A very important point, where young boys are concerned, is to stop their cheering when the leader stops. Unless you have a confederate of tact and personality there is danger that the boys, once started yelling, will enjoy it so hugely that they will keep it up in a disorderly way, and injure the meeting much more than they help it. But properly drilled, a dozen young boys are worth almost as much as a drum corps. Under proper leadership, they will stop instantly at the pre-arranged signal, and enjoy the military precision. Ten minutes training by an experienced man will suffice to complete their education in this regard.
REPETITION NECESSARY.
The outdoor campaigner should never fear repetition. The average outdoor listener is not averse to hearing something that he has heard before, but is averse to anything dull, statistical or requiring laborious mental effort. In fact, from the standpoint of economy, three or five addresses made on the same street corner for three or five successive days, will accomplish much more for the cause than the same number of addresses delivered each one in a different town or locality. The apostle of the New Democracy, traveling from place to place, should stop at least two or three days in each village, even if he has only one speech and must repeat it over with variations each time. If he is resourceful and has a few anecdotes and illustrations for each day, it will pay him to stay a week in each town, as it takes two or three days for new hearers to become familiar with his objects, aims and attitude of thought. The writer has often found that more real, direct converts are made to the people's cause on the sixth or seventh day in a town, than during all of the previous days combined.
Thought is like seed. Whatever be the soil, like all vegetable life, it must undergo three stages, planting, developing and fruit bearing. With the majority each stage of development requires a season; one speaker sows, another waters, and another gathers the ripe fruit. But a brain adjacent to an empty stomach, idle arms or a bankrupt business, offers a more fertile soil for new ideas, and there are some such minds in every town wherein all these processes can be carried on under the tutelage of one man; some such persons in despair at the beginning of the week, who can, by the close of the week, be brought to the light, their gloom dispelled, and a nobler civilization ever after clearly pictured before their eyes, the object of their life's endeavor. There are many persons who, by one series of meetings, are actually converted from ignorant participants in existing injustice to active workers for the true state yet to be. The whole tenor and ideals of their lives are transformed by knowledge vitalized by faith.
When a week's meetings are contemplated in country towns, experience suggests that the best time to start is on Monday and that the meetings all week should lead up to one or two grand demonstrations on Sunday, when the largest crowd of the week can be gotten together, and when, by the aid of a Scripture lesson, a prayer and a couple of patriotic songs, the enthusiasm can be carried highest.[3]
LITERATURE THE BASIS OF THE MOVEMENT.
No outdoor meeting can fill its mission nor make use of half its opportunities, without the sale of literature, which enlarges and completes the points touched on by the speaker. The object of an outdoor speech is to interest, to stir the emotions of men, dispel their lethargy and despair, plant in them hope and faith, and prepare them to think out, read out and study out the great National problem. The attention of men, that is, the real, serious concentration of their minds upon great things, is so rare that when you once have it the opportunity should be utilized fully. Those who are interested by the outdoor speech should be urged to develop that interest into knowledge, conviction and action. This can only be done by inducing them to read some book or pamphlet, explaining in detail the points suggested by you and backing up your assertions by careful arguments. Ten pamphlets, or books, sold at a meeting where men's hearts have been opened and their prejudices melted by enthusiasm, are worth more to the cause than ten thousand books and circulars distributed from door to door. The sale of ten small ten-cent pamphlets at a meeting is at least half the value of the meeting. In this movement one chicken raised is worth more than a whole brood hatched; one fighting rooster is worth three dozen eggs. One campaigner, armed with facts and possessing contagious faith in our creed, necessarily becomes a permanent, creative force in the community in which he lives.
Literature is one element in the production of such centers of power, not literature scattered wildly, but literature placed carefully in the hands of those who have been prepared by the personal appeal of a sincere advocate to see and understand the points enunciated. So bountiful has free literature become and so ocean-like is the flood upon political subjects, that it is difficult to get men to open a pamphlet on political or social subjects when distributed to them in their normal condition. But first arouse them by a stirring address, and they will willingly study what otherwise they could not be induced to consider even superficially.
Not only should the speaker try to sell as many books and pamphlets as possible at the meetings, but he should try to leave in every community or section of a great city covered by him, some worker who will get a stock of such literature and continue its sale until another impulse is given the movement by the visit of another Volunteer.