will be an integral part is very small in proportion to the number of those who expect to enter private business; and from more recent reports in the various colleges, men who enter business are rapidly increasing in numbers, while those who enter the professions, law and the ministry especially, are in proportion decreasing. Here is a condition of affairs which demands our attention. Ought we to teach anything about public speaking to the student who does not intend to enter public life, who hopes that he will always be spared the indiction of making a speech? And if we ought to teach him something, how shall we do so?

SHOULD PUBLIC SPEAKING BE TAUGHT IN COLLEGE?

In the first place, ought we to teach the man public speaking? What good will it do him? Now, I should like to bring this discussion down to its lowest terms. I shall not speak of the necessity that comes to every educated man sooner or later in life to address a body of his neighbors either at a banquet or at a church gathering, or at a town meeting, or on any one of the innumerable occasions in the life of a citizen when a theme of general interest is under discussion. It would seem strange indeed when a topic affecting the wellbeing of men in a community is being discussed, that the educated man, the college man, the man who has had more advantages than the majority of his brethren, should be obliged to sit in a shadowy corner of the room because he is unable to express openly and on his feet the many thoughts that arise in him while he is sitting on his chair. But I wish, for a moment, to disregard this fact; nor shall I speak of the advantages that public speaking affords for private conversation. We are told that conversation nowadays is a lost art. If so, there may be more reasons for it than the mere lack of leisure among the more intellectual of our people. It may also be that slovenliness in speech has become a mental habit. But I wish also to disregard this point; and in pursuance of my object to bring this discussion down to its lowest terms, I want to put the question that every hard-headed student who wants to go into business has put to me when I have advocated

his taking a course in oratory. I want to ask the question of increased earning capacity, the question of dollars and cents. Will the lessons learned from public speaking enable a man to make more money? In answer to this question, let me adduce several bits of testimony, which on their face may seem to have no close connection, but which at bottom may perhaps have some underlying general principle of agreement.

In the first place, the director of the high schools of Pittsburg where I live, one of the most commercial cities in the world, sent out a circular letter to every business firm of consequence in the city, asking those firms what, in their opinion, was the most important thing he could teach students in order to enable them to grapple more successfully with the problems that would await them in the business world. With a few exceptions the answers that he got did not say, "Teach them more arithmetic," or "Teach them more stenography." In fact, ninety-nine per cent. of those business firms laid stress upon the advantage of being able to write and to speak the English tongue accurately and forcibly. Let us mark this bit of testimony, Exhibit 1.

WHAT A SOCIETY OF ENGINEERS SAID.

Now for Exhibit 2. The Chancellor of the University of Pittsburg recently had a meeting with a body of engineers, and asked them what they considered to be the most important part of a college career. Now, their answer may seem strange to you, but I quote it exactly as it was given. "We presuppose," said these gentlemen, "that graduates of an engineering school will have some knowledge of the principles of their profession; but you, Mr. Chancellor, cannot emphasize too strongly the advantage that accrues to men from the ability to think on their feet; to express a well-thought-out proposition extempore; to adapt themselves and their conversation instantaneously to changing conditions as they may arise. We value this ability of rapid and clear thinking and expression more highly than almost anything else." Let us mark this bit of testimony Exhibit 2.

DEMAND FOR MEN WHO CAN SPEAK.

Now for Exhibit 3, and I shall have done with direct proof. I recently spoke to the general manager of an international business house which employs thousands of salesmen. This gentleman said to me, "I never can get enough men for the more important positions of the firm, because there are so very few men who can present their own arguments clearly and overcome the arguments of the other side without giving offence. At the present time, I have three positions paying $5,000 a year each, and I am unable to find a man of personality who has the qualifications that I have indicated." I told him that I felt rather sorry that some of us underpaid teachers of public speaking did not know of his need, as we might become successful candidates ourselves.

But seriously different as these three points may seem on their face, is there not at the bottom an underlying unity to all of them? What does "writing and speaking the mother tongue well" mean but the conveying of thought clearly and powerfully-to persuade? What does "thinking on one's feet and adapting one's case to the case of the other man" mean but the skilful presentation of facts-in order to persuade? And what does "an ability to meet the case of the opponent without giving offence" mean but convincing refutation in order to persuade? Is not persuasion of one sort or another, whether it be to present facts that they may be accepted, or to induce a mood in the mind of the reader to correspond to that of the writer, at the basis of all language; and how much more, at the basis of all spoken language, and, above all, of oratory which has for its fundamental object the moving bodies of men to action as the speaker directs them."

"A PAWNBROKER WITH IMAGINATION."

Now, here we have from unimpeachable sources in a most commercial of cities the testimony of hard-headed business men concerning the value of the lessons of persuasion which public speaking, if only it is taught properly, endeavors to inculcate. Here then is the answer as to whether public speaking will increase the earning power of the student, as to whether it will be a help to

him in his career when he meets men both formally and informally, or whether it will be a hindrance to him. Here also is an answer to the query as to whether the enriching and deepening of personality by an art which so pre-eminently raises a man above his fellows, because it enables him to think deeply and express beautifully what everybody thinks and cannot express, will be of no service to a business man in the great marts of trade and of commerce where much more is required of leaders than that they shall be frugal and attentive. "What is a financier ?" asks a character in Mr. Pinero's "Iris." "Oh," replies the person addressed, "a financier is a pawnbroker with imagination." Whether a financier be a pawnbroker or not, imagination he must have; imagination concerned with the business facts of life; imagination to see steel and iron and railroads and wheat and cotton in big terms; to see those facts and figures as elements in the special problems we must face, just as the statesman must see societies and moralities and civilizations in the problems that he must face.

Is public speaking of any use? Sometimes when I see good and able men falling because they are not able to talk for themselves I cannot help thinking that a man can have no greater advantage in the world than the ability to present his case clearly, sanely, weightily, without the narrowness of not recognizing opposing argument on the one hand, nor the shallowness of not having a point of view of his own on the other. All the broadminded business men with whom I have spoken have told me that they regret few things so much as the fact that they had not the opportunity early in life to learn the principles of speaking, which would have been of immeasurable service to them in every step of their careers from the time when, for example, they were clerks and had to sell goods from behind a counter to the time they appeared before Committees of Congress to defend their interests against what they deemed to be unfair legislation.

METHODS TO BE USED.

Now, if we agree upon this one point, that public speaking is of some worth to the man who does not in

tend to enter public life; if we agree that it will help that man to sell goods, or to make his customers accept a proposition, or to enable him to present his point of view, whether before a Board of Directors or a cashier of a bank, I want to ask how we, at our colleges, can go about to teach it.

I suppose that every instructor of public speaking present will bear me out when I say that the student who does not intend to enter public life or to make some specialty of public speaking has a natural aversion to speaking altogether. He may call it "gassing," or with his Anglo-Saxon reserve, he may look with suspicion upon a man who can express himself freely and fluently. To take such a student into a public speaking class, and to run him through a course of gesturing or of tone production, would be like driving the horse to water when the horse will not drink.

Or to mix the metaphors of swallowing, here is a time when bitter technic must be administered in sugar-coated pills. Just how? May I be allowed to speak of my own experience? A good half of my students in the University of Pittsburg study engineering subjects, and public speaking is as natural to them as flying would be to an elephant. When I first came to the university, I tried those boys out in elocution. They were respectful, but pained. The year following, seeing that their personal deference for me deserved more kindly treatment on my part, I rearranged the entire system. Instead of assigning a selection to be learned by heart, I made the students look up a topic and master it-any topic of deep and abiding interest to any of them. Then I would ask one man to speak on that topic and I would allow the class, to use the English phrase, "to heckle" him. The result was as successful as it was startling. A young man who a year before had recited Patrick Henry's orations in a most genteel and ladylike manner now waxed passionate in defense of some nasty substance or other which is known to the initiate as coal tar.

And why not? That boy was a chemist, and coal tar would very likely play a very important part in his life. It was a thing that he knew a great deal about, a substance the properties of which he wished to impress upon the minds of others. The professor who spoke here