The Ghost in the White House Part 3

This is the gist of what I propose a new organization shall do on a national scale.

It may seem a rather simple-minded way to describe what I propose a great aggregation of American men and women on the scale of the Red Cross, should do, but the soul, the spirit, the temperament, even the technique of what I have in mind--in miniature, is in it.

It is true that it would be a certain satisfaction of course to an author to prove to employers and employees that they could get on better together than they could apart, even if they got on together better only in a kind of secret and private way in the pages of his own book; and it is true that a book in which I could make an employer and an employee work their minds together through my own little fountain pen would count some. I would at least be dramatizing my idea in ink.

But people do not believe ideas dramatized in ink.

The thing for an author or a man who has ideas to do if he must use words, is to use words to make his ideas happen.

Then let him use words about them and write books about them to advertise that they have happened.

People are more impressed with things that have happened than they are with things that are perhaps going to. Instead of having employers and employees go over the same ideas together in a book, I propose that twenty million people, in ten thousand cities shall make them go over the same ideas together in the shop.

Are capital and labor going to use the holdup on each other to get what they want when six million dead men, still almost warm in their graves, have died to prove that the holdup, or German way of getting things, does not work? What the new League will be for will be to put before the world, before every nation, before every village and city in its local branch, a working vision of how different cla.s.ses and different groups of people can get what they want out of each other by trying things out together, by touching each other's imaginations and advertising to each other instead of blowing out each other's brains. The way to keep in place our Bolshevists of America is to show them that we the combined people of America, combined and acting together as one in the organization I am sketching in this book, know what they want, and that we can get the thing they essentially want for them better than they can get it. The three great groups in American life--the employing cla.s.s, the laboring cla.s.s, and the consumer--have all belonged to the Red Cross together, they have all worked together and sacrificed themselves, and sacrificed their cla.s.s, to work for the Red Cross. What the New League will stand for in the name of all of them will be the thing that they have already demonstrated in the Red Cross that they can do. Three cla.s.ses can get a thing for one cla.s.s better than one cla.s.s can get it.

This is the content of the League's vision of action.

The method of it will be advertising with enormous campaigns never dreamed of before what the three-cla.s.s vision is and how it works. Then we will have factories dramatize it. Then we will advertise the factories.

Then when we have democracy working in a thousand factories, we will advertise and transplant our working democracy, our factory democracies, abroad.

People who have learned that democracy works in their daily work can be trusted to believe democracy will work even in their religion, even in their politics.

The idea I have in mind is already foreshadowed in the city of Cleveland.

The spirit of the people of Cleveland has already rebelled against being treated as a ghost--against being whoofed at by Labor unions and trusts.

Always before this, when incompetent manufacturers and incompetent labor unions, for the mere reason that they had not the patience to try very hard and were incompetent to understand one another and do their job, held up the whole city--five hundred thousand people--and calmly made them pay for it, the city of Cleveland like any other city would venture to step in sweetly and kindly, look spiritual and intangible a minute, suggest wistfully that they did feel capital and labor were not being quite fair to Cleveland and would they not please stop interrupting Cleveland several million dollars a day. All that ever would come of it would be the yowls of Labor at the Ghost of Cleveland, the n.o.ble whines of manufacturers at the Ghost of Cleveland.

Cleveland was treated as if it was not there.

Cleveland now swears off from being a ghost and proposes to deal bodily and in behalf of all, with its own lockouts and its own strikes in much the same way I am hoping the nation will, according to the news in my paper this morning.

With Mr. Paul Pfeiss, an eminently competent manufacturer, recognizing the incompetence of his own group as partly responsible for the holdups practiced on the city and with Mr. Warren S. Stone, an eminently competent labor union leader, recognizing the incompetence of his own group as being also partly responsible--with these two men, one the official representative of the Capital group, and the other the official representative of the Labor group, both championing the Public group and standing out for Cleveland against themselves, taking the initiative and acting respectively as President and Secretary of the Public group, the Ghost of the city of Cleveland publicly swears off from being a ghost and begins precipitating a body for itself.

I do not wish to hamper my own statement of my idea of a body for the people of the United States by linking it up with a definite undertaking in Cleveland which may or may not prove to be as good an ill.u.s.tration of it as I hope, but the spirit and the understanding of what has got to happen, seems to be in Cleveland--and I stop in the middle of my chapter with greetings to Paul Pfeiss and to Warren Stone. In my book the Ghost of the People of Cleveland salutes the Ghost of the People of the United States!

VII

THE GHOST GETS DOWN TO BUSINESS

A body usually begins with an embryo, and the tissue and skeleton come afterwards.

A book does, too. I prefer not exposing a skeleton much, myself, and am inclined to feel that the ground plan of a book like the ground plan of a man, should be ill.u.s.trated and used, should be presented to people with the flesh on, that a skeleton should be treated politely as an inference.

But I am dealing with the body of democracy. And people are nervous about democracy just now, so much boneless democracy is being offered to them.

So I begin with the principles--the skeleton of the body of democracy for which this book stands.

The outstanding features of the body of democracy are the brain, the heart and the hand.

With the brain of democracy goes the right to think.

With the heart goes the right to live.

With the hand goes the right to be waited on.

With these three rights go three greater rights, or three duties, some people call them.

With the right to think goes the right to let others think.

With the right to live goes the right to let others live.

With the right to be waited on, goes the right to serve. To call the right to serve a duty is an understatement. I doubt if the people who have succeeded best and who have really attained the largest amount of their three greater rights, have thought of them very often as duties.

I end this chapter with the three questions America is in the world to-day to ask, to find out her own personal three answers to in the sight of the nations.

I am putting with the three questions the three answers I am hoping to hear my country give, before I die.

What determines what proportion of his right to think, each man shall have?

His power to get attention and let others think.

What determines what proportion of his right to live, each man shall have?

His power to let others live.

What determines what proportion of his right to be waited on, each man shall have?

His power to serve.

These are the principles of the new League--the voluntary, spontaneous organization of the men and women of America to meet the emergency in America of our war with ourselves, on the same scale and in the same spirit as the Red Cross met the emergency of our war with other nations, an organization which I hope to show ought to be formed, and which I am rising to make the motion to form, in this book.

I put these principles forward as the by-laws of America's faith in itself, as the principles that should govern the brain, the heart and the hand of each man in a democracy, toward all other men and that should govern all other men toward him--the skeleton of the body of the people.

VIII

THREE RIGHTS OF MAN IN A DEMOCRACY

I--THE RIGHT TO THINK