The New Nation

by Frederic L. Paxson

In 1907, President Roosevelt announced his preference for Judge Taft, and fought off, as he had often done, suggestions that he accept another term himself. He controlled the Republican convention at Chicago, where his candidate was nominated on the first ballot. A Republican Representative from New York, James S. Sherman, was nominated for the Vice-Presidency, and the party leaders were driven to a platform of enthusiastic indorsement of the Roosevelt policies.

The Democratic party, meeting at Denver in 1908, was again under the control of the radical element, and nominated William J. Bryan for the third time. The career of Roosevelt had modified the emphasis of the Bryan reforms. "Any Republican who, after following Roosevelt, should object to Bryan as a radical, would simply be laughed at consumedly," said one of the weeklies. In the ensuing campaign both candidates professed ends that were nearly identical, and their advocates were forced to explain whether the Roosevelt policies would have a better chance under Bryan or Taft. There was no clear issue, and in each party there was a powerful minority that wanted neither of the candidates. The election of Taft had been discounted throughout the campaign, but it was accompanied by a demonstration of independent voting that revealed the weakness of party ties. Four Democratic governors were elected in States that were carried by the Republican national ticket.

The Administration of President Taft was greeted with cordial good will by the progressive elements in both parties. His courage and sincerity had never been questioned. Roosevelt was unlimited in his praise. His judicial training made impossible for him types of political activity that had made enemies for his predecessor among many conservatives, yet his devotion to policies of administrative reform was beyond dispute. He immediately fulfilled one pledge of the Republican platform by summoning Congress to meet on March 15, 1909, to revise the tariff, and on this subject he had for several years avowed a desire that revision should be downward, to remove all trace of special tariff privilege.

The movement for tariff reform had begun in the Middle West about 1902, and had spread with the feeling against the trusts. Roosevelt had indicated a sympathy with it in 1902 and 1903, and had fought Congress for tariff modification in the interest of Cuban reciprocity. But most of the party leaders had opposed tampering with the protective system. Speaker Cannon was an avowed protectionist and defended the attitude of the stand-pat tariff advocates. After 1904 the President had ceased to discuss the tariff, confining himself to other schemes for reform. He left the problem of revision to his successor.

The tariff of 1909 bore the names of Sereno E. Payne, of New York, chairman of the House Committee of Ways and Means, and Nelson W. Aldrich, chairman of the Senate Committee on Finance. As it passed the House it embodied numerous reductions from the Dingley rates. In the Senate it was reframed and became an instrument of even greater protection than the existing law. It was debated in a stronger glare of public interest than any other tariff, and its details were explained and fought by a group of Republicans who refused to accept the control of the inner circle of the party, and who were determined that the revision should be downward and sincere. They did less to affect the bill, however, than President Taft, who forced the conference committee to accept a few reductions in the rates, notably on hides and lumber, and to include a provision for levying an income tax on corporations. A constitutional amendment, authorizing a general income tax, was a part of the agreement. The bill became a law in August, 1909. "The bill, in its final form," said the Outlook, which inclined toward free trade, "is by far the most enlightened protectionist measure ever enacted in the history of the country." "I think that the present tariff," wrote Roosevelt, who had returned to private life, "is better than the last, and considerably better than the one before the last."

Whatever its relation to earlier tariffs the Payne-Aldrich Act was distasteful to the country, which had since 1897 become critical of the methods of tariff legislation. Seven Republican Senators and twenty Representatives voted against it on its final passage. These represented the Middle West and the new generation, and returned home to find their constituents generally with them in denouncing the measure as an instrument of privilege. Some of them had broken with President Taft during the debate, and the breach was deepened when the latter spoke in the West, at Winona, Minnesota, and defended the act as a compliance with the party pledge. It became apparent that the new President was unable to procure party legislation and to maintain at the same time an appearance of harmony in the party. Roosevelt had dissatisfied but had overriden the conservative wing; Taft failed to satisfy the most progressive wing and failed to silence them.

In the autumn of 1909 began a series of administrative misunderstandings that greatly embarrassed the Taft Administration. A prospective minister to China was dismissed abruptly before he left the United States, on account of a supposed indiscretion. In the Department of Agriculture there was dissension between the Secretary, James Wilson, and the chemist engaged in the enforcement of the Pure Food Law, Harvey W. Wiley. The chief of the forestry service, Gifford Pinchot, quarreled openly with the Secretary of the Interior, Richard A. Ballinger, and raised the question of the future of the policy of conservation.

The work of the forestry and reclamation services was at the center of the scheme for conservation of natural resources that had grown out of Roosevelt's conference with the governors in 1908. A subordinate of the forestry service attacked the Secretary of the Interior in 1909, charging favoritism and lack of interest in conservation. He was dismissed in September, upon order of President Taft, whereupon Collier's Weekly undertook an attack upon the President as an enemy of conservation, receiving the moral support of many of the progressives who disliked the tariff act. In January, 1910, the growing controversy led the President to dismiss Pinchot from the service, for insubordination, and Congress to erect a joint committee to investigate the Pinchot-Ballinger dispute.

The Ballinger committee ultimately vindicated the Secretary of the Interior, but the testimony taken brought out a fundamental difference between the theory of Taft, that the President could act only in accordance with the law, and that of Roosevelt, that he could do whatever was not forbidden by law. Although Taft stood by his subordinate, claiming that he and Ballinger were both active in conservation, a large section of the public believed that the aggressive movement for reform had lost momentum. What Roosevelt thought of it was impossible to learn, since he had gone to Africa in 1909, and remained outside the sphere of American politics until the summer of 1910.

The progressive Republicans revolted in 1909 and 1910 against the domination of the "stand-pat" group, and received the name "Insurgents." Senators LaFollette and Cummins, both of whom desired to be President, were the avowed leaders. In the House of Representatives, in March, 1910, the Insurgents coöperated with the Democratic minority, defeated a ruling of Speaker Cannon, and modified the House rules in order to curtail the autocracy of the presiding officer. They asked the country to believe that Taft had ceased to be progressive and had become the ally of the stand-pat interests. The split in the Republican party enabled the Democrats to carry the country in 1910, and to obtain a large majority in the House of Representatives. Champ Clark, of Missouri, and Oscar Underwood, of Alabama, both aspirants for the Democratic presidential nomination, became, respectively, Speaker and chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means in the new House. No one man controlled or led either party by his personality as Theodore Roosevelt had done; the rivalry of lesser leaders destroyed the harmony of both parties, and neither party even approached unanimity in regard to the great policies of the future. In January, 1911, the Insurgent Republicans organized a Progressive Republican League for the purpose of capturing the nomination in 1912 for one of their number, presumably Senator LaFollette.