June 15, 1908

et's take a brief survey. One question: How much interest is there in reading stories from the Republican National Convention of 1908? The Times sent two veterans to cover the gathering in Chicago: George W. Burton, above, a longtime editorial writer who died in 1921, and Harry Carr. Out of curiosity I checked to see how we covered previous conventions and learned that we used AP for the 1900 GOP convention in Philadelphia (McKinley-Roosevelt) and sent another veteran reporter, John McGroarty, to the 1904 convention in Chicago. Recall that William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt won the 1900 presidential race and that Roosevelt became president when McKinley was assassinated in 1901. Roosevelt was reelected in 1904 with Vice President Charles W. Fairbanks, a senator from Indiana. Interestingly enough, Roosevelt did not support Fairbanks for president in 1908, backing William Howard Taft, the secretary of War. (Spoiler: Taft defeated Democratic candidate William Jennings Bryan.) Email me