Rock Island Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1893-1920, 1903-07-11
A STUMPING PRESIDENT
He Insists That He Says Only
Just What He Means.
PLEASE STAND UP, MR.. ROOSEVELT

How About Your Determination to
"Die For Free Trade P"-DO You still
Believe In Government by Injunc-
tiOn:-Are "Dissipated Cowboys"
Shanics by Your
think you will do me the justice
to say that do not say what do not
mean. never said anything off the
stump that I would not say on the
stump. So what I say now you can
take as sincere.-President Roosevelt
at Denison, Ia, June ..
Ho, no, Mr.. President, then you ad-
NIT that your two months swing
around the circle was stumping tour!
In view Of your article, written in 1900
and published in the Youths Compan-
ion last November, on the duties and
responsibilities of the president of the
United States, in which you said "there
are few harder tasks than that Of fill
ing we'll and ably" this high Office, do
you think it entirely proper for presi-
dent to leave his post for more than
two months at, a time TO stump the
country for his own denomination and
reelection? Had you presidential
stumping tours in mind when you said
that 'the president should be held to a
strict accountability alike for what he
does and for what he leaves undoner
Were you a sincere free trader when
you were a member of the New York
Free Trade club in the early eighties
and when you said that you would
die for free trader" If so how do you
explain your letter of resignation to
the secretary, Mr.. Poultney Bigelow,
written after you had decided to desert
the Independents, who had elected you
to the New York legislature, and when
you had decided to go over to the en-
envy, Platt and the professional poll
ticians," whom you were elected to
fight and against whom you expressed
great hatred? In this letter you said
it was the 'only way" you could hope
for political promotion and that any
way 81 am a Republican first, a free
trader afterward-"
Are you now willing to repeat your
free trade speeches on the stump? You
are now playing the Republican? When
will the free trade performance begin?
When the dying scene?
One year ago DR.. Schurman, one of
your good Republican friends, gave US
the campaign slogan for 1904 of the
three R's-Roosevelt, reciprocity and
revision" of tne-tarfff. If, as generally
supposed, DR.. Schurman then correct
" summarized your position on the
tariff, as gathered from your New Eng
land speeches, are you willing to repeat
those speeches now? If not, why not2
l. II, ho Ialx
lished statements that the protective
tariff league people changed" your
views when they informed you, Just
before you left Washington on April 1,
that if you did not cease to talk tariff
revision they would prevent your NOM
Ination2
Are you now willing, Mr.. President,
to say on the stump what you said Of
union workmen in the Review of Re-
views of September, 1896? You then
said: 1.-THE men who object to what
they style government by Injunction
are, as regards the essential principles
of government, in hearty sympathy
with their remote skin clad ancestors,
who lived in caves. fought one another
with stone headed axes and ate the
mammoth and woolly rhInoceros. They
are interesting as representing a geo
logical survival, but they are danger
GUS whenever there Is the least chance
of their making the principles of this
ages-buried past living factors in our
present life. They are not in sympathy
with men of good minds and sound
civic morality"
Why were you not repeating on. the
recent stumping tour what you say of
the farmers In your Ranch Life and
Hunting Trail2" You there say that,
although the cowboys and rough riders
might be 'broken by weeks of brutal
dissipation" yet "they are much better
fellows and pleasanter companions
than small farmers or agricultural la
borers. Nor are the mechanics and
workmen of a great city to be men
toned In the same breath"
If you will show your sincerity by
repeating on the stump what you have
said of free trade, of union working
men and farmers we will not ask you
about your sincerity as a civil service
refor1ner when you appointed Payne
and Clarkson to high offices, or If you
think 1t entirely proper for the presi-
dent, who every year must sign many
bills affecting the railroads, to ride in
private cars at the expense of these
same railroads.
words are good when backed by
deeds, and only So" Mr.. President, as
you said in one of pour speeches of last
July. BYRON w. HOLT.