The Ghost in the White House Part 11

The other main point in the book the hundred million people would write if they could, would be the precise opposite of this one. I would devote the second ten chapters I think, not to Mahogany Desks, or to the b.u.t.tons on them directing machines, but to Cogs.

The second great point the hundred million people will have to meet and will have to see a way out for in their book, is the way a Cog feels about being a Cog.

If a Cog in a big locomotive could take a day off and go around and watch the drivewheel and pistons--watch the smoke coming out of the smokestack and the water scooping up from between the rails--watch the three hundred faces in the train looking out of the windows and the great world booming by, and if the Cog could then say, "I belong with all this and I am helping and making it possible for all these people to do and to have all this!" And if the Cog could then slip back and go on just being a cog,--the cog would be being the kind of a cog a man is supposed to be.

He would be being the kind of a cog a man is supposed to be in a democracy-machine in distinction from a king-machine.

What is more, if a Cog did this, or if arrangements were studied out for some little inkling of a chance to do it, he would be making his job as a Cog one third easier and happier and three times as efficient.

A man is created to be the kind of Cog that works best when it is allowed to do its work in this way. G.o.d created him when He drove in one rivet to feel the whole of the ship. It is feeling the whole of the ship that makes being a Cog worth while.

The great work of the American people in the next four years is to work out for American industry the fate of the Cog in it.

The fate of democracy turns next on our working out a way of allowing a Cog some imagination, or some subst.i.tute for imagination in its daily work--something that the rest of the Cog--the whole man in the Cog can have, which will bring his spirit, his joy and his power to bear on his daily work.

This is the second of the two main points the hundred million people would make in their book if they had time.

These two main points--getting labor to see how a mahogany desk sweats--getting the mahogany desk to put itself in the place of a Cog, know how a Cog feels and what makes a Cog work--are points which are going to be made successfully and quickly in proportion as they are taken up in the right spirit and with a method--a practical human working method which so expresses and dramatizes that right spirit that it will be impossible for people not to respond to it.

I am not undertaking in this part of my book to make an inquiry as to what the right spirit is, or what the right method is that a hundred million people ought to adopt.

I am a somewhat puzzled and determined person and I am inst.i.tuting out loud a searching inquiry as to what I am going to do myself and what the principles and methods are that I should be governed by in doing my personal part, and conducting my own mind and judgment toward the movements and the men about me.

To avoid generalizing, I might as well give my idea the way it came to me--one man's idea of how one man feels he wants to act when being lied to.

I do not say in so many words, I _was_ lied to. I do not know. A great many people every day find themselves in situations where they do not know. The question I am asking of myself is, how can a man or a public take a fair human and constructive att.i.tude when one does not know and cannot know for the time being, all that it is to the point to know?

A stupendous amount of red-flagism, unrest and expensive unreasonableness would be swept away in this country if we all had in mind to use for ourselves when called for the following rules for being lied to.

(Not that I am going to lumber people's minds up by numbering them as rules out loud. They are all here--in what follows--the spirit of them, and people can make their own rules for themselves as they go along.)

IV

RULES FOR BEING LIED TO

(Charles Schwab or Anybody)

---- dropped in, in the rain the other night, and sat by my fireplace and said: "Charles Schwab is the Prince of Liars. He says one thing about labor and does another." He went on to say things he said other people said.

There are two courses of action to take about Charles Schwab's being the Prince of Liars.

One way is to expose what he says.

The other way is to help him make what he says true.

I would rather do what I can to help Charles Schwab practice what he preaches than to stop his preaching.

Everything turns for the American people to-day on being constructive, on dealing with facts as they are, on using the men we have, and on getting the most out of the men we have.

To get the most out of Charles Schwab throw around him expectation and malediction and then let him take his choice.

Charles Schwab in saying what he says about the new spirit in which capital has got to deal with labor is rendering a great, unexpected, sensational and indispensable service to labor and to capital. It is a pity to throw this public confession of capital to labor, and in behalf of labor away. It would be a still greater pity to see labor itself throwing it away.

If I could let myself be cooped up as a writer in any one cla.s.s in this country to-day, and if it were my special business to take sides with labor, the thing I would try to do first with Charles Schwab, instead of undermining what he says and making what he says mean nothing--would be to cooperate with him--back him up--back him up with the public--back him up with the stockholders and the people in his mills, until he makes what he says mean three times as much.

Then I would see to it if I could, that he says four times as much. I would try, if I could, to keep Charles Schwab steadily at it, claiming more and more for labor. Then catching up more and more to Charles Schwab, doing more and more, and compelling his partners to do more and more of what he says.

Charles Schwab has fifty or a hundred thousand or so partners, of course--stockholders he has to educate.

They have to be educated in public. He is not insincere because he has not educated them all in a minute.

V

GETTING ONE MAN RIGHT

There are certain facts which make me believe in Schwab as an a.s.set for the nation and for labor and capital both, that must not be thrown away.

There are all manner of facts about Schwab and his mills which I do not yet know which I could look up and use, but the most valuable facts to use and use first, are facts anybody can get and get without looking up, by just sitting down and thinking.

Getting one man right and being fair to one man is the way to begin to be fair to a nation.

If Charles Schwab is what ---- says he is, if Charles Schwab is doing or winking while it is being done at the thing ---- says he is--he is an incredibly under-witted man--stupid about the public, about labor and about capital--and, what is the most reckless of all--stupid in behalf of himself.

It is rather a hard nut to crack--Charles Schwab's being stupid. I cannot understand why people--why a man like ---- would apparently rather believe that Charles Schwab is stupid than to believe that there must be some other way of explaining him and of explaining what he has heard said about him.

If what ---- says is true about Mr. Schwab, he is not only a stupid man but a ruined man.

In the colossal outbreak of public knowledge coming to us now, nothing will be able to keep Charles Schwab from to-morrow on, from being a stupendous tragedy as long as he lives, and a by-word after he is dead.

The alternatives are:

The a.s.sertions about Mr. Schwab's real att.i.tude toward labor are not true.

If true, they are qualified by facts and by delaying conditions for which all intelligent men whether identified with capital or labor would be glad to allow.

If true they are due to delegated authority.

If a large organization does not hand over authority it is inefficient.

If it does not make experiments with men and methods it is inefficient.

If it does not make a certain proportion of mistakes in its experiments with men and methods its experiments are fake experiments.