Crowds: A Moving-Picture of DemocracyLee, Gerald Stanley
Philosophy
Crowds: A Moving-Picture of Democracy
Lee, Gerald Stanley
Crowds; Social problems
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 coinage 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 the hewing
spirit both in him, who daily puts the inventing spirit and the hewing
spirit together in himself, can get it together 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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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