Page images
PDF
EPUB

I

EDWARD EVERETT HALE (1822

AUTHOR, LECTURER AND PULPIT ORATOR

N 1861, the opening year of the Civil War, a decided sensation was produced by the appearance of a remarkable work, entitled "The Man Without a Country." It came at an opportune time, when millions of our people seemed bent upon discarding the country of the Stars and Stripes, and detailed the melancholy experience of one man whose sentence for treason against the United States was that he should thenceforth live in utter oblivion of the land of his birth and allegiance. As worked up by the skillful pen of the writer, the Rev. Edward Everett Hale, the fate of this exile was most vividly portrayed, and the work became one of the literary phenomena of its day.

NEW ENGLAND CULTURE

[Mr. Hale may be held to possess excellent standing before the American people as an orator as well as a writer; as a lecturer as well as a pulpit speaker. Whatever he writes is fresh and spicy, and much that he says has the same quality. As a guest of the New England Society in the City of New York, on the occasion of its seventyfirst annual banquet, December 22, 1876, he responded as follows to the toast: "New England Culture-the Open Secret of Her Greatness."]

MR. PRESIDENT and GentlEMEN: You seem to have a very frank way of talking about each other among yourselves here. I observe that I am the first stranger who has crossed the river which, I recollect Edward Winslow says, divides the Continent of New England from the Continent of America, and, as a stranger, it is my pleasure and duty at once to express the thanks and congratulations of the invited guests here for the distinguished care which has been taken on this occasion outdoors to make us feel entirely at home. As I came down in the snow storm I could not help feeling that Elder Brewster, and William Bradford, and Carver, and Winslow could not have done better than this in Plymouth; and indeed, as I ate my pork and beans just now, I felt that the Gospel of New England is extending beyond the Connecticut to other nations, and that what

SAMUEL L. CLEMENS (1835

THE ORATOR OF LAUGHTER

A

NY man who attempts to introduce "Mark Twain" to an American audience might as well write himself down as a promising candidate for a lunatic asylum. Everybody knows the genial "Mark,”—that is, everybody who reads and has been blessed by mother Nature with an appreciative taste for humor. His books, from "The Innocents Abroad" to the latest contribution to the literature of mirth, lie on a myriad tables in our land, and have elicited enough laughter to lift the dome of the Capitol. Mr. Clemens, born in Missouri, was in his early life a printer, a Mississippi steamboat pilot, and secretary to his brother, who was Secretary of Nevada Territory. His later life has been passed in authorship, with intermissions devoted to lecturing, in which his ample vein of humor breaks prominently out. We append a brief example of his method.

UNCONSCIOUS PLAGIARISM

["Mark Twain " has frequently made his mark as an after-dinner orator. One of his efforts was at a dinner given by the publishers of the Atlantic Monthly to Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, in recognition of his seventieth birthday. The remarks of Mr. Clemens on this occasion formed a good example of his genial wit and humor, and are well worth reproducing.]

MR. CHAIRMAN, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN :-I would have traveled a much greater distance than I have come to witness the paying of honors to Dr. Holmes; for my feeling towards him has always been one of peculiar warmth. When one receives a letter from a great man for the first time in his life, it is a large event to him, as all of you know by your own experience. You never can receive letters enough from famous men afterward to obliterate that one, or dim the memory of the pleasant surprise it was, and the gratification it gave you. Lapse of time cannot make it commonplace or cheap.

JOHN MITCHELL (1869 ——)

THE COAL MINER'S ADVOCATE

0

F the representatives of the workingmen at the opening of the twentieth century none was more zealous for the advancement of his fellow-artisans, or more widely known to the people alike of America and Europe, than John Mitchell, President of the United Mine Workers, and leader in the great strike of the anthracite coal miners in 1902, the most famous event of the new century in the world of industry. A miner himself-he entered the mines of Illinois at the age of thirteen-Mitchell early joined the Knights of Labor, studied at night to gain what education he could, read all the books he could find on sociological subjects and, in every way available, fitted himself for his future career. His native powers and genius for organization told. Joining the United Mine Workers in 1890, when twenty-one years of age, he was made vice-president of the organization in January, 1892, and president in the following January. This presidency which he has held for so many years is of an organization of over 300,000 members. He led the soft coal miners successfully through the great strike of 1897, and the hard coal miners through that of 1892, and is looked upon by working men and capitalists alike as a genius in organization and a Napoleon in the management of an industrial convulsion.

As an orator, Mr. Mitchell is not given to the passionate declamation so commonly indulged in by popular leaders, but confines himself to logical treatment of the question at issue, expressed in language so simple that even the breaker boys of the mine can follow him with interest and understanding. He is always cool and self-possessed, never permits himself to become flustered or thrown into a passion, and in all the difficult situations arising from the great coal strike,

[blocks in formation]

conducted himself in a manner to win the respect and admiration of his adversaries. Mr. Mitchell's oratory scarcely appertains to the present section of our work, but as the youngest of American public speakers who has won a reputation, we deem it advisable to place him here at the end of the American section of our work.

AN APPEAL FOR THE MINERS

[On Labor Day, September 1, 1902, John Mitchell addressed an immense audience of workingmen at Washington Park, a place of public resort near Philadelphia. As a favorable example of his oratorical manner, we append his address on that occasion.]

This day has been decreed as labor's special holiday, and from one end of the country to the other the great hosts of labor have assembled and are reviewing the struggles of the past and preparing for the struggles of the future. The year just closed has been unprecedented in the growth of the trades union movement, and of independent thought and action. But new problems have arisen which will tax our greatest strength to solve. We have this year government by injunction and ownership by Divine right in the most accentuated form. If one of the most conspicuous among the capitalists properly represents the sentiment of his associates, then we must take it for granted that they believe that God in His infinite wisdom has given into their hands all the resources of our country. As a boy I was taught to believe that God loved all His people alike; that He conferred no more power or privileges on one than on another. And, notwithstanding the declaration of the controllers of the trusts, I am not prepared to abandon the teachings of my mother and my Sunday-school teacher. Every year sees some struggle of the workers that stands out conspicuously. This year it happens that the coal miners of Pennsylvania are engaged in a life and death struggle for the right to live.

The struggle of the miners is the greatest contest between labor and capital in the history of the world, not only because of its magnitude, but because of the issues involved. The miners are fighting for rights guaranteed by our country and exercised by their employers. They are engaged in a life and death struggle, trying to gain sufficient to enable them to take their children of tender years from the mines and the mills and send them to school, where, as American children, they belong.

I want to repeat to you what I said in a speech in Wilmington: Had the Coal Trust known that it had to fight the American people to beat the miners, they would never have engaged in this fight. I have an abiding faith in the American people. Once they believe that a wrong has been perpetrated the heart of the people goes out in sympathy, and they see that

[graphic]
[ocr errors]
« PreviousContinue »