WOODROW WILSON 743 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. THE WILSON PROGRAM 745 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." THE FEDERAL RESERVE ACT 747 Under the direction of Representative Underwood, Chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means, the new tariff was completed before the end of April, 1913. It either reduced or dropped entirely the duties on food-stuffs, clothing, and raw materials. The rates on cotton goods for example were cut fifty per cent, those on woolens more than fifty. In case the rate on any given commodity proved to be so low as to encourage the "dumping" of European goods in American markets, the bill provided for special rates to ward off the danger. Absolute freedom of trade between the Philippines and the United States was granted. Because the changes were certain to diminish revenue, Congress provided for a graduated income tax, as permitted under the new Sixteenth Amendment, to make up the loss. This Underwood Act was the first genuine tariff reform measure enacted after the Civil War, and there was widespread interest in its operation. In New England the textile interests felt that they were ill-used, and during 1913 and 1914 there were numerous signs of industrial depression. Whether this was due to fear or to tariff was an open question. But opportunity for a fair test of the Underwood measure was wanting because the outbreak of the Great War in the summer of 1914 altered completely the industrial situation. THE FEDERAL RESERVE ACT In approaching the problem of currency and banking reform the Wilson administration was able to take full advantage of a vast amount of preliminary work done by the Republicans. In 1907, Congress had appointed a national monetary commission, with Senator Aldrich of Rhode Island as Chairman. This body made an intensive study of banking systems, both at home and abroad, and in 1912, it submitted a report, in several large printed volumes. But in 1912, President Taft and Congress were so hopelessly at odds that constructive legislation had become impossible. There were two main difficulties to be remedied. The banks had never worked out any satisfactory plan whereby their reserves could be pooled in case of emergency. Consequently, as in the Panic of 1907, banks which were thoroughly safe and solvent were forced to the wall, simply because they could not get help to tide them over a temporary shortage of cash. Then the bank note system was unsatisfactory. Designed in 1863 as part of a plan for marketing government bonds, the system had lived on because no one had dared to |