Bull Moose Rush Surprises Hotchkiss.

New York Times 100 years ago today, July 13, 1912:
Marvelous Reports Reach Him of Republican Deserters Coming Over.
BARNES ON HIS TELEPHONE
Just Wanted to Know His Party's Name—A Rainbow, Says Barnes, and Taft Will Win.
    The Bull Moose Party in this State is now mobilizing for the fray. Mr. Hotchkiss, who is directing operations from his office in the Metropolitan Tower, said yesterday that the way the movement was taking hold was something marvelous.
    "I don't know much about politics," said he "I had always thought that a new movement like this might bring out all sorts of men who wanted to make a good thing out of it. In this instance, however, nearly every mail brings me letters by the hundreds offering volunteer service of true believers in a good cause. It has been most inspiring."
    Mr. Hotchkiss began yesterday the task of appointing County Chairmen. These positions in ten out of the sixty-one counties of the State have been filled. In a good many of the counties which were represented at the conference on Thursday Mr. Hotchkiss is awaiting suggestions or action on the part of the local Progressives where organizations had been formed.
    Yesterday's appointments of County Chairmen were:

    Erie County— Chauncey J. Hamlin of Buffalo.
    Tompkins County— Alfred Hays, Jr., of Ithaca.
    Onondaga County— Joseph A. Griffin of Syracuse.
    Herkimer County— Theodore Douglas Robinson.
    Oneida County— Fred M. Davenport of Clinton and Merwin K. Hart of Utica.
    Washington County— Silas E. Evarts of Granville.
    Dutchess County— A. B. Gray of Poughkeepsie.
    Schenectady County— Prof. Howard Opdyke of Schenectady.
    Suffolk County— Regis Post.
    Nassau County— Lucien L. Bonner.

    Coroner Shongut, from the Bronx, dropped in to tell Mr. Hotchkiss that the Progressive movement in his borough would be started at a mass meeting in the McKinley Square Theatre Building this evening, and that the Pioneer Republican Club of the district, the regular organization, would lose at least 100 of its members right away. Harry P. Stratton, a worker in the Eighteenth Assembly District in Kings, went to Mr. Hotchkiss to say that out of 418 enrolled Republican voters in the Twenty-sixth Election District of the Assembly District 393 had signed a pledge to support Col. Roosevelt.
    Mr. Hotchkiss announced yesterday that he was in favor of making all campaign contributions and expenditures public within forty-eight hours of the time they were received or incurred.
    Work is soon to be begun on the State platform of the National Progressive Party. It was said yesterday that this instrument may or may not contain a plank recommending the "federalization" of the State Government. The plan was favored by Gov. Hughes, and it is warmly commended by Mr. Hotchkiss.— not as State Chairman but as citizen, he was careful to explain.
    "It would mean the short ballot, with only Governor and Lieutenant Governor elected for a term of four years," said he. "It would give the Governor power to appoint within thirty days after he had assumed office ten heads of departments, through which there would be a co-ordination of all the administrative activities which now are distributed into such a bewithering number of departments, bureaus, and commissions. It would make for simplicity and for the concentration of responsibility in one person."
    For one tense moment yesterday a wire was working from the office of William Barnes, Jr., Republican State Chairman and implacable foe of the Bull Moose movement and its founder. Mr. Barnes rang up Mr. Hotchkiss to ask him what the official name of the new party would be.
    "We want it for our canvass books," Mr. Barnes explained. "We want to place it at the head of our second column, where we are going to record in our advance canvass how small your vote is going to be."
    Mr. Hotchkiss laughed and told Mr. Barnes, that the Bull Moose boom would run away from the Republicans and leave them in the third position. Mr. Hotchkiss did not say what party he thought would occupy the leading position.
    "This third party is all a rainbow," said Mr. Barnes in discussing the National Progressive Party yesterday. "They arc making midsummer politics, but wait until October. When the people really begin to think they will see that the choice is really between Taft and continued prosperity and Wilson, with the tearing to pieces of the tariff, business stagnation, and everybody broke. That's all there is to it. I am satisfied that a majority will vote to continue Mr. Taft in his present position."
    Mr. Hotchkiss, in discussing the speech of Gen. Daniel E. Sickles at the Bull Moose birthday party on Thursday, in which he raised the secession issue in commenting on the candidacy of Woodrow Wilson said it was not to be taken as the sentiment of the new party but as reflecting entirely the General's own opinions.