Another sign that defence mechanisms are forming in the business mind is flight into generalizations and abstractions. I have spoken already of the element of insincerity in the perennial claim that public benefits flow from any and every scheme out of which I secure private gain. But this is more than mere tactics; it is more than an economic theory now outworn; it is also a flight into generalizations and abstractions. It has become so much a habit that it has secreted from itself a sense of sincerity. The business of coal-mining is ceasing to be to the owners the particular facts of this mine and these miners; it is something larger, more general and public. I do not think we can otherwise explain the tolerance of mine-owners towards the facts revealed to a Senate committee that recently investigated the human conditions at mines in Western Pennsylvania. It is true that the stock-and-bond method of capitalizing an enterprise makes it difficult for the absentee owners, whether of a mine, a factory, or a power plant, to know what is going on. But it is not merely the absentees who escape the force of facts; managers who are close to the works do it too. In short, there is more or less shrinking on the part of business men from the literal actualities of business and industry; the motives thereof are not at peace among themselves, and the manhood of these men has not yet found the way of adequate self-expression. What the business man “really wants” he has still largely to find out. XVI MOTIVES OF THE WORKINGMAN If you want to know the inside of the worker’s mind, do not ask him any generalized questions about it, for, like the capitalist, the employe has his attention fixed upon the mechanisms of industry and upon the particular things that, at the moment, he thinks will better his condition. A generalized answer from him may throw no more light upon his complex springs of action than “love of money” throws upon the conduct of captains of industry. Do not ask his employer, either, what the worker really desires, for the employer will apply to others some over-simple explanation that parallels the one that he applies to himself. Our best sources of general information are men and women who have lived and labored side by side with the workers in an endeavor to understand and help them--persons like Carleton Parker, Helen Marot, and Whiting Williams.[5] The return from such studies is not simple. You cannot compress the soul of the workingman or of anybody else into a simple formula, nor can you explain him by naming the social or economic class to which he belongs. The pigeonholing of men, by the way, is one of the major immoralities!