Taft, William Howard (Administration)

WILLIAM HOWARD Taft (1857–1930) was the 27th president of the United States, serving from 1909 to 1913. Compared to his dynamic and reform-minded predecessor, Theodore Roosevelt, the rotund William Howard Taft seemed anything but a Progressive.

His opponents in the Democratic Party and in his own party derided Taft for being an advocate of business interests. They pointed to his support for the Payne-Aldrich Tariff of 1909, which he described as a significant alteration in the existing protectionist policies, but which many others regarded as a very cynical and superficial revision of those policies. The Payne-Aldrich Tariff did minimally lower some tariff rates on some imports of manufactured goods, but it also raised rates on products associated with the major trusts, such as the mining, steel, and food-processing industries.

Indeed, through his Secretary of State Philander C. Knox, Taft initiated what he called Dollar Diplomacy, the pointed use of American political and military influence to promote the international expansion of American business. Although this policy was described as a necessary response to the competition of the highly industrialized European powers, critics have emphasized that in places such as China and Latin America, European competition became an all-too-easy rationalization for exploiting economically underdeveloped nations that were politically and militarily unable to resist American demands.

Nonetheless, Taft did sign a number of laws extended antitrust regulations. The Taft administration oversaw the division into smaller entities of the Standard Oil Company and of the American Tobacco Company, both of which were found to be monopolies. The Mann-Elkins Act of 1910 extended federal oversight to all operations of railroads that conducted interstate commerce, and it eliminated the common practice of overcharging for short hauls because of the federal restraints on the rates that could be charged for long hauls.

It should be noted that during Taft's term, the Sixteenth Amendment was approved, authorizing the federal imposition of an income tax. Certainly, it is a matter of great dispute whether, over the long term, the income tax has reduced poverty by providing revenues for antipoverty programs or it has directly and indirectly increased poverty by reducing real incomes.

[Page 1054]Taft also served subsequently in the role of chief justice of the Supreme Court, a position that suited his character better than his political appointments.