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YOUNG CLARK SHAVED OFF PART OF HIS KANSAS BEARD AND TAUGHT IN SIDE WHISKERS FOR A YEAR OR SO"

The first Congressional primary ever held in the state was the one at which I was nominated; and afterward primaries were adopted by law.

"I believe in Senatorial primaries we have them in Missouri. I think Senators ought to be elected by the people. I favor any reform in the ballot law that really makes for a free ballot and a fair count and brings elections close to the body of the people. I endorse the principle of the corrupt practices act. It has done a great deal of good in Missouri."

"You wish to be classed as a Progressive, then?" I asked.

"Yes, I class myself as a Progressive. It's in the air-everything is Progressive these days."

"Do you anticipate a realignment of the people into new political parties, Progressive and Conservative?"

"Yes, I think we are coming to that." "About the recall?"

"I should rather not state my position on that just yet."

Just then a bell rang in the Speaker's

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marked, with unconscious profanity, as he strode over toward the House.

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A human, likeable old gentleman, this member from Missouri-pleasant to talk with or to listen to, popular, magnetic, devoted to his books and his home and his family. His comfortable old white house at Bowling Green is as crowded with books as a public library. An interesting personality, that of Champ Clark - and if he has any conception of the vital, burning questions the American people are asking, any grasp on the issues and problems on which the voters of the nation are sharply divided as never before since the dark days before the Civil War, any comprehension of the great readjustments that are going on across party lines as the Progressives and Conservatives are reclassifying themselves, one finds no evidence of it in his conversation or recorded speeches - except as some minor symptom of the great unrest has been felt in Pike County. He does not burn with indignation at the encroachments of the special interests on the people's rights, as Woodrow Wilson does; he does not stand firm against all new departures from the traditions of the past, as Judson Harmon does. He is a compromise candidate.

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WHAT THE DICTOGRAPH IS

THE TINY "DETECTIVE'S EAR" THAT BROKE DOWN THE MCNAMARA DEFENSE AND THAT HAS CONVICTED OTHER CRIMINALS

O

BY

FRENCH STROTHER

The

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NE day in May, 1911, during the session of the Ohio state legislature, two men stood in a room in the Hotel Chittenden, at Columbus. One of these men held a roll of bills in his hand; and he said that he wanted to get senate bill No. 256 out of committee. other man was Rodney J. Diegle, sergeantat-arms of the Ohio state senate. said that he could get four votes for that purpose, at $200 apiece, provided he himself got $100 for the job. The first man counted out $100. Diegle started to take it. Then he walked to the door of the closet and opened it and looked carefully within. Then he got down on his hands and knees and looked under the sofa. Then he walked back and took the money. And in June - two months later

Diegle was sentenced to three years

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A COMPLETE DICTOGRAPH OUTFIT
TRANSMITTER, EARPIECE, AND DRY BATTERY

dictograph procured the conviction of
Mayor Thomas E. Knotts, of Gary, Ind.,
on a charge of receiving a bribe of $5,000.
What is this mysterious dictograph?
It is a tiny sound magnifier and trans-
mitter. Sounds are gathered by it and
are multiplied many times in intensity,
by the peculiar construction of the
vibrating disc that receives the shock
of the sound-waves. These vibrations are
transmitted over wires to a receiving
ear-piece on the same principle as by or-
dinary telephone. The novelty of the
dictograph is in the extreme sensitiveness
of its sound gathering and sound trans-
mitting device - a device the technical
construction of which its inventor declines
to explain.

The transmitter of the dictograph is enclosed in a round, flat, black, vulcanized rubber case, three inches in diameter and three quarters of an inch thick. The other parts of the apparatus are an earpiece two inches in diameter, and a dry battery cell about two inches wide, three inches long, and three quarters of an inch thick. The entire apparatus can be held in one hand, and altogether weighs a little less than one pound.

The dictograph is efficient. In the laboratory at Jamaica, Long Island, in which it was perfected, I stood by the side of Mr. K. M. Turner, the man who invented it. At his direction I took up an ear-piece from a work bench while he turned a switch. Then Mr. Turner, speaking merely into the air as if he were talking to another man in the same room, said, in an ordinary conversational tone:

"Mr. Haff, there is a gentleman on the line here in the laboratory who wishes to have you demonstrate the detective dictograph. Will you please talk to him and show him how it can be heard through various materials?"

At once I heard a perfectly distinct voice answer:

"Certainly, Mr. Turner. I am now talking in an open room, with no obstruction between me and the transmitter, though I am standing about four feet from it.

Now I shall turn a switch and talk to you through another transmitter that is enclosed tightly in a wooden box." Here the voice began to sound more remote but exactly as distinct as before, as it continued: "I shall now switch to still another transmitter that is imbedded in a solid block of cement," and now the voice seemed very far away, but still perfectly audible and distinct. I asked the voice several questions and received its answers. Then Mr. Turner led me out of the building in which the laboratory is, across a yard to another building, and there introduced me to Mr. Haff, who at once continued the conversation that we had just broken off and showed me the wooden box and the concrete block containing the several transmitters.

The detective dictograph is an outgrowth of the commercial dictograph,

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which is, perhaps, an even more remarkable device. Mr. Turner had been for many years and still is - the successful manufacturer of an apparatus that was designed to assist the deaf to hear. He applied the sound gathering and intensifying principle of this apparatus to an intercommunicating telephone system for convenience in his factory. The result was the commercial dictograph. It is a wooden box in which, side by side, are a transmitter and an opening that corresponds in its use to the horn of a phonograph. Below is a row of keys, each marked with a name. Standing in front of his desk in his private office, Mr. Turner pressed down the key marked "Engineer." In a In a moment a marker flew up before a glass above the key, and Mr. Turner now pressed the key upward and began to walk about the room with his hands in his pockets. A voice called out of the opening beside the transmitter, loud enough to be heard all over the room, and said:

"Good morning, Mr. Turner."

"Good morning," Mr. Turner replied, still strolling about the room. "Do you hear me plainly?"

"Perfectly," answered the voice. "Will you please bring me a Turner telephone? I want to have it photographed."

"All right, sir," the voice replied, "but I hope you can wait about ten minutes for it, as none of those here has a name plate on it."

At Mr. Turner's suggestion I entered the conversation, sitting in a chair six feet from the instrument. Later, he called up two men in different buildings at the same time, and the three discussed a business letter that all of them had seen the day before. No mouthpiece nor earpiece was used by any of them. By the time they had finished and Mr. Turner had shut off the connection, a man had brought in a Turner telephone. It, also, utilizes the same transmitter as the detective dictograph, so that it requires no mouthpiece, but it does require an earpiece. So, from these three devices the acousticon, the commercial dictograph, and the Turner telephone - the detective dictograph was evolved. Its opera

tion is perfectly simple: the transmitter is readily hidden - as in the concrete wall of Ortie McManigal's cell in Los Angeles; or as in the space between the back panel of a desk drawer and the back of the desk, in the Ironworkers' headquarters in Indianapolis - and the fine wires that lead to the ear-piece are as easily carried away through a hollowed table leg and a tiny hole in the floor, or by some similar device. In a room of ordinary size it gathers every sound, even whispers from the farthest corner, and

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HOW A DICTOGRAPH IS HID SHOWING THAT IT IS SMALL ENOUGH TO BE CONCEALED BEHIND THE BACK OF A DESK DRAWER

transmits them, magnified in volume, to the receiver. In ordinary detective use the receiver is in a room next door or on the floor below, but in one case the Burns detectives have used it over a wire a mile long. In such cases, of course, the circuit has to be connected with one or two extra batteries like the small dry cell that is used for short distances.

The dictograph has been employed for other such odd uses as these: by Professor Frank Perret to study the minor activity of Mt. Vesuvius between eruptions; by Mr. William Boyce, of Chicago, during an expedition in the jungle of Africa, to hear the sounds made by wild beasts when undisturbed by men; in the Metro

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THE INVENTOR OF THE DICTOGRAPH, DICTATING A LETTER TO A STENOGRAPHER IN ANOTHER ROOM BY WAY OF THE COMMERCIAL DICTOGRAPH THAT STANDS ON HIS DESK

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