But in a mine, two men work all alone down in the dark hole in the ground.  Thousands of other men, all in dark holes, are near by, with nothing but the dull sound of picks to come between.  In thousands of other holes men work, each with his helper, all alone.  The utmost the helper can do is to grow like the man he works with, or like his own pick, or like the coal he chips out, or like the black hole.  The utmost the man who mines coal can do, in the way of being human, is with his helper.

In a factory, for the most part, the only way, during working hours, an employer can express himself and his humanness to his workman is through the steel machine he works with—­through its being a new, good, fair machine or a poor one.  He can only smile and frown at him with steel, be good to him in wheels and levers, or now and then perhaps through a foreman pacing down the aisles.

The question the modern business man in a factory has to face is very largely this:  “I have acres of machines all roaring my will at my men.  I have leather belts, printed rules, white steam, pistons, roar, air, water and fire and silence to express myself to my workmen in.  I have long monotonous swings and sweeps of cold steel, buckets of melted iron, strips of wood, bells, whistles, clocks—­to express myself, to express my human spirit to my men.  Is there, or is there not, any possible way in which my factory with its machines can be made as human and as expressive of the human as a department store?”

This is the question that our machine civilization has set itself to answer.

All the men with good honest working imaginations, the geniuses and the freemen of the world, are setting themselves the task of answering it.

Some say, “Machines are on the necks of the men.  We will take the machines away.”

Others say, “We will make our men as good as our machines.  We will make our inventions in men catch up with our inventions in machines.”

We naturally turn to the employer first as having the first chance.  What is there an employer can do to draw out the latent force in the men, evoke the divine, incalculable passion sleeping beneath in the machine-walled minds, the padlocked wills, the dull unmined desires of men?  How can he touch and wake the solar plexus of labour?

If any employer desires to get into the inner substance of the most common type of workman, be an artist with him, express himself with him and change the nature of that substance, give it a different colour or light or movement so that he will work three times as fast, ten times as cheerfully and healthfully, and with his whole body and soul, spirit, and how is he going to do it?

Most employers wish they could do this.  If they could persuade their men to believe in them, to begin to be willing to work with them instead of against them, they would do it.

What form of language is there, whether of words or of actions, that an employer can use to make the men who work nine hours a day for him and to whom he has to express himself across acres of machines, believe in him and understand him?