estors and with God.
In nine hundred and ninety-nine out of a thousand things a man needs to
have to keep these engagements--things he has to have if he is alive at
all, he is a consumer.
What the new League will say to the consumer is something like this:
"In nine hundred and ninety-nine things out of a thousand you have to
have to live, the Air Line League is organized to stand by you, express
you and get the attention of everybody to what you want; and in the one
thing you make for everybody it is going to express everybody to you and
get your attention to what everybody wants of you."
This would seem to most of us to be fair all around.
When one thinks of it, why should one-thousandth part of what a man has
and has to have, in order to live his life--the part he makes himself--be
seen everywhere in this world in every man's life holding up and
bullying, making him pay high prices for, the other nine hundred and
ninety-nine thousandths?
Let the nine hundred and ninety-nine thousandths of a man's life take
possession of the one thousandth part of him. Then we will have a
civilization.
Or at least the nine hundred and ninety-nine thousandths of him will
persuade the one thousandth of him to cooeperate.
We have had autocracy of capital because on the whole in the world until
machinery came in, capital kept close enough to labor and to the consumer
to know what the workmen and the people wanted.
Now that Capital has lost its grip, Labor announces that it is going to
be after this war the autocrat, and represent capital and the consumer.
The Air Line League is here to ask, Why should not the consumer represent
himself?
Capital has tried and failed and has said, "Let the public be damned."
Now Labor has tried and failed, and is saying hoarsely in a thousand
cities, "Let the public be damned."
What the Air Line League is for is to advertise the people together, and
let the consumers represent themselves.
What we have been fighting for essentially in this war is the control of
the consumers in the world in all nations.
When we speak of democracy and of organizing the will of the people, what
we really mean is organizing the will of the consumers.
Organizing the will of the consumers is not a holdup. A holdup by all the
people of all the people for all the people is Liberty.
XV
SAMPLE DEMOCRACIES
I do not want to delay or bother people with my definition of democracy,
but I do
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