end, he entered the Convention with the delegates of but two States, his
own Wisconsin and North Dakota, pledged to support him.

The pre-convention campaign was made unusually dramatic by the fact
that, for the first time in the history of Presidential elections,
the voters of thirteen States were privileged not only to select the
delegates to the Convention by direct primary vote but to instruct them
in the same way as to the candidate for whom they should cast their
ballots. There were 388 such popularly instructed delegates from
California, Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nebraska, New
Jersey, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, and
Wisconsin. It was naturally in these States that the two candidates
concentrated their campaigning efforts. The result of the selection
of delegates and of the preferential vote in these States was the best
possible evidence of the desire of the rank and file of the party as to
the Presidential candidate. Of these 388 delegates, Senator La Follette
secured 36; President Taft 71--28 in Georgia, 2 in Illinois, 18 in
Massachusetts, 14 in Ohio, and 9 in Pennsylvania; and Roosevelt 281--26
in California, 56 in Illinois, 16 in Maryland, 18 in Massachusetts,
16 in Nebraska, 28 in New Jersey, 34 in Ohio, 10 in Oregon, 67 in
Pennsylvania, and 10 in South Dakota. Roosevelt therefore, in those
States where the voters could actually declare at primary elections
which candidate they preferred, was the expressed choice of more than
five times as many voters as Taft.

When the Republican convention met in Chicago an interesting and
peculiar situation presented itself. There were 1078 seats in the
Convention. Of the delegates elected to those seats Taft had committed
to him the vast majority of the delegates from the States which have
never cast an electoral vote for a Republican candidate for President
since there was a Republican party. Roosevelt had in support of him
the great majority of the delegates from the States which are normally
Republican and which must be relied upon at election time if a
Republican President is to be chosen. Of the 1078 seats more than 200
were contested. Aside from these contested seats, neither candidate had
a majority of the delegates. The problem that confronted each side was
to secure the filling of a sufficient number of the disputed seats with
its retainers to insure a majority for its candidate. In the solution
of this problem the T