e hours of conflict and turmoil passed, there grew steadily and
surely in the Roosevelt ranks a demand for a severance of relations
with the fraudulent Convention and the formation of a new party devoted,
without equivocation or compromise, to Progressive principles. A typical
incident of these days of confusion and uncertainty was the drawing up
of a declaration of purpose by a Progressive alternate from New Jersey,
disgusted with the progress of the machine steam roller and disappointed
at the delayed appearance of a positive Progressive programme of action.
Circulated privately, with the knowledge and approval of Roosevelt,
it was promptly signed by dozens of Progressive delegates. It read as
follows:

"We, the undersigned, in the event that the Republican National
Convention as at present constituted refuses to purge its roll of the
delegates fraudulently placed upon it by the action of the majority
of the Republican National Committee, pledge ourselves, as American
citizens devoted to the progressive principles of genuine popular rule
and social justice, to join in the organization of a new party founded
upon those principles, under the leadership of Theodore Roosevelt."

The first signer of the declaration was Governor Hiram W. Johnson of
California, the second, Governor Robert S. Vessey of South Dakota, the
third, Governor Joseph M. Carey of Wyoming, and farther down the
list were the names of Gifford and Amos Pinchot, James R. Garfield,
ex-Governor John Franklin Fort of New Jersey, with Everett Colby and
George L. Record of the same State, Matthew Hale of Massachusetts,
"Jack" Greenway of Arizona, Judge Ben B. Lindsey of Colorado, Medill
McCormick of Illinois, George Rublee of New Hampshire, and Elon
Huntington Hooker, of New York, who was to become the National Treasurer
of the new party. The document was, of course, a purely informal
assertion of purpose; but it was the first substantial straw to predict
the whirlwind which the masters of the convention were to reap.

When at last it had become unmistakably clear that the Taft forces
were and would remain to the end in control of the Convention, the
Progressive delegates, with a few exceptions, united in dramatic action.
Speaking for them with passion and intensity Henry J. Allen of Kansas
announced their intention to participate no longer in the actions of
a convention vitiated by fraud. The Progressive delegates would, he
declared, remain in their places b