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.
ADVERTISED OUTDOOR MEETINGS.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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