[131]. When Mr. Harding was elected in November, 1920, President Wilson was slowly recovering from a severe illness. Great problems were awaiting attention and by many it was deemed unfortunate that the newly-elected President could not take hold of them for four months. So Mr. Bryan suggested that Mr. Harding should be appointed Secretary of State and that thereafter the President and Vice President should resign. This, under the rules of succession, would have enabled Mr. Harding to take office at once. But the suggestion was not accepted.
[132]. On assuming office in 1921 President Harding invited the Vice President to attend all meetings of the cabinet.
[133]. When President Wilson was ill in 1920 the Secretary of State, Mr. Robert Lansing, called the cabinet together to discuss some urgent matters of business. In due course the President heard of this action and resented it. In a letter to the Secretary of State he called attention to the fact that without the President there was nothing that the cabinet could legally do.
[134]. President Lincoln, for example, did not consult the cabinet in the framing of the Emancipation Proclamation; he merely read it to the cabinet after it was finished. General Grant treated his cabinet as though it was merely his general staff with the function of carrying out orders rather than giving advice. President Roosevelt usually had his own mind made up on matters of policy, and the members of his cabinet, although they differed from him in temperament, did not often differ from him in opinion. President Wilson, in choosing his cabinet, made it a point to get men whose minds ran along with his own. On the other hand, President Hayes, President Harrison, and President McKinley were considerably guided by the advice of their cabinets and consulted them freely.
[135]. The State Department deals chiefly with foreign and diplomatic affairs as well as with relations between the nation and the states; it also promulgates the laws passed by Congress. The Department of the Treasury collects the revenues, pays the government’s bills, attends to the borrowing of money when necessary, issues the currency, and has general supervision over the national banks. The War Department has charge of the armed forces, the land fortifications, the purchase of munitions, and the whole upkeep of the army. The Department of the Interior has functions of a very miscellaneous nature, so much so that it has been jocularly called the “department of things in general”. It has charge of national parks and forests, patents, pensions, the geological survey, and various other things which have little relation to one another. The Postmaster-General assumes the oversight of the entire postal service. The Department of Justice has an Attorney-General at its head. He is the government’s chief legal advisor and represents it in all legal controversies. The Navy Department has charge of all the nation’s armed forces afloat. The Department of Agriculture has to do with the promotion of agricultural interests throughout the country (see pp. 346-348). The Department of Labor has charge of immigration, naturalization, and the execution of the federal laws relating to labor. The Department of Commerce is concerned with the development of foreign and domestic trade, the inspection of steamboats, the publication of consular reports (see pp. 373-374), and so forth.
[136]. In addition to the ten regular departments there are other branches of the national administration whose heads are not members of the cabinet. These include such bodies as the Interstate Commerce Commission (p. [364]), the Federal Trade Commission (p. [391]), the Civil Service Commission (p. [103]), the Tariff Commission (p. [370]), besides various bureaus of one kind or another. Members of these boards and heads of the independent bureaus are all appointed by the President, responsible to him, and removable by him.
[137]. This is old French for Hear Ye! Hear Ye! The custom of opening a court session with these words goes back to the time of the Plantagenets in English history.
[138]. It may be well to explain briefly some of the terms commonly used in connection with the law and the courts. The parties to a suit at law are usually known as the plaintiff and the defendant. A criminal case is one in which some crime is charged; in a civil case, the issue concerns the private rights of individuals (for example, when a man is sued for debt). A court has original jurisdiction where cases come before it in the first instance without having already been heard by some other court; it has appellate jurisdiction when cases come up from some other court on appeal.
[139]. In more than one hundred and thirty years only one Supreme Court justice has been impeached and he was acquitted. The charges in this case, moreover, did not reflect upon the integrity of the judge.
[140]. Article III, Section 1.