Crowds | Page 6

furniture to make a world with--even if it were not this real, big world, with rain and sunshine and wind and people in it, and were only that little, wonderful world a man lives within his own heart. There have been times, and there will be more of them, when I could not otherwise than speak as the champion of Bernard Shaw; but, after all, what single piece of furniture is there that George Bernard Shaw, living with his great attic of not-things all around him, is able to offer to furnish me for me single, little, warm, lighted room to keep my thoughts in? Nor has he furnished me with one thing with which I would care to sit down in my little room and think--looking into the cold, perfect hygienic ashes he has left upon my hearth. Even if I were a revolutionist, and not a mere, plain human being, loving life and wanting to live more abundantly, I am bound to say I do not see what there is in Mr. Galsworthy's photographs, or in Mr. Wells's rich, bottomless murk of humanity to make a revolution for. And Mr. Bernard Shaw, with all his bottles of disinfectants and shelves of sterilized truths, his hard well-being and his glittering comforts, has presented the vision of a world in which at the very best--even if it all comes out as he says it will--a man would merely have things without wanting them, and without wanting anything.
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And so it has seemed to me that even if he is quite unimportant, any man to-day who, in some public place, like a book, shall paint the picture of his heart's desire, who shall throw up, as upon a screen, where all men may see them, his most immediate and most pressing ideals, would perform an important service. If a man's sole interest were to find out what all men in the world want, the best way to do it would be for him to say quite definitely, so that we could all compare notes, what he wanted himself. Speaking for a planet has gone by, but possibly, if a few of us but speak for ourselves, the planet will talk back, and we shall find out at last what it really is that it wants.
The thing that many of us want most in the present grayness and din of the world is some one to play with, or if the word "play" is not quite the right word, some one with whom we can work with freedom and self-expressiveness and joy. Nine men out of ten one meets to-day talk with one as it were with their watches in their hands. The people who are rich one sees everywhere, being run away with by their motor-cars; and the people who are poor one sees struggling pitifully and for their very souls, under great wheels and beneath machines.
Of course, I can only speak for myself. I do not deny that a little while at a time I can sit by a brook in the woods and be happy; but if, as it happens, I would rather have other people about me--people who do not spoil things, I find that the machines about me everywhere have made most people very strange and pathetic in the woods. They cannot sit by brooks, many of them; and when they come out to the sky, it looks to them like some mere, big, blue lead roof up over their lives. Perhaps I am selfish about it, but I cannot bear to see people looking at the sky in this way....
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So, as I have watched my fellow human beings, what I have come to want most of all in this world is the inspired employer--or what I have called the inspired millionaire or organizer; the man who can take the machines off the backs of the people and take the machines out of their wits, and make the machines free their bodies and serve their souls.
If we ever have the inspired employer, he will have to be made by the social imagination of the people, by creating the spirit of expectation and challenge toward the rich among the masses of the people.
I believe that the time has come when the world is to make its last stand for idealism, great men, and crowds.
I believe that great men can be really great, that they can represent crowds. I believe that crowds can be really great, that they can know great men.
The most natural kind of great man for crowds to know first will probably be a kind of everyday great man or business statesman, the man who represents all classes, and who proves it in the way he conducts his business.
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