His statement dictated to Stenographer Martin asking the campaign to continue despite Schrank's shot was as follows:
"I wish to express my cordial agreement with the manly and proper statement of Mr. Bryan at Franklin, Ind., when in arguing for a continuance of the discussion of the issues at stake in the contest he said:
"'The issues of this campaign should not be determined by the act of an assassin. Neither Col. Roosevelt nor his friends should ask that the discussion should be turned away from the principles that are involved. If he is elected President it should be because of what he has done in the past and what he proposes to do hereafter.'
"I wish to point out, however, that neither I nor my friends have asked that the discussion be turned away from the principles that are involved. On the contrary, we emphatically demand that the discussion be carried on precisely as if I had not been shot. I shall be sorry if Mr. Wilson does not keep on the stump and feel that he owes it to himself and to the American people to continue on the stump.
"I wish to make one more comment on Mr. Bryan's statement. It is of course perfectly true that in voting for me or against me, consideration must be paid to what I have done in the past and to what I propose to do. But it seems to me far more important that consideration should be paid to what the progressive party proposes to do.
"I cannot too strongly emphasize the fact upon which we progressives insist that the welfare of any one man in this fight is wholly immaterial compared to the greatest fundamental issues involved in the triumph of the principles for which our cause stands. If I had been killed the fight would have gone on exactly the same. Gov. Johnson, Senator Beveridge, Mr. Straus, Senator Bristow, Miss Jane Addams, Giffford Pinchot, Judge Ben Lindsay, Raymond Robbins, Mr. Prendergast and the hundreds of other men now on the stump are preaching the doctrine that I have been preaching and stand for, and represent just the same cause. They would have continued the fight in exactly the same way if I had been killed, and they are continuing it in just the same way now that I am for the moment laid up.
"So far as my opponents are concerned, whatever could with truth and propriety have been said against me and my cause before I was shot can with equal truth and equal propriety be said against me and it now should be so said, and the things that cannot be said now, are merely the things that ought not to have been said before. This is not a contest about any man; it is a contest concerning principles.
"If my broken rib heals fast enough to relieve my breathing I shall hope to be able to make one or two speeches yet in this campaign; in any event, if I am not able to make them the men I have mentioned above and the hundreds like them will be stating our case right to the end of the campaign and I trust our opponents will be stating their case also.
"Theodore Roosevelt."
October 19, Gov. Hiram W. Johnson, of California, candidate for Vice-President on the National Progressive ticket, was summoned to Mercy Hospital by Col. Roosevelt.