The Republican platform of 1904 gave no recognition of any of the newer social and economic problems which were soon to rend that party in twain. After the fashion of announcements made by parties already in power, it laid great emphasis upon Republican achievements since the great victory of 1896. A protective tariff under which all industries had revived and prospered had been enacted; public credit was now restored, Cuban independence established, peace, freedom, order, and prosperity given to Porto Rico, the Philippine Islands endowed with the largest civil liberty ever enjoyed there, the laws against unjust discriminations by vast aggregations of capital fearlessly enforced, and the gold standard upheld. The program of positive action included nothing new: extension of foreign markets, encouragement of American shipping, enforcement of the Fourteenth Amendment wherever the suffrage had been curtailed, and indorsement of civil service, international arbitration, and liberal pensions. The trust plank was noncommittal as to concrete policy: "Combinations of capital and of labor are the results of the economic movement of the age, but neither must be permitted to infringe the rights and interests of the people. Such combinations, when lawfully formed for lawful purposes, are alike entitled to the protection of the laws, but both are subject to the laws and neither can be permitted to break them."
In their campaign book for 1904, the Republican leaders exhibited Mr. Roosevelt as the ideal American in a superlative degree. "Theodore Roosevelt's character," runs the eulogy, "is no topic for difference of opinion or for party controversy. It is without mystery or concealment. It has the primary qualities that in all ages have been admired and respected: physical prowess, great energy and vitality, straightforwardness and moral courage, promptness in action, talent for leadership.... Theodore Roosevelt, as a typical personality, has won the hearty confidence of the American people; and he has not shrunk from recognizing and using his influence as an advocate of the best standards of personal, domestic, and civic life in the country. He has made these things relating to life and conduct a favorite theme in speech and essay and he has diligently practiced what he preached. Thus he has become a power for wholesomeness in every department of our life as a people."
The Democratic nominee, Mr. Alton B. Parker, failed to elicit any enthusiasm in the rank and file of the party. He had supported the Democratic candidate at a time when many of his conservative friends had repudiated Mr. Bryan altogether, and thus he could not be branded as a "bolter." But Mr. Parker's long term of service as judge of the highest court of New York, his remoteness from actual partisan controversies, his refusal to plunge into a whirlwind stumping campaign, and his dignified reserve, all combined to prevent his getting a grip upon the popular imagination. His weakness was further increased by the half-hearted support given by Mr. Bryan who openly declared the party to be under the control of the "Wall Street element," but confessed that he intended to give his vote to Mr. Parker, although the latter, in a telegram to the nominating convention at St. Louis, had announced his unflinching adherence to the gold standard.
The Democratic platform, except in its denunciation of the Republican administration, was as indefinite as the occasion demanded. Independence should be promised to the Filipinos at the proper time and under proper circumstances; there should be a revision and gradual reduction of the tariff by "the friends of the masses"; United States Senators should be elected by popular vote; combinations and trusts which restrict competition, control production, or fix prices and wages should be forbidden and punished by law. The administration of Mr. Roosevelt was denounced as "spasmodic, erratic, sensational, spectacular, and arbitrary," and the proposal of the Republican platform to enforce the Fourteenth Amendment was condemned as "Bourbon-like, selfish, and narrow," and designed to kindle anew the embers of racial and sectional strife. Constitutional, simple, and orderly government was promised, affording no sensations, offering no organic changes in the political or economic structure, and making no departures from the government "as framed and established by the fathers of the Republic."
The only extraordinary incident in the campaign of 1904 occurred toward the closing days, when Mr. Parker repeatedly charged that the Republican party was being financed by contributions from corporations and trust magnates. The Democratic candidate also declared that Mr. Cortelyou, as Secretary of Commerce and Labor, had acquired through the use of official inquisitorial powers inside information as to the practices of trusts, and that as chairman of the Republican national committee, he had used his special knowledge to extort contributions from corporations. These corrupt and debasing methods had, in the opinion of Mr. Parker, threatened the integrity of the republic and transformed the government of the people into "a government whose officers are practically chosen by a handful of corporate managers, who levy upon the assets of the stockholders whom they represent such sums of money as they deem requisite to place the conduct of the Government in such hands as they consider best for their private interests."
These grave charges were made as early as October 24, and it was expected that Mr. Cortelyou would reply immediately, particularly as Mr. Parker was repeating and amplifying them. However, no formal answer came until November 5, three days before the election, when a countercharge was impossible. On that date Mr. Roosevelt issued a signed statement, analyzing the charges of his opponent, and closing with the positive declaration that "the statements made by Mr. Parker are unqualifiedly and atrociously false."
No doubt it would have been difficult for Mr. Parker to have substantiated many of the details in his charges, but the general truth of his contention that the Republican campaign was financed by railway and trust magnates was later established by the life insurance investigation in New York in 1905, by the exposures of trust methods by Mr. Hearst in the publication of Standard Oil Letters, and by the revelations made before the Clapp committee of the Senate in 1912. It is true, Mr. Roosevelt asserted that he knew nothing personally about the corporation contributions, particularly the Standard Oil gifts, and although he convinced his friends of his entire innocence in the matter, seasoned politicians could hardly understand a naïveté so far outside the range of their experience.
The Democratic candidate and his friends took open pleasure in the discomfiture produced in Republican ranks by these unpleasant revelations, but no little bitterness was added to their cup of joy by the other side of the story. During the life insurance investigation one of the life insurance officers declared: "My life was made weary by the Democratic candidates chasing for money in that campaign. Some of the very men who to-day are being interviewed in the papers as denouncing the men who contribute to campaigns,—their shadows were crossing my path every step I took." Later, before the Clapp committee in 1912, Mr. August Belmont and Mr. T. F. Ryan, corporation magnates with wide-reaching financial interests,—the latter particularly famous for his Tobacco Trust affiliations,—testified that they had underwritten Mr. Parker's campaign to the amount of several hundred thousand dollars. Independent newspapers remarked that it seemed to be another case of the kettle and the pot.