The Lancaster Herald. (Lancaster, Tex.), Vol. 21, No. 21, Ed. 1 Friday, June 26, 1908 Page: 2 of 8
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“But the situation,” said Mr. Handy,
as he pulled at his mustache and put
his hat over his eyes, “does net seem
to be working out that way, though.
Fairbanks is a man than whom no
other in all this great galaxy of sister
states is more fitted geographically
and logically to lead our great party.
“I speak,” went on Mr. Handy, after
reflecting and chewing viciously at his
cigar, “I speak in no uncertain tones
in this matter; he is a leader without
fear and without reproach, and with
him as our standard bearer in this
great contest the eagles of victory
would perch upon our triumphant
guidons.”
Is Now for Taft.
I can say tor; Mr. Handy to-day that
he is ah ardent supporter of the sec-
retary of war for president, and pro-
poses to take the stump for him in his
district. After the nomination Mr.
Handy said to me:
“You know that I was for Roosevelt,
of course. I was for him when he
was just a kid in the police commis-
sion in New York. What’s more, if
we could have put him on the ticket
this year he would make Garrison
county solid for the whole ticket.
But tfien, you know, he’s impulsive
and erratic, and we’ve got to get down
to business.” '
No Politics, All Reform.
It was on Monday that I met my
friend from the Ninth district again.
He was in the Pompeian room of the
Annex when I found him.
“The only true thing,” he said, as he
waved proudly for the boy and ordered
a split of water—“the only true thing
about this convention is that nothing
is true.”
As he sipped the fuzzy Water and
recalled his promise to Mrs. Handy
before he left home, Abner added re-
flectively: “The trouble with this con-
vention i3 there is no politics in it.
There are no politicians here. I’ve
looked at this man Hitchcock—noth-
ing but a card index, that’s all there
is to him. And I’ve looked over Vorys
—he won’t do; he’s perfectly frank.
Haven’t heard him called a liar since
I’ve been here. No man gets far in
politics until his enemies call him a
liar.
“Say,” added the colonel, as he
leaned across the mosaic on the table
top, “say—now honest—why did your
paper cut the ‘Hon.’ off in front of my
name? I lifie it. Tell them to put it
on. I was around when the New York
delegation held a meeting to-day, and
say! They don’t know any more poli-
tics than a rabbit. They decided to do
nothing. Imagine a convention where
the New York delegation is such a
four spot that they have to debate
three days to decide whether they will
take the vice-president! And, what’s
more, imagine a convention where the
most serious item of interest is the
nominee for vice-president! And now
the New York delegation is going to
have'its palm read to find out whether
it will take Hfighes for vice-president
or rally around Jim Sherman, the peo-
ple’s choice, or commit hara-kiri with
Tim Woodruff.”
Mr. Handy reflected for a time and
sighed. “It’s h-1!—it’s certainly
h-1!—but what else could you ex-
pect of a convention where people all
paid their railroad fare. You re-
formers will get this country sewed up
in a sack so that there won’t be
any politics any more. They’ll nomi-
nate the delegates by direct primaries,
instruct them on the chief planks of
the platform—and where will the pal-
ladium of bur liberties be then?”
There Is something in Abner
Handy’s view of it. The alternate
from the Ninth Kansas district has
been drifting around to-day looking for
the old familiar faces, and he finds
they are not here. There aren’t a
dozen bronze buttons in all the throng.
JAMES S. SHERMAN
HON. WILLIAM H. TAFT.
for some formal occasion. Yesterday
afternoon the sibilant lisp of the great
crowd in the Coliseum fell-like a great
wave on the shores of the place, in
idle conversation as the proceedings
of the convention droned on. The
committee on credentials made its re-
port, and the great crowd lapped it
up as the sea laps up the sand-—im-
personally, uninterested, utterly idle.
There was no fight, and evidently the
crowd knew there would be no fighL
The regular order proceeded, and
Senator Lodge was installed as; per-
manent chairman, and the great crowd
—the great buff sea, rocked idly to
look at him. He began to speak with
some fervor, and little ripples of ap-
plause played across the tide. His
earnestness deepened the billows
slightly.
' And the waves lulled and were quiet.
And then, not while he was at a cli-
max, but as the man before them was
reaching deeper and deeper into the
soul of the place and the occasion, the
sibilant lisp of the crowd hushed, and
in the great” silence the man spoke,
simply and strongly and without ora-
torical flourish or emphasis. “He has
enforced the Iqws as he found them,
and so he is the best abused and most
popular man in America."
It was not much of a tribute. But a>
wave of sincere feeling swept over
the quiet tide of humanity. It was not
a strong wave—not much stronger
than the first wave that came rolling .
in. But another wave followed it, and
another higher and stronger came af-
ter it The speaker, who did not rea-
lize what was about to come, put out
his hand to beg silence, but a huge
wave of applause came over him, and
he ducked and backed off good-na-
turedly and let the wind of emotion
play as it would across the restless
sea before him.
At Flood Tide.
In another minute, perhaps two, Sen-
ator Lodge rose again to face the ris-
ing tide, but it rolled in on him with
a great roar, and men knew that the
storm of -applause had come which
Theodore Roosevelt’s work as an
American citizen had conjured. So
they let it rage, and for nearly an hour
the waves of that storm broke and
roared in that place.
Then the crowd, in that hour of Joy,
gathered individuals in and they
ceased to be individuals and became
the crowd. At times the delegates
were swept off their feet. State after
state rose, like black billows on the
face of the waters, and cheered and
waved pennants and sank to equilibri-
um only to ruffle up again and cheer
with the crowd. No state was able to
Keep its mooring. And in the tumult
and the shouting there were no re-
actionaries. New York was as bois-
terous as Wisconsin, and Kansas
joined Pennsylvania.
“Roosevelt, Roosevelt, four years
more,” they roared, and the cry
skimmed over the waves of applause
like a gull, and like a gull it was ev&n-
scent. It signified nothing. And then
slowly, when the deep answered deep,
the calm came and the speaker went
on with fcis speaking.
It was all so simply and so natur-
ally done, all so evidently sincere,
without claque or prearrangement,
that there was is its undercurrent an
element of sadness. For It seemed a
good-by rather than a bait to Theo-
dore Roosevelt, and those who have
feared him feared him no more, and
those who have trusted him were hap-
py, but rather sad than joyful.
Once the big show—the presidential
nomination—was over, the remainder
of the work of the convention, the se-<
lection of a running mate for Secre-J
tary Taft, was completed in short!
order on Friday morning when Hon.)
James 8. Sherman of New York wap
named for second place oa the ticketJ
WILLIAM AJLLBN WHITB. j
(Copyright 1908, by Geo. Matthew Ad*pu,>
breakfast of bacon and eggs? Not at
all! Was it a delegation of flood suf-
ferers or a chain gang? No, but it
looked like the melancholia ward of an
asylum out for a morning’s airing—
and it was the Knox Marching Club!
“They are here. The band Is hem
They have to do something—so they
Story of the Great Gathering
by a Master Pen.
Incidents and Sidelights—Picture of the Nomination
of Secretary Taft—The Old Politician Talks of
Politics of Yesterday and To-Day.
By WILLIAM ALLEN WHITE
Chicago.—A national convention is
all over but the shouting, when
the presidential nomination is made.
It is for that that the delegates assem-
ble. High-browed men wrangle over
§| party platform planks, a^t fight it out
among themselves as to who shall
be forced tp_ accent ±he vice-presiden-
• ' ’“Yiai place, but in ail of these things
the general public has but little inter-
It was under orders, and nothing could
move it. So it moved majestically
along. It adopted the platform, for-
mally voting down, by overwhelming
majorities, planks advocating pub-
licity in campaign contributions
recommended by the president in hi*
messages, valuation of railroads,
recommended by the president in his
messages, and the election of senators
by the people.
A Roosevelt Convention.
For that convention was for Roose-
velt policies only when it had them
in the regular order and the authen-
ticated form. The Roosevelt policies,
as such, did not interest the conven-
tion, for it was under orders and took
only the real milk of the word as it
came through the committee, and it
believed, and probably with some jus-
tification, in the fact that Roosevelt
did net care to have his policies come
into the convention by way of Wis-
consin.
So it voted for the program and
went on to the/ next order. And the
next order was the nomination of a
president. And that is a serious busi-
ness.
It is curious to know just how forms
and conventions and precedents are
worshiped without sense or reason by
apparently clear-headed men. But
there sat 1,000 delegates and 10,000
spectators and listened to five mortal
hours of utterly useless, entirely mean-
ingless and absolutely vacuous
speeches. These speeches were made
putting men in nomination for the
presidency who had no more chance to
be nominated than they had of pick-
ing out a harp check and joining the
HE I
fjut.y
Taft’s
The Smile of
Brothers,
Senator Lodge Wielded the Gavel with
Satisfaction tb All.
ture, and the applause for La Follette
merged into the futile, stupid attempt
to stampede the firowd to Roosevelt,
and for a quarter, of an hour the
yelling continued.
It was quieted as the roll call on
president began and continued down
to Iowa. There a silence fell, and con-
tinued until Taft was nominated.
Now written down here in a thou-
sand words, this seems like the story
of a stirring episode. Yet it covers
events that lasted from 10 o’clock
until 5:30. There was some^ formal
cheering of something like two and
six-elevenths seconds for each of the
allies, and this is the best part of it
all—those who had sought the nom-
ination the hardest, Cannon and
Knox and Fairbanks, got no more
than Foraker, who took what he
could pick up. • There were no dif-
ferences between the $75 picture fire-
works and the ten-cent roman candle
—-they all fizzled and went out in
gloom.;.- ■ ', '
Abner Handy Talks.
But to go back to some of the earlier
days of the convention, some of the
days before the fireworks were all ex-
ploded, the days when only the fuses
were sizzling. »It was on Sunday, I
think, that I met my friend Handy—
Abner Handy from the Ninth Kansas
district. Mr. Handy, who has been out
of politics in Kansas since 1902, was
unable to get to the convention before
Sunday on account of floods in the
Kaw bottoms, and until his arrival the
pre-convention milling had been rath-
er tame. But the arrival of Mr. Handy
in his Prince Albert coat and black
slouch hat, with his massive head of
hair protruding fiercely, and his little
slits of eyes keenly measuring up the
situation—Mr. Handy, is an expert on
“the situation”—added new life to the
crowd in the Annex, and one may say
that the convention began with his ar-
rival. >
“It has been 12 years since I at-
tended a Republican convention,” said
Mr. Handy, as he lolled in a red plush
divan in alimony alley and spat
through his teeth at the onyx mop-
board, “and I meet a great many new
faces. I first saw Fairbanks in the
St. Louis, convention, and I have just
been talking to ode of his managers
—one of the a# men in Indiana poli-
tics-born since I left the state—a Mr,
Ade—George they call him. ■ Clever
young man, apparently. He tells me
flit through the hotels like lost spirits
and recall the dear dead days when
there was politics in this man’s town,
and a railroad attorney with a book of
transportation was a bigger man than
old Grant. And that’s what your re-
form has done. Put a lot of Willies
in serge suits—‘nine ninety-eight,
marked down from fourteen fifty’—
into control of the destinies of our
great republic.
“What has become of our common
heritage?” exclaimed Mr. Handy, wav-
ing his glass wildly. “Where is our
manifest destiny? Who’s gone and
stolen the pride pointer and the alarm-
viewer? Is it in the platform? No,
you reformers are making terms with
Gompers; and Taft’s ‘liberal views,’
as they calF them, are going to pre-
vail over the fine conservative views
of our peerless leader, our grand old
man, freedom’s champion, the defend-
er of the faith of the fathers, the man
who—the man who—the man who”—
reiterated Mr. Handy—“the man who
—I refer to Hon. J. G. Cannon of Dan-
ville, 111.
“Where’s your keynote speech in
this convention? I'll tell you; it’s
fastened in Burrows’ time lock. Who
is going to sound a clarion note here
? There will be no clarion note.
Frank H. Hitchcock Brought in the
Delegatee with Ease.
•at The visitors in the galleries are
(here only to see the hero crowned,
and once the ceremony is over, and
the shontlng has worn Itself out, their
Interest in the convention rapidly dies
away—the show is over.
Thursday was a hot day, and the
perspiration that the thousands shed
would have floated all four of the pres-
ident’s battleships, and the real trou-
ble of the convention—in a day of
trouble—began after the invocation
had been spoken, after Senator Hop-
kins had given a visible demonstra-
tion of the platform, which ntj one
heard and no one seemed to care to
hear, and after Congressman Cooper,
on behalf of the minority of the com-
tnittee on resolutions, began scolding
the convention.
His speech, of course, did not con-
vince. It was a protest, rather than
an argument, and anyway the conven-
tion would not have changed that
platform, which' it believed to be In-
spired from Washington, if the mkior-
Ity had offered the Ten Command-
ments. But Cooper scolded, and when
the authorized representative from the
railroad engineers and firemen and
trainmen appeared and warned the
convention that the railroad employes
of th« country were dissatisfied with
th» anti-injunction planks, that made
no difference, either.
Gabriel’s trumpet would have been
ilMd on the table for the regular order
llF the convention. Its face was set.
to-day
The name of the gallant Blaine will
not be heard in the hall. The party
that saved the country, that broke the
shackles on 4,000,000 slaves, the party
that preserved the Union, is represent-
ed here by the allies, and they are
, tossed around like a lot of last year’s
alfalfa. They came here asking for
the presidency; they were willing to
compromise on the vice-presidency
and sprung the name of Jim Sherman.
“It reminds i»e of the time Col. Ana-
doneran J. Balderson of our town
started out to be minister to England
under Cleveland’s first administration.
He found that job gone, and compro-
mised by applying for assistant secre-
tary of state. Failing in that, he asked
for United States marshal. Failing in
that, he ask,ed for the postofflee at
home, and then, failing in that,
straightened himself up and said:
‘Thank heaven, we have a Democratic
governor in Kansas, and he will not
turn me down.’
“Ho came home three months later
with a pair of Gov. Glick's old* trous-
ers, and to that end has your reform
brought those who for 40 years have
been fighting the party’s battles.”
Mr. Handy rosa proudly and said:
“Reform—reform—what crimes are
committed in thy name!”
The Big Crowd’s Tribate.
What a curious thing is a big crowd
of civilized men and women gathered
Congressman Burton Painted a Glow-
ing Picture of the War Secretary.
Young men with stiff straw hats and
boyish faces are dominating the
crowd.
“What can you expect,” asked the
colonel, earnestly, as he drifted out of
the Taft headquarters, “of a gang like
that? No whispering—no one coming
out of the consultation room like a
man from a dentist's office—with his
teeth in his hands—a sadder and wiser
man; nothing but idle speculation
about the viee-presidenev.”
Sighs for the Old Days.
The colonel waved for the waiter
and sighed and shook his head and
said: “A promise is a promise—when
your wife issues the door keys—yes,
another bottle of those liquid hair-
pins.”
Then he resumed his lamentations:
“I saw some forlorn fellows solemn-
ly hayfooting it down Michigan ave-
nue this morning They had a band
and were in a procession. Was it a
funeral? It was not. Was it the
doomed man walking to the gallows
with & (re step after eating a hearty
Senator Burrows Told of the Glory
of the G. O. P.
heavenly choir. Boutell of Illinois
began it—naming Cannon.
The crowd stood for him with some
patience, though no one listened to
him.
Gov, Hanly of Indiana, an unusually
able governor, and an otherwise sane
man, came a little aftervrard and got
in a row with the convention because
It laughed at him ahd jeered him dur-
ing the last half of a perfectly un-
necessary speech.
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Hulbert, Elbert Monroe & Tufts, Minnie Wetmore. The Lancaster Herald. (Lancaster, Tex.), Vol. 21, No. 21, Ed. 1 Friday, June 26, 1908, newspaper, June 26, 1908; Lancaster, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth542962/m1/2/: accessed April 10, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Lancaster Genealogical Society.