LESSON 1 THE ORGANIZATION OF IDEAS LOGICAL GROUPING OF IDEAS Not all the ideas which fill our minds are clear. Furthermore, they are not, as a rule, organized in logical groups. If we wish to use some of them as speech material, they must be clear and well arranged. When a man plans to make a speech, he draws upon the full stock of his mind, but he carefully tests his information to see if it will have weight with his audience, and he arranges it in the most convenient manner for their understanding. Let us illustrate. If I were to ask you suddenly to tell me immediately all your ideas about trade unions, a great unorganized number of impressions would seek haphazard expression. You might say: "Labor unions start strikes; sometimes there is disorder and even bloodshed; they have walking delegates; I know a union man who received financial help from his organization when he was ill; unions try to get more pay for their members; there is a local chapter of the building trades in my neighborhood; I visited one of their meetings once; unions try to get an eight-hour day, etc." But if you were given some time for reflection, you would organize your thoughts somewhat as follows: 1. What labor unions are: They are organizations of laborers for mutual protection and improvement. 2. What they seek to accomplish among their members: (a) social improvement, (b) sick benefit, (c) life in surance. 3. What they seek to exact from the employer: (a) shorter hours, (b) better pay, (c) better working conditions, such as ventilation, safeguarded machines, clean rooms, etc., (d) exclusion from the shop of non-union men. 4. Results of unionism: (a) good results, (b) bad results, etc., (c) means they use to accomplish their objects. 5. Our consequent attitude towards unions. BENEFITS OF GROUPING IDEAS Such an arrangement or organization of thoughts does three things. First, it insures a thorough and clear grasp of each idea by the speaker. We often let hazy and untrustworthy impressions hold sway in our careless thinking of every-day life. However, if an idea is to be put into an organized plan, the very act of classifying it makes us inspect it more closely. Therefore, careful, organized thinking about a topic leads to a clearer understanding and approval of every idea involved. Second, the plan puts the speech in an order easy for the audience to grasp and retain. Ideas thrown out haphazard do not form part of a well-arranged whole; they are confusing. Certainly all cannot be remembered. Third, the organization helps the speaker himself to stick to his topic and to develop all of it. EXERCISE TO SECURE ORGANIZATION OF IDEAS To acquire the ability to organize readily, follow the directions of this lesson most carefully, one step at a time before proceeding to the next. Read the whole lesson through before you attempt any of the exercises suggested. 1. Read this passage from the speech which Henry Ward Beecher delivered in Liverpool: There are two dominant races in modern history: the Germanic and the Romanic races. The Germanic races tend to personal liberty, to a sturdy individualism, to civil and political liberty. The Romanic race tends to absolutism in government; it is clannish; it loves chieftains; it develops a people that crave strong and showy governments to support and plan for them. The Anglo-Saxon race belongs to the great German family and is a fair exponent of its peculiarities. The AngloSaxon carries self-government and self-development with him wherever he goes. He has popular GOVERNMENT and popular INDUSTRY; for the effects of a generous civil liberty are not seen a whit more plainly in the good order, in the intelligence and in the virtue of self-governing people than in their amazing enterprise and the scope and power of their industry. The power to create riches is just as much a part of the Anglo-Saxon virtues as the power to create good order and social safety. Now read it again. 2. Turn this page over so that you cannot see the passage and write in your own words the ideas which Beecher conveyed to his English audience. Do this even though the composition may be very imperfect. 3. Now read the passage again with this plan in mind. Beecher develops three ideas: (1) The characteristics of the Germanic races, (2) the characteristics of the Romanic races, (3) the way the Anglo-Saxon carries the Germanic idea into industry as well as government. 4. Consulting the following notes, once more write the composition, in your own words. The notes are to III. The Anglo-Saxon belongs to the Germanic group and shows its characteristics in industry as well as in government. 5. Take the following more general outline. Memorize it and then speak the development. In your oral amplification, do not try to remember words which Beecher used before. Merely keep your three ideas in mind and develop them in the same way you would make clear any thought of your own in conversation. Outline: I. Characteristics of the Germanic Races. II. Characteristics of the Romanic Races. When you make your oral development, it is well to have a real audience. If you could get a group to listen to you, it would be well. Or in conversation with some friend you might refer to the Anglo-Saxons and quote the ideas of Beecher. You might also speak your ideas out loud in a room, by yourself, but before a mirror. In this case, do not repeat or make false starts and go all over again when displeased with a word. Go right ahead without a break, no matter how imperfect the performance is. There is no harm in going over the whole orally many times, but it is undesirable to break off in the middle. EXERCISE IN ORIGINAL ANALYSIS FOR THOUGHT GROUPS Read the following paragraphs from Henry W. Grady's "The New South" (delivered before the New England Society, December 22, 1886) and make your own topical outline. Then write your own complete expression of these same ideas. Preserve all of these exercises carefully in your notebook. Also practice oral amplification of a memorized outline. Follow directions given in the preceding exercise. Under the old regime, the negroes were slaves to the South; the South was a slave to the system. The old plantation, with its simple police regulations and its feudal habits, was the only type possible under slavery. Thus was gathered in the hands of a splendid and chivalric oligarchy the substance that should have been diffused among the people-as the rich blood, under certain artificial conditions is gathered at the heart, filling that with affluent rupture but leaving the body chill and colorless. The old South rested everything on slavery and agriculture, unconscious that these could neither give nor maintain healthy growth. The new South presents a perfect Democracy, the oligarchs leading in the popular movement,-a social system compact and closely knitted, less splendid at the surface but stronger at the core; a hundred farms for every plantation; fifty homes for every palace and (instead of agriculture alone) a diversified industry that meets the complex needs of this complex age. In making your notes, be sure to get the central thought the contrast between the old South and the new South. In your development, do not make a running contrast; rather treat the old South fully, drop it, and then take up the new South for complete treatment. Note the following difficult, running contrast, a form of |