,,crowds ,a ,,moving-,,picture ,,of ,,democracy ,,by ,,gerald ,,stanley ,,lee ,editor of ,mount ,tom ,,in ,,five ,,books ,,crowds ,,and ,,machines ,,letting ,,the ,,crowd ,,be ,,good ,,letting ,,the ,,crowd ,,be ,,beautiful ,,crowds ,,and ,,heroes ,,good ,,news ,,and ,,hard ,,work ,,garden ,,city ,,new ,,york ,,doubleday1 ,,page ,,company ,copyright1 #aiac1 by ,,doubleday1 ,,page ,,company ,all rights reserved1 including that of translation into foreign languages1 including the ,scandinavian ,,copyright1 #aiab1 ,,by ,,the ,,ridgway ,,company ,,copyright1 #aiab1 ,,by ,,mitchell ,,kennerley ,,copyright1 #aiac1 ,,by ,,the ,,atlantic ,,monthly ,,co4 ,,copyright1 #aiac1 ,,by ,,the ,,outlook ,,company ,,copyright1 #aiac1 ,,by ,,the ,,independent ,,weekly1 ,,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 ,mountain1 a great ,meadow1 and a ,woman4 ,to the ,mountain for the sense of time1 to the ,meadow for the sense of space1 and to the ,woman for the sense of everything4 ,,table ,,of ,,contents ,,book ,,one ,,crowds ,,and ,,machines ,i4 ,,where ,,are ,,we ,,going8 #c ,,ii4 ,,the ,,crowd ,,scare #ai ,,iii4 ,,the ,,machine ,,scare #cd ,,iv4 ,,the ,,strike--,,an ,,invention ,,for ,,making ,,crowds ,,think #di ,v4 ,,the ,,crowd-,,man--,,an ,,invention ,,for ,,making ,,crowds ,,see #eh ,,vi4 ,,the ,,imagination ,,of ,,crowds #fe ,,vii4 ,,imagination ,,about ,,the ,,unseen #ff ,,viii4 ,,the ,,crowd',s ,,imagination ,,about ,,the ,,future #fi ,,ix4 ,,the ,,crowd',s ,,imagination ,,about ,,people #gd ,x4 ,a ,,democratic ,,theory ,,of ,,human ,,nature #gf ,,xi4 ,,doing ,,as ,,one ,,would ,,wish ,,one ,,had ,,done ,,in ,,twenty ,,years #hj ,,xii4 ,,new ,,kinds ,,and ,,new ,,sizes ,,of ,,men #hf ,,book ,,two ,,letting ,,the ,,crowds ,,be ,,good ,i4 ,,speaking ,,as ,,one ,,of ,,the ,,crowd #ic ,,ii4 ,,is ,,it ,,wrong ,,for ,,good ,,people ,,to ,,be ,,efficient8 #if ,,iii4 ,,is ,,it ,,wrong ,,for ,,good ,,people ,,to ,,be ,,interesting8 #ajc ,,iv4 ,,prospects ,,of ,,the ,,liar #ajg ,v4 ,,prospects ,,of ,,the ,,bully #aaa ,,vi4 ,,goodness ,,as ,a ,,crowd-,,process #aad ,,vii4 ,,thoughts ,,on ,,being ,,improved ,,by ,,other ,,people #aaf ,,viii4 ,,making ,,goodness ,,hurry #abe ,,ix4 ,,touching ,,the ,,imagination ,,of ,,crowds #abh ,x4 ,,the ,,stupendous1 ,,the ,,unusual1 ,,the ,,monotonous ,,and ,,the ,,successful #adb ,,xi4 ,,the ,,successful #adf ,,xii4 ,,the ,,necks ,,of ,,the ,,wicked #aed ,,xiii4 ,,is ,,it ,,wrong ,,for ,,good ,,people ,,to ,,be ,,successful8 #afc ,,xiv4 ,,is ,,it ,,second ,,rate ,,for ,,good ,,people ,,to ,,be ,,successful8 #afg ,,xv4 ,,the ,,successful ,,temperament #agc ,,xvi4 ,,the ,,men ,,ahead ,,pull #agh ,,xvii4 ,,the ,,crowds ,,push #ahd ,,xviii4 ,,the ,,man ,,who ,,says ,,how1 ,,says ,,how #ahf ,,xix4 ,,and ,,the ,,machine ,,starts6 #aid ,,book ,,three ,,letting ,,the ,,crowd ,,be ,,beautiful ,,part ,i4 ,,wistful ,,millionaires ,i4 ,,mr4 ,,carnegie ,,speaks ,,up #bje ,,ii4 ,,mr4 ,,carnegie ,,tries ,,to ,,make ,,people ,,read #bjh ,,iii4 ,,mr4 ,,nobel ,,tries ,,to ,,make ,,people ,,write #baa ,,iv4 ,,paper ,,books1 ,,marble ,,pillars1 ,,and ,,wooden ,,boys #bba ,v4 ,,the ,,humdrum ,,factory ,,and ,,the ,,tumpty-,,tum ,,theatre #bbg ,,part ,,ii4 ,,iron ,,machines ,i4 ,,steeples ,,and ,,chimneys #bcf ,,ii4 ,,bells ,,and ,,wheels #bdj ,,iii4 ,,dew ,,and ,,engines #bdc ,,iv4 ,,dead ,,as ,a ,,door ,,nail6 #bde ,v4 ,,an ,,oxford ,,man ,,and ,,an ,,inch ,,of ,,iron #bdh ,,vi4 ,,the ,,machines' ,,machines #bej ,,vii4 ,,the ,,men',s ,,machines #beb ,,viii4 ,,the ,,basement ,,of ,,the ,,world #bef ,,ix4 ,,the ,,ground ,,floor ,,folks #bfb ,x4 ,,the ,,machine-,,trainers #bff ,,xi4 ,,machines1 ,,crowds1 ,,and ,,artists #bfi ,,part ,,iii4 ,,people-,,machines ,i4 ,,now6 #bhj ,,ii4 ,,committees ,,and ,,committees #bhh ,,iii4 ,,the ,,inconvenience ,,of ,,being ,,human #bhf ,,iv4 ,,letting ,,the ,,crowd ,,have ,,people ,,in ,,it #bij ,,book ,,four ,,crowds ,,and ,,heroes ,i4 ,,the ,,socialist ,,and ,,the ,,hero #big ,,ii4 ,,the ,,crowd ,,and ,,the ,,hero #cja ,,iii4 ,,the ,,crowd ,,and ,,the ,,average ,,person #cjc ,,iv4 ,,the ,,crowd ,,and ,,pierpont ,,morgan #cjg ,v4 ,,the ,,crowd ,,and ,,tom ,,mann #cac ,,vi4 ,,an ,,opening ,,for ,,the ,,next ,,pierpont ,,morgan #cbc ,,vii4 ,,an ,,opening ,,for ,,the ,,next ,,tom ,,mann #cbg ,,viii4 ,,the ,,men ,,who ,,look #cca ,,ix4 ,,who ,,is ,,afraid8 #ccg ,x4 ,,rules ,,for ,,telling ,a ,,hero--,,when ,,one ,,sees ,,one #cdc ,,xi4 ,,the ,,technique ,,of ,,courage #cdf ,,xii4 ,,the ,,men ,,who ,,want ,,things #cdi ,,xiii4 ,,men ,,who ,,get ,,things #cef ,,xiv4 ,,sources ,,of ,,courage ,,for ,,others--,,toleration #cfd ,,xv4 ,,conversion #cga ,,xvi4 ,,exception #chj ,,xvii4 ,,invention #chc ,,xviii4 ,,the ,,man ,,who ,,pulls ,,the ,,world ,,together #cig ,,xix4 ,,the ,,man ,,who ,,stands ,,by #djj ,,xx4 ,,the ,,strike ,,of ,,the ,,saviours #djb ,,xxi4 ,,the ,,league ,,of ,,the ,,men ,,who ,,are ,,not ,,afraid #djd ,,book ,,five ,,good ,,news ,,and ,,hard ,,work ,,part ,i4 ,,news ,,and ,,labour #dac ,,part ,,ii4 ,,news ,,and ,,money #dbb ,,part ,,iii4 ,,news ,,and ,,government ,i4 ,,oxford ,,street ,,and ,,the ,,house ,,of ,,commons #dca ,,ii4 ,,oxford ,,street ,,hums1 ,,the ,,house ,,hems #ddj ,,iii4 ,,president ,,wilson ,,and ,,moses #ddi ,,iv4 ,,the ,,president ,,says ,,yes ,,and ,,no #dee ,v4 ,,the ,,president ,,says ,,look6 #dfc ,,vi4 ,,the ,,people ,,say ,,who ,,are ,,you8 #dfi ,,vii4 ,,the ,,people ,,say ,,who ,,are ,,we8 #dgb ,,viii4 ,,news ,,about ,,us ,,to ,,the ,,president #dgd ,,ix4 ,,news-,,men #dgf ,x4 ,,american ,,temperament ,,and ,,government #dhc ,,xi-,,xii4 ,,news-,,books #eje-eac ,,xiii4 ,,news-,,papers #eag ,,xiv4 ,,news-,,machines #ebd ,,xv4 ,,news-,,crowds #ebg ,,xvi4 ,,crowd-,,men #eej ,,epilogue #eci ,,book ,,one ,,crowds ,,and ,,machines ,,to ,,christopher ,,columbus ,a battered1 wrecked old man ,thrown on this savage shore far1 far from home1 ,pent by the sea and dark rebellious brows twelve dreary months 444 ,the end ,i know not1 it is all in ,thee1 ,or small or great ,i know not--haply what broad fields1 what lands6444 ,and these things ,i see suddenly1 what mean they ,as if some miracle1 some hand divine unsealed my eyes1 ,shadowy vast shapes smile through the air and sky1 ,and on the distant waves sail countless ships1 ,and anthems in new tongues ,i hear saluting me4 ,,chapter ,i ,,where ,,are ,,we ,,going8 ,the best picture ,i know of my religion is ,ludgate ,hill as one sees it going down the foot of ,fleet ,street4 ,it would seem to many perhaps like a rather strange half-heathen altar1 but it has in it the three things with which ,i worship most my ,maker in this present world--the three things which it would be the breath of religion to me to offer to a ,god together--,cathedrals1 ,crowds1 and ,machines4 ,with the railway bridge reaching over1 all the little still locomotives in the din whispering across the street2 with the wide black crowd streaming up and streaming down1 and the big1 faraway1 other-worldly church above1 ,i am strangely glad4 ,it is like having a picture of one's whole world taken up deftly1 and done in miniature and hung up for one against the sky--the white steam which is the breath of modern life1 the vast hurrying of our feet1 and that ,great ,finger pointing toward heaven day and night for us all4444 ,i never tire of walking out a moment from my nook in ,clifford's ,inn and stealing a glimpse and coming back to my fireplace4 ,i sit still a moment before going to work and look in the flames and think4 ,the great roar outside the ,court gathers it all up--that huge1 boundless1 tiny1 summed-up world out there2 flings it faintly against my quiet windows while ,i sit and think4 ,and when one thinks of it a minute1 it sends one half-fearfully1 half-triumphantly back to one's work--the very thought of it4 ,the ,crowd hurrying1 the ,crowd's flurrying ,machines1 and the ,crowd's ,god1 send one back to one's work6 ,in the afternoon ,i go out again1 slip my way through the crowds along the ,strand1 toward ,charing ,cross4 ,i never tire of watching the drays1 the horses1 the streaming taxis1 all these little1 fearful1 gliding crowds of men and women1 when a little space of street is left1 flowing swiftly1 flowing like globules1 like mercury1 between the cabs4 ,but most of all ,i like looking up at that vast second story of the street1 coming in over one like waves1 like seas--all these happy1 curious tops of 'buses2 these dear1 funny1 way-up people on benches2 these world-worshippers1 sight-worshippers1 and ,americans--all these little scurrying congregations1 hundreds of them1 rolling past4 ,i sit on the front seat of a horse 'bus elbow to elbow with the driver1 staring down over the brink of the abyss upon ears and necks--that low1 distant space where the horses look so tiny and so ineffectual and so gone-by below4 ,the street is the true path of the spirit4 ,to walk through it1 or roll or swing on top of a 'bus through it--the miles of faces1 all these tottering1 toddling1 swinging miles of legs and stomachs2 and on all sides of you1 and in the windows and along the walks1 the things they wear1 and the things they eat1 and the things they pour down their little throats1 and the things they pray to and curse and worship and swindle in6 ,it is like being out in the middle of a great ocean of living1 or like climbing up some great mountain-height of people1 their abysses and their clouds about them1 their precipices and jungles and heavens1 the great high roads of their souls reaching off4444 ,i can never say why1 but so strange is it1 so full of awe is it1 and of splendour and pity1 that there are times when1 rolling and swinging along on top of a 'bus1 with all this strange1 fearful joy of life about me1 within me 444 it is as if on top of my 'bus ,i had been far away in some infinite place1 and had felt ,heaven and ,hell sweep past4 ,one of the first things that strikes an ,american when he slips over from ,new ,york1 and finds himself1 almost before he had thought of it--walking down the ,strand1 suddenly1 instead of ,broadway1 is the way things--thousands of things at once2 begin happening to him4 ,of course1 with all the things that are happening to him--the 'buses1 the taxis1 the ,wren steeples1 the great streams of new sights in the streets1 the things that happen to his eyes and to his ears1 to his feet and his hands1 and to his body lunging through the ground and swimming up in space on top of a 'bus through this huge1 glorious1 yellow mist of people 444 there are all the things besides that begin happening to his mind4 ,in ,new ,york1 of course1 he rushes along through the city1 in a kind of tunnel of his own thoughts1 of his own affairs1 and drives on to his point1 and ,new ,york does not--at least it does not very often--make things happen to his mind4 ,he is not in ,london five minutes before he begins to notice how ,london does his thinking for him4 ,the streets of the city set him to thinking1 mile after mile1 miles of comparing1 miles of expecting4 ,and above the streets that he walks through and drives through he finds in ,london another complete set of streets that interest him3 the greater1 silenter streets of ,england--the streets of people's thoughts4 ,and he reads the great newspapers1 those huge highways on which the ,english people are really going somewhere4444 ,where are they going8 ,he goes through the editorials1 he stumbles through the news1 ,where are the ,english people going8 99 99 99 99 99 ,an ,american thinks of the ,english people in the third person--at first1 of course4 ,after three days or so1 he begins1 half-unconsciously1 slipping over every now and then into what seems to be a vague1 loose first person plural4 ,then the first person plural grows4 ,he finds at last that his thinking has settled down into a kind of happy1 easy-going1 international1 editorial ,we4 ,new ,york and ,london1 ,chicago and ,sheffield1 go drifting together through his thoughts1 and even ,paris1 glimmering faintly over there1 and a dim round world1 and he asks1 as the people of a world stream by1 ,where are ,,we going8 ,thus it is that ,london1 looming1 teeming1 world-suggesting1 gets its grip upon a man1 a fresh ,american1 and stretches him1 stretches him before his own eyes1 makes him cosmopolitan1 does his thinking for him4 99 99 99 99 99 ,there was a great sea to still his soul and lay down upon his spirit that big1 quiet roundness of the earth4 ,nothing is quite the same after that wide strip of sea--sleeping out there alone night by night--the gentle round earth sloping away down from under one on both sides1 in the midst of space4444 ,then1 suddenly1 almost before one knows1 that quiet ,space still lingering round one1 perhaps one finds oneself thrust up out of the ground in the night into that big yellow roar of ,trafalgar ,square4 ,and here are the swift sudden crowds of people1 one's own fellow-men hurrying past4 ,one looks into the faces of the people hurrying past3 ,where are we going8 ,one looks at the stars3 ,,where ,,are ,,we ,,going8 99 99 99 99 99 ,that night1 when ,i was thrust up out of the ground and stood dazed in the ,square1 ,i was told in a minute that this ,london where ,i was was a besieged and conquered city4 ,some men had risen up in a day and said to ,london3 ,no one shall go in4 ,no one shall go out4 ,i was in the great proud city at last1 the capital of the world1 her big1 new1 self-assured inventions all about her1 all around her1 and soldiers camping out with her locomotives6 ,with her long trains for endless belts of people going in and coming out1 with her air-brakes1 electric lights1 and motor-cars and aerial mails1 it seemed passing strange to be told that her great stations were all choked up with a queer1 funny1 old1 gone-by1 clanky piece of machinery1 an invention for making people good1 like soldiers6 ,and ,i stood in the middle of the roar of ,trafalgar ,square and asked1 as all ,england was asking that night3 ,where are we going8 ,and ,i looked in the faces of the people hurrying past4 ,and nobody knew4 ,and the next day ,i went through the silenter streets of the city1 the great crowded dailies where all the world troops through1 and then the more quiet weeklies1 then the monthlies1 more dignified and like private parks2 and the quarterlies1 too1 thoughtful1 high-minded1 a little absent1 now and then a footfall passing through4 ,and ,i found them all full of the same strange questioning3 ,where are we going8 ,and nobody knew4 ,it was the same questioning ,i had just left in ,new ,york1 going up all about me1 out of the skyscrapers4 ,new ,york did not know4 ,now ,london did not know4 99 99 99 99 99 ,and after ,i had tried the journals and the magazines1 ,i thought of books4 ,i could not but look about--how could ,i do otherwise than look about8--a lonely ,american walking at last past all these nobly haunted doorways and windows--for your idealists or interpreters1 your men who bring in the sea upon your streets and the mountains on your roof-tops2 who still see the wide1 still reaches of the souls of men beyond the faint and tiny roar of ,london4 ,i could not but look for your men of imagination1 your poets2 for the men who build the dreams and shape the destinies of nations because they mould their thoughts4 ,i do not like to say it4 ,how shall an ,american1 coming to you out of his long1 flat1 literary desert1 dare to say it8444 ,here1 where ,shakespeare played mightily1 and like a great boy with the world2 where ,milton1 ,keats1 ,wordsworth1 ,browning1 ,shelley1 and even ,dickens flooded the lives and refreshed the hearts of the people2 here1 in these selfsame streets1 going past these same old1 gentle1 smoky temples where ,charles ,lamb walked and loved a world1 and laughed at a world1 and even made one--lifted over his ,london forever into the hearts of men4444 ,i can only say what ,i saw those first few fresh days3 ,john ,galsworthy out with his camera--his beautiful1 sad1 foggy camera2 ,arnold ,bennett stitching and stitching faithfully twenty-four hours a day--big1 curious tapestries of little things2 ,h4,g4 ,wells1 with his retorts1 his experiments about him1 his pots and kettles of humanity in a great stew of steam1 half-hopeful1 half-dismayed1 mixing up his great1 new1 queer messes of human nature2 and 7when ,i could look up again7 ,g4,k4 ,chesterton1 divinely swearing1 chanting1 gloriously contradicting1 rolled lustily through the wide1 sunny spaces of ,his ,own ,mind2 and ,bernard ,shaw 7all civilization trooping by71 the eternal boy1 on the eternal curbstone of the world1 threw stones2 and the ,bishop of ,birmingham preached a fine1 helpless sermon4444 99 99 99 99 99 ,when a new ,american1 coming from his own big1 hurried1 formless1 speechless country1 finds himself in what he had always supposed to be this trim1 arranged1 grown-up1 articulate ,england1 and when1 thrust up out of the ground in ,trafalgar ,square1 he finds himself looking at that vast yellow mist of people1 that vast bewilderment of faces1 of the poor1 of the rich1 coming and going they cannot say where--he naturally thinks at first it must be because they cannot speak2 and when he looks to those who speak for them1 to their writers or interpreters1 and when he finds that they are bewildered1 that they are asking the same question over and over that we in ,america are asking too1 ,where are we going8 he is brought abruptly up1 front to front with the great broadside of modern life4 ,london1 his last resort1 is as bewildered as ,new ,york2 and so1 at last1 here it is4 ,it has to be faced now and here1 as if it were some great scare-head or billboard on the world1 ,,where ,,are ,,we ,,going8 99 99 99 99 99 ,the most stupendous feat for the artist or man of imagination in modern times is to conceive a picture or vision for our ,society--our present machine-civilization--a common expectation for people which will make them want to live4 ,if ,leonardo were living now1 he would probably slight for the time being his building bridges1 and skimp his work on ,mona ,lisa1 and write a book--an exultant book about common people4 ,he would focus and express democracy as only the great and true aristocrat or genius or artist will ever do it4 ,a great society must be expressed as a vision or expectation before men can see it together1 and go to work on it together1 and make it a fact4 ,what makes a society great is that it is full of people who have something to live for and who know what it is4 ,it is because nobody knows1 now1 that our present society is not great4 ,the different kinds of people in it have not made up their minds what they are for1 and some kinds have particularly failed to make up their minds what the other kinds are for4 ,we are all making our particular contribution to the common vision1 and some of us are able to say in one way and some in another what this vision is2 but it is going to take a supreme catholic1 summing-up individualist1 a great man or artist--a man who is all of us in one--to express for ,crowds1 and for all of us together1 where we want to go1 what we think we are for1 and what kind of a world we want4 ,this will have to be done first in a book4 ,the modern world is collecting its thoughts4 ,it is trying to write its bible4 ,the ,bible of the ,hebrews 7which had to be borrowed by the rest of the world if they were to have one7 is the one great outstanding fact and result of the ,hebrew genius4 ,they did not produce a civilization1 but they produced a book for the rest of the world to make civilizations out of1 a book which has made all other nations the moral passengers of the ,hebrews for two thousand years4 ,and the whole spirit and aim of this book1 the thing about it that made it great1 was that it was the sublimest1 most persistent1 most colossal1 masterful attempt ever made by men to look forth upon the earth1 to see all the men in it1 like spirits hurrying past1 and to answer the question1 ,,where ,,are ,,we ,,going8 ,i would not have any one suppose that in these present tracings and outlines of thought ,i am making an attempt to look upon the world and say where the people are going1 and where they think they are going1 and where they want to go4 ,i have attempted to find out1 and put down what might seem at first sight 7at least it did to me7 the answer to a very small and unimportant question--,where is it that ,i really want to go myself8 ,what kind of a world is it1 all the facts about me being duly considered1 ,i really want to be in8 ,no man living in a world as interesting as this ever writes a book if he can help it4 ,if ,mr4 ,bernard ,shaw or ,mr4 ,chesterton or ,mr4 ,wells had been so good as to write a book for me in which they had given the answer to my question1 in which they had said more or less authoritatively for me what kind of a world it is that ,i want to be in1 this book would never have been written4 ,the book is not put forward as an attempt to arrange a world1 or as a system or a chart1 or as a nation-machine1 or even as an argument4 ,the one thing that any one can fairly claim for this book is that one man's life has been saved with it4 ,it is the record of one man fighting up through story after story of crowds and of crowds' machines to the great steel and iron floor on the top of the world1 until he had found the manhole in it1 and broken through and caught a breath of air and looked at the light4 ,the book is merely a life-preserver--that is all2 and one man's life-preserver4 ,perhaps the man is representative1 and perhaps he is not4 ,at all events1 here it is4 ,anybody else who can use it is welcome to it4 99 99 99 99 99 ,the first and most practical step in getting what one wants in this world is wanting it4 ,one would think that the next step would be expressing what one wants4 ,but it almost never is4 ,it generally consists in wanting it still harder and still harder until one can express it4 ,this is particularly true when the thing one wants is a new world4 ,here are all these other people who have to be asked4 ,and until one wants it hard enough to say it1 to get it outside one's self1 possibly make it catching1 nothing happens4 ,if one were to point out one trait rather than another that makes ,bernard ,shaw1 for so brilliant a man1 so ineffective as a leader1 or literary statesman1 or social reformer1 it would be his modesty4 ,he has never wanted anything4 ,if ,i could have found a book by ,bernard ,shaw in which ,mr4 ,shaw had merely said what he wanted himself1 it is quite possible this book would not have been written4 ,even if ,mr4 ,shaw1 without saying what he wanted1 had ever shown in any corner of any book that one man's wanting something in this world amounted to anything1 or could make any one else want it1 or could make any difference in him1 or in the world around him1 perhaps ,i would not have written this book4 ,everywhere1 as ,i have looked about me among the bookmen in ,america1 in ,england1 ,i have found1 not the things that they wanted in their books1 but always these same deadly lists or bleak inventories--these prairies of things that they did not want4 ,now1 as a matter of fact1 ,i knew already1 with an almost despairing distinctness1 nearly all these things ,i did not want and it has not helped me 7with all due courtesy and admiration7 having ,john ,galsworthy out photographing them day after day1 so that ,i merely did not want them harder4 ,and ,mr4 ,wells's measles and children's diseases1 too4 ,i knew already that ,i did not want them4 ,and ,mr4 ,shaw's entire1 heroic1 almost noble collection of things he does not want does not supply me--nor could it supply any other man with furniture to make a world with--even if it were not this real1 big world1 with rain and sunshine and wind and people in it1 and were only that little1 wonderful world a man lives within his own heart4 ,there have been times1 and there will be more of them1 when ,i could not otherwise than speak as the champion of ,bernard ,shaw2 but1 after all1 what single piece of furniture is there that ,george ,bernard ,shaw1 living with his great attic of not-things all around him1 is able to offer to furnish me for me single1 little1 warm1 lighted room to keep my thoughts in8 ,nor has he furnished me with one thing with which ,i would care to sit down in my little room and think--looking into the cold1 perfect hygienic ashes he has left upon my hearth4 ,even if ,i were a revolutionist1 and not a mere1 plain human being1 loving life and wanting to live more abundantly1 ,i am bound to say ,i do not see what there is in ,mr4 ,galsworthy's photographs1 or in ,mr4 ,wells's rich1 bottomless murk of humanity to make a revolution for4 ,and ,mr4 ,bernard ,shaw1 with all his bottles of disinfectants and shelves of sterilized truths1 his hard well-being and his glittering comforts1 has presented the vision of a world in which at the very best--even if it all comes out as he says it will--a man would merely have things without wanting them1 and without wanting anything4 99 99 99 99 99 ,and so it has seemed to me that even if he is quite unimportant1 any man to-day who1 in some public place1 like a book1 shall paint the picture of his heart's desire1 who shall throw up1 as upon a screen1 where all men may see them1 his most immediate and most pressing ideals1 would perform an important service4 ,if a man's sole interest were to find out what all men in the world want1 the best way to do it would be for him to say quite definitely1 so that we could all compare notes1 what he wanted himself4 ,speaking for a planet has gone by1 but possibly1 if a few of us but speak for ourselves1 the planet will talk back1 and we shall find out at last what it really is that it wants4 ,the thing that many of us want most in the present grayness and din of the world is some one to play with1 or if the word play is not quite the right word1 some one with whom we can work with freedom and self-expressiveness and joy4 ,nine men out of ten one meets to-day talk with one as it were with their watches in their hands4 ,the people who are rich one sees everywhere1 being run away with by their motor-cars2 and the people who are poor one sees struggling pitifully and for their very souls1 under great wheels and beneath machines4 ,of course1 ,i can only speak for myself4 ,i do not deny that a little while at a time ,i can sit by a brook in the woods and be happy2 but if1 as it happens1 ,i would rather have other people about me--people who do not spoil things1 ,i find that the machines about me everywhere have made most people very strange and pathetic in the woods4 ,they cannot sit by brooks1 many of them2 and when they come out to the sky1 it looks to them like some mere1 big1 blue lead roof up over their lives4 ,perhaps ,i am selfish about it1 but ,i cannot bear to see people looking at the sky in this way4444 99 99 99 99 99 ,so1 as ,i have watched my fellow human beings1 what ,i have come to want most of all in this world is the inspired employer--or what ,i have called the inspired millionaire or organizer2 the man who can take the machines off the backs of the people and take the machines out of their wits1 and make the machines free their bodies and serve their souls4 ,if we ever have the inspired employer1 he will have to be made by the social imagination of the people1 by creating the spirit of expectation and challenge toward the rich among the masses of the people4 ,i believe that the time has come when the world is to make its last stand for idealism1 great men1 and crowds4 ,i believe that great men can be really great1 that they can represent crowds4 ,i believe that crowds can be really great1 that they can know great men4 ,the most natural kind of great man for crowds to know first will probably be a kind of everyday great man or business statesman1 the man who represents all classes1 and who proves it in the way he conducts his business4 ,i have called this man the ,crowdman4 ,i do not say that ,i have met precisely the type of inspired millionaire ,i have in mind1 but ,i have known scores of men who have reminded me of him and of what he is going to be1 and ,i am prepared to say that in spirit1 or latent at least1 he is all about me in the world to-day4 ,if it is proved to me that no such man exists1 ,i am here to say there will be one4 ,if it is proved to me that there cannot be one1 ,i will make one4 ,if it is proved to me that by lifting up ,desire in the faces of young men and of boys1 and in the faces of true fathers and young mothers1 and by ringing up my challenge on the great doors of the schools1 ,i cannot make one1 then ,i will invoke the men that shall write the books1 that shall sing the songs that shall make one6 ,i say this with all reverence for other men's desires and with all respect for natural prejudgments4 ,as ,i have conceived it1 the one business of the world to-day is to find out what we are for and to find out what men in the world--on the whole--really want4 ,when men know what they want they get it4 ,every wrong thing we have to face in modern industrial life is due to men who know what they want1 and who therefore get it1 due to the passions and the dreams of men2 and the one single way in which these wrong things will ever be overcome is with more passions and with more and mightier dreams of men4 ,nothing is more visionary than trying to run a world without dreams1 especially an economic world4 ,it is because even bad dreams are better in this world than having no dreams at all that bad people so called are so largely allowed to run it4 ,in the final and practical sense1 the one factor in economics to be reckoned with is ,desire4 ,the next move in economics is going to be the statement of a shrewd1 dogged1 realizable ideal4 ,it is only ideals that have aroused the wrong passions1 and it is only ideals that will arouse the right ones4 ,it will have to be1 ,i imagine1 when it comes1 not a mere statement of principles1 an analysis1 or a criticism1 but a moving-picture1 a portrait of the human race1 that shall reveal man's heart to himself4 ,what we want is a vast white canvas1 spread1 as it were1 over the end of the world1 before which we shall all sit together1 the audience of the nations1 of the poor1 of the rich1 as in some still1 thoughtful place--all of us together2 and then we will throw up before us on the vast white screen in the dark the vivid picture of our vast desires1 flame up upon it the hopes1 the passions of human lives1 and the grim1 silent wills of men4 ,what do we want8 ,where are we going8 ,in place of the literature of criticism we have come now to the literature of ,desire4 ,this literature will have to come slowly1 and ,i have come to believe that the first book1 when it comes1 will be perhaps a book that does not prove anything1 a book that is a mere cry1 a prayer1 or challenge2 the story of what one man with these streetfuls of the faces of men and the faces of women pouring their dullness and pouring their weariness over him1 has desired1 and of what1 ,god helping him1 he will have4 ,there is a certain sense in which merely praying to ,god has gone by4 ,in the present desperate crisis of a world plunging on in the dark to a catastrophe or a glory that we cannot guess1 it is a time for men to pray a prayer1 a standing-up prayer1 to one another4 ,i believe that it is going to be this huge gathering-in of public desire1 this imperious challenge of what men want1 this standing-up prayer of men to one another1 which alone shall make men go forth with faith and singing once more into the battle of life4 ,sometimes it has seemed to me ,i have already heard it--this song of men's desires about me--faintly4 ,but ,i have seen that the time is at hand when it shall come as a vast chorus of cities1 of fields1 of men's voices1 filling the dome of the world--a chorus in the glory and the shame of which no millionaire who merely wants to make money1 no artist who is not expressing the souls and freeing the bodies of men1 no statesman who is not gathering up the desires of crowds1 and going daily through the world hewing out the will of the people1 shall dare to live4 99 99 99 99 99 ,but while this is the vision of my belief1 ,i would not have any one suppose that ,i am the bearer of easy and gracious tidings4 ,it is rather of a great daily adventure one has with the world4 ,there have been times when it seemed as if it had to begin all over again every morning4 ,day by day ,i walk down ,fleet ,street toward ,ludgate ,hill4 ,i look once more every morning at that great picture of any religion2 ,i look at the quiet1 soaring1 hopeful dome--that little touch of singing or praying that men have lifted up against heaven4 ,will the ,dome bring the ,man to me8 ,i look up at the machines1 strange and eager1 hurrying across the bridge4 ,will the ,machines bring the ,man to me8 ,i look in the faces of the crowd hurrying past4 ,will the ,crowd bring the ,man to me8 ,with the picture of my religion--or perhaps three religions or three stories of religion--,i walk on and on through the crowd1 past the railway1 past the ,cathedral1 past the ,mansion ,house1 and over the ,tower ,bridge4 ,i walk fast and eagerly and blindly1 as though a man would walk away from the world4 ,suddenly ,i find myself1 throngs of voices all about me1 standing half-unconsciously by a high iron fence in ,bermondsey watching that smooth asphalt playground where one sees the very dead 7for once7 crowded by the living--pushed over to the edges--their gravestones tilted calmly up against the walls4 ,i stand and look through the pickets and watch the children run and shout--the little funny1 mockingly dressed1 frowzily frumpily happy children1 the stored-up sunshine of a thousand years all shining faintly out through the dirt1 out through the generations in their little faces--,will the ,man come to me out of these8 ,the tombstones lean against the wall and the children run and shout4 ,as ,i watch them with my hopes and fears and the tombstones tilted against the walls--as ,i peer through the railings at the children1 ,i face my three religions4 ,what will the three religions do with the children8 ,what will the children do with the three religions8 ,and now ,i will tell the truth4 ,i will not cheat nor run away as sometimes ,i seem to have tried to do for years4 ,i will no longer let myself be tricked by the mere glamour and bigness of our modern life nor swooned into good-will by the roll and liturgy of revolution1 of the people1 for the people1 by the people1 nor will ,i be longer awed by those huge phrase-idols1 constitutions1 routines1 that have roared around me ,liberty1 ,equality1 ,fraternity--those imperious1 thoughtless1 stupid tra-la-las of the ,people4 ,do the ,people see truth8 ,can the ,people see truth8 ,can all the crowd1 and can all the machines1 and all the cathedrals piled up together produce the ,man1 the ,crowd-man or great man who sees truth8 ,and so with my three religions1 ,i have three fears1 one for each of them4 ,there is the ,machine fear1 lest the crowd should be overswept by its machines and become like them2 and the ,crowd fear1 lest the crowd should overlook its mighty innumerable and personal need of great men2 and there is also the daily fear for the ,church1 lest the ,church should not understand crowds and machines and grapple with crowds and machines1 interpret them and glory in them and appropriate them for her own use and for ,god's--lest the ,church should turn away from the crowds and the machines and graciously and idly bow down to ,herself4 ,and now ,i am going to try to express these three fears that go with the three religions as well as ,i can1 so that ,i can turn on them and face them and1 ,god helping me1 look them out of countenance4 ,,chapter ,,ii ,,the ,,crowd ,,scare ,time was when a man was born upon this planet in a somewhat lonely fashion4 ,a few human beings out of all infinity stood by to care for him4 ,he was brought up with hills and stars and a neighbour or so1 until he grew to man's estate4 ,he climbed at last over the farthest hill1 and there1 on the rim of things1 standing on the boundary line of sky and earth that had always been the edge of life to him before1 he looked forth upon the freedom of the world1 and said in his soul1 ,what shall ,i be in this world ,i see1 and whither shall ,i go in it8 ,and the sky and the earth and the rivers and the seas and the nights and the days beckoned to him1 and the voices of life rose around him1 and they all said1 ,come6 ,on a corner in ,new ,york1 around a ,street ,department wagon1 not so very long ago1 five thousand men were fighting for shovels1 fifty men to a shovel--a tool for living a little longer4 ,the problem of living in this modern world is the problem of finding room in it4 ,the crowd principle is so universally at work through modern life that the geography of the world has been changed to conform to it4 ,we live in crowds4 ,we get our living in crowds4 ,we are amused in herds4 ,civilization is a list of cities4 ,cities are the huge central dynamos of all being4 ,the power of a man can be measured to-day by the mile1 the number of miles between him and the city2 that is1 between him and what the city stands for--the centre of mass4 ,the crowd principle is the first principle of production4 ,the producer who can get the most men together and the most dollars together controls the market2 and when he once controls the market1 instead of merely getting the most men and the most dollars1 he can get all the men and all the dollars4 ,hence the corporation in production4 ,the crowd principle is the first principle of distribution4 ,the man who can get the most men to buy a particular thing from him can buy the most of it1 and therefore buy it the cheapest1 and therefore get more men to buy from him2 and having bought this particular thing cheaper than all men could buy it1 it is only a step to selling it to all men2 and then1 having all the men on one thing and all the dollars on one thing1 he is able to buy other things for nothing1 for everybody1 and sell them for a little more than nothing to everybody4 ,hence the department store--the syndicate of department stores--the crowd principle in commerce4 ,the value of a piece of land is the number of footsteps passing by it in twenty-four hours4 ,the value of a railroad is the number of people near it who cannot keep still4 ,if there are a great many of these people1 the railroad runs its trains for them4 ,if there are only a few1 though they be heroes and prophets1 ,dantes1 ,savonarolas1 and ,george ,washingtons1 trains shall not be run for them4 ,the railroad is the characteristic property and symbol of property in this modern age1 and the entire value of a railroad depends upon its getting control of a crowd--either a crowd that wants to be where some other crowd is1 or a crowd that wants a great many tons of something that some other crowd has4 ,when we turn from commerce to philosophy1 we find the same principle running through them both4 ,the main thing in the philosophy of to-day is the extraordinary emphasis of environment and heredity4 ,a man's destiny is the way the crowd of his ancestors ballot for his life4 ,his soul--if he has a soul--is an atom acted upon by a majority of other atoms4 ,when we turn to religion in its different phases1 we find the same emphasis upon them all--the emphasis of mass1 of majority4 ,not that the church exists for the masses--no one claims this--but that1 such as it is1 it is a mass church4 ,while the promise of ,scripture1 as a last resort1 is often heard in the church about two or three gathered together in ,god's name1 the ,church is run on the working conviction that unless the minister and the elders can gather two or three hundred in ,god's name1 ,he will not pay any particular attention to them1 or1 if ,he does1 ,he will not pay the bills4 ,the church of our forefathers1 founded on personality1 is exchanged for the church of democracy1 founded on crowds2 and the church of the moment is the institutional church1 in which the standing of the clergyman is exchanged for the standing of the congregation4 ,the inevitable result1 the crowd clergyman1 is seen on every hand amongst us--the agent of an audience1 who1 instead of telling an audience what they ought to do1 runs errands for them morning and noon and night4 ,with coddling for majorities and tact for whims1 he carefully picks his way4 ,he does his people as much good as they will let him1 tells them as much truth as they will hear1 until he dies at last1 and goes to take his place with ,puritan parsons who mastered majorities1 with martyrs who would not live and be mastered by majorities1 and with apostles who managed to make a new world without the help of majorities at all4 ,theology reveals the same tendency4 ,the measuring by numbers is found in all belief1 the same cringing before masses of little facts instead of conceiving the few immeasurable ones4 ,helpless individuals mastered by crowds are bound to believe in a kind of infinitely helpless ,god4 ,he stands in the midst of the crowds of ,his laws and the systems of ,his worlds3 to those who are not religious1 a pale ,first ,cause2 and to those who are1 a ,great ,sentimentality far away in the heavens1 who1 in a kind of vast weak-mindedness 7a ,puritan would say71 seems to want everybody to be good and hopes they will1 but does not quite know what to do about it if they are not4 ,every age has its typical idea of heaven and its typical idea of hell 7in some of them it would be hard to tell which is which71 and every civilization1 has its typical idea of ,god4 ,a civilization with sovereign men in it has a sovereign ,god2 and a crowd civilization1 reflecting its mood on the heavens1 is inclined to a pleasant1 large-minded ,god1 eternally considering everybody and considering everything1 but inefficient withal1 a kind of legislature of ,deity1 typical of representative institutions at their best and at their worst4 ,if we pass from our theology to our social science we come to the most characteristic result of the crowd principle that the times afford4 ,we are brought face to face with ,socialism1 the millennium machine1 the ,corliss engine of progress4 ,it were idle to deny to the ,socialist that he is right--and more right1 indeed1 than most of us1 in seeing that there is a great wrong somewhere2 but it would be impossible beyond this point to make any claim for him1 except that he is honestly trying to create in the world a wrong we do not have as yet1 that shall be large enough to swallow the wrong we have4 ,the term ,socialism stands for many things1 in its present state2 but so far as the average ,socialist is concerned1 he may be defined as an idealist who turns to materialism1 that is1 to mass1 to carry his idealism out4 ,the world having discovered two great ideals in the ,new ,testament1 the service of all men by all other men1 and the infinite value of the individual1 the ,socialist expects to carry out one of these ideals by destroying the other4 ,the principle that an infinitely helpful society can be produced by setting up a row of infinitely helpless individuals is ,socialism1 as the average ,socialist practises it4 ,the average ,socialist is the type of the eager but effeminate reformer of all ages1 because he seeks to gain by machinery things nine tenths of the value of which to men is in gaining them for themselves4 ,socialism is the attempt to invent conveniences for heroes1 to pass a law that will make being a man unnecessary1 to do away with sin by framing a world in which it would be worthless to do right because it would be impossible to do wrong4 ,it is a philosophy of helplessness1 which1 even if it succeeds in helplessly carrying its helplessness out--in doing away with suffering1 for instance--can only do it by bringing to pass a man not alive enough to be capable of suffering1 and putting him in a world where suffering and joy alike would be a bore to him4 ,but the main importance of ,socialism in this connection lies in the fact that it does not confine itself to sociology4 ,it has become a complete philosophy of life1 and can be seen penetrating with its subtle satire on human nature almost everything about us4 ,we have the cash register to educate our clerks into pure and honest character1 and the souls of conductors can be seen being nurtured1 mile after mile1 by fare-recorders4 ,corporations buy consciences by the gross4 ,they are hung over the door of every street car4 ,consciences are worked by pulling a strap4 ,liverymen have cyclometres to help customers to tell the truth1 and the ,australian ballot is invented to help men to be manly enough to vote the way they think4 ,and when1 in the course of human events1 we came to the essentially moral and spiritual reform of a woman's right to dress in good taste--that is1 appropriately for what she is doing1 what did we proceed to do to bring it about8 ,conventions were held year after year1 and over and over1 to get women to dress as they wanted to2 dress reform associations were founded1 syndicates of courage were established all over the land--all in vain2 and finally1--,heaven help us6--how was this great moral and spiritual reform accomplished8 ,by an invention of two wheels1 one in front of the other4 ,it was brought about by the ,pope ,manufacturing ,company of ,hartford1 ,connecticut in two short years4 ,everything is brought about by manufacturing companies4 ,it is the socialist spirit2 the idea that1 if we can only find it1 there is some machine that can surely be invented that will take the place of men3 not only of hands and feet1 but of all the old-fashioned and lumbering virtues1 courage1 patience1 vision1 common sense1 and religion itself1 out of which they are made4 ,but we depend upon machinery not only for the things that we want1 but for the brains with which we decide what we want4 ,if a man wants to know what he thinks1 he starts a club2 and if he wants to be very sure1 he calls a convention4 ,from the ,national ,undertakers' ,association and the ,launderers' ,league to the ,christian ,endeavour ,tournament and the ,world's ,congress--the ,midway ,pleasance of ,piety--the ,convention strides the world with vociferousness4 ,the silence that descends from the hills is filled with its ceaseless din4 ,the smallest hamlet in the land has learned to listen reverent from afar to the vast insistent roar of ,it1 as the ,voice of the ,spirit of the ,times4 ,every idea we have is run into a constitution4 ,we cannot think without a chairman4 ,our whims have secretaries2 our fads have by-laws4 ,literature is a club4 ,philosophy is a society4 ,our reforms are mass meetings4 ,our culture is a summer school4 ,we cannot mourn our mighty dead without ,carnegie hall and forty vice-presidents4 ,we remember our poets with trustees1 and the immortality of a genius is watched by a standing committee4 ,charity is an ,association4 ,theology is a set of resolutions4 ,religion is an endeavour to be numerous and communicative4 ,we awe the impenitent with crowds1 convert the world with boards1 and save the lost with delegates2 and how ,jesus of ,nazareth could have done so great a work without being on a committee is beyond our ken4 ,what ,socrates and ,solomon would have come to if they had only had the advantage of conventions it would be hard to say2 but in these days1 when the excursion train is applied to wisdom2 when1 having little enough1 we try to make it more by pulling it about2 when secretaries urge us1 treasurers dun us1 programs unfold out of every mail--where is the man who1 guileless-eyed1 can look in his brother's face2 can declare upon his honour that he has never been a delegate1 never belonged to anything1 never been nominated1 elected1 imposed on1 in his life8 ,everything convenes1 revolves1 petitions1 adjourns4 ,nothing stays adjourned4 ,we have reports that think for us1 committees that do right for us1 and platforms that spread their wooden lengths over all the things we love1 until there is hardly an inch of the dear old earth to stand on1 where1 fresh and sweet and from day to day1 we can live our lives ourselves1 pick the flowers1 look at the stars1 guess at ,god1 garner our grain1 and die4 ,every new and fresh human being that comes upon the earth is manufactured into a coward or crowded into a machine as soon as we get at him4 ,we have already come to the point where we do not expect to interest anybody in anything without a constitution4 ,and the ,eugenic ,society is busy now on by-laws for falling in love4 ,what this means with regard to the typical modern man is1 not that he does not think1 but that it takes ten thousand men to make him think4 ,he has a crowd soul1 a crowd creed4 ,charged with convictions1 galvanized from one convention to another1 he contrives to live1 and with a sense of multitude1 applause1 and cheers he warms his thoughts4 ,when they have been warmed enough he exhorts1 dictates1 goes hither and thither on the crutch of the crowd1 and places his crutch on the world1 and pries on it1 if perchance it may be stirred to something4 ,to the bigotry of the man who knows because he speaks for himself has been added a new bigotry on the earth--the bigotry of the man who speaks for the nation2 who1 with a more colossal prejudice than he had before1 returns from a mass meeting of himself1 and1 with the effrontery that only a crowd can give1 backs his opinions with forty states1 and walks the streets of his native town in the uniform of all humanity4 ,this is a kind of fool that has never been possible until these latter days4 ,only a very great many people1 all of them working on him at once1 and all of them watching every one else working at once1 can produce this kind4 ,indeed1 the crowd habit has become so strong upon us1 has so mastered the mood of the hour1 that even you and ,i1 gentle reader1 have found ourselves for one brief moment1 perhaps1 in a certain sheepish feeling at being caught in a small audience4 ,being caught in a small audience at a lecture is no insignificant experience4 ,you will see people looking furtively about1 counting one another4 ,you will make comparisons4 ,you will recall the self-congratulatory air of the last large audience you had the honour to belong to1 sitting in the same seats1 buzzing confidently to itself before the lecture began4 ,the hush of disappointment in a small audience all alone with itself1 the mutual shame of it1 the chill in it1 that spreads softly through the room1 every identical shiver of which the lecturer is hired to warm through--all these are signs of the times4 ,people look at the empty chairs as if every modest1 unassuming chair there were some great personality saying to each and all of us3 ,why are you here8 ,did you not make a mistake8 ,are you not ashamed to be a party to--to--as small a crowd as this8 ,thus do we sit1 poor mortals1 doing obeisance to ,empty ,chairs--we who are to be lectured to--until the poor lecturer who is to lecture to us comes in1 and the struggle with the ,chairs begins4 ,when we turn to education as it stands to-day1 the same self-satisfied1 inflexible smile of the crowd is upon it all4 ,we see little but the massing of machinery1 the crowding together of numbers of teachers and numbers of courses and numbers of students1 and the practical total submergence of personality1 except by accident1 in all educated life4 ,the infinite value of the individual1 the innumerable consequences of one single great teaching man1 penetrating every pupil who knows him1 becoming a part of the universe1 a part of the fibre of thought and existence to every pupil who knows him--this is a thing that belongs to the past and to the inevitable future4 ,with all our great institutions1 the crowds of men who teach in them1 the crowds of men who learn in them1 we are still unable to produce out of all the men they graduate enough college presidents to go around4 ,the fact that at almost any given time there may be seen1 in this ,american land of ours1 half a score of colleges standing and waiting1 wondering if they will ever find a president again1 is the climax of what the universities have failed to do4 ,the university will be justified only when a man with a university in him1 a whole campus in his soul1 comes out of it1 to preside over it1 and the soul that has room for more than one chair in it comes out of it to teach in it4 ,when we turn from education to journalism1 the pressure of the crowd is still more in evidence4 ,to have the largest circulation is to have the most advertising1 and to have the most advertising means to have the most money1 and to have the most money means to be able to buy the most ability1 and to have the most ability means to keep all that one gains and get more4 ,the degradation of many of our great journals in the last twenty years is but the inevitable carrying out of the syndicate method in letters--a mass of contributors1 a mass of subscribers1 and a mass of advertisers4 ,so long as it gives itself over to the circulation idea1 the worse a newspaper is1 the more logical it is4 ,there may be a certain point where it is bound to stop some time1 because there will not be enough bad people who are bad enough to go around2 but we have not come to it yet1 and in the meantime about everything that can be thought of is being printed to make bad people4 ,if it be asserted that there are not enough bad people to go around even now1 it may be added that there are plenty of good people to take their places as fast as they fail to be bad enough1 and that the good people who take the bad papers to find fault with them are the ones who make such papers possible4 ,the result of the crowd principle is the inevitable result4 ,our journals have fallen off as a matter of course1 not only in moral ideals 7which everybody realizes71 but in brain force1 power of expression1 imagination1 and foresight--the things that give distinction and results to utterance and that make a journal worth while4 ,the editorial page has been practically abandoned by most journals1 because most journals have been abandoned by their editors3 they have become printed counting-rooms4 ,with all their greatness1 their crowds of writers1 and masses of readers1 and piles of cablegrams1 they are not able to produce the kind of man who is able to say a thing the kind of way that will make everybody stop and listen to him1 cablegrams and all4 ,horace ,greeley and ,samuel ,bowles and ,charles ,a4 ,dana have passed from the press1 and the march of the crowd through the miles of their columns every day is trampling on their graves4 ,the newspaper is the mass machine1 the crowd thinker4 ,to and fro1 from week to week and from year to year1 its flaming headlines sway1 now hither and now thither1 where the greatest numbers go1 or the best guess of where they are going to go2 and ,personality1 creative1 triumphant1 masterful1 imperious ,personality--is it not at an end8 ,it were a dazzling sight1 perhaps1 to gaze at night upon a huge building1 thinking with telegraph under the wide sky around the world1 the hurrying of its hundred pens upon the desks1 and the trembling of its floors with the mighty coming of a ,day out of the grip of the press2 but even this huge bewildering pile of power1 this aggregation1 this corporation of forces1 machines of souls1 glittering down the ,night--does any one suppose ,it stands by ,itself1 that ,it is its own master1 that ,it can do its own will in the world8 ,in all its splendour ,it stands1 weaving the thoughts of the world in the dark2 but that very night1 that very moment1 ,it lies in the power of a little ticking-thing behind its doors4 ,it belongs to that legislature of information and telegraph1 that owner of what happens in a day1 called the ,associated ,press4 ,if the ,one who called ,himself a man and a ,god had not been born in a crowd1 if he had not loved and grappled with it1 and been crucified and worshipped by it1 ,he might have been a ,redeemer for the silent1 stately1 ancient world that was before ,he came1 but ,he would have failed to be a ,redeemer for this modern world--a world where the main inspiration and the main discouragement is the crowd1 where every great problem and every great hope is one that deals with crowds4 ,it is a world where1 from the first day a man looks forth to move1 he finds his feet and hands held by crowds4 ,the sun rises over crowds for him1 and sets over crowds2 and having presumed to be born1 when he presumes to die at last1 in a crowd of graves he is left not even alone with ,god4 ,ten human lives deep they have them--the graves in ,paris2 and whether men live their lives piled upon other men's lives1 in blocks in cities or in the apparent loneliness of town or country what they shall do or shall not do1 or shall have or shall not have--is it not determined by crowds1 by the movement of crowds8 ,the farmer is lonely enough1 one would say1 as he rests by his fire in the plains1 his barns bursting with wheat2 but the murmur of the telegraph almost any moment is the voice of the crowd to him1 thousands of miles away1 shouting in the ,stock ,exchange3 ,you shall not sell your wheat6 ,let it lie6 ,let it rot in your barns6 ,and yet1 if a man were to go around the earth with a surveyor's chain1 there would seem to be plenty of room for all who are born upon it4 ,the fact that there are enough square miles of the planet for every human being on it to have several square miles to himself does not prove that a man can avoid the crowd--that it is not a crowded world4 ,if what a man could be were determined by the square mile1 it would indeed be a gentle and graceful earth to live on4 ,but an acre of ,nowhere satisfies no one2 and how many square miles does a man want to be a nobody in8 ,he can do it better in a crowd1 where every one else is doing it4 ,in the ancient world1 when a human being found something in the wrong place and wanted to put it where it belonged1 he found himself face to face with a few men4 ,he found he had to deal with these few men4 ,to-day1 if he wants anything put where it belongs1 he finds himself face to face with a crowd4 ,he finds that he has to deal with a crowd4 ,the world has telephones and newspapers now1 and it has railroads2 and if a man proposes to do a certain thing in it1 the telephones tell the few1 and the newspapers tell the crowd1 and the crowd gets on to the railroad2 and before he rises from his sleep1 behold the crowd in his front yard2 and if he can get as far as his own front gate in the thing he is going for1 he must be--either a statesman8 a hero8 or a great genius8 ,none of these4 ,let him be a corporation--of ideas or of dollars2 let him be some complex1 solid1 crowded thing1 would he do anything for himself1 or for anybody else1 or for everybody else1 in a world too crowded to tell the truth without breaking something1 or to find room for it1 when it is told1 without breaking something4 ,this is the ,crowd's ,world4 99 99 99 99 99 ,what ,i have written ,i have written4 ,i have been sitting and reading it4 ,it is a mood4 ,but there is an implacable truth in it1 ,i believe1 that must be gotten out and used4 ,as ,i have been reading ,i have looked up4 ,i see the quiet little mountain through my window standing out there in the sun4 ,it looks around the world as if nothing had happened2 and the bobolinks out in the great meadow are all flying and singing in the same breath and rowing through the air1 thousands of them1 miles of them4 ,they do not stop a minute4 ,a moment ago while ,i was writing ,i heard the ,child outside on the piazza1 four years old1 going by my window back and forth1 listening to the crunch of her new shoes as if it were the music of the spheres4 ,why should not ,i do as well8 ,i thought4 ,the ,child is merely seeing her shoes as they are with as many senses and as many thoughts and desires at once as she can muster1 and with all her might4 ,what if ,i were to see the world like the ,child8 ,yesterday ,i went to ,robert's ,meadow4 ,i saw three small city boys1 with their splendid shining rubber boots and their beautiful bamboo poles4 ,they were on their way home4 ,they had only the one trout between them1 and that had been fondled1 examined1 and poked over and bragged about until it was fairly stiff and brown with those boys--looked as if it had been stolen out of a dried-herring box4 ,they put it reverently back1 when ,i saw it1 into their big basket4 ,i smiled a little as ,i walked on and thought how they felt about it4 ,then suddenly it was as if ,i had forgotten something4 ,i turned and looked back2 saw those three boys--a little retinue to that solitary fish--trudging down the road in the yellow sun4 ,and ,i stood there and wanted to be in it6 ,then ,i saw them going round the bend in the road thirty years away4 ,i still want to be one of those boys4 ,and ,i am going to try4 ,perhaps1 ,heaven helping me1 ,i will yet grow up to them6 ,i know that the way those three boys felt about the fish--the way they folded it around with something1 the way they made the most of it1 is the way to feel about the world4 ,i side with the three boys4 ,i am ready to admit that as regards technical and comparatively unimportant details or as regards perspective on the fish the boys may not have been right4 ,it is possible that they had not taken a point of view1 measured in inches or volts or foot-pounds1 that was right and could last forever2 but ,i know that the spirit of their point of view was right--the spirit that hovered around the three boys and around the fish that day was right and could last forever4 ,it is the spirit in which the world was made1 and the spirit in which new worlds in all ages1 and even before our eyes by ,boys and ,girls and--,god1 are being made4 ,it is only the boys and the girls 7all sizes7 who know about worlds4 ,and it is only boys and girls who are right4 ,i heard a robin in the apple tree this morning out in the rain singing1 ,i believe6 ,i believe6 99 99 99 99 99 ,at the same time1 ,i am glad that ,i have known and faced1 and that ,i shall have to know and face1 the ,crowd ,fear4 ,i know in some dogged1 submerged1 and speechless way that it is not a true fear4 ,and yet ,i want to move along the sheer edge of it all my life4 ,i want it4 ,i want all men to have it1 and to keep having it1 and to keep conquering it4 ,i have seen that no man who has not felt it1 who does not know this huge numbing1 numberless fear before the crowd1 and who may not know it again almost any moment1 will ever be able to lead the crowd1 glory in it1 die for it1 or help it4 ,nor will any man who has not defied it1 and lifted his soul up naked and alone before it and cried to ,god1 ever interpret the crowd or express the will of the crowd1 or hew out of earth and heaven what the crowd wants4 ,we want to help to express and fulfil a crowd civilization1 we want to share the crowd life1 to express what people in crowds feel--the great crowd sensations1 excitements1 the inspirations and depressions of those who live and struggle with crowds4 ,we want to face1 and face grimly1 implacably1 the main facts1 the main emotions men are having to-day4 ,and the main emotion men are having to-day about our modern world is that it is a crowded world1 that in the nature of the case its civilization is a crowd civilization4 ,every other important thing for this present age to know must be worked out from this one4 ,it is the main thing with which our religion has to deal1 the thing our literature is about1 and the thing our arts will be obliged to express4 ,any man who makes the attempt to consider or interpret anything either in art or life without a true understanding of the crowd principle as it is working to-day1 without a due sense of its central place in all that goes on around us1 is a spectator in the blur and bewilderment of this modern world1 as helpless in it1 and as childish and superficial in it1 as a ,greek god at the ,world's ,fair1 gazing out of his still ,olympian eyes at the ,midway ,pleasance4 99 99 99 99 99 ,after the ,crowd ,fear there comes to most of us the machine fear4 ,machines are the huge limbs or tentacles of crowds4 ,as the crowds grow the machines grow2 grasping at the little strip of sky over us1 at the little patch of ground beneath our feet1 they swing out before us and beckon daily to us new hells and new heavens in our eyes4 ,,chapter ,,iii ,,the ,,machine ,,scare ,i have had occasion nearly every day for the past two weeks to pass by an ancient churchyard on a great hillside not far from ,london4 ,most of the stones are very old1 and seem to have been thoughtfully and reverently1 flake by flake1 wrought into their final form by long-vanished hands4 ,as ,i stand and watch them1 with the yews and cypresses flocking round them1 it is as if in some sort of way they had been surely wrought by the hand of love1 so full are they of grief and of joy1 of devotion1 of the very singing of the dead and of those who loved them4 ,when ,i walk on a little farther1 and come to a small and new addition to the churchyard1 and look about me at the stones1 ,i find myself suddenly in quite a new company4 ,so far as one could observe1 looking at the gravestones in the new churchyard1 the people who died there died rather thoughtlessly and mechanically1 and as if nobody cared very much4 ,of course1 when one thinks a little further1 one knows that this cannot be true1 and that the men and the women who gathered by these glib1 trim1 capable-looking modern tombstones were as full of love and tenderness and reverence before their dead as the others were--but the lines on the stones give no sign4 ,one never stops to read an epitaph on one of them2 one knows it would not be interesting1 or really whisper to one the strange1 happy1 human things of another world--even of this world1 that make the old tombstones such good company and so friendly to us4 ,one gives a glance at the stone and passes on4 ,it was made by machinery1 apparently2 a machine might have designed it1 a machine might have died and been buried under it4 ,one looks beyond it at all the others like it--all the glib1 competent-looking white stones4 ,were the silenced people all machines under them1 all mechanical1 all made to a pattern like their stones1 like these strangely hard1 brief tombstones standing here at their heads1 summing up their lives before us curtly1 heartlessly1 on this gentle old hillside8 ,i wondered4 ,i looked back to the old eloquent cemetery that almost seemed to be breathing things1 and looked once more at the new4 ,and as ,i stood and thought1 they seemed to me to be two worlds--one the world the people all about me are always saying sadly is going by1 and the other--well1 the one we will have to have4 99 99 99 99 99 ,as ,i look off from the hilltop at the great sloping countryside about me1 which stretches miles and miles1 with its green fields1 and bushy treetops1 its red roofs1 its banners of steam from twenty railways1 its huge1 grim1 furious chimneys1 its still1 sleepy steeples1 ,i also see two worlds1 the same two worlds over again that ,i saw in the churchyard1 except that they are all jumbled together--the complacent1 capable1 cut-out1 homeless-looking houses1 the little snuggled-down old ones with their happy trees about them and trails of cooking smoke4 ,i see the same two worlds standing and facing each other before me whichever way ,i turn4 ,and when ,i slip out of the churchyard from those two little separate worlds of the dead1 and move slowly down the long bustling village street1 and look into the faces of the living1 the same two worlds that were in the churchyard and on the hills seem to look at me out of the faces of the living too4 ,the faces go hurrying past me1 worlds apart4 ,most people1 ,i imagine1 who read these pages must have noticed the people's faces in the streets nowadays--how they seem to have come out of separate worlds into the street a moment1 and hurry past1 and seem to be going back in a moment more to separate worlds4 ,there is hardly even a village footway left anywhere to-day where one cannot see these two worlds1 or the spirit of these two worlds1 flitting past one through the streets in people's faces1 and nightly before our eyes1 struggling with each other to possess1 to swallow away into itself human souls1 to master the fate of man upon the earth4 ,one of these is the ,world of the ,hand-made2 the other is the ,machine-made ,world4 99 99 99 99 99 ,as day by day ,i watch these two worlds with all their people in them flocking past me1 ,i have come to have certain momentary but recurrent resentments and attractions1 unaccountable strong emotions2 and when ,i try afterward to rationalize my emotions1 as a man should1 and give an account of them to myself1 and get them ready to use and face my age with1 and make myself strong and fit to live in an age1 ,i find myself with a great task before me4 ,and yet one must do it2 one cannot live in an age strongly and fitly if one would rather be living in some other age1 or if it is an age with two worlds in it and one cannot make up one's mind which is the world one wants and settle down quietly and live in it4 ,then a strange thing happens1 and always happens the moment ,i begin to try to decide which of the two--the ,hand-made ,world or the ,machine-made ,world--,i will choose4 ,i find that in an odd1 confused1 groping1 obstinate way ,i am bound to choose them both4 ,in spite of all its ugly ways--a kind of vast indifference it has to me1 to everybody1 its magnificent heartlessness--,i find ,i have come to take in the ,machine-made ,world a kind of boundless1 half-secret pride and joy1 for a terrible and strange beauty there is in it4 ,and then1 too1 even if ,i wanted to give it up1 ,i could not3 neither ,i nor any man1 nor all the world combined1 could unthink to-day a hundred years1 fold up a hundred thousand miles of railway1 tuck modern life all neatly up again in a little1 old1 snug1 safe1 lovable ,hand-made ,world4 ,there must be some way out1 some connecting link between the ,hand-made and the ,machine-made4 ,we have merely lost it for a moment4 ,which way shall we turn8 ,and so at last to the little ,thing through which the whole world whispers to me on my desk1 to the mighty railways that beckon past my door1 to the airships that cannot be stilled1 and to the rolling mills that will not be silenced1 ,i turn at last6 ,i turn to the ,machines ,themselves4 ,half-singing and half-cursing1 ,i have faced them4 ,there is some way in which they can answer and can be made to answer--can be made to give me and the men about me the kind of world we want4 ,i try to analyze it and think it out4 ,what is the thing1 the real thing in the ,hand-made ,world1 that fills me with pride and joy1 and that ,i cannot and will not give up8 ,is not the real thing that is in it something that can be or might be freed from it1 exhaled from it1 something that might be in some new form saved1 made an atmosphere or a spirit and passed on8 ,and what is it in the new ,machine-made ,world which1 in spite of the splendid joy1 a rough new1 wild religion there is in it1 keeps daily filling me as ,i go past machines with this contradictory obstinate dread of them8 ,after a time ,i have made a little cleared space in my mind1 a little breathing room4 ,it has come to me from thinking that what is beautiful in the ,hand-made ,world perhaps is not these particular ,hand-made things themselves at which ,i so delight1 but the ,hand-made spirit of the men who made them which the men put into the things4 ,and perhaps what is full of death and fear in the ,machine-made ,world is not the machines themselves1 but the ,machine-made spirit in which the men who run the machines have made the machines work4 ,perhaps the ,hand-made spirit is pervasive1 eternal4 ,perhaps it can escape like a spirit1 and can live where it will live1 and do what it will do1 like a spirit1 and possess the body that it wills to possess4 ,perhaps the ,hand-made spirit is still living around me to-day1 and is not only living1 but is living in a more unspeakable1 unbounded body than any spirit has ever lived in before1 and is to-day before our eyes1 laying its huge iron fingers around our little earth1 and holding the oceans in its hand1 and brushing away mountains with a breath1 until we have ,man at last playing all night through the sky1 with visions and airships and telescopes4 ,his very words walk on the air with soft and unseen feet4 ,it is the ,hand-made spirit that creates machines4 ,the machines themselves are still the mighty children of the men who move and work in the ,hand-made spirit2 and the men who glory in them1 the men who bring them forth1 who think them out1 and who create them1 and who do the great and mighty things with them1 are still the ,hand-made men4 99 99 99 99 99 ,this leads us up to the question we are all asking ourselves every day4 ,how can a machine-made world be run in the spirit of a hand-made world8 ,the particular form in which the question has been put1 which is taken from ,inspired ,millionaires is as follows3 ,the idea that there is something in a machine simply as a machine which makes it inherently unspiritual is based upon the experience of the world2 but it is1 after all1 a rather amateur and juvenile world with machines as yet4 ,its ideas are in their first stages1 and are based for the most part upon the world's experience with second-rate men1 working in second-rate factories--men who have been bullied1 and could be bullied1 by the machines they worked with into being machines themselves4 ,no one would think of denying that men who let machines get the better of them1 either in their minds or their bodies1 in any walk of life1 grow unspiritual and mechanical4 ,but it does not take a machine to make a machine out of a man4 ,anything will do it if the man will let it4 ,even the farmer who is out under the great free dome of heaven1 and working in wonder every day of his life1 grows like a clod if he buries his soul alive in the soil4 ,but farming has been tried many thousands of years1 and the other kind of farmer is known by everybody--the farmer who is master over the soil2 who1 instead of becoming an expression of the soil himself1 makes the soil express him4 ,the next thing that is going to happen is that every one is going to know the other kind of mechanic4 ,it is cheerfully admitted that the kind of mechanic we largely have now1 who allows himself to be a watcher of a machine1 a turner-of-something for forty years1 can hardly be classed as vegetable life4 ,he is not even organic matter except in a very small part of himself4 ,but it is not the mechanical machine which makes the man unspiritual4 ,it is the mechanical man beside the machine4 ,a master at a piano 7which is a machine7 makes it a spiritual thing2 and a master at a printing-press1 like ,william ,morris1 makes it a free and artistic and self-expressive thing4 ,i spent a day a little while ago in walking through a factory4 ,i went past miles of machines--great glass roofs of sunshine over them--and looked in the faces of thousands of men4 ,as ,i went through the machines ,i kept looking to and fro between the machines and the men who stood beside them1 and sometimes ,i came back and looked again at the machines and the men beside them2 and every machine1 or nearly every machine1 ,i saw 7any one could see it in that factory7 was making a man of somebody4 ,one could see the spirit of the man who invented the machine1 and the spirit of the man who worked with it1 and the spirit of the man who owned it and who placed it there with the man1 all softly1 powerfully running together4 ,there were exceptions1 and every now and then one came1 of course1 upon the man who seemed to be simply another and somewhat different contrivance or attachment to his machine--some part that had been left over and thought of last1 and had not been done as well as the others2 but the factory1 taken as a whole1 from the manager's offices and the great counting-room1 and from the tall chimneys to the dump1 seemed to me to have something fresh and human and unwonted about it4 ,it seemed to be a factory that had a look1 a look of its own4 ,it was like a vast countenance4 ,it had features1 an expression4 ,it had an air--well1 one must say it1 of course1 if one is driven to it3 the factory had a soul1 and was humming it4 ,any one could have seen why by going into his office and talking a little while with the owner1 or by even not talking to him--by seeing him look up from his desk4 ,after walking through several miles of his personality1 and up and down and down and up the corridors of his mind1 one did not really need to meet him except as a matter of form and as a finishing touch4 ,one had been visiting with him all along3 to look in his face was merely to sum it up1 to see it all1 the whole place1 over again in one look4 ,one did not need to be surprised2 one might have known what such a man would be like--that such a factory could only be conceived and wrought by a man of genius1 a kind of lighted-up man4 ,a man who had put not only skylights in his buildings1 but skylights in his men1 would have to have a skylight in himself 7a skylight with a motor attachment1 of course74 ,if one were to try to think in nature or in art of something that would be like him--well1 some kind of transcendental engine1 ,i should say1 running softly1 smoothly outdoors in a great sunshine1 would have given one a good idea of him4 ,but1 however this may be1 it certainly would have been quite impossible to go through his factory and ever say again that machines do not and could not have souls1 or at least over-souls1 and that men who worked with machines did not and could not have souls as fast as they were allowed to4 ,a few days later ,i went through another factory1 and ,i came out weary and spent at night1 feeling as unreasonable and almost as hateful about machines1 and as discouraged about the people who had to work with them as ,john ,ruskin did in those first early days when the ,factory ,chimney first lifted its long black flag upon our earth1 and bullied great cities into cowards and slaves1 and all the great1 quiet-hearted nations1 and began making for us--all around us1 before our eyes1 as though in a kind of jeer at us1 and at our queer1 pretty1 helpless little religions--the hell we had ceased to believe in4 ,the hell is here1 and is going to be here apparently as long as may be necessary for us to see it and believe in it once more4 ,if a hell on our own premises1 shut down hard over our lives here and now1 is what is necessary to make us religious and human once more1 if we are reduced to it1 and if having a hard1 literal hell--one of our own--is our only way of seeing things1 of fighting our way through to the truth1 and of getting once more decisive1 manful1 commanding ideas of good and evil1 ,i for one can only be glad we have ,pittsburgs and ,sheffields to hurry us along and soon have it over with4 ,but while1 like ,ruskin1 any one can look about the machines and see hell1 he can see hell to-day1 unlike ,ruskin1 with heaven lined up close beside it4 ,the machines have come to have souls4 ,the machines we can see all about us have taken sides4 ,we can all of us see the machines about us to-day like vast looms1 weaving in and weaving out the fate of the world1 the fate of the churches1 the fate of the women and the little children1 and the very fate of ,god2 and everything about us we can see turning at last on what we are doing with the machines that are about us1 and what we are letting our machines do with us4 99 99 99 99 99 ,it has cleared my mind1 and at least helped me to live side by side with machines better from day to day1 to consider what these two souls or spirits in the machines are1 and what they are doing and likely to do4 ,if one knows them and one sees them1 and sees how they are working1 it is easier to take sides and join in and help4 ,it would seem to me that there are two spirits in machinery--the spirit of weariness1 weakness1 of inventing ways of getting out of work2 and there is the spirit in the machines1 too1 of moving mountains1 conquering the sea and air1 of working harder and lifting one's work over to more heroic1 to more splendid and difficult1 and almost impossible things4 ,it is these two spirits that are fighting for the possession and control of our machine civilization4 ,i watch the machines and the men beside them and see which side they are on4 ,the labourer who is doing as little work as he dares for his wages and the capitalist who is giving as little service as he dares for his money are on the one side 7the vast1 lazy1 mean majority of employers and employees71 and there may be seen standing on the other side against them1 battling for our world1 another small but mighty group made up of the labourer who loves his work more than his wages1 and the capitalist who loves the thing he makes more than the profit4 ,in other words1 the fate of our modern civilization1 with all its marvellous machines on it1 its art galleries and its churches1 is all hanging to-day on the battle between the spirit of achievement1 the spirit of creating things1 and the spirit of weariness or the spirit of thinking of ways of getting out of things4 ,it does not take very long to see which one prefers when one considers the problem of living in one world or the other4 ,if we are to take our choice between living in a world run by tired men and a world run by inspired ones1 most of us will have little difficulty in deciding which we would prefer1 and which one we are bound to have4 ,i have been moved to come forward with the idea of inspired employers--or1 as ,i have called it1 ,inspired ,millionaires--because it would seem to me inspired employers are the very least we can ask for2 for certainly if even our employers cannot be inspired or rested and strong1 we cannot expect their overworked workmen to be4 ,there is no hope for us but to write our books and to live our lives in such a way as to help put the world in the hands of the ,strong1 and to help keep its institutions and customs out of the hands of the overworked4 ,overworked mechanical employers and overworked labourers are the last men to solve the problem of the overworked1 except in a small1 tired1 mean1 resentful1 temporary way4 ,and so1 as ,i look about me and watch the machines and the men who are working with the machines1 or owning them1 it is on this principle that ,i find myself taking sides4 ,i will not live1 if ,i can help it1 in a world that is conceived and arranged and managed by tired and overworked and mechanical men4 ,have ,i not seen tired1 mechanical men1 whole generations of them1 vast mobs of them1 the men who have let the machines mow down their souls8 ,the first thing ,i have come to ask of a man1 if he is to be at the head of a machine--whether it is a machine called a factory1 or a machine called a ,government or a city1 or a machine called a nation--is1 ,is he tired8 ,i have cast my lot once for all--and as it seems to me1 too1 the lot of the world--with those men who are rested1 with the surplus men1 the men who want to work more not less1 who are still and gentle and strong in their hearts1 steady in their imaginations1 great men--men who are not driven to being self-centred or driven to being class-centred1 who can be world-centred and inspired4 99 99 99 99 99 ,when one has made this decision1 that one will work for a world in control of men who are strong1 one suddenly is brought face to face with a fact in our machine civilization which probably is quite new1 and which the spirit of man has never had to face in any age before4 ,for the first time in the history of the world1 machinery has made it possible for the world to get into the hands of the weak4 ,the ,gun began it--the gun in a coward's hands may side with the weak1 and the machine in the hands of the weak may temporarily give the world a list or a trend1 and leave it leaning on the wrong side4 ,the ,trust1 for instance1 which is really an extremely valuable invention1 and perhaps1 on the whole1 the most important machine of modern times when it is used to defend the rights of the people1 is a very different thing when it is pointed at them4 ,we have to-day1 not unnaturally1 the spectacle of perhaps nine people out of ten getting up and saying in chorus all through the world that ,trusts ought to be abolished2 and yet it cannot honestly be said that there is really anything about the trust-machine--any more than any other machine--that is inherently wicked1 or mechanical and heartless4 ,our real objection to the trust-machines is not to the machines themselves1 but to the fact that they are1 or happen to be 7judging each ,trust by itself71 in the hands of the weak and of the tired--of men1 that is1 who have no spirit1 no imagination about people2 mechanical-minded men1 who1 at least in the past1 have taken the easiest and laziest course in business--that of making all the money they can4 ,the moment we see the ,trusts in the hands of the strong men1 the men who are unwilling to slump back into mere money-making1 and who face daily with hardihood and with joy the feat of weaving into business several strands of value at once1 making things and making money and making men together1 the ,trust will become a vast machine of human happiness1 lifting up and pulling on the world for all of us day and night4 ,if our labouring men to-day are to be got out from under the machines1 we can only bring it to pass by doing everything we can in directors' meetings or in labor unions or as buyers or as journalists--whatever we may be--to keep the trust-machines in this world out of the hands of the tired1 weak1 and mechanical-minded men4 ,and the things that have been happening to the trust-machines1 or are about to happen to them1 have happened and are beginning to happen before our eyes to the machines themselves4 ,the machines of flame and iron wheels and men in monstrous factories which the philosophers and the poets and the very preachers have doomed our world with are passing through the same evolution as the trust-machines1 and shall be seen at last through the dim struggle yielding themselves1 bending their iron wills to the same indomitable human spirit1 the same slow1 stern1 implacable will of the soul of man4 ,they shall be inspired machines4 ,now for a long time we have seen 7for the most part7 the weak and mechanical-minded employer1 the man who takes the line of least resistance in business1 on every hand about us1 making his employees mechanical-minded4 ,the men have not been able to work without machines to work with1 and as they have been obliged to come to him to get the machines1 he has adopted the policy of letting himself fall into the weakest and easiest way of keeping his men under his own control4 ,he takes the machines the men have come to him to get1 and turns them back against them1 points them at their lives1 stops their minds with them1 their intelligence and manhood1 the very hope and religion with which they live2 and of course1 when men have had machines pointed at them long enough1 one sees them on every hand being mowed down in rows into machines themselves--as deadly and as hopeless to make a civilization out of1 or a nation out of1 or to give votes to1 or to have for fathers as machines would be1 as iron or leather or wood4 ,in the meantime1 however1 we seem to have been developing--partly by competition and partly by combination and by experience--employers who are not mechanical-minded1 who have spirit themselves1 and who believe in it and can use it in others2 who find ways of adjusting the hours1 the wages1 and the conditions of work for the men1 so that what is most valuable in them1 their spirit1 their imaginations1 their hourly good-will1 can all be turned into the business1 can all daily be used as the most important part of the working equipment of the factory4 ,these employers have found 7by believing it long enough to try it7 that live men can do better and more marketable work than dead ones4 ,if the great slow-moving majority of our modern machine employers were not mechanical-minded1 it would not be necessary to prove to them categorically the little platitude 7which even people who have observed cab-horses know7 that the living is more valuable than the half-dead1 and that live men can do better and more marketable work than half-dead ones4 ,but1 of course1 if they are not convinced by imagination or by arguments or by figures1 they may have to be convinced by losing their business2 for the most spirited employers1 those who take the more difficult and creative course of making money and men together1 are sure to be the employers who will get and keep the most spirited men1 and are sure to crowd out of the market in their own special line employers who can only get and keep mechanical-minded ones4 99 99 99 99 99 ,it would be hard to overstate the importance of the battle now going on among the trades unions between the spirited labourers and the tired ones1 and among the manufacturers between the inspired employers and the mechanical-minded ones4 ,for the time being1 at least1 it is the inspired employers who have most power to change the conditions of labour and to free the mechanical-minded slaves4 ,it is they who are standing to-day on the great strategical ground of our time4 ,they hold the pass of human life4 ,people cannot expect to be inspired in crowds4 ,crowds are too unwieldy and too inconvenient to act quickly4 ,the people can only concentrate their energies on getting and demanding inspired employers1 on insisting that the men who for eight or nine hours a day are pouring in with their wages their thoughts1 and their motives1 the very hope with which they live1 into their lives1 shall be the champions of the people1 shall represent them and act for them1 as they are not placed to act for themselves1 and with more imagination than they can yet expect to have for themselves4 ,if our labouring men of to-day are going to struggle out from under the machines1 they can only do it by doing all that they can in labour unions and in the press and at the polls to keep the machines in this world out of the hands of tired and mechanical-minded owners4 ,but probably the more immediate rescue from the evil or mechanicalness in machines is not going to come from the employers on the one hand or the employees on the other1 but from having the employees in the ,trades ,unions and the employers in the directors' meetings combining together to keep in subordinate places where they cannot hurt others all men1 whether directors or employees1 who do not work harder than they have to1 and who have not the brains to do their work for something besides money4 ,the men who are like this will of course be pitied and duly considered1 but they will be kept where they will not have power to control other men1 or where by force of position or by mere majority they will be able to bully other men to work as mechanically as they do4 ,workmen who do not want to become machines can only better conditions by combination with so-called inspired employers--employers who work harder than they have to1 who dote on the great human difficulties of work1 who choose not the easiest but the most perfect way of doing things1 who are never mechanical themselves1 and will not let their men be if they can help it4 ,i have liked to call these employers inspired millionaires4 ,i would rather have the machine owner or employer a millionaire1 because the more machines an inspired employer can own1 the more he can buy and get away from the uninspired ones1 the sooner will the right of labour and the will of the people be accomplished4 ,when the machines are in the hands of inspired and strong and spirited men--men of real competence or genius for business1 the machines will be seen on every hand around us as the engines of war against evil1 against slavery1 the whirling weapons of the ,spirit4 ,even now1 in dreams have ,i stood and watched them--the will of the people like a flail in their mighty hands--this vast army of machines--go thundering past1 driving the uninspired and mechanical off the face of the earth4 ,,chapter ,,iv ,,the ,,strike--,,an ,,invention ,,for ,,making ,,crowds ,,think ,when ,i was arranging to slip over from ,new ,york and get something ,i very much wanted in ,england last spring1 ,i found myself held up suddenly in all my plans because some men on the docks had decided that there was something that they wanted too4 ,they decided that ,i and thousands of other people in ,new ,york would have to wait over on the shores of ,america until they got it4 ,after postponing my plans until things had settled down1 ,i took passage1 and in due time found myself standing on ,english soil1 only to be informed that1 while ,i might be allowed perhaps at least to stand on ,english soil1 that was really as much as ,i could expect4 ,i could not go anywhere because a number of men on the railways had decided that there was something they wanted and that ,i would have to wait till they got it4 ,i could go down and look at the silent1 cold locomotives on the rails1 and ,i could be as wistful and hopeful as ,i liked about getting up to ,london1 but these men had decided that there was something that they wanted and ,i must wait4 ,i could not think of anything ,i had ever done to these men1 and what had ,liverpool and ,london done to them8 ,after ,i was duly settled in ,london1 and had begun to get into its little ways1 and was busily driving about and attending to my business as ,i had planned1 #f1jjj more men suddenly wanted something1 brought me up to a full stop one rainy day1 and said that they had decided that if ,i wanted to ride ,i would have to walk1 or that ,i would have to poke dismally about in a 'bus1 or worm my way through under the ground4 ,as ,i understood it1 there was something that they wanted and something that they were going to get2 and while of course in a way1 they recognized that there might be something that ,i wanted too1 ,i would have to wait till they got theirs4 ,i could not think of anything ,i had ever done to them1 nor could ,i see what the thousands of other good people in ,london that ,i saw walking and puddling about1 or watched waiting twenty minutes or so with long1 hopeful1 dogged whistles for cabs1 had done to them4 ,a few days more1 and my morning paper tells me suddenly of some more men who wanted something--this time up in ,lancashire4 ,they had decided that they wouldn't let some two or three hundred thousand other men go to their work until they got it4 ,they hushed cities to have their own way4 ,day by day ,i watched them throwing the silence of the cities in their employers' faces1 closing shops1 closing up railroads1 telling the world it must pay more for the clothes on its back1 and all because--a certain ,mr4 and ,mrs4 ,riley of ,accrington1 ,north ,lancashire did not like or did not think that they liked1 the ,north ,lancashire ,trades ,union4 7,the general idea seemed to be to have all the others join in1 everywhere--fifty-four million spindles1 and four hundred and forty thousand looms--and wait and keep perfectly still until ,mr4 and ,mrs4 ,riley could make up their minds47 ,and now this present week1 morning after morning ,i take up my paper and read that #ejj1jjj miners want something4 ,i look in my fire dubiously day by day4 ,i may have to go home to ,america in a few weeks to get warm4 ,of course it is only fair to say at the outset that this little series of impressions1 or sketches1 as one may say1 of ,civilization as ,i have seen it since arriving in ,england are of such a nature that ,i need not have come over to ,england to observe them4 ,i would be the last to deny that the same conveniences for being disagreeable and for getting in the way and for making a general muss of ,life can be offered almost any time in my own hopeful and blundering country4 ,what more immediately concerns me in these things is that1 having happened1 there can be no doubt that they have some valuable and worthy meaning for me and for other people that ,i ought to get out of them4 ,one cannot stand by and see a great civilization like our ,english-speaking civilization1 with its ocean liners1 cathedrals1 and aeroplanes1 being undignified and inefficient before one's eyes and even a little ridiculous1 without trying to see if it does not serve some purpose4 ,there must be something beyond1 something further and deeper1 something newborn about it1 which shall be worth our while4 ,strikes seem to be common people's way of thinking things out4 ,if they had more imagination1 they would know what they were going to think beforehand1 without so much trouble perhaps2 but so long as they have not1 and so long as it is really true perhaps that all these millions of levers and wheels and engines will have to be stopped1 so that the rich mechanical-minded people who own them and the poor mechanical-minded people who work with them can think better1 we will have to be glad at least that they are thinking1 and we will have to hope that they are thinking fast1 and will soon have it over with4 ,in the meantime1 while they are thinking1 we can think too4 ,it is never fair to lump people together1 and there are always exceptions and special reasons to consider2 but1 speaking roughly1 it is fair to lay it down as a general principle that it is apt to be the more common kind of employers and employees who find it difficult to think1 and who need strikes to think with4 ,when we see #age1jjj weavers striking in ,lancashire1 and the ,trades ,unions insisting on the discharge of ,non-,union men1 and employers being willing to recognize the ,unions but being unwilling to be controlled by them1 most of us find ourselves taking sides very quickly4 ,we are often amazed to see how quickly we take sides1 and what amazes some of us most is our apparent inconsistency4 ,we find ourselves now on the ,union side and now on the employer side in the dispute between ,capital and ,labour4 ,we never know when we take up the morning paper1 some of us1 which side will be our next2 and very often1 if we were suddenly asked why1 on reading quietly about a new dispute in the morning paper1 we had taken promptly one side rather than the other1 almost unconsciously1 before we knew it we would not perhaps be able to say at once4 ,the other day ,i became a little alarmed at myself at what looked at first like a kind of moral weakness1 and inability to stand still on one side or the other in the contest between ,labour and ,capital2 and ,i tried to think my way sternly through1 and decide why it was my mind seemed to waver from one side to the other1 and seemed so inconsistent and inefficient4 ,it seems to me ,i have just discovered a certain thread of consistency1 as ,i look back over many disputes4 ,as near as ,i can remember1 ,i find the side that uses force1 or that uses the most force1 invariably turns me against it4 ,if1 as ,i read1 ,i find that both sides are using force1 ,i find myself against both sides4 ,i find myself wishing1 in spite of my dislike of ,socialism1 that the nation had the power1 when a quarrelsome industry turns to the people in the street and stops them in what they are doing1 and tells the people in the street that they cannot ride1 or that they shall not sleep1 or that they cannot eat--when a quarrelsome industry insists on keeping the whole world up all night because it has a ,stomach ,ache1 ,i feel suddenly that the people ought to be able to take the industry away and put it into such hands that the people in the streets will be protected2 into hands that will make the industry behave so that it won't have a stomach ache4 ,an industry with a stomach ache always has it because somebody in it has been over-eating and getting more than their share1 and is incompetent and unfit2 and obviously it should have its freedom1 its privilege of selecting its food1 taken away from it until it behaves4 ,always allowing for exceptions1 we may put it down as a general truth that1 when we find a cause using force or mere advantage of position1 it is because there is incompetence or lack of brains in those who conduct it1 and the cure lies1 not in more force1 but in more brains4 ,one cannot help being angered by force1 because one knows that it is not only not a remedy1 but is itself the cause of all incompetence and blindness in business4 ,force merely heaps the incompetence and blindness up1 postpones coperation1 defeats the mutual interest which is the very substance of business efficiency in a nation4 ,force is itself the injury mounting up more and more1 which it seeks to cure4 ,the most likely way to prevent industrial trouble would seem to be to have employers and managers and foremen who have a genius for getting men to trust and believe in them4 ,we are getting smoke-consumers1 computing machines1 and the next contrivance is going to be the employer who has the understanding spirit1 and who sees the cash value of human genius1 the value in the market of genius for being fair and getting on with people4 ,arbitration boards are at best 7as they themselves would say7 stupid and negative things1 and though better than nothing1 as a rule merely postpone evil or change symptoms4 ,no one can ever really arbitrate for any one else either in industry or marriage except for a moment4 ,the trouble lies deep down inside the people who keep needing arbitration4 ,as long as these people are still there1 and as long as incompetent employers or employees are there1 there is bound to be trouble4 ,turning out incompetent employers and incompetent labourers is the only way4 ,we are getting rid of them as rapidly as possible4 ,all business in the last resort turns on brains for being human and understanding people4 ,business1 as people say1 is partly business and business is partly economics1 but more than anything else1 in modern times1 business is psychology4 ,success is the science of being believed in4 ,incompetent employers and incompetent labourers are already being turned out1 and are bound to be turned out implacably more and more1 by the competitive nature of modern business4 ,under present conditions1 if we have in each industry one single competent employing firm1 with brains for being fair and brains for being far-sighted1 and for being thoughtful of others--in short1 with brains for being believed in--the control of that industry soon falls into their hands4 ,people who use force instead of brains are second-rate1 are out of the spirit of the times1 and are going by4 ,and this seems to be the spirit1 too1 which is to govern the more efficient ,labour ,unions as well as the more efficient ,trusts4 ,if it were possible to collect the names in ,england and ,america of the men in each industry where brains were being personally believed in1 we would have a list of the leaders of ,england and ,america for the next fifty years4 ,having a soul in business pays1 not because it affords a fine motive power1 but because it affords a practical and conclusive method of driving the devil out of business4 ,he is being driven out of industry1 one industry at a time1 by men who get on better without him2 and this is going to go on until the ability to do this--to crowd out the devil1 to get the devil out of machines and factories1 out of the machinery of organization--the power to keep the devil out of things and out of people1 is recognized by everybody as the greatest1 most subtle1 most victorious and universal market-value in the world4 ,the men who can be believed in most will get the most business1 and1 what is still more important1 the men who can make men believe in them most will be able to hire the employees who can be believed in most1 and will get a monopoly of the efficiency of the world2 and though the men who can be believed in less may be able to continue for a time to do their work and go through all their old motions as well as they can1 with all their old lumbering1 pathetic machinery of watching each other and suspecting each other and fighting each other humped up on their backs1 they can never hope to compete with free-moving1 honest men1 who deal directly and openly and in a few words for their employees1 jobbers1 consumers1 and the public1 without any vast machinery of suspicion to bother with4 ,it is a most curious1 local1 temporary1 back-county idea1 the idea that1 for sheer industrial economy1 for simple cheap conclusive finance1 there is anything on earth in business that will take the place of old-fashioned human personal prestige--the prestige of the man who has a genius for being believed in4 ,in a way1 perhaps the recent strike among the ,london cabmen is an instance of what is really the essential issue in every strike4 ,the bottom fact about the taxi chauffeurs1 stated simply1 was that they did not believe in their employers4 ,they believed that1 if the precise figures were known1 their employers were getting more than their share4 ,on the other hand1 the bottom fact about the employers was that they did not and could not believe that1 if the precise figures were known1 the cabmen were not getting more than their share4 ,they insisted that the cabmen should publish1 or make known1 the precise figures of their extras4 ,the cabmen declined to do it1 and it made them look for the moment perhaps as if they were wrong4 ,but were they necessarily wrong8 ,was it really true that they had any more reason to trust their employers than their employers had to trust them8 ,the cabmen might quite honestly and justly have said to the owners3 ,what we want is an honest1 impeccable little dividend-recorder fastened on the back of every owner1 as well as on our machines and on us4 ,then we will publish our extras4 ,the determining and important fact of economics in the last analysis always turns out to be some human fact1 some fact about people4 ,it is really true that just now1 in the present half-stage of machine-industry1 employers should nearly all be compelled to go about in this world with fare-recorders on their backs4 ,employees too4 ,this would be the logical thing to do2 and as it is impracticable1 and as every business must have certain elements of secrecy in it in order to be competent1 the only alternative is to have in charge men with enough genius for being believed in and for taking measures to be believed in--to keep employees believing in them1 in spite of secrecy4 ,under these conditions1 it cannot be long before we will see in every business the men being put forward on both sides who have a genius for being believed in4 ,managers and superintendents will be put in office everywhere who see the cash value1 the economy1 of the simple1 old-fashioned power in a man of a genius for being believed in2 employers with the power of inspiring more and better work from their workmen2 ,labour men with the power of inspiring employers to believe in them1 of inspiring their employers to put up money1 stock1 or profits on their belief--on the belief that workmen are capable of the highest qualities of manhood3 hard work1 loyalty1 persistence1 and faith toward a common end4 ,i have preferred to have this inspired employer a millionaire1 because the more capital he has the more men he can employ1 and the more rapidly the other kind of millionaire1 the blind1 old-fashioned butter of ,labour1 will be driven out of business4 ,little can be done with one book1 but at this special juncture1 this psychological moment for copartnership and the spirit of copartnership1 when all the world is touched to the quick by great strikes--at a time when one can sit still and almost hear the nations think--there are some of us who hope that the case we are trying to make out for copartnership between ,capital and ,labour will be of use to those who are trying to do things1 and who for the moment find themselves foiled at every point by men who have given up believing in human nature4 ,we wish to put ourselves on record1 and to say that we do believe in human nature1 and that we believe not only that the inspired employer is going to be evolved by the ,crowd1 but that the ,crowd is going to recognize him and is going to take sides with him1 and that the ,crowd is going to justify him1 make him succeed1 is going to make his success its own success4 ,in other words1 we believe in heroes1 crowds1 and goodness2 in men of heroic gifts--who are fit and meet to interpret the wills and desires of crowds--who are great men or ,crowd-,men1 crowds in spirit themselves4 ,i would like to try to express the type of modern man who1 as it seems to me1 is about to prove himself the real ruler of our modern world1 the silent master of what the crowds shall think4 ,it has seemed to me that it is going to be a man of a marked type1 and of a particular temperament1 to whom we will have to look in our new and crowded world for the crowd-interpreter1 or man who touches the imagination of crowds4 ,as our whole labour problem to-day turns on our being able to touch the imagination of ,crowds1 it may not be uninteresting in the next chapter to consider what a man who can do this will probably be like and the spirit in which he will do it4 ,,chapter ,v ,,the ,,crowd-,,man--,,an ,,invention ,,for ,,making ,,crowds ,,see ,when ,wilbur ,wright flew around the ,statue of ,liberty in ,new ,york the other day1 his doing it was a big event2 but a still bigger event1 as it seems to some of us1 was the way he felt about ,new ,york when he did it4 ,all ,new ,york could not make him show off4 ,hundreds of thousands of people on roofs could look up at the sky over ,new ,york1 for him to go by1 all that they liked4 ,he slipped down to ,washington without saying anything1 on the #c3be train1 to attend to flying as part of the serious business of the world4 ,why fly around a little town like ,new ,york1 or show your bright wings in the light1 or circle the ,statue of ,liberty for fun1 when you are reconstructing civilization1 and binding a whole planet together1 and wrapping the heavens close down around the earth1 and making railroads everywhere out of the air8 ,new ,york is always a little superficial and funny about itself4 ,all it needs to do1 it seems to think1 is to snap its fingers at a man of genius anywhere on this broad world1 whisper to him pleasantly1 and he will trot promptly up1 of course1 and do his little turn for it4 ,but not ,wilbur ,wright4 ,wilbur ,wright would not give two million people an encore1 or even come back to bow4 ,as one looked over from ,mount ,tom one could see all ,new ,york black and solid on the tops of its roofs and houses looking up into a great hole of air for him1 and ,wilbur ,wright slipping quietly off down to ,washington and leaving them there1 a whole great city under the sky1 with its heads up6 ,a little experience like this has been what ,new ,york has needed for a long time4 ,it takes a scientist to do these things4 ,i wish there were some poet who would do as well4 ,even a prophet up above ,new ,york--or seer of men and of years--glinting his wings in the light1 the ,new ,york ,sun and the ,world and the ,times down below1 all their opera-glasses trained on him1 and all those little funny reporters running helplessly about1 all the people pouring out from ,doctor ,parkhurst's church to look up4444 ,it would be something4 ,probably there are very few capitals in the world--,paris1 ,berlin1 or ,london--that would not be profoundly stirred and possibly much improved by having some man suddenly appear up over them1 who would be so interested in what he was doing that he would forget to notice whether anybody was looking--who would be capable of slipping off quietly and leaving an entire city with its heads up1 and going on and attending to business4 ,there have been times when we would have been relieved1 some of us1 if the ,north ,pole could have been discovered in this way and without large audiences tagging4 ,there are some of us who will never cease to regret as long as we live that the ,north ,pole could not have waited a little4 ,we would rather have had ,wilbur ,wright discover it4 ,one can imagine how he would do it3 fly gracefully up to it all by himself1 and discover it some pleasant evening1 and have it over with1 and slip back on his soft wings in the night1 and not say anything about it4 ,it is this ,wilbur ,wright spirit that ,i would like to dwell on in these pages4 ,it seems to me it is a true modern spirit1 the spirit which alone could make our civilization great1 and the spirit which alone could make crowds great4 ,it was the crowd that spoiled the way the ,pole was discovered--all the millions of people1 vast1 thoughtless audiences piling in and making a show of it4 ,many people in ,america1 all the vast crowds reading about it1 seemed to feel that they were more important than the ,pole2 and when ,captain ,peary came back1 vast crowds of these same people paid as much as five dollars apiece for the privilege of being in the same room with him4 ,it was quite impossible not to contrast ,captain ,peary in his attitude toward the crowd and ,wilbur ,wright4 ,there seemed to be1 and there will always remain1 a certain vulgarity in the way the ,north ,pole was discovered1 and the way the whole world behaved in regard to it1 and the secret seems to have been in ,captain ,peary's failure to be a ,wilbur ,wright4 ,he allowed the ,pole to be a ,crowd affair4 ,all the while as he went about the country holding his little exhibits of the tip of the planet we could not help wishing1 many of us who were in the ,audience1 that this man who sat there before us1 the man who had the ,thing in his hand1 who had collected the ,north ,pole1 would not notice us1 would snub us if need be a little1 and would leave these people1 these millions of people1 with their heads up and go quietly on to the ,south ,pole and collect that4 ,it is because there are thousands of men who understand just how ,wilbur ,wright felt when he slipped away the other day in ,new ,york and left the entire city with its heads up that we have every reason to expect that the crowd is to produce great leaders1 and is to become a great crowd1 great and humble in spirit before ,god1 before the stars1 and the atoms1 and the microbes1 and before ,itself4 ,in the meantime1 however1 we see all about us in the world countless would-be leaders of the crowd1 who would perhaps not quite understand the way ,wilbur ,wright felt that day when he slipped away from ,new ,york and left the entire city with its heads up4 ,most newspaper men--men who are in the habit of writing for a crowd and regarding a crowd quite respectfully--will have wondered a little why ,wilbur ,wright could have let such a crowd go by4 ,most actors and theatrical people would have stayed over a train or so and given one more little performance with all those wistful people on the roof-tops4 ,there are only a very few clergymen in ,england or ,america to-day who1 with a great audience like that and so many men in it1 would ever have thought of slipping off on the #c3be train in the way ,wilbur ,wright did4 ,the ministers and the politicians of all countries are still wondering a little--if they ever thought of it--how ,wright did it4 ,most of the other people in the world wonder a little1 too1 but ,i imagine that the great inventors of the world who read about it the next morning did not wonder4 ,the true scientists1 in this country and in ,germany and in ,france1 all understood just how ,wilbur ,wright felt when he left ,new ,york with its heads up4 ,the great artists of the world1 in literature1 in painting1 and architecture2 the great railroad builders1 the city builders1 the nation builders1 the great statesmen1 the great biologists1 and chemists1 understood4 ,james ,j4 ,hill1 with his face toward the ,pacific1 understood4 ,alexander ,graham ,bell1 out abroad doing the listening and talking and thinking the thoughts of eighty million people1 understood4 ,marconi1 making the ships whisper across the sea1 and ,william ,g4 ,mc,adoo1 shooting a hundred and seventy thousand people a day through a hole under the ,hudson--understood4 ,and ,god1 when ,he made the world4 ,and ,columbus when he discovered ,america4 ,and ,jesus ,christ when ,he was so happy and so preoccupied over ,his vision of a new world1 over inventing ,christianity1 that it seemed a very small and incidental thing to die on the ,cross--,he understood4 ,wilbur ,wright's secret was that he had a vision4 ,his vision was that a human being could be greater and more powerful than the world had ever believed before4 ,just to be there was a great thought1 to be allowed to be one of those admitted1 to be present at the first faint beginning1 the first still alighting of the human spirit from the earth upon the sky4 ,wilbur ,wright made the most ordinary man a genius a minute4 ,he made him wonder softly who he was--and the people all about him--who were they8 and what would they think1 and what would they do next8 ,the first flash of light on the wings was a thousand years4 ,it was as if almost for a moment he saw at last the whole earth about him4 ,history1 churches1 factories on it1 slipping out of its cocoon at last--its little1 old1 faded1 tied-down cocoon1 and sailing upon the air--sailing with him1 sailing with the churches1 with the factories1 and with the schools1 with ,history1 through the ,invisible1 through the ,intangible--out to the ,sun4444 99 99 99 99 99 ,perhaps the reason that ,new ,york was a great city a few minutes the other day when ,wilbur ,wright was there was that ,wilbur ,wright had a new vision in the presence of all those men of something that they could do4 ,he touched the imagination of men about themselves4 ,they were profoundly moved because they saw him in their presence inventing a new kind and new size of human being4 ,he raised the standard of impossibility1 and built an annex on to the planet while they looked2 took a great strip off of space three miles wide and folded it softly on to the planet all the way round before their eyes4 ,for three miles more--three miles farther up above the ground--there was a space where human beings would have to stop saying1 ,i can't1 and ,you can't1 and ,we can't4 ,if people want to say ,i can't1 and ,you can't1 they will have to say it farther and farther away from this planet now4 ,let them try ,mars4 ,the modern imagination takes to impossibilities naturally with ,wilbur ,wright against the horizon4 ,the thing we next cannot believe is the next thing to expect4 ,nobody would have believed ten years ago that an architect could be invented who would tell a man that his house would cost him thirty thousand dollars1 and then hand him back two thousand dollars when he had finished it4 ,but the man had been invented--he invented himself4 ,he represents the owner1 and does as the owner would be done by if he did it himself--if he had the technical knowledge and the time to do it4 ,nobody would have believed a few years ago that a railway president1 when he had occasion to reduce the wages of several thousand employees #aj per cent41 would begin by reducing his own salary #cj per cent41 and the salary of all the officials all the way down #ae per cent41 or #bj per cent4 ,nobody would have believed some time ago that an organizing inventor would be evolved who would meet his directors and tell them that1 if they would have their work done in their mills in three shifts instead of two1 the men would work so much better that it would not cost the ,company more than #aj per cent4 more to offer the better conditions4 ,but such an organizing inventor has been invented1 and has proved his case4 ,luther ,burbank has made a chestnut tree eighteen months old bear chestnuts2 and it has always taken from ten to twenty-five years to make a tree furnish its first chestnut before4 ,about the same time that ,luther ,burbank had succeeded in doing this with chestnuts a similar type of man1 who was not particularly interested in chestnuts and wanted to do something with human nature1 who believed that human nature could really be made to work1 found a certain staple article that everybody needs every day in a state of anarchy in the market4 ,the producers were not making anything on it4 ,the wholesalers dealt in it without a profit1 and the retailers sold it without a profit1 and merely because the other things they sold were worthless without it4 ----1 who was the leading wholesale dealer and in the best position to act1 pointed out that1 if the business was organized and everybody in it would combine with everybody else and make it a monopoly1 the price could be made lower1 and everybody would make money4 ,of course this was a platitude4 ,it was also a platitude that human nature was not good enough1 and could not be trusted to work properly in a monopoly4 ---- then proceeded to invent a monopoly--a kind of monopoly in which human nature could be trusted4 ,he used a very simple device4 ,he began by being trusted himself4 ,having personally and directly proved that human nature in a monopoly could be trusted by being trusted himself1 all he had to do was to capitalize his knowledge of human nature1 use the enormous market value of the trust people had in him to gather people about him in the business who had a good practical business genius for being trusted too and for keeping trusted3 everybody else was shut out4 ,the letter with which the monopoly was started 7after dealing duly with the technical details of the business7 ended like this3 444 the soundest lines of business--viz41 fair prices1 fair profits1 fair division of profits1 fair recognition of service1 do as you would be done by1 money back where it is practicable1 one's profit so small as to make competition not worth while1 open dealing1 and open books4 ,he had invented a monopoly which shared its profits with the people1 and which the people trusted4 ,he was a ,luther ,burbank in money and people instead of chestnuts4 ,he raised the standard of impossibility in people1 and invented a new way for human nature to work4 ,,chapter ,,vi ,,the ,,imagination ,,of ,,crowds ,the modern imagination takes1 speaking roughly1 three characteristic forms3 #a4 ,imagination about the unseen or intangible--the spiritual--as especially typified in electricity1 in the wireless telegraph1 the aeroplane3 a new and extraordinary sense of the invisible and the unproved as an energy to be used and reckoned with4 #b4 ,imagination about the future--a new and extraordinary sense of what is going to happen next in the world4 #c4 ,imagination about people4 ,we are not only inventing new machines1 but our new machines have turned upon us and are creating new men4 ,the telephone changes the structure of the brain4 ,men live in wider distances1 and think in larger figures1 and become eligible to nobler and wider motives4 ,imagination about the unseen is going to give us in an incredible degree the mastery of the spirit over matter4 ,imagination about the future is going to make the next few hundred years an organic part of every man's life to-day4 ,the imagination of men about themselves and other people is going to give us a race of men with new motives2 or1 to put it differently1 it is going to give us not only new sizes but new kinds of men4 ,people are going to achieve impossibilities in goodness1 and our inventions in human nature are going to keep up with our other inventions4 ,,chapter ,,vii ,,imagination ,,about ,,the ,,unseen ,the most distinctively modern thing that ever happened was when ,benjamin ,franklin went out one day and called down lightning from heaven4 ,before that1 power had always been dug up1 or scraped off the ground4 ,the more power you wanted the more you had to get hold of the ground and dig for it2 and the more solid you were1 the more heavy1 solid things you could get1 the more you could pull solid1 heavy things round in this world where you wanted them4 ,franklin turned to the sky1 and turned power on from above1 and decided that the real and the solid and the substantial in this world was to be pulled about by the ,invisible4 ,copernicus had the same idea1 of course1 when he fared forth into space1 and discovered the centre of all power to be in the sun4 ,it grieved people a good deal to find how much more important the sky was than they were1 and their whole little planet with all of them on it4 ,the idea that that big blue field up there1 empty by day and with such crowds of little faint dots in it all night1 was the real thing--the big1 final1 and important thing--and that they and their churches and popes and pyramids and nations should just dance about it for millions of years like a mote in a sunbeam1 hurt their feelings at first4 ,but it did them good4 ,it started them looking ,up1 and looking the other way for power4 ,very soon afterward ,columbus enlarged upon the same idea by starting the world toward very far things1 on the ground2 and he bored through the skylines1 a thousand skylines1 and spread the nations upon the sea4 ,columbus was the typical modern man led by the invisible1 the intangible2 and on the great waters somewhere between ,spain and ,new ,york1 between the old and the new1 ,columbus discovered the ,future ,tense1 the centrifugal tense1 the tense that sweeps in the unknown1 and gathers in1 out of space1 out of hope1 out of faith1 the lives of men4 ,the mere fastened-down stable things1 the mere actual facts1 stopped being the world with ,columbus1 and the air and the sky began to be swung in1 and to be swept through the thoughts and acts of men and of women4444 ,then miners1 mariners1 explorers1 inventors--the impossible steamship1 the railway1 the impossible cotton-gin and sewing-machine and reaper1 ,hoosac tunnels and ,atlantic cables4 ,the impossible became one of the habits of modern life4 ,of course the sky and the air and the unknown and the future had been recognized before1 but only a little and in a rather patronizing way4 ,but when a world has made a great1 solid continent by following a horizon line1 it begins to take things just beyond very seriously4 ,and so our ,time has been fulfilled4 ,we have had the stone age2 we have had the iron age2 and now we have the sky age1 and the sky telegraph1 and sky men1 and sky cities4 ,mountains of stone are built out of men's visions1 towers and skyscrapers swing up out of their wills and up out of their hearts4 99 99 99 99 99 ,not long ago1 as ,i was coming away from ,new ,york in the ,springfield ,express1 which was running at fifty-five miles an hour1 ,i saw suddenly some smoke coming up apparently out of a satchel on the floor1 belonging to the man in the chair in front of me4 ,i moved the satchel away1 and the smoke came up through the carpet4 ,i spoke to the ,pullman conductor who was passing through1 and in a second the train had stopped1 and the great wild roaring ,thing had ceased1 and we stood in a long1 wide1 white silence in the fields4 ,we got off the car--some of us--to see what had happened1 and to see if there was a hot box on the wheels4 ,we found that the entire underside of the floor of the car was on fire1 and what had happened8 ,nothing except a new impossibility2 nothing except that a human being had invented an electrical locomotive so powerful that it was pulling that train fifty-five miles an hour while the brakes on the car were set--twelve brakes all grinding twenty miles on those twelve wheels2 and the locomotive paid no more attention to the brakes of that heavy ,pullman than it would to a feather or to a small boy1 all the way from ,new ,york to ,stamford1 hanging on behind4 ,as ,i came in ,i looked again at the train--the long dull train that had been pulled along by the ,invisible1 by the kingdom of the air and the sky--the long1 dull1 heavy ,train6 ,and the spirit of the far-off sun was in it6 ,in ,count ,zeppelin's new airship the new social spirit has a symbol1 and in the gyroscopic train the inspired millionaire is on a firm foundation4 ,the power of the new kind and new size of capitalist is his power of keeping an equilibrium with the people1 and the men of real genius in modern affairs are men who have motor genius and light genius over other men's wills4 ,they are allied to the ,x-ray and the airship1 and gain their pre-eminence by their power of forecast and invention--their power of riding upon the unseen1 upon the thoughts of men and the spirit of the time4 ,even the painters have caught this spirit4 ,the plein air painters are painting the light1 and the sculptors are carving shadows and haloes1 and we have not an art left which does not lean out into the ,invisible4 ,and religion is full of this spirit and theosophy and ,christian ,science4 ,the playwrights are touched by it2 and the action1 instead of being all on the stage1 is thrown out into the spirit of the audience4 ,the play in a modern theatre is not on the stage but in the stalls4 ,maeterlinck1 ,ibsen1 ,shaw1 merely use the stage as a kind of magic-lantern or suggestion-centre for the real things that1 out behind us in the dark1 are happening in the audience4 ,,chapter ,,viii ,,the ,,crowd',s ,,imagination ,,about ,,the ,,future ,i remember looking over with ,h4,g4 ,wells one night some time ago a set of pictures or photographs of the future in ,america1 which he had brought home with him4 ,they were largely skyscrapers1 big bridges1 ,niagaras1 and things2 and ,i could not help thinking1 as ,i came home that night1 how much more ,mr4 ,wells had of the future of ,america in his own mind than he could possibly buy in his photographs4 ,what funny little films they were after all1 how faint and pathetic1 how almost tragically dull1 those pictures of the future of my country were6 ,h4,g4 ,wells himself1 standing in his own doorway1 was more like ,america1 and more like the future of ,america1 than the pictures were4 ,the future in ,america cannot be pictured4 ,the only place it can be seen is in people's faces4 ,go out into the street1 in ,new ,york1 in ,chicago1 in ,san ,francisco1 in ,seattle2 look eagerly as you go into the faces of the men who pass1 and you feel hundreds of years--the next hundred years--like a breath1 swept past4 ,america1 with all its forty-story buildings1 its little ,play ,niagaras1 its great dumb ,rockies1 is the unseen country4 ,it can only as yet be seen in people's eyes4 ,some days1 flowing sublime and silent through our noisy streets1 and through the vast panorama of our towers1 ,i have heard the footfalls of the unborn1 like sunshine around me4 ,this feeling ,america gives one in the streets is the real ,america4 ,the solidity1 the finality1 the substantial fact in ,america1 is the daily sense in the streets of the future4 ,and it has seemed to me that this fact--whether one observes it in ,americans in ,america1 in ,americans in ,england and in other nations--is what one might call1 for lack of a better name1 the ,american temperament in all peoples is the most outstanding typical and important fact with which our modern world and our philosophy about the world have now to reckon4 ,nothing can be seen as it really is if this amazing pervasive hourly sense of the future is left out of it4 ,all power is rapidly coming to be based on news--news about human nature1 and about what is soon to be done by people4 ,this news travels by express in boxes1 by newspapers1 by telephone1 by word of mouth1 and by wireless telegraph4 ,most of the wireless news is not only wireless1 but it is in cipher--hence prophets1 or men who have great sensitiveness2 men whose souls and bodies are films for the future1 platinum plates for the lights and shadows of events2 men who are world-poets1 sensitive to the air-waves and the light-waves of truth1 to the faintest vibrations from ,to-morrow1 or from the next hundred years hovering just ahead4 ,as a matter of course1 it is already coming to be true that the most practical man to-day is the prophet4 ,in the older days1 men used to look back for wisdom1 and the practical man was the man who spoke from experience1 and they crucified the prophet4 ,but to-day1 the practical man is the man who can make the best guess on to-morrow4 ,the cross has gone by2 at least1 the cross is being pushed farther along4 ,a prophet in business or politics gets a large salary now2 he is a recognized force4 ,being a prophet is getting to be almost smug and respectable4 ,we live so in the future in our modern life1 and our rewards are so great for men who can live in the future1 that a man who can be a ten-year prophet1 or a twenty-five-year prophet1 like ,james ,j4 ,hill1 is put on a pedestal1 or rather is not wasted on a pedestal1 and is made ,president of a railroad4 ,he swings the country as if it were his hat4 ,we see great cities tagging ,wilbur ,wright1 and emperors clinging to the skirts of ,count ,zeppelin4 ,we only crucify a prophet now if he is a hundred1 or two hundred or five hundred years ahead4 ,even then1 we would not be apt to crucify2 we would merely not use him much1 except the first twenty-five years of him4 ,the theory is no longer tenable that prophets must be necessarily crucified4 ,as a matter of history1 most prophets have been crucified by people2 but it was not so much because of their prophecy as because their prophecy did not have any first twenty-five years in it4 ,they were crucified because of a blank place or hiatus1 not necessarily in their own minds1 but at least in other people's4 ,people would have been very glad to have their first twenty-five years' worth if they could have got it4 ,it is this first twenty-five years1 or joining-on part1 which is most important in prophecy1 and which has become our specialty in the ,western ,world4 ,one might say1 in a general way1 that the idea of having a first twenty-five years' section in truth for a prophet is a modern1 an almost ,american1 invention4 ,we are temperamentally a country of the future1 and think instinctively in futures2 and perhaps it is not too much to say 7considering all the faults that go with it for which we are criticized7 that we have led the way in futures as a specialty1 as a national habit of mind2 and though with terrific blunders perhaps have been really the first people en masse to put being a prophet on a practical basis--that is1 to supply the first twenty-five years' section1 or the next-thing-to-do section to ,truth1 to put in a kind of coupling between this world and the next4 ,this is what ,america is for1 perhaps--to put in the coupling between this world and the next4 ,in the former days1 the strength of a man1 or of an estate1 or a business1 was its stability4 ,in the new world1 instead of stability1 we have the idea of persistence1 and power lies not so much in solid brittle foundation quality as in conductivity4 ,socially1 men can be divided into conductors--men who connect powers--and non-conductors--men who do not2 and power lies in persistence1 in dogged flexibility1 adaptableness1 and impressionableness4 ,the set conservative class of people1 in three hundred years1 are going to be the dreamers1 inventors--those who demonstrate their capacity to dream true1 and who hit shrewdly upon probabilities and trends and futures2 and the power of a man is coming to be the power of observing atmospheres1 of being sensitive to the intangible and the unknown4 ,people are more likely to be crucified two thousand years from now for wanting to stay as they are4 ,there used to be the inertia of rest2 and now in its place1 working reciprocally in a new astonishing equilibrium1 we step up calmly on our vast moving sidewalk of civilization and swing into the inertia of motion4 ,the inertia of men1 instead of being that of foundations1 conventions1 customs1 facts1 sogginess1 and heaviness1 is getting to be an inertia now toward the future1 or the next-thing-to-do4 ,most of us can prove this by simply looking inward and taking a glimpse of our own consciousness4 ,let a man draw up before his own mind the contents of his own consciousness 7if he has a motor consciousness71 and we find that the future in his life looms up1 both in its motives and its character1 and takes about three quarters of the room of his consciousness2 and when it is not looming up1 it is woven into everything he does4 ,even if all the future were for was to help one understand the present and act this immediate moment as one should1 nine tenths of the power of seeing a thing as it is1 turns out to be one's power of seeing it as it is going to be4 ,in any normal man's life1 it is really the future and his sense of the future that make his present what it is4 ,history is losing its monopoly4 ,it is only absorbed in men's minds--in the minds of those who are making more of it--in parts or rather in elements of all its parts4 ,the trouble with history seems to have been1 thus far1 that people have been under the illusion that history should be taken as a solid4 ,they seem to think it should be taken in bulk4 ,they take it1 some of them1 a solid hundred years of it or so1 and gulp it down4 ,the advantage of prophecy is that it cannot be taken as a solid by people who would take everything so if they could4 ,prophecy is protected4 ,people have to breathe it1 assimilate it1 and get it into their circulation and make a solid out of it personally1 and do it all themselves4 ,it is this process which is making our modern men spiritual1 interpretative1 and powerful toward the present and toward the past1 and which is giving a body and soul to knowledge1 and is making knowledge lively and human1 the kind of knowledge 7when men get it7 that makes things happen4 ,,chapter ,,ix ,,the ,,crowd',s ,,imagination ,,about ,,people ,i would like to propose1 as a basis for the judgment of men and events1 and as a basis for forecasting the next men and next events1 and arriving at a vision of action1 a ,theory of the ,world4 ,every man has one4 ,every man one knows can be seen doing his work in this world on a great background1 a kind of panorama or stage setting in his mind1 made up of history and books1 newspapers1 people1 and experiences1 which might be called his ,theory of the ,world4 ,it is his theory of the world which makes him what he is--his personal judgment or personal interpretation of what the world is like1 and what works in it1 and what does not work4 ,a man's theory as to why people do or do not do wrong is not a theory he might in some brief disinterested moment1 possibly at luncheon1 take time to discuss4 ,his theory of what is wrong and of what is right1 and of how they work1 touches the efficiency with which he works intimately and permanently at every point every minute of his business day4 ,if he does not know1 in the middle of his business day1 what his theory of the world--of human nature--is1 let him stop and find out4 ,a man's theory of the world is the skylight or manhole over his work4 ,it becomes his hell or heaven--his day and night4 ,he breathes his theory of the world and breathes his idea of the people in it2 and everything he does may be made or may be marred by what1 for instance1 he thinks in the long-run about what ,i am saying now on this next page4 ,whether he is writing for people1 or doing business with them over a counter1 or launching books at them1 everything he does will be steeped in what he believes about what ,i am saying now--it shall be the colour of the world to him1 the sound or timbre of his voice--what he thinks or can make up his mind to think1 of what ,i am saying--on this next page4 ,,chapter ,x ,a ,,democratic ,,theory ,,of ,,human ,,nature ,if the men who were crucifying ,jesus could have been suddenly stopped at the last moment1 and if they could have been kept perfectly still for ten minutes and could have thought about it1 some of them would have refused to go on with the crucifixion when the ten minutes were over4 ,if they could have been stopped for twenty minutes1 there would have been still more of them who would have refused to have gone on with it4 ,they would have stolen away and wondered about ,the ,man in their hearts4 ,there were others who were there who would have needed twenty days of being still and of thinking4 ,there were some who would have had to have twenty years to see what they really wanted1 in all the circumstances1 to do4 ,people crucified ,christ because they were in a hurry4 ,they did what they wanted to do at the moment4 ,so far as we know1 there were only two men who did what they would have wished they had done in twenty years3 there was the thief on the other cross1 who showed ,the ,man he knew who ,he was2 and there was the disciple ,john1 who kept as close as he could4 ,john perhaps was thinking of the past--of all the things that ,christ had said to him2 and the man on the other cross was thinking what was going to happen next4 ,the other people who had to do with the crucifixion were all thinking about the thing they were doing at the moment and the way they felt about it4 ,but the ,man was ,thinking1 not of ,his suffering1 but of the men in front of ,him1 and of what they could be thinking about1 and what they would be thinking about afterward--in ten minutes1 in twenty minutes1 in twenty days1 or in twenty years2 and suddenly ,his heart was flooded with pity at what they would be thinking about afterward1 and in the midst of the pain in ,his arms and the pain in ,his feet ,he made that great cry to ,heaven3 ,father1 forgive them2 they know not what they do6 ,it is because ,christians have never quite believed that ,the ,man really meant this when ,he said it that they have persecuted the ,jews for two thousand years4 ,it is because they do not believe it now that they blame ,mr4 ,rockefeller for doing what most of them twenty years ago would have done themselves4 ,it was one of the hardest things to do and say that any one ever said in the world1 and it was said at the hardest possible time to say it4 ,it was strange that one almost swooning with pain should have said the gentlest-hearted and truest thing about human nature that has ever been said since the world began4 ,it has seemed to me the most literal1 and perhaps the most practical1 truth that has been said since the world began4 ,it goes straight to the point about people4 ,it gives one one's definition of goodness both for one's self and for others4 ,it gives one a program for action4 ,except in our more joyous and free moments1 we assume that when people do us a wrong1 they know what they are about4 ,they look at the right thing to do and they look at the wrong one1 and they choose the wrong one because they like it better4 ,nine people out of ten one meets in the streets coming out of church on ,sunday morning1 if one asked them the question plainly1 ,do you ever do wrong when you know it is wrong8 would say that they did4 ,if you ask them what a sin is1 they will tell you that it is something you do when you know you ought not to do it4 ,but ,the ,man ,himself1 in speaking of the most colossal sin that has ever been committed1 seemed to think that when men committed a sin1 it was because they did not really see what it was that they were doing4 ,they did what they wanted to do at the moment4 ,they did not do what they would have wished they had done in twenty years4 ,i would define goodness as doing what one would wish one had done in twenty years--twenty years1 twenty days1 twenty minutes1 or twenty seconds1 according to the time the action takes to get ripe4 ,it would be far more true and more to the point instead of scolding or admiring ,mr4 ,rockefeller's skilled labour at getting too rich1 to point out mildly that he has done something that in the long-run he would not have wanted to do2 that he has lacked the social imagination for a great permanently successful business4 ,his sin has consisted in his not taking pains to act accurately and permanently1 in his not concentrating his mind and finding out what he really wanted to do4 ,it would seem to be better and truer and more accurate in the tremendous crisis of our modern life to judge ,mr4 ,rockefeller1 not as monster of wickedness1 but merely as an inefficient1 morally underwitted man4 ,there are things that he has not thought of that every one else has4 ,we see that in all those qualities that really go to make a great business house in a great nation ,john ,d4 ,rockefeller stands as the most colossal failure as yet that our ,american business life has produced4 ,to point his incompetence out quietly and calmly and without scolding would seem to be the only fair way to deal with ,mr4 ,rockefeller4 ,he merely has not done what he would have wished he had done in twenty1 well1 possibly two hundred years1 or as long a time as it would be necessary to allow for ,mr4 ,rockefeller to see4 ,the one thing that the world could accept gracefully from ,mr4 ,rockefeller now would be the establishment of a great endowment of research and education to help other people to see in time how they can keep from being like him4 ,if ,mr4 ,rockefeller leads in this great work and sees it soon enough1 perhaps he will stop suddenly being the world's most lonely man4 ,many men have been lonely before in the presence of a few fellow human beings2 but to be lonely with a whole nation--eighty million people2 to feel a whole human race standing there outside of your life and softly wondering about you1 staring at you in the showcase of your money1 peering in as out of a thousand newspapers upon you as a kind of moral curiosity under glass1 studying you as the man who has performed the most athletic feat of not seeing what he was really doing and how he really looked in all the world--this has been ,mr4 ,rockefeller's experience4 ,he has not done what he would wish he had done in twenty years4 ,goodness may be defined as getting one's own attention1 as boning down to find the best and most efficient way of finding out what one wants to do4 ,any man who will make adequate arrangements with himself at suitable times for getting his own attention will be good4 ,any one else from outside who can make such arrangements for him1 such arrangements of expression or--of advertising goodness as to get his attention1 will make him good4 ,,chapter ,,xi ,,doing ,,as ,,one ,,would ,,wish ,,one ,,had ,,done ,,in ,,twenty ,,years ,if two great shops could stand side by side on the ,main ,street of the ,world1 and all the vices could be put in the show window of one of them and all the virtues in the show windows the other1 and all the people could go by all day1 all night1 and see the windowful of virtues as they were1 and the windowful of vices as they were1 all the world would be good in the morning4 ,it would stay good as long as people remembered how the windows looked4 ,or if they could not remember1 all they would need to do1 most people1 when a vice tempted them would be to step out1 look at it in its window a minute--possibly take a look too at the other window--and they would be good4 ,if a man were to take a fancy to any particular vice1 and would take a step up to ,the ,window1 and take one firm look at it in ,the ,window--see it lying there1 its twenty years' evil1 its twenty days'1 its twenty minutes' evil1 all branching up out of it--he would be good4 ,when we see the wrong on one side and the right on the other and really see the right as vividly as we do the wrong1 we do right automatically4 ,wild horses cannot drag a man away from doing right if he sees what the right is4 ,a little while ago in a ,new ,england city where the grade crossings had just been abolished1 and where the railroad wound its way on a huge yellow sandbank through the most beautiful part of the town1 a prominent1 public-spirited citizen wrote a letter to the ,president of the ,company suggesting that the railroad 7for a comparatively small sum1 which he mentioned7 plant its sandbanks with trees and shrubs4 ,a letter came the next day saying that the railroad was unwilling to do it4 ,he might quite justifiably have been indignant and flung himself into print and made a little scene in the papers1 which would have been the regular and conventional thing to do under the circumstances4 ,but it occurred to him instead1 being a man of a curious and practical mind1 that possibly he did not know how to express himself to railroad presidents1 and that his letter had not said what he meant4 ,he thought he would try again1 and see what would happen if he expressed himself more fully and adequately4 ,he took for it this second time a box seven feet long4 ,the box contained two long rolls of paper1 one a picture by a landscape gardener of the embankment as it would look when planted with trees and with shrubs1 and the other a photograph--a long panorama of the same embankment as it then stood with its two great broadsides of yellowness trailing through the city4 ,the box containing the rolls was sent without comment and with photographs and estimates of cost on the bottom of the pictures4 ,a letter from the railroad came next day thanking him for his suggestion1 and promising to have the embankment made into a park at once4 ,if ,god had arranged from the beginning1 slides of the virtues1 and had furnished every man with a stereopticon inside1 and if all a man had to do at any particular time of temptation was to take out just the right slide or possibly try three or four up there on his canvas a second1 no one would ever have any trouble in doing right4 99 99 99 99 99 ,it is not too much to say that this way of looking at evil and good--at the latent capacities of evil and good in men1 if a man once believes it1 and if a man once practises it as a part of his daily practical interpretation and mastery of men1 will soon put a new face for him on nearly every great human problem with which he finds his time confronted4 ,we shall watch the men in the world about us--each for their little day--trying their funny1 pathetic1 curious little moral experiments1 and we shall see the men--all of the men and all of the good and the evil in the men this moment--daily before our eyes working out with an implacable hopefulness the fate of the world4 ,we know that1 in spite of self-deceived syndicalism and self-deceived trusts1 in spite of coal strikes and all the vain1 comic little troops of warships around the earth1 peace and righteousness in a vast overtone are singing toward us4 ,we are not only going to have new and better motives in our modern men1 but the new and better motives are going to be thrust upon us4 ,every man who reads these pages is having1 at the present moment1 motives in his life which he would not have been capable of at first4 ,why should not a human race have motives which it was not capable of at first8 ,if one takes up two or three motives of one's own--the small motives and the large ones--and holds them up in one's hand and looks at them quietly from the point of view of what one would wish one had done in twenty years1 there is scarcely one of us who would choose the small ones4 ,people who are really modern1 that is1 who look beyond themselves in what they do to others1 who live their lives as one might say six people away1 or sixty people farther out from themselves1 or sixty million people farther1 are becoming more common everywhere2 and people who look beyond the moment in what they do to another day1 who are getting more and more to live their lives twenty years ahead1 and to have motives that will last twenty years1 are driven to better and more permanent motives4 ,thinking of more people when we act for ourselves means ethical consciousness or goodness1 and better and more permanent motives4 ,in the last analysis1 the men who permanently succeed in business will have to see farther than the other people do4 ,men like ,john ,d4 ,rockefeller1 who have made failures of their lives1 and have not been able to conduct a business so as to keep it out of the courts1 have failed because they have had imagination about ,things but not imagination about people4 ,the man who is just at hand will not do over again what ,mr4 ,rockefeller has done4 ,he will at least have made some advance in imagination over ,rockefeller4 ,mr4 ,rockefeller became rich by coperating with other rich men to exploit the public4 ,the man of the immediate future is going to get rich1 as rich as he cares to be1 by coperating not merely with his competitors--which is as far as ,rockefeller got--but by coperating with the people4 ,it is a mere matter of social imagination1 of seeing what succeeds most permanently1 and honourably1 of putting what has been called goodness and what is going to be called ,business together4 ,in other words1 social imagination is going to make a man gravitate toward mutual interest or coperation1 which is the new and inevitable level of efficiency and success in business4 ,success is being transferred from men of millionaire genius to men of social and human genius4 ,the men who are going to compete most successfully in modern competitive business are competing by knowing how to coperate better than their competitors do4 ,employers1 employees1 consumers1 partners1 become irresistible by coperation2 only employers1 employees1 consumers1 and partners who coperate better than they do can hope to compete with them4 ,the ,trusts have already crowded out many small rivals because1 while their coperation has been one-sided1 they have coperated with more people than their rivals could2 and the good ,trusts1 in the same way are going to crowd out the bad ,trusts1 because the good ones will know how to coperate with more people than the bad ones do4 ,they will have the human genius to see how they can coperate with the people instead of against them4 ,they are going to invent ways of winning and keeping the confidence of the people1 of taking to this end a smaller and more just share of profits4 ,and they are going to gain their leadership through the wisdom and power that goes with their money1 and not through the money itself4 ,it is the spiritual power of their money that is going to count2 and wealth1 instead of being a millionaire disease1 is going to become a great social energy in democracy4 ,we are going to let men be rich because they represent us1 not because they hold us up1 and because the hold-up has gone by1 that is3 getting all one can1 and service--getting what we have earned--has come in4 ,the new kind and new size of politician will win his power by his faith1 like ,u4 ,ren of ,oregon2 the new kind and new size of editor is going to hire with brains a millionaire to help him run his paper2 and the new kind and new size of author1 instead of tagging a publisher1 will be paid royalties for supplying him with new ideas and creating for him new publics4 ,power in modern life is to be light and heat and motion1 and not a gift of being heavy and solid4 ,even ,money shall lose its inertia4 ,we are in this way being driven into having new kinds and new sizes of men2 and some of them will be rich ones1 and some of them will be poor1 and no one will care4 ,we will simply look at the man and at what size he is4 ,if our preachers are not saving us1 our business men will4 ,sometimes one suspects that the reason goodness is not more popular in modern life is that it has been taken hold of the wrong way4 ,perhaps when we stop teasing people1 and take goodness seriously and calmly1 and see that goodness is essentially imagination1 that it is brains1 that it is thinking down through to what one really wants1 goodness will begin to be more coveted4 ,except among people with almost no brains or imagination at all1 it will be popular4 ,perhaps it is unnecessary to say that these things that ,i have been saying1 or trying to say1 about the flexibility and the potentiality of the human race in its present crisis1 in its present struggle to maintain and add to its glory on the earth1 are all beyond the range of possibility1 and the present strength of manhood4 ,but ,i can only hope that these objections that people make will turn out like mine4 ,i have been making objections all my life1 as all idealists must--only to watch with dismay and joy the old-time1 happy obdurate way objections have of going by4 ,people began by saying they would never use automobiles because they were so noisy and ill-odoured and ugly4 ,presto6 ,the automobile becomes silent and shapes itself in lines of beauty4 ,some of us had decided against balloons4 ,even if the balloon succeeds1 we said1 there will be no way of going just where and when you want to4 ,and then1 presto6 regular channels of wind are discovered1 and the balloon goes on4 ,aeroplanes1 we said1 may be successful1 but the more successful they are1 the more dangerous1 and the more danger there will be of collisions--collisions in the dark and up in the great sky at night4 ,and1 presto6 man invents the wireless telegraph1 and the entire sky can be full of whispers telling every airship where all the other airships are4 ,some of us have decided that we will never have anything to do with monopoly4 ,presto6 there is suddenly evolved an entirely new type of monopolist--the man who can be rich and good2 the millionaire who has invented a monopoly that serves the owners1 the producers and employees1 the distributors and the consumers alike4 ,an ,american railway ,president has been saying lately that ,america would not have enough to eat in #bjej1 but it would not do to try to prove this just yet4 ,some one1 almost any day1 will invent a food that is as highly concentrated as dynamite1 and the whole food supply of ,new ,york--who knows8--shall be carried around in one railway ,president's vest pocket4 ,,chapter ,,xii ,,new ,,kinds ,,and ,,new ,,sizes ,,of ,,men ,it would be hard to overestimate the weariness and cynicism and despair that have been caused in the world by its more recklessly hopeful men--the men who plump down happily anywhere and hope1 the optimists who are merely slovenly in their minds about evil4 ,but the optimism that consists in putting evil facts up into a kind of outdoors in our minds and in giving them room to exercise in our thoughts and feelings1 the optimism that consists in having one's brain move vigorously through disagreeable facts--organize them into the other facts with which they belong and with which they work--is worthy of consideration4 ,many of us1 who have tried optimism and pessimism both1 have noticed certain things4 ,when one is being pessimistic1 one almost always has the feeling of being rather clever4 ,it is forced upon one a little1 of course1 having all those other people about one stodgily standing up for people and not really seeing through them6 ,so1 though one ought not to1 one does feel a little superior--even with the best intentions--when one is being discouraged4 ,but the trouble with pessimism is that it is only at the moment when one is having it that one really enjoys it1 or feels in this way about it4 ,perhaps ,i should not undertake to speak for others1 and should only speak for myself2 but ,i can only bear witness1 for one1 that every time in my life that ,i have broken through the surface a little1 and seen through to the evil1 and found myself suddenly and astutely discouraged1 ,i have found afterward that all ,i had to do was to see the same thing a little farther over1 set it in the light beyond it1 and look at it in larger or more full relations1 and ,i was no longer astutely discouraged4 ,so ,i have come to believe slowly and grimly that feeling discouraged about the world is not quite clever4 ,i have noticed it1 too1 in watching other people--men ,i know4 ,if ,i could take all the men ,i know who are living and acting as if they believed big things about people to-day1 men who are daily taking for granted great things in human nature1 and put them in one group by themselves all together1 and if ,i could then take all the men ,i know who are taking little things for granted in one another and in human nature1 ,i do not believe very many people would find it hard to tell which group would be more clever4 ,possibly the reason more of us do not spend more time in being hopeful about the world is that it takes more brains usually than we happen to have at the moment4 ,hope may be said to be an act of the brain in which it sees facts in relations large enough to see what they are for1 an act in which it insists in a given case upon giving the facts room enough to turn around and to relate themselves to one another1 and settle down where they belong in one's mind1 the way they would in real time4 ,so now1 at last1 ,gentle ,reader1 having looked back and having looked forward1 ,i know the way ,i am going4 ,i am going to hope4 ,it is the only way to see through things4 ,the only way to dare to see through ones' self2 the only way to see through other people and to see past them1 and to see with them and for them--is to hope4 ,so ,i am putting the challenge to the reader1 in this book1 as ,i have put it to myself4 ,there are four questions with which day by day we stand face to face3 #a4 ,does human nature change8 #b4 ,does it change toward a larger and longer vision8 #c4 ,will not a larger and longer vision mean new kinds and new sizes of men8 #d4 ,will not new sizes of men make new-sized ethics practical and make a new world8 ,everything depends for every man upon this planet1 at this moment1 on how he decides these questions4 ,if he says ,yes1 he will live one kind of life1 he will live up to his world4 ,if he says ,no1 he will have a mean world1 smaller-minded than he is himself1 and he will live down to it4 ,this is what the common run of men about us--the men of less creative type in literature1 in business1 and in politics--are doing4 ,they do not believe human nature is changing4 ,they are living down to a world that is going by4 ,they are living down to a world that is smaller than they are themselves4 ,they are trying to make others do it4 ,they answer the question ,does human nature change8 by ,no6 ,wilbur ,wright1 when he flew around over the heads of the people in ,new ,york a few years ago1 a black speck above a whole city with its heads up1 answered ,yes6 ,but the real importance of the flying machine has not stopped short with a little delicate1 graceful thing like walking on the air instead of the ground4 ,the big and really revolutionary thing about ,wilbur ,wright's flying was that he changed the minds of the whole human race in a few minutes about one thing4 ,there was one particular thing that for forty thousand years they knew they could not do4 ,and now they knew they could4 ,it naturally follows--and it lies in the mind of every man who lives--that there must be other particular things4 ,and as nine men out of ten are in business1 most of these particular things are going to be done in business4 ,the ,wilbur ,wright spirit is catching4 ,it is as if a ,lid had been lifted off the world4 ,one sees everywhere business men going about the street expecting new things of themselves4 ,they expect things of the very ground1 and of the air1 and of one another they had not dared expect before4 ,the other day in a ,new ,england city ,i saw a man1 who had been the president of an ,electric ,light ,company for twenty years1 who had invented a public service corporation that worked4 ,since he took office and dictated the policy of the ,company1 every single overture for more expensive equipment in the electric lighting of the city has come from the ,company1 and every single overture for reducing the rate to consumers has come from the company4 ,the consumption of electricity in the city is the largest per capita in the world1 and the rate is the cheapest in the country2 and1 incidentally1 the ,company so trusts the people that they let them have electricity without metres1 and the people so trust the ,company that they save its electricity as they would their own4 ,even the man without a conscience1 who would be mean if he could1 is brought to terms1 and knows that if he refrains from leaving his lights burning all night when he goes to bed he is not merely saving the ,company's electricity but his own4 ,he knows that he is reducing his own and everybody's price for electricity1 and not merely increasing the profits of the ,company4 ,it makes another kind of man slowly out of thousands of men every day1 every night1 turning on and turning off their lights4 ,the ,electric ,light ,company has come to have a daily1 an almost hourly1 influence on the way men do business and go about their work in that city--the motives and assumptions with which they bargain with one another--that might be envied by twenty churches4 ,all that had happened was that a man with a powerful1 quietly wilful personality--the kind that went on crusades and took cities in other ages--had appeared at last1 and proposed to do the same sort of thing in business4 ,he proposed to express his soul1 just as it was1 in business the way other people had expressed theirs for a few hundred years in poetry or more easy and conventional ways4 ,if he could not have made the electric light business say the things about people and about himself that he liked and that he believed1 he would have had to make some other business say them4 ,one of the things he had most wanted to say and prove in business was the economic value of being human1 the enormous business saving that could be effected by being believed in4 ,he preferred being believed in himself1 in business1 and he knew other people would prefer it2 and he was sure that if1 as people said1 being believed in did not pay1 it must be because ways of inventing faith in people1 the technique of trust1 had not been invented4 ,he found himself invited to take charge of the ,electric ,light ,company at a time when it was insolvent and in disgrace with the people1 and he took the ,corporation in hand on the specific understanding that he should be allowed to put his soul into it1 that he should be allowed his own way for three years--in believing in people1 and in inventing ways of getting believed in as much as he liked4 ,the last time ,i saw him1 though he is old and nearly blind1 and while as he talked there lay a darkness on his eyes1 there was a great light in his face4 ,he had besieged a city with the shrewdness of his faith1 and conquered a hundred thousand men by believing in them more than they could4 ,by believing in them shrewdly1 and by thinking out ways of expressing that belief1 he had invented a ,corporation--a ,public ,service ,corporation--that had a soul1 and consequently worked4 ,,book ,,two ,,letting ,,the ,,crowds ,,be ,,good ,,to ,,abraham ,,lincoln ,they stay not in their hold ,these stokers1 ,stooping to hell ,to feed a ship4 ,below the ocean floors4 ,before their awful doors ,bathed in flame1 ,i hear their human lives ,drip--drip4 ,through the lolling aisles of comrades ,in and out of sleep1 ,troops of faces ,to and fro of happy feet1 ,they haunt my eyes4 ,their murky faces beckon me ,from the spaces of the coolness of the sea ,their fitful bodies away against the skies4 ,,chapter ,i ,,speaking ,,as ,,one ,,of ,,the ,,crowd ,it is a little awkward to say what ,i am going to say now4 ,probably it will be still more awkward afterward4 ,but ,i find as ,i go up and down the world and look in the faces of the crowds in it1 that it is true1 and ,i can only tell as it is4 ,i want to be good4 ,and ,i do not want to go up on a mountain to do it1 or to slink off and live all alone on an island in the sea4 ,i go a step further4 ,i believe that the crowds want to be good4 ,but ,i cannot prove that people want to be good in crowds1 and so for the sake of the argument1 and to make the case as simple as possible1 ,i am going to give up speaking for crowds1 and speak for myself as one member of the crowd and for ,lim4 ,lim and ,i 7and ,lim is a business man and not a mere author7 have had long talks in which we have confided to each other what we think this world1 in spite of appearances1 is really like1 and we have come to a kind of provisional program and to a definite agreement on our two main points4 #a4 ,we want to be good4 #b4 ,we want other people to be good1 partly as a matter of convenience for us1 partly for morally aesthetic reasons1 and partly because we want to be in a kind of world where what is good in us works4 ,the next point in our confession follows from this4 ,it is an awkward and exposed thing to say out loud to people in general1 but #c4 ,lim and ,i want to make over the earth4 #d4 ,sitting down grimly by ourselves1 all alone1 and believing in a world hard1 with our eyes shut1 does not interest us4 ,it is this particular planet just as it is that interests us1 in its present hopeful1 squirming state4 ,it does not seem to us to the point just now to conceive some brand new1 clean1 slick planet up in space1 with crowds of perfect and convenient people on it1 and then expect to lay it down in the night like a great1 soft1 beautiful dew or ideal on this one4 ,we want to take this heavy1 inconvenient1 cumbersome1 real planet that we have1 and see what can be done with it1 and by the people on it1 what can be done by these same people1 whose signs one goes by down the street1 with ,smith ,smith1 ,gowns1 with ,clapp ,clapp1 ,butchers1 with ,w4,h4 ,riley ,co41 ,plumbers and ,gas ,fitters1 and with things that real people are really doing4 ,the things that real people are really doing1 when one thinks of it1 are ,soap1 ,tooth-brushes1 ,subsoil ,pipes1 ,wall ,papers1 ,razors1 ,mattresses1 ,suspenders1 ,tiles1 ,shoes1 ,pots1 and ,kettles4 ,of course the first thing that happened to us1 to ,lim and to me 7as any one might guess1 in a little quiet job like making over the earth71 was that we found we had to begin with ourselves4 ,we did4 ,we are obliged to admit that1 as a matter of fact1 we began1 owing to circumstances1 in a kind of rudimentary way with the idea of getting people to take up goodness by talking about it4 ,but we are reformed preachers now4 ,we seldom backslide into talking to people about goodness4 ,we have made up our minds to lie low and keep still and show them some4 ,of course one ought to have some of one's own to show4 ,but the trouble always is1 if it is really good1 one is sure not to know it1 or at least one does not know which it is4 ,the best we can do with goodness1 some of us1 if we want it to show more quickly or to hurry people along in goodness more1 is to show them other people's4 ,i sometimes think that if everybody in the world could know my plumber or pay a bill to him1 the world would soon begin slowly but surely to be a very different place4 ,my plumber is a genius4 ,,chapter ,,ii ,,is ,,it ,,wrong ,,for ,,good ,,people ,,to ,,be ,,efficient8 ,perhaps it will seem a pity to spoil a book--one that might have been really rather interesting--by putting the word goodness down flatly in this way in the middle of it4 ,and in a book which deals with crowds1 too1 and with business4 ,i would not yield first place to any one in being tired of the word4 ,i think1 for one1 that unless there is something we can do to it1 and something we can do to it now1 it had better be dropped4 ,but ,i have sometimes discovered when ,i had thought ,i was tired of a word1 that what ,i was really tired of was somebody who was using it4 ,i do not mind it when my plumber uses it4 ,i have heard him use it 7and swearing softly1 ,i regret to say7 when it affected me like a ,hymn ,tune4 ,and there is ,non1 too4 ,i first made ,non's acquaintance as our train pulled out of ,new ,york1 and we found ourselves going down together on ,friday afternoon to spend ,sunday with ,m---- in ,north ,carolina4 ,the first thing he said was1 when we were seated in the ,pullman comfortably watching that big1 still world under glass roll by outside1 that he had broken an engagement with his wife to come4 ,she was giving a ,tea1 he said1 that afternoon1 and he had faithfully promised to be there4 ,but a weekend in ,north ,carolina appealed to him1 and afternoon tea--well1 he explained to me1 crossing his legs and beaming at me all over as if he were a whole genial1 successful afternoon tea all by himself--afternoon tea did not appeal to him4 ,he thought probably he was a ,non-,gregarious ,person4 ,as he was the gusto of our little party and fairly reeked with sociability1 and was in a kind of orgy of gregariousness every minute all the way to ,wilmington 7even when he was asleep we heard from him71 we called him the ,non-,gregarious ,person1 and every time he piled on one more story1 we reminded him how non-gregarious he was4 ,we called him ,non-,gregarious all the way after that--,non for short4 ,this is the way ,i became acquainted with ,non4 ,it has been ,non ever since4 99 99 99 99 99 ,i found in the course of the next three days that when ,non was not being the life of the party or the party did not need any more life for a while1 and we had gone off by ourselves1 he became1 like most people who let themselves go1 a very serious person4 ,when he talked about his business1 he was even religious4 ,not that he had any particular vocabulary for being religious1 but there was something about him when he spoke of business--his own business--that almost startled me at first4 ,he always seemed to be regarding his business when he spoke of it as being1 for all practical purposes1 a kind of little religion by itself4 ,now ,non is a builder or contractor4 99 99 99 99 99 ,for many years now the best way to make a pessimist or a confirmed infidel out of anybody has been to get him to build a house4 ,no better arrangement for not believing in more people1 and for not believing in more kinds of people at once and for life1 has ever been invented probably than building a house4 ,no man has been educated1 or has been really tested in this world1 until he has built a house4 ,i submit this proposition to anybody who has tried it1 or to any one who is going to try it4 ,there is not a single kind or type of man who sooner or later will not build himself1 and nearly everything that is the matter with him1 into your house4 ,the house becomes a kind of miniature model 7such as they have in expositions7 of what is the matter with people4 ,you enter the door1 you walk inside and brood over them4 ,everything you come upon1 from the white cellar floor to the timbers you bump your head on in the roof1 reminds you of something or of rows of people and of what is the matter with them4 ,it is the new houses that are haunted now4 ,any man who is sensitive to houses and to people and who would sit down in his house when it is finished and look about in it seriously1 and think of all the people that have been built1 in solid wood and stone1 into it1 would get up softly and steal out of it1 out of the front door of it1 and never enter that house again4 ,this is what ,non saw4 ,he saw how people felt about their houses1 and how they lived in them helplessly and angrily year after year1 and felt hateful about the world4 ,i gradually drew out of him the way he felt about it4 ,i found he was not as good as some people are at talking about himself1 but the subject was interesting4 ,he began his career building houses for people1 as nearly every one does4 ,the general idea is that everybody is expected to exact commissions from everybody else1 and the owner is expected to pay each man his own commission and then pay all the commissions that each man has charged the other man4 ,every house that got built in this way seemed to be a kind of network or conspiracy of not doing as you would be done by4 ,non did not see any way out at first1 just for one man4 ,he merely noticed how things were going1 and he noticed that nearly every person that he had dealings with1 from the bottom to the top of the house1 seemed to make him feel that he either was1 or would be1 or ought to be1 a grafter4 ,he could not so much as look at a house he had built1 through the trees when he was going by1 without wishing he could be a better man1 and studying on how it could be managed4 ,his own first houses made him see things4 ,they proved to be the making of him1 and if similar houses have not made similar men1 it is their fault4 ,it might not be reassuring to the men who are now living in these first houses to dwell too much on this 7and ,i might say he did not build them alone71 but it seems to be necessary to bring out the most striking thing about ,non in his first stage as a business man1 viz43 ,he hated his business4 ,he made up his mind he either would make the business the kind of business he liked or get out of it4 ,i did not gather from the way he talked about it that he had any idea of being an uplifter4 ,he merely had1 apparently1 an obstinate1 doggedly comfortable idea about himself1 and about what a thing would have to be1 in this world1 if he was connected with it4 ,he proposed to enjoy his business4 ,he was spending most of his time at it4 ,other people have had this same happy thought1 but they seem to manage to keep on being patient4 ,non could not fall back on being patient1 and it made him think harder4 ,the first thing he thought of was that doing his business as he thought he ought to1 if he once worked his idea out1 and worked it down through and organized it1 might pay4 ,he almost had the belief that people might pay a man a little extra1 perhaps1 for enjoying his business4 ,it cannot be said that he believed this immediately4 ,he merely wanted to1 and worked toward it1 and merely contrived new shrewd ways at first of being able to afford it4 ,gradually he began to notice that the more he enjoyed his business1 the more he enjoyed it with his whole soul and body1 enjoyed it down to the very toes of his conscience1 the more people there were who stepped into his office and wanted him to enjoy his business on their houses4 ,it was what they had been looking for for years--for some builder who was really enjoying his business4 ,and the more he enjoyed his business in his own particular way--that of building a house for a man in less time than he said he would1 and for less money1 not infrequently sending him a check at the end of it--the more his business grew4 ,i do not know that there would be any special harm in speaking of ,non's idea--of just doing as you would be done by--in more moral or religious language1 but it is not necessary4 ,and ,i find ,i take an almost religious joy in looking at the ,golden ,rule at last as a plain business proposition4 ,all that happened was that ,non was original1 saw something that everybody thought they knew1 and acted as if it were so4 ,theoretically one would not have said that it would be original to take an old platitudinous law like the law of supply and demand1 and act as if it were so2 but it was4 ,at the time ,non was beginning his career there was nothing in the building-market people found harder to hire than honesty4 ,here was something1 he saw at last1 that thousands of busy and important men who did not have time to be detectives1 wanted4 ,there did not seem to be any one very actively supplying the demand4 ,a big market1 a small supply1 and almost no competition4 ,non stepped in and proposed to represent a man's interest who is building a house as literally as the man would represent his interests himself1 if he knew all about houses4 ,everything has followed from this4 ,what ,non's business is now1 when a man is building a house1 is to step quietly into the man's shoes1 let him put on another pair1 and go about his business4 ,it is not necessary to go into the details4 ,any reader who has ever built a house knows the details4 ,just take them and turn them around4 ,what those of us who know ,non best like about him is that he is a plain business man1 and that he has acted in this particular matter without any fine moral frills or remarks4 ,he has done the thing because he liked it and believed in it4 ,but the most efficient thing to me about ,non is not the way he is making money out of saving money for other people1 but the way the fact that he can do it makes people feel about the world4 ,whenever ,i have a little space of discouragement or of impatience about the world because it does not hurry more1 ,i fall to thinking of ,non4 ,perhaps next week--,i say to myself cheerfully--,i can go down to ,new ,york and slip into ,non's office and get the latest news as to how religion is getting on4 ,or he will take me out with him to lunch1 and ,i will stop scolding or idealizing1 and we will get down to business1 and ,i will take a good long look into that steady-lighted1 unsentimental face of his while he tells me across the little corner table at ,delmonico's for three hours how shrewd the ,golden ,rule is1 and how it works4 ,sometimes when ,i have just been in ,new ,york1 and have come home and am sitting in my still study1 with the big idle mountain just outside1 and the great meadow and all the world1 like some great1 calm gentle spirit or picture of itself1 lying out there about me1 and ,i fall to thinking of ,non1 and of how he is working in wood and stone inside of people's houses1 and inside of their lives day after day1 and of how he is touching people at a thousand points all the weeks1 being a writer1 making lights and shadows and little visions of words fall together just so1 seems1 suddenly a very trivial occupation--like amusing one's self with a pretty little safe kaleidoscope1 holding it up1 aiming it and shaking softly one's coloured bits of phrases at a world6 ,of course1 it need not be so4 ,but there are moments when ,i think of ,non when it seems so4 ,in our regular ,sunday religion we do not seem to be quite at our best just now4 ,at least 7perhaps ,i should speak for one7 ,i know ,i am not4 ,being a saint of late is getting to be a kind of homely1 modest1 informal1 almost menial everyday thing4 ,it makes one more hopeful about religion4 ,perhaps people who once get the habit1 and who are being good all the week1 can even be good on ,sunday4 ,there are many ways of resting or leaning back upon one's instincts and getting over to one's religion or perspective about the world4 ,mount ,tom 7which is in my front yard1 in ,massachusetts7 helps sometimes--with a single look4 ,when ,i go down to ,new ,york1 ,i look at the ,metropolitan ,tower1 the ,pennsylvania ,station1 the ,mc,adoo ,tunnels1 and at ,non4 ,if ,i wanted to make anybody religious1 ,i would try to get him to work in ,non's office1 or work with anybody who ever worked with him1 or who ever saw him2 or ,i would have him live in a house built by him1 or pay a bill made out by him4 ,it has seemed to me that his succeeding and making himself succeed in this way is a great spiritual adventure1 a pure religion1 a difficult1 fresh1 and stupendous religion4 ,now these many days have ,i watched him going up and down through all the empty reputations1 the unmeaning noises of the world1 living his life like some low1 old-fashioned1 modest ,hymn ,tune he keeps whistling--and ,i have seen him in fear1 and in danger1 and in gladness being shrewder and shrewder for ,god1 now grimly1 now radiantly1 hour by hour1 day by day getting rich with the ,holy ,ghost6 ,,chapter ,,iii ,,is ,,it ,,wrong ,,for ,,good ,,people ,,to ,,be ,,interesting8 ,people are acquiring automobiles1 ,oriental rugs1 five-hundred-dollar gowns1 more rapidly just now than they are goodness1 because advertisements in this present generation are more readable than sermons1 and because the shop windows on ,fifth ,avenue can attract more attention than the churches4 ,the shop windows make people covetous4 ,if the goodness that one sees1 hears about1 or goes by does not make other people covetous1 does not make them wish they had it or some just like it1 it must be because there is something the matter with it1 or something the matter with the way it is displayed4 ,if the church shop windows1 for instance1 were to make displays of goodness up and down the great ,moral ,fifth ,avenue of the world--well1 one does not know2 but there are some of us who would rather expect to see the ,goodness ,display in the windows consisting largely of ,things ,people ,ought ,not to ,want4 ,there would be rows and tiers of ,not-,things piled up--,things for ,people ,not to ,be1 and ,things for ,people ,not to ,do4 ,goodness displayed in this way is not interesting4 ,perhaps this is one of the reasons why the word ,goodness spoils a thing for people--so many people--when it is allowed in it4 ,possibly it is because we are apt to think of the good people1 and of the people who are being good1 as largely keeping from doing something1 or as keeping other people from doing something--as negative4 ,their goodness seems to consist in being morally accurate1 and in being very particular just in time1 and in a kind of general holding in4 ,we do not naturally or off-hand--any of us--think of goodness as having much of a lunge to it4 ,it is tired-looking and discouraged1 and pulls back kindly and gently4 ,or it teases and says1 ,please--,god knows how helpless it is1 and ,i for one am frank to say that1 as far as ,i have observed1 ,he has not been paying very much attention to good people of late4 ,i do not believe ,i am alone in this4 ,there must be thousands of others who have this same half-guilty1 half-defiant feeling of suspiciousness toward what people seem to think should be called goodness4 ,not that we say anything4 ,we merely keep wondering--we cannot see what it is1 exactly1 about goodness that should make it so depressing4 ,in the meantime we hold on4 ,we do not propose to give up believing in it4 ,perhaps1 after all1 all that is the matter with goodness in the ,united ,states is the people who have taken hold of it4 ,they do not seem to be the kind of people who can make it interesting4 ,we cannot help thinking1 if these same bad people about us1 or people who are called bad1 would only take up goodness awhile1 how they would make it hum6 ,i can only speak for one1 but ,i do not deny that when ,i have been sitting 7in some churches71 or associating1 owing to circumstances1 with very good people a little longer than usual1 and come out into the street1 ,i feel like stepping up sometimes to the first fine1 brisk1 businesslike man ,i see going by1 and saying1 ,my dear sir1 ,i do wish that you would take up goodness awhile and see if1 after all1 something cannot really be done4 ,i keep on trying to be hopeful1 but these dear good people in here1 it seems to me1 are making a terrible mess of it6 ,and1 to make a long story short1 ,lim happened to be going by one day1 and this practically is what ,i did4 ,i had done it before with other business men in spirit or in a general way1 but with him ,i was more particular4 ,i went straight to the point4 ,here are at least sixteen valuable efficient brands of goodness in ,america1 ,i said1 all worth their weight in gold for a big business career1 that no one is really using1 that no one quite believes in or can get on the market1 and yet ,i believe with my whole soul in them all1 and ,i believe thousands of other men do1 or are ready to1 the moment some one makes a start4 ,i pulled out a little list of items which ,i had made out and put down on a piece of paper1 and handed them over to him1 and said ,i wished he would take a few of them--the first five or six or so--and make them work4 ,he already had1 ,i found1 made two or three of the harder ones work4 ,i would not have any one suppose for a moment that ,i am presenting ,lim as a kind of business angel4 ,no one who knows ,lim thinks of him1 or would let anybody else think of him1 as being a ,select ,person1 as being particularly or egregiously what he ought to be4 ,this is one reason ,i have picked him out4 ,being good in a small private way1 just as a small private end in itself1 may be practicable perhaps without dragging in people who are not quite what they ought to be4 ,but the moment one tries to make goodness work1 one comes to the fact that it must be made to work with what we have4 ,we have a great crowd of unselected people1 people both good and bad1 and the first principle in making goodness work 7instead of being merely good7 seems to be to believe that goodness is not too good for anybody4 ,anybody who can make it work can have it1 and what goodness seems to need1 especially in ,america and ,england just now1 is people who do not feel that they must at all hazards look good4 ,whatever happens1 whatever else we do in any general investment or movement we may be making with goodness1 we must let these people in4 ,if there is one thing rather than another that those of us who know ,lim all rely on and like1 it is that nothing can ever make him slump down into looking good4 ,we often find him hard to make out--everything is left open and loose and unlabelled in ,lim's moral nature4 ,the only really sure way any one can tell when ,lim is being good is1 that whenever he is being good he becomes suddenly and unexpectedly interesting4 ,his goodness is daring1 unexpected1 and original4 ,one has the feeling that it may break out anywhere4 ,it is always doing things that everybody said could not be done before4 ,it is true that some people are dazed1 and no one can ever seem to feel sure he knows what it is that is going on in ,lim when he is being good1 or that it is goodness4 ,he merely keeps watching it4 ,there is a certain element of news1 of freshness1 of gentle sensation1 in his goodness4 ,it leads to consequences4 ,and there always seems to be something about ,lim's goodness which attracts the attention of people1 and makes people who see it want it4 ,so when ,i speak of goodness in this book1 and put it down as the basis of the power of getting men to do as one likes1 ,i do not deny that ,i am taking the word away and moving it over from its usual associations4 ,i do not mean by a good act1 a good-looking act1 but an act so constituted that it makes good4 ,for the purpose of this book ,i would define goodness as efficiency4 ,goodness is the quality in a thing that makes the thing go1 and that makes it go so that it will not run down1 and that nothing can stop it4 ,there is the inefficiency of lying1 for instance1 and the inefficiency of force1 or bullying4 ,,chapter ,,iv ,,prospects ,,of ,,the ,,liar ,my theory about the ,liar is that it is of no use to scold him or blame him4 ,it merely makes him feel superior4 ,he should be looked upon quietly and without saying anything as a case of arrested development4 ,what has happened to him is that he merely is not quite bright about himself1 and has failed to see how bright 7in the long run7 other people are4 ,when a man lies or does any other wrong thing1 his real failure consists not in the wrongdoing itself1 but in his failure to take pains to focus his mind on the facts in himself1 and in the people about him1 and see what it really is that he would wish he had done1 say in twenty years4 ,it seems to be possible1 after a clumsy fashion1 to find out by a study of ourselves1 and of our own lives and of other men's lives1 what we would wish we had done afterward4 ,everything we have learned so far we have learned by guessing wrong on what we have thought we would want afterward4 ,we have gradually guessed what we wanted better4 ,we began our lives as children with all sorts of interesting sins or moral guesses and experiments4 ,we find there are certain sins or moral experiments we almost never use any more because we found that they never worked4 ,we had been deceived about them4 ,most of us have tried lying4 ,since we were very small we have tried in every possible fashion--now in one way1 now in another--to see if lying could not be made to work4 ,by far the majority of us1 and all of us who are the most intelligent1 are not deceived now by our desire to tell lies4 ,perhaps we have not learned that all lies do not pay4 ,a child tells a lie at first as if a lie had never been thought of before4 ,it is as if lying had just been invented1 and he had just thought what a great convenience it was1 and how many things there were that he could do in that way4 ,he discovers that the particular thing he wants at the moment1 he gets very often by lying4 ,but the next time he lies1 he cannot get anything4 ,if he keeps on lying for a long time1 he learns that while1 after a fashion1 he is getting things1 he is losing people4 ,finally1 he finds he cannot even get things4 ,nobody believes in him or trusts him4 ,he cannot be efficient4 ,he then decides that being trusted1 and having people who feel safe to associate with him and to do business with him1 is the thing he really wants most2 and that he must have first1 even if it is only a way to get the other things he wants4 ,it need not be wondered that the ,trusts1 those huge raw youngsters of the modern spirit1 have had to go through with most of the things other boys have4 ,the ,trusts have had to go through1 one after the other1 all their children's diseases1 and try their funny little moral experiments on the world4 ,they thought they could lie at first4 ,they thought it would be cunning1 and that it would work4 ,they did not realize at once that the bigger a boy you were1 even if you were anonymous1 the more your lie showed and the more people there were who suffered from it who would be bound sooner or later to call you to account for it4 ,the ,trusts have been guessing wrong on what they would wish they had done in twenty years1 and the best of them now are trying to guess better4 ,they are trying to acquire prestige by being far-sighted for themselves and far-sighted for the people who deal with them1 and are resting their policy on winning confidence and on keeping faith with the people4 ,they not only tried lying1 like all young children1 but they tried stealing4 ,for years the big corporations could be seen going around from one big innocent city in this country to another1 and standing by quietly and without saying a word1 putting the streets in their pockets4 ,but no big corporation of the first class to-day would begin its connection with a city in this fashion4 ,beginning a permanent business relation with a customer by making him sorry afterward he has had any dealings with you1 has gone by as a method of getting business in ,england and ,america4 ,one of our big ,american magazines not long ago1 which had gained especially high rates from its advertisers because they believed in it1 lied about its circulation4 ,the man who was responsible was not precisely sure1 gave nominal figures in round numbers1 and did what magazines very commonly did under the circumstances2 but when the magazine owner looked up details afterward and learned precisely what the circulation was for the particular issue concerned1 he sent out announcements to every firm in the country that had anything in the columns of that issue1 saying that the firm had lied1 and enclosing a check for the difference in value represented4 ,of course it was a good stroke of business1 eating national humble pie so1 and it was a cheap stroke of business too1 doing some one1 sudden1 striking thing that no one would forget4 ,not an advertisement could be inserted and paid for in the magazine for years without having that action1 and the prestige of that action1 back of it4 ,every shred of virtue there was in the action could have been set one side1 and was set one side by many people1 because it paid so well4 ,every one saw suddenly1 and with a faint breath of astonishment1 how honesty worked4 ,but the main point about the magazine in distinction from its competitors seems to have been that it not merely saw how honesty worked1 but it saw it first and it had the originality1 the moral shrewdness and courage1 to put up money on it4 ,it believed in honesty so hard that suddenly one morning1 before all the world1 it risked its entire fortune on it4 ,now that it has been done once1 the new level or standard of candour may be said to have been established which others will have to follow4 ,but it does not seem to me that the kind of man who has the moral originality to dare do a thing like this first need ever have any serious trouble with competitors4 ,in the last analysis1 in the competition of modern business to get the crowd1 the big success is bound to come to men in the one region of competition where competition still has some give in it--the region of moral originality4 ,other things in competition nowadays have all been thought of except being good4 ,any man who can and will to-day think out new and unlooked-for ways of being good can get ahead1 in the ,united ,states of practically everybody4 ,,chapter ,v ,,prospects ,,of ,,the ,,bully ,the stage properties that go with a bully change as we grow older4 ,when one thinks of a bully1 one usually sees a picture at once in one's mind4 ,it is a big boy lording it over a little one1 or getting him down and sitting on him4 ,everybody recognizes what is going on immediately1 pitches in nobly and beautifully1 and licks the big boy4 ,the trouble with the bully in business has been that he is not so simple and easy to recognize4 ,he is apt to be more or less anonymous and impersonal1 and it is harder to hit him in the right place4 ,but when one thinks of it perhaps this pleasant and inspiring duty is not so impracticable as it looks1 and is presently to be attended to4 ,any man who relies1 in getting what he wants1 on being big instead of being right1 is a bully4 ,modern business is done over a wide area1 with thousands of persons looking on1 and for a long time and with thousands of people coming back4 ,the man who relies on being big instead of being right1 and who takes advantage of his position instead of his inherent superiority1 is soon seen through4 ,his customers go over to the enemy4 ,a show of force or a hold-up works very well at the moment4 ,being bigger may be more showy than being right1 and it may down the ,little ,boy1 but the ,little ,boy wins the crowd4 ,business to-day consists in persuading crowds4 ,the ,little ,boy can prove he is right4 ,all the bully can prove is that he is bigger4 ,the ,liar in ,business is already going by4 ,now it is the turn of the bully4 ,not long ago a few advertisers in a big ,american city wanted unfairly low rates for advertisements and tried to use force with the newspapers4 ,three or four of the biggest shops combined and gave notice that they would take their advertising away unless the rates came down4 ,after a little1 they drew in a few other lines of business with them1 and suddenly one morning five or six full pages of advertisements were withdrawn from every newspaper in the city4 ,the newspapers went on publishing all the news of the city except news as to what people could buy in department stores1 and waited4 ,they made no counter-move of any kind1 and said nothing and seven days slipped past4 ,they held to the claim that the service they performed in connecting the great stores with the people of the city was a real service1 that it represented market value which could be proved and paid for4 ,they kept on for another week publishing for the people all the news of the city except the news as to how they could spend their money4 ,they wondered how long it would take the great shops with acres of things to sell to see how it would work not to let anybody know what the things were4 ,the great shops tried other ways of letting people know4 ,they tried handbills1 a huge helpless patter of them over all the city4 ,they used billboards1 and posted huge lists of items for people to stop and read in the streets1 if they wanted to1 while they rushed by4 ,for three whole weeks they held on tight to the idea that the newspapers were striking employees of department stores4 ,one would have thought that they would have seen that the newspapers were the representatives of the people--almost the homes of the people--and that it would pay to treat them respectfully4 ,one would have thought they would have seen that if they wanted space in the homes of the people--places at their very breakfast tables--space that the newspapers had earned and acquired there1 they would have to pay their share of what it had cost the newspapers to get it4 ,one would have thought that the department shops would have seen that the more they could make the newspapers prosper1 the more influence the newspapers would have in the homes of the people1 and the more business they could get through them4 ,but it was not until the shopowners had come down and gazed day after day on the big1 white1 lonely floors of their shops that they saw the truth4 ,crowds stayed away1 and proved it to them4 ,namely3 a store1 if it uses a great newspaper1 instead of having a few feet of show windows on a street for people to walk by1 gets practically miles of show windows for people--in their own houses--sells its goods almost any morning to the people--to a whole city--before anybody gets up from breakfast--has its duties as well as its rights4 ,of course1 when the shopkeepers really saw that this was what the newspapers had been doing for them1 they wanted to do what was right1 and wanted to pay for it4 ,one would have thought1 looking at it theoretically1 that the department stores in any city would have imagination enough to see1 without practically having to shut their stores up for three weeks1 what advertising was worth4 ,but if great department stores do not have imagination to see what they would wish they had done in twenty years1 in one year1 or three weeks1 and have to spell out the experience morning by morning and see what works1 word by word1 they do learn in the end that being right works1 and that bullying does not4 ,gradually the level or standard of right in business is bound to rise1 until people have generally come to take the ,golden ,rule with the literalness and seriousness that the best and biggest men are already taking it4 ,department stores that have the moral originality and imagination to guess what people would wish they had bought of them and what they would wish they had sold to them afterward are going to win4 ,department stores that deal with their customers three or four years ahead are the ones that win first4 ,,chapter ,,vi ,,goodness ,,as ,a ,,crowd-,,process ,the basis of successful business is imagination about other people4 ,the best way to train one's imagination about other people is to try different ways of being of service to them4 ,trying different ways of merely getting money out of them does not train the imagination4 ,it is too easy4 ,business is going to be before long among the noblest of the professions1 because it takes the highest order of imagination to succeed in it4 ,goodness is no longer a ,sunday school4 ,the whole world1 in a rough way1 is its own ,sunday school4 ,to have the most brains render the most service--render services people had never dreamed of before4 ,why bother to tell people to be good8 ,it bores us4 ,it bores them4 ,presently we will tell them over our shoulders1 as we go by1 to use their brains4 ,goodness is a by-product of efficiency4 ,being good every day in business stands in no need of being stood up for1 or apologized for1 or even helped4 ,all of these things may be expedient and human and natural1 because one cannot help being interested in particular people and in a particular generation2 but they are not really necessary to goodness4 ,it is only when we are tired1 or when we only half believe in it1 that we feel to-day that goodness needs to be stood up for4 ,in a day when men make vast crowds of things1 so that the things are seen everywhere1 and when the things are made to stand the test of crowds--crowds of days1 or crowds of years--and when they make them for crowds of people1 goodness does not need scared and helpful people defending it4 ,i have seen that goodness is a thing to be sung about like a sunset4 ,i have seen that goodness is organic1 and grounded in the nature of things and in the nature of man4 ,i have seen that being good is the one great adventure of the world1 the huge daily passionate moral experiment of the human heart--that all men are at work on it1 that goodness is an implacable crowd process1 and that nothing can stop it4 ,,chapter ,,vii ,,thoughts ,,on ,,being ,,improved ,,by ,,other ,,people ,but ,fate has so arranged our lives that we all have to live cooped up in one particular generation4 ,living in all of them1 especially the ages just ahead1 and seeing as one looks out upon them how goodness wins1 may be well enough when one is tired or discouraged and is driven to it1 but in the meantime all the while we are living in this one4 ,the faces of the people we know flit past us2 the gaunt1 grim face of the crowd haunts us--the crowd that will slip softly off the earth very soon and drop into the ,darkness--a whole generation of it1 without seeing how things are coming out2 and there is something about the streets1 about the look of women as they go by1 something about the faces of the little children1 that makes one wish goodness would hurry4 ,one cannot think with any real pleasure of goodness as a huge1 slow1 implacable moral glacier1 a kind of human force of gravity1 grinding out truths and grinding under people1 generation after generation1 down toward some vast1 beautiful1 happy valley with flowers and children in it and majestic old men thousands of years away4 ,one wishes goodness would hurry4 ,we are not content1 some of us1 with having the good people climb over the so-called evil ones and gain the supremacy of the world1 and all because the evil people do not see what they really want to do or would have wished they had done afterward4 ,we want the evil ones1 so called1 to see what they really want now4 ,we cannot help believing that there is some way of attracting their attention to what they really want now4 ,i have seen1 or seemed to see1 in my time that there is almost no limit to what people can do if they can get their own attention1 or if some person or some event will happen by that can get their attention for them4 ,paralytics jumped from their beds at the time of the ,san ,francisco earthquake and ran for blocks4 ,the whole earth had to shake them in order to get their attention2 but it did it1 and they saw what it was they wanted1 and they ran for it at once1 whether they were paralytics or not4 ,in the fire that followed the earthquake1 people that had been sick in bed for weeks were seen1 scores of them1 dragging their trunks through the streets4 ,i have seen1 too1 in my time scores of people doing great feats of goodness in this way1 things that they knew they could not do1 dragging huge moral trunks after them1 or swinging them up on their shoulders4 ,i have seen men who thought they were old in their hearts1 and who thought they were wicked1 running like boys1 with shouts and cheers1 to do right4 ,it was all a matter of attention4 ,the question with most of us would seem to be3 ,how can one get one's attention to what one would wish one had done in twenty years1 and how can one get other people's--all the people with whom we are living and working--to do with us what they would wish they had done1 in twenty minutes1 twenty days1 or twenty years8 ,letting the ,crowd be ,good1 all turns in the long run upon touching the imagination of ,crowds4 ,in the last analysis1 the coming of the kingdom of heaven1 as it has been called1 is going to be the coming slowly1 and from unsuspected quarters1 of a new piety and of new kinds of saints into the forefront of modern life--saints who can attract attention1 saints who can make crowds think what they really want4 ,using the word in its more special sense1 the time has come when it is being keenly realized that if goodness is to be properly appreciated by crowds1 it must be properly advertised4 ,how can goodness be advertised to ,crowds8 ,who are the people that can touch the imagination of ,crowds8 ,the best and most suggestive truths that most of us could come to with regard to doing right1 would come from a study of the people who have tried to make us do it4 ,most of us1 if we were asked to name the people most prominently connected with the virtues that we have studied and wondered about most1 would mention1 probably1 either our parents or our preachers4 ,many of us feel quite expert about parents4 ,we have studied vividly1 and sometimes with almost a breathless interest1 all their little ways of getting us to be good1 and there is hardly any one who has not come to quite definite conclusions of how he should be preached to4 ,i have thought it would be not unfruitful to consider in this connection either our parents or our preachers4 ,i have decided to consider the preachers who try to make me good1 because they are a little less complicated than parents4 ,preachers can only be put into classes in a general way4 ,they often overlap1 and many of them change over from one class into another every now and then on some special subject1 or on some special line of experience which they have had4 ,but for the most part1 at least as regards emphasis1 preachers may be said to divide off into three classes3 ,those who tease us to do right4 ,those who make us see that doing right1 if any one wants to do it1 is really an excellent thing4 ,those who make us want to do it4 99 99 99 99 99 ,i never go to hear a second time1 if ,i can help it1 a preacher who has teased me to do right4 ,i used to hope at first that perhaps a clergyman who was teasing people might incidentally slip off the track a minute1 and say something or see something interesting and alive4 ,but1 apparently1 preachers who do not see that people should not be teased to do right1 do not see other things1 and ,i have gradually given up having hopeful moments about them4 ,why1 in a world like this1 with the right and the wrong in it all lying so eloquent and plain and beautiful in the lives of the people about us1 and just waiting to be uncovered a little1 waiting to be looked at hard a minute1 should audiences be gathered together and teased to do right8 ,if the right were merely to be had in sermons or on paper1 it might be different4 ,my own experience with the right has been1 if ,i may speak for one1 that when ,i get out of the way of the people who are doing it1 and let the right they are doing be seen by people1 everybody wants it4 ,when people who are doing right are quietly revealed1 uncovered a little further by a preacher1 everybody envies them1 and teasing becomes superfluous4 ,people sit in their seats and think of them1 and become covetous to be like them4 ,if1 this very day1 all the ministers of the world were to agree that1 on next ,sunday morning at half-past ten o'clock1 they all with one accord would preach a sermon teasing people to be rich1 it would not be more absurd1 or more pathetic1 or more away from the point1 than it would be to preach a sermon teasing people to be good4 ,they want to be good now2 they envy the people that they see going about the world not leaning on others to be good--self-poised1 independent1 free1 rich1 spiritually self-supporting persons4 ,the men and women that we know may be more or less muddled in their minds with philosophy or with theology1 or perhaps they are being deceived by expediency or being bullied by their environment1 but they are not wicked2 they are out of focus1 and what they desire when they go to church on ,sunday morning is to get a good look at beautiful and refreshing things that they want1 and for an hour and a half1 if possible1 with slow steadied thought see their own lives in perspective4 ,it is a criminal waste of time to get hundreds of people to come into church on a ,sunday morning and seat them all together in a great room where they cannot get out1 and then tease them and tell them they ought to be good4 ,they knew it before they came4 ,they are already agreed1 all of them1 that they want to be good4 ,they even want to be good in business--as good as they can afford to4 ,the question is how to manage to do it4 ,the thing that is troubling them is the technique4 ,how can they be good in their business--more good than their employers want them to be1 for instance--and keep their positions8 ,doing as one would wish one had done afterward1 or knowing what one is about1 or being good as it is sometimes called1 is a thing that all really clever people have agreed upon4 ,they simply cannot manage some of the details--details like time and place1 a detail like being good now1 for instance1 or like being good here4 ,it is the more practical things like these that trouble people1 or they grow mixed in their thoughts about the big goods and the little ones--which shall be first in order of importance or which in the order of time4 ,and when one sees that people are really like this in their hearts1 and when one sees them1 all these poor1 helpless people1 sitting cooped up in a church for an hour and a half being teased to be good1 it is small wonder that it seems1 or is coming to seem1 to the clean-cut morally businesslike men and women we have to-day1 a pitiful waste of time4 99 99 99 99 99 ,i come to the second class of preachers ,i had in mind with more diffidence4 ,my feelings about them are not so simple and rudimentary as my feelings about those who have teased me to be good4 ,any man who travels about1 or who drops into churches wherever he happens to be from ,sunday to ,sunday1 is almost sure to find in every city of considerable size at least one imperious capable baffling clergyman4 ,if one is strictly honest and fair toward him1 to say nothing of being a well-meant and hopeful human being who is living in the same world with him and who feels very imperfect too1 finding any serious and honest fault with the sermon1 or at least laying one's finger upon what the fault is1 seems to be almost impossible4 ,one simply comes out of the church in a nice1 neat little glow of good-will and admiration1 and with a strange1 soothing1 happy sense of new1 fresh1 convenient wisdom4 ,the only fair way to criticise the preacher who belongs in this class seems to be to take ten years for it1 go in regularly and get a little practice every ,sunday4 ,there are preachers who preach so well that the only way one can ever find what is the matter with their sermons is to sit quietly while they are preaching them1 and look around at the people4 ,one thinks as one looks around1 ,these people are what this man has done4 ,they are the same people they were ten years ago4 ,i often hear other sermons that are far easier to criticise4 ,they are one-sided or narrow1 but they make new people4 ,i might not always like to be in a congregation when a man is preaching a sermon that makes new people1 because he may be making people or kinds of people that at the time at least ,i do not need to be4 ,but ,i naturally prefer1 at least part of the time1 a preacher who puts in1 before he is through1 some good work on me4 ,there is a preacher in ,b---- who always arouses in me1 whenever ,i am in the city1 the same old1 curious1 hopeful feeling about him that this next one more time he is going to get to me1 that ,i am going to be attended to4 ,i cannot say how many times ,i have dropped in upon him in his big plain church1 seen him with his hushed congregation all about him1 all listening to him up to the last minute1 each of them sitting all alone with his own soul1 and with him1 and with the ticking of the clock4 ,and the sermon is always about the same4 ,you see him narrowing the truth down wonderfully1 ruthlessly1 to ,you4 ,you begin to see everything--to see all the arguments1 all the circumstances1 all the principles4 ,you see them narrowing you down grimly1 closing in upon you1 converging you and all your little1 mean life1 driving you apparently at last into one helpless beautiful corner of doing right4 ,you feel while you listen the old sermon-thrill you have felt before1 a kind of intellectual joy in ,god1 in the very brains of ,god2 you think of how ,he has arranged right and wrong so cunningly1 laid them all out so plain and so close beside each other for you to choose to be good4 ,then the benediction is pronounced over you1 the sevenfold amen dies away over you1 and you go home and do as you like4 ,one sees the sermon for days afterward lying out there in calm and orderly memory1 all so complete and perfect by itself4 ,there does not really seem to be any need of doing anything more to it4 ,it is what people mean probably by a finished sermon4 ,it is as if goodness had been put under a glass globe in a parlour4 ,you go home proud to think of it1 and proud of course to have such a sermon by you4 ,but you would never think of touching such a complete and perfect thing during the week the way you would a poorer sermon1 disturbing it hopefully or mussing it over1 trying to work some of it into your own life4 99 99 99 99 99 ,so much for the first two types of preachers3 the preachers who stand before us ,sunday morning with goodness placed beside them in a dense darkness while they talk1 and who tease us to look at it in the darkness and to take some2 and those who stand1 a cold white light all about them1 and use pointers and blackboards and things--maps of goodness1 great charts of what people ought to be like--and who make one see each virtue just where it belongs as a kind of dot1 like cities in a geography1 and who leave us with the pleasant feeling of how sweet and reasonable ,god is1 or rather would be if anybody would pay any attention to ,him4 99 99 99 99 99 ,i have already hinted at the qualities of the third class of preachers--those who make me want to be good4 ,they seem to throw goodness as upon a screen1 some vast screen of the world1 of this real world about me4 ,they turn their souls1 like still stereopticons1 upon the faces of men--men who are like the men and women ,i know4 ,i go about afterward all the week seeing their sermons in the street4 ,everybody ,i see1 everything that comes up ,monday1 ,tuesday1 ,wednesday1 the very patterns of the days and nights1 of my duties and failures1 keep coming up1 reminding me to be good4 ,i may start in--,i often do--with such a preacher1 criticising him1 but he soon gets me so occupied criticising myself and so lost in wondering how this something that he has and sees just beyond us1 just beyond him1 just beyond me1 can be had for other people1 and how ,i can have some of it for myself1 that ,i forget to criticise4 ,he searches my soul1 makes me a new being in my presence before my eyes--that is1 a new being toward some one subject1 or some one possibility in the world4 ,he helps me while in his presence to accomplish the supreme thing that one man can ever do for another4 ,he helps me to get my own attention4 ,he makes me see a set of particular things that ,i immediately1 before his next sentence1 am trying to find means to do4 ,he does not attract my attention toward what he wants1 like a preacher who teases2 nor does he attract my attention to what ,god wants1 like the preacher with the charts of goodness4 ,he succeeds in attracting and holding down my attention to what ,i really want for myself or others1 and to what ,i propose to get4 ,the imagination of crowds is convinced only by men who have real genius for expression1 for making word-pictures of real things1 men who have what might be called moving-picture minds1 and who are so picturesque and vivid that when they talk to people about goodness they have seen1 everybody feels as if they had been there4 ,it has to be admitted that this type of preacher1 who has a kind of genius1 and has developed an art form for expressing goodness in words1 is necessarily an exceptional man4 ,and it is unreasonable and unfair in the public to expect a man to get up in the pulpit and1 with no costume and no accessories1 merely with a kind of shrewd holiness or divination into human nature1 present goodness so that we seem to be there4 ,it is small wonder that a man who finds he is expected to be a kind of combination of biograph1 brother1 spiritual detective1 and angel all in one1 in order to do his work successfully has days of feeling that he has joined the ranks of ,the ,impossible ,profession4 ,,chapter ,,viii ,,making ,,goodness ,,hurry ,perhaps it has leaked out to those who have been following these pages thus far1 that ,i am merely at best1 if the truth were known1 a kind of reformed preacher4 ,i admit it4 ,many other people are4 ,we began1 owing to circumstances1 with the idea of getting people to take up goodness by talking about it4 ,but we have grown discouraged in talking to people about goodness4 ,more and more1 year by year1 we have made up our minds1 as ,i have hinted1 to lie low and to keep still and show them some4 ,and ,i can only say it again1 as ,i have said it before1 if everybody in the world could know my plumber or pay a bill to him1 the world would soon begin1 slowly but surely1 to be a very different place4 ,the first time ,i saw ,b---- ,i had asked him to come over to arrange with regard to putting in new waterpipes from the street to my house4 ,the old ones had been put in no one could remember how many years before1 and the pressure of water in the house1 apparently from rust in the pipes1 had become very weak4 ,after a minute's conversation ,i at once engaged ,b---- to put in the new and larger pipes1 and he agreed to dig open the trench 7about two hundred feet long1 and three feet deep7 and put the pipes in the next day for thirty-five dollars4 ,the next morning he appeared as promised1 but1 instead of going to work1 he came into my study1 stood there a moment before my eyes1 and quietly but firmly threw himself out of his job6 ,there was no use in spending thirty-five dollars1 he said4 ,he had gone to the ,city ,water ,works ,office and told them to look into the matter and see if the connection they had put in at the junction of my pipe with the main in the street did not need attention4 ,they had found that a new connection was necessary4 ,they would see that a new one was put in at once4 ,they were obliged to do it for nothing1 he said2 and then1 slipping 7figuratively speaking7 thirty-five dollars into my pocket1 he bowed gravely and was gone4 ,b---- knew absolutely and conclusively 7as any one would with a look7 that ,i was not the sort of person who would ever have heard of that blessed little joint out in the street1 or who ever would hear of it or who would know what to do with it if he did4 99 99 99 99 99 ,sometimes ,i sit and think of ,b---- in church1 or at least ,i used to1 especially when his bill had just come in4 ,it was always a pleasure to think of paying one of ,b----'s bills--even if it was sometimes a postponed one4 ,you always knew1 with ,b----1 that he had made that bill out to you as if he had been making out a bill to himself4 ,not such a bad thing to think about during a sermon4 ,i do not deny that ,i do lose a sentence now and then in sermons2 and while1 as every one knows1 the sermons ,i have been provided with in the old stone church have been of a rare and high order1 there have1 ,i do acknowledge1 been bad moments--little sudden bare spots or streaks of abstraction--and ,i do not deny that there have been times when ,i could not help feeling1 as ,i sat listening1 like sending around ,monday morning to the parsonage--my plumber4 ,one could not help thinking what ,dr4 ---- if he once got started on a plumber like ,b---- 7had had him around working all the week during a sermon7 could do with him4 ,i have a shoemaker1 too1 who would help most ministers4 ,i imagine he would point up their sermons a good deal--if they had his shoes on4 ,perhaps shoes and pipes and things like these will be looked upon soon to-day as constituting the great1 slow1 modest1 implacable spiritual forces of our time4 ,at all events1 this is the most economical1 sensible1 thorough way 7when one thinks of it7 that goodness can be advertised4 ,,chapter ,,ix ,,touching ,,the ,,imagination ,,of ,,crowds ,a man's success in business to-day turns upon his power of getting people to believe he has something that they want4 ,success in business1 in the last analysis1 turns upon touching the imagination of crowds4 ,the reason that preachers in this present generation are less successful in getting people to want goodness than business men are in getting them to want motor-cars1 hats1 and pianolas1 is that business men as a class are more close and desperate students of human nature1 and have boned down harder to the art of touching the imaginations of crowds4 ,when one considers what it is that touches a crowd's imagination and how it does it1 one is bound is admit that there is not a city anywhere which has not hundreds of men in it who could do more to touch the imagination of crowds with goodness than any clergyman could4 ,a man of very great gifts in the pulpit1 a man of genius1 even an immortal clergyman1 could be outwitted in the art of touching the imagination of crowds with goodness by a comparatively ordinary man in any one of several hundred of our modern business occupations4 ,there is a certain nation ,i have in mind as ,i write1 which ,i do not like to call by name1 because it is struggling with its faults as the rest of us are with ours4 ,but ,i do not think it would be too much to say that this particular nation ,i have in mind--and ,i leave the reader to fill in one for himself1 has been determined in its national character for hundreds of years1 and is being determined to-day--every day1 nearly every minute of every day1 except when all the people are asleep--by a certain personal habit that the people have4 ,i am persuaded that this habit of itself alone would have been enough to determine the fate of the nation as a third-rate power1 that it would have made it always do things with small pullings and haulings1 in short breaths1 and hand-to-mouth insights--a little jerk of idealism one day1 and a little jerk of materialism the next--a kind of national palavering1 and see-sawing and gesturing1 and talking excitedly and with little flourishes4 ,it is a nation that is always shrugging its shoulders1 that almost never seems to be capable of doing a thing with fine directness1 with long rhythms of purpose or sustained feeling2 and all because every man1 woman1 and child in the country--scores of generations of them for hundreds of years--has been taught that the great spiritual truth or principle at the bottom of correctly and beautifully buying a turnip is to begin by saying that you do not want a turnip at all1 that you never eat turnips1 and none of your family1 and that they never would4 ,the other man begins by pointing out that he is never going to sell another turnip as long as he lives1 if he can help it4 ,gradually the facts are allowed to edge in until at last1 and when each man has taken off ,god knows how much from the value of his soul1 and spent two shillings' worth of time on keeping a halfpenny in his pocket1 both parties separate courteously1 only to carry out the same spiritual truth on a radish perhaps or a spool of thread1 or it may be even a house and lot1 or a battleship1 or a war1 or a rumour of a war1 with somebody4 ,the ,united ,states1 speaking broadly1 is not like this4 ,but it might have been4 ,in the ,united ,states some forty years ago1 being a new country1 and being a country where everything a man did was in the nature of things1 felt to be a first experiment1 everybody felt democratic and independent1 and as if he were making the laws of the universe just for himself as he went along4 ,there was a period of ten years or so in which every spool of thread and bit of dress goods--everything that people wore on their bodies or put in their months1 and everything that they read1 came up and had to be considered as an original first proposition1 as if there never had been a spool of thread before1 as if each bit of dress goods was1 or was capable of being1 a new fresh experiment1 with an adventurous price on it2 and before we knew it a moral nagging and edging and hitching had set in1 and was fast becoming in ,america an ,american trait1 and fixing itself by daily repetition upon the imagination of the people4 ,the shopping of a country is1 on the whole1 from a psychologist's point of view1 the most spiritual energy1 the most irrevocable1 most implacable meter there can ever be of the religion a country really has4 ,there was no clergyman in ,america who could have made the slightest impression on this great national list or trend of always getting things for less than they were worth--this rut of never doing as one would be done by4 ,what was there that could be done with an obstinate1 pervasive1 unceasing habit of the people like this8 ,what was there that could be done to touch the imagination of the crowd8 ,six thousand women a day were going in and out of ,a4,t4 ,stewart's great store on ,broadway at that time4 ,a4,t4 ,stewart announced to ,new ,york suddenly in huge letters one day1 that from that day forward there should be one price for everything sold in his store1 and that that price would be paid for it by everybody4 ,a4,t4 ,stewart's store was the largest1 most successful1 original1 and most closely watched store in ,america4 ,the six thousand women became one thousand4 ,then two thousand4 ,some of them had found that they finished their shopping sooner2 the better class of women1 those whose time was worth the most1 and whose custom was the largest1 gradually found they did not want to shop anywhere else4 ,the two thousand became three thousand1 four thousand1 six thousand1 ten thousand1 twelve thousand4 ,other department stores wanted the twelve thousand to come to them4 ,they announced the one price4 ,hardware stores did it4 ,groceries announced one price4 ,then everybody4 ,not all the clergymen in ,america1 preaching every ,sunday for months1 could have done very much in the way of seriously touching the imagination of the crowd on the moral unworthiness1 the intellectual degradation1 the national danger of picking out the one thing that nearly all the people all do1 and had to do1 all day1 every day1 and making that thing mean1 incompetent1 and small4 ,no one had thought out what it would lead to1 and how monstrous and absurd it was and would always be to have a nation have all its people taking every little thing all day1 every day1 that they were buying1 or that they were selling--taking a spool of thread1 for instance--and packing it1 or packing their action with it1 as full of adulterated motives and of fresh and original ways of not doing as they would be done by as they could think up--a little innocent spool of thread--wreaking all their sins and kinds of sins on it1 breaking every one of the ten commandments on it as an offering4444 ,it was ,a4,t4 ,stewart1 a very ordinary-looking1 practical man in a plain1 everyday business1 who arrested the attention of a nation and changed the habit of thought and trend of mind of a great people1 and made them a candid1 direct people1 a people that went with great sunny prairies and high mountains1 a yea and nay people1 straightforward1 and free from palavering forever4 ,a4,t4 ,stewart was accustomed1 in his own personal dealings from day to day1 to cut people short when they tried to heckle with him4 ,he liked to take things for granted1 drive through to the point1 and go on to the next one4 ,this might have ended1 of course1 in a kind of cul de sac of being a merely personal trait in a clean-cut1 manful1 straightforward ,american gentleman2 and if ,stewart had been a snob or a ,puritan1 or had felt superior1 or if he had thought other people--the great crowds of them who flocked through his store--could never expect to be as good as he was1 nothing would ever have come of it4 ,it is not likely that he was conscious of the long train of spiritual results he had set in motion2 of the way he had taken the habit of mind1 the daily1 hourly psychology of a great people1 and had wrought it through with his own spirit2 or of the way he had saved up1 and set where it could be used1 everyday religion in ,america1 and had freed the business genius of a nation for its most characteristic and most effective self-expression4 ,he merely was conscious that he could not endure palavering in doing business himself1 and that he would not submit to being obliged to endure it1 and he believed millions of people in ,america were as clean-cut and straightforward as he was4 ,and the millions of people stood by him4 ,perhaps ,a4,t4 ,stewart touched the imagination of the crowd because he had let the crowd touch his and had seen what crowds1 in spite of appearances1 were really like4 ,the enterprise of touching the imagination of the crowd with goodness1 which is being conducted every day on an enormous scale around us1 has to be carried on1 like all huge enterprises1 by men who are in a large degree unconscious of it4 ,there are few department stores in ,england or ,america that would expect to be called pious1 but if one is deeply and obstinately interested in the ,golden ,rule1 and in getting crowds of people to believe in it at a time1 it is impossible not to think what sweeps of opportunity department stores would have with it--with the ,golden ,rule4 ,with thousands of people flowing in and out all the week1 and with hundreds of clerks to attend to it1 eight hours a day1 there would hardly seem to be any limit to what such a store could do in making the ,golden ,rule a direct1 a pointed and personal thing1 a thing that could not be evaded and could not be forgotten by thousands of people4 ,the same people all going in and out of department stores1 vast congregations of them1 eight hours a day1 which ministers can only get at in small lots1 three hundred or so1 twenty minutes a week1 and can only get at with words even then--all of them being convinced in terms they understand1 and in terms they keenly feel1 convinced in hats that they will see over and over again1 convinced in velvets that they are going to put on and off for years1 in laces1 in waistcoats1 shoes1 in dining-room chairs1 convinced in the very underclothes next to their skins1 the clothes they sleep in all night1 in the very plates on which they eat1 while all the time they keep remembering1 or being reminded1 just how the things were bought1 and just what was claimed for them and what was not claimed for them1 and thinking how the claims came true or how they did not4 99 99 99 99 99 ,i just saw lying on the table as ,i came through the hall a moment ago a hat which 7out of all the long rows of hats ,i can see faintly reaching across the years7 will always be to me a memorable hat4 ,i am free to say that1 after all the ladies it has been taken off to1 my great memory of that hat is now and always will be1 as long as ,i live1 the department store at which ,i bought it1 and the things the department store1 before ,i got through with it1 managed to make the hat say4 ,i had been in the store the day before and selected1 in broad daylight1 with a big mirror staring me out of countenance1 a hat which was a quarter of a size too large4 ,to clinch the matter1 ,i had ordered four ventilating holes to be punched in it1 and had it sent to my rooms to be my hat--implacably my hat as ,i supposed1 for better for worse1 for richer for poorer--always4 ,the next morning1 after standing before a mirror and trying hopefully for a few minutes to see if ,i could not look more intelligent in the hat1 ,i returned to the store firmly4 ,i had made up my mind that ,i would keep from looking the way that that hat made me look1 at any cost4 ,the store was not responsible according to the letter either for the hat or for the way ,i looked in it4 ,i had deliberately chosen it1 looked at myself in cold blood in it1 had those dreadful1 irremovable1 eternal air-holes dug into it4 ,i would buy a new one4 ,i jumped into a cab1 and a moment after ,i arrived ,i found myself before the clerk from whom ,i had bought it1 with a new one on my head1 and was just reaching into my pocket for my purse when1 to my astonishment1 ,i heard1 or seemed to hear1 the great ,department ,store ,itself1 in the gentle accents of a young man with a yellow moustache1 saying3 ,i'm sorry--all seven storys of it gathering itself up softly1 apparently1 and saying ,i'm sorry6 ,the young man explained that he was afraid the hat was wrong the day before1 and thought he ought to have told me so1 that the store would not want me to pay for the mistake4 ,i came home a changed man4 ,i had been hit by the ,golden ,rule before in department stores1 but always rather subtly--never with such a broad1 beautiful flourish6 ,i made some faint acknowledgment1 ,i have forgotten what1 and rushed out of the store4 ,but ,i have never gone past the store since1 on a 'bus1 or in a taxi1 or sliding through the walkers on the street1 but ,i have looked up to it--to its big1 quiet windows1 its broad1 honest pillars fronting a world4 ,i take off my hat to it4 ,but it gave me more than a hat4 ,i think what a thousand department stores1 stationed in a thousand places on this old planet1 could do in touching the imagination of the world--every day1 day by day1 cityfuls at a time4 ,i had found a department store that had absolutely identified itself with my interests1 that could act about a hat the way a wife would--a department store that looked forward to a permanent relation with me--a great live machine that could be glad and sorry--that really took me in1 knew how ,i felt about things1 cared how ,i looked as ,i walked down the street4 ,sometimes ,i think of the poor1 wounded1 useless thing ,i took back to them1 those pitiless holes punched in it--just where no one else would ever have had them4 ,i am human4 ,i always feel about the store1 that great marble and glass ,face1 when ,i go by it now as if1 in spite of all the difficulties1 it wanted me--to be beautiful6 ,i at least feel and know that the people who were the brain1 the daily moving consciousness behind the face--wanted me to be a becoming customer to them4 ,they did not want to see me coming in1 if it could possibly be helped1 in that hat any more6 99 99 99 99 99 ,i have told this little history of a gray hat1 not because it is in any way extraordinary1 but because it is not4 ,the same thing1 or something quite like it1 expressing the same spirit1 might have happened in any one of the best hundred department stores in the world4 ,most people can remember a time1 only a very little while ago1 when clerks in our huge department stores or selling machines were not expected to be people who would think of things like this to do1 or who would know how1 or who would think to consider them good business if they did4 ,the department store that based its success on selecting clerks of a high order of human insight1 that paid higher wages to its clerks for their power of being believed in1 for their personal qualities and their shrewdness in helping people and a gift for discovering mutual interests with everybody and for founding permanent human relations with the public1 had not been thought of a little while ago4 ,all that had been thought of was the appearance of these things4 ,it was an employer's business1 speaking generally1 to get all he could out of his clerks and have them get as little as possible out of him4 ,it was their business in their turn to get as much money out of the public as they could get1 and to give the public as little in return as they dared4 ,the type of employer who liked to do business in this way1 and who believed in it1 crowed over the world nearly everywhere as the ,practical ,man4 ,and for the time being certainly it has to be admitted that he seemed the most successful4 ,naturally there came to be a general impression among the people that only certain lower orders of life and character could be employed1 or could stand being employed1 in the great department stores4 ,i used often to go into ----'s4 ,everybody remembers it4 ,i went in1 as a rule1 in a helpless1 waiting1 married way1 and as a mere attach of the truly wise and good4 ,all ,i ever did or was expected to do was to stand by and look wise and discriminating a minute about dress goods1 when spoken to4 ,i used to put in my time looking behind the counters--all those busy1 pale1 yellow-lighted people in little holes or stalls trying to be human and natural in that long1 low1 indoor street of theirs1 crowds of women staring by them and picking at things4 ,always that moving sidewalk of questions--that dull1 eager stream of consciousness sweeping by4 ,no sunlight--just the crowds of covetousness and shrewdness4 ,i used to wonder about the clerks1 many of them1 and what they would be like at home or under an apple tree or each with a bit of blue sky to go with them4 ,they used to seem in those days1 as ,i looked1 mostly poor1 underground creatures living in a sort of ,subway of ,things in a hateful1 hard1 little world of clothes1 each with his little study or trick or knack of appearances1 standing there and selling people their good looks day after day at so much a yard4 ,to-day1 in a hundred cities one can go into department shops where one would get1 standing and looking on idly1 totally different impressions4 ,there are hundreds of thousands of young men and women who have made being a clerk a new thing in the world4 ,the public has already had its imagination touched by them1 and is beginning to deal with clerks1 as a class1 on a different level4 ,this has been brought to pass because the employer has been thought of1 or has thought of himself1 who engages and pays for in clerks the highest qualities in human nature that he can get4 ,he picks out and puts in power1 and persuades to be clerks1 people who would have felt superior to it in days gone by--men and women who habitually depend for their efficiency in showing and selling goods upon their more generous emotions and insights1 their imaginations about other people4 ,they gather in their new customers1 and keep up their long lists of old and regular customers1 through shrewd visions of service to people1 and through a technical gift for making the ,golden ,rule work4 ,when one looks at it practically1 and from the point of view of all the consequences1 a bargain is the most spiritual1 conclusive1 most self-revealing experience that people can have together4 ,every bargain is a cross-section in three tenses of a man4 ,a bargain tells everything about people--who they are1 and what they are like4 ,it also tells what they are going to be like unless they take pains2 and it tells what they are not going to be like too sometimes1 and why4 ,the man who comes nearest in modern life to being a ,pope1 is the man who determines in what spirit and by what method the people under him shall conduct his bargains and deal with his customers4 ----1 at the head of his department store1 has a parish behind his counters of twenty-five hundred men and women4 ,he is in the business of determining their religion1 the way they make their religion work1 eight hours a day1 six days a week4 ,he seems to me to be engaged in the most ceaseless1 most penetrating1 most powerful1 and most spiritual activity of the world4 ,he is really getting at the imaginations of people with his idea of goodness4 ,if he does not work his way through to a man's imagination one minute or one day1 he does the next4 ,if he cannot open up a man's imagination with one line of goods1 he does it with another4 ,if he cannot make him see things1 and do as he would be done by1 with one kind of customer1 another is moved in front of him presently1 and another1 and another--the man's inner substance is being attacked and changed nearly every minute every day4 ,there is nothing he can do1 or keep from doing1 in which his employer's idea of goodness does not surround1 besiege1 or pursue him4 ,every officer of the staff1 every customer who slips softly up to the counter in front of him makes him think of the ,golden ,rule in a new way or in some shading of a new way--confronts him with the will1 with the expectation1 with the religion of his employer4 ,in ----'s store 7where ,i looked in a moment yesterday7 one thousand of the two thousand five hundred clerks are men4 ,if ,i were a minister wondering nearly every day how to work in for my religion a fair chance at men1 ,i should often look wistfully from over the edge of my pulpit1 ,i imagine1 to the head of ----'s department store1 sitting at that quiet1 calm1 empty looking desk of his in his little office at the top of his big building in ---- ,street1 with nothing but those little six or seven buttons he softly puts his thumbs on connecting him with a thousand men4 ,and he does not even need the buttons4 ,every man knows and feels1 personally and intimately1 what the man at the desk is asking him to do with a particular customer who stands before him at the moment4 ,as soon as the customer is there1 the man at the desk practically is there too4 ,his religion works by wireless1 and goes automatically1 and as from a huge stored-up reservoir1 to all that happens in the place4 ,he makes regularly with his idea of goodness anywhere from twenty to sixty pastoral calls 7with every sale they make7 on a thousand men a day4 ,he is not dependent1 as the ordinary minister often is1 on their dying1 or on their babies1 or on their wives1 for a chance to get at men with his religion4 ,if ,i wanted to take a spiritual census of modern civilization and get at the actual scientific facts1 what we would have to call1 probably the foot-tons of religion in the world to-day1 ,i would not look for them in the year-books of the churches1 ,i would get them by going about in the great department stores1 by moving among the men and women in them day after day1 and standing by and looking on invisibly4 ,like a shadow or a light ,i would watch them registering their goodness daily1 hourly1 on their counters1 over their counters1 measuring out their souls before ,god in dress goods1 shoes1 boas1 hats1 silk1 and bread and butter6 ,this may not be true of the ,orient1 but it is true1 and getting to be more true every day1 of ,europe and ,america4 ,it is especially true of ,america4 ,in the things which we borrow in ,america1 we are far behind the rest of the world4 ,it is to the things that we create1 that we must look alone1 for our larger destiny1 and our world-service4 ,naturally1 in so far as civilization is a race of borrowing1 nations like ,england and ,france and ,germany a few hundred miles apart from one another1 set the pace for a nation that is three thousand miles away from where it can borrow1 like the ,united ,states4 ,it is a far cry from the land of the ,greeks with their still sunny temples and dreams1 and from ,england with its quiet-singing churches1 to ,new ,york with its practical sky-scraping hewing prayer6 ,new ,york--scooping its will out of the very heavens6 ,new ,york--the ,world's last1 most stern1 perhaps most manful prayer of all--half-asking and half-grasping out of the hand of ,god6 ,here is ,america's religion6 ,half afraid at first1 half glad1 slowly1 solemnly triumphant1 as on the edge of an abyss1 ,i have seen ,america's religion6 ,i have seen my brother ,americans hewing it out--day by day1 night by night1 have ,i seen them--in these huge steel sub-cellars of the sky6 ,i have accepted the challenge4 ,if it is not a religion1 then it shall be to us a religion to make it a religion4 ,the ,metropolitan ,tower with its big clock dial1 with its three stories of telling what time it is1 and its great bell singing hymns above the dizzy flocks of the skyscrapers1 is the soul of ,new ,york1 to me4 ,if one could see a soul--if one could see the soul of ,new ,york1 it would look more like the ,metropolitan ,tower than anything else4 ,it seems to be trying to speak away up there in the whiteness and the light1 the very soul of the young resistless iron-hearted city4 ,i write as an ,american4 ,to me there is something about it as ,i come up the harbour that fills my heart with a big ringing1 as if all the world were ringing1 ringing once more--ringing all over again--up in this white tower of ours in its new bit of blue sky6 ,i glory in ,england with it1 in ,greece1 in ,bethlehem4 ,it is as an outpost on ,space and ,time1 for all of us gathering up all history in it softly--once more and pointing it to ,god6 ,it is the last1 the youngest-minded1 the most buoyant tower--the mighty ,child among the steeples of the world4 ,the lonely towers of ,cologne stretching with that grave and empty nave against the sky1 out of that old and faded region of religion1 far away1 tremulously send greetings to it--to this white tower in the west--to where it goes up with its crowds of people in it1 with business and with daily living and hoping and dying in it1 and strikes heaven6 ,it may be perhaps only the ,american blood in me4 ,perhaps it is raw and new to be so happy4 ,i do not know4 ,i only know that to me the ,metropolitan ,tower is saying something that has been never quite said before--something that has been given in some special sense to us as a trust from the world4 ,it is to me the steeple of democracy--of our democracy1 ,england's democracy--the world's democracy4 ,the hollow domes of ,sts4 ,peter and ,paul1 and all the rest with their vague1 airy other-worldliness1 all soaring and tugging like so many balloons of religion and goodness1 trying to get away from this world--are not to me so splendid1 so magnificently wilful as the ,metropolitan ,tower--as the souls of these modern1 heaven-striking men1 taking the world itself1 at last1 its streets of stone1 of steel1 its very tunnels and lifting them up as blind offerings1 as unbounded instincts1 as prayers1 as songs to heaven6 ,i worship my country1 my people1 my city when ,i hear the big bell in it and when ,i look up to where the tower is in that still place like a sea--look up to where that little white country belfry sits in the light1 in the dark above the vast and roaring city6 ,to me1 the ,metropolitan ,tower1 sweeping up its prayer out of the streets the way it does1 and doing it1 too1 right beside that little safe1 tucked-in1 trim1 ,sunday religion of the ,madison ,square ,presbyterian ,church1 lifts itself up as one of the mighty signs and portents of our time4 ,have ,i not heard the bell tolling to the people in the midst of business and singing great hymns8 ,a great city lifts itself and prays in it--prays while it sings and clangs so absent-looking below4 ,i like to go out before going to sleep and take a look at it--one more look before ,i sleep1 upon the tower1 strong1 unyielding1 alive1 sinewy1 imperturbable1 lifting up within itself the steel and soul of the world4 ,i am content to go to sleep4 ,it is a kind of steeple of the business of this world4 ,i would rather have said that business needed a steeple before until ,i saw the ,metropolitan ,tower and heard it singing above the streets4 ,but ,i had always wanted 7without knowing it71 in a modern office building1 a great solemn bell to remind us what the common day was4 ,i like to hear it striking a common hour and what can be done in it4 ,i stop in the street to listen--to listen while that great hive of people tolls--tolls not the reveries of monks above the roofs of the skyscrapers1 but the religion of business--of the real and daily things1 the seriousness of the mighty street and the faces of the men and the women4 ,,chapter ,x ,,the ,,stupendous1 ,,the ,,unusual1 ,,the ,,monotonous1 ,,and ,,the ,,successful ,the imagination of crowds may be said to be touched most successfully when it is appealed to in one of four ways3 ,,the ,,stupendous4 ,,the ,,unusual4 ,,the ,,monotonous4 ,,the ,,successful4 ,of these four ways1 the stupendous1 or the unusual1 or the successful are the most in evidence1 and have something showy about them1 so that we can look at them afterward1 and point out at a glance what they have done4 ,but probably the underhold on the crowd1 the real grip on its imagination1 the one which does the plain1 hard1 everyday work on a crowd's ideals1 which determines what crowds expect and what crowds are like inside--is the ,monotonous4 ,the man who tells the most people what they shall be like in this world is not the great man or the unusual man4 ,he is the monotonous man4 ,he is the man1 to each of us1 who determines the unconscious beat and rhythm with which we live our daily lives4 ,if we wanted to touch the imaginations of crowds1 or of any particular crowd1 with goodness1 the best way to do it would probably be1 not to go to the crowd itself1 but to the man who is so placed that he determines the crowd's monotony1 the daily rhythm with which it lives--the man1 if we can find him1 who arranges the crowd's heart-beat4 ,it need not take one very long to decide who the man is who determines the crowd's heart-beat4 ,the man who has the most dominion over the imaginations of most of us1 who stands up high before us out in front of our lives1 the man who1 as with a great baton1 day after day1 night after night1 conducts1 as some great symphony1 the fate of the world above our heads1 who determines the deep1 unconscious thoughts and motives1 the inner music or sing-song1 in which we live our lives1 is the man to whom we look for our daily bread4 ,it is the men with whom we earn our money who are telling us all relentlessly1 silently1 what we will have to be like4 ,the men with whom we spend it1 who sell things to us1 like the department stores1 those huge machines of attention1 may succeed in getting great sweeps of attention out of crowds at special times1 by appealing to men through the unusual and through the stupendous or the successful4 ,but what really counts1 and what finally decides what men and what women shall be1 what really gets their attention unfathomably1 unconsciously1 is the way they earn their money4 ,the feeling men come to have about a fact1 of its being what it is1 helplessly or whether or no--the feeling that they come to have about something1 of its being immemorially and innumerably the same everywhere and forever1 comes from what they are thinking and the way they think while they are earning their money4 ,it is out of the subconscious and the monotonous that all our little heavens and hells are made4 ,it is our daily work that becomes to us the real floor and roof of living1 hugs up under us like the ground1 fits itself down over us1 and is our earth and sky4 ,the man with whom we earn our money1 the man who employs us1 his thinking or not thinking1 his ,i will and ,i won't1 are the iron boundaries of the world to us4 ,he is the skylight and the manhole of life4 ,the monotonous1 the innumerable and over and over again1 one's desk1 one's typewriter1 one's machine1 one's own particular factory window1 the tall chimney1 the little forever motion with one's hand--it is these1 godlike1 inscrutable1 speechless1 out of the depths of our unconsciousness and down through our dreams1 that become the very breath and rumble of living to us1 domineer over our imaginations and rule our lives4 ,it is decreed that what our ,employers think and let us know enough to think shall be a part of the inner substance of our being4 ,it shall be a part of growing of the grass to us1 and shall be as water and food and sleep4 ,it shall be to us as the shouts of boys at play in the field and as the crying of our children in the night4 ,to most men ,employers are the great doors that creak at the end of the world4 ,it is not the houses that people live in1 or the theatres that they go to1 or the churches to which they belong1 or the street and number--the ,east ,end look or the ,west ,end look the great city carves on the faces of these men ,i see in the street--that determines what the men are like4 ,their daily work lies deeper in them than their faces4 ,one finds one's self as one flashes by being told things in their walk1 in the way they hold their hands and swing their feet4 ,and what is it their hands and feet1 umbrellas1 bundles1 and the wrinkles in their clothes tell us about them8 ,they tell us how they earn their money4 ,their hopes1 their sorrow1 their fears and curses1 their convictions1 their very religions are the silent1 irrevocable1 heavenly minded1 diabolical by-products of what their ,employers think they can afford to let them know enough to think4 ,fight for yourselves4 ,your masters hate you4 ,they would shoot you down like rabbits1 but they need your labour for their huge profits4 ,don't go in till you get your minimum4 ,no ,royal ,commission1 no promise in the future4 ,leaders only want your votes2 they will sell you4 ,they lie4 ,parliament lies1 and will not help you1 but is trying to sell you4 ,don't touch a tool till you get your minimum4 ,win1 win1 win6 ,it is up to all workers to support the miners4 ,if a man happens to be an employer1 and happens to know that he is not this sort of man1 and finds that he cannot successfully carry on his business unless he can make five hundred men in his factory believe it1 what can he do8 ,how can he touch their imaginations8 ,what language is there1 either of words or of action1 that will lead them to see that he is a really a fair-minded1 competent employer1 a representative of the interests of all1 a fellow-citizen1 a ,crowdman1 and that his men can afford to believe in him and coperate with them8 ,if they think he would shoot them down like rabbits1 it is because they have not the remotest idea what he is really like4 ,they have not noticed him4 ,they have no imagination about him1 have not put themselves in his place4 ,how can he get their attention8 ,,chapter ,,xi ,,the ,,successful ,a little while ago ,i saw in ,paris an ,american woman1 the ,president of a ,woman's ,club 7,i imagined71 who was doing as she should1 and was going about in a cab appreciating ,paris1 drive up to the ,louvre4 ,leaving her cab1 though ,i wondered a little why she did1 at the door1 she hurried up the steps and swept into the gallery1 taking her eleven-year-old boy with her4 ,i came upon her several times4 ,the ,louvre did not interest the boy1 and he seemed to be bothering and troubling his mother1 and of course he kept trying very hard1 as any really nice boy would1 to get out2 but she would not let him1 and he wandered about dolefully1 looking at his feet and at the floor1 or at the guards1 and doing the best he could4 ,finally she came over to him2 there was a ,murillo he must see--it was the opportunity of his life2 she brought him over to it1 and stood him up in front of it1 and he would not look2 she took his small brown head in her hands and steered it to the great masterpiece and held it there--on that poor1 silent1 helpless ,murillo--until4444 ,i observed that she could steer his head2 but ,i could not help thinking how much more she would have done if she had known how to steer it inside4 ,the invention of the ,megaphone1 of the ,cinema1 and the ,london ,times1 and of the ,bible1 are all a part of the great1 happy1 hopeful effort of one part of this world to get the attention of the other part of it1 and steer heads inside4 ,this art of steering heads inside1 which has come to be the secret art of all the other arts1 the secret religion of all the religions1 is also the secret of building and maintaining a civilization and a successful and permanent business4 ,it is hard to believe how largely1 for the last twenty years1 it has been overlooked by employers as the real key of the labour problem--this art of steering people's heads inside4 ,we have seen part of the truth4 ,we have put in a good deal of time in finding fault with labouring men for thinking too much about themselves and about their class1 and for emphasizing their wages more than their work1 and for not having more noble and disinterested characters4 ,parliaments1 clergymen1 and employers have all been troubled for years about ,labour1 and they have been trying very hard on ,sundays and through reports of speeches by members of ,parliament in the daily press1 and through laws1 and through employers' associations1 and through factory rules and fines1 to get the attention of labouring men and lift their thoughts to higher things4 ,a great many wise things have been said to ,labour--masterpieces1 miles of them as it were1 whole ,louvres of words have been hung upon their walls4 ,but in vain6 ,and all because we have merely taken the outside of the boy's head in our hands4 ,we have not thought what was really going on in it4 ,we have not tried to steer it inside4 ,we have been superficial4 ,it is superficial for a comfortable man with a bun in his pocket to talk to a starving man about having some higher motive than getting something to eat4 ,everybody sees that this is superficial1 if we mean by it that his body is starving4 ,but if we mean something more real and more terrible than that--that he is starving inside1 that his soul is starving1 that he has nothing to live for1 no real object in getting something to eat--if we mean by it1 in other words1 that the man's imagination is not touched even by his own life1 people take it very lightly4 ,and it is the most important thing in the world4 ,the one thing now necessary to society1 to industry1 is to get hold of the men who are in it1 one by one1 and touch their imaginations about themselves4 ,we have millions of men working without their thoughts and expectations being ventilated or passed along1 year after year4 ,one sees these men everywhere one goes1 in thousands of factories1 doing their work without any draught4 ,we already have tall chimneys for our coal furnaces2 we have next to see the value of tall chimneys1 great flues to the sky1 on the lives and thought and the inner energies of men4 ,the most obvious way to get a draught on a man1 to get him to glow up and work is to cut through an opening in the top of his life4 ,just where to cut this opening1 and just how to cut it in each man's life--each man considered as a problem by himself--is the ,labour problem4 ,there are certain general principles that might be put down in passing4 ,to begin with1 we must not feel ashamed to begin implacably with the actual man just as he is1 and with the wants and the motives that he actually has4 ,we should feel ashamed rather to begin in any other way4 ,it would not be bright or thoughtful to begin on him with motives he is going to have2 and it certainly would not be religious or worthy of us to try to make him begin with ours4 ,perhaps ours are better--for us4 ,perhaps1 too1 ours will be better for him when he is like us 7if we can give him any reason to want to be74 ,in the meantime1 what is there that can honestly be called base in taking human nature as it is and in allowing a sliding scale of motives in people8 ,starving people and slaves1 or people who are ugly and hateful1 i4e41 not really quite bright toward others1 who impute mean1 inaccurate motives to them1 can only be patiently expected to have a very small area or even mote of unselfishness at first4 ,a cross-section of our society to-day represents the entire geological formation of human nature for #dj1jjj years4 ,we need but look on the faces of the men about us as we go down the street4 ,all history is here this minute4 ,we wish that ,labour had better motives4 ,we wish to get our workmen to understand us better and believe in us more and work for us harder4 ,we agree that we must begin with them1 if we propose to do this1 where they are4 ,where are they8 ,there are certain general observations that might seem to the point4 #a4 ,if a man is a sane and sound man and works hard1 he must feel that everything he does1 every minute1 is definitely connected with the main through-train purpose in his life4 #b4 ,if the main purpose in his life is domestic and consists in having his family live well and giving his children a chance1 he must feel and be absolutely sure when he is working better or working worse for his employer that he is working better or worse for himself and for those for whom he lives4 #c4 ,in the ordinary labourer this domestic unselfishness or house patriotism is a kind of miniature public spirit4 ,it is the elementary form of his national or human enthusiasm4 ,it is the form of disinterestedness that has to be attended to in men first2 and the way for society to get the labouring man to be public-spirited1 to have the habit of considering the rights of others1 is for society to have the habit of considering his rights in his daily work4 ,an intelligent1 live man must be allowed a little margin to practise being unselfish on1 if only in the privacy of his own family4 ,unselfishness begins in small circles4 ,the starving man must be allowed a smaller range of unselfishness than the man who has enough4 ,it is not uncomplimentary or unworthy in human nature to admit that this is so--to demand that the human being who is starving must be allowed to be selfish4 ,if he is not bright enough to be selfish when he is hungry he is dangerous to society4 ,we ought to insist upon his being selfish1 and help him in it4 ,virtue is a surplus4 #d4 ,this is the first humble1 stuttering speech the competent modern employer who proposes to express himself to his men1 and get them to understand him and work with him1 is going to make4 ,he is going to pick out one by one every man in his works who has a decent1 modest1 manly desire to be selfish1 and help him in it4 ,he is going to do something or say something that will make the man see1 that will make him believe for life1 that the most powerful1 the most trustworthy1 the most far-sighted man he can find in the world to be his partner in being decently1 soundly1 and respectfully selfish--is his employer4 ,no employer can expect to get the best work out of a man except by working down through to the inner organic desire in the man as a man1 except by waking his selfishness up and by making it a larger1 fuller1 nobler1 weightier selfishness1 and turning the full weight of it every minute1 every hour1 on his daily work4 ,the best language an employer can find to express this desire at first to his workmen1 is some form of faithful1 honest copartnership4 #e4 ,the ordinary wage labourer has little imagination about other people because he is not allowed any about himself4 ,the moment he is1 and the moment his employer arranges his work so that he sees every minute all day that the work which he does for the firm #cj per cent4 better counts4 #cj per cent4 more on his own main purpose in life1 his imagination is touched about himself and he begins to work like a human being4 ,when a man has been allowed to work awhile as a human being he will begin to be human with a wider range4 ,being a partner touches the imagination and wakes the man's humanness up4 ,he not only works better1 but he loves his family better when he sees he can do something for them4 ,he serves his town better and his lodge better when he sees he can do something for them4 #f4 ,being a partner wakes the man's imagination toward those who work with him1 and toward the public and the markets and the goods and the cities where the goods go4 ,he reads newspapers with a new eye4 ,he becomes interested in people who buy the goods1 and in people who do not4 ,why do they not8 ,he gropes toward a general interest in human nature1 and begins to live4 #g4 ,a man who is being paid wages one night in a week1 has his imagination touched about his work one night in the week4 ,he is merely being a wage-earner4 ,in being a partner he is being paid1 and feels his pay coming in1 every thirty seconds1 in the better way he moves his hands or does not move his hands4 ,this makes him a man4 #h4 ,and1 finally1 as he knows he is being paid1 and that he always will be paid1 what he earns1 he stops thinking of the sick1 tired side of his work--the pay he gets out of it1 and begins to love the work itself1 and begins to be perfect in it for its own sake4 ,this makes him a gentleman4 #i4 ,being a partner makes a man actively and keenly reasonable and practical1 not only about his own labour1 but about the superior value of other people with whom he works4 ,he wants the best people in the best places4 ,he begins to have a practical partner's imagination about the men who are over him1 and about their knowing more than he does4 ,if he is merely paid wages1 he is superstitious1 and jealous toward those who know more than he does4 ,if he is paid profits1 he is glad that they do1 and strikes in and helps4 #aj4 ,another complete range of motives is soon offered to the employee who is a partner4 ,he feels the joy of being a part of a big1 splendid whole1 a disinterested delight and pride in others4 ,he grows young with it1 like a boy in school4 ,here is the factory over him1 around him--his own vast hockey team--and over that is the nation1 and over that is the world6 ,an employer can touch the imagination of most men1 of the rank and file of the people1 ninety-nine times where other people can touch it once4 ,and every time he touches it1 he touches it to the point4 ,if men in general do not believe to-day in religion and do not want it1 it is because they have employers who have not seen any place in their business where they could get their religion in1 and have kept the people 7in the one place where they could really learn what religion is7 from learning anything about it4 ,the moment the more common employers see what the great ones see now1 that business is the one particular place in this world where religion really works1 works the hardest1 the longest1 and the best1 works as it had never been dreamed a religion could be made to work before--the day school teachers of the world1 put the ,golden ,rule in the ,course everybody will know it4 ,it only takes a moment's thought to see what the employers of the world could do with the ,golden ,rule the moment they take hold of it4 ,one has but to consider what they have done with it already4 ,one has but to consider the astounding way in the last fifteen years they have made everybody not believe in it4 ,the employers of the world have been saying ten hours a day to everybody that the ,golden ,rule is a foolish1 pleasant1 inefficient1 worsted motto on a parlour wall4 ,everybody has believed it4 ,and now that the big employers are setting the pace and are saying exactly the opposite thing about the ,golden ,rule1 now that all the employers are trying to get their employees to be efficient 7to do by their employers as they would be done by71 and now that they are trying to be efficient themselves 7are trying to do to their employees as they would have their employees do to them71 the ,golden ,rule is touching the imagination of crowds1 and the crowd is seeing that the ,golden ,rule works4 ,they watch it working every day in the things they know about4 ,then they believe in it for other things4 ,,chapter ,,xii ,,the ,,necks ,,of ,,the ,,wicked ,a letter lies before me1 one out of many others asking me how the author of ,the ,shadow ,christ1 which is a study of the religious values in suffering and self-sacrifice in this world1 takes the low ground that honesty is the best policy4 ,i know two kinds of men who believe that honesty is the best policy4 ,these two men use exactly the same words ,honesty is the best policy4 ,one man says it4 ,the other man sings it4 ,one man is honest because it pays4 ,the other man is honest because he likes it4 ,honesty is the best policy as a motive cannot be called religious1 but ,honesty is the best policy as a ,te ,deum1 as something a man sings in his heart every day about ,god1 something he sings about human nature is religious1 and believing it the way some men believe it1 is an act of worship4 ,it is like a great gentle mass4 ,it is like taking softly up one's own planet and offering it to ,god4 ,here it is--the planet4 ,honesty is organized in the rocks on it and in the oak trees on it and in the people4 ,the rivers flow to the sea and the heart of ,man flows to ,god4 ,on this one planet1 at least1 ,god is a success4 ,possibly it is because many other people beside myself have been slow in clearly making this distinction between ,honesty is the best policy as a motive or a ,te ,deum1 that ,i have come upon so many religious men and women in the last two or three years1 who1 in the finest spirit1 have seemed to me to be doing all that they could to discourage everybody especially to discourage me1 about the ,golden ,rule4 ,the first objection which they put forward to the ,golden ,rule is that it is a failure4 ,when ,i try to deal with this or try to tell them about ,non-,gregarious1 the second objection that they put forward is1 that it is a success4 ,if they cannot discourage me with one of these objections they try to discourage me with the other4 ,they point to the ,cross4 ,some days ,i cannot help wondering what ,christ would think if ,he were to come back and find people1 all these good ,christian people everywhere using the ,cross--the ,cross of all things in the world as an objection to the ,golden ,rule and to its working properly1 or as a general argument against expecting anything of anybody4 ,i do not know that ,i have any philosophy about it that would be of any value to others4 ,i only know that ,i am angry all through when ,i hear a certain sort of man saying1 and apparently proving1 that the ,golden ,rule does not work4 ,and ,i am angry at other people who are listening with me because they are not angry too4 ,why are people so complacent about crosses8 ,and why are they willing to keep on having and expecting to have in this world all the good people on crosses8 ,why do they keep on treating these crosses year after year1 century after century1 in a dull tired way as if they had become a kind of conventionality of ,god's1 a kind of good old church custom1 something that ,he and the ,church by this time1 after two thousand years1 could not really expect to try to get over or improve upon8 ,i do not know that ,i ought to feel as ,i do4 ,i only know that the moment ,i see evil triumphing in this world1 there is one thing that that evil comes up against4 ,it comes up against my will4 ,my will1 so far as it goes1 is a spiritual fact4 ,i do not argue about it1 nor do ,i know that ,i wish to justify it4 ,i merely accept my will as it is1 as one spiritual fact4 ,i propose to know what to do with it next4 ,the first thing that ,i have done1 of course1 has been to find out that there are millions of other so-called ,christian people who have encountered this same fact that ,i have encountered4 ,there are at least some of us who stand together4 ,our wills are set against having any more people die on crosses in this world than can be helped4 ,if there is any kind of skill1 craftmanship1 technique1 psychology1 knowledge of human nature which can be brought to bear1 which will keep the best people in this world not only from being1 but from belonging on crosses in it1 we propose to bring these things to bear4 ,we are not willing to believe that crowds are not inclined to ,goodness4 ,we are not willing to slump down on any general slovenly assumption about the world that goodness cannot be made to work in it4 ,if goodness is not efficient in this world we will make it efficient4 ,our reason for saying this is that we honestly glory in this world4 ,we believe that at this moment while we are still on it1 it is in the act of being a great world1 that it is ,god's world1 and in ,god's ,name we will defend its reputation4 ,we do not deny that it may be better spiritual etiquette1 more heroic looking and may have a certain moral grace1 so far as a man himself is concerned1 if the world makes him suffer for being honest4 ,but after all he is only one man1 and whether he dislikes his suffering or likes it and feels fine and spiritual over it1 it is only one man's suffering4 ,but why is it that when the world makes a man suffer1 everybody should seem always to be thinking of the man8 ,why does not anybody think of the world8 ,is not the fact that a whole world1 eternal and innumerable1 is supposed to be such a mean1 dishonest sort of a world that it will make a man suffer for being good a more important fact than the man's suffering is8 ,it seems to me to be taking not lower but higher ground when one insists on believing in the race one belongs to and in believing that it is a human race that can be believed in4 ,after two thousand years of ,christ1 it is a lazy1 tired1 anmic slander on the world to believe that it does not pay to be good in it4 ,the man who believes it1 and acts as if he believed it1 is to-day and has been from the beginning of time the supreme enemy of us all4 ,he is guilty before heaven and before us all and in all nations of high treason to the human race4 ,one of the next most important things to do in modern religion is going to be to get all these morally dressed-up1 noble-looking people who enjoy feeling how good they are because they have failed1 to examine their hearts1 stop enjoying themselves and think4 ,for hundreds of years we have religiously run after martyrs and we have learned in a way1 most of us1 to have a kind of cooped-up patriotism for our own nation1 but why are there not more people who are patriotic toward the whole human race8 ,one has been used to seeing it now for centuries1 good people all over the world hanging their harps on willow trees1 or snuggling down together by the cold sluggish stream of their lives1 and gossiping about how the world has abused them1 when they would be far better occupied1 nine out of ten of them--in doing something that would make it stop4 ,there was a poet and soldier some thousands of years ago who put more real religion 7and put it too1 into his imprecatory psalms71 than has been put1 ,i believe1 into all the sweet whinings and the spiritual droopings of the world in three thousand years4 ,i do not deny that ,i would quarrel1 as a matter of form1 with the lack of urbanity1 with a certain ill-nature in the imprecatory ,psalms2 but with the spirit in them1 with the motive and mighty desire1 with the necessity in the man's heart that was poured into them1 ,i have the profoundest sympathy4 ,david had a manly1 downright belief4 ,his belief was that if sin is allowed to get to the top in this world of ours1 it is our fault4 ,david felt that it was partly his--and being a king--very much his1 and as he was trying to do something about it1 he naturally wanted the world to help4 ,what he really meant--what lay in the background of his petition--the real spirit that made him speak out in that nave bold way before the ,lord1 and before everybody--that made him ask the great ,god in heaven all looking so white and so indifferent1 to come right down please and jump on the necks of the wicked1 was a vivid1 live vision of his own for his own use that he was going to make the world more decent4 ,he was spirited about it4 ,if ,god did not1 ,he would1 and naturally when he came to expressing how he felt in prayer1 he wanted ,god to stand by him4 ,to put it in good plain soldier-like ,hebrew1 ,he wanted ,god to jump on the necks of his enemies4 ,speaking strictly for ourselves1 in our more modern spirit of course1 we would want to modulate this1 we admit that we would not ask ,god to do a little thing like jumping on the necks of the wicked--just for us--nor would we care to break away from the other things we are doing and attend to it ourselves1 nor would we even favour their necks being jumped on by others1 but while we do not agree with ,david's particular request1 we do profoundly agree with the way he felt when he made it4 ,we would not make our flank movement on the wicked in quite the same way and according to our more modern and more scientific manner of thought1 we would want to do something more practical with the wicked1 but we would want to do something with them and we would want to do it now4 ,as we look at it1 it ought not to be necessary to jump on the necks of the wicked to make them good1 that is1 to make them understand what they would wish they had done in twenty years4 ,we live in a more reasoning and precise age and what more particularly concerns us in the wicked is not their necks1 but their heads and their hearts4 ,it seems to us that they are not using them very much and that the moment they do and we can get them to1 they will be good4 ,possibly it was a mere matter of language1 a concession to the then state of the language--,david's wanting their necks to be jumped on so that he could get their attention at first and make them stop and think and understand4 ,more subtle ways of expressing things to the wicked have been thought of to-day than of jumping on their necks1 but the principle ,david had in mind has not changed1 the principle of being loyal to the human race1 the principle of standing up for people and insisting that they were really meant to be better than they were or than they thought they could be--a kind of holy patriotism ,david had for this world4 ,the main fact about ,david seems to be that he believed he belonged to a great human race4 ,incidentally he believed he belonged to a human race that was really quite bright1 bright enough at least to make people sorry for doing wrong in it--a human race that was getting so shrewd and so just and so honest that it took stupider and stupider people every year to be wicked1 and when he found1 judging from recent events in ,judea1 that this for the time being was not so1 he had a hateful feeling about it1 which it seems to some of us1 vastly improved him and would improve many of us4 ,we do not claim that the imprecatory ,psalms were ,david's best1 but they must have helped him immensely in writing the other ones4 99 99 99 99 99 ,we may be wrong4 ,but it has come to be an important religious duty to some of us1 or rather religious joy1 to hate the prosperity of the wicked4 ,we hate the prosperity of the wicked1 not because it is their prosperity and not ours1 but because their prosperity constitutes a sneer or slander on the world4 ,we have no idea of wanting to go about faithfully jumping upon the necks of the wicked4 ,what we want is to feel that we are in a world where the good people are happy and are making goodness reasonable1 successful1 profitable and practical in it4 ,we want an earth with crowds on it who see things as they are1 and who guess so well on what they want 7i4e41 who are good7 that other people who do not know what they want and are not good1 will be lonesome4 ,we have made up our minds to live in a world not where the wicked will feel that their necks are going to be jumped on 7which is really a rather interesting and prominent feeling on the whole71 but a world where the wicked will be made to feel that nobody notices their necks1 that they are not worth being jumped on1 a world where nobody will have time to go out back and jump on them1 a world where the wicked will not be able to think of anything important to do1 and where the wicked things that are left to do will be so small and so stupid that nobody will notice4 ,they will be ignored like boys with catcalls in the street4 ,when we can make people who do wrong feel unimportant enough1 there is going to be some chance for the good4 ,if we could find some sweet1 proper1 gentle1 ,christian-looking way of conveying to these people for a few swift1 keen minutes how little difference it makes when they and people like them do wrong1 they would steal over in a body and do right4 ,this is our program4 ,we are making preliminary arrangements for a world in which after this1 very soon now1 righteousness is going to attend strictly to its own business and unrighteousness is going to be crowded out4 ,no one will feel that he has time in two or three hundred years from now to go out of his way into some obscure corner of the world and jump on the necks of the wicked4 ,but this is a matter of form4 ,the main fundamental manful instinct ,david had--the idea that there should not be any more people dying on crosses than could be helped--that collective society should take hold of ,evil and set it down hard in its chair and make it cry seems to many of us absolutely sound4 ,of course1 we feel that it is not for us1 those who love righteousness1 to jump on the necks of the wicked4 ,we prefer to have it attended to in a more dignified1 impersonal way by ,society as a whole4 ,so we believe that ,society should proceed to making goodness and honesty pay4 ,if ,society will not do it we will do it4 ,the world may be against us at first but we will at least clear off a small place on it--in our own business for instance--where our goodness can command the most shrewdness and the most technique--and we will do what we can slowly--one industry at a time1 to remove the slander on goodness that goodness is not inefficient1 and the slander on the world that goodness cannot be self-supporting1 self-respecting 7and without disgrace71 even comfortable in it4 ,the old hymn with which many of us are familiar is well and true enough4 ,but it does not seem that standing up for ,jesus is the most important point in the world just now4 ,a great many people are doing it4 ,what we need more is people who will stand up for the world4 ,when people who are standing up for the world stand and sing ,stand up for ,jesus it will begin to count4 ,let four hundred ,nons sing it2 and we will all go to church4 ,if nine of the people out of ten who are singing ,stand up for ,jesus would stand up for the world1 that is1 if they would stop trading with their grocer when they find he slides in regularly one bad orange out of twelve and promptly look up a grocer who does not do such things1 and trade with him1 it would not be necessary for people to do as they so often do nowadays1 fall back on a little wistful half discouraged last resort like standing up for ,jesus4 ,standing up for the world means standing by men who believe in it1 standing by men who make everything they do in business a declaration of their faith in ,god and their faith in the credit of human nature1 men who put up money daily in their advertising1 their buying and selling1 on the loyalty1 common sense1 brains1 courage1 goodness1 and righteous indignation of the people4 ,the idea that goodness is sweet and helpless and that ,jesus was meek and lowly and has to be stood up for is now and always has been a slander4 ,it does not seem to some of us that ,he would want to be stood up for and we do not like the way some people call ,him meek and lowly4 ,it would be more true to say that ,he merely looks meek and lowly2 that is1 if most men had done or not done or had said or not said things in the way he did1 they would have been considered meek and lowly for it4 ,he had a way of using a soft answer to turn away wrath4 ,but there was not anything really meek and lowly about his giving the soft answer4 ,no meek and lowly man would ever have thought of such a thing as turning away wrath with a soft answer4 ,he would have been afraid of looking weak4 ,he would not have had the energy or the honesty or the spiritual address to know or to think of a soft answer that would do it4 ,the spirit of fighting evil with good--a kind of glorious self-will for goodness1 for doing a thing the higher and nobler way and making it work1 the spirit of successful implacably efficient righteousness is the last and most modern interpretation of the ,new ,testament1 the crowd's latest cry to its ,god4 ,crowds will always crucify and crosses will never go by4 ,but we are going to have a higher ideal for crosses4 ,we are not going 7out of sheer shame for the world71 to think seriously any longer of dying on a cross1 or letting any one else die on one for a little rudimentary platitude1 a quiet1 sensible1 everyday business motto for any competent business man like ,do unto others as you would have them do unto you4 ,,chapter ,,xiii ,,is ,,it ,,wrong ,,for ,,good ,,people ,,to ,,be ,,successful8 ,we are having and are about to have notably and truly successful men who have the humility and faithfulness1 the spiritual distinction of true and great success4 ,i want to interpret1 if ,i can1 these men4 ,i would like to put with the great martyrs1 with the immortal heroes of failure1 these modern silent1 unspoken1 unsung mighty men1 the heroes of success4 ,i look forward to seeing them placed among the trophies of religion1 in the heart of mankind at last4 ,i cannot stand by and watch these men being looked upon by good people as men the ,new ,testament made no room for1 secretly disapproved of by religious men and women1 as being successes1 as being little1 noisy1 disturbing1 contradictions of the ,new ,testament as talking back to the ,cross4 ,these things ,i have been trying to say about the ,cross as a means of expressing goodness to crowds have brought me as time goes on into close quarters with many men to whom ,i pay grateful tribute1 men of high spirit1 who strenuously disagree with me4 ,i am not content unless ,i can find common ground with men like these4 ,they are wont to tell me when we argue about it that whatever ,i may be able to say for success as a means of touching the imaginations of crowds with goodness1 great or attractive or enthralling characters are not produced by success4 ,success does not produce great characters4 ,it is now and always has been failure that develops the characters of the men who a truly great4 ,perhaps failure is not the only way4 99 99 99 99 99 ,when ,i was talking with ---- a little while ago about ,non-,gregarious's goodness and how it succeeded1 he was afraid that if his goodness succeeded there must have been something the matter with it4 ,i could see that he was wondering what it was4 ,non's success troubled him4 ,he did not think it was exactly religious4 ,real religion he said1 was self-sacrifice4 ,there always had to be something of the ,cross about real religion4 ,i said that ,non's religion was touched at every point with the ,cross4 ,it seemed to me that it was the spirit of eagerness in it that was the great thing about the ,cross4 ,if ,non would all but have died to make the ,golden ,rule work in this world1 if he daily faced ruin and risked the loss of everything he had in this life to prove that the ,golden ,rule was a success1 that is if he really had a ,cross and if he really faced it--dying on it1 or not dying on it1 could not have made him one whit more religious or less religious than he was4 ,what ,non was willing to die for1 was his belief in the world1 and scores of good ,christian people tried in those early days of his business struggle to keep him from believing in the world4 ,there was hardly a day at first but some good ,christian would step into ,non's office and tell him the world would make him suffer for it if he kept on recklessly believing in it and doing all those unexpected1 unconventional1 honest things that somehow1 apparently1 he could not help doing4 ,they all told him he could not succeed4 ,they said he was a failure4 ,he would suffer for it4 ,i would like to express if ,i can1 what seems to be ,non's point of view toward success and failure4 ,if ,non were trying to express his idea of the suffering of ,christ1 ,i imagine he would say that in the hardest time of all when his body was hanging on the ,cross1 the thing that was really troubling ,christ was not that he was being killed4 ,the thing that was troubling him was that the world really seemed1 at least for the time being1 the sort of world that could do such things4 ,he did not take his own cross too personally or too literally as the world's permanent or fixed attitude toward goodness or every degree of goodness4 ,there was a sense in which he did not believe except temporarily in his own cross4 ,he did not think that the world meant it or that it would ever own up that it meant it4 ,probably if we had crosses to-day the hard part of dying on one would be1 not dying on it1 but thinking while one was dying on it that one was in the sort of world that could do such things4 ,it is ,non's religion not to believe every morning as he goes down to his office that he is in a mean world1 a world that would want to crucify him for doing his work as well as he could4 ,perhaps this was the spirit of the first ,cross1 too4 ,we have every reason to believe that if ,christ could have come back in the flesh three days after the crucifixion and lived thirty-three years longer in it1 he would have occupied himself exclusively in standing up for the world that had crucified him1 in saying that it was a small party in a small province that did it1 that it was temporary and that they did it because they were in a hurry4 ,it was not ,christ1 but the comparatively faint-believing1 worldly minded saints that have enjoyed dying on crosses since1 who have been proud of being martyrs4 ,among those who have tried the martyr way of doing things ,jesus is almost the only one who has not in his heart abused the world4 ,most martyrs have made a kind of religion out of not expecting anything of it and of trying to get out of it4 ,and ye1 all ye people1 are ye suitable or possible people for me to be religious with8 the typical martyr exclaims to all the cities1 to all the inventors1 to the scientists and to the earth-redeemers1 to his neighbours and his fellow men4 ,it was not until science in the person of ,galileo came to the rescue of ,christianity and began slowly to bring it back to where ,christ started it--as a noble1 happy enterprise of standing up for this world and of asserting that these men who were in it are good enough to be religious here and to be the sons of ,god now--that ,christianity began to function4 ,religion has been making apparently a side trip for nearly twelve hundred years1 a side trip into space or into the air or into the grave for holiness for the eternal1 and for the infinite4 ,doubtless very often people on crosses really have been holier than the people who knew how to be good without being crucified4 ,sometimes it has been the other way4 ,it would have been just as holy in ,non to make the gospel work in ,new ,york as to make a blaze1 a show or advertisement of how wicked the world was1 and of how inefficient the gospel was--by going into insolvency4 ,he has had his cross1 but instead of dying on it1 he has taken it up and carried it4 ,scores of risks and difficulties that he has grappled with would have become crosses at once if equally good1 but less resourceful men1 had had them4 ,letting one's self be threatened with the cross a thousand times is quite as brave as dying on one once4 ,the spirit1 or at least the shadow1 of a cross must always fall daily on any life that is stretching the world1 that is freeing the lives of other men against their wills4 ,the whole issue of whether there will be a cross or the threat of a cross turns on a man's insight into human nature and his quiet and practical imagination concentrated upon his work4 ,not dying on a cross is a matter of technique4 ,one sees how not to1 and one does not4 ,it might be said that the world has two kinds of redeemers1 its cross-redeemers and its success-redeemers4 ,the very best are on crosses1 many of them4 ,perhaps in the development of the truth the cross-redeemers come first2 they are the pioneers4 ,then come the success-redeemers1 then everybody6 ,,chapter ,,xiv ,,is ,,it ,,second ,,rate ,,for ,,good ,,people ,,to ,,be ,,successful8 ,of course the most stupendous success that has ever been made--the world's most successful undertaking from a technical point of view as an adaptation of means to ends was the attempt that was made by a man in ,galilee years and years ago to get not only the attention of a whole world1 but to get the attention of a whole world for two thousand years4 ,this purpose of arresting the attention of a world and of holding it for two thousand years was accomplished by the use of success and of failure alternately4 ,christ tried success or failure according to which method 7time and place considered7 would seem to work best4 ,his first success was with the doctors4 ,his next success was based on ,his instinct for psychology1 ,his power of divining people's minds1 which made possible to ,him those extraordinary feats in the way of telling short stories that would arrest and hold the attention of crowds so that they would think and live with them for weeks to come4 ,his next success was a success based on the power of ,his personality1 and ,his knowledge of the human spirit and his victory over ,his own spirit--his success in curing people's diseases and ,his extraordinary roll of miracles4 ,he finally tried failure at the end1 or what looked like failure1 because the ,cross completed what he had had to say4 ,it made ,his success seem greater4 ,the world had put to death the man who had had such great successes4 ,people thought of ,his successes when they thought of ,him on the ,cross1 and they have kept thinking of them for thousands of years4 ,but the ,cross itself1 or the use of failure was a sowing of the seed1 a taking the truth out of the light and the sunshine and putting it in the dark ground4 ,the ,cross was promptly contradicted with the ,resurrection4 ,all this1 it seems to some of us1 is the most stupendous and successful undertaking from a purely technical point of view that the world has seen4 ,in the last analysis it was not ,his ideas or ,his character merely1 but it was ,his technique that made ,christ the ,son of ,god and the ,master of the ,nations of the ,earth4 99 99 99 99 99 ,i think that while ,christ would not have understood ,frederick ,taylor's technique1 his tables of figures or foot-tons or logarithms he would have understood ,frederick ,taylor4 ,nearly all the time that could be said to have been spent in his life in dealing with other men he spent in doing for them on a nobler scale the thing that ,frederick ,taylor did4 ,he went up to men--to hundreds of men a day1 that he saw humdrumming along1 despising themselves and despising their work and expecting nothing of themselves and nothing of any one else and asked them to put their lives in his hands and let him show what could be done with them4 ,this is ,frederick ,taylor's profession4 ,the ,sermon on the ,mount began with telling people that they would be successful if they knew how--if they had a vision4 ,it proceeded to give them the vision4 ,it began with giving them a vision for the things that they had1 told them how even the very things that they had always thought before were what was the matter with the world they could make a great use of4 ,blessed are the peacemakers4 ,blessed are those that hunger2 blessed are the meek4 ,and ,he then went on to tell them how much finer1 and nobler and more free from the cares and weights of this earth they could be if they wanted to be1 than they had dared to believe4 ,he told the people who were around ,him bigger things about human nature1 how successful it was or could be than any one had ever claimed for people in this world before4 ,they put ,him up on a ,cross at last and crucified ,him because they thought ,he was too hopeful about them1 and about human nature or because1 as they would have put it1 ,he was blasphemous and said every man was a ,son of ,god4 ,as human nature then was and in the then spirit of the world1 no better means than a ,cross could have been employed to get the attention of all men1 to make a two thousand year advertisement for all nations of what a success human nature was1 of what men really could be like4 ,but ,i think that if ,christ were to come to us again and if he were to try to get the attention of the whole world once more to precisely the same ideas and principles that he stood for before1 the enterprise would be conducted in a very different manner4 ,there is a picture of ,albert ,durer's which hangs near my desk1 and once more as ,i write these lines my eyes have fallen on it4 ,it is the familiar one with the lion and the lamb in it1 lying down together1 and with the big room with the implements of knowledge scattered about in it and at the other end in the window at the table with a book1 an old1 bent-over scientist with a halo over his head4 ,if ,christ were to appear suddenly in this modern world to-morrow1 the first thing ,he would see and would go toward1 would be the halo over the scientist's head4 ,there is nothing especially picturesque or religious looking1 nothing1 at least1 that could be put in a stained-glass window in ,frederick ,taylor's tables and charts and diagrams of the number of foot-tons a pig-iron handler can lift with his arms in a day4 ,but if ,christ returned to the world to-morrow and if what ,he wanted to do to-morrow was to get the universal1 profound1 convinced attention of all men to the ,golden ,rule1 ,i believe ,he would begin the way ,frederick ,taylor did1 by--being concrete4 ,if ,he wanted to get men in general1 men in business1 to love one another ,he would begin by trying to work out some technical1 practical way in which certain particular men in a certain particular place could afford to love one another4 ,he would find a practical way for instance for the employers and pig-iron handlers in the ,midvale ,steel ,works to come to some sort of common understanding and to work cheerfully and with a free spirit together4 ,i think he would proceed very much in the way that ,frederick ,taylor did4 ,he would not say much about the ,golden ,rule4 ,he would give each man a vision for his work1 and of the way it lapped over into other men's work and leave the ,golden ,rule a chance to take care of itself4 ,this is all the ,golden ,rule1 as a truth or as a remark needs just now4 ,for two thousand years men have devoted themselves ,sunday day after ,sunday to saying over and over again that men should love one another4 ,the idea is a perfectly familiar one4 ,when ,christ said it two thousand years ago1 it was so original and so sensational that just of itself and as a mere remark it had a carrying power over the whole earth4 ,everybody believes it now--that it is a true remark--but like a score of other remarks that have been made and some of the noblest ,christ made1 is it not possible that it has long since in its mere capacity of being a remark1 gone by8 ,there is no one who has not heard about our loving one another4 ,the remark we want now is how we can do it4 ,this is the remark that ,mr4 ,frederick ,taylor has made4 ,it is not very eloquent4 ,it is a mere statement of fact4 ,it has taken him nearly thirty-three years to make it4 ,the gist of it is that for thirty-three years1 the employers and the pig-iron handlers in the ,midvale ,steel ,works1 ,pennsylvania1 have been devoted to one another and to one another's interests and acting all day every day as if of course their interests were the same1 and it has been found that employees when their employers coperated with them could lift forty-seven tons instead of twelve and a half a day1 and were getting #fj per cent4 more wages4 ,everybody listens4 ,everybody sees at a glance that when it comes to making remarks about doing as one would be done by1 this is the one remark that we have all been waiting to hear some one make for two thousand years4 99 99 99 99 99 ,the ,cross or the last-resort type of religion was as far as ,st4 ,augustine or ,st4 ,francis in their world could get4 ,it was all that the ,middle ,ages were ready for or that could be claimed for people who had to live in ages without a printing press1 in which no one in the crowd could expect to know anything and in which there were no ways of letting crowds know things4 ,to-day there is no reason why the ,cross as a contrivance for attracting the attention of all people to goodness should be exclusively relied upon4 ,possibly the ,cross was intended1 at the time1 as the best possible way of starting a religion1 when there was none1 or possibly for keeping it up when there was very little of it4 ,but now that ,christianity has been occupied two thousand years in putting in the groundwork1 in laying down the principles of success1 and in organizing them into the world1 has been slowly making it possible with crowds that could not be long deceived for success to be decent4 ,the leaven has worked into human nature and ,christianity has produced ,the ,successful ,temperament4 ,success has become a spiritual institution4 ,in other words1 the hour of the ,scientist1 of the man with a technique1 of the man who sees how1 the man of ,the ,successful ,temperament is at hand4 ,everything we plan for the world1 including goodness1 from this day--must reckon with him--with the ,man ,who ,sees ,how4 ,,chapter ,,xv ,,the ,,successful ,,temperament ,i also1 ,gentle ,reader1 have despised and do despise success4 ,i also have stood1 like you1 perhaps1 and ,i am standing now in that ancient1 outer court1 where ,i can keep seeing every day ,the ,little ,great ,men with all their funny trappings on1--their hoods1 and their ribbons1 and their train-bearers1 drive up before us all and go in to ,the ,great ,door4 ,i have gone by in the night and have heard the buzz of their voices there4 ,i have looked1 like you1 up at the great lighted windows of ,prosperity from the street4 ,and in the broad daylight ,i have seen them too4 ,i have stood on the curb in the public way with all the others and watched silently the parade of ,the ,little ,great go by4 ,i have waited like you1 ,gentle ,reader1 and smiled or ,i have turned on my heel sadly1 or wearily or bitterly or gayly and walked away down my own side street of the world and with the huzzahs of the crowd echoing faintly in my ears have gone my way4 ,but ,i keep coming back to the curb again4 ,i keep coming back because1 every now and then among all the gilt carriages and the bowing faces in them1 or among all the big yellow vans or cages with the great beasts of success in them1 the literary foxes1 the journalist-juggernauts1 the ,jack ,johnsons of finance1 the contented1 gurgling1 wallowing millionaires--,i cannot help standing once more and looking among them1 for one1 or for possibly two1 or three or four who may be truly successful men4 ,some of them are merely successful-looking4 ,i often find as ,i see them more closely1 that they are undeceived1 or humble1 or are at least not being any more successful-looking than they can help1 and are trying to do better4 ,they are the men who have defied success to succeed and who will defy it again and again4 ,they are the great men4 ,the great man is the man who can get himself made and who will get himself made out of anything he finds at hand4 ,if success cannot do it1 he makes failure do it4 ,if he cannot make success express the greatness or the vision that is in him1 he makes failure express it4 ,but this book is not about great men and goodness4 ,it is about touching the imagination of crowds with goodness1 about making goodness democratic and making goodness available for common people4 99 99 99 99 99 ,a stupendous success in goodness will advertise it as well as a stupendous failure4 ,goodness has had its cross-redeemers to attract the attention of half a world4 ,possibly it is having now its success-redeemers to attract the attention of the other half4 ,the people the success-redeemers reach would turn out to be1 possibly1 very much more than half4 ,the ,cross1 as a means of getting the attention of crowds1 or of the more common people in our modern1 practical-minded ,western world1 was apparently adapted to its purpose as long as it was used for church purposes or as long as it was kept dramatic or sensational or remote1 or as long as it was a cross for some one else1 but as a means of attracting the attention of crowds of ordinary men and women to goodness in common everyday things1 it is very doubtful if failure--in the power of steady daily pulling on men's minds1 has done as much for goodness as success4 ,it is doubtful if1 except as an ideal or conventional symbol the cross has ever been or ever could be what might be called a spiritually middle-class institution4 ,it has been reserved for men of genius1 pioneers and world-designers to have those colossal and glorious crosses that have been worshipped in all ages1 and must be worshipped in all ages as the great memorials of the human race4 ,but the more common and numerous types of men1 the men who do not design worlds1 but who execute them1 build them1 who carry the new designs of goodness out1 who work through the details and conceive the technique of goodness are men in whom the spiritual and religious power takes the natural form of success4 ,it seems to be the nature of the modern and the western type of man to challenge fatalism1 to defy a cross4 ,he would almost boast that nobody could make him die on it4 ,this spirit in men too is a religious spirit4 ,it is the next hail of goodness4 ,goodness posts up its next huge notice on the world3 ,,success ,it is going to make the more rudimentary everyday people notice it1 and it is going to make them notice it in everyday things4 ,it does not admit that goodness is merely for the spiritual aristocrats for those greater souls that can search out and appreciate the spiritual values in failure4 ,it believes that goodness is for crowds4 ,it has discovered that crosses1 to common people in common things1 seem oriental and mystical4 ,the common people of the western world instead of being born with dreamy imaginations are born with pointed and applied ones4 ,it is not impossible that the comparative failure of the ,christian religion in the western world and in the later generations is that it has been trying to be oriental and aristocratic in appealing to what is really a new type of man in the world--the scientific and practical type as we see it in the western nations all about us to-day4 ,we can die on crosses in our ,western world as well as any one and we can do it in crowds too as they do in ,india1 but we propose if crosses are expected of us to know why in crowds4 ,knowing why makes us think of things and makes us do things4 ,it is the keynote of our temperament4 ,and it is not fair to say of us when we make this distinction that we do not believe in the cross4 ,but there are times when some of us wish that we could get other people to stop believing in it4 ,we would all but die on the cross to get other people to stop dying on one for platitudes1 to get them to work their way down to the facts and focus their minds on the practical details of not dying on a cross1 of forming a vision of action which will work4 ,it goes without saying that as long as crowds are in the world crosses will not go by1 but it is wicked not to make them go by as fast as possible1 one by one4 ,they were meant to be moved up higher4 ,we are eager not to die on the same cross for the same thing year after year and century after century4 ,it seems to us that the eagerness that always goes with the cross always was and always will be the essential1 powerful and beautiful thing in it4 ,and it is this new eagerness in the modern spirit1 a kind of hurrying up of the souls of the world that is inspiring us to employ our western genius in inventing and defending and applying the means of goodness and in finding ways of making goodness work4 ,we will not admit that men were intended to die on crosses from a sheer1 beautiful1 heavenly shiftlessness1 vague-mindedness1 mere unwillingness to take pains to express themselves or unwillingness to think things out and to make things plain to crowds4 ,it does not seem to us that it is wicked to employ success as well as failure1 to state our religion to people4 ,it seems to us that it goes naturally with the scientific and technical temperament of the people that we should do this4 ,it is not superior and it is not inferior4 ,it is temperamental and it is based upon the study of the psychology of attention1 on a knowledge of what impresses a certain kind of man and of what really is conclusive with crowds and with average men and women4 ,it is the distinctive point of view of the pragmatic temperament1 of the inductive mind4 ,the modern mind is interested in facts and cannot make a religion out of not knowing them4 ,there was a time once when people used to take their bodily diseases as acts of ,god4 ,we have made up our minds not to have these same bodily diseases now4 ,we have discovered by hard work and constant study that they are not necessary4 ,the same is true of our moral diseases and of our great social maladies4 ,it is going to be the same with crosses4 ,it is a sin and a slander and affront to human nature and to ,god to die on a cross if it can be helped by hard work and close thinking1 or by touching the imaginations of others4 ,most of us acting in most things are not good enough to die on crosses4 ,we are not worthy1 it would not be humble in us to4 ,crosses are only reserved for the newest and most rare truths1 and for the newest and most rare men4 ,they are still1 and they still can be made to be1 a means of grace and of perfection to people who have gifts of learning things by suffering1 but as a means of making other people and people in crowds see things1 the right to use a cross is not for those of us who are merely lumbering spiritually along1 trying to catch up to a plain1 simple-hearted old platitude1 eighteen hundred years late like the ,golden ,rule4 ,the right to a cross is reserved for those who are up on the higher reaches1 those great bleak stretches or moors of truth where men go forth and walk alone with ,god hundreds of years ahead4 ,,chapter ,,xvi ,,the ,,men ,,ahead ,,pull ,writing a hopeful book about the human race with the ,new ,york ,sun1 ,wall ,street1 ,downing ,street and ,bernard ,shaw looking on is uphill work4 ,sometimes ,i wish there were another human race ,i could refer to when ,i am writing about this one1 one every one knows4 ,the one on ,mars1 for instance1 if one could calmly point to it in the middle of an argument1 shut people off with a wave of one's hand and say1 ,mars this and ,mars that would be convenient4 ,the trouble with the human race is that when one is talking to it about itself1 it thinks it is ,it4 ,it is not ,it yet4 ,the earth and everything on it is a huge ,acorn1 tumbling softly through the sky4 ,our boasted ,christianity 7crosses1 and resurrections and cathedrals and all7 is a ,child crying in the night4 99 99 99 99 99 ,it is not necessary for me to prove to the satisfaction of the ,new ,york ,sun and ,bernard ,shaw that the ,golden ,rule has not reached the superior moral stage of being taken as a platitude by all of our people who are engaged in business4 ,it is enough to submit that the most creative and forceful business men--the men who set the pace1 the foremen of the world1 are taking it so1 and that others are trying to be as much like them as they can4 ,wickedness in this world is not going to stop with a jerk4 ,it is merely being better distributed4 ,possibly this is all there is to the problem1 getting sin better distributed4 ,the ,devil has never had a very great outfit or any great weight1 but he has always known where to throw it1 and he has always done an immense business on a small capital and the only way he has managed to get on at all1 is by organizing1 and by getting the attention of a few people at the top4 ,now that the moral sense of the world has become quickened1 and that rapid transit and newspapers and science and the fact-spirit have gained their hold1 the sins of the world are being rapidly distributed1 not so much among the men who determine things as among those who cannot4 ,everything is following the fact-spirit4 ,the modern world and everything in it1 is falling into the hands of the men who cannot be cheated about facts1 who get the facts first and who get them right4 ,the world cannot help falling1 from now on1 slowly--a little ponderously perhaps at first--into the hands of good men4 ,to say that the world is falling into the hands of men who cannot be cheated and to say that it is falling into the hands of good men is to say the same thing4 ,the men who get the things that they want1 get them by seeing the things as they are4 ,goodness and efficiency both boil down to the same quality in the modern man1 his faculty for not being a romantic person and for not being cheated4 ,a good man may be said to be a man who has formed a habit1 an intimate personal habit of not being cheated4 ,everything he does is full of this habit4 ,the sinful man1 as he is usually called1 is a man who is off in his facts1 a man who does not know what he really wants even for himself4 ,in a matter-of-fact civilization like ours1 he cannot hope to keep up4 ,if a man can be cheated1 even by himself--of course other people can cheat him and everybody can take advantage of him4 ,he naturally grows more incompetent every day he lives4 ,the men who are slow or inefficient in finding out what they really want and slow in dealing with themselves are necessarily inefficient and behind hand in dealing with other people4 ,they cannot be men who determine what other people shall do4 ,it is true that for the moment1 it still seems--now that science has only just come to the rescue of religion1 that evil men in a large degree are the men who still are standing in the gate and determining opportunities and letting in and letting out ,civilization as they please4 ,but their time is limited4 ,the fact-spirit is in the people4 ,we enjoy facts4 ,facts are the modern man's hunting1 his adventure and sport4 ,the men who are ahead are getting into a kind of two-and-two-are-four habit that is like music1 like rhythm4 ,it becomes almost a passion1 almost a self-indulgence in their lives4 ,being honest with things1 having a distaste for being cheated by things1 having a distaste for being cheated by one's self and for cheating other people1 runs in the blood in modern men4 ,the nations can be seen going round and round the earth and looking one another long and earnestly in the eyes4 ,the poet is turning his imagination upon the world about him and upon the fact that really works in it4 ,the scientific man has taken hold of religion and righteousness is being proved1 melted down in the laboratory1 welded together before us all and riveted on to the every day1 on to what really happens1 and on to what really works4 ,goodness in its baser form already pays4 ,only the biggest men may have found it out1 but everybody is watching them4 ,the most important spiritual service that any man can render the present age is to make goodness pay at the top 7in the most noticeable place7 in some business where nobody has made it pay before4 ,anybody can see that it almost pays already1 that it pays now here1 now there4 ,at all events1 anybody can see that it is very noticeable that the part of the world that is most spiritual is not merely the part that is whining or hanging on crosses4 ,it is also the part that is successful4 ,one knows scores of saints with ruddy cheeks4 ,it is getting to be a matter of principle almost in a modern saint--to have ruddy cheeks4 ,i submit this fact respectfully to ,bernard ,shaw1 ,wall ,street1 ,downing ,street and ,pennsylvania ,avenue1 and even to the ,new ,york ,sun1 that vast machine for laughing at a world down in its snug quarters in ,park ,row--that the saint with ruddy cheeks is a totally new and disconcerting fact in our modern life4 ,he is the next fact the honest pessimist will have to face4 ,i submit that this saint with ruddy cheeks is here1 that he is lovable1 imperturbable1 imperious1 irrepressible1 as interesting as sin1 as catching as the ,devil and that he has come to stay4 ,he stays because he is successful and can afford to stay4 ,he is successful because he is good4 ,only religion works4 ,i am aware that the ,new ,york ,sun might quarrel with just exactly this way of putting it4 ,i might put it another way or possibly try to say it again after saying something else first4 ,viz43 ,the man who is successful in business is the man who can get people to do as much as they can do and a great deal more than they think they can do4 ,only a very lively goodness1 almost a religion in a man1 can do this4 ,he has to have something in him very like the power of inventing people or of making people over4 ,to be specific3 ,in some big department stores1 as one goes down the aisle1 one will see over and over again the clerks making fun of customers4 ,one by one the customers find it out and the more permanent ones1 those who would keep coming and who have the best trade1 go to other stores4 ,how could such a thing be stopped in a department store by a practical employer8 ,can he stop it successfully by turning on his politeness8 ,of course he can make his clerks polite-looking by turning on his politeness4 ,but politeness in a department store does not consist in being polite-looking4 ,being polite-looking does not work1 does not grip the customer or strike in and do things and make the customer do things4 ,a machine like a department store1 made up of twenty-five hundred human beings1 which is carving out its will1 its nature1 stamping its pattern on a city1 on a million men1 or on a nation1 cannot be made to work without religion4 ,if the clerks are making fun of people1 only religion can stop it4 ,perhaps you have been made fun of yourself1 ,gentle ,reader8 ,you have observed1 perhaps1 that in making fun of people 7making fun of you1 for instance71 the assumption almost always is1 that you are trying to be like the ,standard ,person1 and that this 7they look at you pleasantly as you go by7 is as near as you can get to it6 ,if an employer wishes to make his clerk an especially valuable clerk1 if he wishes to make his clerk an expert in human nature or a good salesman1 one who sees a customer when he comes along as he really is1 and as he is trying to be1 he will only be able to do it by touching something deep down in the clerk's nature1 something very like his religion--his power of putting himself in the place of others4 ,he can only do it by making a clerk feel that this power in him of doing as he would be done by1 and seeing how to do it1 i4e41 the religion in him1 is what he is hired for4 ,it is visionary to try to run a great department store1 a great machine of twenty-five hundred souls1 a machine of human emotions1 of five thousand eyes and ears1 a huge loom of enthusiasm1 of love1 hate1 covetousness1 sorrow1 disappointment1 and joy without having it full of clerks who are experts in human nature1 putting themselves in the place of crowds of other people1 clerks who are essentially religious4 ,so we watch the men who are ahead driving one another into goodness4 ,the man who is not able to create1 distribute or turn on1 in his business establishment1 goodness1 social insight1 and customer-insight in it1 can only hope to-day to keep ahead in business by having competitors as inefficient as he is4 ,the man who is ahead has discovered himself4 ,everything the man ahead is doing eight hours a day1 is seen at last narrowing him down1 cornering him into goodness4 ,of course as long as people looked upon goodness as a ,sunday affair1 a few hours a week put in on it1 we were naturally discouraged about it4 ,it is still a little too fresh looking and it may be still a little too clever for everybody1 but slowly1 irrevocably1 we see it coming4 ,we can look up almost any day and watch some goodness--now--at least one specimen or so1 in every branch of business4 ,we watch daily the men who are ahead1 pulling on the goodness of the world and the ,crowds pushing on it4 ,,chapter ,,xvii ,,the ,,crowds ,,push ,the men who are ahead make goodness start1 but it is the crowds that make it irresistible4 ,the final1 slow1 long1 imperious lift on goodness is the one the crowd gives4 ,of course1 for the most part1 modern business is largely done with crowds4 ,crowds are doing it and crowds are nearly always watching it4 ,the factory is slower than the department store in being good because the men in it deal with crowds of things and crowds of wheels and not with crowds of people4 ,all responsible people are forced to be good1 with crowds around them1 expecting it of them4 ,crowds at the very least are a kind of vast1 insinuating1 penetrating1 omnipresent1 permeating police force of righteousness4 ,in a department store1 the crowds1 twelve thousand a day1 are like some huge coil of hose or vacuum cleaner1 lying about the place1 sucking up1 drawing out1 and demanding goodness from the clerks4 ,clerks develop human insight and powers faster in department stores than machinists do in factories because they are exposed to more people and to larger crowds4 ,the stream clears itself4 ,the last forms of business to yield to the new spirit are to be the lonely ones1 the ones where light1 air1 human emotions1 and crowds are shut out4 ,the lonely forms of business will at last be vitalized and socialized by men of organizing genius1 who will invent the equivalent of crowds going by1 who will contrive ways of putting a few responsible persons in sight or in a position where they will feel crowds going by their souls1 looking into them as if they were shop windows4 ,crowds can keep track of a few4 ,the crowds will see that these few are the kind of men who will keep track of all4 ,crowds in the end will not accept less than the best4 ,with crowds of people and crowds of places and crowds of times we are good4 ,in all things crowds can see or be made to see we are safe4 ,progress lies in making crowds see through people1 making crowds go past them4 ,while they are going past them1 they lure their goodness on4 ,,chapter ,,xviii ,,the ,,man ,,who ,,says ,,how1 ,,says ,,how ,the people who are worried and discouraged about goodness in this world1 one finds when one studies them a little1 are almost always worried in a kind of general way4 ,they do not worry about anything in particular4 ,their religion seems to be a kind of good-hearted1 pained vagueness4 ,the religion of the people who never worry at all1 the thoughtless optimists1 is quite the same too1 except that they have a kind of happy1 rosy-lighted vagueness instead4 ,for about two thousand years now1 goodness has been in the hands of vague people4 ,some of them have used their vagueness to cry with softly1 and some of them have used it to praise ,god with and to have many fine1 brave1 general feelings about ,god4 ,i have tried faithfully1 speaking for one1 to be religious with both of these sets of people4 ,they make one feel rather lonesome4 ,if one goes about and takes a grim happiness1 a kind of iron joy in seeing how successful a locomotive is1 or if one watches a great1 worshipful ocean liner with delight1 or if1 down in ,new ,york1 one looks up and sees a new skyscraper going slowly up1 unfolding into the sky before one1 lifting up its gigantic1 restless1 resistless face to ,god2 there comes to seem to be something about churches and about good people and about the way they have of acting and thinking about goodness and doing things with goodness1 that makes one unhappy4 ,perhaps one has just come from it and one's soul is filled with the stern1 glad singing of a great foundry1 of the religious1 victorious praising spirit of man1 dipping up steel in mighty spoonfuls--the stuff the inside of the earth is made of1 and flinging it together into a great network or crust for the planet--into mighty floors or sidewalks all round the earth for cities to tread on and there comes to seem something so successful1 so manlike1 so godlike about it1 about the way these men who do these things do them and do what they set out to do1 that when ,i find myself suddenly1 all in a few minutes on a ,sunday morning1 thrown out of this atmosphere into a ,christian church1 find myself sitting all still and waiting1 with all these good people about me1 and when ,i find them offering me their religion so gravely1 so hopefully1 it all comes to me with a great rush sometimes--comes to me as out of great deeps of resentment1 that religion could possibly be made in a church to seem something so faint1 so beautifully weary1 so dreamy1 and as if it were humming softly1 absently to itself4 ,i wonder in the presence of a ,christianity like this whether ,i am a ,christian or not--the quartet choirs1 confections1 the little1 dainty1 faintly sweet sermons--it is as if--no ,i will not say it4444 ,i have this moment crossed the words out before my eyes4 ,it is as if1 after all1 religion1 instead of being as ,i supposed down at the foundry1 the stern and splendid music of man conquering all things for ,god1 were1 after all1 some huge1 sublime and holy vagueness1 as if the service and the things ,i saw about me were not hard true realities--as if going to ,church were like sitting in a cloud--some soft musical cloud or floating island of goodness and drifting and drifting4444 99 99 99 99 99 ,not all churches are alike1 but ,i am speaking of something that must have happened to many men4 ,i but record this blank space on this page1 as a spiritual fact1 as a part of the religious experience of a man trying to be good4 ,when this little experience of which the words have to be crossed out after going to ,church--finally settles down1 there is still a grim truth left in it4 ,the vagueness of the man who is good1 who locks himself up in a ,church and says1 ,oh ,god6 ,oh ,god6 ,oh ,god6 and the vigour and incisiveness of the man who says nothing about it and who goes out of doors and acts like a god all the week--these remain with me as a daily and abiding sense4 ,and when ,i find myself myself1 ,i1 who have gloried in cathedrals since ,i was a little child1 looking ahead for a ,god upon the earth1 and when ,i see the foundries1 the airships1 the ocean liners beckoning the soul of man upon the skies1 and the victory of the soul over the dust and over the water and over the air and when ,i see the ,cathedrals beside them1 those vast1 faint1 grave1 happy1 floating islands of the ,saved1 drifting backward down the years1 it does not seem as if ,i could bear the foundries saying one thing about my ,god and the cathedrals saying another4 ,i have tried to see a way out4 ,why should it be so8 ,i have seen that the foundries1 the ocean liners1 and the airships are in the hands of men who say ,how4 ,perhaps we will take goodness and cathedrals1 very soon now1 and put them for a while in the hands of the men who say how4 ,if ,st4 ,francis1 for instance1 to-day1 were to be suddenly more like ,bessemer1 or if ,dr4 ,henry ,van ,dyke were more like ,edison or if the ,reverend ,r4,j4 ,campbell were more like ,sir ,joseph ,lister or if the ,bishop of ,london were to go at ,london the way ,marconi goes at the sky1 what would begin to happen to goodness8 ,one likes to imagine what would happen if that same spirit1 the spirit of how were brought to bear upon a great engineering enterprise like goodness in this world4 ,perhaps the spirit of how is the spirit of ,god4 ,perhaps religion in the twentieth century is ,technique4 ,technique in the twentieth century is the ,holy ,ghost4 ,technique is the very last thing that has been thought of in religion4 ,religion is being converted before our eyes4 ,it is becoming touched with the temper of science1 with the thoroughness1 the doggedness1 the inconsolableness of science until it is seeing how and until it is saying how4 ,when the inventors1 in our machine age1 get to work on goodness in the way that they are getting to work on other things1 things will begin to happen to goodness that the vague1 sweet saints of two thousand years have never dreamed of yet4 ,in ,london and ,new ,york1 in this first quarter of the twentieth century ,christianity will not be put off as a spirit4 ,the right of ,christianity to be a spirit has lapsed4 ,christianity is a ,method4 ,what ,christ meant when ,he said ,he was the ,truth and the ,life1 has been understood1 on the whole1 very well4 ,what ,he meant by saying ,he was the ,way1 we are now beginning1 to work out4 99 99 99 99 99 ,a thousand or two years ago1 when two men stood by the roadside and made a bargain1 it was their affair4 ,when two men stand on the sidewalk now and make a bargain1 say in ,new ,york1 they have to deal and to deal very thoughtfully and accurately with ninety million people who are not there4 ,they do this as well as they can by imagining what the ninety million people would do and say1 and how they would like to be done by1 if they were there4 ,the facilities for finding out what the ninety million people would do and say1 and what they would want1 the general conveniences for assuring the two men on the sidewalk that they will be able to conduct their bargain1 and to get the other ninety million in1 accurately1 that they will be able to do by them as they would be done by--these have scarcely been arranged for yet4 ,in our machine age1 with our railroads1 and our telephones suddenly heaping our lives up on one another's lives1 almost before we have noticed it1 our religious machinery to go with our other machinery1 our machinery that we are going to be ,christians with1 has not been invented yet4 ,religion two-men size1 or man and woman size1 or one family or two family size or village size has been worked out4 ,religion as long as it has been concerned with a few people and was a matter of love between neighbours1 or of skill in being neighbourly1 has had no special or imperative need for science or the scientific man4 ,now that religion is obliged to be an intimate1 a confiding relation between ninety million people1 the spiritual genius1 devotion1 and holiness of the scientific man1 of the man who says how has come to be the modern man's almost only access to his ,god4 ,a ninety million man-power religion is an enterprise of spiritual engineering1 a feat in national and international statesmanship1 a gigantic structural constructive achievement in human nature4 ,doing as one would be done by1 with a few people1 is a thing that any man can sit down and read his ,bible a few minutes and arrange for himself4 ,he can manage to do as he would be done by1 fairly well in the next yard4 ,but how about doing as one would be done by with ninety million people--all sizes1 all climates1 all religions1 ,buffalo1 ,new ,orleans1 ,seattle8 ,how about doing as one would be done by three thousand miles8 ,it is an understatement to say1 as we look about our modern world1 that ,christianity has not been tried yet4 ,christianity has not been invented yet4 ,what was invented two thousand years ago was the spirit of ,christianity4 ,christianity has been for two thousand years a spirit4 ,it is almost like a new religion to me just of itself to think of it4 ,it is like being presented suddenly with a new world to think of it1 to think that all we have really done with ,christianity as yet is to use it as a breath or spirit4 ,i look at the vision of the earth to-day1 of the great cities rushing together at last and running around the world like children running around a house--great cities shouting on the seas1 suddenly sliding up and down the globe1 playing hopscotch on the equator1 scrambling up the poles--all these colossal children6444 ,here we all are6--a whiff of steam from the ,watts's steam kettle and a wave of ,marconi across the air and we have crept up from our little separate sunsets1 all our little private national bedrooms of light and darkness into the one single same cunning dooryard of a world6 ,our religion1 our politics1 our ,bibles1 kings1 millionaires1 crowds1 bombs1 prophets and railroads all hurling1 sweeping1 crashing our lives together in a kind of vast international collision of intimacy4 ,all the ,christianity we can bring to bear or that we can use to run this crash of intimacy with is a spirit1 a breath4 ,we do not well to berate one another or to berate one another's motives or to assail human nature or to grow satirical about ,god with all our little battered helpless ,christians about us and our unadjusted religions4 ,we are a new human race grappling with a new world4 ,our ,christianity has not been invented yet and if we want a ,god1 we will work like chemists1 like airmen1 turn the inside of the earth out1 dump the sky1 move mountains1 face cities1 love one another1 and find ,him6 ,in the meantime until we have done this1 until we have worked as chemists and airmen work1 ,christianity is a spirit4 ,it explains all this eager jumble of the world1 brushes away our objections1 frees our hearts1 gives us our program1 makes us know what we are for1 to stop and think a moment of this--that ,christianity is a spirit4 ,everything that is passing wonderful is a spirit at first4 ,god begins building a world as a world-spirit1 out of a spirit brooding upon the waters4 ,then for a long while the vague waters1 then for a long while a little vague land or spirit-of-planet before a real world4 ,and every real belief that man has had1 has begun as a spirit4 ,for two thousand years ,man has had the spirit of immortality4 ,homer had it4 ,homer had moments when improvising his mighty song all alone1 of hearing or seeming to hear1 faintly1 choruses of men's voices singing his songs after him1 a thousand years away4 ,as he groped his way up in his singing1 he felt them in spirit1 perhaps1 the lonely wandering minstrels in little closed-in valleys1 or on the vast quiet hills1 filling the world with his voice when he was dead1 going about with his singing1 breaking it in upon the souls of children1 of the new boys and girls1 and building new worlds and rebuilding old worlds in the hearts of men4 ,homer had the spirit of hearing his own voice forever1 but the technique of it1 the important point of seeing how the thing could really be done1 of seeing how people1 instead of listening to imitations or copies or awkward echoes of ,homer1 should listen to ,homer's voice itself--the timbre1 the intimacy1 the subtlety1 the strength of it--the depth of his heart singing out of it4 ,all this has had to wait to be thought out by ,thomas ,a4 ,edison4 ,man has not only for thousands of years had the spirit of immortality1 of keeping his voice filed away if any one wanted it on the earth1 forever1 but he has had all the other spirits or ghosts of his mightier self4 ,he has had the spirit of being imperious and wilful with the sea1 of faring forth on a planet and playing with oceans1 and now he has worked out the details in ocean liners1 in boats that fly up from the water1 and in boats which dive and swim beneath the sea4 ,for thousands of years he has had the spirit of the locomotive working through1 troops of runners or of dim men groping defiantly with camels through deserts1 or sweeping on on horses through the plains1 and now with his banners of steam at last he has great public trains of cars carrying cities4 ,for hundreds of years man has had the spirit of the motor-car--of having his own private locomotive or his own special train drive up to his door--the spirit of making every road his railway4 ,for a great many years he has had the spirit of the wireless telegraph and of using the sky4 ,franklin tried using the sky years ago but all he got was electricity4 ,marconi knew how better4 ,marconi has got ghosts of men's voices out of the clouds1 has made heaven a sounding board for great congregations of cities1 and faraway nations wrapped in darkness and silence whisper round the rolling earth4 ,man has long had the spirit of defying the seas4 ,now he has the technique and the motor-boat4 ,he has had the spirit of removing oceans and of building huge1 underground cities1 the spirit of caves in the ground and mansions in the sky1 and now he has subways and skyscrapers4 ,for a thousand years he has had the spirit of ,christ and now there is ,frederick ,taylor1 ,louis ,brandeis1 ,westfield ,pure ,food1 ,doctor ,carrel1 ,jane ,addams1 and ,filene's ,store4 ,vast networks--huge spiritual machines of goodness are crowding and penetrating to-day1 fifteen pounds to the square inch1 the atmosphere of the gospel into the very core of the matter of the world1 into the everyday things1 into the solids of the lives of men4 ,it takes two great spirits of humanity to bring a great truth or a new goodness into this world2 one spirit creates it1 the other conceives it1 gathers the earth about it and gives it birth4 ,these two spirits seem to be the spirits of the poet and the scientist4 ,we are taking to-day1 many of us1 an almost religious delight in them both4 ,we make no comparisons4 ,we note that the poet's inspiration comes first and consists in saying something that is true1 that cannot be proved4 ,a few people with imagination1 here and there1 believe it4 ,the scientist's inspiration comes second and consists in seeing ways of proving it1 of making it matter of fact4 ,he proves it by seeing how to do it4 ,crowds believe it4 ,,chapter ,,xix ,,and ,,the ,,machine ,,starts ,one of the things that makes one thoughtful in going about from city to city and dropping into the churches is the way the people do not sing in them and will not pray in them4 ,in every new strange city where one stops on a ,sunday morning1 one looks hopefully--while one hears the chimes of bells--at the row of steeples down the street4 ,one looks for people going in who seem to go with chimes of bells4 ,and when one goes in1 one finds them again and again1 inside1 all these bolt-up-right1 faintly sing-song congregations4 ,one wonders about the churches4 ,what is there that is being said in them that should make any one feel like singing8 ,the one thing that the churches are for is news--news that would be suitable to sing about1 and that would naturally make one want to sing and pray after one had heard it4 ,there is very little occasion to sing or to pray over old news4 ,worship would take care of itself in our churches if people got the latest and biggest news in them4 ,news is the latest faith men have in one another1 the last thing they have dared to get from ,god4 ,it is not impossible that just at the present moment1 and for some little time to come1 there is really very little worth while that can be said about ,christianity1 until ,christianity has been tried4 ,i cannot conceive of ,christ's coming back and saying anything just at the moment4 ,he would merely wonder why1 in all these two thousand years1 we had not arranged to do anything about what ,he had said before4 ,he would wonder how we could keep on so1 making his great faith for us so poetic1 visionary1 and inefficient4 ,it is in the unconscious recognition of this and of the present spiritual crisis of the world1 that our best men1 so many of them1 instead of going into preaching are going into laboratories and into business where what the gospel really is and what it is really made of1 is being at last revealed to people--where news is being created4 ,perhaps it would not be precisely true--what ,i have said1 about ,christ's not saying anything4 ,he probably would4 ,but he would not say these same merely rudimentary things4 ,he would go on to the truths and applications we have never heard or guessed4 ,the rest of his time he would put in in proving that the things that had been merely said two thousand years ago1 could be done now4 ,and ,he would do what ,he could toward having them dropped forever1 taken for granted and acted on as a part of the morally automatic and of-course machinery of the world4 ,the ,golden ,rule takes or ought to take1 very soon now1 in real religion1 somewhat the same position that table manners take in morals4 ,all good manners are good in proportion as they become automatic4 ,in saying that honesty pays we are merely moving religion on to its more creative and newer levels4 ,we are asserting that the literal belief in honesty1 after this1 ought to be attended to practically by machinery4 ,people ought to be honest automatically and by assumption1 by dismissing it in business in particular1 as a thing to be taken for granted4 ,this is what is going to happen4 ,without the printing press a book would cost about ten thousand dollars1 each copy4 ,with the printing press1 the first copy of a book costs perhaps about six hundred dollars4 ,the second costs--twenty-nine cents4 ,the same principle holds good under the law of moral automatics4 ,let the plates be cast4 ,everything follows4 ,the fire in the ,iroquois ,theatre in ,chicago cost six hundred dead bodies4 ,within a few months outward opening doors flew open to the streets around a world4 ,everybody knew about outward opening doors before4 ,they had the spirit of outward opening doors4 ,but the machinery for making everybody know that they knew it--the moral and spiritual machinery for lifting over the doors of a world and making them all swing suddenly generation after generation the other way1 had not been set up4 ,of course it would have been better if there had been three hundred dead bodies or three dead bodies--but the principle holds good--let the moral plates be cast and the huge moral values follow with comparatively little individual moral hand labour4 ,the moral hand labour moves on to more original things4 ,the same principle holds good in letting an ,american city be good in seeing how to make goodness in a city work4 ,let the plates be once cast--say ,galveston1 ,texas2 or ,de ,moines1 ,iowa1 and goodness after you have your first specimen gets national automatically4 ,two hundred and five cities have adopted the ,galveston or commission government in three years4 99 99 99 99 99 ,the failure for the time being apparently of the more noble and aggressive kinds of goodness against the forces of evil is a matter of technique4 ,our failure is not due to our failure to know what evil really is1 but due to our wasteful way of tunnelling through it4 ,our religious inventors have failed to use the most scientific method4 ,we have gone at the matter of butting through evil without thinking enough4 ,less butting and more thinking is our religion now4 ,we will not try any longer to butt a whole planet when we try to keep one man from doing wrong4 ,we will butt our way through to the man who sees where to butt and how to butt4 ,then all together6 ,very few of the wrongs that are done to society by individuals would be done if civilization were supplied with the slightest adequate machinery or conveniences for bringing home to people vividly who the people are they are wronging1 how they are wronging them1 and how the people feel about it4 ,this machinery for moral and social insight1 this intelligence-engine or apparatus of sympathy for a planet to-day1 before our eyes is being invented and set up4 99 99 99 99 99 ,sometimes ,i almost think that history as a study or particularly as a habit of mind ought to be partitioned off and not allowed to people in general to-day4 ,only men of genius have imagination enough for handling history so that it is not a nuisance1 a provincialism and an impertinence in the serene presence to-day of what is happening before our eyes4 ,history makes common people stop thinking or makes them think wrong1 about nine tenths of the area of human nature1 particularly about the next important things that are going to happen to it4 ,our modern life is not an historian's problem4 ,it is an inventor's problem4 ,the historian can stand by and can be consulted4 ,but things that seem to an historian quite reasonably impossible in human nature are true and we must all of us act every day as if they were true4 ,we but change the temperature of human nature and in one moment new levels and possibilities open up on every side4 ,things that are true about water stop being true the moment it is heated #bab degrees ,fahrenheit4 ,it begins suddenly to act like a cloud and when it is cooled off enough a cloud acts like a stone4 ,railroad trains are run for hundreds of miles every year in ,siberia across clouds that are cold enough4 ,we raise the temperature of human nature and the motives with which men cannot act to-day suddenly around a world are the motives with which they cannot help acting to-morrow4 ,the theory of raised temperatures alone1 in human nature1 will make possible to us ranges of goodness1 of social passion and vision1 that only a few men have been capable of before4 ,all the new inventions have new sins1 even new manners that go with them1 new virtues and new faculties4 ,the telephone1 the motor-car1 the wireless telegraph1 the airship and the motor-boat all make men act with different insights1 longer distances1 and higher speeds4 ,men who1 like our modern men1 have a going consciousness1 see things deeper by going faster4 ,they see how more clearly by going faster4 ,they see farther by going faster4 ,if a man is driving a motor-car three miles an hour all he needs to attend to with his imagination is a few feet of the road ahead4 ,if he is driving his car thirty miles an hour and trying to get on by anticipating his road a few feet ahead1 he dies4 ,the faster a man goes--if he has the brains for it--the more people and the more things in the way1 his mind covers in a minute--the more magnificently he sees how4 ,on a railway train any ordinary man any day in the year 7if he goes fast enough7 can see through a board fence4 ,it may be made of vertical slats five inches across and half an inch apart4 ,he sees through the slits between the slats the whole country for miles4 ,if he goes fast enough a man can see through a solid freight train4 ,all our modern industrial social problems are problems of gearing people up4 ,ordinary men are living on trains now--on moral trains4 ,their social consciousness is being geared up4 ,they are seeing more other people and more other things and more things beyond the ,fence4 ,the increased vibration in human nature and in the human brain and heart that go with the motor-car habit1 the increased speed of the human motor1 the gearing up of the central power house in society everywhere is going to make men capable of unheard-of social technique4 ,the social consciousness is becoming the common man's daily habit4 ,laws of social technique and laws of human nature which were theories once are habits now4 ,there is a certain sense in which it may be said that the modern man enjoys daily his moral imagination4 ,he is angered and delighted with his social consciousness4 ,he boils with rage or sings when he hears of all the new machines of good and machines of evil that people are setting up in our modern world4 ,there is a sense in which he glories in the ,golden ,rule4 ,the moral-machinist's joy is in him4 ,he is not content to watch it go round and round like some smooth-running ,corliss engine which is not connected up yet--that nobody really uses except as a kind of model under glass or a miniature for theological schools4 ,he cannot bear the ,golden ,rule under glass4 ,he wants to see it going round and round1 look up at it1 immense1 silent1 masterful1 running a world4 ,he delights in the ,golden ,rule as a part of his love of nature4 ,it is as the falling of apples to him4 ,he delights in it as he delights in frost and fire and in the glorious1 modest1 implacable1 hushed way they work6 ,we are in an age in which a ,golden ,rule can sing4 ,the men around us are in a new temper4 ,they have the passion1 almost1 the religion of precision that goes with machines4 ,while ,i have been sitting at my desk and writing these last words1 the two half-past-eight trains1 at full speed1 have met in the meadow4 ,there is something a little impersonal1 almost abstracted1 about the way the trains meet out here on their lonely sidewalk through the meadow1 twenty inches apart--morning after morning4 ,it always seems as if this time--this one next time--they would not do it right4 ,one argues it all out unconsciously that of course there is a kind of understanding between them as they come bearing down on each other and it's all been arranged beforehand when they left their stations2 and yet somehow as ,i watch them flying up out of the distance1 those two still1 swift thoughts1 or shots of cities--dark1 monstrous 7it's as if ,springfield and ,northampton had caught some people up and were firing them at each other7--,i am always wondering if this particular time there will not be a report1 after all1 a clang on the landscape1 on all the hills1 and a long story in the ,republican the next morning4 ,then they softly crash together and pass on--two or three quiet whiffs at each other--as if nothing had happened4 ,i always feel afterward as if something splendid1 some great human act of faith1 had been done in my presence4 ,those two looming1 mighty engines1 bearing down on each other1 making an aim so1 at twenty inches from death1 and nothing to depend on but those two gleaming dainty strips or ribbons of iron--a few eighths of an inch on the edge of a wheel--,i never can get used to it3 the two great glowing creatures1 full of thunder and trust1 leaping up the telegraph poles through the still valley1 each of them with its little streak of souls behind it2 immortal souls1 children1 fathers1 mothers1 smiling1 chattering along through ,infinity--it all keeps on being boundless to me1 and full of a glad boyish terror and faith4 ,and under and through it all there is a kind of stern singing4 ,i know well enough1 of course1 that it is a platitude1 this meeting of two trains in a meadow1 but it never acts like one4 ,i sometimes stand and watch the engineer afterward4 ,i wonder if he knows he enjoys it4 ,perhaps he would have to stop to know how happy he was1 and not meet trains for a while4 ,then he would miss something1 ,i think2 he would miss his deep joyous daily acts of faith1 his daily habits of believing in things--in steam1 and in air1 and in himself1 and in the switchman1 and in ,god4 ,i see him in his cab window1 he swings out his blue sleeve at me6 ,i like the way he stakes everything on what he believes4 ,nothing between him and death but a few telegraph ticks--the flange of a wheel4444 ,suddenly the swing of his train comes up like the swing and the rhythm of a great creed4 ,it sounds like a chant down between the mountains4 ,i come into the house lifted with it4 ,i have heard a man believing1 believing mile after mile down the valley4 ,i have heard a man believing in a ,pennsylvania rolling mill1 in a white vapour1 in compressed air and a whistle1 the way ,calvin believed in ,god4 ,,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 flesh1 ,who1 through the double-wondered glory of the dust ,hast thrust ,habits of skies upon me1 souls of days and nights1 ,where are the deeds that needs must be1 ,the dreams1 the high delights1 ,that ,i once more may hear my voice ,from cloudy door to door rejoice-- ,may stretch the boundaries of love ,beyond the mumbling1 mock horizons of my fears ,to the faint-remembered glory of those years-- ,may lift my soul ,and reach this ,heaven of thine ,with mine8 ,come up here1 dear little ,child ,to fly in the clouds and winds with me1 and play with the measureless light6 ,,part ,,one ,,wistful ,,millionaires ,,chapter ,i ,,mr4 ,,carnegie ,,speaks ,,up ,as ,i was wandering through space the other day--just aeroplaning past on my way over from ,mars--,i came suddenly upon a neat1 snug little property1 with a huge sign stuck in the middle of it3 ,,the ,,earth3 ,,this ,,desirable ,,property ,,to ,,let4 ,rockefeller1 ,carnegie1 ,morgan ,co4 ,i was just about to pass it by1 inferring naturally that it must be a mere bank1 or wholesale house1 or something1 when it occurred to me it might do no harm to stop over on it1 and see4 ,i thought ,i might at least drop in and inquire what kind of a firm it was that was handling it1 and what was their idea1 and what1 if anything1 they thought their little planet was for1 and what they proposed to do with it4 ,i found1 on meeting ,mr4 ,rockefeller and ,mr4 ,carnegie and ,mr4 ,morgan1 to my astonishment1 that they did not propose to do anything with it at all4 ,they had merely got it2 that was as far as they had thought the thing out apparently--to get it4 ,they seemed to be depending1 so far as ,i could judge1 in a vague1 pained way1 on somebody's happening along who would think perhaps of something that could be done with it4 ,of course1 as ,mr4 ,carnegie 7who was the talking member of the firm7 pointed out1 if they only owned a part of it1 and could sell one part of it to the other part there would still be something left that they could do1 at least it would be their line2 but merely owning all of it1 so1 as they did1 was embarrassing4 ,he had tried1 ,mr4 ,carnegie told me1 to think of a few things himself1 but was discouraged2 and he intimated he was devoting his life just now to pulling himself together at the end1 and dying a poor man4 ,but that was not much1 he admitted1 and it was really not a very great service on his part to a world1 he thought--his merely dying poor in it4 ,when ,i asked him if there was anything else he had been able to think of to do for the world-- ,no1 he said1 nothing really2 nothing except chucking down libraries on it--safes for old books4 ,and ,mr4 ,morgan8 ,i said4 ,oh6 ,he is chucking down old china on it1 old pictures1 and things4 ,and ,mr4 ,rockefeller8 ,mussing with colleges1 some1 he said1 just now4 ,but he doesn't1 as a matter of fact1 see anything--not of his own--that can really be done with them1 except to make them more systematized and businesslike1 make them over into sort of ,standard ,oil ,spiritual ,refineries1 fill them with millions more of little ,rockefellers--and they won't let him do that4 ,of course1 as you might see1 what they want to do practically is to take the ,rockefeller money and leave the ,rockefeller out4 ,nobody will really let him do anything4 ,everything goes this way when we seriously try to do things4 ,the fact is1 it is a pretty small1 helpless business1 owning a world1 sighed ,mr4 ,carnegie4 ,this is why we are selling out1 if anybody happens along4 ,anybody1 that is1 who really sees what this piece of property is for and how to develop it1 can have it1 said ,mr4 ,carnegie1 and have it cheap4 ,mr4 ,carnegie spoke these last words very slowly and wearily1 and with his most wistful look2 and then1 recalling himself suddenly1 and handing me a glass to look at ,new ,york with and see what ,i thought of it1 he asked to be excused for a moment1 and saying1 ,i have fourteen libraries to give away before a quarter past twelve1 he hurried out of the room4 ,,chapter ,,ii ,,mr4 ,,carnegie ,,tries ,,to ,,make ,,people ,,read ,i found1 as ,i was studying the general view of ,new ,york as seen from the top through ,mr4 ,carnegie's glass1 that there appeared to be a great many dots--long rows of dots for the most part--possibly very high buildings1 but there was one building1 wide and white and low1 and more spread-out and important-looking than any of the others1 which especially attracted my attention4 ,it looked as if it might be a kind of monument or mausoleum to somebody4 ,on looking again ,i found that it was filled with books1 and was the ,carnegie ,public ,library4 ,there were forty more ,libraries for ,new ,york ,mr4 ,carnegie was having put up1 ,i was told1 and he had dotted them--thousands of them almost everywhere one could look1 apparently1 on his own particular part of the planet4 ,a few days later1 when ,i began to do things at a closer range1 ,i took a little trip to ,new ,york1 and visited the ,library2 and ,i asked the man who seemed to have it in charge1 who there was who was writing books for ,mr4 ,carnegie's ,libraries just now1 or if there was any really adequate arrangement ,mr4 ,carnegie had made for having a few great books written for all these fine buildings--all these really noble book-racks1 he had had put up4 ,the man seemed rather taken aback1 and hesitated4 ,finally1 ,i asked him point blank to give me the name of the supposed greatest living author who had written anything for all these miles of ,carnegie ,libraries1 and he mentioned doubtfully a certain ,mr4 ,rudyard ,kipling4 ,i at once asked for his books1 of course1 and sat down without delay to find out if he was the greatest living author the planet had1 what it was he had to say for it and about it1 and more particularly1 of course1 what he had to to say it was for4 ,i found among his books some beautiful and quite refined interpretations of tigers and serpents1 a really noble interpretation or conception of what the beasts were for all the glorious gentlemanly beasts--and of what machines were for--all the young1 fresh1 mighty1 worshipful engines--and what soldiers were for4 ,but when ,i looked at what he thought men were for1 at what the planet was for1 there was practically almost nothing4 ,the nearest ,i came to it was a remark1 apparently in a magazine interview which ,i cannot quote correctly now1 but which amounted to something like this3 ,we will never have a great world until we have some one great artist or poet in it1 who sees it as a whole1 focuses it1 composes it1 makes a picture of it1 and gives the men who are in it a vision to live for4 99 99 99 99 99 ,since then ,i have been trying to see what ,messrs4 ,rockefeller1 ,carnegie1 and ,morgan could do to produce and arrange what seemed to me the one most important1 imperative1 and immediate convenience their planet could have1 namely1 as ,mr4 ,kipling intimated1 some man on it1 some great creative genius1 who would gather it all up in his imagination--the beasts1 and the people1 and the sciences1 and the machines--in short1 the planet as a whole1 and say what it was for4 ,it is from this point of view that ,i have been drawn into writing the following pages on the next important improvements--what one might call the spiritual ,unreal-,estate ,improvements1 for ,messrs4 ,rockefeller1 ,carnegie1 and ,morgan's property which will have to be installed4 ,i have been going over the property more or less carefully in my own way since1 studying it and noting what had been done by the owners1 and what possibly might be done toward arranging authors1 inventors1 seers1 artists1 or engineers or other efficient persons who would be able to inquire1 to think out for a world1 to express for it1 some faint idea of what it was for4 ,,chapter ,,iii ,,mr4 ,,nobel ,,tries ,,to ,,make ,,people ,,write ,not unnaturally1 of course1 ,i turned to see what had already been done by the more powerful men the planet had produced1 in the way of arranging for the necessary seers and geniuses to run the world with1 and ,i soon found that by far the most intelligent and far-seeing attempt that had been made yet in this direction had been made by an inspired1 or semi-inspired1 millionaire in ,sweden1 named ,alfred ,nobel1 an idealist1 who had made a large but unhappy fortune out of an explosive to stop war with4 ,his general idea had been that dynamite would make war so terrible that it would shock people into not fighting any more1 and that gradually people1 not having to spend their time in thinking of ways of killing one another1 would have more time than they had ever had before to think of other and more important things4 ,it was the disappointment of his life that his invention1 instead of being used creatively1 used to free men from fighting and make men think of things1 had been used largely as an arrangement for making people so afraid of war that they could not think of anything else4 ,whichever way he turned he saw the world in a kind of panic1 all the old and gentle-minded nations with their fair fields1 their factories and art galleries1 all hard at work piling up explosives around themselves until they could hardly see over them4 ,as this was the precise contrary of what he had intended1 and he had not managed to do what he had meant to do with making his money1 he thought he would try to see if he could not yet do what he had meant to do in spending it4 ,he sat down to write his ,will1 and in this ,will1 writing as an inventor and a man of genius1 he tried to express1 in the terms of money1 his five great desires for the world4 ,he wished to spend forty thousand dollars a year1 every year forever1 after he was dead1 on each of these five great desires4 ,there were five great ,inventors that he wanted1 and he wanted the whole world searched through for them1 for each of them1 once more every year1 to see if they could be found4 ,mr4 ,nobel expressed his desire for these five ,inventors as people often manage to express things in wills1 in such a way that not everybody had been sure what he meant4 ,there seems to have been comparatively little trouble1 from year to year1 in awarding the prizes to some adequate inventor in the domain of ,peace1 of ,physics1 of ,chemistry1 and of ,medicine2 but the ,nobel ,prize ,trustees1 in trying to pick out an award each year to some man who could be regarded as a true inventor in ,literature1 have met with considerable difficulty in deciding just what sort of a man ,alfred ,nobel had in mind1 and had set aside his forty thousand dollars for when he directed that it should go--to quote from the ,will--,to the person who shall have produced in the field of ,literature the most distinguished work of an idealistic tendency4 ,allen ,upward1 for instance1 an ,englishman unknown in ,stockholm1 invented and published a book four years ago1 called the ,new ,word1 which was so idealistic and distinguished a book1 and so full of new ideas and of new combinations of old ideas1 that there was scarcely a publisher in ,england who did not instinctively recognize it1 who did not see that it would not pay at once1 and that therefore it was too strange and original and too important a book for him to publish1 and after a long delay the book was finally printed in ,geneva4 ,a copy was sent to the ,nobel ,prize ,trustees4 ,one would have thought1 looking at it theoretically1 that here was precisely the sort of situation that ,alfred ,nobel1 who had been the struggling inventor of a great invention that would not pay at once himself1 would have been looking for4 ,a book so inventive1 so far ahead1 that publishers praised it and would not invest in it1 one would have imagined to be the one book of all others for which ,alfred ,nobel stood ready and waiting to put down his forty thousand dollars4 ,but ,mr4 ,nobel's forty thousand dollars did not go to a comparatively obscure and uncapitalized inventor who had written a book to build a world with1 or at least a great preliminary design1 or sketch1 toward a world4 ,the ,nobel ,prize ,trustees1 instead of giving the forty thousand dollars to ,allen ,upward1 looked carefully about through all the nations until their eyes fell on a certain ,mr4 ,rudyard ,kipling4 ,and when they saw ,mr4 ,rudyard ,kipling1 piled high with fame and five dollars a word1 they came over quietly to where he was and put softly down on him forty thousand dollars more4 ,i do not know1 but it is not inconceivable1 that ,kipling himself would rather have had ,allen ,upward have it4 ,i am not quarrelling with the ,trustees1 and am merely trying to think things out and understand4 ,but it certainly is a question that cannot but keep recurring to one's mind--the unfortunate1 and perhaps rather unlooked-for1 way in which ,mr4 ,nobel's ,will works4 ,and ,i have been wondering what there is that might be done1 the world being the kind of world it is1 which would enable the ,nobel ,prize ,trustees to so administer the ,will that its practical weight on the side of ,idealism1 and especially upon the crisis of idealism in young authors1 would be where ,mr4 ,nobel meant to have it4 ,one must hasten to admit that ,mr4 ,upward's book is open to question2 that1 in fact1 it is the main trait of ,mr4 ,upward's book that it raises a thousand questions2 and that it would be a particularly hard book for most men to give a prize to1 quietly go home1 and sleep that night4 ,i must hasten to admit also that1 judging from their own point of view1 the ,nobel ,prize ,trustees have so far done quite well4 ,they have attained a kind of triumph of doing safe things--things that they could not be criticised for2 and they could well reply to this present criticism that there was no other course that they could take4 ,unless they had a large fund for butting through all nations for obscure geniuses1 and for turning up stones everywhere to look for embryo authors--unless they had a fund for going about among the great newspapers1 the big magazines1 and peeping under them through all the world for geniuses--and unless they had still another large fund for guaranteeing their decision when they had found one1 a fund for convincing the world that they were right1 and that they were not wasting their forty thousand dollars--the ,trustees have taken a fairly plausible position4 ,their position being that1 in default of perfectly fresh1 brand-new1 great men1 and in view of the fact1 in a world like this that geniuses in it are almost invariably1 and1 as a matter of course1 lost or mislaid until they are dead1 much the best and safest thing that ,trustees of ,idealism could do was to watch the drift of public opinion in the different nations1 to adopt the course of noting carefully what the world thought were really its great men1 and then 7at a discreet and dignified distance1 of course7 tagging the public1 and wherever they saw a crowd1 a rather nice crowd1 round a man1 standing up softly at the last moment and handing him over his forty thousand dollars4 ,this has been the history of the ,nobel ,trustees of ,idealism1 thus far4 ,but in a way1 we are all the trustees of idealism1 and the problem of the ,nobel ,prize ,trustees is more or less the problem of all of us4 ,we are interested as well as they in trying to find out how to recognize and reward men of genius4 ,what would we do ourselves if we were ,nobel ,prize ,trustees8 ,precisely what was it that ,alfred ,nobel intended to achieve for ,literature when he made this bequest of forty thousand dollars a year in his ,will1 for a work of ,literature of an idealistic tendency8 ,to take a concrete case1 ,i can only record that it has seemed to me that if ,alfred ,nobel himself could have been on hand that particular year1 and could have read ,mr4 ,upward's book1 he would have given the prize of forty thousand dollars to ,allen ,upward4 ,he would not have given the prize to ,mr4 ,kipling--he would have given it twenty years before2 but in this particular year of which ,i am writing1 when he saw these two men together1 ,i believe he would have given the prize to ,allen ,upward1 and he would have hurried4 ,i would like to put forward at this point two inquiries4 ,first1 why did the ,trustees not award the prize to ,allen ,upward8 ,and second1 what would have happened if they had8 ,first1 the ,trustees could not be sure that ,mr4 ,upward in his work of genius was telling the truth4 ,second1 they could not be sure that the world would approve of his having forty thousand dollars for telling the truth4 ,perhaps the world would have rather had him paid forty thousand dollars for not telling it4 ,third1 ,mr4 ,kipling was safe4 ,no creative work had to be done on ,kipling2 all they had to do was to send him the cheque4 ,great crowds had swept in from all over the world1 and nominated ,mr4 ,kipling2 the ,committee merely had to confirm the nomination4 ,fourth1 ,mr4 ,upward1 like all idealists1 like all men who have the power of throwing this world into the melting-pot and bringing it out new again partly unrecognizable 7which1 of course1 is the regular historical1 almost conventional1 thing for an idealist to do with a world71 bewildered the ,nobel ,prize ,committee4 ,they could not be sure but that ,mr4 ,upward's next book would be thought in the wrong1 and make their having given him forty thousand dollars to write it ridiculous4 99 99 99 99 99 ,what would have happened if the ,trustees had given the prize to ,mr4 ,upward8 ,first1 practically no one would have known who he was1 and twenty-five nations would have been reading his book in a week1 to see why the prize was given to him4 ,the book would have been given the most widespread1 highly stimulated1 forty-thousand-dollar-power attention that any book in any age has had4 ,only now and then would a man go over and take down his old ,kiplings from the shelf and read them1 because he had heard that ,mr4 ,kipling had forty thousand dollars more than he had had before4 ,secondly1 ,mr4 ,upward's new book would have the stimulus of his knowing while he was writing it that every word would be read by everybody4 ,all the draught on the fire of his genius of the whole listening world would result in a work that even ,mr4 ,upward himself perhaps would hardly believe he had written4 ,as events turned out1 and ,mr4 ,upward did not get the prize there might be many reasons to believe that his next book might be out of focus1 might be a mere petulant1 scolding book1 his exultation spent or dwindled1 because his last tremendous wager--that the world wanted the truth--was lost4 ,scolding in a book means1 as a rule1 either juvenility or it means relapse into conscious degeneration of the soul--the focussing and fusing power in a man4 ,i have sometimes wondered if even ,christ1 if ,he had not died in ,his thirty-third year1 made ,his great dare for the world on the cross early1 would not have stopped believing so magnificently in other people at about forty or forty-five or so1 and would not have spent the rest of ,his days in railing at them1 and in being very bitter and helpless and eloquent about ,rome and ,jerusalem4 ,i have caught myself once or twice being glad ,abraham ,lincoln died suddenly just when he did1 his great faith and love all warm in him1 and his great oath for the world--that it was good--still fresh upon his lips6 ,writing a book like ,allen ,upward's for a planet with a vision of a thousand years singing splendidly through it1 and then just reading it all alone afterward when he has written it1 and going over the score all alone by himself1 would seem to be a good deal of a strain4 ,to be contradicted out loud and gloriously by a world might be inspiring1 but to be contradicted by a solid phalanx of silent nations1 trooping up behind one another1 unanimous1 impervious1 is enough to make any radiant1 long-accumulated genius pause in full career1 question himself1 question his vision as a chimera1 as some faintly lighted ,northern ,lights upon the world1 that would never mean anything1 that was an illusion1 that would just flicker in the great dark once more and go out4 ,i do not say that this is true1 or that it would be true of ,allen ,upward4 ,but ,i have read his book4 ,i should think it might be true4 ,what ,alfred ,nobel had in mind1 his whole idea in his ,will1 it seems to some of us1 was to put in his forty thousand dollars at the working end of some man's mind1 at the end of the man's mind where the forty thousand dollars would itself be creative1 where the forty thousand dollars would get into the man1 and work out through the man and through his genius into the world4 ,it does not seem to me that he wanted to put his forty thousand dollars at the idle1 old remembering end of a man's mind2 that he meant it should be used as a mere reward for idealism4 ,i doubt if it even so much as occurred to ,alfred ,nobel1 who was an idealist himself1 that idealism1 after a man had managed to have some in this world1 would be rewarded1 or could possibly be paid for1 by any one4 ,he knew1 if ever a man knew1 that idealism was its own reward1 and that it was priceless1 and that any attempt to reward it with money1 to pay a man for it after he had had it1 and after it was all over1 would make forty thousand dollars look shabby1 or at least pathetic and ridiculous4 ,what he wanted to do was to build his forty thousand dollars over into a ,man4 ,he wanted to feel that this money that he had made out of dynamite1 out of destruction1 would be wrought1 through this man1 into exultation1 into life4 ,he had proposed that this forty thousand dollars should become poetry in this man's book1 that it should become light and heat1 a power-house of thought1 of great events4 ,what ,alfred ,nobel had in mind1 ,i think1 with his little forty thousand dollars1 was that it should be given a chance to become an intimate part of some man's genius2 that it should become perhaps at last a ,great ,book--that great foundry of men's souls1 where the moulds of ,history are patterned out1 and where the hopes of nations and the prayers of women and children and of great men are1 and where the ideals of men--those huge drive-wheels of the world--are cast in a strange light and silence4 ,i wondered if they could have thought of this when they voted on ,allen ,upward's book that day three years ago--those twenty grave1 quiet gentlemen in frockcoats in ,stockholm6 99 99 99 99 99 ,i have picked out ,mr4 ,upward's book because it is the most difficult1 the most hazardous1 and the least fortunate one ,i know1 to make my point with2 and because a great many people will get the reaction of disagreeing with me1 and feeling about it probably1 the way the ,nobel ,prizes ,trustees did4 ,i have wanted to take a book which has the traits in it for which men of genius are persecuted or crucified or ignored--our more modern timid or anonymous form of the cross4 ,if ,mr4 ,upward had been given the ,prize by the ,nobel ,prize ,trustees1 it will have to be admitted a howl would have gone up round the world that would not have quieted down yet2 and it is this howl that ,mr4 ,nobel intended his ,prize for1 and that he thought a man would need about forty thousand dollars to meet4 ,i might have taken any one of several other books1 and they would have illustrated my point snugly and more conveniently2 but just that right touch of craziness that ,nobel had in mind1 and that goes with great experiment of spirit--the chill1 ,nietzsche-like wildness1 that bravado before ,god and man and before ,time1 that swinging one's self out on ,eternity1 which make ,upward a typical man of genius1 would have been lacking4 ,k---- 7whose criticisms of books are the most creative ones ,i know7 said of ,upward's book that he felt very happy and strangely emancipated when he read it1 but that it was an uncanny experience1 as if he had been made of thin air1 had become a kind of aerated being1 a psychic effect that genius often has2 and ,k---- admitted to me confidentially that he felt that possibly he and ,upward were being a little crazy and happy together by themselves1 breaking out into infinite space so1 and he took the book over to ,w----1 and left it on his desk slinkingly and half-ashamed and without saying anything about it4 ,he said he was enormously relieved next time he saw ,w----1 felt as if he had just been pulled out of ,bedlam to find that there was at least one other man in the world apparently in his right mind1 who valued the book as he did4 ,this is the precise feeling1 it seems to me1 that the ,nobel ,prize was intended to champion and to stand by and temporarily defend in a new author--the feeling he gives us of being in the presence of unseen forces1 of incalculableness4 ,it was this way ,allen ,upward has of taking his reader apart or up into a high place 7like the ,devil71 and dizzying him1 taking away his breath with ,truth1 that ,nobel had in mind4 ,he wanted to spend eight thousand pounds a year on providing for the world one more book which would give the ordinary man the personal feeling of being with a genius1 cold1 lonely1 cosmic genius1 the sense of a chill wind of ,all ,space ,outside blowing through--a book which is a sort of ,god's ,wilderness1 in which ordinary men with their ordinary plain senses round them move about dazed a little and as trees walking--a great1 gaunt1 naked book4 ,alfred ,nobel was the inventor of an explosive1 a rearranger of things assumed and things unbedded1 and it was this same expansive1 half-terrible1 half-sublime power in other men and other men's books he wanted to endow--the power to free and mobilize the elements in a world1 make it budge over a little toward a new one4 ,he wanted to spend forty thousand dollars a year on the man in literature who had the pent-up power in him to crash the world's mind open once more every year like a ,seed1 and send groping up out of it once more its hidden thought4 ,i may not be right in anticipating the eventual opinion of ,allen ,upward's book2 but even if ,i am wrong1 it will have helped perhaps to call attention to the essential failure of the ,nobel ,prize ,trustees to side with the darers and experimenters in literature1 to take a serious part in those great creative1 centrifugal movements in the souls of men in which new worlds and the sense of new worlds are swept in upon us4 ,for the ,sciences1 which are more matter of fact and tangible1 the ,nobel ,prize is functioning more or less as ,mr4 ,nobel intended1 but certainly in ,literature it will have to be classed as one more of our humdrum regular millionaire arrangements for patting successful people expensively on the back4 ,it acts twenty years too late1 falls into line with our usual worldly ornamental ,d4,d41 ,,ll4,d4 habit1 and has become1 so far as ,literature is concerned1 a mere colossal1 kindly1 doddering ,old ,age ,pension from a few gentlemen in ,stockholm4 ,it adds itself as one more futile effort of men of wealth--or world owners to be creative and lively with money1 very much on the premises with money1 after they are dead4 ,,chapter ,,iv ,,paper ,,books1 ,,marble ,,pillars1 ,,and ,,wooden ,,boys ,i have sometimes wished that ,mr4 ,carnegie would post the following sign up on his ,libraries1 on the outside where people are passing1 and on the inside in the room where people sit and think3 ,a ,,million ,,dollars ,,reward4 ,,wanted1 ,a ,,great ,,living ,,american ,,author ,,for ,,my ,,libraries ,,in ,,the ,,united ,,states4 ,,at ,,present ,,our ,,great ,,author ,,in ,,america ,,appears ,,to ,,have ,,been ,,lost ,,or ,,mislaid2 ,,any ,,one ,,finding ,,him1 ,,or ,,any ,,one ,,that ,,might ,,do ,,for ,,him ,,temporarily1 ,,please ,,communicate ,,with ,,me4 ,,andrew ,,carnegie4 ,mr4 ,carnegie's ,libraries must be a source of constant regret to the author of ,triumphant ,democracy4 ,they are generally made up of books written in the ,old ,world4 ,it would be interesting to know what are the real reasons great ,libraries are not being written for ,mr4 ,carnegie in ,america1 and what there is that ,mr4 ,carnegie or other people can do about it4 ,they are certainly going to be written in ,america some time1 and certainly1 unless the best and greatest part of the ,carnegie ,library of the future is to be the ,american part of it1 the best our ,carnegie ,libraries will do for ,america will be to remind us of what we are not4 ,unless we can make the ,american part of ,mr4 ,carnegie's ,libraries loom in the world as big as ,mr4 ,carnegie's chimneys1 ,america--which is the last newest experiment station of the world--is a failure4 ,it has occurred to me to try to express1 for what it may be worth1 a point of view toward ,triumphant ,democracy ,mr4 ,carnegie may have inadvertently overlooked4 ,if ,mr4 ,carnegie would establish in every town where he has put a ,library1 by endowment or otherwise1 a ,commission1 or what might be called perhaps a ,searching ,party1 in that community1 made up of men of inventive and creative temperament1 who instinctively know this temperament in others--men in all specialities1 in all walks of life1 who are doing things better than any one wants to pay them to do them--and if ,mr4 ,carnegie would set these men to work1 in one way and another1 looking up boys who are like them1 boys about the town1 who are doing things better than any one wants to pay them to do them--he would soon get a monopoly of the idealism of the world2 he would collect in thirty-five years1 or in one generation1 an array of living great men1 of national figures1 men who would be monuments to ,andrew ,carnegie1 as compared with which his present libraries1 big1 thoughtless1 innumerable1 humdrum1 sogging down into the past1 would be as nothing4 ,mr4 ,carnegie has given forty libraries to ,new ,york2 and ,i venture to say that there is at this very moment1 running round the streets of the great city1 one single boy1 who has it in him to conceive1 to imagine1 and hammer together a new world2 and if ,mr4 ,carnegie would invest his fortune1 not in buildings or in books1 but in buying brains enough to find that boy1 and if the whole city of ,new ,york were to devote itself for one hour every day for years to searching about and finding that boy1 to seeing just which he is1 to going over all the other boys five hours a day to pick him out1 it would be--well1 all ,i can say is1 all those forty libraries of ,mr4 ,carnegie's1 those great proud buildings1 would do well if they did not do one thing for six years but find that boy6 ,there is a boy at this very moment with strings and marbles and a nation in his pocket1 a system of railroads--a boy with a national cure for tuberculosis1 with sun-engines for everybody--there is a boy with cathedrals in him too1 no doubt or some boy like young ,pinchot1 with mountainsful of forests in his heart4 ,this is what ,mr4 ,carnegie himself would like to do1 but with his big1 stiff1 clumsy libraries trailing their huge1 senseless brick-and-mortar bodies1 their white pillars and things1 about the country1 unmanned1 inert1 eyeless1 all those great gates and forts of knowledge1 ,coliseums of paper1 and with the mechanical people behind the counters1 the policemen of the books1 all standing about protecting them--with all this formidable array1 how can such a boy be hunted out or drawn in1 or how would he dare go tramping in through the great gates and hunting about for himself8 ,he could only be hunted out by people all wrought through with human experience1 men and women who would give the world to find him1 who are on the daily lookout for such a boy--by some special kind of eager librarian1 or by disguised teachers1 anonymous poets1 or by diviners1 by expert geniuses in boys4 ,if ,mr4 ,carnegie could go about and look up and buy up wherever he went these men who have this boy-genius in them1 deliver them from empty1 helpless1 mere getting-a-living lives2 and if he could set these men1 and set them about thickly1 among the books in his libraries--those huge anatomies and bones of knowledge he has established everywhere1 all his great literary steel-works--men would soon begin to be discovered1 to be created1 to be built in libraries 444 but as it is now4444 ,gentle ,reader1 have you ever stood in front of one of them1 looked up at the windows1 thought of all those great tiers1 those moulds and blocks of learning on the shelves2 and have you never watched the weary people that dribble in from the streets and wander coldly about1 or sit down listless in them--in those mighty1 silent empires of the past8 have you never thought that somewhere all about them1 somewhere in this same library1 there must be some white1 silent1 sunny country of the future1 full of children and of singing1 full of something very different from these iron walls of wisdom8 ,and have you never thought what it would mean if ,mr4 ,carnegie would spend his money on search parties for people among the books1 or what it would mean if the entire library1 if all the books in it1 became1 as it were1 wired throughout with live1 splendid1 delighted men and women1 to make connections1 to establish the current between the people and the books1 to discover the people one by one and follow them to their homes1 and follow them in their lives1 and take out the latent geniuses1 and the listless engineers and poets1 and the ,kossuths1 ,csars1 the ,florence ,nightingales4448 ,it is only by employing forces that can be made extremely small1 invisible1 personal1 penetrating1 and spiritual1 that this sort of work can be done4 ,it must be delicate and wonderful workmanship1 like the magnet1 like the mighty thistledown in the wind1 like electricity1 like love1 like hope--sheer1 happy1 warm human vision going about and casting itself1 casting all its still and tiny might1 its boundless seed1 upon the earth3 but it would pay4 ,the same people too1 specialists in detecting and developing inventors1 could be supplied also to all other possible callings4 ,they would constitute a universal profession1 penetrating all the others4 ,they would go hunting among foremen and in machine shops for the misplaced geniuses1 tried by wrong standards1 underpaid for having other gifts4 ,they would keep a lookout through all the schools and colleges1 looking over the shoulders of scolding teachers and absent professors4 ,they would go about studying the playgrounds and mastering the streets4 ,we do not a little for the ,submerged ,tenth and the sons of the poor1 and we have schools or missions for the sons of the rich1 but one of the things we need next to-day is that something should be done for the sons of the great neglected respectable classes4 ,far more important than one more library--say in ,denver1 for instance would be a ,denver ,bureau of ,investigation1 to be appointed1 of high-priced1 spirited men1 of expert humanists1 to study difficulties1 and devise methods and missions for putting all society in ,denver through filters or placers1 and finding out the rich human ore1 finding out where everybody really belonged1 and what all the clever misplaced people were really for4 ,of course it would take money to do all this1 and flocks of free people who are doing the work they love4 ,but it is not book-racks1 nor paper1 nor ink1 nor stone steps1 nor white pillars--it is free men and free women ,america and ,england are asking of their ,andrew ,carnegies to-day4 ,mr4 ,carnegie has not touched this human problem in his libraries4 ,if ,society were fitted up all through with electric connections1 men with a genius for discovering continents in people1 ,columbuses1 boy-geniuses2 and if there were established everywhere a current between every boy and the great world1 this would be something on which ,mr4 ,carnegie could make a great beginning with the little mite of his fortune4 ,if we were to have even one city fitted up in this way1 it would be hard to say how much it would mean--one city with enough people in it who were free to do beautiful things1 free to be curious about the others1 free to follow clues of greatness1 free to go up the streams of ,society to the still1 faint little springs and beginnings of things4 ,it would soon be a memorable city4 ,a world would watch it1 and other cities would grope toward it4 ,instead of this we have these big1 hollow1 unmanned libraries of ,mr4 ,carnegie's everywhere1 with no people practically to go with them1 no great hive of happy living men and women in and out all day cross-fertilizing boys and books4 ,there seems to be something unfinished and stolid and brutal about a ,carnegie ,library now4 ,the spirit of the garden and the sea1 of the spring and the light1 and of the child1 is not in it4 ,they have come to seem to some of us mere huge ,pittsburgs of brains--all these impervious1 unwieldy1 rolling-mills of knowledge4 ,i should think it would be a terrible prospect to grow old with1 just to sit and see them flocking across the country from your window1 all these huge smoke-stacks of books in their weary1 sordid cities2 and the boys who might be great men1 the small ,lincolns with nations in their pockets1 the little ,bells with worlds in their ears1 the ,pinchots with their forests1 the ,mc,adoos and ,roosevelts1 the young ,carnegies and ,marconis in the streets6 ,,chapter ,v ,,the ,,humdrum ,,factory ,,and ,,the ,,tumpty-,,tum ,,theatre ,mr4 ,israel ,zangwill in presiding at the meeting of the ,sociological ,society the other night remarked1 in referring to inspired millionaires1 that as a rule in the minds of most people nowadays a millionaire seemed to be a kind of broken-off person1 or possibly two persons4 ,there always seemed to have to be a violent change in a millionaire somewhere along the middle of his life4 ,the change seemed to be associated in some way1 ,mr4 ,zangwill thought with his money4 ,he reminded one of the patent-medicine advertisements1 ,before and ,after ,taking4 ,i have been trying to think why it is that the average millionaire reminds people--as ,mr4 ,zangwill says he does--of a patent-medicine advertisement1 ,before and ,after ,taking4 ,i have thought1 since ,mr4 ,zangwill made this remark1 of getting together a small collection of pictures of millionaires--two pictures of each1 one before and the other after taking--and having them mounted in the most approved patent-medicine style1 and taking them down to ,far ,end and asking ,mr4 ,zangwill to look them over with me and see if he thought--he1 ,israel ,zangwill1 the novelist1 the play-wright1 the psychologist--really thought1 that millionaires ,before and ,after were as different as they looked4 ,i imagine he would say--and practically without looking at the pictures--that of course to him or to me perhaps1 or to any especially interested student of human nature1 millionaires are not really different at all ,before and ,after ,taking2 that they merely had a slightly different outer look4 ,they would merely look different1 ,mr4 ,zangwill would say1 to the common run or majority of people--the people one meets in the streets4 ,but would they8 ,one of the most hopeful things that ,i have been thinking of lately is that the people--the ordinary people one meets in the streets--are beginning quite generally to see through their millionaires1 and to see that their money almost never really cures them4 ,most very rich men1 indeed1 are having their times now1 of even seeing through themselves2 and it brings me up abruptly with a shock to think that the ordinary people who pass in the streets would be deceived by these simple little pictures ,before and ,after4 ,they have been deceived until lately1 but are they being deceived now8 ,i would like to see the matter tested1 and ,i have thought it would be a good idea to take my small collection of pictures of millionaires--two pictures of each1 one ,before and the other ,after ,taking--to a millionaire--of course some really reformed or cured one--and ask him to pay the necessary expenses in the columns of the ,times1 and of the ,westminster ,gazette1 and the ,daily ,chronicle1 and other representative ,london journals 7all on the same morning71 of having the pictures published4 ,we could then take what might be called a social1 human1 economic inventory of ,london3 ask people to send in their honest opinions1 on looking at the pictures1 as to whether ,money1 ,before and ,after ,taking1 does or does not produce these remarkable cures in millionaires4 ,i very much doubt if ,mr4 ,zangwill would be found to be right in his estimate of our common people to-day4 ,i venture to believe that it is precisely because our common people are seeing that millionaires are not changed ,before and ,after ,taking that the majority of time millionaires we have to-day have come to be looked upon as one of the charges--one of the great spiritual charges and burdens modern ,society has to carry4 ,society has always had to do what it could for the poor1 but in our modern civilization1 in a new and big sense1 we have to see now what there is1 if possibly anything1 that can be done for the rich4 ,we have come to have them now almost everywhere about us--these great spiritual orphans1 with their pathetic1 blind1 useless fortunes piled up around them2 and ,society has to support them1 to keep them up morally1 keep them doing as little damage as possible1 and has to allow day by day besides for the strain and structural weakness they bring upon the girders of the world--the faith of men in men1 and the credit of ,god1 which alone can hold a world together4 ,it is not denied that the average millionaire1 when he has made his money1 does different-looking things1 and gathers different-looking objects about him1 and is seen in different-looking places4 ,and it is not denied that he changes in more important particulars than things4 ,he quite often changes people1 the people he is seen with but he never or almost never changes himself4 ,he is not one man when he is putting money into his pocket and another when he is taking it out4 ,we keep hoping at first with each new mere millionaire that when he gets all the money he has wanted it will change him2 but we find it almost never does4 ,merely reversing the motion with a pocket does not make a man a new and beautiful creature1 and one soon sees that the typical millionaire is governed by the same bargain principles1 is bullied and domineered over by the same personal limitations1 the same old something-for-nothing habits4 ,if he had the habit1 while getting money out of people1 of getting the better of them1 he still insists on getting the better of people when he gives it to them or to their causes4 ,he takes it out of their souls4 ,there never has been a millionaire who runs his business on the old humdrum principle of merely making all the money he can who does not run his very philanthropies afterward on the same general principle of oppressing everybody1 of outwitting everybody--and of doing people good in a way that makes them wish they were dead4 ,philanthropy as a philosophy1 and even as an institution1 is getting to be nearly futile to-day1 for the reason that millionaires--valid1 authentic cases of millionaires who are really cured--who are changed either in their motives or their methods with regard to what they do with money1 except in rare cases1 do not exist4 ,the ,new ,theatre in ,new ,york1 which was started as a kind of ,polar ,expedition to discover and rescue ,dramatic ,art in ,america1 failed because two hundred and forty millionaires tried to help it4 ,if enough millionaires could have been staved off from that enterprise1 or if it could have been taken in hand either by fewer or more select millionaires coperating with the public and with artists of all classes1 ,new ,theatre of ,new ,york would not have been obliged1 as it has been since1 to start all over again on a new basis4 ,the blunders in creative public work that men who get rich in the wrong way are always sure to make had to be made first4 ,they nearly always have to be made first4 ,there is hardly a single enterprise of higher social value in which the world is interested to-day which is not being gravely threatened in efficient service by letting in too many millionaires1 and by paying too much attention to what they think4 ,if our people were generally alive to the terrific sameness and monotony of a millionaire's life before and after1 and if millionaires were looked over discriminatingly before being allowed to take part in great public enterprises like the cinema1 for instance1 the newspapers1 the hospitals1 the theatres1 there is hardly any limit to the new things that public enterprises would begin to make happen in the world1 and the new men that would begin to function in them4 ,of course1 if what a great vision for the people--i4e41 a public enterprise is for1 is to make money1 it would be different4 ,the mere millionaire might understand1 and his understanding might help4 ,but if an institution is founded 7like a great theatre7 to be a superb and noble masterpiece of understanding and changing human nature2 if it is founded to be a creative and dominating influence1 to build up the ideals and fire the enthusiasm of a city1 to lay the foundations of the daily thoughts and the daily motives of a great people1 the mere millionaire finds1 if he tries to manage it1 that he is getting in beyond his depth4 ,a man who has made his money by exploiting and taking advantage of the public can only be expected1 in conducting a ,theatre1 to be an authority on how to exploit a public and take advantage of it still more1 and how to make it go to the play that merely looks like the play that it wants4 ,millionaires as a class1 unless they are men who have made their money in the artist's or the inventor's spirit1 really ought to be expected by this time1 except in the size of their cheques1 to be modest and thoughtful1 to stand back a little and watch other people4 ,the millionaires themselves1 if they thought about it1 would be the first to advise us not to pay too much attention to them4 ,they are used to large things1 and they know that the only way to do1 in conducting great enterprises1 is to select and use men 7whether millionaires or not7 for the particular efficiencies they have developed4 ,if we are conducting what is called a charity1 we will not expect that a millionaire can do good things unless he is a good man4 ,he spoils them by picking out the wrong people4 ,and we will not expect him to do artistic things unless he has lived his life and done his business in the spirit and the temperament of the artist4 ,he will not know which the artists are or what the artists are like inside2 and he will not like them and they will not like him1 nor will they be interested in him or interested in working with him4 ,everything that artists or men of creative temperament try to do with the common run of millionaires--all these huge1 blind1 imponderable megatheriums1 stamping along through life1 ordering people about--ends in the same way--in irksomeness1 bewildered vision1 fear1 compromise1 and failure1 as seen from the inside4 ,seen on the outside or before the public1 of course1 the ,institution will have the same old1 bland1 familiar air of looking successful and of looking intelligent1 and yet of being uninteresting1 and of not changing the world by a hair's breadth4 ,the only millionaires who should be allowed to have a controlling interest in public enterprises are millionaires who do not need to be different before and after making their money4 ,everybody is coming to see this1 sooner or later4 ,it is already getting very hard to raise money for any public enterprise in which mere millionaires or bewildered1 unhappy rich men are known to have a controlling interest4 ,the most efficient and far-sighted men do not expect anything very decided or of marked character from such enterprises1 and will no longer lend to them either their brains or their money4 ,mere millionaires will soon have to conduct their public enterprises quite by themselves1 and they will then soon fall of their own weight4 ,the moment men are put in control of public enterprises by the size of their brains instead of the size of their cheques1 the whole complexion of what are known as our public enterprises will change1 and churches1 theatres1 hospitals1 settlements1 art galleries1 and all other great public causes1 instead of boring everybody and teasing everybody1 will be attracting everybody and attracting everybody's money4 ,they will be full of character1 courage1 and vision4 ,our present great1 vague1 helpless1 plaintive public enterprises--one third art1 one third millionaire1 one third deficit--drag along financially because they are listless compromises1 because they have no souls or vision1 and are not interesting--not even interesting to themselves4 ,men with creative or imaginative quality1 and courage1 and insight into ordinary human nature1 and far-sightedness of what can be expected of people1 do not get on with the ordinary millionaire4 ,it cannot be denied that millionaires and artists get together in time2 but the particular point that seems to be interesting to consider is how the millionaires and artists can be got together before the artists are dead1 and before the millionaires stop growing and stop being creative and understanding creative men4 ,it might be well to consider the present situation in the concrete--the theatre1 for instance--and see how the situation lies1 and where one would have to begin1 and how one would have to go to work to change it4 ,the present failure of the theatre to encourage what is best in modern art is due to the fact that the public is unimaginative and inartistic4 ,if a public is unimaginative and inartistic1 the only way the best things that are offered can succeed with them is by having these best things held before them long and steadily enough for them slowly to compare them with other things1 and see that they are better than the other things1 and that they are what they want4 ,unimaginative and inartistic people do not know what they want4 ,if things are tried long enough with them they do4 ,when they have been tried long enough with them they support them themselves4 ,the only way fine things can be tried long enough is with sufficient capital4 ,the only way sufficient capital for fine things can be obtained is by having millionaires who appreciate fine things1 and believe in them1 and believe the public in time will believe in them4 ,the only way in which a millionaire can recognize and believe in the fine things and in the best artists is by being1 in spirit and temperament at least1 an artist himself4 ,the only way in which a millionaire can be an artist is to work every day in the spirit in which the artist works4 ,this means the artist in business4 7#a7 ,the artist in business is the man who makes things people already want enough to make money1 and who makes things he is going to make people want enough to make new values and to be of some use4 7#b7 ,the artist in business is the employer who makes new things and men together4 ,he lets the men who make new things with him become new men2 and when the things are made1 they go forth in their turn and make new men and make new publics4 ,new publics have had to be made for everything3 for the first umbrellas1 for the first telephones1 the first typewriters4 ,new publics have had to be made for ,wagner1 for ,sunlight ,soap1 for ,bernard ,shaw2 and it is the men who make new publics--be it for big or little things--who are artists4 ,they are in spirit1 prophets1 kings1 and world-builders4 7#c7 ,incidentally1 the artist in business--the employer who creates new values and is creative himself--will like creative men in his factory1 and will treat them so that they will put their creativeness into his business2 he not only will be an artist himself1 but he will have1 comparatively speaking1 a factory full of artists working with him4 ,and when the factories pour out the men at night1 and the smoke and the murmur cease1 and the windows are dark1 they will go to creative and live men's plays4 ,so it has come to pass that the modern business man of the artist sort holds the arts of modern times in the hollow of his hand4 ,he is a past-master of creating new publics4 7#d7 ,the artist in business is the man who educates and draws out1 at every point where his business touches them1 every day1 all day1 the men with whom he works4 ,he educates and develops the men who make the things4 ,he educates and develops the men who buy them4 ,even the people who wish they had bought them1 are educated or secreted1 by the artist in business4 ,he is a maker of new publics1 a world-builder1 whichever way he turns4 ,a business man who merely makes for people what they want1 and who does not get the prestige with men of making for them things that they did not know they wanted1 is a failure and falls behind in his business4 ,all the big men in business work in future tenses4 ,they are prophets1 historians1 and they are ,now-men1 men who work by seeing the truth all round the present moment1 the present persons1 and the present market1 and before it and behind it4 ,millionaires who are making their money in this spirit will understand and believe in plays that are written in this spirit1 and the people who work for such employers will like to go to such plays1 and the theatre managers1 instead of being the bullies and tyrants of the world of art1 will be held in the power of the men who see things and who make things--men who in vast sweeps called audiences1 night after night1 make new men upon the earth4 ,,part ,,two ,,iron ,,machines ,,chapter ,i ,,steeples ,,and ,,chimneys ,i went to the ,durbar the other night in cinema colour and saw the ,king and ,queen through ,india4 ,i had found my way1 with hundreds of others1 into the gallery of the ,scala ,theatre1 and out of that big1 still rim of watchful darkness where ,i sat ,i saw--there must have been thousands of them--crowds of camels running4 ,and crowds of elephants went swinging past4 ,i watched them like a boy1 like a boy standing on the edge of a thousand years and looking off at a world4 ,it was stately and strange1 and like far music to sit quite still and watch civilizations swinging past4 ,then suddenly it became near and human--the spirit of playgrounds and of shouting and boyish laughter ran through it4 ,and we watched the elephants1 naked and untrimmed1 lolling down to the lake and lying down to be scrubbed in it with comfortable low snorting and slow rolling in the water1 and the men standing by all the while like little play-nurses and tending them1 their big bungling babies1 at the bath4 ,a few minutes later we watched the same elephants1 hundreds of them1 their mighty toilets made1 pacing slowly past1 swinging their gorgeous trappings in our eyes1 rolling their huge hoodahs at us1 and all the time still those little funny dots of men beside them1 moving them silently1 moving them invisibly as by a spirit1 as by a kind of awful wireless--those great engines of the flesh6 ,i shall never forget it or live without it1 that slow pantomime of those mighty1 silent ,eastern nations1 their religions1 their philosophies1 their wills1 their souls1 moving their elephants past--the long panorama of it1 of their little awful human wills1 all those little black1 helpless-looking slits of ,human ,will astride those mighty necks6 ,i have the same feeling when ,i see ,count ,zeppelin with his airship1 or ,grahame-,white at ,hendon1 riding his vast cosmic pigeon up the sky2 and it is the same feeling ,i have with the locomotives--those unconscious1 forbidding1 coldly obedient terrible fellows6 ,have ,i not lain awake and listened to them storming through the night1 heard them out there ahead working our wills on the blackness1 on the thick night1 on the stars1 on ,space1 and on ,time while we slept8 ,my main feeling at the ,durbar while ,i watched those splendid beasts--the crowds of camels1 the crowds of elephants--all being driven along by the little1 faint1 dreamy1 sleepy-looking people was1 ,why don't their elephants turn around on them and chase them8 ,i kept thinking at first that they would1 almost any minute4 ,our elephants chase us--most of us4 ,who has not seen locomotives coming quietly out of their roundhouses in ,new ,york and begin chasing people1 chasing whole towns1 tearing along with them1 making everybody hurry whether or no1 speeding up and ordering around by the clock great cities1 everybody alike1 the rich and the poor1 the just and the unjust1 for hundreds of miles around8 ,in the same way ,i have seen1 hundreds of times1 motor cars turning around on their owners and chasing them--chasing them fairly out of their lives4 ,and hundreds of thousands of little wood-and-rubber ,things with nickel bells whirring1 may be seen ordering around people--who pay them for it--in any city of our modern world4 ,now and then one comes on a man who keeps a telephone1 who is a gentleman with it1 and who keeps it in its place1 but not often4 ,there are certain questions to be asked and to be settled in any civilization that would be called great4 ,first3 ,do the elephants chase the men in it8 ,second3 ,and if--as in our ,western civilization--the men have made their own elephants1 why should they be chased by them8 ,there are some of us who have wondered a little at the comparative inferiority of organ music4 ,we have come to the conclusion that perhaps organ music is inferior because it has been largely composed by organists1 by men who sit at organ machines many hours a day1 and who have let their organ machines with all their stops and pedals1 and with all their stop-and-pedal-mindedness1 select out of their minds the tones that organs can do best--the music that machines like4 ,wagner has come to be recognized as a great and original composer for a machine age because he would not let his imagination be cowed by the mere technical limitations1 the narrow-mindedness of brass horns1 wooden flutes1 and catgut2 he made up his mind that he would not sing violins4 ,he made violins sing him4 ,perhaps this is the whole secret of art in a machine civilization4 ,perhaps a machine civilization is capable of a greater art than has ever been dreamed in the world before1 the moment it stops being chased by its elephants4 ,the question of letting the crowd be beautiful in our world of machines and crowds to-day turns on our producing ,machine-,trainers4 ,men possessed by watches in their vest pockets cannot be inspired1 men possessed by churches or religion-machines cannot be prophets1 men possessed by school-machines cannot be educators4 ,the reason that we find the poet1 or at least the minor poet1 discouraged in a machine age probably is1 that there is nothing a minor poet can do in it4 ,why should nightingales1 poppies1 and dells expect1 in a main trial of strength1 to compete with machines8 ,and why should human beings running for their souls in a race with locomotives expect to keep very long from losing their souls8 ,the reason that most people are discouraged about machinery to-day is that this is what they think a machine civilization is4 ,they whine at the machines4 ,they blame the locomotive4 ,a better way for a man to do would be to stop blaming the locomotive1 and stop running along out of breath beside it1 and climb up into the cab4 ,this is the whole issue of art in our modern civilization--climbing up into the cab4 ,first come the ,machine-,trainers1 or poets who can tame engines4 ,then the other poets4 ,in the meantime1 the less we hear about nightingales and poppies and dells and love and above1 the better4 ,poetry must make a few iron-handed1 gentle-hearted1 mighty men next4 ,it is because we demand and expect the beautiful that we say that poetry must make men next4 ,the elephants have been running around in the garden long enough4 ,,chapter ,,ii ,,bells ,,and ,,wheels ,we are living in a day of the great rebellion of the machines4 ,out of a thousand thousand roundhouses and factories1 vast cities and nations of machines on the land and on the sea have risen before the soul of man and said1 ,we have served you2 now1 you serve us4 ,a million million vulgar1 swaggering ,goliaths1 one sees them everywhere2 they wave their arms at us around the world1 they puff their white breath at us1 they spit smoke in our eyes1 line up in a row before the great cities1 before the mighty-hearted nations1 and say it again and again1 all in chorus1 ,we have served you1 now1 you serve us6 ,it has come to sound to some of us as a kind of chant around our lives4 ,but why should we serve them8 ,i have seen crowds of minor poets running1 their little boxes of perfume and poetry1 their cologne water1 their smelling-salts1 in their hands4 ,and1 of course1 if the world were all minor poets the situation would be serious4 ,and ,i have seen flocks of faint-hearted temples1 of big1 sulky1 beautiful1 absent-minded colleges1 looking afraid4 ,every now and then perhaps one sees a professor run out1 throw a book at the machines1 and run back again4 ,oxford still looks at science1 at matter itself1 tremulously1 with that same old1 still1 dreamy air of dignity1 of gentlemanly disappointment4 ,and if the world were all ,oxford the situation would be serious4 ,when ,oxford with its hundred spires1 its little beautiful boy choirs of professors1 draws me one side from the ,great ,western ,railway ,station1 and intones in those still1 solemn1 lonely spaces the great truth in my ears1 that machines and ideals cannot go together1 that the only way to deal with ideals is to keep them away from machines1 my only reply is that ideals that are so tired that they are merely devoted to defending themselves1 ideals that will not and cannot go forth and be the breath of the machines1 ideals that cannot and will not master the machines1 that will not ride the machines as the wind1 overrun matter1 and conquer the earth1 are not ideals for gentlemen4 ,at least they are not ideals that can keep up the standard of the ,oxford gentleman4 ,a gentleman is a man who is engaged in expressing his best and noblest self in every fibre of his mind and every fibre of his body4 ,he makes the very force of gravity pulling on his clothes express him1 and the movements of his feet and his hands4 ,he gathers up his rooms into his will and all the appointments of his life and crowds into them the full meaning of his soul4 ,he makes all these things say him4 ,the main attribute of a man who is not a gentleman is that he does not do these things1 that he cannot inform his body with his spirit4 ,i go back to the ,great ,western ,railway1 ugly as it still is4 ,i go alone1 and sadly if ,i must1 and for a little time--without the deep bells and without the stained-glass windows1 without all that dear1 familiar beauty ,i have loved in the old and quiet quadrangles--,i take my stand beside the ,great ,western ,railway6 ,i claim the ,great ,western ,railway for the spirit of man and for the will of ,god6 ,with its vast shuttle of steam and shining engines1 its little1 whispering telegraph office1 the ,great ,western ,railway is a part of my body4 ,i lay my will on the heart of ,london with it1 or ,i sleep in the old house in ,lynmouth with it4 ,i am the ,great ,western ,railway1 and the ,great ,western ,railway is ,,me4 ,and from the heart of the roar of ,london to the slow1 sleepy surge of the sea in my window at ,lynmouth it is mine6 ,though it be iron and wood1 switches1 whistles1 and white steam1 it is my body1 and ,i inform it with my spirit1 or ,i die4 ,with the will of ,god ,i endow it1 with the glory of the world1 with the desires of my heart1 and with the prayers of the hurrying men and women4 ,i declare that that same glory ,i have known before1 and that ,i will always know1 and will never give up1 in the old quiet quadrangles of ,oxford and in the deep bells and in the still waters1 as in some strange1 new1 and mighty ,child1 is in the ,great ,western ,railway too4 ,when ,i am in the train it sings4 ,strangely and hoarsely ,it sings6 ,i lie down to rest4 ,it whistles on ahead my ideals down the slope of the world4 ,it roars softly1 while ,i sleep1 my religion in my ears4 ,,chapter ,,iii ,,dew ,,and ,,engines ,when ,i was small1 and wanted suddenly to play tag or duck-on-the-rock ,i had a little square half-mile of boys near by to play with4 ,my daughter plays tag or plays dolls1 any minute she likes1 with a whole city4 ,she is not surprised at the telephone2 she takes it for granted like sunshine and milk4 ,it is a part of the gray matter in her brain--a whole city1 six or seven square miles of it4 ,a little mouthpiece on a desk1 a number1 and two hundred little girls are hers in a minute1 to play dolls with4 ,she thinks in miles when she plays1 where ,i thought in door-yards4 ,the whole city is a part of the daily1 hourly furniture of her mind4 ,the little gray molecules in the structure of her brain are different from those in mine4 ,i have seen that ,man moves over with each new generation into a bigger body1 more awful1 more reverent and free than he has had before4 ,a few minutes ago1 here where ,i am writing1 an engine all in bright1 soft1 lit-up green with little lines of yellow on it and flashing silver feet1 like a vision1 swept past--through my still glass window1 through the quiet green fields--like a great1 swift1 gleaming whisper of ,london4 ,and now1 all in six seconds1 this great quiet air about me is waked to vast vibrations of the mighty city4 ,out over the red pines1 the lonely gorse fields1 ,i have seen passing the spirit of the ,strand4 ,i have seen the great flocking bridges and the roar about ,st4 ,paul's in communion with the treetops and with the hedgerows and with the little brooks1 all in six seconds1 when an engine1 with its vision like a cloud of glory swept past4 ,and yet there are people in ,oxford who tell me that an engine when it is in the very act of expressing such stupendous and boundless thoughts1 of making such mighty and beautiful things happen1 is not beautiful1 that it has nothing to do with art4 ,they can but watch the machines1 the earth black with them1 going about everywhere mowing down great nations and rolling under the souls of men4 ,i cannot see it so4 ,i see a thousand thousand engines carrying dew and green fields to the stones of ,london4 ,i see the desires of the earth hastening4 ,the ships and the wireless telegraph beckon the wills of cities on the seas and on the sky4 ,with the machines ,i have taken a whole planet to me for my feet and for my hands4 ,i gesture with the earth4 ,i hand up oceans to my ,god4 ,,chapter ,,iv ,,dead ,,as ,a ,,door ,,nail6 ,there are people who say that machines cannot be beautiful1 and cannot make for beauty1 because machines are dead4 ,i would agree with them if ,i thought that machines were dead4 ,i have watched in spirit1 hundreds of years1 the machines grow out of ,man like nails1 like vast antenn--a kind of enormous1 more unconscious sub-body4 ,they are apparently of less lively and less sensitive tissue than tongues or eyes or flesh2 and like all bones they do not renew1 of course1 as often or as rapidly as flesh4 ,but the difference between live and dead machines is quite as grave and quite as important as the difference between live and dead men4 ,the generally accepted idea a live thing is1 that it is a thing that keeps dying and being born again every minute2 it is seen to be alive by its responsiveness to the spirit1 to the intelligence that created it and that keeps re-creating it4 ,i have known thousands of factories2 and every factory ,i have known that is really strong or efficient has scales like a snake1 and casts off its old self4 ,all the people in it1 and all the iron and wood in it1 month by month are being renewed and shedding themselves4 ,any live factory can always be seen moulting year after year4 ,a live spirit goes all through the machinery1 a kind of nervous tissue of invention1 of thought4 ,we already speak of live and dead iron1 of live and dead engines or half-dead and half-sick engines1 and we have learned that there is such a thing as tired steel4 ,what people do to steel makes a difference to it4 ,steel is sensitive to people4 ,my human spirit grows my arm and moves it and guides it and expresses itself in it1 keeps re-creating it and destroying it2 and daily my soul keeps rubbing out and writing in new lines upon my face2 and in the same way my typewriter1 in a slow1 more stolid fashion1 responds to my spirit too4 ,two men changing typewriters or motor-cars are1 though more subtly1 like two men changing boots4 ,sewing machines1 pianos1 and fiddles grow intimate with the people who use them1 and they come to express those particular people and the ways in which they are different from others4 ,a ,titian-haired typewriter girl makes her machine move differently every day from a blue-eyed one4 ,typewriters never like to have their people take the liberty of lending them4 ,steel bars and wooden levers all have little mannerisms1 little expressions1 small souls of their own1 habits of people that they have lived with1 which have grasped the little wood and iron levers of their wills and made them what they are4 ,it is somewhere in the region of this fact that we are going to discover the great determining secret of modern life1 of the mastery of man over his machines4 ,man1 at the present moment1 with all his new machines about him1 is engaged in becoming as self-controlled1 as self-expressive1 with his new machines1 with his wireless telegraph arms and his railway legs1 as he is with his flesh and blood ones4 ,the force in man that is doing this is the spiritual genius in him that created the machine1 the genius of imperious and implacable self-expression1 of glorious self-assertion in matter1 the genius for being human1 for being spiritual1 and for overflowing everything we touch and everything we use with our own wills and with the ideals and desires of our souls4 ,the ,dutchman has expressed himself in ,dutch architecture and in ,dutch art2 the ,american has expressed himself in the motor-car2 the ,englishman has expressed himself1 has carved his will and his poetry upon the hills1 and made his landscape a masterpiece by a great nation4 ,he has made his walls and winding roads1 his rivers1 his very treetops express his deep1 silent joy in the earth4 ,so the great1 fresh young nations to-day1 with a kind of new1 stern gladness1 implacableness1 and hope1 have appointed to their souls expression through machinery4 ,our ,engines and our radium shall cry to ,god6 ,our wheels sing in the sun6 ,machinery is our new art-form4 ,a man expresses himself first in his hands and feet1 then in his clothes1 and then in his rooms or in his house1 and then on the ground about him2 the very hills grow like him1 and the ground in the fields becomes his countenance2 and now1 last and furthest of all1 requiring the liveliest and noblest grasp of his soul1 the finest circulation of will of all1 he begins expressing himself in his vast machines1 in his three-thousand-mile railways1 in his vast1 cold-looking looms and dull steel hammers4 ,with telescopes for ,mars-eyes for his spirit1 he walks up the skies2 he expresses his soul in deep and dark mines1 and in mighty foundries melting and re-moulding the world4 ,he is making these things intimate1 sensitive1 and colossal expressions of his soul4 ,they have become the subconscious body1 the abysmal1 semi-infinite body of the man1 sacred as the body of the man is sacred1 and as full of light or of darkness4 ,so ,i have seen the machines go swinging through the world4 ,like archangels1 like demons1 they mount up our desires on the mountains4 ,we do as we will with them4 ,we build ,winchester ,cathedral all over again1 on water4 ,we dive down with our steel wheels and nose for knowledge--like a great ,fish--along the bottom of the sea4 ,we beat up our wills through the air4 ,we fling up1 with our religion1 with our faith1 our bodies on the clouds4 ,we fly reverently and strangely1 our hearts all still and happy1 in the face of ,god6 ,,chapter ,v ,,an ,,oxford ,,man ,,and ,,an ,,inch ,,of ,,iron ,the whole process of machine-invention is itself the most colossal1 spiritual achievement of history4 ,the bare idea we have had of unravelling all creation1 and of doing it up again to express our own souls--the idea of subduing matter1 of making our ideals get their way with matter1 with radium1 ether1 antiseptics1 is itself a religion1 a poetry1 a ritual1 a cry to heaven4 ,the supreme1 spiritual adventure of the world has become this task that man has set himself1 of breaking down and casting away forever the idea that there is such a thing as matter belonging to matter--matter that keeps on in a dead1 stupid way1 just being matter4 ,the idea that matter is not all alive with our souls1 with our desires and prayers1 with hope1 terror1 worship1 with the little terrible wills of men and the spirit of ,god1 is already irreligious to us4 ,is not every cubic inch of iron 7the coldest-blooded scientist admits it7 like a kind of little temple1 its million million little atoms in it going round and round and round dancing before the ,lord8 ,and why should an ,oxford man be afraid of a cubic inch of iron1 or afraid of becoming like it8 ,i daily thank ,god that ,i have been allowed to belong to this generation4 ,i have looked at last a little cubic inch of iron out of countenance4 ,i can sit and watch it1 the little cubic inch of iron1 in its still coldness1 in all its little funny play-deadness1 and laugh6 ,i know that to a telescope or a god1 or to me1 to us1 the little cubic inch of iron is all alive inside1 that it is whirling with will1 that it is sensitive in a rather dead-looking but lively cosmic way1 sensitive like another kind of more slowly quivering flesh1 sensitive to moons and to stars and to heat and cold1 to time and space and to human souls4 ,it is singing every minute low and strange1 night and day1 in its little grim blackness1 of the glory of ,things4 ,i am filled with the same feeling1 the same sense of kindred1 of triumphant companionship1 when ,i go out among them and watch the majestic family of the machines1 of the engines1 those mighty ,innocents1 those new awful sons of ,god1 going abroad through all the world1 looking back at us when we have made them1 unblinking and without sin6 ,like rain and sunshine1 like chemicals1 and like all the other innocent1 godlike things1 and like waves of water and waves of air1 rainbows1 starlight1 they say what we make them say4 ,they are alive with the life that is in us4 ,the first element of power in a man1 in getting control of his life in our modern era1 is to have spirit enough to know what matter is like4 ,the ,machine-,trainer is the man who sees what the machines are like4 ,he is the man who conceives of iron-and-wood machines1 in his daily habit of thought1 as alive4 ,he has discovered ways in which he can produce an impression upon iron and wood with his desires1 and with his will4 ,he goes about making iron-and-wood machines do live things4 ,it is never the machines that are dead4 ,it is only mechanical-minded men that are dead4 ,,chapter ,,vi ,,the ,,machines' ,,machines ,the fate of civilization is not going to be determined by people who are morbidly like machines on the one hand1 or by people who are morbidly unmechanical1 on the other4 ,people in a machine civilization who try to live without being automatic and mechanical-minded part of the time and in some things1 people who try to make everything they do artistic and self-expressive and hand-made1 who attend to all their own thoughts and finish off all their actions by hand themselves1 soon wish they were dead4 ,people who do everything they do mechanically1 or by machinery1 are dead already4 ,it is bad enough for those of us who are trying to live our lives ourselves--real1 true1 hand-made individual lives--to have to fight all these machines about us trying daily to roar and roll us down into humdrum and nothingness1 without having to fight besides all these dear people we have about us too1 who have turned machines1 even one's own flesh and blood4 ,does not one see them--see them everywhere--one's own flesh and blood1 going about like stone-crushers1 road-rollers1 lifts1 lawn-mowers8 ,between the morbidly mechanical people and the morbidly unmechanical people1 modern civilization hangs in the balance4 ,there must be some way of being just mechanical enough1 and at the right time and right place1 and of being just unmechanical enough at the right time and right place4 ,and there must be some way in which men can be mechanical and unmechanical at will4 ,the fate of civilization turns on men who recognize the nature of machinery1 who make machines serve them1 who add the machines to their souls1 like telephones and wireless telegraph1 or to their bodies1 like radium and railroads1 and who know when and when not and how and how not to use them who are so used to using machines quietly and powerfully1 that they do not let the machines outwit them and unman them4 ,who are these men8 ,how do they do it8 ,they are the ,machine-,trainers4 ,the men who understand people-machines1 who understand iron machines1 and who understand how to make people-machines and iron machines run softly together4 ,,chapter ,,vii ,,the ,,men',s ,,machines ,there was a time once in the old simple individual days when drygoods stores could be human4 ,they expressed1 in a quiet1 easy way1 the souls of the people who owned them4 ,when machinery was invented and when organization was invented--machines of people--drygoods stores became vast selling machines4 ,we then faced the problem of making a drygoods store with twenty-five hundred clerks in it as human as a drygoods store with fifteen4 ,this problem has been essentially and in principle solved4 ,at least we know it is about to be solved4 ,we are ready to admit--most of us--that it is practicable for a department store to be human4 ,everything the man at the top does expresses his human nature and his personality to his clerks4 ,his clerks become twenty-five hundred more of him in miniature4 ,what is more1 the very stuff in which the clerks in department stores work--the thing that passes through their hands1 is human1 and everything about it is human1 or can be made human2 and all the while vast currents of human beings1 huge ,mississippis of human feeling1 flow past the clerks--thousands and thousands of souls a day1 and pour over their souls1 making them and keeping them human4 ,the stream clears itself4 ,but what can we say about human beings in a mine1 about the practicability of keeping human twenty-five hundred men in a hole in the ground8 ,and how can a mine-owner reach down to the men in the hole1 make himself felt as a human being on the bottom floor of the hole in the ground8 ,in a department store the employer expresses himself to his clerks through every one of the other twenty-five hundred2 they mingle and stir their souls and hopes and fears together1 and he expresses himself to all of them through them all4 ,but in a mine1 two men work all alone down in the dark hole in the ground4 ,thousands of other men1 all in dark holes1 are near by1 with nothing but the dull sound of picks to come between4 ,in thousands of other holes men work1 each with his helper1 all alone4 ,the utmost the helper can do is to grow like the man he works with1 or like his own pick1 or like the coal he chips out1 or like the black hole4 ,the utmost the man who mines coal can do1 in the way of being human1 is with his helper4 ,in a factory1 for the most part1 the only way1 during working hours1 an employer can express himself and his humanness to his workman is through the steel machine he works with--through its being a new1 good1 fair machine or a poor one4 ,he can only smile and frown at him with steel1 be good to him in wheels and levers1 or now and then perhaps through a foreman pacing down the aisles4 ,the question the modern business man in a factory has to face is very largely this3 ,i have acres of machines all roaring my will at my men4 ,i have leather belts1 printed rules1 white steam1 pistons1 roar1 air1 water and fire and silence to express myself to my workmen in4 ,i have long monotonous swings and sweeps of cold steel1 buckets of melted iron1 strips of wood1 bells1 whistles1 clocks--to express myself1 to express my human spirit to my men4 ,is there1 or is there not1 any possible way in which my factory with its machines can be made as human and as expressive of the human as a department store8 ,this is the question that our machine civilization has set itself to answer4 ,all the men with good honest working imaginations1 the geniuses and the freemen of the world1 are setting themselves the task of answering it4 ,some say1 ,machines are on the necks of the men4 ,we will take the machines away4 ,others say1 ,we will make our men as good as our machines4 ,we will make our inventions in men catch up with our inventions in machines4 ,we naturally turn to the employer first as having the first chance4 ,what is there an employer can do to draw out the latent force in the men1 evoke the divine1 incalculable passion sleeping beneath in the machine-walled minds1 the padlocked wills1 the dull unmined desires of men8 ,how can he touch and wake the solar plexus of labour8 ,if any employer desires to get into the inner substance of the most common type of workman1 be an artist with him1 express himself with him and change the nature of that substance1 give it a different colour or light or movement so that he will work three times as fast1 ten times as cheerfully and healthfully1 and with his whole body and soul1 spirit1 and how is he going to do it8 ,most employers wish they could do this4 ,if they could persuade their men to believe in them1 to begin to be willing to work with them instead of against them1 they would do it4 ,what form of language is there1 whether of words or of actions1 that an employer can use to make the men who work nine hours a day for him and to whom he has to express himself across acres of machines1 believe in him and understand him8 ,the modern employer finds himself set sternly face to face1 every day of his life1 with this question4 ,all civilization seems crowding up day by day1 seems standing outside his office door as he goes in and as he goes out1 and asking him--now with despair1 now with a kind of grim1 implacable hope1 ,do you believe1 or do you not believe1 a factory can be made as human as a department store8 ,this question is going to be answered first by men who know what iron machines really are1 and what they are really for1 and how they work--who know what people-machines really are1 and what they are really for1 and how they work4 ,they will base all that they do upon certain resemblances and certain differences between people and machines4 ,they will work the machines of iron according to the laws of iron4 ,they will work the machines of men according to the laws of human nature4 ,there are certain facts in human nature1 feelings1 enthusiasms and general principles concerning the natural working relation between men and machines1 that it may be well to consider in the next chapter as a basis for a possible solution4 ,what are our machines after all8 ,how are the machines like us8 ,and on what theory of their relation to us can machines and men expect in a world like this to run softly together8 ,these are the questions men are going to answer next4 ,in the meantime1 ,i venture to believe that no man who is morose to-day about the machines1 or who is afraid of machines in our civilization--because they are machines--is likely to be able to do much to save the men in it4 ,,chapter ,,viii ,,the ,,basement ,,of ,,the ,,world ,every man has1 according to the scientists1 a place in the small of his back which might be called roughly1 perhaps1 the soul of his body4 ,all the little streets of the senses or avenues of knowledge1 the spiritual conduits through which he lives in this world1 meet in this little mighty brain in the small of a man's back4 ,about nine hundred millions of his grandfathers apparently make their headquarters in this little place in the small of his back4 ,it is in this one little modest unnoticed place that he is supposed to keep his race-consciousness1 his subconscious memory of a whole human race1 and it is here that the desires and the delights and labours of thousands of years of other people are turned off and turned on in him4 ,it is the brain that has been given to every man for the heavy everyday hard work of living4 ,the other brain1 the one with which he does his thinking and which is kept in an honoured place up in the cupola of his being1 is a comparatively light-working organ1 merely his own private personal brain--a conscious1 small1 and supposably controllable affair4 ,he holds on to his own particular identity with it4 ,the great lower brain in the small of his back is merely lent to him1 as it were1 out of eternity--while he goes by4 ,it is like a great engine which he has been allowed the use of as long as he can keep it connected up properly with his cerebral arrangements4 ,this appears to be mainly what the cerebral brain is for1 this keeping the man connected up4 ,it acts as a kind of stopcock for one's infinity1 for screwing on or screwing off one's vast race-consciousness1 one's all-humanityness1 all those unsounded deeps or reservoirs of human energy1 of hope and memory1 of love1 of passionate thought1 of earthly and heavenly desire that are lent to each of us as we slip softly by for seventy years1 by a whole human race4 ,a human being is a kind of factory4 ,the engine and the works and all the various machines are kept in the basement1 and he sends down orders to them from time to time1 and they do the work which has been conceived up in the headquarters4 ,he expects the works down below to keep on doing these things without his taking any particular notice of them1 while he occupies his mind1 as the competent head of a factory should1 with the things that are new and different and special and that his mind alone can do--the things which1 at least in their present initial formative or creative stage1 no machines as yet have been developed to do1 and that can only be worked out by the man up in the headquarters himself personally1 by the handiwork of his own thought4 ,the more a human being develops1 the more delicate1 sensitive1 strong1 and efficient1 the more spirit-informed once for all the machines in the basement are4 ,as he grows1 the various subconscious arrangements for discriminating1 assimilating and classifying material1 for pumping up power1 light1 and heat to headquarters1 all of which can be turned on at will1 grow more masterful every year4 ,they are found all slaving away for him dimly down in the dark while he sleeps4 ,they hand him up in his very dreams new and strange powers to live and know with4 ,the men who have been the most developed of all1 in this regard1 civilization has always selected and set apart from the others4 ,it calls these men1 in their generation1 men of genius4 ,ordinary men do not try to compete with men of genius4 ,the reason that people set the genius apart and do not try to compete with him is that he has more and better machinery than they have4 ,it is always the first thing one notices about a man of genius--the incredible number of things that he manages to get done for him1 apparently the things that he never takes any time off1 like the rest of us1 to do himself4 ,the subconscious1 automatic1 mechanical equipment of his senses1 the extraordinary intelligence and refinement of his body1 the way his senses keep his spirit informed automatically and convey outer knowledge to him1 the power he has in return of informing this outer knowledge with his spirit1 with his will1 with his choices1 once for all1 so that he is always able afterward to rely on his senses to work out things beautifully for him quite by themselves1 and to hand up to him1 when he wants them1 rare1 deep1 unconscious knowledge--all the things he wants to use for what his soul is doing at the moment--it is these that make the man of genius what he is4 ,he has a larger and better factory than others1 and has developed a huge subconscious service in mind and body4 ,having all these things done for him1 he is naturally more free than others and has more vision and more originality1 his spirit is swung free to build new worlds--to take walks with ,god1 until at last we come to look upon him1 upon the man of genius1 a little superstitiously4 ,we look up every little while from doing the things ourselves that he gets done for him by his subconscious machinery1 and we wonder at him1 we wonder at the strange1 the mighty feats he does1 at his thousand-leagued boots1 at his apparent everywhereness4 ,his songs and joys1 sometimes1 to us1 his very sorrows1 look miraculous4 ,and yet it is all merely because he has a factory1 a great automatic equipment1 a thousand employee-sense perceptions1 down in the basement of his being1 doing things for him that the rest of us do1 or think we are obliged to do ourselves1 and give up all of our time to4 ,he is not held back as we are1 and moves freely4 ,so he dives under the sea familiarly1 or takes peeps at the farther side of the stars1 or he flies in the air1 or he builds unspeakable railroads or thinks out ships or sea-cities1 or he builds books1 or he builds little new still-undreamed-of worlds out of chemistry1 or he unravels history out of rocks1 or plants new cities and mighty states without seeming to try1 or perhaps he proceeds quietly to be interested in men1 in all these funny little dots of men about him2 and out of the earth and sky1 out of the same old earth and sky everybody else had had1 he makes new kinds and new sizes of men with a thought like some mighty1 serene child playing with dolls6 ,it is generally supposed that the man of genius rules history and dictates the ideals1 the activities of the next generation1 writes out the specifications for the joys and sorrows of a world1 and lays the ground-plans of nations because he has an inspired mind4 ,it is really because he has an inspired body1 a body that has received its orders once for all1 from his spirit4 ,we would never wonder that everything a genius does has that vivid and strange reality it has1 if we realized what his body is doing for him1 how he has a body which is at work automatically drinking up the earth into everything he thinks1 drinking up practicability1 art and technique for him into everything he sees and everything he hopes and desires4 ,and every year he keeps on adding a new body1 keeps on handing down to his basement new sets1 every day1 of finer and yet finer things to do automatically4 ,the great spiritual genius becomes great by economizing his consciousness in one direction and letting it fare forth in another4 ,he converts his old inspirations into his new machines4 ,he converts heat into power1 and power into light1 and comes to live at last as almost any man of genius can really be seen living--in a kind of transfigured or lighted-up body4 ,the poet transmutes his subconscious or machine body into words2 and the artist1 into colour or sound or into carved stone4 ,the engineer transmutes his subconscious body into long buildings1 into aisles of windows1 into stories of thoughtful machines4 ,every great spiritual and imaginative genius is seen1 sooner or later1 to be the transmuted genius of some man's body4 ,the things in ,leonardo da ,vinci that his unconscious1 high-spirited1 automatic senses gathered together for him1 piled up in his mind for him1 and handed over to him for the use of his soul1 would have made a genius out of anybody4 ,it is not as if he had had to work out every day all the old details of being a genius1 himself4 ,the miracles he seems to work are all made possible to him because of his thousand man-power1 deep subconscious body1 his tremendous factory of sensuous machinery4 ,it is as if he had practically a thousand men all working for him1 for dear life1 down in his basement1 and the things that he can get these men to attend to for him give him a start with which none of the rest of us could ever hope to compete4 ,we call him inspired because he is more mechanical than we are1 and because his real spiritual life begins where our lives leave off4 ,so the poets who have filled the world with glory and beauty have been free to do it because they have had more perfect1 more healthful and improved subconscious senses handing up wonder to them than the rest of us have4 ,and so the engineers1 living1 as they always live1 with that fierce1 silent1 implacable curiosity of theirs1 woven through their bodies and through their senses and through their souls1 have tagged the ,creator's footsteps under the earth1 and along the sky1 every now and then throwing up new little worlds to ,him like ,his worlds1 saying1 ,look1 ,o ,god1 look at ,,this6--the engineers whose poetry is too deep to look poetic have all done what they have done because the unconscious and automatic gifts of their senses1 of the powers of their observation1 have swung their souls free1 given them long still reaches of thought and vast new orbits of desire1 like gods4 ,all the great men of the world have always had machinery4 ,now1 everybody is having it4 ,the power to get little things1 innumerable1 omnipresent1 for-ever-and-ever things1 tiny just-so things1 done for us automatically so that we can go on to our inspirations is no longer to-day the special prerogative of men of genius4 ,it is for all of us4 ,machinery is the stored-up spirit1 the old saved-up inspiration of the world turned on for every man4 ,and as the greatness of a man turns on his command over machinery1 on his power to free his soul by making his body work for him1 the greatness of a civilization turns upon its getting machines to do its work4 ,the more of our living we can learn to do to-day1 automatically1 the more inspired and creative and godlike and unmechanical our civilization becomes4 ,machinery is the subconscious mind of the world4 ,,chapter ,,ix ,,the ,,ground ,,floor ,,folks ,i would not have1 if ,i could afford it1 a thing in my house that is not hand-made4 ,i have come to believe that machinery is going to make it possible for everybody to have hand-made things in their homes1 things that have been made by people who love to make them1 and by people who1 thinks to the machines1 are soon bound to have time to make them4 ,some will have gifts for hand-made furniture1 others for hand-made ideas4 ,perhaps people will even have time for sitting down to enjoy hand-made ideas1 to enjoy hand-made books--and enjoy reading books by hand4 ,we may have time for following an author in a book in the slow1 old1 deep1 loving1 happy1 hand-made fashion we used to know--when we have enough machines4 ,it looks as if it might be something like this4 ,every man is going to spend his mornings in the basement of society1 taking orders and being a servant and executing automatically1 like a machine if need be1 the will of the world1 making what the world wants in the way it wants it1 expressing society and subordinating himself4 ,in the afternoon he shall come up out of the basement1 and take his stand on the ground floor of the world1 stop being a part of the machinery1 and be a man1 express himself and give orders to himself and do some work he loves to do in the way he loves to do it1 express his soul in his labour1 and be an artist4 ,he will not select his work in the morning1 or select his employer1 or say how the work shall be done4 ,he will himself be selected1 like a young tree or like an iron nail1 because he is the best made and best fitted thing at hand to be used in a certain place and in a certain way4 ,when the man has been selected for his latent capacities1 his employer sets to work on him scientifically and according to the laws of physics1 hygiene1 conservation of energy1 the laws of philosophy1 human nature1 heredity1 psychology1 and even metaphysics1 teaches the man how to hold his hands1 how to lift1 how to sit down1 how to rest1 and how to breathe1 so that three times as much work can be got out of him as he could get out of himself4 ,a mind of the highest rank and1 if necessary1 thirty minds of the highest rank1 shall be at his disposal1 shall be lent him to show him how his work can be done4 ,the accumulated science and genius1 the imagination and experience1 of hundreds of years1 of all climates1 of all countries1 of all temperaments shall be heaped up by his employers1 gathered about the man's mind1 wrought through his limbs1 and help him to do his work4 ,all labour down in the basement of society shall be skilled labour4 ,the brains of men of genius and of experts shall be pumped into labour from above until every man in the basement shall earn as much money in three hours a day as he formerly had earned in nine4 ,between the time a man saves by having machinery and the time he saves by having the brains of great men and geniuses to work with1 it will be possible for men to do enough work for other people down in the basement of the world in a few hours to shut the whole basement up1 if we want to1 by three o'clock4 ,every man who is fit for it shall spend the rest of his time in planning his work himself and in expressing himself1 and in creating hand-made and beautiful1 inspired and wilful things like an artist1 or like a slowed-down genius1 or at least like a man or like a human being4 ,every man owes it to society to spend part of his time in expressing his own soul4 ,the world needs him4 ,society cannot afford to let him merely give to it his feet and his hands4 ,it wants the joy in him1 the creative desire in him1 the slow1 stupid1 hopeful initiative1 in him to help run the world4 ,society wants to use the man's soul too--the man's will4 ,it is going to demand the soul in a man1 the essence or good-will in him1 if only to protect itself1 and to keep the man from being dangerous4 ,men who have lost or suppressed their souls1 and who go about cursing at the world every day they live in it1 are not a safe1 social investment4 ,but while every man is going to see that he owes it to society to use a part of his time in it in expressing himself1 his own desires1 in his own way1 he is going to see also that he owes it to society to spend part of his time in expressing others and in expressing the desires and the needs of others4 ,the two processes could be best effected at first probably by alternating1 by keeping the man in equilibrium1 balancing the mechanical and the spiritual in his life4 ,eventually and ideally1 he will manage to have time in a higher state of society to put them together1 to express in the same act at the same time1 and not alternating or reciprocally1 himself and others4 ,and he will succeed in doing what the great and free artist does already4 ,he will make his individual self-expression so great and so generous that it is also the expression of the universal self4 ,every man will be treated according to his own nature4 ,doubtless some men have not brains enough in a week to supply them for one hour a day of self-directed work4 ,it would take them five hours a day to think how to do one hour's worth of work4 ,men who prefer1 as many will1 not to think1 and who like the basement better1 can substitute in the basement for their sons1 and buy if they like1 the freedom of sons who prefer thinking1 who would like to work harder than their fathers would care to work1 up on the ground floor of the world4 ,but as time goes on1 it is to be hoped that every man will climb up slowly1 and will belong less and less of his time to the staff that borrows brains1 and more and more of his time to the staff that hands brains down1 and that directs the machinery of the world4 ,the time of alternation in dealing with different callings will probably be adjusted differently1 and might be made weeks instead of days1 but the principle would be the same4 ,the forces that are going to help1 apparently1 in this evolution will be the labour exchange--the centre for the mobilization of labour1 the produce exchange1 the inventor's spirit in the labour unions and employers' associations1 and the gradual organization by inventors of the common vision of all men1 and setting it at work on the supreme task of modern life--the task of drawing out1 evoking each particular man in the world1 and in behalf of all1 freeing him for his own particular place4 ,,chapter ,x ,,the ,,machine-,,trainers ,the fundamental failure of humanity so far is in self-assertion4 ,the essential distinctive trait of modern civilization is machinery4 ,machinery logically and irrevocably involves the coperative action of individuals4 ,if we make levers and iron wheels work by putting them together according to their nature1 we can only make vast masses of men work by putting them together according to their nature4 ,so far we have been trying to make vast masses of men work together in precisely the same way we make levers and iron wheels work together4 ,we have thought we could make diabolically1 foolishly1 insanely inflexible men-machines which violate at every point the natural qualities and instincts of the materials of which they are made4 ,we have failed to assert ourselves against our iron machines4 ,we have let our iron machines assert themselves against us4 ,we have let our iron machines be models for us4 ,we have overlooked the difference in the nature of the materials in machines of iron and machines of men4 ,a man is a self-reproducing machine1 and an iron machine is one that has to be reproduced by somebody else4 ,in a man-machine arrangements must be made so that each man can be allowed to be the father of his own children and the author of his own acts4 ,in society or the man-machine1 if it is to work1 men are individuals4 ,society is organically1 irrevocably dependent upon each man1 and upon what each man chooses according to his own nature to do himself4 ,the result is1 the first principle of success in constructing and running a social machine is to ask and to get an answer out of each man who is1 as we look him over and take him up1 and propose to put him into it1 ,what are you like8 ,what are you especially for8 ,what do you want8 ,how can you get it8 ,our success in getting him properly into our machine turns upon a loyal1 patient1 imperious attention on our part to what there is inside him1 inside the particular individual man1 and how we can get him to let us know what is inside1 get him to decide voluntarily to let us have it1 and let us work it into the common end4 ,in this amazing1 impromptu1 new1 and hurried machine civilization which we have been piling up around us for a hundred years we have made machines out of everything1 and our one consummate and glaring failure in the machines we have made is the machine we have made out of ourselves4 ,mineral machines are made by putting comparatively dead1 or at least dead-looking1 matter together2 vegetable machines or gardens1 are made by studying little unconscious seeds that we can persuade to come up and to reproduce themselves4 ,man-machines are produced by putting up possible lives before particular individual men1 and letting them find out 7and finding out for ourselves1 too71 day by day1 into which life they will grow up4 ,everything in a social machine1 if it is a machine that really works1 is based on the profound and special study of individuals3 upon drawing out the aptitudes and motives1 choices and genius in each man2 the passion1 if he has any2 the creative desire1 the self-expressing1 self-reproducing1 inner manhood2 the happy strength there is in him4 ,trades unions overlook this1 and treat all men alike and all employers alike4 ,employers have very largely overlooked it4 ,it is the industrial1 social1 and religious secret of our modern machine civilization4 ,we need not be discouraged about machines1 because the secret of the machine civilization has as yet barely been noticed4 ,the elephants are running around in the garden4 ,but they have merely taken us by surprise4 ,it is their first and their last chance4 ,the men about us are seeing what to do4 ,we are to get control of the elephants1 first1 by getting control of ourselves4 ,we are beginning to organize our people-machines as if they were made of people2 so that the people in them can keep on being people1 and being better ones4 ,and as our people-machines begin to become machines that really work1 our iron machines will no longer be feared4 ,they will reach over and help4 ,as we look about us we shall see our iron machines at last1 about all the world1 all joining in1 all hard at work for us1 a million1 million machines a day making the crowd beautiful4 ,,chapter ,,xi ,,machines1 ,,crowds1 ,,and ,,artists ,a crowd civilization produces1 as a matter of course1 crowd art and art for crowded conditions4 ,this fact is at once the glory and the weakness of the kind of art a democracy is bound to have4 ,the most natural evidence to turn to first1 of the crowd in a crowd age1 is such as can be found in its literature1 especially in its masterpieces4 ,the significance of shaking hands with a ,senator of the ,united ,states is that it is a convenient and labour-saving way of shaking hands with two or three million people4 ,the impressiveness of the ,senator's ,washington voice1 the voice on the floor of the ,senate1 consists in the mystical undertone--the chorus in it--multitudes in smoking cities1 men and women1 rich and poor1 who are speaking when this man speaks1 and who are silent when he is silent1 in the government of the ,united ,states4 ,the typical fact that the ,senator stands for in modern life has a corresponding typical fact in modern literature4 ,the typical fact in modern literature is the epigram1 the senatorial sentence1 the sentence that immeasurably represents what it does not say4 ,the difference between democracy in ,washington and democracy in ,athens may be said to be that in ,washington we have an epigram government1 a government in which ninety million people are crowded into two rooms to consider what to do1 and in which ninety million people are made to sit in one chair to see that it is done4 ,in ,athens every man represented himself4 ,it may be said to be a good working distinction between modern and classic art that in modern art words and colours and sounds stand for things1 and in classic art they said them4 ,in the art of the ,greek1 things were what they seemed1 and they were all there4 ,hence simplicity4 ,it is a quality of the art of to-day that things are not what they seem in it4 ,if they were1 we should not call it art at all4 ,everything stands not only for itself and for what it says1 but for an immeasurable something that cannot be said4 ,every sound in music is the senator of a thousand sounds1 thoughts1 and associations1 and in literature every word that is allowed to appear is the representative in three syllables of three pages of a dictionary4 ,the whistle of the locomotive1 and the ring of the telephone1 and the still1 swift rush of the elevator are making themselves felt in the ideal world4 ,they are proclaiming to the ideal world that the real world is outstripping it4 ,the twelve thousand horsepower steamer does not find itself accurately expressed in iambics on the leisurely fleet of ,ulysses4 ,it is seeking new expression4 ,the command has gone forth over all the beauty and over all the art of the present world1 crowded for time and crowded for space4 ,telegraph6 ,to the nine ,muses the order flies4 ,one can hear it on every side4 ,telegraph6 ,the result is symbolism1 the ,morse alphabet of art and types1 the epigrams of human nature1 crowding us all into ten or twelve people4 ,the epic is telescoped into the sonnet1 and the sonnet is compressed into quatrains or ,tabbs of poetry1 and couplets are signed as masterpieces4 ,the novel has come into being--several hundred pages of crowded people in crowded sentences1 jostling each other to oblivion2 and now the novel1 jostled into oblivion by the next novel1 is becoming the short story4 ,kipling's short stories sum the situation up4 ,so far as skeleton or plot is concerned1 they are built up out of a bit of nothing put with an infinity of ,kipling2 so far as meat is concerned1 they are the ,liebig ,beef ,extract of fiction4 ,a single jar of ,kipling contains a whole herd of old-time novels lowing on a hundred hills4 ,the classic of any given world is a work of art that has passed through the same process in being a work of art that that world has passed through in being a world4 ,mr4 ,kipling represents a crowd age1 because he is crowded with it2 because1 above all others1 he is the man who produces art in the way the age he lives in is producing everything else4 ,this is no mere circumstance of democracy4 ,it is its manifest destiny that it shall produce art for crowded conditions1 that it shall have crowd art4 ,the kind of beauty that can be indefinitely multiplied is the kind of beauty in which1 in the nature of things1 we have made our most characteristic and most important progress4 ,our most considerable success in pictures could not be otherwise than in black and white4 ,black-and-white art is printing-press art2 and art that can be produced in endless copies1 that can be subscribed for by crowds1 finds an extraordinary demand1 and artists have applied themselves to supplying it4 ,all the improvements1 moving on through the use of wood and steel and copper1 and the process of etching1 to the photogravure1 the lithograph1 the moving picture1 and the latest photograph in colour1 whatever else may be said of them from the point of view of ,titian or ,michael ,angelo1 constitute a most amazing and triumphant advance from the point of view of making art a democracy1 of making the rare and the beautiful minister day and night to crowds4 ,the fact that the mechanical arts are so prominent in their relation to the fine arts may not seem to argue a high ideal amongst us2 but as the mechanical arts are the body of beauty1 and the fine arts are the soul of it1 it is a necessary part of the ideal to keep body and soul together until we can do better4 ,mourning with ,ruskin is not so much to the point as going to work with ,william ,morris4 ,if we have deeper feelings about wall-papers than we have about other things1 it is going to the root of the matter to begin with wall-papers1 to make machinery say something as beautiful as possible1 inasmuch as it is bound to have1 for a long time at least1 about all the say there is4 ,the photograph does not go about the world doing ,murillos everywhere by pressing a button1 but the camera habit is doing more in the way of steady daily hydraulic lifting of great masses of men to where they enjoy beauty in the world than ,leonardo da ,vinci would have dared to dream in his far-off day2 and ,leonardo's pictures1 thanks to the same photograph1 and everybody's pictures1 films of paper1 countless spirits of themselves1 pass around the world to every home in ,christendom4 ,the printing press made literature a democracy1 and machinery is making all the arts democracies4 ,the symphony piano1 an invention for making vast numbers of people who can play only a few very poor things play very poorly a great many good ones1 is a consummate instance both of the limitation and the value of our contemporary tendency in the arts4 ,the pipe organ1 though on a much higher plane1 is an equally characteristic contrivance making it possible for a man to be a complete orchestra and a conductor all by himself1 playing on a crowd of instruments1 to a crowd of people1 with two hands and one pair of feet4 ,it is a crowd invention4 ,the orchestra--a most distinctively modern institution1 a kind of republic of sound1 the unseen spirit of the many in one--is the sublimest expression yet attained of the crowd music1 which is1 and must be1 the supreme music of this modern day1 the symphony4 ,richard ,wagner comes to his triumph because his music is the voice of multitudes4 ,the opera1 a crowd of sounds accompanied by a crowd of sights1 presented by one crowd of people on the stage to another crowd of people in the galleries1 stands for the same tendency in art that the syndicate stands for in commerce4 ,it is syndicate music2 and in proportion as a musical composition in this present day is an aggregation of multitudinous moods1 in proportion as it is suggestive1 complex1 paradoxical1 the way a crowd is complex1 suggestive1 and paradoxical--provided it be wrought at the same time into some vast and splendid unity--just in this proportion is it modern music4 ,it gives itself to the counterpoints of the spirit1 the passion of variety in modern life4 ,the legacy of all the ages1 is it not descended upon us8--the spirit of a thousand nations8 ,all our arts are thousand-nation arts1 shadows and echoes of dead worlds playing upon our own4 ,italian music1 out of its feudal kingdoms1 comes to us as essentially solo music--melody2 and the civilization of ,greece1 being a civilization of heroes1 individuals1 comes to us in its noble array with its solo arts1 its striding heroes everywhere in front of all1 and with nothing nearer to the people in it than the ,greek ,chorus1 which1 out of limbo1 pale and featureless across all ages1 sounds to us as the first far faint coming of the crowd to the arts of this groping world4 ,modern art1 inheriting each of these and each of all things1 is revealed to us as the struggle to express all things at once4 ,democracy is democracy for this very reason1 and for no other3 that all things may be expressed at once in it1 and that all things may be given a chance to be expressed at once in it4 ,being a race of hero-worshippers1 the ,greeks said the best1 perhaps1 what could be said in sculpture2 but the marbles and bronzes of a democracy1 having average men for subjects1 and being done by average men1 are average marbles and bronzes4 ,we express what we have4 ,we are in a transition stage4 ,it is not without its significance1 however1 that we have perfected the plaster cast--the establishment of democracy among statues1 and mobs of ,greek gods mingling with the people can be seen almost any day in every considerable city of the world4 ,the same principle is working itself out in our architecture4 ,it is idle to contend against the principle4 ,the way out is the way through4 ,however eagerly we gaze at ,parthenons on their ruined hills1 if thirty-one-story blocks are in our souls thirty-one-story blocks will be our masterpieces1 whether we like it or not4 ,they will be our masterpieces because they tell the truth about us2 and while truth may not be beautiful1 it is the thing that must be told first before beauty can begin4 ,the beauty we are to have shall only be worked out from the truth we have4 ,living as we do in a new era1 not to see that the thirty-one-story block is the expression of a new truth is to turn ourselves away from the one way that beauty can ever be found by men1 in this era or in any other4 ,what is it that the thirty-one-story block is trying to say about us8 ,the thirty-one-story block is the masterpiece of mass1 of immensity1 of numbers2 with its #bdbg windows and its #ggi offices1 and its crowds of lives piled upon lives1 it is expressing the one supreme and characteristic thing that is taking place in the era in which we live4 ,the city is the main fact that modern civilization stands for1 and crowding is the logical architectural form of the city idea4 ,the thirty-one-story block is the statue of a crowd4 ,it stands for a spiritual fact1 and it will never be beautiful until that fact is beautiful4 ,the only way to make the thirty-one-story block beautiful 7the crowd expressed by the crowd7 is to make the crowd beautiful4 ,the most artistic1 the only artistic1 thing the world can do next is to make the crowd beautiful4 ,the typical city blocks1 with their garrets in the lower stories of the sky1 were not possible in the ancient world1 because steel had not been invented2 and the invention of steel1 which is not the least of our triumphs in the mechanical arts1 is in many ways the most characteristic4 ,steel is republican for stone4 ,putting whole quarries into a single girder1 it makes room for crowds2 and what is more significant than this1 inasmuch as the steel pillar is an invention that makes it possible to put floors up first1 and build the walls around the floors1 instead of putting the walls up first and supporting the floors upon the walls1 as in the ancient world1 it has come to pass that the modern world being the ancient world turned upside down1 modern architecture is ancient architecture turned inside out1 a symbol of many things4 ,the ancient world was a wall of individuals1 supporting floor after floor and stage after stage of society1 from the lowest to the highest2 and it is a typical fact in this modern democratic world that it grows from the inside1 and that it supports itself from the inside4 ,when the mass in the centre has been finished1 an ornamental stone facing of great individuals will be built around it and supported by it1 and the work will be considered done4 ,the modern spirit has much to boast of in its mechanical arts1 and in its fine arts almost nothing1 because the mechanical arts are studying what men are needing to-day1 and the fine arts are studying what the ,greeks needed three thousand years ago4 ,to be a real classic is1 first1 to be a contemporary of one's own time2 second1 to be a contemporary of one's own time so deeply and widely as to be a contemporary of all time4 ,the true ,greek is a man who is doing with his own age what the ,greeks did with theirs1 bringing all ages to bear upon it1 and interpreting it4 ,as long as the fine arts miss the fundamental principle of this present age--the crowd principle1 and the mechanical arts do not1 the mechanical arts are bound to have their way with us4 ,and it were vastly better that they should4 ,sincere and straightforward mechanical arts are not only more beautiful than affected fine ones1 but they are more to the point3 they are the one sure sign we have of where we are going to be beautiful next4 ,it is impossible to love the fine arts in the year #aiac without studying the mechanical ones2 without finding one's self looking for artistic material in the things that people are using1 and that they are obliged to use4 ,the determining law of a thing of beauty being1 in the nature of things1 what it is for1 the very essence of the classic attitude in a utilitarian age is to make the beautiful follow the useful and inspire the useful with its spirit4 ,the fine art of the next thousand years shall be the transfiguring of the mechanical arts4 ,the modern hotel1 having been made necessary by great natural forces in modern life1 and having been made possible by new mechanical arts1 now puts itself forward as the next great opportunity of the fine arts4 ,one of the characteristic achievements of the immediate future shall be the twentieth-century ,parthenon--a ,parthenon not of the great and of the few and of the gods1 but of the great many1 where1 through mighty corridors1 day and night1 democracy wanders and sleeps and chatters and is sad and lives and dies1 streets rumbling below4 ,the hotel--the crowd fireside--being more than any other one thing1 perhaps1 the thing that this civilization is about1 the token of what it loves and of how it lives1 is bound to be a masterpiece sooner or later that shall express democracy4 ,the hotel rotunda1 the parlour for multitudes1 is bound to be made beautiful in ways we do not guess4 ,why should we guess8 ,multitudes have never wanted parlours before4 ,the idea of a parlour has been to get out of a multitude4 ,all the inevitable problems that come of having a whole city of families live in one house have yet to be solved by the fine arts as well as by the mechanical ones4 ,we have barely begun4 ,the time is bound to come when the radiator1 the crowd's fireplace-in-a-pipe1 shall be made beautiful2 and when the electric light shall be taught the secret of the candle2 and when the especial problem of modern life--of how to make two rooms as good as twelve--shall be mastered sthetically as well as mathematically2 and when even the piano-folding1 bed-bookcase-toilet-stand-writing-desk-- a crowd invention for living in a crowd--shall either take beauty to itself or lead to beauty that serves the same end4 ,while for the time being it seems to be true that the fine arts are looking to the past1 the mechanical arts are producing conditions in the future that will bring the fine arts to terms1 whether they want to be brought to terms or not4 ,the mechanical arts hold the situation in their hands4 ,it is decreed that people who cannot begin by making the things they use beautiful shall be allowed no beauty in other things4 ,we may wish that ,parthenons and cathedrals were within our souls2 but what the cathedral said of an age that had the cathedral mood1 that had a cathedral civilization and thrones and popes in it1 we are bound to say in some stupendous fashion of our own--something which1 when it is built at last1 will be left worshipping upon the ground beneath the sky when we are dead1 as a memorial that we too have lived4 ,the great cathedrals1 with the feet of the huddled and dreary poor upon their floors1 and saints and heroes shining on their pillars1 and priests behind the chancel with ,god to themselves1 and the vast and vacant nave1 symbol of the heaven glimmering above that few could reach--it is not to these that we shall look to get ourselves said to the nations that are now unborn2 rather1 though it be strange to say it1 we shall look to something like the ocean steamship--cathedral of this huge unresting modern world--under the wide heaven1 on the infinite seas1 with spars for towers and the empty nave reversed filled with human beings' souls--the cathedral of crowds hurrying to crowds4 ,there are hundreds of them throbbing and gleaming in the night--this very moment--lonely cities in the hollow of the stars1 bringing together the nations of the earth4 ,when the spirit of our modern way of living1 the idea in it1 the bare facts about our modern human nature have been noticed at last by our modern artists1 masterpieces shall come to us out of every great and living activity in our lives4 ,art shall tell the things these lives are about4 ,when this is once realized in ,america as it was in ,greece1 the fine arts shall cover the other arts as the waters cover the sea4 ,the ,brooklyn ,bridge1 swinging its web for immortal souls across sky and sea1 comes nearer to being a work of art than almost anything we possess to-day1 because it tells the truth1 because it is the material form of a spiritual idea1 because it is a sublime and beautiful expression of ,new ,york in the way that the ,acropolis was a sublime and beautiful expression of ,athens4 ,the ,acropolis was beautiful because it was the abode of heroes1 of great individuals2 and the ,brooklyn ,bridge1 because it expresses the bringing together of millions of men4 ,it is the architecture of crowds--this ,brooklyn ,bridge--with winds and sunsets and the dark and the tides of souls upon it2 it is the type and symbol of the kind of thing that our modern genius is bound to make beautiful and immortal before it dies4 ,the very word bridge is the symbol of the future of art and of everything else1 the bringing together of things that are apart--democracy4 ,the bridge1 which makes land across the water1 and the boat1 which makes land on the water1 and the cable1 which makes land and water alike--these are the physical forms of the spirit of modern life1 the democracy of matter4 ,but the spirit has countless forms4 ,they are all new and they are all waiting to be made beautiful4 ,the dumb crowd waits in them4 ,we have electricity--the life current of the republican idea--characteristically our foremost invention1 because it takes all power that belongs to individual places and puts it on a wire and carries it to all places4 ,we have the telephone1 an invention which makes it possible for a man to live on a back street and be a next-door neighbour to boulevards2 and we have the trolley1 the modern reduction of the private carriage to its lowest terms1 so that any man for five cents can have as much carriage power as ,napoleon with all his chariots4 ,we have the phonograph1 an invention which gives a man a thousand voices2 which sets him to singing a thousand songs at the same time to a thousand crowds2 which makes it possible for the commonest man to hear the whisper of ,bismarck or ,gladstone1 to unwind crowds of great men by the firelight of his own house4 ,we have the elevator1 an invention for making the many as well off as the few1 an approximate arrangement for giving first floors to everybody1 and putting all men on a level at the same price--one more of a thousand instances of the extraordinary manner in which the mechanical arts have devoted themselves from first to last to the ,constitution of the ,united ,states4 ,while it cannot be said of many of these tools of existence that they are beautiful now1 it is enough to affirm that when they are perfected they will be beautiful2 and that if we cannot make beautiful the things that we need1 we cannot expect to make beautiful the things that we merely want4 ,when the beauty of these things is at last brought out1 we shall have attained the most characteristic and original and expressive and beautiful art that is in our power4 ,it will be unprecedented because it will tell unprecedented truths4 ,it was the mission of ancient art to express states of being and individuals1 and it may be said to be in a general way the mission of our modern art to express the beautiful in endless change1 the movement of masses1 coming to its sublimity and immortality at last by revealing the beauty of the things that move and that have to do with motion1 the bringing of all things and of all souls together on the earth4 ,the fulfillment of the word that has been written1 ,your valleys shall be exalted1 and your mountains shall be made low1 is by no means a beautiful process4 ,democracy is the grading principle of the beautiful4 ,the natural tendency the arts have had from the first to rise from the level of the world1 to make themselves into ,switzerlands in it1 is finding itself confronted with the ,constitution of the ,united ,states--a ,constitution which1 whatever it may be said to mean in the years to come1 has placed itself on record up to the present time1 at least1 as standing for the tableland4 ,the very least that can be granted to this ,constitution is that it is so consummate a political document that it has made itself the creed of our theology1 philosophy1 and sociology2 the principle of our commerce and industry2 the law of production1 education1 and journalism2 the method of our life2 the controlling characteristic and the significant force in our literature2 and the thing our religion and our arts are about4 ,,part ,,three ,,people-,,machines ,,chapter ,i ,,now6 ,this outlook or glimmer of vision ,i have tried to trace1 for the art of crowds is something we want1 and want daily1 in the future4 ,we want daily a future4 ,but1 after all1 it is a future4 ,i speak in this present chapter as one of the crowd who wants something now4 ,i find myself in a world in which apparently some vast anonymous arrangement was made about me and about my life1 before ,i was born4 ,this arrangement seems to be1 as ,i understand it1 that if ,i want to live while ,i am on this planet a certain sort of life or be a certain sort of person1 ,i am expected practically to take out a permit for it from the proper authorities4 ,in the previous chapter ,i made a request of the authorities1 as perhaps the reader will remember4 ,i said1 ,i want to be good now4 ,in this one ,i have a further request to make of the authorities3 ,i want to be beautiful4 ,i want to be beautiful now4 ,i find thousands of other people about me on every hand making these same two requests4 ,i find that the authorities do not seem to notice their requests any more than they have noticed mine4 ,some of us have begun to suspect that we must have made the request in the wrong way4 ,perhaps we should not ask a world--a great1 vague thing like the world in general--to make any slight arrangement we may need for being beautiful4 ,we have come to feel that we must ask somebody in particular1 and do something in particular1 and find some one in particular with whom we can do it4 ,there is getting to be but one course open to a man if he wants to be beautiful4 ,he must bone down and work hard with his soul1 make himself see precisely what it is and who it is standing between him and a beautiful world4 ,he must ask particular persons in particular positions if they do not think he ought to be allowed to be beautiful4 ,he must ask some millionaire probably first--his employer1 for instance--to stop getting in his way1 and at least to step one side and let him reason with him4 ,and when he cannot ask his millionaire--his own particular humdrum millionaire--to step one side and reason with him1 he must ask iron-machines to step one side and reason with him4 ,after this he must ask crowds to please to step one side and reason with him4 ,whatever happens1 he is sure to find always these same three great1 imponderable obstructions in the way of his being beautiful--the humdrum millionaires1 the iron-machines1 and crowds4 ,in the old days when any one wanted to be beautiful he found it more convenient4 ,there was very likely some one who was more beautiful than he was nearby1 some one who found him craving the same thing that he had craved1 and who recognized it and delighted in it1 and who could make room and help4 ,nowadays1 if one wants to be beautiful one must ask everybody4 ,every man finds it the same4 ,he must ask millions of people to let him be something1 one after the other in rows1 that they do not want him to be or do not care whether he is or not4 ,he has to ask more people than he could count1 before he dies1 to let him be beautiful4 ,many of them that he has to ask1 sometimes most of them1 are his inferiors4 ,i have tried to deal with how it is going to be possible for a man to break through to being beautiful1 past millionaires and past iron-machines4 ,i would like now to deal with the people-machines or crowds1 and how perhaps to break past them and be beautiful in behalf of them1 in spite of them4 ,,chapter ,,ii ,,committees ,,and ,,committees ,the problem seems to be something like this4 ,one finds one has been born and put here whether or no1 and that one is inextricably alive in a state of society in which men are coming to live in a kind of vast disease of being obliged to do everything together4 ,we are still old-fashioned enough to be born one at a time1 but we are educated in litters and we do our work in the world in herds and gangs4 ,even the upper classes do their work in gangs1 and with overseers and little crowds called committees4 ,our latest idea consists in putting parts of a great many different men together to make one great one--forming a committee to make a man of genius4 ,there is no denying that1 in a way1 a committee does things2 but what becomes of the committee8 ,and the lower in the scale of life we go the more committees it takes to do the work of one man and the more impossible it becomes to find anything but parts of men to do things4 ,i put it frankly to the reader4 ,the chances are nine out of ten that when you meet a man nowadays and look at him hard or try to do something with him you find he is not a man at all but is some subsection of a committee4 ,you cannot even talk with such a man without selecting some subsection of some subject which interests him2 and if you select any other subsection than his subsection he will think you a bore2 and if you select his subsection he will think that you do not know anything4 ,and if you want to get anything done that is different1 or that is the least bit interesting1 and want to get some one to do it1 how will you go about it8 ,you will find yourself being sent from one person to another2 and before you know it you find yourself mixed up with nine or ten subdivisions of nine or ten committees2 and after you have got your nine or ten subsections of nine or ten committees to get together to consider what it is you want done1 they will tell you1 after due deliberation1 that it is not worth doing1 or that you had better do it yourself4 ,then every subsection of every committee will go home muttering under its breath to every other subsection that a man who wants slightly different and interesting things done in society is a public nuisance2 and that the man who does not know what subsection he is in and what subsection of a man he was intended to be1 and who tries to do things1 carries dismay and anger on every side around him4 ,drop into your pigeonhole and be filed away1 ,o ,gentle ,reader6 ,do you think you are a soul8 ,no2 you are ,series ,b4 ,no4 #begd1 top row on the left4 ,in my morning paper the other day ,i read that in a factory whose long windows ,i often pass in the train1 they have their machinery so perfected that it takes sixty-four machines to make one shoe4 ,query--,if it takes sixty-four machines run by sixty-four men who do nothing else to make one shoe1 how many machines would it take1 and how many shoes1 to make one man8 ,query--,and when an employer in a shoe factory deals with his employee1 can it really be said1 after all1 that he is dealing with him8 ,he is dealing with ,it--with ,nine ,hours a ,day1 of one sixty-fourth of a man4 ,the natural effect of crowds and of machines is to make a man feel that he is1 and always was1 and always will be1 immemorially1 unanimously1 innumerably nobody4 ,sometimes we are allowed a little faint numeral to dangle up over our oblivion4 ,not long ago ,i saw a notice or letter in the ,west ,bulletin--probably from a member of something--ending like this3 444 ,i hope the readers of the ,bulletin will ponder over this suggestion of ,number #bi1fai4--,sincerely yours1 ,no4 #aa1 #age4 ,,chapter ,,iii ,,the ,,inconvenience ,,of ,,being ,,human ,i shall never forget one day ,i spent in ,new ,york some years ago--more years than ,i thought at first4 ,it was a wrong-headed day1 but ,i cannot help remembering it as a symbol of a dread ,i still feel at times in ,new ,york--a feeling of being suddenly lifted1 of being swept out under 7it is like the undertow of the sea7 into a kind of vast deep of impersonality--swept out of myself into a wide1 imperious waste or emptiness of people4 ,i had come fresh from my still country meadow and mountain1 my own trees and my own bobolinks and my own little island of sky up over me1 and in the vast and desolate solitude of men and women ,i wandered about up and down the streets4 ,every block ,i saw1 every window1 skyline1 engine1 street-car1 every human face1 made me feel as if ,i belonged to another world4 ,here was a great conspiracy in stone and iron against my own life with myself4 ,was there a soul in all this huge roar and spectacle of glass and stone and passion that cared for the things that ,i cared for1 or the things that ,i loved1 or that would care one shuffle of all the feet upon the stones for any thought or word or desire of mine8 ,the rain swept in my face1 and ,i spent the day walking up and down the streets looking at stones and glass and people4 ,here we are6 say the great buildings crowding on the sky4 ,who are you84444all the stone and the glass and the walls1 the mighty syndicate of matter everywhere1 surrounded me--one little1 shivering1 foolish mote of being fighting foolishly for its own little foolish mote of identity6 ,and ,i do not believe that ,i was all wrong4 ,new ,york1 like some vast1 implacable cone of ether1 some merciless ansthetic1 was thrust down over me and my breathing1 and ,i still had a kind of left-over prejudice that ,i wanted to be myself1 with my own private self-respect1 with my own private1 temporarily finished-off1 provisionally complete personality4 ,i felt then1 and ,i still feel to-day1 that every man1 as he fights for his breath1 must stand out at least part of his time for the right of being self-contained4 ,it is1 and always will be1 one of the appalling sights of ,new ,york to me--the spectacle of the helplessness1 the wistfulness1 of all those poor ,new ,york people without one another4 ,sometimes the city seems to be a kind of huge monument or idol or shrine of crowds4 ,it seems to be a part of the ceaseless crowd action or crowd corrosion on the sense of identity in the human spirit that the man who lives in crowds should grow more dull and more literal about himself every day4 ,he becomes a mere millionth of something4 ,all these other people he sees about him hurrying to and fro are mere millionths too4 ,he grows more and more obliged to live with a vast bulk of people if he is to notice people at all4 ,unless he sees all the different kinds of people and forms of life with his own eye1 and feels human beings with his hands1 as it were1 he does not know and sympathize with them4 ,the crowd-craving or love of continual city life on the part of many people comes to be a sheer lack of imagination1 an inability to live in qualities instead of quantities in men4 ,to live merely in a city is not to know the real flavour of life any more than the daily paper knows it--the daily paper1 the huge dull monster of observation1 the seer of outsides4 ,the whole effect of crowds on the individual man is to emphasize scareheads and appearances1 advertisements1 and the huge general showing off4 ,the ride in the train from ,new ,haven to ,new ,york is the true portrait of a crowd4 ,crowds of soaps and patent medicines straining on trees and signboard out of the gentle fields toward crowds of men1 culminating at last in ,woodlawn ,cemetery1 where the marble signposts of death flaunt themselves4 ,oblivion itself is advertised1 and the end of the show of a show world is placarded on our graves4 ,men buy space in papers for cards1 and bits of country scenery by the great railroads to put up signboards1 and they spend money and make constant efforts to advertise that they are alive1 and then they build expensive monuments to advertise that they are dead4444 ,the same craving for piled-up appearances is brought to bear by crowds upon their arts4 ,even a gentle soul like ,paderewski1 full of a personal and strange beauty that he could lend to everything he touched1 finds himself swept out of himself at last by the huge undertow of crowds4 ,scarcely a season but his playing has become worn down at the end of it into shrieks and hushes4 ,have ,i not watched him at the end of a tour1 when1 one audience after the other1 those huge ,svengalis had hypnotized him--thundering his very subtleties at them1 hour after hour1 in ,carnegie ,hall8 ,one could only wonder what had happened1 sit by helplessly1 watch the crowd--thousands of headlong human beings lunging their souls and their bodies through the music1 weeping1 gasping1 huzzaing1 and clapping to one another4 ,after every crash of new crescendo1 after every precipice of silence1 they seemed to be crying1 ,this is ,soul6 ,oh1 this is ,soul6 ,the feeling of a vast audience holding its breath1 no matter why it does it or whether it ought to do it or not1 seems to have become almost a religious rite of itself4 ,vistas of faces gallery after gallery hanging on a note1 two or three thousand souls suspended in space all on one tiny little ivory lever at the end of one man's forefinger 444 dim lights shining on them and soft vibrations floating round them 444 going to hear ,paderewski play at the end of his season was going to hear a crowd at a piano singing with its own hands and having a kind of orgy with itself4 ,one could only remember that there had been a ,paderewski once who hypnotized and possessed his audience by being hypnotized and possessed by his own music4 ,one liked to remember him--the ,paderewski who was really an artist and who performed the function of the artist showering imperiously his own visions on the hearts of the people4 ,and what is true in music one finds still truer in the other arts4 ,one keeps coming on it everywhere--the egotism of cities1 the self-complacency of the crowds swerving the finer and the truer artists from their functions1 making them sing in hoarse crowd-voices instead of singing in their own and giving us themselves4 ,nearly all our acting has been corroded by crowds4 ,some of us have been obliged almost to give up going to the theatre except to very little ones1 and we are wondering if churches cannot possibly be made small enough to believe great things1 or if galleries cannot be arranged with few enough people in them to allow us great paintings1 or if there will not be an author so well known to a few men that he will live forever1 or if some newspaper will not yet be great enough to advertise that it has a circulation small enough to tell the truth4 ,,chapter ,,iv ,,letting ,,the ,,crowd ,,have ,,people ,,in ,,it ,so we face the issue4 ,nothing beautiful can be accomplished in a crowd civilization1 by the crowd for the crowd1 unless the crowd is beautiful4 ,no man who is engaged in looking under the lives about him1 who wishes to face the facts of these lives as they are lived to-day1 will find himself able to avoid this last and most important fact in the history of the world--the fact that1 whatever it may mean1 or whether it is for better or worse1 the world has staked all that it is and has been1 and all that it is capable of being1 on the one supreme issue1 ,how can the crowd be made beautiful8 ,the answer to this question involves two difficulties3 7#a7 ,a crowd cannot make itself beautiful4 7#b7 ,a crowd will not let any one else make it beautiful4 ,the men who have been on the whole the most eager democrats of history--the real-idealists--the men who love the crowd and the beautiful too1 and who can have no honest or human pleasure in either of them except as they are being drawn together1 are obliged to admit that living in a democratic country1 a country where politics and sthetics can no longer be kept apart1 is an ordeal that can only be faced a large part of the time with heavy hearts4 ,we are obliged to admit that it is a country where paintings have little but the ,constitution of the ,united ,states wrought into them2 where sculpture is voted and paid for by the common people2 where music is composed for majorities2 where poetry is sung to a circulation2 where literature itself is scaled to subscription lists2 where all the creators of the ,true and the ,beautiful and the ,good may be seen almost any day tramping the tableland of the average man1 fed by the average man1 allowed to live by the average man1 plodding along with weary and dusty steps to the average man's forgetfulness4 ,and1 indeed1 it is not the least trait of this same average man that he forgets1 that he is forgotten1 that his slaves are forgotten1 that the world remembers only those who have been his masters4 ,on the other hand1 the literature of finding fault with the average man 7which is what the larger part of our more ambitious literature really is7 is not a kind of literature that can do anything to mend matters4 ,the art of finding fault with the average man1 with the fact that the world is made convenient for him1 is inferior art because it is helpless art4 ,the world is made convenient for the average man because it has to be1 to get him to live in it2 and if the world were not made convenient for him1 the man of genius would find living with him a great deal more uncomfortable than he does4 ,he would not even be allowed the comfort of saying how uncomfortable4 ,the world belongs to the average man1 and1 excepting the stars and other things that are too big to belong to him1 the moment the average man deserves anything better in it or more beautiful in it than he is getting1 some man of genius rises by his side1 in spite of him1 and claims it for him4 ,then he slowly claims it for himself4 ,the last thing to do1 to make the world a good place for the average man1 would be to make it a world with nothing but average men in it4 ,if it is the ideal of democracy that there shall be a slow massive lifting1 a grading up of all things at once2 that whatever is highest in the true and the beautiful1 and whatever is lowest in them shall be graded down and graded up to the middle height of human life1 where the greatest numbers shall make their home and live upon it2 if the ideal of democracy is tableland--that is--mountains for everybody--a few mountains must be kept on hand to make tableland out of4 ,two solutions1 then1 of a crowd civilization--having the extraordinary men crowded out of it as a convenience to the average ones1 and having the average men crowded out of it as a convenience to the extraordinary ones--are equally impracticable4 ,this brings us to the horns of our dilemma4 ,if the crowd cannot be made beautiful by itself1 and if the crowd will not allow itself to be made beautiful by any one else1 the crowd can only be made beautiful by a man who lives so great a life in it that he can make a crowd beautiful whether it allows him to or not4 ,when this man is born to us and looks out on the conditions around him1 he will find that to be born in a crowd civilization is to be born in a civilization1 first1 in which every man can do as he pleases2 second1 in which nobody does4 ,every man is given by the ,government absolute freedom2 and when it has given him absolute freedom the ,government says to him1 ,now if you can get enough other men1 with their absolute freedom1 to put their absolute freedom with your absolute freedom1 you can use your absolute freedom in any way you want4 ,democracy1 seeking to free a man from being a slave to one master1 has simply increased the number of masters a man shall have4 ,he is hemmed in with crowds of masters4 ,he cannot see his master's huge amorphous face4 ,he cannot go to his master and reason with him4 ,he cannot even plead with him4 ,you can cry your heart out to one of these modern ballot-boxes4 ,you have but one ballot4 ,they will not count tears4 ,the ultimate question in a crowd civilization becomes1 not ,what does a thing mean8 or ,what is it worth8 but ,how much is there of it8 ,if thou art a great man1 says civilization1 get thou a crowd for thy greatness4 ,then come with thy crowd and we will deal with thee4 ,it shall be even as thou wilt4 ,the pressure has become so great1 as is obvious on every side1 that men who are of small or ordinary calibre can only be more pressed by it4 ,they are pressed smaller and smaller--the more they are civilized1 the smaller they are pressed2 and we are being daily brought face to face with the fact that the one solution a crowd civilization can have for the evil of being a crowd civilization is the man in the crowd who can withstand the pressure of the crowd2 that is to say1 the one solution of a crowd civilization is the great-man solution--a solution which is none the less true because by name1 at least1 it leaves most of us out or because it is so familiar that we have forgotten it4 ,the one method by which a crowd can be freed and can be made to realize itself is the great-man method--the method of crucifying and worshipping great men1 until by crucifying and worshipping great men enough1 inch by inch1 and era by era1 it is lifted to greatness itself4 ,not very many years ago1 certain great and good men1 who1 at the cost of infinite pains1 were standing at the time on a safe and lofty rock protected from the fury of their kind by the fury of the sea1 contrived to say to the older nations of the earth1 ,all men are created equal4 ,it is a thing to be borne in mind1 that if these men1 who declared that all men were created equal1 had not been some several hundred per cent4 better men than the men they said they were created equal to1 it would not have made any difference to us or to any one else whether they had said that all men were created equal or not1 or whether the ,republic had ever been started or not1 in which every man1 for hundreds of years1 should look up to these men and worship them as the kind of men that every man in ,america was free to try to be equal to4 ,a civilization by numbers1 a crowd civilization1 if it had not been started by heroes1 could never have been started at all4 ,shall this civilization attempt to live by the crowd principle1 without men in it who are living by the hero principle8 ,on our answer to this question hangs the question whether this civilization1 with all its crowds1 shall stand or fall among the civilizations of the earth4 ,the main difference between the heroes of ,plymouth ,rock1 the heroes who proclaimed freedom in #aggf1 and the heroes who must contrive to proclaim freedom now1 is that tyranny now is crowding around the ,rock1 and climbing up on the ,rock1 eighty-seven million strong1 and that tyranny then was a half-idiot king three thousand miles away4 99 99 99 99 99 ,we know or think we know1 some of us--at least we have taken a certain joy in working it out in our minds1 and live with it every day--how people in crowds are going to be beautiful by and by4 ,the difficulty of being beautiful now1 ,i have tried to express4 ,it seems better to express1 if possible1 what a difficulty is before trying to meet it4 ,and now we would like to try to meet it4 ,how can we determine what is the most practical and natural way for crowds of people to try to be beautiful now8 ,it would seem to be a matter of crowd psychology1 of crowd technique1 and of determining how human nature works4 ,all thoughtful people are agreed as to the aim4 ,everything turns on the method4 ,in the following chapters we will try to consider the technique of being beautiful in crowds4 ,,book ,,four ,,crowds ,,and ,,heroes ,,to ,,walt ,,whitman ,and ,i saw the free souls of poets1 ,the loftiest bards of all ages strode before me ,strange large men1 long unwaked1 undisclosed1 were disclosed to me 444 ,o my rapt verse1 my call1 mock me not6 444 ,i will not be outfaced by irrational things1 ,i will penetrate what is sarcastic upon me1 ,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 they1 ,i will see if ,i am not as majestic as they1 ,i will see if ,i am not as subtle and real as they1 ,i will see if ,i have no meaning while the houses and ships have meaning1 444 ,i am for those that have never been mastered1 ,for men and women whose tempers have never been mastered1 ,for those whom laws1 theories1 conventions can never master4 ,i am for those who walk abreast of the whole earth ,who inaugurate one to inaugurate all4 ,,chapter ,i ,,the ,,socialist ,,and ,,the ,,hero ,i was spending a little time not long ago with a man of singularly devoted and noble spirit who had dedicated his life and his fortune to the ,socialist movement4 ,we had had several talks before1 and always with a little flurry at first of hopefulness toward one another's ideas4 ,we both felt that the other1 for a mere ,socialist or for a mere ,individualist1 was really rather reasonable4 ,we admitted great tracts of things to one another1 and we always felt as if by this one next argument1 perchance1 or by one further illustration1 we would convince the other and rescue him like a brand from the burning4 ,the last time ,i saw him he started in at once at the station as we climbed up into the car by telling me what he was doing4 ,he was studying up the heroes of the ,american ,revolution1 and was writing something to show that they were not really heroes after all4 ,all manner of things were the matter with them4 ,they had always troubled him1 he said4 ,he knew there was something wrong1 and he was glad to have the matter settled4 ,he said he did not1 and never had believed in heroes1 and thought they did a great deal of harm--even dead ones4 ,heroes1 he said1 always deceived the people4 ,they kept people from seeing that nothing could be done in our modern society by any one man4 ,only crowds could do things1 he intimated--each man1 like one little wave on the world1 wavering up to the shore and dying away4 ,as the evening wore on our conversation became more concrete1 and ,i began to drag in1 of course1 every now and then1 naturally1 an inspired or semi-inspired millionaire or so4 ,i cannot say that these gentlemen were received with enthusiasm4 ,finally1 ,i turned on him4 ,what is it that makes you so angry 7and nearly all the ,socialists7 every time you hear something good1 something you cannot deny is good1 about a successful business man8 ,if ,i brought a row of inspired millionaires1 say ten or twelve of them one after the other1 into your library this minute1 you would get hotter and hotter with every one1 wouldn't you8 ,you would scarcely speak to me4 ---- intimated that he was afraid ,i was deceived2 he was afraid that ,i was going about deceiving other people about its being possible for mere individual men to be good2 he was afraid ,i was doing a great deal of damage4 ,he then confided to me that not so very long ago he dropped in one ,monday morning into his guest-chamber just after his guest had gone and found a copy of ,inspired ,millionaires1 which his guest had obviously been reading over ,sunday1 lying on the little reading-table at the head of the bed4 ,he said that he took the book back to his library1 took out two or three encyclopdias from the shelf in the corner1 put my inspired millionaires in behind them1 put the encyclopdias back1 and that they had been there to this day4 ,with this very generous and kindly introduction we went on to a frank talk on the general attitude of ,socialists toward the instinct of hero-worship in human nature4 ,a ,socialist had said only a few days before1 speaking of a certain municipal movement in which the people were interested1 that he thought it really had a very good chance to succeed if only the heroes could be staved off a little longer4 ,he deprecated the almost incurable idea people seemed to have that nothing could ever be done in this world without being all mixed up with heroes4 ,my mind kept recurring in a perplexed way to this remark for a few days after ,i had heard it1 and ,i soon came on the following letter from a prominent ,socialist which had been read at a dinner the night before3 ,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 movement4 ,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 which1 if equally illumined1 would disclose tens of thousands of other comrades1 labouring with equal devotion1 and each no less worthy of praise4444 ,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 women1 and sometimes of children too4 ,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 him2 that we are but fellow-workers together1 deriving help and perhaps inspiration one from another and each from all4 ,in our rejoicing let us place the emphasis rather upon the services of the many to each1 than upon the services of any one of the many4 ,i have not quoted from this letter because ,i disagree with the idea in it4 ,i am ready to admit that though the idea is a somewhat dampening one perhaps for a banquet1 that it is true and important4 ,what ,i object to in the letter is the ,fear in it4 ,in spite of the fineness and truth of the motive that lies1 ,i know1 underneath every line1 the letter is baleful1 sinister1 and weary4 ,i accuse the letter of being1 in a kind of nobly sick way1 visionary1 unpractical1 and socially destructive4 ,i would heartily agree with the writer of the letter about the quality of many heroes1 possibly about most heroes4 ,i would agree in a large measure that the heroes the crowds choose are the wrong ones4 ,but there is a great difference between his belief and mine as to our practical working policy in getting the things for crowds that we both want for them4 ,it seems to me that he does not believe in crowds4 ,he is filled with fear that they would select the wrong heroes4 ,he says they must not have heroes1 or must be allowed as few as possible4 ,i believe in crowds1 and ,i believe that the more they have the hero-habit1 the more heroes they have to compare and select from1 the finer1 longer1 and truer heroes they will select1 the more deeply1 truly1 and concretely the crowds will think1 and the more nobly they will express themselves4 ,but the great argument for the hero as a social method is that the crowd in a clumsy1 wistful way1 deep down in its heart1 in the long run1 loves the beautiful4 ,appealing to the crowd's ideal of the beautiful in conduct1 its sense of the heroic1 or semi-heroic1 is the only practical1 hard-headed understanding way of getting out of the crowd1 for the crowd1 what the crowd wants4 ,i saw the other day in ,boston several thousand schoolboys in the street keeping step4 ,it was a band that held them together4 ,a band is a practical thing4 ,is it not about time1 in our dreary1 drab1 listless procession of economics1 stringing helplessly across the world1 that we have a band of music8 ,what economics needs now is a march4 ,we have to-day a thousand men who can tell people what to do where we have one who can touch the music1 the dance1 the hurrah1 the cry1 the worship in them1 and make them want to do something4 ,the hero is the man who makes people want to do something1 and strangely and subtly1 all through the blood1 while they watch him1 he makes them believe they can4 ,it is socially destructive to throw away the overpowering instinct of human nature which we have called hero-worship4 ,,chapter ,,ii ,,the ,,crowd ,,and ,,the ,,hero ,but it is not only socially destructive4 ,it is dumb and helpless for crowds to try to get on without heroes4 ,big events and big men are crowd expressions4 ,heroes1 ,world ,fairs1 and ,titanic disasters are crowd words1 the crowd's way of seeing and saying things4 ,crowds think in great men1 or they think in simple1 big1 broadly drawn events1 or words of one syllable1 like coal strikes4 ,a whole world works through to an entirely new idea1 the idea that ,england is not necessarily impregnable1 in the ,boer war4 ,and we see ,england1 by way of ,south ,africa1 searching her own heart4 ,the ,meat ,trust1 by raising prices for a few trial weeks1 makes half a nation think its way over into vegetarianism or semi-vegetarianism4 ,in the ,american war with ,spain modern thought attacked the last pathetic citadel in modern life of polite illusion1 of lie-poetry1 and in that one little flash of war between the ,spain spirit and the ,american spirit1 in our modern world1 the nations got their final and conclusive sense of what the ,spanish civilization really was1 of the old ,don ,quixote thinking1 of the delightful1 brave1 courtly blindness1 of the world's last stronghold of pomposity1 of vague1 empty prettiness1 of talking grand and shooting crooked4 ,japan and ,russia fight with guns1 but the real fight is not between their guns1 but between two great national conceptions of human life4 ,like two vast national searchlights we saw them turned on each other1 two huge1 grim1 naked civilizations1 and now in an awful light and roar1 and now in stately sudden silence1 while we all looked on1 all breathless and concentrated1 we saw them1 as on some strange vast stage of the world1 all lit up1 exposed1 penetrated by the minds of men forever4 ,while they fought before us we saw the last two thousand years flash up once more and fade away1 and then the next two thousand years on its slide1 with one click before our faces was fastened into place4 ,men see great spiritual conceptions or ideals for a world when the great ideals are dramatized1 when they stalk out before us1 are acted out before our eyes by mighty nations4 ,before the stage we sit silently and think and watch the ideals of a world1 the souls of the nations struggling together1 and as we watch we discover our souls for ourselves1 we define our ideals for ourselves4 ,we make up our minds4 ,we see what we want4 ,we begin to live4 ,i have come to believe that the hero1 in the same way1 is the common man's desire and prayer writ large4 ,it is his way of keeping it refreshed before him so that he sees it1 recalls it1 suns himself in it1 lifts up his life to it1 every day4 ,,chapter ,,iii ,,the ,,crowd ,,and ,,the ,,average ,,person ,to state still further my difference with the typical ,socialist point of view1 as expressed in the letter from which ,i have quoted1 ,i am obliged to confess that ,i not only believe in having heroes on behalf of crowds1 but in having as a regular method of democracy little crowds of heroes1 or an aristocracy4 ,in other words1 ,i am a democrat4 ,i believe that crowds can produce1 and are bound to produce by a natural crowd-process1 a real aristocracy--an aristocracy which will be truly aristocratic and noble in spirit and action1 and which will express the best ideas in the best way that a crowd can have4 ,the main business of a democracy is to find out which these people are in it and put them where they will represent it4 ,the trouble seems to have been in democracies so far1 that we find out who these people are a generation too late4 ,the great and rare moments of history have been those in which we have found out who they were in time1 as when we found in ,america ,abraham ,lincoln1 an unaristocratic-looking and ungainly man1 and saw suddenly that he was the first gentleman in the ,united ,states4 ,the next great task of democracy is to determine the best means it can of finding out who its aristocrats are1 its all-men1 and determining who they are in time1 men who have vision1 courage1 individuality1 imagination enough to face real things1 and to know real people1 and to put real things and real people together4 ,it is what an aristocracy in a democratic form of government is for1 to furnish imagination to crowds4 ,a real aristocracy is the only clear-headed1 practical means a great nation can have of distributing1 classifying1 and digesting and evoking hordes of men and women4 ,people do not have imagination in hordes1 and imagination is latent and unorganized in masses of people4 ,the crowd problem is the problem of having leaders who can fertilize the imagination and organize the will of crowds4 ,nothing but worship or great desire has ever been able to focus a crowd1 and only the great man1 rich and various in his elements1 abounding1 great as the crowd is great1 can ever hope to do it4 ,every man in a crowd knows that he is or is in danger of being a mere ,me-man1 or a mere class-man1 and he knows that his neighbour is1 and he wishes to be in a world that is saved from his own mere me-ness and his own mere classness4 ,his hero-worship is his way of worshipping his larger self4 ,he communes with his possible or completed self1 his self of the best moments in the official great man or crowd man4 ,the average man in a crowd does not want to be an average man1 and the last thing he wants is to have an average man to represent him4 ,he wants a man to represent him as he would like to be4 ,he cannot express himself--his best self1 in the ,state1 to all the others in the ,state1 without a lifted-up man or crowd man to do it4 ,it is as if he said--as if the average man said1 ,i want a certain sort of world1 ,i want to be able to point to a man1 to a particular man1 and say1 as ,i look at him and ask others to look at him1 ',this is the sort of world ,i want4' ,then everybody knows4 ,the great world that lies in all men's hearts is expressed in miniature1 in the great man4 ,crowds speak in heroes4 99 99 99 99 99 ,i have often heard ,socialists wondering among themselves why a movement that had so many fine insights and so many noble motives behind it had produced so few artists4 ,it has seemed to me that it might be because ,socialists as a class1 speaking roughly1 are generalizers4 ,they do not see vividly and deeply the universal in the particular1 the universal in the individual1 the national in the local4 ,they are convinced by counting1 and are moved by masses1 and are prone to overlook the ,spirit of the ,little1 the immensity of the seed and of the individual4 ,they are prone to look past the next single thing to be done4 ,they look past the next single man to be fulfilled4 ,they feel a bit superior to ,individualists for the way they have of seeing the universal in the particular1 and of being picturesque and personal4 ,socialists are not picturesque and personal4 ,they do not think in pictures4 ,then they wonder why they do not make more headway4 ,crowds and great men and children think in pictures4 ,a hero pictures greatness to them4 ,then they want it for themselves4 ,from the practical1 political point of view of getting things for crowds1 perhaps the trouble lies1 not in our common popular idea of having heroes1 but in the heroes4 ,and perhaps the cure lies not in abolishing heroes1 but in making our heroes move on and in insisting on more and better ones4 ,any man who looks may watch the crowd to-day making its heroes move on4 ,if they do not move on1 the crowd picks up the next hero at hand who is moving--and drops them4 ,one can watch in every civilized country to-day crowds picking up heroes1 comparing1 sorting1 selecting1 seeing the ones that wear the longest1 and one by one taking the old ones down4 ,the crowd takes a hero up in its huge rough hand1 gazes through him at the world1 sees what it wants through him4 ,then it takes up another1 and then another4 ,heroes are crowd spy-glasses4 ,pierpont ,morgan and ,tom ,mann for example4 ,pierpont ,morgan is a typical ,american business man raised to the n-th or hero power4 ,the crowd thinks it is interesting to take up ,pierpont ,morgan1 the ,tom ,mann of the banks4 ,it will see what it wants1 through him4 ,and the crowd thinks it is interesting to take up ,tom ,mann1 too1 the ,pierpont ,morgan of the ,trades ,unions4 ,it will see what it wants1 through him4 ,,chapter ,,iv ,,the ,,crowd ,,and ,,pierpont ,,morgan ,one keeps turning back every now and then1 in reading the ,life of ,pierpont ,morgan1 to the portrait which ,carl ,hovey has placed at the beginning of the book4 ,if one were to look at the portrait long enough1 one would not need to read the book4 ,the portrait puts into a few square inches of space what ,mr4 ,hovey takes half an acre of paper for4 ,and all that he really does on the half-acre of paper is to bring back to one again and again that set and focused look one sees in ,mr4 ,morgan's eyes--the remoteness1 the silence1 the amazing1 dogged1 implacable concentration1 and1 when all is said1 a certain terrible1 inexplicable blindness4 ,the blindness keeps one looking again4 ,one cannot quite believe it4 ,the portrait has something so strong1 so almost noble and commanding1 about it that one cannot but stand back with one's little judgments and give the man who can hurl together out of the bewilderment of the world a personality like this1 and fix it here--all in one small human face--the benefit of the doubt4 ,this is the way the crowd has always taken ,pierpont ,morgan at first4 ,the bare spectacle of a man so magnificently set1 so imperiously preoccupied1 silences our judgments4 ,it seems as if1 of course1 he must be seeing things--things that we and others possibly do not and cannot see4 ,the blindness in the eyes is so complete and set in such a full array that it acts at first on one almost like a kind of vision4 ,the eyes hold themselves like pictures of eyes1 like little walls1 as if real eyes were in behind them4 ,one wonders if there is any one who could ever manage to break through them1 fleck up little ordinary human things--personality1 for instance1 atmosphere1 or light--against them4 ,if ,shakespeare1 whose folios he has1 and ,keats1 whose ,endymion he owns1 or ,milton1 whose ,paradise ,lost he keeps in his safe1 were all to assail him at once1 were to bear down upon that set look in ,pierpont ,morgan's eyes--try to get them to turn one side a second and notice that they--,shakespeare and ,milton and ,keats--were there1 there would not be a flicker or shadow of movement4 ,they are eyes that are set like jaws1 like magnificent spiritual muscles1 on ,something4 ,neither do they reveal light or receive it4 99 99 99 99 99 ,it will be some time before the crowd will find it possible to hand in an account and render a full estimate of the value of the service that ,pierpont ,morgan has rendered to our modern world2 but the service has been for the most part rendered now and while the world1 in its mingled dismay and gratitude at the way he has hammered it together1 is distributing its praise and blame1 there are some of us who would like to step one side a little and think quietly1 if we may1 not about what ,pierpont ,morgan has done1 which we admit duly1 but about the blindness in his eyes4 ,it is ,pierpont ,morgan's blindness that interests the crowd more than anything else about him interests them now4 ,it is his blindness--and the chance to find out just what it is that is making people read his book4 ,his blindness 7if we can fix just what it is7 is the thing that we are going to make our next ,pierpont ,morgan out of4 ,the next ,pierpont ,morgan--the one the crowd is getting ready now--will be made out of the things that this ,pierpont ,morgan did not see4 ,what are these things8 ,we have been looking for the things in ,carl ,hovey's book1 peering in between the lines on every page1 and turning up his adjectives and looking under them1 his adverbs and qualifications1 his shrewdness and carefulness for the things that ,pierpont ,morgan did not see4 ,pierpont ,morgan himself would not have tried to hide them1 and neither has his biographer4 ,his whole book breathes throughout with a just-mindedness1 a spirit of truth1 a necessary and inevitable honesty1 which of itself is not the least testimony to the essential validity and soundness of ,morgan's career4 ,pierpont ,morgan's attitude toward his biography 7if1 in spite of his reticence1 it became one of the necessities--even one of the industrial necessities1 of the world that he should have one7 was probably a good deal the attitude of ,walt ,whitman when he told ,traubel1 ,whatever you do with me1 don't prettify me2 and if there were things in ,mr4 ,morgan's career which he imperturbably failed to see1 ,mr4 ,morgan himself would be the last man not to try to help people to find out what they are4 ,but living has been to ,mr4 ,morgan as it is to us 7as ,i write these lines he is seventy-four years old7 a serious1 bottomless business4 ,he does not know which the things are he has not seen4 ,his eyes are magnificently set4 ,they cannot help us4 ,we must do our own looking4 99 99 99 99 99 ,if ,i were called upon to speak very quickly and without warning2 if any one suddenly expected me in my first sentence to hit the bull's-eye of ,mr4 ,morgan's blindness1 ,i think ,i would try socialism4 ,when the ,emperor ,william was giving himself the treat of talking with the man who runs1 or is supposed to run1 the economics of a world1 he found that he was talking with a man who had not noticed socialism yet1 and who was not interested in it4 ,most people would probably have said that ,morgan was not interested in socialism enough2 but there are very few people who would not be as surprised as ,emperor ,william was to know that he1 ,pierpont ,morgan1 was not informed about the greatest and1 to some of us1 the most threatening1 omnipresent1 and significant spectre in modern industrial life4 ,but when one thinks of it1 and1 when more particularly1 one looks again at that set look in his eyes1 ,i cannot see how it could possibly have been otherwise4 ,if ,morgan's eyes had suddenly begun seeing all sorts of human things--the bewildering welter of the individual minds1 the tragedy of the individual interests around him2 if he had lost his imperious sense of a whole--had tried to potter over and piece together1 like the good people and the wonderers1 the innumerable entangled wires of the world1 his eyes might have been filled perhaps with the beautiful and helpless light of the philosophers1 with the fire of the prophets1 or with the gentle paralysis of the poets1 but he never would have had the courage to do the great work of his life--to turn down forever those iron shutters on his eyes and smite a world together4 ,there was one thing this poor1 dizzied1 scattered planet needed4 ,with its quarrelling and its peevish industries1 its sick poets and its tired religions1 the one thing this planet needed was a ,blow2 it needed a man that could hammer it together4 ,to find fault with this man for not being a seer1 or to feel superior to him for not being an idealist1 or to heckle him for not being a sociologist1 when here he was all the time with this mighty frenzy or heat in him that could melt down the chaos of a world while we looked1 weld it to his will1 and then lift his arm and smite it1 though all men said him nay--back into a world again--to heckle over this man's not being a complete sociologist or professor is not worthy of thoughtful and manful men4 ,i cannot express it1 but ,i can only declare1 living as ,i do in a day like this1 that to me there is a kind of colossal naked poetry in what ,pierpont ,morgan has done which ,i cannot but acknowledge with gratitude and hope4 ,though there be in it1 as in all massive things1 a brutality perhaps like that of the moving glaciers1 like the making and boiling of coal in the earth1 like death1 like childbirth1 like the impersonality of the sea1 my imagination can never get past a kind of elemental1 almost heathen poetry or heathen-god poetry in ,pierpont ,morgan's ,blow or shock upon our world4 ,there may be reason to doubt as to whether it is to be called a heaven-poetry or a hell-poetry--something so gaunt and simple is there about it2 but here we are with all our machines around us1 with our young1 rough1 fresh nations in the act of starting a great civilization once more on this old and gentle earth1 and ,i can only say that poetry 7though it be new1 or different1 or even a little terrible7 is the one thing that now1 or in any other age1 men begin great civilizations with4 99 99 99 99 99 ,i have tried to express the spirit of what ,morgan's genius seized unconsciously by the grim1 resistless will of his age1 has wrought into his career4 ,but in the background of my mind as ,i see ,pierpont ,morgan1 there is always the man who will take his place1 and if ,i did not see the man coming1 and coming rapidly1 who is to take ,mr4 ,morgan's place1 ,i admit that ,mr4 ,morgan himself would be a failure1 a disaster1 a closed wall at the end of the world4 ,no one man will take ,mr4 ,morgan's place1 but the typical man in the group of men that will take his place will justify ,mr4 ,morgan's work1 by taking this world in his hand and riveting his vision on where ,morgan's vision leaves off4 ,as ,morgan has fused railroads1 iron1 coal1 steamships1 seas1 and cities1 the next industrial genius shall fuse the spirits and the wills of men4 ,the ,individualists and the ,socialists1 the aristocracies and democracies1 the capitalists and the labourers shall be welded together1 shall be fused and transfused by the next ,morgan into their ultimate1 inevitable1 inextricable1 mutual interests4 ,the chief characteristic of the new industrial leader is coming to be social imagination or the power of seeing the larger industrial values in human gifts and efficiencies1 the more human and intellectual energies of workmen1 the market value of their spirits1 their imaginations1 and their good-will4 ,the underpinning and ,morganizing work has been done2 the power of instant decision which ,mr4 ,morgan has had1 has been very often based on a lack of imagination about the things that got in his way2 but the things that get in the way now1 the big1 little-looking things--are the things on which the new and inspired millionaires' imagination will find its skill and accumulate its power4 ,it is men's spirits that are now in the way2 they have been piling up and accumulating under ,morgan's rgime long enough1 and it is now their turn4 ,perhaps men's spirits have always been beyond ,mr4 ,morgan1 and perhaps his imagination has been worked largely as a kind of cerebellum imagination3 it is a kind of imagination that sees related and articulated the physical body of things1 the grip on the material tools1 on the gigantic limbs of a world4 ,the man who succeeds ,mr4 ,morgan1 and for whom ,mr4 ,morgan has made the world ready1 is the man who has his imagination in the upper part of his brain1 and instead of doing things by not seeing1 and by not being seen1 he will swing a light4 ,he will be himself in his own personality1 a little of the nature of a searchlight1 and he will work the way a searchlight works1 and will have his will with things by seeing and lighting1 by ,x-raying his way through them and not by a kind of colossal world-butting1 which is ,morgan's way1 both eyes imperiously1 implacably shut1 his whole being all bent1 all crowded into his vast machine of men1 his huge will lifted 444 and excavating blindly1 furiously1 as through some groping force he knew not1 great sub-cellars for a new heaven and new earth4 ,the ,crowd gets its heroes one at a time4 ,heroes are the ,crowd's tools4 ,some are dredges1 some are telescopes4 ,the ,crowd1 by a kind of instinct--an oversoul or undersoul of which it knows not until afterward1 takes up each tool gropingly--sometimes even against its will and against its conscience1 uses it and drops it4 ,then it sees why1 suddenly1 it has used it4 ,then ,god hands it ,another ,one4 ,,chapter ,v ,,the ,,crowd ,,and ,,tom ,,mann ,i dropped into the ,london ,opera ,house the other night to see ,tom ,mann 7the ,english ,bill ,heywood71 another hero or crowd spy-glass that people have taken up awhile--thousands of them--to see through to what they really want4 ,i wanted to hear him speak1 and see1 if ,i could1 why the crowd had taken him up1 and what it was they were seeing through him4 ,i am apt to take a dead set at liking a man ,i do not agree with1 if ,i can4 ,it gives one a better start in understanding him and in not agreeing with him to some purpose4 ,but it was not necessary to try to like ,tom ,mann or to make arrangements for being fair to him4 ,he came up on the platform 7it was at ,mr4 ,hyndmann's ,socialist rally7 in that fine manly glow of his of having just come out of jail 7and a jail1 whatever else may be said about it1 is certainly a fine taking place to come out of--to blossom up out of1 like a night-blooming cereus before a vast1 lighted-up1 uproarious audience74 ,it is wonderful how becoming a jail is to some people6 ,had ,i not seen ,mrs4 ,pethick ,lawrence with the flush of ,old ,bailey on her cheek only a little while before in ,albert ,hall8 ,if ,tom ,mann had had1 like ,elisha1 that night1 a fiery chariot at his disposal1 and had come down1 landed plump out of heaven on his audience1 he could not have done half as well with it as he did with that little gray1 modest1 demure ,salford ,jail the kind ,home ,secretary gave him4 ,he tucked the jail under his arm1 stood there silently before us in a blaze of light4 ,everybody clapped for five minutes4 ,then he waved the air into silence and began to speak4 ,i found ,i had come to hear a simple-minded1 thoughtless1 whole-hearted1 noisy1 self-deceived1 hopelessly sincere person4 ,he was a mere huge pulse or muscle of a man4 ,all we could do was to watch him up there on the platform 7it was all so simple67 taking up the world before everybody in his big hands and whacking on it with a great rapping and sounding before us all1 as if it were ,tommy's own little drum mother gave him4 ,he stood there for some fifteen minutes1 ,i should think1 making it--making the whole world rat-a-tat-tat to his music1 to ,tommy's own music1 as if it were the music of the spheres4 ,mr4 ,mann's gospel of hope for mankind seemed to be to have all the workers of the world all at once refuse to work4 ,have the workers starve and silence a planet1 and take over and confiscate the properties and plants of capital1 dismiss the employers of all nations and run the earth themselves4 99 99 99 99 99 ,i sat in silence4 ,the audience about me broke out into wild1 happy appreciation4 ,it acted as if it had been in the presence of a vision4 ,it was as if1 while they sat there before ,tom ,mann1 they had seen being made1 being hammered out before them1 a new world4 ,i rubbed my eyes4 ,it seemed to me precisely like the old one4 ,and all the trouble for nothing4 ,all the disaster1 the proposed starvation1 and panic for nothing4 ,there was one single possible difference in it4 ,we had had before1 ,pierpont ,morgan1 the ,tom ,mann of the banks1 riding astride the planet1 riding it out with us--with all the rest of us helpless on it1 holding on for dear life1 riding out into the ,blackness4 ,and now we were having instead1 ,tom ,mann1 the ,pierpont ,morgan of the ,trades ,unions1 riding astride the planet1 riding it out with us1 with all the rest of us helpless on it1 holding on for dear life1 riding out into the ,blackness4 ,of course ,pierpont ,morgan and ,tom ,mann are both very useful as crowd spy-glasses for us all to see what we want through4 ,but is this what we want8 ,is it worth while to us1 to the crowd1 to all classes of us1 to have our world turned upside down so that we can be bullied on it by one set of men instead of being bullied on it by another8 ,this is the thing that the ,crowd1 as it takes up one hero after the other1 and looks at the world through him1 is seeing next4 ,some of us have seen sooner than the others4 ,but we are nearly all of us seeing to-day4 ,we have stood by now these many years through strikes and rumours of strikes1 and we have watched the railway hold-ups1 the ,lawrence ,mill strike1 and the great ,english coal strike4 ,we have seen1 in a kind of dumb1 hopeful astonishment1 everybody about us piling into the fray1 some fighting for the rights of labour and some for the rights of capital1 and we have kept wondering if possibly a little something could not be done before long1 possibly next year1 in behalf of the huge1 battered1 helpless ,public1 that dear amorphous old ladylike ,person doddering along the ,main ,street of the ,world1 now being knocked down by one side and now by the other4 ,it has almost looked1 some days1 as if both sides in the quarrel--,capital and ,labour1 really thought that the ,public ought not to expect to be allowed to be out in the streets at all4 ,both sides in the contest are so sure they are right1 and feel so noble and ,christian1 that we know they will take care of themselves2 but the poor old ,lady6--some of us wonder1 in the turmoil of ,civilization and the scuffle of ,christianity1 what is to become of ,her4 ,is it not about time that somebody appeared very soon now who will make a stand once and for all in behalf of this ,dear ,old ,lady-,like ,person8 ,is it really true that no one has noticed ,her and is really going to stand up for ,her--for the old gentle-hearted ,planet as a ,whole8 ,we have our ,tom ,mann for the workers1 and we have the ,daily ,newspaper--the ,tom ,mann of ,capital1 but where is our ,tom ,mann for ,everybody8 ,where is the man who shall come boldly out to ,her1 into the great crowded highway1 where the bullies of wealth have tripped up her feet1 and the bullies of poverty have thrown mud in her face1 where all the little mean herds or classes one after the other hold ,her up--the scorners1 and haters1 and cowards1 and fearers for themselves1 fighting as cowards always have to fight1 in herds 444 where is the man who is going to climb up alone before the bullies of wealth and the bullies of poverty1 take his stand against them all--against both sides1 and dare them to touch the dear helpless old ,lady again8 ,when this man arises--this ,tom ,mann for ,everybody--whether he slips up into immortality out of the crowd at his feet1 and stands up against them in overalls or in a silk hat1 he will take his stand in history as a man beside whom ,napoleon and ,alexander the ,great will look as toys in the childhood of the world4 99 99 99 99 99 ,we are living in a day when not only all competent-minded students of affairs1 but the crowd itself1 the very passers-by in the streets1 have come to see that the very essence of the labour problem is the problem of getting the classes to work together4 ,and when the crowd watches the labour leader and sees that he is not thinking correctly and cannot think correctly of the other classes1 of the consumers and the employers1 it drops him4 ,unless a leader has a class consciousness that is capable of thinking of the other classes--the consumers and employers1 so shrewdly and so close to the facts that the other classes1 the consumers and the employers1 will be compelled to take him seriously1 tolerate him1 welcome him1 and coperate with him1 the crowd has come at last to recognize promptly that he is only of temporary importance as a leader4 ,he is the by-product of one of the illusions of labour4 ,when the illusion goes he goes4 ,capital has been for some time developing its class consciousness4 ,labour has lately been developing in a large degree a class consciousness4 ,the most striking aspect of the present moment is that at last1 in the history of the world1 the ,public is developing a class consciousness4 ,the ,crowd thinks4 ,and as from day to day the ,crowd thinks--holds up its little class heroes1 its ,tom ,manns and ,pierpont ,morgans1 and sees its world through them--it comes more and more to see implacably what it wants4 ,it has been watching the ,tom ,mann1 or ,bill ,heywood type of ,labour leader1 for some time4 ,there are certain general principles with regard to labour leaders that the crowd has come to see by holding up its heroes and looking through them1 at what it wants4 ,the first great principle is that no man needs to be taken very seriously1 as a competent leader of a great labour movement who is merely thinking of the interest of his own class4 ,the second general principle the ,crowd has come to see1 and to insist upon--when it is appealed to 7as it always is1 in the long run7 is that no labour leader needs to be taken very seriously or regarded as very dangerous or very useful--who believes in force4 ,a labour leader who has such a poor idea that a hold-up is the only way he can express it--the ,crowd suspects4 ,the only labour leaders that the ,crowd1 or people as a whole1 take seriously are those that get things by thinking and by making other people think4 ,the ,crowd wants to think4 ,the ,crowd wants to decide4 ,and ,it has decided to decide by being made to think and not by being knocked down4 ,it is not precisely because the ,crowd is not willing to be knocked down1 and has not shown itself to be over and over again1 when it thought its being knocked down might possibly help in a just cause4 ,but it has not been through coal strikes1 ,industrial ,workers of the ,world1 and syndicalist outbreaks for nothing4 ,it is not the knocking down indulged in by labour and by capital that the ,crowd fears4 ,it is the not-thinking4 ,the ,crowd has noticed that the knocking-down disposition and the not-thinking disposition go together4 ,the ,crowd has watched ,force and ,force-people1 and has seen what always happens after a time4 ,it has come to see that people who have to get things by force and not by thinking will not be able to think of anything to do with the things when they get them4 ,so the ,crowd does not want them to get them4 ,the ,crowd has learned all this even from the present owners of things4 ,it does not want to learn them all over again from new ones4 ,the present owners of things have got them half by force1 and that is why they only half understand how to run them4 ,but they do half understand because they only half believe in force4 ,the crowd has seen them get their supremacy by the use of the employment-hold-up1 or by starving or threatening to starve the workers4 ,and now it sees the ,syndicalist workers proposing to get control by starving or threatening to starve everybody4 ,of the two1 those who propose to starve all the people to get their own way1 and those who threaten to starve part of the people1 it has seemed to the ,crowd1 naturally1 that those who only half believe in starving1 and who only starve a part of us1 would be likely to be more intelligent as world-runners4 ,in other words 7accepting for the sake of argument the worst possible interpretation of the capitalist class71 they have spent several years in learning1 and have already half learned that force in industry is inefficient and cannot be made to work4 ,now when the ,crowd sees the ,syndicalists swinging their hats in a hundred nations1 with one big hoarse hurrah around a world1 with five minutes' experience1 come rushing in1 and propose to take up the world--the whole world in two minutes more and run it in the same old bygone way--the way that the capitalists are just giving up--by force--it knows what it thinks4 ,it thinks it will fight ,class ,syndicalism4 ,it makes up its mind it will fight ,class ,syndicalism with ,crowd ,syndicalism4 ,it has decided that1 in the interests of all of us1 of a crowd civilization1 of what we call the world or ,crowd ,syndicate1 its industries should be controlled1 not by the owners and not by the workers1 but by those men1 whoever they are1 who can control them with the most skill and efficiency4 ,the ,crowd has come to see that the present owners--judging from current events1 and taking them as a whole1 and speaking impersonally and historically--have proved themselves1 on the whole1 incompetent to control industries with skill and efficiency1 because they have treated labour as the natural enemy of capital and have quarrelled with it4 ,it sees that the present workers1 acting as syndicates or otherwise1 are incompetent to own and control and manage industry because they propose to treat capital as the natural enemy of the workers4 ,there has been but one conclusion possible4 ,if ,civilization or the ,crowd ,syndicate has a right to have its industries managed in the interests of all1 and if the present owners have proved themselves to be mentally incompetent to control industry because they fight labour1 and if the present labourers as a class have proved themselves to be mentally incompetent because they propose to fight capital1 there is naturally but one question the crowd syndicate is asking to-day1 namely1 ,are there any mentally competent business firms at all in the world1 any firms whose owners and labourers have thought out a way of not fighting8 ,from the point of view of the ,crowd1 the men who are competent1 who know how to do their work1 do not have to lay down their tools and find out all over again how to do their work4 ,they know it and keep doing it4 ,so the ,crowd keeps coming back with the question1 ,are there or are there not any competent business establishments in our modern life8 ,which are they1 and where are they8 ,we want to know about them4 ,we want to study them4 ,we want to focus the thought of the world on them and see how they do it4 ,the answering of this question is what the next ,pierpont ,morgan and the next ,tom ,mann are for4 ,what the next ,pierpont ,morgan is for is to find out for us who the competent employers are--the employers who can get twice as much work out of their labour as other employers do--recognize them1 stand by them and put up money on them4 ,the next ,pierpont ,morgan will find out also who the incompetent employers are1 recognize them1 stand out against them1 and unless they have brains enough or can get brains enough to coperate with their own workmen1 refuse to lend money to them4 ,this would make a banker a statesman1 would make banking a great and creative profession1 shaping the destinies of civilizations1 determining with coins back and forth over a counter the prayers and the songs1 the very religions of nations1 and swinging like a pendulum the fate of the world4 ,the first ,pierpont ,morgan has made himself1 in a necessary transitional movement1 a hero in the business world because of a certain moral energy there is in him4 ,he has insisted in expressing his own character in business4 ,he would not send money to capitalists fighting capitalists1 and in a general way he has compelled capitalists to coperate4 ,the new hero of the business world is going to compel capital not merely to coperate with capital1 but to coperate with labour and with the public4 ,and as ,morgan compelled the railroads of the ,united ,states to coperate with one another by getting money for those that showed the most genius for coperation1 and by not getting money for railroads that showed less genius for it1 so the next ,pierpont ,morgan will throw the weight of his capital at critical times in favour of companies that show the largest genius for building the mutual interests of capitalists1 employees1 and the public inextricably into one body4 ,he is going to recognize as a banker that the most permanent1 long-headed1 practical1 and competent employers are those whose business genius is essentially social genius1 the genius for being human1 for discovering the mutual interests of men1 and for making human machinery work4 ,there is a great position ahead for this hero when he comes4 ,and ,i have seen in my mind to-day thousands of men1 young and old in every business1 in every country of the world1 pressing forward to get the place4 ,it is what the next ,tom ,mann is for--to find out for the ,trades ,unions and for the public who the most competent workmen are in every line of business1 the workmen who are the least mechanical-minded1 who have shown the most brains in educating and being educated by their employers1 the most power in touching the imaginations of their employers with their lives and with their work1 and in coperating with them4 ,when the next ,tom ,mann has searched out and found the workmen in every line of business who are capable of working with their superiors1 and of becoming more and more like them1 he will make known to all other workmen and to all other ,trades ,unions who these workmen are1 and how they have managed to do it4 ,he will see that all ,trades ,unions are informed1 in night-schools and otherwise1 how they have done it4 ,he will see that the principles1 motives1 and conditions that these men have employed in making themselves more like their superiors1 in making themselves more and more fit to take the place of their superiors1 in making their work a daily1 creative1 spirited part of a great business1 are made so familiar to all ,trades ,unions that the policies of all our labour organizations everywhere shall change and shall be infected with a new spirit2 and labouring men1 instead of going to their shops the world over1 to spend nine hours a day in fighting the business in which they are engaged1 to spend nine hours a day in trying to get themselves nothing to do1 nine hours a day in getting nobody to want to employ them1 will work the way they would like to work1 and the way they would all work to-morrow morning if they knew the things about capital and about labour that they have a right to know1 and that only incompetent employers and incompetent labor leaders year by year have kept them from knowing4 ,,chapter ,,vi ,,an ,,opening ,,for ,,the ,,next ,,pierpont ,,morgan ,christ said once1 ,he that is greatest among you let him be your servant4 ,most people have taken it as if ,he had said3 ,he that is greatest among you let him be your valet4 ,he that is greatest among you let him be your butler4 ,he that is greatest among you let him be your hostler1 porter1 footman4 ,they cling to a medival ,morality-,play1 ,servant-in-the-,house idea1 a kind of head-waiter idea of what ,christ meant4 ,this seems to some of us a literal-minded1 ,western way of interpreting an ,oriental metaphor4 ,we do not believe that ,christ meant servanthood4 ,it seems to us that ,he meant something deeper1 that ,he meant service2 that ,he might have said as well3 ,he that is greatest among you let him be your ,duke of ,wellington4 ,he that is greatest among you let him be your ,lincoln4 ,he that is greatest among you let him be your ,edison1 your ,marconi4 ,at all events1 it is extremely unlikely that ,he meant looking and acting like a servant4 ,he meant really being one1 whether one looked like a servant or not4 ,if looking independent and being independent makes the service better1 if defying the appearance of a servant makes the service more efficient1 we believe the appearance should be defied4 ,it troubles us when we see the ,czar of ,russia in the presence of the civilized world1 once a year taking such great pains to look like a servant and to wash his peasants' feet4 ,we are not willing1 if we ever have any relations with the public1 to be ,czars and look like servants4 ,we would prefer to look like czars and be servants4 ,we are inclined to believe that no man who is rendering his utmost service to the crowd ever thinks in the ordinary servant sense of being obedient to it4 ,he is thinking of his service1 and of its being the most high and perfect and most complete thing that he can render--the thing that he1 out of all men1 could think of and do1 and that the crowd would want him to do4 ,he is busy in being obedient to the crowd1 in fulfilling daily its spirit1 and not in taking orders from it4 ,the reason that the larger number of men who go into politics to-day are inefficient and do not get the things done that crowds want1 is that they are the kind of men who feel that they must talk and act like servants4 ,even the most independent-looking and efficient men1 who look as if they really saw something and had something to give1 often prove disappointing4 ,when one comes to know a man of this type more intimately1 one is apt to find that he is really a flunkey in his thoughts2 that he feels hired in his mind2 that he is the valet of a crowd1 and often1 too1 the valet of some particular crowd--some little1 safe1 shut-in crowd1 party1 or special interest that wants to own1 or to keep1 or to take away a world4 ,whichever way to-day one looks1 one finds this illusion as to what a public servant really is1 for the moment1 corrupting our public life4 ,but ,christ did not say1 ,he that is greatest among you1 let him be your valet4 ,the man who is greatest among us1 neither in this age nor in any other1 ever will or ever can be a valet4 ,he faces the crowd the way ,christ did--with his life1 with his soul1 with his ,god4 ,he will not be afraid of the ,crowd4444 ,he will be the ,greatest1 he will be a ,servant4 ,in the meantime--in the hour of the valets1 only the little crowds1 speak4 ,the ,people wait4 ,the ,crowd is dumb1 massive1 and silent4 ,there seems to be no one in the world to express it1 to express its indomitable desire1 its prayer1 to lay at last its huge1 terrible1 beautiful will upon the earth4 ,it is the classes or little crowds--the little pulling and pushing1 helpless1 lonely1 mean1 separated crowds--blind1 hateful1 and afraid1 who are running about trying to lay their little wills upon the earth4 ,the ,crowd waits and is not afraid4 ,the little1 separated crowds are afraid4 ,the world1 for the moment1 is being interpreted1 expressed1 and managed by ,people ,who ,are ,afraid4 ,it is the same in all the nations4 ,in the coal strike in ,england one finds the miners in the trades unions afraid to vote except in secret because they are afraid of one another4 ,one finds the miners' leaders afraid of the men under them and of what they might do1 so that they have no policy except to fight4 ,one finds the miners' leaders afraid of the mine-managers and of what they might do1 so that they have no policy except to fight4 ,one finds the mine-managers afraid of one another1 afraid of their stockholders1 afraid of the miners' leaders1 and afraid of the newspapers and afraid of the ,government4 ,one finds the ,government afraid of everybody4 ,everybody is afraid of the ,government4 ,everybody fights because everybody is afraid4 ,and everybody is afraid because everybody sees that it is mere crowds that are running the world4 ,there is another reason why everybody is afraid4 ,everybody is afraid because everybody is shut in with some little separated crowd4 ,people who are never ,outside1 who only see a little way out over the edge of the little crowd in which they are penned up1 are naturally afraid4 ,a world that is run by little shut-in crowds is necessarily a world that is run by ,people ,who ,are ,afraid4 ,and so now we have come to the fulness of the time4 ,the cities and the nations1 the prairies1 and the seas and the mines1 the very skies about us can be seen by all to-day to be full of a dull groping and of a great asking1 ,who ,are ,the ,men ,who ,are not ,afraid8 ,the moment these men appear who are not afraid1 and it is seen by all that they are not afraid1 the world 7and all the little blind1 helpless crowds in it7 will be placed in their hands4 ,,chapter ,,vii ,,an ,,opening ,,for ,,the ,,next ,,tom ,,mann ,i am aware that ,tom ,mann is not a world figure4 ,but he is a world type4 ,and as the editor of the ,syndicalist1 the leader of the most imposing and revealing labour rally the world has seen1 he is of universal interest4 ,those of us who believe in crowds are deeply interested in finding1 recognizing1 creating1 and in seeing set free out of the ranks of men the labour leaders who shall express the nobility and dignity of modern labour1 who shall express the bigness of spirit1 the brawny-heartedness1 the composure1 the common-sense1 the patriotism1 the faithfulness and courage of the ,people4 ,i indict ,tom ,mann before the bar of the world as not expressing the will and the spirit of the ,people4 ,i do this as a labouring man4 ,i decline1 because ,i spend my time daily tracing out little crooked lines on paper with a pen1 because ,i have wrought day and night to make little patterns of ink and little stretches of words reach men together round a world1 because ,i have sweat blood to believe1 because in weariness and sorrow ,i have wrought out at last my little faith for a world 444 ,i decline not to be numbered with the labourers ,i see in the streets4 ,i claim my right before all men this day1 with my unbent body and with my unsoiled hands1 to be enrolled among the toilers of the earth4 ,i speak as a labouring man4 ,i say ,tom ,mann is incompetent as a true leader of ,labour4 ,the first reason that he is incompetent is that he does not observe facts4 ,he merely observes facts that everybody can see1 that everybody has seen for years4 ,he does not observe the new and exceptional facts about capital that only a few can see1 the seeing of which1 and the seeing of which first1 should alone ever constitute a man a true leader in dealing with capital4 ,he merely believes facts that nearly everybody has caught up to believing--facts about human nature1 about what works in business4 ,the crowd is not content with this4 ,it has become accustomed to seeing that the men who lead in business1 and who make others follow them1 whether masters or workmen1 are men who do it by observing certain new and exceptional facts and acting upon them4 ,if these men cannot observe them1 we have seen them create them4 ,it is the men who make new things true wherever they go that the crowd is coming to recognize and to take seriously and permanently as the real leaders of ,labour and of ,capital to-day4 ,tom ,mann is incompetent as a labour leader in dealing with capital to-day1 because the things that he proposes to do all turn on three facts which1 looked at on the outside1 merely have or might be said to have a true look3 ,first1 employers are all alike2 ,second1 none of them ever work2 ,third1 they are all the enemies of ,labour4 ,tom ,mann is incompetent to grapple with ,capital in behalf of ,labour as any great labour leader would have to do1 because he has his facts wrong about ,capital1 is simple-minded and rudimentary and undiscriminating about the men with whom he deals1 and sees them all alike4 ,this is a poor beginning even for fighting with them4 ,the second reason that ,tom ,mann is incompetent is1 not that he has his facts wrong and does not think1 but that he carries not-thinking about the employing class still further1 has come to make a kind of religion out of not-thinking about them4 ,and instead of thinking how to make labouring men think better than their employers think1 and making them think so well that they can crowd their way into their employers' places1 he proposes to have labour get into their places without thinking1 and run a world without thinking4 ,all that is necessary in order to have workmen run the world1 is to get workmen to stop working1 to stop thinking1 and then as rapidly as possible to get everybody else to stop thinking4 ,then the world will fall into their hands4 ,the third reason that ,tom ,mann is incompetent is that he is unpractical and full of scorn4 ,and scorn1 from the point of view of the practical-minded man1 is a sentimental and useless emotion4 ,we have learned that it almost always has to be used by a man who has his facts wrong1 that is1 who does not see what he himself is really like1 and who has not noticed what other people are really like4 ,no man who sees himself as he is1 feels at liberty to use scorn4 ,and no man who sees others as they are1 sees any occasion for it4 ,tom ,mann uses hate also1 and hate has been found to be1 as directed toward classes of persons as a means of getting them to do things1 archaic and inefficient4 ,it is not quite bright4 ,it need not be denied that hate and scorn both impress some people1 but they never seem to impress the people that see things to do and who find ways to do them4 ,and the people who use scorn are all too narrow1 too class-bound1 and too self-regarding to do things in a huge world problem like the present one4 ,the fourth reason that ,tom ,mann as a labour leader is incompetent is that he is afraid2 he is afraid of capital1 so afraid that he has to fight it instead of grappling with it and coperating with it4 ,he is afraid to believe in labour--so afraid that he takes orders from it instead of seeing for it1 and seeing ahead for it4 ,he is afraid of his employers' brains1 of their having brains enough to understand and to to be convinced as to the position of the labourer4 ,he is afraid to believe in his own brains1 in his own brains being good enough to convince them4 ,so he backs down and fights4 ,if any reader who is interested to do so will kindly turn back at this point a page or so1 and read this chapter we have just gone through together1 over again1 and if he will kindly1 wherever it occurs1 insert for ,tom ,mann1 labour leader1 ,d4,a4 ,thomas1 leader of mine-owners1 he will save much time for both of us1 and he will kindly make one chapter in this book which is already much too long1 as good as two4 ,tom ,mann 7unless he is changed7 is about to be dropped as a typical modern leader of ,labour because he is afraid1 and what he expresses in the labouring class is its fear of ,capital4 ,and what ,d4,a4 ,thomas expresses for ,capital is its fear of ,labour4 ,there are thousands of capitalists and hundreds of thousands of labour men who have something better they want expressed by their leaders1 than their ,fear4 ,out of these men the new leaders will be chosen4 ,,chapter ,,viii ,,the ,,men ,,who ,,look ,during the recent coal strike in ,england1 as at all times in the world1 heroes abounded4 ,the trouble with most of us during the coal strike was not in our not having heroes1 but in our not being quite sure which they were4 ,davy ,mc,ewen1 a miner who stood out against the whole countryside1 and went to his work every day in defiance of thousands of men on the hills about him trying to stop him1 and hundreds of thousands of men all over ,england trying to scare him1 was not a hero to ,mr4 ,josiah ,wedgewood4 ,mr4 ,josiah ,wedgewood one day in the height of the conflict1 from his seat in the ,house of ,commons1 rose in his might--and before the face of the nation called ,davy ,mc,ewen a traitor to his class4 ,sir ,arthur ,markham1 one of the largest of the mine-owners1 in the height of the conflict between the mine-owners and the miners over wages1 rose in the ,house and declared that1 in his opinion as a mine-owner1 the mine-owners were wrong and the miners were right1 and that the mine-owners could afford to pay better wages1 and should yield to the men4 ,he was called a traitor to his class4 ,at the last moment in the coal strike1 when the ,government had done its best1 and when the labour leaders still proposed to hold up ,england and defy the ,government until they got their way1 ,stephen ,walsh1 one of the leaders of the miners1 stood up in the face of a million miners and said he would not go on with the others against the ,government4 ,it is now time for the trades union men to return to work4 ,we have done what we could4 ,our citizenship should be higher than our trades unionship1 and with me1 as long as ,i am a trades union man1 it will be4 ,he was called a traitor to his class4 ,i am an unwilling and unfit person1 as a sojourner and an ,american1 to take any position on the merits of the question as to the disestablishment of the ,church in ,wales4 ,but when ,i saw ,bishop ,gore standing up and looking unblinkingly at facts or what he thought were facts which he would rather not have seen and which were not on his side1 and when ,i saw him voting deliberately for the disestablishment of his own ,church1 ,i greeted with joy1 as if ,i had seen a cathedral1 another traitor to his class4 ,i almost believe that a ,church that could produce and supply a man like this for a great nation looking through every city and county year by year for men to go with it 444 a ,church that could produce and keep producing ,bishop ,gores1 would be entitled1 from a great nation to anything it liked4 99 99 99 99 99 ,men seem to be capable of three stages of courage4 ,courage is graded to the man4 ,there is the man who is so tired1 or mechanical-minded1 that he can only think of himself4 ,there is the man who is so tired that he can only think of his class4 ,and there is the man that one has watched being moved over slowly from a ,me-man into a ,class-man1 who has begun to show the first faint beginnings of being a ,crowd-man4 ,one man has courage for himself because he knows what he wants for himself4 ,another has courage for his class because he knows what he wants for his class4 ,another has courage for ,god and for the world because there are things he sees that he wants for ,god and for the world1 and he sees them so clearly that he sees ways to get them4 ,lack of courage is a lack of vision or clear-headedness about what one wants4 ,i do not know1 but ,i can only say that it has seemed to me that ,bishop ,gore has a vision or clear-headedness about what he wants for democracy1 and that he uses his vision of what he wants for democracy to true his vision for his class4 ,perhaps also he has a vision for his class for the church people that it is for the interest church people to be the class that is1 out of all the world1 supremely considerate1 big1 leisurely1 unfretful in its dealings with others4 ,perhaps also he has a vision for himself and is clear-headed for himself1 and has seen that though the steeples fall about him1 and though the altars go up in smoke1 he will keep the spirit of ,god still within his reach4 ,the gentleness1 the grim hope for the world and the patience that built the cathedrals1 shall be in his heart day and night4 ,i hold no brief for ,bishop ,gore4 ,i know there must be others like him who voted on the other side4 ,i know there are hundreds of thousands of employers who in their hearts are like him4 ,i know there are hundreds of thousands of men in the trades unions who are like him4 ,i am not sure that ,bishop ,gore1 on the merits of the case1 was right4 ,i wish this day ,i knew that he was wrong4 ,i wish that ,i had spent the last six months in fighting him1 in fighting against his vision1 that ,i might be more free to-day to point to him with joy when ,i go up and down the streets with men and look at the churches with men--the rows of churches--and try to tell them what they are for4 ,i have seen that the cathedrals scattered about under the sky in ,england are but ,god's little tools to make great cities on the earth1 and to build softly out of the hearts of men and women men who shall be cathedrals too--men buttressed against the world1 men who can stand alone4 ,and it has seemed to me that ,tom ,mann and ,d4,a4 ,thomas are incompetent as leaders of industry because they do not see that ,labour is full of men who can do things like this4 ,i am proud1 over in my country across the sea1 to be cousin to a nation that is still the headquarters--the international citadel--of individualism upon the earth4 ,the world knows if ,england does not1 that this kind of individualism is the most characteristic1 the most mighty and impregnable ,dreadnought against that ,england has produced4 ,but ,england knows it too4 ,i have seen thousands of men in ,england in their dull brown clothes pass by me in the street who know and respond to the spirit that is in ,bishop ,gore1 and who have the courage to show it themselves4 ,and the vision is in them1 but it is not waked4 ,the moment it is waked we will have a new world4 ,it is because ,tom ,mann and ,d4,a4 ,thomas are not leaders of men who have this spirit that they are about to be dropped as typical leaders of ,labour and ,capital in modern times4 ,no man will be accepted by the ,crowd to-day as a competent leader of his class who is afraid of the other classes4 ,no man will be said to be a true leader1 to be competent to make things move in the world1 who does not have three gears of courage3 courage for himself1 courage for his own people1 courage for other people2 and who does not dare to deal with other people as if they really might be dealt with1 after all1 as fellow human beings capable of acting like fellow human beings1 capable of finer and of truer things1 of more manly and patient1 more shrewdly generous1 more far-sighted things1 than might appear at first4 99 99 99 99 99 ,was ,mr4 ,josiah ,wedgewood right when he called ,davy ,mc,ewen a traitor to his class8 ,i do not want to judge ,davy ,mc,ewen4 ,such things are matters of personal interpretation1 and of standing with a man face to face for a moment and looking him in the eyes4 ,of course1 if ,i had done this1 ,i might have been tempted and despised him4 ,and ,i might now4 ,the thing that ,i would have tried to look down through to in him1 if ,i had looked him in the eye1 would have been something like this3 ,are you or are you not1 ,davy ,mc,ewen1 standing out day after day against your class because you can see less than your class sees1 because you are a mere me-man8 ,do you go by here grimly day by day1 past all these people lined up on the hills1 sternly thinking of yourself8 ,if ,i found that this was true1 as it might well be1 and often is1 ,i would say that ,davy ,mc,ewen was a traitor to his class4 ,but if ,i found ,davy ,mc,ewen going past hills-ful of workmen because he had a larger1 fairer vision of what his class is than they had1 if it proved to be true that the crowd-man in him was keeping the class-man in place1 and holding true his vision for his class1 ,i would say that it was his class that was being a traitor to him2 ,i would say that sooner or later his class would see in some quiet day that it had been a traitor to him and to the world1 and a traitor to itself4 99 99 99 99 99 ,if socialism and individualism cannot work together1 and if 7like the masculine and feminine in spirit7 each cannot make itself the means and the method of fulfilling the other1 there is no reason why either of them should be fulfilled4 ,in the meantime1 there is a kind of self-will that seems to me1 as its shadow comes across my path1 like ,god himself walking on the earth4 ,and ,i have seen it in the rich and ,i have seen it in the poor1 and in people who were being wrong and in people who were being right4 ,it is like hearing great bells in the dark1 singing in the solemn night to so much as hear of a man somewhere1 ,i might go and see1 who stands alone4 ,if we want to stand together1 let us begin with these men who can stand alone4 ,there is a sense in which ,christ died on the cross because ,he could find at the time no other way of saying this4 ,there is a sense in which the decline of individualism is what he died for4 ,or we might call it the beginning of individualism4 ,he died for the principle of doing what he thought was right before anybody else did it1 and whether anybody else did it or not4 ,the self-will of ,jesus was half the ,new ,testament4 ,he crucified himself1 his mother1 and a dozen disciples that ,his own vision for all might be fulfilled4 ,socialism itself1 what is good in it1 would not exist to-day if ,jesus1 the ,christ1 had not practised socialism1 in the best sense1 by being an individualist4 ,if we are going to get to socialism by giving up individualism1 by abolishing heroes1 why get to it8 ,this more glorious self-will is not1 of course1 of a kind that all men can expect to have4 ,most of us have not the vision that equips us1 and that gives us the right1 to have it4 ,but we can exact of our leaders that they shall have it--that they shall see more for us than we can see for ourselves1 that they shall hold their vision up before us and let us see it1 and let us have the use of it1 that they shall be true to us1 that they shall be the big brothers of the people4 ,,chapter ,,ix ,,rules ,,for ,,telling ,a ,,hero--,,when ,,one ,,sees ,,one ,i have sometimes hoped that the modern world was about to produce at last some man somewhere with a big-hearted1 easy powerful mind1 who could protect the ,french ,revolution4 ,what we need most of all just now in our present crisis is some man who could take up the ,french ,revolution without half trying1 all the world looking on and wondering softly how he dares to do it1 and put it gently but firmly1 and once for all1 up high somewhere where no one except geniuses1 or at least the very tallest-minded people1 could ever again get at it4 ,as it is1 hardly a day passes but one sees new little nobodies everywhere all about one reaching up without half thinking to it--to the ,french ,revolution--grabbing it calmly1 and then using it deliberately before our eyes as a general free-for-all analogy for anything that comes into their heads4 ,the ,syndicalists and ,industrial ,workers of the ,world have had the use of it last4 ,the fact that the ,french ,revolution was ,french and that it worked fairly well a hundred years ago and with a ,louis ,sixteenth sort of person1 and as a kind of first rough sketch1 or draft of just what a revolution might be for once1 and what it would have to get over being afterward1 as soon as possible1 never seems to have occurred to many people4 ,one sees them rushing about the world trying to get up exact duplicates1 little fussy replicas of a revolution1 and of a kind of revolution that the real world put quietly away in the attic seventy years ago4 ,the real world1 and all the men in it who are facing real facts to-day1 are getting what they want in precisely the opposite of the violent1 theatrical ,french-,revolution way4 ,the fact that people are quite different now1 and that it is more effective and practical to get new ideas into their heads by keeping their heads on than it is by taking their heads off--some of us seem to have passed over4 ,living as we do in a world to-day with our new explosives1 our new antiseptics1 our new biology1 bacteriology1 our new storage batteries1 our habit of getting everything we get and changing everything we change by quietly and coolly looking at facts1 the old lumbering fashion of having a beautiful1 showy1 emotional revolution now on one side1 and then waiting to have another beautiful1 showy1 emotional revolution on the other1 each oscillating back and forth year by year until people finally settle down1 look at facts together1 become scientific1 and see things as they are--has gone by4 ,we have not time for revolutions nowadays4 ,they may be amusing1 but they are not practical1 and evolution or revolution-without-knowing-it1 or evolution all together1 suit us better4 ,we are in a world in which we are seeing men almost being made over before our eyes by the scientific habit of thought--by the new1 slow1 imperious way we have come to have of making ourselves look at things at which we would rather not look1 until we see them as they are4 ,the man of scientific spirit1 the quiet-minded1 implacable man who gets what he wants for himself and for others by merely turning on the light1 who makes a new world for us by just showing us more plainly the one we really have1 possesses the earth4 ,there is no reason why revolutionists should feel that they are particularly courageous1 that they are the particularly high-minded1 romantic1 adventurous1 uncompromising and superior people4 ,the real adventure1 the abiding emotion and wonder of living in the twentieth century1 lies in the high1 patient1 slow1 quiet1 silent enterprise of seeing facts as they are1 and without any fuss1 and inexorably and with good cheer1 acting on them4 ,the human race has a new temperament4 ,the way to fight now is to look1 to look first1 to look longest1 and to look for the most people4 ,the way we win a revolution or bring the enemy to terms to-day is by battering the enemy with coperation1 with understanding him and being understood by him1 by being impregnably1 obstinately his brother1 by piling up huge happy citadels of good-will1 of services rendered1 services deserved1 and services returned4 ,we had an idea once that the way to conquer a man was by hitting the outside of him4 ,we conquer men now by getting inside of them1 and by getting inside first and then dealing with outside things together4 ,we see the inside4 ,it is the modern note to see the inside1 to attack the essence1 the spirit1 and to work everything out from that4 ,the modern method of being courageous and of defending what we want is a kind of chemistry4 ,hercules is a bust now4 ,we prefer still little women like ,madame ,curie1 or a man like ,sir ,joseph ,lister1 or like ,wilbur ,wright--the courage that faces material facts1 that deals with the elements of things1 whether in a bottle1 or in the heaven above us1 or in the earth1 or in a man1 or in an enemy4 ,when the subject-matter is human nature and the courage we have to have is the courage that can deal with people1 we ask ourselves3 ,what are the most difficult facts to face in people8 ,they are3 ,the facts about how they are different from us4 ,the facts about their being like us4 ,the facts as to what we can do about it4 ,so it has come to seem to me to be the greatest1 the most typical and difficult courage of modern life and of a crowd civilization1 the courage to look at actual facts in people and to see how the people can be made to go together4 ,a man's courage is his sense of identity4 ,a man's courage toward nature1 heat1 cold1 mountains1 seas1 deserts1 chemistry1 geology1 is his sense of identity with ,god and of his right to share with ,god in the creating of ,his world4 ,his courage toward people is his sense of identity with men who seem different from him1 of all races1 all classes1 and all nations4 ,he sees the differences in their big relations alongside the resemblances4 ,then he fits the differences into the resemblances and knows what to do4 ,there is a statue of ,sir ,george ,livesey1 one of the early presidents of the ,south ,metropolitan ,gas ,company1 placed at the entrance of the works where thousands of workmen day and night pass in and pass out4 ,sir ,george ,livesey was the man who1 in the early days of the ,south ,metropolitan ,gas ,company1 stood out against all his workmen1 for six long weeks1 to get the workmen to believe that they were as good as he was4 ,he believed that they were capable1 or should be capable1 of being identified with him and working with him as partners1 of sharing in the direction of the business1 of sharing in the profits1 and coperating all day1 every day1 with him and the other partners1 to make the business a success4 ,he did not propose to be locked up in a business1 if he could help it1 with men who did not feel identified with him1 who were not his partners1 or who did not want to be4 ,he thought it was not good business to engage five thousand men and pay them deliberately so much a day to fight his business on the inside of the works4 ,being obliged to do his business as a fight against people who helped him all the time1 watching and outwitting them as if he were dealing with five thousand intelligent gorillas instead of with fellow human beings1 did not interest him4 ,he did not believe that the men themselves1 in spite of the way they talked1 when they came to think of it1 really enjoyed being intelligent gorillas1 any more than he did4 ,the ,trades ,unions passed a resolution that it was safer for the men in dealing with ,sir ,george ,livesey to keep on being gorillas4 ,sir ,george ,livesey proposed that they should all try being fellow human beings and being in partnership for a little while and see how it worked4 ,the ,trades ,unions were afraid to let them try4 ,even if it worked very well1 and if it turned out that being men was safer1 in this one particular case1 than being gorillas1 it would set a bad example1 the ,trades ,unions thought4 ,they took the ground that it was safer to have all men treated alike1 whether they were gorillas or not4 ,they instructed the men to strike4 ,the ,south ,metropolitan ,gas ,company was almost closed up1 but it did not yield4 ,sir ,george ,livesey took the ground that if the ,trades ,unions believed that his men were not good enough for him1 and that he was not good enough for his men1 he would wait until they did4 ,the bronze statue of ,sir ,george ,livesey that the men have raised1 and that thousands of men go by every day1 day after day1 and look up to at their work1 was raised to a man who had stood out against his workmen for weeks to prove that they were as good as he was1 and could be trusted to be loyal to him1 and that he was as good as they were1 and that he could be trusted to be loyal to them4 ,he had the courage to insist on being1 whether anybody wanted it for the moment or not1 a new kind and new size of man4 ,he preferred being allowed to be a new kind and new size himself1 and he preferred allowing his men to be new kinds and new sizes of men1 and he made a shrewd1 dogged guess that when they tried it they would like it4 ,they were merely afraid to be new sizes1 as we all are at first4 99 99 99 99 99 ,there are possibly three ways in which1 in the confusion of our modern world1 one can tell a hero when one sees one4 ,one knows a hero first by his originality4 ,he invents a new kind and new size of man4 ,he finishes off one sample4 ,there he is4 ,the next thing one notices about this man 7when he is invented7 is his humility4 ,he never seems to feel--having invented himself--how original he is4 ,the more original people think he is1 and the more they try to set him one side as an exception1 the more he resents it4 ,and then1 of course1 the final way one knows a man is a hero is always by his courage1 by his masterful way of driving through1 when he meets a man1 to his sense of identity with him4 ,one always sees a hero going about quietly everywhere1 treating every other man as if he were a hero too4 ,he gets so in the habit1 from day to day 7living with himself71 of believing in human nature1 that when he finds himself suddenly up against other people he cannot stop4 ,it is not that he is deceived about the other people1 though it might seem so sometimes4 ,he merely sees further into them and further for them4 ,has he not invented himself8 ,is he not at this very moment a better kind of man than he thought he could be once8 ,is he not going to be a better kind to-morrow than he is now8 ,so1 quietly1 he keeps on year by year and day by day1 treating other people as if they were1 or were meant to be1 the same kind of man that he is1 until they are4 ,,chapter ,x ,,who ,,is ,,afraid8 ,when ,christ turned the other cheek1 the last thing ,he would have wanted any one to think was that ,he was backing down1 or that ,he was merely being a sweet1 gentle1 grieved person4 ,he was inventing before everybody1 and before ,his enemies1 promptly and with great presence of mind1 a new kind and new size of man4 ,it was a more spirited1 more original1 more unconquerable and bewildering way of fighting than anybody had thought of before4 ,to be suddenly in an enemy's presence a new kind and new size of man--colossal1 baffling--to turn into invisibility before him1 into intangibility1 into another kind of being before the enemy's eyes1 so that he could not possibly tell what to do1 and so that none of the things that he had thought of to do would work4444 ,this is what ,christ was doing1 it seems to some of us1 and it is apparently the way ,he felt about it when ,he did it4 ,turning the other cheek is a kind of moral jiu-jitsu4 99 99 99 99 99 ,the last thing that many of us who are interested in the modern world really want is to have war1 or fighting1 stop4 ,we glory in courage1 in the power of facing danger1 in adventuresomeness of spirit1 in every single one of the qualities that always have made1 and always will make1 every true man a fighter4 ,we contend that fighting1 as at present conducted1 is based on fear and lazy-mindedness2 that it is lacking in the manlier qualities1 that the biggest and newest kind of men are not willing to be in it1 and that it does not work4 ,we would rather see the world abolished than to see war abolished4 ,we want to see war brought up to date4 ,the best way to fight was invented some two thousand years ago1 and the innocent1 conventional persons who still believe in a kind of routine1 or humdrum1 of shooting1 who have not caught up with this two-thousand-year-old invention1 are about to be irrevocably displaced in our modern life by men who have a livelier1 more far-seeing1 more practical1 more modern kind of courage4 ,from this time on we have made up our minds1 we1 the people of this world1 that the only men we are going to allow to fight for us are the men who can fight the way ,christ did4 ,men who have not the courage to fight the way ,christ did are about to be shut up by society2 no one will harm them1 of course1 innocent1 afraid persons1 who have to protect themselves with gunpowder1 but they will merely be set one side after this1 where they will not be in a position to spoil the fighting of the men who are not afraid4 ,and who are the men who are not afraid8 ,to search your enemy's heart1 to amputate1 as by a kind of spiritual surgery1 the very desire for fighting in him1 to untangle his own life before his eyes and suddenly make him see what it is he really wants1 to have him standing there quietly1 radiantly disarmed1 gentle-hearted1 and like a child before you2 if you are able1 ,gentle ,reader1 or ever have been able1 to do this1 you are not afraid6 ,why should any one ever have supposed that it takes a backing down1 giving up1 teary1 weak1 and grieved person to do this8 ,christ expressed ,his idea of courage very mildly when ,he said1 in effect3 ,blessed are those who dare to be meek1 for they shall inherit the earth4 ,it takes a bolder front to step up to a man one knows is one's enemy and coperate with him than it does to do a little1 simple1 thoughtless1 outside thing like stepping up to him and knocking him down4 ,coperating with a man in spite of him1 moving over to where he is1 winning a victory over him by getting at his most rooted1 most protected1 secret1 instinctive feelings1 literally striking him through to the heart and making a new kind of man out of him before his own eyes1 by being a new kind of man to him1 takes a bigger1 stiller courage1 is a more exposed and dangerous thing to do than to fall on him and fight him4 ,it is also more practical4 ,the one cool1 practical1 hard-headed way to win a victory over an enemy is to do the thing that makes him the most afraid4 ,and there is no man people are more afraid of than the man who stands up to them1 quietly looks at them1 and will not fight with them4 ,he is doing the one thing of all others to them that they would not dare to do4 ,they wonder what such a man thinks4 ,if he dares stand up before them and face them with nothing but thinking1 what is he thinking8 ,what he thinks1 if it makes him able to do a thing like this1 must have some man-stuff in it4 ,they prefer to wait and see what he thinks4 ,courage consists in not being afraid of one's own mind and of other people's minds4 ,when men become so afraid of one another's minds and of their own minds that they cannot think1 they have to back down and fight4 ,they are cowards4 ,they do not know what they think4 ,they do not know what they want4 ,,chapter ,,xi ,,the ,,technique ,,of ,,courage ,i have never known a coward4 ,i have known men who did cowardly things and who were capable of cowardly thoughts1 but ,i have never known a man who could be fairly and finally classified as a coward4 ,courage is a process4 ,if people are cowards it is because they are in a hurry4 ,they have not taken the pains to see what they think4 ,the man who has taken the time to think down through to what he really wants and to what he is bound to get1 is always 7and sometimes very suddenly and unexpectedly7 a courageous man4 ,it is the man who is half wondering whether he really wants what he thinks he wants or not1 or whether he can get it or not1 who is a coward4 ,the coward is a half man4 ,he is slovenly minded about himself4 ,he gets out of the hard work of seeing through himself1 of driving on through what he supposes he wants1 to what he knows he wants4 ,so1 after all1 it is a long1 slow1 patient pull1 being a courageous man4 ,few men have the nerve to take the time to attend to it4 ,the first part of courage consists in all this hard work one has to put in on one's soul day after day1 and over and over again1 doggedly1 going back to it4 ,what is it that ,i really want8 ,the second1 or more brilliant-looking part of courage1 the courageous act itself 7like ,roosevelt's when he is shot71 which everybody notices1 is easy4 ,the real courage is over then4 ,courage consists in seeing so clearly something that one wants to get that one is more afraid of not getting it than one is of anything that can get in the way4 ,the first thing that society is ever able to do with the lowest type of labouring man seems to be to get him to want something4 ,it has to think out ways of getting him waked up1 of getting him to be decently selfish1 and to want something for himself4 ,he only wants a little at first2 he wants something for himself to-day and he has courage for to-day4 ,then perhaps he wants something for himself for to-morrow1 or next week1 or next year1 and he has courage for next week1 or for next year4 ,then he wants something for his family1 or for his wife1 and he has courage for his family1 or for his wife4 ,gradually he sees further and wants something for his class4 ,his courage mounts up by leaps and bounds when he is liberated into his class4 ,then he discovers the implacable mutual interest of his class with the other classes1 and he thinks of things he wants for all the classes4 ,he thinks the classes together into a world1 and becomes a man4 ,he has courage for the world4 ,when men see1 whether they are rich or poor1 what they want1 what they believe they can get1 they are not afraid4 ,the next great work of the best employers is to get labour to want enough4 ,labour is tired and mechanical-minded4 ,the next work of the better class of labourer1 or the stronger kind of ,trades ,union1 is to get capital to want enough4 ,capital is tired1 too4 ,it does not see really big1 worth-while things that can be done with capital1 and has no courage for these things4 ,the larger the range and the larger the variety of social desire the greater the courage4 ,the problem in modern industry is the arousing of the imaginations of capitalists and labourers so that they see something that gives them courage for themselves and for one another1 and courage for the world4 ,the world belongs to the men of vision--the men who are not afraid--the men who see things that they have made up their minds to get4 ,who are the men to-day1 in all walks of life1 who want the most things for the most people1 and who have made up their minds to get them8 ,there is just one man we will follow to-day--those of us who belong to the crowd--the man who is alive all over1 who is deeply and gloriously covetous1 the man who sees things he wants for himself1 and who therefore has courage for himself1 and who sees things he wants and is bound to get for other people1 and who therefore has courage for other people4 ,this is the hardest kind of courage to have--courage for other people4 ,,chapter ,,xii ,,the ,,men ,,who ,,want ,,things ,during the coal strike ,i took up my morning paper and read from a speech by ,vernon ,hartshorn1 the miners' leader3 ,in a week's time1 by tying up the railways and other means of transportation1 we could so paralyze the country that the government would come to us on their knees and beg us to go to work on terms they are now flouting as impossible4 ,during the dockers' strike ,i took up my morning paper and read ,ben ,tillett's speech1 at the meeting the day before1 to fifty thousand strikers on ,tower ,hill4 ',i am going to ask you to join me in a prayer1' ,tillett said4 ',lord ,devonport has contributed to the murder1 by starvation1 of your children1 your women1 and your men4 ,i am not going to ask you to do it1 but ,i am going to call on ,god to strike ,lord ,devonport dead1' ,he asked those who were prepared to repeat the 'prayer' to hold up their hands4 ,countless hands were held up1 and cries3 ',strike him doubly stone dead6' ,the men then repeated the following 'prayer'1 word for word1 after ,tillett3 ',o ,god1 strike ,lord ,devonport dead4' ,afterward the strikers chanted the words3 ',he shall die6 ,he shall die6' ,there are times when it is very hard to have courage for other people4 ,it is when one watches people doing cowardly things that one finds it hardest to have courage for them4 ,i felt the same way both mornings at first when ,i held my paper in my hand and thought about what ,i had read1 about the government's going down on its knees1 and about ,god's striking ,lord ,devonport dead4 ,the first feeling was one of profound resentment1 shame--a huge1 helpless1 muddle-headed anger4 ,i had not the slightest trace of courage for the miners2 ,i did not see how the government could have any courage for them4 ,and ,i had no courage for the dockers1 or for what could be expected of the dockers4 ,i did not see how ,lord ,devonport could have any courage for them4 ,i repeated their prayer to myself4 ,the dockers were cowards4 ,i was not going to try to sympathize with them1 or try to be reasonable about them4 ,it was nothing that they were desperate and had prayed4 ,was ,i not desperate too8 ,would not the very thought that fifty thousand men could pray a prayer like that make any man desperate8 ,it was as if ,i had stood and heard fifty thousand beasts roaring to their god4 ,they are desperate1 ,i said to myself3 ,i will not take what they think seriously4 ,it does not matter what desperate people think4 ,then ,i waited a minute4 ,but ,i am desperate1 too1 ,i said2 ,i must not take what ,i think seriously4 ,it does not matter what desperate people think4 ,i thought about this a little1 and drove it in4 ,what ,i think will matter more a little later1 perhaps1 when ,i get over being desperate4 ,perhaps what the dockers think will matter more a little later1 too4 ,in the meantime are not their scared and hateful opinions as good as my scared and hateful opinions8 ,the important and final opinions1 the ones to be taken seriously1 that can be acted on1 will be the opinions of those who get over being scared and hateful first4 ,then ,i stood up for myself4 ,i had a reason for being scared and hateful4 ,they and their prayer drove me to be scared and hateful4 ,i thought again4 ,perhaps they had a reason1 too4 ,then it all came over me4 ,i became a human being all in a minute when ,i thought of it4 ,i became suddenly full of courage for the hateful dockers4 ,i thought how much more discouraging it would be if they had not been hateful at all4 99 99 99 99 99 ,i do not imagine ,god was sorry when ,he heard those fifty thousand dockers asking ,him to strike ,lord ,devonport dead4 ,not that ,he would have approved of it4 ,it was not the last word of wisdom or reasonableness4 ,it was lacking in beauty and distinction as a petition1 as being just the right form of prayer for those fifty thousand faultless dockers up on ,tower ,hill that afternoon 7the whole of ,london listening1 in that shocked and proper way that ,london has74 ,but ,i have not lost all courage for the dockers who made it4 ,they still want something6 ,they still are men6 ,they still stand up when they speak to ,heaven6 ,there is some stuff in them yet6 ,they make heaven and earth ring to get a word with ,god6 ,this all means something to ,god1 probably4 ,perhaps it might mean something to us4 ,we are superior persons1 it is true4 ,we do not pray the way they pray4 ,we believe in being more self-controlled4 ,we take our breakfasts quietly1 and with high collars and silk hats1 and with gilt prayer-books we go into the presence of our ,maker4 ,we believe in being calm and reasonable4 ,but if men who have not enough to eat are so half-dead and so worthless that they can feel calm and reasonable about it1 and can always be precisely right and always say precisely the right thing--if1 with their wives fainting in their arms and their babies crying for food1 all that those dockers had character enough to do1 up on ,tower ,hill1 was to make a polite1 smooth1 ,anglican prayer to ,god--a prayer like a kind of blessing before not having any meat1 and not that awful1 fateful1 husky cry to ,heaven1 a roar or rending of their hearts up to the black and empty sky--what would such men have been good for8 ,what hope or courage could any one have for them1 for such men at such a time1 if they would not1 if they could not1 come thundering and breaking into ,his presence1 fifty thousand strong1 to get what they want8 ,i may not know ,god1 but whatever else ,he is1 ,i feel sure that ,he is not a precise stickler-god1 that ,he is not pompous about spiritual manners1 a huge1 literal-minded1 ,proper ,person1 who cannot make allowances for human nature1 who cannot hear what humble1 rough men like these1 hewing their vast desires for ,him out of darkness1 and out of little foolish words1 are trying to say to ,him4 ,and perhaps we1 too1 do not need to be literal-minded about a prayer that we may hear1 or that we may overhear1 roaring its way up past our smooth1 beautiful lives rudely to ,heaven4 ,what is the gist of the prayer to ,god1 and to us8 ,what is it that the men are trying to say in this awful1 flaming1 blackening metaphor of wishing ,lord ,devonport dead8 ,the gist of it is that they mean to say1 whether they are right or wrong 7like us1 as we would say1 whether we were right or wrong71 they mean to say that they have a right to live4 ,in other words1 the gist of it is that we are like them1 and that they are like us4 ,i1 too1 in my hour of deepest trial1 with no silk hat1 with no gloves1 with no gilt prayer-book1 as ,i should1 have flashed out my will upon my ,god4 ,i1 too1 have cried with ,paul1 with ,job1 across my sin--my sin that very moment heaped up upon my lips--have broken wildly in upon that still1 white floor of ,heaven6 ,and when the dockers break up through1 fling themselves upon their ,god1 what is it1 after all1 but another way of saying1 ,i am persuaded that neither death1 nor life1 nor angels1 nor principalities1 nor powers1 nor things present1 nor things to come1 nor height1 nor depth1 nor any other creature1 shall be able to separate us from the love of ,god4444 ,it may have been wicked in the dockers to address ,god in this way1 but it would have been more wicked in them not to think ,he could understand4 ,i believe1 for one1 that when ,jacob wrestled with the angel1 ,god looked on and liked it4 ,the angel was a mere representative at best1 and ,jacob was really wrestling with ,god4 ,and ,god knew it and liked it4 ,praying to strike ,lord ,devonport dead was the dockers' way of saying to ,god that there was something on their minds that simply could not be said4 ,i can imagine that this would interest a ,god1 a prayer like the dockers' prayer1 so spent1 so desperate1 so unreasonable1 breaking through to that still1 white floor of ,heaven6 ,and it does seem as if1 in our more humble1 homely1 and useful capacity as fellow human beings1 it might interest us4 ,it seems as if1 possibly1 we might stop criticising people who pray harder than we do1 pointing out that wrestling with ,god is really rather rude--as if we might stop and see what it means to ,god and what it means to us1 and what there is that we might do1 you and ,i1 oh1 ,gentle ,reader1 to make it possible for the dockers on ,tower ,hill to be more polite1 perhaps1 more polished1 as it were1 when they speak to ,god next time4 ,perhaps nothing the dockers could do in the way of being violent could be more stupid and wicked than having all these sleek1 beautiful1 perfect people1 twenty-six million of them1 all expecting them not to be violent4 ,in my own quiet1 gentle1 implacable beauty of spirit1 in my own ruthless wisdom on a full stomach1 ,i do not deny that ,i do most sternly disapprove of the dockers and their violence4 ,but it is better than nothing1 thank ,god6 ,they want something4 ,it gives me something to hope for1 and to have courage for1 about them--that they want something4 ,possibly if we could get them started wanting something1 even some little narrow and rather mean thing1 like having enough to eat--possibly they will go on to art galleries1 to peace societies1 and cathedrals next1 and to making very beautiful prayers 7alas1 ,gentle ,reader1 how can ,i say it87 like you--,heaven help us6--and like me6 ,i would have but one objection to letting the dockers have their full way1 and to letting the control of the situation be put into their hands4 ,they do not hunger enough4 ,they are merely hungering for themselves4 ,this may be a reason for not letting the world get entirely into their hands1 but in the meantime we have every reason to be appreciative of the good the dockers are doing 7so far as it goes7 in hungering for themselves4 ,it would be strange indeed if one could not tolerate in dockers a little thing like this4 ,babies do it4 ,it is the first decency in all of us4 ,it is the first condition of our knowing enough1 or amounting to enough1 to ever hunger for any one else4 ,everybody has to make a beginning somewhere4 ,even a ,saint ,francis1 the man who hungers and thirsts for righteousness1 who rises to the heights of social-mindedness1 who hungers and thirsts for everybody1 begins all alone1 at the breast4 ,which is there of us who1 if we had not begun our own hungering and thirsting for righteousness1 our tugging on ,god1 in this old1 lonely1 preoccupied1 selfish-looking way1 would ever have grown up1 would ever have wanted enough things to belong to a ,church of ,england1 for instance1 or to a ,congregational ,home ,missionary ,society8 ,it is true that the dockers are1 for the moment 7alas1 fifty or sixty years or so671 merely wanting things for themselves1 or wanting things for their own class4 ,and so would we if we had been born1 brought up1 and embedded in a society which allowed us so little for ourselves that not growing up morally--keeping on over and over again1 year after year1 just wanting things for ourselves1 and not really being weaned yet--was all that was left to us4 ,there is really considerable spiritual truth in having enough to eat4 ,sometimes ,i have thought it would be not unhelpful1 would make a little ring of gentle-heartedness around us1 some of us--those of us who live protected lives and pray such rich1 versatile prayers1 if we would stop and think what a docker would have to do1 what arrangements a docker would have to make before he could enjoy praying with us--falling back into our beautiful1 soft1 luxurious wanting things for others4 ,possibly these arrangements1 such as they are1 are the ones the dockers are trying to make with ,lord ,devonport now4 ,the docker is trying to get through hungering for something to eat1 to arrange gradually to have his hungers move on4 ,,chapter ,,xiii ,,men ,,who ,,get ,,things ,all the virtues are hungers4 ,a vice is the failure of desire4 ,a vice is a man's failure to have enough big hungers at hand1 sternly within reach1 to control his little ones4 ,a man who is doing wrong is essentially bored4 ,he has let himself drop into doing rows of half-things1 or things which he can only half do4 ,he forgets1 for the moment1 what it really is that he wants1 or possibly that he wants anything4 ,then it is that the one little1 mean ,lonely ,hunger--a glass of liquor1 a second piece of pie1 another man's wife1 or a million dollars1 runs away with him4 ,when a man sins it is because his appetites fail him4 ,self-control lies in maintaining checks and balances of desire1 centripetals1 and centrifugals of desire4 ,the worst thing that could happen to the world would be to have it placed in the hands of men who only have a gift of hungering for certain sorts of things1 or hungering for certain classes of people1 or hungering for themselves4 ,we do not want the man who is merely hungering for himself to rule the world--not because we feel superior to him1 but because a man who is merely hungering for himself cannot be taken seriously as an authority on worlds4 ,people can take him seriously as an authority on his own hunger4 ,but what he thinks about everything beyond that point cannot be taken seriously4 ,what he thinks about how the world should be run1 about what other people want1 what labour and capital want1 cannot be taken seriously4 ,i will not yield place to any one in my sympathy with the dockers4 ,i like to think that ,i too1 given the same grandfathers1 the same sleeping rooms and neighbours1 the same milk1 the same tincture of religion1 would dare to do what they have done4 ,but ,i cannot be content1 as ,i take my stand by the dockers1 with sympathizing in general4 ,i want to sympathize to the point4 ,and on the practical side of what to do next in behalf of the dockers1 or of what to let them do1 ,i find myself facing two facts3 ,first1 the dockers are desperate4 ,i take their desperation as conclusive and imperative4 ,it must be obeyed4 ,second1 ,i do not care what they think4 ,what they think must not be obeyed4 ,men who are in the act of being scared or hateful1 whether it be for five minutes1 jive months1 or sixty years1 who have given up their courage for others1 or for their enemies1 are not practical4 ,what a man who despairs of everybody except himself thinks1 does not work and cannot be made to work4 ,the fact that the dockers have no courage about their employers may be largely the employers' fault4 ,it is largely the fault of society1 of the churches1 the schools1 the daily press4 ,but the fact remains1 and whichever side in the contest has1 or is able to have1 first1 the most courage for the other side1 whichever side wants the most for the other side1 will be the side that will get the most control4 ,if ,labour1 in the form of syndicalism1 wants to grasp the raw materials1 machinery1 and management of modern industry out of the hands of the capitalists and run the world1 the one shrewd1 invincible way for ,labour to do it is going to be to want more things for more people than capitalists can want4 ,the only people1 to-day1 who are going to be competent to run a world1 or who can get hold of even one end of it to try to run it1 are going to be the people who want a world1 who have a habit1 who may be said to be almost in a rut1 of wanting things all day1 every day1 for a world--men who cannot keep narrowed down very long at a time to wanting things for themselves4 ,there will be little need of our all falling into a panic1 or all being obliged to rely on policemen1 or to call out troops to stave off an uprising of the labour classes as long as the labour classes are merely wanting things for themselves4 ,it is the men who have the bigger hungers who are getting the bigger sorts of things--things like worlds into their hands4 ,the me-man and the class-man1 under our modern conditions1 are being more and more kept back and held under in the smaller places1 the me-places and class-places1 by the men who want more things than they can want1 who lap over into wanting things for others4 ,the me-man often may see what he wants clearly and may say what he wants4 ,but he does not get it4 ,it is the class-man who gets it for him4 ,the class-man may see what he wants for his class clearly and may say what he wants4 ,but he does not get it4 ,it is the crowd-man who gets it for him4 ,it is a little startling1 the grim1 brilliant1 beautiful way that ,god has worked it out6 ,it is one of ,his usual paradoxes4 ,the thing in a man that makes it possible for him to get things more than other people can get them is his margin of unselfishness4 ,he gets things by seeing with the thing that he wants all that lies around it4 ,with equal clearness he is seeing all the time the people and the things that are in the way of what he wants2 how the people look or try to look1 how they feel or try to make him think they feel1 what they believe and do not believe or can be made to believe2 he sees what he wants in a vast setting of what he cannot get with people1 and of what he can--in a huge moving picture of the interests of others4 ,the man who1 in fulfilling and making the most of himself1 can get outside of himself into his class1 who1 in being a good class-man1 can overflow into being a man of the world1 is the man who gets what he wants4 ,i am hopeful about ,labour and ,capital to-day because in the industrial world1 as at present constituted in our coperative age1 the men who can get what they want1 who get results out of other people1 are the men who have the largest1 most sensitive outfits for wanting things for other people4 ,if there is one thing rather than another that fills one with courage for the outlook of labouring men to-day it is the colossal failure ,ben ,tillett makes in leading them in prayer4 ,even the dockers1 perhaps the most casually employed1 the most spent and desperate class of ,labour of all1 only prayed ,ben ,tillet's prayer a minute and they were sorry the day after4 ,and it was ,ben ,tillett's prayer in the end that lost them their cause--a prayer that filled all ,england on the next day with the rage of ,labour--that a man like ,ben ,tillett1 with such a mean1 scared1 narrow little prayer1 should dare to represent ,labour4 ,in the same way1 after the shooting in the ,lawrence strike1 when all those men 7,syndicalists7 had streamed through the streets1 showing off before everybody their fine1 brave-looking thoughtless1 superficial1 guillotine feelings and their furious little banner1 ,no ,god and no ,master--it did one good1 only a day or so later1 to see a vast crowd of ,lawrence workers1 thirty thousand strong1 tramping through the streets1 singing1 with bands of music1 and with banners1 ,in ,god we trust and ,one is our ,master1 even ,christ--thousands of men who had never been inside a church1 thousands of men who could never have looked up a verse in the ,bible1 still found themselves marching in a procession1 snatching up these old and pious mottoes and joining in hymns they did not know1 all to contradict1 and to contradict thirty thousand strong1 the idea that the blood and froth1 the fear and unbelief1 of the ,industrial ,workers of the ,world represented or could ever be supposed to represent for one moment the manhood and the courage1 the faithfulness and 7even in the hour of their extremity7 the quiet-heartedness1 the human loyalty and self-forgetfulness1 the moral dignity of the ,american workingman4 ,it cannot truly be said that the typical modern labouring man1 whether in ,america or ,england1 is a coward2 that he has no desire1 no courage1 for any one except for himself and for his own class4 ,mr4 ,o',connor of the ,dockers' ,organization in the ,east of ,scotland1 said at the time of the strike of the dockers in ,london3 ,this kind of business of the bureaucratic labour men in ,london1 issuing orders for men to stop work all over the country1 is against the spirit of the trades unions of ,england4 ,it is a thing we cannot possibly stand4 ,we have an agreement with the employers1 and we have no intention of breaking it4 ,it cannot be said that the typical modern labourer is listening seriously to the ,syndicalist or to the ,industrial ,worker of the ,world when he tells him that ,labour alone can save itself1 and that ,labour alone can save the world4 ,he knows that any scheme of social and industrial reform which leaves any class out1 rich or poor1 which does not see that everybody is to blame1 which does not see that everybody is responsible1 which does not arrange or begin to arrange opportunity and expectation for every man and every degree and kind of man1 and does not do it just where that man is1 and do it now1 is superficial4 ,if we are going to have a society that is for all of us1 it will take all of us1 and all of us together1 to make it4 ,mutual expectation alone can make a great society4 ,mutual expectation1 or courage for others1 persistently and patiently and flexibly applied--applied to details by small men1 applied to wholes by bigger ones--is going to be the next big serious1 unsentimental1 practical industrial achievement4 ,and ,i do not believe that for sheer sentiment's sake we are going to begin by rooting up millionaires and1 with one glorious thoughtless sweep1 saying1 ,we will have a new world1 without asking at least some of the owners of it to help1 or at least letting them in on good behaviour4 ,nor are we going to begin by rooting up trade unions and labour leaders4 ,the great organizations of ,capital in the world to-day are daily engaged1 through competition and experiment and observation1 in educating one another and finding out what they really want and what they can really do2 and it is equally true that the great organizations of labour1 in the same way1 are educating one another4 ,the real fight of modern industry to-day is an educational fight4 ,and the fight is being conducted1 not between ,labour and ,capital1 but between the labouring men who have courage for ,capital and labouring men who have not1 and between capitalists who have courage for ,labour and those who have not4 ,to put it briefly1 the real industrial fight to-day is between those who have courage and those who have not4 ,it is not hard to tell1 in a fight between men who have courage and men who have not1 which will win4 ,probably1 whatever else is the matter with them1 the world will be the most safe in the hands of the men who have the most courage4 ,there are four items of courage ,i would like to see duly discussed in the meetings of the trades unions in ,america and ,england4 ,first1 ,a discussion of trades unions4 ,why is it that1 when the leaders of trades unions come to know employers better than the other men do and begin to see the other side and to have some courage about employers and to become practicable and reasonable1 the unions drop them8 ,second1 ,why is it that1 in a large degree1 the big employers1 when they succeed in getting skilled representatives or managers who come to know and to understand their labouring men better than they do1 do not drop them8 ,why is it that1 day by day1 on all sides in ,america and ,england1 one sees the employing class advancing men who have a genius for being believed in1 to at first questioned1 and then to almost unquestioned1 control of their business8 ,if this is true1 does it not seem on the whole that industry is safer in the hands of employers who have courage for both sides and who see both sides than of employees who do not8 ,does not the remedy for trades unions and employees1 if they want to get control1 seem to be1 instead of fighting1 to see if they cannot see both sides quicker1 and see them better1 than their employers do8 ,third1 ,a discussion of efficiency in a ,national ,labour ,party from the point of view of the trend of national efficiency in business4 ,apparently the most efficient and shrewd business men in ,england and ,america are the men who are running what might be called lubricated industries--who are making their industries succeed on the principle of sympathetic1 smooth-running1 mutual interests4 ,if the successful modern business man who owns factories is not running each factory as a small civil war1 is it not true that the only practical and successful ,labour ,party in ,england1 the only party that can get things done for labour and that can hold power1 is bound to be the party that succeeds in having the most courage for both sides1 in seeing the most mutual interests1 and in seeing how these interests can be put together1 and in seeing it first and acting on it before any other merely one-sided party would be able to think it out8 ,fourth1 ,a discussion of the selection of the best labour leaders to place at the head of the unions4 ,nearly every man who succeeds in business notably1 succeeds in believing something about the people with whom he deals that the men around him have not believed before1 or in believing something which1 if they did believe it1 they had not applied or acted as if they had believed before4 ,if1 in order to succeed1 a business man does not believe something that needs to be believed before other people believe it1 he hires somebody who does believe it to believe it for him4 ,perhaps ,labour would find it profitable to act on this principle too1 and to see to it that the leaders chosen to act for them are not the noisiest minded1 but the most creative men1 the men who can express original1 shrewd faiths in the men with whom they have to deal--faiths that the men around them will be grateful 7after a second thought7 to have expressed next4 99 99 99 99 99 ,in the meantime1 whether among the labourers or the capitalists1 however long it may take1 it is not hard to see1 on every hand to-day1 the world about us slowly1 implacably getting into the hands of the men1 poor or rich1 who have the most keen1 patient courage about other people1 the men who are good 7,god save the word671 the men who have practical1 working human sympathies and a sense of possibilities in those above them and beneath them with whom they work--the men who most clearly1 eagerly1 and doggedly want things for others1 who have the most courage for others4 ,i have thought that if we could find out what this courage is1 how it works1 how it can be had1 and where it comes from1 it might be more worth our while to know than any other one thing in the world4 ,i would like to try to consider a few of the sources of this courage for others4 ,,chapter ,,xiv ,,sources ,,of ,,courage ,,for ,,others--,,toleration ,after making an address on inspired millionaires one night before the ,sociological ,society in their quarters in ,john ,street1 ,i found myself the next day--a six-penny day--standing thoughtfully in the quarters of the ,zological ,society in ,regent's ,park4 ,the ,zological ,society makes one feel more humble1 ,i think1 than the ,sociological ,society does4 ,all sociologists1 members of ,parliament1 eugenists1 professors1 and others1 ought to be compelled by law to spend one day every two weeks with the ,zological ,society in ,regent's ,park4 ,all reformers who essay to make over human nature1 all idealists1 should be required by law to visit menageries--to go to see them faithfully or to be put in them a while until they have observed life and thought things out4 ,a ,,green ,,bench1 ,,the ,,zoo1 ,,regent',s ,,park1 #aiaa4 ,for orienting a man and making him reasonable1 there is nothing1 ,i find1 like coming out and putting in a day here1 making one's self gaze firmly and doggedly at the other animals4 ,we have every reason to believe that ,noah was a good psychologist1 or judge of human nature1 before he went into the ark1 but if he was not1 he certainly would have come out one4 ,there is nothing like a menagerie to limber one up4 ,especially an idealist4 ,take a pelican1 for instance4 ,what possible personal ideal was it that could make a pelican want to be a pelican or that could ever have made a pelican take being a pelican seriously for one minute8 ,and the camel with his lopsided hump4 ,why1 oh1 why1 cries the idealist1 wringing his hands4 ,oh1 why----8 ,i have come out here this afternoon1 in the middle of my book1 in the middle of a chapter against the syndicalists1 but it ill beseems me1 after spending half a day looking calmly at peacocks1 at giraffes1 at hippopotamuses1 at all these tails1 necks1 legs and mouths1 at this stretch or bird's eye view--this vast landscape of ,god's toleration--to criticise any man1 woman or child of this world for blossoming out1 for living up1 or fleshing up1 or paring down1 to what he is really like inside4 ,possibly what each man stands for is well enough for him to stand for4 ,it is only when what a man says1 comes to being repeated1 to being made universal1 to being jammed down on the rest of us1 that the lie in it begins to work out4 ,let us let everybody alone and be ready to find things out just for ourselves4 ,here is this big1 frivolous1 gentle elephant1 for instance1 poking his huge1 inquiring trunk into baby carriages4 ,he is certainly too glorious1 too profound1 a personage to do such things6 ,it does seem a little unworthy to me1 as ,i have been sitting here and watching him from this park bench1 for a noble1 solemn being like the elephant--a kind of cathedral of a beast1 to be as deeply interested as he is in peanuts4 ,he looms up before me once more4 ,i look up a little closer--look into his little1 shrewd eyes--and1 after all1 what do ,i know about him8 ,and ,i watch the camels with the happy1 dazed children on their backs1 go by with soft and drifting feet4 ,do ,i suppose ,i understand camels8 ,or ,i follow the crowd4 ,i find myself at last with that huge1 hushed1 sympathetic congregation at the #d ,p4,m4 service1 watching the lions eat4 ,everything does seem very much mixed up when one brings one's ,sociological ,society dogmas1 and one's little neat1 impeccable row of principles to the test of watching the lions eat6 ,possibly people are as different from one another inside--in their souls at least--as different as these animals are4 ,it is true1 of course1 that as we go about1 people do have a plausible way in this world--all these other people1 of looking like us4 ,but they are different inside4 ,if one could stand on a platform as one was about to speak and could really see the souls of any audience--say of a thousand people--lying out there before one1 they would be a menagerie beside which1 ,o ,gentle ,reader1 ,i dare to believe1 ,barnum and ,bailey's menagerie would pale in comparison4 ,but in a menagerie 7perhaps you have noticed it1 ,gentle ,reader7 one treats the animals seriously1 and as if they were ,individuals4 ,they are what they are4 ,why not treat people's souls seriously8 ,it is true that people's souls1 like the animals1 are alike in a general way4 ,they all have in common 7in spiritual things7 organs of observation1 appropriation1 digestion and organs of self-reproduction4 ,but these spiritual organs of digestion which they have are theirs4 ,and these organs of self-reproduction are for the purpose of reproducing themselves and not us4 ,these are my reflections1 or these try to be my reflections when ,i consider the ,syndicalist--how he grows or when ,i look up and see a class-war socialist--an ,upton ,sinclair banging loosely about the world4 ,my first wild1 aboriginal impulse with ,upton ,sinclair when ,i come up to him as ,i do sometimes--violent1 vociferous roaring behind his bars1 is to whisk him right over from being an ,upton ,sinclair into being me4 ,i do not deny it4 ,then ,i remember softly1 suddenly1 how ,i felt when ,i was watching the lions eat4 ,i remember the pelican4 ,thus ,i save my soul in time4 ,incidentally1 of course1 ,upton ,sinclair's insides are saved also4 ,it is beautiful the way the wild beasts in their cages persuade one almost to be a ,christian6 ,of course when one gets smoothed down one always sees people very differently4 ,in being tolerant the rub comes usually 7with me7 in being tolerant in time4 ,i am tempted at first1 when ,i am with ,upton ,sinclair1 to act as if he were a whole world of ,upton ,sinclairs and of course 7anybody would admit it7 if he really were a whole world of ,upton ,sinclairs he would have to be wiped out4 ,there would be nothing else to do4 ,but he is not and it is not fair to him or fair to the world to act as if he were4 ,the moment ,i see he is confining himself to just being ,upton ,sinclair ,i rather like him4 ,it is the same with ,ella ,wheeler ,wilcox4 ,it is when ,i fall to thinking of her as if she were1 or were in danger of being1 a whole world of ,ella ,wheeler ,wilcoxes that ,i grow intolerant of her4 ,ella ,wheeler ,wilcox as a ,tincture1 which is what she really is1 of course1 is well enough4 ,i do not mind4 ,the real truth about a man like ,upton ,sinclair1 when one has worked down through to it1 is that while from my point of view a class-war socialist--a man who proposes to put society together by keeping men apart--is wrong and is sure to do a great deal of harm to some people1 there are other people to whom he does a great deal of good4 ,there really are people who need ,upton ,sinclair4 ,it may be a hard fact to face perhaps1 but when one faces it one is glad there is one4 ,some of the millionaires need ,sinclair4 ,there are others whose attention would be attracted better in more subtle ways4 ,the class-war socialist1 though ,i may be at this moment in the very act of trying to make him impossible1 to put him out of date1 has been and is1 in his own place and his own time1 ,i gratefully acknowledge1 of incalculable value4 ,any man who can1 by saying violent and noisy things1 make rich1 tired1 mechanical-minded people1 and poor1 tired mechanical-minded people wake up enough to feel hateful has performed a public service4 ,the hatefulness is the beginning of their being covetous for other things than the things they have4 ,if a man has a habit of hunger he gets better and better hungers as a matter of course2 bread and milk1 ribbons1 geraniums1 millinery1 bathtubs1 ,bibles1 copartnership associations4 ,and in the meantime the one precious thing to be looked out for in a man1 and to be held sacred1 is his hunger4 ,the one important religious value in the world is hunger and to all the men to-day who are contributing to the process of moving on hungers2 whether the hungers happen to be our hungers or not or our stages of hunger or not1 we say ,godspeed4 ,there are times when the sudden sense one comes to have that the world is a struggle1 a great prayer toward the sun1 a tumult and groping of desire1 the sense that every kind and type of desire has its time and its place in it and every kind and type of man1 gives a whole new meaning to life4 ,this sense of a now possible toleration which we come to have1 some of us1 opens up to us always when it comes a new world of courage about people4 ,it makes all these dear1 clumsy people about us suddenly mean something4 ,it makes them all suddenly belong somewhere4 ,they become1 as by a kind of miracle1 bathed in a new light1 wrong-headed1 intolerable though they be1 one still sees them flowing out into the great endless stream of becoming--all these dots of the vast desire1 all these queer1 funny1 struggling little sons of ,god6 ,it has been overlooked that social reform primarily is not a matter of legislation or of industrial or political systems1 or of machinery1 but a matter1 of psychology1 of insight into human nature and of expert reading and interpretation of the minds of men4 ,what are they thinking about8 ,what do they think they want8 ,the trades unions and employers' associations1 extreme socialists and extreme ,tories have so far been very bad psychologists4 ,if the ,single ,tax people were as good at being intuitionalists or idea-salesmen as they are at being philosophers in ideas they would long before this have turned everything their way4 ,they would have begun with people's hungers and worked out from them4 ,they would have listened to people to find out what their hungers were4 ,the people who will stop being theoretical and logical about each other and who will look hard into each other's eyes will be the people whose ideas will first come to pass4 ,everything we try to do or say or bring to pass in ,england or ,america is going to begin after this1 not in talking1 but in listening4 ,if social reformers and industrial leaders had been good listeners1 the social deadlock--,england with its ,house of ,lords and railroads both on strike and ,america with its great industries quarrelling--would have been arranged for and got out of the way over twenty years ago4 ,we have overlooked the first step of industrial reform1 the rather extreme step of listening4 ,the most hard-headed and conclusive man to settle any given industrial difficulty is the man who has the gift of divining what is going on in other people's minds1 a gift for being human1 a gift for treating everybody who disagrees with him as if they might possibly be human too1 though they are very poor1 even though they are very rich4 ,practical psychology has come to be not only the only solution but also the only method of our modern industrial questions4 ,being so human that one can guess what any possible human being would think is the one hard-headed and practical way to meet the modern labour problem4 ,the first symptom of being human in a man is his range and power of shrewd1 happy toleration1 or courage for people who know as little now as he knew once4 ,a man's sense of toleration is based primarily upon the range and power of his knowledge of himself1 upon his power of remembering and anticipating himself1 upon his laughing with ,god at himself1 upon his habit in darkness1 weariness or despair1 or in silent victory and joy1 of falling on his knees4 ,toleration is reverence4 ,it is the first source of courage for other people4 ,,chapter ,,xv ,,conversion ,some people think of the world as if it were made all through1 people and all1 of reinforced concrete1 as if everything in it--men1 women1 children1 churches1 colleges1 and parties1 were solidly1 inextricably imbedded in it4 ,every age in history has had to get on as well as it could with two sets of totally impracticable people1 our two great orders of ,philistines in this world1 the people who put their trust in ,portland ,cement and the people who put their trust in ,explosives4 ,there has not been a single great movement in history yet that every thoughtful man has not had to watch being held up by these people--by millions of worthy1 simple1 rudimentary creatures who consent to be mere conservatives or mere radicals4 ,one set says1 ,people cannot be converted so we will blow them up4 ,the other set says1 ,we are going to be blown up1 so let us put on ,plaster of ,paris as a garment1 we will array ourselves before the ,lord in ,portland ,cement4 ,both of these classes of people believe alike on one main point4 ,they do not believe in ,conversion4 ,if the conservatives believed in conversion they would not be so afraid that they feel obliged to resort to ,portland ,cement4 ,if the radicals believed in conversion they would not be so afraid that they feel obliged to resort to ,explosives4 ,in our machine civilization to these two great standard classes of scared people1 there has been added what seems to be a third class--the people who have responded to a kind of motor spirit in the time1 who have modulated a little their unbelief in human nature4 ,they have substituted for their reinforced concrete ,unbelief1 a kind of ,whirling ,unbelief1 called machinery4 ,they admit that in our modern life men are not made of reinforced concrete4 ,we may move1 but we move as wheels move1 they tell us4 ,we arc whirlingly imbedded4 ,we are cogs and wheels in an ,economic ,machine4 ,i would like to consider for a moment this ,whirling ,unbelief4 ,there was a time once when ,i took the ,economic ,machine very seriously4 ,i looked up when ,i went by1 at the ,economic ,machine as the last and the most terrific of the inventions among the machines4 ,the machine that mocked all the other machines1 that made all our machines look pathetic and ridiculous1 was the ,economic ,machine4 ,there were days when ,i heard it or seemed to hear it--this ,economic ,machine closing in around my life1 around all our lives like the last hoarse mocking laugh of civilization4 ,i said ,i will love every machine that runs except the ,economic ,machine--the machine for making people into machines4 ,but one day when ,i had waited or dared to wait1 ,i know not why1 a little longer than usual before the ,whirling ,unbelief1 ,i heard the hoarse mocking laugh die away4 ,i became very quiet4 ,i began to think1 ,i reflected on my experiences4 ,i began to notice things4 ,i noted that every time ,i had found myself being discouraged about people1 ,i had caught myself thinking of people as ,cogs and ,wheels4 ,were they really ,cogs and ,wheels8 ,possibly it was merely the easiest1 most mechanical-minded thing to do to think of people 7with all this machinery around one7 as cogs and wheels in an economic machine4 ,then it began to occur to me that it was because ,i had looked upon the economic machine a little lazily1 a little innocently that ,i had been awed and terrific--and had been swept away with it into the ,whirling ,unbelief4 ,then ,i stood quietly and calmly for days1 for weeks1 for years before it4 ,i watched it ,go ,round4 ,i then discovered under close observation that what had looked to me like an economic machine was not an economic machine at all4 ,the modern economic world has innumerable mechanical elements in it1 but it is not an economic machine4 ,it is a biological engine4 ,it is the biology in it that conceives1 desires1 and determines the machinery in it4 ,the most important parts of the machine are not the very mechanical parts4 ,they are the very biological parts4 ,the economic machine is full of made-people1 but it does not make very much difference about the made-people4 ,i find that as a plain1 practical matter of fact ,i do not need to watch the made-people so very much to understand the world1 or to get ready for what is happening to it4 ,in prospecting for a world1 ,i watch the born people4 ,i watch especially the people who have been born twice4 ,as one watches the way the world is going round one finds that what is really making it go round1 is not its being an economic machine1 but its being a biological engine4 ,industrial reform is a branch of biology4 ,the main fact of biology as regards a man is that he can be born4 ,the main fact of biology as regards society--that is1 the main fact of social biology--is that a man can be born twice4 ,as long as a man is born to go with a father and a mother it is well enough to have been born once1 but the moment a man deals with other people or with the world1 he has to be born again4 ,this is the main fact about the biological engine we call the world4 ,the main fact about the ,engine is the biology in it4 ,every other fact for a man has to be worked out from this--that is3 out of being born once if one wants to belong merely to a father and mother1 and out of being born twice if one wants to belong to a world4 ,a man does not need to enter again into his mother's womb and come out a child4 ,he enters into the ,world's ,womb and comes out a man4 99 99 99 99 99 ,the world is being placed to-day before our eyes in the hands of the men who are born twice4 ,not all men are cogs and wheels4 ,the first day ,i discovered this and believed this ,i went out into the streets and looked into the faces of the men and the women and ,i looked up at the factories and the churches and ,i was not afraid4 ,i do not deny that cogs and wheels are very common4 ,but ,i do not believe that an economic system or industrial scheme based on the general principle of arranging a world for cogs and wheels would work4 ,i believe in arranging the world on the principle that there are now and are going to be always enough men in it who are born1 and enough who are born twice to keep cogs and wheels doing the things men who have been born twice1 who have visions for worlds1 want done1 and to keep people who prefer being cogs and wheels where they will work best and where they will help the running gear of the planet most--by going round and round1 in the way they like--going round and round and round and round4 ,but why is it1 one cannot help wondering1 that the moment a man rises up suddenly in this modern world and bases or seeks to base an industrial or social reform frankly on courage for other people1 on believing in the inherent and eternal power of men of changing their minds1 of being put up in new kinds and new sizes of men1 in other words1 on conversion--why is it that clergymen1 atheists1 ethical societies1 politicians1 socialists will all unite1 will all flock together and descend upon him1 shout and laugh him away1 bully him with dead millionaires1 bad corporations and humdrum business men1 overawe him with mere history1 argue him with statistics1 and thunder him with sermons out of the world--if he puts up a faint little chirrup of hope that men can be converted8 ,it is not that the synods1 ethical societies1 anarchists1 the bishops and ,bernard ,shaw1 have merely given up expecting individual men to be converted4 ,there would be a measure of plausibility in giving up on a few particular men's being born again4 ,it is worse than that4 ,what seems to have happened to nearly all the people who have schemes of industrial reform is that they have really given up at one fell swoop a whole new generation's being born again4 ,it is going to be just like this one1 they tell us1 the new generation--the same old things the same old foolish ways of deceiving the world1 that any child can see have not worked--,bernard ,shaw and the bishops whisper to us1 are coming around and around again4 ,they must be planned for4 ,all these young men of wealth about us who read the papers and who are ashamed of their fathers are going to be just like their fathers4 ,the atheists1 the socialists1 and the single taxers1 missionaries and evangelists have given up their last loophole of hope in the new business generation and they trust only to machines to save us1 or to professors1 or to paper-treatises on eugenics6 ,and yet1 after all1 if we were going to start an absolute1 decisive1 and practical scheme of eugenics to-morrow with whom would we begin1 with which particular people would we begin8 ,we would have to go back1 ,bernard ,shaw and the bishops and all of us1 to the ,new ,testament--to the old idea of being born again4 ,i have watched now these many years the professors1 caught in their culture-machines going round and round1 and the priests caught in their religion-machines going round and round1 and the business men caught in their economic machine1 and ,i have heard them all saying over and over in a kind of terrible sing-song day and night1 the silly1 lazy words of a glorious old roue four thousand years ago1 ,the thing that hath been is the thing which shall be1 and that which is done is that which shall be done and there is no new thing under the sun4 ,there are some of us who do not believe this4 ,we defy the culture-machines4 ,we believe that even professors can be converted1 can be educated4 ,we defy the bishops4 ,we believe that business men can be converted4 ,we defy the business men4 ,we believe the bishops can be converted4 ,i speak for a thousand1 thousand men4 ,in the hum and drive of the wheels and the great roar around me of the ,whirling ,unbelief4 ,i speak for these men--for all of us4 ,we are not cogs and wheels4 ,we are men4 ,we are born again ourselves4 ,other men can be born again4 ,men shall not look each other in the eyes wisely and nod their heads and say that human nature will not change4 ,we will change it4 ,if we cannot get but two or three together to change it1 then two or three by just being two or three and by daring to be two or three1 or even one if necessary shall change it4 ,the moment ninety million people in a great nation have welded out a vision of the kind of man of wealth--the kind of employer they want1 the moment they set the millionaire in the vise of some great national expectation1 carve upon him firmly1 implacably the will of the people1 the people will have the millionaire they want4 ,if a nation really wants a great man it invents him4 ,we have hut to see we really want him1 and that no other machinery will work1 and we will invent him4 ,necessity is the mother of invention4 ,here in these ,united ,states sixty years ago were we not all at work on a man named ,abraham ,lincoln8 ,we had been at work on him for years trying to make him into a ,lincoln4 ,he could not have begun to be what he was without us1 without the daily thought1 the responsibility1 the tragical national hope and fear1 the sense of crisis in a great people4 ,all these had been set to work on him1 on making him a ,lincoln4 ,lincoln would not have dared not to be a great man1 an all-people man with a whole mighty nation1 with all those millions of watchful1 believing people laying their lives softly1 silently1 their very sons' lives in his hands4 ,he did not have the smallest possible chance from the day he was named for ,president1 to be a second-rate man or to betray a nation1 or to back down out of being himself4 ,he had been filled night and day with the vision of a great nation struggling1 with the grim glory of it4 ,he was free to make mistakes for it1 but there was no way he could have kept from being a true1 mighty1 single-hearted man for it1 if he had tried4 ,we had clinched ,lincoln in #ahfb4 ,he was caught fast in the vise of our hopes4 ,perhaps it is because1 at certain times in history1 nations seem to be siding with the worst in their public men and expecting the worst in them that they get them4 ,if a crowd wants to be represented1 wants to touch to the quick and kindle the man in it1 the man filled with vision1 the man who is born again into its desire1 the crowd-man1 they have but to surround him and overshadow him4 ,they will create him1 in scorn and joy will they conceive him1 and before he knows who he is1 they will bring him forth4 ,it would not be hard1 ,i imagine1 to be a great man1 with a true1 steadied1 colossal1 single-heartedness1 if one were caught fast in the vision1 the expectation of a great nation4 ,to be born again is simple with ninety million people to help4 ,we have all been born again in little things with a few people to help4 ,we have been swung over from little short motives to big1 long-levered controlling ones4 ,we have known in a small way what ,conversion is4 ,we have seen how naturally it works out in little things4 ,there is nothing new about it4 ,there is not a man who does not know what it is to get over a small motive4 ,we have seen1 when we looked back1 what it was that happened4 ,the way to get over a small motive is to let it get lost in a big one4 ,a man does not stop to pick up a penny or a million dollars when he is running to save his life4 ,a man does not stop to pick up two pennies1 or two thousand dollars1 or two million dollars when he is running to save ten thousand lives or running to save ninety million lives1 when he is running to save a city or a nation4 ,this is ,conversion--entering into the ,world's ,womb1 the world's vision or expectation and being born again4 99 99 99 99 99 ,it is not for nothing that ,i have seen the sun lifting up the faces of the flowers1 and crumbling the countenances of the hills4 ,and ,i have seen music stirring faintly in the bones of old men4 ,and ,i have heard the dead ,beethoven singing in the feet of children4 ,and ,i have watched the ,little ,earth in its little round of seasons dancing before the ,lord4 ,and ,i have believed that music is wrought into all things1 and that the people ,i see about me have not one of them been left out4 ,i believe in sunshine and in hothouses4 ,i believe in burning glasses4 ,i believe in focusing light into heat and heat into white fire1 and turning white fire into little flowing brooks of steel4 ,and ,i believe in focusing men upon men4 ,i believe in ,conversion4 ,of course it would all be different--focusing men upon men1 if men were cogs and wheels1 or if the men they were focused on were made of stones4 ,i stand and look at this stone and believe it is all rubber and whalebone inside4 ,but what of it8 ,it does not get true4 ,while ,i am looking at a man and believing a certain thing about the man1 it gets true4 ,what is going on in my mind while ,i look at him effects actual mechanical changes in him1 affects the flow of blood in his veins4 ,a look colours him1 whitens him1 twists and turns the muscles and tissues in his body4 ,i draw lines upon his inmost being4 ,i lay down a new face upon his face4 ,a moment after ,i look upon the man's face it has become1 as it were1 or may have become1 a new little landscape4 ,i have seen a great country opened up in him of what he might be like4 ,while ,i look ,i have been ushered softly1 for a second1 into the presence of a man who was not there before4 ,such things have happened4 ,beatrice looked at ,dante once4 ,ten silent centuries began singing4 ,a man named ,stephen1 one day1 while he was dying1 gave a look at a man named ,paul4 ,paul came away quietly and hewed out history for two thousand years4 ,,chapter ,,xvi ,,exception ,a bicycle1 the other day1 a little outside ,paris as it was running along quietly1 lifted itself off the ground suddenly1 and flew three yards and seven inches4 ,there are nine million seven hundred and eighty nine thousand nine hundred and seventy-nine bicycles that have not flown three yards and seven inches4 ,but what of it8 ,why count them up8 ,why bother about them8 ,the important1 conclusive1 massive1 irresistible1 crushing1 material fact is that one bicycle has flown three yards seven inches4 ,the nine million seven hundred and eighty-nine thousand nine hundred and seventy-nine bicycles that can not fly yet are negligible4 ,so are nine out of ten business firms4 ,if there is one exceptional man in modern industry who is running his business in the right way and who has made a success of it and has proved it--he may look visionary to class-socialists and to other people who decide by measuring off masses of fact1 and counting up rows of people and who see what anybody can see1 but he is after all in arranging our social programme the only man of any material importance for us to consider4 ,it would be visionary to take the past1 dump it around in front of one1 and try to make a future out of it4 ,i do not deny what people tell me about millionaires and about factory slaves4 ,i have not mooned or lied or turned away my face4 ,i stand by time one live1 right1 implacable1 irrevocable1 prolific exception4 ,i stand by the one bicycle out of them all that has flown three yards and seven inches4 ,i lay out my program1 conceive my world on that4 ,piles of facts arranged in dead layers high against heaven1 rows of figures1 miles of factory slaves1 acres of cemeteries of dead millionaires1 going-by streetfuls of going-by people1 shall not cow me4 ,my heart has been broken long enough by counting truths on my fingers1 by numbering grains of sand1 men1 and mountains1 bombs1 acorns and marbles alike4 ,which truth matters8 ,which man is right8 ,where is ,nazareth8 99 99 99 99 99 ,nazareth is our only really important town now4 ,i will see what is going on in ,nazareth4 ,on every subject that comes up1 in every line of thought1 ,i will go to the city of implacable exceptions4 ,all the inventors flock there--the man with the one bicycle which flies1 the one great industrial organizer1 the man with the man-machine1 and the man--the great boy who carries new great beautiful cities in his pocket like strings and nails and knives1 they are all there4 ,nazareth is the city1 the one mighty little city of the spirit where all the really worth-while men wherever they may seem to be1 all day1 all night1 do their living4 ,other cities may make things1 in ,nazareth they make worlds4 ,one can see a new one almost any day in ,nazareth4 ,men go up and down the streets there with their new worlds in their eyes4 ,some of them have them almost in their hands or are looking down and working on them4 ,it does not seem to me that any of us can make ourselves strong and fit to lay out a sound program or vision for a world1 who do not watch with critical expectation and with fierce joy these men of ,nazareth1 who do not take at least a little time off every day1 in spirit1 in ,nazareth1 and spend it in watching bicycles fly three feet and seven inches4 ,to watch these men1 it seems to me1 is our one natural1 economical way to get at essential facts1 at the set-one-side truths1 at the exceptions that worlds and all-around programs for worlds are made out of4 ,to watch these men is the one way ,i know not to be lost in great museums and storehouses of facts that do not matter1 in the streetfuls and skyscraperfuls of men that go by4 ,i regret to record that professors of political economy1 social philosophers1 industrial big-wigs1 presidents of boards of trade have not been often met with on the streets of this silent1 crowded1 mighty1 invisible little town that rules the destinies of men4 ,not during the last twenty years1 but one is meeting them there to-day4 ,all these things that people are saying to me are mere history4 ,i have seen the one live exception4 ,one telephone was enough4 ,and one ,galileo was enough1 with his little planet turning round and round1 with all of us on it who were obliged to agree with him about it4 ,it kept turning round and round with us until we did4 ,,chapter ,,xvii ,,invention ,if ,i were a ,noah and wanted to get a fair selection of people in ,london to be saved to start a new world1 ,i would go out and look over the crowd who are watching the flying machines at ,hendon1 and select from them4 ,the ,hendon crowd will not last forever4 ,people who would be far less desirable to start worlds with would gradually work their way in1 but it is only fair to say that these first few thousand men and women of all classes who responded to the flying machine would be possessed1 as any one could see with a look1 of special qualifications for running worlds4 ,i shall never quite forget the sense ,i had the first day of the crowd at ,hendon--those thousands of faces that had gathered up in some way out of themselves a kind of huge crowd-face before one--that imperturbable happiness on it and that look of hard sense and hope1 half poetry1 half science 444 it was like gazing at some portrait1 or some vast countenance of the future--watching the crowd at ,hendon4 ,scores of times ,i looked away from the machines swinging up past me into the sky to watch the faces of the men and the women that belonged with sky machines2 these men and women who stood on the precipice of a new world of air1 of sunshine1 and of darkness1 and were not afraid4 ,one was in a little special civilization for the time being1 all the new people in it sorted out from the old ones4 ,one felt a vast light-heartedness all about4 ,one was in the presence of the picked people who had come to see this first vast initiative of man toward ,space1 toward the stars1 the people who had waited for four thousand years to see it2 to see at last ,little ,man 7as it would seem to ,god7 in this his first clumsy1 beautiful childlike tottering up the sky4 ,one was with the people on the planet who were the first to see the practical1 personal value1 the market value1 of all these huge idle fields of air that go with planets4 ,they were the first people to feel identified with the air1 to have courage for the air1 the lovers of initiative1 the men and women that one felt might really get a new world if they wanted one and who would know what to do with it when they got it4 99 99 99 99 99 ,the other day in ,london near ,charing ,cross1 as the crowds were streaming down the ,strand1 a heavy box joggled off over the end of a dray1 crashed to the pavement1 flew open and sent twenty-four hundred pennies rolling under the feet of the men and of the women and of the boys along the street4 ,traffic was stopped and a thousand men and women and boys began picking the pennies up4 ,they all crowded up around the dray and put the pennies in the box4 ,the next day the brewer to whom the pennies belonged had a letter in the ,times saying that not one of the twenty-four hundred pennies was missing4 ,he closed his letter with a few moral remarks1 announced that he had sent the twenty-four hundred pennies as a kind of tribute to people--to anybody ,who ,happened ,along the ,strand--to a ,foundling ,hospital4 99 99 99 99 99 ,the man who told me this 7it was at a business men's dinner71 told it because he knew ,i was trying to believe pleasant things about human nature4 ,he thought he ought to encourage me4 ,i will not record the conversation1 ,i merely record my humble opinion4 ,i think it would have been better to have had just a few of those pennies in the ,strand say seven or eight missing4 ,on ,broadway probably eleven or twelve out of twenty-four hundred would have been missing--,i hope4 ,and ,i am not unhopeful about ,england1 or about the ,strand4 ,there are two ways to get relief from this story4 ,first1 the brewer lied4 ,there were fewer pennies stolen than he would have thought1 and when he figured it out and found just a few pennies between him and a good story1 he put the pennies in4 ,and so the dear little foundlings got them--the letter in the ,times said4 ,they were presented to them1 as it were1 by the ,good ,little ,boys in the ,strand4 ,second1 somebody else put the pennies in1 some person standing by with a sense of humour1 who knew the letters that people write to the ,times and the kind1 serious1 grave way ,english people read them4 ,he put the pennies grimly in at one end1 then he waited grimly for the letter in the ,times to come out at the other4 ,either of these theories would work very well and let the crowd off4 ,but if they are disproved to me1 ,i have one more to fall back upon4 ,if the story is true and not a soul in that memorable crowd on that memorable day stole a penny1 it was because they had all1 as it happened in that particular crowd1 stolen their pennies before1 and got over it4 ,it would seem a great pity if there had not been some one boy with enough initiative in him1 enough faculty for moral experiment1 to try stealing a penny just once1 to see what it would be like4 ,the same boy would have seen at once what it was like1 tried feeling ashamed of it promptly1 and would never have had to bother to do it again4 ,he would have felt that penny burning in his pocket past cash drawers1 past banks1 past bonds1 until he became ,president of the ,united ,states4 ,at all events the last thing that ,i would be willing to believe is that either ,america or ,england would be capable of producing a chance crowd in the street that out of sheer laziness or moral thoughtlessness would not be able to work up at least one boy in it who would have a sudden flash of imagination about a penny rolling around a man's leg--if he picked it up and--did not put it in the box4 ,the crowd in the ,strand1 of course1 like any other real crowd1 was a stew of development1 a huge laboratory of people4 ,all stages of experience were in it4 ,some of the people in the crowd that day had a new refreshing thought1 when they saw those pennies rolling around everybody4 ,they thought they would try and see what stealing a penny was like4 ,then they did it4 ,others in the crowd thought of stealing a penny too1 and then they had still another thought4 ,they thought of not stealing it4 ,and this second thought interested them more4 ,others did not think of stealing a penny at all because they had thought of it so often before had got used to it and had got used to dismissing it4 ,others thought of stealing a penny and then they thought how ashamed they were of having thought of it4 ,others looked thoughtfully at the pennies and thought they would wait for guineas4 ,but whatever it was or may have been that was taking place in that crowd that day--they all thought4 ,and after all what is really important to a nation is that the people in it--any chance crowd in a street in it should think4 ,i confess ,i care very little one way or the other about the pennies being saved1 or about the brewer's little touch of moral poetry1 his idea that this particular crowd was solid ,sunday-school from one end to the other1 all through4 ,whether it was a crowd that thought of stealing a penny and did or did not1 if the pennies rolling around among their feet made them think1 made them experiment1 played upon the initiative1 the individuality or invention in them1 the personal self-control1 the social responsibility in them1 it was a crowd to be proud of4 ,and ,i am glad1 for one1 that the box of pennies was dumped in the street4 ,i would like to see shillings tried next time4 ,then guineas might be used4 ,a box of guineas dumped in the street would do more good than a box of pennies because there are many people who would think more with the guineas rolling around out of sight around a man's legs than they would with a penny's doing it4 ,in this way a box of guineas would do more good4 99 99 99 99 99 ,thousands of men and women that we have sent to ,india from this ,western ,world have been trying with ,bibles1 and good deeds1 and kind faces1 and ,sunday-schools to get the ,hindoos to believe that it would not be a sin to kill the rats and stop the bubonic plague4 ,nothing came of it4 ,in due time ,general ,booth-,tucker appeared on the scene4 ,he came too1 of course1 with a ,bible and with his kind face like the others1 and of course1 too1 he went to ,sunday-school regularly4 ,and while he was watching the bubonic plague sweeping up cities1 he tried too1 like the others1 to tell the people about a ,god who would not be displeased if they killed the rats and stopped the plague4 ,but he could not convince anybody1 or at best a few here and there4 ,the next thing that was known about ,general ,booth-,tucker's work in ,india was1 that he had 7still with his ,bible1 of course1 and with his kind look7 slipped away and established in the south of ,france a factory for the manufacture of gloves4 ,he then returned to his poor superstitious people in ,india who would not believe him1 and told them that he knew and knew absolutely that they would not be punished for killing the rats1 that the rats were not sacred1 and that he could prove it4 ,he offered the people so much apiece for the skins of the rats4 ,the poorest and most desperate of the natives then began killing the rats secretly and bringing in the skins4 ,they waited for the wrath of ,heaven to fall upon them4 ,nothing happened1 then they told others4 ,the others are telling everybody4 ,general ,booth-,tucker's factory to-day in the south of ,france is very busy making money for the ,salvation ,army1 turning out ,christian gloves for the ,west and turning out ,christians or the beginnings of ,christians for the ,east1 and the ancient1 obstinate theological idea of the holiness of the rats which the ,hindoos have had is being ceaselessly1 happily1 and stupendously1 all day and all night1 disproved4 ,incidentally the little religious glove factory of ,general ,booth-,tucker's in the south of ,france is giving ,india the first serious and fair chance it has ever had to stop being a pest house on the world1 and to bring the bubonic plague with its threat at a planet to an end4 ,general ,booth-,tucker's ,bible was just like anybody else's ,bible4 ,but there must have been something about the way he read his ,bible that made him think of things4 ,and there must have been something about his kind look4 ,he looked kindly at something in particular1 and he was determined to make that something in particular do4 ,he had the rats1 and he had the gloves1 and he had the ,hindoo's--and he made them do1 and before he knew it 7,i doubt if he knows it now7 he became a saviour or inventor4 ,in the big1 desolate1 darkened heart of a nation he had wedged in a ,god4 99 99 99 99 99 ,i wonder if ,general ,booth-,tucker--that is1 the original1 very small edition of ,general ,booth-,tucker--had been in that memorable crowd1 that memorable day in the ,strand when nobody 7with a report that was heard around the world7 stole a penny--,i wonder if ,general ,booth-,tucker would have been ,a ,very ,good ,little ,boy4 ,one of the pennies might have been missing4 ,i have no prejudice against the ,very ,good ,little ,boy4 ,it is not his goodness that is what is the matter with him4 ,but ,i am very much afraid that if there were any way of getting all the facts1 it would not be hard to prove categorically that what has been holding the world back the last twenty-five years in its religious ideals1 its business ethics1 its liberty1 candour1 its courage1 and its skill in social engineering1 is the ,very ,good ,little ,boy4 ,he may be comparatively harmless at first and before his moustache is grown1 but the moment he becomes a grown-up or the moment he sits on committees with his quiet1 careful1 snug1 proper fear of experiment1 of bold initiative1 his disease of never running a risk1 his moral anmia1 he blocks all progress in churches1 in legislatures1 in directors' meetings1 in trades unions1 in slums and ,may-fairs4 ,one sees ,the ,good ,little ,boys weighing down everything the moment they are grown up4 ,they have all been brought up each with his one faint1 polite little hunger1 his one ambition1 his one pale downy desire in life1 looking forward day by day1 year by year1 to the fine frenzy1 to the fierce joy of ,never ,making a ,mistake4 ,if ,i had been given the appointment and were about to set to work to-morrow morning to make a new world1 ,i would begin by getting together all the people in this one that ,i knew1 or had noticed anywhere1 who seemed to have in them the spirit of experiment4 ,any boy or girl or man or woman that ,i had seen having the curiosity to try the different kinds and different sizes of right and wrong1 or that ,i had seen boldly and faithfully experimenting with the beautiful and the ugly so that they really knew about them for themselves--would be let in4 ,i would put these people for a time in a place by themselves where the people who want to keep them from trying or learning1 could not get at them4 ,then ,i would let them try4 ,i would put the humdrum people in another place by themselves and let them humdrum1 the respectable people by themselves and let them respectabilize4 ,then after my try-world had tried1 and got well started and the people in it had finished off some things and knew what they wanted1 ,i would allow the humdrums and the respectabilities to be let in--to do what they were told4 ,doing what they are told is what they like4 ,so they would be happy4 ,of course doing what they are told is what is the matter with them4 ,but what is the matter with them would be useful4 ,and everybody would be happy4 99 99 99 99 99 ,when the ,titanic went down a little while ago and those few quiet men on deck began their duty in that soft1 gracious moonlit night1 of sorting out the people who should die from the people who should live--if one was a woman one could live4 ,if one was a man one could die4 ,no one will quarrel with the division as the only possible or endurable one that could have been made4 ,but if ,god himself could have made the division or some super-man ship's officer who could have represented ,god1 could have made it1 it is not hard to believe that a less superficial1 a more profound and human difference between people would have been used in sorting out the people who should live from the people who should die than a difference in organs of reproduction4 ,the women were saved first because the men were men and because it was the way the men felt4 ,it expressed the men who were on the deck that night that the women should be saved first2 it was the last chance they had to express themselves like men and they wanted to do it4 ,but if ,god himself could have made the division with the immediate and conclusive knowledge of who everybody was1 of what they really were in their hearts1 and of what they and their children and their children's children would do for the world if they lived no one would have quarrelled with ,god for making what would have seemed at the moment1 no doubt1 very unreasonable and ungallant and impossible-looking discriminations in sorting out the people who should live from the people who should die4 ,possibly even ,man 7using the word with a capital71 acting from the point of view of history and of the race and from the point of view of making a kind of world where ,titanic disasters could not happen1 would have chosen on the deck of the ,titanic that night1 very much the way ,god would4 ,from the point of view of ,man there would have been no discrimination in favour of a woman because she was a woman4 ,the last cry of the last man that the still listening life-boats heard coming up out of the sea that night might have been the cry of the man who had invented a ship that could not sink4 ,there would not have been a woman in a life-boat or a woman sinking in the sea who would not have had this man saved before a woman4 ,if we could absolutely know all about the people1 who are the people in this world that we should want to have saved first1 that we would want to have taken to the life-boats and saved first at sea8 ,the women who are with child4 ,and the men who are about to have ideas4 ,and the men who man the boats for them1 who in ,god's name and in the name of a world protect its women who are with child1 and its men who are about to have ideas4 ,the world is different from the ,titanic4 ,we do not need to line up our immortal fellow human beings1 sort them out in a minute on a world and say to them1 ,go here and die6 ,go there and live6 ,we are able to spend on a world at least an average of thirty-five years apiece on all these immortal human beings we are with1 in seeing what they are like1 in guessing on what they are for and on their relative value1 and in deciding where they belong and what a world can do with them4 ,we ought to do better in saving people on a world4 ,we have more time to think4 ,what would we try to do if we took the time to think8 ,would there be any way of fixing upon an order for saving people on a world8 ,what would be the most noble1 the most universal1 the most ,godlike and democratic schedule for souls to be saved on--on a world8 ,i think the man that would save the most other people should be saved first4 ,it would not be democratic to save an ordinary man1 a man who could just save himself1 just think for himself1 when saving the man next to him instead would be saving a man who would save a thousand ordinary men1 or men who have gifts for thinking only of themselves4 ,of course one man who thinks merely of himself is as good as another man who thinks merely of himself1 but from the point of view of a democracy every common man has an inalienable right--the right to have the man who saves common men saved first4 ,and the moment we get in this world1 our first democracy1 the moment the common man really believes in democracy1 this aristocracy or people who save others 7the common man himself will see to it7 will be saved first4 ,he will make mistakes in applying the principle of democracy1 that is in collecting his aristocracies1 his strategic men1 his linchpins of society1 but he will believe in the principle all through4 ,it will be not merely in his brain1 but in his instincts1 in his unconscious hero-worship1 in his sinews and his bones1 and it will stir in his blood1 that some men should be saved before others4 ,but if the world is not a ,titanic1 and if we have on the average thirty-five years apiece to decide about men on a world and put them where they belong1 it might not be amiss to try to unite for the time being on a few fundamental principles4 ,what would seem to us to be a few fundamental principles for the act of world-assimilation1 that vast1 slow1 unconscious crowd-process1 that peristaltic action of society of gathering up and stowing away men--all these little numberless cells of humanity where they belong8 ,no one cell can have much to say about it4 ,but we can watch4 ,and as we watch it seems to us that men may be said to be dividing themselves roughly and flowingly at all times into three great streams or classes4 ,they are either ,inventors1 or they are ,artists1 or they are ,hewers4 ,of course in classifying men it is necessary to bear in mind that their getting out of their classifications is what the classifications are for4 ,and it is also necessary to bear in mind that men can only be classified with regard to their emphasis and may belong in one class in regard to one thing and in another class with regard to another1 but in any particular place1 or at any particular time a man is doing a thing in this world1 he is probably for the time being1 while he is doing it1 doing it as an ,inventor 7or genius71 as an ,artist 7or organizer71 or as a ,hewer4 ,most men1 it must be said1 settle down in their classifications4 ,they are very apt to decide for life whether they are ,inventors or ,artists or ,hewers4 ,but as has been said before1 being on a world and not on a ,titanic1 we have time to think4 ,on what principles could we make out a schedule or inventory of human nature1 and decide on world-values in men8 ,when ,i was a boy ,i played in the hollow of a great butternut tree--the one my mother was married under4 ,when ,i was in college ,i used to go back to it4 ,i used to wonder a little that it was still there4 ,when we had all grown up we all came back and got together under it one happy day and there it still stood1 its great arms from out of the sky bent over lovers and over children on its little island1 its wide river singing round it1 still that glorious old hollow in it1 full of dreams and childhood and mystery1 and that old sudden sunshine in it through the knots like portholes 444 then we stood there all of us together4 ,and the mother watched her daughter married under it4 ,i can remember many days standing beneath it as a small boy 7my small insides full of butternuts1 a thousand more butternuts up on the tree71 and ,i used to look up in its branches and wonder about it1 wonder how it could keep on so with its butternuts and with its leaves1 with its winters and with its summers1 its cool shadows and sunshines1 still being a butternut tree1 with that huge hollow in it4 ,i have learned since that if a few ounces or whittlings of wood in a tree are chipped out in a ring around it under the bark1 cords of wood in the limbs all up across the sky would die in a week--if one chips out those few little ounces of wood4 ,cords of wood can be taken out of the inside of the tree and it will not mind4 ,it is that little half-inch rim of the tree where the juice runs up to the sun that makes the tree alive or dead4 ,the part that must be saved first and provided for first is that slippery little shiny streak under the bark4 ,one could dig out a huge brush-heap of roots and the tree would live4 ,one could pick off millions of leaves1 could cut cords of branches out of it1 or one could make long hollows up to the sun1 tubes to the sky out of trees1 and they would live1 if one still managed to save those little delicate pipe lines for ,sap1 running up and running down1 day and night1 night and day1 between the light in heaven and the darkness in the ground4 ,perhaps ,men are valuable in proportion as it would be difficult to produce promptly other men to perform their functions1 or to take their places4 ,if we cut away in society men of genius1 leaves1 and blossoms1 in trees1 men who reach down ,heaven to us1 they grow out again4 ,if we cut away in society great masses of roots1 common men who hew out the earth in the ground and get earth ready to be heaved up to the sky--the roots grow out again4 ,but if we cut a little faint rim around it of artists1 of inventive men-controllers1 of the ,sap-conductors1 the men who make the ,hewers run up to the sky and who make the geniuses come down to the ground1 the men who run the tree together1 who out of dark earth and bright sunshine build it softly--if we destroy these1 this little rim of great men or men who save others1 a totally new tree has to be begun4 ,it is the essence of a democracy to acknowledge that some men for the time being are more important in it than others1 and that these men1 whosoever they are1 in whatever order of society they may be--poor1 rich1 famous1 obscure--these men who think for others1 who save others and invent others1 who make it possible for others to invent themselves1 these men shall be saved first4 99 99 99 99 99 ,one always thinks at first that one would like to make a diagram of human nature4 ,it would be neat and convenient4 ,then one discovers that no diagram one can make of human nature--unless one makes what might be called a kind of squirming diagram will really work4 ,then one tries to imagine what a flowing diagram would be like4 ,then it occurs to one1 one has seen a flowing diagram4 ,a ,tree is a flowing diagram4 ,so ,i am putting down on this page for what it may be worth1 what ,i have called ,a ,family ,tree of ,folks4 ,read across3 ,,inventors ,,artists ,,hewers ,inventors ,organizers ,labourers ,imagination ,applied ,imagination ,tool or ,mechanism ,fecundity ,control ,activity ,seer ,poet ,actor ,the ,man who ,sees the ,the ,man who ,generalizes ,general in the ,particular ,action ,the ,deeper ,permanent ,the ,immediate ,significance ,hewing ,significance or ,meaning ,light ,applied ,light or ,heat ,applied ,heat or ,motion ,stevenson and ,wall ,james ,j4 ,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 ,scoopers1 ,grabbers 7in mind or body71 ,hewers ,david the poet ,david the king ,david the soldier ,shakespeare ,shakespeare ,shakespeare ,,chapter ,,xviii ,,the ,,man ,,who ,,pulls ,,the ,,world ,,together ,the typical mighty man or man of valour in our modern life is the ,organizer or ,artist4 ,if a man has succeeded in being a great organizer1 it is because he has succeeded in organizing himself4 ,a man who has organized himself is a man who has built a personality4 ,the main fact about a man who has succeeded in being an organized man or personality is1 that he has ordered himself around4 ,naturally1 when other people have to be ordered around1 being full-head-on in the habit of ordering1 even ordering himself1 the hardest feat of all1 he is the man who has to be picked out to order other people4 ,as a rule the man who orders himself around successfully1 who makes his whole nature or all parts of himself work together1 does it because he takes pains to find out who he is and what he is like4 ,if he orders other men successfully and makes them work together it is because he knows what they are like4 ,a man knows what other people are like and bow they feel by having times of being a little like them and by being a big1 latent all-possible1 all-round kind of man4 ,leadership follows4 ,modern business consists in getting ,inventors' minds and ,hewers' minds to work together4 ,the ruler of modern business is the man who by experience or imagination is half an ,inventor himself1 and half a ,hewer himself4 ,he knows how inventing feels and how hewing feels4 ,he has a southern exposure toward ,hewers and makes ,hewers feel identified with him4 ,he has what might be called an eastern exposure toward men of genius1 understands the inventive temperament1 has the kind of personality that evokes inventiveness in others4 ,incidentally he has what might be called a northern exposure which keeps him scientific1 cool1 and close to the spirit of facts4 ,and there has to be something very like a western exposure in him too1 a touch of the homely seer1 a habit of having reflections and afterglows1 a sense of principles1 and of the philosophy of men and things4 ,if ,i were to try to sum up all these qualities in a man and call it by one name1 ,i would call it ,glorified-commonsense4 ,if ,i were asked to define ,glorified-commonsense ,i would say it is a glory which works4 ,it belongs to the man who has a vision or coinage for others because he sees them as they are1 and sees how the glory buried in them 7i4e41 the inspiration or source of hard work in them7 can be got out4 ,everywhere that the ,artist in business1 or ,organizer1 with his ,inventors on one side of him and his ,hewers on the other1 can be seen to-day competing with the man who has the mere millionaire or owning type of mind1 he is crowding him from the market4 ,it is because he understands how ,inventors and ,hewers feel and what they think and when he turns on ,inventors he makes them invent and when he turns on ,hewers he makes them hew4 ,the ,hewer often thinks because he is rich or because he owns a business1 that he can take the place of the artist1 but he can be seen every day in every business around us1 being passed relentlessly out of power because he cannot make his ,inventors invent and cannot make his ,hewers hew as well as some other man4 ,the moment his ,inventors and ,hewers think of him1 hear about him1 or have any dealing with him--with the mere millionaire1 the mere owner kind of person1 his ,inventors invent as little as they can1 and his ,hewers hew as softly as they dare4 ,this is called the ,modern ,industrial ,problem4 ,and no man but the artist1 the man with the inventing and the hewing spirit both in him1 who daily puts the inventing spirit and the hewing spirit together in himself1 can get it together in others4 ,only the man who has kept and saved both the inventing and hewing spirit in himself can save it in others--can be a saviour or artist4 ,,chapter ,,xix ,,the ,,man ,,who ,,stands ,,by ,i have been trying to say in this book that goodness in daily life1 or in business1 in common world-running or world housekeeping1 is by an implacable crowd-process working slowly out of the hands of the wrong men into the hands of the right ones4 ,if this is not true1 ,i am ready to declare myself as a last resort1 in favour of a strike4 ,there is only one strike that would be practical4 ,i would declare for a strike of the saviours4 99 99 99 99 99 ,by a saviour ,i do not mean a man who stoops down to me and saves me4 ,a saviour to me is a man who stands by and lets me save myself4 ,i am afraid we cannot expect much of men who can bear the idea of being saved by other people1 or by saviours who have a stooping feeling4 ,i rejoice daily in the spirit of our modern laboring men1 in that holy defiance in their eyes1 in the way they will not say please to their employers and announce that they will save themselves4 ,the only saviour who can do things for labouring men is the saviour who proposes to do things with them1 who stands by1 who helps to keep oppressors and stooping saviours off--who sees that they have a fair chance and room to save themselves4 ,i define a true saviour as a man who is trying to save himself4 ,it was because ,christ1 ,savonarola1 and ,john ,bunyan were all trying to save themselves that it ever so much as occurred to them to save worlds4 ,saving a world was the only way to do it4 ,the ,cross was ,christ's final stand for his own companionableness1 his stand for being like other people1 for having other people to share his life with1 his faith in others and his joy in the world4 ,the world was saved incidentally when ,christ died on the ,cross4 ,he wanted to live more abundantly--and he had to have certain sorts of people to live more abundantly with4 ,he did not want to live unless he could live more abundantly4 ,we live in a world in which inventors want to die if they cannot invent and in which ,hewers want to die if they cannot hew4 ,i am not proud4 ,i am willing to be saved4 ,any saviour may save me if he wants to1 if his saving me is a part of his saving himself4 ,if the inventor saves me and saves us all because he wants to be in a world where an inventor can invent1 wants some one to invent to2 if the artist saves me because it is part of his worship of ,god to have me saved and wants to use me every day to rejoice about the world with--if the ,hewer comes over and hews out a place in the world for me because he wants to hew1 ,i am willing4 ,all that ,i demand is1 that if a man take the liberty of being a saviour to me that he refrain from stooping1 that he come up to me and save me like a man1 that he stand before me and tell me that here is something that we1 he and ,i1 shoulder to shoulder1 can do1 something that neither of us could do alone4 ,then he will fall to with me and ,i will fall to with him1 and we will do it4 ,this is what ,i mean by a saviour4 ,,chapter ,,xx ,,the ,,strike ,,of ,,the ,,saviours ,a factory in ---- some ten years ago employed one hundred men4 ,three of these men were in the office and ninety-seven were hands in the works4 ,to-day this same factory which is doing a very much larger business is still employing one hundred men1 but thirty of the men are employed in the office and seventy in the works4 ,ten years1 ago to put it in other words1 the factory provided places for one artist or manager and two inventors and places for ninety-seven ,hewers4 ,to-day the factory has made room for thirty inventors1 one manager and twenty-nine men who spend their entire time in thinking of things that will help the ,hewers hew4 ,it has seventy ,hewers who are helping the ,inventors invent by hewing three times as hard and three times as skilfully or three times as much as without the ,inventors to help them1 they had dreamed they could hew before4 ,the ,artist or ,organizer who made this change in the factory found that among the ninety-seven ,hewers that were employed a number of ,hewers were hewing very poorly1 because though hewing was the best they could do1 they could not even hew4 ,he found certain others who were hewing poorly because they were not ,hewers1 but ,inventors4 ,these he set to work--some of them inventing in the office4 ,on closer examination the two ,inventors in the office were found to be not ,inventors at all4 ,one of them was a fine ,hewer who liked to hew and who hated inventing and the other was merely a rich ,hewer who was an owner in the business who saw suddenly that he would have to stop inventing and stop very soon if he wanted the business to make any more money4 ,there are four things that the ,artist has to do with a factory like this before he can make it efficient4 ,each of these things is an art4 ,one art is the art of compelling the mere owner1 the man with the merely hewing mind1 to confine himself to the one thing he knows how to do1 namely to shovelling1 to shovelling his money in when and where he was told it was needed1 and to shovelling his money out when it has been made for him4 ,the art of compelling a mere owner to know his place1 of keeping him shovelling money in and shovelling money out silently and modestly1 consists as a rule in having the ,artist or ,organizer tell him that unless the business is placed completely in his hands he will not undertake to run it4 ,this is the first art4 ,the second art consists in having an understanding with the inventors that they will invent ways of helping the ,hewers hew4 ,the third art consists in having an understanding with the ,hewers that they will accept the help of the ,inventors and hew with it4 ,the fourth art is the art of representing the consumer with the ,hewer and with the ,inventor and with the ,owner and seeing that he shares in the benefits of all economies and improvements4 ,these are all human arts and turn on the power in a man of being a true artist1 of being a man-inventor1 a man-developer and a man-mixer1 daily taking part of himself and using these parts in putting other men together4 ,these organizers or artists1 being the men who see how--are the men who are not afraid4 ,,chapter ,,xxi ,,the ,,league ,,of ,,the ,,men ,,who ,,are ,,not ,,afraid ,if all the unbrained money in the world to-day and the men that go with it could be isolated1 could be taken by men of imagination and put in a few ships and sent off to an island in the sea--if ,new ,york and ,london and all the other important places could be left in the hands of the men who have imagination1 poor and rich1 they would soon have the world in shape to make the men with merely owning minds1 the mere owners off on their island1 beg to come back to it1 to be allowed to have a share in it on any terms4 ,in order to be fair1 of course1 their island would have to be a furnished island--mines1 woods1 and everything they could want4 ,it would become a kind of brute wilderness or desert in twenty-five years4 ,we could1 now and then1 some of us1 take happy little trips1 go out and look them over on their little furnished island4 ,it would do us good to watch them--these men with merely owning or holding-on minds1 really noticing at last how unimportant they are4 ,but it is not necessary to resort to a furnished island as a device1 as a mirror for making mere millionaires see themselves4 ,this is a thing that could be done for millionaires now1 most of them1 here just where they are4 ,all that is necessary is to have the brains of the world so organized that the millionaires who expect merely because they are millionaires to be run after by brains1 cannot get any brains to run after them4 ,i am in favour of organizing the brains of the world into a trades union4 ,one of the next things that is going to happen is that the managing and creating minds of the world to-day are going to organize1 are going to see suddenly their real power and use it4 ,the brains are about to have1 as labour and capital already have1 a class consciousness4 ,i would not claim that there is going to be an international strike of the brains of the world1 but it will not be long before the managing class as a class will be organized so that they can strike if they want to4 ,the ,artists or ,organizers and ,managers of business will not need probably1 in order to accomplish their purpose1 to strike against the uncreative millionaires4 ,they will make a stand 7which the best of them have already made now7 for the balance of power in any business that they furnish their brains to4 ,the brains that create the profits for the owners and that create the labour for the labourers1 will make terms for their brains and will withhold their brains if necessary to this end4 ,but it is far more likely that they will accomplish their purpose sooner by using their brains for the millionaires and for the labourers--by coperating with the millionaires and labourers than they will by striking against them or keeping their brains back4 ,they are in a position to make the millionaires see how little money they can make without them even in a few days4 ,they will let them try4 ,a very little trying will prove it4 ,where hand labour would have to strike for weeks and months to prove its value1 brain labour would have to strike hours and days4 ,this is what is going to be done in modern business in one business at a time1 the brains insisting in each firm upon full control4 ,then1 of course1 the firms that have the brains in most full control will drive the firms in which brains are in less control out of competition4 ,then brains will spread from one business to another4 ,the ,managers1 ,artists1 and ,organizers of the world will have formed at last a ,brain ,syndicate1 and they will put themselves in a position to determine in their own interests and in the interests of society at large the terms on which all men--all men who have no brains to put with their money--shall be allowed to have the use of theirs4 ,they will monopolize the brain supply of the world4 ,then they will act4 ,under our present rgime money hires men2 under the rgime of the ,brain ,syndicate men will hire money4 ,money--i4e41 saved up or canned labour1 is going to be hired by ,managers1 ,organizers1 and ,engineers with as much discrimination and with as deep a study of its efficiency1 as new labour is hired4 ,the millionaires are going to be seen standing with their money bags and their little hats in their hands like office boys asking for positions for their money before the doors of the really serious and important men1 the men who toil out the ideas and the ways and the means of carrying out ideas--the men who do the real work of the world1 who see things that they want and see how to get them--the men of imagination1 the inventors of ideas1 organizers of facts1 generals and engineers in human nature4 ,it is these men who are going to allow people who merely have thoughtless labour and people who merely have thoughtless money to be let in with them4 ,the world's quarrel with the rich man is not his being a rich man1 but his being rich without brains1 and its quarrel with the poor labourer is not his being a poor labourer1 but his being a poor labourer without brains4 ,the only way that either of these men can have a chance to be of any value is in letting themselves be used by the man who will supply them with what they lack4 ,they will try to get this man to see if he cannot think of some way of getting some good out of them for themselves1 and for others4 ,we have a ,frederick ,taylor for furnishing brains to labour4 ,we are going to have a ,frederick ,taylor to attend to the brain-supply of millionaires1 to idea-outfits for directors4 ,every big firm is going to have a large group of specialists working on the problem of how to make millionaires--its own particular millionaires think1 devising ways of keeping idle and thoughtless capitalists out of the way4 ,if the experts fail in making millionaires think1 they may be succeeded by experts in getting rid of them and in finding thoughtful money1 possibly made up of many small sums1 to take their place4 ,the real question the ,artist or ,organizer is going to ask about any man with capital will be1 ,is it the man who is making the money valuable and important or is it the money that is making this man important for the time being and a little noticeable or important-looking8 ,the only really serious question we have to face about money to-day is the unimportance of the men who have it4 ,the ,hewers or ,scoopers1 or ,grabbers1 who have assumed the places of the ,artist and the ,inventor because they have the money1 are about to be crowded over to the silent1 modest back seats in directors' meetings4 ,if they want their profits1 they must give up their votes4 ,they are going to be snubbed4 ,they are going to beg to be noticed4 ,the preferred stock or voting stock will be kept entirely in the hands of the men of working imagination1 of clear-headedness about things that are not quite seen1 the things that constitute the true values in any business situation1 the men who have the sense of the way things work and of the way they will have to go4 ,mere millionaires who do not know their place in a great business will be crowded into small ones4 ,they will be confronted by the organized refusal of men with brains to work for their inferiors1 to be under control of men of second-rate order4 ,men with mere owning and grabbing minds will only be able to find men as stupid as they are to invest and manage their money for them4 ,in a really big creative business their only chance will be cash and silence4 ,they will be very glad at last to get in on any terms1 if the men of brains will let their money edge into their business without votes and be carried along with it as a favour4 ,it is because things are not like this now1 that we have an industrial problem4 ,managers who have already hired labour as a matter of course are going to hire the kind of capital they like1 the kind of capital that thinks and that can work with thinking men4 ,there will gradually evolve a general recognition in business on the part of men who run it and on the part of managers1 of the moral or human value of money4 ,the successful manager is no longer going to grab thoughtlessly at any old1 idle1 foolish pot of money that may be offered to him4 ,he is going to study the man who goes with it1 see how he will vote and see whether he knows his place1 whether he is a ,hewer1 for instance1 who thinks he is an ,inventor4 ,does he or does he not know which he is1 an ,inventor1 an ,artist1 or a ,hewer8 ,capitalists will expect as a matter of course to be looked over and to be hired in a great business enterprise as carefully as labourers are being hired now4 ,the moment it is generally realized that the managers of every big modern business have become as particular about letting in the right kind of directors as they have been before about letting in the right kind of labour1 we will stop having an upside-down business world4 ,an upside-down business world is one in which any man who has money thinks he can be a director almost anywhere1 a world in which on every hand we find managers who are not touching the imagination of the public and getting it to buy1 and not touching the imagination of labour and getting it to work1 because they are not free to carry out their ideas without submitting them to incompetent and scared owners4 ,the incompetent and scared owners--the men who cannot think--are about to be shut out4 ,then they will be compelled to hire incompetent and scared managers4 ,then they will lose their money4 ,then the world will slip out of their hands4 ,the problem of modern industry is to be not the distribution of the money supply1 but the distribution of the man-supply4 ,money follows men4 ,free men4 ,free money4 ,,book ,,five ,,good ,,news ,,and ,,hard ,,work ,,to ,,anybody ,i know that all men ever born are also my brothers4444 ,limitless leaves too1 stiff or drooping in the fields1 ,and brown ants in the little wells beneath them ,and mossy scabs of the worm fence1 heaped stones1 elders1 mulleins and poke weed4 ,a ,child said1 ,what is grass8 fetching it to me with full hands4 ,how could ,i answer the ,child8 99 99 99 99 99 ,i want to trust the sky and the grass6 ,i want to believe the songs ,i hear from the fenceposts6 ,why should a maple-bud mislead me8 ,,part ,,one ,,news ,,and ,,labour ,a big ,new ,england factory1 not long ago1 wanted to get nearer its raw material and moved to ,georgia4 ,all the machine considerations1 better water-power1 cheaper labour1 smaller freight bills1 and new markets had argued for moving to ,georgia4 ,long rows of new mills were built and thousands of negroes were moved in and thousands of shanties were put up1 and the men and the women stood between the wheels4 ,and the wheels turned4 ,there was not a thing that had not been thought of except the men and women that stood between the wheels4 ,the men and women that stood between the wheels were1 for the most part1 strong and hearty persons and they never looked anxious or abused and did as they were told4 ,and when ,saturday night came1 crowds of them with their black faces1 of the men and of the women1 of the boys and girls1 might have been seen filing out of the works with their week's wages4 ,monday morning a few of them dribbled back4 ,there were enough who would come to run three mills4 ,all the others in the long row of mills were silent4 ,tuesday morning1 ,number ,four started up1 ,wednesday1 ,number ,five4 ,by ,thursday noon they were all going4 ,the same thing happened the week after1 and the week after1 and the week after that4 ,the management tried everything they could think of with their people1 scolding1 discharging1 making their work harder1 making their work easier1 paying them less1 paying them more1 two ,baptist ministers and even a little ,roman ,catholic ,church4 ,as long as the negroes saw enough to eat for three days1 they would not work4 ,it began to look as if the mills would have to move back to ,massachusetts1 where people looked anxious and where people felt poor1 got up at #e ,a4,m4 ,mondays and worked4 ,suddenly one day1 the son of one of the owners1 a very new-looking young man who had never seen a business college1 and who had run through ,harvard almost without looking at a book1 and who really did not seem to know or to care anything about anything--except folks--appeared on the scene with orders from his father that he be set to work4 ,the manager could not imagine what to do with him at first1 but finally1 being a boy who made people like him more than they ought to1 he found himself placed in charge of the ,company ,store4 ,the company owned the village1 and the ,company ,store1 which had been treated as a mere necessity in the lonely village1 had been located1 or rather dumped1 at the time1 into a building with rows of little house-windows in it1 a kind of extra storehouse on the premises4 ,the first thing the young man did was to stove four holes in the building1 all along the front and around the corners on the two sides1 and put in four big plate-glass windows4 ,the store was mysteriously closed up in front for a few days to do this1 and no one could see what was happening1 and the negroes slunk around into a back room to buy their meal and molasses4 ,and finally one morning1 one ,sunday morning1 the store opened up bravely and flew open in front4 ,the windows on the right contained three big purple hats with blue feathers1 and some pink parasols4 ,the windows on the left were full of white waistcoats1 silver-headed canes1 patent-leather shoes and other things to live up to4 ,monday morning more of the mills were running than usual4 ,later in the week there appeared in the windows melodions1 phonographs1 big gilt family ,bibles1 bread machines1 sewing machines1 and ,morris chairs4 ,only a few hands took their ,mondays off after this4 ,all the mills began running all the week4 99 99 99 99 99 ,of course there are better things to live for than purple hats and blue feathers1 and silver-headed canes1 and patent leather shoes4 ,but if people can be got to live six days ahead1 or thirty days1 or sixty days ahead1 instead of three days ahead1 by purple hats and blue feathers and white waistcoats1 and if it is necessary to use purple hats and blue feathers to start people thinking in months instead of minutes1 or to budge them over to where they can have a touch of idealism or of religion or of living beyond the moment1 ,i say for one1 with all my heart1 ,god bless purple hats and blue feathers6 99 99 99 99 99 ,the great problem of modern charity1 the one society is largely occupied with to-day1 is3 ,what is there that we can possibly do for our millionaires8 ,the next thing ,society is going to do1 perhaps1 is to design and set up purple hats with blue feathers for millionaires4 ,the moment our millionaires have placed before them something to live for1 a few real1 live1 satisfying ideals1 or splendid lasting things they can do1 things that everybody else would want to do1 and that everybody else would envy them for doing1 it will bore them to run a great business merely to make money4 ,they will find it more interesting1 harder1 and calling for greater genius1 to be great and capable employers4 ,when our millionaires once begin to enter into competition with one another in being the greatest and most successful employers of labour on earth1 our industrial wars will cease4 ,millionaires who get as much work out of their employees as they dare1 and pay them as little as they can1 and who give the public as small values as they dare1 and take as much money as they can1 only do such stupid1 humdrum1 conventional things because they are bored1 because they cannot really think of anything to live for4 ,labourers whose daily1 hourly occupation consists in seeing how much less work a day than they ought to do1 they can do1 and how much more money they can get out of their employers than they earn1 only do such things because they are tired or bored and discouraged1 and because they cannot think of anything that is truly big and fine and worth working for4 ,the industrial question is not an economic question4 ,it is a question of supplying a nation with ideals4 ,it is a problem which only an ,american ,national ,ideal ,supply ,company could hope to handle4 ,the very first moment three or four purple hats with blue feathers for millionaires and for labourers have been found and set up in the great show window of the world1 the industrial unrest of this century begins to end4 99 99 99 99 99 ,as ,i went by1 one day not long ago1 ,i saw two small boys playing house--marking off rooms--sitting-rooms and bedrooms1 with rows of stones on the ground4 ,when ,i came up they had just taken hold of a big stone they wanted to lift over into line a little4 ,they were tugging on it hopefully and with very red faces1 and it did not budge4 ,i picked up a small beam about five feet long on my side of the road1 that ,i thought would do for a crowbar1 stepped over to the boys1 fixed a fulcrum for them1 and went on with my walk4 ,when ,i came back after my walk that night to the place where the boys had been playing1 ,i found the boys had given up working on their house4 ,and as ,i looked about1 every big stone for yards around--every one that was the right size--seemed subtly out of place4 ,the top of the stone wall1 too1 was very crooked4 ,they had given up playing house and had played crowbar all day instead4 ,i should think it would have been a rather wonderful day1 those boys' first day1 seven or eight hours of it spent1 with just a little time off for luncheon1 in seeing how a crowbar worked6 ,i have forgotten just how much larger part of a ton one inch more on a crowbar lifts4 ,i never know figures very well4 ,but ,i know people and ,i know that a man with only three day's worth of things ahead to live for does not get one hundredth part of the purchase power on what he is doing that the man gets who works with thirty days ahead of things to live for1 all of them nerving him up1 keeping him in training1 and inspiring him4 ,and ,i know that the man who does his work with a longer lever still1 with thirty or forty years worth' of things he wants1 all crowding in upon him and backing him up1 can lift things so easily1 so even jauntily1 sometimes1 that he seems to many of us sometimes to be a new size and a new kind of man4 99 99 99 99 99 ,the general conventional idea of business is1 that if you give a man more wages to work for1 he will work more1 but of course if a business man has the brains1 knows how to fire up an employee1 knows how to give him something or suggest something in his life that will make him want to live twenty times as much1 it would not only be cheaper1 but it would work better than paying him twice as much wages4 ,efficiency is based on news4 ,put before a man's life twenty times as much to live for and to work for1 and he will do at least1 well--twice as much work4 ,if a man has a big man's thing or object in view1 he can do three times as much work4 ,if the little thing he has to do1 and keep doing1 is seen daily by him as a part of a big thing1 the power and drive of the big thing is in it1 the little thing becomes the big thing1 seems big while he is doing it every minute4 ,it makes it easier to do it because it seems big4 ,the little man becomes a big man4 ,from the plain1 practical point of view1 it is the idealist in business1 the shrewd1 accurate1 patient idealist in modern business who is the man of economic sense4 ,the employer who can put out ideals in front of his people1 who can make his people efficient with the least expense1 is the employer who has the most economic sense4 ,the employer who is a master at supplying motives to people1 who manages to cut down through to the quick in his employees1 to the daily motives1 to the hourly ideals1 the hourly expectations with which they work1 is the employer who already takes the lead1 who is already setting the pace in the twentieth-century business world4 ,possibly you have noticed this trait in the great employers or1 at least1 in the great managers of employers8 ,you are going1 for instance1 through a confectionery shop4 ,as you move down the long aisles of candy machines you hear the clock strike eleven4 ,suddenly music starts up all around you and before your eyes four hundred girls swing off into each other's arms4 ,they dance between their machines five minutes1 and then1 demurely1 they drop back to their work4 ,you see them sitting quietly in long white rows1 folding up sweet-meats with flushed and glowing cheeks4 ,is this sentiment or is it cold businesslike efficiency8 ,the more sentiment there is in it1 ,i think1 the more efficient it is and the better it works4 ,business is not business4 ,one need not quarrel about words1 but certainly1 whatever else business is1 it is not business4 ,it would be closer to the facts to call business an art or a religion1 a kind of homely1 inspired1 applied piety1 based upon gifts in men which are essentially religious gifts2 the power of communion in the human heart1 the genius for cultivating companionship1 of getting people to understand you and understand one another and do team work4 ,the bed-rock1 the hard pan of business success lies in the fundamental1 daily conviction--the personal habit in a man of looking upon business as a hard1 accurate1 closely studied1 shrewd human art1 a science of mutual expectation4 ,i am not saying that ,i would favour all employers of young women having them1 to-morrow morning at eleven o'clock1 swing off into each other's arms and dance for five minutes4 ,the value of the dance in this particular case was that the ,firm thought of the dancing itself and was always doing things like it1 that everybody knew that the ,firm1 up in its glass office1 felt glad1 joined in the dance in spirit1 enjoyed seeing the girls caught up for five minutes in the joy and swing of a big happy world full of sunshine and music outside1 full of buoyant and gentle things1 of ideals around them which belonged to them and of which they and their lives were a part4 ,when we admit that business success to-day turns or is beginning to turn on a man's power of getting work out of people1 we admit that a man's power of getting work out of people1 his business efficiency1 turns on his power of supplying his people with ideals4 ,ideals are news4 ,you come on a man who thinks he is out of breath and that he cannot possibly run4 ,you happen to be able to tell him that some dynamite in the quarry across the road is going to blow the side of the hill out in forty-five seconds and he will run like a gazelle4 ,you tell a man the news1 the true news that his employees are literally and honestly finding increased pay or promotion1 either in their own establishment or elsewhere for every man they employ1 as fast as he makes himself fit1 and you have created a man three times his own size before your own eyes1 all in a minute4 ,and he begins working for you like a man three times his own size1 and not because he is getting more for it1 but because he suddenly believes in you1 suddenly believes in the world and in the human race he belongs to4 ,to make a man work1 say something to him or do something to him which will make him swing his hat for humanity1 and give three cheers 7like a meeting of workmen the other day73 ,three cheers for ,god6 ,there is a well-known firm in ,england which has the best labour of its kind in the world1 because the moment the ,firm finds that a man's skill has reached the uttermost point in his work1 where it would be to the ,firm's immediate interests to keep him and where the ,firm could keep on making money out of him and where the man could not keep on growing1 they have a way of stepping up to such a man 7and such things happen every few days71 and telling him that he ought to go elsewhere1 finding him a better place and sending him to it4 ,this is a regular system and highly organized4 ,the factory is known or looked upon as a big family or school4 ,there are hundreds of young men and young women who1 in order to get in and get started1 and merely be on the premises of such a factory1 would offer to work for the firm for nothing4 ,the ,factory1 to them1 is like a great ,gate on the ,world4 ,it is its ideals that have made the factory a great gate on the ,world4 ,and ideals are news4 ,ideals are news to a man about himself4 ,news to a man about himself and about what he can be1 is gospel4 ,and a factory with men at the top who have the brains about human nature to do things like this1 men who can tell people news about themselves1 all day1 every day1 all the week1 like a church--let such a factory1 ,i say1 for one1 have a steeple with chimes in it1 if it wants to1 and be counted with the other churches6 ,people have a fashion of speaking of a man's ideals in a kind of weak1 pale way1 as if ideals were clouds1 done in water-colour by schoolgirls1 as if they were pretty1 innocent things1 instead of being fierce1 splendid1 terrific energies1 victorious1 irrevocable in human history1 trampling the earth like unicorns1 breathing wonder1 deaths1 births upon the world1 carrying everything before them1 everywhere they go4 ,these are ideals6 ,this may not be the way ideals work in a moment or in a year1 but it is the way they work in history1 and it is the way they make a man feel when he is working on them4 ,it is what they are for1 to make him feel like this1 when he is working on them4 ,with the men who are most alive and who live the longest1 the men who live farther ahead and think in longer periods of time1 the energies in ideals function as an everyday matter of course4 ,i wish people would speak oftener of a man's motives1 what he lives for1 as his motive powers4 ,they generally speak of motives in a man as if they were a mere kind of dead chart or spiritual geography in him1 or clock-hand on him or map of his soul4 ,the motives and desires in a man are the motors or engines in him1 the central power house in a man1 the thing in him that makes him go4 ,all a man has to do to live suddenly and unexpectedly a big life is to have suddenly a big motive4 ,anybody who has ever tried1 for five minutes1 a big motive1 ever tried working a little happiness for other people into what he is doing for himself1 for instance1 if he stopped to think about it and how it worked and how happy it made him himself1 would never do anything in any other way all his life4 ,it is the big motives that are efficient4 ,,part ,,two ,,news ,,and ,,money ,i think it was ,sir ,william ,lever who remarked 7but ,i have heard in the last two years so many pearls dropped from the lips of millionaires that ,i am not quite sure7 that the way to tell a millionaire1 when one saw one1 was by his lack of ready money4 ,he added that perhaps a surer way of knowing a millionaire1 when one saw one1 was by his lack of ideas4 ,my own experience is that neither of these ways works as well as it used to4 ,i very often meet a man now--a real live millionaire1 no one would think it of4 ,one of them--one of the last ones--telegraphed me from down in the country one morning1 swung up to ,london on a quick train1 cooped me up with him at a little corner table in his hotel1 and gave me more ideas in two hours than ,i had had in a week4 ,i came away very curious about him--whoever he was4 ,not many days afterward ,i found myself motoring up a long1 slow hill1 full of wind and heather1 and there in a stately park with all his treetops around him1 and his own blue sky1 in a big1 beautiful1 serene room1 ,i saw him again4 ,he began at once1 ,do you think ,christ would have approved of my house8 ,his five grown sons were sitting around him but he spoke vividly and directly and like a child1 and as if he had just brushed sixty years away1 and could1 any time4 ,i said ,i did not think it fair to ,christ1 two thousand years off1 to ask what he would have thought of a house like his1 now4 ,the only fair thing to do would be to ask what ,christ would think if ,he were living here to-day4 ,well1 suppose ,he had motored over here with you this afternoon from ---- ,manor1 and spent last night with you there1 and talked with you and with ---- and had seen the pictures1 and the great music room and wandered through the gardens1 and suppose that then ,he had come through on his way up1 all those two miles of slums down in ---- seen all those poor1 driven1 crowded people1 and had finally come up here with you to this big1 still1 restful place two thousand people could live in1 and which ,i keep all to myself4 ,you don't really mean to say1 do you1 that ,he would approve of my living in a house like this8 ,i said that ,i did not think that ,christ would be tipped over by a house or lose his bearings with a human soul because he lived in a park4 ,i thought ,he would look him straight in the eyes4 ,but ,christ said1 ',he that loseth his life shall save it6' ,yes1 but ,he did not intend it as a mere remark about people's houses4 ,it did not seem to me that ,christ meant simply giving up to other people easy and ordinary things like houses or like money1 but that ,he meant giving up to others our motives1 giving up the deepest1 hardest things in us1 our very selves to other people4 ,and so you really think that if ,christ came and looked at this house and looked at me in it1 ,he would not mind8 ,i do not know4 ,i think that after ,he had looked at your house ,he would go down and look at your factory1 possibly4 ,how many men do you employ8 ,sixteen hundred4 ,i think ,he would look at them1 the sixteen hundred men1 and then ,he would move about a little4 ,very likely ,he would look at their wives and the little children4 ,he thought a moment4 ,i could see that he was not as afraid of having ,christ see the factory as he was of having ,him see the house4 ,i was not quite sure but ,i thought there was a little faint gleam in his eye when ,i mentioned the factory4 ,what do you make8 ,i asked4 ,he named something that everybody knows4 ,then ,i remembered suddenly who he was4 ,he was one of the men ,i had first been told about in ,england1 and the name had slipped from me4 ,he had managed to do and do together the three things one goes about looking for everywhere in business--what might be called the ,three ,r's of great business 7though not necessarily ,r's74 7#a7 ,he had raised the wages of his employees4 7#b7 ,he had reduced prices to consumers4 7#c7 ,he had reduced his proportion of profit and raised the income of the works1 by inventing new classes of customers1 and increasing the volume of the business4 ,he had found himself1 one day1 as most men do1 sooner or later1 with a demand for wages that he could not pay4 ,at first he told the men he could not pay them more1 said that he would have to close the works if he did4 ,he was a very busy man to be confronted with a crisis like this4 ,the market was trouble enough4 ,one morning1 when he was up early1 and the house was all still and he was sitting alone with himself1 the thought slipped into his mind that there had been several times before in his life when he had sat thinking about certain things that could not be done4 ,and then he had got up from thinking they could not be done and gone out and done them4 ,he wondered if he could not get up and go out and do this one4 ,as he sat in the stillness with a clear road before his mind and not a soul in the world up1 the thought occurred to him1 with not a thing in sight to stop it1 that he had not really trained himself to be quite such an expert in raising wages as he had in some other things4 ,perhaps he did not know about raising wages4 ,perhaps if he concentrated his imagination as much on getting higher wages for his workmen as he had in those early days years before on making over all his obstinate raw material into the best cases of ---- on earth1 he might find it possible to get more wages for his men by persuading them to earn more and by getting their coperation in finding ways to earn more4 ,as he sat in the stillness1 gradually 7perhaps it was the stillness that did it7 the idea grew on him4 ,he made up his mind to see what would happen if he worked as hard at paying higher wages for three months as he had for three years at making raw material into cases of the best----on earth4 ,then things began happening every day4 ,one of the most important happened to him4 ,he found that higher wages were as interesting a thing to work on as any other raw material had ever been4 ,he found that a cheap workman as raw material to make a high-priced workman out of was as interesting as a case of----4 ,a year or so after this1 there was a strike 7in his particular industry7 of all the workmen in ,england4 ,they struck to be paid the wages his men were paid4 ,he had been able to do three things he thought he thought he could not do4 ,he had succeeded in doing the first1 in raising the wages of his employees1 by thinking up original ways of expressing himself to them1 and of getting them to believe in him and of making them want to work a third harder4 ,at the same time he succeeded in doing the second1 in reducing the prices to consumers1 by inventing new by-products out of waste4 ,he had succeeded in doing the third1 in reducing his per cent4 of profits and increasing his income from the works at the same time1 by thinking up ways of creating new habits and new needs in his customers4 ,he had fulfilled1 as it seems1 the three requisites of a great business career4 ,he had created new workmen1 invented new things for men and women to want1 and had then created some new men and women who could want them4 ,incidentally all the while1 day by day1 while he was doing these things1 he had distributed a large and more or less unexpected sum of money among all these three classes of people4 ,some of this extra money went to his workmen1 and some to himself1 and some to his customers1 but it was largely spent1 of course1 in getting business for other manufacturers and in getting people to buy all over ,england1 from other manufacturers1 things that such people as they had never been able before to afford to buy4 99 99 99 99 99 ,all these things that ,i have been saying and which ,i have duly confided to the reader flashed through my mind as ,i stood with my back to the fire1 realizing suddenly that the man who had done them was the man with whom ,i was talking4 ,possibly some little thing was said4 ,i do not remember what4 ,the next thing ,i knew was that1 with his five grown sons around him1 he returned to his attack on his house4 ,he said some days he was glad it was so far away4 ,he did not want his workmen to see it4 ,he did not go to the mill often in his motor-car1 not when he could help it4 ,i said that ,i thought that a man who was doing extraordinary things for other people1 things that other men could not get time or strength or freedom or boldness of mind or initiative to do1 that any particular thing he could have that gave him any advantage or immunity for doing the extraordinary things better1 that would give him more of a chance to give other people a chance1 that the other people1 if they were in their senses1 would insist upon his having these things4 ,i think there are hundreds of men in my mill who think that they ought to have my motor-car and three or four rooms in this house4 ,are they the most efficient ones8 ,no4 ,if a man gives over to other people his deepest motives1 and if he really identifies himself--the very inside of himself with them and treats their interests as his interests1 the more money he has1 the more people like it4 ,take me1 for instance1 ,i said4 ,i have hoped every minute since ,i knew you1 that you were a prosperous man4 ,i saw the house and looked around in the park as ,i motored up with joy4 ,and when ,i came to the big gate ,i wanted to give three cheers6 ,i wish you had stock in the ,meat ,trust in ,america1 that you could pierce your way like a microbe into the vitals1 into the inside of the ,meat ,trust in my own country1 make a stand in a ,directors' ,meeting for ninety million people over there1 say your say for them1 vote your stock for them1 say how you want a ,meat ,trust you belong to1 to behave1 how you want it to be a big1 serious1 business institution and not a humdrum1 mechanical-minded hold-up anybody could think of--in charge of a few uninteresting1 inglorious men--men nobody really cares to know and that nobody wants to be like 444 when ,i think of what a man like you with money can do 4446 ,am ,i not tired every day1 are you not tired1 yourself1 of going about everywhere and seeing money in the hands of all these second-class1 socially feeble-minded men1 of seeing columns in the papers of what such men think1 of having college presidents1 great universities1 domes1 churches and thousands of steeples all deferring to them and bowing to them1 and all the superior1 live1 interested people ringing their door bells for their money waiting outside on benches for what they think8 ,i do not believe that ,christ came into the world1 two thousand years ago1 to say that only the men who have minds of the second class1 men who are not far-sighted enough in business to be decently unselfish in this world1 should be allowed to have control of the money and of the peoples' means of living in it4 ,we are living in an age of big machines and big1 inevitable aggregations1 and to say in an age like this1 and above all1 to get it out of a ,bible1 or put it into a hymn book or make a religion of it1 that all the first class minds of the world--the men who see far enough to be unselfish1 should give over their money to second-class men1 is the most monstrous1 most unbelieving1 unfaithful1 unbiblical1 irreligious thing a world can be guilty of4 ,the one thing that is now the matter with money1 is that the second-class people have most of it4 ,what would happen if we applied asceticism or a tired1 discouraged unbelief to having children that we do to having pounds and pence and dollars and cents8 ,you would not stand for that would you8 ,i looked at his five sons4 ,suppose all the good families of to-day were to take the ground that having children is a self-indulgence unworthy of good people2 suppose the good people leave having children in this world almost entirely to bad ones8 ,this is what has been happening to money4 ,unbelief in money is unbelief in the spirit4 ,it is paying too much attention to wealth to say that one must or that one must not have it4 ,i cannot recall precisely what was said after this in that long evening talk of ours but what ,i tried to say perhaps might have been something like this3 ,the essence of the ,new ,testament seems to be the emphasis of a man's spirit with or without money4 ,whether a man should be rich or get out of being rich and earn the right to be poor 7which some very true and big men1 artists and inventors in this world will always prefer7 turns on a man's temperament4 ,if a man has a money genius and can so handle money that he can make money1 and if he can1 at the same time1 and all in one bargain1 express his own spirit1 if he can free the spirits of other men with money and express his religion in it1 he should be ostracized by all thoughtful1 ,christian people1 if in the desperate crisis of an age like this1 he tries to get out of being rich4 ,the one thing a man can be said to be for in this world1 is to express the goodness--the religion in him1 in something1 and if he is not the kind of man who can express his religion in money and in employing labour1 then let him find something--say music or radium or painting in which he can4 ,it is this bounding off in a world1 this making a bare spot in life and saying ,this is not ,god1 this cannot be ,god6--it is this alone that is sacriligious4 99 99 99 99 99 ,it may be that ,i am merely speaking for myself1 but ,i did discover a man on ,fleet ,street the other day who quite agreed with me apparently1 that if the thing a man has in him is religion he can put it up or express it in almost anything4 ,this man had tried to express his idea in a window4 ,he had done a ,leonardo da ,vinci's ,last ,supper1 in sugar--a kind of bas-relief in sugar4 ,i do not claim that this kind of foolish1 helpless caricature of a great spiritual truth filled me with a great reverence or that it does now4 ,but it did make me think how things were4 ,if sugar with this man1 like money with a banker1 was the one logical thing the man had to express his religion in1 or if what he had had to express had been really true and fine1 or if there had been a true or fine or great man to express1 ,i do not doubt sugar could have been made to do it4 ,one single man with enough money and enough religions skill in human nature1 who would get into the ,sugar ,trust with some good1 fighting1 voting stock1 who could make the ,sugar ,trust do as it would be done by1 would make over ,american industry in twenty years4 ,he would have thrown up as on a high mountain1 before all ,american men1 one great specimen1 enviable business4 ,he would have revealed as in a kind of deep1 sober apocalypse1 ,american business to itself4 ,he would have revealed ,american business as a new national art form1 as an expression of the practical religion1 the genius for real things1 that is our real modern temperament in ,america and the real modern temperament in all the nations4 ,of course it may not need to be done precisely with the ,sugar ,trust4 ,the ,meat ,trust might do it first1 or the ,steel ,trust4 ,but it will be done4 ,then the ,golden ,rule1 one great ,golden ,rule-machine having been installed in our trust that knew the most1 and was most known1 it could be installed in the others4 ,religion can be expressed much better to-day in a stock-holder's meeting than it can in a prayer-meeting4 ,charles ,cabot1 of ,boston1 walked in quietly to the ,stock-holder's ,meeting of the ,steel ,trust one day and with a little touch of money--#b1ijj in one hand1 and a copy of the ,american ,magazine in the other1 made 7with #b1ijj7 #a1dfh1jjj1jjj do right4 ,,part ,,three ,,news ,,and ,,government ,,chapter ,i ,,oxford ,,street ,,and ,,the ,,house ,,of ,,commons ,every now and then when ,i am in ,london 7at the instigation of some business man who takes the time off to belong to it71 ,i drop into a pleasant but other-worldly and absent-minded place called the ,house of ,commons4 ,i sit in the windows in the smoking-room and watch the faces of the members all about me and watch the steamships1 strangely1 softly1 suddenly--,shakespeare and ,pepys1 outside on the river1 slip gravely by under glass4 ,or ,i go in and sit down under the gallery1 face to face with the ,speaker1 looking across those profiles of world-makers in their seats2 and ,i watch and listen in the ,house itself4 ,there is a kind of pleasant1 convenient1 appropriate hush upon the world there4 ,wisdom4 ,the decorous1 orderly machinery of knowledge rolls over one--one listens to ,it1 to the soft clatter of the endless belt of words4 ,every now and then one sees a member in the middle of a speech1 or possibly in the middle of a sentence1 slip up quietly and take a look 7under glass7 at ,the ,people1 or he uses a microscope1 perhaps1 or a reading glass on ,the ,people1 ,mr4 ,bonar ,law's1 ,mr4 ,lloyd ,george's1 ,ramsay ,mac,donald's1 ,will ,crook's1 or somebody's4 ,then he comes back gravely as if he had got the people attended to now1 and finishes what he was saying4 ,it is a very queer feeling one has about the ,people in the ,house of ,commons4 ,i mean the feeling of their being under glass2 they all seem so manageable1 so quiet and so remote1 a kind of glazed-over picture in still life1 of themselves4 ,every now and then1 of course one takes a member seriously when he steps up to the huge showcase of specimen crowds1 which members are always referring to in their speeches4 ,but nothing comes of it4 ,the crowds seem very remote there under the glass4 ,one feels like smashing something--getting down to closer terms with them--one longs for a ,department ,store or a bridge or a 'bus--something that rattles and bangs and is4 ,all the while outside the mighty street--that huge megaphone of the crowd1 goes shouting past4 ,one wishes the ,house would notice it4 ,but no one does4 ,there is always just the ,house ,itself and that hush or ring of silence around it1 all ,england listening1 all the little country papers far away with their hands up to their ears and the great serious-minded ,dailies1 and the witty ,weeklies1 the stately ,monthlies1 and ,quarterlies all acting as if it mattered4444 ,even during the coal strike nothing really happened in the ,house of ,commons4 ,there was a sense of the great serious people1 of the crowds on ,westminster ,bridge surging softly through glass outside1 but nothing got in4 ,big ,ben boomed down the river1 across the pavements1 over the hurrying crowds and over all the men and the women1 the real business men and women4 ,the only thing about the ,house that seemed to have anything to do with anybody was ,big ,ben4 ,finally one goes up to ,harrod's to get relief1 or one takes a 'bus1 or one tries ,trafalgar ,square1 or one sees if one can really get across the ,strand or one does something--almost anything to recall one's self to real life4 ,and then1 of course1 there is ,oxford ,street4 ,almost always after watching the ,english people express themselves or straining to express themselves in the ,house of ,commons1 ,i try ,oxford ,street4 ,i know1 of course1 that as an art-form for expressing a great people1 ,oxford ,street is not all that it should be1 but there is certainly something1 after all the mooniness and the dim droniness1 and lawyer-mindedness in the way the ,english people express themselves or think that they ought to express themselves in their house of ,commons--there is certainly something that makes ,oxford ,street seem suddenly a fine1 free1 candid way for a great people to talk6 ,and there is all the gusto1 too1 the 'busses1 the taxies1 the hundreds of thousands of men and women saying things and buying things they believe4 ,taking in the shops on both sides or the street1 and taking in the things the people are doing behind the counters1 and in the aisles1 and up in the office windows three blocks of ,oxford ,street really express what the ,english people really want and what they really think and what they believe and put up money on1 more than three years of the house of ,commons4 ,if ,i were an ,englishman ,i would rather be elected to walk up and down ,oxford ,street and read what ,i saw there than to be elected to a seat in the ,house of ,commons1 and ,i could accomplish more and learn more for a nation1 with three blocks of ,oxford ,street1 with what ,i could gather up and read there1 and with what ,i could resent and believe there1 than ,i could with three years of the ,house of ,commons4 ,i know that anybody1 of course1 could be elected to walk up and down ,oxford ,street4 ,but it is enough for me4 ,so ,i almost always try it after the house of ,commons4 ,and when ,i have taken a little swing down ,oxford ,street and got the ,house of ,commons out of my system a little1 perhaps ,i go down to the ,embankment1 and drop into my club4 ,then ,i sit in the window and mull4 ,if the ,english people express themselves and express what they want and what they are bound to have1 on ,oxford ,street and put their money down for it1 so much better than they do in the ,house of ,commons1 why should they not do it there8 ,why should elaborate1 roundabout1 mysterious things like governments1 that have to be spoken of in whispers 7and that express themselves usually in a kind of lawyer-minded way1 in picked and dried words like wills71 be looked upon so seriously1 and be taken on the whole1 as the main reliance the people have1 in a great nation1 for expressing themselves8 ,why should not a great people be allowed to say what they are like and to say what they want and what they are bound to get1 in the way ,oxford ,street says things1 in a few straight1 clean-cut1 ordinary words1 in long quiet rows of deeds1 of buying and selling and acting8 ,pounds1 shillings1 and silence4 ,then on to the next thing4 ,if the ,house of ,commons were more like ,oxford ,street or even if it had suddenly something of the tone of ,oxford ,street1 if suddenly it were to begin some fine morning to express ,england the way ,oxford ,street does1 would not one see1 in less than three months1 new kinds and new sizes of men all over ,england1 wanting to belong to it8 ,big1 powerful1 uncompromising1 creative men who have no time for twiddling1 who never would have dreamed of being tucked away in the house of ,commons before1 would want to belong to it4 ,in the meantime1 of course1 the men of ,england who have empires to express1 are not unnaturally expressing them in more simple language like foundries1 soap factories around a world1 tungsten mines1 department stores1 banks1 subways1 railroads for seventy nations1 and ships on seven seas1 ,winnipeg trolleys and little ,new ,york skyscrapers4 ,business men of the more usual or humdrum kind could not do it1 but certainly1 the first day that business men like these1 of the first or world-size class1 once find the ,house of ,commons a place they like to be in1 once begin expressing the genius of the ,english people in government as they are already expressing the genius of the ,english people in owning the earth1 in buying and selling1 in inventing things and in inventing corporations1 the ,house of ,commons will cease to be a bog of words1 an abyss of committees1 and legislation will begin to be run like a railroad--on a block signal system1 rows of things taken up1 gone over1 and finished4 ,the click of the signal4 ,then the next thing4 ,i sit in my club and look out of the window and think4 ,just outside thousands of taxies shooting all these little mighty wills of men across my window1 across ,london1 across ,england1 across the world 444 the huge1 imperious street 444 all these men hurling themselves about in it1 joining their wills on to telephone wires1 to mighty trains and little quiet country roads1 hitching up cables to their wills1 and ships--hitching up the very clouds over the sea to their wills and running a world--why are not men like these--men who have the street-spirit in them1 this motor genius of driving through to what they want1 taking seats in the ,house of ,commons8 ,perhaps ,oxford ,street is more efficient and more characteristic in expressing the genius and the will of the ,english people than the ,house of ,commons is because of the way in which the people select the men they want to express them in ,oxford ,street4 ,it may be that the men the people have selected to be at the top of the nation's law-making are not selected by as skillful1 painstaking1 or thorough a process as the men who have been selected to be placed at the top of the nation's buying and selling4 ,possibly the reason the ,house of ,commons does not express the will of the people is1 that its members are merely selected in a loose1 vague way and by merely counting noses4 ,possibly1 too1 the men who are selected by a true1 honest1 direct1 natural selection to be the leaders and to free the energies and steer the work of the people1 the men who are selected to lead by being seen and lived with and worked with all day1 every day1 are better selected men than men who having been voted on on slips of paper1 and having been seen in newspaper paragraphs1 travel up to ,london and begin thoughtlessly running a world4 ,the business man drops into the ,house of ,commons after the meeting of his firm in ,bond ,street1 ,lombard ,street1 or ,oxford ,street and takes a look at it4 ,he sees before him a huge tool or piece of machinery--a body of men intended to work together and to get certain grave1 particular1 and important things done1 that the people want done1 and he does not see how a great good-hearted chaos or welter1 a kind of chance national ,weather of ,human ,nature like the ,house of ,commons1 can get the things done4 ,so he confines himself more and more to business where he loses less time in wondering what other people think or if they think at all1 cuts out the work he sees1 and does it4 ,he thinks how it would be if things were turned around and if people tried to get expressed in business in the loose way1 the thoughtless reverie of voting that they use in trying to get themselves expressed in politics4 ,he thinks the stockholders of the ,sunlight ,soap ,company1 ,limited1 would be considerably alarmed to have the president and superintendent and treasurer and the buyers and salesmen of the company elected at the polls by the people in the county or by popular suffrage4 ,he thinks that thousands of the hands as well as the stockholders would be alarmed too4 ,it does not seem to him that anybody1 poor or rich1 employer or employee1 in matters of grave personal concern1 would be willing to trust his interest or would really expect the people1 all the people as a whole1 to be represented or to get what they wanted1 to act definitely and efficiently through the vague generalizations of the polls4 ,perhaps a natural selection1 a dead-earnest rigorous1 selection that men work on nine hours a day1 an implacable1 unremitting process during working hours1 of sorting men out 7which we call business71 is the crowd's most reliable way of registering what it definitely thinks about the men it wants to represent it4 ,business is the crowd's1 big1 serious1 daily voting in pounds1 shillings1 and pence--its hour to hour1 unceasing1 intimate1 detailed labour in picking men out1 in putting at the top the men it can work with best1 the men who most express it1 who have the most genius to serve crowds1 to reveal to crowds their own minds1 and supply to them what they want4 ,as full as it is--like all broad1 honest expressions1 of human shortcomings and of things that are soon to be stopped1 it does remain to be said that business1 in a huge1 rough way1 daily expressing the crowds as far as they have got--the best in them and the worst in them1 is1 after all1 their most faithful and true record1 their handwriting4 ,business is the crowds' autograph--its huge1 slow1 clumsy signature upon our world4 ,buying and selling is the life blood of the crowds' thought1 its big1 brutal daily confiding to us of its view of human life4 ,what do the crowds1 poor and rich1 really believe about life8 ,property is the last will and testament of ,crowds4 ,the man-sorting that goes on in distributing and producing property is the ,crowd's most unremitting1 most normal1 temperamental way of determining and selecting its most efficient and valuable leaders--its men who can express it1 and who can act for it4 ,this is the first reason ,i would give against letting the people rely on having a ,house of ,commons compel business men to be good4 ,men who meet now and again during the year1 afternoons or evenings1 who have been picked out to be at the top of the nation's talking1 by a loose absent-minded and illogical paper-process1 cannot expect to control men who have been picked out to be at the top of a nation's buying and selling1 by a hard-working1 closely fitting1 logical process--the men that all the people by everything they do1 every day1 all day1 have picked out to represent them4 ,any chance three blocks of ,oxford ,street could be relied on to do better4 ,keeping the polls open once in so often1 a few hours1 and using hearsay and little slips of paper--anybody dropping in--seems a rather fluttery and uncertain way to pick out the representatives of the people1 after one has considered three blocks of ,oxford ,street4 ,the next thing the crowd is going to do in getting what it wants from business men is to deal directly with the business men themselves and stop feeling1 what many people feel partly from habit1 perhaps1 that the only way the crowd can get to what it wants is to go way over or way back or way around by ,robin ,hood's barn or the ,house of ,commons4 ,but there is a second reason3 ,the trouble is not merely in the way men who sit in the ,house of ,commons are selected4 ,the real deep-seated trouble with the men who sit in the ,house of ,commons is that they like it4 ,the difficulty 7as in the ,american ,congress too7 seems to be something in the men themselves4 ,it lies in what might be called1 for lack of a better name1 perhaps1 the ,hem and ,haw or ,parliament ,temperament4 ,the dominating type of man in all the world's legislative bodies1 for the time being1 seems to be the considerer or reconsiderer1 the man who dotes on the little and tiddly sides of great problems4 ,the greatness of the problem furnishes1 of course1 the pleasant1 pale glow1 the happy sense of importance to a man1 and then there is all the jolly littleness of the little things besides--the little things that a little man can make look big by getting them in the way of big ones--a great nation looking on and waiting4444 ,for such a man there always seems to be a certain coziness and hominess in a ,legislative ,body4444 ,as a seat in the ,house of ,commons not unnaturally--every year it is hemmed or hawed in1 gets farther and farther away from the people1 it is becoming more and more apparent to the people every year that the ,members of their ,house of ,commons as a class are unlikely to do anything of a very striking or important or lasting value in the way of getting business men to be good4 ,the more efficient and practical business men are coming to suspect that the members of the ,house of ,commons1 speaking broadly1 do not know the will of the people1 and that they could not express it in creative1 straightforward and affirmative laws if they did4 ,,chapter ,,ii ,,oxford ,,street ,,hums4 ,,the ,,house ,,hems ,but it is not only because the members of the ,house of ,commons are selected in a vague way or because they are a vague kind of men1 that they fail to represent the people4 ,the third reason against having a ,house of ,commons try to compel business men to be good1 by law1 is its out-of-the-way position4 ,the out-of-the-way position that a ,parliament occupies in getting business men to be good1 can be best considered1 perhaps1 by admitting at the outset that a government really is one very real and genuine way a great people may have of expressing themselves1 of expressing what they are like and what they want1 and that business is another way4 ,then the question narrows down4 ,which way of expressing the people is the one that expresses them the most to the point1 and which expresses them where their being expressed counts the most8 ,the people have a ,government4 ,and the people have ,business4 ,what is a ,government for8 ,what is ,business for8 ,business is the occupation of finding out and anticipating what the wants of the ,english people really are and of finding out ways of supplying them4 ,the business men on ,oxford ,street hire twenty or thirty thousand men and women1 keep them at work eight or nine hours a day1 five or six days in a week1 finding out what the things are that the ,english people want and reporting on them and supplying them4 ,they are naturally in a strategic position to find out1 not only what kinds of things the people want1 but to find out1 too1 just how they want the things placed before them1 what kind of storekeepers and manufacturers1 salesmen and saleswomen they tolerate1 like to deal with and prefer to have prosper4 ,and the business men are not only in the most strategic and competent position to find out what the people who buy want1 but to find out too1 what the people who sell want4 ,they are in the best position to know1 and to know intimately1 what the salesmen and saleswomen want and what they want to be and what they want to do or not do4 ,they are in a close and watchful position1 too1 with regard to the conditions in the factories from which their goods come and with regard to what the employers1 stockholders1 foremen and workmen in those factories want4 ,what is more to the point1 these same business men1 when they have once found out just what it is the people want1 are the only men who are in a position1 all in the same breath1 without asking anybody and without arguing with anybody1 without meddling or convincing anybody--to get it for them4 ,finding out what people want and getting it for them is what may be called1 controlling business4 ,the question not unnaturally arises with all these business men and their twenty or thirty thousand people working with them1 eight or nine hours a day1 five or six days a week1 in controlling business1 why should the members of the ,house of ,commons expect1 by taking a few afternoons or evenings off for it1 to control business for them8 ,if ,i were an employee and if what ,i wanted to do was to improve the conditions of labour in my own calling1 ,i do not think ,i would want to take the time to wait several months1 probably1 to convince my member of ,parliament1 and then wait a few months more for him to convince the other members of ,parliament1 and then vote his one vote4 ,i would rather deal directly with my employer4 ,if my employer is on my back and if ,i can once get the attention of my employer himself1 as to where he is and as to how he is interrupting what ,i am doing for him--if ,i once get his attention and once get him to notice my back1 he can get down4 ,no one else can get down for him and no one else1 except by turning a whole nation all around1 can make him get down4 ,why should a man bother with ,t4,p4's ,weekly or with ,horatio ,bottomley or with the ,daily ,mail or the ,times1 with a score of other people's by-elections all over ,england to lift his own employer off his back8 ,there is a very simple rule for it4 ,the way to lift one's employer off one's back is to make one's back so efficient that he cannot afford to be on it4 ,the first thing ,i would do would be to see if ,i could not persuade my employer to take steps to train me and to make me efficient1 himself4 ,and perhaps the second thing ,i would try to do would be to wake my trades union up1 to get my trades union to consent to let me want to try to be efficient and work as hard as ,i can1 or to consent to my employer's hiring engineers to make me efficient4 ,i would try to get my trades union to be interested in hiring itself some special expert like ,frederick ,taylor1 some specialist in making a man do three times as much work with the same strength1 making him three times as valuable for his employer and three times as fit and strong for himself4 ,this is what ,i would do if ,i wanted to make my employer good4 ,i would be so good that he could not afford not being good too4 ,if ,i were an employer1 on the other hand1 and understood human nature1 and knew enough about psychology to found a great business house and wanted to make my employee good1 or make him work three times as hard for me1 with three times the normal strength1 day by day1 and have a normal old age to look forward to1 ,i do not think ,i would wait for the ,house of ,commons to butt in and pension him4 ,it seems to me that ,i would be in a position to do it more adequately1 more rapidly1 and do it with more intimate knowledge of economy than the ,house of ,commons could4 ,and ,i would not have to convince several hundred men1 men from rural counties1 how ,i could improve my factory and get them to let me improve it4 ,i could do it quietly by myself4 ,in any given industrial difficulty1 there is and must be a vision for every man1 a vision either borrowed for him or made for him by some one else1 or a vision he has made for himself1 that fits in just where he is4 ,in the last analysis our industrial success is going to lie in the sense of ,here1 and ,me1 and ,now1 raised to the n-th power1 in what might be called a kind of larger syndicalism4 ,the typical syndicalist1 instead of saying1 as he does to-day1 ,we will take the factories out of our employers hands and run them ourselves1 is going to say1 ,we will make ourselves fit to run the factories ourselves4 ,what would please the employers more1 give them a general1 or national confidence in trying to run business and improve the conditions of work to-day1 than to have their employees1 suddenly1 all over the nation1 begin doing their work so well that they would be fit to run the factories8 ,what is true of employers and employees in factories is still more true of the employers and employees in the great retail stores4 ,if there is one thing rather than another the business men and women on ,oxford ,street1 the managers1 floor walkers and clerks all up and down the street are really engaged in all day all their lives1 it is what might be called a daily nine-hour drill in understanding people4 ,why should employers and employees like these--experts in human nature--men who make their profession a success by studying human nature1 and by working in it daily1 call in a few drifting gentlemen from the ,house of ,commons and expect them to work out their human problems better than they can do it8 ,employers and clerks in retail stores are the two sets of people in all the world most competent to study together the working details of human nature1 to act for themselves in self-respecting man-fashion and without whining at a nation4 ,who that they could hope to deal with and get what they want from1 could know more about human nature than they do8 ,are they not the men of all others1 all up and down that little strip of ,oxford ,street1 who devote their entire time to human nature8 ,they are in the daily profession of knowing the soonest and knowing the most about what people are like1 and about what people will probably think4 ,they are intimate with their peccadillos in what they want to wear and in what they want to eat2 they have learned their likes and dislikes in human nature2 they know what they will support and what they will defy in human nature1 in clerks1 and in stores1 and in storekeepers4 ,and these things that they have learned about human nature 7in themselves and other people7 they have learned not by talking about human nature but by a grim daily doing things with it4 ,these things being so1 it would almost seem that these people and people like them were qualified to act1 and as they happen to be in the one strategic position1 both employers and employees alike1 to act and to act for themselves and act directly and act together1 it will not be very long1 probably1 before the nation will be very glad to have them do it4 ,it is likely to be seen very soon 7at least by all skilled ,labour and all skilled ,capital7 that running out into the street and crying ,help6 and calling in some third person to settle family difficulties that can be better settled by being faced and thought out in private1 is an inefficient and incompetent thing to do4 ,and for the most part it is going to be only in the more superficial1 inefficient1 thoughtless industry that men1 either employers or employed1 will be inclined to leave their daily work1 run out wildly and drag in a ,house of ,commons to help them to do right4 ,i am only speaking for myself but certainly if ,i were an employer or an employee1 ,i would not want to wait for an election a year away or to wait for the great engineering problem of compelling my member of ,parliament by my one vote to act for me4 ,perhaps workingmen in ,england and ,america are deceived about the value of voting as a means of improving conditions of workingmen4 ,possibly women are deceived about the value of voting as a means of improving the conditions of working women4 ,possibly a woman could do more behind a counter or by buying a store than by voting to have some man she has read about in a paper1 improve business by talking about it in the ,house of ,commons4 99 99 99 99 99 ,there is also a kind of program or vision of action one can use as a customer as well as an employer or employee4 ,i might speak for myself4 ,i have about so much money ,i spend every year in buying things4 ,i have proposed to study with my money every firm on which ,i spend it4 ,i propose to take away my trade from the firm that does the least as it should and give it to the firm that does the most as it should4 ,i will vote with my entire income and with every penny ,i save for the kind of employers ,i believe in and that ,i want1 for the kind of employers who can earn and deserve and enjoy and keep the kind of salesmen and saleswomen ,i choose to do business with4 ,all the year round1 every firm with which ,i deal1 ,i am going to study not only with my mind but with my money4 ,i will proceed to take my trade away from the big employers who think that ,i want shoddy goods or who think that ,i want or am willing to trade with saleswomen who would let an employer impose on them1 saleswomen that he thinks he can afford to impose upon4 ,i will proceed to vote with my money1 with every penny ,i have in the world1 and ,i will earn more that ,i may vote more1 for the kind of employer with whom ,i like to trade4 ,and there shall not be a man1 woman1 or child of my acquaintance1 if ,i can help it1 or of my family's acquaintance who shall not know who these employers are by name and by address1 the employers that ,i will trade with and the employers that ,i will not4 ,this is my idea as a customer1 as a member of the public1 of the way for a people to express itself and to get what it wants4 ,what ,i want may be said to be a kind of news1 news about me so far as ,i go1 as one member of the public4 ,as ,i am only one person every item of the news about me must be put where it works4 ,i will deal directly with the news of what ,i want and ,i will convey that news1 not to the ,house of ,commons but to the men who have what ,i want and who can give it to me when they know it4 ,news is the real government now and always of this world4 ,when one has made up one's mind to tell this news1 obviously the best art-form for telling news to employers and business men--the news of what we want and what we do not want and of what we want in them as well as in the things they sell1 is to tell them the news in the language they have studied most1 tell it to them in pounds1 shillings1 dollars1 and cents1 and by trading somewhere else4 ,the gospel-bearing value1 the news that one can get into a man's mind with one dollar1 the news that he can be made to see and act on for one dollar--well1 thinking of this some days1 makes for me1 at least1 going up and down the ,main ,street of the ,world feeling my purse snuggling in my pocket1 and all the people ,i can step up to with my purse and tell so many dollars' worth of news to1 tell that dollar's worth of gospel to about the world--makes going up and down with a dollar on a big business street1 and spending it or not spending it1 feel like a kind of chronic1 easy1 happy1 going to ,church4 ,one always has a little money in one's pocket that one spends or that one won't spend1 and sometimes even not spending a dollar1 practised by some people1 at just the right moment and in just the right way1 can be made to mean as much and do as much with a world as spending a thousand dollars would without any meaning put into it4 ,sometimes ,i even go into a store on purpose1 a certain kind of store ,i know will try to cheat me in a certain way1 let them look a minute at the dollar they cannot have4 ,then ,i walk out with it quietly4 ,i have said that the life-blood of my convictions shall circulate in my money and if ,i cannot express my soul1 my religion1 my gospel or news for this world1 news about what ,i want and about what ,i will have in a world1 if ,i cannot make every dollar1 every shilling ,i earn1 go through the world and sing my own little world-song in it1 may ,i never have another shilling or earn another dollar as long as ,i live6 ,the very sight of a dollar now whenever ,i see one once more1 fills me with deep1 hopeful working joy1 thinking of what a bargain it is and how ,i can use it twice over1 thinking of the dollar's worth of news1 to say nothing of the dollar's worth of things that belong with a dollar6 99 99 99 99 99 ,for some generations1 now1 we have tried to make people good in a vague1 general way1 by using priests1 sacraments and confessional boxes4 ,for some centuries we have been trying to make people good with lawyers and juries and ballot boxes4 ,we are now to try1 at last1 religion or gospel or news or ideals--practical1 shrewd aimed ideals1 that is1 news to a man about himself or news about the man from the man himself to us4 ,in everything a man does he is expressing to us this news about himself1 and about his world1 and about his ,god4 ,we are all telling news about the world and about ourselves all the time and we are all in a position for news all the time4 ,what is it from hour to hour and day to day that we will do and we will not do8 ,this news about us is the religion in us4 ,the average man is coming to have very accurate ideas of late as to just where his religion is located4 ,he has come to see that real religion in a man1 very conveniently located 7immediately at hand in him and personally directed71 is his own action1 his own divine ,i will or ,i won't4 ,he has come to be deeply attracted by this idea of a religion for every man just where he is1 fitted on patiently1 cheerfully1 to just where he is1 every day all day1 his glorious1 still1 practical1 good-natured1 godlike ,i will and ,i won't --or ,news about himself4 ,,chapter ,,iii ,,president ,,wilson ,,and ,,moses ,we are deeply interested in the ,united ,states just now1 in seeing what will be the fate of ,president ,wilson's government in getting men to be good4 ,the fate of a government in #aiac may be said to stand on the government's psychology or knowledge of human nature or of what might be called human engineering1 its mastery of the principles of lifting over in great masses heavy spiritual bodies1 like people1 swinging great masses of people's minds over as on some huge national derrick up on ,the ,white ,house1 from one lookout on life to another4 ,there are certain aspects of human nature when power is being applied to it in this way1 and when it is being got to be good1 that may not be beside the point4 ,if one could drop in on a government and have a little neighbourly chat with it1 as one was going by1 ,i think ,i would rather talk with it 7especially our government1 just now71 about ,human ,nature than about anything4 ,i would have to do it1 of course1 in what might seem to a government to be a plain and homely way4 ,i would ask the government what it thought of two or three observations ,i have come to lately about the way that human nature works1 when people are getting it to be good4 ,what a government thinks about them might possibly prove before many months to be quite important to ,it4 ,the first observation is this3 ,the reason that the average bachelor is a bachelor is that he spends the first forty-five years of his life in picking out women he will not marry4 ,possibly it is because many people are following the same principle in trying to be good and in getting other people to be good that they make such poor work of it4 ,possibly the main reason why there are so many wicked people or seem to be1 in proportion1 among the ,hebrews in the ,old ,testament1 is that ,moses was a lawyer and that he tried to start off a great people with the ,ten ,commandments1 that is1 a list of nine things they must never do any more1 and of one that they must4 ,some of us who have tried being good1 have noticed that when we have hit it off1 being good 7at least with us7 consists in being focused1 in getting concentrated1 in getting one's attention to what one really wants to do4 ,moses' idea when he started his government1 the idea of getting people concentrated on not getting concentrated on nine things1 was not conducive to goodness4 ,the fundamental principle ,moses tried to make the people good with was a contradiction in terms4 ,it is a principle that would make wicked people out of almost anybody4 ,it is not a practicable principle for a government to rely on in getting people to be good4 ,it did not work with the people in the ,old ,testament and it has never worked with people since4 ,it does not call people out1 in getting them to take up goodness1 to point out to them nine places not to take hold of and one where they will be allowed to take hold1 if they know how4 ,all that one has to do to see how true this is1 is to observe the groups or classes of people who are especially not what they should be4 ,the people who never get on morally 7as different as they may be in most things and in the fields of their activity7 all have one illusion in common4 ,there is one thing they always keep saying when any new hopeful person tries once more to get them to be good4 ,they say 7almost as if they had a phonograph7 that they try to be good and cannot do it4 ,and this is not true4 ,when a man says he tries to be good and cannot do it1 if he sits down and thinks it over he finds1 generally1 he is not trying to be good at all4 ,he is trying to be not bad4 ,a man cannot get himself reformed1 by a negative process1 by being not bad1 and it is still harder for him and for everybody1 when other people try to do it--those who are near him1 and it is still1 still harder for a ,president down in ,washington to do it4 ,an intelligent1 live man or business corporation cannot be got to keep up an interest very long in being not bad4 ,being not bad is a glittering generality4 ,it is like being not extravagant or economical4 ,most people who have ever tried to attain in a respectable degree to a pale little neuter virtue like economy1 and who have reflected upon their experiences1 have come to conclusions that may not be very far from the point in a fine art like getting one's self to be good or getting other people to be good4 ,to concentrate on being economical by going grimly down the street1 looking at the shop windows1 looking hard at miles of things one will not buy1 cannot be said to be a practicable method of attaining economy4 ,the real artist1 in getting himself to be good1 proceeds to upon the opposite principle4 ,even if the good thing he tries for is merely a negative good thing like economy1 he instinctively seeks out some positive way of getting it4 ,a man who is cultivating the art of getting himself to be economical1 or of getting his wife to be economical1 does not make a start by sitting down with a pencil and making out a list1 by concentrating his mind on rows of things that he and his family must get along without4 ,he knows a better way4 ,he goes downtown with his entire family1 takes them into a big shop and sits down with them and listens to a ,steinway ,grand he cannot get4 ,as he listens to it long enough1 he thinks he will get it4 ,then a subtle1 spiritual change passes over him and over his family while they listen4 ,he would not have said before he started that sitting down and thinking of things he could get along without--making lists in his mind of things that he must not have--could ever be in this world a happy1 even an almost thrilling experience4 ,but as a matter of fact1 as he sits by the piano and listens1 he finds himself counting off economies like strings of pearls1 and he greets each new self-sacrifice he can think of with a cheer4 ,while the ,steinway ,grand fills the room with melody all around him1 there he actually is sitting1 and having the time of his life dreaming of the things he can get along without6 ,when he goes home1 he goes home thinking4 ,and the family all go home thinking4 ,then economy sets in4 ,the reason most people make a failure of their economy is that they are not artistic with it1 they do not enjoy it4 ,they do not pick out anything to enjoy their economy with4 ,with some people an automobile would work better than a ,steinway ,grand and there are as many ways1 of course1 of practising the ,steinway ,grand principle in not being bad as there are people1 but they all consist apparently in selecting some big1 positive thing that one wants to do1 which logically includes and bundles all together where they are attended to in a lump1 all the things that one ought not to do4 ,most sins 7every one who has ever tried them knows this7 most sins are not really worth bothering with1 each in detail1 even the not-doing them and the most practical1 firm method of getting them out of the way 7thousands of them at once1 sometimes1 with one hand7 is to have something so big to live for that all the things that would like to get in the way1 and would like to look important1 look1 when one thinks of it1 suddenly small4 ,the distinctive1 preminent1 official business for the next four years1 of making small things in this country look small and of gently1 quietly making small men feel small1 has been assigned by our people recently1 to ,mr4 ,woodrow ,wilson4 ,now it naturally seems to some of us1 the best way for ,mr4 ,wilson's government to do in getting the ,trusts to give up lying and stealing1 is going to be to place before them quietly a few really big1 interesting1 equally exciting things that ,trusts can do1 and then dare them1 as in some great game or tournament of skill--all the people looking on--dare them1 challenge them like great men1 to do them4 ,there are three ideas ,president ,wilson may have of the government's getting people to be good4 ,first1 not letting people be bad4 7,moses47 ,second1 being good for them4 7,karl ,marx47 ,third1 letting them be good themselves4 7,any ,democrat47 ,the first of these ideas means government by ,prison4 ,the second1 means government by ,usurpation1 that is1 the moment a man amounts to enough to choose to do right or do wrong of his own free will1 the moment he is a man1 in other words1 being so afraid of him and of his being a man1 that we all1 in a kind of panic1 shove into his life and live it for him--this is ,socialism1 a scared machine that scared people have invented for not letting people choose to do right because they may choose to do wrong4 ,the third1 letting people be good themselves1 letting them be self-controlling1 self-respecting1 self-expressing or voluntarily good people1 is democracy1 a machine for letting men be men by trying it4 ,moses was the inventor of a kind of national moral-brake system1 a machine for stopping people nine times out of ten4 ,the question that faces ,president ,wilson just now1 while the world looks on is1 ,is a government or is it not a moral-brake system--a machine for stopping people nine times out of ten8 ,there is a considerable resemblance between ,moses' position and the new ,president's in the ,united ,states4 ,when ,moses looked around on the things he saw the men around him doing1 and took the ground that at least nine out of ten of the things should be stopped1 he was academically correct4 ,and so1 also1 ,president ,wilson1 gazing at the business of this country to-day1 at nine out of ten of the humdrum thoughtless things that trusts and corporations have been doing1 will be academically correct in telling them to stop1 in having his little1 new1 helpless1 unproved1 adolescent government stand up before all the people and speak in loud1 beautiful1 clear accents and 7with its left fist full of prisons1 fines1 lawyers1 of forty-eight legislatures all talking at once7 bring down its right fist as a kind of gavel on the world and say to these men1 before all the nations1 that nine of the things they are doing must be stopped and that one of the things1 if they happen to able be to think out some way of keeping on doing it--nobody will hurt them4 ,but the question before ,president ,wilson1 to-day1 with all our world looking on1 is not whether he would be right in entering upon a career of stopping people4 ,the real and serious question is1 does stopping people stop them8 ,and if stopping people does not stop them1 what will8 ,perhaps the way for a government to stop people from doing things they are doing1 is to tell them the things it wants done4 ,a government that does not express what it wants1 that has not given a masterful1 clear1 inspired statement of what it wants--a government that has only tried to say what it does not want1 is not a government4 ,the next business of a government is a statement of what it wants4 ,the problem of a government is essentially a problem of statement4 ,how shall this statement be made8 ,,chapter ,,iv ,,the ,,president ,,says ,,yes ,,and ,,no ,it was not merely because the seventh commandment was negative1 but because it was abstract that ,david found it so hard to keep4 ,if the seventh commandment 7like ,uriah's wife7 could have had deep blue eyes or could have been beautiful to look upon1 and1 on a particular day in a particular place1 could have been bathing in a garden1 ,david would have found keeping it a very different matter4 ,the tendency to make a statue of purity as a lovely female figure carries us a little further in moral evolution1 than the moral statement that ,moses had managed to get1 and it was further toward the concrete1 but it was not far enough for a real artist or man who does things4 ,one of the things about the real artist that makes him an artist1 is that he is always and always has been and always will be profoundly dissatisfied with a statue of a female figure as an emblem of purity4 ,he challenges the world1 he challenges ,god1 he challenges himself1 he challenges the men and women about him when he is being put off with a ,statue as an emblem of purity4 ,he demands1 searches out1 interprets1 creates something concrete and living to express his idea of purity4 ,how can ,president ,wilson1 in getting the ,trusts not to be corrupt1 in trying to win them--how can ,president ,wilson make the law alluring8 ,how can he make the ,people have a ,low ,voice8 ,a great deal if not nearly everything depends in tempting business men to be good1 upon the tone in which they are addressed4 ,every government1 like every man1 soon comes to have its own characteristic tone in addressing the people4 ,and1 as a matter of fact1 it is almost always the tone in a government1 like the voice in a man1 which tells us the most definitely what it is like1 and is the most intimate and effective expression of what it wants and is the most practical way of getting what it wants4 ,everybody has noticed that a man's voice works harder for him1 works more to the point for him in getting what he wants than his words do4 ,it is his voice that makes people know him1 that makes them know he means what he says4 ,it is his voice that tells them whether he is in the habit of meaning what he says1 and it is his voice that tells them whether he is in habit of getting what he wants1 and of knowing what to do with what he wants when he gets it4 ,a government does not need to say very much if it has the right tone4 ,the tone of a government is the government4 ,if ,president ,wilson is going to succeed in tempting business men to be good1 he is going to do it1 some of us think1 by depending on three principles4 ,these three principles1 like all live1 active principles1 may be stated as three principles or as three personal traits4 ,first1 by being affirmative4 7,isaiah1 in distinction from ,moses47 ,second1 by being concrete4 7,bathsheba47 ,third1 by being specific1 by seeing the universal in the particular4 7,like any artist or man who does things47 ,the value of being affirmative and the value of being concrete have already been touched upon4 ,there remains the value of being specific4 ,possibly1 in this present happy hour1 when our country has grown suddenly sensible and has become practical enough to pick out at last1 once more1 a ,president with a real serious working sense of humour1 even a sense of humour about himself1 it may not be considered disrespectful if ,i continue a little longer dropping in on the ,government1 and saying what ,i have to say in a few plain and homely words4 ,the trouble with most people in being economical with their money is1 that when they spend it1 they spend it on something in particular1 and when they save it1 they try to save it in a kind of general way4 ,the same principle applies to doing right4 ,it is because when people do right1 they do it in a kind of general pleasant1 abstract way1 and when they do wrong they always do something in particular1 that they are so ,wicked4 ,a man will do almost anything to save his life at a particular place and at a particular time1 say at ten o'clock to-morrow morning1 if he is drowning1 but if he has a year to save it in1 a year of controlling his appetites1 of daily1 detailed mastering of his spirit1 of not taking a piece of mince pie1 of stopping his work in time and of going to bed early1 he will die4 ,it is easier when one is going under water for the third time and sees a rope1 to stretch just one inch more and grasp the rope1 reach up to forty more years of one's life1 all concentrated for one on the tip of a rope1 than it is to spread out saving one's life over a whole year1 #cfe breakfasts1 #cfe luncheons1 #cfe dinners1 #cc1cfe moments of anger1 of reckless worry1 of remorse1 of self-pity1 #dj1jjj of despair and round up with a swing at the end of one's year at the tiptop of one's being1 as if it had only taken five minutes4 ,and yet it is only an act of the creative imagination of seeing the whole1 of having a happy1 daily1 detailed spectacle of the end in view1 that is1 of the part in its setting of the whole--going without a piece of mince pie4 ,if one could only make one's self see the piece of mince pie as it is1 it would not be difficult4 ,if one could see it on the plate there and see the not taking it as a little wedge-shaped rivet1 a little triangular link of coupling in the chain that keeps one holding on forty years longer to this planet1 a piece of mince pie left on a plate would become a ,vision4 ,this seems to be the principle that works best in getting other people to be good4 ,perhaps the ,president will succeed in getting ,trusts to be good1 by taking hold of specific ,trusts1 one by one1 and setting them--all mankind looking on--in the nation's vision1 setting them even in their own vision--taking the ,trusts that thought they had got what they wanted1 making them stand up and look 7in some great public lighted place7 at what pathetic1 tragical failures they are1 letting them see that what their ,trust had wanted all along1 if it had only thought about it1 was not success one went to jail for--success by getting the best out of the most people1 but success by serving the most people the best4 ,a great many of us in ,america have been exercising our minds for a long time now about the eagerness of the ,trusts1 and the trouble we were going to have in curbing the eagerness of the ,trusts4 ,sometimes ,i have wondered if1 after all1 it was our minds we were exercising1 for when one sits down seriously to think of it1 it is the eagerness of the ,trusts that is the most hopeful thing about them4 ,what is the matter with our ,american ,trusts1 perhaps1 is not and never has been1 their eagerness1 but their eagerness for things that they did not want1 and for things that almost everybody is coming to see that they did not want4 ,the moment that the eagerness of our ,american ,trusts is an eagerness for things that they really want1 the ,trusts will be seen piling over each other's heels1 asking the government to please investigate them4 ,the more they can get the people to know about them and about their eagerness1 the more the people will trust them and deal with them4 ,all that we have been waiting for is a government that sees the part from the point of view of the whole1 which will take up a few specific ,trusts and be specific enough with them to make them think1 think hard what they really want1 and what their real eagerness is about1 and the entire face of modern business will change4 ,first the expression will change and then the face itself4 ,the moment it is found that the government is a specific government1 all the trusts that know what they really want and know what they really are doing1 will want to be investigated1 because they will want everybody to know that they know4 ,in case of the trusts that do not know what they want and that do not know what they are doing1 the government will just step in1 of course1 and investigate them until they find out4 ,a specific government will not need to be specific many times4 ,it takes up a particular ,trust in its hand1 turns it over quietly1 empties its contents out before the people and says to everybody1 ,this particular ,trust you see here has tried to be a kind of ,trust1 which it found out afterward1 it did not want to be4 ,it is the kind of ,trust whose officers hide their faces when they think of what it was that they thought that they thought that they wanted4444 ,these men you see here1 forty silent nations looking on1 hundreds and thousands of self-respecting1 self-supporting1 public-serving1 creative1 successful business men1 whom all the world envies looking on1 do hereby beg to declare to all business men who know them and to the people1 that they did not ever really want these things for themselves that their business says or seems to say they wanted4 ,they wish to ask the public to put themselves in their places and to refuse to believe that they deliberately sat down1 seriously thought it all out1 that they had planned to express to everybody what their natures really were in a blind1 brutal1 foolish business like this which we have just been showing you4 ,they beg to have it believed that their business misrepresents them1 that it misrepresents what they want1 and they ask to be again admitted to the good-will1 the hope and forgiveness1 the companionship of a great people4 ,they declare 7the government will go on7 that they are not the men they seem4 ,they are merely men in a hurry4 ,they want it understood that they have merely hurried so fast and hurried so long that they now wake up at last only to see1 see with this terrific plainness what it really is that has been happening to them all their lives1 viz43 for forty1 fifty1 or sixty years they have merely forgot who they were and overlooked what they were like4 ,in hurrying1 too1 it is only fair to say they have had to use machines to hurry with and unconsciously1 year by year1 associating almost exclusively with machines1 their machines 7pump handles1 trip-hammers1 hydraulic drills1 steam shovels and cranes and cash registers7 have grown into them4 ,this is the way it has happened4 ',let the nation be merciful to them1' the government will then say1 and dismiss the subject4 99 99 99 99 99 ,what our ,president seems to be for in ,america1 is to do up a nation in one specific1 particular man who expresses everybody4 ,this man deals with each other specific man1 his aggressions and services1 as a nation would if a nation could be one specific man4 ,the ,president of the ,united ,states is the ,comptroller of the people's vision1 by seeing a part and dealing with a part as a part of a whole1 he governs the people4 ,he is the ,chancellor of the ,people's ,attention4 ,the business of being a ,president is the business of focusing the vision1 of flooding the whole desire or will of a people around a man and letting him have the light of it1 to see what he is doing by1 and to be seen by1 while he is doing it4 ,the corporations have expressed or focused the employers of labour4 ,the ,labour ,unions have focused or expressed the will of the labourers1 and the government focuses and expresses the will of the consumers1 of the people as a whole1 rich and poor1 so that ,labour and ,capital1 both listen to ,it1 understand ,it and act on ,it4 ,the way to deal with a specific sin is to flood it around with the general vision4 ,then it does not need to be dealt with4 ,then strangely1 softly1 and almost before we know--out there in the ,light1 it automatically deals with itself4 ,when the ,government takes hold quietly of the ,national ,cash ,register ,company1 turns it up1 empties its contents out1--all its methods and its motives--and all the things ,it thought ,it wanted1 and then proceeds to put its president and twenty-nine of its officers into jail1 my readers will perhaps point out to me that this action of the government as a method of tempting people to be good1 while it may have the virtue of being concrete and the virtue of being specific1 certainly does not have the other virtue that ,i have laid down1 the virtue of being affirmative4 ,certainly they will say there is not anything affirmative about putting twenty-nine big business men in jail4 ,many people would call it the most magnificently negative thing a ,president could have done4 ,moses himself would have done it4 ,it does not seem to me that ,moses would have done it1 or that it was essentially negative4 ,it could not unfairly be claimed that in spite of its negative look on the surface1 it was the most massive1 significant1 crushing affirmation that a great people has made for years4 ,by putting the twenty-nine officers of the ,national ,cash ,register ,company in jail1 the ,american people affirmed around the world the nation's championship of the men that had been defeated in the competition with the ,national ,cash ,register ,company4 ,they affirmed that these men who were not afraid of the ,national ,cash ,register ,company because they were bigger1 and who stood up to them and fought them1 were the kind of men ,americans wanted to be like1 and that the officers of the ,national ,cash ,register ,company were the kind of men ,americans did not want to be like1 would not do business with1 would not tolerate1 would not envy1 would not live on the same continent with1 unless they were kept in jail4 ,the ,president of the ,united ,states1 sitting in ,washington1 at the head of this vast affirmative and assertive continent1 indicted the ,cash ,register ,company1 that is1 by a slight pointed negative action1 by pushing back a button he turned on the great chandelier of a nation and flooded a nation with light4 ,we1 the ,american people1 suddenly1 all in a flash1 looked into each other's faces and knew what we were like4 ,we had hoped we believed in human nature1 and in brave men and in men against machines but we could not prove it4 ,suddenly1 we stood in a blaze of truth about ourselves4 ,suddenly1 we could again look with our old stir of joy at our national ,flag4 ,if we liked1 we could swing our hats4 ,perhaps ,i should speak for myself1 but ,i had been trying to get this news for years4 ,it is news ,i have wanted to live with and do business with4 ,i have been trying to get my question answered4 ,what are the ,american people really like8 ,the ,president points at the ,national ,cash ,register ,company and ,i find out4 ,all the people find out4 ,in the last analysis1 the masterful1 shrewd1 practical1 and constructive part of being a ,president of the ,united ,states--the thing in the business of being a ,president that keeps the position from being a position which only the second rate or ,no type of man would have time to take1 is the fact that the ,president is the ,head ,advertising ,manager of the ,united ,states1 conducting a huge advertising campaign of what ,americans really want4 ,he takes up the ,national ,cash ,register ,company1 picks out its twenty-nine officers1 makes it a bill board sky-high across the country4 ,here are the kind of business men that the people of the ,united ,states do not want1 and here are the kind of men that we do6 ,the thing that makes indicting a trust a positive and affirmative act is the advertising in it4 ,gladstone once wrote a postcard about a little book of ,marie ,bashkirtseff's4 ,twenty nations read the little book4 ,every now and then one watches a man or sees a truth that would make a nation4 ,one wishes one had some way of being the sort of person or being in the kind of place where one could make a nation out of it4 ,one thinks it would be passing wonderful to be ,president of the ,united ,states4 ,it would be like having a great bell up over the world that one could reach up to and ring6 ,but it is better than that4 ,one touches a button at one's desk if one is ,president of the ,united ,states1 a nation looks up4 ,he whispers to twenty thousand newspapers1 ,take your eyes away a minute1 he says1 from ,jack ,johnson and ,miss ,elkin's engagement1 and look1 oh1 look1 ye ,people1 here is a man in this world like this6 ,he has been in the world all this while without our suspecting it4 ,did you know there was or could be anywhere a man like ,,this8 ,and here is a man like this6 ,which do you prefer8 ,which are you really like8 ,there is nothing really regal or imperial in a man1 nothing that makes a man feel suddenly like a whole ,roman ,empire all by himself1 in #aiac1 like saying ,look6 ,look6 ,sometimes ,i think about it4 ,of course ,i could take a great reel of paper and sit down with my fountain pen1 say ,look for a mile1 ,look6 look6 look6 look666--,president ,wilson says it once and without exclamation points4 ,skyscrapers listen to him6 ,great cities rise and lift themselves and smite the world4 ,and the faint1 sleepy little villages stir in their dreams4 ,moses said1 ,thou shalt not6 ,president ,wilson says1 ,look6 ,perhaps if ,moses had had twenty thousand newspapers like twenty thousand field-glasses that he could hand out every morning and lend to people to look through--he would not have had to say1 ,thou shalt not4 ,the precise measure of the governing power a man can get out of the position of being ,president of the ,united ,states to-day is the amount of advertising for the people1 of the people1 and by the people he can crowd every morning1 every week1 into the papers of the country4 ,a ,president becomes a great ,president in proportion as he acts authoritatively1 tactfully1 economically1 and persistently as the ,head ,advertising ,manager of the ideals of the people4 ,he is the great central1 official editor of what the people are trying to find out--of a nation's news about itself4 ,by his being the ,president of what people think1 by his dictating the subjects the people shall take up1 by his sorting out the men whom the people shall notice1 this great ceaseless ,meeting of ninety million men we call the ,united ,states--comes to order4 ,,chapter ,v ,,the ,,president ,,says ,,look6 ,our ,american ,president1 if one merely reads what the ,constitution says about him1 is a rather weak-looking character4 ,the founders of the country did not intend him to be anybody in particular--if it could be helped4 ,they were discouraged about allowing governments to be efficient4 ,not very much that was constructive to do was handed over to him4 ,and the most important power they thought it would do for him to have was the veto or power to say ,no4 ,possibly if our fathers had believed in liberty more they would have allowed more people to have some2 or if they had believed in democracy more1 or trusted the people more1 they would have thought it would do to let them have leaders1 but they had just got away4 ,they felt timid about human nature and decided that the less constructive the government was and the less chance the government had to be concrete1 to interpret a people1 to make opportunities and turn out events1 the better4 ,looked at at first sight no more elaborate1 impenetrable1 water-tight arrangement for keeping a government from letting in an idea or ever having one of its own or ever doing anything for anybody1 could have been conceived than the ,constitution of the ,united ,states1 as the average ,president interprets it4 ,each branch of the government is arranged carefully to keep any other branch from doing anything1 and then the people1 every four years1 look the whole country over for some new man they think will probably leave them alone more than anybody--and put him in for ,president4 ,looking at it narrowly and by itself1 all that a ,president selected like this could ever expect in ,america to put in his time on1 would seem to be--being the country's most importantly helpless man--the man who has been given the honour of being a somewhat more prominent failure in ,america than any one else would be allowed to be4 ,he stops people for four years4 ,other people stop him for four years4 ,then with a long happy sigh1 at the end of his term1 he slips back into real life and begins to do things4 ,this has been the more or less sedately disguised career of the typical ,american ,president4 ,merely reading the ,constitution or the lives of the ,presidents1 without looking at what has been happening to the habits of the people in the last few years1 we might all be asking to-day1 ,what is there that is really constructive that ,president ,wilson can do8 ,what is there that is going to prevent him1 with all that moral earnestness dammed up in him1 that sense of duty1 that ,presbyterian sense of other people's duties--what is there that is going to prevent him1 with his school-book habits1 his ideals1 his volumes of ,american history1 from being a teachery or preachery person--a kind of ,schoolmaster or ,official ,clergyman to ,business8 ,news4 ,the one really important and imperative thing to the people of this country to-day is ,news4 ,in spite of newspapers1 authors1 ,college presidents1 ,bank presidents1 ,socialist agitators1 ,bill ,heywoods1 and ,trusts1 the people are bound to get this news1 and any man who is so placed by his prominence that he can scoop up the news of a country1 hammer its news together into events the papers will report1 express news in the laws1 build news into men who can make laws and unmake laws1 any man who is so placed that directly or indirectly he takes news1 forces it in by hydraulic pressure where people see it doing things1 who takes news and crowds it into courts1 crowds news into lawyers and into legislatures1 pries some of it even into newspapers1 can have1 the ordinary ,american says to-day1 as much leeway in this government as he likes4 ,the ordinary ,american has never been able to understand the objection important people have--that nearly everybody has 7except ordinary people7 to news--especially editors and publishers4 ,it is an old story4 ,every one must have noticed it4 ,one set of people in this world1 always from the beginning1 trying to climb up on the housetops to tell news1 and another set of people hurrying up always and saying1 ,hush1 ,hush6 ,some days it seems1 when ,i read the papers1 that ,i hear half the world saying under its breath1 a vast1 stentorian1 ,shoo6 shoo6 ,,shsh6 ,,shsh6 ,then ,i realize ,i live in an editor's world4 ,i am expected to be in the world that editors have decided on the whole to let me be in4 ,of course ,i did not know what to do at first when this came over me4 ,i naturally began to try to think of some way of cutting across lots1 of climbing up to ,news4 ,i looked at all the neat little park paths1 with all those artistic curves of truth on them the editors have laid out for me and for all of us4 ,then ,i looked at the world and asked myself1 ,who are the men in this world1 if any1 who are able to walk on the ,grass1 who cut across the little park paths when they like8 ,and as fate would have it 7it was during the ,roosevelt administration71 the first two men ,i came on who seemed to be stamping about in the newspapers quite a little as they liked were the ,prime ,minister of ,england and the ,president of the ,united ,states4 ,just how much governing can a ,president do8 ,how many columns a day is he good for1 how many acres of attention every morning in the papers of the country--all these white fields of attention1 these acres of other people's thoughts1 can he cover8 ,how many sticks a day can he make compositors set up of what he thinks8 ,how many square miles of the people's thoughts can he spread out at breakfast tables1 lift up in a thousand thousand trolleys before their faces8 ,i have seen the white fields of attention filled with the footprints of his thoughts1 of his will1 of his desires6 ,i have seen that the ,president is the ,editor of that vast1 anonymous1 silent newspaper1 written all the night1 written all the day1 and softly published across a country--the newspaper of people's thoughts4 ,i have seen the vision of the forests he has cast down1 ground into headlines1 into editorials1 into news4 ,mountains and hills are laid bare to say what he thinks4 ,thousands of presses throb softly and the white reels of wood pulp fly into speech4 ,thousands of miles of paper wet with the thoughts of a people roll dimly under ground in the night4 ,the ,president is saying ,look6 in the night6 ,the newsboys hasten out in the dawn4 ,they cry in the streets6 ,,chapter ,,vi ,,the ,,people ,,say ,,who ,,are ,,you8 ,if news is governing1 how does the ,president do his governing8 ,by being ,news1 himself4 ,by using his appointing power and putting other men who are ,news ,themselves1 news about ,american human nature--where all the people will see it4 ,by telling the people directly 7when he feels especially asked7 news about what is happening in his mind--news about what he believes4 ,by telling the people sometimes 7as candidly as he can without giving the people's enemies a chance to stop him71 what he is going to do next1 sketching out in order of time1 and in order of importance1 his program of issues4 ,by telling the people news about their best business men1 the business men and inventors who1 in their daily business1 free the energies1 unshackle the minds and emancipate the genius of the people4 ,by telling these business men news about the people--and interpreting the people to them4 99 99 99 99 99 ,it is by being news to the people himself that all the other news a ,president can get into his government counts4 ,a man is a man according to the amount of news there is in him4 ,there are twenty personal traits in a ,president which of themselves would all be national news of the first importance if he had them4 ,the bare fact that a ,president could have certain traits at all and still get to be a ,president in this country1 would be news4 ,one of the most important facts about news is that while it can be distributed by machines1 machines cannot make it1 and as a rule they do not understand it4 ,important and critical news is almost always fresh and made by hand the first time4 ,most of the popular news as to what is practical in ,american polities for the last forty years has been produced by political machines1 and of course men who were a good deal like machines were the best men to finish the ideas off and to carry them out4 ,as a result of course1 all the really big leaders for the last forty years1 our most powerful and interesting personalities have been shut out from being ,president of the ,united ,states4 ,the ,white ,house was merely being run as machinery and did not interest them4 ,they watched it grinding its ideas faithfully out from year to year of what ,america was like and what ,american politicians were like1 and finally at last in the clatter of the machines there rings out suddenly across the land a shot that no machinery had allowed for4 ,before any one knows almost there slips suddenly by the side door into the ,white ,house a really interesting man1 and suddenly1 all in one minute1 almost1 this man makes being ,president of the ,united ,states the most interesting lively and athletic feat in the country4 ,and now1 apparently that the idea has been worked out in public before everybody1 by hand1 as it were1 that a man can be alive and interesting all over1 can have at least a little touch of news about him and still be a ,president in this country1 another man with some news in him has been allowed to us and suddenly politics throughout all ,america has become a totally new revealing profession1 and men1 instead of being selected because they were blurred personalities1 the ghosts of compromises1 would-be everybodies--men who had not decided who they were1 and who could not settle down and let people know which of their characters they had hit on at last to be really theirs1 men who had no cutting edge to do things1 screw-drivers trying to be chisels--were revealed to our people at last as vague1 mean1 other-worldly persons1 not fitting into our real ,american world at all1 and hopelessly visionary and impracticable in ,american politics4 ,and now one more hand-made man has been allowed to us4 ,the machines run very still in the ,white ,house4 ,the people of this country no longer go by the ,white ,house on their way to their business and just hear it humdrumming and humdrumming behind the windows as of yore4 ,the nation stands in crowds around the gates and would like to see in4 ,the people wonder4 ,they wonder a million columns a day what is inside4 ,what is inside8 ,an ,american who governs by being news1 himself4 ,the first thing that the people demand from our ,president now is that he shall be news himself4 ,the news that they have selected to know first during the next four years--have put into the ,white ,house to know first is ,woodrow ,wilson4 ,who are you1 ,woodrow ,wilson1 in ,god's name8 the steeples and smoking chimneys1 the bells and whistles1 the ,yales and ,harvards1 and the little country schools1 the crowds in the streets1 and the corn in the fields all say1 ,who ,are ,you8 ,then the people listen4 ,they listen to his ,i wills and ,i won'ts for news about him4 ,they look for news about him in the headlines he steers into the papers every morning1 in the events he makes happen1 in the editorials he makes men think of1 in the men he calls up and puts on the ,national ,wire--in all these1 slowly1 daily1 hourly they drink up their long1 patient1 hopeful answer to their question1 ,who ,are ,you1 ,woodrow ,wilson8 ,,chapter ,,vii ,,the ,,people ,,say ,,who ,,are ,,we8 ,but if the ,president governs first by being news himself1 he governs second by his appointments1 by gathering about him other men who are news to people1 too4 ,one need not divide people into good and bad1 because the true line of division between good and bad instead of being between one man and another1 is apt to be as a matter of fact and experience cut down through the middle of each of us4 ,but for the purposes of public action and decision and getting good things done1 this line does seem to be cut farther over in the middle of some of us1 than it is in others4 ,taking a life-average in any moral or social engineering feat1 in any correct calculation of structural strain1 how far over this line cuts through in a man1 has to be reckoned with4 ,the president by appointing certain men to office1 saying ,i will and ,i won't to certain types of men1 in saying who shall be studied by the people1 who shall be read as documents of our national life1 puts1 if not the most important1 at least the most lively and telling news about his administration into print4 ,we watch our ,president acting for us1 telling us news about what we are like1 sorting men out around him the way ninety million people would sort them out if they were there to do it4 ,the ,president's appointments may be said to be in a way the breath of the nation4 ,a nation has to breathe1 and the plain fact seems to be that certain kinds of people have to be breathed out of a nation and other kinds of people have to be breathed in4 ,the way a ,president appoints men to office is his way of letting a nation breathe4 ,with all his attractive qualities1 perhaps it is because ,mr4 ,taft did not quite let the nation breathe1 and suffocated it a little that there came such an outbreak at the end4 ,perhaps it is because ,mr4 ,taft looked at ,mr4 ,ballinger and then looked at ,mr4 ,pinchot1 all the people of the country all the while looking on1 and said1 ,ballinger is the kind of man our people prefer1 and ,pinchot is not1 that the people broke out so amazingly1 so incredibly1 and decided by such an enormous majority that a man who could pick out men for them like this would not do--as things are just now anyway--for a ,president of the ,united ,states4 ,,chapter ,,viii ,,news ,,about ,,us ,,to ,,the ,,president ,a nation wakes up every morning and for one minute before it runs to its work it says to its ,president1 ,,here ,,we ,,are6 ,the best a ,president can do in the way of a plain1 everyday acknowledgment of the presence of the people is ,news4 ,the news that the people are demanding from the ,president to-day is intensely personal4 ,it is a kind of rough1 butting1 good-natured familiarity a great people has with its ,president1 a little heedless1 relentless1 like some splendid ,child1 ready to forgive and expecting to be forgiven1 it jostles in upon him daily1 ,here we are6 ,what are you believing this morning8 ,did you believe in us yesterday8 ,did you act as if you believed in us8 ,did you get anybody to believe in us8 ,who are the men you say are like us8 ,what are they like this morning8 ,we have asked a hundred times2 we can only ask it once more4 ,how do you think you are turning out yourself1 ,mr4 ,president8 ,are you what you thought you would be8 ,do you think it is a good time for us to decide this morning what you are really like8 ,and1 after all1 ,mr4 ,president--if you please--who are you8 ,and once more1 ,mr4 ,president1 in ,god's name1 who are we8 ,this is always the gist of what it says1 ,who are we8 ,it is the people's main point1 after all1 asking a ,president who they are1 wondering if he can interpret them4 ,then he shuts his door and thinks1 or he calls his ,cabinet and thinks4 ,rows of little-great men file by all day4 ,they stand each a few minutes with his little ,speck or ,dot of the ,people in his hands1 and they say1 ,this is the ,people4 ,he listens4 ,it is very hard to be always ,president of the ,people when one is listening and the little-great go by4 ,one has to go back a little1 in the night perhaps1 or when one is quite alone4 ,he sees again the ,child2 it is what he is in the ,white ,house for1 he remembers1 to express this dumb giant1 this mighty ,child1 half weary1 half glad1 standing there by day by night1 saying1 ,who are we8 ,one would think it would be hard to be glib with the ,child4 ,sometimes it is so deep and silent6 ,once when ,it broke in on ,lincoln in this way and said1 ,who are we8 he prayed4 ,,chapter ,,ix ,,news-,,men ,it seems very difficult to get news through as to who we really are to a ,president4 ,when ,i look about me and see what the ,president's ways are of telling news about himself to us1 ,i see that he is not without his advantages4 ,but when ,i look about to see what conveniences we have as a people for telling our ,president news about us1 ,i note some curious things4 ,the fears of the ,american people1 the fears and threats of labour and capital are organized and expressed1 but their faiths1 their wills1 the things in them that make them go and that make them ,american1 are not organized and are not expressed4 ,the labour unions are afraid and say1 ,we will not work1 to their employers1 ,you cannot make us work4 ,the ,president hears this4 ,it is about all they say4 ,the capitalists and employers are afraid and they say1 ,we will not pay1 ,you cannot make us pay4 ,shall the ,president act as if these men represent ,labor and ,capital8 ,we say1 ,no4 ,neither of these groups of men express real live ,american labour or real live characteristic ,american money4 ,american money is free1 bold1 manful1 generous and courageous to a fault4 ,american money swings out in mighty enterprises1 shrewdly believing things1 imperiously singing things out of its way4 ,a singing people want a singing government4 ,how is our ,president going to hear our labour and our money sing8 ,pinchot expressed us1 not ,ballinger4 ,mr4 ,pinchot is no mere uplifter or missionary4 ,he is an artist in expressing ,america to a ,president4 ,if we have a ,president who will not listen to a man like ,pinchot1 let us try a ,president that will4 ,pinchot--an ,american millionaire with a fortune made out of forests1 who is spending the fortune in protecting the forests for the nation1 is the kind of ,american ,americans like to set up before a ,president to say what ,americans are like4 ,millions of men stand by ,pinchot4 ,we like the way he makes money sing4 ,tom ,l4 ,johnson--an ,american millionaire who made his money in the ordinary humdrum way1 by getting valuable street railway franchises out of a city for nothing--has the courage to turn around1 spend his fortune and spend it all1 in keeping other people from doing it4 ,america presents ,tom ,l4 ,johnson to a ,president with its compliments and says1 ,this is what ,america is like4 ,it may not look always as if ,tom ,l4 ,johnson were ,america--,america in miniature4 ,but millions of us say he is4 ,he makes money sing4 ,we want a ,president--millions of us want him--and this is the most important news about us1 who expects money in this country to sing4 ,we want our money and expect our money in this country to stop saying mean things about us1 things that make us ashamed to look a true newspaper in the face1 or one another in the face1 and that humiliate us before the world4 99 99 99 99 99 ,and now ,i have come to an awkward place in this book where ,i hope the reader will help me all he can4 ,there is nothing to do but to let out the real truth and face the music4 ,the fact is1 ,gentle ,reader--perhaps you have suspected it all along--that if it had not been for fear of mixing my book all up with him and making it a kind of arena or tournament instead of a book1 ,i would have mentioned ex-,president ,roosevelt before this4 ,he has been getting in or nearly getting in to nearly every chapter so far1 but of course ,i knew1 as any one would1 that he would spoil all the calm equipoise1 the quiet onward flowing of the ,stream of ,thought1 and with one chapter after the other1 with each as the crisis came up1 though ,i scarcely know how1 ,i have managed to keep him out4 ,and now1 oh1 ,gentle ,reader1 here he is6 ,i know very well that he is in everything1 and right in the middle of everything1 and that in a kind of splendid mixed happy uproarious way1 there somehow has to be a great to-do the moment he appears4 ,the beautiful clear water1 the lucid depth of ,thought--will all become 7ah1 ,i know it too well1 ,gentle ,reader7 all thunder and spray and underneath the mighty grinding of the wheels--the wheels of the ,nation and the ,mowing ,machine of ,time1 and in the background--in the red background of the ,dawn1 there will be the face of ,theodore--just the face of ,theodore in this book shining at us--readers and writer and all--out of a huge rosy mist6 ,but ,i have been driven to it4 ,the fact seems to be that ,i must find at just this point in the book1 if ,i can1 a word4 ,and the word will have to be a word1 too1 that everybody knows1 and that conveys a lively sense to everybody the moment it is used--of a certain tone or quality1 or hum or murmur of being4 ,no one regrets this more than ,i1 because it is so unwieldy and inconvenient and always bulges out in a sentence or a book or a nation more than it was meant to1 but the word ,,roosevelt1 ,r ,o ,o ,s ,e ,v ,e ,l ,t1 happens to be the word that people in this country1 and very largely in other nations1 and in all languages have chosen and are using every day to express to one another a certain ,american quality or tone now abroad in our world--a certain hum1 as one might say1 or whirr of goodness4 ,this particular hum1 or whirr of goodness1 which is instantly associated with the word ,roosevelt1 expresses1 except that of course it over-expresses1 a part of the news to-day about ,america which we want our ,president to read4 ,one cannot help wondering why it is that if one wanted to express to the largest number of people in the world a certain quality of goodness1 the word ,roosevelt would do it best4 ,i am not dealing for the purpose of this book in what ,mr4 ,roosevelt's goodness is or whether it is what he thinks it is4 ,we might all disagree about that4 ,i am dealing quite strictly in this connection with what even his enemies would say is his almost egregious success in advertising goodness4 ,while we might all disagree as to his goodness being the kind that he or any one ought to love1 we would not fail to agree that it is his love of his own goodness1 such as it is1 and his holding on to it1 and his love of other people's and his love of getting his goodness and their goodness together1 that has made him the most unconcealed person in modern life4 ,these qualities have established him1 with his ability raised to the n-th power of attracting attention to anything he likes1 as the world's greatest ,news ,man--the world's greatest living energy to-day in advertising what is good and what is had in our ,american temperament4 ,even the people who disagree with him or dislike him--many of them would have to fall back on using the word roosevelt1 or rather the verb to roosevelt4 ,it does not seem to be because his goodness in itself is extraordinary4 ,it is even1 for that matter1 in the sense that anybody could have it1 or some more just like it1 a little common4 ,what seems to be uncommon and really distinguished about ,mr4 ,roosevelt is the way he feels about his goodness1 and the way he grips hold of it1 and the way he makes it grip hold of other people--practically anybody almost1 who is standing by4 ,even if they are merely going by in automobiles1 sometimes they catch some4 ,i do not imagine that his worst enemies1 however seriously they may question the general desirability or safety of having so much goodness roosevelting around1 would fail to admit his own real enthusiasm about goodness anywhere he finds it indiscriminately1 whether it is his own or other people's4 ,he grips hold of it1 and grips like a cable car--instantly4 ,his enthusiasm is so great that many people are nonplussed by it4 ,the enthusiasm must really be in spite of appearances about something else1 something wicked in behind1 they think1 and not really about goodness4 ,an entire stranger would not quite believe it4 ,it would be too original in him1 they would say1 or in anybody1 to care so about goodness4 ,if one could watch the expression in ,mr4 ,roosevelt's face or his manner while he is in the act of having a virtue and if one could not see plainly from where one was1 just what it was he was doing1 one would at once conclude that it must be some vice he is having4 ,he looks happy and as if it were some stolen secret4 ,there is always that manner of his when he is caught doing right1 as if one were to say ,now1 at last1 ,i have got it6 ,he does right like a boy with his mouth full of jam1 and this seems to be true not only when1 with a whole public following and two or three nations besides1 and all the newspapers1 he goes off on an orgy of righteousness1 makes the grand tour of ,europe1 and has the time of his life4 ,it is the steady-burning under enthusiasm with him all the while4 ,the spectacle of a good man doing a tremendous good thing affects ,theodore ,roosevelt like one of the great forces of nature1 like ,niagara ,falls1 like the screws of the ,mauritania1 or any other huge1 happy thing that is having its way against fear2 against weakness1 or against small terrified goodness4 ,mr4 ,roosevelt in doing right conveys the sense of enjoying it so himself that he has made almost an art form of public righteousness4 ,he has found his most complete1 his most nave1 instinctive self-expression in it1 and while we have had goodness in public men before1 we have had no man who has been such an international chromo for goodness1 who has made such a big1 comfortable ,he-who-runs-may-read bill-poster for doing right as ,roosevelt4 ,other men have done things that were good to do1 but the very inmost muscle and marrow of goodness itself1 goodness with teeth1 with a fist1 goodness that smiled1 that ha-ha'd1 and that leaped and danced--perpetual motion of goodness1 goodness that reeked--has been reserved for ,theodore ,roosevelt4 ,we have had goodness that was bland or proper1 and goodness that was pious or sentimental and sang1 ,nearer ,my ,god to ,thee1 or goodness that was kind and mushy1 but this goodness with a glad look and bounding heart1 goodness with an iron hand1 we have not had before4 ,it is ,mr4 ,roosevelt's goodness that has made him interesting in ,cairo1 ,paris1 ,rome1 and ,berlin4 ,he has been conducting a grand tour of goodness4 ,he has been a colossal drummer of goodness1 conducting an advertising campaign4 ,he has proved himself a master salesman for moral values4 ,and he has put the ,american character1 its hope1 its energy1 on the markets and on the credits of the world4 ,with all his faults1 those big1 daring1 yawning fissures in him1 he is news about us1 faults and all4 ,though ,i may be1 as ,i certainly am much of the time1 standing and looking across at him1 across an abyss of temperament that ,god cut down between us thousands of years ago1 and while he may have a score of traits ,i would not like and others that no one would like in any one else1 there he is storming out at me with his goodness6 ,it is his way--,god help him6--,god be praised for him6 ,there he is6 ,i know an ,american when ,i see one4 ,he is a man who is singing4 ,a man who is singing is a man who is so shrewd about people that he sees more in them than they see in themselves and who does things so shrewdly in behalf of ,god1 that when ,god looks upon him he delights in him4 ,then ,god falls to of course and helps him do them4 ,when ,american men saw that there was a man among them who was taking a thing like the ,presidency of the ,united ,states 7that most people never run risks with7 and putting it up before everybody1 and using it grimly as a magnificent bet on the people1 they looked up4 ,millions of men leaped in their hearts and as they saw him they knew that they were like him6 ,so did ,theodore ,roosevelt become news about ,us4 ,,chapter ,x ,,american ,,temperament ,,and ,,government ,i would like to say more specifically what ,i mean by an ,american or singing government4 ,the thing that counts the most in a government is its temperament4 ,a ,german government succeeds by having the ,german temperament4 ,an ,american government must have the ,american temperament4 ,if we are fortunate enough to have in ,america a government with an ,american temperament what would it be like8 ,and how would it differ from the traditional or conventional temperament1 governments are usually allowed to have8 ,if ,i were confined to one or two words ,i would put it like this3 ,if a government has the conventional temperament1 it says ,,no4 ,if it has the ,american ,temperament it says1 ,,yes1 ,,but 444 ,the whole policy and temper of a true ,american government is summed up in its saying as it looks about it--now to this business man and now to that1 just in time1 ,,yes ,,but4 ,louis ,brandeis1 of ,boston1 when he was made attorney for the ,gas ,company of ,boston to defend the company from the criticisms of the people1 sent suddenly scores of men all about canvassing the city and looking up people to find fault with the gas4 ,he spent thousands of dollars a month of the ,gas ,company's money for a while in helping people to be disagreeable1 until they had it attended to and got over it4 ,the ,gas ,company had the canvassers show the people how they could burn less gas for what they got for it1 and tried to help them cut their bills in two4 ,incidentally1 of course1 they got to thinking about gas and about what they got for it1 and about other ways they could afford to use it1 and began to have the gas habit--used it for cooking and heating4 ,the people found they wanted to use four times as much gas4 ,the ,boston ,gas ,company smiled sweetly4 ,boston smiled sweetly4 ,not many months had passed and two things had happened in ,boston4 ,the ,boston ,gas ,company1 with precisely the same directors in it1 had made over the directors into new men1 and all the people in ,boston 7all who used gas7 apparently had been made over into new people4 ,what had happened was ,brandeis--a man with an ,american temperament4 ,mr4 ,brandeis had defended his company from the people by going the people's way and helping them until they helped him4 ,mr4 ,brandeis gave gas a soul in ,boston4 ,before a gas corporation has a soul1 it would be ,american for a government to treat it in one way4 ,after it has one it would be ,american to treat it in another4 ,there are two complete sets of conduct1 principles1 and visions in dealing with a corporation before and after its having a soul4 ,preserving the females of the species and killing males as a method of discrimination has been applied to all animals except human beings4 ,this is suggestive of a method of discrimination in dealing with corporations4 ,a corporation that has a soul and that is the most likely to keep reproducing souls in others should be treated in one way1 and a corporation that has not should be treated in another4 ,there are two assumptions underneath everybody's thought1 underneath every action of our government3 ,which is the ,american assumption8 ,people are going to be bad if they can4 ,people are going to be good if they can4 ,men who want to arrange laws and adjust life on the assumption that business men will be bad if they can1 it seems to some of us1 are inefficient and unscientific4 ,it seems to us that they are off on the main and controlling facts in ,american human nature4 ,it is not true that ,american business men will be bad if they can4 ,they will be good if they can4 ,this is my assertion4 ,i cannot prove it4 ,what we seem to need next in this country in order to be clear-headed and to go ahead1 is to prove it4 ,we want a competent census of human nature4 ,lacking a census of human nature1 the next best thing we can do is to watch the men who seem to know the most about human nature4 ,we put ourselves in their hands4 ,these men seem to believe1 judging from their actions1 that there is really nothing that suits our temperament better in ,america than being good4 ,if we can manage to have some way of being good that we have thought of ourselves1 we like it still better4 ,we dote on goodness when it is ours and when we are allowed to put some punch into it4 ,we want to be good1 to express our practical1 our doing-idealism1 but we will not be driven to being good and people who think they can drive us to being good in a government or out of it are incompetent people4 ,they do not know who we are4 ,we say they shall not have their way with us4 ,let them get us right first4 ,then they can do other things4 ,what is our ,american temperament8 ,here are a few ,american reflections4 ,the government of the next boys' school of importance in this country is going to determine the cuts and free hours1 and privileges not by marks1 but by its genius for seeing through boys4 ,and instead of making rules for two hundred pupils because just twenty pupils need them1 they will make the rules for just twenty pupils4 ,pupils who can use their souls and can do better by telling themselves what to do1 will be allowed to do better4 ,why should two hundred boys who want to be men be bullied into being babies by twenty infants who can scare a school government into rules1 i4e41 scare their teachers into being small and mean and second-rate8 ,a government that goes on this principle with business men1 and that does it in a spirit of mutual understanding for those who are not yet free from rules1 and in a spirit of confidence and expectation and of talking it over1 will be a government with an ,american temperament4 ,the first trait of a great government is going to be that it will recognize that the basis of a true government in a democracy is privilege and not treating all people alike4 ,it is going to see that is it a cowardly1 lazy1 brutal1 and mechanical-minded thing for a government which is trying to serve a great people--to treat all the people alike4 ,the basis of a great government like the basis of a great man 7or even the basis of a good digestion7 is discrimination1 and the habit of acting according to facts4 ,we will have rules or laws for people who need them1 and men in the same business who amount to enough and are ,american enough to be safe as laws to themselves1 will continue to have their initiative and to make their business a profession1 a mould1 an art form into which they pour their lives4 ,the pouring of the lives of men like this into their business is the one thing that the business and the government want4 ,several things are going to happen when what a good government seeks each for a man's business1 is to let him express himself in it4 ,when a man has proved conclusively that he has a higher level of motives1 and a higher level of abilities to make his motives work1 the government is going to give him a higher level of rights1 liberties1 and immunities4 ,the government will give special liberties on a sliding scale and with shrewd provision for the future4 ,the government will not give special liberties to the man with higher motives than other men have1 who has not higher abilities to make his motives work1 nor will it give special liberties to the man who has higher abilities which could make higher motives work1 but who has not the higher motives4 ,men who are new kinds and new sizes of men and who have proved that they can make new kinds and new sizes of bargains1 that they can make 7for the same money7 new kinds and new sizes of goods1 and who incidentally make new kinds and new sizes of people out of the people who buy the goods1 men who have achieved all these supposed visionary feats by their own initiative1 will be allowed by the government to have all the initiative they want1 and immunities from fretful rules as long as they resemble themselves and keep on doing what they have shown they can do4 ,the government will deal with each man according to the facts1 the scientific facts1 that he has proved about himself4 ,the government acts according to scientific facts in everything except men1 in pure food1 in cholera1 and the next thing the government is going to do is to be equally efficient in dealing with scientific facts in men4 ,it is going to give some men inspected liberty4 ,if these men say they can be more efficient1 as a railroad sometimes is1 by being a monopoly1 by being a vast1 self-visioned1 self-controlled body the government will have enough character1 expert courage and shrewdness about human nature to provide a way for them to try it4 ,when the other people come up and ask why they cannot have these special immunities and why they cannot be a monopoly1 or nearly a monopoly1 too1 the government will tell them why4 ,telling them why will be governing them4 ,when we once reckon with new kinds and new sizes of men1 everything follows4 ,the first man who organizes a true monopoly for public service and who does it better than any state could do it1 because he thinks of it himself1 glories in it and has a genius for it1 will be given a peerage in ,england perhaps4 ,but he would not really care4 ,the thing itself would be a peerage enough and either in ,america or ,england he would rather be rewarded by being singled out by the government for special rights and distinctions in conducting his business4 ,the best way a democracy can honour a man who has served it is not to give him a title or to make a frivolous1 idle monument of bronze for him1 but to let him have his own way4 ,the way to honour any artist or any creative man1 any man a country is in need of especially1 is to let him have his own way4 99 99 99 99 99 ,we are told that the way to govern trusts is to untrammel competition4 ,but the way to untrammel competition is not to try to untrammel it in its details with lists of things men shall not do4 ,this is cumbersome4 ,we would probably find it very much more convenient in specifying #igi detailed things trusts cannot do1 if we could think of certain sum-totals of details4 ,then we could deal with the details in a lump4 ,the best sum totals of details in this world that have ever been invented yet1 are men4 ,we will pick out a man who has a definite1 marked character1 who is a fine1 convenient sum-total that any one can see1 of things not to do4 ,we will pick out another man in the same line of business who is a fine1 convenient sum-total of things that people ought to do4 ,the government will find ways1 as the ,coach of ,business as the ,referee of the ,game for the people1 to stand by this man until he whips the other1 drives him out of business or makes him play as good a game as he does4 99 99 99 99 99 ,when a child finds suddenly that his father is not merely keeping him from doing things1 that his father has a soul1 the father begins to get results out of the child4 ,as a rule a child discovers first that his father has a soul by noticing that he insists on treating him as if he had one4 ,of course a corporation that has not a soul yet does not propose to be dictated to by a government that has not a soul yet4 ,when corporations without souls see overwhelmingly that a government has a soul1 they will be filled with a wholesome fear4 ,they will always try at first to prevent it from having a soul if they can4 ,but the moment it gets one and shows it1 they will be glad4 ,they will feel on firm ground4 ,they will know what they know4 ,they will act4 ,in the hospital on the hill not far from my house1 one often sees one attendant going out to walk with twelve insane men4 ,one would think it would not be safe for twelve insane men to go out to walk with one sane man1 with one man who has his soul on4 ,the reason it is safe1 is1 that the moment one insane man or man who has not his soul on1 attacks the man who has a soul1 all of the other eleven men throw themselves upon him and fling him to the ground4 ,men whose souls are not on1 protect1 every time1 the man who has his soul on because the man who has a soul is the only defence they have from the men who have not4 ,it is going to be the same with governments4 ,we believe in a government's having as much courage in ,america as a ten-dollar-a-week attendant in an insane asylum4 ,we want a government that sees how courage works4 ,we are told in the ,new ,testament that we are all members one of another4 ,if society has a soul and if every member of it has a soul1 what is the relation of the social soul to the individual soul8 ,a man's soul is the faculty in him for seeing the ,whole in relation to the part--his vision for others in relation to his vision for himself4 ,my forefinger's soul in writing with this fountain pen is the sense my forefinger has of its relation to my arm1 my spinal column1 and my brain4 ,the ability and efficiency of my forefinger depends upon its soul1 that is1 its sense of relation to the other members of the body4 ,if my forefinger tries to act like a brain all by itself1 as it sometimes does1 nobody reads my writing4 ,the government in a society is the soul of all the members and it treats them according to their souls4 ,the one compulsion a government will use if it has a soul1 will be granting charters in business in such a way as to fix definite responsibility and definite publicity upon a few men4 ,if a corporation has a soul1 it must show4 ,it must have a face4 ,anybody can tell a face off-hand or while going by4 ,anybody can keep track of a corporation if it has a face4 ,the trouble with the average corporation is that all that anybody can see is its stomach4 ,even this is anonymous4 ,whose ,stomach is it8 ,who is responsible for it8 ,if we hit it1 whom will we hit8 ,let the government find out4 ,if the time the government is now spending in making impossibly minute laws for impossibly minute men1 were spent in finding out what size men were1 and who they were and then giving them just as many rights from the people1 as they are the right kind and the right size to handle for the people1 it would be an ,american government4 ,if there is one thing rather than another that an ,american or an ,englishman loves1 it is asserting himself or expressing his character in what he does4 ,the typical dominating ,englishman or ,american is not as successful as a ,frenchman or as an ,italian in expressing other things1 as he is in expressing his character4 ,he cares more about expressing his character and asserting it4 ,if he is dealing with things1 he makes them take the stamp of who he is4 ,if he is dealing with people1 he makes them see and acknowledge who he is4 ,they must take in the facts about what he is like when they are with him4 ,they must deal with him as he is4 ,this trait may have its disadvantages1 but if an ,englishman or an ,american is on this earth for anything1 this is what he is for--to express his character in what he does--in strong1 vigorous1 manly lines draw a portrait of himself and show what he is like in what he does4 ,this may be called on both sides of the sea to-day as we stand front to front with the more graceful nations1 ,anglo-,saxon ,art4 ,it is because this particular art in the present crisis of human nature on this planet is the desperate1 the almost reckless need of a world that the other nations of the world with all their dislike of us and their superiorities to us1 with all our ugliness and heaviness and our galumphing in the arts1 have been compelled in this huge1 modern thicket of machines and crowds to give us the lead4 ,and now we are threading a way for nations through the moral wilderness of the earth4 ,this position has been accorded us because it goes with our temperament1 because we can be depended upon to insist on asserting ourselves and on expressing ourselves in what we do4 ,if the present impromptu industrial machinery which has been handed over to us thoughtlessly and in a hurry1 does not express us1 everybody knows that we can be depended on to assert ourselves and that we will insist on one that will4 ,the nations that are more polite and that can dance and bow more nicely than we can in a crisis like this would be dangerous4 ,it is known about us throughout a world that we are not going to be cowed by wood or by iron or by steel and that we are not going to be cowed by men who are all wood and iron and steel inside4 ,if wood1 iron1 or steel does not express us1 we are ,englishmen and we are ,americans4 ,we will butt our character into it until it does4 99 99 99 99 99 ,if the ,american workman were to insist upon butting his ,american temperament into his labour union machinery1 what would his labour machinery in ,america soon begin to show that an ,american labourer was like8 ,i imagine it might work out something like this3 ,the thoughtful workman looks about him4 ,he discovers that the workman pays at least two times as much for coal as he needs to because miners down in ,pennsylvania work one third as hard as they might for the money4 ,when he comes to think of it1 all the labouring men of ,america are paying high prices because they have to pay all the other workmen in ,america for working as little as they can4 ,he is working one third less than he can and making his own class pay for it4 ,he sees every workman about him paying high prices because every other workman in making things for him to eat and for him to wear1 is cheating him--doing a third less a day for him than he ought4 ,at this point the capitalists pile in and help4 ,they shove the prices up still higher because capital is not interested in an industry in which the workmen do six hours' work in nine4 ,it demands extra profits4 ,so while the workmen put up the prices by not working1 the capitalists put up the prices because they are afraid the workmen will not work4 ,half work1 high prices4 ,then the ,american workman thinks4 ,he begins to suppose4 ,suppose that the millers' workmen and the workmen in the woollen mills in ,america see how prices of supplies for labouring men are going up and suppose they agree to work as hard as they can8 ,suppose the wool workers of the world want cheap bread4 ,the flour mill workers want cheap clothes4 ,we will say to the bread people1 ,we will bring down the price of wool for you if you will bring down the price of bread for us4 ,then let ,meat and ,potatoes do the same for one another4 ,then two industries at a time1 industries getting brains in pairs1 until like the animals going into the ark1 little by little 7or rather very fast1 almost piling in1 in fact1 after the first pair have tried it71 at last our true1 spirited1 practical minded ,american workmen will have made their labour machines as natural and as human and as ,american as they are4 ,they will stop trying to lower prices by not working1 each workman joining 7in a factory7 the leisure classes and making the other workmen pay for it4 99 99 99 99 99 ,the ,american workman1 as things are organized now1 finds himself confronted with two main problems4 ,one is himself4 ,how can he get himself to work hard enough to make his food and clothes cheap8 ,the other is his employer4 ,what will the ,american workman do to express his ,american temperament through his labour union to his employer8 ,the ,american workmen will go to their employers and say3 ,instead of doing six hours' work in nine hours1 we will do nine hours' work in nine hours4 ,the millers1 for instance1 will say to the flour mill owners3 ,we will do a third more work for you1 make you a third more profit on our labour if you will divide your third more profit like this3 ,first1 by bringing down the price of flour to everybody2 ,second1 by bringing up our wages4 ,third1 by taking more money yourselves4 ,american labouring men who did this would be acting like ,americans4 ,it is the ,american temperament4 ,they will insist on it3 ,the labour men will continue to say to their employers1 ,we will divide the proceeds of our extra work into three sums of money--ours1 yours1 and everybody's4 ,in return we will soon find the employers saying the same thing to the labour men4 ,employers would like to arrange to be good4 ,if they can get men who earn more1 they want to pay them more4 ,the labourers would like to be good1 i4e41 work more for employers who want to pay them more4 ,but being good has to be arranged for4 ,being good is a matter of mutual understanding1 a matter of organization1 a matter of butting our ,american temperament into our industrial machines4 ,all that is the matter with these industrial machines is that they are not like us4 ,our machines are acting just now for all the world as if they were the ,americans and as if we were the machines4 ,are we for the machines1 or are the machines for us8 ,all that the ,american labourers and that the ,american capitalists have to do is to show what they are really like1 organize their news about themselves so that they get it through to one another1 and our present great daily occupation in ,america 7which each man calls his business7 all the workmen going down to the mills and all the employers going down to their offices1 and then for six1 eight1 nine hours a day being chewed on by machines1 will cease4 ,we make our industrial machines4 ,we are ,americans4 ,our machines must have our ,american temperament4 99 99 99 99 99 ,if an ,american employer were to insist on butting his ,american temperament into his industrial machine1 what would his industrial machine1 when it is well at work at last1 show an ,american employer's temperament to be like8 ,the first thing that would show in his machine1 ,i think1 would be its courage1 its acting with boldness and initiative1 originality and freedom1 without being cluttered up by precedents or running and asking ,mama1 its clear-headedness in what it wants1 its short-cut in getting to it1 and above all a kind of ruthless faith in human nature1 in the ,american people1 in its goods and in itself4 ,the typical ,american business man of the highest class--the man who is expressing his ,american temperament best in his business--is the one who is expressing in it the most courage for himself and for others and for his government4 ,he has big beliefs every few minutes a day1 and he acts on them with nonchalance4 ,if he is running a trust--our most characteristic1 recklessly difficult ,american invention for a man to show through1 and if he tries to get his ,american temperament to show through in it1 tries to make his trust like a vast portrait1 like a kind of countenance on a country1 of what a big ,american business is like1 what will he do8 ,he will take a little axiom like this and act as if it were so4 ,if in any given case the producers by collusion and combination can be efficient in lowering wages to employees and raising prices and cheating the public1 this same combination or collusion would be efficient in raising the wages of employees1 lowering prices and serving the public4 ,he will then1 being an ,american1 turn to his government and say ,i am a certain sort of man4 ,if ,i am allowed to be an exception and to combine in this matter1 ,i can prove that ,i can raise wages1 lower prices for a whole nation in these things that ,i make4 ,i am a certain sort of man4 ,do you think ,i am1 or do you think that ,i am not8 ,i want to know4 ,the government looks noncommittally at him4 ,it says it cannot discriminate4 ,he says nothing for a time1 but he thinks in his heart that it is incompetent and cowardly to run a great government of a great nation as a vast national sweep or flourish of getting out of brains and of evading vision4 ,it seems to him lazy and effeminate in a government to treat all combinations and all monopolies alike4 ,he says3 ,look me in the eyes6 ,i demand of you as a citizen of this country the right to be looked by my government in the eyes4 ,what sort of man am ,i8 ,here are all my doors open4 ,my safes are your safes and my books are your books4 ,am ,i or am ,i not a man who can conduct his business as a great profession1 one of the dignities and energies and joys of a great people8 ,what am ,i like inside8 ,is what ,i am like inside--my having a small size or a big size of motive1 my having a right kind or a wrong kind of ability of no consequence to this government8 ,does the government of this country really mean that the most important things a country like this can produce1 the daily1 ruling motives of the men who are living in it1 have no weight with the government8 ,am ,i to understand that the government does not propose to avail itself of new sizes and new kinds of men and new sizes and new kinds of abilities in men8 ,what ,i am trying to do in my product is to lower the prices and raise the wages for a nation4 ,will you let me do it8 ,will you watch me while ,i do it8 ,this will be the ,american trust of to-morrow4 ,the average trust of this country has not yet found itself1 but the moral and spiritual history1 the religious message to a government of ,the ,trust ,that ,has ,found ,itself will be something like this4 ,perhaps when we have a trust that has found itself1 we will have a government that has dared to find itself1 that has the courage to use its insight1 its sense of difference between men1 as it means of getting what it wants for the people4 ,as it is now1 the government has not found itself and it falls back on complex rules or machines for getting out of seeing through people4 ,where courage is required1 it proceeds as it proceeds with automobile speeding laws4 ,everybody knows that one man driving his car three miles an hour may be more dangerous than another kind of man who is driving his car thirty4 ,when our government begins to be a government1 begins to express the ,american temperament1 it will be a government that will devote its energy1 its men1 and its money to being expert in divining1 and using differences between men4 ,it will govern as any father1 teacher1 or competent business man does by treating some people in one way and others in another1 by giving graded speed licenses in business1 to labour unions1 trusts1 and business men4 ,the government will be able to do this by demanding1 acquiring1 and employing as the servants of the people1 men who are experts in human nature1 masters in not treating men alike--,crowbars1 lemonade-straws1 chisels1 and marshmallows1 powerhouses and olian harps by the people1 for the people1 and of the people1 will be rated for what they are and will be used for what they are for4 ,this will be democracy4 ,it will be the ,american temperament in government4 99 99 99 99 99 ,is ,president ,wilson or is he not going to fall back into a mere lawyer ,moseslike way of getting people to be good1 or is he going to be a man like ,david1 half poet1 half soldier1 who got his way with the nation half by appreciating the men in it and being a fellow human being with them1 and half by fighting them when they would not let him be a fellow human being with them1 and would not let him appreciate them8 ,almost any nation or government can get some kind of ,moses to-day but the men that ,america is producing would not particularly notice a ,moses probably now4 ,a ,moses might do for a ,rockefeller1 but he could not really do anything with a man like ,theodore ,n4 ,vail who has the telephones and telegraphs of a country talking and ticking to us all1 all night1 all day1 what kind of a man he is4 ,a big affirmative1 inspirational man like ,david or even ,napoleon who inspires people with one breath and fights hard with the next1 a man who swings his hat for the world1 a man who goes on ahead and says ,come6 is the only man who can be practical in ,america to-day in helping real live ,american men like ,mc,adoo1 like ,edison and ,acheson1--men who can express a people in a business--to express them4 ,the people have spoken4 ,a man in the ,white ,house who cannot say ,come goes4 ,we want a poet in the ,white ,house4 ,if we can not have a poet for the ,white ,house soon1 we want a poet who will make us a poet for the ,white ,house4 ,i do not believe it is too much to expect a ,president to be a poet4 ,we have had a poet for ,president once in one supreme crisis of this nation and the crisis that is coming now is so much deeper1 so much more human and world-wide than ,lincoln's was that it would almost seem as if a place like the ,white ,house 7where one's poetry could really work7 would make a poet out of anybody4 ,a ,president who has not a kind of plain1 still1 homely poetry in him1 a belief about people that sings1 in the present appalling crisis of the world is impracticable or visionary4 ,so we do not say1 ,have we a ,president that can get our ,bells1 ,edisons1 ,mc,adoos1 ,achesons to be good by toeing a line8 ,we say1 ,have we a ,president who can swing into step1 who can join in the singing1 who can catch up8 ,tunnel ,mc,adoo1 when he lifted up his will against the sea and against the seers of ,wall ,street1 was singing4 ,when he conceived those steel cars1 those roaring yellow streaks of light ringing through rocks beneath the river1 streets of people flashing through under the slime and under the fish and under the ships and under the wide sunshine on the water1 he was singing6 ,he raised millions of dollars singing4 ,of course he sang the way ,americans usually sing1 and had to do as well as he could in talking to bankers and investors not to look as if he were singing1 but there it all was singing inside him1 the seven years of digging1 the seven years of dull thundering on rocks under the city1 and at last the happy steel cars all green and gold1 the streams of people all yellow light hissing and pouring through--those vast pipes for people beneath the sea6 ,if we have a ,president1 let him sing like ,mc,adoo1 or like ,luther ,burbank1 or like ,theodore ,n4 ,vail1 or like ,colonel ,goethals1 picking up a little isthmus like ,panama1 a string between two continents1 playing on it as if it were a harp2 or like ,edward ,ripley playing with the ,santa ,f ,railroad for all the world like ,homer with a lute1 all his seven thousand men1 all his workmen1 all their wives and their children1 all the cities along the line striking up and joining in the chorus or like ,carborundum ,acheson1 backed up by his little ,niagara ,falls oiling the wheels of a world1 weaving diamonds into steel1 hardening the bones of the earth into skyscrapers1 into railroads1 into the mighty thighs of flying locomotives4444 ,any man who is seen acting in this world with a thing1 as if he believed in the thing1 as if he believed in himself and believed in other people1 is singing4 ,moses striking out with a rod1 as we are told1 a path along the sea for his people may have done a more showy thing from a religious point of view1 hitting the water on top so1 making a great splash with an empty place in it for people to march through1 but he was not essentially more religious than ,mc,adoo1 with all those modest but mighty columns of figures piling up behind him1 with all those splendid1 dumb1 still glowing engineers behind him1 lifting up his will against cities1 lifting up his will against herds of politicians1 haughty newspapers1 against the flocks of silly complacent old ferry-boats waddling in the bay1 against the wind and the rain and the cold on the water1 and all the banks of ,wall ,street4444 ,when we want to tell ,news to our ,president about ourselves in ,america1 we point to ,william ,g4 ,mc,adoo4 ,the first news that we1 the ,american people1 must contrive to get into the ,white ,house about ourselves is that we do not want to be improved1 and that we do not like an improving tone in our government4 ,we want to be expressed the way ,mc,adoos express us4 ,we want a government that expresses our faith in one another1 in what we are doing1 and in ourselves1 and in the world4 ,we are singing over here on this continent4 ,we would not all of us put it in just this way4 ,but our singing is the main thing we can do1 and a government that is trying to improve us feebly1 that is looking askance at us and looking askance at our money1 and at our labour1 and that does not believe in us and join in with us in our singing does not know what we are like4 ,our next national business in ,america is to get the real news over to the ,president of what we are like4 ,it is news that we want in the ,white ,house4 ,a missionary in the ,white ,house1 be he ever so humble1 will not do4 ,mr4 ,roosevelt1 himself1 with the word ,duty on every milepost as he whirled past1 with suggestions of things for other people to do buzzing like bees about his head1 acquired his tremendous and incredible power with us as a people because1 in spite of his violent way of breaking out into a missionary every morning and every evening when he talked1 it was not his talking but his singing that made him powerful--his singing1 or doing things as if he believed in people1 his ,i wills and ,i won'ts1 his assuming every day1 his acting every day1 as if ,american men were men4 ,he sang his way roughly1 hoarsely1 even a little comically at times into the hearts of people1 stirred up in the nation a mighty heat1 put a great crackling fire under it1 put two great parties into the pot1 boiled them1 drew off all that was good in them1 and at last1 to-day1 as ,i write 7,february #aiac71 the prospect of a good square meal in the ,white ,house 7with some one else to say grace7 is before the people4 ,the people are waiting to sit down once more in the ,white ,house and refresh themselves4 ,at least1 the soup course is on the table4 ,who did it1 please8 ,who bullied the cook and got everybody ready8 ,theodore ,roosevelt1 singing a little roughly1 possibly hurrahing ,i will1 ,i will1 ,i won't1 ,i won't1 and acting as if he believed in the world4 ,bryan in the village of ,chicago sitting by at a reporter's table saw him doing it4 ,bryan saw how it worked4 ,bryan had it in him too4 ,bryan heard the shouts of the people across the land as they gloried in the fight4 ,he saw the signals from the nations over the sea4 ,then ,armageddon moved to ,baltimore4 99 99 99 99 99 ,and now table is about to be spread4 ,it is to be ,mr4 ,wilson's soup4 ,but the soup will have a ,roosevelt flavour or tang to it4 ,and we will wait to see what ,mr4 ,wilson will do with the other courses4 99 99 99 99 99 ,a poet in words1 with two or three exceptions1 ,america has not produced4 ,the only touch of poetry or art as yet that we have in ,america is--acting as if we believed in people4 ,this particular art is ours4 ,other people may have it1 but it is all we have4 ,this is what makes or may make any moment the common ,american a poet or artist4 ,speaking in this sense1 ,mr4 ,roosevelt is the first poet ,america has produced that ,european peoples and ,european governments have noticed for forty years1 or had any reason to notice4 ,we respectfully place ,mr4 ,roosevelt with ,mr4 ,mc,adoo 7and if ,mr4 ,brandeis will pardon us1 with ,mr4 ,brandeis7 as a typical ,american before the eyes of the new ,president4 ,we ask him to take ,mr4 ,roosevelt as a very important part of the latest news about us4 ,the true imaginative men of our modern life1 the poets of crowds and cities are not to-day our authors1 preachers1 professors or lawyers or philosophers4 ,the poets of crowds are our men like this1 our vision-doers1 the men who have seen visions and dreamed dreams in the real and daily things1 the daring ,governors like ,wilson and like ,hughes1 the daring inventors of great business houses1 the men who have invented the foundations on which nations can stand1 on which railroads can run1 the men whose imaginations1 in the name of heaven1 have played with the earth mightily1 watered deserts1 sailed cities on the seas1 the men who have whistled and who have said ,come6 to empires1 who have thought hundred-year thoughts1 taken out nine hundred and ninety-nine year leases1 who have thought of mighty ways for cities to live1 for cities to be cool1 to be light1 to be dark1 who have conceived ways for nations to talk1 who have grasped the earth and the sky like music1 like words1 and put them in the hands of the people1 and made the people say1 ,o earth1 and ,o sky1 thou art great1 but we also are great6 ,come earth and sky1 thou shalt praise ,god with us6 ,who are these men8 ,let the ,president catch up6 ,who are these men8 ,here is ,edward ,a4 ,filene1 who takes up the pride1 joy1 beauty1 self-respect1 and righteousness of a city1 swings it into a ,store1 and makes that ,store sing about the city up and down the world6 ,here is ,alexander ,cassatt1 imperturbable1 irrepressible1 and like a great ,boy playing leapfrog with a ,railroad--,cassatt who makes quick-hearted1 dreamy ,philadelphia duck under the ,sea1 bob up serenely in the middle of ,new ,york and leap across ,hell ,gate to get to ,boston6 ,let the parliaments droning on their benches1 the ,congresses pile out of their doors and catch up4 ,let the lawyers--the little swarms of dark-minded lawyers1 wondering and running to and fro1 creeping in offices1 who have tried to run our world1 blurred our governments1 and buzzed1 who have filled the world with piles of old paper1 ,congressional ,records1 with technicalities1 words1 droning1 weariness1 despair1 and fear 444 let them come out and look6 ,let them catch up6 ,let a man in this day in the presence of men like these sing4 ,if a man cannot sing1 let him be silent4 ,only men who are singing things shall do them4 ,i go out into the street1 ,i go out and look almost anywhere1 listen anywhere1 and the singing rises round me6 ,it was singing that spread the wireless telegraph like a great web across the sky4 ,it was singing that dug the subways under the streets in ,new ,york4 ,it was singing1 a kind of iron gladness1 hope and faith in men1 that has flung up our skyscrapers into the lower stories of the clouds1 and made them say1 ,i will6 ,i will6 ,i will6 to ,god4 ,ah1 how often have ,i seen them from the harbour1 those flocking1 crowded skyscrapers under that little heaven in ,new ,york1 lifting themselves in the sunlight and in the starlight1 lifting themselves before me1 sometimes1 it seems1 like crowds of great states1 like a great country piled up1 like a nation reaching1 like the plains and the hills and the cities of my people standing up against heaven day by day--all those flocks of the skyscrapers saying1 ,i will6 ,i will6 ,i will6 to ,god4 ,the skyscrapers are news about us to our ,president4 ,he shall reckon with skyscraper men4 ,he shall interpret men that belong with skyscrapers4 ,and as he does so1 ,i shall watch the people answer him1 now with a glad and mighty silence and now with a great solemn shout4 ,the skyscrapers are their skyscrapers4 ,the courage1 the reaching-up1 the steadfastness that is in them is in the hearts of the people4 ,if the ,president does not know us yet in ,america1 does not know ,mc,adoo as a representative ,american1 we will thunder on the doors of the ,white ,house until he does4 ,my impression is he would be out in the yard by the gate asking us to come in4 ,we are ,america4 ,we are expressing our joy in the world1 our faith in ,god1 and our love of the sun and the wind in the hearts of our people4 ,in ,america the free air breathes about us1 and daily the great sun climbs our hillsides1 swings daily past our work4 ,there are ninety million men with this sun and this wind woven into their bodies1 into their souls4 ,they stand with us4 ,the skyscrapers stand with us4 ,all singing stands with us4 ,ah1 ,i have waked in the dawn and in the sun and the wind have ,i seen them6 ,that sun and that wind1 ,i say before ,god1 are ,america6 ,they are the ,american temperament4 ,i will have laws for free men1 laws with the sun and the wind in them6 ,i have waked in the dawn and my heart has been glad with the iron and poetry in the skyscrapers4 ,i will have laws for men and for ,american men1 laws with iron and poetry in them6 ,the way for a government to get the poetry in is to say ,yes to somebody4 ,the way for a government to get the iron in is not by saying ,no4 ,it is not ,american in a government to keep saying ,no4 ,the best way for our government in ,america to say ,no to a man1 is to let him stand by and watch us saying ,yes to some one else4 ,then he will ask why4 ,then he will stand face to face with ,america4 ,,chapter ,,xi ,,news-,,books ,the most practical thing that could happen now in the economic world in ,america would be a sudden1 a great national1 contemporary literature4 ,america1 unlike ,england1 has no recognized cultured class1 and has no aristocracy1 so called1 with which to keep mere rich men suitably miserable--at least a little humble and wistful4 ,our greatest need for a long time has been some big serene1 easy way1 without half trying1 of snubbing rich men in ,america4 ,all these overgrown1 naughty fellows one sees everywhere like street boys on the corners or on the curbstones of society1 calling society names and taking liberties with it1 tripping people up2 hoodlums with dollars1 all these micks of money6--,o1 that society had some big1 calm1 serene way like some huge hearty ,london policeman1 of taking hold of them--taking hold of them by the seats of their little trousers if need be1 and taking them home to ,mother--some way of setting them down hard in their chairs and making them thoughtful6 ,nothing but a national literature will do this4 ,life1 7which is1 with one exception1 perhaps1 the only religious weekly we have left in ,america7 succeeds a little and has some spiritual value because it succeeds in making ,american millionaires look funny1 and in making them want to get away and live in ,europe4 ,but ,life is not enough2 it merely hitches us along from day to day and keeps our courage up4 ,we want in ,america a literature1 we want the thing done thoroughly and forever and once for all4 ,we want an ,aristophanes1 a master who shall go gloriously laughing through our world1 through our chimneys and blind machines1 pot-bellied fortunes1 empty successes1 all these tiny1 queer little men of wind and bladder1 until we have a nation filled with a divine laughter1 with strong1 manful1 happy visions of what men are for4 ,all we have to do is to have a ,news-book--a bookful of the kind of rich men we want1 then we will have them4 ,we will see men piling over each other all day to be them4 ,men have wanted to make money because making money has been supposed to mean certain things about a man4 ,the moment it ceases to mean them1 they will want to make other things4 ,where is the news about what we really want8 ----1 when ,i took him to the train yesterday1 spoke glowingly of the way the ,standard ,oil ,trust had reduced oil from twenty-nine cents to eleven cents4 ,there was not time to say anything4 ,i just thought a minute of how they did it4 ,why is it that people--so many good people will speak of oil at eleven cents in this way1 as if it were a kind of little kingdom of heaven8 ,i admit that eleven cents from twenty-nine cents leaves eighteen cents4 ,i do not deny that the ,standard ,oil ,trust has saved me eighteen cents4 ,but what have they taken away out of my life and taken out of my sense of the world and of the way things go in it and out of my faith in human nature to toss me eighteen cents8 ,if ,i could have for myself and others the sense of the world that ,i had before1 would ,i not to-day1 day after day1 over and over1 gallon by gallon1 be handing them their eighteen cents back8 ,what difference does it make to us if we are in a world where we can buy oil for eleven cents a gallon instead of twenty-nine1 if we do not care whether we are alive or dead in it and do not expect anything from ourselves or expect anything of anybody else8 ,i submit it to your own common sense1 ,gentle ,reader4 ,is it any comfort to buy oil to light a room in which you do not want to sit1 in which you would rather not see anything1 in which you would rather not remember who you are1 what you do1 and what your business is like1 and what you are afraid your business is going to be like8 ,i have passed through all this during the last fifteen years and ,i have come out on the other side4 ,but millions of lives of other men are passing through it now1 passing through it daily1 bitterly1 as they go to their work and as they fall asleep at night4 ,the next thing in this world is not reducing the price of oil4 ,it is raising the price of men and putting a market-value on life4 ,what makes a man a man is that he knows himself1 knows who he is1 what he is for and what he wants4 ,knowing who he is and knowing what he is about1 he naturally acts like a man1 knows what he is about like a man1 and gets things done4 ,a nation that does not know itself shall not be itself4 ,a nation that has a muddle-headed literature1 a nation that to say nothing of not being able to express what it has1 has not even made a beginning at expressing what it wants2 a nation that has not a great1 eager1 glowing literature1 a sublime clear-headedness about what it is for--a nation that cannot put itself into a great book1 a nation that cannot weave itself together even in words into a book that can be unfurled before the people like a flag where everybody can see it and everybody can share it1 look up to it1 live for it1 sleep for it1 get up in the morning and work for it--work for the vision of what it wants to be--cannot be a great nation4 ,a masterpiece is a book that has a thousand years in it4 ,no man has a right to say where these thousand years in it shall lie1 whether in the past or in the future4 ,it is the thousand years' worth in it that makes a masterpiece a masterpiece4 ,in ,america we may not have the literature of what we are or of what we have been1 but the literature of what we are bound to be1 the literature of what ,,we ,,will1 we will have1 and we will have to have it before we can begin being it4 ,first the ,specifications1 then the ,house4 ,from the practical or literary point of view the one sign we have given in this country so far1 that the stuff of masterpieces is in us and that we are capable of a great literature1 is that ,america is bored by its own books4 ,we let a ,french parson write a book for us on the simple life4 ,we let a poor suppressed ,russian with one foot in hell reach over and write books for us about liberty which we greedily read and daily use4 ,we let a sublimely obstinate ,norwegian1 breaking away with his life1 pulling himself up out of the beautiful1 gloomy1 morose bog of romance he was born in--express our ,american outbreak for facts1 for frank realism in human nature4 ,america is bored by its own books because every day it is demanding gloriously from its authors a literature--books that answer our real questions1 the questions the people are asking every night as they go to sleep and every morning when they crowd out into the streets--,where are we going8 ,who are we8 ,what are we like8 ,what are we for8 99 99 99 99 99 ,a---- ,c----1 the little stoopy cobbler on ---- street in ----1 bought some machines to help him last year before ,i went away and added two or three slaves to do the work4 ,i find on coming back that he has moved and has two show windows now1 one with the cobbling slaves in it cobbling1 and the other 7a kind of sudden1 impromptu room with a show window in it7 seems to be straining to be a shoe store4 ,when you go in and show ,c---- in his shirt sleeves1--your old shoes hopefully1 he slips over from his shining leather bench to the shoe-store side and shows you at the psychological moment a new pair of shoes4 ,he is in the train now with me this morning1 across the aisle1 looking out of the window for dear life1 poor fellow1 for all the world as if he could suck up dollars and customers--and people who need shoes--out of the fields as he goes by1 the way the man does mists1 by looking hard at them4 ,i watched him walking up and down the station platform before ,i got on1 with that bent1 concentrated1 meek1 ready-to-die-getting-on look4 ,i saw his future while ,i looked4 ,i saw1 or thought ,i saw1 windows full of bright black shoes1 ,i saw the cobbler's shop moved out into the ell at the back1 and two great show windows in front4 ,a---- ,c---- looks like an edged tool4 ,millions of ,americans are like ,a---- ,c----1 like chisels1 adzes1 saws1 scoops4 ,you talk with them1 and if you talk about anything except scooping and adzing1 you are not talking with just a man1 but a man who is for something and who is not for anything else4 ,he is not for being talked with certainly1 and alas6 not for being loved4 ,at best he is a mere feminine convenience--a father or a cash secreter2 until he wears out at last1 buzzes softly into a grave4 ,an ,englishman of this type is a little better1 would be more like one of these screw-driver1 cork-screw arrangements--a big hollow handle with all sorts of tools inside4 ,is this man a typical ,american8 ,does he need to be8 ,what ,i want is news about us4 ,all an ,american like ,c---- needs is news4 ,his eagerness is the making of him4 ,he is merely eager for what he will not want4 ,all he needs is the world's news about people1 about new inventions in human beings1 news about the different and happier kinds of newly invented men1 news about how they were thought of1 and how they are made1 and news about how they work4 ,i demand three things for ,a---- ,c----3 ,i want a novel that he will read which will make him see himself as ,i see him4 ,i want a moving picture of him that he will go to and like and go to again and again4 ,i want a play that will send him home from the theatre and keep him awake with what he might be all that night4 ,i want a news-book for ,a---- ,c----1 a news-book for all of us4 99 99 99 99 99 ,i read a book some years ago that seemed a true news-book and which was the first suggestion ,i had ever received that a book can be an act of colossal statesmanship1 the making or remaking of a people--a masterpiece of modern literature1 laying the ground plan for the greatness of a nation4 ,when ,i had read it1 ,i wanted to rush outdoors and go down the street stopping people ,i met and telling them about it4 ,once in a very great while one does come on a book like this4 ,one wants to write letters to the reviews4 ,one does not know what one would not do to go down the long aimless ,midway ,plaisance of the modern books1 to call attention to it4 ,one wishes there were a great bell up over the world4444 ,one would reach up to it1 and would say to all the men and the women and to the flocks of the smoking cities1 ,where are you all8 ,the bell would boom out1 ,what are you doing8 ,why are you not reading this book8 ,one wonders if one could not get a coloured page in the middle of the ,atlantic or the ,north ,american ,review or ,everybody's and at least make a great book as prominent as a great soap--almost make it loom up in a country like a ,felt ,mattress or a ,toothbrush4 ,the book that has made me feel like this the most is ,charles ,ferguson's ,religion of ,democracy4 ,i have always wondered why only people here and there responded to it4 ,the things it made me vaguely see1 all those huge masses of real things1 gigantic1 half-godlike1 looming like towers or mountains in a mist4444 ,well1 it must have been a little like this that ,columbus felt that first morning6 ,but as ,columbus went on1 what he struck after all was real land1 some piece of real land in particular4 ,the mist of vision did precipitate into something one could walk on1 and ,i found as ,i went on with ,mr4 ,ferguson's book that if there was going to be any real land1 somebody would have to make some4 ,but for the time being ,charles ,ferguson's book--all those glorious generalizings in behalf of being individual1 all those beautiful1 intoned1 chanted abstractions in behalf of being concrete--came to me in my speechless1 happy gratitude as a kind of first sign in the heavens1 as a pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night1 up over the place in the waste of water where land1 ,land6 ,at last6 ,land again6 will have to be4 ,if we ever have a literature in ,america1 it will be found somewhere when the mist rolls away1 right under ,charles ,ferguson's book4 ,it may be too soon just now in this time of transition in our land of piles and of derricks against the sky1 for the book4 ,all we are competent for now is to say that we want such a book1 that we see what it will do for us4 ,when we want it1 we will get it4 ,let the ,american people put in their order now4 ,in the meantime the ,piles and the ,derricks4 ,all these young and mighty derricks against the sky1 all these soaring steel girders with the blue through them--,america6 ,ah1 my ,god6 is it not a hoping nation8 ,three thousand miles of ,hope1 from ,eastport1 ,maine1 to ,san ,francisco--does not the very sun itself racing across it take three hours to get one look at our ,hope8 ,here it is6--,our ,world4 ,let me1 for one1 say what ,i want4 ,it is already as if ,i had seen it--one big1 heroic imagination at work at last like a sea upon our world1 poetry grappling with the great cities1 with their labour1 with their creative might1 full of their vast joys and sorrows1 full of their tussle with the sea and with the powers of the air and with the iron in the earth6--the big1 speechless cities that no one has spoken for yet1 so splendid1 and so eager1 and so silent about their souls6 ,it is true we are crude and young4 ,behold the ,derricks like mighty ,youths6 ,in our glorious adolescence so sublime1 so ugly1 so believing1 will no one sing a hymn to the ,derricks8 ,where are the dear little ,poets8 ,where are they hiding8 ,playing ,indian perhaps1 or making ,parthenons out of blocks4 ,perhaps they might begin faintly and modestly at first4 ,some dear1 hopeful1 modest ,american poet might creep up from under them1 out from under the great believing1 dumb ,derricks standing on tiptoe of faith against the sky1 and write a book and call it ,beliefs ,american ,poets ,would ,like to ,believe if ,they ,could4 ,,chapter ,,xii ,,news-,,books ,,ii ,a nation's religion is its shrewdness about its ideals1 its genius for stating its ideals or news about itself1 in the terms of its everyday life4 ,a nation's literature is its power of so stating its ideals that we will not need to be shrewd for them--its power of expressing its ideals in words1 of tracing out ideals on white paper1 so that ideals shall enthrall the people1 so that ideals shall be contagious1 shall breathe and be breathed into us1 so that ideals shall be caught up in the voices of men and sung in the streets4 ,ideals1 intangible1 electric1 implacable irresistible1 all-enfolding ideals1 shall hold and grip a continent the way a climate grips a continent1 like sunshine around a helpless thing1 in the hollow of its hand1 and possess the hearts of the people4 ,what our government needs now is a ,national band in ,washington4 ,america is a ,tune4 ,america is not a formula4 ,america is not statistics1 even graphic statistics4 ,a great nation cannot be made1 cannot be discovered1 and then be laid coldly together like a census4 ,america is a ,tune4 ,it must be sung together4 ,the next thing statesmen are going to learn in this country is that from a practical point of view in making a great nation only our ,tune in ,america and only our singing our ,tune can save us4 ,a great nation can be made out of the truth about us4 ,the truth may be--must be probably1--plain4 ,but the truth must sing4 ,it will not be the government that first gets the truth that will govern us4 ,the government that gets the truth big enough to sing first1 and sings it1 will be the government that will govern us4 ,the political party in this country that will first be practical with the people1 and that will first get what it wants1 will be the political party that first takes ,literature seriously4 ,our first great practical government is going to see how a great book1 searching the heart of a nation1 expressing and singing the men in it1 governs a people4 ,being a ,president in a day like this1 if it does not consist in being a poet1 consists in being the kind of ,president who can be1 at least1 in partnership with a poet4 ,it is not every ,president who can be his own ,david1 who can rule with one hand and write psalms and chants for his people with the other4 ,the call is out1 the people have put in their order to the authors of ,america1 to the boys in the colleges1 and to the young women in the great schools--,our ,president wants a book4 ,before much time has passed1 he is going to have one4 ,being a ,president in this country has never been expressed in a book4 ,the ,president is going to have a book that expresses him to the people and that says what he is trying to do4 ,he will live confidentially with the book4 ,it shall be in his times of trial and loneliness like a great people coming to him softly4 ,he shall feel with such a book1 be it day or night1 the nation by him1 by his desk1 by his bedside1 by his silence1 by his questioning1 standing by1 and lifting4 ,in the book the people shall sing to the ,president4 ,he shall be kept reminded that we are there4 ,he shall feel daily what ,america is like4 ,america shall be focussed into melody4 ,we shall have a literature once more and the singers1 as in ,greece1 as in all happy lands and in all great ages1 shall go singing through the streets4 ,there is no singing for a ,president now4 ,all a ,president can do when he is inaugurated1 when he begins now1 is to kiss helplessly some singing four thousand years old in a ,bible by another nation4 ,when ,david sang to his people1 he sang the news1 the latest news1 the news of what was happening to people about him from week to week4 ,why is no one singing #aiac1 our own ,american #aiac8 ,why is no one stuttering out our ,bible--one the ,president could have to refer to1 our own ,bible in our own tongue from morning to morning in the symbols that breathe to us out of the sounds in the street1 out of the air1 out of the fresh1 bright ,american sky1 and out of the new ground beneath our feet8 99 99 99 99 99 ,it is easy for a ,president to pile up three columns a morning of news about himself to us1 show each man his face in the morning1 but what is there he can do with twenty thousand newspapers at his breakfast table1 to pick out the real news about us8 ,who shall paint the portrait of a people8 ,one could go about in the ,white ,house and study the portraits of the presidents1 but where is the portrait of the people8 ,the portrait of the people comes in little bits to the president like a puzzle picture4 ,each man brings in his little crooked piece1 jig-sawed out from ,iowa1 ,south ,dakota1 ,oklahoma or ,aroostook ,county1 ,maine4 ,this picture or vision of a nation1 this wilderness of pieces1 can be seen every day when one goes in1 lying in heaps on the floor of the ,white ,house4 ,a literature is the expression on the face of a nation4 ,a literature is the eyes of a great people looking at one4 ,it seems to be as we look1 looking out of the past and faraway into the future4 ,a newspaper can set a nation's focus for a morning1 adjusting it one way or the other4 ,a ,president can set the focus for four years4 ,but only a book can set the focus for a nation's next hundred years so that it can act intelligently and steadfastly on its main line from week to week and morning to morning4 ,only a book can make a vast1 inspiring1 steadfast1 stage-setting for a nation4 ,only a book1 strong1 slow1 reflective1 alone with each man1 and before all men1 can set in vast still array the perspective1 the vision of the people1 can give that magnificent self-consciousness which alone makes a great nation1 or a mighty man4 ,at last humble1 imperious1 exalted1 it shall see ,itself1 its vision of its daily life lying out before it1 threading its way to ,god6 ,,chapter ,,xiii ,,news-,,papers ,i went one day six months ago to the ,mansion ,house and heard ,lord ,grey1 and ,lord ,robert ,cecil1 and ,mr4 ,t4,c4 ,taylor and others address the annual meeting of the ,labour ,copartnership ,association4 ,i found myself in the presence of a body of men who believe that ,englishmen are capable of bigger and better things than many men believe they are capable of4 ,they refuse to evade the issue of the coal strike and to agree with the socialists who have given up believing that ,english employers can be competent and who merely believe that we will have to rely on our governments now to be employers1 and they refuse to agree with the syndicalists1 who believe in human nature still less and have given up on employers and on governments both4 ,i have retained three impressions as a result of the meeting4 ,the first was that it was the most significant and impressive event since the coal strike1 that it brought the whole industrial issue to a point and summed the coal strike up4 ,the second impression was one of surprise that the hall was not full4 ,the third impression came the next day when ,i looked through the papers for accounts of what had been said and of what it stood for4 ,it was noted pleasantly and hurriedly as one of the day's events4 ,it was just one more of those shadowy things that flicker on the big foolish1 drifting1 rolling attention of a world a second and are gone4 ,people were given a few inches4 ,i read in the papers that same day a quite long account of a discussion of nine bishops for five hours 7meeting at the same time7 on a matter of proper clothes for clergymen4 ,i would have said of that meeting of the ,labour ,copartnership ,association--that it was a meeting of a ,society for ,defence and ,protection of ,longer ,possible ,religion on the ,earth--but the clergy out of all the invitations1 did not seem very largely to have had time to be there4 ,i wondered too a little about the papers1 as ,i hunted through them4 ,it set one to thinking if anything serious to the nation would have happened1 if possibly during the coal strike the ,london papers had devoted as much attention to ,t4,c4 ,taylor--a mutual interest employer--and to how he runs his business--as to ,horatio ,bottomley8 ,possibly too what ,mr4 ,sandow prefers to have people drink is not so important--perhaps whole pages of it at a time--as ,amos ,mann and how he runs his shoe business without strikes1 or as ,joseph ,bibby and how he makes oil cakes and loyal workmen together4 ,i read the other day of a clergyman in ,new ,jersey--who was organizing a league of all the left-handed men in the world4 ,everything is being organized1 whether or no4 ,some one has financed him4 ,there will be some one very soon now who will pay the bill for organizing the attention of a world and for deciding the fate of human nature4 ,it would be worth while spending possibly one fortune on getting human nature to settle decisively and once for all whether it has any reason to believe in itself or not4 ,why have a world at all--one like this8 ,do we want it8 ,who wants it8 ,what do we want instead8 ,we will advertise and find out4 ,we will spend millions of pounds and ,dreadnoughts1 even national beer-bills on it1 if necessary1 on making everybody know that mentally competent business men--mutual-interest employers1 and mentally competent workmen--mutual-interest workmen1 can be produced by the human race4 ,when everybody knows that this is true1 nine out of ten ,parliamentary questions would be settled1 the ,churches would again have a chance to be noticed1 and education and even religion could be taken seriously4 ,there would be some object in being a teacher perhaps once more and in making teaching again a great profession4 ,there would be some object perhaps in even being an artist4 ,the world would start off on a decent1 self-respecting theory or vision about itself4 ,things could begin to be done in society once more1 soundly1 permanently1 humanly and from the bottom up4 ,we would go out on the streets again--rich and poor--and look in each other's faces4 ,we would take up our morning papers without a sinking at the heart4 ,and the men who have stopped believing in men and who merely believe in machines would be indicted before the bar of mankind4 ,we would see them slowly filing back1 one by one1 to where they belong--on the back seats of the world4 ,the newspapers in ,england and ,america seem to think that in their business of rolling the world along1 what they find themselves confronted with just now is an economic problem4 ,the problem that the newspapers are really confronted with1 as a matter of fact1 is one with which newspaper men big and little are more competent to deal than they would be with an expert problem in economics4 ,the real problem that newspapers are confronted with every night1 every morning1 to-day1 is a problem in human nature4 ,some people believe that human nature can be believed in1 and others do not4 ,the socialists1 the syndicalists1 the trades unionists1 as a class1 and the capitalists as a class1 are acting as if they did not4 ,a great many inventors1 and a great many workmen1 all the more bold and inventive workmen1 and many capitalists and great organizers of facts and of men1 are acting as if they believed in human nature4 ,which are right8 ,can a mutual-interest employer1 can a mutual-interest worker1 be produced by the human race8 ,there are some of us who answer that this is a matter of fact1 that this type of man can be produced1 is already produced1 and is about to be reproduced indefinitely4 ,the moment we can convince trades unions and convince employers that this is true we will change the face of the earth4 ,why not change the face of the earth now8 ,in this connection ,i respectfully submit three considerations3 #ast4 ,if all employers of the world to-morrow morning knew what ,lord ,grey 7as ,president of the ,labour ,copartnership ,association7 knows to-day about copartnership--the hard facts about the way copartnership works in calling out human nature--in nerving and organizing labour1 every employer in the world to-morrow would begin to take an attitude toward labour which would result in making strikes and lockouts as impracticable1 as incredible1 as moony1 as visionary forever as ideals of a world without strikes look now4 #bnd4 ,if all the workmen of the world to-morrow morning knew what ,frederick ,taylor 7the ,american engineer7 knows about planning workmen's work so that they receive1 for the same expenditure of strength1 a third more wages every day1 the whole attitude of labour in every nation and of the trades unions of the world--the attitude of doing as little work as possible1 of labouring and studying and slaving away to discover ways of not being of any use to employers--would face about in a day4 #crd4 ,what ,lord ,grey knows about copartnership and the way it works is in the form of ascertainable1 communicable1 and demonstrable facts4 ,what ,frederick ,taylor knows and what he has been doing with human beings and with steel and pig iron and with bricks and other real things is in the form of history that has been making for thirty years--and that can be looked up and proved4 ,why should not everybody who employs labour know what ,lord ,grey knows8 ,and why should not all workmen know what a few thousand workmen who have been trained under ,frederick ,taylor to work under better conditions and with more wages1 know8 ,if ,i were an inspired millionaire the first thing ,i would do to-morrow would be to supply the funds and find the men who should take up what ,lord ,grey knows about employers1 and what ,frederick ,taylor knows about workmen1 and put it where all who live shall see it and know it4 ,i would spend my fortune in proving to the world1 in making everybody know and believe that the mutual-interest business man and the mutual-interest workman have been produced and can be produced and shall be produced by the human race4 ,the problem of the fate of the world in its essential nature and in its spiritual elements and gifts--has come to be in this age of the press a huge advertising problem--a great adventure in human attention4 ,the most characteristic and human and natural way1 and the only profound and permanent way to handle the quarrel between ,capital and ,labour is by placing certain facts--certain rights-of-all-men-to-know1 into the hands of some disinterested and powerful statesman of publicity--some great organizer of the attention of a world4 ,he would have to be a practical passionate psychologist1 a man gifted with a bird's-eye view of publics--a discoverer of geniuses and crowds1 a natural diviner or reader of the hearts of men4 ,he shall search out and employ twenty men to write as many books addressed to as many classes and types of employers and workers4 ,he shall arrange pamphlets for every dooryard that cannot help being read4 ,he shall reach trades unions by using the cinema1 by having some master of human appeal take the fate of labour1 study it out in pictures--and the truth shall be thrown night after night and day after day on a hundred thousand screens around a world4 ,he shall organize and employ wide publicity or rely on secret and careful means on different aspects of the issue according to the nature of the issue1 human nature and common sense1 and organize his campaign to reach every type of person1 every temperament1 and order of circumstance1 each in its own way4 ,what ,lord ,grey knows and what ,frederick ,taylor's workmen know shall be put where all who live shall see it where every employer1 every workman1 every workman's wife and every growing boy and girl that is passing by1 as on some vast billboard above the world1 shall see it--shall see and know and believe that employers that are worth believing in--and that workmen who can work and who are skilled and clever enough to love to work--can still be produced by the human race4 ,if ,i were a newspaper man ,i would start what might be called ,pull ,together ,clubs in every community1 men in all walks of life1 little groups of crowdmen or men in the community who could not bear not to see a town do team work4 ,i would use these ,pull ,together ,clubs in every community as means of gathering and distributing news--as local committees on the national campaign of touching the imagination of labour and touching the imagination of capital4 ,without ,vision the ,people perish4 ,i would begin with spending five million dollars on a vision for the people4 ,what would ,i do with a five-million-dollar fund for touching the imagination of labour and touching the imagination of capital8 ,first3 preliminary announcement in all papers and in all public ways1 asking names and addresses of workmen who have already proved and established their belief in copartnership4 ,names and addresses of employers in the same way4 ,second3 names and addresses of workmen who would believe in it if they could2 who believe in the principle theoretically and would be interested in seeing how it could be practically and technically proved4 ,names and addresses of employers in the same way4 ,third3 selection of one firm in each industry1 the best and most strategically placed to carry it out in that industry1 and placing the facts before them4 ,selection of the leading workmen out of all the workmen in the nation employed in that industry1 who would be willing to work with such a firm4 ,fourth3 a selection of travelling secretaries to visit trades unions and get provisional permission and toleration for these workmen so that they can take copartnership places under such a firm with the consent of their fellows and he set one side for experimental purposes1 under the protection of the trades union rules4 ,fifth3 ,i would find the most promising trades-union branch in each industry and ,i would try to get this branch to take it up with the other branches until all trades unions were brought to admit copartnership members on special terms4 ,sixth3 after getting copartnership tolerated for certain workmen employed in certain firms ,i would try to make copartnership a trades-union movement4 ,i would then let the trades unions educate the employers4 ,seventh3 ,i would prepare a list of apparent exceptions to copartnership as a working principle4 ,i would investigate and try to see why they were exceptions and why copartnership would not work1 and ,i would find and set inventors at work1 and find in what way the spirit that is back of copartnership could be applied4 ,,chapter ,,xiv ,,news-,,machines ,we want to be good and the one thing we need to do is to tell each other4 ,then we will be good4 ,our conveniences for being good in crowds are not finished yet4 ,we have invented machines for crowds to see one another with and to use in getting about in the dark4 ,one engine whirls round and round all night so that half a million people can be going about anywhere after sunset without running into each other4 ,crowds have vast machines for being somewhere else--run in somewhat the same way all from one unpretentious building they put up called a ,power ,house4 ,a great many of our machines for allowing crowds of people to move their bodies around with have been attended to1 but our ,intelligence-,machine1 our machine for knowing what other people really think1 and what they are like in their hearts so that we can know enough to be good to them1 and have brains enough to get them to be good to us1 is not finished and set up yet4 ,the industrial problem instead of being primarily an economic problem is a news problem4 ,if a ,president were to appoint a ,secretary of ,labour and were to give him as one of his conveniences1 a news engineer--an expert at attracting and holding the attention of labour unions and driving through news to them about themselves that they do not know yet1 who would be practically at the head of the department in two years8 ,the ,secretary or the ,secretary's news engineer8 ,news is all there is to such a department1 finding out what it is and distributing it4 ,any one can think of scores of labour-union fallacies1 news they do not know about themselves that they will want to know at once when their attention is called to it4 ,if nine members of the ,president's ,cabinet were national news agents1 experts in nationalizing news1 one member could do with his subordinates all the other things that ,cabinet members do4 ,the real problem before each ,cabinet member is a problem of news4 ,if the ,secretary of ,commerce1 for instance1 could get people to know certain things1 he would not need to do at all most of the things that he is doing now4 ,neither would the ,attorney ,general4 ,if everything in a ,cabinet position turns on getting people to know things1 why not get them to know them8 ,why not take that job instead8 ,why not take the job of throwing one's self out of a job8 ,every powerful man has done it--thrown himself out of what he was doing1 by making up something bigger to do from the beginning of the world4 ,in every business it is the man who can recognize1 focus1 organize1 and apply news1 and who can get news through to people1 who soon becomes the head of the business4 ,the man who can get news through to directors and to employees and make them see themselves and see one another and the facts as they are1 soon gets to be ,head of the factory4 ,the man who can get news through to the public1 the salesman of news to people about what they want to buy and about how they are to spend their money--very personal1 intimate news to every man--soon rises to be ,head of the ,head of the factory and of the entire business4 ,it will probably be the same in a cabinet or in a government4 ,if the ,secretary of the ,department of ,commerce has a news engineer as a subordinate in his department and begins to study and observe how to do his work best1 how to solve his problem in the nation1 we will soon see the head of the department1 if he really is the head of the department1 quietly taking over his news engineer's job and letting his news engineer have his4 ,it is a news engineering job1 being a ,secretary of ,commerce4 ,every member of the ,cabinet has a news engineering job4 ,and the fact seems to be that the moment the news is attended to in each member's department--applied news1 special and private news1 turned on and set to work where it is called for--most members of cabinets1 secretaries of making people do things1 and for that matter1 the ,presidents of making people do things will be thrown out of employment4 ,the ,secretaries of ,what ,people ,think1 and the ,president of ,what ,people ,think--the engineers of the news in this nation--will be the men who govern it4 ,,chapter ,,xv ,,news-,,crowds ,i have tried to express in the last chapter1 some kind of tentative working vision or hope of what authors and of what newspaper men can do in governing a country4 ,this chapter is for anybody1 any plain human being4 ,governments all over the world to-day are groping to find out what plain human beings are like4 ,it does not matter very long what other things a government gets wrong1 if it gets the people right4 ,this suggests something that each of us can do4 ,i was calling on ----1 ,treasurer of ----1 in his new bank1 not long ago--a hushed1 reverent place with a dome up over it and no windows on this wicked world--a kind of heavenly minded way of being lighted from above4 ,it seemed to be a kind of ,church for ,money4 ,this is new1 ,i said1 since ,i've been away4 ,who built it8 ---- mentioned the name of ,non-,gregarious as if ,i had never heard of him4 ,i said nothing4 ,and he began to tell me how ,non built the bank4 ,he said he had wanted ,non from the first1 but that the directors had been set against it4 ,and the more he told the directors about ,non1 he said1 the more set they were4 ,they kept offering a good many rather vague objections1 and for a long time he could not really make them out4 ,finally he got it4 ,all the objections boiled down to one4 ,non was too good to be true4 ,if there was a man like ,non in this world1 they said1 they would have heard about it before4 99 99 99 99 99 ,when ,i was telling ex-,mayor ----1 in ----1 about ,non1 the first time1 he interrupted me and asked me if ,i would mind his ringing for his stenographer4 ,he was a trustee and responsible1 either directly or indirectly1 for hundreds of buildings1 and he wanted the news in writing4 ,of course there must be something the matter with it1 he said1 but he wanted it to be true1 if it could1 and as the bare chance of its being true would be very important to him1 he was going to have it looked up4 ,now ex-,mayor ---- is precisely the kind of man 7as half the world knows7 who1 if he had been a contractor1 instead of what he had happened to be1 would have been precisely the kind of contractor ,non is4 ,he has the same difficult1 heroic blend of shrewd faiths in him1 of high motives and getting what he wants4 ,but the moment ex-,mayor ---- found these same motives put up to be believed in at one remove1 and in somebody else1 he thought they were too good to be true4 ,i have found myself constantly confronted in the last few years of observation with a very singular and interesting fact about business men4 ,nine business men out of ten ,i know1 who have high motives1 7in a rather bluff simple way1 without particularly thinking about it1 one way or the other7 seem to feel a little superior to other people4 ,they begin1 as a rule1 apparently1 by feeling a little superior to themselves1 by trying to keep from seeing how high their motives are1 and when1 in the stern scuffle of life1 they are unable any longer to keep from suspecting how high their motives are themselves1 they fall back on trying to keep other people from suspecting it4 ,in ----'s factory in ----1 the workers in brass1 a few years ago1 could not be kept alive more than two years because they breathed brass filings4 ,when ---- installed1 at great expense1 suction machines to place beside the men to keep them from breathing brass1 some one said1 ,well surely you will admit this time1 that this is philanthropy8 ,not at all4 ,the saving in brass air alone1 gathered up from in front of the men's mouths1 paid for the machines4 ,what is more he said that after he had gone to the expense of educating some fine workmen1 if a mere little sucking machine like that could make the best workmen he had1 work for him twenty years instead of two years1 it was poor economy to let them die4 ,nearly all of the really creative business men make it a point1 until they get a bit intimate with people1 to talk in this tone about business4 ,one can talk with them for hours1 for days at a time1 about their business--some of them1 without being able a single time to corner them into being decent or into admitting that they care about anybody4 ,now ,i will not yield an inch to ---- or to anybody else in my desire to displace and crowd out altruism in our modern life4 ,i believe that altruism is a feeble and discouraged thing from a religious point of view4 ,i have believed that the big1 difficult and glorious thing in religion is mutualism1 a spiritual genius for finding identities1 for putting people's interests together-you-and-,i-ness1 and we-ness1 letting people crowd in and help themselves4 ,and why not believe this and drop it8 ,why should nearly every business man one meets to-day1 try to keep up this desperate show1 of avoiding the appearance of good1 of not wanting to seem mixed up in any way with goodness--either his own or other people's8 ,in the present desperate crisis of the world1 when all our governments everywhere are groping to find out what business men are really like and what they propose to be like1 if a man is good 7far more than if he is bad7 everybody has a right to know it4 ,the ,president has a right to know it4 ,the party leaders have a right to know it4 ,it is a big businesslike thing for a man to make goodness pay1 but what is the man's real1 deep1 happy1 creative1 achieving motive in making goodness pay8 ,what is it in the man that fills him with this fierce desire1 this almost business-fanaticism for making goodness pay8 ,it is a big daily grim love of human nature in him1 his love of being in a human world1 his passion for human economy1 for world efficiency and world-self-respect4 ,this is what it is in him that makes him force goodness to pay4 ,the business men of the bigger type who let themselves talk in this tone to-day1 do not mean it1 they are letting themselves be insensibly drawn into the tone of the men around them4 ,we have gone skulking about with our virtues so long1 saying that we have none1 that we have believed it4 ,we all know men finer than we are who say they have none4 ,so we have not1 probably4 ,and so it goes on4 ,i grow more and more tired every year of going about the business world1 at boards of trade and at clubs and at dinners1 and finding all this otherwise plain and manly world1 all dotted over everywhere with all these simple1 good1 self-deceived blundering prigs of evil1 putting on airs before everybody day and night1 of being worse than they are6 ,it is not exactly a lie4 ,it is a ,humdrum4 ,people do not deliberately lie about human nature4 ,they merely say pianola-minded things4 ,one goes down any business street1 ,oxford ,street1 ,bond ,street1 or ,broadway4 ,one hears the same great ragtime tune of business1 dinging like a kind of street piano1 through men's minds1 ,sh-sh-sh-sh-,oh1 ,,sh-,,sh6 ,oh1 do not let anybody know ,i'm being good6 ,,ii ,i am not going to try any longer to worm out of my virtues or to keep up an appearance of having as low motives as other people are trying to make me believe they have4 ,they have lied long enough4 ,i have lied long enough4 ,my motives are really rather high and ,i am going to admit it4 ,and the higher they are 7when ,i have hustled about and got the necessary brains to go with them7 the better they have worked4 ,nine times out of ten when they have not worked1 it has been my fault4 ,sometimes it is ,john ,doe's fault4 ,i am going to speak to ,john ,doe about it4 ,i am going to tell him what ,i am driving at4 ,i have turned over a new leaf4 ,in the crisis of a great nation and as an act of last desperate patriotism1 ,i am going to give up looking modest4 ,for a long time now ,i have wanted to dare to come out and stand up before this ,modesty ,bug-a-boo and have it out with it and say what ,i think of it1 as one of the great1 still1 sinister threats against our having or getting a real national life in ,america4 ,i knew a boy once who grew so fast that his mother always kept him wearing shoes three sizes too large1 and big1 hopeful-looking coats and trousers4 ,except for a few moments a year he never caught up4 ,nobody ever saw that boy and his long shoes when he was not butting bravely about1 stubbing his toes on the world and turning up his sleeves4 ,it was a great relief to him and everybody1 finally1 when he grew up4 ,i am going to let myself go around1 for a while now1 at least until our present national crisis is over in business and in politics1 like that boy4 ,there are millions of other men in this country who want to be like that boy4 ,nations may smile at us if they want to4 ,we will smile too--rather stiffly and soberly1 but for better or worse we propose from to-day on1 to let people see what we are trying to be daily1 grimly1 right along side of what we are6 ,i have come to the conclusion that the only way1 for me1 at least1 to keep modest and kind1 is to have my ideals all on4 ,when one is going around in sight of everybody with one's moral sleeves rolled up1 and one's great wistful1 broad trousers that do not look as if they would ever get filled out1 it is awkward to find fault with other people for not filling out their moral clothes4 ,it may be a severe measure to take with one's self hut the surest way to be kind is to live an exposed life4 ,i propose to live the next few years in a glass house4 ,there are millions of other men who want to4 ,we want to see if we cannot at last live confidentially with a world1 live navely and simply with a world like boys and like great men and like dogs6 ,what ,i have written1 ,i have written4 ,i propose to run the risk of being good4 ,when driven to it1 ,i will run the risk of saying ,i am good4 ,my motives are fairly high4 ,see6 here is my scale of one hundred6 ,i had rather stand forty-five on my scale than ninety-eight on yours6 ,if there is any discrepancy between my vision and my action1 ,i am not going to be bullied out of my life and out of living my life the way ,i want to1 by the way ,i look4 ,though it mock me1 ,i will not haul down my flag4 ,i will haul up my life6 ,here it is right here in this paragraph1 in black and white4 ,i take it up and look at it1 ,i read it once more and lay it down4 ,what ,i have written1 ,i have written4 ,,iii ,people do not seem to agree in the present crisis of our ,american industrial and national life1 about the necessity of getting at the facts and at the real news in this country about how good we are4 ,last ,november in the national election1 four and a half million men 7,republicans7 said to ,theodore ,roosevelt1 ,theodore6 do not be good so loud6 ,four and a half million other men1 also ,republicans1 told him not to mind what anybody said1 but to keep right on being good as loud as he liked1 for as long as it seemed necessary4 ,they wanted to be sure our goodness in ,america such as we had1 was being loud enough to be heard1 believed in1 and acted on in public4 ,the other set of men1 last ,november 7who were really very good too1 of course71 were more sedate and liked to see goodness modulated more4 ,they stood out for what might be called a kind of moral elegance4 ,the governing difference between the ,roosevelt type and the ,taft type in ,america has not been a mere difference of temperament but a difference in news-sense1 in a sense of crisis in the nation4 ,thousands of men of all parties1 with the nicest1 easiest stand-pat ,taft temperaments in the world1 with soft1 low voices and with the most beautiful moral manners1 have let themselves join in a national attempt to shock this nation into seeing how good it is4 ,a great temporary crisis can only be met by a great temporary loudness4 ,this is what has been happening in ,america during the last six months4 ,at last1 all men in all parties are engaged in trying to find out3 ,is it true or not true that we want to be good8 ,we are trying to get the news through4 ,it may not be very becoming to us and we know as well as any one1 that loudness1 except when morally deaf people drive us to it is in bad taste4 ,we are looking forward1 every one of us1 to being as elegant as any one is1 and the very first minute we get the morally deaf people out of office where we will not have to go about shouting out at them we will tone down in our goodness4 ,we will modulate beautifully6 ,,iv ,there are three other bug-a-boos1 besides the ,modesty ,bug-a-boo that ,america will have to face and drive out of the way before it can be truly said to have a national character or to have grown up and found itself4 ,there is the ,goody-good ,bug-a-boo1 the ,consistency ,bug-a-boo1 and the ,bug-a-boo that ,thomas ,jefferson if he were living now1 would never never ride in a carriage4 ,each of these bug-a-boos in the general mistiness and muddle-headiness of the time can be seen going about1 saying1 ,boo6 ,boo6 to this democracy from day to day and year to year1 keeping it scared into not getting what it wants4 ,there is not one of them that will not evaporate in ten minutes the first morning we get some real news through in this country about ourselves and about what we are like4 ,what is the real news about us1 for instance1 as regards being goody-good8 ,i can only begin with the news for one4 ,for years1 ,i have held myself back from taking a plain or possibly loud stand for goodness as a shrewd1 worldly-wise program for ,american business and public life1 because ,i was afraid of people1 and afraid people would think ,i was trying to improve them4 ,what was worse1 ,i was afraid of myself too4 ,i was afraid ,i really would4 ,i am afraid now1 or rather ,i would be1 if ,i had not drilled through to the news about myself and about other people and about human nature that ,i am putting into this chapter4 99 99 99 99 99 ,i have written five hundred pages in this book on an awkward and dangerous subject like the ,golden ,rule1 and ,i appeal to the reader--,i ask him humbly1 hopefully1 gratefully if he can honestly say 7except for a minute here and there when ,i have been tired and slipped up71 if he has really felt improved or felt that ,i was trying to improve him in this book4 ,on your honour1 ,gentle ,reader--you who have been with me five hundred pages6 ,you say ,yes8 ,then ,i appeal to your sense of fairness4 ,if you truly feel ,i have been trying to improve you in this book1 turn this leaf down here and stop4 ,it is only fair to me4 ,close the book with your improved and being improved feeling and never open it again until it passes over4 ,you have no right to go on page after page calling me names1 as it were1 right in the middle of my own book in this way behind my back1 you6--hundreds and thousands of miles away from me1 by your own lamp1 by your own window--you come to me here between these two helpless pasteboard covers where ,i cannot get out at you1 where ,i cannot answer back1 and you say that ,i am trying to improve you6 ,ah1 ,gentle ,reader1 forgive me6 ,god forgive me6 ,believe me1 ,i never meant1 not if it could possibly be helped1 to improve you6 ,if you insist on it and keep saying that ,i have been improving you1 all ,i can say is that ,i was merely looking as if ,i were improving you4 ,you did it4 ,i did not4 ,god help me if ,i am trying to improve you6 ,i am trying to find out in this book who ,i am4 ,if1 incidentally1 while ,i am quietly working away on this for five hundred pages1 you find out who you are yourself1 and then drop into a gentle glowing improved feeling all by yourself1 do not mix me up in it4 ,i deny that ,i have tried to improve you or anybody4 ,i have written this book to get my own way1 to express my ,america4 ,i have written it to say i1 to say ,i1 to say 7the first minute you let me71 you and ,i1 to say we1 ,,we about ,america--to drive the news through to a ,president of what ,america is like4 ,i am not improving you4 ,i am telling you what may or may not be news about you4 ,take it or leave it4 ,v ,i want to be good4 ,i do not feel superior to other men4 ,and ,i do not propose1 if there is anything ,i can do about it1 to be compelled to feel superior4 ,i believe we all want to be good4 ,the one thing ,i want in this world is to prove it4 ,i want my own way4 ,i am not going to slump into being a beautiful character4 ,i have written this book to get my own way4 ,i have said ,i will not be mixed up in the fate of people who do not know where they are going1 who have not decided what they are like1 who do not know who they are4 ,what do the people want8 ,some people tell me they want nothing4 ,they tell me it would only make things worse and stir things up for me to want to be good4 ,or perhaps they think it is beautiful to lower the price of oil4 ,they want oil at seven cents a gallon4 ,do they8 ,do you8 ,do ,i8 ,i say no4 ,let oil wait4 ,i want to raise the price of men and to put a market value on human life4 ,i find as ,i look about me that there are two classes of statesmen offering to be helpful in making life worth living in ,america4 ,there are the statesmen who think we are going to be good and who believe in a program which trusts and exalts the people and the leaders of the people4 ,there are the statesmen who seem to believe that ,american human nature does not amount to enough to be good4 ,they are planning a program on the principle that the best that can be done with human nature in ,america in business and public life is to have it expurgated4 ,which class of statesmen do we want8 ,in some of our state prisons men who are not considered fit to reproduce themselves are sterilized4 ,the question that is now up before this country is1 ,do we or do we not want ,american business sterilized8 ,are we or are we not going to put a national penalty on all initiative in all business men because some men abuse it8 ,there is but one thing that can save us1 namely1 proving to one another and to our public men1 that we are good1 that we are going to be good and that we know how4 ,we face the issue to-day4 ,two definite programs are before the country4 ,those who have put their faith in being afraid of one another as a national policy have devised several ,by-laws for an ,expurgated ,america4 ,they say1 eliminate the right of a man to do wrong4 ,deny him the right of moral experiment because some of his experiments do not work4 ,we say let him try4 ,we can look out for ourselves or we will have bigger men than he is1 to look out for us4 ,they say1 eliminate the right of a man to be an owner1 because nobody has the courage to believe that a man can express his best self in property4 ,we say that property may express a man's religion1 and that the way a man has of being rich or of being poor may be an art-form4 ,most men can express themselves better in property than in anything else4 ,they say1 eliminate all monopoly indiscriminately and the occasional logical efficiency of monopoly because it has not worked well for the people the first few times and because we have not learned how to handle it4 ,we say learn how to handle it4 ,they say eliminate the middleman4 ,they say that the one strategic man in every industry who can represent everybody if he wants to1 who can be a great man and who can make a great industry serve everybody1 must be eliminated because nobody believes ,america can produce a middleman4 ,we say instead of weakly and helplessly giving up a great spiritual and morally-engineering institution like the middleman because the average middleman does not know his job1 we say3 ,exalt the middleman raise him to the n-th power1 make him--well--do you remember1 ,gentle ,reader1 the walking beams on the old sidewheel steamers8 ,we say do not eliminate him--lift him up--make him what he naturally is and is in position to be--the walking beam of ,business6 ,if the average middleman does not know how to be a real middleman we will make one who does4 ,and all the other eliminations that we have watched people being scared into1 one by one1 we will turn into exaltations--each in its own kind and place4 ,there is not one of our fears that is not the suggestion1 the mighty outline1 the inspiration for the world's next new size and new kind of ,american man4 ,we say place the position before the man--with its fears1 with its songs1 with its challenge4 ,we say1 tell him what we expect of him and demand of him4 ,put him in a high place on a platform before the world6 ,there with the truth about him written on his forehead in the sight of all the people1 call him by name1 glorify him or behead him6 ,we are men and we are ,americans4 ,we will stand up to each of our dangers one by one4 ,each and every danger of them is a romance1 a sublime adventure1 a nation-maker4 ,our threats1 our very by-words and despairs1 we will take up1 and1 in the sight of the world1 forge them into shrewd faiths and into mighty men6 ,this is my news or vision4 ,i say that this is where we are going in ,america4 ,i compel no man to follow my news but ,i will pursue him with my news until he gives me his6 99 99 99 99 99 ,this news1 ,i am telling1 ,gentle ,reader1 is perhaps news about you4 ,if it is not true news1 say so4 ,say what is4 ,we all have a right to know4 ,the one compulsion of modern life is our right to know1 our right to compel people who live on the same continent or who live in the same country with us1 to open up their hearts1 to furnish us with their share of the materials for a mutual understanding1 or for a definite mutual misunderstanding1 on which to live4 ,it is the one compulsion of which we will be guilty4 ,all liberty is in it4 ,these people who have to live with us and that we have to live with1 these people who breathe the same moral air with us1 drink the same water with us1 these people who have their moral dumps1 who throw away their moral garbage with us--these people who will not help provide some daily1 mutual understanding for these common decencies for our souls to live together these people we defy and challenge6 ,we will compel them to reveal themselves4 ,we will drive them away1 or we will drive them into driving us away1 if they will not yield to us what is in their hearts--,mars1 hell1 anywhere we go1 it matters not to us where we go1 except that we cannot and we will not live with men about us who thrust down their true feelings and their real desires into a kind of manhole under them1 and sit on the lid and smile4 ,some seem to have manholes and some have safes or spiritual banks1 and there are others who have convenient1 dim1 beautiful clouds in the sky to hide their feelings in4 ,but whatever their real feelings are1 and wherever they keep them1 they belong to us4 ,we insist on having or on making mutual arrangements to have1 if we live in crowds1 some kind of spiritual rapid transit system for getting our minds through to one another4 ,we demand a system for having the streets of our souls decently lighted1 some provision for moral sewers1 for air or atmosphere--and all the common conveniences for having decent and self-respecting souls in crowds--all the intelligence-machines1 the love-machines1 the hope-machines1 and the believing-machines that the crowds must have for living decently1 for living with beauty1 living with considerateness and respect in this awful daily sublime presence of one another's lives6 ,we shall still have our splendid isolations when we need them1 some of us1 and our little solitudes of meanness1 but the main common fund of motives for living together1 for growing up into a world together1 the desires1 motives1 and intentions in men's hearts1 their desires toward us and ours toward them1 we are going to know and compel to be made known4 ,we will fight men to the death to know them4 ,have we not fought1 you and ,i1 ,gentle ,reader1 all of us1 each man of us1 all our years1 all our days1 to drive through to some sort of mutual understanding with our own selves8 ,now we will fight through to some mutual understanding with one another and with the world4 ,we will knock on every door1 make a house to house canvass of the souls of the world1 pursue every man1 sing under his windows4 ,we will undergird his consciousness and his dreams4 ,we will make the birds sing to him in the morning1 ,where are you going8 ,we will put up a sign at the foot of his bed for his eyes to fall on when he awakes1 ,where are you going8 ,whatever it is that works best1 if we blow it out of you with dynamite or love or fear or draw it out of you with some mighty singing going past--ah1 brother1 we will have it out of you6 ,you shall be our brother6 ,we will be your brother though we die6 ,we will live together or we will die together4 ,what do you really want8 ,what do you really like8 ,who are you8 ,we may pile together all our funny1 fearful1 little ,dreadnoughts1 our stodgy dead lumps of men called armies1 and what are they8 ,and what do they amount to and what can they do1 as compared with truth1 the real news about what people want in this world1 and about where we are going8 ,i say--they shall be as nothing as a rending force1 as a glory to tear down and rebuild a world1 as compared with the truth1 with the news about us1 that shall come out at last 7,god hasten the day67 from the open--the pried-open hearts of men6 ,and ,i have seen that men shall go forth with shouts in that day and with glad and solemn silence1 to build a world6 99 99 99 99 99 ,i wonder if ,i have faced down the ,goody-good ,bug-a-boo4 ,i speak for five million men4 ,we have got this book written between us 7under the name of one of us71 because we want our own way4 ,we are not improving people4 ,we are not even trying to improve ourselves4 ,many of us started in on it once and the first improvement we thought of was not to try any more4 ,it is a great deal harder to try to live4 ,few people want us to--most people get in the way4 ,and when people get in the way we lay about us a little--,we hit them4 ,we have written this book1 because we want to hit a great many people at once4 ,we find them everywhere about us1 in monster cities1 huge thoughtless anthills of them1 and they will not let us live a larger and a richer life4 ,we say to them1 ,we resent your houses your shoes1 your voices1 your fears1 your motives1 your wills1 the diseases you make us walk past every day1 the rows of things you seem to think will do1 and that you think we must get used to1 and we do not propose1 if we can help it1 to get used to what you think will do for ,churches2 nor to what you think will do for a government or to the little lonely1 scattered1 toyschool-houses1 that when you come into the world1 fresh and strange and happy you all proceed solemnly to coop your souls in4 ,nor do we want to get used to your hem-and-haw parliaments and your funny little perfumed prophets--your prophets lying down or propped up with pillows or your poets wringing their hands4 ,nor will we be put off with all your gracefully feeble1 watery1 lovely little pastel religions for this grim and mighty modern world4 ,we are ,american men4 ,we do not propose to be driven out to sea1 to stand face to face every day with what is true and full of beauty and magic1 or to have skies and mountains and stars palmed off on us as companions instead of men6 ,this is what five million men are trying to express in writing this book4 ,if people deny that ,i have the right to give the news about ,america for five million men2 if they say that this is not true about ,american human nature1 that this is not the news1 then ,i will say1 ,i am the news6 ,i am this sort of an ,american6 ,god helping me1 ,i say it6 ,look at me6 ,i am this sort of man of whom ,i am writing6 ,if ,i am not this sort of man this afternoon1 ,i will be in the morning6 ,though ,i go down as a hiss and as laughter and as a by-word and a mocking to the end of my days--,i am this sort of man6 ,i say1 ,look at me6 ,if you will not believe me--that this is an ,american1 if you say that ,i cannot prove that there are five million of men like this in ,america1 then ,i will still say1 ,here is one6 ,what will you do with ,,me8 ,though ,i die in laughter1 all my desires and all my professions in a tumult about my soul1 ,i say it to this nation1 ,your laws1 your programs1 your philosophies1 your ,i wills1 and ,i won'ts1 ,i say1 shall reckon with me6 ,your presidents and your legislatures shall reckon with ,me6 ,here ,i am4 ,the man is here4 ,he is in this book6 ,i will break through to the five million men4 ,i will make the five million men look at me until they recognize themselves4 ,if no one else will attend to it for me1 and if there shall be no other way1 ,i will have a brass band go through the streets of ,new ,york and of a thousand cities1 with banners and floats and great hymns to the people1 and they shall go up and down the streets of the people with signs saying1 ,have you read ,crowds8 ,i will have the ,boston ,symphony ,orchestra tour the country singing--singing from kettledrums to violins to a thousand silent audiences1 ,have yon read ',,crowds'8 ,i live in a nation in which we are butting through into our sense of our national character1 working our way up into a huge mutual working understanding4 ,in our beautiful1 vague1 patriotic1 muddleheadedness about what we want and whether we really want to be good1 and about what being good is like and ,i say1 for one1 half-laughing1 half-praying1 ,god helping me--,look at ,,me6 ,,vi ,i was much interested some time ago when ,i had not been long landed in ,england1 and was still trying in the hopeful ,american way to understand it--to see the various attitudes of ,englishmen toward the discussions which were going on at that time in the ,spectator and elsewhere1 of ,mr4 ,cadbury's inconsistency2 and while ,i had no reason1 as an ,american1 fresh-landed from ,new ,york1 to be interested in ,mr4 ,cadbury himself1 ,i found that his inconsistency interested me very much4 ,it insisted on coming back into my mind1 in spite of what ,i would have thought1 as a strangely important subject--not merely as regards ,mr4 ,cadbury1 which might or might not be important1 but as regards ,england and as regards ,america1 as regards the way a modern man struggling day by day with a huge1 heavy machine civilization like ours1 can still manage to be a live1 useful1 and possibly even a human1 being in it4 ,there are two astonishing facts that stand face to face with all of us to-day1 who are labouring with civilization4 ,the first fact is that almost without exception all the men in it who mean the most in it to us and to other people for good or for evil--who stir us deeply and do things--all fall into the inconsistent class4 ,the second fact is that this is a very small1 select distinguished1 and astonishingly capable class4 ,a man who is in a grim1 serious business like being good1 must expect to give up many of his little self-indulgences in the way of looking good4 ,looking inconsistent1 possibly even inconsistency itself1 may be sometimes1 temporarily1 a man's most important public service to his time4 ,one needs but a little glance at history1 or even at one's own personal history4 ,it is by being inconsistent that people grow1 and without meaning to1 give other people materials for growing4 ,for the particular purpose of making the best things grow1 of pointing up truths1 of giving definite edges to right and wrong1 an inconsistent man--a man who is trying to pry himself out a little at a time from an impossible situation in an impossible world1 is likely to do the world more good than a very large crowd of angels who have made up their minds that they are going to be consistent and going to keep up a consistent look in this same world--whatever happens to it4 99 99 99 99 99 ,if one is marking people on consistency1 and if one takes a scale of #ajj as perfect1 perhaps one should not always insist on #ih4 ,one does not always insist on #ih for one's self4 ,and when one does and does not get it1 one feels forgiving sometimes4 ,in dealing with public men and with other people that we know less than we know ourselves--if they really do things1 it is well to make allowances1 and let them off at #fe4 ,in some cases1 in fact1 when men are doing something that no one else volunteers to do for a world1 ,i find ,i get on very well with letting them off at #ea4 ,i have sometimes wished1 when ,i have been in ,england1 that ,tories and ,liberals and ,socialists and the ,wise and the ,good would consider letting ,george ,cadbury off at #ea4 ,perhaps people are being more safely educated by ,george ,cadbury in his journals than they might be by other people in what seem to seem to many of us unfamiliar and dangerous ideas4 ,perhaps posterity1 in #aiec1 looking down this precipice of revolution ,england did not fall into in #aiac1 may mark ,george ,cadbury #gc--possibly #hi4 ,if1 in any way1 in the crisis of ,england1 ,george ,cadbury can crowd in and can keep thousands and thousands of ,englishmen and women from being educated by ,john ,bottomley ,bull or by ,mrs4 ,john ,bottomley ,bull and hosts of other would-be friends of the people--by ,tom ,mann1 ,ben ,tillett1 and ,vernon ,hartshorn1 does it really seem after all a matter of grave national importance that ,george ,cadbury--a professional non-better--in educating these people should allow them to keep on in his paper1 having a betting column8 ,so long as he really helps stave off ,john ,bottomley ,bull and ,mrs4 ,john ,bottomley ,bull1 let him slump into being a millionaire1 if he cannot very well help it6 ,we say1 some of us1 let him even make cocoa6 or have family prayers6 or be a ,liberal6 ,at least this is the way one ,american visiting ,england feels about it1 if he may be permitted4 ,perhaps ,i would not1 if ,i were an angel4 ,i do not want to be an angel4 ,i am more ambitious4 ,i want my ideals to do things1 and ,i want to stand by people who are doing things with their ideals1 whether their ideals are my ideals or not4 99 99 99 99 99 ,let us suppose4 ,suppose the reader were in ,mr4 ,cadbury's place4 ,what would he do8 ,here are two things1 let us suppose1 he wishes very much4 ,he wishes a certain class of people would not bet1 and he also wishes to convince these same people of certain important social and political ideas for which he stands4 ,if he told them that he would have nothing to do with them unless they stopped betting1 there would be no object in his publishing their paper at all4 ,there would be nothing that they would let him tell them4 ,if1 on the other hand1 he begins merely as one more humble1 fellow-human being1 and puts himself definitely on record as not betting himself1 and still more definitely as wishing other people would not bet1 and then admits honestly that these other people have as good a right to decide to bet as he has to decide not to2 and if he then deliberately proceeds to do what every real gentleman who does not smoke and wishes other people did not1 does without question--namely1 offers them the facilities for doing it why should people call him inconsistent8 ,perhaps a man's consistency consists in his relation to his own smoking and betting and not in his rushing his consistency over into the smoking and betting of other people4 ,perhaps being consistent does not need to mean being a little pharisaical1 or using force1 or cutting people off and having no argument with them1 in one matter1 because one cannot agree with them in another4 ,of course1 ,i admit it would be better if ,mr4 ,cadbury would publish in a parallel column 7if he could get a genius to write it7 an extremely tolerant1 human1 comrade-like series of objections to betting1 which people could read alongside1 and which would persuade people as much as possible not to read the best betting tips in the world in the column next door1 but certainly the act of furnishing the tips in the meantime and of being sure that they are the best tips in the world1 is a very real1 human1 courageous act4 ,it even has a kind of rough and ready religion in it4 ,it may be too much to expect1 but even in our goodness perhaps we ought to do as we would be done by4 ,we must be righteous1 but on the whole1 must we not be righteous toward others as we would have them righteous toward us8 ,what many of us find ourselves wishing most of all1 when we come upon some specially attractive man is1 that we could discover some way1 or that he could discover some way1 in which the idealist in him1 and the realist in him could be got to act together4 ,there are some of us who have come to believe that in the dead earnest1 daily1 almost desperate struggle of modern life1 the real solid idealist will have to care enough about his ideals to arrange to have two complete sets1 one set which he calls his personal ideals1 which are of such a nature that he can carry them out alone and rigidly and quite by himself1 and another which he calls his bending or coperative ideals1 geared a little lower and adjusted to more gradual usage1 which he uses when he asks other men to act with him4 ,it may take a very single-hearted and strong man to keep before his own mind and before other people's his two sets of ideals1 his ,i faiths1 and his you-and-,i faiths1 keeping each in strict proportion1 but it would certainly be a great human adventure to do it4 ,saying ,god and ,i1 and saying ,god and you and ,i are two different arts4 ,and it is clear-headedness and not inconsistency in a man that keeps him so4 ,this is not a mere defence of ,mr4 ,cadbury2 it is a defence of a type of man1 of a temperament in our modern life1 of men like ,edward ,a4 ,filene1 of ,boston1 of a man like ,hugh ,mac ,rae1 one of the institutions of ,north ,carolina1 of ,tom ,l4 ,johnson of ,cleveland1 of nine men out of ten of the bigger and more creative sort who are helping cities to get their way and nations to express themselves4 ,i have believed that the principle at stake1 the great principle for real life in ,england and in ,america1 of letting a man be inconsistent if he knows how--must have a stand made for it4 ,there is no one thing1 whether in history1 or literature1 or science1 or politics that can be more crucial in the fate of a nation to-day than the correct1 just1 and constructive judgment of ,contemporary ,inconsistent ,people4 ,,vii ,if ,i could have managed it1 ,i would have had this book printed and written--every page of it--in three parallel columns4 ,the first column would be for the reader who believes it1 who keeps writing a book more or less like it as he goes along4 ,i would put in one sentence at the top for him and then let him have the rest of the space to write in himself4 ,in other words ,i would say #b plus #b equals #d and drop it4 ,the second column would be for the reader who would like to believe it if he could1 and ,i would branch out a little more--about half a column4 #b #b #d #bj #bj #dj ,the third column would be for the reader who is not going to believe it if it can be helped4 ,it would be in fine type1 bitterly detailed and statistical and take nothing for granted4 #b #b #d #bj #bj #dj #bjj #bjj #djj #b1jjj #b1jjj #d1jjj #bj1jjj #bj1jjj #dj1jjj etc4 ,this arrangement would make the book what might be called a ,moving ,sidewalk of ,truth4 ,first sidewalk rather quick 7six miles an hour74 ,second1 four miles an hour4 ,third1 two miles an hour4 ,people could move over from one sidewalk to the other in the middle of an idea any time1 and go faster or slower as they liked to1 needed to4 ,no one would accuse me--though ,i might like or need for my own personal use at one time or another1 a slower sidewalk or a faster one than others--no one would accuse me of being inconsistent if ,i supplied extra sidewalks for people of different temperaments to move over to suddenly any time they wanted to4 ,i have come to some of my truth by a bitterly slow sidewalk--slower than other people need1 and sometimes ,i have come by a fast one 7or what some would say was no sidewalk at all67 but it cannot fairly be claimed that there is anything inconsistent in my offering people every possible convenience ,i can think of--for believing me4 ,mr4 ,cadbury is not inconsistent if he tells truth at a different rate to different people1 or if he chooses to put truths before people in ,indian file4 ,a man is not inconsistent who does not tell all the news he knows to all kinds of people1 all at once1 all the time4 ,there is nothing disingenuous about having an order for truth4 ,it is not considered compromising to have an order in moving railway trains4 ,why not allow an order in moving trains of thought8 ,and why should a schedule for moving around people's bodies be considered any more reasonable than a schedule or timetable or order for moving around their souls8 ,truth in action must always be in an order4 ,nine idealists out of ten who fight against ,news-men1 or men who are trying to make the beautiful work1 and who call them hypocrites1 would not do it if they were trying desperately to make the beautiful work themselves4 ,it is more comfortable and has a fine free look1 to be blunt with the beautiful--the way a ,poet is--to dump all one's ideals down before people and walk off4 ,but it seems to some of us a cold1 sentimental1 lazy1 and ignoble thing to do with ideals if one loves them--to give everybody all of them all the time without considering what becomes of the ideals or what becomes of the people4 ,,chapter ,,xvi ,,crowd-,,men ,,march #d1 #aiac4 ,as ,i write these words1 ,i look out upon the great meadow4 ,i see the poles and the wires in the sun1 that long trail of poles and wires ,i am used to1 stalking across the meadow4 ,i know what they are doing4 ,they are telling a thousand cities and villages about our new ,president1 the one they are making this minute1 down in ,washington1 for these ,united ,states4 ,with his hand lifted up he has just taken his oath1 has sworn before ,god and before his people to serve the destinies of a nation4 ,and now along a hundred thousand miles of wire on dumb wooden poles1 a hope1 a prayer1 a kind of quiet1 stern singing of a mighty people goes by4 ,and ,i am sitting here in my study window wondering what he will be like1 what he will think1 and what he will believe about us4 ,what will our new ,president do with these hundreds of miles of prayer1 of crying to ,god1 stretched up to him out of the hills and out of the plains8 ,does he really overhear it--that huge1 dumb1 half-helpless1 half-defiant prayer going up past him1 out of the eager1 hoarse cities1 out of the slow1 patient fields1 to ,god8 ,does he overhear it1 ,i wonder8 ,what does he make out that we are like8 ,i should think it would sound like music to him4 ,it would come to seem1 ,i should think1 when he is alone with his ,god 7and will he not please be alone with his ,god sometimes871 like some vast ocean of people singing1 a kind of multitudinous1 faraway singing1 like the wind--ah1 how often have ,i heard the wind like some strange and mighty people in the pine treetops go singing by6 ,i do not see how a ,president could help growing a little like a poet--down in his heart--as he listens4 ,if he does1 he may do as he will with us4 ,we will let him be an artist in a nation4 ,as ,winslow ,homer takes the sea1 as ,millet takes the peasants in the fields1 as ,frank ,brangwyn lifts up the labour in the mills and makes it colossal and sublime1 the ,president is an artist1 in touching the crowd's imagination with itself--in making a nation self-conscious4 ,he shall be the artist1 the composer1 the portrait painter of the people--their faith1 their cry1 their anger1 and their love shall be in him4 ,in him shall be seen the panorama of the crowd1 focused into a single face4 ,in him there shall be put in the foreground of this nation's countenance the things that belong in the foreground4 ,and the things that belong in the background shall be put in the background1 and the little ideas and little men shall look little in it1 and the big ones shall look big4 ,they do not look so now4 ,this is the one thing that is the matter with ,america4 ,the countenence of the nation is not a composed countenance4 ,all that we want is latent in us1 everything is there in our ,washington face4 ,the face merely lacks features and an expression4 ,this is what a ,president is for--to give at last the ,face of the ,united ,states an expression6 ,if he is a shrewd poet and believes in us1 we shall accept him as the official mind reader of the nation4 ,he focuses our desires4 ,in the weariness of the day he looks away--he looks up--he leans his head upon his hand--through the corridors of his brain1 that little silent ,main street of ,america1 the thoughts and the crowds and the jostling wills of the people go4 ,if he is a shrewd poet about us1 he becomes the organic function1 the organizer of the news about our people to ourselves4 ,he is the public made visible1 the public made one4 ,he is a moving picture of us4 ,he speaks and gestures the ,united ,states--if he is a poet about us--when he beckons or points or when he puts his finger on his lips1 or when he says1 ,hush6 or when he says1 ,wait a moment6 he is the voice of the people of the ,united ,states4 99 99 99 99 99 ,i am sitting and correcting1 one by one1 as they are brought to me1 these last page proofs in the factory4 ,the low thunder on the floors of the mighty presses1 crashing down into paper words ,i can never cross out--rises around me4 ,in a minute more--minute by minute that ,i am counting1 that low thunder will overtake me1 will roar down and fold away these last guilty1 hopeful1 tucked-in words with you1 ,gentle ,reader1 and you will get away6 ,and the book will get away6 ,there is no time to try to hold up that low thunder now1 and to say what ,i have meant to say about false simplicity and democracy1 and about our all being bullied into being little old faded ,thomas ,jeffersons a hundred years after he is dead4 ,but ,i will try to suggest what ,i hope that some one who has no printing-presses rolling over him--will say3 ,one cannot help wishing that our socialists to-day would outgrow ,karl ,marx1 and that our individualists would outgrow ,emerson4 ,democrats by this time ought to grow a little1 too1 and outgrow ,jefferson1 and ,republicans ought to be able by this time to outgrow ,hamilton4 ,why not drop ,karl ,marx and ,emerson and run the gamut of both of them1 on a continent #c1jjj miles wide8 ,why should we live ,thomas ,jefferson's and ,alexander ,hamilton's lives8 ,why not drop ,jefferson and ,hamilton and live ours8 ,the last thing that ,jefferson would do1 if he were here1 would be to be ,jefferson over again4 ,it is not fair to ,jefferson for anybody to take the liberty of being like him1 when he would not even do it himself4 ,if ,jefferson were here1 he would break away from everybody1 lawyers1 statesmen and ,congress and go outdoors and look at #aiac for himself4 ,i like to imagine how it would strike him4 ,i am not troubled about what he would do4 ,let ,jefferson go out and listen to that vast machine1 to the ,new ,york ,central ,railway smoothing out and roaring down crowds1 rolling and rolling and rolling men all day and all night into machines4 ,let ,jefferson go out and face the ,new ,york ,central ,railway6 ,jefferson in his time had not faced nor looked down through those great fissures or chasms of inefficiency in what he chose to call democracy1 the haughty1 tyrannical aimlessness and meaninglessness of crowds1 too mean-spirited and full of fear and machines to dare to have leaders6 ,he had not faced that blank staring hell of anonymousness1 that bottomless1 weak1 watery muck of irresponsibility--that terrific1 devilish vagueness which a crowd is and which a crowd has to be without leaders4 ,jefferson did not know about or reckon with ,inventors1 as a means of governing1 as a means of getting the will of the people4 ,a whole new age of invention1 of creation1 has flooded the world since ,jefferson4 ,this is the main fact about the modern man1 that he is gloriously self-made4 ,he is practising democracy1 inventing his own life1 making his own soul before our eyes4 ,if we have a poet in the ,white ,house1 this is the main fact he is going to reckon with3 ,he will not be seen taking sides with the ,alexander ,hamilton model or with the ,thomas ,jefferson model or with ,karl ,marx or ,emerson4 ,we will see him taking ,karl ,marx and ,emerson and ,hamilton and ,jefferson and melting them down1 glowing them and fusing them together into one man--the ,crowd-,man--who shall be more aristocratic than ,hamilton ever dreamed1 and be filled with a genius for democracy that ,jefferson never guessed4 ,america to-day1 on the face of the earth and in the hearts of men1 is a new democracy1 as new as ,radium1 ,copernicus1 the ,wireless ,telegraph1 as new and just beginning to be noticed and guessed at as ,jesus ,christ6 ,copernicus1 ,marconi1 ,wilbur ,wright1 and ,christianity have turned men's hearts outward4 ,men live for the first time in a wide daily consciousness of one another4 ,alexander ,hamilton1 had really a rather timid and polite idea of what an aristocrat was and ,jefferson had merely sketched out a ground plan for a democrat4 ,if ,hamilton had been aristocratic in the modern sense1 he would have devoted half his career to expressing a man like ,jefferson2 and if ,jefferson had been more of a democrat1 he would have had room in himself to tuck in several ,alexander ,hamiltons4 ,either one of them would have been a ,crowd-,man4 ,by a ,crowd-,man ,i do not mean a pull-and-haul man1 a balance of equilibrium between these two men1 ,i mean a fusion1 a glowed together interpenetration of them both4 ,they did not either of them believe in the people as much as a man made out of both of them would--a really wrought-through aristocrat1 a really wrought-through democrat or ,crowd-,man1 or ,hero or ,saviour4 99 99 99 99 99 ,i am afraid that some of us do not like the word ,saviour as people think we ought to4 ,there seems to be something about the way many people use the word ,saviour which makes it seem as if it had been dropped off over the edge of the world--of a real world1 of a man's world4 ,i do not believe that ,christ spent five minutes in ,his whole life in feeling like a ,saviour4 ,he would have felt hurt if ,he had found any one saying ,he was a ,saviour in the tone people often use4 ,he wanted people to feel as if they were like ,him4 ,and the way ,he served them was by making them feel that they were4 ,i do not believe that ,thomas ,jefferson1 if he were here to-day1 would object to a hero1 or aristocrat1 a special expert or a genius in expressing crowds1 if he lived and wrought in this spirit4 ,the final objection that people commonly make to heroes or to men of marked and special vision or courage is that they are not good for people1 because people put them on pedestals and worship them4 ,they look up at them wistfully4 ,and then they look down on themselves4 ,but ,i have never seen a hero on a pedestal4 ,it is only the ,carlyle kind of hero who could ever be put on a pedestal1 or who would stay there if put there4 ,and ,carlyle--with all honour be it said--never quite knew what a hero was4 ,a hero is either a gentleman1 or a philosopher1 or an inventor4 ,the gentleman--on a pedestal--feels hurt and slips down4 ,the philosopher laughs4 ,the inventor thinks up some way of having somebody else get up so that it will not really be a pedestal at all4 ,i agree with all the socialists' objections to heroes1 if they mean by a hero the kind of man that ,thomas ,carlyle1 with all his little glorious hells1 all his little cold1 lonesome1 select heavens1 his thunderclub view of life1 and his ,old ,testament imagination1 called a hero4 ,there is always something a little strained and competitive about ,carlyle's heroes as he conceives them except possibly one or two4 ,being a hero with ,carlyle consisted in conquering and displacing other heroes4 ,even if you were a poet1 being a hero consisted in a kind of spiritual standing on some other poet's neck4 ,according to ,carlyle1 one must always be a hero against other men4 ,modern heroism consists in being a hero with other men4 ,the hero ,against comes in the ,twentieth ,century to be the hero ,with1 and the modern hero is known1 not by cutting his enemies down1 but by his absorbing and understanding them4 ,he drinks up what they wish they could do into what he does1 or he states what they believe better than they can state it4 ,combination or coperation is the tremendous heroism of our present life4 ,i admit that ,i would be afraid of ,carlyle's heroes having pedestals4 ,they have already--many of them--done a good deal of harm because they have had pedestals1 and because they would not get down from them4 ,but mine would4 ,with a man who is being a hero by coperation1 getting down is part of the heroism4 ,and there is never any real danger in allowing a pedestal for a real hero4 ,he never has time to sit on it4 ,one sees him always over and over again kicking his pedestal out from under him and using it to batter a world with4 ,as the world does not take to enjoying its heroes' pedestals in this way1 a pedestal is quite safe4 ,most people feel the same about a hero's halo4 ,they prefer to have him wear it like a kind of glare around his head1 and if he uses it as a searchlight upon them1 if he makes his halo really practical and lights up the world a little around him instead1 he is not likely to be spoiled1 is almost always safe from any danger of having any more halo crowded upon him than he wants1 or than anybody wants him to have4 ,one might put it down as a motto for heroes1 ,keep your halo busy and it won't hurt you4 ,modern democracy will never have a chance of being what it wants to be as long as it keeps on throwing away great natural forces like halos and pedestals4 ,there is no reason why we should not believe in halos and pedestals1 not to wear or stand on1 but when used strictly for butting and seeing purposes4 ,we may know a real hero by the fact that we always have to keep rediscovering him4 ,one knows the real hero by the fact that in his relation to people who put him on a pedestal he is always kicking his pedestal away and substituting his vision4 ,there is something about any real heroism that we see to-day which makes heroes out of the people who see it1 ,a real hero has his back to the people and the crowd looks over his shoulders with him at his work and he feels behind him daily1 with joy and strength1 thousands of heroes pressing up to take his place4 ,and he is daily happy with a strange1 mighty1 impersonal joy in all these other people who could do it1 too4 ,he lives with a great hurrah for the world in his heart4 ,the hero he worships is the hero he sees in others4 ,a man like this would feel cramped if he were merely being himself1 or if he were being imprisoned by the people in his own glory1 or were being cooped up into a hero4 ,it is in this sense that ,i have finally come again to believe that hero worship is safe1 that in some form as one of the great elemental energies in human nature it must be saved1 that it must be regulated and used1 that it has an incalculable power which was meant to be turned on to run a nation with4 ,and ,i believe that ,thomas ,jefferson1 confronted in this desperate1 sublime #aiac1 with the new socialized spirit of our time1 placed face to face at last with a ,christian aristocrat or ,crowd-,man1 would want him saved and emphasized too4 ,it is because in democracies saviours are being kept by crowds and by millionaires and by machines very largely in the position of hired men1 or of ordered about men1 that ninety-nine one-hundredths of the saving or of the man-inventing and man-freeing in crowds1 is not being attended to4 ,i have wanted to suggest in this book that the moment the ,saviours in any nation will organize quietly and save themselves first1 the less difficult thing 7with men to attend to it7 like saving the rest of us1 will be a mere matter of detail4 ,the only thing that stands in the way is the ,thomas ,jefferson bug-a-boo4 ,people seem to have a kind of left-over fear that the moment these saviours or experts or inventors or heroes1 call them what you will1 get the chance that they have been working to get to save us1 they will not want to use it4 ,it does not seem to me that anything will be allowed to interfere with it--with their saving us1 or making detailed arrangements for our saving ourselves4 ,being a great man 7if as democracies seem to think being a great man is a disease7 is at least a self-limiting disease4 ,inventors when they get their first chance are going to save us1 because they could not endure living with us unless we were saved4 ,inventors could not enjoy inventing--inventing their greater1 more noble inventions1 until they had attended to a little rudimentary thing in the world like having people half alive on it to live with and to invent for4 ,it does not interest a really inspired man--inventing flying machines for people who have not time to notice the sky1 wireless telegraph for people who have nothing to say1 symphonies for tone-deaf crowds1 or ambrosia for people who prefer potatoes4 ,this is the whole issue in a nutshell4 ,when people say that our inventors1 or ,crowd-,men or saviours1 when they have fulfilled or saved themselves1 cannot be trusted to save us1 the reply that will have to be made is that only people who do not know how inventors feel or how they are made or what it is in them that drives them to do things1 or how they do them1 will be afraid to let men who give us worlds and who express worlds for us and who make us express ourselves in worlds the freedom to help shape them and run them4 ,men who have the automatic courage1 the helpless bigness and disinterestedness that always goes with invention1 with creative power1 can be trusted by crowds4 ,the prejudice against the hero is due to the fact that heroes in days gone by have been by a very large majority fighters1 expressing themselves against the world1 or expressing one part of the world against another4 ,the moment the hero becomes the artist and begins expressing himself and expressing the crowd together1 the crowd will no longer be touched with fear and driven back upon itself by the ,thomas ,jefferson bug-a-boo4 ,,epilogue ,france is threatened by her childless women1 ,germany by her machines1 ,russia is beginning the ,nineteenth ,century4 ,it is to ,england and ,america1 struggling still sublimely with their sins1 the nations look--for the time being--for the next big free lift upon the world4 ,looked at in the large1 in their historic import and their effect on the time1 the ,english temperament and the ,american temperament are essentially the same4 ,as between ourselves1 ,england and ,america are apt to seem different1 but as between us and the world1 we blend together4 ,one could go through in what ,i have been saying about ,oxford ,street and the ,house of ,commons in this book1 strike out all after ,oxford ,street and read ,broadway1 and all after the ,house of ,commons and read ,congress1 and it would be essentially true with the necessary ,english or ,american modulation4 ,in the same way it would be possible to go through and strike out all after the ,president and read ,prime ,minister or the ,government4 ,england and ,america have the individualistic temperament1 and if we cannot make a self-expressive individualism noble1 and if we are not men enough to sing up our individualism into the social and the universal1 we perish4 ,it is our native way4 ,we are to be crowdmen or nobodies4 ,the ,english temperament or the ,american temperament1 whichever we may call it1 is the same tune1 but played with a different and almost contrasting expression4 ,england is being played gravely and massively like a violoncello1 and ,america--played more lightly1 is full of the sweeps and the lulls1 the ecstasy1 the overriding glory of the violins4 ,but it is the same tune1 and ,god helping us1 we will not and we shall not be overwhelmed under the great dome of the world1 by ,germany with all her faithful pianolas1 or by ,france with her cold sweet flutes1 or by ,russia with her shrieks and her pauses1 pounding her splendid kettledrums in that awful silence6 ,our song is ours--,england and ,america1 the 'cello1 and the bright violins6 ,and no one shall sing it for us4 ,and no one shall keep us from singing it4 ,the skyscrapers are singing1 ,i will1 ,i will6 to ,god1 and ,manchester and ,london and ,port ,sunlight are singing1 ,i will1 ,i will6 to ,god4 ,i have heard even ,westminister ,abbey and ,york--those beautiful old fellows--altering1 ,i will1 ,i will6 to ,god6 ,and ,i have seen1 as ,i was going by1 ,trinity ,church at the head of ,wall ,street repenting her sins and holding noonday prayer meetings for millionaires4 ,our genius is a moral genius1 the genius of each man for fulfilling himself4 ,our religion is the finding of a way to do it beautifully4 ,let ,russian men be an army if they like--death and obedience4 ,let ,german men keep on with their faithful1 plodding1 moral machines if they want to1 and let all ,french men be artists1 go tra-la-laing up and down the ,time to the beautiful--furnishing nudes1 clothes1 and academies to a world4 ,but we--,england and ,america--will stand up on this planet in the way we like to stand on a planet and sing1 ,i will1 ,i will6 to ,god4 ,if we cannot do better1 we will sing1 ,i won't1 ,i won't6 to ,god4 ,our wills and our won'ts are our genius among the sons of men4 ,they are what we are for4 ,with ,england and ,america ,i will and ,i won't are an art form1 our means of expressing ourselves1 our way of invention and creation1 of begetting an age1 of begetting a nation upon a world4 ,we do not know 7like great men and children7 who we are at first4 ,we begin saying vaguely--will--will6 ,then i will6 ,then ,i will6 ,then ,,we ,,will6 ,,the ,,beginning4 ,,the ,,country ,,life ,,press1 ,,garden ,,city1 ,n4,y4