The respect in which President McKinley was held in Europe developed after the assassination in all the journals, and in the utterances of public men of merit and moment, without exception. Occasionally there was a reflection of the vindictiveness of the belittlers of our country by some of our citizens who find their greatest relief from sorrow in the indulgence of their own vain conceits of virtue. President Roosevelt seems to have encountered a share of this distrustful comment. It was touched up broad with the folly of excessive self appreciation attended with public indifference.

In an English journal, within a few days of the death of McKinley, there appeared a volunteered American production, in which the producer claimed that he was well acquainted "with the new President" and called him a "demagogue." There was compensation for this intrusion of an impertinence in a reply from an American gentleman-once a Democratic CongressmanHon. W. M. Beckner, in the London Times of October 7th, saying of the charge of "demagogy:" "If it is meant to say Mr. Roosevelt is one who seeks popular favor at the expense of honest conviction, it is a very unjust characterization. The quality which, above all others, makes Theodore Roosevelt the strongest individuality in America to-day, is his absolute sincerity in dealing with public questions and his unfeigned indifference to what others may think or say with regard to his course in discharging his official duties. He is the personification of courage, truth and manliness, and is a clean, straight man in all the relations of life. When he was President of the Board of Police Commissioners of New York City, he compelled a strict enforcement of the excise and other laws, and this incurred the bitter enmity of the element that controlled votes. When the Spanish War came on, and his regiment was filled so promptly by the best fighting material in the States, he asked the President to appoint to its command an unknown assistant surgeon in the army who had had experience as a soldier, and whose talents and ability he had learned to appreciate. He took a subordinate place himself, but his judgment had been confirmed by the fact that his selection is now a majorgeneral and the able and accomplished Military Governor of Cuba. These were not the acts of a demagogue, but of a faithful and patriotic citizen, who preferred the public good to his own selfish interests. He despises all trickery and sham, and is strong enough to lead without resorting to any base or unworthy practices. My testimony is not that of a partizan-I know the President personally, but we were trained in different political schools. Whilst he was a Republican member of the Civil Service Commission at Washington, I was a Democratic Congressman. He believes in party organization as a means of carrying out the principles which he thinks should be observed in administering the Government, but has never been narrow or bitter in dealing with political opponents. He is the first President we have had in forty years

whose views are uncolored by personal experiences or observation during the Civil War, and is emphatically the product of a new era in American politics. He did not want the nomination for the Vice-Presidency last year, as he had his heart set on seeing completed work which he had begun as Governor of New York. He is hampered by no pledges, has no especial favorites to reward or enemies to punish, and is controlled by no clique or ring or boss. He has been a voluminous writer, but has dealt with no theories, and is therefore committed to no peculiar politics. In writing the history of the Winning of the West, or of your Cromwell, or of his own Rough Riders, or of his hunting adventures, he has always dealt with action. He has never been a dreamer or a poet or a philosopher, but an earnest, practical man of affairs, who takes the world as it is and tries to make it better by what he does and not by what he preaches. I have several times seen it stated that because the family whose name he bears came from Holland he may take sides with the Boers against England. This will not be given much consideration when it is known that his ancestors were three-fourths British and not exceeding one-fourth Dutch, and that he is altogether American. Nor is he a man to forget how generously Great Britain treated his country during the Spanish War, in which he bore so heroic a part. He has enough of care and responsibility as chief executive of the United States without interfering in any respect with the affairs of other countries."

It will be remembered that Secretary Long, called by President Roosevelt when Assistant Secretary of the Navy his Chief, was under consideration at Philadelphia in June, 1900, as a candidate for the Vice-Presidency, and would have been more prominent if there had not been a demand that could not be checked or diverted by Roosevelt.

The New York Independent of September 6th succeeding the convention, contained an article from Secretary Long, on the character of the nominee for the Vice-Presidency, that is a reminder of their relations in 1884. The Secretary said of his promoted Assistant:

"Theodore Roosevelt is one of the interesting personalities of our day and generation. He is a picturesque figure, and was so before the Rough Rider uniform and hat existed, and would be even if he had never worn them. A puny child, whose health was despaired of, he grew to be a stalwart athlete. Within him was a vital spark that has flamed into perfect physical vigor. His characteristic is force. This is the central quality. But with this are an honest mind, right motives, readiness and directness in speech, frankness and courage, and high ideals of public and private duty and service. It could not be otherwise than that such a man should not only fill the popular eye, but command the popular favor. The people like a bold man, a square man, a strong man, and they know instinctively that he is all these.

"But this is not all. A man might have all these qualities and yet fail under the test of actual performance. But Roosevelt has been legislator, police commissioner of the great City of New York, United States Civil Service Commissioner, Assistant Secretary of the Navy, commander of a regiment in battle, and Governor of the Empire State. In all these positions-covering an unusual variety of service and testing the practical capacity and ability of their holder-he has made his mark.

"Then, too, his life and career cover a great variety of the phases of our national life, and identify him with all classes of the people. He was born of a good well-to-do family of Dutch stock in New York; he was a student at Harvard; he lived on a ranch in the far West; he has run the courses of local, State and National politics; he has consorted with the refinements of the city and taken the rough and tumble of the frontier. Everybody knows him. Every college boy swears by him.

Every cow boy ties to him. Every soldier and sailor counts him a friend. The policemen who served under him know that he was as just to their deserts as he was relentless to their faults. The citizen, who prays for good government and honest politics, relies on him for both. It may be that now and then some overzealous reformer, whose sole idea of reform is to kill the Republican party because it does not lay a nestful of golden eggs, 'every day in the hour,' has been unable to forgive him, because he will not desert it; but his very bitterness is really the highest tribute to his ideals and performance.

"He therefore comes to the candidacy for the Vice-Presidency not only well equipped for the high place, but specially qualified to add strength to the ticket. It was because it was universally recognized that this would be the effect that his nomination was spontaneous. While the office is one to which

his active tendencies would not ordinarily incline him, there seems to be at this time no other in the candidacy for which he can render so much service to the Republican party. Young, irrepressible and with an honorable ambition, it is pleasant to think that long years are before him in which he can not fail with his strong character and ability to be a great part in the growth, beneficence and history of his country."

The President accepts the responsibility, and appoints men for better reason than paying the political debts of members of Congress. He ignores the question of color, on behalf of one of the most honorable, able and useful of American citizens. He does not refuse to appoint the son of a laboring man or of a billionaire. He has use for all sorts of people who are industrious and honest, faithful and, according to their means, frugal.

No amount of education or combination, said Roosevelt as Governor, could supply the lack of individual energy, honesty, thrift and industry. The development in the extent of variety of industries had necessitated legislation

in the interests of labor. The Governor touched all the questions of special interest in this association, saying "the law regulating the hours of labor of minors, under fourteen years of age, and of women employed in working for establishments, and the sanitary condition of stores and buildings, would, if the city government failed to furnish appropriation, and to appoint the necessary officers to carry out the law, be practically a dead letter as it was in the City of New York." The law, the Governor said, regulating the hours of labor, on surface railroads was an excellent provision against the tendency to work men too many hours; but the enforcement of this law was left to the railroad commissioners, and they had no active force to use for such a purpose. Therefore, the law failed by default, except when prosecution was undertaken by individuals, for the employee would not complain for fear of being discharged.

An important phase of this subject of sanitary conditions, the Governor said, was found in the "sweat shop" system, which was practically the conversion of the poorest class of living apartments into unwholesome pest creating and crime-breeding workshops. The "most effective and uninquisitive" cure for this was a Massachusetts law, providing that buildings used for manufacturing should be licensed only on condition that the building should fulfill the requirements of the law for manufacturing purposes.

The New York politicians, who sought to raise the strife among "classes," and had faith the poor men would always be revolutionists as against the rich, and war on property in large accumulations, called Roosevelt when he appeared at Albany an Assemblyman, a "silk stocking," and a "dude," until he knocked some of them down; but one of his early onslaughts was for the abolishment of "sweat shops," whose pestilence was cultivated, and one of his scathing phrases was "the guilty rich." He demanded wholesome workshops, and caused their betterment. At the same time, he protected the rights of property; and we quote his remarks:

"As a rule the man who is the loudest denouncer of corporate wealthspelling "corporate" with a large "C" and "wealth" with a large "W"-and who is most inflammable in his insistence, in public, that he will not permit the liberties of the country to be subverted by the men of means, is himself the very man for whom you want to look out most sharply when there comes up something which some corrupt corporation does really want, and about which there is not any great popular excitement at the moment.

"On the one hand we have the perfectly simple savage, who believes that you should tax franchises to the extent of confiscating them, and that it is the duty of all railroad corporations to carry everybody free and give him a chromo.