THE ROLL CALL
"The Little Brother to the Payne-Aldrich Law" SENATOR LA FOLLET TE CRITICIZES PACT PRESENTS record of TAFT Administration on important measures and characterizes TAFT'S CANADIAN pact as a tariff...
...I attack no individual...
...Garfield had blocked the old game...
...This bill, and the Canadian pact upon which it is based, is cruelly unjust to thirty-three million people enaged in and dependent upon agriculture...
...An ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure," is the keynote of the "German System...
...They are fighting for simple justice, with their back to the wall...
...On the same day he dismissed Glavis from the public service...
...September 16...
...The President's letter of September 16th exonerating Ballinger, having failed to convince the public, and having been generally characterized as an "executive white wash," the administration resorted to a congressional in vestigation to vindicate Ballinger, and on December 21st Congress ordered such an investigation...
...Republican county and state conventions adopted resolutions demanding tariff revision...
...Just what may be the relation of Dick Ryan and James J. Ryan to the Morgan-Guggenheim interests, the real parties back of the Cunningham conspiracy, will doubtless ultimately be proven...
...In the same spirit he is now seeking to regain the lost confidence of the public by cabinet changes, in the hope that the people will forget...
...It is fair to say that the bill contained some provisions in the public interest...
...Pinchot protested, and certain of those lands were again withdrawn...
...But, Sir, by the year 1908, Standpat Republicans well understood and openly admitted that tariff revision could no longer be resisted...
...President, I have reviewed the record of this administration to no good purpose, if I have not made it plain that the great issue for which Roosevelt appealed to the public confidence, for which the progressives have been fighting for years, is not the tariff, not railway regulation, not conservation...
...It is for justice, eternal and everlasting justice for every human being, against organized selfishness and power...
...Indeed, Sir, the Dingley rates shut out, in so far as possible, foreign competition...
...His conduct of the pending legislation is of the same kind and quality as that which has marked his whole course as President...
...James J. Ryan must have had all preparations made, his surveyors engaged and in waiting, and ready to move when the word came from Washington...
...Such, in part, was the platform declaration of the Republican party on Conservation, and such, Sir, was the promise of the presidential candidate...
...Taft Abandons Progressive Policies HEIR to the Roosevelt policies, as a Presidential candidate, Mr...
...The American people had witnessed the appropriation of vast timber resources by private interests...
...Through their efforts the bill was reconstructed in the face of strong opposition and continued criticism from the White House...
...Taft to Roosevelt and the Roosevelt policies...
...and with the power greater than all back of these same interests, when he recently and openly announced his support of the Aldrich-Morgan credit-controlling monopoly of all monopolies...
...Month after month passed...
...And it had inspired them with new hope and courage when the Roosevelt administration had organized to take back these natural resources held in fraud and to sacredly protect the remnant of this precious heritage for all future time...
...Taft accepted the trust...
...The avowed purpose of the Dingley law was to exclude foreign made goods and give to American capital and American labor opportunity to supply the American market...
...The people declared, by an overwhelming majority, their determination that the Dingley duties should be revised everywhere downward until those duties measured the difference in the cost of production at home and abroad...
...Of Gifford Pinchot, and the nine years he had devoted to this service, President Roosevelt on June 10, 1907 said: "We are doing everything in our power to prevent fraud upon the public lands...
...Those changes had wrought a revolution in the industrial and commercial conditions of the country The general business oppression following the world-wide financial disturbances in the early '90's prepared the way for the enactment of the high tariff rates written in the Dingley law of 1897...
...And now we are again threatened that any amendment of this tariff legislation, any attempt to so change this measure as to make it in some degree more just and equitable will be met with executive veto...
...The tariff bill came to the Senate...
...There is no opportunity for dispute or difference of opinion...
...Upon that issue they defeated Col...
...Senator Bailey proposed another...
...A tax on corporations...
...Taft emphatically and specifically declared that the "tariff ought to be lowered," that the "Dingley rates have become generally excessive" and that "revision of the tariff in accordance with the pledge of the Republican platform" meant "on the whole a substantial revision downward...
...Much credit has been claimed for the administration because the bill, as finally passed, greatly strengthened the Interstate Commerce Law...
...Session after session these appeals were pigeonholed...
...If it had not been for him this conviction never would nor could have been called...
...It is now known that on the very day the order was mailed in Washington, James J. Ryan, a brother of Richard Ryan, with dummy entrymen, went upon and began a survey of the lands fronting on Controller Bay, and filed upon the particular water front which commands practically the one approach and hence, in effect constitutes the key to the coal fields in which were located the Cunningham claims...
...It was the boldest raid upon public rights in the form of legislation that the System had ever found any administration willing to adopt and attempt to foist upon the serious consideration of Congress...
...As a tariff bill it should have been considered by the House and Senate with due regard to every industry affected, and subject to whatever amendment is required to make it fair and just legislation...
...Why there was omitted from his order opening these lands to entry the sixty day provision, within which no filing could be made upon these lands, is not known...
...And Mr...
...This duty becomes imperative when the President's course has been one of vacillation and contradiction, wanting in steadiness and constancy of purpose and policy...
...Mr...
...A GROSS INJUSTICE TO THE AMERICAN PUBLIC MR...
...Taft Assures the Public THE CANDIDATE went forth to meet the issue and to satisfy the universal demand for tariff revision...
...Is it to be wondered at, Mr...
...The American consumer was completely at the mercy of the over-protected manufacturers of the country...
...As it was finally enacted, it was no longer the President's bill, it no longer bore any resemblance to the measure which came from the hands of his Attorney General...
...The Republican plan meant revision downward according to the difference in the cost of production between this and competing countries,—that is, revision downward along protective lines...
...For weeks before the close of the investigation, it was manifest that important disclosures would be forthcoming, but no one was quite prepared for the shocking discoveries finally made...
...It was indeed an artful dodge...
...In the beginning it was heralded as a blessing to the, consumers...
...They are all powerful;—call the roll...
...Tariff Revision, the Issue THE TARIFF was the one issue paramount in the Presidential contest of 1908...
...The President's course has been vacillating and without definite policy because apparently there has been throughout his administration no deep conviction other than the hour makes appear expedient...
...President, I submit two propositions regarding the pending bill...
...And then he had witnessed that same president on March 16, 1909, transmit his first message to Congress on this all important subject, a message so brief and so perfunctory, that it had not room for an explicit word or suggestion for downward revision of the tariff...
...In whatever he said, wherever he spoke, in all that he wrote during that campaign period, he kept the militant figure of Roosevelt always in the center of the stage,—-steadily in the glare of the spot light...
...Taft's promise in his speech of acceptance "to secure from private appropriation the power in navigable streams" Garfield's successor, Secretary Ballinger, began the reversal of the Roosevelt policies by opening to entry five million acres of the public domain bordering on or contiguous to navigable streams...
...Seizing upon this opportunity, manufacturing combinations of giant proportion immediately formed to suppress domestic competition...
...Throughout the forty pages of his first general message, he found no space to say a word for the great measures that had made the name of his predecessor revered and loved everywhere in the United States...
...Roosevelt had the support and sympathy of the Republican party, and its chief hope of success in the present controversy must rest on the confidence which the people of the country have in the sincerity of the party's declaration and its platform that it intends to continue his policies...
...Ah, Sir, the real beneficiaries are coming into view a little more clearly day by day...
...In other words, the voter had a right to believe that Taft, the lawyer, the judge, was strongly in favor of the income tax and had in mind a feasible plan for the enactment of a constitutional law taxing the individual incomes of the enormously rich, and that by voting for the Republican candidate, the country would have the benefit of such a tax as soon as Congress could convene and enact the Taft plan into law...
...It was an added tax upon the people...
...It was a fit amendment to come from the Senator from Rhode Island...
...The opportunity was offered to add an amendment to tax individual incomes, and re-submit this important question to the Supreme Court which had decided against such an income tax by only one majority...
...So completely had the successor of Roosevelt abandoned the progressive principles committed to his keeping, that he had selected as his legislative counsellor and guide, and in public speech extolled in the most extravagant terms, the patriotism, and statesmanship of the greatest opponent of all progressive policies, and hence the greatest champion of Privilege in the United States Senate...
...And so I say regarding this bill...
...He was always frank and open in support of measures of like character, but what shall be said for the President of the United States who, in the campaign, had given the voters of the country to understand that he would favor an income tax upon the great wealth of individuals,—a tax which once levied upon the individual, after he had received his dividends from Standard Oil, United States Steel and Railroad Bonds and stocks, could not then be shifted to the public...
...Washington correspondence foreshadowed to the country that Ballinger was making plans toward Pinchot's ultimate removal...
...In his speech of acceptance, delivered at Cincinnati on the 22d day of September, Roosevelt, the idol of the American people, seemed to be uppermost in the mind of Candidate Taft...
...It reduces no duties, the effect of which can ever reach the people, but it does reduce duties for the millers, the packers, Standard Oil, the brewers, the coal combines and in some measure for the already grossly over-protected interests...
...It was five days thereafter before it was put in the mails to be transmitted to the Land Office at Juneau, Alaska...
...Joined with the Executive to force this bill through Congress are the newspapers, frankly admitting their selfish interest amounting to many millions of dollars, the railroads, the over-protected manufacturers, and practically every trust and combination, backed by Morgan and Morgan influences...
...The failure of the administration to take action in the Cunningham claims became a subject of public concern...
...September 5; Ballinger, having announced that he would begin "killing snakes," left Washington for Beverly, Massachusetts, to confer with President Taft regarding the Cunningham and other Alaskan coal land claims...
...Again President Roosevelt said, in his opening speech to the Conference of Governors at the White House May 13, 1908: "Especial credit is due to the initiative, the energy, the devotion to duty, and the foresightedness of Gifford Pinchot, to whom we owe so much of the progress we have already made in handling this matter of the co-ordination and conservation of natural resources...
...The railway rate legislation of 1910 was a valuable addition to the federal legislation for the regulation of interstate commerce...
...The Democratic plan meant revision downward according to the democratic principle,—that is, revision downward to the bare revenue basis...
...The Dingley law excluded foreign competition...
...Roosevelt had gained for the public, sustain his forces In the field, re-inforce and support them, revoke no orders, reverse no action, but apply himself to crystallizing into statute law the public opinion, which President Roosevelt organized as of great creative force throughout the land...
...WHAT, SIR, was the meaning of that election as applied to the tariff...
...He had no sooner taken his oath of office than he sacrificed the progressive cause for the support of Aldrich and Cannon and their reactionary program...
...Taft upon the tariff question, and the progressive policies which he was elected to maintain and advance, that the wisdom, the true value, the real stable worth of his recommendations cannot be fairly judged without reviewing the more important issues involved in his election, and the more important acts of his administration...
...The Alaska Scandal THE CONGRESSIONAL investigation of the Alaskan Coal scandal resulted in many startling revelations...
...It was a tax which the corporations could and did shift to their customers, the public...
...Walter L. Fisher was appointed as his successor...
...It was especially heralded as a bill to prevent stock-watering and over-capitalization...
...The Taft-Aldrich Makeshift AND THEN just when the people seemed assured of winning a great victory, the Senator from Rhode Island (Mr...
...March 3, came the threat of congressional investigation into the Department of the Interior and impeachment of Ballinger...
...I quote from the last Republican National platform...
...The delay was unaccountable...
...Tax corporations indeed...
...Under the guise of fulfilling party platform promises for the control of overcapitalization, a bill, amending the Interstate Commerce act was drafted in the Department of Justice with the aid of Wall Street attorneys, expert in all schemes of railroad finance, and made the subject of a special executive message...
...An Artful Dodge THESE SENATORS knew what Aldrich and the President knew...
...November 12...
...January 9, 1911, a bill was introduced to transfer the decision of the Cunningham claims to the courts...
...WHILE IT IS important, Mr...
...It increased in volume year by year preceding 1908...
...Taft Allied with Reactionaries BUT, MORE THAN THIS...
...It was proven that the President s letter exonerating Ballinger and dismissing Glavis was not, in fact, written by the President, but was prepared under the direction of, and approved by Ballinger himself, and then signed by the President...
...Bryan and elected Mr...
...In one of his tributes to Roosevelt in this speech, he said: "He demonstrated to the people by what he said, by what he recommended to Congress, by what he did, the sincerity of his efforts to command respect for the law, to secure equality of all before the law, and to save the country from the dangers of a plutocratic government, toward which we were fast tending...
...March 7, Ballinger resigned as Secretary of the Interior...
...Taft Professes Loyalty to "Roosevelt Policies" IT IS an interesting study in political psychology to observe the campaign devotion of Mr...
...So long as he remained at the head of the Interior Department, the lucrative practice of stealing timber, coal, oil lands, and waterpower sites was dangerous business...
...with these same interests when he defeated the tax on individual incomes, that session...
...President, to the proper discharge of our legislative duties, that there should be maintained between the executive and legislative departments that official comity, in the absence of which it is impossible to accomplish the largest measure of public good, yet our binding covenant to represent the public interest, compels us in our legislative capacity, to examine and analyze the recommendations of the executive with the greatest care and thoroughness at all times...
...Following the disastrous failure of the administration's case before the Ballinger Investigating Committee, the public awaited the decision in the Cunningham claims...
...Upon this false basis he seeks to force it through Congress without amendment or change...
...Taft in the belief that he would hold fast to all that Mr...
...At last it seemed certain that the enormous wealth in the hands of individuals, hitherto escaping taxation, would be compelled to pay its just share in support of government...
...He well understood that the people very generally favor a tax upon the individual incomes of the rich, and his suggestion of the possibility of accomplishing this at once through legislation placed him in a position of great advantage on this issue...
...It was proven further that the letter of Attorney General Wickersham upon which the President stated he had based his decision, was not written by Wickersham until two months after the President's decision had been rendered and given to the public, and that it was then prepared and dated back in order that it might be made to appear as the opinion of the Attorney General upon which the President had based his decision in the matter...
...Rebuked at the polls in the election of 1910, he foolishly tried to buy back with postoffice appointments the support of the progressives in Congress, which he had lost when he abandoned progressive policies...
...Whether the protracted delay of the Cunningham decision had any relation to the successful grabbing of the Controller Bay lands, may appear when all the facts have been uncovered by the investigation...
...Senator Borah and Cummins had discussed the matter fully with the President...
...What Did Taft's Election Mean...
...That was all...
...The country never suspected that anything involving the future of the Alaskan coal lands was quietly finding its way into the records of the General Land Office...
...Baffled in acquiring the ownership of the coal lands, those in interest planned to secure control of the water front commanding approach and access to the coal lands...
...And finally, after having been baffled in his struggle to secure tariff revision by a standpat congress, and after having at last secured the promise of tariff revision downward, by a national convention, and elected a President and a Congress pledged to such revision, the voter had seen his representatives in Congress pass and his President sign a tariff bill that increased his burdens and left him even more completely at the mercy of the over-protected trusts and combinations...
...A proclamation is...
...They had seen the anthracite coal supply within the United States, every foot of it, pass into the ownership of a few railroad companies...
...In Congress after Congress the Committee on Ways and Means was organized to suppress every effort for a revision of the Dingley law...
...It was the uniform practice of President Roosevelt and of other Presidents, whenever they restored public land to entry and sale, to do so by proclamation,—not by executive order,—and to include in such proclamation a provision that the land thus restored to entry and sale should not be subject to entry for sixty days after the date of proclamation restoring it to entry, thus giving ample public notice to all people who might desire to file on such lands...
...Upon his inauguration, March 4, 1909, the first act of President Taft to redeem his promise on conservation was to dismiss Garfield as Secretary of the Interior, and appoint in his place Richard Achilles Ballinger...
...But, Sir, no eminence of position in any party or in government shall protect from deserved criticism the bad record of any public servant...
...Against all the influence of the great railroad corporations of the country, combined with all the power of the administration, the bill which the Executive had caused to be drawn, and which he strongly recommended, was,—-excepting as to the provision for the Commerce Court, which was much improved,— literally torn to pieces and rewritten on the floor of the Senate...
...So much for what we are trying to do in utilizing our public lands for the public in securing the use of water, oil, coal, and timber for the public...
...He said in that message, after discussing the provisions of the measure in detail: "By my direction the attorney general has drafted a bill to carry out these recommendations...
...IT is bigger than a mere opportunity for party advantage...
...IT is more than a question of tariff rates...
...They were assured of the President's sympathy with the amendment, and all progressive senators, remembering his campaign declaration of this subject, believed that he could be relied upon to stand just where he stood in the campaign...
...The candidate then had a very clear conception of these progressive policies, and the high favor in which they stood with the American people...
...It confirmed the public opinion which had early reached the stage of conviction, that Ballinger was using his official power to aid the Morgan-Guggenheim interests in wrongfully acquiring control of the Alaskan coal fields...
...Four years later trust control had extended to 8,864 plants with a total capitalization of $20,-379,000,000...
...But, Sir, I have never sought the easy way...
...From his first utterance it was made clear that the Republican party would, as its first and highest obligation, if entrusted with power, revise the Dingley Tariff rates generally downward, to the end that trusts and combinations, which had formed behind the tariff wall, should no longer find protection in wrongdoing...
...How James J. Ryan secured information far enough in advance to enable him to be on the ground at controller Bay ready to enter upon these lands, as soon as the order was signed, may appear later...
...In fulfillment of Mr...
...PRESIDENT, THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO DOUBT THAT PARTIES TO THE COAL LAND FRAUDS WELL KNEW THAT NEXT TO SECURING THE CUNNINGHAM CLAIMS, TITLE TO THE LANDS ON CONTROLLER BAY WOULD PLACE THEM IN A COMMANDING POSITION OVER ALL THE COAL FIELDS IN QUESTION...
...Prices were advanced...
...On the night of January 7th, President Taft dismissed Gifford Pinchot as Chief Forester...
...Turn now to Alaska...
...While the Interior Department was withholding its decision in the Cunningham claims, parties interested in the Alaskan Coal fields were active...
...Senator Cummins proposed an amendment providing for a tax on individual incomes of five thousand dollars and over...
...Taft Opposes Income Tax IN HIS ACCEPTANCE speech, Mr...
...Around Roosevelt, and the record of his administration and the progressive ideals, which had begun to take the form of settled policies, the candidate builded the chief strength of an otherwise ordinary discussion of issues...
...Taft...
...Everywhere, east as well as west, that was the all absorbing question...
...The Mandate of the People THE DEMAND for tariff revision was inevitable, It came from almost every home in the land...
...Against every attempt to strengthen and entrench special interests, in whatever form it is presented, whether it be a winning or a losing fight, I shall oppose it to the end...
...The people demanded a reduction of duty...
...with these same interests in the long and heart-sickening affair in Alaska, the end of which no man knoweth...
...The nearest telegraph station is one hundred miles from Controller Bay...
...This the President did by secret executive order, and not by proclamation...
...By special session of Congress immediately following the inauguration of the next president,—-" This was a promise for revision, not at some future and indefinite time, but in deference to the demand that could no longer be denied, that convention said to the voters of America, "If you will trust us once more, we will revise the tariff not at some convenient time in the next four years, we will not ask you to wait even until the meeting of the next regular session, but, we will hasten with all possible speed and revise the tariff, 'By special session of Congress immediately following the inauguration of the next president.'" That, Mr...
...The proposition to tax individual incomes was so strong with the country that Mr...
...The testimony in the Ballinger case was closed...
...In this work, Mr...
...President, that the Republican voter in 1910 felt that he had several scores to settle...
...The general suspension of business, unemployment of labor, curtailed production in manufacturing were all very generally charged to the lower duties of the Wilson tariff, and the way was open for advancing rates and raising the tariff wall against foreign importations...
...He had gathered about him able, earnest, and enthusiastic young men and raised them and the Forest Service to the same high ideals...
...President, upon the pledges of the Republican platform, and his oft-repeated promises as a candidate, William Howard Taft was elected President of the United States by an overwhelming majority...
...President Roosevelt, fully realizing the importance of this water front to the public, upon discovery of the preliminary moves by R. S. Ryan and the Morgan-Guggenheim Syndicate, to acquire it, on February 23, 1909, placed it beyond the reach of the land grabbers by proclamation including it in the Chu-gach National Forest...
...That he knew in advance that there was a scheme afoot here in Washington to withdraw the Controller Bay lands from the forest reserve and throw them open to entry, that he was advised step by step as the scheme was consummated, and received advise direct from Washington the very day the President signed the order, seems beyond question...
...The two were combined, and votes enough pledged to insure the adoption of the amendment...
...June 27, 1911, Fred Dennett, United States Land Commissioner announced his decision, holding that the Cunningham coal land claims were fraudulent...
...Congress was flooded with petitions...
...It was entitled "A Bill to Create a Court of Commerce...
...On Thursday December 2, 1909, President Taft's first message on general legislation was presented to Congress and the country...
...December 21...
...The cost of living increased from 40 to 60, 70 and 80 per cent...
...Political managers realized that no obscure generalization regarding tariff revision would be safe...
...It is nothing that it pretends to be, and professes to be nothing that it is...
...Ballinger was forced to modify his first order, but not until an opportunity had been given the water-power magnates to get in on the ground...
...A Remarkable Executive Order THE SUBSEQUENT HISTORY of the Alaskan coal lands scandal simply confirms the bad faith and betrayal of public interest which the earlier testimony so clearly established...
...For twelve long weeks in this chamber, Progressive Republican senators and Progressive Democratic senators made war upon the provisions of that bill, which were hostile to the public interest...
...The Court of Commerce provision was little more than a mask, behind which, concealed in obscure and devious language, lurked the sinister purposes of the measure...
...It was thrust upon the last Congress at the close of a short session when there was absolutely no time for its consideration, followed with the threat of an extra session, if it were not jammed through in obedience to executive orders...
...These executive precedents were violated in reversing Roosevelt's order, and restoring the Controller Bay lands to private entry...
...Standpat senators with elections pending, who were timid about voting against the Income tax, siezed upon this opportunity to kill the amendment taxing individual incomes by supporting as a substitute, a measure, with such a fair sounding title as a "Tax upon Corporations...
...A Definite Promise BUT, SIR, the members of that convention likewise realized that it was vital in view of the temper of the public upon this question, to be equally definite, clear, and specific in their promise as to the hind of revision that would be insured to the American people if they would elect a Republican President and a Republican Congress...
...That issue, Sir, came with the economic changes in the life of the American people, almost entirely within the decade immediately preceding...
...Taft Dismisses the People's Friend PINCHOT had unselfishly devoted himself to the public service...
...I wish it were possible to acquit the President of any knowledge of the real character of the administration bill for the amendment of the Interstate and Anti-trust laws, as drafted by the Attorney General, for nothing is more damaging in the record of this administration...
...It harmonized with its whole plan...
...Second: Considered as a tariff bill it violates every tariff principle and platform promise upon which William H. Taft was elected President of the United States...
...These facts were established beyond contradiction, and finally admitted in the closing days of the congressional investigation...
...A Cruel Injustice SIR, in letter and spirit, this measure violates every principle and every promise of the Republican platform, express or implied, and every printed or spoken word and inducement employed to secure the votes necessary to elect William H. Taft president of the United States...
...There was nothing further to add to the facts proven...
...LA FOLLETTE: Mr...
...It increased the burdens upon the people...
...President, I have always believed that the statesmanship of that time ought to have been wise enough to discern the gathering forces of trust consolidation, which were then clearly manifest...
...Then, to still further show his disregard for the great body of Progressive Republicans, he proclaimed the Payne-Aldrich monstrosity to be the best tariff bill ever enacted by the Republican party...
...With the promises of candidate Taft for downward revision still sounding in his ears, he had seen President Taft use all the power of his administration to save from defeat a Standpat speaker, who appointed a Committee on Ways and Means in deadly opposition to any revision on the tariff in the interest of the ultimate consumer...
...In what terms did they characterize that revision...
...The Little Brother to the Payne-Aldrich Law" SENATOR LA FOLLET TE CRITICIZES PACT PRESENTS record of TAFT Administration on important measures and characterizes TAFT'S CANADIAN pact as a tariff bill that violates every principle upon which the president was elected, and an agreement that is in no sense reciprocity...
...Aldrich, bitterly opposed to it as he was, could not hold all of his followers in line...
...An executive order restoring land to entry is merely transmitted to the land offices and to the heads of various bureaus...
...And, Mr...
...Taft gave the public distinctly to understand that he favored an income tax...
...A Bold Raid on Public Rights AS DRAWN by the Attorney General, by direction of the President, the bill contained but four provisions that could be construed as conferring any benefit upon the public...
...trained men backed by that able and honest Secretary were everywhere guarding the public domain from further encroachment, and hunting down the agents of the System who had fraudulently acquired timber and coal lands, and waterpower sites subject to entry...
...The President seized upon it...
...and once again, where President Taft, realizing the weakness of his position, and the necessity of bolstering his advocacy of a doubtful proposition, leans on Roosevelt and says that "following the course of my distinguished predecessor, I earnestly recommend to Congress the consideration and passage of a Ship Subsidy Bill...
...The man and his policies so often quoted and discussed in Mr...
...The Republican candidate, keenly alive to the campaign value of this issue, said, in his speech of acceptance: "The preservation of our soil and of our forests, the securing from private appropriation the power in navigable streams, the retention of the undisposed of coal lands of the government from alienation, all will properly claim from the next administration earnest attention and appropriate legislation...
...His department had been reorganized...
...August 26...
...Never before had it been attempted with the support of a national administration, and of party leaders upon the floors of Congress to fasten forever upon the commerce of the country the public burden of transportation charges, to pay interest and dividends upon all the watered stocks and bonds, which unrestrained corporate greed had set afloat in the financial channels of this country...
...First: Considered as a measure of reciprocity, I shall demonstrate that it violates every principle of reciprocity heretofore expressed in the platform declarations of the Republican party and recommended by former Republican presidents...
...How the President was induced to reverse, set aside, and annul the action of his predecessor, and that too by a course of proceeding which excluded the public, and opened the way for favored parties to get possession of this strategic position at controller bay, may never be known...
...Taft's Service to Railroads IN ALL THE RECORD of this administration, no more glaring example is presented of the complete surrender to Special Interests and the complete reversal of Roosevelt's progressive policies, than that shown in dealing with the amendments to the Interstate Commerce Act...
...He took "with him to private life the highest encomiums of President Taft upon his patriotic devotion to public duty...
...The speech covers twenty-eight printed pages in the Republican campaign text book, and in the course of it President Roosevelt and' his policies were referred to twenty-six times...
...Reciprocity is a popular catchword...
...Nothing vague about that: in good plain Anglo-Saxon they wrote into the platform of 1908, the most precise declaration of the true principle of protection ever recorded by a Republican National Convention...
...It pays its injured, superannuated, and their dependents, something like $126,000,000 a year...
...The pending legislation, based on the Canadian pact is so important and far-reaching in its consequences, will in my opinion ultimately exert, under the favored nation clause of our treaties, such an influence upon our trade relation with the great nations of the world, stands so by itself in the exercise of the executive prerogative, so involves the whole tariff issue, is so related to the strange course of Mr...
...Washington correspondents warned the country that the interests were organizing against Pinchot...
...August 20...
...But, Sir, it is time to vindicate the truth...
...Taft's speech of acceptance and in his addresses during the campaign, were twice referred to in this, his first message on general legislation...
...November, 1910, Secretary Ballinger publicly declared his intention of recommending that a special act of Congress should be passed, taking the Cunningham claims out of the hands of the President, and turning them over to the Court of Appeals of the District of Columbia...
...Under President Roosevelt, James R. Garfield had made a remarkable record as Secretary of the Interior...
...On the 20th of April, 1911, the country was shocked to learn that on the 28th of October, 1910 President Taft had signed an executive order, reversing the action of President Roosevelt and throwing open 12,800 acres of land, covering the water front of Controller Bay, the only natural harbor affording an approach to the coal fields in which were located the fraudulent Cunningham claims...
...Criticizing the democratic platform, because it recommended a constitutional amendment providing for an income tax, he said: "In my judgment, an amendment to the constitution for an income tax is not necessary...
...Upon this subject the political situation was acute...
...It is these, but, Sir, it is more than all these combined...
...From the platform of his special trains as he journeyed from coast to coast, and in the great auditoriums of the country where the thousands thronged to hear him, Mr...
...Taft Disappoints Voters THE PEOPLE elected Mr...
...Aldrich) without a moment's warning sprung his plan to "tax corporations" as a substitute for the Cummins-Bailey Income Tax amendment, and to the utter amazement of the progressives who had been in conference with and supposed they had the support of the Executive the Aldrich scheme to substitute the "corporation tax" received the endorsement and approval by a special message, of the President of the United States...
...Mark what this platform said: "The Republican party declares unequivocally for the revision of the tariff...
...Three months after he was inaugurated, he seemed to have forgotten that there ever had been any well-known Roosevelt policies...
...In all four movements, my chief advisor, and the man first to suggest to me the courses which have actually proved so beneficial, was Mr...
...PRESIDENT, what is his record of performance...
...The trusts resisted, and the answer of Congress to all appeals was: "We stand pat on the present tariff...
...Issue Clearly Defined AS THE CAMPAIGN progressed, the tariff issue increased steadily in importance...
...Germany has paid its disabled wage-workers more than $1,500,000,000 since 1884...
...I say the Republican Convention of 1908 was bound,-—it could not, if it would, have ignored this great work of the Roosevelt administration...
...Why the President did not issue a proclamation and make his release of these lands public, remains a mystery...
...The trusts strangled home competition...
...It was, Sir, a suitable provision to be coupled with the Payne-Aldrich Bill...
...It would be so easy for one, when charged with aiding in the defeat of the income tax, to answer, "Yes, but I voted to tax the big corporations, instead...
...In this case the executive order was issued October 28, 1910...
...It is a little brother to the Payne Aldrich bill, the greatest legislative wrong inflicted upon the American people in half a century...
...Taft, demands Pinchot's head...
...The soulless corporations which had so long exacted excessive profits from the people were at last to be compelled to turn over some of their surplus wealth to support the government...
...But the President not only assumed the full responsibility for the bill, as drafted, but made it clear by special message submitted to Congress on the seventh day of January, that he was well acquainted with all -of its provisions, and recommended its enactment into law...
...By January 1st, 1908, the increase in trust consolidation embraced 10,220 plants, with outstanding stocks and bonds aggregating $31,672,000,000 of paper capitalization...
...President Taft made public a letter to Ballinger, fully exonerating him and upholding him in the controversy with Pinchot and Glavis...
...He made an executive compact the basis not of a reciprocity treaty but of a tariff bill...
...Washington correspondents announced that Ballinger, in conference with Mr...
...Of this sum the workmen furnish half...
...The shock of this change was partially softened by the retention of Gifford Pinchot, as chief forester...
...Like the so-called Reciprocity Bill, it was a sham, and was set before the country under false pretenses and with a false title...
...The Administration could not afford to reject the measure as reconstructed by Congress,-—and to the credit of Congress, it passed into statute law...
...Two plans of revision were presented by the two great political parties in the campaign of 1908...
...Once he is mentioned as "my predecessor" who directed attention to the "outrageous condition of the workhouse and jail in the District of Columbia...
...I will have no quarrel with men...
...They had awakened suddenly to a realizat on that it was the settled policy of the System to grab the waterpowers wherever found on the public domain...
...October 28, 1910, is now known to be an eventful day in the history of the Alaskan case as will hereafter appear...
...If the Republican party was to succeed in the election of 1908, it was imperative that its platform should declare for tariff revision that would meet the demand in clear and specific terms...
...The country was startled by the report that Louis R. Glavis, special investigator in the field, had filed with President Taft a statement disclosing that a monster conspiracy had consummated the siezure of extensive anthracite coal fields in Alaska...
...It is time that the country should understand...
...The President allied himself with these same interests in the tariff legislation of 1909...
...No man should mistake the true meaning of the contest involved...
...It meant revision DOWNWARD...
...in that every corporation would add the corporation tax to the fixed charges of the business, and exact from the public through increased rates and prices every dollar paid, as a tax to the government...
...Railroad Bill a Sham AS PRESIDENT TAFT'S railroad bill was presented to the Senate, it covered fourty-four pages...
...The American people were never allowed for one moment to forget that he was the chosen instrument to fulfill the great purposes of the great man who had committed to his hands the work of his administration, finished and unfinished...
...With a foresight that was the genius of constructive work, he had wrought out the great plan for the reclamation and conservation of the natural resources of the country...
...Fred Dennett, Commissioner of the General Land Office testified July 10, 1911, before the House Committee on Expenditures in the Department of the Interior, that the executive order, as originally prepared for the President's signature, contained the usual sixty day notice to prospective settlers, but was omitted from the executive order when finally signed by the President...
...The Interior Department was as silent as the tomb...
...And then, Sir, they named William Howard Taft as the man in the Republican party best qualified to redeem in letter and spirit the solemn promise made to the American people on that June day, nineteen hundred and eight...
...August 12...
...So was the tariff bill in 1909...
...BUT, MR...
...Since the President's admission at Indianapolis July Fourth that this bill promises nothing for the consumer, the real parties to profit are beginning to be a little more clearly distinguishable...
...The long contest aroused public sentiment, and it was alert and watchful...
...Within three years following the enactment of the Dingley law, 149 trusts were organized with a total stock and bond capitalization of $3,784,000,000...
...But they were barely sufficient to veil thinly the true purpose of the measure...
...Taft was a pronounced progressive and the leading and most enthusiastic Roosevelt champion from the first to the last day of the campaign...
...An executive order is not necessarily published...
...In such a warfare they are entitled to employ every legitimate weapon...
...President, against the opposition of reactionary senators upon both sides of this chamber, representing the reactionary administration, progressive Republican and Democratic senators in reconstructing the rate bill in 1910 on this floor, rendered the most conspicuous public service to the American public which it has been my privilege to witness, since I have been a member of this body...
...In the light of recent disclosures, all of the facts as they transpired are worthy of being entered on the record...
...It was not made public...
...No action was taken by Congress upon this bill to relieve the administration of the responsibility of deciding the Cunningham claims...
...It was a document of forty printed pages...
...IT is the fight between the plain people and confederated privilege...
...But what kind of revision downward...
...Mark now, how completely the voter was mislead...
...Framed in ambiguous phraseology, it contained twelve provisions written solely in the interests of the railroads, the like of which had never been presented in any legislative body in America...
...He was not talking about a corporation tax, but an income tax as commonly understood, the very income tax pledged in the democratic platform...
...Following this, he journeyed from coast to coast, to speak in defense of standpat senators and Congressmen, who were the bitterest opponents of the progressive policies of his predecessor, and the very men who were chiefly responsible for revision of the tariff upward...
...No act of any President ever caused the American people greater regret and mortification for the unfortunate position in which their chief magistrate placed himself...
...He had been in advance of all others in fighting waste through neglect and destruction, and loss through pillage and plunder of the national wealth belonging to this and future generations...
...Make the corporations pay...
...It promises to reduce duties for the benefit of the people...
...If we who oppose this legislation were seeking the easier way in public life, with the newspapers arrayed so generally in support of it, we should have quietly acquiesced...
...Literary Digest...
...Mark what followed: April 30...
...Day by day through that protracted struggle of three months, they fought their way to one achievement after another, until a dozen bad provisions had been forced out and nineteen provisions of vital importance to the public interest had been written into the measure, perfecting it for final passage...
...Convention Promises Conservation Legislation THE REPUBLICAN National Convention recognized, as it was bound to, the great awakening of the American people on the subject of Conservation...
...A President, whom he had elected, believing him to be the custodian of the Roosevelt policies, had dismissed the Roosevelt cabinet, and appointed in their places men, in the main, of known hostility to those policies...
...President, it would have been difficult to have framed a piece of legislation affecting interstate commerce, more harmful to the public interest than this bill drafted by the Attorney General and recommended to Congress by President Taft...
...And for whose benefit is agriculture to suffer...
...I believe that an income tax * * * can and should be devised which under the decisions of the Supreme Court will conform to the Constitution...
...with these same interests when he proposed and attempted to force through Congress the railway rate bill in 1910...
...CLEANLINESS is the sword to use in the war against the house fly.—-Milwaukee Journal...
...It will help us to weigh at their true value the recommendations op the executive on the pending legislation if we review in this connection the record of the administration, wherever the interests of privilege are in conflict with the interests of the public...
...President, was a specific promise for a prompt revision of the tariff...
...They promised revision.—"by the imposition of such duties as will equal the difference between the cost of production at home and abroad...
...Lands Entered in Alaska THIS IS what was being done in Washington...
...The public did not know that fact at the time because what transpired on that day was kept under cover by the administration for many months...
...But to proceed with the facts in order, as they became known to the public...
...And so we find in its platform among other things on this subject, the following: "We endorse the movement inaugurated by the administration for the conservation of natural resources...
...As a treaty it should have come to the Senate for ratification...
...Taft was elected...
...What is Taft's Record in Conservation...
...He realized that the income tax was popular as a campaign issue, and he led the public to believe that he had a plan through which the tax upon incomes could be levied directly through legislation without waiting for the long delay and uncertainty incident to amending the constitution,—as proposed in the democratic platform...
...It added betrayal to betrayal...
...Gifford Pinchot, Chief of the Forest Service...
...Sir, the selection seemed a wise and fitting one...
...Three months before he was inaugurated, Roosevelt's cabinet seemed certain of being retained by Taft...
Vol. 3 • July 1911 • No. 29
