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Wikipedia Summary for William Howard Taft
William Howard Taft (September 15, 1857 – March 8, 1930) was the 27th president of the United States (1909–1913) and the tenth chief justice of the United States (1921–1930), the only person to have held both offices. Taft was elected president in 1908, the chosen successor of Theodore Roosevelt, but was defeated for reelection by Woodrow Wilson in 1912 after Roosevelt split the Republican vote by running as a third-party candidate. In 1921, President Warren G. Harding appointed Taft to be chief justice, a position he held until a month before his death.
Taft was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1857. His father, Alphonso Taft, was a U.S. attorney general and secretary of war. Taft attended Yale and joined the Skull and Bones, of which his father was a founding member. After becoming a lawyer, Taft was appointed a judge while still in his twenties. He continued a rapid rise, being named solicitor general and a judge of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. In 1901, President William McKinley appointed Taft civilian governor of the Philippines. In 1904, Roosevelt made him Secretary of War, and he became Roosevelt's hand-picked successor. Despite his personal ambition to become chief justice, Taft declined repeated offers of appointment to the Supreme Court of the United States, believing his political work to be more important.
With Roosevelt's help, Taft had little opposition for the Republican nomination for president in 1908 and easily defeated William Jennings Bryan for the presidency in that November's election. In the White House, he focused on East Asia more than European affairs and repeatedly intervened to prop up or remove Latin American governments. Taft sought reductions to trade tariffs, then a major source of governmental income, but the resulting bill was heavily influenced by special interests. His administration was filled with conflict between the Republican Party's conservative wing, with which Taft often sympathized, and its progressive wing, toward which Roosevelt moved more and more. Controversies over conservation and antitrust cases filed by the Taft administration served to further separate the two men. Roosevelt challenged Taft for renomination in 1912. Taft used his control of the party machinery to gain a bare majority of delegates and Roosevelt bolted the party. The split left Taft with little chance of reelection, and he took only Utah and Vermont in Wilson's victory.
After leaving office, Taft returned to Yale as a professor, continuing his political activity and working against war through the League to Enforce Peace. In 1921, Harding appointed Taft chief justice, an office he had long sought. Chief Justice Taft was a conservative on business issues, and under him there were advances in individual rights. In poor health, he resigned in February 1930, and died the following month. He was buried at Arlington National Cemetery, the first president and first Supreme Court justice to be interred there. Taft is generally listed near the middle in historians' rankings of U.S. presidents.
Politics makes me sick.
Machine politics and the spoils system are as much an enemy of a proper and efficient government system of civil service as the boll weevil is of the cotton crop.
The game of baseball is a clean, straight game, and it summons to its presence everybody who enjoys clean, straight athletics. It furnishes amusement to the thousands and thousands.
The President cannot make clouds to rain and cannot make the corn to grow. He cannot make business good, although when these things occur, political parties do claim some credit for the good things that have happened in this way.
The policy of dollar diplomacy is one that appeals alike to idealistic humanitarian sentiments, to dictates of sound policy, and strategy, and to legitimate commercial aims.
The man with the average mentality, but with control, with a definite goal, and a clear conception of how it can be gained, and above all, with the power of application and labor, wins in the end.
Rules of conduct which govern men in their relations to one another are being applied in an ever-increasing degree to nations. The battlefield as a place of settlement of disputes is gradually yielding to arbitral courts of justice.
There is no but in it. The way to be an administration Senator is to vote with the Administration.
What I am anxious to do is to secure my legislation.... What I want to do is to get through that, and if I can point to a record of usefulness of that kind, I am entirely willing to quit office.
Repeat mantra: Donuts are not vitamins, donuts are not.
I think his greatest fault is his failure to accord credit to anyone for what he may have done. This is a great weakness in any man.
When the history of this period is written, William Jennings Bryan will stand out as one of the most remarkable men of his generation and one of the biggest political men of our country.
We passed the Children's Bureau bill calculated to prevent children from being employed too early in factories.
If they will play fair I will play fair, but if they won't then I reserve all my rights to do anything I find myself able to do.
We have a government of limited power under the Constitution, and we have got to work out our problems on the basis of law.
I know this, and I know it from actual experience in the Orient, that the progress of modern Christian civilization has largely depended on the earnest hard work of the Christian missions of every denomination.
The Masonic system represents a stupendous and beautiful fabric, founded on universal purity, to rule and direct our passions, to have faith and love in God, and charity toward man.
Unless education promotes character making, unless it helps men to be more moral, more just to their fellows, more law abiding, more discriminatingly patriotic and public spirited, it is not worth the trouble taken to furnish it.
The scope of modern government in what it can and ought to accomplish for its people has been widened far beyond the principles laid down by the old laissez faire school of political rights, and the widening has met popular approval.
We must dare to be great; and we must realize that greatness is the fruit of toil and sacrifice and high courage.
The true Mason takes full responsibility for the condition of his character and ever strives for its perfection.
The true Mason never hesitates to use the working tools to correct personal flaws.
The true Mason always carries his working tools everywhere.
The true Mason does not hold or teach the attitude that, I am a Master Mason now and thus I no longer need to be concerned with using the working tools because they were given in the earlier degrees.
We are imperfect. We cannot expect perfect government.
Golf in the interest of good health and good manners. It promotes self-restraint and affords a chance to play the man and act the gentleman.
We can't have a decent government unless those in power exercise self restraint.
Too many people don't care what happens so long as it doesn't happen to them.
A man never knows exactly how the child of his brain will strike other people.
Anyone who has taken the oath I have just taken must feel a heavy weight of responsibility. If not, he has no conception of the powers and duties of the office.
Constitutions are checks upon the hasty action of the majority. They are the self-imposed restraints of a whole people upon a majority of them to secure sober action and a respect for the rights of the minority.
The true Mason is ever vigilant for subtle traces of character and personality flaws which daily experience brings out.
The true Mason is the Tiler of the Temple of the Heart.
The underlying principle of Masonry is the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. In this war we are engaging in upholding these principles and our enemies are attacking them.
Masonry aims at the promotion of morality and higher living by the cultivation of the social side of man, the rousing in him of the instincts of charity and love of his kind. It rests surely on the foundation of the brotherhood of man and the fatherhood of God.
The secrecy of Masonry is an honorable secrecy; any good man may ask for her secrets; those who are worthy will receive them. To give them to those who do not seek, or who are not worthy, would but impoverish the Fraternity and enrich not those who received them.
The prosperity of Masonry as a means of strengthening our religion and propagating true brotherly love, is one of the dearest wishes of my heart, which, I trust, will be gratified by the help of the Grand Architect of the Universe.
The precepts of the Gospel were universally the obligations of Masonry.
I do not think that there is any doubt about where I stand in respect to boycotts. If there is, I will just state what I think about them. They are illegal and ought to be suppressed. I would never countenance that which recognizes their legality.
If this humor be the safety of our race, then it is due largely to the infusion into the American people of the Irish brain.
The diplomacy of the present administration has sought to respond to the modern idea of commercial intercourse. This policy has been characterized as substituting dollars for bullets.
I know how irritating it is to have somebody else lay down rules for your moral uplift, but you've got to stand a great deal in order to make progress.
The Masonic Fraternity is one of the most helpful mediating and conserving organizations among men, and I have never wavered from that childhood impression, but it has stood steadfastly with me through the busy, vast hurrying years.
I would like to have an ample fund to spread the light of Republicanism, but I am willing to undergo the disadvantage to make certain that in the future we shall reduce the power of money in politics for unworthy purposes.
There is nothing so despicable as a secret society that is based upon religious prejudice and that will attempt to defeat a man because of his religious beliefs. Such a society is like a cockroach -- it thrives in the dark. So do those who combine for such an end.
We have passed the time of ... the laisser-faire sic school which believes that the government ought to do nothing but run a police force.
In the public interest, therefore, it is better that we lose the services of the exceptions who are good Judges after they are seventy and avoid the presence on the Bench of men who are not able to keep up with the work, or to perform it satisfactorily.
I have come to the conclusion that the major part of the president is to increase the gate receipts of expositions and fairs and bring tourists to town.
Next to the right of liberty, the right of property is the most important individual right guaranteed by the Constitution . .
There is not a subject in which I take a deeper interest than I do in the development of Alaska, and I propose, if Congress will follow by recommendations, to do something in that territory that will make it move on.
The truth is that in my present life I don't remember that I ever was president.
As a people, we have the problem of making our forests outlast this generation, or iron outlast this century, and our coal the next; not merely as a matter of convenience or comfort, but as a matter of stern necessity.
The intoxication of power rapidly sobers off in the knowledge of its restrictions and under the prompt reminder of an ever-present and not always considerate press, as well as the kindly suggestions that not infrequently come from Congress.
The Government is able to afford a suitable army and a suitable navy. It may maintain them without the slightest danger to the Republic or the cause of free institutions, and fear of additional taxation ought not to change a proper policy in this regard.
We, as Unitarians, may feel that the world is coming our way.
I don't know whither we are drifting, but I do know where every real thinking patriot will stand in the end, and that's by the Constitution.
I am afraid I am a constant disappointment to my party. The fact of the matter is, the longer I am President the less of a party man I seem to become.
My impression about the Panama Canal is that the great revolution it is going to introduce in the trade of the world is in the trade between the east and the west coast of the United States.
The City that knows how.
A system in which we may have an enforced rest from legislation for two years is not bad.
Don't worry over what the newspapers say. I don't. Why should anyone else? I told the truth to the newspaper correspondents -- but when you tell the truth to them they are at sea.
I'll be damned if I am not getting tired of this. It seems to be the profession of a President simply to hear other people talk.
Action for which I become responsible, or for which my administration becomes responsible, shall be within the law.
I do not believe in the divinity of Christ, and there are many other of the postulates of the orthodox creed to which I cannot subscribe.
The world is not going to be saved by legislation.
I think I might as well give up being a candidate. There are so many people in the country who don't like me.
The trouble with me is that I like to talk too much.
We are all imperfect. We can not expect perfect government.
No, the only things which do not bother me are the elements. I can overcome them without a fight. All one has to do to get the best of the elements is to stand pat and one will win.
I am president now, and tired of being kicked around.
No tendency is quite so strong in human nature as the desire to lay down rules of conduct for other people.
Don't write so that you can be understood, write so that you can't be misunderstood.
A government is for the benefit of all the people.
I have come to the conclusion that the major part of the work of a President is to increase the gate receipts of expositions and fairs and bring tourists to town.
Presidents come and go, but the Supreme Court goes on forever.
I am afraid I am a constant disappointment to my party. The fact of the matter is, the longer I am president the less of a party man I seem to become.
Socialism proposes no adequate substitute for the motive of enlightened selfishness that today is at the basis of all human labor and effort, enterprise and new activity.
I do not know much about politics, but I am trying to do the best I can with this administration until the time shall come for me to turn it over to somebody else.
We live in a stage of politics, where legislators seem to regard the passage of laws as much more important than the results of their enforcement.
I am in favor of helping the prosperity of all countries because, when we are all prosperous, the trade with each becomes more valuable to the other.
Substantial progress toward better things can rarely be taken without developing new evils requiring new remedies.
As the Republican platforms says, the welfare of the farmer is vital to that of the whole country.
Failure to accord credit to anyone for what he may have done is a great weakness in any man.
Anti-Semitism is a noxious weed that should be cut out. It has no place in America.