ut they would neither vote nor take
any part whatever in the proceedings. He then read, by permission of
the Convention, a statement from Roosevelt, in which he pronounced the
following indictment:

"The Convention has now declined to purge the roll of the fraudulent
delegates placed thereon by the defunct National Committee, and the
majority which has thus indorsed the fraud was made a majority only
because it included the fraudulent delegates themselves who all sat as
judges on one another's cases.... The Convention as now composed has
no claim to represent the voters of the Republican party.... Any man
nominated by the Convention as now constituted would merely be the
beneficiary of this successful fraud; it would be deeply discreditable
for any man to accept the Convention's nomination under these
circumstances; and any man thus accepting it would have no claim to the
support of any Republican on party grounds and would have forfeited
the right to ask the support of any honest man of any party on moral
grounds."

So while most of the Roosevelt delegates sat in ominous quiet and
refused to vote, the Convention proceeded to nominate Taft for President
by the following vote: Taft 561--21 votes more than a majority;
Roosevelt 107; La Follette 41; Cummins 17; Hughes 2; absent 6; present
and not voting 344.

Then the Taft delegates went home to meditate on the fight which they
had won and the more portentous fight which they must wage in the coming
months on a broader field. The Roosevelt delegates, on the other
hand, went out to Orchestra Hall, and in an exalted mood of passionate
devotion to their cause and their beloved leader proceeded to nominate
Theodore Roosevelt for the Presidency and Hiram Johnson for the
Vice-Presidency. A committee was sent to notify Roosevelt of the
nomination and when he appeared in the hall all precedents of
spontaneous enthusiasm were broken. This was no conventional--if the
double entendre may be permitted--demonstration. It had rather the
quality of religious exaltation.

Roosevelt made a short speech, in which he adjured his hearers to go to
their several homes "to find out the sentiment of the people at home and
then again come together, I suggest by mass convention, to nominate for
the Presidency a Progressive on a Progressive platform that will enable
us to appeal to Northerner and Southerner, Easterner and Westerner,
Republican and Democrat alike, in the name of our common Ameri