Roosevelt Writes Of Theft For Taft.

New York Times 100 years ago today, July 12, 1912:
Thinks It Demonstrable That President's Renomination Was Stolen and Submits Argument.
CITES THREE TYPICAL CASES
Many More, He Says, but California, Arizona and Washington Enough to Show Taft in Minority.
    Theodore Roosevelt discusses the seating of contested delegations in the Republican National Convention at Chicago in an editorial article entitled "Thou Shalt Not Steal," which appears in the current issue of The Outlook. He says:
    "The American people are entitled to know that the charge of stealing the Chicago Convention of 1912 is more than campaign recrimination, and that the frauds complained of are much more serious than the mere repetition of loose practices which might have found unfortunate precedents in some previous conventions of both parties.
    "Seriously and literally, President Taft's renomination was stolen for him from the American people, and the ratification or rejection of that nomination raises the critical issue whether votes or fraud shall determine the selection of American Presidents.
    "President Taft was renominated by at majority of barely twenty-one votes, and two of these were publicly raped at the last moment from Massachusetts. If, therefore, more than nineteen or twenty-one of his votes were demonstrably fraudulent, all claim to an honest majority disappears. The demonstration can be made as to many more than this number without touching on a single honestly debatable case.
    "This reckoning takes no account of the notorious fact that even the undisputed part of Mr. Taft's support was largely artificial and misrepresentative, made up of delegates from the outlying possessions, from hopelessly Democratic States, and from States where the people had been successfully denied the expression of their will. It is sufficient to consider only the four confessedly indefensible cases of California, Arizona, Washington, and Texas, which alone wipe out the margin. All that could be added from the other cases would only increase the Roosevelt majority of the honest convention. But I wish it distinctly understood that many of these other cases were as clear as the California case itself.
The California Case.
    "Three of these cases were a direct assault on the right of the people to elect their own delegates at primaries, since in them a few score politicians decided that the voters as a whole had no right themselves to decide whom they wished to see nominated. In the California case the delegates to the National Convention were elected by direct vote at State-wide preferential primaries. The National Committee first, and then the National Republican Convention, nullified the State law, and therefore, by inference, all State primary laws. In Arizona and Washington the control of the State conventions depended on which of two rival delegations were seated from certain counties, the one set elected by the Republican voters at primaries regularly called, and the other set arbitrarily appointed by bolting minorities of both committees. The State committees in each case seated the appointed delegates, and the National Committee approved that action.
    "President Taft was nominated by twenty-one votes—or by nineteen, if the two from Massachusetts are omitted which were counted only by the extraordinary ruling of Chairman Root that when a delegate answers 'Present and not voting,' his alternate shall be called to vote, always provided that alternate is a Taft man, and the delegate a Roosevelt man. The cases here discussed cover, in their narrowest application, thirty votes—California 2, Arizona 6, Washington 14, and Texas at large 8. The change of these thirty votes would have defeated Taft; they would have reversed all the important actions of the convention.
    "Several of the district cases from Texas are involved in the same ruling as that which was made in the case of the delegates at large, and are quite as flagrant.
Rights of People Involved.
    "Numerous other cases—as clearly shown by the minority of the National Committee and by the minority of the Credentials Committee of the convention—were just as bad. As I have said, one Louisiana case was worse. In one Indiana case the Taft delegates were elected only by first packing the Credentials Committee by refusing to let in Roosevelt delegates in whose cases pretended contests had been filed, and then by reversing this ruling and letting the contested Taft delegates vote on their own cases. There was no form of trick or fraud which did not find favor in the eyes of the conspirators. I have merely cited a few cases so conspicuous that the facts cannot be truthfully disputed, and sufficient in number to show by actual figures that the nomination of Mr. Taft could not have been procured except by their inclusion. The men responsible for the theft of the delegates in question cared not one rap for the rights or wrongs of any of the cases. They were concerned only with getting the requisite number of delegates. They did steal as many as were needed; they would have stolen as many more as might have been needed.
    "No free people can afford to submit to government by theft. If the will of the people is defeated by fraud, then the people do not rule. If those who are thus foisted on them represent the special interests instead of the people, then the interests and not the people rule.
    "When the people are denied their only thoroughly efficient weapon, the direct primary, against this usurpation, as was done by the ruling in the California case, then under the system thus established the people cannot rule. The only remedy is to break from the system. It is useless to counsel patience until the next convention, because the organization is already complete to nullify the action of the people as effectively then as it has done this time.
Committee Would Do It Again.
    "The same arbitrary powers have been conferred on the National Committee that were exercised this time, and that committee, which is to act in 1916, is already elected. It is composed of men the majority of whom, under the lead of one of their number, Mr. Barnes, have already shown by their votes in the convention that they are prepared to repeat in 1916 the usurpation of 1912. Every State in the Union might pass Presidential primary laws, and all these States might vote for the same candidate, but if that candidate were not satisfactory to the National Committee now in office it could, and would, reverse the action of the people.
    "On a square issue of power between the Republican National Committee and the Republican voters the committee has won, and has demonstrated that it can win again. The organization has frankly abandoned the pretense of making effective the will of the people.
    "If the American people are really fit for self-government they will instantly take up the challenge which a knot of political conspirators have so insolently thrown down. Non-resistance to such treason against popular government would be almost as reprehensible as active participation therein. Both a great moral issue and a fundamental principle of self-government are involved in the. action of the so-called Republican Convention at Chicago; and we cannot submit to that action without being false both to the basic principles of American democracy and to that spirit of righteousness and honesty which must underlie every form of successful government."