Following this and demonstrable from it by the eternal laws of Logic is the conclusion that the one primary and all-important duty of every man seeing it is to do all he can, after providing for his simplest physical wants, to help systematize and civilize human effort and overcome prejudice so as to obtain this result.
The immediate effect of the practical acceptance of this one self-evident truth is almost inconceivable. Once convince men that their sufferings are unnecessary, that science has placed in their hands all the power and materials needed which rightly applied will give to all men the satisfaction of all their normal desires, and you at once transform the world.
The most formidable obstacle in the way of further progress is not that men are insufficiently versed in political economy or lacking in intelligence, but it is that the people are without hope. Popular effort has so often been thwarted by selfish cunning, great moral enthusiasms dissipated by the science and superior organization of tyranny, that men have lost heart.
Despair is the chief opponent of progress. Our greatest need is hope. The people must have faith that something can be done.
The majority of men know of public measures that would be beneficial if an upward step were possible, but they are overwhelmed by a multitude of incidental obstacles and petty disappointments that cloud their small horizons and shut off from sight the great universal and historic forces that are slowly but surely working out their destinies.
Convince men that our country is large enough and rich enough to give them all an opportunity to work and earn sufficient to support their families and educate their children properly, convince them that their present poverty and sufferings are wholly the result of social crimes, and, if they can believe that this change is actually to be brought about, you change the whole base of their operations and revolutionize their attitude of mind. They are then ready to co-operate with those bold thinkers who have studied out the details of social progress.
Our speakers cannot dwell too long upon, cannot repeat too often, this one all-important, fundamental truth, the basis of all right political thought and action, namely, that the world is all right, nature is lavish, God Almighty is generous, and that human invention has multiplied many times the gifts that God originally gave to man, and now the human family might just as well sit down amid merry-making to the great feast steaming before us, prepared through ages of endeavor, but for a miserable dog in the manger.
Proclaim everywhere that organized greed is this dog. Teach that the highest patriotism consists in striking it, that the only martyrs are those devoured by it, that to kill it is the sublime mission of this generation.
Do not try to teach many things, but urge with all the passion of your being at all times and in all places, the self-evident and fundamental truth that our world contains everything required to make men happy. If want exists, it is the result of crime. Those who profit by this crime try to convince us that nothing can be done to prevent it. Our work is to create hope and courage and let the people know that this crime can be stopped, the criminals caught and punished, and the purposes of God and nature be permitted to proceed unmolested. Tell the people they can put an end to their sufferings, that misery results from human, not from natural causes, and that it need not be. Teach and preach and cry aloud this one fact. Repeat it indoors and out, with all the fire and intensity within you. Each convert will become a center, and our cause will spread irresistibly.
Therefore, Volunteers, do not weary your hearers with statistics and historical or legal minutiae; do not cram them with detailed arguments relating to questions of a local or temporary nature; do not confuse them by trying to explain all the intricacies of a financial system soon to perish from off the earth. Rather even let the sophistries of an opponent go unanswered. But concentrate all your energies upon helping turn the attention of the people away from petty and vexing intricacies to these few great central truths, which, if once clearly seen, make all else plain.