Few onlookers could doubt the power of the media within politics when the two presidential candidates for 1908, William Jennings Bryan and William Howard Taft, both agreed to record cylinders of their speeches for the Edison Talking Machine company. Bryan, Mr. “Cross of Gold” himself, could hardly be restrained from constantly speechifying, while Taft, the middle-brow heir apparent to a two-term president and heartily rustic Easterner (aka Teddy Roosevelt), was more circumspect about squaring off. Although neither specifically debated the other in their series of recordings, owners of phonograph parlors and arcades set up countless faux debates by airing them one after another.

Now, all 22 cylinders recorded by Taft and Bryan are available from Archeophone Records, the world’s foremost emporium for the music (and speeches) of the early recording era, from the 1890s to the 1920s. Aside from annual compilations devoted to each of the first 20 years of the 20th century (and some from the 1890s), they’ve also released excellent volumes on tramp comedians, vaudeville orators, the work of countless minstrels and ragtime performers, and the intriguing Actionable Offenses: Indecent Phonograph Recordings from the 1890s.

Thrill to Bryan’s recital of “The Tariff Question” and hear Taft’s stern rebuttal in “Roosevelt Policies”.