The Birmingham age-herald., 1920-04-18
nr rHnMAs U. MAssoN

Inasmuch as the residential cam paign is getting ready to sweep over us. it is important that somebody should make a list of the one hundred worst orators We might as we'll know what we are up against.
 It's nothing to elect President. But to listen to all the speeches made be- fore the election-that is the hard part. Now is the time to face the issue fairly and squarely. We've all of us got to listen to trained bands of speakers, who will start out in the early summer to ravage and devastate the country from Maine to California. There will be no escape from them. We have recently been through a war and are fairly well
 disciplined. That will help some. We are inured to strikes and to high prices and those of us who live in cities are accustomed to wrap the drapery of our eouehes about us and lie down to sleep on park benches. It will now be our humble duty to hear all the req sons why we should cast our vote for the man who promises to provide us with fur-lined coats next winter, double our wages, keep us out of any more wars, and ask us all personally to visit him at the White House as soon as he gets in
 Headquarters for presidential candi- dates are now being opened up in all parts of the country. Before the con- ventions some parties will have any
 number of prospective candidates on
 hand. Every candidate has political manager and every political manager is now beginning to round up his ora
 tors and put them through their daily
 drill. Before June, to paraphrase MT.
 Bryan, one million embattled orators will spring up over night to save their country. In the meantime, it behooves all of us to know an orator when we see one Now is the time to be pre- pared.
 There never was period in the his tory of the world when there was so
 much incipient oratory going on as there is at present. In practically every community there has been estab
 lished forum, in which the citizens get together and discuss the issues of the day" A lot of people in New York, headed by Henry Taft, at an expense of million and quarter. have recent ly erected a so-called town hall, where the old fas shioned town meeting will be
 conducted. The high cost of living
 prohibition, woman suffrage and the coming campaign have all swept over us at once. The result is that every body is talking at once, just as every Lody is reading. and there is no tell
 ing but what by next November most
 of us may become educated--even the authors of best sellers and the college professors.
 Meanwhile. if you wish to become public speaker, how are you to go about it? I have known men so timid in their
 families that they did not dare look
 their wives in the face, raise their hands over public assembly and ere ate silence so intense that you could hear a League of Nations drop. l have
 known men, the members of whose family cringed before them, who when asked to say a few words have turned white as the driven snow and lost the
 use of their voices. Some years ago l sat next to President Wilson at pub
 lie banquet, and he confessed to me that he had never been able to recover from the nervousness which comes over a man before speaking. But as soon as I get up," he said, T am all right.
 Mir. Wilson has the ability to marshal
 his sentences beforehand so that ne has complete mastery over his subject.
 Some men have an astonishing gift of
 memory that saves them from endless embarrassment, but even this IS not
 altogether safe. as memorlzed speech may be discovered at the last moment not to fit the atmosphere or the audience and then the poor orator is left high and dry Mark Twain had
 this frightful experience, and tells about it excruciatingly in one or his books. I heard him speak al dinner given to him at his seventieth birthday
 His astonishing ease of manner, hls quaint drawl, impressed me as the very
 last word in unstudied ease, until the lady who sat next to me said that ne had been rehearsing that speech for six weeks previously. The other day I heard Mir. Charles Schwab and cam not believe that he ever experiences
 the nervousness that Mr. Wilson re- ferred to. Mr. Schwab declares that he
 makes no pretense of being good
 speaker. He frankly admits that he is no grammarian. As a matter of fact,
 his English is pretty good, because some. as is the man himself.
 while collouuial it is thoroughly whole I have heard him several times and
 lie usually begins by saying "Boys"' There is nothing of the orator about his manner. He talks we'll because he knows what he is talking about, and because he has a genuine love for his fellow men. There is about him noth- ing of that sense of satire which in some others shrivels everything it touches. Rupert Hughes has this sense of satire. but uses 1t discreetly. Ru- pert Hughes Is not an orator in the way Mr. Bryan is. Although the au- thor of some of the most popular books of the day. strange as this may seem, he has an extraordinary fund of gen-