AFTER ENROLLING.
Two young Volunteers start out for a month's campaign in the cause of American liberty. We have no money, the extent of our capital being a bundle of Democratic literature, an appointment from the Bureau of Volunteer Speakers and a good pair of shoes each. We start at seven o'clock in the morning from town "A." It is twenty miles to "B" where we wish to speak at night. We walk six miles by nine o'clock and are then overtaken by a farm wagon in which we are allowed to ride eight miles, when it leaves our road. We give the driver a pamphlet, thanks and a blessing and we part. It is now eleven o'clock and we walk six miles further when at one o'clock we reach our destination.
In ten minutes we have found a friendly Democrat who, after looking at our letters, shakes our hands, takes us to his house and provides food. After resting a couple of hours after dinner, we make an outdoor talk as suggested in Chapter three, and announce a night meeting.
If those who profess the name Democracy in this village are overburdened with sham dignity and devotion to what is old and inefficient and refuse to recognize or aid the appointed speakers of the people's cause, we must be ready to rely on other resources. Our afternoon collection may amount to ten cents or it may reach fifty cents or a dollar. The crowd may, however, refuse to contribute anything. We may sell literature sufficient to supply our wants, or the gold standard and the trusts may have caused such a scarcity of cash that we cannot sell anything. We may be compelled to get our supper and maybe breakfast by trading a pamphlet to a grocer for crackers and cheese. After speaking in the afternoon and evening if we should meet with no success or recognition, expediency would suggest that we shake the dust from the soles of our feet and proceed on our journey toward a more friendly community, while the oppressor prepares the way for the work of education later.
In some places friends will supply car tickets; in others they will procure a carriage or wagon and deliver us to the next town. From other villages or towns we may have to proceed as we started and as the apostles used to travel, walking along the dusty road, the frozen ground or through mud or snow. This method of travel is not only now practiced by many of our speakers, but can and will become the method of thousands more. It is a thoroughly practicable and sensible method of teaching truth against great odds and adds to the force of the speakers' message by proving him sincere.
That this plan of campaigning is altogether feasible the writer can personally attest from actual experience. Years ago, as a mere boy, I became intensely interested in the principles of the New Democracy and starting without money, without friends or any organized assistance, impelled merely by enthusiasm for humanity and hatred of that tyranny through which my race and family had suffered, I traversed in this way every county in the State of Kansas, circulating thousands of pamphlets in which were pointed out the way to a nobler civilization. While still a boy I also walked or rode with friends through Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York. I was often interfered with by persons disposed to disagree, but at every village and town and city through which I passed, I stood up in the open street in a carriage, on a dry-goods box or a chair and proclaimed my faith that the poor people need not suffer as they do if they would but unite in behalf of their own interests and use the ballot against oppression and tyranny.
Very often I was without money, and I then discovered that my early study of hygiene could be turned to good account. I found that the great capitalists, aided by Edward Atkinson and the soup house reformers, in trying to devise a diet for the poor that might enable them to work for less wages, though failing in this, had at least given me a pointer. I found that their bill of fare lacked but one ingredient to make it very endurable, and that was enthusiasm and youthful hope and fire. I added this ingredient and was independent of the world.