The Green Forest tribune., 1908-11-13
oooooCcooooCcooooooooooI WILLIAM HOWARD TAFT , Of Family of Jurists--tis Mothers Influence Call to Public OffCe0n the Federal BenCh-- Blazing the Philippine Trai--Secretary of War--Buiding Panama Canal

ceesS?CCsecCc,3CCCCS dominated the Cincinnati court house In 1881 he became collector of internal revenue for the First Ohio district. A year later he resigned that office and went back to the practice of law, with his fathers old partner, H. P. Floyd In 1883 he became assistant county solicitor. Two years later Governor Foraker appointed him judge of the Supreme Court, to succeed Judson Harmon, who had resigned to enter President Cleveland's cabinet.
 In 1886 Judge Taft married Miss Helen Heron, daughter of Hon. John w. Heron of Cincinnati. They have three ehildren-Robert Alphonso, a student at Yale, Helen, student at Bryn Mawr, and Charles Phelps Sec ond, who attends the public schools in Washington.
 His Judicial Career Begun.
 His appointment as judge of the Superior Court was the beginnig of the judicial career which was Taft's ambition, and for which he was so eminently fitted.
 At the close of his appointed term he was elected for another term. He had served but two years of the five for which he had been elected when President Harrison asked him to take the post of solicitor general of the United Sates. Two of the cases which he conducted as solicitor gen. eral involved questions of vital i'm portance to the entire country The first grew out of the seal fisheries controversy with Great Britain. MT. Taft won against such eminent coun sel as Joseph H. Choate who is widely recognized as leader of the Amerl- can bar. The other was tariff case in which the law was attacked on the ground that Speaker Reed had counted a quorum when the bill passed the house. That, too he won. It was dur ing his term as solicitor general that Mr Taft met Theodore Roosevelt, then civil service commissioner, and began the friendship which has con- tinued and grown ever since and which has had such far-reaching in fiuence upon the lives of both men.
 On the Federal Bench.
 MT. Taft's record as solicitor gen eral so clearly proved his fitness for the bench that after three years in Washington he was sent back to Ohio as judge of the Sixth federal circuit, a post generally recognized as pre- liminary step to the Supreme Court, which was then the goal of his ann bition
 It was during his seven years on the federal bench that Mr. Taft's qualities as a judge became known throughout the country. It was in this period of his service that he rendered the labor decisions which have made him famous. One of the most import ant and faTreaching of all his judg- ments was that against the Addystone Pipe Company, in which for the first time the sherman antitrust law was made living, vital force for the curb ing and punishment of monopoly. When this case reached the Supreme Court. NIT. Taft received the distin- guished and unusual honor of having his decision qouted in full and handed down as a part of the opinions of the high court which sustained him at every point.
 Blazing the Philippine Trail
 Since the settlement of the recon struction question, no more delicate or Hateful problem has confronted American statesmanship than that of the Philippines. The sudden pitching of over-sea territory into our posses sion as result of the war with Spain created situation not only unex- pected, but entirely without prece- dent. There was no guide for our statesmen. The path had to be hewed out new from the beginning
 MT Taft had been opposed to talk ing the islands. He was opposed to retaining them. More than all, he op- posed their exploitation for American benefit He believed that the Philip pines belonged to the Fillipinos, and should be developed in the interest of their own people.
 But he saw the possibility of lift ing a feeble, ignorant people into the light of liberty and setting them upon the path to intelligent, efficient self government. That possibility recon ciled him to the continuance of Amercan authority over the islands. Therefore when President Mckinley asked him to go to Manila and under take the difficult and thankless task of starting the Filipinos upon their true course he sacrificed the judicial career which was his life's ambition and shouldered the White Mans Bur den.'' It was in March, 1900, that he received his appointment as chairman of the Philippine Commission.
 Not many Americans have ever comprehended thoroughly the size of MT. Taft's undertaking, or the full meaning of his achievement. Through bungle in our first dealings with Aguinaldo and the Filipinos the entire native population of the islands had come to believe, with some reason, that the Americans were their ene- mics and had betrayed them. Mir Taft arrived in Manila to find a people subdued by force of arms. but unani- mously hostile, sullen and suspicious. They were still struggling, with the bitterness of despair, against the power in which they all saw only the hand of the oppressor.
 A Revelation to Fiiipinos.
 That was what MT. Taft had to face and in three years he had overcome