Читать книгу The New Democracy: A handbook for Democratic speakers and workers - Walter Vrooman - Страница 12

Table of Contents

No outdoor meeting can fill its mission nor make use of half its opportunities, without the sale of literature, which enlarges and completes the points touched on by the speaker. The object of an outdoor speech is to interest, to stir the emotions of men, dispel their lethargy and despair, plant in them hope and faith, and prepare them to think out, read out and study out the great National problem. The attention of men, that is, the real, serious concentration of their minds upon great things, is so rare that when you once have it the opportunity should be utilized fully. Those who are interested by the outdoor speech should be urged to develop that interest into knowledge, conviction and action. This can only be done by inducing them to read some book or pamphlet, explaining in detail the points suggested by you and backing up your assertions by careful arguments. Ten pamphlets, or books, sold at a meeting where men's hearts have been opened and their prejudices melted by enthusiasm, are worth more to the cause than ten thousand books and circulars distributed from door to door. The sale of ten small ten-cent pamphlets at a meeting is at least half the value of the meeting. In this movement one chicken raised is worth more than a whole brood hatched; one fighting rooster is worth three dozen eggs. One campaigner, armed with facts and possessing contagious faith in our creed, necessarily becomes a permanent, creative force in the community in which he lives.

Literature is one element in the production of such centers of power, not literature scattered wildly, but literature placed carefully in the hands of those who have been prepared by the personal appeal of a sincere advocate to see and understand the points enunciated. So bountiful has free literature become and so ocean-like is the flood upon political subjects, that it is difficult to get men to open a pamphlet on political or social subjects when distributed to them in their normal condition. But first arouse them by a stirring address, and they will willingly study what otherwise they could not be induced to consider even superficially.

Not only should the speaker try to sell as many books and pamphlets as possible at the meetings, but he should try to leave in every community or section of a great city covered by him, some worker who will get a stock of such literature and continue its sale until another impulse is given the movement by the visit of another Volunteer.