HEAVY POLLING.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 3036, 5 November 1908, Page 5

HEAVY POLLING.

CABLE NEWS.

United Press Association— By Electrie Telegraph Copyright,

PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION. MR TAFT'S ELECTION ANNOUNCED. Received November 4, 9.50 p.m. NEW YORK, November 4. A remarkably heavy vote was polled in the United States in connection with the Presidential election. Ideal weather prevailed. All the New York papers announce Mr Taft's election. Mr Taft carried the New England States by "larger majorities than President Roosevelt obtained, including Boston, a Democratic stronghold. Mr Hitchcock, Chairman of the National Republican Convention, has sent congratulations to Mr Taft. There are indications t'hat Mr Taft has carried ail the important doubtful States in Ohio by a majority of 50,000, and New York State by 100,000. The latest estimates give Mr Taft 305 electoral votes. Mr William H. Taft, the Republican nominee and the inheritor of the policies of President Roosevelt, has a long and brilliant ; record of public service. His reputation as a jurist was established as a United States Circuit judge, when he delivered a series of opinions against railway employees, who interrupted the service of a road by striking and boycotting. At the sair.e time he upheld the right of railway employees .to strike without notice when their grievance against the company of their employment was a direct one. Appointed by President McKinley to the presidency of the Philippines Commission, he showed executive ability of the highest order, and his work as an administrator in tho3e islands did more than anything else to reconcile the Filipinos to Ameri-: can rule. As Secretary for War under President Roosevelt, he has twice visited Cuba, acting as peace maker after insurrections, and has performed similar functions in Panama, in addition to his-general control of the canal work. He is a man of thoroughly democratic mould, of great personal charm, and typically American. Mr Bryan's personality is so well known that anything more than the briefest biographical reference to him is superfluous. He emerged from obscurity, at the Democratic National Convention of 1896 by reason of a florid address to the assemblage on the subject of the free coinage of silver, which "stampeded" the convention of his nomination. He was a lawyer who had made no considerable reputation either in his profession or in Congress. His nomination, however, gave him an opportunity to place his radical views before the world

—an opportunity of which he has availed himself ever since, with the result that, next to President Roosevelt, he is the best known man in American politics. After his first defeat (he was renominated in 1900) he established a weekly paper, the "Commoner," which, with his fees from lecture engagements, has made him a comparatively wealthy man. Though his views on some public questions have apparently been modified with the passing of the years, he is still the exponent of radicalism in the Democratic party, and is regarded as a dangerous man by many Democrats, pt.'ticulariy in the eastern States.

The other nominees tor the Presidency include Mr Eugene V. Debs, a Socialist, and Mr Hisgen, who has been selected to represent Mr Hearst's personally-controlled party, the Independence League. But these smaller and "freak" parties are almost negligible factors in the election,