The United States Since the Civil War Part 25

The election resulted in the choice of President Roosevelt, whose popular vote was 7,600,000 to Parker's 5,000,000. In the more populous sections of the country, which were normally Republican, the party vote scarcely exceeded that of 1900, but in the Far West, the increases were notable. Beyond the Mississippi River, except in the southern states, hardly a county gave a majority for Parker, showing that the region which had gone to Bryan in 1896 was substantially solid for Roosevelt.

Indeed, the policies to which Roosevelt was committed bore a greater resemblance to the principles of Bryan than to the _laissez faire_ philosophy to which many important Republican leaders adhered. Despite their dissent, however, his victory in the election was so overwhelming that he could carry out his program with the irresistible pressure of public opinion behind him.

During the campaign year, the Commissioner of Corporations was busy investigating the activities of the so-called "beef-trust," and a suit against the combination was pressed to a successful conclusion in January, 1905. In its decision in the case (Swift & Company _v._ United States), the Supreme Court dwelt at some length on the charges made against the Company. A dominant proportion--six-tenths--of the dealers in fresh meat in the United States were alleged to have agreed not to bid against one another in the live-stock markets; to restrict the output of meat in order to raise prices; to keep a black-list; and to get illegal rates from the railroads to the exclusion of compet.i.tors.

To the objection of the members of the trust that the charges against them were general and did not set forth any specific facts, the Court retorted that the scheme alleged was so vast as to present a new problem in pleading. The decision was against the combination, which was ordered to dissolve. The publicity given to the case and to the methods of the meat packers a.s.sisted in the pa.s.sage of legislation requiring government inspection of meats.

An unexpected phase of the Sherman act appeared in 1908, in the case Loewe _v._ Lawlor. The American Federation of Labor, acting through its official organ, had declared a boycott against D.E. Loewe, a hat manufacturer of Danbury, Connecticut. The Court decided that a combination of labor organizations designed to boycott a dealer's goods was a combination in restraint of trade and that the manufacturer might maintain an action against the Hatters' Union for damages.[5]

In the meantime, another prominent trust had played into the hands of the administration. The American Sugar Refining Company imported large amounts of raw sugar, on which it paid tariff duties. In November, 1907, it was discovered that the Company had tampered with the scales on which the incoming sugar was weighed, in such a manner as to defraud the government. In the resulting legal actions, over $4,000,000 were recovered from the Company, criminal prosecutions were carried on against the officials and employees, and several of them were convicted. The close relation between the railroads and the great corporations was indicated when the Standard Oil Company of Indiana was brought into court on the charge of receiving rebates on petroleum shipped over the Chicago and Alton Railroad. The decision by Judge K.M.

Landis was that the Company was guilty on 1,462 separate counts and must pay a fine of $29,240,000. On appeal to a higher court the case was dismissed, partly on a question concerning the meaning of the law.

The efforts of Roosevelt in the direction of control of the railroads resembled his activities in relation to industrial combinations. A variety of circ.u.mstances had combined to arouse a popular demand for the reinforcement of existing legislation: the discovery of grave abuses in connection with the transportation of petroleum; the continuance of favoritism and rebating, together with increasing public knowledge of their existence; the rise in freight rates; and the consolidation of the railroads into a few large systems, with the accompanying concentration of power in the hands of a small number of persons. In his public speeches and in his messages to Congress in 1904 and 1905, President Roosevelt made himself the spokesman of the popular will. In particular--and it was here that the conflict was destined to rage--the President called for the transfer to the Interstate Commerce Commission of the power to determine the rates which the roads should be allowed to charge. The project was not a new one, having already taken shape in previous years, but at no time was Congress prepared to pa.s.s definite legislation. The reaction of the railroads to the rising demand was energetic. A costly propaganda was entered upon designed to prove to the public that the roads should be let alone. A powerful lobby worked insistently upon Congress, first to prevent action and later, when action was seen to be inevitable, to weaken the legislation wherever possible. The railroad's campaign of popular education, however, helped to convince the popular mind that new laws were needed, and came coincidently with the disclosures of corporate mismanagement and wrong-doing. The outcome was the Hepburn Act of June 29, 1906.

Its major provisions were five in number. It enlarged the scope of the Interstate Commerce Act so as to include control of express and sleeping car companies, pipe lines, switches, spur tracks and terminals. Free pa.s.ses, which had hitherto been productive of much favoritism and the source of political corruption, were strictly forbidden, except to a few specified cla.s.ses. The "commodity clause"

forbade railroads to carry goods, other than timber, in which they had an interest, except such as they were going to use themselves. This provision was designed mainly to check the activities of those companies which owned both coal mines and railroads, and which used their advantageous position to crush independent operators. Its force, however, was largely nullified by subsequent decisions of the courts.

The Hepburn law also enabled the Commission to prescribe the methods of book-keeping which the roads must follow, to call for monthly or special reports and to employ examiners who should have access to the books of the carriers. The roads were even denied the right to keep any records except those approved by the Commission. These drastic features of the law were due in part to the practices of certain roads which hid away corrupt expenditures in their accounts in such a manner that detection was almost impossible. Most important, however, among the provisions of the Act was that in relation to rate-making, which not only empowered the Commission to hear complaints that rates were unjust or unreasonable, but even enabled it to determine what would be a just and reasonable charge in the case, and to order the carrier complained of to adhere to the new rate. The rate-making section of the Hepburn Act immediately resulted in a large increase in the number of complaints entered by shippers against the carriers. Previously, few cases had been taken to the Commission--only 878 in eighteen years--because relief was seldom obtained and then only at great cost in time and money. Under the new law more than 1500 cases were entered within two and a half years, and several thousand others were informally settled out of court.

The example of the federal government in adopting restrictive railway legislation was followed by the states, on a nation-wide scale. Hours of labor were regulated, liability for accidents defined, railroad commissions given larger powers, and freight and pa.s.senger rates determined. The result was a tangle of local regulations, many of which were designed to embarra.s.s the roads and others of which were pa.s.sed with slight knowledge of the practical questions involved.

Aside from his connection with the anti-trust campaign and the movement for railroad regulation, Roosevelt's most significant activities during his second administration related to conservation. As early as 1880 the Superintendent of the Census had called attention to the exhaustion of the best public lands. The truth of his a.s.sertion had been exemplified in the rush of settlers to Oklahoma when the former Indian Territory was opened to settlement on April 22, 1889. At noon on that day the blast of a cavalry bugle was the signal that any settler might enter and stake out his claim. On foot, on fleet horses, in primitive wagons, an excited, jostling mob rushed toward those lands that seemed most desirable. Trains were crowded to the roofs; tools, furniture, and portable houses were carried in from Texas, Nebraska and Kansas. By nightfall a stretch of waving prairie became Gruthrie, with a population of 10,000 persons; by the evening of the first day Oklahoma possessed a population of 50,000; twenty years later it had over a million and a half, contained flourishing cities, many public enterprises, and a beautiful state university.

The fact that desirable land was becoming so rare called attention to the waste and dishonesty in connection with our public land system. In his annual report for 1884 the Secretary of the Interior had complained that large amounts of land had been acquired under fict.i.tious names or by persons employed for the purpose. Their holdings were then pa.s.sed over to speculators who retained huge areas for a rising market.

Railroads had kept lands granted to them, without fulfilling the conditions of the grants. t.i.tled Englishmen and English land companies had gained control of tracts of unbelievable size, one of them being estimated at 3,000,000 acres. The history of the disposal of the public land had almost been duplicated in the history of the forest-bearing public domain, except that measures had earlier been taken to conserve the remnant of the once magnificent supply of standing timber. An act of 1891 had enabled the president to set apart as public reservations any lands bearing forests. All the presidents, from Harrison down, had availed themselves of their power, and had established great numbers of reservations, most of them in states west of the Mississippi.[6]

A few far-sighted individuals had long urged caution in the disposal of the public resources. Some beginnings in fact had already been made in the Division of Forestry in the Department of Agriculture, where Clifford Pinchot was actively interested in forest preservation. In 1901 and later his functions had been expanded, and the forestry service had taken up protection against fire, the sale of timber, and reforestation. In 1907 President Roosevelt appointed a commission to study the inland waterways, which after careful investigation recommended a convention for the discussion of conservation problems.

Thereupon the President invited the governors of the states to Washington for a conference, at which conservation questions were thoroughly discussed. The resulting recommendations composed a complete, although general plan of reform: the natural resources of the country to be used for the prosperity of the American people; reclamation of arid lands; conservation of forests, minerals and water-power; the protection of the sources of the rivers; and cooperation between Congress and the states in developing a conservation program. A National Conservation Commission was later appointed which coordinated the work of organizing the movement, and made an exhaustive inventory of the nation's natural resources.

The conservation movement also called attention to the possibilities of the arid region between the western parts of Kansas, Nebraska and the Dakotas, and the eastern border of California. Within this vast area were large tracts of land that would be fertile if sufficiently supplied with water. The most important legislation in a series of acts designed to meet this need was the Reclamation Act of 1902. Under its provisions the federal government set aside the proceeds of the sale of public land in sixteen states and territories as a fund for irrigation work. With the resources thus obtained, water powers were developed, reservoirs built and large tracts supplied with water. Private companies and western states also carried out numerous projects. The Department of Agriculture after its establishment in 1889 also conducted many undertakings which, in effect, were conservation enterprises. It helped educate the American farmer in scientific methods, sought new crops in every corner of the globe, discovered and circulated means of combating diseases and insects, studied soils, distributed seeds and gathered statistics. In the arid and semi-arid regions the discovery of dry farming was of great value. This consists of planting the seed deep and keeping a mulch of dust on the surface by frequent cultivation, in order to r.e.t.a.r.d the evaporation of the moisture in the ground underneath.[7]

Nothing can be more apparent than the complete change of position which was brought about during the eight years after the death of President McKinley. At the end of that period, both the industrial corporations and the railways were on the defensive, and the public had secured the whip hand. Industry, especially the railroads, was tamed and hobbled--some thought, crippled. Many factors contributed to the revolution. President Roosevelt was its most active agent, to be sure,--its "gigantic advertiser" and popularizer. But it could hardly have taken place--at least at the time and in the way it did--without the great upheaval of 1896, without the publicity which the "muck-rake"

magazines and daily newspapers were able to offer, without the industrial consolidations of 1898 and later, and without the refusal of industry and the railways to obey earlier and less drastic laws, and their skilled and insistent attempts to find loop-holes in legislation.

From the standpoint of politics, the effect of the Roosevelt administrations was notable. As has been seen, the Republican party had become largely the party of the business and commercial cla.s.ses, conservative and unyielding to the new demands of the late nineteenth century. Its leadership had been sharply challenged by the forces of unrest in 1896. On an issue other than a monetary one, the success of Bryan would have been possible. The failure of the attempt to get control of the federal government in the interest of the Populist program was only a temporary defeat, for the revival of unrest, although checked by the war with Spain, was sure soon to reappear. In President Roosevelt, the forces of discontent, especially in the Middle and Far West, saw their hoped-for champion, and their support of him was instant and complete. The dominant leadership and much of the rank and file of the Republican party had become liberal. The situation was anomalous, however, for no great political party can experience a thorough-going change of philosophy in a few years. Only the future, therefore, could tell whether the newer and more liberal element would continue to control the party, or whether a reaction against its leadership would take place.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

It is too early to expect a biography of Roosevelt which is informed and critical, as well as sympathetic. The keenest judgment is to be found in _Atlantic Monthly_ (CIX, 577), "Mr. Roosevelt." The following are also available: L.F. Abbott, _Impressions of Theodore Roosevelt_ (1919); F.E. Leupp, _The Man Roosevelt_ (1904); W.R. Thayer, _Theodore Roosevelt_ (1919); C.G. Washburn, _Theodore Roosevelt; the Logic of His Career_ (1916). Roosevelt can be partly understood through a critical reading of his writings, especially his _Addresses and Presidential Messages_ (1904), and his _Autobiography_ (1913).

On the coal strike consult the _Autobiography_, and _Senate Reports_, 58th Congress, special session, Doc.u.ment No. 6 (Serial Number 4556), the report of the President's Commission. The election of 1904 is discussed in Latane, Croly and Stanwood: see also C.M. Pepper, _The Life and Times of Henry Ga.s.saway Davis_ (1920). The new railroad acts are well discussed in W.Z. Ripley, _Railroads: Rates and Regulations_ (1912), and by F.H. Dixon in _Quarterly Journal of Economics_, XXI, 22.

The literature of conservation is very large. An excellent single chapter is in Katherine Coman, _Industrial History of the United States_ (rev. ed., 1910); C.R. Van Hise, _The Conservation of Natural Resources in the United States_ (1913), is a standard work; R.P. Teele, _Irrigation in the United States_ (1915), is detailed; for doc.u.ments concerning the conference of governors, _House of Representatives Doc.u.ment_ No. 1425, 60th Congress, 2nd session (Serial Number 5538).

The anti-trust campaign is best followed in Theodore Roosevelt, _Addresses and Presidential Messages_, and in the _Autobiography_. The Northern Securities decision is in _United States Reports_, vol. 193, p. 197.

[1] In view of the later activities of President Roosevelt, there is point in the remark of a satirist that Roosevelt did carry out the policies of McKinley--and bury them. _Atlantic Monthly_, CIX, 164.

[2] Above, p. 257.

[3] It was later denied that Baer made the statement, but a photographic copy of the letter was printed in Lloyd, _Henry D. Lloyd_, II, 190. See also Mitch.e.l.l, _Organized Labor_, 384; Peck, _Twenty Years_, 693-6.

[4] Rumor says that Roosevelt sent Elihu Root to the eminent financial magnate, J.P. Morgan, with information of his intent to appoint the Cleveland Commission, and that Morgan applied the pressure to the coal operators.

[5] In 1917, fourteen years after Loewe's first suit, he recovered damages from the Union.

[6] In 1918, 151 national forests aggregated 176,000,000 acres.

Secretary of the Interior, _Annual Report_, 1918, 61.

[7] The territory of Alaska contains immense stores of natural resources which are being conserved with more wisdom than characterized the disposal of our continental supplies. The area of the territory, 586,400 square miles, const.i.tutes a, kingdom. It has uncounted wealth in fish, furs, timber, coal and precious metals. At present the federal government is building a railroad which will tap some of the resources of the region. _Enc. Brit._, "Alaska."

CHAPTER XXI

POLITICS, 1908-1912

By 1908, the year of the presidential election, an influential portion of the Republican members of Congress, particularly in the Senate, were bitterly opposed to President Roosevelt. His att.i.tude on the trusts and the railroads was offensive to many, and on several occasions he had gained the upper hand over Congress by means which were coming to be known as "big-stick" methods. The so-called "constructive recess" of 1903 was an example.

Under the provisions of the Const.i.tution, the president appoints many officials with the advice and consent of the Senate, when it is in session, and fills vacancies that happen during a recess by granting commissions which expire at the end of the next session. On December 2, 1903, at noon, one session of Congress came to an end and another began.

Precisely at 12 o'clock, according to the official statement, the President issued new commissions to W.D. Crum, a negro, to be collector of the port of Charleston, and also to 168 army officers, of whom the President's close friend Brigadier-General Leonard Wood was one. General Wood was to be promoted to a major-generalship and the remaining promotions were dependent upon his advance. The President's theory was that a "constructive recess" intervened between the two sessions, during which he could make recess appointments. Although the Senate was hostile to both Crum and Wood, it reluctantly succ.u.mbed to Roosevelt's wishes rather than withhold promotion from the 167 officers to whom it had no objection.

In 1908, Senator Tillman, an outspoken Democratic critic of the President, declared that senators vigorously denounced Roosevelt's radical ideas in private but that in public they opposed merely by inaction. Party loyalty was sufficient to keep these Republicans, in most cases, from open and continued rebellion. Hardly less hostile to the President were many of the business men of the country, who objected to his economic policies, but the only alternative to Roosevelt was Bryan, who, as one of the earliest proponents of radical legislation, was even more offensive. On the other hand, a large majority of the rank and file of the party, especially in the North and West, upheld the President with unfeigned enthusiasm and made his position in the party so strong that he could practically name his successor. Several candidates had more or less local support for the nomination--Senator Knox, of Pennsylvania, Governor Hughes, of New York, Speaker Cannon, of Illinois, Vice-President Fairbanks, of Indiana, Senator La Follette, of Wisconsin and Senator Foraker, of Ohio. The President's prestige and energy, however, were frankly behind the candidacy of his Secretary of War, William H. Taft.

The Republican convention of 1908 met in Chicago on June 16. Early in the proceedings the mention of Roosevelt's name brought an outburst of enthusiasm which indicated the possibility that he might be nominated for a third term, despite his expressed refusal to allow such a move to be made. In the platform the achievements of the retiring administration were recounted in glowing terms; tariff reform was promised; and a postal savings bank, the strengthening of the Interstate Commerce law and the Sherman Anti-trust act, the more accurate definition of the rules of procedure in the issuance of injunctions, good roads, conservation, pensions and the encouragement of shipping, received the stamp of party approval. Planks pledging the party to legislation requiring the publicity of campaign expenditures, the valuation of the physical property of railroads and the popular election of senators were uniformly rejected. The closing paragraph declared that the "trend of Democracy is toward Socialism, while the Republican party stands for wise and regulated individualism." The contest over the nomination was extremely brief, as Taft received 702 out of 979 votes on the first ballot. James S. Sherman of New York was nominated for the vice-presidency.

The Democrats, meanwhile, were in a quandary. A considerable fraction of the party desired the nomination of somebody other than Bryan, whose defeats in 1896 and 1900 had cast doubts upon the wisdom of a third trial. Nevertheless the failure of Parker in 1904 had been so overwhelming that the nomination of a conservative seemed undesirable and, moreover, no candidate appeared whose achievements or promise could overcome the prestige of Bryan. The national convention was held in Denver, July 7-10, and Bryan dominated all its activities. The platform welcomed the Republican promise to reform the tariff, but doubted its sincerity; promised changes in the Interstate Commerce law, a more elastic currency, improvements in the law of injunctions, generous pensions, good roads and the conservation of the national resources. In the main, however, the platform was an emphatic condemnation of the Republican party as the party of "privileges and private monopoly." It declared that the Republican speaker of the House of Representatives exercised such absolute domination as to stop the enactment of measures desired by the majority. It demanded the termination of the "partnership which has existed between corporations of the country and the Republican party," by which the business interests contributed great sums of money in elections in return for an unmolested opportunity to "encroach upon the rights of the people." It promised the enactment of laws preventing corporation contributions to campaign funds and providing for the publication before election of all contributions by individuals.

Detailed and definite planks in relation to trusts indicated that the framers of the platform possessed at least the courage of their convictions. Three laws were promised: one preventing the duplication of directors among competing corporations; another establishing a license system which would place under federal authority those corporations engaged in interstate commerce which controlled as much as twenty-five per cent. of the product in which they dealt, and which should likewise protect the public from watered stock and prohibit any single corporation from controlling over fifty per cent. of the total amount of any commodity consumed in the United States; and, third, a law forcing corporations to sell to purchasers in all sections of the country on the same terms, after making due allowance for transportation costs.

As soon as the platform was out of the way, the convention turned to the nomination of the candidate. Only George Gray, of Delaware, and John A.

Johnson, of Minnesota, contested the leadership of Bryan, but their support was so slight that he was chosen on the first ballot. John W.

Kern, of Indiana, was nominated for the vice-presidency.

Of the smaller parties which shared in the election of 1908, the People's party and the Socialists should be mentioned. The Populists adopted a program of economic reforms many parts of which had been prominent in their platforms of 1892 and 1896. Both the Republicans and the Democrats, however, had adopted so many of these earlier demands that the Populists rapidly lost strength and disappeared after 1908. The Socialists likewise advocated economic reforms, together with government ownership of the railroads, and of such industries as were organized on a national scale. The candidate nominated was Eugene V. Debs, a labor leader who had gained prominence at the time of the Pullman strike.[1]

The only novelty in the campaign was Bryan's stand in regard to campaign funds. By calling upon his supporters for large numbers of small individual contributions, he drew attention to the fact that the corporations were helping generously to meet Taft's election expenses.

At their leader's direction the Democratic committee announced that it would receive no contributions whatever from corporations, that it would accept no offering over $10,000 and that it would publish a list of contributors before the close of the campaign.

The result of the election was the triumph of Taft and his party. The Republican popular vote was 7,700,000; the Democratic, 6,500,000; the Socialist, 420,890. The election also gave the Republicans control of Congress, which was to be const.i.tuted as follows during 1909-1911: Senate, Democrats, 32, Republicans, 61; House of Representatives, Democrats, 172, Republicans, 219.

Few men in our history have had a wider judicial and administrative experience before coming to the presidency than that of William H. Taft.

He was born in 1857 in Ohio, graduated from Yale University with high rank in the cla.s.s of 1878 and later entered upon the study of law. A judicial temperament early manifested itself and Taft became successively judge of the Superior Court in Cincinnati and of a United States Circuit Court. From the latter post he was called to serve upon the Philippine Commission, was later Governor of the Philippines and Secretary of War in Roosevelt's cabinet. During the period of his connection with the Philippines and his membership in the Cabinet he visited Cuba, Panama, Porto Rico, j.a.pan and the Papal Court at Rome in connection with matters of federal importance.

Personally Taft is kindly, unaffected, democratic, full of good humor, courageous. As a public officer he was slow and judicial, rather than quick and executive like his predecessor. Although in sympathy with the reforms inst.i.tuted by Roosevelt, Taft was less the reformer and more conscious of considerations of const.i.tutionality. Roosevelt thought of the domain of the executive as including all acts not _specifically forbidden_ by the Const.i.tution or by the laws of the nation; Taft thought of it as including only those which were _specifically granted_ by the Const.i.tution and laws. The one was voluble, a dynamo of energy, quick to seize and act upon any innovation that gave promise of being both useful and successful; the other thought and acted more slowly and was less sensitive to the feasibility of change. One possessed well-nigh all the attributes necessary for intense popularity; the other inspired admiration among a smaller group. Roosevelt had a peculiarly keen perception of the currents of public opinion, enjoyed publicity and knew how to achieve it; Taft was less quick at discovering the popular thing and less adept at those tricks of the trade that heightened the popularity of his predecessor.

Despite the patent differences of temperament and philosophy between Taft and Roosevelt, both expected that the new administration would be an extension of the old one. Roosevelt indicated this in his frank preference for Taft as his successor; Taft indicated it in his thorough acceptance of the policies of the preceding seven years and in his intention, expressed at the time of his inauguration, to maintain and further the reforms already initiated. His first act, however, the appointment of his official advisors, caused some surprise among the friends of his predecessor who expected that he would retain most if not all of the Roosevelt cabinet. When he did not do so, it seemed as if the attempt to further the Roosevelt policies would lack continuity.[2]