The Democrats looked upon the Republican dissensions with evident satisfaction. When the time for sifting candidates for 1912 arrived, there was unwonted bustle in their ranks, for they now saw a greater probability of victory than at any time in the preceding sixteen years. The congressional elections of 1910, the division in the Republican party, and discontent with the prevailing order of things manifest throughout the country, all pointed to a possibility of a chance to return to the promised land from which they had been driven in 1897. And there was no lack of strong presidential "timber." Two of the recently elected Democratic governors, Harmon, of Ohio, and Wilson, of New Jersey, were assiduously "boomed" by their respective contingents of supporters. Mr. Bryan, though not an avowed candidate, was still available and strong in his western battalions. Mr. Champ Clark, Speaker of the House of Representatives, and Mr. Oscar Underwood, chairman of the ways and means committee, likewise loomed large on the horizon as possibilities. In the primaries at which delegates to the convention were chosen a great division of opinion was manifested, although there was a considerable drift toward Mr. Clark. No one had anything like a majority of the delegates, but the Speaker's popular vote in such significant states as Illinois showed him to be a formidable contestant. But Mr. Clark soon alienated Mr. Bryan by refusing to join him in a movement to prevent the nomination of a conservative Democrat, Mr. Alton B. Parker, as temporary chairman of the convention which met at Baltimore on June 25. Although at one time Mr. Clark received more than one half of the votes (two thirds being necessary to nominate) his doom was sealed by Mr. Bryan's potent opposition.