Counting the Wilson and the Roosevelt
vote together, we find 10,412,000 votes were cast for Progressive
principles against 3,483,000 votes for the reactionary
Conservatives. And yet the gray wolves of the Republican Party,
and its Old Guard, and its Machine, proclaimed to the country
that its obsolescent doctrines represented the desires and the
ideals of the United States in 1912!
Although the campaign, as conducted by the Republicans, seemed
listless, it did not lack venom. Being a family fight between the
Taft men and the Roosevelt men, it had the bitterness which
family quarrels develop. Mr. Taft and most of his Secretaries had
known the methods of Mr. Roosevelt and his Ministers. They could
counter, therefore, charges of incompetence and indifference by
recalling the inconsistencies, or worse, of Roosevelt's regime.
When the Progressives charged the Taft Administration with being
easy on the Big Interests, Attorney-General Wickersham resorted
to a simple sum in arithmetic in order to contradict them,
showing that whereas Roosevelt began forty-four Anti-Trust suits,
and concluded only four important cases during his seven and a
half years in office, under Taft sixty-six new suits were begun
and many of the old ones were successfully concluded.
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