BOOK FOUR

      CROWDS AND HEROES


      CHAPTER XVIII

      THE MAN WHO PULLS THE WORLD TOGETHER

      THE typical mighty man or man of valour in our modern
      life is the Organizer or Artist.

      If a man has succeeded in being a great organizer, it is because
      he has succeeded in organizing himself.

      A man who has organized himself is a man who has built a
      personality. The main fact about a man who has succeeded
      in being an organized man or personality is, that he has ordered
      himself around.

      Naturally, when other people have to be ordered around,
      being full-head-on in the habit of ordering, even ordering
      himself, the hardest feat of all, he is the man who has to be
      picked out to order other people. As a rule the man who
      orders himself around successfully, who makes his whole nature
      or all parts of himself work together, does it because he takes
      pains to find out who he is and what he is like. If he orders
      other men successfully and makes them work together it is
      because he knows what they are like.

      A man knows what other people are like and how they feel
      by having times of being a little like them and by being a big,
      latent all-possible, all-round kind of man.

      Leadership follows.

      Modern business consists in getting Inventors' minds and
      Hewers' minds to work together. The ruler of modern business
      is the man who by experience or imagination is half an Inventor
      himself, and half a Hewer himself. He knows how inventing
      feels and how hewing feels.

      He has a southern exposure toward Hewers and makes
      Hewers feel identified with him. He has what might be called [398]
      an eastern exposure toward men of genius, understands the
      inventive temperament, has the kind of personality that evokes
      inventiveness in others.

      Incidentally he has what might be called a northern exposure
      which keeps him scientific, cool, and close to the spirit of facts.

      And there has to be something very like a western exposure
      in him too, a touch of the homely seer, a habit of having reflec-
      tions and afterglows, a sense of principles, and of the philosophy
      of men and things.

      If I were to try to sum up all these qualities in a man and call
      it by one name, I would call it Glorified-commonsense.

      If I were asked to define Glorified-commonsense I would say
      it is a glory which works. It belongs to the man who has a
      vision or courage for others because he sees them as they are,
      and sees how the glory buried in them (i.e., the inspiration or
      source of hard work in them) can be got out.

      Everywhere that the Artist in business, or Organizer, with
      his Inventors on one side of him and his Hewers on the other,
      can be seen to-day competing with the man who has the mere
      millionaire or owning type of mind, he is crowding him from
      the market.

      It is because he understands how Inventors and Hewers feel
      and what they think and when he turns on Inventors he makes
      them invent and when he turns on Hewers he makes them hew.

      The Hewer often thinks because he is rich or because he owns
      a business, that he can take the place of the artist, but he can
      be seen every day in every business around us, being passed
      relentlessly out of power because he cannot make his Inventors
      invent and cannot make his Hewers hew as well as some other
      man. The moment his Inventors and Hewers think of him,
      hear about him, or have any dealing with him—with the mere
      millionaire, the mere owner kind of person, his Inventors invent
      as little as they can, and his Hewers hew as softly as they dare.

      This is called the Modern Industrial Problem.

      And no man but the artist, the man with the inventing and [399]
      the hewing spirit both in him, who daily puts the inventing
      spirit and the hewing spirit together in himself, can get it to-
      gether in others.

      Only the man who has kept and saved both the inventing and
      hewing spirit in himself can save it in others—can be a saviour
      or artist.
 


      CHAPTER XIX

      THE MAN WHO STANDS BY

      I HAVE been trying to say in this book that goodness in
      daily life, or in business, in common world-running or world
      housekeeping, is by an implacable crowd-process working
      slowly out of the hands of the wrong men into the hands of
      the right ones.

      If this is not true, I am ready to declare myself as a last resort,
      in favour of a strike.

      There is only one strike that would be practical.

      I would declare for a strike of the saviours.

      . . . . . . .

      By a saviour I do not mean a man who stoops down to me
      and saves me. A saviour to me is a man who stands by and
      lets me save myself.

      I am afraid we cannot expect much of men who can bear the
      idea of being saved by other people, or by saviours who have
      a stooping feeling.

      I rejoice daily in the spirit of our modern laboring men,
      in that holy defiance in their eyes, in the way they will not
      say "please" to their employers and announce that they will
      save themselves.

      The only saviour who can do things for labouring men is the
      saviour who proposes to do things with them, who stands by,
      who helps to keep oppressors and stooping saviours off—who
      sees that they have a fair chance and room to save themselves.

      I define a true saviour as a man who is trying to save himself.

      It was because Christ, Savonarola, and John Bunyan were
      all trying to save themselves that it ever so much as occurred [401]
      to them to save worlds. Saving a world was the only way to
      do it.

      The Cross was Christ's final stand for his own companion-
      ableness, his stand for being like other people, for having other
      people to share his life with, his faith in others and his joy
      in the world.

      The world was saved incidentally when Christ died on the
      Cross. He wanted to live more abundantly—and he had to
      have certain sorts of people to live more abundantly with.
      He did not want to live unless he could live more abundantly.

      We live in a world in which inventors want to die if they can-
      not invent and in which Hewers want to die if they cannot hew.

      I am not proud. I am willing to be saved. Any saviour
      may save me if he wants to, if his saving me is a part of his
      saving himself.

      If the inventor saves me and saves us all because he wants
      to be in a world where an inventor can invent, wants some one
      to invent to; if the artist saves me because it is part of his
      worship of God to have me saved and wants to use me every
      day to rejoice about the world with—if the Hewer comes over
      and hews out a place in the world for me because he wants
      to hew, I am willing.

      All that I demand is, that if a man take the liberty of being
      a saviour to me that he refrain from stooping, that he come up
      to me and save me like a man, that he stand before me and tell
      me that here is something that we, he and I, shoulder to shoulder,
      can do, something that neither of us could do alone. Then
      he will fall to with me and I will fall to with him, and we will
      do it.

      This is what I mean by a saviour.
 


      CHAPTER XX

      THE STRIKE OF THE SAVIOURS

      A FACTORY in ____ some ten years ago employed
      one hundred men. Three of these men were in the office and
      ninety-seven were hands in the works. To-day this same
      factory which is doing a very much larger business is still
      employing one hundred men, but thirty of the men are em-
      ployed in the office and seventy in the works.

      Ten years, ago to put it in other words, the factory provided
      places for one artist or manager and two inventors and places
      for ninety-seven Hewers.

      To-day the factory has made room for thirty inventors, one
      manager and twenty-nine men who spend their entire time in
      thinking of things that will help the Hewers hew.

      It has seventy Hewers who are helping the Inventors invent
      by hewing three times as hard and three times as skilfully or
      three times as much as without the Inventors to help them,
      they had dreamed they could hew before.

      The Artist or Organizer who made this change in the factory
      found that among the ninety-seven Hewers that were employed
      a number of Hewers were hewing very poorly, because though
      hewing was the best they could do, they could not even
      hew. He found certain others who were hewing poorly because
      they were not Hewers, but Inventors. These he set to work—
      some of them inventing in the office.

      On closer examination the two Inventors in the office were
      found to be not Inventors at all. One of them was a fine
      Hewer who liked to hew and who hated inventing and the
      other was merely a rich Hewer who was an owner in the business
      who saw suddenly that he would have to stop inventing and [403]
      stop very soon if he wanted the business to make any more
      money.

      There are four things that the Artist has to do with a factory
      like this before he can make it efficient.

      Each of these things is an art. One art is the art of
      compelling the mere owner, the man with the merely hewing
      mind, to confine himself to the one thing he knows how to
      do, namely to shovelling, to shovelling his money in when and
      where he was told it was needed, and to shovelling his money
      out when it has been made for him.

      The art of compelling a mere owner to know his place, of
      keeping him shovelling money in and shovelling money out
      silently and modestly, consists as a rule in having the Artist
      or Organizer tell him that unless the business is placed com-
      pletely in his hands he will not undertake to run it.

      This is the first art. The second art consists in having an
      understanding with the inventors that they will invent ways
      of helping the Hewers hew.

      The third art consists in having an understanding with the
      Hewers that they will accept the help of the Inventors and hew
      with it. The fourth art is the art of representing the con-
      sumer with the Hewer and with the Inventor and with the
      Owner and seeing that he shares in the benefits of all economies
      and improvements.

      These are all human arts and turn on the power in a man of
      being a true artist, of being a man-inventor, a man-developer and
      a man-mixer, daily taking part of himself and using these parts
      in putting other men together.

      These organizers or artists, being the men who see how—
      are the men who are not afraid.
 


      CHAPTER XXI

      THE LEAGUE OF THE MEN WHO ARE NOT AFRAID

      IF ALL the unbrained money in the world to-day and the men
      that go with it could be isolated, could be taken by men of imagi-
      nation and put in a few ships and sent off to an island in the sea
      —if New York and London and all the other important places
      could be left in the hands of the men who have imagination,
      poor and rich, they would soon have the world in shape to make
      the men with merely owning minds, the mere owners off on
      their island, beg to come back to it, to be allowed to have a
      share in it on any terms.

      In order to be fair, of course, their island would have to be
      a furnished island—mines, woods, and everything they could
      want. It would become a kind of brute wilderness or desert
      in twenty-five years. We could, now and then, some of
      us, take happy little trips, go out and look them over
      on their little furnished island. It would do us good to
      watch them—these men with merely owning or hold-
      ing-on minds, really noticing at last how unimportant they
      are.

      But it is not necessary to resort to a furnished island as a
      device, as a mirror for making mere millionaires see them-
      selves.

      This is a thing that could be done for millionaires now, most
      of them, here just where they are.

      All that is necessary is to have the brains of the world so
      organized that the millionaires who expect merely because
      they are millionaires to be run after by brains, cannot get any
      brains to run after them.

      I am in favour of organizing the brains of the world into a [405]
      trades union.

      One of the next things that is going to happen is that the
      managing and creating minds of the world to-day are going
      to organize, are going to see suddenly their real power and use
      it. The brains are about to have, as labour and capital already
      have, a class consciousness.

      I would not claim that there is going to be an international
      strike of the brains of the world, but it will not be long before
      the managing class as a class will be organized so that they can
      strike if they want to.

      The Artists or Organizers and Managers of business will not
      need probably, in order to accomplish their purpose, to strike
      against the uncreative millionaires. They will make a stand
      (which the best of them have already made now) for the balance
      of power in any business that they furnish their brains to.
      The brains that create the profits for the owners and that
      create the labour for the labourers, will make terms for their
      brains and will withhold their brains if necessary to this end.

      But it is far more likely that they will accomplish their
      purpose sooner by using their brains for the millionaires and
      for the labourers—by cooperating with the millionaires and
      labourers than they will by striking against them or keeping
      their brains back.

      They are in a position to make the millionaires see how little
      money they can make without them even in a few days. They
      will let them try. A very little trying will prove it.

      Where hand labour would have to strike for weeks and
      months to prove its value, brain labour would have to strike
      hours and days.

      This is what is going to be done in modern business in one busi-
      ness at a time, the brains insisting in each firm upon full control.

      Then, of course, the firms that have the brains in most full
      control will drive the firms in which brains are in less control
      out of competition.

      Then brains will spread from one business to another. The [406]
      Managers, Artists, and Organizers of the world will have formed
      at last a Brain Syndicate, and they will put themselves in a
      position to determine in their own interests and in the interests
      of society at large the terms on which all men—all men who
      have no brains to put with their money—shall be allowed
      to have the use of theirs. They will monopolize the brain
      supply of the world.

      Then they will act. Under our present regime money hires
      men; under the regime of the Brain Syndicate men will hire
      money. Money—i.e., saved up or canned labour, is going to
      be hired by Managers, Organizers, and Engineers with as much
      discrimination and with as deep a study of its efficiency, as new
      labour is hired. The millionaires are going to be seen standing
      with their money bags and their little hats in their hands like
      office boys asking for positions for their money before the doors
      of the really serious and important men, the men who toil out
      the ideas and the ways and the means of carrying out ideas—
      the men who do the real work of the world, who see things
      that they want and see how to get them—the men of imagi-
      nation, the inventors of ideas, organizers of facts, generals
      and engineers in human nature.

      It is these men who are going to allow people who merely
      have thoughtless labour and people who merely have thought-
      less money to be let in with them. The world's quarrel with the,
      rich man is not his being a rich man, but his being rich without
      brains, and its quarrel with the poor labourer is not his being
      a poor labourer, but his being a poor labourer without
      brains. The only way that either of these men can have
      a chance to be of any value is in letting themselves be
      used by the man who will supply them with what they lack.
      They will try to get this man to see if he cannot think of
      some way of getting some good out of them for themselves,
      and for others.

      We have a Frederick Taylor for furnishing brains to labour.

      We are going to have a Frederick Taylor to attend to the [407]
      brain-supply of millionaires, to idea-outfits for directors.

      Every big firm is going to have a large group of specialists
      working on the problem of how to make millionaires—its own
      particular millionaires think, devising ways of keeping idle and
      thoughtless capitalists out of the way. If the experts fail in
      making millionaires think, they may be succeeded by experts
      in getting rid of them and in finding thoughtful money, possibly
      made up of many small sums, to take their place.

      The real question the Artist or Organizer is going to ask about
      any man with capital will be, "Is it the man who is making the
      money valuable and important or is it the money that is making
      this man important for the time being and a little noticeable
      or important-looking?"

      The only really serious question we have to face about money
      to-day is the unimportance of the men who have it. The Hewers
      or Scoopers, or Grabbers, who have assumed the places of the
      Artist and the Inventor because they have the money, are
      about to be crowded over to the silent, modest back seats in
      directors' meetings. If they want their profits, they must give
      up their votes. They are going to be snubbed. They are going
      to beg to be noticed. The preferred stock or voting stock will
      be kept entirely in the hands of the men of working imagination,
      of clear-headedness about things that are not quite seen, the
      things that constitute the true values in any business situation,
      the men who have the sense of the way things work and of the
      way they will have to go.

      Mere millionaires who do not know their place in a great
      business will be crowded into small ones. They will be con-
      fronted by the organized refusal of men with brains to work for
      their inferiors, to be under control of men of second-rate order.
      Men with mere owning and grabbing minds will only be able
      to find men as stupid as they are to invest and manage their
      money for them. In a really big creative business their only
      chance will be cash and silence. They will be very glad at last
      to get in on any terms, if the men of brains will let their money [408]
      edge into their business without votes and be carried along
      with it as a favour.

      It is because things are not like this now, that we have an
      industrial problem.

      Managers who have already hired labour as a matter of course
      are going to hire the kind of capital they like, the kind of capital
      that thinks and that can work with thinking men.

      There will gradually evolve a general recognition in business
      on the part of men who run it and on the part of managers, of
      the moral or human value of money. The successful manager
      is no longer going to grab thoughtlessly at any old, idle, foolish
      pot of money that may be offered to him. He is going to study
      the man who goes with it, see how he will vote and see whether
      he knows his place, whether he is a Hewer, for instance, who
      thinks he is an Inventor. Does he or does he not know which
      he is, an Inventor, an Artist, or a Hewer?

      Capitalists will expect as a matter of course to be looked over
      and to be hired in a great business enterprise as carefully as
      labourers are being hired now.

      The moment it is generally realized that the managers of
      every big modern business have become as particular about
      letting in the right kind of directors as they have been before
      about letting in the right kind of labour, we will stop having
      an upside-down business world.

      An upside-down business world is one in which any man who
      has money thinks he can be a director almost anywhere, a
      world in which on every hand we find managers who are not
      touching the imagination of the public and getting it to buy,
      and not touching the imagination of labour and getting it to
      work, because they are not free to carry out their ideas without
      submitting them to incompetent and scared owners.

      The incompetent and scared owners—the men who cannot
      think—are about to be shut out. Then they will be com-
      pelled to hire incompetent and scared managers. Then they
      will lose their money. Then the world will slip out of their [409]
      hands.

      The problem of modern industry is to be not the distribution
      of the money supply, but the distribution of the man-supply.

      Money follows men.

      Free men. Free money.