ntion the most poignantly, and with the least
trouble to us and to themselves?

IX

TECHNIQUE FOR LABOR IN GETTING ITS WAY

The best people to advertise a truth are the people the truth looks
prominent on--the people from whom nobody expects it.

In my subconscious or automatic self the decision has apparently been
made and handed up to me, that there are certain books, I do not need to
read.

My attention has never been really got as yet, to the importance of my
reading one of Harold Bell Wright's novels. But if I heard to-morrow
morning that Henry Cabot Lodge and President Wilson during the last few
peaceful months had both read through Harold Bell Wright's last novel, I
would read it before I went to bed.

Or Judge Gary and Mr. Gompers. Any common experience which I heard in the
last few weeks Judge Gary and Mr. Gompers had had, a novel by Harold Bell
Wright or anything--I would look into, a whole nation would look into
it--the moment they heard of it--at once.

The first thing to do in making a start for new brain tracks for America
is to pick out persons and brain tracks that set each other off.

Even an idea nobody would care about one way or the other becomes
suddenly and nationally interesting to us when we find people we would
not think would believe it, are believing it hard and trying to get us to
believe it.

Suppose for instance that next Fourth of July (I pick out this day for
what I want to have happen because I have so longed for years to have
something strong and sincere said or done on it that would really
celebrate it)--suppose for instance that next Fourth of July, beginning
early in the morning all the Labor leaders of America from Maine to
California, acting as one man broke away--just took one day off, from
doing the old humdrum advertising everybody expects from them--suppose
they proceeded to do something that would attract attention--something
that would interest their friends and disappoint their enemies--just for
twenty-four hours? Suppose just for one day all the Labor leaders instead
of going about advertising to themselves and to everybody the bad
employers and how bad employers are in this country would devote the
Fourth of July to advertising a few good ones?

Then suppose they follow it up--that Labor do something with initiative
in it--the initiative its enemies say it cannot have, something
unexpected and original, true and sensationally fair, something that
would