He made the campaign, however, vigorously and effectively. He was tireless and indefatigable, traveling during it no less than twentytwo thousand miles, making six hundred and seventy-three addresses, speaking to three and a half millions of people. The feat was unprecedented, and it made him known to the people to a remarkable extent. He was highly popular before; he was doubly popular when this remarkable campaign ended. When the day of election came the popularity of the candidates was shown in a plurality of 850,000 votes and an electoral majority of 137. On the 4th of March, 1901, he took the oath of office and became Vice-President of the United States.

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CHAPTER VIII

In the Presidential Chair

N the 6th of September, 1901, a lamentable act took place, one of those tragic occurrences that are apt to arise from the mad ferment of modern life. President McKinley, while shaking hands in friendly spirit with his fellow-citizens in the great hall of the Buffalo Exposition, was foully shot down by a half-insane Anarchist, whose hand the victim had just cordially grasped.

For a week the suffering martyr lay between life and death, for a time showing such signs of recovery that hope overspread the country, then rapidly sinking until death came to him in the early morning of the 14th. His sad passing away left Theodore Roosevelt President, a consummation no one had dreamed of when, against his will, he was induced to become a candidate for the Vice-Presidency.

The death of McKinley was followed by an event of dramatic interest. For a time the recovery of the stricken President seemed so assured that Roosevelt felt secure in making a hunting excursion in the Adirondacks, for which he had previously arranged.

When, on Friday, September 13th, word reached the Tahawas Club House, where the Vice-President had his headquarters, that the exalted victim was fast sinking, Roosevelt was not to be found. He had set out early that morning for a tramp in the mountains, and no one knew just where he was. Before starting he had received a despatch from Buffalo saying that the President was in splendid condition and not in the slightest danger. Under these circumstances he had felt it safe to venture upon his mountain stroll.

The fresh and startling news caused guides and runners to be sent out in all directions, with orders to sound a general alarm and find the Vice-President as quickly as possible. Yet hours passed away and the afternoon was verging into early evening before the signals of the searchers were heard and answered and it became evident that the Roosevelt party was near at hand.

When Colonel Roosevelt was reached and the news of the critical condition of the President told him he could scarcely credit it. Startled and alarmed, he hurried back to the Tahawas Club House, feeling that he must hasten to Buffalo with the utmost despatch. But the nearest railroad station was thirty-five miles distant, and this distance had to be covered by stage, over a road rendered heavy by a recent thunder

storm.

When he reached there the Adirondack Stage Line had a coach in readiness and had provided relays of horses covering the whole distance. All night long the stage coach, bearing its distinguished passenger rolled along through the woods, the latter part of the journey being through heavy forest timber, which rendered it one of actual peril.

President McKinley had already passed away, though this news was not received until he reached the station at North Creek at 5.22 on the following morning. A special train awaited him and dashed away the moment it received the awaited passenger. The trip that followed was a record-breaking one, the speed in many instances exceeding a mile a minute. It was 1.40 p. m. when it pulled into the station at Buffalo, the President, as Roosevelt now was, going to the house where his deceased predecessor lay.

That afternoon he took the oath of office as President of the United States, the oath being administered by Judge Hazel, in the presence of Secretaries Root, Long, Hitchcock and Wilson, AttorneyGeneral Knox and other distinguished persons. The oath taken and the document signed, all the preliminaries were finished, and Theodore Roosevelt became the legally authorized President of the United States.

Theodore Roosevelt was the youngest man in the history of the country to become President of the United States; he had not yet completed his forty-third year. The youngest before him being President Grant, who was forty-seven at the date of his first inauguration. The oldest was President Harrison, who took office at the age of sixty-eight. It was a heavy responsibility to fall on so young a man. How he would act in his new office was the anxious query asked by those who remembered the records of Presidents Tyler, Filmore and Johnson, who like him had begun as Vice-Presidents. President

McKinley stood for certain principles, certain promises to the people made in the platform of the year before. Could an impulsive man like Theodore Roosevelt, a man full of ideas and views of his own, be expected to carry out his predecessor's policy? There was a distinct feeling of relief in the community when he came out with a declaration that this was what he proposed to do.

Yet McKinley's policy did not cover the whole range of legislation, and the remembrance of Roosevelt's radical reform administration in New York was not altogether agreeable to the hide-bound conservatives or the class of shady politicians who had axes to grind. They felt that a man like this in the Presidential chair might prove like the proverbial bull in the china shop.

Roosevelt's last speech as Vice-President gave some indications of his attitude. It was given at Minneapolis on September 2d, three days before the tragedy at Buffalo, and gave strong indications of his mental attitude. Some quotations from it may not be amiss.

"Our interests are at bottom common; in the long run we go up or go down together. Yet more and more it is evident that the state, and if necessary the nation, has got to possess the right of supervision and control as regards the great corporations that are its creatures; particularly as regards the great business combinations which derive a portion of their importance from the existence of some monopolistic tendency. The right should be exercised with caution and selfrestraint; but it should exist, so that it may be invoked if the need arises."

In these few words we have the keynote of much of Roosevelt's Presidential career. Throughout his nearly eight years of office he hammered away at the monopolies that had arisen in the land, and to some degree succeeded in fettering them.

A strong advocate of America for Americans, this is what he had to say about the Monroe Doctrine:

"This is the attitude we should take as regards the Monroe Doctrine. There is not the least need of blustering about it. Still less should it be used as a pretext for our own aggrandizement at the expense of any other American state. But, most emphatically, we must make it evident that we intend on this point ever to maintain the

old American position. The Monroe Doctrine is not international law, but there is no necessity that it should be. All that is needful is that it should continue to be a cardinal feature of American policy on this continent. If we are wise we shall strenuously insist that under no pretext whatever shall there be any territorial aggrandizement upon American soil by any European power, and this no matter what form the territorial aggrandizement may take."

These extracts serve not alone to indicate President Roosevelt's attitude in certain particulars; they serve also to give some conception of his oratorical manner. Fluent as he has shown himself as a speechmaker, he has the faculty of dealing mainly with hard facts. It is the same with his messages to Congress. Some of them have been so expanded that he seemed rather writing a book than a message. But his seeming wordiness came from a desire to omit no matter of national interest and to leave none without a comprehensive treatment. Yet in them all he hammers away with hard facts. Flowery language and inconclusive verbosity have no place in his category.

During Roosevelt's first term in office he did little in the way of proposing radical legislation. He felt that his hands were tied in that respect by the way into which he came into the Presidency. But he showed his untrammeled character in a dozen other ways. Precedents had no sacredness for him; he was always breaking them. One instance was that in which he invited Booker Washington to dinner. The event raised a stir out of all accordance with its significance, for Roosevelt was not the first President to have a colored man at his table, and Booker Washington had shown himself a man whose presence at their tables would honor kings. The storm broke and the thunders of denunciation rolled, but they passed innocuously over Roosevelt's head.

He never hesitated to step outside the lines of routine and break through the cobwebs of red tape. When a coal strike broke out in Pennsylvania and went on with such obstinacy as to threaten disaster to the people he stepped resolutely into the breach and by his influence settled the labor war. The sticklers for precedent cried out in dismay. No President has done such a thing before! It is a dangerous stretch of the executive power! But those citizens whose fires threatened to