Suppose that with considerable advantages in the way of being generally invited to write about what interests me, instead of indulging in a kind of spray or spatter work of beneficial publicity--instead of getting off ideas at a nation with a nice elegant literary atomizer, I insist on making ideas do things and I plan on having my ideas done up solidly in ten solid men who will make the ideas look solid and feel catching?
Suppose inasmuch as in the present desperate crisis of underproduction, a man who dramatizes--makes alluring, dramatic and exciting the idea of increased production or superproducing, seems to the point--suppose I begin with W. J.?
If W. J. were dead, or were to die to-morrow, it would be convenient. In bearing upon our present national crisis it would be thoughtful and practical of W. J. to die.
If W. J.'s worst enemy were to push him off the top of the fortieth story of the Equitable Building to-morrow morning all I would have to do would be to write an article about him in some national weekly, _Saturday Evening Post_ or _Collier's_, which would be read by four million people.
But the _Saturday Evening Post_ or _Collier's_ has no use for W. J. until he is dead. It would like to have, of course, but it would not be fair to the business men who are paying ten thousand dollars a page to be advertised in it, for the _Saturday Evening Post_ to let any other man--any man who is not dead yet, be advertised in it.
This is the reason for the Look-Up Club, a national body--the gathering together of one hundred thousand men of vision to advertise W. J. to--who will then turn--the hundred thousand men of vision--and advertise him to everybody.
Then other men, strategic men like W. J.--men who are dramatizing other strategic ideas will be selected to follow W. J. for the one hundred thousand men of vision to advertise to a hundred million people.
By writing a book and having my publisher distribute through the bookstores a book, I would reach, at best, only one hundred thousand people, and I am proposing to reach a hundred million people--to organize a hundred thousand salesmen scattered in five thousand cities and reach with my book, the hearts and minds, the daily eight-hour-a-day working lives of a hundred million people.