rters, were attracted by Wilson's legislative
programme and record of accomplishment. He could look to an independent
vote such as no other Democrat could hope for.

Despite this strength, the Republican leaders, if they could succeed in
effecting a reunion of their party, awaited the results of the election
with confidence. They counted chiefly upon the personal unpopularity of
Wilson on the Atlantic seaboard and the normal Republican vote in the
industrial centers of the Middle West. His foreign policy, east of the
Mississippi, was generally looked upon as anaemic and nebulous. He had
permitted, so the Republicans contended, the honor of the country to be
stained and Americans to be destroyed, without effective action. His
early opposition to preparedness and the half-hearted measures of army
reform had proved his weakness, at least to the satisfaction of
Republican stump orators. He had won the hearty dislike of the bankers,
the manufacturers, and the merchants by his attacks on capitalist
interests and by his support of labor unions. The Clayton Act, which
exempted strikes from Federal injunctions, and the Adamson Act, which
granted, under threat, the immediate demands of the striking railroad
employees, were cited as clear proof of his demagogic character.
Furthermore, while he alienated the pro-Entente elements in New England
and the Eastern States, he had drawn upon himself the hatred of the
German-Americans by his attacks upon hyphenates and his refusal to accept
an embargo on American munitions.

Had the Republicans been willing to accept Theodore Roosevelt, victory
would probably have come to them. He alone could have gathered in the
Progressive and independent vote, and that of the Pacific coast, which
ultimately went to Wilson. But the Old Guard of the Republicans refused
to consider Roosevelt; they could not take a man who had broken party
lines four years before; above all they wanted a "safe and sane"
President, who would play the political game according to rule--the rule
of the bosses--and they knew that were Roosevelt elected they could not
hope to share in the spoils. The Republican convention ultimately settled
upon Charles E. Hughes, who certainly was not beloved by the bosses, but
who was regarded as "steadier" than Roosevelt. The latter, in order to
defeat Wilson, refused the offer of the Progressives, practically
disbanded the party he had created, and called upon his friends to return
with him