The Triumphant Life of Theodore Roosevelt edited by J. Martin Miller

286 THE CANDIDATES NOMINATED
at from seventy-five cents to one dollar a bushel; whose coal, iron and lumber are in
demand throughout the world, whose home market is assured, and whose lands are
rapidly increasing in value, are not alarmed over the prospect of another Republican
victory under Roosevelt. They are not alarmed over the digging of a canal at
Panama that will give them direct communication with five or six hundred millions
of people who need the products of their fields and factories. Nor are they alarmed
that increased railway and river transportation will be required to move these prod-
ucts to Southern ports, or that from these ports, under a Republican administration,
yellow fever, the South's dread enemy, has been banished, millions saved annually
to the taxpayer and the business year raised from nine months to twelve.
A DISTRUST OF DEMOCRATIC POLICIES
The prosperity of the South is wrapped up in the politics of the Republican
party, and the Southern people are beginning to realize it. Southern business senti-
ment indicates an increasing distrust of the policies of the Democratic party. In
i8g6 Georgia, accustomed to enormous Democratic majorities, gave 94,000 votes for
Bryan and 60,000 for McKinley. North Carolina cast 174,000 votes for Bryan and
155.000 for McKinley. Virginia gave 154,000 votes for Bryan and 135,000 for McKin-
ley. And this was according to Democratic counts. Maryland and West Virginia
cast Republican majorities in both 1896 and 1900. In Virginia, Georgia and North
Carolina in 1900 12 to 15 per cent of the people who had voted in 1S96 stayed away
from the polls and sacrificed their last opportunity to worship the "popular idol."
An analysis of election returns shows that the distrust of Democracy was most pro-
nounced and conspicuous in centers of trade, manufactures and commerce.
Fellow countrymen, we of the South believe in Roosevelt and in his ability to
meet every issue at home and abroad triumphantly. We believe that he is animated
by a spirit of patriotism as broad and as bright as has ever streamed from the White
House over our beloved country ;
and we believe that when he has fulfilled his mis-
sion, he, the son of the North and South, will carry with him the consciousness that
fatherland and motherland, once divorced in sadness, through him and because of
him have been drawn together again in the bonds of the old affection. And we
believe that when he goes at length into the retirement of private life he will go
beloved of all patriotic Americans, from Canada to the Gulf, and from ocean to
ocean. Mr. Chairman, in half of the motherland, I second the nomination of Theo-
dore Roosevelt.
BRADLEY REPRESENTS KENTUCKY
Former Governor Bradley of Kentucky was next intro-
duced as coming from that State and of that people who take
their politics, like their whisky, straight. He said: