be prejudicial to the party he represented, a conviction that was strengthened, when a few days later he said in a published interview that he had no comments to make about me or Mr. Hearst's attacks "because he could not strike a man when he was down"-a cheerful and comforting observation that showed the quality and measure of the friendship and gratitude he had so frequently expressed.

R

CHAPTER XLVII.

SOME OF THE CAUSES OF THE TAFT COLLAPSE.

ECURRING now to the humiliating defeat sustained by President Taft in 1912, the cause of it is commonly attributed to Colonel Roosevelt, and with most people he alone is held responsible therefor.

Judging from purported interviews with him published in newspapers, he is probably glad to have this responsibility laid at his door. Nevertheless the charge is correct only in part. There were other causes.

I feel that I should mention some of them--not in a spirit of unkind criticism, but in a good-natured effort to hold the scales of justice even between my old-time friends. I hope nothing I may say will offend; and that if it should it will be remembered that "faithful are the wounds of a friend"or of anybody else who tells the truth.

The causes to which I refer were quite aside from anything done by Colonel Roosevelt.

They constituted a trouble of President Taft's own making. Before election, and more particularly since his defeat, many of his speeches, considered as abstract expressions, have been noteworthy for their excellence. But while in office he seemed unable, when occasions arose, to recognize concrete cases for the application of his own ideas. Whether this was due to inability to see or mere careless indifference is not entirely clear. He himself was fully conscious of the fact that he had some such trouble, and undertook, in a speech made shortly after his defeat, to explain its nature. It was his opinion, according to newspaper report, that he has "too much love of personal ease." He should be the best authority as to himself; but whether he is or not, there was a popular acceptance of his diagnosis, which it was supposed referred to his well

known fondness for golf and his almost constant traveling about over the country in attendance upon all kinds of public occasions, in connection with which his presence and entertainment were naturally much exploited in the papers, not merely as news items, but for local advertising purposes.

All summer long the papers published daily accounts of the games played and the scores made, all in the greatest detail, until the common people at least were sick and tired of it, and very freely so expressed themselves about it.

Even worse was their impatience with his journeying and banqueting to and fro through the land.

The result was that eventually the impression very generally prevailed that he spent too much time seeking his own pleasure and not enough studying the nation's needs.*

This no doubt cost him some votes in 1912, as he seems to think, but there were other causes of more dignity and moment why he lost the united support of his party and was defeated for re-election-without regard to his trouble with Colonel Roosevelt. I refer to causes that had nothing to do with their quarrel, but which created among Republicans a feeling of

As confirmatory of the text I quote from Mr. Dunn's "Gridiron Nights" the following from his account of one of the Gridiron dinners given in 1911:

"President Taft received more attention than he desired at the dinner. There were references which he did not enjoy. Not only was he touched up in the Mother Goose book, but there was a more pointed thrust at his well-known propensity to travel. Several members of the Club came in with a large roll of paper, and, in reply to a question, said that it was a two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-mile ticket for President Taft. It was unrolled and just as one end was about to be placed in Mr. Taft's hands it snapped back. "This is a return ticket,' was the explanation. Then the lights went out; there was the clanging of a locomotive bell and a picture flashed upon a screen showing the President and his usual traveling companions and paraphernalia on a private car, labeled 'the Summer White House.'

In his account of another dinner Mr. Dunn says the Music Committee of the Gridiron Club sang a song, to the tune of "Marching Through Georgia," that referred to "the many banquets, luncheons, etc., which had been tendered Mr. Taft," composed of the following words:

"Sound the good old dinner horn, we'll sing another song About the trip that Taft once made, when, with digestion strong, He ate his share of everything that they would bring along

As we went eating through Georgia.

Hurrah, hurrah, we sound the jubilee;
Hurrah, hurrah, 'twas something fine to see;
We put away three meals a day
And sometimes three times three,

As we went eating through Georgia."

indifference that made it easy to divide and overthrow the party. I shall venture to name some of them.

To begin with, he appointed two Democrats to be members of his Cabinet, MacVeagh of Chicago to be Secretary of the Treasury, and Dickinson, born in Mississippi, and at the time of his appointment a citizen of Tennessee, to be Secretary of War. Nobody objects to a suitable recognition of the minority party, but if there is any place where a Republican President does not want Democrats, and where a Democratic President does not want Republicans, it is in the Cabinet, where political questions as well as public affairs are necessarily considered. There is an impropriety about such a relationship that the average President or the average Cabinet officer would avoid. It was, therefore, a shock to Republicans the whole country over when Mr. Taft, outdoing President Hayes, who took one Democrat into his Cabinet, started with two. It impaired confidence in the expectation that we were to have a Republican administration.

In the second place, he never was sound on the tariff until too late to do any good. At least there was never a time after he came into political prominence when he did not seem to think the tariff ought to be revised downward until a candidate for re-election. Then, finding the tide running against him, he seemed to realize for the first time the importance of this policy and that his defeat would imperil it. His appeals then put forth for support on that account were almost frantic. They would have done credit to "Pig Iron" Kelly in his palmiest days. But all in vain. His utterances were looked upon as prompted by a sort of death-bed repentance, in which nobody had any confidence.

"The devil was sick-the devil a monk would be.
The devil was well-the devil a monk was he."

Everybody felt that his conversion was due to the compulsion of circumstances and that when such compulsion would be removed by re-election he might revert to his former convictions.

He commenced his tariff-reform talk in a speech at Bath, Maine, as early as 1905, in the first campaign in which he participated after his return from the Philippines.

There always was a small percentage of Republicans, composed chiefly of importers, professors, travelers for pleasure, magazine writers and political dudes, who believed, talked and wrote in favor of a low tariff, which is only another way such This Republicans had of saying they were free traders. percentage was, however, never very formidable until Mr. Taft, a Cabinet officer, became the public champion of their views. Foreseeing that such talk, unanswered, would lead to trouble, I took occasion, in a number of speeches, to answer as well as I could. What I said generally is well represented by what I said at Franklin, Ohio, July 19, 1907. I quote as follows:

They (referring to these tariff reformers and having special reference to the speeches Mr. Taft was then making) seem to think there is something the matter with the tariff, and that it ought to be changed, and they are, therefore, demanding an immediate revision.

Tariff schedules are not intended to stand forever. What suits at one time may not suit at another. If the Dingley Law were to be made new today doubtless some of the rates of duty would be made other than what they are. But it does not follow from this that there should be an immediate revision. It is a serious matter to tinker with the tariff.

One man wants one thing, and another man wants another. Such a work once entered upon would, in the nature of things, involve all the rates of all the schedules, for when the whole country would have opportunity to be heard no item would escape criticism. It might be that a more satisfactory tariff law would be made than is that which we now have, but I doubt it. It may be that our general situation would be improved, but I do not see how that is possible.

With respect to such a procedure only one thing is certain, and that is that we would have a period of suspense, of doubt and of uncertainty that would work a more or less serious interruption to business.

We should not invoke such results until we know, or at least have reason to believe, that revision will do less harm than non-revision.

But pass all that by. Assuming that the least possible injuries would result, and that the greatest benefits we can reasonably hope for would follow, still I want some man who is clamoring for an immediate revision to tell me what evil is so great it can not be longer endured, what duties are to be changed, and what improvement in the situation is to follow. Let us have a bill of particulars. No man should say that he is in favor of such a disturbance of our industrial conditions as all concede would inevitably flow, in greater or less degree, from general revision, unless he has studied the subject sufficiently to have an intelligent opinion as to what should be done, and how it should be done. He should know, at least have an intelligent opinion, as to the particular duties he would change, and the extent to which he would change them. What I want to know is, and I hope some Republican tariff revisionist in Ohio will tell me, whether he would change the duties, now levied for