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.
The Dying Boss
By Lincoln Steffens
(American writer upon social problems, born 1866. A story of the
political leader of a corrupt city, who lies upon his death-bed, and
has asked to have the meaning of his own career made plain to him)
"What kind of a kid were you, Boss?" I began.
"Pretty tough, I guess," he answered.
"Born here?"
"Yes; in the Third Ward."
"Tough then as it is now?"
"Tougher," he said.
"Produces toughness the way Kansas produces corn," I remarked. "Father?" I asked.
"Kept a saloon; a driver before that."
"Mother a girl of the ward?"
"Yes," he said. "She was brought up there; but she came to this country with her father from England, as a baby."
