The Birmingham age-herald., 1912-04-04
TIME TO STOP ROOSEVELT

From the New York Sun.
 4 NY sensible friend of Colonel
 "A Roosevelt will tell him exactly 4 \ what we are going to tell him now.
 In the increasing vehemence of his rancor against President Taft, Colonel Roosevelt is laying himself open to the charge of reckless, persistent, conscious, systematic misrepresentation of the words of an honorable opponent. If Colonel Roosevelt keeps this up the last remnants of a reputation for candor will go to the winds of heaven. Look at his present per formance.
 Colonel Roosevelt is attempting to make his audiences believe that while he, Roose- welt, stands for government by the peo- pie, President Taft stands for govern ment by self constituted oligarchy, and that this is the issue to be decided by the contest for delegates to Chicago. To jus tify his asseveration that MT. Taft is against government by the whole people and in favor of government by limited or selected part of the people, an oligarchy, Colonel Roosevelt in his speeches and let teis and interviews and campaign bulle- tins, a dozen times a day, and some times a dozen times in a single address, fraudu- lently exhibits phrase used by President Taft at Toledo on March s, as follows:
 "It is thus apparent that ours is a gov ernment of all the people, by a represen- tative part of the people"
 Now. the context shows clearly what President Taft had in mind when he ut tered these words. He was merely stat ing the inevitable fact that as the wom- en and the children of this republic have no votes, and as the actual electorate is only about one-fourh of the total num- Der of those of both sexes and all ages whose rights and happiness the govern ment is intended to secure, ''the cleo torate Is a representative governing body for the whole people for whom the gov ernment was established, and the controll- ing majority of the electorate is a body still less numerous It is thus apparent that ours is a government of all the people by a representative part of the people,"
 This innocent and absolutely true state ment that ours IS SONtiHiicht ps o tNf resentative part of the people, that is' by the electorate, intsead of the entire body of men, women and children, Colonei Roosevelt consistently twists and distorts into seeming declaration by MT. Tart of lack of faith In popular government and of a desire that our goVerhiheh. should he a government by a represen- tative part. not merely of the whole peo- n,e but of the electorate itself; that IS to say. an oligarchy, class government Any man ought to be covered with shame when convicted of trick Ike that ine meanest of yellow journals bounding an .drsrsarv with a garbled quotation is no ,,,ore contemptible in the eyes of the com munity.
 Yet that is precisely what Colonel Roosevelt has been doing and is contin- ,,inp to do. Night before last at Detroit he rolled the cheap misrepresentation un- der his active tongue as if it were some thing delicious:
 .sThe Presidents theory or government by the people by what he calls a repre- sentative part of the people. Remember that Abraham Lincoln's statement was that we needed government of the peo- ple for the people, by the people, and that the proposed improvement is to have it government by a representative part of the people,.
 Tn practice, as have already said. this