CHAPTER XXI. WHICH WAS THE REPUBLICAN PARTY?
Did those words of Roosevelt spring from his sense of humor—humor which recognizes the topsy-turvy of life and its swift changes, and still laughs—or from the instinct which knows that even in the sweetest of all experiences there must be a drop of bitterness? Whatever their cause, they proved to be a true foreboding. He had not been home twenty four hours before he perceived, on talking with his friends, that the Republican Party during his absence had drifted far from the course he had charted. "His policies" had vanished with his control, and the men who now managed the Administration and the party regarded him, not merely with suspicion, but with aversion.
To tell the story of this conflict is the disagreeable duty of the historian of. that period, especially if he have friends and acquaintances on both sides of the feud. There are some facts not yet known; there are others which must be touched upon very delicately if at all; and, in the main, so much of the episode grew out of personal likes and dislikes that it is hard to base one's account of it on documents. In trying to get at the truth, I have been puzzled by the point-blank contradictions of antagonistic witnesses, whose veracity has not been questioned. Equally perplexing are the lapses of memory in cases where I happen to have seen letters or documents written at the time and giving real facts. The country would assuredly have been alarmed if it had suspected that, during the years from 1909 to 1912, the statesmen who had charge of it, were as liable to attacks of amnesia as they proved to be later.
The head and front of the quarrel which wrecked the Republican Party must be sought in Roosevelt's thoroughly patriotic desire to have a successor who should carry on the principles which he had fought for and had embodied in national laws during the nearly eight years of his Presidency. He felt more passionately than anybody else the need of continuing the work he had begun, not because it was his work, but because on it alone, as he thought, the reconciliation between Capital and Labor in the United States could be brought about, and the impending war of classes could be prevented. So he chose Judge Taft as the person who, he believed, would follow his lead in this undertaking. But the experience of a hundred and ten years, since Washington was succeeded by John Adams, might have taught him that no President can quite reproduce the qualities of his predecessor and that the establishment of a Presidential dynasty is not congenial to the spirit of the American people. Jefferson did, indeed, hand on his mantle to Madison, and the experiment partially succeeded. But Madison was much nearer Jefferson in ability and influence than Judge Taft was near Roosevelt.
During the campaign of 1908, and immediately after the election, we can imagine that Mr. Taft was sincerely open to Roosevelt's suggestions, and that he quite naturally gave Roosevelt the impression that he intended to follow them, not because they were Roosevelt's, but because they were his own also. As soon as he began to realize that he was President, and that a President has a right to speak and act on his own motion, Mr. Taft saw other views rising within him, other preferences, other resolves. From the bosom of his family he may have heard the exhortation, "Be your own President; don't be any body's man or rubber stamp." No doubt intimate friends strengthened this advice. The desire to be free and independent, which lies at the bottom of every normal heart, took possession of him also; further, was it not the strict duty of a President to give the country the benefit of his best judgment instead of following the rules laid down by another, or to parrot another's doctrines?
Whatever may have been the process by which the change came, it had come before Taft's inauguration. He chose a new Cabinet, although Roosevelt supposed that several of the members of his Cabinet would be retained. Before the Colonel started for Africa he felt that a change had come, but he went away with the hope that things would turn out better than he feared. His long absence under the Equator would relieve any anxiety Taft might have as to Roosevelt's intention to dictate or interfere.
Very little political news reached the Colonel while he was hunting. On reaching Italy, on his return journey, he met Mr. Gifford Pinchot, who had come post-haste from New York, and conveyed to him the latest account of the political situation at home. It was clear that the Republican Party had split into two factions-the Regulars, who regarded President Taft as their standard-bearer, and the Insurgents, who rallied round Roosevelt, and longed desperately for his return. To the enemies of the Administration, it seemed that Mr. Taft had turned away from the Rooseveltian policies. In his appointments he had replaced Roosevelt men by Regulars. His Secretary of the Interior, Mr. Ballinger, came into conflict with Mr. Pinchot over conservation, and the public assumed that the President was not only unconcerned to uphold conservation, but was willing that the natural resources of the Nation should fall again into the hands of greedy private corporations. This assumption proved to be false, and Secretary Ballinger was exonerated by a public investigation; but for two years, at least, the cloud hung over Mr. Taft's reputation, and, as always happens, the correction being far less nimble than the accusation, took a much longer time in remedying the harm that it had done.
When, therefore, Roosevelt landed at the Battery on June 18, 1910, the day of his apotheosis, he knew that a factional fight was raging in the Republican Party. His trusty followers, and every one who bore a grudge against the Administration, urged him to unfurl his flag and check any further disintegration; but prudence controlled him and he announced that he should not speak on political matters for at least two months. He was sincere; but a few days later at the Harvard Commencement exercises he met Governor Hughes, of New York State, who was waging a fierce struggle against the Machine to put through a bill on primary elections. The Governor begged the Colonel as a patriotic boss-hating citizen, to help him, and Roosevelt hastily wrote and dispatched to Albany a telegram urging Republicans to support Hughes. In the result, his advice was not heeded, a straw which indicated that the Machine no longer feared to disregard him.
For several weeks Roosevelt waited and watched, and found out by personal investigation how the Republican Party stood. It took little inspection to show him that the Taft Administration was not carrying out his policies, and that the elements against which he had striven for eight years were creeping back. Indeed, they had crept back. It would be unjust to Mr. Taft to assert that he had not continued the war on Trusts. Under his able Attorney-General, Mr. George W. Wickersham, many prosecutions were going forward, and in some cases the legislation begun by Roosevelt was extended and made more effective. I speak now as to the general course of Mr. Taft's Administration and not specially of the events of 1910. In spite of this continuation of the battle with the Octopus—as the Big Interests, Wall Street, and Trusts were indiscriminately nicknamed—the public did not believe that Mr. Taft and his assistants pushed the fight with their whole heart. Perhaps they were misjudged. Mr. Taft being in no sense a spectacular person, whatever he did would lack the spectacular quality which radiated from all Roosevelt's actions. Then, too, the pioneer has deservedly a unique reward. Just as none of the navigators who followed Columbus on the voyage to the Western Continent could win credit like his, so the prestige which Roosevelt gained from being the first to grapple with the great monopolies could not be shared by any successor of his, who simply carried on the work of "trust-busting," as it was called, which had be come commonplace.
Nevertheless, although nobody doubted Mr. Wickersham's legal ability, the country felt that during the Taft Administration zeal had gone out of the campaign of the Administration against the Interests. Roosevelt had plunged into the fray with the enthusiasm of a Crusader. Taft followed him from afar, but without feeling the Crusader's consecration or his terrible sincerity. And during the first six months of his Administration, President Taft had unwittingly given the country the measure of himself.
The Republican platform adopted at Chicago declared "unequivocally for a revision of the tariff by a special session of Congress, immediately following the inauguration of the next President …. In all tariff legislation the true principle of protection is best maintained by the imposition of such duties as will equal the difference between the cost of production at home and abroad, together with a reasonable profit to American industries. We favor the establishment of maximum and minimum rates to be administered by the President under limitations fixed in the law, the maximum to be available to meet discriminations by foreign countries against American goods entering their markets, and the minimum to represent the normal measure of protection at home." The American public, regardless of party, assumed that the "revision" referred to in this plank of the Republican platform meant a revision downward; and it supposed, from sayings and opinions of Mr. Taft, that he put the same construction upon it. He at once called a special session of Congress, and a new tariff bill was framed under the direction of Sereno E. Payne, a Stand-Pat Republican member of Congress, Chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means, and Nelson W. Aldrich, Senator from Rhode Island, and guardian angel and factotum for the Big Interests. For several months these gentlemen conducted the preparation of the new bill. Payne had already had experience in putting through the McKinley Tariff in 1890, and the Dingley Tariff in 1897. Again the committee-room was packed by greedy protectionists who, for a consideration, got from the Government whatever profit they paid for. Neither Payne nor Aldrich had the slightest idea that to fix tariff rates to enrich special individuals and firms was a most corrupt practice. When a Republican Senator, who honestly supposed that the revision would be downward, privately remonstrated, the reply he heard was, "Where shall we get our campaign funds?" Finally, after some discussion between the House and the Senate—a discussion which did not lessen the enormities of the measure—the Payne-Aldrich Bill was passed by Congress and signed by President Taft, and it enjoyed the bad eminence of being worse than the McKinley and the Dingley tariffs which had preceded it.
The public, which had seen more clearly than on former occasions, how such charters to legalize industrial piracy were devised, was somewhat dashed—by President Taft's approval. Perhaps it still hoped that the creation of a non-partisan Tariff Commission of experts would put an end to this indecent purchase and sale of privileges and would establish rates after the scientific investigation of each case. Soon, however, these hopes were swept away; for on September 17, 1909, the President delivered at Winona, Minnesota, a laudatory speech on the new tariff. He admitted that some points in Schedule K—that comprising wool and woolen goods—were too high. But, he said solemnly that this was "the best tariff law the Republicans ever made, and, therefore, the best the country ever had." In that Winona speech, Mr. Taft hung a millstone round his own neck. His critics and his friends alike had thrust upon them this dilemma: either he knew that the Payne-Aldrich Tariff had been arrived at by corrupt ways and was not a revision downward—in spite of which he pronounced it the "best ever"; or he did not know its nature and the means used in framing it. In the latter case, he could not be considered a person sufficiently informed on great financial questions, or on the practices of some of the politicians who made laws for him to sign, to be qualified to sit in the President's chair. If, on the other hand, knowing the measure to be bad he declared it the "best ever," he was neither sincere nor honest, and in this case also he was not a President whom the country could respect.
I would not imply that the American public went through this process of reasoning at once, or arrived at such clear-cut conclusions; Demos seldom indulges in the luxury of logic; but the shock caused by the Winona speech vibrated through the country and never after that did the public fully trust Mr. Taft. It knew that the Interests had crawled back and dictated the Payne-Aldrich Tariff, and it surmised that, although he prosecuted the Trusts diligently, they did not feel greatly terrified. But nobody whispered or suspected that he was not honest.
While President Taft slowly lost his hold on the American people, he gained proportionately with the Republican Machine. That Machine was composed of the Regulars of the party, or the Conservatives, as they preferred to be called, and it was losing its hold on the country. There comes a time in every sect, party, or institution when it stops growing, its arteries harden, its young men see no visions, its old men dream no dreams; it lives in the past and desperately tries to perpetuate the past. In politics when this process of petrifaction is reached, we call it Bourbonism, and the sure sign of the Bourbon is that, being unconscious that he is the victim of sclerosis, he sees no reason for seeking a cure. Unable to adjust himself to change and new conditions he falls back into the past, as an old man drops into his worn-out armchair.
Now Roosevelt had been, of course, the negation of Bourbonism. He had led the Republican Party into new fields and set it to do new work, and far off, shining clearly, its goal beckoned it on. His followers were mostly young men; they saw that the world had changed, and would change still further, and they went forward valiantly to meet it and, if possible, to shape its changes. For ten years past, these Radicals, as the Regulars named them some what reproachfully, and who were better defined as "Insurgents," had played an increasingly important part in Congress. They would not submit to the Bosses and the Machine, but voted independently, and, although they were not all of them avowed Rooseveltians, they all were going in his direction. In the second year of Mr. Taft's Administration, they rebelled against the rigid dictatorship of Joseph G. Cannon, the Speaker of the House. "Uncle Joe," as the public nicknamed him, dated from before the Civil War, and entered Congress in 1863, forty-seven years before 1910. It was as if a rigid Bourbon, who had served under Louis XV in France in 1763, had been chief law-maker under Napoleon I in 1810. Mr. Cannon, however, had never learned that the Civil War was over, whereas every Frenchman who survived the Revolution knew that it had taken place. So the Insurgents rose up against him, in his old age, deprived him of his dictatorial power, and, at the next election, Democrats and Republicans combined to sweep him out of office altogether.
The Jews who ridiculed Noah when he began to build the Ark were, it proved, Bourbons, but they had some excuse, for when Noah was working there was no portent of a flood and not even a black cloud with a shower wrapped up in it hung on the horizon. But the Republican Regulars, under Mr. Taft, could not complain that no sign had been vouchsafed to them. The amazing rise in power and popularity of Roosevelt during the decade, the surging unrest of Labor throughout the world, the obviously altered conditions which immense fortunes and the amassing of wealth by a few corporations had produced, and such special symptoms as the chafing at the Payne Aldrich Tariff, the defeat of Speaker Cannon, and the election of a Democratic House of Representatives ought to have warned even the dullest Republican. For good, or for ill, a social and industrial revolution was under way, and, instead of trimming their sails to meet it, they had not even taken ship. Roosevelt and the Insurgents had long understood the revolution of which they were a part, and had taken measures to control it. Roosevelt's first achievement, as we have seen, was to bring the Big Interests under the power of the law. The hawks and vultures whose wings he clipped naturally did not like it or him, but the laws had force behind them, and they submitted. The leaders of the popular movement, however, declared that this was not enough. They preached the right of the people to rule. The people, they urged, must have a real share in electing the men who were to make the laws and to administer and interpret them.
Every one knew that the system of party government resulted in a Machine, consisting of a few men who controlled the preliminary steps which led to the nomination of candidates and then decided the election, so far as their control of the regular party members could do this. It would be idle, said the advocates of these popular rights, to make the best of laws in behalf of the people and allow them to be enforced by representatives and judges chosen, under whatever disguise, by the great capitalists. And so these Progressives, bent on trusting implicitly the intelligence, the unselfishness, and the honesty of the People, proposed three novel political instruments for obtaining the pure Democracy they dreamed of. First, the Initiative, by which a certain number of voters could suggest new laws; second, the Referendum, by which a vote should be taken to decide whether the People approved or not of a law that was in operation; and third, the judicial Recall, by which a majority of the voters could nullify a decision handed down by a judge. This last was often misnamed and misconstrued, the "Recall of Judges," but so far as I know very few of the Progressive leaders, certainly not Colonel Roosevelt, proposed to put the tenure of office of a judge at the mercy of a sudden popular vote.
When Roosevelt returned from Africa, he found that the Progressive movement had developed rapidly, and the more he thought over its principles, the more they appealed to him. To arrive at Social Justice was his life-long endeavor. In a speech delivered on August 31, 1910, at Ossawatomie, Kansas, he discoursed on the "New Nationalism." As if to push back hostile criticism at the start, he quoted Abraham Lincoln: "Labor is prior to, and independent of capital; capital is only the fruit of labor and could never have existed but for labor. Labor is the superior of capital and deserves much the higher consideration. Capital has its rights which are as worthy of protection as any other rights …. Nor should this lead to a war upon the owners of property. Property is the fruit of labor; property is desirable; it is a positive good in the world. Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another, but let him work diligently and build one for him self, thus, by example, showing that his own shall be safe from violence when built."
Not all those who cry "Plato! Plato!" are Platonists. So, not all those who now appeal to Lincoln's mighty name for sanction of their own petty caprices and crazy creeds, have learned the first letter of the alphabet which Lincoln used; but Roosevelt, I believe, knew Lincoln better, knew the spirit of Lincoln better, than any other President has known it. And Lincoln would have approved of most, if not of all, of the measures which, in that Ossawatomie speech, Roosevelt declared must be adopted. Whenever he spoke or wrote after that, he repeated his arguments in defense of the "New Nationalism," and they sank deep into the public conscience. He took no active part in politics, as he thought, but the country knew better than he did that, wherever he was, politics was active. Every one consulted him; his occasional speeches roused a storm of criticism; a dozen would-be candidates in each party sat on the anxious seat and waited for his decision. So he watched the year 1910 draw to its close and 1911 wheel by, without his giving the final word. Although he was very really the centre of attention, he nevertheless felt lonely, and a friend tells me of going to Oyster Bay, late in the autumn, and finding Roosevelt in fact alone, as his family were away, and depressed by the thought that he was cut off, probably forever, from throwing himself into work which would be of public benefit. But Roosevelt was a fighter, not a sulker, and he was too healthy in spirit to give way to disappointment.
That he resented the purpose, as he supposed, of the Taft Administration to throw over his policies, I do not doubt, although there are letters in existence which indicate that he still had courteous if not friendly relations with President Taft. But what ate into him more than any personal resentment was his chagrin at seeing the Great Cause, for which he had spent his life, neglected and denied by the Republican Party. Progressivism seemed to be slowly in process of suffocation by the Big Interests which it had come into being to protest against, to curb, and to control.
There were other leaders in this Cause, the most prominent being Senator La Follette, of Wisconsin. He had caught up very early some of Bryan's demagogic doctrines, which he had softened a good deal and made palatable to the Republicans of his State. Then he had stood out as a Liberal in Congress, and from Liberal he became Insurgent, and now that the Insurgents were being defined as Progressives, he led the Progressives in Congress. The same spirit was permeating the Democrats; only the hide-bound Regular Republicans appeared not to notice that a new day had dawned. "Uncle Joe" Cannon, their Speaker of the House, reveled in his Bourbonism, made it as obnoxious as he could, and then was swept away by the enraged Liberals.
By the summer of 1911 the discussion of possible candidates grew more heated. Roosevelt still kept silent, but he told his intimates that he would not run. He did not wish to be President again, especially at the cost of an internecine struggle. I believe that he was sincere; so is the consummate actor or the prima donna, whom the world applauds, sincere in bidding farewell to the stage forever. Nevertheless, which of them is conscious of the strength of the passion, which long habit, and supremacy, and the intoxication of success have evoked, dwells in them? Given the moment and the lure, they forget their promise of farewell.
By this time the politicians began to foresee that the dissension in the Republican Party would make it difficult to choose a candidate who could win. Every President desires to be reelected if he can be, not necessarily because he is greedy of power, but because reelection is equivalent to public approval of his first term. Mr. Taft, therefore, stood out as the logical candidate of the Conservatives. The great majority of the Progressives desired Roosevelt, but, since he would say neither yes nor no, they naturally turned to Senator La Follette. And La Follette launched a vigorous campaign for the nomination and was undoubtedly gaining ground except in the East, where some of his views had been regarded as too extreme even for the Liberals. To his great misfortune, in a speech at Philadelphia on February 2, 1912, he showed signs of a temporary mental collapse and, although his friends protested that this mishap was not serious, much less permanent, he never got back into the running.
Meanwhile, Roosevelt's nearest zealots not only urged upon him the duty of coming out squarely as the Progressive aspirant, but they set up throughout the country their propaganda for him. He received letters by the bushel and every letter appealed to his patriotism and to his sense of duty. The Progressives were in dead earnest. They believed that the country, if not civilization, had reached a crisis on the outcome of which would depend the future health and peace of Society. They had a crusade, not a mere political campaign, ahead of them, and they could not believe that Roosevelt, their peerless champion, would fail them.
The average person, who calmly sits back in his easy-chair and passes his verdict on the acts of great men, does not always allow for the play of emotions which may have influenced them. What sort of reaction must appeals like these have stimulated? How can the unimaginative man, who has never been urged by his fellow townspeople to be even Trustee of the Town library or graveyard, put himself in the place of a Leader, who is told by millions of persons, possibly fanatics but not flatterers, that the destiny of the Nation depends upon his listening to their entreaties?
Everything conspired to win Roosevelt over: La Follette being eliminated, there was no other Progressive whom the majority would agree upon. The party spoke with only one voice, and uttered only one name. And, presently, the Governors of seven States—Bass of New Hampshire, Hadley of Missouri, Osborn of Michigan, Glasscock of West Virginia, Carey of Wyoming, Aldrich of Nebraska, and Stubbs of Kansas—issued an appeal to him which seemed to give an official stamp to the popular entreaties. Roosevelt's enemies insinuated that the seven Governors had been moved to act at his own instigation, and they tried to belittle the entire movement as a "frame-up," in the common phrase of the day. No doubt he was consulted in the general direction of the campaign; no doubt, being a very alert student of political effects, he suggested many things; but the rush of enthusiasts to him was genuine and spontaneous.
I happened to spend the evening of February 25, 1912, with him at the house of Judge Robert Grant in Boston. Judge Grant and I were not politicians, and I, at least, had never voted for a Republican Presidential candidate. But both of us were very old personal friends of the Colonel, and for five hours we three talked with the utmost frankness. He knew that he could trust us, and, I think, he planned to get the views of non-partisan friends before announcing his final decision. Three days earlier, at Columbus, Ohio, he gave a great speech, in which he proclaimed a new charter for Democracy and vigorously advocated the Initiative, Referendum, and Recall. We discussed these from every side; he got the Outlook in which his speech was printed and read to us passages which he thought corrected popular misunderstanding of it. When I objected to the platform in general, because it would tend to destroy representative government and substitute therefor the whims of the populace at the moment, he replied that we had no representative government. "I can name forty-six Senators," he said, "who secured their seats and hold them by the favor of a Wall Street magnate and his associates, in all parts of the country. Do you call that popular, representative government?" he asked.
The evening wore on, and in similar fashion he parried all our criticism. We urged him not to be a candidate, because, we said, we thought that the public ought to be reined in and disciplined, instead of being encouraged to be more lawless and self-willed. I defended our judiciary system and said that the American people needed most of all to be taught respect for the Courts. He explained that his Recall of Judicial Decisions did not mean, as the Opposition alleged, the Recall of Judges. Then we urged him, for the sake of his own future, not to engage in a factional strife which might end his usefulness to the country, but he brushed aside every argument based on his selfish advantage. "I wish," he said to me, "to draw into one dominant stream all the intelligent and patriotic elements, in order to prepare against the social upheaval which will other wise overwhelm us." "A great Central Party, such as Cavour founded for the liberation of Italy?" said I. "Exactly," said he.
The thing which mainly struck me at the time, and which I still vividly remember, was the Colonel's composure throughout all this debate. Vehement he was—because he could not describe even a butterfly without vividness which easily passed into vehemence- -but he was in no sense mentally overwrought; nor did he continually return to one subject like a man with an obsession. His humor flashed out, even at his own expense, but he had throughout the underlying gravity of one who knows that he is about to make a very important decision. I mention these facts because at the time, and afterward, Roosevelt's enemies circulated the assertion that his mind was unbalanced, and that this fact accounted for his break with the regular Republicans. I have in my hand a printed circular, issued by a Chicago lawyer, offering five thousand dollars apiece to each of several hospitals and other charitable institutions, if Roosevelt would allow himself to be examined by competent alienists and they did not pronounce him to be a "madman"! No! he was not mad, but he had the fervor, the courage, the impatience of a Crusader about to undergo ordeal by battle.
>From notes of the conversation Judge Grant made at the time I quote the following. Judge Grant asked:
"Will any of the party leaders support you?"
"No," he said, "none of them; not even Lodge, I think. I don't see how he can. My support will come from the people, officered by a few lieutenants—young men principally like Governor Bass, of New Hampshire." He said that he realized that the probabilities were all against his nomination; that a President in office had all the machinery on his side; but that of course it wouldn't do to admit outside that he expected to lose; that if he could reach the popular vote through direct primaries, he could hope to win. It was manifest that he believed that it was indispensable for the future good of the Republican Party that he should make the breach. When he said as much, I asked, "But the situation is complex, I suppose? You would like to be President?" "You are right," he replied. "It is complex. I like power; but I care nothing to be President as President. I am interested in these ideas of mine and I want to carry them through, and feel that I am the one to carry them through." He said that he believed the most important questions today were the humanitarian and economic problems, and intimated that the will of the people had been thwarted in these ways, especially by the courts on constitutional grounds, and that reforms were urgent.
As I went out into the midnight, I felt sad, as one might after bidding farewell to a friend who has volunteered to lead a forlorn hope. I did not realize then the moral depth from which Roosevelt's resolve came, or that he would rather die for that cause than be victorious in any other.
The next day, Monday, February 26th, he announced to the country that he was a candidate for the Republican nomination.
CHAPTER XXII. THE TWO CONVENTIONS
During the weeks while Roosevelt had been deliberating over "throwing his hat into the ring," his opponents had been busily gathering delegates. By this delay they gained a strategic advantage. According to the unholy custom which gave to the Republicans in the Southern States a quota of delegates proportioned to the population and not to the number of Republican voters, a large Southern delegation was pledged for Mr. Taft very early. Most of the few Southern Republicans were either office-holders or negroes; the former naturally supported the Administration on which their living depended; the latter, whose votes were not counted, also supported the President from whom alone they might expect favors. The former slave States elected 216 delegates, nearly all of whom went to President Taft, making a very good start for him. In the Northern, Western, and Pacific States, however, Roosevelt secured a large proportion of the delegates. In the system of direct primaries, by which the people indicated their preference instead of having the candidates chosen in the State Conventions, which were controlled by the Machine, the Progressives came out far ahead. Thus, in North Dakota, President Taft had less than 4000 votes out of 48,000 cast, the rest going to Roosevelt and La Follette. In several of the great States he carried everything before him. In Illinois, his majority was 139,000 over Taft's; in Pennsylvania, 67 of the 76 delegates went to him. In Ohio, the President's own State, the Taft forces were "snowed under"; in California, a stronghold of Progressivism, Roosevelt had a large plurality. Nevertheless, wherever the Regulars controlled the voting, they usually brought President Taft to the front. Even when they could not produce the votes, they managed to send out contesting delegations.
On looking back, it appears indisputable that if the Republicans could then have cast their ballots they would have been overwhelmingly for Roosevelt; and if the Roosevelt delegates to the Convention had not been hampered in voting, they too would have nominated him. But the elections had been so artfully manipulated that, when the Convention met, there were 220 contests. Everybody understood that the final result hung on the way in which these should be decided.
The Convention assembled in the great Coliseum Hall at Chicago on June 18, 1912. But for ten days the hosts had been coming in, one delegation after another; the hotels were packed; each committee had its special quarters; crowds of sight-seers, shouters, and supporters swelled the multitude. The Republican National Committee met; the managers of each candidate met. The committees, which had not yet an official standing, conferred unofficially. Rumors floated from every room; there were secret conferences, attempts to win over delegates, promises to trade votes, and even efforts at conciliation. Night and day this wild torrent of excitement rushed on.
A spectator from Mars might have remarked: "But for so important a business as the choice of a candidate who may become President of the United States, you ought to have quiet, deliberation, free play, not for those who can shout loudest, but for those who can speak wisest." And to this remark, the howling and whirling dervishes who attended the Convention would have replied, if they had waited long enough to hear it through, by yelling,
"Hail! Hail! the gang's all here!
What the hell do we care?
What the hell do we care?"
and would have darted off to catch up with their fellow Bacchanals. A smell of cocktails and of whiskey was ubiquitous; a dense pall of tobacco smoke pervaded the committee-rooms; and out of doors the clang of brass bands drowned even the incessant noise of the throngs. There was no night, for the myriads of electric lights made shadows but no darkness, and you wondered when these strange creatures slept.
Such Saturnalia did not begin with the Convention of 1912. Most of those who took part in them hardly thought it a paradox that these should be the conditions under which the Americans nominated their candidates for President.
Roosevelt had not intended to appear at the Convention, but when he discovered that the long distance telephone from Chicago to Oyster Bay, by which his managers conferred with him, was being tapped, he changed his mind. He perceived, also, that there was a lack of vigorous leadership among those managers which demanded his presence. By going, he would call down much adverse criticism, even from some of those persons whose support he needed. On the other hand, he would immensely strengthen his cause in Chicago, where the mere sight of him would stimulate enthusiasm.
So he and Mrs. Roosevelt took the five-thirty afternoon train to Chicago, on Friday, June 14th, leaving as privately as possible, and accompanied by seven or eight of their children and cousins. Late on Saturday, the train, having narrowly escaped being wrecked by an accident, reached Chicago. At the station there was an enormous crowd. Roosevelt's young kinsmen kept very close to him and wedged their way to an automobile. With the greatest difficulty his car slowly proceeded to the Congress Hotel. Never was there such a furor of welcome. Everybody wore a Roosevelt button. Everybody cheered for "Teddy." Here and there they passed State delegations bearing banners and mottoes. Rough Riders, who had come in their well-worn uniforms, added to the Rooseveltian exultation. Whoever judged by this demonstration must think it impossible that the Colonel could be defeated.
After he and his party had been shown to the suites reserved for them, he went out on the balcony of a second-floor room and spoke a few words to the immense multitude waiting below. He said, in substance, that he was glad to find from their cheers that Chicago did not believe in the thieves who stole delegates. Some who saw him say that his face was red with anger; others aver that he was no more vehement than usual, and simply strained himself to the utmost to make his voice carry throughout his audience. Still, if he said what they report, he was not politic.
Then followed days and nights of incessant strain.
The Colonel and Mrs. Roosevelt had their personal apartment in the northeast corner of the hotel, at some distance from the Florentine Room, which served as the official headquarters for the Progressives. He had, besides, a private office with a reception-room, and Tyree, one of the devoted detectives who had served under him in old times, carefully guarded the entrance. There was hardly a moment when one or two persons were not closeted with him. Occasionally, he would come out into the reception room and speak to the throng waiting there. No matter what the news, no matter how early or late the hour, he was always cheerful, and the mere sight of him brought joy and confidence to his followers.
The young kinsmen went everywhere and brought back reports of what they had seen or heard. One of them kept a diary of the events as they whirled past, hour by hour, and in this one can note many of the fleeting but vivid touches, which recall to the reader now the reality of those feverish days. He attended a big Taft rally at the Taft headquarters. Bell-boys ran up and down the hotel corridors announcing it. "After each announcement," writes the young cousin, "a group of Roosevelt men would cry out, 'All postmasters attend!'" Two Taftites spoke briefly and "were greeted by a couple of hand claps apiece; and then the star performer of the evening was announced in the most glowing terms as a model of political propriety, and the foremost and most upright citizen of the United States—William Barnes, Jr., of Albany." Mr. Barnes was supposed, at that time, to lead the New York Republican Machine. "We have got to save the country," he said, " save the constitution, save our liberty. We are in danger of monarchy. The country must be saved!!" The Roosevelt cousin thought that he spoke "without fervor to a listless, sedate, and very polite audience. It was made all the more preposterous by the fact that a very ancient colored gentleman stood back of Barnes, and whenever Barnes paused, would point to the crowd and feebly begin clapping his hands. They would then slowly and very politely take up the applause, in every case waiting for his signal. It was almost pathetic." At one time the Roosevelt scouts alleged that "Timothy Woodruff is wavering, with four other delegates, and will soon fall to us," and told "of delegates flopping over, here and there." A still more extraordinary piece of news came from Hooker to the effect that he had in some way intercepted a telegram "from Murray Crane to his nephew saying that Crane and Barnes would 'fight or ruin' and that it was now 'use any means and sacrifice the Republican Party.' Had it not been for the way he told us, I couldn't have believed such a thing possible."
Rumors like these were not verified at the time, and they are assuredly unverifiable now. I repeat them merely to show how suspense and excitement were constantly fed before the Convention met. Remembering how long ex-Senator Crane and Mr. Barnes had had their hands on the throttle of the Republican Machine, we are not surprised at the young Rooseveltian's statement: "The Taft forces control anything that has to do with machinery, but all the feeling is for Roosevelt, and the Congress Hotel, at any rate, favors the 'Big Noise,' as you will sometimes hear him called in the lobbies or in the streets." Apparently, stump speeches were made at any moment, and without provocation, in any hall; room, or lobby of the hotel, by any one who felt the spirit move him; and, lest silence should settle down and soothe the jaded nerves, a band would strike up unexpectedly. The marching to and fro of unrestrained gangs, shouting, "We-want-Teddy!" completed the pandemonium.
Monday came. The young scouts were as busy as ever in following the trails which led to Taft activities. The news they had to tell was always very cheering. They found little enthusiasm among the President's supporters. They heard, from the most trustworthy sources, that this or that Taft leader or delegation was coming over. And, in truth, the Taft body probably did not let off a tenth of the noise which their opponents indulged in. The shallows murmur, but the deeps are dumb, does not exactly apply to the two opposing hosts. The Taft men resorted very little to shouting, because they knew that if they were to win at all it must be by other means. The Rooseveltians, on the other hand, really felt a compelling surge of enthusiasm which they must uncork.
Meanwhile Colonel Roosevelt and his lieutenants knew that the enemy was perfecting his plan to defeat them. On Monday evening his zealots packed the Auditorium and he poured himself out to them in one of his torrential speeches calculated to rouse the passions rather than the minds of his hearers. But it fitly symbolized the situation. He, the daunt less leader, stood there, the soul of sincerity and courage, impressing upon them all that they were engaged in a most solemn cause and defying the opposition as if it were a legion of evil spirits. His closing words—" We stand at Armageddon and we battle for the Lord"—summed it all up so completely that the audience burst into a roar of approval, and never doubted that he spoke the truth.
Tuesday at noon, a crowd of fifteen thousand persons, delegates and visitors, packed the vast Convention Hall of the Coliseum. Mr. Victor Rosewater, of Nebraska, presided at the opening. As it was known that the Republican National Committee intended to place on the temporary roll of delegates seventy-two names of persons whose seats were contested, Governor Hadley, of Missouri, made a motion that only those delegates, whose right was not contested, should sit and vote during the preliminary proceedings. Had he been successful, the Regulars would have lost the battle from the beginning. But he was ruled out of order on the ground that the only business before the Convention was the election of a Temporary Chairman. This took place, and Senator Root, from New York, was elected by 558 votes; McGovern, the Roosevelt candidate, received 501 votes; there were 14 scattering, and 5 persons did not vote. Senator Root, therefore, won his election by 38 votes over the combined opposition, but his plurality was secured by the votes of the 72 whose seats were contested.
During the three following days the Roosevelt men fought desperately to secure what they believed to be justice. They challenged every delegate, they demanded a roll-call on the slightest excuse, they deluged the Regulars with alternate showers of sarcasm and anger. But it availed them nothing. They soon perceived that victory lay with the Republican National Committee, which had the organization of the Convention and the framing of the rules of procedure. The Taft people, the Regulars, controlled the National Committee, and they knew that the rules would do the rest, especially since, the Chairman of the Convention, Senator Root, was the interpreter of the rules.
At no other National Convention in American history did a Chairman keep his head and his temper so admirably as did Mr. Root on this occasion. His intellect, burning with a cold, white light,illumined every point, but betrayed no heat of passion. He applied the rules as impartially as if they were theorems of algebra. Time after time the Rooseveltians protested against the holders of contested seats to vote, but he was unmoved because the rule prescribed that the person had a right to vote. When the contests were taken up, the Taft men always won, the Roosevelt men always lost. The Machine went as if by clock-work or like the guillotine. More than once some Rooseveltian leader, like Governor Hadley, stung by a particularly shocking display of overbearing injustice, taunted the majority with shouts of "Robbers" and "Theft." Roars of passion swept through the hall. The derision of the minority was countered by the majority with equal vigor, but the majority did not always feel, in spite of its truculent manner, confident of the outcome.
By what now seems shameless theft, the Credentials Committee approved the seating of two Taft delegates from California, in spite of the fact that the proper officials of that State had certified that its twenty-six delegates were all for Roosevelt, and had been elected by a majority of 76,000 votes. Chairman Root put the question to the Convention, however, and those two discredited delegates were admitted for Taft by a vote of 542 to 529. This indicates how close the Convention then stood, when a change of seven votes would have given Roosevelt a majority of one and have added to his list the two California delegates who were counted out. Had such a change taken place, those who watched the Convention believed there would have been a "landslide" to Roosevelt. But the Republican Committee's sorely tested rules held. After that, the Rooseveltians saw no gleam of hope.
On Saturday, June 22d, the list of delegates to the Convention having been drawn up as the Republican Machine intended, Mr. Taft was nominated by a vote of 561; Roosevelt received 107, La Follette 41, Cummins 17, Hughes 2; 344 delegates did not vote. The last were all Roosevelt men, but they had been requested by Roosevelt to refuse to vote. Through Mr. Henry J. Allen, of Kansas, he sent this message:
'The Convention has now declined to purge the roll of the fraudulent delegates placed thereon by the defunct National Committee, and the majority which thus endorsed fraud was made a majority only because it included the fraudulent delegates themselves, who all sat as judges on one another's cases. If these fraudulent votes had not thus been cast and counted the Convention would have been purged of their presence. This action makes the Convention in no proper sense any longer a Republican Convention representing the real Republican Party. Therefore, I hope the men elected as Roosevelt delegates will now decline to vote on any matter before the Convention. I do not release any delegate from his honorable obligation to vote for me if he votes at all, but under the actual conditions I hope that he will not vote at all. The Convention as now composed has no claim to represent the voters of the Republican Party. It represents nothing but successful fraud in overriding the will of the rank and file of the party. Any man nominated by the Convention as now constituted would be merely the beneficiary of this successful fraud; it would be deeply discreditable to any man to accept the Convention's nomination under these circumstances; and any man thus accepting it would have no claim to the support of any Republican on party grounds, and would have forfeited the right to ask the support of any honest man of any party on moral grounds.'
Mr. Allen concluded with these words of his own:
'We do not bolt. We merely insist that you, not we, are making the record. And we refuse to be bound by it. We have pleaded with you ten days. We have fought with you five days for a square deal. We fight no more, we plead no longer. We shall sit in protest and the people who sent us here shall judge us.
'Gentlemen, you accuse us of being radical. Let me tell you that no radical in the ranks of radicalism ever did so radical a thing as to come to a National Convention of the great Republican Party and secure through fraud the nomination of a man whom they knew could not be elected.'*
* Fifteenth Republican National Convention (New York, 1912), 333, 335.
Every night during that momentous week the Roosevelt delegates met in the Congress Hotel, talked over the day's proceedings, gave vent to their indignation, confirmed each other's resolution, and took a decision as to their future action. The powerful Hiram Johnson, Governor of California, led them, and through his eloquence he persuaded all but 107 of them to stand by Roosevelt whether he were nominated by the Convention or not.
And this they did. For when the vote for the nomination was taken at the Convention only 107 of the Roosevelt men cast their ballots. They favored Roosevelt, but they were not prepared to quit the Republican Party. During the roll-call the Roosevelt delegates from Massachusetts refused to vote. Thereupon, Mr. Root, the Chairman, ruled that they must vote, to which Frederick Fosdick replied, when his name was read again, "Present, and not voting. I defy the Convention to make me vote for any man"; and seventeen other Roosevelt delegates refrained. Mr. Root then called up the alternates of these abstainers and three of them recorded their votes for Taft, but there was such a demonstration against this ruling that Mr. Root thought better of it and proceeded in it no farther. Many of his Republican associates at the time thought this action high-handed and unjustified, and many more agree in this opinion today.
Except for this grave error, Mr. Root's rulings were strictly according to the precedents and directions of the Republican National Committee, and we may believe that even he saw the sardonic humor of his unvarying application of them at the expense of the Rooseveltians. Before the first day's session was over, the process was popularly called the "steam roller." Late in the week, a delegate rose to a point of order, and on being recognized by the Chairman, he shouted that he wished to call the attention of the Chairman to the fact that the steam roller was exceeding its speed limit, at which Mr. Root replied, "The Chairman rules that the gentleman's point of order is well taken." And everybody laughed. There was one dramatic moment which, as Dean Lewis remarks, has had no counterpart in a National Convention. When the Machine had succeeded, in spite of protests and evidence, in stealing the two delegates from California, the friends of Mr. Taft gave triumphant cheers. Then the Roosevelt men rose up as one man and sent forth a mighty cheer which astonished their opponents. It was a cheer in which were mingled indignation and scorn, and, above all, relief. Strictly interpreted, it meant that those men who had sat for four days and seen their wishes thwarted, by what they regarded as fraud, and had held on in the belief that this fraud could not continue to the end, that a sense of fairness would return and rule the Regulars, now realized that Fraud would concede nothing and that their Cause was lost. And they felt a great load lifted. No obligation bound them any longer to the Republican Party which had renounced honesty in its principles and fair play in its practice. Henceforth they could go out and take any step they chose to promote their Progressive doctrines. *
* Lewis, 363.
Shortly after the Convention adjourned, having, by these methods, nominated Mr. Taft and James S. Sherman for President and Vice-President, the Rooseveltians held a great meeting in Orchestra Hall. Governor Johnson presided and apparently a majority of the Rooseveltians wished, then and there, to organize a new party and to nominate Roosevelt as its candidate. Several men made brief but earnest addresses. Then Roosevelt himself spoke, and although he lacked nothing of his usual vehemence, he seemed to be controlled by a sense of the solemnity of their purpose. He told them that it was no more a question of Progressivism, which he ardently believed in, but a question of fundamental honesty and right, which everybody ought to believe in and uphold. He advised them to go to their homes, to discuss the crisis with their friends; to gain what adherence and support they could, and to return in two months and formally organize their party and nominate their candidate for President. And he added: "If you wish me to make the fight, I will make it, even if only one State should support me. The only condition I impose is that you shall feel entirely free, when you come together, to substitute any other man in my place, if you deem it better for the movement, and in such case, I will give him my heartiest support."
And so the defeated majority of the Republicans at Chicago, Republicans no longer, broke up. There were many earnest hand-shakings, many pledges to meet again in August, and to take up the great work. Those who intended to stay by the Republican Party, not less than those who cast their lot with the Progressives, bade farewell, with deep emotion, to the Leader whom they had wished to see at the head of the Republican Party. Chief among these was Governor Hadley, of Missouri, who at one moment, during the Convention, seemed likely to be brought forward by the Regulars as a compromise candidate. Some of the Progressives resented his defection from them; not so Roosevelt, who said: "He will not be with us, but we must not blame him."
Six weeks later, the Progressives returned to Chicago. Again, Roosevelt had his headquarters at the Congress Hotel. Again, the delegates, among whom were several women, met at the Coliseum. Crowds of enthusiastic supporters and larger crowds of curiosity- seekers swarmed into the vast building. On Monday, August 5, the first session of the Progressive Party's Convention was held. Senator Albert J. Beveridge, of Indiana, made the opening address, in which he defined the principles of their party and the objects it hoped to obtain. Throughout the proceedings there was much enthusiasm, but no battle. It was rather the gathering of several thousand very earnest men and women bent on consecrating themselves to a new Cause, which they believed to be the paramount Cause for the political, economic, and social welfare of. their country. Nearly all of them were Idealists, eager to secure the victory of some special reform. And, no doubt, an impartial observer might have detected among them traces of that "lunatic fringe," which Roosevelt himself had long ago humorously remarked clung to the skirts of every reform. But the whole body, judged without prejudice, probably contained the largest number of disinterested, public-spirited, and devoted persons, who had ever met for a national and political object since the group which formed the Republican Party in 1854.
The professional politician who usually preponderates in such Conventions, and, in the last, had usurped control both of the proceedings and decisions, had little place here. The chief topic of discussion turned on the admission of negro delegates from the South. Roosevelt believed that an attempt to create a negro Progressive Party, as such, would alienate the Southern whites and would certainly sharpen their hostility towards the blacks. Therefore, he advised that the negro delegates ought to be approved by the White Progressives in their several districts. In other words, the Progressive Party in the South should be a white party with such colored members as the whites found acceptable.
On Monday and Tuesday the work done in the Convention was much less important than that done by the Committee on Resolutions and by the Committee on Credentials. On Wednesday the Convention heard and adopted the Platform and then nominated Roosevelt by acclamation. Miss Jane Addams, of Hull House, Chicago, seconded the nomination, praising Roosevelt as "one of the few men in our public life who has been responsive to modern movement." "The program," she said, "will need a leader of invincible courage, of open mind, of democratic sympathies—one endowed with power to interpret the common man, and to identify himself with the common lot." Governor Hiram Johnson, from California, was nominated for Vice-President. Over the platform, to which the candidates were escorted, hung Kipling's stanza:
"For there is neither East nor West,
Border nor breed nor birth,
When two strong men stand face to face,
Though they come from the ends of the earth."
Portraits of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Jackson, and Hamilton, a sufficiently inclusive group of patriots, looked down upon them. After Roosevelt and Johnson addressed the audience, the trombones sounded "Old Hundred" and the great meeting closed to the words—
"Praise God from whom all blessings flow."
The Progressive Platform contained many planks which have since been made laws by the Democratic Party, which read the signs of the times more quickly than did the Republicans. Especially many of the suggestions relating to Labor, the improvement of the currency, the control of corporate wealth, and oversight over public hygiene, should be commended. In general, it promised to bring the Government nearer to the people by giving the people a more and more direct right over the Government. It declared for a rational tariff and the creation of a non-partisan Tariff Commission of experts, and it denounced alike the Republicans for the Payne-Aldrich Bill, which dishonestly revised upwards, and the Democrats, who wished to abolish protection altogether. It urged proper military and naval preparation and the building of two battleships a year—a plank which we can imagine Roosevelt wrote in with peculiar satisfaction. It advocated direct primaries; the conservation of natural resources; woman suffrage.
So rapidly has the country progressed in seven years that most of the recommendations have already been adopted, and are among the common places which nobody disputes any longer. But the Initiative, the Referendum, and the Recall of Judicial Decisions were the points, as I remarked above, over which the country debated most hotly. The Recall, in particular, created a widespread alarm, and just as Roosevelt's demand for it in his Columbus speech prevented, as I believe, his nomination by the Republican Convention in June, so it deprived the Progressives at the election in November of scores of thousands of votes. The people of the United States—every person who owned a bit of property, a stock or a bond, or who had ten dollars or more in the savings bank—looked upon it almost with consternation. For they knew that they were living in a time of flux, when old standards were melting away like snow images in the sun, when new ideals, untried and based on the negation of some of the oldest principles in our civilization, were being pushed forward. They instinctively rallied to uphold Law, the slow product of centuries of growth, the sheet anchor of Society in a time of change. Where could we look for solidity, or permanence, if judicial decisions could be recalled at the caprice of the mob—the hysterical, the uninstructed, the fickle mob? The opinion of one trained and honest judge outweighs the whims of ten thousand of the social dregs.
The Recall of Judicial Decisions, therefore, caused many of Roosevelt's friends, and even Republicans who would otherwise have supported him, to balk. They not only rejected the proposal itself, but they feared that he, by making it, indicated that he had lost his judgment and was being swept into the vortex of revolution. Judges and courts and respect for law, like lighthouses on granite foundations, must be kept safe from the fluctuations of tides and the crash of tempests.
The campaign which followed is chiefly remarkable for Roosevelt's amazing activity. He felt that the success of the Progressive Party at the polls depended upon him as its Leader. The desire for personal success in any contest into which he plunged would have been a great incentive, but this was a cause which dwarfed any personal considerations of his. Senator Joseph M. Dixon, of Montana, managed the campaign; Roosevelt himself gave it a dynamic impulse which never flagged. He went to the Pacific Coast, speaking at every important centre on the way, and returning through the Southern States to New York City. In September he swept through New England, and he was making a final tour through the Middle West, when, on October 14th, just as he was leaving his hotel to make a speech in the Auditorium in Milwaukee, a lunatic named John Schranck shot him with a revolver. The bullet entered his body about an inch below the right nipple and would probably have been fatal but for an eye glass-case and a roll of manuscript he had in his pocket. Before the assassin could shoot again, his hand was caught and deflected by the Colonel's secretary. "Don't hurt the poor creature," Roosevelt said, when Schranck was overpowered and brought before him. Not knowing the extent of his wound, and waiting only long enough to return to his hotel room and change his white shirt, as the bosom of the one he had on was soaked with blood, and disregarding the entreaties of his companions to stay quiet, he went to the Auditorium and spoke for more than an hour. Only towards the end did the audience perceive that he showed signs of fatigue. This extraordinary performance was most foolhardy, and some of his carping critics said that, as usual, Roosevelt wanted to be theatrical. But there was no such purpose in him. He felt to the depths of his soul that neither his safety nor that of any other individual counted in comparison with the triumph of the Cause he was fighting for.
After a brief examination the surgeons stated that he had better be removed to the Mercy Hospital in Chicago. They put him on his special car and by an incredible negligence they sent him off to make the night journey without any surgical attendant. On reaching the Mercy Hospital, Dr. Ryan made a further examination and reported that there seemed to be no immediate danger, although he could not be sure whether the Colonel would live or not. Roosevelt, who was advertised to make a great speech in Louisville, Kentucky, that evening, summoned Senator Beveridge and sent him off with the manuscript of the address to take his place. Mrs. Roosevelt reached Chicago by the first train possible, and stayed with him while he underwent, impatiently, nearly a fortnight's convalescence. Then, much sooner than the surgeons thought wise, although his wound had healed with remarkable speed, he returned to Oyster Bay, and on October 30th he closed his campaign by addressing sixteen thousand persons in the Madison Square Garden. He spoke with unwonted calm and judicial poise; and so earnestly that the conviction which he felt carried conviction to many who heard him. "I am glad beyond measure," he said, "that I am one of the many who in this fight have stood ready to spend and be spent, pledged to fight, while life lasts, the great fight for righteousness and for brotherhood and for the welfare of mankind."
President Taft and the members of his Cabinet took little or no active part in the campaign. Indeed, the Republicans seemed unable to arouse enthusiasm. They relied upon their past victories and the robust campaign fund, which the Interests gladly furnished. The Democratic candidate was Woodrow Wilson, Governor of New Jersey, who had been professor at Princeton University, and then its president. As Governor, he had commended himself by fighting the Machine, and by advocating radical measures. As candidate, he asserted his independence by declaring that "a party platform is not a program." He spoke effectively, and both he and his party had the self-complacency that comes to persons who believe that they are sure to win. And how could their victory be in doubt since the united Democrats had for opponents the divided Republicans? When Colonel Roosevelt was shot, Governor Wilson magnanimously announced that he would make no more speeches. Roosevelt objected to this, believing that a chance accident to him, personally, ought not to stop any one from criticising him politically. "What ever could with truth and propriety have been said against me and my cause before I was shot, can," he urged, "with equal truth and equal propriety, be said against me now, and it should so be said; and the things that cannot be said now are merely the things that ought not to have been said before. This is not a contest about any man; it is a contest concerning principles."
At the election on November 5th, Wilson was elected by 6,286,000 votes out of 15,310,000 votes, thus being a minority President by two million and a half votes. Roosevelt received 4,126,000 and Taft 3,483,000 votes. The combined vote of what had been the Republican Party amounted to 7,609,000 votes, or 1,323,000 more than those received by Mr. Wilson. When it came to the Electoral College, the result was even more significant. Wilson had 435, Roosevelt 88, and Taft, thanks to Vermont and Utah, secured 8 votes. Roosevelt carried Pennsylvania the rock-bound Republican State, Missouri which was usually Democratic, South Dakota, Washington, Michigan, and eleven out of the thirteen votes of California. These figures, analyzed calmly, after the issues and passions have cooled into history, indicate two things. First, the amazing personal popularity of Roosevelt, who, against the opposition of the Republican Machine and all its ramifications, had so easily defeated President Taft, the candidate of that Machine. And secondly, it proved that Roosevelt, and not Taft, really represented a large majority of what had been the Republican Party. Therefore, it was the Taft faction which, in spite of the plain evidence given at the choice of the delegates, and at the Convention itself—evidence which the Machine tried to ignore and suppress—it was the Taft faction and not Roosevelt which split the Republican Party in 1912.
Had it allowed the preference of the majority to express itself by the nomination of Roosevelt, there is every reason to believe that he would have been elected. For we must remember that the Democratic Platform was hardly less progressive than that of the Progressives themselves. Counting the Wilson and the Roosevelt vote together, we find 10,412,000 votes were cast for Progressive principles against 3,483,000 votes for the reactionary Conservatives. And yet the gray wolves of the Republican Party, and its Old Guard, and its Machine, proclaimed to the country that its obsolescent doctrines represented the desires and the ideals of the United States in 1912!
Although the campaign, as conducted by the Republicans, seemed listless, it did not lack venom. Being a family fight between the Taft men and the Roosevelt men, it had the bitterness which family quarrels develop. Mr. Taft and most of his Secretaries had known the methods of Mr. Roosevelt and his Ministers. They could counter, therefore, charges of incompetence and indifference by recalling the inconsistencies, or worse, of Roosevelt's regime. When the Progressives charged the Taft Administration with being easy on the Big Interests, Attorney-General Wickersham resorted to a simple sum in arithmetic in order to contradict them, showing that whereas Roosevelt began forty-four Anti-Trust suits, and concluded only four important cases during his seven and a half years in office, under Taft sixty-six new suits were begun and many of the old ones were successfully concluded. Some great cases, like that of the Standard Oil and of the Railroad Rates, had been settled, which equaled in importance any that Roosevelt had taken up. In the course of debate on the stump, each side made virulent accusations against the other, and things were said which were not true then and have long since been regretted by the sayers. That happens in all political contests.
Roosevelt himself, being the incarnation, if not indeed the cause, of the Progressive Party, had to endure an incessant volley of personal attack. They charged him with inordinate ambition. We heard how Mr. William Barnes, Jr., the would-be savior of the country, implied that Roosevelt must be defeated in order to prevent the establishment of monarchy in the United States. Probably Mr. Barnes, in his moments of reflection, admitted to himself that he did not really mean that, but many campaign orators and editors repeated the insinuation and besought free-born Americans not to elect a candidate who would assume the title of King Theodore. Many of his critics could account for his leaving the Republican Party and heading another, only on the theory that he was moved by a desire for revenge. If he could not rule he would ruin. The old allegation that he must be crazy was of course revived.
After the election, the Republican Regulars, who had stubbornly refused, to read the handwriting on the wall during the previous four years, heaped new abuse upon him. They said that he had betrayed the Party. They said that he had shown himself an ingrate towards Taft, whose achievements in the Presidency awoke his envy. And more recently, many persons who have loathed the Administration of President Wilson, blame Roosevelt for having brought down this curse upon the country.
These various opinions and charges seem to me to be mistaken; and in the foregoing chapters, if I have truly divined Theodore Roosevelt's character, every reader should see that his action in entering the field for the Republican nomination in 1912, and then in founding the Progressive Party, was the perfectly natural culmination of his career. Some one said that he went off at a tangent in 1912. Some one else has said better that this tangent was a straight line leading back to 1882, when he sat in the New York Assembly. Remember that the love of Justice was from boyhood his leading principle. Remember that, after he succeeded in having a law passed relieving the miserably poor cigar-makers from the hideous conditions under which they had to work, a judge declared the law unconstitutional, thereby proving to Roosevelt that the courts, which should be the citadels of justice, might and did, in this case, care more for the financial interests of landowners than for the health, life, and soul of human beings. That example of injustice was branded on his heart, and he resolved to combat the judicial league with in humanity, wherever he met it. So Abraham Lincoln, when, at the age of twenty-two he first saw a slave auction in New Orleans, said, in indignant horror, to his companion, John Hanks: "If I ever get a chance to hit that thing [meaning slavery] I'll hit it hard." Exactly thirty years later, Abraham Lincoln, as President, was hitting that thing—slavery—so hard that it perished. Roosevelt's experience as Assemblyman, as Civil Service Commissioner, as Police Commissioner, as Governor, and as President, had confirmed his belief that the decisions of the courts often stood between the People and Justice.
Especially in his war on the Interests was he angered at finding corporate abuses, and even criminal methods, comfortably protected by an upholstery of favoring laws. With that tact and willingness to compromise on non-essentials in order to gain his essential object, which mark him as a statesman, he used the Republican Party, naturally the party of the plutocrats who controlled the Interests, just as long as he could. Then, when the Republican Machine rose against him, he quitted it and founded the Progressive Party, to be the instrument for carrying on and completing the great reforms he had at heart. Here was no desertion, no betrayal; here was, first of all, common sense; if the road no longer leads towards your goal, you leave it and take an other. No one believed more sincerely than Roosevelt did, in fealty to party. In 1884 he would not bolt, because he hoped that the good which the Republican principles would accomplish would more than offset the harm which the nomination of Blaine would inflict. But in 1912, the Republicans cynically rejected his cause which he had tried to make the Republican cause, and then, as in 1884, he held that the cause was more important than the individual, and he followed this idea loyally, lead where it might.
In trying thus to state Roosevelt's position fairly, I do not mean to imply that I should agree with his conclusions in regard to the Recall of the Judicial Decisions; and the experiments which have already been made with the Referendum and Initiative and Direct Primaries are so unsatisfactory that Roosevelt himself would probably have recognized that the doubts, which many of us felt when he first proposed those measures, have been justified. But I wish to emphasize my admiration for the large consistency of his career, and my conviction that, with out his crowning action in 1912, he would have failed to be the moral force which he was. If ambition, if envy, if a selfish desire to rule, had been the motives which guided him, he would have lain low in 1912; for all his friends and the managers of the Republican Party assured him that if he would stand aside then, he would be unanimously nominated by the Republicans in 1916. But he could not be tempted.