Unlawful trust should be restrained with all the efficiency of injunctive process, and the persons engaged in maintaining them should be punished with all of the severity of criminal prosecution in order that the method pursued in the operation of their business shall be brought within the law. To destroy them, and to eliminate the wealth they represent from the producing capital of the country, would entail enormous loss and would throw out of employment myriads of working men and working women. Such a result is wholly unnecessary to the accomplishment of the needed reform and will inflict upon the innocent far greater punishment than upon the guilty. The Democratic platform does not propose to destroy the plants of the trust physically, but it proposes to do the same thing in a different way. The business of this country is largely dependent on a protective system of tariffs. The business done by many of the so-called trusts is protected with the other businesses of the country. The Democratic platform proposes to take off the tariff in all articles coming into competition with those produced for the so-called trusts and to put them on the free list. If such a course would be utterly destructive of their business, as is intended, it would not only destroy the trusts but all of their smaller competitors. The ruthless and impracticable character of the proposition grows plainer as its effect upon the whole community is realized. To take the course suggested for the Democratic platform in these matters is to involve the entire community, innocent as it is, in the punishment of the guilty. While our policy is to stamp out the specific evil. This difference between the policies of the two great parties is of a special importance in view of the present condition of business. Gradually, business is acquiring a healthier tone, gradually all wealth which was hoarded is coming out to be used, confidence in security of business investment is a plant of slow growth and is absolutely necessary in order that our factories may all open again; in order that our unemployed may become employed; and in order that we may again have the prosperity which blessed us for ten years. The identity of the interests of the capitalists, the farmer, the businessman and the wage earner in the security and profit of investment cannot be too greatly emphasized. I submit to those most interested, the wage earners, the farmers, and the businessmen, whether the introduction into power of the Democratic party with Mr. Bryan, at its head, and with the business destruction that he’s openly advocated as a remedy for our present evil, will bring about the needed confidence for the restoration of prosperity.

Biography:

Distinguished jurist, effective administrator, but poor politician, William Howard Taft spent four uncomfortable years in the White House. Large, jovial, conscientious, he was caught in the intense battles between Progressives and conservatives, and got scant credit for the achievements of his administration.

Born in 1857, the son of a distinguished judge, he was graduated from Yale, and returned to Cincinnati to study and practice law. He rose in politics through Republican judiciary appointments, through his own competence and availability, and because, as he once wrote facetiously, he always had his "plate the right side up when offices were falling."

But Taft much preferred law to politics. He was appointed a Federal circuit judge at 34. He aspired to be a member of the Supreme Court, but his wife, Helen Herron Taft, held other ambitions for him.

His route to the White House was via administrative posts. President McKinley sent him to the Philippines in 1900 as chief civil administrator. Sympathetic toward the Filipinos, he improved the economy, built roads and schools, and gave the people at least some participation in government.

President Roosevelt made him Secretary of War, and by 1907 had decided that Taft should be his successor. The Republican Convention nominated him the next year.

Taft disliked the campaign--"one of the most uncomfortable four months of my life." But he pledged his loyalty to the Roosevelt program, popular in the West, while his brother Charles reassured eastern Republicans. William Jennings Bryan, running on the Democratic ticket for a third time, complained that he was having to oppose two candidates, a western progressive Taft and an eastern conservative Taft.

Progressives were pleased with Taft's election. "Roosevelt has cut enough hay," they said; "Taft is the man to put it into the barn." Conservatives were delighted to be rid of Roosevelt--the "mad messiah."

Taft recognized that his techniques would differ from those of his predecessor. Unlike Roosevelt, Taft did not believe in the stretching of Presidential powers. He once commented that Roosevelt "ought more often to have admitted the legal way of reaching the same ends."

Taft alienated many liberal Republicans who later formed the Progressive Party, by defending the Payne-Aldrich Act which unexpectedly continued high tariff rates. A trade agreement with Canada, which Taft pushed through Congress, would have pleased eastern advocates of a low tariff, but the Canadians rejected it. He further antagonized Progressives by upholding his Secretary of the Interior, accused of failing to carry out Roosevelt's conservation policies.

In the angry Progressive onslaught against him, little attention was paid to the fact that his administration initiated 80 antitrust suits and that Congress submitted to the states amendments for a Federal income tax and the direct election of Senators. A postal savings system was established, and the Interstate Commerce Commission was directed to set railroad rates.

In 1912, when the Republicans renominated Taft, Roosevelt bolted the party to lead the Progressives, thus guaranteeing the election of Woodrow Wilson.

Taft, free of the Presidency, served as Professor of Law at Yale until President Harding made him Chief Justice of the United States, a position he held until just before his death in 1930. To Taft, the appointment was his greatest honor; he wrote: "I don't remember that I ever was President."