I do not think I could deny in court on a Bible, if driven to it, that if the hundred million people were to sit down and write a book just now, I really believe it would be—at least in the main gist and spirit of it, like mine.
Nearly every man in the hundred million people—in what we call helplessly "the public group" and looking on at strikes would be ready, except in his own strike, to write a book like this.
I cannot prove this about my book, but the hundred million people can prove it and do something that will prove it.
And the two great political parties in their coming conventions—one or both of them, I believe, is going to be obliged to give them a chance to try. But it is not up to me. Copying off this book is as far as I go with people.
And the book is not to them. It is not even for them. This book is to me. I have been trying to save my soul with it in the cataclysm of a world. It is easy and light-hearted, but take it off its guard every laugh is a prayer or a cry.
II
IF I WERE A NATION
Economics, I suspect, are much simpler than they look.
The soul of a people is as simple, direct and human in getting connected up with a body and having the use of a body, in this world, as a man is.