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Robert La Follette claims he was double-crossed by Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson calls for change in Kentucky, and House Democrats want a money trust explanation from Williams Jennings Bryan. (Click here for an introduction to The 1912 Project; click here for previous installments.)
T.R. Lied! Robert La Follette seems to have finally recovered from his mental and/or physical collapse in Philadelphia last week and he's mad as hell. See, while the newspapers were quick to dispatch him from the race as exhausted, mentally ill, etc. after he condemned newspapers as tools of the Money Trust, he thinks it was all a trick. According to "Senator La Follette's warmest champions," as The New York Times puts it, Theodore Roosevelt told La Follette he wasn't going to run in 1912. Yesterday The Milwaukee Journal ("La Follette's stanchest supporter in the West") ran "a statement of attitude of Mr. La Follette toward Roosevelt" and it is bitter about Roosevelt stealing all of his thunder. "La Follette started the fight at a time when the prospects for preventing the renomination of President Taft were ridiculously small," it says. "Col. Roosevelt at that time positively eliminated himself from the 1912 fight."
The statement also has a more charitable take on why La Follette was so suddenly and graciously bounced from the Republican field: since Roosevelt had deceived so many by saying he wouldn't run, his former supporters needed an excuse to bolt from the Wisconsin progressive.
Poor La Follette.
Wilson's Banquet Tour Continues A different day, a different hotel ballroom for Woodrow Wilson. Last night he was in Louisville, Kentucky, to talk to local supporters. The Meriden (Conn.) Morning Record carries a bit of the remarks: