n with
skyscraper men. He shall interpret men that belong with skyscrapers.

And as he does so, I shall watch the people answer him, now with a glad
and mighty silence and now with a great solemn shout.

The skyscrapers are their skyscrapers.

The courage, the reaching-up, the steadfastness that is in them is in
the hearts of the people.

If the President does not know us yet in America, does not know McAdoo
as a representative American, we will thunder on the doors of the White
House until he does.

My impression is he would be out in the yard by the gate asking us to
come in.

We are America. We are expressing our joy in the world, our faith in
God, and our love of the sun and the wind in the hearts of our people.

In America the free air breathes about us, and daily the great sun
climbs our hillsides, swings daily past our work. There are ninety
million men with this sun and this wind woven into their bodies, into
their souls. They stand with us.

The skyscrapers stand with us.

All singing stands with us.

Ah, I have waked in the dawn and in the sun and the wind have I seen
them!

That sun and that wind, I say before God, are America! They are the
American temperament.

I will have laws for free men, laws with the sun and the wind in them!

I have waked in the dawn and my heart has been glad with the iron and
poetry in the skyscrapers.

I will have laws for men and for American men, laws with iron and poetry
in them!

The way for a government to get the poetry in is to say "Yes" to
somebody.

The way for a government to get the iron in is not by saying "No." It is
not American in a government to keep saying "No." The best way for our
government in America to say "No" to a man, is to let him stand by and
watch us saying "Yes" to some one else.

Then he will ask why.

Then he will stand face to face with America.

CHAPTER XI

NEWS-BOOKS

The most practical thing that could happen now in the economic world in
America would be a sudden, a great national, contemporary literature.

America, unlike England, has no recognized cultured class, and has no
aristocracy, so called, with which to keep mere rich men suitably
miserable--at least a little humble and wistful. Our greatest need for a
long time has been some big serene, easy way, without half trying, of
snubbing rich men in America. All these overgrown, naughty fellows one
sees everywhere like street boys on the corners or on the c