Taft was installed as civil governor at Manila, but it still required special executive action to lodge him in the local seat of authority, the old royal palace of Mindanao, and to get the military commander out. Under his direction as civil governor peace was extended and local self-government was gradually applied. In 1904 Judge Taft was recalled to Washington to succeed Root as Secretary of War, but in 1907 he was able to fulfill his promise to the Filipinos, and return to Manila to install the first legislative assembly of the islands.

Before Root turned over the War Department to Judge Taft he had completed a drastic program of internal reReorganiza- organization. One of his successors, in 1912, tion of War declared that "until after the Spanish War there Department was no provision in our military establishment for anybody whose duty it should be to study the organization of the army or to make plans for it." In 1886 Secretary Endicott had declared, "When a second lieutenant enters the service... the rigid examination . . . is made the necessary condition for the commission, but this once passed... the officer can, and but too frequently does, close his books and his studies; and if he does not overwork or expose himself. . . he is certain, under the operation of compulsory retirement, to reach the highest grade open to seniority in his arm of the service." In his first annual report in 1899 Root urged upon Congress a reorganization of the militia, since no one expected that the regulars would ever fight alone, and a reorganization of the regulars to provide for the better training of officers and the preparation of war plans. Congress was induced to respond with laws carrying both appropriations and legal authority. On November 27, 1901, the Army War College was opened in Washington under the presidency of Tasker H. Bliss, as a post-graduate school for officers, and a little later Congress provided the funds for the stately building on the lower Potomac, whose terrace William II subsequently adorned with an heroic statue of his ancestor, Frederick the Great.

At Fort Leavenworth, Root revived and enlarged the old service schools, and the Staff College for the technical training of officers in their professional arms of Military the service. When a few of the officer students education detailed to receive this instruction failed to take it seriously, their conviction by court martial received the brief comment of Root, "I think the duty will be more clearly understood hereafter."

The Military Academy at West Point was enlarged to make possible the training of the larger number of officers required by the slightly enlarged regular army. The rebuilding of its plant on a monumental scale was begun in 1902, an even century after its creation. "I think," said President Roosevelt at the centennial exercises, "it is going to be a great deal harder to be a first-class officer in the future than it has been in the past."

Staff

Early in 1903 Root's program of military legislation was completed by the passage of a new militia act, and the creation of a General Staff Corps for the army. General On August 8 of that year Nelson A. Miles was retired as the last of the distinguished series of majorgenerals commanding the army, and was succeeded by the General Staff of which General S. B. M. Young became the first chief.

Army reorganization and colonial expansion did not draw the attention of the Administration away from the need to keep the navy abreast of the times. Only four modern battleships had been available in the Spanish War. To these, others were added at the rate of one or two a year, building up a new fleet of battleships that was believed to be adequate until England launched the Dreadnaught in February, 1906, and opened a new chapter in competitive naval armament. Not until the Delaware went into commission in 1910 did the United States possess one of the newest models, but its fleet of pre-dreadnaught battleships had been able to make a memorable demonstration in 1907. The national policy in which these elements played their part was a coördinated scheme, at

whose head stood Root's administrative work. "The new militia law and the General Staff measure," said the President as he took credit for the series of achievements, "will in the end quite transform our military conditions."

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

William Roscoe Thayer, Life and Letters of John Hay (1915), is naturally rich in information upon this period. W. H. Carter, Life of LieutenantGeneral Chaffee (1917), covers the Chinese expedition, while Theodore Roosevelt, An Autobiography (1913), includes new material on the Venezuela intervention. The two standard works on the Philippines are D. C. Worcester, The Philippines, Past and Present (1914), and J. H. Blount, The American Occupation of the Philippines (1912), the latter being substantially a brief for the Bryan policy. Mrs. William H. Taft, Recollections of Full Years (1914), is packed with charming detail relating to Administration circles. Other useful works are J. A. LeRoy, The Americans in the Philippines (1914); D. R. Williams, The Odyssey of the Philippine Commission (1913); and W. F. Willoughby, Territories and Dependencies of the United States (1905). Full reports on insular affairs are in the War Department Annual Reports, 1899-1901. Frederick Funston, Memories of Two Wars (1911), has a bearing upon the Philippine insurrection. No adequate history of Root's administration of the War Department has been written. His annual reports as Secretary should be consulted, as well as his Military Organization and Colonial Policy of the United States (1916).

CHAPTER XXX

BUSINESS IN POLITICS

AMONG the destructive results of the panic of 1893 was the bankruptcy of many of the great railroads. These had been overbuilt during the preceding decade. Railroad reThe railways to the Pacific had been multiplied, organization for speculative purposes, beyond any reasonable prospect of need, and these new lines collapsed upon themselves as business fell away and credit became difficult to obtain. There is no clearer indication of reviving prosperity after 1896 than the systematic emergence of these roads from the hands of their receivers, and their reorganization in larger systems than had hitherto been known. By 1901 the period of reorganization was so well advanced that the plight of the railroads became less interesting than the effect of their combinations upon public welfare. In February, 1901, announcement was made of a merger of Southern Pacific lines that went beyond any precedent in railroad finance.

The Southern Pacific merger was largely the result of the financial genius of Edward H. Harriman, whose reputation was well established as a builder of roads. It The Harriwas founded upon one of his successful recon- man system structions, by which the Union Pacific system had been resuscitated by him after the panic of 1893 and converted into a valuable property.

After the completion of its main line in 1869, the owners of the Union Pacific system became aware of the fact that their property was not a unit. East of the Great Salt Lake the Union Pacific stretched across the plains to Council Bluffs, and found itself dependent for its through business upon the Central Pacific that ran west from the Great Salt Lake to Sacramento Bay. The opportunities of the two roads were unequal since the Union Pacific had few

near affiliations or friends, while the Central Pacific was dominated by a group of active California capitalists who were equally in control of the network of lines known as the Southern Pacific. Leland Stanford and Collis P. Huntington were the best known of the group. Their boldness as railroad promoters was matched by their skill in securing favors from Congress and the Western States. Before 1885 they were in possession of working agreements over the Sante Fé and Texas Pacific roads, as well as their own main line through Yuma, El Paso, San Antonio, and Houston to New Orleans.

It was natural that little traffic found its way from the Central Pacific to the Union Pacific, if it could as well be routed over one of the southern lines. The Union Pacific, manipulated by Jay Gould in the eighties, was driven to organize a system of dependent lines for itself, and piled up a trackage of about seventy-six hundred miles before the panic of 1893 flattened it out. When Harriman gained control of the Union Pacific after the panic, the system was run down, and was reputed to consist of no more than two streaks of rust across the plains. He rebuilt the line, straightening curves and cutting down the grades, and constructing finally a gigantic causeway across the northern tip of the Great Salt Lake. He reassembled the mileage under his influence by rental, absorption, or friendly agreement. The Southern Pacific system and the reorganized Union Pacific covered the whole southwestern quarter of the

The Southern Pacific merger

United States. During 1900 it became known that the Huntington holdings in the Southern Pacific were in the market for sale. Harriman saw the opportunity to merge the two railroad empires. The purchase was announced in February; the Union Pacific borrowed money on a special issue of bonds, and with the proceeds of the loan became the owner of its former rival. The absorption of more than fifteen thousand miles of track under a single management, and subject to the control of Harriman, was a big enough fact to fix public attention upon the new period of financial concentration,