nsignposts of death flaunt themselves. Oblivion itself is advertised, and\nthe end of the show of a show world is placarded on our graves. Men buy\nspace in papers for cards, and bits of country scenery by the great\nrailroads to put up signboards, and they spend money and make constant\nefforts to advertise that they are alive, and then they build expensive\nmonuments to advertise that they are dead....\n\nThe same craving for piled-up appearances is brought to bear by crowds\nupon their arts. Even a gentle soul like Paderewski, full of a personal\nand strange beauty that he could lend to everything he touched, finds\nhimself swept out of himself at last by the huge undertow of crowds.\nScarcely a season but his playing has become worn down at the end of it\ninto shrieks and hushes. Have I not watched him at the end of a tour,\nwhen, one audience after the other, those huge Svengalis had hypnotized\nhim--thundering his very subtleties at them, hour after hour, in\nCarnegie Hall? One could only wonder what had happened, sit by\nhelplessly, watch the crowd--thousands of headlong human beings lunging\ntheir souls and their bodies through the music, weeping, gasping,\nhuzzaing, and clapping to one another. After every crash of new\ncrescendo, after every precipice of silence, they seemed to be crying,\n\"This is Soul! Oh, this is Soul!\" The feeling of a vast audience holding\nits breath, no matter why it does it or whether it ought to do it or\nnot, seems to have become almost a religious rite of itself. Vistas of\nfaces gallery after gallery hanging on a note, two or three thousand\nsouls suspended in space all on one tiny little ivory lever at the end\nof one man's forefinger ... dim lights shining on them and soft\nvibrations floating round them ... going to hear Paderewski play at the\nend of his season was going to hear a crowd at a piano singing with its\nown hands and having a kind of orgy with itself. One could only remember\nthat there had been a Paderewski once who hypnotized and possessed his\naudience by being hypnotized and possessed by his own music. One liked\nto remember him--the Paderewski who was really an artist and who\nperformed the function of the artist showering imperiously his own\nvisions on the hearts of the people.\n\nAnd what is true in music one finds still truer in the other arts. One\nkeeps coming on it everywhere--the egotism of cities, the\nself-complacency of the crowds swerving the finer and the truer artists\nfrom their functions, making them sing in hoarse crowd-voices instead of\nsinging in their own and giving us themselves. Nearly all our acting has\nbeen corroded by crowds. Some of us have been obliged almost to give up\ngoing to the theatre except to very little ones, and we are wondering if\nchurches cannot possibly be made small enough to believe great things,\nor if galleries cannot be arranged with few enough people in them to\nallow us great paintings, or if there will not be an author so well\nknown to a few men that he will live forever, or if some newspaper will\nnot yet be great enough to advertise that it has a circulation small\nenough to tell the truth.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IV\n\nLETTING THE CROWD HAVE PEOPLE IN IT\n\n\nSo we face the issue.\n\nNothing beautiful can be accomplished in a crowd civilization, by the\ncrowd for the crowd, unless the crowd is beautiful. No man who is\nengaged in looking under the lives about him, who wishes to face the\nfacts of these lives as they are lived to-day, will find himself able to\navoid this last and most important fact in the history of the world--the\nfact that, whatever it may mean, or whether it is for better or worse,\nthe world has staked all that it is and has been, and all that it is\ncapable of being, on the one supreme issue, \"How can the crowd be made\nbeautiful?\"\n\nThe answer to this question involves two difficulties: (1) A crowd\ncannot make itself beautiful. (2) A crowd will not let any one else make\nit beautiful.\n\nThe men who have been on the whole the most eager democrats of\nhistory--the real-idealists--the men who love the crowd and the\nbeautiful too, and who can have no honest or human pleasure in either of\nthem except as they are being drawn together, are obliged to admit that\nliving in a democratic country, a country where politics and aesthetics\ncan no longer be kept apart, is an ordeal that can only be faced a large\npart of the time with heavy hearts. We are obliged to admit that it is a\ncountry where paintings have little but the Constitution of the United\nStates wrought into them; where sculpture is voted and paid for by the\ncommon people; where music is composed for majorities; where poetry is\nsung to a circulation; where literature itself is scaled to\nsubscription lists; where all the creators of the True and the Beautiful\nand the Good may be seen almost any day tramping the tableland of the\naverage man, fed by the average man, allowed to live by the average man,\nplodding along with weary and dusty steps to the average man's\nforgetfulness. And, indeed, it is not the least trait of this same\naverage man that he forgets, that he is forgotten, that his slaves are\nforgotten, that the world remembers only those who have been his\nmasters.\n\nOn the other hand, the literature of finding fault with the average man\n(which is what the larger part of our more ambitious literature really\nis) is not a kind of literature that can do anything to mend matters.\nThe art of finding fault with the average man, with the fact that the\nworld is made convenient for him, is inferior art because it is helpless\nart. The world is made convenient for the average man because it has to\nbe, to get him to live in it; and if the world were not made convenient\nfor him, the man of genius would find living with him a great deal more\nuncomfortable than he does. He would not even be allowed the comfort of\nsaying how uncomfortable. The world belongs to the average man, and,\nexcepting the stars and other things that are too big to belong to him,\nthe moment the average man deserves anything better in it or more\nbeautiful in it than he is getting, some man of genius rises by his\nside, in spite of him, and claims it for him. Then he slowly claims it\nfor himself. The last thing to do, to make the world a good place for\nthe average man, would be to make it a world with nothing but average\nmen in it. If it is the ideal of democracy that there shall be a slow\nmassive lifting, a grading up of all things at once; that whatever is\nhighest in the true and the beautiful, and whatever is lowest in them\nshall be graded down and graded up to the middle height of human life,\nwhere the greatest numbers shall make their home and live upon it; if\nthe ideal of democracy is tableland--that is--mountains for\neverybody--a few mountains must be kept on hand to make tableland out\nof.\n\nTwo solutions, then, of a crowd civilization--having the extraordinary\nmen crowded out of it as a convenience to the average ones, and having\nthe average men crowded out of it as a convenience to the extraordinary\nones--are equally impracticable.\n\nThis brings us to the horns of our dilemma. If the crowd cannot be made\nbeautiful by itself, and if the crowd will not allow itself to be made\nbeautiful by any one else, the crowd can only be made beautiful by a man\nwho lives so great a life in it that he can make a crowd beautiful\nwhether it allows him to or not.\n\nWhen this man is born to us and looks out on the conditions around him,\nhe will find that to be born in a crowd civilization is to be born in a\ncivilization, first, in which every man can do as he pleases; second, in\nwhich nobody does. Every man is given by the Government absolute\nfreedom; and when it has given him absolute freedom the Government says\nto him, \"Now if you can get enough other men, with their absolute\nfreedom, to put their absolute freedom with your absolute freedom, you\ncan use your absolute freedom in any way you want.\" Democracy, seeking\nto free a man from being a slave to one master, has simply increased the\nnumber of masters a man shall have. He is hemmed in with crowds of\nmasters. He cannot see his master's huge amorphous face. He cannot go to\nhis master and reason with him. He cannot even plead with him. You can\ncry your heart out to one of these modern ballot-boxes. You have but one\nballot. They will not count tears. The ultimate question in a crowd\ncivilization becomes, not \"What does a thing mean?\" or \"What is it\nworth?\" but \"How much is there of it?\" \"If thou art a great man,\" says\ncivilization, \"get thou a crowd for thy greatness. Then come with thy\ncrowd and we will deal with thee. It shall be even as thou wilt.\" The\npressure has become so great, as is obvious on every side, that men who\nare of small or ordinary calibre can only be more pressed by it. They\nare pressed smaller and smaller--the more they are civilized, the\nsmaller they are pressed; and we are being daily brought face to face\nwith the fact that the one solution a crowd civilization can have for\nthe evil of being a crowd civilization is the man in the crowd who can\nwithstand the pressure of the crowd; that is to say, the one solution of\na crowd civilization is the great-man solution--a solution which is none\nthe less true because by name, at least, it leaves most of us out or\nbecause it is so familiar that we have forgotten it. The one method by\nwhich a crowd can be freed and can be made to realize itself is the\ngreat-man method--the method of crucifying and worshipping great men,\nuntil by crucifying and worshipping great men enough, inch by inch, and\nera by era, it is lifted to greatness itself.\n\nNot very many years ago, certain great and good men, who, at the cost of\ninfinite pains, were standing at the time on a safe and lofty rock\nprotected from the fury of their kind by the fury of the sea, contrived\nto say to the older nations of the earth, \"All men are created equal.\"\nIt is a thing to be borne in mind, that if these men, who declared that\nall men were created equal, had not been some several hundred per cent.\nbetter men than the men they said they were created equal to, it would\nnot have made any difference to us or to any one else whether they had\nsaid that all men were created equal or not, or whether the Republic had\never been started or not, in which every man, for hundreds of years,\nshould look up to these men and worship them as the kind of men that\nevery man in America was free to try to be equal to. A civilization by\nnumbers, a crowd civilization, if it had not been started by heroes,\ncould never have been started at all. Shall this civilization attempt to\nlive by the crowd principle, without men in it who are living by the\nhero principle? On our answer to this question hangs the question\nwhether this civilization, with all its crowds, shall stand or fall\namong the civilizations of the earth. The main difference between the\nheroes of Plymouth Rock, the heroes who proclaimed freedom in 1776, and\nthe heroes who must contrive to proclaim freedom now, is that tyranny\nnow is crowding around the Rock, and climbing up on the Rock,\neighty-seven million strong, and that tyranny then was a half-idiot king\nthree thousand miles away.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nWe know or think we know, some of us--at least we have taken a certain\njoy in working it out in our minds, and live with it every day--how\npeople in crowds are going to be beautiful by and by.\n\nThe difficulty of being beautiful now, I have tried to express. It seems\nbetter to express, if possible, what a difficulty is before trying to\nmeet it.\n\nAnd now we would like to try to meet it. How can we determine what is\nthe most practical and natural way for crowds of people to try to be\nbeautiful now?\n\nIt would seem to be a matter of crowd psychology, of crowd technique,\nand of determining how human nature works.\n\nAll thoughtful people are agreed as to the aim.\n\nEverything turns on the method.\n\nIn the following chapters we will try to consider the technique of being\nbeautiful in crowds.\n\n\n\n\nBOOK FOUR\n\nCROWDS AND HEROES\n\n\nTO WALT WHITMAN\n\n    _\"And I saw the free souls of poets,\n    The loftiest bards of all ages strode before me\n    Strange large men, long unwaked, undisclosed, were disclosed to me\n    ... O my rapt verse, my call, mock me not!\n    ... I will not be outfaced by irrational things,\n    I will penetrate what is sarcastic upon me,\n    I will make cities and civilizations defer to me\n    This is what I have learnt from America--\n\n    I will confront these shows of the day and night\n    I will know if I am to be less than they,\n    I will see if I am not as majestic as they,\n    I will see if I am not as subtle and real as they,\n    I will see if I have no meaning while the houses and\n        ships have meaning,\n\n    ... I am for those that have never been mastered,\n    For men and women whose tempers have never been mastered,\n    For those whom laws, theories, conventions can never master.\n\n    I am for those who walk abreast of the whole earth\n    Who inaugurate one to inaugurate all.\"_\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER I\n\nTHE SOCIALIST AND THE HERO\n\n\nI was spending a little time not long ago with a man of singularly\ndevoted and noble spirit who had dedicated his life and his fortune to\nthe Socialist movement. We had had several talks before, and always with\na little flurry at first of hopefulness toward one another's ideas. We\nboth felt that the other, for a mere Socialist or for a mere\nIndividualist, was really rather reasonable. We admitted great tracts of\nthings to one another, and we always felt as if by this one next\nargument, perchance, or by one further illustration, we would convince\nthe other and rescue him like a brand from the burning.\n\nThe last time I saw him he started in at once at the station as we\nclimbed up into the car by telling me what he was doing. He was studying\nup the heroes of the American Revolution, and was writing something to\nshow that they were not really heroes after all. All manner of things\nwere the matter with them. They had always troubled him, he said. He\nknew there was something wrong, and he was glad to have the matter\nsettled. He said he did not, and never had believed in heroes, and\nthought they did a great deal of harm--even dead ones. Heroes, he said,\nalways deceived the people. They kept people from seeing that nothing\ncould be done in our modern society by any one man. Only crowds could do\nthings, he intimated--each man, like one little wave on the world,\nwavering up to the shore and dying away.\n\nAs the evening wore on our conversation became more concrete, and I\nbegan to drag in, of course, every now and then, naturally, an inspired\nor semi-inspired millionaire or so.\n\nI cannot say that these gentlemen were received with enthusiasm.\n\nFinally, I turned on him. \"What is it that makes you so angry (and\nnearly all the Socialists) every time you hear something good, something\nyou cannot deny is good, about a successful business man? If I brought a\nrow of inspired millionaires, say ten or twelve of them one after the\nother, into your library this minute, you would get hotter and hotter\nwith every one, wouldn't you? You would scarcely speak to me.\"\n\n---- intimated that he was afraid I was deceived; he was afraid that I\nwas going about deceiving other people about its being possible for mere\nindividual men to be good; he was afraid I was doing a great deal of\ndamage.\n\nHe then confided to me that not so very long ago he dropped in one\nMonday morning into his guest-chamber just after his guest had gone and\nfound a copy of \"Inspired Millionaires,\" which his guest had obviously\nbeen reading over Sunday, lying on the little reading-table at the head\nof the bed.\n\nHe said that he took the book back to his library, took out two or three\nencyclopaedias from the shelf in the corner, put my inspired millionaires\nin behind them, put the encyclopaedias back, and that they had been there\nto this day.\n\nWith this very generous and kindly introduction we went on to a frank\ntalk on the general attitude of Socialists toward the instinct of\nhero-worship in human nature.\n\nA Socialist had said only a few days before, speaking of a certain\nmunicipal movement in which the people were interested, that he thought\nit really had a very good chance to succeed \"if only the heroes could be\nstaved off a little longer.\" He deprecated the almost incurable idea\npeople seemed to have that nothing could ever be done in this world\nwithout being all mixed up with heroes.\n\nMy mind kept recurring in a perplexed way to this remark for a few days\nafter I had heard it, and I soon came on the following letter from a\nprominent Socialist which had been read at a dinner the night before:\n\n    \"I am glad to join with others of my comrades in conveying\n    greetings to Comrade Cahan on the occasion of the fiftieth\n    anniversary of his birth and in recognition of the eminent\n    services that he has rendered in the Socialist movement.\n\n    \"Yet my gladness is not untinged with a certain note of\n    apprehension lest in expressing so conspicuously our esteem of\n    an honoured comrade we obscure the broader scene which, if\n    equally illumined, would disclose tens of thousands of other\n    comrades, labouring with equal devotion, and each no less\n    worthy of praise....\n\n    \"In our rejoicing over the services of Comrade Cahan let us\n    not forget that the facilities that he and that each of us\n    enjoy are the products of thousands of other men and women,\n    and sometimes of children too.\n\n    \"In our rejoicing let us recall that we cannot safely assume\n    that any comrade's services to the movement have been greater\n    than the movement's services to him; that we are but\n    fellow-workers together, deriving help and perhaps inspiration\n    one from another and each from all.\n\n    \"In our rejoicing let us place the emphasis rather upon the\n    services of the many to each, than upon the services of any\n    one of the many.\"\n\nI have not quoted from this letter because I disagree with the idea in\nit. I am ready to admit that though the idea is a somewhat dampening one\nperhaps for a banquet, that it is true and important.\n\nWhat I object to in the letter is the Fear in it.\n\nIn spite of the fineness and truth of the motive that lies, I know,\nunderneath every line, the letter is baleful, sinister, and weary.\n\nI accuse the letter of being, in a kind of nobly sick way, visionary,\nunpractical, and socially destructive.\n\nI would heartily agree with the writer of the letter about the quality\nof many heroes, possibly about most heroes. I would agree in a large\nmeasure that the heroes the crowds choose are the wrong ones.\n\nBut there is a great difference between his belief and mine as to our\npractical working policy in getting the things for crowds that we both\nwant for them. It seems to me that he does not believe in crowds. He is\nfilled with fear that they would select the wrong heroes. He says they\nmust not have heroes, or must be allowed as few as possible.\n\nI believe in crowds, and I believe that the more they have the\nhero-habit, the more heroes they have to compare and select from, the\nfiner, longer, and truer heroes they will select, the more deeply,\ntruly, and concretely the crowds will think, and the more nobly they\nwill express themselves.\n\nBut the great argument for the hero as a social method is that the crowd\nin a clumsy, wistful way, deep down in its heart, in the long run, loves\nthe beautiful. Appealing to the crowd's ideal of the beautiful in\nconduct, its sense of the heroic, or semi-heroic, is the only practical,\nhard-headed understanding way of getting out of the crowd, for the\ncrowd, what the crowd wants.\n\nI saw the other day in Boston several thousand schoolboys in the street\nkeeping step. It was a band that held them together. A band is a\npractical thing.\n\nIs it not about time, in our dreary, drab, listless procession of\neconomics, stringing helplessly across the world, that we have a band of\nmusic? What economics needs now is a march.\n\nWe have to-day a thousand men who can tell people what to do where we\nhave one who can touch the music, the dance, the hurrah, the cry, the\nworship in them, and make them want to do something. The hero is the man\nwho makes people want to do something, and strangely and subtly, all\nthrough the blood, while they watch him, he makes them believe they can.\n\nIt is socially destructive to throw away the overpowering instinct of\nhuman nature which we have called hero-worship.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER II\n\nTHE CROWD AND THE HERO\n\n\nBut it is not only socially destructive. It is dumb and helpless for\ncrowds to try to get on without heroes. Big events and big men are crowd\nexpressions. Heroes, World Fairs, and Titanic disasters are crowd words,\nthe crowd's way of seeing and saying things.\n\nCrowds think in great men, or they think in simple, big, broadly drawn\nevents, or words of one syllable, like coal strikes.\n\nA whole world works through to an entirely new idea, the idea that\nEngland is not necessarily impregnable, in the Boer war. And we see\nEngland, by way of South Africa, searching her own heart. The Meat\nTrust, by raising prices for a few trial weeks, makes half a nation\nthink its way over into vegetarianism or semi-vegetarianism.\n\nIn the American war with Spain modern thought attacked the last pathetic\ncitadel in modern life of polite illusion, of lie-poetry, and in that\none little flash of war between the Spain spirit and the American\nspirit, in our modern world, the nations got their final and conclusive\nsense of what the Spanish civilization really was, of the old Don\nQuixote thinking, of the delightful, brave, courtly blindness, of the\nworld's last stronghold of pomposity, of vague, empty prettiness, of\ntalking grand and shooting crooked.\n\nJapan and Russia fight with guns, but the real fight is not between\ntheir guns, but between two great national conceptions of human life.\nLike two vast national searchlights we saw them turned on each other,\ntwo huge, grim, naked civilizations, and now in an awful light and roar,\nand now in stately sudden silence, while we all looked on, all\nbreathless and concentrated, we saw them, as on some strange vast stage\nof the world, all lit up, exposed, penetrated by the minds of men\nforever. While they fought before us we saw the last two thousand years\nflash up once more and fade away, and then the next two thousand years\non its slide, with one click before our faces was fastened into place.\n\nMen see great spiritual conceptions or ideals for a world when the great\nideals are dramatized, when they stalk out before us, are acted out\nbefore our eyes by mighty nations. Before the stage we sit silently and\nthink and watch the ideals of a world, the souls of the nations\nstruggling together, and as we watch we discover our souls for\nourselves, we define our ideals for ourselves. We make up our minds. We\nsee what we want. We begin to live.\n\nI have come to believe that the hero, in the same way, is the common\nman's desire and prayer writ large. It is his way of keeping it\nrefreshed before him so that he sees it, recalls it, suns himself in it,\nlifts up his life to it, every day.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER III\n\nTHE CROWD AND THE AVERAGE PERSON\n\n\nTo state still further my difference with the typical Socialist point of\nview, as expressed in the letter from which I have quoted, I am obliged\nto confess that I not only believe in having heroes on behalf of crowds,\nbut in having as a regular method of democracy little crowds of heroes,\nor an aristocracy. In other words, I am a democrat. I believe that\ncrowds can produce, and are bound to produce by a natural crowd-process,\na real aristocracy--an aristocracy which will be truly aristocratic and\nnoble in spirit and action, and which will express the best ideas in the\nbest way that a crowd can have.\n\nThe main business of a democracy is to find out which these people are\nin it and put them where they will represent it. The trouble seems to\nhave been in democracies so far, that we find out who these people are a\ngeneration too late. The great and rare moments of history have been\nthose in which we have found out who they were in time, as when we found\nin America Abraham Lincoln, an unaristocratic-looking and ungainly man,\nand saw suddenly that he was the first gentleman in the United States.\n\nThe next great task of democracy is to determine the best means it can\nof finding out who its aristocrats are, its all-men, and determining who\nthey are in time, men who have vision, courage, individuality,\nimagination enough to face real things, and to know real people, and to\nput real things and real people together.\n\nIt is what an aristocracy in a democratic form of government is for, to\nfurnish imagination to crowds. A real aristocracy is the only\nclear-headed, practical means a great nation can have of distributing,\nclassifying, and digesting and evoking hordes of men and women. People\ndo not have imagination in hordes, and imagination is latent and\nunorganized in masses of people. The crowd problem is the problem of\nhaving leaders who can fertilize the imagination and organize the will\nof crowds. Nothing but worship or great desire has ever been able to\nfocus a crowd, and only the great man, rich and various in his elements,\nabounding, great as the crowd is great, can ever hope to do it.\n\nEvery man in a crowd knows that he is or is in danger of being a mere\nMe-man, or a mere class-man, and he knows that his neighbour is, and he\nwishes to be in a world that is saved from his own mere me-ness and his\nown mere classness. His hero-worship is his way of worshipping his\nlarger self. He communes with his possible or completed self, his self\nof the best moments in the official great man or crowd man.\n\nThe average man in a crowd does not want to be an average man, and the\nlast thing he wants is to have an average man to represent him. He wants\na man to represent him as he would like to be.\n\nHe cannot express himself--his best self, in the State, to all the\nothers in the State, without a lifted-up man or crowd man to do it.\n\nIt is as if he said--as if the average man said, \"I want a certain sort\nof world, I want to be able to point to a man, to a particular man, and\nsay, as I look at him and ask others to look at him, 'This is the sort\nof world I want.'\"\n\nThen everybody knows.\n\nThe great world that lies in all men's hearts is expressed in miniature,\nin the great man.\n\nCrowds speak in heroes.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nI have often heard Socialists wondering among themselves why a movement\nthat had so many fine insights and so many noble motives behind it had\nproduced so few artists.\n\nIt has seemed to me that it might be because Socialists as a class,\nspeaking roughly, are generalizers. They do not see vividly and deeply\nthe universal in the particular, the universal in the individual, the\nnational in the local. They are convinced by counting, and are moved by\nmasses, and are prone to overlook the Spirit of the Little, the\nimmensity of the seed and of the individual. They are prone to look past\nthe next single thing to be done. They look past the next single man to\nbe fulfilled.\n\nThey feel a bit superior to Individualists for the way they have of\nseeing the universal in the particular, and of being picturesque and\npersonal.\n\nSocialists are not picturesque and personal. They do not think in\npictures.\n\nThen they wonder why they do not make more headway.\n\nCrowds and great men and children think in pictures.\n\nA hero pictures greatness to them. Then they want it for themselves.\n\nFrom the practical, political point of view of getting things for\ncrowds, perhaps the trouble lies, not in our common popular idea of\nhaving heroes, but in the heroes. And perhaps the cure lies not in\nabolishing heroes, but in making our heroes move on and in insisting on\nmore and better ones.\n\nAny man who looks may watch the crowd to-day making its heroes move on.\n\nIf they do not move on, the crowd picks up the next hero at hand who is\nmoving--and drops them.\n\nOne can watch in every civilized country to-day crowds picking up\nheroes, comparing, sorting, selecting, seeing the ones that wear the\nlongest, and one by one taking the old ones down.\n\nThe crowd takes a hero up in its huge rough hand, gazes through him at\nthe world, sees what it wants through him. Then it takes up another, and\nthen another.\n\nHeroes are crowd spy-glasses.\n\nPierpont Morgan and Tom Mann for example.\n\nPierpont Morgan is a typical American business man raised to the n-th\nor hero power.\n\nThe crowd thinks it is interesting to take up Pierpont Morgan, the Tom\nMann of the banks. It will see what it wants, through him.\n\nAnd the crowd thinks it is interesting to take up Tom Mann, too, the\nPierpont Morgan of the Trades Unions. It will see what it wants, through\nhim.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IV\n\nTHE CROWD AND PIERPONT MORGAN\n\n\nOne keeps turning back every now and then, in reading the \"Life of\nPierpont Morgan,\" to the portrait which Carl Hovey has placed at the\nbeginning of the book. If one were to look at the portrait long enough,\none would not need to read the book. The portrait puts into a few square\ninches of space what Mr. Hovey takes half an acre of paper for. And all\nthat he really does on the half-acre of paper is to bring back to one\nagain and again that set and focused look one sees in Mr. Morgan's\neyes--the remoteness, the silence, the amazing, dogged, implacable\nconcentration, and, when all is said, a certain terrible, inexplicable\nblindness.\n\nThe blindness keeps one looking again. One cannot quite believe it. The\nportrait has something so strong, so almost noble and commanding, about\nit that one cannot but stand back with one's little judgments and give\nthe man who can hurl together out of the bewilderment of the world a\npersonality like this, and fix it here--all in one small human face--the\nbenefit of the doubt. This is the way the crowd has always taken\nPierpont Morgan at first. The bare spectacle of a man so magnificently\nset, so imperiously preoccupied, silences our judgments. It seems as if,\nof course, he must be seeing things--things that we and others possibly\ndo not and cannot see. The blindness in the eyes is so complete and set\nin such a full array that it acts at first on one almost like a kind of\nvision. The eyes hold themselves like pictures of eyes, like little\nwalls, as if real eyes were in behind them. One wonders if there is any\none who could ever manage to break through them, fleck up little\nordinary human things--personality, for instance, atmosphere, or\nlight--against them. If Shakespeare, whose folios he has, and Keats,\nwhose \"Endymion\" he owns, or Milton, whose \"Paradise Lost\" he keeps in\nhis safe, were all to assail him at once, were to bear down upon that\nset look in Pierpont Morgan's eyes--try to get them to turn one side a\nsecond and notice that they--Shakespeare and Milton and Keats--were\nthere, there would not be a flicker or shadow of movement. They are eyes\nthat are set like jaws, like magnificent spiritual muscles, on\nSomething. Neither do they reveal light or receive it.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIt will be some time before the crowd will find it possible to hand in\nan account and render a full estimate of the value of the service that\nPierpont Morgan has rendered to our modern world; but the service has\nbeen for the most part rendered now and while the world, in its mingled\ndismay and gratitude at the way he has hammered it together, is\ndistributing its praise and blame, there are some of us who would like\nto step one side a little and think quietly, if we may, not about what\nPierpont Morgan has done, which we admit duly, but about the blindness\nin his eyes. It is Pierpont Morgan's blindness that interests the crowd\nmore than anything else about him interests them now. It is his\nblindness--and the chance to find out just what it is that is making\npeople read his book. His blindness (if we can fix just what it is) is\nthe thing that we are going to make our next Pierpont Morgan out of. The\nnext Pierpont Morgan--the one the crowd is getting ready now--will be\nmade out of the things that this Pierpont Morgan did not see. What are\nthese things? We have been looking for the things in Carl Hovey's book,\npeering in between the lines on every page, and turning up his\nadjectives and looking under them, his adverbs and qualifications, his\nshrewdness and carefulness for the things that Pierpont Morgan did not\nsee. Pierpont Morgan himself would not have tried to hide them, and\nneither has his biographer. His whole book breathes throughout with a\njust-mindedness, a spirit of truth, a necessary and inevitable honesty,\nwhich of itself is not the least testimony to the essential validity and\nsoundness of Morgan's career. Pierpont Morgan's attitude toward his\nbiography (if, in spite of his reticence, it became one of the\nnecessities--even one of the industrial necessities, of the world that\nhe should have one) was probably a good deal the attitude of Walt\nWhitman when he told Traubel, \"Whatever you do with me, don't prettify\nme\"; and if there were things in Mr. Morgan's career which he\nimperturbably failed to see, Mr. Morgan himself would be the last man\nnot to try to help people to find out what they are. But living has been\nto Mr. Morgan as it is to us (as I write these lines he is seventy-four\nyears old) a serious, bottomless business. He does not know which the\nthings are he has not seen. His eyes are magnificently set. They cannot\nhelp us. We must do our own looking.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIf I were called upon to speak very quickly and without warning; if any\none suddenly expected me in my first sentence to hit the bull's-eye of\nMr. Morgan's blindness, I think I would try socialism. When the Emperor\nWilliam was giving himself the treat of talking with the man who runs,\nor is supposed to run, the economics of a world, he found that he was\ntalking with a man who had not noticed socialism yet, and who was not\ninterested in it. Most people would probably have said that Morgan was\nnot interested in socialism enough; but there are very few people who\nwould not be as surprised as Emperor William was to know that he,\nPierpont Morgan, was not informed about the greatest and, to some of us,\nthe most threatening, omnipresent, and significant spectre in modern\nindustrial life.\n\nBut when one thinks of it, and, when more particularly, one looks again\nat that set look in his eyes, I cannot see how it could possibly have\nbeen otherwise. If Morgan's eyes had suddenly begun seeing all sorts of\nhuman things--the bewildering welter of the individual minds, the\ntragedy of the individual interests around him; if he had lost his\nimperious sense of a whole--had tried to potter over and piece together,\nlike the good people and the wonderers, the innumerable entangled wires\nof the world, his eyes might have been filled perhaps with the beautiful\nand helpless light of the philosophers, with the fire of the prophets,\nor with the gentle paralysis of the poets, but he never would have had\nthe courage to do the great work of his life--to turn down forever those\niron shutters on his eyes and smite a world together.\n\nThere was one thing this poor, dizzied, scattered planet needed. With\nits quarrelling and its peevish industries, its sick poets and its tired\nreligions, the one thing this planet needed was a Blow; it needed a man\nthat could hammer it together. To find fault with this man for not being\na seer, or to feel superior to him for not being an idealist, or to\nheckle him for not being a sociologist, when here he was all the time\nwith this mighty frenzy or heat in him that could melt down the chaos of\na world while we looked, weld it to his will, and then lift his arm and\nsmite it, though all men said him nay--back into a world again--to\nheckle over this man's not being a complete sociologist or professor is\nnot worthy of thoughtful and manful men.\n\nI cannot express it, but I can only declare, living as I do in a day\nlike this, that to me there is a kind of colossal naked poetry in what\nPierpont Morgan has done which I cannot but acknowledge with gratitude\nand hope. Though there be in it, as in all massive things, a brutality\nperhaps like that of the moving glaciers, like the making and boiling of\ncoal in the earth, like death, like childbirth, like the impersonality\nof the sea, my imagination can never get past a kind of elemental,\nalmost heathen poetry or heathen-god poetry in Pierpont Morgan's Blow or\nshock upon our world. There may be reason to doubt as to whether it is\nto be called a heaven-poetry or a hell-poetry--something so gaunt and\nsimple is there about it; but here we are with all our machines around\nus, with our young, rough, fresh nations in the act of starting a great\ncivilization once more on this old and gentle earth, and I can only say\nthat poetry (though it be new, or different, or even a little terrible)\nis the one thing that now, or in any other age, men begin great\ncivilizations with.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nI have tried to express the spirit of what Morgan's genius seized\nunconsciously by the grim, resistless will of his age, has wrought into\nhis career.\n\nBut in the background of my mind as I see Pierpont Morgan, there is\nalways the man who will take his place, and if I did not see the man\ncoming, and coming rapidly, who is to take Mr. Morgan's place, I admit\nthat Mr. Morgan himself would be a failure, a disaster, a closed wall at\nthe end of the world.\n\nNo one man will take Mr. Morgan's place, but the typical man in the\ngroup of men that will take his place will justify Mr. Morgan's work, by\ntaking this world in his hand and riveting his vision on where Morgan's\nvision leaves off. As Morgan has fused railroads, iron, coal,\nsteamships, seas, and cities, the next industrial genius shall fuse the\nspirits and the wills of men. The Individualists and the Socialists, the\naristocracies and democracies, the capitalists and the labourers shall\nbe welded together, shall be fused and transfused by the next Morgan\ninto their ultimate, inevitable, inextricable, mutual interests.\n\nThe chief characteristic of the new industrial leader is coming to be\nsocial imagination or the power of seeing the larger industrial values\nin human gifts and efficiencies, the more human and intellectual\nenergies of workmen, the market value of their spirits, their\nimaginations, and their good-will. The underpinning and Morganizing work\nhas been done; the power of instant decision which Mr. Morgan has had,\nhas been very often based on a lack of imagination about the things that\ngot in his way; but the things that get in the way now, the big,\nlittle-looking things--are the things on which the new and inspired\nmillionaires' imagination will find its skill and accumulate its power.\nIt is men's spirits that are now in the way; they have been piling up\nand accumulating under Morgan's regime long enough, and it is now their\nturn. Perhaps men's spirits have always been beyond Mr. Morgan, and\nperhaps his imagination has been worked largely as a kind of cerebellum\nimagination: it is a kind of imagination that sees related and\narticulated the physical body of things, the grip on the material tools,\non the gigantic limbs of a world. The man who succeeds Mr. Morgan, and\nfor whom Mr. Morgan has made the world ready, is the man who has his\nimagination in the upper part of his brain, and instead of doing things\nby not seeing, and by not being seen, he will swing a light. He will be\nhimself in his own personality, a little of the nature of a searchlight,\nand he will work the way a searchlight works, and will have his will\nwith things by seeing and lighting, by X-raying his way through them and\nnot by a kind of colossal world-butting, which is Morgan's way, both\neyes imperiously, implacably shut, his whole being all bent, all crowded\ninto his vast machine of men, his huge will lifted ... and excavating\nblindly, furiously, as through some groping force he knew not, great\nsub-cellars for a new heaven and new earth.\n\nThe Crowd gets its heroes one at a time. Heroes are the Crowd's tools.\nSome are dredges, some are telescopes. The Crowd, by a kind of\ninstinct--an oversoul or undersoul of which it knows not until\nafterward, takes up each tool gropingly--sometimes even against its will\nand against its conscience, uses it and drops it.\n\nThen it sees why, suddenly, it has used it.\n\nThen God hands it Another One.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER V\n\nTHE CROWD AND TOM MANN\n\n\nI dropped into the London Opera House the other night to see Tom Mann\n(the English Bill Heywood), another hero or crowd spy-glass that people\nhave taken up awhile--thousands of them--to see through to what they\nreally want. I wanted to hear him speak, and see, if I could, why the\ncrowd had taken him up, and what it was they were seeing through him.\n\nI am apt to take a dead set at liking a man I do not agree with, if I\ncan. It gives one a better start in understanding him and in not\nagreeing with him to some purpose.\n\nBut it was not necessary to try to like Tom Mann or to make arrangements\nfor being fair to him. He came up on the platform (it was at Mr.\nHyndmann's Socialist rally) in that fine manly glow of his of having\njust come out of jail (and a jail, whatever else may be said about it,\nis certainly a fine taking place to come out of--to blossom up out of,\nlike a night-blooming cereus before a vast, lighted-up, uproarious\naudience). It is wonderful how becoming a jail is to some people! Had I\nnot seen Mrs. Pethick Lawrence with the flush of Old Bailey on her cheek\nonly a little while before in Albert Hall?\n\nIf Tom Mann had had, like Elisha, that night, a fiery chariot at his\ndisposal, and had come down, landed plump out of heaven on his audience,\nhe could not have done half as well with it as he did with that little\ngray, modest, demure Salford Jail the kind Home Secretary gave him.\n\nHe tucked the jail under his arm, stood there silently before us in a\nblaze of light. Everybody clapped for five minutes.\n\nThen he waved the air into silence and began to speak. I found I had\ncome to hear a simple-minded, thoughtless, whole-hearted, noisy,\nself-deceived, hopelessly sincere person. He was a mere huge pulse or\nmuscle of a man. All we could do was to watch him up there on the\nplatform (it was all so simple!) taking up the world before everybody in\nhis big hands and whacking on it with a great rapping and sounding\nbefore us all, as if it were Tommy's own little drum mother gave him. He\nstood there for some fifteen minutes, I should think, making it--making\nthe whole world rat-a-tat-tat to his music, to Tommy's own music, as if\nit were the music of the spheres.\n\nMr. Mann's gospel of hope for mankind seemed to be to have all the\nworkers of the world all at once refuse to work. Have the workers starve\nand silence a planet, and take over and confiscate the properties and\nplants of capital, dismiss the employers of all nations and run the\nearth themselves.\n\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\nI sat in silence. The audience about me broke out into wild, happy\nappreciation.\n\nIt acted as if it had been in the presence of a vision. It was as if,\nwhile they sat there before Tom Mann, they had seen being made, being\nhammered out before them, a new world.\n\nI rubbed my eyes.\n\nIt seemed to me precisely like the old one. And all the trouble for\nnothing. All the disaster, the proposed starvation, and panic for\nnothing.\n\nThere was one single possible difference in it.\n\nWe had had before, Pierpont Morgan, the Tom Mann of the banks, riding\nastride the planet, riding it out with us--with all the rest of us\nhelpless on it, holding on for dear life, riding out into the\nBlackness.\n\nAnd now we were having instead, Tom Mann, the Pierpont Morgan of the\nTrades Unions, riding astride the planet, riding it out with us, with\nall the rest of us helpless on it, holding on for dear life, riding out\ninto the Blackness.\n\nOf course Pierpont Morgan and Tom Mann are both very useful as crowd\nspy-glasses for us all to see what we want through.\n\nBut is this what we want?\n\nIs it worth while to us, to the crowd, to all classes of us, to have our\nworld turned upside down so that we can be bullied on it by one set of\nmen instead of being bullied on it by another?\n\nThis is the thing that the Crowd, as it takes up one hero after the\nother, and looks at the world through him, is seeing next.\n\nSome of us have seen sooner than the others. But we are nearly all of us\nseeing to-day. We have stood by now these many years through strikes and\nrumours of strikes, and we have watched the railway hold-ups, the\nLawrence Mill strike, and the great English coal strike. We have seen,\nin a kind of dumb, hopeful astonishment, everybody about us piling into\nthe fray, some fighting for the rights of labour and some for the rights\nof capital, and we have kept wondering if possibly a little something\ncould not be done before long, possibly next year, in behalf of the\nhuge, battered, helpless Public, that dear amorphous old ladylike Person\ndoddering along the Main Street of the World, now being knocked down by\none side and now by the other. It has almost looked, some days, as if\nboth sides in the quarrel--Capital and Labour, really thought that the\nPublic ought not to expect to be allowed to be out in the streets at\nall. Both sides in the contest are so sure they are right, and feel so\nnoble and Christian, that we know they will take care of themselves; but\nthe poor old Lady!--some of us wonder, in the turmoil of Civilization\nand the scuffle of Christianity, what is to become of Her.\n\nIs it not about time that somebody appeared very soon now who will make\na stand once and for all in behalf of this Dear Old Lady-Like Person?\n\nIs it really true that no one has noticed Her and is really going to\nstand up for Her--for the old gentle-hearted Planet as a Whole?\n\nWe have our Tom Mann for the workers, and we have the Daily\nNewspaper--the Tom Mann of Capital, but where is our Tom Mann for\nEverybody? Where is the man who shall come boldly out to Her, into the\ngreat crowded highway, where the bullies of wealth have tripped up her\nfeet, and the bullies of poverty have thrown mud in her face, where all\nthe little mean herds or classes one after the other hold Her up--the\nscorners, and haters, and cowards, and fearers for themselves, fighting\nas cowards always have to fight, in herds ... where is the man who is\ngoing to climb up alone before the bullies of wealth and the bullies of\npoverty, take his stand against them all--against both sides, and dare\nthem to touch the dear helpless old Lady again?\n\nWhen this man arises--this Tom Mann for Everybody--whether he slips up\ninto immortality out of the crowd at his feet, and stands up against\nthem in overalls or in a silk hat, he will take his stand in history as\na man beside whom Napoleon and Alexander the Great will look as toys in\nthe childhood of the world.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nWe are living in a day when not only all competent-minded students of\naffairs, but the crowd itself, the very passers-by in the streets, have\ncome to see that the very essence of the labour problem is the problem\nof getting the classes to work together. And when the crowd watches the\nlabour leader and sees that he is not thinking correctly and cannot\nthink correctly of the other classes, of the consumers and the\nemployers, it drops him. Unless a leader has a class consciousness that\nis capable of thinking of the other classes--the consumers and\nemployers, so shrewdly and so close to the facts that the other classes,\nthe consumers and the employers, will be compelled to take him\nseriously, tolerate him, welcome him, and cooeperate with him, the crowd\nhas come at last to recognize promptly that he is only of temporary\nimportance as a leader. He is the by-product of one of the illusions of\nlabour. When the illusion goes he goes.\n\nCapital has been for some time developing its class consciousness.\nLabour has lately been developing in a large degree a class\nconsciousness.\n\nThe most striking aspect of the present moment is that at last, in the\nhistory of the world, the Public is developing a class consciousness.\n\nThe Crowd thinks.\n\nAnd as from day to day the Crowd thinks--holds up its little class\nheroes, its Tom Manns and Pierpont Morgans, and sees its world through\nthem--it comes more and more to see implacably what it wants.\n\nIt has been watching the Tom Mann, or Bill Heywood type of Labour\nleader, for some time.\n\nThere are certain general principles with regard to labour leaders that\nthe crowd has come to see by holding up its heroes and looking through\nthem, at what it wants. The first great principle is that no man needs\nto be taken very seriously, as a competent leader of a great labour\nmovement who is merely thinking of the interest of his own class.\n\nThe second general principle the Crowd has come to see, and to insist\nupon--when it is appealed to (as it always is, in the long run) is that\nno labour leader needs to be taken very seriously or regarded as very\ndangerous or very useful--who believes in force.\n\nA labour leader who has such a poor idea that a hold-up is the only way\nhe can express it--the Crowd suspects. The only labour leaders that the\nCrowd, or people as a whole, take seriously are those that get things\nby thinking and by making other people think.\n\nThe Crowd wants to think.\n\nThe Crowd wants to decide.\n\nAnd It has decided to decide by being made to think and not by being\nknocked down.\n\nIt is not precisely because the Crowd is not willing to be knocked down,\nand has not shown itself to be over and over again, when it thought its\nbeing knocked down might possibly help in a just cause.\n\nBut it has not been through coal strikes, Industrial Workers of the\nWorld, and syndicalist outbreaks for nothing.\n\nIt is not the knocking down indulged in by labour and by capital that\nthe Crowd fears.\n\nIt is the not-thinking.\n\nThe Crowd has noticed that the knocking-down disposition and the\nnot-thinking disposition go together.\n\nThe Crowd has watched Force and Force-people, and has seen what always\nhappens after a time.\n\nIt has come to see that people who have to get things by force and not\nby thinking will not be able to think of anything to do with the things\nwhen they get them.\n\nSo the Crowd does not want them to get them.\n\nThe Crowd has learned all this even from the present owners of things.\nIt does not want to learn them all over again from new ones. The present\nowners of things have got them half by force, and that is why they only\nhalf understand how to run them.\n\nBut they do half understand because they only half believe in force. The\ncrowd has seen them get their supremacy by the use of the\nemployment-hold-up, or by starving or threatening to starve the workers.\nAnd now it sees the Syndicalist workers proposing to get control by\nstarving or threatening to starve everybody. Of the two, those who\npropose to starve all the people to get their own way, and those who\nthreaten to starve part of the people, it has seemed to the Crowd,\nnaturally, that those who only half believe in starving, and who only\nstarve a part of us, would be likely to be more intelligent as\nworld-runners.\n\nIn other words (accepting for the sake of argument the worst possible\ninterpretation of the capitalist class), they have spent several years\nin learning, and have already half learned that force in industry is\ninefficient and cannot be made to work.\n\nNow when the Crowd sees the Syndicalists swinging their hats in a\nhundred nations, with one big hoarse hurrah around a world, with five\nminutes' experience, come rushing in, and propose to take up the\nworld--the whole world in two minutes more and run it in the same old\nbygone way--the way that the capitalists are just giving up--by\nforce--it knows what it thinks.\n\nIt thinks it will fight Class Syndicalism. It makes up its mind it will\nfight Class Syndicalism with Crowd Syndicalism. It has decided that, in\nthe interests of all of us, of a crowd civilization, of what we call the\nworld or Crowd Syndicate, its industries should be controlled, not by\nthe owners and not by the workers, but by those men, whoever they are,\nwho can control them with the most skill and efficiency.\n\nThe Crowd has come to see that the present owners--judging from current\nevents, and taking them as a whole, and speaking impersonally and\nhistorically--have proved themselves, on the whole, incompetent to\ncontrol industries with skill and efficiency, because they have treated\nlabour as the natural enemy of capital and have quarrelled with it. It\nsees that the present workers, acting as syndicates or otherwise, are\nincompetent to own and control and manage industry because they propose\nto treat capital as the natural enemy of the workers. There has been but\none conclusion possible. If Civilization or the Crowd Syndicate has a\nright to have its industries managed in the interests of all, and if\nthe present owners have proved themselves to be mentally incompetent to\ncontrol industry because they fight labour, and if the present labourers\nas a class have proved themselves to be mentally incompetent because\nthey propose to fight capital, there is naturally but one question the\ncrowd syndicate is asking to-day, namely, _\"Are there any mentally\ncompetent business firms at all in the world, any firms whose owners and\nlabourers have thought out a way of not fighting?\"_ From the point of\nview of the Crowd, the men who are competent, who know how to do their\nwork, do not have to lay down their tools and find out all over again\nhow to do their work. They know it and keep doing it.\n\nSo the Crowd keeps coming back with the question, \"Are there or are\nthere not any competent business establishments in our modern life?\nWhich are they, and where are they?\" We want to know about them. We want\nto study them. We want to focus the thought of the world on them and see\nhow they do it.\n\nThe answering of this question is what the next Pierpont Morgan and the\nnext Tom Mann are for.\n\nWhat the next Pierpont Morgan is for is to find out for us who the\ncompetent employers are--the employers who can get twice as much work\nout of their labour as other employers do--recognize them, stand by them\nand put up money on them. The next Pierpont Morgan will find out also\nwho the incompetent employers are, recognize them, stand out against\nthem, and unless they have brains enough or can get brains enough to\ncooeperate with their own workmen, refuse to lend money to them.\n\nThis would make a banker a statesman, would make banking a great and\ncreative profession, shaping the destinies of civilizations, determining\nwith coins back and forth over a counter the prayers and the songs, the\nvery religions of nations, and swinging like a pendulum the fate of the\nworld.\n\nThe first Pierpont Morgan has made himself, in a necessary transitional\nmovement, a hero in the business world because of a certain moral energy\nthere is in him. He has insisted in expressing his own character in\nbusiness. He would not send money to capitalists fighting capitalists,\nand in a general way he has compelled capitalists to cooeperate. The new\nhero of the business world is going to compel capital not merely to\ncooeperate with capital, but to cooeperate with labour and with the\npublic. And as Morgan compelled the railroads of the United States to\ncooeperate with one another by getting money for those that showed the\nmost genius for cooeperation, and by not getting money for railroads that\nshowed less genius for it, so the next Pierpont Morgan will throw the\nweight of his capital at critical times in favour of companies that show\nthe largest genius for building the mutual interests of capitalists,\nemployees, and the public inextricably into one body. He is going to\nrecognize as a banker that the most permanent, long-headed, practical,\nand competent employers are those whose business genius is essentially\nsocial genius, the genius for being human, for discovering the mutual\ninterests of men, and for making human machinery work.\n\nThere is a great position ahead for this hero when he comes. And I have\nseen in my mind to-day thousands of men, young and old in every\nbusiness, in every country of the world, pressing forward to get the\nplace.\n\nIt is what the next Tom Mann is for--to find out for the Trades Unions\nand for the public who the most competent workmen are in every line of\nbusiness, the workmen who are the least mechanical-minded, who have\nshown the most brains in educating and being educated by their\nemployers, the most power in touching the imaginations of their\nemployers with their lives and with their work, and in cooeperating with\nthem.\n\nWhen the next Tom Mann has searched out and found the workmen in every\nline of business who are capable of working with their superiors, and of\nbecoming more and more like them, he will make known to all other\nworkmen and to all other Trades Unions who these workmen are, and how\nthey have managed to do it. He will see that all Trades Unions are\ninformed, in night-schools and otherwise, how they have done it. He will\nsee that the principles, motives, and conditions that these men have\nemployed in making themselves more like their superiors, in making\nthemselves more and more fit to take the place of their superiors, in\nmaking their work a daily, creative, spirited part of a great business,\nare made so familiar to all Trades Unions that the policies of all our\nlabour organizations everywhere shall change and shall be infected with\na new spirit; and labouring men, instead of going to their shops the\nworld over, to spend nine hours a day in fighting the business in which\nthey are engaged, to spend nine hours a day in trying to get themselves\nnothing to do, nine hours a day in getting nobody to want to employ\nthem, will work the way they would like to work, and the way they would\nall work to-morrow morning if they knew the things about capital and\nabout labour that they have a right to know, and that only incompetent\nemployers and incompetent labor leaders year by year have kept them from\nknowing.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VI\n\nAN OPENING FOR THE NEXT PIERPONT MORGAN\n\n\nChrist said once, \"He that is greatest among you let him be your\nservant.\"\n\nMost people have taken it as if He had said:\n\n\"He that is greatest among you let him be your valet.\n\n\"He that is greatest among you let him be your butler.\n\n\"He that is greatest among you let him be your hostler, porter,\nfootman.\"\n\nThey cling to a mediaeval Morality-Play, Servant-in-the-House idea, a\nkind of head-waiter idea of what Christ meant.\n\nThis seems to some of us a literal-minded, Western way of interpreting\nan Oriental metaphor. We do not believe that Christ meant servanthood.\nIt seems to us that He meant something deeper, that He meant service;\nthat He might have said as well:\n\n\"He that is greatest among you let him be your Duke of Wellington.\n\n\"He that is greatest among you let him be your Lincoln.\n\n\"He that is greatest among you let him be your Edison, your Marconi.\"\n\nAt all events, it is extremely unlikely that He meant looking and acting\nlike a servant.\n\nHe meant really being one, whether one looked like a servant or not. If\nlooking independent and being independent makes the service better, if\ndefying the appearance of a servant makes the service more efficient, we\nbelieve the appearance should be defied.\n\nIt troubles us when we see the Czar of Russia in the presence of the\ncivilized world, once a year taking such great pains to look like a\nservant and to wash his peasants' feet.\n\nWe are not willing, if we ever have any relations with the public, to be\nCzars and look like servants.\n\nWe would prefer to look like czars and be servants.\n\nWe are inclined to believe that no man who is rendering his utmost\nservice to the crowd ever thinks in the ordinary servant sense of being\nobedient to it. He is thinking of his service, and of its being the most\nhigh and perfect and most complete thing that he can render--the thing\nthat he, out of all men, could think of and do, and that the crowd would\nwant him to do. He is busy in being obedient to the crowd, in fulfilling\ndaily its spirit, and not in taking orders from it.\n\nThe reason that the larger number of men who go into politics to-day are\ninefficient and do not get the things done that crowds want, is that\nthey are the kind of men who feel that they must talk and act like\nservants. Even the most independent-looking and efficient men, who look\nas if they really saw something and had something to give, often prove\ndisappointing. When one comes to know a man of this type more\nintimately, one is apt to find that he is really a flunkey in his\nthoughts; that he feels hired in his mind; that he is the valet of a\ncrowd, and often, too, the valet of some particular crowd--some little,\nsafe, shut-in crowd, party, or special interest that wants to own, or to\nkeep, or to take away a world.\n\nWhichever way to-day one looks, one finds this illusion as to what a\npublic servant really is, for the moment, corrupting our public life.\n\nBut Christ did not say, \"He that is greatest among you, let him be your\nvalet.\"\n\nThe man who is greatest among us, neither in this age nor in any other,\never will or ever can be a valet. He faces the crowd the way Christ\ndid--with his life, with his soul, with his God.\n\nHe will not be afraid of the Crowd....\n\nHe will be the Greatest, he will be a Servant.\n\nIn the meantime--in the hour of the valets, only the little crowds,\nspeak. The People wait.\n\nThe Crowd is dumb, massive, and silent. There seems to be no one in the\nworld to express it, to express its indomitable desire, its prayer, to\nlay at last its huge, terrible, beautiful will upon the earth.\n\nIt is the classes or little crowds--the little pulling and pushing,\nhelpless, lonely, mean, separated crowds--blind, hateful, and afraid,\nwho are running about trying to lay their little wills upon the earth.\n\nThe Crowd waits and is not afraid.\n\nThe little, separated crowds are afraid.\n\nThe world, for the moment, is being interpreted, expressed, and managed\nby People Who Are Afraid.\n\nIt is the same in all the nations. In the coal strike in England one\nfinds the miners in the trades unions afraid to vote except in secret\nbecause they are afraid of one another. One finds the miners' leaders\nafraid of the men under them and of what they might do, so that they\nhave no policy except to fight. One finds the miners' leaders afraid of\nthe mine-managers and of what they might do, so that they have no policy\nexcept to fight. One finds the mine-managers afraid of one another,\nafraid of their stockholders, afraid of the miners' leaders, and afraid\nof the newspapers and afraid of the Government.\n\nOne finds the Government afraid of everybody.\n\nEverybody is afraid of the Government.\n\nEverybody fights because everybody is afraid.\n\nAnd everybody is afraid because everybody sees that it is mere crowds\nthat are running the world.\n\nThere is another reason why everybody is afraid. Everybody is afraid\nbecause everybody is shut in with some little separated crowd.\n\nPeople who are never Outside, who only see a little way out over the\nedge of the little crowd in which they are penned up, are naturally\nafraid.\n\nA world that is run by little shut-in crowds is necessarily a world that\nis run by People Who Are Afraid.\n\nAnd so now we have come to the fulness of the time. The cities and the\nnations, the prairies, and the seas and the mines, the very skies about\nus can be seen by all to-day to be full of a dull groping and of a great\nasking, \"_Who Are The Men Who Are not Afraid?_\"\n\nThe moment these men appear who are not afraid, and it is seen by all\nthat they are not afraid, the world (and all the little blind, helpless\ncrowds in it) will be placed in their hands.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VII\n\nAN OPENING FOR THE NEXT TOM MANN\n\n\nI am aware that Tom Mann is not a world figure. But he is a world type.\nAnd as the editor of the _Syndicalist_, the leader of the most imposing\nand revealing labour rally the world has seen, he is of universal\ninterest. Those of us who believe in crowds are deeply interested in\nfinding, recognizing, creating, and in seeing set free out of the ranks\nof men the labour leaders who shall express the nobility and dignity of\nmodern labour, who shall express the bigness of spirit, the\nbrawny-heartedness, the composure, the common-sense, the patriotism, the\nfaithfulness and courage of the People.\n\nI indict Tom Mann before the bar of the world as not expressing the will\nand the spirit of the People.\n\nI do this as a labouring man. I decline, because I spend my time daily\ntracing out little crooked lines on paper with a pen, because I have\nwrought day and night to make little patterns of ink and little\nstretches of words reach men together round a world, because I have\nsweat blood to believe, because in weariness and sorrow I have wrought\nout at last my little faith for a world ... I decline not to be numbered\nwith the labourers I see in the streets. I claim my right before all men\nthis day, with my unbent body and with my unsoiled hands, to be enrolled\namong the toilers of the earth.\n\nI speak as a labouring man. I say Tom Mann is incompetent as a true\nleader of Labour.\n\nThe first reason that he is incompetent is that he does not observe\nfacts. He merely observes facts that everybody can see, that everybody\nhas seen for years. He does not observe the new and exceptional facts\nabout capital that only a few can see, the seeing of which, and the\nseeing of which first, should alone ever constitute a man a true leader\nin dealing with capital. He merely believes facts that nearly everybody\nhas caught up to believing--facts about human nature, about what works\nin business. The crowd is not content with this. It has become\naccustomed to seeing that the men who lead in business, and who make\nothers follow them, whether masters or workmen, are men who do it by\nobserving certain new and exceptional facts and acting upon them. If\nthese men cannot observe them, we have seen them create them. It is the\nmen who make new things true wherever they go that the crowd is coming\nto recognize and to take seriously and permanently as the real leaders\nof Labour and of Capital to-day. Tom Mann is incompetent as a labour\nleader in dealing with capital to-day, because the things that he\nproposes to do all turn on three facts which, looked at on the outside,\nmerely have or might be said to have a true look:\n\nFirst, employers are all alike;\n\nSecond, none of them ever work;\n\nThird, they are all the enemies of Labour.\n\nTom Mann is incompetent to grapple with Capital in behalf of Labour as\nany great labour leader would have to do, because he has his facts wrong\nabout Capital, is simple-minded and rudimentary and undiscriminating\nabout the men with whom he deals, and sees them all alike.\n\nThis is a poor beginning even for fighting with them.\n\nThe second reason that Tom Mann is incompetent is, not that he has his\nfacts wrong and does not think, but that he carries not-thinking about\nthe employing class still further, has come to make a kind of religion\nout of not-thinking about them. And instead of thinking how to make\nlabouring men think better than their employers think, and making them\nthink so well that they can crowd their way into their employers'\nplaces, he proposes to have labour get into their places without\nthinking, and run a world without thinking. All that is necessary in\norder to have workmen run the world, is to get workmen to stop working,\nto stop thinking, and then as rapidly as possible to get everybody else\nto stop thinking. Then the world will fall into their hands.\n\nThe third reason that Tom Mann is incompetent is that he is unpractical\nand full of scorn. And scorn, from the point of view of the\npractical-minded man, is a sentimental and useless emotion. We have\nlearned that it almost always has to be used by a man who has his facts\nwrong, that is, who does not see what he himself is really like, and who\nhas not noticed what other people are really like. No man who sees\nhimself as he is, feels at liberty to use scorn. And no man who sees\nothers as they are, sees any occasion for it. Tom Mann uses hate also,\nand hate has been found to be, as directed toward classes of persons as\na means of getting them to do things, archaic and inefficient. It is not\nquite bright. It need not be denied that hate and scorn both impress\nsome people, but they never seem to impress the people that see things\nto do and who find ways to do them. And the people who use scorn are all\ntoo narrow, too class-bound, and too self-regarding to do things in a\nhuge world problem like the present one.\n\nThe fourth reason that Tom Mann as a labour leader is incompetent is\nthat he is afraid; he is afraid of capital, so afraid that he has to\nfight it instead of grappling with it and cooeperating with it. He is\nafraid to believe in labour--so afraid that he takes orders from it\ninstead of seeing for it, and seeing ahead for it. He is afraid of his\nemployers' brains, of their having brains enough to understand and to to\nbe convinced as to the position of the labourer. He is afraid to believe\nin his own brains, in his own brains being good enough to convince them.\n\nSo he backs down and fights.\n\nIf any reader who is interested to do so will kindly turn back at this\npoint a page or so, and read this chapter we have just gone through\ntogether, over again, and if he will kindly, wherever it occurs, insert\nfor Tom Mann, labour leader, \"D.A. Thomas, leader of mine-owners,\" he\nwill save much time for both of us, and he will kindly make one chapter\nin this book which is already much too long, as good as two. Tom Mann\n(unless he is changed) is about to be dropped as a typical modern leader\nof Labour because he is afraid, and what he expresses in the labouring\nclass is its fear of Capital.\n\nAnd what D.A. Thomas expresses for Capital is its fear of Labour.\n\nThere are thousands of capitalists and hundreds of thousands of labour\nmen who have something better they want expressed by their leaders, than\ntheir Fear.\n\nOut of these men the new leaders will be chosen.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VIII\n\nTHE MEN WHO LOOK\n\n\nDuring the recent coal strike in England, as at all times in the world,\nheroes abounded.\n\nThe trouble with most of us during the coal strike was not in our not\nhaving heroes, but in our not being quite sure which they were.\n\nDavy McEwen, a miner who stood out against the whole countryside, and\nwent to his work every day in defiance of thousands of men on the hills\nabout him trying to stop him, and hundreds of thousands of men all over\nEngland trying to scare him, was not a hero to Mr. Josiah Wedgewood. Mr.\nJosiah Wedgewood one day in the height of the conflict, from his seat in\nthe House of Commons, rose in his might--and before the face of the\nnation called Davy McEwen a traitor to his class.\n\nSir Arthur Markham, one of the largest of the mine-owners, in the height\nof the conflict between the mine-owners and the miners over wages, rose\nin the House and declared that, in his opinion as a mine-owner, the\nmine-owners were wrong and the miners were right, and that the\nmine-owners could afford to pay better wages, and should yield to the\nmen.\n\nHe was called a traitor to his class.\n\nAt the last moment in the coal strike, when the Government had done its\nbest, and when the labour leaders still proposed to hold up England and\ndefy the Government until they got their way, Stephen Walsh, one of the\nleaders of the miners, stood up in the face of a million miners and said\nhe would not go on with the others against the Government. \"It is now\ntime for the trades union men to return to work. We have done what we\ncould. Our citizenship should be higher than our trades unionship, and\nwith me, as long as I am a trades union man, it will be.\"\n\nHe was called a traitor to his class.\n\nI am an unwilling and unfit person, as a sojourner and an American, to\ntake any position on the merits of the question as to the\ndisestablishment of the Church in Wales. But when I saw Bishop Gore\nstanding up and looking unblinkingly at facts or what he thought were\nfacts which he would rather not have seen and which were not on his\nside, and when I saw him voting deliberately for the disestablishment of\nhis own Church, I greeted with joy, as if I had seen a cathedral,\nanother traitor to his class. I almost believe that a Church that could\nproduce and supply a man like this for a great nation looking through\nevery city and county year by year for men to go with it ... a Church\nthat could produce and keep producing Bishop Gores, would be entitled,\nfrom a great nation to anything it liked.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nMen seem to be capable of three stages of courage. Courage is graded to\nthe man.\n\nThere is the man who is so tired, or mechanical-minded, that he can only\nthink of himself.\n\nThere is the man who is so tired that he can only think of his class.\n\nAnd there is the man that one has watched being moved over slowly from a\nMe-man into a Class-man, who has begun to show the first faint\nbeginnings of being a Crowd-man.\n\nOne man has courage for himself because he knows what he wants for\nhimself. Another has courage for his class because he knows what he\nwants for his class. Another has courage for God and for the world\nbecause there are things he sees that he wants for God and for the\nworld, and he sees them so clearly that he sees ways to get them.\n\nLack of courage is a lack of vision or clear-headedness about what one\nwants. I do not know, but I can only say that it has seemed to me that\nBishop Gore has a vision or clear-headedness about what he wants for\ndemocracy, and that he uses his vision of what he wants for democracy to\ntrue his vision for his class. Perhaps also he has a vision for his\nclass for the church people that it is for the interest church people to\nbe the class that is, out of all the world, supremely considerate, big,\nleisurely, unfretful in its dealings with others. Perhaps also he has a\nvision for himself and is clear-headed for himself, and has seen that\nthough the steeples fall about him, and though the altars go up in\nsmoke, he will keep the spirit of God still within his reach. The\ngentleness, the grim hope for the world and the patience that built the\ncathedrals, shall be in his heart day and night.\n\nI hold no brief for Bishop Gore.\n\nI know there must be others like him who voted on the other side.\n\nI know there are hundreds of thousands of employers who in their hearts\nare like him. I know there are hundreds of thousands of men in the\ntrades unions who are like him.\n\nI am not sure that Bishop Gore, on the merits of the case, was right. I\nwish this day I knew that he was wrong. I wish that I had spent the last\nsix months in fighting him, in fighting against his vision, that I might\nbe more free to-day to point to him with joy when I go up and down the\nstreets with men and look at the churches with men--the rows of\nchurches--and try to tell them what they are for. I have seen that the\ncathedrals scattered about under the sky in England are but God's little\ntools to make great cities on the earth, and to build softly out of the\nhearts of men and women men who shall be cathedrals too--men buttressed\nagainst the world, men who can stand alone.\n\nAnd it has seemed to me that Tom Mann and D.A. Thomas are incompetent as\nleaders of industry because they do not see that Labour is full of men\nwho can do things like this. I am proud, over in my country across the\nsea, to be cousin to a nation that is still the headquarters--the\ninternational citadel--of individualism upon the earth. The world knows\nif England does not, that this kind of individualism is the most\ncharacteristic, the most mighty and impregnable Dreadnought against that\nEngland has produced.\n\nBut England knows it too.\n\nI have seen thousands of men in England in their dull brown clothes pass\nby me in the street who know and respond to the spirit that is in Bishop\nGore, and who have the courage to show it themselves. And the vision is\nin them, but it is not waked. The moment it is waked we will have a new\nworld. It is because Tom Mann and D.A. Thomas are not leaders of men who\nhave this spirit that they are about to be dropped as typical leaders of\nLabour and Capital in modern times. No man will be accepted by the Crowd\nto-day as a competent leader of his class who is afraid of the other\nclasses. No man will be said to be a true leader, to be competent to\nmake things move in the world, who does not have three gears of courage:\ncourage for himself, courage for his own people, courage for other\npeople; and who does not dare to deal with other people as if they\nreally might be dealt with, after all, as fellow human beings capable of\nacting like fellow human beings, capable of finer and of truer things,\nof more manly and patient, more shrewdly generous, more far-sighted\nthings, than might appear at first.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nWas Mr. Josiah Wedgewood right when he called Davy McEwen a traitor to\nhis class?\n\nI do not want to judge Davy McEwen. Such things are matters of personal\ninterpretation, and of standing with a man face to face for a moment and\nlooking him in the eyes.\n\nOf course, if I had done this, I might have been tempted and despised\nhim.\n\nAnd I might now. The thing that I would have tried to look down through\nto in him, if I had looked him in the eye, would have been something\nlike this: \"Are you or are you not, Davy McEwen, standing out day after\nday against your class because you can see less than your class sees,\nbecause you are a mere me-man? Do you go by here grimly day by day, past\nall these people lined up on the hills, sternly thinking of yourself?\"\n\nIf I found that this was true, as it might well be, and often is, I\nwould say that Davy McEwen was a traitor to his class. But if I found\nDavy McEwen going past hills-ful of workmen because he had a larger,\nfairer vision of what his class is than they had, if it proved to be\ntrue that the crowd-man in him was keeping the class-man in place, and\nholding true his vision for his class, I would say that it was his class\nthat was being a traitor to him; I would say that sooner or later his\nclass would see in some quiet day that it had been a traitor to him and\nto the world, and a traitor to itself.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIf socialism and individualism cannot work together, and if (like the\nmasculine and feminine in spirit) each cannot make itself the means and\nthe method of fulfilling the other, there is no reason why either of\nthem should be fulfilled.\n\nIn the meantime, there is a kind of self-will that seems to me, as its\nshadow comes across my path, like God himself walking on the earth. And\nI have seen it in the rich and I have seen it in the poor, and in people\nwho were being wrong and in people who were being right.\n\nIt is like hearing great bells in the dark, singing in the solemn night\nto so much as hear of a man somewhere, I might go and see, who stands\nalone.\n\nIf we want to stand together, let us begin with these men who can stand\nalone.\n\nThere is a sense in which Christ died on the cross because He could\nfind at the time no other way of saying this. There is a sense in which\nthe decline of individualism is what he died for.\n\nOr we might call it the beginning of individualism. He died for the\nprinciple of doing what he thought was right before anybody else did it,\nand whether anybody else did it or not. The self-will of Jesus was half\nthe New Testament. He crucified himself, his mother, and a dozen\ndisciples that His own vision for all might be fulfilled. Socialism\nitself, what is good in it, would not exist to-day if Jesus, the Christ,\nhad not practised socialism, in the best sense, by being an\nindividualist.\n\nIf we are going to get to socialism by giving up individualism, by\nabolishing heroes, why get to it?\n\nThis more glorious self-will is not, of course, of a kind that all men\ncan expect to have. Most of us have not the vision that equips us, and\nthat gives us the right, to have it. But we can exact of our leaders\nthat they shall have it--that they shall see more for us than we can see\nfor ourselves, that they shall hold their vision up before us and let us\nsee it, and let us have the use of it, that they shall be true to us,\nthat they shall be the big brothers of the people.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IX\n\nRULES FOR TELLING A HERO--WHEN ONE SEES ONE\n\n\nI have sometimes hoped that the modern world was about to produce at\nlast some man somewhere with a big-hearted, easy powerful mind, who\ncould protect the French Revolution. What we need most of all just now\nin our present crisis is some man who could take up the French\nRevolution without half trying, all the world looking on and wondering\nsoftly how he dares to do it, and put it gently but firmly, and once for\nall, up high somewhere where no one except geniuses, or at least the\nvery tallest-minded people, could ever again get at it.\n\nAs it is, hardly a day passes but one sees new little nobodies\neverywhere all about one reaching up without half thinking to it--to the\nFrench Revolution--grabbing it calmly, and then using it deliberately\nbefore our eyes as a general free-for-all analogy for anything that\ncomes into their heads. The Syndicalists and Industrial Workers of the\nWorld have had the use of it last. The fact that the French Revolution\nwas French and that it worked fairly well a hundred years ago and with a\nLouis Sixteenth sort of person, and as a kind of first rough sketch, or\ndraft of just what a revolution might be for once, and what it would\nhave to get over being afterward, as soon as possible, never seems to\nhave occurred to many people. One sees them rushing about the world\ntrying to get up exact duplicates, little fussy replicas of a\nrevolution, and of a kind of revolution that the real world put quietly\naway in the attic seventy years ago. The real world, and all the men in\nit who are facing real facts to-day, are getting what they want in\nprecisely the opposite of the violent, theatrical French-Revolution\nway. The fact that people are quite different now, and that it is more\neffective and practical to get new ideas into their heads by keeping\ntheir heads on than it is by taking their heads off--some of us seem to\nhave passed over. Living as we do in a world to-day with our new\nexplosives, our new antiseptics, our new biology, bacteriology, our new\nstorage batteries, our habit of getting everything we get and changing\neverything we change by quietly and coolly looking at facts, the old\nlumbering fashion of having a beautiful, showy, emotional revolution now\non one side, and then waiting to have another beautiful, showy,\nemotional revolution on the other, each oscillating back and forth year\nby year until people finally settle down, look at facts together, become\nscientific, and see things as they are--has gone by. We have not time\nfor revolutions nowadays. They may be amusing, but they are not\npractical, and evolution or revolution-without-knowing-it, or evolution\nall together, suit us better. We are in a world in which we are seeing\nmen almost being made over before our eyes by the scientific habit of\nthought--by the new, slow, imperious way we have come to have of making\nourselves look at things at which we would rather not look, until we see\nthem as they are. The man of scientific spirit, the quiet-minded,\nimplacable man who gets what he wants for himself and for others by\nmerely turning on the light, who makes a new world for us by just\nshowing us more plainly the one we really have, possesses the earth.\n\nThere is no reason why revolutionists should feel that they are\nparticularly courageous, that they are the particularly high-minded,\nromantic, adventurous, uncompromising and superior people. The real\nadventure, the abiding emotion and wonder of living in the twentieth\ncentury, lies in the high, patient, slow, quiet, silent enterprise of\nseeing facts as they are, and without any fuss, and inexorably and with\ngood cheer, acting on them. The human race has a new temperament. The\nway to fight now is to look, to look first, to look longest, and to\nlook for the most people. The way we win a revolution or bring the\nenemy to terms to-day is by battering the enemy with cooeperation, with\nunderstanding him and being understood by him, by being impregnably,\nobstinately his brother, by piling up huge happy citadels of good-will,\nof services rendered, services deserved, and services returned. We had\nan idea once that the way to conquer a man was by hitting the outside of\nhim. We conquer men now by getting inside of them, and by getting inside\nfirst and then dealing with outside things together.\n\nWe see the inside. It is the modern note to see the inside, to attack\nthe essence, the spirit, and to work everything out from that.\n\nThe modern method of being courageous and of defending what we want is a\nkind of chemistry.\n\nHercules is a bust now.\n\nWe prefer still little women like Madame Curie, or a man like Sir Joseph\nLister, or like Wilbur Wright--the courage that faces material facts,\nthat deals with the elements of things, whether in a bottle, or in the\nheaven above us, or in the earth, or in a man, or in an enemy.\n\nWhen the subject-matter is human nature and the courage we have to have\nis the courage that can deal with people, we ask ourselves: \"What are\nthe most difficult facts to face in people?\"\n\nThey are:\n\n    The facts about how they are different from us. The facts\n    about their being like us. The facts as to what we can do\n    about it.\n\nSo it has come to seem to me to be the greatest, the most typical and\ndifficult courage of modern life and of a crowd civilization, the\ncourage to look at actual facts in people and to see how the people can\nbe made to go together.\n\nA man's courage is his sense of identity.\n\nA man's courage toward nature, heat, cold, mountains, seas, deserts,\nchemistry, geology, is his sense of identity with God and of his right\nto share with God in the creating of His world.\n\nHis courage toward people is his sense of identity with men who seem\ndifferent from him, of all races, all classes, and all nations. He sees\nthe differences in their big relations alongside the resemblances. Then\nhe fits the differences into the resemblances and knows what to do.\n\nThere is a statue of Sir George Livesey, one of the early presidents of\nthe South Metropolitan Gas Company, placed at the entrance of the works\nwhere thousands of workmen day and night pass in and pass out.\n\nSir George Livesey was the man who, in the early days of the South\nMetropolitan Gas Company, stood out against all his workmen, for six\nlong weeks, to get the workmen to believe that they were as good as he\nwas. He believed that they were capable, or should be capable, of being\nidentified with him and working with him as partners, of sharing in the\ndirection of the business, of sharing in the profits, and cooeperating\nall day, every day, with him and the other partners, to make the\nbusiness a success.\n\nHe did not propose to be locked up in a business, if he could help it,\nwith men who did not feel identified with him, who were not his\npartners, or who did not want to be.\n\nHe thought it was not good business to engage five thousand men and pay\nthem deliberately so much a day to fight his business on the inside of\nthe works. Being obliged to do his business as a fight against people\nwho helped him all the time, watching and outwitting them as if he were\ndealing with five thousand intelligent gorillas instead of with fellow\nhuman beings, did not interest him.\n\nHe did not believe that the men themselves, in spite of the way they\ntalked, when they came to think of it, really enjoyed being intelligent\ngorillas, any more than he did.\n\nThe Trades Unions passed a resolution that it was safer for the men in\ndealing with Sir George Livesey to keep on being gorillas.\n\nSir George Livesey proposed that they should all try being fellow human\nbeings and being in partnership for a little while and see how it\nworked.\n\nThe Trades Unions were afraid to let them try. Even if it worked very\nwell, and if it turned out that being men was safer, in this one\nparticular case, than being gorillas, it would set a bad example, the\nTrades Unions thought. They took the ground that it was safer to have\nall men treated alike, whether they were gorillas or not.\n\nThey instructed the men to strike. The South Metropolitan Gas Company\nwas almost closed up, but it did not yield.\n\nSir George Livesey took the ground that if the Trades Unions believed\nthat his men were not good enough for him, and that he was not good\nenough for his men, he would wait until they did.\n\nThe bronze statue of Sir George Livesey that the men have raised, and\nthat thousands of men go by every day, day after day, and look up to at\ntheir work, was raised to a man who had stood out against his workmen\nfor weeks to prove that they were as good as he was, and could be\ntrusted to be loyal to him, and that he was as good as they were, and\nthat he could be trusted to be loyal to them.\n\nHe had the courage to insist on being, whether anybody wanted it for the\nmoment or not, a new kind and new size of man. He preferred being\nallowed to be a new kind and new size himself, and he preferred allowing\nhis men to be new kinds and new sizes of men, and he made a shrewd,\ndogged guess that when they tried it they would like it. They were\nmerely afraid to be new sizes, as we all are at first.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThere are possibly three ways in which, in the confusion of our modern\nworld, one can tell a hero when one sees one.\n\nOne knows a hero first by his originality. He invents a new kind and new\nsize of man. He finishes off one sample. There he is.\n\nThe next thing one notices about this man (when he is invented) is his\nhumility. He never seems to feel--having invented himself--how original\nhe is. The more original people think he is, and the more they try to\nset him one side as an exception, the more he resents it.\n\nAnd then, of course, the final way one knows a man is a hero is always\nby his courage, by his masterful way of driving through, when he meets a\nman, to his sense of identity with him.\n\nOne always sees a hero going about quietly everywhere, treating every\nother man as if he were a hero too.\n\nHe gets so in the habit, from day to day (living with himself), of\nbelieving in human nature, that when he finds himself suddenly up\nagainst other people he cannot stop.\n\nIt is not that he is deceived about the other people, though it might\nseem so sometimes. He merely sees further into them and further for\nthem.\n\nHas he not invented himself? Is he not at this very moment a better kind\nof man than he thought he could be once? Is he not going to be a better\nkind to-morrow than he is now?\n\nSo, quietly, he keeps on year by year and day by day, treating other\npeople as if they were, or were meant to be, the same kind of man that\nhe is, until they are.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER X\n\nWHO IS AFRAID?\n\n\nWhen Christ turned the other cheek, the last thing He would have wanted\nany one to think was that He was backing down, or that He was merely\nbeing a sweet, gentle, grieved person. He was inventing before\neverybody, and before His enemies, promptly and with great presence of\nmind, a new kind and new size of man. It was a more spirited, more\noriginal, more unconquerable and bewildering way of fighting than\nanybody had thought of before. To be suddenly in an enemy's presence a\nnew kind and new size of man--colossal, baffling--to turn into\ninvisibility before him, into intangibility, into another kind of being\nbefore the enemy's eyes, so that he could not possibly tell what to do,\nand so that none of the things that he had thought of to do would\nwork.... This is what Christ was doing, it seems to some of us, and it\nis apparently the way He felt about it when He did it.\n\nTurning the other cheek is a kind of moral jiu-jitsu.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe last thing that many of us who are interested in the modern world\nreally want is to have war, or fighting, stop. We glory in courage, in\nthe power of facing danger, in adventuresomeness of spirit, in every\nsingle one of the qualities that always have made, and always will make,\nevery true man a fighter.\n\nWe contend that fighting, as at present conducted, is based on fear and\nlazy-mindedness; that it is lacking in the manlier qualities, that the\nbiggest and newest kind of men are not willing to be in it, and that it\ndoes not work.\n\nWe would rather see the world abolished than to see war abolished.\n\nWe want to see war brought up to date.\n\nThe best way to fight was invented some two thousand years ago, and the\ninnocent, conventional persons who still believe in a kind of routine,\nor humdrum, of shooting, who have not caught up with this\ntwo-thousand-year-old invention, are about to be irrevocably displaced\nin our modern life by men who have a livelier, more far-seeing, more\npractical, more modern kind of courage. From this time on we have made\nup our minds, we, the people of this world, that the only men we are\ngoing to allow to fight for us are the men who can fight the way Christ\ndid.\n\nMen who have not the courage to fight the way Christ did are about to be\nshut up by society; no one will harm them, of course, innocent, afraid\npersons, who have to protect themselves with gunpowder, but they will\nmerely be set one side after this, where they will not be in a position\nto spoil the fighting of the men who are not afraid.\n\nAnd who are the men who are not afraid?\n\nTo search your enemy's heart, to amputate, as by a kind of spiritual\nsurgery, the very desire for fighting in him, to untangle his own life\nbefore his eyes and suddenly make him see what it is he really wants, to\nhave him standing there quietly, radiantly disarmed, gentle-hearted, and\nlike a child before you; if you are able, Gentle Reader, or ever have\nbeen able, to do this, you are not afraid! Why should any one ever have\nsupposed that it takes a backing down, giving up, teary, weak, and\ngrieved person to do this?\n\nChrist expressed His idea of courage very mildly when He said, in\neffect: \"Blessed are those who dare to be meek, for they shall inherit\nthe earth.\"\n\nIt takes a bolder front to step up to a man one knows is one's enemy\nand cooeperate with him than it does to do a little, simple, thoughtless,\noutside thing like stepping up to him and knocking him down.\n\nCooeperating with a man in spite of him, moving over to where he is,\nwinning a victory over him by getting at his most rooted, most\nprotected, secret, instinctive feelings, literally striking him through\nto the heart and making a new kind of man out of him before his own\neyes, by being a new kind of man to him, takes a bigger, stiller\ncourage, is a more exposed and dangerous thing to do than to fall on him\nand fight him.\n\nIt is also more practical. The one cool, practical, hard-headed way to\nwin a victory over an enemy is to do the thing that makes him the most\nafraid. And there is no man people are more afraid of than the man who\nstands up to them, quietly looks at them, and will not fight with them.\nHe is doing the one thing of all others to them that they would not dare\nto do. They wonder what such a man thinks. If he dares stand up before\nthem and face them with nothing but thinking, what is he thinking?\n\nWhat he thinks, if it makes him able to do a thing like this, must have\nsome man-stuff in it. They prefer to wait and see what he thinks.\n\nCourage consists in not being afraid of one's own mind and of other\npeople's minds. When men become so afraid of one another's minds and of\ntheir own minds that they cannot think, they have to back down and\nfight. They are cowards.\n\nThey do not know what they think.\n\nThey do not know what they want.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XI\n\nTHE TECHNIQUE OF COURAGE\n\n\nI have never known a coward.\n\nI have known men who did cowardly things and who were capable of\ncowardly thoughts, but I have never known a man who could be fairly and\nfinally classified as a coward.\n\nCourage is a process.\n\nIf people are cowards it is because they are in a hurry.\n\nThey have not taken the pains to see what they think.\n\nThe man who has taken the time to think down through to what he really\nwants and to what he is bound to get, is always (and sometimes very\nsuddenly and unexpectedly) a courageous man.\n\nIt is the man who is half wondering whether he really wants what he\nthinks he wants or not, or whether he can get it or not, who is a\ncoward.\n\nThe coward is a half man. He is slovenly minded about himself. He gets\nout of the hard work of seeing through himself, of driving on through\nwhat he supposes he wants, to what he knows he wants.\n\nSo, after all, it is a long, slow, patient pull, being a courageous man.\nFew men have the nerve to take the time to attend to it.\n\nThe first part of courage consists in all this hard work one has to put\nin on one's soul day after day, and over and over again, doggedly, going\nback to it. _What is it that I really want?_\n\nThe second, or more brilliant-looking part of courage, the courageous\nact itself (like Roosevelt's when he is shot), which everybody notices,\nis easy. The real courage is over then.\n\nCourage consists in seeing so clearly something that one wants to get\nthat one is more afraid of not getting it than one is of anything that\ncan get in the way.\n\nThe first thing that society is ever able to do with the lowest type of\nlabouring man seems to be to get him to want something. It has to think\nout ways of getting him waked up, of getting him to be decently selfish,\nand to want something for himself. He only wants a little at first; he\nwants something for himself to-day and he has courage for to-day. Then\nperhaps he wants something for himself for to-morrow, or next week, or\nnext year, and he has courage for next week, or for next year. Then he\nwants something for his family, or for his wife, and he has courage for\nhis family, or for his wife.\n\nGradually he sees further and wants something for his class. His courage\nmounts up by leaps and bounds when he is liberated into his class. Then\nhe discovers the implacable mutual interest of his class with the other\nclasses, and he thinks of things he wants for all the classes. He thinks\nthe classes together into a world, and becomes a man. He has courage for\nthe world.\n\nWhen men see, whether they are rich or poor, what they want, what they\nbelieve they can get, they are not afraid.\n\nThe next great work of the best employers is to get labour to want\nenough. Labour is tired and mechanical-minded. The next work of the\nbetter class of labourer, or the stronger kind of Trades Union, is to\nget capital to want enough. Capital is tired, too. It does not see\nreally big, worth-while things that can be done with capital, and has no\ncourage for these things.\n\nThe larger the range and the larger the variety of social desire the\ngreater the courage.\n\nThe problem in modern industry is the arousing of the imaginations of\ncapitalists and labourers so that they see something that gives them\ncourage for themselves and for one another, and courage for the world.\n\nThe world belongs to the men of vision--the men who are not afraid--the\nmen who see things that they have made up their minds to get.\n\nWho are the men to-day, in all walks of life, who want the most things\nfor the most people, and who have made up their minds to get them?\n\nThere is just one man we will follow to-day--those of us who belong to\nthe crowd--the man who is alive all over, who is deeply and gloriously\ncovetous, the man who sees things he wants for himself, and who\ntherefore has courage for himself, and who sees things he wants and is\nbound to get for other people, and who therefore has courage for other\npeople.\n\nThis is the hardest kind of courage to have--courage for other people.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XII\n\nTHE MEN WHO WANT THINGS\n\n\nDuring the coal strike I took up my morning paper and read from a speech\nby Vernon Hartshorn, the miners' leader: \"In a week's time, by tying up\nthe railways and other means of transportation, we could so paralyze the\ncountry that the government would come to us on their knees and beg us\nto go to work on terms they are now flouting as impossible.\"\n\nDuring the dockers' strike I took up my morning paper and read Ben\nTillett's speech, at the meeting the day before, to fifty thousand\nstrikers on Tower Hill. \"'I am going to ask you to join me in a prayer,'\nTillett said. 'Lord Devonport has contributed to the murder, by\nstarvation, of your children, your women, and your men. I am not going\nto ask you to do it, but I am going to call on God to strike Lord\nDevonport dead,' He asked those who were prepared to repeat the 'prayer'\nto hold up their hands. Countless hands were held up, and cries: 'Strike\nhim doubly stone dead!' The men then repeated the following 'prayer',\nword for word, after Tillett:\n\n    \"'O God, strike Lord Devonport dead.'\n\n\"Afterward the strikers chanted the words: 'He shall die! He shall\ndie!'\"\n\nThere are times when it is very hard to have courage for other people.\n\nIt is when one watches people doing cowardly things that one finds it\nhardest to have courage for them.\n\nI felt the same way both mornings at first when I held my paper in my\nhand and thought about what I had read, about the government's going\ndown on its knees, and about God's striking Lord Devonport dead.\n\nThe first feeling was one of profound resentment, shame--a huge,\nhelpless, muddle-headed anger.\n\nI had not the slightest trace of courage for the miners; I did not see\nhow the government could have any courage for them. And I had no courage\nfor the dockers, or for what could be expected of the dockers. I did not\nsee how Lord Devonport could have any courage for them.\n\nI repeated their prayer to myself.\n\nThe dockers were cowards. I was not going to try to sympathize with\nthem, or try to be reasonable about them. It was nothing that they were\ndesperate and had prayed. Was I not desperate too? Would not the very\nthought that fifty thousand men could pray a prayer like that make any\nman desperate? It was as if I had stood and heard fifty thousand beasts\nroaring to their god.\n\n\"They are desperate,\" I said to myself: \"I will not take what they think\nseriously. It does not matter what desperate people think.\"\n\nThen I waited a minute. \"But I am desperate, too,\" I said; \"I must not\ntake what I think seriously. It does not matter what desperate people\nthink.\"\n\nI thought about this a little, and drove it in.\n\n\"What I think will matter more a little later, perhaps, when I get over\nbeing desperate.\"\n\n\"Perhaps what the dockers think will matter more a little later, too.\"\n\nIn the meantime are not their scared and hateful opinions as good as my\nscared and hateful opinions?\n\nThe important and final opinions, the ones to be taken seriously, that\ncan be acted on, will be the opinions of those who get over being scared\nand hateful first.\n\nThen I stood up for myself.\n\nI had a reason for being scared and hateful. They and their prayer drove\nme to be scared and hateful.\n\nI thought again.\n\nPerhaps they had a reason, too.\n\nThen it all came over me. I became a human being all in a minute when I\nthought of it.\n\nI became suddenly full of courage for the hateful dockers.\n\nI thought how much more discouraging it would be if they had not been\nhateful at all.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nI do not imagine God was sorry when He heard those fifty thousand\ndockers asking Him to strike Lord Devonport dead.\n\nNot that He would have approved of it.\n\nIt was not the last word of wisdom or reasonableness. It was lacking in\nbeauty and distinction as a petition, as being just the right form of\nprayer for those fifty thousand faultless dockers up on Tower Hill that\nafternoon (the whole of London listening, in that shocked and proper way\nthat London has).\n\nBut I have not lost all courage for the dockers who made it.\n\nThey still want something! They still are men! They still stand up when\nthey speak to Heaven! There is some stuff in them yet! They make heaven\nand earth ring to get a word with God!\n\nThis all means something to God, probably.\n\nPerhaps it might mean something to us.\n\nWe are superior persons, it is true. We do not pray the way they pray.\n\nWe believe in being more self-controlled. We take our breakfasts\nquietly, and with high collars and silk hats, and with gilt prayer-books\nwe go into the presence of our Maker. We believe in being calm and\nreasonable.\n\nBut if men who have not enough to eat are so half-dead and so worthless\nthat they can feel calm and reasonable about it, and can always be\nprecisely right and always say precisely the right thing--if, with their\nwives fainting in their arms and their babies crying for food, all that\nthose dockers had character enough to do, up on Tower Hill, was to make\na polite, smooth, Anglican prayer to God--a prayer like a kind of\nblessing before not having any meat, and not that awful, fateful, husky\ncry to Heaven, a roar or rending of their hearts up to the black and\nempty sky--what would such men have been good for? What hope or courage\ncould any one have for them, for such men at such a time, if they would\nnot, if they could not, come thundering and breaking into His presence,\nfifty thousand strong, to get what they want?\n\nI may not know God, but whatever else He is, I feel sure that He is not\na precise stickler-god, that He is not pompous about spiritual manners,\na huge, literal-minded, Proper Person, who cannot make allowances for\nhuman nature, who cannot hear what humble, rough men like these, hewing\ntheir vast desires for Him out of darkness, and out of little foolish\nwords, are trying to say to Him.\n\nAnd perhaps we, too, do not need to be literal-minded about a prayer\nthat we may hear, or that we may overhear, roaring its way up past our\nsmooth, beautiful lives rudely to Heaven.\n\nWhat is the gist of the prayer to God, and to us?\n\nWhat is it that the men are trying to say in this awful, flaming,\nblackening metaphor of wishing Lord Devonport dead?\n\nThe gist of it is that they mean to say, whether they are right or wrong\n(like us, as we would say, whether we were right or wrong), they mean to\nsay that they have a right to live.\n\nIn other words, the gist of it is that we are like them, and that they\nare like us.\n\nI, too, in my hour of deepest trial, with no silk hat, with no gloves,\nwith no gilt prayer-book, as I should, have flashed out my will upon my\nGod. I, too, have cried with Paul, with Job, across my sin--my sin that\nvery moment heaped up upon my lips--have broken wildly in upon that\nstill, white floor of Heaven!\n\nAnd when the dockers break up through, fling themselves upon their God,\nwhat is it, after all, but another way of saying, \"I am persuaded that\nneither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor\nthings present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other\ncreature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God....\"\n\nIt may have been wicked in the dockers to address God in this way, but\nit would have been more wicked in them not to think He could understand.\n\nI believe, for one, that when Jacob wrestled with the angel, God looked\non and liked it.\n\nThe angel was a mere representative at best, and Jacob was really\nwrestling with God.\n\nAnd God knew it and liked it.\n\nPraying to strike Lord Devonport dead was the dockers' way of saying to\nGod that there was something on their minds that simply could not be\nsaid.\n\nI can imagine that this would interest a God, a prayer like the dockers'\nprayer, so spent, so desperate, so unreasonable, breaking through to\nthat still, white floor of Heaven!\n\nAnd it does seem as if, in our more humble, homely, and useful capacity\nas fellow human beings, it might interest us.\n\nIt seems as if, possibly, we might stop criticising people who pray\nharder than we do, pointing out that wrestling with God is really rather\nrude--as if we might stop and see what it means to God and what it means\nto us, and what there is that we might do, you and I, oh, Gentle Reader,\nto make it possible for the dockers on Tower Hill to be more polite,\nperhaps, more polished, as it were, when they speak to God next time.\n\nPerhaps nothing the dockers could do in the way of being violent could\nbe more stupid and wicked than having all these sleek, beautiful,\nperfect people, twenty-six million of them, all expecting them not to be\nviolent.\n\nIn my own quiet, gentle, implacable beauty of spirit, in my own ruthless\nwisdom on a full stomach, I do not deny that I do most sternly\ndisapprove of the dockers and their violence.\n\nBut it is better than nothing, thank God!\n\nThey want something.\n\nIt gives me something to hope for, and to have courage for, about\nthem--that they want something.\n\nPossibly if we could get them started wanting something, even some\nlittle narrow and rather mean thing, like having enough to eat--possibly\nthey will go on to art galleries, to peace societies, and cathedrals\nnext, and to making very beautiful prayers (alas, Gentle Reader, how can\nI say it?) like you--Heaven help us!--and like me!\n\nI would have but one objection to letting the dockers have their full\nway, and to letting the control of the situation be put into their\nhands.\n\nThey do not hunger enough.\n\nThey are merely hungering for themselves.\n\nThis may be a reason for not letting the world get entirely into their\nhands, but in the meantime we have every reason to be appreciative of\nthe good the dockers are doing (so far as it goes) in hungering for\nthemselves.\n\nIt would be strange indeed if one could not tolerate in dockers a little\nthing like this. Babies do it. It is the first decency in all of us. It\nis the first condition of our knowing enough, or amounting to enough, to\never hunger for any one else. Everybody has to make a beginning\nsomewhere. Even a Saint Francis, the man who hungers and thirsts for\nrighteousness, who rises to the heights of social-mindedness, who\nhungers and thirsts for everybody, begins all alone, at the breast.\n\nWhich is there of us who, if we had not begun our own hungering and\nthirsting for righteousness, our tugging on God, in this old, lonely,\npreoccupied, selfish-looking way, would ever have grown up, would ever\nhave wanted enough things to belong to a Church of England, for\ninstance, or to a Congregational Home Missionary Society?\n\nIt is true that the dockers are, for the moment (alas, fifty or sixty\nyears or so!), merely wanting things for themselves, or wanting things\nfor their own class. And so would we if we had been born, brought up,\nand embedded in a society which allowed us so little for ourselves that\nnot growing up morally--keeping on over and over again, year after year,\njust wanting things for ourselves, and not really being weaned yet--was\nall that was left to us.\n\nThere is really considerable spiritual truth in having enough to eat.\n\nSometimes I have thought it would be not unhelpful, would make a little\nring of gentle-heartedness around us, some of us--those of us who live\nprotected lives and pray such rich, versatile prayers, if we would stop\nand think what a docker would have to do, what arrangements a docker\nwould have to make before he could enjoy praying with us--falling back\ninto our beautiful, soft, luxurious wanting things for others.\n\nPossibly these arrangements, such as they are, are the ones the dockers\nare trying to make with Lord Devonport now.\n\nThe docker is trying to get through hungering for something to eat, to\narrange gradually to have his hungers move on.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XIII\n\nMEN WHO GET THINGS\n\n\nAll the virtues are hungers. A vice is the failure of desire. A vice is\na man's failure to have enough big hungers at hand, sternly within\nreach, to control his little ones.\n\nA man who is doing wrong is essentially bored. He has let himself drop\ninto doing rows of half-things, or things which he can only half do. He\nforgets, for the moment, what it really is that he wants, or possibly\nthat he wants anything. Then it is that the one little, mean Lonely\nHunger--a glass of liquor, a second piece of pie, another man's wife, or\na million dollars, runs away with him.\n\nWhen a man sins it is because his appetites fail him. Self-control lies\nin maintaining checks and balances of desire, centripetals, and\ncentrifugals of desire. The worst thing that could happen to the world\nwould be to have it placed in the hands of men who only have a gift of\nhungering for certain sorts of things, or hungering for certain classes\nof people, or hungering for themselves.\n\nWe do not want the man who is merely hungering for himself to rule the\nworld--not because we feel superior to him, but because a man who is\nmerely hungering for himself cannot be taken seriously as an authority\non worlds. People can take him seriously as an authority on his own\nhunger. But what he thinks about everything beyond that point cannot be\ntaken seriously. What he thinks about how the world should be run, about\nwhat other people want, what labour and capital want, cannot be taken\nseriously.\n\nI will not yield place to any one in my sympathy with the dockers.\n\nI like to think that I too, given the same grandfathers, the same\nsleeping rooms and neighbours, the same milk, the same tincture of\nreligion, would dare to do what they have done.\n\nBut I cannot be content, as I take my stand by the dockers, with\nsympathizing in general. I want to sympathize to the point.\n\nAnd on the practical side of what to do next in behalf of the dockers,\nor of what to let them do, I find myself facing two facts:\n\nFirst, the dockers are desperate. I take their desperation as conclusive\nand imperative. It must be obeyed.\n\nSecond, I do not care what they think.\n\nWhat they think must not be obeyed. Men who are in the act of being\nscared or hateful, whether it be for five minutes, jive months, or sixty\nyears, who have given up their courage for others, or for their enemies,\nare not practical. What a man who despairs of everybody except himself\nthinks, does not work and cannot be made to work. The fact that the\ndockers have no courage about their employers may be largely the\nemployers' fault. It is largely the fault of society, of the churches,\nthe schools, the daily press. But the fact remains, and whichever side\nin the contest has, or is able to have, first, the most courage for the\nother side, whichever side wants the most for the other side, will be\nthe side that will get the most control.\n\nIf Labour, in the form of syndicalism, wants to grasp the raw materials,\nmachinery, and management of modern industry out of the hands of the\ncapitalists and run the world, the one shrewd, invincible way for Labour\nto do it is going to be to want more things for more people than\ncapitalists can want.\n\nThe only people, to-day, who are going to be competent to run a world,\nor who can get hold of even one end of it to try to run it, are going to\nbe the people who want a world, who have a habit, who may be said to be\nalmost in a rut, of wanting things all day, every day, for a world--men\nwho cannot keep narrowed down very long at a time to wanting things for\nthemselves.\n\nThere will be little need of our all falling into a panic, or all being\nobliged to rely on policemen, or to call out troops to stave off an\nuprising of the labour classes as long as the labour classes are merely\nwanting things for themselves. It is the men who have the bigger hungers\nwho are getting the bigger sorts of things--things like worlds into\ntheir hands. The me-man and the class-man, under our modern conditions,\nare being more and more kept back and held under in the smaller places,\nthe me-places and class-places, by the men who want more things than\nthey can want, who lap over into wanting things for others.\n\nThe me-man often may see what he wants clearly and may say what he\nwants.\n\nBut he does not get it. It is the class-man who gets it for him.\n\nThe class-man may see what he wants for his class clearly and may say\nwhat he wants.\n\nBut he does not get it. It is the crowd-man who gets it for him.\n\nIt is a little startling, the grim, brilliant, beautiful way that God\nhas worked it out!\n\nIt is one of His usual paradoxes.\n\nThe thing in a man that makes it possible for him to get things more\nthan other people can get them is his margin of unselfishness.\n\nHe gets things by seeing with the thing that he wants all that lies\naround it. With equal clearness he is seeing all the time the people and\nthe things that are in the way of what he wants; how the people look or\ntry to look, how they feel or try to make him think they feel, what they\nbelieve and do not believe or can be made to believe; he sees what he\nwants in a vast setting of what he cannot get with people, and of what\nhe can--in a huge moving picture of the interests of others.\n\nThe man who, in fulfilling and making the most of himself, can get\noutside of himself into his class, who, in being a good class-man, can\noverflow into being a man of the world, is the man who gets what he\nwants.\n\nI am hopeful about Labour and Capital to-day because in the industrial\nworld, as at present constituted in our cooeperative age, the men who can\nget what they want, who get results out of other people, are the men who\nhave the largest, most sensitive outfits for wanting things for other\npeople.\n\nIf there is one thing rather than another that fills one with courage\nfor the outlook of labouring men to-day it is the colossal failure Ben\nTillett makes in leading them in prayer.\n\nEven the dockers, perhaps the most casually employed, the most spent and\ndesperate class of Labour of all, only prayed Ben Tillet's prayer a\nminute and they were sorry the day after.\n\nAnd it was Ben Tillett's prayer in the end that lost them their cause--a\nprayer that filled all England on the next day with the rage of\nLabour--that a man like Ben Tillett, with such a mean, scared, narrow\nlittle prayer, should dare to represent Labour.\n\nIn the same way, after the shooting in the Lawrence strike, when all\nthose men (Syndicalists) had streamed through the streets, showing off\nbefore everybody their fine, brave-looking thoughtless, superficial,\nguillotine feelings and their furious little banner, \"No God and no\nMaster\"--it did one good, only a day or so later, to see a vast crowd of\nLawrence workers, thirty thousand strong, tramping through the streets,\nsinging, with bands of music, and with banners, \"In God we trust\" and\n\"One is our Master, even Christ\"--thousands of men who had never been\ninside a church, thousands of men who could never have looked up a verse\nin the Bible, still found themselves marching in a procession, snatching\nup these old and pious mottoes and joining in hymns they did not know,\nall to contradict, and to contradict thirty thousand strong, the idea\nthat the blood and froth, the fear and unbelief, of the Industrial\nWorkers of the World represented or could ever be supposed to represent\nfor one moment the manhood and the courage, the faithfulness and (even\nin the hour of their extremity) the quiet-heartedness, the human loyalty\nand self-forgetfulness, the moral dignity of the American workingman.\n\nIt cannot truly be said that the typical modern labouring man, whether\nin America or England, is a coward; that he has no desire, no courage,\nfor any one except for himself and for his own class. Mr. O'Connor of\nthe Dockers' Organization in the East of Scotland, said at the time of\nthe strike of the dockers in London: \"This kind of business of the\nbureaucratic labour men in London, issuing orders for men to stop work\nall over the country, is against the spirit of the trades unions of\nEngland. It is a thing we cannot possibly stand. We have an agreement\nwith the employers, and we have no intention of breaking it.\"\n\nIt cannot be said that the typical modern labourer is listening\nseriously to the Syndicalist or to the Industrial Worker of the World\nwhen he tells him that Labour alone can save itself, and that Labour\nalone can save the world. He knows that any scheme of social and\nindustrial reform which leaves any class out, rich or poor, which does\nnot see that everybody is to blame, which does not see that everybody is\nresponsible, which does not arrange or begin to arrange opportunity and\nexpectation for every man and every degree and kind of man, and does not\ndo it just where that man is, and do it now, is superficial.\n\nIf we are going to have a society that is for all of us, it will take\nall of us, and all of us together, to make it. Mutual expectation alone\ncan make a great society. Mutual expectation, or courage for others,\npersistently and patiently and flexibly applied--applied to details by\nsmall men, applied to wholes by bigger ones--is going to be the next big\nserious, unsentimental, practical industrial achievement. And I do not\nbelieve that for sheer sentiment's sake we are going to begin by rooting\nup millionaires and, with one glorious thoughtless sweep, saying, \"We\nwill have a new world,\" without asking at least some of the owners of\nit to help, or at least letting them in on good behaviour. Nor are we\ngoing to begin by rooting up trade unions and labour leaders.\n\nThe great organizations of Capital in the world to-day are daily\nengaged, through competition and experiment and observation, in\neducating one another and finding out what they really want and what\nthey can really do; and it is equally true that the great organizations\nof labour, in the same way, are educating one another.\n\nThe real fight of modern industry to-day is an educational fight. And\nthe fight is being conducted, not between Labour and Capital, but\nbetween the labouring men who have courage for Capital and labouring men\nwho have not, and between capitalists who have courage for Labour and\nthose who have not. To put it briefly, the real industrial fight to-day\nis between those who have courage and those who have not.\n\nIt is not hard to tell, in a fight between men who have courage and men\nwho have not, which will win.\n\nProbably, whatever else is the matter with them, the world will be the\nmost safe in the hands of the men who have the most courage.\n\nThere are four items of courage I would like to see duly discussed in\nthe meetings of the trades unions in America and England.\n\nFirst, A discussion of trades unions. Why is it that, when the leaders\nof trades unions come to know employers better than the other men do and\nbegin to see the other side and to have some courage about employers and\nto become practicable and reasonable, the unions drop them?\n\nSecond, Why is it that, in a large degree, the big employers, when they\nsucceed in getting skilled representatives or managers who come to know\nand to understand their labouring men better than they do, do _not_ drop\nthem? Why is it that, day by day, on all sides in America and England,\none sees the employing class advancing men who have a genius for being\nbelieved in, to at first questioned, and then to almost unquestioned,\ncontrol of their business? If this is true, does it not seem on the\nwhole that industry is safer in the hands of employers who have courage\nfor both sides and who see both sides than of employees who do not? Does\nnot the remedy for trades unions and employees, if they want to get\ncontrol, seem to be, instead of fighting, to see if they cannot see both\nsides quicker, and see them better, than their employers do?\n\nThird, A discussion of efficiency in a National Labour Party from the\npoint of view of the trend of national efficiency in business.\nApparently the most efficient and shrewd business men in England and\nAmerica are the men who are running what might be called lubricated\nindustries--who are making their industries succeed on the principle of\nsympathetic, smooth-running, mutual interests. If the successful modern\nbusiness man who owns factories is not running each factory as a small\ncivil war, is it not true that the only practical and successful Labour\nParty in England, the only party that can get things done for labour and\nthat can hold power, is bound to be the party that succeeds in having\nthe most courage for both sides, in seeing the most mutual interests,\nand in seeing how these interests can be put together, and in seeing it\nfirst and acting on it before any other merely one-sided party would be\nable to think it out?\n\nFourth, A discussion of the selection of the best labour leaders to\nplace at the head of the unions.\n\nNearly every man who succeeds in business notably, succeeds in believing\nsomething about the people with whom he deals that the men around him\nhave not believed before, or in believing something which, if they did\nbelieve it, they had not applied or acted as if they had believed\nbefore. If, in order to succeed, a business man does not believe\nsomething that needs to be believed before other people believe it, he\nhires somebody who does believe it to believe it for him.\n\nPerhaps Labour would find it profitable to act on this principle too,\nand to see to it that the leaders chosen to act for them are not the\nnoisiest minded, but the most creative men, the men who can express\noriginal, shrewd faiths in the men with whom they have to deal--faiths\nthat the men around them will be grateful (after a second thought) to\nhave expressed next.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIn the meantime, whether among the labourers or the capitalists, however\nlong it may take, it is not hard to see, on every hand to-day, the world\nabout us slowly, implacably getting into the hands of the men, poor or\nrich, who have the most keen, patient courage about other people, the\nmen who are \"good\" (God save the word!), the men who have practical,\nworking human sympathies and a sense of possibilities in those above\nthem and beneath them with whom they work--the men who most clearly,\neagerly, and doggedly want things for others, who have the most courage\nfor others.\n\nI have thought that if we could find out what this courage is, how it\nworks, how it can be had, and where it comes from, it might be more\nworth our while to know than any other one thing in the world.\n\nI would like to try to consider a few of the sources of this courage for\nothers.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XIV\n\nSOURCES OF COURAGE FOR OTHERS--TOLERATION\n\n\nAfter making an address on inspired millionaires one night before the\nSociological Society in their quarters in John Street, I found myself\nthe next day--a six-penny day--standing thoughtfully in the quarters of\nthe Zooelogical Society in Regent's Park.\n\nThe Zooelogical Society makes one feel more humble, I think, than the\nSociological Society does.\n\nAll sociologists, members of Parliament, eugenists, professors, and\nothers, ought to be compelled by law to spend one day every two weeks\nwith the Zooelogical Society in Regent's Park.\n\nAll reformers who essay to make over human nature, all idealists, should\nbe required by law to visit menageries--to go to see them faithfully or\nto be put in them a while until they have observed life and thought\nthings out.\n\n    A GREEN BENCH, THE ZOO, REGENT'S PARK, 1911.\n\nFor orienting a man and making him reasonable, there is nothing, I find,\nlike coming out and putting in a day here, making one's self gaze firmly\nand doggedly at the other animals.\n\nWe have every reason to believe that Noah was a good psychologist, or\njudge of human nature, before he went into the ark, but if he was not,\nhe certainly would have come out one.\n\nThere is nothing like a menagerie to limber one up.\n\nEspecially an idealist.\n\nTake a pelican, for instance. What possible personal ideal was it that\ncould make a pelican want to be a pelican or that could ever have made\na pelican take being a pelican seriously for one minute?\n\nAnd the camel with his lopsided hump. \"Why, oh, why,\" cries the\nidealist, wringing his hands. \"Oh, why----?\"\n\nI have come out here this afternoon, in the middle of my book, in the\nmiddle of a chapter against the syndicalists, but it ill beseems me,\nafter spending half a day looking calmly at peacocks, at giraffes, at\nhippopotamuses, at all these tails, necks, legs and mouths, at this\nstretch or bird's eye view--this vast landscape of God's toleration--to\ncriticise any man, woman or child of this world for blossoming out, for\nliving up, or fleshing up, or paring down, to what he is really like\ninside.\n\nPossibly what each man stands for is well enough for him to stand for.\nIt is only when what a man says, comes to being repeated, to being made\nuniversal, to being jammed down on the rest of us, that the lie in it\nbegins to work out.\n\nLet us let everybody alone and be ready to find things out just for\nourselves.\n\nHere is this big, frivolous, gentle elephant, for instance, poking his\nhuge, inquiring trunk into baby carriages. He is certainly too glorious,\ntoo profound, a personage to do such things! It does seem a little\nunworthy to me, as I have been sitting here and watching him from this\npark bench, for a noble, solemn being like the elephant--a kind of\ncathedral of a beast, to be as deeply interested as he is in peanuts.\n\nHe looms up before me once more. I look up a little closer--look into\nhis little, shrewd eyes--and, after all, what do I know about him?\n\nAnd I watch the camels with the happy, dazed children on their backs, go\nby with soft and drifting feet. Do I suppose I understand camels? Or I\nfollow the crowd. I find myself at last with that huge, hushed,\nsympathetic congregation at the 4 P.M. service, watching the lions eat.\n\nEverything does seem very much mixed up when one brings one's\nSociological Society dogmas, and one's little neat, impeccable row of\nprinciples to the test of watching the lions eat!\n\nPossibly people are as different from one another inside--in their souls\nat least--as different as these animals are.\n\nIt is true, of course, that as we go about, people do have a plausible\nway in this world--all these other people, of looking like us.\n\nBut they are different inside.\n\nIf one could stand on a platform as one was about to speak and could\nreally see the souls of any audience--say of a thousand people--lying\nout there before one, they would be a menagerie beside which, O Gentle\nReader, I dare to believe, Barnum and Bailey's menagerie would pale in\ncomparison.\n\nBut in a menagerie (perhaps you have noticed it, Gentle Reader) one\ntreats the animals seriously, and as if they were Individuals.\n\nThey are what they are.\n\nWhy not treat people's souls seriously?\n\nIt is true that people's souls, like the animals, are alike in a general\nway. They all have in common (in spiritual things) organs of\nobservation, appropriation, digestion and organs of self-reproduction.\n\nBut these spiritual organs of digestion which they have are theirs.\n\nAnd these organs of self-reproduction are for the purpose of reproducing\nthemselves and not us.\n\nThese are my reflections, or these try to be my reflections when I\nconsider the Syndicalist--how he grows or when I look up and see a\nclass-war socialist--an Upton Sinclair banging loosely about the world.\n\nMy first wild, aboriginal impulse with Upton Sinclair when I come up to\nhim as I do sometimes--violent, vociferous roaring behind his bars, is\nto whisk him right over from being an Upton Sinclair into being me. I do\nnot deny it.\n\nThen I remember softly, suddenly, how I felt when I was watching the\nlions eat.\n\nI remember the pelican.\n\nThus I save my soul in time.\n\nIncidentally, of course, Upton Sinclair's insides are saved also.\n\nIt is beautiful the way the wild beasts in their cages persuade one\nalmost to be a Christian!\n\nOf course when one gets smoothed down one always sees people very\ndifferently. In being tolerant the rub comes usually (with me) in being\ntolerant in time. I am tempted at first, when I am with Upton Sinclair,\nto act as if he were a whole world of Upton Sinclairs and of course\n(anybody would admit it) if he really were a whole world of Upton\nSinclairs he would have to be wiped out. There would be nothing else to\ndo. But he is not and it is not fair to him or fair to the world to act\nas if he were.\n\nThe moment I see he is confining himself to just being Upton Sinclair I\nrather like him.\n\nIt is the same with Ella Wheeler Wilcox. It is when I fall to thinking\nof her as if she were, or were in danger of being, a whole world of Ella\nWheeler Wilcoxes that I grow intolerant of her. Ella Wheeler Wilcox as a\nTincture, which is what she really is, of course, is well enough. I do\nnot mind.\n\nThe real truth about a man like Upton Sinclair, when one has worked down\nthrough to it, is that while from my point of view a class-war\nsocialist--a man who proposes to put society together by keeping men\napart--is wrong and is sure to do a great deal of harm to some people,\nthere are other people to whom he does a great deal of good.\n\nThere really are people who need Upton Sinclair. It may be a hard fact\nto face perhaps, but when one faces it one is glad there is one. Some of\nthe millionaires need Sinclair. There are others whose attention would\nbe attracted better in more subtle ways.\n\nThe class-war socialist, though I may be at this moment in the very act\nof trying to make him impossible, to put him out of date, has been and\nis, in his own place and his own time, I gratefully acknowledge, of\nincalculable value.\n\nAny man who can, by saying violent and noisy things, make rich, tired,\nmechanical-minded people, and poor, tired mechanical-minded people wake\nup enough to feel hateful has performed a public service. The\nhatefulness is the beginning of their being covetous for other things\nthan the things they have. If a man has a habit of hunger he gets better\nand better hungers as a matter of course; bread and milk, ribbons,\ngeraniums, millinery, bathtubs, Bibles, copartnership associations. And\nin the meantime the one precious thing to be looked out for in a man,\nand to be held sacred, is his hunger.\n\nThe one important religious value in the world is hunger and to all the\nmen to-day who are contributing to the process of moving on hungers;\nwhether the hungers happen to be our hungers or not or our stages of\nhunger or not, we say Godspeed.\n\nThere are times when the sudden sense one comes to have that the world\nis a struggle, a great prayer toward the sun, a tumult and groping of\ndesire, the sense that every kind and type of desire has its time and\nits place in it and every kind and type of man, gives a whole new\nmeaning to life. This sense of a now possible toleration which we come\nto have, some of us, opens up to us always when it comes a new world of\ncourage about people. It makes all these dear, clumsy people about us\nsuddenly mean something. It makes them all suddenly belong somewhere.\nThey become, as by a kind of miracle, bathed in a new light,\nwrong-headed, intolerable though they be, one still sees them flowing\nout into the great endless stream of becoming--all these dots of the\nvast desire, all these queer, funny, struggling little sons of God!\n\nIt has been overlooked that social reform primarily is not a matter of\nlegislation or of industrial or political systems, or of machinery, but\na matter, of psychology, of insight into human nature and of expert\nreading and interpretation of the minds of men. What are they thinking\nabout? What do they think they want?\n\nThe trades unions and employers' associations, extreme socialists and\nextreme Tories have so far been very bad psychologists. If the Single\nTax people were as good at being intuitionalists or idea-salesmen as\nthey are at being philosophers in ideas they would long before this have\nturned everything their way. They would have begun with people's hungers\nand worked out from them. They would have listened to people to find out\nwhat their hungers were. The people who will stop being theoretical and\nlogical about each other and who will look hard into each other's eyes\nwill be the people whose ideas will first come to pass. Everything we\ntry to do or say or bring to pass in England or America is going to\nbegin after this, not in talking, but in listening. If social reformers\nand industrial leaders had been good listeners, the social\ndeadlock--England with its House of Lords and railroads both on strike\nand America with its great industries quarrelling--would have been\narranged for and got out of the way over twenty years ago.\n\nWe have overlooked the first step of industrial reform, the rather\nextreme step of listening. The most hard-headed and conclusive man to\nsettle any given industrial difficulty is the man who has the gift of\ndivining what is going on in other people's minds, a gift for being\nhuman, a gift for treating everybody who disagrees with him as if they\nmight possibly be human too, though they are very poor, even though they\nare very rich. Practical psychology has come to be not only the only\nsolution but also the only method of our modern industrial questions.\nBeing so human that one can guess what any possible human being would\nthink is the one hard-headed and practical way to meet the modern labour\nproblem.\n\nThe first symptom of being human in a man is his range and power of\nshrewd, happy toleration, or courage for people who know as little now\nas he knew once.\n\nA man's sense of toleration is based primarily upon the range and power\nof his knowledge of himself, upon his power of remembering and\nanticipating himself, upon his laughing with God at himself, upon his\nhabit in darkness, weariness or despair, or in silent victory and joy,\nof falling on his knees.\n\nToleration is reverence. It is the first source of courage for other\npeople.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XV\n\nCONVERSION\n\n\nSome people think of the world as if it were made all through, people\nand all, of reinforced concrete, as if everything in it--men, women,\nchildren, churches, colleges, and parties, were solidly, inextricably\nimbedded in it.\n\nEvery age in history has had to get on as well as it could with two sets\nof totally impracticable people, our two great orders of Philistines in\nthis world, the people who put their trust in Portland Cement and the\npeople who put their trust in Explosives.\n\nThere has not been a single great movement in history yet that every\nthoughtful man has not had to watch being held up by these people--by\nmillions of worthy, simple, rudimentary creatures who consent to be mere\nconservatives or mere radicals.\n\nOne set says, \"People cannot be converted so we will blow them up.\"\n\nThe other set says, \"We are going to be blown up, so let us put on\nPlaster of Paris as a garment, we will array ourselves before the Lord\nin Portland Cement.\"\n\nBoth of these classes of people believe alike on one main point.\n\nThey do not believe in Conversion.\n\nIf the conservatives believed in conversion they would not be so afraid\nthat they feel obliged to resort to Portland Cement. If the radicals\nbelieved in conversion they would not be so afraid that they feel\nobliged to resort to Explosives.\n\nIn our machine civilization to these two great standard classes of\nscared people, there has been added what seems to be a third class--the\npeople who have responded to a kind of motor spirit in the time, who\nhave modulated a little their unbelief in human nature. They have\nsubstituted for their reinforced concrete Unbelief, a kind of Whirling\nUnbelief, called machinery.\n\nThey admit that in our modern life men are not made of reinforced\nconcrete. We may move, but we move as wheels move, they tell us. We arc\nwhirlingly imbedded. We are cogs and wheels in an Economic Machine.\n\nI would like to consider for a moment this Whirling Unbelief.\n\nThere was a time once when I took the Economic Machine very seriously.\n\nI looked up when I went by, at the Economic Machine as the last and the\nmost terrific of the inventions among the machines. The machine that\nmocked all the other machines, that made all our machines look pathetic\nand ridiculous, was the Economic Machine. There were days when I heard\nit or seemed to hear it--this Economic Machine closing in around my\nlife, around all our lives like the last hoarse mocking laugh of\ncivilization.\n\nI said I will love every machine that runs except the Economic\nMachine--the machine for making people into machines.\n\nBut one day when I had waited or dared to wait, I know not why, a little\nlonger than usual before the Whirling Unbelief, I heard the hoarse\nmocking laugh die away. I became very quiet. I began to think, I\nreflected on my experiences. I began to notice things.\n\nI noted that every time I had found myself being discouraged about\npeople, I had caught myself thinking of people as Cogs and Wheels.\n\nWere they really Cogs and Wheels?\n\nPossibly it was merely the easiest, most mechanical-minded thing to do\nto think of people (with all this machinery around one) as cogs and\nwheels in an economic machine.\n\nThen it began to occur to me that it was because I had looked upon the\neconomic machine a little lazily, a little innocently that I had been\nawed and terrific--and had been swept away with it into the Whirling\nUnbelief.\n\nThen I stood quietly and calmly for days, for weeks, for years before\nit. I watched it Go Round.\n\nI then discovered under close observation that what had looked to me\nlike an economic machine was not an economic machine at all.\n\nThe modern economic world has innumerable mechanical elements in it, but\nit is not an economic machine.\n\nIt is a biological engine.\n\nIt is the biology in it that conceives, desires, and determines the\nmachinery in it.\n\nThe most important parts of the machine are not the very mechanical\nparts. They are the very biological parts.\n\nThe economic machine is full of made-people, but it does not make very\nmuch difference about the made-people. I find that as a plain, practical\nmatter of fact I do not need to watch the made-people so very much to\nunderstand the world, or to get ready for what is happening to it.\n\nIn prospecting for a world, I watch the born people.\n\nI watch especially the people who have been born twice.\n\nAs one watches the way the world is going round one finds that what is\nreally making it go round, is not its being an economic machine, but its\nbeing a biological engine.\n\nIndustrial reform is a branch of biology.\n\nThe main fact of biology as regards a man is that he can be born.\n\nThe main fact of biology as regards society--that is, the main fact of\nsocial biology--is that a man can be born twice.\n\nAs long as a man is born to go with a father and a mother it is well\nenough to have been born once, but the moment a man deals with other\npeople or with the world, he has to be born again.\n\nThis is the main fact about the biological engine we call the world.\n\nThe main fact about the Engine is the biology in it.\n\nEvery other fact for a man has to be worked out from this--that is: out\nof being born once if one wants to belong merely to a father and mother,\nand out of being born twice if one wants to belong to a world.\n\nA man does not need to enter again into his mother's womb and come out a\nchild. He enters into the World's Womb and comes out a man.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe world is being placed to-day before our eyes in the hands of the men\nwho are born twice.\n\nNot all men are cogs and wheels.\n\nThe first day I discovered this and believed this I went out into the\nstreets and looked into the faces of the men and the women and I looked\nup at the factories and the churches and I was not afraid.\n\nI do not deny that cogs and wheels are very common.\n\nBut I do not believe that an economic system or industrial scheme based\non the general principle of arranging a world for cogs and wheels would\nwork. I believe in arranging the world on the principle that there are\nnow and are going to be always enough men in it who are born, and enough\nwho are born twice to keep cogs and wheels doing the things men who have\nbeen born twice, who have visions for worlds, want done, and to keep\npeople who prefer being cogs and wheels where they will work best and\nwhere they will help the running gear of the planet most--by going round\nand round, in the way they like--going round and round and round and\nround.\n\nBut why is it, one cannot help wondering, that the moment a man rises up\nsuddenly in this modern world and bases or seeks to base an industrial\nor social reform frankly on courage for other people, on believing in\nthe inherent and eternal power of men of changing their minds, of being\nput up in new kinds and new sizes of men, in other words, on\nconversion--why is it that clergymen, atheists, ethical societies,\npoliticians, socialists will all unite, will all flock together and\ndescend upon him, shout and laugh him away, bully him with dead\nmillionaires, bad corporations and humdrum business men, overawe him\nwith mere history, argue him with statistics, and thunder him with\nsermons out of the world--if he puts up a faint little chirrup of hope\nthat men can be converted?\n\nIt is not that the synods, ethical societies, anarchists, the bishops\nand Bernard Shaw, have merely given up expecting individual men to be\nconverted. There would be a measure of plausibility in giving up on a\nfew particular men's being born again. It is worse than that. What seems\nto have happened to nearly all the people who have schemes of industrial\nreform is that they have really given up at one fell swoop a whole new\ngeneration's being born again. It is going to be just like this one,\nthey tell us, the new generation--the same old things the same old\nfoolish ways of deceiving the world, that any child can see have not\nworked--Bernard Shaw and the bishops whisper to us, are coming around\nand around again. They must be planned for. All these young men of\nwealth about us who read the papers and who are ashamed of their fathers\nare going to be just like their fathers. The atheists, the socialists,\nand the single taxers, missionaries and evangelists have given up their\nlast loophole of hope in the new business generation and they trust only\nto machines to save us, or to professors, or to paper-treatises on\neugenics!\n\nAnd yet, after all, if we were going to start an absolute, decisive, and\npractical scheme of eugenics to-morrow with whom would we begin, with\nwhich particular people would we begin? We would have to go back,\nBernard Shaw and the bishops and all of us, to the New Testament--to the\nold idea of being born again.\n\nI have watched now these many years the professors, caught in their\nculture-machines going round and round, and the priests caught in their\nreligion-machines going round and round, and the business men caught in\ntheir economic machine, and I have heard them all saying over and over\nin a kind of terrible sing-song day and night, the silly, lazy words of\na glorious old roue four thousand years ago, \"The thing that hath been\nis the thing which shall be, and that which is done is that which shall\nbe done and there is no new thing under the sun.\"\n\nThere are some of us who do not believe this. We defy the\nculture-machines. We believe that even professors can be converted, can\nbe educated.\n\nWe defy the bishops. We believe that business men can be converted.\n\nWe defy the business men. We believe the bishops can be converted.\n\nI speak for a thousand, thousand men.\n\nIn the hum and drive of the wheels and the great roar around me of the\nWhirling Unbelief. I speak for these men--for all of us. _We are not\ncogs and wheels. We are men. We are born again ourselves. Other men can\nbe born again._\n\nMen shall not look each other in the eyes wisely and nod their heads and\nsay that human nature will not change.\n\nWe will change it. If we cannot get but two or three together to change\nit, then two or three by just being two or three and by daring to be two\nor three, or even one if necessary shall change it.\n\nThe moment ninety million people in a great nation have welded out a\nvision of the kind of man of wealth--the kind of employer they want, the\nmoment they set the millionaire in the vise of some great national\nexpectation, carve upon him firmly, implacably the will of the people,\nthe people will have the millionaire they want. If a nation really wants\na great man it invents him. We have hut to see we really want him, and\nthat no other machinery will work, and we will invent him.\n\nNecessity is the mother of invention. Here in these United States sixty\nyears ago were we not all at work on a man named Abraham Lincoln? We had\nbeen at work on him for years trying to make him into a Lincoln. He\ncould not have begun to be what he was without us, without the daily\nthought, the responsibility, the tragical national hope and fear, the\nsense of crisis in a great people. All these had been set to work on\nhim, on making him a Lincoln.\n\nLincoln would not have dared not to be a great man, an all-people man\nwith a whole mighty nation, with all those millions of watchful,\nbelieving people laying their lives softly, silently, their very sons'\nlives in his hands. He did not have the smallest possible chance from\nthe day he was named for President, to be a second-rate man or to betray\na nation, or to back down out of being himself. He had been filled night\nand day with the vision of a great nation struggling, with the grim\nglory of it. He was free to make mistakes for it, but there was no way\nhe could have kept from being a true, mighty, single-hearted man for it,\nif he had tried. We had clinched Lincoln in 1862. He was caught fast in\nthe vise of our hopes.\n\nPerhaps it is because, at certain times in history, nations seem to be\nsiding with the worst in their public men and expecting the worst in\nthem that they get them.\n\nIf a crowd wants to be represented, wants to touch to the quick and\nkindle the man in it, the man filled with vision, the man who is born\nagain into its desire, the crowd-man, they have but to surround him and\novershadow him. They will create him, in scorn and joy will they\nconceive him, and before he knows who he is, they will bring him forth.\n\nIt would not be hard, I imagine, to be a great man, with a true,\nsteadied, colossal, single-heartedness, if one were caught fast in the\nvision, the expectation of a great nation.\n\nTo be born again is simple with ninety million people to help. We have\nall been born again in little things with a few people to help. We have\nbeen swung over from little short motives to big, long-levered\ncontrolling ones. We have known in a small way what Conversion is. We\nhave seen how naturally it works out in little things.\n\nThere is nothing new about it. There is not a man who does not know what\nit is to get over a small motive. We have seen, when we looked back,\nwhat it was that happened.\n\nThe way to get over a small motive is to let it get lost in a big one.\n\nA man does not stop to pick up a penny or a million dollars when he is\nrunning to save his life.\n\nA man does not stop to pick up two pennies, or two thousand dollars, or\ntwo million dollars when he is running to save ten thousand lives or\nrunning to save ninety million lives, when he is running to save a city\nor a nation.\n\nThis is Conversion--entering into the World's Womb, the world's vision\nor expectation and being born again.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIt is not for nothing that I have seen the sun lifting up the faces of\nthe flowers, and crumbling the countenances of the hills. And I have\nseen music stirring faintly in the bones of old men. And I have heard\nthe dead Beethoven singing in the feet of children.\n\nAnd I have watched the Little Earth in its little round of seasons\ndancing before the Lord.\n\nAnd I have believed that music is wrought into all things, and that the\npeople I see about me have not one of them been left out.\n\nI believe in sunshine and in hothouses. I believe in burning glasses. I\nbelieve in focusing light into heat and heat into white fire, and\nturning white fire into little flowing brooks of steel.\n\nAnd I believe in focusing men upon men.\n\nI believe in Conversion.\n\nOf course it would all be different--focusing men upon men, if men were\ncogs and wheels, or if the men they were focused on were made of stones.\n\nI stand and look at this stone and believe it is all rubber and\nwhalebone inside.\n\nBut what of it?\n\nIt does not get true.\n\nWhile I am looking at a man and believing a certain thing about the man,\nit gets true.\n\nWhat is going on in my mind while I look at him effects actual\nmechanical changes in him, affects the flow of blood in his veins. A\nlook colours him, whitens him, twists and turns the muscles and tissues\nin his body. I draw lines upon his inmost being. I lay down a new face\nupon his face. A moment after I look upon the man's face it has become,\nas it were, or may have become, a new little landscape. I have seen a\ngreat country opened up in him of what he might be like. While I look I\nhave been ushered softly, for a second, into the presence of a man who\nwas not there before.\n\nSuch things have happened.\n\nBeatrice looked at Dante once. Ten silent centuries began singing.\n\nA man named Stephen, one day, while he was dying, gave a look at a man\nnamed Paul. Paul came away quietly and hewed out history for two\nthousand years.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XVI\n\nEXCEPTION\n\n\nA bicycle, the other day, a little outside Paris as it was running along\nquietly, lifted itself off the ground suddenly, and flew three yards and\nseven inches.\n\nThere are nine million seven hundred and eighty nine thousand nine\nhundred and seventy-nine bicycles that have not flown three yards and\nseven inches.\n\nBut what of it? Why count them up? Why bother about them? The important,\nconclusive, massive, irresistible, crushing, material fact is that one\nbicycle has flown three yards seven inches.\n\nThe nine million seven hundred and eighty-nine thousand nine hundred and\nseventy-nine bicycles that can not fly yet are negligible. So are nine\nout of ten business firms.\n\nIf there is one exceptional man in modern industry who is running his\nbusiness in the right way and who has made a success of it and has\nproved it--he may look visionary to class-socialists and to other people\nwho decide by measuring off masses of fact, and counting up rows of\npeople and who see what anybody can see, but he is after all in\narranging our social programme the only man of any material importance\nfor us to consider. It would be visionary to take the past, dump it\naround in front of one, and try to make a future out of it. I do not\ndeny what people tell me about millionaires and about factory slaves. I\nhave not mooned or lied or turned away my face. I stand by time one\nlive, right, implacable, irrevocable, prolific exception. I stand by the\none bicycle out of them all that has flown three yards and seven inches.\nI lay out my program, conceive my world on that. Piles of facts\narranged in dead layers high against heaven, rows of figures, miles of\nfactory slaves, acres of cemeteries of dead millionaires, going-by\nstreetfuls of going-by people, shall not cow me.\n\nMy heart has been broken long enough by counting truths on my fingers,\nby numbering grains of sand, men, and mountains, bombs, acorns and\nmarbles alike.\n\nWhich truth matters?\n\nWhich man is right?\n\nWhere is Nazareth?\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nNazareth is our only really important town now. I will see what is going\non in Nazareth. On every subject that comes up, in every line of\nthought, I will go to the city of implacable exceptions. All the\ninventors flock there--the man with the one bicycle which flies, the one\ngreat industrial organizer, the man with the man-machine, and the\nman--the great boy who carries new great beautiful cities in his pocket\nlike strings and nails and knives, they are all there.\n\nNazareth is the city, the one mighty little city of the spirit where all\nthe really worth-while men wherever they may seem to be, all day, all\nnight, do their living.\n\nOther cities may make things, in Nazareth they make worlds. One can see\na new one almost any day in Nazareth. Men go up and down the streets\nthere with their new worlds in their eyes.\n\nSome of them have them almost in their hands or are looking down and\nworking on them.\n\nIt does not seem to me that any of us can make ourselves strong and fit\nto lay out a sound program or vision for a world, who do not watch with\ncritical expectation and with fierce joy these men of Nazareth, who do\nnot take at least a little time off every day, in spirit, in Nazareth,\nand spend it in watching bicycles fly three feet and seven inches. To\nwatch these men, it seems to me, is our one natural, economical way to\nget at essential facts, at the set-one-side truths, at the exceptions\nthat worlds and all-around programs for worlds are made out of. To watch\nthese men is the one way I know not to be lost in great museums and\nstorehouses of facts that do not matter, in the streetfuls and\nskyscraperfuls of men that go by.\n\nI regret to record that professors of political economy, social\nphilosophers, industrial big-wigs, presidents of boards of trade have\nnot been often met with on the streets of this silent, crowded, mighty,\ninvisible little town that rules the destinies of men.\n\nNot during the last twenty years, but one is meeting them there to-day.\n\nAll these things that people are saying to me are mere history. I have\nseen the one live exception. One telephone was enough. And one Galileo\nwas enough, with his little planet turning round and round, with all of\nus on it who were obliged to agree with him about it. It kept turning\nround and round with us until we did.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XVII\n\nINVENTION\n\n\nIf I were a Noah and wanted to get a fair selection of people in London\nto be saved to start a new world, I would go out and look over the crowd\nwho are watching the flying machines at Hendon, and select from them.\n\nThe Hendon crowd will not last forever. People who would be far less\ndesirable to start worlds with would gradually work their way in, but it\nis only fair to say that these first few thousand men and women of all\nclasses who responded to the flying machine would be possessed, as any\none could see with a look, of special qualifications for running worlds.\n\nI shall never quite forget the sense I had the first day of the crowd at\nHendon--those thousands of faces that had gathered up in some way out of\nthemselves a kind of huge crowd-face before one--that imperturbable\nhappiness on it and that look of hard sense and hope, half poetry, half\nscience ... it was like gazing at some portrait, or some vast\ncountenance of the future--watching the crowd at Hendon. Scores of times\nI looked away from the machines swinging up past me into the sky to\nwatch the faces of the men and the women that belonged with sky\nmachines; these men and women who stood on the precipice of a new world\nof air, of sunshine, and of darkness, and were not afraid.\n\nOne was in a little special civilization for the time being, all the new\npeople in it sorted out from the old ones. One felt a vast\nlight-heartedness all about. One was in the presence of the picked\npeople who had come to see this first vast initiative of man toward\nSpace, toward the stars, the people who had waited for four thousand\nyears to see it; to see at last Little Man (as it would seem to God) in\nthis his first clumsy, beautiful childlike tottering up the sky.\n\nOne was with the people on the planet who were the first to see the\npractical, personal value, the market value, of all these huge idle\nfields of air that go with planets. They were the first people to feel\nidentified with the air, to have courage for the air, the lovers of\ninitiative, the men and women that one felt might really get a new world\nif they wanted one and who would know what to do with it when they got\nit.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe other day in London near Charing Cross, as the crowds were streaming\ndown the Strand, a heavy box joggled off over the end of a dray, crashed\nto the pavement, flew open and sent twenty-four hundred pennies rolling\nunder the feet of the men and of the women and of the boys along the\nstreet.\n\nTraffic was stopped and a thousand men and women and boys began picking\nthe pennies up. They all crowded up around the dray and put the pennies\nin the box.\n\nThe next day the brewer to whom the pennies belonged had a letter in the\n_Times_ saying that not one of the twenty-four hundred pennies was\nmissing.\n\nHe closed his letter with a few moral remarks, announced that he had\nsent the twenty-four hundred pennies as a kind of tribute to people--to\nanybody Who Happened Along the Strand--to a Foundling Hospital.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe man who told me this (it was at a business men's dinner), told it\nbecause he knew I was trying to believe pleasant things about human\nnature. He thought he ought to encourage me.\n\nI will not record the conversation, I merely record my humble opinion.\n\nI think it would have been better to have had just a few of those\npennies in the Strand say seven or eight missing.\n\nOn Broadway probably eleven or twelve out of twenty-four hundred would\nhave been missing--I hope.\n\nAnd I am not unhopeful about England, or about the Strand.\n\nThere are two ways to get relief from this story.\n\nFirst, the brewer lied. There were fewer pennies stolen than he would\nhave thought, and when he figured it out and found just a few pennies\nbetween him and a good story, he put the pennies in. And so the dear\nlittle foundlings got them--the letter in the _Times_ said. They were\npresented to them, as it were, by the Good Little Boys in the Strand.\n\nSecond, somebody else put the pennies in, some person standing by with a\nsense of humour, who knew the letters that people write to the _Times_\nand the kind, serious, grave way English people read them. He put the\npennies grimly in at one end, then he waited grimly for the letter in\nthe _Times_ to come out at the other.\n\nEither of these theories would work very well and let the crowd off.\n\nBut if they are disproved to me, I have one more to fall back upon.\n\nIf the story is true and not a soul in that memorable crowd on that\nmemorable day stole a penny, it was because they had all, as it happened\nin that particular crowd, stolen their pennies before, and got over it.\nIt would seem a great pity if there had not been some one boy with\nenough initiative in him, enough faculty for moral experiment, to try\nstealing a penny just once, to see what it would be like.\n\nThe same boy would have seen at once what it was like, tried feeling\nashamed of it promptly, and would never have had to bother to do it\nagain. He would have felt that penny burning in his pocket past cash\ndrawers, past banks, past bonds, until he became President of the United\nStates.\n\nAt all events the last thing that I would be willing to believe is that\neither America or England would be capable of producing a chance crowd\nin the street that out of sheer laziness or moral thoughtlessness would\nnot be able to work up at least one boy in it who would have a sudden\nflash of imagination about a penny rolling around a man's leg--if he\npicked it up and--did not put it in the box.\n\nThe crowd in the Strand, of course, like any other real crowd, was a\nstew of development, a huge laboratory of people. All stages of\nexperience were in it.\n\nSome of the people in the crowd that day had a new refreshing thought,\nwhen they saw those pennies rolling around everybody. They thought they\nwould try and see what stealing a penny was like. Then they did it.\n\nOthers in the crowd thought of stealing a penny too, and then they had\nstill another thought. They thought of not stealing it. And this second\nthought interested them more.\n\nOthers did not think of stealing a penny at all because they had thought\nof it so often before had got used to it and had got used to dismissing\nit.\n\nOthers thought of stealing a penny and then they thought how ashamed\nthey were of having thought of it. Others looked thoughtfully at the\npennies and thought they would wait for guineas.\n\nBut whatever it was or may have been that was taking place in that crowd\nthat day--they all thought.\n\nAnd after all what is really important to a nation is that the people in\nit--any chance crowd in a street in it should think. I confess I care\nvery little one way or the other about the pennies being saved, or about\nthe brewer's little touch of moral poetry, his idea that this particular\ncrowd was solid Sunday-school from one end to the other, all through.\nWhether it was a crowd that thought of stealing a penny and did or did\nnot, if the pennies rolling around among their feet made them think,\nmade them experiment, played upon the initiative, the individuality or\ninvention in them, the personal self-control, the social responsibility\nin them, it was a crowd to be proud of. And I am glad, for one, that the\nbox of pennies was dumped in the street.\n\nI would like to see shillings tried next time.\n\nThen guineas might be used.\n\nA box of guineas dumped in the street would do more good than a box of\npennies because there are many people who would think more with the\nguineas rolling around out of sight around a man's legs than they would\nwith a penny's doing it.\n\nIn this way a box of guineas would do more good.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThousands of men and women that we have sent to India from this Western\nWorld have been trying with Bibles, and good deeds, and kind faces, and\nSunday-schools to get the Hindoos to believe that it would not be a sin\nto kill the rats and stop the bubonic plague.\n\nNothing came of it.\n\nIn due time General Booth-Tucker appeared on the scene.\n\nHe came too, of course, with a Bible and with his kind face like the\nothers, and of course, too, he went to Sunday-school regularly.\n\nAnd while he was watching the bubonic plague sweeping up cities, he\ntried too, like the others, to tell the people about a God who would not\nbe displeased if they killed the rats and stopped the plague.\n\nBut he could not convince anybody, or at best a few here and there.\n\nThe next thing that was known about General Booth-Tucker's work in India\nwas, that he had (still with his Bible, of course, and with his kind\nlook) slipped away and established in the south of France a factory for\nthe manufacture of gloves.\n\nHe then returned to his poor superstitious people in India who would not\nbelieve him, and told them that he knew and knew absolutely that they\nwould not be punished for killing the rats, that the rats were not\nsacred, and that he could prove it.\n\nHe offered the people so much apiece for the skins of the rats.\n\nThe poorest and most desperate of the natives then began killing the\nrats secretly and bringing in the skins.\n\nThey waited for the wrath of Heaven to fall upon them. Nothing happened,\nthen they told others. The others are telling everybody.\n\nGeneral Booth-Tucker's factory to-day in the south of France is very\nbusy making money for the Salvation Army, turning out Christian gloves\nfor the West and turning out Christians or the beginnings of Christians\nfor the East, and the ancient, obstinate theological idea of the\nholiness of the rats which the Hindoos have had is being ceaselessly,\nhappily, and stupendously, all day and all night, disproved.\n\nIncidentally the little religious glove factory of General\nBooth-Tucker's in the south of France is giving India the first serious\nand fair chance it has ever had to stop being a pest house on the world,\nand to bring the bubonic plague with its threat at a planet to an end.\n\nGeneral Booth-Tucker's Bible was just like anybody else's Bible. But\nthere must have been something about the way he read his Bible that made\nhim think of things. And there must have been something about his kind\nlook. He looked kindly at something in particular, and he was determined\nto make that something in particular do. He had the rats, and he had the\ngloves, and he had the Hindoo's--and he made them do, and before he knew\nit (I doubt if he knows it now) he became a saviour or inventor.\n\nIn the big, desolate, darkened heart of a nation he had wedged in a God.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nI wonder if General Booth-Tucker--that is, the original, very small\nedition of General Booth-Tucker--had been in that memorable crowd, that\nmemorable day in the Strand when nobody (with a report that was heard\naround the world) stole a penny--I wonder if General Booth-Tucker would\nhave been A Very Good Little Boy.\n\nOne of the pennies might have been missing.\n\nI have no prejudice against the Very Good Little Boy. It is not his\ngoodness that is what is the matter with him. But I am very much afraid\nthat if there were any way of getting all the facts, it would not be\nhard to prove categorically that what has been holding the world back\nthe last twenty-five years in its religious ideals, its business ethics,\nits liberty, candour, its courage, and its skill in social engineering,\nis the Very Good Little Boy. He may be comparatively harmless at first\nand before his moustache is grown, but the moment he becomes a grown-up\nor the moment he sits on committees with his quiet, careful, snug,\nproper fear of experiment, of bold initiative, his disease of never\nrunning a risk, his moral anaemia, he blocks all progress in churches, in\nlegislatures, in directors' meetings, in trades unions, in slums and\nMay-fairs. One sees The Good Little Boys weighing down everything the\nmoment they are grown up.\n\nThey have all been brought up each with his one faint, polite little\nhunger, his one ambition, his one pale downy desire in life, looking\nforward day by day, year by year, to the fine frenzy, to the fierce joy\nof Never Making a Mistake.\n\nIf I had been given the appointment and were about to set to work\nto-morrow morning to make a new world, I would begin by getting together\nall the people in this one that I knew, or had noticed anywhere, who\nseemed to have in them the spirit of experiment. Any boy or girl or man\nor woman that I had seen having the curiosity to try the different kinds\nand different sizes of right and wrong, or that I had seen boldly and\nfaithfully experimenting with the beautiful and the ugly so that they\nreally knew about them for themselves--would be let in. I would put\nthese people for a time in a place by themselves where the people who\nwant to keep them from trying or learning, could not get at them.\n\nThen I would let them try.\n\nI would put the humdrum people in another place by themselves and let\nthem humdrum, the respectable people by themselves and let them\nrespectabilize.\n\nThen after my try-world had tried, and got well started and the people\nin it had finished off some things and knew what they wanted, I would\nallow the humdrums and the respectabilities to be let in--to do what\nthey were told.\n\nDoing what they are told is what they like. So they would be happy.\n\nOf course doing what they are told is what is the matter with them. But\nwhat is the matter with them would be useful.\n\nAnd everybody would be happy.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nWhen the Titanic went down a little while ago and those few quiet men on\ndeck began their duty in that soft, gracious moonlit night, of sorting\nout the people who should die from the people who should live--if one\nwas a woman one could live. If one was a man one could die.\n\nNo one will quarrel with the division as the only possible or endurable\none that could have been made.\n\nBut if God himself could have made the division or some super-man ship's\nofficer who could have represented God, could have made it, it is not\nhard to believe that a less superficial, a more profound and human\ndifference between people would have been used in sorting out the people\nwho should live from the people who should die than a difference in\norgans of reproduction.\n\nThe women were saved first because the men were men and because it was\nthe way the men felt. It expressed the men who were on the deck that\nnight that the women should be saved first; it was the last chance they\nhad to express themselves like men and they wanted to do it.\n\nBut if God himself could have made the division with the immediate and\nconclusive knowledge of who everybody was, of what they really were in\ntheir hearts, and of what they and their children and their children's\nchildren would do for the world if they lived no one would have\nquarrelled with God for making what would have seemed at the moment, no\ndoubt, very unreasonable and ungallant and impossible-looking\ndiscriminations in sorting out the people who should live from the\npeople who should die.\n\nPossibly even Man (using the word with a capital), acting from the point\nof view of history and of the race and from the point of view of making\na kind of world where _Titanic_ disasters could not happen, would have\nchosen on the deck of the _Titanic_ that night, very much the way God\nwould.\n\nFrom the point of view of Man there would have been no discrimination in\nfavour of a woman because she was a woman.\n\nThe last cry of the last man that the still listening life-boats heard\ncoming up out of the sea that night might have been the cry of the man\nwho had invented a ship that could not sink.\n\nThere would not have been a woman in a life-boat or a woman sinking in\nthe sea who would not have had this man saved before a woman.\n\nIf we could absolutely know all about the people, who are the people in\nthis world that we should want to have saved first, that we would want\nto have taken to the life-boats and saved first at sea?\n\nThe women who are with child.\n\nAnd the men who are about to have ideas.\n\nAnd the men who man the boats for them, who in God's name and in the\nname of a world protect its women who are with child, and its men who\nare about to have ideas.\n\nThe world is different from the _Titanic_. We do not need to line up our\nimmortal fellow human beings, sort them out in a minute on a world and\nsay to them, \"Go here and die!\" \"Go there and live!\" We are able to\nspend on a world at least an average of thirty-five years apiece on all\nthese immortal human beings we are with, in seeing what they are like,\nin guessing on what they are for and on their relative value, and in\ndeciding where they belong and what a world can do with them.\n\nWe ought to do better in saving people on a world. We have more time to\nthink.\n\nWhat would we try to do if we took the time to think? Would there be any\nway of fixing upon an order for saving people on a world? What would be\nthe most noble, the most universal, the most Godlike and democratic\nschedule for souls to be saved on--on a world?\n\nI think the man that would save the most other people should be saved\nfirst. It would not be democratic to save an ordinary man, a man who\ncould just save himself, just think for himself, when saving the man\nnext to him instead would be saving a man who would save a thousand\nordinary men, or men who have gifts for thinking only of themselves.\n\nOf course one man who thinks merely of himself is as good as another man\nwho thinks merely of himself, but from the point of view of a democracy\nevery common man has an inalienable right--the right to have the man who\nsaves common men saved first.\n\nAnd the moment we get in this world, our first democracy, the moment the\ncommon man really believes in democracy, this aristocracy or people who\nsave others (the common man himself will see to it) will be saved first.\n\nHe will make mistakes in applying the principle of democracy, that is in\ncollecting his aristocracies, his strategic men, his linchpins of\nsociety, but he will believe in the principle all through. It will be\nnot merely in his brain, but in his instincts, in his unconscious\nhero-worship, in his sinews and his bones, and it will stir in his\nblood, that some men should be saved before others.\n\nBut if the world is not a _Titanic_, and if we have on the average\nthirty-five years apiece to decide about men on a world and put them\nwhere they belong, it might not be amiss to try to unite for the time\nbeing on a few fundamental principles. What would seem to us to be a few\nfundamental principles for the act of world-assimilation, that vast,\nslow, unconscious crowd-process, that peristaltic action of society of\ngathering up and stowing away men--all these little numberless cells of\nhumanity where they belong?\n\nNo one cell can have much to say about it. But we can watch.\n\nAnd as we watch it seems to us that men may be said to be dividing\nthemselves roughly and flowingly at all times into three great streams\nor classes.\n\nThey are either Inventors, or they are Artists, or they are Hewers.\n\nOf course in classifying men it is necessary to bear in mind that their\ngetting out of their classifications is what the classifications are\nfor.\n\nAnd it is also necessary to bear in mind that men can only be classified\nwith regard to their emphasis and may belong in one class in regard to\none thing and in another class with regard to another, but in any\nparticular place, or at any particular time a man is doing a thing in\nthis world, he is probably for the time being, while he is doing it,\ndoing it as an Inventor (or genius), as an Artist (or organizer), or as\na Hewer. Most men, it must be said, settle down in their\nclassifications. They are very apt to decide for life whether they are\nInventors or Artists or Hewers.\n\nBut as has been said before, being on a world and not on a _Titanic_, we\nhave time to think.\n\nOn what principles could we make out a schedule or inventory of human\nnature, and decide on world-values in men?\n\nWhen I was a boy I played in the hollow of a great butternut tree--the\none my mother was married under. When I was in college I used to go back\nto it. I used to wonder a little that it was still there. When we had\nall grown up we all came back and got together under it one happy day\nand there it still stood, its great arms from out of the sky bent over\nlovers and over children on its little island, its wide river singing\nround it, still that glorious old hollow in it, full of dreams and\nchildhood and mystery, and that old sudden sunshine in it through the\nknots like portholes ... then we stood there all of us together. And the\nmother watched her daughter married under it.\n\nI can remember many days standing beneath it as a small boy (my small\ninsides full of butternuts, a thousand more butternuts up on the tree),\nand I used to look up in its branches and wonder about it, wonder how it\ncould keep on so with its butternuts and with its leaves, with its\nwinters and with its summers, its cool shadows and sunshines, still\nbeing a butternut tree, with that huge hollow in it.\n\nI have learned since that if a few ounces or whittlings of wood in a\ntree are chipped out in a ring around it under the bark, cords of wood\nin the limbs all up across the sky would die in a week--if one chips out\nthose few little ounces of wood.\n\nCords of wood can be taken out of the inside of the tree and it will not\nmind.\n\nIt is that little half-inch rim of the tree where the juice runs up to\nthe sun that makes the tree alive or dead.\n\nThe part that must be saved first and provided for first is that\nslippery little shiny streak under the bark.\n\nOne could dig out a huge brush-heap of roots and the tree would live.\nOne could pick off millions of leaves, could cut cords of branches out\nof it, or one could make long hollows up to the sun, tubes to the sky\nout of trees, and they would live, if one still managed to save those\nlittle delicate pipe lines for Sap, running up and running down, day and\nnight, night and day, between the light in heaven and the darkness in\nthe ground.\n\nPerhaps Men are valuable in proportion as it would be difficult to\nproduce promptly other men to perform their functions, or to take their\nplaces.\n\nIf we cut away in society men of genius, leaves, and blossoms, in trees,\nmen who reach down Heaven to us, they grow out again.\n\nIf we cut away in society great masses of roots, common men who hew out\nthe earth in the ground and get earth ready to be heaved up to the\nsky--the roots grow out again.\n\nBut if we cut a little faint rim around it of artists, of inventive\nmen-controllers, of the Sap-conductors, the men who make the Hewers run\nup to the sky and who make the geniuses come down to the ground, the men\nwho run the tree together, who out of dark earth and bright sunshine\nbuild it softly--if we destroy these, this little rim of great men or\nmen who save others, a totally new tree has to be begun.\n\nIt is the essence of a democracy to acknowledge that some men for the\ntime being are more important in it than others, and that these men,\nwhosoever they are, in whatever order of society they may be--poor,\nrich, famous, obscure--these men who think for others, who save others\nand invent others, who make it possible for others to invent themselves,\nthese men shall be saved first.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nOne always thinks at first that one would like to make a diagram of\nhuman nature. It would be neat and convenient.\n\nThen one discovers that no diagram one can make of human nature--unless\none makes what might be called a kind of squirming diagram will really\nwork.\n\nThen one tries to imagine what a flowing diagram would be like.\n\nThen it occurs to one, one has seen a flowing diagram.\n\nA Tree is a flowing diagram.\n\nSo I am putting down on this page for what it may be worth, what I have\ncalled A Family Tree of Folks.\n\n_Read across_:\n\n=INVENTORS=              =ARTISTS=                    =HEWERS=\n\nInventors                Organizers                   Labourers\n\nImagination              Applied Imagination          Tool or Mechanism\n\nFecundity                Control                      Activity\n\nSeer                     Poet                         Actor\n\n                         {  The Man who Sees the   }\nThe Man who Generalizes  {General in the Particular}  Action\n\nThe Deeper Permanent     {The Immediate Significance} Hewing\nSignificance             {  or Meaning              }\n\nLight                    Applied Light or Heat        Applied Heat or\n                                                        Motion\n\nStevenson and Wall       James J. Hill                Railway Hands\n\nCreating                 Creative Selecting           Hewing\n\nThe Democrat             {The Aristocrat or}          The Crowd\n                         {  Crowdman       }\n\nGods                     Heroes                       Men\n\nCentrifugal Power        Equilibrium                  Centripetal Power\n\nThe Whirl-Out People     The Centre People            The Whirl-In People\n\nAlexander Graham Bell    Telephone-Vail               Hands\n\nArchitect                Contractor                   Carpenter\n\nGenius                   Artist                       Workmen\n\nColumbus                 Columbus                     Isabella and the\n                                                        sailors\n\nThe Prospector           The Engineer                 }Scoopers, Grabbers\n                                                      }(in mind or body),\n                                                      }Hewers\n\nDavid the poet           David the king               David the soldier\n\nShakespeare              Shakespeare                  Shakespeare\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XVIII\n\nTHE MAN WHO PULLS THE WORLD TOGETHER\n\n\nThe typical mighty man or man of valour in our modern life is the\nOrganizer or Artist.\n\nIf a man has succeeded in being a great organizer, it is because he has\nsucceeded in organizing himself.\n\nA man who has organized himself is a man who has built a personality.\nThe main fact about a man who has succeeded in being an organized man or\npersonality is, that he has ordered himself around.\n\nNaturally, when other people have to be ordered around, being\nfull-head-on in the habit of ordering, even ordering himself, the\nhardest feat of all, he is the man who has to be picked out to order\nother people. As a rule the man who orders himself around successfully,\nwho makes his whole nature or all parts of himself work together, does\nit because he takes pains to find out who he is and what he is like. If\nhe orders other men successfully and makes them work together it is\nbecause he knows what they are like.\n\nA man knows what other people are like and bow they feel by having times\nof being a little like them and by being a big, latent all-possible,\nall-round kind of man.\n\nLeadership follows.\n\nModern business consists in getting Inventors' minds and Hewers' minds\nto work together. The ruler of modern business is the man who by\nexperience or imagination is half an Inventor himself, and half a Hewer\nhimself. He knows how inventing feels and how hewing feels.\n\nHe has a southern exposure toward Hewers and makes Hewers feel\nidentified with him. He has what might be called an eastern exposure\ntoward men of genius, understands the inventive temperament, has the\nkind of personality that evokes inventiveness in others.\n\nIncidentally he has what might be called a northern exposure which keeps\nhim scientific, cool, and close to the spirit of facts.\n\nAnd there has to be something very like a western exposure in him too, a\ntouch of the homely seer, a habit of having reflections and afterglows,\na sense of principles, and of the philosophy of men and things.\n\nIf I were to try to sum up all these qualities in a man and call it by\none name, I would call it Glorified-commonsense.\n\nIf I were asked to define Glorified-commonsense I would say it is a\nglory which works. It belongs to the man who has a vision or coinage for\nothers because he sees them as they are, and sees how the glory buried\nin them (_i.e._, the inspiration or source of hard work in them) can be\ngot out.\n\nEverywhere that the Artist in business, or Organizer, with his Inventors\non one side of him and his Hewers on the other, can be seen to-day\ncompeting with the man who has the mere millionaire or owning type of\nmind, he is crowding him from the market.\n\nIt is because he understands how Inventors and Hewers feel and what they\nthink and when he turns on Inventors he makes them invent and when he\nturns on Hewers he makes them hew.\n\nThe Hewer often thinks because he is rich or because he owns a business,\nthat he can take the place of the artist, but he can be seen every day\nin every business around us, being passed relentlessly out of power\nbecause he cannot make his Inventors invent and cannot make his Hewers\nhew as well as some other man. The moment his Inventors and Hewers think\nof him, hear about him, or have any dealing with him--with the mere\nmillionaire, the mere owner kind of person, his Inventors invent as\nlittle as they can, and his Hewers hew as softly as they dare.\n\nThis is called the Modern Industrial Problem.\n\nAnd no man but the artist, the man with the inventing and the hewing\nspirit both in him, who daily puts the inventing spirit and the hewing\nspirit together in himself, can get it together in others.\n\nOnly the man who has kept and saved both the inventing and hewing spirit\nin himself can save it in others--can be a saviour or artist.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XIX\n\nTHE MAN WHO STANDS BY\n\n\nI have been trying to say in this book that goodness in daily life, or\nin business, in common world-running or world housekeeping, is by an\nimplacable crowd-process working slowly out of the hands of the wrong\nmen into the hands of the right ones.\n\nIf this is not true, I am ready to declare myself as a last resort, in\nfavour of a strike.\n\nThere is only one strike that would be practical.\n\nI would declare for a strike of the saviours.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nBy a saviour I do not mean a man who stoops down to me and saves me. A\nsaviour to me is a man who stands by and lets me save myself.\n\nI am afraid we cannot expect much of men who can bear the idea of being\nsaved by other people, or by saviours who have a stooping feeling.\n\nI rejoice daily in the spirit of our modern laboring men, in that holy\ndefiance in their eyes, in the way they will not say \"please\" to their\nemployers and announce that they will save themselves.\n\nThe only saviour who can do things for labouring men is the saviour who\nproposes to do things with them, who stands by, who helps to keep\noppressors and stooping saviours off--who sees that they have a fair\nchance and room to save themselves.\n\nI define a true saviour as a man who is trying to save himself.\n\nIt was because Christ, Savonarola, and John Bunyan were all trying to\nsave themselves that it ever so much as occurred to them to save worlds.\nSaving a world was the only way to do it.\n\nThe Cross was Christ's final stand for his own companionableness, his\nstand for being like other people, for having other people to share his\nlife with, his faith in others and his joy in the world.\n\nThe world was saved incidentally when Christ died on the Cross. He\nwanted to live more abundantly--and he had to have certain sorts of\npeople to live more abundantly with. He did not want to live unless he\ncould live more abundantly.\n\nWe live in a world in which inventors want to die if they cannot invent\nand in which Hewers want to die if they cannot hew.\n\nI am not proud. I am willing to be saved. Any saviour may save me if he\nwants to, if his saving me is a part of his saving himself.\n\nIf the inventor saves me and saves us all because he wants to be in a\nworld where an inventor can invent, wants some one to invent to; if the\nartist saves me because it is part of his worship of God to have me\nsaved and wants to use me every day to rejoice about the world with--if\nthe Hewer comes over and hews out a place in the world for me because he\nwants to hew, I am willing.\n\nAll that I demand is, that if a man take the liberty of being a saviour\nto me that he refrain from stooping, that he come up to me and save me\nlike a man, that he stand before me and tell me that here is something\nthat we, he and I, shoulder to shoulder, can do, something that neither\nof us could do alone. Then he will fall to with me and I will fall to\nwith him, and we will do it.\n\nThis is what I mean by a saviour.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XX\n\nTHE STRIKE OF THE SAVIOURS\n\n\nA factory in ---- some ten years ago employed one hundred men. Three of\nthese men were in the office and ninety-seven were hands in the works.\nTo-day this same factory which is doing a very much larger business is\nstill employing one hundred men, but thirty of the men are employed in\nthe office and seventy in the works.\n\nTen years, ago to put it in other words, the factory provided places for\none artist or manager and two inventors and places for ninety-seven\nHewers.\n\nTo-day the factory has made room for thirty inventors, one manager and\ntwenty-nine men who spend their entire time in thinking of things that\nwill help the Hewers hew.\n\nIt has seventy Hewers who are helping the Inventors invent by hewing\nthree times as hard and three times as skilfully or three times as much\nas without the Inventors to help them, they had dreamed they could hew\nbefore.\n\nThe Artist or Organizer who made this change in the factory found that\namong the ninety-seven Hewers that were employed a number of Hewers were\nhewing very poorly, because though hewing was the best they could do,\nthey could not even hew. He found certain others who were hewing poorly\nbecause they were not Hewers, but Inventors. These he set to work--some\nof them inventing in the office.\n\nOn closer examination the two Inventors in the office were found to be\nnot Inventors at all. One of them was a fine Hewer who liked to hew and\nwho hated inventing and the other was merely a rich Hewer who was an\nowner in the business who saw suddenly that he would have to stop\ninventing and stop very soon if he wanted the business to make any more\nmoney.\n\nThere are four things that the Artist has to do with a factory like this\nbefore he can make it efficient.\n\nEach of these things is an art. One art is the art of compelling the\nmere owner, the man with the merely hewing mind, to confine himself to\nthe one thing he knows how to do, namely to shovelling, to shovelling\nhis money in when and where he was told it was needed, and to shovelling\nhis money out when it has been made for him.\n\nThe art of compelling a mere owner to know his place, of keeping him\nshovelling money in and shovelling money out silently and modestly,\nconsists as a rule in having the Artist or Organizer tell him that\nunless the business is placed completely in his hands he will not\nundertake to run it.\n\nThis is the first art. The second art consists in having an\nunderstanding with the inventors that they will invent ways of helping\nthe Hewers hew.\n\nThe third art consists in having an understanding with the Hewers that\nthey will accept the help of the Inventors and hew with it. The fourth\nart is the art of representing the consumer with the Hewer and with the\nInventor and with the Owner and seeing that he shares in the benefits of\nall economies and improvements.\n\nThese are all human arts and turn on the power in a man of being a true\nartist, of being a man-inventor, a man-developer and a man-mixer, daily\ntaking part of himself and using these parts in putting other men\ntogether.\n\nThese organizers or artists, being the men who see how--are the men who\nare not afraid.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXI\n\nTHE LEAGUE OF THE MEN WHO ARE NOT AFRAID\n\n\nIf all the unbrained money in the world to-day and the men that go with\nit could be isolated, could be taken by men of imagination and put in a\nfew ships and sent off to an island in the sea--if New York and London\nand all the other important places could be left in the hands of the men\nwho have imagination, poor and rich, they would soon have the world in\nshape to make the men with merely owning minds, the mere owners off on\ntheir island, beg to come back to it, to be allowed to have a share in\nit on any terms.\n\nIn order to be fair, of course, their island would have to be a\nfurnished island--mines, woods, and everything they could want. It would\nbecome a kind of brute wilderness or desert in twenty-five years. We\ncould, now and then, some of us, take happy little trips, go out and\nlook them over on their little furnished island. It would do us good to\nwatch them--these men with merely owning or holding-on minds, really\nnoticing at last how unimportant they are.\n\nBut it is not necessary to resort to a furnished island as a device, as\na mirror for making mere millionaires see themselves.\n\nThis is a thing that could be done for millionaires now, most of them,\nhere just where they are.\n\nAll that is necessary is to have the brains of the world so organized\nthat the millionaires who expect merely because they are millionaires to\nbe run after by brains, cannot get any brains to run after them.\n\nI am in favour of organizing the brains of the world into a trades\nunion.\n\nOne of the next things that is going to happen is that the managing and\ncreating minds of the world to-day are going to organize, are going to\nsee suddenly their real power and use it. The brains are about to have,\nas labour and capital already have, a class consciousness.\n\nI would not claim that there is going to be an international strike of\nthe brains of the world, but it will not be long before the managing\nclass as a class will be organized so that they can strike if they want\nto.\n\nThe Artists or Organizers and Managers of business will not need\nprobably, in order to accomplish their purpose, to strike against the\nuncreative millionaires. They will make a stand (which the best of them\nhave already made now) for the balance of power in any business that\nthey furnish their brains to. The brains that create the profits for the\nowners and that create the labour for the labourers, will make terms for\ntheir brains and will withhold their brains if necessary to this end.\nBut it is far more likely that they will accomplish their purpose sooner\nby using their brains for the millionaires and for the labourers--by\ncooeperating with the millionaires and labourers than they will by\nstriking against them or keeping their brains back.\n\nThey are in a position to make the millionaires see how little money\nthey can make without them even in a few days. They will let them try. A\nvery little trying will prove it.\n\nWhere hand labour would have to strike for weeks and months to prove its\nvalue, brain labour would have to strike hours and days.\n\nThis is what is going to be done in modern business in one business at a\ntime, the brains insisting in each firm upon full control.\n\nThen, of course, the firms that have the brains in most full control\nwill drive the firms in which brains are in less control out of\ncompetition.\n\nThen brains will spread from one business to another. The Managers,\nArtists, and Organizers of the world will have formed at last a Brain\nSyndicate, and they will put themselves in a position to determine in\ntheir own interests and in the interests of society at large the terms\non which all men--all men who have no brains to put with their\nmoney--shall be allowed to have the use of theirs. They will monopolize\nthe brain supply of the world.\n\nThen they will act. Under our present regime money hires men; under the\nregime of the Brain Syndicate men will hire money. Money--_i.e._, saved\nup or canned labour, is going to be hired by Managers, Organizers, and\nEngineers with as much discrimination and with as deep a study of its\nefficiency, as new labour is hired. The millionaires are going to be\nseen standing with their money bags and their little hats in their hands\nlike office boys asking for positions for their money before the doors\nof the really serious and important men, the men who toil out the ideas\nand the ways and the means of carrying out ideas--the men who do the\nreal work of the world, who see things that they want and see how to get\nthem--the men of imagination, the inventors of ideas, organizers of\nfacts, generals and engineers in human nature.\n\nIt is these men who are going to allow people who merely have\nthoughtless labour and people who merely have thoughtless money to be\nlet in with them. The world's quarrel with the rich man is not his being\na rich man, but his being rich without brains, and its quarrel with the\npoor labourer is not his being a poor labourer, but his being a poor\nlabourer without brains. The only way that either of these men can have\na chance to be of any value is in letting themselves be used by the man\nwho will supply them with what they lack. They will try to get this man\nto see if he cannot think of some way of getting some good out of them\nfor themselves, and for others.\n\nWe have a Frederick Taylor for furnishing brains to labour.\n\nWe are going to have a Frederick Taylor to attend to the brain-supply of\nmillionaires, to idea-outfits for directors.\n\nEvery big firm is going to have a large group of specialists working on\nthe problem of how to make millionaires--its own particular millionaires\nthink, devising ways of keeping idle and thoughtless capitalists out of\nthe way. If the experts fail in making millionaires think, they may be\nsucceeded by experts in getting rid of them and in finding thoughtful\nmoney, possibly made up of many small sums, to take their place.\n\nThe real question the Artist or Organizer is going to ask about any man\nwith capital will be, \"Is it the man who is making the money valuable\nand important or is it the money that is making this man important for\nthe time being and a little noticeable or important-looking?\"\n\nThe only really serious question we have to face about money to-day is\nthe unimportance of the men who have it. The Hewers or Scoopers, or\nGrabbers, who have assumed the places of the Artist and the Inventor\nbecause they have the money, are about to be crowded over to the silent,\nmodest back seats in directors' meetings. If they want their profits,\nthey must give up their votes. They are going to be snubbed. They are\ngoing to beg to be noticed. The preferred stock or voting stock will be\nkept entirely in the hands of the men of working imagination, of\nclear-headedness about things that are not quite seen, the things that\nconstitute the true values in any business situation, the men who have\nthe sense of the way things work and of the way they will have to go.\n\nMere millionaires who do not know their place in a great business will\nbe crowded into small ones. They will be confronted by the organized\nrefusal of men with brains to work for their inferiors, to be under\ncontrol of men of second-rate order. Men with mere owning and grabbing\nminds will only be able to find men as stupid as they are to invest and\nmanage their money for them. In a really big creative business their\nonly chance will be cash and silence. They will be very glad at last to\nget in on any terms, if the men of brains will let their money edge into\ntheir business without votes and be carried along with it as a favour.\n\nIt is because things are not like this now, that we have an industrial\nproblem.\n\nManagers who have already hired labour as a matter of course are going\nto hire the kind of capital they like, the kind of capital that thinks\nand that can work with thinking men.\n\nThere will gradually evolve a general recognition in business on the\npart of men who run it and on the part of managers, of the moral or\nhuman value of money. The successful manager is no longer going to grab\nthoughtlessly at any old, idle, foolish pot of money that may be offered\nto him. He is going to study the man who goes with it, see how he will\nvote and see whether he knows his place, whether he is a Hewer, for\ninstance, who thinks he is an Inventor. Does he or does he not know\nwhich he is, an Inventor, an Artist, or a Hewer?\n\nCapitalists will expect as a matter of course to be looked over and to\nbe hired in a great business enterprise as carefully as labourers are\nbeing hired now.\n\nThe moment it is generally realized that the managers of every big\nmodern business have become as particular about letting in the right\nkind of directors as they have been before about letting in the right\nkind of labour, we will stop having an upside-down business world.\n\nAn upside-down business world is one in which any man who has money\nthinks he can be a director almost anywhere, a world in which on every\nhand we find managers who are not touching the imagination of the public\nand getting it to buy, and not touching the imagination of labour and\ngetting it to work, because they are not free to carry out their ideas\nwithout submitting them to incompetent and scared owners.\n\nThe incompetent and scared owners--the men who cannot think--are about\nto be shut out. Then they will be compelled to hire incompetent and\nscared managers. Then they will lose their money. Then the world will\nslip out of their hands.\n\nThe problem of modern industry is to be not the distribution of the\nmoney supply, but the distribution of the man-supply.\n\nMoney follows men.\n\nFree men. Free money.\n\n\n\n\nBOOK FIVE\n\nGOOD NEWS AND HARD WORK\n\n\nTO ANYBODY\n\n       \"_I know that all men ever born are also my brothers....\n    Limitless leaves too, stiff or drooping in the fields,\n       And brown ants in the little wells beneath them\n       And mossy scabs of the worm fence, heaped stones, elders,\n    mulleins and poke weed._\"\n\n_A Child said, \"What is grass?\" fetching it to me with full hands.\n\nHow could I answer the Child?_\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n    _\"I want to trust the sky and the grass!\n    I want to believe the songs I hear from the fenceposts!\n    Why should a maple-bud mislead me?\"_\n\n\n\n\nPART ONE\n\nNEWS AND LABOUR\n\n\nA big New England factory, not long ago, wanted to get nearer its raw\nmaterial and moved to Georgia.\n\nAll the machine considerations, better water-power, cheaper labour,\nsmaller freight bills, and new markets had argued for moving to Georgia.\n\nLong rows of new mills were built and thousands of negroes were moved in\nand thousands of shanties were put up, and the men and the women stood\nbetween the wheels. And the wheels turned.\n\nThere was not a thing that had not been thought of except the men and\nwomen that stood between the wheels.\n\nThe men and women that stood between the wheels were, for the most part,\nstrong and hearty persons and they never looked anxious or abused and\ndid as they were told.\n\nAnd when Saturday night came, crowds of them with their black faces, of\nthe men and of the women, of the boys and girls, might have been seen\nfiling out of the works with their week's wages.\n\nMonday morning a few of them dribbled back. There were enough who would\ncome to run three mills. All the others in the long row of mills were\nsilent. Tuesday morning, Number Four started up, Wednesday, Number Five.\nBy Thursday noon they were all going.\n\nThe same thing happened the week after, and the week after, and the week\nafter that.\n\nThe management tried everything they could think of with their people,\nscolding, discharging, making their work harder, making their work\neasier, paying them less, paying them more, two Baptist ministers and\neven a little Roman Catholic Church.\n\nAs long as the negroes saw enough to eat for three days, they would not\nwork.\n\nIt began to look as if the mills would have to move back to\nMassachusetts, where people looked anxious and where people felt poor,\ngot up at 5 A.M. Mondays and worked.\n\nSuddenly one day, the son of one of the owners, a very new-looking young\nman who had never seen a business college, and who had run through\nHarvard almost without looking at a book, and who really did not seem to\nknow or to care anything about anything--except folks--appeared on the\nscene with orders from his father that he be set to work.\n\nThe manager could not imagine what to do with him at first, but finally,\nbeing a boy who made people like him more than they ought to, he found\nhimself placed in charge of the Company Store. The company owned the\nvillage, and the Company Store, which had been treated as a mere\nnecessity in the lonely village, had been located, or rather dumped, at\nthe time, into a building with rows of little house-windows in it, a\nkind of extra storehouse on the premises.\n\nThe first thing the young man did was to stove four holes in the\nbuilding, all along the front and around the corners on the two sides,\nand put in four big plate-glass windows. The store was mysteriously\nclosed up in front for a few days to do this, and no one could see what\nwas happening, and the negroes slunk around into a back room to buy\ntheir meal and molasses. And finally one morning, one Sunday morning,\nthe store opened up bravely and flew open in front.\n\nThe windows on the right contained three big purple hats with blue\nfeathers, and some pink parasols.\n\nThe windows on the left were full of white waistcoats, silver-headed\ncanes, patent-leather shoes and other things to live up to.\n\nMonday morning more of the mills were running than usual.\n\nLater in the week there appeared in the windows melodions, phonographs,\nbig gilt family Bibles, bread machines, sewing machines, and Morris\nchairs. Only a few hands took their Mondays off after this.\n\nAll the mills began running all the week.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nOf course there are better things to live for than purple hats and blue\nfeathers, and silver-headed canes, and patent leather shoes. But if\npeople can be got to live six days ahead, or thirty days, or sixty days\nahead, instead of three days ahead, by purple hats and blue feathers and\nwhite waistcoats, and if it is necessary to use purple hats and blue\nfeathers to start people thinking in months instead of minutes, or to\nbudge them over to where they can have a touch of idealism or of\nreligion or of living beyond the moment, I say for one, with all my\nheart, \"God bless purple hats and blue feathers!\"\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe great problem of modern charity, the one society is largely occupied\nwith to-day, is: \"What is there that we can possibly do for our\nmillionaires?\"\n\nThe next thing Society is going to do, perhaps, is to design and set up\npurple hats with blue feathers for millionaires.\n\nThe moment our millionaires have placed before them something to live\nfor, a few real, live, satisfying ideals, or splendid lasting things\nthey can do, things that everybody else would want to do, and that\neverybody else would envy them for doing, it will bore them to run a\ngreat business merely to make money. They will find it more interesting,\nharder, and calling for greater genius, to be great and capable\nemployers. When our millionaires once begin to enter into competition\nwith one another in being the greatest and most successful employers of\nlabour on earth, our industrial wars will cease.\n\nMillionaires who get as much work out of their employees as they dare,\nand pay them as little as they can, and who give the public as small\nvalues as they dare, and take as much money as they can, only do such\nstupid, humdrum, conventional things because they are bored, because\nthey cannot really think of anything to live for.\n\nLabourers whose daily, hourly occupation consists in seeing how much\nless work a day than they ought to do, they can do, and how much more\nmoney they can get out of their employers than they earn, only do such\nthings because they are tired or bored and discouraged, and because they\ncannot think of anything that is truly big and fine and worth working\nfor.\n\nThe industrial question is not an economic question. It is a question of\nsupplying a nation with ideals. It is a problem which only an American\nNational Ideal Supply Company could hope to handle. The very first\nmoment three or four purple hats with blue feathers for millionaires and\nfor labourers have been found and set up in the great show window of the\nworld, the industrial unrest of this century begins to end.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nAs I went by, one day not long ago, I saw two small boys playing\nhouse--marking off rooms--sitting-rooms and bedrooms, with rows of\nstones on the ground. When I came up they had just taken hold of a big\nstone they wanted to lift over into line a little. They were tugging on\nit hopefully and with very red faces, and it did not budge. I picked up\na small beam about five feet long on my side of the road, that I thought\nwould do for a crowbar, stepped over to the boys, fixed a fulcrum for\nthem, and went on with my walk. When I came back after my walk that\nnight to the place where the boys had been playing, I found the boys had\ngiven up working on their house. And as I looked about, every big stone\nfor yards around--every one that was the right size--seemed subtly out\nof place. The top of the stone wall, too, was very crooked.\n\nThey had given up playing house and had played crowbar all day instead.\n\nI should think it would have been a rather wonderful day, those boys'\nfirst day, seven or eight hours of it spent, with just a little time off\nfor luncheon, in seeing how a crowbar worked!\n\nI have forgotten just how much larger part of a ton one inch more on a\ncrowbar lifts. I never know figures very well. But I know people and I\nknow that a man with only three day's worth of things ahead to live for\ndoes not get one hundredth part of the purchase power on what he is\ndoing that the man gets who works with thirty days ahead of things to\nlive for, all of them nerving him up, keeping him in training, and\ninspiring him. And I know that the man who does his work with a longer\nlever still, with thirty or forty years worth' of things he wants, all\ncrowding in upon him and backing him up, can lift things so easily, so\neven jauntily, sometimes, that he seems to many of us sometimes to be a\nnew size and a new kind of man.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe general conventional idea of business is, that if you give a man\nmore wages to work for, he will work more, but of course if a business\nman has the brains, knows how to fire up an employee, knows how to give\nhim something or suggest something in his life that will make him want\nto live twenty times as much, it would not only be cheaper, but it would\nwork better than paying him twice as much wages.\n\nEfficiency is based on news. Put before a man's life twenty times as\nmuch to live for and to work for, and he will do at least, well--twice\nas much work.\n\nIf a man has a big man's thing or object in view, he can do three times\nas much work. If the little thing he has to do, and keep doing, is seen\ndaily by him as a part of a big thing, the power and drive of the big\nthing is in it, the little thing becomes the big thing, seems big while\nhe is doing it every minute. It makes it easier to do it because it\nseems big.\n\nThe little man becomes a big man.\n\nFrom the plain, practical point of view, it is the idealist in\nbusiness, the shrewd, accurate, patient idealist in modern business who\nis the man of economic sense. The employer who can put out ideals in\nfront of his people, who can make his people efficient with the least\nexpense, is the employer who has the most economic sense.\n\nThe employer who is a master at supplying motives to people, who manages\nto cut down through to the quick in his employees, to the daily motives,\nto the hourly ideals, the hourly expectations with which they work, is\nthe employer who already takes the lead, who is already setting the pace\nin the twentieth-century business world.\n\nPossibly you have noticed this trait in the great employers or, at\nleast, in the great managers of employers?\n\nYou are going, for instance, through a confectionery shop. As you move\ndown the long aisles of candy machines you hear the clock strike eleven.\nSuddenly music starts up all around you and before your eyes four\nhundred girls swing off into each other's arms. They dance between their\nmachines five minutes, and then, demurely, they drop back to their work.\nYou see them sitting quietly in long white rows, folding up sweet-meats\nwith flushed and glowing cheeks.\n\nIs this sentiment or is it cold businesslike efficiency?\n\nThe more sentiment there is in it, I think, the more efficient it is and\nthe better it works.\n\n\"Business is not business.\"\n\nOne need not quarrel about words, but certainly, whatever else business\nis, it is not business. It would be closer to the facts to call business\nan art or a religion, a kind of homely, inspired, applied piety, based\nupon gifts in men which are essentially religious gifts; the power of\ncommunion in the human heart, the genius for cultivating companionship,\nof getting people to understand you and understand one another and do\nteam work. The bed-rock, the hard pan of business success lies in the\nfundamental, daily conviction--the personal habit in a man of looking\nupon business as a hard, accurate, closely studied, shrewd human art, a\nscience of mutual expectation.\n\nI am not saying that I would favour all employers of young women having\nthem, to-morrow morning at eleven o'clock, swing off into each other's\narms and dance for five minutes. The value of the dance in this\nparticular case was that the Firm thought of the dancing itself and was\nalways doing things like it, that everybody knew that the Firm, up in\nits glass office, felt glad, joined in the dance in spirit, enjoyed\nseeing the girls caught up for five minutes in the joy and swing of a\nbig happy world full of sunshine and music outside, full of buoyant and\ngentle things, of ideals around them which belonged to them and of which\nthey and their lives were a part.\n\nWhen we admit that business success to-day turns or is beginning to turn\non a man's power of getting work out of people, we admit that a man's\npower of getting work out of people, his business efficiency, turns on\nhis power of supplying his people with ideals.\n\nIdeals are news.\n\nYou come on a man who thinks he is out of breath and that he cannot\npossibly run. You happen to be able to tell him that some dynamite in\nthe quarry across the road is going to blow the side of the hill out in\nforty-five seconds and he will run like a gazelle.\n\nYou tell a man the news, the true news that his employees are literally\nand honestly finding increased pay or promotion, either in their own\nestablishment or elsewhere for every man they employ, as fast as he\nmakes himself fit, and you have created a man three times his own size\nbefore your own eyes, all in a minute. And he begins working for you\nlike a man three times his own size, and not because he is getting more\nfor it, but because he suddenly believes in you, suddenly believes in\nthe world and in the human race he belongs to.\n\nTo make a man work, say something to him or do something to him which\nwill make him swing his hat for humanity, and give three cheers (like a\nmeeting of workmen the other day): \"Three cheers for God!\"\n\nThere is a well-known firm in England which has the best labour of its\nkind in the world, because the moment the Firm finds that a man's skill\nhas reached the uttermost point in his work, where it would be to the\nFirm's immediate interests to keep him and where the Firm could keep on\nmaking money out of him and where the man could not keep on growing,\nthey have a way of stepping up to such a man (and such things happen\nevery few days), and telling him that he ought to go elsewhere, finding\nhim a better place and sending him to it. This is a regular system and\nhighly organized. The factory is known or looked upon as a big family or\nschool. There are hundreds of young men and young women who, in order to\nget in and get started, and merely be on the premises of such a factory,\nwould offer to work for the firm for nothing. The Factory, to them, is\nlike a great Gate on the World.\n\nIt is its ideals that have made the factory a great gate on the World.\n\nAnd ideals are news. Ideals are news to a man about himself. News to a\nman about himself and about what he can be, is gospel.\n\nAnd a factory with men at the top who have the brains about human nature\nto do things like this, men who can tell people news about themselves,\nall day, every day, all the week, like a church--let such a factory, I\nsay, for one, have a steeple with chimes in it, if it wants to, and be\ncounted with the other churches!\n\nPeople have a fashion of speaking of a man's ideals in a kind of weak,\npale way, as if ideals were clouds, done in water-colour by schoolgirls,\nas if they were pretty, innocent things, instead of being fierce,\nsplendid, terrific energies, victorious, irrevocable in human history,\ntrampling the earth like unicorns, breathing wonder, deaths, births upon\nthe world, carrying everything before them, everywhere they go. These\nare ideals! This may not be the way ideals work in a moment or in a\nyear, but it is the way they work in history, and it is the way they\nmake a man feel when he is working on them. It is what they are for, to\nmake him feel like this, when he is working on them. With the men who\nare most alive and who live the longest, the men who live farther ahead\nand think in longer periods of time, the energies in ideals function as\nan everyday matter of course.\n\nI wish people would speak oftener of a man's motives, what he lives for,\nas his motive powers. They generally speak of motives in a man as if\nthey were a mere kind of dead chart or spiritual geography in him, or\nclock-hand on him or map of his soul. The motives and desires in a man\nare the motors or engines in him, the central power house in a man, the\nthing in him that makes him go.\n\nAll a man has to do to live suddenly and unexpectedly a big life is to\nhave suddenly a big motive.\n\nAnybody who has ever tried, for five minutes, a big motive, ever tried\nworking a little happiness for other people into what he is doing for\nhimself, for instance, if he stopped to think about it and how it worked\nand how happy it made him himself, would never do anything in any other\nway all his life. It is the big motives that are efficient.\n\n\n\n\nPART TWO\n\nNEWS AND MONEY\n\n\nI think it was Sir William Lever who remarked (but I have heard in the\nlast two years so many pearls dropped from the lips of millionaires that\nI am not quite sure) that the way to tell a millionaire, when one saw\none, was by his lack of ready money. He added that perhaps a surer way\nof knowing a millionaire, when one saw one, was by his lack of ideas.\n\nMy own experience is that neither of these ways works as well as it used\nto. I very often meet a man now--a real live millionaire, no one would\nthink it of.\n\nOne of them--one of the last ones--telegraphed me from down in the\ncountry one morning, swung up to London on a quick train, cooped me up\nwith him at a little corner table in his hotel, and gave me more ideas\nin two hours than I had had in a week.\n\nI came away very curious about him--whoever he was.\n\nNot many days afterward I found myself motoring up a long, slow hill,\nfull of wind and heather, and there in a stately park with all his\ntreetops around him, and his own blue sky, in a big, beautiful, serene\nroom, I saw him again.\n\nHe began at once, \"Do you think Christ would have approved of my house?\"\n\nHis five grown sons were sitting around him but he spoke vividly and\ndirectly and like a child, and as if he had just brushed sixty years\naway, and could, any time.\n\nI said I did not think it fair to Christ, two thousand years off, to ask\nwhat he would have thought of a house like his, now. The only fair\nthing to do would be to ask what Christ would think if He were living\nhere to-day.\n\n\"Well, suppose He had motored over here with you this afternoon from\n---- Manor, and spent last night with you there, and talked with you and\nwith ---- and had seen the pictures, and the great music room and\nwandered through the gardens, and suppose that then He had come through\non his way up, all those two miles of slums down in ---- seen all those\npoor, driven, crowded people, and had finally come up here with you to\nthis big, still, restful place two thousand people could live in, and\nwhich I keep all to myself. You don't really mean to say, do you, that\nHe would approve of my living in a house like this?\"\n\nI said that I did not think that Christ would be tipped over by a house\nor lose his bearings with a human soul because he lived in a park. I\nthought He would look him straight in the eyes.\n\n\"But Christ said, 'He that loseth his life shall save it!'\"\n\n\"Yes, but He did not intend it as a mere remark about people's houses.\"\n\nIt did not seem to me that Christ meant simply giving up to other people\neasy and ordinary things like houses or like money, but that He meant\ngiving up to others our motives, giving up the deepest, hardest things\nin us, our very selves to other people.\n\n\"And so you really think that if Christ came and looked at this house\nand looked at me in it, He would not mind?\"\n\n\"I do not know. I think that after He had looked at your house He would\ngo down and look at your factory, possibly. How many men do you employ?\"\n\n\"Sixteen hundred.\"\n\n\"I think He would look at them, the sixteen hundred men, and then He\nwould move about a little. Very likely He would look at their wives and\nthe little children.\"\n\nHe thought a moment. I could see that he was not as afraid of having\nChrist see the factory as he was of having Him see the house.\n\nI was not quite sure but I thought there was a little faint gleam in his\neye when I mentioned the factory.\n\n\"What do you make?\" I asked.\n\nHe named something that everybody knows.\n\nThen I remembered suddenly who he was. He was one of the men I had first\nbeen told about in England, and the name had slipped from me. He had\nmanaged to do and do together the three things one goes about looking\nfor everywhere in business--what might be called the Three R's of great\nbusiness (though not necessarily R's). (1) He had raised the wages of\nhis employees. (2) He had reduced prices to consumers. (3) He had\nreduced his proportion of profit and raised the income of the works, by\ninventing new classes of customers, and increasing the volume of the\nbusiness.\n\nHe had found himself, one day, as most men do, sooner or later, with a\ndemand for wages that he could not pay.\n\nAt first he told the men he could not pay them more, said that he would\nhave to close the works if he did.\n\nHe was a very busy man to be confronted with a crisis like this. The\nmarket was trouble enough.\n\nOne morning, when he was up early, and the house was all still and he\nwas sitting alone with himself, the thought slipped into his mind that\nthere had been several times before in his life when he had sat thinking\nabout certain things that could not be done. And then he had got up from\nthinking they could not be done and gone out and done them.\n\nHe wondered if he could not get up and go out and do this one.\n\nAs he sat in the stillness with a clear road before his mind and not a\nsoul in the world up, the thought occurred to him, with not a thing in\nsight to stop it, that he had not really trained himself to be quite\nsuch an expert in raising wages as he had in some other things.\n\nPerhaps he did not know about raising wages.\n\nPerhaps if he concentrated his imagination as much on getting higher\nwages for his workmen as he had in those early days years before on\nmaking over all his obstinate raw material into the best cases of ----\non earth, he might find it possible to get more wages for his men by\npersuading them to earn more and by getting their cooeperation in finding\nways to earn more.\n\nAs he sat in the stillness, gradually (perhaps it was the stillness that\ndid it) the idea grew on him.\n\nHe made up his mind to see what would happen if he worked as hard at\npaying higher wages for three months as he had for three years at making\nraw material into cases of the best----on earth.\n\nThen things began happening every day. One of the most important\nhappened to him.\n\nHe found that higher wages were as interesting a thing to work on as any\nother raw material had ever been.\n\nHe found that a cheap workman as raw material to make a high-priced\nworkman out of was as interesting as a case of----.\n\nA year or so after this, there was a strike (in his particular industry)\nof all the workmen in England. They struck to be paid the wages his men\nwere paid.\n\nHe had been able to do three things he thought he thought he could not\ndo. He had succeeded in doing the first, in raising the wages of his\nemployees, by thinking up original ways of expressing himself to them,\nand of getting them to believe in him and of making them want to work a\nthird harder. At the same time he succeeded in doing the second, in\nreducing the prices to consumers, by inventing new by-products out of\nwaste.\n\nHe had succeeded in doing the third, in reducing his per cent. of\nprofits and increasing his income from the works at the same time, by\nthinking up ways of creating new habits and new needs in his customers.\n\nHe had fulfilled, as it seems, the three requisites of a great business\ncareer. He had created new workmen, invented new things for men and\nwomen to want, and had then created some new men and women who could\nwant them.\n\nIncidentally all the while, day by day, while he was doing these things,\nhe had distributed a large and more or less unexpected sum of money\namong all these three classes of people.\n\nSome of this extra money went to his workmen, and some to himself, and\nsome to his customers, but it was largely spent, of course, in getting\nbusiness for other manufacturers and in getting people to buy all over\nEngland, from other manufacturers, things that such people as they had\nnever been able before to afford to buy.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nAll these things that I have been saying and which I have duly confided\nto the reader flashed through my mind as I stood with my back to the\nfire, realizing suddenly that the man who had done them was the man with\nwhom I was talking.\n\nPossibly some little thing was said. I do not remember what. The next\nthing I knew was that, with his five grown sons around him, he returned\nto his attack on his house.\n\nHe said some days he was glad it was so far away. He did not want his\nworkmen to see it. He did not go to the mill often in his motor-car, not\nwhen he could help it.\n\nI said that I thought that a man who was doing extraordinary things for\nother people, things that other men could not get time or strength or\nfreedom or boldness of mind or initiative to do, that any particular\nthing he could have that gave him any advantage or immunity for doing\nthe extraordinary things better, that would give him more of a chance to\ngive other people a chance, that the other people, if they were in their\nsenses, would insist upon his having these things.\n\n\"I think there are hundreds of men in my mill who think that they ought\nto have my motor-car and three or four rooms in this house.\"\n\n\"Are they the most efficient ones?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\nIf a man gives over to other people his deepest motives, and if he\nreally identifies himself--the very inside of himself with them and\ntreats their interests as his interests, the more money he has, the more\npeople like it.\n\n\"Take me, for instance,\" I said.\n\n\"I have hoped every minute since I knew you, that you were a prosperous\nman. I saw the house and looked around in the park as I motored up with\njoy. And when I came to the big gate I wanted to give three cheers! I\nwish you had stock in the Meat Trust in America, that you could pierce\nyour way like a microbe into the vitals, into the inside of the Meat\nTrust in my own country, make a stand in a Directors' Meeting for ninety\nmillion people over there, say your say for them, vote your stock for\nthem, say how you want a Meat Trust you belong to, to behave, how you\nwant it to be a big, serious, business institution and not a humdrum,\nmechanical-minded hold-up anybody could think of--in charge of a few\nuninteresting, inglorious men--men nobody really cares to know and that\nnobody wants to be like ... when I think of what a man like you with\nmoney can do ...!\n\n\"Am I not tired every day, are you not tired, yourself, of going about\neverywhere and seeing money in the hands of all these second-class,\nsocially feeble-minded men, of seeing columns in the papers of what such\nmen think, of having college presidents, great universities, domes,\nchurches and thousands of steeples all deferring to them and bowing to\nthem, and all the superior, live, interested people ringing their door\nbells for their money waiting outside on benches for what they think?\"\n\nI do not believe that Christ came into the world, two thousand years\nago, to say that only the men who have minds of the second class, men\nwho are not far-sighted enough in business to be decently unselfish in\nthis world, should be allowed to have control of the money and of the\npeoples' means of living in it.\n\nWe are living in an age of big machines and big, inevitable\naggregations, and to say in an age like this, and above all, to get it\nout of a Bible, or put it into a hymn book or make a religion of it,\nthat all the first class minds of the world--the men who see far enough\nto be unselfish, should give over their money to second-class men, is\nthe most monstrous, most unbelieving, unfaithful, unbiblical,\nirreligious thing a world can be guilty of. The one thing that is now\nthe matter with money, is that the second-class people have most of it.\n\n\"What would happen if we applied asceticism or a tired, discouraged\nunbelief to having children that we do to having pounds and pence and\ndollars and cents? You would not stand for that would you?\"\n\nI looked at his five sons.\n\n\"Suppose all the good families of to-day were to take the ground that\nhaving children is a self-indulgence unworthy of good people; suppose\nthe good people leave having children in this world almost entirely to\nbad ones?\n\n\"This is what has been happening to money.\n\n\"Unbelief in money is unbelief in the spirit. It is paying too much\nattention to wealth to say that one must or that one must not have it.\"\n\nI cannot recall precisely what was said after this in that long evening\ntalk of ours but what I tried to say perhaps might have been something\nlike this:\n\nThe essence of the New Testament seems to be the emphasis of a man's\nspirit with or without money. Whether a man should be rich or get out of\nbeing rich and earn the right to be poor (which some very true and big\nmen, artists and inventors in this world will always prefer) turns on a\nman's temperament. If a man has a money genius and can so handle money\nthat he can make money, and if he can, at the same time, and all in one\nbargain, express his own spirit, if he can free the spirits of other men\nwith money and express his religion in it, he should be ostracized by\nall thoughtful, Christian people, if in the desperate crisis of an age\nlike this, he tries to get out of being rich.\n\nThe one thing a man can be said to be for in this world, is to express\nthe goodness--the religion in him, in something, and if he is not the\nkind of man who can express his religion in money and in employing\nlabour, then let him find something--say music or radium or painting in\nwhich he can. It is this bounding off in a world, this making a bare\nspot in life and saying \"This is not God, this cannot be God!\"--it is\nthis alone that is sacriligious.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIt may be that I am merely speaking for myself, but I did discover a man\non Fleet Street the other day who quite agreed with me apparently, that\nif the thing a man has in him is religion he can put it up or express it\nin almost anything.\n\nThis man had tried to express his idea in a window.\n\nHe had done a Leonardo da Vinci's \"Last Supper,\" in sugar--a kind of\nbas-relief in sugar.\n\nI do not claim that this kind of foolish, helpless caricature of a great\nspiritual truth filled me with a great reverence or that it does now.\n\nBut it did make me think how things were.\n\nIf sugar with this man, like money with a banker, was the one logical\nthing the man had to express his religion in, or if what he had had to\nexpress had been really true and fine, or if there had been a true or\nfine or great man to express, I do not doubt sugar could have been made\nto do it.\n\nOne single man with enough money and enough religions skill in human\nnature, who would get into the Sugar Trust with some good, fighting,\nvoting stock, who could make the Sugar Trust do as it would be done by,\nwould make over American industry in twenty years.\n\nHe would have thrown up as on a high mountain, before all American men,\none great specimen, enviable business. He would have revealed as in a\nkind of deep, sober apocalypse, American business to itself. He would\nhave revealed American business as a new national art form, as an\nexpression of the practical religion, the genius for real things, that\nis our real modern temperament in America and the real modern\ntemperament in all the nations.\n\nOf course it may not need to be done precisely with the Sugar Trust.\n\nThe Meat Trust might do it first, or the Steel Trust.\n\nBut it will be done.\n\nThen the Golden Rule, one great Golden Rule-machine having been\ninstalled in our trust that knew the most, and was most known, it could\nbe installed in the others.\n\nReligion can be expressed much better to-day in a stock-holder's meeting\nthan it can in a prayer-meeting.\n\nCharles Cabot, of Boston, walked in quietly to the Stock-holder's\nMeeting of the Steel Trust one day and with a little touch of\nmoney--$2,900 in one hand, and a copy of the _American Magazine_ in the\nother, made (with $2,900) $1,468,000,000 do right.\n\n\n\n\nPART THREE\n\nNEWS AND GOVERNMENT\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER I\n\nOXFORD STREET AND THE HOUSE OF COMMONS\n\n\nEvery now and then when I am in London (at the instigation of some\nbusiness man who takes the time off to belong to it), I drop into a\npleasant but other-worldly and absent-minded place called the House of\nCommons.\n\nI sit in the windows in the smoking-room and watch the faces of the\nmembers all about me and watch the steamships, strangely, softly,\nsuddenly--Shakespeare and Pepys, outside on the river, slip gravely by\nunder glass.\n\nOr I go in and sit down under the gallery, face to face with the\nSpeaker, looking across those profiles of world-makers in their seats;\nand I watch and listen in the House itself. There is a kind of pleasant,\nconvenient, appropriate hush upon the world there.\n\nWisdom.\n\nThe decorous, orderly machinery of knowledge rolls over one--one listens\nto It, to the soft clatter of the endless belt of words.\n\nEvery now and then one sees a member in the middle of a speech, or\npossibly in the middle of a sentence, slip up quietly and take a look\n(under glass) at The People, or he uses a microscope, perhaps, or a\nreading glass on The People, Mr. Bonar Law's, Mr. Lloyd George's, Ramsay\nMacDonald's, Will Crook's, or somebody's. Then he comes back gravely as\nif he had got the people attended to now, and finishes what he was\nsaying.\n\nIt is a very queer feeling one has about the People in the House of\nCommons.\n\nI mean the feeling of their being under glass; they all seem so\nmanageable, so quiet and so remote, a kind of glazed-over picture in\nstill life, of themselves. Every now and then, of course one takes a\nmember seriously when he steps up to the huge showcase of specimen\ncrowds, which members are always referring to in their speeches. But\nnothing comes of it.\n\nThe crowds seem very remote there under the glass. One feels like\nsmashing something--getting down to closer terms with them--one longs\nfor a Department Store or a bridge or a 'bus--something that rattles and\nbangs and is.\n\nAll the while outside the mighty street--that huge megaphone of the\ncrowd, goes shouting past. One wishes the House would notice it. But no\none does. There is always just the House Itself and that hush or ring of\nsilence around it, all England listening, all the little country papers\nfar away with their hands up to their ears and the great serious-minded\nDailies, and the witty Weeklies, the stately Monthlies, and Quarterlies\nall acting as if it mattered....\n\nEven during the coal strike nothing really happened in the House of\nCommons. There was a sense of the great serious people, of the crowds on\nWestminster Bridge surging softly through glass outside, but nothing got\nin. Big Ben boomed down the river, across the pavements, over the\nhurrying crowds and over all the men and the women, the real business\nmen and women. The only thing about the House that seemed to have\nanything to do with anybody was Big Ben.\n\nFinally one goes up to Harrod's to get relief, or one takes a 'bus, or\none tries Trafalgar Square, or one sees if one can really get across the\nStrand or one does something--almost anything to recall one's self to\nreal life.\n\nAnd then, of course, there is Oxford Street.\n\nAlmost always after watching the English people express themselves or\nstraining to express themselves in the House of Commons, I try Oxford\nStreet.\n\nI know, of course, that as an art-form for expressing a great people,\nOxford Street is not all that it should be, but there is certainly\nsomething, after all the mooniness and the dim droniness, and\nlawyer-mindedness in the way the English people express themselves or\nthink that they ought to express themselves in their house of\nCommons--there is certainly something that makes Oxford Street seem\nsuddenly a fine, free, candid way for a great people to talk! And there\nis all the gusto, too, the 'busses, the taxies, the hundreds of\nthousands of men and women saying things and buying things they believe.\n\nTaking in the shops on both sides or the street, and taking in the\nthings the people are doing behind the counters, and in the aisles, and\nup in the office windows three blocks of Oxford Street really express\nwhat the English people really want and what they really think and what\nthey believe and put up money on, more than three years of the house of\nCommons.\n\nIf I were an Englishman I would rather be elected to walk up and down\nOxford Street and read what I saw there than to be elected to a seat in\nthe House of Commons, and I could accomplish more and learn more for a\nnation, with three blocks of Oxford Street, with what I could gather up\nand read there, and with what I could resent and believe there, than I\ncould with three years of the House of Commons.\n\nI know that anybody, of course, could be elected to walk up and down\nOxford Street. But it is enough for me.\n\nSo I almost always try it after the house of Commons.\n\nAnd when I have taken a little swing down Oxford Street and got the\nHouse of Commons out of my system a little, perhaps I go down to the\nEmbankment, and drop into my club.\n\nThen I sit in the window and mull.\n\nIf the English people express themselves and express what they want and\nwhat they are bound to have, on Oxford Street and put their money down\nfor it, so much better than they do in the House of Commons, why should\nthey not do it there?\n\nWhy should elaborate, roundabout, mysterious things like governments,\nthat have to be spoken of in whispers (and that express themselves\nusually in a kind of lawyer-minded way, in picked and dried words like\nwills), be looked upon so seriously, and be taken on the whole, as the\nmain reliance the people have, in a great nation, for expressing\nthemselves?\n\nWhy should not a great people be allowed to say what they are like and\nto say what they want and what they are bound to get, in the way Oxford\nStreet says things, in a few straight, clean-cut, ordinary words, in\nlong quiet rows of deeds, of buying and selling and acting?\n\nPounds, shillings, and silence.\n\nThen on to the next thing.\n\nIf the House of Commons were more like Oxford Street or even if it had\nsuddenly something of the tone of Oxford Street, if suddenly it were to\nbegin some fine morning to express England the way Oxford Street does,\nwould not one see, in less than three months, new kinds and new sizes of\nmen all over England, wanting to belong to it?\n\nBig, powerful, uncompromising, creative men who have no time for\ntwiddling, who never would have dreamed of being tucked away in the\nhouse of Commons before, would want to belong to it.\n\nIn the meantime, of course, the men of England who have empires to\nexpress, are not unnaturally expressing them in more simple language\nlike foundries, soap factories around a world, tungsten mines,\ndepartment stores, banks, subways, railroads for seventy nations, and\nships on seven seas, Winnipeg trolleys and little New York skyscrapers.\n\nBusiness men of the more usual or humdrum kind could not do it, but\ncertainly, the first day that business men like these, of the first or\nworld-size class, once find the House of Commons a place they like to be\nin, once begin expressing the genius of the English people in government\nas they are already expressing the genius of the English people in\nowning the earth, in buying and selling, in inventing things and in\ninventing corporations, the House of Commons will cease to be a bog of\nwords, an abyss of committees, and legislation will begin to be run like\na railroad--on a block signal system, rows of things taken up, gone\nover, and finished. The click of the signal. Then the next thing.\n\nI sit in my club and look out of the window and think. Just outside\nthousands of taxies shooting all these little mighty wills of men across\nmy window, across London, across England, across the world ... the huge,\nimperious street ... all these men hurling themselves about in it,\njoining their wills on to telephone wires, to mighty trains and little\nquiet country roads, hitching up cables to their wills, and\nships--hitching up the very clouds over the sea to their wills and\nrunning a world--why are not men like these--men who have the\nstreet-spirit in them, this motor genius of driving through to what they\nwant, taking seats in the House of Commons?\n\nPerhaps Oxford Street is more efficient and more characteristic in\nexpressing the genius and the will of the English people than the House\nof Commons is because of the way in which the people select the men they\nwant to express them in Oxford Street.\n\nIt may be that the men the people have selected to be at the top of the\nnation's law-making are not selected by as skillful, painstaking, or\nthorough a process as the men who have been selected to be placed at the\ntop of the nation's buying and selling.\n\nPossibly the reason the House of Commons does not express the will of\nthe people is, that its members are merely selected in a loose, vague\nway and by merely counting noses.\n\nPossibly, too, the men who are selected by a true, honest, direct,\nnatural selection to be the leaders and to free the energies and steer\nthe work of the people, the men who are selected to lead by being seen\nand lived with and worked with all day, every day, are better selected\nmen than men who having been voted on on slips of paper, and having been\nseen in newspaper paragraphs, travel up to London and begin\nthoughtlessly running a world.\n\nThe business man drops into the House of Commons after the meeting of\nhis firm in Bond Street, Lombard Street, or Oxford Street and takes a\nlook at it. He sees before him a huge tool or piece of machinery--a body\nof men intended to work together and to get certain grave, particular,\nand important things done, that the people want done, and he does not\nsee how a great good-hearted chaos or welter, a kind of chance national\nWeather of Human Nature like the House of Commons, can get the things\ndone.\n\nSo he confines himself more and more to business where he loses less\ntime in wondering what other people think or if they think at all, cuts\nout the work he sees, and does it.\n\nHe thinks how it would be if things were turned around and if people\ntried to get expressed in business in the loose way, the thoughtless\nreverie of voting that they use in trying to get themselves expressed in\npolitics.\n\nHe thinks the stockholders of the Sunlight Soap Company, Limited, would\nbe considerably alarmed to have the president and superintendent and\ntreasurer and the buyers and salesmen of the company elected at the\npolls by the people in the county or by popular suffrage. He thinks that\nthousands of the hands as well as the stockholders would be alarmed too.\nIt does not seem to him that anybody, poor or rich, employer or\nemployee, in matters of grave personal concern, would be willing to\ntrust his interest or would really expect the people, all the people as\na whole, to be represented or to get what they wanted, to act definitely\nand efficiently through the vague generalizations of the polls. Perhaps\na natural selection, a dead-earnest rigorous, selection that men work\non nine hours a day, an implacable, unremitting process during working\nhours, of sorting men out (which we call business), is the crowd's most\nreliable way of registering what it definitely thinks about the men it\nwants to represent it. Business is the crowd's, big, serious, daily\nvoting in pounds, shillings, and pence--its hour to hour, unceasing,\nintimate, detailed labour in picking men out, in putting at the top the\nmen it can work with best, the men who most express it, who have the\nmost genius to serve crowds, to reveal to crowds their own minds, and\nsupply to them what they want.\n\nAs full as it is--like all broad, honest expressions, of human\nshortcomings and of things that are soon to be stopped, it does remain\nto be said that business, in a huge, rough way, daily expressing the\ncrowds as far as they have got--the best in them and the worst in them,\nis, after all, their most faithful and true record, their handwriting.\nBusiness is the crowds' autograph--its huge, slow, clumsy signature upon\nour world.\n\nBuying and selling is the life blood of the crowds' thought, its big,\nbrutal daily confiding to us of its view of human life. What do the\ncrowds, poor and rich, really believe about life? Property is the last\nwill and testament of Crowds.\n\nThe man-sorting that goes on in distributing and producing property is\nthe Crowd's most unremitting, most normal, temperamental way of\ndetermining and selecting its most efficient and valuable leaders--its\nmen who can express it, and who can act for it.\n\nThis is the first reason I would give against letting the people rely on\nhaving a House of Commons compel business men to be good.\n\nMen who meet now and again during the year, afternoons or evenings, who\nhave been picked out to be at the top of the nation's talking, by a\nloose absent-minded and illogical paper-process, cannot expect to\ncontrol men who have been picked out to be at the top of a nation's\nbuying and selling, by a hard-working, closely fitting, logical\nprocess--the men that all the people by everything they do, every day,\nall day, have picked out to represent them.\n\nAny chance three blocks of Oxford Street could be relied on to do\nbetter.\n\nKeeping the polls open once in so often, a few hours, and using hearsay\nand little slips of paper--anybody dropping in--seems a rather fluttery\nand uncertain way to pick out the representatives of the people, after\none has considered three blocks of Oxford Street.\n\nThe next thing the crowd is going to do in getting what it wants from\nbusiness men is to deal directly with the business men themselves and\nstop feeling, what many people feel partly from habit, perhaps, that the\nonly way the crowd can get to what it wants is to go way over or way\nback or way around by Robin Hood's barn or the House of Commons.\n\nBut there is a second reason:\n\nThe trouble is not merely in the way men who sit in the House of Commons\nare selected. The real deep-seated trouble with the men who sit in the\nHouse of Commons is that they like it. The difficulty (as in the\nAmerican Congress too) seems to be something in the men themselves. It\nlies in what might be called, for lack of a better name, perhaps, the\nHem and Haw or Parliament Temperament.\n\nThe dominating type of man in all the world's legislative bodies, for\nthe time being, seems to be the considerer or reconsiderer, the man who\ndotes on the little and tiddly sides of great problems. The greatness of\nthe problem furnishes, of course, the pleasant, pale glow, the happy\nsense of importance to a man, and then there is all the jolly littleness\nof the little things besides--the little things that a little man can\nmake look big by getting them in the way of big ones--a great nation\nlooking on and waiting.... For such a man there always seems to be a\ncertain coziness and hominess in a Legislative Body....\n\nAs a seat in the House of Commons not unnaturally--every year it is\nhemmed or hawed in, gets farther and farther away from the people, it is\nbecoming more and more apparent to the people every year that the\nMembers of their House of Commons as a class are unlikely to do anything\nof a very striking or important or lasting value in the way of getting\nbusiness men to be good.\n\nThe more efficient and practical business men are coming to suspect that\nthe members of the House of Commons, speaking broadly, do not know the\nwill of the people, and that they could not express it in creative,\nstraightforward and affirmative laws if they did.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER II\n\nOXFORD STREET HUMS. THE HOUSE HEMS\n\n\nBut it is not only because the members of the House of Commons are\nselected in a vague way or because they are a vague kind of men, that\nthey fail to represent the people.\n\nThe third reason against having a House of Commons try to compel\nbusiness men to be good, by law, is its out-of-the-way position.\n\nThe out-of-the-way position that a Parliament occupies in getting\nbusiness men to be good, can be best considered, perhaps, by admitting\nat the outset that a government really is one very real and genuine way\na great people may have of expressing themselves, of expressing what\nthey are like and what they want, and that business is another way.\n\nThen the question narrows down. Which way of expressing the people is\nthe one that expresses them the most to the point, and which expresses\nthem where their being expressed counts the most?\n\nThe people have a Government. And the people have Business.\n\nWhat is a Government for?\n\nWhat is Business for?\n\nBusiness is the occupation of finding out and anticipating what the\nwants of the English people really are and of finding out ways of\nsupplying them.\n\nThe business men on Oxford Street hire twenty or thirty thousand men and\nwomen, keep them at work eight or nine hours a day, five or six days in\na week, finding out what the things are that the English people want\nand reporting on them and supplying them.\n\nThey are naturally in a strategic position to find out, not only what\nkinds of things the people want, but to find out, too, just how they\nwant the things placed before them, what kind of storekeepers and\nmanufacturers, salesmen and saleswomen they tolerate, like to deal with\nand prefer to have prosper.\n\nAnd the business men are not only in the most strategic and competent\nposition to find out what the people who buy want, but to find out too,\nwhat the people who sell want. They are in the best position to know,\nand to know intimately, what the salesmen and saleswomen want and what\nthey want to be and what they want to do or not do.\n\nThey are in a close and watchful position, too, with regard to the\nconditions in the factories from which their goods come and with regard\nto what the employers, stockholders, foremen and workmen in those\nfactories want.\n\nWhat is more to the point, these same business men, when they have once\nfound out just what it is the people want, are the only men who are in a\nposition, all in the same breath, without asking anybody and without\narguing with anybody, without meddling or convincing anybody--to get it\nfor them.\n\nFinding out what people want and getting it for them is what may be\ncalled, controlling business.\n\nThe question not unnaturally arises with all these business men and\ntheir twenty or thirty thousand people working with them, eight or nine\nhours a day, five or six days a week, in controlling business, why\nshould the members of the House of Commons expect, by taking a few\nafternoons or evenings off for it, to control business for them?\n\nIf I were an employee and if what I wanted to do was to improve the\nconditions of labour in my own calling, I do not think I would want to\ntake the time to wait several months, probably, to convince my member of\nParliament, and then wait a few months more for him to convince the\nother members of Parliament, and then vote his one vote. I would rather\ndeal directly with my employer.\n\nIf my employer is on my back and if I can once get the attention of my\nemployer himself, as to where he is and as to how he is interrupting\nwhat I am doing for him--if I once get his attention and once get him to\nnotice my back, he can get down. No one else can get down for him and no\none else, except by turning a whole nation all around, can make him get\ndown. Why should a man bother with T.P.'s _Weekly_ or with Horatio\nBottomley or with the _Daily Mail_ or the _Times_, with a score of other\npeople's by-elections all over England to lift his own employer off his\nback?\n\nThere is a very simple rule for it.\n\nThe way to lift one's employer off one's back is to make one's back so\nefficient that he cannot afford to be on it.\n\nThe first thing I would do would be to see if I could not persuade my\nemployer to take steps to train me and to make me efficient, himself.\nAnd perhaps the second thing I would try to do would be to wake my\ntrades union up, to get my trades union to consent to let me want to try\nto be efficient and work as hard as I can, or to consent to my\nemployer's hiring engineers to make me efficient. I would try to get my\ntrades union to be interested in hiring itself some special expert like\nFrederick Taylor, some specialist in making a man do three times as much\nwork with the same strength, making him three times as valuable for his\nemployer and three times as fit and strong for himself.\n\nThis is what I would do if I wanted to make my employer good. I would be\nso good that he could not afford not being good too.\n\nIf I were an employer, on the other hand, and understood human nature,\nand knew enough about psychology to found a great business house and\nwanted to make my employee good, or make him work three times as hard\nfor me, with three times the normal strength, day by day, and have a\nnormal old age to look forward to, I do not think I would wait for the\nHouse of Commons to butt in and pension him. It seems to me that I would\nbe in a position to do it more adequately, more rapidly, and do it with\nmore intimate knowledge of economy than the House of Commons could. And\nI would not have to convince several hundred men, men from rural\ncounties, how I could improve my factory and get them to let me improve\nit. I could do it quietly by myself.\n\nIn any given industrial difficulty, there is and must be a vision for\nevery man, a vision either borrowed for him or made for him by some one\nelse, or a vision he has made for himself, that fits in just where he\nis. In the last analysis our industrial success is going to lie in the\nsense of Here, and Me, and Now, raised to the n-th power, in what might\nbe called a kind of larger syndicalism.\n\nThe typical syndicalist, instead of saying, as he does to-day, \"We will\ntake the factories out of our employers hands and run them ourselves,\"\nis going to say, \"We will make ourselves fit to run the factories\nourselves.\"\n\nWhat would please the employers more, give them a general, or national\nconfidence in trying to run business and improve the conditions of work\nto-day, than to have their employees, suddenly, all over the nation,\nbegin doing their work so well that they would be fit to run the\nfactories?\n\nWhat is true of employers and employees in factories is still more true\nof the employers and employees in the great retail stores. If there is\none thing rather than another the business men and women on Oxford\nStreet, the managers, floor walkers and clerks all up and down the\nstreet are really engaged in all day all their lives, it is what might\nbe called a daily nine-hour drill in understanding people. Why should\nemployers and employees like these--experts in human nature--men who\nmake their profession a success by studying human nature, and by working\nin it daily, call in a few drifting gentlemen from the House of Commons\nand expect them to work out their human problems better than they can do\nit?\n\nEmployers and clerks in retail stores are the two sets of people in all\nthe world most competent to study together the working details of human\nnature, to act for themselves in self-respecting man-fashion and without\nwhining at a nation.\n\nWho that they could hope to deal with and get what they want from, could\nknow more about human nature than they do? Are they not the men of all\nothers, all up and down that little strip of Oxford Street, who devote\ntheir entire time to human nature? They are in the daily profession of\nknowing the soonest and knowing the most about what people are like, and\nabout what people will probably think. They are intimate with their\npeccadillos in what they want to wear and in what they want to eat; they\nhave learned their likes and dislikes in human nature; they know what\nthey will support and what they will defy in human nature, in clerks,\nand in stores, and in storekeepers.\n\nAnd these things that they have learned about human nature (in\nthemselves and other people) they have learned not by talking about\nhuman nature but by a grim daily doing things with it.\n\nThese things being so, it would almost seem that these people and people\nlike them were qualified to act, and as they happen to be in the one\nstrategic position, both employers and employees alike, to act and to\nact for themselves and act directly and act together, it will not be\nvery long, probably, before the nation will be very glad to have them do\nit.\n\nIt is likely to be seen very soon (at least by all skilled Labour and\nall skilled Capital) that running out into the street and crying \"Help!\"\nand calling in some third person to settle family difficulties that can\nbe better settled by being faced and thought out in private, is an\ninefficient and incompetent thing to do.\n\nAnd for the most part it is going to be only in the more superficial,\ninefficient, thoughtless industry that men, either employers or\nemployed, will be inclined to leave their daily work, run out wildly and\ndrag in a House of Commons to help them to do right.\n\nI am only speaking for myself but certainly if I were an employer or an\nemployee, I would not want to wait for an election a year away or to\nwait for the great engineering problem of compelling my member of\nParliament by my one vote to act for me.\n\nPerhaps workingmen in England and America are deceived about the value\nof voting as a means of improving conditions of workingmen. Possibly\nwomen are deceived about the value of voting as a means of improving the\nconditions of working women.\n\nPossibly a woman could do more behind a counter or by buying a store\nthan by voting to have some man she has read about in a paper, improve\nbusiness by talking about it in the House of Commons.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThere is also a kind of program or vision of action one can use as a\ncustomer as well as an employer or employee.\n\n\nI might speak for myself.\n\nI have about so much money I spend every year in buying things. I have\nproposed to study with my money every firm on which I spend it. I\npropose to take away my trade from the firm that does the least as it\nshould and give it to the firm that does the most as it should. I will\nvote with my entire income and with every penny I save for the kind of\nemployers I believe in and that I want, for the kind of employers who\ncan earn and deserve and enjoy and keep the kind of salesmen and\nsaleswomen I choose to do business with.\n\nAll the year round, every firm with which I deal, I am going to study\nnot only with my mind but with my money. I will proceed to take my\ntrade away from the big employers who think that I want shoddy goods or\nwho think that I want or am willing to trade with saleswomen who would\nlet an employer impose on them, saleswomen that he thinks he can afford\nto impose upon. I will proceed to vote with my money, with every penny I\nhave in the world, and I will earn more that I may vote more, for the\nkind of employer with whom I like to trade. And there shall not be a\nman, woman, or child of my acquaintance, if I can help it, or of my\nfamily's acquaintance who shall not know who these employers are by name\nand by address, the employers that I will trade with and the employers\nthat I will not.\n\nThis is my idea as a customer, as a member of the public, of the way for\na people to express itself and to get what it wants.\n\nWhat I want may be said to be a kind of news, news about me so far as I\ngo, as one member of the public. As I am only one person every item of\nthe news about me must be put where it works. I will deal directly with\nthe news of what I want and I will convey that news, not to the House of\nCommons but to the men who have what I want and who can give it to me\nwhen they know it.\n\nNews is the real government now and always of this world.\n\nWhen one has made up one's mind to tell this news, obviously the best\nart-form for telling news to employers and business men--the news of\nwhat we want and what we do not want and of what we want in them as well\nas in the things they sell, is to tell them the news in the language\nthey have studied most, tell it to them in pounds, shillings, dollars,\nand cents, and by trading somewhere else.\n\nThe gospel-bearing value, the news that one can get into a man's mind\nwith one dollar, the news that he can be made to see and act on for one\ndollar--well, thinking of this some days, makes for me, at least, going\nup and down the Main Street of the World feeling my purse snuggling in\nmy pocket, and all the people I can step up to with my purse and tell\nso many dollars' worth of news to, tell that dollar's worth of gospel to\nabout the world--makes going up and down with a dollar on a big business\nstreet, and spending it or not spending it, feel like a kind of chronic,\neasy, happy, going to Church. One always has a little money in one's\npocket that one spends or that one won't spend, and sometimes even not\nspending a dollar, practised by some people, at just the right moment\nand in just the right way, can be made to mean as much and do as much\nwith a world as spending a thousand dollars would without any meaning\nput into it.\n\nSometimes I even go into a store on purpose, a certain kind of store I\nknow will try to cheat me in a certain way, let them look a minute at\nthe dollar they cannot have. Then I walk out with it quietly.\n\nI have said that the life-blood of my convictions shall circulate in my\nmoney and if I cannot express my soul, my religion, my gospel or news\nfor this world, news about what I want and about what I will have in a\nworld, if I cannot make every dollar, every shilling I earn, go through\nthe world and sing my own little world-song in it, may I never have\nanother shilling or earn another dollar as long as I live!\n\nThe very sight of a dollar now whenever I see one once more, fills me\nwith deep, hopeful working joy, thinking of what a bargain it is and how\nI can use it twice over, thinking of the dollar's worth of news, to say\nnothing of the dollar's worth of things that belong with a dollar!\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nFor some generations, now, we have tried to make people good in a vague,\ngeneral way, by using priests, sacraments and confessional boxes. For\nsome centuries we have been trying to make people good with lawyers and\njuries and ballot boxes. We are now to try, at last, religion or gospel\nor news or ideals--practical, shrewd aimed ideals, that is, news to a\nman about himself or news about the man from the man himself to us. In\neverything a man does he is expressing to us this news about himself,\nand about his world, and about his God. We are all telling news about\nthe world and about ourselves all the time and we are all in a position\nfor news all the time.\n\nWhat is it from hour to hour and day to day that we will do and we will\nnot do?\n\nThis news about us is the religion in us.\n\nThe average man is coming to have very accurate ideas of late as to just\nwhere his religion is located. He has come to see that real religion in\na man, very conveniently located (immediately at hand in him and\npersonally directed), is his own action, his own divine \"I will\" or \"I\nwon't.\"\n\nHe has come to be deeply attracted by this idea of a religion for every\nman just where he is, fitted on patiently, cheerfully, to just where he\nis, every day all day, his glorious, still, practical, good-natured,\ngodlike \"I will\" and \"I won't \"--or News about himself.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER III\n\nPRESIDENT WILSON AND MOSES\n\n\nWe are deeply interested in the United States just now, in seeing what\nwill be the fate of President Wilson's government in getting men to be\ngood. The fate of a government in 1913 may be said to stand on the\ngovernment's psychology or knowledge of human nature or of what might be\ncalled human engineering, its mastery of the principles of lifting over\nin great masses heavy spiritual bodies, like people, swinging great\nmasses of people's minds over as on some huge national derrick up on The\nWhite House, from one lookout on life to another.\n\nThere are certain aspects of human nature when power is being applied to\nit in this way, and when it is being got to be good, that may not be\nbeside the point.\n\nIf one could drop in on a government and have a little neighbourly chat\nwith it, as one was going by, I think I would rather talk with it\n(especially our government, just now), about Human Nature than about\nanything.\n\nI would have to do it, of course, in what might seem to a government to\nbe a plain and homely way.\n\nI would ask the government what it thought of two or three observations\nI have come to lately about the way that human nature works, when people\nare getting it to be good. What a government thinks about them might\npossibly prove before many months to be quite important to It.\n\nThe first observation is this:\n\nThe reason that the average bachelor is a bachelor is that he spends the\nfirst forty-five years of his life in picking out women he will not\nmarry.\n\nPossibly it is because many people are following the same principle in\ntrying to be good and in getting other people to be good that they make\nsuch poor work of it.\n\nPossibly the main reason why there are so many wicked people or seem to\nbe, in proportion, among the Hebrews in the Old Testament, is that Moses\nwas a lawyer and that he tried to start off a great people with the Ten\nCommandments, that is, a list of nine things they must never do any\nmore, and of one that they must.\n\nSome of us who have tried being good, have noticed that when we have hit\nit off, being good (at least with us) consists in being focused, in\ngetting concentrated, in getting one's attention to what one really\nwants to do.\n\nMoses' idea when he started his government, the idea of getting people\nconcentrated on not getting concentrated on nine things, was not\nconducive to goodness. The fundamental principle Moses tried to make the\npeople good with was a contradiction in terms. It is a principle that\nwould make wicked people out of almost anybody. It is not a practicable\nprinciple for a government to rely on in getting people to be good. It\ndid not work with the people in the Old Testament and it has never\nworked with people since.\n\nIt does not call people out, in getting them to take up goodness, to\npoint out to them nine places not to take hold of and one where they\nwill be allowed to take hold, if they know how.\n\nAll that one has to do to see how true this is, is to observe the groups\nor classes of people who are especially not what they should be. The\npeople who never get on morally (as different as they may be in most\nthings and in the fields of their activity) all have one illusion in\ncommon. There is one thing they always keep saying when any new hopeful\nperson tries once more to get them to be good.\n\nThey say (almost as if they had a phonograph) that they try to be good\nand cannot do it.\n\nAnd this is not true.\n\nWhen a man says he tries to be good and cannot do it, if he sits down\nand thinks it over he finds, generally, he is not trying to be good at\nall. He is trying to be not bad.\n\nA man cannot get himself reformed, by a negative process, by being not\nbad, and it is still harder for him and for everybody, when other people\ntry to do it--those who are near him, and it is still, still harder for\na President down in Washington to do it.\n\nAn intelligent, live man or business corporation cannot be got to keep\nup an interest very long in being not bad. Being not bad is a glittering\ngenerality. It is like being not extravagant or economical.\n\nMost people who have ever tried to attain in a respectable degree to a\npale little neuter virtue like economy, and who have reflected upon\ntheir experiences, have come to conclusions that may not be very far\nfrom the point in a fine art like getting one's self to be good or\ngetting other people to be good.\n\nTo concentrate on being economical by going grimly down the street,\nlooking at the shop windows, looking hard at miles of things one will\nnot buy, cannot be said to be a practicable method of attaining economy.\n\nThe real artist, in getting himself to be good, proceeds to upon the\nopposite principle. Even if the good thing he tries for is merely a\nnegative good thing like economy, he instinctively seeks out some\npositive way of getting it.\n\nA man who is cultivating the art of getting himself to be economical, or\nof getting his wife to be economical, does not make a start by sitting\ndown with a pencil and making out a list, by concentrating his mind on\nrows of things that he and his family must get along without. He knows a\nbetter way. He goes downtown with his entire family, takes them into a\nbig shop and sits down with them and listens to a Steinway Grand he\ncannot get. As he listens to it long enough, he thinks he will get it.\n\nThen a subtle, spiritual change passes over him and over his family\nwhile they listen. He would not have said before he started that sitting\ndown and thinking of things he could get along without--making lists in\nhis mind of things that he must not have--could ever be in this world a\nhappy, even an almost thrilling experience. But as a matter of fact, as\nhe sits by the piano and listens, he finds himself counting off\neconomies like strings of pearls, and he greets each new self-sacrifice\nhe can think of with a cheer. While the Steinway Grand fills the room\nwith melody all around him, there he actually is sitting, and having the\ntime of his life dreaming of the things he can get along without!\n\nWhen he goes home, he goes home thinking. And the family all go home\nthinking.\n\nThen economy sets in. The reason most people make a failure of their\neconomy is that they are not artistic with it, they do not enjoy it.\nThey do not pick out anything to enjoy their economy with.\n\nWith some people an automobile would work better than a Steinway Grand\nand there are as many ways, of course, of practising the Steinway Grand\nprinciple in not being bad as there are people, but they all consist\napparently in selecting some big, positive thing that one wants to do,\nwhich logically includes and bundles all together where they are\nattended to in a lump, all the things that one ought not to do.\n\nMost sins (every one who has ever tried them knows this) most sins are\nnot really worth bothering with, each in detail, even the not-doing them\nand the most practical, firm method of getting them out of the way\n(thousands of them at once, sometimes, with one hand) is to have\nsomething so big to live for that all the things that would like to get\nin the way, and would like to look important, look, when one thinks of\nit, suddenly small.\n\nThe distinctive, preeminent, official business for the next four years,\nof making small things in this country look small and of gently,\nquietly making small men feel small, has been assigned by our people\nrecently, to Mr. Woodrow Wilson.\n\nNow it naturally seems to some of us, the best way for Mr. Wilson's\ngovernment to do in getting the Trusts to give up lying and stealing, is\ngoing to be to place before them quietly a few really big, interesting,\nequally exciting things that Trusts can do, and then dare them, as in\nsome great game or tournament of skill--all the people looking on--dare\nthem, challenge them like great men, to do them.\n\nThere are three ideas President Wilson may have of the government's\ngetting people to be good.\n\nFirst, not letting people be bad. (Moses.)\n\nSecond, being good for them. (Karl Marx.)\n\nThird, letting them be good themselves. (Any Democrat.)\n\nThe first of these ideas means government by Prison. The second, means\ngovernment by Usurpation, that is, the moment a man amounts to enough to\nchoose to do right or do wrong of his own free will, the moment he is a\nman, in other words, being so afraid of him and of his being a man, that\nwe all, in a kind of panic, shove into his life and live it for\nhim--this is Socialism, a scared machine that scared people have\ninvented for not letting people choose to do right because they may\nchoose to do wrong.\n\nThe third, letting people be good themselves, letting them be\nself-controlling, self-respecting, self-expressing or voluntarily good\npeople, is democracy, a machine for letting men be men by trying it.\n\nMoses was the inventor of a kind of national moral-brake system, a\nmachine for stopping people nine times out of ten. The question that\nfaces President Wilson just now, while the world looks on is, \"Is a\ngovernment or is it not a moral-brake system--a machine for stopping\npeople nine times out of ten?\"\n\nThere is a considerable resemblance between Moses' position and the new\nPresident's in the United States. When Moses looked around on the things\nhe saw the men around him doing, and took the ground that at least nine\nout of ten of the things should be stopped, he was academically correct.\nAnd so, also, President Wilson, gazing at the business of this country\nto-day, at nine out of ten of the humdrum thoughtless things that trusts\nand corporations have been doing, will be academically correct in\ntelling them to stop, in having his little, new, helpless, unproved,\nadolescent government stand up before all the people and speak in loud,\nbeautiful, clear accents and (with its left fist full of prisons, fines,\nlawyers, of forty-eight legislatures all talking at once) bring down its\nright fist as a kind of gavel on the world and say to these men, before\nall the nations, that nine of the things they are doing must be stopped\nand that one of the things, if they happen to able be to think out some\nway of keeping on doing it--nobody will hurt them.\n\nBut the question before President Wilson, to-day, with all our world\nlooking on, is not whether he would be right in entering upon a career\nof stopping people. The real and serious question is, does stopping\npeople stop them? And if stopping people does not stop them, what will?\n\nPerhaps the way for a government to stop people from doing things they\nare doing, is to tell them the things it wants done. A government that\ndoes not express what it wants, that has not given a masterful, clear,\ninspired statement of what it wants--a government that has only tried to\nsay what it does not want, is not a government.\n\nThe next business of a government is a statement of what it wants.\n\nThe problem of a government is essentially a problem of statement.\n\nHow shall this statement be made?\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IV\n\nTHE PRESIDENT SAYS YES AND NO\n\n\nIt was not merely because the seventh commandment was negative, but\nbecause it was abstract that David found it so hard to keep. If the\nseventh commandment (like Uriah's wife) could have had deep blue eyes or\ncould have been beautiful to look upon, and, on a particular day in a\nparticular place, could have been bathing in a garden, David would have\nfound keeping it a very different matter. The tendency to make a statue\nof purity as a lovely female figure carries us a little further in moral\nevolution, than the moral statement that Moses had managed to get, and\nit was further toward the concrete, but it was not far enough for a real\nartist or man who does things.\n\nOne of the things about the real artist that makes him an artist, is\nthat he is always and always has been and always will be profoundly\ndissatisfied with a statue of a female figure as an emblem of purity. He\nchallenges the world, he challenges God, he challenges himself, he\nchallenges the men and women about him when he is being put off with a\nStatue as an emblem of purity. He demands, searches out, interprets,\ncreates something concrete and living to express his idea of purity.\n\nHow can President Wilson, in getting the Trusts not to be corrupt, in\ntrying to win them--how can President Wilson make the law alluring? How\ncan he make the People have a Low Voice?\n\nA great deal if not nearly everything depends in tempting business men\nto be good, upon the tone in which they are addressed. Every government,\nlike every man, soon comes to have its own characteristic tone in\naddressing the people. And, as a matter of fact, it is almost always the\ntone in a government, like the voice in a man, which tells us the most\ndefinitely what it is like, and is the most intimate and effective\nexpression of what it wants and is the most practical way of getting\nwhat it wants. Everybody has noticed that a man's voice works harder for\nhim, works more to the point for him in getting what he wants than his\nwords do. It is his voice that makes people know him, that makes them\nknow he means what he says. It is his voice that tells them whether he\nis in the habit of meaning what he says, and it is his voice that tells\nthem whether he is in habit of getting what he wants, and of knowing\nwhat to do with what he wants when he gets it.\n\nA government does not need to say very much if it has the right tone.\n\nThe tone of a government is the government.\n\nIf President Wilson is going to succeed in tempting business men to be\ngood, he is going to do it, some of us think, by depending on three\nprinciples.\n\nThese three principles, like all live, active principles, may be stated\nas three principles or as three personal traits.\n\nFirst, by being affirmative. (Isaiah, in distinction from Moses.)\n\nSecond, by being concrete. (Bathsheba.)\n\nThird, by being specific, by seeing the universal in the particular.\n(Like any artist or man who does things.)\n\nThe value of being affirmative and the value of being concrete have\nalready been touched upon. There remains the value of being specific.\n\nPossibly, in this present happy hour, when our country has grown\nsuddenly sensible and has become practical enough to pick out at last,\nonce more, a President with a real serious working sense of humour, even\na sense of humour about himself, it may not be considered disrespectful\nif I continue a little longer dropping in on the Government, and saying\nwhat I have to say in a few plain and homely words.\n\nThe trouble with most people in being economical with their money is,\nthat when they spend it, they spend it on something in particular, and\nwhen they save it, they try to save it in a kind of general way. The\nsame principle applies to doing right. It is because when people do\nright, they do it in a kind of general pleasant, abstract way, and when\nthey do wrong they always do something in particular, that they are so\nWicked.\n\nA man will do almost anything to save his life at a particular place and\nat a particular time, say at ten o'clock to-morrow morning, if he is\ndrowning, but if he has a year to save it in, a year of controlling his\nappetites, of daily, detailed mastering of his spirit, of not taking a\npiece of mince pie, of stopping his work in time and of going to bed\nearly, he will die.\n\nIt is easier when one is going under water for the third time and sees a\nrope, to stretch just one inch more and grasp the rope, reach up to\nforty more years of one's life, all concentrated for one on the tip of a\nrope, than it is to spread out saving one's life over a whole year, 365\nbreakfasts, 365 luncheons, 365 dinners, 33,365 moments of anger, of\nreckless worry, of remorse, of self-pity, 40,000 of despair and round up\nwith a swing at the end of one's year at the tiptop of one's being, as\nif it had only taken five minutes. And yet it is only an act of the\ncreative imagination of seeing the whole, of having a happy, daily,\ndetailed spectacle of the end in view, that is, of the part in its\nsetting of the whole--going without a piece of mince pie. If one could\nonly make one's self see the piece of mince pie as it is, it would not\nbe difficult. If one could see it on the plate there and see the not\ntaking it as a little wedge-shaped rivet, a little triangular link of\ncoupling in the chain that keeps one holding on forty years longer to\nthis planet, a piece of mince pie left on a plate would become a Vision.\n\nThis seems to be the principle that works best in getting other people\nto be good.\n\nPerhaps the President will succeed in getting Trusts to be good, by\ntaking hold of specific Trusts, one by one, and setting them--all\nmankind looking on--in the nation's vision, setting them even in their\nown vision--taking the Trusts that thought they had got what they\nwanted, making them stand up and look (in some great public lighted\nplace) at what pathetic, tragical failures they are, letting them see\nthat what their Trust had wanted all along, if it had only thought about\nit, was not success one went to jail for--success by getting the best\nout of the most people, but success by serving the most people the best.\n\nA great many of us in America have been exercising our minds for a long\ntime now about the eagerness of the Trusts, and the trouble we were\ngoing to have in curbing the eagerness of the Trusts.\n\nSometimes I have wondered if, after all, it was our minds we were\nexercising, for when one sits down seriously to think of it, it is the\neagerness of the Trusts that is the most hopeful thing about them.\n\nWhat is the matter with our American Trusts, perhaps, is not and never\nhas been, their eagerness, but their eagerness for things that they did\nnot want, and for things that almost everybody is coming to see that\nthey did not want.\n\nThe moment that the eagerness of our American Trusts is an eagerness for\nthings that they really want, the Trusts will be seen piling over each\nother's heels, asking the government to please investigate them. The\nmore they can get the people to know about them and about their\neagerness, the more the people will trust them and deal with them.\n\nAll that we have been waiting for is a government that sees the part\nfrom the point of view of the whole, which will take up a few specific\nTrusts and be specific enough with them to make them think, think hard\nwhat they really want, and what their real eagerness is about, and the\nentire face of modern business will change. First the expression will\nchange and then the face itself.\n\nThe moment it is found that the government is a specific government,\nall the trusts that know what they really want and know what they really\nare doing, will want to be investigated, because they will want\neverybody to know that they know. In case of the trusts that do not know\nwhat they want and that do not know what they are doing, the government\nwill just step in, of course, and investigate them until they find out.\n\nA specific government will not need to be specific many times.\n\nIt takes up a particular Trust in its hand, turns it over quietly,\nempties its contents out before the people and says to everybody, \"This\nparticular Trust you see here has tried to be a kind of Trust, which it\nfound out afterward, it did not want to be. It is the kind of Trust\nwhose officers hide their faces when they think of what it was that they\nthought that they thought that they wanted....\n\n\"These men you see here, forty silent nations looking on, hundreds and\nthousands of self-respecting, self-supporting, public-serving, creative,\nsuccessful business men, whom all the world envies looking on, do hereby\nbeg to declare to all business men who know them and to the people, that\nthey did not ever really want these things for themselves that their\nbusiness says or seems to say they wanted.\n\n\"They wish to ask the public to put themselves in their places and to\nrefuse to believe that they deliberately sat down, seriously thought it\nall out, that they had planned to express to everybody what their\nnatures really were in a blind, brutal, foolish business like this which\nwe have just been showing you. They beg to have it believed that their\nbusiness misrepresents them, that it misrepresents what they want, and\nthey ask to be again admitted to the good-will, the hope and\nforgiveness, the companionship of a great people.\n\n\"They declare\" (the government will go on) \"that they are not the men\nthey seem. They are merely men in a hurry. They want it understood that\nthey have merely hurried so fast and hurried so long that they now wake\nup at last only to see, see with this terrific plainness what it really\nis that has been happening to them all their lives, _viz._: for forty,\nfifty, or sixty years they have merely forgot who they were and\noverlooked what they were like.\n\n\"In hurrying, too, it is only fair to say they have had to use machines\nto hurry with and unconsciously, year by year, associating almost\nexclusively with machines, their machines (pump handles, trip-hammers,\nhydraulic drills, steam shovels and cranes and cash registers) have\ngrown into them.\n\n\"This is the way it has happened. 'Let the nation be merciful to them,'\nthe government will then say, and dismiss the subject.\"\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nWhat our President seems to be for in America, is to do up a nation in\none specific, particular man who expresses everybody.\n\nThis man deals with each other specific man, his aggressions and\nservices, as a nation would if a nation could be one specific man.\n\nThe President of the United States is the Comptroller of the people's\nvision, by seeing a part and dealing with a part as a part of a whole,\nhe governs the people.\n\nHe is the Chancellor of the People's Attention.\n\nThe business of being a President is the business of focusing the\nvision, of flooding the whole desire or will of a people around a man\nand letting him have the light of it, to see what he is doing by, and to\nbe seen by, while he is doing it.\n\nThe corporations have expressed or focused the employers of labour. The\nLabour Unions have focused or expressed the will of the labourers, and\nthe government focuses and expresses the will of the consumers, of the\npeople as a whole, rich and poor, so that Labour and Capital, both\nlisten to It, understand It and act on It.\n\nThe way to deal with a specific sin is to flood it around with the\ngeneral vision. Then it does not need to be dealt with. Then strangely,\nsoftly, and almost before we know--out there in the Light, it\nautomatically deals with itself.\n\nWhen the Government takes hold quietly of the National Cash Register\nCompany, turns it up, empties its contents out,--all its methods and its\nmotives--and all the things It thought It wanted, and then proceeds to\nput its president and twenty-nine of its officers into jail, my readers\nwill perhaps point out to me that this action of the government as a\nmethod of tempting people to be good, while it may have the virtue of\nbeing concrete and the virtue of being specific, certainly does not have\nthe other virtue that I have laid down, the virtue of being affirmative.\n\"Certainly\" they will say \"there is not anything affirmative about\nputting twenty-nine big business men in jail.\" Many people would call it\nthe most magnificently negative thing a President could have done. Moses\nhimself would have done it.\n\nIt does not seem to me that Moses would have done it, or that it was\nessentially negative. It could not unfairly be claimed that in spite of\nits negative look on the surface, it was the most massive, significant,\ncrushing affirmation that a great people has made for years.\n\nBy putting the twenty-nine officers of the National Cash Register\nCompany in jail, the American people affirmed around the world the\nnation's championship of the men that had been defeated in the\ncompetition with the National Cash Register Company. They affirmed that\nthese men who were not afraid of the National Cash Register Company\nbecause they were bigger, and who stood up to them and fought them, were\nthe kind of men Americans wanted to be like, and that the officers of\nthe National Cash Register Company were the kind of men Americans did\nnot want to be like, would not do business with, would not tolerate,\nwould not envy, would not live on the same continent with, unless they\nwere kept in jail.\n\nThe President of the United States, sitting in Washington, at the head\nof this vast affirmative and assertive continent, indicted the Cash\nRegister Company, that is, by a slight pointed negative action, by\npushing back a button he turned on the great chandelier of a nation and\nflooded a nation with light. We, the American people, suddenly, all in a\nflash, looked into each other's faces and knew what we were like.\n\nWe had hoped we believed in human nature, and in brave men and in men\nagainst machines but we could not prove it.\n\nSuddenly, we stood in a blaze of truth about ourselves. Suddenly, we\ncould again look with our old stir of joy at our national Flag. If we\nliked, we could swing our hats.\n\nPerhaps I should speak for myself, but I had been trying to get this\nnews for years. It is news I have wanted to live with and do business\nwith. I have been trying to get my question answered. What are the\nAmerican people really like?\n\nThe President points at the National Cash Register Company and I find\nout. All the people find out.\n\nIn the last analysis, the masterful, shrewd, practical, and constructive\npart of being a President of the United States--the thing in the\nbusiness of being a President that keeps the position from being a\nposition which only the second rate or No type of man would have time to\ntake, is the fact that the President is the Head Advertising Manager of\nthe United States, conducting a huge advertising campaign of what\nAmericans really want.\n\nHe takes up the National Cash Register Company, picks out its\ntwenty-nine officers, makes it a bill board sky-high across the country.\n\"Here are the kind of business men that the people of the United States\ndo not want, and here are the kind of men that we do!\"\n\nThe thing that makes indicting a trust a positive and affirmative act is\nthe advertising in it.\n\nGladstone once wrote a postcard about a little book of Marie\nBashkirtseff's.\n\nTwenty nations read the little book.\n\nEvery now and then one watches a man or sees a truth that would make a\nnation. One wishes one had some way of being the sort of person or\nbeing in the kind of place where one could make a nation out of it.\n\nOne thinks it would be passing wonderful to be President of the United\nStates. It would be like having a great bell up over the world that one\ncould reach up to and ring! But it is better than that. One touches a\nbutton at one's desk if one is President of the United States, a nation\nlooks up. He whispers to twenty thousand newspapers, \"Take your eyes\naway a minute,\" he says, \"from Jack Johnson and Miss Elkin's engagement,\nand look, oh, look, ye People, here is a man in this world like this! He\nhas been in the world all this while without our suspecting it. Did you\nknow there was or could be anywhere a man like THIS? And here is a man\nlike this! Which do you prefer? Which are you really like?\"\n\nThere is nothing really regal or imperial in a man, nothing that makes a\nman feel suddenly like a whole Roman Empire all by himself, in 1913,\nlike saying \"Look! Look!\"\n\nSometimes I think about it. Of course I could take a great reel of paper\nand sit down with my fountain pen, say Look for a mile, \"Look! look!\nlook! look!!!--President Wilson says it once and without exclamation\npoints. Skyscrapers listen to him! Great cities rise and lift themselves\nand smite the world. And the faint, sleepy little villages stir in their\ndreams.\"\n\nMoses said, \"Thou shalt not!\" President Wilson says, \"Look!\"\n\nPerhaps if Moses had had twenty thousand newspapers like twenty thousand\nfield-glasses that he could hand out every morning and lend to people to\nlook through--he would not have had to say, \"Thou shalt not.\"\n\nThe precise measure of the governing power a man can get out of the\nposition of being President of the United States to-day is the amount of\nadvertising for the people, of the people, and by the people he can\ncrowd every morning, every week, into the papers of the country.\n\nA President becomes a great President in proportion as he acts\nauthoritatively, tactfully, economically, and persistently as the Head\nAdvertising Manager of the ideals of the people. He is the great\ncentral, official editor of what the people are trying to find out--of a\nnation's news about itself.\n\nBy his being the President of what people think, by his dictating the\nsubjects the people shall take up, by his sorting out the men whom the\npeople shall notice, this great ceaseless Meeting of ninety million men\nwe call the United States--comes to order.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER V\n\nTHE PRESIDENT SAYS \"LOOK!\"\n\n\nOur American President, if one merely reads what the Constitution says\nabout him, is a rather weak-looking character.\n\nThe founders of the country did not intend him to be anybody in\nparticular--if it could be helped. They were discouraged about allowing\ngovernments to be efficient. Not very much that was constructive to do\nwas handed over to him. And the most important power they thought it\nwould do for him to have was the veto or power to say \"No.\"\n\nPossibly if our fathers had believed in liberty more they would have\nallowed more people to have some; or if they had believed in democracy\nmore, or trusted the people more, they would have thought it would do to\nlet them have leaders, but they had just got away. They felt timid about\nhuman nature and decided that the less constructive the government was\nand the less chance the government had to be concrete, to interpret a\npeople, to make opportunities and turn out events, the better.\n\nLooked at at first sight no more elaborate, impenetrable, water-tight\narrangement for keeping a government from letting in an idea or ever\nhaving one of its own or ever doing anything for anybody, could have\nbeen conceived than the Constitution of the United States, as the\naverage President interprets it.\n\nEach branch of the government is arranged carefully to keep any other\nbranch from doing anything, and then the people, every four years, look\nthe whole country over for some new man they think will probably leave\nthem alone more than anybody--and put him in for President.\n\nLooking at it narrowly and by itself, all that a President selected like\nthis could ever expect in America to put in his time on, would seem to\nbe--being the country's most importantly helpless man--the man who has\nbeen given the honour of being a somewhat more prominent failure in\nAmerica than any one else would be allowed to be.\n\nHe stops people for four years. Other people stop him for four years.\nThen with a long happy sigh, at the end of his term, he slips back into\nreal life and begins to do things.\n\nThis has been the more or less sedately disguised career of the typical\nAmerican President. Merely reading the Constitution or the lives of the\nPresidents, without looking at what has been happening to the habits of\nthe people in the last few years, we might all be asking to-day, \"What\nis there that is really constructive that President Wilson can do?\" What\nis there that is going to prevent him, with all that moral earnestness\ndammed up in him, that sense of duty, that Presbyterian sense of other\npeople's duties--what is there that is going to prevent him, with his\nschool-book habits, his ideals, his volumes of American history, from\nbeing a teachery or preachery person--a kind of Schoolmaster or Official\nClergyman to Business?\n\nNews.\n\nThe one really important and imperative thing to the people of this\ncountry to-day is News. In spite of newspapers, authors, College\npresidents, Bank presidents, Socialist agitators, Bill Heywoods, and\nTrusts, the people are bound to get this news, and any man who is so\nplaced by his prominence that he can scoop up the news of a country,\nhammer its news together into events the papers will report, express\nnews in the laws, build news into men who can make laws and unmake laws,\nany man who is so placed that directly or indirectly he takes news,\nforces it in by hydraulic pressure where people see it doing things, who\ntakes news and crowds it into courts, crowds news into lawyers and into\nlegislatures, pries some of it even into newspapers, can have, the\nordinary American says to-day, as much leeway in this government as he\nlikes.\n\nThe ordinary American has never been able to understand the objection\nimportant people have--that nearly everybody has (except ordinary\npeople) to news--especially editors and publishers.\n\nIt is an old story. Every one must have noticed it. One set of people in\nthis world, always from the beginning, trying to climb up on the\nhousetops to tell news, and another set of people hurrying up always and\nsaying, \"Hush, Hush!\" Some days it seems, when I read the papers, that I\nhear half the world saying under its breath, a vast, stentorian, \"Shoo!\nshoo! SHSH! SHSH!\"\n\nThen I realize I live in an editor's world. I am expected to be in the\nworld that editors have decided on the whole to let me be in.\n\nOf course I did not know what to do at first when this came over me.\n\nI naturally began to try to think of some way of cutting across lots, of\nclimbing up to News.\n\nI looked at all the neat little park paths, with all those artistic\ncurves of truth on them the editors have laid out for me and for all of\nus. Then I looked at the world and asked myself, \"Who are the men in\nthis world, if any, who are able to walk on the Grass, who cut across\nthe little park paths when they like?\"\n\nAnd as fate would have it (it was during the Roosevelt administration),\nthe first two men I came on who seemed to be stamping about in the\nnewspapers quite a little as they liked were the Prime Minister of\nEngland and the President of the United States.\n\nJust how much governing can a President do?\n\nHow many columns a day is he good for, how many acres of attention every\nmorning in the papers of the country--all these white fields of\nattention, these acres of other people's thoughts, can he cover?\n\nHow many sticks a day can he make compositors set up of what he thinks?\n\nHow many square miles of the people's thoughts can he spread out at\nbreakfast tables, lift up in a thousand thousand trolleys before their\nfaces?\n\nI have seen the white fields of attention filled with the footprints of\nhis thoughts, of his will, of his desires!\n\nI have seen that the President is the Editor of that vast, anonymous,\nsilent newspaper, written all the night, written all the day, and softly\npublished across a country--the newspaper of people's thoughts.\n\nI have seen the vision of the forests he has cast down, ground into\nheadlines, into editorials, into news. Mountains and hills are laid bare\nto say what he thinks. Thousands of presses throb softly and the white\nreels of wood pulp fly into speech. Thousands of miles of paper wet with\nthe thoughts of a people roll dimly under ground in the night.\n\nThe President is saying Look! in the night!\n\nThe newsboys hasten out in the dawn. They cry in the streets!\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VI\n\nTHE PEOPLE SAY \"WHO ARE YOU?\"\n\n\nIf news is governing, how does the President do his governing?\n\nBy being News, himself.\n\nBy using his appointing power and putting other men who are News\nThemselves, news about American human nature--where all the people will\nsee it.\n\nBy telling the people directly (when he feels especially asked) news\nabout what is happening in his mind--news about what he believes.\n\nBy telling the people sometimes (as candidly as he can without giving\nthe people's enemies a chance to stop him), what he is going to do next,\nsketching out in order of time, and in order of importance, his program\nof issues.\n\nBy telling the people news about their best business men, the business\nmen and inventors who, in their daily business, free the energies,\nunshackle the minds and emancipate the genius of the people.\n\nBy telling these business men news about the people--and interpreting\nthe people to them.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIt is by being news to the people himself that all the other news a\nPresident can get into his government counts.\n\nA man is a man according to the amount of news there is in him.\n\nThere are twenty personal traits in a President which of themselves\nwould all be national news of the first importance if he had them. The\nbare fact that a President could have certain traits at all and still\nget to be a President in this country, would be news.\n\nOne of the most important facts about news is that while it can be\ndistributed by machines, machines cannot make it, and as a rule they do\nnot understand it. Important and critical news is almost always fresh\nand made by hand the first time. Most of the popular news as to what is\npractical in American polities for the last forty years has been\nproduced by political machines, and of course men who were a good deal\nlike machines were the best men to finish the ideas off and to carry\nthem out.\n\nAs a result of course, all the really big leaders for the last forty\nyears, our most powerful and interesting personalities have been shut\nout from being President of the United States. The White House was\nmerely being run as machinery and did not interest them. They watched it\ngrinding its ideas faithfully out from year to year of what America was\nlike and what American politicians were like, and finally at last in the\nclatter of the machines there rings out suddenly across the land a shot\nthat no machinery had allowed for. Before any one knows almost there\nslips suddenly by the side door into the White House a really\ninteresting man, and suddenly, all in one minute, almost, this man makes\nbeing President of the United States the most interesting lively and\nathletic feat in the country. And now, apparently that the idea has been\nworked out in public before everybody, by hand, as it were, that a man\ncan be alive and interesting all over, can have at least a little touch\nof news about him and still be a President in this country, another man\nwith some news in him has been allowed to us and suddenly politics\nthroughout all America has become a totally new revealing profession,\nand men, instead of being selected because they were blurred\npersonalities, the ghosts of compromises, would-be everybodies--men who\nhad not decided who they were, and who could not settle down and let\npeople know which of their characters they had hit on at last to be\nreally theirs, men who had no cutting edge to do things, screw-drivers\ntrying to be chisels--were revealed to our people at last as vague,\nmean, other-worldly persons, not fitting into our real American world at\nall, and hopelessly visionary and impracticable in American politics.\n\nAnd now one more hand-made man has been allowed to us.\n\nThe machines run very still in the White House.\n\nThe people of this country no longer go by the White House on their way\nto their business and just hear it humdrumming and humdrumming behind\nthe windows as of yore. The nation stands in crowds around the gates and\nwould like to see in. The people wonder. They wonder a million columns a\nday what is inside.\n\nWhat is inside?\n\nAn American who governs by being news, himself.\n\nThe first thing that the people demand from our President now is that he\nshall be news himself. The news that they have selected to know first\nduring the next four years--have put into the White House to know first\nis Woodrow Wilson.\n\n\"Who are you, Woodrow Wilson, in God's name?\" the steeples and smoking\nchimneys, the bells and whistles, the Yales and Harvards, and the little\ncountry schools, the crowds in the streets, and the corn in the fields\nall say, \"Who Are You?\"\n\nThen the people listen. They listen to his \"I wills\" and \"I won'ts\" for\nnews about him. They look for news about him in the headlines he steers\ninto the papers every morning, in the events he makes happen, in the\neditorials he makes men think of, in the men he calls up and puts on the\nNational Wire--in all these, slowly, daily, hourly they drink up their\nlong, patient, hopeful answer to their question, \"Who Are You, Woodrow\nWilson?\"\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VII\n\nTHE PEOPLE SAY \"WHO ARE WE?\"\n\n\nBut if the President governs first by being news himself, he governs\nsecond by his appointments, by gathering about him other men who are\nnews to people, too.\n\nOne need not divide people into good and bad, because the true line of\ndivision between good and bad instead of being between one man and\nanother, is apt to be as a matter of fact and experience cut down\nthrough the middle of each of us.\n\nBut for the purposes of public action and decision and getting good\nthings done, this line does seem to be cut farther over in the middle of\nsome of us, than it is in others. Taking a life-average in any moral or\nsocial engineering feat, in any correct calculation of structural\nstrain, how far over this line cuts through in a man, has to be reckoned\nwith.\n\nThe president by appointing certain men to office, saying \"I will\" and\n\"I won't\" to certain types of men, in saying who shall be studied by the\npeople, who shall be read as documents of our national life, puts, if\nnot the most important, at least the most lively and telling news about\nhis administration into print.\n\nWe watch our President acting for us, telling us news about what we are\nlike, sorting men out around him the way ninety million people would\nsort them out if they were there to do it.\n\nThe President's appointments may be said to be in a way the breath of\nthe nation.\n\nA nation has to breathe, and the plain fact seems to be that certain\nkinds of people have to be breathed out of a nation and other kinds of\npeople have to be breathed in. The way a President appoints men to\noffice is his way of letting a nation breathe.\n\nWith all his attractive qualities, perhaps it is because Mr. Taft did\nnot quite let the nation breathe, and suffocated it a little that there\ncame such an outbreak at the end. Perhaps it is because Mr. Taft looked\nat Mr. Ballinger and then looked at Mr. Pinchot, all the people of the\ncountry all the while looking on, and said, \"Ballinger is the kind of\nman our people prefer, and Pinchot is not,\" that the people broke out so\namazingly, so incredibly, and decided by such an enormous majority that\na man who could pick out men for them like this would not do--as things\nare just now anyway--for a President of the United States.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VIII\n\nNEWS ABOUT US TO THE PRESIDENT\n\n\nA nation wakes up every morning and for one minute before it runs to its\nwork it says to its President, \"HERE WE ARE!\"\n\nThe best a President can do in the way of a plain, everyday\nacknowledgment of the presence of the people is News.\n\nThe news that the people are demanding from the President to-day is\nintensely personal. It is a kind of rough, butting, good-natured\nfamiliarity a great people has with its President, a little heedless,\nrelentless, like some splendid Child, ready to forgive and expecting to\nbe forgiven, it jostles in upon him daily, \"Here we are! What are you\nbelieving this morning? Did you believe in us yesterday? Did you act as\nif you believed in us? Did you get anybody to believe in us? Who are the\nmen you say are like us? What are they like this morning?\n\n\"We have asked a hundred times; we can only ask it once more. How do you\nthink you are turning out yourself, Mr. President? Are you what you\nthought you would be? Do you think it is a good time for us to decide\nthis morning what you are really like? And, after all, Mr. President--if\nyou please--who _are_ you? And once more, Mr. President, in God's name,\n_who are we?_\"\n\nThis is always the gist of what it says, \"Who are we?\"\n\nIt is the people's main point, after all, asking a President who they\nare, wondering if he can interpret them.\n\nThen he shuts his door and thinks, or he calls his Cabinet and thinks.\n\nRows of little-great men file by all day. They stand each a few minutes\nwith his little Speck or Dot of the People in his hands, and they say,\n\"This is the People.\"\n\nHe listens.\n\nIt is very hard to be always President of the People when one is\nlistening and the little-great go by.\n\nOne has to go back a little, in the night perhaps, or when one is quite\nalone. He sees again the Child; it is what he is in the White House for,\nhe remembers, to express this dumb giant, this mighty Child, half weary,\nhalf glad, standing there by day by night, saying, \"Who are we?\" One\nwould think it would be hard to be glib with the Child.\n\nSometimes it is so deep and silent!\n\nOnce when It broke in on Lincoln in this way and said, \"_Who are we?_\"\nhe prayed.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IX\n\nNEWS-MEN\n\n\nIt seems very difficult to get news through as to who we really are to a\nPresident. When I look about me and see what the President's ways are of\ntelling news about himself to us, I see that he is not without his\nadvantages. But when I look about to see what conveniences we have as a\npeople for telling our President news about us, I note some curious\nthings. The fears of the American people, the fears and threats of\nlabour and capital are organized and expressed, but their faiths, their\nwills, the things in them that make them go and that make them American,\nare not organized and are not expressed.\n\nThe labour unions are afraid and say, \"We will not work,\" to their\nemployers, \"You cannot make us work.\" The President hears this. It is\nabout all they say.\n\nThe capitalists and employers are afraid and they say, \"We will not\npay,\" \"You cannot make us pay.\"\n\nShall the President act as if these men represent Labor and Capital?\n\nWe say, \"No.\"\n\nNeither of these groups of men express real live American labour or real\nlive characteristic American money.\n\nAmerican money is free, bold, manful, generous and courageous to a\nfault. American money swings out in mighty enterprises, shrewdly\nbelieving things, imperiously singing things out of its way.\n\nA singing people want a singing government. How is our President going\nto hear our labour and our money sing?\n\nPinchot expressed us, not Ballinger.\n\nMr. Pinchot is no mere uplifter or missionary. He is an artist in\nexpressing America to a President. If we have a President who will not\nlisten to a man like Pinchot, let us try a President that will.\n\nPinchot--an American millionaire with a fortune made out of forests, who\nis spending the fortune in protecting the forests for the nation, is the\nkind of American Americans like to set up before a President to say what\nAmericans are like. Millions of men stand by Pinchot. We like the way he\nmakes money sing.\n\nTom L. Johnson--an American millionaire who made his money in the\nordinary humdrum way, by getting valuable street railway franchises out\nof a city for nothing--has the courage to turn around, spend his fortune\nand spend it all, in keeping other people from doing it.\n\nAmerica presents Tom L. Johnson to a President with its compliments and\nsays, \"This is what America is like.\"\n\nIt may not look always as if Tom L. Johnson were America--America in\nminiature. But millions of us say he is. He makes money sing.\n\nWe want a President--millions of us want him--and this is the most\nimportant news about us, who expects money in this country to sing.\n\nWe want our money and expect our money in this country to stop saying\nmean things about us, things that make us ashamed to look a true\nnewspaper in the face, or one another in the face, and that humiliate us\nbefore the world.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nAnd now I have come to an awkward place in this book where I hope the\nreader will help me all he can.\n\nThere is nothing to do but to let out the real truth and face the music.\nThe fact is, Gentle Reader--perhaps you have suspected it all\nalong--that if it had not been for fear of mixing my book all up with\nhim and making it a kind of arena or tournament instead of a book, I\nwould have mentioned ex-President Roosevelt before this. He has been\ngetting in or nearly getting in to nearly every chapter so far, but of\ncourse I knew, as any one would, that he would spoil all the calm\nequipoise, the quiet onward flowing of the Stream of Thought, and with\none chapter after the other, with each as the crisis came up, though I\nscarcely know how, I have managed to keep him out. And now, oh, Gentle\nReader, here he is! I know very well that he is in everything, and right\nin the middle of everything, and that in a kind of splendid mixed happy\nuproarious way, there somehow has to be a great to-do the moment he\nappears. The beautiful clear water, the lucid depth of Thought--will all\nbecome (ah, I know it too well, Gentle Reader) all thunder and spray and\nunderneath the mighty grinding of the wheels--the wheels of the Nation\nand the Mowing Machine of Time, and in the background--in the red\nbackground of the Dawn, there will be the face of Theodore--just the\nface of Theodore in this book shining at us--readers and writer and\nall--out of a huge rosy mist!\n\nBut I have been driven to it. The fact seems to be that I must find at\njust this point in the book, if I can, a word. And the word will have to\nbe a word, too, that everybody knows, and that conveys a lively sense to\neverybody the moment it is used--of a certain tone or quality, or hum or\nmurmur of being. No one regrets this more than I, because it is so\nunwieldy and inconvenient and always bulges out in a sentence or a book\nor a nation more than it was meant to, but the word ROOSEVELT, R O O S E\nV E L T, happens to be the word that people in this country, and very\nlargely in other nations, and in all languages have chosen and are using\nevery day to express to one another a certain American quality or tone\nnow abroad in our world--a certain hum, as one might say, or whirr of\ngoodness.\n\nThis particular hum, or whirr of goodness, which is instantly associated\nwith the word Roosevelt, expresses, except that of course it\nover-expresses, a part of the news to-day about America which we want\nour President to read.\n\nOne cannot help wondering why it is that if one wanted to express to the\nlargest number of people in the world a certain quality of goodness, the\nword Roosevelt would do it best.\n\nI am not dealing for the purpose of this book in what Mr. Roosevelt's\ngoodness is or whether it is what he thinks it is. We might all disagree\nabout that. I am dealing quite strictly in this connection with what\neven his enemies would say is his almost egregious success in\nadvertising goodness. While we might all disagree as to his goodness\nbeing the kind that he or any one ought to love, we would not fail to\nagree that it is his love of his own goodness, such as it is, and his\nholding on to it, and his love of other people's and his love of getting\nhis goodness and their goodness together, that has made him the most\nunconcealed person in modern life. These qualities have established him,\nwith his ability raised to the n-th power of attracting attention to\nanything he likes, as the world's greatest News Man--the world's\ngreatest living energy to-day in advertising what is good and what is\nhad in our American temperament.\n\nEven the people who disagree with him or dislike him--many of them would\nhave to fall back on using the word roosevelt, or rather the verb to\nroosevelt.\n\nIt does not seem to be because his goodness in itself is extraordinary.\nIt is even, for that matter, in the sense that anybody could have it, or\nsome more just like it, a little common.\n\nWhat seems to be uncommon and really distinguished about Mr. Roosevelt\nis the way he feels about his goodness, and the way he grips hold of it,\nand the way he makes it grip hold of other people--practically anybody\nalmost, who is standing by. Even if they are merely going by in\nautomobiles, sometimes they catch some. I do not imagine that his worst\nenemies, however seriously they may question the general desirability or\nsafety of having so much goodness roosevelting around, would fail to\nadmit his own real enthusiasm about goodness anywhere he finds it\nindiscriminately, whether it is his own or other people's. He grips hold\nof it, and grips like a cable car--instantly.\n\nHis enthusiasm is so great that many people are nonplussed by it. The\nenthusiasm must really be in spite of appearances about something else,\nsomething wicked in behind, they think, and not really about goodness.\nAn entire stranger would not quite believe it. It would be too original\nin him, they would say, or in anybody, to care so about goodness.\n\nIf one could watch the expression in Mr. Roosevelt's face or his manner\nwhile he is in the act of having a virtue and if one could not see\nplainly from where one was, just what it was he was doing, one would at\nonce conclude that it must be some vice he is having. He looks happy and\nas if it were some stolen secret. There is always that manner of his\nwhen he is caught doing right, as if one were to say \"Now, at last, I\nhave got it!\" He does right like a boy with his mouth full of jam, and\nthis seems to be true not only when, with a whole public following and\ntwo or three nations besides, and all the newspapers, he goes off on an\norgy of righteousness, makes the grand tour of Europe, and has the time\nof his life. It is the steady-burning under enthusiasm with him all the\nwhile. The spectacle of a good man doing a tremendous good thing affects\nTheodore Roosevelt like one of the great forces of nature, like Niagara\nFalls, like the screws of the _Mauritania_, or any other huge, happy\nthing that is having its way against fear; against weakness, or against\nsmall terrified goodness.\n\nMr. Roosevelt in doing right conveys the sense of enjoying it so himself\nthat he has made almost an art form of public righteousness. He has\nfound his most complete, his most naive, instinctive self-expression in\nit, and while we have had goodness in public men before, we have had no\nman who has been such an international chromo for goodness, who has made\nsuch a big, comfortable \"He-who-runs-may-read\" bill-poster for doing\nright as Roosevelt. Other men have done things that were good to do, but\nthe very inmost muscle and marrow of goodness itself, goodness with\nteeth, with a fist, goodness that smiled, that ha-ha'd, and that leaped\nand danced--perpetual motion of goodness, goodness that reeked--has been\nreserved for Theodore Roosevelt. We have had goodness that was bland or\nproper, and goodness that was pious or sentimental and sang, \"Nearer My\nGod to Thee,\" or goodness that was kind and mushy, but this goodness\nwith a glad look and bounding heart, goodness with an iron hand, we have\nnot had before. It is Mr. Roosevelt's goodness that has made him\ninteresting in Cairo, Paris, Rome, and Berlin. He has been conducting a\ngrand tour of goodness. He has been a colossal drummer of goodness,\nconducting an advertising campaign. He has proved himself a master\nsalesman for moral values. And he has put the American character, its\nhope, its energy, on the markets and on the credits of the world.\n\nWith all his faults, those big, daring, yawning fissures in him, he is\nnews about us, faults and all. Though I may be, as I certainly am much\nof the time, standing and looking across at him, across an abyss of\ntemperament that God cut down between us thousands of years ago, and\nwhile he may have a score of traits I would not like and others that no\none would like in any one else, there he is storming out at me with his\ngoodness! It is his way--God help him!--God be praised for him! There he\nis!\n\nI know an American when I see one. He is a man who is singing.\n\nA man who is singing is a man who is so shrewd about people that he sees\nmore in them than they see in themselves and who does things so shrewdly\nin behalf of God, that when God looks upon him he delights in him. Then\nGod falls to of course and helps him do them.\n\nWhen American men saw that there was a man among them who was taking a\nthing like the Presidency of the United States (that most people never\nrun risks with) and putting it up before everybody, and using it grimly\nas a magnificent bet on the people, they looked up. Millions of men\nleaped in their hearts and as they saw him they knew that they were like\nhim!\n\nSo did Theodore Roosevelt become news about Us.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER X\n\nAMERICAN TEMPERAMENT AND GOVERNMENT\n\n\nI would like to say more specifically what I mean by an American or\nsinging government.\n\nThe thing that counts the most in a government is its temperament. A\nGerman government succeeds by having the German temperament. An American\ngovernment must have the American temperament.\n\nIf we are fortunate enough to have in America a government with an\nAmerican temperament what would it be like? And how would it differ from\nthe traditional or conventional temperament, governments are usually\nallowed to have?\n\nIf I were confined to one or two words I would put it like this:\n\nIf a government has the conventional temperament, it says \"NO.\"\n\nIf it has the American Temperament it says, \"YES, BUT ...\"\n\nThe whole policy and temper of a true American government is summed up\nin its saying as it looks about it--now to this business man and now to\nthat, just in time, \"YES BUT.\"\n\nLouis Brandeis, of Boston, when he was made attorney for the Gas Company\nof Boston to defend the company from the criticisms of the people, sent\nsuddenly scores of men all about canvassing the city and looking up\npeople to find fault with the gas.\n\nHe spent thousands of dollars a month of the Gas Company's money for a\nwhile in helping people to be disagreeable, until they had it attended\nto and got over it.\n\nThe Gas Company had the canvassers show the people how they could burn\nless gas for what they got for it, and tried to help them cut their\nbills in two. Incidentally, of course, they got to thinking about gas\nand about what they got for it, and about other ways they could afford\nto use it, and began to have the gas habit--used it for cooking and\nheating.\n\nThe people found they wanted to use four times as much gas.\n\nThe Boston Gas Company smiled sweetly.\n\nBoston smiled sweetly.\n\nNot many months had passed and two things had happened in Boston.\n\nThe Boston Gas Company, with precisely the same directors in it, had\nmade over the directors into new men, and all the people in Boston (all\nwho used gas) apparently had been made over into new people.\n\nWhat had happened was Brandeis--a man with an American temperament.\n\nMr. Brandeis had defended his company from the people by going the\npeople's way and helping them until they helped him.\n\nMr. Brandeis gave gas a soul in Boston.\n\nBefore a gas corporation has a soul, it would be American for a\ngovernment to treat it in one way. After it has one it would be American\nto treat it in another. There are two complete sets of conduct,\nprinciples, and visions in dealing with a corporation before and after\nits having a soul.\n\nPreserving the females of the species and killing males as a method of\ndiscrimination has been applied to all animals except human beings. This\nis suggestive of a method of discrimination in dealing with\ncorporations. A corporation that has a soul and that is the most likely\nto keep reproducing souls in others should be treated in one way, and a\ncorporation that has not should be treated in another.\n\nThere are two assumptions underneath everybody's thought, underneath\nevery action of our government: Which is the American assumption?\n\nPeople are going to be bad if they can.\n\nPeople are going to be good if they can.\n\nMen who want to arrange laws and adjust life on the assumption that\nbusiness men will be bad if they can, it seems to some of us, are\ninefficient and unscientific. It seems to us that they are off on the\nmain and controlling facts in American human nature. It is not true that\nAmerican business men will be bad if they can. They will be good if they\ncan.\n\nThis is my assertion. I cannot prove it.\n\nWhat we seem to need next in this country in order to be clear-headed\nand to go ahead, is to prove it. We want a competent census of human\nnature.\n\nLacking a census of human nature, the next best thing we can do is to\nwatch the men who seem to know the most about human nature.\n\nWe put ourselves in their hands.\n\nThese men seem to believe, judging from their actions, that there is\nreally nothing that suits our temperament better in America than being\ngood. If we can manage to have some way of being good that we have\nthought of ourselves, we like it still better. We dote on goodness when\nit is ours and when we are allowed to put some punch into it. We want to\nbe good, to express our practical, our doing-idealism, but we will not\nbe driven to being good and people who think they can drive us to being\ngood in a government or out of it are incompetent people. They do not\nknow who we are.\n\nWe say they shall not have their way with us.\n\nLet them get us right first. Then they can do other things.\n\nWhat is our American temperament?\n\nHere are a few American reflections.\n\nThe government of the next boys' school of importance in this country is\ngoing to determine the cuts and free hours, and privileges not by marks,\nbut by its genius for seeing through boys.\n\nAnd instead of making rules for two hundred pupils because just twenty\npupils need them, they will make the rules for just twenty pupils.\n\nPupils who can use their souls and can do better by telling themselves\nwhat to do, will be allowed to do better. Why should two hundred boys\nwho want to be men be bullied into being babies by twenty infants who\ncan scare a school government into rules, _i.e._, scare their teachers\ninto being small and mean and second-rate?\n\nA government that goes on this principle with business men, and that\ndoes it in a spirit of mutual understanding for those who are not yet\nfree from rules, and in a spirit of confidence and expectation and of\ntalking it over, will be a government with an American temperament.\n\nThe first trait of a great government is going to be that it will\nrecognize that the basis of a true government in a democracy is\nprivilege and not treating all people alike. It is going to see that is\nit a cowardly, lazy, brutal, and mechanical-minded thing for a\ngovernment which is trying to serve a great people--to treat all the\npeople alike. The basis of a great government like the basis of a great\nman (or even the basis of a good digestion) is discrimination, and the\nhabit of acting according to facts. We will have rules or laws for\npeople who need them, and men in the same business who amount to enough\nand are American enough to be safe as laws to themselves, will continue\nto have their initiative and to make their business a profession, a\nmould, an art form into which they pour their lives. The pouring of the\nlives of men like this into their business is the one thing that the\nbusiness and the government want.\n\nSeveral things are going to happen when what a good government seeks\neach for a man's business, is to let him express himself in it.\n\nWhen a man has proved conclusively that he has a higher level of\nmotives, and a higher level of abilities to make his motives work, the\ngovernment is going to give him a higher level of rights, liberties, and\nimmunities. The government will give special liberties on a sliding\nscale and with shrewd provision for the future. The government will not\ngive special liberties to the man with higher motives than other men\nhave, who has not higher abilities to make his motives work, nor will it\ngive special liberties to the man who has higher abilities which could\nmake higher motives work, but who has not the higher motives.\n\nMen who are new kinds and new sizes of men and who have proved that they\ncan make new kinds and new sizes of bargains, that they can make (for\nthe same money) new kinds and new sizes of goods, and who incidentally\nmake new kinds and new sizes of people out of the people who buy the\ngoods, men who have achieved all these supposed visionary feats by their\nown initiative, will be allowed by the government to have all the\ninitiative they want, and immunities from fretful rules as long as they\nresemble themselves and keep on doing what they have shown they can do.\nThe government will deal with each man according to the facts, the\nscientific facts, that he has proved about himself.\n\nThe government acts according to scientific facts in everything except\nmen, in pure food, in cholera, and the next thing the government is\ngoing to do is to be equally efficient in dealing with scientific facts\nin men.\n\nIt is going to give some men inspected liberty. If these men say they\ncan be more efficient, as a railroad sometimes is, by being a monopoly,\nby being a vast, self-visioned, self-controlled body the government will\nhave enough character, expert courage and shrewdness about human nature\nto provide a way for them to try it.\n\nWhen the other people come up and ask why they cannot have these\nspecial immunities and why they cannot be a monopoly, or nearly a\nmonopoly, too, the government will tell them why.\n\nTelling them why will be governing them.\n\nWhen we once reckon with new kinds and new sizes of men, everything\nfollows. The first man who organizes a true monopoly for public service\nand who does it better than any state could do it, because he thinks of\nit himself, glories in it and has a genius for it, will be given a\npeerage in England perhaps. But he would not really care. The thing\nitself would be a peerage enough and either in America or England he\nwould rather be rewarded by being singled out by the government for\nspecial rights and distinctions in conducting his business. The best way\na democracy can honour a man who has served it is not to give him a\ntitle or to make a frivolous, idle monument of bronze for him, but to\nlet him have his own way.\n\nThe way to honour any artist or any creative man, any man a country is\nin need of especially, is to let him have his own way.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nWe are told that the way to govern trusts is to untrammel competition.\n\nBut the way to untrammel competition is not to try to untrammel it in\nits details with lists of things men shall not do.\n\nThis is cumbersome.\n\nWe would probably find it very much more convenient in specifying 979\ndetailed things trusts cannot do, if we could think of certain\nsum-totals of details.\n\nThen we could deal with the details in a lump.\n\nThe best sum totals of details in this world that have ever been\ninvented yet, are men.\n\nWe will pick out a man who has a definite, marked character, who is a\nfine, convenient sum-total that any one can see, of things not to do.\n\nWe will pick out another man in the same line of business who is a fine,\nconvenient sum-total of things that people ought to do.\n\nThe government will find ways, as the Coach of Business as the Referee\nof the Game for the people, to stand by this man until he whips the\nother, drives him out of business or makes him play as good a game as he\ndoes.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nWhen a child finds suddenly that his father is not merely keeping him\nfrom doing things, that his father has a soul, the father begins to get\nresults out of the child.\n\nAs a rule a child discovers first that his father has a soul by noticing\nthat he insists on treating him as if he had one.\n\nOf course a corporation that has not a soul yet does not propose to be\ndictated to by a government that has not a soul yet. When corporations\nwithout souls see overwhelmingly that a government has a soul, they will\nbe filled with a wholesome fear. They will always try at first to\nprevent it from having a soul if they can.\n\nBut the moment it gets one and shows it, they will be glad. They will\nfeel on firm ground. They will know what they know. They will act.\n\nIn the hospital on the hill not far from my house, one often sees one\nattendant going out to walk with twelve insane men. One would think it\nwould not be safe for twelve insane men to go out to walk with one sane\nman, with one man who has his soul on.\n\nThe reason it is safe, is, that the moment one insane man or man who has\nnot his soul on, attacks the man who has a soul, all of the other eleven\nmen throw themselves upon him and fling him to the ground. Men whose\nsouls are not on, protect, every time, the man who has his soul on\nbecause the man who has a soul is the only defence they have from the\nmen who have not.\n\nIt is going to be the same with governments. We believe in a\ngovernment's having as much courage in America as a ten-dollar-a-week\nattendant in an insane asylum. We want a government that sees how\ncourage works.\n\nWe are told in the New Testament that we are all members one of another.\n\nIf society has a soul and if every member of it has a soul, what is the\nrelation of the social soul to the individual soul?\n\nA man's soul is the faculty in him for seeing the Whole in relation to\nthe part--his vision for others in relation to his vision for himself.\n\nMy forefinger's soul in writing with this fountain pen is the sense my\nforefinger has of its relation to my arm, my spinal column, and my\nbrain. The ability and efficiency of my forefinger depends upon its\nsoul, that is, its sense of relation to the other members of the body.\nIf my forefinger tries to act like a brain all by itself, as it\nsometimes does, nobody reads my writing.\n\nThe government in a society is the soul of all the members and it treats\nthem according to their souls.\n\nThe one compulsion a government will use if it has a soul, will be\ngranting charters in business in such a way as to fix definite\nresponsibility and definite publicity upon a few men.\n\nIf a corporation has a soul, it must show. It must have a face. Anybody\ncan tell a face off-hand or while going by. Anybody can keep track of a\ncorporation if it has a face.\n\nThe trouble with the average corporation is that all that anybody can\nsee is its stomach. Even this is anonymous.\n\nWhose Stomach is it? Who is responsible for it? If we hit it, whom will\nwe hit? Let the government find out. If the time the government is now\nspending in making impossibly minute laws for impossibly minute men,\nwere spent in finding out what size men were, and who they were and then\ngiving them just as many rights from the people, as they are the right\nkind and the right size to handle for the people, it would be an\nAmerican government.\n\nIf there is one thing rather than another that an American or an\nEnglishman loves, it is asserting himself or expressing his character in\nwhat he does. The typical dominating Englishman or American is not as\nsuccessful as a Frenchman or as an Italian in expressing other things,\nas he is in expressing his character.\n\nHe cares more about expressing his character and asserting it. If he is\ndealing with things, he makes them take the stamp of who he is. If he is\ndealing with people, he makes them see and acknowledge who he is. They\nmust take in the facts about what he is like when they are with him.\nThey must deal with him as he is.\n\nThis trait may have its disadvantages, but if an Englishman or an\nAmerican is on this earth for anything, this is what he is for--to\nexpress his character in what he does--in strong, vigorous, manly lines\ndraw a portrait of himself and show what he is like in what he does.\nThis may be called on both sides of the sea to-day as we stand front to\nfront with the more graceful nations, Anglo-Saxon Art.\n\nIt is because this particular art in the present crisis of human nature\non this planet is the desperate, the almost reckless need of a world\nthat the other nations of the world with all their dislike of us and\ntheir superiorities to us, with all our ugliness and heaviness and our\ngalumphing in the arts, have been compelled in this huge, modern thicket\nof machines and crowds to give us the lead.\n\nAnd now we are threading a way for nations through the moral wilderness\nof the earth.\n\nThis position has been accorded us because it goes with our temperament,\nbecause we can be depended upon to insist on asserting ourselves and on\nexpressing ourselves in what we do. If the present impromptu industrial\nmachinery which has been handed over to us thoughtlessly and in a hurry,\ndoes not express us, everybody knows that we can be depended on to\nassert ourselves and that we will insist on one that will. The nations\nthat are more polite and that can dance and bow more nicely than we can\nin a crisis like this would be dangerous. It is known about us\nthroughout a world that we are not going to be cowed by wood or by iron\nor by steel and that we are not going to be cowed by men who are all\nwood and iron and steel inside. If wood, iron, or steel does not express\nus, we are Englishmen and we are Americans. We will butt our character\ninto it until it does.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIf the American workman were to insist upon butting his American\ntemperament into his labour union machinery, what would his labour\nmachinery in America soon begin to show that an American labourer was\nlike?\n\nI imagine it might work out something like this:\n\nThe thoughtful workman looks about him. He discovers that the workman\npays at least two times as much for coal as he needs to because miners\ndown in Pennsylvania work one third as hard as they might for the money.\n\nWhen he comes to think of it, all the labouring men of America are\npaying high prices because they have to pay all the other workmen in\nAmerica for working as little as they can. He is working one third less\nthan he can and making his own class pay for it. He sees every workman\nabout him paying high prices because every other workman in making\nthings for him to eat and for him to wear, is cheating him--doing a\nthird less a day for him than he ought.\n\nAt this point the capitalists pile in and help. They shove the prices up\nstill higher because capital is not interested in an industry in which\nthe workmen do six hours' work in nine. It demands extra profits. So\nwhile the workmen put up the prices by not working, the capitalists put\nup the prices because they are afraid the workmen will not work. Half\nwork, high prices.\n\nThen the American workman thinks. He begins to suppose.\n\nSuppose that the millers' workmen and the workmen in the woollen mills\nin America see how prices of supplies for labouring men are going up and\nsuppose they agree to work as hard as they can? Suppose the wool workers\nof the world want cheap bread. The flour mill workers want cheap\nclothes. We will say to the bread people, \"We will bring down the price\nof wool for you if you will bring down the price of bread for us.\"\n\nThen let Meat and Potatoes do the same for one another. Then two\nindustries at a time, industries getting brains in pairs, until like the\nanimals going into the ark, little by little (or rather very fast,\nalmost piling in, in fact, after the first pair have tried it), at last\nour true, spirited, practical minded American workmen will have made\ntheir labour machines as natural and as human and as American as they\nare. They will stop trying to lower prices by not working, each workman\njoining (in a factory) the leisure classes and making the other workmen\npay for it.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe American workman, as things are organized now, finds himself\nconfronted with two main problems. One is himself. How can he get\nhimself to work hard enough to make his food and clothes cheap? The\nother is his employer.\n\nWhat will the American workman do to express his American temperament\nthrough his labour union to his employer? The American workmen will go\nto their employers and say: \"Instead of doing six hours' work in nine\nhours, we will do nine hours' work in nine hours.\" The millers, for\ninstance, will say to the flour mill owners: \"We will do a third more\nwork for you, make you a third more profit on our labour if you will\ndivide your third more profit like this:\n\n\"First, by bringing down the price of flour to everybody;\n\n\"Second, by bringing up our wages. Third, by taking more money\nyourselves.\"\n\nAmerican labouring men who did this would be acting like Americans. It\nis the American temperament.\n\nThey will insist on it: The labour men will continue to say to their\nemployers, \"We will divide the proceeds of our extra work into three\nsums of money--ours, yours, and everybody's.\" In return we will soon\nfind the employers saying the same thing to the labour men. Employers\nwould like to arrange to be good. If they can get men who earn more,\nthey want to pay them more.\n\nThe labourers would like to be good, _i.e._, work more for employers who\nwant to pay them more.\n\nBut being good has to be arranged for.\n\nBeing good is a matter of mutual understanding, a matter of\norganization, a matter of butting our American temperament into our\nindustrial machines.\n\nAll that is the matter with these industrial machines is that they are\nnot like us.\n\nOur machines are acting just now for all the world as if they were the\nAmericans and as if we were the machines.\n\nAre we for the machines, or are the machines for us?\n\nAll that the American labourers and that the American capitalists have\nto do is to show what they are really like, organize their news about\nthemselves so that they get it through to one another, and our present\ngreat daily occupation in America (which each man calls his \"business\")\nall the workmen going down to the mills and all the employers going down\nto their offices, and then for six, eight, nine hours a day being chewed\non by machines, will cease.\n\nWe make our industrial machines. We are Americans. Our machines must\nhave our American temperament.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIf an American employer were to insist on butting his American\ntemperament into his industrial machine, what would his industrial\nmachine, when it is well at work at last, show an American employer's\ntemperament to be like?\n\nThe first thing that would show in his machine, I think, would be its\ncourage, its acting with boldness and initiative, originality and\nfreedom, without being cluttered up by precedents or running and asking\nMama, its clear-headedness in what it wants, its short-cut in getting to\nit, and above all a kind of ruthless faith in human nature, in the\nAmerican people, in its goods and in itself.\n\nThe typical American business man of the highest class--the man who is\nexpressing his American temperament best in his business--is the one who\nis expressing in it the most courage for himself and for others and for\nhis government. He has big beliefs every few minutes a day, and he acts\non them with nonchalance.\n\nIf he is running a trust--our most characteristic, recklessly difficult\nAmerican invention for a man to show through, and if he tries to get his\nAmerican temperament to show through in it, tries to make his trust like\na vast portrait, like a kind of countenance on a country, of what a big\nAmerican business is like, what will he do?\n\nHe will take a little axiom like this and act as if it were so.\n\n_If in any given case the producers by collusion and combination can be\nefficient in lowering wages to employees and raising prices and cheating\nthe public, this same combination or collusion would be efficient in\nraising the wages of employees, lowering prices and serving the public._\n\nHe will then, being an American, turn to his government and say \"I am a\ncertain sort of man. If I am allowed to be an exception and to combine\nin this matter, I can prove that I can raise wages, lower prices for a\nwhole nation in these things that I make. I am a certain sort of man. Do\nyou think I am, or do you think that I am not? I want to know.\"\n\nThe government looks noncommittally at him. It says it cannot\ndiscriminate.\n\nHe says nothing for a time, but he thinks in his heart that it is\nincompetent and cowardly to run a great government of a great nation as\na vast national sweep or flourish of getting out of brains and of\nevading vision. It seems to him lazy and effeminate in a government to\ntreat all combinations and all monopolies alike. He says: \"Look me in\nthe eyes! I demand of you as a citizen of this country the right to be\nlooked by my government in the eyes. What sort of man am I? Here are all\nmy doors open. My safes are your safes and my books are your books. Am I\nor am I not a man who can conduct his business as a great profession,\none of the dignities and energies and joys of a great people?\n\n\"What am I like inside? Is what I am like inside--my having a small size\nor a big size of motive, my having a right kind or a wrong kind of\nability of no consequence to this government? Does the government of\nthis country really mean that the most important things a country like\nthis can produce, the daily, ruling motives of the men who are living in\nit, have no weight with the government? Am I to understand that the\ngovernment does not propose to avail itself of new sizes and new kinds\nof men and new sizes and new kinds of abilities in men? What I am trying\nto do in my product is to lower the prices and raise the wages for a\nnation. Will you let me do it? Will you watch me while I do it?\"\n\nThis will be the American trust of to-morrow. The average trust of this\ncountry has not yet found itself, but the moral and spiritual history,\nthe religious message to a government of The Trust That Has Found Itself\nwill be something like this.\n\nPerhaps when we have a trust that has found itself, we will have a\ngovernment that has dared to find itself, that has the courage to use\nits insight, its sense of difference between men, as it means of getting\nwhat it wants for the people.\n\nAs it is now, the government has not found itself and it falls back on\ncomplex rules or machines for getting out of seeing through people.\n\nWhere courage is required, it proceeds as it proceeds with automobile\nspeeding laws. Everybody knows that one man driving his car three miles\nan hour may be more dangerous than another kind of man who is driving\nhis car thirty.\n\nWhen our government begins to be a government, begins to express the\nAmerican temperament, it will be a government that will devote its\nenergy, its men, and its money to being expert in divining, and using\ndifferences between men. It will govern as any father, teacher, or\ncompetent business man does by treating some people in one way and\nothers in another, by giving graded speed licenses in business, to\nlabour unions, trusts, and business men.\n\nThe government will be able to do this by demanding, acquiring, and\nemploying as the servants of the people, men who are experts in human\nnature, masters in not treating men alike--Crowbars, lemonade-straws,\nchisels, and marshmallows, powerhouses and AEolian harps by the people,\nfor the people, and of the people, will be rated for what they are and\nwill be used for what they are for.\n\nThis will be democracy. It will be the American temperament in\ngovernment.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIs President Wilson or is he not going to fall back into a mere lawyer\nMoseslike way of getting people to be good, or is he going to be a man\nlike David, half poet, half soldier, who got his way with the nation\nhalf by appreciating the men in it and being a fellow human being with\nthem, and half by fighting them when they would not let him be a fellow\nhuman being with them, and would not let him appreciate them?\n\nAlmost any nation or government can get some kind of Moses to-day but\nthe men that America is producing would not particularly notice a Moses\nprobably now. A Moses might do for a Rockefeller, but he could not\nreally do anything with a man like Theodore N. Vail who has the\ntelephones and telegraphs of a country talking and ticking to us all,\nall night, all day, what kind of a man he is.\n\nA big affirmative, inspirational man like David or even Napoleon who\ninspires people with one breath and fights hard with the next, a man who\nswings his hat for the world, a man who goes on ahead and says \"Come!\"\nis the only man who can be practical in America to-day in helping real\nlive American men like McAdoo, like Edison and Acheson,--men who can\nexpress a people in a business--to express them.\n\nThe people have spoken. A man in the White House who cannot say \"Come\"\ngoes.\n\nWe want a poet in the White House. If we can not have a poet for the\nWhite House soon, we want a poet who will make us a poet for the White\nHouse.\n\nI do not believe it is too much to expect a President to be a poet. We\nhave had a poet for President once in one supreme crisis of this nation\nand the crisis that is coming now is so much deeper, so much more human\nand world-wide than Lincoln's was that it would almost seem as if a\nplace like the White House (where one's poetry could really work) would\nmake a poet out of anybody.\n\nA President who has not a kind of plain, still, homely poetry in him, a\nbelief about people that sings, in the present appalling crisis of the\nworld is impracticable or visionary.\n\nSo we do not say, \"Have we a President that can get our Bells, Edisons,\nMcAdoos, Achesons to be good by toeing a line?\"\n\nWe say, \"Have we a President who can swing into step, who can join in\nthe singing, who can catch up?\"\n\nTunnel McAdoo, when he lifted up his will against the sea and against\nthe seers of Wall Street, was singing. When he conceived those steel\ncars, those roaring yellow streaks of light ringing through rocks\nbeneath the river, streets of people flashing through under the slime\nand under the fish and under the ships and under the wide sunshine on\nthe water, he was singing! He raised millions of dollars singing.\n\nOf course he sang the way Americans usually sing, and had to do as well\nas he could in talking to bankers and investors not to look as if he\nwere singing, but there it all was singing inside him, the seven years\nof digging, the seven years of dull thundering on rocks under the city,\nand at last the happy steel cars all green and gold, the streams of\npeople all yellow light hissing and pouring through--those vast pipes\nfor people beneath the sea!\n\nIf we have a President, let him sing like McAdoo, or like Luther\nBurbank, or like Theodore N. Vail, or like Colonel Goethals, picking up\na little isthmus like Panama, a string between two continents, playing\non it as if it were a harp; or like Edward Ripley playing with the Santa\nFe Railroad for all the world like Homer with a lute, all his seven\nthousand men, all his workmen, all their wives and their children, all\nthe cities along the line striking up and joining in the chorus or like\nCarborundum Acheson, backed up by his little Niagara Falls oiling the\nwheels of a world, weaving diamonds into steel, hardening the bones of\nthe earth into skyscrapers, into railroads, into the mighty thighs of\nflying locomotives....\n\nAny man who is seen acting in this world with a thing, as if he believed\nin the thing, as if he believed in himself and believed in other people,\nis singing.\n\nMoses striking out with a rod, as we are told, a path along the sea for\nhis people may have done a more showy thing from a religious point of\nview, hitting the water on top so, making a great splash with an empty\nplace in it for people to march through, but he was not essentially more\nreligious than McAdoo, with all those modest but mighty columns of\nfigures piling up behind him, with all those splendid, dumb, still\nglowing engineers behind him, lifting up his will against cities,\nlifting up his will against herds of politicians, haughty newspapers,\nagainst the flocks of silly complacent old ferry-boats waddling in the\nbay, against the wind and the rain and the cold on the water, and all\nthe banks of Wall Street....\n\nWhen we want to tell News to our President about ourselves in America,\nwe point to William G. McAdoo.\n\nThe first news that we, the American people, must contrive to get into\nthe White House about ourselves is that we do not want to be improved,\nand that we do not like an improving tone in our government. We want to\nbe expressed the way McAdoos express us. We want a government that\nexpresses our faith in one another, in what we are doing, and in\nourselves, and in the world.\n\nWe are singing over here on this continent. We would not all of us put\nit in just this way. But our singing is the main thing we can do, and a\ngovernment that is trying to improve us feebly, that is looking askance\nat us and looking askance at our money, and at our labour, and that does\nnot believe in us and join in with us in our singing does not know what\nwe are like.\n\nOur next national business in America is to get the real news over to\nthe President of what we are like.\n\nIt is news that we want in the White House. A missionary in the White\nHouse, be he ever so humble, will not do.\n\nMr. Roosevelt, himself, with the word Duty on every milepost as he\nwhirled past, with suggestions of things for other people to do buzzing\nlike bees about his head, acquired his tremendous and incredible power\nwith us as a people because, in spite of his violent way of breaking out\ninto a missionary every morning and every evening when he talked, it was\nnot his talking but his singing that made him powerful--his singing, or\ndoing things as if he believed in people, his I wills and I won'ts, his\nassuming every day, his acting every day, as if American men were men.\nHe sang his way roughly, hoarsely, even a little comically at times into\nthe hearts of people, stirred up in the nation a mighty heat, put a\ngreat crackling fire under it, put two great parties into the pot,\nboiled them, drew off all that was good in them, and at last, to-day, as\nI write (February 1913), the prospect of a good square meal in the White\nHouse (with some one else to say grace) is before the people.\n\nThe people are waiting to sit down once more in the White House and\nrefresh themselves.\n\nAt least, the soup course is on the table.\n\nWho did it, please? Who bullied the cook and got everybody ready?\n\nTheodore Roosevelt, singing a little roughly, possibly hurrahing \"_I\nwill, I will, I won't, I won't_,\" and acting as if he believed in the\nworld.\n\nBryan in the village of Chicago sitting by at a reporter's table saw him\ndoing it.\n\nBryan saw how it worked.\n\nBryan had it in him too.\n\nBryan heard the shouts of the people across the land as they gloried in\nthe fight. He saw the signals from the nations over the sea.\n\nThen Armageddon moved to Baltimore.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nAnd now table is about to be spread.\n\nIt is to be Mr. Wilson's soup.\n\nBut the soup will have a Roosevelt flavour or tang to it. And we will\nwait to see what Mr. Wilson will do with the other courses.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nA poet in words, with two or three exceptions, America has not produced.\n\nThe only touch of poetry or art as yet that we have in America\nis--acting as if we believed in people. This particular art is ours.\nOther people may have it, but it is all we have.\n\nThis is what makes or may make any moment the common American a poet or\nartist.\n\nSpeaking in this sense, Mr. Roosevelt is the first poet America has\nproduced that European peoples and European governments have noticed for\nforty years, or had any reason to notice. We respectfully place Mr.\nRoosevelt with Mr. McAdoo (and if Mr. Brandeis will pardon us, with Mr.\nBrandeis) as a typical American before the eyes of the new President.\nWe ask him to take Mr. Roosevelt as a very important part of the latest\nnews about us.\n\nThe true imaginative men of our modern life, the poets of crowds and\ncities are not to-day our authors, preachers, professors or lawyers or\nphilosophers. The poets of crowds are our men like this, our\nvision-doers, the men who have seen visions and dreamed dreams in the\nreal and daily things, the daring Governors like Wilson and like Hughes,\nthe daring inventors of great business houses, the men who have invented\nthe foundations on which nations can stand, on which railroads can run,\nthe men whose imaginations, in the name of heaven, have played with the\nearth mightily, watered deserts, sailed cities on the seas, the men who\nhave whistled and who have said \"Come!\" to empires, who have thought\nhundred-year thoughts, taken out nine hundred and ninety-nine year\nleases, who have thought of mighty ways for cities to live, for cities\nto be cool, to be light, to be dark, who have conceived ways for nations\nto talk, who have grasped the earth and the sky like music, like words,\nand put them in the hands of the people, and made the people say, \"O\nearth,\" and \"O sky, thou art great, but we also are great! Come earth\nand sky, thou shalt praise God with us!\"\n\nWho are these men?\n\nLet the President catch up!\n\nWho are these men? Here is Edward A. Filene, who takes up the pride,\njoy, beauty, self-respect, and righteousness of a city, swings it into a\nStore, and makes that Store sing about the city up and down the world!\nHere is Alexander Cassatt, imperturbable, irrepressible, and like a\ngreat Boy playing leapfrog with a Railroad--Cassatt who makes\nquick-hearted, dreamy Philadelphia duck under the Sea, bob up serenely\nin the middle of New York and leap across Hell Gate to get to Boston!\nLet the parliaments droning on their benches, the Congresses pile out of\ntheir doors and catch up.\n\nLet the lawyers--the little swarms of dark-minded lawyers, wondering and\nrunning to and fro, creeping in offices, who have tried to run our\nworld, blurred our governments, and buzzed, who have filled the world\nwith piles of old paper, Congressional Records, with technicalities,\nwords, droning, weariness, despair, and fear ... let them come out and\nlook! Let them catch up!\n\nLet a man in this day in the presence of men like these sing. If a man\ncannot sing, let him be silent. Only men who are singing things shall do\nthem.\n\nI go out into the street, I go out and look almost anywhere, listen\nanywhere, and the singing rises round me!\n\nIt was singing that spread the wireless telegraph like a great web\nacross the sky.\n\nIt was singing that dug the subways under the streets in New York.\n\nIt was singing, a kind of iron gladness, hope and faith in men, that has\nflung up our skyscrapers into the lower stories of the clouds, and made\nthem say, \"_I will! I will! I will!_\" to God.\n\nAh, how often have I seen them from the harbour, those flocking, crowded\nskyscrapers under that little heaven in New York, lifting themselves in\nthe sunlight and in the starlight, lifting themselves before me,\nsometimes, it seems, like crowds of great states, like a great country\npiled up, like a nation reaching, like the plains and the hills and the\ncities of my people standing up against heaven day by day--all those\nflocks of the skyscrapers saying, \"_I will! I will! I will!_\" to God.\n\nThe skyscrapers are news about us to our President. He shall reckon with\nskyscraper men. He shall interpret men that belong with skyscrapers.\n\nAnd as he does so, I shall watch the people answer him, now with a glad\nand mighty silence and now with a great solemn shout.\n\nThe skyscrapers are their skyscrapers.\n\nThe courage, the reaching-up, the steadfastness that is in them is in\nthe hearts of the people.\n\nIf the President does not know us yet in America, does not know McAdoo\nas a representative American, we will thunder on the doors of the White\nHouse until he does.\n\nMy impression is he would be out in the yard by the gate asking us to\ncome in.\n\nWe are America. We are expressing our joy in the world, our faith in\nGod, and our love of the sun and the wind in the hearts of our people.\n\nIn America the free air breathes about us, and daily the great sun\nclimbs our hillsides, swings daily past our work. There are ninety\nmillion men with this sun and this wind woven into their bodies, into\ntheir souls. They stand with us.\n\nThe skyscrapers stand with us.\n\nAll singing stands with us.\n\nAh, I have waked in the dawn and in the sun and the wind have I seen\nthem!\n\nThat sun and that wind, I say before God, are America! They are the\nAmerican temperament.\n\nI will have laws for free men, laws with the sun and the wind in them!\n\nI have waked in the dawn and my heart has been glad with the iron and\npoetry in the skyscrapers.\n\nI will have laws for men and for American men, laws with iron and poetry\nin them!\n\nThe way for a government to get the poetry in is to say \"Yes\" to\nsomebody.\n\nThe way for a government to get the iron in is not by saying \"No.\" It is\nnot American in a government to keep saying \"No.\" The best way for our\ngovernment in America to say \"No\" to a man, is to let him stand by and\nwatch us saying \"Yes\" to some one else.\n\nThen he will ask why.\n\nThen he will stand face to face with America.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XI\n\nNEWS-BOOKS\n\n\nThe most practical thing that could happen now in the economic world in\nAmerica would be a sudden, a great national, contemporary literature.\n\nAmerica, unlike England, has no recognized cultured class, and has no\naristocracy, so called, with which to keep mere rich men suitably\nmiserable--at least a little humble and wistful. Our greatest need for a\nlong time has been some big serene, easy way, without half trying, of\nsnubbing rich men in America. All these overgrown, naughty fellows one\nsees everywhere like street boys on the corners or on the curbstones of\nsociety, calling society names and taking liberties with it, tripping\npeople up; hoodlums with dollars, all these micks of money!--O, that\nsociety had some big, calm, serene way like some huge hearty London\npoliceman, of taking hold of them--taking hold of them by the seats of\ntheir little trousers if need be, and taking them home to Mother--some\nway of setting them down hard in their chairs and making them\nthoughtful! Nothing but a national literature will do this. \"Life,\"\n(which is, with one exception, perhaps, the only religious weekly we\nhave left in America) succeeds a little and has some spiritual value\nbecause it succeeds in making American millionaires look funny, and in\nmaking them want to get away and live in Europe. But \"Life\" is not\nenough; it merely hitches us along from day to day and keeps our courage\nup. We want in America a literature, we want the thing done thoroughly\nand forever and once for all. We want an Aristophanes, a master who\nshall go gloriously laughing through our world, through our chimneys\nand blind machines, pot-bellied fortunes, empty successes, all these\ntiny, queer little men of wind and bladder, until we have a nation\nfilled with a divine laughter, with strong, manful, happy visions of\nwhat men are for.\n\nAll we have to do is to have a News-book--a bookful of the kind of rich\nmen we want, then we will have them. We will see men piling over each\nother all day to be them. Men have wanted to make money because making\nmoney has been supposed to mean certain things about a man. The moment\nit ceases to mean them, they will want to make other things.\n\nWhere is the news about what we really want?\n\n----, when I took him to the train yesterday, spoke glowingly of the way\nthe Standard Oil Trust had reduced oil from twenty-nine cents to eleven\ncents.\n\nThere was not time to say anything. I just thought a minute of how they\ndid it.\n\nWhy is it that people--so many good people will speak of oil at eleven\ncents in this way, as if it were a kind of little kingdom of heaven?\n\nI admit that eleven cents from twenty-nine cents leaves eighteen cents.\n\nI do not deny that the Standard Oil Trust has saved me eighteen cents.\nBut what have they taken away out of my life and taken out of my sense\nof the world and of the way things go in it and out of my faith in human\nnature to toss me eighteen cents?\n\nIf I could have for myself and others the sense of the world that I had\nbefore, would I not to-day, day after day, over and over, gallon by\ngallon, be handing them their eighteen cents back?\n\nWhat difference does it make to us if we are in a world where we can buy\noil for eleven cents a gallon instead of twenty-nine, if we do not care\nwhether we are alive or dead in it and do not expect anything from\nourselves or expect anything of anybody else? I submit it to your own\ncommon sense, Gentle Reader. Is it any comfort to buy oil to light a\nroom in which you do not want to sit, in which you would rather not see\nanything, in which you would rather not remember who you are, what you\ndo, and what your business is like, and what you are afraid your\nbusiness is going to be like?\n\nI have passed through all this during the last fifteen years and I have\ncome out on the other side. But millions of lives of other men are\npassing through it now, passing through it daily, bitterly, as they go\nto their work and as they fall asleep at night.\n\nThe next thing in this world is not reducing the price of oil. It is\nraising the price of men and putting a market-value on life.\n\nWhat makes a man a man is that he knows himself, knows who he is, what\nhe is for and what he wants. Knowing who he is and knowing what he is\nabout, he naturally acts like a man, knows what he is about like a man,\nand gets things done.\n\nA nation that does not know itself shall not be itself.\n\nA nation that has a muddle-headed literature, a nation that to say\nnothing of not being able to express what it has, has not even made a\nbeginning at expressing what it wants; a nation that has not a great,\neager, glowing literature, a sublime clear-headedness about what it is\nfor--a nation that cannot put itself into a great book, a nation that\ncannot weave itself together even in words into a book that can be\nunfurled before the people like a flag where everybody can see it and\neverybody can share it, look up to it, live for it, sleep for it, get up\nin the morning and work for it--work for the vision of what it wants to\nbe--cannot be a great nation.\n\nA masterpiece is a book that has a thousand years in it. No man has a\nright to say where these thousand years in it shall lie, whether in the\npast or in the future. It is the thousand years' worth in it that makes\na masterpiece a masterpiece. In America we may not have the literature\nof what we are or of what we have been, but the literature of what we\nare bound to be, the literature of what WE WILL, we will have, and we\nwill have to have it before we can begin being it.\n\nFirst the Specifications, then the House.\n\nFrom the practical or literary point of view the one sign we have given\nin this country so far, that the stuff of masterpieces is in us and that\nwe are capable of a great literature, is that America is bored by its\nown books.\n\nWe let a French parson write a book for us on the simple life. We let a\npoor suppressed Russian with one foot in hell reach over and write books\nfor us about liberty which we greedily read and daily use. We let a\nsublimely obstinate Norwegian, breaking away with his life, pulling\nhimself up out of the beautiful, gloomy, morose bog of romance he was\nborn in--express our American outbreak for facts, for frank realism in\nhuman nature.\n\nAmerica is bored by its own books because every day it is demanding\ngloriously from its authors a literature--books that answer our real\nquestions, the questions the people are asking every night as they go to\nsleep and every morning when they crowd out into the streets--Where are\nwe going? Who are we? What are we like? What are we for?\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nA---- C----, the little stoopy cobbler on ---- street in ----, bought\nsome machines to help him last year before I went away and added two or\nthree slaves to do the work. I find on coming back that he has moved and\nhas two show windows now, one with the cobbling slaves in it cobbling,\nand the other (a kind of sudden, impromptu room with a show window in\nit) seems to be straining to be a shoe store. When you go in and show\nC---- in his shirt sleeves,--your old shoes hopefully, he slips over\nfrom his shining leather bench to the shoe-store side and shows you at\nthe psychological moment a new pair of shoes.\n\nHe is in the train now with me this morning, across the aisle, looking\nout of the window for dear life, poor fellow, for all the world as if he\ncould suck up dollars and customers--and people who need shoes--out of\nthe fields as he goes by, the way the man does mists, by looking hard at\nthem.\n\nI watched him walking up and down the station platform before I got on,\nwith that bent, concentrated, meek, ready-to-die-getting-on look. I saw\nhis future while I looked. I saw, or thought I saw, windows full of\nbright black shoes, I saw the cobbler's shop moved out into the ell at\nthe back, and two great show windows in front. A---- C---- looks like an\nedged tool.\n\nMillions of Americans are like A---- C----, like chisels, adzes, saws,\nscoops. You talk with them, and if you talk about anything except\nscooping and adzing, you are not talking with just a man, but a man who\nis for something and who is not for anything else. He is not for being\ntalked with certainly, and alas! not for being loved. At best he is a\nmere feminine convenience--a father or a cash secreter; until he wears\nout at last, buzzes softly into a grave.\n\nAn Englishman of this type is a little better, would be more like one of\nthese screw-driver, cork-screw arrangements--a big hollow handle with\nall sorts of tools inside.\n\nIs this man a typical American? Does he need to be?\n\nWhat I want is news about us.\n\nAll an American like C---- needs is news. His eagerness is the making of\nhim. He is merely eager for what he will not want.\n\nAll he needs is the world's news about people, about new inventions in\nhuman beings, news about the different and happier kinds of newly\ninvented men, news about how they were thought of, and how they are\nmade, and news about how they work.\n\nI demand three things for A---- C----:\n\nI want a novel that he will read which will make him see himself as I\nsee him.\n\nI want a moving picture of him that he will go to and like and go to\nagain and again.\n\nI want a play that will send him home from the theatre and keep him\nawake with what he might be all that night.\n\nI want a news-book for A---- C----, a news-book for all of us.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nI read a book some years ago that seemed a true news-book and which was\nthe first suggestion I had ever received that a book can be an act of\ncolossal statesmanship, the making or remaking of a people--a\nmasterpiece of modern literature, laying the ground plan for the\ngreatness of a nation.\n\nWhen I had read it, I wanted to rush outdoors and go down the street\nstopping people I met and telling them about it. Once in a very great\nwhile one does come on a book like this. One wants to write letters to\nthe reviews. One does not know what one would not do to go down the long\naimless Midway Plaisance of the modern books, to call attention to it.\nOne wishes there were a great bell up over the world.... One would reach\nup to it, and would say to all the men and the women and to the flocks\nof the smoking cities, \"Where are you all?\" The bell would boom out,\n\"What are you doing? Why are you not reading this book?\" One wonders if\none could not get a coloured page in the middle of the _Atlantic_ or the\n_North American Review_ or _Everybody's_ and at least make a great book\nas prominent as a great soap--almost make it loom up in a country like a\nFelt Mattress or a Toothbrush.\n\nThe book that has made me feel like this the most is Charles Ferguson's\n\"Religion of Democracy.\" I have always wondered why only people here and\nthere responded to it. The things it made me vaguely see, all those huge\nmasses of real things, gigantic, half-godlike, looming like towers or\nmountains in a mist.... Well, it must have been a little like this that\nColumbus felt that first morning!\n\nBut as Columbus went on, what he struck after all was real land, some\npiece of real land in particular. The mist of vision did precipitate\ninto something one could walk on, and I found as I went on with Mr.\nFerguson's book that if there was going to be any real land, somebody\nwould have to make some.\n\nBut for the time being Charles Ferguson's book--all those glorious\ngeneralizings in behalf of being individual, all those beautiful,\nintoned, chanted abstractions in behalf of being concrete--came to me in\nmy speechless, happy gratitude as a kind of first sign in the heavens,\nas a pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night, up over the place in\nthe waste of water where land, Land! At last! Land again! will have to\nbe.\n\nIf we ever have a literature in America, it will be found somewhere when\nthe mist rolls away, right under Charles Ferguson's book.\n\nIt may be too soon just now in this time of transition in our land of\npiles and of derricks against the sky, for the book. All we are\ncompetent for now is to say that we want such a book, that we see what\nit will do for us.\n\nWhen we want it, we will get it. Let the American people put in their\norder now.\n\nIn the meantime the Piles and the Derricks.\n\nAll these young and mighty derricks against the sky, all these soaring\nsteel girders with the blue through them--America!\n\nAh, my God! is it not a hoping nation? Three thousand miles of Hope,\nfrom Eastport, Maine, to San Francisco--does not the very sun itself\nracing across it take three hours to get one look at our Hope?\n\nHere it is!--Our World.\n\nLet me, for one, say what I want.\n\nIt is already as if I had seen it--one big, heroic imagination at work\nat last like a sea upon our world, poetry grappling with the great\ncities, with their labour, with their creative might, full of their vast\njoys and sorrows, full of their tussle with the sea and with the powers\nof the air and with the iron in the earth!--the big, speechless cities\nthat no one has spoken for yet, so splendid, and so eager, and so silent\nabout their souls!\n\nIt is true we are crude and young.\n\nBehold the Derricks like mighty Youths!\n\nIn our glorious adolescence so sublime, so ugly, so believing, will no\none sing a hymn to the Derricks?\n\nWhere are the dear little Poets? Where are they hiding?\n\nPlaying Indian perhaps, or making Parthenons out of blocks.\n\nPerhaps they might begin faintly and modestly at first.\n\nSome dear, hopeful, modest American poet might creep up from under them,\nout from under the great believing, dumb Derricks standing on tiptoe of\nfaith against the sky, and write a book and call it \"Beliefs American\nPoets Would Like to Believe if They Could.\"\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XII\n\nNEWS-BOOKS II\n\n\nA nation's religion is its shrewdness about its ideals, its genius for\nstating its ideals or news about itself, in the terms of its everyday\nlife.\n\nA nation's literature is its power of so stating its ideals that we will\nnot need to be shrewd for them--its power of expressing its ideals in\nwords, of tracing out ideals on white paper, so that ideals shall\nenthrall the people, so that ideals shall be contagious, shall breathe\nand be breathed into us, so that ideals shall be caught up in the voices\nof men and sung in the streets.\n\nIdeals, intangible, electric, implacable irresistible, all-enfolding\nideals, shall hold and grip a continent the way a climate grips a\ncontinent, like sunshine around a helpless thing, in the hollow of its\nhand, and possess the hearts of the people.\n\nWhat our government needs now is a National band in Washington.\n\nAmerica is a Tune.\n\nAmerica is not a formula. America is not statistics, even graphic\nstatistics. A great nation cannot be made, cannot be discovered, and\nthen be laid coldly together like a census. America is a Tune. It must\nbe sung together.\n\nThe next thing statesmen are going to learn in this country is that from\na practical point of view in making a great nation only our Tune in\nAmerica and only our singing our Tune can save us. A great nation can be\nmade out of the truth about us. The truth may be--must be\nprobably,--plain. But the truth must sing.\n\nIt will not be the government that first gets the truth that will govern\nus. The government that gets the truth big enough to sing first, and\nsings it, will be the government that will govern us. The political\nparty in this country that will first be practical with the people, and\nthat will first get what it wants, will be the political party that\nfirst takes Literature seriously. Our first great practical government\nis going to see how a great book, searching the heart of a nation,\nexpressing and singing the men in it, governs a people. Being a\nPresident in a day like this, if it does not consist in being a poet,\nconsists in being the kind of President who can be, at least, in\npartnership with a poet.\n\nIt is not every President who can be his own David, who can rule with\none hand and write psalms and chants for his people with the other.\n\nThe call is out, the people have put in their order to the authors of\nAmerica, to the boys in the colleges, and to the young women in the\ngreat schools--Our President wants a book.\n\nBefore much time has passed, he is going to have one.\n\nBeing a President in this country has never been expressed in a book.\n\nThe President is going to have a book that expresses him to the people\nand that says what he is trying to do. He will live confidentially with\nthe book. It shall be in his times of trial and loneliness like a great\npeople coming to him softly. He shall feel with such a book, be it day\nor night, the nation by him, by his desk, by his bedside, by his\nsilence, by his questioning, standing by, and lifting.\n\nIn the book the people shall sing to the President. He shall be kept\nreminded that we are there. He shall feel daily what America is like.\nAmerica shall be focussed into melody. We shall have a literature once\nmore and the singers, as in Greece, as in all happy lands and in all\ngreat ages, shall go singing through the streets.\n\nThere is no singing for a President now. All a President can do when he\nis inaugurated, when he begins now, is to kiss helplessly some singing\nfour thousand years old in a Bible by another nation.\n\nWhen David sang to his people, he sang the news, the latest news, the\nnews of what was happening to people about him from week to week.\n\nWhy is no one singing 1913, our own American 1913?\n\nWhy is no one stuttering out our Bible--one the President could have to\nrefer to, our own Bible in our own tongue from morning to morning in the\nsymbols that breathe to us out of the sounds in the street, out of the\nair, out of the fresh, bright American sky, and out of the new ground\nbeneath our feet?\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIt is easy for a President to pile up three columns a morning of news\nabout himself to us, show each man his face in the morning, but what is\nthere he can do with twenty thousand newspapers at his breakfast table,\nto pick out the real news about us? Who shall paint the portrait of a\npeople?\n\nOne could go about in the White House and study the portraits of the\npresidents, but where is the portrait of the people? The portrait of the\npeople comes in little bits to the president like a puzzle picture. Each\nman brings in his little crooked piece, jig-sawed out from Iowa, South\nDakota, Oklahoma or Aroostook County, Maine. This picture or vision of a\nnation, this wilderness of pieces, can be seen every day when one goes\nin, lying in heaps on the floor of the White House.\n\nA literature is the expression on the face of a nation. A literature is\nthe eyes of a great people looking at one.\n\nIt seems to be as we look, looking out of the past and faraway into the\nfuture.\n\nA newspaper can set a nation's focus for a morning, adjusting it one way\nor the other. A President can set the focus for four years. But only a\nbook can set the focus for a nation's next hundred years so that it can\nact intelligently and steadfastly on its main line from week to week and\nmorning to morning. Only a book can make a vast, inspiring, steadfast,\nstage-setting for a nation. Only a book, strong, slow, reflective, alone\nwith each man, and before all men, can set in vast still array the\nperspective, the vision of the people, can give that magnificent\nself-consciousness which alone makes a great nation, or a mighty man. At\nlast humble, imperious, exalted, it shall see Itself, its vision of its\ndaily life lying out before it, threading its way to God!\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XIII\n\nNEWS-PAPERS\n\n\nI went one day six months ago to the Mansion House and heard Lord Grey,\nand Lord Robert Cecil, and Mr. T.C. Taylor and others address the annual\nmeeting of the Labour Copartnership Association.\n\nI found myself in the presence of a body of men who believe that\nEnglishmen are capable of bigger and better things than many men believe\nthey are capable of. They refuse to evade the issue of the coal strike\nand to agree with the socialists who have given up believing that\nEnglish employers can be competent and who merely believe that we will\nhave to rely on our governments now to be employers, and they refuse to\nagree with the syndicalists, who believe in human nature still less and\nhave given up on employers and on governments both.\n\nI have retained three impressions as a result of the meeting.\n\nThe first was that it was the most significant and impressive event\nsince the coal strike, that it brought the whole industrial issue to a\npoint and summed the coal strike up.\n\nThe second impression was one of surprise that the hall was not full.\n\nThe third impression came the next day when I looked through the papers\nfor accounts of what had been said and of what it stood for.\n\nIt was noted pleasantly and hurriedly as one of the day's events. It was\njust one more of those shadowy things that flicker on the big foolish,\ndrifting, rolling attention of a world a second and are gone.\n\nPeople were given a few inches.\n\nI read in the papers that same day a quite long account of a discussion\nof nine bishops for five hours (meeting at the same time) on a matter of\nproper clothes for clergymen.\n\nI would have said of that meeting of the Labour Copartnership\nAssociation--that it was a meeting of a Society for Defence and\nProtection of Longer Possible Religion on the Earth--but the clergy out\nof all the invitations, did not seem very largely to have had time to be\nthere.\n\nI wondered too a little about the papers, as I hunted through them.\n\nIt set one to thinking if anything serious to the nation would have\nhappened, if possibly during the coal strike the London papers had\ndevoted as much attention to T.C. Taylor--a mutual interest\nemployer--and to how he runs his business--as to Horatio Bottomley?\n\nPossibly too what Mr. Sandow prefers to have people drink is not so\nimportant--perhaps whole pages of it at a time--as Amos Mann and how he\nruns his shoe business without strikes, or as Joseph Bibby and how he\nmakes oil cakes and loyal workmen together.\n\nI read the other day of a clergyman in New Jersey--who was organizing a\nleague of all the left-handed men in the world. Everything is being\norganized, whether or no. Some one has financed him. There will be some\none very soon now who will pay the bill for organizing the attention of\na world and for deciding the fate of human nature. It would be worth\nwhile spending possibly one fortune on getting human nature to settle\ndecisively and once for all whether it has any reason to believe in\nitself or not. Why have a world at all--one like this? Do we want it?\nWho wants it? What do we want instead? We will advertise and find out.\nWe will spend millions of pounds and Dreadnoughts, even national\nbeer-bills on it, if necessary, on making everybody know that mentally\ncompetent business men--mutual-interest employers, and mentally\ncompetent workmen--mutual-interest workmen, can be produced by the\nhuman race. When everybody knows that this is true, nine out of ten\nParliamentary questions would be settled, the Churches would again have\na chance to be noticed, and education and even religion could be taken\nseriously. There would be some object in being a teacher perhaps once\nmore and in making teaching again a great profession. There would be\nsome object perhaps in even being an artist. The world would start off\non a decent, self-respecting theory or vision about itself. Things could\nbegin to be done in society once more, soundly, permanently, humanly and\nfrom the bottom up.\n\nWe would go out on the streets again--rich and poor--and look in each\nother's faces. We would take up our morning papers without a sinking at\nthe heart.\n\nAnd the men who have stopped believing in men and who merely believe in\nmachines would be indicted before the bar of mankind. We would see them\nslowly filing back, one by one, to where they belong--on the back seats\nof the world.\n\nThe newspapers in England and America seem to think that in their\nbusiness of rolling the world along, what they find themselves\nconfronted with just now is an economic problem.\n\nThe problem that the newspapers are really confronted with, as a matter\nof fact, is one with which newspaper men big and little are more\ncompetent to deal than they would be with an expert problem in\neconomics. The real problem that newspapers are confronted with every\nnight, every morning, to-day, is a problem in human nature.\n\nSome people believe that human nature can be believed in, and others do\nnot. The socialists, the syndicalists, the trades unionists, as a class,\nand the capitalists as a class, are acting as if they did not. A great\nmany inventors, and a great many workmen, all the more bold and\ninventive workmen, and many capitalists and great organizers of facts\nand of men, are acting as if they believed in human nature.\n\nWhich are right? Can a mutual-interest employer, can a mutual-interest\nworker, be produced by the human race? There are some of us who answer\nthat this is a matter of fact, that this type of man can be produced, is\nalready produced, and is about to be reproduced indefinitely.\n\nThe moment we can convince trades unions and convince employers that\nthis is true we will change the face of the earth.\n\nWhy not change the face of the earth now?\n\nIn this connection I respectfully submit three considerations:\n\n1st. If all employers of the world to-morrow morning knew what Lord Grey\n(as President of the Labour Copartnership Association) knows to-day\nabout copartnership--the hard facts about the way copartnership works in\ncalling out human nature--in nerving and organizing labour, every\nemployer in the world to-morrow would begin to take an attitude toward\nlabour which would result in making strikes and lockouts as\nimpracticable, as incredible, as moony, as visionary forever as ideals\nof a world without strikes look now.\n\n2nd. If all the workmen of the world to-morrow morning knew what\nFrederick Taylor (the American engineer) knows about planning workmen's\nwork so that they receive, for the same expenditure of strength, a third\nmore wages every day, the whole attitude of labour in every nation and\nof the trades unions of the world--the attitude of doing as little work\nas possible, of labouring and studying and slaving away to discover ways\nof not being of any use to employers--would face about in a day.\n\n3rd. What Lord Grey knows about copartnership and the way it works is in\nthe form of ascertainable, communicable, and demonstrable facts. What\nFrederick Taylor knows and what he has been doing with human beings and\nwith steel and pig iron and with bricks and other real things is in the\nform of history that has been making for thirty years--and that can be\nlooked up and proved.\n\nWhy should not everybody who employs labour know what Lord Grey knows?\n\nAnd why should not all workmen know what a few thousand workmen who have\nbeen trained under Frederick Taylor to work under better conditions and\nwith more wages, know?\n\nIf I were an inspired millionaire the first thing I would do to-morrow\nwould be to supply the funds and find the men who should take up what\nLord Grey knows about employers, and what Frederick Taylor knows about\nworkmen, and put it where all who live shall see it and know it. I would\nspend my fortune in proving to the world, in making everybody know and\nbelieve that the mutual-interest business man and the mutual-interest\nworkman have been produced and can be produced and shall be produced by\nthe human race.\n\nThe problem of the fate of the world in its essential nature and in its\nspiritual elements and gifts--has come to be in this age of the press a\nhuge advertising problem--a great adventure in human attention.\n\nThe most characteristic and human and natural way, and the only profound\nand permanent way to handle the quarrel between Capital and Labour is by\nplacing certain facts--certain rights-of-all-men-to-know, into the hands\nof some disinterested and powerful statesman of publicity--some great\norganizer of the attention of a world. He would have to be a practical\npassionate psychologist, a man gifted with a bird's-eye view of\npublics--a discoverer of geniuses and crowds, a natural diviner or\nreader of the hearts of men. He shall search out and employ twenty men\nto write as many books addressed to as many classes and types of\nemployers and workers. He shall arrange pamphlets for every dooryard\nthat cannot help being read.\n\nHe shall reach trades unions by using the cinema, by having some master\nof human appeal take the fate of labour, study it out in pictures--and\nthe truth shall be thrown night after night and day after day on a\nhundred thousand screens around a world. He shall organize and employ\nwide publicity or rely on secret and careful means on different aspects\nof the issue according to the nature of the issue, human nature and\ncommon sense, and organize his campaign to reach every type of person,\nevery temperament, and order of circumstance, each in its own way.\n\nWhat Lord Grey knows and what Frederick Taylor's workmen know shall be\nput where all who live shall see it where every employer, every workman,\nevery workman's wife and every growing boy and girl that is passing by,\nas on some vast billboard above the world, shall see it--shall see and\nknow and believe that employers that are worth believing in--and that\nworkmen who can work and who are skilled and clever enough to love to\nwork--can still be produced by the human race.\n\nIf I were a newspaper man I would start what might be called Pull\nTogether Clubs in every community, men in all walks of life, little\ngroups of crowdmen or men in the community who could not bear not to see\na town do team work.\n\nI would use these Pull Together Clubs in every community as means of\ngathering and distributing news--as local committees on the national\ncampaign of touching the imagination of labour and touching the\nimagination of capital.\n\n\"_Without Vision the People perish_.\"\n\nI would begin with spending five million dollars on a vision for the\npeople.\n\nWhat would I do with a five-million-dollar fund for touching the\nimagination of labour and touching the imagination of capital?\n\nFirst: preliminary announcement in all papers and in all public ways,\nasking names and addresses of workmen who have already proved and\nestablished their belief in copartnership.\n\nNames and addresses of employers in the same way.\n\nSecond: names and addresses of workmen who would believe in it if they\ncould; who believe in the principle theoretically and would be\ninterested in seeing how it could be practically and technically\nproved.\n\nNames and addresses of employers in the same way.\n\nThird: selection of one firm in each industry, the best and most\nstrategically placed to carry it out in that industry, and placing the\nfacts before them.\n\nSelection of the leading workmen out of all the workmen in the nation\nemployed in that industry, who would be willing to work with such a\nfirm.\n\nFourth: a selection of travelling secretaries to visit trades unions and\nget provisional permission and toleration for these workmen so that they\ncan take copartnership places under such a firm with the consent of\ntheir fellows and he set one side for experimental purposes, under the\nprotection of the trades union rules.\n\nFifth: I would find the most promising trades-union branch in each\nindustry and I would try to get this branch to take it up with the other\nbranches until all trades unions were brought to admit copartnership\nmembers on special terms.\n\nSixth: after getting copartnership tolerated for certain workmen\nemployed in certain firms I would try to make copartnership a\ntrades-union movement.\n\nI would then let the trades unions educate the employers.\n\nSeventh: I would prepare a list of apparent exceptions to copartnership\nas a working principle. I would investigate and try to see why they were\nexceptions and why copartnership would not work, and I would find and\nset inventors at work, and find in what way the spirit that is back of\ncopartnership could be applied.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XIV\n\nNEWS-MACHINES\n\n\nWe want to be good and the one thing we need to do is to tell each\nother. Then we will be good. Our conveniences for being good in crowds\nare not finished yet.\n\nWe have invented machines for crowds to see one another with and to use\nin getting about in the dark. One engine whirls round and round all\nnight so that half a million people can be going about anywhere after\nsunset without running into each other.\n\nCrowds have vast machines for being somewhere else--run in somewhat the\nsame way all from one unpretentious building they put up called a Power\nHouse.\n\nA great many of our machines for allowing crowds of people to move their\nbodies around with have been attended to, but our Intelligence-Machine,\nour machine for knowing what other people really think, and what they\nare like in their hearts so that we can know enough to be good to them,\nand have brains enough to get them to be good to us, is not finished and\nset up yet.\n\nThe industrial problem instead of being primarily an economic problem is\na news problem.\n\nIf a President were to appoint a Secretary of Labour and were to give\nhim as one of his conveniences, a news engineer--an expert at attracting\nand holding the attention of labour unions and driving through news to\nthem about themselves that they do not know yet, who would be\npractically at the head of the department in two years? The Secretary or\nthe Secretary's news engineer? News is all there is to such a\ndepartment, finding out what it is and distributing it. Any one can\nthink of scores of labour-union fallacies, news they do not know about\nthemselves that they will want to know at once when their attention is\ncalled to it.\n\nIf nine members of the President's Cabinet were national news agents,\nexperts in nationalizing news, one member could do with his subordinates\nall the other things that Cabinet members do.\n\nThe real problem before each Cabinet member is a problem of news. If the\nSecretary of Commerce, for instance, could get people to know certain\nthings, he would not need to do at all most of the things that he is\ndoing now. Neither would the Attorney General.\n\nIf everything in a Cabinet position turns on getting people to know\nthings, why not get them to know them? Why not take that job instead?\nWhy not take the job of throwing one's self out of a job? Every powerful\nman has done it--thrown himself out of what he was doing, by making up\nsomething bigger to do from the beginning of the world.\n\nIn every business it is the man who can recognize, focus, organize, and\napply news, and who can get news through to people, who soon becomes the\nhead of the business.\n\nThe man who can get news through to directors and to employees and make\nthem see themselves and see one another and the facts as they are, soon\ngets to be Head of the factory.\n\nThe man who can get news through to the public, the salesman of news to\npeople about what they want to buy and about how they are to spend their\nmoney--very personal, intimate news to every man--soon rises to be Head\nof the Head of the factory and of the entire business.\n\nIt will probably be the same in a cabinet or in a government. If the\nSecretary of the Department of Commerce has a news engineer as a\nsubordinate in his department and begins to study and observe how to do\nhis work best, how to solve his problem in the nation, we will soon see\nthe head of the department, if he really is the head of the department,\nquietly taking over his news engineer's job and letting his news\nengineer have his.\n\nIt is a news engineering job, being a Secretary of Commerce.\n\nEvery member of the Cabinet has a news engineering job.\n\nAnd the fact seems to be that the moment the news is attended to in each\nmember's department--applied news, special and private news, turned on\nand set to work where it is called for--most members of cabinets,\nsecretaries of making people do things, and for that matter, the\nPresidents of making people do things will be thrown out of employment.\nThe Secretaries of What People Think, and the President of What People\nThink--the engineers of the news in this nation--will be the men who\ngovern it.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XV\n\nNEWS-CROWDS\n\n\nI have tried to express in the last chapter, some kind of tentative\nworking vision or hope of what authors and of what newspaper men can do\nin governing a country.\n\nThis chapter is for anybody, any plain human being.\n\nGovernments all over the world to-day are groping to find out what plain\nhuman beings are like.\n\nIt does not matter very long what other things a government gets wrong,\nif it gets the people right.\n\nThis suggests something that each of us can do.\n\nI was calling on ----, Treasurer of ----, in his new bank, not long\nago--a hushed, reverent place with a dome up over it and no windows on\nthis wicked world--a kind of heavenly minded way of being lighted from\nabove. It seemed to be a kind of Church for Money.\n\n\"This is new,\" I said, \"since I've been away. Who built it?\"\n\n---- mentioned the name of Non-Gregarious as if I had never heard of\nhim.\n\nI said nothing. And he began to tell me how Non built the bank. He said\nhe had wanted Non from the first, but that the directors had been set\nagainst it.\n\nAnd the more he told the directors about Non, he said, the more set they\nwere. They kept offering a good many rather vague objections, and for a\nlong time he could not really make them out.\n\nFinally he got it. All the objections boiled down to one.\n\nNon was too good to be true. If there was a man like Non in this world,\nthey said, they would have heard about it before.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nWhen I was telling ex-Mayor ----, in ----, about Non, the first time, he\ninterrupted me and asked me if I would mind his ringing for his\nstenographer. He was a trustee and responsible, either directly or\nindirectly, for hundreds of buildings, and he wanted the news in\nwriting.\n\nOf course there must be something the matter with it, he said, but he\nwanted it to be true, if it could, and as the bare chance of its being\ntrue would be very important to him, he was going to have it looked up.\n\nNow ex-Mayor ---- is precisely the kind of man (as half the world knows)\nwho, if he had been a contractor, instead of what he had happened to be,\nwould have been precisely the kind of contractor Non is. He has the same\ndifficult, heroic blend of shrewd faiths in him, of high motives and\ngetting what he wants.\n\nBut the moment ex-Mayor ---- found these same motives put up to be\nbelieved in at one remove, and in somebody else, he thought they were\ntoo good to be true.\n\nI have found myself constantly confronted in the last few years of\nobservation with a very singular and interesting fact about business\nmen.\n\nNine business men out of ten I know, who have high motives, (in a rather\nbluff simple way, without particularly thinking about it, one way or the\nother) seem to feel a little superior to other people. They begin, as a\nrule, apparently, by feeling a little superior to themselves, by trying\nto keep from seeing how high their motives are, and when, in the stern\nscuffle of life, they are unable any longer to keep from suspecting how\nhigh their motives are themselves, they fall back on trying to keep\nother people from suspecting it.\n\nIn ----'s factory in ----, the workers in brass, a few years ago, could\nnot be kept alive more than two years because they breathed brass\nfilings. When ---- installed, at great expense, suction machines to\nplace beside the men to keep them from breathing brass, some one said,\n\"Well surely you will admit this time, that this is philanthropy?\"\n\n\"Not at all.\"\n\nThe saving in brass air alone, gathered up from in front of the men's\nmouths, paid for the machines. What is more he said that after he had\ngone to the expense of educating some fine workmen, if a mere little\nsucking machine like that could make the best workmen he had, work for\nhim twenty years instead of two years, it was poor economy to let them\ndie.\n\nNearly all of the really creative business men make it a point, until\nthey get a bit intimate with people, to talk in this tone about\nbusiness. One can talk with them for hours, for days at a time, about\ntheir business--some of them, without being able a single time to corner\nthem into being decent or into admitting that they care about anybody.\n\nNow I will not yield an inch to ---- or to anybody else in my desire to\ndisplace and crowd out altruism in our modern life. I believe that\naltruism is a feeble and discouraged thing from a religious point of\nview. I have believed that the big, difficult and glorious thing in\nreligion is mutualism, a spiritual genius for finding identities, for\nputting people's interests together-you-and-I-ness, and we-ness, letting\npeople crowd in and help themselves.\n\nAnd why not believe this and drop it? Why should nearly every business\nman one meets to-day, try to keep up this desperate show, of avoiding\nthe appearance of good, of not wanting to seem mixed up in any way with\ngoodness--either his own or other people's?\n\nIn the present desperate crisis of the world, when all our governments\neverywhere are groping to find out what business men are really like and\nwhat they propose to be like, if a man is good (far more than if he is\nbad) everybody has a right to know it. The President has a right to know\nit. The party leaders have a right to know it.\n\nIt is a big businesslike thing for a man to make goodness pay, but what\nis the man's real, deep, happy, creative, achieving motive in making\ngoodness pay? What is it in the man that fills him with this fierce\ndesire, this almost business-fanaticism for making goodness pay?\n\nIt is a big daily grim love of human nature in him, his love of being in\na human world, his passion for human economy, for world efficiency and\nworld-self-respect. This is what it is in him that makes him force\ngoodness to pay.\n\nThe business men of the bigger type who let themselves talk in this tone\nto-day, do not mean it, they are letting themselves be insensibly drawn\ninto the tone of the men around them.\n\nWe have gone skulking about with our virtues so long, saying that we\nhave none, that we have believed it. We all know men finer than we are\nwho say they have none. So we have not, probably.\n\nAnd so it goes on. I grow more and more tired every year of going about\nthe business world, at boards of trade and at clubs and at dinners, and\nfinding all this otherwise plain and manly world, all dotted over\neverywhere with all these simple, good, self-deceived blundering prigs\nof evil, putting on airs before everybody day and night, of being worse\nthan they are!\n\nIt is not exactly a lie. It is a Humdrum. People do not deliberately lie\nabout human nature. They merely say pianola-minded things.\n\nOne goes down any business street, Oxford Street, Bond Street, or\nBroadway. One hears the same great ragtime tune of business, dinging\nlike a kind of street piano, through men's minds, \"Sh-sh-sh-sh-Oh,\nSH-SH! Oh, do not let anybody know I'm being good!\"\n\n\n=II=\n\nI am not going to try any longer to worm out of my virtues or to keep up\nan appearance of having as low motives as other people are trying to\nmake me believe they have.\n\nThey have lied long enough.\n\nI have lied long enough.\n\nMy motives are really rather high and I am going to admit it.\n\nAnd the higher they are (when I have hustled about and got the necessary\nbrains to go with them) the better they have worked.\n\nNine times out of ten when they have not worked, it has been my fault.\n\nSometimes it is John Doe's fault.\n\nI am going to speak to John Doe about it. I am going to tell him what I\nam driving at. I have turned over a new leaf. In the crisis of a great\nnation and as an act of last desperate patriotism, I am going to give up\nlooking modest.\n\nFor a long time now I have wanted to dare to come out and stand up\nbefore this Modesty Bug-a-boo and have it out with it and say what I\nthink of it, as one of the great, still, sinister threats against our\nhaving or getting a real national life in America.\n\nI knew a boy once who grew so fast that his mother always kept him\nwearing shoes three sizes too large, and big, hopeful-looking coats and\ntrousers. Except for a few moments a year he never caught up. Nobody\never saw that boy and his long shoes when he was not butting bravely\nabout, stubbing his toes on the world and turning up his sleeves.\n\nIt was a great relief to him and everybody, finally, when he grew up.\n\nI am going to let myself go around, for a while now, at least until our\npresent national crisis is over in business and in politics, like that\nboy.\n\nThere are millions of other men in this country who want to be like\nthat boy. Nations may smile at us if they want to. We will smile\ntoo--rather stiffly and soberly, but for better or worse we propose from\nto-day on, to let people see what we are trying to be daily, grimly,\nright along side of what we are!\n\nI have come to the conclusion that the only way, for me, at least, to\nkeep modest and kind, is to have my ideals all on. When one is going\naround in sight of everybody with one's moral sleeves rolled up, and\none's great wistful, broad trousers that do not look as if they would\never get filled out, it is awkward to find fault with other people for\nnot filling out their moral clothes. It may be a severe measure to take\nwith one's self hut the surest way to be kind is to live an exposed\nlife.\n\nI propose to live the next few years in a glass house. There are\nmillions of other men who want to. We want to see if we cannot at last\nlive confidentially with a world, live naively and simply with a world\nlike boys and like great men and like dogs!\n\nWhat I have written, I have written. I propose to run the risk of being\ngood. When driven to it, I will run the risk of saying I am good.\n\nMy motives are fairly high. See! here is my scale of one hundred! I had\nrather stand forty-five on my scale than ninety-eight on yours!\n\nIf there is any discrepancy between my vision and my action, I am not\ngoing to be bullied out of my life and out of living my life the way I\nwant to, by the way I look. Though it mock me, I will not haul down my\nflag. I will haul up my life!\n\nHere it is right here in this paragraph, in black and white. I take it\nup and look at it, I read it once more and lay it down.\n\nWhat I have written, I have written.\n\n\n=III=\n\nPeople do not seem to agree in the present crisis of our American\nindustrial and national life, about the necessity of getting at the\nfacts and at the real news in this country about how good we are.\n\nLast November in the national election, four and a half million men\n(Republicans) said to Theodore Roosevelt, \"Theodore! do not be good so\nloud!\"\n\nFour and a half million other men, also Republicans, told him not to\nmind what anybody said, but to keep right on being good as loud as he\nliked, for as long as it seemed necessary.\n\nThey wanted to be sure our goodness in America such as we had, was being\nloud enough to be heard, believed in, and acted on in public.\n\nThe other set of men, last November (who were really very good too, of\ncourse), were more sedate and liked to see goodness modulated more. They\nstood out for what might be called a kind of moral elegance.\n\nThe governing difference between the Roosevelt type and the Taft type in\nAmerica has not been a mere difference of temperament but a difference\nin news-sense, in a sense of crisis in the nation.\n\nThousands of men of all parties, with the nicest, easiest stand-pat Taft\ntemperaments in the world, with soft, low voices and with the most\nbeautiful moral manners, have let themselves join in a national attempt\nto shock this nation into seeing how good it is. A great temporary\ncrisis can only be met by a great temporary loudness.\n\nThis is what has been happening in America during the last six months.\nAt last, all men in all parties are engaged in trying to find out: Is it\ntrue or not true that we want to be good?\n\nWe are trying to get the news through. It may not be very becoming to us\nand we know as well as any one, that loudness, except when morally deaf\npeople drive us to it is in bad taste. We are looking forward, every one\nof us, to being as elegant as any one is, and the very first minute we\nget the morally deaf people out of office where we will not have to go\nabout shouting out at them we will tone down in our goodness. We will\nmodulate beautifully!\n\n\n=IV=\n\nThere are three other bug-a-boos, besides the Modesty Bug-a-boo that\nAmerica will have to face and drive out of the way before it can be\ntruly said to have a national character or to have grown up and found\nitself. There is the Goody-good Bug-a-boo, the Consistency Bug-a-boo,\nand the Bug-a-boo that Thomas Jefferson if he were living now, would\nnever never ride in a carriage.\n\nEach of these bug-a-boos in the general mistiness and muddle-headiness\nof the time can be seen going about, saying, \"Boo! Boo!\" to this\ndemocracy from day to day and year to year, keeping it scared into not\ngetting what it wants.\n\nThere is not one of them that will not evaporate in ten minutes the\nfirst morning we get some real news through in this country about\nourselves and about what we are like.\n\nWhat is the real news about us, for instance, as regards being\ngoody-good?\n\nI can only begin with the news for one.\n\nFor years, I have held myself back from taking a plain or possibly loud\nstand for goodness as a shrewd, worldly-wise program for American\nbusiness and public life, because I was afraid of people, and afraid\npeople would think I was trying to improve them.\n\nWhat was worse, I was afraid of myself too. I was afraid I really would.\n\nI am afraid now, or rather I would be, if I had not drilled through to\nthe news about myself and about other people and about human nature that\nI am putting into this chapter.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nI have written five hundred pages in this book on an awkward and\ndangerous subject like the Golden Rule, and I appeal to the reader--I\nask him humbly, hopefully, gratefully if he can honestly say (except for\na minute here and there when I have been tired and slipped up), if he\nhas really felt improved or felt that I was trying to improve him in\nthis book.\n\nOn your honour, Gentle Reader--you who have been with me five hundred\npages!\n\nYou say \"Yes\"?\n\nThen I appeal to your sense of fairness. If you truly feel I have been\ntrying to improve you in this book, turn this leaf down here and stop.\nIt is only fair to me. Close the book with your improved and being\nimproved feeling and never open it again until it passes over. You have\nno right to go on page after page calling me names, as it were, right in\nthe middle of my own book in this way behind my back, you!--hundreds and\nthousands of miles away from me, by your own lamp, by your own\nwindow--you come to me here between these two helpless pasteboard covers\nwhere I cannot get out at you, where I cannot answer back, and you say\nthat I am trying to improve you!\n\nAh, Gentle Reader, forgive me! God forgive me! Believe me, I never\nmeant, not if it could possibly be helped, to improve you! If you insist\non it and keep saying that I have been improving you, all I can say is\nthat I was merely looking as if I were improving you. _You_ did it. I\ndid not. God help me if I am trying to improve you! I am trying to find\nout in this book who I am. If, incidentally, while I am quietly working\naway on this for five hundred pages, you find out who you are yourself,\nand then drop into a gentle glowing improved feeling all by yourself, do\nnot mix me up in it. I deny that I have tried to improve you or anybody.\nI have written this book to get my own way, to express my America. I\nhave written it to say \"i,\" to say \"I,\" to say (the first minute you let\nme), \"you and I,\" to say we, WE about America--to drive the news through\nto a President of what America is like.\n\nI am not improving you. I am telling you what may or may not be news\nabout you.\n\nTake it or leave it.\n\n\n=V=\n\nI want to be good.\n\nI do not feel superior to other men.\n\nAnd I do not propose, if there is anything I can do about it, to be\ncompelled to feel superior.\n\nI believe we all want to be good.\n\nThe one thing I want in this world is to prove it. I want my own way.\n\nI am not going to slump into being a beautiful character. I have written\nthis book to get my own way.\n\nI have said I will not be mixed up in the fate of people who do not know\nwhere they are going, who have not decided what they are like, who do\nnot know who they are. What do the people want? Some people tell me they\nwant nothing. They tell me it would only make things worse and stir\nthings up for me to want to be good.\n\nOr perhaps they think it is beautiful to lower the price of oil. They\nwant oil at seven cents a gallon.\n\nDo they? Do you? Do I?\n\nI say no. Let oil wait. I want to raise the price of men and to put a\nmarket value on human life. I find as I look about me that there are two\nclasses of statesmen offering to be helpful in making life worth living\nin America.\n\nThere are the statesmen who think we are going to be good and who\nbelieve in a program which trusts and exalts the people and the leaders\nof the people.\n\nThere are the statesmen who seem to believe that American human nature\ndoes not amount to enough to be good. They are planning a program on the\nprinciple that the best that can be done with human nature in America in\nbusiness and public life is to have it expurgated.\n\nWhich class of statesmen do we want?\n\nIn some of our state prisons men who are not considered fit to reproduce\nthemselves are sterilized. The question that is now up before this\ncountry is, Do we or do we not want American business sterilized? Are we\nor are we not going to put a national penalty on all initiative in all\nbusiness men because some men abuse it?\n\nThere is but one thing that can save us, namely, proving to one another\nand to our public men, that we are good, that we are going to be good\nand that we know how. We face the issue to-day. Two definite programs\nare before the country.\n\nThose who have put their faith in being afraid of one another as a\nnational policy have devised several By-laws for an Expurgated America.\n\nThey say, eliminate the right of a man to do wrong. Deny him the right\nof moral experiment because some of his experiments do not work. We say\nlet him try. We can look out for ourselves or we will have bigger men\nthan he is, to look out for us.\n\nThey say, eliminate the right of a man to be an owner, because nobody\nhas the courage to believe that a man can express his best self in\nproperty. We say that property may express a man's religion, and that\nthe way a man has of being rich or of being poor may be an art-form.\n\nMost men can express themselves better in property than in anything\nelse.\n\nThey say, eliminate all monopoly indiscriminately and the occasional\nlogical efficiency of monopoly because it has not worked well for the\npeople the first few times and because we have not learned how to handle\nit. We say learn how to handle it.\n\nThey say eliminate the middleman. They say that the one strategic man in\nevery industry who can represent everybody if he wants to, who can be a\ngreat man and who can make a great industry serve everybody, must be\neliminated because nobody believes America can produce a middleman. We\nsay instead of weakly and helplessly giving up a great spiritual and\nmorally-engineering institution like the middleman because the average\nmiddleman does not know his job, we say: Exalt the middleman raise him\nto the n-th power, make him--well--do you remember, Gentle Reader, the\nwalking beams on the old sidewheel steamers? We say do not eliminate\nhim--lift him up--make him what he naturally is and is in position to\nbe--the walking beam of Business!\n\nIf the average middleman does not know how to be a real middleman we\nwill make one who does.\n\nAnd all the other eliminations that we have watched people being scared\ninto, one by one, we will turn into exaltations--each in its own kind\nand place. There is not one of our fears that is not the suggestion, the\nmighty outline, the inspiration for the world's next new size and new\nkind of American man. We say place the position before the man--with its\nfears, with its songs, with its challenge. We say, tell him what we\nexpect of him and demand of him. Put him in a high place on a platform\nbefore the world! There with the truth about him written on his forehead\nin the sight of all the people, call him by name, glorify him or behead\nhim! We are men and we are Americans. We will stand up to each of our\ndangers one by one. Each and every danger of them is a romance, a\nsublime adventure, a nation-maker. Our threats, our very by-words and\ndespairs, we will take up, and, in the sight of the world, forge them\ninto shrewd faiths and into mighty men!\n\nThis is my news or vision. I say that this is where we are going in\nAmerica. I compel no man to follow my news but I will pursue him with my\nnews until he gives me his!\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThis news, I am telling, Gentle Reader, is perhaps news about you.\n\nIf it is not true news, say so. Say what is. We all have a right to\nknow. The one compulsion of modern life is our right to know, our right\nto compel people who live on the same continent or who live in the same\ncountry with us, to open up their hearts, to furnish us with their share\nof the materials for a mutual understanding, or for a definite mutual\nmisunderstanding, on which to live.\n\nIt is the one compulsion of which we will be guilty. All liberty is in\nit. These people who have to live with us and that we have to live with,\nthese people who breathe the same moral air with us, drink the same\nwater with us, these people who have their moral dumps, who throw away\ntheir moral garbage with us--these people who will not help provide some\ndaily, mutual understanding for these common decencies for our souls to\nlive together these people we defy and challenge! We will compel them to\nreveal themselves. We will drive them away, or we will drive them into\ndriving us away, if they will not yield to us what is in their\nhearts--Mars, hell, anywhere we go, it matters not to us where we go,\nexcept that we cannot and we will not live with men about us who thrust\ndown their true feelings and their real desires into a kind of manhole\nunder them, and sit on the lid and smile. Some seem to have manholes and\nsome have safes or spiritual banks, and there are others who have\nconvenient, dim, beautiful clouds in the sky to hide their feelings in.\nBut whatever their real feelings are, and wherever they keep them, they\nbelong to us.\n\nWe insist on having or on making mutual arrangements to have, if we live\nin crowds, some kind of spiritual rapid transit system for getting our\nminds through to one another. We demand a system for having the streets\nof our souls decently lighted, some provision for moral sewers, for air\nor atmosphere--and all the common conveniences for having decent and\nself-respecting souls in crowds--all the intelligence-machines, the\nlove-machines, the hope-machines, and the believing-machines that the\ncrowds must have for living decently, for living with beauty, living\nwith considerateness and respect in this awful daily sublime presence of\none another's lives!\n\nWe shall still have our splendid isolations when we need them, some of\nus, and our little solitudes of meanness, but the main common fund of\nmotives for living together, for growing up into a world together, the\ndesires, motives, and intentions in men's hearts, their desires toward\nus and ours toward them, we are going to know and compel to be made\nknown. We will fight men to the death to know them.\n\nHave we not fought, you and I, Gentle Reader, all of us, each man of us,\nall our years, all our days, to drive through to some sort of mutual\nunderstanding with our own selves? Now we will fight through to some\nmutual understanding with one another and with the world.\n\nWe will knock on every door, make a house to house canvass of the souls\nof the world, pursue every man, sing under his windows. We will\nundergird his consciousness and his dreams. We will make the birds sing\nto him in the morning, \"_Where are you going_?\" We will put up a sign at\nthe foot of his bed for his eyes to fall on when he awakes, \"_Where are\nyou going_?\"\n\nWhatever it is that works best, if we blow it out of you with dynamite\nor love or fear or draw it out of you with some mighty singing going\npast--ah, brother, we will have it out of you! You shall be our brother!\nWe will be your brother though we die!\n\nWe will live together or we will die together.\n\nWhat do you really want? What do you really like? _Who are you_?\n\nWe may pile together all our funny, fearful, little Dreadnoughts, our\nstodgy dead lumps of men called armies, and what are they? And what do\nthey amount to and what can they do, as compared with truth, the real\nnews about what people want in this world, and about where we are going?\n\nI say--they shall be as nothing as a rending force, as a glory to tear\ndown and rebuild a world, as compared with the truth, with the news\nabout us, that shall come out at last (God hasten the day!) from the\nopen--the pried-open hearts of men! And I have seen that men shall go\nforth with shouts in that day and with glad and solemn silence, to build\na world!\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nI wonder if I have faced down the Goody-good Bug-a-boo.\n\nI speak for five million men.\n\nWe have got this book written between us (under the name of one of us),\nbecause we want our own way. We are not improving people. We are not\neven trying to improve ourselves. Many of us started in on it once and\nthe first improvement we thought of was not to try any more.\n\nIt is a great deal harder to try to live. Few people want us to--most\npeople get in the way. And when people get in the way we lay about us a\nlittle--We hit them. We have written this book, because we want to hit a\ngreat many people at once. We find them everywhere about us, in monster\ncities, huge thoughtless anthills of them, and they will not let us live\na larger and a richer life. We say to them, We resent your houses your\nshoes, your voices, your fears, your motives, your wills, the diseases\nyou make us walk past every day, the rows of things you seem to think\nwill do, and that you think we must get used to, and we do not propose,\nif we can help it, to get used to what you think will do for Churches;\nnor to what you think will do for a government or to the little lonely,\nscattered, toyschool-houses, that when you come into the world, fresh\nand strange and happy you all proceed solemnly to coop your souls in.\nNor do we want to get used to your hem-and-haw parliaments and your\nfunny little perfumed prophets--your prophets lying down or propped up\nwith pillows or your poets wringing their hands. Nor will we be put off\nwith all your gracefully feeble, watery, lovely little pastel religions\nfor this grim and mighty modern world. We are American men. We do not\npropose to be driven out to sea, to stand face to face every day with\nwhat is true and full of beauty and magic, or to have skies and\nmountains and stars palmed off on us as companions instead of men!\n\nThis is what five million men are trying to express in writing this\nbook. If people deny that I have the right to give the news about\nAmerica for five million men; if they say that this is not true about\nAmerican human nature, that this is not the news, then I will say, _I am\nthe news_! I am this sort of an American! God helping me, I say it!\n\"Look at _me_!\" I am this sort of man of whom I am writing! If I am not\nthis sort of man this afternoon, I will be in the morning! Though I go\ndown as a hiss and as laughter and as a by-word and a mocking to the end\nof my days--_I_ am this sort of man! I say, \"Look at _me_!\"\n\nIf you will not believe me--that this is an American, if you say that I\ncannot prove that there are five million of men like this in America,\nthen I will still say, \"Here is _one_! What will you do with ME?\" Though\nI die in laughter, all my desires and all my professions in a tumult\nabout my soul, I say it to this nation, \"Your laws, your programs, your\nphilosophies, your I wills, and I won'ts, I say, shall reckon with _me_!\nYour presidents and your legislatures shall reckon with Me!\"\n\nHere I am. The man is here. He is in this book!\n\nI will break through to the five million men. I will make the five\nmillion men look at me until they recognize themselves. If no one else\nwill attend to it for me, and if there shall be no other way, I will\nhave a brass band go through the streets of New York and of a thousand\ncities, with banners and floats and great hymns to the people, and they\nshall go up and down the streets of the people with signs saying, \"Have\nyou read Crowds?\" I will have the Boston Symphony Orchestra tour the\ncountry singing--singing from kettledrums to violins to a thousand\nsilent audiences, \"_Have yon read 'CROWDS'_?\"\n\nI live in a nation in which we are butting through into our sense of our\nnational character, working our way up into a huge mutual working\nunderstanding. In our beautiful, vague, patriotic, muddleheadedness\nabout what we want and whether we really want to be good, and about what\nbeing good is like and I say, for one, half-laughing, half-praying, God\nhelping me--_Look at_ =ME=!\n\n\n=VI=\n\nI was much interested some time ago when I had not been long landed in\nEngland, and was still trying in the hopeful American way to understand\nit--to see the various attitudes of Englishmen toward the discussions\nwhich were going on at that time in the _Spectator_ and elsewhere, of\nMr. Cadbury's inconsistency; and while I had no reason, as an American,\nfresh-landed from New York, to be interested in Mr. Cadbury himself, I\nfound that his inconsistency interested me very much. It insisted on\ncoming back into my mind, in spite of what I would have thought, as a\nstrangely important subject--not merely as regards Mr. Cadbury, which\nmight or might not be important, but as regards England and as regards\nAmerica, as regards the way a modern man struggling day by day with a\nhuge, heavy machine civilization like ours, can still manage to be a\nlive, useful, and possibly even a human, being in it.\n\nThere are two astonishing facts that stand face to face with all of us\nto-day, who are labouring with civilization.\n\nThe first fact is that almost without exception all the men in it who\nmean the most in it to us and to other people for good or for evil--who\nstir us deeply and do things--all fall into the inconsistent class.\n\nThe second fact is that this is a very small, select distinguished, and\nastonishingly capable class.\n\nA man who is in a grim, serious business like being good, must expect to\ngive up many of his little self-indulgences in the way of looking good.\nLooking inconsistent, possibly even inconsistency itself, may be\nsometimes, temporarily, a man's most important public service to his\ntime.\n\nOne needs but a little glance at history, or even at one's own personal\nhistory. It is by being inconsistent that people grow, and without\nmeaning to, give other people materials for growing. For the particular\npurpose of making the best things grow, of pointing up truths, of giving\ndefinite edges to right and wrong, an inconsistent man--a man who is\ntrying to pry himself out a little at a time from an impossible\nsituation in an impossible world, is likely to do the world more good\nthan a very large crowd of angels who have made up their minds that they\nare going to be consistent and going to keep up a consistent look in\nthis same world--whatever happens to it.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIf one is marking people on consistency, and if one takes a scale of 100\nas perfect, perhaps one should not always insist on 98. One does not\nalways insist on 98 for one's self. And when one does and does not get\nit, one feels forgiving sometimes.\n\nIn dealing with public men and with other people that we know less than\nwe know ourselves--if they really do things, it is well to make\nallowances, and let them off at 65.\n\nIn some cases, in fact, when men are doing something that no one else\nvolunteers to do for a world, I find I get on very well with letting\nthem off at 51. I have sometimes wished, when I have been in England,\nthat Tories and Liberals and Socialists and the Wise and the Good would\nconsider letting George Cadbury off at 51.\n\nPerhaps people are being more safely educated by George Cadbury in his\njournals than they might be by other people in what seem to seem to many\nof us unfamiliar and dangerous ideas.\n\nPerhaps posterity, in 1953, looking down this precipice of revolution\nEngland did not fall into in 1913, may mark George Cadbury 73--possibly\n89.\n\nIf, in any way, in the crisis of England, George Cadbury can crowd in\nand can keep thousands and thousands of Englishmen and women from being\neducated by John Bottomley Bull or by Mrs. John Bottomley Bull and hosts\nof other would-be friends of the people--by Tom Mann, Ben Tillett, and\nVernon Hartshorn, does it really seem after all a matter of grave\nnational importance that George Cadbury--a professional non-better--in\neducating these people should allow them to keep on in his paper, having\na betting column?\n\nSo long as he really helps stave off John Bottomley Bull and Mrs. John\nBottomley Bull, let him slump into being a millionaire, if he cannot\nvery well help it! We say, some of us, let him even make cocoa! or have\nfamily prayers! or be a Liberal!\n\nAt least this is the way one American visiting England feels about it,\nif he may be permitted.\n\nPerhaps I would not, if I were an angel.\n\nI do not want to be an angel.\n\nI am more ambitious. I want my ideals to do things, and I want to stand\nby people who are doing things with their ideals, whether their ideals\nare my ideals or not.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nLet us suppose. Suppose the reader were in Mr. Cadbury's place. What\nwould he do? Here are two things, let us suppose, he wishes very much.\nHe wishes a certain class of people would not bet, and he also wishes to\nconvince these same people of certain important social and political\nideas for which he stands. If he told them that he would have nothing to\ndo with them unless they stopped betting, there would be no object in\nhis publishing their paper at all. There would be nothing that they\nwould let him tell them. If, on the other hand, he begins merely as one\nmore humble, fellow-human being, and puts himself definitely on record\nas not betting himself, and still more definitely as wishing other\npeople would not bet, and then admits honestly that these other people\nhave as good a right to decide to bet as he has to decide not to; and if\nhe then deliberately proceeds to do what every real gentleman who does\nnot smoke and wishes other people did not, does without\nquestion--namely, offers them the facilities for doing it why should\npeople call him inconsistent?\n\nPerhaps a man's consistency consists in his relation to his own smoking\nand betting and not in his rushing his consistency over into the smoking\nand betting of other people. Perhaps being consistent does not need to\nmean being a little pharisaical, or using force, or cutting people off\nand having no argument with them, in one matter, because one cannot\nagree with them in another. Of course, I admit it would be better if Mr.\nCadbury would publish in a parallel column (if he could get a genius to\nwrite it) an extremely tolerant, human, comrade-like series of\nobjections to betting, which people could read alongside, and which\nwould persuade people as much as possible not to read the best betting\ntips in the world in the column next door, but certainly the act of\nfurnishing the tips in the meantime and of being sure that they are the\nbest tips in the world, is a very real, human, courageous act. It even\nhas a kind of rough and ready religion in it. It may be too much to\nexpect, but even in our goodness perhaps we ought to do as we would be\ndone by. We must be righteous, but on the whole, must we not be\nrighteous toward others as we would have them righteous toward us?\n\nWhat many of us find ourselves wishing most of all, when we come upon\nsome specially attractive man is, that we could discover some way, or\nthat he could discover some way, in which the idealist in him, and the\nrealist in him could be got to act together.\n\nThere are some of us who have come to believe that in the dead earnest,\ndaily, almost desperate struggle of modern life, the real solid idealist\nwill have to care enough about his ideals to arrange to have two\ncomplete sets, one set which he calls his personal ideals, which are of\nsuch a nature that he can carry them out alone and rigidly and quite by\nhimself, and another which he calls his bending or cooeperative ideals,\ngeared a little lower and adjusted to more gradual usage, which he uses\nwhen he asks other men to act with him.\n\nIt may take a very single-hearted and strong man to keep before his own\nmind and before other people's his two sets of ideals, his \"I\" faiths,\nand his you-and-I faiths, keeping each in strict proportion, but it\nwould certainly be a great human adventure to do it. Saying \"God and I,\"\nand saying \"God and you and I\" are two different arts. And it is\nclear-headedness and not inconsistency in a man that keeps him so.\n\nThis is not a mere defence of Mr. Cadbury; it is a defence of a type of\nman, of a temperament in our modern life, of men like Edward A. Filene,\nof Boston, of a man like Hugh Mac Rae, one of the institutions of North\nCarolina, of Tom L. Johnson of Cleveland, of nine men out of ten of the\nbigger and more creative sort who are helping cities to get their way\nand nations to express themselves. I have believed that the principle at\nstake, the great principle for real life in England and in America, of\nletting a man be inconsistent if he knows how--must have a stand made\nfor it.\n\nThere is no one thing, whether in history, or literature, or science, or\npolitics that can be more crucial in the fate of a nation to-day than\nthe correct, just, and constructive judgment of Contemporary\nInconsistent People.\n\n\n=VII=\n\nIf I could have managed it, I would have had this book printed and\nwritten--every page of it--in three parallel columns.\n\nThe first column would be for the reader who believes it, who keeps\nwriting a book more or less like it as he goes along. I would put in one\nsentence at the top for him and then let him have the rest of the space\nto write in himself. In other words I would say 2 plus 2 equals 4 and\ndrop it.\n\nThe second column would be for the reader who would like to believe it\nif he could, and I would branch out a little more--about half a column.\n\n    2 + 2 = 4\n\n    20 + 20 = 40\n\nThe third column would be for the reader who is not going to believe it\nif it can be helped. It would be in fine type, bitterly detailed and\nstatistical and take nothing for granted.\n\n    2 + 2 = 4\n\n    20 + 20 = 40\n\n    200 + 200 = 400\n\n    2,000 + 2,000 = 4,000\n\n    20,000 + 20,000 = 40,000\n\n    etc.\n\nThis arrangement would make the book what might be called a Moving\nSidewalk of Truth. First sidewalk rather quick (six miles an hour).\nSecond, four miles an hour. Third, two miles an hour. People could move\nover from one sidewalk to the other in the middle of an idea any time,\nand go faster or slower as they liked to, needed to.\n\nNo one would accuse me--though I might like or need for my own personal\nuse at one time or another, a slower sidewalk or a faster one than\nothers--no one would accuse me of being inconsistent if I supplied extra\nsidewalks for people of different temperaments to move over to suddenly\nany time they wanted to. I have come to some of my truth by a bitterly\nslow sidewalk--slower than other people need, and sometimes I have come\nby a fast one (or what some would say was no sidewalk at all!) but it\ncannot fairly be claimed that there is anything inconsistent in my\noffering people every possible convenience I can think of--for believing\nme.\n\nMr. Cadbury is not inconsistent if he tells truth at a different rate to\ndifferent people, or if he chooses to put truths before people in Indian\nfile.\n\nA man is not inconsistent who does not tell all the news he knows to all\nkinds of people, all at once, all the time.\n\nThere is nothing disingenuous about having an order for truth.\n\nIt is not considered compromising to have an order in moving railway\ntrains. Why not allow an order in moving trains of thought? And why\nshould a schedule for moving around people's bodies be considered any\nmore reasonable than a schedule or timetable or order for moving around\ntheir souls?\n\nTruth in action must always be in an order. Nine idealists out of ten\nwho fight against News-men, or men who are trying to make the beautiful\nwork, and who call them hypocrites, would not do it if they were trying\ndesperately to make the beautiful work themselves. It is more\ncomfortable and has a fine free look, to be blunt with the\nbeautiful--the way a Poet is--to dump all one's ideals down before\npeople and walk off. But it seems to some of us a cold, sentimental,\nlazy, and ignoble thing to do with ideals if one loves them--to give\neverybody all of them all the time without considering what becomes of\nthe ideals or what becomes of the people.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XVI\n\nCROWD-MEN\n\nMARCH 4, 1913.\n\n\nAs I write these words, I look out upon the great meadow. I see the\npoles and the wires in the sun, that long trail of poles and wires I am\nused to, stalking across the meadow. I know what they are doing.\n\nThey are telling a thousand cities and villages about our new President,\nthe one they are making this minute, down in Washington, for these\nUnited States. With his hand lifted up he has just taken his oath, has\nsworn before God and before his people to serve the destinies of a\nnation. And now along a hundred thousand miles of wire on dumb wooden\npoles, a hope, a prayer, a kind of quiet, stern singing of a mighty\npeople goes by. And I am sitting here in my study window wondering what\nhe will be like, what he will think, and what he will believe about us.\n\nWhat will our new President do with these hundreds of miles of prayer,\nof crying to God, stretched up to him out of the hills and out of the\nplains?\n\nDoes he really overhear it--that huge, dumb, half-helpless, half-defiant\nprayer going up past him, out of the eager, hoarse cities, out of the\nslow, patient fields, to God?\n\nDoes he overhear it, I wonder? What does he make out that we are like?\n\nI should think it would sound like music to him.\n\nIt would come to seem, I should think, when he is alone with his God\n(and will he not please be alone with his God sometimes?), like some\nvast ocean of people singing, a kind of multitudinous, faraway singing,\nlike the wind--ah, how often have I heard the wind like some strange and\nmighty people in the pine treetops go singing by!\n\nI do not see how a President could help growing a little like a\npoet--down in his heart--as he listens.\n\nIf he does, he may do as he will with us.\n\nWe will let him be an artist in a nation.\n\nAs Winslow Homer takes the sea, as Millet takes the peasants in the\nfields, as Frank Brangwyn lifts up the labour in the mills and makes it\ncolossal and sublime, the President is an artist, in touching the\ncrowd's imagination with itself--in making a nation self-conscious.\n\nHe shall be the artist, the composer, the portrait painter of the\npeople--their faith, their cry, their anger, and their love shall be in\nhim. In him shall be seen the panorama of the crowd, focused into a\nsingle face. In him there shall be put in the foreground of this\nnation's countenance the things that belong in the foreground. And the\nthings that belong in the background shall be put in the background, and\nthe little ideas and little men shall look little in it, and the big\nones shall look big.\n\nThey do not look so now. This is the one thing that is the matter with\nAmerica. The countenence of the nation is not a composed countenance.\nAll that we want is latent in us, everything is there in our Washington\nface. The face merely lacks features and an expression.\n\nThis is what a President is for--to give at last the Face of the United\nStates an expression!\n\nIf he is a shrewd poet and believes in us, we shall accept him as the\nofficial mind reader of the nation. He focuses our desires. In the\nweariness of the day he looks away--he looks up--he leans his head upon\nhis hand--through the corridors of his brain, that little silent Main\nstreet of America, the thoughts and the crowds and the jostling wills of\nthe people go.\n\nIf he is a shrewd poet about us, he becomes the organic function, the\norganizer of the news about our people to ourselves. He is the public\nmade visible, the public made one. He is a moving picture of us. He\nspeaks and gestures the United States--if he is a poet about us--when he\nbeckons or points or when he puts his finger on his lips, or when he\nsays, \"Hush!\" or when he says, \"Wait a moment!\" he is the voice of the\npeople of the United States.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nI am sitting and correcting, one by one, as they are brought to me,\nthese last page proofs in the factory. The low thunder on the floors of\nthe mighty presses, crashing down into paper words I can never cross\nout--rises around me. In a minute more--minute by minute that I am\ncounting, that low thunder will overtake me, will roar down and fold\naway these last guilty, hopeful, tucked-in words with you, Gentle\nReader, and you will get away! And the book will get away!\n\nThere is no time to try to hold up that low thunder now, and to say what\nI have meant to say about false simplicity and democracy, and about our\nall being bullied into being little old faded Thomas Jeffersons a\nhundred years after he is dead.\n\nBut I will try to suggest what I hope that some one who has no\nprinting-presses rolling over him--will say:\n\nOne cannot help wishing that our socialists to-day would outgrow Karl\nMarx, and that our individualists would outgrow Emerson. Democrats by\nthis time ought to grow a little, too, and outgrow Jefferson, and\nRepublicans ought to be able by this time to outgrow Hamilton.\n\nWhy not drop Karl Marx and Emerson and run the gamut of both of them, on\na continent 3,000 miles wide? Why should we live Thomas Jefferson's and\nAlexander Hamilton's lives? Why not drop Jefferson and Hamilton and live\nours?\n\nThe last thing that Jefferson would do, if he were here, would be to be\nJefferson over again. It is not fair to Jefferson for anybody to take\nthe liberty of being like him, when he would not even do it himself. If\nJefferson were here, he would break away from everybody, lawyers,\nstatesmen and Congress and go outdoors and look at 1913 for himself.\n\nI like to imagine how it would strike him. I am not troubled about what\nhe would do. Let Jefferson go out and listen to that vast machine, to\nthe New York Central Railway smoothing out and roaring down crowds,\nrolling and rolling and rolling men all day and all night into machines.\nLet Jefferson go out and face the New York Central Railway! Jefferson in\nhis time had not faced nor looked down through those great fissures or\nchasms of inefficiency in what he chose to call democracy, the haughty,\ntyrannical aimlessness and meaninglessness of crowds, too mean-spirited\nand full of fear and machines to dare to have leaders!\n\nHe had not faced that blank staring hell of anonymousness, that\nbottomless, weak, watery muck of irresponsibility--that terrific,\ndevilish vagueness which a crowd is and which a crowd has to be without\nleaders.\n\nJefferson did not know about or reckon with Inventors, as a means of\ngoverning, as a means of getting the will of the people.\n\nA whole new age of invention, of creation, has flooded the world since\nJefferson. This is the main fact about the modern man, that he is\ngloriously self-made. He is practising democracy, inventing his own\nlife, making his own soul before our eyes.\n\nIf we have a poet in the White House, this is the main fact he is going\nto reckon with: He will not be seen taking sides with the Alexander\nHamilton model or with the Thomas Jefferson model or with Karl Marx or\nEmerson. We will see him taking Karl Marx and Emerson and Hamilton and\nJefferson and melting them down, glowing them and fusing them together\ninto one man--the Crowd-Man--who shall be more aristocratic than\nHamilton ever dreamed, and be filled with a genius for democracy that\nJefferson never guessed. America to-day, on the face of the earth and\nin the hearts of men, is a new democracy, as new as Radium, Copernicus,\nthe Wireless Telegraph, as new and just beginning to be noticed and\nguessed at as Jesus Christ!\n\nCopernicus, Marconi, Wilbur Wright, and Christianity have turned men's\nhearts outward. Men live for the first time in a wide daily\nconsciousness of one another.\n\nAlexander Hamilton, had really a rather timid and polite idea of what an\naristocrat was and Jefferson had merely sketched out a ground plan for a\ndemocrat. If Hamilton had been aristocratic in the modern sense, he\nwould have devoted half his career to expressing a man like Jefferson;\nand if Jefferson had been more of a democrat, he would have had room in\nhimself to tuck in several Alexander Hamiltons. Either one of them would\nhave been a Crowd-Man.\n\nBy a Crowd-Man I do not mean a pull-and-haul man, a balance of\nequilibrium between these two men, I mean a fusion, a glowed together\ninterpenetration of them both. They did not either of them believe in\nthe people as much as a man made out of both of them would--a really\nwrought-through aristocrat, a really wrought-through democrat or\nCrowd-Man, or Hero or Saviour.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nI am afraid that some of us do not like the word Saviour as people think\nwe ought to. There seems to be something about the way many people use\nthe word Saviour which makes it seem as if it had been dropped off over\nthe edge of the world--of a real world, of a man's world.\n\nI do not believe that Christ spent five minutes in His whole life in\nfeeling like a Saviour. He would have felt hurt if He had found any one\nsaying He was a Saviour in the tone people often use. He wanted people\nto feel as if they were like Him. And the way He served them was by\nmaking them feel that they were.\n\nI do not believe that Thomas Jefferson, if he were here to-day, would\nobject to a hero, or aristocrat, a special expert or a genius in\nexpressing crowds, if he lived and wrought in this spirit.\n\nThe final objection that people commonly make to heroes or to men of\nmarked and special vision or courage is that they are not good for\npeople, because people put them on pedestals and worship them. They look\nup at them wistfully. And then they look down on themselves.\n\nBut I have never seen a hero on a pedestal.\n\nIt is only the Carlyle kind of hero who could ever be put on a pedestal,\nor who would stay there if put there.\n\nAnd Carlyle--with all honour be it said--never quite knew what a hero\nwas. A hero is either a gentleman, or a philosopher, or an inventor.\n\nThe gentleman--on a pedestal--feels hurt and slips down.\n\nThe philosopher laughs.\n\nThe inventor thinks up some way of having somebody else get up so that\nit will not really be a pedestal at all.\n\nI agree with all the socialists' objections to heroes, if they mean by a\nhero the kind of man that Thomas Carlyle, with all his little glorious\nhells, all his little cold, lonesome, select heavens, his thunderclub\nview of life, and his Old Testament imagination, called a hero. There is\nalways something a little strained and competitive about Carlyle's\nheroes as he conceives them except possibly one or two.\n\nBeing a hero with Carlyle consisted in conquering and displacing other\nheroes. Even if you were a poet, being a hero consisted in a kind of\nspiritual standing on some other poet's neck. According to Carlyle, one\nmust always be a hero against other men. Modern heroism consists in\nbeing a hero with other men. The hero Against comes in the Twentieth\nCentury to be the hero With, and the modern hero is known, not by\ncutting his enemies down, but by his absorbing and understanding them.\nHe drinks up what they wish they could do into what he does, or he\nstates what they believe better than they can state it. Combination or\ncooeperation is the tremendous heroism of our present life.\n\nI admit that I would be afraid of Carlyle's heroes having pedestals.\nThey have already--many of them--done a good deal of harm because they\nhave had pedestals, and because they would not get down from them.\n\nBut mine would.\n\nWith a man who is being a hero by cooeperation, getting down is part of\nthe heroism. And there is never any real danger in allowing a pedestal\nfor a real hero. He never has time to sit on it.\n\nOne sees him always over and over again kicking his pedestal out from\nunder him and using it to batter a world with. As the world does not\ntake to enjoying its heroes' pedestals in this way, a pedestal is quite\nsafe. Most people feel the same about a hero's halo. They prefer to have\nhim wear it like a kind of glare around his head, and if he uses it as a\nsearchlight upon them, if he makes his halo really practical and lights\nup the world a little around him instead, he is not likely to be\nspoiled, is almost always safe from any danger of having any more halo\ncrowded upon him than he wants, or than anybody wants him to have. One\nmight put it down as a motto for heroes, \"Keep your halo busy and it\nwon't hurt you.\" Modern democracy will never have a chance of being what\nit wants to be as long as it keeps on throwing away great natural forces\nlike halos and pedestals. There is no reason why we should not believe\nin halos and pedestals, not to wear or stand on, but when used strictly\nfor butting and seeing purposes.\n\nWe may know a real hero by the fact that we always have to keep\nrediscovering him. One knows the real hero by the fact that in his\nrelation to people who put him on a pedestal he is always kicking his\npedestal away and substituting his vision.\n\nThere is something about any real heroism that we see to-day which makes\nheroes out of the people who see it, A real hero has his back to the\npeople and the crowd looks over his shoulders with him at his work and\nhe feels behind him daily, with joy and strength, thousands of heroes\npressing up to take his place. And he is daily happy with a strange,\nmighty, impersonal joy in all these other people who could do it, too.\nHe lives with a great hurrah for the world in his heart. The hero he\nworships is the hero he sees in others. A man like this would feel\ncramped if he were merely being himself, or if he were being imprisoned\nby the people in his own glory, or were being cooped up into a hero.\n\nIt is in this sense that I have finally come again to believe that hero\nworship is safe, that in some form as one of the great elemental\nenergies in human nature it must be saved, that it must be regulated and\nused, that it has an incalculable power which was meant to be turned on\nto run a nation with.\n\nAnd I believe that Thomas Jefferson, confronted in this desperate,\nsublime 1913, with the new socialized spirit of our time, placed face to\nface at last with a Christian aristocrat or Crowd-Man, would want him\nsaved and emphasized too.\n\nIt is because in democracies saviours are being kept by crowds and by\nmillionaires and by machines very largely in the position of hired men,\nor of ordered about men, that ninety-nine one-hundredths of the saving\nor of the man-inventing and man-freeing in crowds, is not being attended\nto.\n\nI have wanted to suggest in this book that the moment the Saviours in\nany nation will organize quietly and save themselves first, the less\ndifficult thing (with men to attend to it) like saving the rest of us,\nwill be a mere matter of detail.\n\nThe only thing that stands in the way is the Thomas Jefferson bug-a-boo.\nPeople seem to have a kind of left-over fear that the moment these\nsaviours or experts or inventors or heroes, call them what you will, get\nthe chance that they have been working to get to save us, they will not\nwant to use it.\n\nIt does not seem to me that anything will be allowed to interfere with\nit--with their saving us, or making detailed arrangements for our saving\nourselves.\n\nBeing a great man (if as democracies seem to think being a great man is\na disease) is at least a self-limiting disease. Inventors when they get\ntheir first chance are going to save us, because they could not endure\nliving with us unless we were saved.\n\nInventors could not enjoy inventing--inventing their greater, more noble\ninventions, until they had attended to a little rudimentary thing in the\nworld like having people half alive on it to live with and to invent\nfor.\n\nIt does not interest a really inspired man--inventing flying machines\nfor people who have not time to notice the sky, wireless telegraph for\npeople who have nothing to say, symphonies for tone-deaf crowds, or\nambrosia for people who prefer potatoes.\n\nThis is the whole issue in a nutshell. When people say that our\ninventors, or Crowd-Men or saviours, when they have fulfilled or saved\nthemselves, cannot be trusted to save us, the reply that will have to be\nmade is that only people who do not know how inventors feel or how they\nare made or what it is in them that drives them to do things, or how\nthey do them, will be afraid to let men who give us worlds and who\nexpress worlds for us and who make us express ourselves in worlds the\nfreedom to help shape them and run them.\n\nMen who have the automatic courage, the helpless bigness and\ndisinterestedness that always goes with invention, with creative power,\ncan be trusted by crowds.\n\nThe prejudice against the hero is due to the fact that heroes in days\ngone by have been by a very large majority fighters, expressing\nthemselves against the world, or expressing one part of the world\nagainst another.\n\nThe moment the hero becomes the artist and begins expressing himself and\nexpressing the crowd together, the crowd will no longer be touched with\nfear and driven back upon itself by the Thomas Jefferson bug-a-boo.\n\n\n\n\nEPILOGUE\n\n\nFrance is threatened by her childless women, Germany by her machines,\nRussia is beginning the Nineteenth Century. It is to England and\nAmerica, struggling still sublimely with their sins, the nations\nlook--for the time being--for the next big free lift upon the world.\n\nLooked at in the large, in their historic import and their effect on the\ntime, the English temperament and the American temperament are\nessentially the same. As between ourselves, England and America are apt\nto seem different, but as between us and the world, we blend together.\nOne could go through in what I have been saying about Oxford Street and\nthe House of Commons in this book, strike out all after Oxford Street\nand read Broadway, and all after the House of Commons and read Congress,\nand it would be essentially true with the necessary English or American\nmodulation. In the same way it would be possible to go through and\nstrike out all after the President and read Prime Minister or the\nGovernment.\n\nEngland and America have the individualistic temperament, and if we\ncannot make a self-expressive individualism noble, and if we are not men\nenough to sing up our individualism into the social and the universal,\nwe perish.\n\nIt is our native way. We are to be crowdmen or nobodies.\n\nThe English temperament or the American temperament, whichever we may\ncall it, is the same tune, but played with a different and almost\ncontrasting expression.\n\nEngland is being played gravely and massively like a violoncello, and\nAmerica--played more lightly, is full of the sweeps and the lulls, the\necstasy, the overriding glory of the violins.\n\nBut it is the same tune, and God helping us, we will not and we shall\nnot be overwhelmed under the great dome of the world, by Germany with\nall her faithful pianolas, or by France with her cold sweet flutes, or\nby Russia with her shrieks and her pauses, pounding her splendid\nkettledrums in that awful silence!\n\nOur song is ours--England and America, the 'cello, and the bright\nviolins!\n\nAnd no one shall sing it for us.\n\nAnd no one shall keep us from singing it.\n\nThe skyscrapers are singing, \"I will, I will!\" to God, and Manchester\nand London and Port Sunlight are singing, \"I will, I will!\" to God. I\nhave heard even Westminister Abbey and York--those beautiful old\nfellows--altering, \"I will, I will!\" to God!\n\nAnd I have seen, as I was going by, Trinity Church at the head of Wall\nStreet repenting her sins and holding noonday prayer meetings for\nmillionaires.\n\nOur genius is a moral genius, the genius of each man for fulfilling\nhimself. Our religion is the finding of a way to do it beautifully.\n\nLet Russian men be an army if they like--death and obedience. Let German\nmen keep on with their faithful, plodding, moral machines if they want\nto, and let all French men be artists, go tra-la-laing up and down the\nTime to the beautiful--furnishing nudes, clothes, and academies to a\nworld.\n\nBut we--England and America--will stand up on this planet in the way we\nlike to stand on a planet and sing, \"I will, I will!\" to God.\n\nIf we cannot do better, we will sing, \"I won't, I won't!\" to God. Our\nwills and our won'ts are our genius among the sons of men. They are what\nwe are for. With England and America I will and I won't are an art form,\nour means of expressing ourselves, our way of invention and creation,\nof begetting an age, of begetting a nation upon a world.\n\nWe do not know (like great men and children) who we are at first. We\nbegin saying vaguely--will--will!\n\nThen i will!\n\nThen I will!\n\nThen WE WILL!\n\n\nTHE BEGINNING.\n\n\n\n\nTHE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N.Y.","title":"Crowds: A Moving-Picture of Democracy","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":174466}