FUNDAMENTALS.
To educate the people, the first essential is that the educators know
exactly what they wish to teach and the ultimate purpose of such
teaching.
In the previous chapters are outlined methods of reaching and
persuading people. More important, however, than any manner of
speaking, traveling, advertising or gaining an audience is it that our
speakers never lose sight of the few great basic principles of our
movement, and that they keep these central truths steadily before the
eyes and minds of the people.
The principal danger to be overcome in every popular movement is that
in the adaptation of the central truth of the movement to local and
temporary requirements, the truth itself may be lost in a multitude of
petty intricacies.
In the beginnings of the great religions when they spread irresistibly
over the world, their teachers held firmly to a few great salient
truths. But the influence of every religion waned when its ministers,
forgetting its real object, gave themselves up to details of
worship and church government. This is also the history of nearly
every Christian denomination. In their vigor and youth, they dwelt
principally upon the great primary themes. When these were forgotten or
neglected, the movements themselves lost their power.
The weakness of the people's movement to-day is that our leaders
abandon too often the center of the stream, drawn away by the side
currents and little eddies. The intricacies of finance, statistics and
details of administration, often absorb their whole attention. Those
who would guide the crowd to a higher civilization forget the object
of their endeavors, the crowd forgets; then medley and Babel. Instead
of marching toward the goal, the multitude halt by the wayside, and go
to arguing over the incidents of the journey. The compass, governed
by fixed and universal laws, that acts regardless of the turns in the
road, no longer directs them. They are at the mercy of the local, the
incidental and temporary. When they give up the main road to wander
off in bypaths, unity and progress cease; division, disorder and
disintegration begin.
The silver question, the question as to the power of the Supreme Court
Justices, the railway question, are all merely incidental to the one
great fundamental conflict that has been waged for centuries, the
conflict of the general welfare resting on right against the special
interests that thrive by wrong, of liberty against tyranny; the people
against plutocracy. This conflict should be kept in the forefront by
every Volunteer, who should urge continuously and repeatedly upon his
hearers the few great simple truths of Democracy, holding these out in
bold relief, like mountains above the rolling slopes and projecting
crags that lead up to them, keeping the popular mind centered on the
goal of their efforts, the North Star, as it were, of progress.
Revolutions and special evolutions are brought about in human affairs,
NOT SO MUCH BY THE DISSEMINATION OF A GREAT MULTITUDE OF IDEAS, AS BY
THE CONCENTRATION OF A MULTITUDE OF MINDS UPON A SINGLE IDEA. This
single idea, however, cannot be of a local or temporary nature. It
must, on the other hand, be comprehensive and of sufficient import
to stir the very souls of the masses. A mere question of currency,
transportation or judicial powers, however important, even if
absolutely requisite to further progress, is not capable of producing
the universal enthusiasm required to institute any fundamental
innovation. The truths on which the popular mind is to be focused,
must be self-evident, general, and their application not limited
to a short time or a special locality. With the people's attention
fixed upon a great moral truth universally applicable, their faces
all turned toward, their eyes fixed on one star of deliverance, it
is easy to convince them that to realize their goal no sacrifice
can be too great. Men are prepared to act intelligently concerning
currency, transportation or other incidental reforms when their
enthusiasm and purpose are fully aroused and their attention is fixed
upon universal laws about which there can be no doubt, hesitancy or
confusion. Absorbed in great things, the petty causes of strife and
dissension disappear. We can gain unity only when, leaving details to
tried leaders, the people concentrate their attention on those simple
realities, self-evident and capable of being understood by all, the
attainment of which forces the righteous settlement of details and of
all questions dependent and incidental.
THE WORLD BIG; GOD GOOD; MAN ALONE RESPONSIBLE.
The first such central truth, self-evident to every man, to be
proclaimed tirelessly by the Volunteers, is that the earth is large
enough and rich enough to supply all the good things of life to every
human being born on it. Urge that especially since the triumphs of
modern science is it possible for man to satisfy every natural craving,
every healthy desire, every reasonable hope and dream, without any man
being compelled to sacrifice another human being to his purpose.
The great and the humblest mind alike can see this truth. It stands
out an impregnable tower of strength above all minor and subsidiary
questions. It is unanswerable, incontravertible and DYNAMICALLY
IRRESISTIBLE. The earth is large enough and rich enough and human
energy sufficient to produce in abundance everything required to supply
every natural, healthful human desire. This means that the world, now
made hell by human greed abetted by ignorance and prejudice, might just
as well be heaven. The misery caused by poverty, tyranny and neglect,
can be displaced by happiness, plenty and liberty for all.
Following this and demonstrable from it by the eternal laws of Logic
is the conclusion that the one primary and all-important duty of every
man seeing it is to do all he can, after providing for his simplest
physical wants, to help systematize and civilize human effort and
overcome prejudice so as to obtain this result.
The immediate effect of the practical acceptance of this one
self-evident truth is almost inconceivable. Once convince men that
their sufferings are unnecessary, that science has placed in their
hands all the power and materials needed which rightly applied will
give to all men the satisfaction of all their normal desires, and you
at once transform the world.
The most formidable obstacle in the way of further progress is not
that men are insufficiently versed in political economy or lacking
in intelligence, but it is that the people are without hope. Popular
effort has so often been thwarted by selfish cunning, great moral
enthusiasms dissipated by the science and superior organization of
tyranny, that men have lost heart.
Despair is the chief opponent of progress. Our greatest need is hope.
The people must have faith that something can be done.
The majority of men know of public measures that would be beneficial if
an upward step were possible, but they are overwhelmed by a multitude
of incidental obstacles and petty disappointments that cloud their
small horizons and shut off from sight the great universal and historic
forces that are slowly but surely working out their destinies.
Convince men that our country is large enough and rich enough to give
them all an opportunity to work and earn sufficient to support their
families and educate their children properly, convince them that their
present poverty and sufferings are wholly the result of social crimes,
and, if they can believe that this change is actually to be brought
about, you change the whole base of their operations and revolutionize
their attitude of mind. They are then ready to co-operate with those
bold thinkers who have studied out the details of social progress.
Our speakers cannot dwell too long upon, cannot repeat too often, this
one all-important, fundamental truth, the basis of all right political
thought and action, namely, that the world is all right, nature
is lavish, God Almighty is generous, and that human invention has
multiplied many times the gifts that God originally gave to man, and
now the human family might just as well sit down amid merry-making to
the great feast steaming before us, prepared through ages of endeavor,
but for a miserable dog in the manger.
Proclaim everywhere that organized greed is this dog. Teach that the
highest patriotism consists in striking it, that the only martyrs are
those devoured by it, that to kill it is the sublime mission of this
generation.
Do not try to teach many things, but urge with all the passion of your
being at all times and in all places, the self-evident and fundamental
truth that our world contains everything required to make men happy. If
want exists, it is the result of crime. Those who profit by this crime
try to convince us that nothing can be done to prevent it. Our work is
to create hope and courage and let the people know that this crime can
be stopped, the criminals caught and punished, and the purposes of God
and nature be permitted to proceed unmolested. Tell the people they can
put an end to their sufferings, that misery results from human, not
from natural causes, and that it need not be. Teach and preach and cry
aloud this one fact. Repeat it indoors and out, with all the fire and
intensity within you. Each convert will become a center, and our cause
will spread irresistibly.
Therefore, Volunteers, do not weary your hearers with statistics and
historical or legal minutiae; do not cram them with detailed arguments
relating to questions of a local or temporary nature; do not confuse
them by trying to explain all the intricacies of a financial system
soon to perish from off the earth. Rather even let the sophistries
of an opponent go unanswered. But concentrate all your energies upon
helping turn the attention of the people away from petty and vexing
intricacies to these few great central truths, which, if once clearly
seen, make all else plain.
The man who comprehends fully the truth that our world, since the
discoveries of modern science, is capable of giving every human being
all the good things of life, that as civilization is now blessed and
glorious to some so it can be made to all--such a man will forsake all
small purposes at once and devote himself thereafter to the realization
of his ideal. Nothing else in the world can compare to this work in
importance. When he learns that there is but one great party that
stands for progress, he will immediately ally himself with that party.