TAFT 



6679 



TAFT 



The White House: Executive Office in 



Foreground. 



.AFT, WILLIAM HOWARD (1857- ), an 

 American statesman, the twenty-seventh Presi- 

 dent of the United States. It was the tragedy 

 of President Taft's administration that it trans- 

 formed him from one of the most popular of 

 Americans to one who came to be disliked by 

 a large section of the people. By temperament 

 and training Taft was a judge. The very traits 

 which are most admirable in a judge studious 

 habits, deliberate decisions were most exas- 

 perating in a President at a time when quick 

 decisions and a keen grasp of new things were 

 needed. As President, moreover, Taft lacked 

 the personal picturesqueness of his predecessor, 

 Roosevelt, with whom he was constantly com- 

 pared, and with whom he finally quarreled. 



In the course of years the mistakes made by 

 the Taft administration will seem less signifi- 

 cant, and historians will be inclined to give 

 more heed to its high aims and just motives, 

 and to its real and great achievements. In the 

 heat of political conm'ct, charges of bad faith 

 and evil motives were so frequent that the 

 essential fairness of the President's position was 

 often lost to view. As with Grover Cleveland, 

 so with William Howard Taft; the unpopu- 

 larity of the moment may be turned into last- 

 ing respect in fact, is already so turning. In 

 private life President Taft's virtues were hon- 

 ored without stint, and he won the liking of 

 men with whom he came into intimate rela- 

 tions; his bitterest political opponents could 

 yet remain among his good friends. 



William Howard Taft was born on 'Septem- 

 ber 15, 1857, at Cincinnati, Ohio. He was the 

 son cf Alphonso Taft and his second wife, 

 Louisa Torrey, both of whose ancestors joined 

 the Massachusetts Bay colony in the first half 

 of the seventeenth century. Alphonso Taft was 

 an able lawyer and a distinguished public serv- 

 ant. He first came into national prominence 

 as a judge of the Cincinnati superior court, 

 when he upheld the right of the local board of 



education to abolish the reading of the Bible 

 in the common schools. Although this decision 

 cost him the governorship of Ohio, it gave him 

 a national reputation, which President Grant 

 recognized when he made him Secretary of 

 War (March, 1876) and then Attorney-General 

 (May, 1876). 



In 1874, after his graduation from the Wood- 

 ward High School of his native city, young 

 Taft entered Yale University. There he frankly 

 set out to win honors for scholarship. It is 

 noteworthy, however, that his attention to his 

 studies did not keep him from becoming one of 

 the most popular men in his class, and in his 

 senior year he was elected to one of the exclu- 

 sive, secret "senior societies," or clubs. At 

 graduation he ranked second in a class of 121 

 men. Returning home, he studied at the Cin- 

 cinnati Law School, and when he was graduated 

 in 1880 he shared first honors with one other. It 

 is interesting to note that Robert, President 

 Taft's eldest son, graduated in 1913 from the 

 Harvard Law School with the highest honors 

 which that institution had ever awarded. 



Instead cf entering immediately on the prac- 

 tice cf his profession, the future President be- 

 came law reporter for the Cincinnati Times, 

 which was owned by his half brother, Charles 

 Phelps Taft (born 1843). As the son of. Judge 

 Alphonso Taft and as the younger brother of 

 one of the leading Cincinnati .newspaper own- 

 ers, he was almost from the day of his admis- 

 sion to the bar under the watchful eye of the 

 local Republican party managers, but it was his 

 demonstrated ability that brought him such 

 rapid advancement that at thirty he ascended 

 the bench as jud~e cf the Ohio superior court. 

 In the meantime he had been assistant prose- 

 cutor cf Hamilton County, collector of internal 

 revenue and assistant solicitor of Hamilton 

 County. He was serving in the last office when 

 Governor Foraker in 1887 appointed him to fill 

 a vacancy on the superior court. When Taft's 



