Your profiteer is no plain man.  Nor is your agitator.  They are set up against you and me, and all the other plain men and women who maun make a living and tak’ care of those that are near and dear to them.  Some of us plain folk have more than others of us, maybe, but there’ll be no envy among us for a’ that.  We maun stand together, and we shall.  I’m as sure of that as I’m sure that God has charged himself with the care of this world and all who dwell in it.

I maun talk more about myself than I richt like to do if I’m to make you see how I’m feeling and thinking aboot all the things that are loose wi’ the world to-day.  For, after all, it’s himself a man knows better than anyone else, and if I’ve ideas about life and the world it’s from the way life’s dealt with me that I’ve learned them.  I’ve no done so badly for myself and my ain, if I do say it.  And that’s why, maybe, I’ve small patience with them that’s busy always saying the plain man has no chance these days.

Do you ken how I made my start?  Are ye thinkin’, maybe, that I’d a faither to send me to college and gie me masters to teach me to sing my songs, and to play the piano?  Man, ye’d be wrong, an’ ye thought so!  My faither deed, puir man, when I was but a bairn of eleven—­he was but thirty-twa himself.  And my mither was left with me and six other bairns to care for.  ‘Twas but little schoolin’ I had.

After my faither deed I went to work.  The law would not let me gie up my schoolin’ altogether.  But three days a week I learned to read and write and cipher, and the other three I worked in a flax mill in the wee Forfarshire town of Arboath.  Do ye ken what I was paid?  Twa shillin’ the week.  That’s less than fifty cents in American money.  And that was in 1881, thirty eight years ago.  I’ve my bit siller the noo.  I’ve my wee hoose amang the heather at Dunoon.  I’ve my war loan stock, and my Liberty and Victory bonds.  But what I’ve got I’ve worked for and I’ve earned, and you’ve done the same for what you’ve got, man, and so can any other man if he but wull.

I do not believe God ever intended men to get too rich and prosperous.  When they do lots of little things that go to make up the real man have to be left out, or be dropped out.  And men think too much of things.  For a lang time now things have been riding over men, and mankind has ceased riding over things.  But now we plain folk are going again to make things subservient to life, to human life, to the needs and interests of the plain man.  That is what I want to talk of always, of late—­the need of plain living, plain speaking, plain, useful thinking.

For me the great discovery of the war was that humanity was the greatest thing in the world.  I had to learn that no man could live for and by himself alone.  I had to learn that I must think all the time of others.  A great grief came to me when my son was killed.  But I was not able to think and act for myself alone.  I was minded to tak’ a gun in my hand, and go out to seek to kill twa Huns for my bairn.  But it was his mither who stopped me.