olutely sound; for little permanent good can be done by any party
which worships the State's rights fetish or which fails to regard the
State, like the county or the municipality, as merely a convenient unit
for local self-government, while in all National matters, of importance
to the whole people, the Nation is to be supreme over State, county, and
town alike. But the State's rights fetish, although still effectively
used at certain times by both courts and Congress to block needed
National legislation directed against the huge corporations or in the
interests of workingmen, was not a prime issue at the time of which I
speak. In 1896, 1898, and 1900 the campaigns were waged on two great
moral issues: (1) the imperative need of a sound and honest currency;
(2) the need, after 1898, of meeting in manful and straightforward
fashion the extraterritorial problems arising from the Spanish War. On
these great moral issues the Republican party was right, and the men who
were opposed to it, and who claimed to be the radicals, and their allies
among the sentimentalists, were utterly and hopelessly wrong. This had,
regrettably but perhaps inevitably, tended to throw the party into the
hands not merely of the conservatives but of the reactionaries; of men
who, sometimes for personal and improper reasons, but more often with
entire sincerity and uprightness of purpose, distrusted anything that
was progressive and dreaded radicalism. These men still from force of
habit applauded what Lincoln had done in the way of radical dealing
with the abuses of his day; but they did not apply the spirit in which
Lincoln worked to the abuses of their own day. Both houses of Congress
were controlled by these men. Their leaders in the Senate were Messrs.
Aldrich and Hale. The Speaker of the House when I became President
was Mr. Henderson, but in a little over a year he was succeeded by Mr.
Cannon, who, although widely differing from Senator Aldrich in matters
of detail, represented the same type of public sentiment. There were
many points on which I agreed with Mr. Cannon and Mr. Aldrich, and some
points on which I agreed with Mr. Hale. I made a resolute effort to get
on with all three and with their followers, and I have no question that
they made an equally resolute effort to get on with me. We succeeded in
working together, although with increasing friction, for some years, I
pushing forward and they hanging back. Gradually, however, I was forced