declaration of the Republican party in favor of tariff revision. The work of revising the tariff is at any time, but especially under existing conditions, a difficult and a stupendous task. From my own knowledge of the men who are charged in the first instance with initiating this work, and from my association with some of them in the work of preparing the present tariff law, I feel that the country can rely absolutely upon that work being performed in telligently and not only in line with the declaration of the Republican party, but also in accordance with the tariff revision sentiment of the party. It will not be a revision that will be satisfactory to the Democratic party, nor will it be in line with the tariff policy of that party. If it were it would not be a Republican tariff revision or a revision by the friends of the policy of protection, which is the only kind of revision a majority of our people have declared for. The details of this revision it is impossible for any one at this time to forecast. It will of necessity be the result of compromise and concession. Speaking for myself, personally, I believe when it is finally made a number of articles now on the dutiable list will be found on the free list, and that there will be an average reduction of rates, as you say, upon "the standard lines of manufactured goods entering into competition with our metallic, textile and other leading industries." Just what particular commodities will be transferred from the dutiable list to the free list, no one can now say, but it is my judgment that the items of rough lumber and wood pulp should, and can be, placed on the free list without detriment to either industry. The conditions surrounding the production of lumber in the United States and in Canada have so materially changed since the present duty of two dollars was placed on rough lumber that to my mind this article, together with wood pulp, can be safely, and with advantage to our people, admitted free. You are right in suggesting that our present tariff on foreign luxuries ought to be maintained in order that the future needs of the Treasury may be taken care of out of current revenues. With our national expenditures as great as they are now, and constantly increasing, the new tariff law will have to provide additional revenue to meet increased appropriations for the public service, otherwise new sources of revenue will have to be found or the Government will be put to the necessity of issuing bonds or certificates of indebtedness to meet current expenses. This is one phase of the problem which confronts Congress, and especially those who are now engaged in preparing the proposed new tariff legislation, which I fear is not given that serious consideration by the public which it deserves. The expenditures of the Government this fiscal year, including the expenditures for the Postoffice Department, will aggregate $1,008,000,000. The estimates for national expenditures for the fiscal year, 1910, which are now before Congress, indicate an expenditure in amount practically equal to the expenditures for the current fiscal year. To meet these increased expenditures from the current revenues, these revenues must be materially increased. For that reason it is not at all improbable that some articles now on the free list may have to be transferred to the dutiable list with a slight duty imposed thereon. Otherwise the almost certain deficit of $120,000,000 at the end of the current fiscal year, and the estimated deficit of $143,000,000 at the close of the fiscal year 1910, cannot be provided for from current revenues. Any proposed revision of the tariff always retards, and sometimes seriously disturbs, the business of the country. Now that we are just beginning to recover from the recent business depression, and since a Republican revision of the tariff is certain at the extra session of Congress to be convened soon after the inauguration of Mr. Taft as Président, it is of the utmost importance that this revision shall be accomplished in the shortest time possible, to the end that the importer as well as our domestic manufacturers may know the exact tariff conditions under which their business must be adjusted and conducted in the future. I feel certain, therefore, that for these reasons it is the desire as well as the purpose of both houses of Congress to conclude the consideration and final enactment of what will be known as the Payne tariff bill at the earliest time. possible. Trusting that this rather hasty answer to your inquiries will be satisfactory, and believing that the friends of genuine Republican tariff revision will, when our work is completed, have no real cause for criticism, I remain, ELIHU ROOT: WORLD STATESMAN. BY WALTER WELLMAN. THE greatest intellectual force in the public life of America is the mind of Elihu Root. That is true to-day; it has been true most of the time for nine years; it is likely to be true for years to come. His has been the master mind of two administrations,-McKinley's and Roosevelt's. It will be the same in the Administration of Mr. Taft. Mr. Root is leaving the executive branch of the Government, and is to take his seat in the Senate on March 4. Barring the remote possibility of Democratic control of the Assembly at Albany, this means that he is Senator for life. It means also that in the future, as in the past, his talents are to be dedicated to the service of his country. Some one has said that in Root we have a statesman of the old school. But it is more accurate to say that in him we have a statesman of the new school. He is in a class by himself. In a decade the evolution of the American Government has been from the simple to the complex. Hundreds of new questions and responsibilities have arisen. The old methods of dealing with them have become useless, obsolete. The new era has demanded new methods and new men to operate them. Conspicuous among these new men who have arisen to meet the national exigency, as new men always arise to meet every crisis, have been McKinley, Roosevelt, Hay, Taft, and Root. They have been the really great men of the present epoch. But the greatest of them in intellectual force, in mastery of the principles and details of our Government, is Elihu Root. There is no difference of opinion at the national capital as to that. So President Roosevelt declared a few years ago when he said to me, as I stated at the time in the REVIEW OF REVIEWS: "Elihu Root is the ablest man I have known in our governmental service. I will go further: He is the greatest man that has appeared in the public life of any country, in any position, on either side of the ocean, in my day and generation." If the lips of William McKinley and John Hay were not mute they would echo this high praise. William Howard Taft does echo it with all possible emphasis. It is difficult to write of Mr. Root without frequent use of the superlative, of what would appear fulsome applied to other men. Fulsomeness in praise of him would be grotesque,-like the use of ribbons to adorn the lion's mane, but the simple truth is that his character and his services are themselves superlative and cannot be characterized in any other way. If the wishes and the mood of Mr. Root himself were to be followed in the writing of this sketch of him it would indeed be simple and modest, a mere inventory of the public business with which he has been associated. It would be a photograph, not a portrait. And perhaps the photograph would be enough, if it were well taken, if the inventory of his achievements and of his influence were made complete. HIS IMPRESS ON GOVERNMENT. But it is impossible thus adequately to picture him. To write a list of the things he has done, of the achievements upon which his mind has worked either in dominant or influential fashion, would be to write the history of the American Government for nearly ten years. Not the half, nor the fifth, of his work bears his name. Much of the very best he has done he is not popularly known to have had anything to do with at all. It was once said of him that the people of the United States were the luckiest clients lawyer ever had, because they had for a bagatelle of ten thousand a year enjoyed the services of a million-dollar lawyer. This is true; and in commercial terms it is as good a statement of the fact as we are likely to get. The public naturally thinks of this million-dollar lawyer, this leader of the American bar, as Secretary of War, or Secretary of State, dealing successfully with the questions which arise in those departments. But the truth is much wider. Nothing of first-class importance has been done by the executive branch of the American Government for nine years unless it has first received, in greater or less degree, the impress of Mr. Root's intellectual power. Every difficult question has been referred to him; he has helped work out every big problem. It did not matter whether these questions and problems arose in his own department or another. It was the same. Just as McKinley always wanted Root at his right. hand, so with Roosevelt. Year after year, out of the slough of clumsy inefficiency and month after month, day after day, it has cross purposes into which it had fallen. been like this at the White House: "Well, When he entered the department, just after this is a hard matter to decide. Where's the Spanish War, disorder reigned; the peoElihu? Send for Root to come over right ple had lost confidence in that branch of the away." And Root comes over; the master Administration. The first thing Mr. Root mind sets to work; the elements of the prob- did was to concentrate his mind upon the lem are resolved; the solution is found. task of finding out what the matter was. Nine times out of ten it is the best possible When Elihu Root concentrates his mind you solution. And if when the result of this have a dynamic, almost an invincible, force. mental effort becomes known and effective If you have seen a compressed-air drill and passes into history other men are given working its way slowly, noiselessly, surely the credit for it, and other reputations are through the adamantine rock, you may realmade the stronger for it, so much the better ize how the mind of Mr. Root operates pleased is Mr. Root. He solves problems of upon the problems which confront it. The government half through sheer love of in- harder the rock, the greater the working tellectual conquest, half through a sort of pressure, the sharper the drill. He found intuitive conscience that tells him it is his out what the matter was. He applied the duty to do all he can for the Government remedy. He solved the problem of what to and the country. do with the bureaucracy, what to do with the fifth wheel to the wagon, the General A LAWYER WITHOUT POLITICAL INFLUENCE. of the Army, and in time he created the It seems to me there is something almost General Staff and placed the American milepic about the rise of this man. It is one itary establishment and its administration of the songs to be found ages hence in our upon a basis of the highest efficiency. One national sagas. Ten years ago his name was is not surprised to learn that just now Presinot known to 5000 men outside the city of dent Roosevelt is earnestly entreating Mr. New York. To-day his fame extends Root to perform a like work of reorganizathroughout the world. There is not a cab- tion and regeneration for the Navy Departinet, nor a chancellerie, nor a council cham- ment, which needs it quite as badly as did ber, anywhere, in which he is not often men- the War Department, and that Mr. Root tioned as the dominant mind in the Ameri- has consented to give aid and counsel up to can Government, as the force all other pow- the limit of his strength. ers must reckon and deal with in their relations with Washington. This is an epic story because the man has reached this place among the world's few elect through intellectual power and nothing else. To start with he had no political influence. He had never sought it. In fact, he had been at odds with the political leaders. There was astonishment everywhere when McKinley, that most excellent judge of greatness in others even if he was not great himself, made this New York lawyer a member of his cabinet, this lawyer who had never done anything in politics, and who in a large part of the country was as much unknown as if he were one of the humblest of the hundreds of millions in congested China. REORGANIZING THE WAR DEPARTMENT. The story of his achievements from that day to this is the story of the activities and policies of the American Government. It a story which must be rapidly told, there much of it, so fast have the chips fallen him. He lifted the War Department CONSTRUCTIVE WORK IN CUBA AND THE PHILIPPINES. Very soon it became known in Washington that Elihu Root was more than a lawyer, more than an executive, that he was a statesman with a genius for creating states. It was he who took hold of the difficult problem of creating a nation out of Cuba, establishing a government there and training men to run it and to prepare it for standing alone. He made Cuba, and he wrote what is known in history as the Platt Amendment," upon which to this day are based the relations of Cuba to the United States. Cuba is one monument to the constructive genius of Mr. Root. The Philippines are another. In those days the problem of the Philippines alone was heavy enough to crush an ordinary man. Root carried it, along with many other things, almost alone. When the first Philippine Commission was sent out to carry on the work of reconstruction it was necessary for some one to give them instructions, to define their powers in working out a task huge, complex, delicate. his comprehensive grasp, his almost infinite Such instructions were prepared and handed knowledge of Government affairs; Taft, over to the commission. When they were with his great wholesome common sense, made public, statesmen, students, and jurists his sympathy with the people, his trained the world over saw in them the handiwork perceptions, his knowledge of actual adminof a genius, one of the most remarkable ex- istration work. Root and Taft have been amples of organic law and distribution of by Mr. Roosevelt's side in all his progressive powers known to history. This document, measures; they counseled with him almost this magna charta of the Philippine nation hourly in his campaign for corporate control in embryo, was signed by President McKin- and the enactment of the Railway Rate bill. ley, but every word of it was written by It was long ago written in the book of fate, Elihu Root. wherein there are chapters devoted to appreciation, to friendship, and to gratitude, that when he left the Presidential chair Mr. Roosevelt would try to put one or the other of his friends in his place. It did not matter much from his viewpoint, or the public's, which of them was chosen. It was In one sense it was Mr. Root who made Mr. Taft. President McKinley chose Taft to go to the Philippines to carry out the instructions, and the sequel shows that Mr. McKinley must have been guided in this selection by an inspiration almost divine. Taft was young, inexperienced, but whole-souled, a prince of zeal and performance. Root who guided him, trained him, helped him, encouraged him, held up his hands, smoothed out the roughest parts of the road, and minimized the opposition of public sentiment at home till Taft, the apostle of American method and the test of American efficiency in a most difficult and altogether new task, could have time to get on his feet. - A GREAT TRIUMVIRATE, ROOSEVELT, ROOT, TAFT. We see Mr. Root helping President Roosevelt settle the anthracite coal strike, one of Mr. Roosevelt's greatest unofficial achievements. We see him virtually managing the State Department during the absence of Mr. Hay, and this at a time when the Boxer war in China was hourly producing the most delicate and difficult of diplomatic and military questions. WORK IN THE STATE DEPARTMENT. 66 During the last three and a half years the public has known Mr. Root as Secretary of State. In Washington he has been looked upon as the all-round counselor of the President, incidentally presiding over the State Department. Notwithstanding the scope and multiplicity of his activities, his work as Foreign Minister has been equal to the highest traditions of that office. Perhaps his most brilliant achievement in diplomacy is the pact of peace with Japan,-an "understanding" between the two governments which removes the last remaining source of disagreement between them. It is now generally known that while the famous exchanges of notes" which the jealously strict constructionists of the Senate try to construe as a treaty is nominally confined to an expression of amity as to the Pacific Ocean and the Chinese Empire, actually the most delicate We see him, a little later,-yielding to the and dangerous question of all, that of Japapersuasion of his old friend, Mr. Roosevelt, nese emigration to the United States, has been -leaving his law office in New York, sacri- settled at the same time. The Japanese ficing a princely income, and returning to Government has virtually prohibited all the Government grind as Secretary of State. emigration of coolies or workmen to the For years he has been the guide, the philos- United States, thanks to the diplomacy of opher, the mentor of the energetic young Mr. Root, and the jingoes who have so inPresident. Mr. Roosevelt has done almost dustriously made war and rumors of war benothing of importance without first consult- tween the United States and Japan now find ing Root; if not Root, then Taft, and pref- their occupation gone. For years it has been erably both together. It is not unfair to say axiomatic in Washington that if trouble that these three men have run the Gov- were ever to come between the United Never were three men better States and Japan it would come over this adapted to team work found working hand question of immigration. An anti-Japanese in hand, Roosevelt the patriotic, progres- riot in San Francisco, for instance, followed sive, energetic reformer and statesman, the by chauvinistic outbreaks in both countries popular hero, the leader of public opinion; and the enactment of a Japanese exclusion Root the analyst, with his long look ahead, law by our Congress, would almost surely ernment. |