Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1912-06-22
Copyright by Harris & Ewing.

deency a progressive candidate on
progressive platform, a candidate and
a platform that will enable us to appeal
to northerner and southerner. easterner
and westerner, republican and democrat
alike. in the name of our common Amer
lean citizenship If you wish me to
make the fight ! will make it, even if
only one state should support me. The
only condition | impose is that you
shall feel entirely free when you come
together to substitute any other man
In my place If you deem it better for
the movement, and in such case l will
give him by heartiest support.
Wherever In any state the republican
party is true to the principles of its
founders. and is genuinely the party of
| Justice and of progress l expect to see
II come bodily into the new movement,
Tor the convention that has just sat in
this city is in no proper sense of the
| word republican convention at all. 1t
does not represent the masses of the re-
cynical defiance of their wishes and 1t has
served the purpose only of a group of
sinister political bosses who have not one
SHADOW or sympathy with the spirit and
purpose of the republican party of fifty
years ago, and many of whom have used
the party merely as an adjunct to money
making, either for themselves or for the
great crooked financial interests which
they serve.
Compares Party's Founders.
The bosses who first stole enough dele
| gates to enable them to nominate this
convention, and then did their will in 1t,
| have no kinship of soul or spirit with
| the men who started the republican
party on Its career as an agent Of liberty
and justice. Imagine for yourselves how
Messrs. Barnes and Penrose and Guggen-
helm would have looked standing under
hn he 81
where the republican party was born
fifty-six years ago.
You. my friends. who are here before
| me. You are the heirs in the spirit of
Abraham Lincoln when he refused longer
| to be bound by the shackles of the past
and faced the new issues in the new
| spirit that the times demanded. But we
are more fortunate in one respect than
our predecessors. for we who now stand
for the progressive cause, the progressive
movement, have done forever with all
sectionalism and we make our appeal
| equally to the sons of the man who fought
under Grant, and to the sons of the man
who fought under Lee for the cause we
| champion is as emphatically the cause of
the south as it is the cause of the north
Il am in this fight for certain principles
and the first and most important of these
| goes back to Sinai. and is embodied in
| the comma ndment Thou shalt not steal ;
| Thou shalt not steal nomination Thou
| shalt neither steal in politics nor In bust
| ness. Thou shalt not steal from the
people the birthright Of the people to
rule themselves j hold, in the language
| of the kentucky court of appeals that
| Stealing is stealing. No people is wholly
| civilized where a distinction is drawn be-
| tween stealing an Office and stealing a
purse No truly honest man should be
| satisfied with an office to which his title
| is not as valid as that of the homestead
| which shelters his family.
interests Veto Primaries
| Il do not know whether our countrymen
fully realize the gravity of the crisis
which we this moment face. There is no
use in holding primaries. no use in hold
ing elections. If we permit a small group
of INSCRIPTIONS politicians, some OF
whom are certainly acting in the interests
Of big crooked business. to exercise the
veto power over these primaries and
elections by upsetting the results at their
| own pleasure. The convention which to-
= dav 6fCcrodita