The Attempted Assassination of ex-President Theodore Roosevelt | Page 9

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