tion of 1896. At the very beginning the conservative and progressive wings of the party plunged into an angry fracas over the temporary officers. The conservatives wanted Alton B. Parker, their standardbearer of 1904. Bryan entered vigorous objections to him, and barely failed in his effort to put in a progressive. On the second day of the convention Bryan introduced a series of resolutions the adoption of which would commit the party to "progressivism" and reform. With one important omission these were passed.

There were 1,092 delegates in the convention, and under Democratic rules 728 votes were necessary for a choice. On the first ballot Clark had 440, Wilson 324, Harmon, 148, Underwood, 117, with a number of scattering ones. The Massachusetts delegation distinguished itself for its loyalty to Eugene N. Foss. The balloting started on June 28, and it lasted until July 2. At one stage of the proceedings Clark secured a majority, but the best efforts of his managers could not bring him within sight of the necessary two thirds. The ballots were taken amidst scenes of tremendous excitement. Not even the convention of 1896 had been more noisy. Finally Bryan decided to throw his influence to Wilson, and that meant success. On the forty-sixth ballot Wilson received 990 votes, more than enough to give him the prize.

Clark very properly held Bryan responsible for his defeat, and thenceforth the mere mention of Bryan's name threw him into a rage. "When I get ready to hang the skin of that skunk on the fence and shoot it full of holes," he is reported to have remarked, apropos of Bryan, "it will not be in a casual interview." Some have gone so far as to say that the defeat of Clark was the one great service that Bryan has performed for his country. Clark's was not the only heart broken by the outcome of the great struggle. Over in Princeton, according to a campaign story, a visitor is said to have found Dean West pacing up and down the floor, exclaiming, "My God, I've made Wilson President!"

So great was the excitement during the campaign that many of the voters were blinded to the certainty of Wilson's election. Some actually discussed the prospects of Taft or Roosevelt as though one or the other had a chance. But the "old guard" and the "progressives" were so nearly even that they nullified each other thereby throwing the election to the Democrats. The total popular vote was 14,937,351, divided as follows: Wilson 6,293,019; Roosevelt 4,119,507;

Taft 3,484,956. Of the electoral votes Wilson received 435, Roosevelt, 88, and Taft, 8. The combined Taft and Roosevelt vote was smaller than Taft's vote in 1908; apparently a number of Republicans voted for Wilson. Wilson was a "minority" president, in the sense that his opponents together polled a larger vote than his. The Republican split which caused this gave the Democrats a majority of 144 in the House of Representatives, and of 6 in the Senate. No party ever had a better chance to show what it could do in constructive legislation.

CHAPTER LXVI

PRESIDENT WILSON

After the November election the whole country looked forward to the approaching inauguration with unusual interest. Wilson was the first Democrat to win a presidential contest since Cleveland's time; this in itself was enough to attract the attention of professional politicians and laymen alike. What would the new incumbent do with the office? Those who had followed his career as president of Princeton and as governor of New Jersey confidently prophesied reform. Wilson was given to upsetting traditions, they insisted, and the federal government seemed to offer peculiarly favorable opportunities to a reformer. In various parts of the United States there was a lively demand for change. The large Roosevelt vote was in part at least an index to the strength of the desire for it among the Republicans, while the very nomination of Wilson was proof of a similar desire among the Democrats. Roosevelt had given publicity to reform, and so made it popular. Taft had ignored publicity, and was accused of deserting the cause of reform. Some voters in both parties expected Wilson merely to continue the Roosevelt tradition; some others hoped that the former professor would apply the methods of the intellect rather than of the brass band to reform, and so accomplish even more than Roosevelt.

THE WILSON PROGRAM

Except among the "stand-patters" there was a general agreement that the country needed something; those who prided themselves on maintaining a scientific accuracy in their observations might have said that the something was adjustment instead of reform. The label, however, amounted to little. The people were feeling a steady tightening of the pressure of "Big Business." The corporations, organized wealth, the "trusts," were exercising too much uncontrolled power over the life of the ordinary individuals, and over the government. Preceding presidents, some of them, had called attention to the evils; Wilson was expected to remove them.

Wilson himself was a reformer, in sympathy with the desires, expressed and unexpressed, of the rural South and West, and very much out of sympathy with the highly industrialized East. As a reformer he had a clear perception of his duty as President. He must formulate policies, drive them through Congress, and then assume full responsibility for them before the country at large. Like Jefferson, he would leap over the barrier which was supposed to separate the executive from the legislature, and tell that body what to do.

But the President was not untrammeled in his work. Nearly sixty per cent of the voters in 1912 had expressed a desire for some one else as their chief executive; if he so managed matters that this sixty per cent should unite against him, his program would certainly fail. As a part of his duty therefore he tried to build up a large personal following throughout the country, as Jefferson, Jackson, and Lincoln had done, a following to which he might appeal in case Congress should prove refractory.

Neither Wilson nor any one else could tell what Congress might or might not do. The members of that body are sometimes as temperamental as a lot of professional ball players, and as insistent upon their prerogatives as an absolute monarch. Wilson set out to make himself at one and the same time the director of Congress and the guide of public opinion.

In organizing his Cabinet the new President showed due regard to the necessities of his position. If he was to lead his party to triumph he must have the support, in Congress and out, of the Bryan following. Bryan became Secretary of State. This appointment was both a reward for services rendered and a bid for future help. The Treasury went to William G. McAdoo, whose political services had not been unimportant. Preceding presidents had established the precedent of giving the Post Office department to a clever manipulator of the patronage; for this post Wilson named Burleson of Texas. The Navy went to Josephus Daniels of North Carolina, for delegates secured and held before and during the Baltimore convention. For some reason Wilson was bitterly criticised for allowing matters of political strategy to influence the make-up of the Cabinet. The only president who did things differently was John Quincy Adams, and his experiment was a dismal failure. Under the present system no president can ignore politics, something which Wilson, as a student of government, knew as well as did his Postmaster-general.

Thanks to the party overturn in the elections of 1910, the Wilson administration was peculiarly fortunate in the matter of the patronage. For two years the Senate had been anti-Taft, and Taft appointments had not been confirmed. These had accumulated so that by March 4, 1913, there were 2,500 places to be filled. (These were distributed in such a way as to do the new President the most good, and to bring about party solidarity. The fortunate use of the patronage therefore gave Wilson the whip hand in driving Congress.

In his inaugural Wilson proclaimed the ideals which would govern his administration. "Our duty is to cleanse, to reconsider, to restore, to correct the evil without impairing the good, to purify and harmonize every process of our common life without weakening or sentimentalizing it. . . . We have made up our minds to square every process of our national life again with the standards we so proudly set up at the beginning and have always carried at our hearts. Our work is a work of restoration. . . . The feelings with which we face this new age of right and opportunity sweep across our heartstrings like some air out of God's own presence, where justice and mercy are reconciled, and the judge and the brother are one.

"This is not a day of triumph; it is a day of dedication. Here muster not the forces of party but the forces of humanity. Men's hearts wait upon us; men's lives hang in the balance; men's hopes call upon us to say what we will do. Who shall live up to the great trust? Who dares fail to try? I summon all honest, all patriotic, all forward-looking men to my side. God helping me, I will not fail them, if they will but counsel and sustain me." This perhaps was a bit tenuous; there were, however, more specific suggestions, calling for a revision of the tariff, the establishment of a new banking system, and the reform of the industrial system.

TARIFF REFORM

Undeterred by Taft's luckless venture in tariff reform Wilson called Congress in special session to take up the very same problem. In an address dealing with that subject the President informed Congress that: "We must abolish everything that bears even the semblance of privilege or of any kind of artificial advantage and put our business men and producers under the stimulation of a constant necessity to be efficient, economical, enterprising, masters of competitive supremacy, better workers and merchants than any in the world."