The Words & Wisdom of President Woodrow Wilson. Woodrow Wilson
in party council and approved by the Chief Executive. In 1894, with a like slender majority in the Senate, Mr. Cleveland was unable to lead his party in the famous tariff struggle. They divided and compromised so that, when the Senate finally passed a tariff bill which the House felt forced to accept, the President refused to sign it. He declared it to represent “party perfidy and party dishonor.” But the Democratic party went into long exile as the result of party dissensions over tariff and currency legislation. There were those who predicted that history would repeat itself and that the Democratic Congress would so divide in 1913 as to invite another long exile such as the one that began in 1894 and lasted until 1912. To the President, in cordial co-operation with the leaders of his party in Congress, the historian will give the credit for the united action that insured tariff and currency legislation1 without party dissension or serious financial disturbance.
It is well known that every revision of the tariff in the past half a century has been accompanied by a strong lobby of the interests which had commercial or industrial issues at stake. After the Underwood bill had gone to the Senate, President Wilson had occasion to inform the Senate that he had information that “a numerous, industrious and insidious lobby” was at work. The President's statement, which aroused the country, was, in full, as follows:
“I think that the public ought to know the extraordinary exertions being made by the lobby in Washington to gain recognition for certain alterations of the tariff bill. Washington has seldom seen so numerous, so industrious, or so insidious a lobby. The newspapers are being filled with paid advertisements calculated to mislead the judgment of public men not only, but also the public opinion of the country itself. There is every evidence that money without limit is being spent to sustain this lobby and to create an appearance of a pressure of public opinion antagonistic to some of the chief items of the tariff bill. It is of serious interest to the country that the people at large should have no lobby and be voiceless in these matters while great bodies of astute men seek to create an artificial opinion and to overcome the interests of the public for their private profit. It is thoroughly worth the while of the people of this country to take knowledge of this matter. Only public opinion can check and destroy it.
“The Government in all its branches ought to be relieved from this intolerable burden and this constant interruption to the calm progress of debate. I know that in this I am speaking for the members of the two Houses, who would rejoice as much as I would to be released from this unbearable situation.”
The statement, at first, was received by a portion of the press and people with incredulity but, as the lobby investigating committee, headed by Senator Overman, proceeded with its work, it became plainly evident that the President was entirely correct in his charge and in his description of the nature of the lobby. Evidence adduced showed that the sugar-growing interests spent as much as $100,000 in agitation against free sugar, though there was no proof that this particular item was illegally expended. It was in evidence that more than 1,000,000 documents had been mailed under the franks of Congressmen in opposition to free sugar. In one quarter, charges were made that a long list of members of both branches of Congress had accepted money considerations in exchange for their influence in committees of Congress which had labor legislation in charge. Undue influence was exerted upon other members, it was alleged, by means of “business, political and sympathetic” reasons. It was proven that one shameless lobbyist had impersonated, over the long-distance telephone, several of the leading members of Congress and had offered in their name to influence pending legislation. Evidence was multiplied that strong bodies of men united to defeat members of Congress who opposed the legislation they desired, or sought to put laws on the statute books not favored by them. The trail of the lobbyist was found in a score of ways. The charge of the President of the existence of “a numerous, industrious and insidious lobby” was more than established by the evidence. The President was vindicated. The President's warning and the work of the lobby committee served to put Congress and the people on their guard, and history will doubtless record that the Underwood-Simmons tariff bill was freer from attack by this old enemy of tariff reduction than any other tariff measure passed for many years.
As soon as it became certain that a tariff bill, in accordance with the promises of the Baltimore platform, would pass the extra session, the President bent his energies toward co-operating with Congress to secure the passage of a currency reform measure. The bill, which was christened with the names of Representative Glass and Senator Owen, had the sanction of the Administration.
The President undertook to overcome the feeling of those members of the Senate that remaining in session through the hot summer in order to pass the tariff bill was sufficient achievement for one session and that the currency bill could go over to the regular session. With all the earnestness of his nature, the President urged that there would never be a more favorable opportunity to pass a currency reform measure than the present. He appeared personally before Congress in joint session for the second time and read his message on the currency. “When the work to be done is so pressing and so fraught with big consequence,” he said, “we know that we are not at liberty to weigh against it any point of personal sacrifice.” In making men free to employ individual initiative by removing the trammels of the protection tariff, the President held, there will be necessary some readjustments of purpose and point of view. Then will follow a period of expansion and new enterprise, and “it is for us to determine whether it shall be rapid and facile and of easy accomplishment. This it cannot be unless the resourceful business men who are to deal with the new circumstances are to have at hand and ready for use the instrumentalities and conveniences of free enterprise which independent men need when acting on their own initiative.” One of the chief things business needs now is “the proper means by which readily to vitalize its credit, corporate and individual, and its originative brains. The tyrannies of business, big and little, lie within the field of credit. We know that. Shall we not act upon the knowledge? Do we not know how to act upon it? If a man cannot make his assets available at pleasure, his assets of capacity and character and resource, what satisfaction is it to him to see opportunity beckoning to him on every hand, when others have the keys of credit in their pockets and treat them as all but their own private possession?”
It is imperative, therefore, to act immediately and upon clear principles. “The country has sought and seen its path in this matter within the last few years — sees it more clearly now than it ever saw it before — much more clearly than when the last legislative proposals on the subject were made. We must have a currency, not rigid as now, but readily, elastically responsive to sound credit, the expanding and contracting credits of everyday transactions, the normal ebb and flow of personal and corporate dealings. Our banking laws must mobilize reserves; must not permit the concentration anywhere in a few hands of the monetary resources of the country or their use for speculative purposes in such volume as to hinder or impede or stand in the way of other more legitimate, more fruitful uses. And the control of the system of banking and of issue which our new laws are to set up must be public, not private, must be vested in the Government itself, so that the banks may be the instruments, not the masters, of business and of individual enterprise and initiative.”
The Wilson administration, in its earliest stages, was called upon to consider diplomatic questions that at once gave the people a clear understanding of its foreign policy. With firmness and dignity, unmoved by jingoism or hesitation, the President made clear his determination to make friendliness and justice to other nations the duty and mission of the Republic. In his brief inaugural, Mr. Wilson did not touch upon foreign questions but confined himself to the few economic home problems that pressed for solution. He may have thought, as did most of the people, that no international complications would come up until the needed tariff and currency legislation had been enacted, and he doubtless hoped that not even a small cloud would appear upon the horizon to threaten our cordial and friendly relations with other nations. But there soon came rumors of threatened trouble in one or more Republics to the south of us. There seemed to be a feeling that, after a long period of Republican rule at Washington, the new Administration's induction into office would encourage self-imposed officials to seek to obtain the reins of government. What should the attitude of the Administration be toward our neighbor countries in Central and South America? The President deemed the answer to that question important enough to make a declaration that attracted world-wide