NEW NATIONALISM

The process of adjusting national administration and laws, to meet the needs of life and business that knew no state lines, had been begun during the Roosevelt period. For its completion it was necessary that a successor be found, convinced of the Roosevelt policies and able to carry them out. Three Republicans of this type were often mentioned for the Presidency in 1908. Elihu Root had been the legal mainstay of three administrations, and had received the public commendation of Roosevelt often and without restraint. His availability for the elective office was, however, weakened by his prominence as a corporation lawyer, which would be urged against him in a campaign. William H. Taft, Secretary of War, had a wider popularity than Root; had, as federal judge, long been identified with the enforcement of law, and had been used repeatedly as the spokesman of the President. He knew the colonies as no other American knew them, and was in touch with every detail of the Panama Canal. Neither he nor Root had won a leadership in competitive politics as had the third candidate, Charles E. Hughes, who, as Governor of New York, had shown his capacity to fight professional politicians on their own ground.

In 1907, President Roosevelt announced his preference for Judge Taft, and fought off, as he had often done, suggestions that he accept another term himself. He controlled the Republican convention at Chicago, where his candidate was nominated on the first ballot. A Republican Representative from New York, James S. Sherman, was nominated for the Vice-Presidency, and the party leaders were driven to a platform of enthusiastic indorsement of the Roosevelt policies.

The Democratic party, meeting at Denver in 1908, was again under the control of the radical element, and nominated William J. Bryan for the third time. The career of Roosevelt had modified the emphasis of the Bryan reforms. "Any Republican who, after following Roosevelt, should object to Bryan as a radical, would simply be laughed at consumedly," said one of the weeklies. In the ensuing campaign both candidates professed ends that were nearly identical, and their advocates were forced to explain whether the Roosevelt policies would have a better chance under Bryan or Taft. There was no clear issue, and in each party there was a powerful minority that wanted neither of the candidates. The election of Taft had been discounted throughout the campaign, but it was accompanied by a demonstration of independent voting that revealed the weakness of party ties. Four Democratic governors were elected in States that were carried by the Republican national ticket.

The Administration of President Taft was greeted with cordial good will by the progressive elements in both parties. His courage and sincerity had never been questioned. Roosevelt was unlimited in his praise. His judicial training made impossible for him types of political activity that had made enemies for his predecessor among many conservatives, yet his devotion to policies of administrative reform was beyond dispute. He immediately fulfilled one pledge of the Republican platform by summoning Congress to meet on March 15, 1909, to revise the tariff, and on this subject he had for several years avowed a desire that revision should be downward, to remove all trace of special tariff privilege.

The movement for tariff reform had begun in the Middle West about 1902, and had spread with the feeling against the trusts. Roosevelt had indicated a sympathy with it in 1902 and 1903, and had fought Congress for tariff modification in the interest of Cuban reciprocity. But most of the party leaders had opposed tampering with the protective system. Speaker Cannon was an avowed protectionist and defended the attitude of the stand-pat tariff advocates. After 1904 the President had ceased to discuss the tariff, confining himself to other schemes for reform. He left the problem of revision to his successor.

The tariff of 1909 bore the names of Sereno E. Payne, of New York, chairman of the House Committee of Ways and Means, and Nelson W. Aldrich, chairman of the Senate Committee on Finance. As it passed the House it embodied numerous reductions from the Dingley rates. In the Senate it was reframed and became an instrument of even greater protection than the existing law. It was debated in a stronger glare of public interest than any other tariff, and its details were explained and fought by a group of Republicans who refused to accept the control of the inner circle of the party, and who were determined that the revision should be downward and sincere. They did less to affect the bill, however, than President Taft, who forced the conference committee to accept a few reductions in the rates, notably on hides and lumber, and to include a provision for levying an income tax on corporations. A constitutional amendment, authorizing a general income tax, was a part of the agreement. The bill became a law in August, 1909. "The bill, in its final form," said the Outlook, which inclined toward free trade, "is by far the most enlightened protectionist measure ever enacted in the history of the country." "I think that the present tariff," wrote Roosevelt, who had returned to private life, "is better than the last, and considerably better than the one before the last."

Whatever its relation to earlier tariffs the Payne-Aldrich Act was distasteful to the country, which had since 1897 become critical of the methods of tariff legislation. Seven Republican Senators and twenty Representatives voted against it on its final passage. These represented the Middle West and the new generation, and returned home to find their constituents generally with them in denouncing the measure as an instrument of privilege. Some of them had broken with President Taft during the debate, and the breach was deepened when the latter spoke in the West, at Winona, Minnesota, and defended the act as a compliance with the party pledge. It became apparent that the new President was unable to procure party legislation and to maintain at the same time an appearance of harmony in the party. Roosevelt had dissatisfied but had overriden the conservative wing; Taft failed to satisfy the most progressive wing and failed to silence them.

In the autumn of 1909 began a series of administrative misunderstandings that greatly embarrassed the Taft Administration. A prospective minister to China was dismissed abruptly before he left the United States, on account of a supposed indiscretion. In the Department of Agriculture there was dissension between the Secretary, James Wilson, and the chemist engaged in the enforcement of the Pure Food Law, Harvey W. Wiley. The chief of the forestry service, Gifford Pinchot, quarreled openly with the Secretary of the Interior, Richard A. Ballinger, and raised the question of the future of the policy of conservation.

The work of the forestry and reclamation services was at the center of the scheme for conservation of natural resources that had grown out of Roosevelt's conference with the governors in 1908. A subordinate of the forestry service attacked the Secretary of the Interior in 1909, charging favoritism and lack of interest in conservation. He was dismissed in September, upon order of President Taft, whereupon Collier's Weekly undertook an attack upon the President as an enemy of conservation, receiving the moral support of many of the progressives who disliked the tariff act. In January, 1910, the growing controversy led the President to dismiss Pinchot from the service, for insubordination, and Congress to erect a joint committee to investigate the Pinchot-Ballinger dispute.

The Ballinger committee ultimately vindicated the Secretary of the Interior, but the testimony taken brought out a fundamental difference between the theory of Taft, that the President could act only in accordance with the law, and that of Roosevelt, that he could do whatever was not forbidden by law. Although Taft stood by his subordinate, claiming that he and Ballinger were both active in conservation, a large section of the public believed that the aggressive movement for reform had lost momentum. What Roosevelt thought of it was impossible to learn, since he had gone to Africa in 1909, and remained outside the sphere of American politics until the summer of 1910.

The progressive Republicans revolted in 1909 and 1910 against the domination of the "stand-pat" group, and received the name "Insurgents." Senators LaFollette and Cummins, both of whom desired to be President, were the avowed leaders. In the House of Representatives, in March, 1910, the Insurgents coÖperated with the Democratic minority, defeated a ruling of Speaker Cannon, and modified the House rules in order to curtail the autocracy of the presiding officer. They asked the country to believe that Taft had ceased to be progressive and had become the ally of the stand-pat interests. The split in the Republican party enabled the Democrats to carry the country in 1910, and to obtain a large majority in the House of Representatives. Champ Clark, of Missouri, and Oscar Underwood, of Alabama, both aspirants for the Democratic presidential nomination, became, respectively, Speaker and chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means in the new House. No one man controlled or led either party by his personality as Theodore Roosevelt had done; the rivalry of lesser leaders destroyed the harmony of both parties, and neither party even approached unanimity in regard to the great policies of the future. In January, 1911, the Insurgent Republicans organized a Progressive Republican League for the purpose of capturing the nomination in 1912 for one of their number, presumably Senator LaFollette.

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.

In February, 1912, an appeal signed by seven Republican governors, all of whom dwelt in States now likely to go Democratic, urged Roosevelt to withdraw his pledge and become a candidate for the nomination. The demand was concurred in by admirers who believed that only he could bring about the new nationalism, by Progressives who distrusted LaFollette's capacity to win, and by Republicans who wanted to win at any price and saw only defeat through Taft. On February 24, Roosevelt announced his willingness to accept the nomination, explained that his previous refusal to accept another term had meant another consecutive term, and entered upon a canvass for delegates to the Republican National Convention.

The campaign before the primaries was made difficult because in most States the Republican machinery was in the hands of politicians who disliked Roosevelt, whether they cared for Taft or not. It began too late for the voters to overturn the state and national committees, or to register through the existing party machinery their new desire. It brought out the defects in methods of nomination which direct primaries were expected to remedy, and in some States public opinion was strong enough to compel a hasty passage of primary laws to permit the overturn of the convention system. The LaFollette candidacy was deprived of most of its supporters, through the superior popularity of Roosevelt.

When the convention met at Chicago on June 18, 1912, there were some 411 Roosevelt delegates among the 1078, and more than 250 more who, though instructed for Taft, were contested by Roosevelt delegations. When the national committee overruled the claims of these, Roosevelt denounced their action as "naked theft." He had definitely allied himself with the wing of the party that opposed Taft. When the convention, presided over by Elihu Root, and supported by nearly all the men whom Roosevelt had brought into public prominence, finally renominated Taft and Sherman, Roosevelt asserted that no honest man could vote for a ticket based upon dishonor. The Roosevelt Republicans did not bolt the convention, but when it adjourned they held a mass convention of their own, were addressed by their candidate, and went home to organize a new Progressive party.

The Democratic counsels were affected by the break-up of the Republican party and the success of its conservative wing at Chicago. They met at Baltimore the next week, with Bryan present and active, but not himself a candidate. They had to choose among Clark, the Speaker, Underwood, the chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means, and Governors Harmon, of Ohio, Marshall, of Indiana, and Woodrow Wilson, of New Jersey.

The last of these had risen into national politics since 1910. He had long been known as a brilliant essayist and historian. He was of Virginian birth, and had left the presidency of Princeton University to become Democratic candidate for Governor of New Jersey in 1910. He had shown as governor great capacity to lead his party in the direction of the progressive reforms. He differed in these less from Roosevelt and LaFollette than he or they did from the reactionaries in their own parties. "The President is at liberty, both in law and conscience," he had written long ago, "to be as big a man as he can. His capacity will set the limit.... He has no means of compelling Congress except through public opinion." Unembarrassed by previous attachment to any faction of the Democratic party, with a clear record against special privilege and corporation influence in politics, and supported obstinately by Bryan and the young men who had urged his candidacy, Woodrow Wilson was nominated on the forty-sixth ballot, with Governor Thomas Marshall for Vice-President. The conservative nomination by the Republicans had thrown the Democrats into the hands of their radical wing.

The Progressives held a convention in Chicago on August 5, and nominated Theodore Roosevelt and Governor Hiram Johnson, of California. Their platform included every important reform seriously urged, and was built around the idea of social justice and human rights. They denied that either of the old parties was fitted to carry on the work of progress. In the campaign their candidates and speakers revealed the vigor and the bitterness of the former Insurgents.

The schism threw the election into the hands of the Democrats, who retained the House, gained the Senate, and elected Wilson, though the latter received fewer votes than Bryan had received in each of his three attempts. The struggle was one of personalities, since few openly attacked the avowed aim of progressive legislation. The popularity of Roosevelt detached many Democratic votes from Wilson, but his unpopularity among Republicans who feared him and Progressive Republicans who resented his return to politics, drove to Wilson votes that would otherwise have gone to Taft. Taft received only eight electoral votes in November, and ran far behind both his rivals in the popular count. More than four million votes were polled by the new third party in an independent movement that was without precedent. The Socialist vote for Debs rose from 420,000 in 1908 to 895,000 in 1912.

The last year of the administration of President Taft was overshadowed by the party war, and reduced in effectiveness by the Democratic control of the House. The prosecutions of the trusts were continued, a parcel post was established as a postal savings bank had been, the income tax amendment became part of the Constitution, and an amendment for the direct election of Senators made progress.

When Woodrow Wilson succeeded to the Presidency he formed a cabinet headed by William J. Bryan as Secretary of State, and including only Democrats of progressive antecedents. He called Congress in April, 1913, to revise the tariff once more, and overturned a precedent of a century by delivering to it his message in person. With almost no breathing space for eighteen months, he kept Congress at its task of fulfilling his party's pledges as he interpreted them.

Tariff, currency, and trust control were the main topics upon which the Democrats had avowed positive convictions, and upon which the great mass of progressive citizens, regardless of party affiliation, demanded legislation. One by one these were taken up, the President revealing powers of coercive leadership hitherto unseen in his office. Only the fact that non-partisan opinion was generally with him made possible the mass of constructive legislation that was placed upon the books. The tariff, which became a law on October 3, 1913, was a revision whose downward tendency was beyond dispute. The Federal Reserve Act, revising the banking laws in the interest of flexibility and decentralization, was signed on December 23 of the same year. In January, 1914, President Wilson laid before Congress his plan of trust control, advocating a commission with powers over trade coÖrdinate with those of the Interstate Commerce Commission, and an elaboration of the anti-trust laws to deal with unfair practices and interlocking directorates. The Federal Trade Commission and Clayton Anti-Trust bills fulfilled these recommendations in the autumn of 1914. The Panama Canal Act of 1912 had meanwhile been revised so as to eliminate a preference in rates to American vessels which the President believed to be in violation of the guaranty of equal treatment pledged in the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty. With a more portentous list of constructive laws than had been passed by any Congress since 1890, the Democratic majority allowed an adjournment on October 24, 1914, and its members went home to sound their constituents upon the state of the Union.

The passage of economic laws had called for tact and force upon the part of the President, whose party, like the Republican party, was without a clear vision of its policy and included many reactionaries. Added embarrassments were found in the continuance of civil strife in Mexico. Here, shortly before the inauguration of President Wilson, there had been another revolution, followed by the elevation by the army of General Victoriano Huerta to the Presidency. The followers of the deposed Madero went into revolt at once, and the new Government was refused recognition by the United States on the ground that it was not a Government de facto, and that its title was smirched with blood. Patiently and stubbornly the United States held to its refusal to recognize the results of conspiracy in Mexico. In April, 1914, Vera Cruz was occupied by American forces in retaliation for acts of insult on the part of the Huerta rÉgime, and in July the steady pressure of "watchful waiting" brought about the resignation of the dictator. The Constitutionalists, succeeding him, quarreled shortly among themselves, but the danger from Mexico appeared to be lessening as the year advanced.

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NORTH AMERICA
IN 1915

From Europe came other embarrassments in August. Here, the policy of national armament which had been adopted in the middle of the nineteenth century, reached its logical outcome in a great war which was precipitated by Austria in an attack upon Servia. Russia immediately came to the aid of her Slavonic kinsmen, and upon her Germany declared war on August 1. In a few more days Great Britain and France had joined Russia against the German-Austrian alliance, and most of Europe was at war. To bring home the thousands of American tourists whom the war had reduced to suffering was the first work of the administration. The American ministers in Europe became the custodians of the affairs of the belligerents in every enemy country, and with the aid of all the belligerent nations Americans were carried home. After this came the problems of neutrality and American business. Suffering, due to the stoppage of the export trade, particularly that of cotton, brought wide depression throughout the United States. A new law for the transfer of foreign-built vessels to American registry, and another for federal insurance against war risks, were hurriedly passed, and the question of a public-owned line of merchant ships was discussed. All these problems were distracting the attention of the United States when Congress brought to an end its prolonged labors, and adjourned.

The congressional election of 1914 was profoundly affected by the European war. Early in the year it appeared that conservative opposition to the Democratic program was growing, and that the Democratic majority was likely to be cut down. The Progressive party appeared to be weakening, and the control of the Republican party was settling back among those Republicans against whom the Insurgents had made their protest. But President Wilson's precise neutrality won the confidence of all parties, and although conservatives like Cannon, of Illinois, and Penrose, of Pennsylvania, won over Democrats and Progressives alike in a few cases, he retained for the Sixty-fourth Congress a working majority in the House and an enlarged majority in the Senate. His election in 1912 had been, in part, due to the dispersion of Republican strength caused by the Progressive schism; in 1914, the influence of the Progressives was negligible and the Democrats retained their power in the face of the whole Republican attack.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Between 1909 and 1914, the Outlook, to which Theodore Roosevelt had been an occasional contributor, and which had been a strong supporter of Republican policies since 1898, was the regular organ through which Mr. Roosevelt addressed the public, over his signature as Contributing Editor. In a similar way William J. Bryan reached his followers through the Commoner (1900-), and Robert M. LaFollette through his LaFollette's Weekly (1909-). Collier's Weekly became a center of the adverse criticism of President Taft. All of these, as well as the more general periodicals, are indispensable sources for the period, but are so highly partisan as to need constant correction for prejudice. The election of 1908 is treated in Stanwood's History of the Presidency from 1897 to 1909, while that of 1912 is excellently described in the New International Year Book for 1912. The theories of the new nationalism are in T. Roosevelt, The New Nationalism (1910).