I stressed the need to arouse the party from its lethargy, and to begin at once a powerful and nation-wide campaign to reëlect the President. The Cabinet officers at Washington responded to the enthusiasm which I poured into this enterprise, and I soon had some members of the National Committee awake and actively coöperating. At a conference with Mr. Burleson, I discovered that the Congressional Campaign Committee had done nothing. He sent for Mr. Doremus of Michigan, whose duty it was to launch this Congressional campaign. He painted a gloomy picture of the outlook for the Congressional elections. “We have no money to help the boys make their fights for reëlection, and we have no one to whom we can go and get it. Many of them are thoroughly discouraged, and see no use in trying to do anything for the party, so they are just waiting for the end and planning to go back into private life.” I asked Mr. Doremus: “What is the minimum amount necessary to start vigorous work for their reëlection? I don’t want to know how much you want, but how little you can possibly get along with.” He named a modest figure, but declared that even this was impossible to raise. I promptly under-wrote it personally, and he went to work eagerly; and he afterward reported to me that this action greatly changed the attitude of the Congressmen when they realized that help was at hand to make a real fight for the election. It practically created several hundred active campaign managers at a stroke.
I then returned to New York, and on my own responsibility, leased national headquarters at No. 30 East Forty-second Street, signing the lease in my own name, after I had shown the rooms to Colonel House and Charles R. Crane, who approved my selection. I bought and rented furniture, typewriters, and other supplies, and got everything in shape so that the moment the approaching Convention was over, and the new Campaign Committee named, they would find the tools for their work ready to hand, and could go on the job without the delay we had experienced in 1912.
In view of the hopelessness which I had found among the party leaders, and in view of the very narrow margin by which Mr. Hughes was defeated the following November, I take pride in the consciousness that my activities were one of the necessary factors that led to Mr. Wilson’s reëlection in 1916.