SPEECH-MAKING

by James A. WinansThe Century Company, New York, ppx. 488. $2.50.

At a recent meeting of the National Association of Teachers of Speech an author of a well-known textbook on public speaking said that Professor Winans had made the most significant contribution to the study of rhetoric since Aristotle. That is saying a great deal, and our author would disclaim such credit; but at any rate, Public Speaking, now re-written in SpeechMaking, has had a wider influence in America than any other book on the subject.

There is scarcely a textbook on public speaking among the hundreds published in the last twenty years that has not been based in whole or in part upon the pioneering work of Professor Winans. Sometimes .the authors have given specific credit to him, and sometimes they have appropriated his work without a word, but they have depended upon him none-the-less. The publication of his original book in 1915 changed the entire character of the teaching of public speaking in America and sent it off in a new, and, I think, in a better direction. Interest and persuasion, rather than elocution, are emphasized in almost all college courses today. Since between fifty and sixty thousands of copies of the old book were sold, it is clear that the teachings of Professor Winans have had great influence upon the speeches made in the United States. .

The new book is fundamentally like the old, though the psychology, as the author says, has been folded out of sight. Many of the old chapters have been broken up and re-written, on the whole more clearly and vividly. The author's long study of Daniel Webster is apparent in the large number of illustrations drawn from Webster's speeches. Alumni who memorized "Who Is to Blame?" (also known as "Pub Duty") will find that the old selection has survived in the new book. There is a new chapter on voice written by Professor C. K. Thomas of Cornell.

Speech-Making is the product of the author's forty years' experience in teaching; if it is less dogmatic than many books written from less experience, it is for that very reason more likely to have permanent value.