But here was my book coming out while this outcry was going on, and naturally enough political-minded reviewers took it as intended for a campaign biography. The point I had been trying to make, that here was somebody with rare ability to lead in the labor struggle, was entirely lost. I still believe that if we could have had him active in these past years so disheartening for peaceful industrial relations, the years which have set back so far the hope of genuine understanding cooperation inside industry, we should have been saved the peck of trouble that we are now in. It was out of the stuff gathered in these various undertakings that I was depending for security. But the return from the books and articles of a free lance is more or less uncertain, particularly when they come in so sober a form as mine and are always shaped to fit a self-made pattern. I saw that I must have an annual sure if modest money crop, and I found it from 1924 on in lyceum work. My two seasons on the Chautauqua platform had encouraged the lecture bureau to add me to its list of “talent,” and it was arranged that I go out from four to six weeks a year beginning around Lincoln’s birthday when dinners and celebrations called for speakers, and running on into March—usually five engagements a week, the local committees choosing the subject from the half-dozen I offered. These bookings covered the country from North to South and East to West, long and erratic journeys. Frequently I occupied two different beds a night, and now and then three. It was brutal, exhaustive business, but I learned to climb into an upper berth without a fuss, to sleep on a bench if there was no berth, to rejoice over a cup of hot coffee at an all-night workmen’s lunch counter, to warm my feet by walking a platform while waiting for a train. By the end of the first season I had developed a stoical acceptance of whatever came. This, I argued, saved nervous wear and tear. I think now a certain amount of indignant protest, useless as it would have been, might have put more zest into my travel, as well as my talking. It was not only hard but lonesome business. From the day I started out I felt myself a detached wanderer, one who had laid aside personality and become a cog in the mechanism called a lecture bureau. My one ambition was to fill the specifications of the schedule and have it over with. It was not until I said good-bye to the last committee and was headed home that I felt the joyful rush of reviving personality.