ere is one infallible test that fixes the status of a political party
and its candidates. Who finances them?

With this test applied to Theodore Roosevelt we have no trouble in
locating him. He is above all "a practical man." He was practical in
allowing the steel trust to raid the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company; he
was practical when he legalized the notorious "Alton Steal"; he was
practical when he had Harriman raise $240,000 for his campaign fund, and
he is practical now in having the steel trust and the harvester trust,
who made an anteroom of the White House when he was president, pour out
their slush funds by millions to put him back in the White House and
keep him there.

_Financed by the Trusts._

Taft and Roosevelt, and the Republican party of which they are the
candidates, are all financed by the trusts, and is it necessary to add
that the trusts also consist of practical men and that they do not
finance a candidate or a party they do not control?

Is the man not foolish, to the verge of being feeble-minded, who
imagines that great trust magnates, such as Perkins, McCormick and
Munsey, are flooding the country with Roosevelt money because he is the
champion of progressive principles and the friend of the common people?

The truth is that if the Bull Moose candidate dared to permit an
itemized publication of his campaign contributions in his present mad
and disgraceful pursuit of the presidency, as he has been so often
challenged to do by Senator La Follette, it would paralyze him and
scandalize the nation.

Roosevelt must stand upon the record he made when he was president and
had the power, and not upon his empty promises as a ranting demagogue
and a vote-seeking politician.

For the very reason that the trusts are pouring out their millions to
literally buy his nomination and election and force him into the White
House for a third term, and if possible for life, the people should rise
in their might and repudiate him as they never have repudiated a
recreant official who betrayed his trust.

So much for the Republican party, led by Lincoln half a century ago as
the party of the people in the struggle for the overthrow of chattel
slavery, and now being scuttled by Taft and Roosevelt in base servility
to the plutocracy.

_The Democratic Party._

The Democratic party, like its Republican ally, is a capitalist party,
the only difference being that it represents the minor divisions of the
capital