Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. McKinley

While the late Vice-President Hobart was in no official sense a member of the cabinet, it is well known that President McKinley consulted him constantly and freely, and that Mr. Hobart was on intimate personal and official terms with the members of the cabinet, while also exercising a great deal of practical influence among the Senators, over whose deliberations it was his function to preside. It will be remembered that Mr. Roosevelt was the speaker at the Philadelphia convention who seconded Senator Foraker’s nomination of President McKinley for another term, and that his speech was a fine tribute to Mr. McKinley’s administration as well as a strong plea for Mr. McKinley’s policies. Thus, it was perfectly well known that Mr. Roosevelt was in accord with the President who had made him a high official in the Navy Department, and had afterward commissioned him to high rank in the army. Furthermore, it is no secret that President McKinley, on his own part, sent word to Mr. Roosevelt, as Vice-Presidential nominee, that he would treat him exactly as he had treated Mr. Hobart, in case the ticket should be elected. Thus, Mr. Roosevelt went to Washington as Vice-President to enjoy the full confidence of Mr. McKinley in all matters of public importance, and also to enjoy the friendship and confidence of all the members of the cabinet. These were the circumstances under which Mr. Roosevelt’s action, when the great emergency arose, was not one about which he had any occasion to falter or hesitate. The conditions were totally unlike those that had existed when former Presidents had died in office, and they were diametrically opposite to those at the time of President Garfield’s assassination, when the Vice-President was one of the leaders in an intense factional fight against the political plans and methods of the administration. Mr. Roosevelt’s relations with the administration were thus so normal and appropriate that there was every reason to expect that in the case of Mr. McKinley’s death he would take up the reins of administration exactly where they were laid down, and proceed as best he could with existing instrumentalities.