Lucille
10-13-2008, 05:47 PM
"Enforced Insurance of Bank Deposits" by William H. Taft (http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/info-audioPlayer_image.html?mp3File=taft1_1011.mp3&h=200&w=200','imageShell07','200','200','off','true',40, 10)) (<--audio link - 2 min.)
How right he was.
WSJ: Running on Wax Cylinders
The 1908 presidential campaign on a then-new medium (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122367135148524013.html?mod=googlenews_wsj)
Bryan and Taft were the first political candidates to make commercially recorded campaign speeches on their own behalf, and the records they made were frequently played in alternation at public meetings in order to create the illusion of an actual debate. One enterprising nickelodeon operator in New York City even set up wax dummies of the candidates standing behind a pair of flag-draped podiums that flanked the door to his store.
Each individual cylinder cost 35 cents, the equivalent of $8 today -- all for a grand total of two minutes' worth of talk. Yet they are said to have sold in huge quantities at a time when it was still a novelty for presidential candidates to make any sort of personal appearances. It was long thought beneath their dignity to give stump speeches, but Bryan broke the informal ban when he ran against William McKinley in 1896, embarking on the very first "whistle-stop" train tour by a presidential candidate, an innovation that inspired critics to dismiss him as "a human phonograph." Twelve years later Bryan, whom the Democratic Party had just nominated for his third try at the White House, agreed to make records for Thomas Edison's National Phonograph Co., and within a few weeks his Republican opponent, not to be outdone, followed suit.
Now Archeophone Records, a wonderfully adventurous Illinois-based label that specializes in exhuming long-forgotten but fascinating sound recordings of the past, has done historians of American politics an inestimable service by releasing "Debate '08: Taft and Bryan Campaign on the Edison Phonograph," which contains all 22 of the speeches recorded by the two men for Edison in 1908. (You can order it by going to www.archeophone.com.)
How right he was.
WSJ: Running on Wax Cylinders
The 1908 presidential campaign on a then-new medium (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122367135148524013.html?mod=googlenews_wsj)
Bryan and Taft were the first political candidates to make commercially recorded campaign speeches on their own behalf, and the records they made were frequently played in alternation at public meetings in order to create the illusion of an actual debate. One enterprising nickelodeon operator in New York City even set up wax dummies of the candidates standing behind a pair of flag-draped podiums that flanked the door to his store.
Each individual cylinder cost 35 cents, the equivalent of $8 today -- all for a grand total of two minutes' worth of talk. Yet they are said to have sold in huge quantities at a time when it was still a novelty for presidential candidates to make any sort of personal appearances. It was long thought beneath their dignity to give stump speeches, but Bryan broke the informal ban when he ran against William McKinley in 1896, embarking on the very first "whistle-stop" train tour by a presidential candidate, an innovation that inspired critics to dismiss him as "a human phonograph." Twelve years later Bryan, whom the Democratic Party had just nominated for his third try at the White House, agreed to make records for Thomas Edison's National Phonograph Co., and within a few weeks his Republican opponent, not to be outdone, followed suit.
Now Archeophone Records, a wonderfully adventurous Illinois-based label that specializes in exhuming long-forgotten but fascinating sound recordings of the past, has done historians of American politics an inestimable service by releasing "Debate '08: Taft and Bryan Campaign on the Edison Phonograph," which contains all 22 of the speeches recorded by the two men for Edison in 1908. (You can order it by going to www.archeophone.com.)