It
is that out of the private notions of any group no common idea emerges
by itself. For the number of ways is limited in which a multitude of
people can act directly upon a situation beyond their reach. Some of
them can migrate, in one form or another, they can strike or boycott,
they can applaud or hiss. They can by these means occasionally resist
what they do not like, or coerce those who obstruct what they desire.
But by mass action nothing can be constructed, devised, negotiated, or
administered. A public as such, without an organized hierarchy around
which it can gather, may refuse to buy if the prices are too high, or
refuse to work if wages are too low. A trade union can by mass action
in a strike break an opposition so that the union officials can
negotiate an agreement. It may win, for example, the _right_ to
joint control. But it cannot exercise the right except through an
organization. A nation can clamor for war, but when it goes to war it
must put itself under orders from a general staff.
The limit of direct action is for all practical purposes the power to
say Yes or No on an issue presented to the mass. [Footnote: _Cf_.
James, _Some Problems of Philosophy_, p. 227. "But for most of
our emergencies, fractional solutions are impossible. Seldom can we
act fractionally." _Cf_. Lowell, _Public Opinion and Popular
Government_, pp. 91, 92.] For only in the very simplest cases does
an issue present itself in the same form spontaneously and
approximately at the same time to all the members of a public.
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