warrant. He never could retrieve that act. "Opportunity is bald behind." The day of President Taft's opportunity passed on August 5, 1909. The tide of popular government was running strong when he was inaugurated. He failed to take it at the flood, and all the voyage of his official life was "bound in shallows and in miseries."

1912-A STORY OF THREE CONVENTIONS

That peculiarly inelastic feature of the American Constitution which confers upon the president a popular dictatorship of four years, and then submits to a country-wide referendum the question of whether that dictatorship shall be renewed for a second four years or transferred to a rival candidate, inevitably focuses the attention of the government and the people upon the campaign of a "presidential year" to the neglect of other political business. While the administration in most of the European countries is doubly "responsible" to the people, in that its ministers are virtually a committee of the majority of the elected parliaments or chambers and can be changed at any time by a reversal of "confidence" in the chambers or an appeal to a general election, the sole American executive (the president) is neither beholden to Congress for his office nor responsible to Congress for his administration, nor, except for the remote contingency of impeachment for "treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors," is he removable during his four years' term. The power vested in the president to shape our policies, both domestic and foreign, by his unhampered choice of the heads of the executive departments, his enormous patronage, his sole initiative in diplomacy, and his supreme command of the military and naval forces of the United States, makes the high office a prize to be fought for in the quadrennial contest of the parties, even when no great issues are at stake. But in times of stress and crisis, when conflicting conceptions of national duty and honor are arrayed against one another, the destiny of the republic may depend upon the people's choice of a leader. Who can compute the consequences for our future history if

Thomas Jefferson had not won his fight for a democratic against an aristocratic republic in 1800? if Abraham Lincoln had been defeated in 1860 or repudiated in 1864? if Populism had triumphed with Bryan in 1896?

The issue in 1912 did not present a parallel to the cases just mentioned, for history, with its infinite variety and combination of factors, never "repeats itself." Neither the nation's credit nor the nation's existence was at stake. Nevertheless the crisis was fairly comparable to the Jeffersonian revolution of more than a century before. In both cases a movement for a more complete expression of the people's will in government, which had been gathering strength for a decade, came to the test with the doctrines and practices of a less democratic régime. In Jefferson's day it was a struggle for emancipation from the aristocratic control of "the rich, the well-born, and the able," who claimed the right to the offices of government as a "ruling class" set over the people by virtue of social eminence or even of divine decree. In 1912 it was a fight for the liberation of the government from the control of the big business interests, which, it was felt, were dictating legislation, stifling wholesome competition, and limiting the exercise of the talents of the people at large by an economic despotism quite as arbitrary and even more deplorable than the social despotism of the early years of the republic. For, as Roosevelt wrote to Sir Edward Grey, there was "something to be said for a great aristocracy which has furnished leaders for generations," but "absolutely nothing to be said for a government by a plutocracy-by men gifted with the 'money touch,' but with ideals which in their essence are merely those of so many glorified pawnbrokers."

At the opening of the presidential year the situation in the Republican party, which had been in power for four administrations, was as follows: The Taft supporters had little hope that their candidate could be reëlected, but they were determined to nominate him to prevent the party from falling into the hands of the Progressives, whom Taft in a speech before the Republican Club of New York described as "extremists who would hurry us into a condition which would find no parallel except in the

French Revolution or in that babbling anarchy that once characterized the South American republics." Senator La Follette was still the acknowledged candidate of the Progressives, although important leaders in the movement, like Garfield, the Pinchots, Gilson Gardner, and Medill McCormick, were turning to Roosevelt as the only man who could carry the ticket to victory. Roosevelt himself, as we have seen, was still protesting that he did not want the nomination, but at the same time he refused to declare that he would not accept it if it came "in the light of a duty" which he "could not shirk." The light broke in February, 1912. On the second of that month La Follette, who was under an exceptional physical and mental strain at the moment, made an interminable and incoherent speech at the banquet of the Periodical Publishers' Association at Philadelphia, which was seized upon as a proof that he had "collapsed mentally. Gifford Pinchot telegraphed on February 10 to the president of the Roosevelt Club in St. Paul, Minnesota, "In my judgment, La Follette's condition makes further serious candidacy impossible." On the same day a group of seven Republican governors and seventy other influential men of the party met at Chicago to boom Roosevelt's candidacy. The governors1 sent a joint letter to the colonel, urging him to sink his personal objections for the sake of "the happiness and prosperity of the country," and to respond to a "plain patriotic duty." "A large majority of the Republicans of the country," said the letter, "favor your nomination, and a large majority of the people favor your election as the next President of the United States." Roosevelt had not yet replied to the letter when President Taft made the attack on the Progressives mentioned a few lines above. That attack left Roosevelt no alternative to entering the fight. For it was not only the progressive ideas which he had been advocating in his speeches and writings that were scored by the President, but the progressive leaders themselves were referred to as "emotionalists" and "neurotics." "If Mr. Taft had de

1 They were Bass of New Hampshire, Hadley of Missouri, Osborn of Michigan, Carey of Wyoming, Glasscock of West Virginia, Stubbs of Kansas, and Aldrich of Nebraska.

signed to goad Roosevelt into acceptance of the proposal of the governors," says Bishop ("Theodore Roosevelt and his Time,” Vol. II, p. 317), "he could hardly have hit upon surer means." On February 24, Roosevelt wrote to the governors, "I will accept the nomination for the presidency if it is tendered to me, and I will adhere to this decision until the convention has expressed its preference." His "hat was in the ring."

Since thirteen of the states had the system of preferential presidential primaries in 1912, there was a hot pre-convention fight for delegates. It began in North Dakota on March 19 and ended (only a few days before the meeting of the convention) in South Dakota on June 4. The result was a great victory for Roosevelt. He carried Illinois by a majority of 138,400 over Taft, and Taft's own state of Ohio by 47,000. He won 67 of the 76 delegates from Pennsylvania. Nebraska, Oregon, California, New Jersey, Maryland, and South Dakota instructed their delegates for him. Of the 382 delegates to the convention from the states in which the primaries were held, Roosevelt received 278, Taft 68, and La Follette 36 (from Wisconsin and North Dakota). It was perfectly evident, then, that so far as the Republican voters of the country had a chance to express their choice for a candidate, Roosevelt was their choice.

In three fourths of the states, however, the delegates to the national convention were still chosen by the state conventions. It was here that the administration had the great advantage. This was notoriously true in the case of the solid Democratic South, where the Republican conventions represented "neither party, people, nor principles." President Taft had himself said in the winter of 1908 that the Republican remnant in the South was "no longer to be run for convention votes" as it had been since Mark Hanna's pre-convention campaign for McKinley in 1896. Yet that was exactly what was done in 1912, when the Southern delegates were absolutely necessary to Taft's renomination. In the convention of 1908 he had had 338 delegates from states which did not give him a single vote in the electoral college. These 338 were more than the combined delegation of New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Ohio, Massachusetts,

Indiana, and Iowa, from which states he received 167 of his 321 electoral votes. The same story was repeated in 1912. When the test came between the Taft candidate, Elihu Root, and the Roosevelt candidate, Governor McGovern of Wisconsin, for the temporary chairmanship in the Chicago convention (June 18), Root secured the delegates from Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and the other states south of Mason and Dixon's line, where the Republican organization was a "political sham," but won a majority in only four of the states of the North and West (New York, Michigan, Indiana, and Iowa). McGovern carried the Dakotas, Minnesota, Nebraska, and New Jersey solidly, with 24 of the 26 votes of California, 34 out of 38 from Ohio, 49 out of 58 from Illinois, 64 out of 76 from Pennsylvania, and so on. Mr. Root won the chairmanship by a vote of 558 to 502; but when he stepped to the front of the platform to make his "keynote speech," he was greeted with cries of "Receiver of stolen goods!"

The charge of theft referred not to the support of the Southern delegates, which was legitimate though grossly inequitable, but to the manipulation of the convention roll by the national committee. Every national convention, before its dissolution, chooses a committee consisting of a member from each of the states and territories (including the District of Columbia, Alaska, Porto Rico, Hawaii, and the Philippines) which holds over until the next convention, and represents the permanent organization of the party. It is the business of the committee to summon the new convention and to make up the temporary roll of delegates, which is confirmed by the convention's committee on credentials. The national committee, which met at Chicago ten days before the opening of the convention, had a single object in view, and that was to prevent the Progressives from getting a majority of the delegates. Of the fifty-three members of the committee, fifteen had been defeated in their contest for election to the convention, ten were representatives of Southern states which would not contribute a single vote to the Republican electoral column, and four were from territories that had no vote at all in the election. Thus a majority of the