President Roosevelt with members of his cabinet; Secretary of War Taft is seated at the far left.
AS MCCLURE’S WRITERS LABORED TO expose corruption and monopoly, William Howard Taft was too immersed in the knot of difficulties he faced in the Philippines to keep abreast of this transformative time in his own country. Letters from his brother Horace suggest Taft’s isolation in the islands but also make clear McClure’s essential role in keeping the public informed of key political developments at home. “You have been out of the country, and unless you have read the articles in the New York Times and in McClure’s,” Horace Taft cautioned his brother, “you will not appreciate how much of a stirring there is in the big cities where the worst corruption is. The progress in Chicago is remarkable and most gratifying.” Reformers had “absolutely cut off” the spoils system, he explained, ending all manner of illegal privileges for the trolley companies and the railroads.
No one felt Taft’s absence more during this period of profound change than Theodore Roosevelt. With the Northern Securities case moving slowly toward the Supreme Court, Roosevelt wanted Taft to be a member of the Court when the time for decision came. He believed that “it would be impossible to overestimate the importance” of the suit. If Northern Securities was allowed to stand, the national government would be rendered impotent to control the big corporations. Monopolies would continue to grow, stifling competition and crushing small businessmen. Failure would diminish the presidency, confirming the Morgans and the Harrimans as the true rulers of the country.
Roosevelt’s appointments to the Supreme Court would therefore prove critical. Indeed, he told a friend, he would hold himself “guilty of an irreparable wrong to the nation” if he failed to nominate men who shared his understanding of the great questions raised by the industrial age. To fill the first vacancy that arose, he had appointed Oliver Wendell Holmes, chief justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court, whose sympathies with the labor movement were well known. “The labor decisions which have been criticized by some of the big railroad men and other members of large corporations,” Roosevelt remarked at the time, “constitute to my mind a strong point in Judge Holmes’ favor.” When the appointment was announced, it garnered “the hearty approval of the laboring people of the country,” as well as “no small amount of praise from the Republican organs.”
A second spot on the Supreme Court opened when Judge George Shiras announced that he would retire on January 1, 1903. Roosevelt considered it “of utmost importance” to replace the conservative Shiras with the right man. He could not afford to make a mistake. Under these circumstances, the president immediately settled on his old friend Taft. He not only admired Taft above any other figure in public life, but he knew that Taft’s views on economic matters paralleled his own. Like Roosevelt, Taft was dismayed by what he termed “the blindness and greed of the so-called captains of industry.” He had little patience with “the unconscious arrogance of conscious wealth and financial success,” yet he recognized the necessity of guiding “the feeling against trusts and the abuses of accumulated capital, in such a way as to remedy its evils without a destruction of the principles of private property and freedom of contract.” Moreover, Taft’s reasoning in the Addyston Pipe decision had encouraged reformers hoping to revitalize the Sherman Act.
Three months before Shiras’s retirement, Roosevelt informed Taft of his intention to nominate him for the Supreme Court: “I hesitated long, for Root felt you should not under any circumstances leave the islands, and I was painfully aware that no one could take your place; but I do think it of the very highest consequence to get you on the Supreme Court. I am not at all satisfied with its condition—let us speak this only with bated breath and between you and me. I think we need you there greatly.”
The telegram disconcerted Taft. “All his life,” Nellie recalled, “his first ambition had been to attain the Supreme Bench. To him it meant the crown of the highest career that a man can seek, and he wanted it as strongly as a man can ever want anything. But now that the opportunity had come acceptance was not to be thought of.” From Taft’s perspective, the timing of Roosevelt’s request could not have been worse. “Great honor deeply appreciated but must decline,” he telegraphed. “Situation here most critical . . . Cholera, rinderpest, religious excitement, ladrones, monetary crisis, all render most unwise change of Governor. . . . Nothing would satisfy individual taste more than acceptance. Look forward to the time when I can accept such an offer, but even if it is certain that it never can be repeated I must now decline.”
“I am disappointed of course,” the president returned, “that the situation is such as to make you feel it unwise for you to leave, because exactly as no man can quite do your work in the islands, so no one can quite take your place as the new member of the Court. But, if possible, your refusal on the ground you give makes me admire you and believe in you more than ever. I am quite at a loss whom to appoint to the bench in the place I meant for you. Everything else must give way to putting in the right man.”
Before five weeks had passed, however, Roosevelt sent an emphatic letter reopening the question, pushing Taft to accept the Court appointment with what Nellie termed “unanswerable” finality. “I am awfully sorry, old man,” Roosevelt explained, “but after faithful effort for a month to try to arrange matters on the basis you wanted I find that I shall have to bring you home and put you on the Supreme Court. I am very sorry. I have the greatest confidence in your judgment; but after all, old fellow, if you will permit me to say so, I am President and see the whole field. The responsibility for any error must ultimately come upon me, and therefore I cannot shirk this responsibility or in the last resort yield to anyone else’s decision if my judgment is against it.” In closing, Roosevelt informed his friend that he would promote Commissioner Luke Wright to the position of governor general once Taft was appointed to the Supreme Court.
While this second request was en route to the Philippines, the president had a long talk with Taft’s brother Harry. The two had become good friends when Roosevelt served in New York as police commissioner and governor. He now called on Harry to persuade his brother to return to Washington. “He is extremely anxious that you accept the appointment,” Harry wrote to Taft, laying out Roosevelt’s reasoning at length. “He does not belittle the importance of the problems which you have to contend with, but he feels that there are questions pending here which have to be solved by him which are of even greater importance and perhaps of almost equal difficulty. . . . He evidently thinks he has secured the right man in Holmes and now seeks you, because, as he remarked to me, you will approach all the industrial questions without fear of the affect [sic] upon yourself of the influence of either J. P. Morgan or of the labor leaders.” Harry also reported an interesting talk on the matter with Elihu Root. Root considered Taft “the surest candidate as Roosevelt’s successor, at the end of his second term,” and therefore “could not be enthusiastic about your going on the Bench.”
Despite Roosevelt’s design in urging his letter, Harry admitted that he agreed with Root. “Of course, we all know how you have cherished the ambition to receive this appointment,” he acknowledged, “but when it is within your grasp, it is natural to reflect as to whether you want to make that choice, particularly when your career in the Philippines and the reputation you have made there has opened up before you so many alluring possibilities.” He added that there was “some diversity of view” within the family: Charley favored acceptance, knowing his brother had long coveted the post, while their mother, Aunt Delia, and Horace remained opposed. “I shall be satisfied with your decision,” he assured his brother in closing.
To Taft, as to Nellie, the president’s letter seemed unanswerable. The request “really leaves me no option, so far as I can see, but to give up here and go to Washington,” he told Charley. The Washington Times reported that “within a few months” Taft would resign as governor of the Philippines to take a place on the Court. Nellie “heaved a sigh of resignation” and began making plans for their departure. Still, she recalled, her husband “could not resist the temptation to hazard one more protest.”
“Recognize soldiers duty to obey orders,” he telegraphed Roosevelt on January 8, 1903. “Before orders irrevocable by action, however, I presume on our personal friendship even in the face of your letter to make one more appeal.” Taft proceeded to lay out his argument one final time: “No man is indispensable,” he reasoned. “My death would little interfere with progress, but my withdrawal more serious. Circumstances last three years have convinced these people controlled largely by personal feeling, that I am their sincere friend and stand for a policy of confidence in them and belief in their future and for extension of self-government as they show themselves worthy. Visit to Rome and proposals urged there assure them of my sympathy, in regard to Friars, in respect of whose far-reaching influence they are morbidly suspicious. Announcement of withdrawal . . . will, I fear, give impression that change of policy is intended, because other reasons for action will not be understood. My successor’s task thus made much heavier.” Nevertheless, Taft concluded, “if your judgment is unshaken, I bow to it.”
With little confidence that his request would be considered, Taft sadly informed his colleagues of his impending departure. The announcement spurred an overwhelming response and precipitated one of the “proudest and happiest” moments William Taft had experienced. As January 10 dawned, he and Nellie awakened to the din of band music, as 8,000 Filipinos gathered in front of the Malacañan Palace, urging the governor to stay. Stretched out for blocks, with “flags flying,” the ranks of people carried handmade signs and placards printed in “all sizes and all colours,” some in English, some in Spanish, still others in Tagalog, but all bearing the same message: WE WANT TAFT.
Taft listened in glad surprise as one speaker after another hailed his virtues and accomplishments. “This is a spontaneous demonstration of affection for our Governor,” the first speaker announced. The orator who followed, a former insurrectionist, declared that all the hardships facing the islanders ranked “as nothing compared with the evil effect caused by [Taft’s] impending departure. . . . The Filipino people trust that the home government will not tear from their arms their beloved governor upon whom depends the happy solution of all Philippine questions.” When the speeches concluded, journalists reported, “the thousands of people who filled the grounds of the palace broke into a cheer for the governor.”
News of the popular demonstration soon reached Washington, along with hundreds of cables from Taft’s colleagues, citizen committees, the Filipino Bar Association, and individuals throughout the archipelago, all urging Roosevelt to reconsider. Three days later, a welcome cable arrived in Manila: “All right stay where you are. I shall appoint some one else to the Court. ROOSEVELT.” A more personal letter followed a few days later. Roosevelt admitted he was still “very sorry” Taft would not be joining the Court but assured his friend that all would be well. “In view of the protests from the Philippine people,” he conceded, “I do not see how I could take you away.”
AFTER HIS STRUGGLE TO PERSUADE Roosevelt that he must remain in the Philippines, William Taft resumed work “with renewed vigour and strengthened confidence.” A host of challenges remained, but he was optimistic that the connections he had forged among the Filipino people would allow them to make progress. Absorbed in his daily tasks, Taft found immense gratification in “working for other people and attempting to win their confidence and finally in a measure succeeding.” His genuinely cordial temperament was infectious, enabling him to create an effective, collegial team. “I was not a month with Judge Taft until I was shaking hands with everyone I met and greeting them with a laugh,” remarked one staff member, noting with admiration that he “never saw anyone who could so thoroughly dominate everybody about him and saturate them, as it were, with his own geniality.”
Roosevelt himself continued to laud the many gifts that his friend brought to the difficult task of governing the Philippines. “There is not in this Nation,” Roosevelt told an audience, “a higher or finer type of public servant than Governor Taft.” Secretary of War Elihu Root, who collaborated with Taft on all issues relating to the Philippines, concurred. He assured Henry Taft that his brother possessed “a personality which made [him] nothing but friends” and that “no man in the country had recently exhibited such unusual ability, both administrative and legislative.” When good-natured telegrams between Taft and Root subsequently appeared in newspapers, their obvious camaraderie delighted readers. Taft had cabled Root a description of a long trip to a beautiful resort in the Benguet mountains. “Stood trip well. Rode horseback twenty-five miles to five thousand feet elevation.” Root, knowing Taft’s weight exceeded 300 pounds, cabled back: “How is the horse?” With typical good humor, Taft released Root’s cable to the press, along with his praise for the horse—“a magnificent animal,” he told Root, “gentle and intelligent and of great power. He stood the trip without difficulty.”
With Nellie and the family happily situated at the palace, Taft envisioned a tenure of at least two years, time in which he could construct the foundation for Filipinos to elect their own assembly and achieve a greater degree of sovereignty. But another letter from the president on March 27 soon disrupted this prospect. “You will think I am a variety of the horse leech’s daughter,” Roosevelt began, alluding to the biblical parable in which a blacksmith’s perpetually dissatisfied daughter demands ever more of him. Twice before, Roosevelt had asked Taft to return home; twice he had reluctantly acquiesced to Taft’s resolve to remain in the islands. This third request was an imperative.
“The worst calamity that could happen to me (personally and) officially is impending,” Roosevelt informed Taft, “because Root tells me that he will have to leave me next fall.” The secretary of war had originally joined McKinley’s cabinet, remaining on the understanding that he would return to his legal practice once new governments had been established in Cuba and the Philippines. The time to depart, Root insisted, had now come. For Roosevelt, the alarming prospect of losing “the wisest, the most surefooted, the most far-seeing” member of his administration could be remedied only by recalling Taft to take his place. “I wish to heaven that I did not feel as strongly as I do about two or three men in the public service, notably Root and you,” the president told his friend. “But as I do, I want to ask you whether if I can persuade Root to stay until a year hence, you cannot come back and take his place.”
Recognizing the depth of Taft’s nation-building commitment, Roosevelt assured his friend that he would not have to abandon his cause. “As Secretary of War you would still have the ultimate control of the Philippine situation,” he insisted, “and whatever was done would be under your immediate supervision.” Beyond this enticement, Roosevelt felt he had arrived at the point in his presidency where Taft’s judicious guidance was indispensable. “Remember too the aid and comfort you would be to me,” he urged, “as my counsellor and adviser in all the great questions that come up.” While he respected Taft’s repeatedly expressed desire to complete his work in the Philippines, he needed him at home. “If only there were three of you!” Roosevelt concluded. “Then I would have one of you on the Supreme Court . . . one of you in Root’s place as Secretary of War . . . and one of you permanently Governor of the Philippines. No one can quite take your place as Governor; but no one of whom I can now think save only you can at all take Root’s place as Secretary.”
This time, although he reiterated his concerns, Taft realized that the president’s summons left no room to maneuver. “In view of your desire that I shall be in Washington expressed thus three times, I should feel reluctant to decline again,” he replied, “but the change you propose is full of difficulties for me.” He endeavored to explain the problem of extricating himself from his Filipino colleagues, particularly after his recent pledge to remain with them. While continued supervision of Philippine policy as secretary of war made the prospect of departure more palatable, Taft maintained that he had “no knowledge of army matters and no taste for or experience in politics.” Moreover, the weight of Roosevelt’s expectations left him uneasy: “I cannot but be conscious that were I to come to Washington, you would find me wanting in many of the respects in which you are good enough now to think I might aid you.” Taft hoped the president would grant him several weeks to talk things over with Nellie and consult his brothers before supplying “a definite answer.”
Much as Nellie enjoyed her life in the Philippines, she counseled Will to accept. She had argued strongly against the Supreme Court appointment but had long envisioned an active role for her husband at the highest level of government. The proffered cabinet post, she reflected, fell precisely “in line with the kind of work I wanted my husband to do, the kind of career I wanted for him.” Further, Taft’s health had become an increasing priority for Nellie; he had already endured two serious illnesses and was currently suffering from amoebic dysentery, a plague throughout the tropics. At the same time, the children were reaching ages when their education had to be given serious consideration. Thirteen-year-old Robert was scheduled to leave for Horace’s boarding school in Watertown, Connecticut, later that summer. In three years, he would be prepared to enter the Yale Class of 1910, as his father had proudly “prophesied on the day of his birth.” For Nellie and Will, the separation of 8,000 miles from their eldest son was painful to consider.
In a letter to his brothers, Taft acknowledged the difficulty of refusing the president but expressed serious reservations. “If I were to go, I should have to be in the midst of a presidential campaign, which would be most distasteful to me, for I have no love of American politics,” he explained. “In addition, I do not see how I could possibly live in Washington on the salary of a Cabinet officer.” Cabinet members were expected to entertain lavishly, but their $8,000 salary was far below his compensation as governor general. “My life insurance policy amounts to nearly $2000 a year,” he protested, “and I should very much hate to go there and live in a boarding house.” On the other hand, if his dysentery did not improve, doctors were likely to recommend his departure from the Philippines in any case.
Taft’s mother, intensely anxious about her son’s physical condition, urged his return. Indeed, given these growing health concerns, the family was unanimous in advising that Will accept the post. “I should prefer really not to have you get into politics here,” Charles admitted, “but under the circumstances I do not see how you can decline the offer.” Horace regretted that his brother would have to give up so “great a work” but feared that remaining in the islands would permanently damage Will’s health. If acceptance of the secretaryship seemed inconsistent so soon after declining the Court appointment, Harry reasoned, the control he would retain over Philippine policy considerably mitigated this concern. Reassured by the support of his family, Taft wrote a long letter to Roosevelt indicating acceptance. Yet the letter was so circuitous that his intentions remained somewhat inscrutable. Conceding that the president’s “earnest desire ought to be controlling,” he nevertheless continued to stress his “great reluctance” to desert the Filipino people.
While Taft’s indecision over the cabinet appointment may have been difficult to decipher, there was no equivocation over his personal devotion to Theodore Roosevelt. Taft’s letter cited recent “intimations that the trust people, and possibly some of the machine politicians, are looking about for someone to center upon in opposition to your nomination” and noted that his own name had been bandied forth. “This is absurd,” he declared, because “my loyalty and friendship for you and my appreciation of the manner in which you have stood behind me . . . are such that it would involve the basest ingratitude and treachery for me to permit the use of my name in any way to embarrass your candidacy.” Upon receipt of this puzzling letter, Roosevelt dispatched a telegram to Harry Taft, who assured the president that it should be treated as an acceptance. Roosevelt was thrilled, sending Taft a forthright reply: “You don’t know what a weight you have taken off my mind.”
The president also worked to ease his friend’s qualms over maintaining a proper Washington lifestyle. “It would really add immensely to my pleasure as an American to have you, who will be the foremost member of my Cabinet in the public eye, live the simplest kind of life,” he wrote. “I hope you will live just exactly as you and I did when you were Solicitor General and I Civil Service Commissioner.” Charley Taft, anxious that his brother should face no hardship in his removal to Washington, provided more tangible support. He gave Will 1,000 shares of Cleveland Gas Company stock worth $200,000 and proffered an additional $10,000 a year so that Taft “should feel independent of everybody and able to do as [he] pleased politically or in any other way.” The proposal, Will gratefully replied, “struck me all in a heap: The love you manifest, the possibilities you open and the burdens you take away fill my heart with a joy moderated only by a feeling that I do not deserve it and that I cannot sufficiently requite it.”
With the matter settled at last, only the timing and details of Taft’s return to America remained. “The President is very much gratified,” Harry relayed to Will; “he told me that he expected that you would be the strong man of the Cabinet and he should lean upon your counsel and advice.” Root was impatient to depart but had agreed to stay until year’s end. “Now that it is decided that you are to go,” Harry continued, “we think that you might as well take the step at once.” But Taft held his ground, promising to return in early January 1904. Despite his lifelong resolve to “keep out of politics,” it seemed he would now be thrust in headlong, in the midst of a presidential campaign. Nonetheless, he admitted, the task ahead excited him.
And Roosevelt was unabashedly thrilled to finally have Taft on board, exclaiming, “Thank Heaven you are to be with me!”
“I have an additional and selfish reason for wanting you here,” he confessed, as he looked toward the upcoming presidential campaign. “I shall have to rely very much upon you—upon your judgment and upon your making an occasional speech in which you put my position before the people. I should like you to be thoroughly familiar with this position in all its relations; and such familiarity you can only gain by close association with me for some length of time—in other words, by being in the Cabinet.” The mood of the country had changed in Taft’s absence, he explained. “When you come back I shall have much to tell you.”
WHEN WILLIAM TAFT FINALLY REACHED Washington at 4 p.m. on January 27, 1904, exhausted from a four-week journey by ocean liner and transcontinental train, he was astonished to discover that President Roosevelt had sent the 15th Cavalry to meet him. Escorted to a waiting carriage by a dozen officers in full uniform, Taft was “too amazed for words” when a bugler sounded the call for a hundred cavalry horses to begin their march to the War Department. As the station crowd cheered, journalists marveled that the elaborate ceremony—befitting a tribute to “a sacred potentate” from some faraway land—was unprecedented for an American citizen not yet even sworn in as secretary of war.
The rumpled traveler had barely settled into his rooms at the Arlington Hotel before having to depart for a reception honoring Elihu Root. The evening “was most enjoyable,” Taft reported to Nellie, who was still in California with the two younger children. All the members of the Supreme Court and the cabinet were in attendance, and the president stayed for hours to celebrate both his outgoing and incoming war secretaries.
Journalists gleefully contrasted the easygoing new cabinet member, affectionately known as “Big Bill,” with his staid predecessor, whom few would dare address by his first name, if indeed they could correctly pronounce it. “Two men were never born who are more unlike,” theWashington Times observed. “One is the reserved, dignified, scholarly type, admitted by all persons who know him. The other is the hail-fellow well met, with unlimited brain power and the fortunate gift of being able to make a friend of every man who comes near him.”
Roosevelt was sad to see Root go, he told his eldest son, but “Taft is a splendid fellow and will be an aid and comfort in every way.” Edith worried that Taft was “too much like” her husband to deliver the same detached advice that Root had always provided. Roosevelt did not share his wife’s reservations. “As the people loved Taft, so did Roosevelt,” Mark Sullivan observed, recalling that “whenever Roosevelt mentioned Taft’s name, it was with an expression of pleasure on his own countenance.” Moreover, he instinctively perceived in Taft’s steady composure “a needed and valuable corrective to his own impetuosity.”
On February 1, Taft was sworn in as secretary of war, the position once held by his father. His brothers Harry and Charley stood by his side, along with Annie Taft. “It was good for sore eyes to see them,” Will told his wife. Horace had fallen ill that week and “felt like crying” when he realized he could not join his brothers for the ceremony. After their father’s death, the devotion and support among the Taft brothers had only strengthened.
It was quickly evident that Taft’s innate diplomacy and administrative acumen would bring a jovial, effective leadership to the department. If his spirit of camaraderie, “democratic manner,” and “breezy informality” occasionally irritated Army officers, they, too, eventually succumbed to his authentic affability. “I’m mighty glad to see you,” he exclaimed as he grasped officers by the shoulders, determined to overcome barriers in Washington as he had done in Manila. As Taft traversed the halls of the War Department, one reporter noted, “he found time to extend a hearty welcome to colored messengers he had known for years.” At 320 pounds, his large frame invariably commanded attention. “He looks like an American Bison, a gentle, kind one,” the newspaper editor Arthur Brisbane observed of Taft’s benign, substantial presence.
Having arrived in Washington at the height of the social season, Taft was bombarded by dinner invitations. A brilliant stag affair at Root’s house was followed by the Gridiron Dinner, a Yale Club reception in his honor, a Judiciary Dinner, a cabinet dinner at the new Willard, a formal military banquet, and a White House reception. “I went down behind the Pres. & Mrs. R with Mrs. Shaw [wife of the treasury secretary] and we cut a wide swath,” he told Nellie. “Mrs. Shaw is about as big as I am.”
Hardly a day passed that Taft did not lunch at the White House, join the Roosevelt family for dinner, or consult privately with the president in the early morning or late evening. “The President seems really to take much comfort that I am in his cabinet,” he informed Nellie. “He tells me so and then he tells people so who tell me. He is a very sweet natured man and very trusting man when he believes in one.” Aware that Nellie still reserved judgment, he was careful to add: “I hope you will agree with me when you have fuller opportunities of observation.”
Despite his hectic schedule, Taft managed to compose long letters to Nellie, detailing choice anecdotes about Washington’s social drama: he gossiped over Mrs. Root’s disdain when the first lady invited the “coarse and brazen” divorced wife of ex-Senator Wolcott to the White House; explained that Senator Hale of Maine had been dubbed “the Chief of the Pawnees because he has a pleasant habit of putting his hand on the knees of ladies whom he affects, under the dining table”; and recounted the various exploits of nineteen-year-old Alice Roosevelt—her late night partying, unchaperoned motor rides, brazen public smoking and betting on racehorses. She was known to keep a pet snake in her purse, hide small flasks of whiskey in her long gloves, and play poker with men. Will told Nellie that he had consulted Mrs. Lodge, who had also heard “a great deal of criticism of Alice Roosevelt’s manners and rather rapid life,” and was “much troubled” about it.
“Isn’t there anything you can do to control Alice?” a friend asked Roosevelt. “I can do one of two things,” he famously replied. “I can be President of the United States, or I can control Alice. I cannot possibly do both!”
When Nellie elected to spend several months in the California sun before traveling east, Taft was bereft. “I do not feel that I am living at all in your absence,” he repeatedly lamented; “all that happens to me, all the work I do, every speech I make are all by the way. They are not permanent steps of progress. I am just marking time till you shall come on and real life shall begin again.”
He had little time to brood. Roosevelt “loaded tons of work” on his newly appointed secretary and it seemed “the harder he was pushed the better work he did.” William Taft became the “veritable pack horse for the Administration,” a “trouble-shooter” with duties that extended beyond military matters and the Philippines. The president chose him to supervise the Isthmian Canal Commission, charged with constructing the Panama Canal, and consulted him regularly on labor and capital issues. And, as he had promised, Roosevelt would rely upon Taft heavily for speeches and advice during the presidential campaign. As one reporter observed: “Wherever a tension needed the solvent of good-will, or friction the oil of benevolence; wherever suspicion needed the antidote of frankness, or wounded pride the disinfectant of a hearty laugh—there Taft was sent.”
Taft was “extremely popular both in the senate and the house,” one Iowa newspaper reported. “He spends more time at the capital than all the other members of the cabinet,” the journalist remarked, noting that he had become “an intermediary between the executive and congress, familiar with both ends of Pa. Ave, and as well liked at one end as the other.”
Not surprisingly, Taft remained deeply engaged in the progress of the Philippines. Throughout his tenure as war secretary, he maintained close contact with Luke Wright, his successor as governor general, and with dozens of former colleagues in the islands. “Things have quieted down very much since your departure,” one friend told him, “and we are all taking a much-needed rest, including the old-fashioned clock that stood in your office, which stopped on the day of your departure and has refused persistently, though much coaxed, to tick.”
Taft spent a great deal of his time in February and March on the Hill, testifying and lobbying for a bill to subsidize the construction of a much-needed railroad system in the Philippines. Consultation with railway leaders in New York and a study of Britain’s experience with colonial railroads had convinced Taft that capitalists were loath to invest “so far from home,” especially where a tropical climate’s long rainy season and dense vegetation complicated their prospects. If the Philippine government were authorized to guarantee 5 percent interest on bonds issued for construction, however, he was confident that vital infrastructure projects would be undertaken.
Taft first secured Speaker Joseph Cannon’s approval of the railroad bill, knowing its passage in the Republican-controlled House would then be ensured. “All in favor will please say Aye,” the powerful Speaker declared when the railroad bill came up for a vote. “There was a gentle piping of ‘aye’ on the Republican side.” When the Speaker called for those opposed, there was “a thunderous burst of ‘No!’ ” from the Democrats. “The ‘noes’ seem to make the most noise,” Cannon brusquely concluded, “but the ‘ayes’ have it and the bill is passed.”
Opposition in the Senate, where individual members could easily block a bill, proved more formidable. “I have been working with Democratic members,” Taft told Nellie. “I have been as pretty to them as I can be but it may be love’s labor lost, till more flies can be won with molasses than vinegar and I shall continue to coddle them, even if they go back on me.” Through Taft’s dogged efforts, the bill finally passed, though not until the following congressional session.
Taft’s endeavor to secure congressional support for tariff reduction on Philippine products proved far less successful. Reduced tariffs were essential to the future prosperity of the islands, Taft repeatedly argued, insisting furthermore that reducing excessive import taxes was a matter of basic justice. An Indiana editorial concurred: since the United States had undertaken to govern the Philippines, “it would seem to be taking an unfair advantage of a poor, defenseless people” to levy an “exorbitant tax on their business relations with us” in order to satisfy “a few protected interests.” Within the Congress, however, allies of the sugar and tobacco industries vowed to use any parliamentary tactic necessary to prevent a tariff reduction bill from reaching the floor.
“I can see in the opposition,” Taft complained to Roosevelt, “the fine Italian hand of our dear friend Aldrich of Rhode Island. Whenever there is anything which is likely to injure the tobacco, sugar or silver mining interests under the so-called trust arrangements, that very able and deft manager of the Senate appears long enough in Washington to disturb the even tenor of projected remedial legislation.” Lyman Abbott, as editor of The Outlook, offered pithy commiseration: “The interest of dollars is more powerful than the interest of conscience.”
To Taft’s dismay, Roosevelt defended the Senate leader. “You are unjust to Senator Aldrich,” he chided Taft. Though the president often differed radically with Aldrich and the other members of the Big Four, he insisted that “taken as a body, they [were] broad-minded and patriotic, as well as sagacious, skillful and resolute.” Such words offered scant consolation for Taft; the Senate’s inner circle would effectively block any legislative action on the Philippine tariff reduction until Taft himself became president.
ON MARCH 14, 1904, AS word spread that the Northern Securities merger decision was imminent, an immense crowd gathered outside the Supreme Court. For Roosevelt, the outcome loomed with enormous implications for his party, as well as the nation. If the Court sustained the administration’s argument that the colossal merger represented a monopoly that restricted trade, the victory would demonstrate a fundamental shift in the Republican Party’s relationship with the trusts.
Inside the chamber, seating was filled to capacity. Dozens of senators and congressmen jockeyed for space in the section normally reserved for families of the justices. At the government bench, Attorney General Knox and Secretary Taft sat side by side, their expressions marked by“nervous expectancy.” Nearby, ranks of powerful corporate lawyers had assembled. At the back of the chamber, more than fifty newspapermen, “paper and pencil in hands,” readied to race to the telegraph wires the moment the ruling came down. “It required but little effort of imagination,” one reporter noted, “to see in the vast background millions of American citizens awaiting the outcome of this judicial battle against daring financiers.”
The crowd stood as the Court crier opened the session with the traditional cry: “Oyez, Oyez, Oyez.” The spotlight on the Supreme Court likely conjured conflicting emotions in William Taft, who would have been among the justices had he accepted the president’s appointment offer. That seat was now occupied by Justice William Rufus Day, Taft’s good friend and former colleague on the Ohio bench. The moment Roosevelt had appointed Day, Taft realized that “being an Ohio man, and coming from the same court” foreclosed any chance that he might succeed to the bench in the near future. “Of course this is something of a disappointment,” he had acknowledged to Joseph Bishop at the time, but maintained, “I am sure it would have made no difference if I had known definitely that this was the alternative.” When Bishop shared that excerpt from Taft’s letter with the president, it only confirmed Roosevelt’s admiration. “How eminently characteristic of Taft those extracts are!” he exclaimed. “What a fine fellow he is!”
As Justice John Harlan began to read the Court’s 5–4 opinion, papers reported, “everyone was alert for the significant sentence which should disclose the attitude of the majority.” They did not wait long. “No scheme or device could more certainly come within the words of the [Sherman Anti-Trust Act],” Harlan immediately pronounced, “or more effectively and certainly suppress free competition between the constituent companies.” Echoing the warning Baker had issued when the giant merger first became public, the Court cautioned that if no limits were placed on railroad mergers and more “holding companies” combined, “a universal merger” might be reached, and “a single man might thus control . . . and sway the transportation of the entire country.” With this unambiguous declaration, “it was all over,” the Boston Daily Globe recorded, recounting how “a score of eager men jumped for the exit and disappeared from the chamber to the waiting wires. Wall Street had lost. The government had won.”
Taft enjoyed a moment of personal triumph when Harlan explicated the principles and precedents informing the majority decision. Central among the cases he cited was Taft’s decision in Addyston Pipe and Steel. “If Congress can strike down a combination between private persons or private corporations that restrains trade among the States in iron pipe,” Harlan argued, clearly they were empowered “to strike down combinations among stockholders of competing railroad carriers.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Roosevelt’s first appointee to the Court, proved “the surprise of the day” when he joined the other three dissenting justices. Known as “the friend of the common people” and “the champion of labor,” Holmes delivered a stinging rebuttal, claiming that “while the merger was undoubtedly taken with the intention of ending competition between the two railroads,” the Sherman Act—as currently constructed—did not apply to a transaction of this kind. Roosevelt was stunned by Holmes’s dissent. “I could carve out of a banana a judge with more backbone than that,” he angrily charged. Years later, Holmes agreed that the Northern Securities case had derailed his nascent friendship with Roosevelt. “We talked freely later,” he recalled, “but it was never the same.”
Roosevelt’s frustration with Holmes did not diminish his absolute pleasure in the verdict. Upon receiving the news, the president “put aside all else to express his satisfaction” to every caller at the White House. The impact of this decision on Roosevelt’s political stature could “hardly be exaggerated,” the New York World editorialized. “People will love him for the enemies he has made. It cannot now be said that the Republican Party is owned by the trusts. It cannot now be said that Mr. Roosevelt is controlled by them.” Minnesota governor Samuel Van Sant went so far as to claim the decision meant “more to the people of the country than any other event since the civil war.” The government’s triumph, the Minneapolis Times declared, had confirmed that “no man, however great, is greater than the law.” From that moment, Roosevelt’s reputation as the great “trust-buster” was confirmed.
Even as he savored his dramatic victory, Roosevelt nevertheless made clear that the government would not “run amuck.” While the nation possessed the right and responsibility to regulate corporations, he maintained, “this power should be exercised with extreme caution.” The Northern Securities suit should not be construed as the opening volley of a populist campaign to destroy all big corporations simply because they were big. In fact, Roosevelt viewed the organization of capital as a natural outcome of industrialization and welcomed the lower prices and efficient service made possible by combination. “If a corporation is doing square work I will help it so far as I can,” he insisted. But at the same time, he asserted, “if it oppresses anybody; if it is acting dishonestly towards its stockholders or the public, or towards its laborers, or towards small competitors—why, when I have power I shall try to cinch it.” With characteristic rhetorical balance, the president made it clear he would abide neither the excesses of “the selfish rich” nor the resentful outrage of the “lunatic fringe.”
As he worked to implement this vision for genuine but evenhanded reform into public policy, the president was relieved to have William Howard Taft at his side. The approaching campaign would require powerful advocates for Roosevelt’s election and for his progressive agenda. With his affable nature and tempered approach, the new secretary of war would be Roosevelt’s indispensable complement.