Richmond Palladium (Daily), Volume 33, Number 362, 4 November 1908 — Page 3

THE RICHMOND PALLADIU3I AXD STJ-TISIiEGJlAM, WEDNESDAY, JfOYEMBEIt 4, 1908.

PAGE THREE.

HIGH IDEALS HAVE ALWAYS MARKED LIFE OF WM. H. TAFT

Personal Estimate of the Man by One of America's Greatest Journalists.

By "Raymond." From Chicago Tribune, June 19th, . 1908. The first time I saw "BUI" Taft was la a pretty little scrimmage on the grammar school lot in New Haven. It wai an Impromptu rush, and I felt safer in that affair because of the burly fellow who tramped next to me In the front line. We were freshmen at Yale. I knew the big boy opposite n only by an extremely scant reputation, because this was the first night the class had been thrown together. Some of the upper classmen, probably desiring "to rub it into us or else to size us up in preparation for the annual, rush at Hamilton park a week or ao later, had egged us to a promiscuous battle with the sophomores on the grammar school lot, Just within the shadow of the university. "We were all hopelessly green to college life, but there was from the start one general of the Irresponsible freshmen. He was a big.thick necked, sturdy giant who had come from the

"Woodward high school in Cincinnati. Tis reputation had preceded him. He was the fellow the rest of us were looking after to point the way, to do the spectacular part of the fighting, and to help us to hold our own against the sophomores we' had been taught to believe were nearly invincible. At His Beat in Boyish Scrimmage. It was after the crush of this preliminary rush and during the hand to hand fight which followed as an inevitable result of such a disorganized encounter that I first, srw Taft at his boyish best. The onset of the rush had been checked, the affair had degenerated into a pitched battle, in which little rounds of contestants were engaged. We, a freshmen, scaroely knew each other, and it happened during the evening that after a hard struggle it was found we were

pitching into some of our own fellows. But I never shall forget Taft as 1 learned to know him that night. It was a boys' affair, because we were all youngsters ranging from 17 to 20 years of age. Still at the same time it was a thing which had all the bitterness and all the viciousness of actual battle. There was the big boy from Cincinnati, almost at my elbow, and he was carrying on no child's play of a fight. When he hit he hit to put his opponents out of business. He was determined, grim, visaged and anxious for tc supremacy of his class, but with It all in the midst of the battle there was an eternal good humor, a sort of man's knowledge of the fact that in spite of the blows and the bloody noses it was all play. It was there I heard for the first time the famous Taft laugh, and that laugh came when the grim warriors had stopped their fighting and a wrestling bout proposed. Athletic Champion of Class '78. Those sophomores never knew that this Yale class of '78 had in it from the date of Its organization the best wrestler who was ever to become famous In the athletic annals of the university. They found it out before long and the morning after that impromptu scrimmage on the grammar school lot William Howard Taft was the ac

knowledged athletic champion of the

Yale class of 1878. Prom that day on he grew In the estimation of his classmates, and when

you come to think of it there Is not

a better test on earth than this. Col

lege boys, in the first instance, are essentially fair and democratic. They

recognize literary, -Intellectual, or ath

letic capacity for what it is. It makes but little difference, at least in the

early days of a college career, who a man's father was or what class of society he came from. The first baseman on the university nine is never selected because of his ancestor, and

It is a self-evident fact that the lead

ing scholar in a university is not made so by professors who are influenced

by his wealth or his social standing.

One of ths best things about Taft

as I remember him as a boy was his

extreme fairness. It soon came about that we recognized in him not only a natural leader of men who was destin

ed to real success in life but a friend! who played no favorites. Even at that early point in his career he possessed the Judicial capacity to an extraordinary degree. I know that if there was a dispute in one of the freshmen secret societies, or if there were rival political machines in class politics, or if two men who ought to be friends were not so, it was always Taft who was appealed to as an adjuster of the difficulty. Honesty Never Was Questioned. It is a pretty good testimony to his honesty and to his boyish Integrity that no one ever seemed to question these informal decesions. He still was a beardless boy, but he had the makings or an ideal judge about him. He would listen to the stories of the contestants, weigh the evidence, and giye his opinion with what was manl-

lestly absolute fairness. He was not

always right by a long shot and neither he nor any other man always will be right in the more serious affairs of life. Yet it was true, as I remember it.

that every one of his fellows got into the habit, when a dispute arose of any seriousness, of saying: "Let's leave it to Bill Taft.- and I do not remember

that the fairness of the decision ever

was brought into controversy, after-

wsras, aimougn mere were many

times when It seemed that he had

mads a mistake. ' " '.' "

As the weeks and the months went

by in our college career, Taft only strengthened the good opinion which his associates had of him. He became the most popular man in the class. This was not merely because of his enormous strength or because he

appealed to the brutal side of the boys through his supremacy in athletics.

w's lit lb 3$f C BELLA SHIFF

found it was not nearly as strange U3 he expected it to be. Business Training on the Bench. At the time when he was on the fed-

j eral bench his circuit extended over j Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee. This ' covered the period from March, 1S32, ! until he went to the Philippines. That

was the time of the panic. A good deal of northern capital had been in-

l vested in Kentucky and Tennessee. I and when the hard times came, one ! corporation after another went to 1 pieces.

Almost before he realized the situation the young judge found he was ex

pected to administer the affairs of i ralroads, coal mines, grocery corpor- J

I at'oas, banks, tobacco plantations, I stock farms, and almost every kind of i enterprise in which northern capital i could be induced to enter. They-wer.? all In proceedings which obliged the

federal judge to appoint receivers and to assume general direction of multitudinous business afTnirs. "Do you know," said the secretary, during a casual conversation at hi.' house regarding the details of his professional career, "that when I went to

i the Philippines the thing which disj turbed me most was whether I could : possibly learn how to administer pure- ' ly executive affairs. I was astonished j more than anybody else wher I discovi ered that the process of running :. government was exactly like that of j conducting a big corporation. There ' were hundreds and thousands of new S situations to be met, but the 8am? ! thing occurs In business life. I found

courses open to you, and I want to put them both fairly before yon. "In the first place," said the secretary"there is the easy way. You are a young man, you are on the federal bench, and have progressed where you are recognized as a leader in the Cir-

J cuit Court of Appeals. You have j made a success and are likely to make i other successes. The people and the

party have been liberal with you. You have an ambition to go to the United States Supreme bench, as every good

lawyer has. and I believe the chances

are all In your favor

"You have a life position, and when you grow old you may retire on a full

I pension, so mai you re iu van.

ing a governmental life Ineurance for

your old age. No man could blame you if you would refuse to accept the office which the president now tenders you. It would not be dishonest or disloyal. You are comparatively a poor man and you would be doing the right thing by your family to hold on to your position on the bench and to look only for honors in the line of your own profession. That is the easy way for you

to live the rest of the years of your life. sA. Points Out the Difficulties. "Now, here is a hard way. We want you to go out across the ocean to the Philippine islands, a place where few Americans ever have been. We have undertaken new burdens of government out there which we scarcely understand ourselves. The islands are in insurrection. Armed bands of natives resist our authority. It will be difficult to establish civil government

and it may be impossible, but some man must make the attempt, and the

resident believes you are the man

If you go out there you may make a iicress or a failure. No one can guar

antee what you will do. and you can

not Dossibly know yourself. You may

make a real success and yet the people mav fall to recocnlze it. You may

poems, and read that significant rhyms of the east, which, winds up:

And the end of the fight is a tombstone white. With the name of the late deceased! And the epitaph drear. A fellow lie here - Who tried to hustle the east." But Kipling was wrong;. The end C the fight mas no ""tombstone white but a nomination for the presidency by the dominant political party at home. Marvelous experiences have mtenvened for this man, who had carved out his own destiny from the solid rock by patient endeavor. He has lived to see a legislative assembly opened in Manila and meanwhile has

reconstructed a republic in Cuba.

helped to avert war with Japan. and

organized the construction force ot

the Panama canal.

When he has a "tombstone white"

its epitaph will not be "drear." It will tell the story of a man "who tried to hustle the east" and-hustled it.

that executive experience had come to

l me while I was on the bench owing to . work hard over there, and yet come

i tne hard times, u u nau Deen a pros- Dacki to De neglected and forgotten

CLEARS THE COMPLEXION OVERNIGHT

WILLIAM HOWARD TAFT.

but because they recognized in him an

unusual combination of the qualities which boys adore. Best Wrestler in the University. In the first place, as I have said, he

became the best wrestler In the uni

versity. No one, so far as I know, ev

er threw him in a fair contest, although the giants of our own and all other classes frequently attempted the impossible. As I recall it, he was a

rattling good first baseman, or at any events played somewhere in the infield on the class nine in the scrub games. Down on the river there was no lustier oar than that of Big Bill. In the gymnasium he was nothing short of a holy terror and later on, in junior year, when old Bill Dole used to put the gloves on with members of the class, the Cincinnati athlete had lost none of his strength and none of his agility. There was no one who liked a long walk better, no one who sang louder or laughed harder on the fence, and none more social. Before we were half way through our freshman year it got to be a habit

with the fellows when they had any really good class honor to bestow to offer It first to Taft. and then, if ho did not want it, to distribute the prizes around among the rest of the class. Studied While Others Played. Stories have been told of Taft's athleticism at the opening of his college career similar to those I have just dictated. In point of fact, during the first two or three years of his college career he did not participate in college athletics at all. I still remember the wistful way in which he used to say hs would like to row on the university crew or try for a chance on the university nine. He always ex

plained that his father. Attorney Gen

eral Taft, had determined that he

should excel in his studies and had

sence of brilliance, showing that It was no offhand effort. Thorough In All His Work. On the other hand, there was a solidity, a permanence about the knowledge that he acquired through his studies which always was recognized by the other fellows and by all of the students. He wrote out carefully the most elaborate summaries, made painstaking analyses, and would with great labor personally corroborate the correctness of long chemical formulae. There was nothing frothy, nothing dashy, but nothing obscure. If he bad an essay to write, it was almost wholly lacking in literary gracefulness but one could depend upon it that it was full of meat. Logic was his strong point and he was almost as irresistible in a debate as in a wrestling match, being prepared for both. It is no idle task to set for yourself the goal of the valedictory address in a hustling Yale clss. It "means constant effort, the hardest kind of work

and the sacrifice of ambition in other directions. It meant Taft giving up the ball nine and the crew, at least during his earlier years, and he had to devote a lot of time to patient study which he, as a youag fellow, would much rather have snent on the athletic field or at the boathouse. He graduated salutatorian. That is

to say he was second in a class which

diately following his admission to the bar. Then he was made assistant prosecuting attorney in January, 1881, because that was at the time when the people of Cincinnati were engaged in a spasmodic effort to reform the judiciary and clean up the court machinery generally. "I had to learn law," the secretary said, "because I had to prepare every case for niyself. I learned then the foundation of trial jury, and throughout all my work on the bench I found that the two things which seemed to help me most were first of all my experience in digesting law cases for the

newspapers and secondly my hard work as an assistant prosecuting1 attorney, where I had to depend upon myself and no one else to win a case and had to be thoroughly acquainted with the facts and with the best means of getting them before the jury." People In Cincinnati never are tired of telling the story of how not long after he came back from college a member of the family was libeled in a daily newspaper and how the young student, without saying much at home read the offending article, dropped down town, hunted up the editor, and promptly pounded him to a jelly. Many people might get the idea from this that the young lawyer who has now become the republican candidate for the president was or is of a quarrelsome disposition. Nothing

wound up with something like 150 coma De iartner irom tne train. ie members. That would be honor enough was powerfully built, strong as an ox,

but I never knew of his allowing him

self to be forced into a quarrel of any

graduation was unqestionably the most klnd unless there was ample justifica

tion for it. He was the peacemaker, ! BOme unusually erood man. who would

for most men, but during his course he took prizes and at the time of his

j perous period the chances are I would

j have been unfamiliar with the general i executive work, because there would i have been fewer receiverships and bankruptcies, and the federal court, as j usual, would have concerned itself

largely with matters of theory." Has High Ideals of Duty. Speaking of the Philippines here is the real story of just how Mr. Taft came to go to those islands. Part of it was told to me by Mark Hanna, part by Secretary Root, and the rest by Mr. Taft himself. I think I have written the story before, but it is worth doing it again because it illustrates better than anything else I know the keynote in the career of William Howard Taft, a note with which the American people are certain to become proudly familiar during his administration if the republicans win the election in November. This is the subjection of himself to his ideals of

duty. It began when he was a boy in college. He recognized the wisdom of the will of his father in insisting that' he should not waste time on college athletics and he devoted himself laboriously to his studies when all the instincts of the man carried him out across the green fields and over the dancing waters of New Haven bay. During the year which followed the ratification of the treaty of peace be

tween the United States and Spain there was a constant warfare in the islands. Aguinaldo was on the warpath and it required a great many soldiers to hem him in. Teaching a Lesson to the Natives. Actual civil government was impossible, and yet President McKinley and Elihu Root, the secretary of war, with the constant assistance and advice of John Hay, secretary of state, began to plan for the time when it would be possible to put a civilian in charge and give the nativest at least of Luzon, a taste of real free government. All three of the men held, in spite of the advice of some distinguished army officers, that the best way to pacify the Filipinos and to render the use of an army unnecessary, was to set up a form of government independent of the military and give the natives a chance to see what an honest form of government was like. It was determined to send out to the

islands a commission to be headed by

notable all round student and athlete who had been in the university for many years. Head of a Famous Class. It was no collection of weaklings,

that faninns Vnle r.laiiR of '7S an thpir

positively forbidden him to take part ; subaequent careers have shown. Taft.8 in any of the official athletics of the friBnr, v nmi on ni

class.

It was this same stern but extremely

wise parental order which took Taft away from the rest of the fellows early in the evening. After a Jolly din

ner at one of the boarding clubs the big, bull necked student would stroll down to the fence and participate in the usual songs of Jollying which werethe inevitable accompaniments of mere presence in that historic and

sacred place. Then might come a

stroll down the streat and a half hour or more in some of the various resorts then affected by the students.

There were evenings when half an evening would be passed at "Mory's", but every one knew that long before the crowd started back towards the

college Taft would manage to disappear, and by the time the late songs were sung on the fence every one could see the rim light of his student lamp and knew that he was grindiCg for the morrow's lessons. Young Taft was not one of your brilliant students. That is to say, everything that came to him came from bard work and I believe that has been the dominant characteristic of his whole life. There were other fellows one of whom Is a bank president. I think, in Boston and the other I know is a clever lawyer and a third the head of a great trust company in New York, who snatched knowledge quickly. They could learn things in half ths time Taft took. It was necessary for him to go at a thing laboriously and even tirelessly. He studied until late at night and his recitations in the class were conducted with an ah-

since then with a dozen different men who were his classmates in the olden days, and many of them have reached unusual distinction In public life. John Addison Porter was secretary to McKinley. Harry Hoyt is now solicitor general of the United States. "Billy Hunt was governor of Porto Rico. John Proctor Clark is a famous Judge in New York state. Ed. Whitney was assistant attorney general under Olney. Paul Charlton is law officer of the insular bureau. Howard Van Buren was known to all European travelers as United States consul at Nice. Herbert Bowen defended the consulate at Barvelona against a Spanish mob and later on was minis

ter to Venezuela.

Howara tiouister was a common n'8 election.

pleas Judge in Cincinnati, and there have been a dozen otners more or less famous in athletics, business, medicine, the church, ana social life. To be at the head of a class of hustling young Americans, graduating second, with a splendid athletic record and unbounded personal popularity means the beginning of a great career. It was during his early days in Cincinnati immediately following his graduation, so Secretary Taft told me one evening as we walked In the dusk around the Washington monument, that he got the real foundation of the sound legal knowledge which has made him famous in his profession, aside from all political position. Learned Law as a Reporter.. He had a year as law reporter on two of ths Cincinnati papers lmme-

not the trouble breeder, and I do not

believe the man lives who can say that Taft used his great strength at any time in an unfair way. Fairness a Dominant Characteristic. This characteristic has followed him throughout his whole life. Fairness in his treatment of other men is the constant characteristic of William Howard Taft. It is hard to swerve him to the right or left if he thinks there is duty ahead. It is practically useless to appeal to him to do a wrong thing because of choice of friendship or of political policy. He is not at all stern, sees what is best to do in a political way with extraordinary vividness, but never can be persuaded to compromise what he considers an essential principle of life. He would be a daring man who would go to Secretary Taft today and proposes to him to do a thing he knew to be radically

I wrong, merely because it would help

Most people do not expect a man who has been successful as a judge to be equally so as an administrative officer. The general idea Is that the man on the bench deals with abstractions, with theories of law, with elemental principles, and that he Is on that account absolutely unfitted for administering ordinary business affairs. In the case of Taft exactly the contrary has proved true. That he was successful as a judge no one will think of denying. That he has been a marvelous administrator has more recently developed to the surprise even of his own friends. The secretary once told me how It was that this executive capacity was developed while he was still on the

co-operate with the military authorities at first, and who at the earliest possible moment would become the first civil governor of the Philippines.

The country was canvassed and the name of one public man after another was suggested. To Mark Hanna and to McKinley came almost at the same time the suggestion of Judge Taft. Both of them knew him, knew his integrity, knew his ideals, and believed that his experience on the bench was just what was necessary to fit him for the strange duty across the Pacific. It was finally decided to tender the office to Taft, but it was scarcely believed he could be induced to accept. He was young, ambitious, with a good future before him at home, holding a life position from which he conld retire in his old age with full pay. Moreover, there was good ground to believe he was not particularly in sympathy at the outset with the proposition to take and hold the Philippines. It was evident that it would take strong arguments to shake this man loose from his Ohio surroundings and transplant him across the' sea. Appeal of Secretary Root. To Elihu Root, then as now the best special pleader in this country, was assigned the task of persuading Judge Taft to give up his professional career and undertake the new work in the Philippines. Secretary Root, with rars insight into the secretary's argument of his life. He talked to Taft substantially as follows: "Judge, you are in a good position now and apparently have a brilliant future before, you. The president has concluded that you are the only man In the country and. In fact, the only

man to send to establish civil govern-

bencb. so that when he came to under-! ment in our new possession of the

take til work in the Philippines he Philippine Islands. There are twojpuHed out a volume of Kipling's j

For the time being at lea3t, and

possibly forever, you will have to give up your ambltlou, with which I fully sympathize, to go on the bench of the supreme court of the United States. You will have to resign your life office and undertake one which may be terminated at any time, and which has no old age insurance or possibility of retlreemnt. It is an unfamiliar climate, and you will work among a strange people. You may be taken with a fever, or you may be assassinated. "That is the hard way for you. Judge Taft. The president of the United States calls upon you to take the hard way, and he asks you to make a decision for the sake of those

brown people across the ocean, whether you will live your easy life as you have been living it, or take up the hard life as I have honestly pictured It for you."

Taft Chose the Hard Way. It is a fact, although I have paraphrased the language, that Secretary Root with characteristic cleverness, painted the dismal duty of the far off islands in the blackest possible colors and laid stress upon the easy life Judge Taft would have by remaining

home. The point he made was that duty required that the work should be undertaken which held little prospect of preferment. He knew accurately the frame of mind of the man he was talking to, and that kind of argument won where none other would. Judge Taft accepted the responsibility of establishing civil government in the Philippines with his eyes wide open to the fact that in all probability he would receive scant reward for his labors. It was once more the dominant note In his character, and he gave up bis pleasant home life in Cincinnati to go into the governor's palace in Manila Just as he used to leave the river or the base ball field and go back to his room to dig out a translation from Tacitus or an optional problem in the differental calculus. Like a Dream to Taft. One day recently Secretary Taft and his brother Charles, the Cincinnati editor, were chatting about the progress of the campaign. - "Charles." said the secretary, "doesn't this whole thing seem strange to you?" "Not so very," said Brother Charles, "because I have been so hard at work trying to look after your Interests that

the whole thing has grown upon me

gradually until it seems perfectly natural."

"Well, you know. Charlie, it seems

a great big dream to me. Sometimes I

wake ud In the night andthink that it is still a dream, and I have to go

over actual events in my mind to

realize that I have become a presiden

tial possibility. I never thought of!

doing more than getting on the supreme bench, and I was working for that to the best of my ability. I am sure It never occurred to me when I went to the Philippines that the work there would lead to a presidential nomination. It always takes me some time in the morning before I realize that the whole thing is true." It must seem like a dream, and yet It !s an ordinary story of the possibilities of American life. Taft came awfully near being cut off with no greater place in history than that of a pretty good federal Judge, who la a time of national disturbance bad been selected to establish a civil government in a faraway group of islands. He nearly broke down within a short time after he went to the Philippines. Seriously III in 1901. -When he returned to this country for an operation in. December. 1901, less than two years after his first appointment and only five months after

he became the first civil governor of the islands, his condition was a good j deal more serious than the public ever j understood. He had been ill in Man-j ila for two months and it seemed as if ; his work for the little brown men was i surety over. j They tell the story that when he

was at his worst and while several of his oScial friends were in the room

the governor reached under his pillow.

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