The Ghost in the White House: Some suggestions as to how a hundred million people (who are supposed in a vague, helpless way to haunt the white house) can make themselves felt with a president, how they can back him up, express themselves to him, be expressed by him, and get what they want
John Stuart Mill · en
Nearly all men admit--or at least they like to say when they are properly
approached, or when they make the approach themselves, that they make
mistakes and that they are poor miserable sinners. Everybody is. They
rather revel in it, some of them, in being in a nice safe way, miserable
sinners. The trouble comes in ever going into the particulars with them,
in finding any particular time and place one can edge in in which they
are not perfect.
This fact which seems to be true of employers and employees, of capital
and labor in general, brings out and illustrates another general
principle in making the necessary excavations in one's own mind and other
people's for new brain tracks--another working principle of technique for
a man or a group in a nation to use in getting and deserving to get its
way.
There are various Alexandering stages in the technique of not being
fooled by oneself.
Self-criticism.
Asking others to help--one's nearest Alexander.
Self-confession to oneself.
Self-discipline.
Asking others to help.
The way to keep from philandering with one's own self-love or with one's
own group or party--is to look over the entire field--the way one would
on other subjects than being fooled by one's own side, strip down to the
bare facts about oneself and facts about others for one's vision of
action and fit them together and act.
In getting one's way quickly, thoroughly, personally--_i.e._, so that
other people will feel one deserves it and will practically hand it over
to one, and want one to have it, the best technique seems to be not only
to utilize self-criticism or self-confession, as a part of getting one's
way, but self-confession screwed up a little tighter--screwed up into
self-confession to others.
I need not say that I am not throwing this idea out right and left to
employers with any hopeful notion that it will be generally acted on
offhand.
It is merely thrown out for employers who want to get their way with
their employees--get team work and increased production out of their
employees before their rivals do.
It is only for employers who want their own way a great deal--men who are
in the habit of feeling masterful and self-masterful in getting their own
way--who are shrewd enough, sincere enough to take a short-cut to it, and
get it quick.
XII
THE FACTORY THAT LAY AWAKE ALL NIGHT
There is a man at the head of a factory not a thousand miles away, I wish
thirty thousand banks and a hundred million people knew, as I know
him--and as God and his workmen know him.