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TAFT, William Howard
(1857–1930), 27th president of the U.S. (1909–13)
and 10th chief justice of the U.S. (1921–30); he was the
only person in U.S. history to head two branches of the federal government.
The son of a leading Ohio lawyer and politician, Taft was
born on Sept. 15, 1857, in Cincinnati, Ohio. He studied at Yale
University, graduating second in his class in 1878, and at the Cincinnati
Law School, receiving his degree and commencing practice in 1880.
Taft moved rapidly up through appointive offices, as assistant district
attorney and internal revenue collector in Cincinnati in the early
1880s, later as a state judge, then as solicitor general of the
U.S. (1890–92) and judge of the Circuit Court of Appeals
(1892–1900). He was an able lawyer and a jurist of moderately
progressive social views, and he formed political connections and
lasting friendships, the most important of which were with the future
presidents William McKinley
and Theodore Roosevelt. In 1886 he married
Helen Herron (1861–1943) of Cincinnati, who became his
astute adviser and prodded him to pursue lofty ambitions. Their
three children all distinguished themselves in public service: Robert,
as U.S. senator from Ohio and as a Republican leader; Helen (1891–1987)
as dean of Bryn Mawr College; and Charles (1897–1983) as
mayor of Cincinnati. One of Taft’s grandsons also served
as U.S. representative and senator from Ohio.
In 1900 President McKinley appointed Taft head of the commission to
govern the Philippines, and the following year he became the islands’ first
civilian governor, a post he filled admirably, setting up judicial
and local government systems, starting social services, and dealing
with native leaders and Roman Catholic church officials over land
disposition. His work drew favorable attention from the U.S. press
and made him a popular national figure. In 1904 President Roosevelt
named him secretary of war, a position from which he continued to
supervise the Philippines, directed construction of the Panama Canal
and started government in the Canal Zone, and contributed to the
modernization of the army. Taft also helped to conduct the negotiations
that ended the Russo-Japanese War in 1905, and he traveled to the
Far East to settle a conflict with Japan over the exclusion of Oriental
immigration. Twice he declined Roosevelt’s offers of a
seat on the Supreme Court, which he wanted, because his wife persuaded
him to remain available for the presidency. Receiving Roosevelt’s
nod for the 1908 Republican nomination, he capitalized on the incumbent’s
winning popularity and the party’s strength, easily defeating
the Democratic nominee, William Jennings Bryan.
Taft was not a successful president, both because he faced
a difficult situation and because he lacked political gifts. A deepening
division within the Republican party between progressives and conservatives,
which Roosevelt had smoothed over and evaded, dogged his administration from
the outset. Taft’s attempt in 1909 to revise the protective
tariff, which had grown increasingly unpopular, became a fiasco
when conservative Republican senators subverted the legislation.
Taft, however, failed either to work out compromises or to fight
for his program, and he alienated his former progressive supporters. Relations
with progressives deteriorated further in 1910, when, after a complicated
administrative struggle, Taft fired the chief of the Forest Service,
Gifford Pinchot, the nation’s leading conservationist and
a friend of Roosevelt. Republican unity collapsed in the 1910 primaries
when Taft unsuccessfully opposed several progressives supported
by Roosevelt, and they and the Democrats scored big victories in
the fall elections. Those conflicts doomed the Taft administration
politically, although it did compile a number of accomplishments,
including establishment of the Federal Children’s Bureau,
vigorous antitrust prosecutions of big business, and a restrained,
pacific foreign policy. Taft suffered a severe personal and political
blow early in his term when his wife was partially incapacitated
by a stroke (1909).
Taft’s presidency might have ended quietly if Roosevelt
had not run against him in 1912. Siding with progressive dissidents,
Roosevelt won most of the primaries but lost the Republican nomination
because Taft controlled the party machinery. Charging a “steal,” Roosevelt
then bolted to head the third-party Progressive (Bull Moose) ticket.
By this time, Taft regarded Roosevelt as a dangerous demagogue,
especially because of his criticism of court decisions, and he stayed
in the presidential race without hope of winning, only to keep Roosevelt
from being elected. Although he finished behind Roosevelt, carrying
only Utah and Vermont, Taft split the usual Republican vote and
threw the election to the Democratic nominee, Woodrow Wilson. He
was pleased at the outcome and left the White House with undisguised
relief.
Taft’s years as ex-president were among his happiest
and most productive. In 1913 he became a professor at Yale Law School
and finally succeeded in reducing his renowned weight below 300
lb. He remained active in the Republican party, and although he
criticized Wilson’s domestic policies from an increasingly
conservative stance, he supported his successor’s foreign
policies and in 1915 headed the League to Enforce Peace, which advocated
a league of nations before Wilson did. After the U.S. entered World
War I in 1917, Wilson appointed Taft cochairman of the National
War Labor Board, and when the Republicans regained the White House
in 1921, President Warren G. Harding named him chief justice of the
U.S., fulfilling Taft’s long-held dream. Taft became one
of the great chief justices in the history of the Supreme Court.
He again showed his administrative ability by reducing the Court’s
backlog and securing passage of the Judiciary Act of 1925, which
gave the justices more control over the selection of cases to be heard.
Taft also impressed his judicial views on the Supreme Court, forsaking
his own earlier progressivism for a more conservative stress on
property rights and governmental limitation. A majority of the justices
retained his viewpoint until the late 1930s. In February 1930, Taft
resigned the chief justiceship in failing health, and he died on
March 8, 1930.