The Pensacola journal. (Pensacola, Fla.) 1898-1985, 1910-04-10
ey Associated Press.

Chicago, Ills, April 9.-In the most
aggressive defense that has yet been
uttered for the policies and admins
tration of William H. Taft, Attorney
General George w. Wickersham, at
the Appomattox celebration of the
Hamilton Club tonight. flayed the pres
ident's detractors; smote the repub-
lican insurgents hip and thigh, re-
viewed the acts of the first year of
the administration and, declaring that
every pledge made in the republican
platform Of 1908 had been fulfilled to
the extent of the possible limits of ex-
ecutiye action, challenged in ringing
tones, what other administration
can point to the accomplishment of so
much In so short time?"
SPOKE FOR TAFT.
IL was the general feeling that the
attorney general was speaking for his
chief as he recalled the campaign
pledges one by one and pointed to the
executives action upon them after
taking office.
The administrators determination
70 enforce the Sherman law against
trusts and monopolies, he reiterated:
the tariff, he defended and declared
that as revenue producer It had no
equal, while its maximum and mini
mum provisions provided powerful
weapon for the protection of American
commerce. Pointing to the treasury's
statement of an estimated surplus of
more than s35,000,60 for the fiscal
year ending on June Both, 1911. the at
torney general said 1t reflected econo-
mics which would reduce the annual
expenses OF government forty-two mil
hon dollars and turn an estimated AN
nual deficit OF a hundred millions into
a surplus OF thirty-five millions. while
alter-dinner orators were efoquently
discoursing on the subject.
Every republican, must choose, the
attorney general declared, whether or
not he was with the republican party
and the president.
TREASON is CHARGED.
He that hath no stomach for the
light. let him depart" quoted Mr..
Wickersham in a shout which empha.
sized the sentiment. THE time of run
aing with the hares and the hounds is
syer. Treason has ever consisted in
giving aid and comfort to the enemy.
any one wishes to join the demo-
.ratic party, let him do so; but let him
lot claim TO be a republican and work
and out of season to defeat repub-
lean measures and to subvert the in.
iuence of the republican president"
Arranging his argument to follow
he sequence of events, Mr.. Wicker
,ham began by saying that the pre-
nous administrations had been charac-
lerized by determined and coura-
geous attack on abuses of privilege
and power, upon which had been rear
ed aggregations of capital whose exist
snce and unchecked growth threatened
- - -
"A higher standard of business NOR
ality and obedience to law had been
set" declared the attorney general,
but in the attainment of these ends
the country had been shaken to its
foundations and the work Of perfecting
the machinery by which those stand
ards might be maintained, by which,
to use the language of President Taft,
the law-breakers might be promptly
restrained and punished but which
should operate with sufficient accuracy
and dispatch to interfere with legiti-
mate business as little as possible,
was, as the president pointed out in
= his speech of acceptance, to be the
schief function of his administration"
IL would be { strained analogy, the
attorney general thought, to liken
though closely the task confronting
the administration of President Taft
with the work of reconstruction follow
Ing the civil war
"The terms which General Grant
had advised General Lee would be ac-
ceptable," he said, however. Were as
simple and conclusive as those which
nearly a half century later, President
Taft offered to- the managers of great
trusts and monopohes.
"On this anniversary of the peace of
Appomattox the mind naturally turns
to many points of similarity in the
conditions prevailing in these two diff