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YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

THE PROGRESSIVE CHARACTER'
OF PRESIDENT TAFT'S
ADMINISTRATION

ADDRESS OF
HENRY L. STIMSON
SECRETARY OF WAR
BEFORE THE TAFT CLUB OF ILLINOIS
CHICAGO
ON TUESDAY, MARCH 5. 1912

WASHINGTON. D. C,
1912

ADDRESS OF HENRY L. STIMSON, SECRETARY OF
WAR, BEFORE THE TAFT CLUB OF ILLINOIS,
CHICAGO, MARCH 5, 1912.
I am here to-night to speak for the renomination of President
Taft. I am now and always have been a Progressive. I believe
that the Republican party, so long as it is true to its historical
creed of constitutional method and interpretation, will necessa
rily be the party of progress; and that the Democratic party, so
long as it is true to its historical creed of constitutional method
and interpretation, will necessarily be the party of conservatism
and reaction.
I am for Mr. Taft because I believe that he has faithfully
carried out this Progressive faith of the Republican party; that
his administration stands for orderly, permanent progress in our
national Government; and that to refuse him the nomination
on the assertions that have been made against him, would be a
blow to that progress and would put a premium upon hasty and
unfounded criticism.
I entered into public life under the inspiration of Theodore
Roosevelt. I am a firm believer in the great national policies
for which he has fought. And I now remain his sincere friend.
But I believe that those who are forcing him, contrary to his
original intention, into the arena against Mr. Taft, are jeopar
dizing instead of helping the real cause of progress in the Nation.
The introduction of such a contest at this time, dragging in, as
it necessarily will, new and personal issues which are quite
foreign to the great progressive policies for which the Republican
party stands, cannot fail to weaken whichever candidate is
eventually nominated in June. If, as a result, that candidate is
defeated in November, the Government may be thrown into the
hands of a truly reactionary party for years to come.
Under our Republican creed, government is not a mere organ
ized police force, but an affirmative agency for national progress
and social betterment. The Republican party came into exist
ence as an organized effort to use the national power to limit a
great human wrong and gradually to rid the nation of the worst

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social evil from which it has ever suffered. We inherited the
views of our federalist forefathers in regarding the Constitution
as the perpetual charter of a living nation fit to meet and deal
with all the necessary changes which come with a progressive
civiUzation. Our party has never hesitated to use all national
powers in the interest of human welfare. So long as we are true
to that faith, so long as we follow those traditions, our party is
necessarily the party of progress. Privileged and special
interests have no place under such a code.
Let me point out to you briefly two or three of the vital
achievements which seem to me to identify Mr. Taft with this
cause. I shall not attempt a summary of his constructive work.
I shall merely indicate several of the typical accomplishments
which, to my mind, identify his administration with the progress
of the Republican party and of the nation.
TARIFF REFORM.
In the first place, I wish to emphasize the accomplishment in
connection with which he has been most falsely vilified and abused.
I mean his accomplishment in getting his party and the nation on
to the right track in regard to tarifi' reform. This is not only a
progressive achievement ; if it is adhered to by the party, if the
President is supported in it, it removes the' one active and
dangerous tendency which during the past thirty years has been
undermining the real principles of the party and tending to turn
it into a party of reaction. The protective tariff of Alexander
Hamilton was intended to be an instrument for the welfare of
the nation as a whole. His tariff policy, like the other elements
of his general constructive fiscal policy of which it formed apart,
was intended to build up a self-dependent, vigorous and pros
perous nation, wherein the welfare of each individual was in
separably bound up in the prosperity of the whole. This national
theory of a protective tariff the Republican party adopted,
although under the exigencies of the great Civil War they were
obliged to use it as a war measure for the collection of revenue.
But with the lapse of time after the war was over, when a pro
tective tariff' had become a fixed institution, there gradually grew

up under it privileged interests who fattened upon it as upon a
bounty. The theory of national welfare gradually became re
placed by a sense of vested right on the part of those who bene
fited by the tariff. The hold of these beneficiaries upon the
party and the nation grew stronger and stronger. Under the
established methods of tariff legislation, the protected interests
had a tremendous advantage over the consumer in making their
desires felt in the halls of Congress. Every time that the tariff
was revised, it was revised upward, in spite of the fact that with
the increase and diversity of our manufacturies the need for such
protection was rapidly diminishing. One has only to follow the
figures of the successive tariff laws between 1875 and 1909 to see
the regfular and steady rise in unnecessary protection every time
the Republican party touched the tariff.
At the same time, there was a real dread of the business
disturbance which would follow a revision of the tariff accord
ing to old methods. The people dreaded, and with good reason,
not only the repellent spectacle which followed every general
revision of the tariff in Washington — the pulling and hauling
and bargaining and trading of the various protected interests —
but they knew only too well the paralyzing effect upon business
which inevitably followed any such unscientific and whole
sale tinkering with the tariff. It had become almost a political
axiom that tariff reduction would be either impossible or fatal
to any administration, however strong.
Now, in a word, what has President Taft accomplished?
In the first place, the steady yielding of his party to the
pressure of the beneficiaries of the tariff has been stopped; the
steady upward rise of tariff taxation has ceased; the corner has
been turned and a marked beginning made in the process of
reduction. That alone is an achievement which none of his
Republican predecessors have ever accomplished.
In the second place, under his vigorous initiative a method
has been found and laid before the people which will eliminate
the evils of the past and which will provide a scientific method
for the future. He and his party now stand for a revision
schedule by schedule, so as to make trading between protected
interests impossible. He and his party now stand for a revision

to be made upon the scientific information acquired by an
expert board instead of the ex parle statements made by the
beneficiaries of the tariff. Under this system for the first time
the consumer has an adequate hearing, while at the same time
it is rendered impossible for an ignorant or ill-considered re
duction to be made which would destroy a legitimate industry.
As he himself has expressed it in his veto of the reckless cotton
bill sent up to him last summer by the Democrats:
The important thing is to get our tariff legislation out of the slough
of guesswork and logrolling and ex parte statements of interested
persons, and to establish that legislation on the basis of tested and
determined facts, to which shall be applied, fairly and openly, whatever
tariff principle the people of the country choose to adopt.
Is not this a tremendous achievement in the direction of
national progress — ^to completely rescue his party from the
methods and influences which, if uncontrolled, would inevitably
turn it into a party of special interest and reaction? Is he not
right in standing to the uttermost, even to the exercise of all
of the Executive powers of veto, against the old privilege-
breeding methods of tariff revision employed by the Demo
cratic House of Representatives? Is he not right in insisting,
even against popular clamor, that we shall make a clean break
with the past and that no tariff revision shall take place except
upon these conditions and after a scientific study by a non
partisan board of experts ? Only in that way can the corrupting
influence of tariff legislation be minimized and the RepubUcan
party kept true to its original principles.
RECIPROCITY.
The President's efforts for reciprocity furnish another example
of his attitude towards national progress. The reciprocity
law was carried through under his personal initiative and leader
ship. Until he spoke, the nation had not awakened to the
broad importance of that great movement. It represents a
pohcy of great foresight and wisdom. Our nation is rapidly
passing beyond a period of exploitation into one of conservation.

The end of our virgin homestead land has been virtually
reached. The old days of wasteful methods of farming are over ;
the new days of intensive farming are at hand; and the lesson
must be learned with an unexpected suddenness which is bound
to produce some hardship. At the same time, we are rapidly
changing from a nation of food producers into a nation of food
consumers; from a nation with a majority of farmers into a
nation with a majority of city dweUers. Coincident with this,
and partially as a result of it, has come a great rise in the cost
of living.
I live in the city of New York. I know the wages of the
factory workers and sweat-shop toilers of that great city, and I
know the very narrow margin which separates many of them
from want. I am well aware' of the acute suffering which has
been caused among those workers by the rise in the prices of
¦ their food supply, and what any future rise in that supply must
mean to them.
In his reciprocity program the President with clear foresight
strove to meet this great national need and to alleviate this
coming burden of distress upon our working population. He
sought to open the grain fields of Canada as a food supply
against the time when our own fields should be no longer suffi
cient. He sought to do it at a time when it could be done
without undue injury to any American producer, but simply
as a guarantee against future hardship and oppression. He
rose far above the narrow vision of locality or trade into a con
tinental policy which is bound to be right if the laws of nature
and the features of geography are right.
THE TRUST PROBLEM.
In almost his first message to the first regular session of Con
gress under his administration, in January, 1910, President Taft
recommended a far-sighted policy of federal regulation over our
great industrial corporations. He even presented to Congress,
through his Attorney General, a bill providing for the incorpora
tion under federal laws of corporations engaged in interstate
business or trade. To that or some very closely similar system

of federal regulation this nation must, in my opinion, eventuaUy
come if it is ever to solve the problem of the trusts. But at the
time when he thus suggested it, the nation was so unalive to its
necessity that his recommendation was virtuaUy ignored.
The President then proceeded to enforce the laws against
trusts already standing upon the statute books, and he enforced
them with a vigor which soon brought the importance of the
question to the attention of the country. The necessities of the
situation are now abundantly apparent ; and when in his message
on the Sherman Anti-Trust Law last December the President
again renewed his former recommendations as to federal regula
tion, his words fell upon more receptive ears.
People throughout the country now reaUze that there is a
trust problem which mere denunciation and even vigorous prose
cution alone will not solve. They reaUze now the need of con
structive legislation to meet a great economic puzzle which was
unknown to earlier generations. On the one side the captain
of industry has now learned his lesson. He now well realizes
that he cannot, by hoping for an unenforced Sherman Law,
escape all effective Government regulation. And on the other
side the people have come to know that there is a real problem
which cannot be met by indiscriminate attack on business or an
indiscriminate demand for criminal prosecution.
The public interest thus aroused has brought forward a host
of earnest investigators. The resulting suggestions of construc
tive remedies are gradually narrowing down into very similar
lines, and these lines approach with remarkable closeness the
recommendations for which the President stands. As soon as
we can get over the unsettling effect of an imminent Presidential
election, we seem to be in a fair wayof solving our trust problem
and solving it right. CORPORATION TAX.
For years the battle of those progressives who wished property
to pay a larger and fairer share of the expenses of Govemment
has been directed towards the passage of an income tax. To do
this, in view of the decision of the Supreme Court, a Constitu-

tional amendment was necessary. Without waiting for the long
process of obtaining such an amendment, Mr. Taft has advocated
and brought about the enactment of and has brought into suc
cessful administrative working a corporation excise tax which
serves substantially the purpose of an income tax. Practically
aU of our large business is now incorporated. Therefore, this
tax on the net earnings of business corporations reaches much
the same property as would be reached by an income tax. It
reaches the income from virtually all investments, except invest
ments in the form of bonded or other debt. And it does it with
out many of the objectionable features which characterize an
income tax. The law has already been held constitutional by
the Supreme Court, and thus in the great battle for progress Mr.
Taft has turned the flank of one of the most stubborn fortresses
of reaction. *
MR. taft's interest IN HUMAN WELFARE.
Some of the President's critics have suggested that he was
more interested in the machinery of government and in questions
of property rights than in the promotion of human welfare. It
is a singular criticism to make of a man who gave up his cherished
profession, who abandoned the honorable ambition of his youth
of attaining a seat upon our highest bench, in order to undertake,
amid the dangers of a tropical climate, the heavy burden of
leading slowly upward in the paths of civilization and self-
government a helpless and an alien people. To the Filipino his
name is synonymous with that kindly, brotherly attitude which
characterized his policy in the islands, and this deep personal
interest in the welfare of the inhabitants of those islands has
continued ever since, and manifested itself in countless efforts in
their behalf. Fortunate it is for American rule in the Philippine
Islands that the real character of Mr. Taft is better known there
than to these mistaken American critics.
Vital interest in humanity is properly demanded of the head
of the RepubUc, and I beUeve firmly that Mr. Taft is guided
by a deep interest in human welfare. What else is it that
underlies his burning zeal on behalf of the Arbitration Treaties —

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the favorite topic which never fails to kindle his eloquence?'
His latest message to Congress transmits the report of a Commis
sion on the subject of employers' liability and workmen's com
pensation, and in it he discusses carefully and intelligently and
with zeal and sympathy the best method of putting an end on
our interstate railroads to the disgraceful system which leaves
the burden of accident and injury upon the shoulders of the
men who are least able to bear it. Only a few weeks before he
urged upon Congress the estabUshment of an industrial com
mission which should take up the whole subject of the relations
of labor and capital. This whole message is pregnant with
appreciation of the inadequacy of the existing social machinery
and with a desire to bring about a betterment in the relations
of the workman to his employer. During his administration
there has been actually placed upon the statute books a safety-
appliance law to protect the workman, an employers' liability
law to compensate him for injuries', and an Act creating a
Mining Bureau, as Mr. Taft himself expressed it, "chiefly to
promote the cause of humanity in mining."
his progress has been MADE UPON THE BASIS OF CAREFULLY
INVESTIGATED FACTS.
Mr. Taft's administration has thus been essentially progressive.
But it has also fulfilled another necessary condition tD permanent
progress. He has not only been wilUng to advance, but he has
insisted that the steps to be taken should be taken upon the
basis of carefully ascertained facts and carefully studied con
clusions. I doubt if there has ever been an administration when
so many vital questions of progress were under careful, scientific
investigation and scrutiny by commissions of competent experts.
There is nothing dramatic about such a method. But a reform
accomplished in the light of such carefully accredited facts is
more likely to be permanent. This is the very essence of Mr.
Taft's method as a reformer.
Thus, we have the spectacle of a tariff" commission producing
a report on the woolen schedule so comprehensive, so thorough,
so fair and non-partisan, that even now, two months after its

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promulgation, it has yet to be seriously criticised by any single
element of the innumerable conflicting interests that have argued
about and fought over this controverted subject for a score of
years. The Hadley Commission has investigated the vexed
question of railroad capitalization and has rendered a far-
reaching and progressive report. Indeed, except for the study by
which it was buttressed and the authority and weight of its mem
bers, such a report might well have produced bitter party criti
cism instead of the respectful and almost universal commenda
tion which it has received. Again, the Hughes Commission,
after patient study of the subject, has brought in a report upon
the postal rates for second-class matter, including the cost of
the carriage of our magazines and newspapers, which has
apparently at once opened the way towards the amicable settle
ment of a controversy over which only two years ago the most
violent feelings and passions were aroused.
These are but suggestive examples. They serve to indicate
the spirit and the method which the President has sought to
instil throughout his administration. The conduct of the
Government has been quiet but effective; the conduct of his
administration, intelligent, watchful and dignified. Wherever
mistakes have been made, they have been promptly and thor
oughly remedied. The bitter controversy which two years ago
raged in the Department of the Interior has been completely
ended. The questions then raised have been solved, and solved
in the interests of the people. The conservation of our vast
natural resources, under the administration of your fellow-
townsman, the present Secretary of the Interior, has been
placed upon a plane which has completely silenced all former
critics. These are the standards by which the character of the
President's administration should be judged — by which the
character of any progressive administration should be judged —
namely, by its open-mindedness to the needs and demands of
the present, by the patient care with which it investigates the
underlying facts, and by the courage with which it takes its
advanced position after such study.

WE MUST NOT CONFUSE REFORMS AND REMEDIES PECULIAR TO
THE PROBLEMS OF INDIVIDUAL STATES WITH THE STANDARDS
AND REQUIREMENTS OF NATIONAL PROGRESS.
Of late there has been sweeping over the country a widespread
discussion of various poUtical reforms and remedies which are
being tried in many of our States. Grievous abuses have existed
in practicaUy all of our States; abuses which have greatly
diminished the efficiency of popular government and which
have tended to take the real power over affairs out of the hands
of the people and place it in the hands of professional poli
ticians. Sincere and energetic reformers are at work in our
different States in attacking these evils and seeking to establish
more effective and purer systems of government, both for
those States and for their municipalities. 'Yery different and
conflicting theories are held by equally intelUgent and sincere
men. The 48 States of our Union, with their infinite variety
of climate, geography and social conditions, offer just so many
opportunities for experiment in the methods of local self-govern
ment. It is idle to expect a system which may work well in
one of these communities to apply equaUy well to aU. Equally
disinterested reformers may reach widely varying conclusions
in different commonwealths. Successful progressive reform
in Oregon or Wisconsin may be very different from successful
progressive reform in New York or Pennsylvania, with their
different business and social conditions.
It is mere narrowness and intolerance to insist upon a remedy
which has proved effective in one place, as the necessar\- test
of sincere or inteUigent reform in another. It is even more
erroneous to make fideUty to one of those schemes of local
government in one of these commonwealths a test for what is
proper or appropriate in the government of the nation at large.
For example, it is quite generally beUeved that the refer
endum has worked satisfactorily and weU in the State of Oregon.
On the other hand, it is beUeved with equal sincerity and with
equal generality that the system of referendum of constitutional
questions in New York, where it has been in effect for upwards
of fifty years, has worked ineffectively and badly. Should

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the national Republican who lives in New York be read out
of his party because he declines to accept the referendum as
the best remedy to cure the abuses of popular government in
his own State?
The structure of our Federal Government is wholly different
from that of any of these States. Whereas most of them are
suffering from a complexity of system which makes reform in
their structural machinery absolutely necessary, in the structure
of the Federal Government we have retained the simplicity
instituted by the fathers. Instead of electing such a vast
number of public officers as to make an intelligent choice impos
sible to the average voter and thus compel him to surrender his
power to the professional poUtician, we have in the National
Government retained the short ballot system in its simplicity
and elect only our President and Congressman. We have
great problems before us, but they are the substantive problems
of applying the national power to the welfare of our varied
people and to the regulation of our newly-developed giant
industries. The problem of reforming the political structure
of the Government, of obtaining more adequate machinery for
registering the people's will, which is so pressing in our States
and in our cities, is much less important in the domain of the
Federal Government. It therefore only confuses and distracts
to drag into a national campaign the prejudices and Shibboleths
which have arisen in the contests of the different States. Mr.
Taft's administration must be judged by the attitude with which
he has approached and the success that he has attained in dealing
with these national problems, and not according to the views
which any of us may hold upon these local questions of State
machinery. THE JUDICIAL RECALL.
Among the remedies which have been thus discussed in our
different States is the recall. The only application of this
remedy to the national Government which has been proposed,
has been to apply it to the Federal Judiciary. As to this I only
wish to say that I am thoroughly in accord with the position

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taken by Mr. Taft. I am whoUy opposed to the proposition
to recaU the Federal Judge. The Federal Judiciary has been
the choicest flower of our entire judicial system. Mr. Bryce,
in his "American Commonwealth," has said.
There is no part of the American system which reflects more credit
on its authors or has worked better in practice.
It is true that the American judge, in his right to pass upon
Constitutional questions, wields a tremendous political power,
and it is true that that power has been sometimes abused. It is
true that the judge, like other public officers, is, in a broad sense,
the servant of the people, and that in exercising this political
power his course must be ultimately determined by the matured
and deliberate conclusions of the people in framing the funda
mental law of the land. But there are better ways of accom
plishing this necessary result of bringing the judge into accord
with the enlightened conscience of the people as expressed in its
Constitution than by dragging him down into the welter of
politics. Our experience has abundantly shown that, under the
influence of honest, keen and unsparing criticism of his deci
sions — criticism such as Mr. Lincoln rendered to the Dred Scott
decision and such as Mr. Roosevelt has rendered to some of the
reactionary decisions of our own times — this result can eventu
ally be accomplished. I venture to say that there is no court
and no body of men so intelligently alive to the needs of human
welfare under our constantly changing national conditions as the
Justices who sit to-day upon our great Federal Supreme Court.
The careful and conscientious methods which are employed in
their selection by the Presidents who choose them, and the
inteUigent and fair-minded criticism of their decisions on the
great Constitutional questions of the day, may be safely trusted
to maintain this attitude in the future, and at the same time to
protect their dignity and independence in deciding upon ques
tions of individual rights.
Four years ago, in his speech of acceptance of the nomination
for President, Mr. Taft outUned the relation which he deemed
his administration should sustain to that of his predecessor. His
position was carefully and deliberately taken, and it was taken

15
with the thorough approval and deliberate endorsement of Mr.
Roosevelt. In that speech Mr. Taft said
We should be blind to the ordinary working of human nature if we
did not recognize that the moral standards set by President Roosevelt
will not continue to be observed by those whom cupidity and a desire
for financial power may tempt, unless the requisite machinery is intro
duced into the law which shall, in its practical operation, maintain
these standards and secure the country against a departure from them.
The chief function of the next administration, in my judgment,
is distinct from and a progressive development of that which has been
performed by President Roosevelt. The chief function of the next
administration is to complete and perfect the machinery by which
these standards may be maintained, by which the lawbreakers may be
promptly restrained and punished, but which shall operate with suf
ficient accuracy and dispatch to interfere with legitimate business as
little as possible.
To this work Mr. Taft has devoted himself. He thus deliber
ately renounced more striking methods of reform and set himself
to the undramatic and inconspicuous public service which leaves
out all thought of a man's own aggrandizement. He has
repeatedly, for example, urged upon Congress to placeupon the
classified civil service virtually all of the Presidential offices —
a measure which would at one blow strike out most of the
enormous political power of the President.
The results of this deliberate self-abnegation are shown in the
great legislative and constructive accomplishments of his term.
Is it fair now to criticise him because, in faithfully carrying out
this pledge of four years ago — in performing this vitally useful
though inconspicuous work — he has not dominated the public
attention with dramatic display?
Furthermore, in the interest excited by new proposals of
reform we must never forget that it is even more important to
preserve the greaf body of our laws and traditions which have
grown up under and which embody the conclusions of the wisest
and the purest and the best men of our history as to what is
necessary for the preservation of liberty and order and justice.
It is no slight thing to continue that greatest line of progress
which consists in the continued elevation of the standards and
the morals of the public service. No change in the methods or

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machinery of government, no enactment of reform legislation, is
of equal consequence in comparison with having the ideals of the
whole people continue to move upward. For, unless you keep
the standards and ideals of the people up to the laws, you cannot
enforce those laws. Mr. Taft's standards of administration,
like those of Mr. Roosevelt, have been constantly towards
purity and elevation in our public service and our pubUc life.
With great patience, with unswerving courage, with absolute
disinterestedness, in these excitable times when men's minds are
full of a readiness for criticism and a desire for experiment, he
has carried on the burden of administration and has carried it
forward. It will be a reflection upon our own power of fair-
minded and candid judgment if we do not recognize the merit as
well as the difficulty of that achievement now.

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