The Ghost in the White House Part 4

I am ent.i.tled to one one-hundred millionth of President Wilson's time in a year.

1/100,000,000th.

If I want 2/100,000,000ths of President Wilson's time in a year I must show him why. I must also show the other 99,999,999 people who think I deserve no more than my regular 1/100,000,000th why I should have two.

Not allowing for the President's sleeping nights, my precise share of his time would be one-third of a second once a year. Why should I have two-thirds of a second?

I have to show.

The success of democracy as a working inst.i.tution turns on salesmanship--upon every man's selling himself--his right to the attention of the Government.

A democracy which considers itself a queue of a hundred million people standing before the window of the President's attention to be waited upon by the President in the order in which they are born or in which they come up, would be a helpless inst.i.tution. The success of democracy--that is, the success of a government in serving the will of the hundred million people in the queue, turns on sorting people in the queue out, turns on giving attention to what some people in the queue want before others. The man who gets out of line and walks up ahead of people who have been standing in line longer than he has, must get the permission of the queue. He must make the people in the queue feel he represents them with the President if he steps up ahead. Then they let him have their turn. They are glad to let him have hours with the President if they feel he is giving hours' worth of representation to their minutes. All each man wants to feel is that in letting Gompers, for instance, or Schwab, go up ahead, he is getting with the President a minute an hour long. Miles of people in rows say to a man like this, who can give them and their interests with the President a minute an hour long, "You first, please."

Political democracy, if it works, turns on getting the attention of the queue and then going with it to the window.

Political democracy, in other words, turns on advertising.

So does industrial democracy.

Industrial democracy in a factory of five thousand men consists in making arrangements for the five thousand men to appreciate each other, appreciate the Firm, and to feel the Firm appreciating them; arrangements for having the five thousand men get each other's attention in the right proportions at the right time so that they work as one.

The next thing that is coming in industrial democracy is getting skilled capital and skilled labor to appreciate each other's skill. A skilled capitalist can not fairly be called a skilled capitalist or, now that this war is over, unless he knows how to keep his queue appreciating his skill, keep his five thousand men standing in line for his attention cheerfully.

The difference between an industrial autocracy and an industrial democracy is that in an industrial autocracy you keep your queue in line with a club, or with threats of bread and b.u.t.ter, and in an industrial democracy you have your queue of five thousand men, each man in the row cheering you while he sees you giving one minute a week of your attention to him and one hour a day of your attention to others. Still you find him cheering you.

The skilled employer is the employer who so successfully advertises his skill to his employees and so successfully advertises their skill to themselves and to one another that they hand over to him in their common interest the right to sort them over. They hand over to him deliberately, in other words, in their own interests, the right not to treat them alike. Democracy consists in keeping people in line without a club.

Democracy is a queueful of people cutting in ahead of one another fairly and in a way that the queue stands for.

If a man standing in a queue before a ticket window wants to cut in ahead of five people, the way for him to do it is to show the five people something in his hand that makes them say, "You first, please." He must show why he should go first, and that he is doing it in their interest.

The other day as I was standing in a long line of people before the ticket window in the Northampton station, I noticed on a guess that half a dozen of the people were standing in line to buy a ticket to New York on the express due in half an hour, and a dozen and a half were standing in line to buy tickets to Springfield on the local going in three minutes. I was number thirteen. I wanted to get a ticket for Springfield.

The thing for me to do, of course, to rise to the crisis and make democracy work, was to jump up on my suitcase and address the queue who were ahead of me: "Ladies and gentlemen! Eighteen or twenty of you in this line ahead of me want tickets to Springfield on the train going in three minutes, and the rest of you want tickets on the train going in half an hour. If you people who are hoping you can get your tickets in time to go to Springfield will let me cut in ahead of you out of my turn and get my ticket, I will buy tickets for all of you with this ten dollar bill in thirty seconds, and you can get your tickets of me on the train, and in this way we will all catch it."

I did not do it, of course, but it would have been what I call democracy if I had.

The whole problem of labor and capital, and of political and industrial freedom, from now on after this war would have been solved in miniature before that window--if I had. My invention for the future of the Red Cross is that it should do what I tried to do at that window, for the American people.

Democracy is a form of government in which the people are essentially autocrats. The difference between an autocracy and a democracy is that the people select their autocrats. The more autocracy the more efficiency.

A people can not have the autocracy they need to get what they want unless they are willing to give over to their representatives the necessary trust pro tem., the necessary ex officio right to be autocrats in their behalf. Democracy is autocracy of the people, for the people, by the people--that is, by the people in spirit to their representatives who express their spirit.

The representatives of the people can not keep the people's autocracy for them unless they keep in touch with the people--that is, unless they advertise to the people and the people feel that they can advertise to them.

In an autocracy the autocracy of the ruler is based on forcing people's attention. In a democracy the autocracy is based on touching men's imaginations, on making people want to fall into line in the right order.

If the Kaiser had done this in Germany, Germany would have been the greatest democracy in the world and the greatest nation. If the Kaiser had had the power and genius for advertising of the modern kind, if he had had the power of making people want things in distinction from making them meek and making them take them whether they wanted them or not, he would have invented and set up a working model for America.

Obviously, the more the people desire to form in line the better and more successful all the people in the line will be in getting what they want at the window. The more autocracy people know enough to give their representatives, the better democracy works. In the last a.n.a.lysis the fate of democracy in modern life turns on having autocrats on probation--autocrats selected for their positions by advertising, and kept in position as autocrats as long as they can advertise to the people and as long as the people feel that they can advertise to them.

IX

II--THE RIGHT TO BE WAITED ON

Democracy is a form of government in which the people are supposed to be waited on in the way kings are, and in which the people arrange to have things done for them so that they won't have to hold up their work and take the time off to do them themselves.

Three Rights to Be Waited on

1. Skilled labor has the right to be waited on by skilled capital.

Skilled labor, being preoccupied as it naturally is by its highly specialized knowledge and skill, can not take the time off to do for itself what skilled capital could do in providing work, and providing markets for skilled labor. It cannot, on the other hand, take the time off to understand skilled capital and what it is doing in detail. Even if it could take the time off, and if five thousand hands in a factory all devoted themselves all day to understanding the work the Office is doing, the five thousand would make poor work of understanding.

Arrangements have got to be made in one way or another for skilled labor's trusting the Office, for its feeling that the autocracy it intrusts to the Office is being used fairly in its interest.

The first and most important skill of skilled capital, of course, is its skill in doing for its employees and for its customers what it is supposed to do.

But the second skill of capital must be skill in being believed in and finding means of being believed in by its employees. The more it is believed in, the more power to serve will be accorded to it. In other words, the second function of skilled capital is advertising to its skilled labor, and in making exchange arrangements with its skilled labor, for being advertised to.

2. Skilled capital has a right to be waited on by skilled labor.

The first skill of skilled labor must be with its machines and its tools, and in making its product, but the second skill must be its skill in being believed in. The skilled capital it is supposed to be waited on by is preoccupied with its skill, and unless labor makes special and very thorough provision to be understood and to keep understood by skilled capital, and by the public and the people who buy the goods, and unless skilled labor tries to keep in touch all around and do teamwork all around with all concerned so that it can do its work, it can not fairly be called skilled labor at all. Skilled labor has to have skill in putting its skill with others to produce a result.

In other words, the second skill of skilled labor is skill in making arrangements for being believed in and believing in others. Its second skill is in advertising and in being advertised to.

3. The other group concerned in industry is one which I like to call the Skilled Consumers.

The people have a right to have capital skilled in considering them, and labor skilled in considering them, at every point.

The people are the employers of all employers and of all employees.

The saying among business men and merchants in case of quarrel, "The customer is always right," has to be in the long run treated in a democracy as if it were approximately true.

What the consumers have to do in a democracy, however, in a singular degree is to live up to it. The consumers must make, and I believe are going to make, elaborate arrangements for being skilled consumers.

Skilled capital has organized.

Skilled labor has organized.

And now the consumers, or the people, if they are to be skilled, and if they are to get out of skilled capital and skilled labor what they want, will organize their skill to get it. They will organize to help the best skilled capital at the expense of the worst, to help the best skilled labor at the expense of the worst.

In other words, the secret of industrial democracy and of making industrial democracy work, lies in making the people skilled in conveying their wishes to the skilled capital and skilled labor waiting on them.