The USA in William Howard Taft’s Time 1909-1913
by Mike Donovan
Taft was a scholar and a prince Taft weighed 750 pounds!
Superlawyer – The Philippines - One of many Yalees in the White House - Graduated and taught there - The giant in the White House. –VP James S. ‘Smiling Jim’ Sherman – Chief Justice of the Supreme Court 1921-1930 - Defeated 3-time loser William Jennings Bryan (D) in the election of 1908. The final was 321-162. – Got stuck in a tub in the White House – Unitarian - One of only two Presidents Buried in Arlington National Cemetery - His Secretary of State was a noted Philanderer.
“Whether I win or lose is not the important thing. But I am in this fight to perform a great public duty – the duty of keeping Theodore Roosevelt out of the White House.”
1912
The Taft years were the heart and center Era of Progressivism. From TR to Wilson, the history books call it that. And they ended long before Wilson finished his second term.
Progressivism flourished in spite of Taft, not because of his leadership. Taft was a passive president based on his background in jurisprudence. The prudence is built in. He had plenty of smarts and talents, but he thought less that government is good government. On the other hand he was a handy person for the Progressive crusaders because Taft didn't believe in standing in the way of their reforms any more than he believed in promoting them. If they could fight their way into Congress with their reforms and Congress saw fit to pass them, then Taft usually wouldn't veto those reforms. Big business didn't hate him because his strong passivity, if there is such an oxymoron, worked the same way for both sides. Taft let reform and big business slug it out while he played referee. Unlike TR and FDR, Taft didn't want to be one of the contestants in the ring. TR was permanently angry at Taft for this passivity. The way these two famous men went from best friends to worst enemies is like a movie script so junior-high that you roll your eyes and say, “yeah, as if that would ever happen.” And it did, at the highest levels of publicity and power.
Taft may not have been the funniest guy to ever inhabit the White House, but he certainly had the best rip-roaring belly-laugh. Testimonials to Taft's fine and lovable personality were almost always centered around the universal compliment that he loved to laugh and laugh loud. Of all the presidents, he was the one I'd like to see in the front row of my comedy show. I can't say that any president in my lifetime had a big easy winning laugh (Clinton laughed out of control one time at a remark by Boris Yeltsin at a Rose Garden press conference, but it was an aberration and it went down in history as an inappropriate blooper, not a charming moment.) Can anyone imagine Carter or Bush senior wiping tears from their eyes doubled over on the floor laughing? The country had a man like that in Taft.
Taft was so instantly lovable that Teddy Roosevelt was jealous. “Taft has nothing to overcome when he meets people. I realize that I have always got to overcome a little something before I get to the heart of people,” said Roosevelt. Join the club, Teddy.
William Taft said in 1903 that any party that would nominate him for president would be making a great mistake.
Taft’s entire presidency was conducted in the shadow of Teddy Roosevelt's previous presidency. Not since Marty Van Buren had the previous president held more influence than the one in office. Even while hunting lions in Africa as an ex-Prez, Teddy Roosevelt was still the most famous person in America. And he reveled in his fame.
Like Jackson in 1836, T. Roosevelt in 1908 was so powerful and popular that he could virtually name his successor as President. TR chose Taft to be the next president. Roosevelt was practically a regent in the Taft years.
Roosevelt crowned Taft when the two were close friends. But later when TR did not like the policies of his protégé, the two had a highly publicized falling out that fascinated the American public to the detriment of the great social issues. It was the greatest break-up in all of American history.
By the time Taft was up for re-election in 1912 the two old pals were going 15 rounds in the ring and calling each other names as they made their way back to their corner between bells. America's greatest personal friendship deteriorated into America's most bitter personal enmity. It is a sad story. Not as sad as my second set Friday in Atlantic City last March, but it was sad.
The nation's first golfing prez, Taft enjoyed a good joke about his famous big belly, especially the story that he was such a gentleman that he once stood up on a train and gave his seat to four ladies.
Popular vote 1908
Taft R) 7,675,000
Bryan D) 6,412,000
Debs S) 420,000
Chafin Pro) 253,007
In 1908 the charming Socialist Eugene Debs polled 3% of the popular vote but failed to win any electoral votes. The Prohibition candidate chafed when he read about the final tally in the papers. Eugene W. Chafin got more than half as many votes as the Socialists, probably not a good sign for the Socialists.
The Socialists in America are always ruined by the adoption of their best ideas by the center and even the moderate right. They contribute many ideas that are stolen, then get condemnation for the ideas not adopted. The monster political parties play cafeteria thief with the Socialist all the time. The cruelties of politics leaves them only their radical and impractical ideas and their most insolent individuals.
The main question on Taft is, how can anyone that big be considered an obscure president? The Hall of Presidents at Disney World has a replica moving-figure of each of the Presidents all standing around in the same room as if for a group photo shoot. Easily the most memorable image of the entire scene is how huge William Taft is compared to all the others. He completely dominates the group. Every other park patron is walking out of the exhibit saying, “Can you believe how big Taft is?”
Taft is not considered one of our great presidents because his administration was relatively uneventful. There were no great wars, scandals, economic booms or depressions, nor was there even any single great international crisis that bore directly on the United States. This makes him one of our great presidents in my book, or at least a President in great era. The great years are the ones in which we are allowed to go about our business. There's nothing greater than a complete absence of crisis.
Taft’s salary was 75,000 dollars, representing a raise over the salary that Sam paid to Theodore Roosevelt.
Taft was a Unitarian and did not believe in the divinity of Christ. He did believe in God and golf. I agree on the first two, but I hate golf.
But I don't mind if presidents golf. A lot of people seem to mind. Taft took a lot of heat for playing too much golf. I don't get it. If the man in charge of the bombs wants to golf, let him golf.
Taft’s cabinet
Secretary of State----Philander C. Knox----1909-1913
Sec. of War --------------Jacob M. Dickenson –1909-1911
Henry Stimson -------1911-1913
Sec. of Treasury--------------Frank McVeagh—1909-1913
Att. General-------G.W. “Dave” Wickersham—1909-1913
Interior---------------------------R.A. Ballinger---1909-1911
Interior---------------------------Walter L. Fisher-1911-1913
BIO
William Howard Taft was born on September 15, 1857 in Cincinnati, Ohio.
His great-great grandfather Peter DeBarbuti Taft had fought at the Battle of Bunker Hill. His father Alphonso was one of the founders of the Republican Party in Ohio in 1856, and served as Secretary of War under President Grant, and in 1876 US was Secretary General, whatever that is. They are the only father and son to have served as Secretary of War.
William got a diploma from Yale in 1878, and moved on to graduate studies at the University of Cincinnati. He passed the bar in 80.
In 1881 he became a county prosecutor in the Cincinnati area.
On June 19, 1886 Taft married the charming Miss Helen Herron. William and ‘Nellie’ had three kids. (Mrs. Taft suffered a stroke just three months after her husband became President and made a gradual recovery over the course of his term.)
There may be a chilling irony here. Mrs. T was the one that supposedly pushed him into the White House when he really only wanted to serve on the Supreme Court. If the stroke was related to her life at the top of the mountain, she may have been a victim of the monkey's paw. (The Monkey's Paw is a short story in which a greedy couple find a charm, a magic monkey's paw that makes wishes come rue. They wish for a million dollars. Their son then dies in a car crash. A check arrives in the mail from the insurance company for guess how much money.)
President Ben Harrison named Taft Circuit Court Judge in 1892 and it was at this job that he first met and befriended Teddy Roosevelt who was then customs collector for the port of New York.
Then in 1900 Taft was given the thankless and impossible job of supervising the downsizing and termination of US military rule in the Philippines. Since a full-scale insurrection was already under way at this time it must have seemed like a punishment rather than a job.
The Philippine insurrectos under Aguinaldo were finished, and the Insurrection ended, so a governor was needed for the Imperial U.S. trusteeship and Taft got the post. WHT's service in the Philippines won him uncontested praise from all corners.
Mr. E. Root resigned as Secretary of War and Teddy Roosevelt appointed Taft to replace him. Taft liked the job because he could keep his hands on the Philippines issues, about which he now had compassionate and sentimental attachments.
Mr. Taft declined an offer from President Roosevelt to become a Supreme Court justice. Mrs. Taft was probably influential in this decision. She stressed to Big Willie that to become a Supreme Court Justice would probably end his chance for the Presidency, which she definitely wanted, more perhaps than he did.
EVENTS
ELECTION OF 1908
BALLINGER SCANDAL
DOLLAR DIPLOMACY
PAYNE-ALDRICH TARIFF
THE BREAK-UP OF STANDARD OIL
INSURGENTS
PROGRESSIVISM
MANN-ELKINS ACT 1910
MID-TERM ELECTIONS GO DEM
THE 16th DAMN AMENDMENT
SPEAKER OF HOUSE POWER REDUCED
TRIANGLE SHIRTWAIST FACTORY FIRE 1911
CANADIAN FREE TRADE AGREEMENT GAFFE
US MARINES IN NICARAGUA 1912
ELECTION OF 1912
ELECTION OF 1908
Back in 1904 Theodore Roosevelt made a grand promise to not run for a third term (second full term.) In 1908 he was kicking himself when the time came to keep his promise. It’s a lot like when we tell people to ‘stop by any time’ and then they actually do and the weekend is ruined. On the other hand, famed author and newspaperman Mark Sullivan, who was close to Roosevelt insists that this image of TR in 1908 is unfair and untrue. Sully says that TR at all times seemed quite sincere about having no intention or even desire to serve again as king.
Many of TR's supporters wanted him to just forget that he had ever made that silly one-term only pledge. One clever fan, Senator Bourne from Oregon, came up with a phrase to justify the broken promise. Jon Bourne said that TR was not running for a third term. Roosevelt was merely running for a “second elective term.” This would not violate the two-term tradition and would give Teddy a crack to slip through to justify running again. TR scoffed at Bourne's idea and said again that his hat was out of the ring.
When 1908 opened there was no clear replacement for TR in the vanguard of the Republican flock, although Charlie Hughes of New York was a possibility and wanted the job. Still, the rank and file Republican voters of American loved only Roosevelt. The big shots in the party didn't all love the guy, but they all knew that the voters wanted him. TR wasn't worried about it. When the time came, he would ignore the calls for his re-election (to a second elected term) and help put someone else in.
But his personal secretary Billy Loeb warned him that talk was growing stronger with each passing week that TR as merely posturing a disinterest in re-election in order to get drafted at the Convention in a storm of glory. Roosevelt blew him off but Loeb let him have it as only a close friend is allowed to do. “No Ted. You are wrong! You're making a mistake. You should pick a candidate that you like, offer him up to the party and get out there and support him and do it now. Frankly Ted, I don't care who the guy is, but you've got to pick somebody.”
TR finally snapped, “All right Loeb! Fine! Now get off my back!” And that is how it came about that early in 1908 Theodore named William Howard Taft to replace him in the closes thing to a dynastic crowning in all of US history.
The rise and fall of Charles Philip Hughes as the nominee in 08 is interesting. The year before when Mrs Taft asked TR about the succession for her husband, Teddie warned her verbally and then Taft in a letter that even though they were close, Roosevelt, “might have to support Hughes” in 1908. He told the Tafts the hard truth for two reasons. One, he didn't like to feel cornered into letting anyone else, even his friends, make his decisions for him, so he wanted to establish the full playing field for himself to pick from on principle. The other reason he declined to make an early commitment to Taft was that TR in 1907 could foresee a time when Charles E. Hughes could be the clear choice of the Party leaders to replace him. Teddy wanted to be a loyal Republican and maintain his option to support any man who was the clear choice of the anti-Donkeys.
However, once TR had decided on Taft, the Hughes candidacy became something of a problem. By the middle of January Hughes was beginning to become the favorite of the Republican political hacks and county chairmen. Teddy realized he had waited too long and had to find a way to muzzle the Hughes movement.
It so happened that Hughes was planning a big important platform speech on January 29, 1908. This was going to essentially begin his campaign. The press was giving the upcoming speech considerable coverage, to the point where it was not going to be just a speech, it would also be something of an event.
Theodore Roosevelt called for a press conference on the afternoon on January 29, and made a hundred blockbuster attacks on the abuses of big business. The tone and the scope of the Roosevelt assaults were large, even for Teddy.
The next day all the newspapers of the nation were filled with banner headlines about the vitriolic and passionate speech by the President. The Hughes speech in almost every paper was relegated to page four or five, right next to the ad for ladies shoes. It ruined the candidacy of Hughes. Whenever anyone asked Teddy if he had timed his speech on purpose to put the smack-down on CEH, he would decline to answer while poorly suppressing a satisfied smile. He almost admitted it to one reporter, saying, “If Hughes wants to play politics, he'd better learn that it's a much rougher game than tennis. It's something like rugby without rules.'
The Republican Convention met in Chicago in June. Teddy knew that the first time his name was mentioned there would be a long demonstration in the hall and he had an agent near the stage connected to TR via a telegraph so that if the demonstration led to a serious call for the President's re-election, he could telegraph a firm refusal.
Sure enough when keynote speaker Henry Cabot Lodge made a reference to “the President” as “the most popular man in the USA today” the place went bananas. The demonstration lasted 45 minutes. Republican boosters screamed themselves hoarse for Teddy the Great. One man, a MR. Butler of Colorado, who had only stopped into the Convention as an afterthought during a trip back home from the east coast, collapsed and died as a result of screaming endlessly for 45 minutes.
The next morning, Mrs Taft told the Convention leaders that when her husband was nominated, “the demonstration had better last at least 46 minutes or heads will roll.” No one was sure if she was kidding or not. When that afternoon Massachusetts put Taft over the top with 25 votes, the demonstration lasted 41 minutes. Mrs. Taft got the shaft.
In 1908 Roosevelt gave his pal and Secretary of War the job of President. He gave it to Will like a businessman handing coins to a wino sitting on the sidewalk. The election was a mere formality. Jack the Ripper if he was a RepublIcan might have won a close one against Bryan in 1908. Anyone of ability would thrash that rad if they had the backing of Teddy Roosevelt in a booming economy and a time of peace.
The poor showing of conservative Democrat Alton Parker in 1904 led in 1908 to the fatal, fateful and final revival of the Bryan candidacy. Mr. Cross of Gold was back in the loser's saddle.
William Jennings Bryan was a lackluster choice. The Democrats had no great leader other than this man now known as “The Great Commoner” who was publishing a newspaper called The Commoner. The two main issues for Bryan were free silver and taking a stand against American imperialism.
But these issues weren't hot and helpful. The Philippines situation was stabilizing and people had long lost their vehemence over the silver debate. Bryan tried to espouse some centrist views, but was so well matched by Taft there that he ended up reaching out in a left direction as election day drew closer.
Bryan actively favored adoption of the income tax, which was well established in other industrial countries. The Dem candidate said that the USA was behind in this progressive matter. Taft would adopt the income tax anyway after he won. He just hadn’t been dumb enough to announce his tax plan in advance. He wasn’t foolish enough to say “Read my lips, New Federal Taxes!”
For Vice President the Republicans chose ‘Sunny Jim’ Sherman of New York, the former mayor of Utica. Some books call him “Smiling Jim” but older sources call him “Sunny Jim” which seems the more likely real nickname. “Smiling Jim” doesn't ring natural like sunny. Sunny Sherman died in office shortly before the day he was to run for re-election in 1912.
The Socialists and Prohibitionists ran tickets that helped nor hurt no-one. After the election they all got drunk together and condemned capitalism.
A third third-party candidate in 1908 was William Randolph Hearst. Citizen Kane was going to represent the “Independence Party of America,” or the IPA. He never formally announced his candidacy but the IPA existed largely to help him run for President. He was the Ross Perot of his time, a very rich man who could afford to lose and who created a bogus party of the people to ride on.
Minor personal scandals precluded the Hearst candidacy, so another guy ran for the Independence Party and lost big enough that most history books don't even mention the presence of that third party. It was more or less a sixth or seventh party masquerading as a third.
So it was to be a President Taft. There easily could have been a President Root. Back in 1904 TR had urged Elihu (Athos) Root to run for Governor of New York. If he had, he probably would have won and would have been a clear choice for TR to appoint to the Presidency in 08.
INAUGURAL
Taft was Inaugurated in a big snowstorm on March 4, 1909. The formal swearing ceremony took place in the Senate chamber. As Taft was about to leave the building he saw Roosevelt passing below him. Teddy looked up and raced to Taft and grabbed him warmly by the shoulders. Taft returned the physical compliment. The two stared at each other for the longest moment while the Senate looked on emotionally. Teddy whispered a thought into Tafts big ear and Taft laughed. No one knows what he said although reporters asked him about it. My guess is, “I wonder what that nit-wit Bryan is doing right now?”
The departing Roosevelt dominated the new coverage of the day, not the incoming Taft. This bothered Mrs. Taft more than William Howard, who was fairly unflappable by nature.
As soon as Taft was inaugurated, Roosevelt went on a trip to Africa to hunt lions. Give him credit. Most hunters only kill the gentle animals that can’t fight back. Roosevelt may have been a macho jerk, but at least he was a legitimate one.
As Teddy departed Africa, a bitter Bryan supporter famously quipped, “I don't know about you, but I'm rooting for the lions.”
That guy almost got his wish. On at least one occasion a lion charged Roosevelt and the president got off a deadly shot in the nick of time. How did Hollywood miss making a version of that scene? Can you imagine if one of our former Presidents had actually been torn to shreds and eaten by wild lions? It almost happened!
When TR returned from his ‘vacation,’ relations with his buddy Taft began a long downward spiral. The criticized each other in private and in public until the former friends were soon not on speaking terms. At one point Roosevelt referred to his former pal as “fatso.” Teddy Roosevelt, Taft's sponsor and friend, had suddenly become a much bigger problem for Taft than the Democrats.
TARIFFIC START – PAYNE-ALDRICH 1909
Taft had promised a revision of the tariff if he were elected and everyone knew this meant a reduction. Many Americans were blaming the high cost of living on the high tariffs, which hadn’t been changed substantially since sky-hi Dingley in 1897. It was common thinking in 1908 that the high tariff led directly to more monopoly in business and since everyone was against monopoly except Rockefeller and Morgan, it was safe to pledge tariff reductions in any campaign at this time. But in practice, tariff reduction had to pass by way of the Congress. Big business had its hands deep into the pockets of many members of Congress so that meant that it was always hard to get real tariff reductions even if the public supported this.
The House passed a bill for serious tariff reduction on March 15 1909. Then it went to the senate. Nelson Aldrich of Rhode Island led the obstructionists. Literally hundreds of amendments were attached to the bill which reduced the practical effect of the original to nothing. Most amendments were for increases in tariffs on exceptional items. It added up to no gain for the low tariff movement even though we are about to pass a bill that is ostensibly a large lower the tariff bill.
MEXICAN TRIP 1909/ TAFT TIDBITS
When W.H. Taft visited Mexico on a political trip in 1909, it marked the first time a president had left US soil.
On November 10, 1910 a rebellion broke out against the dictator for the last 25 years, Porfirio Diaz. Under Diaz the nation of Mexico was more totalitarian than Russia under Nicholas I. Taft and the upper echelon of American business supported Diaz because he preserved order. The USA had over 2 billion dollars invested there.
A liberal named Madero secured control of Mexico for a few months before a counter-revolution returned strong-arm government in February 1913 under General Huerta. Henry Lane Wilson, the US Ambassador in Mexico City was complicit in this counter-revolution. His actions facilitated the murder of Madero.
Taft was also the first Prez with his own car. There weren’t a lot of highways but Taft used the car to drive to the Washington ice cream parlor several times a day. Taft was the man who invented the 7th inning stretch in baseball. When he got up to stretch his legs at a long game at the Polo grounds in between the top and bottom half of the 7th inning, the crowd out of respect rose with him and thus began this useless tradition in baseball.
CANNON MUZLED MARCH 1910
Throughout the TR era and into the Taft, the Speaker of the House was arguably almost as powerful a political personage as the President. Not only was this true by the nature of the job, but by the nature of the unique individual holding it.
That man was Congressman Joe Cannon and he was as hated as he was powerful, which was a lot. Not that JC didn't have friends. Not that he wasn't gregarious and talented. But Cannon set progressive legislation back for a decade. He did it for living. He controlled the House of Representatives by controlling the Republican Caucus. Joe told them how to vote and his Republicans were a majority. Party members were obliged to vote for any measure that was approved by the Republican Caucus. So nothing got by Joe Cannon and he was against virtually all progressive legislation that came his way. Joe Cannon was a friend of big business, and who hated progressive legislation more than big business?
Cannon had a photographic memory and an explosive temper. He was the King of the Hill. One Congressman received a letter from a college student requesting a primer on the rules of the House of Representatives. The Congressman mailed the student a head shot of Joe Cannon.
Taft couldn't stand him. Willie thought of Cannon as vulgar and embarrassing, unsuited to the dignity of the Capitol Building. Taft punned that “Joe Cannon is a crass act.”
The dominance of one man, Joe Cannon, over the entire American Congressional legislative process was no secret. The nations newspapers wrote of it often and gave it a nickname - “Canonism.”
Cannon controlled the House in many ways but the most effective method was by heading the five-man Rules Committee. With a Republican majority at his call, Joe Cannon could write or dissolve, any rule in the book. His word was law and if it wasn't he could remake the law in a day or two.
Nelson Aldrich of Rhode Island was almost as powerful in the Senate (he of the 'Big Four'”) but the first rebellion against excessive dictatorial power on the Hill was directed at Joe Cannon. The Progressive cavalry charged the Cannon's mouth in march of 1910. The weapon the anti-Joes used was a bill to expand the Rules Committee from five to 15. This would seriously reduce the ability of Cannon to control things.
Mr. Norris began the revolt in the House on March 10, 1910. He rose and reminded the body that the Constitution permitted the House to make its own rules. Therefore he was within his rights to propose new rules for the Rules Committee structure.
Needless to say the Cannonites did everything they could to stop this revolution from below in the House of Congress. Cannon used the Rules Committee to try to forbid itself from reforming itself. Democrats combined with Republican apostates to force the issue. The nations newspapers followed the power struggle for weeks.
There were simply too many Progressive Republicans in the House to continue the conservative Republican dictatorial rule. The break-away Republicans combined with the Democrats to take Cannon's powder.
The settlement called for a doubling of the Rules Committee to ten instead of the proposed 15. But more importantly a rule was adopted that the Speaker of the House could not longer even be a member of the Rules Committee, let alone run it. The age of Cannon was over. The nation rejoiced.
Cannon has to go down as one of the bad guys of our story of American History. A lot of people were probably injured physically or destroyed financially by the absence of progressive legislation that he blocked in the name of rich jerks.
A story by Douglas MacArthur gives some idea of the type of man he was and the power he held. MacArthur was an aide to President Teddy Roosevelt in 1907 when Cannon was regaling a bunch of men outside the Oval Office. TR was patiently waiting for Cannon to come in for his appointment, and Cannon was late. The 6' 4” inch MacArthur thought this was rude and disrespectful for anyone to keep the President waiting by telling ribald jokes in the lobby.
MacArthur pushed his way through the circle, put his hand around Cannon's elbow and said, “Mr. Cannon, the President will see you now.” Cannon stopped, looked around, made sure you could hear a pin drop, then blew a huge puff of cigar smoke into Doug MacArthur's face and said, “The hell he will!”
Everyone roared with laughter at MacArthur's expense and Cannon didn't go in for another 20 minutes. That's how powerful he once had been. Cannon even made TR back down.
TEDDY'S EUROPEAN VACATION
In the spring of 1910, fresh from the jungles of Africa where he had killed at least 290 species of animals, former President Theodore Roosevelt took a long and most glorious tour of Europe.
Crowds and glamour followed TR everywhere. He met royalty on a royal scale and it was they who were the more in awe of him.
Roosevelt thought Scandanavia was delightful, but couldn't resist ranking out Denmark. “Vermont with a King” he called it.
When he gave a speech at the Sorbonne, the crowd applauded every time he slipped in a French phrase.
Roosevelt was supposed to meet with the Pope but there was a problem with the methods of the Vatican City. The Methodists were protesting against the Catholic Church and were disrupting the peace of St. Peter's Square. The Vatican, through a slimy intermediary, asked Roosevelt to meet with the Vatican, but also to refrain from any contact with or public mention of the protestant Methodists.
The Methodist protestors asked to meet with Roosevelt. He found self-satisfaction in refusing both parties. Teddy never got to meet the Pope, and the Catholics avoided the publicity of Teddy jumping in on the Methodist protest controversy.
Roosevelt was planning on meeting King Edward 7 in late May but Edzo 7 died on May the 6, 1910. So Roosevelt went off to London as Taft's representative at the great funeral. (Was he the stutter-guy they made the movie about? I am so weak on British royalty and new movies.)
Foreign Minister M. Pinchon attended for France. Mister Pinchon tried to connect with Roosevelt by whispering in his ear that France and the United States were being dissed. “Why are our staff people dressed in black, but all the other nations are given deep maroon suits? Why are the two greatest democracies being treated like Ottoman provinces?”
Roosevelt tried nicely to tell Pinchon that he didn't care what color anyone was wearing. They were here to pay their respects to the dead King and that was it.
Pinchon kept it up all afternoon. He saw a slight in every seating arrangement and speech.
When the casket parade was moving out of Westminster towards the London burial site, Pinchon began griping again to Roosevelt.
“Our carriage is eighth in line. What's up with that? Why is the Minister of Portugal ahead of us. What do they take our two great nations for, a couple of chumps? Why I think that...”
TR had finally reached his limit and blew his stack. “Good heavens man, be quiet! This is a funeral! Fix this up later and wait for the next King to die so you can have your proper place in line! For now be quiet!”
Pinchot was quiet after that.
I love these stories.
Ted met the Kaiser in Berlin, who spoke fluent English. The German ruler invited Mr. Roosevelt to review the entire Prussian Army on parade, the first time a civilian of any nation had ever been extended the honor. TR stood side by side with Kaiser Wilhelm, a man who would later sent 25 million people to a needless early death in WWI. The Kaiser and TR were both blabbermouths, but the Kaiserego won out, and basically bent Teddy's ear for several hours. TR loved it.
The Kaiser's photographer had taken a hundred photos of the two and Wilhelm gave a full set of prints to TR. The Kaiser made funny notations on the bottom.
One photo was of the two of them on horseback watching maneuvers. The Kaiser wrote on it, “Here we have Teddy Roosevelt telling me how to run my business.” Another photo showed Teddy laughing uproariously as the Kaiser spoke. The Kaiser wrote across the bottom, “You never got tired of my Polish jokes,” which wasn't of course was Teddy was really laughing at in the picture. Teddy loved the Kaiser's punky notes and immediately had the pictures put into expensive glass frames.
Then the Kaiser's Interior Minister became alarmed that the pictures might make their way into the newspapers and become an image problem for Germany. He sent a man to Roosevelt's hotel the night before the ex-President was to leave the country. Would the President please return the pictures?
“No way, Heinz!” shouted TR with a toothy grin. “I shall cherish these pics forever! 23 Ethiopian lions couldn't pry them from my hands.”
This was 1910.
Eight years later he wanted to hang the Kaiser. In 1918 Roosevelt wanted to personally lead a US Army regiment against the Wilhelm's warriors (but Wilson would allow it.)
Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts wrote often overseas to TR about political developments and controversies going on back in the states. TR also picked up some information from the foreign newspapers.
The Ballinger affair and the Speaker Cannon Congressional squabble hurt TR's relationship with President WHT.
“TAKEN” - THE MANN ACT - JUNE 1910
The term going around was “white slavery.” This was the kidnapping of pure white girls and forcing them into prostitution either in the USA, or worse, overseas somewhere. White girls were allegedly being stuck with poison pins on trolley cars, collapsing in a heroin-high funk, and coming back to life when it was too late and they were sex slaves on the coast of South America.
The stories may have been based on isolated incidents that were true, but the popular belief was that this was a widespread phenomenon, which was not true. The slavery problem was discussed by all Americans in the Taft era. Newspaper articles declared war on white slavery.
Movies and plays were produced that exploited the fear of this social evil under the guise of being deeply compassionate in concern about it.
A book titled “My Little Sister” was a national best seller, its sordid contents known to virtually all Americans. Little Sister was the story of two young Yank women who visited London only to be kidnapped. Instead of visiting a clock named Big Ben they ended up slaves to a fat old guy named Big Ben. One of the two damsel in distress escaped to tell her story to the world, but the other was never seen again. The country was so wrapped up in it this prosti-terrorism that every runway was presumed by default to have been kidnapped and forced into prostitution. Liam Nillson couldn't save them. American girls didn't run away from home as much as before.
All this talk led to the passage of the Mann-Elkins Act of 1910, or more commonly “The Mann Act.” Congress passed it on June 25, 1910 and is still part of the legal system today. Under Mann, it was now a federal felony to transport a woman across state lines “for any immoral purpose.”
The Bill's sponsor, Congressman Jimmy Mann, may not have foreseen that his Bill could lead to a broad interpretation, but it certainly did. From now on if a man paid for a woman's train ticket to Illinois from Indiana and had a sexual encounter there, the police could arrest and prosecute him. “Immoral act” in this day and age could mean almost anything. And the woman didn't have to be underage. You could give someone's grandmother a ride to Wisconsin from Rochester Minnesota, buy her a jug of rum, take her to a foul-mouthed stand-up comedy show, and find yourself in jail the next day as a “white slaver.”
Some men were entrapped and blackmailed under the Mann-Elkins law.
The official name of the Mann Act was the “White Slave Traffic Act.”
SMOKING WOMEN
Back in Taft time it was a controversial subject. Was it all right for women to smoke?
The older folks said, “No! Well I never! The very idea!” The younger folks said, “Spark it up Dianne. And blow the smoke in grandfather's angry face.” The new generation of young people were taking over the moral structure of America. Female smoking was as good a place to make a stand as any other.
One day in 1910 Alice Roosevelt came to visit the White House at a Taft ball. AR started to light up a cigarette and a man named Butt (I kid you not) told her to please not light that butt. Alice, always a defiant one anyway, shrugged her shoulders, and brought her cigarette up to the White House roof where she smoked to her rebel heart's content while watching the Pennsylvania Ave traffic stroll by.
67 years later President Carter's aide Hamilton Jordan and pop music star Willie Nelson continued the Alice Roosevelt tradition and also smoked rebelliously on the White House roof. But it was different brand of tobacco than the one Alice was smoking. In fact Willie later claimed that after he was finished he actually spoke with Alice Roosevelt.
On another occasion a Russian lady of some renown visited the WHT White House and when she took out a cigarette, the others nearby gasped in horror. Taft, the big gentleman that he was, shocked them even more when he lit it up for her. His aides jumped through hoops begging the press not to report it, and they didn't.
BALLINGER PROBLEM
Secretary of the Interior Richard A. Ballinger resigned on March 6, 1911. He was under attack for allegedly turning over prized public lands for private sale with some corruption in the mix. The chief loot was Alaska coal and Montana water. Taft stood by his Interior man and instead fired Pinchot, the man from the Forestry division bringing the charges against Ballinger. But Richie B decided to spare his President the trouble and resigned. A later investigative committee exonerated Ballinger, but with a substantial group in disagreement. That group included most Democrats and the “Insurgent Republicans.”
Taft had a good record on the environment and set aside almost as much public land for preservation as did his predecessor. But Taft never gets the credit that Roosevelt gets because Taft wasn’t a self-worshiping blowhard about everything he ever did.
NICARAGUA AND ‘DOLLAR DIPLOMACY’
Secretary of State Philander Knox and President Taft worked together closely in foreign policy. They tried to obtain rights for an American built railroad in China with no success. American banks in the Taft era took over the national banking system of Haiti.
The Taft/Knox team decided to invoke the Monroe Doctrine in Nicaragua, just as TR had done in the Dominican Republic. But there was a difference between TR’s imperialism and Taft’s. TR lived by the slogan ‘Speak softly and carry a big stick.’ Taft governed under a different slogan, ‘Speak softly and carry a big wallet.’
Many countries in Central America were in debt to the hated foreign banks, but Nicaragua’s outstanding debts really stood out. Nicaragua owed several rich countries a total of about 15 billion dollars, and remember, that's when you could buy a car for eight dollars.
In spite of treaties, proclamations and conferences to the contrary, Central America was still wracked by wars, rebellions, dictators and economic anguish, none of which were conducive to foreign economic exploitation and profit. The USA had three basic reason for caring about Nicaragua enough to toss around some old fashioned imperialism there; 1- the trans-oceanic canal 2- basic self-defense, and 3- selfish greed.
The “Big Ditch” project in Panama was under construction when Taft took office and was still under construction when he left. But in a region as unstable as Central America, in a world as unstable as 1909, it couldn’t hurt to have a backup plan. The US wanted to keep Nicaragua as a backup canal option, and couldn’t well feel secure with that plan if revolution plagued Nic with itself and Nic was always at war with his neighbors (Boston Herald headline writers always called it Nic – “Reagan Plea to Nic Rebels.”)
Nicaragua had recently started a needless war with Honduras. Nicaragua was an own-goal incompetent nation (soccer slang - “own goal” foolish self destructive behavior, as in player kicks the ball in his own goal.) The US couldn’t hope to maintain exclusive rights to a Nicaraguan canal if an unstable government or one unfriendly to the United States was ever in place in Nicaragua.
By 1909 US investments overseas had more than doubled since 1899. The nation had long allowed diplomacy to pave the way for business, but now under Taft it was prepared to let business pave the way for diplomacy. Money was ready to hit the beach, and Nic was a target.
Nicaragua had a bad news dictator named Jose Zelaya. Under the Z Nicaragua had started a war with Honduras a war which inspired TR and Taft to both say “I’m not happy.”
In 1909 a rebellion broke out against Zelaya. The USA rushed to support the challenger Adolph Diaz. In 1912 Diaz in turn was threatened with revolution. AD asked the United States to save him. The USA sent 2,000 marines to make sure that Diaz stayed in power. The troops stopped the rebellion, clapped the rebel leader Juan Carlos Lopez Martinez in irons, and then expelled him from the country.
The USA was so supportive of the Diaz regime that we agreed to station a permanent military garrison in Managua. The Diaz family ruled everything. Marty Diaz was the Foreign Minister. The Diaz brothers were feared from Panama to Miami.
When the Taft administration tried to take over the collection of Nicaraguan customs, the Senate blocked the idea. So a way was found around the Capitol gang by an arrangement between the State Department, Diaz, and American banks.
Costa Rica, El Salvador and Honduras decided that American collection of Nic money was a violation of their rights as nations whose money would be handled. They took their case to a body of law that had been created the United States, the Central American Court of Justice. The CACJ ruled against the United States. So, naturally, the USA and Nicaragua simply ignored the decision and continued the collecting arrangement. The CACJ was reduced to a laughing stock and went out of business. The USA would remain in force in Nicaragua until 2050.
MUCKRAKERS CONTINUE
With the help of popular Progressive magazines such as Collier's, McClure’s, Mad, and the American Magazine, the arrogant rich came under continuous attack from the Muckraker reporters and the population at large. Most of the millionaires tried to defend themselves by pointing out the good deeds they also do, but some were defiant. Millionaire Brad Martin wrote an in-your-face book in 1911 called The Passing of the Idle Rich, in which he expounded on the new activist millionaire who held no shame, and deserved everything he had. “We own America,” he writes, “we got it; God knows how, but we intend to keep it … Truly I can say that wealth has no politics save its own interests.”
This as a time when one millionaire held a party in which guests smoked cigarettes after dinner that were rolled up in one hundred dollar bills. It is little wonder there was a socialist backlash as well as a common sense push for progressive reform, even amongst most conservatives.
PROGRESSO SOUP
A lot of ingredients went into defining the age as The Progressive Era.
It is easy to confuse US Populism and Progressivism. They sound similar and both were part of a general protest movement against the filthy rich. They both had a basic air of left, relative to the era. Populism and Progressivism were both designed to help the poor and the down on their luck in the name of fairness.
But there were key differences, the first being that the Populists essentially lost their war, and the Progressives essentially won theirs.
The Populists ranged on the Grange from the late 1870's to the turn of the century, peaking in the mid-90's after the Panic of 1893. The Progressives spanned the first two decades of the 20th century, losing their punch near the end of WWI, but after a winning run of reform.
The Populists were primarily a rural political force out of the west, which always hurt them. You people can't beat the eastern seaboard political power, you need to co-opt it, or else you are doomed to fail. The Populist defied the older conservative power in America with a lot an angry rural unrest. The Progressives were conservative in their approach to conservatives. They wanted to make the establishment see the light and change gently but firmly in the liberal direction. The Populists had a violent self-righteous left-wing attitude - the conservative structure had to come tumbling down to be replaced by mass co-operative business relations between capital and labor. Yes, it was tinged with Marxist salt and pepper all the way - another reason it was doomed to fail.
The Progressives wanted unions for the sake of improving the conditions of the workers. The Progressives rarely wanted the infrastructure of the United States government altered like an earthquake hit it. The Populists had wanted just that.
The Progressives had the advantage that the Populists had already broken the ice for change. The Populists had gone too far but had broken down a wall with artillery for the Progressives to walk through
with their hands up saying, 'we're unarmed. ... let's talk.'
The Populists had a lot of rough characters full of fight and radical ideas. The Progressives were of all stripes, and had a leadership class of educated and successful people. The Progressive journalist 'muckrakers' weren't angry because they had nothing to eat, they were angry when they saw that others had nothing to eat. Progressivism was liberalism as managed by the caring well-off liberals. Populism was a lot of hungry people who wanted to run a pitchfork through the rich and elected a lot of politicians who could speak their mind for them.
When big business got really big, scary big, it bumped a lot of older established superior classes by default down to only moderately successful. When tycoons like Carnegie and Rockefeller made 300 million dollars in an age when they average worker made $500 a year, it kind of made a lot of well off people feel like they weren't such big shots any more. This is one of the factors that made Progressivism successful. Whereas Populism was the low rural class against all the other classes, Progressivism had all the classes up to the upper middle class. Even the only slightly rich had learned to hate the Rockefeller-Swift-Carnegie-J.P. Moragn barons of wealth. It was all the other classes against the super rich and the old corrupt politicians.
The church is a good weather vane. There weren't too many socialist leaning priests in 1880. The church was still all powerful. The church was still the richie rich on the block in most towns. But the Taft era that had changed. People worshipped money far more than God on Sunday. The church was still rich, but now, Carnegie and Rockefeller were even richer. A lot of church leaders began to turn left and support liberal reforms designed to reduce the wealth and power of the robber barons. Of course, some of this church thinking was sincere caring too, but the selfish resentment for loss of prestige and power was in the mix.
Village leaders used to feel like real stars when they walked down the street. Now they were big fish in a small pond as people read the newspaper accounts of truly famous men making fortunes every month. It made the mayor and the fire chief feel like open mikers. The same was true of small time lawyers. They read about lawyers for the big corporations making fantastic fees and felt small. The law community got on board too. The big business monster had grown too big to keep any friends, even among the successful class.
Progressive reforms included trust busting, the recall, the referendum, direct election of Senators, female suffrage, child labor laws, strong new meat packing standards, food and drug labeling, the graduated income tax, tariff reductions, the eight hour day, workers compensation for injuries on the job, the right to unionize, the right to strike, and trying to get the Supreme Court to stop taking all the laws that were passed in the name of Progressivism and turning them around to crush Progressivism.
On the local level the Progressives worked hard to battle slums. They took industries where the public interest was at stake, water power for example, and put it in the hands of the local government. More to the point, Progressivism took public interest industries out of the hands of rich capitalists who had shown now for decades that they could not be trusted. Reform in city government led to a more orderly system where each corrupt cog in the wheel could no longer claim it was not aware of what was going on.
The super-rich and the corrupt politicians had little choice but to give ground, and give ground they did. Progressivism had its ups and downs from 1900 to 1920, but it had more ups than downs. The Populists made a lot of noise and peaked in the election of 1896 while winning exactly two states. Populists did a lot better. They ended up running things for a while.
TRIANGLE FIRE 3.25.11
The Labor movement gained much sympathy when an overcrowded unsafe factory erupted in flames and killed 148 immigrant workers in New York City, mostly young ladies aged 16-23. The ten-story Triangle Waist Factory stood at the corner of Greene St and Washington Place, near today’s Greenwich Village. Many jumped to their death rather than face the fire, as did so many on 9/11 2001. The fire lasted 30 minutes, and I’m not sure what a “waist factory” even is, but I can guess.
It’s a shame that it took a horrible fire to awaken the USA to the inhumanity of conditions in many if not most of the nation’s large factories. The disaster helped the reform movement. The 148 did not died in vain. For many decades they remained heroic martyrs whose names were invoked in defense of the right of safe working conditions for labor.
The issue of fire safety touches all of us, even today. In 1999 a night club in Rhode Island went up in flames and killed exactly 100 people due to unsafe conditions during a music show. That club did a stand-up comedy night on Wednesdays.
TAFT BLOCKS ARIZONA STATEHOOD 1911
Two new states, Arizona and New Mexico, came into the Union in 1912. But they were almost there in 1911 when Taft blocked them with his big bod. A law was going to be included in the Arizona state constitution that would permit the recall of judges by popular referendum. This was no good. William’s legal background came through beautifully as he wrote why he could not stand by and allow this,
“The unbridled expression of a majority of the
community converted hastily into law or action
would sometimes make a government tyrannical
and cruel. Constitutions are checks upon the hasty
action of the majority. They are the self-imposed
restraints of a whole people upon a majority of
them to secure sober action and a respect for the
rights of the minority. …
“By the recall of the Arizona constitution it is
proposed to give to the majority power to remove
arbitrarily any judge who may have the courage to
render an unpopular decision. … We cannot be
blind to the fact that often an intelligent and
respectable electorate may be so roused upon an
issue that it will visit with condemnation the
decision of a just judge, though exactly in accord
with the law governing the case, merely because it
affects unfavorably their contest.”
Well said Willie. To hell with the unthinking democratic mob. The USA is not a pure democracy. It is a republic, and a nation of laws. Arizona pulled a fast one and withdrew its recall laws, only to recall the law after Taft left the White House. In 1913 California kicked a judge out of office because he gave bail to an offender who left town and was never apprehended. Most states today do not allow a voter recall of judges but a few do and I don’t like it. I’m with Mr. T on this one. The argument quoted above is irrefutable.
STIMSON TAKES OVER WAR 5 22 11
Ballinger resigned as Secretary of War in March of 1911. Taking over the post was Henry L. Stimson, who would serve a more famous term at the same post during WWII.
Stimson led one of the great lives of American history. Hank started out as a lawyer for big corporations. He didn't have much of a conscience about helping out the behemoth bullies but when he was asked to become US Attorney in 1908 he took the job and began to see the other side. Stimson found himself investigating and prosecuting corporations instead of defending them. Stimson helped the US government to successfully prosecute several corporations for the evil practice of secret rebates by railroads to favored monopolies. The sugar industry was especially at fault here, along with oil, of course. Having seen both sides of the corporate fence he came to make these interesting observations,
“ .. it has always seemed to me, in the law, from
what I have seen of it, that wherever the public
interest has come into conflict with private
interests, private interest was more adequately
represented than the public interest. … I was
taken , as you might say, by the back of the
neck … and turned loose with nothing but my
oath of office to guide me, the first feeling was
that I had gotten out of the dark places where I
had been wandering all my life, and got out
where I could see the stars and get my bearings
once more.”
When Stimson took over at the War Department the Army consisted of 74,822 men of whom just over 4,000 were officers. Chief of the General Staff was Leonard Wood, of Spanish-American War fame. The next most powerful post was Adjutant General and this was manned by a Mr. Ainsworth.
General Freddie Ainsworth was popular and influential. He had clout beyond his post within the Army and had a great deal of Congressional juice. Ainsworth had a lot of clout with the Capitol Hill mob. Fred Ainsworth had come to believe that he had at least as much influence as the Chief of Staff, and about as much as the Secretary of War.
In fact he was right. But when Stimson took over he was determined to correct all that. Ainsworth sent Wood a sharp memo about a change that was being proposed in the procedure for muster rolls. Wood and Stimson thought that the Ainsworth muster memo stank of outright insubordination. It wasn’t the substance of Ainsworth’s memo that angered Stimson. It was the style. So in this case style became substance and the ostensible substance became irrelevant. Ainsworth habitually questioned the integrity of anyone who didn’t agree with him and impugned their intelligence too.
H Stimson not only wanted to force Ainsworth to resign, he wanted an apology for the tone of his letter, and he wanted to subject General Ainsworth to a military courts martial.
Ainsworth was expecting a letter expressing thanks for his accurate criticisms and instead got a resign or go to jail letter. Frederick agreed to resign.
Stimson gave as much public attention as possible to the Freddie Ainsworth affair in order to demonstrate to the world that in this country the military is always subordinate to civilian control. It was a miniature version of Truman firing MacArthur.
NAFTA 1911
It wasn't called NAFTA, at the time, but there were similarities between the North American Free Trade Agreement of the 1990's and the Canada Tariff Agreement of 1911.
The lines were not drawn neatly on the matter of letting Canadian products into the United States on low tariff conditions, and in an era when high tariffs ruled.
The Progressives were for or against it depending on their selfish geographical concerns. Western progressives weren't progressive when it seemed to them that an invasion of cheap Canadian products would hurt their ability to make money. Eastern progressives had less to lose so they favored the free trade idea with Canada. Both major political parties were divided along similar selfish lines.
The Congress passed a bill in 1911 reducing tariffs with Canada drastically, making Canada a glaring exception to the high tariffs imposed by the allegedly low-tariff Payne-Aldrich.
Getting this liberal tariff passed was a tough mountain to climb, but no sooner did America overcome its xenophobia than the whole thing backfired because of Canadian Xenophobia. The Canadian electorate listened to red-neck Canadians claiming that the Americans were now on the road to annexing Canada. The low tariff was supposedly a trojan horse breaking ground towards a new USA that made up the whole continent. The US Hawks of 1812 would have their way in 1912. The land of “eh?” voted the Liberals out in an angry landslide and the Conservatives took over in Ottawa and nullified NAFTA 1911.
WICKED WICKERSHAM AND STEEL
In October of 1911 AG Dave Wickersham brought a US government suit against US Steel for the illegal acquisition of the Tennessee Iron and Coal Company back in 1907.
TR took this as the personal insult it was intended to be.
In 1907 US Steel had convinced President Roosevelt to allow this purchase in the interest of alleviating the Panic of 1907 for the good of the country. US Steel had met with TR at the White House and got a free pass on prosecution under the Sherman Anti-trust Act, convincing the President that this was not even going to be profitable for US Steel, and that it was only being done for patriotic reasons. They asked for a personal promise from Roosevelt not to prosecute for restrain of trade or illegal combination, and they got it.
Over the next year or two it became clear enough that the US Steel Corporation had made a great deal of money off of Tennessee Iron and Coal and had unofficially made a fool of Roosevelt in 1907. Roosevelt was too proud to admit that, and he defended his actions with a false passion.
Now Taft was making a fool of Roosevelt officially. By prosecuting US Steel in 1911 he was declaring TR's personal promise of 1907 null and void and was declaring that the US Steel had swindled the President.
Taft may or may not have done this anyway, but the fact that the two men by October 1911 were openly enemies, probably played a large part.
ARCHIE BUTT
One of the most famous men of his era, but not so famous today was Archie Butt. Mr. Butt was a close advisor and friend to Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft.
AB was a lifelong military man, having served in both the Spanish-American War and the Philippine Insurrection. He was not officially a cabinet member for either TR or Taft but had more more personal access to the President than any three cabinet members. Military advisor, golfing buddy, valet, personal advisor, not a yes man, but always supportive, Archie Butt was an important presence in two Administrations. He's in a lot of pictures from both eras. He's the guy in full military dress standing literally behind the President.
When Taft and Roosevelt developed their tragic quarrel, Archie was caught in the middle. Both Presidents loved Archie, Archie loved both Presidents and both Presidents now hated each other.
I hate it when people I like bad mouth someone I like. It's a no-win position. TR kept ripping Taft in the papers and Taft started to complain to Archie about TR. It was a shame that they put him in the middle.
Early in 1912 Butt asked Taft for a leave of absence for health reasons. Taft supported this decision and encouraged Butt to go to Europe and get away from politics for a while. And he apologized if he had added anything to Archie's troubles.
Butt, who had never married, took a tour of Europe and loved it all. Near the end he wrote home that he had met a woman in London who might be “something special.”
Two days later he boarded a big ship at Southampton England bound for New York. It was the Titanic.
Archie Butt's body was never found. Taft was the main speaker at a service for Archie with 1,500 people in attendance, and the big man broke down a couple of times giving the eulogy.
TITANIC APRIL 1912
The death of the luxury liner Titanic is one of the most famous things in all of human history. It happened on Taft's watch in April of 1912.
The ship went down in a blizzard. Legend has it that it struck an iceberg.
1,500 men went down with the ship. 700 women and children were put into lifeboats and made it back alive.
The Titanic was on it's maiden voyage and was advertised as the most unsinkable ship ever built. That either spooky, or God's way of telling humans to knock of the arrogance.
There have been two major movies about Titanic. The first was bad for the reasons old movies tend in general to be bad. The new one is bad for the reasons that the new movies tend in general to be bad.
In the new one, the rich people are so demonized that we are almost supposed to root for them to die. Instead of paying a salute to the magnanimous gesture of the men choosing to stay behind, the Cameron camera only showed a couple of bad men trying to sneak or fight their way into the lifeboats in spite of the no men rule.
LAWRENCE WOBBLY 1912
Ask an educated person what the historic question – The “Wobblies” was the nickname for the IWW. What did these three letters stand for? They will instantly bark, “Oh yes, I know that one; that would be the International Workers of the World.” It’s an easy mistake to make because most leftist labor organizations were unabashedly socialist, and socialism was international in nature. The IWW was the Industrial Workers of the World and was essentially an American organization. The ‘International Workers of the World’ is redundant. This month I saw the IWW referred to incorrectly on a major documentary as the International Workers of the World.
I ran into a reputable political satirist named Will Durst at the Atlanta airport a few years back (we had worked together as regular stand-up comedians before he turned to political comedy) and he asked me what I was reading. I showed him the book, The Wobblies. “Oh,” he said, “The International Workers of the World.”
The IWW had a great little history but failed in the end largely because it never established an effective alliance with the American Federation of Labor.
The Wobblies and the AFL were supposed to be fighting the same battle together but there were too many differences for an alliance.
The IWW wanted a revolutionary socialist solution to the evils of industrial America. The AFL wanted only to better the working conditions and salaries of the laborer.
The IWW was naïve enough to think that the workers could own the means of production. This makes no sense because once labor owns it, they aren’t labor anymore. The man of the people who slays the King and takes his throne is no longer the man of the people. Now he is the King and someone else wants his scalp in the name of the people. This is the essential stupidity of Marxism. I have wasted a great deal of my life studying Marxism and I know what I am talking about.
The IWW strength was concentrated in the west, particularly in the mines, and never had more than 40,000 members. But it had publicity out of proportion to its work, and in the east, the hip left idolized it and wrote about it with considerable emotion.
In 1912 the IWW had its glory day in the textile strike at Lawrence, Massachusetts. The strikers won and the IWW got as much of the credit in supporting the strikers as the strikers did themselves. The IWW took in the children of strikers who could not support the little ones because of lost wages.
The IWW boasted of violent intentions often enough. The Wobblies paid the price in government harassment and arrests, which diminished their power and numbers. Their defender/historians to this day still mock this harassment as oppression of a peaceful group, as though threats of violence are not a form of it. This duality of intent and capability is the consistent and self-destructive mark of the radical left. It was there at Haymarket Square in 1876, it was there during the Palmer raids of 1919. And it was there a lot in the IWW. Leave us alone you evil big government! Let us peacefully plan your violent downfall. The boorish government both local and national, commits unspeakable acts of oppression against the radicals who after all only claim that they can and will do revolutionary and violent things. The reality that they don’t have the muscle to back up their intentions exonerates them and makes their oppressors the bad guys. Yeah, rite.
People go to jail for brandishing a fake gun.
NOT FADE AWAY – MAC DOWN – 9-5-12
General Arthur MacArthur, Douggie's dad, was very famous in his own right. He was one of the highest ranking generals alive, and was the former military ruler of the Philippines. Mac senior had won the Medal of Honor in the Civil War. “Art-Mac” was almost a household name. No wonder his son became so grandiose when he became a general. He had to outrank his father's shadow and ordinary behavior wouldn't get it there.
On September 5, Artie's old regiment, the Wisconsin 24 held it's 50th reunion. General MacAarthur was 90 and his 89 year old wife begged him not to go. He refused, because he was MacArthur. He “had to be with his men,” the cornball. Only 53 of the W-54 were both still alive and capable of getting to Milwaukee for the anniversary dinner.
The last speaker to rise to the podium was the most illustrious, General MacArthur. He looked around the room and began a dramtic speech about duty, honor and glory.
“And our regiment, the Wisconi.....”
He never added the n to the end of the word. Arthur MacArthur collapsed, mid speech, of a heart attack. A doctor rushed up and bent over. “Boys, he is dying.”
All 53 old men of the 54 made a circle around the dying man and recited the Lords Prayer. When the prayer was through, so was MacArthur. He had pulled a Dick Shawn.
It's a bit ironic that Douglas MacArthur is famous for the phrase, “Old soldiers never die, they just fade away.” His father died with no fade out at all, the complete opposite of Dugout Doug's corny aphorism.
(Note: Dick Shawn was a famous comedian who was on stage in San Diego and died in the middle of his one-man show. The crowd thought it was part of the act until they saw the lights go up and heard the announcement to please leave in an orderly fashion. His last words were, “If there was a nuclear war, and we were the only survivors, I would be your leader.” Then, ker-plunk.)
MAGDALENA BAYWATCH 1912
The Monroe Doctrine was expanded as a result of events at Magdalena Bay in the Baja peninsula of lower California, which is Mexico.
A Japanese private fishing company was negotiating with the Mexican government to purchase or lease a base at Magdalena Bay. This alarmed many conservative American politicians who saw in this a threat to our communications with the Panama Canal and a general intrusion into our hemisphere. A private company could represent the interest of it’s parent nation and in a way create even more of a threat to American national security because it could make moves without political responsibility, whereas an over purchase of the same spot by the Japanese government would include clear political responsibility.
Ultra isolationist Senator Lodge of Massachusetts introduced a resolution in 1912 which extended the terms of the Monroe Doctrine yet again for United States foreign policy. Originally the Doctrine had been directed against interference in our hemisphere by any “European” or “old world” power. Now it would include any “non-American” power. But more importantly this Lodge resolution specified that possession of any harbor on the American continent “by any corporation” was tantamount to possession by the country of that corporation’s origin. In other words a Japanese Fishing company in possession of Magdalena Bay was the same as possession by Japan of Magdalena Bay and would not be tolerated by the USA.
The deal never went through and Magdalena Bay remained a great place for scuba diving, but not for threats to our communication lines in the Pacific. This Lodge corollary to the Monroe Doctrine in theory is a respected part of national policy. The Second World War in the Pacific might have been more difficult 30 years later of Japan had built up Magdalena Bay as a private operation initially and then took it over for military purposes at the convenient moment.
FORD JOKES
The automobile was a revolutionary change in the American lifestyle. It represented actual wealth. No matter how fancy a rich man's car looked, he could get from Scranton to Wilkes Barre any faster than the man in his inexpensive Ford.
Henry Ford's cars were dominating the market and were inspiring a national phenomenon. The Ford Jokes. Hundreds of Ford jokes were making the rounds of US folklore. For years it was hard to go anywhere without someone telling you a Ford joke. There were hundreds of thousands of tiny hardcover books sold consisting of nothing but collections of Ford jokes.
I was really hoping to pick out one or two good ones to share here but unfortunately they are all horrible. None of them are the least bit funny now, not to me anyway, and certainly not worth risking. Its bad enough you might groan at my jokes that I think are good. I'm not tossing out any second raters from someone else that even I groaned at.
Many of the jokes were put-downs, but some were praising the car. Often they made fun of how small the car was. They were all duds.
In the mid-1970's a second round of Ford jokes went around about how dumb and clumsy the President was.
“Do you know why Jerry Ford once got fired from his job as an elevator operator?”
“No.”
“He couldn't learn the route.”
NO MORE “GRUB STREET”
The first two decades of the 20th century saw a remarkable change in the world of the serious writer. It was the time of plenty. The world of the writer in the latter part of the 19th century was not so lucrative, lending itself to the pejorative term for the home of most writers; 'grub street.'
But the rise of the automobile made magazine and newspaper distribution expand with it. They were “hitchhiking” on the success of the car.
Massive circulations combined with the rise of advertising combined to make these times a writers dream. There was simply more than enough work for everyone with any talent at all behind a typewriter.
Advertising had previously been a simple method of informing the customer of that the product was and where to buy it. But in TR and Taft's time that changed completely. Now the purpose of the advertiser was to create the demand, not just meet it. Advertising was the new home of many a talented writer who previously wrote literature per se. If you didn't think about shoelaces before, the new advertising made you. “Your boss is looking down on you because of your terrible shoe laces. Be like this cool guy in our ad who wears Globo Shoelaces. His boss noticed his fine shoelaces and gave him a raise!.” Gee, I think I need to buy those Globo Shoelaces. I didn't realize it a week ago but they might be right. Maybe my boss really is looking with disdain on my old pitiful shoelaces. Writers were being hired left and right to write this type of lame but effective copy. And they were being paid ten times more than the useless fools who wrote with artistic excellence on important matters.
This led in turn to another remarkable phenomenon. The advertising revenues of newspapers and magazines reached a point where the profit margin of these publications was determined by advertising, not the price paid for the newspapers. In the 19th century the ads were in the back of the paper all in one section and the publisher was reluctant and embarrassed to even included them in his fine literary product.
By Taft's time that had all completely changed. Now the copy was pasted all around the ad. The literature was merely bait to send the reader to look at the ad. This new system has lasted a hundred years and shows no signs of slowing down.
Writers became moderately wealthy without even becoming famous. It was the best of times for them. Novels were divided up to several installments and printed in magazines where the ads paid the writer and paid well. It was a big jump from merely publishing a book and hoping to break even with the cover price.
The joy of getting major published now came with a price. The big advertisers could pressure the publishers to squash articles or stories that had any anti big business sentiment. The writers were making money but the iconoclastic among them were emasculated big time. This problem was scoffed at as silly paranoia by some analysts at first but over the decades it has proven to be a major problem for freedom of speech in America. Voluntary censorship as the price of admission to high profile writing gigs has become something of a sad norm in the periodical field.
Even today any rebellious author, especially on the left, has to think strictly in terms of old fashioned book publishing. It is now next to impossible to get lefty work published in major newspapers or magazines. This bad trend began with this big change in the advertising concept in these changing years.
FREUD SHAKES UP THE MORALS OF THE NATION
Those crazy Austrians. They gave us Hitler and they gave us Freud, each man shaking up the century in a big way each in their inimitable way. Freud would have had a great time analyzing Hitler and Hitler would have had a great time executing freud for calling Hitler a sexually unsatisfied loser who overcompensated for his weaknesses through achievement.
Sigmund Freud as an Austrian physician who specialized in treating the mentally sick. He developed his theories about the root cause of all human behavior while over there and brought his radical ideas over here in a series of lectures at Clark University in Worcester Massachusetts in 1910.
Freud felt that the human mind was divided into the penthouse and the cellar. The penthouse was our conscious mind where we behaved civilized and tried to get along with people. But we all had monstrous demons at another level. these cellar dwellers wanted to either hurt people or have sex with them, perhaps in some cases both. In any case the 'subconscious' was a scary world of our real impulses and in controlling our real desires we interact socially without revealing our real nature.
Freud felt that most of our drive for success in life was merely an external outlet for our deep sexual aggressive desires. According to Freud, painters painted because they were horny, athletes ran because they were horny, and worst of all, people went to church ... I can't even say it. He thought that religion was merely another manifestation in controlled outward form of our inner sexual drive.
Then there were the dreams. Freud interpreted dreams as no one had ever done before. The American Indians believed in the wisdom of dreams. Freud thought that dreams were not spiritual guide-lights, but in reality the subconscious roaming free doing whatever it really wanted to do without the restraint imposed by the conscious mind, like a teenager at home with the parents away for the weekend. Our inner self comes out while we dream, he believed. Last night I dreamed I strangled two editors and a literary agent, for example. I woke up in a cold sweat, soaked with disappointment.
Freud was the rage in the Taft era. Of course a lot of old school conservatives hated him and rejected his work completely. Many critics dreamed of killing him. I'm pretty sure the only reason that Freud did any research and writing at all was because he wasn't very good in bed (Mrs. Freud told me that last night in yet another scary dream.)
Perhaps more important than the theories themselves was that the Freudian controversy opened up to discussion the world of sexuality. The over thirty crowd in 1910 couldn't get over the very idea that people were discussing sex with the same aplomb that they usually discussed the baseball game. At the turn of the century the word “leg” was consider inappropriate in mixed company. Now young learned adults were dropping the 's' word right and left while their grandmothers fainted. It took a specific issue and controversy over sex to open up cultural freedom of speech on the subject. Just trying to campaign for more tolerance in sexual discussion wouldn't have broken the ice. But with the freudian controversy, the mores on sex were liberalized through the side door. Even those who condemned Freuds sex talks were contributing to the breakdown of Puritanical values.
When TR came to office in 1901 it was unthinkable for an unmarried couple to go on a date without a chaperone. By the time Taft let office it was a rare couple that was still shackled by these antiquated paranoias about sex.
For every book that Freud wrote there were ten books analyzing that book. I have tried to read several books about Freud and found them eggheaded and boring. So I never had an inkling to try and read Freud. So when I finally found a large volume of his collected works at a flea market for 50 cents I let it sit uncracked in the bottom of a box o books for a decade. One day I started to read and couldn't put it down. I was completely surprised to find that his writing style is not nearly as eggheaded as those who analyze him. He is not that difficult to read.
I read a book by him on jokes and the meaning of those jokes on the subconscious. After 30 years in stand-up comedy I can honestly say after reading it that I know more about that subject than he does. That's only natural. I also trust that if he had interviewed several veteran vaudevillian comedians in his time he would have learned more from them than they from he, and more important he would have welcomed their enlightening thoughts and would have written a revised and improved edition of Jokes and Their Meaning on the Subconscious.
I played at Clark University with fellow comedian Billy Campbell from Chicago. It was in a basement pub and the kids hardly listened to a word of the show. I told a young student afterwards that their school was the place where Freud gave his most important lectures that later became famous books. “Yeah, rite,” she said sarcastically.
There's no Freudian explanation for basic simple ignorance.
GET PSYCHED, PEOPLE!
Last week I played in Las Vegas and I was really psyched to go back out there to headline at a great comedy club.
That is how we use the term “psyched” today. But the word originated in the Taft era. In the new science of Freudian psychoanalysis people who underwent this treatment were said to have been 'psyched.' Somehow it evolved from meaning needing medical treatment to meaning exited anticipation of something really excellent.
I'd be really psyched if someone could enlighten me on how that happened.
TURKEY JERKS
There are few subjects less interesting to me than the dances of a given era in a given nation. But there is no avoiding it. The nation was preoccupied with dancing in the Taft era. It was a subject on everyone's mind and lips, much more so than today.
Dances aren't controversial. They don't represent a mind set or a revolutionary shake up of our national culture. Dances of the 1960's were a little more important, like the frug or the twist than dances today, but even these were not really a national sensation.
But in Taft time the “turkey trot” and the “bunny hop” to name only two, were pressing the national buttons of action and reaction.
Prior to these new uptempo dances, the courting ritual included only staid and slow dances like the minuet and the waltz. When these new dances came into popular being accompanied by lively ragtime tunes, it was, I hate to say it, revolutionary.
These animal dances were a national craze among the young and the angry disapproval of them was the craze among the old. It was the invasion of rock and roll in the 1950's but it was even more rock and roll than rock and roll, because no one had ever done anything like it before. Music was always slow and so was the dancing. Couples weren't supposed to make intimate contact when they danced. These dances were largely an excuse for cheap feels and thrills on the dance floor in a repressed era, as well as a vehicle through which young people told old people, we will decide what our mores will be, not you. And if you disapprove, so much the better. That's the whole point.”
Rock and rollers think they invented iconoclastic culture in 1955 and that it all sprang from that well. But the real rebellion began back in this time. Before that, everything was sacred for a thousand years. This was the big breakthrough, not the Charleston of the roaring twenties, the “boogie-woogie” of the 1930's or the swinging big band sounds of the 40's. The real rebellion began before the first world war. The rebellion froze during the war and then picked up where it left off after the war. By the time the 1950's came on, several layers of defiant high energy music and dance had already busted down doors of snob conservatism. The 50's simply crystalized it into mass production and a fantastic publicity money making machine. The revolutionary boom of the record industry made rock and roll revolutionary, not the revolutionary nature of the music itself. I know this is heresy to a generation that has been loving itself over its rebel rock since 1955, but that fight had already been fought by youngsters were were pretty much in the box (dead) by 1955.
The turkey trot was by far the most popular and most controversial of the animal dances in the Taft time. Most of the songs that the TT was danced to had popular lyrics and people sang along as they danced in full simultaneous throttle when doing it. A woman in upstate New York was arrested and put on trial for dancing the turkey trop. The charge was lewd behavior!
During the trial in the town of Milwood the defense lawyer asked if his client could do the dance for the court. The prosecuting attorney protested violently saying that his honor clearly didn't want to turn his courtroom into a circus. But the judge allowed it and when she started to dance the turkey trot in the courtroom the spectators began singing along and tapping their feet with a grin. The judge demanded order in the court and after things calmed down the woman started up again. This time the entire courtroom except for the judge and the prosecutor started wiggling and singing along as she danced the turkey trot in the Milwood hall of justice. She was acquitted. This scene belongs in a comedy fiction movie, but it was real and she was not the only person arrested in the United States for doing the turkey trot.
One man was arrested in Binghamton New York for doing the squid. When he did the dance in the courtroom he was declared insane and sent to a mental institution. All right, I made that one up, but the turkey trot courtroom story is quite true.
RIP MT 4-21-10
Mark Twain was probably the most prominent celebrity death in the Taft years. The greatest American humorist died at the age of 74 on April 21, 1910.
There was a public funeral in New York City. Thousands could pay their last respects, and then his cynical body was taken to Elmira, New York in Chemung County for burial next to his wife.
My favorite book by Twain that I finished from cover to cover is ... someday I must make the time. I saw the entire Disney movie version of The Prince and the Pauper, and enjoyed it very much.
WOMEN VOTE
The suffragette movement won full victory only in 1920, but many states allowed full voting rights for women even in the Taft era. The problem was getting the whole nation on board. That which you do to the least of my sisters, that you do to me.
The west led the progressive way on this issue.
Women had full voting rights in the states of Washington, Oregon, Idaho Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, Kansas, Arizona and California. The Northeast and the Great Lakes states generally had limited voting rights for women, that is, they could vote in most local elections, but not in national ones. The South, as in Civil War South, denied the women vote entirely with the singular exceptions of Mississippi and Louisiana which granted limited local voting rights only.
It is a myth that the woman's suffrage movement was a mass movement, a groundswell of revolutionary change initiated by the female millions. In fact, most women were complacent about the whole thing and it took determined revolutionary leaders to make the movement ignite. It wasn't until the movement had begun to make major breakthroughs that the rank and file females began to marsh down Pennsylvania Ave demanding the vote. Most of the feminists demanding the vote were Janie come latelies.
One well respected writer of the era insisted decades later that most women he knew were actually opposed to getting the vote! They thought that their place in society had certain special privileges that would be taken away with the modernization and equalization of the female role in society and politics.
NEW YORK CITY
The most un-American city in the country in the Taft era was New York. Immigrants were pouring into NYC at a fantastic rate. The new wave of immigrants were not representative of the rest of the country, which up to that time was predominantly English Irish and German. Now the immigrants were pouring in from all parts of the world but especially from southwestern Europe. A new mass of Jewish people led to the slightly less than playful nickname “Jew York.” Even today there are more Jews in New York than in any city in Israel.
In most countries the largest city is a macrocosm of the rural and suburban country. Paris represented in 1910 a focus point of the real french people from every corner of France. While the French culture may have emanated from Paris, it can equally be argued that French culture poured into Paris from all corners of the nation. Inner Paris was a metropolis that reflected outer France.
In the time of Taft, this equation was reversed. Few of the countless thousands of immigrants reflected anything cultural in Wisconsin or Georgia or even in upstate New York. In 1910 the foreign born population foreign born population of NYC reached an astonishing 78%. And that doesn't even include second generation people whose parents spoke a foreign language first and taught it at home first. Its safe to say that in 1910, NYC was 90% foreign. There were very few real New York Yankees in New York City.
Because they had no American base of tradition and cultural to work from, the new New York was more able to adopt new ideas from overseas that would be considered heresy in Chicago or St. Louis. Iconoclasm found a ready audience in Taft's time. New ideas and ideals arrived in New York where the immigrants absorbed them without cultural prejudice. It also helped that the immigrants had to be a little rebellious in the first place in order to have chosen to emigrate to the USA. Europe shook the map and all the nuts rolled into the corner called New York City. These feisty bohemians were not stuck on old conservative orthodoxies. The immigrant mass became the fertile planting ground for progressivism and cultural liberation. Then when these ideas became normal in New York they gradually spread to acceptance in the rest of the country. This was not the way in other capitol cities around the world. In other countries the culture turns into the capitol city. From NYC it turns out.
New York was so un-American in essence that it helped to change America in ways that a purely American city could never dream of doing. Without that baggage of national orthodoxies, new ideas were adopted in a heartbeat and then passed on to the rest of the country where in other countries the biggest city resisted these same new ideas and they never made it to those countries country-sides. New York City's dynamism may have been an accident of immigration, but it gave a spark to innovation and progressivisms that moved the country foreword in ways that were the envy of the world. Other countries could at least find some consolation to know that it was their emigrants that gave the USA its special qualities of advancements.
It's tough for me to be a Red Sox baseball fan and get hostility from New Yorkers whenever I play clubs far from home. Its so immature and personally frustrating because I don't feel the same in reverse, even though I love my home city of Boston. I loved New York City when I lived there and there's no doubt in my mind that it is the greatest city in the world. The pluralism of New York is unmatched anywhere on this planet and that was as true in 1910 as it is now. In some ways NYC is scary and cold. It doesn't care if you like it or not. It has no need, like some communities, to be loved and approved of. It just sits there and does what it does. Is what it is. For all its crime and dirt it is also the international capitol of tolerance (except on baseball), and of liberalism in its broadest and best definition.
SUPREME COURT
An influential book came out in 1907 that contributed to a new national intellectual spirit as regards to the Supreme Court. In the last 20 years or so, the Court had been so conservative and unyielding that it seemed like the one branch of government holding back the tides of progress.
In 1907 a scholar/businessman/lawyer named J. Allen Smith wrote The Spirit of American Government in which he argued that the Supreme Court was intended to reflect the will of the people and was supposed to adjust its views with the changing times. The Founding Fathers never intended the Court to be a brick wall protecting the status quo until the sun runs out of energy.
Marietta College fired J. Allen for his rebellious views, but the progressive academic community was all over it. This book established a seed of new thinking about the Court. The Court had been deciding in favor of big business and against labor for far too long. It was not supposed to be an instrument of oppression, protecting the strong and cold shouldering the weak. It had a moral component just like the executive and the Congress.
The Court changed gradually in a progressive direction. This book was one of many factors contributing to a Supreme sea change.
Taft named six men to the Supreme Court in his years in office. The one guy he wanted most to appoint was stuck doing the appointing.
The six men were Pitney Mahlon, Joseph Lamar, Willis Van Devanter, Edward White, Charles Hughes and Horace Lurton.
Taft saw the Senate confirm five of these six new Justices between December 20 1909 and December 15 1910. That's a remarkable five new Justices in a span of lass than one year.
Mahlon Pitney was a super Justice. His great grandson, by the way, was none other than movie star Christopher Reeve.
Edward White was chief justice for a while, and he had a reputation for making decisions favorable to white supremacists. Eddie White served in the Confederate Army in the Cicil War, one of three Supreme Court Justices to have fought for injustice.
AFTER OFFICE
Taft became a Professor of law at Yale after leaving the White House.
When Harding was nominated for President in 1920 Taft got behind WG 100%. In 21 Harding rewarded Taft with an appointment to the US Supreme Court. In fairness to Harding it should be said that Taft certainly would have been a likely choice for the job even if he hadn't lost three entire pounds campaigning for Harding. Mrs T says the nine years her William was on the Supreme Court were the happiest of his life. Taft told a friend that “I don't remember ever having been President of the United States.”
Taft went off to that great ice cream store in the sky on March 8, 1930, a month after resigning as Chief Justice.
CONCLUSION
Historians bash Taft, not so much by calling him bad things without saying any good things, but the good things are a short, token moments to feign balance, and are then followed by a stream of elaborately explained bad things about his rule.
If Taft was an ineffective president it is because he was a disciplined lawyer who believed in a strict interpretation of the powers of the presidency. He was the equivalent of a ‘strict constitutionalist’ in the early debates of the republic. As a result of his conservative take on the rights of Presidents he took very little initiative, but rather reacted to events as they came his way. William saw that as his duty. He also saw it as his duty not to conduct foreign policy in the adventurous aggressive spirit of his predecessor.
SOURCES
America, A Mosaic in the Making, by Zeile Cirocco and Henry Lashua – Mosaic says that Taft held Diaz of Nicaragua hostage to the USA’s desire to take over Nicaraguan customs; that Taft sent the Marines to Nicaragua in an act inimical to the wishes of Diaz. The other books seem to indicate that Diaz was going to get support from the United States without conditions.
“President Taft refused to recognize a revolution
in Nicaragua until the leaders agreed to accept
American credits to pay off British debts and sent
Marines to punctuate his point.”
The is a beautiful physical textbook. The maps and the illustrations are the best.
The American Pageant, A History of the Republic, by Thomas A. Bailey of Stanford – c) 1961 D.C. Heath
Great maps, great selection of reprints of political cartoons, great writing; it's just a shame that Bailey also occasionally cites poetry and song lyrics. It was so close to the perfect history book.
The Complete Book of US Presidents, by DeGregorio, c) 2001 Barnes and Noble
CBUSP was the source for the Taft ancestor at Bunker Hill and his self deprecating quote on presidential fitness.
A Diplomatic History of the American People, by Thomas A. Bailey
Bailey and Johnny Hicks ruled the Stanford history department for many decades. They are two of the best historians of all time.
A Diplomatic History of the United States, by Samuel Flagg Bemis, Farnam Professor of Diplomatic History in Yale University – c) 1934 Henry Holt.
Bemis is a god in the diplomatic history profession, but certainly some of his opinions can be challenged. Like when he said that Taft wanted to conquer the world. What was he basing that on?
The Growth of the American Republic Vol II 1865-1937, by Samuel Eliot Morison and Henry Steele Commager – c) 1940 (fourth edition)
This was one of the most widely used textbooks for college freshmen in America for 15-20 years. It is scholarly and offensive. It is off the scales opinionated but it sells these opinions as facts. Nothing wrong with polemics, I love polemics, but don't sell it to people as solid general history.
A History of the American People, by Norman A. Graebner (University of Virginia), Gilbert Fite (University of Oklahoma), and Philip White (University of Texas) – c) 1970 – These guys were pretty rough on Taft, typical of the take on this era in US history books.
Taft was accused of having a
“..basic conservatism, which was accentuated
by a lack of compromise, flexibility, and
political finesse.”
I don’t know. I can’t say. I didn’t know the guy. Apparently Graebe and Fite did. Taft never claimed to be anything other than a conservative jurist. Why he should be called out on being short on progressivism is beyond me. He gets the James Buchanan treatment. How dare this conservative run as a conservative and then display nothing but conservatism while in office. How dare he do that! We historians know what's best and we're always in favor of progressivism. We also know how everything turned out in hindsight. So woe to any president who fails to meet the demands of progressive historians.
For a guy who went on to become a Supreme Court Justice after reaching the Presidency, Taft is consistently assessed by historians as a man of very limited ability. Something doesn’t add up.
History of a Free People, by Henry W. Bragdon and Sam P. McCutchen, c)1954
Henry is an instructor of history as the prestigious and strict Phillips Exeter Academy. Even more prestigious is Phillips Andover Academy where the two President Bushes went, and a football rival of PEA
SPM taught American and African history at NYU.
The March of Democracy: Vol II, From Civil War to World Power, by James Truslow Adams – c) 1933 Scribner
A very famous history book by a very bad guy.
The National Experience – Part Two A History of the United States Since 1865 by John S. Blum (Yale), Edmund S. Morgan (Yale), Wille Lee Rose (The Johns Hopkins University), Arthur M. Sschlesinger (CUNY), Kenneth M. Stampp (UC Berkeley), and C. Vann Woodward – c) 1981 Fifth Edition – HBJ
I don't love the book, but it's high quality with this all-star line-up.
Our Times, by Mark Sullivan – c) 1930 – OT is a famed five volume treatment of America from 1900-1925. Unfortunately it is focused on everyday cultural life in America far far more than on politics. There are dozens of pages discussing and describing popular tunes from 1912. It is generally considered a masterpiece, but I find the writing often too flowery. One page is a treat the next is a torture. Long footnotes and two-page paragraphs do not help either.
That being said, this is a must read for all students of American history unless you prefer to spend months reading microfilm of the newspapers of the era. Sully was a prominent newspaper writer in the times he is writing about. He is often opinionated, so his isn't the last word on any subject. But he is a real window on the times, their times. Its pretty easy to find copies of Our Times in used book stores and flea markets. Scribner didn't skimp on quality paper. Finding all five volumes at once isn't quite as easy.
Highly recommended but highly overrated. It's also recommended for anyone interested in the history of the book. This was a milestone achievement in that field.
Out of Many, A History of the American People, by John Mack Faragher (Yale); Mary Jo Buhle (Brown), Daniel Czitrom (Mount Holyoke); and Susan Armitage (Washington State), c)1994 – This book has the Howard Zinn forced left viewpoint seal of approval.
The Oxford History of the American People, by Samuel Eliot Morison – c) 1965 Oxford University Press
Even though he is was a Harvard man, Harvard University Press never publish him. Maybe its because he is a disagreeable redneck who thinks he's a liberal, and a man who so failed the test of racism in the Civil War era that he once had to re-write certain passages on slavery in a revised edition of his general American history he wrote with Henry Steele Commager.
On page 831 Sam calls Taft contemporary Joe Cannon “a vulgar blatherskite.” What the hell is a blatherskite?
On page 840 SEM finally reveals what I had long felt when reading his work, that he is a partisan polemicist supporter of the Democratic Party. He usually tries to hide it, but maybe on this particular night he had a few too many Cape Codders (vodka and cranberry juice) at the Harvard Club on Comm. Ave (where there is now a statue of him) before he went home and hit the typewriter,
“The Election of 1912 began an era in American political history that still endures, one in which the Democratic party replaced the Republican as the party of new ideas and positive leaders. Social justice at home and vigorous leadership abroad have been forwarded b every Democratic President; whilst Republican presidents and defeated Republican presidential candidates, have tended to check reform at home and retire to isolation in foreign policy.”
Sam is so biased that he capitalizes President for “Democratic President” and uses the small p for “Republican presidents.”
A History of the American Republic, by John A. Garraty of Columbia University c) 1966 Harper & Row
The grouchy Garraty describes WHT,
“Taft lacked the physical and mental stamina required of a modern chief executive.”
That is typical judgmental condescending historian writing. Garraty lacks the mental stamina to not indulge in such sweeping indictments of people he didn't know.
Taft was a Supreme Court Justice and Gouvernor Morris emeritus professor says he wasn't mentally fit. Meanwhile Taft, while fat, was also a champion ice-skater and once climbed the North Face of the Eiger in his younger years. And yet Garraty calls him physically unfit to be president!
Garraty was a swimming instructor during WWII at the merchant marine, and he used to run the Boston Marathon, so he's probably snobby towards fat people, just as he is towards Republicans in general. Garraty really put the 16-inch guns on President Taft.
The United States, The History of a Republic, by Dick Hofstadter, Billy Miller and Danny Aaron, c) 1957
This staid and excellent hardcover schoolbook provided the incredible story of the 100 dollar bill cigarettes.
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