The result has been that I have avoided a split and that as a net result of my two years and the two sessions of the Legislature, there has been an enormous improvement in the administration of the Government, and there has also been a great advance in legislation." To show my reading of the situation at the time I quote from a letter of mine to Joseph B.Bishop, then editor of the _Commercial Advertiser_, with whom towards the end of my term I had grown into very close relations, and who, together with two other old friends, Albert Shaw, of the _Review of Reviews_, and Silas McBee, now editor of the _Constructive Quarterly_, knew the inside of every movement, so far as I knew it myself.

The letter, which is dated April 11, 1900, runs in part as follows: "The dangerous element as far as I am concerned comes from the corporations.

The [naming certain men] crowd and those like them have been greatly exasperated by the franchise tax.

They would like to get me out of politics for good, but at the moment they think the best thing to do is to put me into the Vice-Presidency.

Naturally I will not be opposed openly on the ground of the corporations' grievance; but every kind of false statement will continually be made, and men like [naming the editors of certain newspapers] will attack me, not as the enemy of corporations, but as their tool! There is no question whatever that if the leaders can they will upset me." One position which as Governor (and as President) I consistently took, seems to me to represent what ought to be a fundamental principle in American legislative work.