In the evening of that election day in 1904 which saw Roosevelt made
President in his own right, after three years of the Presidency given
him by fate, he issued a brief statement, in which he said: "The wise
custom which limits the President to two terms regards the substance and
not the form, and under no circumstances will I be a candidate for or
accept another nomination." From this determination, which in his mind
related to a third consecutive term, and to nothing else, he never
wavered. Four years later, in spite of a widespread demand that he
should be a candidate to succeed himself, he used the great influence
and prestige of his position as President and leader of his party to
bring about the nomination of his friend and close associate, William
Howard Taft. The choice received general approval from the Republican
party and from the country at large, although up to the very moment of
the nomination in the convention at Chicago there was no certainty that
a successful effort to stampede the convention for Roosevelt would not
be made by his more irreconcilable supporters.
Taft was elected by a huge popular plurality. His opponent was William
Jennings Bryan, who was then making his third unsuccessful campaign for
the Presidency. Taft's election, like his nomination, was assured by
the unreserved and dynamic support accorded him by President Roosevelt.
Taft, of course, was already an experienced statesman, high in the
esteem of the nation for his public record as Federal judge, as the
first civil Governor of the Philippines, and as Secretary of War in
the Roosevelt Cabinet. There was every reason to predict for him a
successful and effective Administration. His occupancy of the White
House began under smiling skies. He had behind him a united party and a
satisfied public opinion. Even his political opponents conceded that
the country would be safe in his hands. It was expected that he would
be conservatively progressive and progressively conservative. Everybody
believed in him. Yet within a year of the day of his inauguration the
President's popularity was sharply on the wane. Two years after his
election the voters repudiated the party which he led. By the end of his
Presidential term the career which had begun with such happy auguries
had become a political tragedy. There were then those who recalled the
words of the Roman historian, "All would have believed him capable of
governing if only he had not come to govern."
It was not that the Taft Administration was barren of achievement.
On the contrary, its record of accomplishment was substantial. Of two
amendments to the Federal Constitution proposed by Congress, one was
ratified by the requisite number of States before Taft went out of
office, and the other was finally ratified less than a month after the
close of his term. These were the amendment authorizing the imposition
of a Federal income tax and that providing for the direct election of
United States Senators. Two States were admitted to the Union during
Taft's term of office, New Mexico and Arizona, the last Territories of
the United States on the continent, except Alaska.
Other achievements of importance during Taft's Administration were the
establishment of the parcels post and the postal savings banks; the
requirement of publicity, through sworn statements of the candidates,
for campaign contributions for the election of Senators and
Representatives; the extension of the authority of the Interstate
Commerce Commission over telephone, telegraph, and cable lines; an act
authorizing the President to withdraw public lands from entry for
the purpose of conserving the natural resources which they may
contain--something which Roosevelt had already done without specific
statutory authorization; the establishment of a Commerce Court to
hear appeals from decisions of the Interstate Commerce Commission; the
appointment of a commission, headed by President Hadley of Yale, to
investigate the subject of railway stock and bond issues, and to propose
a law for the Federal supervision of such railway securities; the Mann
"white slave" act, dealing with the transfer of women from one State to
another for immoral purposes; the establishment of the Children's
Bureau in the Department of Commerce and Labor; the empowering of the
Interstate Commerce Commission to investigate all railway accidents; the
creation of Forest Reserves in the White Mountains and in the southern
Appalachians.
Taft's Administration was further marked, by economy in expenditure, by
a considerable extension of the civil service law to cover positions in
the executive departments hitherto free plunder for the spoilsmen, and
by efforts on the part of the President to increase the efficiency and
the economical administration of the public service.
But this good record of things achieved was not enough to gain for
Mr. Taft popular approval. Items on the other side of the ledger were
pointed out. Of these the three most conspicuous were the Payne-Aldrich
tariff, the Ballinger-Pinchot controversy, and the insurgent movement in
Congress.
The Republican party was returned to power in 1908, committed to a
revision of the tariff. Though the party platform did not so state, this
was generally interpreted as a pledge of revision downward. Taft made
it clear during his campaign that such was his own reading of the party
pledge. He said, for instance, "It is my judgment that there are many
schedules of the tariff in which the rates are excessive, and there
are a few in which the rates are not sufficient to fill the measure of
conservative protection. It is my judgment that a revision of the tariff
in accordance with the pledge of the platform, will be, on the whole,
a substantial revision downward, though there probably will be a few
exceptions in this regard." Five months after Taft's inauguration the
Payne-Aldrich bill became law with his signature. In signing it the
President said, "The bill is not a perfect bill or a complete compliance
with the promises made, strictly interpreted"; but he further declared
that he signed it because he believed it to be "the result of a sincere
effort on the part of the Republican party to make downward revision."
This view was not shared by even all Republicans. Twenty of them in the
House voted against the bill on its final passage, and seven of them
in the Senate. They represented the Middle West and the new element
and spirit in the Republican party. Their dissatisfaction with the
performance of their party associates in Congress and in the White
House was shared by their constituents and by many other Republicans
throughout the country. A month after the signing of the tariff law,
Taft made a speech at Winona, Minnesota, in support of Congressman James
A. Tawney, the one Republican representative from Minnesota who had not
voted against the bill. In the course of that speech he said; "This is
the best tariff bill that the Republican party has ever passed, and,
therefore, the best tariff bill that has been passed at all."
He justified Mr. Tawney's action in voting for the bill and his own
in signing it on the ground that "the interests of the country, the
interests of the party" required the sacrifice of the accomplishment of
certain things in the revision of the tariff which had been hoped for,
"in order to maintain party solidity," which he believed to be much more
important than the reduction of rates in one or two schedules of the
tariff.
A second disaster to the Taft Administration came in the famous
Ballinger-Pinchot controversy. Louis R. Glavis, who had served as a
special agent of the General Land Office to investigate alleged frauds
in certain claims to coal lands in Alaska, accused Richard Ballinger,
the Secretary of the Interior, of favoritism toward those who were
attempting to get public lands fraudulently. The charges were vigorously
supported by Mr. Pinchot, who broadened the accusation to cover a
general indifference on the part of the Secretary of the Interior to
the whole conservation movement. President Taft, however, completely
exonerated Secretary Ballinger from blame and removed Glavis for "filing
a disingenuous statement unjustly impeaching the official integrity
of his superior officer." Later Pinchot was also dismissed from the
service. The charges against Secretary Ballinger were investigated by a
joint committee of Congress, a majority of which exonerated the accused
Cabinet officer. Nevertheless the whole controversy, which raged with
virulence for many months, convinced many ardent supporters of the
conservation movement, and especially many admirers of Mr. Pinchot and
of Roosevelt, that the Taft Administration at the best was possessed of
little enthusiasm for conservation. There was a widespread belief, as
well, that the President had handled the whole matter maladroitly and
that in permitting himself to be driven to a point where he had to
deprive the country of the services of Gifford Pinchot, the originator
of the conservation movement, he had displayed unsound judgment and
deplorable lack of administrative ability.
The first half of Mr. Taft's term was further marked by acute
dissensions in the Republican ranks in Congress. Joseph G. Cannon was
Speaker of the House, as he had been in three preceding Congresses.
He was a reactionary Republican of the most pronounced type. Under his
leadership the system of autocratic party control of legislation in the
House had been developed to a high point of effectiveness. The Speaker's
authority had become in practice almost unrestricted.
In the congressional session of 1909-10 a strong movement of insurgency
arose within the Republican party in Congress against the control of
the little band of leaders dominated by the Speaker. In March, 1910,
the Republican Insurgents, forty in number, united with the Democratic
minority to overrule a formal decision of the Speaker. A four days'
parliamentary battle resulted, culminating in a reorganization of the
all-powerful Rules Committee, with the Speaker no longer a member of it.
The right of the Speaker to appoint this committee was also taken
away. When the Democrats came into control of the House in 1911, they
completed the dethronement of the Speaker by depriving him of the
appointment of all committees.
The old system had not been without its advantages, when the power
of the Speaker and his small group of associate party leaders was not
abused. It at least concentrated responsibility in a few prominent
members of the majority party. But it made it possible for these few
men to perpetuate a machine and to ignore the desires of the rest of
the party representatives and of the voters of the party throughout the
country. The defeat of Cannonism put an end to the autocratic power
of the Speaker and relegated him to the position of a mere presiding
officer. It had also a wider significance, for it portended the division
in the old Republican party out of which was to come the new Progressive
party.
When the mid-point of the Taft Administration was reached, a practical
test was given of the measure of popular approval which the President
and his party associates had achieved. The congressional elections
went decidedly against the Republicans. The Republican majority of
forty-seven in the House was changed to a Democratic majority of
fifty-four. The Republican majority in the Senate was cut down from
twenty-eight to ten. Not only were the Democrats successful in this
substantial degree, but many of the Western States elected Progressive
Republicans instead of Republicans of the old type. During the last two
years of his term, the President was consequently obliged to work with
a Democratic House and with a Senate in which Democrats and Insurgent
Republicans predominated over the old-line Republicans.
The second half of Taft's Presidency was productive of little but
discord and dissatisfaction. The Democrats in power in the House were
quite ready to harass the Republican President, especially in view
of the approaching Presidential election. The Insurgents in House and
Senate were not entirely unwilling to take a hand in the same game.
Besides, they found themselves more and more in sincere disagreement
with the President on matters of fundamental policy, though not one of
them could fairly question his integrity of purpose, impugn his purity
of character, or deny his charm of personality.
Three weeks after Taft's inauguration, Roosevelt sailed for Africa,
to be gone for a year hunting big game. He went with a warm feeling of
friendship and admiration for the man whom he had done so much to make
President. He had high confidence that Taft would be successful in his
great office. He had no reason to believe that any change would come in
the friendship between them, which had been peculiarly intimate. From
the steamer on which he sailed for Africa, he sent a long telegram of
cordial and hearty good wishes to his successor in Washington.
The next year Roosevelt came back to the United States, after a
triumphal tour of the capitals of Europe, to find his party disrupted
and the progressive movement in danger of shipwreck. He had no intention
of entering politics again. But he had no intention, either, of ceasing
to champion the things in which he believed. This he made obvious,
in his first speech after his return, to the cheering thousands who
welcomed him at the Battery. He said:
"I have thoroughly enjoyed myself; and now I am more glad than I can say
to get home, to be back in my own country, back among people I love. And
I am ready and eager to do my part so far as I am able, in helping solve
problems which must be solved, if we of this, the greatest democratic
republic upon which the sun has ever shone, are to see its destinies
rise to the high level of our hopes and its opportunities. This is the
duty of every citizen, but is peculiarly my duty; for any man who
has ever been honored by being made President of the United States is
thereby forever rendered the debtor of the American people and is bound
throughout his life to remember this, his prime obligation."
The welcome over, Roosevelt tried to take up the life of a private
citizen. He had become Contributing Editor of The Outlook and had
planned to give his energies largely to writing. But he was not to be
let alone. The people who loved him demanded that they be permitted to
see and to hear him. Those who were in the thick of the political fight
on behalf of progress and righteousness called loudly to him for aid.
Only a few days after Roosevelt had landed from Europe, Governor Hughes
of New York met him at the Commencement exercises at Harvard and urged
him to help in the fight which the Governor was then making for a direct
primary law. Roosevelt did not wish to enter the lists again until he
had had more time for orientation; but he always found it difficult to
refuse a plea for help on behalf of a good cause. He therefore sent a
vigorous telegram to the Republican legislators at Albany urging them to
support Governor Hughes and to vote for the primary bill. But the appeal
went in vain: the Legislature was too thoroughly boss-ridden. This
telegram, however, sounded a warning to the usurpers in the house of the
Republican Penelope that the fingers of the returned Odysseus had not
lost their prowess with the heroic bow.
During the summer of 1910, Roosevelt made a trip to the West and in a
speech at Ossawattomie, Kansas, set forth what came to be described as
the New Nationalism. It was his draft of a platform, not for himself,
but for the nation. A few fragments from that speech will suggest what
Roosevelt was thinking about in those days when the Progressive party
was stirring in the womb. "At many stages in the advance of humanity,
this conflict between the men who possess more than they have earned and
the men who have earned more than they possess is the central condition
of progress. In our day it appears as the struggle of free men to gain
and hold the right of self-government as against the special interests,
who twist the methods of free government into machinery for defeating
the popular will. At every stage, and under all circumstances, the
essence of the struggle is to equalize opportunity, destroy privilege,
and give to the life and citizenship of every individual the highest
possible value both to himself and to the commonwealth.
"Every special interest is entitled to justice, but not one is entitled
to a vote in Congress, to a voice on the bench, or to representation in
any public office. The Constitution guarantees protection to property,
and we must make that promise good. But it does not give the right of
suffrage to any corporation.
"The absence of effective state and, especially, national restraint upon
unfair money getting has tended to create a small class of enormously
wealthy and economically powerful men, whose chief object is to hold and
increase their power. The prime need is to change the conditions which
enable these men to accumulate power which it is not for the general
welfare that they should hold or exercise.
"We are face to face with new conceptions of the relations of property
to human welfare, chiefly because certain advocates of the rights of
property as against the rights of men have been pushing their claims too
far.
"The State must be made efficient for the work which concerns only the
people of the State; and the nation for that which concerns all the
people. There must remain no neutral ground to serve as a refuge for
lawbreakers, and especially for lawbreakers of great wealth, who can
hire the vulpine legal cunning which will teach them how to avoid both
jurisdictions.
"I do not ask for overcentralization; but I do ask that we work in
a spirit of broad and far-reaching nationalism when we work for what
concerns our people as a whole.
"We must have the right kind of character--character that makes a
man, first of all, a good man in the home, a good father, a good
husband--that makes a man a good neighbor.... The prime problem of our
nation is to get the right kind of good citizenship, and to get it, we
must have progress, and our public men must be genuinely progressive.
"I stand for the Square Deal. But when I say that I am for the square
deal I mean not merely that I stand for fair play under the present
rules of the game, but that I stand for having those rules changed so as
to work for a more substantial equality of opportunity and of reward for
equally good service."
These generalizations Roosevelt accompanied by specific recommendations.
They included proposals for publicity of corporate affairs; prohibition
of the use of corporate funds for political purposes; governmental
supervision of the capitalization of all corporations doing an
interstate business; control and supervision of corporations and
combinations controlling necessaries of life; holding the officers and
directors of corporations personally liable when any corporation breaks
the law; an expert tariff commission and revision of the tariff schedule
by schedule; a graduated income tax and a graduated inheritance tax,
increasing rapidly in amount with the size of the estate; conservation
of natural resources and their use for the benefit of all rather than
their monopolization for the benefit of the few; public accounting for
all campaign funds before election; comprehensive workmen's compensation
acts, state and national laws to regulate child labor and work for
women, the enforcement of sanitary conditions for workers and the
compulsory use of safety appliances in industry.
There was nothing in all these proposals that should have seemed
revolutionary or extreme. But there was much that disturbed the
reactionaries who were thinking primarily in terms of property and only
belatedly or not at all of human rights. The Bourbons in the Republican
party and their supporters among the special interests "viewed
with alarm" this frank attack upon their intrenched privileges. The
Progressives, however, welcomed with eagerness this robust leadership.
The breach in the Republican party was widening with steadily
accelerating speed.
In the fall of 1910 a new demand arose that Roosevelt should enter
actively into politics. Though it came from his own State, he resisted
it with energy and determination. Nevertheless the pressure from his
close political associates in New York finally became too much for him,
and he yielded. They wanted him to go as a delegate to the Republican
State Convention at Saratoga and to be a candidate for Temporary
Chairman of the Convention--the officer whose opening speech is
traditionally presumed to sound the keynote of the campaign. Roosevelt
went and, after a bitter fight with the reactionists in the party,
led by William Barnes of Albany, was elected Temporary Chairman over
Vice-President James S. Sherman. The keynote was sounded in no uncertain
tones, while Mr. Barnes and his associates fidgeted and suffered.
Then came a Homeric conflict, with a dramatic climax. The reactionary
gang did not know that it was beaten. Its members resisted stridently
an attempt to write a direct primary plank into the party platform. They
wished to rebuke Governor Hughes, who was as little to their liking
as Roosevelt himself, and they did not want the direct primary. After
speeches by young James Wadsworth, later United States Senator, Job
Hedges, and Barnes himself, in which they bewailed the impending demise
of representative government and the coming of mob rule, it was clear
that the primary plank was defeated. Then rose Roosevelt. In a speech
that lashed and flayed the forces of reaction and obscurantism, he
demanded that the party stand by the right of the people to rule.
Single-handed he drove a majority of the delegates into line. The plank
was adopted. Thenceforward the convention was his. It selected, as
candidate for Governor, Henry W. Stimson, who had been a Federal
attorney in New York under Roosevelt and Secretary of War in Taft's
Cabinet. When this victory had been won, Roosevelt threw himself
into the campaign with his usual abandon and toured the State, making
fighting speeches in scores of cities and towns. But in spite of
Roosevelt's best efforts, Stimson was defeated.
All this active participation in local political conflicts seriously
distressed many of Roosevelt's friends and associates. They felt that he
was too big to fritter himself away on small matters from which he--and
the cause whose great champion he was--had so little to gain and so much
to lose. They wanted him to wait patiently for the moment of destiny
which they felt sure would come. But it was never easy for Roosevelt
to wait. It was the hardest thing in the world for him to decline an
invitation to enter a fight--when the cause was a righteous one.
So the year 1911 passed by, with the Taft Administration steadily losing
prestige, and the revolt of the Progressives within the Republican party
continually gathering momentum. Then came 1912, the year of the Glorious
Failure.