TAFT 



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TAFT 



referendum and recall, the commission form of 

 municipal government, the city manager, the 

 frequent investigations into the affairs of trusts, 

 the conservation movement, and, finally, the 

 breach in the Republican party these were all 

 signs of the times. 



Woman suffrage made tremendous strides 

 between 1909 and 1913. Washington in 1910, 

 California in 1911, Arizona, Kansas and Oregon 

 in 1912 were added to the list of states which 

 have granted full suffrage to women. These 

 brought the total to twelve states at the end 

 of the Taft administration. Another striking 

 movement was the rapid spread of prohibition. 

 As a matter of fact only one state, West Vir- 

 ginia (in 1912), adopted prohibition while Taft 

 was President, but the movement was gathering 

 force which was revealed by the addition of 

 five states to the "dry" column in 1914 and 

 1915, and by many additions to the local option 

 "dry" areas. One of the most significant po- 

 litical changes since the War of Secession was 

 the adoption of the Seventeenth Amendment 

 to the Constitution. It provided for the popu- 

 lar election of United States Senators. It was 

 proposed in 1913, but did not become effective 

 until after the expiration of Taft's term. An- 

 other great change was the Sixteenth Amend- 

 ment, which was adopted in 1913, and author- 

 ized the levy of a direct Federal income tax. 

 In a few years this was to become one of the 

 chief sources of the national revenue. 



While the existing unrest thus expressed it- 

 self in certain concrete achievements, it was 

 also revealed in a general tendency to investi- 

 gate. Thus the President, by virtue of a clause 

 in the Payne-Aldrich Act, appointed a tariff 

 board of five members to study the making of 

 future tariffs. The board had no legal standing, 

 and much of its labor was wasted. Another 

 great investigation was that conducted by the 

 National Monetary Commission, headed by 

 Senator Nelson W. Aldrich; out of its report 

 grew the Federal Reserve Bank system (see 

 BANKS AND BANKING). 



The Anti-Trust Tendencies. But what will 

 probably be longest remembered as the distin- 

 guishing feature of the Taft administration was 

 its attitude towards the great trusts. The At- 

 torney-General, George W. Wickersham, or- 

 ganized a bureau for the purpose of studying 

 suspicious-appearing corporations and obtaining 

 evidence. Suits at law and in equity were 

 brought against about seventy trusts, including 

 those which controlled the manufacture or dis- 

 tribution of sugar, beef, lumber, paper, window 



glass, bathtubs, wire, steel, harvesters, shoe ma- 

 chinery and shipping. In 1911 the Supreme 

 Court ordered the dissolution of the Standard 

 Oil Company and the so-called "tobacco trust." 

 All trusts were pursued with impartiality, with 

 the result that more combinations were called 

 in civil or criminal suits than had been attacked 

 by all of Taft's predecessors since the passage 

 of the Sherman Act in 1890. At the same time 

 the spirit of the public was indicated by Con- 

 gressional "investigations," none of which had 

 results of lasting importance. The most con- 

 spicuous was the investigation of the "money 

 trust," or the banking and financial interests. 

 The facts disclosed were of value in framing 

 the Federal Reserve Act and the Clayton Anti- 

 Trust Act in the succeeding administration. 



Balling er-Pinchot Controversy, Almost at the 

 outset of his term President Taft identified 

 himself, perhaps unwillingly, with the extreme 

 conservative Republicans as against the pro- 

 gressive element. In the Ballinger-Pinchot dis- 

 pute he sided with his Secretary of the Interior, 

 Richard A. Ballinger, and dismissed Gifford 

 Pinchot from office. Pinchot had charged that 

 the Interior Department had encouraged illegal 

 entries for Alaskan coal lands and in other ways 

 had abandoned the policy of conservation of 

 natural resources as begun in the Roosevelt 

 administration. Technically Pinchot was guilty 

 of insubordination, for which he was dismissed, 

 but the fact that the evidence against Ballinger 

 was strong might have justified the President 

 in taking some other course. He, however, 

 stood by the Secretary, who was ultimately 

 exonerated by a Congressional committee. 



The Breach in the Republican Party. During 

 the Roosevelt administration there had arisen 

 a fairly sharp distinction between the conserva- 

 tive and the progressive elements in the Re- 

 publican party. The latter generally had the 

 support of the President, and when Taft took 

 office on Roosevelt's recommendation, it was 

 assumed that he would continue Roosevelt's 

 policies. By his defense of the Payne-Aldrich 

 Tariff Act, however, President Taft immedi- 

 ately alienated the progressive Republicans. 

 The two factions were further divided by the 

 more or less openly avowed sympathy of 

 Roosevelt with the insurgents, on his return 

 from Africa. The breach between the two 

 factions led to a Democratic victory in the 

 Congressional elections of 1910, and gave the 

 Democrats control of the House of Representa- 

 tives. The Democrats, aided from time to time 

 by the insurgent Republicans, carried tariff 



