Debating for boys

The Ford Hall Town Meeting is a school of democracy at work; it is a school of applied brotherhood. That statement may sound like an attempt at fine writing but I want to show you that applied to the Town Meeting it is justified. I want to show you also that after you have carried on a debating club for a few years, the Town Meeting is a good graduate school for the further development of the art of debate. You will remember that throughout this book I have insisted that the real purpose of debate is to get worth while things done. To a peculiar degree, the Ford Hall Town Meeting does enable debate to get worth while things done.

I said it was a school of democracy at work; but what is democracy? You have learned that there are three kinds of states, monarchies, aristocracies and democracies. You all believe, moreover, that in this age of the world, the first two are outgrown and that the democratic state is the only one that should exist nowadays. If I should ask you to define a democratic state you would immediately answer that the democratic state is one based upon democracy. If I should then ask you to define democracy, you would hesitate long. I have tried many definitions before I found one which was satisfactory. How does this strike you?

“Democracy is the equality of opportunity for self-expression.” I think that statement covers it all. You see, for instance, the opportunity to the slave was not equal to that of the free man. The child of twelve who works in the factory all day has no equality of opportunity with other children. The man who is willing to work but can’t find a job, has no equality of opportunity. To the slave, the child, and the jobless man, democracy means nothing.

We all believe that God intended every child to have his chance. Somehow, though, things have become twisted and warped. Because we believe, however, that after a while things will be right, we keep on trying to help make our democracy the common property of all of us. We try to keep these children out of the factory and get them into school. We try to get a job for this man who wants work, or, better yet, so arrange things that there will be plenty of jobs for him and for his friends. After Jimmy Francis’ mother has lost Jimmy’s father by death and she is left without means, we want our democratic state to say: “Oh! Mrs. Francis, what a loss! We are truly sorry for Jimmy and for you. To show that we are, we have arranged so you will have a few dollars a week, enough to help take care of Jimmy, so you won’t be anxious and worried about his bringing up.”

You see many a widowed mother hasn’t had her equal chance to bring up her boy as she wanted to. Democracy didn’t exist as far as she was concerned. Her Jimmy began to live in the streets, then in the pool-rooms, then in the saloons. He wasn’t a good boy any more; he knew all about vice and crime. He knew all about reform schools and jails and possibly State prisons. Her Jimmy was lost to democracy.

But was it Jimmy’s fault? Or his mother’s? Did he have his chance? Was the State really democratic to him?

You see there are many questions which will tax all our thinking powers properly to answer. Really, however, the kind of a state which gives every boy his opportunity to make the most of himself, is just like one great family. You know in the family, Jimmy has a chance equal to that of Bob, and Bill and Frank share alike in everything. Why? Because they are brothers. Don’t you see then that democracy is but another name for brotherhood? If all men are brothers, if they really are brothers, and mean brotherhood when they say brotherhood, most of our perplexing questions would settle themselves right off.

The idea seems very simple; it is simple. Its working out, however, is not so simple.

How shall we put at work this idea of democracy? That’s not so simple, and men everywhere are studying how best to bring into action this simple principle of democracy, brotherhood. One of the best of the schools working out this idea is the Ford Hall Town Meeting. I want to show you just what it is doing, and how its example affects you.

Really to understand the Town Meeting you must know something about the “Ford Hall Idea,” for the Town Meeting is but its latest development. Like many other ideas, this one centers about one man. I don’t mean that this man discovered it. No. The Idea was as old as time. Hebrew prophets taught it. David sang it. Jesus lived it. Paul preached it. This man made a new application of the old vision. He was, eight years ago, an ordinary business man, who was more and more grieved at the way people went on misunderstanding one another. Class was clashing with class. Men didn’t know what other men thought, and because they didn’t know, they doubted; because they doubted, they feared. And, the worst, men evidently didn’t care to find out what other men thought. They seemed to hunt for points of differences instead of points upon which they could agree. This was the situation that George W. Coleman saw.

He began to wonder what he could do to bring men together. He felt sure that if they could only know each other, they would find so many points where they did agree that they would forget those upon which they did not agree. If that much progress proved impossible, he thought that at least they would see the real merit on both sides, see the sincerity of each other, and make a working agreement which would put tolerance in the place of hate.

Mr. Coleman was at that time president of the Boston Baptist Social Union to which Daniel Sharp Ford had left a building on Beacon Hill, Boston, and an income to be used “to soften the inevitable conflict between capital and labor in Boston.” Mr. Ford was the owner of The Youth’s Companion. “There is my chance,” said Mr. Coleman. “What can better carry out the spirit of Mr. Ford’s will than a Sunday night service where the Jew and the Baptist, the Methodist and the Socialist, the Congregationalist and the Catholic, the Churched and the Unchurched, can get together and discuss the vital things of life, and learn to know each other.”

The Social Union agreed, and now for seven winters every Sunday night has seen twelve hundred earnest men and women gathered in Ford Hall to listen to one who has a message and is not afraid to let the other man talk back. The speaker speaks, and then the listeners ask questions. They have the right to talk out in meeting, you see, and understand the great difference between being talked at and being talked with. At the Ford Hall Meetings, speaker and audience talk with each other.

Of course, much of the success of Ford Hall has come from the choice of the subjects of the addresses. No one would think, for example, of discussing the Alsace-Lorraine affair, interesting as it all is to the student of history, and fitting as it would be for the Debating Club. Nor would a speaker at Ford Hall discuss the authorship of the book of Amos, for example, important as is such a question for a theological school. But the teachings of Amos on the questions of land ownership, the points of similarity between Amos and Henry George—that’s different, you see. It is right that we should know whether Cook or Peary discovered the North Pole, but that problem does not affect the life of the man who lives in the congested city slum. He would go right on living just the same whether there was a North Pole or wasn’t. The racial differences between the Slavs and the Yankees suggest interesting questions, but they assume a different importance when they are related to the immigration of those Slavs to America. In the first instance, the Ford Hall audience would be but politely interested; in the second discussion they would be vitally concerned.

If we can group these questions under one class, then, we should say Ford Hall Folks, as they have come to call themselves, are concerned in Social Civics. The Idea, then, that Mr. Coleman had, was that if a place could be provided where men and women of all races and beliefs and creeds and of no creeds could get together to discuss together Social Civics—that is, those questions which vitally concern the common life of all—that they would learn to know each other, to understand each other, to respect each other’s point of view. In short they would become neighbors instead of enemies.

And the idea worked! They have not lost their independence. Oh, no! They think just as intensely as they ever did. But they realize that the other man is doing the same thing too.

In the Ford Hall audiences, are men of all faiths and of none, of all economic and political creeds. Most of them are workers with their hands. Most of them are poor, many extremely so. Many of them have fled the terrors of oppression and massacre, and, in too many cases, when they arrived in America they found misunderstanding and even brutality, little less than that which they escaped overseas. So when they did find Ford Hall, the place where brotherhood is preached and, better yet, where it is lived, you can see that liberty, justice, equality and freedom, came to mean something to them.

I am telling you these things in such detail for I want you to realize that democracy and brotherhood are very real things; they touch our lives closely and intimately. If you have been fortunate enough to have escaped the miseries so many of these brothers of ours have had to endure, you ought to feel an added sense of responsibility for the maintenance of the democracy they believe in.

In the Ford Hall meetings, then, we have a group of people with a passion for brotherhood trying to find the ground common to all their beliefs. But these meetings were only discussing the theories of democracy. How should the theory be converted into practice? The answer is The Town Meeting.

All the Ford Hall Folks are enthusiastically democratic. They said: “We all want to do something. What shall we do? What can we do? What are people who think as we do, doing now? Have we laws which would do what we want done, if they were enforced? If they are not enforced, why aren’t they? Is it because of remediable defect in the law, or is it because the people need further education?”

You see how different the abstract idea may be from the measure necessary to carry it into practice? For example, during the winter of 1914 we all agreed that the man who wants work and is starving because he can’t get it ought to have his chance, ought to have work. One speaker at a Ford Hall meeting discussed: “The Right to Work.” He was eloquent, logical, forceful; his hearers again received the message of democracy, that every man had the right to self expression in terms of his industrial life—had a right to a job. But there could be no discussion of how he was going to get that job. The next Thursday night, however, a bill was introduced in the Town Meeting providing that the State should engage in active work in reforesting and reclaiming waste land, thereby providing work for the unemployed. Do you see the difference? Do you see how the Town Meeting supplements and carries into definite expression the Ford Hall Idea? The Sunday night speaker discussed the theory of the rights of the jobless man. The Town Meeting sought to put that theory into practice the next Thursday night. That’s the Town Meeting angle of the Ford Hall Idea.

I hope I have made clear to you the reasons for organizing the Town Meeting. We all felt that there was plenty of talk lying around loose, good talk, full of good ideas and worth while. But if that talk could be translated into workable measures, into specific plans for doing things, we would be taking a distinct step ahead. So the Town Meeting was organized.

The Town Meeting, in form, is a group of men and women who are organized to discuss such measures as would be introduced into a real town meeting, a city council or a state legislature, to relieve social ills. The ordinance or bill, as the case may be, is not a mere declaration of a theory, but a definite programme for carrying some theory of betterment into action. We confined the sphere of its discussions to matters arising within a State, and not the nation, because we wished, for the sake of simplicity, to avoid the complications of inherent and delegated sovereignty. We assumed, therefore, that the Town Meeting could legislate on all matters except those belonging to the National or Federal government.

In Town Meeting citizenship, there are no distinctions of sex, race, creed, or position or rank of any kind. The suggestion of an age limit was voted down after a lad in knee trousers had made an impassioned plea for a chance to supplement the work of the schools. Young and old, rich and poor, foreigner and native, join in a citizenship whose sole test is service. We believe in each other, in the Town Meeting. We trust each other. Take, for instance, the single matter of taxes. Of course we need money to pay our bills. Therefore we arranged our budget and levied our appropriation to meet it but imposed no taxes. Our citizens know that we must have money; they know our needs, and every meeting envelopes like this are passed around:

The citizen determines how much he should pay, how much he can pay, inserts that much, seals his envelope and hands it to the treasurer. No mark of any kind is placed upon the envelope and no one but the citizen knows the amount he has paid. The question is one between himself and his honor.

The organization is called the Town Meeting because we wished to emphasize the absolute and fundamental democracy of the group. You remember how in the town meetings of New England the citizens came together every year and decided what the town should do and should not do. As community life became more complicated, however, the town meeting proved inadequate. The various towns, therefore, appointed delegates to discuss together the questions of large concern while the town meetings cared for purely local matters. Furthermore, as cities increased in importance and in the variety of their business, city councils often took the place of town meetings. So we soon had the three legislative bodies, the town meeting, the city council, and the legislature.

Out of this increasing perplexity of modern conditions has arisen the need of a more highly organized legislative system. Now men cannot get together and offhand decide what should or should not be done. Men, even of the highest motives, can’t legislate intelligently upon questions that they have not studied. Hence the committee system of Congress and the various legislatures has grown up.

Under this system, committees are appointed, from the members, to which are referred the various questions which come before the legislative bodies. For instance, if a bill which sought to regulate the employment of boys in factories were presented to a state legislature, it would probably be referred to the Committee on Labor, or perhaps to the Committee on Industries. If in that State there were many questions about child labor, it might have a special committee on child labor alone. But whatever the committee might be, there would be some one committee to which would be referred every bill affecting the labor of children in factories. This committee would be in a position to discuss all these measures more intelligently and study them more carefully than could be done in the legislature itself. It would invite before it people who knew the subject thoroughly and would then report its conclusions to the legislature, perhaps together with its information carefully organized.

The Ford Hall Town Meeting is organized, like a legislature, with a series of committees to which are referred the various questions which come before it. The Calendar of the Town Meeting on a recent date will indicate clearly what kind of measures we are considering and what committees have them in charge.

When you look at the Calendar you will notice that there are “orders” on the list, and “bills.” In other Calendars “resolves” appeared also. What is the difference? Generally speaking, the bill is a measure introduced into the legislature, an order (ordinance) is a measure introduced into a city council, and a resolve (resolution) is a measure introduced into a town meeting. Yes, I mean to say we introduce them all indiscriminately, but we don’t mix them up. You may have a perfectly good idea for helping solve a problem but many a time you don’t know whether it is something the State should take up or whether it belongs to the city or possibly to the town. So in the Town Meeting the citizen must make up his mind where his proposed measure belongs. That’s part of his drill.

Look at the Calendar again. See the practical nature of the measures introduced. The history of Order No. 1 illustrates a valuable feature of the Town Meeting. The order directed the City of Boston to expend $50,000 on a model municipal lodging house. That winter the question of unemployment and the care of the unemployed was very much before us in Boston and in other parts of the country. It is easy to say: “Yes, we will have a model municipal lodging house” and order one built. But in regular routine I, as Moderator, referred this order to the Committee on City Planning. (You know it is the duty of the Moderator to refer every measure when it is introduced, to what, in his judgment, is the proper committee.) The chairman of this committee didn’t render a perfunctory report on the bill but started his committee at work studying municipal lodging houses everywhere. The members of the committee asked themselves: “What constitutes a model lodging house?” and then set themselves to find out. They have been studying such institutions at home and abroad. They are accumulating such a mass of information upon the questions involved that when they do bring in a report it will be supported by evidence which will command attention. Such a report will be a very much worth while document; it will be a sociological study worthy of any civic body.

The next on the Calendar, Bill No. 5, concerned the notice which must be given before discharge of employés. Now notice. The great majority of the citizens of the Town Meeting are workers with their hands—laborers, and sympathetic with labor; yet they defeated that bill, because it was unfair and impractical.

The Town Meeting takes itself very seriously, and so must you when you organize one. It doesn’t for a moment think it is just playing at life. It studies these questions and then seeks to translate its decisions into civic action. For example, after deciding that a certain policy was for the best interest of the city, it memorialized the city to that end. The city authorities heard our arguments, and the matter is now laid over awaiting the settlement of certain questions upon which our question depends. As far as this point is concerned it makes no difference what the city eventually does with our memorial. The point is that the city takes us as seriously as we take ourselves.

Have I told you enough to give you the spirit and genius of the Ford Hall Town Meeting? You can see how it gives training in parliamentary practice and debate. You see how it educates in the finer graces of club life and intercourse. You can see how its committee activities can weld workers together. You can see how its investigations of city conditions are truly educational, how they train the citizens for usefulness to the state.

Have I justified the insertion of this description of the Ford Hall Town Meeting in a book on Debating for Boys?

I have told you about it because all your debating and all your clubs won’t be worth much to you unless you catch the same spirit of applied democracy, of brotherhood—the spirit that has gripped the Ford Hall Folks. Truly they were baptized with a passion for it. They found it here after great suffering and trial. You boys can govern your lives by the same spirit; you can fill your lives with the same service.

So after you have tried yourselves out in the regular debating clubs, organize a Town Meeting, or do it now if you feel the kindling of the idea strongly enough. Everything I have said about debating applies to the work of the Town Meeting as well as that of the debating society. And even more than that of the club is the work of the Town Meeting related to real life, preparation for which is the aim of this book.