BOOK TWO

      LETTING THE CROWDS BE GOOD


      CHAPTER III

      IS IT WRONG FOR GOOD PEOPLE TO BE
      INTERESTING?

      PEOPLE are acquiring automobiles, Oriental rugs, five-
      hundred-dollar gowns, more rapidly just now than they are
      goodness, because advertisements in this present generation
      are more readable than sermons, and because the shop windows
      on Fifth Avenue can attract more attention than the churches.

      The shop windows make people covetous.

      If the goodness that one sees, hears about, or goes by does not
      make other people covetous, does not make them wish they had
      it or some just like it, it must be because there is something the
      matter with it, or something the matter with the way it is dis-
      played.

      If the church shop windows, for instance, were to make dis-
      plays of goodness up and down the great Moral Fifth Avenue of
      the world—well, one does not know; 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
      Want.

      There would be rows and tiers of Not-Things piled up—
      Things for People Not to Be, and Things for People Not To
      Do.

      Goodness displayed in this way is not interesting.

      Perhaps this is one of the reasons why the word Goodness
      spoils a thing for people—so many people—when it is allowed
      in it.

      Possibly it is because we are apt to think of the good people,
      and of the people who are being good, as largely keeping from
      doing something, or as keeping other people from doing some- [104]
      thing—as negative. Their goodness seems to consist in being
      morally accurate, and in being very particular just in time, and
      in a kind of general holding in.

      We do not naturally or off-hand—any of us—think of good-
      ness as having much of a lunge to it. It is tired-looking and
      discouraged, and pulls back kindly and gently. Or it teases
      and says, "Please"—God knows how helpless it is, and I for
      one am frank to say that, as far as I have observed, He has not
      been paying very much attention to good people of late.

      I do not believe I am alone in this. There must be thousands
      of others who have this same half-guilty, half-defiant feeling
      of suspiciousness toward what people seem to think should be
      called goodness. Not that we say anything. We merely keep
      wondering—we cannot see what it is, exactly, about goodness
      that should make it so depressing.

      In the meantime we hold on. We do not propose to give up
      believing in it. Perhaps, after all, all that is the matter with
      goodness in the United States is the people who have taken
      hold of it.

      They do not seem to be the kind of people who can make it
      interesting. We cannot help thinking, if these same bad people
      about us, or people who are called bad, would only take up
      goodness awhile, how they would make it hum!

      I can only speak for one, but I do not deny that when I have
      been sitting (in some churches), or associating, owing to cir-
      cumstances, with very good people a little longer than usual, and
      come out into the street, I feel like stepping up sometimes to
      the first fine, brisk, businesslike man I see going by, and saying,
      "My dear sir, I do wish that you would take up goodness
      awhile and see if, after all, something cannot really be done.
      I keep on trying to be hopeful, but these dear good people in
      here, it seems to me, are making a terrible mess of it!"

      And, to make a long story short, Lim happened to be going
      by one day, and this practically is what I did. I had done it
      before with other business men in spirit or in a general way, but [105]
      with him I was more particular. I went straight to the point.
      "Here are at least sixteen valuable efficient brands of goodness
      in America," I said, "all worth their weight in gold for a big
      business career, that no one is really using, that no one quite
      believes in or can get on the market, and yet I believe with my
      whole soul in them all, and I believe thousands of other men do,
      or are ready to, the moment some one makes a start."

      I pulled out a little list of items which I had made out and
      put down on a piece of paper, and handed them over to him,
      and said I wished he would take a few of them—the first five
      or six or so—and make them work.

      He already had, I found, made two or three of the harder ones
      work.

      I would not have anyone suppose for a moment that I am
      presenting Lim as a kind of business angel.

      No one who knows Lim thinks of him, or would let anybody
      else think of him, as being a Select Person, as being particularly
      or egregiously what he ought to be. This is one reason I have
      picked him out. Being good in a small private way, just as a
      small private end in itself, may be practicable perhaps without
      dragging in people who are not quite what they ought to be.
      But the moment one tries to make goodness work, one comes
      to the fact that it must be made to work with what we have.

      We have a great crowd of unselected people, people both good
      and bad, and the first principle in making goodness work (in-
      stead of being merely good) seems to be to believe that goodness
      is not too good for anybody. Anybody who can make it work
      can have it, and what goodness seems to need, especially in
      America and England just now, is people who do not feel that
      they must at all hazards look good. Whatever happens, what-
      ever else we do in any general investment or movement we may
      be making with goodness, we must let these people in. If
      there is one thing rather than another that those of us who know
      Lim all rely on and like, it is that nothing can ever make him
      slump down into looking good. We often find him hard to [106]
      make out—everything is left open and loose and unlabelled
      in Lim's moral nature. The only really sure way anyone can
      tell when Lim is being good is, that whenever he is being good
      he becomes suddenly and unexpectedly interesting. His good-
      ness is daring, unexpected, and original. One has the feeling
      that it may break out anywhere. It is always doing things
      that everybody said could not be done before. It is true that
      some people are dazed, and no one can ever seem to feel sure
      he knows what it is that is going on in Lim when he is being
      good, or that it is goodness. He merely keeps watching it.

      There is a certain element of news, of freshness, of gentle sen-
      sation, in his goodness. It leads to consequences. And there
      always seems to be something about Lim's goodness which
      attracts the attention of people, and makes people who see it
      want it. So when I speak of goodness in this book, and put it
      down as the basis of the power of getting men to do as one
      likes, I do not deny that I am taking the word away and moving
      it over from its usual associations. I do not mean by a good
      act, a good-looking act, but an act so constituted that it makes
      good. For the purpose of this book I would define goodness as
      efficiency. Goodness is the quality in a thing that makes the
      thing go, and that makes it go so that it will not run down,
      and that nothing can stop it.

      There is the inefficiency of lying, for instance, and the inef-
      ficiency of force, or bullying.
 


      CHAPTER IV

      PROSPECTS OF THE LIAR

      MY THEORY about the Liar is that it is of no use to scold
      him or blame him. It merely makes him feel superior. He
      should be looked upon quietly and without saying anything as a
      case of arrested development. What has happened to him is
      that he merely is not quite bright about himself, and has tailed
      to see how bright (in the long run) other people are.

      When a man lies or does any other wrong thing, his real fail-
      ure consists not in the wrongdoing itself, but in his failure to
      take pains to focus his mind on the facts in himself, and in the
      people about him, and see what it really is that he would wish he
      had done, say in twenty years. It seems to be possible, after a
      clumsy fashion, to find out by a study of ourselves, and of our
      own lives and of other men's lives, what we would wish we had
      done afterward. Everything we have learned so far we have
      learned by guessing wrong on what we have thought we would
      want afterward. We have gradually guessed what we wanted
      better. We began our lives as children with all sorts of inter-
      esting sins or moral guesses and experiments. We find there
      are certain sins or moral experiments we almost never use any
      more because we found that they never worked. We had been
      deceived about them. Most of us have tried lying. Since
      we were very small we have tried in every possible fashion—
      now in one way, now in another—to see if lying could not be
      made to work. By far the majority of us, and all of us who are
      the most intelligent, are not deceived now by our desire to tell
      lies. Perhaps we have not learned that all lies do not pay. A
      child tells a lie at first as if a lie had never been thought of be-
      fore. It is as if lying had just been invented, and he had just [108]
      thought what a great convenience it was, and how many things
      there were that he could do in that way. He discovers that the
      particular thing he wants at the moment, he gets very often by
      lying. But the next time he lies, he cannot get anything. If
      he keeps on lying for a long time, he learns that while, after a
      fashion, he is getting things, he is losing people. Finally, he
      finds he cannot even get things. Nobody believes in him or
      trusts him. He cannot be efficient. He then decides that
      being trusted, and having people who feel safe to associate with
      him and to do business with him, is the thing he really wants
      most; and that he must have first, even if it is only a way to get
      the other things he wants. It need not be wondered that the
      Trusts, those huge raw youngsters of the modern spirit, have
      had to go through with most of the things other boys have.

      The Trusts have had to go through, one after the other, all their
      children's diseases, and try their funny little moral experiments
      on the world. They thought they could lie at first. They
      thought it would be cunning, and that it would work. They
      did not realize at once that the bigger a boy you were, even if
      you were anonymous, 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 it.

      The Trusts have been guessing wrong on what they would
      wish they had done in twenty years, and the best of them now
      are trying to guess better. They are trying to acquire prestige
      by being far-sighted for themselves and far-sighted for the peo-
      ple who deal with them, and are resting their policy on winning
      confidence and on keeping faith with the people.

      They not only tried lying, like all young children, but
      they tried stealing. For years the big corporations could be
      seen going around from one big innocent city in this country
      to another, and standing by quietly and without saying a word.
      putting the streets in their pockets.

      But no big corporation of the first class to-day would begin
      its connection with a city in this fashion. Beginning a per- [109]
      manent business relation with a customer by making him sorry
      afterward he has had any dealings with you, has gone by as a
      method of getting business in England and America.

      One of our big American magazines not long ago, which had
      gained especially high rates from its advertisers because they
      believed in it, lied about its circulation. The man who was
      responsible was not precisely sure, gave nominal figures in round
      numbers, and did what magazines very commonly did under the
      circumstances; but when the magazine owner looked up details
      afterward and learned precisely what the circulation was for
      the particular issue concerned, he sent out announcements to
      every firm in the country that had anything in the columns of
      that issue, saying that the firm had lied, and enclosing a check
      for the difference in value represented. Of course it was a good
      stroke of business, eating national humble pie so, and it was a
      cheap stroke of business too, doing some one, sudden, striking
      thing that no one would forget. Not an advertisement could be
      inserted and paid for in the magazine for years without having
      that action, and the prestige of that action, back of it. Every
      shred of virtue there was in the action could have been set one
      side, and was set one side by many people, because it paid so
      well. Every one saw suddenly, and with a faint breath of
      astonishment, how honesty worked. But the main point
      about the magazine in distinction from its competitors seems to
      have been that it not merely saw how honesty worked, but it
      saw it first and it had the originality, the moral shrewdness and
      courage, to put up money on it. It believed in honesty so hard
      that suddenly one morning, before all the world, it risked its
      entire fortune on it. Now that it has been done once, the new
      level or standard of candour may be said to have been established
      which others will have to follow. 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
      competitors. In the last analysis, in the competition of modern
      business to get the crowd, the big success is bound to come to [110]
      men in the one region of competition where competition still
      has some give in it—the region of moral originality. Other
      things in competition nowadays have all been thought of except
      being good. Any man who can and will to-day think out new
      and unlooked-for ways of being good can get ahead, in the
      United States of practically everybody.
 


      CHAPTER V

      PROSPECTS OF THE BULLY

      THE stage properties that go with a bully change as we grow
      older. When one thinks of a bully, one usually sees a picture
      at once in one's mind. It is a big boy lording it over a little
      one, or getting him down and sitting on him.

      Everybody recognizes what is going on immediately, pitches
      in nobly and beautifully, and licks the big boy.

      The trouble with the bully in business has been that he is not
      so simple and easy to recognize. He is apt to be more or less
      anonymous and impersonal, and it is harder to hit him in the
      right place.

      But when one thinks of it perhaps this pleasant and inspiring
      duty is not so impracticable as it looks, and is presently to be
      attended to.

      Any man who relies, in getting what he wants, on being big
      instead of being right, is a bully.

      Modern business is done over a wide area, with thousands
      of persons looking on, and for a long time and with thousands of
      people coming back. The man who relies on being big instead
      of being right, and who takes advantage of his position instead
      of his inherent superiority, is soon seen through. His customers
      go over to the enemy. A show of force or a hold-up works
      very well at the moment. Being bigger may be more showy
      than being right, and it may down the Little Boy, but the Little
      Boy wins the crowd.

      Business to-day consists in persuading crowds.

      The Little Boy can prove he is right. All the bully can prove
      is that he is bigger.

      The Liar in Business is already going by. [112]

      Now it is the turn of the bully.

      Not long ago a few advertisers in a big American city wanted
      unfairly low rates for advertisements and tried to use force with
      the newspapers. Three or four of the biggest shops combined
      and gave notice that they would take their advertising away
      unless the rates came down. After a little, they drew in a few
      other lines of business with them, and suddenly one morning
      five or six full pages of advertisements were withdrawn from
      every newspaper in the city. The newspapers went on pub-
      lishing all the news of the city except news as to what people
      could buy in department stores, and waited. They made no
      counter-move of any kind, and said nothing and seven days
      slipped past. They held to the claim that the service they per-
      formed in connecting the great stores with the people of the
      city was a real service, that it represented market value which
      could be proved and paid for. 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 money. They won-
      dered 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 were.

      The great shops tried other ways of letting people know.
      They tried handbills, a huge helpless patter of them over all the
      city. They used billboards, and posted huge lists of items for
      people to stop and read in the streets, if they wanted to, while
      they rushed by. For three whole weeks they held on tight to
      the idea that the newspapers were striking employees of de-
      partment stores. 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 respectfully. 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 there, they would
      have to pay their share of what it had cost the newspapers to [113]
      get it.

      One would have thought that the department shops would
      have seen that the more they could make the newspapers pros-
      per, the more influence the newspapers would have in the homes
      of the people, and the more business they could get through
      them. But it was not until the shopowners had come down
      and gazed day after day on the big, white, lonely floors of their
      shops that they saw the truth. Crowds stayed away, and proved
      it to them. Namely: a store, if it uses a great newspaper, in-
      stead of having a few feet of show windows on a street for people
      to walk by, 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 break-
      fast—has its duties as well as its rights.

      Of course, when the shopkeepers really saw that this was
      what the newspapers had been doing for them, they wanted to
      do what was right, and wanted to pay for it. One would have
      thought, looking at it theoretically, that the department stores
      in any city would have imagination enough to see, without
      practically having to shut their stores up for three weeks, what
      advertising was worth. But if great department stores do not
      have imagination to see what they would wish they had done in
      twenty years, in one year, or three weeks, and have to spell out
      the experience morning by morning and see what works, word
      by word, they do learn in the end that being right works, and
      that bullying does not. Gradually the level or standard of
      right in business is bound to rise, until people have generally
      come to take the Golden Rule with the literalness and serious-
      ness that the best and biggest men are already taking it.

      Department stores that have the moral originality and imagi-
      nation to guess what people would wish they had bought of
      them and what they would wish they had sold to them after-
      ward are going to win. Department stores that deal with their
      customers three or four years ahead are the ones that win first.