belief that they ought to be conserved rather than upon any stated authority to conserve them. Taft approached similar problems and believed himself excluded from the twilight zone except as Congress directed him to enter it. He searched the statute books for laws conferring authority while Roosevelt searched to see if there were prohibitions. The normal consequence of such difference in temper was difference in conduct that showed itself now that Taft was responsible for presidential policies, and it necessarily made him appear to be allied with those who obstructed Government control.

Before leaving his summer home at Beverly, Massachusetts, for his Western trip, it became necessary for President Taft to straighten out a controversy involving problems of conservation. The Secretary of the troversy Interior, Richard A. Ballinger, had served as

The Ballinger con

Commissioner of the General Land Office under Roosevelt. His policies as Secretary failed to meet the expectations of the conservationists. Gifford Pinchot, of the Forestry Service, openly attacked him in the early summer because of his policies respecting water-power sites and coal lands. The controversy involved both policies and opinions, and was the more difficult to settle because Pinchot was in the Department of Agriculture and not under the control of Ballinger. Only by the direct intervention of the President could action be obtained. The attack on Ballinger was founded upon specific charges made by one of his employees named Glavis. A memorandum prepared for the President and supporting the Secretary, although not passing judgment upon the merits of particular claims, was signed by Taft in September. Glavis was dismissed from the Government service, and persuaded his friends that he was made a victim because of his activity in the public interest. On November 13, 1909, he published in Collier's Weekly "The Whitewashing of Ballinger."

Before Congress met, the friends of conservation were engaged in a vigorous attack upon Ballinger as a servant of the trusts and monopolies that were endeavoring to steal

the public domain. A joint committee was appointed on January 26 to investigate the administration of the Department of the Interior. It ultimately filed a report upholding the administration of the department, but the controversy had grown from the limited field of conservation to the broader one of general politics. Gifford Pinchot had continued his open attacks upon Ballinger and his policies. He carried his fight until it involved a matter of administrative discipline. In the early winter he wrote a letter to Senator Dolliver in violation of a rule forbidding subordinates to carry on direct correspondence with Congress in such cases. He believed the Secretary of Agriculture had authorized him to write the letter, but when Secretary Wilson denied having given the authority there remained no other course than to treat it as a breach of discipline. Taft dismissed Pinchot on January 7, 1910, and precipitated thereby a party crisis in the face of approaching Congressional elections.

and conser

vation

So far as conservation was concerned, there was room for more than one opinion. The legal authority for as vigorous a program as Roosevelt had carried out was The West dubious at best. President Taft appealed in defense of conservation, with every appearance of sincerity, but his acts failed to satisfy the conservationists, and the difference of opinion was seized upon by the insurgents who were already disposed to believe that he had abandoned the progressive cause to ally himself with the "stand-pat." By 1910 another point of view had developed with reference to conservation. In many respects the policy was an Eastern policy for Western problems. Local opinion in the West had always favored the speedy development of the public domain. Western States invited irrigation works, but looked askance at national forests forever removed from State management or taxation, and objected to withdrawal of lands from entry. The selfish interests that desired to appropriate national resources found it possible to stir up a genuine Western objection to a national policy that hindered local develop

ment. Ballinger had the Far Western point of view, while Taft, his chief, had the legalistic mind. Of necessity their conduct in conservation failed to meet the expectation of the scientific conservationists. The dismissal of Pinchot brought conservation into the field of active politics. Before his dismissal he had already written of the controversy to Colonel Roosevelt at Khartoum, and in the early spring of 1910 he crossed the Atlantic to meet him at Porto Maurizio as he traveled north from Africa. The friends. of conservation, thinking themselves deceived by the Administration, turned to the ex-President, the founder of the movement, for leadership and comfort, while in Congress the insurgent Republicans as well as the Democrats made the most of the Payne-Aldrich tariff and the Ballinger-Pinchot controversy as proof that the conservatives had gained control of the Administration.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

F. A. Ogg, National Progress (1917), gives a careful narrative of events after 1907. Other works of special interest on this period are Frank J. Goodnow, Social Reform and the Constitution (1911); Nicholas Murray Butler, Why Should we Change our Form of Government (1912); Herbert Croly, The Promise of American Life (1909); and Paul L. Haworth, America in Ferment (1915). The writings of Tarbell and Taussig continue usefu upon the tariff. The insurgent point of view is best represented by Collier's Weekly, 1909-10. The report of the investigating committee on the Ballinger-Pinchot controversy is printed as 61st Cong., 2d Sess., Sen. Doc. 248.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

INSURGENCY

THE differences of principle and the personal grievances that had been suppressed or overridden by the dominating personality of Roosevelt broke out in open war- Insurgent fare before Taft met his first Congress. While revolt the Committee on Ways and Means was drafting its tariff schedules in secrecy, a group of dissenters became openly insurgent against the policies of the party, and let it be known that there would be a test of strength in the organization of the Sixty-First Congress. From this time until the end of the Administration the insurgents held the center of the political stage. Most of their members came from the upper Mississippi Valley with the States that had harbored the Granger movement now most active in revolt. In the Senate their leaders had little chance for effective action, since there were almost twice as many Republicans as Democrats in that body, and the votes of men like Cummins, Beveridge, and La Follette were not needed to make a majority. In the House, however, of the three hundred and ninety-one members the Republicans at best had a majority of under fifty, while the insurgents claimed to control between twenty and thirty votes, and it was always possible that by uniting with the Democratic minority they might break the Republican control. Attempts were made in March, 1909, to defeat Cannon for reëlection, and these constituted the first formal action of the insurgents.

The fundamental insurgent claim was that machine politics had usurped the control of the national parties, and had defrauded the people of the right of self-govern- Attack on ment. The most visible agent of this domi- Cannon nance was the Speaker of the House of Representatives, whose power had steadily grown more autocratic since Thomas B. Reed had led in the revision of the rules in 1890.

The large membership of the House and the short average tenure of its members inherently weakened it as a machine for doing public business. On the floor and in the committee rooms most of the members were usually new and inexperienced in the mechanism of government. The small proportion who had sat in two or three preceding Congresses acquired a power of leadership based upon knowing the ropes that was often far in excess of their right to leadership. The Speaker was in control of his party in the House. He appointed all committees and these committees drafted the rules and statutes that the House enacted. He controlled the floor for purposes of debate, and by withholding recognition from private speakers; or by collusion as to who should be recognized, he was able to silence individuals or factions. Few members of Congress had personal grievances against Joseph G. Cannon, but all the insurgent leaders. believed that his power was so exercised as to prevent interference with the legislative policies of conservative Republicans. The revolt had been long impending. A dozen Republicans voted against Cannon's reëlection, and a larger number voted against the readoption of the rules of the House that placed the entire control of committee policies in his hands. In the ensuing debate over the PayneAldrich tariff the insurgents' grievance over the mechanics of party control was heightened by their hostility to the tariff that was passed. In both houses ominous groups voted against the final passage of the bill. When the administrative quarrel between Ballinger and Pinchot arose, and Taft most needed the support and confidence of his party, the insurgent Republicans were indisposed to grant it.

of reforms

The reform program looked toward a revival of essential democracy by making government more responsive to the Program people. In the management of party conventions there had been personal grievances and violations of principle over a long term of years. Candidates for office were nominated by party conventions, while the delegates to these conventions were selected in