RECOLLECTIONS OF FULL YEARS
fight. My husband's brother Charles devoted a full year to it, established headquarters in Ohio and Washington, and bore the brunt of the contest. The afternoon of the convention when the voting came, we all assembled at my husband's office in the War Department and received the news over the telephone as it came in. I have a series of photographs, taken by a friend, of the expressions on my husband's face as the results of the voting were being announced. Soon after the nomination was made, on the first of July Mr. Taft resigned from the Cabinet, and we established ourselves at Hot Springs, Virginia, where he spent some weeks preparing his address of acceptance. This he submitted to Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Root before he went to Cincinnati to deliver it. Mr. Charles Taft made elaborate preparations to receive and entertain the Committee of Announcement, and on a platform in front of his fine old house, in Pike Street, on one of the hottest days of the summer, my husband delivered his acceptance. We then returned to Hot Springs and spent another month in preparation for the campaign. From Hot Springs we went to Middle Bass Island on Lake Erie to spend a week or more there. We then went to Cincinnati. Upon this latter trip Mr. Taft made a good many speeches from the platform of our car. In September Mr. Bryan's campaign looked very hopeful. The opposition of Mr. Gompers and organised labour seemed formidable. Mr. Taft determined to meet this issue fully and frankly. He was attacked because he had delivered a number of labour decisions supposed to be against the interest of labour. He had sent to jail, for six months, the chief lieutenant of Debs in the Debs railway rebellion of 1894, breaking it up in Cincinnati and the vicinity. He did not apologise in any way for the action he had taken. A meeting of the railway trade organisations was called in Chicago at Orchestra Hall, and there he explained his action, defended it, and avowed
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