Middlebury register. (Middlebury, Vt.) 1886-1937, 1910-10-07
What Roosevelt Has Done.

what Roosevelt Has Done
Something has happened Zone of the
most remarkable days in the history of
the American people" said an old line
republican to me last night. 1--WE have
seen what one mar can do. | think him
a wrecker; but / may be mistaken. He
may be a Moses that will lead the whole
American people into different
What are the facts? Aren't they that
one man in this State has sufficient cou
age to go into a State convention of his
own party and designate the grafters
and do-nothings therein? You and |
know why some men are in politics.
You and | could mention fifty politicians
of the same stripe in this one Empire
State who have lived most of their lives
without visible means of support.
If you cannot, | can.
1t was very late for the truth to come
out, but it was heard from the lips of
Theodore Roosevelt yesterday. 1t
doesn't matter that the spokesman for
the American people was an ex-Presi-
dent. The man who made this truthful
proclamation might have been you or |.
The era of the Indifferent, negligent
grating representative or senator
closed at Saratoga yesterday afternoon.
Napoleon, when told that the Alps
were an insuperable barrier to the
French invasion of Italy, said: There
will not be any Alps after the French
army crosses!'
From yesterday, onward, a man with
a negligible record never will be able to
appeal to the suffrages of an American
constituency.
That was a lesson of yesterday. And
without prejudice to any of the immor-
tai happenings in the past, never was
there a greater punishment.
The remainder of the incidents at Sar-
atoga are of small Importance. No
body, republican or democrat, cares
very much who is named for any of the
offices.
The momentous principle has been
won, namely, that star-chamber bosses
are dead.
Many of the readers do not agree with
the methods of the mar from Oyster
Bay. That is of nc Importance. Some
body had to do exactly what he has
done.
Until three years ago, when the
leaven began to work, this country was
ruled by a few men who managed a
score of imperial interests in this
L y L ~ q 5AOlC . viz
mark, but the absolute ''control' was
there. Some people saw it as far back
as 1884. But none of the wiseacres of
that period could get a hearing. They
were laughed out of that free Parlia-
ment in which every citizen of a repub-
lie should be heard. They were advised,
to mind their own business
Alasl Many congressman, so advised,
did as they were told.
There wasn't a days session of Con-
gress during the past ten years in which
n vigorous, leather-lunged representa-
tive mot misrepresentation could not
have got upon his feet and started the
agitation that has now come to its full
fruition.
Agitation in public life is like compe-
tition in commercial life. Without it
reform dies a natural life and trade
goes to the dogs.
There will always be bosses, just as
there will be feas and other insects.
Heroic treatment has eliminated the
mosquito from more than one million
square miles of United States territory.
The untactful conduct of Theodore
Roosevelt, in this practically single
handed warfare against corrupt methods
of his own party, will live in history.
He did not have to do what he has done.
He never wants to be President of the
United States again. Any man who es-
capes from two terms of that job alive
and with a creditable record may well
be satisfied with earthly achievement.
What Roosevelt ought to have learn
ed, pointed the way to the Saratoga
convention. Roosevelt practically asks.
do you follow me?"
The place is not the Bridge at Lodi
Roosevelt has not asked a single man il
. he expects ito live forever!' Those
who follow him believe in him; those
who do not will awake to the changed
political conditions that one earnest
!, man has brought about. Julius Cham.
bers in the Brooklyn Eagle, Dem.