lawyer is, is that he is an expert in
conducting people's fights for them.

My idea is that the whole thing should be turned around and that in the
special state the world is in just now, a new profession should at once
be started--a profession in which any man who went into it, would be
occupied in being a lawyer backwards.

(I think this would be perhaps the best way to put it because to most
people, being a lawyer backwards is inspiring to think of--because
everybody would see--a whole nation would see all in one unanimous
minute, just what the new profession I have in mind would be like.)

Everybody knows about lawyers. They are always being advertised by the
things they do and get the rest of us to do. The most conspicuous
ad.--their huge national international display ad. just now of what a
lawyer is like--of just how nice being a lawyer backwards would be, is
the United States Senate.

It would be the most alluring spectacle we could have in America to most
people, if we could have the spectacle in our country of two or three
hundred thousand men being lawyers backwards--two or three hundred
thousand men stationed strategically in ten thousand cities, as experts
everybody went to, to keep them out of fights.

You see a man's sign up over his door and you go in and pay him a fee, or
pay him so much a year for making you love your enemies. And of course he
will change your enemies some for you in spots so that you can put it
over. Then by putting in a little touch here and there on you perhaps, it
is not impossible he will make your enemies love you.

My idea is that this idea should be presented to people not for what it
is worth--not as a high moral idea or as a spiritual luxury but as a
plain practical every day convenience in our world as it is, for getting
the things done one wants to do, and for getting what one wants.

If I were hiring a man to help me get what I want out of other people and
if I had my choice between hiring a man who is a skilled expert in making
people understand me and hiring a man who is a skilled expert in making
people afraid of me, it would not take me long to say which would be the
more practical thing for me to do.

If I could go down town and engage a man at so much a year who would be
an expert in making me understand myself and in making me make fun of
myself, so that I could get myself into fairly good shape for other
people to understand, it would be still more practic