The Democratic candidate and his friends took open pleasure in the discomfiture produced in Republican ranks by these unpleasant revelations, but no little bitterness was added to their cup of joy by the other side of the story. During the life insurance investigation one of the life insurance officers declared: "My life was made weary by the Democratic candidates chasing for money in that campaign. Some of the very men who to-day are being interviewed in the papers as denouncing the men who contribute to campaigns,--their shadows were crossing my path every step I took." Later, before the Clapp committee in 1912, Mr. August Belmont and Mr. T. F. Ryan, corporation magnates with wide-reaching financial interests,--the latter particularly famous for his Tobacco Trust affiliations,--testified that they had underwritten Mr. Parker's campaign to the amount of several hundred thousand dollars. Independent newspapers remarked that it seemed to be another case of the kettle and the pot. That the conservative interests looked to the Republican party, if not to Mr. Roosevelt, for the preservation of good order in politics and the prevention of radical legislation, is shown by the campaign contributions on the part of those who had earlier financed Mr. Hanna. In 1907 a letter from the railroad magnate, Mr. E. H. Harriman, was made public, in which the writer declared that Mr. Roosevelt had invited him to Washington in the autumn of 1904, just before the election, that at the President's request he had raised $250,000 to help carry New York state, and that he had paid the money over to the Republican treasurer, Mr. Bliss. Mr. Roosevelt indignantly denied that he had requested Mr. Harriman to raise a dollar for "the Presidential campaign of 1904." It will be noted that Mr. Roosevelt here made a distinction between the state and national campaign. This distinction he again drew during the United States Senate investigation in 1912, when it became apparent that the Standard Oil Trust had made a large contribution to the Republican politicians in 1904. From his testimony, it would appear that Mr. Roosevelt was unaware of the economic forces which carried him to victory in 1904. Indeed, from the election returns, he was justified in regarding his victory as a foregone conclusion, even if the financiers of the party had not taken such extensive precautions.