Crowds Part 37

Gradually he sees further and wants something for his cla.s.s. His courage mounts up by leaps and bounds when he is liberated into his cla.s.s. Then he discovers the implacable mutual interest of his cla.s.s with the other cla.s.ses, and he thinks of things he wants for all the cla.s.ses. He thinks the cla.s.ses together into a world, and becomes a man. He has courage for the world.

When men see, whether they are rich or poor, what they want, what they believe they can get, they are not afraid.

The next great work of the best employers is to get labour to want enough. Labour is tired and mechanical-minded. The next work of the better cla.s.s of labourer, or the stronger kind of Trades Union, is to get capital to want enough. Capital is tired, too. It does not see really big, worth-while things that can be done with capital, and has no courage for these things.

The larger the range and the larger the variety of social desire the greater the courage.

The problem in modern industry is the arousing of the imaginations of capitalists and labourers so that they see something that gives them courage for themselves and for one another, and courage for the world.

The world belongs to the men of vision--the men who are not afraid--the men who see things that they have made up their minds to get.

Who are the men to-day, in all walks of life, who want the most things for the most people, and who have made up their minds to get them?

There is just one man we will follow to-day--those of us who belong to the crowd--the man who is alive all over, who is deeply and gloriously covetous, the man who sees things he wants for himself, and who therefore has courage for himself, and who sees things he wants and is bound to get for other people, and who therefore has courage for other people.

This is the hardest kind of courage to have--courage for other people.

CHAPTER XII

THE MEN WHO WANT THINGS

During the coal strike I took up my morning paper and read from a speech by Vernon Hartshorn, the miners' leader: "In a week's time, by tying up the railways and other means of transportation, we could so paralyze the country that the government would come to us on their knees and beg us to go to work on terms they are now flouting as impossible."

During the dockers' strike I took up my morning paper and read Ben Tillett's speech, at the meeting the day before, to fifty thousand strikers on Tower Hill. "'I am going to ask you to join me in a prayer,'

Tillett said. 'Lord Devonport has contributed to the murder, by starvation, of your children, your women, and your men. I am not going to ask you to do it, but I am going to call on G.o.d to strike Lord Devonport dead,' He asked those who were prepared to repeat the 'prayer'

to hold up their hands. Countless hands were held up, and cries: 'Strike him doubly stone dead!' The men then repeated the following 'prayer', word for word, after Tillett:

"'O G.o.d, strike Lord Devonport dead.'

"Afterward the strikers chanted the words: 'He shall die! He shall die!'"

There are times when it is very hard to have courage for other people.

It is when one watches people doing cowardly things that one finds it hardest to have courage for them.

I felt the same way both mornings at first when I held my paper in my hand and thought about what I had read, about the government's going down on its knees, and about G.o.d's striking Lord Devonport dead.

The first feeling was one of profound resentment, shame--a huge, helpless, muddle-headed anger.

I had not the slightest trace of courage for the miners; I did not see how the government could have any courage for them. And I had no courage for the dockers, or for what could be expected of the dockers. I did not see how Lord Devonport could have any courage for them.

I repeated their prayer to myself.

The dockers were cowards. I was not going to try to sympathize with them, or try to be reasonable about them. It was nothing that they were desperate and had prayed. Was I not desperate too? Would not the very thought that fifty thousand men could pray a prayer like that make any man desperate? It was as if I had stood and heard fifty thousand beasts roaring to their G.o.d.

"They are desperate," I said to myself: "I will not take what they think seriously. It does not matter what desperate people think."

Then I waited a minute. "But I am desperate, too," I said; "I must not take what I think seriously. It does not matter what desperate people think."

I thought about this a little, and drove it in.

"What I think will matter more a little later, perhaps, when I get over being desperate."

"Perhaps what the dockers think will matter more a little later, too."

In the meantime are not their scared and hateful opinions as good as my scared and hateful opinions?

The important and final opinions, the ones to be taken seriously, that can be acted on, will be the opinions of those who get over being scared and hateful first.

Then I stood up for myself.

I had a reason for being scared and hateful. They and their prayer drove me to be scared and hateful.

I thought again.

Perhaps they had a reason, too.

Then it all came over me. I became a human being all in a minute when I thought of it.

I became suddenly full of courage for the hateful dockers.

I thought how much more discouraging it would be if they had not been hateful at all.

I do not imagine G.o.d was sorry when He heard those fifty thousand dockers asking Him to strike Lord Devonport dead.

Not that He would have approved of it.

It was not the last word of wisdom or reasonableness. It was lacking in beauty and distinction as a pet.i.tion, as being just the right form of prayer for those fifty thousand faultless dockers up on Tower Hill that afternoon (the whole of London listening, in that shocked and proper way that London has).

But I have not lost all courage for the dockers who made it.

They still want something! They still are men! They still stand up when they speak to Heaven! There is some stuff in them yet! They make heaven and earth ring to get a word with G.o.d!

This all means something to G.o.d, probably.

Perhaps it might mean something to us.

We are superior persons, it is true. We do not pray the way they pray.

We believe in being more self-controlled. We take our breakfasts quietly, and with high collars and silk hats, and with gilt prayer-books we go into the presence of our Maker. We believe in being calm and reasonable.

But if men who have not enough to eat are so half-dead and so worthless that they can feel calm and reasonable about it, and can always be precisely right and always say precisely the right thing--if, with their wives fainting in their arms and their babies crying for food, all that those dockers had character enough to do, up on Tower Hill, was to make a polite, smooth, Anglican prayer to G.o.d--a prayer like a kind of blessing before not having any meat, and not that awful, fateful, husky cry to Heaven, a roar or rending of their hearts up to the black and empty sky--what would such men have been good for? What hope or courage could any one have for them, for such men at such a time, if they would not, if they could not, come thundering and breaking into His presence, fifty thousand strong, to get what they want?