William Horton Foster

“ The way to learn to debate is by actual practice in debate. The way to learn to speak is by trying to speak. Never miss a proper opportunity of speaking. Don’t make yourself disliked, of course, but try every chance you get, and listen to every debate or speech you can and apply to every argument you hear or read the tests which show whether they are real or false. Before you really know it, you will prove every proposition presented to you and that without any conscious effort. ”

“ You must of course so conduct yourself physically that you will not distract the attention of your audience from what you are saying; you wish to help your thought, not hinder it.
But always be yourself—be natural. It is better to be a real William Smith or even a real Bill Smith than an imitation Daniel Webster. Study Webster and Calhoun and Root and Bryan. Get all the illustrations and aid you can from their methods in debate; but remember after all you must be yourself. When you were created the mold was thrown away. No two natures are alike, no two persons have the same powers. ”

“ Really, however, the kind of a state which gives every boy his opportunity to make the most of himself, is just like one great family. You know in the family, Jimmy has a chance equal to that of Bob, and Bill and Frank share alike in everything. Why? Because they are brothers. Don’t you see then that democracy is but another name for brotherhood? If all men are brothers, if they really are brothers, and mean brotherhood when they say brotherhood, most of our perplexing questions would settle themselves right off. ”

“ Don’t try to trap the other side into some unfortunate position which will prove its undoing. Note the difference: in the actual debate, be merciless to your opponent’s argument, but before the debate and during it, treat him frankly and generously. Trail down his argument, track it to its lair, flay it, have no respect or mercy to it, but be sure you are remorselessly pursuing the contention and not the contender. ”

“ Second, to have my argument really worth while, I must have done more—I must have made you want to debate. For an argument is only half an argument unless it brings you to the point of doing. In this particular it differs from many other kinds of speaking—contention for example.
In contention, the contender has very little hope as a rule of changing his adversary’s mind. He is not arguing; he is simply sticking up for his point. How much of what passes for argument belongs to this class of effort! ”

“ If, however, someone should urge that you may be losing some of the educative value of debate by thus avoiding such subtleties and trickeries as I have just been condemning, let me remind you again, that the real value of agreement, whether in the debating club or in later and more real life, is not in just winning but in determining just what should be done. Your purpose to arrive at a correct course of action will be strengthened, not weakened, by clearing away the unnecessary and non-essential points at the beginning. ”

“ Don’t think for a minute that either heat or violence or sarcasm is a good answer. Neither can the testimony of one witness be rebutted by that of another unless the latter’s knowledge of the matter is shown to be the greater. And the strength of refutation lies in the skill with which you make your audience believe your witnesses are more worthy of belief than those of your opponent, provided always that is the fact. ”

“ If you are not successful in your argument, what shall you do? If the judges in the debate decide against you, what next? If your opponent instead of yourself has succeeded in rousing your hearers to the point of action, shall you sulk in your tent like Achilles or shall you turn in and help? By all means the latter, unless there is some moral principle involved. In active life, men are too willing to feel absolved from all responsibility unless their own special programme is adopted. ”

“ The child of twelve who works in the factory all day has no equality of opportunity with other children. The man who is willing to work but can’t find a job, has no equality of opportunity. To the slave, the child, and the jobless man, democracy means nothing. ”

“ In the first place, the debate of the boys’ club, of the school society, or of the city lyceum, is the same in form and method as the debates in legislature or Congress. Any lad who is trained to debate, who knows his subject, who is logical and direct, who is frightened neither at his own voice nor of his opponent’s ability, will later in life be able to meet an opponent in the larger halls of the capital. ”

“ It is not the business of the judges to teach etiquette or courtesy. I should, however, if I were acting as a judge, penalize the side the supporters of which deliberately seek to embarrass the opposing side.
The judge must, therefore, be fair and impartial. He must judge the debate and not the question. But what weight shall he give to matter and manner respectively? Obviously the manner of the speaker has a more immediate appeal than the subject matter. However, a debate is not a declamation contest. ”

“ Rebuttal.—In rebuttal—which is simply refutation in action—you can readily give to your whole debate, or at least your side of it, a unity which might otherwise be lacking. You relate your work to the work of your comrades and to that of your opponents. You select his strong points; you minimize his weak ones. ”

“ In the plans for your hike, you proposed to do something, to go somewhere; if the question of conservation is up for discussion it is with some definite end in view, not simply as an excuse for general talk about it. The discussion which does not lead to a definite plan of action is not truly argument. If after your audience, whether it is your patrol, your debating club, or later your legislature, has listened to you, it says “What a fine speech!” you have failed. The audience should be convinced to the point of action. ”

“ For example, if some such question is proposed for your debate as: “Is the conservation of the timber supply of the United States wise?” you at once must by your own independent thinking prepare your argument. Your teacher or other friends will aid you but you must work it out yourself. You will first ask yourself what you mean and what is meant generally by “conservation”; you will then ask where and how much the same policy has been tried in other countries, why it should be tried here and what results may be reasonably expected to follow the policy here. ”

“ Some men—and boys—think it smart to leave the question uncertain and indefinite so that—as they mistakenly suppose—they may increase their own chances of success. They feel that if they can only have a wide enough range in the discussion some of their arguments will probably hit the point and win their case for them. Too many times, however, the point at which they are aiming is the decision of the judges and not the logical and irresistible culmination of the argument. ”

“ Suppose you have decided to debate one phase of the child labor problem, and your question reads something like this: “Resolved: that no children below the age of sixteen years should be allowed to work in factories.” You see the question omits all discussion of child labor on the farm, for instance, or in the street trades, or in any occupation except those within doors under factory conditions. ”

“ If you carefully study these forms of argument, and can estimate the value of opinions and circumstantial evidence, you will not only be able to build up a bomb proof argument of your own but you will be able to detect fallacies in your opponent’s discussion. ”

“ Boys like to debate; debating will do them good. This volume is a simple, unpretentious manual designed to help boys to debate efficiently—to get from the most manly of all sports, and a royal sport it is, all of the pleasure and profit it has to offer. The book is designed, first of all, as an aid to the boy himself—in home, club, school, church—and, also, as an aid to the father, club director, teacher, clergyman, all, in fact, who are his friends and advisers. ”

“ The great majority of the citizens of the Town Meeting are workers with their hands—laborers, and sympathetic with labor; yet they defeated that bill, because it was unfair and impractical.
The Town Meeting takes itself very seriously, and so must you when you organize one. It doesn’t for a moment think it is just playing at life. It studies these questions and then seeks to translate its decisions into civic action. For example, after deciding that a certain policy was for the best interest of the city, it memorialized the city to that end. ”

“ Choose as a judge no one who is known to have a prejudice on the question itself. The harassed judge must never forget that he is deciding on the merits of the debate, not on the merits of the question. ”

“ To think constructively is a vastly more valuable mental habit than to think negatively. When you and your opponents think alike, whether in debate or real life, when you agree upon a certain part of the question between you, you have cleared the way for at least that much of constructive thought. Finally, such agreement is necessary to coöperation, and coöperation is absolutely essential to any action whether it [33] is a trip to Mount Washington, a campaign against Philip of Macedon, or the carrying out of a certain policy toward the Philippines. We must work together or not at all. ”

“ To a peculiar degree, the Ford Hall Town Meeting does enable debate to get worth while things done.
I said it was a school of democracy at work; but what is democracy? You have learned that there are three kinds of states, monarchies, aristocracies and democracies. You all believe, moreover, that in this age of the world, the first two are outgrown and that the democratic state is the only one that should exist nowadays. If I should ask you to define a democratic state you would immediately answer that the democratic state is one based upon [117] democracy. ”

“ The first persons to consult are the other members of your own family. Their experience in public affairs you will find in many cases to be much larger than you have thought. How many times, for instance, do your neighbors or perhaps the township supervisor drop in upon your father to talk with him in the evening about matters of public policy? How many times does the school teacher, on her way home from work, stop to pass a word with your grandfather who was a member of the legislature back in Connecticut long before the family moved West? ”

“ You see, if you think a moment, that every one of these things, so important to you whether as boy or man, is drilled into you by practice in debate.
Debating Means Constructive Thinking.—In the next place, not only is practice in debate invaluable [11] in acquiring self-control and correct habits of speech, but also it teaches you to organize your own powers; it drills you in constructive thinking. In much of your school work, you learn and recite the words of others—either of teachers or of textbook writers. But if a subject for debate is proposed, you must think it out yourself. ”

“ In your presentation of your side of the conservation question, for instance, you will mass your facts and arguments about the few really essential points which are left for debate. You will not simply talk about the propositions. You will remember that each point must be proved. You will get not simply the opinions of someone else upon the question; you will get facts. For instance, in the question of the ownership of timber tracts, a part of the conservation problem, it will not be enough to cite what some one thinks about it, but get the actual number of acres owned by corporations. ”

“ Never to use a long word when a short one will express the exact meaning, never to use a foreign word or a word of foreign derivation when a plain Saxon word will do—a few such rules as these will soon form a clear clean style, and no drill equals the debate for the recognition of this style or its opposite, huge bombastic statement. ”

“ For example, in your discussion of conservation you can take it as self-evident that the policy of the United States government is to aid the people of the United States. You can also take it for granted that the citizens of the United States are moved by love of country and love of home. ”

“ In the Ford Hall meetings, then, we have a group of people with a passion for brotherhood trying to find the ground common to all their beliefs. But these meetings were only discussing the theories of democracy. How should the theory be converted into practice? The answer is The Town Meeting.
All the Ford Hall Folks are enthusiastically democratic. They said: “We all want to do something. What shall we do? What can we do? What are people who think as we do, doing now? Have we laws which would do what we want done, if they were enforced? If they are not enforced, why aren’t they? ”

“ In Congress, motions are not, as a rule, seconded; but in most voluntary organizations, the chairman—except in matters of routine business—waits, before stating the question, until some one says, “I second the motion.” That, a member can do without rising. If no one offers to second the motion, the chairman need not state the motion at all, and often refuses to do so. ”

“ So we soon had the three legislative bodies, the town meeting, the city council, and the legislature.
Out of this increasing perplexity of modern conditions has arisen the need of a more highly organized legislative system. Now men cannot get together and offhand decide what should or should not be done. Men, even of the highest motives, can’t legislate intelligently upon questions that they have not studied. Hence the committee system of Congress and the various legislatures has grown up. ”

“ One speaker at a Ford Hall meeting discussed: “The Right to Work.” He was eloquent, logical, forceful; his hearers again received the message of democracy, that every man had the right to self expression in terms of his industrial life—had a right to a job. But there could be no discussion of how he was going to get that job. The next Thursday night, however, a bill was introduced in the Town Meeting providing that the State should engage in active work in reforesting and reclaiming waste land, thereby providing work for the unemployed. ”

“ If your audience—and your judges—is entirely impartial and unprejudiced, if you do not have to combat a preconceived position, you can probably safely content yourself with advancing your own position and leave the rebuttal of your opponent’s arguments until later. But [74] if you are presenting some novel proposition or some unpopular idea which cannot be entertained unless certain hostile ideas are cleared away, you will win better attention if you demolish the fundamental ideas upon which the old theory rests before you present your constructive argument. ”

“ So not only for the benefit of your critic but especially for the value of the exercise to yourself, reduce your argument to definite formal organization. You will be paid in the long run. You may have such a command of yourself and your thinking that you can carry all this organization in your head without any brief—but most of us can’t. ”