THE MAN WHO PULLS THE WORLD TOGETHER
The typical mighty man or man of valour in our modern life is the
Organizer or Artist.
If a man has succeeded in being a great organizer, it is because he has
succeeded in organizing himself.
A man who has organized himself is a man who has built a personality.
The main fact about a man who has succeeded in being an organized man or
personality is, that he has ordered himself around.
Naturally, when other people have to be ordered around, being
full-head-on in the habit of ordering, even ordering himself, the
hardest feat of all, he is the man who has to be picked out to order
other people. As a rule the man who orders himself around successfully,
who makes his whole nature or all parts of himself work together, does
it because he takes pains to find out who he is and what he is like. If
he orders other men successfully and makes them work together it is
because he knows what they are like.
A man knows what other people are like and bow they feel by having times
of being a little like them and by being a big, latent all-possible,
all-round kind of man.
Leadership follows.
Modern business consists in getting Inventors' minds and Hewers' minds
to work together. The ruler of modern business is the man who by
experience or imagination is half an Inventor himself, and half a Hewer
himself. He knows how inventing feels and how hewing feels.
He has a southern exposure toward Hewers and makes Hewers feel
identified with him. He has what might be called an eastern exposure
toward men of genius, understands the inventive temperament, has the
kind of personality that evokes inventiveness in others.
Incidentally he has what might be called a northern exposure which keeps
him scientific, cool, and close to the spirit of facts.
And there has to be something very like a western exposure in him too, a
touch of the homely seer, a habit of having reflections and afterglows,
a sense of principles, and of the philosophy of men and things.
If I were to try to sum up all these qualities in a man and call it by
one name, I would call it Glorified-commonsense.
If I were asked to define Glorified-commonsense I would say it is a
glory which works. It belongs to the man who has a vision or coinage for
others because he sees them as they are, and sees how the glory buried
in them (_i.e._, the inspiration or source of hard work in them) can be
got out.
Everywhere that the Artist in business, or Organizer, with his Inventors
on one side of him and his Hewers on the other, can be seen to-day
competing with the man who has the mere millionaire or owning type of
mind, he is crowding him from the market.
It is because he understands how Inventors and Hewers feel and what they
think and when he turns on Inventors he makes them invent and when he
turns on Hewers he makes them hew.
The Hewer often thinks because he is rich or because he owns a business,
that he can take the place of the artist, but he can be seen every day
in every business around us, being passed relentlessly out of power
because he cannot make his Inventors invent and cannot make his Hewers
hew as well as some other man. The moment his Inventors and Hewers think
of him, hear about him, or have any dealing with him--with the mere
millionaire, the mere owner kind of person, his Inventors invent as
little as they can, and his Hewers hew as softly as they dare.
This is called the Modern Industrial Problem.
And no man but the artist, the man with the inventing and the hewing
spirit both in him, who daily puts the inventing spirit and the hewing
spirit together in himself, can get it together in others.
Only the man who has kept and saved both the inventing and hewing spirit
in himself can save it in others--can be a saviour or artist.