6 Living in Revolution
freedom won, just as we boasted of making men in New
England by redeeming some of the rockiest farm land in the
world.
Admitting this, we must with equal firmness insist that,
in these impersonal relations, something vital is missing
without which they tend to destroy personality and real
community. What is needed is a constant recognition of the
other aspect of our double relation. People who have been
objects may, in a moment, be turned into persons—and vice
versa.
The combination was concretely illustrated for me re-
cently on a taxicab journey across the city of New York.
The ride began in complete silence, as if the driver were a
mere part of the driving wheel, and I were a load of coal
to be delivered at some cellar window. When conversation
at last broke the silence, it appeared that he had a son in
the country’s service; which prompted me to remark that I
had two sons in the navy. Looking at me in his mirror the
driver said, “You aren’t old enough to have sons like that.”
I asked him how old he thought I was, and he replied, “You
aren’t a day over forty-five.” I could have hugged the man.
Everything was different after we had met as persons, even
while he went on mechanically driving the car (thank God)
and I continued to be a paying load, for which no doubt he
also thanked God.
There we were on opposite sides of the class struggle. He
was a member of a labor union and I was a member of the
bourgeoisie subsisting on endowed funds in a private uni-
versity. But we achieved a personal relationship which
would have made it much easier to settle a strike. That
modicum of personal contact in the midst of our impersonal
relations did not abolish the impersonal necessities of trans-
portation, but transformed them into a new possibility.
★