Such elevation above himself, in congressional debate, was most

uncommon. Some such there were in the great discussions of executive

power following the removal of the deposits, which they who heard them

will never forget, and some which rest in the tradition of hearers only.

But there were other fields of oratory on which, under the influence of

more uncommon springs of inspiration, he exemplified, in still other

forms, an eloquence in which I do not know that he has had a superior

among men. Addressing masses by tens of thousands in the open air, on

the urgent political questions of the day, or designed to lead the

meditations of an hour devoted to the remembrance of some national era,

or of some incident marking the progress of the nation, and lifting him

up to a view of what is, and what is past, and some indistinct

revelation of the glory that lies in the future, or of some great

historical name, just borne by the nation to his tomb--we have learned

that then and there, at the base of Bunker Hill, before the corner-stone

was laid, and again when from the finished column the centuries looked

on him; in Faneuil Hall, mourning for those with whose spoken or written

eloquence of freedom its arches had so often resounded; on the Rock of

Plymouth; before the Capitol, of which there shall not be one stone left

on another before his memory shall have ceased to live--in such scenes,

unfettered by the laws of forensic or parliamentary debate, multitudes

uncounted lifting up their eyes to him; some great historical scenes of

America around; all symbols of her glory and art and power and fortune

there; voices of the past, not unheard; shapes beckoning from the

future, not unseen--sometimes that mighty intellect, borne upward to a

height and kindled to an illumination which we shall see no more,

wrought out, as it were, in an instant a picture of vision, warning,

prediction; the progress of the nation; the contrasts of its eras; the

heroic deaths; the motives to patriotism; the maxims and arts imperial

by which the glory has been gathered and may be heightened--wrought out,

in an instant, a picture to fade only when all record of our mind shall

die.

In looking over the public remains of his oratory, it is striking to

remark how, even in that most sober and massive understanding and

nature, you see gathered and expressed the characteristic sentiments and

the passing time of our America. It is the strong old oak which ascends

before you; yet our soil, our heaven, are attested in it as perfectly as

if it were a flower that could grow in no other climate and in no other

hour of the year or day. Let me instance in one thing only. It is a

peculiarity of some schools of eloquence that they embody and utter,

not merely the individual genius and character of the speaker, but a

national consciousness--a national era, a mood, a hope, a dread, a

despair--in which you listen to the spoken history of the time. There is

an eloquence of an expiring nation, such as seems to sadden the glorious

speech of Demosthenes; such as breathes grand and gloomy from visions of

the prophets of the last days of Israel and Judah; such as gave a spell

to the expression of Grattan and of Kossuth--the sweetest, most

mournful, most awful of the words which man may utter, or which man may

hear--the eloquence of a perishing nation.

There is another eloquence, in which the national consciousness of a

young or renewed and vast strength, of trust in a dazzling certain and

limitless future, an inward glorying in victories yet to be won, sounds

out as by voice of clarion, challenging to contest for the highest prize

of earth; such as that in which the leader of Israel in its first days

holds up to the new nation the Land of Promise; such as that which in

the well-imagined speeches scattered by Livy over the history of the

"majestic series of victories" speaks the Roman consciousness of growing

aggrandizement which should subject the world; such as that through

which, at the tribunes of her revolution, in the bulletins of her rising

soldiers, France told to the world her dream of glory.

And of this kind somewhat is ours--cheerful, hopeful, trusting, as

befits youth and spring; the eloquence of a state beginning to ascend to

the first class of power, eminence, and consideration, and conscious of

itself. It is to no purpose that they tell you it is in bad taste; that

it partakes of arrogance and vanity; that a true national good breeding

would not know, or seem to know, whether the nation is old or young;

whether the tides of being are in their flow or ebb; whether these

coursers of the sun are sinking slowly to rest, wearied with a journey

of a thousand years, or just bounding from the Orient unbreathed. Higher

laws than those of taste determine the consciousness of nations. Higher

laws than those of taste determine the general forms of the expression

of that consciousness. Let the downward age of America find its orators

and poets and artists to erect its spirit, or grace and soothe its

dying; be it ours to go up with Webster to the Rock, the Monument, the

Capitol, and bid "the distant generations hail!"

Until the seventh day of March, 1850, I think it would have been

accorded to him by an almost universal acclaim, as general and as

expressive of profound and intelligent conviction and of enthusiasm,

love, and trust, as ever saluted conspicuous statesmanship, tried by

many crises of affairs in a great nation, agitated ever by parties, and

wholly free.

_ALBERT J. BEVERIDGE_

PASS PROSPERITY AROUND

Delivered as Temporary Chairman of Progressive National Convention,

Chicago, Ill., June, 1911.

We stand for a nobler America. We stand for an undivided Nation. We

stand for a broader liberty, a fuller justice. We stand for a social

brotherhood as against savage individualism. We stand for an intelligent

coöperation instead of a reckless competition. We stand for mutual

helpfulness instead of mutual hatred. We stand for equal rights as a

fact of life instead of a catch-word of politics. We stand for the rule

of the people as a practical truth instead of a meaningless pretense. We

stand for a representative government that represents the people. We

battle for the actual rights of man.

To carry out our principles we have a plain program of constructive

reform. We mean to tear down only that which is wrong and out of date;

and where we tear down we mean to build what is right and fitted to the

times. We harken to the call of the present. We mean to make laws fit

conditions as they are and meet the needs of the people who are on earth

to-day. That we may do this we found a party through which all who

believe with us can work with us; or, rather, we declare our allegiance

to the party which the people themselves have founded.

For this party comes from the grass roots. It has grown from the soil of

the people's hard necessities. It has the vitality of the people's

strong convictions. The people have work to be done and our party is

here to do that work. Abuse will only strengthen it, ridicule only

hasten its growth, falsehood only speed its victory. For years this

party has been forming. Parties exist for the people; not the people for

parties. Yet for years the politicians have made the people do the work

of the parties instead of the parties doing the work of the people--and

the politicians own the parties. The people vote for one party and find

their hopes turned to ashes on their lips; and then to punish that

party, they vote for the other party. So it is that partisan victories

have come to be merely the people's vengeance; and always the secret

powers have played their game.

Like other free people, most of us Americans are progressive or

reactionary, liberal or conservative. The neutrals do not count. Yet

to-day neither of the old parties is either wholly progressive or wholly

reactionary. Democratic politicians and office seekers say to

reactionary Democratic voters that the Democratic party is reactionary

enough to express reactionary views; and they say to progressive

Democrats that the Democratic party is progressive enough _to_ express

progressive views. At the same time, Republican politicians and office

seekers say the same thing about the Republican party to progressive and

reactionary Republican voters.

Sometimes in both Democratic and Republican States the progressives get

control of the party locally and then the reactionaries recapture the

same party in the same State; or this process is reversed. So there is

no nation-wide unity of principle in either party, no stability of

purpose, no clear-cut and sincere program of one party at frank and open

war with an equally clear-cut and sincere program of an opposing party.

This unintelligent tangle is seen in Congress. Republican and Democratic

Senators and Representatives, believing alike on broad measures

affecting the whole Republic, find it hard to vote together because of

the nominal difference of their party membership. When, sometimes, under

resistless conviction, they do vote together, we have this foolish

spectacle: legislators calling themselves Republicans and Democrats

support the same policy, the Democratic legislators declaring that that

policy is Democratic and Republican legislators declaring that it is

Republican; and at the very same time other Democratic and Republican

legislators oppose that very same policy, each of them declaring that it

is not Democratic or not Republican.

The condition makes it impossible most of the time, and hard at any

time, for the people's legislators who believe in the same broad

policies to enact them into logical, comprehensive laws. It confuses the

public mind. It breeds suspicion and distrust. It enables such special

interests as seek unjust gain at the public expense to get what they

want. It creates and fosters the degrading boss system in American

politics through which these special interests work.

This boss system is unknown and impossible under any other free

government in the world. In its very nature it is hostile to general

welfare. Yet it has grown until it now is a controlling influence in

American public affairs. At the present moment notorious bosses are in

the saddle of both old parties in various important States which must be

carried to elect a President. This Black Horse Cavalry is the most

important force in the practical work of the Democratic and Republican

parties in the present campaign. Neither of the old parties' nominees

for President can escape obligation to these old-party bosses or shake

their practical hold on many and powerful members of the National

Legislature.

Under this boss system, no matter which party wins, the people seldom

win; but the bosses almost always win. And they never work for the

people. They do not even work for the party to which they belong. They

work only for those anti-public interests whose political employees they

are. It is these interests that are the real victors in the end.

These special interests which suck the people's substance are

bi-partisan. They use both parties. They are the invisible government

behind our visible government. Democratic and Republican bosses alike

are brother officers of this hidden power. No matter how fiercely they

pretend to fight one another before election, they work together after

election. And, acting so, this political conspiracy is able to delay,

mutilate or defeat sound and needed laws for the people's welfare and

the prosperity of honest business and even to enact bad laws, hurtful to

the people's welfare and oppressive to honest business.

It is this invisible government which is the real danger to American

institutions. Its crude work at Chicago in June, which the people were

able to see, was no more wicked than its skillful work everywhere and

always which the people are not able to see.

But an even more serious condition results from the unnatural alignment

of the old parties. To-day we Americans are politically shattered by

sectionalism. Through the two old parties the tragedy of our history is

continued; and one great geographical part of the Republic is separated

from other parts of the Republic by an illogical partisan solidarity.

The South has men and women as genuinely progressive and others as

genuinely reactionary as those in other parts of our country. Yet, for

well-known reasons, these sincere and honest southern progressives and

reactionaries vote together in a single party, which is neither

progressive nor reactionary. They vote a dead tradition and a local

fear, not a living conviction and a national faith. They vote not for

the Democratic party, but against the Republican party. They want to be

free from this condition; they can be free from it through the National

Progressive party.

For the problems which America faces to-day are economic and national.

They have to do with a more just distribution of prosperity. They

concern the living of the people; and therefore the more direct

government of the people by themselves.

They affect the South exactly as they affect the North, the East or the

West. It is an artificial and dangerous condition that prevents the

southern man and woman from acting with the northern man and woman who

believe the same thing. Yet just that is what the old parties do

prevent.

Not only does this out-of-date partisanship cut our Nation into two

geographical sections; it also robs the Nation of a priceless asset of

thought in working out our national destiny. The South once was famous

for brilliant and constructive thinking on national problems, and to-day

the South has minds as brilliant and constructive as of old. But

southern intellect cannot freely and fully aid, in terms of politics,

the solving of the Nation's problems. This is so because of a partisan

sectionalism which has nothing to do with those problems. Yet these

problems can be solved only in terms of politics.

The root of the wrongs which hurt the people is the fact that the

people's government has been taken away from them--the invisible

government has usurped the people's government. Their government must be

given back to the people. And so the first purpose of the Progressive

party is to make sure the rule of the people. The rule of the people

means that the people themselves shall nominate, as well as elect, all

candidates for office, including Senators and Presidents of the United

States. What profiteth it the people if they do only the electing while

the invisible government does the nominating?

The rule of the people means that when the people's legislators make a

law which hurts the people, the people themselves may reject it. The

rule of the people means that when the people's legislators refuse to

pass a law which the people need, the people themselves may pass it. The

rule of the people means that when the people's employees do not do the

people's work well and honestly, the people may discharge them exactly

as a business man discharges employees who do not do their work well and

honestly. The people's officials are the people's servants, not the

people's masters.

We progressives believe in this rule of the people that the people

themselves may deal with their own destiny. Who knows the people's needs

so well as the people themselves? Who so patient as the people? Who so

long suffering, who so just? Who so wise to solve their own problems?

Today these problems concern the living of the people. Yet in the

present stage of American development these problems should not exist in

this country. For, in all the world there is no land so rich as ours.

Our fields can feed hundreds of millions. We have more minerals than the

whole of Europe. Invention has made easy the turning of this vast

natural wealth into supplies for all the needs of man. One worker today

can produce more than twenty workers could produce a century ago.

The people living in this land of gold are the most daring and

resourceful on the globe. Coming from the hardiest stock of every nation

of the old world their very history in the new world has made Americans

a peculiar people in courage, initiative, love of justice and all the

elements of independent character.

And, compared with other peoples, we are very few in numbers. There are

only ninety millions of us, scattered over a continent. Germany has

sixty-five millions packed in a country very much smaller than Texas.

The population of Great Britain and Ireland could be set down in

California and still have more than enough room for the population of

Holland. If this country were as thickly peopled as Belgium there would

be more than twelve hundred million instead of only ninety million

persons within our borders.

So we have more than enough to supply every human being beneath the

flag. There ought not to be in this Republic a single day of bad

business, a single unemployed workingman, a single unfed child. American

business men should never know an hour of uncertainty, discouragement or

fear; American workingmen never a day of low wages, idleness or want.

Hunger should never walk in these thinly peopled gardens of plenty.

And yet in spite of all these favors which providence has showered upon

us, the living of the people is the problem of the hour. Hundreds of

thousands of hard-working Americans find it difficult to get enough to

live on. The average income of an American laborer is less than $500 a

year. With this he must furnish food, shelter and clothing for a family.

Women, whose nourishing and protection should be the first care of the

State, not only are driven into the mighty army of wage-earners, but are

forced to work under unfair and degrading conditions. The right of a

child to grow into a normal human being is sacred; and yet, while small

and poor countries, packed with people, have abolished child labor,

American mills, mines, factories and sweat-shops are destroying hundreds

of thousands of American children in body, mind and soul.

At the same time men have grasped fortunes in this country so great that

the human mind cannot comprehend their magnitude. These mountains of

wealth are far larger than even that lavish reward which no one would

deny to business risk or genius.

On the other hand, American business is uncertain and unsteady compared

with the business of other nations. American business men are the best

and bravest in the world, and yet our business conditions hamper their

energies and chill their courage. We have no permanency in business

affairs, no sure outlook upon the business future. This unsettled state

of American business prevents it from realizing for the people that

great and continuous prosperity which our country's location, vast

wealth and small population justifies.

We mean to remedy these conditions. We mean not only to make prosperity

steady, but to give to the many who earn it a just share of that

prosperity instead of helping the few who do not earn it to take an

unjust share. The progressive motto is "Pass prosperity around." To make

human living easier, to free the hands of honest business, to make trade

and commerce sound and steady, to protect womanhood, save childhood and

restore the dignity of manhood--these are the tasks we must do.

What, then, is the progressive answer to these questions? We are able to

give it specifically and concretely. The first work before us is the

revival of honest business. For business is nothing but the industrial

and trade activities of all the people. Men grow the products of the

field, cut ripe timber from the forest, dig metal from the mine, fashion

all for human use, carry them to the market place and exchange them

according to their mutual needs--and this is business.

With our vast advantages, contrasted with the vast disadvantages of

other nations, American business all the time should be the best and

steadiest in the world. But it is not. Germany, with shallow soil, no

mines, only a window on the seas and a population more than ten times as

dense as ours, yet has a sounder business, a steadier prosperity, a more

contented because better cared for people.

What, then, must we do to make American business better? We must do what

poorer nations have done. We must end the abuses of business by striking

down those abuses instead of striking down business itself. We must try

to make little business big and all business honest instead of striving

to make big business little and yet letting it remain dishonest.

Present-day business is as unlike old-time business as the old-time

ox-cart is unlike the present-day locomotive. Invention has made the

whole world over again. The railroad, telegraph, telephone have bound

the people of modern nations into families. To do the business of these

closely knit millions in every modern country great business concerns

came into being. What we call big business is the child of the economic

progress of mankind. So warfare to destroy big business is foolish

because it can not succeed and wicked because it ought not to succeed.

Warfare to destroy big business does not hurt big business, which always

comes out on top, so much as it hurts all other business which, in such

a warfare, never comes out on top.

With the growth of big business came business evils just as great. It is

these evils of big business that hurt the people and injure all other

business. One of these wrongs is over capitalization which taxes the

people's very living. Another is the manipulation of prices to the

unsettlement of all normal business and to the people's damage. Another

is interference in the making of the people's laws and the running of

the people's government in the unjust interest of evil business. Getting

laws that enable particular interests to rob the people, and even to

gather criminal riches from human health and life is still another.

An example of such laws is the infamous tobacco legislation of 1902,

which authorized the Tobacco Trust to continue to collect from the

people the Spanish War tax, amounting to a score of millions of dollars,

but to keep that tax instead of turning it over to the government, as it

had been doing. Another example is the shameful meat legislation, by

which the Beef Trust had the meat it sent abroad inspected by the

government so that foreign countries would take its product and yet was

permitted to sell diseased meat to our own people. It is incredible that

laws like these could ever get on the Nation's statute books. The

invisible government put them there; and only the universal wrath of an

enraged people corrected them when, after years, the people discovered

the outrages.

It is to get just such laws as these and to prevent the passage of laws

to correct them, as well as to keep off the statute books general laws

which will end the general abuses of big business that these few

criminal interests corrupt our politics, invest in public officials and

keep in power in both parties that type of politicians and party

managers who debase American politics.

Behind rotten laws and preventing sound laws, stands the corrupt boss;

behind the corrupt boss stands the robber interest; and commanding these

powers of pillage stands bloated human greed. It is this conspiracy of

evil we must overthrow if we would get the honest laws we need. It is

this invisible government we must destroy if we would save American

institutions.

Other nations have ended the very same business evils from which we

suffer by clearly defining business wrong-doing and then making it a

criminal offense, punishable by imprisonment. Yet these foreign nations

encourage big business itself and foster all honest business. But they

do not tolerate dishonest business, little or big.

What, then, shall we Americans do? Common sense and the experience of

the world says that we ought to keep the good big business does for us

and stop the wrongs that big business does to us. Yet we have done just

the other thing. We have struck at big business itself and have not even

aimed to strike at the evils of big business. Nearly twenty-five years

ago Congress passed a law to govern American business in the present

time which Parliament passed in the reign of King James to govern

English business in that time.

For a quarter of a century the courts have tried to make this law work.

Yet during this very time trusts grew greater in number and power than

in the whole history of the world before; and their evils flourished

unhindered and unchecked. These great business concerns grew because

natural laws made them grow and artificial law at war with natural law

could not stop their growth. But their evils grew faster than the trusts

themselves because avarice nourished those evils and no law of any kind

stopped avarice from nourishing them.

Nor is this the worst. Under the shifting interpretation of the Sherman

law, uncertainty and fear is chilling the energies of the great body of

honest American business men. As the Sherman law now stands, no two

business men can arrange their mutual affairs and be sure that they are

not law-breakers. This is the main hindrance to the immediate and

permanent revival of American business. If German or English business

men, with all their disadvantages compared with our advantages, were

manacled by our Sherman law, as it stands, they soon would be bankrupt.

Indeed, foreign business men declare that, if their countries had such a

law, so administered, they could not do business at all.

Even this is not all. By the decrees of our courts, under the Sherman

law, the two mightiest trusts on earth have actually been licensed, in

the practical outcome, to go on doing every wrong they ever committed.

Under the decrees of the courts the Oil and Tobacco Trusts still can

raise prices unjustly and already have done so. They still can issue

watered stock and surely will do so. They still can throttle other

business men and the United Cigar Stores Company now is doing so. They

still can corrupt our politics and this moment are indulging in that

practice.

The people are tired of this mock battle with criminal capital. They do

not want to hurt business, but they do want to get something done about

the trust question that amounts to something. What good does it do any

man to read in his morning paper that the courts have "dissolved" the

Oil Trust, and then read in his evening paper that he must thereafter

pay a higher price for his oil than ever before? What good does it do

the laborer who smokes his pipe to be told that the courts have

"dissolved" the Tobacco Trust and yet find that he must pay the same or

a higher price for the same short-weight package of tobacco? Yet all

this is the practical result of the suits against these two greatest

trusts in the world.

Such business chaos and legal paradoxes as American business suffers

from can be found nowhere else in the world. Rival nations do not fasten

legal ball and chain upon their business--no, they put wings on its

flying feet. Rival nations do not tell their business men that if they

go forward with legitimate enterprise the penitentiary may be their

goal. No! Rival nations tell their business men that so long as they do

honest business their governments will not hinder but will help them.

But these rival nations do tell their business men that if they do any

evil that our business men do, prison bars await them. These rival

nations do tell their business men that if they issue watered stock or

cheat the people in any way, prison cells will be their homes.

Just this is what all honest American business wants; just this is what

dishonest American business does not want; just this is what the

American people propose to have; just this the national Republican

platform of 1908 pledged the people that we would give them; and just

this important pledge the administration, elected on that platform,

repudiated as it repudiated the more immediate tariff pledge.

Both these reforms, so vital to honest American business, the

Progressive party will accomplish. Neither evil interests nor reckless

demagogues can swerve us from our purpose; for we are free from both and

fear neither.

We mean to put new business laws on our statute books which will tell

American business men what they can do and what they cannot do. We mean

to make our business laws clear instead of foggy--to make them plainly

state just what things are criminal and what are lawful. And we mean

that the penalty for things criminal shall be prison sentences that

actually punish the real offender, instead of money fines that hurt

nobody but the people, who must pay them in the end.

And then we mean to send the message forth to hundreds of thousands of

brilliant minds and brave hearts engaged in honest business, that they

are not criminals but honorable men in their work to make good business

in this Republic. Sure of victory, we even now say, "Go forward,

American business men, and know that behind you, supporting you,

encouraging you, are the power and approval of the greatest people under

the sun. Go forward, American business men, and feed full the fires

beneath American furnaces; and give employment to every American laborer

who asks for work. Go forward, American business men, and capture the

markets of the world for American trade; and know that on the wings of

your commerce you carry liberty throughout the world and to every

inhabitant thereof. Go forward, American business men, and realize that

in the time to come it shall be said of you, as it is said of the hand

that rounded Peter's Dome, 'he builded better than he knew.'"

The next great business reform we must have to steadily increase

American prosperity is to change the method of building our tariffs. The

tariff must be taken out of politics and treated as a business question

instead of as a political question. Heretofore, we have done just the

other thing. That is why American business is upset every few years by

unnecessary tariff upheavals and is weakened by uncertainty in the

periods between. The greatest need of business is certainty; but the

only thing certain about our tariff is uncertainty.

What, then, shall we do to make our tariff changes strengthen business

instead of weakening business? Rival protective tariff nations have

answered that question. Common sense has answered it. Next to our need

to make the Sherman law modern, understandable and just, our greatest

fiscal need is a genuine, permanent, non-partisan tariff commission.

Five years ago, when the fight for this great business measure was begun

in the Senate the bosses of both parties were against it. So, when the

last revision of the tariff was on and a tariff commission might have

been written into the tariff law, the administration would not aid this

reform. When two years later the administration supported it weakly, the

bi-partisan boss system killed it. There has not been and will not be

any sincere and honest effort by the old parties to get a tariff

commission. There has not been and will not be any sincere and honest

purpose by those parties to take the tariff out of politics.

For the tariff in politics is the excuse for those sham political

battles which give the spoilers their opportunity. The tariff in

politics is one of the invisible government's methods of wringing

tribute from the people. Through the tariff in politics the

beneficiaries of tariff excesses are cared for, no matter which party is

"revising."

Who has forgotten the tariff scandals that made President Cleveland

denounce the Wilson-Gorman bill as "a perfidy and a dishonor?" Who ever

can forget the brazen robberies forced into the Payne-Aldrich bill which

Mr. Taft defended as "the best ever made?" If everyone else forgets

these things the interests that profited by them never will forget them.

The bosses and lobbyists that grew rich by putting them through never

will forget them. That is why the invisible government and its agents

want to keep the old method of tariff building. For, though such tariff

"revisions" may make lean years for the people, they make fat years for

the powers of pillage and their agents.

So neither of the old parties can honestly carry out any tariff policies

which they pledge the people to carry out. But even if they could and

even if they were sincere, the old party platforms are in error on

tariff policy. The Democratic platform declares for free trade; but free

trade is wrong and ruinous. The Republican platform permits extortion;

but tariff extortion is robbery by law. The Progressive party is for

honest protection; and honest protection is right and a condition of

American prosperity.

A tariff high enough to give American producers the American market when

they make honest goods and sell them at honest prices but low enough

that when they sell dishonest goods at dishonest prices, foreign

competition can correct both evils; a tariff high enough to enable

American producers to pay our workingmen American wages and so arranged

that the workingmen will get such wages; a business tariff whose changes

will be so made as to reassure business instead of disturbing it--this

is the tariff and the method of its making in which the Progressive

party believes, for which it does battle and which it proposes to write

into the laws of the land.

The Payne-Aldrich tariff law must be revised immediately in accordance

to these principles. At the same time a genuine, permanent, non-partisan

tariff commission must be fixed in the law as firmly as the Interstate

Commerce Commission. Neither of the old parties can do this work. For

neither of the old parties believes in such a tariff; and, what is more

serious, special privilege is too thoroughly woven into the fiber of

both old parties to allow them to make such a tariff. The Progressive

party only is free from these influences. The Progressive party only

believes in the sincere enactment of a sound tariff policy. The

Progressive party only can change the tariff as it must be changed.

These are samples of the reforms in the laws of business that we intend

to put on the Nation's statute books. But there are other questions as

important and pressing that we mean to answer by sound and humane laws.

Child labor in factories, mills, mines and sweat-shops must be ended

throughout the Republic. Such labor is a crime against childhood because

it prevents the growth of normal manhood and womanhood. It is a crime

against the Nation because it prevents the growth of a host of children

into strong, patriotic and intelligent citizens.

Only the Nation can stop this industrial vice. The States cannot stop

it. The States never stopped any national wrong--and child labor is a

national wrong. To leave it to the State alone is unjust to business;

for if some States stop it and other States do not, business men of the

former are at a disadvantage with the business men of the latter,

because they must sell in the same market goods made by manhood labor at

manhood wages in competition with goods made by childhood labor at

childhood wages. To leave it to the States is unjust to manhood labor;

for childhood labor in any State lowers manhood labor in every State,

because the product of childhood labor in any State competes with the

product of manhood labor in every State. Children workers at the looms

in South Carolina means bayonets at the breasts of men and women workers

in Massachusetts who strike for living wages. Let the States do what

they can, and more power to their arm; but let the Nation do what it

should and cleanse our flag from this stain.

Modern industrialism has changed the status of women. Women now are wage

earners in factories, stores and other places of toil. In hours of labor

and all the physical conditions of industrial effort they must compete

with men. And they must do it at lower wages than men receive--wages

which, in most cases, are not enough for these women workers to live on.

This is inhuman and indecent. It is unsocial and uneconomic. It is

immoral and unpatriotic. Toward women the Progressive party proclaims

the chivalry of the State. We propose to protect women wage-earners by

suitable laws, an example of which is the minimum wage for women

workers--a wage which shall be high enough to at least buy clothing,

food and shelter for the woman toiler.

The care of the aged is one of the most perplexing problems of modern

life. How is the workingman with less than five hundred dollars a year,

and with earning power waning as his own years advance, to provide for

aged parents or other relatives in addition to furnishing food, shelter

and clothing for his wife and children? What is to become of the family

of the laboring man whose strength has been sapped by excessive toil and

who has been thrown upon the industrial scrap heap? It is questions

like these we must answer if we are to justify free institutions. They

are questions to which the masses of people are chained as to a body of

death. And they are questions which other and poorer nations are

answering.

We progressives mean that America shall answer them. The Progressive

party is the helping hand to those whom a vicious industrialism has

maimed and crippled. We are for the conservation of our natural

resources; but even more we are for the conservation of human life. Our

forests, water power and minerals are valuable and must be saved from

the spoilers; but men, women and children are more valuable and they,

too, must be saved from the spoilers.

Because women, as much as men, are a part of our economic and social

life, women, as much as men, should have the voting power to solve all

economic and social problems. Votes for women are theirs as a matter of

natural right alone; votes for women should be theirs as a matter of

political wisdom also. As wage-earners, they should help to solve the

labor problem; as property owners they should help to solve the tax

problem; as wives and mothers they should help to solve all the problems

that concern the home. And that means all national problems; for the

Nation abides at the fireside.

If it is said that women cannot help defend the Nation in time of war

and therefore that they should not help to determine the Nation's

destinies in time of peace, the answer is that women suffer and serve in

time of conflict as much as men who carry muskets. And the deeper answer

is that those who bear the Nation's soldiers are as much the Nation's

defenders as their sons.

Public spokesmen for the invisible government say that many of our

reforms are unconstitutional. The same kind of men said the same thing

of every effort the Nation has made to end national abuses. But in every

case, whether in the courts, at the ballot box, or on the battlefield,

the vitality of the Constitution was vindicated.

The Progressive party believes that the Constitution is a living thing,

growing with the people's growth, strengthening with the people's

strength, aiding the people in their struggle for life, liberty and the

pursuit of happiness, permitting the people to meet all their needs as

conditions change. The opposition believes that the Constitution is a

dead form, holding back the people's growth, shackling the people's

strength but giving a free hand to malign powers that prey upon the

people. The first words of the Constitution are "We the people," and

they declare that the Constitution's purpose is "to form a perfect Union

and to promote the general welfare." To do just that is the very heart

of the progressive cause.

The Progressive party asserts anew the vitality of the Constitution. We

believe in the true doctrine of states' rights, which forbids the Nation

from interfering with states' affairs, and also forbids the states from

interfering with national affairs. The combined intelligence and

composite conscience of the American people is as irresistible as it is

righteous; and the Constitution does not prevent that force from working

out the general welfare.

From certain sources we hear preachments about the danger of our reforms

to American institutions. What is the purpose of American institutions?

Why was this Republic established? What does the flag stand for? What do

these things mean?

They mean that the people shall be free to correct human abuses.

They mean that men, women and children shall not be denied the

opportunity to grow stronger and nobler.

They mean that the people shall have the power to make our land each day

a better place to live in.

They mean the realities of liberty and not the academics of theory.

They mean the actual progress of the race in tangible items of daily

living and not the theoretics of barren disputation.

If they do not mean these things they are as sounding brass and tinkling

cymbals.

A Nation of strong, upright men and women; a Nation of wholesome homes,

realizing the best ideals; a Nation whose power is glorified by its

justice and whose justice is the conscience of scores of millions of

God-fearing people--that is the Nation the people need and want. And

that is the Nation they shall have.

For never doubt that we Americans will make good the real meaning of our

institutions. Never doubt that we will solve, in righteousness and

wisdom, every vexing problem. Never doubt that in the end, the hand from

above that leads us upward will prevail over the hand from below that

drags us downward. Never doubt that we are indeed a Nation whose God is

the Lord.

And, so, never doubt that a braver, fairer, cleaner America surely will

come; that a better and brighter life for all beneath the flag surely

will be achieved. Those who now scoff soon will pray. Those who now

doubt soon will believe.

Soon the night will pass; and when, to the Sentinel on the ramparts of

Liberty the anxious ask: "Watchman, what of the night?" his answer will

be "Lo, the morn appeareth."

Knowing the price we must pay, the sacrifice we must make, the burdens

we must carry, the assaults we must endure--knowing full well the

cost--yet we enlist, and we enlist for the war. For we know the justice

of our cause, and we know, too, its certain triumph.

Not reluctantly then, but eagerly, not with faint hearts but strong, do

we now advance upon the enemies of the people. For the call that comes

to us is the call that came to our fathers. As they responded so shall

we.

"He hath sounded forth a trumpet that shall never call retreat,

He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment seat.

Oh, be swift our souls to answer Him, be jubilant our feet,

Our God is marching on."

_RUSSELL CONWELL_

ACRES OF DIAMONDS[40]

I am astonished that so many people should care to hear this story over

again. Indeed, this lecture has become a study in psychology; it often

breaks all rules of oratory, departs from the precepts of rhetoric, and

yet remains the most popular of any lecture I have delivered in the

forty-four years of my public life. I have sometimes studied for a year

upon a lecture and made careful research, and then presented the lecture

just once--never delivered it again. I put too much work on it. But this

had no work on it--thrown together perfectly at random, spoken offhand

without any special preparation, and it succeeds when the thing we

study, work over, adjust to a plan, is an entire failure.

The "Acres of Diamonds" which I have mentioned through so many years are

to be found in Philadelphia, and you are to find them. Many have found

them. And what man has done, man can do. I could not find anything

better to illustrate my thought than a story I have told over and over

again, and which is now found in books in nearly every library.

In 1870 we went down the Tigris River. We hired a guide at Bagdad to

show us Persepolis, Nineveh and Babylon, and the ancient countries of

Assyria as far as the Arabian Gulf. He was well acquainted with the

land, but he was one of those guides who love to entertain their

patrons; he was like a barber that tells you many stories in order to

keep your mind off the scratching and the scraping. He told me so many

stories that I grew tired of his telling them and I refused to

listen--looked away whenever he commenced; that made the guide quite

angry. I remember that toward evening he took his Turkish cap off his

head and swung it around in the air. The gesture I did not understand

and I did not dare look at him for fear I should become the victim of

another story. But, although I am not a woman, I did look, and the

instant I turned my eyes upon that worthy guide he was off again. Said

he, "I will tell you a story now which reserve for my particular

friends!" So then, counting myself a particular friend, I listened, and

I have always been glad I did.

He said there once lived not far from the River Indus an ancient Persian

by the name of Al Hafed. He said that Al Hafed owned a very large farm

with orchards, grain fields and gardens. He was a contented and wealthy

man--contented because he was wealthy, and wealthy because he was

contented. One day there visited this old farmer one of those ancient

Buddhist priests, and he sat down by Al Hafed's fire and told that old

farmer how this world of ours was made. He said that this world was once

a mere bank of fog, which is scientifically true, and he said that the

Almighty thrust his finger into the bank of fog and then began slowly to

move his finger around and gradually to increase the speed of his finger

until at last he whirled that bank of fog into a solid ball of fire, and

it went rolling through the universe, burning its way through other

cosmic banks of fog, until it condensed the moisture without, and fell

in floods of rain upon the heated surface and cooled the outward crust.

Then the internal flames burst through the cooling crust and threw up

the mountains and made the hills of the valley of this wonderful world

of ours. If this internal melted mass burst out and copied very quickly

it became granite; that which cooled less quickly became silver; and

less quickly, gold; and after gold diamonds were made. Said the old

priest, "A diamond is a congealed drop of sunlight."

This is a scientific truth also. You all know that a diamond is pure

carbon, actually deposited sunlight--and he said another thing I would

not forget: he declared that a diamond is the last and highest of God's

mineral creations, as a woman is the last and highest of God's animal

creations. I suppose that is the reason why the two have such a liking

for each other. And the old priest told Al Hafed that if he had a

handful of diamonds he could purchase a whole country, and with a mine

of diamonds he could place his children upon thrones through the

influence of their great wealth. Al Hafed heard all about diamonds and

how much they were worth, and went to his bed that night a poor man--not

that he had lost anything, but poor because he was discontented and

discontented because he thought he was poor. He said: "I want a mine of

diamonds!" So he lay awake all night, and early in the morning sought

out the priest. Now I know from experience that a priest when awakened

early in the morning is cross. He awoke that priest out of his dreams

and said to him, "Will you tell me where I can find diamonds?" The

priest said, "Diamonds? What do you want with diamonds?" "I want to be

immensely rich," said Al Hafed, "but I don't know where to go." "Well,"

said the priest, "if you will find a river that runs over white sand

between high mountains, in those sands you will always see diamonds."

"Do you really believe that there is such a river?" "Plenty of them,

plenty of them; all you have to do is just go and find them, then you

have them." Al Hafed said, "I will go." So he sold his farm, collected

his money at interest, left his family in charge of a neighbor, and away

he went in search of diamonds. He began very properly, to my mind, at

the Mountains of the Moon. Afterwards he went around into Palestine,

then wandered on into Europe, and at last when his money was all spent,

and he was in rags, wretchedness and poverty, he stood on the shore of

that bay in Barcelona, Spain, when a tidal wave came rolling through the

Pillars of Hercules and the poor afflicted, suffering man could not

resist the awful temptation to cast himself into that incoming tide, and

he sank beneath its foaming crest, never to rise in this life again.

When that old guide had told me that very sad story, he stopped the

camel I was riding and went back to fix the baggage on one of the other

camels, and I remember thinking to myself, "Why did he reserve that for

his _particular friends_?" There seemed to be no beginning, middle or

end--nothing to it. That was the first story I ever heard told or read

in which the hero was killed in the first chapter. I had but one chapter

of that story and the hero was dead. When the guide came back and took

up the halter of my camel again, he went right on with the same story.

He said that Al Hafed's successor led his camel out into the garden to

drink, and as that camel put its nose down into the clear water of the

garden brook Al Hafed's successor noticed a curious flash of light from

the sands of the shallow stream, and reaching in he pulled out a black

stone having an eye of light that reflected all the colors of the

rainbow, and he took that curious pebble into the house and left it on

the mantel, then went on his way and forgot all about it. A few days

after that, this same old priest who told Al Hafed how diamonds were

made, came in to visit his successor, when he saw that flash of light

from the mantel. He rushed up and said, "Here is a diamond--here is a

diamond! Has Al Hafed returned?" "No, no; Al Hafed has not returned and

that is not a diamond; that is nothing but a stone; we found it right

out here in our garden." "But I know a diamond when I see it," said he;

"that is a diamond!"

Then together they rushed to the garden and stirred up the white sands

with their fingers and found others more beautiful, more valuable

diamonds than the first, and thus, said the guide to me, were discovered

the diamond mines of Golconda, the most magnificent diamond mines in all

the history of mankind, exceeding the Kimberley in its value. The great

Kohinoor diamond in England's crown jewels and the largest crown diamond

on earth in Russia's crown jewels, which I had often hoped she would

have to sell before they had peace with Japan, came from that mine, and

when the old guide had called my attention to that wonderful discovery

he took his Turkish cap off his head again and swung it around in the

air to call my attention to the moral. Those Arab guides have a moral to

each story, though the stories are not always moral. He said, had Al

Hafed remained at home and dug in his own cellar or in his own garden,

instead of wretchedness, starvation, poverty and death in a strange

land, he would have had "acres of diamonds"--for every acre, yes, every

shovelful of that old farm afterwards revealed the gems which since have

decorated the crowns of monarchs. When he had given the moral to his

story, I saw why he had reserved this story for his "particular

friends." I didn't tell him I could see it; I was not going to tell that

old Arab that I could see it. For it was that mean old Arab's way of

going around a thing, like a lawyer, and saying indirectly what he did

not dare say directly, that there was a certain young man that day

traveling down the Tigris River that might better be at home in America.

I didn't tell him I could see it.

I told him his story reminded me of one, and I told it to him quick. I

told him about that man out in California, who, in 1847, owned a ranch

out there. He read that gold had been discovered in Southern California,

and he sold his ranch to Colonel Sutter and started off to hunt for

gold. Colonel Sutter put a mill on the little stream in that farm and

one day his little girl brought some wet sand from the raceway of the

mill into the house and placed it before the fire to dry, and as that

sand was falling through the little girl's fingers a visitor saw the

first shining scales of real gold that were ever discovered in

California; and the man who wanted the gold had sold this ranch and gone

away, never to return. I delivered this lecture two years ago in

California, in the city that stands near that farm, and they told me

that the mine is not exhausted yet, and that a one-third owner of that

farm has been getting during these recent years twenty dollars of gold

every fifteen minutes of his life, sleeping or waking. Why, you and I

would enjoy an income like that!

But the best illustration that I have now of this thought was found here

in Pennsylvania. There was a man living in Pennsylvania who owned a farm

here and he did what I should do if I had a farm in Pennsylvania--he

sold it. But before he sold it he concluded to secure employment

collecting coal oil for his cousin in Canada. They first discovered coal

oil there. So this farmer in Pennsylvania decided that he would apply

for a position with his cousin in Canada. Now, you see, this farmer was

not altogether a foolish man. He did not leave his farm until he had

something else to do. Of all the simpletons the stars shine on there is

none more foolish than a man who leaves one job before he has obtained

another. And that has especial reference to gentlemen of my profession,

and has no reference to a man seeking a divorce. So I say this old

farmer did not leave one job until he had obtained another. He wrote to

Canada, but his cousin replied that he could not engage him because he

did not know anything about the oil business. "Well, then," said he, "I

will understand it." So he set himself at the study of the whole

subject. He began at the second day of the creation, he studied the

subject from the primitive vegetation to the coal oil stage, until he

knew all about it. Then he wrote to his cousin and said, "Now I

understand the oil business." And his cousin replied to him, "All right,

then, come on."

That man, by the record of the county, sold his farm for eight hundred

and thirty-three dollars--even money, "no cents." He had scarcely gone

from that farm before the man who purchased it went out to arrange for

the watering the cattle and he found that the previous owner had

arranged the matter very nicely. There is a stream running down the

hillside there, and the previous owner had gone out and put a plank

across that stream at an angle, extending across the brook and down

edgewise a few inches under the surface of the water. The purpose of the

plank across that brook was to throw over to the other bank a

dreadful-looking scum through which the cattle would not put their noses

to drink above the plank, although they would drink the water on one

side below it. Thus that man who had gone to Canada had been himself

damming back for twenty-three years a flow of coal oil which the State

Geologist of Pennsylvania declared officially, as early as 1870, was

then worth to our State a hundred millions of dollars. The city of

Titusville now stands on that farm and those Pleasantville wells flow

on, and that farmer who had studied all about the formation of oil since

the second day of God's creation clear down to the present time, sold

that farm for $833, no cents--again I say, "no sense."

But I need another illustration, and I found that in Massachusetts, and

I am sorry I did, because that is my old State. This young man I mention

went out of the State to study--went down to Yale College and studied

Mines and Mining. They paid him fifteen dollars a week during his last

year for training students who were behind their classes in mineralogy,

out of hours, of course, while pursuing his own studies. But when he

graduated they raised his pay from fifteen dollars to forty-five dollars

and offered him a professorship. Then he went straight home to his

mother and said, "Mother, I won't work for forty-five dollars a week.

What is forty-five dollars a week for a man with a brain like mine!

Mother, let's go out to California and stake out gold claims and be

immensely rich." "Now," said his mother, "it is just as well to be happy

as it is to be rich."

But as he was the only son he had his way--they always do; and they

sold out in Massachusetts and went to Wisconsin, where he went into the

employ of the Superior Copper Mining Company, and he was lost from sight

in the employ of that company at fifteen dollars a week again. He was

also to have an interest in any mines that he should discover for that

company. But I do not believe that he has ever discovered a mine--I do

not know anything about it, but I do not believe he has. I know he had

scarcely gone from the old homestead before the farmer who had bought

the homestead went out to dig potatoes, and as he was bringing them in

in a large basket through the front gateway, the ends of the stone wall

came so near together at the gate that the basket hugged very tight. So

he set the basket on the ground and pulled, first on one side and then

on the other side. Our farms in Massachusetts are mostly stone walls,

and the farmers have to be economical with their gateways in order to

have some place to put the stones. That basket hugged so tight there

that as he was hauling it through he noticed in the upper stone next the

gate a block of native silver, eight inches square; and this professor

of mines and mining and mineralogy, who would not work for forty-five

dollars a week, when he sold that homestead in Massachusetts, sat right

on that stone to make the bargain. He was brought up there; he had gone

back and forth by that piece of silver, rubbed it with his sleeve, and

it seemed to say, "Come now, now, now, here is a hundred thousand

dollars. Why not take me?" But he would not take it. There was no silver

in Newburyport; it was all away off--well, I don't know where; he

didn't, but somewhere else--and he was a professor of mineralogy.

I do not know of anything I would enjoy better than to take the whole

time to-night telling of blunders like that I have heard professors

make. Yet I wish I knew what that man is doing out there in Wisconsin. I

can imagine him out there, as he sits by his fireside, and he is saying

to his friends, "Do you know that man Conwell that lives in

Philadelphia?" "Oh, yes, I have heard of him." "And do you know that man

Jones that lives in that city?" "Yes, I have heard of him." And then he

begins to laugh and laugh and says to his friends, "They have done the

same thing I did, precisely." And that spoils the whole joke, because

you and I have done it.

Ninety out of every hundred people here have made that mistake this very

day. I say you ought to be rich; you have no right to be poor. To live

in Philadelphia and not be rich is a misfortune, and it is doubly a

misfortune, because you could have been rich just as well as be poor.

Philadelphia furnishes so many opportunities. You ought to be rich. But

persons with certain religious prejudice will ask, "How can you spend

your time advising the rising generation to give their time to getting

money--dollars and cents--the commercial spirit?"

Yet I must say that you ought to spend time getting rich. You and I know

there are some things more valuable than money; of course, we do. Ah,

yes! By a heart made unspeakably sad by a grave on which the autumn

leaves now fall, I know there are some things higher and grander and

sublimer than money. Well does the man know, who has suffered, that

there are some things sweeter and holier and more sacred than gold.

Nevertheless, the man of common sense also knows that there is not any

one of those things that is not greatly enhanced by the use of money.

Money is power. Love is the grandest thing on God's earth, but fortunate

the lover who has plenty of money. Money is power; money has powers; and

for a man to say, "I do not want money," is to say, "I do not wish to do

any good to my fellowmen." It is absurd thus to talk. It is absurd to

disconnect them. This is a wonderfully great life, and you ought to

spend your time getting money, because of the power there is in money.

And yet this religious prejudice is so great that some people think it

is a great honor to be one of God's poor. I am looking in the faces of

people who think just that way. I heard a man once say in a prayer

meeting that he was thankful that he was one of God's poor, and then I

silently wondered what his wife would say to that speech, as she took in

washing to support the man while he sat and smoked on the veranda. I

don't want to see any more of that land of God's poor. Now, when a man

could have been rich just as well, and he is now weak because he is

poor, he has done some great wrong; he has been untruthful to himself;

he has been unkind to his fellowmen. We ought to get rich if we can by

honorable and Christian methods, and these are the only methods that

sweep us quickly toward the goal of riches.

I remember, not many years ago a young theological student who came into

my office and said to me that he thought it was his duty to come in and

"labor with me." I asked him what had happened, and he said: "I feel it

is my duty to come in and speak to you, sir, and say that the Holy

Scriptures declare that money is the root of all evil." I asked him

where he found that saying, and he said he found it in the Bible. I

asked him whether he had made a new Bible, and he said, no, he had not

gotten a new Bible, that it was in the old Bible. "Well," I said, "if it

is in my Bible, I never saw it. Will you please get the text-book and

let me see it?" He left the room and soon came stalking in with his

Bible open, with all the bigoted pride of the narrow sectarian, who

founds his creed on some misinterpretation of Scripture, and he put the

Bible down on the table before me and fairly squealed into my ear,

"There it is. You can read it for yourself." I said to him, "Young man,

you will learn, when you get a little older, that you cannot trust

another denomination to read the Bible for you." I said, "Now, you

belong to another denomination. Please read it to me, and remember that

you are taught in a school where emphasis is exegesis." So he took the

Bible and read it: "The _love_ of money is the root of all evil." Then

he had it right. The Great Book has come back into the esteem and love

of the people, and into the respect of the greatest minds of earth, and

now you can quote it and rest your life and your death on it without

more fear. So, when he quoted right from the Scriptures he quoted the

truth. "The love of money is the root of all evil." Oh, that is it. It

is the worship of the means instead of the end, though you cannot reach

the end without the means. When a man makes an idol of the money instead

of the purposes for which it may be used, when he squeezes the dollar

until the eagle squeals, then it is made the root of all evil. Think, if

you only had the money, what you could do for your wife, your child, and

for your home and your city. Think how soon you could endow the Temple

College yonder if you only had the money and the disposition to give it;

and yet, my friend, people say you and I should not spend the time

getting rich. How inconsistent the whole thing is. We ought to be rich,

because money has power. I think the best thing for me to do is to

illustrate this, for if I say you ought to get rich, I ought, at least,

to suggest how it is done. We get a prejudice against rich men because

of the lies that are told about them. The lies that are told about Mr.

Rockefeller because he has two hundred million dollars--so many believe

them; yet how false is the representation of that man to the world. How

little we can tell what is true nowadays when newspapers try to sell

their papers entirely on some sensation! The way they lie about the rich

men is something terrible, and I do not know that there is anything to

illustrate this better than what the newspapers now say about the city

of Philadelphia. A young man came to me the other day and said, "If Mr.

Rockefeller, as you think, is a good man, why is it that everybody says

so much against him?" It is because he has gotten ahead of us; that is

the whole of it--just gotten ahead of us. Why is it Mr. Carnegie is

criticised so sharply by an envious world? Because he has gotten more

than we have. If a man knows more than I know, don't I incline to

criticise somewhat his learning? Let a man stand in a pulpit and preach

to thousands, and if I have fifteen people in my church, and they're all

asleep, don't I criticise him? We always do that to the man who gets

ahead of us. Why, the man you are criticising has one hundred millions,

and you have fifty cents, and both of you have just what you are worth.

One of the richest men in this country came into my home and sat down in

my parlor and said: "Did you see all those lies about my family in the

paper?" "Certainly I did; I knew they were lies when I saw them." "Why

do they lie about me the way they do?" "Well," I said to him, "if you

will give me your check for one hundred millions, I will take all the

lies along with it." "Well," said he, "I don't see any sense in their

thus talking about my family and myself. Conwell, tell me frankly, what

do you think the American people think of me?" "Well," said I, "they

think you are the blackest-hearted villain that ever trod the soil!"

"But what can I do about it?" There is nothing he can do about it, and

yet he is one of the sweetest Christian men I ever knew. If you get a

hundred millions you will have the lies; you will be lied about, and you

can judge your success in any line by the lies that are told about you.

I say that you ought to be rich. But there are ever coming to me young

men who say, "I would like to go into business, but I cannot." "Why

not?" "Because I have no capital to begin on." Capital, capital to begin

on! What! young man! Living in Philadelphia and looking at this wealthy

generation, all of whom began as poor boys, and you want capital to

begin on? It is fortunate for you that you have no capital. I am glad

you have no money. I pity a rich man's son. A rich man's son in these

days of ours occupies a very difficult position. They are to be pitied.

A rich man's son cannot know the very best things in human life. He

cannot. The statistics of Massachusetts show us that not one out of

seventeen rich men's sons ever die rich. They are raised in luxury, they

die in poverty. Even if a rich man's son retains his father's money even

then he cannot know the best things of life.

A young man in our college yonder asked me to formulate for him what I

thought was the happiest hour in a man's history, and I studied it long

and came back convinced that the happiest hour that any man ever sees in

any earthly matter is when a young man takes his bride over the

threshold of the door, for the first time, of the house he himself has

earned and built, when he turns to his bride and with an eloquence

greater than any language of mine, he sayeth to his wife, "My loved one,

I earned this home myself; I earned it all. It is all mine, and I divide

it with thee." That is the grandest moment a human heart may ever see.

But a rich man's son cannot know that. He goes into a finer mansion, it

may be, but he is obliged to go through the house and say, "Mother gave

me this, mother gave me that, my mother gave me that, my mother gave me

that," until his wife wishes she had married his mother. Oh, I pity a

rich man's son. I do. Until he gets so far along in his dudeism that he

gets his arms up like that and can't get them down. Didn't you ever see

any of them astray at Atlantic City? I saw one of these scarecrows once

and I never tire thinking about it. I was at Niagara Falls lecturing,

and after the lecture I went to the hotel, and when I went up to the

desk there stood there a millionaire's son from New York. He was an

indescribable specimen of anthropologic potency. He carried a

gold-headed cane under his arm--more in its head than he had in his. I

do not believe I could describe the young man if I should try. But still

I must say that he wore an eye-glass he could not see through; patent

leather shoes he could not walk in, and pants he could not sit down

in--dressed like a grasshopper! Well, this human cricket came up to the

clerk's desk just as I came in. He adjusted his unseeing eye-glass in

this wise and lisped to the clerk, because it's "Hinglish, you know," to

lisp: "Thir, thir, will you have the kindness to fuhnish me with thome

papah and thome envelopehs!" The clerk measured that man quick, and he

pulled out a drawer and took some envelopes and paper and cast them

across the counter and turned away to his books. You should have seen

that specimen of humanity when the paper and envelopes came across the

counter--he whose wants had always been anticipated by servants. He

adjusted his unseeing eye-glass and he yelled after that clerk: "Come

back here, thir, come right back here. Now, thir, will you order a

thervant to take that papah and thothe envelopes and carry them to

yondah dethk." Oh, the poor miserable, contemptible American monkey! He

couldn't carry paper and envelopes twenty feet. I suppose he could not

get his arms down. I have no pity for such travesties of human nature.

If you have no capital, I am glad of it. You don't need capital; you

need common sense, not copper cents.

A.T. Stewart, the great princely merchant of New York, the richest man

in America in his time, was a poor boy; he had a dollar and a half and

went into the mercantile business. But he lost eighty-seven and a half

cents of his first dollar and a half because he bought some needles and

thread and buttons to sell, which people didn't want.

Are you poor? It is because you are not wanted and are left on your own

hands. There was the great lesson. Apply it whichever way you will it

comes to every single person's life, young or old. He did not know what

people needed, and consequently bought something they didn't want and

had the goods left on his hands a dead loss. A.T. Stewart learned there

the great lesson of his mercantile life and said, "I will never buy

anything more until I first learn what the people want; then I'll make

the purchase." He went around to the doors and asked them what they did

want, and when he found out what they wanted, he invested his sixty-two

and a half cents and began to supply "a known demand." I care not what

your profession or occupation in life may be; I care not whether you are

a lawyer, a doctor, a housekeeper, teacher or whatever else, the

principle is precisely the same. We must know what the world needs first

and then invest ourselves to supply that need, and success is almost

certain. A.T. Stewart went on until he was worth forty millions. "Well,"

you will say, "a man can do that in New York, but cannot do it here in

Philadelphia." The statistics very carefully gathered in New York in

1889 showed one hundred and seven millionaires in the city worth over

ten millions apiece. It was remarkable and people think they must go

there to get rich. Out of that one hundred and seven millionaires only

seven of them made their money in New York, and the others moved to New

York after their fortunes were made, and sixty-seven out of the

remaining hundred made their fortunes in towns of less than six thousand

people, and the richest man in the country at that time lived in a town

of thirty-five hundred inhabitants, and always lived there and never

moved away. It is not so much where you are as what you are. But at the

same time if the largeness of the city comes into the problem, then

remember it is the smaller city that furnishes the great opportunity to

make the millions of money. The best illustration that I can give is in

reference to John Jacob Astor, who was a poor boy and who made all the

money of the Astor family. He made more than his successors have ever

earned, and yet he once held a mortgage on a millinery store in New

York, and because the people could not make enough money to pay the

interest and the rent, he foreclosed the mortgage and took possession of

the store and went into partnership with the man who had failed. He kept

the same stock, did not give them a dollar capital, and he left them

alone and went out and sat down upon a bench in the park. Out there on

that bench in the park he had the most important, and to my mind, the

pleasantest part of that partnership business. He was watching the

ladies as they went by; and where is the man that wouldn't get rich at

that business? But when John Jacob Astor saw a lady pass, with her

shoulders back and her head up, as if she did not care if the whole

world looked on her, he studied her bonnet; and before that bonnet was

out of sight he knew the shape of the frame and the color of the

trimmings, the curl of the--something on a bonnet. Sometimes I try to

describe a woman's bonnet, but it is of little use, for it would be out

of style to-morrow night. So John Jacob Astor went to the store and

said: "Now, put in the show window just such a bonnet as I describe to

you because," said he, "I have just seen a lady who likes just such a

bonnet. Do not make up any more till I come back." And he went out again

and sat on that bench in the park, and another lady of a different form

and complexion passed him with a bonnet of different shape and color, of

course. "Now," said he, "put such a bonnet as that in the show window."

He didn't fill his show window with hats and bonnets which drive people

away and then sit in the back of the store and bawl because the people

go somewhere else to trade. He didn't put a hat or bonnet in that show

window the like of which he had not seen before it was made up.

In our city especially there are great opportunities for manufacturing,

and the time has come when the line is drawn very sharply between the

stockholders of the factory and their employés. Now, friends, there has

also come a discouraging gloom upon this country and the laboring men

are beginning to feel that they are being held down by a crust over

their heads through which they find it impossible to break, and the

aristocratic money-owner himself is so far above that he will never

descend to their assistance. That is the thought that is in the minds of

our people. But, friends, never in the history of our country was there

an opportunity so great for the poor man to get rich as there is now in

the city of Philadelphia. The very fact that they get discouraged is

what prevents them from getting rich. That is all there is to it. The

road is open, and let us keep it open between the poor and the rich. I

know that the labor unions have two great problems to contend with, and

there is only one way to solve them. The labor unions are doing as much

to prevent its solving as are the capitalists to-day, and there are

positively two sides to it. The labor union has two difficulties; the

first one is that it began to make a labor scale for all classes on a

par, and they scale down a man that can earn five dollars a day to two

and a half a day, in order to level up to him an imbecile that cannot

earn fifty cents a day. That is one of the most dangerous and

discouraging things for the working man. He cannot get the results of

his work if he do better work or higher work or work longer; that is a

dangerous thing, and in order to get every laboring man free and every

American equal to every other American, let the laboring man ask what he

is worth and get it--not let any capitalist say to him: "You shall work

for me for half of what you are worth;" nor let any labor organization

say: "You shall work for the capitalist for half your worth." Be a man,

be independent, and then shall the laboring man find the road ever open

from poverty to wealth. The other difficulty that the labor union has to

consider, and this problem they have to solve themselves, is the kind of

orators who come and talk to them about the oppressive rich. I can in my

dreams recite the oration I have heard again and again under such

circumstances. My life has been with the laboring man. I am a laboring

man myself. I have often, in their assemblies, heard the speech of the

man who has been invited to address the labor union. The man gets up

before the assembled company of honest laboring men and he begins by

saying: "Oh, ye honest, industrious laboring men, who have furnished all

the capital of the world, who have built all the palaces and constructed

all the railroads and covered the ocean with her steamships. Oh, you

laboring men! You are nothing but slaves; you are ground down in the

dust by the capitalist who is gloating over you as he enjoys his

beautiful estates and as he has his banks filled with gold, and every

dollar he owns is coined out of the hearts' blood of the honest laboring

man." Now, that is a lie, and you know it is a lie; and yet that is the

kind of speech that they are all the time hearing, representing the

capitalists as wicked and the laboring men so enslaved. Why, how wrong

it is! Let the man who loves his flag and believes in American

principles endeavor with all his soul to bring the capitalist and the

laboring man together until they stand side by side, and arm in arm, and

work for the common good of humanity.

He is an enemy to his country who sets capital against labor or labor

against capital.

Suppose I were to go down through this audience and ask you to introduce

me to the great inventors who live here in Philadelphia. "The inventors

of Philadelphia," you would say, "Why we don't have any in Philadelphia.

It is too slow to invent anything." But you do have just as great

inventors, and they are here in this audience, as ever invented a

machine. But the probability is that the greatest inventor to benefit

the world with his discovery is some person, perhaps some lady, who

thinks she could not invent anything. Did you ever study the history of

invention and see how strange it was that the man who made the greatest

discovery did it without any previous idea that he was an inventor? Who

are the great inventors? They are persons with plain, straightforward

common sense, who saw a need in the world and immediately applied

themselves to supply that need. If you want to invent anything, don't

try to find it in the wheels in your head nor the wheels in your

machine, but first find out what the people need, and then apply

yourself to that need, and this leads to invention on the part of the

people you would not dream of before. The great inventors are simply

great men; the greater the man the more simple the man; and the more

simple a machine, the more valuable it is. Did you ever know a really

great man? His ways are so simple, so common, so plain, that you think

any one could do what he is doing. So it is with the great men the world

over. If you know a really great man, a neighbor of yours, you can go

right up to him and say, "How are you, Jim, good morning, Sam." Of

course you can, for they are always so simple.

When I wrote the life of General Garfield, one of his neighbors took me

to his back door, and shouted, "Jim, Jim, Jim!" and very soon "Jim" came

to the door and General Garfield let me in--one of the grandest men of

our century. The great men of the world are ever so. I was down in

Virginia and went up to an educational institution and was directed to a

man who was setting out a tree. I approached him and said, "Do you think

it would be possible for me to see General Robert E. Lee, the President

of the University?" He said, "Sir, I am General Lee." Of course, when

you meet such a man, so noble a man as that, you will find him a simple,

plain man. Greatness is always just so modest and great inventions are

simple.

I asked a class in school once who were the great inventors, and a

little girl popped up and said, "Columbus." Well, now, she was not so

far wrong. Columbus bought a farm and he carried on that farm just as I

carried on my father's farm. He took a hoe and went out and sat down on

a rock. But Columbus, as he sat upon that shore and looked out upon the

ocean, noticed that the ships, as they sailed away, sank deeper into the

sea the farther they went. And since that time some other "Spanish

ships" have sunk into the sea. But as Columbus noticed that the tops of

the masts dropped down out of sight, he said: "That is the way it is

with this hoe handle; if you go around this hoe handle, the farther off

you go the farther down you go. I can sail around to the East Indies."

How plain it all was. How simple the mind--majestic like the simplicity

of a mountain in its greatness. Who are the great inventors? They are

ever the simple, plain, everyday people who see the need and set about

to supply it.

I was once lecturing in North Carolina, and the cashier of the bank sat

directly behind a lady who wore a very large hat. I said to that

audience, "Your wealth is too near to you; you are looking right over

it." He whispered to his friend, "Well, then, my wealth is in that hat."

A little later, as he wrote me, I said, "Wherever there is a human need

there is a greater fortune than a mine can furnish." He caught my

thought, and he drew up his plan for a better hat pin than was in the

hat before him, and the pin is now being manufactured. He was offered

fifty-five thousand dollars for his patent. That man made his fortune

before he got out of that hall. This is the whole question: Do you see a

need?

I remember well a man up in my native hills, a poor man, who for twenty

years was helped by the town in his poverty, who owned a wide-spreading

maple tree that covered the poor man's cottage like a benediction from

on high. I remember that tree, for in the spring--there were some

roguish boys around that neighborhood when I was young--in the spring of

the year the man would put a bucket there and the spouts to catch the

maple sap, and I remember where that bucket was; and when I was young

the boys were, oh, so mean, that they went to that tree before that man

had gotten out of bed in the morning, and after he had gone to bed at

night, and drank up that sweet sap. I could swear they did it. He didn't

make a great deal of maple sugar from that tree. But one day he made the

sugar so white and crystalline that the visitor did not believe it was

maple sugar; thought maple sugar must be red or black. He said to the

old man: "Why don't you make it that way and sell it for confectionery?"

The old man caught his thought and invented the "rock maple crystal,"

and before that patent expired he had ninety thousand dollars and had

built a beautiful palace on the site of that tree. After forty years

owning that tree he awoke to find it had fortunes of money indeed in it.

And many of us are right by the tree that has a fortune for us, and we

own it, possess it, do what we will with it, but we do not learn its

value because we do not see the human need, and in these discoveries and

inventions this is one of the most romantic things of life.

I have received letters from all over the country and from England,

where I have lectured, saying that they have discovered this and that,

and one man out in Ohio took me through his great factories last spring,

and said that they cost him $680,000, and said he, "I was not worth a

cent in the world when I heard your lecture 'Acres of Diamonds;' but I

made up my mind to stop right here and make my fortune here, and here it

is." He showed me through his unmortgaged possessions. And this is a

continual experience now as I travel through the country, after these

many years. I mention this incident, not to boast, but to show you that

you can do the same if you will.

Who are the great inventors? I remember a good illustration in a man who

used to live in East Brookfield, Mass. He was a shoemaker, and he was

out of work, and he sat around the house until his wife told him to "go

out doors." And he did what every husband is compelled by law to do--he

obeyed his wife. And he went out and sat down on an ash barrel in his

back yard. Think of it! Stranded on an ash barrel and the enemy in

possession of the house! As he sat on that ash barrel, he looked down

into that little brook which ran through that back yard into the

meadows, and he saw a little trout go flashing up the stream and hiding

under the bank. I do not suppose he thought of Tennyson's beautiful

poem:

"Chatter, chatter, as I flow,

To join the brimming river,

Men may come, and men may go,

But I go on forever."

But as this man looked into the brook, he leaped off that ash barrel and

managed to catch the trout with his fingers, and sent it to Worcester.

They wrote back that they would give him a five dollar bill for another

such trout as that, not that it was worth that much, but they wished to

help the poor man. So this shoemaker and his wife, now perfectly united,

that five dollar bill in prospect, went out to get another trout. They

went up the stream to its source and down to the brimming river, but not

another trout could they find in the whole stream; and so they came home

disconsolate and went to the minister. The minister didn't know how

trout grew, but he pointed the way. Said he, "Get Seth Green's book, and

that will give you the information you want." They did so, and found all

about the culture of trout. They found that a trout lays thirty-six

hundred eggs every year and every trout gains a quarter of a pound every

year, so that in four years a little trout will furnish four tons per

annum to sell to the market at fifty cents a pound. When they found

that, they said they didn't believe any such story as that, but if they

could get five dollars apiece they could make something. And right in

that same back yard with the coal sifter up stream and window screen

down the stream, they began the culture of trout. They afterwards moved

to the Hudson, and since then he has become the authority in the United

States upon the raising of fish, and he has been next to the highest on

the United States Fish Commission in Washington. My lesson is that man's

wealth was out there in his back yard for twenty years, but he didn't

see it until his wife drove him out with a mop stick.

I remember meeting personally a poor carpenter of Hingham,

Massachusetts, who was out of work and in poverty. His wife also drove

him out of doors. He sat down on the shore and whittled a soaked shingle

into a wooden chain. His children quarreled over it in the evening, and

while he was whittling a second one, a neighbor came along and said,

"Why don't you whittle toys if you can carve like that?" He said, "I

don't know what to make!" There is the whole thing. His neighbor said to

him: "Why don't you ask your own children?" Said he, "What is the use of

doing that? My children are different from other people's children." I

used to see people like that when I taught school. The next morning when

his boy came down the stairway, he said, "Sam, what do you want for a

toy?" "I want a wheelbarrow." When his little girl came down, he asked

her what she wanted, and she said, "I want a little doll's washstand, a

little doll's carriage, a little doll's umbrella," and went on with a

whole lot of things that would have taken his lifetime to supply. He

consulted his own children right there in his own house and began to

whittle out toys to please them. He began with his jack-knife, and made

those unpainted Hingham toys. He is the richest man in the entire New

England States, if Mr. Lawson is to be trusted in his statement

concerning such things, and yet that man's fortune was made by

consulting his own children in his own house. You don't need to go out

of your own house to find out what to invent or what to make. I always

talk too long on this subject.

I would like to meet the great men who are here to-night. The great men!

We don't have any great men in Philadelphia. Great men! You say that

they all come from London, or San Francisco, or Rome, or Manayunk, or

anywhere else but here--anywhere else but Philadelphia--and yet, in

fact, there are just as great men in Philadelphia as in any city of its

size. There are great men and women in this audience. Great men, I have

said, are very simple men. Just as many great men here as are to be

found anywhere. The greatest error in judging great men is that we think

that they always hold an office. The world knows nothing of its greatest

men. Who are the great men of the world? The young man and young woman

may well ask the question. It is not necessary that they should hold an

office, and yet that is the popular idea. That is the idea we teach now

in our high schools and common schools, that the great men of the world

are those who hold some high office, and unless we change that very soon

and do away with that prejudice, we are going to change to an empire.

There is no question about it. We must teach that men are great only on

their intrinsic value, and not on the position that they may

incidentally happen to occupy. And yet, don't blame the young men saying

that they are going to be great when they get into some official

position. I ask this audience again who of you are going to be great?

Says a young man: "I am going to be great." "When are you going to be

great?" "When I am elected to some political office." Won't you learn

the lesson, young man; that it is _prima facie_ evidence of littleness

to hold public office under our form of government? Think of it. This is

a government of the people, and by the people, and for the people, and

not for the office-holder, and if the people in this country rule as

they always should rule, an office-holder is only the servant of the

people, and the Bible says that "the servant cannot be greater than his

master." The Bible says that "he that is sent cannot be greater than him

who sent him." In this country the people are the masters, and the

office-holders can never be greater than the people; they should be

honest servants of the people, but they are not our greatest men. Young

man, remember that you never heard of a great man holding any political

office in this country unless he took that office at an expense to

himself. It is a loss to every great man to take a public office in our

country. Bear this in mind, young man, that you cannot be made great by

a political election.

Another young man says, "I am going to be a great man in Philadelphia

some time." "Is that so? When are you going to be great?" "When there

comes another war! When we get into difficulty with Mexico, or England,

or Russia, or Japan, or with Spain again over Cuba, or with New Jersey,

I will march up to the cannon's mouth, and amid the glistening bayonets

I will tear down their flag from its staff, and I will come home with

stars on my shoulders, and hold every office in the gift of the

government, and I will be great." "No, you won't! No, you won't; that is

no evidence of true greatness, young man." But don't blame that young

man for thinking that way; that is the way he is taught in the high

school. That is the way history is taught in college. He is taught that

the men who held the office did all the fighting.

I remember we had a Peace Jubilee here in Philadelphia soon after the

Spanish war. Perhaps some of these visitors think we should not have had

it until now in Philadelphia, and as the great procession was going up

Broad street I was told that the tally-ho coach stopped right in front

of my house, and on the coach was Hobson, and all the people threw up

their hats and swung their handkerchiefs, and shouted "Hurrah for

Hobson!" I would have yelled too, because he deserves much more of his

country than he has ever received. But suppose I go into the High School

to-morrow and ask, "Boys, who sunk the Merrimac?" If they answer me

"Hobson," they tell me seven-eighths of a lie--seven-eighths of a lie,

because there were eight men who sunk the Merrimac. The other seven men,

by virtue of their position, were continually exposed to the Spanish

fire, while Hobson, as an officer, might reasonably be behind the

smoke-stack. Why, my friends, in this intelligent audience gathered here

to-night I do not believe I could find a single person that can name the

other seven men who were with Hobson. Why do we teach history in that

way? We ought to teach that however humble the station a man may occupy,

if he does his full duty in his place, he is just as much entitled to

the American people's honor as is a king upon a throne. We do teach it

as a mother did her little boy in New York when he said, "Mamma, what

great building is that?" "That is General Grant's tomb." "Who was

General Grant?" "He was the man who put down the rebellion." Is that the

way to teach history?

Do you think we would have gained a victory if it had depended on

General Grant alone? Oh, no. Then why is there a tomb on the Hudson at

all? Why, not simply because General Grant was personally a great man

himself, but that tomb is there because he was a representative man and

represented two hundred thousand men who went down to death for their

nation and many of them as great as General Grant. That is why that

beautiful tomb stands on the heights over the Hudson.

I remember an incident that will illustrate this, the only one that I

can give to-night. I am ashamed of it, but I don't dare leave it out. I

close my eyes now; I look back through the years to 1863; I can see my

native town in the Berkshire Hills, I can see that cattle-show ground

filled with people; I can see the church there and the town hall

crowded, and hear bands playing, and see flags flying and handkerchiefs

streaming--well do I recall at this moment that day. The people had

turned out to receive a company of soldiers, and that company came

marching up on the Common. They had served out one term in the Civil War

and had reënlisted, and they were being received by their native

townsmen. I was but a boy, but I was captain of that company, puffed out

with pride on that day--why, a cambric needle would have burst me all to

pieces. As I marched on the Common at the head of my company, there was

not a man more proud than I. We marched into the town hall and then they

seated my soldiers down in the center of the house and I took my place

down on the front seat, and then the town officers filed through the

great throng of people, who stood close and packed in that little hall.

They came up on the platform, formed a half circle around it, and the

mayor of the town, the "chairman of the Selectmen" in New England, took

his seat in the middle of that half circle. He was an old man, his hair

was gray; he never held an office before in his life. He thought that an

office was all he needed to be a truly great man, and when he came up he

adjusted his powerful spectacles and glanced calmly around the audience

with amazing dignity. Suddenly his eyes fell upon me, and then the good

old man came right forward and invited me to come up on the stand with

the town officers. Invited me up on the stand! No town officer ever took

notice of me before I went to war. Now, I should not say that. One town

officer was there who advised the teacher to "whale" me, but I mean no

"honorable mention." So I was invited up on the stand with the town

officers. I took my seat and let my sword fall on the floor, and folded

my arms across my breast and waited to be received. Napoleon the Fifth!

Pride goeth before destruction and a fall. When I had gotten my seat and

all became silent through the hall, the chairman of the Selectmen arose

and came forward with great dignity to the table, and we all supposed he

would introduce the Congregational minister, who was the only orator in

the town, and who would give the oration to the returning soldiers. But,

friends, you should have seen the surprise that ran over that audience

when they discovered that this old farmer was going to deliver that

oration himself. He had never made a speech in his life before, but he

fell into the same error that others have fallen into, he seemed to

think that the office would make him an orator. So he had written out a

speech and walked up and down the pasture until he had learned it by

heart and frightened the cattle, and he brought that manuscript with

him, and taking it from his pocket, he spread it carefully upon the

table. Then he adjusted his spectacles to be sure that he might see it,

and walked far back on the platform and then stepped forward like this.

He must have studied the subject much, for he assumed an elocutionary

attitude; he rested heavily upon his left heel, slightly advanced the

right foot, threw back his shoulders, opened the organs of speech, and

advanced his right hand at an angle of forty-five. As he stood in that

elocutionary attitude this is just the way that speech went, this is it

precisely. Some of my friends have asked me if I do not exaggerate it,

but I could not exaggerate it. Impossible! This is the way it went;

although I am not here for the story but the lesson that is back of it:

"Fellow citizens." As soon as he heard his voice, his hand began to

shake like that, his knees began to tremble, and then he shook all over.

He coughed and choked and finally came around to look at his manuscript.

Then he began again: "Fellow citizens: We--are--we are--we are--we

are--We are very happy--we are very happy--we are very happy--to welcome

back to their native town these soldiers who have fought and bled--and

come back again to their native town. We are especially--we are

especially--we are especially--we are especially pleased to see with us

to-day this young hero (that meant me)--this young hero who in

imagination (friends, remember, he said "imagination," for if he had not

said that, I would not be egotistical enough to refer to it)--this young

hero who, in imagination, we have seen leading his troops--leading--we

have seen leading--we have seen leading his troops on to the deadly

breach. We have seen his shining--his shining--we have seen his

shining--we have seen his shining--his shining sword--flashing in the

sunlight as he shouted to his troops, 'Come on!'"

Oh, dear, dear, dear, dear! How little that good, old man knew about

war. If he had known anything about war, he ought to have known what any

soldier in this audience knows is true, that it is next to a crime for

an officer of infantry ever in time of danger to go ahead of his men. I,

with my shining sword flashing in the sunlight, shouting to my troops:

"Come on." I never did it. Do you suppose I would go ahead of my men to

be shot in the front by the enemy and in the back by my own men? That is

no place for an officer. The place for the officer is behind the private

soldier in actual fighting. How often, as a staff officer, I rode down

the line when the Rebel cry and yell was coming out of the woods,

sweeping along over the fields, and shouted, "Officers to the rear!

Officers to the rear!" and then every officer goes behind the line of

battle, and the higher the officer's rank, the farther behind he goes.

Not because he is any the less brave, but because the laws of war

require that to be done. If the general came up on the front line and

were killed you would lose your battle anyhow, because he has the plan

of the battle in his brain, and must be kept in comparative safety. I,

with my "shining sword flashing in the sunlight." Ah! There sat in the

hall that day men who had given that boy their last hard-tack, who had

carried him on their backs through deep rivers. But some were not there;

they had gone down to death for their country. The speaker mentioned

them, but they were but little noticed, and yet they had gone down to

death for their country, gone down for a cause they believed was right

and still believe was right, though I grant to the other side the same

that I ask for myself. Yet these men who had actually died for their

country were little noticed, and the hero of the hour was this boy. Why

was he the hero? Simply because that man fell into that same

foolishness. This boy was an officer, and those were only private

soldiers. I learned a lesson that I will never forget. Greatness

consists not in holding some office; greatness really consists in doing

some great deed with little means, in the accomplishment of vast

purposes from the private ranks of life; that is true greatness. He who

can give to this people better streets, better homes, better schools,

better churches, more religion, more of happiness, more of God, he that

can be a blessing to the community in which he lives to-night will be

great anywhere, but he who cannot be a blessing where he now lives will

never be great anywhere on the face of God's earth. "We live in deeds,

not years, in feeling, not in figures on a dial; in thoughts, not

breaths; we should count time by heart throbs, in the cause of right."

Bailey says: "He most lives who thinks most."

If you forget everything I have said to you, do not forget this, because

it contains more in two lines than all I have said. Bailey says: "He

most lives who thinks most, who feels the noblest, and who acts the

best."

_VICTOR HUGO_

HONORE DE BALZAC

Delivered at the Funeral of Balzac, August 20, 1850.

Gentlemen: The man who now goes down into this tomb is one of those to

whom public grief pays homage.

In one day all fictions have vanished. The eye is fixed not only on the

heads that reign, but on heads that think, and the whole country is

moved when one of those heads disappears. To-day we have a people in

black because of the death of the man of talent; a nation in mourning

for a man of genius.

Gentlemen, the name of Balzac will be mingled in the luminous trace our

epoch will leave across the future.

Balzac was one of that powerful generation of writers of the nineteenth

century who came after Napoleon, as the illustrious Pleiad of the

seventeenth century came after Richelieu,--as if in the development of

civilization there were a law which gives conquerors by the intellect as

successors to conquerors by the sword.

Balzac was one of the first among the greatest, one of the highest among

the best. This is not the place to tell all that constituted this

splendid and sovereign intelligence. All his books form but one book,--a

book living, luminous, profound, where one sees coming and going and

marching and moving, with I know not what of the formidable and

terrible, mixed with the real, all our contemporary civilization;--a

marvelous book which the poet entitled "a comedy" and which he could

have called history; which takes all forms and all style, which

surpasses Tacitus and Suetonius; which traverses Beaumarchais and

reaches Rabelais;--a book which realizes observation and imagination,

which lavishes the true, the esoteric, the commonplace, the trivial, the

material, and which at times through all realities, swiftly and grandly

rent away, allows us all at once a glimpse of a most sombre and tragic

ideal. Unknown to himself, whether he wished it or not, whether he

consented or not, the author of this immense and strange work is one of

the strong race of Revolutionist writers. Balzac goes straight to the

goal.

Body to body he seizes modern society; from all he wrests something,

from these an illusion, from those a hope; from one a catch-word, from

another a mask. He ransacked vice, he dissected passion. He searched out

and sounded man, soul, heart, entrails, brain,--the abyss that each one

has within himself. And by grace of his free and vigorous nature; by a

privilege of the intellect of our time, which, having seen revolutions

face to face, can see more clearly the destiny of humanity and

comprehend Providence better,--Balzac redeemed himself smiling and

severe from those formidable studies which produced melancholy in

Moliere and misanthropy in Rousseau.

This is what he has accomplished among us, this is the work which he has

left us,--a work lofty and solid,--a monument robustly piled in layers

of granite, from the height of which hereafter his renown shall shine in

splendor. Great men make their own pedestal, the future will be

answerable for the statue.

His death stupefied Paris! Only a few months ago he had come back to

France. Feeling that he was dying, he wished to see his country again,

as one who would embrace his mother on the eve of a distant voyage. His

life was short, but full, more filled with deeds than days.

Alas! this powerful worker, never fatigued, this philosopher, this

thinker, this poet, this genius, has lived among us that life of storm,

of strife, of quarrels and combats, common in all times to all great

men. To-day he is at peace. He escapes contention and hatred. On the

same day he enters into glory and the tomb. Thereafter beyond the

clouds, which are above our heads, he will shine among the stars of his

country. All you who are here, are you not tempted to envy him?

Whatever may be our grief in presence of such a loss, let us accept

these catastrophes with resignation! Let us accept in it whatever is

distressing and severe; it is good perhaps, it is necessary perhaps, in

an epoch like ours, that from time to time the great dead shall

communicate to spirits devoured with skepticism and doubt, a religious

fervor. Providence knows what it does when it puts the people face to

face with the supreme mystery and when it gives them death to reflect

on,--death which is supreme equality, as it is also supreme liberty.

Providence knows what it does, since it is the greatest of all

instructors.

There can be but austere and serious thoughts in all hearts when a

sublime spirit makes its majestic entrance into another life, when one

of those beings who have long soared above the crowd on the visible

wings of genius, spreading all at once other wings which we did not see,

plunges swiftly into the unknown.

No, it is not the unknown; no, I have said it on another sad occasion

and I shall repeat it to-day, it is not night, it is light. It is not

the end, it is the beginning! It is not extinction, it is eternity! Is

it not true, my hearers, such tombs as this demonstrate immortality? In

presence of the illustrious dead, we feel more distinctly the divine

destiny of that intelligence which traverses the earth to suffer and to

purify itself,--which we call man.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 37: Saguntum was a city of Iberia (Spain) in alliance with

Rome. Hannibal, in spite of Rome's warnings in 219 B.C., laid siege to

and captured it. This became the immediate cause of the war which Rome

declared against Carthage.]

[Footnote 38: From his speech in Washington on March 13, 1905, before

the National Congress of Mothers. Printed from a copy furnished by the

president for this collection, in response to a request.]

[Footnote 39: Used by permission.]

[Footnote 40: Reported by A. Russell Smith and Harry E. Greager. Used by

permission.

On May 21, 1914, when Dr. Conwell delivered this lecture for the five

thousandth time, Mr. John Wanamaker said that if the proceeds had been

put out at compound interest the sum would aggregate eight millions of

dollars. Dr. Conwell has uniformly devoted his lecturing income to works

of benevolence.]

GENERAL INDEX

Names of speakers and writers referred to are set in CAPITALS. Other

references are printed in "lower case," or "small," type. Because of the

large number of fragmentary quotations made from speeches and books, no

titles are indexed, but all such material will be found indexed under

the name of its author.

A

Accentuation, 150.

ADDISON, JOSEPH, 134.

ADE, GEORGE, 252.

After-Dinner Speaking, 362-370.

Analogy, 223.

Analysis, 225.

Anecdote, 251-255; 364.

Anglo-Saxon words, 338.

Antithesis, 222.

Applause, 317.

Argument, 280-294.

ARISTOTLE, 344.

Articulation, 148-149.

Association of ideas, 347, 348.

Attention, 346, 347.

Auditory images, 324, 348, 349.

B

BACON, FRANCIS, 225, 226, 362.

BAGEHOT, WALTER, 249.

BAKER, GEORGE P., 281.

BALDWIN, C.S., 16, 92.

BARRIE, JAMES M., 339-341.

BATES, ARLO, 222-223.

BEECHER, HENRY WARD, 3, 6, 31, 76-78;

113, 139, 186, 188, 223, 265, 275, 343, 346, 351-352.

BERNHARDT, SARA, 105.

BEROL, FELIX, 344.

BEVERIDGE, ALBERT, J., 22, 35, 46, 67, 107, 470-483.

BIRRELL, AUGUSTINE, 97.

BLAINE, JAMES G., 368.

BONCI, SIGNOR, 124.

Books, 191-197; 207-210.

Breathing, 129-131.

Briefs, 177, 210-214, 290-294.

BRISBANE, ARTHUR, 19.

BROOKS, PHILLIPS, 356.

BROUGHAM, LORD, 338.

BRYAN, WILLIAM JENNINGS, 32, 60, 116, 157, 269, 273-277, 302, 448-464.

BRYANT, WILLIAM CULLEN, 366-367.

BURNS, ROBERT, 39.

BURROUGHS, JOHN, 116.

BYRON, LORD, 64, 87, 145, 188, 189, 199.

C

CAESAR, JULIUS, 175.

CAMPBELL, THOMAS, 121.

CARLETON, WILL, 334.

CARLYLE, THOMAS, 42, 57, 105, 109, 194, 218, 249, 277-278.

CATO, 356, 372.

CHAMBERS, ROBERT, 19.

Change of pace, 39-49.

Character, 357-358.

CHANNING, WILLIAM ELLERY, 177.

Charm, 134-144.

CHILD, RICHARD WASHBURN, 376.

CHOATE, RUFUS, 464-469.

CHURCHILL, WINSTON SPENCER, 89.

CICERO, 115.

Classification, 224.

CLEVELAND, GROVER, 367-368.

COHAN, GEORGE, 376.

COLERIDGE, S.T., 373.

COLLINS, WILKIE, 60.

COMFORT, W.L., 235.

Comparison, 19.

Conceit, 4.

Concentration, 3, 57, 80-84; 346-347; 374.

Confidence, 1-8; 184, 263-275; 350, 358-360.

Contrast, 19, 222.

Conversation, 372-377.

CONWELL, RUSSELL, 200, 483-503.

CORNWALL, BARRY, 138, 184.

COWPER, WILLIAM, 69, 121.

CRANCH, CHRISTOPHER P., 72.

CROMWELL, OLIVER, 95, 105.

Crowd, Influencing the, 262-278; 308-320.

Ctesiphon, 116.

CURTIS, GEORGE WILLIAM, 258-260.

D

DANA, CHARLES, 18, 200.

DANIEL, JOHN WARWICK, 369-370.

DANTE, 106.

DE AMICIS, EDMONDO, 238.

Debate, Questions for, 290, 379-382.

Definition, 222, 224.

Delivery, methods of, 171-181.

DE MAUPASSANT, GUY, 187, 339.

DEMOSTHENES, 67, 363.

DEPEW, CHAUNCEY M., 365.

DE QUINCEY, THOMAS, 255-256; 338

Description, 231-247.

DICKENS, CHARLES, 5, 234, 246, 247.

Discarding, 224.

DISRAELI, ISAAC, 101, 321.

Distinctness, 146-152.

Division, 224, 225.

E

Egotism, 376.

EMERSON, RALPH WALDO, 10, 97, 103, 104, 105, 122, 144, 168, 188, 201,

231, 295, 321, 357, 362, 372.

Emphasis, 16-24; 31-32; 47, 73.

Enthusiasm, 101-109; 267, 304, 311.

Enunciation, 150-152.

EVERETT, EDWARD, 78-79.

Example, 223.

Exposition, 218-228.

Extemporaneous Speech, 179.

F

Facial Expression, 163.

Feeling, 101-109; 240, 264-265; 295-305; 312, 317, 320.

Figures of speech, 235, 277, 331.

FLAUBERT, GUSTAVE, 339.

Fluency, 115-123; 179, 184-197, 354, 373.

Force, 87-97.

G

GALTON, FRANCIS, 323.

GASKELL, MRS., 186.

Generalization, 226.

GENUNG, JOHN FRANKLIN, 55, 92, 220, 226, 281.

GEORGE, HENRY, 344.

Gesture, 150-168.

GIBBON, EDWARD, 175.

GLADSTONE, WILLIAM E., 2, 8, 124, 157, 372.

GOETHE, J.W. VON, 117, 372.

GOLDSMITH, OLIVER, 121.

GORDON, G.B., 365-366.

GOUGH, JOHN B., 188.

GRADY, HENRY W., 38, 240-242; 252-253; 268, 365, 425-438.

GRAHAM, HARRY, 255.

Gustatory images, 325, 348.

H

Habit, 190, 349.

HALLECK, FITZ-GREENE, 302.

HAMLET, 88-89; 152-153.

HANCOCK, PROF. ALBERT E., 335.

HART, J.M., 338.

HAY, JOHN, 443-448.

HEARN, LAFCADIO, 238.

HENLEY, WILLIAM ERNEST, 122, 271-272.

HENRY, O., 247, 328-329.

HENRY, PATRICK, 22, 102, 103, 107, 110-112; 201, 271, 276.

HESIOD, 146.

HILL, A.S., 92, 281.

HILLIS, NEWELL DWIGHT, 24, 32, 191-193; 273-274; 394-402.

HOAR, GEORGE, 296-297.

HOBSON, RICHMOND PEARSON, 285-286; 287-289.

HOGG, JAMES, 139.

HOLMES, G.C.V., 226.

HOLMES, OLIVER WENDELL, 148, 373.

HOLYOAKE, GEORGE JACOB, 280, 281.

HOMER, 146, 235.

HOUDIN, ROBERT, 350.

HUBBARD, ELBERT, 3.

HUGO, VICTOR, 107, 503-505.

Humor, 251-255; 363-365.

HUXLEY, T.H., 227.

I

Imagination, 321-333.

Imitation, 335-336.

Inflection, 69-74.

INGERSOLL, ROBERT J., 68, 175.

IRVING, WASHINGTON, 5, 235, 236, 246.

IRVING, SIR HENRY, 158.

J

JAMES, WILLIAM, 349.

JAMESON, MRS. ANNA, 69.

JONES-FOSTER, ARDENNES, 243-245.

JONSON, BEN, 343.

K

KAUFMAN, HERBERT, 42-44.

KIPLING, RUDYARD, 4, 299-300.

KIRKHAM, STANTON DAVIS, 360.

L

LANDOR, WALTER SAVAGE, 339.

LEE, GERALD STANLEY, 308.

Library, Use of a, 207-210.

LINCOLN, ABRAHAM, 50, 107, 166.

LINDSAY, HOWARD, 40.

LOCKE, JOHN, 188, 343.

LONGFELLOW, H.W., 117, 124, 136.

LOOMIS, CHARLES BATTELL, 365.

LOTI, PIERRE, 238.

LOWELL, JAMES RUSSELL, 235.

M

MACAULAY, T.B., 76.

MACLAREN, ALEXANDER, 254.

MCKINLEY, WILLIAM, Last Speech, 438-442;

Tribute to, by John Hay, 443.

MASSILLON, 188.

Memory, 343-354.

MERWIN, SAMUEL, 72.

MESSAROS, WALDO, 147.

MILL, JOHN STUART, 355.

MILTON, JOHN, 137.

Monotony, Evils of, 10-12;

How to conquer, 12-14; 44.

MORLEY, JOHN, 403-410.

MOSES, 115.

Motor images, 324, 348.

MOTTE, ANTOINE, 10.

MOZLEY, JAMES, 235.

N

NAPOLEON, 13, 104, 141, 184, 321.

Narration, 249-260.

Naturalness, 14, 29, 58, 70.

Notes, see Briefs.

O

Observation, 167-168; 186-188; 206-207; 223, 227, 350.

Occasional speaking, 362-370.

Olfactory images, 325, 348.

Outline of speech, 212-214.

P

Pace, Change of, 30-49.

PAINE, THOMAS, 122.

PARKER, ALTON B., 423.

PARKER, THEODORE, 257-258.

PATCH, DAN, 2.

PAUL, 2, 107.

Pause, 55-64.

Personality, 355-360.

Persuasion, 295-307.

PHILLIPS, ARTHUR EDWARD, 227, 229.

PHILLIPS, CHARLES, 302-305.

PHILLIPS, WENDELL, 25-26; 34-35; 38, 72, 97, 99-100.

Pitch, change of, 27-35;

low, 32, 69.

PITTENGER, WILLIAM, I, 66.

Platitudes, 376, 377.

POPE, ALEXANDER, 122, 175, 231.

Posture, 165.

Practise, Necessity for, 2, 14, 118.

Precision of utterance, 146-152.

Preparation, 4-5; 179, 184-215; 362-365.

PREYER, WILHELM T., 188.

Proportion, 205.

PUTNAM, DANIEL, 80.

Q

QUINTILIAN, 344.

R

Reading, 191-197.

REDWAY, 170.

Reference to Experience, 226.

Repetition in memorizing, 348.

Reserve power, 184-197.

Right thinking, 355-360.

ROBESPIERRE, 153-155.

ROGERS, SAMUEL, 343.

ROOSEVELT, THEODORE, 275, 416-422.

RUSKIN, JOHN, 89, 90, 188.

S

SAINTSBURY, GEORGE, 55.

SAVONAROLA, 158, 161.

SCALIGER, 343.

SCHAEFER, NATHAN C., 262, 355.

SCHEPPEGRELL, WILLIAM, 27.

SCHILLER, J.C.F., 117.

SCOTT, WALTER DILL, 8.

SCOTT, SIR WALTER, 271.

Self-confidence, See Confidence.

Self-consciousness, 1-8.

SEWARD, W.H., 65-68.

SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM, 22, 32, 82, 88-89; 122, 152-153; 161, 164, 227,

295, 302, 312-317; 321.

SHEPPARD, NATHAN, 147, 156, 170.

SIDDONS, MRS., 48, 70.

SIDNEY, SIR PHILIP, 188.

Sincerity, 109.

SMITH, F. HOPKINSON, 365.

SPENCER, HERBERT, 58, 69.

Stage fright, 1-8.

STEVENSON, R.L., 122, 196, 201, 238, 242-243; 335-336.

STORY, JOSEPH, 298.

Subject, Choosing a, 201-204.

Subjects for speeches and debates, 121-123; 379-393.

Suggestion, 262-278; 308-320.

SUNDAY, "BILLY," 90, 158.

Suspense, 59-61.

Syllogism, 286.

T

Tactile images, 325, 348.

TALMAGE, T. DEWITT, 237.

Tempo, 39-49.

TENNYSON, ALFRED, 121, 141-143.

THACKERAY, W.M., 343.

THOREAU, H.D., 188.

Thought, 184-197; 265, 347, 355-360.

THURSTON, JAMES MELLEN, 50-54; 302.

Titles, 215.

TOOMBS, ROBERT, 410-415.

TWAIN, MARK, 343, 363, 365.

V

VAN DYKE, HENRY, 365.

Visualizing, 323, 348, 349.

Vocabulary, 334-341.

Voice, 32, 124-144.

VOLTAIRE, 4.

W

WATTERSON, HENRY, 303, 402-403.

WEBSTER, DANIEL, 2, 73, 103, 109, 201, 278;

Eulogy of, by Rufus Choate, 464-469.

WEED, THURLOW, 349.

WENDELL, PROF. BARRETT, 93.

WESCOTT, JOHN W., 424-425.

WHITEFIELD, GEORGE, 161.

WHITTIER, J.G., 48.

Will power, 356-359; 373, 375.

Words, 92, 93, 336-341; 374.

Y

YOUNG, EDWARD, 90.