William H. Taft

Source

• Born: 15 September 1857
• Birthplace: Cincinnati, Ohio
• Died: 8 March 1930
• Best Known As: The largest-ever U.S. President, 1909-1913

William Howard Taft was the 27th president of the United States, serving one term from 1909-1913. Taft was the son of Alphonso Taft, Secretary of War and Attorney General in the cabinet of Ulysses S. Grant. William graduated from Yale in 1878 and Cincinnati Law School in 1880, then went on to be a respectable Republican jurist and administrator. He served under Teddy Roosevelt as the first civilian governor of the Philippines, Secretary of War and a provisional governor of Cuba. A lifelong Republican, he was Roosevelt's successor as president, elected in 1908 and taking office in 1809. He lost a re-election bid in 1912 when Roosevelt ran against him and both were defeated by Democrat Woodrow Wilson. By his own admission, Taft wasn't much of a president, and historians tend to attribute his political rise to the ambitions of his wife, Helen "Nellie" Taft. Nonetheless, he was by all accounts a likable fellow with a great legal mind. In 1921 Taft was appointed Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court by President Warren Harding; he held the post for nine years, resigning just before his death in 1930. Taft's son Robert A. Taft was a powerful senator known as "Mr. Republican" in the mid-1900s.

Taft was a large man, weighing over three hundred pounds... When Taft visited Mexico's President Porfirio Díaz at Ciudad Juárez in 1909, it was the first time a U.S. president set foot on foreign soil... Taft was the first president to open the baseball season by tossing out a ball (1910).

(b. Cincinnati, Ohio, 15 Sept. 1857; d. 8 Mar. 1930) US; Solicitor-General 1890 – 2, Governor of the Philippines 1901 – 3, President 1909 – 13, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court 1921 – 30 Born into a family involved in law and politics — his grandfather and father were judges, his father having served also as a Cabinet member — Taft was educated at high school in Cincinnati and took his first degree at Yale, graduating second in a class of 121. He studied law at Cincinnati Law School and was admitted to the bar in Ohio in 1880. He served in a number of positions, primarily legal posts, before being appointed a judge of the Superior Court of Cincinnati in 1887. Three years later he was appointed Solicitor-General of the United States. In 1892 he was appointed a US circuit judge. Four years later he became a law professor at his old law school.

His rise to public prominence began in 1900 when President McKinley appointed him to chair a commission to establish civil government in the Philippines. A year later he was appointed Governor-General of the Philippines, a post in which he served with some distinction. He served for three years and returned to take up a Cabinet post as Secretary of War. Well liked and trusted by the President, Teddy Roosevelt, he was Roosevelt's chosen successor and in 1908 he was the Republican nominee for the presidency. He won with a convincing majority — achieving 7.6 million votes to William Jennings Bryan's 6.4 million — and was inaugurated on 4 March 1909. As President, he maintained Roosevelt's campaign against monopolies and encouraged "dollar diplomacy" abroad, relying on trade rather than military power to spread American influence. A number of important acts were passed and a constitutional amendment — introducing a federal income tax — was achieved. However, Taft lacked Roosevelt's clout and dynamism and had difficulty controlling the more conservative elements in the Republican Party. In the 1910 mid-term elections, the Republicans lost control of the House of Representatives. Progressives in the Republican Party became disillusioned with Taft and relations between the President and his predecessor became strained. In 1912, Roosevelt ran as a Progressive candidate for the presidency, effectively splitting the Republican vote and letting the Democrat, Woodrow Wilson, into office. Taft finished third in the race.

After leaving the White House, Taft returned to academic life, taking up the post of law professor at Yale and serving briefly as joint chairman of the National War Labor Board. He returned to judicial life in 1921. The new Republican President, Warren Harding, nominated him to be Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. It was a post in which he was to serve for nine years. Though not a great jurist, he was an effective administrator and achieved reform of the federal judiciary. He wrote some important opinions for the court and felt thoroughly at ease on the nation's highest court. He resigned in February 1930, at the age of 72, because of a heart ailment, and died just over a month later.

Taft was a great man physically — he weighed in excess of 20 stone, the heaviest man ever to occupy the presidency — but not a great man politically. His greatest love was the law and he was at his happiest when serving on the bench. What took him away from the bench so often was his sense of duty, as well as his wife's ambition for him. His wife was the daughter of a judge but she wanted her husband to achieve prominence; she was the first First Lady to travel with her husband from the inauguration to the White House. Above all, Taft was a man who believed in service to his country. When called upon by the President to serve in a particular post, Taft responded to the call. While in the Philippines, he twice turned down the offer of a place on the Supreme Court because his work was not finished. He disliked confrontation and was distraught when his old friend Roosevelt turned against him. He was a patrician — he treated the Filipinos as people for whom he had a special responsibility (he spoke of them "as my little brown brothers") — and had a friendly disposition. He always took in good spirits jokes about his ample girth. When, in the Philippines, he cabled to the Secretary of War that he had ridden 25 miles on horseback, he received the reply: "How is the horse?"

Taft was not cut out for the rough and tumble of national politics. When he lost office, he admitted to feeling relieved and told his successor, "I'm glad to be going. This is the lonesomest place in the world." His enduring love was for the law and he achieved contentment late in life when he became Chief Justice. "I love judges and I love courts," he once declared, and in 1925 he wrote "The truth is that in my present life I don't remember that I was ever President." As President, he fulfilled the ambitions of his wife. As Chief Justice, he fulfilled his own.

(b. Cincinnati, Ohio, 15 Sep. 1857; d. Washington, D.C., 8 Mar. 1930; interred Arlington National Cemetery), president of the United States, 1909–1913; chief justice, 1921–1930. William Howard Taft, the only figure in American history to serve both as president of the United States and chief justice of its highest court, was born in Cincinnati on 15 September 1857, the son and grandson of judges. Ample in girth as well as intellect, he possessed amiability rather than political ambition. Taft was attracted not to politics, but to law in general, and judging in particular, throughout his long and varied career. Though capable as a lawyer, he achieved his greatest fulfillment as a judge. He served in a number of political capacities, including the highest political office in this country, but his calling remained the judiciary. “I love judges, and I love courts. They are my ideals, that typify on earth what we shall meet hereafter in heaven under a just God.” And toward the end of his life, when, after losing reelection to the presidency, he ultimately attained his lifelong goal of the chief justice's seat on the Court, an observer described him on the bench “as one of the high gods of the world, a smiling Buddha, placid, wise, gentle, sweet” (J. Anderson, William Howard Taft, 1981, p. 259).

Taft graduated from Yale in 1878, and after attending the University of Cincinnati law school, was admitted to the Ohio bar two years later. But his private practice was a short one. The son of a family well known in Ohio politics, he was appointed to the Ohio Superior Court in 1887. Within two years, he tried to have his name submitted to President Benjamin Harrison for a vacancy on the United States Supreme Court. Although he did not receive the appointment, the influence exercised on his behalf was sufficient for Harrison to name the thirty‐two‐year‐old Ohio judge as solicitor general. The required relocation to Washington afforded Taft the opportunity to meet lawyers and political figures on the national scene. Taft was not an eloquent advocate, but his performance as solicitor general was more than competent; he won sixteen out of the eighteen cases that he argued before the Court. In

1892, Harrison appointed him a federal judge for the Sixth Circuit.

Taft, William Howard

Taft served on the circuit bench for eight years. Many of the cases before him concerned organized labor. Throughout his later career, especially during his presidential term, Taft would be severely criticized for his hostility to the working man. In fact, examination of his federal judicial career indicates ambivalence rather than outright antagonism toward labor. He had no doubt, for example, that workers had the right to organize into unions and strike when they considered it necessary. Moreover, he ruled in one case that it was unlawful for owners to force their workers to accept nonliability clauses as a condition of employment, a device popular among employers for avoiding liability for accidents. Taft's ruling was later reversed by the Supreme Court.

On the other hand, a strike was not the same thing as a boycott; Taft regularly enjoined the latter. While he occasionally supported the workers' position in a particular case, he remained staunchly conservative in his attitudes toward property rights. And, like many conservatives, he reacted with outrage to violence resulting from conflict between labor and management. During the Pullman strike in 1894, Taft wrote to his wife that “it will be necessary for the military to kill some of the mob. … They have only killed six … as yet. This is hardly enough to make an impression.”

Taft found his years as a federal judge extremely fulfilling. There was always the possibility of advancement to the high court, a goal not shared by Taft's wife, who consistently urged her husband to venture into fields with greater potential for political rewards. When in 1900 President William McKinley named him chair of the Philippine Commission, pressure from Helen Taft, rather than his own preference, proved persuasive. He remained in the islands for four years, ultimately serving as civil governor, a position that he considered similar to his earlier judicial functions. So absorbing did he find his island responsibilities that on at least two separate occasions between 1901 and 1904, Taft declined appointments to the Supreme Court, choosing instead to remain in the Philippines. Finally in 1904, President Theodore Roosevelt recalled him to Washington as secretary of war. His close association with the president, together with Helen Taft's vigorous encouragement and Roosevelt's stated determination not to seek reelection in 1908, all combined to propel a reluctant Taft into the White House.

Had Roosevelt been able to offer Taft the position of chief justice, subsequent events might have been very different. Neither interested in politics nor astute in the ways of politicians, Taft found his four years as chief executive a frustrating and unrewarding experience. He was, however, able to make six appointments to the Supreme Court, more than any other one‐term president in American history. He even named a new chief justice in place of Melville Fuller, commenting with real regret that “the one place in the government which I would have liked to fill myself I am forced to give to another.” Indeed, Taft's self‐interest in this matter colored his conduct.

Ultimately faced with two choices, both justices currently on the Court, either Edward D. White or Charles Evans Hughes, Taft ultimately named White, even though White was a Democrat, and though Taft respected Hughes more as a judge. But White was a dozen years older than Taft, and seventeen years older than Hughes. Refusing to abandon his goal of ultimately serving as chief justice, Taft realized that given the vicissitudes of time, he might yet have a chance of succeeding White. Actuarial considerations may thus have been the dominant factor in White's ultimate selection.

Taft expected defeat in the bitter three‐way 1912 presidential campaign and left the presidency to Woodrow Wilson with relief. Offered the Kent Chair in Constitutional Law at Yale Law School, Taft commented jocularly that a chair would not be adequate, but perhaps “a sofa of law” might suffice. He adjusted to the life of an academician with an extensive and, for the time, lucrative lecture schedule. He remained interested in national affairs and strongly endorsed Wilson's League of Nations, even as he severely criticized the embattled president's political intransigence. Always a loyal Republican, he supported Warren G. Harding with consistency if not enthusiasm. After Harding's triumphant election, the new chief executive offered to place Taft on the bench, but the former president replied that he would only accept the position of chief justice.

With an eagerness to succeed his own nominee as chief justice that was understandable if not unseemly, Taft might have pondered Thomas Jefferson's famous lament about justices on the high court: “few die and none resign.” Although he had a few anxious months owing to Chief Justice White's seeming longevity, ultimately Taft's calculations concerning the length of the chief's term were correct. To some extent in 1908, but even more so in 1921, Taft happened to be in the right place for the right position with the right president at the right time. Nominated chief justice by Harding on 30 June 1921, the former president was confirmed later that same day by the Senate, which did not even bother to refer the matter to committee.

As chief justice, Taft was distinguished less by doctrinal than by departmental innovation. Especially in the first half of his nine‐year term, while he remained in relatively sound health, he was the most active chief justice in court administrative matters thus far in the history of that tribunal. Taft did not hesitate to use many of his old presidential and congressional contacts to further his goals for the Court. His skillful combination of informal lobbying, matched with a sound understanding of the needs of the federal judicial system, led to congressional enactment of the Judiciary Act of 1925, which gave the justices almost total discretion over their docket. This discretionary flexibility continues to the present, allowing the Court, with very few exceptions, to decide what cases need to be resolved and in what context. Later, Taft employed these same skillful techniques to insure congressional support for the construction of a building appropriate to the Court's role in American constitutional adjudication. He did not live to see it completed, but the structure remains one fitting tribute to Taft's vision of the Court.

As chief justice, Taft emphasized teamwork among his associates. He did not appreciate frequent dissents (especially those replete with lengthy footnotes that seemed to emanate too often from Justice Louis Brandeis) because he thought they lessened the effectiveness of the Court's work. His reluctance to see disagreement within the Court made public is reflected in the fact that in his eight full terms he dissented about twenty times and submitted written dissents in only four cases. Yet he wrote 249 opinions on behalf of the Court.

Taft's conservative tendencies demonstrated during his first judicial career were very much in evidence during his second. In 1921, speaking for a bare majority of the Court, he struck down an Arizona statute that limited use of injunctions during labor disputes. Conduct that strikers claimed to be sanctioned by the statute was, according to Taft in Truax v. Corrigan (1921), “moral coercion by illegal annoyance and obstruction, and it thus was plainly a conspiracy” (p. 328). Less than six months later, he held a federal statute dealing with child labor unconstitutional. Earlier, Congress had enacted a similar law, based upon its power to regulate commerce, only to see it struck down by the Court (see Commerce Power). Its second attempt was based not on the Commerce Clause, but rather on the taxing power; yet Taft saw no difference worth discussing (see Taxing and Spending Clause). In reality, the act was a penalty, Taft concluded in Bailey v. Drexel Furniture Co. (1922), because in seeking “to do the same thing, and the effort must be equally futile” (p. 39).

Taft was nevertheless capable of unusual doctrinal flexibility. In one of his rare dissents, he criticized the majority's rejection of a minimum wage for women. Sounding more like Justice Holmes than himself, Taft wrote in Adkins v. Children's Hospital (1923), “it is not the function of this Court to hold congressional acts invalid simply because they are passed to carry out economic views which the Court believes to be unwise or unsound” (p. 562). When the Court unanimously rejected a congressional attempt to regulate commodity futures trading through the taxing power, in the course of his opinion, Taft advised Congress to reenact the measure based on its plenary authority to regulate commerce. Congress did so, and with the sections regulating futures trading still intact, Taft upheld the law. Indeed, Taft's opinions for the Court dealing with the national commerce power tended to be sweeping in their endorsement of congressional authority. If they represented a conservative viewpoint, it was a dynamic conservatism—restricted only by Taft's insistence that the “sanctity and inviolability of judicial decisions” from his court be unimpaired.

By 1928, Taft's health was failing. Although he sat in his accustomed chair for the opening of the 1929 October term, illness forced him to resign in February 1930. He died barely a month later and was the first president to be buried in Arlington National Cemetery. If not a distinguished judge in his doctrines and opinions, Taft was an outstanding judicial administrator. Especially in the first half of his term, no chief justice thus far in our history matched his active role in court administration, and his leadership in bringing about legislation gave needed judicial discretion to the Court to control its docket. Taft's leadership helped modernize a tribunal badly in need of such change. In retrospect, however, too often his decisions reflected a fear of change rather than its necessary facilitation.

See also Chief Justice, Office of the.

Bibliography

• Alpheus Thomas Mason, The Supreme Court from Taft to Warren (1958).
• Alpheus Thomas Mason, William Howard Taft: Chief Justice (1964).
• Walter F. Murphy, In His Own Image: Mr. Chief Justice Taft and Supreme Court Appointments, in The Supreme Court and the Constitution, edited by Philip Kurland (1965).
• Hentry F. Pringle, The Life and Times of William Howard Taft, 2 vols. (reprint, 1964)

— Jonathan Lurie

William Howard Taft (1857-1930), as twenty-seventh president of the United States and a chief justice, failed to rise adequately to the challenges of the times, despite his many strong qualities.

William Howard Taft was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, on Sept. 15, 1857, into a family of old New England stock. Both his father and grandfather had served terms as judges, and young Taft aspired to a judicial career. A bright but unimaginative youngster, he attended high school in Cincinnati, and at Yale University he finished second in a graduating class of 121 in 1878. Two years later he graduated from the Cincinnati Law School.

An outsize, congenial young man with a tendency to procrastinate, Taft took an active interest in Republican politics. He was rewarded with appointments to various offices. Between 1880 and 1890 he served successively as assistant prosecuting attorney for Hamilton County, Ohio, collector of internal revenue for Cincinnati, and judge of the Superior Court of Ohio. Named solicitor general of the United States in 1890, he distinguished himself for his thorough preparation and won 15 of the first 18 cases he argued in the Supreme Court.

Meanwhile, in 1886, Taft had married Helen Herron of Cincinnati. Eventually they had three children. A driving, ambitious woman, she wanted her husband to follow a political rather than a legal career. When a Federal judgeship opened in 1891, she protested that his appointment would "put and end to all your opportunities … of being thrown with bigwigs." And she twice influenced him to reject offers of a Supreme Court seat during Theodore Roosevelt's first administration in order to maintain his availability for the presidency.

Federal Service

Disregarding his wife's admonitions, Taft accepted appointment to the Sixth Circuit Court in 1892. Though he again distinguished himself for thoroughness and technical command of the law, he was inhibited by his lack of imagination. Yet he was in no sense a reactionary and in some respects not even a conservative. He broke new ground in employers' liability cases and revitalized the Sherman Antitrust Act. He also upheld labor's right to strike. He disapproved of secondary boycotts, however, and by insisting on enforcing the injunctive power he acquired a somewhat exaggerated reputation as an antilabor judge. His written opinions, like his oral arguments, were learned but verbose.

In 1899 Taft turned down the presidency of Yale University, partly because he believed his Unitarianism would offend traditionalists. Then, in March 1900, he reluctantly acceded to President William McKinley's request that he become president of the Philippine Commission. The 4 most creative years of his life followed. Overriding the will of the autocratic military governor, Gen. Arthur MacArthur, he instituted civil government and became in 1901 the archipelago's first civil governor.

In the Philippines, Taft established an educational system, built roads and harbors, and negotiated the purchase of 400, 000 acres from the Dominican friars for resale on generous terms to the Filipinos. He also pushed limited self-government rapidly. Taft's conviction that the Philippines should be administered in the interests of its citizens, coupled with his open, conciliatory presence, won him respect and affection. And though he failed to prevent the islands from entering into an economic relationship with the United States which adversely affected their development in the long run, his tenure was probably the most enlightened colonial administration to that time.

Secretary of War

On Feb. 1, 1904, Taft succeeded Elihu Root as U.S. secretary of war. The duties again proved surprisingly congenial, largely because he became one of President Roosevelt's most intimate advisers and his principal troubleshooter. Continuing to supervise administration of the Philippines, he assumed responsibility for starting construction of the Panama Canal and represented the President on various missions. His most important mission was to Japan; it culminated in the secret recognition of Japan's suzerainty over Korea. He also helped suppress a threatened revolution in Cuba in 1906.

Although Taft still yearned to join the Supreme Court, he allowed his wife and brothers to kindle presidential aspirations. Impressed by Taft's "absolutely unflinching rectitude" and "literally dauntless courage and willingness to bear responsibility, " as he phrased it, Roosevelt decided in 1907 to make Taft his successor as president. Both men believed mistakenly at the time that they agreed totally on public policy. Yet by February 1908, after several thunderous messages to Congress had revealed the real depth of Roosevelt's progressivism, his wife urged him not to "make any more speeches on the Roosevelt policies."

Nevertheless, the presidential campaign of 1908 was waged mainly on the "Roosevelt policies." Though Taft defeated William Jennings Bryan handily, his plurality dropped about 1, 500, 000 votes below Roosevelt's in 1904. Moreover, the election of numerous Progressive Republicans and Democrats shifted the balance in Congress.

The Presidency

Whatever Taft thought about Roosevelt's objectives, he never had approved of his freewheeling, often extralegal, procedures. This was especially true of conservation, a field in which Roosevelt and his subordinates had consistently interpreted the law loosely in order to protect the public interest. Taft decided, accordingly, that his mission was to consolidate rather than push forward - to give the Roosevelt reforms, as he privately said, "the sanction of law." To this end he surrounded himself with lawyers. At the same time, he underestimated both the temper of the times and the zeal of the Progressive Republicans in Congress. Worse still, he proved incapable of giving the nation the kind of moral, intellectual, and political leadership it had grown accustomed to under Roosevelt.

Taft's troubles started early. True at first to his campaign promises, he called a special session of Congress to revise the tariff. The resultant bill was not a bad measure by Republican standards, but it failed abysmally to meet expectations. Disguising his disappointment, Taft called it "the best bill that the party has ever passed" and signed it into law. This alienated many insurgent Republicans, most of whom were already seething over his refusal to support their effort to reduce the powers of Joseph "Uncle Joe" Cannon, the czarlike Speaker of the House.

Taft's replacement of Roosevelt's secretary of the interior contributed to the polarization of the party. The new secretary, Richard A. Ballinger, was a moderate conservationist and a strict legal constructionist in the manner of Taft himself." I do not hesitate to say, " the President wrote, that the presidential power to withdraw public lands from private use "was exercised far beyond legal limitation under Secretary Garfield." With Taft's endorsement, Ballinger insisted on opening much valuable land to private entry while the Geological Survey completed surveys. Angered by this and other inhibiting policies, Roosevelt's intimate friend, Chief Forester Gifford Pinchot, finally charged Ballinger with a "giveaway" of Alaskan mineral lands to the Guggenheim-Morgan financial interests. Taft thereupon removed Pinchot from office. Although Ballinger was eventually exonerated, Taft was fatally, and somewhat unfairly, stamped as anticonservationist.

Ironically, Taft's relentless prosecution of trusts further exacerbated his relations with Roosevelt. Unlike the former president, he believed that dissolution rather than regulation was the preferred solution. He gave Attorney General George W. Wickersham free rein to institute proceedings, and by the end of 4 years almost twice as many actions had been initiated as in 7½ years under Roosevelt. Among these were proceedings against the U.S. Steel Corporation, which had absorbed the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company during the Panic of 1907 with Roosevelt's tacit approval.

In Congress, meanwhile, a coalition of Progressive Republicans and Democrats drove through half a dozen reform measures. Some were supported warmly by Taft, some halfheartedly, and others not at all. But all owed their passage to the Progressive ferment Roosevelt had done so much to create during his presidency and after his return from abroad in 1910. They included amendments for an income tax and the direct election of senators, the Mann-Elkins Act to increase the powers of the Interstate Commerce Commission, creation of the Children's Bureau, a corporation tax, safety standards for mines, Postal Savings and Parcel Post, and workmen's compensation legislation.

Foreign Affairs

Taft's conduct of foreign policy was governed by an uncritical extension of the concepts behind the Open-Door Notes of 1899 and 1900. Disregarding Roosevelt's warning that the United States should accept Japanese preeminence in eastern Asia and abandon commercial aspirations in Manchuria and North China, he pursued a policy of "active intervention to secure for our merchandise and our capitalists opportunity for profitable investment."

In the Caribbean, Taft was even more ingenious than Roosevelt in devising means to protect the Panama Canal. He put American troops into Nicaragua in 1912 to install and maintain in power a conservative, pro-United States party. And in what came to be termed "dollar diplomacy, " he encouraged American capital to displace European capital elsewhere in the region. The end result was security for the canal and ultraconservative and often repressive government for the Caribbean peoples.

By 1912 Taft had so isolated himself from his party's Progressive and was under such heavy fire from Roosevelt and Senator Robert M. La Follette that the Progressives were prepared to support either Roosevelt or La Follette for the presidential nomination. Taft lost to the former president by more than 2 to 1 in the 13 state primaries that winter and spring. However, his control of Republican party machinery gave him enough delegates to win renomination in convention. Embittered further by Roosevelt's decision to run on the Progressive ticket, Taft waged an angry, defensive, and ineffectual campaign. He finished behind Woodrow Wilson and Roosevelt.

Taft's best qualities, especially his capacity for disinterested public service, again became dominant after he left the White House and accepted the Kent chair of constitutional law at Yale. His views on World War I were closer to President Wilson's than to those of interventionist Republicans like Roosevelt and Lodge, and he generously backed the President during the period of neutrality. His work as joint chairman of the War Labor Board contributed greatly to the relatively smooth course of labor-management relations during the war. He afterward gave broad support to Wilson's plan for the League of Nations Covenant.

Chief Justice

On June 30, 1921, President Warren G. Harding fulfilled Taft's "heart's desire" by appointing him chief justice. Taft brought to his new position a consuming belief in the rule of law, an unshakable conviction that the protection of property rights was crucial to orderly government, and a driving determination to perfect the administration of justice. He further brought a fierce resolve to mold the Court in his own moderately conservative image. In 1916 he had bitterly opposed Wilson's nomination of Louis D. Brandeis. Now, as chief justice, he discouraged Harding from considering men like Benjamin Cardozo, Learned Hand, and Henry Stimson because they might "herd" with the liberals, Holmes and Brandeis. Yet, he also said, it would be equally unwise to have too many men as reactionary as James McReynolds. He was largely responsible for the selection of Pierce Butler in 1922.

As chief justice, Taft compiled a mixed record. Although he succeeded in massing the Court along generally conservative lines, few of his opinions ring down through the years. One exception was his dissent in 1923 from the majority finding in the Adkins case that a minimum-wage act interfered with freedom of contract. Otherwise, as a careful student of Taft's chief justiceship writes, "Taft endorsed decisions, sometimes writing the majority opinion, that seemed to fasten both the national government and the states in a strait jacket." He wrote the majority opinion in the second child-labor case. He ruled, again for the majority, that a Kansas statute for compulsory arbitration of wage disputes was unconstitutional. And he declared, once more for the conservative majority, that an Arizona limitation on the use of injunctions against labor violated due process. He also held in the famous Coronado case that labor unions could be sued under the antitrust laws.

Conversely, Taft sanctioned the exercise of broad regulatory powers by the Federal government under the commerce clause. He also sustained the presidential power to remove executive officers.

As an administrator, Taft ranks with Melville W. Fuller and Charles Evans Hughes; he was notably successful in effecting administrative reforms. He wrote more opinions than any other member of his Court, expedited the hearing of cases, and won congressional authorization to create a conference of senior circuit judges. He also shaped and influenced passage of the Judge's Bill of 1925, which gave the Court wide discretionary power and enabled it to reduce the number of unimportant cases that came before it. In addition, Taft was preeminently responsible for the decision to construct the Supreme Court Building. However, he made little enduring impression upon constitutional law. He retired in February 1930 and died in Washington on March 30.

Taft's reputation among contemporary historians is somewhat higher as president and somewhat lower as chief justice than it was in his lifetime. More than any other major figure of his times, perhaps, he exemplified the conservative virtues and weaknesses. Yearning always "for the absolute" - for a system of law devoid of vagueness - he failed in the end to find or to fashion it. He also failed in the main to adjust creatively to the social and economic changes induced by the industrialization of the nation.

Further Reading

The standard work on Taft is Henry F. Pringle, The Life and Times of William Howard Taft (2 vols., 1939). A brief account of Taft's presidential years is in George E. Mowry, The Era of Theodore Roosevelt, 1900-1912 (1958). Alpheus Thomas Mason's penetrating study William Howard Taft: Chief Justice (1965) offers a revealing account of Taft's chief justiceship. Taft's relations with Roosevelt are related in detail in William H. Harbaugh, Power and Responsibility: The Life and Times of Theodore Roosevelt (1961; new rev. ed. 1963), and William Manners, TR and Will: A Friendship That Split the Republican Party (1969). See also Archie Butt, Taft and Roosevelt: The Intimate Letters of Archie Butt (2 vols., 1930). James Penick, Jr., Progressive Politics and Conservation: The Ballinger-Pinchot Affair (1968), sheds new light on that episode.

For more information on William Howard Taft, visit Britannica.com.

• Born: Sept. 15, 1857, Cincinnati, Ohio
• Political party: Republican
• Education: Yale College, B.A., 1878; University of Cincinnati Law School, LL.B., 1880
• Military service: none
• Previous government service: assistant prosecuting attorney, Hamilton County, Ohio, 1881–82; collector of internal revenue for Cincinnati, 1882–83; assistant county solicitor, Hamilton County, 1885–87; justice, Superior Court of Cincinnati, 1887–90; U.S. solicitor general, 1890–92; presiding judge, 6th Circuit Court of Appeals, 1892–1900; president, Philippine Commission, 1900–1901; civil governor of the Philippines, 1901–4; U.S. secretary of war, 1904–8
• Elected President, 1908; served, 1909–13
• Subsequent government service: joint chairman, National War Labor Board, 1917–18; Appointed to Supreme Court by President Warren G. Harding June 30, 1921; replaced Chief Justice Edward D. White, who died
• Supreme Court term: confirmed by the Senate June 30, 1921, by a voice vote; retired Feb., 3, 1930
• Died: Mar. 8, 1930, Washington, D.C.

William Howard Taft viewed the President as “chief magistrate” of the nation—someone who would hear the arguments of lower officials and then make his decision—not as a national leader who would use public opinion to lead the nation in his own direction. Taft argued that Presidential power was limited by the express language of the Constitution and that the President could not use the “general welfare” clause of its preamble to extend his powers further to meet the needs of the people (as his predecessor Theodore Roosevelt had argued). When Taft broke with the former President over conservation policies, he opened a split in the Republican party that guaranteed his defeat for a second term.

Taft is the only President of the United States. to also serve as chief justice of the United States. Of the two positions, chief justice was the one to which he most strongly aspired. From his youth to old age, Taft ardently desired to sit on the Supreme Court. When he was 63 years old, his ambition was fulfilled when President Warren G. Harding appointed him to the Court.

Taft was born into a staunch Republican family. His grandfather had been a judge in New England, and his father, Alphonso Taft, had been secretary of war and attorney general in President Ulysses S. Grant's administration and minister to Russia and Austria during Chester Arthur's Presidency. Taft graduated from Yale second in his class, attended law school in Cincinnati, practiced law briefly, and then spent much of his career as a judge. His highest ambition was to serve on the Supreme Court. In a sense his Presidency was a detour to his lifelong goal, one he accepted because of the urging of his brothers and his wife.

After serving for many years as a state and federal judge, and as solicitor general in the U.S. Justice Department, Taft was tapped by President William McKinley in 1900 to serve as president of the U.S. Philippine Commission, set up to administer the islands the United States had won from Spain in the Spanish-American War. Taft believed that the “little brown brothers” on the islands were not ready for self-rule, so he organized a civil government to replace U.S. military rule and was named the first civil governor of the Philippines the following year. While he was working to pacify the island, he twice declined offers of a Supreme Court appointment from Theodore Roosevelt.

In 1904 Taft became Roosevelt's secretary of war. He met secretly with Count Katsura of Japan on July 29, 1905, to discuss a proposed Japanese protectorate (control over politics and the economy) in Korea once the Russo-Japanese War was concluded. Taft's acquiescence paved the way for the success of the Portsmouth Peace Conference that ended the war. In 1906 Taft helped prevent a potential rebellion in Cuba against a U.S.-supported regime. The United States imposed a provisional government under the terms of the Platt Amendment, which permitted U.S. intervention in Cuban affairs.

Roosevelt designated Taft his successor, and he easily won the Republican nomination of 1908. Taft defeated the Democratic nominee, William Jennings Bryan, though in the heat of the campaign he had to leave his front porch in Cincinnati and campaign vigorously in the Midwest—the first time in U.S. history that both major-party candidates actively campaigned among the people for votes.

When Taft was inaugurated, it was the first time since 1837 that a President had successfully transferred power to his preferred successor. But Taft soon disappointed Roosevelt with his inability to provide effective leadership. He held as few press conferences as he could and was unable to rally public opinion behind him. While Roosevelt spent a year in Africa hunting big game, Taft allied himself with Republican conservatives and signed the Payne-Aldrich Tariff, which made only minor cuts in the high taxes on imports that had been set in 1897 by the Dingley Tariff Act. By accepting a high tariff he alienated himself from the progressive wing of the party.

Not all Taft's policies were conservative, however. The tariff act contained the first federal tax on corporate profits. Taft enforced the Sherman Anti-Trust Act to a greater extent than the “trust buster” Roosevelt had, winning lawsuits against the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey, American Tobacco Company, Du Pont de Nemours, and the American Sugar Refining Company. He limited the workday of federal employees to eight hours and created a commission to consider workmen's compensation legislation, which would provide money to injured workers. He proposed an amendment to the Constitution that would permit a personal income tax.

Taft called for a new budget process in which the President would have the primary responsibility for formulating an executive budget, but Congress ignored his requests. He got Congress to approve a new department of labor, enlarge the national park system, and create a bureau of mines. Congress extended the jurisdiction of the Interstate Commerce Commission to cover telephones, telegraph lines, underwater cable lines, and radio. A new campaign finance law proposed by Taft required candidates for Congress to make public their campaign expenditures.

In foreign policy Taft won arbitration treaties with Great Britain and France to provide for peaceful resolution of disputes, but these were blocked by the Senate. He barely got Senate approval for a trade agreement with Canada, and the Canadian parliament defeated it. The President instituted a foreign policy of “dollar diplomacy,” which he defined as “substituting dollars for bullets” in an attempt to increase U.S. trade and influence abroad. The government worked with commercial banks to dominate the finances of Caribbean and Central American governments: it ran their customs houses (which collected duties on imported goods), helped establish local banks, floated loans for development, and secured contracts and markets for U.S. businesses.

Taft abandoned dollar diplomacy for more forceful intervention when he landed 2,500 marines in Nicaragua to take control of the country, and he also sent troops into Honduras, Cuba, and China to end threats to U.S. property. “Peaceful Bill” did keep U.S. troops out of Mexico during a revolution that erupted in 1910. Taft upset foreign nations by signing a 1912 law that exempted U.S. shipping companies from paying tolls for use of the Panama Canal. This law seemed to violate the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty, which established that all nations would pay the same tolls; Taft construed it to mean all nations except the United States. The law was repealed in 1913 after Taft left office.

Theodore Roosevelt split with his protégé in 1910 after Taft fired Gifford Pinchot, chief of the Division of Forestry and a defender of Roosevelt's conservation policies. Taft sided with his secretary of the interior, Richard Ballinger, who had opened for sale a tract of public land in Alaska that Roosevelt had previously designated not for sale. (Within a year, after a public outcry, Ballinger was forced to resign and the sale was canceled.)

In the fall of 1910 ex-President Theodore Roosevelt made a nationwide tour to 20 cities, where he articulated a progressive program of government regulation known as the New Nationalism. Meanwhile, Congress passed a series of bills providing for low tariffs on wool, cotton, and other goods, which Taft vetoed, further reducing his popularity in the Middle West. In the 1910 midterm elections Democrats won the House of Representatives and increased their Senate seats from 32 to 42; Republican Senate seats dropped from 59 to 49.

By February 1912, Roosevelt was openly campaigning for the Republican Presidential nomination, reversing his pledge not to seek a third term by claiming he had meant he would not seek three consecutive terms. Taft became the first sitting President to campaign for his own renomination. Roosevelt defeated him in most of the 15 Presidential primaries, even in Ohio. But Taft managed to secure the Republican nomination in 1912, in part through his control of Southern delegations that consisted primarily of black officeholders dependent on his patronage and in part through the support of big-city political machines, or organizations. Roosevelt contested these “Taft delegations” with his own supporters. But the Republican National Committee, controlled by Taft, seated 235 of the Southerners who favored him, awarding only 20 to the Roosevelt delegates and ensuring Taft's victory. Roosevelt then ran as a third-party candidate.

It was a bitter campaign. Taft called Roosevelt an egotist and a demagogue; Roosevelt called Taft a weakling and a fathead with the brains of a guinea pig. With the Republican vote split, Democrat Woodrow Wilson won the election. Taft ran a poor third, winning only the eight electoral college votes of Utah and Vermont. Republicans remained in a minority in the House, lost control of the Senate, and lost a majority of state governments. After four years of Taft his party was divided and in shambles. “I am glad to be going,” he said as he left office. “This is the lonesomest place in the world.”

After leaving the White House, Taft taught constitutional law at Yale Law School and was elected president of the American Bar Association. He served on the National War Labor Board during World War I. Finally, in 1921, he achieved his goal in life: President Warren Harding appointed him to the Supreme Court. Chief Justice Taft was a great judicial administrator. He influenced Congress to pass the Judiciary Act of 1925, which gave the Court almost total authority to choose what cases it would decide. And Taft influenced Congress to appropriate money for construction of the magnificent Supreme Court Building in which the Court conducts its work today. (Since 1860, the Court had been conducting its business on the first floor of the Capitol, in the old Senate chamber.) Chief Justice Taft was also known as a skillful manager of the Court's work load and an adept mediator among his colleagues.

Taft was not, however, as accomplished at formulating doctrine or writing opinions. Though he wrote 249 opinions for the Court, he left no landmark decisions or enduring interpretations of the Constitution. His most significant opinion was in Myers v. United States (1926). The Court ruled that the President had the power to remove an executive appointee, a postmaster, without the consent of the Senate. Taft said: “I never wrote an opinion I felt to be so important in its effect.”

The Tafts, like the Adamses and the Kennedys, are an American political dynasty. Taft's son, Robert Alphonso Taft, became a U.S. senator from Ohio in 1939. Known as Mr. Republican, he was one of the most influential Republican senators ever to serve. He was a contender for the Republican Presidential nomination in 1940, 1948, and 1952 but was never nominated. His son, Robert Taft, Jr., served as majority leader of the Ohio House of Representatives, as a U.S. representative in the 1960s, and as a senator from 1970 to 1976.

See also Office buildings, Supreme Court; Removal power; Roosevelt, Theodore; Wilson, Woodrow

Sources

• Paolo E. Coletta, The Presidency of William Howard Taft (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1973).
• William Manners, TR and Will: A Friendship That Split the Republican Party (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1969).
• Alpheus Thomas Mason, William Howard Taft: Chief Justice (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1964).
• William Howard Taft, Our Chief Magistrate and His Powers (New York: Columbia University Press, 1916)

(1857-1930), twenty-seventh president of the United States and chief justice, U.S. Supreme Court. A native of Cincinnati and a graduate of Yale, Taft was an able administrator and an intelligent, if unimaginative, lawyer and jurist. He was, however, a poor politician.

Taft served as U.S. solicitor general from 1890 to 1892 and as a federal circuit court judge from 1892 to 1900. He became head of the Second Philippine Commission in 1901 and the first governor-general of the Philippines the year following. In both posts he did much to advance civil government and to reconcile the Filipinos to American rule. Appointed secretary of war in 1904, he faithfully executed President Theodore Roosevelt's policies. In 1908, at Roosevelt's urging, he ran for president, handily defeating the Democratic candidate, William Jennings Bryan.

Conservative in temperament but moderately progressive in intellect, Taft deemed it his mission as president to consolidate rather than expand the Roosevelt reforms--to give them "the sanction of law," as he privately phrased it. But he surrounded himself with conventional-minded lawyers and allowed Old Guard Republican leaders to control his lines to Congress. Partly in consequence, he compromised on the tariff after a courageous initial call for reform. He also suffered the resignation of Roosevelt's intimate, Chief Forester Gifford Pinchot, because he believed that some of the Roosevelt-Pinchot conservation practices had been "exercised far beyond legal limitation." Yet Taft instituted twice as many antitrust proceedings as Roosevelt had, and he signed a number of long-deferred measures, including a corporation tax, into law. Constitutional amendments for an income tax and direct election of senators were also approved during his administration, though they owed more to a coalition of progressive Republicans and Democrats than to the president.

Taft's performance in foreign affairs was similarly mixed. A strong proponent of international law, he strove unsuccessfully to win Senate support of a series of arbitration treaties, but he also sent marines into Nicaragua. Nevertheless, he much preferred economic to military action, and he supported an unproductive program of "dollar diplomacy" in the Caribbean and the Far East. Taft failed to be reelected in 1912 because of the defection of progressives to Roosevelt, who ran on the Bull Moose ticket, and to Woodrow Wilson, the successful Democratic candidate.

From Yale University, where he became a professor of law after leaving the White House, Taft gave measured support to Wilson's neutrality policies before the United States entered World War I. In 1915 he became president of the League to Enforce Peace, an organization of largely Republican internationalists, and he subsequently influenced Wilson to modify his proposed Covenant of the League of Nations. Convinced that qualified American membership in the League was better than nonparticipation, Taft reluctantly supported proposed Republican reservations. He hoped, in vain, that the internationalist wing of the gop would control foreign policy following the election of Warren G. Harding in 1920.

During the war, Taft had performed yeoman service as joint chairman of the quasi-judicial War Labor Board. After his appointment as chief justice of the Supreme Court in 1921, he modernized the judiciary system somewhat and exercised an influential voice in appointments. A genial and considerate man who weighed three hundred pounds, Taft frequently persuaded the Court's minority to refrain from dissent in order to convey an impression of unity. Although historians continue to regard Taft as politically maladroit, they tend to agree that, both as president and as chief justice, he was somewhat more progressive than conservative.

Bibliography:

Paola Coletta, The Presidency of William Howard Taft (1973); Alpheus T. Mason, William Howard Taft: Chief Justice (1965); Henry F. Pringle, The Life and Times of William Howard Taft, 2 vols. (1939).

Author:

William H. Harbaugh

See also Elections: 1908 , 1912; Philippines; Progressivism; Supreme Court. For events during Taft's administration, see Antitrust Movement; Asia-U.S. Relations; Ballinger-Pinchot Controversy; Caribbean-U.S. Relations; Dollar Diplomacy; Income Tax; Tariff.

Taft, William Howard, 1857–1930, 27th President of the United States (1909–13) and 10th Chief Justice of the United States (1921–30), b. Cincinnati.

Early Career

After graduating (1878) from Yale, he attended Cincinnati Law School. He received his law degree in 1880. He became a Cincinnati lawyer and soon had political posts as assistant prosecuting attorney for Hamilton co. (1881–83), assistant county solicitor (1885–87), and judge of the superior court of Ohio (1887–90). He became nationally prominent as a figure in Republican politics in 1890, when President Benjamin Harrison chose him as U.S. Solicitor General.

After service as a federal circuit judge (1892–1900) and as dean of the Cincinnati law school (1898–1900), he was appointed (1900) head of the commission sent to organize civil government in the Philippines, and he was named first civil governor of the Philippine Islands; he did much to better relations between Filipinos and Americans. In 1904 his friend President Theodore Roosevelt appointed Taft Secretary of War. Taft became a close adviser to the President and was prominent in Latin American affairs, conducting the delicate negotiations attending U.S. intervention in Cuba in 1906.

Presidency

Roosevelt chose Taft as his successor, and the Republican party named him as presidential candidate in the election of 1908, in which he defeated William Jennings Bryan. He was expected to continue Roosevelt's policies, and to a large extent he did. Trusts were vigorously prosecuted under the Sherman Antitrust Act; the Interstate Commerce Commission was strengthened by the Mann-Elkins Act (1910); and Taft's Latin American policy, known as “dollar diplomacy,” was to an extent only an enlargement of Roosevelt's Panama policy and the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. The emphasis in all these policies had, however, changed. In Latin America, for instance, the accent was on protection of property and interests of Americans abroad rather than on national interest. Members of the Republican party who favored progressive policies were increasingly restive, and the Insurgents movement grew strong.

The administration made positive achievements in the inauguration of the postal savings bank (1910) and the parcel-post system (1912), and the creation of the Dept. of Labor (1911). Nevertheless, Taft was generally at odds with the progressive elements in his party: he failed to support the Insurgents' attempt to oust the dictatorial speaker of the House of Representatives, Joseph Cannon; he favored the Payne-Aldrich tariff, a high-tariff measure that was denounced by progressive Republicans; and he supported Richard Ballinger against Gifford Pinchot in the Ballinger-Pinchot controversy.

Meanwhile, Taft's relations with Roosevelt deteriorated, and the former President joined the opposition to Taft. In 1912, Roosevelt fought vigorously for the Republican presidential nomination. When he failed and Taft got the nomination, Roosevelt headed the Progressive party and ran in the election as the Progressive (popularly called the Bull Moose) candidate. The Republican vote was split, and the Democratic candidate, Woodrow Wilson, won.

Later Life

Taft retired from public life and taught law (1912–21) at Yale. He was cochairman (1918–19) of the War Labor Conference in World War I. In 1921, President Harding appointed him Chief Justice. His chief contribution to the Supreme Court was his administrative efficiency.

Bibliography

Taft's writings include The United States and Peace (1914) and Our Chief Magistrate and His Powers (1916). See Taft and Roosevelt: The Intimate Letters of Archie Butt (1930, repr. 1971); biographies by H. F. Pringle (1939, repr. 1964), J. I. Anderson (1981), and J. C. Casey (1989); A. T. Mason, William Howard Taft, Chief Justice (1965); P. E. Coletta, The Presidency of William Howard Taft (1973).

A political leader of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A Republican, Taft was president between 1909 and 1913. At the beginning of his presidency, he stayed close to the policies of Theodore Roosevelt, who had been president before him. Later, however, he turned to more conservative measures, such as a high protective tariff, and he lost popularity. In foreign policy, Taft advocated dollar diplomacy. He came in third in the election of 1912, running as a Republican, behind Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt. In the 1920s, Taft served as chief justice of the Supreme Court.

William Howard Taft is the only person to serve as both president and chief justice of the United States. A gifted judge and administrator, Taft helped modernize the way the U.S. Supreme Court conducted its business and was the driving force behind the construction of the Supreme Court Building in Washington, D.C.

Taft was born on September 15, 1857, in Cincinnati, Ohio. His father, Alphonso Taft, served as secretary of war and attorney general in President Ulysses S. Grant's administration. Taft graduated from Yale University in 1878 and earned a law degree from Cincinnati Law College (now University of Cincinnati College of Law) in 1880. He established a law practice in Cincinnati and served as prosecutor for Hamilton County, Ohio, from 1881 to 1882. Taft was assistant county solicitor from 1885 to 1887 and a superior court judge from 1887 to 1890.

Though only thirty-three years old, Taft lobbied President Benjamin Harrison for a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court in 1890. Although Harrison demurred, he did make Taft U.S. solicitor general, the person who argues on behalf of the federal government before the Supreme Court. Taft won sixteen of the eighteen cases he argued before 1892, when Harrison appointed him to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.

The jurisdiction of the Sixth Circuit included Chicago and other industrialized cities of the Midwest, which were the scenes of conflict between laborunions and large manufacturing companies. Taft, like most conservative judges of his time, upheld the use of the labor injunction to prevent labor strikes and violence. The use of the injunction removed an important bargaining tool and seriously weakened labor unions. Taft, however, did believe workers had a right to organize and could legally strike, if the strike was peaceful.

Taft left the court in 1900 at the request of President William McKinley. In the aftermath of the Spanish-American War (1898), the United States had taken possession of the Philippine Islands. Taft was chosen to lead a commission that would help establish a civil government in the islands and end military rule. In 1901 he became the first civilian governor of the Philippines and drew praise from the Philippine people for his administration. Taft reluctantly returned to Washington in 1904 at the request of President Theodore Roosevelt to become secretary of war. As secretary, Taft supervised the construction of the Panama Canal, established the U.S. Canal Zone, and helped negotiate a treaty that ended the Russo-Japanese War in 1905.

When Roosevelt declined to run for another term in 1908, Taft was nominated as the Republican candidate. He easily defeated the Democratic candidate, William Jennings Bryan, in the general election and assumed office in 1909 as Roosevelt's political heir. Taft's administration proved to be lackluster at best, however. Though he was an able administrator, he lacked the political skills necessary to succeed in Washington. He alienated Roosevelt and other liberal Republicans by appeasing conservative Republicans, splitting the party in the process.

Taft did carry on Roosevelt's "trust-busting" initiatives, attacking business trusts under the ShermanAnti-Trust Act (15 U.S.C.A. §1 et seq.) and supporting the Mann-Elkins Act of 1910 (49 U.S.C.A. §1 et seq.), which gave more power to the Interstate CommerceCommission. He also established the Department of Labor. In foreign affairs Taft adopted a policy of "dollar diplomacy" as an economic substitute for military aid to underdeveloped countries.

Taft's political downfall began in 1910 with his support of Speaker of the House of Representatives Joseph Cannon, a conservative Republican who ran the House with an iron fist. Liberals had counted on Taft to help them break Cannon's power, but he refused. When Taft approved the development of Alaskan coal resources, he drew public criticism from Gifford A. Pinchot of the Forestry Service, a promoter of conservation and Roosevelt's close ally.

In 1912 Roosevelt ran against Taft for the Republican presidential nomination. When Taft won the endorsement, Roosevelt formed the Progressive party, effectively guaranteeing that Democrat Woodrow Wilson would be elected president. Taft carried only Utah and Vermont and split the Republican vote with Roosevelt, allowing Wilson to win handily.

After leaving the presidency, Taft became a law professor at Yale University. During World War I he served on the National War Labor Board and advocated the establishment of the League of Nations and U.S. participation in that world organization.

In 1921 President Warren G. Harding appointed Taft chief justice of the United States. On a Court dominated by conservatives, Taft usually went along with his brethren in striking down laws that sought to regulate business and labor practices.

Taft distinguished himself more as an administrator than as a judge. He developed and lobbied for the Judiciary Act of 1925, 43 Stat. 936, which gave the Court almost complete discretion over its docket. Under Taft the Court developed the writ of certiorari process, whereby a party files a petition seeking review by the Court. Because only a small fraction of these petitions are granted, the process has dramatically reduced the work of the Court. Taft also lobbied Congress for funds to construct a separate building for the Court. Although he did not live to see its completion, the Supreme Court Building, which was designed by Cass Gilbert, proved to be a lasting monument to Taft's administrative talents.

Taft's health began to fail in 1928, and he was forced to resign from the Court in February 1930. He died on March 8, 1930, in Washington, D.C.

IN BRIEF: n. - 27th President of the United States and later chief justice of the United States Supreme Court (1857-1930); United States sculptor (1860-1936).

Quotes:

"Politics, when I am in it, it makes me sick."

"Next to the right of liberty, the right of property is the most important individual right guaranteed by the Constitution and the one which, united with that of personal liberty, has contributed more to the growth of civilization than any other institution established by the human race."

"Socialism proposes no adequate substitute for the motive of enlightened selfishness that to-day is at the basis of all human labor and effort, enterprise and new activity."

"The trouble with me is that I like to talk too much."

"There is only one thing I wast to say about Ohio that has a political tinge, and that is that I think a mistake has been made of recent years in Ohio in failing to continue as our representatives the same people term after term. I do not need to tell a Washington audience, among whom there are certainly some who have been interested in legislation, that length of service in the House and in the Senate is what gives influence."

"Now, I am opposed to the franchise in the District [of Columbia]; I am opposed, and not because I yield to any one in my support and belief in the principles of self-government; but principles are applicable generally, and then, unless you make exceptions to the application of these principles, you will find that they will carry you to very illogical and absurd results. This was taken out of the application of the principle of self-government in the very Constitution that was intended to put that in force in every other part of the country, and it was done because it was intended to have the representatives of all the people in the country control this one city, and to prevent its being controlled by the parochial spirit that would necessarily govern men who did not look beyond the city to the grandeur of the nation, and this as the representative of that nation."

See more famous quotes by William Howard Taft

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