THE PUBLIC BUSINESS; THE COMMERCE COURT. for the Federal Reserve Board. In these cases it was careful to leave out the requirement for competitive examinations. In spite of the reduction of the revenue, Congress continued to make very heavy appropriations. For the year 1912-13, the expenditures were about $684,000,000 (leaving the Post Office out of account); for 1913-14 they were $701,000,000; for 1914-15, $733,000,000. Congress still clung to its system of lack of responsibility shown by appropriating money through eleven different committees, none of which felt bound to consider the probable income of the governPresident Taft, through his ment. Commission on Economy and Efficiency, tried hard to bring about a budget, as well as the necessary changes in the system of keeping public accounts. President Wilson paid no particular attention to that subject, though the Chamber of Commerce of the United States urged the reform. One of the difficulties was the habit of Congress to make up composite bills for public buildings and river and harbor improvements. This system, popularly called the "Pork Barrel," allowed items to be put in for a great variety of small places and improvements by the log-rolling method. Appropriations for rivers and harbors, which in '1911-12 were $31,000,000, rose to $51,000,000 in 1913-14 under the Democratic Congress. The next year, Senator Theodore E. Burton, of Ohio, filibustered 571 against the pending bill and compelled Congress to cut it down to $27,000,000. The following year (1915) it rose again to $34,000,000.. An appropriation in which the whole country was much interested was $2,000,000 for a Lincoln Memorial in Washington, which took the form of a Greek temple with appropriate approaches and surroundings. Congress also took a destructive interest in the Commerce Court, which was set up by the Tariff Act of 1909, for the purpose of securing quick decisions on cases appealed from the Interstate Commerce Commission to the judicial courts.* The decisions of the Commerce Court proved to be more favorable to the railroads than was expected, although President Taft and his Attorney-General gave the Court their approval. As soon as the Democrats came into power, they again attacked the Court, and in December, 1913, succeeded in abolishing it. was Attorney-General.* In 1916 notwithstanding its immense business, Louis D. Brandeis, of Massachusetts, was nominated by the President for another vacancy, but the nomination was violently attacked, long hearings were held before a sub-committee of the Senate, and no vote was reached up to May, 1916. Several decisions of importance were rendered by the Supreme Court under the anti-trust laws. In 1913 it was decided that an attempt to "corner" cotton was a restraint of interstate trade contrary to the statutes. The court also held (December, 1912) that the merger of the Union Pacific and Southern Pacific Railroads, which had been brought about several years before, was a combination in restraint of trade. With regard to the railroads the Court in the Minnesota cases (1913) held that a State might regulate rates on on railroad traffic wholly within its own borders; but in the Texas-Shreveport case (1914) the Court held that rates fixed by the Texas Railroad Commission to give especial advantage to Texas firms could not be maintained; that when there was a conflict between the control of railroads by a State and the control by the United States, Federal control must prevail. On the other hand, in 1915, the Supreme Court declined to hold certain steamship combinations illegal, and affirmed that the United States Steel Corporation, * On August 29, 1914, McReynolds was succeeded as Attorney-General by Thomas W. Gregory, of Texas. was not acting in contradiction to the anti-trust acts. Territories, Lands and Conservation. When Arizona was admitted as a State in 1912, the whole of the continental area was at last organized as States. Nevertheless the United States never had more difficulty with its territories and outlying possessions than after 1912. Alaska, which came into the possession of the United States in 1867, was for the first time. allowed to hold a legislature under a complete territorial government, in March, 1913. Its fisheries, its mines and its furs together made up a business of about $40,000,000 a year. The long pending question of a railroad from the coast into the interior was settled by an act of March 12, 1914, which provided that the United States government should build about 700 miles of road at a cost of about $35,000,000. With the exception of the Panama Railroad, this was the first Federal government railroad in the United States. Another act of 1914 settled a disputed question with regard to the Alaskan coal lands, by reserving part of the lands and arranging the rest in such a way as to prevent the monopoly of the coal deposits by any corporation. Provision was also made for the construction of highways. In 1915 the products of Alaska counted up to $70,000,000. THE PHILIPPINES; CONSERVATION. The question of the Philippine Islands was even more difficult, because the Democratic platform of 1912 contained a plank declaring that "we favor an immediate declaration of the Nation's purpose to recognize the independence of the Philippine Islands." In September, 1913, Governor-General W. Cameron Forbes, who had been connected with the Philippine government since 1904, was displaced by Francis Burton Harrison, who had instructions to give more authority to the Filipinos. He publicly announced that "every step every step we take will be taken with a view to the ultimate independence of the Islands and as a preparation for that independence; and we hope to move toward that end as rapidly as the safety and the permanent interests of the Islands will permit." President Wilson appointed five of the nine commissioners from among the native citizens. In 1914 the Jones bill was introduced into Congress "to declare the purpose of the people of the United States as to the future political status of the people of the Philippine Islands, and to provide a more autonomous government for those islands." The bill seemed likely to go through easily, but in 1915 it was shelved by the Senate and the next year a strong opposition appeared to any pledge that the Filipinos should be allowed independence at a fixed date. Whatever was expected when the Islands 573 were annexed in 1898, they had not proved profitable to the capitalist nor alluring to settlers. Only a handful of Americans lived in the Islands outside the official and military circles. On the other hand, the question arose as to what would become of the Filipinos if left to themselves in the surging seas of Asiatic affairs. Would Japan or Germany or Great Britain allow them to keep independence if it were acquired? The great question of conservation of the national resources which had been pushed to the front since 1905, came up in various hotly contested. forms. The reclamation of arid lands by government irrigation works went forward without interruption; but serious issues arose regarding the water powers. In 1913 a large number of those powers on public lands were reserved, pending action by Congress. In 1915 bills were introduced by which the government was to grant fifty year leases of water-powers; but no formal measures were passed, down to May, 1916. The government maintained its policy of setting aside scenic areas for national parks. In 1910 the Glacier National Park was reserved, with 1,500 square miles, covering the main divide of the Rockies for about 50 miles south of the Canadian boundary. In 1915, the equally magnificent area of the Rocky Mountain National Park was created. It contained nearly 400 square miles, including the valley known as Estes Park, with Long's Peak and other snow mountains encircling it. A long controversy with regard to the desire of the city of San Francisco for a reservoir site in the Hetch Hetchy valley of the Sierra Nevadas was brought to a close by an act of 1913, granting the privilege. General Foreign Relations. At the end of the Taft administration, the United States was on terms of amity and concord with most of the nations of the earth except Mexico and some of the Central American states. Many arbitration treaties had been negotiated, and the influence of Taft's administration was strongly felt in favor of world peace.* The new administration showed its adherence to that policy when Mr. Bryan became Secretary of State. He had a great hold on a considerable part of the people of the country, among whom he was accustomed to speak to large audiences on questions of public interest. President Wilson reversed the policy of Roosevelt and Taft by making almost a clean sweep of the ministers of the United States to foreign countries. All the thirteen ambassadors except one were replaced, in some cases by very inexperienced men. Only three or four of the Envoys Extraordinary and Ministers Resident remained. The consular service, however, was well protected * See page 292 et seq., ante. by law and recent precedents, and remained an expert service in which the higher positions were filled by promotion from the lower. Secretary Bryan at once began to negotiate another group of arbitration treaties, and between 1913 and 1915 had the satisfaction of seeing 28 of them ratified by the Senate. He also put forward a plan for international commissions of inquiry in case of disputes between the United States and other countries. In 1913, he sent a note to the conference then sitting in Bucharest, Rumania, for the settlement of the rivalries of the Balkan powers, asking that the conference formally announce that religious liberty was to be allowed in all the countries involved. Steps were taken by the administration in 1914 to secure a third Hague Conference to perfect the elaborate system of peace treaties and tribunals which was begun in the Conferences of 1899 and 1907. Almost the only serious international question left unsettled by the Taft administration was that of the Panama Canal tolls:* The Canal Act (August 24, 1912), gave the use of the canal free to American vessels engaged in the coasting trade, and the Democratic platform of 1912 approved this principle. Great Britain protested that any discrimination was contrary to the treaties of the United States with England and with Panama. A bill was introduced and strongly backed by Senator Elihu * See page 297, ante. LATIN-AMERICAN AFFAIRS. Root and others, for the repeal of this discrimination; and President Wilson finally succeeded in compelling his party to agree to the bill, by an act of June 15, 1914. Latin-American Affairs, 1909-1916. The new administration inherited troubles of various kinds with LatinAmerica. Under Roosevelt, Cuba became a protectorate of the United States in 1902; Panama was virtually a dependency from the time of the Canal Treaty of 1903; and a United States control of the custom houses was instituted in Santo Domingo in 1909. President Taft followed up this policy by sending a military force into Nicaragua in 1912, and in 1913 negotiated a treaty with that country by which the United States was to have the sole right to build a canal across Nicaragua and was to receive the Bay of Fonseca, against which it was to make a payment of $3,000,000. President Wilson early committed himself in the same direction. Secretary Bryan negotiated a new treaty with Nicaragua in about the same terms, but included a section resembling the Cuban Platt Amendment of 1902, under which Nicaragua would become a dependency. President Wilson adhered to this policy of bringing a number of the weak LatinAmerican neighbors under the control of the United States, although a strong party in Nicaragua protested with all its might, and for several years the treaty was not ratified by 575 the Senate. An American collector of taxes remained in that country without any authority from Congress, till in 1916 the treaty was at last accepted by the Senate. For some time it had been clear that Haiti would follow the same road as its sister negro republic. It was equally involved in debt, and there was an equal danger that some foreign country might collect its debts by taking territory. To stop one of the usual bloody factional fights, President Wilson directed marines to land in Haiti in July, 1915, and a treaty was negotiated, by which not only the customs, but all the government finances, were put under the control of the American Federal government. This treaty also was ratified by the Senate (February 28, 1916), thus completing a block of five LatinAmerican states states Cuba, Panama, Santo Domingo, Nicaragua and Haiti - which had practically lost their independence and were protectorates of the United States. This relation in the case of Panama brought the United States into difficulty with the United States of Colombia, which would never admit that the Republic of Panama was legally separated from Colombian territory in 1903. Under Secretary Knox, the American minister to Colombia, Mr. DuBois, in 1913, tried to negotiate a treaty by which Colombia was to receive a bonus of $10,000,000 for relinquishing all claims to Panama, and allowing the United States to build an |