"I hope you will not allow the convention to be stampeded to Roosevelt for Vice-President," said McKinley (as quoted by Senator Foraker). The repute of Roose

velt, rising continuously since his election as governor of New York, threatened to upset the well-balanced party machine. Some Republicans had even talked of discarding McKinley in his favor, and Roosevelt had begun to consider the distribution of patronage, should this occur. He had not been among the McKinley supporters of 1896, and his willing leadership among the critics of the War Department in front of Santiago had created a personal unwillingness to have him on the ticket. Governor Roosevelt agreed in substance with McKinley on this point. "I should like to be governor for another term," he wrote to Senator Platt. "The Vice-Presidency is not . . . an office in which a man who is still vigorous and not past middle life has much chance of doing anything."

The denials of Governor Roosevelt that he was a candidate for the vice-presidency were repeated at frequent intervals during the spring of 1900, but failed to check the popular desire for his services. This popularity fell in well with the personal wishes of party leaders in Pennsylvania and New York. Quay, just refused his seat in the Senate by a majority that included Senator Hanna, was not averse to embarrassing the party organization that had allowed him to be humiliated. Platt in New York had managed to maintain harmonious public relationships with the governor, but was willing to back him as a candidate for almost any position outside of New York. During the days of the convention Colonel Roosevelt was in Philadelphia at the head of the New York delegation, wearing his campaign hat, visiting the headquarters of the other State delegations in turn, and noisily protesting his unwillingness to be sacrificed as Vice-President. From the records available in the biographies of Hay, Foraker, and McKinley, it seems that the reluctance to be Vice-President was mingled with a willingness to show McKinley that he could be Vice-President if he so desired. A private wire to

the White House carried the story of the Roosevelt boom, and at the end the Administration bowed as gracefully as could be to the unanimous will of the party.

During the ensuing canvass President McKinley adhered to the tactics that he had followed in the previous campaign. He maintained the dignity and poise suitable to his own character and becoming, according to past precedent, in the presidency. Bryan took to the stump as usual, but this time he aroused no fears in the hearts of his opponents, and he was trailed back and forth across the continent by as good a campaigner as himself. The National Committee made Colonel Roosevelt speak more than three hundred times during the canvass. In the heart of

Populism in Denver he denounced free silver, and everywhere he inspired the hopes of those who were longing for a higher level in party politics.

the issues

Public opinion was badly split by the old issue and the new. The problem of imperialism cut across the boundaries that divided the free-silver advocates Public opinfrom those of the gold standard. Until late ion and in the campaign a group of distinguished goldstandard anti-imperialists wavered before the choice of evils. Many of them, believing that imperialism was more closely connected with the future of democracy than any currency controversy, voted for Bryan; but these were more than offset by the gains of the Republican Party due to the prestige that came from a successful and prosperous administration. As the canvass advanced the argument of the full dinner pail increased its grip upon the average voter. On election day the prosperity that had been promised in McKinley's first campaign secured a decisive victory for him in his second.

The winter of 1900, with the presidency settled, with all fears of repudiation expelled, and with four more years of administrative continuity assured, has had no equal among periods of industrial confidence. Both capital and labor looked forward to a future of unchecked development, and the organizations of both the trusts and the unions were

increased in size and projected further throughout the people. The feeling of assurance pervading the country was partly based upon the absence of any disturbing national program. The two things for which the Republican Party had perfected its organization in 1896 had been accomplished. The Dingley tariff of 1897 was producing an abundant revenue. The gold standard had been proclaimed as the official basis of national commerce. No great legislative programs involving fundamental change were pending. The national need for a canal at Panama was within reach of gratification. The defects in administrative organization that the Spanish War had disclosed were in process of correction under the wise control of Elihu Root. John Hay was extending American ideals of fair play across the Pacific.

The inaugural ceremony of March 4, 1901, was the most imposing ceremonial of its kind that had been seen, but lacked significance as a public event. The Cabinet of McKinley needed no reorganization and received none. The second term seemed likely to inspire only the uninteresting annals of a happy people. This happiness was increased when toward the end of March the insurgent leader Aguinaldo was taken prisoner, bringing the Philippine revolt so nearly to an end that it was possible to think of establishing civil government in the islands.

The assassination of McKinley at Buffalo in September, 1901, destroyed this certainty at a single stroke. It brought

Assassination of McKinley

into the presidency on September 14 a new personality that spoke for a later generation and a different era. It removed the basis for the rigid political organization of which Senator Hanna was the chief engineer, and opened the way for aspiring politicians in the Middle West to push upon the party councils their demands that a program of national and social betterment be formulated and adopted.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

The formal documents upon the campaign of 1900 are to be found in Edward Stanwood, History of the Presidency, 1897-1909 (1912), which is as invaluable as his earlier volume. Many personal details are preserved in Thayer's Life and Letters of John Hay, Olcott's William McKinley, and J. B. Foraker's Notes of a Busy Life. William J. Bryan, in The Second Battle (1900), gives an autobiographic account of the struggle, which may be supplemented by that in Tom L. Johnson's Own Story, and Brand Whitlock's Forty Years of It. Cara Lloyd's Biography of Henry Demarest Lloyd gives the best picture of the way in which the hopes of the social reformers who had worked with the Populist Party went aglimmering when Populism was absorbed by Democracy. The autobiography of Robert M. La Follette contains testimony upon the movement within the Republican Party to salvage what was good in Populism. The Report of the United States Industrial Commission is packed with testimony upon the new industrial society, while the technical articles in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Political Science Quarterly, the Annals of the American Academy, and the Journal of Political Economy, indicate at once the nature of new problems, and the new standards of economic scholarship.

CHAPTER XXVIII

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

THEODORE ROOSEVELT was not yet forty-three years of age when he took his oath as President on September 14, 1901, but he had behind him already nearly twenty years of prominent political life. In personal appearance and behavior he still showed the jubilance and enthusiasm of youth, but in experience of affairs and political sagacity he was as old as most of his seniors in the party. His origin, and his career thus far, were as unusual in American politics as the remaining eighteen years of his life were to be. Born in 1858, his infancy was passed during the Administration of the self-made rail-splitter, Abraham Lincoln. He left Harvard College as his party was electRoosevelt ing Garfield and glorying in the fact that the candidate had begun his life upon the towpath. The selfmade man, born in the cabin, and ripening in the full opportunity of American democracy was still the type American. Roosevelt had none of this in his experience. was born in affluence, educated in a social group whose position had been secure for generations, and he was launched into life free to determine for himself whether he would make money or leave behind him a career of accomplishment in public work.

Youth of

ical career

He

In the fall of 1881, “finding it would not interfere much with my law" Roosevelt accepted a nomination to the New Early polit York Assembly, and described himself as "a 'political hack."" At no time thereafter was he ever really out of politics, and at every stage his name was identified with the advance of self-government. Three years as a young man in the New York Assembly made him a national figure "a light-footed, agile, nervous, yet prompt boy, with light-brown, slightly curling hair, blue eyes and an eye-glass, and ready to rise and speak with a