Now, Mr. Chairman, I want to ask this
question of my Republican friends: When you
go to the country in the election about to come,
will you say that it is a Roosevelt panic?
Will you say that it is a Roosevelt panic be
cause Mr. Roosevelt has been “Democratic in
spots,” to use the words of a much more dis
tinguished Democrat than myself, or do you
propose to stand by him and say, as you have
been shouting and vociferating for the past
four years, that the Republican party, as well
as Mr. Roosevelt, is responsible for what has
been done? Republican financiers in New
York City, and throughout the country, and
Republican newspapers in New York and in
other states, are now assuming the “safe,
sane, and conservative” pose; they are now
saying that Mr. Roosevelt’s trust baiting, more
deadly than either his “bear baiting,” or his
“wolf hunting,” has caused the panic; they
are saying that persecution of the railroads
and the demagogic arraying of the people
against property interests are responsible for
impaired confidence and the resulting financial
troubles. Only the other day the distinguished
gentleman who so eloquently nominated the
President at your last national convention, re
ferred to him as the “man on the barrel,” ex
horting the crowd to madness and almost to mob
law, and the great Republican newspapers in
New York printed in parallel columns the
eloquent words of ex-Governor Black at the
Republican convention in 1904, and the scorch
ing words of the same distinguished gentle
man before the New Hampshire Bar Associa
tion in 1907.
