CHAPTER VIII WOODROW WILSON, APOSTLE OF THE "NEW FREEDOM" The high-bred instincts of a better day JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL THE TRIPLE ATTACK ON PRIVILEGE Since Abraham Lincoln's entrance into the White House no change of administration has been attended with more pronounced consequences for our history than was the transition from Taft to Wilson. The new President came into office with the consciousness of an immediate mission. There was something apocalyptic in his vision. He would "make all things new." His confession of faith published in "The New Freedom," just before his inauguration, abounds in prophecies of the new order for which the time was ripe. Novus nascitur ordo rerum. "I tell you," he said, "the so-called radicalism of our times is simply the effort of nature to release the generous energies of our people. The men who have been ruling America must consent to let the majority enter the game. . . . We are just upon the threshold of a time when the systematic life of this country will be sustained or at least supplemented at every point by governmental activity. . . . We have great tasks before us and we must enter on them as befits men charged with the responsibility of shaping a new era. . . . America stands for opportunity, America stands for a free field and no favor, America stands for a government responsive to the interests of all. And until America recovers those ideals in practice she will not have the right to hold her head high again amid the nations, as she used to hold it." He closed his inaugural address with the solemn reaffirmation that America had come to the parting of the ways: "This is not a day of triumph; it is a day of dedication. Here muster not the forces of party but the forces of humanity. Men's hearts wait upon us, men's lives hang in the balance, men's hopes call upon us to say what we will do. Who shall live up to the great trust? Who dares fail to try? I summon all honest men, all patriotic, all forward-looking men to my side. God helping me, I will not fail them if they will but counsel and sustain me." In spite of his apostolic fervor the new President fully realized the difficulties which confronted him. Not only were the abuses of privilege, which he was determined to abolish, inveterate, but his own qualifications for leadership in the crusade were questioned by thousands of men whose professions of reform were as sincere as his own. His Southern birth made him invidious to a large class of Northerners, who, although they had buried the animosities of a former generation, were still not ready to see the administration of the country intrusted to the hands of a man who had been brought up in the atmosphere of secession and who, in his criticism of historians like Burgess and Rhodes, had defended the South against any hint of treasonable conduct in fighting its "war for independence." His party allegiance discredited him in the eyes of those Republicans who, by constant repetition of a dogma which for nearly a score of years there had been no opportunity to disprove, had fully persuaded themselves that Democrats were not fit to run the government. His total lack of experience in any branch of national politics gave plausibility to the prediction that his administration would be "amateurish," "arbitrary," "visionary," out of touch with trained legislators of Congress, and at the mercy of the machine politicians, who would pay scant heed to his "academic essays" on reform. He would find Washington quite a different place from Trenton, said the knowing ones. Wilson's cabinet selections did not serve to increase confidence in him. He was practically obliged to offer the Secretaryship of State to the man who had assured his nomination in the convention, albeit Mr. Bryan had no conspicuous gift for diplomacy, and was actually saved from many an embarrassing position only by the extraordinary wisdom and tact of the counselor of the department, Professor John Bassett Moore. Two other political appointments to the cabinet were made as rewards of faithful service to Wilson in the South, where the Clark and Underwood interests were strong. Colonel Edward M. House of Texas had secured a solid delegation for Wilson from his state, and while he himself preferred the unofficial rôle of confidential friend and adviser to the President, as "the power behind the throne," he recommended his fellow Texan, Albert S. Burleson, for the position of Postmaster-General.1 Josephus Daniels, editor of the Raleigh (North Carolina) News Observer, who had directed the publicity work of the Wilson campaign, was made Secretary of the Navy. Both of the latter men, who, incidentally, were the only members of the cabinet (besides W. B. Wilson, the Secretary of Labor) to retain their original portfolios during the whole of the Wilson administration, were constantly criticized for administrative inefficiency and political jobbery. The war portfolio was given to Lindley M. Garrison, Vice Chancellor of New Jersey, who, according to the account of President Wilson's private secretary, Joseph P. Tumulty, was discovered by the latter "by running through the pages of the Lawyers' Diary." William G. McAdoo, a New York lawyer-financier, best known for his construction of the Hudson and Manhattan Railroad (the "Hudson tubes"), was made Secretary of the Treasury. James C. McReynolds of Tennessee, who had been Assistant Attorney-General from 1903 to 1907, and had since the latter date been practicing law in New York, was put at the head of the Department of Justice. Franklin K. Lane of California, acting chairman of the Interstate Commerce Commission, was made Secretary of the Inte 2 1On the death of Justice Lurton, in the summer of 1914, another Texan, Thomas W. Gregory, was taken into the cabinet to replace Attorney-General McReynolds, who was appointed to Lurton's place on the bench. The Secretary of Agriculture, David F. Houston, though coming from Missouri at the time of his appointment, had previously lived for many years in Texas. 2 J. P. Tumulty, "Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him," p. 138. rior. David F. Houston, chancellor of Washington University, St. Louis, was Secretary of Agriculture; William C. Redfield, a wealthy manufacturer of New York, Secretary of Commerce; and William B. Wilson of Pennsylvania, a former secretary and treasurer of the United Mine Workers of America, was the first head of the newly created Department of Labor, which took over the work of the Bureau of Labor, together with immigration, naturalization, and the Children's Bureau. The cabinet list presented some peculiar features. Five of the members were Southerners by birth. In contrast to Taft's group of lawyers, only two of Wilson's selections (Garrison and McReynolds) were actively engaged in law, though others had studied it. Burleson was the only member chosen from the House or Senate, and Lane the only government official. For the first time since John Quincy Adams's administration New England was entirely unrepresented, nor was there any member from the important states of the Old Northwest. The predominance of the South in the new administration was shown in the legislative as well as in the executive branch of the government. The chairmen of five of the six most important committees of the Senate were Southerners: Martin of Virginia (Appropriations), Owen of Oklahoma (Banking and Currency), Simmons of North Carolina (Finance), Bacon of Georgia (Foreign Relations), Culberson of Texas (Judiciary), Newlands of Nevada (Interstate Commerce). In the House thirty-eight of the fifty-eight committee chairmen were from the South, including again five out of six of the committees corresponding to those of the Senate just named: Glass of Virginia (Banking and Currency), Underwood of Alabama (Ways and Means), Flood of Virginia (Foreign Affairs), Clayton of Alabama (Judiciary), Adamson of Georgia (Interstate and Foreign Commerce). This was partly due to the fact that Democratic 1 There was no secretary from New England in the cabinet of John Quincy Adams, but the President himself was from Massachusetts. Altogether there were ten changes in the cabinet during Wilson's two terms, but New England was never favored with an appointment. This may partly explain the fact that there was considerable hostility to President Wilson in that section of the country. members of Congress from the South, having virtually no Republican opposition to overcome, retained their seats at Washington and thus moved up, by virtue of seniority, to the chairmanship of the committees. But though the South was "in the saddle," it could not be counted on to back the President solidly. As a section of the country still predominantly agricultural, it would doubtless support his economic reforms, but it would have little sympathy with his "progressive" political and social program. The machine leaders, like Martin and Simmons, Bacon and Underwood, Clark and Stone, would not warm to the newfangled ideas on child labor, woman suffrage, or the treatment of the negroes. Finally, all through the South there was an intense anti-Mexican feeling, which, as we shall see in our next section, proved a great embarrassment to the President in his attempt to liberalize our policy toward the LatinAmerican nations. To offset the obvious handicaps with which he had to contend, however, the President had some decided advantages. He was strong-willed, eager, optimistic, and capable of keeping his counsels, almost to secretiveness, and of making up his mind with precision and finality. He had a well-matured ideal of leadership, which was a combination of the duties of a responsible prime minister and a popular tribune of the Jacksonian type. "The President is at liberty both in law and conscience," he had written in one of his earlier treatises, "to be as big a man as he can; his capacity will set the limit." He counted on the support of "all forward-looking men" who were not more partisan than progressive. And finally, in the make-up of the Sixty-third Congress he had the advantage that the election had returned in the huge Democratic majority a number of new men who would not be so jealous of executive direction as those who were broken into legislative work. In his inaugural address Wilson summed up the evils which must be remedied in order to square every process of our national life with the standards which we had so proudly set up in 1776, and which we had "always carried in our hearts." Chief among these evils were three: |