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Upton Sinclair, ed. (1878–1968). rn The Cry for Justice: An Anthology of the Literature of Social Protest. 1915.

Crowds

Gerald Stanley Lee

(Contemporary American author and lecturer, formerly a clergyman)

AS I have watched my fellow human beings, what I have come to want most of all in this world is the inspired employer—or what I have called the inspired millionaire or organizer; the man who can take the machines off the backs of the people, and take the machines out of their wits, and make the machines free their bodies and serve their souls.

If we ever have the inspired employer, he will have to be made by the social imagination of the people, by creating the spirit of expectation and challenge toward the rich among the masses of the people.…

Nothing is more visionary than trying to run a world without dreams, especially an economic world. It is because even bad dreams are better in this world than having no dreams at all that bad people so-called are so largely allowed to run it.

In the final and practical sense, the one factor in economics to be reckoned with is Desire.