The
Republican newspapers joined in the use of abusive terms against
Roosevelt, to a degree which has never been paralleled, before nor
since. They described him as a monster, a foul traitor, another
Benedict Arnold, and for weeks used language about him for which
the writers would be overcome with shame if it were brought home
to them now. This had its natural result. Just as the speeches of
Emma Goldman and others stirred up the murderer of President
McKinley to his act, so this reiteration of abuse, this harping on
the assertion that Roosevelt was the enemy of the country, the
destroyer of law and liberty, induced another weak-minded creature
to attempt murder.
A man named Schrank who said that he had been led on by what he
read in the papers, waited for Roosevelt outside a hotel in
Milwaukee. This was during the campaign and Roosevelt was leaving
the hotel to make a speech in a public hall. As he stood up in his
automobile, Schrank shot him in the chest. The bullet was
partially checked by a thick roll of paper--the notes for his
speech--and by an eye-glasses case. Nevertheless, with the bullet
in him, only stopping to change his blood-soaked shirt, he refused
to quit. He went and made his speech, standing on the platform and
speaking for over an hour.
He thought of himself as a soldier fighting for a cause, and he
would no more leave because of a wound than he would have deserted
his fellow-hunter in Africa, when that charging lion came down on
them.
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