QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS.

1. In the long run, have the people gained or lost by the formation of the trusts? Give your reasons for your opinion.

2. Can you find an example of a monopoly in your home community? If you owned all the butter in the country could you sell it for any price you pleased? Why?

3. How many hours per day do the men work in the shops and factories in your neighborhood? How many hours per day do you think they ought to work?

4. Who was Jay Gould? James J. Hill? Pierpont Morgan? Who is John D. Rockefeller?

Andrew Carnegie? J.

5. When the taxes bring in more money than is needed to pay the necessary expenses of the government what ought to be done?

6. Ask the men you know what their reasons are for favoring or opposing a protective tariff.

7. Is it wrong for the man who ships a hundred carloads of goods to get a lower freight rate than the man who ships only one carload? Why? Is it right to sell potatoes at a lower price per bushel to the man who takes one hundred bushels than to the man who buys only one bushel? Why?

8. Just what is meant by sixteen to one? Was Bryan right or wrong in advocating the free coinage of silver? Why?

CHAPTER XXVII

NEW SOCIAL IDEALS AND RECENT PROGRESS

Our Latest Presidents.-About six months after beginning his second term, President McKinley was shot by an anarchist The death of while he was shaking hands with the people at the Pan-American McKinley Exposition in Buffalo. At first the people hoped that the wounded president might recover, but this hope proved vain,

Theodore
Roosevelt

Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.
Theodore Roosevelt

and in a few days he died. For the fifth time in our history a vicepresident succeeded to the presidency.

Theodore Roosevelt was already justly famous as an upright and courageous public servant when McKinley's death made him president in September, 1901. Since early manhood he had striven for purer politics and more efficient government. In 1900 Roosevelt was governor of New York, and the leaders of the Republican party in

that state who did not like his zeal for reform, managed to have him nominated for the vice-presidency in order to prevent his reëlection as governor. They little dreamed that by this act they were making him the leader of the nation in its struggle for a square deal in business and for higher social ideals. The new president was a vigorous, bold, enthusiastic, and outspoken man of rare ability and the highest integrity. He was unselfish, absolutely fearless, and a born leader of men. No other American since Abraham Lincoln has had so great an influence for good upon the thought and the life of our people.

The time was ripe for such a leader as President Roosevelt. He felt the growing unrest among the people, and he knew that

deal"

his countrymen would not permit the railroads and the trusts The policy of to rule them forever. He believed that the right way to avoid the "square trouble in future was to enforce all the existing laws regulating big business, to make new laws for its further control in the interest of all the people, and to alike what he called a "square deal."

give to rich and poor While this policy won

for Roosevelt the bitter hatred of the trust magnates and of

the self-seeking politicians who served them, it made him very popular with the people, and in 1904 he was elected to the presidency by an overwhelming majority over Alton B. Parker, the Democratic candidate.

Roosevelt's second term was a continual struggle for the rights of the people against the big business interests of the country. Several trusts were prosecuted for breaking the laws, and new laws were passed for the better regulation of the railroads. The confidence of the people in Roosevelt continued to grow, and in 1908 his influence lea the Republicans to make his secretary of war, William H. Taft of Ohio, their candidate for the presidency. For a third time William Jennings Bryan was the defeated Democratic candidate.

The election of Taft

William H. Taft, our president from 1909 to 1913, was a wise and experienced statesman who shared some of the progressive views and carried on most of the policies of his pre- The rise decessor. But Taft was an easy-going man who lacked the of the Progressive fighting qualities of Roosevelt, and he soon fell under the movement influence of the old-fashioned or conservative Republicans who disliked Roosevelt and his reforms. These conservative Republicans or "standpatters," as they were called, planned

Woodrow
Wilson

to renominate Taft in 1912, but the progressive members of the party who wanted to carry still further the reform policies of Roosevelt refused to vote for Taft and tried to nominate Roosevelt for another term. After a close and bitter contest in the Republican national convention, Taft was nominated. The progressive Republicans declared that Taft's nomination was made by unfair means and refused to support him. A little later they held another convention, organized the Progressive

party, demanded a long list of political and social reforms, and named Roosevelt as their candidate for the presidency. The result of this split in the Republican party in 1912 was the election of Woodrow Wilson by the Democrats.

Woodrow Wilson, who became president in 1913, was a famous teacher and author who had been president of Princeton University and more recently governor of New Jersey. He was a progressive and forwardlooking man, and during his first term the power of the trusts and of the great financial combinations was further restricted. In 1916 Wilson was reëlected over

Charles E. Hughes, the candidate of the Republicans. The history of his second term is the story of the entrance of our country into the great war with Germany in 1917 and of the part which we took in bringing that awful contest to a victorious end.

New Ways in Politics and Government. In an earlier chapter we saw how the spoils system tended to corrupt our The spoils political life. Yet for half a century after Andrew Jackson introduced this bad practice into our national government, whenever the party in power was defeated in a presidential

system

election, all the appointive office-holders except the judges were turned out and their places given to the politicians of the victorious party. About fifty years ago a few earnest men began to urge a reform of the civil service, but at first very little attention was paid to them.

After President Garfield was shot by a disappointed officeseeker, the evils of the spoils system could no longer be overlooked or denied, and in 1883 Congress passed the Civil Service Civil service Law. This act provided for the appointment of a Civil Service reform Commission of three men. It is the duty of this commission to give competitive examinations which must be taken by those who seek places in the civil service. When a public officer has been appointed after passing such an examination he cannot be removed except for just cause and then only after a fair hearing. The passage of the Civil Service Law marked the beginning of a change from the spoils system to a merit system. The president has the right to name the offices for which competitive examinations must be taken. At first the number of offices on this list was small, but the later presidents, especially Cleveland, Roosevelt and Taft, have added others to it until now fully two-thirds of all the persons in the civil service had to pass examinations before they were appointed. Similar efforts have been made to introduce the merit system into the governments of some of our states and cities, but in many of them the evils of the spoils system are still very grave.

The organization which manages each political party is sometimes called the party "machine," and the leaders of the "machine" are often called the "bosses" of the party. Until Political recent years candidates for office in our counties, congressional "machines" and party districts, and states were nominated by party conventions. The "bosses" members of these conventions were supposed to be elected by the voters of the respective parties, but as a matter of fact they were often chosen through the influence of the party "bosses" and they usually voted as the "bosses" directed. By paying the campaign expenses of the party "machines", and sometimes by bribing the "bosses", the corporations and trusts which were trying to get the business of the country into their hands often managed to have men selected for office who would do their bidding. About twenty years ago some of the western states began to try to destroy the influence of the "bosses"