man could be found who had the courage to stand up
at a banquet and talk about so simple a matter. It
is refreshing because it shows a willingness to climb
down from the pedestal and look at the machinery of
business as it actually works.
We are all going back to work even the men in
the front office. Business has made a discovery, it has
rediscovered work. The magic of money has been ex-
ploded and the invincible power of work is again be-
coming appreciated.
Business men have believed for too long a period
that you could do anything by "financing" it. The
most frequent item of business news that has marked
the past five years has related to hundreds upon hun-
dreds of concerns that have been "refinanced." The
process of ''refinancing" is simply the game of sending
good money after bad. In the majority of cases the
need of "refinancing"' has arisen through bad manage-
ment, and the effect of "refinancing" is simply to pay
the poor managers to keep up their bad management
a little longer. It is merely the postponement of the
day of judgment which is overtaking, and must over-
take, all concerns that have not played fair with the
law of Use and Service.
This makeshift of "refinancing" is. of course, a
device of the speculative financiers. Their money is
no good to them unless they can connect it up with
a place where real work is being done, and they cannot
connect it up with a place where real work is being
FORD IDEALS
done unless, somehow, that place is poorly managed.
Thus, the speculative financiers delude themselves that
they are putting their money out to "use." They are
not; they are putting it out to waste, and the end of
the transaction is usually a sad experience.
That, indeed, is one of the elements in the present
condition of affairs which has troubled the country,
but from which there is now a promise that we shall
emerge.
Take the railroads, for example. Theirs has been
one long story of dependence on money before every-
thing else. True, the railroads are a great national
institution. True also, there have been men of vision
connected with their development. But the major part
of railroad history has had to do with stock markets
and games of exploitation.
Today far too many railroads are run, not. from the
offices of practical men. but from banking offices, and
the principles of procedure, the whole outlook, is finan-
cial not transportational, but financial.
There has been a breakdown of railroading gener-
ally, in this the greatest railroad country in the world,
simply because more attention has been paid to rail-
roads as factors in the stock market than as servants
of the people. Outworn ideas have been retained, de-
velopment has been practically stopped, railroad men
with vision have not been free to grow the dead hand
of finance has been heavy on every department.
As a result what? "Why. it is thought that per-
haps One Billion Dollars, or thereabout, will solve the
difficulty. Let this be understood One Billion Dol-
lars will only make the difficulty One Billion Dollars
worse. The purpose of the billion is simply to con-
tinue the present methods of railroad management,
and it is because of the present methods that we have
any railroad difficulties, at all.
This is not new. Every business man who thinks,
knows it. But it is bard to get out of the ruts.
Going back to dependence on Work and not on
Money will make a big difference everywhere, and one
of the effects will be the displacement of titles by real
jobs. Titles arc too often the dress uniform that should
be laid aside for field uniform.
MUCH NONSENSE IN TITLES
A foreign observer, in a recent book, has written
that in America we are very strong on titles. Every-
body seems to be a president of something. There is
a story of a President of the United States sojourning
in the country and calling up the village post office
on the phone. "This is the President," said he. "Pres-
ident of what?" inquired the boy at the other end.
In his village there were plenty of presidents, from the
town government to the ladies' aid society.
Most men can swing a job, but they are floored by
a title. The effect of a title is very peculiar. It has
been used too much as a sign of emancipation from
work. It. is almost equivalent to a sign "This man
has nothing to do but regard himself as important
and all others as inferior." Not only has it been in-
jurious to the wearers, but it has had its effect on
others as well. There is perhaps, no greater single
source of personal dissatisfaction among men than the
fact, that the title-bearers are not always the real lead-
ers. Everybody acknowledges a real leader, a man
who is fit to plan and command ; but there are moun-
tains of evidence everywhere that the real leaders are
not always the titlebearers. And when you do find a
real leader who bears a title, you will have to inquire
of some one else what his title is. lie doesn't boast it.
It has been greatly overdone and business has suf-
fered from it. One of its specially bad effects is such
a division of responsibility as amounts to a removal
of responsibility altogether. \\ here responsibility is
broken up into many small bits and divided between
many departments, each department under its own
titular head, who in turn is surrounded by a group
bearing their nice sub-titles, it will be difficult to lind
anyone who really feels responsible.
Evervone knows what "passing the buck" means,
and the game mu>t have originated in industrial or-
ganixations where the departments simply shove re-
sponsibility along.
The health of every organization depends on every
member of it, whatever his place, feeling that every-
thing that happens to come to his notice relating to
the welfare of the business, is up to him.
FORD IDEALS
have gone to the devil under the eyes of departments
that say, "Oh, that doesn't come under our depart-
ment" some other department 100 miles away has
that in charge, and the interests of the road go to rot
and ruin while each department tries to keep within
its own narrow limits.
There was formerly a lot of advice given to offi-
cials not to hide behind their titles. The very neces-
sity of the advice showed a condition that needed more
than advice to correct it. And the correction is just
this abolish the titles. A few may be legally neces-
sary ; a few may be useful in directing the public
where to do certain kinds of business with the concern,
but for the rest the best rule is to get rid of them.
As a matter of fact, the record of business just
now is such as to detract very much from the value
of titles. No one would boast of being president of
a bankrupt bank. Well, business has not been so skill-
fully steered as to leave much margin for pride in
the steersmen. The right to bear titles is to be won
all over again ; the field is open ; past honors are with-
ered ; the contest is on anew.
The men who bear titles now and are worth any-
thing are forgetting their titles and are down in the
foundations of their business looking for the weak
spots. They are back again in the places from which
they rose trying to reconstruct from the bottom up.
They are leaders in the reconstruction. And when a
man is in that work, he doesn't need titles. His work
decks him with honors.
Developing Talent in a Small
Community
WHEN the passing of city life is discussed, and
the rediscovery of the small town is affirmed, one
of the commonest questions to arise is this: "What
are your small towns going to do for the advantages
of the city the theater and entertainments, for ex-
ample?" That is the form in which the question usu-
ally comes, with an anxiety about the "theater and
entertainments."
The question assumes two conditions : First, that
a majority of city people attend the theater and other
entertainments to such an extent that these institu-
tions have become a necessary element in their lives;
and, second, that the theater and entertainments nor-
mally fulfill the human desire and need for recreation.
Neither of these assumptions is true.
It may be found to be just a question whether the
theater is as popular in point of attendance compared
with the population as it was .">() years ago. The
totals are larger, but it may be doubtful that, the pro-
portions are. We are not half so theater-mad as some
people suppose. The proportion of regular attendants,
people who haunt the theater, who are always looking
over the list of shows for "a place to go tonight," is
not very great. In a certain city where it was as-
sumed that the theater was carrying everything before
it and that church attendance was a contemptible little
quantity in comparison, it was found that the church
with one day a week excelled in drawing power all
the legitimate theaters of that city with seven nights
a week and two matinees. Leaving the modern theater
would not be such a terrible loss, as tens of thousands
who have moved to the small town can testify.
And as to the "entertainment" values of the mod-
ern commercialized amusement enterprise, the bored
audiences of any large city bear eloquently silent wit-
445
FORD IDEALS
ness. The fresh, blithe wholesomeness which repro-
duces the childishness of human life is lacking. Real
entertainment is lacking and would be undoubtedly
considered as amateurish, so depraved has the public
taste become through bedroom farces and bathroom
dramas. Those who are inoculated with the sordid
sensuousness of the stage would undoubtedly miss that
kind of thing in the small town, just as the drug addict,
locked in a sanitarium, would miss his favorite poison.
However, that still leaves the question where it
was : what are the small towns to do for recreation,
for the indulgence of the play spirit? The play spirit
is a part of life. Its misdirection leads to harm. In
youth especially it is a safeguard, in maturity and
age a recreative force. Temperaments differ, but taken
by and large the human race will play.
There are, however, no profits in mere playing.
That is the reason amusements became commercialized.
Instead of play, there arose the spectacle. People
ceased to play, and watched players. Football is a
husky game, but of the thousands of ''fans" who shout
for football, how many take the risks of it? The same
is true of baseball ; it is called "sport" to sit on the
bleachers and boo or boost. We are mere spectators ;
other men do the so-called "playing," and because we
are merely spectators their playing is not Play at all,
but work. There is no community of entertainment
and enjoyment, there is no participation.
In the small town of the future there will be a
Little Theater, and the play instinct of the people
will work itself out through themselves, not by wage
earners called "actors" or "players." There will be
many actors and players, of course, but they will not
be under the commercial domination which every sin-
cerely devoted actor and player feels today. The great
geniuses in the dramatic world will still have their
vogue or, to state it more accurately, their vogue will
return, because in these sad days dramatic genius is
not necessary. The art of play will be like the art
of music, imported into the community for daily con-
sumption, and not retained in the concert hall as dra-
matic art is retained in the modern theater. The thea-
446
DEVELOPING TALENT IN A SMALL COMMUNITY
ter as a servant of life is being tided over these de-
structive times by the Little Theater which is spring-
ing up in small communities, where the people are
developing themselves.
The commercial monopoly of this natural phase of
life is being broken. And why not? If, when a writer
completes a story, we may all have a copy of it to read
in our own homes ; why may we not also have the
play of the playwright, interpreted in our own com-
munity by our own people in our own way? The
question has been answered. The flow of people back
to the country places is bringing with it these new pos-
sibilities. And the benefit is double : the country is
being lifted out of the crude and inexpressive practices
into which its play exercise degenerated for the lack
of inspiration and the people from the city, are being
benefited by the wholesome restraint which comes from
amusements which have their rise and issue in the
same community.
That is a point well worth remembering: when the
community shall provide its own recreation and enter-
tainment out of its own resources and by means of
its own people, indecency will simply automatically
disappear. Why? Well, consider what constitutes the
present situation : a theater audience gathers, a few
hundreds from a city of half a million or a million
people, an audience of strangers. The shield of ano-
nymity protects them all. Young women are there,
but they reflect that no one knows them. The people
on the stage are from another city, strangers, too. The
condition is ideal for putting across anything which
common shame would otherwise prevent.
Now, in the home town, with the home folks in
the chairs and home folks on the stage, it would simply
be impossible there is not enough brazenness in hu-
man nature to permit home folks to enact bedroom
farces before home folks, or to revel on the stage in
matter that would not be permitted within a thousand
miles of any home-town parlor.
That will be one of the effects of a return to the
small town, and a necessity of drawing upon the com-
munity's creative powers to supply the normal need
for entertainment.
,
FORD IDEALS
Of course, the principle extends further. Refer-
ence has been made to amusements only because it
was involved in the question which has been asked.
But the principle applies to every element of com-
munity life. City living has made us entirely too de-
pendent. City dwellers will soon lose the art of build-
ing fires. Most of the other domestic arts are "lost
arts" already. And the art of providing entertainment
or amusement for ourselves was about to disappear.
The ideal community is self-sustaining to a greater
extent than any community now is. If near flowing
water, every community should be self-sustaining in
matters of power, heating and lighting. Every com-
munity in the midst of an agricultural district should
be self-sustaining in the matter of food. The grain
grown near by should be milled near by, a sufficient
supply reserved and the surplus sent to the great cen-
ters of consumption. Each community should be con-
structed out of materials near at hand, and thus pre-
serve unity with its basic soil. And each community
should derive from the wellsprings of its own life those
finer inspirations and recreative activities which put a
bloom and a flavor upon life. It is all contained in
that principle known as "self-development." The re-
ward of self-development should be self-sustenance,
with the community as well as with the individual.
448
Parties Are Born, Not Made
POLITICAL parties are like poets, born, not made.
And yet political parties have been found to be
so useful to certain purposes and interests that numer-
ous attempts have been made to manufacture them for
occasion. A political party is a publicity organization,
a semi-legislative organization, often a coercive organ-
ization which can render more service to special inter-
ests than it can sometimes render to the public.
The people, of course, who are living mostly in the
nursery atmosphere with regard to these things, imag-
ine that a political party is a fellowship of conviction
upon certain principles. That is what it ought to be ;
and it is the belief that the political party is just that,
which keeps it going. But the party is other than
that. It would take almost psychic eyes to see just
what the so-called political organizations consist in,
what holds them together, where their ramifications
run, and what type of mind it is that finds congenial
the atmosphere of the "organization.'' Perhaps it is
the least moral organization in the world, outside the
realm of those which are distinctively subversive.
And yet, such is the irony of things, this lower
network of organization forms the basis for much
good work. All men who are interested in politics
are not on the inside of the "organization/' not at all.
The real motive power of politics, so far as the motion
of the people's mind is concerned, is in the "idea,"
the "issue," the genuine proposals of government policy
and legislative action. But these seldom have their
source in the "organization." They are imported from
the people. All that the "organization,'' or the "party"
does (the "party" not being the whole number of ad-
herents, but the hierarchy of leaders) is to sort out
the possible issues and select the group which they
think will "sell" at the election. Any otlu-r set of
issues even quite opposite issues would do just as
FORD IDEALS
well if they would "sell." The main object is to keep
the "organization" in offices. The party never gets the
offices ; only the "organization'' does that. As a whole,
our offices are manned by the prettiest lot of political
gamesters that any country ever saw.
So, there we have the genesis of two evils. One
evil is the existence of a party which has neither po-
litical nor moral principle, but which lives for the thing
called "power," using as its steps to power such "issues"
as appeal to popular approval ; the other evil is the view
of certain apostles of moral or political principles that
a political organization can be whisked into existence
by publicity agent methods, to serve the purpose of a
certain candidate or a certain principle for a single
election only. So, on the one hand we have the pol-
iticians whose object, is office, poking around aYaong
possible "issues," ignoring the ones which would re-
quire moral courage to espouse, and choosing the ones
that seem ready to ripen in a campaign ; and on the
other hand, we have the possessors of progressive
ideas looking for a party to "put them across."
It is a situation which speaks indisputably of the
sorry collapse which has overtaken political effort in
this country.
The "third party" demonstrations have been a sign
of the same condition. The only third parties that ever
had a reasonable and sincere motive and purpose were
never permitted to attain party maturity, because the
older parties took their issues and rode to power upon
them. An illustration of this may be seen in the adop-
tion of the Prohibition Party's most distinctive plank
by both the older parties.
Lately our "third parties" have been launched either
for the purpose of putting a candidate across (which
must be the final judgment on Mr. Roosevelt's effort)
or for the purpose of cementing the radical elements
of political disorder and giving them the respectable
appearance of political organization. Both were vivid
commentaries on the truth that political parties are
born, not made. \Yhen the genuine Third Party comes,
it will not be a Third Party at all. but the First Party,
relegating both old parties to secondary status. It
450
PARTIES ARE BORX, NOT MADE
will be a national party, summoning New Era Men
from all the old parties, and from no party at all, to
do the work which others have neglected.
We do not need a "third party" in the United
States, we need a party that is first for Americanism,
by which we mean the principle that the fulfillment
of life consists in the largest liberation of the creative
and constructive forces in nature and in humanity for
the service and prosperity of all. Americanism is com-
munistic only in that it stands for a community benefit,
instead of an exclusive personal benefit, proceeding
from all industrial, financial and political activity. The
Old Era was individualistic in its objective. The New
Era will remain necessarily individualistic in its meth-
od, but will enwrap the whole community in its ob-
jective. Communism fails just because it. is not com-
munism, because it is individualism of a type that de-
feats the benefits of individuals, and so cheats also the
community of its benefits. We are individuals in action
and communists in responsibility.
The division between modern parties is not political,
nor philosophical, nor moral any longer, but purely
sentimental. All of the old subjects of division are
now subjects of scientific examination and adjustment.
Locally, politics has come to be a preference of indi-
viduals for office: one group wishes to place this man,
another wishes to place the other man. A sufficient
number of experienced electioneers finds tin's kind of
politics a sport, to give it zest. But, as for the pro-
found political convictions which marked the birth and
the vigorous years of the Democratic and Republican
parties, they simplv don't exist.
The two great parties are being used that is, the
"organization" of them is being used more and more
as bulwarks against the changes which must inevitably
overtake the stupidities and injustices which have be-
come fastened in our national life. Every old slogan
which warns the people against progress as something
dangerous finds its heartv echo in the political "organ-
ization." The ''organization" knows nothing about ti-
nance. administration, international relations literally
nothing about anything that affects the heart of our
451
FORD IDEALS
national life but it is always ready with the cries
which sustain the old order of things.
That is where the two old parties are in the great-
est danger: they have anchored to an era that is even
now growing dim in the distance : unless they cut the
cable, they will disappear with it.
And it is just here that we mark the fatal distinc-
ticr between party and people. The people do not
comprise the party. Parties are merely bidders for
the people's suffrage. When parties disappear the peo-
ple remain. This is the logic of third parties. The
old parties simply die off the limb like leaves that have
ceased to nourish themselves with the life of the tree
that bore them. The people grow and keep growing.
If parties lag behind, as parties now are lagging be-
hind, a new party is inevitable not to put a chosen
candidate across, not to stampede the people for a new
"interest." but as an expression of the life of the peo-
ple. Parties are the people's political clothing; when
the coat grows too small it is discarded.
452
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