Byron C. Piatt

              1917

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BYRON C. PIATT


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ASSOCIATE MEMBER
AMERICAN LYCEUM UNION

S.B.Hershey
Prest & Gent Mgr.
ROCHESTER.N.Y.

Exclusive Direction
CENTRAL LYCEUM BUREAU
Suite 415 Orchestra Bld., Chicago, Ill.
FRED PELHAM, Manager.




BYRON C. PIATT, PROPHET-ORATOR
CONSIDERABLY over a Century ago a French protestant exile by the name of John Piatt came to this country to escape religious persecution.  He settled upon the New England frontier.  From the loins of this one man have sprung successive generations of soldiers, journalists, poets, preachers, farmers and business men.  From one branch of the family alone came Col. A. Sanders Piatt, the general, John Piatt, the poet, and Donn Piatt, the journalist.  During the Civil War a score of these men from both sides of the Mason and Dixon Line met in battle and fought against family and blood for a principle.

The mettle of the ancestrial zealot has reappeared in the life and work of Byron C. Piatt.  The key to the man is in the line he has chosen for himself from the poet Heine.  Upon leaving college to enter the ministry he was drawn irresistibly into the thick of the social questions that are agitating our time.  He comes to the Lyceum platform because he has to.  His ideas have possessed him completely and forced him into the arena to fight for them.  Mr. Piatt is an orator and more—he is a prophet.  Voice, gesture and body combine to drive home the thing that he has to say.  First, last and all the time the message is the thing.  Every sentence is welded together with overmastering conviction.  He possesses the charm and magnetism of down-right, thorough-going sincerity.  The romance of facts and figures, masterly argument, thrusts of ridicule, flashes of wit and impassioned appeals to reason and conscience follow each other in rapid succession till the whole compass of human life is played upon.  He warms and lifts his hearers into enthusiasm by the breadth of his sympathy and his passion for justice.  His style is direct and simple, and, at times, epigrammatic with sharp turns of expression and surprises of thought that keep the listener tense with attention.

The lecture-going public has been waiting for the man and his message.  We predict for Mr. Piatt an enthusiastic reception and, in a short time, a place second to none on the Lyceum platform.—The Management.




We do not possess our ideas but are possessed by them.  They seize us and force us into the arena where, like gladiators, we must fight for them.

—Heine.

What the author of The Jungle and The Industrial Republic has to say.  It will be remembered that Mr. Sinclair's novel, The Jungle, came under the notice of President Roosevelt last year and brought on a revolution in the packing industry.

DEAR COMRADE:

The Mass Against the Man is a splendid lecture, well thought, well expressed, and full of go.  I wish you all success with it.

UPTON SINCLAIR




LECTURE SUBJECTS

The Mass Against the Man
A Sane but Searching Inquiry into the Social Unrest of Our Time, with Its Bearings upon the Industrial Problem.


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American Morals
A Straight, Steady Look into the Inmemorial Question of Moral Good and Evil, with Its Bearings upon Our National Destiny.



A Brief

What the Social Question is and what has made it.
Is the mass crushing the man or the man the mass?
How the discovery of steam power has brought on a crisis in the affairs of the world.
An answer to the question: Is there poverty in this country?
Is it true that the rich are becoming richer and the poor poorer?
Does poverty debase or elevate the people?
Some interesting information about dog banquets and dog grave yards in New York City.
Shall a man climb up higher or stay where he is?
Is there room at the top for every man and woman?
Is Kipling any more of a social necessity than the garbage man?
Shall we use men to make money or money to make men?
Will the civilization of the future be competative or co-operative?
Should you work for me or should I work for you?
Why we advertise and who pays the bill.
Why food stuffs are adulterated.
Why we have an Immigration question.
Why Germany is building 18 ten-million dollar battleships.
Why the governments of the nations are enemies and the people of the nations friends and allies.
A history of morals among pagan civilizations.
Is America an immoral Nation?
Is war a moral institution?
Are our dramas and operas immoral?
Do what we eat and the climate we live in react upon conduct?
What has the negro question to do with morals?
How has the immigrant influenced our moral standards?
Do our amusements determine our morals or our morals our amusements?
What shall we do with the Prude, the Dude and the Nude?
Which are the more immoral, the rich or the poor?
Is there more vice in the city than in the country?
Is a double standard of morals natural or artificial?
Has the last Century brought a rise or a decline in morals?
Do our colleges educate up or down?
To what extent does environment determine morals?
Does it weaken a man's morals to be under fed and over worked?
Some startling products of our shop age.
What is to become of the American home?
Should we forbid marriage or divorce?
Will Carnegie Libraries and Trust Companies solve the question?
Should the boys and girls in our public schools be separated?
Is the moral code of Jesus Christ obsolete?




THE CENTRAL PRINTING & ENGRAVING COMPANY