have let the
machines mow down their souls? The first thing I have come to ask of a
man, if he is to be at the head of a machine--whether it is a machine
called a factory, or a machine called a Government or a city, or a
machine called a nation--is, _Is he tired?_ I have cast my lot once for
all--and as it seems to me, too, the lot of the world--with those men
who are rested, with the surplus men, the men who want to work more not
less, who are still and gentle and strong in their hearts, steady in
their imaginations, great men--men who are not driven to being
self-centred or driven to being class-centred, who can be world-centred
and inspired.

* * * * *

When one has made this decision, that one will work for a world in
control of men who are strong, one suddenly is brought face to face with
a fact in our machine civilization which probably is quite new, and
which the spirit of man has never had to face in any age before.

For the first time in the history of the world, machinery has made it
possible for the world to get into the hands of the weak.

The Gun began it--the gun in a coward's hands may side with the weak,
and the machine in the hands of the weak may temporarily give the world
a list or a trend, and leave it leaning on the wrong side.

The Trust, for instance, which is really an extremely valuable
invention, and perhaps, on the whole, the most important machine of
modern times when it is used to defend the rights of the people, is a
very different thing when it is pointed at them. We have to-day, not
unnaturally, the spectacle of perhaps nine people out of ten getting up
and saying in chorus all through the world that Trusts ought to be
abolished; and yet it cannot honestly be said that there is really
anything about the trust-machine--any more than any other machine--that
is inherently wicked, or mechanical and heartless. Our real objection to
the trust-machines is not to the machines themselves, but to the fact
that they are, or happen to be (judging each Trust by itself), in the
hands of the weak and of the tired--of men, that is, who have no spirit,
no imagination about people; mechanical-minded men, who, at least in the
past, have taken the easiest and laziest course in business--that of
making all the money they can.

The moment we see the Trusts in the hands of the strong men, the men who
are unwilling to slump back into mere money-making, and who face daily
wit