Primary Sources: U.S. Presidents

Works by Taft available through Project Gutenberg.

December 7, 1909, December 6, 1910, December 5, 1911, and December 3, 1912

THURSDAY, MARCH 4, 1909

Provided by the University of California, Santa Barbara's Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project.

nauguration ceremonies, March 4, 1909

"In the 1912 presidential election, Republican incumbent William Howard Taft faced not one but three opponents: moderate Democratic Governor Woodrow Wilson, former President Theodore Roosevelt leading the breakaway Bull Moose party, and Socialist Party stalwart Eugene Debs, running for the fourth time. Voter interest, already piqued by the unusual campaign and the candidates’ slashing attacks on one another, was further heightened by the availability of sound recordings of campaign addresses. Though his administration had adopted some anti-trust policies, Taft generally embraced a non-interventionist approach to the problems that plagued American society in 1912. When asked by reporters in 1912 how he would relieve the nation’s severe unemployment, Taft replied, “God knows,” a position not calculated to win over many working-class voters. Taft’s attitudes were well captured in this recorded selection from one of his campaign speeches, entitled “On Popular Unrest” (which was recorded in a studio on wax cylinder). When the votes were tallied, Taft placed a distant third behind Wilson and Roosevelt." GMU History Matters