Crowds: A Moving-Picture of DemocracyLee, Gerald Stanley
Philosophy
Crowds: A Moving-Picture of Democracy
Lee, Gerald Stanley
Crowds; Social problems
They tell us how they earn their money. Their hopes, their sorrow, their
fears and curses, their convictions, their very religions are the
silent, irrevocable, heavenly minded, diabolical by-products of what
their Employers think they can afford to let them know enough to think.
"Fight for yourselves. Your masters hate you. They would shoot
you down like rabbits, but they need your labour for their
huge profits. Don't go in till you get your minimum. No Royal
Commission, no promise in the future. Leaders only want your
votes; they will sell you. They lie. Parliament lies, and will
not help you, but is trying to sell you. Don't touch a tool
till you get your minimum. Win, win, win! It is up to all
workers to support the miners."
If a man happens to be an employer, and happens to know that he is not
this sort of man, and finds that he cannot successfully carry on his
business unless he can make five hundred men in his factory believe it,
what can he do? How can he touch their imaginations? What language is
there, either of words or of action, that will lead them to see that he
is a really a fair-minded, competent employer, a representative of the
interests of all, a fellow-citizen, a Crowdman, and that his men can
afford to believe in him and cooeperate with them?
If they think he would shoot them down like rabbits, it is because they
have not the remotest idea what he is really like. They have not noticed
him. They have no imagination about him, have not put themselves in his
place. How can he get their attention?
CHAPTER XI
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
course he kept trying very hard, as any really nice boy would, to get
out; but she would not let him, and he wandered about dolefully, looking
at his feet and at the floor, or at the guards, and doing the best he
could. Finally she came over to him; there was a Murillo he must see--it
was the opportunity of his life; she brought him over to it, and stood
him up in front of it, and he would not look; she took his small brown
head in her hands and steered it to the great masterpiece and held it
there--on that poor, silent, helpless Murillo--until....
I observed that she could steer his head; but I could not help thinking
how much more she would have done if she had known how to steer it
inside.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account