The Art of Public Speaking
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