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ADDRESS OF HON. THEODORE ROOSEVELT DELIVERED AT BOSTON, MASS. SATURDAY, APRIL 27, 1912
PRESENTED BY MR. REED April 29, 1912.--Ordered to be printed
WASHINGTON GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 1912
ADDRESS OF HON. THEODORE ROOSEVELT.
PRINCIPLES, NOT PERSONALITIES, AT STAKE.
My friends and fellow citizens, men and women of Massachusetts, men and women of Boston, I am glad indeed to be in your old historic State, your old historic city, this evening to plead for a cause which is preeminently the cause for which Massachusetts has stood throughout her existence as a colony and as a Commonwealth. And friends--friends, I shall make my appeal to you in the name of every man and every principle for whom and for which Massachusetts has stood in the heroic days of the past.
Now, friends, last night I felt obliged to answer at length the attacks made upon me by Mr. Taft, but I do not wish this contest to be put upon the basis of a contest of personalities between myself and Mr. Taft, and to-night I shall only allude to Mr. Taft just as far as it is necessary for me in order to illustrate the principles for which he and I respectively stand.
FIGHTING FOR EVERY GOOD CITIZEN.
And those allusions I shall make right at the outset, so that I can get down to the part of my speech in which I shall strive, however feebly, to put before you the principles which I think are at stake in this contest. For mind you, friends, I hold that this is infinitely more than a mere faction fight in the Republican Party. I hold that this is infinitely more than any ordinary party contest, for I claim that we who stand for the principles of progressive Republicanism --that we who stand for making the principles of Abraham Lincoln living principles applied to the living issues of to-day--I hold that we are fighting not only for every good Republican, but for every good citizen in the United States, whoever he may be.
And now at the outset, to dispose of the only matters that I have to take up in connection with Mr. Taft, I am more fortunate than Mr. Taft in my friends.
WILLING TO LOSE WITH A GOOD MAN.
When Mr. Taft came here on Thursday and I came here on Friday, Mr. Taft came here having lost the State of Illinois; I came here having lost the State of New Hampshire. In Illinois Mr. Taft's chief lieutenant had been Mr. Lorimer. In New Hampshire my chief supporter, chief lieutenant, had been Gov. Bass.
And Mr. Taft came here to explain that he didn't like Mr. Lorimer , having kept his dislike strictly private and confidential until Mr. Lorimer lost out in Illinois.
And I came here to say that, win or lose, I am with Gov. Bass every time, and that I count it the highest privilege to have had him as my champion, and I would rather lose with him than win with the forces allied against me.
FOUGHT LORIMER IN ILLINOIS.
Now, just one more moment about Mr. Lorimer.
I know his record well. Mr. Taft was originally, a year and a quarter ago, against Mr. Lorimer, and at that time he requested me not to assault Mr. Lorimer in public for fear it would help Mr. Lorimer.
And accordingly I kept quiet for several months, until I became convinced that the assault against Mr. Lorimer was going on with such excessive secrecy that neither Mr. Lorimer nor any of his friends knew that there was an assault at all. And then I took up the cudgels that I had dropped and I attacked Mr. Lorimer again. And I didn't attack him in Massachusetts after the Illinois primary; I attacked him in Illinois before the Illinois primary. I was informed before I went there that I ought not to attack Mr. Lorimer because he had many friends, some of whom "intended to vote for me," and that I would alienate their support. And I answered to them that I would rather lose every delegate in Illinois than by silence connive at the wickedness of which Mr. Lorimer had been guilty.
And I fought it out fair and square on that issue from one end of Illinois to the other. And I won.
And I got every delegate in Illinois excepting two, the two from the district which Mr. Lorimer carries in his waistcoat pocket, and those two are for Mr. Taft. And, friends, it would not have been possible for me to have supported Mr. Lorimer at all--to have acquiesced in his support of me; but if it had been, and I had been going to repudiate him, I would have repudiated him before the Illinois primary and not afterwards.
THE MAN FOR THE BOSSES.
I have got a couple of columns arranged parallel here, one containing a dozen of my representative supporters and the other containing the dozen foremost supporters of Mr. Taft.
Perkins? He is for me. You can't--I will tell you. Wait a minute. You can't put a question to me that it will embarrass me to answer for one moment.
RECORD IS OPEN TO ALL.
Wait a moment. I know that kind well. And you can guarantee that any supporter of mine comes out in the open and supports me. And you can guarantee also that after he has supported me, and I have accepted his support, I won't repudiate him afterwards.
And finally, you can guarantee this, that you can search from the top to the bottom of my record in the past and of my record in the future and you will never find that I have done or am doing or ever shall do for Mr. Perkins or for any other human being --wait a minute--or for any other human being one thing that I wouldn't tell to this audience in its entire details.
Not a bit. I am glad to have him stay in. Don't put him out.
HISSES ON THE BOSSES.
And now I have given you the names of my supporters. Here are the names of a dozen representative supporters of Mr. Taft: Senator Lorimer , Senator Penrose , Senator Gallinger , Senator Guggenheim , Senator Aldrich , Senator Stephenson , Mr. Kealing of Indiana , Mr. Barnes of New York , Mr. Cox of Ohio , Mr. Cannon , Mr. Ballinger , and finally, to balance Frank Heney in California, Mr. Patrick Calhoun , whom Frank Heney tried to put into the penitentiary.
Now, friends, Mr. Taft has said that I have accepted the support of bosses. So I have, when they went my way; but I never went their way. Either they had to go my way or we parted company.
Understand me, friends, and make no thought of Mr. Taft. I think he means well, but he means feebly, and he is surrounded by men who are neither well meaning nor feeble.
And now, friends, that is all I have got to say of the personalities in this contest. I have not been interested in them in any shape or way. I have no personal feeling whatever in the matter. I will support any man as long as that man renders service to the people of the United States. And when he ceases rendering service I shall cease to support him.
APPEAL TO THE PATRIOTS.
And now, friends, to you men and women of Massachusetts, I wish to make as strong an appeal as I know how. I come from another State. I have no New England blood in me, but nine-tenths of the men in our nation's past to whom I have looked up most have been men of New England blood. And I ask Massachusetts now to stand as Massachusetts has ever stood, to stand in the van of the forward movement and not to be dragged reluctantly onward behind the other States that go forward.
Massachusetts stood by Abraham Lincoln. Massachusetts gave her mighty support to the rail splitter from Illinois when he announced as his cardinal doctrines the right of the people to rule, and their good sense which would so guide them as to bring nearer the day when social and industrial justice should prevail in this Republic of ours.
THE REAL KIND OF FIGHT.
And I ask Massachusetts to support us in this campaign, not because it is easy, but because it is hard. I appeal to you because this is the only kind of a fight worth going into, the kind of fight where the victory is worth winning and where the struggle is difficult.
Here in Massachusetts, as elsewhere, we have against us the enormous preponderance of the forces that win victory in ordinary political contests.
We have against us 95 per cent of the old regular political leaders. We have against us 95 per cent of the great corporations, which either legitimately fear that we would not tolerate their benefiting by privilege or else which are merely panic-struck and fail to realize that we will do absolute justice--just as much justice to the big man as the little man, but no more.
SILK STOCKINGS AGAINST HIM.
Friends, we have against us also, I am sorry to say, 95 per cent of the respectable, amiable, silk-stocking vote.
And it is amusing to see how exactly the conditions now parallel the conditions 55 years ago, when Abraham Lincoln was making his fight for the Union and for freedom.
After his defeat by Douglas in 1858, in November of that year, he wrote a letter to a friend, dating the letter at Springfield, Ill. It's a letter I should like to have framed at this moment in every house in the Back Bay. He said:
In the late contest we had with us a considerable proportion of the plain Democracy, but we lost almost all the old silk stocking, exclusive Whigery. I do not mean that we lost all the Whigs, but only those of the nice, exclusive, silk-stocking type.
Now that was written by Abraham Lincoln 54 years ago, and it has just happened in your own city, and in mine, and in the country generally at the present moment.
In consequence, friends, we have against us the money; we have against us the politicians; we have against us every newspaper that can be reached or controlled by the money power ; we have against us the timid silk-stocking element--understand, not the silk-stocking man who feels competent to hold his own in the turmoil of actual life, not the silk-stocking man who is content to go out into the world and take his chances as any other man takes his.
We have got that man with us. We have got that man with us. We have against us only the silk-stocking man who is not quite confident enough in himself to believe in himself, who is not quite confident enough in himself to believe that he can hold his own with the rest of his fellow-Americans without advantage on his part.
We have these men that I have spoken of against us, and we have not got anybody with us except the people. And on next Tuesday I want the people--I want you--to go to the polls and vote the same way you shout.
In Massachusetts, as in Illinois, and as in most other States this year, it is such a contest in the civic field as you saw in the military field in 1775 and 1776.
It is a contest between the Minute Men and the mercenaries. . And I want to show that in civic life you are competent to do the work that your forefathers have done; done with honor in the past.
LOWELL'S PROPHECY.
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