CROWDS AND HEROES - CHAPTER XVIII
THE MAN WHO PULLS THE WORLD TOGETHER
The typical mighty man or man of valour in our modern
life is the
Organizer or Artist.
If a man has succeeded in being a
great organizer, it is because he has succeeded in
organizing himself.
A man who has organized himself is
a man who has built a personality. The main fact
about a man who has succeeded in being an organized
man or personality is, that he has ordered himself
around.
Naturally, when other people have
to be ordered around, being full-head-on in the habit
of ordering, even ordering himself, the hardest feat
of all, he is the man who has to be picked out to order
other people. As a rule the man who orders himself
around successfully, who makes his whole nature or
all parts of himself work together, does it because
he takes pains to find out who he is and what he is
like. If he orders other men successfully and
makes them work together it is because he knows what
they are like.
A man knows what other people are
like and bow they feel by having times of being a
little like them and by being a big, latent all-possible,
all-round kind of man.
Leadership follows.
Modern business consists in getting
Inventors’ minds and Hewers’ minds to
work together. The ruler of modern business is
the man who by experience or imagination is half an
Inventor himself, and half a Hewer himself. He
knows how inventing feels and how hewing feels.
He has a southern exposure toward
Hewers and makes Hewers feel identified with him.
He has what might be called an eastern exposure toward
men of genius, understands the inventive temperament,
has the kind of personality that evokes inventiveness
in others.
Incidentally he has what might be
called a northern exposure which keeps him scientific,
cool, and close to the spirit of facts.
And there has to be something very
like a western exposure in him too, a touch of the
homely seer, a habit of having reflections and afterglows,
a sense of principles, and of the philosophy of men
and things.
If I were to try to sum up all these
qualities in a man and call it by one name, I would
call it Glorified-commonsense.
If I were asked to define Glorified-commonsense
I would say it is a glory which works. It belongs
to the man who has a vision or coinage for others
because he sees them as they are, and sees how the
glory buried in them (i.e., the inspiration
or source of hard work in them) can be got out.
Everywhere that the Artist in business,
or Organizer, with his Inventors on one side of him
and his Hewers on the other, can be seen to-day competing
with the man who has the mere millionaire or owning
type of mind, he is crowding him from the market.
It is because he understands how Inventors
and Hewers feel and what they think and when he turns
on Inventors he makes them invent and when he turns
on Hewers he makes them hew.
The Hewer often thinks because he
is rich or because he owns a business, that he can
take the place of the artist, but he can be seen every
day in every business around us, being passed relentlessly
out of power because he cannot make his Inventors
invent and cannot make his Hewers hew as well as some
other man. The moment his Inventors and Hewers
think of him, hear about him, or have any dealing
with him-with the mere millionaire, the
mere owner kind of person, his Inventors invent as
little as they can, and his Hewers hew as softly as
they dare.
This is called the Modern Industrial Problem.
And no man but the artist, the man
with the inventing and the hewing spirit both in him,
who daily puts the inventing spirit and the hewing
spirit together in himself, can get it together in
others.
Only the man who has kept and saved
both the inventing and hewing spirit in himself can
save it in others-can be a saviour or artist.