Radio broadcast .. (1922-30)

2O Radio Broadcast that his position has popular support, is quick access to that public, and facility for the public to express itself. This increase of facility is one of the things the radio will bring about. Popular support existed to some extent before; and to the degree that it existed, it was the most powerful of political leverages. For the fact that Woodrow Wilson had a political career, the largest single contributing factor was an incident at the Democratic Convention at Baltimore in 1912. During all the early days of that convention, Champ Clark was in the lead, with Wilson a second, at one time so destined, apparently, to be permanently a second, that some of his advisers counseled him to withdraw, after Clark had pushed his leadership to the point of an actual majority. Just about that time, however, the convention adjourned over Sunday. During that weekend adjournment, the convention and the individual delegates were flooded with telegrams demanding that Wilson be made the nominee. It was through this pressure from the country that the Democrats took the unprecedented step of refusing the necessary two thirds to a candidate who had already got more than half the delegates, rejected Clark, and nominated Wilson. BROADCASTING CONGRESS THAT is the kind of thing that is going to be greatly accelerated by the radio. We have already had the radio for the first time this year in the conventions and in the acceptance ceremonies of the candidates. Undoubtedly the proceedings of Congress will soon be broadcast, I think. A public that got so much interest out of the Democratic Convention will insist on the same access to Congress. And Congress as a whole won't be disposed to deny it. There is already a bill pending providing for the installation. The bill was introduced by Senator Howell of Nebraska. Senator Howell was one of the very earliest radio zealots in America. He was acutely interested in it and active about it long before most of us paid any attention to it. Senator Howell has a scientific thread in his training that he got from his education at the Annapolis Naval Academy. Also, he is a most earnest believer in the public ownership and management of utilities that concern the public generally. Before he came to the Senate he was, as the manager of the city gas system of Omaha, one of the earliest, and possibly the most successful, director of a publicly owned utility in the United States. Senator Howell heard about the use of the radio in Europe quite early, and some three years ago made a trip to Vienna to study its working in that city. He thinks strongly that the radio should be facilitated in every possible way as a medium between the people and the Government. Due to his own bent and experience, he would take an earlier and longer step toward identification of the radio with the Post Office, for example, than most of his fellow senators now think practicable or desirable. Short of that, however, there is little doubt that his bill to equip the two Houses of Congress for the broadcasting of speeches and other public business will be adopted. I don't know of any public man who opposes the idea of the maximum possible radio dissemination of all forms of public business and public discussion. If any of them have qualms, they won't state them publicly, for they know it is an innovation that cannot be stopped. Theoretically, a politician may believe in some other form of government than through public opinion or public emotion. But practically they know that it is the form of government that is now here. And if you assent to the principle of government by public opinion, you must assent also to the doctrine that the wider the dissemination of public information, and the greater the number of persons enabled to participate in the formation of common judgments and common reactions in the shape of emotion, the more logical it is. HOW IS RADIO GOING TO BALANCE POLITICAL FORTUNES? POSSIBLY we shall have some erratic, some curious and unanticipated results in the fortunes of individual politicians and leaders. There appears to be such a thing as a radio personality. In the present campaign it is claimed that Coolidge has it, while Davis has not. A correspondent of a Democratic paper, Mr. Charles Michelson of the New York World, wrote about this: Mr. Coolidge is no orator. There is a wire edge to his voice, due in some degree to the regular nasal twang of the thirty-third degree Yankee and in part to his meticulous enunciation of each syllable; but according to the professors of the new art, he has a perfect radio voice. The twang and shrillness disappear somewhere along the aerial, and he sounds through the ether with exact clearness as well as softness. Mr. Davis, on the contrary, has a voice which to the direct auditor has that belllike quality of resonance that doubles the