The Making of Arguments Part 4

MISCELLANEOUS WORKS

LIPPINCOTT'S NEW GAZETTEER A geographical dictionary of the world.

THE CENTURY ATLAS With cla.s.sified references to places.

THE HANDY REFERENCE ATLAS Small size (octavo); a most useful book for the desk or library table.

PLOETZ'S EPITOME OF UNIVERSAL HISTORY A very compact epitome of history, with all the important dates.

NOTES AND QUERIES A periodical devoted to notes and queries on a mult.i.tude of curious and out-of-the-way facts; yearly index volumes are issued.

BIBLIOGRAPHIES ISSUED BY THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

SONNENSCHEIN'S THE BEST BOOKS A guide to about fifty thousand of the best available books in a great variety of fields, cla.s.sified by subject.

Make yourself familiar with all of these books which are within your reach. Get into the habit, when you have a few minutes to spare, of taking them down from the shelves and turning over the pages to see what they contain. And whenever a question of fact comes up in general talk, make a mental note of it, or better, one in writing, and the next time you go to the library hunt it up in one of these reference books. You will be surprised to see, when once you have made the habit, how short a time it takes to settle disputes about most facts; and at the same time you will be extending your general knowledge.

In learning the use of these and other books, do not forget the most important source of all, the librarian. The one guiding principle of modern librarianship is to make the books useful; and it gives every proper librarian active pleasure to show you how to use the books in his charge.

In using books and magazines scrutinize the character of the source. Is it impartial or partisan? Is its treatment of the subject exhaustive and definite, or cursory and superficial? Does the author know the subject at first hand, or does he rely on other men? On such points the second book or article will be easier to estimate than the first, and the third than the second; for with each new source you have the earlier ones as a basis for comparison. In any case do not trust to a single authority: no matter how authoritative it is, sooner or later the narrow basis of your views will betray itself, for an argument which is merely a revamping of some one else's views is not likely to have much spontaneity.

In many subjects, and especially those of new or local interest, you will not find the facts gathered and a.s.similated for you; you must go out and gather your own straw for the making of your bricks. Such are most questions of reform or change in school or college systems, in athletics, in munic.i.p.al affairs, in short, most of the questions on which the average man after he leaves college is likely to be making arguments.

To get decisive facts on such questions as these you must go, in the case of local subjects, to the newspapers, to city and town reports, or to doc.u.ments issued by interested committees; for college questions you go to the presidents' reports and to annual catalogues or catalogues of graduates, or perhaps to _Graduates' Bulletins_ or _Weeklies_; for athletic questions you go to the files of the daily newspapers, or for records to such works as the _World_ or _Tribune Almanacs_; for school questions you go to school catalogues, or to school-committee reports.

You will be surprised to find how little time you use to get together bodies of facts and figures that may make you, in a small way, an original authority on the subject you are discussing. It does not take long to count a few hundred names, or to run through the files of a newspaper for a week or a month; and when you have done such investigation you get a sense of surety in dealing with your subject that will strengthen your argument. Here, as in the larger discussions of later life, the readiness to take the initiative and the ingenuity in thinking of possible sources are what make you count.

Such sources you can often piece out by personal inquiry from men who are conversant with the subject--town or city officers, members of faculties, princ.i.p.als of schools. If you go to such people hoping that they will do your work for you, you will not be likely to get much comfort; but if you are keen about your subject yourself, and ready to work, you will often get not only valuable information and advice, but sometimes also a chance to go through unpublished records. A young man who is working hard and intelligently is apt to be an object of interest to older men who have been doing the same all their lives.

EXERCISES

1. Name those of the sources on pages 34-36, which are available to you.

Report to the cla.s.s on the scope and character of each of them. (The report on different sources can be divided among the cla.s.s.)

2. Name some sources for facts relating to your own school or college; to your own town or city; to your own state.

3. Report on the following, in not more than one hundred words, naming the source from which you got your information: the situation and government of the Fiji Islands; Circe; the author of "A man's a man for a' that"; Becky Sharp; the age of President Taft and the offices he has held; the early career of James Madison; the American amateur record in the half-mile run; the family name of Lord Salisbury, and a brief account of his career; the salary of the mayor of New York; the island of Guam: some of the important measures pa.s.sed by Congress in the session of 1910-1911. (This exercise a teacher can vary indefinitely by turning over the pages of reference books which his cla.s.s can reach; or the students can be set to making exercises for each other.)

14. Bibliography. Before starting in earnest on the reading for your argument, begin a bibliography, that is, a list of the books and articles and speeches which will help you. This bibliography should be entered in your notebook, and it is convenient to allow s.p.a.ce enough there to keep the different kinds of sources separate. In making your bibliography you will use some of the sources which have just been described, especially "Poole's Index," and "The Reader's Guide," and the subject catalogue of the library. Make your entries so full that you can go at once to the source; it is poor economy to save a minute on copying down a t.i.tle, and then waste ten or fifteen in going back to the source from which you got it. On large subjects the number of books and articles is far beyond the possibilities of most courses in argumentation, and here you must exercise your judgment in choosing the most important. The name of the author is on the whole a safe guide: if you find an article or a book by President Eliot on an educational subject, or one by President Hadley on economics, or one by President Jordan on zoology, or one by any of them on university policy, you will know at once that you cannot afford to neglect it. As you go on with your reading you will soon find who are authorities on special subjects by noting who are quoted in text and footnotes. If the subject happens to be one of those on which a bibliography has been issued either by the Library of Congress or from some other source, the making of your own bibliography will reduce itself to a selection from this list.

Keep your bibliography as a practical aid to you in a very practical task. Do not swell it from mere love of acc.u.mulation, as you might collect stamps. The making of exhaustive bibliographies is work for advanced scholarship or for a.s.sistant librarians. For the practical purposes of making an argument a very moderate number of t.i.tles beyond those you can actually use will give you sufficient background.

Notebook. Enter in your notebook the t.i.tles of books, articles, or speeches which bear on your subject, and which you are likely to be able to read.

Ill.u.s.tration. Bibliography for an argument on introducing commission government of the Des Moines type into Wytown.

BOOKS

WOODRUFF, C. R. City Government by Commission. New York, 1911.

Bibliography in appendix.

HAMILTON, J. J. The Dethronement of the City Boss. New York, 1910.

ARTICLES

From Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature, Vol. II (1905-1909).

(There are thirty entries here under the heading, Munic.i.p.al Government, and the subheading, Government by Commission. Of these I omit those dealing with cities in Texas, as not bearing directly on the Des Moines plan, and select seven of the most recent.)

"Another City for Commission Government," _World's Work_, Vol. XVIII (June, 1909), p. 11,639.

"City Government." _Outlook_. Vol. XCII (August 14, 1909), pp.

865-866.

BRADFORD, E. S. "Commission Government in American Cities," National Conference on City Government (1909), pp. 217-228.

PEARSON, P. M. "Commission System of Munic.i.p.al Government"

(bibliography), Intercollegiate Debates, pp. 461-477.

ALLEN, S. B. "Des Moines Plan," National Conference on City Government (1907), pp. 156-165.

"Des Moines Plan of City Government," _World's Work_, Vol. XVIII (May, 1909), p. 11,533.

GOODYEAR, D. "The Example of Haverhill," _Independent_, Vol. LXVI (January, 1909), p. 194.

From Reader's Guide (1910). (Seven entries, of which I select the following.)

GOODYEAR, D. "The Experience of Haverhill," _Independent_, Vol.

LXVIII (February, 1910), p. 415.

"Rapid Growth of Commission Government," _Outlook_, Vol. XCIV (April, 1910), p. 822.

TURNER, G. K. "New American City Government," _McClure's_, Vol. x.x.xV (May, 1910), pp. 97-108.

"Organization of Munic.i.p.al Government," American Government and Politics; pp. 598-602.

15. Planning for a Definite Audience. Before setting to work on the actual planning of your argument there are still two preliminary questions you have to consider--the prepossessions of your audience, and the burden of proof; of these the latter is dependent on the former.

When you get out into active life and have an argument to make, this question of the audience will force itself on your attention, for you will not make the argument unless you want to influence views which are actually held. In a school or college argument you have the difficulty that your argument will in most cases have no such practical effect.

Nevertheless, even here you can get better practice by fixing on some body of readers who might be influenced by an argument on your subject, and addressing yourself specifically to them. You can hardly consider the burden of proof or lay out the s.p.a.ce which you will give to different points in your argument unless you take into account the present knowledge and the prepossessions of your audience on the subject.

Where the question is large and abstract the audience may be so general as to seem to have no special characteristics; but if you will think of the differences of tone and att.i.tude of two different newspapers in treating some local subject you will see that readers always segregate themselves into types. Even on a larger scale, one can say that the people of the United States as a whole are optimistic and self-confident in temper, and in consequence careless as to many minor deficiencies and blemishes in our national polity. On a good many questions the South, which is still chiefly agricultural, has different interests and prepossessions from the North; and the West, being a new country, is inclined to have less reverence for the vested rights of property as against the rights of men, than the Eastern states, where wealth has long been concentrated and inherited.

As one narrows down to the immediate or local questions which make the best subjects for practice the part played by the audience becomes more apparent. The reform of the rules of football is a good example: a few years ago an audience of elderly people would have taken for granted the brutality of the game, and its tendency to put a premium on unfair play; the rules committee, made up of believers in the game, had to be hammered at for several years before they made the changes which have so greatly improved it. So in matters of local or munic.i.p.al interest, such as the location of a new street car line, or the laying out of a park, it will make a vast difference to you whether you are writing for people who have land on the proposed line or park, or for the general body of citizens.

Differences in thy prepossessions of your audience and in their knowledge of the subject have, therefore, a direct and practical effect on the planning of your argument. Suppose you are arguing in favor of raising the standard of admission to your college; if your argument is addressed to the faculty you will give little s.p.a.ce to explaining what those requirements now are; but if you are sending out an address to the alumni you must give some s.p.a.ce to telling them clearly and without technicalities what present conditions are and explaining the changes that you propose. Theoretically an argument should change in form and proportions for every audience which you address. The theory may be pushed too far; but in the practice of real life it will be found nearly true. With different audiences you will unconsciously make different selection of material, and you will vary your emphasis, the place of your refutation, and the distribution of your s.p.a.ce.

Notebook. Enter the audience for whom your argument might be written, and note what you think would be their knowledge of the subject, and their prepossessions toward it.

Ill.u.s.tration. The citizens of Wytown. They are convinced that there should be a change in the city government; but they are not yet familiar with the Des Moines plan.