The skyscrapers are news about us to our President.  He shall reckon with skyscraper men.  He shall interpret men that belong with skyscrapers.

And as he does so, I shall watch the people answer him, now with a glad and mighty silence and now with a great solemn shout.

The skyscrapers are their skyscrapers.

The courage, the reaching-up, the steadfastness that is in them is in the hearts of the people.

If the President does not know us yet in America, does not know McAdoo as a representative American, we will thunder on the doors of the White House until he does.

My impression is he would be out in the yard by the gate asking us to come in.

We are America.  We are expressing our joy in the world, our faith in God, and our love of the sun and the wind in the hearts of our people.

In America the free air breathes about us, and daily the great sun climbs our hillsides, swings daily past our work.  There are ninety million men with this sun and this wind woven into their bodies, into their souls.  They stand with us.

The skyscrapers stand with us.

All singing stands with us.

Ah, I have waked in the dawn and in the sun and the wind have I seen them!

That sun and that wind, I say before God, are America!  They are the
American temperament.

I will have laws for free men, laws with the sun and the wind in them!

I have waked in the dawn and my heart has been glad with the iron and poetry in the skyscrapers.

I will have laws for men and for American men, laws with iron and poetry in them!

The way for a government to get the poetry in is to say “Yes” to somebody.

The way for a government to get the iron in is not by saying “No.”  It is not American in a government to keep saying “No.”  The best way for our government in America to say “No” to a man, is to let him stand by and watch us saying “Yes” to some one else.

Then he will ask why.

Then he will stand face to face with America.

CHAPTER XI

NEWS-BOOKS

The most practical thing that could happen now in the economic world in America would be a sudden, a great national, contemporary literature.

America, unlike England, has no recognized cultured class, and has no aristocracy, so called, with which to keep mere rich men suitably miserable—­at least a little humble and wistful.  Our greatest need for a long time has been some big serene, easy way, without half trying, of snubbing rich men in America.  All these overgrown, naughty fellows one sees everywhere like street boys on the corners or on the curbstones of society, calling society names and taking liberties with it, tripping people up; hoodlums with dollars, all these micks of money!—­O, that society had some big, calm, serene way like some