The Ghost in the White House Part 5

Skilled capital has a right to be waited on by skilled consumers, who will support it when it is right and punish it when it is wrong, by the way they buy and sell.

Skilled labor has a right to be waited on by skilled consumers, who will defend it from skilled capital that pretends to be skilled and is not.

True and sincere skilled capital and true and sincere skilled labor cannot keep on doing what they try to do as long as the supposedly skilled consumers they have a right to, back away from their job and lazily and foolishly buy and sell in the markets in such a way as to reward capital for doing wrong to labor, or labor for doing wrong to capital.

In other words, the second function of the skilled consumers after telling skilled capital and labor what they want to eat and wear, is to make arrangements to advertise to capital and labor and to have capital and labor advertise to them, so that they can be skilled in knowing how to help them work together, and skilled in buying in such a way as to help in making capital and labor more skilled instead of less in dealing with themselves and one another and with the people.

I have summed up the three Rights to Be Waited On. All of these rights turn on skilled advertising and on the science of being believed in, the science of being allowed to be autocrats, the science of being allowed by the people to make their democracy work.

I would like to ill.u.s.trate this in the next chapter.

X

III--THE RIGHT TO WHISPER

The employees in the stockyards in ---- have been trying to get the attention of Mr. John Doe, the young man who inherited the business, to the fact that the least a family can live on now is $1388 a year.

Mr. Doe, who has never tried being bitterly poor and whose attention can not be got to what can be done in a year for a wife and five children with $1388 until he tries it, is rather discouraging to deal with.

There is no known way of getting him to try it, and in the meantime he thinks he knows without trying, and he thinks his attention is got when it is not. He tells the workmen that two pairs of shoes ought to last a child a year--and goes home in his limousine.

That is the end of it.

It ought not to be the end of it.

Who can get Mr. Doe's attention?

Why is it that Mr. Doe's employees do not succeed in getting Mr. Doe's attention?

Why is it that Mr. Doe has so little difficulty in getting theirs? Why is it that Mr. Doe's employees, when he speaks of the two pairs of shoes a year, hang on his words?

Because Mr. John Doe is their employer.

Who are the people whose words Mr. Doe would hang on and would be obliged to hang on?

Mr. Doe's employers.

Who are Mr. Doe's employers?

All the people in America who eat meat.

Of course if one had just come from Mars yesterday and was looking about studying things, the first thing one would ask would be, Why do not the people in America who eat meat, and who keep on Mr. Doe in his position, at once mention to him that they wish him to look into the matter of the two pairs of shoes a year?

Because the People Who Eat Meat--Mr. Doe's employers--have no way of mentioning it to Mr. Doe.

If the People Who Eat Meat would but barely whisper to Mr. Doe it would get his attention as much as a whole year's shouting would from his workmen.

But the People Who Eat Meat in America have no whisper. In other words, it is because Mr. Doe's employers are absolutely dumb, and Mr. Doe is absolutely deaf to any one except his employers, that two pairs of shoes are not enough for the workmen's children.

It is for the purpose of letting the People Who Eat Meat in America--whisper and learn to whisper in this country that the new League organized to operate as a kind of People's Advertising Guild or Consumers' Advertising Club, with its national office in New York and its local branches in ten thousand towns and cities, now offers its services to all people who eat meat in America.

The employers of America have organized to do anything with their business, and anything with their workmen, and anything with the country that they like.

The workmen of America have organized to do now, and are deliberately planning to do anything with their work, and anything with their employers, and anything with the country that they like.

The new national League is now to be organized as the voice of the American people, as the whisper of the will of the consumer in every industry in America.

The people to get the attention of employers are the employers of the employers.

Every civil war we are having in this country can be settled and the attention of the fighters on both sides can be got, and the country can work as one man in making democracy safe for the world, the moment the employers of the employers whisper.

The way I would like to end this chapter--with the blanks filled in, of course, would be this.

Anybody who wants to be a part of this whisper, who knows of any industry he would like to see a whisper from the people tried in, or who wishes as an a.s.sociate Member to join the Air Line League--a League for the direct action of the people in what concerns them all, is invited to send five dollars as members.h.i.+p fee and his name and address, to ----, Treasurer National Office of The Air Line League, Number ---- Street, New York.

But the chapter cannot end in this way.

This is merely the pattern of the way I would like to have it end later, and while I have put the name--The Air Line League--down and am going to use it for the convenience of this book, I only do so, leaving it open to the people who have the vision of The League and who put the vision into action, to change the name if they want to.

XI

THE RIGHT TO WHISPER TOGETHER

Every man like all Gaul is divided into three parts. He is an employee of somebody, an employer of somebody, and a consumer.

The natural employer left to himself is apt to suppose, if he is making shoes, that his consumers ought to pay more for shoes, and that his employees ought to be paid less. As regards hats, and umbrellas, and overcoats, and underwear, the same man is a rather n.o.ble impartial person towards employers and employees. He wants them to listen to each other and lower the cost of living by not having strikes and lockouts, and by not fighting each other ten hours a day.

In 999 out of 1000 labor quarrels a consumer is naturally a fair-minded person and the best-located person to control and determine how any particular business shall be run.

The League proposed is planned to operate in its national and local functions as a national Consumers' Club, with working branches in every town which shall be engaged in doing specific things every day toward making the employers and employees in that town listen to each other in the interests of the consumer public.

It is always to the interests of the consumer-public to see to it that people who have particular interests in a business should be compelled to listen to the others' interests.

Consumers naturally prefer experts to run things for them, but if they do not run them for them, they are the natural people to make them do it.

In the last resort the right to control is with the consumers.

We are going to look to them very soon now as the natural Central Telephone Exchange in business. It is the consumers who connect everybody up. They are the switchboard of the World.