Crowds: A Moving-Picture of DemocracyLee, Gerald Stanley
Philosophy
Crowds: A Moving-Picture of Democracy
Lee, Gerald Stanley
Crowds; Social problems
Of course Pierpont Morgan and Tom Mann are both very useful as crowd
spy-glasses for us all to see what we want through.
But is this what we want?
Is it worth while to us, to the crowd, to all classes of us, to have our
world turned upside down so that we can be bullied on it by one set of
men instead of being bullied on it by another?
This is the thing that the Crowd, as it takes up one hero after the
other, and looks at the world through him, is seeing next.
Some of us have seen sooner than the others. But we are nearly all of us
seeing to-day. We have stood by now these many years through strikes and
rumours of strikes, and we have watched the railway hold-ups, the
Lawrence Mill strike, and the great English coal strike. We have seen,
in a kind of dumb, hopeful astonishment, everybody about us piling into
the fray, some fighting for the rights of labour and some for the rights
of capital, and we have kept wondering if possibly a little something
could not be done before long, possibly next year, in behalf of the
huge, battered, helpless Public, that dear amorphous old ladylike Person
doddering along the Main Street of the World, now being knocked down by
one side and now by the other. It has almost looked, some days, as if
both sides in the quarrel--Capital and Labour, really thought that the
Public ought not to expect to be allowed to be out in the streets at
all. Both sides in the contest are so sure they are right, and feel so
noble and Christian, that we know they will take care of themselves; but
the poor old Lady!--some of us wonder, in the turmoil of Civilization
and the scuffle of Christianity, what is to become of Her.
Is it not about time that somebody appeared very soon now who will make
a stand once and for all in behalf of this Dear Old Lady-Like Person?
Is it really true that no one has noticed Her and is really going to
stand up for Her--for the old gentle-hearted Planet as a Whole?
We have our Tom Mann for the workers, and we have the Daily
Newspaper--the Tom Mann of Capital, but where is our Tom Mann for
Everybody? Where is the man who shall come boldly out to Her, into the
great crowded highway, where the bullies of wealth have tripped up her
feet, and the bullies of poverty have thrown mud in her face, where all
the little mean herds or classes one after the other hold Her up--the
scorners, and haters, and cowards, and fearers for themselves, fighting
as cowards always have to fight, in herds ... where is the man who is
going to climb up alone before the bullies of wealth and the bullies of
poverty, take his stand against them all--against both sides, and dare
them to touch the dear helpless old Lady again?
When this man arises--this Tom Mann for Everybody--whether he slips up
into immortality out of the crowd at his feet, and stands up against
them in overalls or in a silk hat, he will take his stand in history as
a man beside whom Napoleon and Alexander the Great will look as toys in
the childhood of the world.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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