Is it by extreme solicitude to avoid small mistakes and ingratiate all influential persons?
No. He makes his share of small mistakes and sometimes scandalizes the influential, but it does not seem to matter.
He gets help because he seems to be worth helping; because he gives his mind not to the retention of power, but to the use of it in accomplishing what he was chosen to accomplish. He has signed a tariff bill. That was one great battle won. He had to have splendid support to win it, but he got the support. Has he rested on that victory? Not a minute. Now it is the currency bill and it will be that until he signs a currency bill that will satisfy the country. Then it will be the trusts, and the Lord knows what.
But it is safe to bet that Mr. Wilson also knows what. He has thought out a great many problems of government. He will always know of things that ought to be done to improve the life of the people, and he will always have a program for doing the next thing on his list, and will always push it as hard as seems to him practicable and, probably, much harder than will seem expedient to most observers. He has shown himself to be a great driving force, and the kind of one that gains ground because of the forces that he can carry with him. What he is after will always be as clear as he can make it, and it will be important, and those that are for it will be confident that they will get it if they win, and those that are against it will know what they are against. There is a good prospect for clean political and economic issues in this country for some time to come; issues about which people will have to think, and on which they will divide. The question is going to be how much improvement the country can stand in a given time. The patient is on the operating table. No doubt he needs to have a good deal done, but if his pulse begins to sink, off he will have to come, and wait until he gets stronger. Otherwise the disposition is to make a new man of him and do it now.
And so, small matters are not going to make so much difference as they might if less important changes were imminent. It may be true that the trousers of all the cabinet bag at the knees, but nobody cares much. Mr. Bryan may talk in the Chautauqua circuit, and do lots of other unusual things, Mr. McAdoo's department may make mistakes in its income-tax circulars, Mr. Daniels may behave at times too much like Mr. Daniels, Mr. McReynolds's young men may show a too voluble zeal in prosecution, but it will be a mistake to expand occurrences of that size into evidences of administrative failure. Cromwell had a wart on his nose, but still was esteemed an efficient man. His trousers would undoubtedly have bagged at the knees if he had worn trousers, but his statue stands at last by the Parliament House in London.
President Wilson's administration is likely to win or lose on wagers of considerable size. It may be a good administration or it may be a bad one, but there is no sign or symptom that it is going to be a piker.
A NEEDED UNPOPULAR REFORM
The American people in their frugal rural days enjoyed their freedom, knew all their neighbors, and governed themselves simply and directly. They knew personally the men they elected. Now bosses govern them, and the men they elect are unknown to the voters. The republic is rich, the people are many. Still possessed of that spirit of liberty which Edmund Burke noted as characteristic of the American colonists, and still reaching for complete self-government, they have grasped too much, and have lost their grip on what is essential. They have seen the setting up of secret oligarchies in all the chief cities and states. The head of the most considerable of these oligarchies, regnant save in times of extraordinary protest and agitation, is virtually king of a tributary city and state, whose population is over thrice that of the original thirteen Colonies, whose public expenditures are three hundred millions of dollars yearly, and whose wealth amounts to twenty-five billions. He and his associates, too, partake of this fierce American spirit, in the sense that they are strong individualists. And they are captains of a peculiar industry.