Enlightened Control in Place of Management
And so you know that changes are impending because what was a body of scattered sentiment is now becoming a concentrated force, and so with sympathy and understanding comes control, for, in place of this control of enlightened and sovereign opinions, we have had in the field of politics as elsewhere, the reign of management, and management is compounded of these two things, secrecy plus concentration.
You cannot manage a nation, you cannot manage the people of a state, you cannot manage a great population, you can manage only some central force; what you do, therefore, if you want to manage in politics or anywhere else is to choose a great single force or single group of forces, and then find some man or men sagacious and secretive enough to manage the business without being discovered. And that has been done for a generation in the United States.
Now, the schoolhouse among other things is going to break that up. Is it not significant that this thing is being erected upon the foundation originally laid in America, where we saw from the first that the schoolhouse and the church were to be the pillars of the Republic? Is it not significant that as if by instinct we return to those sources of liberty undefiled which we find in the common meeting place, in the place owned by everybody, in the place where nobody can be excluded, in the place to which everybody comes as by right?
And so what we are doing is simply to open what was shut, to let the light come in upon places that were dark, to substitute for locked doors, open doors, for it does not make any difference how many or how few come in provided anybody who chooses may come in. So as soon as you have established that principle, you have openings, and these doors are open as if they were the flood gates of life.