1908 Steamroller Unknown To Colonel.

New York Times 100 years ago today, July 19, 1912:
He Had Known of It, He Says, and Its Practices, He Would Have Stopped It
DIFFERENT NOW, ANYWAY
Accuses Taft of Sharp Practice and Denounces "Men Who Live Softly" and Oppose Him.
    Col. Theodore Roosevelt, while he dwelt in the White House, in one of his messages to Congress reviled men "with soft hands and hard faces." In an editorial in the current weekly issue of The Outlook he goes a step further and vigorously assails as enemies of social and economic justice "men who live softly."
    Another editorial deals with the operations of the "steam roller" at the Chicago convention, and contrasts in a manner that tells very much to the Colonel's advantage but which is bound to arouse a storm of dissent, the running of the steam roller of the bosses in Chicago this year, with its operation in the same place in 1904 and in 1908.
    In the former year the Colonel was himself a candidate for President. In 1908 he, controlling the patronage of the Federal Administration as he did in 1904, was anxious to have his then friend William H. Taft nominated for president.
    In both years the steam roller flattened out opposition, though, as the Colonel says, there was little need of resorting to steam-roller methods in 1904 because the bulk of the Republican strength was for him.
    In 1908 the situation was somewhat different. There was some opposition to Mr. Taft which could be overcome only by ruthless crushing out of other booms. While it is generally accepted as a fact that in 1908 the steam roller performed its most thorough work with the Colonel's complete knowledge and connivance, the Colonel in his Outlook editorial proclaims to all the world that if he had known anything about it he would have stopped in that year the practices he protests against so vigorously this year when they materially affected his own prospects. The Colonel says in his steam-roller editorial:

    There was no contest over my nomination in 1904 when the convention assembled. Every delegate was for me, and this was true of both sides in every contest. In 1908, when Mr. Taft was fairly nominated, there were no "steam roller" methods, as far as I know, and if anything dishonest or improper was done in the effort to nominate him it was without my knowledge, and if it had been brought to my attention and I had any power in the matter I would have interfered with it.

    In the second article the Colonel alludes to "the respectable men who with discomfort stood behind their leaders in securing the triumph of fraud and political theft at Chicago." and assails "the other respectable men who felt no discomfort in thus supporting rascality; who, on the contrary, glorified in their actions."
    The Colonel goes on to say that some of the men responsible for the steam roller work in Chicago this year excused themselves by saying that they had merely been doing this year what was being done in 1904 and 1908. Then he gives a piece of information that will come as a surprise to most persons who have followed recent political history. The Colonel declares that he was nominated for Vice President at the Philadelphia convention in 1900 "against the wish of the most powerful politicians who then had control of the Republican Party, and purely because of a popular demand deemed too insistent to be denied."
    It is no secret that Col. Roosevelt virtually was driven into accepting the Vice Presidential nomination by Senator Thomas C. Platt, who was then the Republican leader of the State of New York. Platt disliked Col. Roosevelt, and Col. Roosevelt, conscious of the distrust he inspired in Senator Piatt, contended, at the time of the Philadelphia Convention that his nomination for Vice President involved a malicious attempt to shelve him politically.
    Col. Roosevelt contrasts the Chicago and the Baltimore conventions and the results of each. In Chicago the Republican bosses, he says, were willing to risk certain defeat to prevent his nomination; in Baltimore the Democratic bosses were willing to accept any candidate in order to win. On this point the Colonel says:

    The fight at Baltimore was not, as at Chicago, to eliminate the bosses, and incidentally, to nominate a certain candidate; it was to persuade the bosses into themselves nominating Dr. Wilson, thus securing the perpetuation of their own control in their several States. Mr. Sullivan of Illinois, Mr. Taggart of Indiana, and others like them, brought about Dr. Wilson's nomination; Mr. Murphy acquiesced at the end. Dr. Wilson's victory would not mean the dethronement of these men; it would mean their perpetuation in power. My election would mean that Mr. Penrose, Mr. Barnes, and Mr. Guggenheim would be definitely eliminated from political control of their States.

    In his  second editorial the Colonel deals harshly with "men who live softly." He says:

    They are men who find life easy, who live softly, and who, instead of feeling that their own good fortune makes it incumbent on them actively to work for betterment in the life conditions of others, are overcome by the fear that any such effort to improve the general welfare would jar the present system sufficiently to cause them inconvenience. These men abound in the New York and Boston social and business or professional clubs, in the Boards of Trade and Chambers of Commerce, in the bar associations, in the residential districts where people of means and leisure dwell. They are free from physical toil and hardship; they live under conditions that tell for ease, that indeed tend rather to too much self-indulgent softness, and, therefore, alas! to that dreadful selfishness which is born of fear when they become alarmed lest the system which has brought about these pleasant conditions may be changed.
    They develop a panic-born immorality, which makes them not merely excuse, but eagerly commend, the theft of a nominating convention, or any other rascality which in their estimation helps to "save society," or to "preserve the Constitution," or to "repel assaults on the courts," for these men under such conditions follow the lead of the great corporation owners and great corporation lawyers in treating the Constitution and the courts— quite without warrant— as instruments designed to protect privilege and vested wrong and to prevent the people from really ruling themselves. They have apparently been educated to the point of feeling all this in accentuated form about me, and about the changes I champion. They do not know that most of the things I advocate have been successfully tried out in a few of our own States— Wisconsin, for instance, and even Massachusetts— and in foreign countries such as Germany, Denmark, England, New Zealand, and Switzerland. I am merely trying to get this country to be wise in time— which is nine-tenths of Wisdom. I wish to see our less fortunate citizens avoid the dreadful excesses of syndicalism and the like to which their fellows abroad have been prone. This can only be accomplished if our people as a whole will formulate and reduce to practice certain great moral principles which most of us are now dimly beginning to see shape themselves from the confused welter of our business and our politics.

    The Colonel bitterly assails President Taft, whom he accuses of securing "by trickery and sharp practice" the support of "the six delegates at large from Ohio which in the primaries had gone 47,000 against him."