At this point you may hold up the pamphlet and announce its price. If this is done before the lecture, have the ushers pass through the audience, each with a good supply, and beginning at the front row and working rapidly so as not to unnecessarily delay the meeting. If the sale is at the close of the meeting announce that copies may be had while leaving and have your ushers in the rear so as to meet the audience. A good deal depends on having live and capable ushers. Our big sales at the Garrick are due to ushers being past masters in their art.
BOOK TALK NO 2.
THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO.
In the year 1848—over sixty years ago—Scientific Socialism was born. Almost every objection we now hear against Socialism holds only against the utopian Socialism which died and was discarded by Socialists more than half a century ago.
The birth of Scientific Socialism came as the result of the discovery of a great new truth. This truth revolutionized all our ideas about society just as Darwin’s discovery, eleven years later, revolutionized our notions of organic life.
From 1848 forward there was no need for speculations and guesses as to how the world will be in the future or how it might be now if it were not as it is. From that time we knew that the present was carried in the womb of the past and the future is already here in embryo.
If you think you know the main outlines of the future society yet cannot find those outlines already developing in the society about you, you are nursing a delusion. You belong to the Socialism of Utopia—if your future society is not already here in part, it is “nowhere,” as Utopia means.
We know today that science does not consist of a mere collection of facts. The facts of course are necessary, but science comes only when we push through the facts and find the laws behind them.
The discovery that gave birth to Scientific Socialism had to do with history. This discovery changed our ideas as to what constitutes history. The rise and fall of kings, tales of bloody wars, the news of camp and courts; these were supposed to be all that was important in history. This has been well called: “Drum and trumpet history.”
Since 1848 history is the story of the development of human society. The introduction of machinery overshadows all kings and courts in history, as we now know it, because it played a greater part in social development than ten thousand kings.
History itself is not a science but it is one of the chief parts of “the science of society”—sociology.
Historical movement like all movement proceeds by law. When Karl Marx discovered the central law of history he became the real founder of modern sociology. His discovery of this law of history ranks with Newton’s discovery of gravity or the Copernican revolution in astronomy. It ranks Marx as one of the men whose genius created a new epoch in human thinking.
Marx made the discovery before 1848, but that date is immortal because in that year it was published to the world. That date ranks with 1859 when the “undying Darwin” gave us “The Origin of Species.”
The book was not intended for a book and became a book only by reason of its great importance. It was published as a political manifesto—the manifesto of “The Communist League.” Hence its name—“The Communist Manifesto.” This book is the foundation and starting point of Scientific Socialism and is indispensable to all students of social science or social questions.
The book itself explains why it is not “The Socialist Manifesto” as we might have expected. At that time the various groups using Socialist as a title were Utopian and some of them positively reactionary. There is a description and analysis of these groups in the third chapter which shows why Marx had no part in them. Their advocates know nothing of the new historical principle which now stands at the center of Socialist thought and which has successfully withstood half a century of searching criticism.
This great new principle is called: “The Materialistic Conception of History.” It is not mentioned by name in the manifesto, but it is there like a living presence spreading light in dark places of history which had never been penetrated by previous thinkers. The key to all history is found in methods of producing and distributing material wealth. Out of the changes in this field all other social changes come.
Forty years later Frederick Engels gave completeness to the Manifesto by adding a preface which defines the main theory, gives an estimate of its value, and explains his part as co-author with Marx.
No other book can ever take the place of the Communist Manifesto. Its value grows with the passing years. It was the first trumpet blast to announce the coming of the triumphant proletariat.
The Manifesto’s first two chapters and its closing paragraph are beyond all price. They are without parallel in the literature of the world. They sparkle like “jewels on the stretched forefinger of all time.”
Here the speaker may show the book and state its price, and proceed with the selling. If the sale is made while the audience is leaving, nothing further need be said, and if the sale is the last thing in the meeting it is useless to ask the audience to remain seated during the sale. They get irritated and the meeting breaks up in confusion. See that your salesmen are posted at the exits where they will face the audience as it leaves. At one big meeting in Pittsburg where the sales of a fifty cent book reached over sixty dollars they would have been double but some of the sellers came to the front, and while the audience was clamoring for books which could not be had at the doors, these sellers were following the audience in the rear with armfuls which they had no chance to sell.
If the sale is made before the lecture while the sellers are passing through the audience the speaker should continue speaking of the book so as to sustain interest. There will be no loss of time making change if the right priced books are sold. 10c, 25c, 50c or $1 are right prices. At a public meeting it is a mistake to try to sell a book at an odd price as 15c or 35c or 60c. The demand dies and the audience gets impatient while the sellers are trying to make change.
The speaker who endeavors to make a success of book-selling at his meetings will find his labors doubled. The larger his sales the greater his labors. On my last western trip I sold on an average half a trunk full of books at each meeting and I had no spare moment from the work of ordering by telegram and rushing around to express offices and getting the books to the meetings. But the rewards are great. My trips are always a financial success and the books I leave scattered on my trail do far more good than the lectures I delivered.
CHAPTER XXII
CONCLUSION
In concluding this series I will group several items of importance which did not suggest themselves under any previous head.
Gestures should be carefully watched, especially at the beginning, when future habits are in the process of formation. They should not be affected or mechanical like those of the child reciting something of which it does not understand the sense.