By the middle of September Mr. Kern’s itinerary had been made out by the national committee and called for extensive campaigning, especially in the east and south. There had been rumblings through the press of some apathy in the southern states, and while there was no danger of losing the electoral votes of this section, it was thought but the part of deserved courtesy to send the vice-presidential nominee through the south. The middle of September found him addressing a great throng at the state fair at Louisville, where he carefully refrained from any expression of a partisan nature; two days later he was in Chicago with Mr. Bryan, and on the 19th he began his speaking tour of the south. This took him first into Maryland. It was while here that the unfortunate Haskell episode, which occasioned such concern and embarrassment to leading Democrats, occurred. The charge that the treasurer of the Democratic national committee had some sort of connections with the Standard Oil Company, had been taken up by President Roosevelt with the view to convincing the people of the insincerity, if not dishonesty, of the Democratic candidates in the matter of campaign contributions. There was enough fire to make much smoke with the careful handling of an astute politician like Mr. Roosevelt using his high office as a base of operations. The publicity-before-the-election policy of Bryan and Kern was causing Mr. Taft and Mr. Roosevelt no end of trouble, and the attempt of the former, strangely backed by the latter, to convince the people that a program of publicity-after-the-election would do quite as well was not making a favorable impression. Thus the Haskell incident was worked to the limit of its possibilities. At Elliott City, Md., Mr. Kern took notice of the president’s contribution to the campaign concerning the Haskell matter, charging him with using it in an effort to muddy the waters, and ridiculing his pretensions as a reformer. From Maryland he was forced to jump to Mansfield, Ohio, to formally open the campaign in that state with former Gov. James E. Campbell, where he discussed the tariff and trusts and facetiously referred to the Foraker-Taft-Roosevelt Kilkenny cat fight. Five days later he met his opponent for the first time at the Auditorium Annex in Chicago. Learning that Mr. Sherman was in the hotel, he expressed a desire to Senator Smith, of Michigan, to meet him. The senator called the Republican nominee from his room and the meeting took place in the lobby, to the delight of the newspaper men. This was the beginning of a warm personal friendship between two men whose political opinions were as divergent as it was possible for them to be.