Latest / Labor and Freedom / 009 - Roosevelt and His Regime

Transcript

009 - Roosevelt and His Regime · Labor and Freedom

0:00
Speaker 1: Roosevelt and his regime by Eugene V. Debs. This LibriVox
0:05
Speaker 1: recording is in the public domain. Appeal to Reason, April twentieth,
0:12
Speaker 1: nineteen o seven. The only time in my life I
0:16
Speaker 1: ever saw Theodore Roosevelt was years before he became President
0:20
Speaker 1: of the United States. I was aboard of a train
0:24
Speaker 1: in the far West, where Roosevelt was then said to
0:27
Speaker 1: be following ranch life, and as he and several companions
0:30
Speaker 1: in cowboy costume entered the car at a station stop,
0:34
Speaker 1: he was pointed out to me I did not like him.
0:38
Speaker 1: The years since have not altered that feeling of aversion,
0:41
Speaker 1: except to accentuate it. I have since seen the nation
0:46
Speaker 1: mad with hero worship over this man, Roosevelt, but I
0:49
Speaker 1: have not been impressed by it. The very great men
0:53
Speaker 1: sometimes shrivel into very small ones and finally vanish an
0:57
Speaker 1: oblivion in the short space of a singeration. The American
1:02
Speaker 1: people are more idolatrous than any heathen nation on earth.
1:06
Speaker 1: They worship their popular heroes while they last, with passionate frenzy,
1:11
Speaker 1: and with equal madness do they hunt down the sane
1:14
Speaker 1: fools who vainly try to teach them. Since Theodore Roosevelt
1:20
Speaker 1: and George Dewey as heroes, and Wendell Phillips and John
1:23
Speaker 1: Brown as fools are notable illustrations. American history is filled
1:29
Speaker 1: with them. But my personal dislike of the cowboy in
1:33
Speaker 1: imitation who has since become president, however justifiable, would scarcely
1:38
Speaker 1: warrant a public attack upon his official character. And this review,
1:42
Speaker 1: being of such a nature, is inspired as will appear
1:46
Speaker 1: by entirely different motives. There are those, and they constitute
1:51
Speaker 1: a great majority of the American people, who stand in
1:54
Speaker 1: awe of their President, supposedly their servant, but in fact
1:59
Speaker 1: their masses. They speak of him with a kind of
2:03
Speaker 1: reverential adulation, as a lordly personage, a superior being to
2:07
Speaker 1: be looked up to and worshiped, rather than a fellow
2:11
Speaker 1: man to be respected and loved. There are those who
2:14
Speaker 1: betray equal ignorance in a more vulgar fashion, by coarse tirades,
2:19
Speaker 1: for which there is often as little excuse as there
2:22
Speaker 1: is for extreme adulation. Regarding the President of the United States,
2:27
Speaker 1: as I do simply as a citizen and fellow man,
2:30
Speaker 1: the same as any other, I shall speak of him
2:33
Speaker 1: and his acts free alike from awe and malice. And
2:36
Speaker 1: if I place him in the public pillory, where he
2:39
Speaker 1: has placed so many others, to be seen and despised
2:42
Speaker 1: of men, it will be from a sense that his
2:45
Speaker 1: official acts, so often in flat denial of his profession,
2:49
Speaker 1: merit the execration of honest men. In a reigning President
2:53
Speaker 1: Roosevelt in his administration, I have no private spite nor
2:57
Speaker 1: personal grudge to satisfy, but an obligation to redeem and
3:02
Speaker 1: a principle to vindicate. I shall go about it as
3:05
Speaker 1: I would any other moral duty, asking no favors, and
3:09
Speaker 1: prepare to accept all consequences. In the first place, I
3:14
Speaker 1: charge President Roosevelt with being a hypocrite, the most consummate
3:18
Speaker 1: that ever occupied the executive seat of the nation. His
3:21
Speaker 1: profession of pure politics is false, his boasted moral courage
3:26
Speaker 1: the bluff of a bully, and his square deal a
3:29
Speaker 1: delusion and a sham. Theodore Roosevelt is mainly for Theodore Roosevelt,
3:35
Speaker 1: and incidentally for such others as are also for the
3:38
Speaker 1: same distinguished gentleman, first last, and all the same. He
3:42
Speaker 1: is a smooth and slippery politician, swollen purple with self conceit.
3:48
Speaker 1: He is shrewd enough to gauge the stupidity of the masses,
3:51
Speaker 1: and unscrupulous enough to turn it into hero worship. This
3:56
Speaker 1: constitutes the demagogue, and he is that in superlative to dear.
4:01
Speaker 1: Only a few days ago he appeared in a characteristic role,
4:05
Speaker 1: rushing into the limelight as necessary to him as breath.
4:09
Speaker 1: He shrieked that he and Root were horrified because of
4:13
Speaker 1: certain scandalous and revolting charges made by one of his
4:17
Speaker 1: own former political chums. Of course, he and Root of
4:21
Speaker 1: Tweed fame, the foxiest fixer of the mall, were horrified
4:26
Speaker 1: because of the shock to their political virtue. But it
4:29
Speaker 1: so happened that the horror took effect only when they
4:32
Speaker 1: found themselves uncovered. The taking of Harriman's boodle for corruptly
4:37
Speaker 1: electing him president, and the use of his stolen insurance
4:40
Speaker 1: funds for the same criminal purpose did not horrify the
4:44
Speaker 1: President and Root, nor would they be horrified yet if
4:48
Speaker 1: they had not been caught red handed in the act
4:50
Speaker 1: with the booty upon their persons. The cry of the
4:54
Speaker 1: exposed malefactor and all his pack of yelpers that he
4:58
Speaker 1: is the victim of a plot by his own friends
5:01
Speaker 1: and supporters. The very gentleman who furnished him with free
5:05
Speaker 1: special trains, paid his campaign expenses, and in fact bought
5:10
Speaker 1: the presidency for him, is so palpably false as to
5:14
Speaker 1: be absolutely ridiculous, and only brings into bolder relief the
5:19
Speaker 1: hypocrisy and fraud it was designed to conceal. This much
5:24
Speaker 1: is preliminary to the extraordinary official conduct of the President,
5:27
Speaker 1: which has horrified not only its victims but millions of others,
5:31
Speaker 1: and now prompts this review and protest. Something over a
5:37
Speaker 1: year ago, Charles Moyer, William Heywood, and George pettibone of
5:42
Speaker 1: Colorado leading officials of the Western Federation of Miners, were
5:46
Speaker 1: overpowered and kidnapped by a gang of thugs and torn
5:50
Speaker 1: from their families at night by conspiracy of two degenerate
5:54
Speaker 1: governors and another notorious criminal acting for the Mine and
5:58
Speaker 1: Smelter Trust, one of the most stupendous aggregations of force
6:02
Speaker 1: and plunder in all America. Every decent man and woman
6:06
Speaker 1: was horrified by this infamy, and the whole working class
6:10
Speaker 1: of the nation cried out against it. Was Roosevelt also horrified, yes,
6:16
Speaker 1: because the Mine and Smelter Trust had kidnapped three citizens
6:19
Speaker 1: of the Republic. Oh No, the three citizens were only
6:24
Speaker 1: working cattle, and he never had any other conception of them.
6:28
Speaker 1: He was horrified because the Mine and Smelter Trust, unclean
6:32
Speaker 1: birds that feather their nests, especially in Colorado with legislatures
6:37
Speaker 1: and United States senatorships, had not killed instead of kidnapping
6:41
Speaker 1: their victims. Then and there Theodore Roosevelt disgraced himself in
6:46
Speaker 1: his high office, and his cruel and cowardly act will
6:50
Speaker 1: load his name with odium as long as it is remembered.
6:54
Speaker 1: The Mine and Smelter Trust had put up the funds
6:57
Speaker 1: and used its vast machinery for Rosevelt, and now Roosevelt
7:02
Speaker 1: must serve it, even to the extent of upholding criminals,
7:05
Speaker 1: approving kidnapping and murdering its helpless victims. When Roosevelt stepped
7:12
Speaker 1: out of the White House and called Moyer, Haywood, and
7:15
Speaker 1: Pettibone murderers, men he had never seen and did not know,
7:19
Speaker 1: men who had never been tried, never convicted, and whom
7:24
Speaker 1: every law of the land presumed innocent until proven guilty,
7:28
Speaker 1: he fell a million miles beneath where Lincoln stood, and
7:32
Speaker 1: there he grovels today with his political crimes, one after another,
7:37
Speaker 1: finding him out and pointing at him their accusing fingers.
7:42
Speaker 1: No president of the United States has ever descended to
7:45
Speaker 1: such depths as has Roosevelt to serve his law, defying
7:49
Speaker 1: in crime and citing masters. The act is simply scandalous
7:54
Speaker 1: and without a parallel in American history. What right has
7:58
Speaker 1: Theodore Roosevelt to pre judge American citizens, pronounce their guilt
8:03
Speaker 1: and hand them over to the hangman In a petaphlogging lawyer.
8:07
Speaker 1: Such an act would be infamous. In the president of
8:10
Speaker 1: the nation, it becomes monstrous and staggers belief. All that
8:15
Speaker 1: Roosevelt knows about Moyer, Haywood, and Petabone he knows from
8:19
Speaker 1: his friends their kidnappers. The millions of working men and
8:23
Speaker 1: women embracing practically every labor union in America count for
8:28
Speaker 1: nothing with him. He is not now standing for their votes.
8:33
Speaker 1: He is fulfilling his obligation to the gentleman who put
8:36
Speaker 1: up the coin that elected him, paying off the mortgage
8:40
Speaker 1: they hold upon his administration. Theodore Roosevelt is swift to
8:45
Speaker 1: brand other men who even venture to disagree with him
8:48
Speaker 1: as liars. He, according to himself, is immaculate and infallible.
8:54
Speaker 1: The greatest liar is he who sees only liars and others.
8:58
Speaker 1: When Theodore Roosevelt, President of the United States, denounced Charles Moyer,
9:04
Speaker 1: William Heywood, and George Pettibone as murderers, he uttered a
9:08
Speaker 1: lie as black and damnable, a calumny as foul and
9:12
Speaker 1: atrocious as ever issued from a human throat. The men
9:16
Speaker 1: he thus traduced and vilified, sitting in their prison cells,
9:20
Speaker 1: for having dutifully served their fellow workers and having spurned
9:24
Speaker 1: the bribes of their masters, transcend immeasurably the man in
9:29
Speaker 1: the White House, who, with the cruel malevolence of a barbarian,
9:33
Speaker 1: has pronounced their doom a thousand times. Rather would I
9:37
Speaker 1: be one of those men in Ada County jail than
9:40
Speaker 1: Theodore Roosevelt in the White House at Washington. Had these
9:45
Speaker 1: men accepted with but a shadow of the eagerness Roosevelt
9:48
Speaker 1: displayed the debauching funds of the Trust pirates, they would
9:53
Speaker 1: not now languish in felon cells. The same brazen robbers
9:57
Speaker 1: of the people and corruptors of the body. Poula who
10:00
Speaker 1: put Moyer, Haywood, and Petabone in jail also put Theodore
10:04
Speaker 1: Roosevelt in the White House. This accounts for his prostituting
10:09
Speaker 1: the high office Lincoln honored, and resorting to methods that
10:13
Speaker 1: would shame a Bowery ward healer. Moyer, Heywood and Petabone
10:18
Speaker 1: are not murderers. It is a ghastly lie, and I
10:22
Speaker 1: denounce it in the name of law and in the
10:25
Speaker 1: name of justice. I know these men, these sons of toil.
10:30
Speaker 1: I know their hearts, their guileless nature, and their rugged honesty.
10:35
Speaker 1: I love and honor them, and shall fight for them
10:37
Speaker 1: while there is breath in my body. Here and now.
10:41
Speaker 1: I challenge Theodore Roosevelt. He is guilty of high crimes
10:45
Speaker 1: and deserves impeachment. Let him do his worst. I denounce
10:50
Speaker 1: him and defy him. During my recent visit at Washington,
10:55
Speaker 1: I learned from those who know him what they think
10:57
Speaker 1: of Roosevelt. Among newspaper he is literally despised. Their true
11:03
Speaker 1: feeling is not apparent in what they write, for they
11:05
Speaker 1: know that the slightest offense to the president is lesse
11:08
Speaker 1: magistae and means instantaneous decapitation. For the second time, Theodore Roosevelt,
11:15
Speaker 1: President of the United States, has now publicly convicted Moyer Haywood,
11:20
Speaker 1: and Petabone. He has not pronounced condemnation upon Harry Thaw
11:24
Speaker 1: or any rich man charged with murder. He has, however,
11:28
Speaker 1: made a postmaster of a man at Chicago charged by
11:32
Speaker 1: the Chicago Tribune with having shot another man in a
11:34
Speaker 1: midnight brawl over disreputable women, and then used his influence
11:39
Speaker 1: to make the same man mayor of that city. Moyer, Haywood,
11:44
Speaker 1: and Petabone, the three working men kidnapped by the Mine
11:48
Speaker 1: and Smelter Trust, have now been in jail fourteen months.
11:53
Speaker 1: They have not been tried but twice condemned by President Roosevelt,
11:57
Speaker 1: the last time but a few days ago, in connection
12:00
Speaker 1: with Harriman, his former political power and financial backer. These
12:05
Speaker 1: men are in prison cells, their bodies and manacles, and
12:09
Speaker 1: their lips sealed. They cannot speak for themselves. They are
12:13
Speaker 1: voiceless and at the mercy of calumny, no matter how
12:17
Speaker 1: grossly outraged they must submit. For a man, clothed with
12:22
Speaker 1: the almost absolute power of a president, to strike down
12:26
Speaker 1: men gagged and bound as these men are, he must
12:30
Speaker 1: have an unspeakably brutal and cowardly nature, Just such a
12:34
Speaker 1: nature as the governor of an empire state must have
12:38
Speaker 1: to turn a deaf ear to the agonizing entreaties of
12:41
Speaker 1: a shrieking, shuddering woman and see her dragged into the
12:45
Speaker 1: horrors of electrocution. The true character of this man is
12:49
Speaker 1: being gradually revealed to the American people. He has never
12:54
Speaker 1: been anything but an enemy of the working class. He
12:57
Speaker 1: joined a labor organization poorly as a demagogue. In all
13:02
Speaker 1: his life he never associated with working people. His writings
13:06
Speaker 1: before he became a politician show that he held them
13:09
Speaker 1: in contempt. When he entered political life, he soon learned
13:13
Speaker 1: how to shake hands with a fireman for the camera
13:15
Speaker 1: and have his press agent to the rest. And it
13:18
Speaker 1: was this species of demagogery, the very basis conceivable, that
13:23
Speaker 1: idolized him with the ignorant mass and gave him the
13:26
Speaker 1: voice of the millions he in his heart despised as
13:30
Speaker 1: an inferior race. In his book on Ranch Life and
13:34
Speaker 1: the Hunting Trail, page ten, written long before he entered politics,
13:39
Speaker 1: Roosevelt revealed his innate contempt for those who toil after
13:44
Speaker 1: describing cowboys when drunk on the villainous whiskey of the
13:48
Speaker 1: frontier towns. He closes with this comparison, which needs no comment.
13:54
Speaker 1: They are much better fellows and pleasanter companions than small
13:57
Speaker 1: farmers or agricultural laborers. Nor are the mechanics and workmen
14:01
Speaker 1: of a great city to be mentioned in the same breath.
14:05
Speaker 1: The pretended friendship for the great body of working men,
14:08
Speaker 1: who are not to be compared to drunken cowboys, has
14:12
Speaker 1: served as stemagogical purpose, But the final chapter is not
14:16
Speaker 1: yet written. There will be an awakening, and every official
14:20
Speaker 1: act of Theodore Roosevelt will be subjected to its searching scrutiny.
14:25
Speaker 1: He has always been on the side of capital wholly,
14:28
Speaker 1: while pretending the impossible feat of serving both capital and
14:32
Speaker 1: labour with equal fidelity, and only the deplorable ignorance of
14:36
Speaker 1: his dupes has applauded him in that hypocritical role. The
14:40
Speaker 1: Anthracite miners or their children at least, will someday know
14:44
Speaker 1: that it was President Theodore Roosevelt who handed them over
14:48
Speaker 1: to the Coal Trust with a gold brick for a
14:50
Speaker 1: souvenir labeled arbitration. Theodore Roosevelt is an aristocrat and an autocrat.
14:57
Speaker 1: His affected democracy is spurious and easily detected. He belongs
15:02
Speaker 1: to the upper crust, and at the very best. He
15:05
Speaker 1: can conceive of the working class only as contented wage slaves,
15:10
Speaker 1: And no one knows better than he how easily these
15:13
Speaker 1: slaves are duped, and how madly they will cheer and
15:16
Speaker 1: follow a cheap and showy hero. The simple fact is
15:21
Speaker 1: that Theodore Roosevelt was made president by the industrial captains
15:26
Speaker 1: and the robbers in general of the working class. They
15:30
Speaker 1: picked him for a winner, and he has not failed them.
15:33
Speaker 1: Elected by the trusts and surrounded by trust attorneys as
15:37
Speaker 1: cabinet advisors, Roosevelt is essentially the monarch of a trust administration.
15:43
Speaker 1: If this be denied, Roosevelt is challenged to answer if
15:47
Speaker 1: it was not the railroad Trust that furnished him gratuitously
15:51
Speaker 1: with the special trains that bore him in royal splendor
15:54
Speaker 1: over all the railways of the nation. He is challenged
15:58
Speaker 1: to publish the list of contributors to his political sewer funds,
16:02
Speaker 1: amounting to millions of dollars and freely used to buy
16:06
Speaker 1: the votes that made him president. Did or did not
16:10
Speaker 1: the men known as trust magnets put up his boodle
16:14
Speaker 1: boodle drawn from the veins of labor. Will mister Roosevelt
16:18
Speaker 1: deny it? Did he not know at the time that
16:22
Speaker 1: his man Cordelieu was holding up the trusts for all
16:25
Speaker 1: they would cough up for his election. Will he dare
16:29
Speaker 1: plead ignorance to intelligent persons as to who put up
16:32
Speaker 1: the money that debauched the voters of the nation. Is
16:36
Speaker 1: it true that a spasm of virtuous indignation seized him
16:40
Speaker 1: when he found that the trust had slipped the lucre
16:42
Speaker 1: into his slush funds when he was not looking. But
16:46
Speaker 1: this was only after he saw the people looking behind
16:48
Speaker 1: the curtain. Then he bounded to the floor lights and
16:52
Speaker 1: denounced Alton B. Parker as a liar for charging that
16:56
Speaker 1: the Trust were furnishing the boodle to make him president.
17:00
Speaker 1: But no man not feeble minded was deceived as to
17:03
Speaker 1: who was the liar. Read the Washington Press Dispatch. In
17:07
Speaker 1: the Kansas City Journal of April fourth, it was declared
17:11
Speaker 1: in banking circles that light could be shed on the
17:13
Speaker 1: question of campaign contributions in nineteen o four if the
17:17
Speaker 1: books of the National Republican Committee were thrown open. The
17:21
Speaker 1: books will not be thrown open. Roosevelt will not allow it.
17:25
Speaker 1: He knows they contain the damning evidence of his guilt.
17:29
Speaker 1: The case is clearly stated in the platform of the
17:32
Speaker 1: Democratic State Convention of Missouri, adopted in nineteen o six,
17:36
Speaker 1: which reads as follows. We believe Theodore Roosevelt insincere pretending
17:42
Speaker 1: to inveigh against the crimes of trusts and corporations. He
17:45
Speaker 1: openly defended Paul Morton when, as manager of the Santa
17:48
Speaker 1: Fe Railroad he was compelled to confess enormous rebates to
17:52
Speaker 1: the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company. It was Roosevelt who
17:55
Speaker 1: advanced the pernicious doctrine that you must punish the corporation,
17:58
Speaker 1: not its officials, who cause it to commit crime. It
18:02
Speaker 1: was Roosevelt who denounced large campaign contributions while his Secretary
18:06
Speaker 1: of Commerce and Labour was fleecing the corporations out of
18:09
Speaker 1: one of the biggest slush funds ever known in the
18:12
Speaker 1: history of American politics. President Roosevelt may shout liar until
18:17
Speaker 1: he turns as black in the face, as are the
18:19
Speaker 1: cracksmen at heart who burglarized the safes of the New
18:22
Speaker 1: York insurance companies to land him in the White House.
18:26
Speaker 1: While he was toying with the names of Jimmy Hyde
18:29
Speaker 1: and Chauncey Depew as pawns in the corrupt game. But
18:33
Speaker 1: the damned spot will not out until the whole truth
18:36
Speaker 1: is known and the whole crime expiated. The publication of
18:41
Speaker 1: the Roosevelt Herreman correspondence places the President in his true
18:45
Speaker 1: colors before the American people. It explains his hot haste
18:49
Speaker 1: in condemning Moyer, Haywood, and Pettibone to the gallows, and
18:53
Speaker 1: sending Tafft to Idaho to assure the smelter trust and
18:56
Speaker 1: warn the protesting people that the kidnapping of the workingmen
19:00
Speaker 1: was sanctioned by the White House and would have the
19:02
Speaker 1: support of the national administration. A more shameful perversion of
19:08
Speaker 1: the public power never blackened the pages of history. This
19:12
Speaker 1: national scandal shows up the President's two faced character so
19:16
Speaker 1: clearly and convincingly that it leaves not so much as
19:19
Speaker 1: a pinhole for escape. It is a damning indictment of
19:22
Speaker 1: not only the President, but the whole brood of plutocrats, promoters,
19:27
Speaker 1: and grafting politicians who have been looting this nation for years.
19:31
Speaker 1: There is one among these illuminating epistles which I want
19:35
Speaker 1: to burn in the minds of the working class dupes
19:38
Speaker 1: who have been bowing in the dust before this blustering
19:41
Speaker 1: bully of the White House Personal October one, nineteen o four.
19:46
Speaker 1: My dear mister Harriman, a suggestion has come to me
19:49
Speaker 1: in a roundabout way that you do not think it
19:51
Speaker 1: wise to come to see me in these closing weeks
19:54
Speaker 1: of the campaign, but that you are reluctant to refuse,
19:57
Speaker 1: inasmuch as I have asked you now, My dear sir,
20:00
Speaker 1: you and I are practical men, and you are on
20:02
Speaker 1: the ground and know the conditions better than I do.
20:05
Speaker 1: If you think there is any danger of your visit
20:07
Speaker 1: to me causing trouble, or if you think there is
20:09
Speaker 1: nothing special I should be informed about, or any matter
20:12
Speaker 1: in which I could give aid, why of course, give
20:15
Speaker 1: up the visit for the time being, And then a
20:18
Speaker 1: few weeks hence, before I write my message, I shall
20:21
Speaker 1: get you to come down to discuss certain government matters
20:23
Speaker 1: not connected with the campaign. With great regards, sincerely, yours,
20:28
Speaker 1: Theodore Roosevelt does not this brand the president with the
20:33
Speaker 1: duplicity of a tweed and the cunning of a quay.
20:37
Speaker 1: Would a president who is honest with the people clandestinely
20:40
Speaker 1: consort with the villain he characterizes as a liar and
20:44
Speaker 1: all that is vicious. The disclosure made, and the secret
20:48
Speaker 1: correspondent stripped the President of the last shred of deception
20:51
Speaker 1: with which to cloak his perfidy. The mask is lifted
20:55
Speaker 1: and the exposure is complete. It is in the President's
20:59
Speaker 1: own handwriter, in a letter to Harriman, that would never
21:02
Speaker 1: have seen the light had not circumstances forced it upon
21:05
Speaker 1: the attention of a betrayed people. It is adroitly phrased,
21:10
Speaker 1: but its meaning is not in doubt. He knew Harriman then,
21:14
Speaker 1: as he knows him now, wanted his boodle, and insinuatingly
21:18
Speaker 1: coaxed him to sneak to the White House when no
21:21
Speaker 1: one was looking. And only after he was discovered did
21:24
Speaker 1: he denounce Harreman as a liar and fall into his
21:27
Speaker 1: usual fit of moral epilepsy. From now on there will
21:32
Speaker 1: be a sharp decline in the stock of Theodore Roosevelt.
21:36
Speaker 1: The capitalist papers may continue to boom him as the
21:39
Speaker 1: only savior, and his corpse of press agents at the
21:42
Speaker 1: White House may continue to grind out three column stories
21:45
Speaker 1: about the awful conspiracy of his trusty friends to ruin him.
21:49
Speaker 1: But his bubble is pricked, and the cheap glory in
21:52
Speaker 1: which he reveled is departing forever. The people have been
21:56
Speaker 1: sadly deceived for a time, but the march of events
21:59
Speaker 1: is over their eyes. Only the very ignorant and foolish
22:03
Speaker 1: believe that a president who has surrounded himself with Wall
22:06
Speaker 1: Street darlings as cabinet ministers has any serious designs on
22:10
Speaker 1: the trusts. The Ryan Root and Roosevelt combination is ideal.
22:16
Speaker 1: It speaks for itself, with such shining lights as Taft
22:20
Speaker 1: corl You Knox and Paul Morton surrounding it. All lingering
22:25
Speaker 1: doubt is removed, and the fool's paradise is in the
22:28
Speaker 1: full blaze of its glory. Space will not permit a
22:32
Speaker 1: review of the personnel of the president's official family, at
22:35
Speaker 1: least two of whom, had the law been enforced, would
22:38
Speaker 1: now be in penitentiary. The story of President Roosevelt and
22:43
Speaker 1: Paul Morton, if truthfully told, would make a luminous chapter
22:47
Speaker 1: in railroad rascality and political jobbery. It was this notorious
22:52
Speaker 1: strike breaker and self confessed criminal that Roosevelt issued a
22:56
Speaker 1: bill of moral rectitude long as Pope's essay that landed
23:00
Speaker 1: him into the eighty thousand dollars a year insurance graft
23:03
Speaker 1: he now holds down. There is in this promotion the
23:07
Speaker 1: very climax of the irony of Boodle. Paul Morton, who
23:12
Speaker 1: began as a strike breaker on the C, B and
23:14
Speaker 1: Q and reared a monument to theft at Hutchinson, Kansas,
23:18
Speaker 1: and left his trail of crime all the way from
23:20
Speaker 1: the Mississippi to the Pacific. Is fit, indeed, to be
23:24
Speaker 1: the cabinet associate and confidential chum of a president who
23:28
Speaker 1: puts him at the head of the company whose funds
23:30
Speaker 1: were stolen to buy his election. William H. Taft is
23:35
Speaker 1: another of the elect and it is easy to understand
23:38
Speaker 1: why Roosevelt has decided to make this illustrious son his
23:41
Speaker 1: successor as President of the United States, and is now
23:44
Speaker 1: grooming him with the patronage of the National Administration. Taft
23:48
Speaker 1: is a man after Roosevelt's own heart. Among his early
23:52
Speaker 1: acts as a judge, he fined the bricklayers of Cincinnati
23:55
Speaker 1: two thousand dollars for going on a strike. He was
23:59
Speaker 1: next world to Toledo by special train and ordered by
24:02
Speaker 1: the Toledo ann Arbor and North Michigan Railroad to issue
24:06
Speaker 1: an injunction, binding and gagging its striking engineers and firemen,
24:10
Speaker 1: and locking their leader up in jail. And he complied
24:13
Speaker 1: with alacrity. From that time on, it has been smooth
24:17
Speaker 1: sailing for the accommodating judge. And there is not a
24:20
Speaker 1: beloaded plutocrat in the land who would not hail with
24:23
Speaker 1: joy the election of William Taft as president. He would
24:26
Speaker 1: be almost as acceptable to these vultures as Roosevelt himself.
24:31
Speaker 1: The manner in which President Roosevelt manipulates the Supreme Court
24:35
Speaker 1: by bestowing lucrative offices upon the sons and other relatives
24:39
Speaker 1: and friends of its dignitaries, can only be hinted at here,
24:42
Speaker 1: but will receive due attention later on. The case of
24:46
Speaker 1: ex Senator Burton is an instance in point. Other senators
24:50
Speaker 1: had taken thousands in similar cases to Burton's paltry few
24:53
Speaker 1: hundred dollars, but Burden was marked by Roosevelt for refusing
24:57
Speaker 1: to crook the knee to the Sugar Trust, and pursued
25:00
Speaker 1: with merciless ferocity until he was lodged behind prison bars.
25:05
Speaker 1: The President did not have a call to go after
25:07
Speaker 1: his old friends Chauncey Depew and Thomas Platt, with the
25:11
Speaker 1: same virtuous passion to see crime punished and criminals jailed.
25:16
Speaker 1: When Roosevelt was making his continental campaign in the palatial
25:19
Speaker 1: special trains furnished free by the Railroad Trust, he stopped
25:23
Speaker 1: at Abilene, Kansas, the home of the then Senator Burton,
25:27
Speaker 1: and opened his speech there in these words, I am
25:31
Speaker 1: glad to be at the home of the senior Senator
25:33
Speaker 1: from Kansas, and am delighted to meet and greet his
25:35
Speaker 1: neighbors and friends. I want to say that no man
25:38
Speaker 1: in this world has done more, And I had almost
25:41
Speaker 1: said as much to place me where I am now
25:43
Speaker 1: than your distinguished Senator. Fine way the President had of
25:48
Speaker 1: showing his gratitude. Burton should have known better and taken warning.
25:52
Speaker 1: Whenever Roosevelt gets that near to a man, something is
25:56
Speaker 1: going to happen. My dear is then due to be
25:59
Speaker 1: met m morphosed with startling suddenness into an atrocious lyre
26:05
Speaker 1: Roosevelt can brook no rivalry. He is the self appointed
26:08
Speaker 1: central luminary in the solar system. All others must be
26:12
Speaker 1: contented with being fireflies. He must violate all traditions and
26:17
Speaker 1: smash all precedents. He is spectacular beyond the wildest dreams.
26:22
Speaker 1: He must have the center of the stage and hold
26:24
Speaker 1: the undivided attention of the audience. Any stunt will do
26:28
Speaker 1: when the interest lags. A familiar turn with a prize
26:32
Speaker 1: fighter or a gunman is always good for an encore.
26:35
Speaker 1: A dashed to Panama with a fleet of battleships and
26:38
Speaker 1: a battery of cameras and a squad of artists and
26:41
Speaker 1: reporters is good for thousands of columns about the marvelous
26:45
Speaker 1: virility and fertility of the greatest president since Washington. He
26:49
Speaker 1: is followed with minute and eager details as he darts
26:52
Speaker 1: from cellar to roof, inspects every shingle, wears a solemn expression,
26:57
Speaker 1: throws a shovelful of coal into the furnace, snatches a
27:01
Speaker 1: bite from a working man's pail, shakes hands with a
27:04
Speaker 1: startled section man, and is off like a flash to
27:07
Speaker 1: look after some other section of the planet that it
27:10
Speaker 1: may not drop out of its shining orbit. Mighty savior
27:14
Speaker 1: of the human race, such is Theodore Roosevelt, the President
27:19
Speaker 1: who condemns working men as murderers when they are objectionable
27:23
Speaker 1: to the trust that control his administration. Archbishop Ireland, the
27:28
Speaker 1: plutocratic prelate will cheerfully certify to Roosevelt as the anointed
27:33
Speaker 1: of the Lord, and this will make another interesting chapter
27:36
Speaker 1: for a later review. A chapter that will deal with
27:39
Speaker 1: Ireland is the political as well as spiritual adviser of
27:43
Speaker 1: Jim Hill and the Great Northern and of court decisions
27:46
Speaker 1: awarding him thousands of acres of land, and making of
27:50
Speaker 1: the alleged follower of the Tramp of Galilee a multi millionaire.
27:55
Speaker 1: A chapter that will tell of a high priest sounding
27:58
Speaker 1: the political keynote to benighted followers in exchange for a
28:03
Speaker 1: promised voucher for a red hat to be worn in
28:06
Speaker 1: a land of freedom in which the state and Church
28:09
Speaker 1: are absolutely divorced. Only a few of the facts about
28:13
Speaker 1: Roosevelt and his regime have been here stated, but enough
28:17
Speaker 1: to satisfy all honest men that Theodore Roosevelt is the
28:21
Speaker 1: friend of the enemies and the enemy of the friends
28:24
Speaker 1: of this republic. End of Roosevelt and his regime