Sound Bites of the 1908 Presidential Candidates

roncosmos writes "Science News has up a feature on the first use of sound recording in a presidential campaign. In 1908, for the first time, presidential candidates recorded their voices on wax cylinders. Their voices could be brought into the home for 35 cents, equivalent to about $8 now. In that pre-radio era, this was the only way, short of hearing a speech at a whistle stop, that you could hear the candidates. The story includes audio recordings from the 1908 candidates, William Jennings Bryan and William Howard Taft. Bryan's speech, on bank failures, seems sadly prescient now. Taft's, on the progress of the Negro, sounds condescending to modern ears but was progressive at the time. There are great images from the campaign; lots of fun."

Sounds condescending to modern ears

sounds condescending to modern ears but was progressive at the time

As opposed to the non-condescending progressives of today.

Re:Sounds condescending to modern ears

Today's conservatives conserve the values of yesterday's revolutionaries. Today's progressives fight for what tomorrow's conservatives will fight to conserve.

Re:Sounds condescending to modern ears

The examples you quote are good ones (and I won't try to defend Obama's comments), but there are just as many cases where this idea of "anti-elitism" is misused.

It's come to a point where simply being elite is considered elitism. John Kerry was considered out of touch with the common man because he liked wind surfing and went to Yale.

How many times during the last few years have you heard people say something along the lines of "Just because you're a respected (climatologist | biologist | economist | theologian | lawyer | diplomat) doesn't mean you know more than me (global warming | evolution | economics | religion | law | foreign affairs) than I do"?

I don't approve of intellectuals being condescending, but it's just as bad when people dismiss an idea as "elitism" simply because they disagree with it and it came from someone with a PhD.

conservatives are anti-elitism?

Like Phil Gramm, McCain's economic advisor, who calls people "whiners" if they think the economy is doing badly?

Heck, conservatives are most of the elite---Bush beat Kerry by huge margins among people making $200k+, even in states that Kerry otherwise won handily (he won 64-35% among that demographic in California). Rich liberals are a fairly small subset of overall rich people---even in California, conservative aerospace/defense industry, real-estate, and import/export businessmen far outnumber Hollywood actors and tech bosses.

banking

Isn't the whole reason you got the greenback dollar because Lincoln didn't want to get the US govt into hock with the banks?

I was under the impression that there was always a significant distrust of banks in the US, until recently that is. I am astonished that a country which refuses to pay for a national 'free at point of provision' health service, supported by taxes, yet they happily hand over the entire country's income tax to the banking system, and now 700 billion because they stayed greedy for a bit too long.

That also puzzles me. Why not, just to throw a wild idea out, take a portion of the bad dept on for the people who are getting kicked out. I mean like buy 1/2 or 2/3 of the dept from the citizens affected, so they aren't evicted.

Surely that would work just as well.

Re:banking

It's been mentioned that for about 75 Billion the US Gov could give 100k to each of the households currently in foreclosure, which should stop that process. Unfortunately, the issue isn't necessarily the houses that ARE in foreclosure, as only between 1-2% (from figures I've heard) are in foreclosure. The issue, is that no one wants to buy the securities based on the possibility that more will go into foreclosure. The US Gov is offering to buy all the securities based on the sub-prime mortgages which would remove the concern about buying a mortgage backed security that might be poisoned with possible, future foreclosures.

Unfortunately, either option seems silly. First, we're rewarding foolishness on the part of both the buyer and seller, which only encourages further such action in the future. Second, unemployment is still at reasonable levels, there may not be as much credit on the market, but the market is definitely not dry, and won't be as long as the fed keeps money available which it's done all along.

It looks like fear mongering on behalf of wall street is about to put 700 billion dollars into the pockets of the upper 90% via stock increases as banks unload these securities which they should have never created in the first place.

Banking and Democrat Change

The problem is that the people who were supposed to oversee Fannie Mae are the same people that are now supporting a certain Democrat candidate for president, and it would not be beneficial for the media to expose those relationships to the public-at-large until after the election.

• Jamie Gorelick [wikipedia.org], on the board of Fannie Mae, received > $75 million in bonuses when the company was "doing well"; she is now assisting Obama's campaign. Investigation would reveal that FM was "cooking the books" in order to pump up executive bonuses [msn.com].
• Barney Frank [businessandmedia.org], served on the House Banking Committee, and stopped many legislation attempts to regulate Fannie Mae.
• Frank Raines, former Fannie Mae executive and Clinton budget directory, received preferentially lower interest rates [wsj.com] on personal loans. He is now advising the Obama campaign [wsj.com].
• Democratic Congressional Black Caucus, who was praised by Fannie Mae's CEO Daniel Mudd [youtube.com] for passing beneficial legislation, in the name of loosening regulations allowing people with poor credit scores to overextend themselves with home loans. We know today how that turned out.

I don't understand how the Enron Trial is on the tip of everyone's tongue, but the media isn't calling to put these banking executive in jail for a fraud that is 10x worse!

Re:Banking and Democrat Change

You're so full of misinformation. Barney Frank was the one who passed regulations on Freddie & Fannie. In July 2007 Frank became chairman and he and the Democrats passed regulations within two months. These regulations had been blocked by the house Republicans since 1994.

It's incredible that the Republicans claim the big mean Democrats prevented them from instituting a proper regulatory framework despite over a decade of Republican majorities in the House and Senate.

Re:banking

Why not, just to throw a wild idea out, take a portion of the bad dept on for the people who are getting kicked out. I mean like buy 1/2 or 2/3 of the dept from the citizens affected, so they aren't evicted.

So, my taxes, that came out of my pocket, should pay off the loan of another person? Why stop there? Use my money to pay people's rent, utilities, etc.

People seem to think that a person losing their home is the end of the world. Rent an apartment (people do it all the time), and make sure you save wisely enough to be able to pay for your house next time.

Re:banking

which to many Americans (who are, let's be honest, people and therefore stupid)

Fixed that minor point for you. It's not like the good people of the rest of the world are magically resistant to propaghanda or sufficiently knowledgeable about economic systems.

Surprised, Am I

35 cents, equivalent to about $8

I'm surprised that the inflation rate is so low for what had to be cutting edge technology of the era. Considering that a modern music CD that costs literal pennies to press sells (or attempts to sell, considering recent sales figures) for up to twice that price I wonder what figure was used for the amount of inflation over the last century.

Panic of 1873

I just got done reading an article about the Economic Panic of 1873 and how that depression more closely resembles what's currently happening. This might explain why Bryan was talking about bank failures. It was still fresh in their minds.

http://chronicle.com/temp/reprint.php?id=477k3d8mh2wmtpc4b6h07p4hy9z83x18 [chronicle.com]

Re:Panic of 1873

People didn't have the same concept of time in the olden days, two events in the same century seemed practically simultaneous to them. They also walked very quickly, talked in funny voices, and could only see in black and white.

Todays Presidental Race

McCain must be excited to hear his old wax cylinder recordings again.

Bit-torrenting like its 1908

Of course what they don't tell you is that most people just ripped the wax cylinders into an oral history form and passed it on that way via a peer to peer approach.

People complained that the problem with the P2P network was that you couldn't tell what was the original and what was either a bad copy or just some virus put in there by someone else to mislead people, but people in South Texas claimed it was the only way they could do it as the Wax cylinders were not available in their area due to them melting.

Re:Can't listen, Flash only

Spoiled kids today. In MY day, we had to listen to presidential debates on wax cylinders! And it cost us the equivalent of eight dollars, too!

Re:Can't listen, Flash only

What are you talking 'bout, you young whippersnapper? Tarnation, in MY day we didn't have no dad blamed newfangled wax cylinders. We had to trudge hundreds of miles through the snow, uphill (both ways) to find a whistle stop where we could hear the varmints. Before shootin' at 'em, of course. Gotta make sure ya ain't shootin' at the wrong one. Then we'd tar and feather 'em and run 'em outta town on a rail.

I'd tell ya to git offen my lawn, but we didn't even have no durned lawns back then.

Re:Can't listen, Flash only

They are MP3s. Listen to them directly

http://www.sciencenews.org/sounds/files/bryan_guarantee_of_deposits.mp3 [sciencenews.org]

http://www.sciencenews.org/sounds/files/taft_rights_and_progress_of_the_negro.mp3 [sciencenews.org]

Re:Can't listen, Flash only

That's nice, but why the hell couldn't they just link to them directly? Why do they go out of their way to make their site completely unusable to those of us who don't use flash? It's so easy to do it right, why do so many places get it wrong?

Re:Can't listen, Flash only

Yes, and some day my "why can't all sites work the same without javascript" campaign will catch on, too.
 
  Why can't all sites work the same without javascript! I shouldn't have to use that trash!

You must be able to see to hear this Flash audio

Really? Flash is pretty easy to use, too.

How easy? Can you use it with your eyes closed? For sake of argument, I'll allow you to have a braille display.

Re:Tag failures

There's a purpose to having tags?

Re:Prescient?

Your argument seems to be that the government forced companies to take on loans from 'minorities and the poor'. You didn't quite work yourself into a froth about liberalism, affirmative action or whatever else you think is wrong with left but it seems like you were heading in that direction.

If you look at the people who are defaulting on mortgages it's not really minorities and the poor (I guess in your mind minority = poor?) but mostly middle class Americans who took out loans that they couldn't afford to pay back. Just look at where these defaulters live and you'll see that suburban middle class (white, black, hispanic, etc.) enclaves are most effected.

I won't disagree with you that some of this crisis has it's roots during the Clinton era or that the government is partially to blame. I'd blame the government for not regulating the lending industry enough rather then accusing them of forcing risky loans on companies. These companies, as well as the housing industry, wanted to take on these loans because they saw green and more importantly, other institutions wanted the securities these loans were wrapped up in because they thought it would make them money.

Please don't use this crisis as some sort of attack against the poor and/or minorities. It just makes you sound ignorant.

What CRA Whiners Aren't Telling You

The CRA only applies to banks.

Despite the fact that CRA appears to have increased bank and thrift lending in low- and moderate-income communities, such institutions are not the only ones operating in these areas. In fact, with new and lower-cost sources of funding available from the secondary market through securitization, and with advances in financial technology, subprime lending exploded in the late 1990s, reaching over $600 billion and 20% of all originations by 2005. More than half of subprime loans were made by independent mortgage companies not subject to comprehensive federal supervision

http://www.house.gov/apps/list/hearing/financialsvcs_dem/barr021308.pdf

The CRA is only at worst 50% responsible (an additional 30% of the subprime loans were made by "affiliates" of banks, and therefore partially covered by CRA, the remaining 20% of all loans were made directly by banks... and the worst case scenario is that the regulators were there twisting the banks' arms for every single loan). The other 50% of the mortgages were irrefutably made of the originators' free will.

Secondly, the CRA doesn't call for Option ARMs or interest-only loans or giving people money with zero down or piggybacking another mortgage for the down payment or liar loans... those are entirely the invention of the banks and mortgage companies that offered them.

Re:Prescient?

The government may have adjusted the rules to try and give people loans to poorer people, but you cannot say the bank was forced to give them loans. There is a lot of process that goes into getting a loan which includes checks and balances on whom is supposed to get approved. The fact of the matter is that too many people had in an interest in pushing loans, good or bad, because they got an immediate payoff and they could pass a bad loan to someone else. Think of all the people who get a cut when you sell a house,

• Real Estate Agent
• Property Assessor
• Mortgage Broker
• the Seller
• Rating's Agencies
• and the BANK!

That's right, the bank got an immediate payoff for making the loan! Why? Because they turned around and sold the loan. Basically everyone could pass the buck onto someone else. Unless your were the final sucker who got caught holding the loan which ends up worthless. It was a game of hot-potato being played by financial experts who convinced themselves they knew better than someone else.

As for politcal activism, that is a load of crap. It came down to businesses wanted to do business anyway they like without any oversight, it was only a matter of time before someone came up with this Ponzi scheme. If people had to actually hold onto the loans that they made none of this stuff would have happened. But you would have had rich financial analyst's screaming "this not a free market!"