Debating for boys

by William Horton Foster

Suppose you have decided to debate one phase of the child labor problem, and your question reads something like this: “Resolved: that no children below the age of sixteen years should be allowed to work in factories.” You see the question omits all discussion of child labor on the farm, for instance, or in the street trades, or in any occupation except those within doors under factory conditions. You will see, also, that before you begin your actual analysis, you and your opponents must agree on what you mean by “factories”—just what kind of manufacturing establishments you have in mind. Otherwise you would be compelled to define them more carefully in the question itself as you stated it.

For two reasons, you need the “brief” at this stage of your analysis. To discuss the least important one first—you should inform your critical friend or teacher as to just what your argument is. You must tell him what are the bones of the skeleton, indicate their arrangement, and show them to him without the beautiful covering of flesh and skin to be given them by your charming diction and eloquence. The bones may not be properly articulated at all—what, when clothed with the flesh and muscle of your finished debate, may seem like a strong right arm adequately equipped with biceps and all the rest of the blow delivering agencies may not be properly joined at the shoulder and hence fail utterly, when the test comes. So let your friendly critic—your specialist in this kind of anatomy—see just what you have and how your various arguments hang together.

But more important than to satisfy your critic is it carefully to formulate your argument for your own benefit in thinking through your proposition. As you think about your question, various considerations will suggest themselves to you. Some you will recognize as arguments of first rank—as indispensable to your case. Others will take a subordinate place; still others serve as mere illustrations or arguments from resemblance. Finally, however, your logical sequence will emerge, and you will have a structure which will be logical throughout, with every part fitting into every other part and pointing to an irresistible conclusion.

The name given to it well defines this formulation of your argument. It is your argument but in brief. Every essential to your full argument must be there. But take other warning from that name. In form don’t let it be too brief. It is not enough to sprinkle hints over the page, hints which may be fairly intelligible to you but be meaningless to another. Remember that critic of yours who will look over your brief. Don’t make it superficial or arrange your arguments in casual instead of causal sequence. Besides, you may find in practice that a word which to-day, as you put it down on paper, hot from your thinking machine, means everything to you and is the key word to a weighty argument, to-morrow or next week will have lost its cunning and mean anything or nothing to you.

So not only for the benefit of your critic but especially for the value of the exercise to yourself, reduce your argument to definite formal organization. You will be paid in the long run. You may have such a command of yourself and your thinking that you can carry all this organization in your head without any brief—but most of us can’t. Moreover, you will find that putting these arguments down in black and white before you and then arranging them in causal logical sequence will aid your thinking immensely. Thoughts which were dim and misty, which were without form and substance, will fall into order and assume a relation to the whole subject unseen before.

You will also find that by a simple system of symbols you will aid this clarifying process. Propositions of equal dignity and rank will be introduced by equivalent symbols and thus their relationship automatically indicated. No, of course not—it is not necessary to go through this process. You may get through many debates without using any of these aids—mechanical, if you please. But they are useful and have been used by hundreds of debaters. Don’t you think it is a little foolish to insist on swimming the river and demonstrating your power in that way, when there is available a very comfortable bridge that hundreds have used to their great convenience?

One other observation about the form of this “brief.” It should be so arranged that, using the words “for” or “because” to introduce your arguments, you will have a complete clause, with subject and predicate. You will note that clauses occur in the brief given below. I have connected them with their proper prepositions.

Subdivision I gives us: “Resolved: that no children below the age of sixteen should be allowed to work in factories, for such labor is unnecessary, for there is an ample supply of adult labor entirely adequate to the demands of factory work.”

II. 1. A. gives us this sentence: “Resolved: that no children below the age of sixteen should be allowed to work in factories, for such labor injures the child’s health, for confinement within the building, under the conditions of factory employment, checks the growth of the child and promotes many diseases.” So II. 1. B. gives a second sentence like the one last quoted except that its last portion differs as the subordinate argument differs. That reads: “Resolved: that no children below the age of sixteen should be allowed to work in factories, for such labor injures the child’s health, for normal physical development demands out-of-doors activity and freedom from the strain of factory work.”

Let me hint, too, that frequently after you have arranged what seems to be a perfect logical argument, if from under each head you remove the proof and connect the various sequences so that you form one sentence, you will find that it is not logical and must be arranged all over again.