classify your notes by setting
down the big, central thoughts of your material on separate cards or
slips of paper. These will stand in the same relation to your subject as
chapters do to a book.

Then arrange these main ideas or heads in such an order that they will
lead effectively to the result you have in mind, so that the speech may
rise in argument, in interest, in power, by piling one fact or appeal
upon another until the climax--the highest point of influence on your
audience--has been reached.

Next group all your ideas, facts, anecdotes, and illustrations under the
foregoing main heads, each where it naturally belongs.

You now have a skeleton or outline of your address that in its polished
form might serve either as the brief, or manuscript notes, for the
speech or as the guide-outline which you will expand into the written
address, if written it is to be.

Imagine each of the main ideas in the brief on page 213 as being
separate; then picture your mind as sorting them out and placing them in
order; finally, conceive of how you would fill in the facts and examples
under each head, giving special prominence to those you wish to
emphasize and subduing those of less moment. In the end, you have the
outline complete. The simplest form of outline--not very suitable for
use on the platform, however--is the following:

_WHY PROSPERITY IS COMING_

What prosperity means.--The real tests of prosperity.--Its basis in the
soil.--American agricultural progress.--New interest in
farming.--Enormous value of our agricultural products.--Reciprocal
effect on trade.--Foreign countries affected.--Effects of our new
internal economy--the regulation of banking and "big business"--on
prosperity.--Effects of our revised attitude toward foreign markets,
including our merchant marine.--Summary.

Obviously, this very simple outline is capable of considerable expansion
under each head by the addition of facts, arguments, inferences and
examples.

Here is an outline arranged with more regard for argument:

FOREIGN IMMIGRATION SHOULD BE RESTRICTED[11]

I. FACT AS CAUSE: Many immigrants are practically paupers.
(Proofs involving statistics or statements of authorities.)

II. FACT AS EFFECT: They sooner or later fill our alms-houses
and become public charges. (Proofs involving statistics or
statements of authorities.)

III. FACT AS CAUSE: Some of them are criminals. (Examples of
recent cases.)