Club Clash Over Taft.

New York Times 100 years ago today, July 13, 1912:
Roosevelt Supporters in Brooklyn Union League Hold Up Campaign Sign.
    The Taft-Roosevelt fight has caused serious trouble in the Brooklyn Union League Club, the officials, as well as the members being split on the question of whether the President or the ex-President should be supported. In the Board of Governors and the Political committee the Taft and Roosevelt sympathizers are at odds, and it is feared that the trouble will spread through the big membership of the organization. Both the Colonel's admirers and the followers of the President are claiming a majority. The club has nearly 800 members.
    When it was proposed, following the club's custom, that the names of the Republican nominees for President and Vice President be displayed on the big clubhouse in Grant Square there was an immediate outbreak. At a meeting of the Board of Governors First Vice President John E. Ruston, a Taft man, proposed that an electric sign bearing the names of Taft and Sherman be placed on the roof of the building. Mr. Ruston is acting as President in the absence of President Robert J. MacFarland, who is ill at his country home at Chatham, N. Y.
    Fourteen of the twenty-two Governors were present. Alderman William Morrison, who is a Governor, and also Chairman of the Political Committee of the club, contended that the matter should rest with the Political Committee. The Alderman is a Roosevelt man. He was supported by other Governors who are favorable to the ex-President, and there was a lively debate. The Roosevelt men wanted to leave the controversy to the club as a body to decide. A motion to that effect, however, was lost by a vote of seven to five, two, Mr. Ruston and the Secretary, not voting. Finally, by the same vote, a motion empowering the Acting President, "through the Political Committee," to place, the sign on the roof was passed. Mr. Ruston then turned to Alderman Morrison and asked:
    "As Acting President, I ask you, as Chairman of the Political Committee, if you will place the sign on the roof?"
    "Not until I have consulted with the other members of the committee," responded the Alderman.
    "Am I to take that as a refusal? " pursued Mr. Ruston.
    "You can take it as anything you please," replied Morrison.
    Mr. Ruston last night, said he was confident that the sign would be placed on the roof.