Arthur M. Lewis

“ At the end of a good story the audience will laugh and take a moments rest. For about a minute your spell is broken and men whom you might of held the rest of the evening remember during that minute that they have stayed too long already. Of course this does not apply to a story of two or three sentences thrust into the middle of an argument without breaking or closing it. Longer stories may be used to advantage but they are not very useful to a speaker who has much to say and knows how to say it. Of course wit is a valuable factor but wit shows itself in a lightning dart, not in a long story. ”

“ Every musical comedy concludes with its full cast on the stage singing the most effective air. Every vaudeville performer strives to reach a climax and, where talent breaks down, refuge is sought in some such miserable subterfuge as waving the flag or presenting a picture of the bulldog countenance of Theodore Roosevelt.
The entertainer, however, appeals to prevailing opinions and prejudices; he gives the audience what they want. The lecturer should be an instructor and his theme may be a new and, as yet, unpopular truth, and it is his duty to give the audience what they should have. ”

“ When persuasion becomes the object, deliberation is thrown aside and words begin to flow like a mountain freshet, and if the speaker has natural capacity he concludes his point with a grand rush that carries everything before it. ”

“ Listeners who have the misfortune to be present at such a commencement and who do not wish to have their pity excited, had better retire at once, for when such a speaker has been at work fifteen minutes and should be gradually gathering strength like a broadening river, he is really beginning to decline. From then on the lecture dies a lingering death and the audience welcomes its demise with a sigh of relief. Such performances are not common, as no one can make that blunder twice before the same audience. ”

“ Of course, deliberation may be overdone, and if the audience once gets the impression that the speaker is slow and does not move along more quickly because he cannot, the effect is disastrous.
Deliberation is closely akin to seriousness and the lecturer who has no great and serious question to present should retire from the platform and try vaudeville.
It is just here that the Socialist has a great advantage, for his theme is the most serious and tremendous that ever occupied the mind of man. ”

“ It is almost impossible to drive a nail properly if it was started wrong, and the skillful workman will draw it out and start it over again. But such a blunder in lecturing cannot be remedied—at least for that occasion. A stale or confused beginning haunts and depresses the mind of the speaker and makes his best work impossible. It also destroys the confidence of the audience, so that what comes later is likely to be underestimated. ”

“ On one occasion, when the subject of discussion was not of any such serious import as Socialism, but more a question of who could win a debate on a subject of small merit, I defeated my opponent by a trick that I am heartily ashamed of, even under those mitigating circumstances. ”

“ For myself, if when I am announced to speak and I am not there and there is no message in the hands of the chairman reporting my death or some other almost equally good reason, it is almost safe to say my name has been used without my consent.
Any lecturer who treats his audience lightly has no reason to expect it will take him seriously. There is no lecturing future ahead of the man who says to some disappointed auditor he meets afterward on the street: “Well, the weather was so bad I didn’t think anybody would turn out.” ”

“ Neglecting to read, in a lecturer, is something more than a mistake—it is a vice. Its real name is laziness. As well expect good bricklaying from a man too lazy to lift a brick.
The idea of a man teaching something he himself does not know is grotesque, and yet, I have known at least three-score who felt divinely appointed to perform that very task. ”

“ I never allow my audience to imagine for a moment that my book talk is a mere matter of selling something. There will always be one or two in the audience who will take that view—natural selection always overlooks a few chuckle-heads. ”

“ Remember that there must be listeners as well as lecturers, and you may make a good listener, a quality none too common, but, as for lecturing, you have about as much chance of success as a man who could not climb ten rungs of a ladder without going dizzy, would have as a steeplejack.
The speaker who writes out his speech and commits it to memory and then recites it, has at least, this in his favor: his performance represents great labor. An audience usually is, and should be, very lenient with anyone who has obviously labored hard for its benefit. ”

“ There is no easier task in the world than to defeat the police authorities in a free speech fight. In the few cases where we lose it is our own fault. The police are usually acting under orders when making arrests and nothing is gained by making bitter enemies of them unless they treat you brutally.
A cool head, a disposition to reason the matter out with the district attorney, the chief of police, the mayor, or in the courts, without ever offering to compromise your speaking rights, will always triumph. ”

“ Street speaking is widely different from hall lecturing and this the reason so many speakers succeed at one and fail at the other. The hall lecturer opens easily and paves the way for the treatment of his theme, but the street speaker would get no crowd or a small one by such a method.
He must plunge at once into the heart of his talk and put as much energy into addressing the first dozen as when his crowd grows larger. As soon as he adapts his voice and manner to the size of his crowd the crowd will stop growing. The only way to add another hundred is to talk as if they were already there. ”

“ A lecturer should realize his grave responsibility to his audience. Nothing but absolute physical impossibility is a sufficient excuse for disappointing an assembly. Have it thoroughly understood that when your name appears on a program, you will be at your post.
Never allow, if you can possibly prevent, anybody to announce you to speak without consulting you and getting your consent. In some cities the method of announcing a speaker, when it is not known whether or not he can be present and, in some cases, even when it is known he cannot, has prevailed in the Socialist party. ”

“ If you think you know the main outlines of the future society yet cannot find those outlines already developing in the society about you, you are nursing a delusion. You belong to the Socialism of Utopia—if your future society is not already here in part, it is “nowhere,” as Utopia means.
We know today that science does not consist of a mere collection of facts. The facts of course are necessary, but science comes only when we push through the facts and find the laws behind them. ”

“ When a speaker carefully selects his words and it is clear to the audience that he is deliberately weighing and measuring his sentences, his listeners are unconsciously impressed with a sense of their importance. ”

“ At a street meeting about half the audience is constantly changing, and hopping from one question to another has many advantages. A street speaker must be interesting or he will lose his crowd, and the better his crowd the sooner he will lose it. ”

“ In trying a passage in your study it is well to stand about as you would on a platform. My friend Jack London assured me that when he took to the platform his chief difficulty arose from never having learned to think on his feet.
Writing is also a great test of the value of a point. Many a point that looks brilliant when you first conceive it turns out badly when you try to write it out. On the other hand, an unpromising idea may prove quite fertile when tried out with a pen. It is better to make these discoveries in your study than before your audience. ”

“ History itself is not a science but it is one of the chief parts of “the science of society”—sociology.
Historical movement like all movement proceeds by law. When Karl Marx discovered the central law of history he became the real founder of modern sociology. His discovery of this law of history ranks with Newton’s discovery of gravity or the Copernican revolution in astronomy. It ranks Marx as one of the men whose genius created a new epoch in human thinking. ”

“ If he is talking to “bums” they will stay whether he talks or not, but if he has an audience of people who have other things awaiting their attention they will pass on the moment the speaker loses his grip.
This is why telling stories at street meetings is not so good a thing as some unobserving speakers suppose. No matter how good a story is, it has a tendency to break up a crowd. I noticed it often before I caught the reason. A story always carries its own conclusion and it thereby makes a sort of a breaking off place in a speech like the end of a chapter in a book. ”

“ BOOK-SELLING AND PROFESSIONALISM
A man who does a day’s work in a shop and speaks on a street corner in the evening has about as much chance of becoming an effective speaker as he would have of becoming an effective musician, physician or lawyer by the same method. It is necessary, however, to train before going wholly into the work just as a man studies law evenings, before starting out as a lawyer.
In New York, Socialist street meetings are a force and count for a great deal, because the committee keeps a staff of capable speakers on salary to do nothing else. ”

“ I have no hard feelings against drunks but they are useless and worse in a street meeting. There are two reasons for the present bad selection of corners in so many cities. First, it is easier for a poor speaker to get an audience where there are hangers-out waiting to be entertained. Second, the city authorities like to have Socialist speaking done where it will not reach the live members of the community. A change of corners sometimes means a hard fight with the police but if the proper methods are used victory is sure and the result is always worth the labor spent. ”

“ It is said that the great Greek orator, Demosthenes, developed his magnificent voice by shouting above the roar of the sea near which he lived, but it is probable that he had a better voice to begin with than the tradition represents. In the absence of sea waves, one’s voice may be tested and strengthened by trying to drown the noise of the electric cars at a street meeting. Most poor voices are produced in the upper part of the throat or, still worse, in the roof of the mouth, while deep and thrilling tones can only be obtained from further down. ”

“ As to people who disturb your meeting, if you are speaking in hobo-dom you may well despair. There are so many drunks, that interruptions are constant and irrepressible, and every interruption breaks your grip on the audience. Moral: Don’t speak there.
On a corner where you get an audience of typical working men disturbances are rare and in a majority of cases if they are not easily suppressed it is lack of tact on the part of the speaker. A speaker should never try to be smart at the expense of a man in the audience, even when he speaks out of his turn. ”

“ In the commercial world it is held and admitted that a seller is seeking his own benefit and the advantages to the buyer are only incidental. In our case this is largely reversed, but that does not justify the speaker in rousing all the prejudices lying dormant in the hearer’s mind.
A good book talk thoroughly captures the interest of the audience before they know the book is on hand and is going to be offered for sale. ”

“ These remarks have no application in the case of those who, wishing to become lecturers, are determined to do everything in their power to acquire the proper qualifications, but only to those who think that because they have once persuaded an audience to listen to them, they now know everything necessary to be known.
A self-satisfied, ignorant man on a lecture platform is an anomaly that, fortunately, is never long continued, for the process of “natural selection” weeds him out. ”

“ It was well enough in the middle ages for great conclaves of clericals to discuss sagely what language will be spoken in heaven, and how many angels could dance a saraband on the point of a needle, but the twentieth century is face to face with tremendous problems and the public mind clamors for a solution. It will listen eagerly to the man who knows and has something to say. But it insists that the man who knows no more than it knows itself, shall hold his peace. ”