Personal
My dear Miss Addams,
With others of your friends and those who have long trusted in your sane judgment and clear-eyed vision of things as they are, I am bewildered and amazed that [anyone] could so have pulled wool over your eyes or raised such a cloud of dust as to becloud that vision and make it possible for you to enter or at least to remain in the Third Term Party -- for such it really is -- Do you not realize that [Flinn] who is called protector of vice in Pittsburg and Parker, -- are the men whom Roosevelt will serve when, if he should be elected. I cannot believe that you really think that "the end justifies the means" or that a just cause may be sought by bad methods and yet such ideas alone would explain your upholding Roosevelt, because for the sake of votes, he is posing as the supporter of woman's suffrage [page 2] and other worthy objects. He has proven that he cannot be trusted in any cause save the personal aggrandizement of Theodore Roosevelt.
If you refuse to stay in a party which has again introduced the color line you will do more for the causes you love than T. R. or any party he leads can possibly do. To remain one of his supporters is to weaken your own influence, which is infinitely greater than his, in this broad land of ours, and to jeopardize those public <causes> services which you may hereafter wish to espouse and strengthen.
Although I have no hope that my words alone could influence, I cannot help writing to beg of you in your own words to "stop, look & listen," and trust that of your own good sense you will still withdraw at an early date from the so-called Progressive Party which under Roosevelt can only mean retrogression, I am
Most sincerely yours,
Emily Ray Gregory.
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