CROWDS

A MOVING-PICTUREOF DEMOCRACY

BY

GERALD STANLEY LEE

_Editor of "Mount Tom"_

IN FIVE BOOKSCROWDS AND MACHINESLETTING THE CROWD BE GOODLETTING THE CROWD BE BEAUTIFULCROWDS AND HEROESGOOD NEWS AND HARD WORK

GARDEN CITY NEW YORKDOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY

_Copyright, 1913, by_DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY_All rights reserved, including that oftranslation into foreign languages, including the Scandinavian_

COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY THE RIDGWAY COMPANYCOPYRIGHT, 1912, BY MITCHELL KENNERLEYCOPYRIGHT, 1913, BY THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY CO. COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY THE OUTLOOK COMPANYCOPYRIGHT, 1913, BY THE INDEPENDENT WEEKLY, INCORPORATED

BOOKS

By GERALD STANLEY LEE

THE LOST ART OF READING _A Sketch of Civilization_

THE CHILD AND THE BOOK _A Constructive Criticism of Education_

THE SHADOW CHRIST _A Study of the Hebrew Men of Genius_

THE VOICE OF THE MACHINES _An Introduction to the Twentieth Century_

INSPIRED MILLIONAIRES _A Study of the Man of Genius in Business_

CROWDS _A Moving Picture of Democracy_

 _Gratefully inscribed to a little Mountain, a great Meadow, and a Woman. To the Mountain for the sense of time, to the Meadow for the sense of space, and to the Woman for the sense of everything. _

TABLE OF CONTENTS

BOOK ONE

CROWDS AND MACHINES

I. WHERE ARE WE GOING? 3

II. THE CROWD SCARE 19

III. THE MACHINE SCARE 34

IV. THE STRIKE--AN INVENTION FOR MAKING CROWDS THINK 49

V. THE CROWD-MAN--AN INVENTION FOR MAKING CROWDS SEE 58

VI. THE IMAGINATION OF CROWDS 65

VII. IMAGINATION ABOUT THE UNSEEN 66

VIII. THE CROWD'S IMAGINATION ABOUT THE FUTURE 69

IX. THE CROWD'S IMAGINATION ABOUT PEOPLE 74

X. A DEMOCRATIC THEORY OF HUMAN NATURE 76

XI. DOING AS ONE WOULD WISH ONE HAD DONE IN TWENTY YEARS 80

XII. NEW KINDS AND NEW SIZES OF MEN 86

BOOK TWO

LETTING THE CROWDS BE GOOD

I. SPEAKING AS ONE OF THE CROWD 93

II. IS IT WRONG FOR GOOD PEOPLE TO BE EFFICIENT? 96

III. IS IT WRONG FOR GOOD PEOPLE TO BE INTERESTING? 103

IV. PROSPECTS OF THE LIAR 107

V. PROSPECTS OF THE BULLY 111

VI. GOODNESS AS A CROWD-PROCESS 114

VII. THOUGHTS ON BEING IMPROVED BY OTHER PEOPLE 116

VIII. MAKING GOODNESS HURRY 125

IX. TOUCHING THE IMAGINATION OF CROWDS 128

X. THE STUPENDOUS, THE UNUSUAL, THE MONOTONOUS AND THE SUCCESSFUL 142

XI. THE SUCCESSFUL 146

XII. THE NECKS OF THE WICKED 154

XIII. IS IT WRONG FOR GOOD PEOPLE TO BE SUCCESSFUL? 163

XIV. IS IT SECOND RATE FOR GOOD PEOPLE TO BE SUCCESSFUL? 167

XV. THE SUCCESSFUL TEMPERAMENT 173

XVI. THE MEN AHEAD PULL 178

XVII. THE CROWDS PUSH 184

XVIII. THE MAN WHO SAYS HOW, SAYS HOW 186

XIX. AND THE MACHINE STARTS! 194

BOOK THREE

LETTING THE CROWD BE BEAUTIFUL

PART I. WISTFUL MILLIONAIRES

I. MR. CARNEGIE SPEAKS UP 205

II. MR. CARNEGIE TRIES TO MAKE PEOPLE READ 208

III. MR. NOBEL TRIES TO MAKE PEOPLE WRITE 211

IV. PAPER BOOKS, MARBLE PILLARS, AND WOODEN BOYS 221

V. THE HUMDRUM FACTORY AND THE TUMPTY-TUM THEATRE 227

PART II. IRON MACHINES

I. STEEPLES AND CHIMNEYS 236

II. BELLS AND WHEELS 240

III. DEW AND ENGINES 243

IV. DEAD AS A DOOR NAIL! 245

V. AN OXFORD MAN AND AN INCH OF IRON 248

VI. THE MACHINES' MACHINES 250

VII. THE MEN'S MACHINES 252

VIII. THE BASEMENT OF THE WORLD 256

IX. THE GROUND FLOOR FOLKS 262

X. THE MACHINE-TRAINERS 266

XI. MACHINES, CROWDS, AND ARTISTS 269

PART III. PEOPLE-MACHINES

I. NOW! 280

II. COMMITTEES AND COMMITTEES 288

III. THE INCONVENIENCE OF BEING HUMAN 286

IV. LETTING THE CROWD HAVE PEOPLE IN IT 290

BOOK FOUR

CROWDS AND HEROES

I. THE SOCIALIST AND THE HERO 297

II. THE CROWD AND THE HERO 301

III. THE CROWD AND THE AVERAGE PERSON 303

IV. THE CROWD AND PIERPONT MORGAN 307

V. THE CROWD AND TOM MANN 313

VI. AN OPENING FOR THE NEXT PIERPONT MORGAN 323

VII. AN OPENING FOR THE NEXT TOM MANN 327

VIII. THE MEN WHO LOOK 331

IX. WHO IS AFRAID? 337

X. RULES FOR TELLING A HERO--WHEN ONE SEES ONE 343

XI. THE TECHNIQUE OF COURAGE 346

XII. THE MEN WHO WANT THINGS 349

XIII. MEN WHO GET THINGS 356

XIV. SOURCES OF COURAGE FOR OTHERS--TOLERATION 364

XV. CONVERSION 371

XVI. EXCEPTION 380

XVII. INVENTION 383

XVIII. THE MAN WHO PULLS THE WORLD TOGETHER 397

XIX. THE MAN WHO STANDS BY 400

XX. THE STRIKE OF THE SAVIOURS 402

XXI. THE LEAGUE OF THE MEN WHO ARE NOT AFRAID 404

BOOK FIVE

GOOD NEWS AND HARD WORK

PART I. NEWS AND LABOUR 413

PART II. NEWS AND MONEY 422

PART III. NEWS AND GOVERNMENT

I. OXFORD STREET AND THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 431

II. OXFORD STREET HUMS, THE HOUSE HEMS 440

III. PRESIDENT WILSON AND MOSES 449

IV. THE PRESIDENT SAYS YES AND NO 455

V. THE PRESIDENT SAYS "LOOK!" 463

VI. THE PEOPLE SAY "WHO ARE YOU?" 469

VII. THE PEOPLE SAY "WHO ARE WE?" 472

VIII. NEWS ABOUT US TO THE PRESIDENT 474

IX. NEWS-MEN 476

X. AMERICAN TEMPERAMENT AND GOVERNMENT 483

XI-XII. NEWS-BOOKS 505-513

XIII. NEWS-PAPERS 517

XIV. NEWS-MACHINES 524

XV. NEWS-CROWDS 527

XVI. CROWD-MEN 550

EPILOGUE 539

BOOK ONE

CROWDS AND MACHINES

TO CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS

 _"A battered, wrecked old man Thrown on this savage shore far, far from home, Pent by the sea and dark rebellious brows twelve dreary months . .. The end I know not, it is all in Thee, Or small or great I know not--haply what broad fields, what lands!. .. 

 And these things I see suddenly, what mean they As if some miracle, some hand divine unsealed my eyes, Shadowy vast shapes smile through the air and sky, And on the distant waves sail countless ships, And anthems in new tongues I hear saluting me. "_

CHAPTER I

WHERE ARE WE GOING?

The best picture I know of my religion is Ludgate Hill as one sees itgoing down the foot of Fleet Street. It would seem to many perhaps likea rather strange half-heathen altar, but it has in it the three thingswith which I worship most my Maker in this present world--the threethings which it would be the breath of religion to me to offer to a Godtogether--Cathedrals, Crowds, and Machines. 

With the railway bridge reaching over, all the little still locomotivesin the din whispering across the street; with the wide black crowdstreaming up and streaming down, and the big, faraway, other-worldlychurch above, I am strangely glad. It is like having a picture of one'swhole world taken up deftly, and done in miniature and hung up for oneagainst the sky--the white steam which is the breath of modern life, thevast hurrying of our feet, and that Great Finger pointing toward heavenday and night for us all. .. . 

I never tire of walking out a moment from my nook in Clifford's Inn andstealing a glimpse and coming back to my fireplace. I sit still a momentbefore going to work and look in the flames and think. The great roaroutside the Court gathers it all up--that huge, boundless, tiny, summed-up world out there; flings it faintly against my quiet windowswhile I sit and think. 

And when one thinks of it a minute, it sends one half-fearfully, half-triumphantly back to one's work--the very thought of it. The Crowdhurrying, the Crowd's flurrying Machines, and the Crowd's God, send oneback to one's work!

In the afternoon I go out again, slip my way through the crowds alongthe Strand, toward Charing Cross. 

I never tire of watching the drays, the horses, the streaming taxis, allthese little, fearful, gliding crowds of men and women, when a littlespace of street is left, flowing swiftly, flowing like globules, likemercury, between the cabs. 

But most of all I like looking up at that vast second story of thestreet, coming in over one like waves, like seas--all these happy, curious tops of 'buses; these dear, funny, way-up people on benches;these world-worshippers, sight-worshippers, and Americans--all theselittle scurrying congregations, hundreds of them, rolling past. 

I sit on the front seat of a horse 'bus elbow to elbow with the driver, staring down over the brink of the abyss upon ears and necks--that low, distant space where the horses look so tiny and so ineffectual and sogone-by below. 

The street is the true path of the spirit. To walk through it, or rollor swing on top of a 'bus through it--the miles of faces, all thesetottering, toddling, swinging miles of legs and stomachs; and on allsides of you, and in the windows and along the walks, the things theywear, and the things they eat, and the things they pour down theirlittle throats, and the things they pray to and curse and worship andswindle in! It is like being out in the middle of a great ocean ofliving, or like climbing up some great mountain-height of people, theirabysses and their clouds about them, their precipices and jungles andheavens, the great high roads of their souls reaching off. .. . I cannever say why, but so strange is it, so full of awe is it, and ofsplendour and pity, that there are times when, rolling and swingingalong on top of a 'bus, with all this strange, fearful joy of life aboutme, within me . .. It is as if on top of my 'bus I had been far away insome infinite place, and had felt Heaven and Hell sweep past. 

One of the first things that strikes an American when he slips over fromNew York, and finds himself, almost before he had thought of it--walkingdown the Strand, suddenly, instead of Broadway, is the waythings--thousands of things at once; begin happening to him. 

Of course, with all the things that are happening to him--the 'buses, the taxis, the Wren steeples, the great streams of new sights in thestreets, the things that happen to his eyes and to his ears, to his feetand his hands, and to his body lunging through the ground and swimmingup in space on top of a 'bus through this huge, glorious, yellow mist ofpeople . .. There are all the things besides that begin happening to hismind. 

In New York, of course, he rushes along through the city, in a kind oftunnel of his own thoughts, of his own affairs, and drives on to hispoint, and New York does not--at least it does not very often--makethings happen to his mind. He is not in London five minutes before hebegins to notice how London does his thinking for him. The streets ofthe city set him to thinking, mile after mile, miles of comparing, milesof expecting. 

And above the streets that he walks through and drives through he findsin London another complete set of streets that interest him: thegreater, silenter streets of England--the streets of people's thoughts. And he reads the great newspapers, those huge highways on which theEnglish people are really going somewhere. .. . "_Where are they going?_"He goes through the editorials, he stumbles through the news, "_Whereare the English people going?_"

 * * * * *

An American thinks of the English people in the third person--at first, of course. 

After three days or so, he begins, half-unconsciously, slipping overevery now and then into what seems to be a vague, loose first personplural. 

Then the first person plural grows. 

He finds at last that his thinking has settled down into a kind ofhappy, easy-going, international, editorial "We. " New York and London, Chicago and Sheffield, go drifting together through his thoughts, andeven Paris, glimmering faintly over there, and a dim round world, and heasks, as the people of a world stream by, "_Where are WE going?_"

Thus it is that London, looming, teeming, world-suggesting, gets itsgrip upon a man, a fresh American, and stretches him, stretches himbefore his own eyes, makes him cosmopolitan, does his thinking for him. 

 * * * * *

There was a great sea to still his soul and lay down upon his spiritthat big, quiet roundness of the earth. 

Nothing is quite the same after that wide strip of sea--sleeping outthere alone night by night--the gentle round earth sloping away downfrom under one on both sides, in the midst of space. .. . Then, suddenly, almost before one knows, that quiet Space still lingering round one, perhaps one finds oneself thrust up out of the ground in the night intothat big yellow roar of Trafalgar Square. 

And here are the swift sudden crowds of people, one's own fellow-menhurrying past. One looks into the faces of the people hurrying past:"_Where are we going?_" One looks at the stars: "WHERE ARE WE GOING?"

 * * * * *

That night, when I was thrust up out of the ground and stood dazed inthe Square, I was told in a minute that this London where I was was abesieged and conquered city. Some men had risen up in a day and said toLondon: "No one shall go in. No one shall go out. "

I was in the great proud city at last, the capital of the world, herbig, new, self-assured inventions all about her, all around her, andsoldiers camping out with her locomotives!

With her long trains for endless belts of people going in and comingout, with her air-brakes, electric lights, and motor-cars and aerialmails, it seemed passing strange to be told that her great stations wereall choked up with a queer, funny, old, gone-by, clanky piece ofmachinery, an invention for making people good, like soldiers!

And I stood in the middle of the roar of Trafalgar Square and asked, asall England was asking that night: "Where are we going?"

And I looked in the faces of the people hurrying past. 

And nobody knew. 

And the next day I went through the silenter streets of the city, thegreat crowded dailies where all the world troops through, and then themore quiet weeklies, then the monthlies, more dignified and like privateparks; and the quarterlies, too, thoughtful, high-minded, a littleabsent, now and then a footfall passing through. 

And I found them all full of the same strange questioning: "Where are wegoing?"

And nobody knew. 

It was the same questioning I had just left in New York, going up allabout me, out of the skyscrapers. 

New York did not know. 

Now London did not know. 

 * * * * *

And after I had tried the journals and the magazines, I thought ofbooks. 

I could not but look about--how could I do otherwise than look about?--alonely American walking at last past all these nobly haunted doorwaysand windows--for your idealists or interpreters, your men who bring inthe sea upon your streets and the mountains on your roof-tops; whostill see the wide, still reaches of the souls of men beyond the faintand tiny roar of London. 

I could not but look for your men of imagination, your poets; for themen who build the dreams and shape the destinies of nations because theymould their thoughts. 

I do not like to say it. How shall an American, coming to you out of hislong, flat, literary desert, dare to say it?. .. Here, where Shakespeareplayed mightily, and like a great boy with the world; where Milton, Keats, Wordsworth, Browning, Shelley, and even Dickens flooded the livesand refreshed the hearts of the people; here, in these selfsame streets, going past these same old, gentle, smoky temples where Charles Lambwalked and loved a world, and laughed at a world, and even madeone--lifted over his London forever into the hearts of men. .. . 

I can only say what I saw those first few fresh days: John Galsworthyout with his camera--his beautiful, sad, foggy camera; Arnold Bennettstitching and stitching faithfully twenty-four hours a day--big, curioustapestries of little things; H. G. Wells, with his retorts, hisexperiments about him, his pots and kettles of humanity in a great stewof steam, half-hopeful, half-dismayed, mixing up his great, new, queermesses of human nature; and (when I could look up again) G. K. Chesterton, divinely swearing, chanting, gloriously contradicting, rolled lustily through the wide, sunny spaces of His Own Mind; andBernard Shaw (all civilization trooping by), the eternal boy, on theeternal curbstone of the world, threw stones; and the Bishop ofBirmingham preached a fine, helpless sermon. .. . 

 * * * * *

When a new American, coming from his own big, hurried, formless, speechless country, finds himself in what he had always supposed to bethis trim, arranged, grown-up, articulate England, and when, thrust upout of the ground in Trafalgar Square, he finds himself looking at thatvast yellow mist of people, that vast bewilderment of faces, of thepoor, of the rich, coming and going they cannot say where--he naturallythinks at first it must be because they cannot speak; and when he looksto those who speak for them, to their writers or interpreters, and whenhe finds that they are bewildered, that they are asking the samequestion over and over that we in America are asking too, "Where are wegoing?" he is brought abruptly up, front to front with the greatbroadside of modern life. London, his last resort, is as bewildered asNew York; and so, at last, here it is. It has to be faced now and here, as if it were some great scare-head or billboard on the world, "WHEREARE WE GOING?"

 * * * * *

The most stupendous feat for the artist or man of imagination in moderntimes is to conceive a picture or vision for our Society--our presentmachine-civilization--a common expectation for people which will makethem want to live. 

If Leonardo were living now, he would probably slight for the time beinghis building bridges, and skimp his work on Mona Lisa, and write abook--an exultant book about common people. He would focus and expressdemocracy as only the great and true aristocrat or genius or artist willever do it. A great society must be expressed as a vision or expectationbefore men can see it together, and go to work on it together, and makeit a fact. What makes a society great is that it is full of people whohave something to live for and who know what it is. It is because nobodyknows, now, that our present society is not great. The different kindsof people in it have not made up their minds what they are for, and somekinds have particularly failed to make up their minds what the otherkinds are for. 

We are all making our particular contribution to the common vision, andsome of us are able to say in one way and some in another what thisvision is; but it is going to take a supreme catholic, summing-upindividualist, a great man or artist--a man who is all of us in one--toexpress for Crowds, and for all of us together, where we want to go, what we think we are for, and what kind of a world we want. 

This will have to be done first in a book. The modern world iscollecting its thoughts. It is trying to write its bible. 

The Bible of the Hebrews (which had to be borrowed by the rest of theworld if they were to have one) is the one great outstanding fact andresult of the Hebrew genius. They did not produce a civilization, butthey produced a book for the rest of the world to make civilizations outof, a book which has made all other nations the moral passengers of theHebrews for two thousand years. 

And the whole spirit and aim of this book, the thing about it that madeit great, was that it was the sublimest, most persistent, most colossal, masterful attempt ever made by men to look forth upon the earth, to seeall the men in it, like spirits hurrying past, and to answer thequestion, "WHERE ARE WE GOING?"

I would not have any one suppose that in these present tracings andoutlines of thought I am making an attempt to look upon the world andsay where the people are going, and where they think they are going, andwhere they want to go. I have attempted to find out, and put down whatmight seem at first sight (at least it did to me) the answer to a verysmall and unimportant question--"Where is it that I really want to gomyself?" "What kind of a world is it, all the facts about me being dulyconsidered, I really want to be in?"

No man living in a world as interesting as this ever writes a book if hecan help it. If Mr. Bernard Shaw or Mr. Chesterton or Mr. Wells had beenso good as to write a book for me in which they had given the answer tomy question, in which they had said more or less authoritatively for mewhat kind of a world it is that I want to be in, this book would neverhave been written. The book is not put forward as an attempt to arrangea world, or as a system or a chart, or as a nation-machine, or even asan argument. The one thing that any one can fairly claim for this bookis that one man's life has been saved with it. It is the record of oneman fighting up through story after story of crowds and of crowds'machines to the great steel and iron floor on the top of the world, until he had found the manhole in it, and broken through and caught abreath of air and looked at the light. The book is merely alife-preserver--that is all; and one man's life-preserver. Perhaps theman is representative, and perhaps he is not. At all events, here it is. Anybody else who can use it is welcome to it. 

 * * * * *

The first and most practical step in getting what one wants in thisworld is wanting it. One would think that the next step would beexpressing what one wants. But it almost never is. It generally consistsin wanting it still harder and still harder until one can express it. 

This is particularly true when the thing one wants is a new world. Hereare all these other people who have to be asked. And until one wants ithard enough to say it, to get it outside one's self, possibly make itcatching, nothing happens. 

If one were to point out one trait rather than another that makesBernard Shaw, for so brilliant a man, so ineffective as a leader, orliterary statesman, or social reformer, it would be his modesty. He hasnever wanted anything. 

If I could have found a book by Bernard Shaw in which Mr. Shaw hadmerely said what he wanted himself, it is quite possible this book wouldnot have been written. Even if Mr. Shaw, without saying what he wanted, had ever shown in any corner of any book that one man's wantingsomething in this world amounted to anything, or could make any one elsewant it, or could make any difference in him, or in the world aroundhim, perhaps I would not have written this book. 

Everywhere, as I have looked about me among the bookmen in America, inEngland, I have found, not the things that they wanted in their books, but always these same deadly lists or bleak inventories--these prairiesof things that they did not want. 

Now, as a matter of fact, I knew already, with an almost despairingdistinctness, nearly all these things I did not want and it has nothelped me (with all due courtesy and admiration) having John Galsworthyout photographing them day after day, so that I merely did not want themharder. And Mr. Wells's measles and children's diseases, too. I knewalready that I did not want them. And Mr. Shaw's entire, heroic, almostnoble collection of things he does not want does not supply me--norcould it supply any other man with furniture to make a world with--evenif it were not this real, big world, with rain and sunshine and wind andpeople in it, and were only that little, wonderful world a man liveswithin his own heart. There have been times, and there will be more ofthem, when I could not otherwise than speak as the champion of BernardShaw; but, after all, what single piece of furniture is there thatGeorge Bernard Shaw, living with his great attic of not-things allaround him, is able to offer to furnish me for me single, little, warm, lighted room to keep my thoughts in? Nor has he furnished me with onething with which I would care to sit down in my little room andthink--looking into the cold, perfect hygienic ashes he has left upon myhearth. Even if I were a revolutionist, and not a mere, plain humanbeing, loving life and wanting to live more abundantly, I am bound tosay I do not see what there is in Mr. Galsworthy's photographs, or inMr. Wells's rich, bottomless murk of humanity to make a revolution for. And Mr. Bernard Shaw, with all his bottles of disinfectants and shelvesof sterilized truths, his hard well-being and his glittering comforts, has presented the vision of a world in which at the very best--even ifit all comes out as he says it will--a man would merely have thingswithout wanting them, and without wanting anything. 

 * * * * *

And so it has seemed to me that even if he is quite unimportant, any manto-day who, in some public place, like a book, shall paint the pictureof his heart's desire, who shall throw up, as upon a screen, where allmen may see them, his most immediate and most pressing ideals, wouldperform an important service. If a man's sole interest were to find outwhat all men in the world want, the best way to do it would be for himto say quite definitely, so that we could all compare notes, what hewanted himself. Speaking for a planet has gone by, but possibly, if afew of us but speak for ourselves, the planet will talk back, and weshall find out at last what it really is that it wants. 

The thing that many of us want most in the present grayness and din ofthe world is some one to play with, or if the word "play" is not quitethe right word, some one with whom we can work with freedom andself-expressiveness and joy. Nine men out of ten one meets to-day talkwith one as it were with their watches in their hands. The people whoare rich one sees everywhere, being run away with by their motor-cars;and the people who are poor one sees struggling pitifully and for theirvery souls, under great wheels and beneath machines. 

Of course, I can only speak for myself. I do not deny that a littlewhile at a time I can sit by a brook in the woods and be happy; but if, as it happens, I would rather have other people about me--people who donot spoil things, I find that the machines about me everywhere have mademost people very strange and pathetic in the woods. They cannot sit bybrooks, many of them; and when they come out to the sky, it looks tothem like some mere, big, blue lead roof up over their lives. Perhaps Iam selfish about it, but I cannot bear to see people looking at the skyin this way. .. . 

 * * * * *

So, as I have watched my fellow human beings, what I have come to wantmost of all in this world is the inspired employer--or what I havecalled the inspired millionaire or organizer; the man who can take themachines off the backs of the people and take the machines out of theirwits, and make the machines free their bodies and serve their souls. 

If we ever have the inspired employer, he will have to be made by thesocial imagination of the people, by creating the spirit of expectationand challenge toward the rich among the masses of the people. 

I believe that the time has come when the world is to make its laststand for idealism, great men, and crowds. 

I believe that great men can be really great, that they can representcrowds. I believe that crowds can be really great, that they can knowgreat men. 

The most natural kind of great man for crowds to know first willprobably be a kind of everyday great man or business statesman, the manwho represents all classes, and who proves it in the way he conducts hisbusiness. 

I have called this man the Crowdman. 

I do not say that I have met precisely the type of inspired millionaireI have in mind, but I have known scores of men who have reminded me ofhim and of what he is going to be, and I am prepared to say that inspirit, or latent at least, he is all about me in the world to-day. Ifit is proved to me that no such man exists, I am here to say there willbe one. If it is proved to me that there cannot be one, _I will makeone_. If it is proved to me that by lifting up Desire in the faces ofyoung men and of boys, and in the faces of true fathers and youngmothers, and by ringing up my challenge on the great doors of theschools, I cannot make one, then I will invoke the men that shall writethe books, that shall sing the songs that shall make one! I say thiswith all reverence for other men's desires and with all respect fornatural prejudgments. As I have conceived it, the one business of theworld to-day is to find out what we are for and to find out what men inthe world--on the whole--really want. When men know what they want theyget it. Every wrong thing we have to face in modern industrial life isdue to men who know what they want, and who therefore get it, due to thepassions and the dreams of men; and the one single way in which thesewrong things will ever be overcome is with more passions and with moreand mightier dreams of men. 

Nothing is more visionary than trying to run a world without dreams, especially an economic world. It is because even bad dreams are betterin this world than having no dreams at all that bad people so called areso largely allowed to run it. 

In the final and practical sense, the one factor in economics to bereckoned with is Desire. 

The next move in economics is going to be the statement of a shrewd, dogged, realizable ideal. It is only ideals that have aroused the wrongpassions, and it is only ideals that will arouse the right ones. 

It will have to be, I imagine, when it comes, not a mere statement ofprinciples, an analysis, or a criticism, but a moving-picture, aportrait of the human race, that shall reveal man's heart to himself. What we want is a vast white canvas, spread, as it were, over the end ofthe world, before which we shall all sit together, the audience of thenations, of the poor, of the rich, as in some still, thoughtfulplace--all of us together; and then we will throw up before us on thevast white screen in the dark the vivid picture of our vast desires, flame up upon it the hopes, the passions of human lives, and the grim, silent wills of men. _"What do we want?" "Where are we going?"_

In place of the literature of criticism we have come now to theliterature of Desire. 

This literature will have to come slowly, and I have come to believethat the first book, when it comes, will be perhaps a book that does notprove anything, a book that is a mere cry, a prayer, or challenge; thestory of what one man with these streetfuls of the faces of men and thefaces of women pouring their dullness and pouring their weariness overhim, has desired, and of what, God helping him, he will have. 

There is a certain sense in which merely praying to God has gone by. Inthe present desperate crisis of a world plunging on in the dark to acatastrophe or a glory that we cannot guess, it is a time for men topray a prayer, a standing-up prayer, to one another. 

I believe that it is going to be this huge gathering-in of publicdesire, this imperious challenge of what men want, this standing-upprayer of men to one another, which alone shall make men go forth withfaith and singing once more into the battle of life. Sometimes it hasseemed to me I have already heard it--this song of men's desires aboutme--faintly. But I have seen that the time is at hand when it shall comeas a vast chorus of cities, of fields, of men's voices, filling the domeof the world--a chorus in the glory and the shame of which nomillionaire who merely wants to make money, no artist who is notexpressing the souls and freeing the bodies of men, no statesman who isnot gathering up the desires of crowds, and going daily through theworld hewing out the will of the people, shall dare to live. 

 * * * * *

But while this is the vision of my belief, I would not have any onesuppose that I am the bearer of easy and gracious tidings. 

It is rather of a great daily adventure one has with the world. 

There have been times when it seemed as if it had to begin all overagain every morning. 

Day by day I walk down Fleet Street toward Ludgate Hill. 

I look once more every morning at that great picture of any religion; Ilook at the quiet, soaring, hopeful dome--that little touch of singingor praying that men have lifted up against heaven. "Will the Dome bringthe Man to me?"

I look up at the machines, strange and eager, hurrying across thebridge. "Will the Machines bring the Man to me?"

I look in the faces of the crowd hurrying past. "Will the Crowd bringthe Man to me?"

With the picture of my religion--or perhaps three religions or threestories of religion--I walk on and on through the crowd, past therailway, past the Cathedral, past the Mansion House, and over the TowerBridge. I walk fast and eagerly and blindly, as though a man would walkaway from the world. 

Suddenly I find myself, throngs of voices all about me, standinghalf-unconsciously by a high iron fence in Bermondsey watching thatsmooth asphalt playground where one sees the very dead (for once)crowded by the living--pushed over to the edges--their gravestonestilted calmly up against the walls. I stand and look through the picketsand watch the children run and shout--the little funny, mockinglydressed, frowzily frumpily happy children, the stored-up sunshine of athousand years all shining faintly out through the dirt, out through thegenerations in their little faces--"Will the Man come to me out ofthese?"

The tombstones lean against the wall and the children run and shout. AsI watch them with my hopes and fears and the tombstones tilted againstthe walls--as I peer through the railings at the children, I face mythree religions. What will the three religions do with the children?What will the children do with the three religions?

And now I will tell the truth. I will not cheat nor run away assometimes I seem to have tried to do for years. I will no longer letmyself be tricked by the mere glamour and bigness of our modern lifenor swooned into good-will by the roll and liturgy of revolution, "ofthe people, " "for the people, " "by the people, " nor will I be longerawed by those huge phrase-idols, constitutions, routines, that haveroared around me "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity"--those imperious, thoughtless, stupid tra-la-las of the People. Do the People see truth?Can the People see truth? Can all the crowd, and can all the machines, and all the cathedrals piled up together produce the Man, the Crowd-manor great man who sees truth?

And so with my three religions, I have three fears, one for each ofthem. There is the Machine fear, lest the crowd should be overswept byits machines and become like them; and the Crowd fear, lest the crowdshould overlook its mighty innumerable and personal need of great men;and there is also the daily fear for the Church, lest the Church shouldnot understand crowds and machines and grapple with crowds and machines, interpret them and glory in them and appropriate them for her own useand for God's--lest the Church should turn away from the crowds and themachines and graciously and idly bow down to Herself. 

And now I am going to try to express these three fears that go with thethree religions as well as I can, so that I can turn on them and facethem and, God helping me, look them out of countenance. 

CHAPTER II

THE CROWD SCARE

Time was when a man was born upon this planet in a somewhat lonelyfashion. A few human beings out of all infinity stood by to care forhim. He was brought up with hills and stars and a neighbour or so, untilhe grew to man's estate. He climbed at last over the farthest hill, andthere, on the rim of things, standing on the boundary line of sky andearth that had always been the edge of life to him before, he lookedforth upon the freedom of the world, and said in his soul, "What shall Ibe in this world I see, and whither shall I go in it?" And the sky andthe earth and the rivers and the seas and the nights and the daysbeckoned to him, and the voices of life rose around him, and they allsaid, "Come!"

On a corner in New York, around a Street Department wagon, not so verylong ago, five thousand men were fighting for shovels, fifty men to ashovel--a tool for living a little longer. 

The problem of living in this modern world is the problem of findingroom in it. The crowd principle is so universally at work through modernlife that the geography of the world has been changed to conform to it. We live in crowds. We get our living in crowds. We are amused in herds. Civilization is a list of cities. Cities are the huge central dynamos ofall being. The power of a man can be measured to-day by the mile, thenumber of miles between him and the city; that is, between him and whatthe city stands for--the centre of mass. 

The crowd principle is the first principle of production. The producerwho can get the most men together and the most dollars together controlsthe market; and when he once controls the market, instead of merelygetting the most men and the most dollars, he can get all the men andall the dollars. Hence the corporation in production. 

The crowd principle is the first principle of distribution. The man whocan get the most men to buy a particular thing from him can buy the mostof it, and therefore buy it the cheapest, and therefore get more men tobuy from him; and having bought this particular thing cheaper than allmen could buy it, it is only a step to selling it to all men; and then, having all the men on one thing and all the dollars on one thing, he isable to buy other things for nothing, for everybody, and sell them for alittle more than nothing to everybody. Hence the department store--thesyndicate of department stores--the crowd principle in commerce. 

The value of a piece of land is the number of footsteps passing by it intwenty-four hours. The value of a railroad is the number of people nearit who cannot keep still. If there are a great many of these people, therailroad runs its trains for them. If there are only a few, though theybe heroes and prophets, Dantes, Savonarolas, and George Washingtons, trains shall not be run for them. The railroad is the characteristicproperty and symbol of property in this modern age, and the entire valueof a railroad depends upon its getting control of a crowd--either acrowd that wants to be where some other crowd is, or a crowd that wantsa great many tons of something that some other crowd has. 

When we turn from commerce to philosophy, we find the same principlerunning through them both. The main thing in the philosophy of to-day isthe extraordinary emphasis of environment and heredity. A man's destinyis the way the crowd of his ancestors ballot for his life. His soul--ifhe has a soul--is an atom acted upon by a majority of other atoms. 

When we turn to religion in its different phases, we find the sameemphasis upon them all--the emphasis of mass, of majority. Not that thechurch exists for the masses--no one claims this--but that, such as itis, it is a mass church. While the promise of Scripture, as a lastresort, is often heard in the church about two or three gatheredtogether in God's name, the Church is run on the working conviction thatunless the minister and the elders can gather two or three hundred inGod's name, He will not pay any particular attention to them, or, if Hedoes, He will not pay the bills. The church of our forefathers, foundedon personality, is exchanged for the church of democracy, founded oncrowds; and the church of the moment is the institutional church, inwhich the standing of the clergyman is exchanged for the standing of thecongregation. The inevitable result, the crowd clergyman, is seen onevery hand amongst us--the agent of an audience, who, instead of tellingan audience what they ought to do, runs errands for them morning andnoon and night. With coddling for majorities and tact for whims, hecarefully picks his way. He does his people as much good as they willlet him, tells them as much truth as they will hear, until he dies atlast, and goes to take his place with Puritan parsons who masteredmajorities, with martyrs who would not live and be mastered bymajorities, and with apostles who managed to make a new world withoutthe help of majorities at all. 

Theology reveals the same tendency. The measuring by numbers is found inall belief, the same cringing before masses of little facts instead ofconceiving the few immeasurable ones. Helpless individuals mastered bycrowds are bound to believe in a kind of infinitely helpless God. Hestands in the midst of the crowds of His laws and the systems of Hisworlds: to those who are not religious, a pale First Cause; and to thosewho are, a Great Sentimentality far away in the heavens, who, in a kindof vast weak-mindedness (a Puritan would say), seems to want everybodyto be good and hopes they will, but does not quite know what to doabout it if they are not. 

Every age has its typical idea of heaven and its typical idea of hell(in some of them it would be hard to tell which is which), and everycivilization, has its typical idea of God. A civilization with sovereignmen in it has a sovereign God; and a crowd civilization, reflecting itsmood on the heavens, is inclined to a pleasant, large-minded God, eternally considering everybody and considering everything, butinefficient withal, a kind of legislature of Deity, typical ofrepresentative institutions at their best and at their worst. 

If we pass from our theology to our social science we come to the mostcharacteristic result of the crowd principle that the times afford. Weare brought face to face with Socialism, the millennium machine, theCorliss engine of progress. It were idle to deny to the Socialist thathe is right--and more right, indeed, than most of us, in seeing thatthere is a great wrong somewhere; but it would be impossible beyond thispoint to make any claim for him, except that he is honestly trying tocreate in the world a wrong we do not have as yet, that shall be largeenough to swallow the wrong we have. The term "Socialism" stands formany things, in its present state; but so far as the average Socialistis concerned, he may be defined as an idealist who turns to materialism, that is, to mass, to carry his idealism out. The world having discoveredtwo great ideals in the New Testament, the service of all men by allother men, and the infinite value of the individual, the Socialistexpects to carry out one of these ideals by destroying the other. 

The principle that an infinitely helpful society can be produced bysetting up a row of infinitely helpless individuals is Socialism, as theaverage Socialist practises it. The average Socialist is the type of theeager but effeminate reformer of all ages, because he seeks to gain bymachinery things nine tenths of the value of which to men is in gainingthem for themselves. Socialism is the attempt to invent conveniencesfor heroes, to pass a law that will make being a man unnecessary, to doaway with sin by framing a world in which it would be worthless to doright because it would be impossible to do wrong. It is a philosophy ofhelplessness, which, even if it succeeds in helplessly carrying itshelplessness out--in doing away with suffering, for instance--can onlydo it by bringing to pass a man not alive enough to be capable ofsuffering, and putting him in a world where suffering and joy alikewould be a bore to him. 

But the main importance of Socialism in this connection lies in the factthat it does not confine itself to sociology. It has become a completephilosophy of life, and can be seen penetrating with its subtle satireon human nature almost everything about us. We have the cash register toeducate our clerks into pure and honest character, and the souls ofconductors can be seen being nurtured, mile after mile, byfare-recorders. Corporations buy consciences by the gross. They are hungover the door of every street car. Consciences are worked by pulling astrap. Liverymen have cyclometres to help customers to tell the truth, and the Australian ballot is invented to help men to be manly enough tovote the way they think. And when, in the course of human events, wecame to the essentially moral and spiritual reform of a woman's right todress in good taste--that is, appropriately for what she is doing, whatdid we proceed to do to bring it about? Conventions were held year afteryear, and over and over, to get women to dress as they wanted to; dressreform associations were founded, syndicates of courage were establishedall over the land--all in vain; and finally, --Heaven help us!--how wasthis great moral and spiritual reform accomplished? By an invention oftwo wheels, one in front of the other. It was brought about by the PopeManufacturing Company of Hartford, Connecticut in two short years. 

Everything is brought about by manufacturing companies. It is thesocialist spirit; the idea that, if we can only find it, there is somemachine that can surely be invented that will take the place of men: notonly of hands and feet, but of all the old-fashioned and lumberingvirtues, courage, patience, vision, common sense, and religion itself, out of which they are made. 

But we depend upon machinery not only for the things that we want, butfor the brains with which we decide what we want. If a man wants to knowwhat he thinks, he starts a club; and if he wants to be very sure, hecalls a convention. From the National Undertakers' Association and theLaunderers' League to the Christian Endeavour Tournament and the World'sCongress--the Midway Pleasance of Piety--the Convention strides theworld with vociferousness. The silence that descends from the hills isfilled with its ceaseless din. The smallest hamlet in the land haslearned to listen reverent from afar to the vast insistent roar of It, as the Voice of the Spirit of the Times. 

Every idea we have is run into a constitution. We cannot think without achairman. Our whims have secretaries; our fads have by-laws. Literatureis a club. Philosophy is a society. Our reforms are mass meetings. Ourculture is a summer school. We cannot mourn our mighty dead withoutCarnegie hall and forty vice-presidents. We remember our poets withtrustees, and the immortality of a genius is watched by a standingcommittee. Charity is an Association. Theology is a set of resolutions. Religion is an endeavour to be numerous and communicative. We awe theimpenitent with crowds, convert the world with boards, and save the lostwith delegates; and how Jesus of Nazareth could have done so great awork without being on a committee is beyond our ken. What Socrates andSolomon would have come to if they had only had the advantage ofconventions it would be hard to say; but in these days, when theexcursion train is applied to wisdom; when, having little enough, we tryto make it more by pulling it about; when secretaries urge us, treasurers dun us, programs unfold out of every mail--where is the manwho, guileless-eyed, can look in his brother's face; can declare uponhis honour that he has never been a delegate, never belonged toanything, never been nominated, elected, imposed on, in his life?

Everything convenes, revolves, petitions, adjourns. Nothing staysadjourned. We have reports that think for us, committees that do rightfor us, and platforms that spread their wooden lengths over all thethings we love, until there is hardly an inch of the dear old earth tostand on, where, fresh and sweet and from day to day, we can live ourlives ourselves, pick the flowers, look at the stars, guess at God, garner our grain, and die. Every new and fresh human being that comesupon the earth is manufactured into a coward or crowded into a machineas soon as we get at him. We have already come to the point where we donot expect to interest anybody in anything without a constitution. Andthe Eugenic Society is busy now on by-laws for falling in love. 

What this means with regard to the typical modern man is, not that hedoes not think, but that it takes ten thousand men to make him think. Hehas a crowd soul, a crowd creed. Charged with convictions, galvanizedfrom one convention to another, he contrives to live, and with a senseof multitude, applause, and cheers he warms his thoughts. When they havebeen warmed enough he exhorts, dictates, goes hither and thither on thecrutch of the crowd, and places his crutch on the world, and pries onit, if perchance it may be stirred to something. To the bigotry of theman who knows because he speaks for himself has been added a new bigotryon the earth--the bigotry of the man who speaks for the nation; who, with a more colossal prejudice than he had before, returns from a massmeeting of himself, and, with the effrontery that only a crowd can give, backs his opinions with forty states, and walks the streets of hisnative town in the uniform of all humanity. This is a kind of fool thathas never been possible until these latter days. Only a very great manypeople, all of them working on him at once, and all of them watchingevery one else working at once, can produce this kind. 

Indeed, the crowd habit has become so strong upon us, has so masteredthe mood of the hour, that even you and I, gentle reader, have foundourselves for one brief moment, perhaps, in a certain sheepish feelingat being caught in a small audience. Being caught in a small audience ata lecture is no insignificant experience. You will see people lookingfurtively about, counting one another. You will make comparisons. Youwill recall the self-congratulatory air of the last large audience youhad the honour to belong to, sitting in the same seats, buzzingconfidently to itself before the lecture began. The hush ofdisappointment in a small audience all alone with itself, the mutualshame of it, the chill in it, that spreads softly through the room, every identical shiver of which the lecturer is hired to warmthrough--all these are signs of the times. People look at the emptychairs as if every modest, unassuming chair there were some greatpersonality saying to each and all of us: "Why are you here? Did you notmake a mistake? Are you not ashamed to be a party to--to--as small acrowd as this?" Thus do we sit, poor mortals, doing obeisance to EmptyChairs--we who are to be lectured to--until the poor lecturer who is tolecture to us comes in, and the struggle with the Chairs begins. 

When we turn to education as it stands to-day, the same self-satisfied, inflexible smile of the crowd is upon it all. We see little but themassing of machinery, the crowding together of numbers of teachers andnumbers of courses and numbers of students, and the practical totalsubmergence of personality, except by accident, in all educated life. 

The infinite value of the individual, the innumerable consequences ofone single great teaching man, penetrating every pupil who knows him, becoming a part of the universe, a part of the fibre of thought andexistence to every pupil who knows him--this is a thing that belongs tothe past and to the inevitable future. With all our great institutions, the crowds of men who teach in them, the crowds of men who learn inthem, we are still unable to produce out of all the men they graduateenough college presidents to go around. The fact that at almost anygiven time there may be seen, in this American land of ours, half ascore of colleges standing and waiting, wondering if they will ever finda president again, is the climax of what the universities have failed todo. The university will be justified only when a man with a universityin him, a whole campus in his soul, comes out of it, to preside over it, and the soul that has room for more than one chair in it comes out of itto teach in it. 

When we turn from education to journalism, the pressure of the crowd isstill more in evidence. To have the largest circulation is to have themost advertising, and to have the most advertising means to have themost money, and to have the most money means to be able to buy the mostability, and to have the most ability means to keep all that one gainsand get more. The degradation of many of our great journals in the lasttwenty years is but the inevitable carrying out of the syndicate methodin letters--a mass of contributors, a mass of subscribers, and a mass ofadvertisers. So long as it gives itself over to the circulation idea, the worse a newspaper is, the more logical it is. There may be a certainpoint where it is bound to stop some time, because there will not beenough bad people who are bad enough to go around; but we have not cometo it yet, and in the meantime about everything that can be thought ofis being printed to make bad people. If it be asserted that there arenot enough bad people to go around even now, it may be added that thereare plenty of good people to take their places as fast as they fail tobe bad enough, and that the good people who take the bad papers to findfault with them are the ones who make such papers possible. 

The result of the crowd principle is the inevitable result. Our journalshave fallen off as a matter of course, not only in moral ideals (whicheverybody realizes), but in brain force, power of expression, imagination, and foresight--the things that give distinction and resultsto utterance and that make a journal worth while. The editorial page hasbeen practically abandoned by most journals, because most journals havebeen abandoned by their editors: they have become printedcounting-rooms. With all their greatness, their crowds of writers, andmasses of readers, and piles of cablegrams, they are not able to producethe kind of man who is able to say a thing the kind of way that willmake everybody stop and listen to him, cablegrams and all. HoraceGreeley and Samuel Bowles and Charles A. Dana have passed from thepress, and the march of the crowd through the miles of their columnsevery day is trampling on their graves. The newspaper is the massmachine, the crowd thinker. To and fro, from week to week and from yearto year, its flaming headlines sway, now hither and now thither, wherethe greatest numbers go, or the best guess of where they are going togo; and Personality, creative, triumphant, masterful, imperiousPersonality--is it not at an end? It were a dazzling sight, perhaps, togaze at night upon a huge building, thinking with telegraph under thewide sky around the world, the hurrying of its hundred pens upon thedesks, and the trembling of its floors with the mighty coming of a Dayout of the grip of the press; but even this huge bewildering pile ofpower, this aggregation, this corporation of forces, machines of souls, glittering down the Night--does any one suppose It stands by Itself, that It is its own master, that It can do its own will in the world? Inall its splendour It stands, weaving the thoughts of the world in thedark; but that very night, that very moment, It lies in the power of alittle ticking-thing behind its doors. It belongs to that legislature ofinformation and telegraph, that owner of what happens in a day, calledthe Associated Press. 

If the One who called Himself a man and a God had not been born in acrowd, if he had not loved and grappled with it, and been crucified andworshipped by it, He might have been a Redeemer for the silent, stately, ancient world that was before He came, but He would have failed to be aRedeemer for this modern world--a world where the main inspiration andthe main discouragement is the crowd, where every great problem andevery great hope is one that deals with crowds. It is a world where, from the first day a man looks forth to move, he finds his feet andhands held by crowds. The sun rises over crowds for him, and sets overcrowds; and having presumed to be born, when he presumes to die at last, in a crowd of graves he is left not even alone with God. Ten human livesdeep they have them--the graves in Paris; and whether men live theirlives piled upon other men's lives, in blocks in cities or in theapparent loneliness of town or country what they shall do or shall notdo, or shall have or shall not have--is it not determined by crowds, bythe movement of crowds? The farmer is lonely enough, one would say, ashe rests by his fire in the plains, his barns bursting with wheat; butthe murmur of the telegraph almost any moment is the voice of the crowdto him, thousands of miles away, shouting in the Stock Exchange: "Youshall not sell your wheat! Let it lie! Let it rot in your barns!"

And yet, if a man were to go around the earth with a surveyor's chain, there would seem to be plenty of room for all who are born upon it. Thefact that there are enough square miles of the planet for every humanbeing on it to have several square miles to himself does not prove thata man can avoid the crowd--that it is not a crowded world. If what a mancould be were determined by the square mile, it would indeed be a gentleand graceful earth to live on. But an acre of Nowhere satisfies no one;and how many square miles does a man want to be a nobody in? He can doit better in a crowd, where every one else is doing it. 

In the ancient world, when a human being found something in the wrongplace and wanted to put it where it belonged, he found himself face toface with a few men. He found he had to deal with these few men. To-day, if he wants anything put where it belongs, he finds himself face to facewith a crowd. He finds that he has to deal with a crowd. The world hastelephones and newspapers now, and it has railroads; and if a manproposes to do a certain thing in it, the telephones tell the few, andthe newspapers tell the crowd, and the crowd gets on to the railroad;and before he rises from his sleep, behold the crowd in his front yard;and if he can get as far as his own front gate in the thing he is goingfor, he must be--either a statesman? a hero? or a great genius? None ofthese. Let him be a corporation--of ideas or of dollars; let him be somecomplex, solid, crowded thing, would he do anything for himself, or foranybody else, or for everybody else, in a world too crowded to tell thetruth without breaking something, or to find room for it, when it istold, without breaking something. 

This is the Crowd's World. 

 * * * * *

What I have written I have written. 

I have been sitting and reading it. It is a mood. But there is animplacable truth in it, I believe, that must be gotten out and used. 

As I have been reading I have looked up. I see the quiet little mountainthrough my window standing out there in the sun. It looks around theworld as if nothing had happened; and the bobolinks out in the greatmeadow are all flying and singing in the same breath and rowing throughthe air, thousands of them, miles of them. They do not stop a minute. 

A moment ago while I was writing I heard the Child outside on thepiazza, four years old, going by my window back and forth, listening tothe crunch of her new shoes as if it were the music of the spheres. Whyshould not I do as well? I thought. The Child is merely seeing her shoesas they are with as many senses and as many thoughts and desires at onceas she can muster, and with all her might. 

What if I were to see the world like the Child?

Yesterday I went to Robert's Meadow. I saw three small city boys, withtheir splendid shining rubber boots and their beautiful bamboo poles. They were on their way home. They had only the one trout between them, and that had been fondled, examined, and poked over and bragged aboutuntil it was fairly stiff and brown with those boys--looked as if it hadbeen stolen out of a dried-herring box. They put it reverently back, when I saw it, into their big basket. I smiled a little as I walked onand thought how they felt about it. 

Then suddenly it was as if I had forgotten something. I turned andlooked back; saw those three boys--a little retinue to that solitaryfish--trudging down the road in the yellow sun. And I stood there andwanted to be in it! Then I saw them going round the bend in the roadthirty years away. 

I still want to be one of those boys. 

And I am going to try. Perhaps, Heaven helping me, I will yet grow up tothem!

I know that the way those three boys felt about the fish--the way theyfolded it around with something, the way they made the most of it, isthe way to feel about the world. 

I side with the three boys. I am ready to admit that as regardstechnical and comparatively unimportant details or as regardsperspective on the fish the boys may not have been right. It is possiblethat they had not taken a point of view, measured in inches or volts orfoot-pounds, that was right and could last forever; but I know that thespirit of their point of view was right--the spirit that hovered aroundthe three boys and around the fish that day was right and could lastforever. 

It is the spirit in which the world was made, and the spirit in whichnew worlds in all ages, and even before our eyes by Boys and Girlsand--God, are being made. 

It is only the boys and the girls (all sizes) who know about worlds. Andit is only boys and girls who are right. 

I heard a robin in the apple tree this morning out in the rain singing, _"I believe! I believe!"_

 * * * * *

At the same time, I am glad that I have known and faced, and that Ishall have to know and face, the Crowd Fear. 

I know in some dogged, submerged, and speechless way that it is not atrue fear. And yet I want to move along the sheer edge of it all mylife. I want it. I want all men to have it, and to keep having it, andto keep conquering it. I have seen that no man who has not felt it, whodoes not know this huge numbing, numberless fear before the crowd, andwho may not know it again almost any moment, will ever be able to leadthe crowd, glory in it, die for it, or help it. Nor will any man who hasnot defied it, and lifted his soul up naked and alone before it andcried to God, ever interpret the crowd or express the will of the crowd, or hew out of earth and heaven what the crowd wants. 

We want to help to express and fulfil a crowd civilization, we want toshare the crowd life, to express what people in crowds feel--the greatcrowd sensations, excitements, the inspirations and depressions of thosewho live and struggle with crowds. 

We want to face, and face grimly, implacably, the main facts, the mainemotions men are having to-day. And the main emotion men are havingto-day about our modern world is that it is a crowded world, that in thenature of the case its civilization is a crowd civilization. Every otherimportant thing for this present age to know must be worked out fromthis one. It is the main thing with which our religion has to deal, thething our literature is about, and the thing our arts will be obligedto express. Any man who makes the attempt to consider or interpretanything either in art or life without a true understanding of the crowdprinciple as it is working to-day, without a due sense of its centralplace in all that goes on around us, is a spectator in the blur andbewilderment of this modern world, as helpless in it, and as childishand superficial in it, as a Greek god at the World's Fair, gazing out ofhis still Olympian eyes at the Midway Pleasance. 

 * * * * *

After the Crowd Fear there comes to most of us the machine fear. Machines are the huge limbs or tentacles of crowds. As the crowds growthe machines grow; grasping at the little strip of sky over us, at thelittle patch of ground beneath our feet, they swing out before us andbeckon daily to us new hells and new heavens in our eyes. 

CHAPTER III

THE MACHINE SCARE

I have had occasion nearly every day for the past two weeks to pass byan ancient churchyard on a great hillside not far from London. Most ofthe stones are very old, and seem to have been thoughtfully andreverently, flake by flake, wrought into their final form bylong-vanished hands. As I stand and watch them, with the yews andcypresses flocking round them, it is as if in some sort of way they hadbeen surely wrought by the hand of love, so full are they of grief andof joy, of devotion, of the very singing of the dead and of those wholoved them. 

When I walk on a little farther, and come to a small and new addition tothe churchyard, and look about me at the stones, I find myself suddenlyin quite a new company. So far as one could observe, looking at thegravestones in the new churchyard, the people who died there died ratherthoughtlessly and mechanically, and as if nobody cared very much. Ofcourse, when one thinks a little further, one knows that this cannot betrue, and that the men and the women who gathered by these glib, trim, capable-looking modern tombstones were as full of love and tendernessand reverence before their dead as the others were--but the lines on thestones give no sign. One never stops to read an epitaph on one of them;one knows it would not be interesting, or really whisper to one thestrange, happy, human things of another world--even of this world, thatmake the old tombstones such good company and so friendly to us. Onegives a glance at the stone and passes on. It was made by machinery, apparently; a machine might have designed it, a machine might have diedand been buried under it. One looks beyond it at all the others likeit--all the glib, competent-looking white stones. Were the silencedpeople all machines under them, all mechanical, all made to a patternlike their stones, like these strangely hard, brief tombstones standinghere at their heads, summing up their lives before us curtly, heartlessly, on this gentle old hillside?

I wondered. 

I looked back to the old eloquent cemetery that almost seemed to bebreathing things, and looked once more at the new. 

And as I stood and thought, they seemed to me to be two worlds--one theworld the people all about me are always saying sadly is going by, andthe other--well, the one we will have to have. 

 * * * * *

As I look off from the hilltop at the great sloping countryside aboutme, which stretches miles and miles, with its green fields, and bushytreetops, its red roofs, its banners of steam from twenty railways, itshuge, grim, furious chimneys, its still, sleepy steeples, I also see twoworlds, the same two worlds over again that I saw in the churchyard, except that they are all jumbled together--the complacent, capable, cut-out, homeless-looking houses, the little snuggled-down old ones withtheir happy trees about them and trails of cooking smoke. I see the sametwo worlds standing and facing each other before me whichever way Iturn. 

And when I slip out of the churchyard from those two little separateworlds of the dead, and move slowly down the long bustling villagestreet, and look into the faces of the living, the same two worlds thatwere in the churchyard and on the hills seem to look at me out of thefaces of the living too. 

The faces go hurrying past me, worlds apart. Most people, I imagine, whoread these pages must have noticed the people's faces in the streetsnowadays--how they seem to have come out of separate worlds into thestreet a moment, and hurry past, and seem to be going back in a momentmore to separate worlds. 

There is hardly even a village footway left anywhere to-day where onecannot see these two worlds, or the spirit of these two worlds, flittingpast one through the streets in people's faces, and nightly before oureyes, struggling with each other to possess, to swallow away into itselfhuman souls, to master the fate of man upon the earth. 

One of these is the World of the Hand-made; the other is theMachine-made World. 

 * * * * *

As day by day I watch these two worlds with all their people in themflocking past me, I have come to have certain momentary but recurrentresentments and attractions, unaccountable strong emotions; and when Itry afterward to rationalize my emotions, as a man should, and give anaccount of them to myself, and get them ready to use and face my agewith, and make myself strong and fit to live in an age, I find myselfwith a great task before me. And yet one must do it; one cannot live inan age strongly and fitly if one would rather be living in some otherage, or if it is an age with two worlds in it and one cannot make upone's mind which is the world one wants and settle down quietly and livein it. Then a strange thing happens, and always happens the moment Ibegin to try to decide which of the two--the Hand-made World or theMachine-made World--I will choose. I find that in an odd, confused, groping, obstinate way I am bound to choose them both. In spite of allits ugly ways--a kind of vast indifference it has to me, to everybody, its magnificent heartlessness--I find I have come to take in theMachine-made World a kind of boundless, half-secret pride and joy, for aterrible and strange beauty there is in it. And then, too, even if Iwanted to give it up, I could not: neither I nor any man, nor all theworld combined, could unthink to-day a hundred years, fold up a hundredthousand miles of railway, tuck modern life all neatly up again in alittle, old, snug, safe, lovable Hand-made World. There must be some wayout, some connecting link between the Hand-made and the Machine-made. Wehave merely lost it for a moment. 

Which way shall we turn? And so at last to the little Thing throughwhich the whole world whispers to me on my desk, to the mighty railwaysthat beckon past my door, to the airships that cannot be stilled, and tothe rolling mills that will not be silenced, I turn at last! I turn tothe Machines Themselves. Half-singing and half-cursing, I have facedthem. There is some way in which they can answer and can be made toanswer--can be made to give me and the men about me the kind of world wewant. I try to analyze it and think it out. What is the thing, the realthing in the Hand-made World, that fills me with pride and joy, and thatI cannot and will not give up? Is not the real thing that is in itsomething that can be or might be freed from it, exhaled from it, something that might be in some new form saved, made an atmosphere or aspirit and passed on? And what is it in the new Machine-made Worldwhich, in spite of the splendid joy, a rough new, wild religion there isin it, keeps daily filling me as I go past machines with thiscontradictory obstinate dread of them? After a time I have made a littlecleared space in my mind, a little breathing room. It has come to mefrom thinking that what is beautiful in the Hand-made World perhaps isnot these particular Hand-made things themselves at which I so delight, but the Hand-made spirit of the men who made them which the men put intothe things. And perhaps what is full of death and fear in theMachine-made World is not the machines themselves, but the Machine-madespirit in which the men who run the machines have made the machineswork. Perhaps the Hand-made spirit is pervasive, eternal. Perhaps it canescape like a spirit, and can live where it will live, and do what itwill do, like a spirit, and possess the body that it wills to possess. Perhaps the Hand-made spirit is still living around me to-day, and isnot only living, but is living in a more unspeakable, unbounded bodythan any spirit has ever lived in before, and is to-day before our eyes, laying its huge iron fingers around our little earth, and holding theoceans in its hand, and brushing away mountains with a breath, until wehave Man at last playing all night through the sky, with visions andairships and telescopes. His very words walk on the air with soft andunseen feet. 

It is the Hand-made spirit that creates machines. The machinesthemselves are still the mighty children of the men who move and work inthe Hand-made spirit; and the men who glory in them, the men who bringthem forth, who think them out, and who create them, and who do thegreat and mighty things with them, are still the Hand-made men. 

 * * * * *

This leads us up to the question we are all asking ourselves every day. "How can a machine-made world be run in the spirit of a hand-madeworld?" The particular form in which the question has been put, which istaken from "Inspired Millionaires" is as follows:

"The idea that there is something in a machine simply as a machine whichmakes it inherently unspiritual is based upon the experience of theworld; but it is, after all, a rather amateur and juvenile world withmachines as yet. Its ideas are in their first stages, and are based forthe most part upon the world's experience with second-rate men, workingin second-rate factories--men who have been bullied, and could bebullied, by the machines they worked with into being machinesthemselves. No one would think of denying that men who let machines getthe better of them, either in their minds or their bodies, in any walkof life, grow unspiritual and mechanical. But it does not take a machineto make a machine out of a man. Anything will do it if the man will letit. Even the farmer who is out under the great free dome of heaven, andworking in wonder every day of his life, grows like a clod if he burieshis soul alive in the soil. But farming has been tried many thousands ofyears, and the other kind of farmer is known by everybody--the farmerwho is master over the soil; who, instead of becoming an expression ofthe soil himself, makes the soil express him. The next thing that isgoing to happen is that every one is going to know the other kind ofmechanic. It is cheerfully admitted that the kind of mechanic we largelyhave now, who allows himself to be a watcher of a machine, aturner-of-something for forty years, can hardly be classed as vegetablelife. He is not even organic matter except in a very small part ofhimself. 

"But it is not the mechanical machine which makes the man unspiritual. It is the mechanical man beside the machine. A master at a piano (whichis a machine) makes it a spiritual thing; and a master at aprinting-press, like William Morris, makes it a free and artistic andself-expressive thing. "

I spent a day a little while ago in walking through a factory. I wentpast miles of machines--great glass roofs of sunshine over them--andlooked in the faces of thousands of men. As I went through the machinesI kept looking to and fro between the machines and the men who stoodbeside them, and sometimes I came back and looked again at the machinesand the men beside them; and every machine, or nearly every machine, Isaw (any one could see it in that factory) was making a man of somebody. One could see the spirit of the man who invented the machine, and thespirit of the man who worked with it, and the spirit of the man whoowned it and who placed it there with the man, all softly, powerfullyrunning together. There were exceptions, and every now and then onecame, of course, upon the man who seemed to be simply another andsomewhat different contrivance or attachment to his machine--some partthat had been left over and thought of last, and had not been done aswell as the others; but the factory, taken as a whole, from themanager's offices and the great counting-room, and from the tallchimneys to the dump, seemed to me to have something fresh and human andunwonted about it. It seemed to be a factory that had a look, a look ofits own. It was like a vast countenance. It had features, an expression. It had an air--well, one must say it, of course, if one is driven to it:the factory had a soul, and was humming it. Any one could have seen whyby going into his office and talking a little while with the owner, orby even not talking to him--by seeing him look up from his desk. Afterwalking through several miles of his personality, and up and down anddown and up the corridors of his mind, one did not really need to meethim except as a matter of form and as a finishing touch. One had beenvisiting with him all along: to look in his face was merely to sum itup, to see it all, the whole place, over again in one look. One did notneed to be surprised; one might have known what such a man would belike--that such a factory could only be conceived and wrought by a manof genius, a kind of lighted-up man. A man who had put not onlyskylights in his buildings, but skylights in his men, would have to havea skylight in himself (a skylight with a motor attachment, of course). 

If one were to try to think in nature or in art of something that wouldbe like him--well, some kind of transcendental engine, I should say, running softly, smoothly outdoors in a great sunshine, would have givenone a good idea of him. But, however this may be, it certainly wouldhave been quite impossible to go through his factory and ever say againthat machines do not and could not have souls, or at least over-souls, and that men who worked with machines did not and could not have soulsas fast as they were allowed to. 

A few days later I went through another factory, and I came out wearyand spent at night, feeling as unreasonable and almost as hateful aboutmachines, and as discouraged about the people who had to work with themas John Ruskin did in those first early days when the Factory Chimneyfirst lifted its long black flag upon our earth, and bullied greatcities into cowards and slaves, and all the great, quiet-heartednations, and began making for us--all around us, before our eyes, asthough in a kind of jeer at us, and at our queer, pretty, helplesslittle religions--the hell we had ceased to believe in. 

The hell is here, and is going to be here apparently as long as may benecessary for us to see it and believe in it once more. If a hell on ourown premises, shut down hard over our lives here and now, is what isnecessary to make us religious and human once more, if we are reduced toit, and if having a hard, literal hell--one of our own--is our only wayof seeing things, of fighting our way through to the truth, and ofgetting once more decisive, manful, commanding ideas of good and evil, Ifor one can only be glad we have Pittsburgs and Sheffields to hurry usalong and soon have it over with. 

But while, like Ruskin, any one can look about the machines and seehell, he can see hell to-day, unlike Ruskin, with heaven lined up closebeside it. The machines have come to have souls. The machines we can seeall about us have taken sides. We can all of us see the machines aboutus to-day like vast looms, weaving in and weaving out the fate of theworld, the fate of the churches, the fate of the women and the littlechildren, and the very fate of God; and everything about us we can seeturning at last on what we are doing with the machines that are aboutus, and what we are letting our machines do with us. 

 * * * * *

It has cleared my mind, and at least helped me to live side by side withmachines better from day to day, to consider what these two souls orspirits in the machines are, and what they are doing and likely to do. If one knows them and one sees them, and sees how they are working, itis easier to take sides and join in and help. 

It would seem to me that there are two spirits in machinery--the spiritof weariness, weakness, of inventing ways of getting out of work; andthere is the spirit in the machines, too, of moving mountains, conquering the sea and air, of working harder and lifting one's workover to more heroic, to more splendid and difficult, and almostimpossible things. It is these two spirits that are fighting for thepossession and control of our machine civilization. I watch the machinesand the men beside them and see which side they are on. The labourer whois doing as little work as he dares for his wages and the capitalist whois giving as little service as he dares for his money are on the oneside (the vast, lazy, mean majority of employers and employees), andthere may be seen standing on the other side against them, battling forour world, another small but mighty group made up of the labourer wholoves his work more than his wages, and the capitalist who loves thething he makes more than the profit. In other words, the fate of ourmodern civilization, with all its marvellous machines on it, its artgalleries and its churches, is all hanging to-day on the battle betweenthe spirit of achievement, the spirit of creating things, and the spiritof weariness or the spirit of thinking of ways of getting out of things. 

It does not take very long to see which one prefers when one considersthe problem of living in one world or the other. If we are to take ourchoice between living in a world run by tired men and a world run byinspired ones, most of us will have little difficulty in deciding whichwe would prefer, and which one we are bound to have. I have been movedto come forward with the idea of inspired employers--or, as I havecalled it, "Inspired Millionaires"--because it would seem to me inspiredemployers are the very least we can ask for; for certainly if even ouremployers cannot be inspired or rested and strong, we cannot expecttheir overworked workmen to be. There is no hope for us but to writeour books and to live our lives in such a way as to help put the worldin the hands of the Strong, and to help keep its institutions andcustoms out of the hands of the overworked. Overworked mechanicalemployers and overworked labourers are the last men to solve the problemof the overworked, except in a small, tired, mean, resentful, temporaryway. 

And so, as I look about me and watch the machines and the men who areworking with the machines, or owning them, it is on this principle thatI find myself taking sides. I will not live, if I can help it, in aworld that is conceived and arranged and managed by tired and overworkedand mechanical men. Have I not seen tired, mechanical men, wholegenerations of them, vast mobs of them, the men who have let themachines mow down their souls? The first thing I have come to ask of aman, if he is to be at the head of a machine--whether it is a machinecalled a factory, or a machine called a Government or a city, or amachine called a nation--is, _Is he tired?_ I have cast my lot once forall--and as it seems to me, too, the lot of the world--with those menwho are rested, with the surplus men, the men who want to work more notless, who are still and gentle and strong in their hearts, steady intheir imaginations, great men--men who are not driven to beingself-centred or driven to being class-centred, who can be world-centredand inspired. 

 * * * * *

When one has made this decision, that one will work for a world incontrol of men who are strong, one suddenly is brought face to face witha fact in our machine civilization which probably is quite new, andwhich the spirit of man has never had to face in any age before. 

For the first time in the history of the world, machinery has made itpossible for the world to get into the hands of the weak. 

The Gun began it--the gun in a coward's hands may side with the weak, and the machine in the hands of the weak may temporarily give the worlda list or a trend, and leave it leaning on the wrong side. 

The Trust, for instance, which is really an extremely valuableinvention, and perhaps, on the whole, the most important machine ofmodern times when it is used to defend the rights of the people, is avery different thing when it is pointed at them. We have to-day, notunnaturally, the spectacle of perhaps nine people out of ten getting upand saying in chorus all through the world that Trusts ought to beabolished; and yet it cannot honestly be said that there is reallyanything about the trust-machine--any more than any other machine--thatis inherently wicked, or mechanical and heartless. Our real objection tothe trust-machines is not to the machines themselves, but to the factthat they are, or happen to be (judging each Trust by itself), in thehands of the weak and of the tired--of men, that is, who have no spirit, no imagination about people; mechanical-minded men, who, at least in thepast, have taken the easiest and laziest course in business--that ofmaking all the money they can. 

The moment we see the Trusts in the hands of the strong men, the men whoare unwilling to slump back into mere money-making, and who face dailywith hardihood and with joy the feat of weaving into business severalstrands of value at once, making things and making money and making mentogether, the Trust will become a vast machine of human happiness, lifting up and pulling on the world for all of us day and night. 

If our labouring men to-day are to be got out from under the machines, we can only bring it to pass by doing everything we can in directors'meetings or in labor unions or as buyers or as journalists--whatever wemay be--to keep the trust-machines in this world out of the hands of thetired, weak, and mechanical-minded men. 

And the things that have been happening to the trust-machines, or areabout to happen to them, have happened and are beginning to happenbefore our eyes to the machines themselves. The machines of flame andiron wheels and men in monstrous factories which the philosophers andthe poets and the very preachers have doomed our world with are passingthrough the same evolution as the trust-machines, and shall be seen atlast through the dim struggle yielding themselves, bending their ironwills to the same indomitable human spirit, the same slow, stern, implacable will of the soul of man. They shall be inspired machines. 

Now for a long time we have seen (for the most part) the weak andmechanical-minded employer, the man who takes the line of leastresistance in business, on every hand about us, making his employeesmechanical-minded. The men have not been able to work without machinesto work with, and as they have been obliged to come to him to get themachines, he has adopted the policy of letting himself fall into theweakest and easiest way of keeping his men under his own control. Hetakes the machines the men have come to him to get, and turns them backagainst them, points them at their lives, stops their minds with them, their intelligence and manhood, the very hope and religion with whichthey live; and of course, when men have had machines pointed at themlong enough, one sees them on every hand being mowed down in rows intomachines themselves--as deadly and as hopeless to make a civilizationout of, or a nation out of, or to give votes to, or to have for fathersas machines would be, as iron or leather or wood. 

In the meantime, however, we seem to have been developing--partly bycompetition and partly by combination and by experience--employers whoare not mechanical-minded, who have spirit themselves, and who believein it and can use it in others; who find ways of adjusting the hours, the wages, and the conditions of work for the men, so that what is mostvaluable in them, their spirit, their imaginations, their hourlygood-will, can all be turned into the business, can all daily be used asthe most important part of the working equipment of the factory. Theseemployers have found (by believing it long enough to try it) that livemen can do better and more marketable work than dead ones. If the greatslow-moving majority of our modern machine employers were notmechanical-minded, it would not be necessary to prove to themcategorically the little platitude (which even people who have observedcab-horses know) that the living is more valuable than the half-dead, and that live men can do better and more marketable work than half-deadones. 

But, of course, if they are not convinced by imagination or by argumentsor by figures, they may have to be convinced by losing their business;for the most spirited employers, those who take the more difficult andcreative course of making money and men together, are sure to be theemployers who will get and keep the most spirited men, and are sure tocrowd out of the market in their own special line employers who can onlyget and keep mechanical-minded ones. 

 * * * * *

It would be hard to overstate the importance of the battle now going onamong the trades unions between the spirited labourers and the tiredones, and among the manufacturers between the inspired employers and themechanical-minded ones. 

For the time being, at least, it is the inspired employers who have mostpower to change the conditions of labour and to free themechanical-minded slaves. It is they who are standing to-day on thegreat strategical ground of our time. They hold the pass of human life. People cannot expect to be inspired in crowds. Crowds are too unwieldyand too inconvenient to act quickly. The people can only concentratetheir energies on getting and demanding inspired employers, oninsisting that the men who for eight or nine hours a day are pouring inwith their wages their thoughts, and their motives, the very hope withwhich they live, into their lives, shall be the champions of the people, shall represent them and act for them, as they are not placed to act forthemselves, and with more imagination than they can yet expect to havefor themselves. If our labouring men of to-day are going to struggle outfrom under the machines, they can only do it by doing all that they canin labour unions and in the press and at the polls to keep the machinesin this world out of the hands of tired and mechanical-minded owners. 

But probably the more immediate rescue from the evil or mechanicalnessin machines is not going to come from the employers on the one hand orthe employees on the other, but from having the employees in the TradesUnions and the employers in the directors' meetings combining togetherto keep in subordinate places where they cannot hurt others all men, whether directors or employees, who do not work harder than they haveto, and who have not the brains to do their work for something besidesmoney. The men who are like this will of course be pitied and dulyconsidered, but they will be kept where they will not have power tocontrol other men, or where by force of position or by mere majoritythey will be able to bully other men to work as mechanically as they do. Workmen who do not want to become machines can only better conditions bycombination with so-called inspired employers--employers who work harderthan they have to, who dote on the great human difficulties of work, whochoose not the easiest but the most perfect way of doing things, who arenever mechanical themselves, and will not let their men be if they canhelp it. I have liked to call these employers inspired millionaires. Iwould rather have the machine owner or employer a millionaire, becausethe more machines an inspired employer can own, the more he can buy andget away from the uninspired ones, the sooner will the right of labourand the will of the people be accomplished. When the machines are inthe hands of inspired and strong and spirited men--men of realcompetence or genius for business, the machines will be seen on everyhand around us as the engines of war against evil, against slavery, thewhirling weapons of the Spirit. 

Even now, in dreams have I stood and watched them--the will of thepeople like a flail in their mighty hands--this vast army ofmachines--go thundering past, driving the uninspired and mechanical offthe face of the earth. 

CHAPTER IV

THE STRIKE--AN INVENTION FOR MAKING CROWDS THINK

When I was arranging to slip over from New York and get something I verymuch wanted in England last spring, I found myself held up suddenly inall my plans because some men on the docks had decided that there wassomething that they wanted too. They decided that I and thousands ofother people in New York would have to wait over on the shores ofAmerica until they got it. 

After postponing my plans until things had settled down, I took passage, and in due time found myself standing on English soil, only to beinformed that, while I might be allowed perhaps at least to stand onEnglish soil, that was really as much as I could expect. I could not goanywhere because a number of men on the railways had decided that therewas something they wanted and that I would have to wait till they gotit. 

I could go down and look at the silent, cold locomotives on the rails, and I could be as wistful and hopeful as I liked about getting up toLondon, but these men had decided that there was something that theywanted and I must wait. 

I could not think of anything I had ever done to these men, and what hadLiverpool and London done to them?

After I was duly settled in London, and had begun to get into its littleways, and was busily driving about and attending to my business as I hadplanned, 6, 000 more men suddenly wanted something, brought me up to afull stop one rainy day, and said that they had decided that if I wantedto ride I would have to walk, or that I would have to poke dismallyabout in a 'bus, or worm my way through under the ground. As Iunderstood it, there was something that they wanted and something thatthey were going to get; and while of course in a way, they recognizedthat there might be something that I wanted too, I would have to waittill they got theirs. 

I could not think of anything I had ever done to them, nor could I seewhat the thousands of other good people in London that I saw walking andpuddling about, or watched waiting twenty minutes or so with long, hopeful, dogged whistles for cabs, had done to them. 

A few days more, and my morning paper tells me suddenly of some more menwho wanted something--this time up in Lancashire. They had decided thatthey wouldn't let some two or three hundred thousand other men go totheir work until they got it. They hushed cities to have their own way. Day by day I watched them throwing the silence of the cities in theiremployers' faces, closing shops, closing up railroads, telling the worldit must pay more for the clothes on its back, and all because--a certainMr. And Mrs. Riley of Accrington, North Lancashire did not like or didnot think that they liked, the North Lancashire Trades Union. (Thegeneral idea seemed to be to have all the others join in, everywhere--fifty-four million spindles, and four hundred and fortythousand looms--and wait and keep perfectly still until Mr. And Mrs. Riley could make up their minds. )

And now this present week, morning after morning I take up my paper andread that 500, 000 miners want something. I look in my fire dubiously dayby day. I may have to go home to America in a few weeks to get warm. 

Of course it is only fair to say at the outset that this little seriesof impressions, or sketches, as one may say, of Civilization as I haveseen it since arriving in England are of such a nature that I need nothave come over to England to observe them. I would be the last to denythat the same conveniences for being disagreeable and for getting in theway and for making a general muss of Life can be offered almost anytime in my own hopeful and blundering country. 

What more immediately concerns me in these things is that, havinghappened, there can be no doubt that they have some valuable and worthymeaning for me and for other people that I ought to get out of them. 

One cannot stand by and see a great civilization like ourEnglish-speaking civilization, with its ocean liners, cathedrals, andaeroplanes, being undignified and inefficient before one's eyes and evena little ridiculous, without trying to see if it does not serve somepurpose. There must be something beyond, something further and deeper, something newborn about it, which shall be worth our while. Strikes seemto be common people's way of thinking things out. If they had moreimagination, they would know what they were going to think beforehand, without so much trouble perhaps; but so long as they have not, and solong as it is really true perhaps that all these millions of levers andwheels and engines will have to be stopped, so that the richmechanical-minded people who own them and the poor mechanical-mindedpeople who work with them can think better, we will have to be glad atleast that they are thinking, and we will have to hope that they arethinking fast, and will soon have it over with. In the meantime, whilethey are thinking, we can think too. 

It is never fair to lump people together, and there are alwaysexceptions and special reasons to consider; but, speaking roughly, it isfair to lay it down as a general principle that it is apt to be the morecommon kind of employers and employees who find it difficult to think, and who need strikes to think with. When we see 175, 000 weavers strikingin Lancashire, and the Trades Unions insisting on the discharge ofNon-Union men, and employers being willing to recognize the Unions butbeing unwilling to be controlled by them, most of us find ourselvestaking sides very quickly. We are often amazed to see how quickly wetake sides, and what amazes some of us most is our apparentinconsistency. We find ourselves now on the Union side and now on theemployer side in the dispute between Capital and Labour. We never knowwhen we take up the morning paper, some of us, which side will be ournext; and very often, if we were suddenly asked why, on reading quietlyabout a new dispute in the morning paper, we had taken promptly one siderather than the other, almost unconsciously, before we knew it we wouldnot perhaps be able to say at once. The other day I became a littlealarmed at myself at what looked at first like a kind of moral weakness, and inability to stand still on one side or the other in the contestbetween Labour and Capital; and I tried to think my way sternly through, and decide why it was my mind seemed to waver from one side to theother, and seemed so inconsistent and inefficient. 

It seems to me I have just discovered a certain thread of consistency, as I look back over many disputes. 

As near as I can remember, I find the side that uses force, or that usesthe most force, invariably turns me against it. If, as I read, I findthat both sides are using force, I find myself against both sides. Ifind myself wishing, in spite of my dislike of Socialism, that thenation had the power, when a quarrelsome industry turns to the people inthe street and stops them in what they are doing, and tells the peoplein the street that they cannot ride, or that they shall not sleep, orthat they cannot eat--when a quarrelsome industry insists on keeping thewhole world up all night because it has a Stomach Ache, I feel suddenlythat the people ought to be able to take the industry away and put itinto such hands that the people in the streets will be protected; intohands that will make the industry behave so that it won't have a stomachache. An industry with a stomach ache always has it because somebody init has been over-eating and getting more than their share, and isincompetent and unfit; and obviously it should have its freedom, itsprivilege of selecting its food, taken away from it until it behaves. 

Always allowing for exceptions, we may put it down as a general truththat, when we find a cause using force or mere advantage of position, itis because there is incompetence or lack of brains in those who conductit, and the cure lies, not in more force, but in more brains. One cannothelp being angered by force, because one knows that it is not only not aremedy, but is itself the cause of all incompetence and blindness inbusiness. Force merely heaps the incompetence and blindness up, postpones coöperation, defeats the mutual interest which is the verysubstance of business efficiency in a nation. Force is itself the injurymounting up more and more, which it seeks to cure. 

The most likely way to prevent industrial trouble would seem to be tohave employers and managers and foremen who have a genius for gettingmen to trust and believe in them. We are getting smoke-consumers, computing machines, and the next contrivance is going to be the employerwho has the understanding spirit, and who sees the cash value of humangenius, the value in the market of genius for being fair and getting onwith people. Arbitration boards are at best (as they themselves wouldsay) stupid and negative things, and though better than nothing, as arule merely postpone evil or change symptoms. No one can ever reallyarbitrate for any one else either in industry or marriage except for amoment. The trouble lies deep down inside the people who keep needingarbitration. As long as these people are still there, and as long asincompetent employers or employees are there, there is bound to betrouble. 

Turning out incompetent employers and incompetent labourers is the onlyway. We are getting rid of them as rapidly as possible. All business inthe last resort turns on brains for being human and understandingpeople. Business, as people say, is partly business and business ispartly economics, but more than anything else, in modern times, businessis psychology. 

Success is the science of being believed in. Incompetent employers andincompetent labourers are already being turned out, and are bound to beturned out implacably more and more, by the competitive nature of modernbusiness. Under present conditions, if we have in each industry onesingle competent employing firm, with brains for being fair and brainsfor being far-sighted, and for being thoughtful of others--in short, with brains for being believed in--the control of that industry soonfalls into their hands. People who use force instead of brains aresecond-rate, are out of the spirit of the times, and are going by. Andthis seems to be the spirit, too, which is to govern the more efficientLabour Unions as well as the more efficient Trusts. 

If it were possible to collect the names in England and America of themen in each industry where brains were being personally believed in, wewould have a list of the leaders of England and America for the nextfifty years. Having a soul in business pays, not because it affords afine motive power, but because it affords a practical and conclusivemethod of driving the devil out of business. He is being driven out ofindustry, one industry at a time, by men who get on better without him;and this is going to go on until the ability to do this--to crowd outthe devil, to get the devil out of machines and factories, out of themachinery of organization--the power to keep the devil out of things andout of people, is recognized by everybody as the greatest, most subtle, most victorious and universal market-value in the world. The men who canbe believed in most will get the most business, and, what is still moreimportant, the men who can make men believe in them most will be able tohire the employees who can be believed in most, and will get a monopolyof the efficiency of the world; and though the men who can be believedin less may be able to continue for a time to do their work and gothrough all their old motions as well as they can, with all their oldlumbering, pathetic machinery of watching each other and suspecting eachother and fighting each other humped up on their backs, they can neverhope to compete with free-moving, honest men, who deal directly andopenly and in a few words for their employees, jobbers, consumers, andthe public, without any vast machinery of suspicion to bother with. Itis a most curious, local, temporary, back-county idea, the idea that, for sheer industrial economy, for simple cheap conclusive finance, thereis anything on earth in business that will take the place ofold-fashioned human personal prestige--the prestige of the man who has agenius for being believed in. 

In a way, perhaps the recent strike among the London cabmen is aninstance of what is really the essential issue in every strike. Thebottom fact about the taxi chauffeurs, stated simply, was that they didnot believe in their employers. They believed that, if the precisefigures were known, their employers were getting more than their share. On the other hand, the bottom fact about the employers was that they didnot and could not believe that, if the precise figures were known, thecabmen were not getting more than their share. They insisted that thecabmen should publish, or make known, the precise figures of theirextras. The cabmen declined to do it, and it made them look for themoment perhaps as if they were wrong. But were they necessarily wrong?Was it really true that they had any more reason to trust theiremployers than their employers had to trust them? The cabmen might quitehonestly and justly have said to the owners: "What we want is an honest, impeccable little dividend-recorder fastened on the back of every owner, as well as on our machines and on us. Then we will publish our extras. "

The determining and important fact of economics in the last analysisalways turns out to be some human fact, some fact about people. It isreally true that just now, in the present half-stage ofmachine-industry, employers should nearly all be compelled to go aboutin this world with fare-recorders on their backs. Employees too. Thiswould be the logical thing to do; and as it is impracticable, and asevery business must have certain elements of secrecy in it in order tobe competent, the only alternative is to have in charge men with enoughgenius for being believed in and for taking measures to be believedin--to keep employees believing in them, in spite of secrecy. Underthese conditions, it cannot be long before we will see in every businessthe men being put forward on both sides who have a genius for beingbelieved in. Managers and superintendents will be put in officeeverywhere who see the cash value, the economy, of the simple, old-fashioned power in a man of a genius for being believed in;employers with the power of inspiring more and better work from theirworkmen; Labour men with the power of inspiring employers to believe inthem, of inspiring their employers to put up money, stock, or profits ontheir belief--on the belief that workmen are capable of the highestqualities of manhood: hard work, loyalty, persistence, and faith towarda common end. I have preferred to have this inspired employer amillionaire, because the more capital he has the more men he can employ, and the more rapidly the other kind of millionaire, the blind, old-fashioned butter of Labour, will be driven out of business. 

Little can be done with one book, but at this special juncture, thispsychological moment for copartnership and the spirit of copartnership, when all the world is touched to the quick by great strikes--at a timewhen one can sit still and almost hear the nations think--there are someof us who hope that the case we are trying to make out for copartnershipbetween Capital and Labour will be of use to those who are trying to dothings, and who for the moment find themselves foiled at every point bymen who have given up believing in human nature. We wish to putourselves on record, and to say that we do believe in human nature, andthat we believe not only that the inspired employer is going to beevolved by the Crowd, but that the Crowd is going to recognize him andis going to take sides with him, and that the Crowd is going to justifyhim, make him succeed, is going to make his success its own success. Inother words, we believe in heroes, crowds, and goodness; in men ofheroic gifts--who are fit and meet to interpret the wills and desiresof crowds--who are great men or Crowd-Men, crowds in spirit themselves. 

I would like to try to express the type of modern man who, as it seemsto me, is about to prove himself the real ruler of our modern world, thesilent master of what the crowds shall think. It has seemed to me thatit is going to be a man of a marked type, and of a particulartemperament, to whom we will have to look in our new and crowded worldfor the crowd-interpreter, or man who touches the imagination of crowds. 

As our whole labour problem to-day turns on our being able to touch theimagination of Crowds, it may not be uninteresting in the next chapterto consider what a man who can do this will probably be like and thespirit in which he will do it. 

CHAPTER V

THE CROWD-MAN--AN INVENTION FOR MAKING CROWDS SEE

When Wilbur Wright flew around the Statue of Liberty in New York theother day, his doing it was a big event; but a still bigger event, as itseems to some of us, was the way he felt about New York when he did it. All New York could not make him show off. Hundreds of thousands ofpeople on roofs could look up at the sky over New York, for him to goby, all that they liked. He slipped down to Washington without sayinganything, on the 3:25 train, to attend to flying as part of the seriousbusiness of the world. 

Why fly around a little town like New York, or show your bright wings inthe light, or circle the Statue of Liberty for fun, when you arereconstructing civilization, and binding a whole planet together, andwrapping the heavens close down around the earth, and making railroadseverywhere out of the air? New York is always a little superficial andfunny about itself. All it needs to do, it seems to think, is to snapits fingers at a man of genius anywhere on this broad world, whisper tohim pleasantly, and he will trot promptly up, of course, and do hislittle turn for it. 

But not Wilbur Wright. Wilbur Wright would not give two million peoplean encore, or even come back to bow. As one looked over from Mount Tomone could see all New York black and solid on the tops of its roofs andhouses looking up into a great hole of air for him, and Wilbur Wrightslipping quietly off down to Washington and leaving them there, a wholegreat city under the sky, with its heads up!

A little experience like this has been what New York has needed for along time. It takes a scientist to do these things. I wish there weresome poet who would do as well. Even a prophet up above New York--orseer of men and of years--glinting his wings in the light, the New York_Sun_ and the _World_ and the _Times_ down below, all their opera-glassestrained on him, and all those little funny reporters running helplesslyabout, all the people pouring out from Doctor Parkhurst's church tolook up. .. . It would be something. 

Probably there are very few capitals in the world--Paris, Berlin, orLondon--that would not be profoundly stirred and possibly much improvedby having some man suddenly appear up over them, who would be sointerested in what he was doing that he would forget to notice whetheranybody was looking--who would be capable of slipping off quietly andleaving an entire city with its heads up, and going on and attending tobusiness. 

There have been times when we would have been relieved, some of us, ifthe North Pole could have been discovered in this way and without largeaudiences tagging. There are some of us who will never cease to regretas long as we live that the North Pole could not have waited a little. We would rather have had Wilbur Wright discover it. One can imagine howhe would do it: fly gracefully up to it all by himself, and discover itsome pleasant evening, and have it over with, and slip back on his softwings in the night, and not say anything about it. It is this WilburWright spirit that I would like to dwell on in these pages. It seems tome it is a true modern spirit, the spirit which alone could make ourcivilization great, and the spirit which alone could make crowds great. It was the crowd that spoiled the way the Pole was discovered--all themillions of people, vast, thoughtless audiences piling in and making ashow of it. Many people in America, all the vast crowds reading aboutit, seemed to feel that they were more important than the Pole; and whenCaptain Peary came back, vast crowds of these same people paid as muchas five dollars apiece for the privilege of being in the same room withhim. It was quite impossible not to contrast Captain Peary in hisattitude toward the crowd and Wilbur Wright. There seemed to be, andthere will always remain, a certain vulgarity in the way the North Polewas discovered, and the way the whole world behaved in regard to it, andthe secret seems to have been in Captain Peary's failure to be a WilburWright. He allowed the Pole to be a Crowd affair. All the while as hewent about the country holding his little exhibits of the tip of theplanet we could not help wishing, many of us who were in the Audience, that this man who sat there before us, the man who had the Thing in hishand, who had collected the North Pole, would not notice us, would snubus if need be a little, and would leave these people, these millions ofpeople, with their heads up and go quietly on to the South Pole andcollect that. It is because there are thousands of men who understandjust how Wilbur Wright felt when he slipped away the other day in NewYork and left the entire city with its heads up that we have everyreason to expect that the crowd is to produce great leaders, and is tobecome a great crowd, great and humble in spirit before God, before thestars, and the atoms, and the microbes, and before Itself. In themeantime, however, we see all about us in the world countless would-beleaders of the crowd, who would perhaps not quite understand the wayWilbur Wright felt that day when he slipped away from New York and leftthe entire city with its heads up. Most newspaper men--men who are inthe habit of writing for a crowd and regarding a crowd quiterespectfully--will have wondered a little why Wilbur Wright could havelet such a crowd go by. Most actors and theatrical people would havestayed over a train or so and given one more little performance with allthose wistful people on the roof-tops. There are only a very fewclergymen in England or America to-day who, with a great audience likethat and so many men in it, would ever have thought of slipping off onthe 3:25 train in the way Wilbur Wright did. The ministers and thepoliticians of all countries are still wondering a little--if they everthought of it--how Wright did it. Most of the other people in the worldwonder a little, too, but I imagine that the great inventors of theworld who read about it the next morning did not wonder. The truescientists, in this country and in Germany and in France, all understoodjust how Wilbur Wright felt when he left New York with its heads up. Thegreat artists of the world, in literature, in painting, andarchitecture; the great railroad builders, the city builders, the nationbuilders, the great statesmen, the great biologists, and chemists, understood. James J. Hill, with his face toward the Pacific, understood. Alexander Graham Bell, out abroad doing the listening and talking andthinking the thoughts of eighty million people, understood. Marconi, making the ships whisper across the sea, and William G. McAdoo, shootinga hundred and seventy thousand people a day through a hole under theHudson--understood. 

And God, when He made the world. And Columbus when he discoveredAmerica. And Jesus Christ when He was so happy and so preoccupied overHis vision of a new world, over inventing Christianity, that it seemed avery small and incidental thing to die on the Cross--He understood. 

Wilbur Wright's secret was that he had a vision. His vision was that ahuman being could be greater and more powerful than the world had everbelieved before. 

Just to be there was a great thought, to be allowed to be one of thoseadmitted, to be present at the first faint beginning, the first stillalighting of the human spirit from the earth upon the sky. Wilbur Wrightmade the most ordinary man a genius a minute. He made him wonder softlywho he was--and the people all about him--who were they? and what wouldthey think, and what would they do next? The first flash of light on thewings was a thousand years. It was as if almost for a moment he saw atlast the whole earth about him. History, churches, factories on it, slipping out of its cocoon at last--its little, old, faded, tied-downcocoon, and sailing upon the air--sailing with him, sailing with thechurches, with the factories, and with the schools, with History, through the Invisible, through the Intangible--out to the Sun. .. . 

 * * * * *

Perhaps the reason that New York was a great city a few minutes theother day when Wilbur Wright was there was that Wilbur Wright had a newvision in the presence of all those men of something that they could do. He touched the imagination of men about themselves. They were profoundlymoved because they saw him in their presence inventing a new kind andnew size of human being. He raised the standard of impossibility, andbuilt an annex on to the planet while they looked; took a great stripoff of space three miles wide and folded it softly on to the planet allthe way round before their eyes. For three miles more--three milesfarther up above the ground--there was a space where human beings wouldhave to stop saying, "I can't, " and "You can't, " and "We can't. " Ifpeople want to say "I can't, " and "You can't, " they will have to say itfarther and farther away from this planet now. Let them try Mars. Themodern imagination takes to impossibilities naturally with Wilbur Wrightagainst the horizon. The thing we next cannot believe is the next thingto expect. 

Nobody would have believed ten years ago that an architect could beinvented who would tell a man that his house would cost him thirtythousand dollars, and then hand him back two thousand dollars when hehad finished it. But the man had been invented--he invented himself. 

He represents the owner, and does as the owner would be done by if hedid it himself--if he had the technical knowledge and the time to do it. 

Nobody would have believed a few years ago that a railway president, when he had occasion to reduce the wages of several thousand employees10 per cent. , would begin by reducing his own salary 30 per cent. , andthe salary of all the officials all the way down 15 per cent. , or 20 percent. 

Nobody would have believed some time ago that an organizing inventorwould be evolved who would meet his directors and tell them that, ifthey would have their work done in their mills in three shifts insteadof two, the men would work so much better that it would not cost theCompany more than 10 per cent. More to offer the better conditions. Butsuch an organizing inventor has been invented, and has proved his case. 

Luther Burbank has made a chestnut tree eighteen months old bearchestnuts; and it has always taken from ten to twenty-five years to makea tree furnish its first chestnut before. About the same time thatLuther Burbank had succeeded in doing this with chestnuts a similar typeof man, who was not particularly interested in chestnuts and wanted todo something with human nature, who believed that human nature couldreally be made to work, found a certain staple article that everybodyneeds every day in a state of anarchy in the market. The producers werenot making anything on it. The wholesalers dealt in it without a profit, and the retailers sold it without a profit, and merely because the otherthings they sold were worthless without it. 

----, who was the leading wholesale dealer and in the best position toact, pointed out that, if the business was organized and everybody in itwould combine with everybody else and make it a monopoly, the pricecould be made lower, and everybody would make money. 

Of course this was a platitude. 

It was also a platitude that human nature was not good enough, and couldnot be trusted to work properly in a monopoly. 

---- then proceeded to invent a monopoly--a kind of monopoly in whichhuman nature could be trusted. 

He used a very simple device. 

He began by being trusted himself. 

Having personally and directly proved that human nature in a monopolycould be trusted by being trusted himself, all he had to do was tocapitalize his knowledge of human nature, use the enormous market valueof the trust people had in him to gather people about him in thebusiness who had a good practical business genius for being trusted tooand for keeping trusted: everybody else was shut out. 

The letter with which the monopoly was started (after dealing duly withthe technical details of the business) ended like this:

". .. The soundest lines of business--_viz. _, fair prices, fair profits, fair division of profits, fair recognition of service, do as you would bedone by, money back where it is practicable, one's profit so small as tomake competition not worth while, open dealing, and open books. "

He had invented a monopoly which shared its profits with the people, andwhich the people trusted. He was a Luther Burbank in money and peopleinstead of chestnuts. He raised the standard of impossibility in people, and invented a new way for human nature to work. 

CHAPTER VI

THE IMAGINATION OF CROWDS

The modern imagination takes, speaking roughly, three characteristicforms:

1. Imagination about the unseen or intangible--the spiritual--asespecially typified in electricity, in the wireless telegraph, theaeroplane: a new and extraordinary sense of the invisible and theunproved as an energy to be used and reckoned with. 

2. Imagination about the future--a new and extraordinary sense of whatis going to happen next in the world. 

3. Imagination about people. We are not only inventing new machines, butour new machines have turned upon us and are creating new men. Thetelephone changes the structure of the brain. Men live in widerdistances, and think in larger figures, and become eligible to noblerand wider motives. 

Imagination about the unseen is going to give us in an incredible degreethe mastery of the spirit over matter. 

Imagination about the future is going to make the next few hundred yearsan organic part of every man's life to-day. 

The imagination of men about themselves and other people is going togive us a race of men with new motives; or, to put it differently, it isgoing to give us not only new sizes but new kinds of men. People aregoing to achieve impossibilities in goodness, and our inventions inhuman nature are going to keep up with our other inventions. 

CHAPTER VII

IMAGINATION ABOUT THE UNSEEN

The most distinctively modern thing that ever happened was when BenjaminFranklin went out one day and called down lightning from heaven. Beforethat, power had always been dug up, or scraped off the ground. The morepower you wanted the more you had to get hold of the ground and dig forit; and the more solid you were, the more heavy, solid things you couldget, the more you could pull solid, heavy things round in this worldwhere you wanted them. Franklin turned to the sky, and turned power onfrom above, and decided that the real and the solid and the substantialin this world was to be pulled about by the Invisible. 

Copernicus had the same idea, of course, when he fared forth into space, and discovered the centre of all power to be in the sun. It grievedpeople a good deal to find how much more important the sky was than theywere, and their whole little planet with all of them on it. The ideathat that big blue field up there, empty by day and with such crowds oflittle faint dots in it all night, was the real thing--the big, final, and important thing--and that they and their churches and popes andpyramids and nations should just dance about it for millions of yearslike a mote in a sunbeam, hurt their feelings at first. But it did themgood. It started them looking Up, and looking the other way for power. 

Very soon afterward Columbus enlarged upon the same idea by starting theworld toward very far things, on the ground; and he bored through theskylines, a thousand skylines, and spread the nations upon the sea. Columbus was the typical modern man led by the invisible, theintangible; and on the great waters somewhere between Spain and NewYork, between the old and the new, Columbus discovered the Future Tense, the centrifugal tense, the tense that sweeps in the unknown, and gathersin, out of space, out of hope, out of faith, the lives of men. The merefastened-down stable things, the mere actual facts, stopped being theworld with Columbus, and the air and the sky began to be swung in, andto be swept through the thoughts and acts of men and of women. .. . Thenminers, mariners, explorers, inventors--the impossible steamship, therailway, the impossible cotton-gin and sewing-machine and reaper, Hoosactunnels and Atlantic cables. The impossible became one of the habits ofmodern life. 

Of course the sky and the air and the unknown and the future had beenrecognized before, but only a little and in a rather patronizing way. But when a world has made a great, solid continent by following ahorizon line, it begins to take things just beyond very seriously. Andso our Time has been fulfilled. We have had the stone age; we have hadthe iron age; and now we have the sky age, and the sky telegraph, andsky men, and sky cities. Mountains of stone are built out of men'svisions, towers and skyscrapers swing up out of their wills and up outof their hearts. 

 * * * * *

Not long ago, as I was coming away from New York in the SpringfieldExpress, which was running at fifty-five miles an hour, I saw suddenlysome smoke coming up apparently out of a satchel on the floor, belongingto the man in the chair in front of me. I moved the satchel away, andthe smoke came up through the carpet. I spoke to the Pullman conductorwho was passing through, and in a second the train had stopped, and thegreat wild roaring Thing had ceased, and we stood in a long, wide, whitesilence in the fields. We got off the car--some of us--to see what hadhappened, and to see if there was a hot box on the wheels. We foundthat the entire underside of the floor of the car was on fire, and whathad happened? Nothing except a new impossibility; nothing except that ahuman being had invented an electrical locomotive so powerful that itwas pulling that train fifty-five miles an hour while the brakes on thecar were set--twelve brakes all grinding twenty miles on those twelvewheels; and the locomotive paid no more attention to the brakes of thatheavy Pullman than it would to a feather or to a small boy, all the wayfrom New York to Stamford, hanging on behind. As I came in I lookedagain at the train--the long dull train that had been pulled along bythe Invisible, by the kingdom of the air and the sky--the long, dull, heavy Train! And the spirit of the far-off sun was in it!

In Count Zeppelin's new airship the new social spirit has a symbol, andin the gyroscopic train the inspired millionaire is on a firmfoundation. The power of the new kind and new size of capitalist is hispower of keeping an equilibrium with the people, and the men of realgenius in modern affairs are men who have motor genius and light geniusover other men's wills. They are allied to the X-ray and the airship, and gain their pre-eminence by their power of forecast andinvention--their power of riding upon the unseen, upon the thoughts ofmen and the spirit of the time. Even the painters have caught thisspirit. The plein air painters are painting the light, and the sculptorsare carving shadows and haloes, and we have not an art left which doesnot lean out into the Invisible. And religion is full of this spirit andtheosophy and Christian Science. The playwrights are touched by it; andthe action, instead of being all on the stage, is thrown out into thespirit of the audience. The play in a modern theatre is not on the stagebut in the stalls. Maeterlinck, Ibsen, Shaw, merely use the stage as akind of magic-lantern or suggestion-centre for the real things that, outbehind us in the dark, are happening in the audience. 

CHAPTER VIII

THE CROWD'S IMAGINATION ABOUT THE FUTURE

I remember looking over with H. G. Wells one night some time ago a set ofpictures or photographs of the future in America, which he had broughthome with him. They were largely skyscrapers, big bridges, Niagaras, andthings; and I could not help thinking, as I came home that night, howmuch more Mr. Wells had of the future of America in his own mind than hecould possibly buy in his photographs. What funny little films they wereafter all, how faint and pathetic, how almost tragically dull, thosepictures of the future of my country were! H. G. Wells himself, standingin his own doorway, was more like America, and more like the future ofAmerica, than the pictures were. 

The future in America cannot be pictured. The only place it can be seenis in people's faces. Go out into the street, in New York, in Chicago, in San Francisco, in Seattle; look eagerly as you go into the faces ofthe men who pass, and you feel hundreds of years--the next hundredyears--like a breath, swept past. America, with all its forty-storybuildings, its little Play Niagaras, its great dumb Rockies, is theunseen country. It can only as yet be seen in people's eyes. Some days, flowing sublime and silent through our noisy streets, and through thevast panorama of our towers, I have heard the footfalls of the unborn, like sunshine around me. 

This feeling America gives one in the streets is the real America. Thesolidity, the finality, the substantial fact in America, is the dailysense in the streets of the future. And it has seemed to me that thisfact--whether one observes it in Americans in America, in Americans inEngland and in other nations--is what one might call, for lack of abetter name, the American temperament in all peoples is the mostoutstanding typical and important fact with which our modern world andour philosophy about the world have now to reckon. Nothing can be seenas it really is if this amazing pervasive hourly sense of the future isleft out of it. 

All power is rapidly coming to be based on news--news about humannature, and about what is soon to be done by people. This news travelsby express in boxes, by newspapers, by telephone, by word of mouth, andby wireless telegraph. Most of the wireless news is not only wireless, but it is in cipher--hence prophets, or men who have greatsensitiveness; men whose souls and bodies are films for the future, platinum plates for the lights and shadows of events; men who areworld-poets, sensitive to the air-waves and the light-waves of truth, tothe faintest vibrations from To-morrow, or from the next hundred yearshovering just ahead. As a matter of course, it is already coming to betrue that the most practical man to-day is the prophet. In the olderdays, men used to look back for wisdom, and the practical man was theman who spoke from experience, and they crucified the prophet. Butto-day, the practical man is the man who can make the best guess onto-morrow. The cross has gone by; at least, the cross is being pushedfarther along. A prophet in business or politics gets a large salarynow; he is a recognized force. Being a prophet is getting to be almostsmug and respectable. 

We live so in the future in our modern life, and our rewards are sogreat for men who can live in the future, that a man who can be aten-year prophet, or a twenty-five-year prophet, like James J. Hill, isput on a pedestal, or rather is not wasted on a pedestal, and is madePresident of a railroad. He swings the country as if it were his hat. Wesee great cities tagging Wilbur Wright, and emperors clinging to theskirts of Count Zeppelin. We only crucify a prophet now if he is ahundred, or two hundred or five hundred years ahead. Even then, wewould not be apt to crucify; we would merely not use him much, exceptthe first twenty-five years of him. 

The theory is no longer tenable that prophets must be necessarilycrucified. As a matter of history, most prophets have been crucified bypeople; but it was not so much because of their prophecy as becausetheir prophecy did not have any first twenty-five years in it. They werecrucified because of a blank place or hiatus, not necessarily in theirown minds, but at least in other people's. People would have been veryglad to have their first twenty-five years' worth if they could have gotit. It is this first twenty-five years, or joining-on part, which ismost important in prophecy, and which has become our specialty in theWestern World. One might say, in a general way, that the idea of havinga first twenty-five years' section in truth for a prophet is a modern, an almost American, invention. We are temperamentally a country of thefuture, and think instinctively in futures; and perhaps it is not toomuch to say (considering all the faults that go with it for which we arecriticized) that we have led the way in futures as a specialty, as anational habit of mind; and though with terrific blunders perhaps havebeen really the first people _en masse_ to put being a prophet on apractical basis--that is, to supply the first twenty-five years'section, or the next-thing-to-do section to Truth, to put in a kind ofcoupling between this world and the next. This is what America is for, perhaps--to put in the coupling between this world and the next. 

In the former days, the strength of a man, or of an estate, or abusiness, was its stability. In the new world, instead of stability, wehave the idea of persistence, and power lies not so much in solidbrittle foundation quality as in conductivity. Socially, men can bedivided into conductors--men who connect powers--and non-conductors--menwho do not; and power lies in persistence, in dogged flexibility, adaptableness, and impressionableness. The set conservative class ofpeople, in three hundred years, are going to be the dreamers, inventors--those who demonstrate their capacity to dream true, and whohit shrewdly upon probabilities and trends and futures; and the power ofa man is coming to be the power of observing atmospheres, of beingsensitive to the intangible and the unknown. People are more likely tobe crucified two thousand years from now for wanting to stay as theyare. There used to be the inertia of rest; and now in its place, workingreciprocally in a new astonishing equilibrium, we step up calmly on ourvast moving sidewalk of civilization and swing into the inertia ofmotion. 

The inertia of men, instead of being that of foundations, conventions, customs, facts, sogginess, and heaviness, is getting to be an inertianow toward the future, or the next-thing-to-do. Most of us can provethis by simply looking inward and taking a glimpse of our ownconsciousness. Let a man draw up before his own mind the contents of hisown consciousness (if he has a motor consciousness), and we find thatthe future in his life looms up, both in its motives and its character, and takes about three quarters of the room of his consciousness; andwhen it is not looming up, it is woven into everything he does. Even ifall the future were for was to help one understand the present and actthis immediate moment as one should, nine tenths of the power of seeinga thing as it is, turns out to be one's power of seeing it as it isgoing to be. In any normal man's life, it is really the future and hissense of the future that make his present what it is. 

History is losing its monopoly. It is only absorbed in men's minds--inthe minds of those who are making more of it--in parts or rather inelements of all its parts. 

The trouble with history seems to have been, thus far, that people havebeen under the illusion that history should be taken as a solid. Theyseem to think it should be taken in bulk. They take it, some of them, asolid hundred years of it or so, and gulp it down. The advantage ofprophecy is that it cannot be taken as a solid by people who would takeeverything so if they could. Prophecy is protected. People have tobreathe it, assimilate it, and get it into their circulation and make asolid out of it personally, and do it all themselves. It is this processwhich is making our modern men spiritual, interpretative, and powerfultoward the present and toward the past, and which is giving a body andsoul to knowledge, and is making knowledge lively and human, the kind ofknowledge (when men get it) that makes things happen. 

CHAPTER IX

THE CROWD'S IMAGINATION ABOUT PEOPLE

I would like to propose, as a basis for the judgment of men and events, and as a basis for forecasting the next men and next events, andarriving at a vision of action, a Theory of the World. 

Every man has one. 

Every man one knows can be seen doing his work in this world on a greatbackground, a kind of panorama or stage setting in his mind, made up ofhistory and books, newspapers, people, and experiences, which might becalled his Theory of the World. 

It is his theory of the world which makes him what he is--his personaljudgment or personal interpretation of what the world is like, and whatworks in it, and what does not work. 

A man's theory as to why people do or do not do wrong is not a theory hemight in some brief disinterested moment, possibly at luncheon, taketime to discuss. His theory of what is wrong and of what is right, andof how they work, touches the efficiency with which he works intimatelyand permanently at every point every minute of his business day. 

If he does not know, in the middle of his business day, what his theoryof the world--of human nature--is, let him stop and find out. 

A man's theory of the world is the skylight or manhole over his work. Itbecomes his hell or heaven--his day and night. He breathes his theory ofthe world and breathes his idea of the people in it; and everything hedoes may be made or may be marred by what, for instance, he thinks inthe long-run about what I am saying now on this next page. Whether heis writing for people, or doing business with them over a counter, orlaunching books at them, everything he does will be steeped in what hebelieves about what I am saying now--it shall be the colour of the worldto him, the sound or timbre of his voice--what he thinks or can make uphis mind to think, of what I am saying--on this next page. 

CHAPTER X

A DEMOCRATIC THEORY OF HUMAN NATURE

If the men who were crucifying Jesus could have been suddenly stopped atthe last moment, and if they could have been kept perfectly still forten minutes and could have thought about it, some of them would haverefused to go on with the crucifixion when the ten minutes were over. Ifthey could have been stopped for twenty minutes, there would have beenstill more of them who would have refused to have gone on with it. Theywould have stolen away and wondered about The Man in their hearts. Therewere others who were there who would have needed twenty days of beingstill and of thinking. There were some who would have had to have twentyyears to see what they really wanted, in all the circumstances, to do. 

People crucified Christ because they were in a hurry. 

They did what they wanted to do at the moment. So far as we know, therewere only two men who did what they would have wished they had done intwenty years: there was the thief on the other cross, who showed The Manhe knew who He was; and there was the disciple John, who kept as closeas he could. John perhaps was thinking of the past--of all the thingsthat Christ had said to him; and the man on the other cross was thinkingwhat was going to happen next. The other people who had to do with thecrucifixion were all thinking about the thing they were doing at themoment and the way they felt about it. But the Man was Thinking, not ofHis suffering, but of the men in front of Him, and of what they could bethinking about, and what they would be thinking about afterward--in tenminutes, in twenty minutes, in twenty days, or in twenty years; andsuddenly His heart was flooded with pity at what they would be thinkingabout afterward, and in the midst of the pain in His arms and the painin His feet He made that great cry to Heaven: "Father, forgive them;they know not what they do!"

It is because Christians have never quite believed that The Man reallymeant this when He said it that they have persecuted the Jews for twothousand years. It is because they do not believe it now that they blameMr. Rockefeller for doing what most of them twenty years ago would havedone themselves. It was one of the hardest things to do and say that anyone ever said in the world, and it was said at the hardest possible timeto say it. It was strange that one almost swooning with pain should havesaid the gentlest-hearted and truest thing about human nature that hasever been said since the world began. It has seemed to me the mostliteral, and perhaps the most practical, truth that has been said sincethe world began. 

It goes straight to the point about people. It gives one one'sdefinition of goodness both for one's self and for others. It gives onea program for action. 

Except in our more joyous and free moments, we assume that when peopledo us a wrong, they know what they are about. They look at the rightthing to do and they look at the wrong one, and they choose the wrongone because they like it better. Nine people out of ten one meets in thestreets coming out of church on Sunday morning, if one asked them thequestion plainly, "Do you ever do wrong when you know it is wrong?"would say that they did. If you ask them what a sin is, they will tellyou that it is something you do when you know you ought not to do it. 

But The Man Himself, in speaking of the most colossal sin that has everbeen committed, seemed to think that when men committed a sin, it wasbecause they did not really see what it was that they were doing. Theydid what they wanted to do at the moment. They did not do what theywould have wished they had done in twenty years. 

I would define goodness as doing what one would wish one had done intwenty years--twenty years, twenty days, twenty minutes, or twentyseconds, according to the time the action takes to get ripe. 

It would be far more true and more to the point instead of scolding oradmiring Mr. Rockefeller's skilled labour at getting too rich, to pointout mildly that he has done something that in the long-run he would nothave wanted to do; that he has lacked the social imagination for a greatpermanently successful business. His sin has consisted in his not takingpains to act accurately and permanently, in his not concentrating hismind and finding out what he really wanted to do. It would seem to bebetter and truer and more accurate in the tremendous crisis of ourmodern life to judge Mr. Rockefeller, not as monster of wickedness, butmerely as an inefficient, morally underwitted man. There are things thathe has not thought of that every one else has. 

We see that in all those qualities that really go to make a greatbusiness house in a great nation John D. Rockefeller stands as the mostcolossal failure as yet that our American business life has produced. Topoint his incompetence out quietly and calmly and without scolding wouldseem to be the only fair way to deal with Mr. Rockefeller. He merely hasnot done what he would have wished he had done in twenty, well, possiblytwo hundred years, or as long a time as it would be necessary to allowfor Mr. Rockefeller to see. The one thing that the world could acceptgracefully from Mr. Rockefeller now would be the establishment of agreat endowment of research and education to help other people to see intime how they can keep from being like him. If Mr. Rockefeller leads inthis great work and sees it soon enough, perhaps he will stop suddenlybeing the world's most lonely man. 

Many men have been lonely before in the presence of a few fellow humanbeings; but to be lonely with a whole nation--eighty million people; tofeel a whole human race standing there outside of your life and softlywondering about you, staring at you in the showcase of your money, peering in as out of a thousand newspapers upon you as a kind of moralcuriosity under glass, studying you as the man who has performed themost athletic feat of not seeing what he was really doing and how hereally looked in all the world--this has been Mr. Rockefeller'sexperience. He has not done what he would wish he had done in twentyyears. 

Goodness may be defined as getting one's own attention, as boning downto find the best and most efficient way of finding out what one wants todo. Any man who will make adequate arrangements with himself at suitabletimes for getting his own attention will be good. Any one else fromoutside who can make such arrangements for him, such arrangements ofexpression or--of advertising goodness as to get his attention, willmake him good. 

CHAPTER XI

DOING AS ONE WOULD WISH ONE HAD DONE IN TWENTY YEARS

If two great shops could stand side by side on the Main Street of theWorld, and all the vices could be put in the show window of one of themand all the virtues in the show windows the other, and all the peoplecould go by all day, all night, and see the windowful of virtues as theywere, and the windowful of vices as they were, all the world would begood in the morning. 

It would stay good as long as people remembered how the windows looked. Or if they could not remember, all they would need to do, most people, when a vice tempted them would be to step out, look at it in its windowa minute--possibly take a look too at the other window--and they wouldbe good. 

If a man were to take a fancy to any particular vice, and would take astep up to The Window, and take one firm look at it in The Window--seeit lying there, its twenty years' evil, its twenty days', its twentyminutes' evil, all branching up out of it--he would be good. 

When we see the wrong on one side and the right on the other and reallysee the right as vividly as we do the wrong, we do right automatically. Wild horses cannot drag a man away from doing right if he sees what theright is. 

A little while ago in a New England city where the grade crossings hadjust been abolished, and where the railroad wound its way on a hugeyellow sandbank through the most beautiful part of the town, aprominent, public-spirited citizen wrote a letter to the President ofthe Company suggesting that the railroad (for a comparatively smallsum, which he mentioned) plant its sandbanks with trees and shrubs. Aletter came the next day saying that the railroad was unwilling to doit. He might quite justifiably have been indignant and flung himselfinto print and made a little scene in the papers, which would have beenthe regular and conventional thing to do under the circumstances. But itoccurred to him instead, being a man of a curious and practical mind, that possibly he did not know how to express himself to railroadpresidents, and that his letter had not said what he meant. He thoughthe would try again, and see what would happen if he expressed himselfmore fully and adequately. He took for it this second time a box sevenfeet long. The box contained two long rolls of paper, one a picture by alandscape gardener of the embankment as it would look when planted withtrees and with shrubs, and the other a photograph--a long panorama ofthe same embankment as it then stood with its two great broadsides ofyellowness trailing through the city. The box containing the rolls wassent without comment and with photographs and estimates of cost on thebottom of the pictures. 

A letter from the railroad came next day thanking him for hissuggestion, and promising to have the embankment made into a park atonce. 

If God had arranged from the beginning, slides of the virtues, and hadfurnished every man with a stereopticon inside, and if all a man had todo at any particular time of temptation was to take out just the rightslide or possibly try three or four up there on his canvas a second, noone would ever have any trouble in doing right. 

 * * * * *

It is not too much to say that this way of looking at evil and good--atthe latent capacities of evil and good in men, if a man once believesit, and if a man once practises it as a part of his daily practicalinterpretation and mastery of men, will soon put a new face for him onnearly every great human problem with which he finds his timeconfronted. We shall watch the men in the world about us--each for theirlittle day--trying their funny, pathetic, curious little moralexperiments, and we shall see the men--all of the men and all of thegood and the evil in the men this moment--daily before our eyes workingout with an implacable hopefulness the fate of the world. We know that, in spite of self-deceived syndicalism and self-deceived trusts, in spiteof coal strikes and all the vain, comic little troops of warships aroundthe earth, peace and righteousness in a vast overtone are singing towardus. 

We are not only going to have new and better motives in our modern men, but the new and better motives are going to be thrust upon us. Every manwho reads these pages is having, at the present moment, motives in hislife which he would not have been capable of at first. Why should not ahuman race have motives which it was not capable of at first? If onetakes up two or three motives of one's own--the small motives and thelarge ones--and holds them up in one's hand and looks at them quietlyfrom the point of view of what one would wish one had done in twentyyears, there is scarcely one of us who would choose the small ones. People who are really modern, that is, who look beyond themselves inwhat they do to others, who live their lives as one might say six peopleaway, or sixty people farther out from themselves, or sixty millionpeople farther, are becoming more common everywhere; and people who lookbeyond the moment in what they do to another day, who are getting moreand more to live their lives twenty years ahead, and to have motivesthat will last twenty years, are driven to better and more permanentmotives. 

Thinking of more people when we act for ourselves means ethicalconsciousness or goodness, and better and more permanent motives. 

In the last analysis, the men who permanently succeed in business willhave to see farther than the other people do. 

Men like John D. Rockefeller, who have made failures of their lives, andhave not been able to conduct a business so as to keep it out of thecourts, have failed because they have had imagination about Things butnot imagination about people. 

The man who is just at hand will not do over again what Mr. Rockefellerhas done. He will at least have made some advance in imagination overRockefeller. 

Mr. Rockefeller became rich by coöperating with other rich men toexploit the public. The man of the immediate future is going to getrich, as rich as he cares to be, by coöperating not merely with hiscompetitors--which is as far as Rockefeller got--but by coöperating withthe people. 

It is a mere matter of social imagination, of seeing what succeeds mostpermanently, and honourably, of putting what has been called "goodness"and what is going to be called "Business" together. In other words, social imagination is going to make a man gravitate toward mutualinterest or coöperation, which is the new and inevitable level ofefficiency and success in business. Success is being transferred frommen of millionaire genius to men of social and human genius. The men whoare going to compete most successfully in modern competitive businessare competing by knowing how to coöperate better than their competitorsdo. Employers, employees, consumers, partners, become irresistible bycoöperation; only employers, employees, consumers, and partners whocoöperate better than they do can hope to compete with them. The Trustshave already crowded out many small rivals because, while theircoöperation has been one-sided, they have coöperated with more peoplethan their rivals could; and the good Trusts, in the same way are goingto crowd out the bad Trusts, because the good ones will know how tocoöperate with more people than the bad ones do. They will have thehuman genius to see how they can coöperate with the people instead ofagainst them. 

They are going to invent ways of winning and keeping the confidence ofthe people, of taking to this end a smaller and more just share ofprofits. And they are going to gain their leadership through the wisdomand power that goes with their money, and not through the money itself. It is the spiritual power of their money that is going to count; andwealth, instead of being a millionaire disease, is going to become agreat social energy in democracy. We are going to let men be richbecause they represent us, not because they hold us up, and because thehold-up has gone by, that is: getting all one can, and service--gettingwhat we have earned--has come in. 

The new kind and new size of politician will win his power by his faith, like U. Ren of Oregon; the new kind and new size of editor is going tohire with brains a millionaire to help him run his paper; and the newkind and new size of author, instead of tagging a publisher, will bepaid royalties for supplying him with new ideas and creating for him newpublics. Power in modern life is to be light and heat and motion, andnot a gift of being heavy and solid. Even Money shall lose its inertia. 

We are in this way being driven into having new kinds and new sizes ofmen; and some of them will be rich ones, and some of them will be poor, and no one will care. We will simply look at the man and at what size heis. 

If our preachers are not saving us, our business men will. Sometimes onesuspects that the reason goodness is not more popular in modern life isthat it has been taken hold of the wrong way. Perhaps when we stopteasing people, and take goodness seriously and calmly, and see thatgoodness is essentially imagination, that it is brains, that it isthinking down through to what one really wants, goodness will begin tobe more coveted. Except among people with almost no brains orimagination at all, it will be popular. 

Perhaps it is unnecessary to say that these things that I have beensaying, or trying to say, about the flexibility and the potentiality ofthe human race in its present crisis, in its present struggle tomaintain and add to its glory on the earth, are all beyond the range ofpossibility, and the present strength of manhood. But I can only hopethat these objections that people make will turn out like mine. I havebeen making objections all my life, as all idealists must--only to watchwith dismay and joy the old-time, happy obdurate way objections have ofgoing by. 

People began by saying they would never use automobiles because theywere so noisy and ill-odoured and ugly. Presto! The automobile becomessilent and shapes itself in lines of beauty. 

Some of us had decided against balloons. "Even if the balloon succeeds, "we said, "there will be no way of going just where and when you wantto. " And then, presto! regular channels of wind are discovered, and theballoon goes on. 

"Aeroplanes, " we said, "may be successful, but the more successful theyare, the more dangerous, and the more danger there will be ofcollisions--collisions in the dark and up in the great sky at night. " And, presto! man invents the wireless telegraph, and the entire sky can befull of whispers telling every airship where all the other airships are. 

Some of us have decided that we will never have anything to do withmonopoly. Presto! there is suddenly evolved an entirely new type ofmonopolist--the man who can be rich and good; the millionaire who hasinvented a monopoly that serves the owners, the producers and employees, the distributors and the consumers alike. An American railway Presidenthas been saying lately that America would not have enough to eat in2050, but it would not do to try to prove this just yet. Some one, almost any day, will invent a food that is as highly concentrated asdynamite, and the whole food supply of New York--who knows?--shall becarried around in one railway President's vest pocket. 

CHAPTER XII

NEW KINDS AND NEW SIZES OF MEN

It would be hard to overestimate the weariness and cynicism and despairthat have been caused in the world by its more recklessly hopefulmen--the men who plump down happily anywhere and hope, the optimists whoare merely slovenly in their minds about evil. But the optimism thatconsists in putting evil facts up into a kind of outdoors in our mindsand in giving them room to exercise in our thoughts and feelings, theoptimism that consists in having one's brain move vigorously throughdisagreeable facts--organize them into the other facts with which theybelong and with which they work--is worthy of consideration. Many of us, who have tried optimism and pessimism both, have noticed certain things. 

When one is being pessimistic, one almost always has the feeling ofbeing rather clever. It is forced upon one a little, of course, havingall those other people about one stodgily standing up for people and notreally seeing through them!

So, though one ought not to, one does feel a little superior--even withthe best intentions--when one is being discouraged. 

But the trouble with pessimism is that it is only at the moment when oneis having it that one really enjoys it, or feels in this way about it. 

Perhaps I should not undertake to speak for others, and should onlyspeak for myself; but I can only bear witness, for one, that every timein my life that I have broken through the surface a little, and seenthrough to the evil, and found myself suddenly and astutely discouraged, I have found afterward that all I had to do was to see the same thing alittle farther over, set it in the light beyond it, and look at it inlarger or more full relations, and I was no longer astutely discouraged. 

So I have come to believe slowly and grimly that feeling discouragedabout the world is not quite clever. I have noticed it, too, in watchingother people--men I know. If I could take all the men I know who areliving and acting as if they believed big things about people to-day, men who are daily taking for granted great things in human nature, andput them in one group by themselves all together, and if I could thentake all the men I know who are taking little things for granted in oneanother and in human nature, I do not believe very many people wouldfind it hard to tell which group would be more clever. Possibly thereason more of us do not spend more time in being hopeful about theworld is that it takes more brains usually than we happen to have at themoment. Hope may be said to be an act of the brain in which it seesfacts in relations large enough to see what they are for, an act inwhich it insists in a given case upon giving the facts room enough toturn around and to relate themselves to one another, and settle downwhere they belong in one's mind, the way they would in real time. 

So now, at last, Gentle Reader, having looked back and having lookedforward, I know the way I am going. 

I am going to hope. 

It is the only way to see through things. The only way to dare to seethrough ones' self; the only way to see through other people and to seepast them, and to see with them and for them--is to hope. 

So I am putting the challenge to the reader, in this book, as I have putit to myself. 

There are four questions with which day by day we stand face to face:

1. Does human nature change?

2. Does it change toward a larger and longer vision?

3. Will not a larger and longer vision mean new kinds andnew sizes of men?

4. Will not new sizes of men make new-sized ethics practicaland make a new world?

Everything depends for every man upon this planet, at this moment, onhow he decides these questions. If he says Yes, he will live one kind oflife, he will live up to his world. If he says No, he will have a meanworld, smaller-minded than he is himself, and he will live down to it. 

This is what the common run of men about us--the men of less creativetype in literature, in business, and in politics--are doing. They do notbelieve human nature is changing. They are living down to a world thatis going by. They are living down to a world that is smaller than theyare themselves. They are trying to make others do it. They answer thequestion "Does human nature change?" by "No!" Wilbur Wright, when heflew around over the heads of the people in New York a few years ago, ablack speck above a whole city with its heads up, answered "Yes!"

But the real importance of the flying machine has not stopped short witha little delicate, graceful thing like walking on the air instead of theground. 

The big and really revolutionary thing about Wilbur Wright's flying wasthat he changed the minds of the whole human race in a few minutes aboutone thing. There was one particular thing that for forty thousand yearsthey knew they could not do. And now they knew they could. 

It naturally follows--and it lies in the mind of every man wholives--that there must be other particular things. And as nine men outof ten are in business, most of these particular things are going to bedone in business. 

The Wilbur Wright spirit is catching. 

It is as if a Lid had been lifted off the world. 

One sees everywhere business men going about the street expecting newthings of themselves. They expect things of the very ground, and of theair, and of one another they had not dared expect before. 

The other day in a New England city I saw a man, who had been thepresident of an Electric Light Company for twenty years, who hadinvented a public service corporation that worked. Since he took officeand dictated the policy of the Company, every single overture for moreexpensive equipment in the electric lighting of the city has come fromthe Company, and every single overture for reducing the rate toconsumers has come from the company. 

The consumption of electricity in the city is the largest _per capita_in the world, and the rate is the cheapest in the country; and, incidentally, the Company so trusts the people that they let them haveelectricity without metres, and the people so trust the Company thatthey save its electricity as they would their own. 

Even the man without a conscience, who would be mean if he could, isbrought to terms, and knows that if he refrains from leaving his lightsburning all night when he goes to bed he is not merely saving theCompany's electricity but his own. He knows that he is reducing his ownand everybody's price for electricity, and not merely increasing theprofits of the Company. 

It makes another kind of man slowly out of thousands of men every day, every night, turning on and turning off their lights. 

The Electric Light Company has come to have a daily, an almost hourly, influence on the way men do business and go about their work in thatcity--the motives and assumptions with which they bargain with oneanother--that might be envied by twenty churches. 

All that had happened was that a man with a powerful, quietly wilfulpersonality--the kind that went on crusades and took cities in otherages--had appeared at last, and proposed to do the same sort of thing inbusiness. He proposed to express his soul, just as it was, in businessthe way other people had expressed theirs for a few hundred years inpoetry or more easy and conventional ways. 

If he could not have made the electric light business say the thingsabout people and about himself that he liked and that he believed, hewould have had to make some other business say them. 

One of the things he had most wanted to say and prove in business wasthe economic value of being human, the enormous business saving thatcould be effected by being believed in. 

He preferred being believed in himself, in business, and he knew otherpeople would prefer it; and he was sure that if, as people said, "beingbelieved in did not pay, " it must be because ways of inventing faith inpeople, the technique of trust, had not been invented. 

He found himself invited to take charge of the Electric Light Company ata time when it was insolvent and in disgrace with the people, and hetook the Corporation in hand on the specific understanding that heshould be allowed to put his soul into it, that he should be allowed hisown way for three years--in believing in people, and in inventing waysof getting believed in as much as he liked. 

The last time I saw him, though he is old and nearly blind, and while ashe talked there lay a darkness on his eyes, there was a great light inhis face. 

He had besieged a city with the shrewdness of his faith, and conquered ahundred thousand men by believing in them more than they could. 

By believing in them shrewdly, and by thinking out ways of expressingthat belief, he had invented a Corporation--a Public ServiceCorporation--that had a soul, and consequently worked. 

BOOK TWO

LETTING THE CROWDS BE GOOD

TO ABRAHAM LINCOLN

 They stay not in their hold These stokers, Stooping to hell To feed a ship. Below the ocean floors. Before their awful doors Bathed in flame, I hear their human lives Drip--drip. 

 Through the lolling aisles of comrades In and out of sleep, Troops of faces To and fro of happy feet, They haunt my eyes. Their murky faces beckon me From the spaces of the coolness of the sea Their fitful bodies away against the skies. 

CHAPTER I

SPEAKING AS ONE OF THE CROWD

It is a little awkward to say what I am going to say now. 

Probably it will be still more awkward afterward. 

But I find as I go up and down the world and look in the faces of thecrowds in it, that it is true, and I can only tell as it is. 

_I want to be good. _

And I do not want to go up on a mountain to do it, or to slink off andlive all alone on an island in the sea. 

I go a step further. 

I believe that the crowds want to be good. 

But I cannot prove that people want to be good in crowds, and so for thesake of the argument, and to make the case as simple as possible, I amgoing to give up speaking for crowds, and speak for myself as one memberof the crowd and for Lim. Lim and I (and Lim is a business man and not amere author) have had long talks in which we have confided to each otherwhat we think this world, in spite of appearances, is really like, andwe have come to a kind of provisional program and to a definiteagreement on our two main points. 

1. We want to be good. 

2. We want other people to be good, partly as a matter of conveniencefor us, partly for morally aesthetic reasons, and partly because we wantto be in a kind of world where what is good in us works. 

The next point in our confession follows from this. It is an awkward andexposed thing to say out loud to people in general, but

3. Lim and I want to make over the earth. 

4. Sitting down grimly by ourselves, all alone, and believing in a worldhard, with our eyes shut, does not interest us. It is this particularplanet just as it is that interests us, in its present hopeful, squirming state. 

It does not seem to us to the point just now to conceive some brand new, clean, slick planet up in space, with crowds of perfect and convenientpeople on it, and then expect to lay it down in the night like a great, soft, beautiful dew or ideal on this one. We want to take this heavy, inconvenient, cumbersome, real planet that we have, and see what can bedone with it, and by the people on it, what can be done by these samepeople, whose signs one goes by down the street, with Smith & Smith, Gowns, with Clapp & Clapp, Butchers, with W. H. Riley & Co. , Plumbers andGas Fitters, and with things that real people are really doing. 

The things that real people are really doing, when one thinks of it, areSoap, Tooth-brushes, Subsoil Pipes, Wall Papers, Razors, Mattresses, Suspenders, Tiles, Shoes, Pots, and Kettles. Of course the first thingthat happened to us, to Lim and to me (as any one might guess, in alittle quiet job like making over the earth), was that we found we hadto begin with ourselves. 

We did. 

We are obliged to admit that, as a matter of fact, we began, owing tocircumstances, in a kind of rudimentary way with the idea of gettingpeople to take up goodness by talking about it. 

But we are reformed preachers now. We seldom backslide into talking topeople about goodness. 

We have made up our minds to lie low and keep still and show them some. 

Of course one ought to have some of one's own to show. But the troublealways is, if it is really good, one is sure not to know it, or at leastone does not know which it is. The best we can do with goodness, some ofus, if we want it to show more quickly or to hurry people along ingoodness more, is to show them other people's. 

I sometimes think that if everybody in the world could know my plumberor pay a bill to him, the world would soon begin slowly but surely to bea very different place. 

My plumber is a genius. 

CHAPTER II

IS IT WRONG FOR GOOD PEOPLE TO BE EFFICIENT?

Perhaps it will seem a pity to spoil a book--one that might have beenreally rather interesting--by putting the word "goodness" down flatly inthis way in the middle of it. 

And in a book which deals with crowds, too, and with business. 

I would not yield first place to any one in being tired of the word. Ithink, for one, that unless there is something we can do to it, andsomething we can do to it now, it had better be dropped. 

But I have sometimes discovered when I had thought I was tired of aword, that what I was really tired of was somebody who was using it. 

I do not mind it when my plumber uses it. I have heard him use it (andswearing softly, I regret to say) when it affected me like a Hymn Tune. 

And there is Non, too. 

I first made Non's acquaintance as our train pulled out of New York, andwe found ourselves going down together on Friday afternoon to spendSunday with M---- in North Carolina. The first thing he said was, whenwe were seated in the Pullman comfortably watching that big, still worldunder glass roll by outside, that he had broken an engagement with hiswife to come. She was giving a Tea, he said, that afternoon, and he hadfaithfully promised to be there. But a weekend in North Carolinaappealed to him, and afternoon tea--well, he explained to me, crossinghis legs and beaming at me all over as if he were a whole genial, successful afternoon tea all by himself--afternoon tea did not appeal tohim. 

He thought probably he was a Non-Gregarious Person. 

As he was the gusto of our little party and fairly reeked withsociability, and was in a kind of orgy of gregariousness every minuteall the way to Wilmington (even when he was asleep we heard from him), we called him the Non-Gregarious Person, and every time he piled on onemore story, we reminded him how non-gregarious he was. We called himNon-Gregarious all the way after that--Non for short. 

This is the way I became acquainted with Non. It has been Non eversince. 

 * * * * *

I found in the course of the next three days that when Non was not beingthe life of the party or the party did not need any more life for awhile, and we had gone off by ourselves, he became, like most people wholet themselves go, a very serious person. When he talked about hisbusiness, he was even religious. Not that he had any particularvocabulary for being religious, but there was something about him whenhe spoke of business--his own business--that almost startled me at first. He always seemed to be regarding his business when he spoke of it asbeing, for all practical purposes, a kind of little religion by itself. 

Now Non is a builder or contractor. 

 * * * * *

For many years now the best way to make a pessimist or a confirmedinfidel out of anybody has been to get him to build a house. No betterarrangement for not believing in more people, and for not believing inmore kinds of people at once and for life, has ever been inventedprobably than building a house. No man has been educated, or has beenreally tested in this world, until he has built a house. I submit thisproposition to anybody who has tried it, or to any one who is going totry it. There is not a single kind or type of man who sooner or laterwill not build himself, and nearly everything that is the matter withhim, into your house. The house becomes a kind of miniature model (suchas they have in expositions) of what is the matter with people. Youenter the door, you walk inside and brood over them. Everything you comeupon, from the white cellar floor to the timbers you bump your head onin the roof, reminds you of something or of rows of people and of whatis the matter with them. It is the new houses that are haunted now. Anyman who is sensitive to houses and to people and who would sit down inhis house when it is finished and look about in it seriously, and thinkof all the people that have been built, in solid wood and stone, intoit, would get up softly and steal out of it, out of the front door ofit, and never enter that house again. 

This is what Non saw. He saw how people felt about their houses, and howthey lived in them helplessly and angrily year after year, and felthateful about the world. 

I gradually drew out of him the way he felt about it. I found he was notas good as some people are at talking about himself, but the subject wasinteresting. He began his career building houses for people, as nearlyevery one does. The general idea is that everybody is expected to exactcommissions from everybody else, and the owner is expected to pay eachman his own commission and then pay all the commissions that each manhas charged the other man. Every house that got built in this way seemedto be a kind of network or conspiracy of not doing as you would be doneby. Non did not see any way out at first, just for one man. He merelynoticed how things were going, and he noticed that nearly every personthat he had dealings with, from the bottom to the top of the house, seemed to make him feel that he either was, or would be, or ought to be, a grafter. He could not so much as look at a house he had built, throughthe trees when he was going by, without wishing he could be a betterman, and studying on how it could be managed. His own first houses madehim see things. They proved to be the making of him, and if similarhouses have not made similar men, it is their fault. It might not bereassuring to the men who are now living in these first houses to dwelltoo much on this (and I might say he did not build them alone), but itseems to be necessary to bring out the most striking thing about Non inhis first stage as a business man, _viz. _: He hated his business. Hemade up his mind he either would make the business the kind of businesshe liked or get out of it. I did not gather from the way he talked aboutit that he had any idea of being an uplifter. He merely had, apparently, an obstinate, doggedly comfortable idea about himself, and about what athing would have to be, in this world, if he was connected with it. Heproposed to enjoy his business. He was spending most of his time at it. 

Other people have had this same happy thought, but they seem to manageto keep on being patient. Non could not fall back on being patient, andit made him think harder. 

The first thing he thought of was that doing his business as he thoughthe ought to, if he once worked his idea out, and worked it down throughand organized it, might pay. He almost had the belief that people mightpay a man a little extra, perhaps, for enjoying his business. It cannotbe said that he believed this immediately. He merely wanted to, andworked toward it, and merely contrived new shrewd ways at first of beingable to afford it. Gradually he began to notice that the more he enjoyedhis business, the more he enjoyed it with his whole soul and body, enjoyed it down to the very toes of his conscience, the more peoplethere were who stepped into his office and wanted him to enjoy hisbusiness on their houses. It was what they had been looking for foryears--for some builder who was really enjoying his business. And themore he enjoyed his business in his own particular way--that of buildinga house for a man in less time than he said he would, and for lessmoney, not infrequently sending him a check at the end of it--the morehis business grew. 

I do not know that there would be any special harm in speaking of Non'sidea--of just doing as you would be done by--in more moral or religiouslanguage, but it is not necessary. And I find I take an almost religiousjoy in looking at the Golden Rule at last as a plain businessproposition. All that happened was that Non was original, saw somethingthat everybody thought they knew, and acted as if it were so. Theoretically one would not have said that it would be original to takean old platitudinous law like the law of supply and demand, and act asif it were so; but it was. At the time Non was beginning his careerthere was nothing in the building-market people found harder to hirethan honesty. Here was something, he saw at last, that thousands of busyand important men who did not have time to be detectives, wanted. Theredid not seem to be any one very actively supplying the demand. A bigmarket, a small supply, and almost no competition. Non stepped in andproposed to represent a man's interest who is building a house asliterally as the man would represent his interests himself, if he knewall about houses. Everything has followed from this. What Non's businessis now, when a man is building a house, is to step quietly into theman's shoes, let him put on another pair, and go about his business. Itis not necessary to go into the details. Any reader who has ever built ahouse knows the details. Just take them and turn them around. 

What those of us who know Non best like about him is that he is a plainbusiness man, and that he has acted in this particular matter withoutany fine moral frills or remarks. He has done the thing because he likedit and believed in it. 

But the most efficient thing to me about Non is not the way he is makingmoney out of saving money for other people, but the way the fact that hecan do it makes people feel about the world. Whenever I have a littlespace of discouragement or of impatience about the world because it doesnot hurry more, I fall to thinking of Non. "Perhaps next week"--I sayto myself cheerfully--"I can go down to New York and slip into Non'soffice and get the latest news as to how religion is getting on. Or hewill take me out with him to lunch, and I will stop scolding oridealizing, and we will get down to business, and I will take a goodlong look into that steady-lighted, unsentimental face of his while hetells me across the little corner table at Delmonico's for three hourshow shrewd the Golden Rule is, and how it works. " Sometimes when I havejust been in New York, and have come home and am sitting in my stillstudy, with the big idle mountain just outside, and the great meadow andall the world, like some great, calm gentle spirit or picture of itself, lying out there about me, and I fall to thinking of Non, and of how heis working in wood and stone inside of people's houses, and inside oftheir lives day after day, and of how he is touching people at athousand points all the weeks, being a writer, making lights and shadowsand little visions of words fall together just so, seems, suddenly avery trivial occupation--like amusing one's self with a pretty littlesafe kaleidoscope, holding it up, aiming it and shaking softly one'scoloured bits of phrases at a world! Of course, it need not be so. Butthere are moments when I think of Non when it seems so. 

In our regular Sunday religion we do not seem to be quite at our bestjust now. 

At least (perhaps I should speak for one) I know I am not. 

Being a saint of late is getting to be a kind of homely, modest, informal, almost menial everyday thing. It makes one more hopeful aboutreligion. Perhaps people who once get the habit, and who are being goodall the week, can even be good on Sunday. 

There are many ways of resting or leaning back upon one's instincts andgetting over to one's religion or perspective about the world. Mount Tom(which is in my front yard, in Massachusetts) helps sometimes--with asingle look. 

When I go down to New York, I look at the Metropolitan Tower, thePennsylvania Station, the McAdoo Tunnels, and at Non. 

If I wanted to make anybody religious, I would try to get him to work inNon's office, or work with anybody who ever worked with him, or who eversaw him; or I would have him live in a house built by him, or pay a billmade out by him. 

It has seemed to me that his succeeding and making himself succeed inthis way is a great spiritual adventure, a pure religion, a difficult, fresh, and stupendous religion. 

Now these many days have I watched him going up and down through all theempty reputations, the unmeaning noises of the world, living his lifelike some low, old-fashioned, modest Hymn Tune he keeps whistling--and Ihave seen him in fear, and in danger, and in gladness being shrewder andshrewder for God, now grimly, now radiantly, hour by hour, day by daygetting rich with the Holy Ghost!

CHAPTER III

IS IT WRONG FOR GOOD PEOPLE TO BE INTERESTING?

People are acquiring automobiles, Oriental rugs, five-hundred-dollargowns, more rapidly just now than they are goodness, becauseadvertisements in this present generation are more readable thansermons, and because the shop windows on Fifth Avenue can attract moreattention than the churches. The shop windows make people covetous. 

If the goodness that one sees, hears about, or goes by does not makeother people covetous, does not make them wish they had it or some justlike it, it must be because there is something the matter with it, orsomething the matter with the way it is displayed. 

If the church shop windows, for instance, were to make displays ofgoodness up and down the great Moral Fifth Avenue of the world--well, one does not know; but there are some of us who would rather expect tosee the Goodness Display in the windows consisting largely of ThingsPeople Ought Not to Want. 

There would be rows and tiers of Not-Things piled up--Things for PeopleNot to Be, and Things for People Not to Do. 

Goodness displayed in this way is not interesting. Perhaps this is oneof the reasons why the word Goodness spoils a thing for people--so manypeople--when it is allowed in it. 

Possibly it is because we are apt to think of the good people, and ofthe people who are being good, as largely keeping from doing something, or as keeping other people from doing something--as negative. Theirgoodness seems to consist in being morally accurate, and in being veryparticular just in time, and in a kind of general holding in. 

We do not naturally or off-hand--any of us--think of goodness as havingmuch of a lunge to it. It is tired-looking and discouraged, and pullsback kindly and gently. Or it teases and says, "Please"--God knows howhelpless it is, and I for one am frank to say that, as far as I haveobserved, He has not been paying very much attention to good people oflate. 

I do not believe I am alone in this. There must be thousands of otherswho have this same half-guilty, half-defiant feeling of suspiciousnesstoward what people seem to think should be called goodness. Not that wesay anything. We merely keep wondering--we cannot see what it is, exactly, about goodness that should make it so depressing. 

In the meantime we hold on. We do not propose to give up believing init. Perhaps, after all, all that is the matter with goodness in theUnited States is the people who have taken hold of it. 

They do not seem to be the kind of people who can make it interesting. We cannot help thinking, if these same bad people about us, or peoplewho are called bad, would only take up goodness awhile, how they wouldmake it hum!

I can only speak for one, but I do not deny that when I have beensitting (in some churches), or associating, owing to circumstances, withvery good people a little longer than usual, and come out into thestreet, I feel like stepping up sometimes to the first fine, brisk, businesslike man I see going by, and saying, "My dear sir, I do wishthat _you_ would take up goodness awhile and see if, after all, something cannot really be done. I keep on trying to be hopeful, butthese dear good people in here, it seems to me, are making a terriblemess of it!"

And, to make a long story short, Lim happened to be going by one day, and this practically is what I did. I had done it before with otherbusiness men in spirit or in a general way, but with him I was moreparticular. I went straight to the point. "Here are at least sixteenvaluable efficient brands of goodness in America, " I said, "all worththeir weight in gold for a big business career, that no one is reallyusing, that no one quite believes in or can get on the market, and yet Ibelieve with my whole soul in them all, and I believe thousands of othermen do, or are ready to, the moment some one makes a start. "

I pulled out a little list of items which I had made out and put down ona piece of paper, and handed them over to him, and said I wished hewould take a few of them--the first five or six or so--and make themwork. 

He already had, I found, made two or three of the harder ones work. 

I would not have any one suppose for a moment that I am presenting Limas a kind of business angel. 

No one who knows Lim thinks of him, or would let anybody else think ofhim, as being a Select Person, as being particularly or egregiously whathe ought to be. This is one reason I have picked him out. Being good ina small private way, just as a small private end in itself, may bepracticable perhaps without dragging in people who are not quite whatthey ought to be. But the moment one tries to make goodness work, onecomes to the fact that it must be made to work with what we have. Wehave a great crowd of unselected people, people both good and bad, andthe first principle in making goodness work (instead of being merelygood) seems to be to believe that goodness is not too good for anybody. Anybody who can make it work can have it, and what goodness seems toneed, especially in America and England just now, is people who do notfeel that they must at all hazards look good. Whatever happens, whateverelse we do in any general investment or movement we may be making withgoodness, we must let these people in. If there is one thing rather thananother that those of us who know Lim all rely on and like, it is thatnothing can ever make him slump down into looking good. We often findhim hard to make out--everything is left open and loose and unlabelledin Lim's moral nature. The only really sure way any one can tell whenLim is being good is, that whenever he is being good he becomes suddenlyand unexpectedly interesting. His goodness is daring, unexpected, andoriginal. One has the feeling that it may break out anywhere. It isalways doing things that everybody said could not be done before. It istrue that some people are dazed, and no one can ever seem to feel surehe knows what it is that is going on in Lim when he is being good, orthat it is goodness. He merely keeps watching it. There is a certainelement of news, of freshness, of gentle sensation, in his goodness. Itleads to consequences. And there always seems to be something aboutLim's goodness which attracts the attention of people, and makes peoplewho see it want it. So when I speak of goodness in this book, and put itdown as the basis of the power of getting men to do as one likes, I donot deny that I am taking the word away and moving it over from itsusual associations. I do not mean by a good act, a good-looking act, butan act so constituted that it makes good. For the purpose of this book Iwould define goodness as efficiency. Goodness is the quality in a thingthat makes the thing go, and that makes it go so that it will not rundown, and that nothing can stop it. 

There is the inefficiency of lying, for instance, and the inefficiencyof force, or bullying. 

CHAPTER IV

PROSPECTS OF THE LIAR

My theory about the Liar is that it is of no use to scold him or blamehim. It merely makes him feel superior. He should be looked upon quietlyand without saying anything as a case of arrested development. What hashappened to him is that he merely is not quite bright about himself, andhas failed to see how bright (in the long run) other people are. 

When a man lies or does any other wrong thing, his real failure consistsnot in the wrongdoing itself, but in his failure to take pains to focushis mind on the facts in himself, and in the people about him, and seewhat it really is that he would wish he had done, say in twenty years. It seems to be possible, after a clumsy fashion, to find out by a studyof ourselves, and of our own lives and of other men's lives, what wewould wish we had done afterward. Everything we have learned so far wehave learned by guessing wrong on what we have thought we would wantafterward. We have gradually guessed what we wanted better. We began ourlives as children with all sorts of interesting sins or moral guessesand experiments. We find there are certain sins or moral experiments wealmost never use any more because we found that they never worked. Wehad been deceived about them. Most of us have tried lying. Since we werevery small we have tried in every possible fashion--now in one way, nowin another--to see if lying could not be made to work. By far themajority of us, and all of us who are the most intelligent, are notdeceived now by our desire to tell lies. Perhaps we have not learnedthat all lies do not pay. A child tells a lie at first as if a lie hadnever been thought of before. It is as if lying had just been invented, and he had just thought what a great convenience it was, and how manythings there were that he could do in that way. He discovers that theparticular thing he wants at the moment, he gets very often by lying. But the next time he lies, he cannot get anything. If he keeps on lyingfor a long time, he learns that while, after a fashion, he is gettingthings, he is losing people. Finally, he finds he cannot even getthings. Nobody believes in him or trusts him. He cannot be efficient. Hethen decides that being trusted, and having people who feel safe toassociate with him and to do business with him, is the thing he reallywants most; and that he must have first, even if it is only a way to getthe other things he wants. It need not be wondered that the Trusts, those huge raw youngsters of the modern spirit, have had to go throughwith most of the things other boys have. The Trusts have had to gothrough, one after the other, all their children's diseases, and trytheir funny little moral experiments on the world. They thought theycould lie at first. They thought it would be cunning, and that it wouldwork. They did not realize at once that the bigger a boy you were, evenif you were anonymous, the more your lie showed and the more peoplethere were who suffered from it who would be bound sooner or later tocall you to account for it. 

The Trusts have been guessing wrong on what they would wish they haddone in twenty years, and the best of them now are trying to guessbetter. They are trying to acquire prestige by being far-sighted forthemselves and far-sighted for the people who deal with them, and areresting their policy on winning confidence and on keeping faith with thepeople. 

They not only tried lying, like all young children, but they triedstealing. For years the big corporations could be seen going around fromone big innocent city in this country to another, and standing byquietly and without saying a word, putting the streets in their pockets. 

But no big corporation of the first class to-day would begin itsconnection with a city in this fashion. Beginning a permanent businessrelation with a customer by making him sorry afterward he has had anydealings with you, has gone by as a method of getting business inEngland and America. 

One of our big American magazines not long ago, which had gainedespecially high rates from its advertisers because they believed in it, lied about its circulation. The man who was responsible was notprecisely sure, gave nominal figures in round numbers, and did whatmagazines very commonly did under the circumstances; but when themagazine owner looked up details afterward and learned precisely whatthe circulation was for the particular issue concerned, he sent outannouncements to every firm in the country that had anything in thecolumns of that issue, saying that the firm had lied, and enclosing acheck for the difference in value represented. Of course it was a goodstroke of business, eating national humble pie so, and it was a cheapstroke of business too, doing some one, sudden, striking thing that noone would forget. Not an advertisement could be inserted and paid for inthe magazine for years without having that action, and the prestige ofthat action, back of it. Every shred of virtue there was in the actioncould have been set one side, and was set one side by many people, because it paid so well. Every one saw suddenly, and with a faint breathof astonishment, how honesty worked. But the main point about themagazine in distinction from its competitors seems to have been that itnot merely saw how honesty worked, but it saw it first and it had theoriginality, the moral shrewdness and courage, to put up money on it. Itbelieved in honesty so hard that suddenly one morning, before all theworld, it risked its entire fortune on it. Now that it has been doneonce, the new level or standard of candour may be said to have beenestablished which others will have to follow. But it does not seem to methat the kind of man who has the moral originality to dare do a thinglike this first need ever have any serious trouble with competitors. Inthe last analysis, in the competition of modern business to get thecrowd, the big success is bound to come to men in the one region ofcompetition where competition still has some give in it--the region ofmoral originality. Other things in competition nowadays have all beenthought of except being good. Any man who can and will to-day think outnew and unlooked-for ways of being good can get ahead, in the UnitedStates of practically everybody. 

CHAPTER V

PROSPECTS OF THE BULLY

The stage properties that go with a bully change as we grow older. Whenone thinks of a bully, one usually sees a picture at once in one's mind. It is a big boy lording it over a little one, or getting him down andsitting on him. 

Everybody recognizes what is going on immediately, pitches in nobly andbeautifully, and licks the big boy. 

The trouble with the bully in business has been that he is not so simpleand easy to recognize. He is apt to be more or less anonymous andimpersonal, and it is harder to hit him in the right place. 

But when one thinks of it perhaps this pleasant and inspiring duty isnot so impracticable as it looks, and is presently to be attended to. 

Any man who relies, in getting what he wants, on being big instead ofbeing right, is a bully. 

Modern business is done over a wide area, with thousands of personslooking on, and for a long time and with thousands of people comingback. The man who relies on being big instead of being right, and whotakes advantage of his position instead of his inherent superiority, issoon seen through. His customers go over to the enemy. A show of forceor a hold-up works very well at the moment. Being bigger may be moreshowy than being right, and it may down the Little Boy, but the LittleBoy wins the crowd. 

Business to-day consists in persuading crowds. 

The Little Boy can prove he is right. All the bully can prove is that heis bigger. 

The Liar in Business is already going by. 

Now it is the turn of the bully. 

Not long ago a few advertisers in a big American city wanted unfairlylow rates for advertisements and tried to use force with the newspapers. Three or four of the biggest shops combined and gave notice that theywould take their advertising away unless the rates came down. After alittle, they drew in a few other lines of business with them, andsuddenly one morning five or six full pages of advertisements werewithdrawn from every newspaper in the city. The newspapers went onpublishing all the news of the city except news as to what people couldbuy in department stores, and waited. They made no counter-move of anykind, and said nothing and seven days slipped past. They held to theclaim that the service they performed in connecting the great storeswith the people of the city was a real service, that it representedmarket value which could be proved and paid for. They kept on foranother week publishing for the people all the news of the city exceptthe news as to how they could spend their money. They wondered how longit would take the great shops with acres of things to sell to see how itwould work not to let anybody know what the things were. 

The great shops tried other ways of letting people know. They triedhandbills, a huge helpless patter of them over all the city. They usedbillboards, and posted huge lists of items for people to stop and readin the streets, if they wanted to, while they rushed by. For three wholeweeks they held on tight to the idea that the newspapers were strikingemployees of department stores. One would have thought that they wouldhave seen that the newspapers were the representatives of thepeople--almost the homes of the people--and that it would pay to treatthem respectfully. One would have thought they would have seen that ifthey wanted space in the homes of the people--places at their verybreakfast tables--space that the newspapers had earned and acquiredthere, they would have to pay their share of what it had cost thenewspapers to get it. 

One would have thought that the department shops would have seen thatthe more they could make the newspapers prosper, the more influence thenewspapers would have in the homes of the people, and the more businessthey could get through them. But it was not until the shopowners hadcome down and gazed day after day on the big, white, lonely floors oftheir shops that they saw the truth. Crowds stayed away, and proved itto them. Namely: a store, if it uses a great newspaper, instead ofhaving a few feet of show windows on a street for people to walk by, gets practically miles of show windows for people--in their ownhouses--sells its goods almost any morning to the people--to a wholecity--before anybody gets up from breakfast--has its duties as well asits rights. 

Of course, when the shopkeepers really saw that this was what thenewspapers had been doing for them, they wanted to do what was right, and wanted to pay for it. One would have thought, looking at ittheoretically, that the department stores in any city would haveimagination enough to see, without practically having to shut theirstores up for three weeks, what advertising was worth. But if greatdepartment stores do not have imagination to see what they would wishthey had done in twenty years, in one year, or three weeks, and have tospell out the experience morning by morning and see what works, word byword, they do learn in the end that being right works, and that bullyingdoes not. Gradually the level or standard of right in business is boundto rise, until people have generally come to take the Golden Rule withthe literalness and seriousness that the best and biggest men arealready taking it. Department stores that have the moral originality andimagination to guess what people would wish they had bought of them andwhat they would wish they had sold to them afterward are going to win. Department stores that deal with their customers three or four yearsahead are the ones that win first. 

CHAPTER VI

GOODNESS AS A CROWD-PROCESS

The basis of successful business is imagination about other people. Thebest way to train one's imagination about other people is to trydifferent ways of being of service to them. Trying different ways ofmerely getting money out of them does not train the imagination. It istoo easy. 

Business is going to be before long among the noblest of theprofessions, because it takes the highest order of imagination tosucceed in it. Goodness is no longer a Sunday school. The whole world, in a rough way, is its own Sunday school. 

To have the most brains render the most service--render services peoplehad never dreamed of before. 

Why bother to tell people to be good? It bores us. It bores them. Presently we will tell them over our shoulders, as we go by, to usetheir brains. Goodness is a by-product of efficiency. 

Being good every day in business stands in no need of being stood upfor, or apologized for, or even helped. All of these things may beexpedient and human and natural, because one cannot help beinginterested in particular people and in a particular generation; but theyare not really necessary to goodness. It is only when we are tired, orwhen we only half believe in it, that we feel to-day that goodness needsto be stood up for. In a day when men make vast crowds of things, sothat the things are seen everywhere, and when the things are made tostand the test of crowds--crowds of days, or crowds of years--and whenthey make them for crowds of people, goodness does not need scared andhelpful people defending it. I have seen that goodness is a thing to besung about like a sunset. I have seen that goodness is organic, andgrounded in the nature of things and in the nature of man. I have seenthat being good is the one great adventure of the world, the huge dailypassionate moral experiment of the human heart--that all men are at workon it, that goodness is an implacable crowd process, and that nothingcan stop it. 

CHAPTER VII

THOUGHTS ON BEING IMPROVED BY OTHER PEOPLE

But Fate has so arranged our lives that we all have to live cooped up inone particular generation. Living in all of them, especially the agesjust ahead, and seeing as one looks out upon them how goodness wins, maybe well enough when one is tired or discouraged and is driven to it, butin the meantime all the while we are living in this one. The faces ofthe people we know flit past us; the gaunt, grim face of the crowdhaunts us--the crowd that will slip softly off the earth very soon anddrop into the Darkness--a whole generation of it, without seeing howthings are coming out; and there is something about the streets, aboutthe look of women as they go by, something about the faces of the littlechildren, that makes one wish goodness would hurry. One cannot thinkwith any real pleasure of goodness as a huge, slow, implacable moralglacier, a kind of human force of gravity, grinding out truths andgrinding under people, generation after generation, down toward somevast, beautiful, happy valley with flowers and children in it andmajestic old men thousands of years away. One wishes goodness wouldhurry. We are not content, some of us, with having the good people climbover the so-called evil ones and gain the supremacy of the world, andall because the evil people do not see what they really want to do orwould have wished they had done afterward. We want the evil ones, socalled, to see what they really want now. We cannot help believing thatthere is some way of attracting their attention to what they really wantnow. 

I have seen, or seemed to see, in my time that there is almost no limitto what people can do if they can get their own attention, or if someperson or some event will happen by that can get their attention forthem. 

Paralytics jumped from their beds at the time of the San Franciscoearthquake and ran for blocks. The whole earth had to shake them inorder to get their attention; but it did it, and they saw what it wasthey wanted, and they ran for it at once, whether they were paralyticsor not. In the fire that followed the earthquake, people that had beensick in bed for weeks were seen, scores of them, dragging their trunksthrough the streets. 

I have seen, too, in my time scores of people doing great feats ofgoodness in this way, things that they knew they could not do, dragginghuge moral trunks after them, or swinging them up on their shoulders. Ihave seen men who thought they were old in their hearts, and who thoughtthey were wicked, running like boys, with shouts and cheers, to doright. It was all a matter of attention. The question with most of uswould seem to be: How can one get one's attention to what one would wishone had done in twenty years, and how can one get other people's--allthe people with whom we are living and working--to do with us what theywould wish they had done, in twenty minutes, twenty days, or twentyyears?

Letting the Crowd be Good, all turns in the long run upon touching theimagination of Crowds. 

In the last analysis, the coming of the kingdom of heaven, as it hasbeen called, is going to be the coming slowly, and from unsuspectedquarters, of a new piety and of new kinds of saints into the forefrontof modern life--saints who can attract attention, saints who can makecrowds think what they really want. 

Using the word in its more special sense, the time has come when it isbeing keenly realized that if goodness is to be properly appreciated bycrowds, it must be properly advertised. 

How can goodness be advertised to Crowds?

Who are the people that can touch the imagination of Crowds?

The best and most suggestive truths that most of us could come to withregard to doing right, would come from a study of the people who havetried to make us do it. Most of us, if we were asked to name the peoplemost prominently connected with the virtues that we have studied andwondered about most, would mention, probably, either our parents or ourpreachers. Many of us feel quite expert about parents. We have studiedvividly, and sometimes with almost a breathless interest, all theirlittle ways of getting us to be good, and there is hardly any one whohas not come to quite definite conclusions of how he should be preachedto. I have thought it would be not unfruitful to consider in thisconnection either our parents or our preachers. I have decided toconsider the preachers who try to make me good, because they are alittle less complicated than parents. 

Preachers can only be put into classes in a general way. They oftenoverlap, and many of them change over from one class into another everynow and then on some special subject, or on some special line ofexperience which they have had. But for the most part, at least asregards emphasis, preachers may be said to divide off into threeclasses:

Those who tease us to do right. 

Those who make us see that doing right, if any one wants to do it, isreally an excellent thing. 

Those who make us want to do it. 

 * * * * *

I never go to hear a second time, if I can help it, a preacher who hasteased me to do right. I used to hope at first that perhaps a clergymanwho was teasing people might incidentally slip off the track a minute, and say something or see something interesting and alive. But, apparently, preachers who do not see that people should not be teased todo right, do not see other things, and I have gradually given up havinghopeful moments about them. Why, in a world like this, with the rightand the wrong in it all lying so eloquent and plain and beautiful in thelives of the people about us, and just waiting to be uncovered a little, waiting to be looked at hard a minute, should audiences be gatheredtogether and teased to do right?

If the right were merely to be had in sermons or on paper, it might bedifferent. My own experience with the right has been, if I may speak forone, that when I get out of the way of the people who are doing it, andlet the right they are doing be seen by people, everybody wants it. Whenpeople who are doing right are quietly revealed, uncovered a littlefurther by a preacher, everybody envies them, and teasing becomessuperfluous. People sit in their seats and think of them, and becomecovetous to be like them. If, this very day, all the ministers of theworld were to agree that, on next Sunday morning at half-past teno'clock, they all with one accord would preach a sermon teasing peopleto be rich, it would not be more absurd, or more pathetic, or more awayfrom the point, than it would be to preach a sermon teasing people to begood. They want to be good now; they envy the people that they see goingabout the world not leaning on others to be good--self-poised, independent, free, rich, spiritually self-supporting persons. 

The men and women that we know may be more or less muddled in theirminds with philosophy or with theology, or perhaps they are beingdeceived by expediency or being bullied by their environment, but theyare not wicked; they are out of focus, and what they desire when they goto church on Sunday morning is to get a good look at beautiful andrefreshing things that they want, and for an hour and a half, ifpossible, with slow steadied thought see their own lives in perspective. It is a criminal waste of time to get hundreds of people to come intochurch on a Sunday morning and seat them all together in a great roomwhere they cannot get out, and then tease them and tell them they oughtto be good. They knew it before they came. They are already agreed, allof them, that they want to be good. They even want to be good inbusiness--as good as they can afford to. The question is how to manageto do it. The thing that is troubling them is the technique. How canthey be good in their business--more good than their employers want themto be, for instance--and keep their positions? Doing as one would wishone had done afterward, or knowing what one is about, or "being good" asit is sometimes called, is a thing that all really clever people haveagreed upon. They simply cannot manage some of the details--details liketime and place, a detail like being good now, for instance, or likebeing good here. It is the more practical things like these that troublepeople, or they grow mixed in their thoughts about the big goods and thelittle ones--which shall be first in order of importance or which in theorder of time. And when one sees that people are really like this intheir hearts, and when one sees them, all these poor, helpless people, sitting cooped up in a church for an hour and a half being teased to begood, it is small wonder that it seems, or is coming to seem, to theclean-cut morally businesslike men and women we have to-day, a pitifulwaste of time. 

 * * * * *

I come to the second class of preachers I had in mind with morediffidence. My feelings about them are not so simple and rudimentary asmy feelings about those who have teased me to be good. 

Any man who travels about, or who drops into churches wherever hehappens to be from Sunday to Sunday, is almost sure to find in everycity of considerable size at least one imperious capable bafflingclergyman. If one is strictly honest and fair toward him, to say nothingof being a well-meant and hopeful human being who is living in the sameworld with him and who feels very imperfect too, finding any serious andhonest fault with the sermon, or at least laying one's finger upon whatthe fault is, seems to be almost impossible. One simply comes out ofthe church in a nice, neat little glow of good-will and admiration, andwith a strange, soothing, happy sense of new, fresh, convenient wisdom. 

The only fair way to criticise the preacher who belongs in this classseems to be to take ten years for it, go in regularly and get a littlepractice every Sunday. There are preachers who preach so well that theonly way one can ever find what is the matter with their sermons is tosit quietly while they are preaching them, and look around at thepeople. One thinks as one looks around, "These people are what this manhas done. "

They are the same people they were ten years ago. 

I often hear other sermons that are far easier to criticise. They areone-sided or narrow, but they make new people. 

I might not always like to be in a congregation when a man is preachinga sermon that makes new people, because he may be making people or kindsof people that at the time at least I do not need to be. But I naturallyprefer, at least part of the time, a preacher who puts in, before he isthrough, some good work on me. There is a preacher in B---- who alwaysarouses in me, whenever I am in the city, the same old, curious, hopefulfeeling about him that this next one more time he is going to get to me, that I am going to be attended to. I cannot say how many times I havedropped in upon him in his big plain church, seen him with his hushedcongregation all about him, all listening to him up to the last minute, each of them sitting all alone with his own soul, and with him, and withthe ticking of the clock. And the sermon is always about the same. Yousee him narrowing the truth down wonderfully, ruthlessly, to You. Youbegin to see everything--to see all the arguments, all thecircumstances, all the principles. You see them narrowing you downgrimly, closing in upon you, converging you and all your little, meanlife, driving you apparently at last into one helpless beautiful cornerof doing right. You feel while you listen the old sermon-thrill you havefelt before, a kind of intellectual joy in God, in the very brains ofGod; you think of how He has arranged right and wrong so cunningly, laidthem all out so plain and so close beside each other for you to chooseto be good. Then the benediction is pronounced over you, the sevenfoldamen dies away over you, and you go home and do as you like. 

One sees the sermon for days afterward lying out there in calm andorderly memory, all so complete and perfect by itself. There does notreally seem to be any need of doing anything more to it. It is whatpeople mean probably by a "finished sermon. " It is as if goodness hadbeen put under a glass globe in a parlour. You go home proud to think ofit, and proud of course to have such a sermon by you. But you wouldnever think of touching such a complete and perfect thing during theweek the way you would a poorer sermon, disturbing it hopefully ormussing it over, trying to work some of it into your own life. 

 * * * * *

So much for the first two types of preachers: the preachers who standbefore us Sunday morning with goodness placed beside them in a densedarkness while they talk, and who tease us to look at it in the darknessand to take some; and those who stand, a cold white light all aboutthem, and use pointers and blackboards and things--maps of goodness, great charts of what people ought to be like--and who make one see eachvirtue just where it belongs as a kind of dot, like cities in ageography, and who leave us with the pleasant feeling of how sweet andreasonable God is, or rather would be if anybody would pay any attentionto Him. 

 * * * * *

I have already hinted at the qualities of the third class ofpreachers--those who make me want to be good. They seem to throwgoodness as upon a screen, some vast screen of the world, of this realworld about me. They turn their souls, like still stereopticons, uponthe faces of men--men who are like the men and women I know. I go aboutafterward all the week seeing their sermons in the street. Everybody Isee, everything that comes up Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, the verypatterns of the days and nights, of my duties and failures, keep comingup, reminding me to be good. I may start in--I often do--with such apreacher, criticising him, but he soon gets me so occupied criticisingmyself and so lost in wondering how this something that he has and seesjust beyond us, just beyond him, just beyond me, can be had for otherpeople, and how I can have some of it for myself, that I forget tocriticise. He searches my soul, makes me a new being in my presencebefore my eyes--that is, a new being toward some one subject, or someone possibility in the world. He helps me while in his presence toaccomplish the supreme thing that one man can ever do for another. Hehelps me to get my own attention. He makes me see a set of particularthings that I immediately, before his next sentence, am trying to findmeans to do. He does not attract my attention toward what he wants, likea preacher who teases; nor does he attract my attention to what Godwants, like the preacher with the charts of goodness. He succeeds inattracting and holding down my attention to what I really want formyself or others, and to what I propose to get. 

The imagination of crowds is convinced only by men who have real geniusfor expression, for making word-pictures of real things, men who havewhat might be called moving-picture minds, and who are so picturesqueand vivid that when they talk to people about goodness they have seen, everybody feels as if they had been there. It has to be admitted thatthis type of preacher, who has a kind of genius, and has developed anart form for expressing goodness in words, is necessarily an exceptionalman. And it is unreasonable and unfair in the public to expect a man toget up in the pulpit and, with no costume and no accessories, merelywith a kind of shrewd holiness or divination into human nature, presentgoodness so that we seem to be there. It is small wonder that a man whofinds he is expected to be a kind of combination of biograph, brother, spiritual detective, and angel all in one, in order to do his worksuccessfully has days of feeling that he has joined the ranks of TheImpossible Profession. 

CHAPTER VIII

MAKING GOODNESS HURRY

Perhaps it has leaked out to those who have been following these pagesthus far, that I am merely at best, if the truth were known, a kind ofreformed preacher. 

I admit it. Many other people are. We began, owing to circumstances, with the idea of getting people to take up goodness by talking about it. 

But we have grown discouraged in talking to people about goodness. Moreand more, year by year, we have made up our minds, as I have hinted, tolie low and to keep still and show them some. 

And I can only say it again, as I have said it before, if everybody inthe world could know my plumber or pay a bill to him, the world wouldsoon begin, slowly but surely, to be a very different place. 

The first time I saw B---- I had asked him to come over to arrange withregard to putting in new waterpipes from the street to my house. The oldones had been put in no one could remember how many years before, andthe pressure of water in the house, apparently from rust in the pipes, had become very weak. After a minute's conversation I at once engagedB---- to put in the new and larger pipes, and he agreed to dig open thetrench (about two hundred feet long, and three feet deep) and put thepipes in the next day for thirty-five dollars. The next morning heappeared as promised, but, instead of going to work, he came into mystudy, stood there a moment before my eyes, and quietly but firmly threwhimself out of his job!

There was no use in spending thirty-five dollars, he said. He had goneto the City Water Works Office and told them to look into the matter andsee if the connection they had put in at the junction of my pipe withthe main in the street did not need attention. They had found that a newconnection was necessary. They would see that a new one was put in atonce. They were obliged to do it for nothing, he said; and then, slipping (figuratively speaking) thirty-five dollars into my pocket, hebowed gravely and was gone. 

B---- knew absolutely and conclusively (as any one would with a look)that I was not the sort of person who would ever have heard of thatblessed little joint out in the street, or who ever would hear of it orwho would know what to do with it if he did. 

 * * * * *

Sometimes I sit and think of B---- in church, or at least I used to, especially when his bill had just come in. It was always a pleasure tothink of paying one of B----'s bills--even if it was sometimes apostponed one. You always knew, with B----, that he had made that billout to you as if he had been making out a bill to himself. 

Not such a bad thing to think about during a sermon. 

I do not deny that I do lose a sentence now and then in sermons; andwhile, as every one knows, the sermons I have been provided with in theold stone church have been of a rare and high order, there have, I doacknowledge, been bad moments--little sudden bare spots or streaks ofabstraction--and I do not deny that there have been times when I couldnot help feeling, as I sat listening, like sending around Monday morningto the parsonage--my plumber. One could not help thinking what Dr. ----if he once got started on a plumber like B---- (had had him aroundworking all the week during a sermon) could do with him. 

I have a shoemaker, too, who would help most ministers. I imagine hewould point up their sermons a good deal--if they had his shoes on. 

Perhaps shoes and pipes and things like these will be looked upon soonto-day as constituting the great, slow, modest, implacable spiritualforces of our time. 

At all events, this is the most economical, sensible, thorough way (whenone thinks of it) that goodness can be advertised. 

CHAPTER IX

TOUCHING THE IMAGINATION OF CROWDS

A man's success in business to-day turns upon his power of gettingpeople to believe he has something that they want. 

Success in business, in the last analysis, turns upon touching theimagination of crowds. The reason that preachers in this presentgeneration are less successful in getting people to want goodness thanbusiness men are in getting them to want motor-cars, hats, and pianolas, is that business men as a class are more close and desperate students ofhuman nature, and have boned down harder to the art of touching theimaginations of crowds. 

When one considers what it is that touches a crowd's imagination and howit does it, one is bound is admit that there is not a city anywherewhich has not hundreds of men in it who could do more to touch theimagination of crowds with goodness than any clergyman could. A man ofvery great gifts in the pulpit, a man of genius, even an immortalclergyman, could be outwitted in the art of touching the imagination ofcrowds with goodness by a comparatively ordinary man in any one ofseveral hundred of our modern business occupations. 

There is a certain nation I have in mind as I write, which I do not liketo call by name, because it is struggling with its faults as the rest ofus are with ours. But I do not think it would be too much to say thatthis particular nation I have in mind--and I leave the reader to fill inone for himself, has been determined in its national character forhundreds of years, and is being determined to-day--every day, nearlyevery minute of every day, except when all the people are asleep--by acertain personal habit that the people have. I am persuaded that thishabit of itself alone would have been enough to determine the fate ofthe nation as a third-rate power, that it would have made it always dothings with small pullings and haulings, in short breaths, andhand-to-mouth insights--a little jerk of idealism one day, and a littlejerk of materialism the next--a kind of national palavering, andsee-sawing and gesturing, and talking excitedly and with littleflourishes. It is a nation that is always shrugging its shoulders, thatalmost never seems to be capable of doing a thing with fine directness, with long rhythms of purpose or sustained feeling; and all because everyman, woman, and child in the country--scores of generations of them forhundreds of years--has been taught that the great spiritual truth orprinciple at the bottom of correctly and beautifully buying a turnip isto begin by saying that you do not want a turnip at all, that you nevereat turnips, and none of your family, and that they never would. Theother man begins by pointing out that he is never going to sell anotherturnip as long as he lives, if he can help it. Gradually the facts areallowed to edge in until at last, and when each man has taken off Godknows how much from the value of his soul, and spent two shillings'worth of time on keeping a halfpenny in his pocket, both partiesseparate courteously, only to carry out the same spiritual truth on aradish perhaps or a spool of thread, or it may be even a house and lot, or a battleship, or a war, or a rumour of a war, with somebody. 

The United States, speaking broadly, is not like this. But it might havebeen. 

In the United States some forty years ago, being a new country, andbeing a country where everything a man did was in the nature of things, felt to be a first experiment, everybody felt democratic andindependent, and as if he were making the laws of the universe just forhimself as he went along. 

There was a period of ten years or so in which every spool of thread andbit of dress goods--everything that people wore on their bodies or putin their months, and everything that they read, came up and had to beconsidered as an original first proposition, as if there never had beena spool of thread before, as if each bit of dress goods was, or wascapable of being, a new fresh experiment, with an adventurous price onit; and before we knew it a moral nagging and edging and hitching hadset in, and was fast becoming in America an American trait, and fixingitself by daily repetition upon the imagination of the people. 

The shopping of a country is, on the whole, from a psychologist's pointof view, the most spiritual energy, the most irrevocable, mostimplacable meter there can ever be of the religion a country really has. 

There was no clergyman in America who could have made the slightestimpression on this great national list or trend of always getting thingsfor less than they were worth--this rut of never doing as one would bedone by. What was there that could be done with an obstinate, pervasive, unceasing habit of the people like this?

What was there that could be done to touch the imagination of the crowd?

Six thousand women a day were going in and out of A. T. Stewart's greatstore on Broadway at that time. A. T. Stewart announced to New Yorksuddenly in huge letters one day, that from that day forward thereshould be one price for everything sold in his store, and that thatprice would be paid for it by everybody. 

A. T. Stewart's store was the largest, most successful, original, andmost closely watched store in America. 

The six thousand women became one thousand. 

Then two thousand. Some of them had found that they finished theirshopping sooner; the better class of women, those whose time was worththe most, and whose custom was the largest, gradually found they did notwant to shop anywhere else. The two thousand became three thousand, fourthousand, six thousand, ten thousand, twelve thousand. 

Other department stores wanted the twelve thousand to come to them. Theyannounced the one price. 

Hardware stores did it. Groceries announced one price. Then everybody. 

Not all the clergymen in America, preaching every Sunday for months, could have done very much in the way of seriously touching theimagination of the crowd on the moral unworthiness, the intellectualdegradation, the national danger of picking out the one thing thatnearly all the people all do, and had to do, all day, every day, andmaking that thing mean, incompetent, and small. No one had thought outwhat it would lead to, and how monstrous and absurd it was and wouldalways be to have a nation have all its people taking every little thingall day, every day, that they were buying, or that they wereselling--taking a spool of thread, for instance--and packing it, orpacking their action with it, as full of adulterated motives and offresh and original ways of not doing as they would be done by as theycould think up--a little innocent spool of thread--wreaking all theirsins and kinds of sins on it, breaking every one of the ten commandmentson it as an offering. .. . 

It was A. T. Stewart, a very ordinary-looking, practical man in a plain, everyday business, who arrested the attention of a nation and changedthe habit of thought and trend of mind of a great people, and made thema candid, direct people, a people that went with great sunny prairiesand high mountains, a yea and nay people, straightforward, and free frompalavering forever. A. T. Stewart was accustomed, in his own personaldealings from day to day, to cut people short when they tried to hecklewith him. He liked to take things for granted, drive through to thepoint, and go on to the next one. This might have ended, of course, in akind of _cul de sac_ of being a merely personal trait in a clean-cut, manful, straightforward American gentleman; and if Stewart had been asnob or a Puritan, or had felt superior, or if he had thought otherpeople--the great crowds of them who flocked through his store--couldnever expect to be as good as he was, nothing would ever have come ofit. 

It is not likely that he was conscious of the long train of spiritualresults he had set in motion; of the way he had taken the habit of mind, the daily, hourly psychology of a great people, and had wrought itthrough with his own spirit; or of the way he had saved up, and setwhere it could be used, everyday religion in America, and had freed thebusiness genius of a nation for its most characteristic and mosteffective self-expression. 

He merely was conscious that he could not endure palavering in doingbusiness himself, and that he would not submit to being obliged toendure it, and he believed millions of people in America were asclean-cut and straightforward as he was. 

And the millions of people stood by him. 

Perhaps A. T. Stewart touched the imagination of the crowd because he hadlet the crowd touch his and had seen what crowds, in spite ofappearances, were really like. 

The enterprise of touching the imagination of the crowd with goodness, which is being conducted every day on an enormous scale around us, hasto be carried on, like all huge enterprises, by men who are in a largedegree unconscious of it. There are few department stores in England orAmerica that would expect to be called pious, but if one is deeply andobstinately interested in the Golden Rule, and in getting crowds ofpeople to believe in it at a time, it is impossible not to think whatsweeps of opportunity department stores would have with it--with theGolden Rule. With thousands of people flowing in and out all the week, and with hundreds of clerks to attend to it, eight hours a day, therewould hardly seem to be any limit to what such a store could do inmaking the Golden Rule a direct, a pointed and personal thing, a thingthat could not be evaded and could not be forgotten by thousands ofpeople. The same people all going in and out of department stores, vastcongregations of them, eight hours a day, which ministers can only getat in small lots, three hundred or so, twenty minutes a week, and canonly get at with words even then--all of them being convinced in termsthey understand, and in terms they keenly feel, convinced in hats thatthey will see over and over again, convinced in velvets that they aregoing to put on and off for years, in laces, in waistcoats, shoes, indining-room chairs, convinced in the very underclothes next to theirskins, the clothes they sleep in all night, in the very plates on whichthey eat, while all the time they keep remembering, or being reminded, just how the things were bought, and just what was claimed for them andwhat was not claimed for them, and thinking how the claims came true orhow they did not. 

 * * * * *

I just saw lying on the table as I came through the hall a moment ago ahat which (out of all the long rows of hats I can see faintly reachingacross the years) will always be to me a memorable hat. I am free to saythat, after all the ladies it has been taken off to, my great memory ofthat hat is now and always will be, as long as I live, the departmentstore at which I bought it, and the things the department store, beforeI got through with it, managed to make the hat say. 

I had been in the store the day before and selected, in broad daylight, with a big mirror staring me out of countenance, a hat which was aquarter of a size too large. To clinch the matter, I had ordered fourventilating holes to be punched in it, and had it sent to my rooms to bemy hat--implacably my hat as I supposed, for better for worse, forricher for poorer--always. The next morning, after standing before amirror and trying hopefully for a few minutes to see if I could not lookmore intelligent in the hat, I returned to the store firmly. I had madeup my mind that I would keep from looking the way that that hat made melook, at any cost. The store was not responsible according to the lettereither for the hat or for the way I looked in it. I had deliberatelychosen it, looked at myself in cold blood in it, had those dreadful, irremovable, eternal air-holes dug into it. I would buy a new one. Ijumped into a cab, and a moment after I arrived I found myself beforethe clerk from whom I had bought it, with a new one on my head, and wasjust reaching into my pocket for my purse when, to my astonishment, Iheard, or seemed to hear, the great Department Store Itself, in thegentle accents of a young man with a yellow moustache, saying: "I'msorry"--all seven storys of it gathering itself up softly, apparently, and saying "I'm sorry!" The young man explained that he was afraid thehat was wrong the day before, and thought he ought to have told me so, that the store would not want me to pay for the mistake. 

I came home a changed man. I had been hit by the Golden Rule before indepartment stores, but always rather subtly--never with such a broad, beautiful flourish! I made some faint acknowledgment, I have forgottenwhat, and rushed out of the store. 

But I have never gone past the store since, on a 'bus, or in a taxi, orsliding through the walkers on the street, but I have looked up toit--to its big, quiet windows, its broad, honest pillars fronting aworld. 

I take off my hat to it. 

But it gave me more than a hat. 

I think what a thousand department stores, stationed in a thousandplaces on this old planet, could do in touching the imagination of theworld--every day, day by day, cityfuls at a time. 

I had found a department store that had absolutely identified itselfwith my interests, that could act about a hat the way a wife would--adepartment store that looked forward to a permanent relation with me--agreat live machine that could be glad and sorry--that really took me in, knew how I felt about things, cared how I looked as I walked down thestreet. Sometimes I think of the poor, wounded, useless thing I tookback to them, those pitiless holes punched in it--just where no oneelse would ever have had them. I am human. I always feel about thestore, that great marble and glass Face, when I go by it now as if, inspite of all the difficulties, it wanted me--to be beautiful! I at leastfeel and know that the people who were the brain, the daily movingconsciousness behind the face--wanted me to be a becoming customer tothem. They did not want to see me coming in, if it could possibly behelped, in that hat any more!

 * * * * *

I have told this little history of a gray hat, not because it is in anyway extraordinary, but because it is not. The same thing, or somethingquite like it, expressing the same spirit, might have happened in anyone of the best hundred department stores in the world. 

Most people can remember a time, only a very little while ago, whenclerks in our huge department stores or selling machines were notexpected to be people who would think of things like this to do, or whowould know how, or who would think to consider them good business ifthey did. 

The department store that based its success on selecting clerks of ahigh order of human insight, that paid higher wages to its clerks fortheir power of being believed in, for their personal qualities and theirshrewdness in helping people and a gift for discovering mutual interestswith everybody and for founding permanent human relations with thepublic, had not been thought of a little while ago. 

All that had been thought of was the appearance of these things. It wasan employer's business, speaking generally, to get all he could out ofhis clerks and have them get as little as possible out of him. It wastheir business in their turn to get as much money out of the public asthey could get, and to give the public as little in return as theydared. 

The type of employer who liked to do business in this way, and whobelieved in it, crowed over the world nearly everywhere as the PracticalMan. And for the time being certainly it has to be admitted that heseemed the most successful. Naturally there came to be a generalimpression among the people that only certain lower orders of life andcharacter could be employed, or could stand being employed, in the greatdepartment stores. 

I used often to go into ----'s. Everybody remembers it. I went in, as arule, in a helpless, waiting, married way, and as a mere attaché of thetruly wise and good. All I ever did or was expected to do was to standby and look wise and discriminating a minute about dress goods, whenspoken to. I used to put in my time looking behind the counters--allthose busy, pale, yellow-lighted people in little holes or stalls tryingto be human and natural in that long, low, indoor street of theirs, crowds of women staring by them and picking at things. Always thatmoving sidewalk of questions--that dull, eager stream of consciousnesssweeping by. No sunlight--just the crowds of covetousness andshrewdness. I used to wonder about the clerks, many of them, and whatthey would be like at home or under an apple tree or each with a bit ofblue sky to go with them. They used to seem in those days, as I looked, mostly poor, underground creatures living in a sort of Subway of Thingsin a hateful, hard, little world of clothes, each with his little studyor trick or knack of appearances, standing there and selling peopletheir good looks day after day at so much a yard. 

To-day, in a hundred cities one can go into department shops where onewould get, standing and looking on idly, totally different impressions. There are hundreds of thousands of young men and women who have madebeing a clerk a new thing in the world. The public has already had itsimagination touched by them, and is beginning to deal with clerks, as aclass, on a different level. 

This has been brought to pass because the employer has been thought of, or has thought of himself, who engages and pays for in clerks thehighest qualities in human nature that he can get. He picks out and putsin power, and persuades to be clerks, people who would have feltsuperior to it in days gone by--men and women who habitually depend fortheir efficiency in showing and selling goods upon their more generousemotions and insights, their imaginations about other people. Theygather in their new customers, and keep up their long lists of old andregular customers, through shrewd visions of service to people, andthrough a technical gift for making the Golden Rule work. 

When one looks at it practically, and from the point of view of all theconsequences, a bargain is the most spiritual, conclusive, mostself-revealing experience that people can have together. Every bargainis a cross-section in three tenses of a man. A bargain tells everythingabout people--who they are, and what they are like. It also tells whatthey are going to be like unless they take pains; and it tells what theyare not going to be like too sometimes, and why. 

The man who comes nearest in modern life to being a Pope, is the man whodetermines in what spirit and by what method the people under him shallconduct his bargains and deal with his customers. ----, at the head ofhis department store, has a parish behind his counters of twenty-fivehundred men and women. He is in the business of determining theirreligion, the way they make their religion work, eight hours a day, sixdays a week. He seems to me to be engaged in the most ceaseless, mostpenetrating, most powerful, and most spiritual activity of the world. Heis really getting at the imaginations of people with his idea ofgoodness. If he does not work his way through to a man's imagination oneminute or one day, he does the next. If he cannot open up a man'simagination with one line of goods, he does it with another. If hecannot make him see things, and do as he would be done by, with one kindof customer, another is moved in front of him presently, and another, and another--the man's inner substance is being attacked and changednearly every minute every day. There is nothing he can do, or keep fromdoing, in which his employer's idea of goodness does not surround, besiege, or pursue him. Every officer of the staff, every customer whoslips softly up to the counter in front of him makes him think of theGolden Rule in a new way or in some shading of a new way--confronts himwith the will, with the expectation, with the religion of his employer. 

In ----'s store (where I looked in a moment yesterday) one thousand ofthe two thousand five hundred clerks are men. If I were a ministerwondering nearly every day how to work in for my religion a fair chanceat men, I should often look wistfully from over the edge of my pulpit, Iimagine, to the head of ----'s department store, sitting at that quiet, calm, empty looking desk of his in his little office at the top of hisbig building in ---- Street, with nothing but those little six or sevenbuttons he softly puts his thumbs on connecting him with a thousandmen. 

And he does not even need the buttons. Every man knows and feels, personally and intimately, what the man at the desk is asking him to dowith a particular customer who stands before him at the moment. As soonas the customer is there, the man at the desk practically is there too. His religion works by wireless, and goes automatically, and as from ahuge stored-up reservoir, to all that happens in the place. He makesregularly with his idea of goodness anywhere from twenty to sixtypastoral calls (with every sale they make) on a thousand men a day. Heis not dependent, as the ordinary minister often is, on their dying, oron their babies, or on their wives, for a chance to get at men with hisreligion. 

If I wanted to take a spiritual census of modern civilization and get atthe actual scientific facts, what we would have to call, probably thefoot-tons of religion in the world to-day, I would not look for them inthe year-books of the churches, I would get them by going about in thegreat department stores, by moving among the men and women in them dayafter day, and standing by and looking on invisibly. Like a shadow or alight I would watch them registering their goodness daily, hourly, ontheir counters, over their counters, measuring out their souls beforeGod in dress goods, shoes, boas, hats, silk, and bread and butter!

This may not be true of the Orient, but it is true, and getting to bemore true every day, of Europe and America. 

It is especially true of America. In the things which we borrow inAmerica, we are far behind the rest of the world. It is to the thingsthat we create, that we must look alone, for our larger destiny, and ourworld-service. 

Naturally, in so far as civilization is a race of borrowing, nationslike England and France and Germany a few hundred miles apart from oneanother, set the pace for a nation that is three thousand miles awayfrom where it can borrow, like the United States. It is a far cry fromthe land of the Greeks with their still sunny temples and dreams, andfrom England with its quiet-singing churches, to New York with itspractical sky-scraping hewing prayer!

New York--scooping its will out of the very heavens!

New York--the World's last, most stern, perhaps most manful prayer ofall--half-asking and half-grasping out of the hand of God!

Here is America's religion! Half afraid at first, half glad, slowly, solemnly triumphant, as on the edge of an abyss, I have seen America'sreligion! I have seen my brother Americans hewing it out--day by day, night by night, have I seen them--in these huge steel sub-cellars of thesky!

I have accepted the challenge. 

If it is not a religion, then it shall be to us a religion to make it areligion. 

The Metropolitan Tower with its big clock dial, with its three storiesof telling what time it is, and its great bell singing hymns above thedizzy flocks of the skyscrapers, is the soul of New York, to me. 

If one could see a soul--if one could see the soul of New York, it wouldlook more like the Metropolitan Tower than anything else. 

It seems to be trying to speak away up there in the whiteness and thelight, the very soul of the young resistless iron-hearted city. 

I write as an American. To me there is something about it as I come upthe harbour that fills my heart with a big ringing, as if all the worldwere ringing, ringing once more--ringing all over again--up in thiswhite tower of ours in its new bit of blue sky! I glory in England withit, in Greece, in Bethlehem. It is as an outpost on Space and Time, forall of us gathering up all history in it softly--once more and pointingit to God!

It is the last, the youngest-minded, the most buoyant tower--the mightyChild among the steeples of the world. The lonely towers of Colognestretching with that grave and empty nave against the sky, out of thatold and faded region of religion, far away, tremulously send greetingsto it--to this white tower in the west--to where it goes up with itscrowds of people in it, with business and with daily living and hopingand dying in it, and strikes heaven!

It may be perhaps only the American blood in me. Perhaps it is raw andnew to be so happy. I do not know. I only know that to me theMetropolitan Tower is saying something that has been never quite saidbefore--something that has been given in some special sense to us as atrust from the world. It is to me the steeple of democracy--of ourdemocracy, England's democracy--the world's democracy. The hollow domesof Sts. Peter and Paul, and all the rest with their vague, airyother-worldliness, all soaring and tugging like so many balloons ofreligion and goodness, trying to get away from this world--are not to meso splendid, so magnificently wilful as the Metropolitan Tower--as thesouls of these modern, heaven-striking men, taking the world itself, atlast, its streets of stone, of steel, its very tunnels and lifting themup as blind offerings, as unbounded instincts, as prayers, as songs toheaven!

I worship my country, my people, my city when I hear the big bell in itand when I look up to where the tower is in that still place like asea--look up to where that little white country belfry sits in thelight, in the dark above the vast and roaring city!

To me, the Metropolitan Tower, sweeping up its prayer out of the streetsthe way it does, and doing it, too, right beside that little safe, tucked-in, trim, Sunday religion of the Madison Square PresbyterianChurch, lifts itself up as one of the mighty signs and portents of ourtime. Have I not heard the bell tolling to the people in the midst ofbusiness and singing great hymns? A great city lifts itself and prays init--prays while it sings and clangs so absent-looking below. 

I like to go out before going to sleep and take a look at it--one morelook before I sleep, upon the tower, strong, unyielding, alive, sinewy, imperturbable, lifting up within itself the steel and soul of the world. I am content to go to sleep. 

It is a kind of steeple of the business of this world. I would ratherhave said that business needed a steeple before until I saw theMetropolitan Tower and heard it singing above the streets. But I hadalways wanted (without knowing it), in a modern office building, a greatsolemn bell to remind us what the common day was. I like to hear itstriking a common hour and what can be done in it. I stop in the streetto listen--to listen while that great hive of people tolls--tolls not thereveries of monks above the roofs of the skyscrapers, but the religionof business--of the real and daily things, the seriousness of the mightystreet and the faces of the men and the women. 

CHAPTER X

THE STUPENDOUS, THE UNUSUAL, THE MONOTONOUS, AND THE SUCCESSFUL

The imagination of crowds may be said to be touched most successfullywhen it is appealed to in one of four ways:

 THE STUPENDOUS. THE UNUSUAL. THE MONOTONOUS. THE SUCCESSFUL. 

Of these four ways, the stupendous, or the unusual, or the successfulare the most in evidence, and have something showy about them, so thatwe can look at them afterward, and point out at a glance what they havedone. But probably the underhold on the crowd, the real grip on itsimagination, the one which does the plain, hard, everyday work on acrowd's ideals, which determines what crowds expect and what crowds arelike inside--is the Monotonous. 

The man who tells the most people what they shall be like in this worldis not the great man or the unusual man. He is the monotonous man. 

He is the man, to each of us, who determines the unconscious beat andrhythm with which we live our daily lives. 

If we wanted to touch the imaginations of crowds, or of any particularcrowd, with goodness, the best way to do it would probably be, not to goto the crowd itself, but to the man who is so placed that he determinesthe crowd's monotony, the daily rhythm with which it lives--the man, ifwe can find him, who arranges the crowd's heart-beat. 

It need not take one very long to decide who the man is who determinesthe crowd's heart-beat. The man who has the most dominion over theimaginations of most of us, who stands up high before us out in front ofour lives, the man who, as with a great baton, day after day, nightafter night, conducts, as some great symphony, the fate of the worldabove our heads, who determines the deep, unconscious thoughts andmotives, the inner music or sing-song, in which we live our lives, isthe man to whom we look for our daily bread. 

It is the men with whom we earn our money who are telling us allrelentlessly, silently, what we will have to be like. The men with whomwe spend it, who sell things to us, like the department stores, thosehuge machines of attention, may succeed in getting great sweeps ofattention out of crowds at special times, by appealing to men throughthe unusual and through the stupendous or the successful. But whatreally counts, and what finally decides what men and what women shallbe, what really gets their attention unfathomably, unconsciously, is theway they earn their money. The feeling men come to have about a fact, ofits being what it is, helplessly or whether or no--the feeling that theycome to have about something, of its being immemorially and innumerablythe same everywhere and forever, comes from what they are thinking andthe way they think while they are earning their money. It is out of thesubconscious and the monotonous that all our little heavens and hellsare made. It is our daily work that becomes to us the real floor androof of living, hugs up under us like the ground, fits itself down overus, and is our earth and sky. The man with whom we earn our money, theman who employs us, his thinking or not thinking, his "I will" and "Iwon't, " are the iron boundaries of the world to us. He is the skylightand the manhole of life. 

The monotonous, the innumerable and over and over again, one's desk, one's typewriter, one's machine, one's own particular factory window, the tall chimney, the little forever motion with one's hand--it isthese, godlike, inscrutable, speechless, out of the depths of ourunconsciousness and down through our dreams, that become the very breathand rumble of living to us, domineer over our imaginations and rule ourlives. It is decreed that what our Employers think and let us knowenough to think shall be a part of the inner substance of our being. Itshall be a part of growing of the grass to us, and shall be as water andfood and sleep. It shall be to us as the shouts of boys at play in thefield and as the crying of our children in the night. To most menEmployers are the great doors that creak at the end of the world. 

It is not the houses that people live in, or the theatres that they goto, or the churches to which they belong, or the street and number--theEast End look or the West End look the great city carves on the faces ofthese men I see in the street--that determines what the men are like. 

Their daily work lies deeper in them than their faces. One finds one'sself as one flashes by being told things in their walk, in the way theyhold their hands and swing their feet. 

And what is it their hands and feet, umbrellas, bundles, and thewrinkles in their clothes tell us about them?

They tell us how they earn their money. Their hopes, their sorrow, theirfears and curses, their convictions, their very religions are thesilent, irrevocable, heavenly minded, diabolical by-products of whattheir Employers think they can afford to let them know enough to think. 

 "Fight for yourselves. Your masters hate you. They would shoot you down like rabbits, but they need your labour for their huge profits. Don't go in till you get your minimum. No Royal Commission, no promise in the future. Leaders only want your votes; they will sell you. They lie. Parliament lies, and will not help you, but is trying to sell you. Don't touch a tool till you get your minimum. Win, win, win! It is up to all workers to support the miners. "

If a man happens to be an employer, and happens to know that he is notthis sort of man, and finds that he cannot successfully carry on hisbusiness unless he can make five hundred men in his factory believe it, what can he do? How can he touch their imaginations? What language isthere, either of words or of action, that will lead them to see that heis a really a fair-minded, competent employer, a representative of theinterests of all, a fellow-citizen, a Crowdman, and that his men canafford to believe in him and coöperate with them?

If they think he would shoot them down like rabbits, it is because theyhave not the remotest idea what he is really like. They have not noticedhim. They have no imagination about him, have not put themselves in hisplace. How can he get their attention?

CHAPTER XI

THE SUCCESSFUL

A little while ago I saw in Paris an American woman, the President of aWoman's Club (I imagined), who was doing as she should, and was goingabout in a cab appreciating Paris, drive up to the Louvre. Leaving hercab, though I wondered a little why she did, at the door, she hurried upthe steps and swept into the gallery, taking her eleven-year-old boywith her. I came upon her several times. The Louvre did not interest theboy, and he seemed to be bothering and troubling his mother, and ofcourse he kept trying very hard, as any really nice boy would, to getout; but she would not let him, and he wandered about dolefully, lookingat his feet and at the floor, or at the guards, and doing the best hecould. Finally she came over to him; there was a Murillo he must see--itwas the opportunity of his life; she brought him over to it, and stoodhim up in front of it, and he would not look; she took his small brownhead in her hands and steered it to the great masterpiece and held itthere--on that poor, silent, helpless Murillo--until. .. . 

I observed that she could steer his head; but I could not help thinkinghow much more she would have done if she had known how to steer itinside. 

The invention of the Megaphone, of the Cinema, and the _London Times_, and of the Bible, are all a part of the great, happy, hopeful effort ofone part of this world to get the attention of the other part of it, andsteer heads inside. 

This art of steering heads inside, which has come to be the secret artof all the other arts, the secret religion of all the religions, isalso the secret of building and maintaining a civilization and asuccessful and permanent business. It is hard to believe how largely, for the last twenty years, it has been overlooked by employers as thereal key of the labour problem--this art of steering people's headsinside. 

We have seen part of the truth. We have put in a good deal of time infinding fault with labouring men for thinking too much about themselvesand about their class, and for emphasizing their wages more than theirwork, and for not having more noble and disinterested characters. Parliaments, clergymen, and employers have all been troubled for yearsabout Labour, and they have been trying very hard on Sundays and throughreports of speeches by members of Parliament in the daily press, andthrough laws, and through employers' associations, and through factoryrules and fines, to get the attention of labouring men and lift theirthoughts to higher things. 

A great many wise things have been said to Labour--masterpieces, milesof them as it were, whole Louvres of words have been hung upon theirwalls. 

But in vain!

And all because we have merely taken the outside of the boy's head inour hands. We have not thought what was really going on in it. We havenot tried to steer it inside. We have been superficial. 

It is superficial for a comfortable man with a bun in his pocket to talkto a starving man about having some higher motive than getting somethingto eat. Everybody sees that this is superficial, if we mean by it thathis body is starving. But if we mean something more real and moreterrible than that--that he is starving inside, that his soul isstarving, that he has nothing to live for, no real object in gettingsomething to eat--if we mean by it, in other words, that the man'simagination is not touched even by his own life, people take it verylightly. 

And it is the most important thing in the world. The one thing nownecessary to society, to industry, is to get hold of the men who are init, one by one, and touch their imaginations about themselves. We havemillions of men working without their thoughts and expectations beingventilated or passed along, year after year. 

One sees these men everywhere one goes, in thousands of factories, doingtheir work without any draught. We already have tall chimneys for ourcoal furnaces; we have next to see the value of tall chimneys, greatflues to the sky, on the lives and thought and the inner energies ofmen. The most obvious way to get a draught on a man, to get him to glowup and work is to cut through an opening in the top of his life. 

Just where to cut this opening, and just how to cut it in each man'slife--each man considered as a problem by himself--is the Labourproblem. 

There are certain general principles that might be put down in passing. To begin with, we must not feel ashamed to begin implacably with theactual man just as he is, and with the wants and the motives that heactually has. We should feel ashamed rather to begin in any other way. It would not be bright or thoughtful to begin on him with motives he isgoing to have; and it certainly would not be religious or worthy of usto try to make him begin with ours. Perhaps ours are better--for us. Perhaps, too, ours will be better for him when he is like us (if we cangive him any reason to want to be). In the meantime, what is there thatcan honestly be called base in taking human nature as it is and inallowing a sliding scale of motives in people? Starving people andslaves, or people who are ugly and hateful, _i. E. _, not really quitebright toward others, who impute mean, inaccurate motives to them, canonly be patiently expected to have a very small area or even mote ofunselfishness at first. A cross-section of our society to-day representsthe entire geological formation of human nature for 40, 000 years. Weneed but look on the faces of the men about us as we go down the street. All history is here this minute. 

We wish that Labour had better motives. We wish to get our workmen tounderstand us better and believe in us more and work for us harder. 

We agree that we must begin with them, if we propose to do this, wherethey are. 

Where are they?

There are certain general observations that might seem to the point. 

1. If a man is a sane and sound man and works hard, he must feel thateverything he does, every minute, is definitely connected with the mainthrough-train purpose in his life. 

2. If the main purpose in his life is domestic and consists in havinghis family live well and giving his children a chance, he must feel andbe absolutely sure when he is working better or working worse for hisemployer that he is working better or worse for himself and for thosefor whom he lives. 

3. In the ordinary labourer this domestic unselfishness or housepatriotism is a kind of miniature public spirit. It is the elementaryform of his national or human enthusiasm. It is the form ofdisinterestedness that has to be attended to in men first; and the wayfor society to get the labouring man to be public-spirited, to have thehabit of considering the rights of others, is for society to have thehabit of considering his rights in his daily work. An intelligent, liveman must be allowed a little margin to practise being unselfish on, ifonly in the privacy of his own family. Unselfishness begins in smallcircles. The starving man must be allowed a smaller range ofunselfishness than the man who has enough. It is not uncomplimentary orunworthy in human nature to admit that this is so--to demand that thehuman being who is starving must be allowed to be selfish. If he is notbright enough to be selfish when he is hungry he is dangerous tosociety. We ought to insist upon his being selfish, and help him in it. Virtue is a surplus. 

4. This is the first humble, stuttering speech the competent modernemployer who proposes to express himself to his men, and get them tounderstand him and work with him, is going to make. He is going to pickout one by one every man in his works who has a decent, modest, manlydesire to be selfish, and help him in it. He is going to do something orsay something that will make the man see, that will make him believe forlife, that the most powerful, the most trustworthy, the most far-sightedman he can find in the world to be his partner in being decently, soundly, and respectfully selfish--is his employer. 

No employer can expect to get the best work out of a man except byworking down through to the inner organic desire in the man as a man, except by waking his selfishness up and by making it a larger, fuller, nobler, weightier selfishness, and turning the full weight of it everyminute, every hour, on his daily work. 

The best language an employer can find to express this desire at firstto his workmen, is some form of faithful, honest copartnership. 

5. The ordinary wage labourer has little imagination about other peoplebecause he is not allowed any about himself. The moment he is, and themoment his employer arranges his work so that he sees every minute allday that the work which he does for the firm 30 per cent. Better counts. 30 per cent. More on his own main purpose in life, his imagination istouched about himself and he begins to work like a human being. When aman has been allowed to work awhile as a human being he will begin to behuman with a wider range. Being a partner touches the imagination andwakes the man's humanness up. He not only works better, but he loves hisfamily better when he sees he can do something for them. He serves histown better and his lodge better when he sees he can do something forthem. 

6. Being a partner wakes the man's imagination toward those who workwith him, and toward the public and the markets and the goods and thecities where the goods go. He reads newspapers with a new eye. Hebecomes interested in people who buy the goods, and in people who donot. Why do they not? He gropes toward a general interest in humannature, and begins to live. 

7. A man who is being paid wages one night in a week, has hisimagination touched about his work one night in the week. He is merelybeing a wage-earner. In being a partner he is being paid, and feels hispay coming in, every thirty seconds, in the better way he moves hishands or does not move his hands. This makes him a man. 

8. And, finally, as he knows he is being paid, and that he always willbe paid, what he earns, he stops thinking of the sick, tired side of hiswork--the pay he gets out of it, and begins to love the work itself, andbegins to be perfect in it for its own sake. This makes him a gentleman. 

9. Being a partner makes a man actively and keenly reasonable andpractical, not only about his own labour, but about the superior valueof other people with whom he works. He wants the best people in the bestplaces. He begins to have a practical partner's imagination about themen who are over him, and about their knowing more than he does. If heis merely paid wages, he is superstitious, and jealous toward those whoknow more than he does. If he is paid profits, he is glad that they do, and strikes in and helps. 

10. Another complete range of motives is soon offered to the employeewho is a partner. He feels the joy of being a part of a big, splendidwhole, a disinterested delight and pride in others. He grows young withit, like a boy in school. 

Here is the factory over him, around him--his own vast hockey team--andover that is the nation, and over that is the world!

An employer can touch the imagination of most men, of the rank and fileof the people, ninety-nine times where other people can touch it once. And every time he touches it, he touches it to the point. 

If men in general do not believe to-day in religion and do not want it, it is because they have employers who have not seen any place in theirbusiness where they could get their religion in, and have kept thepeople (in the one place where they could really learn what religion is)from learning anything about it. The moment the more common employerssee what the great ones see now, that business is the one particularplace in this world where religion really works, works the hardest, thelongest, and the best, works as it had never been dreamed a religioncould be made to work before--the day school teachers of the world, putthe Golden Rule in the Course everybody will know it. 

It only takes a moment's thought to see what the employers of the worldcould do with the Golden Rule the moment they take hold of it. 

One has but to consider what they have done with it already. 

One has but to consider the astounding way in the last fifteen yearsthey have made everybody not believe in it. 

The employers of the world have been saying ten hours a day to everybodythat the Golden Rule is a foolish, pleasant, inefficient, worsted mottoon a parlour wall. 

Everybody has believed it. 

And now that the big employers are setting the pace and are sayingexactly the opposite thing about the Golden Rule, now that all theemployers are trying to get their employees to be efficient (to do bytheir employers as they would be done by), and now that they are tryingto be efficient themselves (are trying to do to their employees as theywould have their employees do to them), the Golden Rule is touching theimagination of crowds, and the crowd is seeing that the Golden Ruleworks. They watch it working every day in the things they know about. Then they believe in it for other things. 

CHAPTER XII

THE NECKS OF THE WICKED

A letter lies before me, one out of many others asking me how the authorof "The Shadow Christ, " which is a study of the religious values insuffering and self-sacrifice in this world, takes the low ground thathonesty is the best policy. 

I know two kinds of men who believe that honesty is the best policy. 

These two men use exactly the same words "Honesty is the best policy. "

One man says it. 

The other man sings it. 

One man is honest because it pays. 

The other man is honest because he likes it. 

"Honesty is the best policy" as a motive cannot be called religious, but"Honesty is the best policy" as a Te Deum, as something a man sings inhis heart every day about God, something he sings about human nature isreligious, and believing it the way some men believe it, is an act ofworship. 

It is like a great gentle mass. 

It is like taking softly up one's own planet and offering it to God. 

Here it is--the planet. Honesty is organized in the rocks on it and inthe oak trees on it and in the people. The rivers flow to the sea andthe heart of Man flows to God. On this one planet, at least, God is asuccess. 

Possibly it is because many other people beside myself have been slow inclearly making this distinction between "Honesty is the best policy" asa motive or a Te Deum, that I have come upon so many religious men andwomen in the last two or three years, who, in the finest spirit, haveseemed to me to be doing all that they could to discourage everybodyespecially to discourage me, about the Golden Rule. 

The first objection which they put forward to the Golden Rule is that itis a failure. 

When I try to deal with this or try to tell them about Non-Gregarious, the second objection that they put forward is, that it is a success. 

If they cannot discourage me with one of these objections they try todiscourage me with the other. 

They point to the Cross. 

Some days I cannot help wondering what Christ would think if He were tocome back and find people, all these good Christian people everywhereusing the Cross--the Cross of all things in the world as an objection tothe Golden Rule and to its working properly, or as a general argumentagainst expecting anything of anybody. 

I do not know that I have any philosophy about it that would be of anyvalue to others. 

I only know that I am angry all through when I hear a certain sort ofman saying, and apparently proving, that the Golden Rule does not work. 

And I am angry at other people who are listening with me because theyare not angry too. 

Why are people so complacent about crosses? And why are they willing tokeep on having and expecting to have in this world all the good peopleon crosses? Why do they keep on treating these crosses year after year, century after century, in a dull tired way as if they had become a kindof conventionality of God's, a kind of good old church custom, somethingthat He and the Church by this time, after two thousand years, could notreally expect to try to get over or improve upon?

I do not know that I ought to feel as I do. 

I only know that the moment I see evil triumphing in this world, thereis one thing that that evil comes up against. 

It comes up against my will. 

My will, so far as it goes, is a spiritual fact. 

I do not argue about it, nor do I know that I wish to justify it. Imerely accept my will as it is, as one spiritual fact. 

I propose to know what to do with it next. 

The first thing that I have done, of course, has been to find out thatthere are millions of other so-called Christian people who haveencountered this same fact that I have encountered. 

There are at least some of us who stand together. Our wills are setagainst having any more people die on crosses in this world than can behelped. If there is any kind of skill, craftmanship, technique, psychology, knowledge of human nature which can be brought to bear, which will keep the best people in this world not only from being, butfrom belonging on crosses in it, we propose to bring these things tobear. We are not willing to believe that crowds are not inclined toGoodness. We are not willing to slump down on any general slovenlyassumption about the world that goodness cannot be made to work in it. 

If goodness is not efficient in this world we will make it efficient. 

Our reason for saying this is that we honestly glory in this world. Webelieve that at this moment while we are still on it, it is in the actof being a great world, that it is God's world, and in God's Name wewill defend its reputation. 

We do not deny that it may be better spiritual etiquette, more heroiclooking and may have a certain moral grace, so far as a man himself isconcerned, if the world makes him suffer for being honest. But after allhe is only one man, and whether he dislikes his suffering or likes itand feels fine and spiritual over it, it is only one man's suffering. 

But why is it that when the world makes a man suffer, everybody shouldseem always to be thinking of the man? Why does not anybody think of theworld?

Is not the fact that a whole world, eternal and innumerable, is supposedto be such a mean, dishonest sort of a world that it will make a mansuffer for being good a more important fact than the man's suffering is?It seems to me to be taking not lower but higher ground when one insistson believing in the race one belongs to and in believing that it is ahuman race that can be believed in. After two thousand years of Christ, it is a lazy, tired, anæmic slander on the world to believe that it doesnot pay to be good in it. The man who believes it, and acts as if hebelieved it, is to-day and has been from the beginning of time thesupreme enemy of us all. He is guilty before heaven and before us alland in all nations of high treason to the human race. One of the nextmost important things to do in modern religion is going to be to get allthese morally dressed-up, noble-looking people who enjoy feeling howgood they are because they have failed, to examine their hearts, stopenjoying themselves and think. 

For hundreds of years we have religiously run after martyrs and we havelearned in a way, most of us, to have a kind of cooped-up patriotism forour own nation, but why are there not more people who are patriotictoward the whole human race? One has been used to seeing it now forcenturies, good people all over the world hanging their harps on willowtrees, or snuggling down together by the cold sluggish stream of theirlives, and gossiping about how the world has abused them, when theywould be far better occupied, nine out of ten of them--in doingsomething that would make it stop. There was a poet and soldier somethousands of years ago who put more real religion (and put it too, intohis imprecatory psalms), than has been put, I believe, into all thesweet whinings and the spiritual droopings of the world in threethousand years. I do not deny that I would quarrel, as a matter of form, with the lack of urbanity, with a certain ill-nature in the imprecatoryPsalms; but with the spirit in them, with the motive and mighty desire, with the necessity in the man's heart that was poured into them, I havethe profoundest sympathy. 

David had a manly, downright belief. His belief was that if sin isallowed to get to the top in this world of ours, it is our fault. Davidfelt that it was partly his--and being a king--very much his, and as hewas trying to do something about it, he naturally wanted the world tohelp. 

What he really meant--what lay in the background of his petition--thereal spirit that made him speak out in that naïve bold way before theLord, and before everybody--that made him ask the great God in heavenall looking so white and so indifferent, to come right down please andjump on the necks of the wicked, was a vivid, live vision of his own forhis own use that he was going to make the world more decent. He wasspirited about it. If God did not, He would, and naturally when he cameto expressing how he felt in prayer, he wanted God to stand by him. Toput it in good plain soldier-like Hebrew, He wanted God to jump on thenecks of his enemies. 

Speaking strictly for ourselves, in our more modern spirit of course, wewould want to modulate this, we admit that we would not ask God to do alittle thing like jumping on the necks of the wicked--just for us--norwould we care to break away from the other things we are doing andattend to it ourselves, nor would we even favour their necks beingjumped on by others, but while we do not agree with David's particularrequest, we do profoundly agree with the way he felt when he made it. Wewould not make our flank movement on the wicked in quite the same wayand according to our more modern and more scientific manner of thought, we would want to do something more practical with the wicked, but wewould want to do something with them and we would want to do it now. 

As we look at it, it ought not to be necessary to jump on the necks ofthe wicked to make them good, that is, to make them understand what theywould wish they had done in twenty years. We live in a more reasoningand precise age and what more particularly concerns us in the wicked isnot their necks, but their heads and their hearts. It seems to us thatthey are not using them very much and that the moment they do and we canget them to, they will be good. Possibly it was a mere matter oflanguage, a concession to the then state of the language--David'swanting their necks to be jumped on so that he could get their attentionat first and make them stop and think and understand. More subtle waysof expressing things to the wicked have been thought of to-day than ofjumping on their necks, but the principle David had in mind has notchanged, the principle of being loyal to the human race, the principleof standing up for people and insisting that they were really meant tobe better than they were or than they thought they could be--a kind ofholy patriotism David had for this world. The main fact about Davidseems to be that he believed he belonged to a great human race. Incidentally he believed he belonged to a human race that was reallyquite bright, bright enough at least to make people sorry for doingwrong in it--a human race that was getting so shrewd and so just and sohonest that it took stupider and stupider people every year to bewicked, and when he found, judging from recent events in Judea, thatthis for the time being was not so, he had a hateful feeling about it, which it seems to some of us, vastly improved him and would improve manyof us. We do not claim that the imprecatory Psalms were David's best, but they must have helped him immensely in writing the other ones. 

 * * * * *

We may be wrong. But it has come to be an important religious duty tosome of us, or rather religious joy, to hate the prosperity of thewicked. We hate the prosperity of the wicked, not because it is theirprosperity and not ours, but because their prosperity constitutes asneer or slander on the world. We have no idea of wanting to go aboutfaithfully jumping upon the necks of the wicked. What we want is to feelthat we are in a world where the good people are happy and are makinggoodness reasonable, successful, profitable and practical in it. We wantan earth with crowds on it who see things as they are, and who guess sowell on what they want (_i. E. _, who are good) that other people who donot know what they want and are not good, will be lonesome. 

We have made up our minds to live in a world not where the wicked willfeel that their necks are going to be jumped on (which is really arather interesting and prominent feeling on the whole), but a worldwhere the wicked will be made to feel that nobody notices their necks, that they are not worth being jumped on, a world where nobody will havetime to go out back and jump on them, a world where the wicked will notbe able to think of anything important to do, and where the wickedthings that are left to do will be so small and so stupid that nobodywill notice. They will be ignored like boys with catcalls in the street. When we can make people who do wrong feel unimportant enough, there isgoing to be some chance for the good. 

If we could find some sweet, proper, gentle, Christian-looking way ofconveying to these people for a few swift, keen minutes how littledifference it makes when they and people like them do wrong, they wouldsteal over in a body and do right. 

This is our program. We are making preliminary arrangements for a worldin which after this, very soon now, righteousness is going to attendstrictly to its own business and unrighteousness is going to be crowdedout. No one will feel that he has time in two or three hundred yearsfrom now to go out of his way into some obscure corner of the world andjump on the necks of the wicked. 

But this is a matter of form. The main fundamental manful instinct Davidhad--the idea that there should not be any more people dying on crossesthan could be helped--that collective society should take hold of Eviland set it down hard in its chair and make it cry seems to many of usabsolutely sound. Of course, we feel that it is not for us, those wholove righteousness, to jump on the necks of the wicked. We prefer tohave it attended to in a more dignified, impersonal way by Society as awhole. So we believe that Society should proceed to making goodness andhonesty pay. If Society will not do it _we_ will do it. The world may beagainst us at first but we will at least clear off a small place onit--in our own business for instance--where our goodness can command themost shrewdness and the most technique--and we will do what we canslowly--one industry at a time, to remove the slander on goodness thatgoodness is not inefficient, and the slander on the world that goodnesscannot be self-supporting, self-respecting (and without disgrace), evencomfortable in it. 

The old hymn with which many of us are familiar is well and true enough. But it does not seem that standing up for Jesus is the most importantpoint in the world just now. A great many people are doing it. What weneed more is people who will stand up for the world. When people who arestanding up for the world stand and sing "Stand up for Jesus" it willbegin to count. Let four hundred Nons sing it; and we will all go tochurch. 

If nine of the people out of ten who are singing "Stand up for Jesus"would stand up for the world, that is, if they would stop trading withtheir grocer when they find he slides in regularly one bad orange out oftwelve and promptly look up a grocer who does not do such things, andtrade with him, it would not be necessary for people to do as they sooften do nowadays, fall back on a little wistful half discouraged lastresort like "standing up for Jesus. "

Standing up for the world means standing by men who believe in it, standing by men who make everything they do in business a declaration oftheir faith in God and their faith in the credit of human nature, menwho put up money daily in their advertising, their buying and selling, on the loyalty, common sense, brains, courage, goodness, and righteousindignation of the people. 

The idea that goodness is sweet and helpless and that Jesus was meek andlowly and has to be stood up for is now and always has been a slander. It does not seem to some of us that He would want to be stood up for andwe do not like the way some people call Him meek and lowly. It would bemore true to say that He merely looks meek and lowly; that is, if mostmen had done or not done or had said or not said things in the way hedid, they would have been considered meek and lowly for it. He had a wayof using a soft answer to turn away wrath. But there was not anythingreally meek and lowly about his giving the soft answer. No meek andlowly man would ever have thought of such a thing as turning away wrathwith a soft answer. He would have been afraid of looking weak. He wouldnot have had the energy or the honesty or the spiritual address to knowor to think of a soft answer that would do it. 

The spirit of fighting evil with good--a kind of glorious self-will forgoodness, for doing a thing the higher and nobler way and making itwork, the spirit of successful implacably efficient righteousness is thelast and most modern interpretation of the New Testament, the crowd'slatest cry to its God. Crowds will always crucify and crosses will nevergo by. But we are going to have a higher ideal for crosses. We are notgoing (out of sheer shame for the world), to think seriously any longerof dying on a cross, or letting any one else die on one for a littlerudimentary platitude, a quiet, sensible, everyday business motto forany competent business man like "Do unto others as you would have themdo unto you. "

CHAPTER XIII

IS IT WRONG FOR GOOD PEOPLE TO BE SUCCESSFUL?

We are having and are about to have notably and truly successful men whohave the humility and faithfulness, the spiritual distinction of trueand great success. 

I want to interpret, if I can, these men. I would like to put with thegreat martyrs, with the immortal heroes of failure, these modern silent, unspoken, unsung mighty men, the heroes of success. I look forward toseeing them placed among the trophies of religion, in the heart ofmankind at last. 

I cannot stand by and watch these men being looked upon by good peopleas men the New Testament made no room for, secretly disapproved of byreligious men and women, as being successes, as being little, noisy, disturbing, contradictions of the New Testament as talking back to theCross. 

These things I have been trying to say about the Cross as a means ofexpressing goodness to crowds have brought me as time goes on into closequarters with many men to whom I pay grateful tribute, men of highspirit, who strenuously disagree with me. 

I am not content unless I can find common ground with men like these. 

They are wont to tell me when we argue about it that whatever I may beable to say for success as a means of touching the imaginations ofcrowds with goodness, great or attractive or enthralling characters arenot produced by success. Success does not produce great characters. Itis now and always has been failure that develops the characters of themen who a truly great. 

Perhaps failure is not the only way. 

 * * * * *

When I was talking with ---- a little while ago about Non-Gregarious'sgoodness and how it succeeded, he was afraid that if his goodnesssucceeded there must have been something the matter with it. 

I could see that he was wondering what it was. 

Non's success troubled him. He did not think it was exactly religious. "Real religion" he said, "was self-sacrifice. There always had to besomething of the Cross about real religion. "

I said that Non's religion was touched at every point with the Cross. 

It seemed to me that it was the spirit of eagerness in it that was thegreat thing about the Cross. If Non would all but have died to make theGolden Rule work in this world, if he daily faced ruin and risked theloss of everything he had in this life to prove that the Golden Rule wasa success, that is if he really had a Cross and if he really facedit--dying on it, or not dying on it, could not have made him one whitmore religious or less religious than he was. What Non was willing todie for, was his belief in the world, and scores of good Christianpeople tried in those early days of his business struggle to keep himfrom believing in the world. There was hardly a day at first but somegood Christian would step into Non's office and tell him the world wouldmake him suffer for it if he kept on recklessly believing in it anddoing all those unexpected, unconventional, honest things that somehow, apparently, he could not help doing. 

They all told him he could not succeed. They said he was a failure. Hewould suffer for it. 

I would like to express if I can, what seems to be Non's point of viewtoward success and failure. 

If Non were trying to express his idea of the suffering of Christ, Iimagine he would say that in the hardest time of all when his body washanging on the Cross, the thing that was really troubling Christ was notthat he was being killed. The thing that was troubling him was that theworld really seemed, at least for the time being, the sort of world thatcould do such things. He did not take his own cross too personally ortoo literally as the world's permanent or fixed attitude toward goodnessor every degree of goodness. There was a sense in which he did notbelieve except temporarily in his own cross. He did not think that theworld meant it or that it would ever own up that it meant it. 

Probably if we had crosses to-day the hard part of dying on one wouldbe, not dying on it, but thinking while one was dying on it that one wasin the sort of world that could do such things. 

It is Non's religion not to believe every morning as he goes down to hisoffice that he is in a mean world, a world that would want to crucifyhim for doing his work as well as he could. 

Perhaps this was the spirit of the first Cross, too. We have everyreason to believe that if Christ could have come back in the flesh threedays after the crucifixion and lived thirty-three years longer in it, hewould have occupied himself exclusively in standing up for the worldthat had crucified him, in saying that it was a small party in a smallprovince that did it, that it was temporary and that they did it becausethey were in a hurry. 

It was not Christ, but the comparatively faint-believing, worldly mindedsaints that have enjoyed dying on crosses since, who have been proud ofbeing martyrs. 

Among those who have tried the martyr way of doing things Jesus isalmost the only one who has not in his heart abused the world. Mostmartyrs have made a kind of religion out of not expecting anything of itand of trying to get out of it. "And ye, all ye people, are ye suitableor possible people for me to be religious with?" the typical martyrexclaims to all the cities, to all the inventors, to the scientists andto the earth-redeemers, to his neighbours and his fellow men. It wasnot until science in the person of Galileo came to the rescue ofChristianity and began slowly to bring it back to where Christ startedit--as a noble, happy enterprise of standing up for this world and ofasserting that these men who were in it are good enough to be religioushere and to be the sons of God now--that Christianity began to function. Religion has been making apparently a side trip for nearly twelvehundred years, a side trip into space or into the air or into the gravefor holiness for the eternal, and for the infinite. 

Doubtless very often people on crosses really have been holier than thepeople who knew how to be good without being crucified. Sometimes it hasbeen the other way. It would have been just as holy in Non to make thegospel work in New York as to make a blaze, a show or advertisement ofhow wicked the world was, and of how inefficient the gospel was--bygoing into insolvency. 

He has had his cross, but instead of dying on it, he has taken it up andcarried it. Scores of risks and difficulties that he has grappled withwould have become crosses at once if equally good, but less resourcefulmen, had had them. Letting one's self be threatened with the cross athousand times is quite as brave as dying on one once. The spirit, or atleast the shadow, of a cross must always fall daily on any life that isstretching the world, that is freeing the lives of other men againsttheir wills. The whole issue of whether there will be a cross or thethreat of a cross turns on a man's insight into human nature and hisquiet and practical imagination concentrated upon his work. 

Not dying on a cross is a matter of technique. One sees how not to, andone does not. It might be said that the world has two kinds ofredeemers, its cross-redeemers and its success-redeemers. The very bestare on crosses, many of them. Perhaps in the development of the truththe cross-redeemers come first; they are the pioneers. Then come thesuccess-redeemers, then everybody!

CHAPTER XIV

IS IT SECOND RATE FOR GOOD PEOPLE TO BE SUCCESSFUL?

Of course the most stupendous success that has ever been made--theworld's most successful undertaking from a technical point of view as anadaptation of means to ends was the attempt that was made by a man inGalilee years and years ago to get not only the attention of a wholeworld, but to get the attention of a whole world for two thousand years. 

This purpose of arresting the attention of a world and of holding it fortwo thousand years was accomplished by the use of success and of failurealternately. 

Christ tried success or failure according to which method (time andplace considered) would seem to work best. 

His first success was with the doctors. 

His next success was based on His instinct for psychology, His power ofdivining people's minds, which made possible to Him those extraordinaryfeats in the way of telling short stories that would arrest and hold theattention of crowds so that they would think and live with them forweeks to come. 

His next success was a success based on the power of His personality, and His knowledge of the human spirit and his victory over His ownspirit--his success in curing people's diseases and His extraordinaryroll of miracles. 

He finally tried failure at the end, or what looked like failure, because the Cross completed what he had had to say. 

It made His success seem greater. 

The world had put to death the man who had had such great successes. 

People thought of His successes when they thought of Him on the Cross, and they have kept thinking of them for thousands of years. 

But the Cross itself, or the use of failure was a sowing of the seed, ataking the truth out of the light and the sunshine and putting it in thedark ground. 

The Cross was promptly contradicted with the Resurrection. All this, itseems to some of us, is the most stupendous and successful undertakingfrom a purely technical point of view that the world has seen. In thelast analysis it was not His ideas or His character merely, but it wasHis technique that made Christ the Son of God and the Master of theNations of the Earth. 

 * * * * *

I think that while Christ would not have understood Frederick Taylor'stechnique, his tables of figures or foot-tons or logarithms he wouldhave understood Frederick Taylor. 

Nearly all the time that could be said to have been spent in his life indealing with other men he spent in doing for them on a nobler scale thething that Frederick Taylor did. He went up to men--to hundreds of men aday, that he saw humdrumming along, despising themselves and despisingtheir work and expecting nothing of themselves and nothing of any oneelse and asked them to put their lives in his hands and let him showwhat could be done with them. 

This is Frederick Taylor's profession. 

The Sermon on the Mount began with telling people that they would besuccessful if they knew how--if they had a vision. It proceeded to givethem the vision. It began with giving them a vision for the things thatthey had, told them how even the very things that they had alwaysthought before were what was the matter with the world they could make agreat use of. "Blessed are the peacemakers. Blessed are those thathunger; blessed are the meek. "

And He then went on to tell them how much finer, and nobler and morefree from the cares and weights of this earth they could be if theywanted to be, than they had dared to believe. He told the people whowere around Him bigger things about human nature, how successful it wasor could be than any one had ever claimed for people in this worldbefore. They put Him up on a Cross at last and crucified Him becausethey thought He was too hopeful about them, and about human nature orbecause, as they would have put it, He was blasphemous and said everyman was a Son of God. 

As human nature then was and in the then spirit of the world, no bettermeans than a Cross could have been employed to get the attention of allmen, to make a two thousand year advertisement for all nations of what asuccess human nature was, of what men really could be like. 

But I think that if Christ were to come to us again and if he were totry to get the attention of the whole world once more to precisely thesame ideas and principles that he stood for before, the enterprise wouldbe conducted in a very different manner. 

There is a picture of Albert Durer's which hangs near my desk, and oncemore as I write these lines my eyes have fallen on it. It is thefamiliar one with the lion and the lamb in it, lying down together, andwith the big room with the implements of knowledge scattered about in itand at the other end in the window at the table with a book, an old, bent-over scientist with a halo over his head. 

If Christ were to appear suddenly in this modern world to-morrow, thefirst thing He would see and would go toward, would be the halo over thescientist's head. 

There is nothing especially picturesque or religious looking, nothing, at least, that could be put in a stained-glass window in FrederickTaylor's tables and charts and diagrams of the number of foot-tons apig-iron handler can lift with his arms in a day. 

But if Christ returned to the world to-morrow and if what He wanted todo to-morrow was to get the universal, profound, convinced attention ofall men to the Golden Rule, I believe He would begin the way FrederickTaylor did, by--being concrete. If He wanted to get men in general, menin business, to love one another He would begin by trying to work outsome technical, practical way in which certain particular men in acertain particular place could afford to love one another. 

He would find a practical way for instance for the employers andpig-iron handlers in the Midvale Steel Works to come to some sort ofcommon understanding and to work cheerfully and with a free spirittogether. I think he would proceed very much in the way that FrederickTaylor did. 

He would not say much about the Golden Rule. He would give each man avision for his work, and of the way it lapped over into other men's workand leave the Golden Rule a chance to take care of itself. This is allthe Golden Rule, as a truth or as a remark needs just now. 

For two thousand years men have devoted themselves Sunday day afterSunday to saying over and over again that men should love one another. The idea is a perfectly familiar one. When Christ said it two thousandyears ago, it was so original and so sensational that just of itself andas a mere remark it had a carrying power over the whole earth. 

Everybody believes it now--that it is a true remark--but like a score ofother remarks that have been made and some of the noblest Christ made, is it not possible that it has long since in its mere capacity of beinga remark, gone by? There is no one who has not heard about our lovingone another. The remark we want now is how we can do it. This is theremark that Mr. Frederick Taylor has made. It is not very eloquent. Itis a mere statement of fact. It has taken him nearly thirty-three yearsto make it. 

The gist of it is that for thirty-three years, the employers and thepig-iron handlers in the Midvale Steel Works, Pennsylvania, have beendevoted to one another and to one another's interests and acting all dayevery day as if of course their interests were the same, and it has beenfound that employees when their employers coöperated with them couldlift forty-seven tons instead of twelve and a half a day, and weregetting 60 per cent. More wages. 

Everybody listens. Everybody sees at a glance that when it comes tomaking remarks about doing as one would be done by, this is the oneremark that we have all been waiting to hear some one make for twothousand years. 

 * * * * *

The Cross or the last-resort type of religion was as far as St. Augustine or St. Francis in their world could get. It was all that theMiddle Ages were ready for or that could be claimed for people who hadto live in ages without a printing press, in which no one in the crowdcould expect to know anything and in which there were no ways of lettingcrowds know things. 

To-day there is no reason why the Cross as a contrivance for attractingthe attention of all people to goodness should be exclusively reliedupon. 

Possibly the Cross was intended, at the time, as the best possible wayof starting a religion, when there was none, or possibly for keeping itup when there was very little of it. 

But now that Christianity has been occupied two thousand years inputting in the groundwork, in laying down the principles of success, andin organizing them into the world, has been slowly making it possiblewith crowds that could not be long deceived for success to be decent. The leaven has worked into human nature and Christianity has producedThe Successful Temperament. 

Success has become a spiritual institution. In other words, the hour ofthe Scientist, of the man with a technique, of the man who sees how, theman of The Successful Temperament is at hand. 

Everything we plan for the world, including goodness, from thisday--must reckon with him--with the Man Who Sees How. 

CHAPTER XV

THE SUCCESSFUL TEMPERAMENT

I also, Gentle Reader, have despised and do despise "success. "

I also have stood, like you, perhaps, and I am standing now in thatancient, outer court, where I can keep seeing every day The Little GreatMen with all their funny trappings on, --their hoods, and their ribbons, and their train-bearers, drive up before us all and go in to The GreatDoor. I have gone by in the night and have heard the buzz of theirvoices there. I have looked, like you, up at the great lighted windowsof Prosperity from the street. 

And in the broad daylight I have seen them too. I have stood on the curbin the public way with all the others and watched silently the parade ofThe Little Great go by. 

I have waited like you, Gentle Reader, and smiled or I have turned on myheel sadly, or wearily or bitterly or gayly and walked away down my ownside street of the world and with the huzzahs of the crowd echoingfaintly in my ears have gone my way. 

But I keep coming back to the curb again. 

I keep coming back because, every now and then among all the giltcarriages and the bowing faces in them, or among all the big yellow vansor cages with the great beasts of success in them, the literary foxes, the journalist-juggernauts, the Jack Johnsons of finance, the contented, gurgling, wallowing millionaires--I cannot help standing once more andlooking among them, for one, or for possibly two, or three or four whomay be truly successful men. Some of them are merely successful-looking. I often find as I see them more closely, that they are undeceived, orhumble, or are at least not being any more successful-looking thanthey can help, and are trying to do better. 

They are the men who have defied success to succeed and who will defy itagain and again. 

They are the great men. 

The great man is the man who can get himself made and who will gethimself made out of anything he finds at hand. 

If success cannot do it, he makes failure do it. If he cannot makesuccess express the greatness or the vision that is in him, he makesfailure express it. 

But this book is not about great men and goodness. It is about touchingthe imagination of crowds with goodness, about making goodnessdemocratic and making goodness available for common people. 

 * * * * *

A stupendous success in goodness will advertise it as well as astupendous failure. 

Goodness has had its cross-redeemers to attract the attention of half aworld. 

Possibly it is having now its success-redeemers to attract the attentionof the other half. 

The people the success-redeemers reach would turn out to be, possibly, very much more than half. 

The Cross, as a means of getting the attention of crowds, or of the morecommon people in our modern, practical-minded Western world, wasapparently adapted to its purpose as long as it was used for churchpurposes or as long as it was kept dramatic or sensational or remote, oras long as it was a cross for some one else, but as a means ofattracting the attention of crowds of ordinary men and women to goodnessin common everyday things, it is very doubtful if failure--in the powerof steady daily pulling on men's minds, has done as much for goodness assuccess. 

It is doubtful if, except as an ideal or conventional symbol the crosshas ever been or ever could be what might be called a spirituallymiddle-class institution. It has been reserved for men of genius, pioneers and world-designers to have those colossal and glorious crossesthat have been worshipped in all ages, and must be worshipped in allages as the great memorials of the human race. 

But the more common and numerous types of men, the men who do not designworlds, but who execute them, build them, who carry the new designs ofgoodness out, who work through the details and conceive the technique ofgoodness are men in whom the spiritual and religious power takes thenatural form of success. 

It seems to be the nature of the modern and the western type of man tochallenge fatalism, to defy a cross. He would almost boast that nobodycould make him die on it. This spirit in men too is a religious spirit. It is the next hail of goodness. Goodness posts up its next huge noticeon the world:

 [SUCCESS]

It is going to make the more rudimentary everyday people notice it, andit is going to make them notice it in everyday things. It does not admitthat goodness is merely for the spiritual aristocrats for those greatersouls that can search out and appreciate the spiritual values infailure. 

It believes that goodness is for crowds. It has discovered that crosses, to common people in common things, seem oriental and mystical. Thecommon people of the western world instead of being born with dreamyimaginations are born with pointed and applied ones. It is notimpossible that the comparative failure of the Christian religion in thewestern world and in the later generations is that it has been trying tobe oriental and aristocratic in appealing to what is really a new typeof man in the world--the scientific and practical type as we see it inthe western nations all about us to-day. 

We can die on crosses in our Western world as well as any one and we cando it in crowds too as they do in India, but we propose if crosses areexpected of us to know why in crowds. Knowing why makes us think ofthings and makes us do things. It is the keynote of our temperament. 

And it is not fair to say of us when we make this distinction that we donot believe in the cross. But there are times when some of us wish thatwe could get other people to stop believing in it. We would all but dieon the cross to get other people to stop dying on one for platitudes, toget them to work their way down to the facts and focus their minds onthe practical details of not dying on a cross, of forming a vision ofaction which will work. It goes without saying that as long as crowdsare in the world crosses will not go by, but it is wicked not to makethem go by as fast as possible, one by one. They were meant to be movedup higher. We are eager not to die on the same cross for the same thingyear after year and century after century. It seems to us that theeagerness that always goes with the cross always was and always will bethe essential, powerful and beautiful thing in it. 

And it is this new eagerness in the modern spirit, a kind of hurrying upof the souls of the world that is inspiring us to employ our westerngenius in inventing and defending and applying the means of goodness andin finding ways of making goodness work. We will not admit that men wereintended to die on crosses from a sheer, beautiful, heavenlyshiftlessness, vague-mindedness, mere unwillingness to take pains toexpress themselves or unwillingness to think things out and to makethings plain to crowds. It does not seem to us that it is wicked toemploy success as well as failure, to state our religion to people. Itseems to us that it goes naturally with the scientific and technicaltemperament of the people that we should do this. It is not superior andit is not inferior. It is temperamental and it is based upon the studyof the psychology of attention, on a knowledge of what impresses acertain kind of man and of what really is conclusive with crowds andwith average men and women. It is the distinctive point of view of thepragmatic temperament, of the inductive mind. The modern mind isinterested in facts and cannot make a religion out of not knowing them. There was a time once when people used to take their bodily diseases asacts of God. We have made up our minds not to have these same bodilydiseases now. We have discovered by hard work and constant study thatthey are not necessary. The same is true of our moral diseases and ofour great social maladies. 

It is going to be the same with crosses. It is a sin and a slander andaffront to human nature and to God to die on a cross if it can be helpedby hard work and close thinking, or by touching the imaginations ofothers. 

Most of us acting in most things are not good enough to die on crosses. We are not worthy, it would not be humble in us to. Crosses are onlyreserved for the newest and most rare truths, and for the newest andmost rare men. They are still, and they still can be made to be, a meansof grace and of perfection to people who have gifts of learning thingsby suffering, but as a means of making other people and people in crowdssee things, the right to use a cross is not for those of us who aremerely lumbering spiritually along, trying to catch up to a plain, simple-hearted old platitude, eighteen hundred years late like theGolden Rule. The right to a cross is reserved for those who are up onthe higher reaches, those great bleak stretches or moors of truth wheremen go forth and walk alone with God hundreds of years ahead. 

CHAPTER XVI

THE MEN AHEAD PULL

Writing a hopeful book about the human race with the New York _Sun_, Wall Street, Downing Street and Bernard Shaw looking on is uphill work. 

Sometimes I wish there were another human race I could refer to when Iam writing about this one, one every one knows. The one on Mars, forinstance, if one could calmly point to it in the middle of an argument, shut people off with a wave of one's hand and say, "Mars this" and "Marsthat" would be convenient. 

The trouble with the human race is that when one is talking to it aboutitself, it thinks it is It. 

It is not It yet. 

The earth and everything on it is a huge Acorn, tumbling softly throughthe sky. 

Our boasted Christianity (crosses, and resurrections and cathedrals andall) is a Child crying in the night. 

 * * * * *

It is not necessary for me to prove to the satisfaction of the New York_Sun_ and Bernard Shaw that the Golden Rule has not reached the superiormoral stage of being taken as a platitude by all of our people who areengaged in business. It is enough to submit that the most creative andforceful business men--the men who set the pace, the foremen of theworld, are taking it so, and that others are trying to be as much likethem as they can. Wickedness in this world is not going to stop with ajerk. It is merely being better distributed. Possibly this is all thereis to the problem, getting sin better distributed. The Devil has neverhad a very great outfit or any great weight, but he has always knownwhere to throw it, and he has always done an immense business on a smallcapital and the only way he has managed to get on at all, is byorganizing, and by getting the attention of a few people at the top. Nowthat the moral sense of the world has become quickened, and that rapidtransit and newspapers and science and the fact-spirit have gained theirhold, the sins of the world are being rapidly distributed, not so muchamong the men who determine things as among those who cannot. 

Everything is following the fact-spirit. The modern world and everythingin it, is falling into the hands of the men who cannot be cheated aboutfacts, who get the facts first and who get them right. 

The world cannot help falling, from now on, slowly--a little ponderouslyperhaps at first--into the hands of good men. To say that the world isfalling into the hands of men who cannot be cheated and to say that itis falling into the hands of good men is to say the same thing. 

The men who get the things that they want, get them by seeing the thingsas they are. Goodness and efficiency both boil down to the same qualityin the modern man, his faculty for not being a romantic person and fornot being cheated. 

A good man may be said to be a man who has formed a habit, an intimatepersonal habit of not being cheated. Everything he does is full of thishabit. The sinful man, as he is usually called, is a man who is off inhis facts, a man who does not know what he really wants even forhimself. In a matter-of-fact civilization like ours, he cannot hope tokeep up. If a man can be cheated, even by himself--of course otherpeople can cheat him and everybody can take advantage of him. Henaturally grows more incompetent every day he lives. The men who areslow or inefficient in finding out what they really want and slow indealing with themselves are necessarily inefficient and behind hand indealing with other people. They cannot be men who determine what otherpeople shall do. 

It is true that for the moment, it still seems--now that science hasonly just come to the rescue of religion, that evil men in a largedegree are the men who still are standing in the gate and determiningopportunities and letting in and letting out Civilization as theyplease. But their time is limited. 

The fact-spirit is in the people. We enjoy facts. Facts are the modernman's hunting, his adventure and sport. The men who are ahead aregetting into a kind of two-and-two-are-four habit that is like music, like rhythm. It becomes almost a passion, almost a self-indulgence intheir lives. Being honest with things, having a distaste for beingcheated by things, having a distaste for being cheated by one's self andfor cheating other people, runs in the blood in modern men. The nationscan be seen going round and round the earth and looking one another longand earnestly in the eyes. The poet is turning his imagination upon theworld about him and upon the fact that really works in it. Thescientific man has taken hold of religion and righteousness is beingproved, melted down in the laboratory, welded together before us all andriveted on to the every day, on to what really happens, and on to whatreally works. Goodness in its baser form already pays. Only the biggestmen may have found it out, but everybody is watching them. The mostimportant spiritual service that any man can render the present age isto make goodness pay at the top (in the most noticeable place) in somebusiness where nobody has made it pay before. Anybody can see that italmost pays already, that it pays now here, now there. At all events, anybody can see that it is very noticeable that the part of the worldthat is most spiritual is not merely the part that is whining or hangingon crosses. It is also the part that is successful. One knows scores ofsaints with ruddy cheeks. It is getting to be a matter of principlealmost in a modern saint--to have ruddy cheeks. 

I submit this fact respectfully to Bernard Shaw, Wall Street, DowningStreet and Pennsylvania Avenue, and even to the New York _Sun_, thatvast machine for laughing at a world down in its snug quarters in ParkRow--that the saint with ruddy cheeks is a totally new and disconcertingfact in our modern life. He is the next fact the honest pessimist willhave to face. 

I submit that this saint with ruddy cheeks is here, that he is lovable, imperturbable, imperious, irrepressible, as interesting as sin, ascatching as the Devil and that he has come to stay. 

He stays because he is successful and can afford to stay. 

He is successful because he is good. 

Only religion works. 

I am aware that the New York _Sun_ might quarrel with just exactly thisway of putting it. 

I might put it another way or possibly try to say it again after sayingsomething else first. _Viz. _: The man who is successful in business isthe man who can get people to do as much as they can do and a great dealmore than they think they can do. 

Only a very lively goodness, almost a religion in a man, can do this. Hehas to have something in him very like the power of inventing people orof making people over. 

To be specific: In some big department stores, as one goes down theaisle, one will see over and over again the clerks making fun ofcustomers. 

One by one the customers find it out and the more permanent ones, thosewho would keep coming and who have the best trade, go to other stores. 

How could such a thing be stopped in a department store by a practicalemployer? Can he stop it successfully by turning on his politeness?

Of course he can make his clerks polite-looking by turning on hispoliteness. But politeness in a department store does not consist inbeing polite-looking. Being polite-looking does not work, does not gripthe customer or strike in and do things and make the customer do things. 

A machine like a department store, made up of twenty-five hundred humanbeings, which is carving out its will, its nature, stamping its patternon a city, on a million men, or on a nation, cannot be made to workwithout religion. If the clerks are making fun of people, only religioncan stop it. 

Perhaps you have been made fun of yourself, Gentle Reader? You haveobserved, perhaps, that in making fun of people (making fun of you, forinstance), the assumption almost always is, that you are trying to belike the Standard Person, and that this (they look at you pleasantly asyou go by) is as near as you can get to it! If an employer wishes tomake his clerk an especially valuable clerk, if he wishes to make hisclerk an expert in human nature or a good salesman, one who sees acustomer when he comes along as he really is, and as he is trying to be, he will only be able to do it by touching something deep down in theclerk's nature, something very like his religion--his power of puttinghimself in the place of others. He can only do it by making a clerk feelthat this power in him of doing as he would be done by, and seeing howto do it, _i. E. _, the religion in him, is what he is hired for. 

It is visionary to try to run a great department store, a great machineof twenty-five hundred souls, a machine of human emotions, of fivethousand eyes and ears, a huge loom of enthusiasm, of love, hate, covetousness, sorrow, disappointment, and joy without having it full ofclerks who are experts in human nature, putting themselves in the placeof crowds of other people, clerks who are essentially religious. 

So we watch the men who are ahead driving one another into goodness. Theman who is not able to create, distribute or turn on, in his businessestablishment, goodness, social insight, and customer-insight in it, canonly hope to-day to keep ahead in business by having competitors asinefficient as he is. 

The man who is ahead has discovered himself. Everything the man aheadis doing eight hours a day, is seen at last narrowing him down, cornering him into goodness. 

Of course as long as people looked upon goodness as a Sunday affair, afew hours a week put in on it, we were naturally discouraged about it. 

It is still a little too fresh looking and it may be still a little tooclever for everybody, but slowly, irrevocably, we see it coming. We canlook up almost any day and watch some goodness--now--at least onespecimen or so, in every branch of business. 

We watch daily the men who are ahead, pulling on the goodness of theworld and the Crowds pushing on it. 

CHAPTER XVII

THE CROWDS PUSH

The men who are ahead make goodness start, but it is the crowds thatmake it irresistible. 

The final, slow, long, imperious lift on goodness is the one the crowdgives. Of course, for the most part, modern business is largely donewith crowds. Crowds are doing it and crowds are nearly always watchingit. 

The factory is slower than the department store in being good becausethe men in it deal with crowds of things and crowds of wheels and notwith crowds of people. 

All responsible people are forced to be good, with crowds around them, expecting it of them. 

Crowds at the very least are a kind of vast, insinuating, penetrating, omnipresent, permeating police force of righteousness. 

In a department store, the crowds, twelve thousand a day, are like somehuge coil of hose or vacuum cleaner, lying about the place, sucking up, drawing out, and demanding goodness from the clerks. Clerks develophuman insight and powers faster in department stores than machinists doin factories because they are exposed to more people and to largercrowds. The stream clears itself. 

The last forms of business to yield to the new spirit are to be thelonely ones, the ones where light, air, human emotions, and crowds areshut out. 

The lonely forms of business will at last be vitalized and socialized bymen of organizing genius, who will invent the equivalent of crowds goingby, who will contrive ways of putting a few responsible persons insight or in a position where they will feel crowds going by their souls, looking into them as if they were shop windows. Crowds can keep track ofa few. The crowds will see that these few are the kind of men who willkeep track of all. 

Crowds in the end will not accept less than the best. With crowds ofpeople and crowds of places and crowds of times we are good. In allthings crowds can see or be made to see we are safe. Progress lies inmaking crowds see through people, making crowds go past them. While theyare going past them, they lure their goodness on. 

CHAPTER XVIII

THE MAN WHO SAYS HOW, SAYS HOW

The people who are worried and discouraged about goodness in this world, one finds when one studies them a little, are almost always worried in akind of general way. They do not worry about anything in particular. Their religion seems to be a kind of good-hearted, pained vagueness. 

The religion of the people who never worry at all, the thoughtlessoptimists, is quite the same too, except that they have a kind of happy, rosy-lighted vagueness instead. 

For about two thousand years now, goodness has been in the hands ofvague people. Some of them have used their vagueness to cry with softly, and some of them have used it to praise God with and to have many fine, brave, general feelings about God. 

I have tried faithfully, speaking for one, to be religious with both ofthese sets of people. 

They make one feel rather lonesome. 

If one goes about and takes a grim happiness, a kind of iron joy inseeing how successful a locomotive is, or if one watches a great, worshipful ocean liner with delight, or if, down in New York, one looksup and sees a new skyscraper going slowly up, unfolding into the skybefore one, lifting up its gigantic, restless, resistless face to God;there comes to seem to be something about churches and about good peopleand about the way they have of acting and thinking about goodness anddoing things with goodness, that makes one unhappy. 

Perhaps one has just come from it and one's soul is filled with thestern, glad singing of a great foundry, of the religious, victoriouspraising spirit of man, dipping up steel in mighty spoonfuls--the stuffthe inside of the earth is made of, and flinging it together into agreat network or crust for the planet--into mighty floors or sidewalksall round the earth for cities to tread on and there comes to seemsomething so successful, so manlike, so godlike about it, about the waythese men who do these things do them and do what they set out to do, that when I find myself suddenly, all in a few minutes on a Sundaymorning, thrown out of this atmosphere into a Christian church, findmyself sitting all still and waiting, with all these good people aboutme, and when I find them offering me their religion so gravely, sohopefully, it all comes to me with a great rush sometimes--comes to meas out of great deeps of resentment, that religion could possibly bemade in a church to seem something so faint, so beautifully weary, sodreamy, and as if it were humming softly, absently to itself. 

I wonder in the presence of a Christianity like this whether I am aChristian or not--the quartet choirs, confections, the little, dainty, faintly sweet sermons--it is as if--no I will not say it. .. . 

I have this moment crossed the words out before my eyes. It is as if, after all, religion, instead of being as I supposed down at the foundry, the stern and splendid music of man conquering all things for God, were, after all, some huge, sublime and holy vagueness, as if the service andthe things I saw about me were not hard true realities--as if going toChurch were like sitting in a cloud--some soft musical cloud or floatingisland of goodness and drifting and drifting. .. . 

 * * * * *

Not all churches are alike, but I am speaking of something that musthave happened to many men. I but record this blank space on this page, as a spiritual fact, as a part of the religious experience of a mantrying to be good. 

When this little experience of which the words have to be crossed outafter going to Church--finally settles down, there is still a grim truthleft in it. 

The vagueness of the man who is good, who locks himself up in a Churchand says, "Oh God! Oh God! Oh God!" and the vigour and incisiveness ofthe man who says nothing about it and who goes out of doors and actslike a god all the week--these remain with me as a daily and abidingsense. 

And when I find myself myself, I, who have gloried in cathedrals since Iwas a little child, looking ahead for a God upon the earth, and when Isee the foundries, the airships, the ocean liners beckoning the soul ofman upon the skies, and the victory of the soul over the dust and overthe water and over the air and when I see the Cathedrals beside them, those vast, faint, grave, happy, floating islands of the Saved, driftingbackward down the years, it does not seem as if I could bear thefoundries saying one thing about my God and the cathedrals sayinganother. 

I have tried to see a way out. Why should it be so?

I have seen that the foundries, the ocean liners, and the airships arein the hands of men who say How. 

Perhaps we will take goodness and cathedrals, very soon now, and putthem for a while in the hands of the men who say how. If St. Francis, for instance, to-day, were to be suddenly more like Bessemer, or if Dr. Henry Van Dyke were more like Edison or if the Reverend R. J. Campbellwere more like Sir Joseph Lister or if the Bishop of London were to goat London the way Marconi goes at the sky, what would begin to happen togoodness? One likes to imagine what would happen if that same spirit, the spirit of "how" were brought to bear upon a great engineeringenterprise like goodness in this world. 

Perhaps the spirit of "how" is the spirit of God. 

Perhaps religion in the twentieth century is Technique. 

Technique in the twentieth century is the Holy Ghost. 

Technique is the very last thing that has been thought of in religion. Religion is being converted before our eyes. It is becoming touched withthe temper of science, with the thoroughness, the doggedness, theinconsolableness of science until it is seeing how and until it issaying how. 

When the inventors, in our machine age, get to work on goodness in theway that they are getting to work on other things, things will begin tohappen to goodness that the vague, sweet saints of two thousand yearshave never dreamed of yet. 

In London and New York, in this first quarter of the twentieth centuryChristianity will not be put off as a spirit. The right of Christianityto be a spirit has lapsed. 

Christianity is a Method. 

What Christ meant when He said He was the Truth and the Life, has beenunderstood, on the whole, very well. What He meant by saying He was theWay, we are now beginning, to work out. 

 * * * * *

A thousand or two years ago, when two men stood by the roadside and madea bargain, it was their affair. 

When two men stand on the sidewalk now and make a bargain, say in NewYork, they have to deal and to deal very thoughtfully and accuratelywith ninety million people who are not there. They do this as well asthey can by imagining what the ninety million people would do and say, and how they would like to be done by, if they were there. 

The facilities for finding out what the ninety million people would doand say, and what they would want, the general conveniences for assuringthe two men on the sidewalk that they will be able to conduct theirbargain, and to get the other ninety million in, accurately, that theywill be able to do by them as they would be done by--these have scarcelybeen arranged for yet. 

In our machine age, with our railroads, and our telephones suddenlyheaping our lives up on one another's lives, almost before we havenoticed it, our religious machinery to go with our other machinery, ourmachinery that we are going to be Christians with, has not beeninvented yet. 

Religion two-men size, or man and woman size, or one family or twofamily size or village size has been worked out. Religion as long as ithas been concerned with a few people and was a matter of love betweenneighbours, or of skill in being neighbourly, has had no special orimperative need for science or the scientific man. 

Now that religion is obliged to be an intimate, a confiding relationbetween ninety million people, the spiritual genius, devotion, andholiness of the scientific man, of the man who says "how" has come to bethe modern man's almost only access to his God. 

A ninety million man-power religion is an enterprise of spiritualengineering, a feat in national and international statesmanship, agigantic structural constructive achievement in human nature. Doing asone would be done by, with a few people, is a thing that any man can sitdown and read his Bible a few minutes and arrange for himself. He canmanage to do as he would be done by, fairly well in the next yard. Buthow about doing as one would be done by with ninety million people--allsizes, all climates, all religions, Buffalo, New Orleans, Seattle? Howabout doing as one would be done by three thousand miles?

It is an understatement to say, as we look about our modern world, thatChristianity has not been tried yet. 

Christianity has not been invented yet. 

What was invented two thousand years ago was the spirit of Christianity. 

Christianity has been for two thousand years a spirit. 

It is almost like a new religion to me just of itself to think of it. Itis like being presented suddenly with a new world to think of it, tothink that all we have really done with Christianity as yet is to use itas a breath or spirit. 

I look at the vision of the earth to-day, of the great cities rushingtogether at last and running around the world like children runningaround a house--great cities shouting on the seas, suddenly sliding upand down the globe, playing hopscotch on the equator, scrambling up thepoles--all these colossal children!. .. Here we all are!--a whiff ofsteam from the Watts's steam kettle and a wave of Marconi across the airand we have crept up from our little separate sunsets, all our littleprivate national bedrooms of light and darkness into the one single samecunning dooryard of a world! Our religion, our politics, our Bibles, kings, millionaires, crowds, bombs, prophets and railroads all hurling, sweeping, crashing our lives together in a kind of vast internationalcollision of intimacy. 

All the Christianity we can bring to bear or that we can use to run thiscrash of intimacy with is a spirit, a breath. 

We do not well to berate one another or to berate one another's motivesor to assail human nature or to grow satirical about God with all ourlittle battered helpless Christians about us and our unadjustedreligions. 

We are a new human race grappling with a new world. Our Christianity hasnot been invented yet and if we want a God, we will work like chemists, like airmen, turn the inside of the earth out, dump the sky, movemountains, face cities, love one another, and find Him!

In the meantime until we have done this, until we have worked aschemists and airmen work, Christianity is a spirit. 

It explains all this eager jumble of the world, brushes away ourobjections, frees our hearts, gives us our program, makes us know whatwe are for, to stop and think a moment of this--that Christianity is aspirit. 

Everything that is passing wonderful is a spirit at first. God beginsbuilding a world as a world-spirit, out of a spirit brooding upon thewaters. Then for a long while the vague waters, then for a long while alittle vague land or spirit-of-planet before a real world. 

And every real belief that man has had, has begun as a spirit. 

For two thousand years Man has had the spirit of immortality. Homer hadit. Homer had moments when improvising his mighty song all alone, ofhearing or seeming to hear, faintly, choruses of men's voices singinghis songs after him, a thousand years away. 

As he groped his way up in his singing, he felt them in spirit, perhaps, the lonely wandering minstrels in little closed-in valleys, or on thevast quiet hills, filling the world with his voice when he was dead, going about with his singing, breaking it in upon the souls of children, of the new boys and girls, and building new worlds and rebuilding oldworlds in the hearts of men. Homer had the spirit of hearing his ownvoice forever, but the technique of it, the important point of seeinghow the thing could really be done, of seeing how people, instead oflistening to imitations or copies or awkward echoes of Homer, shouldlisten to Homer's voice itself--the timbre, the intimacy, the subtlety, the strength of it--the depth of his heart singing out of it. All thishas had to wait to be thought out by Thomas A. Edison. 

Man has not only for thousands of years had the spirit of immortality, of keeping his voice filed away if any one wanted it on the earth, forever, but he has had all the other spirits or ghosts of his mightierself. He has had the spirit of being imperious and wilful with the sea, of faring forth on a planet and playing with oceans, and now he hasworked out the details in ocean liners, in boats that fly up from thewater, and in boats which dive and swim beneath the sea. For thousandsof years he has had the spirit of the locomotive working through, troopsof runners or of dim men groping defiantly with camels through deserts, or sweeping on on horses through the plains, and now with his banners ofsteam at last he has great public trains of cars carrying cities. 

For hundreds of years man has had the spirit of the motor-car--of havinghis own private locomotive or his own special train drive up to hisdoor--the spirit of making every road his railway. For a great manyyears he has had the spirit of the wireless telegraph and of using thesky. Franklin tried using the sky years ago but all he got waselectricity. Marconi knew how better. Marconi has got ghosts of men'svoices out of the clouds, has made heaven a sounding board for greatcongregations of cities, and faraway nations wrapped in darkness andsilence whisper round the rolling earth. Man has long had the spirit ofdefying the seas. Now he has the technique and the motor-boat. He hashad the spirit of removing oceans and of building huge, undergroundcities, the spirit of caves in the ground and mansions in the sky, andnow he has subways and skyscrapers. For a thousand years he has had thespirit of Christ and now there is Frederick Taylor, Louis Brandeis, Westfield Pure Food, Doctor Carrel, Jane Addams, and Filene's Store. Vast networks--huge spiritual machines of goodness are crowding andpenetrating to-day, fifteen pounds to the square inch, the atmosphere ofthe gospel into the very core of the matter of the world, into theeveryday things, into the solids of the lives of men. 

It takes two great spirits of humanity to bring a great truth or a newgoodness into this world; one spirit creates it, the other conceives it, gathers the earth about it and gives it birth. These two spirits seem tobe the spirits of the poet and the scientist. 

We are taking to-day, many of us, an almost religious delight in themboth. We make no comparisons. 

We note that the poet's inspiration comes first and consists in sayingsomething that is true, that cannot be proved. 

A few people with imagination, here and there, believe it. 

The scientist's inspiration comes second and consists in seeing ways ofproving it, of making it matter of fact. 

He proves it by seeing how to do it. 

Crowds believe it. 

CHAPTER XIX

AND THE MACHINE STARTS

One of the things that makes one thoughtful in going about from city tocity and dropping into the churches is the way the people do not sing inthem and will not pray in them. In every new strange city where onestops on a Sunday morning, one looks hopefully--while one hears thechimes of bells--at the row of steeples down the street. One looks forpeople going in who seem to go with chimes of bells. And when one goesin, one finds them again and again, inside, all these bolt-up-right, faintly sing-song congregations. 

One wonders about the churches. 

What is there that is being said in them that should make any one feellike singing?

The one thing that the churches are for is news--news that would besuitable to sing about, and that would naturally make one want to singand pray after one had heard it. 

There is very little occasion to sing or to pray over old news. 

Worship would take care of itself in our churches if people got thelatest and biggest news in them. 

News is the latest faith men have in one another, the last thing theyhave dared to get from God. 

It is not impossible that just at the present moment, and for somelittle time to come, there is really very little worth while that can besaid about Christianity, until Christianity has been tried. I cannotconceive of Christ's coming back and saying anything just at the moment. He would merely wonder why, in all these two thousand years, we had notarranged to do anything about what He had said before. He would wonderhow we could keep on so, making his great faith for us so poetic, visionary, and inefficient. 

It is in the unconscious recognition of this and of the presentspiritual crisis of the world, that our best men, so many of them, instead of going into preaching are going into laboratories and intobusiness where what the gospel really is and what it is really made of, is being at last revealed to people--where news is being created. 

Perhaps it would not be precisely true--what I have said, about Christ'snot saying anything. He probably would. But he would not say these samemerely rudimentary things. He would go on to the truths and applicationswe have never heard or guessed. The rest of his time he would put in inproving that the things that had been merely said two thousand yearsago, could be done now. And He would do what He could toward having themdropped forever, taken for granted and acted on as a part of the morallyautomatic and of-course machinery of the world. 

The Golden Rule takes or ought to take, very soon now, in real religion, somewhat the same position that table manners take in morals. 

All good manners are good in proportion as they become automatic. Insaying that honesty pays we are merely moving religion on to its morecreative and newer levels. We are asserting that the literal belief inhonesty, after this, ought to be attended to practically by machinery. People ought to be honest automatically and by assumption, by dismissingit in business in particular, as a thing to be taken for granted. 

This is what is going to happen. 

Without the printing press a book would cost about ten thousand dollars, each copy. 

With the printing press, the first copy of a book costs perhaps aboutsix hundred dollars. 

The second costs--twenty-nine cents. 

The same principle holds good under the law of moral automatics. 

Let the plates be cast. Everything follows. The fire in the IroquoisTheatre in Chicago cost six hundred dead bodies. 

Within a few months outward opening doors flew open to the streetsaround a world. 

Everybody knew about outward opening doors before. 

They had the spirit of outward opening doors. But the machinery formaking everybody know that they knew it--the moral and spiritualmachinery for lifting over the doors of a world and making them allswing suddenly generation after generation the other way, had not beenset up. 

Of course it would have been better if there had been three hundred deadbodies or three dead bodies--but the principle holds good--let the moralplates be cast and the huge moral values follow with comparativelylittle individual moral hand labour. The moral hand labour moves on tomore original things. 

The same principle holds good in letting an American city be good inseeing how to make goodness in a city work. 

Let the plates be once cast--say Galveston, Texas; or De Moines, Iowa, and goodness after you have your first specimen gets nationalautomatically. 

Two hundred and five cities have adopted the Galveston or commissiongovernment in three years. 

 * * * * *

The failure for the time being apparently of the more noble andaggressive kinds of goodness against the forces of evil is a matter oftechnique. Our failure is not due to our failure to know what evilreally is, but due to our wasteful way of tunnelling through it. 

Our religious inventors have failed to use the most scientific method. We have gone at the matter of butting through evil without thinkingenough. Less butting and more thinking is our religion now. We will nottry any longer to butt a whole planet when we try to keep one man fromdoing wrong. 

We will butt our way through to the man who sees where to butt and howto butt. Then all together!

Very few of the wrongs that are done to society by individuals would bedone if civilization were supplied with the slightest adequate machineryor conveniences for bringing home to people vividly who the people arethey are wronging, how they are wronging them, and how the people feelabout it. This machinery for moral and social insight, thisintelligence-engine or apparatus of sympathy for a planet to-day, beforeour eyes is being invented and set up. 

 * * * * *

Sometimes I almost think that history as a study or particularly as ahabit of mind ought to be partitioned off and not allowed to people ingeneral to-day. Only men of genius have imagination enough for handlinghistory so that it is not a nuisance, a provincialism and animpertinence in the serene presence to-day of what is happening beforeour eyes. History makes common people stop thinking or makes them thinkwrong, about nine tenths of the area of human nature, particularly aboutthe next important things that are going to happen to it. 

Our modern life is not an historian's problem. It is an inventor'sproblem. The historian can stand by and can be consulted. But thingsthat seem to an historian quite reasonably impossible in human natureare true and we must all of us act every day as if they were true. Webut change the temperature of human nature and in one moment new levelsand possibilities open up on every side. 

Things that are true about water stop being true the moment it is heated212 degrees Fahrenheit. It begins suddenly to act like a cloud and whenit is cooled off enough a cloud acts like a stone. Railroad trains arerun for hundreds of miles every year in Siberia across clouds that arecold enough. We raise the temperature of human nature and the motiveswith which men cannot act to-day suddenly around a world are the motiveswith which they cannot help acting to-morrow. 

The theory of raised temperatures alone, in human nature, will makepossible to us ranges of goodness, of social passion and vision, thatonly a few men have been capable of before. 

All the new inventions have new sins, even new manners that go withthem, new virtues and new faculties. The telephone, the motor-car, thewireless telegraph, the airship and the motor-boat all make men act withdifferent insights, longer distances, and higher speeds. 

Men who, like our modern men, have a going consciousness, see thingsdeeper by going faster. 

They see how more clearly by going faster. 

They see farther by going faster. 

If a man is driving a motor-car three miles an hour all he needs toattend to with his imagination is a few feet of the road ahead. 

If he is driving his car thirty miles an hour and trying to get on byanticipating his road a few feet ahead, he dies. 

The faster a man goes--if he has the brains for it--the more people andthe more things in the way, his mind covers in a minute--the moremagnificently he sees how. 

On a railway train any ordinary man any day in the year (if he goes fastenough) can see through a board fence. It may be made of vertical slatsfive inches across and half an inch apart. He sees through the slitsbetween the slats the whole country for miles. If he goes fast enough aman can see through a solid freight train. 

All our modern industrial social problems are problems of gearing peopleup. Ordinary men are living on trains now--on moral trains. 

Their social consciousness is being geared up. They are seeing moreother people and more other things and more things beyond the Fence. 

The increased vibration in human nature and in the human brain and heartthat go with the motor-car habit, the increased speed of the humanmotor, the gearing up of the central power house in society everywhereis going to make men capable of unheard-of social technique. The socialconsciousness is becoming the common man's daily habit. Laws of socialtechnique and laws of human nature which were theories once are habitsnow. 

There is a certain sense in which it may be said that the modern manenjoys daily his moral imagination. He is angered and delighted with hissocial consciousness. He boils with rage or sings when he hears of allthe new machines of good and machines of evil that people are setting upin our modern world. 

There is a sense in which he glories in the Golden Rule. Themoral-machinist's joy is in him. He is not content to watch it go roundand round like some smooth-running Corliss engine which is not connectedup yet--that nobody really uses except as a kind of model under glass ora miniature for theological schools. He cannot bear the Golden Ruleunder glass. He wants to see it going round and round, look up at it, immense, silent, masterful, running a world. He delights in the GoldenRule as a part of his love of nature. It is as the falling of apples tohim. He delights in it as he delights in frost and fire and in theglorious, modest, implacable, hushed way they work!

We are in an age in which a Golden Rule can sing. The men around us arein a new temper. They have the passion, almost, the religion ofprecision that goes with machines. 

While I have been sitting at my desk and writing these last words, thetwo half-past-eight trains, at full speed, have met in the meadow. 

There is something a little impersonal, almost abstracted, about the waythe trains meet out here on their lonely sidewalk through the meadow, twenty inches apart--morning after morning. It always seems as if thistime--this one next time--they would not do it right. One argues it allout unconsciously that of course there is a kind of understandingbetween them as they come bearing down on each other and it's all beenarranged beforehand when they left their stations; and yet somehow as Iwatch them flying up out of the distance, those two still, swiftthoughts, or shots of cities--dark, monstrous (it's as if Springfieldand Northampton had caught some people up and were firing them at eachother)--I am always wondering if this particular time there will not bea report, after all, a clang on the landscape, on all the hills, and along story in the _Republican_ the next morning. 

Then they softly crash together and pass on--two or three quiet whiffsat each other--as if nothing had happened. 

I always feel afterward as if something splendid, some great human actof faith, had been done in my presence. Those two looming, mightyengines, bearing down on each other, making an aim so, at twenty inchesfrom death, and nothing to depend on but those two gleaming daintystrips or ribbons of iron--a few eighths of an inch on the edge of awheel--I never can get used to it: the two great glowing creatures, fullof thunder and trust, leaping up the telegraph poles through the stillvalley, each of them with its little streak of souls behind it; immortalsouls, children, fathers, mothers, smiling, chattering along throughInfinity--it all keeps on being boundless to me, and full of a gladboyish terror and faith. And under and through it all there is a kind ofstern singing. 

I know well enough, of course, that it is a platitude, this meeting oftwo trains in a meadow, but it never acts like one. I sometimes standand watch the engineer afterward. I wonder if he knows he enjoys it. Perhaps he would have to stop to know how happy he was, and not meettrains for a while. Then he would miss something, I think; he would misshis deep joyous daily acts of faith, his daily habits of believing inthings--in steam, and in air, and in himself, and in the switchman, andin God. 

I see him in his cab window, he swings out his blue sleeve at me! I likethe way he stakes everything on what he believes. Nothing between himand death but a few telegraph ticks--the flange of a wheel. .. . Suddenlythe swing of his train comes up like the swing and the rhythm of a greatcreed. It sounds like a chant down between the mountains. I come intothe house lifted with it. I have heard a man believing, believing mileafter mile down the valley. I have heard a man believing in aPennsylvania rolling mill, in a white vapour, in compressed air and awhistle, the way Calvin believed in God. 

BOOK THREE

LETTING THE CROWD BE BEAUTIFUL

TO WILBUR WRIGHT AND WILLIAM MARCONI

 _"Great Spirit--Thou who in my being's burning mesh Hath wrought the shining of the mist through and through the flesh, Who, through the double-wondered glory of the dust Hast thrust Habits of skies upon me, souls of days and nights, Where are the deeds that needs must be, The dreams, the high delights, That I once more may hear my voice From cloudy door to door rejoice-- May stretch the boundaries of love Beyond the mumbling, mock horizons of my fears To the faint-remembered glory of those years-- May lift my soul And reach this Heaven of thine With mine?"

 "Come up here, dear little Child To fly in the clouds and winds with me, and play with the measureless light!"_

PART ONE

WISTFUL MILLIONAIRES

CHAPTER I

MR. CARNEGIE SPEAKS UP

As I was wandering through space the other day--just aeroplaning past onmy way over from Mars--I came suddenly upon a neat, snug littleproperty, with a huge sign stuck in the middle of it:

 THE EARTH: THIS DESIRABLE PROPERTY TO LET. Rockefeller, Carnegie, Morgan & Co. 

I was just about to pass it by, inferring naturally that it must be amere bank, or wholesale house, or something, when it occurred to me itmight do no harm to stop over on it, and see. I thought I might at leastdrop in and inquire what kind of a firm it was that was handling it, andwhat was their idea, and what, if anything, they thought their littleplanet was for, and what they proposed to do with it. 

I found, on meeting Mr. Rockefeller and Mr. Carnegie and Mr. Morgan, tomy astonishment, that they did not propose to do anything with it atall. They had merely got it; that was as far as they had thought thething out apparently--to get it. They seemed to be depending, so far asI could judge, in a vague, pained way, on somebody's happening along whowould think perhaps of something that could be done with it. 

Of course, as Mr. Carnegie (who was the talking member of the firm)pointed out, if they only owned a part of it, and could sell one part ofit to the other part there would still be something left that they coulddo, at least it would be their line; but merely owning all of it, so, asthey did, was embarrassing. He had tried, Mr. Carnegie told me, to thinkof a few things himself, but was discouraged; and he intimated he wasdevoting his life just now to pulling himself together at the end, anddying a poor man. But that was not much, he admitted, and it was reallynot a very great service on his part to a world, he thought--his merelydying poor in it. 

When I asked him if there was anything else he had been able to think ofto do for the world--

"No, " he said, "nothing really; nothing except chucking down librarieson it--safes for old books. "

"And Mr. Morgan?" I said. 

"Oh! He is chucking down old china on it, old pictures, and things. "

"And Mr. Rockefeller?"

"Mussing with colleges, some, " he said, "just now. But he doesn't, as amatter of fact, see anything--not of his own--that can really be donewith them, except to make them more systematized and businesslike, makethem over into sort of Standard Oil Spiritual Refineries, fill them withmillions more of little Rockefellers--and they won't let him do that. Ofcourse, as you might see, what they want to do practically is to takethe Rockefeller money and leave the Rockefeller out. Nobody will reallylet him do anything. Everything goes this way when we seriously try todo things. The fact is, it is a pretty small, helpless business, owninga world, " sighed Mr. Carnegie. 

"This is why we are selling out, if anybody happens along. Anybody, thatis, who really sees what this piece of property is for and how todevelop it, can have it, " said Mr. Carnegie, "and have it cheap. "

Mr. Carnegie spoke these last words very slowly and wearily, and withhis most wistful look; and then, recalling himself suddenly, and handingme a glass to look at New York with and see what I thought of it, heasked to be excused for a moment, and saying, "I have fourteen librariesto give away before a quarter past twelve, " he hurried out of the room. 

CHAPTER II

MR. CARNEGIE TRIES TO MAKE PEOPLE READ

I found, as I was studying the general view of New York as seen from thetop through Mr. Carnegie's glass, that there appeared to be a great manydots--long rows of dots for the most part--possibly very high buildings, but there was one building, wide and white and low, and more spread-outand important-looking than any of the others, which especially attractedmy attention. It looked as if it might be a kind of monument ormausoleum to somebody. On looking again I found that it was filled withbooks, and was the Carnegie Public Library. There were forty moreLibraries for New York Mr. Carnegie was having put up, I was told, andhe had dotted them--thousands of them almost everywhere one could look, apparently, on his own particular part of the planet. 

A few days later, when I began to do things at a closer range, I took alittle trip to New York, and visited the Library; and I asked the manwho seemed to have it in charge, who there was who was writing books forMr. Carnegie's Libraries just now, or if there was any really adequatearrangement Mr. Carnegie had made for having a few great books writtenfor all these fine buildings--all these really noble book-racks, he hadhad put up. The man seemed rather taken aback, and hesitated. Finally, Iasked him point blank to give me the name of the supposed greatestliving author who had written anything for all these miles of CarnegieLibraries, and he mentioned doubtfully a certain Mr. Rudyard Kipling. Iat once asked for his books, of course, and sat down without delay tofind out if he was the greatest living author the planet had, what itwas he had to say for it and about it, and more particularly, of course, what he had to to say it was for. 

I found among his books some beautiful and quite refined interpretationsof tigers and serpents, a really noble interpretation or conception ofwhat the beasts were for all the glorious gentlemanly beasts--and ofwhat machines were for--all the young, fresh, mighty, worshipfulengines--and what soldiers were for. But when I looked at what hethought men were for, at what the planet was for, there was practicallyalmost nothing. The nearest I came to it was a remark, apparently in amagazine interview which I cannot quote correctly now, but whichamounted to something like this: "We will never have a great world untilwe have some one great artist or poet in it, who sees it as a whole, focuses it, composes it, makes a picture of it, and gives the men whoare in it a vision to live for. "

 * * * * *

Since then I have been trying to see what Messrs. Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Morgan could do to produce and arrange what seemed to me the onemost important, imperative, and immediate convenience their planet couldhave, namely, as Mr. Kipling intimated, some man on it, some greatcreative genius, who would gather it all up in his imagination--thebeasts, and the people, and the sciences, and the machines--in short, the planet as a whole, and say what it was for. It is from this point ofview that I have been drawn into writing the following pages on the nextimportant improvements--what one might call the spiritual Unreal-EstateImprovements, for Messrs. Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Morgan's propertywhich will have to be installed. I have been going over the propertymore or less carefully in my own way since, studying it and noting whathad been done by the owners, and what possibly might be done towardarranging authors, inventors, seers, artists, or engineers or otherefficient persons who would be able to inquire, to think out for aworld, to express for it, some faint idea of what it was for. 

CHAPTER III

MR. NOBEL TRIES TO MAKE PEOPLE WRITE

Not unnaturally, of course, I turned to see what had already been doneby the more powerful men the planet had produced, in the way ofarranging for the necessary seers and geniuses to run the world with, and I soon found that by far the most intelligent and far-seeing attemptthat had been made yet in this direction had been made by an inspired, or semi-inspired, millionaire in Sweden, named Alfred Nobel, anidealist, who had made a large but unhappy fortune out of an explosiveto stop war with. His general idea had been that dynamite would make warso terrible that it would shock people into not fighting any more, andthat gradually people, not having to spend their time in thinking ofways of killing one another, would have more time than they had ever hadbefore to think of other and more important things. It was thedisappointment of his life that his invention, instead of being usedcreatively, used to free men from fighting and make men think of things, had been used largely as an arrangement for making people so afraid ofwar that they could not think of anything else. Whichever way he turnedhe saw the world in a kind of panic, all the old and gentle-mindednations with their fair fields, their factories and art galleries, allhard at work piling up explosives around themselves until they couldhardly see over them. As this was the precise contrary of what he hadintended, and he had not managed to do what he had meant to do withmaking his money, he thought he would try to see if he could not yet dowhat he had meant to do in spending it. He sat down to write his Will, and in this Will, writing as an inventor and a man of genius, he triedto express, in the terms of money, his five great desires for the world. He wished to spend forty thousand dollars a year, every year forever, after he was dead, on each of these five great desires. There were fivegreat Inventors that he wanted, and he wanted the whole world searchedthrough for them, for each of them, once more every year, to see if theycould be found. Mr. Nobel expressed his desire for these five Inventorsas people often manage to express things in wills, in such a way thatnot everybody had been sure what he meant. There seems to have beencomparatively little trouble, from year to year, in awarding the prizesto some adequate inventor in the domain of Peace, of Physics, ofChemistry, and of Medicine; but the Nobel Prize Trustees, in trying topick out an award each year to some man who could be regarded as a trueinventor in Literature, have met with considerable difficulty indeciding just what sort of a man Alfred Nobel had in mind, and had setaside his forty thousand dollars for when he directed that it shouldgo--to quote from the Will--"To the person who shall have produced inthe field of Literature the most distinguished work of an idealistictendency. "

Allen Upward, for instance, an Englishman unknown in Stockholm, inventedand published a book four years ago, called the "New Word, " which was soidealistic and distinguished a book, and so full of new ideas and of newcombinations of old ideas, that there was scarcely a publisher inEngland who did not instinctively recognize it, who did not see that itwould not pay at once, and that therefore it was too strange andoriginal and too important a book for him to publish, and after a longdelay the book was finally printed in Geneva. 

A copy was sent to the Nobel Prize Trustees. 

One would have thought, looking at it theoretically, that here wasprecisely the sort of situation that Alfred Nobel, who had been thestruggling inventor of a great invention that would not pay at oncehimself, would have been looking for. A book so inventive, so far ahead, that publishers praised it and would not invest in it, one would haveimagined to be the one book of all others for which Alfred Nobel stoodready and waiting to put down his forty thousand dollars. 

But Mr. Nobel's forty thousand dollars did not go to a comparativelyobscure and uncapitalized inventor who had written a book to build aworld with, or at least a great preliminary design, or sketch, toward aworld. The Nobel Prize Trustees, instead of giving the forty thousanddollars to Allen Upward, looked carefully about through all the nationsuntil their eyes fell on a certain Mr. Rudyard Kipling. And when theysaw Mr. Rudyard Kipling, piled high with fame and five dollars a word, they came over quietly to where he was and put softly down on him fortythousand dollars more. 

I do not know, but it is not inconceivable, that Kipling himself wouldrather have had Allen Upward have it. 

I am not quarrelling with the Trustees, and am merely trying to thinkthings out and understand. But it certainly is a question that cannotbut keep recurring to one's mind--the unfortunate, and perhaps ratherunlooked-for, way in which Mr. Nobel's Will works. And I have beenwondering what there is that might be done, the world being the kind ofworld it is, which would enable the Nobel Prize Trustees to soadminister the Will that its practical weight on the side of Idealism, and especially upon the crisis of idealism in young authors, would bewhere Mr. Nobel meant to have it. 

One must hasten to admit that Mr. Upward's book is open to question;that, in fact, it is the main trait of Mr. Upward's book that it raisesa thousand questions; and that it would be a particularly hard book formost men to give a prize to, quietly go home, and sleep that night. Imust hasten to admit also that, judging from their own point of view, the Nobel Prize Trustees have so far done quite well. They haveattained a kind of triumph of doing safe things--things that they couldnot be criticised for; and they could well reply to this presentcriticism that there was no other course that they could take. Unlessthey had a large fund for butting through all nations for obscuregeniuses, and for turning up stones everywhere to look for embryoauthors--unless they had a fund for going about among the greatnewspapers, the big magazines, and peeping under them through all theworld for geniuses--and unless they had still another large fund forguaranteeing their decision when they had found one, a fund forconvincing the world that they were right, and that they were notwasting their forty thousand dollars--the Trustees have taken a fairlyplausible position. Their position being that, in default of perfectlyfresh, brand-new, great men, and in view of the fact, in a world likethis that geniuses in it are almost invariably, and, as a matter ofcourse, lost or mislaid until they are dead, much the best and safestthing that Trustees of Idealism could do was to watch the drift ofpublic opinion in the different nations, to adopt the course of notingcarefully what the world thought were really its great men, and then (ata discreet and dignified distance, of course) tagging the public, andwherever they saw a crowd, a rather nice crowd, round a man, standing upsoftly at the last moment and handing him over his forty thousanddollars. This has been the history of the Nobel Trustees of Idealism, thus far. 

But in a way, we are all the trustees of idealism, and the problem ofthe Nobel Prize Trustees is more or less the problem of all of us. Weare interested as well as they in trying to find out how to recognizeand reward men of genius. What would we do ourselves if we were NobelPrize Trustees? Precisely what was it that Alfred Nobel intended toachieve for Literature when he made this bequest of forty thousanddollars a year in his Will, for a work of Literature of an idealistictendency?

To take a concrete case, I can only record that it has seemed to methat if Alfred Nobel himself could have been on hand that particularyear, and could have read Mr. Upward's book, he would have given theprize of forty thousand dollars to Allen Upward. He would not have giventhe prize to Mr. Kipling--he would have given it twenty years before;but in this particular year of which I am writing, when he saw these twomen together, I believe he would have given the prize to Allen Upward, and he would have hurried. 

I would like to put forward at this point two inquiries. First, why didthe Trustees not award the prize to Allen Upward? And second, what wouldhave happened if they had?

First, the Trustees could not be sure that Mr. Upward in his work ofgenius was telling the truth. 

Second, they could not be sure that the world would approve of hishaving forty thousand dollars for telling the truth. Perhaps the worldwould have rather had him paid forty thousand dollars for not tellingit. 

Third, Mr. Kipling was safe. No creative work had to be done on Kipling;all they had to do was to send him the cheque. Great crowds had swept infrom all over the world, and nominated Mr. Kipling; the Committee merelyhad to confirm the nomination. 

Fourth, Mr. Upward, like all idealists, like all men who have the powerof throwing this world into the melting-pot and bringing it out newagain partly unrecognizable (which, of course, is the regularhistorical, almost conventional, thing for an idealist to do with aworld), bewildered the Nobel Prize Committee. They could not be sure butthat Mr. Upward's next book would be thought in the wrong, and maketheir having given him forty thousand dollars to write it ridiculous. 

 * * * * *

What would have happened if the Trustees had given the prize to Mr. Upward?

First, practically no one would have known who he was, and twenty-fivenations would have been reading his book in a week, to see why the prizewas given to him. The book would have been given the most widespread, highly stimulated, forty-thousand-dollar-power attention that any bookin any age has had. 

Only now and then would a man go over and take down his old Kiplingsfrom the shelf and read them, because he had heard that Mr. Kipling hadforty thousand dollars more than he had had before. 

Secondly, Mr. Upward's new book would have the stimulus of his knowingwhile he was writing it that every word would be read by everybody. Allthe draught on the fire of his genius of the whole listening world wouldresult in a work that even Mr. Upward himself perhaps would hardlybelieve he had written. As events turned out, and Mr. Upward did not getthe prize there might be many reasons to believe that his next bookmight be out of focus, might be a mere petulant, scolding book, hisexultation spent or dwindled, because his last tremendous wager--thatthe world wanted the truth--was lost. 

Scolding in a book means, as a rule, either juvenility or it meansrelapse into conscious degeneration of the soul--the focussing andfusing power in a man. I have sometimes wondered if even Christ, if Hehad not died in His thirty-third year, made His great dare for the worldon the cross early, would not have stopped believing so magnificently inother people at about forty or forty-five or so, and would not havespent the rest of His days in railing at them, and in being very bitterand helpless and eloquent about Rome and Jerusalem. I have caught myselfonce or twice being glad Abraham Lincoln died suddenly just when he did, his great faith and love all warm in him, and his great oath for theworld--that it was good--still fresh upon his lips!

Writing a book like Allen Upward's for a planet with a vision of athousand years singing splendidly through it, and then just reading itall alone afterward when he has written it, and going over the score allalone by himself, would seem to be a good deal of a strain. To becontradicted out loud and gloriously by a world might be inspiring, butto be contradicted by a solid phalanx of silent nations, trooping upbehind one another, unanimous, impervious, is enough to make anyradiant, long-accumulated genius pause in full career, question himself, question his vision as a chimera, as some faintly lighted NorthernLights upon the world, that would never mean anything, that was anillusion, that would just flicker in the great dark once more and goout. 

I do not say that this is true, or that it would be true of AllenUpward. 

But I have read his book. I should think it might be true. 

What Alfred Nobel had in mind, his whole idea in his Will, it seems tosome of us, was to put in his forty thousand dollars at the working endof some man's mind, at the end of the man's mind where the fortythousand dollars would itself be creative, where the forty thousanddollars would get into the man, and work out through the man and throughhis genius into the world. It does not seem to me that he wanted to puthis forty thousand dollars at the idle, old remembering end of a man'smind; that he meant it should be used as a mere reward for idealism. Idoubt if it even so much as occurred to Alfred Nobel, who was anidealist himself, that idealism, after a man had managed to have some inthis world, would be rewarded, or could possibly be paid for, by anyone. He knew, if ever a man knew, that idealism was its own reward, andthat it was priceless, and that any attempt to reward it with money, topay a man for it after he had had it, and after it was all over, wouldmake forty thousand dollars look shabby, or at least pathetic andridiculous. What he wanted to do was to build his forty thousand dollarsover into a Man. He wanted to feel that this money that he had made outof dynamite, out of destruction, would be wrought, through this man, into exultation, into life. He had proposed that this forty thousanddollars should become poetry in this man's book, that it should becomelight and heat, a power-house of thought, of great events. What AlfredNobel had in mind, I think, with his little forty thousand dollars, wasthat it should be given a chance to become an intimate part of someman's genius; that it should become perhaps at last a Great Book--thatgreat foundry of men's souls, where the moulds of History are patternedout, and where the hopes of nations and the prayers of women andchildren and of great men are, and where the ideals of men--those hugedrive-wheels of the world--are cast in a strange light and silence. 

I wondered if they could have thought of this when they voted on AllenUpward's book that day three years ago--those twenty grave, quietgentlemen in frockcoats in Stockholm!

 * * * * *

I have picked out Mr. Upward's book because it is the most difficult, the most hazardous, and the least fortunate one I know, to make my pointwith; and because a great many people will get the reaction ofdisagreeing with me, and feeling about it probably, the way the NobelPrizes Trustees did. I have wanted to take a book which has the traitsin it for which men of genius are persecuted or crucified orignored--our more modern timid or anonymous form of the cross. If Mr. Upward had been given the Prize by the Nobel Prize Trustees, it willhave to be admitted a howl would have gone up round the world that wouldnot have quieted down yet; and it is this howl that Mr. Nobel intendedhis Prize for, and that he thought a man would need about forty thousanddollars to meet. 

I might have taken any one of several other books, and they would haveillustrated my point snugly and more conveniently; but just that righttouch of craziness that Nobel had in mind, and that goes with greatexperiment of spirit--the chill, Nietzsche-like wildness, that bravadobefore God and man and before Time, that swinging one's self out onEternity, which make Upward a typical man of genius, would have beenlacking. K---- (whose criticisms of books are the most creative ones Iknow) said of Upward's book that he felt very happy and strangelyemancipated when he read it, but that it was an uncanny experience, asif he had been made of thin air, had become a kind of aerated being, apsychic effect that genius often has; and K---- admitted to meconfidentially that he felt that possibly he and Upward were being alittle crazy and happy together by themselves, breaking out intoinfinite space so, and he took the book over to W----, and left it onhis desk slinkingly and half-ashamed and without saying anything aboutit. He said he was enormously relieved next time he saw W----, felt asif he had just been pulled out of Bedlam to find that there was at leastone other man in the world apparently in his right mind, who valued thebook as he did. 

This is the precise feeling, it seems to me, that the Nobel Prize wasintended to champion and to stand by and temporarily defend in a newauthor--the feeling he gives us of being in the presence of unseenforces, of incalculableness. It was this way Allen Upward has of takinghis reader apart or up into a high place (like the Devil), and dizzyinghim, taking away his breath with Truth, that Nobel had in mind. Hewanted to spend eight thousand pounds a year on providing for the worldone more book which would give the ordinary man the personal feeling ofbeing with a genius, cold, lonely, cosmic genius, the sense of a chillwind of All Space Outside blowing through--a book which is a sort ofGod's Wilderness, in which ordinary men with their ordinary plain sensesround them move about dazed a little and as trees walking--a great, gaunt, naked book. 

Alfred Nobel was the inventor of an explosive, a rearranger of thingsassumed and things unbedded, and it was this same expansive, half-terrible, half-sublime power in other men and other men's books hewanted to endow--the power to free and mobilize the elements in a world, make it budge over a little toward a new one. He wanted to spend fortythousand dollars a year on the man in literature who had the pent-uppower in him to crash the world's mind open once more every year like aSeed, and send groping up out of it once more its hidden thought. 

I may not be right in anticipating the eventual opinion of AllenUpward's book; but even if I am wrong, it will have helped perhaps tocall attention to the essential failure of the Nobel Prize Trustees toside with the darers and experimenters in literature, to take a seriouspart in those great creative, centrifugal movements in the souls of menin which new worlds and the sense of new worlds are swept in upon us. For the Sciences, which are more matter of fact and tangible, the NobelPrize is functioning more or less as Mr. Nobel intended, but certainlyin Literature it will have to be classed as one more of our humdrumregular millionaire arrangements for patting successful peopleexpensively on the back. It acts twenty years too late, falls into linewith our usual worldly ornamental D. D. , LL. D. Habit, and has become, sofar as Literature is concerned, a mere colossal, kindly, doddering OldAge Pension from a few gentlemen in Stockholm. It adds itself as onemore futile effort of men of wealth--or world owners to be creative andlively with money, very much on the premises with money, after they aredead. 

CHAPTER IV

PAPER BOOKS, MARBLE PILLARS, AND WOODEN BOYS

I have sometimes wished that Mr. Carnegie would post the following signup on his Libraries, on the outside where people are passing, and on theinside in the room where people sit and think:

 A MILLION DOLLARS REWARD. 

 WANTED, A GREAT LIVING AMERICAN AUTHOR FOR MY LIBRARIES IN THE UNITED STATES. AT PRESENT OUR GREAT AUTHOR IN AMERICA APPEARS TO HAVE BEEN LOST OR MISLAID; ANY ONE FINDING HIM, OR ANY ONE THAT MIGHT DO FOR HIM TEMPORARILY, PLEASE COMMUNICATE WITH ME. 

 ANDREW CARNEGIE. 

Mr. Carnegie's Libraries must be a source of constant regret to theauthor of "Triumphant Democracy. " They are generally made up of bookswritten in the Old World. It would be interesting to know what are thereal reasons great Libraries are not being written for Mr. Carnegie inAmerica, and what there is that Mr. Carnegie or other people can doabout it. They are certainly going to be written in America some time, and certainly, unless the best and greatest part of the Carnegie Libraryof the future is to be the American part of it, the best our CarnegieLibraries will do for America will be to remind us of what we are not. Unless we can make the American part of Mr. Carnegie's Libraries loom inthe world as big as Mr. Carnegie's chimneys, America--which is the lastnewest experiment station of the world--is a failure. 

It has occurred to me to try to express, for what it may be worth, apoint of view toward Triumphant Democracy Mr. Carnegie may haveinadvertently overlooked. 

If Mr. Carnegie would establish in every town where he has put aLibrary, by endowment or otherwise, a Commission, or what might becalled perhaps a Searching Party, in that community, made up of men ofinventive and creative temperament, who instinctively know thistemperament in others--men in all specialities, in all walks of life, who are doing things better than any one wants to pay them to dothem--and if Mr. Carnegie would set these men to work, in one way andanother, looking up boys who are like them, boys about the town, who aredoing things better than any one wants to pay them to do them--he wouldsoon get a monopoly of the idealism of the world; he would collect inthirty-five years, or in one generation, an array of living great men, of national figures, men who would be monuments to Andrew Carnegie, ascompared with which his present libraries, big, thoughtless, innumerable, humdrum, sogging down into the past, would be as nothing. Mr. Carnegie has given forty libraries to New York; and I venture to saythat there is at this very moment, running round the streets of thegreat city, one single boy, who has it in him to conceive, to imagine, and hammer together a new world; and if Mr. Carnegie would invest hisfortune, not in buildings or in books, but in buying brains enough tofind that boy, and if the whole city of New York were to devote itselffor one hour every day for years to searching about and finding thatboy, to seeing just which he is, to going over all the other boys fivehours a day to pick him out, it would be--well, all I can say is, allthose forty libraries of Mr. Carnegie's, those great proud buildings, would do well if they did not do one thing for six years but find thatboy!

There is a boy at this very moment with strings and marbles and a nationin his pocket, a system of railroads--a boy with a national cure fortuberculosis, with sun-engines for everybody--there is a boy withcathedrals in him too, no doubt or some boy like young Pinchot, withmountainsful of forests in his heart. 

This is what Mr. Carnegie himself would like to do, but with his big, stiff, clumsy libraries trailing their huge, senseless brick-and-mortarbodies, their white pillars and things, about the country, unmanned, inert, eyeless, all those great gates and forts of knowledge, Coliseumsof paper, and with the mechanical people behind the counters, thepolicemen of the books, all standing about protecting them--with allthis formidable array, how can such a boy be hunted out or drawn in, orhow would he dare go tramping in through the great gates and huntingabout for himself? He could only be hunted out by people all wroughtthrough with human experience, men and women who would give the world tofind him, who are on the daily lookout for such a boy--by some specialkind of eager librarian, or by disguised teachers, anonymous poets, orby diviners, by expert geniuses in boys. If Mr. Carnegie could go aboutand look up and buy up wherever he went these men who have thisboy-genius in them, deliver them from empty, helpless, meregetting-a-living lives; and if he could set these men, and set themabout thickly, among the books in his libraries--those huge anatomiesand bones of knowledge he has established everywhere, all his greatliterary steel-works--men would soon begin to be discovered, to becreated, to be built in libraries . .. But as it is now. .. . 

Gentle Reader, have you ever stood in front of one of them, looked up atthe windows, thought of all those great tiers, those moulds and blocksof learning on the shelves; and have you never watched the weary peoplethat dribble in from the streets and wander coldly about, or sit downlistless in them--in those mighty, silent empires of the past? have younever thought that somewhere all about them, somewhere in this samelibrary, there must be some white, silent, sunny country of the future, full of children and of singing, full of something very different fromthese iron walls of wisdom? And have you never thought what it wouldmean if Mr. Carnegie would spend his money on search parties for peopleamong the books, or what it would mean if the entire library, if all thebooks in it, became, as it were, wired throughout with live, splendid, delighted men and women, to make connections, to establish the currentbetween the people and the books, to discover the people one by one andfollow them to their homes, and follow them in their lives, and take outthe latent geniuses, and the listless engineers and poets, and theKossuths, Cæsars, the Florence Nightingales. .. ?

It is only by employing forces that can be made extremely small, invisible, personal, penetrating, and spiritual, that this sort of workcan be done. It must be delicate and wonderful workmanship, like themagnet, like the mighty thistledown in the wind, like electricity, likelove, like hope--sheer, happy, warm human vision going about and castingitself, casting all its still and tiny might, its boundless seed, uponthe earth: but it would pay. 

The same people too, specialists in detecting and developing inventors, could be supplied also to all other possible callings. They wouldconstitute a universal profession, penetrating all the others. Theywould go hunting among foremen and in machine shops for the misplacedgeniuses, tried by wrong standards, underpaid for having other gifts. They would keep a lookout through all the schools and colleges, lookingover the shoulders of scolding teachers and absent professors. Theywould go about studying the playgrounds and mastering the streets. 

We do not a little for the Submerged Tenth and the sons of the poor, andwe have schools or missions for the sons of the rich, but one of thethings we need next to-day is that something should be done for thesons of the great neglected respectable classes. Far more important thanone more library--say in Denver, for instance would be a Denver Bureauof Investigation, to be appointed, of high-priced, spirited men, ofexpert humanists, to study difficulties, and devise methods and missionsfor putting all society in Denver through filters or placers, andfinding out the rich human ore, finding out where everybody reallybelonged, and what all the clever misplaced people were really for. Ofcourse it would take money to do all this, and flocks of free people whoare doing the work they love. But it is not book-racks, nor paper, norink, nor stone steps, nor white pillars--it is free men and free womenAmerica and England are asking of their Andrew Carnegies to-day. 

Mr. Carnegie has not touched this human problem in his libraries. IfSociety were fitted up all through with electric connections, men with agenius for discovering continents in people, Columbuses, boy-geniuses;and if there were established everywhere a current between every boy andthe great world, this would be something on which Mr. Carnegie couldmake a great beginning with the little mite of his fortune. If we wereto have even one city fitted up in this way, it would be hard to say howmuch it would mean--one city with enough people in it who were free todo beautiful things, free to be curious about the others, free to followclues of greatness, free to go up the streams of Society to the still, faint little springs and beginnings of things. It would soon be amemorable city. A world would watch it, and other cities would gropetoward it. Instead of this we have these big, hollow, unmanned librariesof Mr. Carnegie's everywhere, with no people practically to go withthem, no great hive of happy living men and women in and out all daycross-fertilizing boys and books. 

There seems to be something unfinished and stolid and brutal about aCarnegie Library now. The spirit of the garden and the sea, of thespring and the light, and of the child, is not in it. They have come toseem to some of us mere huge Pittsburgs of brains--all these impervious, unwieldy, rolling-mills of knowledge. I should think it would be aterrible prospect to grow old with, just to sit and see them flockingacross the country from your window, all these huge smoke-stacks ofbooks in their weary, sordid cities; and the boys who might be greatmen, the small Lincolns with nations in their pockets, the little Bellswith worlds in their ears, the Pinchots with their forests, the McAdoosand Roosevelts, the young Carnegies and Marconis in the streets!

CHAPTER V

THE HUMDRUM FACTORY AND THE TUMPTY-TUM THEATRE

Mr. Israel Zangwill in presiding at the meeting of the SociologicalSociety the other night remarked, in referring to inspired millionaires, that as a rule in the minds of most people nowadays a millionaire seemedto be a kind of broken-off person, or possibly two persons. There alwaysseemed to have to be a violent change in a millionaire somewhere alongthe middle of his life. The change seemed to be associated in some way, Mr. Zangwill thought with his money. He reminded one of thepatent-medicine advertisements, "Before and After Taking. "

I have been trying to think why it is that the average millionairereminds people--as Mr. Zangwill says he does--of a patent-medicineadvertisement, "Before and After Taking. "

I have thought, since Mr. Zangwill made this remark, of getting togethera small collection of pictures of millionaires--two pictures of each, one before and the other after taking--and having them mounted in themost approved patent-medicine style, and taking them down to Far End andasking Mr. Zangwill to look them over with me and see if he thought--he, Israel Zangwill, the novelist, the play-wright, the psychologist--reallythought, that millionaires "Before and After" were as different as theylooked. 

I imagine he would say--and practically without looking at thepictures--that of course to him or to me perhaps, or to any especiallyinterested student of human nature, millionaires are not reallydifferent at all "Before and After Taking"; that they merely had aslightly different outer look. They would merely look different, Mr. Zangwill would say, to the common run or majority of people--the peopleone meets in the streets. 

But would they?

One of the most hopeful things that I have been thinking of lately isthat the people--the ordinary people one meets in the streets--arebeginning quite generally to see through their millionaires, and to seethat their money almost never really cures them. Most very rich men, indeed, are having their times now, of even seeing through themselves;and it brings me up abruptly with a shock to think that the ordinarypeople who pass in the streets would be deceived by these simple littlepictures Before and After. They have been deceived until lately, but arethey being deceived now? I would like to see the matter tested, and Ihave thought it would be a good idea to take my small collection ofpictures of millionaires--two pictures of each, one Before and the otherAfter Taking--to a millionaire--of course some really reformed or curedone--and ask him to pay the necessary expenses in the columns of the_Times_, and of the _Westminster Gazette_, and the _Daily Chronicle_, and other representative London journals (all on the same morning), ofhaving the pictures published. We could then take what might be called asocial, human, economic inventory of London: ask people to send in theirhonest opinions, on looking at the pictures, as to whether Money, Beforeand After Taking, does or does not produce these remarkable cures inmillionaires. I very much doubt if Mr. Zangwill would be found to beright in his estimate of our common people to-day. 

I venture to believe that it is precisely because our common people areseeing that millionaires are not changed Before and After Taking thatthe majority of time millionaires we have to-day have come to be lookedupon as one of the charges--one of the great spiritual charges andburdens modern Society has to carry. 

Society has always had to do what it could for the poor, but in ourmodern civilization, in a new and big sense, we have to see now whatthere is, if possibly anything, that can be done for the rich. 

We have come to have them now almost everywhere about us--these greatspiritual orphans, with their pathetic, blind, useless fortunes piled uparound them; and Society has to support them, to keep them up morally, keep them doing as little damage as possible, and has to allow day byday besides for the strain and structural weakness they bring upon thegirders of the world--the faith of men in men, and the credit of God, which alone can hold a world together. 

It is not denied that the average millionaire, when he has made hismoney, does different-looking things, and gathers different-lookingobjects about him, and is seen in different-looking places. And it isnot denied that he changes in more important particulars than things. Hequite often changes people, the people he is seen with but he never oralmost never changes himself. He is not one man when he is putting moneyinto his pocket and another when he is taking it out. 

We keep hoping at first with each new mere millionaire that when he getsall the money he has wanted it will change him; but we find it almostnever does. 

Merely reversing the motion with a pocket does not make a man a new andbeautiful creature, and one soon sees that the typical millionaire isgoverned by the same bargain principles, is bullied and domineered overby the same personal limitations, the same old something-for-nothinghabits. If he had the habit, while getting money out of people, ofgetting the better of them, he still insists on getting the better ofpeople when he gives it to them or to their causes. He takes it out oftheir souls. There never has been a millionaire who runs his businesson the old humdrum principle of merely making all the money he can whodoes not run his very philanthropies afterward on the same generalprinciple of oppressing everybody, of outwitting everybody--and of doingpeople good in a way that makes them wish they were dead. Philanthropyas a philosophy, and even as an institution, is getting to be nearlyfutile to-day, for the reason that millionaires--valid, authentic casesof millionaires who are really cured--who are changed either in theirmotives or their methods with regard to what they do with money, exceptin rare cases, do not exist. 

The New Theatre in New York, which was started as a kind of PolarExpedition to discover and rescue Dramatic Art in America, failedbecause two hundred and forty millionaires tried to help it. If enoughmillionaires could have been staved off from that enterprise, or if itcould have been taken in hand either by fewer or more selectmillionaires coöperating with the public and with artists of allclasses, New Theatre of New York would not have been obliged, as it hasbeen since, to start all over again on a new basis. The blunders increative public work that men who get rich in the wrong way are alwayssure to make had to be made first. They nearly always have to be madefirst. There is hardly a single enterprise of higher social value inwhich the world is interested to-day which is not being gravelythreatened in efficient service by letting in too many millionaires, andby paying too much attention to what they think. If our people weregenerally alive to the terrific sameness and monotony of a millionaire'slife "before and after, " and if millionaires were looked overdiscriminatingly before being allowed to take part in great publicenterprises like the cinema, for instance, the newspapers, thehospitals, the theatres, there is hardly any limit to the new thingsthat public enterprises would begin to make happen in the world, and thenew men that would begin to function in them. 

Of course, if what a great vision for the people--_i. E. _, a publicenterprise is for, is to make money, it would be different. The meremillionaire might understand, and his understanding might help. But ifan institution is founded (like a great theatre) to be a superb andnoble masterpiece of understanding and changing human nature; if it isfounded to be a creative and dominating influence, to build up theideals and fire the enthusiasm of a city, to lay the foundations of thedaily thoughts and the daily motives of a great people, the meremillionaire finds, if he tries to manage it, that he is getting inbeyond his depth. A man who has made his money by exploiting and takingadvantage of the public can only be expected, in conducting a Theatre, to be an authority on how to exploit a public and take advantage of itstill more, and how to make it go to the play that merely looks like theplay that it wants. 

Millionaires as a class, unless they are men who have made their moneyin the artist's or the inventor's spirit, really ought to be expected bythis time, except in the size of their cheques, to be modest andthoughtful, to stand back a little and watch other people. Themillionaires themselves, if they thought about it, would be the first toadvise us not to pay too much attention to them. They are used to largethings, and they know that the only way to do, in conducting greatenterprises, is to select and use men (whether millionaires or not) forthe particular efficiencies they have developed. If we are conductingwhat is called a charity, we will not expect that a millionaire can dogood things unless he is a good man. He spoils them by picking out thewrong people. And we will not expect him to do artistic things unless hehas lived his life and done his business in the spirit and thetemperament of the artist. He will not know which the artists are orwhat the artists are like inside; and he will not like them and theywill not like him, nor will they be interested in him or interested inworking with him. Everything that artists or men of creative temperamenttry to do with the common run of millionaires--all these huge, blind, imponderable megatheriums, stamping along through life, ordering peopleabout--ends in the same way--in irksomeness, bewildered vision, fear, compromise, and failure, as seen from the inside. Seen on the outside orbefore the public, of course, the Institution will have the same old, bland, familiar air of looking successful and of looking intelligent, and yet of being uninteresting, and of not changing the world by ahair's breadth. 

The only millionaires who should be allowed to have a controllinginterest in public enterprises are millionaires who do not need to bedifferent before and after making their money. Everybody is coming tosee this, sooner or later. It is already getting very hard to raisemoney for any public enterprise in which mere millionaires orbewildered, unhappy rich men are known to have a controlling interest. The most efficient and far-sighted men do not expect anything verydecided or of marked character from such enterprises, and will no longerlend to them either their brains or their money. Mere millionaires willsoon have to conduct their public enterprises quite by themselves, andthey will then soon fall of their own weight. The moment men are put incontrol of public enterprises by the size of their brains instead of thesize of their cheques, the whole complexion of what are known as ourpublic enterprises will change, and churches, theatres, hospitals, settlements, art galleries, and all other great public causes, insteadof boring everybody and teasing everybody, will be attracting everybodyand attracting everybody's money. They will be full of character, courage, and vision. Our present great, vague, helpless, plaintivepublic enterprises--one third art, one third millionaire, one thirddeficit--drag along financially because they are listless compromises, because they have no souls or vision, and are not interesting--not eveninteresting to themselves. 

Men with creative or imaginative quality, and courage, and insight intoordinary human nature, and far-sightedness of what can be expected ofpeople, do not get on with the ordinary millionaire. It cannot be deniedthat millionaires and artists get together in time; but the particularpoint that seems to be interesting to consider is how the millionairesand artists can be got together before the artists are dead, and beforethe millionaires stop growing and stop being creative and understandingcreative men. 

It might be well to consider the present situation in the concrete--thetheatre, for instance--and see how the situation lies, and where onewould have to begin, and how one would have to go to work to change it. 

The present failure of the theatre to encourage what is best in modernart is due to the fact that the public is unimaginative and inartistic. 

If a public is unimaginative and inartistic, the only way the bestthings that are offered can succeed with them is by having these bestthings held before them long and steadily enough for them slowly tocompare them with other things, and see that they are better than theother things, and that they are what they want. 

Unimaginative and inartistic people do not know what they want. Ifthings are tried long enough with them they do. When they have beentried long enough with them they support them themselves. 

The only way fine things can be tried long enough is with sufficientcapital. 

The only way sufficient capital for fine things can be obtained is byhaving millionaires who appreciate fine things, and believe in them, andbelieve the public in time will believe in them. 

The only way in which a millionaire can recognize and believe in thefine things and in the best artists is by being, in spirit andtemperament at least, an artist himself. 

The only way in which a millionaire can be an artist is to work everyday in the spirit in which the artist works. 

This means the artist in business. 

(1) The artist in business is the man who makes things people alreadywant enough to make money, and who makes things he is going to makepeople want enough to make new values and to be of some use. 

(2) The artist in business is the employer who makes new things and mentogether. He lets the men who make new things with him become new men;and when the things are made, they go forth in their turn and make newmen and make new publics. New publics have had to be made foreverything: for the first umbrellas, for the first telephones, the firsttypewriters. New publics have had to be made for Wagner, for SunlightSoap, for Bernard Shaw; and it is the men who make new publics--be itfor big or little things--who are artists. They are in spirit, prophets, kings, and world-builders. 

(3) Incidentally, the artist in business--the employer who creates newvalues and is creative himself--will like creative men in his factory, and will treat them so that they will put their creativeness into hisbusiness; he not only will be an artist himself, but he will have, comparatively speaking, a factory full of artists working with him. Andwhen the factories pour out the men at night, and the smoke and themurmur cease, and the windows are dark, they will go to creative andlive men's plays. 

So it has come to pass that the modern business man of the artist sortholds the arts of modern times in the hollow of his hand. He is apast-master of creating new publics. 

(4) The artist in business is the man who educates and draws out, atevery point where his business touches them, every day, all day, the menwith whom he works. He educates and develops the men who make thethings. He educates and develops the men who buy them. Even the peoplewho wish they had bought them, are educated or secreted, by the artistin business. He is a maker of new publics, a world-builder, whicheverway he turns. A business man who merely makes for people what they want, and who does not get the prestige with men of making for them thingsthat they did not know they wanted, is a failure and falls behind in hisbusiness. All the big men in business work in future tenses. They areprophets, historians, and they are Now-men, men who work by seeing thetruth all round the present moment, the present persons, and the presentmarket, and before it and behind it. Millionaires who are making theirmoney in this spirit will understand and believe in plays that arewritten in this spirit, and the people who work for such employers willlike to go to such plays, and the theatre managers, instead of being thebullies and tyrants of the world of art, will be held in the power ofthe men who see things and who make things--men who in vast sweepscalled audiences, night after night, make new men upon the earth. 

PART TWO

IRON MACHINES

CHAPTER I

STEEPLES AND CHIMNEYS

I went to the Durbar the other night in cinema colour and saw the Kingand Queen through India. I had found my way, with hundreds of others, into the gallery of the Scala Theatre, and out of that big, still rim ofwatchful darkness where I sat I saw--there must have been thousands ofthem--crowds of camels running. 

And crowds of elephants went swinging past. 

I watched them like a boy, like a boy standing on the edge of a thousandyears and looking off at a world. 

It was stately and strange, and like far music to sit quite still andwatch civilizations swinging past. 

Then suddenly it became near and human--the spirit of playgrounds and ofshouting and boyish laughter ran through it. And we watched theelephants, naked and untrimmed, lolling down to the lake and lying downto be scrubbed in it with comfortable low snorting and slow rolling inthe water, and the men standing by all the while like little play-nursesand tending them, their big bungling babies, at the bath. A few minuteslater we watched the same elephants, hundreds of them, their mightytoilets made, pacing slowly past, swinging their gorgeous trappings inour eyes, rolling their huge hoodahs at us, and all the time still thoselittle funny dots of men beside them, moving them silently, moving theminvisibly as by a spirit, as by a kind of awful wireless--those greatengines of the flesh! I shall never forget it or live without it, thatslow pantomime of those mighty, silent Eastern nations, their religions, their philosophies, their wills, their souls, moving their elephantspast--the long panorama of it, of their little awful human wills, allthose little black, helpless-looking slits of Human Will astride thosemighty necks!

I have the same feeling when I see Count Zeppelin with his airship, orGrahame-White at Hendon, riding his vast cosmic pigeon up the sky; andit is the same feeling I have with the locomotives--those unconscious, forbidding, coldly obedient terrible fellows! Have I not lain awake andlistened to them storming through the night, heard them out there aheadworking our wills on the blackness, on the thick night, on the stars, onSpace, and on Time while we slept?

My main feeling at the Durbar while I watched those splendid beasts--thecrowds of camels, the crowds of elephants--all being driven along by thelittle, faint, dreamy, sleepy-looking people was, "Why don't theirelephants turn around on them and chase them?"

I kept thinking at first that they would, almost any minute. 

Our elephants chase us--most of us. Who has not seen locomotives comingquietly out of their roundhouses in New York and begin chasing people, chasing whole towns, tearing along with them, making everybody hurrywhether or no, speeding up and ordering around by the clock greatcities, everybody alike, the rich and the poor, the just and the unjust, for hundreds of miles around? In the same way I have seen, hundreds oftimes, motor cars turning around on their owners and chasingthem--chasing them fairly out of their lives. And hundreds of thousandsof little wood-and-rubber Things with nickel bells whirring, may be seenordering around people--who pay them for it--in any city of our modernworld. 

Now and then one comes on a man who keeps a telephone, who is agentleman with it, and who keeps it in its place, but not often. 

There are certain questions to be asked and to be settled in anycivilization that would be called great. 

First: Do the elephants chase the men in it? Second: And if--as in ourWestern civilization--the men have made their own elephants, why shouldthey be chased by them?

There are some of us who have wondered a little at the comparativeinferiority of organ music. We have come to the conclusion that perhapsorgan music is inferior because it has been largely composed byorganists, by men who sit at organ machines many hours a day, and whohave let their organ machines with all their stops and pedals, and withall their stop-and-pedal-mindedness, select out of their minds the tonesthat organs can do best--the music that machines like. 

Wagner has come to be recognized as a great and original composer for amachine age because he would not let his imagination be cowed by themere technical limitations, the narrow-mindedness of brass horns, woodenflutes, and catgut; he made up his mind that he would not sing violins. He made violins sing him. 

Perhaps this is the whole secret of art in a machine civilization. 

Perhaps a machine civilization is capable of a greater art than has everbeen dreamed in the world before, the moment it stops being chased byits elephants. The question of letting the crowd be beautiful in ourworld of machines and crowds to-day turns on our producingMachine-Trainers. 

Men possessed by watches in their vest pockets cannot be inspired, menpossessed by churches or religion-machines cannot be prophets, menpossessed by school-machines cannot be educators. 

The reason that we find the poet, or at least the minor poet, discouraged in a machine age probably is, that there is nothing a minorpoet can do in it. Why should nightingales, poppies, and dells expect, in a main trial of strength, to compete with machines? And why shouldhuman beings running for their souls in a race with locomotives expectto keep very long from losing their souls?

The reason that most people are discouraged about machinery to-day isthat this is what they think a machine civilization is. They whine atthe machines. They blame the locomotive. 

A better way for a man to do would be to stop blaming the locomotive, and stop running along out of breath beside it, and climb up into thecab. 

This is the whole issue of art in our modern civilization--climbing upinto the cab. 

First come the Machine-Trainers, or poets who can tame engines. Then theother poets. 

In the meantime, the less we hear about nightingales and poppies anddells and love and above, the better. 

Poetry must make a few iron-handed, gentle-hearted, mighty men next. Itis because we demand and expect the beautiful that we say that poetrymust make men next. 

The elephants have been running around in the garden long enough. 

CHAPTER II

BELLS AND WHEELS

We are living in a day of the great rebellion of the machines. Out of athousand thousand roundhouses and factories, vast cities and nations ofmachines on the land and on the sea have risen before the soul of manand said, "We have served you; now, you serve us. "

A million million vulgar, swaggering Goliaths, one sees them everywhere;they wave their arms at us around the world, they puff their whitebreath at us, they spit smoke in our eyes, line up in a row before thegreat cities, before the mighty-hearted nations, and say it again andagain, all in chorus, _"We have served you, now, you serve us!"_

It has come to sound to some of us as a kind of chant around our lives. 

But why should we serve them?

I have seen crowds of minor poets running, their little boxes of perfumeand poetry, their cologne water, their smelling-salts, in their hands. 

And, of course, if the world were all minor poets the situation would beserious. 

And I have seen flocks of faint-hearted temples, of big, sulky, beautiful, absent-minded colleges, looking afraid. Every now and thenperhaps one sees a professor run out, throw a book at the machines, andrun back again. Oxford still looks at science, at matter itself, tremulously, with that same old, still, dreamy air of dignity, ofgentlemanly disappointment. 

And if the world were all Oxford the situation would be serious. 

When Oxford with its hundred spires, its little beautiful boy choirs ofprofessors, draws me one side from the Great Western Railway Station, and intones in those still, solemn, lonely spaces the great truth in myears, that machines and ideals cannot go together, that the only way todeal with ideals is to keep them away from machines, my only reply isthat ideals that are so tired that they are merely devoted to defendingthemselves, ideals that will not and cannot go forth and be the breathof the machines, ideals that cannot and will not master the machines, that will not ride the machines as the wind, overrun matter, and conquerthe earth, are not ideals for gentlemen. 

At least they are not ideals that can keep up the standard of the Oxfordgentleman. 

A gentleman is a man who is engaged in expressing his best and noblestself in every fibre of his mind and every fibre of his body. He makesthe very force of gravity pulling on his clothes express him, and themovements of his feet and his hands. He gathers up his rooms into hiswill and all the appointments of his life and crowds into them the fullmeaning of his soul. He makes all these things say him. 

The main attribute of a man who is not a gentleman is that he does notdo these things, that he cannot inform his body with his spirit. 

I go back to the Great Western Railway, ugly as it still is. I go alone, and sadly if I must, and for a little time--without the deep bells andwithout the stained-glass windows, without all that dear, familiarbeauty I have loved in the old and quiet quadrangles--I take my standbeside the Great Western Railway! I claim the Great Western Railway forthe spirit of man and for the will of God!

With its vast shuttle of steam and shining engines, its little, whispering telegraph office, the Great Western Railway is a part of mybody. I lay my will on the heart of London with it, or I sleep in theold house in Lynmouth with it. I am the Great Western Railway, and theGreat Western Railway is ME. And from the heart of the roar of Londonto the slow, sleepy surge of the sea in my window at Lynmouth it ismine! Though it be iron and wood, switches, whistles, and white steam, it is my body, and I inform it with my spirit, or I die. With the willof God I endow it, with the glory of the world, with the desires of myheart, and with the prayers of the hurrying men and women. 

I declare that that same glory I have known before, and that I willalways know, and will never give up, in the old quiet quadrangles ofOxford and in the deep bells and in the still waters, as in somestrange, new, and mighty Child, is in the Great Western Railway too. 

When I am in the train it sings. Strangely and hoarsely It sings! I liedown to rest. It whistles on ahead my ideals down the slope of theworld. It roars softly, while I sleep, my religion in my ears. 

CHAPTER III

DEW AND ENGINES

When I was small, and wanted suddenly to play tag or duck-on-the-rock Ihad a little square half-mile of boys near by to play with. 

My daughter plays tag or plays dolls, any minute she likes, with a wholecity. She is not surprised at the telephone; she takes it for grantedlike sunshine and milk. It is a part of the gray matter in her brain--awhole city, six or seven square miles of it. A little mouthpiece on adesk, a number, and two hundred little girls are hers in a minute, toplay dolls with. She thinks in miles when she plays, where I thought indoor-yards. The whole city is a part of the daily, hourly furniture ofher mind. The little gray molecules in the structure of her brain aredifferent from those in mine. 

I have seen that Man moves over with each new generation into a biggerbody, more awful, more reverent and free than he has had before. 

A few minutes ago, here where I am writing, an engine all in bright, soft, lit-up green with little lines of yellow on it and flashing silverfeet, like a vision, swept past--through my still glass window, throughthe quiet green fields--like a great, swift, gleaming whisper of London. And now, all in six seconds, this great quiet air about me is waked tovast vibrations of the mighty city. Out over the red pines, the lonelygorse fields, I have seen passing the spirit of the Strand. I have seenthe great flocking bridges and the roar about St. Paul's in communionwith the treetops and with the hedgerows and with the little brooks, allin six seconds, when an engine, with its vision like a cloud of gloryswept past. 

And yet there are people in Oxford who tell me that an engine when it isin the very act of expressing such stupendous and boundless thoughts, ofmaking such mighty and beautiful things happen, is not beautiful, thatit has nothing to do with art. They can but watch the machines, theearth black with them, going about everywhere mowing down great nationsand rolling under the souls of men. 

I cannot see it so. I see a thousand thousand engines carrying dew andgreen fields to the stones of London. I see the desires of the earthhastening. The ships and the wireless telegraph beckon the wills ofcities on the seas and on the sky. With the machines I have taken awhole planet to me for my feet and for my hands. I gesture with theearth. I hand up oceans to my God. 

CHAPTER IV

DEAD AS A DOOR NAIL!

There are people who say that machines cannot be beautiful, and cannotmake for beauty, because machines are dead. 

I would agree with them if I thought that machines were dead. 

I have watched in spirit, hundreds of years, the machines grow out ofMan like nails, like vast antennæ--a kind of enormous, more unconscioussub-body. They are apparently of less lively and less sensitive tissuethan tongues or eyes or flesh; and like all bones they do not renew, ofcourse, as often or as rapidly as flesh. But the difference between liveand dead machines is quite as grave and quite as important as thedifference between live and dead men. The generally accepted idea a livething is, that it is a thing that keeps dying and being born again everyminute; it is seen to be alive by its responsiveness to the spirit, tothe intelligence that created it and that keeps re-creating it. I haveknown thousands of factories; and every factory I have known that isreally strong or efficient has scales like a snake, and casts off itsold self. All the people in it, and all the iron and wood in it, monthby month are being renewed and shedding themselves. Any live factory canalways be seen moulting year after year. A live spirit goes all throughthe machinery, a kind of nervous tissue of invention, of thought. 

We already speak of live and dead iron, of live and dead engines orhalf-dead and half-sick engines, and we have learned that there is sucha thing as tired steel. What people do to steel makes a difference toit. Steel is sensitive to people. My human spirit grows my arm and movesit and guides it and expresses itself in it, keeps re-creating it anddestroying it; and daily my soul keeps rubbing out and writing in newlines upon my face; and in the same way my typewriter, in a slow, morestolid fashion, responds to my spirit too. Two men changing typewritersor motor-cars are, though more subtly, like two men changing boots. Sewing machines, pianos, and fiddles grow intimate with the people whouse them, and they come to express those particular people and the waysin which they are different from others. A Titian-haired typewriter girlmakes her machine move differently every day from a blue-eyed one. Typewriters never like to have their people take the liberty of lendingthem. Steel bars and wooden levers all have little mannerisms, littleexpressions, small souls of their own, habits of people that they havelived with, which have grasped the little wood and iron levers of theirwills and made them what they are. 

It is somewhere in the region of this fact that we are going to discoverthe great determining secret of modern life, of the mastery of man overhis machines. Man, at the present moment, with all his new machinesabout him, is engaged in becoming as self-controlled, asself-expressive, with his new machines, with his wireless telegraph armsand his railway legs, as he is with his flesh and blood ones. The forcein man that is doing this is the spiritual genius in him that createdthe machine, the genius of imperious and implacable self-expression, ofglorious self-assertion in matter, the genius for being human, for beingspiritual, and for overflowing everything we touch and everything we usewith our own wills and with the ideals and desires of our souls. TheDutchman has expressed himself in Dutch architecture and in Dutch art;the American has expressed himself in the motor-car; the Englishman hasexpressed himself, has carved his will and his poetry upon the hills, and made his landscape a masterpiece by a great nation. He has made hiswalls and winding roads, his rivers, his very treetops express his deep, silent joy in the earth. So the great, fresh young nations to-day, witha kind of new, stern gladness, implacableness, and hope, have appointedto their souls expression through machinery. Our Engines and our radiumshall cry to God! Our wheels sing in the sun!

Machinery is our new art-form. A man expresses himself first in hishands and feet, then in his clothes, and then in his rooms or in hishouse, and then on the ground about him; the very hills grow like him, and the ground in the fields becomes his countenance; and now, last andfurthest of all, requiring the liveliest and noblest grasp of his soul, the finest circulation of will of all, he begins expressing himself inhis vast machines, in his three-thousand-mile railways, in his vast, cold-looking looms and dull steel hammers. With telescopes for Mars-eyesfor his spirit, he walks up the skies; he expresses his soul in deep anddark mines, and in mighty foundries melting and re-moulding the world. He is making these things intimate, sensitive, and colossal expressionsof his soul. They have become the subconscious body, the abysmal, semi-infinite body of the man, sacred as the body of the man is sacred, and as full of light or of darkness. 

So I have seen the machines go swinging through the world. Likearchangels, like demons, they mount up our desires on the mountains. Wedo as we will with them. We build Winchester Cathedral all over again, on water. We dive down with our steel wheels and nose forknowledge--like a great Fish--along the bottom of the sea. We beat upour wills through the air. We fling up, with our religion, with ourfaith, our bodies on the clouds. We fly reverently and strangely, ourhearts all still and happy, in the face of God!

CHAPTER V

AN OXFORD MAN AND AN INCH OF IRON

The whole process of machine-invention is itself the most colossal, spiritual achievement of history. The bare idea we have had ofunravelling all creation, and of doing it up again to express our ownsouls--the idea of subduing matter, of making our ideals get their waywith matter, with radium, ether, antiseptics, is itself a religion, apoetry, a ritual, a cry to heaven. The supreme, spiritual adventure ofthe world has become this task that man has set himself, of breakingdown and casting away forever the idea that there is such a thing asmatter belonging to matter--matter that keeps on in a dead, stupid way, just being matter. The idea that matter is not all alive with our souls, with our desires and prayers, with hope, terror, worship, with thelittle terrible wills of men and the spirit of God, is alreadyirreligious to us. Is not every cubic inch of iron (the coldest-bloodedscientist admits it) like a kind of little temple, its million millionlittle atoms in it going round and round and round dancing before theLord?

And why should an Oxford man be afraid of a cubic inch of iron, orafraid of becoming like it?

I daily thank God that I have been allowed to belong to this generation. I have looked at last a little cubic inch of iron out of countenance. Ican sit and watch it, the little cubic inch of iron, in its stillcoldness, in all its little funny play-deadness, and laugh! I know thatto a telescope or a god, or to me, to us, the little cubic inch of ironis all alive inside, that it is whirling with will, that it is sensitivein a rather dead-looking but lively cosmic way, sensitive like anotherkind of more slowly quivering flesh, sensitive to moons and to starsand to heat and cold, to time and space and to human souls. It issinging every minute low and strange, night and day, in its little grimblackness, of the glory of Things. I am filled with the same feeling, the same sense of kindred, of triumphant companionship, when I go outamong them and watch the majestic family of the machines, of theengines, those mighty Innocents, those new awful sons of God, goingabroad through all the world, looking back at us when we have made them, unblinking and without sin!

Like rain and sunshine, like chemicals, and like all the other innocent, godlike things, and like waves of water and waves of air, rainbows, starlight, they say what we make them say. They are alive with the lifethat is in us. 

The first element of power in a man, in getting control of his life inour modern era, is to have spirit enough to know what matter is like. 

The Machine-Trainer is the man who sees what the machines are like. Heis the man who conceives of iron-and-wood machines, in his daily habitof thought, as alive. He has discovered ways in which he can produce animpression upon iron and wood with his desires, and with his will. Hegoes about making iron-and-wood machines do live things. 

It is never the machines that are dead. 

It is only mechanical-minded men that are dead. 

CHAPTER VI

THE MACHINES' MACHINES

The fate of civilization is not going to be determined by people who aremorbidly like machines on the one hand, or by people who are morbidlyunmechanical, on the other. 

People in a machine civilization who try to live without being automaticand mechanical-minded part of the time and in some things, people whotry to make everything they do artistic and self-expressive andhand-made, who attend to all their own thoughts and finish off all theiractions by hand themselves, soon wish they were dead. 

People who do everything they do mechanically, or by machinery, are deadalready. 

It is bad enough for those of us who are trying to live our livesourselves--real, true, hand-made individual lives--to have to fight allthese machines about us trying daily to roar and roll us down intohumdrum and nothingness, without having to fight besides all these dearpeople we have about us too, who have turned machines, even one's ownflesh and blood. Does not one see them--see them everywhere--one's ownflesh and blood, going about like stone-crushers, road-rollers, lifts, lawn-mowers?

Between the morbidly mechanical people and the morbidly unmechanicalpeople, modern civilization hangs in the balance. 

There must be some way of being just mechanical enough, and at the righttime and right place, and of being just unmechanical enough at the righttime and right place. And there must be some way in which men can bemechanical and unmechanical at will. 

The fate of civilization turns on men who recognize the nature ofmachinery, who make machines serve them, who add the machines to theirsouls, like telephones and wireless telegraph, or to their bodies, likeradium and railroads, and who know when and when not and how and how notto use them who are so used to using machines quietly and powerfully, that they do not let the machines outwit them and unman them. 

Who are these men?

How do they do it?

They are the Machine-Trainers. The men who understand people-machines, who understand iron machines, and who understand how to makepeople-machines and iron machines run softly together. 

CHAPTER VII

THE MEN'S MACHINES

There was a time once in the old simple individual days when drygoodsstores could be human. They expressed, in a quiet, easy way, the soulsof the people who owned them. 

When machinery was invented and when organization was invented--machinesof people--drygoods stores became vast selling machines. 

We then faced the problem of making a drygoods store with twenty-fivehundred clerks in it as human as a drygoods store with fifteen. 

This problem has been essentially and in principle solved. At least weknow it is about to be solved. We are ready to admit--most of us--thatit is practicable for a department store to be human. Everything the manat the top does expresses his human nature and his personality to hisclerks. His clerks become twenty-five hundred more of him in miniature. What is more, the very stuff in which the clerks in department storeswork--the thing that passes through their hands, is human, andeverything about it is human, or can be made human; and all the whilevast currents of human beings, huge Mississippis of human feeling, flowpast the clerks--thousands and thousands of souls a day, and pour overtheir souls, making them and keeping them human. The stream clearsitself. 

But what can we say about human beings in a mine, about thepracticability of keeping human twenty-five hundred men in a hole in theground? And how can a mine-owner reach down to the men in the hole, makehimself felt as a human being on the bottom floor of the hole in theground?

In a department store the employer expresses himself to his clerksthrough every one of the other twenty-five hundred; they mingle and stirtheir souls and hopes and fears together, and he expresses himself toall of them through them all. 

But in a mine, two men work all alone down in the dark hole in theground. Thousands of other men, all in dark holes, are near by, withnothing but the dull sound of picks to come between. In thousands ofother holes men work, each with his helper, all alone. The utmost thehelper can do is to grow like the man he works with, or like his ownpick, or like the coal he chips out, or like the black hole. The utmostthe man who mines coal can do, in the way of being human, is with hishelper. 

In a factory, for the most part, the only way, during working hours, anemployer can express himself and his humanness to his workman is throughthe steel machine he works with--through its being a new, good, fairmachine or a poor one. He can only smile and frown at him with steel, begood to him in wheels and levers, or now and then perhaps through aforeman pacing down the aisles. 

The question the modern business man in a factory has to face is verylargely this: "I have acres of machines all roaring my will at my men. Ihave leather belts, printed rules, white steam, pistons, roar, air, water and fire and silence to express myself to my workmen in. I havelong monotonous swings and sweeps of cold steel, buckets of melted iron, strips of wood, bells, whistles, clocks--to express myself, to expressmy human spirit to my men. Is there, or is there not, any possible wayin which my factory with its machines can be made as human and asexpressive of the human as a department store?"

This is the question that our machine civilization has set itself toanswer. 

All the men with good honest working imaginations, the geniuses and thefreemen of the world, are setting themselves the task of answering it. 

Some say, "Machines are on the necks of the men. We will take themachines away. "

Others say, "We will make our men as good as our machines. We will makeour inventions in men catch up with our inventions in machines. "

We naturally turn to the employer first as having the first chance. Whatis there an employer can do to draw out the latent force in the men, evoke the divine, incalculable passion sleeping beneath in themachine-walled minds, the padlocked wills, the dull unmined desires ofmen? How can he touch and wake the solar plexus of labour?

If any employer desires to get into the inner substance of the mostcommon type of workman, be an artist with him, express himself with himand change the nature of that substance, give it a different colour orlight or movement so that he will work three times as fast, ten times ascheerfully and healthfully, and with his whole body and soul, spirit, and how is he going to do it?

Most employers wish they could do this. If they could persuade their mento believe in them, to begin to be willing to work with them instead ofagainst them, they would do it. 

What form of language is there, whether of words or of actions, that anemployer can use to make the men who work nine hours a day for him andto whom he has to express himself across acres of machines, believe inhim and understand him?

The modern employer finds himself set sternly face to face, every day ofhis life, with this question. All civilization seems crowding up day byday, seems standing outside his office door as he goes in and as he goesout, and asking him--now with despair, now with a kind of grim, implacable hope, "Do you believe, or do you not believe, a factory canbe made as human as a department store?"

This question is going to be answered first by men who know what ironmachines really are, and what they are really for, and how theywork--who know what people-machines really are, and what they are reallyfor, and how they work. They will base all that they do upon certainresemblances and certain differences between people and machines. 

They will work the machines of iron according to the laws of iron. 

They will work the machines of men according to the laws of humannature. 

There are certain facts in human nature, feelings, enthusiasms andgeneral principles concerning the natural working relation between menand machines, that it may be well to consider in the next chapter as abasis for a possible solution. 

What are our machines after all? How are the machines like us? And onwhat theory of their relation to us can machines and men expect in aworld like this to run softly together? These are the questions men aregoing to answer next. In the meantime, I venture to believe that no manwho is morose to-day about the machines, or who is afraid of machines inour civilization--because they are machines--is likely to be able to domuch to save the men in it. 

CHAPTER VIII

THE BASEMENT OF THE WORLD

Every man has, according to the scientists, a place in the small of hisback which might be called roughly, perhaps, the soul of his body. Allthe little streets of the senses or avenues of knowledge, the spiritualconduits through which he lives in this world, meet in this littlemighty brain in the small of a man's back. 

About nine hundred millions of his grandfathers apparently make theirheadquarters in this little place in the small of his back. 

It is in this one little modest unnoticed place that he is supposed tokeep his race-consciousness, his subconscious memory of a whole humanrace, and it is here that the desires and the delights and labours ofthousands of years of other people are turned off and turned on in him. It is the brain that has been given to every man for the heavy everydayhard work of living. The other brain, the one with which he does histhinking and which is kept in an honoured place up in the cupola of hisbeing, is a comparatively light-working organ, merely his own privatepersonal brain--a conscious, small, and supposably controllable affair. He holds on to his own particular identity with it. The great lowerbrain in the small of his back is merely lent to him, as it were, out ofeternity--while he goes by. 

It is like a great engine which he has been allowed the use of as longas he can keep it connected up properly with his cerebral arrangements. 

This appears to be mainly what the cerebral brain is for, this keepingthe man connected up. It acts as a kind of stopcock for one's infinity, for screwing on or screwing off one's vast race-consciousness, one'sall-humanityness, all those unsounded deeps or reservoirs of humanenergy, of hope and memory, of love, of passionate thought, of earthlyand heavenly desire that are lent to each of us as we slip softly by forseventy years, by a whole human race. 

A human being is a kind of factory. The engine and the works and all thevarious machines are kept in the basement, and he sends down orders tothem from time to time, and they do the work which has been conceived upin the headquarters. He expects the works down below to keep on doingthese things without his taking any particular notice of them, while heoccupies his mind, as the competent head of a factory should, with thethings that are new and different and special and that his mind alonecan do--the things which, at least in their present initial formative orcreative stage, no machines as yet have been developed to do, and thatcan only be worked out by the man up in the headquarters himselfpersonally, by the handiwork of his own thought. 

The more a human being develops, the more delicate, sensitive, strong, and efficient, the more spirit-informed once for all the machines in thebasement are. As he grows, the various subconscious arrangements fordiscriminating, assimilating and classifying material, for pumping uppower, light, and heat to headquarters, all of which can be turned on atwill, grow more masterful every year. They are found all slaving awayfor him dimly down in the dark while he sleeps. They hand him up in hisvery dreams new and strange powers to live and know with. 

The men who have been the most developed of all, in this regard, civilization has always selected and set apart from the others. It callsthese men, in their generation, men of genius. 

Ordinary men do not try to compete with men of genius. 

The reason that people set the genius apart and do not try to competewith him is that he has more and better machinery than they have. It isalways the first thing one notices about a man of genius--the incrediblenumber of things that he manages to get done for him, apparently thethings that he never takes any time off, like the rest of us, to dohimself. The subconscious, automatic, mechanical equipment of hissenses, the extraordinary intelligence and refinement of his body, theway his senses keep his spirit informed automatically and convey outerknowledge to him, the power he has in return of informing this outerknowledge with his spirit, with his will, with his choices, once for all, so that he is always able afterward to rely on his senses to work outthings beautifully for him quite by themselves, and to hand up to him, when he wants them, rare, deep, unconscious knowledge--all the things hewants to use for what his soul is doing at the moment--it is these thatmake the man of genius what he is. He has a larger and better factorythan others, and has developed a huge subconscious service in mind andbody. Having all these things done for him, he is naturally more freethan others and has more vision and more originality, his spirit isswung free to build new worlds--to take walks with God, until at last wecome to look upon him, upon the man of genius, a little superstitiously. We look up every little while from doing the things ourselves that hegets done for him by his subconscious machinery, and we wonder at him, we wonder at the strange, the mighty feats he does, at histhousand-leagued boots, at his apparent everywhereness. His songs andjoys, sometimes, to us, his very sorrows, look miraculous. 

And yet it is all merely because he has a factory, a great automaticequipment, a thousand employee-sense perceptions, down in the basementof his being, doing things for him that the rest of us do, or think weare obliged to do ourselves, and give up all of our time to. He is notheld back as we are, and moves freely. So he dives under the seafamiliarly, or takes peeps at the farther side of the stars, or he fliesin the air, or he builds unspeakable railroads or thinks out ships orsea-cities, or he builds books, or he builds little newstill-undreamed-of worlds out of chemistry, or he unravels history outof rocks, or plants new cities and mighty states without seeming to try, or perhaps he proceeds quietly to be interested in men, in all thesefunny little dots of men about him; and out of the earth and sky, out ofthe same old earth and sky everybody else had had, he makes new kindsand new sizes of men with a thought like some mighty, serene childplaying with dolls!

It is generally supposed that the man of genius rules history anddictates the ideals, the activities of the next generation, writes outthe specifications for the joys and sorrows of a world, and lays theground-plans of nations because he has an inspired mind. It is reallybecause he has an inspired body, a body that has received its ordersonce for all, from his spirit. We would never wonder that everything agenius does has that vivid and strange reality it has, if we realizedwhat his body is doing for him, how he has a body which is at workautomatically drinking up the earth into everything he thinks, drinkingup practicability, art and technique for him into everything he sees andeverything he hopes and desires. And every year he keeps on adding a newbody, keeps on handing down to his basement new sets, every day, offiner and yet finer things to do automatically. The great spiritualgenius becomes great by economizing his consciousness in one directionand letting it fare forth in another. He converts his old inspirationsinto his new machines. He converts heat into power, and power intolight, and comes to live at last as almost any man of genius can reallybe seen living--in a kind of transfigured or lighted-up body. The poettransmutes his subconscious or machine body into words; and the artist, into colour or sound or into carved stone. The engineer transmutes hissubconscious body into long buildings, into aisles of windows, intostories of thoughtful machines. Every great spiritual and imaginativegenius is seen, sooner or later, to be the transmuted genius of someman's body. The things in Leonardo da Vinci that his unconscious, high-spirited, automatic senses gathered together for him, piled up inhis mind for him, and handed over to him for the use of his soul, wouldhave made a genius out of anybody. It is not as if he had had to workout every day all the old details of being a genius, himself. 

The miracles he seems to work are all made possible to him because ofhis thousand man-power, deep subconscious body, his tremendous factoryof sensuous machinery. It is as if he had practically a thousand men allworking for him, for dear life, down in his basement, and the thingsthat he can get these men to attend to for him give him a start withwhich none of the rest of us could ever hope to compete. We call himinspired because he is more mechanical than we are, and because his realspiritual life begins where our lives leave off. 

So the poets who have filled the world with glory and beauty have beenfree to do it because they have had more perfect, more healthful andimproved subconscious senses handing up wonder to them than the rest ofus have. 

And so the engineers, living, as they always live, with that fierce, silent, implacable curiosity of theirs, woven through their bodies andthrough their senses and through their souls, have tagged the Creator'sfootsteps under the earth, and along the sky, every now and thenthrowing up new little worlds to Him like His worlds, saying, "Look, OGod, look at THIS!"--the engineers whose poetry is too deep to lookpoetic have all done what they have done because the unconscious andautomatic gifts of their senses, of the powers of their observation, have swung their souls free, given them long still reaches of thoughtand vast new orbits of desire, like gods. 

All the great men of the world have always had machinery. 

Now, everybody is having it. The power to get little things, innumerable, omnipresent, for-ever-and-ever things, tiny just-so things, done for us automatically so that we can go on to our inspirations is nolonger to-day the special prerogative of men of genius. It is for allof us. Machinery is the stored-up spirit, the old saved-up inspirationof the world turned on for every man. And as the greatness of a manturns on his command over machinery, on his power to free his soul bymaking his body work for him, the greatness of a civilization turns uponits getting machines to do its work. The more of our living we can learnto do to-day, automatically, the more inspired and creative and godlikeand unmechanical our civilization becomes. 

Machinery is the subconscious mind of the world. 

CHAPTER IX

THE GROUND FLOOR FOLKS

I would not have, if I could afford it, a thing in my house that is nothand-made. I have come to believe that machinery is going to make itpossible for everybody to have hand-made things in their homes, thingsthat have been made by people who love to make them, and by people who, thinks to the machines, are soon bound to have time to make them. Somewill have gifts for hand-made furniture, others for hand-made ideas. Perhaps people will even have time for sitting down to enjoy hand-madeideas, to enjoy hand-made books--and enjoy reading books by hand. We mayhave time for following an author in a book in the slow, old, deep, loving, happy, hand-made fashion we used to know--when we have enoughmachines. 

It looks as if it might be something like this. 

Every man is going to spend his mornings in the basement of society, taking orders and being a servant and executing automatically, like amachine if need be, the will of the world, making what the world wantsin the way it wants it, expressing society and subordinating himself. Inthe afternoon he shall come up out of the basement, and take his standon the ground floor of the world, stop being a part of the machinery, and be a man, express himself and give orders to himself and do somework he loves to do in the way he loves to do it, express his soul inhis labour, and be an artist. He will not select his work in themorning, or select his employer, or say how the work shall be done. Hewill himself be selected, like a young tree or like an iron nail, because he is the best made and best fitted thing at hand to be used ina certain place and in a certain way. 

When the man has been selected for his latent capacities, his employersets to work on him scientifically and according to the laws of physics, hygiene, conservation of energy, the laws of philosophy, human nature, heredity, psychology, and even metaphysics, teaches the man how to holdhis hands, how to lift, how to sit down, how to rest, and how tobreathe, so that three times as much work can be got out of him as hecould get out of himself. A mind of the highest rank and, if necessary, thirty minds of the highest rank, shall be at his disposal, shall belent him to show him how his work can be done. The accumulated scienceand genius, the imagination and experience, of hundreds of years, of allclimates, of all countries, of all temperaments shall be heaped up byhis employers, gathered about the man's mind, wrought through his limbs, and help him to do his work. 

All labour down in the basement of society shall be skilled labour. Thebrains of men of genius and of experts shall be pumped into labour fromabove until every man in the basement shall earn as much money in threehours a day as he formerly had earned in nine. 

Between the time a man saves by having machinery and the time he savesby having the brains of great men and geniuses to work with, it will bepossible for men to do enough work for other people down in the basementof the world in a few hours to shut the whole basement up, if we wantto, by three o'clock. Every man who is fit for it shall spend the restof his time in planning his work himself and in expressing himself, andin creating hand-made and beautiful, inspired and wilful things like anartist, or like a slowed-down genius, or at least like a man or like ahuman being. 

Every man owes it to society to spend part of his time in expressing hisown soul. The world needs him. Society cannot afford to let him merelygive to it his feet and his hands. It wants the joy in him, thecreative desire in him, the slow, stupid, hopeful initiative, in him tohelp run the world. Society wants to use the man's soul too--the man'swill. It is going to demand the soul in a man, the essence or good-willin him, if only to protect itself, and to keep the man from beingdangerous. Men who have lost or suppressed their souls, and who go aboutcursing at the world every day they live in it, are not a safe, socialinvestment. 

But while every man is going to see that he owes it to society to use apart of his time in it in expressing himself, his own desires, in hisown way, he is going to see also that he owes it to society to spendpart of his time in expressing others and in expressing the desires andthe needs of others. The two processes could be best effected at firstprobably by alternating, by keeping the man in equilibrium, balancingthe mechanical and the spiritual in his life. Eventually and ideally, hewill manage to have time in a higher state of society to put themtogether, to express in the same act at the same time, and notalternating or reciprocally, himself and others. And he will succeed indoing what the great and free artist does already. He will make hisindividual self-expression so great and so generous that it is also theexpression of the universal self. Every man will be treated according tohis own nature. Doubtless some men have not brains enough in a week tosupply them for one hour a day of self-directed work. It would take themfive hours a day to think how to do one hour's worth of work. Men whoprefer, as many will, not to think, and who like the basement better, can substitute in the basement for their sons, and buy if they like, thefreedom of sons who prefer thinking, who would like to work harder thantheir fathers would care to work, up on the ground floor of the world. But as time goes on, it is to be hoped that every man will climb upslowly, and will belong less and less of his time to the staff thatborrows brains, and more and more of his time to the staff that handsbrains down, and that directs the machinery of the world. The time ofalternation in dealing with different callings will probably be adjusteddifferently, and might be made weeks instead of days, but the principlewould be the same. The forces that are going to help, apparently, inthis evolution will be the labour exchange--the centre for themobilization of labour, the produce exchange, the inventor's spirit inthe labour unions and employers' associations, and the gradualorganization by inventors of the common vision of all men, and settingit at work on the supreme task of modern life--the task of drawing out, evoking each particular man in the world, and in behalf of all, freeinghim for his own particular place. 

CHAPTER X

THE MACHINE-TRAINERS

The fundamental failure of humanity so far is in self-assertion. 

The essential distinctive trait of modern civilization is machinery. 

Machinery logically and irrevocably involves the coöperative action ofindividuals. 

If we make levers and iron wheels work by putting them togetheraccording to their nature, we can only make vast masses of men work byputting them together according to their nature. 

So far we have been trying to make vast masses of men work together inprecisely the same way we make levers and iron wheels work together. Wehave thought we could make diabolically, foolishly, insanely inflexiblemen-machines which violate at every point the natural qualities andinstincts of the materials of which they are made. 

We have failed to assert ourselves against our iron machines. We havelet our iron machines assert themselves against us. We have let our ironmachines be models for us. We have overlooked the difference in thenature of the materials in machines of iron and machines of men. 

A man is a self-reproducing machine, and an iron machine is one that hasto be reproduced by somebody else. 

In a man-machine arrangements must be made so that each man can beallowed to be the father of his own children and the author of his ownacts. 

In society or the man-machine, if it is to work, men are individuals. Society is organically, irrevocably dependent upon each man, and uponwhat each man chooses according to his own nature to do himself. 

The result is, the first principle of success in constructing andrunning a social machine is to ask and to get an answer out of each manwho is, as we look him over and take him up, and propose to put him intoit, "What are you like?" "What are you especially for?" "What do youwant?" "How can you get it?"

Our success in getting him properly into our machine turns upon a loyal, patient, imperious attention on our part to what there is inside him, inside the particular individual man, and how we can get him to let usknow what is inside, get him to decide voluntarily to let us have it, and let us work it into the common end. 

In this amazing, impromptu, new, and hurried machine civilization whichwe have been piling up around us for a hundred years we have mademachines out of everything, and our one consummate and glaring failurein the machines we have made is the machine we have made out ofourselves. 

Mineral machines are made by putting comparatively dead, or at leastdead-looking, matter together; vegetable machines or gardens, are madeby studying little unconscious seeds that we can persuade to come up andto reproduce themselves. Man-machines are produced by putting uppossible lives before particular individual men, and letting them findout (and finding out for ourselves, too), day by day, into which lifethey will grow up. 

Everything in a social machine, if it is a machine that really works, isbased on the profound and special study of individuals: upon drawing outthe aptitudes and motives, choices and genius in each man; the passion, if he has any; the creative desire, the self-expressing, self-reproducing, inner manhood; the happy strength there is in him. 

Trades unions overlook this, and treat all men alike and all employersalike. Employers have very largely overlooked it. 

It is the industrial, social, and religious secret of our modern machinecivilization. We need not be discouraged about machines, because thesecret of the machine civilization has as yet barely been noticed. 

The elephants are running around in the garden. But they have merelytaken us by surprise. It is their first and their last chance. The menabout us are seeing what to do. We are to get control of the elephants, first, by getting control of ourselves. We are beginning to organize ourpeople-machines as if they were made of people; so that the people inthem can keep on being people, and being better ones. And as ourpeople-machines begin to become machines that really work, our ironmachines will no longer be feared. They will reach over and help. As welook about us we shall see our iron machines at last, about all theworld, all joining in, all hard at work for us, a million, millionmachines a day making the crowd beautiful. 

CHAPTER XI

MACHINES, CROWDS, AND ARTISTS

A crowd civilization produces, as a matter of course, crowd art and artfor crowded conditions. This fact is at once the glory and the weaknessof the kind of art a democracy is bound to have. 

The most natural evidence to turn to first, of the crowd in a crowd age, is such as can be found in its literature, especially in itsmasterpieces. 

The significance of shaking hands with a Senator of the United States isthat it is a convenient and labour-saving way of shaking hands with twoor three million people. The impressiveness of the Senator's Washingtonvoice, the voice on the floor of the Senate, consists in the mysticalundertone--the chorus in it--multitudes in smoking cities, men andwomen, rich and poor, who are speaking when this man speaks, and who aresilent when he is silent, in the government of the United States. 

The typical fact that the Senator stands for in modern life has acorresponding typical fact in modern literature. The typical fact inmodern literature is the epigram, the senatorial sentence, the sentencethat immeasurably represents what it does not say. The differencebetween democracy in Washington and democracy in Athens may be said tobe that in Washington we have an epigram government, a government inwhich ninety million people are crowded into two rooms to consider whatto do, and in which ninety million people are made to sit in one chairto see that it is done. In Athens every man represented himself. 

It may be said to be a good working distinction between modern andclassic art that in modern art words and colours and sounds stand forthings, and in classic art they said them. In the art of the Greek, things were what they seemed, and they were all there. Hence simplicity. It is a quality of the art of to-day that things are not what they seemin it. If they were, we should not call it art at all. Everything standsnot only for itself and for what it says, but for an immeasurablesomething that cannot be said. Every sound in music is the senator of athousand sounds, thoughts, and associations, and in literature everyword that is allowed to appear is the representative in three syllablesof three pages of a dictionary. The whistle of the locomotive, and thering of the telephone, and the still, swift rush of the elevator aremaking themselves felt in the ideal world. They are proclaiming to theideal world that the real world is outstripping it. The twelve thousandhorsepower steamer does not find itself accurately expressed in iambicson the leisurely fleet of Ulysses. It is seeking new expression. Thecommand has gone forth over all the beauty and over all the art of thepresent world, crowded for time and crowded for space. "Telegraph!" Tothe nine Muses the order flies. One can hear it on every side. "Telegraph!" The result is symbolism, the Morse alphabet of art and"types, " the epigrams of human nature, crowding us all into ten ortwelve people. The epic is telescoped into the sonnet, and the sonnet iscompressed into quatrains or Tabbs of poetry, and couplets are signed asmasterpieces. The novel has come into being--several hundred pages ofcrowded people in crowded sentences, jostling each other to oblivion;and now the novel, jostled into oblivion by the next novel, is becomingthe short story. Kipling's short stories sum the situation up. So far asskeleton or plot is concerned, they are built up out of a bit of nothingput with an infinity of Kipling; so far as meat is concerned, they arethe Liebig Beef Extract of fiction. A single jar of Kipling contains awhole herd of old-time novels lowing on a hundred hills. 

The classic of any given world is a work of art that has passed throughthe same process in being a work of art that that world has passedthrough in being a world. Mr. Kipling represents a crowd age, because heis crowded with it; because, above all others, he is the man whoproduces art in the way the age he lives in is producing everythingelse. 

This is no mere circumstance of democracy. It is its manifest destinythat it shall produce art for crowded conditions, that it shall havecrowd art. The kind of beauty that can be indefinitely multiplied is thekind of beauty in which, in the nature of things, we have made our mostcharacteristic and most important progress. Our most considerablesuccess in pictures could not be otherwise than in black and white. Black-and-white art is printing-press art; and art that can be producedin endless copies, that can be subscribed for by crowds, finds anextraordinary demand, and artists have applied themselves to supplyingit. All the improvements, moving on through the use of wood and steeland copper, and the process of etching, to the photogravure, thelithograph, the moving picture, and the latest photograph in colour, whatever else may be said of them from the point of view of Titian orMichael Angelo, constitute a most amazing and triumphant advance fromthe point of view of making art a democracy, of making the rare and thebeautiful minister day and night to crowds. The fact that the mechanicalarts are so prominent in their relation to the fine arts may not seem toargue a high ideal amongst us; but as the mechanical arts are the bodyof beauty, and the fine arts are the soul of it, it is a necessary partof the ideal to keep body and soul together until we can do better. Mourning with Ruskin is not so much to the point as going to work withWilliam Morris. If we have deeper feelings about wall-papers than wehave about other things, it is going to the root of the matter to beginwith wall-papers, to make machinery say something as beautiful aspossible, inasmuch as it is bound to have, for a long time at least, about all the say there is. The photograph does not go about the worlddoing Murillos everywhere by pressing a button, but the camera habit isdoing more in the way of steady daily hydraulic lifting of great massesof men to where they enjoy beauty in the world than Leonardo da Vinciwould have dared to dream in his far-off day; and Leonardo's pictures, thanks to the same photograph, and everybody's pictures, films of paper, countless spirits of themselves, pass around the world to every home inChristendom. The printing press made literature a democracy, andmachinery is making all the arts democracies. The symphony piano, aninvention for making vast numbers of people who can play only a few verypoor things play very poorly a great many good ones, is a consummateinstance both of the limitation and the value of our contemporarytendency in the arts. The pipe organ, though on a much higher plane, isan equally characteristic contrivance making it possible for a man to bea complete orchestra and a conductor all by himself, playing on a crowdof instruments, to a crowd of people, with two hands and one pair offeet. It is a crowd invention. The orchestra--a most distinctivelymodern institution, a kind of republic of sound, the unseen spirit ofthe many in one--is the sublimest expression yet attained of the crowdmusic, which is, and must be, the supreme music of this modern day, thesymphony. Richard Wagner comes to his triumph because his music is thevoice of multitudes. The opera, a crowd of sounds accompanied by a crowdof sights, presented by one crowd of people on the stage to anothercrowd of people in the galleries, stands for the same tendency in artthat the syndicate stands for in commerce. It is syndicate music; and inproportion as a musical composition in this present day is anaggregation of multitudinous moods, in proportion as it is suggestive, complex, paradoxical, the way a crowd is complex, suggestive, andparadoxical--provided it be wrought at the same time into some vast andsplendid unity--just in this proportion is it modern music. It givesitself to the counterpoints of the spirit, the passion of variety inmodern life. The legacy of all the ages, is it not descended uponus?--the spirit of a thousand nations? All our arts are thousand-nationarts, shadows and echoes of dead worlds playing upon our own. Italianmusic, out of its feudal kingdoms, comes to us as essentially solomusic--melody; and the civilization of Greece, being a civilization ofheroes, individuals, comes to us in its noble array with its solo arts, its striding heroes everywhere in front of all, and with nothing nearerto the people in it than the Greek Chorus, which, out of limbo, pale andfeatureless across all ages, sounds to us as the first far faint comingof the crowd to the arts of this groping world. Modern art, inheritingeach of these and each of all things, is revealed to us as the struggleto express all things at once. Democracy is democracy for this veryreason, and for no other: that all things may be expressed at once init, and that all things may be given a chance to be expressed at once init. Being a race of hero-worshippers, the Greeks said the best, perhaps, what could be said in sculpture; but the marbles and bronzes of ademocracy, having average men for subjects, and being done by averagemen, are average marbles and bronzes. We express what we have. We are ina transition stage. It is not without its significance, however, that wehave perfected the plaster cast--the establishment of democracy amongstatues, and mobs of Greek gods mingling with the people can be seenalmost any day in every considerable city of the world. The sameprinciple is working itself out in our architecture. It is idle tocontend against the principle. The way out is the way through. Howevereagerly we gaze at Parthenons on their ruined hills, if thirty-one-storyblocks are in our souls thirty-one-story blocks will be ourmasterpieces, whether we like it or not. They will be our masterpiecesbecause they tell the truth about us; and while truth may not bebeautiful, it is the thing that must be told first before beauty canbegin. The beauty we are to have shall only be worked out from the truthwe have. Living as we do in a new era, not to see that thethirty-one-story block is the expression of a new truth is to turnourselves away from the one way that beauty can ever be found by men, inthis era or in any other. 

What is it that the thirty-one-story block is trying to say about us?The thirty-one-story block is the masterpiece of mass, of immensity, ofnumbers; with its 2427 windows and its 779 offices, and its crowds oflives piled upon lives, it is expressing the one supreme andcharacteristic thing that is taking place in the era in which we live. The city is the main fact that modern civilization stands for, andcrowding is the logical architectural form of the city idea. Thethirty-one-story block is the statue of a crowd. It stands for aspiritual fact, and it will never be beautiful until that fact isbeautiful. The only way to make the thirty-one-story block beautiful(the crowd expressed by the crowd) is to make the crowd beautiful. Themost artistic, the only artistic, thing the world can do next is to makethe crowd beautiful. 

The typical city blocks, with their garrets in the lower stories of thesky, were not possible in the ancient world, because steel had not beeninvented; and the invention of steel, which is not the least of ourtriumphs in the mechanical arts, is in many ways the mostcharacteristic. Steel is republican for stone. Putting whole quarriesinto a single girder, it makes room for crowds; and what is moresignificant than this, inasmuch as the steel pillar is an invention thatmakes it possible to put floors up first, and build the walls around thefloors, instead of putting the walls up first and supporting the floorsupon the walls, as in the ancient world, it has come to pass that themodern world being the ancient world turned upside down, modernarchitecture is ancient architecture turned inside out, a symbol of manythings. The ancient world was a wall of individuals, supporting floorafter floor and stage after stage of society, from the lowest to thehighest; and it is a typical fact in this modern democratic world thatit grows from the inside, and that it supports itself from the inside. When the mass in the centre has been finished, an ornamental stonefacing of great individuals will be built around it and supported by it, and the work will be considered done. 

The modern spirit has much to boast of in its mechanical arts, and inits fine arts almost nothing, because the mechanical arts are studyingwhat men are needing to-day, and the fine arts are studying what theGreeks needed three thousand years ago. To be a real classic is, first, to be a contemporary of one's own time; second, to be a contemporary ofone's own time so deeply and widely as to be a contemporary of all time. The true Greek is a man who is doing with his own age what the Greeksdid with theirs, bringing all ages to bear upon it, and interpreting it. As long as the fine arts miss the fundamental principle of this presentage--the crowd principle, and the mechanical arts do not, the mechanicalarts are bound to have their way with us. And it were vastly better thatthey should. Sincere and straightforward mechanical arts are not onlymore beautiful than affected fine ones, but they are more to the point:they are the one sure sign we have of where we are going to be beautifulnext. It is impossible to love the fine arts in the year 1913 withoutstudying the mechanical ones; without finding one's self looking forartistic material in the things that people are using, and that they areobliged to use. The determining law of a thing of beauty being, in thenature of things, what it is for, the very essence of the classicattitude in a utilitarian age is to make the beautiful follow the usefuland inspire the useful with its spirit. The fine art of the nextthousand years shall be the transfiguring of the mechanical arts. Themodern hotel, having been made necessary by great natural forces inmodern life, and having been made possible by new mechanical arts, nowputs itself forward as the next great opportunity of the fine arts. Oneof the characteristic achievements of the immediate future shall be thetwentieth-century Parthenon--a Parthenon not of the great and of the fewand of the gods, but of the great many, where, through mighty corridors, day and night, democracy wanders and sleeps and chatters and is sad andlives and dies, streets rumbling below. The hotel--the crowdfireside--being more than any other one thing, perhaps, the thing thatthis civilization is about, the token of what it loves and of how itlives, is bound to be a masterpiece sooner or later that shall expressdemocracy. The hotel rotunda, the parlour for multitudes, is bound to bemade beautiful in ways we do not guess. Why should we guess? Multitudeshave never wanted parlours before. The idea of a parlour has been to getout of a multitude. All the inevitable problems that come of having awhole city of families live in one house have yet to be solved by thefine arts as well as by the mechanical ones. We have barely begun. Thetime is bound to come when the radiator, the crowd's fireplace-in-a-pipe, shall be made beautiful; and when the electric light shall be taughtthe secret of the candle; and when the especial problem of modernlife--of how to make two rooms as good as twelve--shall be masteredæsthetically as well as mathematically; and when even the piano-folding, bed-bookcase-toilet-stand-writing-desk--a crowd invention for livingin a crowd--shall either take beauty to itself or lead to beauty thatserves the same end. 

While for the time being it seems to be true that the fine arts arelooking to the past, the mechanical arts are producing conditions in thefuture that will bring the fine arts to terms, whether they want to bebrought to terms or not. The mechanical arts hold the situation in theirhands. It is decreed that people who cannot begin by making the thingsthey use beautiful shall be allowed no beauty in other things. We maywish that Parthenons and cathedrals were within our souls; but what thecathedral said of an age that had the cathedral mood, that had acathedral civilization and thrones and popes in it, we are bound to sayin some stupendous fashion of our own--something which, when it is builtat last, will be left worshipping upon the ground beneath the sky whenwe are dead, as a memorial that we too have lived. The great cathedrals, with the feet of the huddled and dreary poor upon their floors, andsaints and heroes shining on their pillars, and priests behind thechancel with God to themselves, and the vast and vacant nave, symbol ofthe heaven glimmering above that few could reach--it is not to thesethat we shall look to get ourselves said to the nations that are nowunborn; rather, though it be strange to say it, we shall look tosomething like the ocean steamship--cathedral of this huge unrestingmodern world--under the wide heaven, on the infinite seas, with sparsfor towers and the empty nave reversed filled with human beings'souls--the cathedral of crowds hurrying to crowds. There are hundreds ofthem throbbing and gleaming in the night--this very moment--lonelycities in the hollow of the stars, bringing together the nations of theearth. 

When the spirit of our modern way of living, the idea in it, the barefacts about our modern human nature have been noticed at last by ourmodern artists, masterpieces shall come to us out of every great andliving activity in our lives. Art shall tell the things these lives areabout. When this is once realized in America as it was in Greece, thefine arts shall cover the other arts as the waters cover the sea. TheBrooklyn Bridge, swinging its web for immortal souls across sky and sea, comes nearer to being a work of art than almost anything we possessto-day, because it tells the truth, because it is the material form of aspiritual idea, because it is a sublime and beautiful expression of NewYork in the way that the Acropolis was a sublime and beautifulexpression of Athens. The Acropolis was beautiful because it was theabode of heroes, of great individuals; and the Brooklyn Bridge, becauseit expresses the bringing together of millions of men. It is thearchitecture of crowds--this Brooklyn Bridge--with winds and sunsets andthe dark and the tides of souls upon it; it is the type and symbol ofthe kind of thing that our modern genius is bound to make beautiful andimmortal before it dies. The very word "bridge" is the symbol of thefuture of art and of everything else, the bringing together of thingsthat are apart--democracy. The bridge, which makes land across thewater, and the boat, which makes land on the water, and the cable, whichmakes land and water alike--these are the physical forms of the spiritof modern life, the democracy of matter. But the spirit has countlessforms. They are all new and they are all waiting to be made beautiful. The dumb crowd waits in them. We have electricity--the life current ofthe republican idea--characteristically our foremost invention, becauseit takes all power that belongs to individual places and puts it on awire and carries it to all places. We have the telephone, an inventionwhich makes it possible for a man to live on a back street and be anext-door neighbour to boulevards; and we have the trolley, the modernreduction of the private carriage to its lowest terms, so that any manfor five cents can have as much carriage power as Napoleon with all hischariots. We have the phonograph, an invention which gives a man athousand voices; which sets him to singing a thousand songs at the sametime to a thousand crowds; which makes it possible for the commonest manto hear the whisper of Bismarck or Gladstone, to unwind crowds of greatmen by the firelight of his own house. We have the elevator, aninvention for making the many as well off as the few, an approximatearrangement for giving first floors to everybody, and putting all men ona level at the same price--one more of a thousand instances of theextraordinary manner in which the mechanical arts have devotedthemselves from first to last to the Constitution of the United States. While it cannot be said of many of these tools of existence that theyare beautiful now, it is enough to affirm that when they are perfectedthey will be beautiful; and that if we cannot make beautiful the thingsthat we need, we cannot expect to make beautiful the things that wemerely want. When the beauty of these things is at last brought out, weshall have attained the most characteristic and original and expressiveand beautiful art that is in our power. It will be unprecedentedbecause it will tell unprecedented truths. It was the mission ofancient art to express states of being and individuals, and it may besaid to be in a general way the mission of our modern art to express thebeautiful in endless change, the movement of masses, coming to itssublimity and immortality at last by revealing the beauty of the thingsthat move and that have to do with motion, the bringing of all thingsand of all souls together on the earth. 

The fulfillment of the word that has been written, "Your valleys shallbe exalted, and your mountains shall be made low, " is by no means abeautiful process. Democracy is the grading principle of the beautiful. The natural tendency the arts have had from the first to rise from thelevel of the world, to make themselves into Switzerlands in it, isfinding itself confronted with the Constitution of the United States--aConstitution which, whatever it may be said to mean in the years tocome, has placed itself on record up to the present time, at least, asstanding for the tableland. 

The very least that can be granted to this Constitution is that it is soconsummate a political document that it has made itself the creed of ourtheology, philosophy, and sociology; the principle of our commerce andindustry; the law of production, education, and journalism; the methodof our life; the controlling characteristic and the significant force inour literature; and the thing our religion and our arts are about. 

PART THREE

PEOPLE-MACHINES

CHAPTER I

NOW!

This outlook or glimmer of vision I have tried to trace, for the art ofcrowds is something we want, and want daily, in the future. We wantdaily a future. But, after all, it is a future. 

I speak in this present chapter as one of the crowd who wants somethingnow. 

I find myself in a world in which apparently some vast anonymousarrangement was made about me and about my life, before I was born. Thisarrangement seems to be, as I understand it, that if I want to livewhile I am on this planet a certain sort of life or be a certain sort ofperson, I am expected practically to take out a permit for it from theproper authorities. 

In the previous chapter I made a request of the authorities, as perhapsthe reader will remember. I said, "I want to be good now. "

In this one I have a further request to make of the authorities: "I wantto be beautiful. "

I want to be beautiful now. 

I find thousands of other people about me on every hand making thesesame two requests. I find that the authorities do not seem to noticetheir requests any more than they have noticed mine. 

Some of us have begun to suspect that we must have made the request inthe wrong way. Perhaps we should not ask a world--a great, vague thinglike the world in general--to make any slight arrangement we may needfor being beautiful. We have come to feel that we must ask somebody inparticular, and do something in particular, and find some one inparticular with whom we can do it. There is getting to be but one courseopen to a man if he wants to be beautiful. He must bone down and workhard with his soul, make himself see precisely what it is and who it isstanding between him and a beautiful world. He must ask particularpersons in particular positions if they do not think he ought to beallowed to be beautiful. He must ask some millionaire probablyfirst--his employer, for instance--to stop getting in his way, and atleast to step one side and let him reason with him. And when he cannotask his millionaire--his own particular humdrum millionaire--to step oneside and reason with him, he must ask iron-machines to step one side andreason with him. After this he must ask crowds to please to step oneside and reason with him. 

Whatever happens, he is sure to find always these same three great, imponderable obstructions in the way of his being beautiful--the humdrummillionaires, the iron-machines, and crowds. 

In the old days when any one wanted to be beautiful he found it moreconvenient. There was very likely some one who was more beautiful thanhe was nearby, some one who found him craving the same thing that he hadcraved, and who recognized it and delighted in it, and who could makeroom and help. 

Nowadays, if one wants to be beautiful one must ask everybody. Every manfinds it the same. He must ask millions of people to let him besomething, one after the other in rows, that they do not want him to beor do not care whether he is or not. He has to ask more people than hecould count, before he dies, to let him be beautiful. Many of them thathe has to ask, sometimes most of them, are his inferiors. 

I have tried to deal with how it is going to be possible for a man tobreak through to being beautiful, past millionaires and pastiron-machines. I would like now to deal with the people-machines orcrowds, and how perhaps to break past them and be beautiful in behalf ofthem, in spite of them. 

CHAPTER II

COMMITTEES AND COMMITTEES

The problem seems to be something like this. One finds one has been bornand put here whether or no, and that one is inextricably alive in astate of society in which men are coming to live in a kind of vastdisease of being obliged to do everything together. 

We are still old-fashioned enough to be born one at a time, but we areeducated in litters and we do our work in the world in herds and gangs. Even the upper classes do their work in gangs, and with overseers andlittle crowds called committees. Our latest idea consists in puttingparts of a great many different men together to make one greatone--forming a committee to make a man of genius. 

There is no denying that, in a way, a committee does things; but whatbecomes of the committee?

And the lower in the scale of life we go the more committees it takes todo the work of one man and the more impossible it becomes to findanything but parts of men to do things. I put it frankly to the reader. The chances are nine out of ten that when you meet a man nowadays andlook at him hard or try to do something with him you find he is not aman at all but is some subsection of a committee. You cannot even talkwith such a man without selecting some subsection of some subject whichinterests him; and if you select any other subsection than hissubsection he will think you a bore; and if you select his subsection hewill think that you do not know anything. 

And if you want to get anything done that is different, or that is theleast bit interesting, and want to get some one to do it, how will yougo about it? You will find yourself being sent from one person toanother; and before you know it you find yourself mixed up with nine orten subdivisions of nine or ten committees; and after you have got yournine or ten subsections of nine or ten committees to get together toconsider what it is you want done, they will tell you, after duedeliberation, that it is not worth doing, or that you had better do ityourself. Then every subsection of every committee will go homemuttering under its breath to every other subsection that a man whowants slightly different and interesting things done in society is apublic nuisance; and that the man who does not know what subsection heis in and what subsection of a man he was intended to be, and who triesto do things, carries dismay and anger on every side around him. Dropinto your pigeonhole and be filed away, O Gentle Reader! Do you thinkyou are a soul? No; you are Series B. No. 2574, top row on the left. 

In my morning paper the other day I read that in a factory whose longwindows I often pass in the train, they have their machinery soperfected that it takes sixty-four machines to make one shoe. 

Query--If it takes sixty-four machines run by sixty-four men who donothing else to make one shoe, how many machines would it take, and howmany shoes, to make one man?

Query--And when an employer in a shoe factory deals with his employee, can it really be said, after all, that he is dealing with _him_? He isdealing with _It_--with Nine Hours a Day, of one sixty-fourth of a man. 

The natural effect of crowds and of machines is to make a man feel thathe is, and always was, and always will be, immemorially, unanimously, innumerably nobody. 

Sometimes we are allowed a little faint numeral to dangle up over ouroblivion. Not long ago I saw a notice or letter in the _WestBulletin_--probably from a member of something--ending like this: ". .. I hope the readers of the _Bulletin_ will ponder over this suggestion of_Number_ 29, 619. --Sincerely yours, _No. _ 11, 175. "

CHAPTER III

THE INCONVENIENCE OF BEING HUMAN

I shall never forget one day I spent in New York some years ago--moreyears than I thought at first. It was a wrong-headed day, but I cannothelp remembering it as a symbol of a dread I still feel at times in NewYork--a feeling of being suddenly lifted, of being swept out under (itis like the undertow of the sea) into a kind of vast deep ofimpersonality--swept out of myself into a wide, imperious waste oremptiness of people. I had come fresh from my still country meadow andmountain, my own trees and my own bobolinks and my own little island ofsky up over me, and in the vast and desolate solitude of men and women Iwandered about up and down the streets. Every block I saw, every window, skyline, engine, street-car, every human face, made me feel as if Ibelonged to another world. Here was a great conspiracy in stone and ironagainst my own life with myself. Was there a soul in all this huge roarand spectacle of glass and stone and passion that cared for the thingsthat I cared for, or the things that I loved, or that would care oneshuffle of all the feet upon the stones for any thought or word ordesire of mine? The rain swept in my face, and I spent the day walkingup and down the streets looking at stones and glass and people. _"Herewe are!"_ say the great buildings crowding on the sky. _"Who areyou?"_. .. . All the stone and the glass and the walls, the mightysyndicate of matter everywhere, surrounded me--one little, shivering, foolish mote of being fighting foolishly for its own little foolish moteof identity!

And I do not believe that I was all wrong. New York, like some vast, implacable cone of ether, some merciless anæsthetic, was thrust downover me and my breathing, and I still had a kind of left-over prejudicethat I wanted to be myself, with my own private self-respect, with myown private, temporarily finished-off, provisionally completepersonality. I felt then, and I still feel to-day, that every man, as hefights for his breath, must stand out at least part of his time for theright of being self-contained. It is, and always will be, one of theappalling sights of New York to me--the spectacle of the helplessness, the wistfulness, of all those poor New York people without one another. Sometimes the city seems to be a kind of huge monument or idol or shrineof crowds. It seems to be a part of the ceaseless crowd action or crowdcorrosion on the sense of identity in the human spirit that the man wholives in crowds should grow more dull and more literal about himselfevery day. He becomes a mere millionth of something. All these otherpeople he sees about him hurrying to and fro are mere millionths too. Hegrows more and more obliged to live with a vast bulk of people if he isto notice people at all. Unless he sees all the different kinds ofpeople and forms of life with his own eye, and feels human beings withhis hands, as it were, he does not know and sympathize with them. Thecrowd-craving or love of continual city life on the part of many peoplecomes to be a sheer lack of imagination, an inability to live inqualities instead of quantities in men. To live merely in a city is notto know the real flavour of life any more than the daily paper knowsit--the daily paper, the huge dull monster of observation, the seer ofoutsides. The whole effect of crowds on the individual man is toemphasize scareheads and appearances, advertisements, and the hugegeneral showing off. The ride in the train from New Haven to New York isthe true portrait of a crowd. Crowds of soaps and patent medicinesstraining on trees and signboard out of the gentle fields toward crowdsof men, culminating at last in Woodlawn Cemetery, where the marblesignposts of death flaunt themselves. Oblivion itself is advertised, andthe end of the show of a show world is placarded on our graves. Men buyspace in papers for cards, and bits of country scenery by the greatrailroads to put up signboards, and they spend money and make constantefforts to advertise that they are alive, and then they build expensivemonuments to advertise that they are dead. .. . 

The same craving for piled-up appearances is brought to bear by crowdsupon their arts. Even a gentle soul like Paderewski, full of a personaland strange beauty that he could lend to everything he touched, findshimself swept out of himself at last by the huge undertow of crowds. Scarcely a season but his playing has become worn down at the end of itinto shrieks and hushes. Have I not watched him at the end of a tour, when, one audience after the other, those huge Svengalis had hypnotizedhim--thundering his very subtleties at them, hour after hour, inCarnegie Hall? One could only wonder what had happened, sit byhelplessly, watch the crowd--thousands of headlong human beings lungingtheir souls and their bodies through the music, weeping, gasping, huzzaing, and clapping to one another. After every crash of newcrescendo, after every precipice of silence, they seemed to be crying, "This is Soul! Oh, this is Soul!" The feeling of a vast audience holdingits breath, no matter why it does it or whether it ought to do it ornot, seems to have become almost a religious rite of itself. Vistas offaces gallery after gallery hanging on a note, two or three thousandsouls suspended in space all on one tiny little ivory lever at the endof one man's forefinger . .. Dim lights shining on them and softvibrations floating round them . .. Going to hear Paderewski play at theend of his season was going to hear a crowd at a piano singing with itsown hands and having a kind of orgy with itself. One could only rememberthat there had been a Paderewski once who hypnotized and possessed hisaudience by being hypnotized and possessed by his own music. One likedto remember him--the Paderewski who was really an artist and whoperformed the function of the artist showering imperiously his ownvisions on the hearts of the people. 

And what is true in music one finds still truer in the other arts. Onekeeps coming on it everywhere--the egotism of cities, theself-complacency of the crowds swerving the finer and the truer artistsfrom their functions, making them sing in hoarse crowd-voices instead ofsinging in their own and giving us themselves. Nearly all our acting hasbeen corroded by crowds. Some of us have been obliged almost to give upgoing to the theatre except to very little ones, and we are wondering ifchurches cannot possibly be made small enough to believe great things, or if galleries cannot be arranged with few enough people in them toallow us great paintings, or if there will not be an author so wellknown to a few men that he will live forever, or if some newspaper willnot yet be great enough to advertise that it has a circulation smallenough to tell the truth. 

CHAPTER IV

LETTING THE CROWD HAVE PEOPLE IN IT

So we face the issue. 

Nothing beautiful can be accomplished in a crowd civilization, by thecrowd for the crowd, unless the crowd is beautiful. No man who isengaged in looking under the lives about him, who wishes to face thefacts of these lives as they are lived to-day, will find himself able toavoid this last and most important fact in the history of the world--thefact that, whatever it may mean, or whether it is for better or worse, the world has staked all that it is and has been, and all that it iscapable of being, on the one supreme issue, "How can the crowd be madebeautiful?"

The answer to this question involves two difficulties: (1) A crowdcannot make itself beautiful. (2) A crowd will not let any one else makeit beautiful. 

The men who have been on the whole the most eager democrats ofhistory--the real-idealists--the men who love the crowd and thebeautiful too, and who can have no honest or human pleasure in either ofthem except as they are being drawn together, are obliged to admit thatliving in a democratic country, a country where politics and æstheticscan no longer be kept apart, is an ordeal that can only be faced a largepart of the time with heavy hearts. We are obliged to admit that it is acountry where paintings have little but the Constitution of the UnitedStates wrought into them; where sculpture is voted and paid for by thecommon people; where music is composed for majorities; where poetry issung to a circulation; where literature itself is scaled tosubscription lists; where all the creators of the True and the Beautifuland the Good may be seen almost any day tramping the tableland of theaverage man, fed by the average man, allowed to live by the average man, plodding along with weary and dusty steps to the average man'sforgetfulness. And, indeed, it is not the least trait of this sameaverage man that he forgets, that he is forgotten, that his slaves areforgotten, that the world remembers only those who have been hismasters. 

On the other hand, the literature of finding fault with the average man(which is what the larger part of our more ambitious literature reallyis) is not a kind of literature that can do anything to mend matters. The art of finding fault with the average man, with the fact that theworld is made convenient for him, is inferior art because it is helplessart. The world is made convenient for the average man because it has tobe, to get him to live in it; and if the world were not made convenientfor him, the man of genius would find living with him a great deal moreuncomfortable than he does. He would not even be allowed the comfort ofsaying how uncomfortable. The world belongs to the average man, and, excepting the stars and other things that are too big to belong to him, the moment the average man deserves anything better in it or morebeautiful in it than he is getting, some man of genius rises by hisside, in spite of him, and claims it for him. Then he slowly claims itfor himself. The last thing to do, to make the world a good place forthe average man, would be to make it a world with nothing but averagemen in it. If it is the ideal of democracy that there shall be a slowmassive lifting, a grading up of all things at once; that whatever ishighest in the true and the beautiful, and whatever is lowest in themshall be graded down and graded up to the middle height of human life, where the greatest numbers shall make their home and live upon it; ifthe ideal of democracy is tableland--that is--mountains foreverybody--a few mountains must be kept on hand to make tableland outof. 

Two solutions, then, of a crowd civilization--having the extraordinarymen crowded out of it as a convenience to the average ones, and havingthe average men crowded out of it as a convenience to the extraordinaryones--are equally impracticable. 

This brings us to the horns of our dilemma. If the crowd cannot be madebeautiful by itself, and if the crowd will not allow itself to be madebeautiful by any one else, the crowd can only be made beautiful by a manwho lives so great a life in it that he can make a crowd beautifulwhether it allows him to or not. 

When this man is born to us and looks out on the conditions around him, he will find that to be born in a crowd civilization is to be born in acivilization, first, in which every man can do as he pleases; second, inwhich nobody does. Every man is given by the Government absolutefreedom; and when it has given him absolute freedom the Government saysto him, "Now if you can get enough other men, with their absolutefreedom, to put their absolute freedom with your absolute freedom, youcan use your absolute freedom in any way you want. " Democracy, seekingto free a man from being a slave to one master, has simply increased thenumber of masters a man shall have. He is hemmed in with crowds ofmasters. He cannot see his master's huge amorphous face. He cannot go tohis master and reason with him. He cannot even plead with him. You cancry your heart out to one of these modern ballot-boxes. You have but oneballot. They will not count tears. The ultimate question in a crowdcivilization becomes, not "What does a thing mean?" or "What is itworth?" but "How much is there of it?" "If thou art a great man, " sayscivilization, "get thou a crowd for thy greatness. Then come with thycrowd and we will deal with thee. It shall be even as thou wilt. " Thepressure has become so great, as is obvious on every side, that men whoare of small or ordinary calibre can only be more pressed by it. Theyare pressed smaller and smaller--the more they are civilized, thesmaller they are pressed; and we are being daily brought face to facewith the fact that the one solution a crowd civilization can have forthe evil of being a crowd civilization is the man in the crowd who canwithstand the pressure of the crowd; that is to say, the one solution ofa crowd civilization is the great-man solution--a solution which is nonethe less true because by name, at least, it leaves most of us out orbecause it is so familiar that we have forgotten it. The one method bywhich a crowd can be freed and can be made to realize itself is thegreat-man method--the method of crucifying and worshipping great men, until by crucifying and worshipping great men enough, inch by inch, andera by era, it is lifted to greatness itself. 

Not very many years ago, certain great and good men, who, at the cost ofinfinite pains, were standing at the time on a safe and lofty rockprotected from the fury of their kind by the fury of the sea, contrivedto say to the older nations of the earth, "All men are created equal. "It is a thing to be borne in mind, that if these men, who declared thatall men were created equal, had not been some several hundred per cent. Better men than the men they said they were created equal to, it wouldnot have made any difference to us or to any one else whether they hadsaid that all men were created equal or not, or whether the Republic hadever been started or not, in which every man, for hundreds of years, should look up to these men and worship them as the kind of men thatevery man in America was free to try to be equal to. A civilization bynumbers, a crowd civilization, if it had not been started by heroes, could never have been started at all. Shall this civilization attempt tolive by the crowd principle, without men in it who are living by thehero principle? On our answer to this question hangs the questionwhether this civilization, with all its crowds, shall stand or fallamong the civilizations of the earth. The main difference between theheroes of Plymouth Rock, the heroes who proclaimed freedom in 1776, andthe heroes who must contrive to proclaim freedom now, is that tyrannynow is crowding around the Rock, and climbing up on the Rock, eighty-seven million strong, and that tyranny then was a half-idiot kingthree thousand miles away. 

 * * * * *

We know or think we know, some of us--at least we have taken a certainjoy in working it out in our minds, and live with it every day--howpeople in crowds are going to be beautiful by and by. 

The difficulty of being beautiful now, I have tried to express. It seemsbetter to express, if possible, what a difficulty is before trying tomeet it. 

And now we would like to try to meet it. How can we determine what isthe most practical and natural way for crowds of people to try to bebeautiful now?

It would seem to be a matter of crowd psychology, of crowd technique, and of determining how human nature works. 

All thoughtful people are agreed as to the aim. 

Everything turns on the method. 

In the following chapters we will try to consider the technique of beingbeautiful in crowds. 

BOOK FOUR

CROWDS AND HEROES

TO WALT WHITMAN

 _"And I saw the free souls of poets, The loftiest bards of all ages strode before me Strange large men, long unwaked, undisclosed, were disclosed to me . .. O my rapt verse, my call, mock me not! . .. I will not be outfaced by irrational things, I will penetrate what is sarcastic upon me, I will make cities and civilizations defer to me This is what I have learnt from America--

 I will confront these shows of the day and night I will know if I am to be less than they, I will see if I am not as majestic as they, I will see if I am not as subtle and real as they, I will see if I have no meaning while the houses and ships have meaning, . .. I am for those that have never been mastered, For men and women whose tempers have never been mastered, For those whom laws, theories, conventions can never master. 

 I am for those who walk abreast of the whole earth Who inaugurate one to inaugurate all. "_

CHAPTER I

THE SOCIALIST AND THE HERO

I was spending a little time not long ago with a man of singularlydevoted and noble spirit who had dedicated his life and his fortune tothe Socialist movement. We had had several talks before, and always witha little flurry at first of hopefulness toward one another's ideas. Weboth felt that the other, for a mere Socialist or for a mereIndividualist, was really rather reasonable. We admitted great tracts ofthings to one another, and we always felt as if by this one nextargument, perchance, or by one further illustration, we would convincethe other and rescue him like a brand from the burning. 

The last time I saw him he started in at once at the station as weclimbed up into the car by telling me what he was doing. He was studyingup the heroes of the American Revolution, and was writing something toshow that they were not really heroes after all. All manner of thingswere the matter with them. They had always troubled him, he said. Heknew there was something wrong, and he was glad to have the mattersettled. He said he did not, and never had believed in heroes, andthought they did a great deal of harm--even dead ones. Heroes, he said, always deceived the people. They kept people from seeing that nothingcould be done in our modern society by any one man. Only crowds could dothings, he intimated--each man, like one little wave on the world, wavering up to the shore and dying away. 

As the evening wore on our conversation became more concrete, and Ibegan to drag in, of course, every now and then, naturally, an inspiredor semi-inspired millionaire or so. 

I cannot say that these gentlemen were received with enthusiasm. 

Finally, I turned on him. "What is it that makes you so angry (andnearly all the Socialists) every time you hear something good, somethingyou cannot deny is good, about a successful business man? If I brought arow of inspired millionaires, say ten or twelve of them one after theother, into your library this minute, you would get hotter and hotterwith every one, wouldn't you? You would scarcely speak to me. "

---- intimated that he was afraid I was deceived; he was afraid that Iwas going about deceiving other people about its being possible for mereindividual men to be good; he was afraid I was doing a great deal ofdamage. 

He then confided to me that not so very long ago he dropped in oneMonday morning into his guest-chamber just after his guest had gone andfound a copy of "Inspired Millionaires, " which his guest had obviouslybeen reading over Sunday, lying on the little reading-table at the headof the bed. 

He said that he took the book back to his library, took out two or threeencyclopædias from the shelf in the corner, put my inspired millionairesin behind them, put the encyclopædias back, and that they had been thereto this day. 

With this very generous and kindly introduction we went on to a franktalk on the general attitude of Socialists toward the instinct ofhero-worship in human nature. 

A Socialist had said only a few days before, speaking of a certainmunicipal movement in which the people were interested, that he thoughtit really had a very good chance to succeed "if only the heroes could bestaved off a little longer. " He deprecated the almost incurable ideapeople seemed to have that nothing could ever be done in this worldwithout being all mixed up with heroes. 

My mind kept recurring in a perplexed way to this remark for a few daysafter I had heard it, and I soon came on the following letter from aprominent Socialist which had been read at a dinner the night before:

 "I am glad to join with others of my comrades in conveying greetings to Comrade Cahan on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of his birth and in recognition of the eminent services that he has rendered in the Socialist movement. 

 "Yet my gladness is not untinged with a certain note of apprehension lest in expressing so conspicuously our esteem of an honoured comrade we obscure the broader scene which, if equally illumined, would disclose tens of thousands of other comrades, labouring with equal devotion, and each no less worthy of praise. .. . 

 "In our rejoicing over the services of Comrade Cahan let us not forget that the facilities that he and that each of us enjoy are the products of thousands of other men and women, and sometimes of children too. 

 "In our rejoicing let us recall that we cannot safely assume that any comrade's services to the movement have been greater than the movement's services to him; that we are but fellow-workers together, deriving help and perhaps inspiration one from another and each from all. 

 "In our rejoicing let us place the emphasis rather upon the services of the many to each, than upon the services of any one of the many. "

I have not quoted from this letter because I disagree with the idea init. I am ready to admit that though the idea is a somewhat dampening oneperhaps for a banquet, that it is true and important. 

What I object to in the letter is the Fear in it. 

In spite of the fineness and truth of the motive that lies, I know, underneath every line, the letter is baleful, sinister, and weary. 

I accuse the letter of being, in a kind of nobly sick way, visionary, unpractical, and socially destructive. 

I would heartily agree with the writer of the letter about the qualityof many heroes, possibly about most heroes. I would agree in a largemeasure that the heroes the crowds choose are the wrong ones. 

But there is a great difference between his belief and mine as to ourpractical working policy in getting the things for crowds that we bothwant for them. It seems to me that he does not believe in crowds. He isfilled with fear that they would select the wrong heroes. He says theymust not have heroes, or must be allowed as few as possible. 

I believe in crowds, and I believe that the more they have thehero-habit, the more heroes they have to compare and select from, thefiner, longer, and truer heroes they will select, the more deeply, truly, and concretely the crowds will think, and the more nobly theywill express themselves. 

But the great argument for the hero as a social method is that the crowdin a clumsy, wistful way, deep down in its heart, in the long run, lovesthe beautiful. Appealing to the crowd's ideal of the beautiful inconduct, its sense of the heroic, or semi-heroic, is the only practical, hard-headed understanding way of getting out of the crowd, for thecrowd, what the crowd wants. 

I saw the other day in Boston several thousand schoolboys in the streetkeeping step. It was a band that held them together. A band is apractical thing. 

Is it not about time, in our dreary, drab, listless procession ofeconomics, stringing helplessly across the world, that we have a band ofmusic? What economics needs now is a march. 

We have to-day a thousand men who can tell people what to do where wehave one who can touch the music, the dance, the hurrah, the cry, theworship in them, and make them want to do something. The hero is the manwho makes people want to do something, and strangely and subtly, allthrough the blood, while they watch him, he makes them believe they can. 

It is socially destructive to throw away the overpowering instinct ofhuman nature which we have called hero-worship. 

CHAPTER II

THE CROWD AND THE HERO

But it is not only socially destructive. It is dumb and helpless forcrowds to try to get on without heroes. Big events and big men are crowdexpressions. Heroes, World Fairs, and Titanic disasters are crowd words, the crowd's way of seeing and saying things. 

Crowds think in great men, or they think in simple, big, broadly drawnevents, or words of one syllable, like coal strikes. 

A whole world works through to an entirely new idea, the idea thatEngland is not necessarily impregnable, in the Boer war. And we seeEngland, by way of South Africa, searching her own heart. The MeatTrust, by raising prices for a few trial weeks, makes half a nationthink its way over into vegetarianism or semi-vegetarianism. 

In the American war with Spain modern thought attacked the last patheticcitadel in modern life of polite illusion, of lie-poetry, and in thatone little flash of war between the Spain spirit and the Americanspirit, in our modern world, the nations got their final and conclusivesense of what the Spanish civilization really was, of the old DonQuixote thinking, of the delightful, brave, courtly blindness, of theworld's last stronghold of pomposity, of vague, empty prettiness, oftalking grand and shooting crooked. 

Japan and Russia fight with guns, but the real fight is not betweentheir guns, but between two great national conceptions of human life. Like two vast national searchlights we saw them turned on each other, two huge, grim, naked civilizations, and now in an awful light and roar, and now in stately sudden silence, while we all looked on, allbreathless and concentrated, we saw them, as on some strange vast stageof the world, all lit up, exposed, penetrated by the minds of menforever. While they fought before us we saw the last two thousand yearsflash up once more and fade away, and then the next two thousand yearson its slide, with one click before our faces was fastened into place. 

Men see great spiritual conceptions or ideals for a world when the greatideals are dramatized, when they stalk out before us, are acted outbefore our eyes by mighty nations. Before the stage we sit silently andthink and watch the ideals of a world, the souls of the nationsstruggling together, and as we watch we discover our souls forourselves, we define our ideals for ourselves. We make up our minds. Wesee what we want. We begin to live. 

I have come to believe that the hero, in the same way, is the commonman's desire and prayer writ large. It is his way of keeping itrefreshed before him so that he sees it, recalls it, suns himself in it, lifts up his life to it, every day. 

CHAPTER III

THE CROWD AND THE AVERAGE PERSON

To state still further my difference with the typical Socialist point ofview, as expressed in the letter from which I have quoted, I am obligedto confess that I not only believe in having heroes on behalf of crowds, but in having as a regular method of democracy little crowds of heroes, or an aristocracy. In other words, I am a democrat. I believe thatcrowds can produce, and are bound to produce by a natural crowd-process, a real aristocracy--an aristocracy which will be truly aristocratic andnoble in spirit and action, and which will express the best ideas in thebest way that a crowd can have. 

The main business of a democracy is to find out which these people arein it and put them where they will represent it. The trouble seems tohave been in democracies so far, that we find out who these people are ageneration too late. The great and rare moments of history have beenthose in which we have found out who they were in time, as when we foundin America Abraham Lincoln, an unaristocratic-looking and ungainly man, and saw suddenly that he was the first gentleman in the United States. 

The next great task of democracy is to determine the best means it canof finding out who its aristocrats are, its all-men, and determining whothey are in time, men who have vision, courage, individuality, imagination enough to face real things, and to know real people, and toput real things and real people together. 

It is what an aristocracy in a democratic form of government is for, tofurnish imagination to crowds. A real aristocracy is the onlyclear-headed, practical means a great nation can have of distributing, classifying, and digesting and evoking hordes of men and women. Peopledo not have imagination in hordes, and imagination is latent andunorganized in masses of people. The crowd problem is the problem ofhaving leaders who can fertilize the imagination and organize the willof crowds. Nothing but worship or great desire has ever been able tofocus a crowd, and only the great man, rich and various in his elements, abounding, great as the crowd is great, can ever hope to do it. 

Every man in a crowd knows that he is or is in danger of being a mereMe-man, or a mere class-man, and he knows that his neighbour is, and hewishes to be in a world that is saved from his own mere me-ness and hisown mere classness. His hero-worship is his way of worshipping hislarger self. He communes with his possible or completed self, his selfof the best moments in the official great man or crowd man. 

The average man in a crowd does not want to be an average man, and thelast thing he wants is to have an average man to represent him. He wantsa man to represent him as he would like to be. 

He cannot express himself--his best self, in the State, to all theothers in the State, without a lifted-up man or crowd man to do it. 

It is as if he said--as if the average man said, "I want a certain sortof world, I want to be able to point to a man, to a particular man, andsay, as I look at him and ask others to look at him, 'This is the sortof world I want. '"

Then everybody knows. 

The great world that lies in all men's hearts is expressed in miniature, in the great man. 

Crowds speak in heroes. 

 * * * * *

I have often heard Socialists wondering among themselves why a movementthat had so many fine insights and so many noble motives behind it hadproduced so few artists. 

It has seemed to me that it might be because Socialists as a class, speaking roughly, are generalizers. They do not see vividly and deeplythe universal in the particular, the universal in the individual, thenational in the local. They are convinced by counting, and are moved bymasses, and are prone to overlook the Spirit of the Little, theimmensity of the seed and of the individual. They are prone to look pastthe next single thing to be done. They look past the next single man tobe fulfilled. 

They feel a bit superior to Individualists for the way they have ofseeing the universal in the particular, and of being picturesque andpersonal. 

Socialists are not picturesque and personal. They do not think inpictures. 

Then they wonder why they do not make more headway. 

Crowds and great men and children think in pictures. 

A hero pictures greatness to them. Then they want it for themselves. 

From the practical, political point of view of getting things forcrowds, perhaps the trouble lies, not in our common popular idea ofhaving heroes, but in the heroes. And perhaps the cure lies not inabolishing heroes, but in making our heroes move on and in insisting onmore and better ones. 

Any man who looks may watch the crowd to-day making its heroes move on. 

If they do not move on, the crowd picks up the next hero at hand who ismoving--and drops them. 

One can watch in every civilized country to-day crowds picking upheroes, comparing, sorting, selecting, seeing the ones that wear thelongest, and one by one taking the old ones down. 

The crowd takes a hero up in its huge rough hand, gazes through him atthe world, sees what it wants through him. Then it takes up another, andthen another. 

Heroes are crowd spy-glasses. 

Pierpont Morgan and Tom Mann for example. 

Pierpont Morgan is a typical American business man raised to the n-thor hero power. 

The crowd thinks it is interesting to take up Pierpont Morgan, the TomMann of the banks. It will see what it wants, through him. 

And the crowd thinks it is interesting to take up Tom Mann, too, thePierpont Morgan of the Trades Unions. It will see what it wants, throughhim. 

CHAPTER IV

THE CROWD AND PIERPONT MORGAN

One keeps turning back every now and then, in reading the "Life ofPierpont Morgan, " to the portrait which Carl Hovey has placed at thebeginning of the book. If one were to look at the portrait long enough, one would not need to read the book. The portrait puts into a few squareinches of space what Mr. Hovey takes half an acre of paper for. And allthat he really does on the half-acre of paper is to bring back to oneagain and again that set and focused look one sees in Mr. Morgan'seyes--the remoteness, the silence, the amazing, dogged, implacableconcentration, and, when all is said, a certain terrible, inexplicableblindness. 

The blindness keeps one looking again. One cannot quite believe it. Theportrait has something so strong, so almost noble and commanding, aboutit that one cannot but stand back with one's little judgments and givethe man who can hurl together out of the bewilderment of the world apersonality like this, and fix it here--all in one small human face--thebenefit of the doubt. This is the way the crowd has always takenPierpont Morgan at first. The bare spectacle of a man so magnificentlyset, so imperiously preoccupied, silences our judgments. It seems as if, of course, he must be seeing things--things that we and others possiblydo not and cannot see. The blindness in the eyes is so complete and setin such a full array that it acts at first on one almost like a kind ofvision. The eyes hold themselves like pictures of eyes, like littlewalls, as if real eyes were in behind them. One wonders if there is anyone who could ever manage to break through them, fleck up littleordinary human things--personality, for instance, atmosphere, orlight--against them. If Shakespeare, whose folios he has, and Keats, whose "Endymion" he owns, or Milton, whose "Paradise Lost" he keeps inhis safe, were all to assail him at once, were to bear down upon thatset look in Pierpont Morgan's eyes--try to get them to turn one side asecond and notice that they--Shakespeare and Milton and Keats--werethere, there would not be a flicker or shadow of movement. They are eyesthat are set like jaws, like magnificent spiritual muscles, onSomething. Neither do they reveal light or receive it. 

 * * * * *

It will be some time before the crowd will find it possible to hand inan account and render a full estimate of the value of the service thatPierpont Morgan has rendered to our modern world; but the service hasbeen for the most part rendered now and while the world, in its mingleddismay and gratitude at the way he has hammered it together, isdistributing its praise and blame, there are some of us who would liketo step one side a little and think quietly, if we may, not about whatPierpont Morgan has done, which we admit duly, but about the blindnessin his eyes. It is Pierpont Morgan's blindness that interests the crowdmore than anything else about him interests them now. It is hisblindness--and the chance to find out just what it is that is makingpeople read his book. His blindness (if we can fix just what it is) isthe thing that we are going to make our next Pierpont Morgan out of. Thenext Pierpont Morgan--the one the crowd is getting ready now--will bemade out of the things that this Pierpont Morgan did not see. What arethese things? We have been looking for the things in Carl Hovey's book, peering in between the lines on every page, and turning up hisadjectives and looking under them, his adverbs and qualifications, hisshrewdness and carefulness for the things that Pierpont Morgan did notsee. Pierpont Morgan himself would not have tried to hide them, andneither has his biographer. His whole book breathes throughout with ajust-mindedness, a spirit of truth, a necessary and inevitable honesty, which of itself is not the least testimony to the essential validity andsoundness of Morgan's career. Pierpont Morgan's attitude toward hisbiography (if, in spite of his reticence, it became one of thenecessities--even one of the industrial necessities, of the world thathe should have one) was probably a good deal the attitude of WaltWhitman when he told Traubel, "Whatever you do with me, don't prettifyme"; and if there were things in Mr. Morgan's career which heimperturbably failed to see, Mr. Morgan himself would be the last mannot to try to help people to find out what they are. But living has beento Mr. Morgan as it is to us (as I write these lines he is seventy-fouryears old) a serious, bottomless business. He does not know which thethings are he has not seen. His eyes are magnificently set. They cannothelp us. We must do our own looking. 

 * * * * *

If I were called upon to speak very quickly and without warning; if anyone suddenly expected me in my first sentence to hit the bull's-eye ofMr. Morgan's blindness, I think I would try socialism. When the EmperorWilliam was giving himself the treat of talking with the man who runs, or is supposed to run, the economics of a world, he found that he wastalking with a man who had not noticed socialism yet, and who was notinterested in it. Most people would probably have said that Morgan wasnot interested in socialism enough; but there are very few people whowould not be as surprised as Emperor William was to know that he, Pierpont Morgan, was not informed about the greatest and, to some of us, the most threatening, omnipresent, and significant spectre in modernindustrial life. 

But when one thinks of it, and, when more particularly, one looks againat that set look in his eyes, I cannot see how it could possibly havebeen otherwise. If Morgan's eyes had suddenly begun seeing all sorts ofhuman things--the bewildering welter of the individual minds, thetragedy of the individual interests around him; if he had lost hisimperious sense of a whole--had tried to potter over and piece together, like the good people and the wonderers, the innumerable entangled wiresof the world, his eyes might have been filled perhaps with the beautifuland helpless light of the philosophers, with the fire of the prophets, or with the gentle paralysis of the poets, but he never would have hadthe courage to do the great work of his life--to turn down forever thoseiron shutters on his eyes and smite a world together. 

There was one thing this poor, dizzied, scattered planet needed. Withits quarrelling and its peevish industries, its sick poets and its tiredreligions, the one thing this planet needed was a Blow; it needed a manthat could hammer it together. To find fault with this man for not beinga seer, or to feel superior to him for not being an idealist, or toheckle him for not being a sociologist, when here he was all the timewith this mighty frenzy or heat in him that could melt down the chaos ofa world while we looked, weld it to his will, and then lift his arm andsmite it, though all men said him nay--back into a world again--toheckle over this man's not being a complete sociologist or professor isnot worthy of thoughtful and manful men. 

I cannot express it, but I can only declare, living as I do in a daylike this, that to me there is a kind of colossal naked poetry in whatPierpont Morgan has done which I cannot but acknowledge with gratitudeand hope. Though there be in it, as in all massive things, a brutalityperhaps like that of the moving glaciers, like the making and boiling ofcoal in the earth, like death, like childbirth, like the impersonalityof the sea, my imagination can never get past a kind of elemental, almost heathen poetry or heathen-god poetry in Pierpont Morgan's Blow orshock upon our world. There may be reason to doubt as to whether it isto be called a heaven-poetry or a hell-poetry--something so gaunt andsimple is there about it; but here we are with all our machines aroundus, with our young, rough, fresh nations in the act of starting a greatcivilization once more on this old and gentle earth, and I can only saythat poetry (though it be new, or different, or even a little terrible)is the one thing that now, or in any other age, men begin greatcivilizations with. 

 * * * * *

I have tried to express the spirit of what Morgan's genius seizedunconsciously by the grim, resistless will of his age, has wrought intohis career. 

But in the background of my mind as I see Pierpont Morgan, there isalways the man who will take his place, and if I did not see the mancoming, and coming rapidly, who is to take Mr. Morgan's place, I admitthat Mr. Morgan himself would be a failure, a disaster, a closed wall atthe end of the world. 

No one man will take Mr. Morgan's place, but the typical man in thegroup of men that will take his place will justify Mr. Morgan's work, bytaking this world in his hand and riveting his vision on where Morgan'svision leaves off. As Morgan has fused railroads, iron, coal, steamships, seas, and cities, the next industrial genius shall fuse thespirits and the wills of men. The Individualists and the Socialists, thearistocracies and democracies, the capitalists and the labourers shallbe welded together, shall be fused and transfused by the next Morganinto their ultimate, inevitable, inextricable, mutual interests. 

The chief characteristic of the new industrial leader is coming to besocial imagination or the power of seeing the larger industrial valuesin human gifts and efficiencies, the more human and intellectualenergies of workmen, the market value of their spirits, theirimaginations, and their good-will. The underpinning and Morganizing workhas been done; the power of instant decision which Mr. Morgan has had, has been very often based on a lack of imagination about the things thatgot in his way; but the things that get in the way now, the big, little-looking things--are the things on which the new and inspiredmillionaires' imagination will find its skill and accumulate its power. It is men's spirits that are now in the way; they have been piling upand accumulating under Morgan's régime long enough, and it is now theirturn. Perhaps men's spirits have always been beyond Mr. Morgan, andperhaps his imagination has been worked largely as a kind of cerebellumimagination: it is a kind of imagination that sees related andarticulated the physical body of things, the grip on the material tools, on the gigantic limbs of a world. The man who succeeds Mr. Morgan, andfor whom Mr. Morgan has made the world ready, is the man who has hisimagination in the upper part of his brain, and instead of doing thingsby not seeing, and by not being seen, he will swing a light. He will behimself in his own personality, a little of the nature of a searchlight, and he will work the way a searchlight works, and will have his willwith things by seeing and lighting, by X-raying his way through them andnot by a kind of colossal world-butting, which is Morgan's way, botheyes imperiously, implacably shut, his whole being all bent, all crowdedinto his vast machine of men, his huge will lifted . .. And excavatingblindly, furiously, as through some groping force he knew not, greatsub-cellars for a new heaven and new earth. 

The Crowd gets its heroes one at a time. Heroes are the Crowd's tools. Some are dredges, some are telescopes. The Crowd, by a kind ofinstinct--an oversoul or undersoul of which it knows not untilafterward, takes up each tool gropingly--sometimes even against its willand against its conscience, uses it and drops it. 

Then it sees why, suddenly, it has used it. 

Then God hands it Another One. 

CHAPTER V

THE CROWD AND TOM MANN

I dropped into the London Opera House the other night to see Tom Mann(the English Bill Heywood), another hero or crowd spy-glass that peoplehave taken up awhile--thousands of them--to see through to what theyreally want. I wanted to hear him speak, and see, if I could, why thecrowd had taken him up, and what it was they were seeing through him. 

I am apt to take a dead set at liking a man I do not agree with, if Ican. It gives one a better start in understanding him and in notagreeing with him to some purpose. 

But it was not necessary to try to like Tom Mann or to make arrangementsfor being fair to him. He came up on the platform (it was at Mr. Hyndmann's Socialist rally) in that fine manly glow of his of havingjust come out of jail (and a jail, whatever else may be said about it, is certainly a fine taking place to come out of--to blossom up out of, like a night-blooming cereus before a vast, lighted-up, uproariousaudience). It is wonderful how becoming a jail is to some people! Had Inot seen Mrs. Pethick Lawrence with the flush of Old Bailey on her cheekonly a little while before in Albert Hall?

If Tom Mann had had, like Elisha, that night, a fiery chariot at hisdisposal, and had come down, landed plump out of heaven on his audience, he could not have done half as well with it as he did with that littlegray, modest, demure Salford Jail the kind Home Secretary gave him. 

He tucked the jail under his arm, stood there silently before us in ablaze of light. Everybody clapped for five minutes. 

Then he waved the air into silence and began to speak. I found I hadcome to hear a simple-minded, thoughtless, whole-hearted, noisy, self-deceived, hopelessly sincere person. He was a mere huge pulse ormuscle of a man. All we could do was to watch him up there on theplatform (it was all so simple!) taking up the world before everybody inhis big hands and whacking on it with a great rapping and soundingbefore us all, as if it were Tommy's own little drum mother gave him. Hestood there for some fifteen minutes, I should think, making it--makingthe whole world rat-a-tat-tat to his music, to Tommy's own music, as ifit were the music of the spheres. 

Mr. Mann's gospel of hope for mankind seemed to be to have all theworkers of the world all at once refuse to work. Have the workers starveand silence a planet, and take over and confiscate the properties andplants of capital, dismiss the employers of all nations and run theearth themselves. 

 * * * * *

I sat in silence. The audience about me broke out into wild, happyappreciation. 

It acted as if it had been in the presence of a vision. It was as if, while they sat there before Tom Mann, they had seen being made, beinghammered out before them, a new world. 

I rubbed my eyes. 

It seemed to me precisely like the old one. And all the trouble fornothing. All the disaster, the proposed starvation, and panic fornothing. 

There was one single possible difference in it. 

We had had before, Pierpont Morgan, the Tom Mann of the banks, ridingastride the planet, riding it out with us--with all the rest of ushelpless on it, holding on for dear life, riding out into theBlackness. 

And now we were having instead, Tom Mann, the Pierpont Morgan of theTrades Unions, riding astride the planet, riding it out with us, withall the rest of us helpless on it, holding on for dear life, riding outinto the Blackness. 

Of course Pierpont Morgan and Tom Mann are both very useful as crowdspy-glasses for us all to see what we want through. 

But is this what we want?

Is it worth while to us, to the crowd, to all classes of us, to have ourworld turned upside down so that we can be bullied on it by one set ofmen instead of being bullied on it by another?

This is the thing that the Crowd, as it takes up one hero after theother, and looks at the world through him, is seeing next. 

Some of us have seen sooner than the others. But we are nearly all of usseeing to-day. We have stood by now these many years through strikes andrumours of strikes, and we have watched the railway hold-ups, theLawrence Mill strike, and the great English coal strike. We have seen, in a kind of dumb, hopeful astonishment, everybody about us piling intothe fray, some fighting for the rights of labour and some for the rightsof capital, and we have kept wondering if possibly a little somethingcould not be done before long, possibly next year, in behalf of thehuge, battered, helpless Public, that dear amorphous old ladylike Persondoddering along the Main Street of the World, now being knocked down byone side and now by the other. It has almost looked, some days, as ifboth sides in the quarrel--Capital and Labour, really thought that thePublic ought not to expect to be allowed to be out in the streets atall. Both sides in the contest are so sure they are right, and feel sonoble and Christian, that we know they will take care of themselves; butthe poor old Lady!--some of us wonder, in the turmoil of Civilizationand the scuffle of Christianity, what is to become of Her. 

Is it not about time that somebody appeared very soon now who will makea stand once and for all in behalf of this Dear Old Lady-Like Person?

Is it really true that no one has noticed Her and is really going tostand up for Her--for the old gentle-hearted Planet as a Whole?

We have our Tom Mann for the workers, and we have the DailyNewspaper--the Tom Mann of Capital, but where is our Tom Mann forEverybody? Where is the man who shall come boldly out to Her, into thegreat crowded highway, where the bullies of wealth have tripped up herfeet, and the bullies of poverty have thrown mud in her face, where allthe little mean herds or classes one after the other hold Her up--thescorners, and haters, and cowards, and fearers for themselves, fightingas cowards always have to fight, in herds . .. Where is the man who isgoing to climb up alone before the bullies of wealth and the bullies ofpoverty, take his stand against them all--against both sides, and darethem to touch the dear helpless old Lady again?

When this man arises--this Tom Mann for Everybody--whether he slips upinto immortality out of the crowd at his feet, and stands up againstthem in overalls or in a silk hat, he will take his stand in history asa man beside whom Napoleon and Alexander the Great will look as toys inthe childhood of the world. 

 * * * * *

We are living in a day when not only all competent-minded students ofaffairs, but the crowd itself, the very passers-by in the streets, havecome to see that the very essence of the labour problem is the problemof getting the classes to work together. And when the crowd watches thelabour leader and sees that he is not thinking correctly and cannotthink correctly of the other classes, of the consumers and theemployers, it drops him. Unless a leader has a class consciousness thatis capable of thinking of the other classes--the consumers andemployers, so shrewdly and so close to the facts that the other classes, the consumers and the employers, will be compelled to take himseriously, tolerate him, welcome him, and coöperate with him, the crowdhas come at last to recognize promptly that he is only of temporaryimportance as a leader. He is the by-product of one of the illusions oflabour. When the illusion goes he goes. 

Capital has been for some time developing its class consciousness. Labour has lately been developing in a large degree a classconsciousness. 

The most striking aspect of the present moment is that at last, in thehistory of the world, the Public is developing a class consciousness. 

The Crowd thinks. 

And as from day to day the Crowd thinks--holds up its little classheroes, its Tom Manns and Pierpont Morgans, and sees its world throughthem--it comes more and more to see implacably what it wants. 

It has been watching the Tom Mann, or Bill Heywood type of Labourleader, for some time. 

There are certain general principles with regard to labour leaders thatthe crowd has come to see by holding up its heroes and looking throughthem, at what it wants. The first great principle is that no man needsto be taken very seriously, as a competent leader of a great labourmovement who is merely thinking of the interest of his own class. 

The second general principle the Crowd has come to see, and to insistupon--when it is appealed to (as it always is, in the long run) is thatno labour leader needs to be taken very seriously or regarded as verydangerous or very useful--who believes in force. 

A labour leader who has such a poor idea that a hold-up is the only wayhe can express it--the Crowd suspects. The only labour leaders that theCrowd, or people as a whole, take seriously are those that get thingsby thinking and by making other people think. 

The Crowd wants to think. 

The Crowd wants to decide. 

And It has decided to decide by being made to think and not by beingknocked down. 

It is not precisely because the Crowd is not willing to be knocked down, and has not shown itself to be over and over again, when it thought itsbeing knocked down might possibly help in a just cause. 

But it has not been through coal strikes, Industrial Workers of theWorld, and syndicalist outbreaks for nothing. 

It is not the knocking down indulged in by labour and by capital thatthe Crowd fears. 

It is the not-thinking. 

The Crowd has noticed that the knocking-down disposition and thenot-thinking disposition go together. 

The Crowd has watched Force and Force-people, and has seen what alwayshappens after a time. 

It has come to see that people who have to get things by force and notby thinking will not be able to think of anything to do with the thingswhen they get them. 

So the Crowd does not want them to get them. 

The Crowd has learned all this even from the present owners of things. It does not want to learn them all over again from new ones. The presentowners of things have got them half by force, and that is why they onlyhalf understand how to run them. 

But they do half understand because they only half believe in force. Thecrowd has seen them get their supremacy by the use of theemployment-hold-up, or by starving or threatening to starve the workers. And now it sees the Syndicalist workers proposing to get control bystarving or threatening to starve everybody. Of the two, those whopropose to starve all the people to get their own way, and those whothreaten to starve part of the people, it has seemed to the Crowd, naturally, that those who only half believe in starving, and who onlystarve a part of us, would be likely to be more intelligent asworld-runners. 

In other words (accepting for the sake of argument the worst possibleinterpretation of the capitalist class), they have spent several yearsin learning, and have already half learned that force in industry isinefficient and cannot be made to work. 

Now when the Crowd sees the Syndicalists swinging their hats in ahundred nations, with one big hoarse hurrah around a world, with fiveminutes' experience, come rushing in, and propose to take up theworld--the whole world in two minutes more and run it in the same oldbygone way--the way that the capitalists are just giving up--byforce--it knows what it thinks. 

It thinks it will fight Class Syndicalism. It makes up its mind it willfight Class Syndicalism with Crowd Syndicalism. It has decided that, inthe interests of all of us, of a crowd civilization, of what we call theworld or Crowd Syndicate, its industries should be controlled, not bythe owners and not by the workers, but by those men, whoever they are, who can control them with the most skill and efficiency. 

The Crowd has come to see that the present owners--judging from currentevents, and taking them as a whole, and speaking impersonally andhistorically--have proved themselves, on the whole, incompetent tocontrol industries with skill and efficiency, because they have treatedlabour as the natural enemy of capital and have quarrelled with it. Itsees that the present workers, acting as syndicates or otherwise, areincompetent to own and control and manage industry because they proposeto treat capital as the natural enemy of the workers. There has been butone conclusion possible. If Civilization or the Crowd Syndicate has aright to have its industries managed in the interests of all, and ifthe present owners have proved themselves to be mentally incompetent tocontrol industry because they fight labour, and if the present labourersas a class have proved themselves to be mentally incompetent becausethey propose to fight capital, there is naturally but one question thecrowd syndicate is asking to-day, namely, _"Are there any mentallycompetent business firms at all in the world, any firms whose owners andlabourers have thought out a way of not fighting?"_ From the point ofview of the Crowd, the men who are competent, who know how to do theirwork, do not have to lay down their tools and find out all over againhow to do their work. They know it and keep doing it. 

So the Crowd keeps coming back with the question, "Are there or arethere not any competent business establishments in our modern life?Which are they, and where are they?" We want to know about them. We wantto study them. We want to focus the thought of the world on them and seehow they do it. 

The answering of this question is what the next Pierpont Morgan and thenext Tom Mann are for. 

What the next Pierpont Morgan is for is to find out for us who thecompetent employers are--the employers who can get twice as much workout of their labour as other employers do--recognize them, stand by themand put up money on them. The next Pierpont Morgan will find out alsowho the incompetent employers are, recognize them, stand out againstthem, and unless they have brains enough or can get brains enough tocoöperate with their own workmen, refuse to lend money to them. 

This would make a banker a statesman, would make banking a great andcreative profession, shaping the destinies of civilizations, determiningwith coins back and forth over a counter the prayers and the songs, thevery religions of nations, and swinging like a pendulum the fate of theworld. 

The first Pierpont Morgan has made himself, in a necessary transitionalmovement, a hero in the business world because of a certain moral energythere is in him. He has insisted in expressing his own character inbusiness. He would not send money to capitalists fighting capitalists, and in a general way he has compelled capitalists to coöperate. The newhero of the business world is going to compel capital not merely tocoöperate with capital, but to coöperate with labour and with thepublic. And as Morgan compelled the railroads of the United States tocoöperate with one another by getting money for those that showed themost genius for coöperation, and by not getting money for railroads thatshowed less genius for it, so the next Pierpont Morgan will throw theweight of his capital at critical times in favour of companies that showthe largest genius for building the mutual interests of capitalists, employees, and the public inextricably into one body. He is going torecognize as a banker that the most permanent, long-headed, practical, and competent employers are those whose business genius is essentiallysocial genius, the genius for being human, for discovering the mutualinterests of men, and for making human machinery work. 

There is a great position ahead for this hero when he comes. And I haveseen in my mind to-day thousands of men, young and old in everybusiness, in every country of the world, pressing forward to get theplace. 

It is what the next Tom Mann is for--to find out for the Trades Unionsand for the public who the most competent workmen are in every line ofbusiness, the workmen who are the least mechanical-minded, who haveshown the most brains in educating and being educated by theiremployers, the most power in touching the imaginations of theiremployers with their lives and with their work, and in coöperating withthem. 

When the next Tom Mann has searched out and found the workmen in everyline of business who are capable of working with their superiors, and ofbecoming more and more like them, he will make known to all otherworkmen and to all other Trades Unions who these workmen are, and howthey have managed to do it. He will see that all Trades Unions areinformed, in night-schools and otherwise, how they have done it. He willsee that the principles, motives, and conditions that these men haveemployed in making themselves more like their superiors, in makingthemselves more and more fit to take the place of their superiors, inmaking their work a daily, creative, spirited part of a great business, are made so familiar to all Trades Unions that the policies of all ourlabour organizations everywhere shall change and shall be infected witha new spirit; and labouring men, instead of going to their shops theworld over, to spend nine hours a day in fighting the business in whichthey are engaged, to spend nine hours a day in trying to get themselvesnothing to do, nine hours a day in getting nobody to want to employthem, will work the way they would like to work, and the way they wouldall work to-morrow morning if they knew the things about capital andabout labour that they have a right to know, and that only incompetentemployers and incompetent labor leaders year by year have kept them fromknowing. 

CHAPTER VI

AN OPENING FOR THE NEXT PIERPONT MORGAN

Christ said once, "He that is greatest among you let him be yourservant. "

Most people have taken it as if He had said:

"He that is greatest among you let him be your valet. 

"He that is greatest among you let him be your butler. 

"He that is greatest among you let him be your hostler, porter, footman. "

They cling to a mediæval Morality-Play, Servant-in-the-House idea, akind of head-waiter idea of what Christ meant. 

This seems to some of us a literal-minded, Western way of interpretingan Oriental metaphor. We do not believe that Christ meant servanthood. It seems to us that He meant something deeper, that He meant service;that He might have said as well:

"He that is greatest among you let him be your Duke of Wellington. 

"He that is greatest among you let him be your Lincoln. 

"He that is greatest among you let him be your Edison, your Marconi. "

At all events, it is extremely unlikely that He meant looking and actinglike a servant. 

He meant really being one, whether one looked like a servant or not. Iflooking independent and being independent makes the service better, ifdefying the appearance of a servant makes the service more efficient, webelieve the appearance should be defied. 

It troubles us when we see the Czar of Russia in the presence of thecivilized world, once a year taking such great pains to look like aservant and to wash his peasants' feet. 

We are not willing, if we ever have any relations with the public, to beCzars and look like servants. 

We would prefer to look like czars and be servants. 

We are inclined to believe that no man who is rendering his utmostservice to the crowd ever thinks in the ordinary servant sense of beingobedient to it. He is thinking of his service, and of its being the mosthigh and perfect and most complete thing that he can render--the thingthat he, out of all men, could think of and do, and that the crowd wouldwant him to do. He is busy in being obedient to the crowd, in fulfillingdaily its spirit, and not in taking orders from it. 

The reason that the larger number of men who go into politics to-day areinefficient and do not get the things done that crowds want, is thatthey are the kind of men who feel that they must talk and act likeservants. Even the most independent-looking and efficient men, who lookas if they really saw something and had something to give, often provedisappointing. When one comes to know a man of this type moreintimately, one is apt to find that he is really a flunkey in histhoughts; that he feels hired in his mind; that he is the valet of acrowd, and often, too, the valet of some particular crowd--some little, safe, shut-in crowd, party, or special interest that wants to own, or tokeep, or to take away a world. 

Whichever way to-day one looks, one finds this illusion as to what apublic servant really is, for the moment, corrupting our public life. 

But Christ did not say, "He that is greatest among you, let him be yourvalet. "

The man who is greatest among us, neither in this age nor in any other, ever will or ever can be a valet. He faces the crowd the way Christdid--with his life, with his soul, with his God. 

He will not be afraid of the Crowd. .. . 

He will be the Greatest, he will be a Servant. 

In the meantime--in the hour of the valets, only the little crowds, speak. The People wait. 

The Crowd is dumb, massive, and silent. There seems to be no one in theworld to express it, to express its indomitable desire, its prayer, tolay at last its huge, terrible, beautiful will upon the earth. 

It is the classes or little crowds--the little pulling and pushing, helpless, lonely, mean, separated crowds--blind, hateful, and afraid, who are running about trying to lay their little wills upon the earth. 

The Crowd waits and is not afraid. 

The little, separated crowds are afraid. 

The world, for the moment, is being interpreted, expressed, and managedby People Who Are Afraid. 

It is the same in all the nations. In the coal strike in England onefinds the miners in the trades unions afraid to vote except in secretbecause they are afraid of one another. One finds the miners' leadersafraid of the men under them and of what they might do, so that theyhave no policy except to fight. One finds the miners' leaders afraid ofthe mine-managers and of what they might do, so that they have no policyexcept to fight. One finds the mine-managers afraid of one another, afraid of their stockholders, afraid of the miners' leaders, and afraidof the newspapers and afraid of the Government. 

One finds the Government afraid of everybody. 

Everybody is afraid of the Government. 

Everybody fights because everybody is afraid. 

And everybody is afraid because everybody sees that it is mere crowdsthat are running the world. 

There is another reason why everybody is afraid. Everybody is afraidbecause everybody is shut in with some little separated crowd. 

People who are never Outside, who only see a little way out over theedge of the little crowd in which they are penned up, are naturallyafraid. 

A world that is run by little shut-in crowds is necessarily a world thatis run by People Who Are Afraid. 

And so now we have come to the fulness of the time. The cities and thenations, the prairies, and the seas and the mines, the very skies aboutus can be seen by all to-day to be full of a dull groping and of a greatasking, "_Who Are The Men Who Are not Afraid?_"

The moment these men appear who are not afraid, and it is seen by allthat they are not afraid, the world (and all the little blind, helplesscrowds in it) will be placed in their hands. 

CHAPTER VII

AN OPENING FOR THE NEXT TOM MANN

I am aware that Tom Mann is not a world figure. But he is a world type. And as the editor of the _Syndicalist_, the leader of the most imposingand revealing labour rally the world has seen, he is of universalinterest. Those of us who believe in crowds are deeply interested infinding, recognizing, creating, and in seeing set free out of the ranksof men the labour leaders who shall express the nobility and dignity ofmodern labour, who shall express the bigness of spirit, thebrawny-heartedness, the composure, the common-sense, the patriotism, thefaithfulness and courage of the People. 

I indict Tom Mann before the bar of the world as not expressing the willand the spirit of the People. 

I do this as a labouring man. I decline, because I spend my time dailytracing out little crooked lines on paper with a pen, because I havewrought day and night to make little patterns of ink and littlestretches of words reach men together round a world, because I havesweat blood to believe, because in weariness and sorrow I have wroughtout at last my little faith for a world . .. I decline not to be numberedwith the labourers I see in the streets. I claim my right before all menthis day, with my unbent body and with my unsoiled hands, to be enrolledamong the toilers of the earth. 

I speak as a labouring man. I say Tom Mann is incompetent as a trueleader of Labour. 

The first reason that he is incompetent is that he does not observefacts. He merely observes facts that everybody can see, that everybodyhas seen for years. He does not observe the new and exceptional factsabout capital that only a few can see, the seeing of which, and theseeing of which first, should alone ever constitute a man a true leaderin dealing with capital. He merely believes facts that nearly everybodyhas caught up to believing--facts about human nature, about what worksin business. The crowd is not content with this. It has becomeaccustomed to seeing that the men who lead in business, and who makeothers follow them, whether masters or workmen, are men who do it byobserving certain new and exceptional facts and acting upon them. Ifthese men cannot observe them, we have seen them create them. It is themen who make new things true wherever they go that the crowd is comingto recognize and to take seriously and permanently as the real leadersof Labour and of Capital to-day. Tom Mann is incompetent as a labourleader in dealing with capital to-day, because the things that heproposes to do all turn on three facts which, looked at on the outside, merely have or might be said to have a true look:

First, employers are all alike;

Second, none of them ever work;

Third, they are all the enemies of Labour. 

Tom Mann is incompetent to grapple with Capital in behalf of Labour asany great labour leader would have to do, because he has his facts wrongabout Capital, is simple-minded and rudimentary and undiscriminatingabout the men with whom he deals, and sees them all alike. 

This is a poor beginning even for fighting with them. 

The second reason that Tom Mann is incompetent is, not that he has hisfacts wrong and does not think, but that he carries not-thinking aboutthe employing class still further, has come to make a kind of religionout of not-thinking about them. And instead of thinking how to makelabouring men think better than their employers think, and making themthink so well that they can crowd their way into their employers'places, he proposes to have labour get into their places withoutthinking, and run a world without thinking. All that is necessary inorder to have workmen run the world, is to get workmen to stop working, to stop thinking, and then as rapidly as possible to get everybody elseto stop thinking. Then the world will fall into their hands. 

The third reason that Tom Mann is incompetent is that he is unpracticaland full of scorn. And scorn, from the point of view of thepractical-minded man, is a sentimental and useless emotion. We havelearned that it almost always has to be used by a man who has his factswrong, that is, who does not see what he himself is really like, and whohas not noticed what other people are really like. No man who seeshimself as he is, feels at liberty to use scorn. And no man who seesothers as they are, sees any occasion for it. Tom Mann uses hate also, and hate has been found to be, as directed toward classes of persons asa means of getting them to do things, archaic and inefficient. It is notquite bright. It need not be denied that hate and scorn both impresssome people, but they never seem to impress the people that see thingsto do and who find ways to do them. And the people who use scorn are alltoo narrow, too class-bound, and too self-regarding to do things in ahuge world problem like the present one. 

The fourth reason that Tom Mann as a labour leader is incompetent isthat he is afraid; he is afraid of capital, so afraid that he has tofight it instead of grappling with it and coöperating with it. He isafraid to believe in labour--so afraid that he takes orders from itinstead of seeing for it, and seeing ahead for it. He is afraid of hisemployers' brains, of their having brains enough to understand and to tobe convinced as to the position of the labourer. He is afraid to believein his own brains, in his own brains being good enough to convince them. 

So he backs down and fights. 

If any reader who is interested to do so will kindly turn back at thispoint a page or so, and read this chapter we have just gone throughtogether, over again, and if he will kindly, wherever it occurs, insertfor Tom Mann, labour leader, "D. A. Thomas, leader of mine-owners, " hewill save much time for both of us, and he will kindly make one chapterin this book which is already much too long, as good as two. Tom Mann(unless he is changed) is about to be dropped as a typical modern leaderof Labour because he is afraid, and what he expresses in the labouringclass is its fear of Capital. 

And what D. A. Thomas expresses for Capital is its fear of Labour. 

There are thousands of capitalists and hundreds of thousands of labourmen who have something better they want expressed by their leaders, thantheir Fear. 

Out of these men the new leaders will be chosen. 

CHAPTER VIII

THE MEN WHO LOOK

During the recent coal strike in England, as at all times in the world, heroes abounded. 

The trouble with most of us during the coal strike was not in our nothaving heroes, but in our not being quite sure which they were. 

Davy McEwen, a miner who stood out against the whole countryside, andwent to his work every day in defiance of thousands of men on the hillsabout him trying to stop him, and hundreds of thousands of men all overEngland trying to scare him, was not a hero to Mr. Josiah Wedgewood. Mr. Josiah Wedgewood one day in the height of the conflict, from his seat inthe House of Commons, rose in his might--and before the face of thenation called Davy McEwen a traitor to his class. 

Sir Arthur Markham, one of the largest of the mine-owners, in the heightof the conflict between the mine-owners and the miners over wages, rosein the House and declared that, in his opinion as a mine-owner, themine-owners were wrong and the miners were right, and that themine-owners could afford to pay better wages, and should yield to themen. 

He was called a traitor to his class. 

At the last moment in the coal strike, when the Government had done itsbest, and when the labour leaders still proposed to hold up England anddefy the Government until they got their way, Stephen Walsh, one of theleaders of the miners, stood up in the face of a million miners and saidhe would not go on with the others against the Government. "It is nowtime for the trades union men to return to work. We have done what wecould. Our citizenship should be higher than our trades unionship, andwith me, as long as I am a trades union man, it will be. "

He was called a traitor to his class. 

I am an unwilling and unfit person, as a sojourner and an American, totake any position on the merits of the question as to thedisestablishment of the Church in Wales. But when I saw Bishop Gorestanding up and looking unblinkingly at facts or what he thought werefacts which he would rather not have seen and which were not on hisside, and when I saw him voting deliberately for the disestablishment ofhis own Church, I greeted with joy, as if I had seen a cathedral, another traitor to his class. I almost believe that a Church that couldproduce and supply a man like this for a great nation looking throughevery city and county year by year for men to go with it . .. A Churchthat could produce and keep producing Bishop Gores, would be entitled, from a great nation to anything it liked. 

 * * * * *

Men seem to be capable of three stages of courage. Courage is graded tothe man. 

There is the man who is so tired, or mechanical-minded, that he can onlythink of himself. 

There is the man who is so tired that he can only think of his class. 

And there is the man that one has watched being moved over slowly from aMe-man into a Class-man, who has begun to show the first faintbeginnings of being a Crowd-man. 

One man has courage for himself because he knows what he wants forhimself. Another has courage for his class because he knows what hewants for his class. Another has courage for God and for the worldbecause there are things he sees that he wants for God and for theworld, and he sees them so clearly that he sees ways to get them. 

Lack of courage is a lack of vision or clear-headedness about what onewants. I do not know, but I can only say that it has seemed to me thatBishop Gore has a vision or clear-headedness about what he wants fordemocracy, and that he uses his vision of what he wants for democracy totrue his vision for his class. Perhaps also he has a vision for hisclass for the church people that it is for the interest church people tobe the class that is, out of all the world, supremely considerate, big, leisurely, unfretful in its dealings with others. Perhaps also he has avision for himself and is clear-headed for himself, and has seen thatthough the steeples fall about him, and though the altars go up insmoke, he will keep the spirit of God still within his reach. Thegentleness, the grim hope for the world and the patience that built thecathedrals, shall be in his heart day and night. 

I hold no brief for Bishop Gore. 

I know there must be others like him who voted on the other side. 

I know there are hundreds of thousands of employers who in their heartsare like him. I know there are hundreds of thousands of men in thetrades unions who are like him. 

I am not sure that Bishop Gore, on the merits of the case, was right. Iwish this day I knew that he was wrong. I wish that I had spent the lastsix months in fighting him, in fighting against his vision, that I mightbe more free to-day to point to him with joy when I go up and down thestreets with men and look at the churches with men--the rows ofchurches--and try to tell them what they are for. I have seen that thecathedrals scattered about under the sky in England are but God's littletools to make great cities on the earth, and to build softly out of thehearts of men and women men who shall be cathedrals too--men buttressedagainst the world, men who can stand alone. 

And it has seemed to me that Tom Mann and D. A. Thomas are incompetent asleaders of industry because they do not see that Labour is full of menwho can do things like this. I am proud, over in my country across thesea, to be cousin to a nation that is still the headquarters--theinternational citadel--of individualism upon the earth. The world knowsif England does not, that this kind of individualism is the mostcharacteristic, the most mighty and impregnable Dreadnought against thatEngland has produced. 

But England knows it too. 

I have seen thousands of men in England in their dull brown clothes passby me in the street who know and respond to the spirit that is in BishopGore, and who have the courage to show it themselves. And the vision isin them, but it is not waked. The moment it is waked we will have a newworld. It is because Tom Mann and D. A. Thomas are not leaders of men whohave this spirit that they are about to be dropped as typical leaders ofLabour and Capital in modern times. No man will be accepted by the Crowdto-day as a competent leader of his class who is afraid of the otherclasses. No man will be said to be a true leader, to be competent tomake things move in the world, who does not have three gears of courage:courage for himself, courage for his own people, courage for otherpeople; and who does not dare to deal with other people as if theyreally might be dealt with, after all, as fellow human beings capable ofacting like fellow human beings, capable of finer and of truer things, of more manly and patient, more shrewdly generous, more far-sightedthings, than might appear at first. 

 * * * * *

Was Mr. Josiah Wedgewood right when he called Davy McEwen a traitor tohis class?

I do not want to judge Davy McEwen. Such things are matters of personalinterpretation, and of standing with a man face to face for a moment andlooking him in the eyes. 

Of course, if I had done this, I might have been tempted and despisedhim. 

And I might now. The thing that I would have tried to look down throughto in him, if I had looked him in the eye, would have been somethinglike this: "Are you or are you not, Davy McEwen, standing out day afterday against your class because you can see less than your class sees, because you are a mere me-man? Do you go by here grimly day by day, pastall these people lined up on the hills, sternly thinking of yourself?"

If I found that this was true, as it might well be, and often is, Iwould say that Davy McEwen was a traitor to his class. But if I foundDavy McEwen going past hills-ful of workmen because he had a larger, fairer vision of what his class is than they had, if it proved to betrue that the crowd-man in him was keeping the class-man in place, andholding true his vision for his class, I would say that it was his classthat was being a traitor to him; I would say that sooner or later hisclass would see in some quiet day that it had been a traitor to him andto the world, and a traitor to itself. 

 * * * * *

If socialism and individualism cannot work together, and if (like themasculine and feminine in spirit) each cannot make itself the means andthe method of fulfilling the other, there is no reason why either ofthem should be fulfilled. 

In the meantime, there is a kind of self-will that seems to me, as itsshadow comes across my path, like God himself walking on the earth. AndI have seen it in the rich and I have seen it in the poor, and in peoplewho were being wrong and in people who were being right. 

It is like hearing great bells in the dark, singing in the solemn nightto so much as hear of a man somewhere, I might go and see, who standsalone. 

If we want to stand together, let us begin with these men who can standalone. 

There is a sense in which Christ died on the cross because He couldfind at the time no other way of saying this. There is a sense in whichthe decline of individualism is what he died for. 

Or we might call it the beginning of individualism. He died for theprinciple of doing what he thought was right before anybody else did it, and whether anybody else did it or not. The self-will of Jesus was halfthe New Testament. He crucified himself, his mother, and a dozendisciples that His own vision for all might be fulfilled. Socialismitself, what is good in it, would not exist to-day if Jesus, the Christ, had not practised socialism, in the best sense, by being anindividualist. 

If we are going to get to socialism by giving up individualism, byabolishing heroes, why get to it?

This more glorious self-will is not, of course, of a kind that all mencan expect to have. Most of us have not the vision that equips us, andthat gives us the right, to have it. But we can exact of our leadersthat they shall have it--that they shall see more for us than we can seefor ourselves, that they shall hold their vision up before us and let ussee it, and let us have the use of it, that they shall be true to us, that they shall be the big brothers of the people. 

CHAPTER IX

RULES FOR TELLING A HERO--WHEN ONE SEES ONE

I have sometimes hoped that the modern world was about to produce atlast some man somewhere with a big-hearted, easy powerful mind, whocould protect the French Revolution. What we need most of all just nowin our present crisis is some man who could take up the FrenchRevolution without half trying, all the world looking on and wonderingsoftly how he dares to do it, and put it gently but firmly, and once forall, up high somewhere where no one except geniuses, or at least thevery tallest-minded people, could ever again get at it. 

As it is, hardly a day passes but one sees new little nobodieseverywhere all about one reaching up without half thinking to it--to theFrench Revolution--grabbing it calmly, and then using it deliberatelybefore our eyes as a general free-for-all analogy for anything thatcomes into their heads. The Syndicalists and Industrial Workers of theWorld have had the use of it last. The fact that the French Revolutionwas French and that it worked fairly well a hundred years ago and with aLouis Sixteenth sort of person, and as a kind of first rough sketch, ordraft of just what a revolution might be for once, and what it wouldhave to get over being afterward, as soon as possible, never seems tohave occurred to many people. One sees them rushing about the worldtrying to get up exact duplicates, little fussy replicas of arevolution, and of a kind of revolution that the real world put quietlyaway in the attic seventy years ago. The real world, and all the men init who are facing real facts to-day, are getting what they want inprecisely the opposite of the violent, theatrical French-Revolutionway. The fact that people are quite different now, and that it is moreeffective and practical to get new ideas into their heads by keepingtheir heads on than it is by taking their heads off--some of us seem tohave passed over. Living as we do in a world to-day with our newexplosives, our new antiseptics, our new biology, bacteriology, our newstorage batteries, our habit of getting everything we get and changingeverything we change by quietly and coolly looking at facts, the oldlumbering fashion of having a beautiful, showy, emotional revolution nowon one side, and then waiting to have another beautiful, showy, emotional revolution on the other, each oscillating back and forth yearby year until people finally settle down, look at facts together, becomescientific, and see things as they are--has gone by. We have not timefor revolutions nowadays. They may be amusing, but they are notpractical, and evolution or revolution-without-knowing-it, or evolutionall together, suit us better. We are in a world in which we are seeingmen almost being made over before our eyes by the scientific habit ofthought--by the new, slow, imperious way we have come to have of makingourselves look at things at which we would rather not look, until we seethem as they are. The man of scientific spirit, the quiet-minded, implacable man who gets what he wants for himself and for others bymerely turning on the light, who makes a new world for us by justshowing us more plainly the one we really have, possesses the earth. 

There is no reason why revolutionists should feel that they areparticularly courageous, that they are the particularly high-minded, romantic, adventurous, uncompromising and superior people. The realadventure, the abiding emotion and wonder of living in the twentiethcentury, lies in the high, patient, slow, quiet, silent enterprise ofseeing facts as they are, and without any fuss, and inexorably and withgood cheer, acting on them. The human race has a new temperament. Theway to fight now is to look, to look first, to look longest, and tolook for the most people. The way we win a revolution or bring theenemy to terms to-day is by battering the enemy with coöperation, withunderstanding him and being understood by him, by being impregnably, obstinately his brother, by piling up huge happy citadels of good-will, of services rendered, services deserved, and services returned. We hadan idea once that the way to conquer a man was by hitting the outside ofhim. We conquer men now by getting inside of them, and by getting insidefirst and then dealing with outside things together. 

We see the inside. It is the modern note to see the inside, to attackthe essence, the spirit, and to work everything out from that. 

The modern method of being courageous and of defending what we want is akind of chemistry. 

Hercules is a bust now. 

We prefer still little women like Madame Curie, or a man like Sir JosephLister, or like Wilbur Wright--the courage that faces material facts, that deals with the elements of things, whether in a bottle, or in theheaven above us, or in the earth, or in a man, or in an enemy. 

When the subject-matter is human nature and the courage we have to haveis the courage that can deal with people, we ask ourselves: "What arethe most difficult facts to face in people?"

They are:

 The facts about how they are different from us. The facts about their being like us. The facts as to what we can do about it. 

So it has come to seem to me to be the greatest, the most typical anddifficult courage of modern life and of a crowd civilization, thecourage to look at actual facts in people and to see how the people canbe made to go together. 

A man's courage is his sense of identity. 

A man's courage toward nature, heat, cold, mountains, seas, deserts, chemistry, geology, is his sense of identity with God and of his rightto share with God in the creating of His world. 

His courage toward people is his sense of identity with men who seemdifferent from him, of all races, all classes, and all nations. He seesthe differences in their big relations alongside the resemblances. Thenhe fits the differences into the resemblances and knows what to do. 

There is a statue of Sir George Livesey, one of the early presidents ofthe South Metropolitan Gas Company, placed at the entrance of the workswhere thousands of workmen day and night pass in and pass out. 

Sir George Livesey was the man who, in the early days of the SouthMetropolitan Gas Company, stood out against all his workmen, for sixlong weeks, to get the workmen to believe that they were as good as hewas. He believed that they were capable, or should be capable, of beingidentified with him and working with him as partners, of sharing in thedirection of the business, of sharing in the profits, and coöperatingall day, every day, with him and the other partners, to make thebusiness a success. 

He did not propose to be locked up in a business, if he could help it, with men who did not feel identified with him, who were not hispartners, or who did not want to be. 

He thought it was not good business to engage five thousand men and paythem deliberately so much a day to fight his business on the inside ofthe works. Being obliged to do his business as a fight against peoplewho helped him all the time, watching and outwitting them as if he weredealing with five thousand intelligent gorillas instead of with fellowhuman beings, did not interest him. 

He did not believe that the men themselves, in spite of the way theytalked, when they came to think of it, really enjoyed being intelligentgorillas, any more than he did. 

The Trades Unions passed a resolution that it was safer for the men indealing with Sir George Livesey to keep on being gorillas. 

Sir George Livesey proposed that they should all try being fellow humanbeings and being in partnership for a little while and see how itworked. 

The Trades Unions were afraid to let them try. Even if it worked verywell, and if it turned out that being men was safer, in this oneparticular case, than being gorillas, it would set a bad example, theTrades Unions thought. They took the ground that it was safer to haveall men treated alike, whether they were gorillas or not. 

They instructed the men to strike. The South Metropolitan Gas Companywas almost closed up, but it did not yield. 

Sir George Livesey took the ground that if the Trades Unions believedthat his men were not good enough for him, and that he was not goodenough for his men, he would wait until they did. 

The bronze statue of Sir George Livesey that the men have raised, andthat thousands of men go by every day, day after day, and look up to attheir work, was raised to a man who had stood out against his workmenfor weeks to prove that they were as good as he was, and could betrusted to be loyal to him, and that he was as good as they were, andthat he could be trusted to be loyal to them. 

He had the courage to insist on being, whether anybody wanted it for themoment or not, a new kind and new size of man. He preferred beingallowed to be a new kind and new size himself, and he preferred allowinghis men to be new kinds and new sizes of men, and he made a shrewd, dogged guess that when they tried it they would like it. They weremerely afraid to be new sizes, as we all are at first. 

 * * * * *

There are possibly three ways in which, in the confusion of our modernworld, one can tell a hero when one sees one. 

One knows a hero first by his originality. He invents a new kind and newsize of man. He finishes off one sample. There he is. 

The next thing one notices about this man (when he is invented) is hishumility. He never seems to feel--having invented himself--how originalhe is. The more original people think he is, and the more they try toset him one side as an exception, the more he resents it. 

And then, of course, the final way one knows a man is a hero is alwaysby his courage, by his masterful way of driving through, when he meets aman, to his sense of identity with him. 

One always sees a hero going about quietly everywhere, treating everyother man as if he were a hero too. 

He gets so in the habit, from day to day (living with himself), ofbelieving in human nature, that when he finds himself suddenly upagainst other people he cannot stop. 

It is not that he is deceived about the other people, though it mightseem so sometimes. He merely sees further into them and further forthem. 

Has he not invented himself? Is he not at this very moment a better kindof man than he thought he could be once? Is he not going to be a betterkind to-morrow than he is now?

So, quietly, he keeps on year by year and day by day, treating otherpeople as if they were, or were meant to be, the same kind of man thathe is, until they are. 

CHAPTER X

WHO IS AFRAID?

When Christ turned the other cheek, the last thing He would have wantedany one to think was that He was backing down, or that He was merelybeing a sweet, gentle, grieved person. He was inventing beforeeverybody, and before His enemies, promptly and with great presence ofmind, a new kind and new size of man. It was a more spirited, moreoriginal, more unconquerable and bewildering way of fighting thananybody had thought of before. To be suddenly in an enemy's presence anew kind and new size of man--colossal, baffling--to turn intoinvisibility before him, into intangibility, into another kind of beingbefore the enemy's eyes, so that he could not possibly tell what to do, and so that none of the things that he had thought of to do wouldwork. .. . This is what Christ was doing, it seems to some of us, and itis apparently the way He felt about it when He did it. 

Turning the other cheek is a kind of moral jiu-jitsu. 

 * * * * *

The last thing that many of us who are interested in the modern worldreally want is to have war, or fighting, stop. We glory in courage, inthe power of facing danger, in adventuresomeness of spirit, in everysingle one of the qualities that always have made, and always will make, every true man a fighter. 

We contend that fighting, as at present conducted, is based on fear andlazy-mindedness; that it is lacking in the manlier qualities, that thebiggest and newest kind of men are not willing to be in it, and that itdoes not work. 

We would rather see the world abolished than to see war abolished. 

We want to see war brought up to date. 

The best way to fight was invented some two thousand years ago, and theinnocent, conventional persons who still believe in a kind of routine, or humdrum, of shooting, who have not caught up with thistwo-thousand-year-old invention, are about to be irrevocably displacedin our modern life by men who have a livelier, more far-seeing, morepractical, more modern kind of courage. From this time on we have madeup our minds, we, the people of this world, that the only men we aregoing to allow to fight for us are the men who can fight the way Christdid. 

Men who have not the courage to fight the way Christ did are about to beshut up by society; no one will harm them, of course, innocent, afraidpersons, who have to protect themselves with gunpowder, but they willmerely be set one side after this, where they will not be in a positionto spoil the fighting of the men who are not afraid. 

And who are the men who are not afraid?

To search your enemy's heart, to amputate, as by a kind of spiritualsurgery, the very desire for fighting in him, to untangle his own lifebefore his eyes and suddenly make him see what it is he really wants, tohave him standing there quietly, radiantly disarmed, gentle-hearted, andlike a child before you; if you are able, Gentle Reader, or ever havebeen able, to do this, you are not afraid! Why should any one ever havesupposed that it takes a backing down, giving up, teary, weak, andgrieved person to do this?

Christ expressed His idea of courage very mildly when He said, ineffect: "Blessed are those who dare to be meek, for they shall inheritthe earth. "

It takes a bolder front to step up to a man one knows is one's enemyand coöperate with him than it does to do a little, simple, thoughtless, outside thing like stepping up to him and knocking him down. 

Coöperating with a man in spite of him, moving over to where he is, winning a victory over him by getting at his most rooted, mostprotected, secret, instinctive feelings, literally striking him throughto the heart and making a new kind of man out of him before his owneyes, by being a new kind of man to him, takes a bigger, stillercourage, is a more exposed and dangerous thing to do than to fall on himand fight him. 

It is also more practical. The one cool, practical, hard-headed way towin a victory over an enemy is to do the thing that makes him the mostafraid. And there is no man people are more afraid of than the man whostands up to them, quietly looks at them, and will not fight with them. He is doing the one thing of all others to them that they would not dareto do. They wonder what such a man thinks. If he dares stand up beforethem and face them with nothing but thinking, what is he thinking?

What he thinks, if it makes him able to do a thing like this, must havesome man-stuff in it. They prefer to wait and see what he thinks. 

Courage consists in not being afraid of one's own mind and of otherpeople's minds. When men become so afraid of one another's minds and oftheir own minds that they cannot think, they have to back down andfight. They are cowards. 

They do not know what they think. 

They do not know what they want. 

CHAPTER XI

THE TECHNIQUE OF COURAGE

I have never known a coward. 

I have known men who did cowardly things and who were capable ofcowardly thoughts, but I have never known a man who could be fairly andfinally classified as a coward. 

Courage is a process. 

If people are cowards it is because they are in a hurry. 

They have not taken the pains to see what they think. 

The man who has taken the time to think down through to what he reallywants and to what he is bound to get, is always (and sometimes verysuddenly and unexpectedly) a courageous man. 

It is the man who is half wondering whether he really wants what hethinks he wants or not, or whether he can get it or not, who is acoward. 

The coward is a half man. He is slovenly minded about himself. He getsout of the hard work of seeing through himself, of driving on throughwhat he supposes he wants, to what he knows he wants. 

So, after all, it is a long, slow, patient pull, being a courageous man. Few men have the nerve to take the time to attend to it. 

The first part of courage consists in all this hard work one has to putin on one's soul day after day, and over and over again, doggedly, goingback to it. _What is it that I really want?_

The second, or more brilliant-looking part of courage, the courageousact itself (like Roosevelt's when he is shot), which everybody notices, is easy. The real courage is over then. 

Courage consists in seeing so clearly something that one wants to getthat one is more afraid of not getting it than one is of anything thatcan get in the way. 

The first thing that society is ever able to do with the lowest type oflabouring man seems to be to get him to want something. It has to thinkout ways of getting him waked up, of getting him to be decently selfish, and to want something for himself. He only wants a little at first; hewants something for himself to-day and he has courage for to-day. Thenperhaps he wants something for himself for to-morrow, or next week, ornext year, and he has courage for next week, or for next year. Then hewants something for his family, or for his wife, and he has courage forhis family, or for his wife. 

Gradually he sees further and wants something for his class. His couragemounts up by leaps and bounds when he is liberated into his class. Thenhe discovers the implacable mutual interest of his class with the otherclasses, and he thinks of things he wants for all the classes. He thinksthe classes together into a world, and becomes a man. He has courage forthe world. 

When men see, whether they are rich or poor, what they want, what theybelieve they can get, they are not afraid. 

The next great work of the best employers is to get labour to wantenough. Labour is tired and mechanical-minded. The next work of thebetter class of labourer, or the stronger kind of Trades Union, is toget capital to want enough. Capital is tired, too. It does not seereally big, worth-while things that can be done with capital, and has nocourage for these things. 

The larger the range and the larger the variety of social desire thegreater the courage. 

The problem in modern industry is the arousing of the imaginations ofcapitalists and labourers so that they see something that gives themcourage for themselves and for one another, and courage for the world. 

The world belongs to the men of vision--the men who are not afraid--themen who see things that they have made up their minds to get. 

Who are the men to-day, in all walks of life, who want the most thingsfor the most people, and who have made up their minds to get them?

There is just one man we will follow to-day--those of us who belong tothe crowd--the man who is alive all over, who is deeply and gloriouslycovetous, the man who sees things he wants for himself, and whotherefore has courage for himself, and who sees things he wants and isbound to get for other people, and who therefore has courage for otherpeople. 

This is the hardest kind of courage to have--courage for other people. 

CHAPTER XII

THE MEN WHO WANT THINGS

During the coal strike I took up my morning paper and read from a speechby Vernon Hartshorn, the miners' leader: "In a week's time, by tying upthe railways and other means of transportation, we could so paralyze thecountry that the government would come to us on their knees and beg usto go to work on terms they are now flouting as impossible. "

During the dockers' strike I took up my morning paper and read BenTillett's speech, at the meeting the day before, to fifty thousandstrikers on Tower Hill. "'I am going to ask you to join me in a prayer, 'Tillett said. 'Lord Devonport has contributed to the murder, bystarvation, of your children, your women, and your men. I am not goingto ask you to do it, but I am going to call on God to strike LordDevonport dead, ' He asked those who were prepared to repeat the 'prayer'to hold up their hands. Countless hands were held up, and cries: 'Strikehim doubly stone dead!' The men then repeated the following 'prayer', word for word, after Tillett:

 "'O God, strike Lord Devonport dead. '

"Afterward the strikers chanted the words: 'He shall die! He shalldie!'"

There are times when it is very hard to have courage for other people. 

It is when one watches people doing cowardly things that one finds ithardest to have courage for them. 

I felt the same way both mornings at first when I held my paper in myhand and thought about what I had read, about the government's goingdown on its knees, and about God's striking Lord Devonport dead. 

The first feeling was one of profound resentment, shame--a huge, helpless, muddle-headed anger. 

I had not the slightest trace of courage for the miners; I did not seehow the government could have any courage for them. And I had no couragefor the dockers, or for what could be expected of the dockers. I did notsee how Lord Devonport could have any courage for them. 

I repeated their prayer to myself. 

The dockers were cowards. I was not going to try to sympathize withthem, or try to be reasonable about them. It was nothing that they weredesperate and had prayed. Was I not desperate too? Would not the verythought that fifty thousand men could pray a prayer like that make anyman desperate? It was as if I had stood and heard fifty thousand beastsroaring to their god. 

"They are desperate, " I said to myself: "I will not take what they thinkseriously. It does not matter what desperate people think. "

Then I waited a minute. "But I am desperate, too, " I said; "I must nottake what I think seriously. It does not matter what desperate peoplethink. "

I thought about this a little, and drove it in. 

"What I think will matter more a little later, perhaps, when I get overbeing desperate. "

"Perhaps what the dockers think will matter more a little later, too. "

In the meantime are not their scared and hateful opinions as good as myscared and hateful opinions?

The important and final opinions, the ones to be taken seriously, thatcan be acted on, will be the opinions of those who get over being scaredand hateful first. 

Then I stood up for myself. 

I had a reason for being scared and hateful. They and their prayer droveme to be scared and hateful. 

I thought again. 

Perhaps they had a reason, too. 

Then it all came over me. I became a human being all in a minute when Ithought of it. 

I became suddenly full of courage for the hateful dockers. 

I thought how much more discouraging it would be if they had not beenhateful at all. 

 * * * * *

I do not imagine God was sorry when He heard those fifty thousanddockers asking Him to strike Lord Devonport dead. 

Not that He would have approved of it. 

It was not the last word of wisdom or reasonableness. It was lacking inbeauty and distinction as a petition, as being just the right form ofprayer for those fifty thousand faultless dockers up on Tower Hill thatafternoon (the whole of London listening, in that shocked and proper waythat London has). 

But I have not lost all courage for the dockers who made it. 

They still want something! They still are men! They still stand up whenthey speak to Heaven! There is some stuff in them yet! They make heavenand earth ring to get a word with God!

This all means something to God, probably. 

Perhaps it might mean something to us. 

We are superior persons, it is true. We do not pray the way they pray. 

We believe in being more self-controlled. We take our breakfastsquietly, and with high collars and silk hats, and with gilt prayer-bookswe go into the presence of our Maker. We believe in being calm andreasonable. 

But if men who have not enough to eat are so half-dead and so worthlessthat they can feel calm and reasonable about it, and can always beprecisely right and always say precisely the right thing--if, with theirwives fainting in their arms and their babies crying for food, all thatthose dockers had character enough to do, up on Tower Hill, was to makea polite, smooth, Anglican prayer to God--a prayer like a kind ofblessing before not having any meat, and not that awful, fateful, huskycry to Heaven, a roar or rending of their hearts up to the black andempty sky--what would such men have been good for? What hope or couragecould any one have for them, for such men at such a time, if they wouldnot, if they could not, come thundering and breaking into His presence, fifty thousand strong, to get what they want?

I may not know God, but whatever else He is, I feel sure that He is nota precise stickler-god, that He is not pompous about spiritual manners, a huge, literal-minded, Proper Person, who cannot make allowances forhuman nature, who cannot hear what humble, rough men like these, hewingtheir vast desires for Him out of darkness, and out of little foolishwords, are trying to say to Him. 

And perhaps we, too, do not need to be literal-minded about a prayerthat we may hear, or that we may overhear, roaring its way up past oursmooth, beautiful lives rudely to Heaven. 

What is the gist of the prayer to God, and to us?

What is it that the men are trying to say in this awful, flaming, blackening metaphor of wishing Lord Devonport dead?

The gist of it is that they mean to say, whether they are right or wrong(like us, as we would say, whether we were right or wrong), they mean tosay that they have a right to live. 

In other words, the gist of it is that we are like them, and that theyare like us. 

I, too, in my hour of deepest trial, with no silk hat, with no gloves, with no gilt prayer-book, as I should, have flashed out my will upon myGod. I, too, have cried with Paul, with Job, across my sin--my sin thatvery moment heaped up upon my lips--have broken wildly in upon thatstill, white floor of Heaven!

And when the dockers break up through, fling themselves upon their God, what is it, after all, but another way of saying, "I am persuaded thatneither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, northings present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any othercreature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God. .. . "

It may have been wicked in the dockers to address God in this way, butit would have been more wicked in them not to think He could understand. 

I believe, for one, that when Jacob wrestled with the angel, God lookedon and liked it. 

The angel was a mere representative at best, and Jacob was reallywrestling with God. 

And God knew it and liked it. 

Praying to strike Lord Devonport dead was the dockers' way of saying toGod that there was something on their minds that simply could not besaid. 

I can imagine that this would interest a God, a prayer like the dockers'prayer, so spent, so desperate, so unreasonable, breaking through tothat still, white floor of Heaven!

And it does seem as if, in our more humble, homely, and useful capacityas fellow human beings, it might interest us. 

It seems as if, possibly, we might stop criticising people who prayharder than we do, pointing out that wrestling with God is really ratherrude--as if we might stop and see what it means to God and what it meansto us, and what there is that we might do, you and I, oh, Gentle Reader, to make it possible for the dockers on Tower Hill to be more polite, perhaps, more polished, as it were, when they speak to God next time. 

Perhaps nothing the dockers could do in the way of being violent couldbe more stupid and wicked than having all these sleek, beautiful, perfect people, twenty-six million of them, all expecting them not to beviolent. 

In my own quiet, gentle, implacable beauty of spirit, in my own ruthlesswisdom on a full stomach, I do not deny that I do most sternlydisapprove of the dockers and their violence. 

But it is better than nothing, thank God!

They want something. 

It gives me something to hope for, and to have courage for, aboutthem--that they want something. 

Possibly if we could get them started wanting something, even somelittle narrow and rather mean thing, like having enough to eat--possiblythey will go on to art galleries, to peace societies, and cathedralsnext, and to making very beautiful prayers (alas, Gentle Reader, how canI say it?) like you--Heaven help us!--and like me!

I would have but one objection to letting the dockers have their fullway, and to letting the control of the situation be put into theirhands. 

They do not hunger enough. 

They are merely hungering for themselves. 

This may be a reason for not letting the world get entirely into theirhands, but in the meantime we have every reason to be appreciative ofthe good the dockers are doing (so far as it goes) in hungering forthemselves. 

It would be strange indeed if one could not tolerate in dockers a littlething like this. Babies do it. It is the first decency in all of us. Itis the first condition of our knowing enough, or amounting to enough, toever hunger for any one else. Everybody has to make a beginningsomewhere. Even a Saint Francis, the man who hungers and thirsts forrighteousness, who rises to the heights of social-mindedness, whohungers and thirsts for everybody, begins all alone, at the breast. 

Which is there of us who, if we had not begun our own hungering andthirsting for righteousness, our tugging on God, in this old, lonely, preoccupied, selfish-looking way, would ever have grown up, would everhave wanted enough things to belong to a Church of England, forinstance, or to a Congregational Home Missionary Society?

It is true that the dockers are, for the moment (alas, fifty or sixtyyears or so!), merely wanting things for themselves, or wanting thingsfor their own class. And so would we if we had been born, brought up, and embedded in a society which allowed us so little for ourselves thatnot growing up morally--keeping on over and over again, year after year, just wanting things for ourselves, and not really being weaned yet--wasall that was left to us. 

There is really considerable spiritual truth in having enough to eat. 

Sometimes I have thought it would be not unhelpful, would make a littlering of gentle-heartedness around us, some of us--those of us who liveprotected lives and pray such rich, versatile prayers, if we would stopand think what a docker would have to do, what arrangements a dockerwould have to make before he could enjoy praying with us--falling backinto our beautiful, soft, luxurious wanting things for others. 

Possibly these arrangements, such as they are, are the ones the dockersare trying to make with Lord Devonport now. 

The docker is trying to get through hungering for something to eat, toarrange gradually to have his hungers move on. 

CHAPTER XIII

MEN WHO GET THINGS

All the virtues are hungers. A vice is the failure of desire. A vice isa man's failure to have enough big hungers at hand, sternly withinreach, to control his little ones. 

A man who is doing wrong is essentially bored. He has let himself dropinto doing rows of half-things, or things which he can only half do. Heforgets, for the moment, what it really is that he wants, or possiblythat he wants anything. Then it is that the one little, mean LonelyHunger--a glass of liquor, a second piece of pie, another man's wife, ora million dollars, runs away with him. 

When a man sins it is because his appetites fail him. Self-control liesin maintaining checks and balances of desire, centripetals, andcentrifugals of desire. The worst thing that could happen to the worldwould be to have it placed in the hands of men who only have a gift ofhungering for certain sorts of things, or hungering for certain classesof people, or hungering for themselves. 

We do not want the man who is merely hungering for himself to rule theworld--not because we feel superior to him, but because a man who ismerely hungering for himself cannot be taken seriously as an authorityon worlds. People can take him seriously as an authority on his ownhunger. But what he thinks about everything beyond that point cannot betaken seriously. What he thinks about how the world should be run, aboutwhat other people want, what labour and capital want, cannot be takenseriously. 

I will not yield place to any one in my sympathy with the dockers. 

I like to think that I too, given the same grandfathers, the samesleeping rooms and neighbours, the same milk, the same tincture ofreligion, would dare to do what they have done. 

But I cannot be content, as I take my stand by the dockers, withsympathizing in general. I want to sympathize to the point. 

And on the practical side of what to do next in behalf of the dockers, or of what to let them do, I find myself facing two facts:

First, the dockers are desperate. I take their desperation as conclusiveand imperative. It must be obeyed. 

Second, I do not care what they think. 

What they think must not be obeyed. Men who are in the act of beingscared or hateful, whether it be for five minutes, jive months, or sixtyyears, who have given up their courage for others, or for their enemies, are not practical. What a man who despairs of everybody except himselfthinks, does not work and cannot be made to work. The fact that thedockers have no courage about their employers may be largely theemployers' fault. It is largely the fault of society, of the churches, the schools, the daily press. But the fact remains, and whichever sidein the contest has, or is able to have, first, the most courage for theother side, whichever side wants the most for the other side, will bethe side that will get the most control. 

If Labour, in the form of syndicalism, wants to grasp the raw materials, machinery, and management of modern industry out of the hands of thecapitalists and run the world, the one shrewd, invincible way for Labourto do it is going to be to want more things for more people thancapitalists can want. 

The only people, to-day, who are going to be competent to run a world, or who can get hold of even one end of it to try to run it, are going tobe the people who want a world, who have a habit, who may be said to bealmost in a rut, of wanting things all day, every day, for a world--menwho cannot keep narrowed down very long at a time to wanting things forthemselves. 

There will be little need of our all falling into a panic, or all beingobliged to rely on policemen, or to call out troops to stave off anuprising of the labour classes as long as the labour classes are merelywanting things for themselves. It is the men who have the bigger hungerswho are getting the bigger sorts of things--things like worlds intotheir hands. The me-man and the class-man, under our modern conditions, are being more and more kept back and held under in the smaller places, the me-places and class-places, by the men who want more things thanthey can want, who lap over into wanting things for others. 

The me-man often may see what he wants clearly and may say what hewants. 

But he does not get it. It is the class-man who gets it for him. 

The class-man may see what he wants for his class clearly and may saywhat he wants. 

But he does not get it. It is the crowd-man who gets it for him. 

It is a little startling, the grim, brilliant, beautiful way that Godhas worked it out!

It is one of His usual paradoxes. 

The thing in a man that makes it possible for him to get things morethan other people can get them is his margin of unselfishness. 

He gets things by seeing with the thing that he wants all that liesaround it. With equal clearness he is seeing all the time the people andthe things that are in the way of what he wants; how the people look ortry to look, how they feel or try to make him think they feel, what theybelieve and do not believe or can be made to believe; he sees what hewants in a vast setting of what he cannot get with people, and of whathe can--in a huge moving picture of the interests of others. 

The man who, in fulfilling and making the most of himself, can getoutside of himself into his class, who, in being a good class-man, canoverflow into being a man of the world, is the man who gets what hewants. 

I am hopeful about Labour and Capital to-day because in the industrialworld, as at present constituted in our coöperative age, the men who canget what they want, who get results out of other people, are the men whohave the largest, most sensitive outfits for wanting things for otherpeople. 

If there is one thing rather than another that fills one with couragefor the outlook of labouring men to-day it is the colossal failure BenTillett makes in leading them in prayer. 

Even the dockers, perhaps the most casually employed, the most spent anddesperate class of Labour of all, only prayed Ben Tillet's prayer aminute and they were sorry the day after. 

And it was Ben Tillett's prayer in the end that lost them their cause--aprayer that filled all England on the next day with the rage ofLabour--that a man like Ben Tillett, with such a mean, scared, narrowlittle prayer, should dare to represent Labour. 

In the same way, after the shooting in the Lawrence strike, when allthose men (Syndicalists) had streamed through the streets, showing offbefore everybody their fine, brave-looking thoughtless, superficial, guillotine feelings and their furious little banner, "No God and noMaster"--it did one good, only a day or so later, to see a vast crowd ofLawrence workers, thirty thousand strong, tramping through the streets, singing, with bands of music, and with banners, "In God we trust" and"One is our Master, even Christ"--thousands of men who had never beeninside a church, thousands of men who could never have looked up a versein the Bible, still found themselves marching in a procession, snatchingup these old and pious mottoes and joining in hymns they did not know, all to contradict, and to contradict thirty thousand strong, the ideathat the blood and froth, the fear and unbelief, of the IndustrialWorkers of the World represented or could ever be supposed to representfor one moment the manhood and the courage, the faithfulness and (evenin the hour of their extremity) the quiet-heartedness, the human loyaltyand self-forgetfulness, the moral dignity of the American workingman. 

It cannot truly be said that the typical modern labouring man, whetherin America or England, is a coward; that he has no desire, no courage, for any one except for himself and for his own class. Mr. O'Connor ofthe Dockers' Organization in the East of Scotland, said at the time ofthe strike of the dockers in London: "This kind of business of thebureaucratic labour men in London, issuing orders for men to stop workall over the country, is against the spirit of the trades unions ofEngland. It is a thing we cannot possibly stand. We have an agreementwith the employers, and we have no intention of breaking it. "

It cannot be said that the typical modern labourer is listeningseriously to the Syndicalist or to the Industrial Worker of the Worldwhen he tells him that Labour alone can save itself, and that Labouralone can save the world. He knows that any scheme of social andindustrial reform which leaves any class out, rich or poor, which doesnot see that everybody is to blame, which does not see that everybody isresponsible, which does not arrange or begin to arrange opportunity andexpectation for every man and every degree and kind of man, and does notdo it just where that man is, and do it now, is superficial. 

If we are going to have a society that is for all of us, it will takeall of us, and all of us together, to make it. Mutual expectation alonecan make a great society. Mutual expectation, or courage for others, persistently and patiently and flexibly applied--applied to details bysmall men, applied to wholes by bigger ones--is going to be the next bigserious, unsentimental, practical industrial achievement. And I do notbelieve that for sheer sentiment's sake we are going to begin by rootingup millionaires and, with one glorious thoughtless sweep, saying, "Wewill have a new world, " without asking at least some of the owners ofit to help, or at least letting them in on good behaviour. Nor are wegoing to begin by rooting up trade unions and labour leaders. 

The great organizations of Capital in the world to-day are dailyengaged, through competition and experiment and observation, ineducating one another and finding out what they really want and whatthey can really do; and it is equally true that the great organizationsof labour, in the same way, are educating one another. 

The real fight of modern industry to-day is an educational fight. Andthe fight is being conducted, not between Labour and Capital, butbetween the labouring men who have courage for Capital and labouring menwho have not, and between capitalists who have courage for Labour andthose who have not. To put it briefly, the real industrial fight to-dayis between those who have courage and those who have not. 

It is not hard to tell, in a fight between men who have courage and menwho have not, which will win. 

Probably, whatever else is the matter with them, the world will be themost safe in the hands of the men who have the most courage. 

There are four items of courage I would like to see duly discussed inthe meetings of the trades unions in America and England. 

First, A discussion of trades unions. Why is it that, when the leadersof trades unions come to know employers better than the other men do andbegin to see the other side and to have some courage about employers andto become practicable and reasonable, the unions drop them?

Second, Why is it that, in a large degree, the big employers, when theysucceed in getting skilled representatives or managers who come to knowand to understand their labouring men better than they do, do _not_ dropthem? Why is it that, day by day, on all sides in America and England, one sees the employing class advancing men who have a genius for beingbelieved in, to at first questioned, and then to almost unquestioned, control of their business? If this is true, does it not seem on thewhole that industry is safer in the hands of employers who have couragefor both sides and who see both sides than of employees who do not? Doesnot the remedy for trades unions and employees, if they want to getcontrol, seem to be, instead of fighting, to see if they cannot see bothsides quicker, and see them better, than their employers do?

Third, A discussion of efficiency in a National Labour Party from thepoint of view of the trend of national efficiency in business. Apparently the most efficient and shrewd business men in England andAmerica are the men who are running what might be called lubricatedindustries--who are making their industries succeed on the principle ofsympathetic, smooth-running, mutual interests. If the successful modernbusiness man who owns factories is not running each factory as a smallcivil war, is it not true that the only practical and successful LabourParty in England, the only party that can get things done for labour andthat can hold power, is bound to be the party that succeeds in havingthe most courage for both sides, in seeing the most mutual interests, and in seeing how these interests can be put together, and in seeing itfirst and acting on it before any other merely one-sided party would beable to think it out?

Fourth, A discussion of the selection of the best labour leaders toplace at the head of the unions. 

Nearly every man who succeeds in business notably, succeeds in believingsomething about the people with whom he deals that the men around himhave not believed before, or in believing something which, if they didbelieve it, they had not applied or acted as if they had believedbefore. If, in order to succeed, a business man does not believesomething that needs to be believed before other people believe it, hehires somebody who does believe it to believe it for him. 

Perhaps Labour would find it profitable to act on this principle too, and to see to it that the leaders chosen to act for them are not thenoisiest minded, but the most creative men, the men who can expressoriginal, shrewd faiths in the men with whom they have to deal--faithsthat the men around them will be grateful (after a second thought) tohave expressed next. 

 * * * * *

In the meantime, whether among the labourers or the capitalists, howeverlong it may take, it is not hard to see, on every hand to-day, the worldabout us slowly, implacably getting into the hands of the men, poor orrich, who have the most keen, patient courage about other people, themen who are "good" (God save the word!), the men who have practical, working human sympathies and a sense of possibilities in those abovethem and beneath them with whom they work--the men who most clearly, eagerly, and doggedly want things for others, who have the most couragefor others. 

I have thought that if we could find out what this courage is, how itworks, how it can be had, and where it comes from, it might be moreworth our while to know than any other one thing in the world. 

I would like to try to consider a few of the sources of this courage forothers. 

CHAPTER XIV

SOURCES OF COURAGE FOR OTHERS--TOLERATION

After making an address on inspired millionaires one night before theSociological Society in their quarters in John Street, I found myselfthe next day--a six-penny day--standing thoughtfully in the quarters ofthe Zoölogical Society in Regent's Park. 

The Zoölogical Society makes one feel more humble, I think, than theSociological Society does. 

All sociologists, members of Parliament, eugenists, professors, andothers, ought to be compelled by law to spend one day every two weekswith the Zoölogical Society in Regent's Park. 

All reformers who essay to make over human nature, all idealists, shouldbe required by law to visit menageries--to go to see them faithfully orto be put in them a while until they have observed life and thoughtthings out. 

 A GREEN BENCH, THE ZOO, REGENT'S PARK, 1911. 

For orienting a man and making him reasonable, there is nothing, I find, like coming out and putting in a day here, making one's self gaze firmlyand doggedly at the other animals. 

We have every reason to believe that Noah was a good psychologist, orjudge of human nature, before he went into the ark, but if he was not, he certainly would have come out one. 

There is nothing like a menagerie to limber one up. 

Especially an idealist. 

Take a pelican, for instance. What possible personal ideal was it thatcould make a pelican want to be a pelican or that could ever have madea pelican take being a pelican seriously for one minute?

And the camel with his lopsided hump. "Why, oh, why, " cries theidealist, wringing his hands. "Oh, why----?"

I have come out here this afternoon, in the middle of my book, in themiddle of a chapter against the syndicalists, but it ill beseems me, after spending half a day looking calmly at peacocks, at giraffes, athippopotamuses, at all these tails, necks, legs and mouths, at thisstretch or bird's eye view--this vast landscape of God's toleration--tocriticise any man, woman or child of this world for blossoming out, forliving up, or fleshing up, or paring down, to what he is really likeinside. 

Possibly what each man stands for is well enough for him to stand for. It is only when what a man says, comes to being repeated, to being madeuniversal, to being jammed down on the rest of us, that the lie in itbegins to work out. 

Let us let everybody alone and be ready to find things out just forourselves. 

Here is this big, frivolous, gentle elephant, for instance, poking hishuge, inquiring trunk into baby carriages. He is certainly too glorious, too profound, a personage to do such things! It does seem a littleunworthy to me, as I have been sitting here and watching him from thispark bench, for a noble, solemn being like the elephant--a kind ofcathedral of a beast, to be as deeply interested as he is in peanuts. 

He looms up before me once more. I look up a little closer--look intohis little, shrewd eyes--and, after all, what do I know about him?

And I watch the camels with the happy, dazed children on their backs, goby with soft and drifting feet. Do I suppose I understand camels? Or Ifollow the crowd. I find myself at last with that huge, hushed, sympathetic congregation at the 4 P. M. Service, watching the lions eat. 

Everything does seem very much mixed up when one brings one'sSociological Society dogmas, and one's little neat, impeccable row ofprinciples to the test of watching the lions eat!

Possibly people are as different from one another inside--in their soulsat least--as different as these animals are. 

It is true, of course, that as we go about, people do have a plausibleway in this world--all these other people, of looking like us. 

But they are different inside. 

If one could stand on a platform as one was about to speak and couldreally see the souls of any audience--say of a thousand people--lyingout there before one, they would be a menagerie beside which, O GentleReader, I dare to believe, Barnum and Bailey's menagerie would pale incomparison. 

But in a menagerie (perhaps you have noticed it, Gentle Reader) onetreats the animals seriously, and as if they were Individuals. 

They are what they are. 

Why not treat people's souls seriously?

It is true that people's souls, like the animals, are alike in a generalway. They all have in common (in spiritual things) organs ofobservation, appropriation, digestion and organs of self-reproduction. 

But these spiritual organs of digestion which they have are theirs. 

And these organs of self-reproduction are for the purpose of reproducingthemselves and not us. 

These are my reflections, or these try to be my reflections when Iconsider the Syndicalist--how he grows or when I look up and see aclass-war socialist--an Upton Sinclair banging loosely about the world. 

My first wild, aboriginal impulse with Upton Sinclair when I come up tohim as I do sometimes--violent, vociferous roaring behind his bars, isto whisk him right over from being an Upton Sinclair into being me. I donot deny it. 

Then I remember softly, suddenly, how I felt when I was watching thelions eat. 

I remember the pelican. 

Thus I save my soul in time. 

Incidentally, of course, Upton Sinclair's insides are saved also. 

It is beautiful the way the wild beasts in their cages persuade onealmost to be a Christian!

Of course when one gets smoothed down one always sees people verydifferently. In being tolerant the rub comes usually (with me) in beingtolerant in time. I am tempted at first, when I am with Upton Sinclair, to act as if he were a whole world of Upton Sinclairs and of course(anybody would admit it) if he really were a whole world of UptonSinclairs he would have to be wiped out. There would be nothing else todo. But he is not and it is not fair to him or fair to the world to actas if he were. 

The moment I see he is confining himself to just being Upton Sinclair Irather like him. 

It is the same with Ella Wheeler Wilcox. It is when I fall to thinkingof her as if she were, or were in danger of being, a whole world of EllaWheeler Wilcoxes that I grow intolerant of her. Ella Wheeler Wilcox as aTincture, which is what she really is, of course, is well enough. I donot mind. 

The real truth about a man like Upton Sinclair, when one has worked downthrough to it, is that while from my point of view a class-warsocialist--a man who proposes to put society together by keeping menapart--is wrong and is sure to do a great deal of harm to some people, there are other people to whom he does a great deal of good. 

There really are people who need Upton Sinclair. It may be a hard factto face perhaps, but when one faces it one is glad there is one. Some ofthe millionaires need Sinclair. There are others whose attention wouldbe attracted better in more subtle ways. 

The class-war socialist, though I may be at this moment in the very actof trying to make him impossible, to put him out of date, has been andis, in his own place and his own time, I gratefully acknowledge, ofincalculable value. 

Any man who can, by saying violent and noisy things, make rich, tired, mechanical-minded people, and poor, tired mechanical-minded people wakeup enough to feel hateful has performed a public service. Thehatefulness is the beginning of their being covetous for other thingsthan the things they have. If a man has a habit of hunger he gets betterand better hungers as a matter of course; bread and milk, ribbons, geraniums, millinery, bathtubs, Bibles, copartnership associations. Andin the meantime the one precious thing to be looked out for in a man, and to be held sacred, is his hunger. 

The one important religious value in the world is hunger and to all themen to-day who are contributing to the process of moving on hungers;whether the hungers happen to be our hungers or not or our stages ofhunger or not, we say Godspeed. 

There are times when the sudden sense one comes to have that the worldis a struggle, a great prayer toward the sun, a tumult and groping ofdesire, the sense that every kind and type of desire has its time andits place in it and every kind and type of man, gives a whole newmeaning to life. This sense of a now possible toleration which we cometo have, some of us, opens up to us always when it comes a new world ofcourage about people. It makes all these dear, clumsy people about ussuddenly mean something. It makes them all suddenly belong somewhere. They become, as by a kind of miracle, bathed in a new light, wrong-headed, intolerable though they be, one still sees them flowingout into the great endless stream of becoming--all these dots of thevast desire, all these queer, funny, struggling little sons of God!

It has been overlooked that social reform primarily is not a matter oflegislation or of industrial or political systems, or of machinery, buta matter, of psychology, of insight into human nature and of expertreading and interpretation of the minds of men. What are they thinkingabout? What do they think they want?

The trades unions and employers' associations, extreme socialists andextreme Tories have so far been very bad psychologists. If the SingleTax people were as good at being intuitionalists or idea-salesmen asthey are at being philosophers in ideas they would long before this haveturned everything their way. They would have begun with people's hungersand worked out from them. They would have listened to people to find outwhat their hungers were. The people who will stop being theoretical andlogical about each other and who will look hard into each other's eyeswill be the people whose ideas will first come to pass. Everything wetry to do or say or bring to pass in England or America is going tobegin after this, not in talking, but in listening. If social reformersand industrial leaders had been good listeners, the socialdeadlock--England with its House of Lords and railroads both on strikeand America with its great industries quarrelling--would have beenarranged for and got out of the way over twenty years ago. 

We have overlooked the first step of industrial reform, the ratherextreme step of listening. The most hard-headed and conclusive man tosettle any given industrial difficulty is the man who has the gift ofdivining what is going on in other people's minds, a gift for beinghuman, a gift for treating everybody who disagrees with him as if theymight possibly be human too, though they are very poor, even though theyare very rich. Practical psychology has come to be not only the onlysolution but also the only method of our modern industrial questions. Being so human that one can guess what any possible human being wouldthink is the one hard-headed and practical way to meet the modern labourproblem. 

The first symptom of being human in a man is his range and power ofshrewd, happy toleration, or courage for people who know as little nowas he knew once. 

A man's sense of toleration is based primarily upon the range and powerof his knowledge of himself, upon his power of remembering andanticipating himself, upon his laughing with God at himself, upon hishabit in darkness, weariness or despair, or in silent victory and joy, of falling on his knees. 

Toleration is reverence. It is the first source of courage for otherpeople. 

CHAPTER XV

CONVERSION

Some people think of the world as if it were made all through, peopleand all, of reinforced concrete, as if everything in it--men, women, children, churches, colleges, and parties, were solidly, inextricablyimbedded in it. 

Every age in history has had to get on as well as it could with two setsof totally impracticable people, our two great orders of Philistines inthis world, the people who put their trust in Portland Cement and thepeople who put their trust in Explosives. 

There has not been a single great movement in history yet that everythoughtful man has not had to watch being held up by these people--bymillions of worthy, simple, rudimentary creatures who consent to be mereconservatives or mere radicals. 

One set says, "People cannot be converted so we will blow them up. "

The other set says, "We are going to be blown up, so let us put onPlaster of Paris as a garment, we will array ourselves before the Lordin Portland Cement. "

Both of these classes of people believe alike on one main point. 

They do not believe in Conversion. 

If the conservatives believed in conversion they would not be so afraidthat they feel obliged to resort to Portland Cement. If the radicalsbelieved in conversion they would not be so afraid that they feelobliged to resort to Explosives. 

In our machine civilization to these two great standard classes ofscared people, there has been added what seems to be a third class--thepeople who have responded to a kind of motor spirit in the time, whohave modulated a little their unbelief in human nature. They havesubstituted for their reinforced concrete Unbelief, a kind of WhirlingUnbelief, called machinery. 

They admit that in our modern life men are not made of reinforcedconcrete. We may move, but we move as wheels move, they tell us. We arcwhirlingly imbedded. We are cogs and wheels in an Economic Machine. 

I would like to consider for a moment this Whirling Unbelief. 

There was a time once when I took the Economic Machine very seriously. 

I looked up when I went by, at the Economic Machine as the last and themost terrific of the inventions among the machines. The machine thatmocked all the other machines, that made all our machines look patheticand ridiculous, was the Economic Machine. There were days when I heardit or seemed to hear it--this Economic Machine closing in around mylife, around all our lives like the last hoarse mocking laugh ofcivilization. 

I said I will love every machine that runs except the EconomicMachine--the machine for making people into machines. 

But one day when I had waited or dared to wait, I know not why, a littlelonger than usual before the Whirling Unbelief, I heard the hoarsemocking laugh die away. I became very quiet. I began to think, Ireflected on my experiences. I began to notice things. 

I noted that every time I had found myself being discouraged aboutpeople, I had caught myself thinking of people as Cogs and Wheels. 

Were they really Cogs and Wheels?

Possibly it was merely the easiest, most mechanical-minded thing to doto think of people (with all this machinery around one) as cogs andwheels in an economic machine. 

Then it began to occur to me that it was because I had looked upon theeconomic machine a little lazily, a little innocently that I had beenawed and terrific--and had been swept away with it into the WhirlingUnbelief. 

Then I stood quietly and calmly for days, for weeks, for years beforeit. I watched it Go Round. 

I then discovered under close observation that what had looked to melike an economic machine was not an economic machine at all. 

The modern economic world has innumerable mechanical elements in it, butit is not an economic machine. 

It is a biological engine. 

It is the biology in it that conceives, desires, and determines themachinery in it. 

The most important parts of the machine are not the very mechanicalparts. They are the very biological parts. 

The economic machine is full of made-people, but it does not make verymuch difference about the made-people. I find that as a plain, practicalmatter of fact I do not need to watch the made-people so very much tounderstand the world, or to get ready for what is happening to it. 

In prospecting for a world, I watch the born people. 

I watch especially the people who have been born twice. 

As one watches the way the world is going round one finds that what isreally making it go round, is not its being an economic machine, but itsbeing a biological engine. 

Industrial reform is a branch of biology. 

The main fact of biology as regards a man is that he can be born. 

The main fact of biology as regards society--that is, the main fact ofsocial biology--is that a man can be born twice. 

As long as a man is born to go with a father and a mother it is wellenough to have been born once, but the moment a man deals with otherpeople or with the world, he has to be born again. 

This is the main fact about the biological engine we call the world. 

The main fact about the Engine is the biology in it. 

Every other fact for a man has to be worked out from this--that is: outof being born once if one wants to belong merely to a father and mother, and out of being born twice if one wants to belong to a world. 

A man does not need to enter again into his mother's womb and come out achild. He enters into the World's Womb and comes out a man. 

 * * * * *

The world is being placed to-day before our eyes in the hands of the menwho are born twice. 

Not all men are cogs and wheels. 

The first day I discovered this and believed this I went out into thestreets and looked into the faces of the men and the women and I lookedup at the factories and the churches and I was not afraid. 

I do not deny that cogs and wheels are very common. 

But I do not believe that an economic system or industrial scheme basedon the general principle of arranging a world for cogs and wheels wouldwork. I believe in arranging the world on the principle that there arenow and are going to be always enough men in it who are born, and enoughwho are born twice to keep cogs and wheels doing the things men who havebeen born twice, who have visions for worlds, want done, and to keeppeople who prefer being cogs and wheels where they will work best andwhere they will help the running gear of the planet most--by going roundand round, in the way they like--going round and round and round andround. 

But why is it, one cannot help wondering, that the moment a man rises upsuddenly in this modern world and bases or seeks to base an industrialor social reform frankly on courage for other people, on believing inthe inherent and eternal power of men of changing their minds, of beingput up in new kinds and new sizes of men, in other words, onconversion--why is it that clergymen, atheists, ethical societies, politicians, socialists will all unite, will all flock together anddescend upon him, shout and laugh him away, bully him with deadmillionaires, bad corporations and humdrum business men, overawe himwith mere history, argue him with statistics, and thunder him withsermons out of the world--if he puts up a faint little chirrup of hopethat men can be converted?

It is not that the synods, ethical societies, anarchists, the bishopsand Bernard Shaw, have merely given up expecting individual men to beconverted. There would be a measure of plausibility in giving up on afew particular men's being born again. It is worse than that. What seemsto have happened to nearly all the people who have schemes of industrialreform is that they have really given up at one fell swoop a whole newgeneration's being born again. It is going to be just like this one, they tell us, the new generation--the same old things the same oldfoolish ways of deceiving the world, that any child can see have notworked--Bernard Shaw and the bishops whisper to us, are coming aroundand around again. They must be planned for. All these young men ofwealth about us who read the papers and who are ashamed of their fathersare going to be just like their fathers. The atheists, the socialists, and the single taxers, missionaries and evangelists have given up theirlast loophole of hope in the new business generation and they trust onlyto machines to save us, or to professors, or to paper-treatises oneugenics!

And yet, after all, if we were going to start an absolute, decisive, andpractical scheme of eugenics to-morrow with whom would we begin, withwhich particular people would we begin? We would have to go back, Bernard Shaw and the bishops and all of us, to the New Testament--to theold idea of being born again. 

I have watched now these many years the professors, caught in theirculture-machines going round and round, and the priests caught in theirreligion-machines going round and round, and the business men caught intheir economic machine, and I have heard them all saying over and overin a kind of terrible sing-song day and night, the silly, lazy words ofa glorious old roue four thousand years ago, "The thing that hath beenis the thing which shall be, and that which is done is that which shallbe done and there is no new thing under the sun. "

There are some of us who do not believe this. We defy theculture-machines. We believe that even professors can be converted, canbe educated. 

We defy the bishops. We believe that business men can be converted. 

We defy the business men. We believe the bishops can be converted. 

I speak for a thousand, thousand men. 

In the hum and drive of the wheels and the great roar around me of theWhirling Unbelief. I speak for these men--for all of us. _We are notcogs and wheels. We are men. We are born again ourselves. Other men canbe born again. _

Men shall not look each other in the eyes wisely and nod their heads andsay that human nature will not change. 

We will change it. If we cannot get but two or three together to changeit, then two or three by just being two or three and by daring to be twoor three, or even one if necessary shall change it. 

The moment ninety million people in a great nation have welded out avision of the kind of man of wealth--the kind of employer they want, themoment they set the millionaire in the vise of some great nationalexpectation, carve upon him firmly, implacably the will of the people, the people will have the millionaire they want. If a nation really wantsa great man it invents him. We have hut to see we really want him, andthat no other machinery will work, and we will invent him. 

Necessity is the mother of invention. Here in these United States sixtyyears ago were we not all at work on a man named Abraham Lincoln? We hadbeen at work on him for years trying to make him into a Lincoln. Hecould not have begun to be what he was without us, without the dailythought, the responsibility, the tragical national hope and fear, thesense of crisis in a great people. All these had been set to work onhim, on making him a Lincoln. 

Lincoln would not have dared not to be a great man, an all-people manwith a whole mighty nation, with all those millions of watchful, believing people laying their lives softly, silently, their very sons'lives in his hands. He did not have the smallest possible chance fromthe day he was named for President, to be a second-rate man or to betraya nation, or to back down out of being himself. He had been filled nightand day with the vision of a great nation struggling, with the grimglory of it. He was free to make mistakes for it, but there was no wayhe could have kept from being a true, mighty, single-hearted man for it, if he had tried. We had clinched Lincoln in 1862. He was caught fast inthe vise of our hopes. 

Perhaps it is because, at certain times in history, nations seem to besiding with the worst in their public men and expecting the worst inthem that they get them. 

If a crowd wants to be represented, wants to touch to the quick andkindle the man in it, the man filled with vision, the man who is bornagain into its desire, the crowd-man, they have but to surround him andovershadow him. They will create him, in scorn and joy will theyconceive him, and before he knows who he is, they will bring him forth. 

It would not be hard, I imagine, to be a great man, with a true, steadied, colossal, single-heartedness, if one were caught fast in thevision, the expectation of a great nation. 

To be born again is simple with ninety million people to help. We haveall been born again in little things with a few people to help. We havebeen swung over from little short motives to big, long-leveredcontrolling ones. We have known in a small way what Conversion is. Wehave seen how naturally it works out in little things. 

There is nothing new about it. There is not a man who does not know whatit is to get over a small motive. We have seen, when we looked back, what it was that happened. 

The way to get over a small motive is to let it get lost in a big one. 

A man does not stop to pick up a penny or a million dollars when he isrunning to save his life. 

A man does not stop to pick up two pennies, or two thousand dollars, ortwo million dollars when he is running to save ten thousand lives orrunning to save ninety million lives, when he is running to save a cityor a nation. 

This is Conversion--entering into the World's Womb, the world's visionor expectation and being born again. 

 * * * * *

It is not for nothing that I have seen the sun lifting up the faces ofthe flowers, and crumbling the countenances of the hills. And I haveseen music stirring faintly in the bones of old men. And I have heardthe dead Beethoven singing in the feet of children. 

And I have watched the Little Earth in its little round of seasonsdancing before the Lord. 

And I have believed that music is wrought into all things, and that thepeople I see about me have not one of them been left out. 

I believe in sunshine and in hothouses. I believe in burning glasses. Ibelieve in focusing light into heat and heat into white fire, andturning white fire into little flowing brooks of steel. 

And I believe in focusing men upon men. 

I believe in Conversion. 

Of course it would all be different--focusing men upon men, if men werecogs and wheels, or if the men they were focused on were made of stones. 

I stand and look at this stone and believe it is all rubber andwhalebone inside. 

But what of it?

It does not get true. 

While I am looking at a man and believing a certain thing about the man, it gets true. 

What is going on in my mind while I look at him effects actualmechanical changes in him, affects the flow of blood in his veins. Alook colours him, whitens him, twists and turns the muscles and tissuesin his body. I draw lines upon his inmost being. I lay down a new faceupon his face. A moment after I look upon the man's face it has become, as it were, or may have become, a new little landscape. I have seen agreat country opened up in him of what he might be like. While I look Ihave been ushered softly, for a second, into the presence of a man whowas not there before. 

Such things have happened. 

Beatrice looked at Dante once. Ten silent centuries began singing. 

A man named Stephen, one day, while he was dying, gave a look at a mannamed Paul. Paul came away quietly and hewed out history for twothousand years. 

CHAPTER XVI

EXCEPTION

A bicycle, the other day, a little outside Paris as it was running alongquietly, lifted itself off the ground suddenly, and flew three yards andseven inches. 

There are nine million seven hundred and eighty nine thousand ninehundred and seventy-nine bicycles that have not flown three yards andseven inches. 

But what of it? Why count them up? Why bother about them? The important, conclusive, massive, irresistible, crushing, material fact is that onebicycle has flown three yards seven inches. 

The nine million seven hundred and eighty-nine thousand nine hundred andseventy-nine bicycles that can not fly yet are negligible. So are nineout of ten business firms. 

If there is one exceptional man in modern industry who is running hisbusiness in the right way and who has made a success of it and hasproved it--he may look visionary to class-socialists and to other peoplewho decide by measuring off masses of fact, and counting up rows ofpeople and who see what anybody can see, but he is after all inarranging our social programme the only man of any material importancefor us to consider. It would be visionary to take the past, dump itaround in front of one, and try to make a future out of it. I do notdeny what people tell me about millionaires and about factory slaves. Ihave not mooned or lied or turned away my face. I stand by time onelive, right, implacable, irrevocable, prolific exception. I stand by theone bicycle out of them all that has flown three yards and seven inches. I lay out my program, conceive my world on that. Piles of factsarranged in dead layers high against heaven, rows of figures, miles offactory slaves, acres of cemeteries of dead millionaires, going-bystreetfuls of going-by people, shall not cow me. 

My heart has been broken long enough by counting truths on my fingers, by numbering grains of sand, men, and mountains, bombs, acorns andmarbles alike. 

Which truth matters?

Which man is right?

Where is Nazareth?

 * * * * *

Nazareth is our only really important town now. I will see what is goingon in Nazareth. On every subject that comes up, in every line ofthought, I will go to the city of implacable exceptions. All theinventors flock there--the man with the one bicycle which flies, the onegreat industrial organizer, the man with the man-machine, and theman--the great boy who carries new great beautiful cities in his pocketlike strings and nails and knives, they are all there. 

Nazareth is the city, the one mighty little city of the spirit where allthe really worth-while men wherever they may seem to be, all day, allnight, do their living. 

Other cities may make things, in Nazareth they make worlds. One can seea new one almost any day in Nazareth. Men go up and down the streetsthere with their new worlds in their eyes. 

Some of them have them almost in their hands or are looking down andworking on them. 

It does not seem to me that any of us can make ourselves strong and fitto lay out a sound program or vision for a world, who do not watch withcritical expectation and with fierce joy these men of Nazareth, who donot take at least a little time off every day, in spirit, in Nazareth, and spend it in watching bicycles fly three feet and seven inches. Towatch these men, it seems to me, is our one natural, economical way toget at essential facts, at the set-one-side truths, at the exceptionsthat worlds and all-around programs for worlds are made out of. To watchthese men is the one way I know not to be lost in great museums andstorehouses of facts that do not matter, in the streetfuls andskyscraperfuls of men that go by. 

I regret to record that professors of political economy, socialphilosophers, industrial big-wigs, presidents of boards of trade havenot been often met with on the streets of this silent, crowded, mighty, invisible little town that rules the destinies of men. 

Not during the last twenty years, but one is meeting them there to-day. 

All these things that people are saying to me are mere history. I haveseen the one live exception. One telephone was enough. And one Galileowas enough, with his little planet turning round and round, with all ofus on it who were obliged to agree with him about it. It kept turninground and round with us until we did. 

CHAPTER XVII

INVENTION

If I were a Noah and wanted to get a fair selection of people in Londonto be saved to start a new world, I would go out and look over the crowdwho are watching the flying machines at Hendon, and select from them. 

The Hendon crowd will not last forever. People who would be far lessdesirable to start worlds with would gradually work their way in, but itis only fair to say that these first few thousand men and women of allclasses who responded to the flying machine would be possessed, as anyone could see with a look, of special qualifications for running worlds. 

I shall never quite forget the sense I had the first day of the crowd atHendon--those thousands of faces that had gathered up in some way out ofthemselves a kind of huge crowd-face before one--that imperturbablehappiness on it and that look of hard sense and hope, half poetry, halfscience . .. It was like gazing at some portrait, or some vastcountenance of the future--watching the crowd at Hendon. Scores of timesI looked away from the machines swinging up past me into the sky towatch the faces of the men and the women that belonged with skymachines; these men and women who stood on the precipice of a new worldof air, of sunshine, and of darkness, and were not afraid. 

One was in a little special civilization for the time being, all the newpeople in it sorted out from the old ones. One felt a vastlight-heartedness all about. One was in the presence of the pickedpeople who had come to see this first vast initiative of man towardSpace, toward the stars, the people who had waited for four thousandyears to see it; to see at last Little Man (as it would seem to God) inthis his first clumsy, beautiful childlike tottering up the sky. 

One was with the people on the planet who were the first to see thepractical, personal value, the market value, of all these huge idlefields of air that go with planets. They were the first people to feelidentified with the air, to have courage for the air, the lovers ofinitiative, the men and women that one felt might really get a new worldif they wanted one and who would know what to do with it when they gotit. 

 * * * * *

The other day in London near Charing Cross, as the crowds were streamingdown the Strand, a heavy box joggled off over the end of a dray, crashedto the pavement, flew open and sent twenty-four hundred pennies rollingunder the feet of the men and of the women and of the boys along thestreet. 

Traffic was stopped and a thousand men and women and boys began pickingthe pennies up. They all crowded up around the dray and put the penniesin the box. 

The next day the brewer to whom the pennies belonged had a letter in the_Times_ saying that not one of the twenty-four hundred pennies wasmissing. 

He closed his letter with a few moral remarks, announced that he hadsent the twenty-four hundred pennies as a kind of tribute to people--toanybody Who Happened Along the Strand--to a Foundling Hospital. 

 * * * * *

The man who told me this (it was at a business men's dinner), told itbecause he knew I was trying to believe pleasant things about humannature. He thought he ought to encourage me. 

I will not record the conversation, I merely record my humble opinion. 

I think it would have been better to have had just a few of thosepennies in the Strand say seven or eight missing. 

On Broadway probably eleven or twelve out of twenty-four hundred wouldhave been missing--I hope. 

And I am not unhopeful about England, or about the Strand. 

There are two ways to get relief from this story. 

First, the brewer lied. There were fewer pennies stolen than he wouldhave thought, and when he figured it out and found just a few penniesbetween him and a good story, he put the pennies in. And so the dearlittle foundlings got them--the letter in the _Times_ said. They werepresented to them, as it were, by the Good Little Boys in the Strand. 

Second, somebody else put the pennies in, some person standing by with asense of humour, who knew the letters that people write to the _Times_and the kind, serious, grave way English people read them. He put thepennies grimly in at one end, then he waited grimly for the letter inthe _Times_ to come out at the other. 

Either of these theories would work very well and let the crowd off. 

But if they are disproved to me, I have one more to fall back upon. 

If the story is true and not a soul in that memorable crowd on thatmemorable day stole a penny, it was because they had all, as it happenedin that particular crowd, stolen their pennies before, and got over it. It would seem a great pity if there had not been some one boy withenough initiative in him, enough faculty for moral experiment, to trystealing a penny just once, to see what it would be like. 

The same boy would have seen at once what it was like, tried feelingashamed of it promptly, and would never have had to bother to do itagain. He would have felt that penny burning in his pocket past cashdrawers, past banks, past bonds, until he became President of the UnitedStates. 

At all events the last thing that I would be willing to believe is thateither America or England would be capable of producing a chance crowdin the street that out of sheer laziness or moral thoughtlessness wouldnot be able to work up at least one boy in it who would have a suddenflash of imagination about a penny rolling around a man's leg--if hepicked it up and--did not put it in the box. 

The crowd in the Strand, of course, like any other real crowd, was astew of development, a huge laboratory of people. All stages ofexperience were in it. 

Some of the people in the crowd that day had a new refreshing thought, when they saw those pennies rolling around everybody. They thought theywould try and see what stealing a penny was like. Then they did it. 

Others in the crowd thought of stealing a penny too, and then they hadstill another thought. They thought of not stealing it. And this secondthought interested them more. 

Others did not think of stealing a penny at all because they had thoughtof it so often before had got used to it and had got used to dismissingit. 

Others thought of stealing a penny and then they thought how ashamedthey were of having thought of it. Others looked thoughtfully at thepennies and thought they would wait for guineas. 

But whatever it was or may have been that was taking place in that crowdthat day--they all thought. 

And after all what is really important to a nation is that the people init--any chance crowd in a street in it should think. I confess I carevery little one way or the other about the pennies being saved, or aboutthe brewer's little touch of moral poetry, his idea that this particularcrowd was solid Sunday-school from one end to the other, all through. Whether it was a crowd that thought of stealing a penny and did or didnot, if the pennies rolling around among their feet made them think, made them experiment, played upon the initiative, the individuality orinvention in them, the personal self-control, the social responsibilityin them, it was a crowd to be proud of. And I am glad, for one, that thebox of pennies was dumped in the street. 

I would like to see shillings tried next time. 

Then guineas might be used. 

A box of guineas dumped in the street would do more good than a box ofpennies because there are many people who would think more with theguineas rolling around out of sight around a man's legs than they wouldwith a penny's doing it. 

In this way a box of guineas would do more good. 

 * * * * *

Thousands of men and women that we have sent to India from this WesternWorld have been trying with Bibles, and good deeds, and kind faces, andSunday-schools to get the Hindoos to believe that it would not be a sinto kill the rats and stop the bubonic plague. 

Nothing came of it. 

In due time General Booth-Tucker appeared on the scene. 

He came too, of course, with a Bible and with his kind face like theothers, and of course, too, he went to Sunday-school regularly. 

And while he was watching the bubonic plague sweeping up cities, hetried too, like the others, to tell the people about a God who would notbe displeased if they killed the rats and stopped the plague. 

But he could not convince anybody, or at best a few here and there. 

The next thing that was known about General Booth-Tucker's work in Indiawas, that he had (still with his Bible, of course, and with his kindlook) slipped away and established in the south of France a factory forthe manufacture of gloves. 

He then returned to his poor superstitious people in India who would notbelieve him, and told them that he knew and knew absolutely that theywould not be punished for killing the rats, that the rats were notsacred, and that he could prove it. 

He offered the people so much apiece for the skins of the rats. 

The poorest and most desperate of the natives then began killing therats secretly and bringing in the skins. 

They waited for the wrath of Heaven to fall upon them. Nothing happened, then they told others. The others are telling everybody. 

General Booth-Tucker's factory to-day in the south of France is verybusy making money for the Salvation Army, turning out Christian glovesfor the West and turning out Christians or the beginnings of Christiansfor the East, and the ancient, obstinate theological idea of theholiness of the rats which the Hindoos have had is being ceaselessly, happily, and stupendously, all day and all night, disproved. 

Incidentally the little religious glove factory of GeneralBooth-Tucker's in the south of France is giving India the first seriousand fair chance it has ever had to stop being a pest house on the world, and to bring the bubonic plague with its threat at a planet to an end. 

General Booth-Tucker's Bible was just like anybody else's Bible. Butthere must have been something about the way he read his Bible that madehim think of things. And there must have been something about his kindlook. He looked kindly at something in particular, and he was determinedto make that something in particular do. He had the rats, and he had thegloves, and he had the Hindoo's--and he made them do, and before he knewit (I doubt if he knows it now) he became a saviour or inventor. 

In the big, desolate, darkened heart of a nation he had wedged in a God. 

 * * * * *

I wonder if General Booth-Tucker--that is, the original, very smalledition of General Booth-Tucker--had been in that memorable crowd, thatmemorable day in the Strand when nobody (with a report that was heardaround the world) stole a penny--I wonder if General Booth-Tucker wouldhave been A Very Good Little Boy. 

One of the pennies might have been missing. 

I have no prejudice against the Very Good Little Boy. It is not hisgoodness that is what is the matter with him. But I am very much afraidthat if there were any way of getting all the facts, it would not behard to prove categorically that what has been holding the world backthe last twenty-five years in its religious ideals, its business ethics, its liberty, candour, its courage, and its skill in social engineering, is the Very Good Little Boy. He may be comparatively harmless at firstand before his moustache is grown, but the moment he becomes a grown-upor the moment he sits on committees with his quiet, careful, snug, proper fear of experiment, of bold initiative, his disease of neverrunning a risk, his moral anæmia, he blocks all progress in churches, inlegislatures, in directors' meetings, in trades unions, in slums andMay-fairs. One sees The Good Little Boys weighing down everything themoment they are grown up. 

They have all been brought up each with his one faint, polite littlehunger, his one ambition, his one pale downy desire in life, lookingforward day by day, year by year, to the fine frenzy, to the fierce joyof Never Making a Mistake. 

If I had been given the appointment and were about to set to workto-morrow morning to make a new world, I would begin by getting togetherall the people in this one that I knew, or had noticed anywhere, whoseemed to have in them the spirit of experiment. Any boy or girl or manor woman that I had seen having the curiosity to try the different kindsand different sizes of right and wrong, or that I had seen boldly andfaithfully experimenting with the beautiful and the ugly so that theyreally knew about them for themselves--would be let in. I would putthese people for a time in a place by themselves where the people whowant to keep them from trying or learning, could not get at them. 

Then I would let them try. 

I would put the humdrum people in another place by themselves and letthem humdrum, the respectable people by themselves and let themrespectabilize. 

Then after my try-world had tried, and got well started and the peoplein it had finished off some things and knew what they wanted, I wouldallow the humdrums and the respectabilities to be let in--to do whatthey were told. 

Doing what they are told is what they like. So they would be happy. 

Of course doing what they are told is what is the matter with them. Butwhat is the matter with them would be useful. 

And everybody would be happy. 

 * * * * *

When the Titanic went down a little while ago and those few quiet men ondeck began their duty in that soft, gracious moonlit night, of sortingout the people who should die from the people who should live--if onewas a woman one could live. If one was a man one could die. 

No one will quarrel with the division as the only possible or endurableone that could have been made. 

But if God himself could have made the division or some super-man ship'sofficer who could have represented God, could have made it, it is nothard to believe that a less superficial, a more profound and humandifference between people would have been used in sorting out the peoplewho should live from the people who should die than a difference inorgans of reproduction. 

The women were saved first because the men were men and because it wasthe way the men felt. It expressed the men who were on the deck thatnight that the women should be saved first; it was the last chance theyhad to express themselves like men and they wanted to do it. 

But if God himself could have made the division with the immediate andconclusive knowledge of who everybody was, of what they really were intheir hearts, and of what they and their children and their children'schildren would do for the world if they lived no one would havequarrelled with God for making what would have seemed at the moment, nodoubt, very unreasonable and ungallant and impossible-lookingdiscriminations in sorting out the people who should live from thepeople who should die. 

Possibly even Man (using the word with a capital), acting from the pointof view of history and of the race and from the point of view of makinga kind of world where _Titanic_ disasters could not happen, would havechosen on the deck of the _Titanic_ that night, very much the way Godwould. 

From the point of view of Man there would have been no discrimination infavour of a woman because she was a woman. 

The last cry of the last man that the still listening life-boats heardcoming up out of the sea that night might have been the cry of the manwho had invented a ship that could not sink. 

There would not have been a woman in a life-boat or a woman sinking inthe sea who would not have had this man saved before a woman. 

If we could absolutely know all about the people, who are the people inthis world that we should want to have saved first, that we would wantto have taken to the life-boats and saved first at sea?

The women who are with child. 

And the men who are about to have ideas. 

And the men who man the boats for them, who in God's name and in thename of a world protect its women who are with child, and its men whoare about to have ideas. 

The world is different from the _Titanic_. We do not need to line up ourimmortal fellow human beings, sort them out in a minute on a world andsay to them, "Go here and die!" "Go there and live!" We are able tospend on a world at least an average of thirty-five years apiece on allthese immortal human beings we are with, in seeing what they are like, in guessing on what they are for and on their relative value, and indeciding where they belong and what a world can do with them. 

We ought to do better in saving people on a world. We have more time tothink. 

What would we try to do if we took the time to think? Would there be anyway of fixing upon an order for saving people on a world? What would bethe most noble, the most universal, the most Godlike and democraticschedule for souls to be saved on--on a world?

I think the man that would save the most other people should be savedfirst. It would not be democratic to save an ordinary man, a man whocould just save himself, just think for himself, when saving the mannext to him instead would be saving a man who would save a thousandordinary men, or men who have gifts for thinking only of themselves. 

Of course one man who thinks merely of himself is as good as another manwho thinks merely of himself, but from the point of view of a democracyevery common man has an inalienable right--the right to have the man whosaves common men saved first. 

And the moment we get in this world, our first democracy, the moment thecommon man really believes in democracy, this aristocracy or people whosave others (the common man himself will see to it) will be saved first. 

He will make mistakes in applying the principle of democracy, that is incollecting his aristocracies, his strategic men, his linchpins ofsociety, but he will believe in the principle all through. It will benot merely in his brain, but in his instincts, in his unconscioushero-worship, in his sinews and his bones, and it will stir in hisblood, that some men should be saved before others. 

But if the world is not a _Titanic_, and if we have on the averagethirty-five years apiece to decide about men on a world and put themwhere they belong, it might not be amiss to try to unite for the timebeing on a few fundamental principles. What would seem to us to be a fewfundamental principles for the act of world-assimilation, that vast, slow, unconscious crowd-process, that peristaltic action of society ofgathering up and stowing away men--all these little numberless cells ofhumanity where they belong?

No one cell can have much to say about it. But we can watch. 

And as we watch it seems to us that men may be said to be dividingthemselves roughly and flowingly at all times into three great streamsor classes. 

They are either Inventors, or they are Artists, or they are Hewers. 

Of course in classifying men it is necessary to bear in mind that theirgetting out of their classifications is what the classifications arefor. 

And it is also necessary to bear in mind that men can only be classifiedwith regard to their emphasis and may belong in one class in regard toone thing and in another class with regard to another, but in anyparticular place, or at any particular time a man is doing a thing inthis world, he is probably for the time being, while he is doing it, doing it as an Inventor (or genius), as an Artist (or organizer), or asa Hewer. Most men, it must be said, settle down in theirclassifications. They are very apt to decide for life whether they areInventors or Artists or Hewers. 

But as has been said before, being on a world and not on a _Titanic_, wehave time to think. 

On what principles could we make out a schedule or inventory of humannature, and decide on world-values in men?

When I was a boy I played in the hollow of a great butternut tree--theone my mother was married under. When I was in college I used to go backto it. I used to wonder a little that it was still there. When we hadall grown up we all came back and got together under it one happy dayand there it still stood, its great arms from out of the sky bent overlovers and over children on its little island, its wide river singinground it, still that glorious old hollow in it, full of dreams andchildhood and mystery, and that old sudden sunshine in it through theknots like portholes . .. Then we stood there all of us together. And themother watched her daughter married under it. 

I can remember many days standing beneath it as a small boy (my smallinsides full of butternuts, a thousand more butternuts up on the tree), and I used to look up in its branches and wonder about it, wonder how itcould keep on so with its butternuts and with its leaves, with itswinters and with its summers, its cool shadows and sunshines, stillbeing a butternut tree, with that huge hollow in it. 

I have learned since that if a few ounces or whittlings of wood in atree are chipped out in a ring around it under the bark, cords of woodin the limbs all up across the sky would die in a week--if one chips outthose few little ounces of wood. 

Cords of wood can be taken out of the inside of the tree and it will notmind. 

It is that little half-inch rim of the tree where the juice runs up tothe sun that makes the tree alive or dead. 

The part that must be saved first and provided for first is thatslippery little shiny streak under the bark. 

One could dig out a huge brush-heap of roots and the tree would live. One could pick off millions of leaves, could cut cords of branches outof it, or one could make long hollows up to the sun, tubes to the skyout of trees, and they would live, if one still managed to save thoselittle delicate pipe lines for Sap, running up and running down, day andnight, night and day, between the light in heaven and the darkness inthe ground. 

Perhaps Men are valuable in proportion as it would be difficult toproduce promptly other men to perform their functions, or to take theirplaces. 

If we cut away in society men of genius, leaves, and blossoms, in trees, men who reach down Heaven to us, they grow out again. 

If we cut away in society great masses of roots, common men who hew outthe earth in the ground and get earth ready to be heaved up to thesky--the roots grow out again. 

But if we cut a little faint rim around it of artists, of inventivemen-controllers, of the Sap-conductors, the men who make the Hewers runup to the sky and who make the geniuses come down to the ground, the menwho run the tree together, who out of dark earth and bright sunshinebuild it softly--if we destroy these, this little rim of great men ormen who save others, a totally new tree has to be begun. 

It is the essence of a democracy to acknowledge that some men for thetime being are more important in it than others, and that these men, whosoever they are, in whatever order of society they may be--poor, rich, famous, obscure--these men who think for others, who save othersand invent others, who make it possible for others to invent themselves, these men shall be saved first. 

 * * * * *

One always thinks at first that one would like to make a diagram ofhuman nature. It would be neat and convenient. 

Then one discovers that no diagram one can make of human nature--unlessone makes what might be called a kind of squirming diagram will reallywork. 

Then one tries to imagine what a flowing diagram would be like. 

Then it occurs to one, one has seen a flowing diagram. 

A Tree is a flowing diagram. 

So I am putting down on this page for what it may be worth, what I havecalled A Family Tree of Folks. 

_Read across_:

=INVENTORS= =ARTISTS= =HEWERS=

Inventors Organizers Labourers

Imagination Applied Imagination Tool or Mechanism

Fecundity Control Activity

Seer Poet Actor

 { The Man who Sees the }The Man who Generalizes {General in the Particular} Action

The Deeper Permanent {The Immediate Significance} HewingSignificance { or Meaning }

Light Applied Light or Heat Applied Heat or Motion

Stevenson and Wall James J. Hill Railway Hands

Creating Creative Selecting Hewing

The Democrat {The Aristocrat or} The Crowd { Crowdman }

Gods Heroes Men

Centrifugal Power Equilibrium Centripetal Power

The Whirl-Out People The Centre People The Whirl-In People

Alexander Graham Bell Telephone-Vail Hands

Architect Contractor Carpenter

Genius Artist Workmen

Columbus Columbus Isabella and the sailors

The Prospector The Engineer }Scoopers, Grabbers }(in mind or body), }Hewers

David the poet David the king David the soldier

Shakespeare Shakespeare Shakespeare

CHAPTER XVIII

THE MAN WHO PULLS THE WORLD TOGETHER

The typical mighty man or man of valour in our modern life is theOrganizer or Artist. 

If a man has succeeded in being a great organizer, it is because he hassucceeded in organizing himself. 

A man who has organized himself is a man who has built a personality. The main fact about a man who has succeeded in being an organized man orpersonality is, that he has ordered himself around. 

Naturally, when other people have to be ordered around, beingfull-head-on in the habit of ordering, even ordering himself, thehardest feat of all, he is the man who has to be picked out to orderother people. As a rule the man who orders himself around successfully, who makes his whole nature or all parts of himself work together, doesit because he takes pains to find out who he is and what he is like. Ifhe orders other men successfully and makes them work together it isbecause he knows what they are like. 

A man knows what other people are like and bow they feel by having timesof being a little like them and by being a big, latent all-possible, all-round kind of man. 

Leadership follows. 

Modern business consists in getting Inventors' minds and Hewers' mindsto work together. The ruler of modern business is the man who byexperience or imagination is half an Inventor himself, and half a Hewerhimself. He knows how inventing feels and how hewing feels. 

He has a southern exposure toward Hewers and makes Hewers feelidentified with him. He has what might be called an eastern exposuretoward men of genius, understands the inventive temperament, has thekind of personality that evokes inventiveness in others. 

Incidentally he has what might be called a northern exposure which keepshim scientific, cool, and close to the spirit of facts. 

And there has to be something very like a western exposure in him too, atouch of the homely seer, a habit of having reflections and afterglows, a sense of principles, and of the philosophy of men and things. 

If I were to try to sum up all these qualities in a man and call it byone name, I would call it Glorified-commonsense. 

If I were asked to define Glorified-commonsense I would say it is aglory which works. It belongs to the man who has a vision or coinage forothers because he sees them as they are, and sees how the glory buriedin them (_i. E. _, the inspiration or source of hard work in them) can begot out. 

Everywhere that the Artist in business, or Organizer, with his Inventorson one side of him and his Hewers on the other, can be seen to-daycompeting with the man who has the mere millionaire or owning type ofmind, he is crowding him from the market. 

It is because he understands how Inventors and Hewers feel and what theythink and when he turns on Inventors he makes them invent and when heturns on Hewers he makes them hew. 

The Hewer often thinks because he is rich or because he owns a business, that he can take the place of the artist, but he can be seen every dayin every business around us, being passed relentlessly out of powerbecause he cannot make his Inventors invent and cannot make his Hewershew as well as some other man. The moment his Inventors and Hewers thinkof him, hear about him, or have any dealing with him--with the meremillionaire, the mere owner kind of person, his Inventors invent aslittle as they can, and his Hewers hew as softly as they dare. 

This is called the Modern Industrial Problem. 

And no man but the artist, the man with the inventing and the hewingspirit both in him, who daily puts the inventing spirit and the hewingspirit together in himself, can get it together in others. 

Only the man who has kept and saved both the inventing and hewing spiritin himself can save it in others--can be a saviour or artist. 

CHAPTER XIX

THE MAN WHO STANDS BY

I have been trying to say in this book that goodness in daily life, orin business, in common world-running or world housekeeping, is by animplacable crowd-process working slowly out of the hands of the wrongmen into the hands of the right ones. 

If this is not true, I am ready to declare myself as a last resort, infavour of a strike. 

There is only one strike that would be practical. 

I would declare for a strike of the saviours. 

 * * * * *

By a saviour I do not mean a man who stoops down to me and saves me. Asaviour to me is a man who stands by and lets me save myself. 

I am afraid we cannot expect much of men who can bear the idea of beingsaved by other people, or by saviours who have a stooping feeling. 

I rejoice daily in the spirit of our modern laboring men, in that holydefiance in their eyes, in the way they will not say "please" to theiremployers and announce that they will save themselves. 

The only saviour who can do things for labouring men is the saviour whoproposes to do things with them, who stands by, who helps to keepoppressors and stooping saviours off--who sees that they have a fairchance and room to save themselves. 

I define a true saviour as a man who is trying to save himself. 

It was because Christ, Savonarola, and John Bunyan were all trying tosave themselves that it ever so much as occurred to them to save worlds. Saving a world was the only way to do it. 

The Cross was Christ's final stand for his own companionableness, hisstand for being like other people, for having other people to share hislife with, his faith in others and his joy in the world. 

The world was saved incidentally when Christ died on the Cross. Hewanted to live more abundantly--and he had to have certain sorts ofpeople to live more abundantly with. He did not want to live unless hecould live more abundantly. 

We live in a world in which inventors want to die if they cannot inventand in which Hewers want to die if they cannot hew. 

I am not proud. I am willing to be saved. Any saviour may save me if hewants to, if his saving me is a part of his saving himself. 

If the inventor saves me and saves us all because he wants to be in aworld where an inventor can invent, wants some one to invent to; if theartist saves me because it is part of his worship of God to have mesaved and wants to use me every day to rejoice about the world with--ifthe Hewer comes over and hews out a place in the world for me because hewants to hew, I am willing. 

All that I demand is, that if a man take the liberty of being a saviourto me that he refrain from stooping, that he come up to me and save melike a man, that he stand before me and tell me that here is somethingthat we, he and I, shoulder to shoulder, can do, something that neitherof us could do alone. Then he will fall to with me and I will fall towith him, and we will do it. 

This is what I mean by a saviour. 

CHAPTER XX

THE STRIKE OF THE SAVIOURS

A factory in ---- some ten years ago employed one hundred men. Three ofthese men were in the office and ninety-seven were hands in the works. To-day this same factory which is doing a very much larger business isstill employing one hundred men, but thirty of the men are employed inthe office and seventy in the works. 

Ten years, ago to put it in other words, the factory provided places forone artist or manager and two inventors and places for ninety-sevenHewers. 

To-day the factory has made room for thirty inventors, one manager andtwenty-nine men who spend their entire time in thinking of things thatwill help the Hewers hew. 

It has seventy Hewers who are helping the Inventors invent by hewingthree times as hard and three times as skilfully or three times as muchas without the Inventors to help them, they had dreamed they could hewbefore. 

The Artist or Organizer who made this change in the factory found thatamong the ninety-seven Hewers that were employed a number of Hewers werehewing very poorly, because though hewing was the best they could do, they could not even hew. He found certain others who were hewing poorlybecause they were not Hewers, but Inventors. These he set to work--someof them inventing in the office. 

On closer examination the two Inventors in the office were found to benot Inventors at all. One of them was a fine Hewer who liked to hew andwho hated inventing and the other was merely a rich Hewer who was anowner in the business who saw suddenly that he would have to stopinventing and stop very soon if he wanted the business to make any moremoney. 

There are four things that the Artist has to do with a factory like thisbefore he can make it efficient. 

Each of these things is an art. One art is the art of compelling themere owner, the man with the merely hewing mind, to confine himself tothe one thing he knows how to do, namely to shovelling, to shovellinghis money in when and where he was told it was needed, and to shovellinghis money out when it has been made for him. 

The art of compelling a mere owner to know his place, of keeping himshovelling money in and shovelling money out silently and modestly, consists as a rule in having the Artist or Organizer tell him thatunless the business is placed completely in his hands he will notundertake to run it. 

This is the first art. The second art consists in having anunderstanding with the inventors that they will invent ways of helpingthe Hewers hew. 

The third art consists in having an understanding with the Hewers thatthey will accept the help of the Inventors and hew with it. The fourthart is the art of representing the consumer with the Hewer and with theInventor and with the Owner and seeing that he shares in the benefits ofall economies and improvements. 

These are all human arts and turn on the power in a man of being a trueartist, of being a man-inventor, a man-developer and a man-mixer, dailytaking part of himself and using these parts in putting other mentogether. 

These organizers or artists, being the men who see how--are the men whoare not afraid. 

CHAPTER XXI

THE LEAGUE OF THE MEN WHO ARE NOT AFRAID

If all the unbrained money in the world to-day and the men that go withit could be isolated, could be taken by men of imagination and put in afew ships and sent off to an island in the sea--if New York and Londonand all the other important places could be left in the hands of the menwho have imagination, poor and rich, they would soon have the world inshape to make the men with merely owning minds, the mere owners off ontheir island, beg to come back to it, to be allowed to have a share init on any terms. 

In order to be fair, of course, their island would have to be afurnished island--mines, woods, and everything they could want. It wouldbecome a kind of brute wilderness or desert in twenty-five years. Wecould, now and then, some of us, take happy little trips, go out andlook them over on their little furnished island. It would do us good towatch them--these men with merely owning or holding-on minds, reallynoticing at last how unimportant they are. 

But it is not necessary to resort to a furnished island as a device, asa mirror for making mere millionaires see themselves. 

This is a thing that could be done for millionaires now, most of them, here just where they are. 

All that is necessary is to have the brains of the world so organizedthat the millionaires who expect merely because they are millionaires tobe run after by brains, cannot get any brains to run after them. 

I am in favour of organizing the brains of the world into a tradesunion. 

One of the next things that is going to happen is that the managing andcreating minds of the world to-day are going to organize, are going tosee suddenly their real power and use it. The brains are about to have, as labour and capital already have, a class consciousness. 

I would not claim that there is going to be an international strike ofthe brains of the world, but it will not be long before the managingclass as a class will be organized so that they can strike if they wantto. 

The Artists or Organizers and Managers of business will not needprobably, in order to accomplish their purpose, to strike against theuncreative millionaires. They will make a stand (which the best of themhave already made now) for the balance of power in any business thatthey furnish their brains to. The brains that create the profits for theowners and that create the labour for the labourers, will make terms fortheir brains and will withhold their brains if necessary to this end. But it is far more likely that they will accomplish their purpose soonerby using their brains for the millionaires and for the labourers--bycoöperating with the millionaires and labourers than they will bystriking against them or keeping their brains back. 

They are in a position to make the millionaires see how little moneythey can make without them even in a few days. They will let them try. Avery little trying will prove it. 

Where hand labour would have to strike for weeks and months to prove itsvalue, brain labour would have to strike hours and days. 

This is what is going to be done in modern business in one business at atime, the brains insisting in each firm upon full control. 

Then, of course, the firms that have the brains in most full controlwill drive the firms in which brains are in less control out ofcompetition. 

Then brains will spread from one business to another. The Managers, Artists, and Organizers of the world will have formed at last a BrainSyndicate, and they will put themselves in a position to determine intheir own interests and in the interests of society at large the termson which all men--all men who have no brains to put with theirmoney--shall be allowed to have the use of theirs. They will monopolizethe brain supply of the world. 

Then they will act. Under our present régime money hires men; under therégime of the Brain Syndicate men will hire money. Money--_i. E. _, savedup or canned labour, is going to be hired by Managers, Organizers, andEngineers with as much discrimination and with as deep a study of itsefficiency, as new labour is hired. The millionaires are going to beseen standing with their money bags and their little hats in their handslike office boys asking for positions for their money before the doorsof the really serious and important men, the men who toil out the ideasand the ways and the means of carrying out ideas--the men who do thereal work of the world, who see things that they want and see how to getthem--the men of imagination, the inventors of ideas, organizers offacts, generals and engineers in human nature. 

It is these men who are going to allow people who merely havethoughtless labour and people who merely have thoughtless money to belet in with them. The world's quarrel with the rich man is not his beinga rich man, but his being rich without brains, and its quarrel with thepoor labourer is not his being a poor labourer, but his being a poorlabourer without brains. The only way that either of these men can havea chance to be of any value is in letting themselves be used by the manwho will supply them with what they lack. They will try to get this manto see if he cannot think of some way of getting some good out of themfor themselves, and for others. 

We have a Frederick Taylor for furnishing brains to labour. 

We are going to have a Frederick Taylor to attend to the brain-supply ofmillionaires, to idea-outfits for directors. 

Every big firm is going to have a large group of specialists working onthe problem of how to make millionaires--its own particular millionairesthink, devising ways of keeping idle and thoughtless capitalists out ofthe way. If the experts fail in making millionaires think, they may besucceeded by experts in getting rid of them and in finding thoughtfulmoney, possibly made up of many small sums, to take their place. 

The real question the Artist or Organizer is going to ask about any manwith capital will be, "Is it the man who is making the money valuableand important or is it the money that is making this man important forthe time being and a little noticeable or important-looking?"

The only really serious question we have to face about money to-day isthe unimportance of the men who have it. The Hewers or Scoopers, orGrabbers, who have assumed the places of the Artist and the Inventorbecause they have the money, are about to be crowded over to the silent, modest back seats in directors' meetings. If they want their profits, they must give up their votes. They are going to be snubbed. They aregoing to beg to be noticed. The preferred stock or voting stock will bekept entirely in the hands of the men of working imagination, ofclear-headedness about things that are not quite seen, the things thatconstitute the true values in any business situation, the men who havethe sense of the way things work and of the way they will have to go. 

Mere millionaires who do not know their place in a great business willbe crowded into small ones. They will be confronted by the organizedrefusal of men with brains to work for their inferiors, to be undercontrol of men of second-rate order. Men with mere owning and grabbingminds will only be able to find men as stupid as they are to invest andmanage their money for them. In a really big creative business theironly chance will be cash and silence. They will be very glad at last toget in on any terms, if the men of brains will let their money edge intotheir business without votes and be carried along with it as a favour. 

It is because things are not like this now, that we have an industrialproblem. 

Managers who have already hired labour as a matter of course are goingto hire the kind of capital they like, the kind of capital that thinksand that can work with thinking men. 

There will gradually evolve a general recognition in business on thepart of men who run it and on the part of managers, of the moral orhuman value of money. The successful manager is no longer going to grabthoughtlessly at any old, idle, foolish pot of money that may be offeredto him. He is going to study the man who goes with it, see how he willvote and see whether he knows his place, whether he is a Hewer, forinstance, who thinks he is an Inventor. Does he or does he not knowwhich he is, an Inventor, an Artist, or a Hewer?

Capitalists will expect as a matter of course to be looked over and tobe hired in a great business enterprise as carefully as labourers arebeing hired now. 

The moment it is generally realized that the managers of every bigmodern business have become as particular about letting in the rightkind of directors as they have been before about letting in the rightkind of labour, we will stop having an upside-down business world. 

An upside-down business world is one in which any man who has moneythinks he can be a director almost anywhere, a world in which on everyhand we find managers who are not touching the imagination of the publicand getting it to buy, and not touching the imagination of labour andgetting it to work, because they are not free to carry out their ideaswithout submitting them to incompetent and scared owners. 

The incompetent and scared owners--the men who cannot think--are aboutto be shut out. Then they will be compelled to hire incompetent andscared managers. Then they will lose their money. Then the world willslip out of their hands. 

The problem of modern industry is to be not the distribution of themoney supply, but the distribution of the man-supply. 

Money follows men. 

Free men. Free money. 

BOOK FIVE

GOOD NEWS AND HARD WORK

TO ANYBODY

 "_I know that all men ever born are also my brothers. .. . Limitless leaves too, stiff or drooping in the fields, And brown ants in the little wells beneath them And mossy scabs of the worm fence, heaped stones, elders, mulleins and poke weed. _"

_A Child said, "What is grass?" fetching it to me with full hands. 

How could I answer the Child?_

 * * * * *

 _"I want to trust the sky and the grass! I want to believe the songs I hear from the fenceposts! Why should a maple-bud mislead me?"_

PART ONE

NEWS AND LABOUR

A big New England factory, not long ago, wanted to get nearer its rawmaterial and moved to Georgia. 

All the machine considerations, better water-power, cheaper labour, smaller freight bills, and new markets had argued for moving to Georgia. 

Long rows of new mills were built and thousands of negroes were moved inand thousands of shanties were put up, and the men and the women stoodbetween the wheels. And the wheels turned. 

There was not a thing that had not been thought of except the men andwomen that stood between the wheels. 

The men and women that stood between the wheels were, for the most part, strong and hearty persons and they never looked anxious or abused anddid as they were told. 

And when Saturday night came, crowds of them with their black faces, ofthe men and of the women, of the boys and girls, might have been seenfiling out of the works with their week's wages. 

Monday morning a few of them dribbled back. There were enough who wouldcome to run three mills. All the others in the long row of mills weresilent. Tuesday morning, Number Four started up, Wednesday, Number Five. By Thursday noon they were all going. 

The same thing happened the week after, and the week after, and the weekafter that. 

The management tried everything they could think of with their people, scolding, discharging, making their work harder, making their workeasier, paying them less, paying them more, two Baptist ministers andeven a little Roman Catholic Church. 

As long as the negroes saw enough to eat for three days, they would notwork. 

It began to look as if the mills would have to move back toMassachusetts, where people looked anxious and where people felt poor, got up at 5 A. M. Mondays and worked. 

Suddenly one day, the son of one of the owners, a very new-looking youngman who had never seen a business college, and who had run throughHarvard almost without looking at a book, and who really did not seem toknow or to care anything about anything--except folks--appeared on thescene with orders from his father that he be set to work. 

The manager could not imagine what to do with him at first, but finally, being a boy who made people like him more than they ought to, he foundhimself placed in charge of the Company Store. The company owned thevillage, and the Company Store, which had been treated as a merenecessity in the lonely village, had been located, or rather dumped, atthe time, into a building with rows of little house-windows in it, akind of extra storehouse on the premises. 

The first thing the young man did was to stove four holes in thebuilding, all along the front and around the corners on the two sides, and put in four big plate-glass windows. The store was mysteriouslyclosed up in front for a few days to do this, and no one could see whatwas happening, and the negroes slunk around into a back room to buytheir meal and molasses. And finally one morning, one Sunday morning, the store opened up bravely and flew open in front. 

The windows on the right contained three big purple hats with bluefeathers, and some pink parasols. 

The windows on the left were full of white waistcoats, silver-headedcanes, patent-leather shoes and other things to live up to. 

Monday morning more of the mills were running than usual. 

Later in the week there appeared in the windows melodions, phonographs, big gilt family Bibles, bread machines, sewing machines, and Morrischairs. Only a few hands took their Mondays off after this. 

All the mills began running all the week. 

 * * * * *

Of course there are better things to live for than purple hats and bluefeathers, and silver-headed canes, and patent leather shoes. But ifpeople can be got to live six days ahead, or thirty days, or sixty daysahead, instead of three days ahead, by purple hats and blue feathers andwhite waistcoats, and if it is necessary to use purple hats and bluefeathers to start people thinking in months instead of minutes, or tobudge them over to where they can have a touch of idealism or ofreligion or of living beyond the moment, I say for one, with all myheart, "God bless purple hats and blue feathers!"

 * * * * *

The great problem of modern charity, the one society is largely occupiedwith to-day, is: "What is there that we can possibly do for ourmillionaires?"

The next thing Society is going to do, perhaps, is to design and set uppurple hats with blue feathers for millionaires. 

The moment our millionaires have placed before them something to livefor, a few real, live, satisfying ideals, or splendid lasting thingsthey can do, things that everybody else would want to do, and thateverybody else would envy them for doing, it will bore them to run agreat business merely to make money. They will find it more interesting, harder, and calling for greater genius, to be great and capableemployers. When our millionaires once begin to enter into competitionwith one another in being the greatest and most successful employers oflabour on earth, our industrial wars will cease. 

Millionaires who get as much work out of their employees as they dare, and pay them as little as they can, and who give the public as smallvalues as they dare, and take as much money as they can, only do suchstupid, humdrum, conventional things because they are bored, becausethey cannot really think of anything to live for. 

Labourers whose daily, hourly occupation consists in seeing how muchless work a day than they ought to do, they can do, and how much moremoney they can get out of their employers than they earn, only do suchthings because they are tired or bored and discouraged, and because theycannot think of anything that is truly big and fine and worth workingfor. 

The industrial question is not an economic question. It is a question ofsupplying a nation with ideals. It is a problem which only an AmericanNational Ideal Supply Company could hope to handle. The very firstmoment three or four purple hats with blue feathers for millionaires andfor labourers have been found and set up in the great show window of theworld, the industrial unrest of this century begins to end. 

 * * * * *

As I went by, one day not long ago, I saw two small boys playinghouse--marking off rooms--sitting-rooms and bedrooms, with rows ofstones on the ground. When I came up they had just taken hold of a bigstone they wanted to lift over into line a little. They were tugging onit hopefully and with very red faces, and it did not budge. I picked upa small beam about five feet long on my side of the road, that I thoughtwould do for a crowbar, stepped over to the boys, fixed a fulcrum forthem, and went on with my walk. When I came back after my walk thatnight to the place where the boys had been playing, I found the boys hadgiven up working on their house. And as I looked about, every big stonefor yards around--every one that was the right size--seemed subtly outof place. The top of the stone wall, too, was very crooked. 

They had given up playing house and had played crowbar all day instead. 

I should think it would have been a rather wonderful day, those boys'first day, seven or eight hours of it spent, with just a little time offfor luncheon, in seeing how a crowbar worked!

I have forgotten just how much larger part of a ton one inch more on acrowbar lifts. I never know figures very well. But I know people and Iknow that a man with only three day's worth of things ahead to live fordoes not get one hundredth part of the purchase power on what he isdoing that the man gets who works with thirty days ahead of things tolive for, all of them nerving him up, keeping him in training, andinspiring him. And I know that the man who does his work with a longerlever still, with thirty or forty years worth' of things he wants, allcrowding in upon him and backing him up, can lift things so easily, soeven jauntily, sometimes, that he seems to many of us sometimes to be anew size and a new kind of man. 

 * * * * *

The general conventional idea of business is, that if you give a manmore wages to work for, he will work more, but of course if a businessman has the brains, knows how to fire up an employee, knows how to givehim something or suggest something in his life that will make him wantto live twenty times as much, it would not only be cheaper, but it wouldwork better than paying him twice as much wages. 

Efficiency is based on news. Put before a man's life twenty times asmuch to live for and to work for, and he will do at least, well--twiceas much work. 

If a man has a big man's thing or object in view, he can do three timesas much work. If the little thing he has to do, and keep doing, is seendaily by him as a part of a big thing, the power and drive of the bigthing is in it, the little thing becomes the big thing, seems big whilehe is doing it every minute. It makes it easier to do it because itseems big. 

The little man becomes a big man. 

From the plain, practical point of view, it is the idealist inbusiness, the shrewd, accurate, patient idealist in modern business whois the man of economic sense. The employer who can put out ideals infront of his people, who can make his people efficient with the leastexpense, is the employer who has the most economic sense. 

The employer who is a master at supplying motives to people, who managesto cut down through to the quick in his employees, to the daily motives, to the hourly ideals, the hourly expectations with which they work, isthe employer who already takes the lead, who is already setting the pacein the twentieth-century business world. 

Possibly you have noticed this trait in the great employers or, atleast, in the great managers of employers?

You are going, for instance, through a confectionery shop. As you movedown the long aisles of candy machines you hear the clock strike eleven. Suddenly music starts up all around you and before your eyes fourhundred girls swing off into each other's arms. They dance between theirmachines five minutes, and then, demurely, they drop back to their work. You see them sitting quietly in long white rows, folding up sweet-meatswith flushed and glowing cheeks. 

Is this sentiment or is it cold businesslike efficiency?

The more sentiment there is in it, I think, the more efficient it is andthe better it works. 

"Business is not business. "

One need not quarrel about words, but certainly, whatever else businessis, it is not business. It would be closer to the facts to call businessan art or a religion, a kind of homely, inspired, applied piety, basedupon gifts in men which are essentially religious gifts; the power ofcommunion in the human heart, the genius for cultivating companionship, of getting people to understand you and understand one another and doteam work. The bed-rock, the hard pan of business success lies in thefundamental, daily conviction--the personal habit in a man of lookingupon business as a hard, accurate, closely studied, shrewd human art, ascience of mutual expectation. 

I am not saying that I would favour all employers of young women havingthem, to-morrow morning at eleven o'clock, swing off into each other'sarms and dance for five minutes. The value of the dance in thisparticular case was that the Firm thought of the dancing itself and wasalways doing things like it, that everybody knew that the Firm, up inits glass office, felt glad, joined in the dance in spirit, enjoyedseeing the girls caught up for five minutes in the joy and swing of abig happy world full of sunshine and music outside, full of buoyant andgentle things, of ideals around them which belonged to them and of whichthey and their lives were a part. 

When we admit that business success to-day turns or is beginning to turnon a man's power of getting work out of people, we admit that a man'spower of getting work out of people, his business efficiency, turns onhis power of supplying his people with ideals. 

Ideals are news. 

You come on a man who thinks he is out of breath and that he cannotpossibly run. You happen to be able to tell him that some dynamite inthe quarry across the road is going to blow the side of the hill out inforty-five seconds and he will run like a gazelle. 

You tell a man the news, the true news that his employees are literallyand honestly finding increased pay or promotion, either in their ownestablishment or elsewhere for every man they employ, as fast as hemakes himself fit, and you have created a man three times his own sizebefore your own eyes, all in a minute. And he begins working for youlike a man three times his own size, and not because he is getting morefor it, but because he suddenly believes in you, suddenly believes inthe world and in the human race he belongs to. 

To make a man work, say something to him or do something to him whichwill make him swing his hat for humanity, and give three cheers (like ameeting of workmen the other day): "Three cheers for God!"

There is a well-known firm in England which has the best labour of itskind in the world, because the moment the Firm finds that a man's skillhas reached the uttermost point in his work, where it would be to theFirm's immediate interests to keep him and where the Firm could keep onmaking money out of him and where the man could not keep on growing, they have a way of stepping up to such a man (and such things happenevery few days), and telling him that he ought to go elsewhere, findinghim a better place and sending him to it. This is a regular system andhighly organized. The factory is known or looked upon as a big family orschool. There are hundreds of young men and young women who, in order toget in and get started, and merely be on the premises of such a factory, would offer to work for the firm for nothing. The Factory, to them, islike a great Gate on the World. 

It is its ideals that have made the factory a great gate on the World. 

And ideals are news. Ideals are news to a man about himself. News to aman about himself and about what he can be, is gospel. 

And a factory with men at the top who have the brains about human natureto do things like this, men who can tell people news about themselves, all day, every day, all the week, like a church--let such a factory, Isay, for one, have a steeple with chimes in it, if it wants to, and becounted with the other churches!

People have a fashion of speaking of a man's ideals in a kind of weak, pale way, as if ideals were clouds, done in water-colour by schoolgirls, as if they were pretty, innocent things, instead of being fierce, splendid, terrific energies, victorious, irrevocable in human history, trampling the earth like unicorns, breathing wonder, deaths, births uponthe world, carrying everything before them, everywhere they go. Theseare ideals! This may not be the way ideals work in a moment or in ayear, but it is the way they work in history, and it is the way theymake a man feel when he is working on them. It is what they are for, tomake him feel like this, when he is working on them. With the men whoare most alive and who live the longest, the men who live farther aheadand think in longer periods of time, the energies in ideals function asan everyday matter of course. 

I wish people would speak oftener of a man's motives, what he lives for, as his motive powers. They generally speak of motives in a man as ifthey were a mere kind of dead chart or spiritual geography in him, orclock-hand on him or map of his soul. The motives and desires in a manare the motors or engines in him, the central power house in a man, thething in him that makes him go. 

All a man has to do to live suddenly and unexpectedly a big life is tohave suddenly a big motive. 

Anybody who has ever tried, for five minutes, a big motive, ever triedworking a little happiness for other people into what he is doing forhimself, for instance, if he stopped to think about it and how it workedand how happy it made him himself, would never do anything in any otherway all his life. It is the big motives that are efficient. 

PART TWO

NEWS AND MONEY

I think it was Sir William Lever who remarked (but I have heard in thelast two years so many pearls dropped from the lips of millionaires thatI am not quite sure) that the way to tell a millionaire, when one sawone, was by his lack of ready money. He added that perhaps a surer wayof knowing a millionaire, when one saw one, was by his lack of ideas. 

My own experience is that neither of these ways works as well as it usedto. I very often meet a man now--a real live millionaire, no one wouldthink it of. 

One of them--one of the last ones--telegraphed me from down in thecountry one morning, swung up to London on a quick train, cooped me upwith him at a little corner table in his hotel, and gave me more ideasin two hours than I had had in a week. 

I came away very curious about him--whoever he was. 

Not many days afterward I found myself motoring up a long, slow hill, full of wind and heather, and there in a stately park with all histreetops around him, and his own blue sky, in a big, beautiful, sereneroom, I saw him again. 

He began at once, "Do you think Christ would have approved of my house?"

His five grown sons were sitting around him but he spoke vividly anddirectly and like a child, and as if he had just brushed sixty yearsaway, and could, any time. 

I said I did not think it fair to Christ, two thousand years off, to askwhat he would have thought of a house like his, now. The only fairthing to do would be to ask what Christ would think if He were livinghere to-day. 

"Well, suppose He had motored over here with you this afternoon from---- Manor, and spent last night with you there, and talked with you andwith ---- and had seen the pictures, and the great music room andwandered through the gardens, and suppose that then He had come throughon his way up, all those two miles of slums down in ---- seen all thosepoor, driven, crowded people, and had finally come up here with you tothis big, still, restful place two thousand people could live in, andwhich I keep all to myself. You don't really mean to say, do you, thatHe would approve of my living in a house like this?"

I said that I did not think that Christ would be tipped over by a houseor lose his bearings with a human soul because he lived in a park. Ithought He would look him straight in the eyes. 

"But Christ said, 'He that loseth his life shall save it!'"

"Yes, but He did not intend it as a mere remark about people's houses. "

It did not seem to me that Christ meant simply giving up to other peopleeasy and ordinary things like houses or like money, but that He meantgiving up to others our motives, giving up the deepest, hardest thingsin us, our very selves to other people. 

"And so you really think that if Christ came and looked at this houseand looked at me in it, He would not mind?"

"I do not know. I think that after He had looked at your house He wouldgo down and look at your factory, possibly. How many men do you employ?"

"Sixteen hundred. "

"I think He would look at them, the sixteen hundred men, and then Hewould move about a little. Very likely He would look at their wives andthe little children. "

He thought a moment. I could see that he was not as afraid of havingChrist see the factory as he was of having Him see the house. 

I was not quite sure but I thought there was a little faint gleam in hiseye when I mentioned the factory. 

"What do you make?" I asked. 

He named something that everybody knows. 

Then I remembered suddenly who he was. He was one of the men I had firstbeen told about in England, and the name had slipped from me. He hadmanaged to do and do together the three things one goes about lookingfor everywhere in business--what might be called the Three R's of greatbusiness (though not necessarily R's). (1) He had raised the wages ofhis employees. (2) He had reduced prices to consumers. (3) He hadreduced his proportion of profit and raised the income of the works, byinventing new classes of customers, and increasing the volume of thebusiness. 

He had found himself, one day, as most men do, sooner or later, with ademand for wages that he could not pay. 

At first he told the men he could not pay them more, said that he wouldhave to close the works if he did. 

He was a very busy man to be confronted with a crisis like this. Themarket was trouble enough. 

One morning, when he was up early, and the house was all still and hewas sitting alone with himself, the thought slipped into his mind thatthere had been several times before in his life when he had sat thinkingabout certain things that could not be done. And then he had got up fromthinking they could not be done and gone out and done them. 

He wondered if he could not get up and go out and do this one. 

As he sat in the stillness with a clear road before his mind and not asoul in the world up, the thought occurred to him, with not a thing insight to stop it, that he had not really trained himself to be quitesuch an expert in raising wages as he had in some other things. 

Perhaps he did not know about raising wages. 

Perhaps if he concentrated his imagination as much on getting higherwages for his workmen as he had in those early days years before onmaking over all his obstinate raw material into the best cases of ----on earth, he might find it possible to get more wages for his men bypersuading them to earn more and by getting their coöperation in findingways to earn more. 

As he sat in the stillness, gradually (perhaps it was the stillness thatdid it) the idea grew on him. 

He made up his mind to see what would happen if he worked as hard atpaying higher wages for three months as he had for three years at makingraw material into cases of the best----on earth. 

Then things began happening every day. One of the most importanthappened to him. 

He found that higher wages were as interesting a thing to work on as anyother raw material had ever been. 

He found that a cheap workman as raw material to make a high-pricedworkman out of was as interesting as a case of----. 

A year or so after this, there was a strike (in his particular industry)of all the workmen in England. They struck to be paid the wages his menwere paid. 

He had been able to do three things he thought he thought he could notdo. He had succeeded in doing the first, in raising the wages of hisemployees, by thinking up original ways of expressing himself to them, and of getting them to believe in him and of making them want to work athird harder. At the same time he succeeded in doing the second, inreducing the prices to consumers, by inventing new by-products out ofwaste. 

He had succeeded in doing the third, in reducing his per cent. Ofprofits and increasing his income from the works at the same time, bythinking up ways of creating new habits and new needs in his customers. 

He had fulfilled, as it seems, the three requisites of a great businesscareer. He had created new workmen, invented new things for men andwomen to want, and had then created some new men and women who couldwant them. 

Incidentally all the while, day by day, while he was doing these things, he had distributed a large and more or less unexpected sum of moneyamong all these three classes of people. 

Some of this extra money went to his workmen, and some to himself, andsome to his customers, but it was largely spent, of course, in gettingbusiness for other manufacturers and in getting people to buy all overEngland, from other manufacturers, things that such people as they hadnever been able before to afford to buy. 

 * * * * *

All these things that I have been saying and which I have duly confidedto the reader flashed through my mind as I stood with my back to thefire, realizing suddenly that the man who had done them was the man withwhom I was talking. 

Possibly some little thing was said. I do not remember what. The nextthing I knew was that, with his five grown sons around him, he returnedto his attack on his house. 

He said some days he was glad it was so far away. He did not want hisworkmen to see it. He did not go to the mill often in his motor-car, notwhen he could help it. 

I said that I thought that a man who was doing extraordinary things forother people, things that other men could not get time or strength orfreedom or boldness of mind or initiative to do, that any particularthing he could have that gave him any advantage or immunity for doingthe extraordinary things better, that would give him more of a chance togive other people a chance, that the other people, if they were in theirsenses, would insist upon his having these things. 

"I think there are hundreds of men in my mill who think that they oughtto have my motor-car and three or four rooms in this house. "

"Are they the most efficient ones?"

"No. "

If a man gives over to other people his deepest motives, and if hereally identifies himself--the very inside of himself with them andtreats their interests as his interests, the more money he has, the morepeople like it. 

"Take me, for instance, " I said. 

"I have hoped every minute since I knew you, that you were a prosperousman. I saw the house and looked around in the park as I motored up withjoy. And when I came to the big gate I wanted to give three cheers! Iwish you had stock in the Meat Trust in America, that you could pierceyour way like a microbe into the vitals, into the inside of the MeatTrust in my own country, make a stand in a Directors' Meeting for ninetymillion people over there, say your say for them, vote your stock forthem, say how you want a Meat Trust you belong to, to behave, how youwant it to be a big, serious, business institution and not a humdrum, mechanical-minded hold-up anybody could think of--in charge of a fewuninteresting, inglorious men--men nobody really cares to know and thatnobody wants to be like . .. When I think of what a man like you withmoney can do . .. !

"Am I not tired every day, are you not tired, yourself, of going abouteverywhere and seeing money in the hands of all these second-class, socially feeble-minded men, of seeing columns in the papers of what suchmen think, of having college presidents, great universities, domes, churches and thousands of steeples all deferring to them and bowing tothem, and all the superior, live, interested people ringing their doorbells for their money waiting outside on benches for what they think?"

I do not believe that Christ came into the world, two thousand yearsago, to say that only the men who have minds of the second class, menwho are not far-sighted enough in business to be decently unselfish inthis world, should be allowed to have control of the money and of thepeoples' means of living in it. 

We are living in an age of big machines and big, inevitableaggregations, and to say in an age like this, and above all, to get itout of a Bible, or put it into a hymn book or make a religion of it, that all the first class minds of the world--the men who see far enoughto be unselfish, should give over their money to second-class men, isthe most monstrous, most unbelieving, unfaithful, unbiblical, irreligious thing a world can be guilty of. The one thing that is nowthe matter with money, is that the second-class people have most of it. 

"What would happen if we applied asceticism or a tired, discouragedunbelief to having children that we do to having pounds and pence anddollars and cents? You would not stand for that would you?"

I looked at his five sons. 

"Suppose all the good families of to-day were to take the ground thathaving children is a self-indulgence unworthy of good people; supposethe good people leave having children in this world almost entirely tobad ones?

"This is what has been happening to money. 

"Unbelief in money is unbelief in the spirit. It is paying too muchattention to wealth to say that one must or that one must not have it. "

I cannot recall precisely what was said after this in that long eveningtalk of ours but what I tried to say perhaps might have been somethinglike this:

The essence of the New Testament seems to be the emphasis of a man'sspirit with or without money. Whether a man should be rich or get out ofbeing rich and earn the right to be poor (which some very true and bigmen, artists and inventors in this world will always prefer) turns on aman's temperament. If a man has a money genius and can so handle moneythat he can make money, and if he can, at the same time, and all in onebargain, express his own spirit, if he can free the spirits of other menwith money and express his religion in it, he should be ostracized byall thoughtful, Christian people, if in the desperate crisis of an agelike this, he tries to get out of being rich. 

The one thing a man can be said to be for in this world, is to expressthe goodness--the religion in him, in something, and if he is not thekind of man who can express his religion in money and in employinglabour, then let him find something--say music or radium or painting inwhich he can. It is this bounding off in a world, this making a barespot in life and saying "This is not God, this cannot be God!"--it isthis alone that is sacriligious. 

 * * * * *

It may be that I am merely speaking for myself, but I did discover a manon Fleet Street the other day who quite agreed with me apparently, thatif the thing a man has in him is religion he can put it up or express itin almost anything. 

This man had tried to express his idea in a window. 

He had done a Leonardo da Vinci's "Last Supper, " in sugar--a kind ofbas-relief in sugar. 

I do not claim that this kind of foolish, helpless caricature of a greatspiritual truth filled me with a great reverence or that it does now. 

But it did make me think how things were. 

If sugar with this man, like money with a banker, was the one logicalthing the man had to express his religion in, or if what he had had toexpress had been really true and fine, or if there had been a true orfine or great man to express, I do not doubt sugar could have been madeto do it. 

One single man with enough money and enough religions skill in humannature, who would get into the Sugar Trust with some good, fighting, voting stock, who could make the Sugar Trust do as it would be done by, would make over American industry in twenty years. 

He would have thrown up as on a high mountain, before all American men, one great specimen, enviable business. He would have revealed as in akind of deep, sober apocalypse, American business to itself. He wouldhave revealed American business as a new national art form, as anexpression of the practical religion, the genius for real things, thatis our real modern temperament in America and the real moderntemperament in all the nations. 

Of course it may not need to be done precisely with the Sugar Trust. 

The Meat Trust might do it first, or the Steel Trust. 

But it will be done. 

Then the Golden Rule, one great Golden Rule-machine having beeninstalled in our trust that knew the most, and was most known, it couldbe installed in the others. 

Religion can be expressed much better to-day in a stock-holder's meetingthan it can in a prayer-meeting. 

Charles Cabot, of Boston, walked in quietly to the Stock-holder'sMeeting of the Steel Trust one day and with a little touch ofmoney--$2, 900 in one hand, and a copy of the _American Magazine_ in theother, made (with $2, 900) $1, 468, 000, 000 do right. 

PART THREE

NEWS AND GOVERNMENT

CHAPTER I

OXFORD STREET AND THE HOUSE OF COMMONS

Every now and then when I am in London (at the instigation of somebusiness man who takes the time off to belong to it), I drop into apleasant but other-worldly and absent-minded place called the House ofCommons. 

I sit in the windows in the smoking-room and watch the faces of themembers all about me and watch the steamships, strangely, softly, suddenly--Shakespeare and Pepys, outside on the river, slip gravely byunder glass. 

Or I go in and sit down under the gallery, face to face with theSpeaker, looking across those profiles of world-makers in their seats;and I watch and listen in the House itself. There is a kind of pleasant, convenient, appropriate hush upon the world there. 

Wisdom. 

The decorous, orderly machinery of knowledge rolls over one--one listensto It, to the soft clatter of the endless belt of words. 

Every now and then one sees a member in the middle of a speech, orpossibly in the middle of a sentence, slip up quietly and take a look(under glass) at The People, or he uses a microscope, perhaps, or areading glass on The People, Mr. Bonar Law's, Mr. Lloyd George's, RamsayMacDonald's, Will Crook's, or somebody's. Then he comes back gravely asif he had got the people attended to now, and finishes what he wassaying. 

It is a very queer feeling one has about the People in the House ofCommons. 

I mean the feeling of their being under glass; they all seem somanageable, so quiet and so remote, a kind of glazed-over picture instill life, of themselves. Every now and then, of course one takes amember seriously when he steps up to the huge showcase of specimencrowds, which members are always referring to in their speeches. Butnothing comes of it. 

The crowds seem very remote there under the glass. One feels likesmashing something--getting down to closer terms with them--one longsfor a Department Store or a bridge or a 'bus--something that rattles andbangs and is. 

All the while outside the mighty street--that huge megaphone of thecrowd, goes shouting past. One wishes the House would notice it. But noone does. There is always just the House Itself and that hush or ring ofsilence around it, all England listening, all the little country papersfar away with their hands up to their ears and the great serious-mindedDailies, and the witty Weeklies, the stately Monthlies, and Quarterliesall acting as if it mattered. .. . 

Even during the coal strike nothing really happened in the House ofCommons. There was a sense of the great serious people, of the crowds onWestminster Bridge surging softly through glass outside, but nothing gotin. Big Ben boomed down the river, across the pavements, over thehurrying crowds and over all the men and the women, the real businessmen and women. The only thing about the House that seemed to haveanything to do with anybody was Big Ben. 

Finally one goes up to Harrod's to get relief, or one takes a 'bus, orone tries Trafalgar Square, or one sees if one can really get across theStrand or one does something--almost anything to recall one's self toreal life. 

And then, of course, there is Oxford Street. 

Almost always after watching the English people express themselves orstraining to express themselves in the House of Commons, I try OxfordStreet. 

I know, of course, that as an art-form for expressing a great people, Oxford Street is not all that it should be, but there is certainlysomething, after all the mooniness and the dim droniness, andlawyer-mindedness in the way the English people express themselves orthink that they ought to express themselves in their house ofCommons--there is certainly something that makes Oxford Street seemsuddenly a fine, free, candid way for a great people to talk! And thereis all the gusto, too, the 'busses, the taxies, the hundreds ofthousands of men and women saying things and buying things they believe. 

Taking in the shops on both sides or the street, and taking in thethings the people are doing behind the counters, and in the aisles, andup in the office windows three blocks of Oxford Street really expresswhat the English people really want and what they really think and whatthey believe and put up money on, more than three years of the house ofCommons. 

If I were an Englishman I would rather be elected to walk up and downOxford Street and read what I saw there than to be elected to a seat inthe House of Commons, and I could accomplish more and learn more for anation, with three blocks of Oxford Street, with what I could gather upand read there, and with what I could resent and believe there, than Icould with three years of the House of Commons. 

I know that anybody, of course, could be elected to walk up and downOxford Street. But it is enough for me. 

So I almost always try it after the house of Commons. 

And when I have taken a little swing down Oxford Street and got theHouse of Commons out of my system a little, perhaps I go down to theEmbankment, and drop into my club. 

Then I sit in the window and mull. 

If the English people express themselves and express what they want andwhat they are bound to have, on Oxford Street and put their money downfor it, so much better than they do in the House of Commons, why shouldthey not do it there?

Why should elaborate, roundabout, mysterious things like governments, that have to be spoken of in whispers (and that express themselvesusually in a kind of lawyer-minded way, in picked and dried words likewills), be looked upon so seriously, and be taken on the whole, as themain reliance the people have, in a great nation, for expressingthemselves?

Why should not a great people be allowed to say what they are like andto say what they want and what they are bound to get, in the way OxfordStreet says things, in a few straight, clean-cut, ordinary words, inlong quiet rows of deeds, of buying and selling and acting?

Pounds, shillings, and silence. 

Then on to the next thing. 

If the House of Commons were more like Oxford Street or even if it hadsuddenly something of the tone of Oxford Street, if suddenly it were tobegin some fine morning to express England the way Oxford Street does, would not one see, in less than three months, new kinds and new sizes ofmen all over England, wanting to belong to it?

Big, powerful, uncompromising, creative men who have no time fortwiddling, who never would have dreamed of being tucked away in thehouse of Commons before, would want to belong to it. 

In the meantime, of course, the men of England who have empires toexpress, are not unnaturally expressing them in more simple languagelike foundries, soap factories around a world, tungsten mines, department stores, banks, subways, railroads for seventy nations, andships on seven seas, Winnipeg trolleys and little New York skyscrapers. 

Business men of the more usual or humdrum kind could not do it, butcertainly, the first day that business men like these, of the first orworld-size class, once find the House of Commons a place they like to bein, once begin expressing the genius of the English people in governmentas they are already expressing the genius of the English people inowning the earth, in buying and selling, in inventing things and ininventing corporations, the House of Commons will cease to be a bog ofwords, an abyss of committees, and legislation will begin to be run likea railroad--on a block signal system, rows of things taken up, goneover, and finished. The click of the signal. Then the next thing. 

I sit in my club and look out of the window and think. Just outsidethousands of taxies shooting all these little mighty wills of men acrossmy window, across London, across England, across the world . .. The huge, imperious street . .. All these men hurling themselves about in it, joining their wills on to telephone wires, to mighty trains and littlequiet country roads, hitching up cables to their wills, andships--hitching up the very clouds over the sea to their wills andrunning a world--why are not men like these--men who have thestreet-spirit in them, this motor genius of driving through to what theywant, taking seats in the House of Commons?

Perhaps Oxford Street is more efficient and more characteristic inexpressing the genius and the will of the English people than the Houseof Commons is because of the way in which the people select the men theywant to express them in Oxford Street. 

It may be that the men the people have selected to be at the top of thenation's law-making are not selected by as skillful, painstaking, orthorough a process as the men who have been selected to be placed at thetop of the nation's buying and selling. 

Possibly the reason the House of Commons does not express the will ofthe people is, that its members are merely selected in a loose, vagueway and by merely counting noses. 

Possibly, too, the men who are selected by a true, honest, direct, natural selection to be the leaders and to free the energies and steerthe work of the people, the men who are selected to lead by being seenand lived with and worked with all day, every day, are better selectedmen than men who having been voted on on slips of paper, and having beenseen in newspaper paragraphs, travel up to London and beginthoughtlessly running a world. 

The business man drops into the House of Commons after the meeting ofhis firm in Bond Street, Lombard Street, or Oxford Street and takes alook at it. He sees before him a huge tool or piece of machinery--a bodyof men intended to work together and to get certain grave, particular, and important things done, that the people want done, and he does notsee how a great good-hearted chaos or welter, a kind of chance nationalWeather of Human Nature like the House of Commons, can get the thingsdone. 

So he confines himself more and more to business where he loses lesstime in wondering what other people think or if they think at all, cutsout the work he sees, and does it. 

He thinks how it would be if things were turned around and if peopletried to get expressed in business in the loose way, the thoughtlessreverie of voting that they use in trying to get themselves expressed inpolitics. 

He thinks the stockholders of the Sunlight Soap Company, Limited, wouldbe considerably alarmed to have the president and superintendent andtreasurer and the buyers and salesmen of the company elected at thepolls by the people in the county or by popular suffrage. He thinks thatthousands of the hands as well as the stockholders would be alarmed too. It does not seem to him that anybody, poor or rich, employer oremployee, in matters of grave personal concern, would be willing totrust his interest or would really expect the people, all the people asa whole, to be represented or to get what they wanted, to act definitelyand efficiently through the vague generalizations of the polls. Perhapsa natural selection, a dead-earnest rigorous, selection that men workon nine hours a day, an implacable, unremitting process during workinghours, of sorting men out (which we call business), is the crowd's mostreliable way of registering what it definitely thinks about the men itwants to represent it. Business is the crowd's, big, serious, dailyvoting in pounds, shillings, and pence--its hour to hour, unceasing, intimate, detailed labour in picking men out, in putting at the top themen it can work with best, the men who most express it, who have themost genius to serve crowds, to reveal to crowds their own minds, andsupply to them what they want. 

As full as it is--like all broad, honest expressions, of humanshortcomings and of things that are soon to be stopped, it does remainto be said that business, in a huge, rough way, daily expressing thecrowds as far as they have got--the best in them and the worst in them, is, after all, their most faithful and true record, their handwriting. Business is the crowds' autograph--its huge, slow, clumsy signature uponour world. 

Buying and selling is the life blood of the crowds' thought, its big, brutal daily confiding to us of its view of human life. What do thecrowds, poor and rich, really believe about life? Property is the lastwill and testament of Crowds. 

The man-sorting that goes on in distributing and producing property isthe Crowd's most unremitting, most normal, temperamental way ofdetermining and selecting its most efficient and valuable leaders--itsmen who can express it, and who can act for it. 

This is the first reason I would give against letting the people rely onhaving a House of Commons compel business men to be good. 

Men who meet now and again during the year, afternoons or evenings, whohave been picked out to be at the top of the nation's talking, by aloose absent-minded and illogical paper-process, cannot expect tocontrol men who have been picked out to be at the top of a nation'sbuying and selling, by a hard-working, closely fitting, logicalprocess--the men that all the people by everything they do, every day, all day, have picked out to represent them. 

Any chance three blocks of Oxford Street could be relied on to dobetter. 

Keeping the polls open once in so often, a few hours, and using hearsayand little slips of paper--anybody dropping in--seems a rather flutteryand uncertain way to pick out the representatives of the people, afterone has considered three blocks of Oxford Street. 

The next thing the crowd is going to do in getting what it wants frombusiness men is to deal directly with the business men themselves andstop feeling, what many people feel partly from habit, perhaps, that theonly way the crowd can get to what it wants is to go way over or wayback or way around by Robin Hood's barn or the House of Commons. 

But there is a second reason:

The trouble is not merely in the way men who sit in the House of Commonsare selected. The real deep-seated trouble with the men who sit in theHouse of Commons is that they like it. The difficulty (as in theAmerican Congress too) seems to be something in the men themselves. Itlies in what might be called, for lack of a better name, perhaps, theHem and Haw or Parliament Temperament. 

The dominating type of man in all the world's legislative bodies, forthe time being, seems to be the considerer or reconsiderer, the man whodotes on the little and tiddly sides of great problems. The greatness ofthe problem furnishes, of course, the pleasant, pale glow, the happysense of importance to a man, and then there is all the jolly littlenessof the little things besides--the little things that a little man canmake look big by getting them in the way of big ones--a great nationlooking on and waiting. .. . For such a man there always seems to be acertain coziness and hominess in a Legislative Body. .. . 

As a seat in the House of Commons not unnaturally--every year it ishemmed or hawed in, gets farther and farther away from the people, it isbecoming more and more apparent to the people every year that theMembers of their House of Commons as a class are unlikely to do anythingof a very striking or important or lasting value in the way of gettingbusiness men to be good. 

The more efficient and practical business men are coming to suspect thatthe members of the House of Commons, speaking broadly, do not know thewill of the people, and that they could not express it in creative, straightforward and affirmative laws if they did. 

CHAPTER II

OXFORD STREET HUMS. THE HOUSE HEMS

But it is not only because the members of the House of Commons areselected in a vague way or because they are a vague kind of men, thatthey fail to represent the people. 

The third reason against having a House of Commons try to compelbusiness men to be good, by law, is its out-of-the-way position. 

The out-of-the-way position that a Parliament occupies in gettingbusiness men to be good, can be best considered, perhaps, by admittingat the outset that a government really is one very real and genuine waya great people may have of expressing themselves, of expressing whatthey are like and what they want, and that business is another way. 

Then the question narrows down. Which way of expressing the people isthe one that expresses them the most to the point, and which expressesthem where their being expressed counts the most?

The people have a Government. And the people have Business. 

What is a Government for?

What is Business for?

Business is the occupation of finding out and anticipating what thewants of the English people really are and of finding out ways ofsupplying them. 

The business men on Oxford Street hire twenty or thirty thousand men andwomen, keep them at work eight or nine hours a day, five or six days ina week, finding out what the things are that the English people wantand reporting on them and supplying them. 

They are naturally in a strategic position to find out, not only whatkinds of things the people want, but to find out, too, just how theywant the things placed before them, what kind of storekeepers andmanufacturers, salesmen and saleswomen they tolerate, like to deal withand prefer to have prosper. 

And the business men are not only in the most strategic and competentposition to find out what the people who buy want, but to find out too, what the people who sell want. They are in the best position to know, and to know intimately, what the salesmen and saleswomen want and whatthey want to be and what they want to do or not do. 

They are in a close and watchful position, too, with regard to theconditions in the factories from which their goods come and with regardto what the employers, stockholders, foremen and workmen in thosefactories want. 

What is more to the point, these same business men, when they have oncefound out just what it is the people want, are the only men who are in aposition, all in the same breath, without asking anybody and withoutarguing with anybody, without meddling or convincing anybody--to get itfor them. 

Finding out what people want and getting it for them is what may becalled, controlling business. 

The question not unnaturally arises with all these business men andtheir twenty or thirty thousand people working with them, eight or ninehours a day, five or six days a week, in controlling business, whyshould the members of the House of Commons expect, by taking a fewafternoons or evenings off for it, to control business for them?

If I were an employee and if what I wanted to do was to improve theconditions of labour in my own calling, I do not think I would want totake the time to wait several months, probably, to convince my member ofParliament, and then wait a few months more for him to convince theother members of Parliament, and then vote his one vote. I would ratherdeal directly with my employer. 

If my employer is on my back and if I can once get the attention of myemployer himself, as to where he is and as to how he is interruptingwhat I am doing for him--if I once get his attention and once get him tonotice my back, he can get down. No one else can get down for him and noone else, except by turning a whole nation all around, can make him getdown. Why should a man bother with T. P. 's _Weekly_ or with HoratioBottomley or with the _Daily Mail_ or the _Times_, with a score of otherpeople's by-elections all over England to lift his own employer off hisback?

There is a very simple rule for it. 

The way to lift one's employer off one's back is to make one's back soefficient that he cannot afford to be on it. 

The first thing I would do would be to see if I could not persuade myemployer to take steps to train me and to make me efficient, himself. And perhaps the second thing I would try to do would be to wake mytrades union up, to get my trades union to consent to let me want to tryto be efficient and work as hard as I can, or to consent to myemployer's hiring engineers to make me efficient. I would try to get mytrades union to be interested in hiring itself some special expert likeFrederick Taylor, some specialist in making a man do three times as muchwork with the same strength, making him three times as valuable for hisemployer and three times as fit and strong for himself. 

This is what I would do if I wanted to make my employer good. I would beso good that he could not afford not being good too. 

If I were an employer, on the other hand, and understood human nature, and knew enough about psychology to found a great business house andwanted to make my employee good, or make him work three times as hardfor me, with three times the normal strength, day by day, and have anormal old age to look forward to, I do not think I would wait for theHouse of Commons to butt in and pension him. It seems to me that I wouldbe in a position to do it more adequately, more rapidly, and do it withmore intimate knowledge of economy than the House of Commons could. AndI would not have to convince several hundred men, men from ruralcounties, how I could improve my factory and get them to let me improveit. I could do it quietly by myself. 

In any given industrial difficulty, there is and must be a vision forevery man, a vision either borrowed for him or made for him by some oneelse, or a vision he has made for himself, that fits in just where heis. In the last analysis our industrial success is going to lie in thesense of Here, and Me, and Now, raised to the n-th power, in what mightbe called a kind of larger syndicalism. 

The typical syndicalist, instead of saying, as he does to-day, "We willtake the factories out of our employers hands and run them ourselves, "is going to say, "We will make ourselves fit to run the factoriesourselves. "

What would please the employers more, give them a general, or nationalconfidence in trying to run business and improve the conditions of workto-day, than to have their employees, suddenly, all over the nation, begin doing their work so well that they would be fit to run thefactories?

What is true of employers and employees in factories is still more trueof the employers and employees in the great retail stores. If there isone thing rather than another the business men and women on OxfordStreet, the managers, floor walkers and clerks all up and down thestreet are really engaged in all day all their lives, it is what mightbe called a daily nine-hour drill in understanding people. Why shouldemployers and employees like these--experts in human nature--men whomake their profession a success by studying human nature, and by workingin it daily, call in a few drifting gentlemen from the House of Commonsand expect them to work out their human problems better than they can doit?

Employers and clerks in retail stores are the two sets of people in allthe world most competent to study together the working details of humannature, to act for themselves in self-respecting man-fashion and withoutwhining at a nation. 

Who that they could hope to deal with and get what they want from, couldknow more about human nature than they do? Are they not the men of allothers, all up and down that little strip of Oxford Street, who devotetheir entire time to human nature? They are in the daily profession ofknowing the soonest and knowing the most about what people are like, andabout what people will probably think. They are intimate with theirpeccadillos in what they want to wear and in what they want to eat; theyhave learned their likes and dislikes in human nature; they know whatthey will support and what they will defy in human nature, in clerks, and in stores, and in storekeepers. 

And these things that they have learned about human nature (inthemselves and other people) they have learned not by talking abouthuman nature but by a grim daily doing things with it. 

These things being so, it would almost seem that these people and peoplelike them were qualified to act, and as they happen to be in the onestrategic position, both employers and employees alike, to act and toact for themselves and act directly and act together, it will not bevery long, probably, before the nation will be very glad to have them doit. 

It is likely to be seen very soon (at least by all skilled Labour andall skilled Capital) that running out into the street and crying "Help!"and calling in some third person to settle family difficulties that canbe better settled by being faced and thought out in private, is aninefficient and incompetent thing to do. 

And for the most part it is going to be only in the more superficial, inefficient, thoughtless industry that men, either employers oremployed, will be inclined to leave their daily work, run out wildly anddrag in a House of Commons to help them to do right. 

I am only speaking for myself but certainly if I were an employer or anemployee, I would not want to wait for an election a year away or towait for the great engineering problem of compelling my member ofParliament by my one vote to act for me. 

Perhaps workingmen in England and America are deceived about the valueof voting as a means of improving conditions of workingmen. Possiblywomen are deceived about the value of voting as a means of improving theconditions of working women. 

Possibly a woman could do more behind a counter or by buying a storethan by voting to have some man she has read about in a paper, improvebusiness by talking about it in the House of Commons. 

 * * * * *

There is also a kind of program or vision of action one can use as acustomer as well as an employer or employee. 

I might speak for myself. 

I have about so much money I spend every year in buying things. I haveproposed to study with my money every firm on which I spend it. Ipropose to take away my trade from the firm that does the least as itshould and give it to the firm that does the most as it should. I willvote with my entire income and with every penny I save for the kind ofemployers I believe in and that I want, for the kind of employers whocan earn and deserve and enjoy and keep the kind of salesmen andsaleswomen I choose to do business with. 

All the year round, every firm with which I deal, I am going to studynot only with my mind but with my money. I will proceed to take mytrade away from the big employers who think that I want shoddy goods orwho think that I want or am willing to trade with saleswomen who wouldlet an employer impose on them, saleswomen that he thinks he can affordto impose upon. I will proceed to vote with my money, with every penny Ihave in the world, and I will earn more that I may vote more, for thekind of employer with whom I like to trade. And there shall not be aman, woman, or child of my acquaintance, if I can help it, or of myfamily's acquaintance who shall not know who these employers are by nameand by address, the employers that I will trade with and the employersthat I will not. 

This is my idea as a customer, as a member of the public, of the way fora people to express itself and to get what it wants. 

What I want may be said to be a kind of news, news about me so far as Igo, as one member of the public. As I am only one person every item ofthe news about me must be put where it works. I will deal directly withthe news of what I want and I will convey that news, not to the House ofCommons but to the men who have what I want and who can give it to mewhen they know it. 

News is the real government now and always of this world. 

When one has made up one's mind to tell this news, obviously the bestart-form for telling news to employers and business men--the news ofwhat we want and what we do not want and of what we want in them as wellas in the things they sell, is to tell them the news in the languagethey have studied most, tell it to them in pounds, shillings, dollars, and cents, and by trading somewhere else. 

The gospel-bearing value, the news that one can get into a man's mindwith one dollar, the news that he can be made to see and act on for onedollar--well, thinking of this some days, makes for me, at least, goingup and down the Main Street of the World feeling my purse snuggling inmy pocket, and all the people I can step up to with my purse and tellso many dollars' worth of news to, tell that dollar's worth of gospel toabout the world--makes going up and down with a dollar on a big businessstreet, and spending it or not spending it, feel like a kind of chronic, easy, happy, going to Church. One always has a little money in one'spocket that one spends or that one won't spend, and sometimes even notspending a dollar, practised by some people, at just the right momentand in just the right way, can be made to mean as much and do as muchwith a world as spending a thousand dollars would without any meaningput into it. 

Sometimes I even go into a store on purpose, a certain kind of store Iknow will try to cheat me in a certain way, let them look a minute atthe dollar they cannot have. Then I walk out with it quietly. 

I have said that the life-blood of my convictions shall circulate in mymoney and if I cannot express my soul, my religion, my gospel or newsfor this world, news about what I want and about what I will have in aworld, if I cannot make every dollar, every shilling I earn, go throughthe world and sing my own little world-song in it, may I never haveanother shilling or earn another dollar as long as I live!

The very sight of a dollar now whenever I see one once more, fills mewith deep, hopeful working joy, thinking of what a bargain it is and howI can use it twice over, thinking of the dollar's worth of news, to saynothing of the dollar's worth of things that belong with a dollar!

 * * * * *

For some generations, now, we have tried to make people good in a vague, general way, by using priests, sacraments and confessional boxes. Forsome centuries we have been trying to make people good with lawyers andjuries and ballot boxes. We are now to try, at last, religion or gospelor news or ideals--practical, shrewd aimed ideals, that is, news to aman about himself or news about the man from the man himself to us. Ineverything a man does he is expressing to us this news about himself, and about his world, and about his God. We are all telling news aboutthe world and about ourselves all the time and we are all in a positionfor news all the time. 

What is it from hour to hour and day to day that we will do and we willnot do?

This news about us is the religion in us. 

The average man is coming to have very accurate ideas of late as to justwhere his religion is located. He has come to see that real religion ina man, very conveniently located (immediately at hand in him andpersonally directed), is his own action, his own divine "I will" or "Iwon't. "

He has come to be deeply attracted by this idea of a religion for everyman just where he is, fitted on patiently, cheerfully, to just where heis, every day all day, his glorious, still, practical, good-natured, godlike "I will" and "I won't "--or News about himself. 

CHAPTER III

PRESIDENT WILSON AND MOSES

We are deeply interested in the United States just now, in seeing whatwill be the fate of President Wilson's government in getting men to begood. The fate of a government in 1913 may be said to stand on thegovernment's psychology or knowledge of human nature or of what might becalled human engineering, its mastery of the principles of lifting overin great masses heavy spiritual bodies, like people, swinging greatmasses of people's minds over as on some huge national derrick up on TheWhite House, from one lookout on life to another. 

There are certain aspects of human nature when power is being applied toit in this way, and when it is being got to be good, that may not bebeside the point. 

If one could drop in on a government and have a little neighbourly chatwith it, as one was going by, I think I would rather talk with it(especially our government, just now), about Human Nature than aboutanything. 

I would have to do it, of course, in what might seem to a government tobe a plain and homely way. 

I would ask the government what it thought of two or three observationsI have come to lately about the way that human nature works, when peopleare getting it to be good. What a government thinks about them mightpossibly prove before many months to be quite important to It. 

The first observation is this:

The reason that the average bachelor is a bachelor is that he spends thefirst forty-five years of his life in picking out women he will notmarry. 

Possibly it is because many people are following the same principle intrying to be good and in getting other people to be good that they makesuch poor work of it. 

Possibly the main reason why there are so many wicked people or seem tobe, in proportion, among the Hebrews in the Old Testament, is that Moseswas a lawyer and that he tried to start off a great people with the TenCommandments, that is, a list of nine things they must never do anymore, and of one that they must. 

Some of us who have tried being good, have noticed that when we have hitit off, being good (at least with us) consists in being focused, ingetting concentrated, in getting one's attention to what one reallywants to do. 

Moses' idea when he started his government, the idea of getting peopleconcentrated on not getting concentrated on nine things, was notconducive to goodness. The fundamental principle Moses tried to make thepeople good with was a contradiction in terms. It is a principle thatwould make wicked people out of almost anybody. It is not a practicableprinciple for a government to rely on in getting people to be good. Itdid not work with the people in the Old Testament and it has neverworked with people since. 

It does not call people out, in getting them to take up goodness, topoint out to them nine places not to take hold of and one where theywill be allowed to take hold, if they know how. 

All that one has to do to see how true this is, is to observe the groupsor classes of people who are especially not what they should be. Thepeople who never get on morally (as different as they may be in mostthings and in the fields of their activity) all have one illusion incommon. There is one thing they always keep saying when any new hopefulperson tries once more to get them to be good. 

They say (almost as if they had a phonograph) that they try to be goodand cannot do it. 

And this is not true. 

When a man says he tries to be good and cannot do it, if he sits downand thinks it over he finds, generally, he is not trying to be good atall. He is trying to be not bad. 

A man cannot get himself reformed, by a negative process, by being notbad, and it is still harder for him and for everybody, when other peopletry to do it--those who are near him, and it is still, still harder fora President down in Washington to do it. 

An intelligent, live man or business corporation cannot be got to keepup an interest very long in being not bad. Being not bad is a glitteringgenerality. It is like being not extravagant or economical. 

Most people who have ever tried to attain in a respectable degree to apale little neuter virtue like economy, and who have reflected upontheir experiences, have come to conclusions that may not be very farfrom the point in a fine art like getting one's self to be good orgetting other people to be good. 

To concentrate on being economical by going grimly down the street, looking at the shop windows, looking hard at miles of things one willnot buy, cannot be said to be a practicable method of attaining economy. 

The real artist, in getting himself to be good, proceeds to upon theopposite principle. Even if the good thing he tries for is merely anegative good thing like economy, he instinctively seeks out somepositive way of getting it. 

A man who is cultivating the art of getting himself to be economical, orof getting his wife to be economical, does not make a start by sittingdown with a pencil and making out a list, by concentrating his mind onrows of things that he and his family must get along without. He knows abetter way. He goes downtown with his entire family, takes them into abig shop and sits down with them and listens to a Steinway Grand hecannot get. As he listens to it long enough, he thinks he will get it. 

Then a subtle, spiritual change passes over him and over his familywhile they listen. He would not have said before he started that sittingdown and thinking of things he could get along without--making lists inhis mind of things that he must not have--could ever be in this world ahappy, even an almost thrilling experience. But as a matter of fact, ashe sits by the piano and listens, he finds himself counting offeconomies like strings of pearls, and he greets each new self-sacrificehe can think of with a cheer. While the Steinway Grand fills the roomwith melody all around him, there he actually is sitting, and having thetime of his life dreaming of the things he can get along without!

When he goes home, he goes home thinking. And the family all go homethinking. 

Then economy sets in. The reason most people make a failure of theireconomy is that they are not artistic with it, they do not enjoy it. They do not pick out anything to enjoy their economy with. 

With some people an automobile would work better than a Steinway Grandand there are as many ways, of course, of practising the Steinway Grandprinciple in not being bad as there are people, but they all consistapparently in selecting some big, positive thing that one wants to do, which logically includes and bundles all together where they areattended to in a lump, all the things that one ought not to do. 

Most sins (every one who has ever tried them knows this) most sins arenot really worth bothering with, each in detail, even the not-doing themand the most practical, firm method of getting them out of the way(thousands of them at once, sometimes, with one hand) is to havesomething so big to live for that all the things that would like to getin the way, and would like to look important, look, when one thinks ofit, suddenly small. 

The distinctive, preëminent, official business for the next four years, of making small things in this country look small and of gently, quietly making small men feel small, has been assigned by our peoplerecently, to Mr. Woodrow Wilson. 

Now it naturally seems to some of us, the best way for Mr. Wilson'sgovernment to do in getting the Trusts to give up lying and stealing, isgoing to be to place before them quietly a few really big, interesting, equally exciting things that Trusts can do, and then dare them, as insome great game or tournament of skill--all the people looking on--darethem, challenge them like great men, to do them. 

There are three ideas President Wilson may have of the government'sgetting people to be good. 

First, not letting people be bad. (Moses. )

Second, being good for them. (Karl Marx. )

Third, letting them be good themselves. (Any Democrat. )

The first of these ideas means government by Prison. The second, meansgovernment by Usurpation, that is, the moment a man amounts to enough tochoose to do right or do wrong of his own free will, the moment he is aman, in other words, being so afraid of him and of his being a man, thatwe all, in a kind of panic, shove into his life and live it forhim--this is Socialism, a scared machine that scared people haveinvented for not letting people choose to do right because they maychoose to do wrong. 

The third, letting people be good themselves, letting them beself-controlling, self-respecting, self-expressing or voluntarily goodpeople, is democracy, a machine for letting men be men by trying it. 

Moses was the inventor of a kind of national moral-brake system, amachine for stopping people nine times out of ten. The question thatfaces President Wilson just now, while the world looks on is, "Is agovernment or is it not a moral-brake system--a machine for stoppingpeople nine times out of ten?"

There is a considerable resemblance between Moses' position and the newPresident's in the United States. When Moses looked around on the thingshe saw the men around him doing, and took the ground that at least nineout of ten of the things should be stopped, he was academically correct. And so, also, President Wilson, gazing at the business of this countryto-day, at nine out of ten of the humdrum thoughtless things that trustsand corporations have been doing, will be academically correct intelling them to stop, in having his little, new, helpless, unproved, adolescent government stand up before all the people and speak in loud, beautiful, clear accents and (with its left fist full of prisons, fines, lawyers, of forty-eight legislatures all talking at once) bring down itsright fist as a kind of gavel on the world and say to these men, beforeall the nations, that nine of the things they are doing must be stoppedand that one of the things, if they happen to able be to think out someway of keeping on doing it--nobody will hurt them. 

But the question before President Wilson, to-day, with all our worldlooking on, is not whether he would be right in entering upon a careerof stopping people. The real and serious question is, does stoppingpeople stop them? And if stopping people does not stop them, what will?

Perhaps the way for a government to stop people from doing things theyare doing, is to tell them the things it wants done. A government thatdoes not express what it wants, that has not given a masterful, clear, inspired statement of what it wants--a government that has only tried tosay what it does not want, is not a government. 

The next business of a government is a statement of what it wants. 

The problem of a government is essentially a problem of statement. 

How shall this statement be made?

CHAPTER IV

THE PRESIDENT SAYS YES AND NO

It was not merely because the seventh commandment was negative, butbecause it was abstract that David found it so hard to keep. If theseventh commandment (like Uriah's wife) could have had deep blue eyes orcould have been beautiful to look upon, and, on a particular day in aparticular place, could have been bathing in a garden, David would havefound keeping it a very different matter. The tendency to make a statueof purity as a lovely female figure carries us a little further in moralevolution, than the moral statement that Moses had managed to get, andit was further toward the concrete, but it was not far enough for a realartist or man who does things. 

One of the things about the real artist that makes him an artist, isthat he is always and always has been and always will be profoundlydissatisfied with a statue of a female figure as an emblem of purity. Hechallenges the world, he challenges God, he challenges himself, hechallenges the men and women about him when he is being put off with aStatue as an emblem of purity. He demands, searches out, interprets, creates something concrete and living to express his idea of purity. 

How can President Wilson, in getting the Trusts not to be corrupt, intrying to win them--how can President Wilson make the law alluring? Howcan he make the People have a Low Voice?

A great deal if not nearly everything depends in tempting business mento be good, upon the tone in which they are addressed. Every government, like every man, soon comes to have its own characteristic tone inaddressing the people. And, as a matter of fact, it is almost always thetone in a government, like the voice in a man, which tells us the mostdefinitely what it is like, and is the most intimate and effectiveexpression of what it wants and is the most practical way of gettingwhat it wants. Everybody has noticed that a man's voice works harder forhim, works more to the point for him in getting what he wants than hiswords do. It is his voice that makes people know him, that makes themknow he means what he says. It is his voice that tells them whether heis in the habit of meaning what he says, and it is his voice that tellsthem whether he is in habit of getting what he wants, and of knowingwhat to do with what he wants when he gets it. 

A government does not need to say very much if it has the right tone. 

The tone of a government is the government. 

If President Wilson is going to succeed in tempting business men to begood, he is going to do it, some of us think, by depending on threeprinciples. 

These three principles, like all live, active principles, may be statedas three principles or as three personal traits. 

First, by being affirmative. (Isaiah, in distinction from Moses. )

Second, by being concrete. (Bathsheba. )

Third, by being specific, by seeing the universal in the particular. (Like any artist or man who does things. )

The value of being affirmative and the value of being concrete havealready been touched upon. There remains the value of being specific. 

Possibly, in this present happy hour, when our country has grownsuddenly sensible and has become practical enough to pick out at last, once more, a President with a real serious working sense of humour, evena sense of humour about himself, it may not be considered disrespectfulif I continue a little longer dropping in on the Government, and sayingwhat I have to say in a few plain and homely words. 

The trouble with most people in being economical with their money is, that when they spend it, they spend it on something in particular, andwhen they save it, they try to save it in a kind of general way. Thesame principle applies to doing right. It is because when people doright, they do it in a kind of general pleasant, abstract way, and whenthey do wrong they always do something in particular, that they are soWicked. 

A man will do almost anything to save his life at a particular place andat a particular time, say at ten o'clock to-morrow morning, if he isdrowning, but if he has a year to save it in, a year of controlling hisappetites, of daily, detailed mastering of his spirit, of not taking apiece of mince pie, of stopping his work in time and of going to bedearly, he will die. 

It is easier when one is going under water for the third time and sees arope, to stretch just one inch more and grasp the rope, reach up toforty more years of one's life, all concentrated for one on the tip of arope, than it is to spread out saving one's life over a whole year, 365breakfasts, 365 luncheons, 365 dinners, 33, 365 moments of anger, ofreckless worry, of remorse, of self-pity, 40, 000 of despair and round upwith a swing at the end of one's year at the tiptop of one's being, asif it had only taken five minutes. And yet it is only an act of thecreative imagination of seeing the whole, of having a happy, daily, detailed spectacle of the end in view, that is, of the part in itssetting of the whole--going without a piece of mince pie. If one couldonly make one's self see the piece of mince pie as it is, it would notbe difficult. If one could see it on the plate there and see the nottaking it as a little wedge-shaped rivet, a little triangular link ofcoupling in the chain that keeps one holding on forty years longer tothis planet, a piece of mince pie left on a plate would become a Vision. 

This seems to be the principle that works best in getting other peopleto be good. 

Perhaps the President will succeed in getting Trusts to be good, bytaking hold of specific Trusts, one by one, and setting them--allmankind looking on--in the nation's vision, setting them even in theirown vision--taking the Trusts that thought they had got what theywanted, making them stand up and look (in some great public lightedplace) at what pathetic, tragical failures they are, letting them seethat what their Trust had wanted all along, if it had only thought aboutit, was not success one went to jail for--success by getting the bestout of the most people, but success by serving the most people the best. 

A great many of us in America have been exercising our minds for a longtime now about the eagerness of the Trusts, and the trouble we weregoing to have in curbing the eagerness of the Trusts. 

Sometimes I have wondered if, after all, it was our minds we wereexercising, for when one sits down seriously to think of it, it is theeagerness of the Trusts that is the most hopeful thing about them. 

What is the matter with our American Trusts, perhaps, is not and neverhas been, their eagerness, but their eagerness for things that they didnot want, and for things that almost everybody is coming to see thatthey did not want. 

The moment that the eagerness of our American Trusts is an eagerness forthings that they really want, the Trusts will be seen piling over eachother's heels, asking the government to please investigate them. Themore they can get the people to know about them and about theireagerness, the more the people will trust them and deal with them. 

All that we have been waiting for is a government that sees the partfrom the point of view of the whole, which will take up a few specificTrusts and be specific enough with them to make them think, think hardwhat they really want, and what their real eagerness is about, and theentire face of modern business will change. First the expression willchange and then the face itself. 

The moment it is found that the government is a specific government, all the trusts that know what they really want and know what they reallyare doing, will want to be investigated, because they will wanteverybody to know that they know. In case of the trusts that do not knowwhat they want and that do not know what they are doing, the governmentwill just step in, of course, and investigate them until they find out. 

A specific government will not need to be specific many times. 

It takes up a particular Trust in its hand, turns it over quietly, empties its contents out before the people and says to everybody, "Thisparticular Trust you see here has tried to be a kind of Trust, which itfound out afterward, it did not want to be. It is the kind of Trustwhose officers hide their faces when they think of what it was that theythought that they thought that they wanted. .. . 

"These men you see here, forty silent nations looking on, hundreds andthousands of self-respecting, self-supporting, public-serving, creative, successful business men, whom all the world envies looking on, do herebybeg to declare to all business men who know them and to the people, thatthey did not ever really want these things for themselves that theirbusiness says or seems to say they wanted. 

"They wish to ask the public to put themselves in their places and torefuse to believe that they deliberately sat down, seriously thought itall out, that they had planned to express to everybody what theirnatures really were in a blind, brutal, foolish business like this whichwe have just been showing you. They beg to have it believed that theirbusiness misrepresents them, that it misrepresents what they want, andthey ask to be again admitted to the good-will, the hope andforgiveness, the companionship of a great people. 

"They declare" (the government will go on) "that they are not the menthey seem. They are merely men in a hurry. They want it understood thatthey have merely hurried so fast and hurried so long that they now wakeup at last only to see, see with this terrific plainness what it reallyis that has been happening to them all their lives, _viz. _: for forty, fifty, or sixty years they have merely forgot who they were andoverlooked what they were like. 

"In hurrying, too, it is only fair to say they have had to use machinesto hurry with and unconsciously, year by year, associating almostexclusively with machines, their machines (pump handles, trip-hammers, hydraulic drills, steam shovels and cranes and cash registers) havegrown into them. 

"This is the way it has happened. 'Let the nation be merciful to them, 'the government will then say, and dismiss the subject. "

 * * * * *

What our President seems to be for in America, is to do up a nation inone specific, particular man who expresses everybody. 

This man deals with each other specific man, his aggressions andservices, as a nation would if a nation could be one specific man. 

The President of the United States is the Comptroller of the people'svision, by seeing a part and dealing with a part as a part of a whole, he governs the people. 

He is the Chancellor of the People's Attention. 

The business of being a President is the business of focusing thevision, of flooding the whole desire or will of a people around a manand letting him have the light of it, to see what he is doing by, and tobe seen by, while he is doing it. 

The corporations have expressed or focused the employers of labour. TheLabour Unions have focused or expressed the will of the labourers, andthe government focuses and expresses the will of the consumers, of thepeople as a whole, rich and poor, so that Labour and Capital, bothlisten to It, understand It and act on It. 

The way to deal with a specific sin is to flood it around with thegeneral vision. Then it does not need to be dealt with. Then strangely, softly, and almost before we know--out there in the Light, itautomatically deals with itself. 

When the Government takes hold quietly of the National Cash RegisterCompany, turns it up, empties its contents out, --all its methods and itsmotives--and all the things It thought It wanted, and then proceeds toput its president and twenty-nine of its officers into jail, my readerswill perhaps point out to me that this action of the government as amethod of tempting people to be good, while it may have the virtue ofbeing concrete and the virtue of being specific, certainly does not havethe other virtue that I have laid down, the virtue of being affirmative. "Certainly" they will say "there is not anything affirmative aboutputting twenty-nine big business men in jail. " Many people would call itthe most magnificently negative thing a President could have done. Moseshimself would have done it. 

It does not seem to me that Moses would have done it, or that it wasessentially negative. It could not unfairly be claimed that in spite ofits negative look on the surface, it was the most massive, significant, crushing affirmation that a great people has made for years. 

By putting the twenty-nine officers of the National Cash RegisterCompany in jail, the American people affirmed around the world thenation's championship of the men that had been defeated in thecompetition with the National Cash Register Company. They affirmed thatthese men who were not afraid of the National Cash Register Companybecause they were bigger, and who stood up to them and fought them, werethe kind of men Americans wanted to be like, and that the officers ofthe National Cash Register Company were the kind of men Americans didnot want to be like, would not do business with, would not tolerate, would not envy, would not live on the same continent with, unless theywere kept in jail. 

The President of the United States, sitting in Washington, at the headof this vast affirmative and assertive continent, indicted the CashRegister Company, that is, by a slight pointed negative action, bypushing back a button he turned on the great chandelier of a nation andflooded a nation with light. We, the American people, suddenly, all in aflash, looked into each other's faces and knew what we were like. 

We had hoped we believed in human nature, and in brave men and in menagainst machines but we could not prove it. 

Suddenly, we stood in a blaze of truth about ourselves. Suddenly, wecould again look with our old stir of joy at our national Flag. If weliked, we could swing our hats. 

Perhaps I should speak for myself, but I had been trying to get thisnews for years. It is news I have wanted to live with and do businesswith. I have been trying to get my question answered. What are theAmerican people really like?

The President points at the National Cash Register Company and I findout. All the people find out. 

In the last analysis, the masterful, shrewd, practical, and constructivepart of being a President of the United States--the thing in thebusiness of being a President that keeps the position from being aposition which only the second rate or No type of man would have time totake, is the fact that the President is the Head Advertising Manager ofthe United States, conducting a huge advertising campaign of whatAmericans really want. 

He takes up the National Cash Register Company, picks out itstwenty-nine officers, makes it a bill board sky-high across the country. "Here are the kind of business men that the people of the United Statesdo not want, and here are the kind of men that we do!"

The thing that makes indicting a trust a positive and affirmative act isthe advertising in it. 

Gladstone once wrote a postcard about a little book of MarieBashkirtseff's. 

Twenty nations read the little book. 

Every now and then one watches a man or sees a truth that would make anation. One wishes one had some way of being the sort of person orbeing in the kind of place where one could make a nation out of it. 

One thinks it would be passing wonderful to be President of the UnitedStates. It would be like having a great bell up over the world that onecould reach up to and ring! But it is better than that. One touches abutton at one's desk if one is President of the United States, a nationlooks up. He whispers to twenty thousand newspapers, "Take your eyesaway a minute, " he says, "from Jack Johnson and Miss Elkin's engagement, and look, oh, look, ye People, here is a man in this world like this! Hehas been in the world all this while without our suspecting it. Did youknow there was or could be anywhere a man like THIS? And here is a manlike this! Which do you prefer? Which are you really like?"

There is nothing really regal or imperial in a man, nothing that makes aman feel suddenly like a whole Roman Empire all by himself, in 1913, like saying "Look! Look!"

Sometimes I think about it. Of course I could take a great reel of paperand sit down with my fountain pen, say Look for a mile, "Look! look!look! look!!!--President Wilson says it once and without exclamationpoints. Skyscrapers listen to him! Great cities rise and lift themselvesand smite the world. And the faint, sleepy little villages stir in theirdreams. "

Moses said, "Thou shalt not!" President Wilson says, "Look!"

Perhaps if Moses had had twenty thousand newspapers like twenty thousandfield-glasses that he could hand out every morning and lend to people tolook through--he would not have had to say, "Thou shalt not. "

The precise measure of the governing power a man can get out of theposition of being President of the United States to-day is the amount ofadvertising for the people, of the people, and by the people he cancrowd every morning, every week, into the papers of the country. 

A President becomes a great President in proportion as he actsauthoritatively, tactfully, economically, and persistently as the HeadAdvertising Manager of the ideals of the people. He is the greatcentral, official editor of what the people are trying to find out--of anation's news about itself. 

By his being the President of what people think, by his dictating thesubjects the people shall take up, by his sorting out the men whom thepeople shall notice, this great ceaseless Meeting of ninety million menwe call the United States--comes to order. 

CHAPTER V

THE PRESIDENT SAYS "LOOK!"

Our American President, if one merely reads what the Constitution saysabout him, is a rather weak-looking character. 

The founders of the country did not intend him to be anybody inparticular--if it could be helped. They were discouraged about allowinggovernments to be efficient. Not very much that was constructive to dowas handed over to him. And the most important power they thought itwould do for him to have was the veto or power to say "No. "

Possibly if our fathers had believed in liberty more they would haveallowed more people to have some; or if they had believed in democracymore, or trusted the people more, they would have thought it would do tolet them have leaders, but they had just got away. They felt timid abouthuman nature and decided that the less constructive the government wasand the less chance the government had to be concrete, to interpret apeople, to make opportunities and turn out events, the better. 

Looked at at first sight no more elaborate, impenetrable, water-tightarrangement for keeping a government from letting in an idea or everhaving one of its own or ever doing anything for anybody, could havebeen conceived than the Constitution of the United States, as theaverage President interprets it. 

Each branch of the government is arranged carefully to keep any otherbranch from doing anything, and then the people, every four years, lookthe whole country over for some new man they think will probably leavethem alone more than anybody--and put him in for President. 

Looking at it narrowly and by itself, all that a President selected likethis could ever expect in America to put in his time on, would seem tobe--being the country's most importantly helpless man--the man who hasbeen given the honour of being a somewhat more prominent failure inAmerica than any one else would be allowed to be. 

He stops people for four years. Other people stop him for four years. Then with a long happy sigh, at the end of his term, he slips back intoreal life and begins to do things. 

This has been the more or less sedately disguised career of the typicalAmerican President. Merely reading the Constitution or the lives of thePresidents, without looking at what has been happening to the habits ofthe people in the last few years, we might all be asking to-day, "Whatis there that is really constructive that President Wilson can do?" Whatis there that is going to prevent him, with all that moral earnestnessdammed up in him, that sense of duty, that Presbyterian sense of otherpeople's duties--what is there that is going to prevent him, with hisschool-book habits, his ideals, his volumes of American history, frombeing a teachery or preachery person--a kind of Schoolmaster or OfficialClergyman to Business?

News. 

The one really important and imperative thing to the people of thiscountry to-day is News. In spite of newspapers, authors, Collegepresidents, Bank presidents, Socialist agitators, Bill Heywoods, andTrusts, the people are bound to get this news, and any man who is soplaced by his prominence that he can scoop up the news of a country, hammer its news together into events the papers will report, expressnews in the laws, build news into men who can make laws and unmake laws, any man who is so placed that directly or indirectly he takes news, forces it in by hydraulic pressure where people see it doing things, whotakes news and crowds it into courts, crowds news into lawyers and intolegislatures, pries some of it even into newspapers, can have, theordinary American says to-day, as much leeway in this government as helikes. 

The ordinary American has never been able to understand the objectionimportant people have--that nearly everybody has (except ordinarypeople) to news--especially editors and publishers. 

It is an old story. Every one must have noticed it. One set of people inthis world, always from the beginning, trying to climb up on thehousetops to tell news, and another set of people hurrying up always andsaying, "Hush, Hush!" Some days it seems, when I read the papers, that Ihear half the world saying under its breath, a vast, stentorian, "Shoo!shoo! SHSH! SHSH!"

Then I realize I live in an editor's world. I am expected to be in theworld that editors have decided on the whole to let me be in. 

Of course I did not know what to do at first when this came over me. 

I naturally began to try to think of some way of cutting across lots, ofclimbing up to News. 

I looked at all the neat little park paths, with all those artisticcurves of truth on them the editors have laid out for me and for all ofus. Then I looked at the world and asked myself, "Who are the men inthis world, if any, who are able to walk on the Grass, who cut acrossthe little park paths when they like?"

And as fate would have it (it was during the Roosevelt administration), the first two men I came on who seemed to be stamping about in thenewspapers quite a little as they liked were the Prime Minister ofEngland and the President of the United States. 

Just how much governing can a President do?

How many columns a day is he good for, how many acres of attention everymorning in the papers of the country--all these white fields ofattention, these acres of other people's thoughts, can he cover?

How many sticks a day can he make compositors set up of what he thinks?

How many square miles of the people's thoughts can he spread out atbreakfast tables, lift up in a thousand thousand trolleys before theirfaces?

I have seen the white fields of attention filled with the footprints ofhis thoughts, of his will, of his desires!

I have seen that the President is the Editor of that vast, anonymous, silent newspaper, written all the night, written all the day, and softlypublished across a country--the newspaper of people's thoughts. 

I have seen the vision of the forests he has cast down, ground intoheadlines, into editorials, into news. Mountains and hills are laid bareto say what he thinks. Thousands of presses throb softly and the whitereels of wood pulp fly into speech. Thousands of miles of paper wet withthe thoughts of a people roll dimly under ground in the night. 

The President is saying Look! in the night!

The newsboys hasten out in the dawn. They cry in the streets!

CHAPTER VI

THE PEOPLE SAY "WHO ARE YOU?"

If news is governing, how does the President do his governing?

By being News, himself. 

By using his appointing power and putting other men who are NewsThemselves, news about American human nature--where all the people willsee it. 

By telling the people directly (when he feels especially asked) newsabout what is happening in his mind--news about what he believes. 

By telling the people sometimes (as candidly as he can without givingthe people's enemies a chance to stop him), what he is going to do next, sketching out in order of time, and in order of importance, his programof issues. 

By telling the people news about their best business men, the businessmen and inventors who, in their daily business, free the energies, unshackle the minds and emancipate the genius of the people. 

By telling these business men news about the people--and interpretingthe people to them. 

 * * * * *

It is by being news to the people himself that all the other news aPresident can get into his government counts. 

A man is a man according to the amount of news there is in him. 

There are twenty personal traits in a President which of themselveswould all be national news of the first importance if he had them. Thebare fact that a President could have certain traits at all and stillget to be a President in this country, would be news. 

One of the most important facts about news is that while it can bedistributed by machines, machines cannot make it, and as a rule they donot understand it. Important and critical news is almost always freshand made by hand the first time. Most of the popular news as to what ispractical in American polities for the last forty years has beenproduced by political machines, and of course men who were a good deallike machines were the best men to finish the ideas off and to carrythem out. 

As a result of course, all the really big leaders for the last fortyyears, our most powerful and interesting personalities have been shutout from being President of the United States. The White House wasmerely being run as machinery and did not interest them. They watched itgrinding its ideas faithfully out from year to year of what America waslike and what American politicians were like, and finally at last in theclatter of the machines there rings out suddenly across the land a shotthat no machinery had allowed for. Before any one knows almost thereslips suddenly by the side door into the White House a reallyinteresting man, and suddenly, all in one minute, almost, this man makesbeing President of the United States the most interesting lively andathletic feat in the country. And now, apparently that the idea has beenworked out in public before everybody, by hand, as it were, that a mancan be alive and interesting all over, can have at least a little touchof news about him and still be a President in this country, another manwith some news in him has been allowed to us and suddenly politicsthroughout all America has become a totally new revealing profession, and men, instead of being selected because they were blurredpersonalities, the ghosts of compromises, would-be everybodies--men whohad not decided who they were, and who could not settle down and letpeople know which of their characters they had hit on at last to bereally theirs, men who had no cutting edge to do things, screw-driverstrying to be chisels--were revealed to our people at last as vague, mean, other-worldly persons, not fitting into our real American world atall, and hopelessly visionary and impracticable in American politics. 

And now one more hand-made man has been allowed to us. 

The machines run very still in the White House. 

The people of this country no longer go by the White House on their wayto their business and just hear it humdrumming and humdrumming behindthe windows as of yore. The nation stands in crowds around the gates andwould like to see in. The people wonder. They wonder a million columns aday what is inside. 

What is inside?

An American who governs by being news, himself. 

The first thing that the people demand from our President now is that heshall be news himself. The news that they have selected to know firstduring the next four years--have put into the White House to know firstis Woodrow Wilson. 

"Who are you, Woodrow Wilson, in God's name?" the steeples and smokingchimneys, the bells and whistles, the Yales and Harvards, and the littlecountry schools, the crowds in the streets, and the corn in the fieldsall say, "Who Are You?"

Then the people listen. They listen to his "I wills" and "I won'ts" fornews about him. They look for news about him in the headlines he steersinto the papers every morning, in the events he makes happen, in theeditorials he makes men think of, in the men he calls up and puts on theNational Wire--in all these, slowly, daily, hourly they drink up theirlong, patient, hopeful answer to their question, "Who Are You, WoodrowWilson?"

CHAPTER VII

THE PEOPLE SAY "WHO ARE WE?"

But if the President governs first by being news himself, he governssecond by his appointments, by gathering about him other men who arenews to people, too. 

One need not divide people into good and bad, because the true line ofdivision between good and bad instead of being between one man andanother, is apt to be as a matter of fact and experience cut downthrough the middle of each of us. 

But for the purposes of public action and decision and getting goodthings done, this line does seem to be cut farther over in the middle ofsome of us, than it is in others. Taking a life-average in any moral orsocial engineering feat, in any correct calculation of structuralstrain, how far over this line cuts through in a man, has to be reckonedwith. 

The president by appointing certain men to office, saying "I will" and"I won't" to certain types of men, in saying who shall be studied by thepeople, who shall be read as documents of our national life, puts, ifnot the most important, at least the most lively and telling news abouthis administration into print. 

We watch our President acting for us, telling us news about what we arelike, sorting men out around him the way ninety million people wouldsort them out if they were there to do it. 

The President's appointments may be said to be in a way the breath ofthe nation. 

A nation has to breathe, and the plain fact seems to be that certainkinds of people have to be breathed out of a nation and other kinds ofpeople have to be breathed in. The way a President appoints men tooffice is his way of letting a nation breathe. 

With all his attractive qualities, perhaps it is because Mr. Taft didnot quite let the nation breathe, and suffocated it a little that therecame such an outbreak at the end. Perhaps it is because Mr. Taft lookedat Mr. Ballinger and then looked at Mr. Pinchot, all the people of thecountry all the while looking on, and said, "Ballinger is the kind ofman our people prefer, and Pinchot is not, " that the people broke out soamazingly, so incredibly, and decided by such an enormous majority thata man who could pick out men for them like this would not do--as thingsare just now anyway--for a President of the United States. 

CHAPTER VIII

NEWS ABOUT US TO THE PRESIDENT

A nation wakes up every morning and for one minute before it runs to itswork it says to its President, "HERE WE ARE!"

The best a President can do in the way of a plain, everydayacknowledgment of the presence of the people is News. 

The news that the people are demanding from the President to-day isintensely personal. It is a kind of rough, butting, good-naturedfamiliarity a great people has with its President, a little heedless, relentless, like some splendid Child, ready to forgive and expecting tobe forgiven, it jostles in upon him daily, "Here we are! What are youbelieving this morning? Did you believe in us yesterday? Did you act asif you believed in us? Did you get anybody to believe in us? Who are themen you say are like us? What are they like this morning?

"We have asked a hundred times; we can only ask it once more. How do youthink you are turning out yourself, Mr. President? Are you what youthought you would be? Do you think it is a good time for us to decidethis morning what you are really like? And, after all, Mr. President--ifyou please--who _are_ you? And once more, Mr. President, in God's name, _who are we?_"

This is always the gist of what it says, "Who are we?"

It is the people's main point, after all, asking a President who theyare, wondering if he can interpret them. 

Then he shuts his door and thinks, or he calls his Cabinet and thinks. 

Rows of little-great men file by all day. They stand each a few minuteswith his little Speck or Dot of the People in his hands, and they say, "This is the People. "

He listens. 

It is very hard to be always President of the People when one islistening and the little-great go by. 

One has to go back a little, in the night perhaps, or when one is quitealone. He sees again the Child; it is what he is in the White House for, he remembers, to express this dumb giant, this mighty Child, half weary, half glad, standing there by day by night, saying, "Who are we?" Onewould think it would be hard to be glib with the Child. 

Sometimes it is so deep and silent!

Once when It broke in on Lincoln in this way and said, "_Who are we?_"he prayed. 

CHAPTER IX

NEWS-MEN

It seems very difficult to get news through as to who we really are to aPresident. When I look about me and see what the President's ways are oftelling news about himself to us, I see that he is not without hisadvantages. But when I look about to see what conveniences we have as apeople for telling our President news about us, I note some curiousthings. The fears of the American people, the fears and threats oflabour and capital are organized and expressed, but their faiths, theirwills, the things in them that make them go and that make them American, are not organized and are not expressed. 

The labour unions are afraid and say, "We will not work, " to theiremployers, "You cannot make us work. " The President hears this. It isabout all they say. 

The capitalists and employers are afraid and they say, "We will notpay, " "You cannot make us pay. "

Shall the President act as if these men represent Labor and Capital?

We say, "No. "

Neither of these groups of men express real live American labour or reallive characteristic American money. 

American money is free, bold, manful, generous and courageous to afault. American money swings out in mighty enterprises, shrewdlybelieving things, imperiously singing things out of its way. 

A singing people want a singing government. How is our President goingto hear our labour and our money sing?

Pinchot expressed us, not Ballinger. 

Mr. Pinchot is no mere uplifter or missionary. He is an artist inexpressing America to a President. If we have a President who will notlisten to a man like Pinchot, let us try a President that will. 

Pinchot--an American millionaire with a fortune made out of forests, whois spending the fortune in protecting the forests for the nation, is thekind of American Americans like to set up before a President to say whatAmericans are like. Millions of men stand by Pinchot. We like the way hemakes money sing. 

Tom L. Johnson--an American millionaire who made his money in theordinary humdrum way, by getting valuable street railway franchises outof a city for nothing--has the courage to turn around, spend his fortuneand spend it all, in keeping other people from doing it. 

America presents Tom L. Johnson to a President with its compliments andsays, "This is what America is like. "

It may not look always as if Tom L. Johnson were America--America inminiature. But millions of us say he is. He makes money sing. 

We want a President--millions of us want him--and this is the mostimportant news about us, who expects money in this country to sing. 

We want our money and expect our money in this country to stop sayingmean things about us, things that make us ashamed to look a truenewspaper in the face, or one another in the face, and that humiliate usbefore the world. 

 * * * * *

And now I have come to an awkward place in this book where I hope thereader will help me all he can. 

There is nothing to do but to let out the real truth and face the music. The fact is, Gentle Reader--perhaps you have suspected it allalong--that if it had not been for fear of mixing my book all up withhim and making it a kind of arena or tournament instead of a book, Iwould have mentioned ex-President Roosevelt before this. He has beengetting in or nearly getting in to nearly every chapter so far, but ofcourse I knew, as any one would, that he would spoil all the calmequipoise, the quiet onward flowing of the Stream of Thought, and withone chapter after the other, with each as the crisis came up, though Iscarcely know how, I have managed to keep him out. And now, oh, GentleReader, here he is! I know very well that he is in everything, and rightin the middle of everything, and that in a kind of splendid mixed happyuproarious way, there somehow has to be a great to-do the moment heappears. The beautiful clear water, the lucid depth of Thought--will allbecome (ah, I know it too well, Gentle Reader) all thunder and spray andunderneath the mighty grinding of the wheels--the wheels of the Nationand the Mowing Machine of Time, and in the background--in the redbackground of the Dawn, there will be the face of Theodore--just theface of Theodore in this book shining at us--readers and writer andall--out of a huge rosy mist!

But I have been driven to it. The fact seems to be that I must find atjust this point in the book, if I can, a word. And the word will have tobe a word, too, that everybody knows, and that conveys a lively sense toeverybody the moment it is used--of a certain tone or quality, or hum ormurmur of being. No one regrets this more than I, because it is sounwieldy and inconvenient and always bulges out in a sentence or a bookor a nation more than it was meant to, but the word ROOSEVELT, R O O S EV E L T, happens to be the word that people in this country, and verylargely in other nations, and in all languages have chosen and are usingevery day to express to one another a certain American quality or tonenow abroad in our world--a certain hum, as one might say, or whirr ofgoodness. 

This particular hum, or whirr of goodness, which is instantly associatedwith the word Roosevelt, expresses, except that of course itover-expresses, a part of the news to-day about America which we wantour President to read. 

One cannot help wondering why it is that if one wanted to express to thelargest number of people in the world a certain quality of goodness, theword Roosevelt would do it best. 

I am not dealing for the purpose of this book in what Mr. Roosevelt'sgoodness is or whether it is what he thinks it is. We might all disagreeabout that. I am dealing quite strictly in this connection with whateven his enemies would say is his almost egregious success inadvertising goodness. While we might all disagree as to his goodnessbeing the kind that he or any one ought to love, we would not fail toagree that it is his love of his own goodness, such as it is, and hisholding on to it, and his love of other people's and his love of gettinghis goodness and their goodness together, that has made him the mostunconcealed person in modern life. These qualities have established him, with his ability raised to the n-th power of attracting attention toanything he likes, as the world's greatest News Man--the world'sgreatest living energy to-day in advertising what is good and what ishad in our American temperament. 

Even the people who disagree with him or dislike him--many of them wouldhave to fall back on using the word roosevelt, or rather the verb toroosevelt. 

It does not seem to be because his goodness in itself is extraordinary. It is even, for that matter, in the sense that anybody could have it, orsome more just like it, a little common. 

What seems to be uncommon and really distinguished about Mr. Rooseveltis the way he feels about his goodness, and the way he grips hold of it, and the way he makes it grip hold of other people--practically anybodyalmost, who is standing by. Even if they are merely going by inautomobiles, sometimes they catch some. I do not imagine that his worstenemies, however seriously they may question the general desirability orsafety of having so much goodness roosevelting around, would fail toadmit his own real enthusiasm about goodness anywhere he finds itindiscriminately, whether it is his own or other people's. He grips holdof it, and grips like a cable car--instantly. 

His enthusiasm is so great that many people are nonplussed by it. Theenthusiasm must really be in spite of appearances about something else, something wicked in behind, they think, and not really about goodness. An entire stranger would not quite believe it. It would be too originalin him, they would say, or in anybody, to care so about goodness. 

If one could watch the expression in Mr. Roosevelt's face or his mannerwhile he is in the act of having a virtue and if one could not seeplainly from where one was, just what it was he was doing, one would atonce conclude that it must be some vice he is having. He looks happy andas if it were some stolen secret. There is always that manner of hiswhen he is caught doing right, as if one were to say "Now, at last, Ihave got it!" He does right like a boy with his mouth full of jam, andthis seems to be true not only when, with a whole public following andtwo or three nations besides, and all the newspapers, he goes off on anorgy of righteousness, makes the grand tour of Europe, and has the timeof his life. It is the steady-burning under enthusiasm with him all thewhile. The spectacle of a good man doing a tremendous good thing affectsTheodore Roosevelt like one of the great forces of nature, like NiagaraFalls, like the screws of the _Mauritania_, or any other huge, happything that is having its way against fear; against weakness, or againstsmall terrified goodness. 

Mr. Roosevelt in doing right conveys the sense of enjoying it so himselfthat he has made almost an art form of public righteousness. He hasfound his most complete, his most naïve, instinctive self-expression init, and while we have had goodness in public men before, we have had noman who has been such an international chromo for goodness, who has madesuch a big, comfortable "He-who-runs-may-read" bill-poster for doingright as Roosevelt. Other men have done things that were good to do, butthe very inmost muscle and marrow of goodness itself, goodness withteeth, with a fist, goodness that smiled, that ha-ha'd, and that leapedand danced--perpetual motion of goodness, goodness that reeked--has beenreserved for Theodore Roosevelt. We have had goodness that was bland orproper, and goodness that was pious or sentimental and sang, "Nearer MyGod to Thee, " or goodness that was kind and mushy, but this goodnesswith a glad look and bounding heart, goodness with an iron hand, we havenot had before. It is Mr. Roosevelt's goodness that has made himinteresting in Cairo, Paris, Rome, and Berlin. He has been conducting agrand tour of goodness. He has been a colossal drummer of goodness, conducting an advertising campaign. He has proved himself a mastersalesman for moral values. And he has put the American character, itshope, its energy, on the markets and on the credits of the world. 

With all his faults, those big, daring, yawning fissures in him, he isnews about us, faults and all. Though I may be, as I certainly am muchof the time, standing and looking across at him, across an abyss oftemperament that God cut down between us thousands of years ago, andwhile he may have a score of traits I would not like and others that noone would like in any one else, there he is storming out at me with hisgoodness! It is his way--God help him!--God be praised for him! There heis!

I know an American when I see one. He is a man who is singing. 

A man who is singing is a man who is so shrewd about people that he seesmore in them than they see in themselves and who does things so shrewdlyin behalf of God, that when God looks upon him he delights in him. ThenGod falls to of course and helps him do them. 

When American men saw that there was a man among them who was taking athing like the Presidency of the United States (that most people neverrun risks with) and putting it up before everybody, and using it grimlyas a magnificent bet on the people, they looked up. Millions of menleaped in their hearts and as they saw him they knew that they were likehim!

So did Theodore Roosevelt become news about Us. 

CHAPTER X

AMERICAN TEMPERAMENT AND GOVERNMENT

I would like to say more specifically what I mean by an American orsinging government. 

The thing that counts the most in a government is its temperament. AGerman government succeeds by having the German temperament. An Americangovernment must have the American temperament. 

If we are fortunate enough to have in America a government with anAmerican temperament what would it be like? And how would it differ fromthe traditional or conventional temperament, governments are usuallyallowed to have?

If I were confined to one or two words I would put it like this:

If a government has the conventional temperament, it says "NO. "

If it has the American Temperament it says, "YES, BUT . .. "

The whole policy and temper of a true American government is summed upin its saying as it looks about it--now to this business man and now tothat, just in time, "YES BUT. "

Louis Brandeis, of Boston, when he was made attorney for the Gas Companyof Boston to defend the company from the criticisms of the people, sentsuddenly scores of men all about canvassing the city and looking uppeople to find fault with the gas. 

He spent thousands of dollars a month of the Gas Company's money for awhile in helping people to be disagreeable, until they had it attendedto and got over it. 

The Gas Company had the canvassers show the people how they could burnless gas for what they got for it, and tried to help them cut theirbills in two. Incidentally, of course, they got to thinking about gasand about what they got for it, and about other ways they could affordto use it, and began to have the gas habit--used it for cooking andheating. 

The people found they wanted to use four times as much gas. 

The Boston Gas Company smiled sweetly. 

Boston smiled sweetly. 

Not many months had passed and two things had happened in Boston. 

The Boston Gas Company, with precisely the same directors in it, hadmade over the directors into new men, and all the people in Boston (allwho used gas) apparently had been made over into new people. 

What had happened was Brandeis--a man with an American temperament. 

Mr. Brandeis had defended his company from the people by going thepeople's way and helping them until they helped him. 

Mr. Brandeis gave gas a soul in Boston. 

Before a gas corporation has a soul, it would be American for agovernment to treat it in one way. After it has one it would be Americanto treat it in another. There are two complete sets of conduct, principles, and visions in dealing with a corporation before and afterits having a soul. 

Preserving the females of the species and killing males as a method ofdiscrimination has been applied to all animals except human beings. Thisis suggestive of a method of discrimination in dealing withcorporations. A corporation that has a soul and that is the most likelyto keep reproducing souls in others should be treated in one way, and acorporation that has not should be treated in another. 

There are two assumptions underneath everybody's thought, underneathevery action of our government: Which is the American assumption?

People are going to be bad if they can. 

People are going to be good if they can. 

Men who want to arrange laws and adjust life on the assumption thatbusiness men will be bad if they can, it seems to some of us, areinefficient and unscientific. It seems to us that they are off on themain and controlling facts in American human nature. It is not true thatAmerican business men will be bad if they can. They will be good if theycan. 

This is my assertion. I cannot prove it. 

What we seem to need next in this country in order to be clear-headedand to go ahead, is to prove it. We want a competent census of humannature. 

Lacking a census of human nature, the next best thing we can do is towatch the men who seem to know the most about human nature. 

We put ourselves in their hands. 

These men seem to believe, judging from their actions, that there isreally nothing that suits our temperament better in America than beinggood. If we can manage to have some way of being good that we havethought of ourselves, we like it still better. We dote on goodness whenit is ours and when we are allowed to put some punch into it. We want tobe good, to express our practical, our doing-idealism, but we will notbe driven to being good and people who think they can drive us to beinggood in a government or out of it are incompetent people. They do notknow who we are. 

We say they shall not have their way with us. 

Let them get us right first. Then they can do other things. 

What is our American temperament?

Here are a few American reflections. 

The government of the next boys' school of importance in this country isgoing to determine the cuts and free hours, and privileges not by marks, but by its genius for seeing through boys. 

And instead of making rules for two hundred pupils because just twentypupils need them, they will make the rules for just twenty pupils. 

Pupils who can use their souls and can do better by telling themselveswhat to do, will be allowed to do better. Why should two hundred boyswho want to be men be bullied into being babies by twenty infants whocan scare a school government into rules, _i. E. _, scare their teachersinto being small and mean and second-rate?

A government that goes on this principle with business men, and thatdoes it in a spirit of mutual understanding for those who are not yetfree from rules, and in a spirit of confidence and expectation and oftalking it over, will be a government with an American temperament. 

The first trait of a great government is going to be that it willrecognize that the basis of a true government in a democracy isprivilege and not treating all people alike. It is going to see that isit a cowardly, lazy, brutal, and mechanical-minded thing for agovernment which is trying to serve a great people--to treat all thepeople alike. The basis of a great government like the basis of a greatman (or even the basis of a good digestion) is discrimination, and thehabit of acting according to facts. We will have rules or laws forpeople who need them, and men in the same business who amount to enoughand are American enough to be safe as laws to themselves, will continueto have their initiative and to make their business a profession, amould, an art form into which they pour their lives. The pouring of thelives of men like this into their business is the one thing that thebusiness and the government want. 

Several things are going to happen when what a good government seekseach for a man's business, is to let him express himself in it. 

When a man has proved conclusively that he has a higher level ofmotives, and a higher level of abilities to make his motives work, thegovernment is going to give him a higher level of rights, liberties, andimmunities. The government will give special liberties on a slidingscale and with shrewd provision for the future. The government will notgive special liberties to the man with higher motives than other menhave, who has not higher abilities to make his motives work, nor will itgive special liberties to the man who has higher abilities which couldmake higher motives work, but who has not the higher motives. 

Men who are new kinds and new sizes of men and who have proved that theycan make new kinds and new sizes of bargains, that they can make (forthe same money) new kinds and new sizes of goods, and who incidentallymake new kinds and new sizes of people out of the people who buy thegoods, men who have achieved all these supposed visionary feats by theirown initiative, will be allowed by the government to have all theinitiative they want, and immunities from fretful rules as long as theyresemble themselves and keep on doing what they have shown they can do. The government will deal with each man according to the facts, thescientific facts, that he has proved about himself. 

The government acts according to scientific facts in everything exceptmen, in pure food, in cholera, and the next thing the government isgoing to do is to be equally efficient in dealing with scientific factsin men. 

It is going to give some men inspected liberty. If these men say theycan be more efficient, as a railroad sometimes is, by being a monopoly, by being a vast, self-visioned, self-controlled body the government willhave enough character, expert courage and shrewdness about human natureto provide a way for them to try it. 

When the other people come up and ask why they cannot have thesespecial immunities and why they cannot be a monopoly, or nearly amonopoly, too, the government will tell them why. 

Telling them why will be governing them. 

When we once reckon with new kinds and new sizes of men, everythingfollows. The first man who organizes a true monopoly for public serviceand who does it better than any state could do it, because he thinks ofit himself, glories in it and has a genius for it, will be given apeerage in England perhaps. But he would not really care. The thingitself would be a peerage enough and either in America or England hewould rather be rewarded by being singled out by the government forspecial rights and distinctions in conducting his business. The best waya democracy can honour a man who has served it is not to give him atitle or to make a frivolous, idle monument of bronze for him, but tolet him have his own way. 

The way to honour any artist or any creative man, any man a country isin need of especially, is to let him have his own way. 

 * * * * *

We are told that the way to govern trusts is to untrammel competition. 

But the way to untrammel competition is not to try to untrammel it inits details with lists of things men shall not do. 

This is cumbersome. 

We would probably find it very much more convenient in specifying 979detailed things trusts cannot do, if we could think of certainsum-totals of details. 

Then we could deal with the details in a lump. 

The best sum totals of details in this world that have ever beeninvented yet, are men. 

We will pick out a man who has a definite, marked character, who is afine, convenient sum-total that any one can see, of things not to do. 

We will pick out another man in the same line of business who is a fine, convenient sum-total of things that people ought to do. 

The government will find ways, as the Coach of Business as the Refereeof the Game for the people, to stand by this man until he whips theother, drives him out of business or makes him play as good a game as hedoes. 

 * * * * *

When a child finds suddenly that his father is not merely keeping himfrom doing things, that his father has a soul, the father begins to getresults out of the child. 

As a rule a child discovers first that his father has a soul by noticingthat he insists on treating him as if he had one. 

Of course a corporation that has not a soul yet does not propose to bedictated to by a government that has not a soul yet. When corporationswithout souls see overwhelmingly that a government has a soul, they willbe filled with a wholesome fear. They will always try at first toprevent it from having a soul if they can. 

But the moment it gets one and shows it, they will be glad. They willfeel on firm ground. They will know what they know. They will act. 

In the hospital on the hill not far from my house, one often sees oneattendant going out to walk with twelve insane men. One would think itwould not be safe for twelve insane men to go out to walk with one saneman, with one man who has his soul on. 

The reason it is safe, is, that the moment one insane man or man who hasnot his soul on, attacks the man who has a soul, all of the other elevenmen throw themselves upon him and fling him to the ground. Men whosesouls are not on, protect, every time, the man who has his soul onbecause the man who has a soul is the only defence they have from themen who have not. 

It is going to be the same with governments. We believe in agovernment's having as much courage in America as a ten-dollar-a-weekattendant in an insane asylum. We want a government that sees howcourage works. 

We are told in the New Testament that we are all members one of another. 

If society has a soul and if every member of it has a soul, what is therelation of the social soul to the individual soul?

A man's soul is the faculty in him for seeing the Whole in relation tothe part--his vision for others in relation to his vision for himself. 

My forefinger's soul in writing with this fountain pen is the sense myforefinger has of its relation to my arm, my spinal column, and mybrain. The ability and efficiency of my forefinger depends upon itssoul, that is, its sense of relation to the other members of the body. If my forefinger tries to act like a brain all by itself, as itsometimes does, nobody reads my writing. 

The government in a society is the soul of all the members and it treatsthem according to their souls. 

The one compulsion a government will use if it has a soul, will begranting charters in business in such a way as to fix definiteresponsibility and definite publicity upon a few men. 

If a corporation has a soul, it must show. It must have a face. Anybodycan tell a face off-hand or while going by. Anybody can keep track of acorporation if it has a face. 

The trouble with the average corporation is that all that anybody cansee is its stomach. Even this is anonymous. 

Whose Stomach is it? Who is responsible for it? If we hit it, whom willwe hit? Let the government find out. If the time the government is nowspending in making impossibly minute laws for impossibly minute men, were spent in finding out what size men were, and who they were and thengiving them just as many rights from the people, as they are the rightkind and the right size to handle for the people, it would be anAmerican government. 

If there is one thing rather than another that an American or anEnglishman loves, it is asserting himself or expressing his character inwhat he does. The typical dominating Englishman or American is not assuccessful as a Frenchman or as an Italian in expressing other things, as he is in expressing his character. 

He cares more about expressing his character and asserting it. If he isdealing with things, he makes them take the stamp of who he is. If he isdealing with people, he makes them see and acknowledge who he is. Theymust take in the facts about what he is like when they are with him. They must deal with him as he is. 

This trait may have its disadvantages, but if an Englishman or anAmerican is on this earth for anything, this is what he is for--toexpress his character in what he does--in strong, vigorous, manly linesdraw a portrait of himself and show what he is like in what he does. This may be called on both sides of the sea to-day as we stand front tofront with the more graceful nations, Anglo-Saxon Art. 

It is because this particular art in the present crisis of human natureon this planet is the desperate, the almost reckless need of a worldthat the other nations of the world with all their dislike of us andtheir superiorities to us, with all our ugliness and heaviness and ourgalumphing in the arts, have been compelled in this huge, modern thicketof machines and crowds to give us the lead. 

And now we are threading a way for nations through the moral wildernessof the earth. 

This position has been accorded us because it goes with our temperament, because we can be depended upon to insist on asserting ourselves and onexpressing ourselves in what we do. If the present impromptu industrialmachinery which has been handed over to us thoughtlessly and in a hurry, does not express us, everybody knows that we can be depended on toassert ourselves and that we will insist on one that will. The nationsthat are more polite and that can dance and bow more nicely than we canin a crisis like this would be dangerous. It is known about usthroughout a world that we are not going to be cowed by wood or by ironor by steel and that we are not going to be cowed by men who are allwood and iron and steel inside. If wood, iron, or steel does not expressus, we are Englishmen and we are Americans. We will butt our characterinto it until it does. 

 * * * * *

If the American workman were to insist upon butting his Americantemperament into his labour union machinery, what would his labourmachinery in America soon begin to show that an American labourer waslike?

I imagine it might work out something like this:

The thoughtful workman looks about him. He discovers that the workmanpays at least two times as much for coal as he needs to because minersdown in Pennsylvania work one third as hard as they might for the money. 

When he comes to think of it, all the labouring men of America arepaying high prices because they have to pay all the other workmen inAmerica for working as little as they can. He is working one third lessthan he can and making his own class pay for it. He sees every workmanabout him paying high prices because every other workman in makingthings for him to eat and for him to wear, is cheating him--doing athird less a day for him than he ought. 

At this point the capitalists pile in and help. They shove the prices upstill higher because capital is not interested in an industry in whichthe workmen do six hours' work in nine. It demands extra profits. Sowhile the workmen put up the prices by not working, the capitalists putup the prices because they are afraid the workmen will not work. Halfwork, high prices. 

Then the American workman thinks. He begins to suppose. 

Suppose that the millers' workmen and the workmen in the woollen millsin America see how prices of supplies for labouring men are going up andsuppose they agree to work as hard as they can? Suppose the wool workersof the world want cheap bread. The flour mill workers want cheapclothes. We will say to the bread people, "We will bring down the priceof wool for you if you will bring down the price of bread for us. "

Then let Meat and Potatoes do the same for one another. Then twoindustries at a time, industries getting brains in pairs, until like theanimals going into the ark, little by little (or rather very fast, almost piling in, in fact, after the first pair have tried it), at lastour true, spirited, practical minded American workmen will have madetheir labour machines as natural and as human and as American as theyare. They will stop trying to lower prices by not working, each workmanjoining (in a factory) the leisure classes and making the other workmenpay for it. 

 * * * * *

The American workman, as things are organized now, finds himselfconfronted with two main problems. One is himself. How can he gethimself to work hard enough to make his food and clothes cheap? Theother is his employer. 

What will the American workman do to express his American temperamentthrough his labour union to his employer? The American workmen will goto their employers and say: "Instead of doing six hours' work in ninehours, we will do nine hours' work in nine hours. " The millers, forinstance, will say to the flour mill owners: "We will do a third morework for you, make you a third more profit on our labour if you willdivide your third more profit like this:

"First, by bringing down the price of flour to everybody;

"Second, by bringing up our wages. Third, by taking more moneyyourselves. "

American labouring men who did this would be acting like Americans. Itis the American temperament. 

They will insist on it: The labour men will continue to say to theiremployers, "We will divide the proceeds of our extra work into threesums of money--ours, yours, and everybody's. " In return we will soonfind the employers saying the same thing to the labour men. Employerswould like to arrange to be good. If they can get men who earn more, they want to pay them more. 

The labourers would like to be good, _i. E. _, work more for employers whowant to pay them more. 

But being good has to be arranged for. 

Being good is a matter of mutual understanding, a matter oforganization, a matter of butting our American temperament into ourindustrial machines. 

All that is the matter with these industrial machines is that they arenot like us. 

Our machines are acting just now for all the world as if they were theAmericans and as if we were the machines. 

Are we for the machines, or are the machines for us?

All that the American labourers and that the American capitalists haveto do is to show what they are really like, organize their news aboutthemselves so that they get it through to one another, and our presentgreat daily occupation in America (which each man calls his "business")all the workmen going down to the mills and all the employers going downto their offices, and then for six, eight, nine hours a day being chewedon by machines, will cease. 

We make our industrial machines. We are Americans. Our machines musthave our American temperament. 

 * * * * *

If an American employer were to insist on butting his Americantemperament into his industrial machine, what would his industrialmachine, when it is well at work at last, show an American employer'stemperament to be like?

The first thing that would show in his machine, I think, would be itscourage, its acting with boldness and initiative, originality andfreedom, without being cluttered up by precedents or running and askingMama, its clear-headedness in what it wants, its short-cut in getting toit, and above all a kind of ruthless faith in human nature, in theAmerican people, in its goods and in itself. 

The typical American business man of the highest class--the man who isexpressing his American temperament best in his business--is the one whois expressing in it the most courage for himself and for others and forhis government. He has big beliefs every few minutes a day, and he actson them with nonchalance. 

If he is running a trust--our most characteristic, recklessly difficultAmerican invention for a man to show through, and if he tries to get hisAmerican temperament to show through in it, tries to make his trust likea vast portrait, like a kind of countenance on a country, of what a bigAmerican business is like, what will he do?

He will take a little axiom like this and act as if it were so. 

_If in any given case the producers by collusion and combination can beefficient in lowering wages to employees and raising prices and cheatingthe public, this same combination or collusion would be efficient inraising the wages of employees, lowering prices and serving the public. _

He will then, being an American, turn to his government and say "I am acertain sort of man. If I am allowed to be an exception and to combinein this matter, I can prove that I can raise wages, lower prices for awhole nation in these things that I make. I am a certain sort of man. Doyou think I am, or do you think that I am not? I want to know. "

The government looks noncommittally at him. It says it cannotdiscriminate. 

He says nothing for a time, but he thinks in his heart that it isincompetent and cowardly to run a great government of a great nation asa vast national sweep or flourish of getting out of brains and ofevading vision. It seems to him lazy and effeminate in a government totreat all combinations and all monopolies alike. He says: "Look me inthe eyes! I demand of you as a citizen of this country the right to belooked by my government in the eyes. What sort of man am I? Here are allmy doors open. My safes are your safes and my books are your books. Am Ior am I not a man who can conduct his business as a great profession, one of the dignities and energies and joys of a great people?

"What am I like inside? Is what I am like inside--my having a small sizeor a big size of motive, my having a right kind or a wrong kind ofability of no consequence to this government? Does the government ofthis country really mean that the most important things a country likethis can produce, the daily, ruling motives of the men who are living init, have no weight with the government? Am I to understand that thegovernment does not propose to avail itself of new sizes and new kindsof men and new sizes and new kinds of abilities in men? What I am tryingto do in my product is to lower the prices and raise the wages for anation. Will you let me do it? Will you watch me while I do it?"

This will be the American trust of to-morrow. The average trust of thiscountry has not yet found itself, but the moral and spiritual history, the religious message to a government of The Trust That Has Found Itselfwill be something like this. 

Perhaps when we have a trust that has found itself, we will have agovernment that has dared to find itself, that has the courage to useits insight, its sense of difference between men, as it means of gettingwhat it wants for the people. 

As it is now, the government has not found itself and it falls back oncomplex rules or machines for getting out of seeing through people. 

Where courage is required, it proceeds as it proceeds with automobilespeeding laws. Everybody knows that one man driving his car three milesan hour may be more dangerous than another kind of man who is drivinghis car thirty. 

When our government begins to be a government, begins to express theAmerican temperament, it will be a government that will devote itsenergy, its men, and its money to being expert in divining, and usingdifferences between men. It will govern as any father, teacher, orcompetent business man does by treating some people in one way andothers in another, by giving graded speed licenses in business, tolabour unions, trusts, and business men. 

The government will be able to do this by demanding, acquiring, andemploying as the servants of the people, men who are experts in humannature, masters in not treating men alike--Crowbars, lemonade-straws, chisels, and marshmallows, powerhouses and Æolian harps by the people, for the people, and of the people, will be rated for what they are andwill be used for what they are for. 

This will be democracy. It will be the American temperament ingovernment. 

 * * * * *

Is President Wilson or is he not going to fall back into a mere lawyerMoseslike way of getting people to be good, or is he going to be a manlike David, half poet, half soldier, who got his way with the nationhalf by appreciating the men in it and being a fellow human being withthem, and half by fighting them when they would not let him be a fellowhuman being with them, and would not let him appreciate them?

Almost any nation or government can get some kind of Moses to-day butthe men that America is producing would not particularly notice a Mosesprobably now. A Moses might do for a Rockefeller, but he could notreally do anything with a man like Theodore N. Vail who has thetelephones and telegraphs of a country talking and ticking to us all, all night, all day, what kind of a man he is. 

A big affirmative, inspirational man like David or even Napoleon whoinspires people with one breath and fights hard with the next, a man whoswings his hat for the world, a man who goes on ahead and says "Come!"is the only man who can be practical in America to-day in helping reallive American men like McAdoo, like Edison and Acheson, --men who canexpress a people in a business--to express them. 

The people have spoken. A man in the White House who cannot say "Come"goes. 

We want a poet in the White House. If we can not have a poet for theWhite House soon, we want a poet who will make us a poet for the WhiteHouse. 

I do not believe it is too much to expect a President to be a poet. Wehave had a poet for President once in one supreme crisis of this nationand the crisis that is coming now is so much deeper, so much more humanand world-wide than Lincoln's was that it would almost seem as if aplace like the White House (where one's poetry could really work) wouldmake a poet out of anybody. 

A President who has not a kind of plain, still, homely poetry in him, abelief about people that sings, in the present appalling crisis of theworld is impracticable or visionary. 

So we do not say, "Have we a President that can get our Bells, Edisons, McAdoos, Achesons to be good by toeing a line?"

We say, "Have we a President who can swing into step, who can join inthe singing, who can catch up?"

Tunnel McAdoo, when he lifted up his will against the sea and againstthe seers of Wall Street, was singing. When he conceived those steelcars, those roaring yellow streaks of light ringing through rocksbeneath the river, streets of people flashing through under the slimeand under the fish and under the ships and under the wide sunshine onthe water, he was singing! He raised millions of dollars singing. 

Of course he sang the way Americans usually sing, and had to do as wellas he could in talking to bankers and investors not to look as if hewere singing, but there it all was singing inside him, the seven yearsof digging, the seven years of dull thundering on rocks under the city, and at last the happy steel cars all green and gold, the streams ofpeople all yellow light hissing and pouring through--those vast pipesfor people beneath the sea!

If we have a President, let him sing like McAdoo, or like LutherBurbank, or like Theodore N. Vail, or like Colonel Goethals, picking upa little isthmus like Panama, a string between two continents, playingon it as if it were a harp; or like Edward Ripley playing with the SantaFé Railroad for all the world like Homer with a lute, all his seventhousand men, all his workmen, all their wives and their children, allthe cities along the line striking up and joining in the chorus or likeCarborundum Acheson, backed up by his little Niagara Falls oiling thewheels of a world, weaving diamonds into steel, hardening the bones ofthe earth into skyscrapers, into railroads, into the mighty thighs offlying locomotives. .. . 

Any man who is seen acting in this world with a thing, as if he believedin the thing, as if he believed in himself and believed in other people, is singing. 

Moses striking out with a rod, as we are told, a path along the sea forhis people may have done a more showy thing from a religious point ofview, hitting the water on top so, making a great splash with an emptyplace in it for people to march through, but he was not essentially morereligious than McAdoo, with all those modest but mighty columns offigures piling up behind him, with all those splendid, dumb, stillglowing engineers behind him, lifting up his will against cities, lifting up his will against herds of politicians, haughty newspapers, against the flocks of silly complacent old ferry-boats waddling in thebay, against the wind and the rain and the cold on the water, and allthe banks of Wall Street. .. . 

When we want to tell News to our President about ourselves in America, we point to William G. McAdoo. 

The first news that we, the American people, must contrive to get intothe White House about ourselves is that we do not want to be improved, and that we do not like an improving tone in our government. We want tobe expressed the way McAdoos express us. We want a government thatexpresses our faith in one another, in what we are doing, and inourselves, and in the world. 

We are singing over here on this continent. We would not all of us putit in just this way. But our singing is the main thing we can do, and agovernment that is trying to improve us feebly, that is looking askanceat us and looking askance at our money, and at our labour, and that doesnot believe in us and join in with us in our singing does not know whatwe are like. 

Our next national business in America is to get the real news over tothe President of what we are like. 

It is news that we want in the White House. A missionary in the WhiteHouse, be he ever so humble, will not do. 

Mr. Roosevelt, himself, with the word Duty on every milepost as hewhirled past, with suggestions of things for other people to do buzzinglike bees about his head, acquired his tremendous and incredible powerwith us as a people because, in spite of his violent way of breaking outinto a missionary every morning and every evening when he talked, it wasnot his talking but his singing that made him powerful--his singing, ordoing things as if he believed in people, his I wills and I won'ts, hisassuming every day, his acting every day, as if American men were men. He sang his way roughly, hoarsely, even a little comically at times intothe hearts of people, stirred up in the nation a mighty heat, put agreat crackling fire under it, put two great parties into the pot, boiled them, drew off all that was good in them, and at last, to-day, asI write (February 1913), the prospect of a good square meal in the WhiteHouse (with some one else to say grace) is before the people. 

The people are waiting to sit down once more in the White House andrefresh themselves. 

At least, the soup course is on the table. 

Who did it, please? Who bullied the cook and got everybody ready?

Theodore Roosevelt, singing a little roughly, possibly hurrahing "_Iwill, I will, I won't, I won't_, " and acting as if he believed in theworld. 

Bryan in the village of Chicago sitting by at a reporter's table saw himdoing it. 

Bryan saw how it worked. 

Bryan had it in him too. 

Bryan heard the shouts of the people across the land as they gloried inthe fight. He saw the signals from the nations over the sea. 

Then Armageddon moved to Baltimore. 

 * * * * *

And now table is about to be spread. 

It is to be Mr. Wilson's soup. 

But the soup will have a Roosevelt flavour or tang to it. And we willwait to see what Mr. Wilson will do with the other courses. 

 * * * * *

A poet in words, with two or three exceptions, America has not produced. 

The only touch of poetry or art as yet that we have in Americais--acting as if we believed in people. This particular art is ours. Other people may have it, but it is all we have. 

This is what makes or may make any moment the common American a poet orartist. 

Speaking in this sense, Mr. Roosevelt is the first poet America hasproduced that European peoples and European governments have noticed forforty years, or had any reason to notice. We respectfully place Mr. Roosevelt with Mr. McAdoo (and if Mr. Brandeis will pardon us, with Mr. Brandeis) as a typical American before the eyes of the new President. We ask him to take Mr. Roosevelt as a very important part of the latestnews about us. 

The true imaginative men of our modern life, the poets of crowds andcities are not to-day our authors, preachers, professors or lawyers orphilosophers. The poets of crowds are our men like this, ourvision-doers, the men who have seen visions and dreamed dreams in thereal and daily things, the daring Governors like Wilson and like Hughes, the daring inventors of great business houses, the men who have inventedthe foundations on which nations can stand, on which railroads can run, the men whose imaginations, in the name of heaven, have played with theearth mightily, watered deserts, sailed cities on the seas, the men whohave whistled and who have said "Come!" to empires, who have thoughthundred-year thoughts, taken out nine hundred and ninety-nine yearleases, who have thought of mighty ways for cities to live, for citiesto be cool, to be light, to be dark, who have conceived ways for nationsto talk, who have grasped the earth and the sky like music, like words, and put them in the hands of the people, and made the people say, "Oearth, " and "O sky, thou art great, but we also are great! Come earthand sky, thou shalt praise God with us!"

Who are these men?

Let the President catch up!

Who are these men? Here is Edward A. Filene, who takes up the pride, joy, beauty, self-respect, and righteousness of a city, swings it into aStore, and makes that Store sing about the city up and down the world!Here is Alexander Cassatt, imperturbable, irrepressible, and like agreat Boy playing leapfrog with a Railroad--Cassatt who makesquick-hearted, dreamy Philadelphia duck under the Sea, bob up serenelyin the middle of New York and leap across Hell Gate to get to Boston!Let the parliaments droning on their benches, the Congresses pile out oftheir doors and catch up. 

Let the lawyers--the little swarms of dark-minded lawyers, wondering andrunning to and fro, creeping in offices, who have tried to run ourworld, blurred our governments, and buzzed, who have filled the worldwith piles of old paper, Congressional Records, with technicalities, words, droning, weariness, despair, and fear . .. Let them come out andlook! Let them catch up!

Let a man in this day in the presence of men like these sing. If a mancannot sing, let him be silent. Only men who are singing things shall dothem. 

I go out into the street, I go out and look almost anywhere, listenanywhere, and the singing rises round me!

It was singing that spread the wireless telegraph like a great webacross the sky. 

It was singing that dug the subways under the streets in New York. 

It was singing, a kind of iron gladness, hope and faith in men, that hasflung up our skyscrapers into the lower stories of the clouds, and madethem say, "_I will! I will! I will!_" to God. 

Ah, how often have I seen them from the harbour, those flocking, crowdedskyscrapers under that little heaven in New York, lifting themselves inthe sunlight and in the starlight, lifting themselves before me, sometimes, it seems, like crowds of great states, like a great countrypiled up, like a nation reaching, like the plains and the hills and thecities of my people standing up against heaven day by day--all thoseflocks of the skyscrapers saying, "_I will! I will! I will!_" to God. 

The skyscrapers are news about us to our President. He shall reckon withskyscraper men. He shall interpret men that belong with skyscrapers. 

And as he does so, I shall watch the people answer him, now with a gladand mighty silence and now with a great solemn shout. 

The skyscrapers are their skyscrapers. 

The courage, the reaching-up, the steadfastness that is in them is inthe hearts of the people. 

If the President does not know us yet in America, does not know McAdooas a representative American, we will thunder on the doors of the WhiteHouse until he does. 

My impression is he would be out in the yard by the gate asking us tocome in. 

We are America. We are expressing our joy in the world, our faith inGod, and our love of the sun and the wind in the hearts of our people. 

In America the free air breathes about us, and daily the great sunclimbs our hillsides, swings daily past our work. There are ninetymillion men with this sun and this wind woven into their bodies, intotheir souls. They stand with us. 

The skyscrapers stand with us. 

All singing stands with us. 

Ah, I have waked in the dawn and in the sun and the wind have I seenthem!

That sun and that wind, I say before God, are America! They are theAmerican temperament. 

I will have laws for free men, laws with the sun and the wind in them!

I have waked in the dawn and my heart has been glad with the iron andpoetry in the skyscrapers. 

I will have laws for men and for American men, laws with iron and poetryin them!

The way for a government to get the poetry in is to say "Yes" tosomebody. 

The way for a government to get the iron in is not by saying "No. " It isnot American in a government to keep saying "No. " The best way for ourgovernment in America to say "No" to a man, is to let him stand by andwatch us saying "Yes" to some one else. 

Then he will ask why. 

Then he will stand face to face with America. 

CHAPTER XI

NEWS-BOOKS

The most practical thing that could happen now in the economic world inAmerica would be a sudden, a great national, contemporary literature. 

America, unlike England, has no recognized cultured class, and has noaristocracy, so called, with which to keep mere rich men suitablymiserable--at least a little humble and wistful. Our greatest need for along time has been some big serene, easy way, without half trying, ofsnubbing rich men in America. All these overgrown, naughty fellows onesees everywhere like street boys on the corners or on the curbstones ofsociety, calling society names and taking liberties with it, trippingpeople up; hoodlums with dollars, all these micks of money!--O, thatsociety had some big, calm, serene way like some huge hearty Londonpoliceman, of taking hold of them--taking hold of them by the seats oftheir little trousers if need be, and taking them home to Mother--someway of setting them down hard in their chairs and making themthoughtful! Nothing but a national literature will do this. "Life, "(which is, with one exception, perhaps, the only religious weekly wehave left in America) succeeds a little and has some spiritual valuebecause it succeeds in making American millionaires look funny, and inmaking them want to get away and live in Europe. But "Life" is notenough; it merely hitches us along from day to day and keeps our courageup. We want in America a literature, we want the thing done thoroughlyand forever and once for all. We want an Aristophanes, a master whoshall go gloriously laughing through our world, through our chimneysand blind machines, pot-bellied fortunes, empty successes, all thesetiny, queer little men of wind and bladder, until we have a nationfilled with a divine laughter, with strong, manful, happy visions ofwhat men are for. 

All we have to do is to have a News-book--a bookful of the kind of richmen we want, then we will have them. We will see men piling over eachother all day to be them. Men have wanted to make money because makingmoney has been supposed to mean certain things about a man. The momentit ceases to mean them, they will want to make other things. 

Where is the news about what we really want?

----, when I took him to the train yesterday, spoke glowingly of the waythe Standard Oil Trust had reduced oil from twenty-nine cents to elevencents. 

There was not time to say anything. I just thought a minute of how theydid it. 

Why is it that people--so many good people will speak of oil at elevencents in this way, as if it were a kind of little kingdom of heaven?

I admit that eleven cents from twenty-nine cents leaves eighteen cents. 

I do not deny that the Standard Oil Trust has saved me eighteen cents. But what have they taken away out of my life and taken out of my senseof the world and of the way things go in it and out of my faith in humannature to toss me eighteen cents?

If I could have for myself and others the sense of the world that I hadbefore, would I not to-day, day after day, over and over, gallon bygallon, be handing them their eighteen cents back?

What difference does it make to us if we are in a world where we can buyoil for eleven cents a gallon instead of twenty-nine, if we do not carewhether we are alive or dead in it and do not expect anything fromourselves or expect anything of anybody else? I submit it to your owncommon sense, Gentle Reader. Is it any comfort to buy oil to light aroom in which you do not want to sit, in which you would rather not seeanything, in which you would rather not remember who you are, what youdo, and what your business is like, and what you are afraid yourbusiness is going to be like?

I have passed through all this during the last fifteen years and I havecome out on the other side. But millions of lives of other men arepassing through it now, passing through it daily, bitterly, as they goto their work and as they fall asleep at night. 

The next thing in this world is not reducing the price of oil. It israising the price of men and putting a market-value on life. 

What makes a man a man is that he knows himself, knows who he is, whathe is for and what he wants. Knowing who he is and knowing what he isabout, he naturally acts like a man, knows what he is about like a man, and gets things done. 

A nation that does not know itself shall not be itself. 

A nation that has a muddle-headed literature, a nation that to saynothing of not being able to express what it has, has not even made abeginning at expressing what it wants; a nation that has not a great, eager, glowing literature, a sublime clear-headedness about what it isfor--a nation that cannot put itself into a great book, a nation thatcannot weave itself together even in words into a book that can beunfurled before the people like a flag where everybody can see it andeverybody can share it, look up to it, live for it, sleep for it, get upin the morning and work for it--work for the vision of what it wants tobe--cannot be a great nation. 

A masterpiece is a book that has a thousand years in it. No man has aright to say where these thousand years in it shall lie, whether in thepast or in the future. It is the thousand years' worth in it that makesa masterpiece a masterpiece. In America we may not have the literatureof what we are or of what we have been, but the literature of what weare bound to be, the literature of what WE WILL, we will have, and wewill have to have it before we can begin being it. 

First the Specifications, then the House. 

From the practical or literary point of view the one sign we have givenin this country so far, that the stuff of masterpieces is in us and thatwe are capable of a great literature, is that America is bored by itsown books. 

We let a French parson write a book for us on the simple life. We let apoor suppressed Russian with one foot in hell reach over and write booksfor us about liberty which we greedily read and daily use. We let asublimely obstinate Norwegian, breaking away with his life, pullinghimself up out of the beautiful, gloomy, morose bog of romance he wasborn in--express our American outbreak for facts, for frank realism inhuman nature. 

America is bored by its own books because every day it is demandinggloriously from its authors a literature--books that answer our realquestions, the questions the people are asking every night as they go tosleep and every morning when they crowd out into the streets--Where arewe going? Who are we? What are we like? What are we for?

 * * * * *

A---- C----, the little stoopy cobbler on ---- street in ----, boughtsome machines to help him last year before I went away and added two orthree slaves to do the work. I find on coming back that he has moved andhas two show windows now, one with the cobbling slaves in it cobbling, and the other (a kind of sudden, impromptu room with a show window init) seems to be straining to be a shoe store. When you go in and showC---- in his shirt sleeves, --your old shoes hopefully, he slips overfrom his shining leather bench to the shoe-store side and shows you atthe psychological moment a new pair of shoes. 

He is in the train now with me this morning, across the aisle, lookingout of the window for dear life, poor fellow, for all the world as if hecould suck up dollars and customers--and people who need shoes--out ofthe fields as he goes by, the way the man does mists, by looking hard atthem. 

I watched him walking up and down the station platform before I got on, with that bent, concentrated, meek, ready-to-die-getting-on look. I sawhis future while I looked. I saw, or thought I saw, windows full ofbright black shoes, I saw the cobbler's shop moved out into the ell atthe back, and two great show windows in front. A---- C---- looks like anedged tool. 

Millions of Americans are like A---- C----, like chisels, adzes, saws, scoops. You talk with them, and if you talk about anything exceptscooping and adzing, you are not talking with just a man, but a man whois for something and who is not for anything else. He is not for beingtalked with certainly, and alas! not for being loved. At best he is amere feminine convenience--a father or a cash secreter; until he wearsout at last, buzzes softly into a grave. 

An Englishman of this type is a little better, would be more like one ofthese screw-driver, cork-screw arrangements--a big hollow handle withall sorts of tools inside. 

Is this man a typical American? Does he need to be?

What I want is news about us. 

All an American like C---- needs is news. His eagerness is the making ofhim. He is merely eager for what he will not want. 

All he needs is the world's news about people, about new inventions inhuman beings, news about the different and happier kinds of newlyinvented men, news about how they were thought of, and how they aremade, and news about how they work. 

I demand three things for A---- C----:

I want a novel that he will read which will make him see himself as Isee him. 

I want a moving picture of him that he will go to and like and go toagain and again. 

I want a play that will send him home from the theatre and keep himawake with what he might be all that night. 

I want a news-book for A---- C----, a news-book for all of us. 

 * * * * *

I read a book some years ago that seemed a true news-book and which wasthe first suggestion I had ever received that a book can be an act ofcolossal statesmanship, the making or remaking of a people--amasterpiece of modern literature, laying the ground plan for thegreatness of a nation. 

When I had read it, I wanted to rush outdoors and go down the streetstopping people I met and telling them about it. Once in a very greatwhile one does come on a book like this. One wants to write letters tothe reviews. One does not know what one would not do to go down the longaimless Midway Plaisance of the modern books, to call attention to it. One wishes there were a great bell up over the world. .. . One would reachup to it, and would say to all the men and the women and to the flocksof the smoking cities, "Where are you all?" The bell would boom out, "What are you doing? Why are you not reading this book?" One wonders ifone could not get a coloured page in the middle of the _Atlantic_ or the_North American Review_ or _Everybody's_ and at least make a great bookas prominent as a great soap--almost make it loom up in a country like aFelt Mattress or a Toothbrush. 

The book that has made me feel like this the most is Charles Ferguson's"Religion of Democracy. " I have always wondered why only people here andthere responded to it. The things it made me vaguely see, all those hugemasses of real things, gigantic, half-godlike, looming like towers ormountains in a mist. .. . Well, it must have been a little like this thatColumbus felt that first morning!

But as Columbus went on, what he struck after all was real land, somepiece of real land in particular. The mist of vision did precipitateinto something one could walk on, and I found as I went on with Mr. Ferguson's book that if there was going to be any real land, somebodywould have to make some. 

But for the time being Charles Ferguson's book--all those gloriousgeneralizings in behalf of being individual, all those beautiful, intoned, chanted abstractions in behalf of being concrete--came to me inmy speechless, happy gratitude as a kind of first sign in the heavens, as a pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night, up over the place inthe waste of water where land, Land! At last! Land again! will have tobe. 

If we ever have a literature in America, it will be found somewhere whenthe mist rolls away, right under Charles Ferguson's book. 

It may be too soon just now in this time of transition in our land ofpiles and of derricks against the sky, for the book. All we arecompetent for now is to say that we want such a book, that we see whatit will do for us. 

When we want it, we will get it. Let the American people put in theirorder now. 

In the meantime the Piles and the Derricks. 

All these young and mighty derricks against the sky, all these soaringsteel girders with the blue through them--America!

Ah, my God! is it not a hoping nation? Three thousand miles of Hope, from Eastport, Maine, to San Francisco--does not the very sun itselfracing across it take three hours to get one look at our Hope?

Here it is!--Our World. 

Let me, for one, say what I want. 

It is already as if I had seen it--one big, heroic imagination at workat last like a sea upon our world, poetry grappling with the greatcities, with their labour, with their creative might, full of their vastjoys and sorrows, full of their tussle with the sea and with the powersof the air and with the iron in the earth!--the big, speechless citiesthat no one has spoken for yet, so splendid, and so eager, and so silentabout their souls!

It is true we are crude and young. 

Behold the Derricks like mighty Youths!

In our glorious adolescence so sublime, so ugly, so believing, will noone sing a hymn to the Derricks?

Where are the dear little Poets? Where are they hiding?

Playing Indian perhaps, or making Parthenons out of blocks. 

Perhaps they might begin faintly and modestly at first. 

Some dear, hopeful, modest American poet might creep up from under them, out from under the great believing, dumb Derricks standing on tiptoe offaith against the sky, and write a book and call it "Beliefs AmericanPoets Would Like to Believe if They Could. "

CHAPTER XII

NEWS-BOOKS II

A nation's religion is its shrewdness about its ideals, its genius forstating its ideals or news about itself, in the terms of its everydaylife. 

A nation's literature is its power of so stating its ideals that we willnot need to be shrewd for them--its power of expressing its ideals inwords, of tracing out ideals on white paper, so that ideals shallenthrall the people, so that ideals shall be contagious, shall breatheand be breathed into us, so that ideals shall be caught up in the voicesof men and sung in the streets. 

Ideals, intangible, electric, implacable irresistible, all-enfoldingideals, shall hold and grip a continent the way a climate grips acontinent, like sunshine around a helpless thing, in the hollow of itshand, and possess the hearts of the people. 

What our government needs now is a National band in Washington. 

America is a Tune. 

America is not a formula. America is not statistics, even graphicstatistics. A great nation cannot be made, cannot be discovered, andthen be laid coldly together like a census. America is a Tune. It mustbe sung together. 

The next thing statesmen are going to learn in this country is that froma practical point of view in making a great nation only our Tune inAmerica and only our singing our Tune can save us. A great nation can bemade out of the truth about us. The truth may be--must beprobably, --plain. But the truth must sing. 

It will not be the government that first gets the truth that will governus. The government that gets the truth big enough to sing first, andsings it, will be the government that will govern us. The politicalparty in this country that will first be practical with the people, andthat will first get what it wants, will be the political party thatfirst takes Literature seriously. Our first great practical governmentis going to see how a great book, searching the heart of a nation, expressing and singing the men in it, governs a people. Being aPresident in a day like this, if it does not consist in being a poet, consists in being the kind of President who can be, at least, inpartnership with a poet. 

It is not every President who can be his own David, who can rule withone hand and write psalms and chants for his people with the other. 

The call is out, the people have put in their order to the authors ofAmerica, to the boys in the colleges, and to the young women in thegreat schools--Our President wants a book. 

Before much time has passed, he is going to have one. 

Being a President in this country has never been expressed in a book. 

The President is going to have a book that expresses him to the peopleand that says what he is trying to do. He will live confidentially withthe book. It shall be in his times of trial and loneliness like a greatpeople coming to him softly. He shall feel with such a book, be it dayor night, the nation by him, by his desk, by his bedside, by hissilence, by his questioning, standing by, and lifting. 

In the book the people shall sing to the President. He shall be keptreminded that we are there. He shall feel daily what America is like. America shall be focussed into melody. We shall have a literature oncemore and the singers, as in Greece, as in all happy lands and in allgreat ages, shall go singing through the streets. 

There is no singing for a President now. All a President can do when heis inaugurated, when he begins now, is to kiss helplessly some singingfour thousand years old in a Bible by another nation. 

When David sang to his people, he sang the news, the latest news, thenews of what was happening to people about him from week to week. 

Why is no one singing 1913, our own American 1913?

Why is no one stuttering out our Bible--one the President could have torefer to, our own Bible in our own tongue from morning to morning in thesymbols that breathe to us out of the sounds in the street, out of theair, out of the fresh, bright American sky, and out of the new groundbeneath our feet?

 * * * * *

It is easy for a President to pile up three columns a morning of newsabout himself to us, show each man his face in the morning, but what isthere he can do with twenty thousand newspapers at his breakfast table, to pick out the real news about us? Who shall paint the portrait of apeople?

One could go about in the White House and study the portraits of thepresidents, but where is the portrait of the people? The portrait of thepeople comes in little bits to the president like a puzzle picture. Eachman brings in his little crooked piece, jig-sawed out from Iowa, SouthDakota, Oklahoma or Aroostook County, Maine. This picture or vision of anation, this wilderness of pieces, can be seen every day when one goesin, lying in heaps on the floor of the White House. 

A literature is the expression on the face of a nation. A literature isthe eyes of a great people looking at one. 

It seems to be as we look, looking out of the past and faraway into thefuture. 

A newspaper can set a nation's focus for a morning, adjusting it one wayor the other. A President can set the focus for four years. But only abook can set the focus for a nation's next hundred years so that it canact intelligently and steadfastly on its main line from week to week andmorning to morning. Only a book can make a vast, inspiring, steadfast, stage-setting for a nation. Only a book, strong, slow, reflective, alonewith each man, and before all men, can set in vast still array theperspective, the vision of the people, can give that magnificentself-consciousness which alone makes a great nation, or a mighty man. Atlast humble, imperious, exalted, it shall see Itself, its vision of itsdaily life lying out before it, threading its way to God!

CHAPTER XIII

NEWS-PAPERS

I went one day six months ago to the Mansion House and heard Lord Grey, and Lord Robert Cecil, and Mr. T. C. Taylor and others address the annualmeeting of the Labour Copartnership Association. 

I found myself in the presence of a body of men who believe thatEnglishmen are capable of bigger and better things than many men believethey are capable of. They refuse to evade the issue of the coal strikeand to agree with the socialists who have given up believing thatEnglish employers can be competent and who merely believe that we willhave to rely on our governments now to be employers, and they refuse toagree with the syndicalists, who believe in human nature still less andhave given up on employers and on governments both. 

I have retained three impressions as a result of the meeting. 

The first was that it was the most significant and impressive eventsince the coal strike, that it brought the whole industrial issue to apoint and summed the coal strike up. 

The second impression was one of surprise that the hall was not full. 

The third impression came the next day when I looked through the papersfor accounts of what had been said and of what it stood for. 

It was noted pleasantly and hurriedly as one of the day's events. It wasjust one more of those shadowy things that flicker on the big foolish, drifting, rolling attention of a world a second and are gone. 

People were given a few inches. 

I read in the papers that same day a quite long account of a discussionof nine bishops for five hours (meeting at the same time) on a matter ofproper clothes for clergymen. 

I would have said of that meeting of the Labour CopartnershipAssociation--that it was a meeting of a Society for Defence andProtection of Longer Possible Religion on the Earth--but the clergy outof all the invitations, did not seem very largely to have had time to bethere. 

I wondered too a little about the papers, as I hunted through them. 

It set one to thinking if anything serious to the nation would havehappened, if possibly during the coal strike the London papers haddevoted as much attention to T. C. Taylor--a mutual interestemployer--and to how he runs his business--as to Horatio Bottomley?

Possibly too what Mr. Sandow prefers to have people drink is not soimportant--perhaps whole pages of it at a time--as Amos Mann and how heruns his shoe business without strikes, or as Joseph Bibby and how hemakes oil cakes and loyal workmen together. 

I read the other day of a clergyman in New Jersey--who was organizing aleague of all the left-handed men in the world. Everything is beingorganized, whether or no. Some one has financed him. There will be someone very soon now who will pay the bill for organizing the attention ofa world and for deciding the fate of human nature. It would be worthwhile spending possibly one fortune on getting human nature to settledecisively and once for all whether it has any reason to believe initself or not. Why have a world at all--one like this? Do we want it?Who wants it? What do we want instead? We will advertise and find out. We will spend millions of pounds and Dreadnoughts, even nationalbeer-bills on it, if necessary, on making everybody know that mentallycompetent business men--mutual-interest employers, and mentallycompetent workmen--mutual-interest workmen, can be produced by thehuman race. When everybody knows that this is true, nine out of tenParliamentary questions would be settled, the Churches would again havea chance to be noticed, and education and even religion could be takenseriously. There would be some object in being a teacher perhaps oncemore and in making teaching again a great profession. There would besome object perhaps in even being an artist. The world would start offon a decent, self-respecting theory or vision about itself. Things couldbegin to be done in society once more, soundly, permanently, humanly andfrom the bottom up. 

We would go out on the streets again--rich and poor--and look in eachother's faces. We would take up our morning papers without a sinking atthe heart. 

And the men who have stopped believing in men and who merely believe inmachines would be indicted before the bar of mankind. We would see themslowly filing back, one by one, to where they belong--on the back seatsof the world. 

The newspapers in England and America seem to think that in theirbusiness of rolling the world along, what they find themselvesconfronted with just now is an economic problem. 

The problem that the newspapers are really confronted with, as a matterof fact, is one with which newspaper men big and little are morecompetent to deal than they would be with an expert problem ineconomics. The real problem that newspapers are confronted with everynight, every morning, to-day, is a problem in human nature. 

Some people believe that human nature can be believed in, and others donot. The socialists, the syndicalists, the trades unionists, as a class, and the capitalists as a class, are acting as if they did not. A greatmany inventors, and a great many workmen, all the more bold andinventive workmen, and many capitalists and great organizers of factsand of men, are acting as if they believed in human nature. 

Which are right? Can a mutual-interest employer, can a mutual-interestworker, be produced by the human race? There are some of us who answerthat this is a matter of fact, that this type of man can be produced, isalready produced, and is about to be reproduced indefinitely. 

The moment we can convince trades unions and convince employers thatthis is true we will change the face of the earth. 

Why not change the face of the earth now?

In this connection I respectfully submit three considerations:

1st. If all employers of the world to-morrow morning knew what Lord Grey(as President of the Labour Copartnership Association) knows to-dayabout copartnership--the hard facts about the way copartnership works incalling out human nature--in nerving and organizing labour, everyemployer in the world to-morrow would begin to take an attitude towardlabour which would result in making strikes and lockouts asimpracticable, as incredible, as moony, as visionary forever as idealsof a world without strikes look now. 

2nd. If all the workmen of the world to-morrow morning knew whatFrederick Taylor (the American engineer) knows about planning workmen'swork so that they receive, for the same expenditure of strength, a thirdmore wages every day, the whole attitude of labour in every nation andof the trades unions of the world--the attitude of doing as little workas possible, of labouring and studying and slaving away to discover waysof not being of any use to employers--would face about in a day. 

3rd. What Lord Grey knows about copartnership and the way it works is inthe form of ascertainable, communicable, and demonstrable facts. WhatFrederick Taylor knows and what he has been doing with human beings andwith steel and pig iron and with bricks and other real things is in theform of history that has been making for thirty years--and that can belooked up and proved. 

Why should not everybody who employs labour know what Lord Grey knows?

And why should not all workmen know what a few thousand workmen who havebeen trained under Frederick Taylor to work under better conditions andwith more wages, know?

If I were an inspired millionaire the first thing I would do to-morrowwould be to supply the funds and find the men who should take up whatLord Grey knows about employers, and what Frederick Taylor knows aboutworkmen, and put it where all who live shall see it and know it. I wouldspend my fortune in proving to the world, in making everybody know andbelieve that the mutual-interest business man and the mutual-interestworkman have been produced and can be produced and shall be produced bythe human race. 

The problem of the fate of the world in its essential nature and in itsspiritual elements and gifts--has come to be in this age of the press ahuge advertising problem--a great adventure in human attention. 

The most characteristic and human and natural way, and the only profoundand permanent way to handle the quarrel between Capital and Labour is byplacing certain facts--certain rights-of-all-men-to-know, into the handsof some disinterested and powerful statesman of publicity--some greatorganizer of the attention of a world. He would have to be a practicalpassionate psychologist, a man gifted with a bird's-eye view ofpublics--a discoverer of geniuses and crowds, a natural diviner orreader of the hearts of men. He shall search out and employ twenty mento write as many books addressed to as many classes and types ofemployers and workers. He shall arrange pamphlets for every dooryardthat cannot help being read. 

He shall reach trades unions by using the cinema, by having some masterof human appeal take the fate of labour, study it out in pictures--andthe truth shall be thrown night after night and day after day on ahundred thousand screens around a world. He shall organize and employwide publicity or rely on secret and careful means on different aspectsof the issue according to the nature of the issue, human nature andcommon sense, and organize his campaign to reach every type of person, every temperament, and order of circumstance, each in its own way. 

What Lord Grey knows and what Frederick Taylor's workmen know shall beput where all who live shall see it where every employer, every workman, every workman's wife and every growing boy and girl that is passing by, as on some vast billboard above the world, shall see it--shall see andknow and believe that employers that are worth believing in--and thatworkmen who can work and who are skilled and clever enough to love towork--can still be produced by the human race. 

If I were a newspaper man I would start what might be called PullTogether Clubs in every community, men in all walks of life, littlegroups of crowdmen or men in the community who could not bear not to seea town do team work. 

I would use these Pull Together Clubs in every community as means ofgathering and distributing news--as local committees on the nationalcampaign of touching the imagination of labour and touching theimagination of capital. 

"_Without Vision the People perish_. "

I would begin with spending five million dollars on a vision for thepeople. 

What would I do with a five-million-dollar fund for touching theimagination of labour and touching the imagination of capital?

First: preliminary announcement in all papers and in all public ways, asking names and addresses of workmen who have already proved andestablished their belief in copartnership. 

Names and addresses of employers in the same way. 

Second: names and addresses of workmen who would believe in it if theycould; who believe in the principle theoretically and would beinterested in seeing how it could be practically and technicallyproved. 

Names and addresses of employers in the same way. 

Third: selection of one firm in each industry, the best and moststrategically placed to carry it out in that industry, and placing thefacts before them. 

Selection of the leading workmen out of all the workmen in the nationemployed in that industry, who would be willing to work with such afirm. 

Fourth: a selection of travelling secretaries to visit trades unions andget provisional permission and toleration for these workmen so that theycan take copartnership places under such a firm with the consent oftheir fellows and he set one side for experimental purposes, under theprotection of the trades union rules. 

Fifth: I would find the most promising trades-union branch in eachindustry and I would try to get this branch to take it up with the otherbranches until all trades unions were brought to admit copartnershipmembers on special terms. 

Sixth: after getting copartnership tolerated for certain workmenemployed in certain firms I would try to make copartnership atrades-union movement. 

I would then let the trades unions educate the employers. 

Seventh: I would prepare a list of apparent exceptions to copartnershipas a working principle. I would investigate and try to see why they wereexceptions and why copartnership would not work, and I would find andset inventors at work, and find in what way the spirit that is back ofcopartnership could be applied. 

CHAPTER XIV

NEWS-MACHINES

We want to be good and the one thing we need to do is to tell eachother. Then we will be good. Our conveniences for being good in crowdsare not finished yet. 

We have invented machines for crowds to see one another with and to usein getting about in the dark. One engine whirls round and round allnight so that half a million people can be going about anywhere aftersunset without running into each other. 

Crowds have vast machines for being somewhere else--run in somewhat thesame way all from one unpretentious building they put up called a PowerHouse. 

A great many of our machines for allowing crowds of people to move theirbodies around with have been attended to, but our Intelligence-Machine, our machine for knowing what other people really think, and what theyare like in their hearts so that we can know enough to be good to them, and have brains enough to get them to be good to us, is not finished andset up yet. 

The industrial problem instead of being primarily an economic problem isa news problem. 

If a President were to appoint a Secretary of Labour and were to givehim as one of his conveniences, a news engineer--an expert at attractingand holding the attention of labour unions and driving through news tothem about themselves that they do not know yet, who would bepractically at the head of the department in two years? The Secretary orthe Secretary's news engineer? News is all there is to such adepartment, finding out what it is and distributing it. Any one canthink of scores of labour-union fallacies, news they do not know aboutthemselves that they will want to know at once when their attention iscalled to it. 

If nine members of the President's Cabinet were national news agents, experts in nationalizing news, one member could do with his subordinatesall the other things that Cabinet members do. 

The real problem before each Cabinet member is a problem of news. If theSecretary of Commerce, for instance, could get people to know certainthings, he would not need to do at all most of the things that he isdoing now. Neither would the Attorney General. 

If everything in a Cabinet position turns on getting people to knowthings, why not get them to know them? Why not take that job instead?Why not take the job of throwing one's self out of a job? Every powerfulman has done it--thrown himself out of what he was doing, by making upsomething bigger to do from the beginning of the world. 

In every business it is the man who can recognize, focus, organize, andapply news, and who can get news through to people, who soon becomes thehead of the business. 

The man who can get news through to directors and to employees and makethem see themselves and see one another and the facts as they are, soongets to be Head of the factory. 

The man who can get news through to the public, the salesman of news topeople about what they want to buy and about how they are to spend theirmoney--very personal, intimate news to every man--soon rises to be Headof the Head of the factory and of the entire business. 

It will probably be the same in a cabinet or in a government. If theSecretary of the Department of Commerce has a news engineer as asubordinate in his department and begins to study and observe how to dohis work best, how to solve his problem in the nation, we will soon seethe head of the department, if he really is the head of the department, quietly taking over his news engineer's job and letting his newsengineer have his. 

It is a news engineering job, being a Secretary of Commerce. 

Every member of the Cabinet has a news engineering job. 

And the fact seems to be that the moment the news is attended to in eachmember's department--applied news, special and private news, turned onand set to work where it is called for--most members of cabinets, secretaries of making people do things, and for that matter, thePresidents of making people do things will be thrown out of employment. The Secretaries of What People Think, and the President of What PeopleThink--the engineers of the news in this nation--will be the men whogovern it. 

CHAPTER XV

NEWS-CROWDS

I have tried to express in the last chapter, some kind of tentativeworking vision or hope of what authors and of what newspaper men can doin governing a country. 

This chapter is for anybody, any plain human being. 

Governments all over the world to-day are groping to find out what plainhuman beings are like. 

It does not matter very long what other things a government gets wrong, if it gets the people right. 

This suggests something that each of us can do. 

I was calling on ----, Treasurer of ----, in his new bank, not longago--a hushed, reverent place with a dome up over it and no windows onthis wicked world--a kind of heavenly minded way of being lighted fromabove. It seemed to be a kind of Church for Money. 

"This is new, " I said, "since I've been away. Who built it?"

---- mentioned the name of Non-Gregarious as if I had never heard ofhim. 

I said nothing. And he began to tell me how Non built the bank. He saidhe had wanted Non from the first, but that the directors had been setagainst it. 

And the more he told the directors about Non, he said, the more set theywere. They kept offering a good many rather vague objections, and for along time he could not really make them out. 

Finally he got it. All the objections boiled down to one. 

Non was too good to be true. If there was a man like Non in this world, they said, they would have heard about it before. 

 * * * * *

When I was telling ex-Mayor ----, in ----, about Non, the first time, heinterrupted me and asked me if I would mind his ringing for hisstenographer. He was a trustee and responsible, either directly orindirectly, for hundreds of buildings, and he wanted the news inwriting. 

Of course there must be something the matter with it, he said, but hewanted it to be true, if it could, and as the bare chance of its beingtrue would be very important to him, he was going to have it looked up. 

Now ex-Mayor ---- is precisely the kind of man (as half the world knows)who, if he had been a contractor, instead of what he had happened to be, would have been precisely the kind of contractor Non is. He has the samedifficult, heroic blend of shrewd faiths in him, of high motives andgetting what he wants. 

But the moment ex-Mayor ---- found these same motives put up to bebelieved in at one remove, and in somebody else, he thought they weretoo good to be true. 

I have found myself constantly confronted in the last few years ofobservation with a very singular and interesting fact about businessmen. 

Nine business men out of ten I know, who have high motives, (in a ratherbluff simple way, without particularly thinking about it, one way or theother) seem to feel a little superior to other people. They begin, as arule, apparently, by feeling a little superior to themselves, by tryingto keep from seeing how high their motives are, and when, in the sternscuffle of life, they are unable any longer to keep from suspecting howhigh their motives are themselves, they fall back on trying to keepother people from suspecting it. 

In ----'s factory in ----, the workers in brass, a few years ago, couldnot be kept alive more than two years because they breathed brassfilings. When ---- installed, at great expense, suction machines toplace beside the men to keep them from breathing brass, some one said, "Well surely you will admit this time, that this is philanthropy?"

"Not at all. "

The saving in brass air alone, gathered up from in front of the men'smouths, paid for the machines. What is more he said that after he hadgone to the expense of educating some fine workmen, if a mere littlesucking machine like that could make the best workmen he had, work forhim twenty years instead of two years, it was poor economy to let themdie. 

Nearly all of the really creative business men make it a point, untilthey get a bit intimate with people, to talk in this tone aboutbusiness. One can talk with them for hours, for days at a time, abouttheir business--some of them, without being able a single time to cornerthem into being decent or into admitting that they care about anybody. 

Now I will not yield an inch to ---- or to anybody else in my desire todisplace and crowd out altruism in our modern life. I believe thataltruism is a feeble and discouraged thing from a religious point ofview. I have believed that the big, difficult and glorious thing inreligion is mutualism, a spiritual genius for finding identities, forputting people's interests together-you-and-I-ness, and we-ness, lettingpeople crowd in and help themselves. 

And why not believe this and drop it? Why should nearly every businessman one meets to-day, try to keep up this desperate show, of avoidingthe appearance of good, of not wanting to seem mixed up in any way withgoodness--either his own or other people's?

In the present desperate crisis of the world, when all our governmentseverywhere are groping to find out what business men are really like andwhat they propose to be like, if a man is good (far more than if he isbad) everybody has a right to know it. The President has a right to knowit. The party leaders have a right to know it. 

It is a big businesslike thing for a man to make goodness pay, but whatis the man's real, deep, happy, creative, achieving motive in makinggoodness pay? What is it in the man that fills him with this fiercedesire, this almost business-fanaticism for making goodness pay?

It is a big daily grim love of human nature in him, his love of being ina human world, his passion for human economy, for world efficiency andworld-self-respect. This is what it is in him that makes him forcegoodness to pay. 

The business men of the bigger type who let themselves talk in this toneto-day, do not mean it, they are letting themselves be insensibly drawninto the tone of the men around them. 

We have gone skulking about with our virtues so long, saying that wehave none, that we have believed it. We all know men finer than we arewho say they have none. So we have not, probably. 

And so it goes on. I grow more and more tired every year of going aboutthe business world, at boards of trade and at clubs and at dinners, andfinding all this otherwise plain and manly world, all dotted overeverywhere with all these simple, good, self-deceived blundering prigsof evil, putting on airs before everybody day and night, of being worsethan they are!

It is not exactly a lie. It is a Humdrum. People do not deliberately lieabout human nature. They merely say pianola-minded things. 

One goes down any business street, Oxford Street, Bond Street, orBroadway. One hears the same great ragtime tune of business, dinginglike a kind of street piano, through men's minds, "Sh-sh-sh-sh-Oh, SH-SH! Oh, do not let anybody know I'm being good!"

=II=

I am not going to try any longer to worm out of my virtues or to keep upan appearance of having as low motives as other people are trying tomake me believe they have. 

They have lied long enough. 

I have lied long enough. 

My motives are really rather high and I am going to admit it. 

And the higher they are (when I have hustled about and got the necessarybrains to go with them) the better they have worked. 

Nine times out of ten when they have not worked, it has been my fault. 

Sometimes it is John Doe's fault. 

I am going to speak to John Doe about it. I am going to tell him what Iam driving at. I have turned over a new leaf. In the crisis of a greatnation and as an act of last desperate patriotism, I am going to give uplooking modest. 

For a long time now I have wanted to dare to come out and stand upbefore this Modesty Bug-a-boo and have it out with it and say what Ithink of it, as one of the great, still, sinister threats against ourhaving or getting a real national life in America. 

I knew a boy once who grew so fast that his mother always kept himwearing shoes three sizes too large, and big, hopeful-looking coats andtrousers. Except for a few moments a year he never caught up. Nobodyever saw that boy and his long shoes when he was not butting bravelyabout, stubbing his toes on the world and turning up his sleeves. 

It was a great relief to him and everybody, finally, when he grew up. 

I am going to let myself go around, for a while now, at least until ourpresent national crisis is over in business and in politics, like thatboy. 

There are millions of other men in this country who want to be likethat boy. Nations may smile at us if they want to. We will smiletoo--rather stiffly and soberly, but for better or worse we propose fromto-day on, to let people see what we are trying to be daily, grimly, right along side of what we are!

I have come to the conclusion that the only way, for me, at least, tokeep modest and kind, is to have my ideals all on. When one is goingaround in sight of everybody with one's moral sleeves rolled up, andone's great wistful, broad trousers that do not look as if they wouldever get filled out, it is awkward to find fault with other people fornot filling out their moral clothes. It may be a severe measure to takewith one's self hut the surest way to be kind is to live an exposedlife. 

I propose to live the next few years in a glass house. There aremillions of other men who want to. We want to see if we cannot at lastlive confidentially with a world, live naïvely and simply with a worldlike boys and like great men and like dogs!

What I have written, I have written. I propose to run the risk of beinggood. When driven to it, I will run the risk of saying I am good. 

My motives are fairly high. See! here is my scale of one hundred! I hadrather stand forty-five on my scale than ninety-eight on yours!

If there is any discrepancy between my vision and my action, I am notgoing to be bullied out of my life and out of living my life the way Iwant to, by the way I look. Though it mock me, I will not haul down myflag. I will haul up my life!

Here it is right here in this paragraph, in black and white. I take itup and look at it, I read it once more and lay it down. 

What I have written, I have written. 

=III=

People do not seem to agree in the present crisis of our Americanindustrial and national life, about the necessity of getting at thefacts and at the real news in this country about how good we are. 

Last November in the national election, four and a half million men(Republicans) said to Theodore Roosevelt, "Theodore! do not be good soloud!"

Four and a half million other men, also Republicans, told him not tomind what anybody said, but to keep right on being good as loud as heliked, for as long as it seemed necessary. 

They wanted to be sure our goodness in America such as we had, was beingloud enough to be heard, believed in, and acted on in public. 

The other set of men, last November (who were really very good too, ofcourse), were more sedate and liked to see goodness modulated more. Theystood out for what might be called a kind of moral elegance. 

The governing difference between the Roosevelt type and the Taft type inAmerica has not been a mere difference of temperament but a differencein news-sense, in a sense of crisis in the nation. 

Thousands of men of all parties, with the nicest, easiest stand-pat Tafttemperaments in the world, with soft, low voices and with the mostbeautiful moral manners, have let themselves join in a national attemptto shock this nation into seeing how good it is. A great temporarycrisis can only be met by a great temporary loudness. 

This is what has been happening in America during the last six months. At last, all men in all parties are engaged in trying to find out: Is ittrue or not true that we want to be good?

We are trying to get the news through. It may not be very becoming to usand we know as well as any one, that loudness, except when morally deafpeople drive us to it is in bad taste. We are looking forward, every oneof us, to being as elegant as any one is, and the very first minute weget the morally deaf people out of office where we will not have to goabout shouting out at them we will tone down in our goodness. We willmodulate beautifully!

=IV=

There are three other bug-a-boos, besides the Modesty Bug-a-boo thatAmerica will have to face and drive out of the way before it can betruly said to have a national character or to have grown up and founditself. There is the Goody-good Bug-a-boo, the Consistency Bug-a-boo, and the Bug-a-boo that Thomas Jefferson if he were living now, wouldnever never ride in a carriage. 

Each of these bug-a-boos in the general mistiness and muddle-headinessof the time can be seen going about, saying, "Boo! Boo!" to thisdemocracy from day to day and year to year, keeping it scared into notgetting what it wants. 

There is not one of them that will not evaporate in ten minutes thefirst morning we get some real news through in this country aboutourselves and about what we are like. 

What is the real news about us, for instance, as regards beinggoody-good?

I can only begin with the news for one. 

For years, I have held myself back from taking a plain or possibly loudstand for goodness as a shrewd, worldly-wise program for Americanbusiness and public life, because I was afraid of people, and afraidpeople would think I was trying to improve them. 

What was worse, I was afraid of myself too. I was afraid I really would. 

I am afraid now, or rather I would be, if I had not drilled through tothe news about myself and about other people and about human nature thatI am putting into this chapter. 

 * * * * *

I have written five hundred pages in this book on an awkward anddangerous subject like the Golden Rule, and I appeal to the reader--Iask him humbly, hopefully, gratefully if he can honestly say (except fora minute here and there when I have been tired and slipped up), if hehas really felt improved or felt that I was trying to improve him inthis book. 

On your honour, Gentle Reader--you who have been with me five hundredpages!

You say "Yes"?

Then I appeal to your sense of fairness. If you truly feel I have beentrying to improve you in this book, turn this leaf down here and stop. It is only fair to me. Close the book with your improved and beingimproved feeling and never open it again until it passes over. You haveno right to go on page after page calling me names, as it were, right inthe middle of my own book in this way behind my back, you!--hundreds andthousands of miles away from me, by your own lamp, by your ownwindow--you come to me here between these two helpless pasteboard coverswhere I cannot get out at you, where I cannot answer back, and you saythat I am trying to improve you!

Ah, Gentle Reader, forgive me! God forgive me! Believe me, I nevermeant, not if it could possibly be helped, to improve you! If you insiston it and keep saying that I have been improving you, all I can say isthat I was merely looking as if I were improving you. _You_ did it. Idid not. God help me if I am trying to improve you! I am trying to findout in this book who I am. If, incidentally, while I am quietly workingaway on this for five hundred pages, you find out who you are yourself, and then drop into a gentle glowing improved feeling all by yourself, donot mix me up in it. I deny that I have tried to improve you or anybody. I have written this book to get my own way, to express my America. Ihave written it to say "i, " to say "I, " to say (the first minute you letme), "you and I, " to say we, WE about America--to drive the news throughto a President of what America is like. 

I am not improving you. I am telling you what may or may not be newsabout you. 

Take it or leave it. 

=V=

I want to be good. 

I do not feel superior to other men. 

And I do not propose, if there is anything I can do about it, to becompelled to feel superior. 

I believe we all want to be good. 

The one thing I want in this world is to prove it. I want my own way. 

I am not going to slump into being a beautiful character. I have writtenthis book to get my own way. 

I have said I will not be mixed up in the fate of people who do not knowwhere they are going, who have not decided what they are like, who donot know who they are. What do the people want? Some people tell me theywant nothing. They tell me it would only make things worse and stirthings up for me to want to be good. 

Or perhaps they think it is beautiful to lower the price of oil. Theywant oil at seven cents a gallon. 

Do they? Do you? Do I?

I say no. Let oil wait. I want to raise the price of men and to put amarket value on human life. I find as I look about me that there are twoclasses of statesmen offering to be helpful in making life worth livingin America. 

There are the statesmen who think we are going to be good and whobelieve in a program which trusts and exalts the people and the leadersof the people. 

There are the statesmen who seem to believe that American human naturedoes not amount to enough to be good. They are planning a program on theprinciple that the best that can be done with human nature in America inbusiness and public life is to have it expurgated. 

Which class of statesmen do we want?

In some of our state prisons men who are not considered fit to reproducethemselves are sterilized. The question that is now up before thiscountry is, Do we or do we not want American business sterilized? Are weor are we not going to put a national penalty on all initiative in allbusiness men because some men abuse it?

There is but one thing that can save us, namely, proving to one anotherand to our public men, that we are good, that we are going to be goodand that we know how. We face the issue to-day. Two definite programsare before the country. 

Those who have put their faith in being afraid of one another as anational policy have devised several By-laws for an Expurgated America. 

They say, eliminate the right of a man to do wrong. Deny him the rightof moral experiment because some of his experiments do not work. We saylet him try. We can look out for ourselves or we will have bigger menthan he is, to look out for us. 

They say, eliminate the right of a man to be an owner, because nobodyhas the courage to believe that a man can express his best self inproperty. We say that property may express a man's religion, and thatthe way a man has of being rich or of being poor may be an art-form. 

Most men can express themselves better in property than in anythingelse. 

They say, eliminate all monopoly indiscriminately and the occasionallogical efficiency of monopoly because it has not worked well for thepeople the first few times and because we have not learned how to handleit. We say learn how to handle it. 

They say eliminate the middleman. They say that the one strategic man inevery industry who can represent everybody if he wants to, who can be agreat man and who can make a great industry serve everybody, must beeliminated because nobody believes America can produce a middleman. Wesay instead of weakly and helplessly giving up a great spiritual andmorally-engineering institution like the middleman because the averagemiddleman does not know his job, we say: Exalt the middleman raise himto the n-th power, make him--well--do you remember, Gentle Reader, thewalking beams on the old sidewheel steamers? We say do not eliminatehim--lift him up--make him what he naturally is and is in position tobe--the walking beam of Business!

If the average middleman does not know how to be a real middleman wewill make one who does. 

And all the other eliminations that we have watched people being scaredinto, one by one, we will turn into exaltations--each in its own kindand place. There is not one of our fears that is not the suggestion, themighty outline, the inspiration for the world's next new size and newkind of American man. We say place the position before the man--with itsfears, with its songs, with its challenge. We say, tell him what weexpect of him and demand of him. Put him in a high place on a platformbefore the world! There with the truth about him written on his foreheadin the sight of all the people, call him by name, glorify him or beheadhim! We are men and we are Americans. We will stand up to each of ourdangers one by one. Each and every danger of them is a romance, asublime adventure, a nation-maker. Our threats, our very by-words anddespairs, we will take up, and, in the sight of the world, forge theminto shrewd faiths and into mighty men!

This is my news or vision. I say that this is where we are going inAmerica. I compel no man to follow my news but I will pursue him with mynews until he gives me his!

 * * * * *

This news, I am telling, Gentle Reader, is perhaps news about you. 

If it is not true news, say so. Say what is. We all have a right toknow. The one compulsion of modern life is our right to know, our rightto compel people who live on the same continent or who live in the samecountry with us, to open up their hearts, to furnish us with their shareof the materials for a mutual understanding, or for a definite mutualmisunderstanding, on which to live. 

It is the one compulsion of which we will be guilty. All liberty is init. These people who have to live with us and that we have to live with, these people who breathe the same moral air with us, drink the samewater with us, these people who have their moral dumps, who throw awaytheir moral garbage with us--these people who will not help provide somedaily, mutual understanding for these common decencies for our souls tolive together these people we defy and challenge! We will compel them toreveal themselves. We will drive them away, or we will drive them intodriving us away, if they will not yield to us what is in theirhearts--Mars, hell, anywhere we go, it matters not to us where we go, except that we cannot and we will not live with men about us who thrustdown their true feelings and their real desires into a kind of manholeunder them, and sit on the lid and smile. Some seem to have manholes andsome have safes or spiritual banks, and there are others who haveconvenient, dim, beautiful clouds in the sky to hide their feelings in. But whatever their real feelings are, and wherever they keep them, theybelong to us. 

We insist on having or on making mutual arrangements to have, if we livein crowds, some kind of spiritual rapid transit system for getting ourminds through to one another. We demand a system for having the streetsof our souls decently lighted, some provision for moral sewers, for airor atmosphere--and all the common conveniences for having decent andself-respecting souls in crowds--all the intelligence-machines, thelove-machines, the hope-machines, and the believing-machines that thecrowds must have for living decently, for living with beauty, livingwith considerateness and respect in this awful daily sublime presence ofone another's lives!

We shall still have our splendid isolations when we need them, some ofus, and our little solitudes of meanness, but the main common fund ofmotives for living together, for growing up into a world together, thedesires, motives, and intentions in men's hearts, their desires towardus and ours toward them, we are going to know and compel to be madeknown. We will fight men to the death to know them. 

Have we not fought, you and I, Gentle Reader, all of us, each man of us, all our years, all our days, to drive through to some sort of mutualunderstanding with our own selves? Now we will fight through to somemutual understanding with one another and with the world. 

We will knock on every door, make a house to house canvass of the soulsof the world, pursue every man, sing under his windows. We willundergird his consciousness and his dreams. We will make the birds singto him in the morning, "_Where are you going_?" We will put up a sign atthe foot of his bed for his eyes to fall on when he awakes, "_Where areyou going_?"

Whatever it is that works best, if we blow it out of you with dynamiteor love or fear or draw it out of you with some mighty singing goingpast--ah, brother, we will have it out of you! You shall be our brother!We will be your brother though we die!

We will live together or we will die together. 

What do you really want? What do you really like? _Who are you_?

We may pile together all our funny, fearful, little Dreadnoughts, ourstodgy dead lumps of men called armies, and what are they? And what dothey amount to and what can they do, as compared with truth, the realnews about what people want in this world, and about where we are going?

I say--they shall be as nothing as a rending force, as a glory to teardown and rebuild a world, as compared with the truth, with the newsabout us, that shall come out at last (God hasten the day!) from theopen--the pried-open hearts of men! And I have seen that men shall goforth with shouts in that day and with glad and solemn silence, to builda world!

 * * * * *

I wonder if I have faced down the Goody-good Bug-a-boo. 

I speak for five million men. 

We have got this book written between us (under the name of one of us), because we want our own way. We are not improving people. We are noteven trying to improve ourselves. Many of us started in on it once andthe first improvement we thought of was not to try any more. 

It is a great deal harder to try to live. Few people want us to--mostpeople get in the way. And when people get in the way we lay about us alittle--We hit them. We have written this book, because we want to hit agreat many people at once. We find them everywhere about us, in monstercities, huge thoughtless anthills of them, and they will not let us livea larger and a richer life. We say to them, We resent your houses yourshoes, your voices, your fears, your motives, your wills, the diseasesyou make us walk past every day, the rows of things you seem to thinkwill do, and that you think we must get used to, and we do not propose, if we can help it, to get used to what you think will do for Churches;nor to what you think will do for a government or to the little lonely, scattered, toyschool-houses, that when you come into the world, freshand strange and happy you all proceed solemnly to coop your souls in. Nor do we want to get used to your hem-and-haw parliaments and yourfunny little perfumed prophets--your prophets lying down or propped upwith pillows or your poets wringing their hands. Nor will we be put offwith all your gracefully feeble, watery, lovely little pastel religionsfor this grim and mighty modern world. We are American men. We do notpropose to be driven out to sea, to stand face to face every day withwhat is true and full of beauty and magic, or to have skies andmountains and stars palmed off on us as companions instead of men!

This is what five million men are trying to express in writing thisbook. If people deny that I have the right to give the news aboutAmerica for five million men; if they say that this is not true aboutAmerican human nature, that this is not the news, then I will say, _I amthe news_! I am this sort of an American! God helping me, I say it!"Look at _me_!" I am this sort of man of whom I am writing! If I am notthis sort of man this afternoon, I will be in the morning! Though I godown as a hiss and as laughter and as a by-word and a mocking to the endof my days--_I_ am this sort of man! I say, "Look at _me_!"

If you will not believe me--that this is an American, if you say that Icannot prove that there are five million of men like this in America, then I will still say, "Here is _one_! What will you do with ME?" ThoughI die in laughter, all my desires and all my professions in a tumultabout my soul, I say it to this nation, "Your laws, your programs, yourphilosophies, your I wills, and I won'ts, I say, shall reckon with _me_!Your presidents and your legislatures shall reckon with Me!"

Here I am. The man is here. He is in this book!

I will break through to the five million men. I will make the fivemillion men look at me until they recognize themselves. If no one elsewill attend to it for me, and if there shall be no other way, I willhave a brass band go through the streets of New York and of a thousandcities, with banners and floats and great hymns to the people, and theyshall go up and down the streets of the people with signs saying, "Haveyou read Crowds?" I will have the Boston Symphony Orchestra tour thecountry singing--singing from kettledrums to violins to a thousandsilent audiences, "_Have yon read 'CROWDS'_?"

I live in a nation in which we are butting through into our sense of ournational character, working our way up into a huge mutual workingunderstanding. In our beautiful, vague, patriotic, muddleheadednessabout what we want and whether we really want to be good, and about whatbeing good is like and I say, for one, half-laughing, half-praying, Godhelping me--_Look at_ =ME=!

=VI=

I was much interested some time ago when I had not been long landed inEngland, and was still trying in the hopeful American way to understandit--to see the various attitudes of Englishmen toward the discussionswhich were going on at that time in the _Spectator_ and elsewhere, ofMr. Cadbury's inconsistency; and while I had no reason, as an American, fresh-landed from New York, to be interested in Mr. Cadbury himself, Ifound that his inconsistency interested me very much. It insisted oncoming back into my mind, in spite of what I would have thought, as astrangely important subject--not merely as regards Mr. Cadbury, whichmight or might not be important, but as regards England and as regardsAmerica, as regards the way a modern man struggling day by day with ahuge, heavy machine civilization like ours, can still manage to be alive, useful, and possibly even a human, being in it. 

There are two astonishing facts that stand face to face with all of usto-day, who are labouring with civilization. 

The first fact is that almost without exception all the men in it whomean the most in it to us and to other people for good or for evil--whostir us deeply and do things--all fall into the inconsistent class. 

The second fact is that this is a very small, select distinguished, andastonishingly capable class. 

A man who is in a grim, serious business like being good, must expect togive up many of his little self-indulgences in the way of looking good. Looking inconsistent, possibly even inconsistency itself, may besometimes, temporarily, a man's most important public service to histime. 

One needs but a little glance at history, or even at one's own personalhistory. It is by being inconsistent that people grow, and withoutmeaning to, give other people materials for growing. For the particularpurpose of making the best things grow, of pointing up truths, of givingdefinite edges to right and wrong, an inconsistent man--a man who istrying to pry himself out a little at a time from an impossiblesituation in an impossible world, is likely to do the world more goodthan a very large crowd of angels who have made up their minds that theyare going to be consistent and going to keep up a consistent look inthis same world--whatever happens to it. 

 * * * * *

If one is marking people on consistency, and if one takes a scale of 100as perfect, perhaps one should not always insist on 98. One does notalways insist on 98 for one's self. And when one does and does not getit, one feels forgiving sometimes. 

In dealing with public men and with other people that we know less thanwe know ourselves--if they really do things, it is well to makeallowances, and let them off at 65. 

In some cases, in fact, when men are doing something that no one elsevolunteers to do for a world, I find I get on very well with lettingthem off at 51. I have sometimes wished, when I have been in England, that Tories and Liberals and Socialists and the Wise and the Good wouldconsider letting George Cadbury off at 51. 

Perhaps people are being more safely educated by George Cadbury in hisjournals than they might be by other people in what seem to seem to manyof us unfamiliar and dangerous ideas. 

Perhaps posterity, in 1953, looking down this precipice of revolutionEngland did not fall into in 1913, may mark George Cadbury 73--possibly89. 

If, in any way, in the crisis of England, George Cadbury can crowd inand can keep thousands and thousands of Englishmen and women from beingeducated by John Bottomley Bull or by Mrs. John Bottomley Bull and hostsof other would-be friends of the people--by Tom Mann, Ben Tillett, andVernon Hartshorn, does it really seem after all a matter of gravenational importance that George Cadbury--a professional non-better--ineducating these people should allow them to keep on in his paper, havinga betting column?

So long as he really helps stave off John Bottomley Bull and Mrs. JohnBottomley Bull, let him slump into being a millionaire, if he cannotvery well help it! We say, some of us, let him even make cocoa! or havefamily prayers! or be a Liberal!

At least this is the way one American visiting England feels about it, if he may be permitted. 

Perhaps I would not, if I were an angel. 

I do not want to be an angel. 

I am more ambitious. I want my ideals to do things, and I want to standby people who are doing things with their ideals, whether their idealsare my ideals or not. 

 * * * * *

Let us suppose. Suppose the reader were in Mr. Cadbury's place. Whatwould he do? Here are two things, let us suppose, he wishes very much. He wishes a certain class of people would not bet, and he also wishes toconvince these same people of certain important social and politicalideas for which he stands. If he told them that he would have nothing todo with them unless they stopped betting, there would be no object inhis publishing their paper at all. There would be nothing that theywould let him tell them. If, on the other hand, he begins merely as onemore humble, fellow-human being, and puts himself definitely on recordas not betting himself, and still more definitely as wishing otherpeople would not bet, and then admits honestly that these other peoplehave as good a right to decide to bet as he has to decide not to; and ifhe then deliberately proceeds to do what every real gentleman who doesnot smoke and wishes other people did not, does withoutquestion--namely, offers them the facilities for doing it why shouldpeople call him inconsistent?

Perhaps a man's consistency consists in his relation to his own smokingand betting and not in his rushing his consistency over into the smokingand betting of other people. Perhaps being consistent does not need tomean being a little pharisaical, or using force, or cutting people offand having no argument with them, in one matter, because one cannotagree with them in another. Of course, I admit it would be better if Mr. Cadbury would publish in a parallel column (if he could get a genius towrite it) an extremely tolerant, human, comrade-like series ofobjections to betting, which people could read alongside, and whichwould persuade people as much as possible not to read the best bettingtips in the world in the column next door, but certainly the act offurnishing the tips in the meantime and of being sure that they are thebest tips in the world, is a very real, human, courageous act. It evenhas a kind of rough and ready religion in it. It may be too much toexpect, but even in our goodness perhaps we ought to do as we would bedone by. We must be righteous, but on the whole, must we not berighteous toward others as we would have them righteous toward us?

What many of us find ourselves wishing most of all, when we come uponsome specially attractive man is, that we could discover some way, orthat he could discover some way, in which the idealist in him, and therealist in him could be got to act together. 

There are some of us who have come to believe that in the dead earnest, daily, almost desperate struggle of modern life, the real solid idealistwill have to care enough about his ideals to arrange to have twocomplete sets, one set which he calls his personal ideals, which are ofsuch a nature that he can carry them out alone and rigidly and quite byhimself, and another which he calls his bending or coöperative ideals, geared a little lower and adjusted to more gradual usage, which he useswhen he asks other men to act with him. 

It may take a very single-hearted and strong man to keep before his ownmind and before other people's his two sets of ideals, his "I" faiths, and his you-and-I faiths, keeping each in strict proportion, but itwould certainly be a great human adventure to do it. Saying "God and I, "and saying "God and you and I" are two different arts. And it isclear-headedness and not inconsistency in a man that keeps him so. 

This is not a mere defence of Mr. Cadbury; it is a defence of a type ofman, of a temperament in our modern life, of men like Edward A. Filene, of Boston, of a man like Hugh Mac Rae, one of the institutions of NorthCarolina, of Tom L. Johnson of Cleveland, of nine men out of ten of thebigger and more creative sort who are helping cities to get their wayand nations to express themselves. I have believed that the principle atstake, the great principle for real life in England and in America, ofletting a man be inconsistent if he knows how--must have a stand madefor it. 

There is no one thing, whether in history, or literature, or science, orpolitics that can be more crucial in the fate of a nation to-day thanthe correct, just, and constructive judgment of ContemporaryInconsistent People. 

=VII=

If I could have managed it, I would have had this book printed andwritten--every page of it--in three parallel columns. 

The first column would be for the reader who believes it, who keepswriting a book more or less like it as he goes along. I would put in onesentence at the top for him and then let him have the rest of the spaceto write in himself. In other words I would say 2 plus 2 equals 4 anddrop it. 

The second column would be for the reader who would like to believe itif he could, and I would branch out a little more--about half a column. 

 2 + 2 = 4

 20 + 20 = 40

The third column would be for the reader who is not going to believe itif it can be helped. It would be in fine type, bitterly detailed andstatistical and take nothing for granted. 

 2 + 2 = 4

 20 + 20 = 40

 200 + 200 = 400

 2, 000 + 2, 000 = 4, 000

 20, 000 + 20, 000 = 40, 000

 etc. 

This arrangement would make the book what might be called a MovingSidewalk of Truth. First sidewalk rather quick (six miles an hour). Second, four miles an hour. Third, two miles an hour. People could moveover from one sidewalk to the other in the middle of an idea any time, and go faster or slower as they liked to, needed to. 

No one would accuse me--though I might like or need for my own personaluse at one time or another, a slower sidewalk or a faster one thanothers--no one would accuse me of being inconsistent if I supplied extrasidewalks for people of different temperaments to move over to suddenlyany time they wanted to. I have come to some of my truth by a bitterlyslow sidewalk--slower than other people need, and sometimes I have comeby a fast one (or what some would say was no sidewalk at all!) but itcannot fairly be claimed that there is anything inconsistent in myoffering people every possible convenience I can think of--for believingme. 

Mr. Cadbury is not inconsistent if he tells truth at a different rate todifferent people, or if he chooses to put truths before people in Indianfile. 

A man is not inconsistent who does not tell all the news he knows to allkinds of people, all at once, all the time. 

There is nothing disingenuous about having an order for truth. 

It is not considered compromising to have an order in moving railwaytrains. Why not allow an order in moving trains of thought? And whyshould a schedule for moving around people's bodies be considered anymore reasonable than a schedule or timetable or order for moving aroundtheir souls?

Truth in action must always be in an order. Nine idealists out of tenwho fight against News-men, or men who are trying to make the beautifulwork, and who call them hypocrites, would not do it if they were tryingdesperately to make the beautiful work themselves. It is morecomfortable and has a fine free look, to be blunt with thebeautiful--the way a Poet is--to dump all one's ideals down beforepeople and walk off. But it seems to some of us a cold, sentimental, lazy, and ignoble thing to do with ideals if one loves them--to giveeverybody all of them all the time without considering what becomes ofthe ideals or what becomes of the people. 

CHAPTER XVI

CROWD-MEN

MARCH 4, 1913. 

As I write these words, I look out upon the great meadow. I see thepoles and the wires in the sun, that long trail of poles and wires I amused to, stalking across the meadow. I know what they are doing. 

They are telling a thousand cities and villages about our new President, the one they are making this minute, down in Washington, for theseUnited States. With his hand lifted up he has just taken his oath, hassworn before God and before his people to serve the destinies of anation. And now along a hundred thousand miles of wire on dumb woodenpoles, a hope, a prayer, a kind of quiet, stern singing of a mightypeople goes by. And I am sitting here in my study window wondering whathe will be like, what he will think, and what he will believe about us. 

What will our new President do with these hundreds of miles of prayer, of crying to God, stretched up to him out of the hills and out of theplains?

Does he really overhear it--that huge, dumb, half-helpless, half-defiantprayer going up past him, out of the eager, hoarse cities, out of theslow, patient fields, to God?

Does he overhear it, I wonder? What does he make out that we are like?

I should think it would sound like music to him. 

It would come to seem, I should think, when he is alone with his God(and will he not please be alone with his God sometimes?), like somevast ocean of people singing, a kind of multitudinous, faraway singing, like the wind--ah, how often have I heard the wind like some strange andmighty people in the pine treetops go singing by!

I do not see how a President could help growing a little like apoet--down in his heart--as he listens. 

If he does, he may do as he will with us. 

We will let him be an artist in a nation. 

As Winslow Homer takes the sea, as Millet takes the peasants in thefields, as Frank Brangwyn lifts up the labour in the mills and makes itcolossal and sublime, the President is an artist, in touching thecrowd's imagination with itself--in making a nation self-conscious. 

He shall be the artist, the composer, the portrait painter of thepeople--their faith, their cry, their anger, and their love shall be inhim. In him shall be seen the panorama of the crowd, focused into asingle face. In him there shall be put in the foreground of thisnation's countenance the things that belong in the foreground. And thethings that belong in the background shall be put in the background, andthe little ideas and little men shall look little in it, and the bigones shall look big. 

They do not look so now. This is the one thing that is the matter withAmerica. The countenence of the nation is not a composed countenance. All that we want is latent in us, everything is there in our Washingtonface. The face merely lacks features and an expression. 

This is what a President is for--to give at last the Face of the UnitedStates an expression!

If he is a shrewd poet and believes in us, we shall accept him as theofficial mind reader of the nation. He focuses our desires. In theweariness of the day he looks away--he looks up--he leans his head uponhis hand--through the corridors of his brain, that little silent Mainstreet of America, the thoughts and the crowds and the jostling wills ofthe people go. 

If he is a shrewd poet about us, he becomes the organic function, theorganizer of the news about our people to ourselves. He is the publicmade visible, the public made one. He is a moving picture of us. Hespeaks and gestures the United States--if he is a poet about us--when hebeckons or points or when he puts his finger on his lips, or when hesays, "Hush!" or when he says, "Wait a moment!" he is the voice of thepeople of the United States. 

 * * * * *

I am sitting and correcting, one by one, as they are brought to me, these last page proofs in the factory. The low thunder on the floors ofthe mighty presses, crashing down into paper words I can never crossout--rises around me. In a minute more--minute by minute that I amcounting, that low thunder will overtake me, will roar down and foldaway these last guilty, hopeful, tucked-in words with you, GentleReader, and you will get away! And the book will get away!

There is no time to try to hold up that low thunder now, and to say whatI have meant to say about false simplicity and democracy, and about ourall being bullied into being little old faded Thomas Jeffersons ahundred years after he is dead. 

But I will try to suggest what I hope that some one who has noprinting-presses rolling over him--will say:

One cannot help wishing that our socialists to-day would outgrow KarlMarx, and that our individualists would outgrow Emerson. Democrats bythis time ought to grow a little, too, and outgrow Jefferson, andRepublicans ought to be able by this time to outgrow Hamilton. 

Why not drop Karl Marx and Emerson and run the gamut of both of them, ona continent 3, 000 miles wide? Why should we live Thomas Jefferson's andAlexander Hamilton's lives? Why not drop Jefferson and Hamilton and liveours?

The last thing that Jefferson would do, if he were here, would be to beJefferson over again. It is not fair to Jefferson for anybody to takethe liberty of being like him, when he would not even do it himself. IfJefferson were here, he would break away from everybody, lawyers, statesmen and Congress and go outdoors and look at 1913 for himself. 

I like to imagine how it would strike him. I am not troubled about whathe would do. Let Jefferson go out and listen to that vast machine, tothe New York Central Railway smoothing out and roaring down crowds, rolling and rolling and rolling men all day and all night into machines. Let Jefferson go out and face the New York Central Railway! Jefferson inhis time had not faced nor looked down through those great fissures orchasms of inefficiency in what he chose to call democracy, the haughty, tyrannical aimlessness and meaninglessness of crowds, too mean-spiritedand full of fear and machines to dare to have leaders!

He had not faced that blank staring hell of anonymousness, thatbottomless, weak, watery muck of irresponsibility--that terrific, devilish vagueness which a crowd is and which a crowd has to be withoutleaders. 

Jefferson did not know about or reckon with Inventors, as a means ofgoverning, as a means of getting the will of the people. 

A whole new age of invention, of creation, has flooded the world sinceJefferson. This is the main fact about the modern man, that he isgloriously self-made. He is practising democracy, inventing his ownlife, making his own soul before our eyes. 

If we have a poet in the White House, this is the main fact he is goingto reckon with: He will not be seen taking sides with the AlexanderHamilton model or with the Thomas Jefferson model or with Karl Marx orEmerson. We will see him taking Karl Marx and Emerson and Hamilton andJefferson and melting them down, glowing them and fusing them togetherinto one man--the Crowd-Man--who shall be more aristocratic thanHamilton ever dreamed, and be filled with a genius for democracy thatJefferson never guessed. America to-day, on the face of the earth andin the hearts of men, is a new democracy, as new as Radium, Copernicus, the Wireless Telegraph, as new and just beginning to be noticed andguessed at as Jesus Christ!

Copernicus, Marconi, Wilbur Wright, and Christianity have turned men'shearts outward. Men live for the first time in a wide dailyconsciousness of one another. 

Alexander Hamilton, had really a rather timid and polite idea of what anaristocrat was and Jefferson had merely sketched out a ground plan for ademocrat. If Hamilton had been aristocratic in the modern sense, hewould have devoted half his career to expressing a man like Jefferson;and if Jefferson had been more of a democrat, he would have had room inhimself to tuck in several Alexander Hamiltons. Either one of them wouldhave been a Crowd-Man. 

By a Crowd-Man I do not mean a pull-and-haul man, a balance ofequilibrium between these two men, I mean a fusion, a glowed togetherinterpenetration of them both. They did not either of them believe inthe people as much as a man made out of both of them would--a reallywrought-through aristocrat, a really wrought-through democrat orCrowd-Man, or Hero or Saviour. 

 * * * * *

I am afraid that some of us do not like the word Saviour as people thinkwe ought to. There seems to be something about the way many people usethe word Saviour which makes it seem as if it had been dropped off overthe edge of the world--of a real world, of a man's world. 

I do not believe that Christ spent five minutes in His whole life infeeling like a Saviour. He would have felt hurt if He had found any onesaying He was a Saviour in the tone people often use. He wanted peopleto feel as if they were like Him. And the way He served them was bymaking them feel that they were. 

I do not believe that Thomas Jefferson, if he were here to-day, wouldobject to a hero, or aristocrat, a special expert or a genius inexpressing crowds, if he lived and wrought in this spirit. 

The final objection that people commonly make to heroes or to men ofmarked and special vision or courage is that they are not good forpeople, because people put them on pedestals and worship them. They lookup at them wistfully. And then they look down on themselves. 

But I have never seen a hero on a pedestal. 

It is only the Carlyle kind of hero who could ever be put on a pedestal, or who would stay there if put there. 

And Carlyle--with all honour be it said--never quite knew what a herowas. A hero is either a gentleman, or a philosopher, or an inventor. 

The gentleman--on a pedestal--feels hurt and slips down. 

The philosopher laughs. 

The inventor thinks up some way of having somebody else get up so thatit will not really be a pedestal at all. 

I agree with all the socialists' objections to heroes, if they mean by ahero the kind of man that Thomas Carlyle, with all his little glorioushells, all his little cold, lonesome, select heavens, his thunderclubview of life, and his Old Testament imagination, called a hero. There isalways something a little strained and competitive about Carlyle'sheroes as he conceives them except possibly one or two. 

Being a hero with Carlyle consisted in conquering and displacing otherheroes. Even if you were a poet, being a hero consisted in a kind ofspiritual standing on some other poet's neck. According to Carlyle, onemust always be a hero against other men. Modern heroism consists inbeing a hero with other men. The hero Against comes in the TwentiethCentury to be the hero With, and the modern hero is known, not bycutting his enemies down, but by his absorbing and understanding them. He drinks up what they wish they could do into what he does, or hestates what they believe better than they can state it. Combination orcoöperation is the tremendous heroism of our present life. 

I admit that I would be afraid of Carlyle's heroes having pedestals. They have already--many of them--done a good deal of harm because theyhave had pedestals, and because they would not get down from them. 

But mine would. 

With a man who is being a hero by coöperation, getting down is part ofthe heroism. And there is never any real danger in allowing a pedestalfor a real hero. He never has time to sit on it. 

One sees him always over and over again kicking his pedestal out fromunder him and using it to batter a world with. As the world does nottake to enjoying its heroes' pedestals in this way, a pedestal is quitesafe. Most people feel the same about a hero's halo. They prefer to havehim wear it like a kind of glare around his head, and if he uses it as asearchlight upon them, if he makes his halo really practical and lightsup the world a little around him instead, he is not likely to bespoiled, is almost always safe from any danger of having any more halocrowded upon him than he wants, or than anybody wants him to have. Onemight put it down as a motto for heroes, "Keep your halo busy and itwon't hurt you. " Modern democracy will never have a chance of being whatit wants to be as long as it keeps on throwing away great natural forceslike halos and pedestals. There is no reason why we should not believein halos and pedestals, not to wear or stand on, but when used strictlyfor butting and seeing purposes. 

We may know a real hero by the fact that we always have to keeprediscovering him. One knows the real hero by the fact that in hisrelation to people who put him on a pedestal he is always kicking hispedestal away and substituting his vision. 

There is something about any real heroism that we see to-day which makesheroes out of the people who see it, A real hero has his back to thepeople and the crowd looks over his shoulders with him at his work andhe feels behind him daily, with joy and strength, thousands of heroespressing up to take his place. And he is daily happy with a strange, mighty, impersonal joy in all these other people who could do it, too. He lives with a great hurrah for the world in his heart. The hero heworships is the hero he sees in others. A man like this would feelcramped if he were merely being himself, or if he were being imprisonedby the people in his own glory, or were being cooped up into a hero. 

It is in this sense that I have finally come again to believe that heroworship is safe, that in some form as one of the great elementalenergies in human nature it must be saved, that it must be regulated andused, that it has an incalculable power which was meant to be turned onto run a nation with. 

And I believe that Thomas Jefferson, confronted in this desperate, sublime 1913, with the new socialized spirit of our time, placed face toface at last with a Christian aristocrat or Crowd-Man, would want himsaved and emphasized too. 

It is because in democracies saviours are being kept by crowds and bymillionaires and by machines very largely in the position of hired men, or of ordered about men, that ninety-nine one-hundredths of the savingor of the man-inventing and man-freeing in crowds, is not being attendedto. 

I have wanted to suggest in this book that the moment the Saviours inany nation will organize quietly and save themselves first, the lessdifficult thing (with men to attend to it) like saving the rest of us, will be a mere matter of detail. 

The only thing that stands in the way is the Thomas Jefferson bug-a-boo. People seem to have a kind of left-over fear that the moment thesesaviours or experts or inventors or heroes, call them what you will, getthe chance that they have been working to get to save us, they will notwant to use it. 

It does not seem to me that anything will be allowed to interfere withit--with their saving us, or making detailed arrangements for our savingourselves. 

Being a great man (if as democracies seem to think being a great man isa disease) is at least a self-limiting disease. Inventors when they gettheir first chance are going to save us, because they could not endureliving with us unless we were saved. 

Inventors could not enjoy inventing--inventing their greater, more nobleinventions, until they had attended to a little rudimentary thing in theworld like having people half alive on it to live with and to inventfor. 

It does not interest a really inspired man--inventing flying machinesfor people who have not time to notice the sky, wireless telegraph forpeople who have nothing to say, symphonies for tone-deaf crowds, orambrosia for people who prefer potatoes. 

This is the whole issue in a nutshell. When people say that ourinventors, or Crowd-Men or saviours, when they have fulfilled or savedthemselves, cannot be trusted to save us, the reply that will have to bemade is that only people who do not know how inventors feel or how theyare made or what it is in them that drives them to do things, or howthey do them, will be afraid to let men who give us worlds and whoexpress worlds for us and who make us express ourselves in worlds thefreedom to help shape them and run them. 

Men who have the automatic courage, the helpless bigness anddisinterestedness that always goes with invention, with creative power, can be trusted by crowds. 

The prejudice against the hero is due to the fact that heroes in daysgone by have been by a very large majority fighters, expressingthemselves against the world, or expressing one part of the worldagainst another. 

The moment the hero becomes the artist and begins expressing himself andexpressing the crowd together, the crowd will no longer be touched withfear and driven back upon itself by the Thomas Jefferson bug-a-boo. 

EPILOGUE

France is threatened by her childless women, Germany by her machines, Russia is beginning the Nineteenth Century. It is to England andAmerica, struggling still sublimely with their sins, the nationslook--for the time being--for the next big free lift upon the world. 

Looked at in the large, in their historic import and their effect on thetime, the English temperament and the American temperament areessentially the same. As between ourselves, England and America are aptto seem different, but as between us and the world, we blend together. One could go through in what I have been saying about Oxford Street andthe House of Commons in this book, strike out all after Oxford Streetand read Broadway, and all after the House of Commons and read Congress, and it would be essentially true with the necessary English or Americanmodulation. In the same way it would be possible to go through andstrike out all after the President and read Prime Minister or theGovernment. 

England and America have the individualistic temperament, and if wecannot make a self-expressive individualism noble, and if we are not menenough to sing up our individualism into the social and the universal, we perish. 

It is our native way. We are to be crowdmen or nobodies. 

The English temperament or the American temperament, whichever we maycall it, is the same tune, but played with a different and almostcontrasting expression. 

England is being played gravely and massively like a violoncello, andAmerica--played more lightly, is full of the sweeps and the lulls, theecstasy, the overriding glory of the violins. 

But it is the same tune, and God helping us, we will not and we shallnot be overwhelmed under the great dome of the world, by Germany withall her faithful pianolas, or by France with her cold sweet flutes, orby Russia with her shrieks and her pauses, pounding her splendidkettledrums in that awful silence!

Our song is ours--England and America, the 'cello, and the brightviolins!

And no one shall sing it for us. 

And no one shall keep us from singing it. 

The skyscrapers are singing, "I will, I will!" to God, and Manchesterand London and Port Sunlight are singing, "I will, I will!" to God. Ihave heard even Westminister Abbey and York--those beautiful oldfellows--altering, "I will, I will!" to God!

And I have seen, as I was going by, Trinity Church at the head of WallStreet repenting her sins and holding noonday prayer meetings formillionaires. 

Our genius is a moral genius, the genius of each man for fulfillinghimself. Our religion is the finding of a way to do it beautifully. 

Let Russian men be an army if they like--death and obedience. Let Germanmen keep on with their faithful, plodding, moral machines if they wantto, and let all French men be artists, go tra-la-laing up and down theTime to the beautiful--furnishing nudes, clothes, and academies to aworld. 

But we--England and America--will stand up on this planet in the way welike to stand on a planet and sing, "I will, I will!" to God. 

If we cannot do better, we will sing, "I won't, I won't!" to God. Ourwills and our won'ts are our genius among the sons of men. They are whatwe are for. With England and America I will and I won't are an art form, our means of expressing ourselves, our way of invention and creation, of begetting an age, of begetting a nation upon a world. 

We do not know (like great men and children) who we are at first. Webegin saying vaguely--will--will!

Then i will!

Then I will!

Then WE WILL!

THE BEGINNING. 

THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.