At 8:10 o'clock on the night of Oct. 14, 1912, a shot
was fired the echo of which swept around the entire world in thirty
minutes.
An insane man attempted to end the life of the only
living ex-president of the United States and the best known American.
The bullet failed of its mission.
Col. Theodore Roosevelt, carrying the leaden missile
intended as a pellet of death in his right side, has recovered. He is
spared for many more years of active service for his country.
John Flammang Schrank, the mad man who fired the shot,
is in the Northern Hospital for the Insane at Oshkosh, Wis., pronounced
by a commission of five alienists a paranoiac. If he recovers he will
face trial for assault with intent to kill.
This little book presents an accurate story of the
attempt upon the life of the ex-president. The aim of those who present
it is that, being an accurate narrative, it shall be a contribution to
the history of the United States.
This book is written, compiled and edited by Henry F.
Cochems, Chairman of the national speakers' bureau of the Progressive
party during the 1912 campaign, and who was with Col. Roosevelt in the
automobile when the ex-president was shot, Wheeler P. Bloodgood,
Wisconsin representative of the National Progressive committee, and
Oliver E. Remey, city editor of the Milwaukee Free Press, who
necessarily followed all incidents of the shooting closely.
The story told is an historical narrative in the
preparation of which accuracy never has been lost sight of.
CHRONOLOGY.
October 14, 1912—At 8:10 o'clock
P.M., John Flammang Schrank, of New York, a paranoiac, shoots ex-President
Theodore Roosevelt in the right side with a 38-caliber bullet as the ex-President
is standing in an automobile in front of Hotel Gilpatrick, Milwaukee.
Schrank is immediately arrested, after a struggle to recover the
revolver and protect him from violence. Col. Roosevelt, bleeding from
his wound, is driven to the Auditorium, Milwaukee, and speaks to an
audience of 9,000 for eighty minutes. Immediately after his speech he is
taken to the Johnston Emergency hospital, Milwaukee, where his wound is
dressed. At 12:30 o'clock he is taken on a special train to Chicago,
then to Mercy hospital.
October 15, 1912—Schrank is
arraigned in District court, Milwaukee, and admits having fired the shot.
He is bound over to Municipal court for preliminary hearing.
October 18, 1912—Ex-President
Roosevelt passes crisis in Mercy hospital, Chicago.
October 21, 1912—Ex-President
Roosevelt leaves Chicago for his home at Oyster Bay, R.I.
October 22, 1912—Ex-President
Roosevelt reaches home after a trip not seriously impairing his
condition.
October 26, 1912—Ex-President
Roosevelt takes first walk out of doors.
October 27, 1912—Ex-President
Roosevelt celebrates his fifty-fourth birthday.
October 30, 1912—Ex-President
Roosevelt speaks to an audience of 16,000 in Madison Square Garden, New
York, over 30,000 having been turned away. He is given an ovation
lasting forty-five minutes.
November 1, 1912—Ex-President
Roosevelt again speaks to an audience filling Madison Square Garden. But
for his request that it cease so that he could speak, the ovation would
have exceeded that of October 30.
November 3, 1912—Ex-President
Roosevelt makes his last campaign speech at Oyster Bay, R.I.
November 5, 1912—Ex-President
Roosevelt votes at Oyster Bay, R.I.
November 12, 1912—John Flammang
Schrank pleads guilty to assault with intent to murder before Judge
August C. Backus in Municipal court, Milwaukee. Judge Backus appoints a
commission of five Milwaukee alienists to determine, as officers of the
court, Schrank's sanity.
November 14, 1912—The sanity
commission begins examinations of Schrank.
November 22, 1912—The sanity
commission reports to Judge A. C. Backus in Municipal court, Milwaukee,
that Schrank is insane and was insane at the time he shot ex-President
Roosevelt. Schrank is committed to the Northern Hospital for the Insane
at Oshkosh, Wis. Judge Backus in making the commitment orders that in
the event of recovery Schrank shall face trial on the charge of assault
with intent to kill.
November 25, 1912—Schrank is taken
to the Northern Hospital for the Insane, Oshkosh, Wis., by deputies from
the office of the sheriff of Milwaukee county.
CHAPTER I.
THE SHOT IS FIRED.
RELATED BY HENRY F. COCHEMS AFTER THE
SHOOTING.
At 8:10 o'clock on the night of Oct. 14, 1912, an
attempt was made to assassinate Ex-President Theodore Roosevelt in the
city of Milwaukee. Col. Roosevelt had dined at the Hotel Gilpatrick with
the immediate members of his traveling party. The time having arrived to
leave for the Auditorium, where he was due to speak, he left his
quarters, and, emerging from the front of the hotel, crossing the walk,
stepped into a waiting automobile.
Instantly that he appeared a wild acclaim of applause
and welcome greeted him. He settled in his seat, but, responsive to the
persistent roar of the crowd, which extended in dense masses for over a
block in every direction, he rose in acknowledgement, raising his hat in
salute.
At this instant there cracked out the vicious report
of a pistol shot, the flash of the gun showing that the would-be
assassin had fired from a distance of only four or five feet.
Instantly there was a wild panic and confusion.
Elbert E. Martin, one of Col. Roosevelt's stenographers, a powerful
athlete and ex-football player, leaped across the machine and bore the
would-be assassin to the ground. At the same moment Capt. A. O. Girard,
a former Rough Rider and bodyguard of the ex-President, and several
policemen were upon him. Col. Roosevelt's knees bent just a trifle, and
his right hand reached forward on the door of the car tonneau. Then he
straightened himself and reached back against the upholstered seat, but
in the same instant he straightened himself, he again raised his hat, a
reassuring smile upon his face, apparently the coolest and least excited
of any one in the frenzied mob, who crowding in upon the man who fired
the shot, continued to call out:
"Kill him, kill him."
I had stepped into the car beside Col. Roosevelt,
about to take my seat when the shot was fired. Throwing my arm about the
Colonel's waist, I asked him if he had been hit, and after Col.
Roosevelt saying in an aside, "He pinked me, Harry," called out to those
who were wildly tearing at the would-be assassin:
"Don't hurt him; bring him to me here!"
The sharp military tone of command was heard in the
midst of the general uproar, and Martin, Girard and the policemen
dragged Schrank toward where Mr. Roosevelt stood. Arriving at the side
of the car, the revolver, grasped by three or four hands of men
struggling for possession, was plainly visible, and I succeeded in
grasping the barrel of the revolver, and finally in getting it from the
possession of a detective. Mr. Martin says that Schrank still had his
hands on the revolver at that time. The Colonel then said:
"Officers, take charge of him, and see that there is
no violence done to him."
The crowd had quickly cleared from in front of the
automobile, and we drove through, Col. Roosevelt waving a hand, the
crowd now half-hysterical with frenzied excitement.
After rounding the corner I drew the revolver from my
overcoat pocket and saw that it was a 38-caliber long which had been
fired. As the Colonel looked at the revolver he said:
"A 38-Colt has an ugly drive."
Mr. McGrath, one of the Colonel's secretaries riding
at his right side, said:
"Why, Colonel, you have a hole in your overcoat. He
has shot you."
The Colonel said:
"I know it," and opened his overcoat, which disclosed
his white linen, shirt, coat and vest saturated with blood. We all
instantly implored and pleaded with the Colonel to drive with the
automobile to a hospital, but he turned to me with a characteristic
smile and said:
"I know I am good now; I don't know how long I may
be. This may be my last talk in this cause to our people, and while I am
good I am going to drive to the hall and deliver my speech."
Just below the nipple of his right breast appeared a
gaping hole. They insisted that under no consideration should he speak,
but the Colonel asked:
"Has any one a clean handkerchief?"
Some one extending one, he placed it over the wound,
buttoned up his clothes and said:
"Now, gentlemen, let's go in," and advanced to the
front of the platform.
I, having been asked to present him to the audience,
after admonishing the crowd that there was no occasion for undue
excitement, said that an attempt to assassinate Col. Roosevelt had taken
place; that the bullet was still in his body, and that he would attempt
to make his speech as promised.
As the Colonel stepped forward, some one in the
audience said audibly:
"Fake," whereupon the Colonel smilingly said:
"No, it's no fake," and opening his vest, the blood-red
stain upon his linen was clearly visible.
A half-stifled expression of horror swept through the
audience.
About the first remark uttered in the speech, as the
Colonel grinned broadly at the audience, was:
"It takes more than one bullet to kill a Bull Moose.
I'm all right, no occasion for any sympathy whatever, but I want to take
this occasion within five minutes after having been shot to say some
things to our people which I hope no one will question the profound
sincerity of."
Throughout his speech, which continued for an hour
and twenty minutes, the doctors and his immediate staff of friends,
sitting closely behind him, expected that he might at any moment
collapse. I was so persuaded of this that I stepped over the front of
the high platform to the reporters' section immediately beneath where he
was speaking, so that I might catch him if he fell forward.
These precautions, however, were unnecessary, for,
while his speech lacked in the characteristic fluency of other speeches,
while the shock and pain caused his argument to be somewhat labored, yet
it was with a soldierly firmness and iron determination, which more than
all things in Roosevelt's career discloses to the country the real
Roosevelt, who at the close of his official service as President in 1909
left that high office the most beloved public figure in our history
since Lincoln fell, and the most respected citizen of the world. As was
said in an editorial in the Chicago Evening Post:
"The bullet is in me now, so that I cannot make a
very long speech. But I will try my best.
"And now, friends, I want to take advantage of this
incident to say as solemn a word of warning as I know how to my fellow
Americans.
"First of all, I want to say this about myself: I
have altogether too many important things to think of to pay any heed or
feel any concern over my own death.
"Now I would not speak to you insincerely within five
minutes of being shot. I am telling you the literal truth when I say
that my concern is for many other things. It is not in the least for my
own life.
"I want you to understand that I am ahead of the game
anyway. No man has had a happier life than I have had—a happier life in
every way.
"I have been able to do certain things that I greatly
wished to do, and I am interested in doing other things.
"I can tell you with absolute truthfulness that I am
very much uninterested in whether I am shot or not.
"It was just as when I was colonel of my regiment. I
always felt that a private was to be excused for feeling at times some
pangs of anxiety about his personal safety, but I cannot understand a
man fit to be a colonel who can pay any heed to his personal safety when
he is occupied, as he ought to be occupied, with the absorbing desire to
do his duty.
"I am in this cause with my whole heart and soul; I
believe in the Progressive movement—a movement for the betterment of
mankind, a movement for making life a little easier for all our people,
a movement to try to take the burdens off the man and especially the
woman in this country who is most oppressed.
"I am absorbed in the success of that movement. I
feel uncommonly proud in belonging to that movement.
"Friends, I ask you now this evening to accept what I
am saying as absolute truth when I tell you I am not thinking of my own
success, I am not thinking of my own life or of anything connected with
me personally."
SPEAKS TO GREAT AUDIENCE.[1]
The audience seemed unable to realize the truth of
the statement of Henry F. Cochems, who had introduced Col. Roosevelt,
that the ex-President had been shot. Col. Roosevelt had opened his vest
to show blood from his wound.
Even then many in the audience did not comprehend
that they were witnessing a scene destined to go down in history—an ex-President
of the United States, blood still flowing from the bullet wound of a
would-be assassin, delivering a speech from manuscript perforated by the
bullet of the assailant.
Col. Roosevelt said:
"Friends, I shall ask you to be as quiet as possible,"
he said. "I don't know whether you fully understand that I have just
been shot, but it takes more than that to kill a bull moose. (Cheers.)
But fortunately I had my manuscript, so you see I was going to make a
long speech (holds up manuscript with bullet hole) and there is a bullet—there
is where the bullet went through and it probably saved me from it going
into my heart. The bullet is in me now, so that I can not make a very
long speech, but I will try my best. (Cheers.)
"And now, friends, I want to take advantage of this
incident and say a word of a solemn warning, as I know how to my fellow
countrymen. First of all, I want to say this about myself: I have
altogether too important things to think of to feel any concern over my
own death, and now I can not speak to you insincerely within five
minutes of being shot. I am telling you the literal truth when I say
that my concern is for many other things. It is not in the least for my
own life. I want you to understand that I am ahead of the game, anyway.
(Applause and cheers.) No man has had a happier life than I have led; a
happier life in every way. I have been able to do certain things that I
greatly wished to do and I am interested in doing other things. I can
tell you with absolute truthfulness that I am very much uninterested in
whether I am shot or not. It was just as when I was colonel of my
regiment. I always felt that a private was to be excused for feeling at
times some pangs of anxiety about his personal safety, but I can not
understand a man fit to be a colonel who can pay any heed to his
personal safety when he is occupied as he ought to be occupied with the
absorbing desire to do his duty. (Applause and cheers.)
"I am in this cause with my whole heart and soul. I
believe that the progressive movement is for making life a little easier
for all our people; a movement to try to take the burdens off the men
and especially the women and children of this country. I am absorbed in
the success of that movement.
"Friends, I ask you now this evening to accept what I
am saying as absolutely true, when I tell you I am not thinking of my
own success. I am not thinking of my life or of anything connected with
me personally. I am thinking of the movement. I say this by way of
introduction because I want to say something very serious to our people
and especially to the newspapers. I don't know anything about who the
man was who shot me tonight. He was seized at once by one of the
stenographers in my party, Mr. Martin, and I suppose is now in the hands
of the police. He shot to kill. He shot—the shot, the bullet went in
here—I will show you (opened his vest and shows bloody stain in the
right breast; stain covered the entire lower half of his shirt to the
waist).
"I am going to ask you to be as quiet as possible for
I am not able to give the challenge of the bull moose quite as loudly.
Now I do not know who he was or what party he represented. He was a
coward. He stood in the darkness in the crowd around the automobile and
when they cheered me and I got up to bow, he stepped forward and shot me
in the darkness.
"Now friends, of course, I do not know, as I say,
anything about him, but it is a very natural thing that weak and vicious
minds should be inflamed to acts of violence by the kind of awful
mendacity and abuse that have been heaped upon me for the last three
months by the papers in the interest of not only Mr. Debs but of Mr.
Wilson and Mr. Taft. (Applause and cheers.)
"Friends, I will disown and repudiate any man of my
party who attacks with such foul slander and abuse any opponent of any
other party (applause) and now I wish to say seriously to all the daily
newspapers, to the republican, the democratic and the socialist parties
that they cannot month in and month out and year in and year out make
the kind of untruthful, of bitter assault that they have made and not
expect that brutal violent natures, or brutal and violent characters,
especially when the brutality is accompanied by a not very strong mind;
they cannot expect that such natures will be unaffected by it.
"Now friends, I am not speaking for myself at all. I
give you my word, I do not care a rap about being shot not a rap. (Applause.)
"I have had a good many experiences in my time and
this is one of them. What I care for is my country. (Applause and cheers.)
I wish I were able to impress upon my people—our people, the duty to
feel strongly but to speak the truth of their opponents. I say now, I
have never said one word against any opponent that I can not—on the
stump—that I can not defend. I have said nothing that I could not
substantiate and nothing that I ought not to have said—nothing that I—nothing
that looking back at I would not say again.
"Now friends, it ought not to be too much to ask that
our opponents (speaking to some one on the stage) I am not sick at all.
I am all right. I can not tell you of what infinitesimal importance I
regard this incident as compared with the great issues at stake in this
campaign and I ask it not for my sake, not the least in the world, but
for the sake of our common country, that they make up their minds to
speak only the truth, and not to use the kind of slander and mendacity
which if taken seriously must incite weak and violent natures to crimes
of violence. (Applause.) Don't you make any mistake. Don't you pity me.
I am all right. I am all right and you can not escape listening to the
speech either. (Laughter and applause.)
"And now, friends, this incident that has just
occurred—this effort to assassinate me, emphasizes to a peculiar degree
the need of this progressive movement. (Applause and cheers.) Friends,
every good citizen ought to do everything in his or her power to prevent
the coming of the day when we shall see in this country two recognized
creeds fighting one another, when we shall see the creed of the 'Havenots'
arraigned against the creed of the 'Haves.' When that day comes then
such incidents as this tonight will be commonplace in our history. When
you make poor men—when you permit the conditions to grow such that the
poor man as such will be swayed by his sense of injury against the men
who try to hold what they improperly have won, when that day comes, the
most awful passions will be let loose and it will be an ill day for our
country.
"Now, friends, what we who are in this movement are
endeavoring to do is to forestall any such movement by making this a
movement for justice now—a movement in which we ask all just men of
generous hearts to join with the men who feel in their souls that lift
upward which bids them refuse to be satisfied themselves while their
fellow countrymen and countrywomen suffer from avoidable misery. Now,
friends, what we progressives are trying to do is to enroll rich or poor,
whatever their social or industrial position, to stand together for the
most elementary rights of good citizenship, those elementary rights
which are the foundation of good citizenship in this great republic of
ours.
"My friends are a little more nervous than I am.
Don't you waste any sympathy on me. I have had an A1 time in life and I
am having it now.
"I never in my life had any movement in which I was
able to serve with such wholehearted devotion as in this; in which I was
able to feel as I do in this that common weal. I have fought for the
good of our common country. (Applause.)
"And now, friends, I shall have to cut short much of
the speech that I meant to give you, but I want to touch on just two or
three of the points.
"In the first place, speaking to you here in
Milwaukee, I wish to say that the progressive party is making its appeal
to all our fellow citizens without any regard to their creed or to their
birthplace. We do not regard as essential the way in which a man
worships his God or as being affected by where he was born. We regard it
as a matter of spirit and purpose. In New York, while I was police
commissioner, the two men from whom I got the most assistance were Jacob
Ries, who was born in Denmark and Oliver Van Briesen, who was born in
Germany, both of them as fine examples of the best and highest American
citizenship as you could find in any part of this country.
"I have just been introduced by one of your own men
here, Henry Cochems. His grandfather, his father and that father's seven
brothers all served in the United States army and they entered it four
years after they had come to this country from Germany (applause). Two
of them left their lives, spent their lives on the field of battle—I am
all right—I am a little sore. Anybody has a right to be sore with a
bullet in him. You would find that if I was in battle now I would be
leading my men just the same. Just the same way I am going to make this
speech.
"At one time I promoted five men for gallantry on the
field of battle. Afterward it happened to be found in making some
inquiries about that I found that it happened that two of them were
Protestants, two Catholics and one a Jew. One Protestant came from
Germany and one was born in Ireland. I did not promote them because of
their religion. It just happened that way. If all five of them had been
Jews, I would have promoted them, or if all five had been Protestants I
would have promoted them; or if they had been Catholics. In that
regiment I had a man born in Italy who distinguished himself by
gallantry, there was a young fellow, a son of Polish parents, and
another who came here when he was a child from Bohemia, who likewise
distinguished themselves, and friends, I assure you, that I was
incapable of considering any question whatever, but the worth of each
individual as a fighting man. If he was a good fighting man, then I saw
that Uncle Sam got the benefit from it. That is all. (Applause.)
"I make the same appeal in our citizenship. I ask in
our civic life we in the same way pay heed only to the man's quality of
citizenship to repudiate as the worst enemy that we can have whoever
tries to get us to discriminate for or against any man because of his
creed or his birthplace.
"Now, friends, in the same way I want our people to
stand by one another without regard to differences or class or
occupation. I have always stood by the labor unions. I am going to make
one omission tonight. I have prepared my speech because Mr. Wilson had
seen fit to attack me by showing up his record in comparison with mine.
But I am not going to do that tonight. I am going to simply speak of
what I myself have done and of what I think ought to be done in this
country of ours. (Applause.)
"It is essential that there should be organizations
of labor. This is an era of organization. Capital organizes and
therefore labor must organize. (Applause.)
"My appeal for organized labor is twofold, to the
outsider and the capitalist I make my appeal to treat the laborers
fairly, to recognize the fact that he must organize, that there must be
such organization, that it is unfair and unjust—that the laboring man
must organize for his own protection and that it is the duty of the rest
of us to help him and not hinder him in organizing. That is one-half of
the appeal that I make.
"Now the other half is to the labor man himself. My
appeal to him is to remember that as he wants justice, so he must do
justice. I want every labor man, every labor leader, every organized
union man to take the lead in denouncing crime or violence. (Applause.)
I want them to take the lead (applause) in denouncing disorder and
inciting riot, that in this country we shall proceed under the
protection of our laws and with all respect to the laws and I want the
labor men to feel in their turn that exactly as justice must be done
them so they must do justice. That they must bear their duty as citizens,
their duty to this great country of ours and that they must not rest
content without unless they do that duty to the fullest degree. (Interruption.)
"And here I have got to make one comparison between
Mr. Wilson and myself simply because he has invited it and I can not
shrink from it.
"Mr. Wilson has seen fit to attack me, to say that I
did not do much against the trusts when I was president. I have got two
answers to make to that. In the first place what I did and then I want
to compare what I did while I was president with what Mr. Wilson did not
do while he was governor. (Applause and laughter.)
"When I took office as president"—(turning to stage)
"How long have I talked?"
Answer: "Three-quarters of an hour."
"Well, I will take a quarter of an hour more. (Laughter
and applause.) When I took office the anti-trust law was practically a
dead letter and the interstate commerce law in as poor a condition. I
had to revive both laws. I did. I enforced both. It will be easy enough
to do now what I did then, but the reason that it is easy now is because
I did it when it was hard. (Applause and cheers.)
"Nobody was doing anything. I found speedily that the
interstate commerce law by being made more perfect could be a most
useful instrument for helping solve some of our industrial problems with
the anti-trust law. I speedily found that almost the only positive good
achieved by such a successful lawsuit as the Northern Securities suit,
for instance, was for establishing the principle that the government was
supreme over the big corporation, but that by itself, or that law did
not do—did not accomplish any of the things that we ought to have
accomplished, and so I began to fight for the amendment of the law along
the lines of the interstate commerce, and now we propose, we
progressives, to establish an interstate commission having the same
power over industrial concerns that the interstate commerce commission
has over railroads, so that whenever there is in the future a decision
rendered in such important matters as the recent suits against the
Standard Oil, the sugar—no, not that—tobacco—the tobacco trust—we will
have a commission which will see that the decree of the court is really
made effective; that it is not made a merely nominal decree.
"Our opponents have said that we intend to legalize
monopoly. Nonsense. They have legalized monopoly. At this moment the
Standard Oil and Tobacco trust monopolies are legalized; they are being
carried on under the decree of the Supreme Court. (Applause.)
"Our proposal is really to break up monopoly. Our
proposal is to put in the law—to lay down certain requirements and then
require the commerce commission—the industrial commission to see that
the trusts live up to those requirements. Our opponents have spoken as
if we were going to let the commission declare what the requirements
should be. Not at all. We are going to put the requirements in the law
and then see that the commission makes the trust. (Interruption.) You
see they don't trust me. (Laughter.) That the commission requires them
to obey that law.
"And now, friends, as Mr. Wilson has invited the
comparison I only want to say this: Mr. Wilson has said that the states
are the proper authorities to deal with the trusts. Well, about 80 per
cent of the trusts are organized in New Jersey. The Standard Oil, the
tobacco, the sugar, the beef, all those trusts are organized in New
Jersey and Mr. Wilson—and the laws of New Jersey say that their charters
can at any time be amended or repealed if they misbehave themselves and
it gives the government—the laws give the government ample power to act
about those laws and Mr. Wilson has been governor a year and nine months
and he has not opened his lips. (Applause and cheers.) The chapter
describing of what Mr. Wilson has done about the trusts in New Jersey
would read precisely like a chapter describing the snakes in Ireland,
which ran: 'There are no snakes in Ireland.' (Laughter and applause.) Mr.
Wilson has done precisely and exactly nothing about the trusts.
"I tell you and I told you at the beginning I do not
say anything on the stump that I do not believe. I do not say anything I
do not know. Let any of Mr. Wilson's friends on Tuesday point out one
thing or let Mr. Wilson point out one thing he has done about the trusts
as governor of New Jersey. (Applause.)
"And now, friends, I want to say one special thing
here——"
(Col. Roosevelt turned to the table upon the stage to
reach for his manuscript, but found it in the hands of some one upon the
stage. He demanded it back with the words: "Teach them not to grab,"
which provoked laughter.)
"And now, friends, there is one thing I want to say
specially to you people here in Wisconsin. All that I have said so far
is what I would say in any part of this union. I have a peculiar right
to ask that in this great contest you men and women of Wisconsin shall
stand with us. (Applause.) You have taken the lead in progressive
movements here in Wisconsin. You have taught the rest of us to look to
you for inspiration and leadership. Now, friends, you have made that
movement here locally. You will be doing a dreadful injustice to
yourselves; you will be doing a dreadful injustice to the rest of us
throughout this union if you fail to stand with us now that we are
making this national movement (applause) and what I am about to say now
I want you to understand if I speak of Mr. Wilson I speak with no mind
of bitterness. I merely want to discuss the difference of policy between
the progressive and the democratic party and to ask you to think for
yourselves which party you will follow. I will say that, friends,
because the republican party is beaten. Nobody need to have any idea
that anything can be done with the republican party. (Cheers and
applause.)
Col. Roosevelt stopped to take a drink of water and
the doctors remonstrated with him to stop talking, to which he replied:
"It is getting to be better and better as time goes on. (Turning to the
audience) If these doctors don't behave themselves I won't let them look
at me at all." (Laughter and applause.)
"Now the democratic party in its platform and through
the utterances of Mr. Wilson has distinctly committed itself to old
flintlock, muzzle loaded doctrine of states right and I have said
distinctly that we are for the people's right. We are for the rights of
the people. If they can be obtained best through the national government,
then we are for national rights. We are for the people's rights however
it is necessary to secure them.
"Mr. Wilson has made a long essay against Senator
Beveridge's bill to abolish child labor. It is the same kind of an
argument that would be made against our bill to prohibit women from
working more than eight hours a day in industry. It is the same kind of
argument that would have to be made, if it is true, it would apply
equally against our proposal to insist that in continuous industries
there shall be by law one day's rest in seven and a three-shift eight
hour day. You have labor laws here in Wisconsin, and any Chamber of
Commerce will tell you that because of that fact there are industries
that will not come into Wisconsin. They prefer to stay outside where
they can work children of tender years; where they can work women
fourteen and sixteen hours a day, where, if it is a continuous industry,
they can work men twelve hours a day and seven days a week.
"Now, friends, I know that you of Wisconsin would
never repeal those laws even if they are to your commercial hurt, just
as I am trying to get New York to adopt such laws even though it will be
to New York's commercial hurt. But if possible, I want to arrange it so
that we can have justice without commercial hurt, and you can only get
that if you have justice enforced nationally. You won't be burdened in
Wisconsin with industries not coming to the state if the same good laws
are extended all over the other states. (Applause.) Do you see what I
mean? The states all compete in a common market and it is not justice to
the employers of a state that has enforced just and proper laws to have
them exposed to the competition of another state where no such laws are
enforced. Now the democratic platform, their speaker declares that we
shall not have such laws. Mr. Wilson has distinctly declared that you
shall not have a national law to prohibit the labor of children, to
prohibit child labor. He has distinctly declared that we shall not have
law to establish a minimum wage for women.
"I ask you to look at our declaration and hear and
read our platform about social and industrial justice and then, friends,
vote for the progressive ticket without regard to me, without regard to
my personality, for only by voting for that platform can you be true to
the cause of progress throughout this union." (Applause.)
All through his talk, it was evident that his
physicians feared his injury had been more serious than he was willing
to admit. That a man with a bullet embedded in his body could stand up
there and insist on giving the audience the speech which they had come
to hear was almost incredible and it was plain the physicians as well as
the other friends of the colonel on the stage were greatly alarmed.
Col. Roosevelt, however, would have none of it. "Sit
down, sit down," he said to those who, when he faltered once or twice,
half rose to come towards him. He insisted that he was having a good
time in spite of his injury.
Finally a motherly looking woman, a few rows of seats
back from the stage rose and said, "Mr. Roosevelt, we all wish you would
be seated."
To this the colonel quickly replied: "I thank you,
madam, but I don't mind it a bit."
To those on the stage, who wished he would adopt the
suggestion of being seated, he said: "Good gracious if you saw me in the
saddle at the head of my troops with a bullet in me you would not mind."
The only time Col. Roosevelt gave up and took a seat
was when he came to a quotation from La Follette's weekly which paid him
a tribute of praise for his work as president. This was read by
Assemblyman T. J. Mahon, while the colonel rested.
At the conclusion of the reading Col. Roosevelt said
that he was the same man now that he was then. He had not been president
since 1909 so that what he was described as being then he was now.
T. J. Mahon read this editorial from La Follette's
magazine of March 13, 1909:
ROOSEVELT IN THE EMERGENCY.
At the hospital, Dr. Joseph Colt Bloodgood, a surgeon
of the faculty of Johns-Hopkins university, was invited into the
consultation. The Colonel's first thought had been to reassure Mrs.
Roosevelt and family against any unnecessary fear, and before he
received treatment, he sent a long reassuring telegram, together with a
telegram to Seth Bullock, whose telegram was one of the first of the
stream of telegrams which began pouring in for news of the patient's
condition.
During the preliminary examination of the wound by
the doctors in the Johnston Emergency hospital, preparations were
completed to secure X-ray pictures under the direction of Dr. J. S.
Janssen, Roentgenologist, Milwaukee. Dr. Janssen secured his views and
left for his laboratory to develop the negatives.
While these negatives were being secured, it was
determined by the doctors that no great additional danger would be
incurred if Col. Roosevelt were moved to a train, and by special train
to Chicago, which plan he had proposed, so that he might be nearer to
the center of his fight. He was moved by ambulance to the train, which
left Milwaukee shortly after midnight.
In the meantime, the completion of the X-ray pictures
disclosed the fact that the bullet laid between the fourth and fifth
ribs, three and one-half inches from the surface of the chest, on the
right side, and later examinations disclosed that it had shattered the
fourth rib somewhat, and was separated by only a delicate tissue from
the pleural cavity.
By a miracle it had spent its force, for had it
entered slightly farther, it would almost to a certainty have ended Col.
Roosevelt's life.
Upon Dr. Janssen's report of the location of the
bullet, there was a period of indecision, during which the train waited,
before the surgeons concluded that the patient might be taken to
Chicago, despite the deep nature of the wound, without seriously
impairing his chances.
Arriving at Chicago about 3 in the morning of October
15, an ambulance was procured and the Colonel taken to Mercy hospital,
where he was attended by Dr. John B. Murphy, Dr. Arthur Dean Bevan and
Dr. S. L. Terrell.
A week later, during which the surgeons concluded
that the wound was not mortal, and having recovered his strength
somewhat, he was taken East to his home at Oyster Bay.
The bullet lies where it imbedded itself. It has not
been disturbed by probes, because surgeons have concluded that such an
effort would incur additional danger.
That the shot fired by Schrank didn't succeed in
murdering Col. Roosevelt is a miracle of good fortune. A "thirty-eight"
long Colt's cartridge, fired from a pistol frame of "forty-four" caliber
design, so built because it gives a heavier drive to the projectile,
fired at that close range, meant almost inevitable death.
The aim was taken at a lower portion of Col.
Roosevelt's body, but a bystander struck Schrank's arm at the moment of
explosion, and elevated the direction of the shot. After passing through
the Colonel's heavy military overcoat, and his other clothing, it would
have certainly killed him had it not struck in its course practically
everything which he carried on his person which could impede its force.
In his coat pocket he had fifty pages of manuscript
for the night's speech, which had been doubled, causing the bullet to
traverse a hundred pages of manuscript.
It had struck also his spectacle case on the outer
concave surface of the gun metal material of which the case was
constructed. It had passed through a double fold of his heavy suspenders
before reaching his body.
Had anyone of those objects been out of the range of
the bullet, Schrank's dastardly purpose would have been accomplished
beyond any conjecture.
"DR. JOSEPH COLT BLOODGOOD,
Miss White, describing the ex-President's stay in the
hospital, said:
"Col. Roosevelt is the most unusual patient who ever
was ministered to in the Johnston Emergency Hospital, in that he was
absolutely calm and unperturbed, and influenced every one about him to
be so, although excitement and unrest were in the very atmosphere, and
he was suffering much.
"Col. Roosevelt had not been in the hospital fifteen
minutes before every one he came in contact with was willing to swear
allegiance to the Bull Moose party, and personal allegiance to, the
genial Bull Moose himself. He was so friendly and cordial, so natural
and free, so happy and genial and so inclined to 'jolly' us all that we
felt on terms of intimate friendship with him almost immediately, and
yet through all this freedom of manner he maintained a dignity that
never for an instant let us forget we were in the presence of a great
man.
"It is almost unbelievable that he could have been as
unruffled and apparently unconcerned as he was when he really was
suffering, and when he did not know how serious the wound was."
"GOD HELP POOR FOOL."
"I asked the colonel how he felt about the
prosecution of the man who shot him," said Miss White, "and he said, 'I've
not decided yet, but God help the poor fool under any circumstances!'
and the tone he used was one of kindly sympathy and sincerity, and
without one trace of malice or sarcasm.
"He seemed kindly interested in everything that any
one said to him. Miss Elvine Kucko, one of our nurses, shook hands with
him when he was about to go and said she was sorry the shooting had
happened in our city. The colonel consoled her by saying it might have
happened anywhere. I broke in with a remark to the effect that he would
have felt even worse had it been perpetrated by a Milwaukeean, and that
we were glad it was a New Yorker who did the deed.
"'You cruel little woman!' the patient ejaculated,
and I remembered then that New York was the ex-President's state."
When he was ready to go, Miss White offered him a
sealed envelope and told him his cuff buttons, shirt studs and collar
buttons were in it.
"No, you can't do that with me," he said, "I want to
see! I don't intend to get down to Chicago without the flat button for
the back of my collar."
Miss White joined him in a laugh as she pulled open
the envelope and counted each one separately into his hand. That flat
bone button that he treasured hid itself under one of the others and he
had to have a second count before he was satisfied that he was not going
to be inconvenienced by its loss when he should next care to wear a
collar.
Doctors and nurses questioned the ex-President's coat
being warm enough, but he assured them that the coat was one he had worn
in the Spanish-American war, that it was of military make and would keep
him warm enough in a steam-heated Pullman.
When the bandages were being strapped on the
colonel's chest to keep the dressing in place, one of the doctors, Fred
Stratton, a young giant, didn't put one fold as Miss White thought it
ought to be. She ordered it put right, and the colonel began to laugh,
which isn't to be wondered at when one remembers that Miss White is a
tiny, wee bit of fluffy humanity who doesn't look a bit like what one
would expect, the superintendent of a big hospital and looked a pigmy
beside the big doctor.
"Oh, please—not quite that long——" began Miss White.
"Well, we'll knock off two and make it eighteen," the
colonel interposed.
When the wound was dressed doctors and nurses tried
to persuade the patient to remain over night, but without success.
"I know if Mrs. Roosevelt were here she would insist
upon your staying," Miss White said.
"Young woman, if Mrs. Roosevelt were here I am
certain she would insist upon my leaving immediately," her husband made
reply, and gazed at the four pretty nurses surrounding him.
When the patient was brought up the elevator and led
into the "preparation" room, the first thing to do was to prepare him
for care of his wound. Miss White took his eye glasses. The Colonel
objected and said he did not want those out of his sight. But when Miss
White assured him she would give the glasses her personal attention he
seemed content with the arrangement.
One of the physicians asked for a chair for Col.
Roosevelt. Miss White said the operating table was ready, and the
colonel immediately acquiesced and laid down on the carefully scrubbed
pine slab on an iron frame, which has carried the weight of tramps,
laborers and other unfortunates picked up in the street, but never
before that of an ex-President of the United States.
Miss White was a little diffident about exposing the
fact that the president had said a swear word, but she finally admitted
that he remarked:
"I don't care a d——n about finding the bullet but I
do hope they'll fix it up so I need not continue to suffer."
The doctors washed the wound area, painted it with
iodine, itself a somewhat painful operation, and proceeded to the
dressing.
One of the doctors told Col. Roosevelt that Miss
White was a suffragist, and that after his kind treatment he ought to be
converted. Miss White said the Big Bull Moose was a suffragist and that
was one of the big planks of his party and the colonel laughed and said
of course he believed in it.
When the party left for Chicago Dr. R. G. Sayle took
with his antisepticized surgeon's gloves, surgical dressing and
instruments to be used in case of hemorrhage before Chicago was reached.
Not a souvenir of the ex-President's visit remains in
the hospital. His shirt was turned over to the police, and a blood-soaked
handkerchief which was bound upon the wound, and which was picked up by
one of the nurses, was found to have an "S" in the corner, so it was
evident that it either did not belong to the ex-President or he had not
always owned it, and this was discarded.
The Mercy Hospital nurses were appreciative of Col.
Roosevelt.
"He was the best patient I ever had," said Miss
Welter, and the sentiment was endorsed by Miss Fitzgerald.
"He was consideration itself. He never had a word of
complaint all the time he was at the hospital, and his chief worry
seemed to be that we were not comfortable. We had expected to find him 'strenuous'
and possibly disagreeable. On the contrary, we found him most docile. He
chafed at being kept in bed, but he tried not to show it, and he never
was ill-humored or peevish, as many patients in a similar position are."
Mrs. Roosevelt reached Chicago with her son Theodore
and her daughter Ethel, was driven directly to Mercy Hospital and took
charge of her husband as soon as she had greeted him. She was quite
composed on her arrival and placidly directed affairs all through. As a
result of her presence, the colonel's visiting list was materially cut
down, he devoted less time to reading telegrams, and discussed the
campaign very little.
Part of the morning he spent in reading cablegrams of
sympathy and congratulation on his escape from Emperor William, King
George, the President of France, the King of Italy, the King of Spain,
the President of Portugal and the Crown Prince and Princess of Germany.
Among his few callers were Col. Cecil Lyon, Medill
McCormick, Dr. Alexander Lambert, his family physician, who accompanied
Mrs. Roosevelt to Chicago, Dr. Evans of Chicago and Dr. Woods-Hutchinson,
a writer on medical topics, a warm personal friend.
As soon as he saw Dr. Lambert the colonel said:
"Lambert, you'd have let me finish that speech if
you'd been there after I was shot, wouldn't you?"
"Perhaps so," returned the doctor, a little dubiously,
"but I should have made sure you were not seriously hurt first."
Before Mrs. Roosevelt arrived the colonel was
insistent that he be allowed to go to Oyster Bay shortly. After a talk
with Mrs. Roosevelt, he said he would leave that question to her.
"It will probably be ten days at least before we go,"
she said. "It is too far distant to attempt a prophecy."
A more careful examination of the X-ray photographs
taken of the patient disclosed the fact that his fourth rib was slightly
splintered by the impact of the bullet lodged against it. This accounted
for the discomfort that the colonel suffered.
Mrs. Roosevelt was insistent on taking her husband
home at the earliest moment consistent with safety.
The colonel passed an easy day. He continued to
exhibit the utmost indifference to the motives of Schrank, who sought
his life. "His name might be Czolgosz or anything else as far as I am
concerned," he said to one of his visitors. "I never heard of him before
and know nothing about him."
To another friend he expressed the opinion that the
man was a maniac afflicted with a paranoia on the subject of the third
term. He showed no curiosity about him and did not discuss him, although
he talked considerably about the shooting.
"You know," he said to Dr. Murphy, "I have done a lot
of hunting and I know that a thirty-eight caliber pistol slug fired at
any range will not kill a bull moose."
Before he went to sleep, Col. Roosevelt called for
hot water and a mirror and sitting in bed, carefully shaved himself. Mrs.
Roosevelt, tired out after her long journey, also retired early, at 10
o'clock.
The following bulletin, issued by the surgeons on the
morning of October 15, described the wound inflicted by Schrank's bullet:
"Any way, if I had to die, I wanted to die with my
boots on." Lying on a hospital bed completely filled by his great bulk,
Theodore Roosevelt made this answer to a question by Dr. Terrell.
He had just talked with the newspaper men who were
with his party enroute. Terrell, coming in at the conclusion of the
conversation, expressed the fear that the ex-President was exerting
himself beyond his strength.
"You do too much," said Terrell. "The most
uncomfortable hour I ever spent in my life was while I sat on that
platform in Milwaukee wondering where that bullet was and in how
imminent danger you were. How could you be so incautious as to make a
speech then? It was all very well for you to say the shot was not fatal
but how could you tell?"
The colonel grinned, raised his arm heavily, trying
not to show the pain that came with every movement.
"I did not think the wound was dangerous," he said.
"I was confident that it was not in a place where much harm could follow
and therefore I wished to make the speech. Anyway, even if it went
against me—well, if I had to die—" and the colonel chuckled grimly, "I
thought I'd rather die with my boots on."
The newspaper men who were with him when out of the
darkness came the bullet that still menaces his life, felt that in that
sentence he had epitomized his unfaltering courage. Never once since has
he wavered in courage. Physically overcome he once sank back, and came
as near to fainting as so strong a man can. All the rest of the time he
has been as serene as a man unhurt.
It was in the gray of this morning's daylight that we
caught our first glimpse of him after the shooting. Standing in the
corridor of his private car as it lay in the North-Western station in
Chicago, we heard Dr. Terrell say:
"Now is a chance to see the old warrior, he is coming
out."
The door of his state room creaked and swung open
slowly. As it swung back within loomed the figure that attracts
attention everywhere. The colonel stepped out slowly, his shoulders
thrown back and his bearing soldierly. He stretched out two fingers to
one of the party.
"Ah, old comrade," he said, "shake. The newspaper
boys are my friends," he added, as he proceeded toward the door of the
car. "I'm glad to see them."
"You had a pretty rough time last night, colonel,"
suggested somebody.
"We did have a middling lively time, didn't we?" said
the colonel with a broad grin.
"Pretty plucky of you," said another man. "Everybody
agrees to that."
"Fiddlesticks," and the colonel stepped out on the
platform and down the steps.
He had indignantly refused a stretcher and even
balked at an ambulance, but finally agreed that this was the best means
of conveyance to the hospital.
He walked past a silent crowd, a crowd that wanted to
cheer, but did not dare, but stood, without a smile as he went by. To
them all he waved a hand. Just as he was leaving the steps a flashlight
flared forth, the sharp report of the powder startling everybody.
"Ah, shot again," said the colonel, without a tremor.
Before climbing into the ambulance he turned to the
newspaper men who had come out to see him off.
"I want to see you newspaper men at the hospital at 3
o'clock. I want all the old guard there." Then he started up the steps
of the automobile conveyance with a firm step and tried to seat himself
firmly on the cushion. But he had counted on more strength than he
possessed. With a smothered exclamation he sank back among them, his
head dropping and his figure one of pathetic helplessness.
At 3 o'clock he welcomed the newspaper men sitting up
in bed with his massive chest hidden beneath an undershirt.
"I came away in too big a hurry to get my pajamas,"
he explained, apologetically.
"Here they are, bless their hearts. They never desert
me," the colonel cried, as the visitors were ushered in.
His face had lost the gray of the early morning and
resumed its normal tint. He never looked better and certainly never
looked larger. He filled the narrow hospital cot completely, from side
to side, and from end to end.
Two beautiful rooms had been secured for him at Mercy
Hospital, one of the biggest and finest institutions in the west. The
four windows of the sick room faced two on Calumet avenue and two on
Twenty-sixth street, in a quiet part of town, away from the smoke and
the roar of the elevated trains. To make the air more salubrious an
oxygen apparatus had been placed in the room, which liberated just
enough gas to make the air fresh and to give it an autumn twang.
In response to a question as to how he felt, he
replied with a laugh: "I feel as well as a man feels who has a bullet in
him."
"But haven't you any pain?" asked someone.
"Well," the colonel said, dryly, "A man with a bullet
in him is lucky if he doesn't experience a little pain."
Here Dr. Terrell, always on watch, held up a warning
hand.
"You must not talk much," he said.
"I'll boss this job," said Roosevelt. "You go away
and let me do this thing."
Just then the door opened to admit Elbert E. Martin,
the herculean stenographer who had grabbed Schrank before he could fire
a second shot.
"Here he is," cried the colonel, waving his hand, "here
is the man that did it."
Martin had brought a lot of telegrams. The colonel,
lying partly propped up adjusted the great tortoise shell glasses and
proceeded to look them over. With one of them he seemed especially
pleased. It came from Madison, Wis., and was as follows:
"But I never had a bullet in me before," he said.
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