Evening star., 1912-07-21

trlbuterS are routed the same as a theatrical
troupe: an advance man marking the tin
erarv and looking after local details. SO that
an expectant audience Is waiting when the
car is stopped and the star begins his
much gesticulated exposition from the back
platform In this way often one hundred
meetings are addressed between Monday
morning and Saturday night.
The effort to combine in a five-ininute
talk thought and expression in striking and
convincing form, to suit with plan and style
OF speech the everchanging character OF the
audiences, has developed a new note in the
campaign oratory of even the stars
Thrilling rhetorical appeal and sermonic cx-
hortation have given way to a terminology
emphatic to roughness, which causes the EN-
tences to carry the extreme of meaning to
the average ear. An alleged misstatement
is "lie," while "Bet your lives.' Dead
sure.7-"You'll vote right because you're
built that wayr are appearing again and
again in the present campaign.
But if unavoidably fragmentary and col
loquial, the speech from the travelling ros-
trum has evolved pregnant phrase and logl-
cal brevity. The statements, "When the
dinner pail is empty, it is a serious business
and "When trust closes factory, it does
not invite a President to be present at the
closing have impaired pungent turn to
the views of speclal-traln orators, and we
find Mr.. Bryan prophesying in compact elo-
quence, "An industrial despotism that COM
pels millions of people to get on their knees
and pray to the trusts, Give us this day our
daily bread.' Under the necessity for rapid
fire argument the speaker learns to express
his contention in the form of a series of ques-
tions that, arranged in sylogis tic order and
implying in themselves the answer, lead to
an apparent redncti0 dd dbsnrdHm. For IN
stance, better than an hours magnetic ora
tory has proved the terse summary, III the
trusts are good, why are they denounced;
if they are bad, why are more permitted to
organize; if some are good and some are
bad can you tell me the differenceo'
PUT, effective factor as the candidate him
= self on the stump has become aligned
on a question of personality rather than po-
litical creed, as we may seem to the for
eigner, appearance there is always pre-
carious to the chances of his cause; for the
early injunction that it behooves candidates
ito watch their mouths lest they put their
foot in them still holds good.
Likewise with the custom OF saving ora
torical ammunition from the Senate and
Cabinet for an awful detonation at the close
of the campaign. Sometimes the distin-
guished spellbinder, under the more or less
Subdu1ng circumstance OF fndlng that MS
national reputation has not preceded him,
confines himself to ponderous remarks from
notes; but more often, when the party flag
is up and the party drum calls for the lock
step, he exhibits himself as savage partizan
preaching on the text attributed to Horace
Greeley, that every horsethief IS a member
of the opposite party, or, as he himself
would say, finds himself making it hot
enough to suit "all the boys in the trenches
With a few brilliant exceptions, these big
guns" are guns of percussion rather than
precision. The statesman may be master of
forensic arts; but as a campalgner he IS
likely to be too anxious to preserve his rela-
tive Importance i'll the picture.
"Politics is continuous performance, you
see,' once remarked thin-hpped philoso-
pher whose watch chain and bunchy seal
ring were favorite marks for the political
cartoonist. "I'm really sorry for the anna
toors They do their turn a sight better
than some of the boys; but they want to
climb down and see the show awhile. And
that amt according to the game Or, as
the theatrical managers maxim runs, "The
worst professional is better than the best
amateur" And the professional spelbinder
would seem to have been dictated by some
such sense of the shrewd.
1t is said that Senator Hanna once eX-
pressed himself in prophecy to the effect that