f men tell
them to learn for themselves and to teach their sons, and to hold them
at the critical hour, even by sweat and blood, to a clean life; for in
this way only can feeble-minded homes, almshouses, and the scarlet woman
be abolished. In this way only can men arise to full physical and mental
force, and become the fathers of a race to whom the struggle for clean
manhood will not be the battle it is with us.

"By the distorted faces, by the misshapen bodies, by marks of
degeneracy, recognizable to your practised eyes everywhere on the
streets, by the agony of the mother who bore you, and later wept over
you, I conjure you men to live up to your high and holy privilege, and
tell all men that they can be clean, if they will. This in memory of the
mother who shortened her days to make me a moral man. And if any among
you is the craven to plead immorality as a safeguard to health, I ask,
what about the health of the women you sacrifice to shield your precious
bodies, and I offer my own as the best possible refutation of that
cowardly lie. I never have been ill a moment in all my life, and
strength never has failed me for work to which I set my hand.

"The rapidly decreasing supply of drugs and the adulterated importations
early taught me that the day was coming when it would be an absolute
necessity to raise our home supplies. So, while yet in my teens, I began
collecting from the fields and woods for miles around such medicinal
stuff as grew in my father's fields, marsh, and woods, and planting
more wherever I found anything growing naturally in its prime. I merely
enlarged nature's beds and preserved their natural condition. As
the plants spread and the harvest increased, I built a dry-house on
scientific principles, a large store-room, and later a laboratory in
which I have been learning to prepare some of my crude material for the
market, combining ideas of my own in remedies, and at last producing
one your president just has indicated that I come to submit to you as a
final resort in certain conditions.

"My operations now have spread to close six hundred acres of almost
solid medicinal growth, including a little lake, around the shores of
which flourish a quadruple setting of water-loving herbs."

Occasionally he shifted his position or easily walked across the
platform and faced his audience from a different direction. His voice
was strong, deep, and rang clearly and earnestly. His audience sat on
the front e