Republican Tangle In Pennsylvania Hopeless.

New York Times 100 years ago today, July 27, 1912:
Lawyers Can Find No Way to Solve the Taft-Roosevelt Electoral Puzzle.
Special to The New York Times.
    HARRISBURG, Penn., July 26.— How will Pennsylvania vote in November? No-body knows, and apparently a great many people do not care; yet two immense signs printed on strips of white cloth in great, staring black, letters are stretched across the main street of this town, on one of which reads this legend: "Pennsylvania for Woodrow Wilson," and on the other these words: "For the Entire Republican Ticket and United Party."
    Strange to say, neither the Taft people nor the Roosevelt people have opened headquarters in Pennsylvania, the theory being that both are waiting for the Bull Moose Convention at Chicago.
    Yesterday the Hon. Henry G. Wasson, State Republican Chairman, held a conference here with a number of County Republican Chairmen from the central counties of the State, and they talked and talked and talked. There are twenty-seven counties in this political division of the Commonwealth, and sixteen of these counties were represented. Some time ago Mr. Wasson held a conference with the County Chairmen of the western district, in which there are twenty-two counties, and at that conference fifteen counties were represented. A little later a conference will be held with the Chairmen of, the eastern district, probably at Philadelphia.
    The object of these conferences is to "size up the situation," which appears to be "up stumpo in swampibus," it being very much the nature of the Moose family to seek the seclusion which the low grounds supply when the chase is furious.

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    Everything of a political sort is dreadfully mussed up in Pennsylvania. There is Penrose, for example, at Philadelphia, and Flinn at Pittsburgh, both bosses of the most extreme type, and both claiming the mastery of the Republican Party. Wasson is the new Chairman of the party in the State. He lives in Pittsburgh, and succeeded Walton, who lives in Philadelphia. He is supposed to represent Flinn; but he asseverates that he represents the party, and resents the story which has been told by his enemies that in the present emergency he "stands in" with Flinn. He has been trying to get the party together; that is his mission, and he is doing the best he can with a stiff-necked and rebellious and utterly unsophisticated generation of new lights who have entered the arena in this State. He said yesterday that he hoped for and expected that there would be an amicable adjustment of the Presidential Electoral situation in Pennsylvania without recourse to law; indeed, it is said by the
knowing ones that there is no law by which the present conditions can be met.
    Marlin Edgar Olmsted, who has been a member of Congress for eighteen years, and is regarded as one of the first lawyers of the Commonwealth, is reported to have been studying the legal aspects of the case for months, and has not yet, according to authorities in Harrisburg, discovered exactly how the regulars can get into court. There are no precedents, there is no law, although the statute books of the State are filled with laws on the subject of elections.
    Wasson is said to have declared that the Republican Electoral ticket cannot be changed, that if he was on it he would get off if he did not intend to stand by the regular party which nominated it; but the men who are on it show a disposition to "stay put," and, except for Flinn's ridiculous proposition that the Electors vote either for Roosevelt or for Taft, as either might show a majority at the election in November, the ticket is in a fearful tangle. How Wasson expects to bring light out of this darkness and make this crooked path straight has not been explained.

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    At the meeting of the central County Chairmen yesterday there was a good deal of very straight talk about the danger of ditching the whole State Republican ticket, which naturally is not what Flinn wants. All that he wants, so far as the onlooker can see, is to manage the Republican Party in State affairs. Probably if Penrose for the sake of the party should obliterate himself, Flinn might be willing to "save the party" by consenting that the Republican Electoral ticket should vote for Taft, the Regular nominee of the party. One of the most amusing of the claims made by Flinn and his associates is that Taft's nomination at Chicago was accomplished by fraud. This is the latest example of "Satan rebuking sin."

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    The election laws of Pennsylvania are fearfully and wonderfully made. Three hundred and forty-four pages of the latest Legislative Handbook are filled with citations bearing upon these statutes and information about the election machinery and results in this State, and the index to the digest of the election laws of the Commonwealth fills twenty-one pages printed in the smallest type, noting where the law can be found relating to this, that, or the other feature of the laws. In all this waste of legislation there is not one peg upon which the present case can be hung, and such proceedings as may be necessary to clear the present cloudy skies must be de novo.
    Pennsylvania has a primary election law which has contributed mainly to the confusion of politics in the State and encouraged mightily all manner of corruption and sharp practice in the elections held in the State. The pre-emption of public lands in the Far West is not to be compared with the pre-emption of political names in Pennsylvania. Anybody can run for any office he pleases and under any name, or any number of names he choose, with the result that there are Democratic-Republicans and Republican-Democrats running for office all the time and to the great confusion of the electorate and the ready appeal of the man with the money to pay for the game. The man who gets to the Secretary of the Commonwealth first with the most names is the man who will be able to plead with the voters of as many varying phases of political belief as he may think necessary to his success at the polls.
    At the last primary election Michael Donohoe of Philadelphia ran for Congress as a Democrat and Keystone candidate, and William W. Griest of Lancaster ran for Congress as the candidate of thel Republican and Keystone Parties. In the Thirtieth District, M. Clyde Kelly of North Braddock, notwithstanding his name and the association of ideas in what he represented, ran for Congress as a Republican and Prohibitionist. So it ran through all the list of candidates.
    In the Twenty-fifth Senatorial District,
for illustration, Frank E. Baldwin, a Republican, ran for the Senate on the Democratic, Prohibition, and Keystone tickets; Henry A. Clark of Erie ran for State Senator from the Forty-ninth District on the Democratic and Republican tickets, while W. Bruce Good of Shickshimny ran for the legislature in the Fourth District of Luzerne County on the Republican, Democratic, Prohibition, and Keystone tickets, which "was all to the good" in his case, but very confusing to the outlanders, who have always believed that the party name really counted for a good deal in placing men in politics.
    Wherever the primary system has been tried it has encouraged fraud and resulted in the elevation of unworthy men to office and opened opportunities for the use of money in the control of the voters.

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    Take the case of Olmsted, one of the most capable men in the public life of the State. At the last election he was defeated by an ex-Councilman of Harrisburg and a clerk in a tinmill. Something of the same sort happened to Dalzell. Olmsted was probably himself to blame, because it is said that he held himself somewhat aloof from the voters, excepting along about the time nominations were to be made. There has been intense feeling against the newly rich who hive tried to dominate the party and against Penrose, as already noted, because he was rather "above his business" in managing the affairs of the party. It is said that he really did not "go a-fishing" on Election Day as previously reported; but it is admitted that he did not stir around as much as the political necessities of the campaign required. Hence, the present, if temporary, ascendency of William Flinn. How long Flinn will stay where he is will depend a good deal on how he manoeuvres out of his present embarrassment. He Is not supposed to be opposed at heart to Taft; Penrose was the fellow he was after. Three-fourths of the Flinn people are believed to be for Taft.
    At the primary election only about one-fourth of the Republicans of Pennsylvania voted for Roosevelt. The larger number did not vote at all, and they are sorry for it now. Besides, there appears to be no room to doubt that thousands of Democrats and Keystone Party men voted in the Republican primary for the Republican ticket

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    Nobody can give a reasonable explanation of the opposition to Taft among the Republicans in this State. They don't know why; but they are, or at least they say they are. Notwithstanding the fact that Taft headquarters have not yet been opened in Pennsylvania, it is said that the Taft people have not been letting things go by default, and that many of the most expert of the gumshoe brigade have been doing hard work all over the State, and very good work as the Taft people think. One of the close observers to-day gave it as his sound judgment that Mr. Roosevelt would not be in the race at all after the meeting of the Bull Moose Convention in Chicago.
    Wasson's expectation that it would not be necessary to resort to law in the case of the Electoral ticket and his statement that he had been in close touch with Hilles would seem to promise clearing weather in the Keystone State before the election in November. J. C. H.