Page images
PDF
EPUB
[graphic][subsumed][subsumed]
[merged small][ocr errors][merged small]

A

MONG the younger men who have attained the honor of membership in the United States Senate may be named Albert Jeremiah Beveridge, whose elevation to a seat in that distinguished body was a suitable reward for his brilliant oratorical powers and statesmanlike abilities. Like so many of our leading legislators, Mr. Beveridge was essentially a self-made man. Born on an Ohio farm, he obtained an. education by working his way through DePauw University, for which laudable purpose he took up the honorable calling of a bookagent. His adopted profession was that of the law, in which he became an advocate in many important cases in the courts of Indiana. While still a boy, he had shown himself a ready and eloquent speaker in college contests, and he now employed his skill in oratory in the field of Republican politics, winning so high a position in his party as to be elected to the Senate from Indiana for the term beginning March, 1899. In the summer of 1899, Mr. Beveridge visited Eastern Asia, where he made a thorough study of the relations of the Russians and Chinese in Manchuria, his observations leading to a series of illuminating letters which throw new light upon the position and purposes of Russia in Asia.

EULOGY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY

[At the meeting of the National League of Republican Clubs, held at Chicago in October, 1902, Senator Beveridge made a brief but telling speech, than which we can offer no more characteristic example of his style of oratory. Its occasion gave the cue to its character, which is that of an ardent eulogy of the Republican party, of whose principles Mr. Beveridge is an earnest advocate.]

Young blood is Republican blood. It is the blood that believes and builds; the blood of faith and hope and deeds. That is why there is no

HENRY W. GRADY (1851-1889)

THE ORATOR OF THE "NEW SOUTH

F

EW recent orations have had so great an effect in the North as those delivered by Henry W. Grady, Georgia's young orator, at New York, on "The New South," and at Boston, on "The Future of the Negro." Here was a voice from the South which the North was glad to hear, new light shed on two of the greatest problems of the country, and a hand held out for all true patriots to grasp. Unfortunately death carried off this able orator before his powers had reached their prime. Born at Athens, Georgia, in 1851, Grady, on reaching manhood, made journalism his profession, and in 1880 became editor of the Atlanta Constitution, in whose management he soon gained the reputation of being one of the ablest of American editors. Though he died nine years afterward, he lived long enough to win a fame that extended through all sections of the land, and his speeches did much to allay prejudice and draw the North and South into a closer union.

THE NEW SOUTH

[The address, from the closing part of which we offer a selection, was delivered in 1887, at the annual banquet of the New England Club in New York. The banquets of this club have often been made the occasion for speeches upon topics of national importance, but none of these have attracted more attention than Grady's eloquent presentation of the new conditions in the South.]

There was a South of secession and slavery-that South is dead. There is a South of union and freedom-that South is living, breathing, growing every hour.

[ocr errors]

I accept the term, The New South," as in no sense disparaging to the Old. Dear to me is the home of my childhood and the traditions of my people. There is a New South, not through protest against the Old, but because of new conditions, new adjustments, and, if you please, new

[blocks in formation]

and unimpeachable integrity, bold but safe, brilliant but wise, masterful but heeding counsel, and a fighter without fear."

GIFTS TO LIBERAL INSTITUTIONS

[As an example of Thomas B. Reed at his best in oratory we cannot do better than to offer a selection from his address in 1898, on the semi-centennial of Girard College, Philadelphia. Reed's method did not usually reach this elevation in sentiment and breadth of view, being rather controversial than dignified, and we therefore present this as showing the heights of thought and lucidity of expression of which he was capable.]

Six hundred and fifty or seventy years ago, England, which, during the following period of nearly seven centuries, has been the richest nation on the face of the globe, began to establish the two universities which, from the banks of the Cam and the Isis, have sent forth great scholars and priests and statesmen, whose fame is the history of their own country, and whose deeds have been part of the history of every land and sea. During all that long period, reaching back two hundred and fifty years, before it was even dreamed that this great hemisphere existed; before the world knew that it was swinging in the air and rolling about the sun; kings and cardinals, nobles and great churchmen, the learned and the pious, began bestowing upon those abodes of scholars their gifts of land. and money; and they have continued their benefactions down to our time. What those universities, with all their colleges and halls teeming with scholars for six hundred years, have done for the progress of civilization and the good of men, this whole evening could not begin to tell. Even your imaginations cannot, at this moment, create the surprising picture. Nevertheless, the institution at which most of you are, or have been, pupils is at the beginning of a career with which those great universities and their great history may struggle in vain for the palm of the greatest usefulness to the race of man. One single fact will make it evident that this possibility is not the creation of imagination or the product of that boastfulness which America will some day feel herself too great to cherish, but a simple and plain possibility which has the sanction of mathematics, as well as of hope.

Although more than six centuries of regal, princely, and pious donations have been poured into the purses of those venerable aids to learning, the munificence of one American citizen to-day affords an endowment income equal to that of each university, and, when the full century has completed his work, will afford an income superior to .the income of both. When Time has done his perfect work, Stephen Girard, mariner and merchant, may be found to have come nearer immortality

[blocks in formation]

making a large number of effective speeches, in which the principles and practices of the party in power were severely scored. But his labors proved of no avail, he was defeated by a greater number of electoral votes than before, and once more retired to private life.

THE CROSS OF GOLD

["Free Silver," we have said, was the Democratic and Populist battle-cry in 1896. The platform read: “We demand the free and unlimited coinage of both silver and gold at the present legal ratio of 16 to 1, without waiting for the aid and consent of any other nation." This declaration of financial principles, penned by Bryan, was in direct opposition to the Republican financial plank, which stated: "We are opposed to the free coinage of silver, except by international agreement." Such was the issue upon which the campaign was fought. The speech with which Bryan defended his side of the argument was an acknowledged masterpiece. The burning eloquence, earnestness, zeal and magnetic power of the orator were irresistible. When the closing words were spoken the great audience rose as one man, and he was borne from the stage in a burst of the wildest enthusiasm. His plank in the platform was adopted by a large majority, and carried with it his nomination for the Presidency.]

And now, my friends, let me come to the paramount issue. If they ask us why it is that we say more on the money question than we say upon the tariff question, I reply that, if protection has slain its thousands, the gold standard has slain its tens of thousands. If they ask us why we do not embody in our platform all the things that we believe in, we reply that when we have restored the money of the Constitution all other necessary reforms will be possible; but that until this is done there is no other reform that can be accomplished.

Here is the line of battle, and we care not upon which issue they force the fight; we are prepared to meet them on either issue or on both. If they tell us that the gold standard is the standard of civilization, we reply to them that this, the most enlightened of all the nations of the earth, has never declared for a gold standard and that both the great parties this year are declaring against it. If the gold standard is the standard of civilization, why, my friends, should we not have it? If they come to meet us on that issue we can present the history of our nation. More than that; we can tell them that they will search the pages of history in vain to find a single instance where the common people of any land have ever declared themselves in favor of the gold standard. They can find where the holders of fixed investments have declared for a gold standard, but not where the masses have.

[ocr errors]

Mr. Carlisle said, in 1878, that this was a struggle between the idle holders of idle capital" and " the struggling masses who produce the

« PreviousContinue »