A cool head, a disposition to reason the matter out with the district attorney, the chief of police, the mayor, or in the courts, without ever offering to compromise your speaking rights, will always triumph. The realization by the authorities that they are in a dirty and tyrannical business is one of your strongest weapons. Courtesy and persuasive but firm and unflinching reasoning makes them more conscious of their humiliating part in the matter. If you do or say foolish or offensive things they will forget their conscience in their anger, and give you a fight for which you alone are to blame.
There are a few exceptions to this rule; cases where the authorities are bent on victory; even then there is no excuse for losing your head. But you must give them all the fight they want and never under any circumstances show the white feather or accept anything less than all you need to make your meeting successful. In handling the police and their relations to street meetings the New York comrades have set other cities an example to go by. The comrades select any corners they please and during the day notify the police by telephone that Socialist meetings will be held that evening on such and such corners and a policeman is instructed to protect each meeting. The New York comrades have had many hard battles with the police to keep this system, and they have reason to be proud of the result.
The permit system is all right if it does not keep you from the corners you wish to use. If it does, the best thing is to fight it out for a new arrangement or the right to hold your meetings without arrangements. If you conduct your case properly the public will be overwhelmingly on your side. It is good at such times to “view with alarm” the introduction of Russian methods into “free” America. If there is real intelligence on the other side your opponents will soon conclude that you are getting more publicity for your ideas out of the police fight than you could ever get at peaceful street meetings. After this light has dawned you will proceed undisturbed.
BOOK-SELLING AND PROFESSIONALISM
A man who does a day’s work in a shop and speaks on a street corner in the evening has about as much chance of becoming an effective speaker as he would have of becoming an effective musician, physician or lawyer by the same method. It is necessary, however, to train before going wholly into the work just as a man studies law evenings, before starting out as a lawyer.
In New York, Socialist street meetings are a force and count for a great deal, because the committee keeps a staff of capable speakers on salary to do nothing else. In Chicago street, speaking is a failure and many have concluded we should be better without it. This is because Chicago lacks the enterprise to follow the example of New York and depends on voluntary, haphazard, untrained, inefficient speaking.
New York, I believe, spends a good deal of money on its street meetings, and for some reason Chicago does not seem to be able to do that. But this barrier is not insurmountable. Street meetings with efficient speakers may be made self-supporting, but professional speakers are the only ones who have any chance to become efficient to the point of making their meetings pay a salary and other expenses.
I hardly think it can be done by collections but I know by experience that it can be done by book-selling.
I worked several weeks in New York one summer at the highest rate they pay and instead of sending a bill for wages I sent a paper dollar which represented the surplus from book sales after I had paid myself all that was due to me, and no collections were taken. My best book-sale at one meeting was $34 but it would just as easily have gone over $40 if the supply had held out. $20 to $30 worth of literature can be sold easily enough on any one of half a dozen corners in New York.
Chicago is not as good as New York but it is at least half as good and a good speaker could work for $25 a week and make three or four meetings foot the bill. I did this very easily in Chicago last summer. The beginner should sell 10c booklets or pamphlets, and elsewhere in this volume he will find two speeches that will show him how to do it. At a street meeting he need not make these speeches in detail, but just give the pith of them.