Running on Wax Cylinders

The Wall Street Journal ran an article Running on Wax Cylinders about the '08 debates, the 1908 debates.

"But William Jennings Bryan and William Howard Taft, who ran against one another a century ago, debated countless times all across the U.S. -- though neither one of them ever showed up. 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."

Archeophone Records has found 22 of these recordings and is making them available. The article has 4 of the 2 minute recordings and they're worth a listen.

"It's startling, for instance, to hear Taft, who at the time was Theodore Roosevelt's secretary of war, state unapologetically that "Christianity and the spread of Christianity are the only basis for hope of modern civilization in the growth of popular self-government," or to listen to Bryan, the Great Commoner, castigate the evils of American imperialism: "Instead of profit it has brought loss. Instead of strength it has brought weakness. Instead of glory it has brought humiliation. It has more than doubled our standing army, and there is talk of further increase.""