Miss Gould will, I hope, have typened my draught of report for Cincinnati.

It is an important matter and I am not disposed to proceed without all the help you & Eliot can give. I want you both to look it over carefully before Sunday, discuss it and be prepared to discuss it with me; the paper and the management of it. The circumstances give us possibly a rare opportunity to say something for our faith & we should use it. If we are going to do so we should hit the enemy of our profession as hard as we know how, the three of us. It will not be a bad time to strike at him just after the Phila. Convention. But it is a question of business & we must go well together and count the cost. If you & Eliot agree with me I want you to help make the best of it. Scrutinize the statements and question me as to their accuracy. I believe that I have exaggerated nothing. But mainly consider whether I have struck the right key and have kept to it. I shd wish to have it moderate and sensible, cool and quiet, and you must consider it with reference to its effect on business men.

Looking at it from a selfish business point of view, consider that the chances are that in no case are we very likely to be asked to do anything at Cincinnati. If we ever should be it will be because of some very unlikely uprising to which our testimony will help. But really I don’t think we want to make plans which would be travesties in the work as at Chicago. It will be of no use to you in the long run. Our capital is in the form of sound reputation for creditable work such as we can not do under such a state of things as has prevailed, and, I fear, is likely to prevail at Cincinnati.

Warder, the Supt, I think a good man, has written that what we do must be done soon. There is a bill which he evidently thinks of political engineering before the legislature. But don’t let us be driven to do anything that could well be bettered by using more time for it.

What I want is to have a good (literary) German translation of it, and send two copies for the German papers and half a dozen for the English. The Commission may suppress it, but I would give them no excuse for doing so. In fact, I assume that, even politically, it is just what they want at this crisis. The new bill probably turns them out to make a place for more men, and it {is} just possible that they would like to appear as champions of our views. I am pretty sure that Warder will be disposed to take that ground. If the Commission is disposed to suppress it, I think that in some way sooner or later we can get it out, and the suppression of it will make it the more effective on public opinion.

It is an important document, if rightly used, and I want you & Eliot to give it your best thought. I hope that you will be pretty well satisfied with it, as a draught.

[738]

Consult Baxter Monday, if not before, as to a good German translator, and get the translation under way.

12.45 A.M.