Electoral Votes to Steal.

New York Times 100 years ago today, July 16, 1912:
To the Editor of The New York Times:
    How noble, how inspiring. (not to say, a la Mr. Pecksniff, "how moral,") for this great new Third Term Party to start out with the grand principle that "The people need not rule! T. R. will steal enough Electoral votes to save them the trouble just as long as he lives. So there you are!" Useful, too, as a rallying call— "a trumpet call to charge the Volscians home"— for it is just possible that the boiling indignation of this people over the crime of the Chicago Convention in being governed by its majority might cool in time; that T. R.'s wrongs might even become, in time, a bore! An entire Nation cannot forever wail over them, like Mark Twain shedding tears over the grave of  Adam. But there will always—at least every four years—be Electoral votes to steal!
        B. F. CARPENTER.
    New York, July 12, 1912.