Americus times-recorder. [volume] (Americus, Ga.) 1891-current, 1912-03-07
TAFTS Third
YEAR HAS NOW
JUST CLOSED
HIS GOOD and BAD POINTS
As Shown By a Democratic
Newspaper
New York World.)


Mr.. Taft has completed three years
of his term as President. On his rec
ord for that period he is asking for
denomination by his party and reel
ection by the country. At the outset
he faces the united OPPOSITION of the
Democratic party and the factional
fight in which Mr.. Roosevelt, after
long intriguing in the dark, has taken
the leadership against his old friend
and associate.
The weakest part of Mr.. Taft's adj
ministration has been his tariff policy.
He began by starting promptly the
work of tariff revision to which he
was pledged signed the Payne-Al-
drich bill with it's "indefensible" wool
schedule, and at Winona praised IT
as the best tariff ever enacted. At the
very first opportunity the country
roundly rebuked him, justified the
insurgents who had fought the pas
sage of the Payne Aldrich bill and
elected a Democratic House.
Ever since, Mr.. Taft has stood in
an apologize attitude before the pub
lie on the tariff He has regularly
advocated tariff revision and, when
ever occasion offered, has personally
blocked it with his yetoes. The I'M
just and excessive tariff rates which
he has condemned he alone has pre-
served against reduction by Congress.
With his Tariff Board plan, which was
to be the means of taking the tariff
question out of politics and settling it
in a scientific, business-like way, he
has kept it unsettled and thrown it
into another Presidential campaign.
He has largely destroyed the force of
his arguments in favor of the Tariff
Board by making use of it primarily
as an instrument for delay and ex-
cuse for partisan appeals.
On the other hand, never before has
the Sherman Antitrust law been 50
vigorously enforced as it has been
since Mr.. Taft became President He
has conducted his campaign against
illegal combinations, not in the Roose-
veltian fashion of Incorporate har-
argues and blood-curdling threats, but
by orderly, effective suits in the
courts. The Standard OIL which Mr. |
Roosevelt denounced, Mr.. Taft forced |
to dissolve. The Steel Trust has not
been received in private audience at
the White House and granted an Ex-
ecutive license to absorb a valuable |
competitor, but has been led to the bar
of justice to defend its existence.
The Chicago beef-packers have not
secured immunity through official
bungling but are actually on trial OF
criminal indictments.
Mr. Taft took the Sherman law as he
found it, and as the Executive he has
respected the law. He has not used
it for political effect or sensational
purposes. He has not feared to MAKE
enemies, nor has he exempted great
interest that have been so friendly
to us" from it's rigors. He has plainly
informed business men that they must
square themselves to the necessity OF
getting along with competition and
getting along without monopoly And
the clamor of Big Business has not
budged him from his chosen course.
Nowhere has Mr. Taft shown to bet
ter advantage than in his judicial APP
pointments. Called on by circum-
stances to appoint a majority OF the
members of the United States Su-
preme Court, including the Chief JUS
tee, he has scrupulously disregarded