He told the Committee he would not return with them. He said that a committee could not get him. The thousand men had rolled him away through jeers in the streets in a wheelbarrow, and now if the thousand men wanted him they could come with their wheelbarrow and roll him back.
The thousand came with their wheelbarrow and rolled him back.
The crowds laughed.
But the thousand men and their employer were sober and happy—had some imagination about each other and went to work.
If I were a nation, the first question I would ask would be, "Why bother with wheelbarrows, and with being obliged in this melodramatic Russian way to act an idea all out in order to see it?"
In America we propose to come through to this same idea by being human, by using our brains on our fellow human beings, by hoeing each other's imaginations.
The issue on which our brains have got to be used is one which grows logically out of the two main new characteristic elements in our modern industrial life.
These are the Mahogany Desk and the Cog.
III