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

The first thing the man in the White House for the next four years is going to have to face is the problem of dealing with people as they really are.

If I were writing a book for the next president to run for president on, one of the first things I would put into it would be a definite statement of what the president and the government proposed to do and what policy they proposed to adopt to keep Labor and Capital from being off on their facts about each other.

There are two policies to choose from.

First Policy: Have Capital tell Labor what is the matter with Labor, and have Labor tell Capital what is the matter with Capital. (Results: Strikes heaped on lockouts and lockouts heaped on strikes.)

Second Policy: Turn the whole truth-telling policy around.

The way to make a truth count is to get the utmost possible attention to it.

The way to get the utmost possible attention to a truth is to have people one does not expect it from telling it. The way to advertise the sins of Capital is to have Capital tell them. Employers and capitalists can attract twenty times as much attention in telling things that are the matter with them, and will be believed forty times as much. And they not only can tell the facts against themselves more fairly, but while they are telling the facts against themselves they are in a position to change them. They can tell facts against themselves with one hand and change them with the other. Or they can begin changing them—begin getting labor to help them change them.

If I had to save the world in a week or rather get assurance in a week that it could be saved, I would get all the people in it to agree for a year to read each other's papers. Have every man read two papers. We would start up for America the national Parallel Column Habit. Each man by himself daily putting his own little world and other people's world alongside until they got used to it, and then together.

There is no limit to what reading the wrong papers would not do for this nation. It is not a matter to argue about. It is a mere plain matter of fact in ordinary every day psychology. The veriest tyro in human engineering can see it,—that the way to get a truth noticed about Capital or Labor, the way to make a truth of some use and get it believed and acted on, is to have the wrong people tell it.

Judge Gary could say some of the things Mr. Gompers is saying a great deal better than Mr. Gompers could.