GERALD STANLEY LEE

Author of "Crowds" and "Inspired Millionaires"

"The White House is haunted by a vague helpless abstraction,—by a kind of ghost of the nation, called The People"

NEW YORK E. P. DUTTON & CO. 681 FIFTH AVENUE

Copyright, 1920 BY E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY

All Rights Reserved

First printing May, 1920

Printed in the United States of America

TO JENNETTE LEE

Transcriber's Note: Chapter XXII in Book II was printed without a title.

CONTENTS

BOOK I

WHAT THE PEOPLE EXPECT OF THE PEOPLE

Gist3

The Lonesomest Job on Earth4

The President and the Ghost6

Real Folks and the Ghost12

The Ghost Receives an Invitation16

What a Body for the Ghost Would be Like20

The Ghost gets Down to Business25

Three Rights of Man in a Democracy—The Right to Think27

The Right to be Waited On32

The Right to Whisper36

The Right to Whisper Together39

The Right to Trust Somebody41

The Right to Vote All Day46

The Skilled Consumer48

Sample Democracies51

The Town Pendulum54

The National Listening Machine58

How the National Listening Machine Will Work62

Making a Right Start64

Up to the People66

The Way for a Nation to Speak Up68

BOOK II

WHAT EACH MAN EXPECTS OF HIMSELF

G. S. L. to Himself75

If I Were a Nation78

What the Mahogany Desk is Going to Do81

Rules for Being Lied to85

Getting One Man Right87

Getting Fifty Men Right89

Engineers in Folks91

The Great New Profession92

Getting People to Notice Facts97

The Fool Killers100

The Whisperers102

Mr. Dooley, Judge Gary and Mr. Gompers103

Fooling Onseself in Politics108

Swearing Off from Oneself in Time112

Technique for not Being Fooled by Oneself117

The Autobiography of a Letter120

The Man Fifty Three Thousand Post Offices Failed On124

Causes of Being Fooled About Oneself126

Loco-Mindedness128

Flat-Thinking. Thinking in Me Flat131

Lost-Mindedness133

137

Self Discipline by Proxy139

Machine Mindedness142

New Brain Tracks in Business143

BOOK III

TECHNIQUE FOR A NATION'S GETTING ITS WAY

Big in Little147

Conscious Control of Brain Tracks149

What is Called Thinking151

Living Down Cellar in One's Own Mind156

Being Helped up the Cellar Stairs160

Reflections on the Stairs166

Helping Other People up the Cellar Stairs169

Helping a Nation up the Cellar Stairs173

Technique for Labor in Getting its Way175

Technique for Capital in Getting its Way179

Philandering and Alexandering183

The Factory that Lay Awake All Night185

Listening to Jim191

The New Company196

The Fifty-Cent Dollar198

The Business Man, the Professional Man and the Artist200

The News-Man203

W. J.205

The Look-Up Club Looks Up207

Propagandy People211

The Skilled Consumers of Publicity213

BOOK IV

THE TECHNIQUE OF A NATION'S GETTING ITS WAY

Fourth of July All the Year Round217

The Vision and the Body219

The Call of a Hundred Million People222

The Call of a World227

Missouri232

A Victory Loan Advertisement236

BOOK V

THE TECHNIQUE OF A NATION'S BEING BORN AGAIN

Reconstruction243

National Biology245

The Air Line League247

The Look-Up Club Looks Up250 (1) For Instance250 (2) Why The Look-Up Club Looks Up255

The Try-Out Club Tries Out257 (1) I + You = We257 (2) The Engineer at Work260 (3) The Engineer and the Game262 (4) The American Business Sport264

The Put-Through Clan Puts Through270 (1) What270 (2) How272 (3) Psycho-Analysis273 (4) Psycho-Analysis for a Town276 (5) To-Morrow280 (6) Who281 (7) The Town Fireplace286 (8) The Sign on the World288

BOOK VI

WHAT THE PEOPLE EXPECT OF THE PRESIDENT

The Big Brother of the People293

The Man Who Carries the Bunch of Keys for the Nation300

The President's Temperament302

The President's Religion306

The Red Flag and the White House309

INTRODUCTION

THE MOTION BEFORE THE HOUSE

This is a book a hundred million people would write if they had time.

I am nominating in this book—in the presence of the people, the next President of the United States.

The name is left blank.

I am nominating a man not a name.

I am presenting a program and a sketch of what the next President will be like, of what he will be like as a fellow human being, and I leave the details—his name, the color of his eyes and the party he belongs to, to be filled in by people later.

Here is his program, his faith in the people, his vision for the people and his vision for himself.

No one has ever nominated a President in a book before.

I do it because a book can be more quiet, more sensible and thoughtful, more direct and human, and closer to the hearts of the people, than a convention can.

A book can be more public too—can be attended by more people than a convention. Only a few thousand people can get into a convention. A hundred million can get into a book. All in the same two hours, by twenty million lamps thousands of miles apart, the people can crowd into a book.

So in this book, as I have said, I am merely acting as the secretary or employee of the hundred million people. I am writing a book a hundred million people would write if they could, expressing for them the kind of President for the next four years of our nation—the most colossal four years of the world, the people have ordered in their hearts.

We are weary of politicians' politicians. We want ours. Politicians may not be so bad but during the war they do not seem to us to have done as well as most people. In the dead-earnest of the war, with our Liberty Loan and Red Cross and Council of Defense, and our dollar a year men we have half taken over the government ourselves and we feel no longer awed by the regular political practitioners or government tinkerers. They are not all alike, of course, but we have turned our national glass on them and have come to see through them—at least the worst ones and many thousands of them—all these busy little worms of public diplomacy building their faint vague little coral islands of bluff and unbelief far far away from us, out in the great ocean of their nothingness all by themselves.

Unless the more common run of our typical politicians see through themselves before the conventions come, and see that the people see through them, and see it quick, their days are numbered.

Instead of patronizing us and whispering to one another behind their hands about us, their time has come now—in picking out the next President to begin gazing up to the countenance of the people, to begin listening to the people's prayer to God.

The people are a new people since the war. Out of the crash of empires, out of threats in every man's door-yard the people are praying to God.

And they are voting to God, too.

The sooner the two great political parties reckon with this, the sooner they push around behind themselves out of sight all the funny little would-be Presidents, and all the little shan't-be politicians running around like ants under the high heaven of the faith of a great people picking up tidbits they dare to believe—and put forward instead a live believing hot and cold human being, a man who will give up being President for what he believes, the sooner they will find themselves with a President on their hands that can be elected. Whichever party it is that does this, and does it first and does it best, will be the one that will be underwritten by the people.

The people of this country are to-day in a religious mood toward the great coming political conventions and the questions and the men that will come up in them. We are on the whole, in spite of the low estimate the majority of politicians have of us, straight-minded and free-hearted people, shrewd, masterful and devout, praying with one hand and keeping from being fooled with the other and we want our public men to have courage and vision for themselves and for us. We give notice that thousands of our most complacently puttering, most quibbly and fuddly politicians are going to be taken out by the people, lifted up by the people, and dropped kindly but firmly over the edge of the world. This nation is facing the most colossal, most serious and godlike moment any nation has ever faced, and it does not propose in the presence of forty nations, in the presence of its own conscience, its own grim appalling hope, to be trifled with.

So far as any one can see with the naked eye the quickest and surest way to get past the politicians, to remind the politicians of the real spirit of the people, to loom up the face of the people before their eyes and make them suddenly take the people more seriously than they take themselves, is with a book. In a book a President can be nominated by acclamation—by a kind of silent acclamation. In a book, without giving any name or pointing anybody out at least the soul of a President can be ordered by a people.

We will publish upon the housetops the hopes and the prayers and the wills of the people.

Then let the conventions feel the housetops looking down on them when they meet.

In a book published in a hundred newspapers one week, wedged into covers across a nation another, the people with one single national stroke can put what they want before the country—a hundred million people in a book can rise to make a motion.

We will not wait to be cornered by our politicians into a convention to which we cannot go. We will not wait to be told three months too late, to pick out—out of two men we did not want, the man we will have to take. The short-cut way for us as the people of this country to take the initiative with our politicians and to make the politicians toe our line, instead of toeing theirs, is for the people to blurt out the truth, write a book, get in early beforehand their quiet word with both great parties and tell them whatever his name is, whatever his party is, the kind of President they want.

So here it is, such as it is, the book, a little politically innocent-looking thing perhaps, just engaged in being like folks instead of like politicians, just engaged in being human—in letting a nation speak and act as a human being speaks and acts, in a great simple sublime human crisis in which with forty nations looking on, we are making democracy work—making a loophole for the fate of the world.

I am trying to answer three questions.

What shall the new President believe about the people and expect of the people?

What shall the new people—people made new by this war, expect of themselves and expect of their new President?

What kind of a President, with what kind of a personality or temperament do the people feel would be the best kind of a President to pull them together, to help the people do what the people have to do?

I have wanted to bring forward a way in which the things the new President will expect the people to do, can be done by the people.

What the people want done, especially with regard to the Red Flag, predatory capital, predatory labor, and the fifty-cent dollar cannot be done by the President for them, and they are not going to do it themselves lonesomely and individually by yearning, or by standing around three thousand miles apart or in any other way than by voluntarily agreeing to get together and do it together.