Crowds - free ebook by Gerald Stanley Lee

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Crowds

Gerald Stanley Lee

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92 chapters

A MOVING-PICTURE OF DEMOCRACY

A MOVING-PICTURE OF DEMOCRACY

GARDEN CITY NEW YORK DOUBLEDAY, PAGE &amp; COMPANY Copyright, 1913, by DOUBLEDAY, PAGE &amp; COMPANY All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign languages, including the Scandinavian COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY THE RIDGWAY COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY MITCHELL KENNERLEY COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY CO. COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY THE OUTLOOK COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY THE INDEPENDENT WEEKLY, INCORPORATED BOOKS By GERALD STANLEY LEE THE LOST ART OF READING A Sketch of Civi

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WHERE ARE WE GOING?

WHERE ARE WE GOING?

The best picture I know of my religion is Ludgate Hill as one sees it going down the foot of Fleet Street. It would seem to many perhaps like a rather strange half-heathen altar, but it has in it the three things with which I worship most my Maker in this present world—the three things which it would be the breath of religion to me to offer to a God together—Cathedrals, Crowds, and Machines. With the railway bridge reaching over, all the little still locomotives in the din whispering across the

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THE CROWD SCARE

THE CROWD SCARE

Time was when a man was born upon this planet in a somewhat lonely fashion. A few human beings out of all infinity stood by to care for him. He was brought up with hills and stars and a neighbour or so, until he grew to man's estate. He climbed at last over the farthest hill, and there, on the rim of things, standing on the boundary line of sky and earth that had always been the edge of life to him before, he looked forth upon the freedom of the world, and said in his soul, "What shall I be in t

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THE MACHINE SCARE

THE MACHINE SCARE

I have had occasion nearly every day for the past two weeks to pass by an ancient churchyard on a great hillside not far from London. Most of the stones are very old, and seem to have been thoughtfully and reverently, flake by flake, wrought into their final form by long-vanished hands. As I stand and watch them, with the yews and cypresses flocking round them, it is as if in some sort of way they had been surely wrought by the hand of love, so full are they of grief and of joy, of devotion, of

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THE STRIKE—AN INVENTION FOR MAKING CROWDS THINK

THE STRIKE—AN INVENTION FOR MAKING CROWDS THINK

When I was arranging to slip over from New York and get something I very much wanted in England last spring, I found myself held up suddenly in all my plans because some men on the docks had decided that there was something that they wanted too. They decided that I and thousands of other people in New York would have to wait over on the shores of America until they got it. After postponing my plans until things had settled down, I took passage, and in due time found myself standing on English so

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THE CROWD-MAN—AN INVENTION FOR MAKING CROWDS SEE

THE CROWD-MAN—AN INVENTION FOR MAKING CROWDS SEE

When Wilbur Wright flew around the Statue of Liberty in New York the other day, his doing it was a big event; but a still bigger event, as it seems to some of us, was the way he felt about New York when he did it. All New York could not make him show off. Hundreds of thousands of people on roofs could look up at the sky over New York, for him to go by, all that they liked. He slipped down to Washington without saying anything, on the 3:25 train, to attend to flying as part of the serious busines

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THE IMAGINATION OF CROWDS

THE IMAGINATION OF CROWDS

The modern imagination takes, speaking roughly, three characteristic forms: 1. Imagination about the unseen or intangible—the spiritual—as especially typified in electricity, in the wireless telegraph, the aeroplane: a new and extraordinary sense of the invisible and the unproved as an energy to be used and reckoned with. 2. Imagination about the future—a new and extraordinary sense of what is going to happen next in the world. 3. Imagination about people. We are not only inventing new machines,

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IMAGINATION ABOUT THE UNSEEN

IMAGINATION ABOUT THE UNSEEN

The most distinctively modern thing that ever happened was when Benjamin Franklin went out one day and called down lightning from heaven. Before that, power had always been dug up, or scraped off the ground. The more power you wanted the more you had to get hold of the ground and dig for it; and the more solid you were, the more heavy, solid things you could get, the more you could pull solid, heavy things round in this world where you wanted them. Franklin turned to the sky, and turned power on

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THE CROWD'S IMAGINATION ABOUT THE FUTURE

THE CROWD'S IMAGINATION ABOUT THE FUTURE

I remember looking over with H.G. Wells one night some time ago a set of pictures or photographs of the future in America, which he had brought home with him. They were largely skyscrapers, big bridges, Niagaras, and things; and I could not help thinking, as I came home that night, how much more Mr. Wells had of the future of America in his own mind than he could possibly buy in his photographs. What funny little films they were after all, how faint and pathetic, how almost tragically dull, thos

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THE CROWD'S IMAGINATION ABOUT PEOPLE

THE CROWD'S IMAGINATION ABOUT PEOPLE

I would like to propose, as a basis for the judgment of men and events, and as a basis for forecasting the next men and next events, and arriving at a vision of action, a Theory of the World. Every man has one. Every man one knows can be seen doing his work in this world on a great background, a kind of panorama or stage setting in his mind, made up of history and books, newspapers, people, and experiences, which might be called his Theory of the World. It is his theory of the world which makes

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A DEMOCRATIC THEORY OF HUMAN NATURE

A DEMOCRATIC THEORY OF HUMAN NATURE

If the men who were crucifying Jesus could have been suddenly stopped at the last moment, and if they could have been kept perfectly still for ten minutes and could have thought about it, some of them would have refused to go on with the crucifixion when the ten minutes were over. If they could have been stopped for twenty minutes, there would have been still more of them who would have refused to have gone on with it. They would have stolen away and wondered about The Man in their hearts. There

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DOING AS ONE WOULD WISH ONE HAD DONE IN TWENTY YEARS

DOING AS ONE WOULD WISH ONE HAD DONE IN TWENTY YEARS

If two great shops could stand side by side on the Main Street of the World, and all the vices could be put in the show window of one of them and all the virtues in the show windows the other, and all the people could go by all day, all night, and see the windowful of virtues as they were, and the windowful of vices as they were, all the world would be good in the morning. It would stay good as long as people remembered how the windows looked. Or if they could not remember, all they would need t

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NEW KINDS AND NEW SIZES OF MEN

NEW KINDS AND NEW SIZES OF MEN

It would be hard to overestimate the weariness and cynicism and despair that have been caused in the world by its more recklessly hopeful men—the men who plump down happily anywhere and hope, the optimists who are merely slovenly in their minds about evil. But the optimism that consists in putting evil facts up into a kind of outdoors in our minds and in giving them room to exercise in our thoughts and feelings, the optimism that consists in having one's brain move vigorously through disagreeabl

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SPEAKING AS ONE OF THE CROWD

SPEAKING AS ONE OF THE CROWD

It is a little awkward to say what I am going to say now. Probably it will be still more awkward afterward. But I find as I go up and down the world and look in the faces of the crowds in it, that it is true, and I can only tell as it is. I want to be good. And I do not want to go up on a mountain to do it, or to slink off and live all alone on an island in the sea. I go a step further. I believe that the crowds want to be good. But I cannot prove that people want to be good in crowds, and so fo

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IS IT WRONG FOR GOOD PEOPLE TO BE EFFICIENT?

IS IT WRONG FOR GOOD PEOPLE TO BE EFFICIENT?

Perhaps it will seem a pity to spoil a book—one that might have been really rather interesting—by putting the word "goodness" down flatly in this way in the middle of it. And in a book which deals with crowds, too, and with business. I would not yield first place to any one in being tired of the word. I think, for one, that unless there is something we can do to it, and something we can do to it now, it had better be dropped. But I have sometimes discovered when I had thought I was tired of a wo

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IS IT WRONG FOR GOOD PEOPLE TO BE INTERESTING?

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 becau

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PROSPECTS OF THE LIAR

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 failed to see how bright (in the long run) other people are. When a man lies or does any other wrong thing, his real failure consists not in the wrongdoing itself, but in his failure to take pains to focus h

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PROSPECTS OF THE BULLY

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

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GOODNESS AS A CROWD-PROCESS

GOODNESS AS A CROWD-PROCESS

The basis of successful business is imagination about other people. The best way to train one's imagination about other people is to try different ways of being of service to them. Trying different ways of merely getting money out of them does not train the imagination. It is too easy. Business is going to be before long among the noblest of the professions, because it takes the highest order of imagination to succeed in it. Goodness is no longer a Sunday school. The whole world, in a rough way,

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THOUGHTS ON BEING IMPROVED BY OTHER PEOPLE

THOUGHTS ON BEING IMPROVED BY OTHER PEOPLE

But Fate has so arranged our lives that we all have to live cooped up in one particular generation. Living in all of them, especially the ages just ahead, and seeing as one looks out upon them how goodness wins, may be well enough when one is tired or discouraged and is driven to it, but in the meantime all the while we are living in this one. The faces of the people we know flit past us; the gaunt, grim face of the crowd haunts us—the crowd that will slip softly off the earth very soon and drop

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MAKING GOODNESS HURRY

MAKING GOODNESS HURRY

Perhaps it has leaked out to those who have been following these pages thus far, that I am merely at best, if the truth were known, a kind of reformed preacher. I admit it. Many other people are. We began, owing to circumstances, with the idea of getting people to take up goodness by talking about it. But we have grown discouraged in talking to people about goodness. More and more, year by year, we have made up our minds, as I have hinted, to lie low and to keep still and show them some. And I c

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TOUCHING THE IMAGINATION OF CROWDS

TOUCHING THE IMAGINATION OF CROWDS

A man's success in business to-day turns upon his power of getting people to believe he has something that they want. Success in business, in the last analysis, turns upon touching the imagination of crowds. The reason that preachers in this present generation are less successful in getting people to want goodness than business men are in getting them to want motor-cars, hats, and pianolas, is that business men as a class are more close and desperate students of human nature, and have boned down

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THE STUPENDOUS, THE UNUSUAL, THE MONOTONOUS, AND THE SUCCESSFUL

THE STUPENDOUS, THE UNUSUAL, THE MONOTONOUS, AND THE SUCCESSFUL

The imagination of crowds may be said to be touched most successfully when it is appealed to in one of four ways: THE STUPENDOUS. THE UNUSUAL. THE MONOTONOUS. THE SUCCESSFUL. Of these four ways, the stupendous, or the unusual, or the successful are the most in evidence, and have something showy about them, so that we can look at them afterward, and point out at a glance what they have done. But probably the underhold on the crowd, the real grip on its imagination, the one which does the plain, h

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THE SUCCESSFUL

THE SUCCESSFUL

A little while ago I saw in Paris an American woman, the President of a Woman's Club (I imagined), who was doing as she should, and was going about in a cab appreciating Paris, drive up to the Louvre. Leaving her cab, though I wondered a little why she did, at the door, she hurried up the steps and swept into the gallery, taking her eleven-year-old boy with her. I came upon her several times. The Louvre did not interest the boy, and he seemed to be bothering and troubling his mother, and of cour

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THE NECKS OF THE WICKED

THE NECKS OF THE WICKED

A letter lies before me, one out of many others asking me how the author of "The Shadow Christ," which is a study of the religious values in suffering and self-sacrifice in this world, takes the low ground that honesty is the best policy. I know two kinds of men who believe that honesty is the best policy. These two men use exactly the same words "Honesty is the best policy." One man says it. The other man sings it. One man is honest because it pays. The other man is honest because he likes it.

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IS IT WRONG FOR GOOD PEOPLE TO BE SUCCESSFUL?

IS IT WRONG FOR GOOD PEOPLE TO BE SUCCESSFUL?

We are having and are about to have notably and truly successful men who have the humility and faithfulness, the spiritual distinction of true and great success. I want to interpret, if I can, these men. I would like to put with the great martyrs, with the immortal heroes of failure, these modern silent, unspoken, unsung mighty men, the heroes of success. I look forward to seeing them placed among the trophies of religion, in the heart of mankind at last. I cannot stand by and watch these men be

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IS IT SECOND RATE FOR GOOD PEOPLE TO BE SUCCESSFUL?

IS IT SECOND RATE FOR GOOD PEOPLE TO BE SUCCESSFUL?

Of course the most stupendous success that has ever been made—the world's most successful undertaking from a technical point of view as an adaptation of means to ends was the attempt that was made by a man in Galilee years and years ago to get not only the attention of a whole world, but to get the attention of a whole world for two thousand years. This purpose of arresting the attention of a world and of holding it for two thousand years was accomplished by the use of success and of failure alt

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THE SUCCESSFUL TEMPERAMENT

THE SUCCESSFUL TEMPERAMENT

I also, Gentle Reader, have despised and do despise "success." I also have stood, like you, perhaps, and I am standing now in that ancient, outer court, where I can keep seeing every day The Little Great Men with all their funny trappings on,—their hoods, and their ribbons, and their train-bearers, drive up before us all and go in to The Great Door. I have gone by in the night and have heard the buzz of their voices there. I have looked, like you, up at the great lighted windows of Prosperity fr

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THE MEN AHEAD PULL

THE MEN AHEAD PULL

Writing a hopeful book about the human race with the New York Sun , Wall Street, Downing Street and Bernard Shaw looking on is uphill work. Sometimes I wish there were another human race I could refer to when I am writing about this one, one every one knows. The one on Mars, for instance, if one could calmly point to it in the middle of an argument, shut people off with a wave of one's hand and say, "Mars this" and "Mars that" would be convenient. The trouble with the human race is that when one

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THE CROWDS PUSH

THE CROWDS PUSH

The men who are ahead make goodness start, but it is the crowds that make it irresistible. The final, slow, long, imperious lift on goodness is the one the crowd gives. Of course, for the most part, modern business is largely done with crowds. Crowds are doing it and crowds are nearly always watching it. The factory is slower than the department store in being good because the men in it deal with crowds of things and crowds of wheels and not with crowds of people. All responsible people are forc

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THE MAN WHO SAYS HOW, SAYS HOW

THE MAN WHO SAYS HOW, SAYS HOW

The people who are worried and discouraged about goodness in this world, one finds when one studies them a little, are almost always worried in a kind of general way. They do not worry about anything in particular. Their religion seems to be a kind of good-hearted, pained vagueness. The religion of the people who never worry at all, the thoughtless optimists, is quite the same too, except that they have a kind of happy, rosy-lighted vagueness instead. For about two thousand years now, goodness h

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AND THE MACHINE STARTS

AND THE MACHINE STARTS

One of the things that makes one thoughtful in going about from city to city and dropping into the churches is the way the people do not sing in them and will not pray in them. In every new strange city where one stops on a Sunday morning, one looks hopefully—while one hears the chimes of bells—at the row of steeples down the street. One looks for people going in who seem to go with chimes of bells. And when one goes in, one finds them again and again, inside, all these bolt-up-right, faintly si

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MR. CARNEGIE SPEAKS UP

MR. CARNEGIE SPEAKS UP

As I was wandering through space the other day—just aeroplaning past on my way over from Mars—I came suddenly upon a neat, snug little property, with a huge sign stuck in the middle of it: THE EARTH: THIS DESIRABLE PROPERTY TO LET. Rockefeller, Carnegie, Morgan &amp; Co. I was just about to pass it by, inferring naturally that it must be a mere bank, or wholesale house, or something, when it occurred to me it might do no harm to stop over on it, and see. I thought I might at least drop in an

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MR. CARNEGIE TRIES TO MAKE PEOPLE READ

MR. CARNEGIE TRIES TO MAKE PEOPLE READ

I found, as I was studying the general view of New York as seen from the top through Mr. Carnegie's glass, that there appeared to be a great many dots—long rows of dots for the most part—possibly very high buildings, but there was one building, wide and white and low, and more spread-out and important-looking than any of the others, which especially attracted my attention. It looked as if it might be a kind of monument or mausoleum to somebody. On looking again I found that it was filled with bo

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MR. NOBEL TRIES TO MAKE PEOPLE WRITE

MR. NOBEL TRIES TO MAKE PEOPLE WRITE

Not unnaturally, of course, I turned to see what had already been done by the more powerful men the planet had produced, in the way of arranging for the necessary seers and geniuses to run the world with, and I soon found that by far the most intelligent and far-seeing attempt that had been made yet in this direction had been made by an inspired, or semi-inspired, millionaire in Sweden, named Alfred Nobel, an idealist, who had made a large but unhappy fortune out of an explosive to stop war with

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PAPER BOOKS, MARBLE PILLARS, AND WOODEN BOYS

PAPER BOOKS, MARBLE PILLARS, AND WOODEN BOYS

I have sometimes wished that Mr. Carnegie would post the following sign up on his Libraries, on the outside where people are passing, and on the inside in the room where people sit and think: A MILLION DOLLARS REWARD. WANTED, A GREAT LIVING AMERICAN AUTHOR FOR MY LIBRARIES IN THE UNITED STATES. AT PRESENT OUR GREAT AUTHOR IN AMERICA APPEARS TO HAVE BEEN LOST OR MISLAID; ANY ONE FINDING HIM, OR ANY ONE THAT MIGHT DO FOR HIM TEMPORARILY, PLEASE COMMUNICATE WITH ME. ANDREW CARNEGIE. Mr. Carnegie's

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THE HUMDRUM FACTORY AND THE TUMPTY-TUM THEATRE

THE HUMDRUM FACTORY AND THE TUMPTY-TUM THEATRE

Mr. Israel Zangwill in presiding at the meeting of the Sociological Society the other night remarked, in referring to inspired millionaires, that as a rule in the minds of most people nowadays a millionaire seemed to be a kind of broken-off person, or possibly two persons. There always seemed to have to be a violent change in a millionaire somewhere along the middle of his life. The change seemed to be associated in some way, Mr. Zangwill thought with his money. He reminded one of the patent-med

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STEEPLES AND CHIMNEYS

STEEPLES AND CHIMNEYS

I went to the Durbar the other night in cinema colour and saw the King and Queen through India. I had found my way, with hundreds of others, into the gallery of the Scala Theatre, and out of that big, still rim of watchful darkness where I sat I saw—there must have been thousands of them—crowds of camels running. And crowds of elephants went swinging past. I watched them like a boy, like a boy standing on the edge of a thousand years and looking off at a world. It was stately and strange, and li

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BELLS AND WHEELS

BELLS AND WHEELS

We are living in a day of the great rebellion of the machines. Out of a thousand thousand roundhouses and factories, vast cities and nations of machines on the land and on the sea have risen before the soul of man and said, "We have served you; now, you serve us." A million million vulgar, swaggering Goliaths, one sees them everywhere; they wave their arms at us around the world, they puff their white breath at us, they spit smoke in our eyes, line up in a row before the great cities, before the

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DEW AND ENGINES

DEW AND ENGINES

When I was small, and wanted suddenly to play tag or duck-on-the-rock I had a little square half-mile of boys near by to play with. My daughter plays tag or plays dolls, any minute she likes, with a whole city. She is not surprised at the telephone; she takes it for granted like sunshine and milk. It is a part of the gray matter in her brain—a whole city, six or seven square miles of it. A little mouthpiece on a desk, a number, and two hundred little girls are hers in a minute, to play dolls wit

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DEAD AS A DOOR NAIL!

DEAD AS A DOOR NAIL!

There are people who say that machines cannot be beautiful, and cannot make for beauty, because machines are dead. I would agree with them if I thought that machines were dead. I have watched in spirit, hundreds of years, the machines grow out of Man like nails, like vast antennæ—a kind of enormous, more unconscious sub-body. They are apparently of less lively and less sensitive tissue than tongues or eyes or flesh; and like all bones they do not renew, of course, as often or as rapidly as flesh

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AN OXFORD MAN AND AN INCH OF IRON

AN OXFORD MAN AND AN INCH OF IRON

The whole process of machine-invention is itself the most colossal, spiritual achievement of history. The bare idea we have had of unravelling all creation, and of doing it up again to express our own souls—the idea of subduing matter, of making our ideals get their way with matter, with radium, ether, antiseptics, is itself a religion, a poetry, a ritual, a cry to heaven. The supreme, spiritual adventure of the world has become this task that man has set himself, of breaking down and casting aw

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THE MACHINES' MACHINES

THE MACHINES' MACHINES

The fate of civilization is not going to be determined by people who are morbidly like machines on the one hand, or by people who are morbidly unmechanical, on the other. People in a machine civilization who try to live without being automatic and mechanical-minded part of the time and in some things, people who try to make everything they do artistic and self-expressive and hand-made, who attend to all their own thoughts and finish off all their actions by hand themselves, soon wish they were d

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THE MEN'S MACHINES

THE MEN'S MACHINES

There was a time once in the old simple individual days when drygoods stores could be human. They expressed, in a quiet, easy way, the souls of the people who owned them. When machinery was invented and when organization was invented—machines of people—drygoods stores became vast selling machines. We then faced the problem of making a drygoods store with twenty-five hundred clerks in it as human as a drygoods store with fifteen. This problem has been essentially and in principle solved. At least

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THE BASEMENT OF THE WORLD

THE BASEMENT OF THE WORLD

Every man has, according to the scientists, a place in the small of his back which might be called roughly, perhaps, the soul of his body. All the little streets of the senses or avenues of knowledge, the spiritual conduits through which he lives in this world, meet in this little mighty brain in the small of a man's back. About nine hundred millions of his grandfathers apparently make their headquarters in this little place in the small of his back. It is in this one little modest unnoticed pla

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THE GROUND FLOOR FOLKS

THE GROUND FLOOR FOLKS

I would not have, if I could afford it, a thing in my house that is not hand-made. I have come to believe that machinery is going to make it possible for everybody to have hand-made things in their homes, things that have been made by people who love to make them, and by people who, thinks to the machines, are soon bound to have time to make them. Some will have gifts for hand-made furniture, others for hand-made ideas. Perhaps people will even have time for sitting down to enjoy hand-made ideas

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THE MACHINE-TRAINERS

THE MACHINE-TRAINERS

The fundamental failure of humanity so far is in self-assertion. The essential distinctive trait of modern civilization is machinery. Machinery logically and irrevocably involves the coöperative action of individuals. If we make levers and iron wheels work by putting them together according to their nature, we can only make vast masses of men work by putting them together according to their nature. So far we have been trying to make vast masses of men work together in precisely the same way we m

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MACHINES, CROWDS, AND ARTISTS

MACHINES, CROWDS, AND ARTISTS

A crowd civilization produces, as a matter of course, crowd art and art for crowded conditions. This fact is at once the glory and the weakness of the kind of art a democracy is bound to have. The most natural evidence to turn to first, of the crowd in a crowd age, is such as can be found in its literature, especially in its masterpieces. The significance of shaking hands with a Senator of the United States is that it is a convenient and labour-saving way of shaking hands with two or three milli

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NOW!

NOW!

This outlook or glimmer of vision I have tried to trace, for the art of crowds is something we want, and want daily, in the future. We want daily a future. But, after all, it is a future. I speak in this present chapter as one of the crowd who wants something now. I find myself in a world in which apparently some vast anonymous arrangement was made about me and about my life, before I was born. This arrangement seems to be, as I understand it, that if I want to live while I am on this planet a c

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COMMITTEES AND COMMITTEES

COMMITTEES AND COMMITTEES

The problem seems to be something like this. One finds one has been born and put here whether or no, and that one is inextricably alive in a state of society in which men are coming to live in a kind of vast disease of being obliged to do everything together. We are still old-fashioned enough to be born one at a time, but we are educated in litters and we do our work in the world in herds and gangs. Even the upper classes do their work in gangs, and with overseers and little crowds called commit

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THE INCONVENIENCE OF BEING HUMAN

THE INCONVENIENCE OF BEING HUMAN

I shall never forget one day I spent in New York some years ago—more years than I thought at first. It was a wrong-headed day, but I cannot help remembering it as a symbol of a dread I still feel at times in New York—a feeling of being suddenly lifted, of being swept out under (it is like the undertow of the sea) into a kind of vast deep of impersonality—swept out of myself into a wide, imperious waste or emptiness of people. I had come fresh from my still country meadow and mountain, my own tre

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LETTING THE CROWD HAVE PEOPLE IN IT

LETTING THE CROWD HAVE PEOPLE IN IT

So we face the issue. Nothing beautiful can be accomplished in a crowd civilization, by the crowd for the crowd, unless the crowd is beautiful. No man who is engaged in looking under the lives about him, who wishes to face the facts of these lives as they are lived to-day, will find himself able to avoid this last and most important fact in the history of the world—the fact that, whatever it may mean, or whether it is for better or worse, the world has staked all that it is and has been, and all

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THE SOCIALIST AND THE HERO

THE SOCIALIST AND THE HERO

I was spending a little time not long ago with a man of singularly devoted and noble spirit who had dedicated his life and his fortune to the Socialist movement. We had had several talks before, and always with a little flurry at first of hopefulness toward one another's ideas. We both felt that the other, for a mere Socialist or for a mere Individualist, was really rather reasonable. We admitted great tracts of things to one another, and we always felt as if by this one next argument, perchance

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THE CROWD AND THE HERO

THE CROWD AND THE HERO

But it is not only socially destructive. It is dumb and helpless for crowds to try to get on without heroes. Big events and big men are crowd expressions. Heroes, World Fairs, and Titanic disasters are crowd words, the crowd's way of seeing and saying things. Crowds think in great men, or they think in simple, big, broadly drawn events, or words of one syllable, like coal strikes. A whole world works through to an entirely new idea, the idea that England is not necessarily impregnable, in the Bo

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THE CROWD AND THE AVERAGE PERSON

THE CROWD AND THE AVERAGE PERSON

To state still further my difference with the typical Socialist point of view, as expressed in the letter from which I have quoted, I am obliged to confess that I not only believe in having heroes on behalf of crowds, but in having as a regular method of democracy little crowds of heroes, or an aristocracy. In other words, I am a democrat. I believe that crowds can produce, and are bound to produce by a natural crowd-process, a real aristocracy—an aristocracy which will be truly aristocratic and

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THE CROWD AND PIERPONT MORGAN

THE CROWD AND PIERPONT MORGAN

One keeps turning back every now and then, in reading the "Life of Pierpont Morgan," to the portrait which Carl Hovey has placed at the beginning of the book. If one were to look at the portrait long enough, one would not need to read the book. The portrait puts into a few square inches of space what Mr. Hovey takes half an acre of paper for. And all that he really does on the half-acre of paper is to bring back to one again and again that set and focused look one sees in Mr. Morgan's eyes—the r

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THE CROWD AND TOM MANN

THE CROWD AND TOM MANN

I dropped into the London Opera House the other night to see Tom Mann (the English Bill Heywood), another hero or crowd spy-glass that people have taken up awhile—thousands of them—to see through to what they really want. I wanted to hear him speak, and see, if I could, why the crowd had taken him up, and what it was they were seeing through him. I am apt to take a dead set at liking a man I do not agree with, if I can. It gives one a better start in understanding him and in not agreeing with hi

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AN OPENING FOR THE NEXT PIERPONT MORGAN

AN OPENING FOR THE NEXT PIERPONT MORGAN

Christ said once, "He that is greatest among you let him be your servant." Most people have taken it as if He had said: "He that is greatest among you let him be your valet. "He that is greatest among you let him be your butler. "He that is greatest among you let him be your hostler, porter, footman." They cling to a mediæval Morality-Play, Servant-in-the-House idea, a kind of head-waiter idea of what Christ meant. This seems to some of us a literal-minded, Western way of interpreting an Orienta

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AN OPENING FOR THE NEXT TOM MANN

AN OPENING FOR THE NEXT TOM MANN

I am aware that Tom Mann is not a world figure. But he is a world type. And as the editor of the Syndicalist , the leader of the most imposing and revealing labour rally the world has seen, he is of universal interest. Those of us who believe in crowds are deeply interested in finding, recognizing, creating, and in seeing set free out of the ranks of men the labour leaders who shall express the nobility and dignity of modern labour, who shall express the bigness of spirit, the brawny-heartedness

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THE MEN WHO LOOK

THE MEN WHO LOOK

During the recent coal strike in England, as at all times in the world, heroes abounded. The trouble with most of us during the coal strike was not in our not having heroes, but in our not being quite sure which they were. Davy McEwen, a miner who stood out against the whole countryside, and went to his work every day in defiance of thousands of men on the hills about him trying to stop him, and hundreds of thousands of men all over England trying to scare him, was not a hero to Mr. Josiah Wedge

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RULES FOR TELLING A HERO—WHEN ONE SEES ONE

RULES FOR TELLING A HERO—WHEN ONE SEES ONE

I have sometimes hoped that the modern world was about to produce at last some man somewhere with a big-hearted, easy powerful mind, who could protect the French Revolution. What we need most of all just now in our present crisis is some man who could take up the French Revolution without half trying, all the world looking on and wondering softly how he dares to do it, and put it gently but firmly, and once for all, up high somewhere where no one except geniuses, or at least the very tallest-min

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WHO IS AFRAID?

WHO IS AFRAID?

When Christ turned the other cheek, the last thing He would have wanted any one to think was that He was backing down, or that He was merely being a sweet, gentle, grieved person. He was inventing before everybody, and before His enemies, promptly and with great presence of mind, a new kind and new size of man. It was a more spirited, more original, more unconquerable and bewildering way of fighting than anybody had thought of before. To be suddenly in an enemy's presence a new kind and new size

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THE TECHNIQUE OF COURAGE

THE TECHNIQUE OF COURAGE

I have never known a coward. I have known men who did cowardly things and who were capable of cowardly thoughts, but I have never known a man who could be fairly and finally classified as a coward. Courage is a process. If people are cowards it is because they are in a hurry. They have not taken the pains to see what they think. The man who has taken the time to think down through to what he really wants and to what he is bound to get, is always (and sometimes very suddenly and unexpectedly) a c

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THE MEN WHO WANT THINGS

THE MEN WHO WANT THINGS

During the coal strike I took up my morning paper and read from a speech by Vernon Hartshorn, the miners' leader: "In a week's time, by tying up the railways and other means of transportation, we could so paralyze the country that the government would come to us on their knees and beg us to go to work on terms they are now flouting as impossible." During the dockers' strike I took up my morning paper and read Ben Tillett's speech, at the meeting the day before, to fifty thousand strikers on Towe

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MEN WHO GET THINGS

MEN WHO GET THINGS

All the virtues are hungers. A vice is the failure of desire. A vice is a man's failure to have enough big hungers at hand, sternly within reach, to control his little ones. A man who is doing wrong is essentially bored. He has let himself drop into doing rows of half-things, or things which he can only half do. He forgets, for the moment, what it really is that he wants, or possibly that he wants anything. Then it is that the one little, mean Lonely Hunger—a glass of liquor, a second piece of p

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SOURCES OF COURAGE FOR OTHERS—TOLERATION

SOURCES OF COURAGE FOR OTHERS—TOLERATION

After making an address on inspired millionaires one night before the Sociological Society in their quarters in John Street, I found myself the next day—a six-penny day—standing thoughtfully in the quarters of the Zoölogical Society in Regent's Park. The Zoölogical Society makes one feel more humble, I think, than the Sociological Society does. All sociologists, members of Parliament, eugenists, professors, and others, ought to be compelled by law to spend one day every two weeks with the Zoölog

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CONVERSION

CONVERSION

Some people think of the world as if it were made all through, people and all, of reinforced concrete, as if everything in it—men, women, children, churches, colleges, and parties, were solidly, inextricably imbedded in it. Every age in history has had to get on as well as it could with two sets of totally impracticable people, our two great orders of Philistines in this world, the people who put their trust in Portland Cement and the people who put their trust in Explosives. There has not been

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EXCEPTION

EXCEPTION

A bicycle, the other day, a little outside Paris as it was running along quietly, lifted itself off the ground suddenly, and flew three yards and seven inches. There are nine million seven hundred and eighty nine thousand nine hundred and seventy-nine bicycles that have not flown three yards and seven inches. But what of it? Why count them up? Why bother about them? The important, conclusive, massive, irresistible, crushing, material fact is that one bicycle has flown three yards seven inches. T

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INVENTION

INVENTION

If I were a Noah and wanted to get a fair selection of people in London to be saved to start a new world, I would go out and look over the crowd who are watching the flying machines at Hendon, and select from them. The Hendon crowd will not last forever. People who would be far less desirable to start worlds with would gradually work their way in, but it is only fair to say that these first few thousand men and women of all classes who responded to the flying machine would be possessed, as any o

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THE MAN WHO PULLS THE WORLD TOGETHER

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 orderin

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THE MAN WHO STANDS BY

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

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THE STRIKE OF THE SAVIOURS

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 employed 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 roo

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THE LEAGUE OF THE MEN WHO ARE NOT AFRAID

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 imagination 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

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GOOD NEWS AND HARD WORK

GOOD NEWS AND HARD WORK

TO ANYBODY A Child said, "What is grass?" fetching it to me with full hands. How could I answer the Child?...

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NEWS AND LABOUR

NEWS AND LABOUR

A big New England factory, not long ago, wanted to get nearer its raw material and moved to Georgia. All the machine considerations, better water-power, cheaper labour, smaller freight bills, and new markets had argued for moving to Georgia. Long rows of new mills were built and thousands of negroes were moved in and thousands of shanties were put up, and the men and the women stood between the wheels. And the wheels turned. There was not a thing that had not been thought of except the men and w

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NEWS AND MONEY

NEWS AND MONEY

I think it was Sir William Lever who remarked (but I have heard in the last two years so many pearls dropped from the lips of millionaires that I am not quite sure) that the way to tell a millionaire, when one saw one, was by his lack of ready money. He added that perhaps a surer way of knowing a millionaire, when one saw one, was by his lack of ideas. My own experience is that neither of these ways works as well as it used to. I very often meet a man now—a real live millionaire, no one would th

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OXFORD STREET AND THE HOUSE OF COMMONS

OXFORD STREET AND THE HOUSE OF COMMONS

Every now and then when I am in London (at the instigation of some business man who takes the time off to belong to it), I drop into a pleasant but other-worldly and absent-minded place called the House of Commons. I sit in the windows in the smoking-room and watch the faces of the members all about me and watch the steamships, strangely, softly, suddenly—Shakespeare and Pepys, outside on the river, slip gravely by under glass. Or I go in and sit down under the gallery, face to face with the Spe

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OXFORD STREET HUMS. THE HOUSE HEMS

OXFORD STREET HUMS. THE HOUSE HEMS

But it is not only because the members of the House of Commons are selected in a vague way or because they are a vague kind of men, that they fail to represent the people. The third reason against having a House of Commons try to compel business men to be good, by law, is its out-of-the-way position. The out-of-the-way position that a Parliament occupies in getting business men to be good, can be best considered, perhaps, by admitting at the outset that a government really is one very real and g

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PRESIDENT WILSON AND MOSES

PRESIDENT WILSON AND MOSES

We are deeply interested in the United States just now, in seeing what will be the fate of President Wilson's government in getting men to be good. The fate of a government in 1913 may be said to stand on the government's psychology or knowledge of human nature or of what might be called human engineering, its mastery of the principles of lifting over in great masses heavy spiritual bodies, like people, swinging great masses of people's minds over as on some huge national derrick up on The White

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THE PRESIDENT SAYS YES AND NO

THE PRESIDENT SAYS YES AND NO

It was not merely because the seventh commandment was negative, but because it was abstract that David found it so hard to keep. If the seventh commandment (like Uriah's wife) could have had deep blue eyes or could have been beautiful to look upon, and, on a particular day in a particular place, could have been bathing in a garden, David would have found keeping it a very different matter. The tendency to make a statue of purity as a lovely female figure carries us a little further in moral evol

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THE PRESIDENT SAYS "LOOK!"

THE PRESIDENT SAYS "LOOK!"

Our American President, if one merely reads what the Constitution says about him, is a rather weak-looking character. The founders of the country did not intend him to be anybody in particular—if it could be helped. They were discouraged about allowing governments to be efficient. Not very much that was constructive to do was handed over to him. And the most important power they thought it would do for him to have was the veto or power to say "No." Possibly if our fathers had believed in liberty

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THE PEOPLE SAY "WHO ARE YOU?"

THE PEOPLE SAY "WHO ARE YOU?"

If news is governing, how does the President do his governing? By being News, himself. By using his appointing power and putting other men who are News Themselves, news about American human nature—where all the people will see it. By telling the people directly (when he feels especially asked) news about what is happening in his mind—news about what he believes. By telling the people sometimes (as candidly as he can without giving the people's enemies a chance to stop him), what he is going to d

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THE PEOPLE SAY "WHO ARE WE?"

THE PEOPLE SAY "WHO ARE WE?"

But if the President governs first by being news himself, he governs second by his appointments, by gathering about him other men who are news to people, too. One need not divide people into good and bad, because the true line of division between good and bad instead of being between one man and another, is apt to be as a matter of fact and experience cut down through the middle of each of us. But for the purposes of public action and decision and getting good things done, this line does seem to

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NEWS ABOUT US TO THE PRESIDENT

NEWS ABOUT US TO THE PRESIDENT

A nation wakes up every morning and for one minute before it runs to its work it says to its President, "HERE WE ARE!" The best a President can do in the way of a plain, everyday acknowledgment of the presence of the people is News. The news that the people are demanding from the President to-day is intensely personal. It is a kind of rough, butting, good-natured familiarity a great people has with its President, a little heedless, relentless, like some splendid Child, ready to forgive and expec

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NEWS-MEN

NEWS-MEN

It seems very difficult to get news through as to who we really are to a President. When I look about me and see what the President's ways are of telling news about himself to us, I see that he is not without his advantages. But when I look about to see what conveniences we have as a people for telling our President news about us, I note some curious things. The fears of the American people, the fears and threats of labour and capital are organized and expressed, but their faiths, their wills, t

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AMERICAN TEMPERAMENT AND GOVERNMENT

AMERICAN TEMPERAMENT AND GOVERNMENT

I would like to say more specifically what I mean by an American or singing government. The thing that counts the most in a government is its temperament. A German government succeeds by having the German temperament. An American government must have the American temperament. If we are fortunate enough to have in America a government with an American temperament what would it be like? And how would it differ from the traditional or conventional temperament, governments are usually allowed to hav

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NEWS-BOOKS

NEWS-BOOKS

The most practical thing that could happen now in the economic world in America would be a sudden, a great national, contemporary literature. America, unlike England, has no recognized cultured class, and has no aristocracy, so called, with which to keep mere rich men suitably miserable—at least a little humble and wistful. Our greatest need for a long time has been some big serene, easy way, without half trying, of snubbing rich men in America. All these overgrown, naughty fellows one sees ever

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NEWS-BOOKS II

NEWS-BOOKS II

A nation's religion is its shrewdness about its ideals, its genius for stating its ideals or news about itself, in the terms of its everyday life. A nation's literature is its power of so stating its ideals that we will not need to be shrewd for them—its power of expressing its ideals in words, of tracing out ideals on white paper, so that ideals shall enthrall the people, so that ideals shall be contagious, shall breathe and be breathed into us, so that ideals shall be caught up in the voices o

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NEWS-PAPERS

NEWS-PAPERS

I went one day six months ago to the Mansion House and heard Lord Grey, and Lord Robert Cecil, and Mr. T.C. Taylor and others address the annual meeting of the Labour Copartnership Association. I found myself in the presence of a body of men who believe that Englishmen are capable of bigger and better things than many men believe they are capable of. They refuse to evade the issue of the coal strike and to agree with the socialists who have given up believing that English employers can be compet

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NEWS-MACHINES

NEWS-MACHINES

We want to be good and the one thing we need to do is to tell each other. Then we will be good. Our conveniences for being good in crowds are not finished yet. We have invented machines for crowds to see one another with and to use in getting about in the dark. One engine whirls round and round all night so that half a million people can be going about anywhere after sunset without running into each other. Crowds have vast machines for being somewhere else—run in somewhat the same way all from o

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NEWS-CROWDS

NEWS-CROWDS

I have tried to express in the last chapter, some kind of tentative working vision or hope of what authors and of what newspaper men can do in governing a country. This chapter is for anybody, any plain human being. Governments all over the world to-day are groping to find out what plain human beings are like. It does not matter very long what other things a government gets wrong, if it gets the people right. This suggests something that each of us can do. I was calling on ——, Treasurer of ——, i

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CROWD-MEN

CROWD-MEN

MARCH 4, 1913. As I write these words, I look out upon the great meadow. I see the poles and the wires in the sun, that long trail of poles and wires I am used to, stalking across the meadow. I know what they are doing. They are telling a thousand cities and villages about our new President, the one they are making this minute, down in Washington, for these United States. With his hand lifted up he has just taken his oath, has sworn before God and before his people to serve the destinies of a na

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