Book Review from Northwest Ohio Quarterly

In 2004, Ohio University Press began publishing an eight volume set entitled The Collected Works of William Howard Taft. Under the editorial guidance of David H. Burton, the collection embodies the most significant among Taft’s scholarly works, all of which were penned between his term as federal circuit court judge in the late nineteenth century and his tenure as the nation’s tenth chief justice of the United States Supreme Court.

The inaugural volume includes two of Taft’s earliest books, Four Aspects of Civic Duty (1906) and Present Day Problems (1908).

The first section is comprised of a series of lectures presented at Yale University in 1906. The essays, collectively entitled “Four Aspects of Civic Duty,” examine the duties of citizenship from the perspective of a recent university graduate, jurist, colonial administrator, and president of the United States.

Patrician and pragmatic in his approach, Taft believed that the “wise, the well born, and the well-to-do” were best equipped to govern the nation, but he also underscored the primacy of constitutional law in guiding, or at the very least delimiting, political action.

More engaging is the second collection of writings and addresses, entitled “Present Day Problems,” which largely serves as an apologetic for such diverse issues as Republican conservatism, Theodore Roosevelt’s policies, the federal judiciary, and the United States presence in the Philippines and the international theater in general.

As Ohio historian George Knepper once noted, presidents who were a part of the “Ohio Dynasty” supported, rather than impeded, the nation’s transition from an agricultural to an industrial economy. Taft’s writings certainly reflect this vein of thought.

Though a conservative who embraced the republican ideology of his Federalist and Whig antecedents, Taft was also enough of a progressive to embrace change, as long as it was tempered with “reason.” For example, he called for a conciliatory approach to the ongoing tensions between capital and labor, arguing that “the organization of labor into labor unions is absolutely essential to the welfare of the laboring man in the protection of his legitimate interests.”

Similarly, speaking to a southern audience in 1907, Taft defended the right of blacks to vote, insisting that it was a civic duty to ensure that the path of the African American was “made as easy as we can, that his progress is as incessant as proper encouragement can make it.”

On the other hand, he abhorred union radicalism and resisted an “amalgamation” of the races. Thus, he called for conciliatory measures without abandoning his elitist and paternalistic leanings.

Of particular interest is theme to which Taft often returned in, the various essays-and., speeches presented in this collection—the Philippines. Indeed, Taft was so enamored, with the South Pacific Island that he found the easiest way to discourage members of the press “from pursuing embarrassing inquiries into other matters [was] to insist on discussing with them for publication interesting phases of the Philippine situation.”

They usually left “forthwith.” An avid defender of the American presence in the Philippines and former chief civil administrator of the southeast Asian colony, Taft was critical both of capitalists who wanted to exploit the colony and of populists who called for immediate independence.

Taft believed he was “living in an age when the intervention of a stronger nation in the affairs of a people unable to maintain a government of law and order to assist the latter to better government becomes a national duty and works for the progress of the world.”

He favored a gradual emancipation of the Filipinos, maintaining that a protracted process of political preparation was required before independence could be granted. Only then, could the people of the Philippines be assured of a stable and well-ordered govern merit. In suggesting this approach, Taft challenged William Jennings Byran’s argument for immediate self-determination. Furthermore, he assumed that a western-style democracy was the best form of government for any society, regardless of its cultural, economic, and political traditions.

The introductions by Taft’s grandson, Seth Taft, and his great-grandson, Ohio Governor Bob Taft, offer a personal perspective to the jovial but equally scholarly president and Supreme Court justice. Commentaries by David H. Burton and A. E. Campbell provide a balanced assessment of Taft’s writings.

They rightly note the breadth of Taft’s knowledge and the conciliatory nature- of his conservative progressivism, as well as his paternalistic bisd and rather bland style of writing and speaking.

Taft was surely a jurist first, as evident ih his methodical and expository style of writing, and an orator second. Nevertheless, this collection is of value to the student of Taft, political progressivism, and moderate Republicanism.

Northwest Ohio Quarterly