Middlebury register. (Middlebury, Vt.) 1886-1937, 1912-07-12
ROOSEVELT PICKS MAJOR
ITY TO BITS.
dulent and Other Delegates,
He Allows Taft TO.

New York, July 4.-"Mr. Tafts ma
jority: An analysis" is the subject of an
editorial by Theodore Roosevelt, which
look. The writer says in part:
1.-THE Chicago Evening Post and the
Indianapolis Star were originally Taft
papers. They believed that the voters
ought to choose Mr.. Taft over me in
the primaries, and advocated their doing
so. But they also believed that the
voters themselves had the right to de-
eide. When the Taft managers in
Indiana stole the majority of the dele
gates for Mr.. Taft these papers mme-
diately protested, taking the same
attitude that another paper which had
favored Mr.. Taft, the Spokane Spoke
man Review, shortly afterwards took
in reference to the theft of the Wash
ington delegates.
1.-THE Chicago Evening Post on June
"a spoke of the Chicago convention as
follows:
"'In our judgment that nomination
|
was tainted nomination. There was
in it trickery and fraud. Stripped of it's
practical essentials, it was nomination
made by minority instead of a ma
jority. The miserable 20 votes above
the nominating point which the steam
roller drivers were able to muster fade
instantly away under scrutiny from any
standpoint Of representative determine
tion.
"When went into the contest for the
nomination was of course pitted against
very heavy odds. To start with Mr..
Taft had over two hundred and sixty
delegates from the Territories and from
States controlled by federal officeholders
in which there was no real Republican
party, and he thus began the contest
with nearly half the necessary number
of delegates to nominate him. In addi-
ton he had with him the votes of certain
purely boss-controlled states like New
York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Utah,
Wyoming and Colorado, where the
voters had no chance to express their
preference land where the leading
papers were controlled by the special
interests, so that the sources of general
information were choked and the truth
was sedulously hidden from the people. J
Adding these votes to the others, Mr..
Taft had nearly four hundred delegates
in whose selection the people had nc
say whatever.
Nevertheless we started in, making
our fight especially in the primary
States. In these States the rank and
file of the Republican voters had their
say instead of the politicians, and in
these States we beat Mr.. Taft on the
popular vote over two to one in total
vote of three million, or whereabouts,
and in delegates beat him very nearly
in the proportion of seven to one.
$50 overwhelming was our victory in
the States where the people had even a
partial chance to express themselves in
primaries that we overcame Mr.. Taft 6
nearly solid vote from the rotten-borough
States and among the boss-picked dele
gates, and obtained clear majority of
all the delegates elected to the CONVEX
ton, that is, about five hundred and
sixty delegates. By Mr.. Taft's direc-
ton and connivance, and under the per-
sonal supervision of his private secre-
tary and one member of his cabinet,
Messrs. Barnes, Penrose, Guggenheim,
Crane, Franklin, Murphy, and Mr..
Taft's other heutenants proceeded to
steal from the people enough delegates
fraudulently to convert my majority
into minority.
1.-THE nominating vote for Mr.. Taft
was SCI, being 81 beyond the majority
necessary to nominate him. From these
81 the first to be substracted are two
votes which the chairman, Mr.. Root, in