The Making of Arguments Part 24

In brief: The change in the law is just: it is demanded by the change which has taken place in our industrial system; it is all but universally desired; the experience and the conscience of the civilized world call for it; but America is powerless to make it under her present Const.i.tution. Other countries can make it because they are monarchies: America cannot make it because she is free.

The clause in the Const.i.tution which, in the opinion of the Court of Appeals, prohibits the legislature from making this wise and just reform in our law is the clause which provides that "no person shall be ...

deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law"--a prohibition which occurs twice in our Federal Const.i.tution (Amendments V and XIV), and is to be found in many, very probably in most, State Const.i.tutions. We believe that the Court of Appeals, in its contention that this clause in our Const.i.tution prohibits this just and necessary reform in our industrial laws, is sustained neither by the spirit nor by the letter of this clause in the Const.i.tution, neither by the history of its origin and significance nor by the course of judicial interpretation which has been given to it by the United Slates Supreme Court.

Let the reader stop a moment here and reflect upon the principle involved in the law enacted in other civilized countries and proposed in ours. It is not that an employer should be mulcted in damages when he has been guilty of no fault. It is not that he should be compelled to pay for his carelessness without an opportunity to prove to the court that he has not been careless. It is that accidents occurring in the course of organized industry should be held to have occurred, not to the individual, but to the industry.

"In everything within the sphere of human activity," says the Court of Appeals, "the risks which are inherent and unavoidable must fall upon those who are exposed to them." The jurists of all the civilized countries of Europe agree that in modern organized industries it is the industry, not the individual, that is exposed to the accidents. The law applies to the factory hand for the future the principle heretofore applied to the seaman in maritime law. The factory hand is henceforth to be regarded as a "co-adventurer" with the employer in the industry.

Nor is "due process of law" denied by the Workman's Compensation Act. No damages can be recovered from the employer against his consent without a suit at law. The statute in terms provides that "any question which shall arise under this act shall be determined either by agreement or by arbitration as provided in the Code of Civil Procedure, or by an action at law as herein provided." And what is provided is that, if the employer fail to make compensation as provided by the Act, the injured party or his guardian or executor may sue for the amount. The law does not deny the employer his day in court. But it redefines the question for the court to decide. It has not to decide whether the employer is guilty of fault. His liability does not depend on his fault. The court has simply to decide whether the accident occurred in the due course of the business, and, if the employer chooses to raise the question, whether it was "caused in whole or in part by the serious and willful misconduct of the workman." If not, the workman is ent.i.tled to recover, and the amount which he is ent.i.tled to recover is fixed by the statute.

The question, then, is this:

Does a law which, for accidents in certain carefully defined and especially dangerous employments, transfers the liability from the individual to the organization, and which carefully preserves the right of the employer to submit any questions which arise under the law to the courts for adjudication, deprive the employer of his property without due process of law? The Court of Appeals of New York State affirms that it does. _The Outlook_ affirms that it does not.

To state this question appears to us to answer it. Certainly there is nothing in the Workman's Compensation Act which violates the _letter_ of the Const.i.tution. It does not in terms take the property of the employer without due process of law. How any one can find in the act a violation of the _spirit_ of the Const.i.tution we find it difficult to conceive.

And that difficulty is enhanced, not relieved, by a careful study of the opinions of the Court. For in those opinions it is a.s.sumed that on its face the law is unconst.i.tutional, and the Court devotes all its intellectual energies to an attempt to show that the authorities cited in opposition are exceptional. That the law and the Const.i.tution are not inconsistent is, however, established both by a consideration of the object and intent of the Const.i.tutional provision and by judicial decisions interpreting it. To these two considerations we now direct the attention of the reader.

The provision in the federal Const.i.tution that "no person shall be ...

deprived of life, liberty, or property, except by due process of law"

(Fifth Amendment), and the provision, "nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law"

(Fourteenth Amendment), are derived from the Great Charter wrested from King John by the Barons in 1215. "No freeman shall be taken or imprisoned, or disseized, or outlawed, or banished, or any ways destroyed, nor will we pa.s.s upon him, nor will we send upon him, unless by the lawful judgment of his peers, or by the law of the land." This is perhaps the most important of those general clauses in the Great Charter which, says Hallam in his "History of the Middle Ages," "protect the personal liberty and property of all freemen by giving security from arbitrary imprisonment and arbitrary spoliation." Hume gives some intimation of the abuses that led to this provision: merchants had been subjected to arbitrary tolls and impositions; the property of the dying had been seized and their lawful heirs dispossessed; officers of the Crown had levied on horses and carts in time of peace for their own or the public service. Green, in his "History of the English People," gives the picture of John's despotism and of the growing spirit of liberty in the English common people with greater detail The King's exactions drove the Barons into alliance with the people. "Illegal exactions, the seizure of their castles, the preference shown to foreigners, were small provocations compared with his attacks on the honor of their wives and daughters." The demand of the common people to subst.i.tute due process of law for wager by battle, and to be secure in their lives, their liberties, and their property from acts of lawless and irresponsible power, the Barons made their own, and by the same act claimed for others what they claimed for themselves. "The under tenants were protected against all exactions of their lords in precisely the same terms as they were protected against the lawless exactions of the Crown."

From such a provision for the protection of the fundamental rights of person and property it is a far cry to the conclusion that the people cannot remedy the injustice which inflicts all the consequences of accidents which occur in extrahazardous trades upon the individual who, in practicing that trade, happens to be subjected to the peril. Common sense, as well as frequent decisions of the courts, sustain Daniel Webster's definition of the scope of the Const.i.tutional provision embodying in our law this provision of the Great Charter: "The meaning is that every citizen shall hold his life, liberty, and property and immunities under the protection of general rules which govern society."

That society can never make new rules for the better protection of life, liberty, and property and immunities, is a doctrine as repugnant to reason as it is to social progress. It is equally repugnant to the principle of interpretation laid down by the Supreme Court of the United States: "The law is perfectly well settled that the first ten amendments to the Const.i.tution, commonly known as the Bill of Rights, were not intended to lay down any novel principles of government, but simply to embody certain guarantees and immunities which we had inherited from our English ancestors."[77] And it seems never even to have occurred to English law makers that the Workman's Compensation Act is inconsistent with this provision of their Great Charter--a charter which is as much a part of the British const.i.tution as the Fifth and Tenth Amendments are of ours. In the English Const.i.tution, as in the American, the principle is carefully defined in writing. The only difference is that in England the Parliament is the final judge of its meaning; in the United States that final judge is the Supreme Court of the United States.

At least it ought to be. But the New York Court of Appeals does not allow that it is the final authority. In this particular case it is not, for no appeal lies by the plaintiff in this case from the state to the national court. But an appeal does lie by the public. _The Outlook_ takes such an appeal. And it declares without hesitation that the decision of the New York Court of Appeals is in conflict, not only with the trend of judicial decisions in that Court, but also with its very explicit statement of the fundamental principles to be applied in interpreting the Const.i.tution.

We have already noted the fact that maritime law regards a seaman as a co-adventurer with the s.h.i.+powner, and therefore makes the s.h.i.+p liable for his care, keep, and cure in case any accident occurs to him, even though it be produced by his own fault. We now add that the Supreme Court of the United States has decided that such a law does not take the s.h.i.+powner's property without due process of law. That, says the Court of Appeals, is different, for "the contract and services of seamen are exceptional in character ... When he is sick or injured he is ent.i.tled to be cared for at the expense of the s.h.i.+p, and for the failure of the master to perform his duty in this regard the s.h.i.+p or the owner is liable." No doubt there is a difference between a seaman on a s.h.i.+p and a factory hand in a factory. Very probably that difference ought to weigh with the representatives of the people in determining what difference there should be in their respective treatment. But if making a s.h.i.+p liable for accidents happening to a seaman does not take the s.h.i.+powner's property without due process of law, then rendering a factory liable for accidents happening to a factory hand does not lake the factory owner's property without due process of law. The Const.i.tution of the United States is precisely the same on sea as on land; but to the Const.i.tution of the United Slates the Court of Appeals gives one meaning on s.h.i.+pboard and another meaning in the town.

The right of the legislature to impose new responsibilities upon property is not confined by the United States Supreme Court to the sea.

It is equally sustained upon the land. The State of Oklahoma provided for an a.s.sessment on all banks in the State in order to create a fund for the purpose of guaranteeing the depositors in all banks in the State. The n.o.ble State Bank brought suit against the State to prevent it from collecting this a.s.sessment, on the ground that it was taking property without due process of law. The Supreme Court, without a dissenting opinion, held that the act was const.i.tutional, on two grounds: first, because "it is established by a series of cases that an ulterior public advantage may justify a comparatively insignificant taking of private property for what in its immediate purpose is a private use"; and, second, because "it may be said in a general way that the police power extends to all the great public needs. It may be put forth in aid of what is sanctioned by usage or held by the prevailing morality or strong and preponderant opinion to be greatly and immediately necessary to the public welfare." A similar case coming before the Court from the State of Kansas was decided with the same unanimity by the Court at the same time.[78]

This definition of Const.i.tutional law by the unanimous opinion of the Supreme Court of the United Slates, if accepted, clearly determines the const.i.tutionality of the Workman's Compensation Act. That this Act "is sanctioned by usage and held by the prevailing morality and strong and preponderant opinion to be greatly and immediately necessary to the public welfare" is proved by the fact that it is demanded alike by employer and employee, that it has been approved by the general public, that it is apparently regarded by the Court of Appeals itself as a reform much to be desired, and that it has been adopted by every civilized country in Europe except Switzerland. The New York Court of Appeals can find only one escape from this declaration of principle by the highest tribunal in the land, in these two cases, namely, a repudiation of the authority of that tribunal in these cases: "We cannot recognize them as controlling our construction of our Const.i.tution."

In this review of the decision of the New York Court of Appeals we have pa.s.sed by without comment some extraordinary statements which should not be pa.s.sed by in any complete review--the statement that "practically all of these [European] countries are so-called const.i.tutional monarchies in which, as in England, there is no written const.i.tution," whereas, in fact, practically all of the European nations have written const.i.tutions; and the statement that the Workman's Compensation Act "does nothing to conserve the health, safety, or morals of the employee," whereas, in fact, it is aimed and purposed to accomplish all three results, and was urged in the English House of Lords by Lord Salisbury specifically on the ground that "to my mind the great attraction of this bill is that I believe it will turn out a great machinery for the saving of human life."

But we have deliberately neglected all minor details in an endeavor to put before our lay readers a true interpretation, and what we hope they will generally believe to be a just criticism, of this decision of the highest court of the Empire State. In that decision, in our opinion, the Court has disregarded all considerations of social justice and public policy, has set itself against the conscience and judgment of the civilized world, and in its forced interpretation of the Const.i.tution has disregarded alike the history of the Const.i.tution's origin and of its judicial interpretation by the highest court in the land.

APPENDIX II

SOME SUGGESTIONS TO INSTRUCTORS

What is the purpose of a course in the writing of arguments? The arguments which it turns out cannot convince any one, since there is no one for them to convince; so that the immediate and tangible product of the course must be looked on as a by-product, and a by-product from which there can be no salvage.

What products, then, can teachers aim to produce? First, a vital respect for facts and for sound reasoning therefrom; second, the power so to a.n.a.lyze and marshal the facts in an obscure and complicated case as to bring order and light out of confusion; and third, the appreciation of other men's point of view and training in the tact which will influence them. Incidentally a good course in argumentation should leave with its students an acquaintance with certain effective and economical devices for going to work that should serve them well in later life.

I will take up each of these points in order, and speak of a few methods which I have found useful in practice.

In the first place, how can a teacher establish and strengthen the veneration for fact and the suspicion of all unsupported a.s.sertion and _a priori_ reasoning? Partly by judicious exercises, partly by quiet guidance in the choice of subjects. Let a cla.s.s cross-examine each other on their exact knowledge of the ultimate facts on some familiar subject.

On the question of the value of Latin, for example, just how many of the cla.s.s know no Latin? In a piece of their own writing, how many of the words are derived from the Latin? and what kind of words are they? Of the leaders in scholars.h.i.+p in the cla.s.s how many know Latin? Of the best writers? Of the authors whose works they are studying in English literature, how many were trained in Latin? Of the authors of the textbooks in science how many? A few such questions as these will suggest others; and the members of the cla.s.s should keep a record of how many such questions they can answer with precision. Very few people have any exact command of facts on subjects about which they talk freely and with authority; and a young man who has had this truth borne in on him by personal examination will come to writing an argument with more modesty and scrupulousness.

Then a cla.s.s can be guided away from the large subjects where of necessity their knowledge of facts is second-hand, and in which their arguments, being of necessity short, can touch only the surface of the subject. Here, I think, is where much of the ineffectiveness of courses in argument is to be found. "Judges should be elected by direct vote of the people," "The right of suffrage should be limited by an educational test," "Corporations engaged in interstate commerce should be required to take out a federal license," are samples of propositions recommended as subjects for arguments of two thousand words or less. No undergraduate has the practical knowledge of affairs to judge the value of facts adduced in support of such propositions, and except for the members of debating teams, who spend time on their contests comparable to that given by athletes to their sports, no undergraduate can make himself acquainted with the vast fields of economics and governmental theory covered by such subjects. To write an argument of twelve hundred words on such a subject will weaken rather than strengthen the respect for facts.

What sort of subjects, then, can be used? This is, I confess, a question not altogether easy to answer; but I have had a try at an answer in the list of Subjects which is given in Chapter I, which can be adapted to special conditions of time or place. In general a question which a student would discuss of his own accord and with some warmth is the best subject for him. There are many such subjects in athletics: at this date the rules of football seem not yet settled beyond amendment, and the material for hunting facts in the records of past games is large; Dean Briggs of Harvard is making an appeal to players to raise the level of manners and of ethics in baseball; do all your students agree with him?

Should the universities be allowed to use men in their graduate schools as members of their teams? And what are the facts about the playing of such men in the universities in which your students would be interested?

Then there are various educational questions, on which the views of students have real value, especially if they are based on some examination of facts in the course of writing an argument. President Lowell of Harvard told a body of students whom he was consulting that it did not make much difference what they wanted, but that their views when set forth for the purpose of helping the authorities of the college were of great value. The views of your cla.s.s on examinations for entrance would be based on knowledge which a member of the faculty cannot have at first-hand. What is the estimate of the relative difficulty of getting into various colleges, and on what figures from schools is the estimate based? For how many boys are languages easier or harder than history or mathematics or science? Does admission by certificate provide sufficient safeguard for the standards of the college? Does a rigid prescription of subjects for examination distort the course for the high school? How many boys, who can be named, had their education injured by such prescription? Should the standard for entrance or for graduation be raised, or lowered, at your college? Should honor students be excused from final examinations? Should they have special privileges? Should freshmen be required to be within college bounds at a fixed hour every night? Should cla.s.s rushes be abolished? Here are only a few suggestions of subjects which can be adapted to the needs and the knowledge of special cla.s.ses. They are of no value, however, unless the students are driven to gather facts, and to reason from these facts, not from general impressions. School catalogues, college catalogues, informal censuses, reports of presidents and of committees, and other printed or oral sources will help in the gathering of facts.

Then there are the innumerable local and state questions that touch the fathers of at least half of any cla.s.s, and that the sons may be in the way of hearing discussed at home, or may be sent to hear discussed in legislatures and city councils. Every instructor who takes a daily newspaper will be provided with more of these subjects than his cla.s.s can use. For their facts the students can go to the newspapers, to printed reports, to the persons who are concerned with the questions which they are going to argue. In some cases the students will get valuable interest and advice from the older men who have the active charge of the questions under discussion; and it is not inconceivable, that if some of the latter happen to be graduates of the college or school, they will even read the arguments and make helpful criticisms on them. The grateful interest of graduates is a source which has not been overdrawn for aid in the processes of instruction.

Many of the subjects which I have here offered as suggestions can be discussed in part, at any rate, within the s.p.a.ce of an editorial article; and that I conceive to be about the length which most arguments written by students, except those in special courses, will run to. In so short a s.p.a.ce, it is hardly necessary to point out, evidence cannot be presented and discussed with the detail, say, of Webster's "Speech in the White Murder Case." It would be a good separate exercise to call for such detailed presentation of evidence on some single point in the argument. With most cla.s.ses, however, the instructor cannot do much more than rule out wholly unsupported a.s.sertion, and insist that the distinction between fact and inference from fact shall be kept in sight.

The second of the results which an instructor in a course in argumentation should aim for is the power to a.n.a.lyze complicated ma.s.ses of facts and so arrange them and present them as to bring order out of confusion. President Taft has said that Justice Hughes "won his reputation at the bar by his gift of boring to the innermost core of a subject"; and that is what the drill on the introduction to the brief should to some degree impart to students. The orderly a.n.a.lysis of the question, step by step, according to the admirable scheme devised by Professor Baker, cannot help implanting some understanding of what it means to go to the heart of a question. Every man sooner or later, must face complicated and puzzling questions; and the ordinary man will give himself a long start if he will thus put down on paper the points that can be urged on the two sides of a question, and then study them until the real points at issue emerge. Then the drill in laying out the logical skeleton of an argument, so plainly that no false or broken connection can escape detection, will strengthen the conscience for clearness and coherence of thought; and the necessity for getting back to ultimate facts for every a.s.sertion, and putting down the source from which the facts are derived, will help to implant a wholesome respect for facts as something different from a.s.sertion.

Since the argument written out is the final test of the thinking, some care must be taken that students do not obscure by careless paragraphing and slovenly sentences such clearness of thought as they have attained in their brief. I have found it useful to prescribe marginal t.i.tles to the paragraphs: a student who has struggled to find a single phrase that will cover all of a sprawling paragraph will have learned some respect for firmness of paragraphing. In general, an instructor has a right to insist that his cla.s.s shall apply in practice all that they have learned about the ordinary devices for getting clearness and emphasis.

In the third place, this practice in writing arguments ought to leave with students a more developed idea of how to make readers look favorably on a proposition which they are urging. I have insisted, at the risk of seeming repet.i.tious, on the need of considering the audience whose minds are to be won over; for what persuasiveness can mean apart from specific persons to persuade I cannot conceive. Much of the perfunctory emptiness of the textbooks when they get to this part of the subject comes from neglecting this very practical and obvious side of making an argument. The difficulty it raises for arguments written in cla.s.s work is just as obvious; more than most kinds of composition written for practice, arguments run the risk of having no touch with reality. Something may be done, however, if an instructor guides his cla.s.s toward the kind of questions I have suggested above: an argument on the rules of football would be addressed to the Rules Committee, and most youths would know something of the prepossessions of so famous a man as Mr. Camp; an argument on a college question would be addressed to the faculty or the president, and it may be a.s.sumed that students have some idea of their general att.i.tude on such matters. I have followed the practice in my own sections of freshmen of requiring them to put at the head of their brief and of their argument the audience which they had in mind. Then when one comes to criticism and conference one can by a little cross-examination bring home to them the very practical nature of this matter of persuasion.

One must be careful not to insist too strictly on the model and the scheme of work laid down here, and in practically the same form in other books. It is the best that has yet been devised, but any student who is set to making a brief of one of the examples of argument at the end of this book will see for himself that there is no one infallible way of making an argument. Each argument must adapt itself to its occasion and its audience; and an instructor will be wise to keep himself awake to this truth by noting divergencies from the model. The rules which are here set forth and the model which is built on them are serviceable just so long as they are serviceable, and no longer. Their chief service is done when they have set up in the minds of students a standard of effectiveness in singling out and emphasizing the critical issues of a question.

As to the exercises which should accompany the work in argument my experience with cla.s.ses of five to six hundred freshmen leads me to think that their value to the student can hardly be overestimated. I will speak here of a few of them.

The exercises in the use of reference books is something that every student ought to be put through. I found it simple and not too extravagant of time to take my sections to the library in squads of ten or a dozen, and show them and let them handle the princ.i.p.al books on the list. Then on the spot I gave each of them a sheet of theme paper on which I had written some sort of fact drawn from one of these books, and told them to look up that fact and report on it. My object was to convince them that most ordinary facts can be looked up in less than five minutes. The material for this exercise I got by turning over the reference books and jotting down almost anything that caught my eye. One can in this way get a great variety of facts in a very short time. In some libraries it might be possible to get members of the library staff to share in this instruction; in all libraries one will find active cooperation.

For the preliminary work on the argument we found that it was often practicable and advisable to let the students pair off on the two sides of the question, and work together through all the preliminaries. Two men thus working together often discuss themselves into the liveliest kind of interest in their question; and almost always they come closer to the important issues involved by sharpening their wits against each other. Their arguments, too, are better, especially in the refutation, from their knowing just what points can be made on the other side.

It is excellent practice, not only for the brief and the argument, but also for all other college work, to set the students to making briefs of parts or wholes of the arguments printed here as examples, or of other arguments found outside. Not only lawyers, but other men of affairs, constantly have to digest and summarize papers; and skill in picking out essential facts and the thread of thought from a doc.u.ment is a highly valuable a.s.set for practical life. The exercise is sometimes irksome to students, for it is hard work at first and calls for concentration of mind: but it can be sweetened and made livelier by the compet.i.tion of cla.s.sroom discussion.

All through the work on the argument students may well be set to watching the daily papers and the magazines for examples of arguments, and of good and bad reasoning. Very often an instructor can get, at the cost of a cent or two apiece, a set of arguments printed in a newspaper for his cla.s.s to a.n.a.lyze. Senators and representatives in Congress are notably willing to send copies of speeches, and these sometimes furnish good examples of both sound and unsound reasoning.

If time serves, instructors will do well to give a grounding in logic. I have inserted a brief discussion of the subject with the hope that it will furnish a basis for a short study; it can be reenforced by a few weeks on such a manual as Jevons's "Primer of Logic," or Bode's "Outline of Logic" if there is time. Whatever be one's view of the positive value of deductive logic, there can be no doubt that every student should have some knowledge of the canons of inductive logic, and that a study of propositions and syllogisms is a mighty sharpener of the discrimination for the real meaning of words and sentences.

The short chapter on debating I have added for the use of cla.s.ses where a moderate amount of training in this most useful of exercises is practicable. Debating may be looked at in two ways, either as training in alertness and effectiveness in discussion, or as a form of intercollegiate or interscholastic sport. On the latter aspect a recognized authority has said: "Formal debate is a kind of game. In the time limit, the order of speakers, the alternation of sides, the give and take of reb.u.t.tal, the fixed rules of conduct, the ethics of the contest, the qualifications for success, and the final awarding of victory, debate has much in common with tennis";[79] and he develops the likeness through a page of rather fine print. From this point of view debating has keenly interested a small body of students; in some colleges it has been recognized by hatbands or other emblems of distinction for the successful "teams"; and it has developed an elaborate apparatus of rules and of "coaches." With the game in this full bloom I have not s.p.a.ce to deal in this small book; for such elaborate work of a.n.a.lysis and preparation one must go to special manuals which deal with it at length. I have confined myself to an application of the general principles of the subject to the spoken argument, and to a few suggestions for preparing for and carrying on the not very formal discussions which the average man gets into in the ordinary run of life.

Even where there is not time for systematic practice in debating, much may be done by extemporaneous five-minute speeches. There is unquestionably an active movement among the best teachers of English for more stress on oral composition; they recognize that the power to stand quietly and at one's ease on one's feet and explain one's views clearly and cogently will help any man in his life work.

In some cases there may be local or academic subjects under discussion at the time the cla.s.s is working on argument on which they can prepare themselves to speak. It may be possible to interest graduates of the school and college, so that they will give help in getting material, and perhaps in judging and criticizing. Occasionally, perhaps, a man who has the actual settlement of a local question or a share in the settlement may be willing to hear the discussion. Any aid of this sort that will bring the debate within the bounds of reality will add zest to it.

For the use of this book when a comparatively short time, perhaps six weeks, is at the disposal of the instructor, my advice, based on the practice worked out with my colleagues in the freshman course at Harvard, would be to begin with Chapter I, and at the same time ask the cla.s.s to hand in subjects for approval. This should be done a fortnight ahead of the main work, in order to allow changes of subject, after consultation if necessary. In connection with Chapter II would come exercises in making briefs of one or more of the arguments in the back of the book or of others provided for the purpose. Then would come the preliminary work on the brief, the introduction to the brief. This it is profitable to treat as a separate piece of work, with a grade of its own. At this stage would be the place for the exercises in the use of reference books, which will lead naturally to looking up the material for the brief. If possible a conference should be given on the introduction to the brief. Then comes the next main step in the work, the brief. The work for this would naturally be accompanied by study of Chapter III, and by such exercises in the correction of bad briefing and in correction of fallacies as the instructor finds time for. There should be another conference on the brief, and it should be rewritten if necessary. Instructors who have been through the subject will know from sad experience that one rewriting and one conference may be only starters. Then comes the argument itself: this should be the climax, and not merely a perfunctory filling out of the brief. If it be at all possible, the argument should be rewritten after a conference, and the conference can hardly be too long. If the argument is fifteen hundred or two thousand words long, a half an hour will be found a short time to go over the whole with any thoroughness. No instructor in English needs to have it pointed out that conferences are his most efficient means of education.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: See Lincoln's speech at Galesburg and at Quincy, in the Lincoln-Douglas debates.]