The Art of Public Speaking
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 employes. 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