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Show SHAME ON THEM. ' Fifty-four yoars ago, says the Indianapolis Star, there was born in the city of New York a delicate boy, whose iron will kept him alive and acquired for him the rugged constitution which nature had denied; de-nied; whose patrician ancestry developed strangely in him a marvelous mar-velous propensity for understanding and interpreting the common people; whose aristocratic associations on Fifth avenue and scholastic training at' Harvard University issued m his drifting into the rough and ready ranch life of the Western cowboy. At 24 this yonng man was a member of the New York Legislature, Legisla-ture, at 26 a delegate to the Republican national convention, at 28 the Republican candidate for mayor of New York, at 31 a civil service ser-vice commissioner of the United States, at 37 president of the New York city police board, at 39 assistant secretary of the United States Navy, at 40 a lieutenant colonel of volunteers and promoted to bo colonel for gallantry in battle, at 41 Governor of New York, at 42 elected Vice President, at 43 succeeding to the presidency and at 46 elected to that office by the largest popular majority ever recorded. Throughout his career this man was always in the forefront of every battle for political and social reform. He gave the nation a decent de-cent civil service, he revolutionized New York's police force along honest lines, he introduced beneficent reforms in the navy, he brought peace between Russia and Japan, he translated the Panama Canal from a dream into a fact, he captivated the thrones and courts, academies acade-mies and universities of Europe, by his learning and his enthusiasms; he incurred, from his earliest public acts until the present day, the implacable hostility of predatory wealth and corrupt bosses; he became be-came the hope of the masses, the idol of social reformers and the hero of red-blooded men everywhere for his courage, his honesty, his vigor. Posterity will view with shame and reprobation the effort Lhat those who have suffered from his militant hatred of wrongdoing put forth to blacken Theodore Roosevelt's name and fame. |