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

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,