The President had some rather wild and supercilious conversation with Jim, about the new strike on in two days and it ended in Jim's dismissing the President from the interview and slamming himself out of the door, only to open it again and stick his head in and say, "The trouble with you, Al, is you've forgotten you ever carried a dinner pail."
The President lay awake that night, came to the works the next morning, called the four hundred men together, asked the other officers to stay away, shut himself up in the room with the four hundred men and told them with a deep feeling, no man present could even mistake or ever forget, what Jim had said to him about himself—that he had forgotten how he felt when he carried a dinner pail, told them that he had lain awake all night thinking that Jim was right, that he wanted to know all the things he had forgotten, that they would be of more use to him and perhaps more use than anything in the world and that if they would be so good as to tell him what the things were that he had forgotten—so good as to get up in that room where they were all alone together and tell him what was the matter with him, he would never forget it as long as he lived. He wanted to see what he could do in the factory from now on to get back all that sixteen-year-old boy with the dinner pail knew, have the use of it in the factory every day from now on to earn and to keep the confidence the sixteen-year-old boy had, and run the factory with it.
Jim got up and made a few more remarks without any door-slamming. Fifteen or twenty more men followed with details.
This was the first meeting that pulled the factory together. In those that followed the President and the men together got at the facts together and worked out the spirit and principles and applied them to details. The meetings were held on company time—at first every few days, then every week, and now quite frequently when some new special application comes up. Nine out of ten of the difficulties disappeared when the new spirit of team work and mutual candor was established and everybody saw how it worked.
No one could conceive now of getting a strike in edgewise to the factory that listened to Jim.
I am not unaccustomed to going about factories with Presidents and it is often a rather stilted and lonely performance. But when I first went through this factory with the President that listened to Jim, stood by benches, talked with him and his men together, felt and saw the unconscious natural and human way conversations were conducted between them, saw ten dollars a day and a hundred dollars a day talking and laughing together and believing and working together, it did not leave very much doubt in my mind as to what the essential qualities are that business men to-day—employers and workingmen—are going to have and have to have to make them successful in producing goods, in leading their rivals in business and in getting their way with one another.
Naturally as a matter of convenience and a short cut for all of us, I would like to see Capital take what is supposed to be its initiative—be the side that leads off and makes the start in the self-discipline, self-confession and conscious control of its own class, which it thinks Labor ought to.
Whichever side in our present desperate crisis attains self-discipline and the full power in sight of the people not to be fooled about itself first, will win the leadership first, and win the loyalty and gratitude and partiality and enthusiasm of the American people for a hundred years.
The first thing for a man to do to get his way with another man—install a new brain track with him that they can use together, is to surprise the man by picking out for him and doing to him the one thing that he knows that you of all others would be the last man to do.