f being
identified with him and working with him as partners, of sharing in the
direction of the business, of sharing in the profits, and cooeperating
all day, every day, with him and the other partners, to make the
business a success.

He did not propose to be locked up in a business, if he could help it,
with men who did not feel identified with him, who were not his
partners, or who did not want to be.

He thought it was not good business to engage five thousand men and pay
them deliberately so much a day to fight his business on the inside of
the works. Being obliged to do his business as a fight against people
who helped him all the time, watching and outwitting them as if he were
dealing with five thousand intelligent gorillas instead of with fellow
human beings, did not interest him.

He did not believe that the men themselves, in spite of the way they
talked, when they came to think of it, really enjoyed being intelligent
gorillas, any more than he did.

The Trades Unions passed a resolution that it was safer for the men in
dealing with Sir George Livesey to keep on being gorillas.

Sir George Livesey proposed that they should all try being fellow human
beings and being in partnership for a little while and see how it
worked.

The Trades Unions were afraid to let them try. Even if it worked very
well, and if it turned out that being men was safer, in this one
particular case, than being gorillas, it would set a bad example, the
Trades Unions thought. They took the ground that it was safer to have
all men treated alike, whether they were gorillas or not.

They instructed the men to strike. The South Metropolitan Gas Company
was almost closed up, but it did not yield.

Sir George Livesey took the ground that if the Trades Unions believed
that his men were not good enough for him, and that he was not good
enough for his men, he would wait until they did.

The bronze statue of Sir George Livesey that the men have raised, and
that thousands of men go by every day, day after day, and look up to at
their work, was raised to a man who had stood out against his workmen
for weeks to prove that they were as good as he was, and could be
trusted to be loyal to him, and that he was as good as they were, and
that he could be trusted to be loyal to them.

He had the courage to insist on being, whether anybody wanted it for the
moment or not, a new kind and new size of man. He preferred being
allowed to be a new kin