There had been disagreements in the Republican Party for a number of years.  These had gone on during the Roosevelt administration.  In the main, these struggles can be described by saying that President Roosevelt and those who agreed with him were looking out for the advantage of the many, and for the welfare and health of great masses of the people.  His opponents were more interested to see that nothing checked the activities of great corporations, railroads, and manufacturing interests.  They sincerely believed that this was the first concern of all true patriots.  Roosevelt wished every man to have a square deal, an equal chance, so far as possible, to earn as good a living as he could.  His opponents thought that if the great business interests could only go on, as they liked, without being annoyed by the government, they would be able to give employment to almost everybody, and to all the unfortunates, who were crushed in the struggle, they would give charity.

Between these two groups there was a ceaseless fight all the years Roosevelt was in the White House.  He had been strongly approved at the polls; many of the measures he advocated had been made laws by Congress.  So he thought, and the larger part of the Republican Party thought, when Mr. Taft became President, that the measures which they had approved were going to be advanced still further.

It soon appeared that they were in for a disappointment.  Mr. Taft proved friendly to the older politicians; the younger and progressive men were not in favor.  He made his associates, and chose as his advisers, the men who called Mr. Roosevelt “rash,” “a socialist,” “an anarchist.”  Many of the men who surrounded President Taft were honest and patriotic.  But there were also a number of stick-in-the-mud statesmen,—­old gentlemen who had been saying the same thing, thinking the same things, doing the same things, for forty years.  To change, to be up with the times, to progress, to alter methods to meet new conditions, struck them as simply indecent.  Their idea of a happy national life was great “prosperity” for a fortunate few, a lesser degree of success for some others who could cling to the chariot wheels of the rich, and,—­charity for the rest.  That was always their answer to the old, hard problem of wealth and poverty.  Like quack doctors they would try to cure the symptoms, rather than like wise physicians seek to find the causes.  They were like the Tories in our Revolution who were for King George against George Washington, because King George was the legal King of the American colonies, or like the Northern pro-slavery men, who defended slavery because it was permitted by the Constitution and the slaves were legal “property.”  The Constitution was, for them, an instrument to be used to block all change, whether good or bad.

Other men, near to President Taft, were neither patriotic nor innocent.  They were shrewd, powerful Bosses,—­men of the type of Platt.  Only, Mr. Taft did not stand on the alert with them, as Roosevelt had done as Governor, working with them when he could, and fighting them when they went wrong.  He allowed them to influence his administration, and, at last, accepted a nomination engineered by them for their own selfish purposes.