The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism

by Doris Kearns Goodwin

  With the revenue question resolved, the Senate’s tariff bill passed just before midnight on July 8 by a margin of 9 votes. The Senate bill made some reductions that the House had neglected, but also restored duties on hides and raw materials and left intact the controversial wool and cotton schedules. The Democratic vote along party lines was expected; that ten Republican senators followed La Follette in joining the Democrats made headlines. These dissenting votes revealed the very party split Theodore Roosevelt had feared, and long carefully avoided, further complicating matters for Taft.

  As the conference committee began its deliberations, Taft remained hopeful that he could persuade the dozen conferees to combine the best elements of both bills in a final product that both progressives and conservatives could support. Newspapers across the country called on the president to take charge. “Congress has had its inning,” the Baltimore Sun observed. “It is now the President’s inning, and he has the masses of the people behind him.” The Boston Journal declared it time for the president “to make good,” calling the proceedings “the greatest crisis of his career as Chief Magistrate.” The final tariff legislation, press reports agreed, would be a defining moment in his young presidency. “If he allows a bill to come from conference which disappoints the country,” the Journal concluded, “he will have forfeited a large share of the stock of popular confidence with which he was invested when he became President.”

  In the days that followed, Butt observed, Taft “used the White House as a great political adjunct.” He invited Payne to dinner one night and Aldrich the next; both men dined with the president the following evening, then retired to the terrace where they continued their conversation until long after midnight. The president put his yacht “at the disposal of the conferees in the hope that they might take a comfortable trip down the Chesapeake and adjust some matters under the influence of such a favorable environment.” He took breakfasts with the insurgents, lunches with the standpatters, and late evening automobile rides with Speaker Cannon.

  Throughout these intensive negotiations, Taft found time for almost daily letters to Nellie. He was “longing” for her company, he assured her, and would proceed to Beverly the moment the tariff struggle ended. In the interim, he was “delighted” that Bob and Helen had arrived. “I hope that you will feel more like making the effort to talk with them than you have heretofore,” he cajoled tenderly, “because it is practice that brings about the changes you seek.” The pace of recovery might be frustrating, he acknowledged, but he predicted that progress would come “by jerks.” Meanwhile, she was fortunate to enjoy the cooling onshore wind. “Last night was as hot a night as I have ever passed in Washington,” he told her. “I slept in three beds, and changed because each time I waked up I found myself so bathed in perspiration that the bed was uncomfortable.”

  Taft’s stream of letters, continuing through July and into the second week of August, provide insight into his strategy during the final stage of the tariff battle. The newspapers, he explained, had overstated the increases in the Senate bill, leading the public to view “the Senate bill as a very bad bill, and the House bill, by contrast as a good one.” The primary difference between the two, he told Nellie, lay in the Senate’s treatment of raw materials. If he could make the conferees return raw materials and hides to the free list and reduce the lumber rates, he believed he could “reconcile the country to the view that a substantial step downward has been taken.”

  On July 16, Taft made his first public move to influence the legislative process. Since he had called Congress into special session four months earlier, the president had patiently allowed lawmakers to work their will. Now, as tensions escalated within the conference committee, he issued a forceful statement that “he was committed to the principle of downward revision.” Unless he was presented with evidence that the producers of oil, coal, or hides were unable “to compete successfully, without reduction of wages, then they did not need a duty and their articles should go on the free list.” He understood that such action might hurt politicians in specific districts, but “with the whole people as his constituency,” the president was obliged to provide a “broader point of view.” The insurgents were “jubilant.” Republican senator Bristow of Kansas commented that the president’s statement “greatly strengthens the hands of the progressives.” Congratulatory messages flooded the White House and newspapers predicted that the final product would be “the Taft tariff bill—not the Payne or the Aldrich, or the Payne-Aldrich bill.”

  Nellie was relieved to hear that her husband had intervened at last. “I see today you made a statement as to what you were going to stand for,” she wrote. “I hope you won’t have to come down much on it dear.” While Nellie’s handwriting remained poor, her desire to support her husband was fiercely conveyed. Indeed, as the trials of Taft’s presidency commenced in earnest, the loss of her acute judgment and indomitable presence was a source of sorrow and frustration for both of them. For the first time in their marriage, Nellie was distracting Will from the difficulties he faced rather than offering sound guidance and solace.

  The tariff situation, Taft acknowledged to his brother Horace, was “a good deal more of a muddle than the papers make out.” Despite repeated promises to follow the president’s lead in the conference proceedings, Aldrich refused Taft’s request to commit himself “in writing” concerning free hides and raw materials. Although Taft had developed genuine respect for the Senate leader during the eighteen-week ordeal, he understood that he was dealing with “an expert and acute politician” and that he might “be deceived.” He was particularly worried about the cotton schedule of duties. “Aldrich insists that it is not an increase,” he confided to Nellie, “but I fear he is not borne out by the facts.” Meanwhile, Speaker Cannon threatened to defeat the entire bill unless the conferees agreed to the House-sponsored duties on gloves and hosiery. Apparently, Aldrich explained to Taft, the Speaker felt he “owed his victory” to the glove manufacturer Lucius Littauer, “and therefore it was a personal matter with him” to keep the measure intact. The Speaker’s blatant demand outraged Taft. “It is the greatest exhibition of tyranny that I have known,” he declared. “Aldrich and I continue to be good friends although we differ somewhat, but he is a very different man from the Speaker.”

  On July 28, Taft sent an ultimatum to the conference committee, insisting that he would not sign any bill that did not contain both the free raw materials agreed upon by the House and the Senate reductions in gloves and hosiery. “They have my last word,” he told Archie Butt, before departing for a round of golf followed by a dinner party. Ten minutes into dinner, Butt recorded, “the message came by phone from the White House that the conferees had agreed and had accepted the rates as laid down by the President. For a moment, Taft remained perfectly silent, staring incredulously at the paper before him.” Then, smiling broadly, he shared his satisfaction: “Well, good friends, this makes me very happy.” When the round of congratulations ended and the party drew to a close, Butt accompanied Taft to the White House. “There was no one waiting for him,” Butt observed. He was “lonelier in his victory than he had been in his fight.”

  On the afternoon of Thursday, August 5, the president arrived to sign the Payne-Aldrich bill. The sun was shining on the Capitol; the president wore a “cut away suit” and carried “a straw hat in his hand,” appearing “fairly radiant” to the assembled spectators. Cabinet officers along with members of Congress filled the president’s chamber, where Taft’s relief and good humor were evident to all. “Do you think I ought to adjourn Congress before I sign it?” he joked. “I certainly do not,” Aldrich replied, as the audience broke into laughter.

  For weeks, correspondents had speculated about the possibility of a presidential veto. Progressives, still desperately unhappy with the bill despite the last-minute improvements, had called upon Taft to reject this version and start over in the full session the following year. Well aware that he “could make a lot of cheap capita
l” and “popularize [himself] with the masses with a declaration of hostilities toward Congress,” Taft felt that such an action “would greatly injure the party.” Moreover, he was delighted by many aspects of the bill, including the reduced duties on raw materials, the formation of the tariff commission, the corporate tax, the income tax amendment, and the free trade provision for the Philippines. At this juncture, he had worked too hard and too long with congressional leaders to turn against them.

  At six minutes after five o’clock, the president signed the Payne-Aldrich bill. Three minutes later, he appended his signature to a companion bill that established free trade with the Philippines, fulfilling a promise made long before. “A broad smile of satisfaction overspread his face,” one reporter observed, “and he wrote his name with a flourish not in evidence when he signed the other bill.”

  In the midst of the ceremony, Butt recorded, “a terrific thunderstorm broke out.” The room suddenly darkened. “Heavy black clouds rolled up, and the electric lights had to be turned on. Peals of thunder and vivid flashes of lightning came from the sky.” Correspondents straightaway declared the storm a portent, auguring the “storm of protest” that would inevitably follow as the public understood the disappointing limitations of the bill. The measure was not “perfect,” Taft admitted in a public statement, but it nevertheless represented “the result of a sincere effort on the part of the Republican party to make a downward revision and to comply with the promises of the platform.” Later that night, he celebrated with cigars and wine at a White House dinner. “Practically all the prominent figures in the tariff fight” attended, the New York Times noted—“except the ‘insurgents’ in both branches of Congress.” Trusting that the animosities of the debate would soon be forgotten, the president expressed sincere thanks to every member who had helped steer the measure through “its long and stormy journey.”

  Public reaction to Taft’s role in the passage of the tariff bill was mixed. The New York Tribune offered a positive assessment, claiming that his “patient leadership” had “borne fruit in the many material concessions forced from the Senate,” easing the way “for intelligent and fair-minded tariff legislation in the future.” The New York American was less optimistic; while conceding that the president had made the final bill “less shocking,” it insisted that slight improvements to a bad bill did not relieve him of his obligation to carry out his party’s pledge. A tariff law that retained and even increased duties on “the necessities of the common people,” such as cotton and wool, many editorials proclaimed, could only be judged an “empty victory.” Most agreed that the president had “vindicated his personal sincerity,” but the fact that “he erred in his strategy” could not be denied. It was “his own fault,” the New York Times charged, that the final result had fallen short of his promised reform. “It is clear that he made the mistake of holding aloof too long; that he waited until after the horse was stolen before locking the stable door.”

  THE DAY AFTER SIGNING THE bill, Taft departed for Beverly. He planned to spend five relaxing weeks with Nellie and the children before embarking on a two-month tour of the West. As the presidential train pulled into tiny Montserrat Station on the edge of town, Taft was thrilled to see Nellie waiting to greet him. The train had barely “come to a standstill,” a reporter for the New York Times noted, “before he ran down the steps of the observation platform,” pushing his way through the “enthusiastic” crowd to reach his wife. He embraced her with kisses “which could be heard by everyone present.” While the president and his family motored to their seaside cottage, members of the White House staff drove to the office suites arranged at the Board of Trade building in Beverly. Once Taft escaped to the Myopia Hunt Golf Course that afternoon, the Baltimore Sun correspondent discerned an unmistakable message in his expression: “If anybody says the word tariff to me within the space of several days he will get hit with a golf stick.”

  Taft soon settled into a pleasant routine. After working with his secretary or meeting with visitors in the morning, he played a round of golf, returned to his papers and documents in early afternoon, and then gave “the rest of the day” to Nellie. He sat with her on the veranda, telling stories “to make her forget her illness,” and when breezes cooled the late afternoons, he accompanied her on long drives in the countryside and along the shore. Seated beside his wife in the back of the open touring car, Taft directed the chauffeur to travel “over every beautiful road,” trying each day “to find some new and pleasant route.” They always returned from these forty- or fifty-mile excursions by seven-thirty, when their children joined them for “the family dinner hour” and everyone exchanged stories about the day’s activities.

  Taft watched the weeks slip by with growing dread, aware that at the end of his holiday his 13,000-mile western tour would commence. “If it were not for the speeches, I should look forward with the greatest pleasure to this trip,” he told Captain Butt. “But without the speeches there would be no trip, and so there you are.” During the Beverly respite, Taft had hoped to prepare four basic speeches, but as the end of August approached, he had not drafted a single one. “I would give anything in the world if I had the ability to clear away work as Roosevelt did,” he confessed. “I have never known any one to keep ahead of his work as he did. It was a passion with him. I am putting off these speeches from day to day, and the result will be that I shall have to slave the last week I am here and get no enjoyment out of life at all.” Three days before the trip began, Taft was still unprepared. “I do not know exactly what to say or how to say it,” he told a friend. “I shall stagger through the matter some way, but not in any manner, I fear, to reflect credit on the Administration.”

  Before Taft set out on his trip, he explained to reporters that he hoped to “take the people into his confidence regarding the tariff contest.” He would travel from the Alleghenies to the Rockies, where rebellion against the Republican Old Guard and the tariff was “rampant.” He was optimistic that straightforward conversation with his critics might “prepossess them in favor of his standard.” He would readily acknowledge that “the bill was unsatisfactory in many ways,” but insisted that “it was the best he could obtain from the Congress under the circumstances.” A future fight for deeper reductions loomed, for Taft believed that the American people had “learned a great deal about the tariff” and were prepared to elect new representatives pledged to remedy the “shortcomings” in the present bill. Most important, Taft believed this comprehensive tour would allow him to engage directly with “tens and hundreds of thousands” of his “fellow citizens,” creating a “personal touch” between people in all sections of the country and their president.

  In his strategy to realize this ambitious agenda, Taft stumbled badly from the outset. He opened his speaking tour at a black-tie banquet sponsored by the Boston Chamber of Commerce. The audience of nearly 2,000 included “cabinet members, diplomats, congressmen, clergymen and distinguished business leaders.” The diners greeted him with hearty applause, but soon settled into a “grim silence” when he announced that he would refrain from any tariff discussion in order “to leave something” for future audiences. He chose instead to expound upon the Monetary Commission, appointed by Congress in the wake of the 1907 Panic. Chaired by Nelson Aldrich, the commission was leaning toward “a central bank” with sufficient reserves to meet future financial crises. The president characterized Aldrich as “one of the ablest statesmen in financial matters in either house,” a leader eager “to crown his political career” with the creation of “a sound and safe monetary and banking system.” While Aldrich would one day be credited as the “Father of the Federal Reserve Banking System,” he was then regarded throughout the West as a servant of special privilege and the chief architect of the disappointing tariff bill. Taft’s inept decision to lionize the senator in his very first speech cast a shadow on his tour before it had even started.

  The president’s train traveled from Boston to Illinois, making short
stops along the way. Reaching Chicago that evening, he spoke at Orchestra Hall, where the massive crowd gave him a hearty reception. At Milwaukee the next day, he detailed his plans for postal savings legislation and dedicated a building in La Crosse before moving on to Winona, a small Minnesota city on the banks of the Mississippi, where he finally delivered his first statement on the tariff.

  The choice of Winona, home to Representative James Tawney, was dictated, one correspondent noted, by Taft’s “omnipresent good nature . . . his most endearing trait.” Minnesota was a “hotbed of insurgency.” Tawney, chairman of the Appropriations Committee, was the only member of the ten-person state delegation who had voted for the Payne-Aldrich tariff bill. The legislation was so unpopular in Minnesota that Tawney was in danger of losing his seat in the next election. Republican leaders in the House had implored the president to present a strong defense of Tawney’s vote in the congressman’s home district.

  Though Taft knew that his first major speech on the tariff would be widely reported, he continued to procrastinate on the necessary preparation. The day before the scheduled address, he confessed his anxiety to Nellie: “Hope to be able to deliver a tariff speech at Winona but it will be a close shave.” On the train from La Crosse to Winona, he finally settled down in his private stateroom to work. He had “a mass of facts and figures before him,” along with a lengthy statement prepared by Representative Payne. Two stenographers stood ready to take dictation. A draft was completed when the train reached Winona at eight o’clock that evening, but there was no time to solicit comments or make revisions. “Speech hastily prepared,” he telegraphed Nellie, “but I hope it may do some good.”