lieve in fighting on the one hand nor in an anaemic and
temporary thing like arbitration on the other. All that men really do in
arbitration is to hire their listening done for them by other people.
Listening which men were created to do themselves, which is done for them
by others, only lasts a minute.
The three plain spiritual brutal facts that capital and labor have to
reckon with and conform to in dealing with human nature to-day are these:
Disputes can not be fought out--not even by the people themselves.
Disputes can not be arbitrated out by other people for them.
All other people are for in a fight is to compel the fighters to listen
to each other.
Doing anything less than compelling the fighters to listen to each other,
is visionary, cowardly, temporary and impracticable.
The moment people stop fighting, begin listening to each other and begin
feeling listened to, nobody can hire them to organize to fight each
other. They organize to listen to each other.
What the Air Line League is for in every nation, in every city, town and
village where a branch is set up, is to organize people to listen to each
other.
I do not think any one is going to feel obliged to feel afraid of the
power of a League, that puts daily before its own face, before
everybody's face--before every letter it writes, and before everything it
does, across its letter-head, this chapter in nine words.
PEOPLE FIGHT BECAUSE THEY CANNOT GET EACH OTHER'S ATTENTION.
XVIII
HOW THE NATIONAL LISTENING MACHINE WILL WORK
Nine people out of ten who do wrong in business, do it because they feel
that if they do not do the wrong to some one else, some one else will do
the wrong to them. In the last analysis, some way of bringing about
conscription for universal service in business is the only way in which
we can be assured that the criminals and exploiters in any particular
line of industry will not, at least temporarily, control and ruin the
business. What the Air Line League would do practically would be to
organize American business-men into a kind of "I Won't If You Won't"
Club. A very large majority of men daily see that certain things ought
not to be done. It is not right-mindedness in people that is needed so
much as the organization of the right-mindedness so that those who are
wrong can be crowded out. My idea of the general policy of the Air Line
League would be to bring the public to cooeperate with the best men in
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