The New Nation

by Frederic L. Paxson

The Taft policies differed from those of his predecessor chiefly in the method of their advocacy. Like Roosevelt, Taft had trouble in getting them enacted, and unlike Roosevelt, he failed to magnetize the people and carry them with him. He procured, however, funds for the creation of a board of tariff experts to aid in future revisions of schedules, and for a commerce court, to handle appeals in interstate commerce cases. The income tax amendment secured his support. He used his influence to prevent the seating of William Lorimer, a Senator elected from Illinois under conditions of grave scandal. The Interstate Commerce Law was revised and strengthened in 1910. An enabling act for Arizona and New Mexico was passed in 1910, under which both of these Territories became States in 1912. He continued the series of anti-trust suits begun under Roosevelt, and procured decisions ordering the dissolution of the Southern Pacific merger, the Standard Oil Company, and the Tobacco Trust, and the penalizing of many others.

In the field of administration President Taft showed an instinct for orderly and economical government. He urged upon Congress the adoption of a budget system for expenditures, and employed a body of experts to aid in reducing the cost and inefficiency of the executive departments. He extended the civil service until in 1912 only 56,000 of the 334,000 federal employees were still outside the classified service.

The foreign negotiations of the Taft Administration were most distinguished in respect to Latin-American trade, to arbitration, to neutrality, and to reciprocity. With the Latin-Americas he continued the policy of friendly support, through Philander C. Knox, his Secretary of State. The critics of this policy stigmatized it as "dollar diplomacy," but Taft and Knox defended it as leading these republics through sound finance to stable government. A protracted revolution in Mexico led to the expulsion of President Porfirio Diaz in 1911, and was followed by counter-revolutions in 1912. Throughout the disturbance Taft maintained a rigid neutrality, and induced Congress to permit him to prohibit the export of arms for sale to the belligerents. This constituted an advance upon the customary practice of neutrals, who are permitted under international law to sell munitions of war to either belligerent.

In 1908, Roosevelt had signed general arbitration treaties with Great Britain and other countries, containing the usual reservations of cases involving honor or national existence. In 1911, Taft signed yet broader treaties with Great Britain and France, providing for the arbitration of all justiciable disputes, and for a commission to determine whether disputed cases were justiciable or not. The Senate declined to ratify these agreements.

Canadian reciprocity was a part of Taft's tariff program. In 1911, he called Congress in special session to approve an agreement for a modification of the Payne-Aldrich rates with Canada. The Democratic majority in the House of Representatives supported this measure, as did enough of the regular Republicans to insure its passage. But the Insurgents opposed it as likely to injure the interests of the farmer. In September, 1911, Canada rejected the whole measure after a general election in which a fear of annexation by the United States was an important motive.

The Taft policies failed to thrill the party or the people. They were less spectacular than the evils which the muck-rakers had portrayed. They were constructive and detailed, and aroused as opponents many who had joined in the general clamor for reform. They interested the party leaders little, for these were more concerned with their own personal fates, and were not overshadowed by the President as they had been for eight preceding years. They were all conceived in the spirit of a lawyer and judge, and were passed in an alliance with the wing of the Republican party that was most impervious to the new reforms, and were hence open to the attack that they were in spirit and intent reactionary.

In June, 1910, with the Republican schism well advanced, Theodore Roosevelt returned to the United States. A few weeks later he made a speaking trip in the West, and at Osawatomie, Kansas, he laid down a platform of reform that he called "New Nationalism." This was in substance an evolution from the history of forty years. It assumed the fact of the development of business and society along national lines, and demanded that the Government meet the new problems. It believed that constitutional power already existed for most of the needed functions of government, and demanded that where the power was lacking it should be obtained by constitutional amendment. The platform was received with equally violent commendation and attack. Many Progressives hailed it as an exposition of their faith. Conservatives were prone to call it socialistic or revolutionary. It restored Roosevelt to a position of consequence in public affairs, and emphasized the fact that Taft had developed no power of popular leadership comparable to that of his friend and predecessor. It gave the Progressives hope that Roosevelt, debarred from the Presidency by his pledge and by the unwritten third-term tradition, would aid them in forcing the Republican party to nominate a Progressive in 1912.

The concrete principles of the Progressive group embraced a series of policies looking toward the destruction of ring-controlled politics. They demanded and generally concurred in the initiative and referendum, the direct primary, and the direct election of delegates to national conventions, and the direct election of United States Senators. Many of them believed in a new doctrine, the recall, which was to be applied to administrative officials, to judges, and even to judicial decisions. Woman suffrage was commonly acceptable to them.

The cause of woman suffrage had made great progress since Idaho became, in 1896, the fourth suffrage State. A modified form of suffrage in local or school elections had been allowed in many States. A new period of agitation for unrestricted woman suffrage had begun in England about 1906, and had been given advertisement by the deliberate violations of law and order by the militant suffragettes. The agitation, though not the excess, had spread to the United States. In 1910, Washington, and in 1911, California, had become woman suffrage States. By 1914, the total was raised to twelve by the addition of Arizona, Kansas, Oregon, Illinois,[2] Nevada, and Montana.

In the winter of 1911-12, the prospect of Republican success in the next national campaign was slight. The Democrats had gained the House in 1910, and they, with the aid of Progressive Republican votes, had passed and sent up to the President several tariff bills, reducing the rates, schedule by schedule. Everyone of these had been vetoed, each veto tending to convince the Progressives that Taft was conservative, if not stand-pat in his sentiments. The Progressive Republicans were pledged to work against the renomination of Taft, and were unlikely to support him vigorously, if renominated. Many regular Republicans believed he could not be reëlected. The section of the party that desired a Progressive President became larger than the group that believed in LaFollette, and demands that Roosevelt return were heard from many sources.