William Howard Taft was born on 15 September 1857
in a fashionable suburb of Cincinnati.
His father Alphonso Taft was a lawyer and had been a delegate
at the first Republican National Convention in 1856,
and he supported the Union during the Civil War.
He was a superior court judge 1866-72.
During Grant’s last year as President he was Secretary of War for 75 days in 1876
and then US Attorney General from May 22 to the end of the term in 1877.
Will Taft was brought up as a Unitarian, and he attended a public high school
in Cincinnati that sent students to college.
He went to Yale College in 1874 and was a champion heavyweight wrestler.
His father in 1832 at Yale had co-founded the secret Skull and Bones society,
the Brotherhood of Death, and Will became a member.
He was most influenced by William Graham Sumner
who taught political and social science.
Sumner lectured on the ideas of Herbert Spencer and became a social Darwinist.
Will Taft studied Theodore Dwight Woolsey’s Introduction to International Law,
and he graduated second in his class from Yale in 1878.
In his senior oration he criticized the political corruption of the Republican Party
and the centralization caused by the Civil War.
He believed that wealth was the “great civilizer and source of a nation’s happiness.”
Taft graduated from the Cincinnati Law School in 1880.
He passed the bar exam, and The Cincinnati Commercial newspaper
gave him a full-time job covering local trials.
In 1881 he worked as an assistant prosecuting attorney.
In January 1882 President Chester Arthur made him a Collector of Internal Revenue
in Cincinnati, and Taft supervised over a hundred employees
in collecting $10 million on sales of whiskey and tobacco.
Yet he refused to give political favors,
and in March 1883 he went to Washington and resigned.
He became a partner with his father’s former law partner.
In 1884 Taft campaigned for the Republicans, presidential candidate James Blaine,
and Joseph Foraker who was running for governor.
Taft found Helen “Nellie” Herron intellectually stimulating,
and he married her on 19 June 1886.
Ohio’s Gov. Foraker in 1887 selected Taft to be a judge on the Ohio Superior Court,
and in April 1888 he was elected for a five-year term.
At this time Taft was prejudiced toward those with property
and against workers which can be seen from the following decision:
In Moores & Company v. Bricklayers Union No. 1 (1890),
Taft displayed not only an unyielding position
in favor of capital over labor, but he also
chose to embrace a double standard of social morality.
The dispute involved a secondary boycott by bricklayers
who refused to handle any materials
brought to the building site by various suppliers
until their grievances were satisfied.
One such supplier, Moores, sued the union for damages.
Taft ruled that a secondary boycott was illegal,
thereby upholding a lower court decision.
But he went beyond the rule of law
in handing down his opinion,
arguing that malice was the motivation of the bricklayers.
He could have arrived at that judgment only
based on his private attitude toward the labor movement,
relative to which he had deep suspicions
that privately tended to demonize union leaders.1
Yet Taft recognized that employees had “the right to organize into or to join
a labor union which should take joint action as to their terms of employment.”
He explained, “If they stand together, they are often able, all of them,
to command better prices for their labor than when dealing singly with rich employers.”2
He even wrote that union officers could order members
“on pain of expulsion from their union, peaceably to leave the employ of their employer
because any of the terms of their employment are unsatisfactory.”3
His verdict upheld the ruling of the lower court that awarded the plaintiffs $2,250,
and the Ohio Supreme Court agreed with Taft’s decision.
Judge Taft in the case of Voight v. Baltimore decided that
the Baltimore Railroad was liable for a worker’s permanent injuries
that their negligence caused even though a contract denied that obligation.
The Supreme Court reversed that because of the contract,
and in 1908 President Roosevelt signed a law banning such oppressive contracts.
In 1890 President Benjamin Harrison made Taft the U. S. Solicitor General.
Taft argued before the U. S. Supreme Court on behalf of the U. S. Government
in 27 cases and won 20 of them.
In his second year he upheld the McKinley tariff, and he persuaded the Court
to accept House Speaker Reed’s method of counting a quorum to prevent
the minority from obstructing legislation.
His best case in 1891 involved fishing in the Bering Sea
where the United States claimed jurisdiction and seized Canadian revenue cutters
inside the 3-mile limit.
Britain took the case to the U. S. Supreme Court,
and Taft contended that the judicial branch could not order the executive branch
to stop the use of revenue cutters because of the constitutional separation of powers.
On 29 February 1892 both sides agreed to arbitration by neutrals,
and on 15 August 1893 the British sealers were awarded $473,151.
Taft lived in Washington very near Theodore Roosevelt
who was on the Civil Service Commission,
and they became good friends who shared political ideals.
In March 1892 Taft was appointed a federal appeals judge in Cincinnati,
and he resigned as Solicitor General.
He held that appellate position for eight years.
On 23 April 1893 Taft ruled in Toledo & Ann Arbor & North Michigan
Railway Company v. Pennsylvania that a worker’s quitting was illegal
if it was part of a combination because it violated the Interstate Commerce Act.
In the depression in the winter of 1893-94 the Pullman Palace Car Company
had reduced wages by about 25% and dismissed many men.
After Pullman declined arbitration, the American Railway Union (ARU)
led by Eugene Debs on 26 June 1894 began a boycott against all Pullman cars.
On July 2 federal judges Peter Grosscup and William Woods in Chicago
imposed a broader injunction than Taft had against Debs and the strikers.
Taft showed his contempt for striking workers by ruling that the ARU
was applying a secondary boycott against innocent railway companies
when strikers refused to operate any train that had a Pullman car.
On July 3 President Cleveland sent soldiers to end the strike in Chicago.
Taft had granted the Cincinnati Southern railroad’s suit for an injunction,
and he had Frank Phelan, a Debs lieutenant, arrested on July 3.
Taft wrote to his wife Nellie on
July 6, 1894: Affairs in Chicago seem to be much disturbed.
It will be necessary for the military to kill some of the mob
before the trouble can be stayed.
July 7, 1894: The situation in Chicago is very alarming
and distressing and until they have had much bloodletting,
it will not be better….
July 8, 1894: The Chicago situation is not much improved.
They have only killed six of the workers as yet.
July 9, 1894: This is hardly enough to make an impression.
The strike situation is very bad.
The workingmen seem to be in the hands
of the most demagogic and insane leaders
and they are determined to provoke a civil war.4
Frank Phelan worked closely with Eugene Debs
who called for a general strike on July 11.
In the Thomas v. Cincinnati, N.O. & T.P. Railway case on July 13 Taft sentenced
Phelan to six months in jail because he had disregarded the injunction by urging
railway employees to join a general strike against the Pullman Company.
Phelan denied having incited anyone to use violence,
and Judge Taft imputed “secret terrorism” to his words.
Taft was elected president of the Cincinnati Civil Service Reform Association,
and he was made a trustee of Yale College.
His wife Nellie helped him improve his speeches.
She also cofounded the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra,
and they gave their first concert series in 1895.
In 1896 Taft became the Dean of the Cincinnati Law School and Professor of Property.
In Addyston Pipe and Steel Co. v. United States that was decided
on 8 February 1898 Taft argued based on the Sherman Anti-Trust Act
that Addyston had restrained trade by fixing prices, and this challenged the decision
by the U. S. Supreme Court in the 1895 United States v. E. C. Knight case.
The U. S. Supreme Court on 4 December 1899 agreed with Taft
that corporate rights were not sacrosanct.
In January 1900 President McKinley asked Taft to serve on a civil commission
in the Philippines and implied he might be its president.
War Secretary Elihu Root challenged Taft to take the position,
Now your country needs you.
This is a task worthy any man.
This is the parting of the ways.
You may go on holding the job you have
in a humdrum, mediocre way.
But here is something that will test you;
something in the way of effort and struggle
and the question is,
will you take the harder or the easier task?5
Taft wanted to be on the U. S. Supreme Court
and asked how it would affect his judicial career.
McKinley promised that if a seat became open on that Court, he would appoint him.
Taft said he would accept if he was head of the commission.
The other members of the Second Philippine Commission were General Luke Wright,
the lawyer Henry C. Ide who had been chief justice of Samoa,
the zoologist Dean Worcester who was on the first Philippine Commission,
and the history professor Bernard Moses who became a key advisor.
Taft spent $2,300 for books on civil law, history, and government to take with him.
The Commission left San Francisco on April 17 and reached Japan in May,
and Taft’s wife and children stayed in Yokohama
to avoid the summer heat of the Philippines.
At Tokyo they met the Emperor of Japan, and Taft was not impressed.
The commissioners arrived at Manila Bay on June 3,
and General Arthur MacArthur was not there to greet them.
Taft went to the other side of the world as the first American proconsul.
He hoped that the Filipino people could be educated so that they could be
the first self-governing people in East Asia, but in fact
the 65,000 American troops occupying their country had been preventing that.
General MacArthur had arrived on May 5 as the new military governor.
He was less aggressive than his predecessor General Elwell Otis,
and MacArthur had granted a general amnesty.
The Military Governor MacArthur lived in Malacanan Palace
which had been used by the Spanish governors.
Taft found a house he could rent for $150 a month
that needed to be cleaned and given plumbing.
He brought with him four Chinese servants he had hired at Hong Kong
who were a cook, a laundryman, and two houseboys.
President McKinley’s instructions to this Philippine Commission
were actually written by Secretary of War Elihu Root with assistance by Taft.
Judge Ide contributed the idea that the Commission should control appropriations.
Taft sent letters to Root complaining about MacArthur.
The Commission took power on September 1, and Taft had control of the funds.
The U. S. Constitution was to be applied
except for the rights to a jury trial and to bear arms.
Qualified Filipinos were encouraged to hold offices,
and Taft looked forward to establishing popular assemblies.
Under the U. S. President the Secretary of War Root was the final authority
over the Military Governor and the Civil Commission.
According to the Presidential instructions the Commission was
designed not for our satisfaction,
or for the expression of theoretical views,
but for the happiness, peace, and prosperity
of the people of the Philippine Islands,
and the measures adopted should be made to conform
to their customs, their habits, and even to their prejudices,
to the fullest extent consistent with the accomplishment
of the indispensable requisites
of just and effective government.6
The first duty of the Commission was to establish local governments
“in which natives of the islands, both in the cities and in the rural communities,
shall be afforded the opportunity to manage their own local affairs.”7
Yet slavery among the Moro tribes would continue.
Schools were to be organized that would be open to all.
Because there were so many languages with few people knowing Spanish,
English was to be the official language.
The Military Governor remained in charge of law enforcement.
Taft complained when MacArthur’s military superintendent of education
ordered 50,000 history books sight unseen for the schools.
On August 21 Taft spent $4,000 to send a confidential cable to War Secretary Root
that was signed by all the commissioners.
They noted that insurgents had been cleared out of northern Luzon
and that customs collections had increased by 50% since the Spanish rule.
The poor were being taxed more, and the wealthy were protected.
On September 1 the legislative powers were transferred from the military governor
to the Civil Commission enabling them to revise taxes,
appropriate funds, and establish lawcourts.
McArthur had a fund of $2,500,000 collected mostly from customs taxes,
and the Commission gained control of that.
Having met with William Jennings Bryan, Taft was concerned that the Democratic nominee
was promising the Filipinos their independence and that that was encouraging the rebels.
The insurgents attacked American troops twice in September and again in October.
Former insurgents were required to swear their allegiance,
renounce “revolutionary governments,”
and obey the “supreme authority of the United States.”
So far about 5,000 Filipinos had taken the amnesty oath
in a country of seven million people.
By the end of 1900 the Civil Commission had revised taxes,
and they established municipal governments with civil service.
In January 1901 President McKinley and War Secretary Root commended Taft,
and they asked him to organize a new civil government.
On January 29 Taft wrote to Root that concerns over increasing violence
were exaggerated and that more Filipinos were taking the oath.
Commissioners in February began traveling to provinces
to organize municipal governments.
Taft and others made speeches.
The Spooner Amendment by the U. S. Congress attached to an Army appropriation
in late February declared the Filipino insurrection over and transferred authority
from the military to the Civil Commission.
On March 10 Commissioners with sixty people left Luzon for the southern islands
to visit 18 provinces, and they returned on May 3.
On March 23 the U. S. Army captured the rebel leader Aguinaldo,
and he took the oath of allegiance on April 19.
The Commission warned armed insurgents that their funds and property
would be confiscated after April 1,
and they would not be eligible for government positions.
On 4 July 1901 Cayetano Arellano, the Chief Justice of the Philippines
Supreme Court, administered the oath to Taft inaugurating him as the first
Civil Governor of the Philippines, and General Chaffee replaced MacArthur
as the commander of the Philippines.
Taft said that his goal was to develop a permanent civil government that was more popular.
His speech was translated into Spanish, and he announced
that they would add three Filipinos to the Civil Commission.
He had wanted five Filipinos including Aguinaldo,
but the other commissioners outvoted him.
General Wright became Secretary of Commerce and Police;
the Secretary of Finance and Justice was Henry C. Ide;
Commissioner Bernard Moses was Secretary of Public Instruction;
and Dean C. Worcester became the Secretary of the Interior.
The three Filipino commissioners were educated and had some wealth,
and none of them advocated independence or even more self-rule.
In late 1900 the new commissioners Benito Legarda and T. H. Pardo de Tavera
had helped organize the Federal Party that was loyal to the United States
and hoped for statehood.
Within a year there were 25,000 Federals in Manila.
On July 5 the Tafts moved into the Malacanan Palace
that also had several houses for secretaries and assistants.
Taft’s salary was $20,000, and he needed it for his expenses.
He interviewed Filipinos using a translator.
He and his wife Nellie were determined not to treat them as an inferior race
which the military often did.
The Tafts called them “our little brown brothers,”
and they invited them as social equals to their home reception on Wednesdays.
American soldiers made fun of this by singing,
“He may be a brother of William H. Taft, but he ain’t no friend of mine!”8
Governor Taft ordered schools established to promote literacy,
clinics to improve health care, roads built to help commerce, local governments
organized to teach self-rule, and land reform to give more farmers a chance.
Because the Philippines had several thousand islands,
the congress of a federation could include many representatives.
The Commission revised the old Spanish tax code.
The judges under the Spanish rule were replaced by Americans,
and Taft asked for upright lawyers with at least ten years of experience
who have a sufficient knowledge of Spanish.
Some judges were Filipinos so that they could learn how to administer justice.
Because very few Filipinos were literate, he considered jury trials impractical.
Frederick W. Atkinson became the Secretary of Education,
and in the coming years more Filipinos learned English than Spanish.
Other bureaus that formed were Health, Forestry, Agriculture, and Customs.
Taft welcomed the U. S. Supreme Court’s decision in the Insular Cases of 1901
that the Dingley Tariff did not extend to the Philippines
because he believed it would harm the economy.
After attending a cockfight he asked General MacArthur
not to forbid them because the people enjoyed them.
Taft went on a provincial tour to mountains and the northwest coast of Luzon,
and this affected his health.
News of McKinley’s assassination in September shocked people,
and violence in the Philippines increased.
On September 17 the new U. S. President Theodore Roosevelt published
an article in Outlook writing that Taft was a good Governor of the Philippines
because he would be “a first-class President of the United States”
and “a first-class Chief Justice of the United States.”9
In late September fifty American soldiers were killed by an ambush in Samar.
In October there were nearly 500 American military posts in the Philippines.
On October 2 Taft came down with dengue fever.
On October 26 Roosevelt advised Taft to accept a nomination
to the U. S. Supreme Court; and he declined
because he felt it was his duty to help the Filipino people during an economic crisis.
The Military Governor Chaffee refused to serve a writ of habeas corpus for a prisoner,
and an appeal was sent to President Roosevelt
who wired Taft and Chaffee to settle it themselves.
Taft in December returned to Washington for a third operation
to remove an abscess in his intestines.
By the 1890s the Catholic Church and Spanish friars had over 400,000 acres
in the Philippines, and they charged excessive rents to more than 60,000 tenants.
Nearly 90% of Filipinos were Catholics.
After the insurgency against the Spaniards began in 1896,
Aquinaldo confiscated their lands.
They killed fifty priests, imprisoned hundreds, and tortured many of them.
In the treaty with Spain when the United States acquired the Philippines,
all property rights were guaranteed.
The Philippine Commission decided to purchase the friars’ lands and to replace
the Spanish friars with other Catholic priests.
Taft suggested American priests.
The Filipino lawyer Felipe Calderon in October 1900 told the Commission
that Aguinado had declared that the lands of the Spanish friars were forfeited.
A Filipino physician explained that the clerics raised funds by telling dying Filipinos
that they would go to hell if they did not donate their wealth or lands
to the Catholic Church.
In December 1900 Taft wrote,
The truth is that the friars ceased to be religious ministers
altogether and became political bosses,
losing sight of the beneficent purpose of their organizations.
They unfrocked themselves in maintaining
their political control of this beautiful country.
Distance from Rome and freedom from supervision
made them an independent quantity and enabled them
to gratify their earthly desires for money and power
and other things, and they cut themselves off
from any right to consideration by the church,
by those who are in the church,
or by those, who being out of it, respect it.10
In January 1902 Taft testified for two hours to a U. S. Senate committee
on charges against American soldiers in the Philippines,
and he admitted that they bothered him.
He advised them that they needed a treaty with the Vatican
in order to do land reform in the Philippines.
Roosevelt sent Taft to Rome to negotiate with Pope Leo XIII
on the sale of 400,000 acres in the Philippines that were held by Spanish friars.
This issue had provoked a Filipino rebellion prior to the American intervention.
Taft in February met with President Roosevelt,
War Secretary Root, and Archbishop John Ireland.
The President ordered Taft to go to Rome,
and Root advised him to consider it a business matter.
Root wrote that they should extinguish the titles of the friars
and provide “full and fair compensation.”
On June 5 Taft met with Pope Leo XIII at the Vatican
and proposed buying the property and replacing the Spanish friars.
On June 21 the cardinals agreed to sell the land,
and they did not promise to remove the friars.
Finally in November 1903 about 10,000 acres were withdrawn from the sale,
and the U. S. paid $7,543,000 for the rest.
American and Filipino bishops were appointed,
and the 200 hundred who remained had no political power.
Taft and the Philippine Commission enforced the Philippine Organic Act
that the U. S. Congress passed on 1 July 1902.
When some prominent Filipinos tried to start a law-and-order party
that was not subservient to the United States, Taft refused to authorize that.
In 1902 and 1903 disease and famine devastated the Philippines.
Cholera killed over 100,000 Filipinos,
and rinderpest reduced the number of beasts of burden by 75%.
The U. S. Congress passed a tariff that gave the Philippines a rate 25% lower
than the products of other countries.
Taft asked the Congress to provide at least $2 million to relieve the Philippines.
On 6 January 1903 Taft received a letter from President Roosevelt
who wrote that he was going to put him on the Supreme Court
and that General Wright would replace him as the Civil Governor.
On January 10 Filipinos gathered outside the gates to the Malacanan Palace
with the banner “Queremos Taft!” which means “We want Taft!”
About 8,000 people listened to speeches.
Dr. Dominador Gomez said that Governor Taft was a saint
who could unite all the factions in the islands.
The revolutionary Pedro Paterno said that Taft had
“turned a dying people to the light and life of modern liberties.”11
The other members of the Commission cabled President Roosevelt
that the Filipino people “have absolute confidence in Taft.”
Roosevelt cabled Taft, “All right, you shall stay where you are.”12
Taft in March suffered from amoebic dysentery, and he learned that
some Americans were dishonest and had stolen money.
He prosecuted them, and all but two were sent to prison.
On March 27 Taft received a letter from Roosevelt that Secretary of War Root
was going to leave in the fall and that he could persuade him to stay a year
if Taft would take his place.
He said he needed Taft “not merely as secretary of war,
not merely as director of the affairs of the Philippines,
but as my counselor and advisor in all the great questions that come up.”13
Roosevelt in September ordered Taft to return to Washington.
Taft agreed to become Secretary of War, and he left Manila on 23 December 1903.
On 6 January 1904 William Howard Taft met with Emperor Meiji of Japan,
and he learned from him, other Japanese officials, and the U. S. minister Lloyd Griscom
that war was likely between Japan and Russia.
Taft arrived in Washington on January 27,
and the 15th Cavalry escorted him to the War Department.
He became the Secretary of War on February 1.
The next day Charles Taft wrote to his brother Will,
who was concerned about the low salary of a cabinet officer that was only $8,000.
Charles gave Will 1,000 shares of Cleveland Gas Company stock
that were worth $200,000 which provided $10,000 a year.
Taft often had lunch or dinner with President Roosevelt,
and they talked almost every day.
Taft developed good relations with members of Congress,
and he spent more time there than the rest of the cabinet.
On March 4 Taft persuaded Roosevelt to postpone paying the $4 million
for the Panama Canal, and Roosevelt in May directed
Taft to supervise the building of the canal.
Taft calculated that the excavation would move a mass greater than ever before.
Because he wanted the liberal Amador to stay in power,
Taft imposed a 10% ad valorem tax on all products coming into Panama
through the two ports that the Americans were controlling.
On June 29 Taft began with a two-hour speech to the Harvard Law School alumni
in a debate on the Philippines with Senator Richard Olney,
the former Democratic Secretary of State.
Secretary of State John Hay died on July 1,
and Roosevelt replaced him with Elihu Root on July 19.
Roosevelt, Taft, and Root worked together closely, and they thought of themselves
as the “Three Musketeers” who were “all for one and one for all.”
On August 28 Taft to help Roosevelt spoke to 1,500 people
at Montpelier, Vermont to influence their September election,
and in Portland, Maine he gave his first speech without notes.
On October 1 he began the Republicans’ campaign in Ohio
by opening the event at Warren attended by about 2,000 people.
President Roosevelt was easily elected on November 8,
and the Republicans gained 45 seats in the House of Representatives
and lost only one in the Senate retaining a 56-31 advantage.
Taft went to the Panama Canal Zone, and on November 27 he met with the Republic’s
first president, Dr. Manuel Amador, who was in the Conservative Party.
General Estaban Huertas on October 28 had demanded
that two of Amador’s conservative ministers resign.
Taft noted that the threat to use U. S. forces caused
Huertas to disband his army a few days before Taft arrived.
Panama had two main ports at Panama City and Colon
that were not under the jurisdiction of the United States
so that the revenues went into the treasury of the Republic of Panama.
Building supplies came in free of duty.
At first Taft believed that a sea-level canal would be best in the long run
even though it would cost $247,021,000 instead of $139,705,200
for a canal with locks, and it would take at least 12 years
compared to 8 years for a locks canal.
On January 13 Roosevelt asked the U. S. Congress to reduce the commissioners
from seven to three as requested by Chief Engineer John F. Wallace.
This would go into effect on 1 April 1905.
In March 1905 Roosevelt declined to work with Germany
to keep an open door with Morocco, and he left for a hunting trip.
Taft on April 5 expressed his concern that the French were involved
with Morocco’s open door and that Germany had interests there.
On April 6 Taft wrote to Roosevelt about the English
and their hostile relationship with Germany.
On the night of the San Francisco earthquake on 16 April 1906
Taft learned of a telephone call to the White House,
and he quickly approved the use of $2,500,000.
He ordered $1,000,000 in army property shipped including tents and other supplies.
The U. S. Congress soon confirmed his actions.
Roosevelt returned to Washington on May 11
and began working as his own secretary of state.
He decided that the lock canal would be better,
and the U. S. Congress approved that in June 1906.
The chief sanitary officer William Gorgas was determined to stop the spread
of mosquitoes in order to prevent a yellow fever epidemic,
but the chief engineer
Wallace neglected the safety protocols that he deemed experimental.
When yellow fever broke out, most of the American workers left.
Gorgas asked for more authority.
Roosevelt trusted Taft who supported Gorgas
and persuaded Wallace to resign on June 28.
Taft returned to Washington the next day, and Roosevelt had him
release to the press the transcript of his conversation with Wallace.
Taft made five trips to Panama as Secretary of War,
and he would make two more as President.
In July 1905 Taft had led a delegation of 30 influential Congressmen
and 50 others on a visit to the Philippines.
On July 27 he met with Japan’s Premier Taro Katsura
and he agreed that Japan could take over Korea.
Four days later President Roosevelt wired his confirmation of that.
On August 5 Taft gave a speech at the Malacanan Palace.
He respected the Filipinos and their “aspirations to become a self-governing people
and a nation,” though he believed it would take a long time.
Taft on December 1 weighed 321 pounds,
and he began a diet supervised by Dr. Yorke-Davis of London.
By the middle of March 1906 his weight was down to 266,
and during the summer he weighed 250 pounds.
He went on a speaking tour from Ohio west to Idaho
and back through Kansas to Louisiana.
Roosevelt especially praised his speech at Bath, Maine on September 6.
Taft worked for two years to get a tariff bill to reduce rates
on imports from the Philippines, and in January 1906
the U. S. House of Representatives passed it 257-71.
Taft testified to the Senate committee on the bill for two days,
and protectionists blocked the bill in the committee.
The Cuban elections in 1905 had been faulty.
Tomás Estrada Palma’s Moderates had added 150,000 names,
and the Liberals had withdrawn from the ballots.
After Cuban President Palma’s inauguration in March 1906
Havana began reporting strife, and it increased in the summer.
Palma admitted he could not protect people or property.
On September 10 he requested American troops,
and three days later he said he would resign.
On the 15th Taft told Secretary of State Root
“that the Cuban government has proven to be nothing but a house of cards.”14
On the same day Taft advised Roosevelt to consult
Attorney General Moody on the treaty.
On September 19 Roosevelt replied he would not submit to Moody
nor would he ask Congress for permission.
On that day Secretary of War Taft and the Acting Secretary of State Robert Bacon
arrived in Havana at the request of Palma.
They learned that 15,000 armed men were threatening Palma’s regime.
Roosevelt did not want Taft to intervene or at least not use the word “intervention”
or “to do it in as gentle way as possible.”
Taft asked Palma to stay in office, and he insisted on resigning.
On September 28 Palma’s government collapsed, and the next day
Taft proclaimed himself the provisional governor of an interim government in Cuba.
On October 3 Taft wired Roosevelt that he justified his action by the Platt Amendment.
Roosevelt sent 6,000 troops who occupied the island.
They came not to fight but to “provide a background of confidence.”15
Insurgents began turning in their arms.
Taft made a speech at the National University of Havana urging students
to found businesses and acquire wealth to develop their society.
Charles E. Magoon succeeded Taft in Cuba on October 13.
They took a census and revised the election laws.
In the first elections in 1907 a poll found that
a majority of the Cuban voters wanted independence.
The Commissioners then required parties to have a nationalistic plan in their platforms.
The American troops eventually withdrew on 28 January 1909
as the Liberals took power in Cuba.
In March 1907 Taft began seeking the presidential nomination
by hiring A. I. Vorys to manage his campaign in Ohio.
In July he wrote to Roosevelt’s secretary William Loeb asking for a list
of Republican national committeemen from the South so that it could be sent to Vorys.
Charles Dewey Hilles was going to be working for Taft in New York.
Although Senator Foraker opposed Taft, on July 30 the Ohio Republican
State Central Committee voted 15 to 6 to endorse Taft’s candidacy.
Taft decided not to comment on the Brownsville controversy,
and after his inauguration in March 1909 one of his first official acts was
to advise army courts of inquiry to readmit the dismissed Negro infantrymen.
Taft in September 1907 traveled west making speeches,
and then he went to the Philippines.
Roosevelt was concerned about immigration issues involving the Japanese
in Hawaii and California, and Taft visited Japan again
and was given a dinner in Tokyo on September 30.
Taft said,
There is nothing in these events of injustice that cannot
be honorably and fully arranged by ordinary diplomatic
methods between the two governments conducted
as they are by statesmen of honor, sanity and justice….
War between Japan and the United States
would be a crime against modern civilization.
It would be as wicked as it would be insane.16
On October 14 Taft sent a wire from Manila assuring that the conflicts in California
were caused by sensational journalism and did not represent American sentiment.
He agreed with the Japanese who objected strongly to any treaty
that would restrict the Japanese emigration while admitting Europeans.
Taft departed from the Philippines and went north to Vladivostok
to the Trans-Siberian Railway.
In Moscow he met with Tsar Nicholas II;
and he avoided Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm II because
he did not want to make the French and the British jealous.
He boarded the USS President Grant at Hamburg
and returned to the United States to run for President.
On December 25 Taft wrote in a private letter to C. M. Heald,
I agree heartily and earnestly in the policies
which have come to be known as the Roosevelt policies.
Those policies, stated succinctly, are that the guaranties
of the Constitution shall be in favor of life, liberty
and property and shall be sacredly maintained; …
Mr. Roosevelt’s views were mine
long before I knew Mr. Roosevelt at all.
You will find them expressed in my opinions in so far as
it was proper to express them in judicial opinions,
and I am not to be driven from adherence to those views.17
In January 1908 he wrote on labor,
Labor has a legal right to organize, to strike,
to enforce its demands by any peaceful method.
In some respects, the courts had abused
their injunction powers to oppress labor.
Labor leaders should have a right
to be heard before being enjoined.
It might be wise to have a second judge hear
contempt proceedings following violation of an injunction.18
Taft also believed that the Interstate Commerce Commission
should have the power to regulate railroads by fixing maximum rates,
and these should not become effective until courts review them.
He suggested that careful study should determine how to reduce high tariff rates
so that the rates are not “greater than the difference in the
cost of production abroad and in the United States.”
His position was that “an income tax might be wise”
but that it would require an amendment to the U. S. Constitution.
On February 15 the Assistant Postmaster General Frank H. Hitchcock
resigned in order to work on the Taft canvass.
On March 20 he estimated that Taft would have 552 delegates of the total 980.
On April 1 Taft left on a speaking tour that took him as far west as Omaha.
He returned to Washington on May 17.
The Republican National Convention began on 16 June 1908 in Chicago.
The credentials committee was ruling in favor of Taft.
Of the 125 delegates who were officeholders, 97 of them were committed to Taft.
During Senator Lodge’s long oration as the permanent chairman
he mentioned President Roosevelt, and the demonstration lasted 49 minutes.
Many chanted, “Four years more!”
After the nominating speeches on June 18 Taft won with 702 votes,
and no one else got more than 68 votes.
As a running mate Taft had said he wanted someone from the west
like Senator Dolliver of Iowa, and he refused to grant Senator Borah of Idaho
concessions to progressives.
Senator Beveridge of Indiana said he would decline
because La Follette’s progressive ideas were being rejected.
Taft chose for Vice President the conservative Rep. James Sherman of New York.
John D. Rockefeller sent Taft a telegram congratulating him,
and Andrew Carnegie provided a check for $20,000.
Taft resigned as War Secretary on June 30 to devote himself to the campaign.
The Democrats at Denver on the first ballot on July 10 nominated
William Jennings Bryan for the third time.
Taft read newspapers about his campaign so that he could issue denials.
The easy ones he simply denied, and he found it “troublesome” to have to
partly deny and partly explain the others.
The New York lawyer William Cromwell donated $50,000 to the campaign,
and Taft asked him to reduce the amount which he did to $10,000.
Taft refused to take any money from a corporation or from anyone connected to one.
A Federal law banned contributions from corporations but not from individuals.
Bryan in May had suggested that they ask Congress to require public notice
of all contributions before the election.
Taft had written back that he favored publication after the election.
New York had a state law for publicity,
and Taft’s chairman in New York was bound by that.
Taft promised that if he was elected, he would extend that principle.
The Taft campaign would raise about $1,600,000.
Roosevelt had spent over $2,200,000 in 1904.
Taft in his long acceptance speech at Cincinnati said,
The chief function of the next administration,
in my judgment, is distinct from,
and a progressive development of that
which has been performed by President Roosevelt.
The chief function of the next administration
is to complete and perfect the machinery by which
these standards may be maintained, by which
the lawbreakers may be promptly restrained and punished,
but which shall operate with sufficient accuracy and dispatch
to interfere with legitimate business as little as possible.
Such machinery is not now inadequate….
A merchant or manufacturer engaged
in a legitimate business that covers certain states,
wishes to sell his business and his good will, and so
in the terms of the sale obligates himself to the purchaser
not to go into the same business in those states.
Such a restraint of trade
has always been enforced at common law.
Again, the employees of an interstate railway
Combine and enter upon a peaceable and lawful strike
to secure better wages.
At common law this was not a restraint of trade
or commerce or a violation of the rights
of the company or of the public.
Neither case ought to be made
a violation of the anti-trust law.19
Taft would oppose legalizing boycotts especially secondary boycotts.
He aimed to improve the power of the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC)
“to ascertain the value of the physical railroad property.”
He advised amending anti-trust law.
He criticized the Democrats’ policies, and he said the tariffs needed to be revised.
He supported the rights of labor but not harmful actions that are not lawful.
He urged adopting the postal-savings-bank system.
He suggested making campaign contributions and expenditures public,
and he favored the election of Senators by the people.
The Wall Street Journal praised Taft’s policy
as a balance between eastern conservatism and western radicalism.
Taft in September gave speeches in the Midwest and went as far as Colorado.
His meetings drew large crowds, and he was encouraged.
On September 17 the anti-liquor militant Carrie Nation
asked Taft about his position on alcohol.
He declined to answer,
and she left and called him an enemy of temperance and an infidel.
His position on prohibition was that he opposed any law that could not be enforced.
Yet he strongly favored local options to limit selling liquor.
On October 28 he spoke at the liberal Cooper Union in New York
on the right of workers to be organized in unions and to strike as long as
they did not injure property or business unlawfully or use a secondary boycott.
Some Catholics and Protestant denominations criticized Taft for being a Unitarian
who in the past had denied “the divinity of Christ.”
Protestants were concerned that
he had paid the Catholic Church millions for the land in the Philippines.
In the election on November 3 Taft got 7,678,395 votes to 6,408,984 for Bryan,
and he won 29 states for 321 Electoral College votes
to Bryan’s 17 states with 162 Electoral votes.
Republicans lost four seats in the House of Representatives
and still had a 219-172 majority.
Losing only two seats in the Senate, they dominated it 59-31.
Yet Democrats had elected the governor in five states that Taft had won.
Wisconsin’s Senator La Follette sent Taft this telegram:
No man ever had a greater opportunity.
The country confides in your constructive leadership
for the progressive legislation needed to secure
equal opportunity for all in our industrial development.20
On November 17 Taft spoke of the free trade on sugar and tobacco
with the Philippines that the War Secretary Wright had approved.
At first Taft said that he wanted to keep Roosevelt’s Cabinet,
and Roosevelt told him that Secretary of State Root, Navy Secretary Newberry,
and Treasury Secretary Cortelyou would be leaving.
Taft actually retained only the Agriculture Secretary Wilson
and Postmaster General Meyer whom he transferred to being Navy Secretary.
On December 19 he announced that Senator Knox of Pennsylvania,
who had been U. S. Attorney General, had agreed to be Secretary of State.
President-elect Taft went to Panama on January 19 to inspect the canal construction.
On February 7 he went to New Orleans,
and he made speeches in the South as he traveled by rail.
Ten days later he announced that Jacob M. Dickinson,
who co-founded the American Society of International Law,
would be Secretary of War.
He named Richard Ballinger, a lawyer who had been a reforming Mayor of Seattle
and a General Land Office Commissioner, as Interior Secretary.
Franklin MacVeagh had gone to Columbia Law School and was a
commercial bank director in Chicago for 29 years
before becoming Treasury Secretary.
The Republican National Committee Chairman Hitchcock
was made the Postmaster General.
Charles Nagel had taught at the St. Louis Law School for 24 years
and was also a corporation lawyer,
and Taft appointed him Secretary of Commerce and Labor.
George Wickersham was a law partner in New York City
and became Attorney General.
On 23 February 1909 President-elect Taft wrote
to the Kansas City Star publisher W. R. Nelson,
I am going to be criticized for
putting corporation lawyers into my Cabinet.
I think I shall have in the Cabinet five
as good lawyers as there are in the country,
and being good, first-class lawyers,
they have had a good deal of corporate employment….
The people who are best fitted to do this,
without injury to the business interests of the country,
are those lawyers who understand corporate wealth,
the present combination, its evils, and the method
by which they can be properly restrained.21
Roosevelt asked Taft to appoint his secretary William Loeb,
and Taft made him the collector of the port of New York.
Taft said he would confer with Booker T. Washington on appointments for Negroes,
and he would not appoint any in the South where they would be resented.
Dr. Crum, whom Roosevelt had appointed as the port collector in Charleston,
agreed to resign, and Dr. Washington and Roosevelt accepted that.
On March 3 a rain and snow storm became worse that night,
and the inauguration the next day would take place inside the Senate chamber.
Taft in the past had said that it would be a cold day
if he ever entered the White House.
President Taft’s inaugural address on 4 March 1809 was longer than any other
with the exception of William Henry Harrison’s
who was President for only one month.
Here is the entire speech:
My Fellow-Citizens:
Anyone who has taken the oath I have just
taken must feel a heavy weight of responsibility.
If not, he has no conception of the powers and duties of the
office upon which he is about to enter, or he islacking in a
proper sense of the obligation which the oath imposes.
The office of an inaugural address is to give a summary
outline of the main policies of the new administration,
so far as they can be anticipated.
I have had the honor to be one of the advisers of my
distinguished predecessor, and, as such, to hold up
his hands in the reforms he has initiated.
I should be untrue to myself, to my promises, and to the
declarations of the party platform upon which I was elected
to office, if I did not make the maintenance and enforcement
of those reforms a most important feature of my administration.
They were directed to the suppression of the lawlessness and abuses
of power of the great combinations of capital invested in railroads
and in industrial enterprises carrying on interstate commerce.
The steps which my predecessor took and the legislation
passed on his recommendation have accomplished much,
have caused a general halt in the vicious policies which
created popular alarm, and have brought about in the
business affected a much higher regard for existing law.
To render the reforms lasting, however, and to secure
at the same time freedom from alarm on the part of those
pursuing proper and progressive business methods,
further legislative and executive action are needed.
Relief of the railroads from certain restrictions of the antitrust
law have been urged by my predecessor and will be urged by me.
On the other hand, the administration is pledged to legislation
looking to a proper federal supervision and restriction to
prevent excessive issues of bonds and stock by companies
owning and operating interstate commerce railroads.
Then, too, a reorganization of the Department of Justice,
of the Bureau of Corporations in the Department of Commerce
and Labor, and of the Interstate Commerce Commission,
looking to effective cooperation of these agencies, is needed
to secure a more rapid and certain enforcement of the laws
affecting interstate railroads and industrial combinations.
I hope to be able to submit at the first regular session of
the incoming Congress, in December next, definite suggestions
in respect to the needed amendments to the antitrust and
the interstate commerce law and the changes required in
the executive departments concerned in their enforcement.
It is believed that with the changes to be recommended
American business can be assured of that measure of
stability and certainty in respect to those things that
may be done and those that are prohibited which is
essential to the life and growth of all business.
Such a plan must include the right of the people to avail
themselves of those methods of combining capital and
effort deemed necessary to reach the highest degree
of economic efficiency, at the same time differentiating
between combinations based upon legitimate economic
reasons and those formed with the intent of creating
monopolies and artificially controlling prices.
The work of formulating into practical shape such
change is creative word of the highest order, and
requires all the deliberation possible in the interval.
I believe that the amendments to be proposed are
just as necessary in the protection of legitimate
business as in the clinching of the reforms which
properly bear the name of my predecessor.
A matter of most pressing importance is the revision of the tariff.
In accordance with the promises of the platform upon which
I was elected, I shall call Congress into extra session to
meet on the 15th day of March, in order that consideration
may be at once given to a bill revising the Dingley Act.
This should secure an adequate revenue and adjust the
duties in such a manner as to afford to labor and to all
industries in this country, whether of the farm, mine or
factory, protection by tariff equal to the difference
between the cost of production abroad and the cost of
production here, and have a provision which shall put
into force, upon executive determination of certain facts,
a higher or maximum tariff against those countries whose
trade policy toward us equitably requires such discrimination.
It is thought that there has been such a change in conditions
since the enactment of the Dingley Act, drafted on a similarly
protective principle, that the measure of the tariff above
stated will permit the reduction of rates in certain schedules
and will require the advancement of few, if any.
The proposal to revise the tariff made in such an
authoritative way as to lead the business community
to count upon it necessarily halts all those branches
of business directly affected; and as these are most
important, it disturbs the whole business of the country.
It is imperatively necessary, therefore, that a tariff bill
be drawn in good faith in accordance with promises
made before the election by the party in power, and
as promptly passed as due consideration will permit.
It is not that the tariff is more important in the long run than
the perfecting of the reforms in respect to antitrust legislation
and interstate commerce regulation, but the need for action
when the revision of the tariff has been determined upon is
more immediate to avoid embarrassment of business.
To secure the needed speed in the passage of the tariff bill,
it would seem wise to attempt no other legislation at the extra session.
I venture this as a suggestion only, for the course
to be taken by Congress, upon the call of the
Executive, is wholly within its discretion.
In the mailing of a tariff bill the prime motive is
taxation and the securing thereby of a revenue.
Due largely to the business depression which followed
the financial panic of 1907, the revenue from customs
and other sources has decreased to such an extent
that the expenditures for the current fiscal year
will exceed the receipts by $100,000,000.
It is imperative that such a deficit shall not continue, and
the framers of the tariff bill must, of course, have in mind
the total revenues likely to be produced by it and so
arrange the duties as to secure an adequate income.
Should it be impossible to do so by import duties,
new kinds of taxation must be adopted, and among
these I recommend a graduated inheritance tax as
correct in principle and as certain and easy of collection.
The obligation on the part of those responsible for
the expenditures made to carry on the Government,
to be as economical as possible, and to make the burden
of taxation as light as possible, is plain, and should be
affirmed in every declaration of government policy.
This is especiallytrue when we are face to face with a heavy deficit.
But when the desireto win the popular approval leads to
the cutting off of expenditures really needed to make the
Government effective and to enable it to accomplish its
proper objects, the result is as much to be condemned as
the waste of government funds in unnecessary expenditure.
The scope of a modern government in what it can and ought
to accomplish for its people has been widened far beyond the
principles laid down by the old "laissez faire" school of
political writers, and this widening has met popular approval.
In the Department of Agriculture the use of scientific
experiment on a large scale and the spread of information derived
from them for the improvement of general agriculture must go on.
The importance of supervising business of great railways and
industrial combinations and the necessary investigation and
prosecution of unlawful business methods are another necessary
tax upon Government which did not exist half a century ago.
The putting into force of laws which shall secure the
conservation of our resources, so far as they may be within
the jurisdiction of the Federal Government, including the most
important work of saving and restoring our forests and the great
improvement of waterways, are all proper government functions
which must involve large expenditure if properly performed.
While some of them, like the reclamation of lands,
are made to pay for themselves, others are of such
an indirect benefit that this cannot be expected of them.
A permanent improvement, like the Panama Canal, should be
treated as a distinct enterprise, and should be paid for by the
proceeds of bonds, the issue of which will distribute its cost between the
present and future generations in accordance with the benefits derived.
It may well be submitted to the serious consideration
of Congress whether the deepening and control of the
channel of a great river system, like that of the Ohio
or of the Mississippi, when definite and practical plans
for the enterprise have been approved and determined
upon, should not be provided for in the same way.
Then, too, there are expenditures of Government absolutely
necessary if our country is to maintain its proper place
among the nations of the world, and is to exercise its proper
influence in defense of its own trade interests in the
maintenance of traditional American policy against the
colonization of European monarchies in this hemisphere,
and in the promotion of peace and international morality.
I refer to the cost of maintaining a proper army
a proper navy, and suitable fortifications upon the
mainland of the United States and in its dependencies.
We should have an army so organized and so officered
as to be capable in time of emergency, in cooperation with
the national militia and under the provisions of a proper
national volunteer law, rapidly to expand into a force
sufficient to resist all probable invasion from abroad
and to furnish a respectable expeditionary force if necessary
in the maintenance of our traditional American policy
which bears the name of President Monroe.
Our fortifications are yet in a state of only partial completeness,
and the number of men to man them is insufficient.
In a few years however, the usual annual appropriations
for our coast defenses, both on the mainland and in the
dependencies, will make them sufficient to resist all
direct attack, and by that time we may hope that the
men to man them will be provided as a necessary adjunct.
The distance of our shores from Europe and Asia of course
reduces the necessity for maintaining under arms a great army,
but it does not take away the requirement of mere prudence--
that we should have an army sufficiently large and so constituted
as to form a nucleus out of which a suitable force can quickly grow.
What has been said of the army may be affirmed
in even a more emphatic way of the navy.
A modern navy can not be improvised.
It must be built and in existence when the emergency
arises which calls for its use and operation.
My distinguished predecessor has in many speeches and
messages set out with great force and striking language
the necessity for maintaining a strong navy commensurate
with the coast line, the governmental resources, and the
foreign trade of our Nation; and I wish to reiterate all the
reasonswhich he has presented in favor of the policy of
maintaining a strong navy as the best conservator of our peace
with other nations, and the best means of securing respect
for the assertion of our rights, the defense of our interests,
and the exercise of our influence in international matters.
Our international policy is always to promote peace.
We shall enter into any war with a full consciousness
of the awful consequences that it always entails, whether
successful or not, and we, of course, shall make every
effort consistent with national honor and the highest
national interest to avoid a resort to arms.
We favor every instrumentality, like that of the Hague Tribunal
and arbitration treaties made with a view to its use in all international
controversies, in order to maintain peace and to avoid war.
But we should be blind to existing conditions and should allow
ourselves to become foolish idealists if we did not realize that,
with all the nations of the world armed and prepared for war,
we must be ourselves in a similar condition, in order to prevent
other nations from taking advantage of us and of our inability
to defend our interests and assert our rights with a strong hand.
In the international controversies that are likely to arise
in the Orient growing out of the question of the open door
and other issues the United States can maintain her interests
intact and can secure respect for her just demands.
She will not be able to do so, however, if it is understood that
she never intends to back up her assertion of right and her defense
of her interest by anything but mere verbal protest and diplomatic note.
For these reasons the expenses of the army and navy and
of coast defenses should always be considered as something
which the Government must pay for, and they should not
be cut off through mere consideration of economy.
Our Government is able to afford a
suitable army and a suitable navy.
It may maintain them without the slightest danger to the Republic
or the cause of free institutions, and fear of additional taxation
ought not to change a proper policy in this regard.
The policy of the United States in the Spanish war and
since has given it a position of influence among the nations
that it never had before, and should be constantly exerted
to securing to its bona fide citizens, whether native or
naturalized, respect for them as such in foreign countries.
We should make every effort to prevent humiliating
and degrading prohibition against any of our citizens
wishing temporarily to sojourn in foreign countries
because of race or religion.
The admission of Asiatic immigrants who cannot be
amalgamated with our population has been made the subject
either of prohibitory clauses in our treaties and statutes or of
strict administrative regulation secured by diplomatic negotiation.
I sincerely hope that we may continue to minimize the
evils likely to arise from such immigration without
unnecessary friction and by mutual concessions
between self-respecting governments.
Meantime we must take every precaution to prevent,
or failing that, to punish outbursts of race feeling among
our people against foreigners of whatever nationality
who have by our grant a treaty right to pursue lawful business
here and to be protected against lawless assault or injury.
This leads me to point out a serious defect in the present
federal jurisdiction, which ought to be remedied at once.
Having assured to other countries by treaty the protection of
our laws for such of their subjects or citizens as we permit to
come within our jurisdiction, we now leave to a state or a city,
not under the control of the Federal Government, the duty
of performing our international obligations in this respect.
By proper legislation we may, and ought to, place in the hands
of the Federal Executive the means of enforcing the treaty rights
of such aliens in the courts of the Federal Government.
It puts our Government in a pusillanimous position to make
definite engagements to protect aliens and then to excuse the
failure to perform those engagements by an explanation that
the duty to keep them is in States or cities, not within our control.
If we would promise we must put ourselves
in a position to perform our promise.
We cannot permit the possible failure of justice, due to
local prejudice in any State or municipal government,
to expose us to the risk of a war which might be avoided
if federal jurisdiction was asserted by suitable legislation
by Congress and carried out by proper proceedings instituted
by the Executive in the courts of the National Government.
One of the reforms to be carried out during the incoming
administration is a change of our monetary and banking laws,
so as to secure greater elasticity in the forms of currency
available for trade and to prevent the limitationsof law from
operating to increase the embarrassment of a financial panic.
The monetary commission, lately appointed, is giving full
consideration to existing conditions and to all proposed remedies,
and will doubtless suggest one that will meet the
requirements of business and of public interest.
We may hope that the report will embody neither the narrow
dew of those who believe that the sole purpose of the new system
should be to secure a large return on banking capital or of those
who would have greater expansion of currency with little regard
to provisions for its immediate redemption or ultimate security.
There is no subject of economic discussion so intricate and so likely
to evoke differing views and dogmatic statements as this one.
The commission, in studying the general influence of currency
on business and of business on currency, have wisely extended
their investigations in European banking and monetary methods.
The information that they have derived from such experts as
they have found abroad will undoubtedly be found helpful in
the solution of the difficult problem they have in hand.
The incoming Congress should promptly fulfill the promise of
the Republican platform and pass a proper postal savings bank bill.
It will not be unwise or excessive paternalism.
The promise to repay by the Government will furnish an
inducement to savings deposits which private enterprise
cannot supply and at such a low rate of interest as not
to withdraw custom from existing banks.
It will substantially increase the funds available
for investment as capital in useful enterprises.
It will furnish absolute security which makes the
proposed scheme of government guaranty of deposits
so alluring, without its pernicious results.
I sincerely hope that the incoming Congress will be alive,
as it should be, to the importance of our foreign trade
and of encouraging it in every way feasible.
The possibility of increasing this trade in the Orient,
in the Philippines, and in South America are known
to everyone who has given the matter attention.
The direct effect of free trade between this country
and the Philippines will be marked upon our sales of
cottons, agricultural machinery, and other manufactures.
The necessity of the establishment of direct lines of steamers
between North and South America has been brought to the
attention of Congress by my predecessor and by Mr. Root
before and after his noteworthy visit to that continent,
and I sincerely hope that Congress may be induced to
see the wisdom of a tentative effort to establish
such lines by the use of mail subsidies.
The importance of the part which the Departments of
Agriculture and of Commerce and Labor may play in ridding
the markets of Europe of prohibitions and discriminations
against the importation of our products is fully understood,
and it is hoped that the use of the maximum and minimum feature
of our tariff law to be soon passed will be effective
to remove many of those restrictions.
The Panama Canal will have a most important bearing
upon the trade between the eastern and far western
sections of our country, and will greatly increase the
facilities for transportation between the eastern and the
western seaboard, and may possibly revolutionize the
transcontinental rates with respect to bulky merchandise.
It will also have a most beneficial effect to increase the
trade between the eastern seaboard of the United States
and the western coast of South America, and, indeed,
with some of the important ports on the east coast
of South America reached by rail from the west coast.
The work on the canal is making most satisfactory progress.
The type of the canal as a lock canal was fixed by Congress
after a full consideration of the conflicting reports of the majority
and minority of the consulting board, and after the recommendation
of the War Department and the Executive upon those reports.
Recent suggestion that something had occurred on theIsthmus
to make the lock type of the canal less feasible than it was supposed
to be when the reports were made and the policy determined on
led to a visit to the Isthmus of a board of competent engineers to
examine the Gatundam and locks, which are the key of the lock type.
The report of that board shows nothing has occurred in the
nature of newly revealed evidence which should change
the views once formed in the original discussion.
The construction will go on under a most effective organization
controlled by Colonel Goethals and his fellow army engineers
associated with him, and will certainly be completed early
in the next administration, if not before.
Some type of canal must be constructed.
The lock type has been selected.
We are all in favor of having it built as promptly as possible.
We must not now, therefore, keep up a fire in the rear of the
agents whom we have authorized to do our work on the Isthmus.
We must hold up their hands, and speaking for the incoming
administration I wish to say that I propose to devote all the
energy possible and under my control to pushing of this work on
the plans which have been adopted, and to stand behind the men
who are doing faithful, hard work to bring about the early completion
of this, the greatest constructive enterprise of modern times.
The governments of our dependencies in Porto Rico and the
Philippines are progressing as favorably as could be desired.
The prosperity of Porto Rico continues unabated.
The business conditions in the Philippines are not all that
we could wish them to be, but with the passage of the new
tariff bill permitting free trade between the United States
and the archipelago, with such limitations on sugar and tobacco
as shall prevent injury to domestic interests in those products,
we can count on an improvement in business conditions
in the Philippines and the development of a mutually
profitable trade between this country and the islands.
Meantime our Government in each dependency is upholding
the traditions of civil liberty and increasing popular control
which might be expected under American auspices.
The work which we are doing there redounds to our credit as a nation.
I look forward with hope to increasing the already good feeling
between the South and the other sections of the country.
My chief purpose is not to effect a change in
the electoral vote of the Southern States.
That is a secondary consideration.
What I look forward to is an increase in the tolerance of political
views of all kinds and their advocacy throughout the South,
and the existence of a respectable political opposition in every State;
even more than this, to an increased feeling on the part of all the
people in the South that this Government is their Government,
and that its officers in their states are their officers.
The consideration of this question can not, however,
be complete and full without reference to the negro race,
its progress and its present condition.
The thirteenth amendment secured them freedom;
the fourteenth amendment due process of law, protection of
property, and the pursuit of happiness; and the fifteenth
amendment attempted to secure the negro against any
deprivation of the privilege to vote because he was a negro.
The thirteenth and fourteenth amendments have been generally
enforced and have secured the objects for which they are intended.
While the fifteenth amendment has not been generally observed
in the past, it ought to be observed, and the tendency of Southern
legislation today is toward the enactment of electoral qualifications
which shall square with that amendment.
Of course, the mere adoption of a constitutional law
is only one step in the right direction.
It must be fairly and justly enforced as well.
In time both will come.
Hence it is clear to all that the domination of an ignorant,
irresponsible element can be prevented by constitutional laws
which shall exclude from voting both negroes and whites
not having education or other qualifications thought
to be necessary for a proper electorate.
The danger of the control of an ignorant electorate
has therefore passed.
With this change, the interest which many of the Southern
white citizens take in the welfare of the negroes has increased.
The colored men must base their hope on the results of their
own industry, self-restraint, thrift, and business success,
as well as upon the aid and comfort and sympathy which
they may receive from their white neighbors of the South.
There was a time when Northerners who sympathized
with the negro in his necessary struggle for better conditions
sought to give him the suffrage as a protection to enforce
its exercise against the prevailing sentiment of the South.
The movement proved to be a failure.
What remains is the fifteenth amendment to the Constitution
and the right to have statutes of States specifying qualifications
for electors subjected to the test of compliance with that amendment.
This is a great protection to the negro.
It never will be repealed, and it never ought to be repealed.
If it had not passed, it might be difficult now to adopt it;
but with it in our fundamental law, the policy of Southern legislation
must and will tend to obey it, and so long as the statutes of the
States meet the test of this amendment and are not otherwise
in conflict with the Constitution and laws of theUnited States,
it is not the disposition or within the province of the
Federal Government to interfere with the regulation
by Southern States of their domestic affairs.
There is in the South a stronger feeling than ever among the
intelligent well-to-do, and influential element in favor of the
industrial education of the negro and the encouragement of the race
to make themselves useful members of the community.
The progress which the negro has made in the last fifty years,
from slavery, when its statistics are reviewed, is marvelous,
and it furnishes every reason to hope that in the next
twenty-five years a still greater improvement in his
condition as a productive member of society, on the farm,
and in the shop, and in other occupations may come.
The negroes are now Americans.
Their ancestors came here years ago against their will,
and this is their only country and their only flag.
They have shown themselves anxious to live for it and to die for it.
Encountering the race feeling against them, subjected at times
to cruel injustice growing out of it, they may well have our
profound sympathy and aid in the struggle they are making.
We are charged with the sacred duty of making their path
as smooth and easy as we can.
Any recognition of their distinguished men, any appointment to
office from among their number, is properly taken as an
encouragement and an appreciation of their progress,
and this just policy should be pursued when suitable occasion offers.
But it may well admit of doubt whether, in the case of any race,
an appointment of one of their number to a local office in a
community in which the race feeling is so widespread and acute
as to interfere with the ease and facility with which the local
government business can be done by the appointee is of
sufficient benefit by way of encouragement to the race to
outweigh the recurrence and increase of race feeling
which such an appointment is likely to engender.
Therefore the Executive, in recognizing the negro race
by appointments, must exercise a careful discretion
not thereby to do it more harm than good.
On the other hand, we must be careful not to encourage
the mere pretense of race feeling manufactured in the
interest of individual political ambition.
Personally, I have not the slightest race prejudice or feeling,
and recognition of its existence only awakens in my heart
a deeper sympathy for those who have to bear it or suffer from it,
and I question the wisdom of a policy which is likely to increase it.
Meantime, if nothing is done to prevent it, a better feeling between
the negroes and the whites in the South will continue to grow,
and more and more of the white people will come to realize that
the future of the South is to be much benefited by the
industrial and intellectual progress of the negro.
The exercise of political franchises by those of this race who are
intelligent and well to do will be acquiesced in, and the right to vote
will be withheld only from the ignorant and irresponsible of both races.
There is one other matter to which I shall refer.
It was made the subject of great controversy during the election
and calls for at least a passing reference now.
My distinguished predecessor has given much attention
to the cause of labor, with whose struggle for better things
he has shown the sincerest sympathy.
At his instance Congress has passed the bill fixing the liability
of interstate carriers to their employees for injury sustained in
the course of employment, abolishing the rule of fellow-servant
and the common-law rule as to contributory negligence, and
substituting therefor the so-called rule of "comparative negligence."
It has also passed a law fixing the compensation of government
employees for injuries sustained in the employ of the Government
through the negligence of the superior.
It has also passed a model child-labor law for the District of Columbia.
In previous administrations an arbitration law for interstate commerce
railroads and their employees, and laws for the application of safety
devices to save the lives and limbs of employees
of interstate railroads had been passed.
Additional legislation of this kind was passed by the outgoing Congress.
I wish to say that insofar as I can I hope to promote
the enactment of further legislation of this character.
I am strongly convinced that the Government should make itself
as responsible to employees injured in its employ as an
interstate-railway corporation is made responsible by federal law
to its employees; and I shall be glad, whenever any additional
reasonable safety device can be invented to reduce the loss of life
and limb among railway employees, to urge Congress to require
its adoption by interstate railways.
Another labor question has arisen
which has awakened the most excited discussion.
That is in respect to the power of the federal courts
to issue injunctions in industrial disputes.
As to that, my convictions are fixed.
Take away from the courts, if it could be taken away, the power
to issue injunctions in labor disputes, and it would create a
privileged class among the laborers and save the lawless
among their number from a most needful remedy available
to all men for the protection of their business against lawless invasion.
The proposition that business is not a property or pecuniary right
which can be protected by equitable injunction
is utterly without foundation in precedent or reason.
The proposition is usually linked with one
to make the secondary boycott lawful.
Such a proposition is at variance with the American instinct,
and will find no support, in my judgment, when submitted
to the American people.
The secondary boycott is an instrument of tyranny,
and ought not to be made legitimate.
The issue of a temporary restraining order without notice
has in several instances been abused by its inconsiderate exercise,
and to remedy this the platform upon which I was elected
recommends the formulation in a statute of the conditions
under which such a temporary restraining order ought to issue.
A statute can and ought to be framed to embody the best modern
practice, and can bring the subject so closely to the attention of
the court as to make abuses of the process unlikely in the future.
The American people, if I understand them, insist that the authority
of the courts shall be sustained, and are opposed to any change in
the procedure by which the powers of a court may be weakened and
the fearless and effective administration of justice be interfered with.
Having thus reviewed the questions likely to recur during my
administration, and having expressed in a summary way the
position which I expect to take in recommendations to Congress
and in my conduct as an Executive, I invoke the considerate
sympathy and support of my fellow-citizens and the aid of the
Almighty God in the discharge of my responsible duties.22
This last sentence ended his address.
President Taft convened a special session of the U. S. Congress on March 15
and in a brief message the next day he noted that the recession following the panic
of October 1907 had caused a federal deficit of over $100 million,
and the tariffs needed to be revised.
At the memorial service for Grover Cleveland on March 18 Taft praised
the career of the only Democratic President since the Civil War.
On March 23 Theodore Roosevelt left to go hunting in Africa,
and he would not return until June 1910.
Taft wrote an affectionate letter at his departure
promising to always consider his ideas.
Taft chose to stay out of the struggle between those favoring and opposing the powerful
House Speaker Joseph Cannon who chose all the committees and managed legislation.
Taft wanted a bill to replace the Dingley Tariff of 1897 that would fulfill the pledge of the
Republican plank that promised “unequivocally for the revision of the tariff by a special
session of Congress immediately following the inauguration of the next president”
that would be the “true principle of protection” by “imposition of such duties as will
equal the difference between the cost of production at home and abroad,
together with a reasonable profit to American industries.”23
While speaking in Georgia in January he had learned they would like to see the
manufacturing using wood, iron, and cotton stimulated,
and in Mississippi there was a call to protect lumber.
Taft decided that he wanted a tariff law that would not injure any part of the country.
On April 1 Senator Joseph Bailey offered an amendment to the Payne-Aldrich bill
for a general income tax of 3% on incomes over $5,000.
The U. S. Supreme Court had declared such a tax unconstitutional,
and therefore Taft advocated a constitutional amendment instead.
Senator Nelson Aldrich of Rhode Island said he would agree to that.
Taft also suggested that Aldrich sponsor a tax on the income of corporations,
and he doubted the deficit would last two years.
Senator Lodge was concerned that Taft knew little about tariffs and politics.
Vice President Sherman advised him to tell Postmaster General Hitchcock to
“shut off all the appointments of postmasters until the bill is passed,”
and Taft replied that he only wanted to use that as a
“lever on the members and senators who are recalcitrant.”
Taft was happy with the tariff bill that the House sent to the Senate on April 9,
and he hoped to make the Senate bill as near as possible.
In the next month the Senate removed many of the tariff cuts.
The powerful Senator Aldrich wanted the tariffs on 600 items increased.
Taft on May 10 informed the Congress of a crisis in Puerto Rico,
and he asked for a special session to amend the act governing the island.
On May 26 Taft spoke to blacks at Howard University concluding that the people
and the government of the United States have an obligation to help them solve
“one of the great problems that God has put upon the people of the United States.”
In the May issue of McClure’s he answered the critics of the Panama Canal,
and in the June issue he wrote about judicial decisions.
On June 16 Taft sent a message to Congress recommending a 2% tax on the
net incomes of all corporations except national banks, savings banks,
and building and loan associations.
He was told that this would bring in $25 million.
Taft got angry when he learned that the Conference Committee on the tariff bill would be
eight Republican protectionists that included senators La Follette, Beveridge, and Dolliver.
Taft asked them to let in freely hides, lumber, coal, iron, newsprint paper, gloves, and wool,
and they worked out a compromise.
Joe Cannon had to give up on protecting gloves.
As they were wrangling over the tariff on lumber, Cannon threatened to adjourn the House.
Aldrich asked Taft to give in, and he said he would convene a new session
if they did not pass the bill.
The House and Senate conferees agreed to the bill on July 29.
Taft signed it gladly on August 5 as it contained the corporate income tax
which would be upheld finally by the Supreme Court
in Flint v. Stone Tracy Co. in March 1911.
The President admitted that the Payne-Aldrich Act was not “a perfect bill,”
and he believed that it was “a sincere effort on the part of the Republican party
to make a downward revision.”
Commodities worth $5 million that had decreases in duties were consumed within a year
while at the same time higher rates only applied on consumer goods valued at $600,000.
The economist F. W. Taussig who studied trade observed that the Payne-Aldrich Act
did not essentially change the U. S. tariff system.
He wrote,
In the Senate, things went in star-chamber fashion,
and the familiar process of log-rolling and manipulation
was once again to be seen.
The act as finally passed
brought no real breach in the tariff wall,
and no downward revision of any serious consequence.
None the less, a somewhat different spirit
from that of 1890 or 1897 was shown in 1909.
Though the act as a whole
brought no considerable downward revision,
it was less aggressively protectionist
than the previous Republican measures.24
At the National Irrigation Conference in Spokane, Washington delegates
discussed the conservation and reclamation of forests and waterways.
On August 9 the United Press news agency reported that General Electric, Guggenheim,
and Amalgamated Copper had purchased 15,868 acres in Montana.
On August 10 Gifford Pinchot, who was the Chief of the United States Forestry Service
and a close friend of Theodore Roosevelt, criticized Interior Secretary Richard Ballinger
for delaying Taft’s re-withdrawal order so that they could buy that land.
Later Ballinger proved that this land grab was exaggerated because
they really only got 158.63 acres.
On August 18 Louis Glavis, the head of the Field Division of the Interior Department,
gave President Taft detailed allegations against Ballinger on a coal case.
Taft and his Attorney General George Wickersham sent it to Ballinger
who completed his reply in 10,000 words on September 4.
Taft wrote an official letter to Ballinger and provided copies for the press
before he boarded a train for his speaking tour on September 13.
His letter and documents he had studied found little evidence against Ballinger.
On September 14 President Taft spoke to the Boston Chamber of Commerce
on improving business methods.
Two days later in Chicago he discussed labor unions and injunction issues.
In Wisconsin he never mentioned Senator La Follette,
and on the 17th at Milwaukee he promoted his plan for postal savings banks.
Later at Winona, Minnesota he gave a long speech and said,
“On the whole, however, I am bound to say that I think the Payne bill
is the best bill that the Republican party ever passed.”25
Journalists picked this up as newsworthy, and soon newspaper headlines
were spreading a message that Democrats could use in future elections.
In Des Moines, Iowa on September 20 Taft gave a speech on how to amend
the Interstate Commerce Commission law.
The next day at Denver, Colorado he discussed taxing corporations
and a 2% tax on individuals’ income over $5,000.
His train reached Seattle, Washington on September 29,
and there and at Tacoma he discussed Alaska.
Los Angeles welcomed him with a large demonstration on October 11,
and the Chamber of Commerce put on a large banquet at the Shriners’ Auditorium.
He talked about the Panama Canal and trade.
Taft met with Mexico’s President Porfirio Diaz at El Paso, Texas and in Juarez, Mexico.
Taft was concerned about American lives and about $2 million in investments in Mexico.
By 1910 the Americans owned 43% of Mexico’s property while Mexicans held 33%,
and other foreign nations had 24%.
Taft wanted to spend more money on waterways,
and in Texas he talked about natural resources and irrigation.
In St. Louis on October 25 he said,
The improvement of waterways,
the improvement of irrigation of arid and subarid lands,
and all this conservation of resources is not for the purpose
of distributing ‘pork’ to every part of the country….
Now there is a proposition that we issue $500,000,000
of bonds or a billion of bonds for waterways,
and then that we just cut that up and apportion
a part to the Pacific, a part to the Atlantic,
a part to the Missouri and a part to the Ohio.
I am opposed to it because it not only smells
of the pork barrel, but it will be the pork barrel.26
Taft spoke at Vicksburg, Mississippi on October 28,
and two days later he attended the Waterways Convention at New Orleans.
In early November he spoke in Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina
and at Richmond, Virginia on the 10th.
The next day he returned to Washington and addressed the Laymen’s Missionary Movement.
On his tour he gave 259 speeches.
On November 17 the elected government of Nicaraguan President
José Santos Zelaya executed two American citizens
who had been fighting for rebels led by Juan Estrada.
The next day Taft sent U. S. warships to Nicaragua.
On December 1 Secretary of State Knox broke off relations with Nicaragua.
Zelaya resigned on December 17 and left for Spain,
and Nicaragua’s congress made José Madriz president.
He opposed U. S. intervention and went into exile in August 1910.
Juan José Estrada became president on August 30.
The Taft Administration supported his conservative government,
and U. S. Marines began occupying Nicaragua.
On 20 November 1909 the U. S. Supreme Court decided that
Standard Oil of New Jersey had violated the Anti-trust Act by controlling 85%
of the American petroleum industry.
The Court ordered them to divest themselves of all its subsidiaries within thirty days.
Taft commended Frank Kellogg for his prosecution.
On 4 March 1910 a bill to create the Rockefeller Foundation as a national corporation
with $100 million for various projects was introduced in the U. S. Congress,
and five days later the company’s lawyers filed briefs with the U. S. Supreme Court.
On 7 February 1911 the U. S. Attorney General Wickersham informed Taft
that this institution using Rockefeller was questionable,
and Taft agreed with him.
The bill was withdrawn and was introduced again in 1912 and failed to pass.
Taft in his First Annual Message to Congress on December 7
reported his policies on many issues.
He wrote,
The total deficit for the last fiscal year
in the Post-Office Department amounted to $17,500,000.
The branches of its business which it did at a loss
were the second-class mail service, in which the loss,
as already said, was $63,000,000, and
the free rural delivery, in which the loss was $28,000,000.
These losses were in part offset by the profits
of the letter postage and other sources of income.
It would seem wise to reduce the loss upon
second-class mail matter, at least to the extent of preventing
a deficit in the total operations of the Post-Office.27
The second-class mail rate would affect newspapers and magazines.
On 10 January 1910 President Taft signed the Mann-Elkins Act
that gave the Interstate Commerce Commission more authority to regulate railway rates
for telegraph, telephone, and wireless communications, and it established a Commerce Court.
On that day Representative George W. Norris of Nebraska wrote to Taft,
I am in favor of increasing the power
of the Interstate Commerce Commission;
of the government regulation and control
of industrial and railroad corporations;
the physical valuation of railroads;
the publication of campaign expenses;
the enactment of a reasonable postal savings bank law;
the reasonable and fair conservation of natural resources;
the regulation of injunctions
as outlined in the Republican platform;
the reform of federal court procedure as advocated by you,
and a permanent nonpartisan tariff commission.28
In 1909 and 1910 Gifford Pinchot, Louis Glavis, Norman Hapgood of Collier’s Weekly,
and others accused Interior Secretary Richard Ballinger and the Taft Administration
of corruption regarding natural resources and coal lands in Alaska.
Roosevelt wrote that Pinchot had done more for
“the preservation of the natural resources of our country” than anyone.
They liked James R. Garfield, and Taft had replaced him with Ballinger
who directed the Geological Survey to study all the water-power sites
so that they could be preserved.
Taft believed that Garfield had withdrawn lands illegally.
On December 23 Ballinger asked Washington’s Senator Wesley Jones
to demand that the U. S. Congress investigate the charges against him.
Ballinger had been Commissioner of the General Land Office in 1907,
and in 1908 he was an agent for the corporation of Cunningham, Morgan and Guggenheim
regarding coal fields in Alaska.
As Interior Secretary he dismissed Glavis after he appealed to Pinchot.
Ballinger and Taft believed that waterways were needed for water power,
and they ordered many removed from the protection of the Forestry Service.
Glavis also accused Land Commissioner Dennett of misconduct.
Taft felt that Roosevelt and Pinchot were more sympathetic
“for they both have more of a Socialist tendency.”29
Taft did not want to offend his friend Roosevelt,
and Elihu Root advised him to dismiss Pinchot.
On 7 January 1910 Taft wrote to Pinchot,
Your letter was in effect an improper appeal
to Congress and the public to excuse in advance
the guilt of your subordinates before I could act,
and against my decision in the Glavis case
before the whole evidence on which that was based
could be considered….
By your own conduct you have destroyed your usefulness
as a helpful subordinate of the government,
and it therefore now becomes my duty
to direct the secretary of agriculture
to remove you from your office as the forester.30
Congress authorized the investigation that began on January 19 and ended on May 20.
On February 26 Pinchot testified to a Congressional committee that Ballinger
was “an enemy of the policy of conservation” and that he had not been a
“guardian of public property of enormous value.”
On May 15 Taft explained how his deliberation process had worked,
though his method was questionable in this letter:
I therefore directed him to embody in a written statement
such analysis and conclusions as he had given me,
file it with the record, and date it prior to the date
of my opinion, so as to show that my decision was fortified
by his summary of the evidence
and his conclusions therefrom.31
On May 26 Taft wrote to Roosevelt who was in the Congo when he learned that
Pinchot was dismissed.
In June at Southampton he received Taft’s letter which said,
The Garfield-Pinchot-Ballinger controversy has given me
a great deal of personal pain and suffering,
but I am not going to say a word to you on that subject.
You will have to look into that wholly for yourself
without influence by the parties,
if you would find the truth.32
Taft and Ballinger persuaded the Congress to pass legislation
giving the President the authority to protect public land from private development.
On June 25 President Taft signed the bill that established postal savings banks
that had proved popular in many countries.
Previous presidents including Roosevelt had attempted to do this over forty years,
and Taft got it done.
He noted that about $3,500 million, which was 98.4% of all savings in U. S. banks,
were in only 14 states while the other 32 states had only about $70 million which was 1.6%.
The amount of savings in these new postal accounts would increase to $43 million by 1914
and to $1,180 million by 1933.
The United States had a deficit of $89 million in the fiscal year ending 30 June 1909
while in 1910 it was reduced to about $18 million.
The Hepburn Act which Roosevelt had signed on 29 June 1906 increased the
jurisdiction and authority of the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC).
On 20-22 August 1909 the U. S. Attorney General Wickersham held a conference
in New York with ICC Chairman Martin A. Knapp and Commerce Secretary Nagel,
and they planned bills that gave the ICC the power to supervise railroad bonds
and stocks with a Commerce Court to review its orders.
Taft suggested allowing the ICC to control the construction
of various railroad devices to safeguard railroad workers.
The ICC was authorized to investigate rates.
Taft also supported a practical bill to fix compensation for injuries on railways.
He got the Congress to approve a $20 million bond issue for irrigation projects.
Taft gave up his opposition to “pork barrel” spending
so that improvements could be made in various places.
Taft in May 1910 expressed his view of foreign policy
that came to be known as “dollar diplomacy.” He said,
We believe it to be of the utmost importance that
while our foreign policy should not be turned
a hair’s breadth from the straight path of justice,
it may be well made to include active intervention to secure
for our merchandise and our capitalists opportunity
for profitable investment which shall insure
to the benefit of both countries concerned.33
That month the U. S. sold two battleships to Argentina.
Taft was especially concerned about the stability of Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador,
Nicaragua, and Costa Rica because of the Panama Canal.
The U. S. Supreme Court Justice Rufus W. Peckham had died on 24 October 1909
and Taft chose the Federal Circuit Court Judge Lurton to replace him
even though Lurton was 65 years old.
Taft was critical of elderly justices; and he had worked with Lurton for years
and respected him greatly.
Lurton served from January 1910 until his death in July 1914.
Justice David J. Brewer died on 28 March 1910,
and Taft appointed New York’s Gov. Charles Evans Hughes who began serving
in October at the age of 48 until he resigned in 1916 to run for President.
Taft would become Chief Justice in July 1921 for nearly nine years,
and he would be succeeded as Chief Justice by Hughes who retired in June 1941.
Chief Justice Fuller died on 4 July 1910.
Taft promoted Justice Edward D. White to Chief Justice even though he was a
Confederate veteran, a Catholic, and a Democrat.
The Associate Justice Moody resigned on November 20 because of poor health,
and Taft appointed the conservative Willis Van Devanter
who served from January 1911 to June 1937.
Theodore Marburg at a dinner in Baltimore on 6 February 1910 had founded
the American Society for the Judicial Settlement of International Disputes.
Taft agreed to be the honorary president, and Secretary of State Knox and
Woodrow Wilson sent endorsing letters.
Taft in March gave a speech in New York on the futility of war even for the winners.
He suggested a permanent court of arbitrations to resolve “all questions”
that could lead to war including matters of national honor.
In June both houses of Congress passed a resolution creating a peace commission,
though their proposal for an international navy was considered too radical.
On November 16 the U. S. State Department contacted Austria-Hungary,
Belgium,
France, Germany, Britain, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Russia, and Turkey,
and only Austria-Hungary and Britain sent favorable responses.
In December at a meeting of Marburg’s group Taft said,
“If we do not have arbitration, we shall have war.”34
On December 24 Andrew Carnegie donated $10 million for a Carnegie Peace Fund,
and he suggested adopting Taft’s views.
On June 18 Theodore Roosevelt returned from his African hunting and visits
to crown heads in Europe, and he appreciated getting a letter from President Taft.
Agriculture Secretary Wilson told Roosevelt that President Taft had continued his policies,
and Roosevelt said he would not comment.
The U. S. Congress adjourned on June 26, and Taft went there to sign the final bills.
The main senators who opposed him did not bother to say goodbye to him.
On June 30 Roosevelt with Senator Lodge visited Taft at his summer home in Beverly,
Massachusetts where he was resting away from the heat of Washington.
After their conversation they agreed to tell the press that it was merely a social visit.
Roosevelt found support for his progressive views in The Promise of American Life
by Herbert Croly which had been published in November 1909.
This book suggested, “The principle of democracy is virtue”35 and implied
that the U. S. Constitution in some parts may be destructive of democracy
which Roosevelt believed was based on good ethics.
Taft was concerned that Roosevelt was moving toward socialism and away
from the Constitution which he believed “every real thinking patriot” should support.
He complained that Roosevelt even criticized the U. S. Supreme Court.
Taft was concerned that Roosevelt was joining the “insurgents” such as
La Follette, Payne, Aldrich, Lodge, and others who were carrying western states.
Taft did not like this “New Nationalism.”
Taft noted in July that in the previous year he had turned a projected deficit
of $40 million to a surplus of $11 million in 1911.
In June he had obtained $100,000 to investigate expenditures,
and it would begin in the Treasury Department.
Instead of speaking to the National Conservation Congress at St. Paul
with Roosevelt on September 4, Taft chose to speak on the following night.
The two long-time friends did meet on September 19 at New Haven
when Taft was attending a meeting of the Yale Corporation.
Taft felt that Roosevelt was influenced by the muckrakers
and was moving in a direction he did not expect.
He read that Roosevelt had said that Taft had not carried out his policies
and that he would not support him for the nomination in 1912.
At the New York State Convention in Saratoga on September 27
Taft supported Roosevelt against his conservative Vice President Sherman.
The New York Republicans chose Roosevelt as temporary chairman
and Elihu Root as permanent chairman.
Roosevelt was glad that they nominated Henry Stimson for governor.
Taft expected that in the elections on 8 November 1910 the Democrats gained
a majority of 20 to 25; and they added 55 seats that gave them a 227-161 advantage of 66
in the U. S. House of Representatives.
Democrats gained 7 seats in the U. S. Senate
even though their advantage in the popular votes was only 0.16%.
Republicans lost 9 seats in the Senate and still had a 50-40 advantage.
Beveridge and Stimson were defeated, and New Jersey elected
the Princeton professor Woodrow Wilson as their Democratic governor.
In the fall of 1910 the Aldrich Plan for Monetary Legislation was developed
over ten days by the Rhode Island Senator Aldrich with the bankers Henry P. Davison,
Paul M. Warburg, and Frank A. Vanderlip on Jekyll Island off the Georgia coast.
They proposed the Reserve Association of America to make banking liquid with secondary
discounting and commercial paper accepted by member banks so that currency could be issued
and circulated as long as issued assets were in its hands.
On November 11 President Taft went to Panama to inspect the construction of the canal.
After his return he invited Roosevelt to visit him in the White House,
and they had a cordial time and talked about Panama
and the anti-Japanese legislation in California.
Taft sent him a copy of his upcoming message to Congress,
and Roosevelt commended it and said he agreed.
Taft favored getting a reciprocity agreement with Canada to end tariffs and gain free trade.
Utah’s Senator Reed Smoot warned the President that farmers would not like that.
Taft believed that the treaty was right and was not concerned about the politics.
He also wanted to negotiate reciprocity with Germany and Mexico,
and those would not happen.
Taft avoided tariff competition with France.
Newspaper publishers had opposed Taft’s higher second-class postal rates,
and they favored reciprocity so that paper and pulp would be imported duty free.
Taft believed that reciprocity could stop the rising cost of living.
In his Second Annual Message to Congress on December 6 Taft reported that
arbitration had helped solve a dispute over fishing with Britain,
and the Tribunal at The Hague resolved another between the Governments
of the United States and Venezuela.
He was pleased that the Congress had approved a 5-member peace commission.
He discussed various foreign relations and tariff negotiations,
and he hoped for reciprocity with Canada.
He affirmed his intention to protect aliens.
He thanked the Congress for passing the merit system for selecting diplomats.
He announced the estimates for federal spending in the current and next fiscal years
and included a detailed chart showing the six departments and the territories.
He noted that the Payne Tariff was criticized, and he believed it provided protection at home.
He asked for more Army officers and engineers.
Charts showed the amounts of exports and imports of the Philippine Islands.
He reported on the progress of the Panama Canal and urged its fortification.
He discussed tolls and the likely revenue and maintenance.
He called for an amendment to the interstate commerce law to prohibit railroads
from owning or controlling ships engaged in trade through the Canal.
He noted that anti-trust laws were being enforced.
He urged reforms in federal and state courts, and he advised reducing unnecessary appeals
to the Supreme Court.
He asked for increases in the salaries of Federal judges.
He foresaw more postal savings banks opening.
He reported that the budget of the Post Office Department was becoming more balanced.
He agreed with the Navy Secretary’s request for reorganization,
and some navy-yards could be abolished.
For land reclamation and conservation he recommended repealing the law
“which forbids his reserving more forest lands in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana,
Colorado, and Wyoming,”36
leasing coal deposits, oil and gas prospecting, and water-power sites.
He discussed Alaska and many other issues related to the government.
He concluded,
It is in the interest of all the people of the country
that for the time being the activities of government,
in addition to enforcing earnestly and impartially the existing
laws, should be directed to economy of administration,
to the enlargement of opportunities for foreign trade,
to the conservation and improvement
of our agricultural lands and our other natural resources,
to the building up of home industries,
and to the strengthening of confidence
of capital in domestic investment.37
Taft had good relations with Japan because he had talked with leaders there
in earlier visits to Yokohama and Tokyo.
He told Roosevelt that he was concerned about Japan, and he did not agree that
added military preparation was needed because of a Japanese invasion.
Taft supported having a world’s fair in San Francisco,
and he thought that would promote peace and better relations with Asians.
He opposed the exclusion clause against Japanese immigration and explained,
“Japan feels this is a remnant of the old order of things
under which she was treated as half civilized.”38
He denied the rumor that a Japanese syndicate
had purchased 400,000 acres in Baja California.
The U. S. Senate even passed Lodge’s resolution opposing the deal,
and Taft told Stanford University’s president David Starr Jordan that it was not important.
Jordan wrote in his autobiography,
“This absurd and irrelevant document was never signed by President Taft.”39
Taft had met Jordan in 1909.
Taft wanted a Tariff Board,
and in late December he asked the Congress for a Tariff Commission.
They provided some funds but no commission.
President Taft hosted a White House conference on banks in January 1911.
On January 11 the United States and Canada both made laws to establish reciprocal
trading on most agricultural products and some others.
Taft in a letter to Roosevelt on January 10 had noted that this
“would make Canada only an adjunct of the United States.”
On the 12th Roosevelt wrote to Taft that the reciprocity with Canada was excellent.
On January 21 Robert La Follette invited progressive leaders to his home,
and they organized the National Progressive League to work for
direct election of U. S. senators, primary elections for candidates and delegates
to national conventions, and amendments
to state constitutions to allow initiative, referendum, and recall.
They stimulated the forming of state Progressive Leagues,
and the Progressive Federation of Publicists and Editors was founded.
Roosevelt told La Follette that he agreed with them,
though he saw those things as means, not goals.
He declined to join and endorsed their principles in The Outlook.
The Democrats had taken over the U. S. House of Representatives,
and in the U. S. Senate the Republicans were divided
between the conservatives and the progressives.
Taft sent the reciprocity agreement to Congress on January 26
with a special message in which he wrote,
My purpose in making a reciprocal trade agreement
with Canada has been not only to obtain one which
would be mutually advantageous to both countries,
but one which also would be truly national in its scope
as applied to our own country
and would be of benefit to all sections.40
William Randolph Hearst sent his approval from London.
On February 14 Champ Clark in the House of Representatives said that
he was for reciprocity and explained,
I hope to see the day when the American flag will float over
every square foot of the British North American possessions
clear to the North Pole.41
This set off alarms among Canadians who did not want to be annexed by the U. S.
Taft said, “The talk of annexation is bosh.
Everyone who knows anything about it realizes that it is bosh.”42
He thought it should be treated as a joke.
The U. S. House of Representatives passed the reciprocity bill on February 21.
On the 18th Andrew Carnegie wrote to Taft that it was supported by the Democrats.
Taft in March accepted Ballinger’s resignation for reasons of health and finances,
and his appointment of the lawyer Walter L. Fisher as Interior Secretary
worked out because he was considered a disciple of Pinchot.
One hour after the U. S. Congress adjourned on March 4
Taft summoned them to a special session on April 4.
On March 11 Taft appointed the Commission on Efficiency and Economy with the
economist Frederick A. Cleveland as its chairman and filled it with five capable men.
He directed the heads of the departments to answer their requests for information.
At this time the United States was the only great nation that did not have a budget
or a unified system for government spending.
Yet expenditures had reached $1 billion a year.
Taft asked for $250,000 for the Commission,
and he estimated it would save taxpayers $2 million a year.
Congress granted them only $75,000 and stipulated that only three employees
could be paid over $4,000 a year.
Taft wanted all the employees except for important officers to be under the merit system.
He wanted to strengthen civil service and reduce patronage
which he said caused “nothing but trouble.”
He believed that administrative officers should continue as long as they did their work well.
Democrats were in control of the U. S. House of Representatives
which passed the reciprocity bill on April 21.
The U. S. Senators approved it on July 22 with 31 Democrats and 22 Republicans
voting in favor over 24 Republicans and 3 Democrats against.
Taft signed it on July 26.
The U. S. Ambassador to Mexico, Henry Lane Wilson, came to Washington
to warn President Taft that President Diaz was in danger of being overthrown.
Taft ordered 20,000 soldiers sent to the Mexican border with Texas and California,
and he said they would not cross the border
before he obtained authority from the Congress.
On May 23 Diaz refused to resign, and that night more than fifty people were killed.
More lives were lost the next day, and Diaz resigned and fled to Vera Cruz.
The revolutionary leader Francisco Madero came to Mexico City supported
by 100,000 soldiers, and he became president on November 6
and soon faced an insurrection.
On May 15 the U. S. Supreme Court had convicted Standard Oil of violating
the Antitrust Act, and the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey had thirty days
to divest itself of over thirty subsidiaries.
Two weeks later the Supreme Court condemned the American Tobacco Company
and 28 other companies in an action that had been started by Roosevelt.
On June 6 the U. S. made a treaty with Nicaragua that allowed the
U. S. President to approve the receiver general of customs,
and the U. S. would urge bankers to extend loans on fair terms.
Later in 1911 a revolution broke out, and the U. S. sent marines again.
On July 6 in a speech to the Michigan State Bar Association the
Attorney General Wickersham said that the “only legitimate end and object of all
government is the greatest good of the greatest number of the people.”43
In a letter to Taft on September 23 Wickersham warned him that big financiers
advised managers of the Republican Party that there would not be financial donations
unless the prosecution of the meat-packers in Chicago was dropped along
with the attempt to dissolve the combination between
the National City Bank and its subsidiaries.
In response Taft in a speech said,
Every trust of any size that violates the statue will,
before the end of this administration in 1913,
be brought into court to meet and acquiesce in a degree
of disintegration by which competition
between its parts shall be restored and preserved.44
On August 4 British and French diplomats came to the White House
to sign the Arbitration Treaty to resolve conflicts even those affecting national honor.
Roosevelt opposed the treaty because he believed a self-respecting nation
should not surrender its rights to someone else.
The National Rifle Association’s president called Taft “mushy” about “the horrors of war.”
Taft had served as Honorary President of the American Society
for the Judicial Settlement of International Disputes since it formed in 1910.
When the U. S. Senators added amendments, which Taft believed crippled the treaty,
he refused to sign the bill.
In 1911 he decreased U. S. military spending by $53 million.
Although Roosevelt opposed arbitration, Taft in August hoped that
he could change the minds of the senators needed for ratification of treaties.
That summer Taft vetoed tariff reductions on wool, cotton, chemicals, metals,
and other products, and in December he would agree that
the Schedule K on wool could be lowered.
After his birthday on September 15 Taft left on a two-month tour of the West
by train, making speeches that city newspapers printed in full.
At Marquette, Michigan he said,
We had the war of 1812, in which our neighbor, England,
asserted rights that she would not now think of pressing.
I think that war might have been settled
without a fight and ought to have been.
So with the Mexican War.
So, I think, with the Spanish War.45
While he was in Kalamazoo, Michigan he learned that the Liberal government
was no long in office in Canada,
and that the government had rejected the reciprocity agreement.
On October 7 at the University of Idaho he told students and faculty
that international peace is possible.
He gave the example of how dueling was customary,
and it was no more rational than war for settling a question of honor.
He said,
I don’t think that it indicates that a man
lacks personal courage if he does not want to fight,
but prefers to submit questions of national honor
to a board of arbitration….
We are a great nation of 90,000,000 people.
We have power; we have wealth;
we are afraid of no nation in the world
so far as battle is concerned.
We have no entangling alliances.
The other nations who have entangling alliances
and who cannot lead in this movement look to us to lead.46
William Allen White reported that Taft’s trip showed tha
he had lost the confidence of the people.
On October 27 (Roosevelt’s birthday) newspapers reported on the Taft
administration’s anti-trust suit against the U.S. Steel Corporation and its holding
companies along with J. P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie,
Judge Elbert Gary, George W. Perkins, and Henry Frick.
The government’s lawyers were using the acquisition of the
Tennessee Coal and Iron Company which
Roosevelt had approved in 1907 during a financial panic.
They argued that Roosevelt did not understand the situation
and wanted to control the company.
Newspaper headlines said he was “deceived” and “fooled.”
Roosevelt defended his action and said that Taft in his Cabinet was involved in the meetings.
Roosevelt had become very popular as the “trust-buster.”
In three years the Taft administration brought more anti-trust cases than Roosevelt had;
and times had changed, and they were no long popular.
In December a poll of 16,000 Republican voters by three major newspapers in Ohio
showed that almost three quarters favored Roosevelt.
The Taft administration while negotiating for a coaling station in Peru
agreed to loan them money if Peru would buy two submarines built in the U. S.
instead of two from France.
A difficult issue was whether to allow U. S. ships to use the Panama Canal without paying.
American citizens already had paid $400 million to construct the Canal,
and the United States had established its right to build fortifications there.
At the end of 1911 Taft told Congress,
I am very confident that the United States
has the power to relieve from the payment of tolls
any part of our shipping that Congress deems wise.
We own the canal.
It was our money that built it.
We have the right to charge tolls for its use.47
William Cameron Forbes had been a commissioner in the Philippines since 1904,
and he became the Governor of the Philippine Islands on 11 November 1909
until September 1913.
He reformed the legal system while the economy prospered.
General John Pershing governed the Moros Province
from November 1909 to December 1913.
In the fall of 1911 he besieged Bud Dajo and disarmed the Moros,
collecting 7,000 firearms, and 1,256 U. S. forces defeated 800 Moros in December.
Taft’s Third Annual Message to Congress was 66 pages
and was given in four parts from December 5 to 21.
He began by discussing the antitrust law and U. S. Supreme Court decisions.
He opposed repeal and asked for supplemental legislation,
and he recommended Federal incorporation.
He suggested that government experts could help the courts with trust dissolutions.
He proposed a Corporation Commission and considered incorporation voluntary.
In Part 2 on December 7 he discussed foreign relations and confirmed the
arbitration treaties with Britain and France.
The United States helped bring about friendly resolutions in disputes
“between Panama and Costa Rica and between Haiti and the Dominican Republic.”
He discussed in detail political events in Mexico
and explained why he sent troops to the border.
He reported on the treaties proposed with Nicaragua and Honduras.
Loans were made to support construction projects in China.
The U. S. renewed its treaty with Japan in 1911.
On June 19 the United States recognized the Portuguese Republic.
The fur-seal treaty between the United States, Great Britain, Japan, and Russia
was concluded on July 7.
American exports reached a peak in the fiscal year ending on June 30.
Taft suggested forming Chambers of Foreign Commerce,
and he commended Congress for supporting the foreign service.
In Part 3 on December 20 Taft discussed his Tariff Board
and methods for adjusting duties.
Part 4 on December 21 was about financial issues and currency reform.
He reported that the latest fiscal year had a surplus of $47,234,377,
and the Post Office had its first surplus in 27 years.
The total national debt was about $1,304 million.
The sale of Panama Canal bonds showed that the United States had better credit
than any other government with a 2.9% interest rate.
He reported on the work of the Monetary Commission
and concluded that reform is necessary.
He estimated that the Panama Canal could be completed by July 1913.
He reported on the Philippine Islands and its harbors and waterways.
He described the work of the U. S. Department of Justice and the Postal Savings Bank.
He proposed abolishing unnecessary Navy yards.
He asked the Congress to organize a Council of National Defense.
Finally he asked for a civil-service retirement system,
and he renewed his request to eliminate all local offices from politics.
Taft in his message had also suggested renegotiating the 1832 treaty with Russia
that protected American citizens from discrimination.
Jews in early December were concerned that anti-Semitism in Russia
was harming American citizens in Russia.
The House of Representatives on December 13 voted 301 to 1
to abrogate the Russian treaty.
Because the Russians refused to change their policy,
Taft abrogated the Treaty of Commerce with Russia on December 17.
On 22 January 1912 President Taft wrote in a letter to the banker Otto Bannard,
I believe I represent a safer and saner view
of our government and its Constitution
than does Theodore Roosevelt,
and whether beaten or not I mean to continue
to labor in the vineyard for those principles.48
On February 5 Taft wrote in a letter to Kentucky’s U. S. Senator William O’Connell Bradley,
“Personal abuse is not likely to control ultimately in this campaign;
and I certainly don’t want to be responsible for it if it does.”49
In a message to Congress on February 2 Taft had recommended a board of experts
to explain why high prices were so distressing in the world.
The State Department gathered evidence and studied food prices,
and they found that cooperatives had been effective in England.
Despite high prices all over the world Taft believed that
the United States was more prosperous that it had ever been before.
Some midwestern governors signed a letter asking Roosevelt to run for President,
and they made it public on February 10.
Funds would be coming from the publisher Frank A. Munsey,
J. P. Morgan’s partner George W. Perkins,
and the progressive Republican Medill McCormick.
During his speech “Charter of Democracy” at Columbus, Ohio
on February 21 Roosevelt declared, “My hat is in the ring.”
The U. S. Senate amended the arbitration treaties with Britain and France,
and in March they passed them 76 to 3.
Taft in April decided he would renew negotiation with England and France
on the treaties, and then he became busy with the campaign.
On March 14 the U. S. Congress passed a resolution prohibiting
the shipment
of weapons to any nation in North or South America where violence existed.
Navy Secretary Meyer in April asked Congress
if he could enlist 2,000 men if there was an intervention.
On March 26 New York voters in the primary election
chose 83 delegates for Taft and 7 for Roosevelt.
By the end of the month Taft had 274 delegates
toward the 540 needed for the nomination at the convention.
Roosevelt in April got 56 of Pennsylvania’s 76 delegates,
and he won in Taft’s state of Ohio as well as in Maryland and California.
On April 15 Taft appointed Julia Lathrop to run the Children’s Bureau
with a salary of $5,000, and she was the first woman to become a bureau chief.
Also in April the Taft administration brought an antitrust case agains
International Harvester and its director George W. Perkins,
who was a Roosevelt supporter,
because the Roosevelt administration had neglected to do so.
At Fostoria, Ohio on May 1912 Taft reviewed his record on protecting workers saying,
We passed a mining bureau bill to discover the nature
of those dreadful explosions and loss of life in mines.
We passed safety appliance bills
to reduce the loss of life and limbs to railroad employees.
We passed an employers liability act
to make easier recovery of damages by injured employees.
We have just passed through the Senate
a workman’s compensation act …
requiring the railroads to insure their employees
against the accidents of a dangerous employment.
We passed the children’s bureau bill calculated to
prevent children from being employed too early in factories.
We passed the white phosphorus match bill to stamp out
the making of white phosphorus matches
which results in dreadful diseases
to those engaged in their manufacture.50
President Taft was persuaded to sign an increase in pensions for veterans
because Elihu Root and Henry Cabot Lodge advised him
that the Congress would override his veto.
On May 10 Congress passed the pension bill that increased pension spending
from $155 million in 1912 to $176 million in 1913, and Taft signed it into law.
Taft’s brother Charles in May promised to give him $50,000
and sent $25,000 right away.
Up to this time the President usually did not do much campaigning while traveling,
and this year Taft spent much time giving speeches in various places
before the convention to answer what he considered to be
Roosevelt’s misrepresentations of his record as President.
Later in the year a U. S. Senate committee studied the campaign expenses
and estimated that Roosevelt spent $338,000
before the Republican convention at Chicago.
Thomas Lawson donated $100,000 directly to Roosevelt,
and in Ohio the boss Walter Brown reported that about $50,000
was used in that state’s primary election.
William Flinn testified that he spent $99,384 in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania.
In the first year in which any primary elections were held,
in 13 states Roosevelt won 9 of them giving him 278 delegates.
Taft won 48 delegates and La Follette got 36.
Roosevelt had won Illinois by 139,436 votes, New Jersey by 17,213,
Pennsylvania by 105,899, California by 69,218, Ohio by 47,447,
and Nebraska with 16,769 more than Taft and La Follette.
The total popular vote in the primaries was 1,214,969 for Roosevelt,
865,835 for Taft, and 327,357 for La Follette.
On May 31 Taft proposed that committee meetings be open to the press,
and Roosevelt agreed.
The Convention was to be controlled by the Republican National Committee
that had been elected for four years at the end of the 1908 convention
with Roosevelt people, and now most were supporting President Taft.
At their meetings they seated Taft men from Alabama and Indiana.
On June 12 the New York Times reported that the decisions of the National Committee
were “dangerously near being treason to the whole spirit of our institutions;
to the whole spirit of free democratic government.”51
Taft on June 14 informed his supporters that he would not accept a compromise candidate.
In June 18-22 the Republican National Convention met in Chicago.
Taft had support from political bosses such as Boies Penrose of Pennsylvania,
William Barnes of New York, Jim Watson of Indiana, and Harry Daugherty of Ohio.
Roosevelt went to the Chicago convention with a black Rough Rider hat
and said he felt like a “Bull Moose.”
About 20,000 people filled the auditorium.
Roosevelt said he had no doubt that his contesting delegates, not Taft’s,
“were honorably and lawfully chosen by the people.”
Taft believed he had 557 delegates, 17 more than he needed.
Elihu Root was nominated to be temporary chairman with the quote
that Roosevelt called him “the ablest man that has appeared in public life
of any country in any position in my time,” and he was elected 558 to 502.
Root’s speech praised the achievements of Taft
and that the Republican Party would uphold their integrity.
Then he criticized Roosevelt.
The Credentials Committee also favored Taft,
and they approved the actions of the National Committee.
Of the 254 contested delegates they awarded 235 to Taft and 19 to Roosevelt.
On the floor Barnes led the effort for Taft,
and Flinn of Pittsburgh worked for Roosevelt.
On June 20 Taft indicated he would “yield to a third candidate who stands
for my principles, like Hughes or Root,”
and he would not accept anyone supporting “Rooseveltism.”
A woman asked for “a cheer for Teddy!” and escorting her to the platform
touched off a demonstration for Roosevelt that lasted nearly an hour.
Then Root called for a vote to unseat Taft delegates that failed.
Late that night Gov. Hiram Johnson of California in the Congress Hotel
suggested they start a new political party.
The next day Taft suggested Missouri’s Gov. Herbert Hadley
as a compromise candidate, and Roosevelt rejected that.
Warren Gamaliel Harding, the former Lt. Gov. of Ohio (1904-06),
nominated Taft for President.
Conservatives managed to prevent most of Roosevelt’s delegates from being recognized,
and many Roosevelt delegates refused to participate in the voting.
On the first ballot Taft got 561 votes, Roosevelt 107, La Follette 41,
Iowa’s Senator Albert Cummins 17, and Charles Evan Hughes 2.
Roosevelt got 53 votes from Illinois and less than 10 in every other state.
A total of 344 delegates, who believed that Roosevelt had been cheated, did not vote.
Vice President James Sherman was nominated again with 596 votes on the first ballot.
After the convention Roosevelt at a meeting began his speech,
“Thou shalt not steal” and said he would run as a third-party candidate.
The Democrats National Convention was at Baltimore from June 25 to July 2.
William Jennings Bryan helped Woodrow Wilson get the nomination over Champ Clark
who was Speaker of the U. S. House of Representatives.
Wilson considered Roosevelt more dangerous than Taft
who decided to make no speeches other than his acceptance speech.
The Democrats advocated an income tax, presidential primaries,
election of senators by popular vote, and Federal supervision
of railway, telephone, and telegraph companies.
On June 27 Taft had recommended that the U. S. Congress adopt a budget,
and on August 24 they specified that estimated appropriations
should be submitted only to Congress.
Taft complained that this took away executive power and duty from the President.
He ordered his Cabinet officers to submit financial data anyway,
and the administration would draft a detailed budget
for the fiscal year to begin on 1 July 1913.
On July 22 Taft wrote to his wife Helen,
I have strengthened the Supreme Court, have given them
a good deal of new and valuable legislation,
have not interfered with business, have kept the peace,
and on the whole have enabled people to pursue
their various occupations without interruption.52
Taft continued to advocate increasing the postal rates on newspapers and magazines
because the post office was losing money on them,
and he regretted this after the election.
The Bull Moose Party met at Chicago on August 5 and tried to sell tickets for $10
and had to lower the price to $3.
About 10,000 people heard the keynote speech by Albert Beveridge who described
progressive policies which aimed to make honest businesses bigger,
and he even called for social security for the aged.
Roosevelt accepted woman suffrage in the progressive platform.
During the campaign Taft said he would play the part of a conservative.
He considered Roosevelt a greater menace than Wilson,
and he noted that in seven and a half years the Roosevelt presidency
had brought 44 cases against monopolies while in less than four years
his administration had prosecuted 22 such civil suits and gained 45 criminal indictments.
Taft declined to support votes for women because he considered it a state question.
In this election over a million women would vote in nine western states.
Taft had difficulty finding someone to run his campaign,
and he finally chose his secretary Charles Dewey Hilles.
They raised less than a $1 million compared to most campaigns
that had over two or three million.
Taft spoke at the official notification of his nomination at Washington on August 1.
He criticized Roosevelt and said that his
recently avowed political views would have committed the party
to radical proposals involving dangerous changes in our present
constitutional form of representative government
and our independent judiciary.53
Although he was a conservative, Taft had come to realize that
the least government was not always the best government
because the duty of government to protect weaker classes was being recognized.
New conditions were requiring new policies.
Urged by Ambassador Henry Lane Wilson, President Taft talked
“earnestly and energetically” to Mexico’s Ambassador Calero on September 4.
Two days later Secretary of State Knox criticized the murder of American citizens in Mexico.
He suggested that lifting the arms embargo could help the insurgents.
On September 19 Taft learned that Santo Domingo was violating its treaty
with the United States, and the U. S. State Department advised
breaking off diplomatic relations with the Dominican Republic.
Taft sent General Frank McIntyre and the diplomat Doyle
on the USS Prairie with 750 marines.
When revolutionaries were overthrowing the Dominican President Victoria on October 29,
Secretary of State Knox suggested more warships.
During a speech at Milwaukee on October 14 Roosevelt was shot in the chest.
He managed to finish his speech; and then he rested in a hospital
until he spoke again on October 30.
On that day the ill Vice President Sherman died.
Taft replaced him for the imminent election by choosing Nicholas Murray Butler,
the President of Columbia University.
On the 31st Louis Seibold of the New York World interviewed Taft
and said he would send it to the Associate Press and many newspapers,
Taft had qualms about what he said about his friend Roosevelt
and never allowed it to be released.
The election was on November 5, and Wilson claimed victory at 10:45 p.m.
Wilson got 6,286,214 votes, Roosevelt 4,126,020, and Taft 3,483,922.
Wilson won in 40 states with 435 electoral votes;
Roosevelt took 6 states with 88 electoral votes,
while Taft had only Vermont and Utah with 8 electoral votes.
The Socialist Eugene Debs did not win a state, and he got 901,551 votes.
Roosevelt and Taft together had over half the popular votes.
They both conceded; the two friends had defeated each other.
Yet Wilson probably would have won against either one.
Taft said he would organize a Constitutional Club
to educate people on constitutional principles.
He felt greatly relieved that his presidency was not going to be renewed.
On November 16 Taft made a speech to the Lotus Club in New York,
and he talked about the powers and obligations of the President.
He suggested the executive could be ineligible after one six-year term.
His greatest regret was that the Senate did not ratify
the arbitration treaties with France and Britain.
Andrew Carnegie offered to give former presidents and their widows $25,000 a year,
and he declined it as not right.
He had received a salary of $75,000
with $25,000 for traveling expenses plus other perquisites.
He expected to work as a lawyer.
When he attended a meeting of the Yale Corporation the President Hadley offered him
a professorship of law to lecture on constitutional and governmental law
for a salary of $5,000.
He was eager to work on constitutionalism and international peace.
Taft sent his last annual message to Congress in three parts.
In Part 1 on December 3 he discuss foreign relations,
and he suggested reorganizing the State Department.
He noted successful arbitrations in South America and Central America.
He praised the treaties with China.
He suggested aid for Central America.
He reported that American capital invested in Mexico reached $1 billion.
He discussed many issues.
On December 6 he sent Part 2 “On Fiscal, judicial, Military and Insular Affairs.”
The value of the agriculture crop surpassed $1 billion.
The general fund increased about $27 million in the past year.
He put forward a plan to let the Philippines become independent in eight years.
He asked the Congress to give seats to the members of the President’s Cabinet
to improve communication.
Part 3 on the Post Office, Interior, Agriculture, and Commerce and Labor
and District of Columbia was sent on December 19.
In this last message to Congress he also wrote that
the government could “be given a greater voice.”
A Conference of Governors in December at Richmond, Virginia
discussed Taft’s letter asking for “an adequate financial system
as an aid to the farmers of this country.”
Taft explained that farmers had borrowed $6 billion paying about 8.5% interest
which was much higher than corporations and municipalities paid.
The State Department found that
rates for agriculture in France and Germany were about 4%.
The governors passed resolutions and appointed committees,
and they listened to Taft again during a luncheon at the White House on December 11,
and Congress failed to act on this.
After the Congress recessed for the holidays, Taft left on the battleship Arkansas
to go and inspect work on the Panama Canal.
On February 3 the 16th Amendment to the U. S. Constitution allowing
the Federal Government to collect income taxes without apportioning it among the states
was ratified after having been proposed by the Congress in 1909.
The Congress on 19 May 1912 had approved the 17th Amendment mandating
the election of U. S. Senators by the people, and it would be ratified on 8 April 1913.
On 15 February 1913 Ambassador Wilson and other U. S. diplomats
persuaded Mexico’s President Madero to resign.
Four days later General Victoriano Huerta sent a telegram to President Taft
informing him that he had overthrown the government and had forces
who would bring about “peace and prosperity.”
Three days later Madero and his Vice President Pino Suárez were killed.
Taft accompanied Wilson to and from his inauguration on March 4.
Taft was proud that he had nominated
six of the nine Supreme Court justices including the chief.
He joked, “If any of you die, I’ll disown you.”54
Taft became the President of the League to Enforce Peace on 17 June 1915;
and after President Wilson declared war in 1917,
Taft supported the war effort.
On 3 October 1921 President Harding nominated him to be the
Chief Justice of the U. S. Supreme Court, and he served there until he resigned
on 3 February 1930 because of declining health before his death on March 8.
1. William Howard Taft: Confident Peacemaker by David H. Burton, p. 16-17.
2. The Bully Pulpit by Doris Kearns Goodwin, p. 216.
3. Ibid.
4. The Life and Times of William Howard Taft by Henry R. Pringle, Volume 1, p. 128-129.
5. Ibid., p. 160-161.
6. Ibid., p. 183.
7. Ibid., p. 184.
8. The Bully Pulpit by Doris Kearns Goodwin, p. 269.
9. The Life and Times of William Howard Taft by Henry R. Pringle, Volume 1, p. 199.
10. Ibid., p. 223.
11. Ibid., p. 246.
12. Ibid., p. 247.
13. Ibid., p. 252.
14. The Life and Times of William Howard Taft by Henry R. Pringle, Volume 1, 307.
15. William Howard Taft: Confident Peacemaker by David H. Burton, p. 43.
16. Ibid., p. 303.
17. Ibid., p. 339, 340.
18. Ibid., p. 341.
19. The Collected Works of William Howard Taft, Volume III ed. David H. Burton, p. 7, 12.
20. The Life and Times of William Howard Taft by Henry R. Pringle, Volume 1, p. 378.
21. Ibid., p. 381, 382.
22. The Collected Works of William Howard Taft, Volume III
ed. David H. Burton, p. 44, 45, 46, 49, 53, 55.
23. The Life and Times of William Howard Taft by Henry R. Pringle, Volume 1, 421.
24. Ibid., p. 446.
25. Ibid., p. 454.
26. Ibid., p. 467.
27. The Collected Works of William Howard Taft, Volume III ed. David H. Burton, p. 381.
28. The Life and Times of William Howard Taft by Henry R. Pringle, p. 612.
29. Ibid., p. 492.
30. Ibid., p. 509.
31. Ibid., p. 512.
32. Ibid., p. 513-514.
33. Ibid., p. 678.
34. Ibid., p. 739.
35. Ibid., p. 569.
36. The Collected Works of William Howard Taft, Volume IV ed. David H. Burton, p. 52.
37. Ibid., p. 77.
38. The Life and Times of William Howard Taft by Henry R. Pringle, p. 714.
39. The Days of a Man: Being Memories of a Naturalist, Teacher and Minor Prophet
of Democracy, Volume Two 1900-1921 by David Starr Jordan, p. 410.
40. William Howard Taft: Confident Peacemaker by David H. Burton, p. 140.
41. The Life and Times of William Howard Taft by Henry R. Pringle, Volume 2, p. 589.
42. Ibid., p. 593.
43. Ibid., p. 668.
44. Ibid., p. 669.
45. Ibid., p. 749.
46. Ibid., p. 750.
47. Ibid., p. 649.
48. Ibid., p. 764.
49. Ibid.
50. Ibid., p. 621.
51. Ibid., p. 800.
52. Ibid., p. 603.
53. Ibid., p. 832.
54. Ibid., p. 854.
Evaluating US Presidents Volume 2: Andrew Johnson to Taft 1865-1913
has been published as a book.
For ordering information please click here.
Evaluating US Presidents Volume 1: Washington to Lincoln 1789-1865
Evaluating US Presidents Volume 2 Andrew Johnson to Taft 1865-1913
Evaluating US Presidents Volume 3: Wilson, Harding & Coolidge 1913-1929