To make arguments in such cases persuasive you must show how the question affects the practical interests of your readers, and then that the plan which you support will bring them the greatest advantage.  Generalities and large political truths may help you to convince them; but to persuade them to active interest and action you must get down to the realities which touch them personally.  If you are arguing for a commission government in your city on the ground of economy, show in dollars and cents what portion of his income the owner of a house and lot worth five or ten thousand dollars pays each year because of the present extravagance and wastefulness.  If you can make a voter see that the change is likely to save him ten or twenty-five or a hundred dollars a year, you have made an argument that is persuasive.  The arguments for the reformation of our currency system are aimed directly at the material interests of the business men of the country and their employees; and the pleas for one or another system attempt to show how each will conduce to the greater security and profit of the greatest number of people.

To make such arguments count, however, you must deal in concrete terms.  A recent argument[61] for the establishment of a general parcels post in this country presents figures to show that for the transportation of a parcel by express at a rate of forty-five cents, the railroad gets twenty-two and one-half cents for service which it could do at a handsome profit for five cents.  Of the validity of these figures I have no means of judging; but the effectiveness of the argument lies in its making plain to each of its readers a fact which touches his pocket every time he sends a parcel by express.  It is this kind of argument that has persuasiveness, for the way we spend our money and what we get for it come close home to most of us.  Of all practical interests those of the purse are of necessity the most moving for all but the very rich.

Money interests, however, are far from being the only practical interests which concern us:  there are many matters of convenience and comfort where an individual or a community is not thinking of the cost.  Such questions as what kind of furnace to set up, whether to build a house of brick or of cement, which railroad to take between, two cities, are questions that draw arguments from other people than advertising agents.  Of another sort are questions that concern education.  What college shall a boy go to; shall he be prepared in a public school, or a private day school, or a boarding school?  Shall a given college admit on certificate, or demand an examination of its own?  Shall a certain public school drop Greek from its list of studies; shall it set up a course in manual training?  All these are examples of another set of questions that touch practical interests very closely.  In arguments on such questions, therefore, if you are to have the power of persuading and so of influencing