Crowds eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 612 pages of information about Crowds.

Crowds eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 612 pages of information about Crowds.

We live in a world in which inventors want to die if they cannot invent and in which Hewers want to die if they cannot hew.

I am not proud.  I am willing to be saved.  Any saviour may save me if he wants to, if his saving me is a part of his saving himself.

If the inventor saves me and saves us all because he wants to be in a world where an inventor can invent, wants some one to invent to; if the artist saves me because it is part of his worship of God to have me saved and wants to use me every day to rejoice about the world with—­if the Hewer comes over and hews out a place in the world for me because he wants to hew, I am willing.

All that I demand is, that if a man take the liberty of being a saviour to me that he refrain from stooping, that he come up to me and save me like a man, that he stand before me and tell me that here is something that we, he and I, shoulder to shoulder, can do, something that neither of us could do alone.  Then he will fall to with me and I will fall to with him, and we will do it.

This is what I mean by a saviour.

CHAPTER XX

THE STRIKE OF THE SAVIOURS

A factory in ——­ some ten years ago employed one hundred men.  Three of these men were in the office and ninety-seven were hands in the works.  To-day this same factory which is doing a very much larger business is still employing one hundred men, but thirty of the men are employed in the office and seventy in the works.

Ten years, ago to put it in other words, the factory provided places for one artist or manager and two inventors and places for ninety-seven Hewers.

To-day the factory has made room for thirty inventors, one manager and twenty-nine men who spend their entire time in thinking of things that will help the Hewers hew.

It has seventy Hewers who are helping the Inventors invent by hewing three times as hard and three times as skilfully or three times as much as without the Inventors to help them, they had dreamed they could hew before.

The Artist or Organizer who made this change in the factory found that among the ninety-seven Hewers that were employed a number of Hewers were hewing very poorly, because though hewing was the best they could do, they could not even hew.  He found certain others who were hewing poorly because they were not Hewers, but Inventors.  These he set to work—­some of them inventing in the office.

On closer examination the two Inventors in the office were found to be not Inventors at all.  One of them was a fine Hewer who liked to hew and who hated inventing and the other was merely a rich Hewer who was an owner in the business who saw suddenly that he would have to stop inventing and stop very soon if he wanted the business to make any more money.

There are four things that the Artist has to do with a factory like this before he can make it efficient.

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Project Gutenberg
Crowds from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.