Wausau pilot. [volume] (Wausau, Wis.) 1896-1940, 1910-02-15

Eleven Months Of Taft.

ognize the fact that this is a transit
tion period in American history. We
have been engaged in exploiting the
immense resources of a virgin cent?
nent; we have sacrificed all other
things in our progress to the single
consideration of speed, and wallowed
in material prosperity.
We are now confronted with two
questions of the first magnitude: How
to conserve that which remains of the
national heritage we have been vast
ing in riotous living. and how to keep
the corporations which we ourselves
have made from devouring us. In our
struggle with these problems rision,
conscience and courage in the Federal
Executive are of priceless value to the
country. The hope of the future turns
upon the execution of law to-day. How
stands President Taft in the judgment
of the country, after eleven months of
administration?
This question is the more important
because all the strength there is in
the Executive Department, so far as
revealed, is in the Presidential chair.
Perhaps no other President of the
United States ever served through
year so heavily fraught with events
of moment to government and people
with so little help from his Cabinet.
Two roads lie open before President
Taft-the service of the interests"
and the service of the people. A break
there is an irrepressible conflict be-
tween the men of the Roosevelt poll
cies" and the men of the machine. Few
executives ever faced so clean-cut an
alternative 1t is not a question of
revolutionizing or deserving his own
party, but of choosing between two
factions, one numerically larger, the
other active and growing, with the
logic both of conscience and political
history in its favor.
Thus far President Taft's course has
been what mathematician call an sir
regular curve" that may be described,
but cannot be plotted mathematically.
He has zigZagged back and forth be-
tween radicals and reactionaries.. He
stands committed to an excellent pro
gramme of legislation upon conserva-
ton and kindred issues; he demands
radical measures for the control of
corporate abuses; he is the champion
of certain judicial reforms which will
give to the poor man a speedier and
less expensive justice. But he has pub
licly commended tariff act whose
principles he had publicly disapproved;
he has defied the very men whose en-
thusiasm and moral weight he so sadly
needs to carry out reforms dear to
his heart; he has accepted and ap-
proved as his instruments machine
politicians of low type. His treatment
of the insurgents shows no continuity
of purpose; he has challenged, pla-
Gated, threatened, withdrawn his
threats He has handled the Ballinger-
Pinchot issue in such good-Lord-
good-devil way that man who, in
spite of certain superficial defects, has
been the nations self-forgetful and ef-
ficient servant in work of great mo-
ment, chose that defiance of the ad-
ministration which led inevitably to
dismissal as the best course open to
him.
One hundred years from now the
historian may reconstruct two Tafts
from the records which the last year
has written: One, the uncompromis-
ing standpatter and chilled-steel regu-
lar, the upholder of the status quo and
threatener of the insurgents; the other
the continuation of the Roosevelt poll
cies and tribune of the people.
Now the acute question is, Which
Taft is to be the Taft of the future?
Mr. Taft is no politician, or he would
perceive as a matter of instinct, with
out stopping to reason or reflect, that
the fissure in the Republican party is
irreparable. Republicanism must for
the future mean either Aldrich and
Cannon or Murdoch and Dolliver. 1t
cannot mean both. Mr. Taft is vast
ing his time in trying to reconcile ir-
reconeilables. He may go down in
history as archpriest of the regulars,
as leader OF the radicals, or IS one who
stumbled back and forth between two
hosts whose line of march separated
them ever more widely, in a vain at
tempt to find a common way for men
set on reaching different destinations.
st. Louis Republican.
Election of Senator'S by the People.
This is time for election of Sena-
tors by the people, so far as that is
| nossihle under ollr system Ordinarily