Mark the idioms in Shakespeare.  He spoke the words and uttered the thoughts of hostlers as well as of kings.  Observe the common language in the Bible.  It is curious to note the number of the pithy expressions daily appearing among us which are repetitions of what the people were saying in the time of Isaiah.

All who love Robert Burns have their affection for him rooted in the human quality of him; and Burns’s oneness with the rest of us is revealed by the earthiness of his words.  They smell of home.  They have the fragrance of trees and soil.  We know that they were not coined by Burns the genius, but repeated from the mouths of plain men and women by Burns the reporter.  It is so with all literature that lives.

Mingle with the people, therefore; be one of them.  Who are you that you should not be one of them?  Who is any one that he should not be one of the people?  Their common thought is necessarily higher and better than the thought of any man.  This is mathematical.

And the people, too, are young, eternally young.  They are the source of all power, not politically speaking now, but ethnically, even commercially, speaking.  The successful manager of any business will tell you that he takes as careful an inventory of public opinion as he does of the material items of his merchandise.  A capable merchant told me that he makes it a point to mingle with the crowds.

“Not,” said he, “to hear what they have to say, for you catch only a scrap or a sentence here and there; but to go up against them.  Somehow or other you get their drift that way.  Anyhow I am conscious that this helps me to understand what the people need and want.  There is such a thing as commercial instinct; and contact with the people keeps this fresh and true.”

We have come to that state of enlightenment where the people want to know not only that they are getting the best goods or best service, but that the business which supplies either is run all right.  Who can doubt that in the universal mind there is a question as to the moral element in American business?

This is nothing but the composite conscience of the American people demanding that American business shall not only be conducted ably, but also that it shall be conducted honestly.  It is a force which you must take into account.  It will be a glorious asset for you if you will pay enough attention to it to understand it.

But you must mingle with the people yourself in order to comprehend this source of power.  Do not sit alone in your room and read about the people; that is no way to learn about them.

Remember that no workable constitution was ever written exclusively by scholars.  Recall the ordinance for the government of Carolina devised by the philosopher Locke.  It failed; yet it reads well.  Time and again theorists with highest purpose and broadest book wisdom have formulated laws for the good of mankind which would not work.