Woodrow Wilson as president

Introduction

The Wilson Administration marks the end of an era. It is divided into two historic periods separated by the European War, which draws a heavy curtain between the first and the second half of his Administration. Moreover, each has been so crowded with events of vital importance to this nation as to assume the significance of a turning point in history. Therefore, the student of history will find in this period the beginnings of questions likely to occupy the public attention for generations and destined to shape the growth of our nation for all time.

In the conclusion of the old era the Wilson Administration achieved, perhaps, the most notable legislation ever enacted in an equal period of time in the history of the Congress of the United States. However, so many things have occurred since then — "the terrible swift sword" has so affected men's memories — that even those acts have been almost forgotten, except in circles affected directly by them. The reduced tariff, an

6 INTRODUCTION

income tax, the banished lobby, the Federal Reserve Act, the struggle through the long, hot summer against boss-rule and machine methods, the Alaska railroad, the Clayton Anti-Trust Act, another summer of intense labor, the destruction of monopoly, the Federal Trade Commission, the conservation of material and human resources — these suggest an era long removed from the present, but they are the epitome of the first eighteen months of the Wilson Administration.

The sixty-third Congress, the Long Congress, brought the old era to a close and witnessed the beginning of the new. In it will be found, standing close together, the solution of old problems and the beginnings of new issues. The student of history who recalls the vast crowds that assembled in 1912 and the fiery speeches of the leaders of that time, and contrasts the marching crowds of 1916 and the fiery speeches by the same leaders to the same people on different issues, must realize that in the meantime affairs of consequence have taken place.

A vast gulf separates 1912 and 1916. Men's thoughts have turned about; men's ideas have changed; the world is different; it is drifting on an unknown sea; seemingly impossible things are

INTRODUCTION 7

happening daily; and no man knows into what kind of harbor the ship will at last be moored. Fortunate was it indeed for America that the issues of 1912 were really settled before the vital issues of 1916 had taken shape and dwarfed all other issues.

The European war has changed the course of history. The world has gone mad. Men stand amazed, shocked, shuddering at the fierceness of this insatiate monster which threatens a breakdown of civilization and a return to the Dark Ages.

Great men have risen among us. They are grappling heroically with the problems of the day just as did the great men in other crises of the world's history.

But how happens it that America alone of the great nations of the earth is so happily situated? Her people are free to come and go, to think and speak and act. They enjoy unbounded and unprecedented prosperity. Their nation has come to be the richest on earth. Their foreign trade is expanding as never before, itself an epoch in their history. In the twinkling of an eye they have changed from a debtor nation to a creditor nation and have become the leading bankers of the world.

g INTRODUCTION

In spite of the world's turmoil, they have had leisure in calmness and with deliberation to settle their internal affairs and to mitigate the evils which menace the processes of their own development.

Notwithstanding these favors, new issues have arisen as a result of the great war that are now pressing heavily for solution. "America First" is a watchword with which to stir the patriotism of the people. "The melting-pot" is a symbol that tells of our composite character in a time of "civil war by proxy." "Pan Americanism" speaks of a new continental policy. "Preparedness" — military preparedness, commercial preparedness, industrial preparedness, and educational preparedness suggest other problems that this war has brought to us for solution.

Woodrow Wilson, the President, is guiding this nation across the gulf that separates the past from the future. He has established a marvelous leadership and has become one of the world's great figures within the brief span of four years. But how did he reach this fine eminence?

He laid his hand upon monopoly, and it surrendered its power. He drove invisible government out of Washington and enthroned the

INTRODUCTION 9

people's representatives as sovereign in the Nation's capital. And when the old era died and the new appeared, a revitalized democracy faced the future.

He called to Europe when the mad nations had slipped their cables and sanity returned. He stretched his hand to the Latin- American republics and they grasped it in an hour of peril and the two continents became friends. He stood by the prostrate form of Mexico, her silent friend, and waited patiently for the re-birth of constitutional government. He kept "America First" aflame in the hearts of patriots and partisans until hatred was consumed and America, "the melting-pot of nations," was prepared to meet the crises of this new era.

Such is the story that runs through these chapters.

CONTEXTS

Part I Chapter Page

T. A New Champion of the People Appears 13

II. A New and Untried Leader is Chosen 25

III. I xaugurating the New Reoim£ 4")

-"TV. A New Tariff: the First Stage in the Journey

to New Freedom 61

-^^ A New Currency : the Second .Stage in the Journey 91

VI. The Destruction of Monopoly: the Third Stage

of the Journey 124

VII. The End of the Old Regim£ 160

VIII. A New Foreign Policy 1 00

IX. The President Broadens the Meaning of the

Monroe Doctrine 170"

X. The New American Policy Applied to Mexico.. 190 XI. President Wilson's Relations with General

Carranza 220

XII. Good Faith and Justice Toward all Nations... 250

Part II

XIII. TnE European War and a New Era 271

X I V. America First '^77

w. Holding the World to Some Standard 307

XVI. Military Preparedness Becomes a National

Problem 362

XVII. The President Takes the Issue to the People.. 38S

XVIII. The Nation for Military PREPAREDNESS 301

XIX. The Need of Commercial Preparedness 408

XX. The Need of Industrial Preparedness -in

XXI. Forming a Pan-American Union 477

XXII. The Xeed of Educational Preparedness 508

XXIII. Tin: Man in Action 520

Appendix

SELECTIONS FROM WOODROW WILSON'S PUBLIC ADDRESSES

PAGE

The .Spirit ok Penn 538

John Barry's Example 540

The Plain Men of the Colonies 543

The Meaning of the Declaration of Independence 548

Our Duty to the Defenders of the Union 553

The New Era 557

The American Flag 559

The Meaning of the Flag 560

Let No Man Create Division 561

What America Has to Fear 564

Our Neutrality Misunderstood 566

The Lesson of the War 568

PART I

Chapter I A New Champion Of The People Appears

Politics in the year 1912 was staged with all the elements of the melodrama. Big Business was the villain ; the people's representatives were crying for relief ; the star players, who were ready to lead the reform with the zeal of a crusader, were coming to the front for a round of applause; and from the anterooms the crafty agents of the villain were conning their parts in a whispered monotone. Nor was the drama wanting in the elements of the tragic and the comic. Big Business was accused of hideous crimes and convicted of many. But perhaps its most objectionable feature was its size and the way it supported its weight, which, like the corpulency of Sir John Falstaff, was a ludicrous handicap to the progress of the drama. However, when the curtain arose, Big Business, terrified by the confusion resulting from a clamor of accusations and from the assaults of the plumed knights, could have exclaimed, in the language of the fat comedian, "It were better to be eaten to death with a rust than to be scoured to nothing with perpetual motion."

But here the analogy must end. The issues of the year were too real to be staged, and the unremedied wrongs too tragic to be used for an evening's entertainment. All the strength of the old-time political parties was accumulating to fight one great evil, and the campaign for the Presidency was turning on one issue — human rights against material rights. This problem embraced the questions of monopoly, of special privilege, of governmental policy, and of the rights of a free people. But these are trite and time-worn phrases which for a generation have been rolled like sweet morsels by friend and foe of liberty; and even in very remote townships they have served in the absence of a real local issue to elect a township constable as well as to defeat a great leader for the Presidency.

So long had the evils of monopoly been growing in the nation, and so long have these terms of abuse been employed, that they had grown smooth from the abrasion of perpetual use. Therefore, when the campaign of 1912 opened, they had almost ceased to convey an idea to many minds, and their chief value seemed to be to enable the historian or the political economist to trace the decline of political freedom.

However, one corporation after another had been brought before the bar of justice and stories of real or imagined Avrongs had been trailed through the press of the country so long that the conviction that Big Business -was dishonest and unscrupulous, deepened with a feeling of distrust and even of hatred. Throughout the nation, therefore, there was such a deep-seated hostility to it that, in many sections of the country, if a large corporation went into the courts with a case that was at all doubtful, it was almost impossible to secure from a jury a verdict in its favor. Thus the people at large had formed a habit of mind that was instinctively hostile to great wealth.

On the other hand, Big Business had formed the habit of looking to the Government for protection — protection from the people, protection from competition, protection from interference. The close relationship between the national government and large private interests due to protection gave the impression that America was ruled by an oligarchy composed of the captains of industry. In order to protect themselves, while the spirit of unrest was growing, the business of the country became so interlaced that the larger industrial life stood like a house of cards propped together, the good and the bad, and when the government attacked one, it appeared to be attacking all. Therefore, it seemed that the government had to protect all or disturb all, for to destroy bad business threatened disaster throughout the country.

Privilege in one form or another had grown very complex, very pervasive, and could be seen cropping out everywhere. It had, in fact, woven itself into every part of our political life, and many thinking people had come honestly to the conclusion that such a relationship was natural and that whoever disturbed it was an enemy to good government. However, there were many men, even among the captains of industry, who were profoundly concerned over this relationship, this dependence of business upon governmental protection, and this interlocking and interlacing of interests. Moreover, the plain people, the great middle class, who were not members of these gigantic concerns, and who never asked the government for any right save to live their lives in a free country, had felt for a generation that injustice was at work in the nation, since Big Business did not owe its existence nor its large profits primarily to increasing efficiency, but to the control of the market through the destruction of competition. Thoughtful men in both parties were aware of these evils. Moreover, it was pointed out, time after time, that the art of making a living must be protected more and more effectively, and the only thing that can guarantee the progress of the race is competition, or cooperation that does not destroy competition.

As the summer of 1912 was approaching, when the political parties were to select their candidates for the Presidency, the issue was reduced almost to this simple proposition — monopoly must be destroyed and competition restored. But monopoly had grown up under the protection of the government, although the officers of the government all had been avowed enemies of special privilege. This was the anomalous and very extraordinary condition, the Gordian knot that the nation — Big Business as well as the people at large — desired to see cut, But it was a Herculean task that confronted the political parties, and the people everywhere were asking this question, Would a champion come forth who could command the strength to win?

The people had struggled for twenty years against trusts and monopolies, and they were now calling for a leader, a man of wisdom and integrity and power. And it mattered little from what political party he should come;

There were two great national leaders in the fulness of their power, and to them, more than to any others, the nation looked for guidance in the matter — one was William Jennings Bryan, a Democrat; and the other was Theodore Roosevelt, a Republican.

Mr. Bryan had been nominated for the Presidency of the United States three times and three times had been defeated ; yet his leadership remained. He seemed to thrive on defeat. However, after his first defeat in 1896 he established a newspaper. From thai and from the proceeds of his lectures he provided himself with freedom of action to go anywhere at any lime and address the people on the issues of the day. The m. 1st brilliant orator of his generation, he attracted great audiences wherever he spoke, and he went everywhere — he knew everybody and everybody knew him. He was the King of Chautauqua platforms. He possessed wonderful physical vitality and seemed never to tire. For sixteen years he had voiced the unrest of the nation, and there was no doubt that he felt as the people felt. He knew that something was wrong, and he spoke his feelings in such terms as to stir his audience wherever he went. In this way he contributed powerfully to arousing the people to a sense of their wrongs.

Theodore Roosevelt had been President of the United States for seven years. During his occupancy of that office his sayings and his doings continually held popular interest, and he, too, with the prestige of his high office giving force to his speeches, proclaimed that things were wrong. He was so powerful that he had not only been re-elected for a second term, but he had dictated the nomination of his successor, taken from his own cabinet, and had materially assisted in the election which followed. He was gifted with marvelous political sagacity, and he had the prestige of never having been beaten. He had contributed greatly to the spread of progressive ideas, and the full force of his dramatic personality was thrown into the campaign for the Presidency.

Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Bryan were the antithesis of each other. What the one was the other was not, and willingly they agreed on nothing; yet each knew that something was wrong. They agreed as to many of the things that were wrong, but they differed fundamentally as to how to remedy the wrong. The year 1912 found both of them private citizens, and yet they were the two most powerful men in the nation because of their influence with the people.

All the forces of reform seemed to gather headway as the great national conventions of 1912 began to take shape, and striking scenes were witnessed. Mr. Roosevelt fought Big Business in the Republican party, but he was beaten in the Chicago Convention amidst the most dramatic scenes. He Avithdrew from the party, organized a third party, became its candidate for the Presidency, and began one of the most spectacular campaigns in the history of the Republic.

President Taft was renominated by the Republican party ; but he was not a great leader. Neither his honesty, his patriotism, nor his ability was seriously questioned. But, when he was in the wrong, he did not have the adroitness to make his cause appear the better, and when he was in the right, he did not have the power to evoke popular support. He was characterized as "a very poor politician, with no instinct for reading the signs of the times or for discharging the high duties of his office in a way to arouse enthusiasm for inspiring leadership."

Scarcely had the echoes of the Republican convention at Chicago died away when the struggle was renewed in the Democratic convention at Baltimore. There Mr. Bryan fought Big Business amidst scenes not less exciting than those at Chicago. As the contest continued and the agents of monopoly appeared more active, Mr. Bryan, in a dramatic attack on what seemed to be the attempt of Big Business to control the nomination, withdrew his support from one candidate and threw the weight of his great influence to a less favored son in the convention, and Governor Woodrow Wilson, of New Jersey, was nominated. Thus was ushered into the limelight a third great personality.

The Democratic nominee was referred to as "the scholar in politics." He had been a teacher of history and political economy, and had won distinction as an interpreter of modern sociological and political problems and institutions. Moreover, he was a recognized writer of force, and his books on government were widely used both in Europe and America. The teacher and writer became president of Princeton University in 1902, but his executive duties did not deter him from discussing political problems, and in the period from 1902 to 1910 while Mr. Bryan and Mr. Roosevelt were active in politics, Mr. Wilson was analyzing for the nation the problems of government and pointing to definite solutions.

But he did not enter politics until 1907, when his friends in New Jersey brought him out as a candidate for the United States Senate. Three years later (1910) he was nominated for Governor. Only his most cnthusiastic friends believed he could be elected. New Jersey had been under Republican rule, and for the most of that time under boss rule of the most distinct type. However, Mr. Wilson took the stump and at once loomed large as a political campaigner. His speeches were so effective that he rapidly obtained a large following. Metropolitan newspapers featured his addresses. He was again the interpreter of political institutions and in his own state he had a concrete illustration of private control of political institutions and the loss of individual freedom and initiative. He was elected, and this remarkable achievement made him a Presidential possibility, and in 1912 he was nominated for the Presidency by the Democratic convention.

The three parties introduced their respective chiefs to the nation, compiled their platforms and came before the people, each asking for the election of its candidate. Each asserted emphatically that monopoly should be destroyed, and that in order to make the • list ruction natural as well as complete, the cause of monopolies should be removed. But men could not agree as to the cause of monopoly. Was the protective tariff the Leading cause? That was the question. Mr. Taft, the candidate of the Republican party, said he was pledged in the Republican platform to "maintain a degree of protection." Mr. Wilson was opposed to all forms of protection. But Mr. Roosevelt's position was not so clear. He said, "We believe in a tariff for labor — a tariff to help our wage workers."

Were monopoly and trusts the result, in part, of our currency laws? The Republican platform declared that "our banking arrangements today need further revision to meet the requirement of current conditions." The Democratic party said that the nation should be freed "from control or dominion by what is known as the money trust. Banks exist for the accommodation of the public, and not for the control of business," and all legislation should provide "absolute security to the public and complete protection from the misuse of the power given to those who possess it." The Progressives declared that ' ' the present method of issuing notes through private agencies is harmful and unscientific."

However, the complaint against our banking laws extended beyond the bounds of political parties. There was considerable difference of opinion among the bankers themselves. The American Bankers' Association in convention at Detroit declared "that this Association will cooperate with any and all people in devising a financial system for this country which will place us on a par with other great commercial and competing nations ; a system which shall give to the American people of all classes and conditions the financial facilities and industrial advantages to Avhich they are entitled."

Was there anything inherently wrong in the organization of business? All parties agreed that there was, and the indictments under the Sherman anti-trust law were convincing to the nation. Moreover, Pig Business, being "scoured to nothing with perpetual motion," was asking for relief, for surcease from agitation and for a clear cut road to public favor. Who could give it ; Mr. Roosevelt and the Progressives, Mr. Taft and the Republicans, or Mr. Wilson and the Democrats?

The eyes of the nation soon became fixed on two of the candidates — on Theodore Roosevelt, because of his spectacular fight against the Republican party; and on Woodrow Wilson, because of the extraordinary chain of events that had produced his nomination. The Democratic party, notwithstanding the great convention fight, was more united that it had been since 1896. People everywhere were talking about "Wilson luck." He was nominated in the face of machine politics and the money interests. Even Mr. Roosevelt had praised him highly, not suspecting for a moment he could be nominated. He appeared before the nation at a time when the Republican party was hopelessly divided. Even in the councils of his party, objectionable men withdrew and left the management in the hands of his friends, and opposition within the Democratic party seemed to fade away without a protest. Then came the news from Sea Girt, his summer home, that he would conduct his campaign for election without the

24 VVOODROW WILSON AS PRESIDENT

aid of the National Committeemen. "Remarkable man!" they said. And many non-Calvinists really hoped there was something in predestination.

The office of President has become much more complicated than it used to be ; and, since it was a probability that Mr. Wilson would be elected if the split in the Republican party continued, men all over the Avorld were wondering and asking one another what constructive qualities he possessed and what power of resistance he had. His "Essays on Government" were reread, his books of history became popular at once, his characterizations of American statesmen were appraised, and his political theories were growing in popularity. A new leader, indeed, had appeared.

Chapter II An Untried Leader Is Chosen

The campaign of 1912 was unique. Party control was weak and machine politics were mechanical and unnatural. The management of the campaign was in the hands of young men; the press bureau rose into prominence ; and a direct appeal to the people took the place of the "inside room" conference.

On August 7 Governor Wilson was formally notified that he was the choice of the Democratic party for the presidency of the United States. He had remained silent since his nomination. But on this occasion party leaders signaled to him to come forth from his temporary retirement and speak to the nation. And he came forth, the man in action, to translate his political philosophy, seasoned Avith mature thought, into a new freedom for the American people.

It was a part of Mr. Wilson's temperament as well as his philosophy to hold steadfastly to a small body of clear cut doctrines, the central idea of which was the great issue already before the people — the doctrine that government should have nothing to do with special privilege. His speech of acceptance was received by the people as a fine product of a public man of right convictions. Its greatest significance, it was said at the time of its utterance, lies in its appeal "for the emancipation of our public life from its domination by private interests and by a class of men who are in politics for their own personal benefit. ' '

"We stand," he said, "in the presence of an awakened Nation, impatient of partisan makebelieve. The public man who does not realize the fact and feel its stimulation must be singularly unsusceptible to the influences that stir in every quarter about him. The Nation has awakened to a sense of neglected ideals and neglected duties; to a' consciousness that the rank and file of her people find life very hard to sustain, that her young men find opportunity embarrassed, and that her older men find business difficult to renew and maintain because of circumstances of privilege and private advantage which have interlaced their subtle threads throughout almost every part of the framework of our present law. She has awakened to the knowledge that she has lost certain cherished liberties and has wasted priceless resources which she had solemnly undertaken to hold in trust for posterity and for all mankind ; and to the conviction that she stands confronted w r ith an occasion for constructive statesmanship such as has not arisen since the great days in which her Government was set up."

He called the nation to witness that a new age was at hand, regardless of which candidate was elected. The suspicion and mistrust and confusion, he argued, all warned those in authority and those who worked to be placed in authority that Ave were on the divide and governmental process of the future would never again be the same as those of the past. Then he asked, "What is there to do?"

"It is hard to sum up the great task, but apparently this is the sum of the matter : There are two great things to do. One is to set up the rule of justice and of right in such matters as the tariff, the regulation of the trusts, and the prevention of monopoly, the adaptation of our banking and currency laws to the various uses to which our people must put them, the treatment of those who do the daily labor in our factories and mines and throughout all our great commercial and industrial undertakings, and the political life of the people of the Philippines, for whom we hold governmental power in trust, for their service, not our own. The other, the additional duty, is the great task of protecting our people and our resources and of keeping open to the whole people the doors of opportunity through which they must, generation by generation, pass if they are to make conquest of their fortunes in health, in freedom, in peace, and in contentment. In the performance of this second duty we are face to face with questions of conservation and of development, questions of forests and water powers and mines and waterways, of the building of an adequate merchant marine, and the opening of every highway and facility and the setting up of every safeguard needed by a great, industrious, expanding nation. "These are all great matters on which everybody should be heard. We have got into trouble in recent years chiefly because these large things, which ought to have been handled by taking counsel with as large a number of people as possible, because they touched every interest and the life of every class and region, have in fact been too often handled in private conference. They have been settled by very small, and often deliberately exclusive, groups of men who undertook to speak for the whole nation, or rather for themselves in the terms of the whole nation — very honestly it may be true, but very ignorantly sometimes, and very shortsightedly, too — a poor substitute for genuine common counsel. No group of directors, economic or political, can speak for a people. They have neither the point of view nor the knowledge. Our difficulty is not that wicked and designing men have plotted against us, but that our common affairs have been determined upon too narrow a view, and by too private an initial Lve. Our task is now to effect a great readjustment and get the forces of the whole people once more into play. We need no revolution; we need no exci 1 <■- 1 change; we need only a new point of view and a new method and spirit of counsel."

It was a part of Mr. Wilson's philosophy that the proper point of view is obtained not from the cloistered library nor from the "inside room" of political managers, but from taking counsel with the body of the nation. Therefore, in closing his address, he announced with refreshing frankness a new policy that would lie inaugurated if he should become President.

"No man can be just who is not free," he said, "and no man who lias to show favor ought to undertake the solemn responsibility of government, in any rank or post whatever, least of all in the supreme post of President of the United States.

"To be free is not necessarily to be wise. But wisdom comes with counsel, with the frank and free conference of untrammeled men united in the common interest. Should I be entrusted with the great office of President, I would seek counsel wherever it could be had upon free terms. I know the temper of the great convention which nominated me ; I know the temper of the country which lay back of that convention and spoke through it. I heed with deep thankfulness the message you bring me from it. I feel that I am surrounded by men whose principles and ambitions are those of true servants of the people. I thank God, and will take courage."