Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography,

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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.

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