The Ghost in the White House / Some suggestions as to how a hundred million people (who are supposed in a vague, helpless way to haunt the white house) can make themselves felt with a president, how they can back him up, express themselves to him, be expressed by him, and get what they want

by Gerald Stanley Lee

In nine hundred and ninety-nine out of a thousand things a man needs to have to keep these engagements—things he has to have if he is alive at all, he is a consumer.

What the new League will say to the consumer is something like this:

"In nine hundred and ninety-nine things out of a thousand you have to have to live, the Air Line League is organized to stand by you, express you and get the attention of everybody to what you want; and in the one thing you make for everybody it is going to express everybody to you and get your attention to what everybody wants of you."

This would seem to most of us to be fair all around.

When one thinks of it, why should one-thousandth part of what a man has and has to have, in order to live his life—the part he makes himself—be seen everywhere in this world in every man's life holding up and bullying, making him pay high prices for, the other nine hundred and ninety-nine thousandths?

Let the nine hundred and ninety-nine thousandths of a man's life take possession of the one thousandth part of him. Then we will have a civilization.

Or at least the nine hundred and ninety-nine thousandths of him will persuade the one thousandth of him to coöperate.

We have had autocracy of capital because on the whole in the world until machinery came in, capital kept close enough to labor and to the consumer to know what the workmen and the people wanted.

Now that Capital has lost its grip, Labor announces that it is going to be after this war the autocrat, and represent capital and the consumer.

The Air Line League is here to ask, Why should not the consumer represent himself?