Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him

by Joseph P. Tumulty

I knew that if I repeated this story to the President it would be the open sesame for the old man. I excused myself and quickly made my way to the Cabinet Room where the President was holding a conference with the Cabinet members. After making my excuses to the Cabinet for my interruption, I whispered into the President's ear that there was an old man in my office who knew his father very well in the old days in Georgia and that he wanted an opportunity to shake hands with him. I then said to the President, "He told me the old horse story, the one that you have often told me. I am sure that he is an old friend of your father's." This struck the President's most tender spot, for many times during the years of our association the President had regaled me with delightful stories of his father and of the tender, solicitous way in which his father had cared for him. One of the passions of President Wilson's life was his love for and recollection of that old father, himself a man of remarkable force of character and intellect. Turning to the members of the Cabinet, the President said, "Gentlemen, will you please excuse me for a few minutes?" When I told the fine old chap that the President would see him at once he almost collapsed. Then, fixing himself up, rearranging his old frock coat, taking his high hat in hand, striking a statesmanlike posture, he walked into the President's office. No words passed between the two men for a few seconds. The old man looked silently at the President, with pride and admiration plainly visible in his eyes, and then walked slowly toward the President and took both his hands. Releasing them, he put one of his arms around the President's shoulder and looking straight into the President's eyes, he said, "Woodrow, my boy, your old father was a great friend of mine and he was mighty proud of you. He often told me that some day you would be a great man and that you might even become President." While the old man was addressing him the President stood like a big bashful schoolboy, and I could see that the old man touched the mystic chord of memories that were very sweet and dear to the President. Removing his arm from about the President's shoulder, the old man said, "Well, well, Woodrow, what shall I say to you?" Then, answering his own question, he said, "I shall say to you what your dear old father would have said were he here: 'Be a good boy, my son, and may God bless you and take care of you!'"

The President said nothing, but I could see that his lips were quivering. For a moment he stood still, in his eyes the expression of one who remembers things of long ago and sacred. Then he seemed, as with an effort, to summon himself, and his thoughts back to the present, and I saw him walk slowly toward the door of the Cabinet Room, place one hand on the knob, with the other brush his handkerchief across his eyes. I saw him throw back his shoulders and grow erect again as he opened the door, and I heard him say in quiet, steady tones, "I hope you will pardon the interruption, gentlemen."

The popular cry of the unthinking against Woodrow Wilson in the early days of his administration was that he was a pacifist and unwilling to fight. The gentlemen who uttered these unkind criticisms were evidently unmindful of the moral courage he manifested in the various fights in which he had participated in his career, both at Princeton University, where he served as president, and as governor of New Jersey, in challenging the "old guard" of both parties to mortal combat for the measures of reform which he finally brought to enactment. They also forgot the moral courage which he displayed in fighting the tariff barons and ha procuring the enactment of the Underwood tariff, and of the fine courage he manifested in decentralizing the financial control of the country and bringing about the Federal Reserve Act, which now has the whole-hearted approval of the business world in America and elsewhere, but which was resisted in the making by powerful interests.

I do not wish to make an invidious comparison between Woodrow Wilson and his predecessors in the White House, but if one will examine the political history of this country, he will find that very few Presidents had ever succeeded, because of the powerful interests they were compelled to attack, in finally putting upon the statute books any legislation that could control the moneyed interests of the country. The reform of the tariff and the currency had been the rocks upon which many administrations had met disaster.

Nearly every adviser about Woodrow Wilson, even those who had had experience in the capital of the nation, warned him that he might, after a long fight, succeed in reforming the tariff, but that his efforts would fail if he attempted to pass a bill that would establish currency reform. But the President allowed nothing to stand in the way of the establishment of the Federal Reserve system without which the financing of the greatest war in the history of the world would have been impossible. It was his courage and his persistency that provided the first uniform and harmonious system of banking which the United States has ever had.

If Woodrow Wilson had accomplished nothing more than the passage of this Federal Reserve Act, he would have been entitled to the gratitude of the nation. This Act supplied the country with an elastic currency controlled by the American people. Panics—the recurring phenomena of disaster which the Republican party could neither control nor explain—are now but a memory. Under the Republican system there was an average of one bank failure every twenty-one days for a period of nearly forty years. After the passage of the Federal Reserve system there were, in 1915, four bank failures; in 1916 and 1917, three bank failures; in 1918, one bank failure; and in 1919, no bank failures at all.

Woodrow Wilson is not a showy fighter, but he is a tenacious and a courageous one.

A little story came to me at the White House, illustrating alike the calmness and the fighting quality of Woodrow Wilson. The incident happened while he was a student at the University of Virginia. It appears that some of the University boys went to a circus and had got into a fight with the circus men and been sadly worsted. They called a meeting at "wash hall," as they termed it. Many of the boys made ringing speeches, denouncing the brutality and unfairness of the circus people and there was much excitement. It was then moved that all the boys present should proceed to the circus and give proper battle, to vindicate the honour of the college. Just before the motion was put a slim, black-haired, solemn youth arose from his seat in the rear of the hall, and walking up the aisle, requested a hearing. He stated that perhaps he was being forward, because he was a "first-year" man, in asking to be heard; that he felt that the action of the circus men deserved the severest condemnation; that it was a natural impulse to want to punish cowardly acts and to "clean up" the show; but that it was lawlessness they were about to engage in; that it would bring disgrace on the college, as well as on the state and the Southland; more than this, many of the showmen would be armed with clubs, knives, and pistols, and if the boys did go, some of them might not come back alive and others might be maimed or crippled for life. He then paused, but resuming, said, "However, if my views do not meet with your approval; if you decide to go as a body, or if a single man wants to go to fight, I shall ask to go with him."

Was not his attitude in this incident characteristic of his dealing with Germany? He was patient with Germany and stood unmoved under the bitterest criticism and ridicule; but when he found that patience was no longer a virtue, he went into the war in the most ruthless way and punished Germany for her attempt to control the high seas.

I recall my own antagonism to him in New Jersey when I was engaged, as now certain of his enemies are engaged, in attacking him, and I recall how my opposition abated and altogether disappeared by the recital by one of his friends to me one day of the controversy among the Princeton Trustees that arose over the now-famous Proctor gift. I was discussing the Princeton professor with this old friend one day and I said to him that I suspected that Wall Street interests were back of his candidacy for the governorship. My friend said, "Tumulty, you are wrong. There is no unwholesome interest or influence back of Wilson. I tell you he is a fine fellow and if he is elected governor, he will be a free man." He then cited the instance of the Princeton fight over the Proctor gift. It will be recalled that Mr. Proctor bequeathed to Princeton University a large sum of money, but attached certain conditions to the gift that had to do with the policy or internal control of the University. The gift was made at a time when Princeton was in sore need of funds. President Wilson, in a prolonged fight, bitterly waged by some who had been his close personal friends, persuaded the Board of Trustees to vote, by a narrow margin, for rejection of the gift on the grounds that a great educational institution could not afford to have its internal policies dictated by purchase on the part of a rich man. By his position he alienated from his leadership many of the wealthy, influential Princeton alumni, especially in the larger Eastern cities, but he stood like a rock on the principle that the educational policy of a college must be made by those authorized to make it and not changed at the bidding of wealthy benefactors. This was a convincing answer to my attack upon the Princeton professor.