Page:The Presidents of the United States, 1789-1914, v. IV.djvu/178

142 LIVES OF THE PRESIDENTS terous was the counter-assertion that "big business" had artificially induced the disaster to frighten Mr. Roosevelt and stop his talking. The panic did come immediately after a speech made by the President during a journey regarding waterways through the Mississippi Valley. It had to come one day or another; an ebb-tide in finance and credit had been flowing slowly round the world, and it reached us at the time predicted for it a year be fore the worst. But this truth is not even now universally known; and in 1907-1908 it was con cealed for political purposes by some who did know it. Of the two false notions, unquestionably that one prevailed which laid the panic at the "rich man s" door. At the Republican Convention held in Chicago, June 25, 1908, the "demonstration" for Mr. Roosevelt lasted for forty minutes. The nomi nation could have been swept to him on the wave of enthusiasm raised by his name; it was only not swept to him through the energy and skill of those who were aiding him to carry out his determination against it and in favor of Mr. Taft. Although the final acts of Congress in Mr. Roosevelt s second term, the Forest Reserve Bill passed by the House March 1, and the ratification by the senate of the Canadian Waterways Treaty, March 4, were in harmony with his policies, for many months the relations between him and both houses had been increasingly discordant, and he