Woodrow Wilson as President

PART I

CHAPTER I

A NEW CHAMPION OF THE PEOPLE APPEARS

Politics in the year 1912 was staged with all the elements of the melodrama. Big Business was the villain; the people's representatives were crying for relief; the star players, who were ready to lead the reform with the zeal of a crusader, were coming to the front for a round of applause; and from the anterooms the crafty agents of the villain were conning their parts in a whispered monotone. Nor was the drama wanting in the elements of the tragic and the comic. Big Business was accused of hideous crimes and convicted of many. But perhaps its most objectionable feature was its size and the way it supported its weight, which, like the corpulency of Sir John Falstaff, was a ludicrous handicap to the progress of the drama. However, when the curtain arose, Big Business, terrified by the confusion resulting from a clamor of accusations and from the assaults of the plumed knights, could have exclaimed, in the language of the fat comedian, "It

were better to be eaten to death with a rust than to be scoured to nothing with perpetual motion."

But here the analogy must end. The issues of the year were too real to be staged, and the unremedied wrongs too tragic to be used for an evening's entertainment. All the strength of the old-time political parties was accumulating to fight one great evil, and the campaign for the Presidency was turning on one issue-human rights against material rights. This problem embraced the questions of monopoly, of special privilege, of governmental policy, and of the rights of a free people. But these are trite and time-worn phrases which for a generation have been rolled like sweet morsels by friend and foe of liberty; and even in very remote townships they have served in the absence of a real local issue to elect a township constable as well as to defeat a great leader for the Presidency.

So long had the evils of monopoly been growing in the nation, and so long have these terms of abuse been employed, that they had grown smooth from the abrasion of perpetual use. Therefore, when the campaign of 1912 opened, they had almost ceased to convey an idea to many minds, and their chief value seemed to be to enable the historian or the political economist to trace the decline of political freedom.

However, one corporation after another had been brought before the bar of justice and stories of real or imagined wrongs had been trailed through the press

of the country so long that the conviction that Big Business was dishonest and unscrupulous, deepened with a feeling of distrust and even of hatred. Throughout the nation, therefore, there was such a deep-seated hostility to it that, in many sections of the country, if a large corporation went into the courts with a case that was at all doubtful, it was almost impossible to secure from a jury a verdict in its favor. Thus the people at large had formed a habit of mind that was instinctively hostile to great wealth.

On the other hand, Big Business had formed the habit of looking to the Government for protectionprotection from the people, protection from competition, protection from interference. The close relationship between the national government and large private interests due to protection gave the impression that America was ruled by an oligarchy composed of the captains of industry. In order to protect themselves, while the spirit of unrest was growing, the business of the country became so interlaced that the larger industrial life stood like a house of cards propped together, the good and the bad, and when the government attacked one, it appeared to be attacking all. Therefore, it seemed that the government had to protect all or disturb all, for to destroy bad business threatened disaster throughout the country.

Privilege in one form or another had grown very complex, very pervasive, and could be seen cropping

out everywhere. It had, in fact, woven itself into every part of our political life, and many thinking people had come honestly to the conclusion that such a relationship was natural and that whoever disturbed it was an enemy to good government. However, there were many men, even among the captains of industry, who were profoundly concerned over this relationship, this dependence of business upon governmental protection, and this interlocking and interlacing of interests. Moreover, the plain people, the great middle class, who were not members of these gigantic concerns, and who never asked the government for any right save to live their lives in a free country, had felt for a generation that injustice was at work in the nation, since Big Business did not owe its existence nor its large profits primarily to increasing efficiency, but to the control of the market through the destruction of competition. Thoughtful men in both parties were aware of these evils. Moreover, it was pointed out, time after time, that the art of making a living must be protected more and more effectively, and the only thing that can guarantee the progress of the race is competition, or cooperation that does not destroy competition.

As the summer of 1912 was approaching, when the political parties were to select their candidates for the Presidency, the issue was reduced almost to this simple proposition-monopoly must be destroyed and com