Magna Carta, and Other Addresses

by William D. Guthrie

Another reason why the majority in the Chicago convention should not have cast aside President Taft and nominated ex-President Roosevelt was because to have done so would have been an act of political treachery, ingratitude and dishonor. President Taft had earned and deserved renomination for great and faithful service to the nation and to the party. The custom generally followed had been to renominate a President who had served well and capably. The Republicans of New York had unanimously proclaimed in their platform of 1910, when ex-President Roosevelt himself controlled the state convention and dictated its policy: "We enthusiastically indorse the progressive and statesmanlike leadership of William Howard Taft, and declare our pride in the achievements of his first eighteen months as President of the United States. Each succeeding month since his inauguration has confirmed the nation in its high esteem of his greatness of character, intellectual ability, sturdy common sense, extraordinary patience and perseverance, broad and statesmanlike comprehension of public questions and unfaltering and unswerving adherence to duty." And nothing had occurred during the months intervening between this state convention and the national convention to shake that high and just estimate of the character and ability of President Taft. He had consented to run when he believed he could rely on the loyalty of Mr. Roosevelt as his friend, and subsequent withdrawal would have been a personal humiliation.

In practical achievements, President Taft's administration had been notably successful and efficient, although not spectacular. It may be asserted with confidence that the laws enacted by Congress never had been administered more effectively, honestly and impartially than under President Taft. Without turmoil or agitation, and without threatening Congress, he had accomplished more in three and one-third years than his immediate predecessor in seven and one-half years. He had shown a consistent policy of real progressiveness and constructive statesmanship. In every branch of government he had confirmed President Roosevelt's panegyric of 1908, when he urged the American people to elect Mr. Taft because of his pre-eminent qualifications for the office of President of the United States.

It may be true that after eighteen years of unselfish devotion and conspicuously efficient and faithful service to the American public, as solicitor general, United States circuit judge, governor of the Philippines, secretary of war and President of the United States, Mr. Taft had failed to secure popularity with the thoughtless, the discontented and the revolutionary, and with that part of the press that lives on sensationalism and muck-raking. But such popularity should hardly be the test of qualification for the great office of President of the United States. We know that Lincoln was so unpopular with the unthinking and impatient in 1864 that he despaired of re-election and that he expected defeat at the polls unless the army could save the day and change public opinion by some striking successes.

Popularity with the unreasoning and discontented was easily within the reach of President Taft had he sought it. In view of the prestige of his high office and the reverence it commands, he had only to practice the well-known arts of the demagogue by which crowds are stirred and led astray—as well known to him as to all who read history. He had only to issue from time to time high-sounding declarations about his staunch patriotism, his own virtue, his uncompromising veracity, his self-sacrificing loyalty to duty, the infallibility of his judgment, the purity of his motives, and the corruption and mendacity of his adversaries. He had only to rail at corporations, at the builders of the industries of the country and at bankers and capitalists, in order to secure the applause of envy and discontent. He had only to inveigh against predatory wealth to become at once the idol of predatory poverty. But his self-respect would not allow him to stoop so low and to pander to what is weakest, if not basest, in human nature, and his sense of duty would not permit him thus to degrade the great office of President of the United States.

The ingratitude of republics is proverbial; yet surely it would have been an unparalleled act of ingratitude for President Taft's own party to refuse him the renomination he had earned and deserved. The lesson that the repudiation of President Taft by his own party would have taught the country and future generations would have been demoralizing. It would have constituted a warning to all our present and future public officers that with us Americans conspicuously efficient and faithful public service goes for naught, and that Republican public officers, from the President of the United States down to the lowest, must not expect to be judged by their acts, ability and character, but as they have succeeded in cultivating the applause of the unthinking.

The great issues before the people in the present critical campaign, however, are far more important than the personal qualifications, claims, or merits of the candidates. These issues are: (1) the constitutional right and power of Congress to protect American industries and to preserve our present industrial system; (2) the threatened overthrow of the representative system of government in state and nation by the introduction of the initiative, the referendum and the recall, and (3) the assault upon the administration of justice in American courts.

Upon the tariff question, there is an irreconcilable difference between the principles of the Republican party and those of the Democratic party. The one insists that it is the legitimate duty and function of Congress in levying taxes to protect American industries and wages, whilst the other insists that Congress has neither the right nor the power under the federal Constitution to do so. I shall assume that political platforms, although they may not be binding programmes, certainly are intended to embody a declaration of the political faith and principles in which the respective candidates believe and which they intend to represent. If this be not so, then why are platforms adopted?

The platform of the Republican party unqualifiedly pledges the party and its candidates to a protective tariff with duties so adjusted as adequately to protect American industries and wages. It concedes that readjustments must be made and that excessive rates should be reduced, but it insists that, in order to do so intelligently and fairly, correct information is indispensable. It favors securing this information by an expert commission and a non-partisan tariff board. It seeks the withdrawal of the tariff from politics in order that each industry may be dealt with on its merits by non-partisan commissions. It indicts the Democratic party for its refusal to provide funds for the continuance of such a tariff board and for the reckless and sectional tariff bills passed by the Democratic House of Representatives which wholly disregard the protection of American interests.

Senator Root declared at the national convention that the Democratic party did not want to ascertain the facts upon which a just protective measure could be framed, but intended that there should be no protection for American industries, and he further declared that the Democratic House of Representatives had framed and passed a series of tariff bills for revenue only with complete indifference to the absolute destruction that their enactment would bring upon great American industries. He asserted that "the American people have now to pass, not upon the abuses of the tariff, but on the fundamental question between the two systems of tariff-making."

This challenge the Democratic party met and answered in the first and cardinal plank adopted by its national convention at Baltimore, which pledged the party and its candidates to the ultimate attainment of the principles of free trade, because of the absence of power in the Congress of the United States to protect American labor and American industries. The plank reads as follows: "We declare it to be a fundamental principle of the Democratic party that the federal government, under the Constitution, has no right or power to impose or collect tariff duties except for the purpose of revenue." And there can be no doubt that this declaration was assumed not only to represent the present free-trade policy of the Democratic party but to be in full accord with Governor Wilson's personal views as an out-and-out free trader.