were the favourites of the bosses, that is, of the great interests, but former personal relations and the exigencies of politics seemed to require silence.

The great silent masses of the people, in so far as these can stop their ploughs and their hammers to think, were watching the strange developments. It was indeed a situation fast getting beyond the powers of the men who generally "fix things" in our life. Clark, a mere boy in the great complex of American life, had a majority of the delegations to the convention. But Underwood and Harmon held each a sufficient block of votes to deny Clark the nomination on the first ballot. Either of them might have withdrawn if they had not known that Wilson, and not Clark, would have been the beneficiary of such a move. Although Harmon, Clark, and Underwood all stood for exactly the same thing, not one of them could move without definitely surrendering the nomination to the one man whom all feared. Under these circumstances, Colonel Harvey, thinking to tip the balances at last in favour of Clark and reaction, published in his Weekly, a few days before the convention assembled, a great black-and-white map of the country showing almost two thirds of the districts committed to the nomination of Clark. The former friend thought he had his sweet revenge for the plain talk of the preceding December. It was another Joline letter.1

But the "predestination of Woodrow Wilson" seemed to be past defeat. The passions of men as well as the imponderables of politics, played in his favour. The great Republican convention met in Chicago about the middle of June. The national executive committee of the party gathered a week beforehand, as the Democratic committee

See issue of June 22, 1912; Harper's Weekly during the winter and spring of 1912 should be read by every student of the period.

had done in 1896,1 to overrule the will of the majority of the membership of the party who wished the renomination of Roosevelt. Roosevelt, like the Bryan of 1895, had canvassed the country and apparently won a majority of delegates; only in 1912 it was called a primary campaign whereis in 1896 it was a radical movement which could not be suppressed and which was conducted in extra-legal form. The Republican national committee ruthlessly unseated Roosevelt delegates in favour of contesting Taft delegates as the Democratic c mittee had done with Bryan delegates sixteen years befor When the convention assembled it was safely "Taft" and in charge of Messrs. Root, Crane, Barnes, and Lodge. The bosses would have their way and take no chances with any doubtful tactics.

The anger of Roosevelt rose to the nth power. Breaking all precedents, he journeyed to Chicago; denounced the national committee as having stolen the votes of the convention, and his former friend, Taft, as the receiver of stolen property. The country was excited and angry. The headlines of the newspapers everywhere carried the news from Chicago in true war-time style. Colonel Harvey was in the Chicago convention and wrote to his Weekly attacks upon Roosevelt that descended to the level of diatribes. Bryan was also in the Chicago convention reporting the Republican quarrel to a syndicate of papers in true reporter's style, without indicating his inward glee that the great rival party of forty years' successful history was going to pieces. Colonel House, now Wilson's closest adviser, declared that Roosevelt was his best aid in the coming Baltimore gathering. The outcome at Chicago was a complete rupture of the party.

1Ante pp. 92-93.

Mr.

"A series of articles in the World's Work during the summer of 1919 shows well the Roosevelt conduct and point of view.

Taft was the nominee, but Roosevelt announced that there would be another convention which meant his own nomination as the head of a new or progressive movement. The Democrats would nominate the next president, just as the Republicans had been sure of doing when they had put forward Lincoln at Chicago in 1860, after a similar break-up of the old Democratic party of Southern domination.

The Democrats gathered in Baltimore on June 25th. The national committee was reactionary. It set up Alton B. Parker, a Tammany Hall man, for temporary chairman. .The move was intended to make Clark the nominee. It was plain to the country that the Democratic bosses intended to do in Baltimore what the Republican bosses had done in Chicago. The people of the country became more angry than they had been during the contest in Chicago. There had not been so much excitement in a preliminary presidential campaign since 1860. There was not so much excitement even then. Bryan entered the Baltimore convention as a sort of St. George going out to fight the dragon, and with the hearty support of the people of all parties who sent him scores of thousands of telegrams urging him to do his utmost. The presence of Thomas F. Ryan, as a delegate from Virginia, was ominous. Bryan, with the enthusiastic support of the country, defeated the machine forces, and the permanent じ organization of the convention showed the friends of Wilson to be in charge, although their instructions from local conventions still bound many of them to Clark or Harmon or Underwood.

The early ballots proved that the fight was between Clark and Wilson. Upon every roll call, Tammany Hall cast the solid vote of New York for Harmon. When, after many weary repetitions of the count, Bryan offered resolutions opposing any candidate who received the support of the

"privilege-hunting class" and demanding the expulsion of Ryan and his group from the convention, there was pandemonium in the hall. But the vote upon the resolutions showed the temper of the delegates. The nomination of Clark was thenceforward hopeless. Bryan's rôle as an exponent of outraged public opinion and as a master of great conventions was superbly played. The whole nation warmed to him, although it was clear that the country did not wish him to be the nominee of the Democrats. When he gave his influence finally and openly to Wilson the struggle was closed. Wilson received the necessary two-thirds vote and was proclaimed the candidate.

The forward-looking element of the party had won. Messrs Bryan, House, who was, however, not in Baltimore, Josephus Daniels, and young William F. McCombs had won the esteem of the people. The old party of Jefferson and Jackson and of the campaign of 1896 was still in existence. Its leader stood, in spite of party names, in the place where events put Lincoln in 1860. Would Wilson, the professor and the moderate Liberal of other days, rise to the great occasion?

The people of the country were not certain. Many fine spirits of every section did not think so. History and sectional bias and family pride blinded them to the facts. It was then, as now, a hard thing for the representative of an old Northern family to vote with the party of the solid South, the party which John Hay so unjustly denounced as beneath contempt in 1900. These good people, disgusted with the conduct of their regular party leaders, turned to Colonel Roosevelt who made an evangelical campaign, though not himself permeated with the true social gospel. Wilson was the beneficiary of the Roosevelt movement. He was elected, like Lincoln in 1860 and Jefferson in 1800, because of the split