been organized by the Department of Speech (see Part IX: Debating) . In 1893, an association including Michigan, Chicago, Northwestern, and Wisconsin was created. A few years later the Central Debating League was formed, and the Mid-West League was organized in 1915. Shortly thereafter the department, in co-operation with the Extension Division of the University, formed the Michigan High School Debating League, which is recognized as one of the outstanding organizations of its kind in the United States. For women debaters the Michigan-Ohio-Indiana League was created in 1922, and in December, 1923, there was secured for the University of Michigan an endowment of $8,000 from Mrs. Eleanor Clay Ford, to provide testimonials and gold medals annually for each of a selected number of Michigan women participating in intercollegiate debates.
Probably the largest organization created through the co-operation of the Department of Speech is Delta Sigma Rho, a national honorary forensic society with seventy-one chapters and more than ten thousand members at the present time. Not only was the University of Michigan one of the eight leading universities of the country to be charter members, but Professor Trueblood was one of the founders of the society and served as the chairman of the organization meeting held at Chicago in 1906.
Finally, the Oratorical Association Lecture Course, which had been functioning as a Student Lecture Association for several years, was placed under the sponsorship of the department in 1911 (see Part IX: Student Lecture Association) . Professor Trueblood was chairman of the committee until the time of his retirement in 1926, and since that time a member of the Department of Speech has served in a similar capacity. During its years of management, the Association has presented such famous persons in the field of public affairs as William Jennings Bryan, William Howard Taft, Newton D. Baker, Winston Churchill, William E. Borah, Ruth Bryan Owen, and Albert J. Beveridge. In the field of literature and the theater, such personalities as John Galsworthy, John Drinkwater, Irvin S. Cobb, Alexander Woollcott, Cornelia Otis Skinner, Gilbert K. Chesterton, William Butler Yeats, Thomas Mann, and Edna St. Vincent Millay have appeared. In the field of exploration and travel almost every famous explorer of recent years — including Vilhjalmur Stefansson, Donald MacMillan, Carl Akeley, Roald Amundsen, Richard E. Byrd, Fritdjof Nansen, William Beebe, and Martin and Osa Johnson — has also been scheduled.
This Oratorical Association is one of the oldest institutions on the University of Michigan campus, is perhaps the oldest of such organizations in the country, and, throughout its long career, has been recognized as outstanding.
The summer of 1940 witnessed the establishment by the Department of Speech of a campus organization which promises to contribute much to the entire University as well as to the one field. This is the annual speech conference, conducted each summer, which makes available to all departments in the institution demonstrations and lectures in public speaking, debating, interpretation, the drama, radio, and speech correction. Each year one or more nationally prominent persons in the field of speech are to be brought to the campus for the speech conference, and the lectures and demonstrations conducted by these authorities will extend the usefulness of the department beyond the boundaries of its courses and of the contributions of its staff members.
The first university department of speech in the United States has evolved
