32 The Fear of Democracy
conscience. Charities and welfare agencies have grown quite as businesslike in methods as the rest. Goodwill itself is largely a matter of bounty and generous impulse. Recently a board charged with the responsibility of conducting a settlement house was deliberating over the future. There was some question about what the board ought to do next, how it ought to spend its time and money, especially since the neighborhood had shown signs of improvement. After several hours of talk it was suggested by one new member of the board that it might be well to call the people of the community into consultation. Objections from experienced members of the board smothered the suggestion almost at once. Here was a body of liberal and enlightened persons, pledged to make the settlement an effective force in the community. And they were unable to get beyond a sense of benevolence befitting an eighteenth century squire.

Ideologically the whole history of the United States has been an attempt to escape from the revolutionary character of the original democratic idea. When we speak of democracy and modern needs, we should not speak of an array of liberal political institutions evolved under the impetus given by the democratic idea, admirable and beneficial though these institutions may be. We should speak of the idea itself, not of its historical modification. If we do this, we shall see that we have progressively abandoned the ethics implicit in that idea, keeping up all the time a sacerdotal regard for it in our national liturgy but systematically denying its serviceability in our day to day living. We fear democracy as we might fear anarchy: an ideal which is fortunately unattainable.



The Fear of Democracy	33
By its very nature democracy is a living idea and it must be susceptible of daily renewal. There is no doubt that in the writings of such exponents as Paine and Jefferson, who insisted that man could apply to practical situations the theories of Locke, Montesquieu, and others, the principles set forth were daring and bold, at variance with the shibboleths of the day and astounding in their ethical thrust.
The intent and conviction of some of the men who were the early architects of democracy may be seen in this passage from Jefferson: "Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are therefore its only safe depositories. . . . The influence over the government must be shared by all the people. If every individual which composes their mass participates in the ultimate authority, the government will be safe."*
Ideas back of the great affirmations of democracy were creative: they were capable of releasing tremendous forces in the minds of men. But once these ideas were solidified in government forms, they began to lose some of their power. The ideas themselves were ahead of the day they were stated and they are ahead of us now. But we are inclined to lose sight of the genius of an idea in the face of the circumstances which it sets up.
The democratic character of our form of government was modified in the early years of its existence by a strong monarchical sentiment, and later by an increasingly competitive nationalism. Under the exigencies of a nationalist world, it was
________

* From "Notes on Virginia." The Works of Thomas Jefferson, collected and edited by Paul Leicester Ford. New York, 1904. Vol. IV, p. 64.


34	The Fear of Democracy
deemed imperative to make America strong. A new nation which felt itself growing stronger was under the compulsion of becoming like other nations.
In this way the matrix of the democratic idea was changed. Moreover, the industrial revolution as it got rapidly under way proved more influential on our development than the American Revolution. The country grew and expanded, and the production and distribution of goods by new methods became matters of all-consuming interest. We began to regard with a reluctance akin to fear any procedure that might interfere with what we considered the peculiarly American force of prosperity and business enterprise. Men might be created free and equal--a far-flung ethical ideal--but the idea ceased to be feasible if slavery was profitable. With the rise of business and manufacture, more and more energy went into machines, the exchange of creature comforts became the aim of society, and it was not unnatural that the awkward and theoretical notions of democracy should be obscured. The immigration of vast hordes of European labor, the rise of large-scale industrial enterprises, the development of the theory of business management--under all these influences democracy came to mean hardly more than the right of a man to rise, by a free play of his wits and talents, from one class to another. The picture of democracy as a group process embracing the whole of the social organism came to be regarded as doctrinaire and out-of-date.
In America the idea died hard. The effort to reach an ideal community under the aegis of religion caused the flowering of cults and utopias, each seeking to reach some measure of the democratic ideal that had been subordinated to the hungry


The Fear of Democracy	35
demands of the industrial revolution. A few of these communities achieved a mild success and showed endurance, but they were one and all looked upon with amusement by realists and made the subject of raillery and attack. For the blight of industrialism lay heavy, and the view that democracy was anything besides a union of states in a fixed social pattern or an empire with a parliament and a broadly humanitarian colonial policy seems to have escaped even the serious thinkers.
It is almost impossible to exaggerate the creeping and pervasive influence which mass production and merchandising have exercised over all our thinking. Preoccupation with goods has affected our views, our inclinations, our manner of speech, the terms in which we refer to problems and situations that have no connection with business. Spending the bulk of our waking hours in business or in activities connected with business, we carry over, often quite unconsciously, into our social, educational; and political activities the frame of mind that mercantilism requires.
Most conspicuous among the habits that result is the tendency to look upon the public as "customers" or "consumers." In almost every social enterprise whether it be building a new hospital or thumping for world federation-the men and women responsible, under the spell of mercantilism, arrogate to themselves the role of managers, of producers, of merchants. They look upon all others-those who must put up the money for the new hospital or provide the votes for world federation-as customers pure and simple.
As in business, the customer must be pleased. Ile may be cajoled. He ought to be swayed. But in all and sundry cases,
36	The Fear of Democracy
the object is to do something to the customer. Thus we hear it said among advocates of even the most wholesome and needed reforms that "we must go out and sell the American public." A campaign must be "put over." An effort to reduce the accident rate, say, is referred to as a "drive." The standard nomenclature of military tactics is applied first to businessgetting and then to the field of social effort. And in the entire process, the public-which is made up in part at least of the very persons who are always putting over campaigns and selling reforms-assumes the image in our minds of a formless hulk of ignoramuses. "The people" are imagined to be a vapid, inscrutable, volatile body of odd and assorted creatures whose sole function it is to receive the impressions given by the most vociferous leaders.
This insidious and invidious distinction between the "leaders" and "the public" is to be seen on every hand. It is perhaps plainest to see in the field of merchandizing ideas-as in the production of radio programs, motion pictures, magazines and newspapers, where topflight executives measure their ability in terms of their power to influence or please the public and defend every travesty of taste and every elaborate use of bad grammar on the grounds that "the public wouldn't stand for anything better."
It is to be seen also in the tactics of adult educationparticularly in the effort to popularize, to write down. to patronize. The advertising influence has permeated every cranny of the education business, so that we are now treated to drawings and sign language instead of words for the benefit of our faltering minds. It is not sufficient to tell us that a nation has eight battleships. We must be given a picture of eight tiny
The Fear of Democracy	37
battleships as for a primer. Otherwise we wouldn't know that a nation has eight battleships.
In the midst of such wide and vested disdain for the people, we naturally absorb views that make it all but impossible even to think about the democratic idea, much less act upon it.
The idea that the people might be trusted to act directly upon their problems and originate solutions is not only feared; often it is not thought of at all. And when it is suggested, it is hardly entertained. The reply usually runs, "You mean the educated people, of course." And if it is admitted that the whole of the American people might be trusted to experiment with democracy, the critic usually flies to other continents and says, "But all of this presupposes a high degree of education. It wouldn't work among the Hottentots; it would never be grasped by the Oriental mind."
To answer such comments might lead into bootless speculation. It can be stated, however, that if the people (whether here or elsewhere) are regarded with contempt, they will be have contemptibly. That is to say, they will not put forward their best efforts-any more than any of us in private life makes his best showing in the face of constant carping. Most of the evidences that could be cited of the dumbness of the people arise from the simple fact that our present attitudes encourage and expect dumbness.
A friend of mine returned not long ago from Africa, deeply disappointed in the. progress of the natives. In the Belgian Congo he had studied colonial administration and had
found the Belgian officials one and all discouraged. In one village, for example, the people had been ordered to put in a
38	The Fear of Democracy
communal plot to increase production. It was assumed by the officials that they would cultivate this plot at the season which was best. Not so. Instead, they went out and obediently cultivated the plot on the first five days of the month, rain or shine. The result was that the plot failed and the officials were more convinced than ever that the African was a hopeless ninny.
But it takes only moderate reflection to see that this incident is no measure of the African intelligence. If it is, it shows simply that the natives know how to outfox the officials. Until people are given full opportunity for responsible action which they themselves help originate and undertake-only then can they be judged.
Generally we start with the presupposition that the people-particularly of other countries-do not have our capacities and must be treated like sheep. In the smoky atmosphere of industrialism we have become a nation of straw-bosses, foremen, and executive vice-presidents. Our object is commonly to get a job done, and people are deemed bright or hopeless in the degree to which they do or refuse to do our bidding.
Shortly after the end of the war an army officer was sent to Okinawa to erect a hospital there. Many of those who talked with him about his mission told him to allow at least eighteen months for the job because the Okinawans were the dumbest people on earth. The officer went and surveyed the field. He discovered almost at once that what his superiors had meant about the Okinawans was that they could not speak English. In spirit, talents, competence., and co-operativeness, they surpassed many of the peoples he had met in other theaters. 'What's more, they responded with vim to his genial approach
The Fear of Democracy	39
and the respect it implied, and the hospital was built in six weeks-not eighteen months.
The fear of democracy is a compound of many fears. We shall do well to remember, however, that it stems, at least in part, from the fears of small-time bosses and their stubborn reluctance to believe that the mass of people can be trusted to reach sound conclusions on their own initiative without being lectured and punched and pulled about as they are now by the flailing of their leaders. Objections will be advanced on practical grounds, to be sure. It will be said that we cannot retool our present government machinery, that we cannot convert to democracy without serious instability. Few will have the cheek to argue against the democratic theory. The argument will always be shifted, oh so quickly, to practical grounds, where greed, temporizing, postponement, and the protection of position have the advantage, and imagination is stopped dead in its tracks.
Whatever the fear put forth, it will not be amiss for us to inspect its origin. In many cases it may be found to arise from prevailing mercantile attitudes which, in turn, are the product of industrial megalomania. Whatever else may be said of these attitudes, they cannot be said to invalidate the underlying premises of democracy or the pertinence of these premises to the new world which of late has been thrust upon us.
f
Copyright 1948 by the International Committee of Young Men's Christian Associations
PRINTED IN U.S.A.


5
Where  e Can
The AjlParMus of Dcrno crac.
)Mty This Book	7
	1	
The Perennial Crisis	11
	2	
The Fear of Demourac.%	24
	3	
Nevertheles.,	40
	4	
The Method of Dcnu~cr:wN	58
7
The Promi~,(- of DrmocracY
lie: in
3
Nevertheless . .
* Add to the various and sundry other excuses that can be trumped up to avoid democracy the further contention that it offers no real assurance of delivering us from our present predicament.
To this argument there can be no silencing answer. We will not find a guarantee on the label. Only a demagogue would seek to palm off democracy as an elixir of peace and prosperity. Because we have made a mess of the world without democracy, it does not follow that we shall make a paradise if we turn to democracy now. At best an experiment with popular discussion and action on a world scale involves a colossal gamble, a sally into the unknown. The results are wholly unpredictable. The present rigidly contained chaos might grow into a bellowing revolt of the masses. (There is, as Balzac reminds us, nothing more terrible than the revolt of sheep.)
Yet one can honestly say that, with all its risks, democ racy remains our last chance. It alone holds some promise of 40
Nevertheless . . .	41
breaking the chain of error that links us with the past, of releasing the latent and untried powers that will enable, us to grapple with the present. In spite of our long and complacent acceptance of substitutes, the creative spirit of democracy has been at work as an accusing ideal, as a ferment, as an unrealized dream. And it is more active. today than it has ever been before. The new ideas, the venturesome impulses, the departures from old routine in the management of world affairs, have come not only from the democracies but from the promptings and urgings of citizens within the democracies.
This is a fact so dimly appreciated that it needs recital from the record. In America the awakening of citizen interest as a force to be reckoned with apart from government promptr,
began shortly after the Dumbarton Oaks Conference. It was apparent even then that the diffused slaughter of modern war had changed in a most striking way the relationship between the individual and the political managers to whom he had delegated the responsibility of running his world. The individual had come to have an admitted part in a tremendous conflict which held a large section of the race in its grip. The indispensable man had proved to be the average man, who was assured by all the big guns of propaganda that without his toil and co-operation the exertions of the armies would be in vain.
Moreover, in the industrial skills required to conduct an up-to-date war, in the effort to hurl a nation's whole economy at the enemy, civilian populations found an exhilarating fellow ship, a fellowship that could come only from a concerted striving for survival. In countries where men, women, and children bore the brunt of bombs; this sense of fellowship galvanized
4°_	Nevertheless . . .
whole peoples into incredible heroism. In countries where the war was chiefly= a matter of materiel and logistics, of spectacular production and rapid delivery, the sense of mass responsi. bility was not less real if it was decidedly less heroic.
A public opinion survey conducted a year after Pearl Harbor solemnized the fact that eighty-three per cent of the people of the United States felt that they had a direct part in
the war effort. How much part they actually had may, of course, be open to question. The range of contributions was great. Some sacrifices were made on a basis of cost plus ten per cent. War work as a rule brought good wages and it was steady. The civilian effort to entertain servicemen was carried on with a charity bazaar hoopla. and not a few young women sweated out the war in crinoline. Yet even those who made a good thing of it felt that they belonged in the pageant. With a slight stretch of the imagination it was possible to make a car pool and minor inconveniences seem as austere as the Battle of Britain.
If there were civilians who derived their sense of contribution from the mere fact that the war affected them mildly, there was a large and solid body who could claim with reason
that they had a measurable part in the war. Those long-suffering souls who administered the draft boards with diligence and fairness, those who sat with patience on ration boards, those who stepped beyond routine to help manage war bond drives, those who trained as auxiliary police, those who rolled bandages or rolled their husbands and acquaintances in bandages-these persons could feel that, whatever difference they made, they had turned aside to offer what help they could.
Not a few activities of dubious value offered the civilian
Nevertheless . . .	43
host a chance to experience the emotion of lending a hand. The number of American citizens immobilized from productive work and given over (night and day) to the intricacies of our air-raid warning system must have handed the German General Staff one of few legitimate laughs it enjoyed during the war. But the business of having whole cities joined in a social enter. prise was no laughing matter.
All in all, the staggering scope and intimate details of the war brought citizens a satisfying, if somewhat illusory, sense of being privy to great events. Notably, the widespread prac tice of giving blood, while it was a neat and orderly procedure that smacked more of the kitchen than of the battlefield, served to enable millions to identify themselves through a vital and sacramental act with the cause for which other millions fought. In this, as well as in countless other chores less open to metaphysical interpretation, there grew up a kind of immense team spirit, which, measured against that of wars carried on with less publicity, was startling and novel.
Mixed in and running along with the satisfaction of mass participation, however, ran a mass uneasiness and concern. The uneasiness arose partly out of the enjoyment of fatty ease (a by-product of full production) in the presence of world tribulation. The concern was due to the realization that the people of the democracies had in the pursuit of happiness neglected the factors which might have prevented the carnage of war and the deep rupture within the whole social organism. Few had read The Moral Equivalent of War by William James, but all began dimly to perceive the truths he had set about to establish: that modern war provides a concrete and agreed goal of social action but a goal that is grievously negative at best.
44	Nevertheless . . .
Civilians enjoyed the excitement of united action but they suffered inwardly from a painful admission that in the last analysis this action was destructive, that the controlling purpose of the struggle which engaged them was no higher and no better than the aim of outliving a crisis which human stupidity had brought to pass.
Thus in the United States, where the drive for sacrifice found insufficient objects for healthy outlet, there arose early an idealized fear of the future. This expressed itself in the
restless desire to reshape human society in such a way that war might be prevented. There was nothing new in this idea. What was new was the locale in which the idea found its firmest advocacy. It began first to manifest itself among unofficial and nongovernment people-the people ordinarily called average. And it drew its strength and its conviction and its zeal from the habits of thought being formed under the stress of concerted mass participation in war.
Gradually, and imperceptibly at first, the initiative in social action began to pass from heads of state to heads of organizations in touch with the vast reach of ordinary citizens.
The concomitant of mass participation in war was a tendency toward mass and individual responsibility for matters that would be settled after the war. As war ceased to be an item of interest only to general staffs and professional armies, so peace was no longer regarded as the exclusive province of diplomatic agencies.
Obviously an unprecedented and, in the literal sense of the word, revolutionary factor had entered the scene. As the war wore on the number of public meetings devoted to world
Nevertheless . . .	45
affairs increased. Radio forums and debates supplemented the healthy commotion in the local community. There was hardly a city that did not have its series devoted to the ideal of a durable peace and the methods by which the ideal could be attained. Many local war councils sponsored such meetings, using civilian defense agencies as the cadre of the effort. Even if a town was small it was likely to be touched by one of the Rotary Institutes of International Understanding; over 4000 of these concentrated sessions-with an outside speaker coursing on world affairs before schools, the club, and meetings-were held in 1944.
It was in this atmosphere that the Dumbarton Conference set forth certain high-sounding proposals for an international organization. These proposals were fashioned by
heads of state, enfeebled by timidity. Consequently the results were peaked, but they had the virtue of being concrete and they • introduced into public affairs the thought that future hope lay in something besides national self-assertiveness.
It occurred to the Department of State right early that the proposals would need "implementation at the citizen level." Acting upon this wise acknowledgment, the Department mailed out the proposals, along with some mild discussion material, to large and influential organizations such as the General Federation of Women's Clubs, the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America, the National Congress of Parents
Teachers.
From the. headquarters of these agencies the proposals fluttered down to local groups and into the hands of ordinary men and women. The response was instant, and it exceeded all expectations. Letters from individuals to the President and to
dismass
Oaks
and
11
46	Nevertheless . . .
the Secretary of State reached as high the San Francisco Conference.
Not only did the people write. They wanted to talk. At one time as many as eighteen national organizations sought an audience with the President and the Secretary of State. Both of these men were too busy with the war and statecraft to bother, but it was agreed that Archibald MacLeish, then as. sistant secretary of state in charge of public affairs, would see the importunate citizens.
MacLeish seated delegates from the eighteen national bodies in a semi-circle in his office. It is to his credit that he did not seek to indoctrinate them; he let them do the talking. He went around the semi-circle and asked three simple questions:
as 7000 a day before
What is your organization doing about foreign policy? What does it intend to do?
Wbat does it expect the Department of State to do?
These questions elicited some straight answers but none so straight as the one given by Mrs. L. W. Hughes of Arlington, Tennessee. Mrs. Hughes was on hand to represent the National Congress of Parents and Teachers. She had lost one son in the war and on the day she spoke her piece she knew that another son was being trained to jump as a paratrooper over Germany. Her statement began as follows:
"Mr. Secretary., I don't want to seem rude, but I think it ought to be made clear that we are not here to co-operate with the Department of State.
"We are here to see if the Department of State wants to co-operate with us."
Nevertheless . . .	47 on to point out simply and patiently that
She went there were naturally many in the government who were concerned about matters of war and peace. But, she emphasized, there were millions outside the government who were cerned even more.
No statement could have summed up more succinctly the way millions had begun to feel. Her words marked a moment of departure in the history of political procedure. For a person without official status had, in the sanctum sanctorum of government, served notice that the responsibility for an ordered world had passed to citizens.
The change rung by Mrs. Hughes' statement is too profound to measure yet. What followed her remarks is of great significance, not in concrete accomplishment, but in terms of preparation for the fuller democratic awakening that may lie ahead. It established the principle of intercommunication between the Department of State and the heads of organizations that make up a vast part of the adult population of the United States. After the meeting in MacLeish's office, the De. partment extended invitations to forty-two national organizations to send consultants to the San Francisco Conference.
At the Conference the forty-two consultants, together with 195 others named by organizations with representatives on the Pacific Coast, were invited to meet with the American official delegates, and they called upon them frequently to propound their views. Delegates were armed with books into which had been pasted resolutions, letters, recommendations, and criticisms touching the Dumbarton Oaks Proposals. Part of the responsibility of the delegates thus lay in entertaining and considering an expression of views from citizen bodies.
con-
48	Nevertheless . . .
Government had at last recognized the principle of citizen as cess, the right of the individual to by-pass his elected repre. sentatives, to have a direct line to the men who were supposed to reshape his world.
The liaison thus established between people's groups and officials concerned with action on world policy has been continued and encouraged by the Department of State. There are now 125 American organizations whose consultants, ac. credited by the Department, are assigned to UN headquarters. These men and women represent farmers, labor unions, exservicemen, businessmen, women's clubs-the whole spice and variety of American life. They have permission to sit in on the proceedings of the General Assembly and the Security Council, to move about in the buildings at Lake Success, to meet with members of the United States Delegation, and to learn from the secretariat the work of the United Nations. They are made to feel a part of what goes on, and they are encouraged not only to report steadily to the organizations they represent but also to convey to the official delegates the views of those organizations.
True, the arrangement leaves a good deal to be desired. It may be said to be casually handled; there are a lot of loose pistons in the machinery. It may be said, further, that the Department merely used this device to sell the American people a policy approved by officialdom. In spite of the theatrics of citizen participation at San Francisco, the world organization solemnized there was no more than an elaborate but still conventional alliance of powers modeled along lines in vogue at the time of the Congress of Vienna.
Even so, a new element has been introduced by these
Nevertheless . . .	49
developments. The right of action by persons without official status has been underlined. The contagion of responsibility is bound to have been started and new habits of thinking may be formed as a result. With all the drawbacks and shortcomings, there has been set in motion a really big operation which had not been more than dreamed of twenty-five years ago. The facilities for democratic action have increased immensely and the conversion to true democratic forms has been made remarkably easier.
The awakening of citizen responsibility brought about more than new procedures. It has also given rise to new ideas and a new frame of mind. There are evidences to show, for example, that the people have gone far ahead of their leaders in the direction of democratic responsibility for creating a supranational government to replace our present anarchy. Awakened to the real task of attaining an ordered world, and not merely to the idea of rendering yeoman's support to the statesmen, they are moving in realms their leaders have not yet properly imagined.
Recently Elmo Roper, who conducts the public opinion survey for Fortune, put this plain question to the people: "If every other country in the world would elect representatives to
a world congress and let all problems between countries be decided by this congress, with the strict provision that all countries have to abide by decisions, whether they like them or not, would you be willing to have the United States go along with this?" To this question 62.8 per cent of the people said yes, and 19.8 per cent said no. Among those who expressed an opinion, the majority was three to one for the principle of
c

50	Nevertheless ...
government, and it is reasonable to suppose that many of those who had no opinion would join with the majority after an opportunity to discuss the matter.
By far the most compelling sign of the hospitality of the people to new ideas-a hospitality that contrasts with the pa. thetic weakness of the statesmen-is to be found in the story of the influence of the writings of such men as Clarence Streit and Emery Reves. Beginning with the publication ten years ago of his Union Now, Streit has consistently held before readers a clear and practical exposition of his idea for a federal union of the democracies. His book has deeply touched millions with its common sense.
More recently, The Anatomy of Peace, by Emery Reves has extended the interest created by Streit and other writers. This book is a forthright presentation of the immediate neces sity for world government. It was published quietly in June of 1945. The wiseacres among the critics and commentators paid little attention to it. But Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Owen J. Roberts became aware of its message. He saw that the book said what others had half said. Accordingly, when he retired from the bench in the summer of 1945, he agreed to address an open letter to the American people in the book's behalf.
The letter was drafted and redrafted. Others joined in the signing. Albert Einstein, Thomas Mann, Dorothy Canfield Fisher, representatives of business, of labor, of veterans, of churches-all took an interest. Finally in October the letter was issued. It went with a personal letter to eighty-five American newspapers. Some fifty published the letter.
Late that fall The Reader's Digest began to carry the
Nevertheless ...	51
book in condensed form, running it in three instalments. Sales rocketed. America woke up to the ideas that Reves put forth. His terminology began to find its way into the language. News magazines recounted the story of the book's success. Before long it had reached a sale of 70,000 copies and then a special newsstand edition of 100,000 appeared.
The most remarkable demonstration of the book's influence and of the people's response to it came when the program service of The Reader's Digest announced a specially prepared discussion program on the book. Requests for the program started rolling in at the rate of 200 a day. In the end orders from groups and individuals reached 23,000.
It is no special credit to Mr. Reves, and certainly none to his publishers, that his book sold so well, that it is now appearing in seventeen languages and in twenty-five separate countries. It is a credit to the human race. The book is radical, but only to politicians, not to the much underrated man in the street.
That mere acceptance of ideas is not enough is stressed by Lionel Curtis, who emphasizes the need of expert planning at this stage of world affairs: "The Anatomy of Peace is an unanswer able statement of the thesis that the maintenance of national sovereignties must lead to world war. It is not now necessary to go on proving this. The Gallup polls you quote show that a majority now see this even if the politicians and journalists do not. We have reached the point when we see that we can't cross a river in our cars to and fro until we build a bridge, agreed-but we cannot get on with building a bridge until some engineer has drawn a plan or blueprints which can be approved by the people who have to find the money and then put it into the hands of constructors.
"Lord Acton said that freedom-democracy, or whatever
52	Nevertheless . .
you like to call it-can only find its fullest expression in federalism. But people numbering millions cannot produce a plan for extend. ing democracy any more than the shareholders of the British railways could produce a plan for a Forth Bridge. They can only approve a practicable plan when it is laid before them, and say they will find the money to build it.
"That is the stage to which writers like Emery Reves and evangelists like Robert Lee Humber have brought us. We cannot now get beyond that stage unless we have a carefully drawn plan before us and create an agreement to carry that plan out."
C.W.F.--In spite of the fact that wide stretches of the public both. here and abroad may tacitly accept the arguments of Reves and Curtis, there is as yet no way by which this acceptance can be put on record. Specific plans, to be sure, are important, but likewise important is the full and official expression of world opinion on the principles back of the plans. Decision by consent or ratification is not adequate for the kind of democracy that is needed. To create the necessary agreement to carry out a plan for a new world order the people must be given every chance for full participation and responsible action.
Of even greater significance than the changing mind of the American people is their impressive willingness to act, through existing democratic machinery, on new ideas which their national leaders have not yet grasped. No better example of this willingness could be found than in the people's response to the work of Robert Lee Humber of North Carolina.
A man of great charm and vitality, infinitely persuasive both in public address and private conversation, Humber's achievements will be regarded by some as merely a tribute to his magnetic personality and his colossal powers of salesman. ship. And, indeed, it would be a mistake to think of Humber as setting the style for future democratic action. His story
Nevertheless . . .	53
should be studied for what it reveals about the responsiveness of the American people to new ideas within the framework of the half-democracy we have at present and their capacities to think beyond the narrow terms and choices offered in hidebound official circles.
There was no outward reason why Humber should have taken upon himself the sorrows of social reform. Of an old, established, and well-to-do family, he was graduated from Harvard and went to Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. After his term at Oxford, he went to Paris and took up the practise of law. He lived in Paris, comfortably and well, until the fall of France, then returned to his native state.
In the course of his European law practice he had begun to think hard and painfully about the world problem. He had come to the conclusion that the industrial revolution had pro foundly changed our world and that old methods of preventing war would no longer work. We should have to have, he felt, something vastly stronger than a confederacy of sovereign nations, each jealous of its imprescriptible rights.
With these convictions Humber returned home. There were several courses open to him. He could have run at once for office. He could have found contacts at high levels.
But Humber was a man of perception who understood the possibilities of democracy. He did none of the obvious things. He did something far more natural and to the demo cratic point. He called together his neighbors. He invited the local garage mechanic, the doctor, the baker, the member of the legislature, and an assortment of other friends to meet on his place for an all-day picnic.
Children as well as adults came. After a day of sports,
Nevertheless . . .	55
of reflecting the views of the people. There was a long and lively debate over Humber's resolution, punctuated by some dramatic moments. One member of the House arose to say that the resolution required more time for consideration. To this remark an advocate of the Humber idea retorted, "The progress of civilization cannot wait on my colleague's intellectual development."
Finally the resolution was passed by the House and went to the Senate of the Legislature. Here the opposition stiffened, but in the end the men who saw Humber's point tri umphed and the State of North Carolina, in the solid South, in isolationist America, in 1941, went on record as petitioning the President and the Congress of the United States to call a world constitutional convention to consider setting up a federal world government along the lines laid in Humber's Declaration.
Humber saw now the possibilities of action on the citizen level. He had talked not merely- to the legislators but to the people. It had been their will which was borne in upon their representatives. He went next to New Jersey. The New Jersey State Federation of Women's Clubs, which had been studying the world problem for years in hundreds of meetings throughout the state, got back of the measure, and the legis. lature yielded to the embattled women, after five months of struggle, and passed it.
It had taken Humber two arduous years to gain acceptance of his ideas in two states. But far from being discouraged, he was refreshed. He had avoided the usual rigmarole of citi zen helplessness and the usual expectation that those at the top must solve our problem for us. He did not sit around
54	Nevertheless . . .
with dinner on the ground, Humber assembled his friends under a big tree. He pointed out that not far away had been the first plane flight at Kitty Hawk. Not far in the other direction was Roanoke Island, where the first English settlers in America had landed. Then he went on to say that the movement his neighbors might launch that day could exceed in importance the development of aviation or the opening of a new continent.
After this simple introduction Humber read a brief statement he had prepared. It was called The Declaration of the Federation of the World. It bore the fruits of his reflection during the years he had been abroad. It contained, among other things, the statement: "The age of treaties is dead; the age of law is here." It was a concise, plain, unmistakable plea for a world government in which individuals and not states would be accountable.
The ideas set forth were radical. They were years ahead of official position. They involved the willingness to transfer national sovereignty to a higher sovereignty created by the people. They were contrary to what one would suppose to be the cherished prejudices of persons who had not thought about the problem.
But Humber found his neighbors in accord with him. They saw his point. After that day Humber knew that he could with confidence present these ideas to others. He stumped the state, talking in school houses, to women's clubs and luncheon clubs, to people on buses and in hotel lobbies. Everywhere he found hospitality. Then his Declaration was offered as a resolution in the House of the North Carolina State Legislature. State governments have no authority in the making of foreign policy, but they have the right of petition,
56	Nevertheless . . .
arguing against the effectiveness of democratic action. Instead, he took to the road like a disciple without purse or scrip. 'In four years Humber presented his resolution singlehandedly to forty, state legislatures. He traveled 300,000 miles. He accepted not one cent of expense money from any person or organization. He kept up as best he could, without letting it interfere with the main business at band, the practice of law. Wherever he went-on buses, in hotel lobbies, on trains, before committees, before schools and luncheon clubs-he talked about the necessity of world federation.
Out of the forty states which considered his resolution, nineteen are still considering it or have passed it through one House. In no state has it been defeated on the floor of either House. In fifteen other states it has been passed, and in many states dramatically. When it came up for a vote in Oklahoma the man who had introduced it arose to move its adoption. He had hardly sat down when the man at the next table leaped to his feet and asked for the privilege of standing as a co-sponsor. One by one the members of the House asked for the same privilege, so that in the end it was not passed in a routine way but actually sponsored by all the members.
The fifteenth state to pass the Humber resolution (in May, 1.947) was the President's own state of Missouri. With fitting ceremonies the officials of the legislature, flanked by prominent citizens of the state, flew the resolution to Wash-ington and handed it to a bewildered but jovial chief executive. It was a busy, day, but the President had time for the boys from Missouri and there were pictures galore and handshaking all around. There was little time to discuss ideas, however, and when some of the delegation sought to press
Nevertheless . . .	57
home the point of the resolution, their efforts were parried as at a press conference and some more pictures were taken. Finally one vocal advocate of federation spoke up and boldly explained that the time had come when the world must be governed by law instead of diplomacy. To which came the pulverizing answer, "But, gentlemen, diplomacy is law?"
It is clear from this incident that Humber's herculean labors have had as yet little effect on American official policy. It is equally clear from the action of the legislatures that the mass of the electorate is willing and able to consider and act upon matters the statesmen are too busy running their governments to think about. Humber has, in a word, discovered again the maturity of the people and put on record such evidences of that maturity as could scarcely be imagined without him.
The real tides and currents that look to change are running among peoples, not among political leaders. This is the promise of democracy. While the sages sit about wagging their heads, the grass-roots legislative branches of forty out of forty-eight of America's states consider asking the President and the Congress to accept the principle of federal world government.
A study of the simple facts reveals that whatever of great good that has happened in our time has happened at the people's behest. It may not be enough. It may not yet have had a telling effect upon the actions of governments. But at least the achievements are there as a shining example of the power of the people and the capacity of the people and of their will and ability to set off on the right track.
4
The Method of Democracy
The Method of Democracy	59
Sir Norman Angell comments: "Your case is somewhat weakened by slipping at points into the demagogic assumptionsthe implication, at least, that `The People' are `naturally' wise,
wise by the light of nature and a good heart; that their `natural' impulses, if only they are allowed expression, can never be selfdestructive. Experience denies this. The roots of suicidal folly are deep indeed, since they go back to animal origins: the planet is lull of the bones of races that committed suicide by refusing to adapt themselves to changing circumstance-it being perhaps not without significance that it is the greatest, biggest individually, most powerful of the animals, which have disappeared most completely.
"We live in a world now, which has-very suddenly, without giving us much time to adapt our way of thought and feeling to the change-become so interdependent and so vulnerable that only closely integrated co-operation can save us. And in the way of that co-operation stand impulses which are certainly 'natural'the nationalisms which have so divided Europe that its economy cannot feed it, and its political organisation cannot defend it against recurrent dictators, Napoleons, Hiders, Stalins; or the fanaticisms of India which with the mutual massacres of Hindu-Moslem running into tens of thousands every month threaten to reduce India to the condition of China; or of Palestine, the Holy Land where religious antagonisms have turned it into a seething cauldron of hate and murder; or the racial impulses of the Anglo-Saxon in the South which have made the lynching phenomenon possible; or the conviction of the Inquisitor so passionate that he `knew' he teas doing the will of God when he racked and tortured; or the equally passionate conviction of the Revolutionist who can send thousands to the guillotine or millions to death camps of the Arctic-all done, not merely in the name of The People, butand this is the fact upon the facing of which the success of democracy depends-usually with their willing consent, sometimes at their direct instigation.
"The obstacles to lynching-prevention, to international co-
3
* It is idle, of course, merely to admire the wisdom of the people and content ourselves with the illusion that sane opinion will somehow- finally prevail. What we have witnessed under our present indirect and loose-jointed political system should be taken as simply an earnest of what might be accomplished if we moved forward toward democracy. The awakening of citizens to world affairs is cause for rejoicing, but this awakening will not be effective unless greatly increased provision is made in our social and political arrangements for the full voice of the people to be heard.
Hence we return to the immediate challenge of our appointed generation: to understand the nature of democracy in all aspects of our life and to extend the scope of democratic
action until it includes the vital matters upon which turns our survival.
58
6
The story of the origin and writing of this book is a proper part of the book itself and ought to be told briefly at the outset.
Five years ago (in the Spring of 1943) 1 undertook a study of the citizen's role in world affairs-the part a plain man might play in the drama of issues which, for want of a less obnoxious term, we called foreign policy.
In all public meetings and private conversations the question that rose like a refrain was, What can I do? At the suggestion of my friend, Clyde Eagleton, Professor of International Law at New York University, I set out to try to answer that question. I talked with leaders of adult education, with Congressmen and officials in the Department of State, with editors and professors, with lobbyists and servicemen. I investigated cases of democratic action wherever I could find them. I observed and analyzed various successful pressure techniques.
7
 
.   
60	The Method of Democracy
operation, the pooling of sovereignty, to tariff reductions are not as a rule found at the top. They come from the bottom-the bottom of our natures."
C.W.F.--It cannot be denied that the people have been guilty of heinous mistakes. Part of this is to be traced to the Old Adam, which democracy itself cannot wholly eradicate. But part of it may also be due to the fact that up to now we have operated under a half-democratic but basically authoritarian system. We have assumed that because the people have some voice and some power they are to be blamed for the mistakes of history. We can condemn the people out of hand only when they have a full chance and then fail. At present we have, even in countries which make loud claims to being democratic, only enough democracy to make the people take the rap for the sins of their leaders. A little democracy is a dangerous thing; it enables unscrupulous leaders to manipulate the masses, to play upon prejudice and hatred and to exploit the people in acts tvitich they can turn and blame on the people. Full democracy might not remedy the mess we are in but it would at least make a fair assignment of responsibility for failure.
We must recognize that democracy offers merely a method-as totalitarianism is a method, republicanism is a method, communism is a method. Under democracy the group affected by any decision takes full responsibility for reaching that decision. It may be the decision of a small discussion group: in that case the whole group participates fully in the discussion and does not merely ratify by consent or silence the opinion of a few garrulous and domineering members. It may be the decision of a group of employees in an industry: in that case the employees determine the issue and arrive at a conclusion and do not merely debate and accept or reject the decision of the personnel department or the management. It
The Method of Democracy	61
may be the decision of citizens of the whole world: in that case the decision is arrived at by peoples declaring their will in concert and not merely by bowing to the policies or decrees of the officials of their respective national governments.
If the method used is totalitarian, then the leader commands obedience and forces his theories as well as his will upon the populace by propaganda and appeal to prejudice. (The leader may be either a sales manager or a political dictator.) If the method is communistic, self-anointed leaders seek to overthrow whatever rulership exists in order that they may seize power for themselves in behalf of the people. If the method used is representative or republican, the leaders selected by the people enforce their will until ousted and maintain themselves by seeking periodically to have their judgments ratified.
Anita Marie MacRae writes: "I gave a little Chinese boy an American history book used in junior high schools as reading material and of course, he came out with the inevitable, awk ward question: `What means Democracy?' I said it was the type of government we had in the United States. `Oh,' Mr. Koo said innocently, `Democracy is to let people vote for someone to tell them what to do?"'
Of the several methods in vogue or in prospect, the democratic one offers the only novelty, the only break with encrusted tradition. For this reason it is the most easily derided and the most likely to be discounted. Yet in spite of the shock and incredulity with which a serious proposal of democracy usually meets, the results of the democratic technique are often found to be remarkably good, even in the most difficult and improbable situations.



The Method of Democracy	63
Adam sought to escape the obsessive emphasis placed upon starting every enterprise with a leader-whether he be sergeant, foreman, supervisor, or fuhrer.
A British major makes this observation about the leaderless groups: "Your references to our army are doubly interesting to are. I had heard of Sir R. Adam's experiment but did not know what measure of success they had reached. Like all good Adjt. Gen's. Sir R. was abused by one and all in the array and he had not only had some very good ideas but managed to put them across.
"1 can't help thinking, however, that the experiment of choosing leaders by their reactions on training, etc.-in fact by the election of their fellows-can only have a narrow application.
I mean that you can train small bodies of men for particular purposes-what the public calls `commando tactics' and what the army has called since the time of Cromwell a raid or a fighting patrol. These little parties of men, if they are to be successful, become entirely democratic, i.e., each man must think for himself and as part of his group as well. The leader may be appointed from above in the first place, but the one who survives is the one who has the complete confidence-and not blind confidence either-of the group. This is not one way of doing this particular thing, it is the only way.
"In the army in general 1 frankly don't believe it applies. Armies are by their nature authoritarian and you must have a certain element-in my opinion a large element-of `not theirs to reason why' if any army is to be successful over a period in peace or war. I do not mean by this that morons make the best soldiers or any of that nonsense. No good modern army care exist on morons. But in mornents of crisis and fear, mental and physical, it is not human nature to put instinctive trust in someone whom you have elected. 1 believe our present system of making the officers careers genuinely open to all, and then making the finished product into a definite caste within the Array will pay well in its results. However this is a diversion; 1 merely mean to say that in my
62	The Method of Democracy
The experience of the British army in the midst of total war has pertinence here. Through the gifted efforts of Sir Ronald Adam, adjutant general, five units of that army chose their own officers. One of the most instructive methods tried out was the use of the leaderless group set up to determine who was fit to assume command of small units being prepared for hazardous missions behind enemy lines.
Small groups of men went through a series of training operations with no appointed officer in charge. The objective was clear in each manoeuver-it might be laying a pontoon bridge or storming a house. The group moved as a unit. Usually a dominant person asserted himself and assumed command at the outset. Only in rare instances, though, did he hold it. After a series of tests the man who finally emerged as leader had established his position by right of performance. His proficiency and co-operation won him the respect of his comrades. He led by group agreement, not because some "superior officer" or some scheme of classification had placed him in command.
Such ventures, small in scale and unfortunately- not very frequent in the army or out of it, are worth prayerful attention. For no single item seems to bother folks so much as the nature and place of leadership under a democratic system. The critic will dismiss democracy as the rule of the mob. The person who concedes its desirability will come back again and again to the question of leadership. Even when confronted with the image of the leaderless group, most of us are prone to note only that leaders were finally chosen and established; and hence we miss the chief point: that the effort of Sir Ronald

64	The Method of Democracy
humble opinion the Fighting Services, of wanted at all, must be something entirely outside a truly democratic society."
C.W.F.-!t would be a mistake, and probably a dissipa. tion of effort, to press for a democratic army or for the testing of democratic ideas within any military force. The point in citing the army, however, is to stress the necessity of leaving no department of life untouched by social imagination. With millions under arms and more likely to be, we shall be overlooking a big and sig. nificant portion of our population if we exempt the whole military from democratic experimentation. The thing to guard against is the assumption that democratic methods won't work in practical situations where men have jobs to do. We must try and see. That is all. And we must avoid self-righteous glee when a few feeble and half-hearted attempts fail.
If we are to think imaginatively about democracy (and we shall never get over our present political infirmities until we do), we will do well to stop thinking about leadership at all. Having been molded from birth to accept the doctrine of obedience, we naturally waver when we are asked to forsake its many comforts. As the late G. A. Studdert-Kennedy once said, "It is so much easier to do and die than it is to reason why." We continually expect persons in minor positions of authority to tell us what to do, feel, see, expect, and hope. We expect our leaders to tell us what to think. Often we expect them to tell us what we think.
Even when it is muddle-headed and wrong, leadership suits us fine. To be sure, we do not always follow. We may rebel, heckle, and reject. But whether we accept or ignore the advice and counsel of leaders, we want them just the same. The reason is simple. During the days when we became preoccupied with creature comforts and the nation was expanding like
The Method of Democracy	65
steam, we acquired a habit of delegating not only authority but responsibility. "Let George do it" became the national motto. It was deemed advisable to leave all the dirty work in business to the boss, in government to the politicians, in education to the teachers and administrators, in local affairs to the town board. The acceptance of the leadership principle in consequence became the standard order of procedure, and a vast amount of solemn nonsense grew up to support it.
Thus, when a proposal looking toward the democratization of society is advanced, it runs smack up against the hankering for leadership. There can be no doubt that leader ship would be gravely needed in a democratic society-and even more so in a society struggling to become democratic. But the brand of leadership would be unrecognizably different. It would evolve, glory be, out of a new set of circumstances which would create new demands and set up new methods of selection. We shall only fetter our imagination further and sweep our problems under the rug if we continue to cling to what we now construe to be leadership.
Already at hand are certain exemplary cases which show the lines democratic leadership might take. One of the best is to be found in the labors of Rudolph 114. Wittenberg and his associates in East Harlem, New York City. Dr. Wittenberg's book, So You Want to Help People, offers a remarkably fine body of ideas he has accumulated through years of work with groups of all kinds. One who wishes to discover how the democratic procedure departs from the accepted social work practices of the day will find the fascinating answer in this book. But Dr. Wittenberg's experience at the Neighborhood Center for Block Organization, sponsored by Union Settlement, offers

66
The Method of Democracy
The Method of Democracy
67
even wiser counsel than his book to those who are puzzled about leadership.
In the midst of the most dismal and depressed area of Harlem Dr. Wittenberg and his staff undertook to provide enabling leadership for the improvement of living conditions. The filth and degradation the people endure there (many of them Porto Ricans, many Negro, and some of Irish descent) make passages in Dickens seem like some of the cheerier sections of Harold Bell Wright. Among the aggravations endured by the tenement dwellers in the worst buildings is to have their sleeping children's fingers gnawed by rats. Owned by a horde of petty landlords, the buildings are in foul repair, with many ceilings falling or about to fall, toilets out of order, boilers busted.
In these buildings live persons of the lowest income group, lingering and unassimilated national minorities, beaten down by society and by the grim and unceasing necessity of earning bread from day to day. They represent in concentrated form the impotence of man in modern industrial civilization. Only among a few, and then unaccountably, could there be found any feeling that the individual counts or that he has any power to remedy the lot oŁ his generation.
Now the customary procedure of the do-gooder under such miserable circumstances would be to expose conditions, to go to the newspapers or the local politicians and vehemently demand that matters be straightened out but fast. This is the American way, and it may be added that it leaves almost entirely untouched the technique of democratic action. The point is not merely to clean up conditions but to enable the people concerned to take some responsibility.
This is the approach Wittenberg and his staff made. Knowing that persons in such an area would not be likely to come to a hall but might come to a store, they set up head quarters for their block committees in an empty store, where people could out of habit drift in off the streets. Through the committees representing the various blocks the staff of the Neighborhood Center began gradually to discover the nasty facts. And they discovered, too; that some of the people, in spite of being deprived of incentives for citizenship, were interested in working toward betterment. There was no attempt made to control the morals of those who made up the committees. But the committees knew first-hand what conditions were like and they commenced, under their new role, to feel some dignity.
As interest grew Dr. Wittenberg and his staff presented the committees with the regulations of the New York building code. Then it was suggested that the committees check the re quirements of the code against conditions in their blocks. Fair warning was given that this would be a tough assignment. Some people would probably refuse to co-operate and might set dogs on those making the survey. A good many would not care about improvements. One woman had already said that if her ceiling fell she hoped she would be under it. But in spite of the time required and the problems in the way, the committees went forward with the test. In one block there were found to be 761 separate and distinct violations of the building code.
The results were placed before the committees for the five blocks. It was next suggested that a delegation call upon the New York housing commission. The possible interview with
68	The Method of Democracy
the commissioner was acted out in advance, questions antici- pated and answers made ready. Then Wittenberg got the commissioner of housing on the phone and let the woman who was to be chairman of the delegation do the talking. She made an appointment with the commissioner for her delegation to go in a body to see the official.
It took several visits to City Hall before there was more than a twitch of official action. Then after one of the sessions the chairman of the delegation returned home to find a car penter on her stoop. She told him to leave, not to stop up her rat holes. She liked those rat holes, she said. And she knew the law well enough to know that she could keep the man off the premises. Immediately afterward she reported the inci. dent to the committees for the blocks. She explained that she was not going to let the landlord slip in and make repairs ahead of the oncoming inspection.
Results of the experiment are not yet assessed. After two and a half years, the staff is now making a report of the work the citizens, under enabling leadership rather than cheer leading, have accomplished. The concrete gains will appear discouraging to those who worship results instead of method. The people in the blocks covered have little or no time for civic endeavor. Only a few of them have taken any interest. The tenements have been improved but they are still not fit habita- tions and the people who occupy them still live in economic uncertainty and under the pall of futility which hangs over great stretches of our cities. But the fact remains that whatever has been achieved has come from the efforts of the people acting in concert and not from the gyrations of a rambunctious leader.
The Method of Democracy	69
Adopting unconsciously the mannerisms of industrialism, we are constantly seeking spectacular results-in reform as well as in production. In doing this we lose sight of the importance of processes that have value per se. We are, for example, in continuous danger of mistaking the fruits of benevolence for the evidence of democratic progress, of supposing that the general lot of man can best be improved by persuading management to be kind and generous or by helping top-notch reformers to spread their dreams upon the statute books. The flamboyant talk of free enterprise and the fatuous hope for a planned society both alike spring from this misunderstanding.
There is no gainsaying the blessings of benevolence; and the benefits of much social legislation are plain. But all attempts to reshape society from the topside--by decree, by superior wisdom, or by generosity-overlook certain simple truths. The chief of these is that it is not civilized treatment that men want most, but the right to have some say in the kind of treatment they get. A liberal friend of mine in Leeds, England, once quoted a workingman's reaction to certain social reforms which his professional benefactors assured him would be of great value for him. "But," protested the workingman, "I don't want to be done good to at!"
Most talk of incentives for workers still turns upon the inducements management can think up to offer, and the workers by and large are seldom consulted, save through union repre sentatives (actually a subdivision of the managerial hierarchy) or through such patronizing devices as the suggestion box. Nor is the tendency to look upon workers as so many chemical elements or mathematical abstractions confined to American
70	The Method of Democracy
capitalism. Under a socialist government in Great Britain the production of coal is of crucial importance and the maximum attention has been given the matter in the press and in the government. Talk is rife about better machinery, fuller rations, shorter hours, higher pay. Yet no one has seriously suggested asking the miners themselves what would make them mine more coal. They are assured that under nationalization they now own the mines, but, as one observer has stated it, they haven't yet been made to /eel that they own them.
Under the murk of old methods, however, evidence is growing that the worker, like the citizen, will do his best only if he achieves some sense of personal and group responsibility. In not a few cases the discovery is made by accident and it always meets with surprise. One of the most revealing instances on record is cited by Peter F. Drucker."
Drucker tells of visiting during the war two plants snaking identical airplane parts. They were located in two mid. western cities, one of which he calls Indianapolis and the other Dayton, though neither city is the actual location of the incidents described. The plant at Indianapolis was spic and span and highly managed. Conditions were ideal for the workers. The building itself was new and the operation had been skillfully set up, so that every movement contributed to the efficiency of the thing as a whole. The foremen were on their toes; they had taught the workers well, and each person knew what he was supposed to do.
By contrast the plant at Dayton was ramshackle. Ar. rangements left a good deal to be desired for the workers'
Peter F. Drucker. "Why Men Strike." Harper's Magazine, November, 1946.
The Method of Democracy	71
comfort. The place was actually somewhat disorderly in appearance, and when Drucker visited the plant the officials kept apologizing for what they considered a lack of neatness and modernity. What's more, the Dayton plant had been opened in a hurry and there had not been time to program the whole operation. The result was a degree of confusion, to put it mildly.
But the odd part of it was that production under ideal conditions in Indianapolis was only one-sixth of what it was in Dayton!
By all the theories of business enterprise, this was unaccountable. Furthermore, labor troubles dogged the job at Indianapolis. There were quickie strikes, higher turnover, more discontent, flare-ups, and a prevailing sullenness. At Dayton there was hardly any trouble at all.
A visit to the two plants pointed up the differences and finally led to the explanation. In Indianapolis, every worker was intent upon doing precisely as he had been instructed. No one looked up as the visitors passed: all the workers were too busy being efficient to allow interruptions. Workers did not smile or speak. They stayed with their machines. At Dayton the workers talked or sang at their jobs. They felt free to take a normally curious interest in persons touring the shops, and in many cases they insisted upon showing the visitors how they did their part of the work. No two aisles in the Dayton plant did the job the same way. Each worker had his own- peculiarities of movement, and the work was shifted around, so that for a while one worker did a certain movement and then exchanged places with another.
What had happened, of course, was that the Indianapo-

72	The Method of Democracy
lis plant had been set up on theory and it was supposed to proceed according to Hoyle. The Dayton plant was hastily assembled and the management, through necessity and not through choice, as Drucker stresses, had left a good many of the production problems up to the foremen and the men., The result was that the men at Dayton got a feeling of teamwork and responsible action. It was their enterprise, not merely one that had been foisted upon them by superior mortals who knew how the workers ought to behave if only they were treated kindly.
So startling and convincing was the difference in terms of the end result that the principle of co-operative responsibility had to be recognized and obeyed. It was not until the
methods of the Dayton plant were gradually transferred to Indianapolis that production there was raised to the Dayton level and the labor troubles declined.
The pity of it is that such demonstrations of the soundness of democratic effort are not seen in their wider context. Where tangibles like industrial output are at stake, we are
willing to take the pains to get a laboratory picture of human nature in action. Hence some of the most valuable experimental study of the way individuals and groups feel has been made in the field of business. And generally the results are buried in business files or made the subject of intellectual analysis by professors who write for the cognoscenti. Their illustrative significance for the whole problem of society is lost sight of entirely.
This is true of the classic studies that have been carried on for almost twenty years in the Hawthorne plant of the
The Method of Democracy	73
Western Electric Company, near Chicago. The plant, which employs some 30,000 persons in peace times, makes the equipment for the Bell Telephone System. It did the usual number of favors for its employees, even in the 1920's. Yet with all its benevolence, it had labor tension and, as early as 1924, began a systematic analysis of factors that entered into the efficiency and happiness of the worker.
The first attempt was to study the effect of lighting on output. Two groups of workers were chosen. One was the control group., which worked under the regular lighting of the plant. The other was the test group, which was given more light. The group with more light increased its output, as good specimens should. But the control group, without any extra light, increased its output too!
Here emerged the point which required years to confirm. The control group was in on an experiment. They had been singled out, were given a purpose. They were alerted by circumstances to feel a part of the vast establishment in which they had been nonentities before.
The investigators, however, went patiently on with their tests. A group of six girls was taken as a test group to find what changes in working conditions might be indicated for the Plant as a whole. The girls formed a team to assemble telephone relays-a complicated mechanism with forty separate parts. Their regular output was carefully measured, then conditions changed from time to time. During their regular work each girl turned out about 2400 relays a week.
There followed a series of test periods four to twelve months in length. Pauses for rest were introduced into the day's routine. The pauses were short but the response was an
74
increased output. In another period rest pauses were increased to ten minutes in length, and production rose again. Later hot snacks, provided by the company, were served during one of the pauses that refreshed. Production went up still further. Then the girls were dismissed at 4:30 instead of 5:00. The output rose, but when they were in a later test period dismissed at 4:00 instead of 4:30, there was no rise in the number of relays they produced. Then the closing time was changed back to 5:00and production went up sharply.
By now the research staff conducting the were completely buffaloed. Obviously something was at work, steadily- pushing production up. Stuart Chase calls it "the mysterious factor X." For next the girls were given Saturdays off for a period of twelve successive weeks, but the further generous concession on the part of
fluenced production not a whit.
Then suddenly every improvement made
the company in.
working
conditions over a period of a year and a half was taken away. What happened when the team had to return to its original position-with no special privileges, no hot lunches provided by a fatherly company, no pauses for rest, no Saturdays off? Production leaped to an all-time high of 3000 relays a week per girl!
The industrialists (at least those I have talked with) dismiss as freakish the results achieved by a team that defied all the rules of motive. The team performed as it did because it was engaged in a contest, an experiment, and such startling benefits would not accrue under normal industrial arrangements. But one who studies the Hawthorne experiments in the light of Elton Mayo's remarkable book, The Social Problems of
The Method of Democracy
The Method of Democracy	75
an Industrial Civilization, will see in the work done a broad significance for the whole of our society.
Under what Mayo calls "the rabble hypothesis"-the assumption that society- is made up of a pack of snarling and competitive individuals each after his own good-we have been consistently overlooking since the industrial revolution the fact that the individual operates best in small, functional, and self-respecting groups. Certainly a primary effort in all our attempts to meet the crisis of modern society should be in the direction of creating and maintaining healthy and co-operative group life. Experiments such as those at the Hawthorne plant should not be looked upon merely as studies in "incentive." They hold the clue to the larger mystery-the mystery of how men and women in a wholly impersonalized industrial order can be given through group participation a consciousness that they make a difference.
From scattered and isolated experiments in industry, social work, even in polities, we have at hand the materials by which to understand democracy as a process. There is no longer any excuse for not recognizing democracy when we see it. But while we applaud incidental democracy, we go blandly on in our mediaeval way, never thinking to apply the obvious lessons of group action to the business of running our communities or our schools, or to the larger and knottier issues of national life. In the face of the proven advantages of democracy as a technique, we prefer government by neglect.
One reason for our dismal failure to extend and apply the little that we know is that we have not yet begun to think seriously about democracy as a system. We start the thinking
76	The Method of Democracy
we do with some other interest or preoccupation: leadership training, increased production, the publication of a book; managerial efficiency, personal prestige, preconceived reforms, proper indoctrination, and the mere physical expansion of any enterprise in which we happen to be engaged.
Thus we tend to leave life very much as is, and we consider democracy only occasionally and only as it contributes to the goals we have hitherto set up as worthy.
We can go on ignoring democracy and quietly develop. ing the tyrannies we pretend to despise. We can seek to make our countries strong and our companies efficient, tidy in ad ministration and impregnable in war. But all the while we shall be bottling up energies which; if released, might change the dismal course of history.
If we are to leave untouched the present methods of industrialized nationalism, with cordons and blocs and counterblocs and barriers separating people into tight principalities, it is a question of when, not how, we shall be destroyed. The one real chance before us lies in the introduction of some new and fissurable element into a world situation the outcome of which is now monotonously easy to foretell.
Where We Can Beg in
* A study of instances of authentic democracy will loosen our minds and perhaps get us out of the pinhead orbits in which we usually move, but the essential is for us to hit upon some agreed form of action whereby the vast commonalty of us can test out the democratic idea for ourselves. Following hard upon the need for an understanding of democracy is the need for laboratory work, for experiments which we can conduct within the framework of our daily lives.
One form of democracy which appears most likely to attract us is the discussion group. This is the heart of the democratic process. Democracy must not end with the discus sion group, but it cannot begin anywhere else. The full interchange of views among citizens in small groups on subjects in which their common interests are involved is the very essence of the matter.
77
78	Where We Can Begin
Decisions on questions relating to wages, hours, prices, working conditions, to taxation, education, public improve- ments, to tariffs, international loans, problems of world gov. ernment, or to any other important affair, should, under no circumstances, save in the direct emergency, be formulated until all those concerned have had a chance to talk these questions over and express their views. It is not enough that the mass of men involved in an undertaking should ratify decisions handed down by executives at the top claiming to represent their interests. The aid of all the people all the time should be sought in creating decisions ultimately made at the. top.
This is the method of democracy at its minimum. And to put it into effect there is no substitute for the small discus. sion group. Yet the sad part of it is that we have not developed any widespread or useful discussion form since the days of the cracker barrel. If anything, we have lost ground in the field of group conversation-while we perfected the Gatling gun, dual highways, technicolor, neon lights, television, permanent ice cubes, car horns that play "God Bless America"; while we improved the airplane, worked out the proximity fuse, and found our drunken way to the atom bomb.
With all our modern facilities we proceed with what we are pleased to call discussion entirely along the old authoritarian lines. We adore lectures and debates and forensic fisti cuffs. We attend forums and panels, worshipping in the presence of all the paraphernalia of indoctrination. E. C. Lindeman describes our travesty of discussion as follows:
Most ordinary debating proceeds from the "fight" symbol and consequently encourages contentiousness. Persons representing various viewpoints are brought together, not with the expecta
Where We Can Begin	79
tion that these will be resolved but, on the contrary, in the hope that these differences will be intensified and that the audience will witness a good "show"-which means a conflict, war.
Often, when there is no actual debate from the platform, the chairman will address the audience in this fashion: "Well, our speaker has had his opportunity to express his point of view on this important subject. Now, it's your chance and I hope you'll go after him!" Here again is the invitation to quarrel. So prevalent has the fight-symbol become in our time that the art of conversa. Eon has almost disappeared. The practiced art of disagreement, which may have started as a mere attention-getting device, finally becomes a general habit. More and more people go about repeating, "I don't agree with you," when of course they should be saying, "I have not yet understood you." Forums, committee meetings, discussion groups, sociable gatherings, all seem to become invitations for a quarrel, for talking without communication. And, the seriousness of this development is indicated by the fact that it is particularly intellectuals who thus defeat the communicating process, which must be taken as a sign that education itself fosters this habit.
Even if we are not engrossed in controversy, we remain essentially passive. Too often the hubbub of adult education resembles a style show in which we watch mannequins of po litical theory parading the latest fad of opinion. Any chance of contact, of communication, is lacking. We are merely spectators called in to be edified in an entertaining way.
All the new machine-made methods of public enlightenment--films, visual aids, synchrophones, radio, records, graphs, and the rest-simply add to the Niagara of what is incessantly poured down upon us from above. The emphasis is upon the production of films, not upon their use. The clever and easy aid to superficial instruction gets the call, and the brains of the commercial world are engaged to make matters palatable to