added that I learned years afterward that Mr. Wilson was not a party to
Colonel Harvey's plans; that once he even sent a friend as an emissary to
explain to the Colonel that Mr. Wilson did not believe that the use of his
name in connection with political office was a service to him or to
Princeton University.

The suggestion that Woodrow Wilson be given the nomination was hotly
resented by young men like myself in the Legislature. Frankly, I led the
opposition to the man I was afterward to serve for eleven years in the
capacity of private secretary. The basis of my opposition to Mr. Wilson
for this empty honour was the rumour that had been industriously
circulated in the state House and elsewhere, that there was, as Mr. Dooley
says, "a plan afoot" by the big interests of New Jersey and New York to
nominate Woodrow Wilson for the senatorship and then nominate him for
governor of the state as a preliminary start for the Presidency. I
remember now, with the deepest chagrin and regret, having bitterly
assailed Woodrow Wilson's candidacy in a Democratic caucus which I
attended and how I denounced him for his alleged opposition to labour. In
view of my subsequent intimacy with Mr. Wilson and the knowledge gained of
his great heart and his big vision in all matters affecting labour, I
cannot now point with pride to the speech I then made attacking him. I am
sure the dear doctor, away off in Princeton, never even heard of my
opposition to him, although in my conceit I thought the state reverberated
with the report of my unqualified and bitter opposition to him. In my poor
vanity I thought that perhaps what I had said in my speech of opposition
to him had reached the cloisters of Princeton. As a matter of fact, he
never heard about me or my speech, and afterward in the years of our
association he "joshed" me about my opposition to him and would often make
me very uncomfortable by recounting to his friends at the White House how
even his own secretary had opposed him when his name was first under