not mind confiding to them where I have seen some.
One is always coming upon bits or dots of democracy in America. It is
these bits or dots of rough more or less unfinished democracy we have in
America which make most of us believe in the people of this country.
Everybody in America knows of them.
There are at least forty-four dots of democracy--little marked-off
places--what might be called safety zones (everybody knows of them), even
in New York. There are usually white globes in front of them, and a short
name written in long plain slanting white letters across a huge piece of
glass.
If anybody wants to see just what democracy is like in business all he
has to do is to go into the nearest Childs restaurant, order some
griddle-cakes, sit down and eat and think. All he really needs to do is
to study the menu, but of course a menu is more thoroughly studied by
eating some of it.
One soon finds that a menu may be a little modest every-day magna charta
of democracy or it may not.
What a menu has long been for in the typical restaurant is to find a way
of browbeating and bewildering a customer into spending more money for
his luncheon than he intends to when he comes in.
Rows of grieved and vaguely disturbed people can be seen in restaurants
every day--being mowed down by menus.
In a Childs restaurant business success is based on turning the whole
idea of a menu around, and instead of the customer's coming in and
studying the menu, the menu studies him.
The consumer in a Childs restaurant is there to economize and the
restaurant is there to help him do it, the whole menu being constructed
by experts in foods for the express purpose of telling the customer more
than he knows about his food and his money, persuading him and
practically tricking him into spending less money on his luncheon than he
intends to.
A business may be said to be a big vital and winning business in any line
in proportion as one sees the consumers in it--practically running
it--running it in spirit. A democratic business is one which is being run
as the consumers would run it if they knew how.
A business may be said to be a democratic business in proportion as one
sees experts in it expressing crowds. One sees great crowds going to and
fro and up and down in it acting for all practical purposes like
geniuses, like skilled angels doing every day offhand inspired and
inspiring difficult adventurous things as a matter of course--li
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