FOR BUSINESS MEN BY WILLIAM G. HOFFMAN Associate Professor of Public Speaking FIRST EDITION SECOND IMPRESSION MCGRAW-HILL BOOK COMPANY, INC. NEW YORK: 370 SEVENTH AVENUE COPYRIGHT, 1923, BY THE PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA THE MAPLE PRESS YORK PA J N Siratory hahr PREFACE The purpose of this book is to illustrate the principles of public speaking in the more practical and familiar types of address that prevail today. Timeliness is a distinguishing factor in the effective speech. The good speaker fashions his talk to meet present, immediate and temporary interests that arise from a unique combination of audience and occasion. For this reason few speeches have permanent value. Most of them are naturally too local and restricted in subject matter and appeal to be printed, and those that are published are often disappointing because they lack the necessary energy and emphasis of the speaker's voice and bearing. The political, forensic and oratorical types of a generation ago are, as a rule, comparatively remote in content and style. They furnish few directly helpful suggestions, and are rather discouraging to the man who must talk about clothing, machinery, taxes or sales campaigns. The best speeches of all ages can, of course, make important contributions to the general culture of the student, and a liberal education is of decided advantage to every speaker. The speech is inevitably a reflection of the man. This book stresses in discussion and assignments the need of enriching and developing the whole mind. But it is written on the assumption that the ideal speech, even when it is concerned with the generalities of life and character, is practical in purpose and technical in means. The public speaker must have a vocational skill. He must take his audiences as he finds them and hit a given target with the first shot. He cannot compose a speech as whim or earnest conviction dictate, and send it about the country in a book until it finds congenial readers. He must be steeped in the best methods and devices of current practice. The speaker must make his own speeches. Memorizing and rehearsing well-known speeches not only puts off the real business of the student but is frequently harmful. It is exhibitional, instead of practical and communicative. The prize declaimer |