Life — September 28, 1916 — page 11: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Give Us Mechanical Orators T is probably feasible to construct a mechanism that will do the hard physical work of oratory. If so, it should be done. In newspapers of the 5th of Septem- ber one finds pictures of Senator Ollie James making the presentation speech to Mr. Wilson on the front stoop at “Shadow Lawn.” With one arm ex- tended, he is orating to the crowd on the lawn, and is paying no attention to Mr. Wilson, who stands patiently by, taking his medicine. Ollie James is splendid at these bi open-air-oratory jobs. He is a huge man with a huge voice, and words + enough to fill it. His words are fine OLD FRIENDS MEET AGAIN pictorial parts of speech, but his value is not in them, but in the noise he can make with them. He is a siege-gun orator. Bryan is another. Burke Cochran is another, and there are a few more. It seems absurd to use human beings in politics for these steam-calliope pur- poses. Bryan, Cockran, Senator James and such prodigies belong in the de- partment of sounds, just as much as opera singers do, Politicians who have ideas, and can put them together to good purpose, should be able to get them spoken by convenient mechan- isms, driven by motors and controlled by buttons. It should be possible to have your James or your Cockran set up on a platform, and punch at the FIND THE BOY WHO WILL HAVE TO FIGHT TEN OTHERS ON THE WAY HOME proper time the proper button of his waistcoat and have discourse flow out, according to holes punched in a manu- script, in whatever volume was re- quired to reach the outskirts of the crowd. Political dependence on mere human lungs is absurd. We must take a lesson in this matter from the movies. As they minister to vision, so the mechanical orator will minister to hearing. Gompers Is for Wilson SAMUEL GOMPERS is now for Wilson. He approves the Pre: dent's course in the Brotherhood’s strike and denounces any attempt at legislation to compel compulsory ar- bitration. He opposes Mr. Hughes chiefly on the ground that,’as a me ber of the Supreme Court, he parti pated in the decisions in the Danbury hatters’ and = Arizona anti-alien-law cases, which decisions he feels to have been unfavorable to labor. Samuel's position is interesting, but for whom is it making most vote: Organized labor has suddenly come to figure as a powerful threat. Would Samuel Gompers have us all under- stand that a vote for Wilson is a vote to give organized labor anything it wants, and to discipline the Supreme Court for decisions that offend it? 'ARDEN OSBORNE his critics, but no one Thomas Mutt Osborne. has calls him AENEAS was the first man to cut a Dido, comicbooks.com