CHAPTER III.

SPEECHES AND MEETINGS.

The Volunteers are organized, not to do the easy things that have been done in the past and are now being very satisfactorily done by others, but rather to do what others have left, and are leaving, undone. In communities where the New Democracy is strong and the people are already in the habit of gathering periodically and during political campaigns nightly, it requires no organization of Volunteers to provide men to instruct and amuse them to their entire satisfaction. Our work is to do what others have not done and cannot do; to gather crowds where others have failed; to create interest where there is no interest; to make friends where we have no friends, and, WHERE WE ARE ALREADY STRONG AND DOMINANT IN A COMMUNITY, TO TEACH OUR FRIENDS AND BROTHERS TO SO SYSTEMATIZE THEIR EFFORTS AND ENTHUSIASM AS TO BE MOST USEFUL IN EDUCATING AND GAINING THE SUPPORT OF LESS ADVANCED COMMUNITIES ELSEWHERE.

In arranging indoor meetings, it is essential, in order that our work may be fruitful, to get out other than what is known as "the same old crowd." There are a few people of both parties in every community who are always interested in politics, and who attend nearly all party meetings. On such, ammunition is largely wasted. A speaker should never be satisfied to address a small crowd, the majority of whom are already in accord with his principles. His object should be to bring in new men, to get in fresh blood. The motto of each of us should be, "I came not to bring the righteous, but sinners, to repentance."

To secure the attendance of the non-political class, it is, therefore, expedient, in addition to the regular speeches, to provide some form of entertainment, such as vocal and instrumental music, a dramatic rendition, or a children's performance.

When an audience is assembled particularly to enjoy the entertainment and incidentally from curiosity to see and hear the strange speaker, it is well for the speech to be built from materials furnished by the local performers. If children have participated, there is no happier way to begin than by telling how enjoyable were their songs and recitations, how thrilling the thoughts born of their happy faces and hearts throbbing with youthful hopes. The speaker might tell how, looking into their bright eyes, his thoughts turned toward the future, where he saw the obstacles against which these children will have to contend, the difficulties they will meet in getting started in life, the unfair advantages over them possessed by the children of special privilege. By taking the children who participate as a text and riveting the attention of the audience upon them instead of considering the rights of men in general, he can gain at once, not only the attention, but the sympathy and the very hearts of those who listen.

If the entertainment is a musical one, the speaker might begin by describing the state of mind produced by the sweet harmonies just listened to. By recalling the difference between the discord produced by ten men tuning their musical instruments and the harmony resulting when they play the same instruments together, he has an illustration applicable in several ways: suggesting the harmony and orderliness of the state that we are fighting for, the economy of concert in our political methods, and numerous other points, which, if given in a conversational way, will arrest the attention of even the women and the children. Let him then proceed with simple axiomatic truths that can be grasped by every hearer, abundantly illustrated, and the crowd will be induced to attend future meetings.

There are a thousand cues given and illustrations suggested by a preliminary entertainment that can be made the gateway to the sympathies, affections and intelligence of those who listen. Convince the audience that the questions treated are neither abstract nor incomprehensible, but simple and tangible, and concern their personal welfare and the future of their families, and self-interest will impel them to listen to specific arguments backed by facts and figures.

The Volunteer who aspires to attract vast audiences and transplant the hopes and thoughts that flourish in his own mind to the fertile soil of other minds, must first learn that the passion to instruct, though a noble instinct, must be curbed ruthlessly, else instead of an orator the "would-be" will find himself a bore. The passion to impart knowledge, like the other human passions, when given free rein to exercise itself unrestrained, defeats its own ends and at last destroys itself.

How many old speakers we know who long ago looked forward, as hundreds of young men now look forward, to becoming orators, with power to sway the multitudes, to guide and lead them to higher things. But instead of orators we call them fossils. Instead of attracting they repel. They begin whenever permitted and never stop until so commanded. They are brought out and used in emergencies when no one else can be obtained, but never otherwise. They are common hacks. Why is this? Not always because such men do not possess ability. Some of them have followed the world's greatest thinkers throughout their intricate reasonings and profound solutions of life's most serious problems. But at the very start they conceived wrong notions concerning the function of a public speaker, an erroneous impression as to the utility and object of a speech or popular address.

We have often noticed that superior minds are overlooked on popular occasions and some man with less capacity and knowledge, far less endowed with mental treasures, is called upon to do the honors of the occasion. Why? Because he has the faculty of addressing himself directly to the listeners and of adapting himself to their frame of mind.

TEN COMMANDMENTS.

To those who would become speakers and avoid the mistakes that cause the majority of failures, the following rules will be found valuable:

1. Do not try to tell all you know at any one time.

2. Do not try to appear deep, learned or poetical.

3. Do not try to prove every statement you make.

4. Use statistics sparingly.

5. Address yourself, not to the kind of men and women you would have made had you been the Creator, but to the actual men and women who have been created, who fill your halls and make up your audiences.

6. Make your talk personal and apply every point to the wants, woes and sentiments of your listeners.

7. Never regret the half hour or the hour occupied by the music, recitations, drama, or other entertainment preceding your speech.

8. Do not manifest impatience at the time consumed in short talks by local speakers.

9. Remember that generally all the good that it is possible for you to accomplish if your audience by preliminary exercises is brought into rapport and sympathy with you, can be accomplished in half an hour. If you can get the complete attention of your audience for half an hour, they will have sufficient matter to fully occupy their thoughts the rest of the day and night, and not only this, if your talk is interesting and they go away hungry instead of satiated, they will gladly attend the next meeting.

10. Be satisfied if you interest your hearers and be not greedy to instruct. For those really interested by oratory will instruct themselves by means of literature which is the only source of real instruction. Oratory should win sentiment and stir interest; literature performs the work of education. The speech fulfils its mission if it persuades men to read aright.

ENTERTAINMENT.

A meeting that is half entertainment or if illustrations, anecdotes and stories be included under the head of entertainment, a meeting that is nine-tenths entertainment and one-tenth direct statement of fact and reasoning therefrom, is of far more value than a three hours' bombardment with facts, figures, arguments and the soundest reasoning, directed by a master. The average human mind, as God made it and as our present unsocial life has unmade it, will become wearied by such an effort and leave the meeting with the firm resolve not to attend another. Such meetings cannot be held often and do not win the sympathies and co-operation of men nearly so much as a meeting planned and arranged on the basis of adaptation to the capacities of the average listener and his multiform emotions and mental wants. This is the secret of the success of the popular churches. They do not try to teach the people too much. They do not strain that organ, very weak in the average human mind, known as the logical faculty.

Far more progress can be made in any community by instituting a successful series of meetings, wherein serious reasoning occupies a minor portion of the time, the rest filled in by entertainment, than can be gained by meetings that furnish a perfect mine of wealth in the way of food for thought and intellectual feasting for the few who have the power to appreciate such things.[4]

[4] Of course the most effective methods of presenting our cause can only be hinted at in a text-book. A month or several months of personal training is requisite to give the student a real understanding of the difference between the old method and the new. It is, therefore, urged that as many of the younger speakers as possible attend and take direct, personal instruction from the Faculty of the Volunteers' School in St. Louis.

LIFE IS SHORT.

The length of the man's speech should be measured, not by his own physical endurance nor the time that his breath lasts, not by the amount that he has to say nor even by the capacity of his audience to listen or to remain in the room, but in every case it should be measured by the capacity of his hearers to enjoy.

Most political meetings are too long. Very often two or three speakers are engaged, each harboring the erroneous opinion that duty requires him to talk an hour. Now, any speaker who cannot say something good, useful and inspiring in fifteen minutes, is incapable of saying anything good, useful or inspiring at all.

Except in times of great excitement or in out-of-the-way country districts where meetings are few and the hearers, like savages in a forest, must gorge themselves when they have a chance, the speaking should never, on any occasion, last more than an hour and a half.

Where there are three speakers, not only should each be limited to half an hour but the chair should be filled by a man with pluck and personality sufficiently great to tap the speaker on the shoulder when his time is up.

I have seen more hoggishness displayed at political meetings than ever at a dinner table. The man who sits down at a table and eats everything in sight before his friends arrive, is a gentleman compared with the fellow who occupies the time of his colleagues at a public meeting; because, if by one man's greed all the food on the table is eaten, other food can be obtained, but when some oratorical hog monopolizes the opportunity of his fellow-speakers, he takes from his colleagues what can never be replaced.

Our volunteers will accomplish a great work for humanity indeed if one of their number succeeds in inventing a method to stiffen the backbones of presiding officers sufficiently to enable them to sit down on that species of "bore" who push themselves to the front, ask to speak first by pledging to quit at a specified time and then talk on until the audience begins to disperse. Few people appreciate the great loss caused to a party or movement by the vacillating weakness of presiding officers and the greedy instincts of men who like to be heard and, in order to satisfy this instinct, "hog everything in sight."

One mission of the volunteer speaker is to teach etiquette to the political speakers of our own party and when "Ex-Governor So-and-So" and "Prosecuting Attorney Other-man" and "Judge Dry-Bones" and "Ex-Judge Old Fogy" and "The Honorables" and "The Colonels" and "The Generals" and the bulldozing youthful speakers assume to occupy time not intended for them, to take the chairman by the arm and stand by his side until he redeems the pledge made before the meeting and stops the mouth of the insolent fellow who has not sense enough to regard the rights of his fellow-workers.

AN OUNCE OF PREVENTION.

If a prominent man, known to be long-winded and lacking in this one requisite of a gentleman, is present and it is uncertain that the presiding officer has the courage necessary to call him down at the right time, our voluble celebrity should be told that the position of honor being the last on the program, it has been POSITIVELY given to him. Thus the other speakers will have a chance to plant a few ideas in the minds of their auditors before they are hopelessly wearied. Although the last speaker may injure the general effect of the meeting by his prolonged and drawn-out harangue, the self-assertive and independent ones among the listeners can, at least, leave the room when they get fatigued, without missing the opportunity of listening to those whom they came to hear. This point is purposely emphasized, and strong language not inadvertently used.

Where more than one speaker participates, there is nothing more essential for a successful meeting than that each speaker be limited in time by a pre-arranged plan, and that each be forced by the presiding officer strictly to observe that limit.

MORE THAN TWO MILLION MEMBERS.

The success of the Christian Endeavor movement in the Protestant churches is due almost solely to their method. The Christian Endeavor Societies have no new message to the world; they advocate no reforms; they do not add anything to the teaching of the church; do not even take it back to any of those sublime truths of the past largely ignored and forgotten by the modern church. But there is one simple reform in the method of carrying on religious meetings to which the Christian Endeavor Societies owe their success, and by means of which alone they have gained more than two million members in little more than a decade. This great and valuable secret is their system of two or three minute addresses, and their requiring participation in the meeting by every member.

Some of us are familiar with the old time Protestant prayer-meetings, composed of five or six old men, from ten to thirty middle-aged and old women, with a scattering boy or girl forced to attend by parents. The prayers were long. The talks were dry. The presence of a young man or woman was always a surprise.

The Christian Endeavor Society with the same theology, the same message, the same hymns, not even having a new impulse, a new moral ideal, or a new hope for the betterment of the world, but merely by requiring each member to say a few words and requiring that they say no more than a few words, has succeeded in joining together over two million young people into a prayer meeting society. Young people and prayer meetings! Always before suspicious of each other! Presto change! Two million young people organize in fifteen years to attend prayer meeting. The explanation of this miracle is ENFORCED BREVITY.

Short speeches, the extinction of bores, and the participation in each meeting in some way by every listener are so far as method goes the essentials for a great popular movement.

Good manners that have been taught to most of the world as regards eating and drinking have begun to be introduced into the world of meetings, religious and political, and when we see a feature, a little reform of this kind, building up in a few years one of the largest and most formidable religious organizations in the way of numbers that the world has ever seen, the organizers and workers of the new Democracy should profit thereby and at least learn the lesson, "Don't bore the people." It were better that the long-winded talker were a Republican or that he were thrown into the sea than that he should be allowed to destroy our meetings by his prolonged and learned discourses. Flee from the long-winded man, or else turn on him and make him sit down when his time is up. Or do with him as you do with the man who displays swinish proclivities when you invite him to dinner, DON'T INVITE HIM AGAIN.

THE BUREAU OF VOLUNTEER SPEAKERS.

A community feels that it needs to be awakened, and desires to arrange a series of meetings.[5] How can suitable speakers be had? So often a mistake is made. A speaker goes off on a tangent; he carries his hearers into a labyrinth of statistics and details, from which he cannot extricate them; he makes one "break" that alienates more votes than his whole speech wins, or in other ways proves himself incapable of accomplishing good for the community that he visits.

[5] Advertising methods: Tickets afford the best method of advertising meetings of all kinds. It is a personal, definite invitation, and the surest "crowd-gatherer." In large cities it may be necessary to issue from fifty thousand to one hundred thousand, and have them carefully distributed, in order to get out two thousand persons. In smaller places the percentage of waste is not so great. Get the co-operation of the press, if possible, but do not rely upon it. To the last moment there is always danger of its deserting to the money power, as the latter can bring almost irresistible pressure to bear upon it. Print on every ticket a short list of the best books, i. e., Lloyd's "Wealth against Commonwealth," Ely's "Socialism and Social Reform," "Ten Men of Money Island," "Coin's Financial School," etc.

Heretofore such a man, by bulldozing prominent politicians into giving him letters of recommendation, might impose himself on one community after another, and continue for years to injure the party. By proper co-operation of the party with the Bureau of Volunteers Speakers, this evil, in a large measure, can be avoided, because this Bureau does not send a man to speak until it is thoroughly acquainted, not only with his character, but his capacities and judgment, and knows his method of argument and what he is to advocate. When young and comparatively inexperienced speakers are sent out, it is known beforehand what is to be said, as their speeches are prepared and rehearsed in advance. They must know what they have to say, and not trust to inspiration, which often results in perspiration for the speaker, and exasperation for the hearers.

Every speaker sent out will present the great fundamental truths of our movement and not waste time in arguing details, which only supplies our enemies with new weapons to use against us. His speech beforehand has been pruned and criticised; the dead branches lopped off; the twigs and vines cleared from the trunk of the tree, and he is prepared to do only such work as will make converts and deepen the convictions of those already with us.

There exists no other Bureau or Headquarters in America, through which Democratic organizations can obtain at all times the best talent, and never fail to get a man who will strengthen their local organization.

Again, when meetings are held regularly in a town and a work of systematic education is carried on, it often happens that one speaker following another repeats over again the same statistics, the same arguments and even the same stories heard before, thereby tiring the audience. But when a community is supplied regularly by the National Bureau, each speaker takes up a different phase of the great problem, recapitulating only the few fundamental truths on which our movement rests. Each presents also something new, bright and spicy of his own. By this arrangement every community can enjoy the benefits of a succession of good speakers every month or week during the whole four years, and escape the persecution of those unteachable bores, who think themselves speakers. The crowds at these regular periodical meetings will increase, because each time they will hear something just as good as the last time, with added special features, the result of individual genius.

At present, when a speaker is wanted, anybody is invited who happens to be available, his abilities being measured by his own recommendation, or by letters bulldozed from prominent men, who, for reasons of political prudence dared not offend so energetic a fellow. A community in this way may secure a good speech occasionally, but often the speaker is a positive injury to the cause. One poor speech in a series does more to lessen the general interest and reduce the size of the crowds thereafter, than can be overcome by half a dozen good speeches.

Of course, where the local Democracy can secure the services of some one of our national leaders, no bureau mediation is needed, but our national leaders are few and the work before us limitless, therefore the service of the Volunteers' Bureau in training, equipping and guaranteeing a large number of new speakers who can be secured at any time, by any community, at a moderate expense, is meeting with hearty response by Democratic clubs generally.

The best way to make a strong club anywhere is to institute a series of meetings, all the year round, and, by having at least one able speaker each time, never to disappoint the audience.

Let each town and village establish a lecture course at once, and place itself in communication with the Volunteers' Bureau. The more numerous and closer together such villages and towns are, the smaller will be the expense to each community and the easier will it be to make up regular circuits for speakers.

THE CO-OPERATION OF CONSTITUENTS NECESSARY.

Although every speaker sent out is guaranteed to do effective work, the leaders of each community are urgently requested to report to headquarters at once, the success or short-comings of each speaker and meeting. Without such co-operation, the Bureau cannot keep that oversight of its hundreds of speakers necessary to raise the standard of work to the highest efficiency. It is assuredly the duty of local workers to give straight-forward reports to headquarters, of the short-comings and "breaks" on the part of the representatives of our Bureau, who represent our party and for whom our party is responsible as well as to report the benefits resulting from each meeting. The fact should also be emphasized that each representative of the Bureau receives a letter of recognition and instruction once a month from headquarters, and his standing with the Bureau should be judged solely by such letters or by direct correspondence. We must be able, when any speaker fails on his part to fulfill our requirements, to cease our connection with, and our responsibility for him.