The Human Drift

Lyrics

[Intro]
(a strop, a tap of steel on porcelain, a small bell)
Before the razor. Understand that. Before the razor there was a book.

[Verse 1]
Eighteen ninety-four, a travelling salesman writes a book,
and the book is not about business — the book is a manifesto.
He proposes that all industry on earth should merge as one,
a single People's Corporation, competition abolished,
everybody shareholders, nobody selling against anybody,
and the whole of North America housed in one enormous city.

[Chorus]
The Human Drift! That's the title! He meant every word!
He wanted money gone. He thought the market was a waste.
He called it duplication — a thousand men making one thing
that one good factory could make once, and better, and for all.
The Human Drift. Written by King Camp Gillette.
Seven years before the blade. Seven years before the face.

[Verse 2]
Then he invented a thing you throw away. That's the joke.
A blade too cheap to sharpen, made to be used and dropped,
and he gave away the handle so you'd have to buy the blades
forever, every week, at a price you'd never notice.
That's the model. He invented that. It runs the world today.
The man who thought waste was the enemy invented the disposable.

[Chorus]

[Bridge]
And his face — his actual face, moustache and collar and all —
went onto every package, billions of them, everywhere,
so that a man who wanted a world with no brands in it at all
became one of the most reproduced faces that has ever lived.
He lost it in the Crash. Died in 'thirty-two, mostly broke.
The company kept the face. It did not keep the book.

[Chorus]

[Outro]
(the small bell again)
He wanted one company.
He got one. It just wasn't the one he meant.