THE DECLINE OF ORATORY.
The political campaign affords a good view of the decline of oratory and of its chief causes. Oratory is not a less potent force on account of any decrease in the production of the talents which under proper culture form the orator. Humanity is probably richer in such gifts. And yet oratory had notice to prepare for an eclipse when printing was invented, and the shadow upon oratorical influence has grown larger in each half century until the illuminating office has passed almost entirely over to the press. In the old campaigns, the orator furnished a feeble press with facts and arguments; in the present campaign the positions are exactly reversed. The press furnishes the ideas, the arguments, the facts, the illustrations. The stump speaker no longer invents; he crams. He is not an original thinker, developing lines of attack and defense, fortifying weak positions and fashioning a line of battle by a single speech. He is the mouthpiece of party opinion, the obedient servant of party tactics, and the illustrator and peddler of other men’s thoughts. And all this work is cut out for him by men who in the press represent both public opinion and party councils of war. Men are living who can remember when the words of Clay, Webster, Calhoun, Seward, Lincoln, were waited for; and the words came—they were battle cries and marching orders. Now nobody waits for any orator, and the orator gets his instructions from the press. It is not very wise to attribute the change to the decline of statesmanship and leadership. It is not clear that the former has declined; it is certain that the latter has not. But the leader is no longer a man who makes a speech, but he has become a man who writes an article or plans a campaign in which the telegraph, the literary bureau, the campaign document, and the contriving genius in himself do the large work. He puts orators into the field and tells them what to say. They are his instruments, very useful instruments, because the love of public speaking is still strong in men; but still oratory uses the tools of the man with a pen and types.
The causes of the changed relations of writer and speaker are made conspicuous by the campaign. A carefully prepared and printed document can be circulated in millions of copies; a speech can be heard by from one to five thousand people only. These words of ours are addressed to one hundred and fifty thousand readers; he is a genius, before whom this present writer would take off his hat, who can collect five thousand men to listen to him on any subject. The press has the large audience, a vast congregation never dreamed of until the press and swift modes of communication made the immense audience possible. Another cause is that, while we have more talents, there are competing demands for the services of those which prevail in argument and persuasion. Fifty years ago this country had no great editors; it could easily furnish a liberal supply of orators. Now it uses up a large amount of its oratorical ability in the editorial rooms. Other pursuits have silenced tongues that might have moved mankind, by employing the brains in mercantile and industrial work on large lines. Many a great railroad man might have been a great orator. But the diversion of born pleaders and debaters to the newspapers sufficiently accounts for their absence from the stump.
The genius for mastery over political thought and action is not blind; it has gone into the press because it could prevail and direct and conquer in the press. It is a natural consequence of the shifting of the central point of persuasive power that we perceive a third cause of the decline of oratory. The press is at the center, the headquarters so to say, while the orator is out in the field making a raid or conducting a skirmish. Centralization is an inevitable effect of the press, the telegraph and the railway. Some effects are to be regretted as we regret the existence of unpleasant incidents of wholesome movements in progress. But our regret can hardly extend to the power of directing a party campaign from a center of the field. It is, in our day, the only way of making it a distinct engagement. It would be a series of isolated skirmishes if we did not have a headquarters and a central committee. This central power speaks in telegraphic clicks and printed words. The orator may be a dashing lieutenant, he can not be a general.
Oratory has taken a subordinate position. The fact has its bearings on deliberative assembly government. Congress can not have great orators in an age when the public will is expressed by editors, and the shape of bills fixed by the newspapers. The business of the legislators is restricted on all sides by the press. The discussions of a legislature are feebleness itself in the presence of the ringing and decisive editorials of influential newspapers. The press hems in the assemblymen within narrow limits of choice; and a speech can not be great when it can not command the field, but only a corner of it. All this does not mean that oratory is dying or to die; it has simply taken a lower place as an agent in argument and persuasion. Nor do we mean that great orators are no longer possible. A great orator, by natural endowment, may make and hold a commanding place—by the aid of the press. But the greatness which will do this must be of a prodigious power and altogether exceptional magnitude. The best men will, as a rule, seek the easier paths to influence, and these lie through types and ink. To speak well will always be an admirable and effective art; but the orator must serve and follow the press. He is a necessary part of the machinery of persuasion, but he is no longer the driving wheel.