The Republican platform recommends the adoption of a postal savings bank system. The government guarantee will bring out of hoarding places much money which may be turned into wealth producing capital and will be a great incentive for thrift in the many small places in the country having now no savings bank facilities which are reached by the post office. It will bring to everyone however remote from financial centers a place of perfect safety for deposit with the interest returned. The pending bill for such banks provides for the investment of the money deposited in national banks and the various places in which we’ve gathered or as near thereto as may be practicable. This answers the criticism contained in the Democratic platform that under the system the money gathered in the country will be deposited in Wall Street banks. The system of postal savings bank has been tried in so many countries successfully that it cannot be regarded longer as a new and untried experiment. The Democratic platform recommends a tax upon the national banks and upon such state banks as may come in, in the nature of enforced insurance, to raise the guarantee funds to pay the depositors of any bank which fails. The proposition is to tax the honest and prudent banker to make up for the dishonesty and imprudence of others. No one can foresee the burden which under this system would be imposed upon the sound and the conservative bankers of the country by this obligation to make good for the losses caused by the reckless, speculative and dishonest men who would be unable to secure deposits under such a system on the faith of the proposed insurance. Because in its present shape, the proposal would remove all safeguards against recklessness in banking… and in the end, probably the only benefit would accrue to the speculator who would be delighted to enter the banking business when it was certain that he could enjoy any profits that would accrue, while the risk would have to be assumed by his honest and hardworking fellow. In short, the proposal is wholly impracticable unless it is to be accompanied by a complete revolution in our banking system with a supervision so close as practically to create a government bank. If the proposal were adopted exactly as the Democratic platform suggests, it will bring the whole banking system of the country down in ruin. And this proposal is itself an excellent illustration of the fitness for national control of a party, which will commit itself to a scheme of this nature without the slightest sense of responsibility for the practical operation of the law proposed. The Democratic party announces its adhesion to this plan and only recommends the tried system of postal savings bank as an alternative if the new experimental panacea is not available. The Republican party prefers the postal savings bank as one tried safe and known to be effective and as reaching many more people now, without banking facilities, than the new system proposed.

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."