He always attracted large crowds, & according to historian John Vincent, his Birmingham speech of 1858 was the first great public meeting which was really a press conference – this was near the beginning of the great expansion of the popular press in England following Gladstone’s abolition of newspaper taxes in 1855
Bright was also always keen to adopt the new technology of communications. He was an investor in the first attempt to lay a telegraph cable across the Atlantic, & his family firm installed one of Manchester’s first telephone lines:
Messrs John Bright & Bros are now working the telephone between their warehouse in Spring Gardens Manchester & their works in Rochdale, a distance of 15 miles. Conversation is carried on with the greatest ease & so perfect are the arrangements that whispers can be distinctly heard at each end. The wire in question is carried over the city warehouses & along the towing path of the Rochdale Canal - The Manchester Guardian 3 January 1879
Let us hope however that Obama does not turn out to be like John Bright in another respect. When he finally was appointed as a minister in Gladstone’s cabinet, he proved to be a poor administrator:
In his administrative duties at the board of trade he did little else than sign the papers prepared for him by the permanent officials; & splendid as were his oratorical gifts he failed in the rapid give-and-take of debate - Low & Sanders: Political History of England Vol 12 p224
Link
