The methods employed were somewhat different from those usually followed in public discussions. In order that the academic atmosphere of thoroughness, sincerity and impartiality might so far as possible be conserved without sacrificing at the same time the interest that comes from having questions presented by experts and from the stimulus of controversy, it was decided that each question discussed should cover three sessions. At the first session an able authority has presented one side of the question. If there were time, as has usually been the case in the hour and a half, the audience has questioned the speaker in order to bring out more fully the points made.
At the second session, a week later, the opposite side has been presented with similar questioning.
At the third meeting the director of the forum has enumerated briefly the most essential points made on both sides, giving his own judgment regarding their validity and the relation of the question under discussion to the public interest. In some instances where it has seemed desirable, he has supplemented the arguments presented in the discussion by points of his own in order to make the discussion as complete as possible. In this summary an effort has been made to present the questions as impartially as possible from the viewpoint of the public interest.
In addition to this, representative citizens from the audience have given in brief talks of not more than ten minutes each their own views. Sometimes these voluntary speakers have been students, sometimes citizens. So far as possible the names were learned in advance in order that the discussion might proceed in the nature of a debate with the two sides presented alternately. In these third meetings especially, the interest has chiefly centered. In two or three instances, notably perhaps in the consideration of woman’s suffrage and the closed shop, the discussion was most animated, not to say excited, but nevertheless the temper of university study and the desire, however heated the feelings, to reach the truth and a fair judgment was not lost.
The list of topics and speakers included:
The Control of Vice and Crime—
William J. Gaynor, mayor of New York; Arthur Woods, former deputy commissioner of police, in special charge of the investigation of Italian criminals and the white slave traffic.
The Relation of Government to Corporations—
Martin W. Littleton, member of the Congressional Committee on Investigation of Industrial Monopolies; Herbert Knox Smith, late United States commissioner of corporations in charge of the Investigations of the Standard Oil Company, the American Tobacco Company, the Meat Packers, the International Harvester Company, and many other of the great corporations.
Socialism—