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The Congressman tried hard, but failed.

This was the very sort of legislation that Roosevelt himself had in mind.

There can be little doubt that there was a conspiracy in Washington, overt or implied, to block anything Hearst wanted, even if it was something good.

Hatred tied his hands in Congress.

Roosevelt and others considered him partly responsible for the murder of McKinley.

They were repelled by his noisy newspapers, his personal publicity, his presumptuous campaign for the Presidential nomination, and by the swelling cloud of rumor about his moral lapses.

He might get votes from his constituents, but he would never get a helping hand in Congress.

He was the House pariah.

Even the regular Democrats disowned him.

Inherently incapable of cooperating with others, he ran his own show regardless of how many party-line Democratic toes he stepped on.

He was a political maverick, a reformer with his own program, determined to bulldoze it through or to blazon the infamy of those who balked him.

He showed little interest in measures put forward by the regular Democrats.

He sought to run Congress as he ran his New York American or Journal, a scheme veteran legislators resisted.

For a freshman Congressman to read political Lessons to graybeard Democrats was poor policy for one who needed to make friends.

He soon quarreled with all the party leaders in the House, and came to be regarded with detestation by regular Democrats as a professional radical leading a small pack of obedient terriers whose constant snapping was demoralizing to party discipline.