FOREWORD
Vital are the questions now confronting man the world over; but particularly are those questions important to Americans, because the United States of America is looked upon as the pioneer country of the world in all matters pertaining to man’s emancipation from the injustice of ages, and that young country is expected to blaze a trail through the unsolved realm of progress along which the older nations may travel till they reach the plain of universal justice and liberty.
Among the problems now confronting the people are those of finance, labor, religion, conservation of natural resources, and civic justice. The questions are here, but where are the orators capable of making those questions clear to the masses? Where are the men to solve those problems? Some there are who are nobly responding to the demands of the times, but they are too few successfully to grapple with the task.
It is claimed that this is the age of the printing-press and that the necessity for orators no longer exists. This is surely not a valid claim. The newspaper is doing its work, and in many cases is doing it nobly, but it can never take the place of the human voice. An article may be printed in a paper having a circulation running into the hundreds of thousands, and yet the article will be read by only a small percentage of those into whose hands the paper falls; and out of this percentage a still smaller percentage will be influenced by the printed word. The speaker, on the other hand, addresses an audience of only a few thousand, but of that number, if the speaker is deserving of the name, he will influence a majority. Suppose he convinces and persuades only one hundred, the one hundred are so thoroughly brought into accord with the speaker that they go out into the world and, by word of mouth, bring ten times their number to the same way of thinking. By this means all great movements have flourished. John the Baptist, with the spoken word, prepared the way and made straight the path; Jesus of Nazareth taught by spoken symbols only; Paul of Tarsus carried Christianity into Greece and Rome by means of speech; Peter the Hermit enthused the Crusaders by his spoken utterances; Martin Luther brought about a reformation by his speech before the Diet of Worms; Patrick Henry aroused his countrymen by his eloquence; Daniel O’Connell accomplished Catholic emancipation in Great Britain by means of presenting the cause of religious liberty to friend and foe in the shape of the spoken word; Daniel Webster expounded the Constitution orally; William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips and Abraham Lincoln pleaded for the enslaved negro by word of mouth; and La Follette, Bryan, and Roosevelt are expressing the thoughts of the people of today by means of man’s greatest attribute—speech.
Therefore, if any would take part in the glorious work of advancing the progress of the world, let him fit himself to discuss by word of mouth the great problems now confronting humanity.