Root and Czolgosz

     ELIHU ROOT’S record is about as evil-odored as that of any other high-finance politician. His coming out against Hearst in New York has brought out his own record as a Trust servitor, gladly skirting the walls of the penitentiary in the service of his masters. Verily, he is a Root of all evil. He has been in the pay of giant crooks, from Tweed to Tom Ryan. His skullduggery reaches from juggling with courts to defying banking laws by negotiating bogus loans. He says Hearst nerved the arm of Czolgosz. He lies. Czolgosz was moved in his crazy mind to the awful deed he did, by the evils perpetrated by the huge thieves whose fees have made Root’s fame and fortune. President McKinley was saved from everlasting disgrace only by his death at the hands of an assassin. If McKinley had lived and the Root crowd had retained its hold upon him, he would have earned universal execration. The gang that surrounded McKinley was for the continuance of every crookedness that Theodore Roosevelt has attacked. Of that gang Root was the legal brain. It was Root and what Root stood and stands for that produced the sentiment, risen to insanity, that urged Leon Czolgosz to slay President McKinley at Buffalo. Happy McKinley, that he died before his fame was wholly blasted by the perpetuation of the policies in the support of which Root has become distinguished—“by merit raised to that bad eminence.”