SPEAKS TO GREAT AUDIENCE.[1]
Standing with his coat and vest opened, holding before him manuscript
of the speech he had prepared to deliver, through which were two
perforations by Schrank's bullet, the ex-President was given an ovation
which shook the mammoth Auditorium, Milwaukee.
[1] Stenographic Report from The Milwaukee Sentinel.
The audience seemed unable to realize the truth of the statement of
Henry F. Cochems, who had introduced Col. Roosevelt, that the
ex-President had been shot. Col. Roosevelt had opened his vest to show
blood from his wound.
Even then many in the audience did not comprehend that they were
witnessing a scene destined to go down in history--an ex-President of
the United States, blood still flowing from the bullet wound of a
would-be assassin, delivering a speech from manuscript perforated by
the bullet of the assailant.
Col. Roosevelt said:
"Friends, I shall ask you to be as quiet as possible," he said. "I
don't know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot, but
it takes more than that to kill a bull moose. (Cheers.) But fortunately
I had my manuscript, so you see I was going to make a long speech
(holds up manuscript with bullet hole) and there is a bullet--there is
where the bullet went through and it probably saved me from it going
into my heart. The bullet is in me now, so that I can not make a very
long speech, but I will try my best. (Cheers.)
"And now, friends, I want to take advantage of this incident and say a
word of a solemn warning, as I know how to my fellow countrymen. First
of all, I want to say this about myself: I have altogether too
important things to think of to feel any concern over my own death, and
now I can not speak to you insincerely within five minutes of being
shot. I am telling you the literal truth when I say that my concern is
for many other things. It is not in the least for my own life. I want
you to understand that I am ahead of the game, anyway. (Applause and
cheers.) No man has had a happier life than I have led; a happier life
in every way. I have been able to do certain things that I greatly
wished to do and I am interested in doing other things. I can tell you
with absolute truthfulness that I am very much uninterested in whether
I am shot or not. It was just as when I was colonel of my regiment. I
always felt that a private was to be excused for feeling at times some
pangs of anxiety about his personal safety, but I can not understand a
man fit to be a colonel who can pay any heed to his personal safety
when he is occupied as he ought to be occupied with the absorbing
desire to do his duty. (Applause and cheers.)
"I am in this cause with my whole heart and soul. I believe that the
progressive movement is for making life a little easier for all our
people; a movement to try to take the burdens off the men and
especially the women and children of this country. I am absorbed in the
success of that movement.
"Friends, I ask you now this evening to accept what I am saying as
absolutely true, when I tell you I am not thinking of my own success. I
am not thinking of my life or of anything connected with me personally.
I am thinking of the movement. I say this by way of introduction
because I want to say something very serious to our people and
especially to the newspapers. I don't know anything about who the man
was who shot me tonight. He was seized at once by one of the
stenographers in my party, Mr. Martin, and I suppose is now in the
hands of the police. He shot to kill. He shot--the shot, the bullet
went in here--I will show you (opened his vest and shows bloody stain
in the right breast; stain covered the entire lower half of his shirt
to the waist).
"I am going to ask you to be as quiet as possible for I am not able to
give the challenge of the bull moose quite as loudly. Now I do not know
who he was or what party he represented. He was a coward. He stood in
the darkness in the crowd around the automobile and when they cheered
me and I got up to bow, he stepped forward and shot me in the darkness.
"Now friends, of course, I do not know, as I say, anything about him,
but it is a very natural thing that weak and vicious minds should be
inflamed to acts of violence by the kind of awful mendacity and abuse
that have been heaped upon me for the last three months by the papers
in the interest of not only Mr. Debs but of Mr. Wilson and Mr. Taft.
(Applause and cheers.)
"Friends, I will disown and repudiate any man of my party who attacks
with such foul slander and abuse any opponent of any other party
(applause) and now I wish to say seriously to all the daily newspapers,
to the republican, the democratic and the socialist parties that they
cannot month in and month out and year in and year out make the kind of
untruthful, of bitter assault that they have made and not expect that
brutal violent natures, or brutal and violent characters, especially
when the brutality is accompanied by a not very strong mind; they
cannot expect that such natures will be unaffected by it.
"Now friends, I am not speaking for myself at all. I give you my word,
I do not care a rap about being shot not a rap. (Applause.)
"I have had a good many experiences in my time and this is one of them.
What I care for is my country. (Applause and cheers.) I wish I were
able to impress upon my people--our people, the duty to feel strongly
but to speak the truth of their opponents. I say now, I have never said
one word against any opponent that I can not--on the stump--that I can
not defend. I have said nothing that I could not substantiate and
nothing that I ought not to have said--nothing that I--nothing that
looking back at I would not say again.
"Now friends, it ought not to be too much to ask that our opponents
(speaking to some one on the stage) I am not sick at all. I am all
right. I can not tell you of what infinitesimal importance I regard
this incident as compared with the great issues at stake in this
campaign and I ask it not for my sake, not the least in the world, but
for the sake of our common country, that they make up their minds to
speak only the truth, and not to use the kind of slander and mendacity
which if taken seriously must incite weak and violent natures to crimes
of violence. (Applause.) Don't you make any mistake. Don't you pity me.
I am all right. I am all right and you can not escape listening to the
speech either. (Laughter and applause.)
"And now, friends, this incident that has just occurred--this effort to
assassinate me, emphasizes to a peculiar degree the need of this
progressive movement. (Applause and cheers.) Friends, every good
citizen ought to do everything in his or her power to prevent the
coming of the day when we shall see in this country two recognized
creeds fighting one another, when we shall see the creed of the
'Havenots' arraigned against the creed of the 'Haves.' When that day
comes then such incidents as this tonight will be commonplace in our
history. When you make poor men--when you permit the conditions to grow
such that the poor man as such will be swayed by his sense of injury
against the men who try to hold what they improperly have won, when
that day comes, the most awful passions will be let loose and it will
be an ill day for our country.
"Now, friends, what we who are in this movement are endeavoring to do
is to forestall any such movement by making this a movement for justice
now--a movement in which we ask all just men of generous hearts to join
with the men who feel in their souls that lift upward which bids them
refuse to be satisfied themselves while their fellow countrymen and
countrywomen suffer from avoidable misery. Now, friends, what we
progressives are trying to do is to enroll rich or poor, whatever their
social or industrial position, to stand together for the most
elementary rights of good citizenship, those elementary rights which
are the foundation of good citizenship in this great republic of ours.
"My friends are a little more nervous than I am. Don't you waste any
sympathy on me. I have had an A1 time in life and I am having it now.
"I never in my life had any movement in which I was able to serve with
such wholehearted devotion as in this; in which I was able to feel as I
do in this that common weal. I have fought for the good of our common
country. (Applause.)
"And now, friends, I shall have to cut short much of the speech that I
meant to give you, but I want to touch on just two or three of the
points.
"In the first place, speaking to you here in Milwaukee, I wish to say
that the progressive party is making its appeal to all our fellow
citizens without any regard to their creed or to their birthplace. We
do not regard as essential the way in which a man worships his God or
as being affected by where he was born. We regard it as a matter of
spirit and purpose. In New York, while I was police commissioner, the
two men from whom I got the most assistance were Jacob Ries, who was
born in Denmark and Oliver Van Briesen, who was born in Germany, both
of them as fine examples of the best and highest American citizenship
as you could find in any part of this country.
[Illustration: X-Ray Photograph Showing Bullet as it Remains in
Theodore Roosevelt.]
"I have just been introduced by one of your own men here, Henry
Cochems. His grandfather, his father and that father's seven brothers
all served in the United States army and they entered it four years
after they had come to this country from Germany (applause). Two of
them left their lives, spent their lives on the field of battle--I am
all right--I am a little sore. Anybody has a right to be sore with a
bullet in him. You would find that if I was in battle now I would be
leading my men just the same. Just the same way I am going to make this
speech.
"At one time I promoted five men for gallantry on the field of battle.
Afterward it happened to be found in making some inquiries about that I
found that it happened that two of them were Protestants, two Catholics
and one a Jew. One Protestant came from Germany and one was born in
Ireland. I did not promote them because of their religion. It just
happened that way. If all five of them had been Jews, I would have
promoted them, or if all five had been Protestants I would have
promoted them; or if they had been Catholics. In that regiment I had a
man born in Italy who distinguished himself by gallantry, there was a
young fellow, a son of Polish parents, and another who came here when
he was a child from Bohemia, who likewise distinguished themselves, and
friends, I assure you, that I was incapable of considering any question
whatever, but the worth of each individual as a fighting man. If he was
a good fighting man, then I saw that Uncle Sam got the benefit from it.
That is all. (Applause.)
"I make the same appeal in our citizenship. I ask in our civic life we
in the same way pay heed only to the man's quality of citizenship to
repudiate as the worst enemy that we can have whoever tries to get us
to discriminate for or against any man because of his creed or his
birthplace.
"Now, friends, in the same way I want our people to stand by one
another without regard to differences or class or occupation. I have
always stood by the labor unions. I am going to make one omission
tonight. I have prepared my speech because Mr. Wilson had seen fit to
attack me by showing up his record in comparison with mine. But I am
not going to do that tonight. I am going to simply speak of what I
myself have done and of what I think ought to be done in this country
of ours. (Applause.)
"It is essential that there should be organizations of labor. This is
an era of organization. Capital organizes and therefore labor must
organize. (Applause.)
"My appeal for organized labor is twofold, to the outsider and the
capitalist I make my appeal to treat the laborers fairly, to recognize
the fact that he must organize, that there must be such organization,
that it is unfair and unjust--that the laboring man must organize for
his own protection and that it is the duty of the rest of us to help
him and not hinder him in organizing. That is one-half of the appeal
that I make.
"Now the other half is to the labor man himself. My appeal to him is to
remember that as he wants justice, so he must do justice. I want every
labor man, every labor leader, every organized union man to take the
lead in denouncing crime or violence. (Applause.) I want them to take
the lead (applause) in denouncing disorder and inciting riot, that in
this country we shall proceed under the protection of our laws and with
all respect to the laws and I want the labor men to feel in their turn
that exactly as justice must be done them so they must do justice. That
they must bear their duty as citizens, their duty to this great country
of ours and that they must not rest content without unless they do that
duty to the fullest degree. (Interruption.)
"I know these doctors when they get hold of me they will never let me
go back and there are just a few things more that I want to say to you.
"And here I have got to make one comparison between Mr. Wilson and
myself simply because he has invited it and I can not shrink from it.
"Mr. Wilson has seen fit to attack me, to say that I did not do much
against the trusts when I was president. I have got two answers to make
to that. In the first place what I did and then I want to compare what
I did while I was president with what Mr. Wilson did not do while he
was governor. (Applause and laughter.)
"When I took office as president"--(turning to stage) "How long have I
talked?"
Answer: "Three-quarters of an hour."
"Well, I will take a quarter of an hour more. (Laughter and applause.)
When I took office the anti-trust law was practically a dead letter and
the interstate commerce law in as poor a condition. I had to revive
both laws. I did. I enforced both. It will be easy enough to do now
what I did then, but the reason that it is easy now is because I did it
when it was hard. (Applause and cheers.)
"Nobody was doing anything. I found speedily that the interstate
commerce law by being made more perfect could be a most useful
instrument for helping solve some of our industrial problems with the
anti-trust law. I speedily found that almost the only positive good
achieved by such a successful lawsuit as the Northern Securities suit,
for instance, was for establishing the principle that the government
was supreme over the big corporation, but that by itself, or that law
did not do--did not accomplish any of the things that we ought to have
accomplished, and so I began to fight for the amendment of the law
along the lines of the interstate commerce, and now we propose, we
progressives, to establish an interstate commission having the same
power over industrial concerns that the interstate commerce commission
has over railroads, so that whenever there is in the future a decision
rendered in such important matters as the recent suits against the
Standard Oil, the sugar--no, not that--tobacco--the tobacco trust--we
will have a commission which will see that the decree of the court is
really made effective; that it is not made a merely nominal decree.
"Our opponents have said that we intend to legalize monopoly. Nonsense.
They have legalized monopoly. At this moment the Standard Oil and
Tobacco trust monopolies are legalized; they are being carried on under
the decree of the Supreme Court. (Applause.)
"Our proposal is really to break up monopoly. Our proposal is to put in
the law--to lay down certain requirements and then require the commerce
commission--the industrial commission to see that the trusts live up to
those requirements. Our opponents have spoken as if we were going to
let the commission declare what the requirements should be. Not at all.
We are going to put the requirements in the law and then see that the
commission makes the trust. (Interruption.) You see they don't trust
me. (Laughter.) That the commission requires them to obey that law.
"And now, friends, as Mr. Wilson has invited the comparison I only want
to say this: Mr. Wilson has said that the states are the proper
authorities to deal with the trusts. Well, about 80 per cent of the
trusts are organized in New Jersey. The Standard Oil, the tobacco, the
sugar, the beef, all those trusts are organized in New Jersey and Mr.
Wilson--and the laws of New Jersey say that their charters can at any
time be amended or repealed if they misbehave themselves and it gives
the government--the laws give the government ample power to act about
those laws and Mr. Wilson has been governor a year and nine months and
he has not opened his lips. (Applause and cheers.) The chapter
describing of what Mr. Wilson has done about the trusts in New Jersey
would read precisely like a chapter describing the snakes in Ireland,
which ran: 'There are no snakes in Ireland.' (Laughter and applause.)
Mr. Wilson has done precisely and exactly nothing about the trusts.
"I tell you and I told you at the beginning I do not say anything on
the stump that I do not believe. I do not say anything I do not know.
Let any of Mr. Wilson's friends on Tuesday point out one thing or let
Mr. Wilson point out one thing he has done about the trusts as governor
of New Jersey. (Applause.)
"And now, friends, I want to say one special thing here----"
(Col. Roosevelt turned to the table upon the stage to reach for his
manuscript, but found it in the hands of some one upon the stage. He
demanded it back with the words: "Teach them not to grab," which
provoked laughter.)
"And now, friends, there is one thing I want to say specially to you
people here in Wisconsin. All that I have said so far is what I would
say in any part of this union. I have a peculiar right to ask that in
this great contest you men and women of Wisconsin shall stand with us.
(Applause.) You have taken the lead in progressive movements here in
Wisconsin. You have taught the rest of us to look to you for
inspiration and leadership. Now, friends, you have made that movement
here locally. You will be doing a dreadful injustice to yourselves; you
will be doing a dreadful injustice to the rest of us throughout this
union if you fail to stand with us now that we are making this national
movement (applause) and what I am about to say now I want you to
understand if I speak of Mr. Wilson I speak with no mind of bitterness.
I merely want to discuss the difference of policy between the
progressive and the democratic party and to ask you to think for
yourselves which party you will follow. I will say that, friends,
because the republican party is beaten. Nobody need to have any idea
that anything can be done with the republican party. (Cheers and
applause.)
[Illustration: John Flammang Schrank.]
"When the republican party--not the republican party--when the bosses
in the control of the republican party, the Barneses and Penroses last
June stole the nomination and wrecked the republican party for good and
all. (Applause.) I want to point out to you, nominally, they stole that
nomination from me, but really it was from you. (Applause.) They did
not like me and the longer they live the less cause they will have to
like me. (Applause and laughter.) But while they do not like me, they
dread you. You are the people that they dread. They dread the people
themselves, and those bosses and the big special interests behind them
made up their mind that they would rather see the republican party
wrecked than see it come under the control of the people themselves. So
I am not dealing with the republican party. There are only two ways you
can vote this year. You can be progressive or reactionary. Whether you
vote republican or democratic it does not make any difference, you are
voting reactionary." (Applause.)
Col. Roosevelt stopped to take a drink of water and the doctors
remonstrated with him to stop talking, to which he replied: "It is
getting to be better and better as time goes on. (Turning to the
audience) If these doctors don't behave themselves I won't let them
look at me at all." (Laughter and applause.)
"Now the democratic party in its platform and through the utterances of
Mr. Wilson has distinctly committed itself to old flintlock, muzzle
loaded doctrine of states right and I have said distinctly that we are
for the people's right. We are for the rights of the people. If they
can be obtained best through the national government, then we are for
national rights. We are for the people's rights however it is necessary
to secure them.
"Mr. Wilson has made a long essay against Senator Beveridge's bill to
abolish child labor. It is the same kind of an argument that would be
made against our bill to prohibit women from working more than eight
hours a day in industry. It is the same kind of argument that would
have to be made, if it is true, it would apply equally against our
proposal to insist that in continuous industries there shall be by law
one day's rest in seven and a three-shift eight hour day. You have
labor laws here in Wisconsin, and any Chamber of Commerce will tell you
that because of that fact there are industries that will not come into
Wisconsin. They prefer to stay outside where they can work children of
tender years; where they can work women fourteen and sixteen hours a
day, where, if it is a continuous industry, they can work men twelve
hours a day and seven days a week.
"Now, friends, I know that you of Wisconsin would never repeal those
laws even if they are to your commercial hurt, just as I am trying to
get New York to adopt such laws even though it will be to New York's
commercial hurt. But if possible, I want to arrange it so that we can
have justice without commercial hurt, and you can only get that if you
have justice enforced nationally. You won't be burdened in Wisconsin
with industries not coming to the state if the same good laws are
extended all over the other states. (Applause.) Do you see what I mean?
The states all compete in a common market and it is not justice to the
employers of a state that has enforced just and proper laws to have
them exposed to the competition of another state where no such laws are
enforced. Now the democratic platform, their speaker declares that we
shall not have such laws. Mr. Wilson has distinctly declared that you
shall not have a national law to prohibit the labor of children, to
prohibit child labor. He has distinctly declared that we shall not have
law to establish a minimum wage for women.
"I ask you to look at our declaration and hear and read our platform
about social and industrial justice and then, friends, vote for the
progressive ticket without regard to me, without regard to my
personality, for only by voting for that platform can you be true to
the cause of progress throughout this union." (Applause.)
All through his talk, it was evident that his physicians feared his
injury had been more serious than he was willing to admit. That a man
with a bullet embedded in his body could stand up there and insist on
giving the audience the speech which they had come to hear was almost
incredible and it was plain the physicians as well as the other friends
of the colonel on the stage were greatly alarmed.
Col. Roosevelt, however, would have none of it. "Sit down, sit down,"
he said to those who, when he faltered once or twice, half rose to come
towards him. He insisted that he was having a good time in spite of his
injury.
Finally a motherly looking woman, a few rows of seats back from the
stage rose and said, "Mr. Roosevelt, we all wish you would be seated."
To this the colonel quickly replied: "I thank you, madam, but I don't
mind it a bit."
To those on the stage, who wished he would adopt the suggestion of
being seated, he said: "Good gracious if you saw me in the saddle at
the head of my troops with a bullet in me you would not mind."
The only time Col. Roosevelt gave up and took a seat was when he came
to a quotation from La Follette's weekly which paid him a tribute of
praise for his work as president. This was read by Assemblyman T. J.
Mahon, while the colonel rested.
At the conclusion of the reading Col. Roosevelt said that he was the
same man now that he was then. He had not been president since 1909 so
that what he was described as being then he was now.
T. J. Mahon read this editorial from La Follette's magazine of March
13, 1909:
"Roosevelt steps from the stage gracefully. He has ruled his party
to a large extent against its will. He has played a large part of
the world's work for the past seven years. The activities of his
remarkably forceful personality have been so manifold that it will
be long before his true rating will be fixed in the opinion of the
race. He is said to think that the three great things done by him
are the undertaking of the construction of the Panama canal and its
rapid and successful carrying forward, the making of peace between
Russia and Japan, and the sending around the world of the fleet.
"These are important things but many will be slow to think them his
great services. The Panama canal will surely serve mankind when in
operation; and the manner of organizing this work seems to be fine.
But no one can yet say whether this project will be a gigantic
success or a gigantic failure; and the task is one which must in
the nature of things have been undertaken and carried through some
time soon, as historic periods go, anyhow. The peace of Portsmouth
was a great thing to be responsible for, and Roosevelt's good
offices undoubtedly saved a great and bloody battle in Manchuria.
But the war was fought out, and the parties ready to quit, and
there is reason to think that it is only when this situation was
arrived at that the good offices of the President of the United
States were, more or less indirectly, invited. The fleet's cruise
was a strong piece of diplomacy, by which we informed Japan that we
will send our fleet wherever we please and whenever we please. It
worked out well.
"But none of these things, it will seem to many, can compare with
some of Roosevelt's other achievements. Perhaps he is loath to take
credit as a reformer, for he is prone to spell the word with
question marks, and to speak despairingly of 'reform.'
"But for all that, this contention of 'reformers' made reform
respectable in the United States, and this rebuke of 'muck-rakers'
has been the chief agent in making the history of 'muck-raking' in
the United States a national one, conceded to be useful. He has
preached from the White House many doctrines; but among them he has
left impressed on the American mind the one great truth of economic
justice couched in the pithy and stinging phrase 'the square deal.'
The task of making reform respectable in a commercialized world,
and of giving the national a slogan in a phrase, is greater than
the man who performed it is likely to think.
"And, then, there is the great and statesmanlike movement for the
conservation of our national resources, into which Roosevelt so
energetically threw himself at a time when the nation as a whole
knew not that we are ruining and bankrupting ourselves as fast as
we can. This is probably the greatest thing Roosevelt did,
undoubtedly. This globe is the capital stock of the race. It is
just so much coal and oil and gas. This may be economized or
wasted. This same thing is true of phosphates and other mineral
resources. Our water resources are immense, and we are only just
beginning to use them. Our forests have been destroyed; they must
be restored. Our soils are being depleted; they must be built up
and conserved.
"These questions are not of this day only, or of this generation.
They belong all to the future. Their consideration requires that
high moral tone which regards the earth as the home of a posterity
to whom we owe a sacred duty.
"This immense idea, Roosevelt, with high statesmanship, dinned into
the ears of the nation until the nation heeded. He held it so high
that it attracted the attention of the neighboring nations of the
continent, and will so spread and intensify that we will soon see
world's conferences devoted to it.
"Nothing can be greater or finer than this. It is so great and so
fine that when the historian of the future shall speak of Theodore
Roosevelt, he is likely to say that he did many notable things,
among them that of inaugurating the movement which finally resulted
in the square deal, but that his greatest work was inspiring and
actually beginning a world movement for staying terrestrial waste
and saving for the human race the things upon which, and upon which
alone, a great and peaceful and progressive and happy race life can
be founded.
"What statesman in all history has done anything calling for so
wide a view and for a purpose more lofty?"
[Illustration: Page One of Letter Found in Schrank's Pocket.]