Robert A. Taft: Ideas, Tradition, and Party in U.S. Foreign Policy 0742544893, 9780742544895

Robert A. Taft, the son of president and chief justice William H. Taft, is one of twentieth-century America's most

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Robert A. Taft: Ideas, Tradition, and Party in U.S. Foreign Policy
 0742544893, 9780742544895

Table of contents :
Contents
Acknowledgments
Chronology
Introduction
Notes
1 Education of a Senator
Notes
2 The Fight Against Intervention
Notes
3 Wartime Debates, Postwar Vision
Notes
4 Critic of Postwar Liberalism
Notes
5 Cold Warrior
Notes
6 Mr. Republican
Notes
7 Conclusion
Notes
Bibliographical Essay
Index

Citation preview

ROBERT A. TAFT

ROBERT A. TAFT Ideas, Tradition, and P arty in U S . Foreign P olicy CLARENCE E. WUNDERLIN

SR

BOOKS

R O W M A N & L IT T L E F IE L D P U B L IS H E R S , IN C.

Lanham • Boulder • New York • Toronto • O xford

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC. Published in the United States of Am erica by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, M aryland 20706 www.rowmanlittlefield.com PO Box 317 Oxford OX2 9RU, UK Copyright © 2005 by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication m ay be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system , or transm itted in any form or by any m eans, electronic, m echanical, photocopying, recording, or otherw ise, w ithout the prior permission of the publisher. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data W underlin, Clarence E. Robert A. Taft : ideas, tradition, and party in U S . foreign policy / Clarence E. Wunderlin. p. cm . — (Biographies in Am erican foreign policy) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7425-4489-3 (alk. paper) — ISBN 0-74254490-7 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Taft, Robert A. (Robert Alphonso), 1889-1953.2. Taft, Robert A. (R obot Alphonso), 1889-1953— Political and social views. 3. Legislators—United States—Biography. 4. United States. Congress. Senate— Biography. 5. United States— Foreign relations— 1933-1945.6. United States— Foreign relations— 1945-1953.7. United States—Politics and governm ent— 1933-1953.8. Conservatism — United States—H istory—20th century. 9. Nationalism—United States—H istory—20th century. 10. Republican Party (U.S. : 1854- )— History— 20th century. I. Title. H. Series. E748.T2W 86 2005 328.73'0972—dc22 2004023941 Printed in the United States of America @ ™ The paper used in this publication m eets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library M aterials, AN SI/N ISO Z39.48-1992.

To A nn

Contents

Acknowledgments, xi Chronology, xiii Introduction, 1 1

Education of a Senator, 9

2

The Fight Against Intervention, 33

3

Wartime Debates, Postwar Vision, 71

4

Critic of Postwar Liberalism, 107

5

Cold Warrior, 143

6

Mr. Republican, 177

7

Conclusion, 207

Bibliographical Essay, 219 Index, 229 About the Author, 243

Acknowledgments

Elsewhere, I have already thanked those who assisted me in the researching, annotating, publishing, and, of course, paying for, the four-volume, selective edition of Senator Taft's papers. They have included numerous archivists and curators, especially the expert staff at the Manuscript Reading Room of the Library of Congress, who helped me assemble the evidence eventually used for this short biog­ raphy. In addition, I owe a debt of gratitude to the graduate students at Kent State University's Department of History who assisted me on the editorial project. In particular, I wish to thank David E. Settje and Robin L. Bowden, keen students of post-W orld War II U.S. cultural history, who pushed me to see the centrality of Taft's post-Czech coup anticommunism. Neither the editing project nor this biography would have been completed without the financial assistance of the Ohio Board of Regents, the Louise Taft Semple Foundation, and, most im portantly, the N ational H istorical Publications and Records Commission. Finally, I wish to thank my wife and colleague at Kent State, Ann Heiss, to whom this book is dedicated, for putting up with me and Bob Taft for diese past six years. Several scholars have assisted me in constructing this life of Senator Robert A. Taft. Settje and Bowden, who commented on earlier portions of the manuscript, were instrumental in formulating its final arguments. Ann Heiss read, edited, and commented on the entire manuscript. Andy Fry, the series editor, and Walter Hixson of die University of Akron read the manuscript very closely and challenged me to improve the work. Professor Fry's "aggressive" editing has cer­ tainly improved die book in numerous ways. One final note on the business of publishing. I want to thank Andy Fry and all those at Rowman & Litdefield Publishers for smoothing out the transition of this project from its inception with SR Books, Inc., to its completion under the R&L imprint.

xi

Chronology

1889 Septem ber8

Robert Alphonso Taft bom , Cincinnati, Ohio

April 17

Taft family sets sail for Philippines (W. H. Taft served as civil governor)

August 20

Robert sets sail for United States (began preparatory school)

January

Taft family returns to United States (W. H. Taft becomes secretary of war)

September

Robert m atriculates at Yale College, New Haven, Connecticut

November

William H. Taft elected president of the United States

June 21 September

Robert graduates horn Yale College Robert begins studies at Harvard Law School

November

William H. Taft defeated in reelection bid in three-way presidential race

May July-A ugust September

Robert graduates from Harvard Law School Robert tours Europe with friends Robert begins work in law offices of Maxwell & Ramsey, Cincinnati, Ohio; resides with his uncle, Charles R Taft I

1900

1903

1904

1906

1908

1910

1912

1913

xiii

xiv

Chronology

1914 August October 17

World War I begins Robert A. Taft weds Martha W. Bowers, Washington, D.C.

August

William Howard Taft III (first son) bom

February April June

Robert Taft Jr. (second son) bom U.S. Congress declares war on Germany Robert begins work with U.S. Food Administration, Washington, D.C.

March

William H. Taft begins work as co-chairman of die National War Labor Board Armistice signed; hostilities end Robert departs for Paris as legal counsel for American Relief Administration

1915 1917

1918

November 11 November 1919 January-June

Versailles Peace Conference

Spring

Robert works for Herbert H oover's presidential campaign Robert elected to Ohio House of Representatives

1920

November 1922 November

Robert reelected to Ohio House

January

Law firm of Taft & Taft established (with brother, Charles P. Taft II) Lloyd B. Taft (third son) bom

1923

1924

November

Law firm of Taft, Stettinius & Hollister established, Cincinnati, Ohio Robert reelected for third term (serves briefly as speaker)

1925 April

Horace D. Taft (fourth son) bom

xv

Chronology

1930 November

Robert elected to Ohio State Senate

November

Franklin D. Roosevelt defeats Herbert Hoover for presidency; Robert Taft defeated for reelection to Ohio State Senate

January 30

Adolf Hitler is appointed chancellor of Germany United States formally establishes diplomatic relations with die Soviet Union

1932

1933

November 16 1935 March 7 April 9 August 31 October 3

German forces enter the demilitarized Rhineland Taft addresses Warren, Ohio, Chamber of Commerce President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the first U.S. Neutrality Act Italy invades Abyssinia (Ethiopia)

1936 April

Taft addresses New Hampshire Women Republicans Club; Taft runs as Ohio "Favorite Son" in presidential campaign; Anti-Comintern Pact signed by Germany and Japan

October 5

President Roosevelt presents "quarantine" speech Italy adheres to Anti-Comintern Pact

1937

November 6 1938 September 30

November

Munich Agreement: Great Britain and France agree to cede Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland to Germany Robert A. Taft elected to the U.S. Senate

1939 March 6 March 31

Taft votes for Air Force Augmentation Bill Taft votes for Strategic and Critical M aterials Reserve Bill

Chronology

xvi

April August 23 September 1 September

Taft supports repeal of arms embargo ("cash and carry") The Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact is signed Germany invades Poland Taft votes for revision of the Neutrality Acts (adm inistration's bill for repeal of arms embargo and for "cash and carry" clause)

1940 June 13 July 10 July 19 August 8

German forces occupy Paris Vichy Regime is established in France Taft votes for two-ocean navy bill and army appropriation bill Taft supports call-up of the National Guard; Taft opposes Selective Service Act

1941 March 11 June 22 July August 12 December 7 December 8 December 11

Taft votes against Lend-Lease Bill (offers direct loan substitute bill) Germany invades die Soviet Union U.S. troops occupy Iceland President Roosevelt and Prime M inister Churchill sign Atlantic Charter Japan attacks the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii United States declares war on Japan Germany and Italy declare war on the United States

1942 November 8

Operation Torch, the Anglo-American invasion of North Africa, begins

May 22

Taft presents commencement address at Grove City College Taft presents major speech at American Bar Association conference Teheran Conference, the first of the Big-3 wartime summits, begins

1943

August 26 November 28 1944 June 6

Operation Overlord, die Allied invasion of Normandy, commences

Chronology July 1

August 21 November

xvii Bretton Woods Conference to establish the International Monetary Fund and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (World Bank) begins Dumbarton Oaks Conference to establish the United Nations organization begins Taft reelected to a second term in the U.S. Senate

1945 February 4 April 12

April 25 May 8 July 17 July 28 August 6 August 9 August 14 September 11 November 14

December 16

Yalta Conference/ the Crimean summit of the Big-3 heads of state, begins President Roosevelt dies at Warm Springs, Georgia vacation home; Vice President Harry S. Truman succeeds to the U.S. presidency San Francisco Conference for the establishm ent of die United Nations begins Germany surrenders Potsdam Conference of the Big-3 heads of state commences Taft votes, with reservations, to ratify the United Nations Charter United States drops the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan United States drops a second bomb on Nagasaki, Japan Japan surrenders Council of Foreign M inisters convenes in London Senators Wagner, Eilender, and Taft introduce S. 1592, a bill to establish a national housing agency and begin federal grants-in-aid to the states for housing Council of Foreign M inisters reconvenes in Moscow

1946 February 22 March 5 April 25

Diplomat George F. Kennan sends "Long Telegram" from Moscow Churchill delivers "Iron Curtain" speech in Fulton, M issouri Council of Foreign M inisters reconvenes in Paris

xviii

Chronology

May 3

May 25 October 5

Taft co-sponsors S. 2143, a bill to establish an independent national health agency and to authorize federal grants-in-aid to the states Taft opposes Truman adm inistration bill to draft striking coal miners Taft delivers speech at "The Heritage of the English-Speaking Peoples and Their Responsi­ bilities" symposium at Kenyon College

1947 January 21 March 12 June 4

July 26

December 1

December 30

George C. Marshall succeeds Jam es E Byrnes as U.S. secretary of state President Truman enunciates the Truman Doctrine Secretary of State Marshall proposes program for the economic recovery of Europe (Marshall Plan) Congress passes the National Security Act, creating the Department of Defense, die Central Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Agency Taft delivers St. Andrew's Society speech criticizing inflationary domestic and foreign policies of Truman administration Taft delivers "Inflation and the Marshall Plan" speech

1948 February March 17

May 14 June 24 June 26 November 2 N ovem berDecember

Communist coup in Czechoslovakian government Great Britain, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg sign the Brussels Pact, a mutual defense alliance for Western Europe United States recognizes the new state of Israel Soviet Union imposes a blockade around the German city of Berlin United States initiates airlift of supplies to Berlin Truman elected to the presidency Tafts tours Europe, reviews Marshall Plan efforts

Chronology

xix

1949 January 21 April 4 July 21

September 23 December 8

Dean G. Acheson succeeds George Marshall as U.S. secretary of state The treaty establishing the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is signed Taft votes against ratification of the NATO treaty (the U.S. Senate ratifies the NATO treaty by vote of 82 to 13) President Truman announces that the Soviet Union has tested an atomic device Chiang Kai-shek and the Nationalist Chinese government flee mainland to the island of Formosa (Taiwan); communists under Mao Tse-tung's leadership assume control in China

1950 January 31

April 14 June 25 June 28 June 30 October

November November 26 December 20 December

President Truman announces his approval of U.S. program for the development of a hydrogen bomb President Truman receives the NSC-68 report on national security policy North Korea invades South Korea Taft presents "Korean C risis" speech in Senate President Truman commits U.S. troops to the Korean peninsula President Truman "requests" General Dwight D. Eisenhower to become supreme allied commander, Europe Taft reelected to U.S. Senate from Ohio Chinese communist forces cross the Yalu River into Korea Hoover gives "G reat Debate" address Taft meets with Eisenhower to discuss NATO

1951 January 5

January 22

Taft delivers "The Basis of an American Foreign Policy" speech, his contribution to the "Great Debate" on national military policy Alger Hiss is convicted of perjury committed during testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee

xx

Chronology

October 16 November

Taft announces bid for GOP nomination Taft publishes A Foreign Policy fo r A m ericans (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday)

M arch-July June 1

Presidential primaries Eisenhower returns to United States to enter campaign for GOP nomination Republican National Convention, Chicago, Illinois (Eisenhower nominated) Taft vacations in Canada Taft-Eisenhower meet at M omingside Heights, New York City Eisenhower elected president

1952

July 7 July-A ugust September 12 November 1953 January February March April May May 26 June July 4 July 31

Taft becomes majority leader in U.S. Senate Eisenhower terminates wage controls (price controls expire April 30,1953) Administration extends rent controls Taft>Eisenhower golf outing in Augusta (Taft first experiences pain in hip) Taft's first hospitalization for tests Taft's National Conference of Christians and Jews speech is presented by son Robert Jr. Taft hospitalized in New York Taft readmitted to hospital in New York Taft dies of cancer, New York City

Introduction

T

his a work of intellectual biography. It explores the life and thought of Robert Alphonso Taft (1889-1953), arguably Am erica's most prominent conservative legislator in die twentieth century. Taft, the eldest son of president and chief justice William Howard Taft, combined a career in law w ith Republican Party politics, became an influential member of the Ohio General Assembly in the 1920s and 1930s, and served in the U.S. Senate from 1939 until his death in 1953.

Ideas and Intellectual Traditions The concept that "reason" or "rationality" is the key to understanding the process of historical developm ent underpins this biography. This study seeks to locate Senator Taft's conservatism in a contextual web of "intellec­ tual traditions," rational connections to earlier thinkers, previous schools of thought, even multiple generations of intellectual life. In Taft's case, the intellectual traditions are primarily those traditions that have given a certain coher­ ence to American political culture through time. In particu­ lar, this biography connects Taft's ideas, beliefs, and assumptions to important traditions in the hundred-yearlong sweep of Whig and Republican Party theory and prac­ tice prior to Taft's 1938 election to the U.S. Senate. This book offers an assessment, in some detail, of the ideas, or the "principles," to use Taft's own label, that made up his political thought. Most important were three core principles— "liberty," "equal opportunity," and "equal jus­ tice under law "—around which he composed much of his political, economic, and social thought. Taken together

I

2

Introduction

these core principles and other associated ideas provide the con­ stituent parts of Taft's political ideology. But, as most readers no doubt already recognize, die senator did not invent these ideas. Rather, these core "principles" and many of his other political concepts were components of a nineteenth-century lib­ eral ideology that dominated American political debate, certainly in the Northern states, for over a hundred years. To say that Senator Taft em braced that traditional nineteenth-century political ideology means that he located his ideas within key long-standing W higRepublican traditions and employed those traditions of thought and practice to justify his own policy positions. This book attempts to delineate those key intellectual traditions, thereby furnishing both an intellectual and historical context for Taft's conservatism. Senator Taft's intellectual biography can be separated into two broad, but somewhat overlapping phases, periods determined by the general discursive frameworks that guided his thinking and gave coherence to his contributions to political argument.1 In the two decades before the m ilitarization of the Cold War after 1948, Taft's conservatism was shaped by the parameters of debate established for two broad issues dominating American politics: state-society rela­ tions as practiced by the New Deal in the domestic realm and an increasingly interventionist approach to foreign policy issues prac­ ticed by liberal internationalists in the Roosevelt and Truman admin­ istrations. Therefore, Taft's contributions to political argument in this first phase of his senatorial career fell within the frameworks estab­ lished by the antistatist and anti-interventionist discursive traditions in American political culture. Crucial to this intellectual biography, with its emphasis on for­ eign relations, are the concerns and questions raised by Am erica's anti-interventionist tradition. A nti-interventionism dated from President George W ashington's 1796 "Farew ell A ddress." The nation's first chief executive espoused a conception of American uniqueness or exceptionalism , that the United States enjoyed a com­ pletely different set of interests from Europe, and that the nation should remain disengaged from other nations and coalitions of nations. "Europe," according to President Washington, "has a set of primary interests which to us have none or a very remote relation." He observed that Am erica's "detached and distant situation invites and enables us to pursue a different course." Most memorably, Washington concluded: "'U s our true policy to steer clear of perma­ nent alliances, with any portion of the foreign world___ Taking care always to keep ou rselves. . . on a respectable posture, we may safely

Introduction

3

trust to tem porary alliances for extraordinary em ergencies."2 Although Americans remained faithful to W ashington's tenets for a century, opponents of intervention received considerable criticism at the time of the Spanish-Am erican War, at Am erica's entrance into World War I, and again during the twenty-seven month "neutrality period" after the start of World War H. Taft, elected to the U.S. Senate only ten months before the outbreak of war on the Continent in 1939, quickly assumed a leadership position among anti-interventionists in the debates over revision of Am erica's N eutrality Acts, legislation intended to keep the nation from engaging in another crusade to make the world safe for democracy. When the Cold War intensified after 1948, the senator's political arguments fell increasingly within the framework of anticommunism. Although anticommunism had exerted an influence on Taft through­ out his career, it remained a secondary influence on his foreign policy thinking before 1948. Once he perceived that international commu­ nism, under the direction of the Soviet Union, posed a long-term threat to the "Am erican Way of Life," the senator transformed him self into a conservative "Cold Warrior." By 1951, Taft's antistatist and anti­ interventionist arguments had taken a back seat to the requirements of a global Cold War, w ith the senator embracing balance-of-power theories that he had denigrated in previous years. Anticommunism, an important American political tradition, became the most important influence on the senator when reinterpreted within the context of the emerging Cold War. Underpinning Taft's political thinking in both phases of his life was his conception of American nationalism, simply labeled the "American Way of Life." The senator embraced a "civic nationalist" conception of nationhood that postulated that American citizenship was determined not by racial or ethnic criteria, but by adherence to a set of ideals or civic principles.3 Not surprisingly, for Taft, it was belief in liberty, equal opportunity, and equal justice under law that defined this "Am erican Way of Life." Taft joined the great Democratic histo­ rian George Bancroft, Senator Albert Beveridge (R-Ind.), and a long line of other historians, civic leaders, and politicians who had embraced a sim ilar American cultural narrative. They believed that those principles brought the Puritans to New England, that New England was the cradle of American democracy, and that Puritanism was "tiie master influence of American civilization."4 Taft interpreted tiie rest of American history as a constant struggle to preserve the lib­ eral or libertarian ideals of the nation's Founding Fathers. In his speeches and writings, the senator portrayed the U.S. Civil War not

4

Introduction

prim arily as a nation-building effort, but as a freedom- and opportu­ nity-affirming endeavor. It was a great struggle to extend those same individualist ideals to the entire nation. On this civic nationalist foundation, Taft erected a conservative political philosophy buttressed by the use of five "traditions of thought" available to him in the m id-twentieth century. These included the employment of the constitutionalist legal tradition with its reverence for fundamental law in both domestic and foreign pol­ icy; the "independent internationalist" tradition in U.S. economic diplomacy; the "conservative internationalism " of his father, William Howard Taft, and other Great W ar-era advocates of international arbitration and collective security; neomercantilist economic thought derived horn the earlier Whig-Republican heritage; and, finally, the continentalist tradition in American strategic thinking that empha­ sized defense of North America. Especially salient in the antistatist arguments of the first phase of Taft's career was the deployment of the constitutionalist legal tradi­ tion. Although tiie senator took much of his understanding of "funda­ mental doctrine" from his father, this line of thought can be traced back to earlier generations of Whig-Republicans. Such conservative Whigs as Rufus Choate saw the federal Constitution as "fundamental law," not merely a "voluntary agreem ent" but "sanctioned by usage, hallowed by sentiment, and in harmony with our national charac­ ter."3 Senator Taft deployed constitutionalist arguments to preserve individual liberty, the separation of powers among governmental branches, and the prerogatives of state and local governments in the U.S. federal system. A second tradition of thought shaped Taft's stance on econom ic policy. The senator drew on the econom ic thought and practice of the antebellum W higs and the later Republican Party for the mer­ cantilist tradition of national econom ic developm ent. Follow ing in the footsteps of his grandfather's and fath er's generations of W higRepublicans, and closely influenced by H erbert C. Hoover, his political mentor, Senator Taft was the last in a long lineage of Republican neom ercantilists who em braced the concepts of internal econom ic developm ent through home m arket protection, the advo­ cacy of high living standards in the dom estic economy, and a healthy skepticism toward what he perceived as the "free trade" ideas of the Dem ocrats. In the realm of international economic diplomacy, Taft drew on tiie established Republican Party tradition of "independent interna­ tionalism ," most fully articulated by Herbert C. Hoover during the

Introduction

5

1920s "Republican Ascendancy." As a diplomatist, Hoover, first as commerce secretary, then as president, sought a middle course between isolationism and Woodrow W ilson's moralistic or "righteous internationalism ." In Hooverian thought and practice, that "m iddle position rested on a foreign policy principle to which Hoover remained true the rest of his life: die idea that limited moral and polit­ ical involvement with the world, accompanied by controlled eco­ nomic expansion, was valid and could be distinguished from the less desirable extrem es."6 Thus, "independent internationalism " in prac­ tice meant an engaged, not isolated, America on die world stage, act­ ing unilaterally or independently w ith die maximum freedom and flexibility. Senator Taft's views on foreign affairs blended such unilateral approaches with a great reverence for international law. Here, the views of his father, William Howard Taft, former secretary of state Elihu Root, and other conservative activists who established die League to Enforce Peace during the World War I era influenced the senator. In contrast to W ilson's liberal approach to international­ ism, their "conservative internationalism " promoted various schemes for die institutionalization of international law, world courts, arbitra­ tion of disputes between nations, and collective security arrange­ ments. Taft's father vigorously promoted international arbitration and collective arrangements, a line of thought to which his son would remain steadfastly faithful. Throughout his first decade in die U.S. Senate, Taft also main­ tained a conservative approach to defense and national security issues that employed the ideas and assumptions of continentalism. Continentalist thought, with its emphasis on defense of die North American continent, its assets and resources, and the various approaches and trade routes to the nation, was the dominant intellec­ tual tradition among the U.S. m ilitary in the hundred years before Taft's election to the Senate.

Party, Politics, and Progress Taft was, first and foremost, a politician. Throughout his career, he believed that political parties were organizations conceived and grounded on distinctive political or philosophical principles. For Taft, parties were the vehicles through which citizens could organize and cooperate with like-minded citizens in order to shape the develop­ ment of their communities, society, and nation. Thus, political parties could be instruments of social progress.

6

Introduction

And Taft was a Republican politician. The Republican Party, to his way of dunking, was the nation's most effective political instrument of progress. Since Abraham Lincoln, it had been the guarantor of those core political "principles" that Taft, and most Americans, valued highly. It was the guarantor of individual freedom, restraining the influence of powerful institutions that might infringe on the opportu­ nity of citizens. Most importantly, the Republicans, faithful to the Whig tradition of the antebellum years, had been the primary political agent facilitating U.S. enterprise and initiative. The nineteenth-century Whig-Republicans' positive conception of "liberty" meant the promo­ tion of individual self-development that helped a man become his own master. This necessitated politicians to facilitate each (male) citi­ zen's development of his individual capacities, whether physical, intellectual, or commercial. Senator Taft was the heir to this tradition. The senator viewed the Democratic Party as an obstacle to, rather than an agent of, social progress. He considered the Democrats under the New Deal and Fair Deal to have organized for the purpose of expanding the power of the liberal state, not necessarily for the progress of their comm unities. He accused Dem ocrats, led by Franklin D. Roosevelt, of abandoning the core principle of "equal opportunity" for a politically more palatable principle of "security." Roosevelt's New Deal, Taft charged, had asked Americans to forsake opportunity for a smothering form of security guaranteed by an everexpanding, all-powerful, bureaucratic state. Under Roosevelt, accord­ ing to Taft, the Democrats had enshrined their paternalistic notion of security with the motto "Som ething for N othing." The senator's rebuttal, naturally, was "Republicanism is Americanism."

Notes 1. Historians of Anglo-American political thought have identified two categories of intellectual traditions: discursive traditions, those often con­ tested constructions that establish parameters for debate in the political cul­ ture, and ideological traditions, those positive constructions of ideas used in intellectual exchanges. "Traditions of discourse" usually focus political argu­ ment "on a related set of questions or common concerns" without necessar­ ily forcing politicians, statesmen, or diplomats to hold or express common ideas. In Taft's case, the antistatist and anti-interventionist discursive tradi­ tions focused the political arguments of his early senatorial career; anticom­ munism framed the political arguments of his final years. Ideological tradi­ tions, or "traditions of thought," embody "a shared set of beliefe and values," ever changing with the times, but always involving "similar conceptions of man and the state, informed by shared moral or metaphysical beliefs, giving rise to a certain appropriate terminology." On this methodology, see Andrew

Introduction

7

Lockyer, "Traditions' as Context in the History ot Political Theory/' Political Studies 27 (June 1979): 202-3. 2. George Washington, "Farewell Address" [Sept. 19, 1796], quoted in Thomas G. Paterson, J. Garry Clifford, and Kenneth J. Hagan, American Foreign Relations: A History to 1920,5th ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000), 53. 3. The concept of "civic nationalism" is fully defined in Gary Gerstle, American Crucible: Race and Nation in the Twentieth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 3-9. 4. Such scholars as George Bancroft, George W. Curtis, David Starr Jordan, and Senator Albert Beveridge all lauded the early New Englanders as prophets of the republic. Curtis praised Puritanism as "the master influence of American civilization." Jordan, the president of Stanford University, believed that the Puritan conscience was "the most precious political heritage of the republic and the backbone of American culture." The educator asserted that every great advocate of liberty in the nation's past, with the exception of the Virginians Jefferson and Madison, were Puritan New Englanders. Beveridge, the prominent Progressive Era historian and politician, labeled Puritanism "the very breath of life" of the American republic. The Puritan, according to Beveridge, was the outstanding citizen of history, a man who had "obeyed a divine impulse to found the everlasting commonwealth of lib­ erty." Edward M. Bums, The American Idea of Mission: Concepts of National Purpose and Destiny (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1957), 4 9 ,5 1 ,5 5 . 5. Quoted from Daniel Walker Howe, The Political Culture cfthe American Whigs (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979), 228. 6. The concept is from Joan Hoff Wilson, Herbert Hoover: Forgotten Progressive (New York: HarperCollins, 1975), 174.

Education of a Senator

T

he Taft family of Ohio was already nationally promi­ nent when Robert Alphonso was bom on September 8, 1889. Alphonso Taft, Robert's grandfather, was a trans­ planted Yankee who had left his New England home for Cincinnati, Ohio, not long after graduation from Yale College. He became one of the Queen C ity's most respected lawyers and jurists by midcentury. One of the founders of the Republican Party in Ohio, he served with distinction in die cabinet of President Ulysses S. Grant and later as a diplomat in the 1880s. By then, four of his sons, Charles Phelps, W illiam Howard, Henry W aters, and Horace Dutton, had already embarked on successful careers in law, politics, business, and education, respectively. William H. Taft was a leading reformer during a period that historians usually label the "Progressive Era" in U.S. history. First as secretary of war, then as president, he was a progressive who sought to channel and reform the rapid industrialization already w ell under way by the turn of the century, who sought to reestablish the primacy of public institutions over private ones through the mech­ anism of law, and who was an advocate of a highly legal­ istic strain of political thought. The elder Taft blended pro­ gressive reform ism , especially a keen desire to join Theodore Roosevelt in his effort to reassert public author­ ity over the large private corporations of that era, w ith a conservatism that sought to preserve the U.S. Constitution, liberty under die law, and representative government. Because he believed that social problems resulted from the failures of individuals, not organizational structures, Taft blamed individual industrialists, not the modem business corporation, for the abuses of the business system. He embraced the modem corporation, a combination created 9

10

Robert A . Taft

to accumulate the funds of numerous investors, as an efficient mech­ anism for the use of wealth as capital, and therefore, as an instrument of social progress. In the first eight years of the twentieth century, W illiam H. Taft labored under the leadership of Theodore Roosevelt to adm inister effectively the modernizing U.S. m ilitary establish­ ment and the new colonial empire it had acquired in 1898, as w ell as promote public-interest reforms. Then, as president, Taft furthered Roosevelt's reform agenda with the vigorous prosecution of trusts, extension of federal adm inistrative authority over the railroads, expansion of the national forest preserves, advocacy of the eighthour workday for laborers on government contract projects, and the support of federal mine safety legislation. But Roosevelt's belief in the sweeping use of executive author­ ity had disturbed Taft. The former judge insisted that Americans m ust "w ork out our problems on the basis of law ."1 An opponent of the excessive use of executive power as w ell as the movement for direct democracy so passionately espoused by Theodore Roosevelt, President Taft dedicated him self to the preservation of the Constitution, protection of the status and prerogatives of the judici­ ary, and defense of individual liberty and the rights of private prop­ erty. W hen Roosevelt unsuccessfully challenged Taft for the Republican presidential nom ination in 1912, the incum bent presi­ dent dug in his heels. "If I were nom inated, even though I were to go down to defeat, I should be on a conservative platform and rally the conservative forces in this country and keep them in a nucleus of party strength, so that after four years the party could gather itself together and probably reestablish itself in control."2 Democrat Woodrow W ilson defeated both Taft and Roosevelt in 1912, but war in Europe intervened, forcing Taft and other conservative Republicans to w ait eight long years before they could recapture the W hite House. It was this conservative reform tradition that the president's son Robert A. Taft inherited. Senator Taft was also a conservative who sought to restore stability to a nation reconfigured by reform. Although he rose to national prominence at a very different point in the nation's history, Senator Taft sought to cap a long period of reformism and help reestablish an equilibrium of social forces. Stability, for the senator, did not mean stagnation. From the mid1930s, he embraced a dynamic conception of market-oriented eco­ nomics that guaranteed opportunities for technological innovation, entrepreneurship, and gradual social change. Taft sought to reestab­ lish the primacy of the individual, especially in economic life, libérât-

Education o f a Senator

11

Robert A. Taft, The Taft School, Class of 1906. (Courtesy of The Taft School, W atertown, Conn.)

ing the entrepreneur from the institutional shackles not m erely of governm ental bureaucracy, b ut of entrenched corp orate interests. F or Üıe senator, it w as the individual inventor and entrepreneur, not m od­ em corp orate m anagers, w ho w ere the p rim ary instrum ents of social progress.

12

Robert A . Taft

Father and Son The Tafts were undoubtedly influenced by the "New England Way," the dominant cultural tradition of the region. According to this Puritan tradition, economic success, intellectual achievements, cul­ tural distinction, ethical purity, and religious piety all marked persons for sainthood. Thus, New Englanders did not merely celebrate indi­ vidual accomplishments, but disciplined and channeled that achieve­ ment. In this tradition, the "truly conscientious individual" combined all these elements, in rough equilibrium, to follow a principled approach to life. New Englanders had "an obligation—not just the option—to cultivate and develop their physical, intellectual, aesthetic, and moral faculties. Importantly, the obligation extends to helping others to do the sam e."3 These obligations shaped the Tafts. The political and economic thought of both Will Taft and his son Robert centered on individual liberty, economic opportunity to succeed in enterprise, and equal jus­ tice under the law. Clearly stated in the writings of both was the emphasis on the compelling need for a man to develop his faculties to their fullest potential, and the duty of society to foster such develop­ ment. This cultural tradition explains much of their thinking about the freedom of the individual, whether entrepreneurial or intellectual, and their view of government's role in regulating and promoting enterprise. This compelling need to promote excellence, this forceful legacy of New England, was the motor that propelled the Taft men forward in life. Possibly the most important concrete example of this heritage for the Taft men was the life of Alphonso Taft, the first member of the New England family to settle along the Ohio River. The elder Taft, an 1833 graduate of Yale College, embodied the work ethic that charac­ terized the stem Yankee settler on the frontier and became a success­ ful Cincinnati lawyer by the 1840s. Not surprisingly, Alphonso Taft, a vigorous proponent of American Whiggery, accepted the "free soil, free labor" tenets of the Republican Party in the 1850s. He succeeded in both the law and politics during the 1860s and eventually assumed positions on the bench, in the cabinet of President Ulysses S. Grant, and in the diplomatic corps. The New England cultural heritage, with its emphasis on self­ development, shaped Alphonso's personal religious views. He aban­ doned the Baptist tradition of his forefathers for Unitarianism as a young man, joined the Western Unitarian Conference Church, and sent his boys to its Sunday school each week. Taft's views of personal

The Taft Family, 1909: Charles Phelps n , William H ow ard, Helen, Helen ("N ellie") Herron (seated), and Robert Alphonso. (Courtesy of the H arry S. Truman Library.)

14

Robert A . Taft

achievement fit nicely with the Unitarian worldview. Antebellum Unitarians believed that the faculties of a human being needed devel­ opm ent more than control. U nitarians such as W illiam Ellery Charming taught that God endowed all humans with the power of self-im provem ent die power to determine and form themselves. Charming's "self-culture" emphasized the simultaneous development of all the principles of human nature. The moral, religious, intellectual, social, practical, aesthetic, and even self-expressive senses needed to be perfected in order to attain die complete self.4 It was die embrace of self-culture, the desire to facilitate self-development among others, and, by extension, the desire to emphasize and promote individual economic achievement that underlay the Tafts' social thought and dis­ tinguished their contributions to the modem American discourse on civilization. The Taft m en's keen desire for self-improvement led them to excel in academics, in the law, and in politics. The two generations who fol­ lowed Alphonso to Yale College stood out in its keenly competitive world of academics. Despite considerable criticism for procrastina­ tion, William Howard Taft accomplished much at Yale College, where prize competitions in a wide variety of academic subjects channeled his energies. He earned high marks and graduated as the class salutatorian. Along the way, he garnered a junior year mathematics prize, then received several senior year composition prizes. In his only excursion into college politics, he campaigned for, but just barely won, election as class orator in his junior year. Robert's experience mirrored that of his father. The younger Taft, who possessed a highly ordered mind, an amazing memory, and great facility with statistics, was truly a standout in a classical liberal arts setting. He completed the preparatory phase of his education at the Taft School in Watertown, Connecticut, where he studied from 1903 to 1906 under the supervision of his uncle Horace D. Taft with the highest marks in his class. At Yale, Robert won several prizes, received "brightest" and "m ost scholarly" honors, and ended four years of intense "grind" as class valedictorian. When he moved on to Harvard Law School, Robert achieved the highest marks of any stu­ dent in the previous fifteen years, collecting the award as "m ost prom ising." The faculty named him editor of the Law Review for his senior year.5 In stem patriarchal fashion, Taft men guided their sons' careers with a strong hand. In the case of William Howard, there was no alter­ native to the profession of law. "I am glad," Alphonso Taft declared, "that Will is going to work at the law with all his might. That is his

Education o f a Senator

15

destiny, and he should be in it."6 Robert followed his father, uncles, and grandfather, allowing Will Taft considerable control over his future. Robert's younger brother, Charles R Taft n , traveled a sim ilar path to Yale College and, after m ilitary service in the Great War, Yale Law School; their sister Helen Taft pursued an academic career, grad* uating from Bryn Mawr College and receiving her Ph.D. degree in history from Yale University. With W ill's approval, Robert passed on the opportunity to clerk for Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes in order to establish him self in private practice. The son desired to return to Cincinnati, to start his career immediately, and to be married. Will Taft encouraged him in all these endeavors. The former pres­ ident was delighted that his son was returning to the Queen City on die Ohio River, advising him to begin learning the Ohio Code and the procedures of the local and state courts. To that end, Will Taft secured his son a position in the law firm of Lawrence Maxwell Jr., the former U.S. solicitor general in the Cleveland administration. W ill Taft then arranged for Robert to live with his uncle Charles P. Taft I, a former congressman who had turned a small real estate fortune into a farflung business empire with major holdings in publishing and ranch­ ing. Will Taft's actions also brought Robert into contact with his future wife. Indeed, the major event shaping Robert's life before die out­ break of the Great War was not die start of his private law practice, but his October 1914 marriage to Martha W heaton Bowers, daughter of the late Lloyd Bowers, solicitor general in the Taft administration. Martha was an attractive, cultured young woman who had studied in Paris at the Sorbonne. It was there that she caught the eye of a young New York lawyer, John Foster Dulles. Having turned down a pro­ posal of marriage from Dulles, she was available when Robert became interested in early 1912. The elder Taft believed it was the per­ fect union. The Tafts settied into a life of privilege in Cincinnati. Over die next decade, they had four sons: William Howard HI (b. 1915), Robert Jr. (1917), Lloyd (1923), and H orace (1925). Before moving to Washington, D.C., during the war, Robert purchased an old farmstead on Indian H ill, an outlying neighborhood of Cincinnati. After the war, the family moved to "Sky Farm ," a property it still maintains. Although M artha's inheritance allowed them to live comfortably, Robert's new career lacked fulfillment. Embarrassed to be working without salary and disgusted by M axwell's inattention to his profes­ sional development, Robert languished in his first job. The closest he came to significant legal work was researching the occasional foot­ note for M axwell's brief in the pivotal U.S. v. National Cash Register

16

Robert A . Taft

antitrust case. At no other time in his life did Robert's considerable intellectual abilities and enormous capacity for work remain so underutilized. Robert even considered a May 1914 offer to join a firm of prominent Jewish lawyers in Cincinnati/ but was dissuaded by his father. Even if he received plenty of work from Jew ish clients, die for­ mer president reminded his son, it was doubtful that such a firm "stands high enough, or that the kind of business they do is what you would like."7 War came just in time.

Serving with Hoover During the first two years of the Great War, Robert saw little reason for die European conflict. Like his father, he was not eager for America to join the Allies. Like most Republicans, he supported mobilization policies that would prepare the U.S. army for any future contingencies. With Lawrence Maxwell in the lead, Taft and other Cincinnati lawyers marched with representatives of other key profes­ sions and businesses in that city's mammoth 1916 Preparedness Day parade. But lacking any long-standing family tradition of active mili­ tary service, Robert refrained from volunteering for officer's training camps or active duty in die army or marines. Germany's resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare in die North Atlantic in early 1917 changed all that. Robert agreed w ith his father, President Woodrow W ilson, and others who argued that the U-boat campaign defied international law and that Germany should be punished. He joined members of the Cincinnati Yale Club who petitioned die W hite House to "defend our national honor and die rights of our citizens upon the high seas." The club called for a "highly increased standing Arm y" and a "per­ manent and democratic system of defense, based upon Universal M ilitary Training and service under direct and exclusive federal con­ trol."8 When war came in April 1917, Robert was "tw enty-seven years old, six feet tall, 165 pounds, in vigorous health."9 With others, he vol­ unteered for duty in the army and endured the mandatory physical examination. Robert, like family friend John Foster Dulles, was barred from m ilitary service because of poor eyesight. With no legitimate grounds for appeal, Robert resigned him self to civilian war work, then watched his athletic younger brother, Charles, depart for duty with the army artillery. Taft offered his services to Herbert C. Hoover, the newly appointed director of the U.S. Food Administration. Hoover, a Stanford-educated

Education cif a Senator

1.

Robert A. Taft as assistant counsel of the U.S. Food Adm inistration during World Wai I. (Courtesy of the H oover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace.)

m ining engineer, international business consultant, and m ultim illion­ aire, had becom e an expert on agricultural econom ics and international trade. A fter he directed efforts to transport A m ericans ou t of the w ai zone in 1914, H oover assum ed the far m ore difficult task of adm inister­ ing the Com m ittee for the Relief of Belgium , w hich furnished food sup­ plies for the occupied nation. H oover, know n to all w ho w orked foi him as "th e C hief," w as eagerly recruiting young college m en anc

18

Robert A . Taft

jumped at die chance to add Taft to his agency's Legal Division in Washington, D.C. Throughout the sixteen m onths he served in the Food Adm inistration's Legal Division, Taft handed down rulings, wrote legal opinions, and offered interpretations on the law—usually relat­ ing to tiie licensing of food processors and vendors. He even traveled in September 1917 to North Dakota to negotiate with that state's attor­ ney general, W illiam Langer, on the legalities of grain storage and pricing. When Legal Division personnel were shuffled in an early 1918 reorganization, Taft assumed greater responsibilities, allocating cases among the other assistant counsels. As the war dragged on, Hoover began to consult Taft on issues transcending routine divi­ sional matters. The young lawyer frequently drafted responses by "tiie Chief" to queries horn President W ilson and members of Congress, and composed a memorandum on presidential authority for his father, who was serving as co-chairman of the National War Labor Board. The young law yer's wartime service with Hoover became his first period of significant intellectual and professional growth. Work in Washington, D.C., taught important lessons. The daily grind of paperwork at the Food A dm inistration's offices ingrained in tiie young Taft an enduring hatred of the "red tape and delay and confusion" of bureaucratic life.10 Food relief work in Paris provided Taft w ith a much more valu­ able educational experience. In addition to serving as legal counsel for the American Relief Administration, the young lawyer lived with Hoover and other key staff members in tiie spacious mansion on Paris's Rue de Luebeck that served as tiie director's residence. It was here that Taft began to form his vision of Europe and to think through tiie ideas underpinning his father's support for an international "league of sovereign nations." From Hoover, he received lessons on the modem formulations of mercantilist economic thought, which would underlie Republican international economic policy during the decade of the 1920s and would shape Taft's future policy views. The first lesson was H oover's stance on the importance of the market in promoting economic recovery. In the war-tom nations of central and eastern Europe, Hoover wanted to remove or reduce government reg­ ulations "so that private trade can get started, and all the countries commence to export to pay for their food."11 The Paris experience also left Taft with lasting impressions of the great powers and European diplomacy. Taft claimed that "a strong im perialistic party" dominated each of the Allied governments, but especially the French and the Italian. The British leaders, he observed,

Education c f a Senator

19

"are terrifically afraid that they w ill lose some part of their trade supremacy." The government of Prime M inister David Lloyd George desired a treaty among the great powers "by which they could agree to run the whole world economically at least." The French, led by their army, had "im perialistic notions," administered their finances "a good deal like a com er grocery," and continually tried "to get small advantages of no real importance, especially in the way of credits & small gifts so to speak from the U .S." The Italians fared worst, in Taft's mind. "The general idea of all who come in contact with them ," he charged, "is that if they had food, ships & money they would be worse than the G erm ans."12 Taft further observed that "the old idea of spheres of influence, political and economic is still very much alive." As for reparations, the great powers wanted as much as they could get. "France wants at least the Saar valley & have a yearning for all of Germany west of the Rhine—they probably w ill get the Saar valley, although the population is German. Italy wants the whole Adriatic coast, & to hinder the Jugo-Slavs in every way."13 The young Taft fretted most over the fate of the proposed League of Nations. His father served on the board of the League to Enforce Peace, die principal organization advancing a "conservative interna­ tionalism " in America.14 To promote peace and stability worldwide, the former president advocated a postwar international order based on international law and the compulsory arbitration of disputes among nations; the elder Taft proposed that arbitration mechanisms be backed by a framework of collective security that allowed peaceful nations to impose coercive sanctions on aggressors. Neither Taft approved of W ilson's approach to collective security. The younger Taft believed Wilson "w ould accept almost anything if it was called a League of Nations, whether it had any force in it or not." He reported to his father that French Premier Georges Clemenceau reaffirmed the "balance of pow er" as a basis for international relations and rejected the league concept. Most upsetting to Robert Taft was the view of Secretary of State Robert Lansing, who thought American participa­ tion in a league organization to be unconstitutional, "a position which seems to m e," Taft observed, "as narrow and stupid as anything I know."15 Taft attributed much of the failure of Wilsonian diplomacy to Wilson. "The American Peace M ission is hopeless, and the President is undoubtedly to blam e," Taft informed his father, "first for appoint­ ing them, second, for neglecting them ." Young Taft, who claimed President Wilson neither outlined his views to nor consulted on pol­ icy with the American delegation, declared that the "result is they all

20

Robert A . Taft

work along in the dark, afraid to call their soul their ow n/' Evaluating the committee of specialists on diplomacy that the State Department had assembled, Robert Taft penned: "They have a corps of good experts, whose opinion seldom affects any final decision."16 Hoover was the only American in Paris to impress the young Taft. In a November 1920 letter to President-elect Warren G. Harding, Taft explained why Hoover would make an excellent choice for the cabinet: His greatest strength, to my mind, lies not so much in his organizing ability, as in his power of working out practical solutions for great problems in almost any field of activity. This accounts for his success in the business of large scale mining, in the Belgian relief, in the Food Administration, in the supplying of the Allies, and in the post­ war relief work. I do not believe there is any w ar record which could equal his in meeting and solving problems of a kind and on a scale not conceived of before.

Taft reassured Harding that Hoover was not a "W ilson type," but rattier flexible and open to compromise.17

Lawyer and Legislator Taft's success in the profession of law was much less spectacular than that of his father, the chief justice, but far more lucrative. Soon after returning to Cincinnati, Taft became co-founder of one of the preemi­ nent firm s in the dty, Taft, Stettinius & Hollister. Over the next two decades, Taft adroitly handled the restructuring of Cincinnati's numerous railroad terminals, secured the financing for the massive Cincinnati Terminal Building, and established the firm 's leading posi­ tion in southwestern Ohio in the underwriting of municipal bond issues. Throughout the 1920s, Robert continued as legal counsel for the far-flung business empire of his uncle Charles P. Taft I. This responsibility took him to board meetings in New York City, to the massive "Taft Ranch" in eastern Texas for cattle and cotton gin inspec­ tions, and to closings on numerous Cincinnati real estate deals. Like his father, Robert Taft found success in politics as well as in law. Both Taft men rose to prominence in the Republican Party, but by quite different paths. William Howard, the judicious one, secured one appointed position after another, merging law and politics. After establishing a national reputation as U.S. solicitor general in Benjamin Harrison's administration and on the Sixth Circuit Federal Court, W illiam Howard accepted President W illiam M cKinley's appoint­ ment to head the Second Philippine Commission, later serving as the first civil governor of the islands. President Roosevelt then appointed

Education c f a Senator

21

him secretary of war. Only in 1908/ in his first campaign for national office, did Will succeed to the presidency. In contrast, Robert followed a legislative path to partisan prominence. Robert carefully balanced a legal career with elective office, serving in the interwar years as state representative and state senator before campaigning successfully for the U.S. Senate in 1938. Taft, "w ho derived satisfaction from the legal niceties of legisla­ tive w ork," rose swiftly to prominence after 1921 in the Ohio House of Representatives.18 He threw him self into the revenue problems of the state, gained invaluable knowledge of fiscal matters, and began his career by offering new legislation to reform the state's tax system. Throughout his career as a state legislator he continued to seek inno­ vative ways to solve the state's problem of insufficient revenues. During his next two terms (1923-24,1925-26), Taft established a statesmanlike reputation for independence and integrity. He objected to the bill establishing Armistice Day as a state holiday, thereby angering the American Legion. In addition, he placed him self in the moderate camp on labor reform by supporting a constitutional amendment to ban child labor, in opposition to a large group of man­ ufacturers in the state. At some risk to his political future, he took on the powerful anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic Ku Klux Klan (KKK), sup­ porting an unsuccessful 1923 bill to force secret organizations to sub­ mit their membership lists to the state government. He then opposed a successful bill that would, if not for die governor's veto, have forced all public school teachers to begin class with a reading of scripture. Following in the footsteps of his grandfather Alphonso, whose judi­ cial ruling against compulsory Bible reading in the schools had reaf­ firmed the distinction between church and state, Taft criticized the measure as an infringement of the individual liberty so necessary in education for the development of a student's intellectual capacities. Even after these controversial stands, Taft, w ith four years of experi­ ence under his belt, cultivated the support of many conservatives and prohibitionists. With their help, he claimed first the majority leader­ ship, then, during a brief special session, the speaker's chair in the Ohio House. After six years in the state's lower house, Taft returned to his legal practice in 1926. Following a four-year hiatus, the young lawyer returned to the state capital as a member of the Ohio Senate. He served one two-year term at the beginning of the Great Depression, losing a reelection bid during the Roosevelt landslide of 1932. Although he established a reputation as a fiscal conservative because of his opposition to statesponsored unemployment insurance and state payments of old-age

22

Robert A . Taft

pensions, Taft also gained prominence as an innovator. As the down­ ward spiral of plant closings and layoffs continued and state relief obligations mounted in the early 1930s, Ohio approached a severe revenue crisis. Taft, who possessed an extensive knowledge of fiscal matters, crafted a partial solution. The 1932 Intangible Tax initiated taxation on such intangible assets as stocks, bonds, and trust funds, long exempt from the state's taxation on real property. It was a novel approach that eventually added revenue to the state's badly hemor­ rhaging budget.

Conservative Critic of the New Deal The election of Franklin D. Roosevelt and die rise of his liberal "New D eal" administration led Taft to a second period of intellectual and professional growth. In the mid-1930s, die young Ohioan made his mark as an insightful critic of die Roosevelt administration and a ris­ ing star in the Republican Party. In 1936 Ohio party leaders, seeking to maximize die state's leverage at die GOP's presidential nominating convention, decided to run Taft as a "favorite son" candidate. He then stepped onto die national political stage with a speech to New Hampshire women Republicans during the spring 1936 primary cam­ paign season. Taft enjoyed the increased notoriety afforded by the political spotlight, briefly entertained thoughts of securing the second spot on the national ticket, and welcomed the opportunity to attack die theories and policies of the New Deri. "The New D eri is largely revolutionary," Taft informed the Warren, Ohio, Chamber of Commerce in the spring of 1935.19 With those harsh words, Taft began his career as a formidable critic of Franklin Roosevelt's administration. He joined a cohort of conserva­ tives from both parties, the architects of the 1930s antistatism in America, who stood in opposition to the administration. Led by for­ mer president Hoover, American conservatives portrayed the New D eri as "revolutionary" and identified "sinister bureaucrats" and "starry-eyed professors" as the key actors in a liberal project to replace Am erica's government of laws with an arbitrary government of men, to substitute "totalitarian tyranny" for constitutional govern­ ment, and to undermine the free enterprise system with excessive governmental regulation.20 When no miraculous recovery occurred, conservatives began by criticizing the New D eri as a collection of dangerous experiments. They "accused the administration of using the American people as guinea pigs for the benefit of woolly-minded radicals in the presi-

Education c f a Senator

23

dent's brain trust."21 Later, conservatives portrayed the hallmark pro­ grams of Roosevelt's "First New D eal" as models of excessive and arbitrary government. The president's vanguard recovery programs— the National Recovery Administration (NRA) and the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA)—inaugurated administered mar­ kets in both the manufacturing and farm sectors. In industry, the pres­ ident called for cooperative action to set output levels or prices through an NRA-administered partnership of business, government, and organized labor. Similarly, in agriculture, die administration sought to raise prices through a variety of AAA schemes to contrive scarcity in the commodity markets. Far from being an advocate of laissez-faire, the Ohioan left no doubt that the federal government had to play a constructive role in promoting economic recovery. He lauded the innovative trickle-down approach pioneered by Hoover's administration as necessary to arrest the downward spiral of plant closings and layoffs, praising such capi­ tal loan programs as the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, the Farm Loan Boards, and the Home Owners' Loan Corporation. "I think no one can question the wisdom of the government loaning money to business and individuals to tide them over a depression," the future senator declared, "when the private machinery of lending broke down."22 The public loan corporations, according to Taft, carried many citizens through troubled times, barred further liquidation in an econ­ omy plagued by persistent deflation, and minimized many social prob­ lems in both m ill towns and farm counties. Taft also approved counter­ cyclical public works programs as proper government policy in a depression, while warning that pump-priming measures could bank­ rupt a nation if not properly managed. Taft retained the classical liberal belief in the self-correcting pow­ ers of markets. "Recovery is a good deal more likely to be secured," he asserted, "by leaving the patient to the convalescent processes of nature than it is by quack rem edies."23 In the opening months of Roosevelt's "Second New D eal," Taft proposed that the federal gov­ ernment do everything possible to promote private investment. Only through a revival of private capital markets could production and employment rebound. W hat distinguished Taft's prescription from that of many other conservatives was his emphasis on entrepreneurship. "1 believe that the best recovery policy," he contended, would be the "deliberate encouragement of business men to go into new business" and the "deliberate encouragement of people to save money and create new capital."24 Over the next decade, Taft elaborated this point, employing

24

Robert A . Ttft

the image of the entrepreneur and the language of the marketplace. To his 1936 New Hampshire Republican audience, he praised the "Am erican business system ," a dynamic form of capitalism that had rewarded outstanding men possessing the "qualities of industry, abil­ ity, intelligence and thrift." To Taft, those entrepreneurial attributes had been the key to die nation's economic and social progress over the previous century. That system may not have rewarded individu­ als justly in all cases, Taft admitted, but the impersonal allocation of rewards by market mechanisms was far superior to the distribution of incomes by "officials serving a partisan governm ent."25 To effect the much-needed private-sector convalescence, Taft pre­ scribed a strong dose of fiscal conservatism in the mid-1930s. He firm ly believed that only a stable fiscal environment could provide the conditions necessary for investm ent a balanced budget, a stable currency, and sound credit. It was the latter concern that sent Taft into action. As legal counsel for Cincinnati's Dixie Terminal Company, he brought suit against the federal government for the Treasury's refusal to honor its obligations. The celebrated "Gold Clause" cases stemmed from the Roosevelt adm inistration's abandonment of the interna­ tional gold standard in 1933. Following the adm inistration's lead, Congress repudiated the obligation to redeem federal contracts, espe­ cially bonds, in gold. After opponents of the move filed several suits in federal court, the Supreme Court narrowly ruled in favor of the government because holders of federal securities had demonstrated no financial loss. Taft was determined to show just such a loss. In March 1935, on behalf of the Dixie Company, he presented a $50 U.S. Treasury Bond, demanding either payment of the principal in gold or interest on the security until its 1938 maturity date. The Treasury refused to make either payment; Taft immediately filed suit, claiming the Dixie Company, the holder of the bond, had suffered financial loss on its investment. Unless the federal government honored its obligations, Taft charged, "the credit of the United States cannot long survive."26 He then took up the standard for other bondholders across the nation, counseling them to keep their securities and filing additional suits throughout 1935 and 1936. Undeterred by a federal court of claims ruling against him , Taft appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. He pre­ sented the oral arguments for the bondholders before the high court on November 18 and 19,1937. In December, the court ruled against him. Associate Justice Benjamin Cardozo, who narrowly crafted the majority opinion, declared that the original World War I Liberty Bonds authorized the U.S. government to redeem them before their

Education o f a Senator

25

maturity, that the federal government had issued valid call notices for the bonds, and that it was authorized to cease interest payments on those securities as of the call date. To fiscal conservatism, Taft added a dash of antiregulatory activism. He strongly believed that the regulatory measures promul­ gated by the New Deal bureaucracy in the 1930s were stifling busi­ ness expansion, especially new enterprise. These measures, he asserted, were intruding on management's decision-making in the workplace. To expand investment, the federal government had to offer an "increased assurance to individuals and business that they will not be subjected to governmental interference in the normal processes of business."27 Most of Taft's critique derived from H oover's well-publicized ideas. From his mentor, he took a deeply held aversion to government by bureaucracy. Never a simple-minded opponent of the exercise of federal authority, Taft disapproved of the intrusion of politically appointed federal bureaucrats in the activities of states, local munici­ palities, and individual citizens. He was most vociferous in his protests against the development of a body of administrative laws promulgated by New Deal agencies with little or no congressional oversight. In the economic realm, he opposed public enterprise and deficit spending, while clearly stating the broad areas in which the federal apparatus could act to facilitate private sector enterprise. In the political argument of the mid-1930s, Taft articulated four themes that would characterize his opposition to "N ew Dealism " for the rem ainder of his life. Three of those themes identified the targets of bureaucratic excess; the fourth clarified the methods at work. First, tiie New Deal had intervened to an unprecedented degree in the individual lives and business ventures of U.S. citizens. Second, the Roosevelt adm inistration had presided over a vast concentration of power in the federal government. Third, New Dealers had effected a centralization of power in the executive branch at the expense of the other branches. Taft's constitutionalism led him to a vigorous defense of the rights of states and local governments, as well as a strong desire to preserve the prerogatives of Congress and the fed­ eral judiciary. Finally, professors and bureaucrats in the host of New Deal agencies utilized adm inistrative law to carry out their New Deal "revolution," w ith little or no provision for substantive judicial review of their decisions. Taft charged that the Dem ocratic Party under Franklin D. Roosevelt was undermining the "Am erican Way of Life." The New Deal, with the excessive centralization of power in an ineffective,

26

Robert A . Taft

stifling bureaucracy, was destroying a way of life that had been erected over the preceding century on the nation's solid foundation of business, a marketplace system of incentives and rewards to individ­ ual Americans of outstanding industry, initiative, daring, and genius. That "Am erican Way of Life" depended on the principles of liberty, equal opportunity, and equal justice under law. For Taft, liberty meant not merely freedom from the excessive interference or coercion that governments or powerful organizations could wield, but also the freedom to determine one's own life and career, the opportunity to develop one's own potential to the fullest. It was this linkage of lib­ erty to the principle of opportunity, Taft believed, that most distin­ guished Republicans from the New Deal. Franklin Roosevelt had defined opportunity in terms of security, "a reasonable chance to improve your condition in life as you grow older; a practical assur­ ance against want and suffering in your old age."28 Unlike Roosevelt, Taft defined opportunity in the more ambitious sense of initiative and enterprise. Only through such opportunity, Taft theorized, could indi­ viduals develop their capacities, whether intellectual, scientific, or entrepreneurial, to the fullest. In sum, that "Am erican Way of Life," nurtured by Republican statesmen since Lincoln, was die aggregate product of individual endeavors across the nation that laid the foun­ dation for social progress. Not surprisingly, Taft viewed the Republican Party as the only political instrument that could reinvigorate that way of life and secure continued progress for America. For him, it was a moral obligation, an economic necessity, and a political duty to work within the Republican Party. Only it, not fite Democrats, could be trusted to reg­ ulate and reform that "Am erican system " of business and industry in accordance with the long-standing principles of liberty, equal oppor­ tunity, and equal justice under law. As a politician, not a public ser­ vant, Taft believed that it was necessary to operate within die politi­ cal system of a democracy to energize America. From die beginning of his political career in Cincinnati, Taft opted to work for gradual change within the Republican Party. His opposition to Roosevelt's New Deal reinforced his faith in the party system. He viewed the political process as the primary mechanism for accommodating the competing goals of individuals in die nation. From his father, Taft received a deep faith in politics as a mechanism to assist individuals in satisfying their personal desires and preferences. Taft's opposition to excessive bureaucracy, a line of argument well within the American tradition of antistatism , was developed within the larger mid-1930s conservative response to the New Deal.

Education a f a Senator

27

He seems to have followed the lead of his former mentor, Hoover, and former Treasury Secretary Ogden M ills. In particular, it was the cri­ tique of governmental "regim entation" in die rhetoric of Hoover and M ills, the principal Republican Party leaders in this conservative reac­ tion, that die young Taft adopted, then adapted. But Taft's great emphasis on traditional individualism distin­ guished his thinking from the associational views of the former pres­ ident. In The Challenge to Liberty, Hoover defended these associational endeavors: "The government through its constituted officials has co­ operated in furthering great social activities, by determining facts and by assisting organizations to make plans for social advancement, to create standards, to co-ordinate drought and stimulate effort."29 Central to H oover's associative state viewpoint was a deeply held belief in human cooperation. No civilization has hitherto ever seen such a growth of voluntary associative activities in every form of planning, co-ordination and cooperation of effort, the expression of free men. It comes naturally, since the whole system builded on Liberty is a stimulant to plan and progress. The unparalleled rise of die American man and woman was not alone the result of riches in lands, forests, or mines; it sprang from ideals and philosophic ideas out of which plans, and the exe­ cution of them, are stimulated by the forces of freedom.30

It is clear from Taft's 1936 appraisal of die NRA that he cared lit­ tle for die type of associational activities that characterized H oover's social thought. Taft emphatically declared that the "only defensible features of this program seem to me the abolition of child labor and the establishment of minimum wage scales, which might be done independently of N .R.A ."31 Taft strictly adhered to the tenets of the 1890 Sherman Anti-Trust Act, which forbade the "tru st" form of busi­ ness organization and all other commercial practices that unreason­ ably restrained trade. Similarly, he rejected the administration of prices by public or private agencies except in the chronically troubled natural resources sector. Here, most notably in the bituminous coal industry, he was willing to accept some price and output controls. Only with his promotion of farm cooperatives in the agricultural sec­ tor did Taft advocate the kind of associational activities urged by Hoover. In his refutation of the basic assumptions of the New Deal and in his disregard for the "new assodationalism ," Taft emphasized that the individual was the primary instrument for securing economic recov­ ery, sustainable economic growth, and social progress. This emphasis on entrepreneurial individualism distinguishes him from his old boss,

28

Robert A . Taft

placed him outside the m ainstream of corporate liberal thinking a t m idcentury, and provided one basis for the historical analysis of p ost-W orld W ar II conservative political-econom ic thought.

Election to the Senate A lthough his roles as corp orate law yer and conservative spokesm an had proven to be im m ensely rew arding, Taft felt unfulfilled as the D epression d ecad e d rew to a clo se. H e w an ted to ch am p ion R epublican principles of governm ent on a larger stage. H e thought, correctly, th at N ew D eal D em ocrats w ould be vulnerable given the persistence of the econom ic depression. So he decided to challenge O hio's incum bent U .S. Senator R obert Bulkley, w ho w as standing for reelection in N ovem ber 1938. Taft brought m any assets to the 1938 senatorial cam paign. H e assem bled a strong team of political organizers and fundraisers, led by his cousin D avid S. Ingalls, an affable w ar hero w ho had served as assistant secretary of the n avy in the 1920s. D esperate to turn back R oosevelt's N ew D eal, O hio's industrial and financial elite, especially

The Taft Family, 1938: Robert Jr., William Howard HI, Lloyd Bowers, and H orace Dwight, standing; Robert and M artha, seated. (Courtesy of the Cincinnati H istorical Society.)

Education o f a Senator

29

Cincinnati's wealthy fam ilies, opened their w allets for the wellknown Republican law yer-legislator. The Taft team spent over $100,000, an almost unthinkable sum for Depression-era politics, in die successful primary campaign against Judge Arthur Day of the Ohio Supreme Court. In the three-month general election campaign they spent more than $50,000 to defeat the incumbent Bulkley. O hio's journalists also flocked to the Taft banner. Both major Cincinnati newspapers, the Enquirer and the Taft-owned Times-Star, helped solidify his hold on Hamilton County; die Cleveland News and the Dayton Journal joined the principal Knight family paper, the Akron Beacon-Journal, and Paul Block's Toledo Blade in endorsements of Taft's candidacy in those key industrial centers. Among major Ohio news­ papers only the Columbus Dispatch, committed to Judge Day in the primary campaign, withheld support. Perhaps Taft's most valuable political asset was his w ife, Martha. A former officeholder in die national organization of the League of Women Voters, she was no stranger to the most salient political issues of the decade. But more importantly, she was a tireless public speaker who traveled the state on behalf of her husband, utilizing her sharp w it to slice up FDR and the New Deal. It was M artha, not her husband, who was the natural campaigner in the nitty-gritty of Midwestern political culture. In Am erica's heartland, Taft's greatest personal attribute, his growing image as a "m an of integrity," a "statesm an" among mere politicians, was also one of his greatest liabilities. Much of this image resulted from his family background, his upper-class privileged upbringing, and his success at the practice of corporate law. But it also resulted from his early training. Taft's classical education at prepara­ tory school and Yale College led him to take a debating society approach to political campaigning. His "respectable and dignified" demeanor, more befitting a statesman than a stump campaigner, was hardly an effective image for vote-getting at the town halls and county fairs of the Buckeye State. It also affected his public speaking. Taft prepared his speeches with the aim of marshaling the facts, per­ suading the audience, and, thereby, winning the contest. But he often bowled over audiences with mountains of statistics, offering voters a dizzying array of facts and figures on such issues as the persistence of high unemployment and low industrial output, all with the aim of demonstrating the New D eal's failure to jum pstart an ailing economy. Neither college nor law school prepared Taft for the stump speech. "W hile I have no difficulty in talking," Taft informed his father early in his career as a state legislator, "I don't know how to do any of the

30

Robert A . Tafi

eloquence business which makes for applause. It is more like a rather dull argument in court."32 Throughout his career he never mastered that great American tradition, political oratory, with its effective use of humor, metaphor, image, "die alliterative phrase, the clever anal­ ogy, die literary allusion, or the pounding clim ax."33 Nevertheless, Taft won in November 1938. Although he lost in die heavily Democratic urban centers of northeast Ohio, the Republican candidate bested his opponent in the remaining industrialized coun­ ties of the state. The rural counties voted predominantiy for die Grand Old Party, adding to his toll. He finished with 54 percent of die total ballots cast, winning the race against Bulkley with a plurality of 170,597 votes. Taft even outpolled die head of the Ohio Republican ticket, the very popular John Bricker, who won the gubernatorial race that year. By 1938, Taft had fashioned a conservative critique of die New Deal that blended restraints on spending and bureaucratic govern­ ment w ith a neo-Whig emphasis of the facilitation of entrepreneurial enterprise as the key to economic recovery and growth. From his father, Will Taft, die senator inherited a constitutionalism that set lim­ its on executive authority in both die domestic and foreign policy realms. Similarly, he inherited his father's sense of economy when spending from the public purse. From his mentor, Herbert Hoover, the senator took an abiding hatred of both expansive bureaucracy and regulatory activism. The Great Depression forced Taft to apply his party's political traditions to the nation's most extreme economic crisis. He never abandoned the century-old Whig and Republican tradition of tariff protection as the principal federal mechanism for promoting national economic growth. Once the economy collapsed, Taft approved of H oover's trickle-down infusion of public capital into the investment system through the Reconstruction Finance Corporation. In the mid1930s, Taft interpreted the prolonged downturn as a result of the New D eal's obstruction of a traditional investm ent-driven recovery. Following Republican traditions, he advocated federal policies that promoted entrepreneurship, private investment, and the expansion of private rather than public sector enterprise. Although he accurately criticized many of the New D eal's excesses, Taft never acknowledged that even H oover's most innova­ tive prescription for the economy was inadequate. Trickle-down eco­ nomics merely tackled an enormously complex socioeconomic prob­ lem with a simple, supply-side solution—infusing a new wave of investment capital into U.S. banks and corporations. Taft refused to

Education c f a Senator

31

recognize that the public sector had a much greater role to play in resolving the crisis.

Notes 1. William Howard Taft, quoted in Mark C. Cames and John A. Garraty, American Destiny: Narrative of a Nation, 2 vols. (New York: Longman, 2003), 2:731. 2. William H. Taft, quoted in David Potash, 'Topular Government: Commentary," in The Collected Works of William Howard Taft, 8 vols. (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2001- ), 5:8. 3. J. David Greenstone, The Lincoln Persuasion: Remaking American Liberalism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), quoted material at 32 and 59. 4. Daniel Walker Howe, Making the American Self: Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997), 131-35. 5. James T. Patterson, Mr. Republican: A Biography c f Robert A. Tift (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1972), 26-55. 6. Alphonso Taft to Charles P. Taft I, Feb. 1,1883, William Howard Taft Papers, Library of Congress, quoted in Henry F. Pringle, The Life and Times i f William Howard Taft: A Biography, 2 vols. (New York: Farrar & Rinehart, 1939), 1:32. 7. William H. Taft to Robert Taft (hereafter abbreviated RT), May 31, 1914, in The Papers of Robert A. Tift, Clarence E. Wunderlin Jr., ed., 4 vols. (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1997-2005), 1:64. Hereafter cited as Papers of RAT. 8. Resolution quoted in Patterson, Mr. Republican, 70. 9. Patterson, Mr. Republican, 70. 10. Ibid., 72. 11. RT to William H. Taft, Jan. 5,1919, in Papers of RAT, 1:173. 12. RT to William H. Taft, Dec. 4,1918, Jan. 5,1919, and Mar. 30,1919, in Papers of RAT, 1:165-66,171,193-94. 13. RT to William H. Taft, Dec. 4,1918, and Jan. 5,1919, in Papers of RAT, 1:165,171. 14. The concept of "conservative internationalism" is from Thomas J. Knock, To End All Wars: Woodrow Wilson and the Quest for a New World Order (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 56. (Original publication New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.) 15. RT to William H. Taft, Jan. 5,1919, in Papers of RAT, 1:171. 16. RT to William H. Taft, Mar. 30,1919, in Papers of RAT, 1:192. 17. RT to Warren G. Harding, Nov. 27,1920, in Papers cfRAT, 1:256-57. 18. Quoted in Patterson, Mr. Republican, 160. 19. RT Speech, "The New Deal: Recovery, Reform, and Revolution" [Apr. 9,1935], in Papers of RAT, 1:483. 20. Quoted from Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., The Coming c f the New Deal (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1959), 474-77. 21. Quoted from James Holt, "The New Deal and the Anti-Statist Tradition," in John Braeman, Robert H. Bremner, and David Brody, eds., The New Deal, 2 vols. (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1975), 29. 22. RT Speech, "The New Deal: Recovery, Reform, and Revolution," in Papers cfRAT, 1:486.

32

Robert A . Taft

23. Ibid. 24. Ibid., 1:487. 25. KT Speech, Women's Republican Club of New Hampshire, in Papers of RAT, 1:507. 26. Quoted in Patterson, Mr. Republican, 153. 27. RT Speech, "The New Deal: Recovery, Reform, and Revolution," in Papers of RAT, 1:487. 28. F. D. Roosevelt, Speech to Young Democrats of Baltimore, Maryland, Apr. 13,1936, quoted by RT in Papers of RAT, 1:506. 29. Herbert Hoover, The Challenge to Liberty (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1934), quote on 109-10. 30. Hoover, Challenge to Liberty, quote on 110. Hoover's conception of cooperation and progress seems to place him among those philosophical pragmatists who embraced the notion of a "social self," a self constructed not in isolation, but by assodational activities within a web of modem social institutions. On pragmatism and the notion of a "social self," see James Livingston, Pragmatism and the Political Economy of Cultural Revolution, 1850-1940 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994), esp. 66-77. 31. RT Speech, "The New Deal: Recovery, Reform, and Revolution," in Papers of RAT, 1:484. In April 1936, Taft endorsed a child labor amendment to the U.S. Constitution, "as an effective means of abolishing once and for all child labor where it still exists." Ibid., 1:508. 32. RT to William H. Taft, Oct. 21, 1922, quoted in Patterson, Mr. Republican, 95. 33. Quoted horn Patterson, Mr. Republican, 166-67.

The Fight Against Intervention fter joining the U.S. Senate in January 1939, Robert A. Taft quickly emerged as one of the most ardent critics of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration. Taft continually upbraided the Democratic Roosevelt and his lieutenants during the three years before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The Ohio Republican deprecated both the domestic policies of the languishing New Deal and tiie adm inistration's increasingly interventionist foreign policies. Clarifying his anti-interventionist stance to a wealthy industrialist near the end of World War II, Taft explained that, as fascism spread across Europe, he had been guided by three basic principles: "first, that we should stay out of the war unless attacked; second, that we should build up our defense to meet any possible threat of attack; third, that we should aid Britain as much as possible, con­ sistent w ith the policy of staying out of the w ar."1 After the fall of France in mid-1940, the senator, obviously influenced by his experiences during the World War I-era prepared­ ness debates and homefront mobilization, attacked what he perceived as Roosevelt's negligence in not pursuing a coherent, integrated defense mobilization policy.

A

Neutrality Revised When he joined the U.S. Senate in January 1939, Taft thor­ oughly supported the existing neutrality laws. Am erica's neutrality legislation was a bundle of statutes and congres­ sional resolutions initially prompted by the Italian threat to Ethiopia. The Neutrality Act of 1935 imposed a mandatory arm s em bargo on all belligerents once the president declared that a state of war existed and gave the chief exec­ utive authority to forbid passage of U.S. citizens, except at 33

34

Robert A . Taft

their own risk, on belligerent vessels. The 1936 law banned loans to any belligerent nation. A January 1937 joint resolution embargoed shipments to the opposing forces in the Spanish Civil War, technically an internal conflict not provided for in the original neutrality legisla­ tion. In May 1937, a new act authorized President Roosevelt to list commodities other than munitions that belligerents could purchase and transport on their own vessels (the famous "cash and carry" pro­ vision) and strictly forbade travel by U.S. citizens on vessels of war­ ring nations. The 1937 law attempted to create a two-year legal framework for neutrality, augmenting the munitions embargo clause w ith the "cash and carry" commercial system and preventing U.S. merchant ships from going in harm 's way. "Cash and carry" neutrality, however, favored those powers with naval mastery on the high seas. The limi­ tations of the neutrality framework became painfully obvious in the Far East, where Japan achieved dominance through a systematic cam­ paign of aggression. When, by the spring of 1939, the Munich settle­ ment had disintegrated in the wake of Germany's invasion of Czechoslovakia, the Spanish Republic had fallen after the Fascists' capture of Madrid, the Italian state had scored another im perialist success with the seizure of Albania, and the Japanese absorption of tiie Spratly Islands threatened the Philippines, President Roosevelt desired a more flexible neutrality law. The president preferred repeal of the arms embargo provision if he could not obtain a law that would allow a chief executive to discriminate between aggressor and victim. Thus, he pressured Democratic leaders in Congress to revise the acts. Taft was anxious to preserve the Neutrality Acts in the spring of 1939. Anti-interventionists sprang to the defense of "cash and carry" neutrality when the Senate Foreign Relations Committee decided to hold hearings on its extension. After the Roosevelt adm inistration arranged for prominent women interventionists to testify, Senator Gerald P. Nye (R-N.D.), leader of the anti-interventionist opposition in the Senate, and Dorothy Detzer, a pacificist who served as execu­ tive secretary of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, persuaded Taft to invite his sister, Helen Taft Manning, pro­ fessor of diplomatic history at Bryn Mawr College, to help mount a rebuttal. In her April 1939 testimony, Professor Manning urged Congress to pass Senator N ye's resolution, a measure that would have retained the arms embargo and "cash and carry" provisions while augmenting congressional oversight powers and restricting presidential authority. The anti-interventionist arguments carried great weight, forcing the Roosevelt administration to avoid an out­

The Fight Against Intervention

35

right confrontation. The committee took no action and "cash and carry" expired in May 1939. War in Europe triggered a new debate over neutrality law revi­ sion. At dawn on September 1 ,1939, German troops stormed across die border of Poland while Luftwade bombers began an unprece­ dented aerial bombardment of that nation's ancient cities. Two days later. Great Britain and France, bound by treaty to the defense of Poland, declared war on the invading nation. In the United States, President Roosevelt, forced into invoking the Neutrality Acts because of the existence of a "state of w ar" in Europe, swiftly sought an alter­ native to an arms embargo that prohibited deliveries of much-needed munitions to Am erica's traditional allies. By the end of September Senator Key Pittm an (D-Nev.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, had introduced a resolution to abolish the arms embargo, reinstate "cash and carry," and dram atically restrict the movements of U.S. merchant shipping. Senator Taft agreed with the president that the arms embargo should be repealed, on condition that "cash and carry" be reinstated. "I see nothing unneutral in the shipment of munitions of w ar," he lec­ tured an audience in Minneapolis, "to any nation which comes and gets them ." The fact that "cash and carry" neutrality favored the British, whose Royal Navy dominated the sea lanes, and their French allies did not "m ake it less neutral," according to the senator. He asserted, unconvincingly, that if the United States did not sell muni­ tions to the Allies, some other nation would provide them.2 The senator's main concern was the preservation of strict legal neutrality. To his way of thinking, Roosevelt's desire to draw moral distinctions between aggressor and victim posed the greatest threat to Am erica's strict neutralism. In the debate over revision, therefore, he opposed any new law that might "give discretion to any official of the government to favor one nation over other nations, or to impose embargoes against aggressors, or against those whom we dislike." Any revision that recognized those distinctions, the senator declared, "would be a departure from neutrality," would turn the United States into a propaganda agency for the Allies, and would lead the nation toward eventuell intervention in the war.3 Taft feared U.S. intervention on the side of the Allies and vigor­ ously countered the four principal arguments for it. He reminded interventionists who believed America could not escape war that the nation possessed a 150-year-old tradition of remaining neutral in European wars; to those who cast the war as a defense of democracy against dictatorship, Taft asserted that the "actual result" of World

36

Robert A . Tafl

War I "destroyed more democracies and set up more dictatorships" than at any time in recent history; to those who cried that a victorious Germany could threaten the United States, die senator countered by stressing that both a strict neutrality and a formidable continental defense would keep America secure; similarly, to those international­ ists who claimed that German hegemony would undermine U.S. trade overseas, he declared that war rarely altered long-term com­ mercial relationships that were based on needs and preferences.4 Neutrality touched Americans like no other issue that year. During early autumn, citizens across the nation flooded the offices of congressmen and senators with letters and telegrams. Taft's secre­ taries spent several weeks replying to some 40,000 correspondents from Ohio, sending each a form letter explaining the senator's stance on revision, and forwarding copies of his speeches to select con­ stituents. Although a minority criticized him sharply, most Americans concurred with the senator's anti-interventionist posture.

Prosperity and Protection Taft came to Washington w ith the twin goals of promoting prosperity and protecting American jobs. He firm ly believed that these goals could only be achieved through the promotion of private enterprise, not public works projects. Taft maintained that the welfare of America was threatened by "the fallacy that prosperity can be restored by increased government spending and deficits" and argued that deficit spending was a vain, dangerous, and immoral theory. It was "utterly vain" because it had no chance of succeeding. To prove his point, Taft referred to the successful recovery from the 1930s depression in England, where budgets were balanced, and to numerous prior eco­ nomic upturns in U.S. history as proof that conservative restraint was the proper path to prosperity. According to the spending theory that Taft so loudly denounced, if government loses money, "it contributes to prosperity." New Dealers increasingly referred to deficit spending as "investm ent by the governm ent," Taft declared. But if these expen­ ditures were truly investments, why not provide the incentives for private individuals to make diem? But such government initiatives as Florida ship canals and "Passamaquoddy tide-ham essing projects" failed Taft's test for true investment because they were "not likely to earn any return." Public works projects were actually dangerous, the senator opined, because they discouraged "m any tim es" die identical amount of private investment that could be made in the same indus­ try, "for no one wants to be in an industry where government is a

The Fight Against Intervention

37

competitor." Deficits and debt were also dangerous because of the inflationary pressures that built up in the economy, destabilizing the balance between price and wage levels. Possibly most disturbing to Taft was the immorality of the spending theory. The grandson of New Englanders clearly perceived deficit spending as a profound moral problem because he felt that Americans "cannot live beyond our m eans" and that spending "deludes the people into thinking they can get something for nothing."5 In the spring of 1939 Taft engaged Representative T. V. Sm ith, a New Deal Democrat from Illinois, in a series of radio debates. During their exchange on economic policy, Taft presented his assessment of the 1937-38 "Roosevelt Recession," a significant reversal in the nation's economic recovery. Incensed by the New Deal view that the recession had resulted from a cutback in federal spending, Taft claimed that just the opposite had occurred. The recession, according to the new senator, began in the midsummer of 1937 after a year in which spending reached an "all-tim e high" and the deficit amounted to approximately $3 billion.6 Taft's alternative explanation emphasized production rather than consumption. The senator argued that a collapse of investment in the capital goods sector triggered the recession. According to this expla­ nation, the recession resulted "from Government interference, the lack of saving, and the unwillingness of individuals to invest in per­ manent things." Taft argued that the recession "first appeared in the capital goods industries." Utilization of capacity in the steel industry fell from 100 percent to 20 percent in a mere six months. "H ardly a domestic order was given for machinery," claimed the senator. The slack in the pivotal capital goods sector had resulted from a wide­ spread refusal of industry to invest in a new plant. On one hand, Taft contended, rising taxes, increased wages, and regulatory interference forced many industrialists to postpone much-needed investments; but, on tite other hand, a lack of savings nationwide limited the liquid capital available to fund plant expansion. Taft believed that public investment was crowding out private investment, explaining that the $3 billion saved by citizens in 1937 went primarily into federal gov­ ernment securities and municipal bond issues, rather than private sector securities.7 "W hat happened is quite clear," charged the senator. Railroads were the prim ary victim of federal intervention in 1937. The Roosevelt adm inistration pushed up taxes, supported higher wage levels, and instituted other policies that forced up costs for the roads. Railroads had no capital funds available for replacements or even

38

Robert A . Taft

ordinary maintenance. These corporations could not take their usual 20 p erçoit of the nation's steel production. Second on the New Deal target list, according to Taft, were the utilities. Federal regulations had driven up utility costs while maintaining rates at previous levels. In addition, the threat of competition from public enterprise diminished the desire for plant expansion on the part of utility managers. Firms in core manufacturing industries had few incentives to invest capital funds and expand production at higher costs because they feared that government interference would prevent them from raising prices and recovering higher costs. The rising unemployment in the key capital goods sector—"industries which make things that go into permanent structures"—sent waves rippling throughout the economy. The downturn reduced purchasing power across the economy "until the same condition was reflected in all other industries in the United States."8 Taft's concern for prosperity at home also led him to criticize the Roosevelt adm inistration's trade policies. He disparaged the notion that the adm inistration's liberal internationalism could provide the secure commercial conditions necessary to promote prosperity glob­ ally. The midcentury doctrine of liberal internationalism hinged on a conception of integrated world markets, a program of reciprocal tar­ iff reductions articulated by Secretary of State Cordell Hull, a devout free-trade advocate, and a set of schemes for the multilateral manage­ ment of trade, money, and lending. Taft branded this internationalism as nothing more than free-trade dogma. He rejected the fundamental propositions of free traders that resources were utilized most effi­ ciently in a fully integrated globed economy without barriers, and that this free interaction of national interests fostered peace among nations. Placing national development above all else, Taft asserted that free trade would have impeded, not fostered, development of the "Am erican system " with its high levels of production, employment, and consumption. Indeed, the great achievement of the Republican Party since the Civil War era had been the protection of the nation's industrial base and, thus, the preservation of its high-wage economy and high standard of living. The neom ercantilist tradition of the nineteenth-century W higs and Republicans had emphasized economic development with the twin goals of national independence and self-sufficiency. To achieve those goals, neom ercantilists followed a variety of schem es, includ­ ing high tariffs or restrictive quotas (usually on m anufactures), infra­ structure development, underwriting new enterprise with credit or capital infusion, and the securing of raw m aterials and export mar­

The Fight Against Intervention

39

kets. Like earlier seventeenth-century m ercantilists, these new mer­ cantilists believed in harnessing the power of national government to secure wealth and prosperity. The primary concern of any neomercantilist was protection of the home market, and Taft was no exception. Early in his first term as a U.S. senator, he reaffirmed his support for the traditional Republican Party policy of cost-of-production tariffs, drawing on the "m oderate revisionism " of his father and of Herbert Hoover. W illiam Howard Taft had espoused a "true principle of protection" that advocated "im position of such duties as w ill equal the difference between the cost of production at home and abroad, together with a reasonable profit to American industries."9 It fell to Herbert Hoover to elaborate fully the Republican Party's modem neom ercantilist commercial vision in the 1920s. First as com­ merce secretary, then as president, Hoover perceived international commerce as essentially a triangle of interconnected trading relation­ ships. Trade between the industrializing nations of Europe and the United States formed one leg; a second leg consisted of the relation­ ships between raw materials suppliers in the developing world (including colonial territories) and Am erica's manufacturing base; and the relationships between European producers and their colonial consumers constituted the final leg. W hile the United States ran sub­ stantial surpluses with its European trading partners, it ran up con­ siderable deficits with the underdeveloped colonies, thus providing a rich source of dollars for the metropolitan nations of Europe. The U.S. domestic economy was the linchpin of this commercial vision. According to Hoover, a growing, high-wage economy in the United States was essential to maintain a prosperous commercial tri­ angle. A protective tariff was the key mechanism for maintaining those high wage levels for the American working class, for preserving a high standard of living for the United States, and for sustaining the U.S. domestic economy as the greatest source of demand for the develop­ ing w orld's raw materials. Hoover and other New Era Republican neomercantilists embraced the concept of reciprocal trade agreements to allow the exchange of specialty items not mass produced in the importing nation, thereby promoting trade that did not endanger established industries. Although the concept of reciprocity was an important component in traditional Republican commercial policy, the New Deal's practice of reciprocal trade negotiations was not. Congress had amended the 1930 Smoot-Hawley Tariff with the Trade Agreements Act of 1934, a three-year emergency measure under which the executive branch had

40

Robert A . Taft

successfully negotiated reciprocal trade agreements with twenty-six nations. In order to obtain concessions on American exports from trad­ ing partners, the act authorized the president to reduce rates on imports up to 50 percent, to prevent increases in existing rates, and to guarantee duty-free rates for commodities on the free list. Agreements under the act did not require senatorial confirmation. Taft castigated Cordell Hull for the way he had pursued reciprocal agreements. The senator believed in tariffs "made by the Executive" and the principle of commercial reciprocity. "I do not believe in freetrade, however," Taft declared, "and die administration of die treaties by Hull, of course, is really carrying out a free trade policy." Taft wanted all agreements to be submitted to the U.S. Tariff Commission, an independent agency entrusted with die investigation of interna­ tional trade practices, "for certification that they are not so low as to give a competitive advantage against American producers. I believe a great deal could be done in lowering die tariffs within this principle."10 The Cincinnati senator offered die Ohio pottery industry as an example of flawed trade treaty making. He warned that the federal government should not reduce a tariff on a product "w hose produc­ tion in the United States is established" and whose overseas cost was substantially below the production cost in America. Addressing the Potters Association soon after he took office, Taft took up the case of the ailing East Liverpool, Ohio, pottery manufacturers. Japanese pot­ tery firm s had recently made enormous inroads in the American domestic market. By 1939 the U.S. market share for Japanese manu­ facturers, who paid the average potter only four and one-half cents per hour, had risen to 45 percent. Taft asked why the United States should make concessions to global competitors that sacrificed the jobs of men in eastern Ohio in order to stimulate the production of some exportable products in another region of the nation.11 According to the senator, exports were not essential to U.S. pros­ perity in early 1939. "Foreign exports at the present mom ent," he declared, "are a shaky source of prosperity in any event." He doubted that the United States could long hold "substantial foreign markets in manufactured goods when every government is concerning itself to stimulate its own m anufactures."12 Recent studies by economic histo­ rians support Taft's arguments. Evidence demonstrates that exports throughout this period were a negligible portion of total commerce and income. One recent study has shown that exports accounted for a mere 3.5 percent of national production at the end of the 1930s, less than the comparable measurement ten years earlier. Although the ratio of imports to total national production remained small, it was

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increasing more rapidly than exports, and 93 percent of all domestic production was still consumed at home. But liberal internationalists argued that a positive linkage existed between domestic production, the export of surpluses, and U.S. tariff policy. Secretary of State Cordell Hull had maintained since the early 1920s that "a level of maximum production in all lines" of production in the American market could only occur if free-trade policies created "a ready world market for all surplus products."13 Unless global trade cleared existing surpluses horn the American domestic market, inter­ nationalists contended, there was little chance that the nation's econ­ omy would perform at a high rate of capacity utilization. The farm economy (and the farm vote) was a whole different mat­ ter. Taft knew well that Republican Party protectionism had been responsible for a huge sectoral difference in prices and standards of living between urban and rural America. There was no denying that farmers paid high prices for manufactured goods in die protected domestic market, but in many cases "those farmers producing crops with an exportable surplus, like wheat and cotton, must sell at the world price."14 This recognition did not deter Taft from criticizing Roosevelt's economics of scarcity. To raise prices, the New Deal had erected a variety of output restrictions, storage and conservation schemes, and even crop destruction programs. The senator, whose conception of social progress rested on abundant production, countered the New Deal with political, economic, and moral arguments. Regardless of the farm ers' overproduction predicament, there was no justification for the output restrictions of the New Deal. It was politically unwise to expand the adm inistrative capacities of the federal government to the degree necessary to adm inister a policy of scarcity. Economically, it was detrimental because it destroyed incentives for innovation, restricted the development of agricultural skills among the rural pop­ ulation, and hindered economic growth at home and abroad. From a moral standpoint, the senator continued to believe it wrong in a depression not to produce foodstuffs at full capacity. During the 1940 campaign, an indignant Taft declared that it "is wrong to plow under the fruits of nature while people in our cities are in dire w ant."15 Other rationales existed for a political economy of abundance. Taft had railed against the contrived scarcity philosophy of the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA) since the mid-1930s. An enormous drop in farm income had occurred since the 1920s and the policies of the AAA had done little to rectify that trend. Reducing supply, whether by accumulating vast federally purchased crop sur-

42

Robert A . Taft

pluses in storage facilities across the nation or by destroying crops, cattle, and hogs, which Taft pressed in political argument throughout the late 1930s, had simply not succeeded in returning farm incomes to their 1929 levels. What seemed especially ironic to Taft, die neomercantilist, were the nation's losses in global trade. The AAA's philosophy of contrived scarcity often undermined U.S. producers and sometimes directly con­ tradicted the tariff reduction policies of Cordell Hull and State Department internationalists. Although the United States sought to restrict domestic agricultural output, Taft observed, die monetary value of agricultural imports doubled from approximately $1 billion in the decade of the 1920s to about $2 billion in the 1930s. Argentinian com and Polish meats, among other products, completed with American produce and thus adversely affected the economic positions of U.S. farmers. But the most egregious example of contradictory New Deal farm policy, to Taft's way of thinking, was the dramatic decline of "King Cotton." The AAA's successful restriction of cotton production had led to lower cotton exports, die loss of traditional markets over­ seas, and a healthy stimulus (in the form of higher U.S. prices) to pro­ duction in such competitor nations as Egypt. According to Taft, American farmers lost not only export markets but increasing shares of die U.S. domestic market to competing agricultural economies like Egypt and Brazil under H ull's reciprocal trade regime. Early in his first term as senator, Taft realized that such conditions necessitated federal government action. In his 1939 Foundations o f Democracy debate with Representative T. V. Smith (D -Ill.), Taft admit­ ted that the farm ers' disadvantageous position "justifies a reasonable subsidy in the form of benefits for soil conservation," as long as these payments did not become a mechanism for crop restriction and price­ setting policies.16 During the following year, Taft offered a more diverse approach to the farm problem. In true mercantilist fashion, he also called for the federal government to revise the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act (RTAA) to reintroduce cost-of-production tariffs. He urged the federal government to assist in the development of new products (and thus, markets), through technological innovation, for old agricultural products. The senator also approved of government leases to remove marginal land from cultivation and to transfer those lands into timber development for the paper and pulp industry. Taft's views on agricultural policy separated him from die Coolidge-Hoover Republican policies of the 1920s and demonstrated his politically sophisticated approach to farm prices. First, Taft made the distinction between natural surpluses, ones that the economy had

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traditionally generated without any recourse to extensive subsidies or loan credits, and an artificially created export stream promoted and financed through loan credits to foreign purchasers. Farm crops pro­ duced continually in excessive amounts, in the senator's view, pro­ vided a good example of the first category of surplus and deserved close attention. Second, Taft urged the federal government to support the export of those natural surpluses not sold in the domestic market, subsidizing tiie difference between the home market price and the globed market price. Many farm organizations had supported the controversial McNary-Haugen bills of the mid-1920s. McNary-Haugen, vetoed by President Calvin Coolidge in both 1927 and 1928, would have estab­ lished a two-tiered price system for farmers producing within the protected domestic market. If enacted, this legislation would have led to the creation of an advantageous domestic price for products sold inside the tariff wall and an "equalization fee," collected from pro­ ducers, to offset losses from sales of exports at a second, global, price set by tiie international market for agricultural commodities.17

Americanism, Race, and the Equal Opportunity Society Early in his first Senate term, Taft, a rising star among the opposition Republican Party in Washington, D.C., had the opportunity to present his views on race and nationhood. In a series of public addresses in early 1939, he elaborated on his earlier views of Americanism, on the United States as an equal opportunity society, and on where African Americans fit in that society. Senator Taft was a "civic nationalist." In other words, he, like many Americans of the mid-twentieth century, held that tiie United States was based not on common descent, language, cultural tradi­ tion, or geographic homeland, but on belief in a set of universal ideals.18 Since the colonial era, according to the senator's construction of nation, Americanism had been rooted in a shared belief in three core liberal principles of individual liberty, equal opportunity, and equal justice under law. Invited to give the Memorial Day oration at Arlington National Cemetery in 1939, Taft used the occasion to offer his interpretation of American history. The American nation-building project, Taft asserted, began with the arrival of Puritan dissenters in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The Puritans came to the New World in search of individual freedom and the right to establish a better life. The senator, him self a descendent of an immigrant to M assachusetts in the 1680s, declared that the pursuit of their individual destinies on

44

Robert A . Taft

a new continent "w ithout the interference of government" motivated diese early New Englanders.19 Taft saw die Bay Colony's ideals as the core of the nation's ideol­ ogy. Puritan conceptions of individual liberty and equal opportunity for economic advancement, the ideals that led them away from an oppressive Old World to settlement in the New World in the seven­ teenth century, provided the ideological basis for the American republic. Their ideals became the fundamental doctrine of inalienable rights in die Declaration of Independence, the senator argued. In order to protect individual citizens from either capricious despots or majoritarian tyranny, the Founding Fathers then institutionalized those Puritan ideals in the Constitution. Puritanism was responsible, in Senator Taft's mind, for constitutional protections against the arbi­ trary rule of government, especially against die infringements of the freedoms of speech and religion, and against oppressive searches, seizures, and unfair trials. More important than those negative constructions of liberty were the positive conceptions of opportunity and social mobility. America had always been the "land of opportunity" in Taft's nationalist vision. The United States had never known die rigid social stratification that characterized the princely states of the Old World. The social fluidity of the "A m erican Way of L ife," founded on a m arket-based "Am erican business system " that rewarded "ability and understand­ ing and courage," had allowed for the upward mobility of the most intelligent and energetic men of the nation. This m obility was espe­ cially evident, Taft thought, during die industrial transformation of the nineteenth century.20 In Taft's view of the rise of American civilization, Puritan men formed the foundation of Am erica's success in both economic devel­ opment and democratic politics. Puritan men at the head of white, Anglo-Saxon, pioneer households in the New World were dynamic entrepreneurs who were able to develop their capacities to the fullest in the proverbial "vast w ilderness" of North America. It was from the M assachusetts Bay Colony's model of government and society, the senator argued, that Am erica's democratic institutions evolved. Here Taft embraced a narrowly defined nationalist vision widely held by numerous American historians and statesmen in the early decades of die twentieth century. Taft portrayed Am erica's history as a constant struggle to pre­ serve the liberal or libertarian ideals of the Founders. The senator viewed die Civil War not prim arily as a nation-building effort, but as a freedom- and opportunity-affirming endeavor. It was a movement

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to reinvigorate the individualist ideals of liberty, equal opportunity, and equal justice.21 These ideals, threatened by the slaveholdercontrolled Democratic Party, Taft elaborated later in his career, were "the same principles which Abraham Lincoln proclaimed in his speech at Gettysburg, the same principles upon which the Republican Party was founded, and the same principles upon which die Nation was founded." For the next eight decades, the Republican Party was the vehicle of nationalism , in the senator's mind; "Republicanism is Americanism," he declared in 1951.22 Unlike the 1850s Democratic Party of Illinois senator Stephen Douglas, New Deal Democracy embraced a strong, even oppressive, national state. Taft saw the activist New D eal's intrusions in the marketplace as interference in the "Am erican business system ." Such activism led the senator to emphasize, more often than his reformer father, the negative concep­ tions of liberty. In political argument from 1935 until his death in 1953, Senator Taft employed his reading of liberty as die central premise in his assault on the New D eal's "planned econom y" and its ambitious presidency.23 To liberty, Senator Taft coupled opportunity. Increasingly for the senator, the principle of equal opportunity m eant providing all citi­ zens w ith a series of chances to develop their faculties and assets to the fullest extent. More precisely, it m eant the chance to obtain an education, to perform in one's chosen profession, and to com pete in the m arketplace. For Taft, education was the key. "W ith universal free education," Taft claim ed, discounting the weighty evidence of social inequality, "there has been no boy or girl bom in the United States who has not had the opportunity to rise to the top of his or her field of activity." One need only look at the men surrounding the senator, the leaders of government, business, the professions, and the military, to find "top men who started w ith nothing except their own character." Even more prom ising, Senator Taft em phasized, oblivious to existing barriers of race, ethnicity, and gender, "th is is still true today in spite of all the talk of the privileged and under­ privileged."24 Equal opportunity was integral to the pursuit of self-interest. It was the antebellum conception of liberty as pursuit of self-interest, so important to such former Whigs as Abraham Lincoln, that shaped the thinking of the Tafts and led the senator to advocate specific, limited, yet very positive uses of government. In all his critiques of the New Deal, Taft asserted the need to have government create the conditions for successful entrepreneurship. Although stable currency, balanced budgets, and looser federal regulations were essential, by the 1940s

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Taft embraced a new Whig view of government that actively pro­ moted small business enterprise and entrepreneurship. To what degree did this America include m inorities, especially African Americans? Taft expressed his conservative views on civil rights and "racial uplift," the improvement of social conditions for African Americans, especially those residing in the South, in two widely reported speeches, first, at the memorial services for Akron industrialist Harvey Firestone during the 1938 campaign and, second, at the 1939 Charter Day ceremonies at Howard University. From these pulpits, Taft preached the gospel of economic oppor­ tunity to African Americans. He claimed that African Americans had achieved considerable progress in education and employment since emancipation, and stressed the need for black Americans to take pri­ mary responsibility for their own advancement, but also asserted that black Americans should capitalize on the employment opportunities offered by liberal white employers. Taft developed these ideas over the next decade and linked them to his father's belief in the impor­ tance of education at all levels to enable men and women, black and white, to take advantage of economic opportunity. The Tafts believed that it was essential to educate the "low er races," colonial peoples overseas and African Americans in the United States, so they could achieve the m aterial improvement of their standard of living that underpinned social progress. According to William Howard Taft, Anglo-Saxon peoples had advanced to a high degree of civilization because they had been educated to value the virtues of self-restraint and providence, traits essential to the wise "use of wealth as capital." Through education, he contended, the "Southern N egro" and the "low er races" of the colonial world could "up lift" themselves to a civilized state. The former president, who had served as civilian governor of the Philippine Islands after the Spanish-American War, firmly believed it was the "duty" of white American men to educate these "low er races." Here, Senator Taft dis­ agreed with his father. By the late 1930s, the senator believed that America had failed to accomplish that mission of "racial uplift," both at home and in such overseas U.S. possessions as Puerto Rico. The senator argued that populations in these U.S. territories could not depend on American administrators. Similarly, the "colored race" of tiie American South, according to the senator, had to shoulder the pri­ mary burden of its own education and advancement.25 Senator Taft clearly believed that the greatest progress for African Americans would come through economic advancement within their own community-based, largely segregated economies. To this end, Taft

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praised black enterprise and the accomplishments of such African American entrepreneurs and inventors as George Washington Carver, whose success had been achieved through personal determination and hard work, not government handouts. The senator also linked employment discrimination to the New Deal's failure to generate meaningful recovery. African Americans had been subject to economic discrimination throughout the economy because there were insufficient jobs for all those Americans who desired to work. Discrimination was a natural result of nationwide economic stagnation as white workers took whatever means possible to ensure their self-preservation, th u s, discrimination would cease only when economic growth and development created abundant employment opportunities. At Howard University, Taft declared that "colored people, even more than anyone else, are interested in gov­ ernment policies which w ill stimulate private industry, and stimulate the creation of more jobs and more prosperity."26 Opposing federal intervention in the workplace, the senator rejected fair employment legislation on the grounds that intrusive regulations would hinder new enterprise and growth. Taft shifted the burden of integrating die workplace to the American employer. To both the Akron and Howard audiences, the senator contended that employers "like Harvey Firestone—w illing to take a chance in building up new industries" were "the only men who can solve the employment problem ." Taft admitted that, unfor­ tunately, "em ployers in general have not followed the example of Mr. Firestone." During the depression years, he observed, "it has been generally true, that colored people were more likely to lose their jobs and found it harder to get them back." Taft recognized that "there is still an economic discrim ination which we must look to men like Mr. Firestone to abolish." Only managers could effectively reform employment practices in their firm s, and they had to do so voluntarily, radier than by federal government coercion. In new busi­ nesses, Taft declared, "the colored people must be given an equal proportionate part" of the workforce, "as they were given in the Firestone com panies." The Republican candidate boldly declared that "w e must realize that the solution is not [to be achieved] by passing law s."27 Early in his career, Taft still saw the federal government's role in social policy, especially race relations, as largely negative and protec­ tive. He believed it should guarantee personal liberty for all Americans regardless of race. African Americans, he maintained, had every right to ask that the federal government protect the rights granted by the

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Robert A . Taft

Constitution, its first ten amendments (the Bill of Rights), and the Fourteenth and Fifteenth ("Reconstruction") Amendments. They deserved, as Taft had emphatically declared at the Firestone memorial, nothing less and "nothing more than every citizen is entitled to—the right to life, liberty and property—the right to vote—the right to a fair trial and all other rights which are guaranteed to every citizen" by the Bill of Rights and the Reconstruction amendments. But African Americans also deserved statutory protection to guarantee federal enforcement of rights "which in some places they do not have in fact."28 Unlike the conservative southern Democrats he often sided with in the U.S. Senate, Taft persistently endorsed antilynching legislation to pro­ tect tire lives of African Americans in the American South as well as laws prohibiting the poll tax and other limitations on black political rights. But, for the duration of his career, he remained steadfastly opposed to the enactment of federal administrative protections against employment discrimination. Taft clearly felt that the Democratic Roosevelt had failed to serve the nation's African American population that so idolized him and his w ife. The Dem ocratic adm inistration, fearful of alienating its Southern white base of support, had neglected to press for the legis­ lation and enforcement of the most basic human and political rights. Similarly, the senator believed that President Roosevelt had failed the entire nation by not preparing it for the possibility of war.

"N ational Defense or National Confusion" As Germany's armored blitzkrieg engulfed France and the Low Countries in the spring of 1940, Taft complained publicly about the Roosevelt adm inistration's lack of preparations for war. The Ohio senator charged that the president and his advisors possessed no strategic plan for the defense of North America, no overall industrial mobilization plan ready to implement, and finally, no financial plan to pay for the impending mobilization. From his vantage point on Capitol H ill, Taft failed to see a coherent approach to the task of mobi­ lization that confronted the nation. Especially galling was the lack of any coherent strategic approach to the threat posed by the Axis forces. "There is no agreem ent," he claimed, "on the fundamental question as to just what area we are going to defend."29 The lack of a financial plan for paying for the m obilization deeply concerned Taft, the U.S. Senate's newest fiscal conservative. By October 1940, the president had signed only two new tax bills that garnered the nation an additional $1 billion, but calendar year appro­

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priations for 1940 had increased by approximately $5 billion. "O f course we have to borrow money for some of the great defense expen­ ditures of today/' a dismayed Taft concluded. "But there should be a plan to reduce other expenses and pay for the normal upkeep of the army and navy, which we are now going to have to maintain for many years to com e."30 But it was the lack of a coordinated plan for conversion to defense production that most troubled the Ohioan. In die autumn of 1940 Taft saw neither a plan for conversion nor any progress toward achieving the shift to defense production. It was not the creation of new indus­ trial plants, he emphasized, but the conversion of existing private sec­ tor production from civilian consumer goods to munitions and other defense-related goods that was the key to mobilization. At this point in 1940, Taft and other conservatives feared that many of the hard-core New Dealers around Roosevelt were waiting to impose a heavily centralized, state-directed m obilization on America. Indeed, according to political scientist Brian E. Waddell, during the late 1930s New Deal extensions of government authority combined with the expansion of the state's bureaucratic resources to increase the state's ability to confront a new war emergency with greater independence. . . . A group of New Dealers, composed of a cadre of economists, lawyers, and academics, hoped for a planned mobilization effort that would guarantee adequate preparation for any military contin­ gency, while also spreading the burdens of war as equitably as pos­ sible. These New Dealers also wanted to build on their recent attempts to expand domestic state authority in the hope of establish­ ing a new kind of national political economy.

Not surprisingly, these liberals opposed the establishm ent of a corpo­ rate-dominated mobilization model along the lines of the World War I-era War Industries Board and the Depression-era National Recovery Administration.31 Confronted with the successes of the German totalitarian regime in tiie spring of 1940, Senator Taft believed that many New Deal Democrats would use the war emergency to augment the president's authority. "There are men in this country who feel that we must fol­ low [the German] exam ple," Taft observed, "that we must give arbi­ trary power to the President to tell every citizen what he shall do, in manufacture, in commerce, in agriculture; to draft man power and capital; to fix all wages and prices."32 The senator, who adhered to a rather strict interpretation of the Constitution, feared this movement would infringe on the prerogatives of Congress.

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Robert A . Taft

Taft made four recommendations to place die nation on the proper footing for mobilization: a joint committee of Congress should assess mobilization issues, a single administrator should head that m obilization, private enterprise should shoulder the burden of defense production, and the federal government should reduce regu­ lations in order to facilitate industrial production. Regarding his first suggestion, Taft believed that Congress, working through a joint com­ mittee, should request all existing contingency plans from the execu­ tive branch, sort out the proper approach to both m ilitary and indus­ trial mobilization, then send legislation to the full Congress to begin implementation of a nationwide mobilization.33 Appointment of a single adm inistrator to oversee m obilization, Taft's second recommendation, was anathema to Roosevelt. As European nations approached war in m id-1939, the president appointed the War Resources Board, under the leadership of steel industry executive Edward R. Stettinius Jr., to report on the proper organizational basis to govern American industry in the event of war. Stettinius's board, influenced by existing armed forces mobilization plans, proposed a superagency to coordinate mobilization. Roosevelt found this unacceptable, shelved the Stettinius report, declared a lim­ ited emergency after war began on the Continent in September 1939, and established the Office of Economic Management (OEM) within the Executive Office of the President. On May 29,1940, while German troops streamed across western Europe, the president revived the World War I-era Advisory Commission of the Council of National Defense. The commission was comprised of seven independent rep­ resentatives of particular sectors of the economy who reported directly to the president or through the OEM. The alternative "single adm inistrator" proposal was central to the conservative approach to mobilization. As early as May 1940, Taft urged the creation of a single agency, with a single supervising administrator, to oversee both m obilization of the nation's industrial base and the procurement process followed by the armed forces. It was necessary, he firm ly believed, to coordinate the conversion to defense production and to gain some control over the chaotic approach to procurement by the armed forces. Only under the direc­ tion of a "single adm inistrator" could industrial m obilization be con­ ducted with great efficiency. For conservatives like Taft and Hoover, the notion that an independent board, whose function was "entirely advisory," could be of any use in coordinating industrial conversion and m ilitary procurement was ridiculous. In his May 29, 1940, address, Taft reminded listeners of the words of General George W.

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Goethals, chief engineer of the Panama Canal project during his father's administration: "A board is long, narrow and w ooden."34 hi contrast, die "single adm inistrator" proposal had its roots in both business management practices and precedents from the Great War. Taft recalled that "the Secretary of M unitions," an administrator who headed armed forces procurement, was "a vital necessity in every European cabinet during the w ar."35 According to Taft, Bernard Baruch, President W ilson's chairman of the War Industries Board (WIB), held a sim ilar position in die United States in 1918. In their rec­ ollections of the Great War, die senator and many other proponents of the World War I m obilization model certainly exaggerated Baruch's authority, as the WIB never wrested procurement from the powerful army and navy chiefs, and price controls were established by a sepa­ rate committee under the chairmanship of Robert S. Brookings. Taft deemed appointment of a prominent industrialist as essential for the success of his "single adm inistrator" proposal. "I entirely agree w ith you," Taft informed a steel industry executive in June 1940, "that industrial m obilization cannot be properly planned or carried out except by someone with both power and industrial experience." Taft was appalled that authority had been delegated to, or divided between, Harry Hopkins, the president's closest advisor, Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, and Jesse Jones, chairman of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation. "W hile each of these gentlemen is able in his own particular field," Taft charged, "I doubt if either would be selected as experienced in the organization of industry for war." The senator firm ly believed that "[m jodem war is a war of machinery. Its success depends as much on industry as it does on men, guns and ships." "Surely it is a job," he concluded, "w hich ought to be given to the most competent and experienced man in the whole field of industry."36 In his October 2, 1940, speech, "N ational Defense or National Confusion," Taft noted that even the armed forces recognized the need for unified administration. The central feature of the 1939 ver­ sion of the m ilitary's Industrial M obilization Plan (IMP), according to the Ohio senator, was the creation of a War Resources Administration, a superagency "w ith a single head, to undertake the industrial mobi­ lization of the nation and the procurement of army and navy equip­ m ent."37 M obilization, Taft contended, meant the conversion of existing private industrial capacity to defense production. He was outraged in May 1940 when the adm inistration pushed through an amendment authorizing the Reconstruction Finance Corporation to create the

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Robert A . Taft

Defense Supplies Corporation. This new public corporation could then receive "unlim ited am ounts" of public capital "for plant con­ struction, equipment, and working capital." The senator declared that "[ujnder this authority the government could go into any business, manufacturing, commerce or agriculture, for any business would have some relation to national defense." To him, it demonstrated the adm inistration's desire "to extend New Deal principles into pre­ paredness with tiie same disregard for private industry which has heretofore existed in peacetim e." An angry Taft exclaimed: "If there is an industrial program, it ought to be presented to Congress. If there are kinds of war equipment which the government can manufacture better than private industry, then let us authorize the government to do that particular tiling."38 Taft had campaigned for the reduction of regulations on business since the mid-1930s and his fourth set of recommendations was cen­ tral to the conservative quest for stability in America. Taft had argued that New Deal regulatory legislation had increased the cost of pro­ duction, slowed business investment, and hindered economic recov­ ery during the Depression decade. Detailed regulation of entire industries simply to rectify the abuses of "one or two crooks in the industry" was unnecessary.39 With Europe engulfed in war and America contemplating conversion to defense production, Taft natu­ rally believed that federal regulators should moderate their activities in tiie interest of facilitating the nation's mobilization.

The Politics of Neutrality Taft had eyed the presidency since 1937. He began seriously contem­ plating a bid for his party's 1940 nomination in the first months of 1939. By midsummer he was holding strategy sessions and putting together a campaign organization; he announced his candidacy in early August. Why was an inexperienced first-term senator pre­ sumptuous enough to desire the top job after only a couple months in office? Personal ambition, a conservative agenda, and Republican Party politics combined to press Taft into the presidential race. Consistent with an upbringing that emphasized an individual's striving for excellence, the senator channeled his personal ambitions along the lines of public office holding. He simply believed that he could accomplish more in the presidency. As a conservative, he felt a duty to bring a greater degree of stability to Am erica's domestic and foreign affairs. He believed it was essential for the nation, after enduring six years of New Deal reformism, to chart a more conserva-

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tive course. For him/ such a rightward shift meant a rededication to those core intellectual traditions that had guided Republican admin­ istrations over the previous century: conservative, independent, and continentalist approaches to foreign affairs, neom ercantilist eco­ nomic thought, and a strict constitutionalism that imposed restraints on all federal activities. Finally, Taft was a Republican who firmly believed that the only political vehicle through which America could accomplish such a conservative stabilization was the Grand Old Party. Taft was quickly recognized as one of the leaders of the antiRoosevelt Republicans in Congress, men who refused to compromise with the New Deal. Just as sw iftly he gained a loyal following who wanted him to run in 1940. Established party bosses across the nation hailed Taft. He was popular because, first and foremost, he was the most dedicated anti-N ew Deal candidate at a time when Republicans were desperate to return to the status of majority party. State and local leaders needed what they considered a true Republican candidate who could recap­ ture the W hite House and federal patronage. Most of those leaders also fondly remembered the senator's father, William Howard Taft, an affable man and, most importantly, a defender of the Republican Party who had articulated its fundamental conservative principles in the tumultuous 1912 election campaign. Those advantages over other Republicans continually accrued to the senator over the remainder of his career. Taft approached the campaign with a fairly uninspired strategy. First, he sought to smooth over divisions in his home base of Ohio and obtain Governor John Bricker's support. Then he appealed to key social groups and economic interests. To the most significant voting bloc overlooked by the GOP in recent elections, African Americans, he admitted that his party had taken them for granted. Black Americans had traditionally supported candidates from the party of Lincoln, and Republicans had begun to expect their support without offering anything in return. This mistake allowed Roosevelt and the Democrats, aided by the economic security furnished by public relief program s and steady em ploym ent w ith the Works Progress Administration, to solidify their hold on African American voters. The senator and his lieutenants next decided to make a traditional Republican bid for the nomination. They would skip the primaries that cost so much in both time and money, but seek the support of prom inent Republicans and opinion-m akers across the nation. Especially important were newspaper publishers, politically active businessmen, and former party officeholders. Taft was careful to

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maintain long-standing relations w ith former president Herbert Hoover. This type of primary campaign differed little from those run by candidates Warren G. Harding and A lf Landon. The main objective was to stop New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey. Dewey was counting on his notoriety as a crime fighter, his East Coast political connections, and an aggressive nationwide pri­ mary campaign to gam er a large portion of the delegates before the June 1940 convention. Taft's goal was to keep him from locking up the nomination on the first ballot by encouraging other candidates, espe­ cially favorite sons, to tie up delegates. He pursued this goal with a Southern and Western strategy, combining the benefits of geography and ideology to win over delegates. Throughout the spring of 1940, most party leaders and delegates who came from the more conserva­ tive Southern, Midwestern, and Western states chose Taft. But the senator confronted two sizable handicaps. He rapidly developed an unflattering image, in part generated by the mistakes of his own campaign committee. In the spring of 1940, Taft's handlers made several unsuccessful attempts to portray their candidate as a man of the people, but the problem was larger than media gaffes. It was a personality shaped by years of lonely striving for academic excellence and competitive success. "H e was not a warm or genial m an," one jour­ nalist observed, "he was cold, and could be extremely hard and right­ eous." Although even his critics admitted that "there was a tremendous honesty about him that commanded respect, and beneath his frigid exterior he was a shy, pleasant sort of m an," shy men with frigid exte­ riors struggled on the hustings.40 Taft's campaign managers partially compensated for the candidate's shortcomings by employing his wife. Martha balanced great personal drive with an "understanding heart."41 In her campaign speeches, given extemporaneously, she captivated audiences with a keen intellect and a razor-sharp wit. No amount of humor could reverse the tide of human events in 1940. Taft's second handicap stemmed from his decision to run a cam­ paign focused tightly on domestic issues, deemphasizing foreign pol­ icy. This strategy worked as long as the "Phony War," the lull after the occupation of Poland, continued. Once Germany began its blitzkrieg offensives in the spring, many Americans, led by President Roosevelt, desired to find ways to help Britain and France within the framework of neutrality. But Senator Taft refused to be caught up in the emotions of the time, displaying what one observer labeled an "apparent cal­ lousness toward the Allied cause."42 Taft reaffirmed his opposition to U.S. "participation" in the war. In a pivotal May 20 speech in St. Louis, Missouri, the senator declared that

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the Nazis posed no actual threat to the United States, that there was more to fear from the "infiltration of totalitarian ideas from the New Deal circle in Washington" than from German fascism or Soviet commu­ nism, and that participation in war would be "more likely to destroy American democracy than German dictatorship."43 Throughout the era of American neutrality, Taft was adamant about w ar's destructive con­ sequences. Wars destroyed democracy because they rapidly increased government spending, eroded the constitutional rights of citizens, and, most significantly, expanded the administrative capacities of central governments. In January 1940, die senator warned Republicans that leg­ islation pending in Congress would give the president authority to nationalize businesses for the war effort, fix both wages and prices, and regulate private sector employment and "commercial life." These meas­ ures for file "mobilization of wealth" would augment existing statutory grants to take over railroads and munitions manufacturing once war came, as well as radio facilities and public utilities if hostilities loomed.44 Such centralization threatened to extend the peacetime New Deal into the war mobilization period and to alter profoundly American democ­ racy, perhaps permanently. In 1939, President Roosevelt had considered appointing promi­ nent Republicans to the War and Navy departments to solidify a bipartisan approach to mobilization. The collapse of France in 1940 forced die president to act; he named Frank Knox to the navy post and Henry L. Stimson to oversee the army. Stimson, an elder states­ man of the Republican Party, had held the same post in the Taft administration and served as secretary of state under Hoover. Both Roosevelt appointees came from the internationalist wing of the GOP, but Stimson was especially controversial. Only days before die appointment, he had declared that the nation faced "probably the greatest crisis in its history" and called for a repeal of "cash and carry" neutrality, for immediate U.S. naval assistance to British ships in the Western Hemisphere, and for the recognition that die United States must play a larger role in world affairs.45 Taft was incensed by this defiant interventionism. At the Senate M ilitary Affairs Comm ittee's July 2 confirmation hearing, die senator pressed Stimson to confess his desire to intervene in the war on behalf of Britain. Stimson refused to commit himself. Taft then asked the nominee if he favored repeal of the neutrality acts. When Stimson replied that, in essence, he did favor repeal, Taft took the offensive with one conditional question after another. Taft's vehement opposition to intervention masked his support for m ilitary preparedness before Pearl Harbor. True to the principle of

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preparedness, follow ed scrupulously by Republicans prior to American intervention in World War I, Senator Taft voted for the National Defense Bill of 1939 and on March 6, 1939, supported an increase in the authorized aircraft of the Army Air Corps to 6,000 in the aircraft appropriations bill. Hardly a dogmatic antim ilitarist, Taft also voted for the creation of a "strategic" and "critical" materials reserve to assist in the future production of munitions. The senator thoroughly supported every voluntary measure to augment the national defense during the frightening summer of 1940. On July 19, he voted for both the "tw o-ocean navy" bill and the army appropria­ tion bill that augmented the regular army to 375,000 men. On August 8, Taft also voted to call out the National Guard, a measure that fur­ ther increased the army to approximately 750,000 men. In at least two of these measures, Taft supported positions that exceeded those taken by the Roosevelt administration. But Taft refused to support the 1940 Selective Service Act. Although his own failure to fight on the Western Front in World War I may have been a factor, Taft based his opposition to conscripting men into the ranks prim arily on a mix of ideology and necessity. First, the senator was "opposed to the compulsory draft of men in time of peace until every voluntary method has been tried to obtain the men necessary for the force required for defense." Taft even offered a sub­ stitute bill to expand the army by voluntary enlistments to 1.5 miUion. Reflecting on the controversy in 1944, Taft justified his conservative vision of preparedness, emphasizing the ideal of voluntarism, instead of coercion, in manpower mobilization. He asserted that the navy had operated strictly on a voluntary basis until 1943, that the War Department never gave the volunteer army a chance in the pre-Pearl Harbor period, and that the draft was a political instrument "to make the country war-conscious and more inclined to enter the European w ar."46 Second, for strictly national defense, the senator did not beUeve that America needed a large, conscripted army. Although a large ground army was certainly needed to invade H itler's Europe after 1940, Taft contended that defense of the North American conti­ nent was prim arily a naval mission. Thus, the senator's conservative approach to preparedness hinged on his strategic thinking. His 1940 defense views constituted the beginnings of a "continentalist" strategy that would later evolve into a Cold War conception of maritime defense and containment by 1951. In his continentalism, Taft joined a diverse group of poUticians, m ilitary thinkers, and statesmen, including Herbert Hoover and Lieutenant General Stanley D. Embick, one of the arm y's chief plan­

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ners during die interwar years. Continentalist thought emphasized North Am erica's geopolitical advantages, especially the view that the United States, unlike Britain, "w as virtually self-sufficient and pos­ sessed such abundant resources as to make foreign trade and any other overseas interests very minor and inconsequential national goals," and the belief that the continent possessed an unassailable defensive position between two great oceans.47 Regarding the latter point, Taft felt certain that no great power "would be stupid enough to attack us by landing troops in the United States from across thou­ sands of miles of ocean," unless it possessed strategic bases from which to operate. If America maintained a powerful navy, the senator added, that force would prevent any power from obtaining those strategic bases on or near the North American continent.48 The most crucial factor undermining Am erica's traditional com­ mitment to a continental defense strategy was Britain's increasingly perilous position. With the fall of France in mid-1940, the British faced H itler's Germany virtually alone. Although Britons valiantly with­ stood a massive German aerial bombardment at home and a devas­ tating U-boat campaign against their shipping in the North Atlantic, they approached financial exhaustion.

"A id to Britain— Short of W ar" W hen Prime M inister W inston Churchill inform ed President Roosevelt in late 1940 that the British would soon be unable to pay cash for war materiel and shipping, the U.S. government began formu­ lating a substitute for "cash and carry." On his return from a postelec­ tion Caribbean vacation, the president hinted at a new approach to aid for the United Kingdom. In a December 29 fireside radio chat, Roosevelt announced that furnishing the British with munitions risked provoking war, but he believed it was the best way "to keep war away from our country." Then, in a dramatic exhortation, the president urged America to "becom e the great arsenal of democracy."49 The Roosevelt adm inistration sought to create that arsenal through a program eventually known as Lend-Lease. The bill, sym­ bolically introduced in Congress as H.R. 1776, granted authority to tiie president to sell, lease, lend, or exchange munitions or other defense-related items. The administration first intended Lend-Lease to aid the embattled Britons, but, during the war, extended it to other allies in the antifascist crusade, including the Soviet Union. The senator believed that Roosevelt was pushing America step by step closer to intervention. "The fundamental issue," therefore, he

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asserted to a prominent Minnesota Republican in December 1940/ was not whether die United States should commit itself to a larger program of aid to Britain/ but "w hether we go to war or not." Taft was willing to assist Britain "to the extent that it does not involve us in w ar." Although he labeled him self "an advocate of peace/' Taft was willing to extend financial aid to the British if they were unable to pay. Regarding Roosevelt's new idea, he was adamant: "I do not like the idea of lending them m unitions." Taft sought to adhere to neutrality and make available munitions to Britain without committing an act of war. He knew that American naval convoys for the protection of British merchant shipping was "w ar itself" and "would probably put Hitler in a position where he could not help declaring w ar" on America. The senator criticized those, like Henry Stimson, who wanted "to go to war at once" or who were willing to risk war by "reckless" actions to help Britain. Their pro-war position/ the senator claimed/ was not in Am erica's national interest.50 Once the Lend-Lease debate was joined on Capitol H ill, Taft elab­ orated on his analysis. War sentiment in the United States, he con­ tended, was "anim ated not by reason, but by a deep resentment against German outrage." He sympathized with these antifascist sen­ timents, but considered them insufficient to declare war. "I detest every utterance of Mr. Hitler and every action of the German Government in the last eight years," he announced, "but we have no right to engage 130 m illion people in war, or send their sons and our own to war, except on the ground of their own interest." And he found it was not "to the interest" of die American people to go to war.51 Carefully scrutinizing that national interest, he judged the inter­ ventionist position to be "unsound." First, Taft refuted the notion that defeat of the British would lead to a German invasion of North America. Using the president's own contentions, he asked how the Nazis could mount a transatlantic campaign without the necessary "strategic bases from which to operate." Second, he rejected the idea "that our trade will be destroyed" once Germany consolidated its hold on Europe. North America, he contended, was the principal market for much of Latin Am erica's produce. The United States would certainly be pressed by strong economic competition globally, but it possessed many economic advantages even against a united Europe. It was not the American way, he asserted, to declare war on a nation because it might be a future commercial competitor. "I do not contend that German victory would make no difference to the United

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States," he concluded, "bu t I do contend that it would make less dif­ ference than a world war of which no man could see die end."52 Taft supported aid to Britain, but not in the form of Lend-Lease. Six months later, after Germ any's invasion of die Soviet Union, he explained his reasons for backing the British people. They possessed "the same ideals as we ourselves," "they are our close relatives, from whom we derived fundam entally the whole theory of our Governm ent," and, finally, the United Kingdom and the British Empire were sources of stability whose destruction would bring "the greatest hazard to the peace arid prosperity of the entire w orld."53 In early 1941, however, Taft firm ly believed that any debate over Roosevelt's Lend-Lease program should consider the likelihood that U.S. aid would trigger war. In the deliberations on the bill, H.R. 1776, Taft held firm ly to his advocacy of "extending all possible aid to Britain, provided, first, it does not involve us in the war, and, second, it does not im pair our defense." He opposed Lend-Lease because he felt it did not satisfy either of those conditions. He called H.R. 1776 a "w ar b ill" and vowed "to oppose in every w ay" the nation's entry into the European war. In congressional debate, Taft claim ed that Lend-Lease was m ilitarily and politically dangerous, as w ell as eco­ nomically unnecessary. From a strategic standpoint, Taft was certain that Lend-Lease would provoke H itler to declare war on the United States. The bill set aside Section 2 of the 1939 N eutrality Act that pro­ hibited American ships from carrying passengers or war m ateriel to a belligerent nation, thereby possibly placing American ships and sailors in harm 's way and provoking attack by German submariners. The senator also m aintained that Lend-Lease m ight im pair Am erica's national defense. Here, the 1940 destroyers-for-bases deal with Britain certainly shaped Taft's perceptions. The senator had crit­ icized the adm inistration's September 1940 exchange of fifty aging U.S. Navy destroyers for ninety-nine-year leases on m ilitary bases in Newfoundland, Bermuda, and numerous British insular possessions in the Caribbean. With the hyperbole typical of a fervent anti­ interventionist, Senator Taft declared that H.R. 1776 allow ed Roosevelt to "lease, lend, sell, or give away our entire Navy, except die m en." It was a "violation of my oath," he insisted, to perm it the president to deplete the American navy.54 From an economic standpoint, Taft contended, it made more sense to extend U.S. dollars to the British for the purchase of armaments than to lend them munitions. "Lending war equipment is a good deal

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like lending chewing gum /' he quipped, "you certainly don't want the same gum back." For that reason, the Ohio senator offered a substitute bill to give Britain $2 billion in credits to purchase American arma­ ments. Once again, Taft strongly criticized die Roosevelt administra­ tion for inadequately mobilizing the nation's industrial base. "During the first year of the war [in Europe] the administration did nothing to increase production," Taft lamented, "and what it is doing now w ill not help Great Britain much before 1942."55 Most dangerously, Lend-Lease placed Roosevelt "in a position where he can run the w ar." It vested such arbitrary power in the American chief executive, said Taft, that he could dictate to die British "whether to fight or make peace" and whether they could "send expeditions to Africa, or Greece, or the Continent of Europe." In the senator's eyes, Lend-Lease established Roosevelt as "the great protag­ onist of the forces opposing H itier." In the most bitter rhetoric of his career, Taft charged Roosevelt w ith m anipulating events from "behind die scenes" where "he can pull the strings which fire the guns and drop the bombs on armed forces and helpless civilians alike." The legislation granted the president "the power to plunge into die war millions of people now at peace" without a declaration of war by the U.S. Congress. Then, Taft asked, if it becomes Am erica's war, how long could Americans "expect other peoples to fight it for us"?56 Guilefully titled "A n Act to Promote the Defense of die United States," H.R. 1776, which initially appropriated $7 billion, was signed into law on March 11,1941. The final vote was 60 to 31. Opponents of the bill included Taft, sixteen other Republicans, thirteen Democrats, and one independent; supporters included forty-nine Democrats, ten Republicans, and one independent. Taft's most important amend­ ment, which sought to prevent the president from committing troops abroad, had also been defeated, 51 to 38. The anti-interventionists were desolated by the bill's passage. "We have tom up 150 years of traditional American foreign policy," moaned Senator Arthur H. Vandenberg (D-M ich.). "We have tossed W ashington's Farewell Address in the discard."57 Just as the provisions of Roosevelt's Lend-Lease program had infuriated anti-interventionists, the president's new domestic mobi­ lization program sim ilarly enraged those constitutionalists who feared the ever-expanding authority of the executive branch. Conservatives, both Republican and Democrat, bemoaned the new bureaucracy Roosevelt created to administer prices as American industry prepared to arm Britain in the war against fascism.

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"The M ost Outrageous Power G rab" Taft considered Roosevelt's April 11,1941, executive order establish­ ing the O ffice of Price Adm inistration and Civilian Supply (OPA) "the m ost outrageous power grab which this country has ever seen." Several aspects of the new price control system troubled the senator: he objected to the use of the executive order; preferred that Congress enact such controls, thereby granting statutory authority w ith fully defined powers to the agency; and desired a com m ittee of experts, not a Roosevelt-appointed New Deal bureaucrat, to direct the price system .58 What most disturbed Taft was the net drawn by OPA over the nation's retail transactions. He firm ly believed in 1941 that controls should have been limited to "basic commodities and to those closely related to defense."59 It is clear that Taft wanted to preserve private enterprise and protect as many sectors of the market from state super­ vision as was possible during the period of peacetime m obilization that predated the Pearl Harbor attack. In the end, it was the exempted commodities, goods not snared by OPA's net, that derailed the system of controls. The exem ption of agricultural commodities made it all but impossible to stabilize many prices and manage the cost of living. In late 1941, Taft was one of thirty-seven senators who attempted unsuccessfully to impose controls on die farm sector. The adm inistration acquiesced to those exemptions pushed through Congress by the powerful farm lobby. With his knowledge of World War I m obilization from service in the U.S. Food Administration, Senator Taft realized that it was im possi­ ble to prevent businesses across the nation from raising their prices if higher food prices drove up the cost of their labor.

The Drift toward Intervention Although Germany's June 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union and Japan's moves into French Indochina kept the president from approv­ ing any changes in die disposition of the U.S. fleet, Roosevelt did order 4,000 marines to garrison Iceland on July 1. The U.S. Navy then implemented its Hemisphere Defense Plan No. 4 to escort ships to and from Iceland's waters. From mid-July, the navy began to shield not only U.S. and Icelandic flag ships, but also ships of all nations that joined escorted convoys in the North Atlantic. Taft had lashed out at advocates of convoying British merchant ships as early as mid-May. The German U-boat menace in the North

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Atlantic was not nearly as great a hindrance to the war effort, the sen­ ator asserted, as the interventionists contended. He suspected that interventionists advocated convoying of merchant ships as "an effec­ tive means of getting us into the war," rather than out of "any concern about the arrival of our m unitions." According to U.S. Maritime Commission reports, Taft charged, "less than 4% of the ships carrying munitions from this country to Great Britain were actually sunk." There was no reason, having undertaken the provisioning of Britain through die Lend-Lease program, that die United States "should assume the burden of delivering those munitions in England, and thereby go to war in England's behalf." In a national radio address on May 17, Taft reminded his countrymen that, although die maritime war was costly, Britain possessed "m ore than half the merchant ship­ ping of the world" and the world's largest navy. To provide greater assistance to Britain, Taft suggested that the Roosevelt administration speed up industrial production, eliminate strikes and other work stop­ pages, and establish a "sensible government set up in Washington" to further mobilization.60 In the five months between die American occupation of Iceland and die attack on Pearl Harbor, Taft stubbornly opposed the drift toward intervention. In the Senate debates, he reserved his most caus­ tic remarks for die president and the civilian leadership of the War and Navy departments. Throughout die period, the senator sharply denounced the expanded m ilitary commitments in the North Atlantic and the "hem ispheric defense" arguments used to justify those obli­ gations. Taft was adamant that Germany, committed to a massive Eastern Front campaign against the Soviet Union after late June and over­ stretched by the garrisoning of a conquered Europe, posed no threat to a distant United States, protected as it was by a vast oceanic moat and one of the great navies of the world. Taft refused to believe that the defense of die Western Hemisphere necessitated die occupation of such far-flung, rocky outposts as Iceland and the Azores. The admin­ istration's greatiy expanded concept of hemispheric defense not only placed U.S. troops beyond the traditionally accepted boundaries of die North American continent, but substituted Americans for Britons, allowing the latter's redeployment in the tight against Hider. August's "outstanding event," as Taft labeled it, was the meeting between President Roosevelt and Prime M inister Churchill. The two leaders conferred with their m ilitary and civilian advisors from August 9 to August 12,1941, aboard warships anchored in Placentia Bay, off Newfoundland. Although die British came prepared to dis-

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cuss tiie specifics of their antifascist crusade, the Americans kept dis­ cussions general and Roosevelt remained noncommittal. The confer­ ence's most significant achievement was the planning for the support and supply of Allied efforts against Germany, especially the provision of the Soviet Union. These U.S.-UK staff discussions on supply were swiftly followed by discussions with the USSR staff on matters of assistance. At the end of the Placentia Bay conference, Roosevelt and Churchill agreed on an eight-point joint declaration, known as the Atlantic Charter, intentionally crafted as a vague, general statement of what amounted to Anglo-American war aims. The Atlantic Charter deeply distressed Taft. W hat exactly was the charter? queried the senator. Was it, on one hand, an agreement or treaty or obligation? Or, on the other hand, was it a statement of pol­ icy or just the opinion of the two leaders? Although Churchill dealt with ti\e document as an obligation, referring "the agreement to his Cabinet for approval before signing," Roosevelt treated it merely as a statement of policy, consulting only Harry Hopkins before commit­ ting to it. Back in Washington, D.C., the Democratic Party leadership assumed that the charter was merely a policy statement of the two executives without any obligations. On his return to London, the prime minister publicly declared that the two leaders "have jointly pledged their countries to the final destruction of the Nazi tyranny."61 The senator admitted that the charter "w as inspiring to hear." He was heartened by the charter's statement of "so many principles which represent the ideals in a general way of the Anglo-Saxon peo­ ples." With the charter's principles and ideals, such as seeking no ter­ ritorial or other aggrandizement from the war, equal access to the w orld's trade and raw materials, improved labor standards and eco­ nomic security, freedom of the seas, and freedom from fear and want, "every American must be in accord." Still, the exact "m eaning of most of the clauses is not clear," Taft observed, "and I am exceedingly doubtful as to just what commitments, if any, are undertaken by the United States."62 It was the British understanding of a "definite pledge" that most concerned Taft. Although the w ily Roosevelt claimed that the charter brought the United States no closer to war and the Senate m ajority leader claim ed it was merely a policy statem ent, its "join t declara­ tion" form at "suggests that the President is assuming some obliga­ tions to Great Britain." The British were led to believe it was "a pledge" to destroy Hitler, the senator claimed angrily, "w hich can only be done by w ar." In assuming such an obligation, he alleged, President Roosevelt had once again exceeded the authority of his

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office. The president "has no constitutional right to enter into any agreement to destroy die Nazi tyranny," Taft thundered, "or disarm any nation by force, without the consent of Congress, which alone can declare w ar."63 In the larger strategic sense, Taft feared die Adantic Charter marked die beginnings of Anglo-American imperialism. The char­ ter's eight points "seem to me a declaration that the United States and England propose to run the world for the present, with some interna­ tional agreement in die indefinite future." Senator Taft believed that this new chapter in imperialism would necessarily begin, as Churchill emphasized, "w ith the disarming of Germany, Italy and Japan." To his cousin, newspaper publisher Hulbert Taft, the senator confided "th at historians w ill regard it as a British-A m erican m ilitary alliance."64 Taft continued his opposition to American intervention in die European war throughout the autumn of 1941. Decisions made on the far side of the globe, however, undercut the anti-interventionist stance. The dramatic success of Japan's opening moves in die Pacific led Hider to declare war on the United States. America faced a truly global conflict.

The Onset of War "Although I have long foreseen the probability of war w ith Japan," the senator claimed, "I have prayed that die tragedy of such a war might be averted." Such was the senator's reaction to die Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on the morning of December 7,1941. The suc­ cess of the Hawaiian operation allowed Japan to begin its campaign of conquest across Southeast Asia and the South Pacific, threatening the Philippine Islands, the British possessions of Hong Kong and Malaya, and the Dutch East Indies. Like many Americans, Taft was outraged and resigned to total war against the nation's enemies. "Undivided and unlimited prosecution of that w ar," he declared in a December 8,1941, statement from Capitol H ill, "m ust show die world that no one can safely attack die American people."65 Just eleven days later, Taft outlined die responsibilities of a wartime Congress to business executives in Chicago. After he assured die audience that he would faithfully support the war effort, the sen­ ator reminded them that legislators must continue to debate and deliberate even in the national emergency. "A s a matter of general principle," Taft announced, "I believe there can be no doubt that crit­ icism in time of war is essential to die maintenance of any kind of

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democratic government." He observed that the embattled British were distinctive in their pursuit of parliamentary debate. "Perhaps nothing today distinguishes democratic government in England so greatly horn the totalitarianism of Germ any/' he noted, "as the free­ dom of criticism which has existed continuously in the House of Commons and elsewhere in England." Taft recognized that such free­ dom did not extend to divulging secrets, but rejected the notion that debate should be curtailed because "it w ill give some com fort to the enemy."66 Taft admitted he was no expert on warfare. He declared that, in the numerous congressional hearings that loomed ahead, General George C. Marshall and the nation's other top military and naval lead­ ership would guide him. But he warned that he would not accept "the leadership and recommendations of the president on every issue." Taft carefully explained that "duties imposed by the Constitution on Senators and Congressmen certainly require that we exercise our own judgment on questions relating to the conduct of the w ar."67 In Taft's mind, Roosevelt's New Deal had failed the nation. It proved incapable of resurrecting a moribund economy; it was unable to formulate a coherent mobilization strategy; it had muddled its own policy of strict neutrality; it had abandoned the defense of the North American continent for an irresponsible expansionism; it had demon­ strated its inability to secure economic opportunity for the nation; and it neglected Am erica's main m inority group. Taft was most critical of economic policy. The New Deal, not Am erica's business system, had prolonged the Depression. The sena­ tor correctly concluded that New Deal policies frequently failed, often contradicted each other, and sometimes produced perverse conse­ quences. Yet, he incorrectly assumed that public sector activism had undermined private sector recovery. The senator, who viewed the Depression in conventional business cycle terms, expected that a tra­ ditional production-investment revival would generate recovery if unimpeded by politicians. Historians have only recently begun to understand that the qualitative transformation to a mass consump­ tion economy, under way in the 1920s, had erected a host of impedi­ ments to a conventional recovery in the 1930s. Those obstacles within the American business system, not New Deal policies, delayed eco­ nomic recovery. Not only did Taft feel that Roosevelt had failed to adhere to strict neutrality, the senator believed that the adm inistration's policies had provoked war. In the autumn of 1944, Senator Taft assured industrial­ ist George F. Stanley that he had maintained a principled position

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throughout the neutrality period. Once war came in 1939, Taft firm ly believed that "cash and carry" was the only mechanism to remove die arms embargo and still remain technically impartial. Then, as H itler's conquest of Europe began to unfold, he consistently positioned him­ self to support die British to the greatest extent possible without engulfing die nation in war. Looking back from the vantage point of 1944, he truly believed that Lend-Lease created the conditions for war. "In spite of Administration protests that the Lend-Lease Bill was a peace m easure," he lectured Stanley, "it is now finally admitted that it assured acts of war against Germany and Japan and our ultimate entrance into the w ar."68 Taft then quoted Arthur H. Sulzberger, edi­ tor of the New York Times, who admitted that he no longer thought that America went to war because it was attacked at Pearl Harbor. Rather, claimed Sulzberger, "w e were attacked at Pearl Harbor because we had gone to war when we made the lend-lease declara­ tion." Sulzberger, among other internationalists, asserted that the United States had taken the "affirm ative" step and "w ar-like act" of Lend-Lease "because we knew that all we hold dear in the world was under attack and that we could not let it perish."69 In contrast, Taft had seen Lend-Lease not only as provocative, but as destructive and unnecessary. But Am erica's global war began in the Pacific, not the North Atlantic. Taft's analysis of the provocation was mistaken. Japan hinged its decision for war on an assessment of its own economic needs and great power status. Am erica's (and its allies') increasingly tighter clamp on the flow of Japanese commerce, not U.S. assistance to the enemies of the Axis powers, was the determining factor.

Notes 1. RT to George F. Stanley, Sept. 8,1944, in Papers of RAT, 2:577. 2. RT Speech, Sept. 6,1939, in Papers cfRAT, 2:72. 3. Ibid. 4. Ibid., 2:69-71. 5. RT, Radio Address, May 22,1939, Robert A. Taft Sr. Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Hereafter cited as LC/RATP. 6. RT quoted from T. V. Smith and Robert A. Taft, Foundations of Democracy: A Series of Debates (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1939), 228. 7. RT quote, Smith and Taft, Foundations of Democracy, 229-30. 8. RT quote, Smith and Taft, Foundations of Democracy, 230; see also RT Speech, Hamilton County Republican Club, Feb. 11, 1939, and RT Radio Address, NBC Blue Network, May 22,1939, LC/RATP. 9. Quoted in Henry F. Pringle, The Life and Times of William Howard Taft, 2 vols. (New York: Farrar & Rinehart, 1939), 1:421.

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10. RT to Horace D. Taft, Jan. 22,1940, in Papers of RAT, 2:114. The sena­ tor continued with an assessment of reciprocity measures under an earlier, Republican, regime: "Henry Fletcher told me that the effort at Executive tariff-making under Hoover could in his opinion have substantially reduced tariffs, but the reductions which the Commission could make were subject to the President's approval, and after Hoover refused to approve several reduc­ tions, the Commission lost interest." 11. RT Speech, U S. Potters Association, Jan. 31, 1939, LC/RATP, in Papers of RAT, 2:6-7. 12. Ibid. 13. For Hull's early theorizing on trade, see Michael A. Butler, Cautious Visionary: Cordell Hull and Tariff Reform, 1933-1937 (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1998), 12. 14. RT quote, Smith and Taft, Foundations of Democracy, 223. 15. RT, Campaign Questionnaire, 1940, in Box 148, LC/RATP. 16. RT quote, Smith and Taft, Foundations of Democracy, 223. 17. A brief summary of McNary-Haugen is in Broadus Mitchell, Depression Decade: From New Era through New Deal, 1929-1941 (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1947), 183. 18. On "civic nationalism," see Gary Gerstle, American Crucible: Race and Nation in the Twentieth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 4. 19. RT, Arlington Cemetery Memorial Day Oration, May 30, 1939, in Papers of RAT, 2:37-38. 20. Ibid., 2:38-39. 21. Ibid., 2:39. 22. RT Speech, Steubenville Grant High School, Apr. 22,1948, RT to John Woodward, Jan. 15,1951, LC/RATP. 23. In defining "liberty," Senator Taft wrote that a citizen must be free "to spend his earnings as he desires to spend them, to choose the place where he desires to live, to take the job that fits him whether some union official is willing that he gets it or not. It is the freedom of the local community to work out its own salvation when it has the power to do so___ It is the freedom of thought and experiments in academic institutions. It is the freedom of men engaged in industry to run their business as they think best so long as they do not interfere with the rights of others to do the sam e." James T. Patterson, Mr. Republican: A Biography of Robert A. Taft (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1972), 332-33. 24. RT, Arlington Cemetery Memorial Day Oration, May 30, 1939, in Papers of RAT, 2:38. 25. See especially William Howard Taft, "The Future of the Negro," in W. H. Taft, Political Issues and Outlooks: Speeches Delivered Between August, 1908, and February, 1909 (New York: Doubleday, Page, 1909), 66-73, and "China and Her Relations with the United States," in W. H. Taft, Present Day Problems: A Collection of Addresses Delivered on Various Occasions (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1908 [reprint, Freeport, N.Y.: Books for Libraries Press, 1967]), 44. 26. RT, Address at Howard University, Mar. 2 ,1 9 3 9 , in Papers of RAT, 2:15. 27. RT, Firestone Memorial Oration, Apr. 3,1938, copy in Paul W. Walter Papers, Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, Ohio; on Firestone, see also RT, Address at Howard University, Mar. 2,1939, in Papers of RAT, 2:14-15. 28. RT, Firestone Memorial Oration, Apr. 3,1938.

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29. RT Address, "National Preparedness," May 29, 1940, in Papers c f RAT, 2:149. 30. RT Address, "National Defense or National Confusion," Oct. 2,1940, in Papers of RAT, 2:186. 31. Quote from Brian E. Waddell, "Economic Mobilization for World War II and the Transformation of the U.S. State," Politics and Society 22 June 1994): 169. 32. RT Address, "National Preparedness," May 29, 1940, in Papers c f RAT, 2:144-45. 33. Ibid., 2:150. 34. Ibid., 2:150. In October 1940, Taft caustically described the resurrec­ tion of the seven-man Advisory Commission of the CND as a New Deal scheme to create "seven new bureaus to coordinate existing bureaus." Papers of RAT, 2:185-86. 35. RT Address, "National Preparedness," in Papers c f RAT, 2:150; see also "National Defense or National Confusion," in Papers of RAT, 2:186. 36. RT to Charles Hook, June 11, 1940, in Papers c f RAT, 2:155; RT Address, "National Preparedness," May 29,1940, in Papers of RAT, 2:150. 37. RT Address, "National Defense or National Confusion," Oct. 2,1940, in Papers cfRAT, 2:186. 38. RT Address, "National Preparedness," May 29, 1940, in Papers c f RAT, 2:149-50. 39. Ibid., 2:150-51. 40. Turner Catledge quoted in Patterson, Mr. Republican, 221. 41. Quoted in ibid., 210. 42. Forrest Davis quoted in ibid., 218. 43. Quoted in ibid., 217. 44. RT Speech, "Non-Partisanship in Foreign and Domestic Policy," Jan. 19,1940, LC/RATP. 45. Henry L. Stimson, quoted in David F. Schmitz, Henry L Stimson: The First Wise Man (Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 2001), 131. 46. RT to George F. Stanley, Sept. 8,1944, in Papers cfRAT, 2:578. 47. Quote from Mark A. Staler, "From Continentalism to Globalism: General Stanley D. Embick, the Joint Strategic Survey Committee, and the Military View of American National Policy during (he Second World War," Diplomatic History 6 (Summer 1982): 305. 48. RT to George F. Stanley, Sept. 8,1944, in Papers cfRAT, 2:577. 49. Roosevelt quoted from Public Papers and Addresses c f Franklin D. Roosevelt, 13 vols. (New York: Macmillan, 1938-50), 9:640-43. 50. RT to Gladys Appel, Dec. 26,1940, in Papers cfRAT, 2:211. 51. RT, Statement on Lend-Lease, Feb. 26,1941, in Papers cfRAT, 2229. 52. Ibid., 2:229-30. 53. RT Radio Address, "Russia and die Four Freedoms," June 25,1941, in Papers cfRAT, 2:257. 54. RT, Statement on Lend-Lease, Feb. 26,1941, in Papers cfRAT, 2:226-29. 55. Ibid., 2:227. 56. Ibid., 2:228. 57. Vandenberg quoted in Thomas G. Paterson, J. Garry Clifford, and Kenneth J. Hagan, American Foreign Policy: A History, Since 1900, 3rd ed. (Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath, 1991), 381. 58. Quoted in Patterson, Mr. Republican, 237. 59. Quote in ibid.

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60. RT Speech, "Shall the United States Enter die European W ar?" in Papers of RAT, 2:244. 61. RT, Radio Address, Aug. 29,1941, in Papers of RAT, 2:283. 62. Ibid., 2:282. 63. Ibid., 2:283; see also RT to Hulbert Taft, Aug. 26,1941, in ibid., 2:281. 64. RT to Hulbert Taft, in Papers of RAT, 2:281. 65. RT Statement, Dec. 8,1941, in ibid., 2:301. 66. RT Speech, Dec. 19,1941, in ibid., 2:303. 67. Ibid. 68. RT to Geoige F. Stanley, Sept. 8,1944, in ibid., 2:579. 69. Arthur H. Sulzberger, quoted by Taft in RT to George F. Stanley, ibid.

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hroughout the war years, Senator Taft engaged in a run­ ning battle with Roosevelt adm inistration liberals over both the proper role of the federal government in the wartime m obilization and Am erica's role in the postwar world. In the realm of domestic policy, Taft preferred to res­ urrect the loosely knit, highly voluntary approach taken by the War Industries Board during World War I, rejecting the much more government-directed vision of many New Dealers. When members of Congress pressed for the con­ scription of industrial manpower, Taft, among other conser­ vatives, fought successfully to maintain a system that allo­ cated labor to the nation's industries prim arily according to market mechanisms. From early 1943, Taft became increasingly engaged in policy debates over the nature of the postwar political and economic order. To establish stability among sovereign nations, Taft drew on his father's conservative internation­ alism ; to chart Am erica's course in global economic affairs, he drew on the m ercantilist tradition w ithin the Republican Party and the unilateral approach to diplomacy practiced by Herbert Hoover and other independent internationalists during the 1920s.

The Homefront at War Once war came, the senator repeatedly emphasized, in both his public rhetoric and his private correspondence, die need for the federal government to preserve the "American Way of Life" during the wartime emergency. For Taft, as for many other Americans, that effort meant a homefront mobilization 71

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conducted under the guiding principles of democracy, efficiency, and personal sacrifice. The debates over wartime mobilization in the United States stemmed from underlying philosophical differences over the degree to which public power should be exercised in the war effort. Americans debated the proper balance of "concentrated public pow er" and voluntary cooperation necessary to fight die global conflict. "How could mobilization organization, constructed in the context of liberal democratic culture," they asked, "be seen to be both efficient and legit­ im ate?"1 For Senator Taft, democracy, efficiency, and sacrifice had specific meanings in die context of a war emergency. His prescription for a "dem ocratic" approach meant rejection of a m obilization commanded by either the executive branch, whether comprised of New Deal pub­ lic servants or die nation's m ilitary brass, or economic conversion done in the interest of large corporations. Instead, he emphasized the need for a congressionally supervised, business-managed scheme of voluntary cooperation among economic interests and between state and society. According to Taft, Congress should oversee a voluntaris­ tic scheme of mobilization that would preserve the core principles of individual liberty, economic opportunity, and equal justice under law. For die senator, "efficiency" meant the application of business think­ ing and managerial practices to the mobilization of the domestic economy. Throughout his political rhetoric, he juxtaposed busi­ nesslike "efficiency" to the ineptitude and inefficiency of a govern­ ment bureaucracy that was not disciplined by market mechanisms. Similarly, Taft defined "sacrifice" as die imposition of lim its on indi­ vidual self-interest within the parameters of the U.S. political and eco­ nomic system. As a key architect of die conservative stance in the wartim e "politics of sacrifice," Senator Taft believed that all citizens should shoulder a share of die hom efront burden.2 Yet his positions on mobi­ lization policy revealed his conservative orientation in favor of industrial producers, particularly his preference for the functions of investm ent and production over spending and consum ption. Although Taft believed that the homefront burdens should be borne equally by citizen-consum ers, he placed strict lim its on burdens that hindered die interplay of the m arketplace system of incentives and rewards that underlay the nation's industrial capitalism . By 1942, the federal government was losing its war for price sta­ bility. It possessed few weapons to combat the basic inflationary dynamic in the economy. Although federal expenditures pumped m illions of dollars to consumers through wages and salaries, muni­

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tions production steadily reduced stocks of consumer goods. OPA adm inistrator Leon Henderson had little control over the unstable variables of wages and farm prices. In order to gain control over the runaway economy, OPA instituted ten rationing programs on com­ modities not exempt from supervision and froze prices on those goods at tiie retail level. Although Congress authorized OPA to fix maximum prices in January 1942, it w as not until A pril that Henderson abandoned selective controls and issued the General Maximum Price Regulation, which froze all retail prices at the high­ est price during the previous month. "G eneral M ax" did not cure Henderson's problems. Once adm inistrators froze prices, the quality of goods deteriorated and black markets proliferated. Taft thoroughly disagreed w ith the adm inistration's approach to controls. In correspondence w ith the OPA chief, Taft declared that he had "been considerably alarmed at the proposal that a general retail price be fixed on all com m odities as of some date in the p ast." Furthermore, he saw "no reason to think" that existing selective poli­ cies would not succeed, especially if they were "based on wholesale prices primarily, and not on retail."3 Taft then argued that "it seems to m e that price fixing should start with the raw m aterial, and be gradually extended to the w holesaler and retailer."4 To Herbert Hoover, the senator declared: "H enderson has gone about price fix­ ing in exactly the wrong way, and I even doubt whether his proce­ dure is legal under the Price Control A ct." Taft was convinced that the OPA adm inistrator's methods were not those intended by the statute. Turning to food prices, the Ohioan observed: "For instance, he has fixed the price of all pork products without fixing the price of hogs, which is w ell w ithin his power even w ith the restrictions on farm prices." To Hoover, the senator concluded: "O f course such a control is bound to break down if not changed."5 Only through con­ trols at tiie source (or early in the productive process) could prices be stabilized, Taft asserted, particularly under conditions of everincreasing scarcity of commodities for civilian consumers. By impos­ ing controls on raw m aterials or on the supplier, he believed, the bur­ den of sacrifice could be reduced on the producer of finished goods or the retailer of products. By early 1942 Taft had devised a set of five guidelines that he felt should frame federal price controls in wartime. Over the previous year, he had expressed the first two underlying assumptions: that controls should be selective, not comprehensive, thereby minimizing the extent of bureaucratic interference and maximizing the degree of voluntary cooperation in the economy; and that controls should be

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imposed on raw m aterials or on die prices of primary commodities exchanged early in the production process, instead of on retail com­ modities. In addition to these fundamental assumptions, Taft pro­ posed in early 1942 that federal adm inistrators should seek price sta­ bility, radier than freeze prices. The senator preferred price stability, which provided for gradual increases over time and reflected long­ term changes in market conditions, to an immobile and unnatural price structure. Finally, Taft proposed two procedural measures to guide federal adm inistrators: that federal review boards should be impaneled to hear complaints and that OPA should not use prewar protits as a basis for price-fixing.6

The Revenue Debates of 1942 By early 1942 it was evident to most policym akers that die central fis­ cal problem on die homefront was not a shortage, but an excess, of capital. Inflation had not existed in the months before the attack on Pearl Harbor because of the enormous slack in the economy and the high rate of unutilized productive capacity in the industrial base. But in the months following the declaration of war, inflation emerged when mass purchasing power increased as the economy hurtled toward full employment, and conversion to defense production gen­ erated shortages of consumer goods. Several key members of the Roosevelt adm inistration and other New Deal liberals advocated both compulsory savings programs and a national sales tax as effective revenue-raising and inflation-fighting instruments in the spring of 1942. A national sales tax would have exempted food purchases, existed only for the duration of the war, and accompanied a steeply graduated income tax. OPA chief Leon Henderson, M arriner S. Eccles of the Federal Reserve Board, Budget Director Harold Sm ith, and Vice President Henry Wallace supported the tax. Henry Morgenthau, the secretary of the treasury, flatly rejected imposing such a regressive measure on the "people in the lower one-third" of the society, telling Roosevelt that "it would be a mistake to yield to the clamor for a sales tax."7 Taft wanted to combine a national sales tax with a steeply gradu­ ated income tax and an excess profits tax. He believed a national sales tax was the most effective mechanism to reduce consumer spending, dampen inflation, and simultaneously raise additional revenues for the war effort. He acknowledged that such a tax was regressive, most damaging to lower-income groups, but believed that during wartime, everyone m ust sacrifice. "I don't see why every person," Taft wrote to

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a concerned constituent, "should not pay at least 10 per cent of his incom e."8 The senator had always embraced die graduated income tax. In 1942 he believed that the wealthy in America should pay more in taxes than they had paid in peacetime. He explained that those with incomes of $100,000 or more "m ust look forward to living on not more than half the amount they have formerly enjoyed." But Taft opposed any cap or lim itation on incomes. To preserve die marketbased system of incentives and rewards, the senator believed that incomes after taxes "should h av e. . . some relation to the return on the m oney" that a man earns.9 The debate over savings replicated the controversy over a national sales tax. The debate over voluntary versus compulsory sav­ ings programs once again arrayed Treasury Department bureaucrats and conservatives on Capitol H ill and across the nation against liberal New Dealers in the Budget O ffice and on die Federal Reserve Board. Morgenthau, the leading financial conservative within the adminis­ tration, wanted a voluntaristic approach to preserve the utility of bond drives in managing civilian morale, to pressure Congress to raise taxes, and to provide the obvious (inflation-fighting) outiet for personal savings. M arriner Eccles led the push for a compulsory savings program. The Federal Reserve boss considered the existing voluntary mecha­ nisms inadequate to soak up all the additional mass purchasing power in the economy. Low-income investors only purchased about 10 percent of the U.S. Savings Bonds, with die bulk going to middleand upper-income investors. In order to siphon off the potentially inflationary purchasing power from the bulk of the American work­ ing class, Eccles considered it necessary to have a compulsory savings plan. Taft, ever the voluntarist, concurred with Morgenthau in his opposition to compulsory savings schemes. The senator made an earnest plea to every citizen to "help the war by denying him self something he would like to have and buying defense bonds." Construction of guns, planes, and ships was im possible without "paying for them ," and the government could only pay through tax revenues or borrowing. "Taxes are already burdensome, and w ill be more so," Taft explained, "bu t they cannot possibly provide the money necessary." He continued: "It is your duty to save all that you can save and put it into bonds. It is going to be easier to save, because there are a lot of things you have been accustomed to buying which soon w ill not be available, and you m ight as well put the money

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where it w ill be of some use." The drive to maximize savings meant "giving up luxuries" across die societal spectrum, but Taft did not value the sacrifice made by American consumers nearly as much as the sacrifice made by the owners of invested capital.10 Those who sacrificed the most included citizens and institutions on fixed incomes, sm all businessmen whose enterprises could not function without them at the helm, and die owners of die nation's capital stock. Numerous small businesses had been "sw ept aside without compensation for that which has often taken a lifetim e to build." The most striking example of economic losers in the wartime "com plete economic revolution," according to Taft, were the automo­ bile dealerships, the commercial foundation stones of die newly emerging consumer economy, which were "apparendy headed for bankruptcy." Hundreds of thousands of salesmen were being dis­ placed, but war work would provide employment for all of diem. More important was the economic sacrifice imposed on citizens with fixed incomes. "Certainly those who have saved over many years to provide a return for their old age," claimed the senator, "are going to find their dollars have less value." Similarly, colleges, universities, research foundations, and other institutions dépendait on endow­ ments would suffer during wartime.11 But the greatest economic sacrifice of the war, according to die senator, would be borne by the owners of capital, the coupon holders of both equity and debt. The cost of enlarging the national debt would be the undermining of real capital values. In late 1941, he had esti­ mated that the war would cost $150 billion; by early 1942 he believed "the debt w ill certainly be 200 billion dollars." To Taft, that amounted to a "first m ortgage" on the entire sum of the nation's "incom e-pro­ ducing property." Influenced by Herbert Hoover and other "New Era" Republicans of the 1920s, Taft believed that war was destructive of property and that defense appropriations added littie or nothing to the productive capital of the nation. "W hen we finish the w ar," he cautioned, "w e w ill have little more property than we had when we started." Thus, after the additional bonded debt, "there w ill be 400 billion dollars' worth of tickets out there for property that is worth only half that sum ." Remembering his two decades of experience in corporate law, Taft declared: "W hen that occurred in private industry, we knew that the company was over-capitalized, and we had to scale down the value of its securities." The United States would "have to scale down the value of the property to less than 50% of what it was before the w ar," he warned, through a "capital levy" or controlled inflation.12

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Taft proposed a formula for government-imposed distributive justice, a fair allocation of income shares. "Every group in the popu­ lation must reconcile itself/' the senator declared, "to the fact that it cannot come out of this war in any better shape than when it went in, if as good." The senator asserted that there "can be no protit made out of this kind of w ar." He proposed that the excess profits tax take all but a "fair return" on invested capital. Procurement officers could let contracts as quickly as possible, then tax collectors could follow up by assessing all contracts and subcontracts using a "recapture tax." Shares to labor and agriculture should be carefully lim ited also. The farmer should not profit from the war, Taft declared. "In my opinion he would do w ell to lim it his demands to parity prices," the senator said early in 1942, referring to the pre-W orld War I basis point on which agricultural price levels were assessed. Higher prices would merely trigger price inflation, he believed, which would damage liv­ ing standards nationwide. Regarding labor's distributive share, the "workman cannot hope to profit from the w ar." Higher wages would also trigger inflation, "w hich w ill destroy the very advantage he is seeking to secure." To Taft, the only fair wage demands during wartime were those "justified by increases in the cost of living." The only exceptions were "in some industries where abnormally low wages have prevailed."13 The senator's conservative formula for distributive justice neces­ sitated strict lim its im posed by a strong federal governm ent. Although he consistently opposed the extension of the central gov­ ernm ent's bureaucracy and often proposed measures to decentralize power to the states, Taft firm ly believed that the nation's indepen­ dence and security demanded a powerful, autonomous national gov­ ernment. In debates over the postwar international order, the senator jealously guarded Am erica's sovereignty against reformist schemes that sought to dilute it.

A League of Sovereign Nations Consistent with his "Am erica at W ar" speech, Taft refused to relin­ quish partisanship as a basis for democratic action in wartime. He maintained that the Republican Party was the most effective political vehicle for both executing the war and designing a practical interna­ tionalist scheme for order in the postwar era. In the spring of 1942, the senator asserted that Republicans gained nothing from a public repu­ diation of isolationism or from assuming a definite stance on the post­ war international order. But Taft labored throughout the early months

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of the war to undermine the influence of former presidential candi­ date Wendell W illkie. When W illkie introduced a resolution for the promotion of postwar international cooperation at the Republican Party's May 1942 conference in Chicago, the senator sought unsuc­ cessfully to stop it. At that point, Taft knew he was in a long struggle against idealistic liberal internationalism. Soon events on the Senate floor forced Taft into the national debate over postwar international organization. During the spring of 1943, internationalist congressmen began introducing resolutions designed to commit the United States to extensive postwar security responsibilities. The controversial Ball-Burton-Hatch-Hill Resolution proposed American participation after the war in a strong organiza­ tion of nations devoted to collective security, with provisions for an international police force. By early 1943, there was also extensive public discussion of the postwar international order. Three schemes had roots in the main­ stream of liberal internationalist thought: Henry Luce's "American Century" conception of U.S. global dominion; the world federalism of Clarence Streit and Harold Stassen; and the international development views of Henry Wallace and other New Dealers. A fourth proposition, Walter Lippmann's great-power alliance scheme, fit much more closely with European balance-of-power models and marked a dra­ matic departure from the Wilsonian liberal internationalist tradition. Writing in February 1941, Henry R. Luce, publisher of Life, called on his fellow countrym en to make the tw entieth century an "Am erican Century." He proposed that America should be "the dynamic center of ever-widening spheres of enterprise," as well as "the powerhouse of the ideals of Freedom and Justice," and claimed that it had a duty to be "the training center of the skillful servants of m ankind." He believed that it was "the m anifest duty of this country to undertake to feed all the people of the world who as a result of this worldwide collapse of civilization are hungry and destitute." Luce preached that America ought to enlist as "the Good Sam aritan of the entire w orld."14 Taft was skeptical. He doubted whether America, "the senior partner in the control" of the world, guaranteeing "peace, happiness and liberty to all people," could rule any more effectively than the British had during the nineteenth century and asserted that there "isn 't tite slightest evidence that we could make a success of our American raj." He pointed to the abysmal record of the U.S. territorial government in Puerto Rico, "w here we have been for forty-five years without relieving poverty or improving anyone's condition." The fail-

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tire of die United States to rule "a small island of two m illion people/' the senator maintained/ did not augur well for the effort to "m anage several billion people in the rest of die w orld." The available evidence led Taft to reject the view so strongly held by his father/ the first civil governor of the Philippines, that die United States could successfully lift the "low er races" into civilization.15 M ore im portant than the sheer im practicality of Am erican dominion, Taft believed that such a development would be "com ­ pletely contrary to the ideals of the American people and die theory that we are fighting for liberty as well as for security." Luce's proposal for an American Century assumed that the U.S. government knew what was best not only for its citizens but for die rest of the world as well. In Taft's estim ation, the record of New Deal liberalism had demonstrated die flaws in the assumption that the federal govern­ ment knew what was best for the world. American citizens, who "love liberty for other people as for them selves," he believed, would protest any act "w hich smacked of im perialism ."16 New Deal liberals outlined a second scheme. Vice President Henry Wallace and key labor leaders such as CIO President Philip Murray proposed what many Americans viewed as a global New Deal. They advocated that the United States not only take the lead in the reconstruction of Europe but also invest to modernize Asia, the Indian subcontinent, and the rest of the Western Hemisphere. Such capital investment would elevate living standards at home and abroad. In a speech to the 1944 United Auto Workers convention, Murray recommended that Americans "should use our immense pro­ ductive capacity in heavy goods to help re-build w ar-tom Europe and Russia, and to industrialize China, India and Latin America, liie re is a large enough market here to help to stabilize big industry in the United States for decades." These liberals prophesied the coming of a "Century of the Common M an," in which U.S.-led economic develop­ ment would bring progress for all. To reach this utopia, they advo­ cated the dedication of enormous sums for international investment, the extension of additional credit to the Third World to foster techno­ logical development, and the implementation of programs to stimu­ late this global economic growth, if necessary, through deficit spend­ ing in the United States.17 This global Keynesian project, according to Taft, would kill "tw o birds with one stone," supplying the w orld's population while run­ ning deficits that its proponents argued would sustain production and employment at home.18 This was a scheme, in Taft's words, that made maintenance of American control over international affairs

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dependent on "econom ic generosity." Instead of "setting up an inter­ national W. P. A .," the senator proposed that the United States should "help a people to help itself/' through "reasonable trade arrange­ m ents" designed to aid countries "w hich wish to improve their industry, commerce and agriculture."19 Clarence Streit and Harold Stassen proposed a third set of schemes for postwar organization. Streit, the author of Union Now, a popular world federalism tract, urged the Allies to create a federation, complete w ith a parliamentary government and an international police force for collective security. Similarly, Stassen, die former Minnesota governor on duty w ith the navy in die Pacific, had called for a postwar world government in a widely read Saturday Evening Post article. Taft dismissed diese "super-state" proposals. Their advocacy of a "w orld code of justice" to provide specific protections for minorities and prohibitions on religious persecution especially irritated him. Taft, die nationalist, clearly bristled at die world federalists' emphasis on "hum an rights rather than national rights." He believed that a "super­ state" with full sovereignty in a variety of activities was "unsound and im practical." He flatly opposed the notion that sovereign nations should relinquish control over national security to an international police force. Furthermore, Taft, the m ercantilist, was unwilling to relin­ quish control over national economic policy, especially tariffs. "O ur tariffs would be reduced, or could," he cautioned, "and our markets raided." Finally, the effort to "regulate die treatment of m inorities," to deal with such difficult questions as die status of Jews in Europe or African Americans in the U.S. South, according to Taft, was "m ore likely to produce war than to abolish it." Regarding "m atters of inter­ nal control," Taft warned, "it w ill be a nightm are."20 Walter Lippmann, the widely read syndicated colum nist, pro­ posed yet another scheme for international organization. He had abandoned a strong belief in Wilsonian liberal internationalism , held early in his career, for die canons of great power politics, especially die principle of spheres of interest. In his April 1943 U.S. Foreign Policy: Shield o f the Republic, Lippmann sought to dramatize the lim its of American intervention. The "prim ary aim " of American responsi­ bility, Lippmann observed in a letter to diplomat Hugh Wilson, should be die protection of the Atlantic basin and the Pacific islands. Lippmann, die realist, would couple the preservation of die Atlantic community to a "blue w ater" naval strategy in the Pacific Ocean. Beyond these areas, die United States should make no permanent commitments. Eastern Europe, that great expanse of agricultural

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lands between Russia and Western Europe, should be neutralized to placate Soviet fears of encirclement. Lippmann believed that all this would be possible under a regime of great-power cooperation. For him, "national security" meant die protection of die United States and the preservation of U.S. democratic institutions.21 If he found w orld federalism "im p ractical," Taft deem ed Lippmann's great-powers thesis dangerous. "Fundam entally this is im perialism ," declared Taft in a blunt denunciation of Lippmann's views before the American Bar Association's 1943 annual meeting. "It derides the idea that w e can defend the United States, or A m erica," the senator claimed, "w ithout seabases and air bases in Europe, Africa, and A sia." Under this plan, according to Taft, the United States would have to defend the Atlantic to Iceland and the British Isles, and patrol the Pacific from Alaska to the Philippines and Australia. For that strategic purpose, he argued, the United States "m ust control all tiie sealanes and all the airlanes over the Atlantic and the Pacific."22 Taft asked why other nations should not have the same rights. Was it not in the strategic interest of Britain, the Soviet Union, France, the Netherlands, and other nations to have an international m ilitary presence that served their own individual interests? "If we must have bases in Africa to defend South Am erica," the senator charged, "w hy doesn't France or any other African power have to have bases in South America to defend Africa from us?" Once other powers sought to defend their strategic interests, he warned, a global arms race would certainly follow. "It has long been recognized," he maintained, "that m ilitarism , the very existence of huge armaments potentially aggressive is a cause of war. They are a tinder box which any spark may ignite." Concurring with earlier critics of munitions makers, Taft charged that statesm en "w ho control them unconsciously desire to see them in action. They create a profession o f m ilitarists." Furthermore, Taft declared, Lippm ann's balance-of-power thesis was "at variance" w ith the Atlantic Charter, which provided for the disar­ mament of tiie Axis nations and "all other practicable measures which w ill lighten for peace-loving peoples the crushing burden of arma­ m ents."23 After assessing the alternatives, Taft offered his own vision for a postwar world. That vision drew heavily on the conservative interna­ tionalist tradition of his father, William Howard Taft, and other prominent World War I-era Republican advocates of international arbitration and collective security. The senator rested his own concept of collective organization on a solid foundation of international law. A league of sovereign nations should be established, Taft proposed,

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but only after the great powers had created the conditions for stable commercial relations in a final peace settlement. Taft's league would be subordinated to regional peacekeeping machinery and would not interfere with the internal political affairs of nations. For Senator Taft, as for the conservative internationalists of the Great War, the ideal postwar organization would rely on law and jus­ tice, not the force of arms. He urged that after hostilities ended, nations create a body of international law, establish a strong world court to enforce the law, and refer disputes to that court. If the court ruled a dispute "justiciable," the judges could hear the case; if judges refused to hear the case, it could be sent to arbitration. Those nations that refused to abide by the new league's covenants on arms limita­ tions and inspection, that refused to subm it disputes to the world cotut, or that flouted judges' decrees would be labeled "aggressors." Taft maintained that all member nations should be obligated without veto option to adopt, first, economic sanctions and, ultimately, armed force, to halt aggression.24 The initial public debate over the proper design for international order came to a close in November 1943. The U.S. Senate approved the compromise Connally Resolution that pledged the United States to participation in a postwar league of "free and sovereign nations." At nearly the same moment in time, the Big-3 (United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union) foreign m inisters, joined by the Chinese ambas­ sador, signed the Moscow Four-Power Declaration endorsing a future league whose membership was open to all peace-loving nations. A gratified Taft registered his pleasure that the United States was now committed to a postwar organization of sovereign nations. The Connally Resolution and the Moscow declaration elim inated any chance that "one-w orld" liberals would push for the establishm ent of a world federalist "super-state" and sim ilarly prevented the Allies from creating a postwar alliance to govern international relations. A future United Nations, the senator felt certain, would be "dem o­ cratic," not "im perialistic."25 But Taft still had misgivings. The greatest deficiency in the two documents, he observed, was the failure to emphasize the establish­ ment of a body of international law, principles that a future organiza­ tion would enforce. For that reason, Taft, at the Republican Party's September 1943 Mackinac Conference, had been adamant that the party's foreign policy resolution endorse American participation in a league devoted to "perm anent peace with organized justice in a free w orld."26 Like H oover's vision, however, Taft's conception of a stable international order rested not on a veneer of political organization,

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but on an underlying foundation of stable, complementary commer­ cial relations.

A New M ercantilist Vision for the World Taft steadfastly maintained that any international order must be founded on the establishm ent of independent, economically viable national units. W ith respect to the postw ar world, the senator declared that there must be "a sound economic basis for peace, one which w ill assure to every nation a fair distribution of the w orld's goods and the ability to develop its resources and capacities." Any postwar settlem ent, he held, must provide for self-supporting eco­ nomic arrangements with access to markets for both raw m aterials and finished goods. Taft explained in 1943 that the next postwar set­ tlement needed to guarantee to nations or groups of nations "the raw materials which they require to feed their people and develop their industrial life." In addition, he believed that the next settlem ent must grant to each w ar-tom nation "an outlet for sufficient products at least to pay for these raw m aterials."27 Economic self-sufficiency for nation-states was, for Taft, the only viable means of securing "freedom from w ant." Here, the senator employed President Roosevelt's language of liberal internationalism . The "freedom from w ant" concept was one of the "Four Freedom s" announced by President Roosevelt at the end of his January 6,1941, annual message to Congress. After unveiling the Lend-Lease Bill, Roosevelt defined the "four essential freedom s" that his administra­ tion aimed to secure: freedom of speech and of religion, freedom from fear and from want.28 Although Taft believed that such m aterial selfsufficiency was im possible to secure on an individual basis, he did think it achievable at the level of autonomous nation-states. "If we interpret freedom from want to mean only this fair and equitable treatment for nations," Taft asserted, "then I think it is a reasonable goal and one which must underlie any practical plan for peace."29 The origins of Taft's views on the economic foundation of inter­ national order are very clear, and the intensely criticized 1919 Versailles Treaty shaped much of his thinking. That treaty had estab­ lished a large number of newly formed or newly independent states including Austria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, and Yugoslavia. In addition, the victors used the treaty to surround Bolshevik Russia with a circle of newly formed states, all formerly territories of the Russian Empire, including Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and Finland. Some critics of the form ation of these new states, which resulted horn

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President Woodrow W ilson's crusade for the self-determ ination of peoples, believed that the new nations were created on a weak foun­ dation, leaving them vulnerable to external pressures and inviting international instability. Taft was one of those critics. He judged the treaty and President W ilson's noble crusade failures because they placed the selfdeterm ination of peoples ahead of economic self-sufficiency in the remaking of Europe. In 1943 the senator inform ed the young men and women of Grove City C ollege's graduating class that twentyfour years earlier at Versailles "econom ic conditions w ere com pletely disrupted and disregarded" in die interest of the ideal of self-deter­ m ination as die victors established states "w hich were wholly unable to support them selves." W ilson, Lloyd George, and Clem enceau, the senator lamented, had carved Europe into "a large number of unstable u nits." Among these unstable units, Taft concluded, it was impossi­ ble to establish stable commercial relations on w hich a viable inter­ national economic order could be constructed. The causes of the second war were, for Taft, firm ly rooted in the diplomacy ending the first one.30 Taft's belief in national self-sufficiency led him to embrace regional economic integration. In the early 1940s, he drew on Herbert H oover's critique of Versailles and the former president's concept of "natural economic areas." Hoover and Hugh Gibson, a career diplo­ m at with considerable experience in economic policymaking, had written that many of the eastern European states created in 1919 "are in reality part of larger natural economic areas." In The Problems o f Lasting Peace, they pointed specifically to the case of the Danube Valley, w hich com prised the m odem states of Czechoslovakia, Austria, Hungary, and Yugoslavia. "From every standpoint of raw m aterials, com p lem entary agriculture, manufactures, and trans­ portation, they should be in one economic unit." The barriers each state erected against commerce from the others after the first war, argued Hoover and Gibson, "im poverished them all." These, and other natural areas of commerce, if integrated after World War O, "w ould make for prosperity and lessened friction, and thereby for more lasting peace."31 As early as July 1942, Taft had expressed his faith in regional eco­ nomic blocs. His correspondence with Robert R Vanderpoel, financial editor of the Chicago Herald American, illustrates his emerging views. Vanderpoel, one of Taft's "original boosters," was "greatly disturbed" by what he perceived to be the senator's "progressive drift toward isolationism ." The editor feared that Taft desired "to build a Chinese

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wall around this country." Vanderpoel abhorred the thought "that we should return once more to the selfish, blind idea that the United States could live as a nation by itself instead of as an intelligent, responsible part of a world civilization."32 Vanderpoel argued with Vanderbilt University's Professor D. F. Fleming, whose critique of Taft's position on the Republican National Com m ittee's 1942 resolu­ tion on foreign policy had recently appeared. Taft's opposition to Wendell W illkie's proposal to assume "w hatever just and reasonable responsibilities may be dem anded" of the United States, according to Fleming, was a throwback to interwar isolationism .33 Taft reassured die editor that his desire to see America follow an independent course in world politics did not reflect naive isolationism. The senator vowed that he could support a new League of Nations after foe war. But Taft was quick to admit his uncertainty about some of the principles articulated in foe Atlantic Charter. The senator had harbored doubts about the charter since its inception in late summer of 1941. He had immediately questioned how foe Allies could guarantee freedom foom fear and want, foe sixth principle of foe charter, in any postwar world. For Taft, who believed that freedom from want was inextricably linked to a nation's capacity for economic self-sufficiency, foe issues of self-determination and economic access, elaborated in foe third and fourth clauses of the charter, brought foe problems of 1919 back to center stage. Was self-government to be determined along lines of race, ethnicity, or "nationality" as at Versailles, or in accordance with natural economic relationships? W hat did "access, on equal terms, to foe trade" of the world mean? Did that translate to free trade and foe dissolution of protective tariffs? Or did it mean acceptance of foe long­ standing Republican principle of "no special privileges" to any trading partner? To Vanderpoel, Taft declared that he was "w illing to go as far towards international cooperation as I believe can succeed."34 Taft then briefly summarized his m ercantilist vision to foe Chicago editor. Significantly, he cast foe question of a stable interna­ tional economic order in terms of national economic self-sufficiency within a framework of regional integration or "natural economic areas." In his letter to Vanderpoel, Taft claimed that to forge a viable international economic order he was "inclined to favor a division of foe world into economic regions, each one to be as self-supporting as possible."35 Taft elaborated his views on economic integration one year later. He observed that the victor nations must attempt to create "custom s unions" between nations whose economies were "com plem entary" to establish a reasonable self-sufficiency.36 Customs unions, associations

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of two or more sovereign states that agree to reduce or elim inate trade barriers among themselves while presenting a common front toward outsiders, were designed to lower import costs and enlarge export markets for member states. Important vehicles for regional integration that promote economic growth, such unions typically stimulate com­ merce and industry by imposing an economic structure in which member states specialize in production best suited to their resource assets or the resources or essential products of member states. Taft saw such customs associations as crucial vehicles in which smaller states, such as those created by die 1919 treaty, could create self-supporting economic relationships unobtainable on their own. For Taft, it was eco­ nomic self-sufficiency, not an increasingly integrated global economy, that would provide die foundation for a stable world order. Taft was not the only Allied leader to consider political-econom ic integration in 1943. British Prime M inister Winston S. Churchill dis­ cussed the creation of European federations with both President Roosevelt and leading American officials during that year. Churchill envisioned a postwar Europe led by a dominant group of large states and several federations of lesser states: "a Danubian federation based on Vienna and doing something to fill the gap caused by the disap­ pearance of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Bavaria might join this group. Then there should be a Balkan federation." The prime minis­ ter thought Turkey m ight be "w illing with Greece to play some part in the Balkan system ."37 Churchill concerned him self prim arily with the issue of political integration. He saw a European confederation sharing governance w ith American and Far Eastern federal bodies in a World Council that delegated to the great powers the responsibility for peacemaking. Yet, advocates of Pan-European integration, influenced by the ideas of the leading theorist of the movement, Austrian Count CoudenhoveKalergi, sought economic cooperation as well. In a widely circulated "D raft Constitution" for a future "United States of Europe," move­ ment leaders called for the "unification of the European econom y" with the eventual creation of a postwar customs union w ith "intraEuropean free trade." Pending such a union, Pan-Europeanists called for a ban on "unilateral tariffs, exchange controls, im port quotas, export premiums, transport differentials, blocked accounts, m ultiple currencies," and any other barrier to free trade on the Continent.38 Two days after the commencement of the great "O verlord" inva­ sion of Europe on June 6,1944, Taft detailed his conception of a viable postwar international economic order. The senator declared it neces­ sary to apply the principles of liberty, equality of opportunity, and

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equal justice under law to politics among nations, ju st as in relations among citizens. But he conceived of that application in a vastly differ­ ent way than contemporary liberal internationalists. First, to under­ write liberty among nations, "the sovereign equality of all peaceloving states," those states must be free from the pressures of political spheres of influence and Big-3 pow er politics, the essence of Lippmann's balance-of-power schemes. Second, to guarantee equal treatment under international law in the postwar order, the victors must ensure all nations that any future peacekeeping organization would rest "on a firm foundation of organized justice in a free w orld." Third, the peace treaties and postwar agreements must secure eco­ nomic opportunity for all nations in the form of access to markets "on equal terms to the raw m aterials of the w orld" and for the sale of fin­ ished goods.99 Throughout the war years, Senator Taft sought to apply his core principles of freedom and opportunity to the formation of a postwar order. To him , these principles were the core ideas underpinning any free society. Therefore it is not surprising that during the wartime debates over manpower m obilization, he fought to preserve a marketoriented system of labor allocation that allowed each worker a signif­ icant degree of freedom and mobility.

The Debates over Industrial M anpower A m erica's participation in global w ar after Decem ber 7, 1941, demanded a rapid general m obilization nationwide of both military and civilian resources. Almost immediately, "a formidable debate arose over the allocation of manpower in the mobilization process." Americans argued whether their nation "should rely on mandatory or voluntary means to secure workers in defense-related jobs."40 Although the Roosevelt adm inistration and its War Manpower Commission, under the direction of Paul V. McNutt, the former gov­ ernor of Indiana, were reluctant to depart from voluntary manpower allocation methods, the wartime C itizen's Committee lobbied for leg­ islation that would institute a mandatory conscription of workers. The Citizen's Committee, headed by prominent New York lawyer and preparedness advocate Grenville Clark, exerted pressure initially on the adm inistration, then on Congress, to establish a civilian coun­ terpart to the m ilitary's Selective Service. Clark finally enlisted the aid of two legislators who were sympa­ thetic to the Citizen's Committee's ideas of patriotic national service. On February 8,1943, Senator Warren Austin (R-Vt.) and Representative

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James W. Wadsworth Jr. (R-N.Y.) introduced a bill to create a "system of civilian selective service." The Austin-Wadsworth Bill called for the registration of adult men and women, authorized the president to determine the need for workers in critical industries, and empowered the Selective Service to draft qualified workers to satisfy manpower needs if insufficient volunteers stepped forward. The bill stated that every citizen had an obligation to serve on die homefront "as he or she may be deemed best fit to perform ." Senator Austin justified this con­ scription of labor, carried out by local draft boards, as the only demo­ cratic means for "com plete, effective mobilization of manpower and woman power in winning the war."41 Senator Taft's vigorous opposition to Austin-Wadsworth led to a heated exchange w ith C itizen's Committee chairman W. Douglas Arant. In stating his views, Taft distinguished between the operation of a m ilitary organization and private industry. "The problem of oper­ ating our huge civilian machinery," die senator observed, "is a very different one from that of operating an army. The attem pt to operate the civilian machinery in the same manner in a democratic country like the United States I believe would be a failure."42 Taft was concerned that Austin-Wadsworth threatened both the efficiency of industry and the rights of labor. Regarding his first con­ cern, Taft feared that compulsory measures would destroy the exist­ ing industrial harmony that was already outproducing the Axis. Agreeing w ith the National Association of M anufacturers (NAM) leadership, the senator wrote Arant that he firm ly believed that "equal production can not be secured by compulsory labor."43 Taft made a more impassioned argument for individual liberty. Passage of Austin-Wadsworth would mean, according to the senator, "the sacrifice of practically all the individual rights which have always been considered an essential part of American democracy." Although citizens "m ay have to surrender some of those rights tem­ porarily during the war, and we have done so," he believed that "cer­ tainly we should not do so unless the object to be gained is clear and certain." The senator seemed to agree with the view expressed by Bernard M. Baruch, chairman of President W ilson's War Industries Board in 1918, that drafting a man to fight for his country is m orally different from drafting a man to work for an employer managing a business for profit.44 In a long letter to the senator, Arant sought to refute Taft's views. "Failure on the part of Congress to enact national service legislation heretofore," he claimed, "has resulted in compulsion by executive and adm inistrative orders and decrees of one form or another which

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probably are not authorized by law ." Axant then charged that "the Selective Service Act is being used to control civilian service in a way not intended by Congress." "The use of such methods is an admis­ sion," the prominent Birmingham, Alabama, lawyer contended, "that voluntary methods in the absence of legal obligation for service are not sufficient."45 The debate over w orkers' rights infuriated Arant. "I do not agree w ith you," he declared, "that die enactment of the Austin-Wadsworth Bill would involve the sacrifice of practically all the individual rights which are part of American democracy. The bill contains careful safe­ guards for die protection of the individual." Arant reminded the sen­ ator of earlier batdes: "This argument was made by many people against die Selective Service Training and Service Act of 1940." Finally, Arant drew a comparison with Am erica's closest ally, arguing that "[n]ational service legislation has been in existence in England for some time and individual rights there have not been sacrificed."46 In the fight against national service legislation, the Ohio legislator had numerous allies. Industrial leaders from the NAM and other employer groups opposed the loss of managerial prerogatives and the voluntary nature of free labor. NAM spokesmen cautioned that industrial "production would su ffer. . . because there is no substitute for the initiative and w illing effort of free m en." Organized labor con­ curred. Both die American Federation of Labor (AFL) and the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), seldom in agreement and rarely supportive of m anagerial positions, joined in die opposition. The trade unionists feared the loss of collective bargaining, seniority, and reemployment rights once Congress established a national serv­ ice program. Similarly, representatives of wom en's groups who opposed conscripting fem ale labor lobbied against A ustinWadsworth. Finally, leaders of the African American community per­ ceived the bill as a mechanism to force black workers into a state of peonage. Once local draft boards in the South assumed control over the local labor pool, they contended, "hapless, hopeless, and help­ less" African Americans would be at the mercy of white elites.47 Opposition to the proposal for a nationwide conscription of civil­ ian labor and the failure of the administration to lead the fight for pas­ sage led Senator Austin to suspend hearings. But Germany's December 1944 Ardennes counteroffensive reopened the debate on national serv­ ice legislation. Congressional Democrats introduced a substitute meas­ ure, the May-Bailey Bill, in early 1945. The new legislation, introduced by Senator Josiah W. Bailey (D-N.C.) and Representative Andrew J. May (D-Ky.), chairman of the House M ilitary Affairs Committee, was

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essentially a "w ork or fight" law. It would have frozen the jobs of all male workers between the ages of eighteen and forty-five or compelled diem to do defense-related work when offered.48 After a new round of debates, Congress produced compromise legislation that proved even more offensive to advocates of voluntarism. Taft was outraged. The substitute bill "gives alm ost unlimited power to [War Manpower Commission Chairman] McNutt to write regulations having die force of law and covering the whole field of em ploym ent." The exasperated legislator exclaim ed, "I hope we can amend it and get back to a voluntary basis." Writing to fellow conser­ vative Joseph N. Pew Jr., Taft declared that "everyone who knows anything about production agrees that the bill w ill radier interfere with production than increase it." Taft found "no evidence" to justify circum scribing "th e freedom of the individual em ployer and employee which has produced such m agnificent results in the past."49 Senator Bailey's amendment to the substitute legislation drew more fire from the Ohio senator. Bailey's amendment provided that draft boards could order men between the ages of eighteen and fortyfive to leave their employment and take jobs assigned to diem by the War Manpower Comm ission. Bailey's M arch 1945 amendment, according to Taft, was merely a roundabout way of instituting a com­ pulsory national service program for draft-age men. A "w ork or else" law was unnecessary, according to the senator. It was industrial mobi­ lization along the lines of a "voluntary system " that had achieved the "m agnificent results" he had spoken of earlier. More importantiy, Taft doubted that either die civilian bureaucracy of the federal govern­ ment or the m ilitary could improve production m aterially under a compulsory system. He was especially critical of the military, which, according to his constituent m ail, had clearly demonstrated that it was an inefficient em ployer of men.50 Taft asserted that such compulsory legislation "w ould not only change die whole nature of Am erica" and abolish "die freedom for which we are fighting," but would also create "confusion" within industry and hinder production. It m ight, in Taft's words, "create dis­ satisfaction and destroy the morale of the workmen and the spirit of voluntary cooperation shown by die labor leaders." He further spec­ ulated that worker dissatisfaction could reduce industrial output by 10 to 20 percent. W hen Senator Millard Tydings (D-Md.) argued that national service m ight make possible die achievement of higher lev­ els of production, Taft retorted that Bailey's amendment could under­ mine the "cooperative spirit" between capital and labor that "now generally exists" in industry and retard production.51

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Entrepreneurship and the Postwar Society After 1920 the Republican Party championed small business enter­ prise and cast small businessmen as pillars of American society. Senator Taft praised new ventures, those small businesses that had growth potential. Such entrepreneurship was the key to economic growth, he asserted, and to the expansion of private sector employ­ ment. In contrast, New Deal liberals in die National Resources Planning Board (NRPB) called for a vast extension of public enter­ prise in the nation. NRPB planners, led by economist Alvin Hansen, among others, preferred to extend, rather than dismantle, the large wartime organization of government-run public enterprises. In early 1944, Taft made a strong case for private enterprise: he vehemently criticized the wartime tax system of the Roosevelt adm inistration, cas­ tigated the subsidization of public enterprise as a strategy for long­ term economic growth, made a convincing argument that "sm all business" was responsible for the most dynamic growth in the econ­ omy, and advocated that the federal government should facilitate small capital ventures through a variety of loan and investment guar­ antees. Debates over federal support for sm all business and the nation's smaller manufacturing enterprises prompted the senator's advocacy of private enterprise. By early 1944, Taft fully embraced such a small business economic development program. He was especially keen on promoting small business economic development for such regions as New England that had experienced severe industrial decline in the twentieth century. Taft's promotion of private enterprise included a ringing indict­ ment of New Deal public enterprise. He criticized the NRPB's 1943 recom m endations for expanding public enterprise. Based on Keynesian compensatory spending theories, the planning board drafted several monographs on postwar economic development and made numerous policy suggestions before conservative opposition led to its dissolution. The NRPB recommended public or quasi-public corporations to operate companies in the power generation, trans­ portation, ship-building, aviation, aluminum, and magnesium indus­ tries. Conservatives feared that continuation of massive public enter­ prises after the war would translate to continued high rates of taxation and spending. Taft worried that private entrepreneurship would decline because of both the "crushing burden" of high taxes and the competitive threat that public corporations posed in the search for capital and markets.52

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Taft recognized that small business development required federal support. It was a "typical exam ple" of private enterprise "w hich had been hampered and may be destroyed unless it is protected and assisted in some degree by federal legislation." The senator believed that it was necessary to "foster and stim ulate sm all business, old and new /' while not creating new federal controls that might be used by the Roosevelt adm inistration "either for political purposes or for eco­ nomic planning."53 The senator rejected the idea w idely held by American corporate leaders that the m odem corporation was the prim ary instrum ent of economic growth and technological progress. He observed that "large business units, like units of government, tend to settle down into fixed grooves. They adopt methods which cannot be easily changed. There is little incentive among their many em ployees to develop new ideas or new m ethods." Furthermore, the large corpo­ ration could become an ally and tool of socialism . If the nation becam e "a country of big business," it was no better off than under a state socialist regime. Indeed, he argued, "the easiest road to social­ ism is through the form ation of large business units which can easily be taken over by the governm ent." Communists, socialists, and New Dealers all had shown "a strange friendliness to the biggest units of big business."54 Taft claim ed that large corporations had, for their part, not stood in the way of Roosevelt's radical reform ist experi­ ments. In contrast, Taft, like other Republicans of this era, embraced "sm all business." But he was most concerned with entrepreneurship, portraying the smaller manufacturing enterprises being undertaken across the industrial North and Midwest as the driving force in the American economy. Rather than believing the liberal Keynesian view that economic growth necessitated public spending and state enter­ prise, Taft affirmed that it was "individual work, individual initiative, genius, and daring," fairly rewarded in the marketplace, that gener­ ated economic growth.55 Taft drew a sharp distinction between types of sm aller enterprises and their needs in the capital markets. Retail establishm ents and wholesale dealers were by far the most numerous group of small businessmen and, according to the senator, the most important guardians of independence, freedom, and opportunity in our local communities. These businessmen were the least likely to need assis­ tance from government in securing loan capital. In contrast, small manufacturing concerns were the most important growth engines generating new production and employment.

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From his years as a corporate law yer and state legislator, Taft pos­ sessed a d ear understanding of the needs of sm all and medium-sized industrial corporations. Returning to his 1939 analysis of government interference in the m arketplace, Taft argued that small businessmen must receive relief from both the high costs of federal regulatory ini­ tiatives and large federal tax bills. The "greatest com plaint" Taft had received from Cincinnati sm all businessmen concerned the onerous burden of federal regulatory reporting. Large corporations could absorb the cost of such reporting, Taft explained, but the small enter­ prise could not. "The small business man had to spend his own time, which ought to have been devoted to improving his own business."56 N ext in importance to reducing tire regulatory costs of small busi­ nesses, Taft asserted, was supplying their capital needs. The senator harkened back to a tim e when those with fortunes "becam e the patron and backer of other men who seemed to possess ideas or abil­ ity." Taft recognized that "m any of tire new ventures went wrong, but when one did succeed, the investor obtained such advantages as to balance his losses in others." According to Taft's narrative of the Industrial Revolution, industries with "one or two employees were expanded by the investments of a half-dozen friends who had confi­ dence in the enterprise or the enterpriser, until they gave work to hundreds of men, or thousands, or hundreds of thousands." This ven­ ture capital investment process, so important to the development of industry during the previous century, had ended, according to Taft, largely because of the high rates of tax on income.57 After looking at the costs of the wartime m obilization, the senator realized that, in the postwar era, there could probably be little relief in the payment of income taxes. But he was adamant about reforming the capital gains tax. Taft believed that removing the capital gains tax barrier would do much to improve the financing of sm aller enter­ prises after the war. The federal capital gains tax had tended to "freeze capital," in Taft's words, "and prevent its turnover in individ­ ual hands," while producing little revenue for the Treasury. "If we want capital to go into small industry, or into large industry, the mar­ ket ought to be ju st as liquid as possible, and the government ought to do everything possible to encourage the transfer of property from one person to another, so that capital reaches the hands of those who can make it most useful for production and em ploym ent."58 Taft then recommended that federal restrictions on securities issues be relaxed to facilitate investment in sm aller industrial firms. Once again, Taft criticized the Roosevelt adm inistration's regulatory zeal for increasing the cost of doing business. The Securities and

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Exchange Commission, according to Taft, had made "the business of public financing so expensive and difficult as to be alm ost im possible in die case of those small manufacturing concerns which have attained their first growth but need additional capital for expansion." Taft also believed that federal regulations hampered the growth of securities exchanges in sm aller cities. "It is hopeless for the small business man to look to New York for capital. The great exchanges there can only be interested in big business."99 Far from being an advocate of laissez-faire, Taft advocated a vig­ orous, constructive role for the federal government in financing all the capital needs of small business after the war. Sm aller enterprises required three types of capital assets: their operations often necessi­ tated commercial loans for "current purposes"; loans for "capital pur­ poses" extending for periods of five to ten years; and long-term capi­ tal needs in the form of either preferred or common stock.60 In early 1944, Taft placed his considerable political clout behind the small business entrepreneurs of America. He supported legisla­ tion introduced by Senator Jam es M. Mead (R-N.Y.) that called for the creation of a small business finance corporation within the Federal Reserve System with specific authority to guarantee or insure loans directly to small businesses and provide limited guaranties to private investment companies furnishing capital to business ventures. For Taft, forging a stable postwar social order meant balancing private initiative and public power. In all the mobilization debates, the senator had advocated using the power of the federal government to facilitate business enterprise without allowing bureaucracy to stifle initiative. On the issue of equal opportunity in employment, Taft adhered to the same principles. He refused to sanction a m assive fed­ eral adm inistrative intervention in employment relations regardless of tiie critical nature of the social problem.

Race and the Postwar Society In the final eighteen months of World War H, key liberal Democrats began to press for federal intervention in support of civil rights, shift­ ing from a class-based, economic reform agenda to one characterized by attention to individual rights and entitlem ents. Liberals increas­ ingly believed that social problems resulted from racial, ethnic, and other sociocultural categories, in addition to economic factors. In the case of employment discrimination, these liberals, led by Senator Dennis Chavez (D-N.M.), responded to the increasing groundswell for federal intervention with the introduction of S. 2048 in 1944.

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The Chavez Bill proposed to use the full force of the federal gov­ ernment to fight employment discrimination. President Roosevelt, responding earlier to pressure from African American leaders, had issued Executive Order 8802 to ban discrim ination in defense indus­ tries during die war emergency. That order had established the Fair Employment Practices Committee (FEPC), an agency that was ulti­ mately forced to pursue voluntaristic approaches to elim inate dis­ crimination in die nation's manufacturing base. Initially it only made recommendations, but soon it began issuing directives instructing unions and employers to end discrimination. Although the wartime FEPC accomplished much, employers disregarded most of its compli­ ance orders. Recalcitrant employers abhorred the lack of due process attending agency directives; conservatives saw a radical New Deal bureaucracy attempting to impose a new code of social relations on industry. The 1944 bill called for the creation of a permanent, five-member, presidentially appointed commission w ith full investigatory and enforcement powers and specified a series of "unfair employment practices" that were expressly forbidden by employers in firms with six or more workers and by trade unions. It banned discrim ination by employers in hiring, discharges, and compensation or conditions of employment because of a w orker's "race, creed, color, national origin, or ancestry." Similarly, it forbade trade unions from denying full membership rights and privileges, expelling members, and discrimi­ nating against other organizations, employers, or individuals because of their race, creed, color, national origin, or ancestry. To enforce these bans on unfair employment practices, the commission would have the power to serve a complaint on an offender, conduct a hearing, issue a cease and desist order, and, ultimately, petition the federal court for the enforcement of such an order, or for a judge's restraining order, in cases where recalcitrant employers refused to comply. Although they never endorsed the Chavez Bill, Republicans embraced the concept of a permanent commission on employment practices and vaguely supported civil rights. In a single, unamplified sentence, the 1944 Republican platform stated: "We pledge the estab­ lishm ent by Federal legislation of a permanent Fair Employment Practices Com m ittee." Taft, who drafted the passages on domestic affairs, and other platform managers coupled this uninspiring lan­ guage w ith plain endorsements of civil rights legislation. The docu­ ment condemned "the injection into American life of appeals to racial and religious prejudice," promised "an immediate Congressional inquiry" into and legislation to end "m istreatm ent, segregation and

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discrimination against Negroes who are in our armed forces/' and pledged the party to oppose the poll tax as "a condition of voting in Federal elections" and to propose the "im m ediate submission of a Constitutional amendment for its abolition." Republicans also cham­ pioned the "early enactm ent" of a federal antilynching statute.61 Republicans were of two minds on the issue of employment dis­ crimination. Some moderates accepted greater federal supervision over employment practices; most conservatives rejected government intrusion in the management of enterprise, reaffirming a long-held belief in entrepreneurial freedom; some, like Thomas E. Dewey of New York, attempted to straddle the fence on civil rights. Governor Dewey signed legislation during the summer of 1944 that established a state fair employment practices commission with enforcement pow­ ers. But presidential candidate Dewey ran on a nationwide party plat­ form that offered no specific endorsement of enforcement and con­ formed to earlier promises of freedom and equal opportunity by the GOP. The party pledged itself to "re-establishing liberty at hom e," to upholding "w ith all our strength the Bill of Rights, the Constitution and tiie law of the land." In the platform 's closing statement, the Republican leadership posed the problem as follows: "The essential question at trial in this nation is whether men can organize together in a highly industrialized society, succeed, and still be free. That is the essential question at trial throughout the world today."62 Nowhere did tiie Republicans demonstrate that they placed employment opportuni­ ties for all workers on an equal footing with entrepreneurial freedom. Once Dewey lost the 1944 presidential election and Chavez rein­ troduced his bill, Taft openly professed his criticism s of the compul­ sory legislation. In a February 2,1945, conference, the senator lectured indignant National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) leaders about the shortcomings of the Chavez Bill, m aintaining it "w ould arouse more open anti-Negro feeling than has existed since Reconstruction." Taft candidly expressed his gradualist beliefe regarding racial uplift. He believed, and had often lectured audiences, that African Americans should be proud of the rapid progress they had made in uplifting their race since emancipation. According to T. M. Berry, the senator had "urged Negroes to be patient and satisfied with their progress thus far." The president of the NAACP's Cincinnati Branch later recalled that the senator had counseled African Americans "not to [be] insistent upon working where they are not w anted."63 Taft raised other objections to the bill. He adamantly contended that a compulsory FEPC would destroy customs and traditions in

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industry, some of which had been beneficial to black laborers. If African Americans insisted on immediate equal treatment in employ­ ment, Taft had cautioned NAACP leaders, "the way [might] be opened for white men to possibly disgrace" previously all-black trades such as sleeping car porters. Taft's most enduring criticism of file Chavez Bill—one he would repeat in the 1949 legislative battle— was that a compulsory FEPC would force employers to a "percent­ age" or quota system of hiring. The senator declared that employers who had m inority populations in their locality that were underrepre­ sented in their workforce would be compelled to hire up to a certain "percentage of races, creeds and colors."64 On February 5,1945, Taft offered a substitute bill for the creation of a permanent commission w ith only investigatory powers. Taft's bill was accompanied by a stinging critique of the philosophy of the New Deal adm inistrative state embodied in the Chavez Bill. "Few realize how extensive these compulsory provisions are," the senator declared. "They are modeled on the 'unfair labor practice' provisions of the National Labor Relations A ct."65 It is essential to understand that the senator's opposition to the Chavez Bill (and, later, the 1949 McGrath Bill) was based on two distinct, but interrelated, points: First, the unfair labor practice provisions "give to anyone who is refused employment or dismissed from a job the right to bring an action against the employer, alleging some motive of discrim ination because the applicant or em ployee is w hite, black, Protestant, Catholic, Jew ish, Czech, Pole or Germ an." Taft was certain that the compulsory legislation would open the floodgates of litigation "by inviting thousands of law suits which w ill get beyond the control even of the Fair Employment Practices Comm ittee itself." Taft observed that the Chavez Bill would generate racial prejudice against m inorities and destabilize the workforce because such "m otives are always possible to allege." Second, Taft lamented, as he had done many times regarding the Wagner Act, that "the question is left for decision to a board which is bound by no rules of evidence, and prac­ tically not subject to court review."66 Taft, among other conservatives, objected to New Deal adm inistrative agencies that were not required to abide by courtroom rules and were subject only to a procedural, not substantive, review by the federal courts. Moreover, Taft again raised the specter of m inority hiring quotas. "A s I see it," the senator contended, "the compulsory act, if dupli­ cated in every state as its proponents plan, w ill finally force every em ployer to choose his employees approximately in proportion to the division of races and religions in his district." Such an employment

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policy w ill be the em ployer's "best defense to harassing suits." "R ace and religion w ill enter into every decision/' Taft railed. "Catholic institutions, for instance, w ill have to em ploy Protestants; the M ethodist Book Concern w ill have to employ Catholics." Repeating his earlier warnings to NAACP leaders, he suggested that white wait­ ers and porters could "insist upon most of the work in die Pullman sleepers and dining cars." Because the Chavez Bill "even includes national origin and ancestry," an obsessed Taft continued, employers in a m ulticultural setting like Cleveland "could be sued by represen­ tatives of every nationality group particularly if they do not have members of that nationality employed in the particular office or plant." A compulsory FEPC eventually "w ould tell every employer how he must make up his labor force." It would, the senator claimed, create "m ore bad racial and religious feeling than any other method which can be pu rsu ed. . . [and] do the colored race much more harm than good."67 As an alternative to Chavez, Taft advocated a "constructive approach" that hinged on gradualism in racial uplift, voluntarism in state-society relations, and localism in the political-economic concep­ tion of labor markets. "Progress against discrimination must be made gradually," Taft recommended, "and must be made by voluntary cooperation and education with encouragement from a Federal Board." His February 1945 bill, S. 459, proposed a permanent commis­ sion authorized to make comprehensive local studies to determine the best ways to "elim inate" employment discrimination and provide for the full employment of "negroes and all other minority groups." Taft's bill would have granted a new commission "fu ll pow er" to call wit­ nesses and inquire into specific cases of discrimination, make recom­ mendations, and "secure community interest and cooperation and voluntary compliance by employers and labor unions."68 S. 459 vigorously restated Taft's conception of an equal opportu­ nity society. In the introductory declaration, Taft stated that "the prac­ tice of denying employment opportunities to, and discrim inating in employment against properly qualified persons by reason of race, creed, or color is contrary to the principles of freedom and equality of opportunity upon which this Nation is built." He added that it was also "incom patible with the provisions of the Constitution" and fomented "dom estic strife and unrest." Taft extended his philosophy of individuell development to the nation by adding that discrimina­ tion "deprives the United States of the fullest utilization of its capaci­ ties for production and defense, and burdens, hinders, and obstructs com m erce."69

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Taft's bill placed greater lim its on the definition of discrim ination than the compulsory bill. S. 459 stated that "it is the policy of the United States to bring about the elim ination of discrim ination because of race, creed, or color" in all employment relations under fédéral jurisdiction. Taft clearly limited application of his bill to racial and religious differences, so as to exclude "national origin" or "ances­ try."70 Given his February 5,1945, statem ent, it is clear that he desired to latch tightly a Pandora's box of ethnic discrim ination that would, in his mind, make adm inistration of employment practices in such m ulticultural localities as Cleveland extremely difficult. Taft sought to temper the equal opportunity ideal with a rever­ ence for localism. He was w illing to alter attitudes about race rela­ tions in order to ensure blacks greater economic opportunity, but only within a framework that preserved local considerations. In his February 5 statem ent introducing S. 459, he readily admitted that cre­ ation of an FEPC "is justified by the fact that negroes do not have the opportunities for employment enjoyed by white m en." In many local­ ities, "they are the last to be employed and the first to be laid off." Because much employment discrim ination stemmed from "[cjustom and prejudice," Taft was convinced that only a local approach could end that discrimination. "A voluntary com m ission," the senator earnestly intoned, "can develop different kinds of plans to increase good colored employment in different cities after studying the local conditions and the character of local industries." As Taft observed, the "m ethod of solving the problem of negro full em ploym ent in Cleveland may be entirely different from that which should be pur­ sued in New York City or in Atlanta, G eorgia." By 1945, Taft had rec­ ognized that it was necessary to assess not only the nature of jobs in various industries but also the social and cultural conditions—the nature of racism—in various localities. For these inquiries, he pro­ posed granting the federal commission the "pow er to set up local [employment practices] commissions in all regions throughout the United States."71 Taft refused to accept a stronger federal antidiscrim ination law. By w ar's end, liberals wanted a strong FEPC to guarantee employ­ ment rights to all citizens. With the onset of the Cold War, liberals quickly recognized how discrim ination undermined Am erica's image abroad, especially in the newly sovereign nations in the w orld's underdeveloped regions. America could not exem plify democracy and freedom worldwide, these liberals charged, if it could not resolve such basic issues as employment discrim ination at home. Taft was unmoved by these arguments. Throughout the 1940s, he steadfastly

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opposed a fair employment law "w ith teeth" on principle: the harm resulting horn a new, powerful federal bureaucracy outweighed the benefits achieved from forcefully dismantling racial discrimination in employment. The senator's objection to excessive statism resulted from a pen­ chant for freedom and initiative. He em braced sim ilar assum ptions when considering A m erica's role in the postw ar international order. W hen faced w ith the problem s of global m onetary stability and postw ar reconstruction and developm ent loans, Taft preferred to chart a course that allow ed Am erica the greatest independence and flexibility.

Independent Internationalist In 1944 representatives of forty-six nations met at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, to devise a new structure for international economic activity. The conferees recommended the creation of two new multi­ lateral financial institutions—an international monetary fund and an international bank. The fund, subscribed to the amount of $8.8 billion by member nations, was charged with the task of facilitating interna­ tional trade, preventing discrim inatory exchange controls, and staunching destabilizing currency wars with their destructive rounds of devaluations. The bank, initially capitalized at $9.1 billion, was established to extend loans for the reconstruction and long-term development of member nations, to promote private investment and the "long-range balanced growth of international trade." Advocates of the Bretton Woods plan "sought to banish restrictive policies and state trading, integrate tire world economy along m ultilateral lines, and supplement market forces and private enterprise w ith institu­ tional regulators and government aid ."72 It was the mechanism of m ultilateral institutional regulators to which Taft most strenuously objected. Throughout the early postwar period, he preferred unilateral lending to allow the United States to follow an independent course of action in postwar reconstruction efforts. In June 1944, the senator admitted that "w e should consult with foreign nations as to their needs, and sit in on international boards to discuss their problem s." Regarding the monetary fund, he recognized that "w e are interested in helping them stabilize their cur­ rency, but we must reserve our freedom of action to handle our own cash for stabilizing exchange or assisting other countries."73 Taft believed that the key to international monetary stabilization was a bilateral "agreem ent w ith England as to the relation of the dol­

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lar and the pound." Once the two allies had fixed sterling-dollar exchange, he asserted, they could "then consider one by one the con­ dition of the other countries."74 Although he did not call for restoration of the 1920s gold exchange standard, Taft sought to address postwar instability by reinstating the bilateral relations that had characterized the interwar period. It was the bilateral sterling-dollar arrangement and the close cooperation between the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the Bank of England during these years that served as Taft's model. In foe 1920s, central bankers had established a gold exchange standard based on an elaborate pyramid scheme: American banks, holding foe m ajority of foe w orld's gold, formed foe base of foe pyra­ mid; British banks, which held reserves prim arily in U.S. dollars, loaned sterling to European states and colonies; these nations held sterling pounds, whose value was pegged to foe dollar in 1926, as reserves and provided loans for commerce and industry throughout foe remainder of foe world. The pyramid scheme was a brilliant suc­ cess in foe short run. In foe long run, foe entire system hinged on foe stability of foe U.S. dollar and foe security of foe American gold sup­ ply. Inflation and speculation in foe United States could (and did) undermine foe entire world monetary structure. Taft was in no hurry to deal with currency stabilization. Before addressing exchange matters, foe senator argued, it was necessary to restart commercial and industrial activity in foe w ar-tom nations. "Their currency status," he observed soon after foe June 1944 Normandy invasion, "is only a result of their poor economic condi­ tion or poor budgetary policy." For Taft, foe proper method for jum pstarting economies was "direct loans in reasonable amount on defi­ nite conditions imposed by u s." Taft argued that foe United States should extend "only enough to enable foe borrower to import raw m aterials and other goods necessary for foe starting up of its manu­ facture and its productions." Later, when these nations had put their own houses in order, Taft advised, England and foe United States could consider foe question of exchange stabilization. "The attem pt to support exchange as a first step," Taft cautioned, "is utterly hopeless and infinitely more expensive."75 With respect to postwar reconstruction policies, Taft was applying lessons learned while working alongside Hoover in Europe in 1919. Wartime regulations coupled with the destruction caused by hostilities had "wiped out" private business and commerce on foe Continent by foe November 1918 armistice. It was H oover's intention in January 1919 to "break down these controls as far as possible or simplify them, so that private trade can get started, and all foe countries commence to

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export to pay for their food."76 Once market relations were restored following hostilities, nations could contemplate permanent currency stabilization measures. Senator Taft fought his own ideological war in the three years after the Pearl Harbor attack, a war against liberal statist and "super­ state" policies and prescriptions. In die realm of domestic policy, although he advocated a constructive federal role in promoting entre­ preneurship, he consistently opposed efforts to extend the national governm ent's adm inistrative authority over manpower allocation and employment practices. His faith in voluntary, market-based solu­ tions for those problems never wavered. Although Taft correctly rea­ soned that voluntary, m arket m echanism s efficiently allocated resources, he certainly overestimated voluntarism 's effectiveness as an instrument of social change. Deeply ingrained cultural forces such as racial discrim ination could only be erased by forceful federal action. In a sim ilar fashion, Taft attacked the various big-govem m ent proposals for postwar international organization. Each plan, in turn, required an excessive U.S. commitment of resources overseas or a loss of sovereignty to some international body. In contrast, Senator Taft remained faithful to an earlier generation of Republican Party thought and action, blending Progressive Era beliefs in law and jus­ tice with interwar-era unilateralism . Taft's faith in international law and arbitration dovetailed neatly w ith his independent internationalist approach to diplomacy. Like World War I-era conservative internationalists who advocated American participation in an international organization founded on law and justice, the senator remained a committed nationalist, resis­ ted any lessening of U.S. sovereignty or m ilitary power, and sought to preserve a free hand for unilateral American action on issues of eco­ nomic diplomacy and national security. In the latter realm, Taft fol­ lowed the old conservative internationalists who "believed that the United States should pursue international stability through the power of deterrence inherent in collective security, yet reserve to itself the right to improve its capacity to undertake coercive action against the forces of disorder that threatened the national interest."77 The senator maintained that mechanisms for law and justice were meaningless without international economic stability. His belief in the commercial roots of war separated him from those earlier conserva­ tive internationalists. Taft firm ly believed that nations had to receive access to natural resources and markets necessary for their industrial growth. He correctly argued that sm aller nations that depended on

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adjacent states within "natural economic areas" needed to be inte­ grated regionally to thrive. Once integration remedied the underlying economic conflicts among states, to Taft's way of thinking, remaining disputes could easily be resolved through courts and arbitration.

Notes 1. The questions are taken from Robert Cuff, "American Mobilization for War, 1917-45: Political Culture vs Bureaucratic Administration," in N. F. Dreisziger, ed., Mobilization for Total War: The Canadian, American and British Experience, 1914-1918, 1939-1945 (W aterloo, Ontario: Wilfred Laurier University Press, 1981), 73. 2. The phrase is from Mark H. Leff, "The Politics of Sacrifice on the American Home Front in World War U," Journal of American History 77 (March 1991): 1296-1318. In his essay, Leff assessed "a political process in which claimed sacrifices and contributions could be parlayed into political advan­ tage or into efforts to shift war burdens to others" (1298). 3. RT to Leon Henderson, Apr. 9,1942, in Papers of RAT, 2:347. 4. RT to Henderson, Apr. 15,1942, in Papers of RAT, 2:349. 5. RT to Hoover, May 22, 1942, Herbert Hoover Papers (PostPresidential), Herbert Hoover Presidential Library, West Branch, Iowa. 6. James T. Patterson, Mr. Republican: A Biography of Robert A. Taft (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1972), 257-58. The senator thought that "profits present a very poor basis for fixing prices." OPA had averaged industry prof­ its from the 1936-39 period, thereby utilizing figures from an economically depressed period as a benchmark, in addition, averages were "unfair to the smaller companies" whose lower profits were offset by the higher margins of more efficient, larger enterprises. RT to [OPA Legal Counsel] David Ginsburg, Apr. 6,1942, in Papers of RAT, 2:345-46. 7. Morgenthau quote from John M. Blum, V Wasfor Victory: Politics and American Culture During World War II (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976), 229. 8. RT to Matt Formate, Apr. 11,1942, Paul W. Walter Papers, Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, Ohio. 9. Quoted passages from Patterson, Mr. Republican, 256. 10. RT Speech, Feb. 12,1942, in Papers of RAT, 2:335. 11. Ibid. 12. Ibid., 2:334; the notion of a "capital levy" is discussed at 2:308. 13. RT Speech, Feb. 12,1942, in Papers of RAT, 2:334. 14. Henry Luce, quoted from Life (Feb. 17,1941), reprinted in Diplomatic History 23 (Spring 1999): 170-71. 15. RT Speech, Grove City College, May 22,1943, in Papers cfRAT, 2:446. 16. Ibid., 2:446-47. 17. Murray quoted in John Fousek, To Lead the Free World: American Nationalism and the Cultural Roots c f the Cold War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), 55-57. On Wallace, see Ronald Radosh and Leonard P. Liggio, "Henry A. Wallace and the Open Door," in Thomas G. Paterson, ed., Cold War Critics: Alternatives to American Foreign Policy in the Truman Years (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1971), 76-113; J. S. Walker, Henry A. Wallace and American Foreign Policy (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1976).

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18. RT Speech, Grove City College, May 22,1943, in Papers of RAT, 2:447; see also Ronald Radosh, Prophets on the Right: Profiles of Conservative Critics of American Globalism (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1975), 138-39. 19. Papers of RAT, 2:447. 20. Ibid., 2:447-49. 21. Walter Lippmann, U.S. Foreign Policy: Shield of the Republic (Boston: Little, Brown, 1943); Lippmann to Hugh Wilson, Apr. 8,1943, Yale University Archives/W . Lippmann Papers, quoted in Ronald Steel, Walter Lippmann and the American Century (New York: Vintage, 1981), 407-8. 22. For Taft's critique of Lippmann, see RT Speech, "Peace or Politics," Aug. 26,1943, in Papers of RAT, 2:476-80, quoted material from p. 477. 23. Ibid., 2:477-78. Paragraph 8 of the U.S.-British Joint Declaration, commonly referred to as the Atlantic Charter, states: "Eighth, they believe that all of the nations of the world, for realistic as well as spiritual reasons must come to the abandonment of the use of force. Since no future peace can be maintained if land, sea or air armaments continue to be employed by nations which threaten, or may threaten, aggression outside of their frontiers, they believe, pending the establishment of a wider and permanent system of general security, that the disarmament of such nations is essential. ‘Drey will likewise aid and encourage all other practicable measures which will lighten for peace-loving peoples the crushing burden of arm am ents." Foreign Relations of the United States: Diplomatic Papers, 1941, 7 vols. (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1958), 1:368-69. 24. Taft quoted in Patterson, Mr. Republican, 296. 25. RT Radio Broadcast, Nov. 16,1943, in Papers cfRAT, 2:506. 26. Mackinac Charter, quoted in C. David Tompkins, Senator Arthur H. Vandenberg: The Evolution of a Modem Republican, 1884-1945 (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1970), 212. 27. RT Speech, Grove City College, May 22,1943, in Papers cfRAT, 2:449. 28. For a brief summary of the "Four Freedoms," see David M. Kennedy, Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 469-70. 29. RT Speech, Grove City College, May 22, 1943, in Papers of RAT, 2:449-50. 30. Ibid., 2:449. 31. Quoted passages from Herbert Hoover and Hugh Gibson, The Problems of Lasting Peace (Garden City, N.J.: Doubleday, Doran, 1942), 231. 32. Vanderpoel to RT, May 1,1942, LC/RATP. 33. Quote from D. F. Fleming Radio Broadcast, "America and the World Crisis," n. d. [Apr. 1942], copy in LC/RATP. 34. RT to Vanderpoel, May 6,1942, LC/RATP, in Papers cfRAT, 2:360; the discussion of the Atlantic Charter is in RT Radio Broadcast, August 29,1941, in Papers cfRAT, 2:284-85. 35. RT to Vanderpoel, May 6,1942, in Papers c f RAT, 2:360. 36. RT Speech, Grove City College, May 22,1943, in Papers of RAT, 2:449. 37. Churchill quoted in Warren Kimball, ed., Churchill and Roosevelt: The Complete Correspondence, 3 vols. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), 2:223. 38. Quotations from Arnold Zürcher, The Struggle to Unite Europe, 1940-1958 (New York: New York University Press, 1958), 219; see also David Weigall, "British Ideas of European Unity and Regional Confederation," in

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M L. Smith and Peter M. R. Stirk, eds., Making the New Europe: European Unity and the Second World War (New York: Pinter, 1990), 61-63. 39. RT Speech, "W hat Foreign Policy Will Promote Peace?" June 8,1944, in Papers of RAT, 2:552-60. 40. Quote from George T. M azuzan, "The National War Service Controversy, 1942-1945," Mid-America 57 (October 1975): 246. The official army assessment of the national service controversy is in Byron Fairchild and Jonathan Grossman, The Army and Industrial Manpower (Washington, D.C.: Office of the Chief of Military History, 1959), 219-45. 41. Quotations from Mazuzan, "National War Service Controversy," 246-51; Fairchild and Grossman, Army and Industrial Manpower, 225. 42. RT to W. Douglas Arant, June 16,1943, in Papers of RAT, 2:456. 43. Ibid. 44. Ibid.; for Baruch's views, see Fairchild and Grossman, Army and Industrial Manpower, 227. 45. Arant to RT, June 16,1943, LC/RATP, quoted in Papers of RAT, 2:457, note 4. 46. Ibid., quoted at 2:457, note 5. 47. Quoted passages from the opposition to the Austm-Wadsworth Bill, in Fairchild and Grossman, Army and Industrial Manpower, 226-27. 48. "Work or fight" quote from Mazuzan, "National War Service Controversy," 256. 49. RT to Joseph N. Pew Jr., Feb. 28,1945, LC/RATP. 50. RT Speech, Mar. 7,1945, LC/RATP. 51. Ibid. 52. RT Speech, "Financing Small Business After the War," Jan. 14,1944, in Papers of RAT, 2:517. 53. Ibid., 2:518. 54. Ibid., 2:518-19. 55. Ibid. 56. Ibid., 2:519. 57. Ibid., 2:520. 58. Ibid. 59. Ibid., 2:520-21. 60. Ibid., 2:521. 61. Quotes from text of the 1944 Republican Platform, New York Times, June 28,1944 ,1 ,1 4 . The 1944 platform also committed the party to an "imme­ diate, just and final settlement" of all Native American claims against die fed­ eral government. 62. Platform quoted from New York Times, June 28,1944,14. 63. Berry to RT, Feb. 5, 1945, NAACP Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 64. Ibid. 65. Taft Statement on FEPC, [Feb. 5,1945], attached to RT to Roy Wilkins, Mar. 6,1945, LC/N AACP Papers. In addition to a general statement of "basic rights of employees" stated in Section 7 of the National Labor Relations (Wagner) Act of 1935, that statute defined and prohibited employers from engaging in five "unfair labor practices": (1) the interference, restraint, or coercion of employees in the exercise of their basic rights; (2) domination or interference with either the formation or administration of a labor union or financial contributions or other support to it; (3) discrimination to encourage

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or discourage union membership; (4) discrimination against an employee for filing charges with the board against an employer; and (5) refusal to bargain collectively with the legal representatives of employees in an appropriate bar­ gaining unit. Harry A. Millis and Emily Clark Brown, From the Wagner Act to Taft-Hartley: A Study of National Labor Policy and Labor Relations (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1950), 31. 66. RT, Statement on FEPC Bill, [Feb. 5, 1945], copy in LC/NAACP Papers. 67. Ibid. 68. Ibid. 69. United States Senate, Subcommittee of the Committee on Education and Labor, Fair Employment Practice Act, Hearings on S. 101 and S. 459, 79th Cong., 1st sess., 1945 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1945), 5. 70. Ibid. 71. Ibid. 72. Quoted passages from Thomas G. Paterson, J. Garry Clifford, and Kenneth J. Hagan, American Foreign Policy: A History, Since 1900, 3rd ed. (Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath, 1991), 405; Patterson, Mr. Republican, 293; and Michael J. Hogan, The Marshall Plan: America, Britain, and the Reconstruction of Western Europe, 1947-1952 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 17. 73. RT Speech, "W hat Foreign Policy Will Promote Peace?," June 8,1944, in Papers of RAJ, 2:557. 74. Ibid. 75. Ibid. 76. RT to William H. Taft, Jan. 5,1919, in Papers cfRAT, 1:173. 77. Thomas J. Knock, To End All Wars: Woodrow Wilson and the Quest for a New World Order (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992; reprint, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 58.

Critic of Postwar Liberalism rT Ihroughout the immediate postwar years, Taft vocally X opposed the liberalism of the Truman administration. The senator was critical of both liberalism 's internationalist program for U.S. foreign relations and its dom estic social and econom ic agenda. In global econom ic affairs, he renewed his struggle against m ultilateral approaches to postwar reconstruction and financial stability. Similarly, he reluctantly accepted the United Nations and its framework for collective security, branding the Security Council an instrument for continued great power dominance. No mat­ ter how much he desired the United States to pursue an independent internationalist approach, the senator could not escape the realities of an intensifying Cold War that increasingly divided East from West by 1948. On the domestic side, Taft and other antistatist conser­ vatives successfully derailed liberal program s for full employment and national health insurance. The senator cared more about the welfare of Americans than most of his conservative colleagues. Taft sought to position the Republican Party closer to the mainstream of American lib­ eralism through the adoption of a comprehensive social welfare program grounded on the principles of liberty and equal opportunity. The Ohioan cosponsored legislation to provide federal aid to education and housing and federal grants to help states improve health care facilities. His con­ servative social vision called for federal funds, without fed­ eral bureaucratic interference, to assist state and local gov­ ernments in providing families w ith an American standard of living and children with the opportunities to fulfill their potential.

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Senator Taft w ith his cousin, David S. Ingalls Sr., form er assistant secretary of the navy for aeronautics. (Courtesy of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Library.)

Renewing the Attack on M ultilateralism In tite 1945 debates over p ostw ar organization , Taft coupled those les­ sons learned at H o o v er's side in 1919 to a firm belief in an indepen­ den t internationalist approach to econom ic diplom acy. W hen the International M onetary Fund (IM F) and W orld Bank legislation cam e before C ongress in the sum m er of 1945, he delivered an extensive cri­ tique of m ultilateral internationalism to his Senate colleagues. H e began by reem phasizing his su p p ort for d irect U .S. loans to w ar-to m

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nations to finance the purchase of equipment and raw materials "so that their economic machine may begin to operate." Taft did not shrink from the advocacy of public loans. He firm ly believed that public nation-to-nation loans were the appropriate vehicle for relief and reconstruction. Remembering die nation's experience in the Great War, he admitted that Americans should recognize "that they may never be repaid."1 Taft carefully outlined the disadvantages of the new "World Bank" for economic reconstruction and development. Under the new scheme, the United States and other participating nations would have to guarantee private loans and private capital investments. These guaranteed loans would take the place of the high level of wartime exports financed by Lend-Lease. Liberal internationalist proponents of the new bank, according to the senator, believed that the nation's wartime full-employment prosperity hinged on Lend-Lease exports totaling some $1 billion per month. To sustain wartime levels of pro­ duction it was necessary to clear surpluses from the home market through die vigorous promotion of exports. The United States must continue sizable overseas exports, the liberal internationalists argued, even if based on the extension of its own dollars on credit. Taft con­ sidered this policy reckless. It maintained an artificial level of pur­ chasing power abroad that could not be sustained in the next eco­ nomic recession. For Taft, the lessons of private lending in the 1920s were quite clear: once the wastefulness of excessive purchasing power overseas, generated by U.S. loans, was recognized, it could result in an abrupt cessation of lending, unemployment at home, and "resentm ent abroad."2 Taft's reservations about foreign investment demonstrated his neom ercantilist concern for the home market. No advocate of "dollar diplomacy," he enumerated three reasons for his reluctant support of private investment overseas. First, he reminded his Senate colleagues that American companies, especially after ratification of the United Nations Charter, had few avenues to follow in protecting their invest­ ments or collecting international obligations. M ajor U.S. corporations could no longer automatically count on diplomats or marines to assist them. Second, he observed that anti-im perialist sentiments had inten­ sified in the wake of World War n . M ost developing nations, accord­ ing to the senator, considered foreign investors akin to "absentee landlords," interested merely in exploiting their nation's labor and natural resources. Third, Taft denigrated liberal internationalist argu­ ments that the United States should emulate Britain in the export of capital surpluses. The Ohio senator presented the uniquely American

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neom ercantilist argument against the usefulness of the British Empire as a model. In Taft's view, England's domestic market was never selfsufficient, always imported more than it exported, and needed invest­ ments abroad to generate the revenues to buy those imports. The British forged a colonial empire by confiscating extensive tracts of land and rich sources of natural resources, often at negligible cost to the mother country, to make those investments profitable. The United States did not possess a vast overseas colonial empire, ready to accept investments of capital surpluses, or the military, naval, and police forces available to protect those investments.3 The evidence regarding the British Empire reveals a more com­ plex imperial relationship than Taft would have had his audience believe. Before the Great War, Britain's trade within the empire was in rough balance, colonial rule created a "particularly safe haven" for foreign investments, and the colonies provided an important outlet for the investment of capital surpluses. During the 1930s, Britain ran consistent "adverse balances" in its commodities trade with the empire and sterling area, deficits that were essential if overseas com­ ponents of tiie empire were to meet their debt obligations and pay for other "invisible" assets. Thus, the reality seems to have been ju st the reverse of Taft's analysis: Britain had to "accept" trade deficits and continue lending to the sterling area in order to continue the prof­ itable imperial relationship.4 Agreeing that financial assistance was necessary for postwar reconstruction, Taft turned his attention to the proper mechanism to adm inister those loans. The Export-Import Bank, an institution that the senator had originally distrusted, was a more proper conduit than the m ultilateral Bretton Woods institutions. To Taft, the bank was the perfect organ for two reasons: it was a public institution controlled by the U.S. Congress and it could provide direct assistance to foreign nations at higher interest rates than private lending institutions, thereby not competing w ith the major investment banks for recon­ struction and development loans. It was the ideal vehicle for high-risk lending in the immediate reconstruction period. To this end, as the war drew to a close, the senator proposed enlarging the bank's capi­ tal from $700 m illion to $3.5 billion. In tiie summer of 1945 the Senate also debated a successor to the flawed League of Nations of the interwar years. Three months of meet­ ings at the Dumbarton Oaks mansion in Washington, D.C., between representatives of the United States, Britain, the Soviet Union, and China in 1944 had produced a framework for the modem United Nations Organization. Not surprisingly, the Big-4 diplomats drafted a

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charter providing for a strong Security Council dominated by die great powers and a weak General Assembly. In addition, the Security Council, empowered with die right to use force to settle disputes, was to have five permanent members (the original four powers—the United States, Britain, the Soviet Union, and China—plus France). Although he initially voted for the U.N. Charter when Senator Arthur Vandenberg presented it to the Senate after the 1945 San Francisco Conference, Taft was greatiy disappointed by the docu­ ment. The senator voted against the legislation institutionalizing the U.N. Charter in December 1945 because "it looks towards domina­ tion of the world by the arbitrary force of the great pow ers, and looks away from international ju stice." He regretted that the Charter was not "based on international law, but rather on force organized by the great powers acting unanim ously." Taft firm ly believed that "ultim ate peace can only be achieved by a rule of law and justice accepted by the public opinion of the w orld." Collective security by the use of armed force, even if applied equally to all nations (which the veto option prevents), he m aintained, "should only be one of the weapons of ju stice." W ithout guiding legal principles, the Security Council would be governed by the principles of force and expedi­ ency. The charter vested the Security Council w ith arbitrary pow ers, restrained only by the veto power granted to each perm anent mem­ ber. Because legislation granted "unlim ited discretion" to the presi­ dent to direct the Am erican delegate on the council, Taft concluded, with characteristic hyperbole, that the December 1945 act "surren­ ders all power of Congress and the people over foreign policy to the President."5 It was Taft's emphasis on international justice, rather than force of arms, that aroused the most intense criticism of his career. Invited to address the Kenyon College symposium on the heritage and respon­ sibility of the English-speaking peoples, Taft argued that the key con­ cept among all the intellectual traditions that characterized the vari­ ous English-speaking cultures was the principle of "equal justice under law ." M ost of his address entailed a lengthy critique of the Truman adm inistration's arbitrary and excessive uses of power, with­ out recourse to justice under the law. Taft stunned his audience with a stiff critique of the international war crim es trials. The senator firm ly believed that the Nuremberg trials of the imprisoned Nazi leadership "violate that fundamental principle of American law that a man cannot be tried under an ex post facto statute." Surrounding the entire affair, Taft m aintained, "there is the spirit of vengeance, and vengeance is seldom ju stice." No m atter how much the trials were

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dressed in the trappings of justice, the senator argued, a trial of the defeated by the victorious powers could never be just. He concluded that "the hanging of die eleven men convicted w ill be a blot on the American record which we shall long regret."6 Public opinion across the nation sw iftly registered its disgust over the remarks. Fellow lawyers complained loudly that the senator had his history wrong. There were numerous precedents in Western legal thought and prac­ tice for die establishm ent of war crim es tribunals. The Nuremberg tri­ bunals, argued prominent specialists in international law, "had ample justification from the League of Nations Charter, the Versailles Treaty, and the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928."7 Taft's Republican colleagues, many of whom were facing close contests in N ovem ber's upcoming elections, rapidly distanced themselves from the prominent Ohioan. In the immediate postwar period, Taft renewed his advocacy of international law and justice and his campaign against liberal and m ultilateral approaches to diplomacy and foreign aid. Simultaneously, he maintained a struggle against big-government, big-spending initia­ tives in health care and employment policy. Although his leadership in labor relations policy demonstrated his belief in a powerful federal judiciary, Taft's postwar record reveals the depth of his hatred of expanding bureaucracy.

A Postw ar Domestic Agenda The sweeping cradle-to-the-grave conception of economic security held by many New Deal liberals, the wartime proposals from the National Resources Planning Board for extensive experim entation in peacetim e "public enterprise," and the numerous spending projects put forth by congressional Democrats and the Truman adm inistration at the end of the war outraged Taft. Truman's desire to extend wartime price and wage controls into the reconversion period after hostilities also worried the senator. Taft led conservatives in advocat­ ing a postwar agenda that called for a sw ift termination of most wartime public enterprises, an end to federal controls, and the resumption of marketplace decisions on investment, employment, and prices. Taft also entered the postwar era w ith an increasingly sophisticated social welfare agenda that justified federal assistance for, but not supervision of, a broad range of welfare, housing, and educational programs. The conservative economic agenda clashed abruptly with the lib­ eral Dem ocrats' "Sixty M illion Jobs" movement and the economic views of Henry A. Wallace, economist Alvin Hansen, and Senator

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James Murray (D-M ont.), sponsor of S. 380, the controversial 1945 Full Employment Bill. S. 380 endorsed the liberals' view that it was tiie "responsibility of the Federal Government to provide such vol­ ume of Federal investment and expenditure as may be needed to assure continuing full em ploym ent."8 The Full Employment Bill demonstrated yet again the degree to which liberalism , increasingly shaped by the notion of governm ent's capacity to stim ulate economic growth by spending, embraced the concept that the primary respon­ sibility for prosperity and progress rested within the federal govern­ ment, not the private sector. Taft heartily disagreed. The O hioan's approach to the Full Employment Bill revealed his firm belief in individual initiative and private enterprise as the keys to securing economic prosperity and social progress. Although critical of New Deal statism at w ar's end, Taft was far from advocating an ideology of laissez-faire. He recog­ nized that the federal government had an important role to play in promoting economic development, especially by supporting sm all business enterprise and by using its powers to restore prosperous conditions. On this matter, Taft demonstrated his belief in fiscal "pum p-prim ing" in contrast to the liberals' increasing belief in per­ manent or continuing "com pensatory spending" by the federal treas­ ury.9 Taft's conception of "pum p-prim ing" harkened back to the 1920s views of H erbert Hoover, then secretary of commerce. Hoover had called for federal public works spending in recessionary times as the tactic of last resort after private corporate spending and public works by local and state governments failed to stem the rising tide of unem­ ployment. Senator Taft truly feared that federal domestic spending, like the British Loan and other relief and reconstruction spending overseas, would create an artificial demand for American goods and services. Continuing compensatory spending through public works projects or investment in publicly operated enterprises would eventually out­ pace society's demands. "O nce the federal government develops a new line of activity, it is not easy to stop it, and it goes on long after the need has disappeared."10 The threat to democratic government was just as obvious to the senator. "[Sjpending not only increases the debt," he contended, "but it increases tremendously federal central­ ized pow er." W henever the government in Washington, D.C., fol­ lowed a permanent policy of spending, "it controls whatever private interests or local government is dependent on that money."11 Private enterprise, rather than public spending, was the pathway to full employment and economic growth. In the senator's mind, the

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"m ost necessary and immediate step to restore prosperity" in die reconversion period was the elim ination of wartime controls to restore freedom to both individuals and businesses. In August 1945, the senator proposed that the Office of Price Administration adopt a much more flexible policy for the reconversion period. He sought to elim inate all controls on "nonessential articles" and allow reasonable price increases on essential goods and services that would induce new sm all businesses to produce more for the market and employ returning veterans. He would then remove all wage controls in early 1946. Similarly, he called on the War Production Board to end its con­ trols on production. "U nless controls are relaxed," he informed his colleagues in the Senate, "w e can never get started on new housing, farm machinery, reconversion machinery," or other facilities needed to employ die thousands of returning veterans. In addition, Taft rec­ ommended that conscription be terminated, manpower regulations be abolished, and government propaganda efforts, undertaken in the guise of public relations, be canceled. Finally, he urged Congress to formulate a new "reconversion budget" that would keep spending to $20 billion plus war costs and advocated passage of a new tax sched­ ule with reduced peacetime rates that would encourage enterprise and initiative.12 Throughout the early postwar years, Taft sparred w ith the Truman adm inistration over price controls. The senator's stance on controls derived from the productionist assumptions inherent in his m ercantilist philosophy. At w ar's end, he believed that the nation was entering a "reconversion period," in which wartime m ilitary produc­ tion was gradually changing over to peacetim e civilian production. "It is vitally important that we encourage the production of civilian goods," he preached, especially "the resumption of the manufacture of refrigerators, radios, automobiles, and thousands of other prod­ u cts." Controls on such basic commodities as wheat, cotton, and lum­ ber should have been elim inated. The m arket, Taft explained, responded only to the basic economic laws of supply and demand. The greater the incentives for production of these basic commodities, the greater their supply. Once supplies increased, prices would natu­ rally trend downward. In contrast, die prices of durable manufac­ tured goods reflected their cost, including the wages of industrial workers. On these goods, Taft recognized the need for continued con­ trols to prevent runaway inflation and huge corporate profits.13 Pressure mounted for Truman to end price controls in the sum­ mer of 1946. Business interests, farmers, and conservative advocates of free-market thinking all desired an end to the Office of Price

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Administration. Taft and leading congressional conservatives passed a bill in June 1946 to extend OPA, but gut its bureaucratic authority. Although the Democratic leadership favored i t the president exer­ cised his veto powers. OPA expired amid a mad scramble to increase prices. New legislation restored OPA, but without its wartime author­ ity. The resurrected agency was powerless to stop industry price hikes; efforts to curb the increases in beef prices led to a producers' boycott of the market and widespread consumer protest. Truman removed controls on m eat in mid-October 1946; the remaining price controls terminated at year's end. It was the threat of the comprehensive welfare state, however, that most concerned Taft. He recognized that a social welfare safety net could only be established if the expense did not excessively burden American business, destroying its system of incentives and rewards for private enterprise that ultim ately paid the bill for expensive public sector programs. He believed that no more than $20 billion could be raised through taxation. In October 1945, Taft estimated that the fed­ eral government needed to spend $6 billion for interest payments on the public debt, $6 billion for the armed forces, $3 billion for veterans benefits, and $5 billion for other departments of government.14 Looming on the horizon was an enormously expensive social insurance program. The Wagner-Murray-Dingell Bill, Taft believed, would, if enacted, provide the United States with universal compul­ sory health insurance and many other benefits along the lines of Britain's 1942 Beveridge social insurance plan and increase the pay­ roll tax to 8 percent. "I do not agree with the theories of Sir William Beveridge, but at least he is frank in giving a fair estim ate of the cost and consequences of his numerous plans." Taft reminded listeners that Beveridge had estim ated the annual cost of his plan to be the equivalent of $18 billion. "The Wagner-Murray-Dingell b ill," the sen­ ator asserted, "m oves a long way in that direction."15 Where exactly did Taft and Beveridge disagree? The senator recoiled at the British plan's statist approach. He abhorred the com­ pulsory nature of insurance and bemoaned Britain's creation of a m assive bureaucratic apparatus to adm inister it. This expansion of the national governm ent's adm inistrative capacities, which m ight be handled arbitrarily, was of most concern to Taft. He refused to con­ sider a sim ilar extension of the federal bureaucracy in the United States. President Truman, who embraced the principles underlying Roosevelt's Economic Bill of Rights, was determined to travel the same path as Britain's Beveridge to comprehensive national health

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care. In 1946, his adm inistration backed a revised Wagner-MurrayDingell Bill that proposed compulsory national health insurance under the Social Security system, additional federal grants-in-aid to the states for public health and child care programs, and federal sub­ sidies for medical research and education. In order to avoid the conservative-dom inated Senate Finance Com m ittee, chaired by Walter F. George (D-Ga.), the liberals, led by the venerable Senator Robert Wagner of New York, removed earlier provisions for financing health care by either payroll or general taxes.16 The m edical lobby and its conservative allies in Congress launched an all-out assault on the administration-backed Wagner bill. Taft even proposed his own alternative to the revised WagnerMurray-DingeU social insurance plan. In his plan, the Ohioan pro­ posed creation of a national health agency to adm inister federal grants-in-aid to the individual states to underwrite free medical care to the indigent. Taft accepted federal responsibility to provide ade­ quate medical care to those unable to afford it, but rejected the addi­ tional social insurance bureaucracy to supervise such care. The Truman adm inistration, wedded to some form of a national health insurance plan, refused to back title conservative alternative.17 Throughout the 1944 campaign, Taft had maintained his opposi­ tion to federal aid to education. Any subsidy would open the door to federal control of the schools and a dim inution of states' rights. Taft began to have a change of heart on federal aid in the spring of 1945. He began cooperating w ith Senators Elbert D. Thomas (D-Utah) and Lister H ill (D-Ala.) and negotiating with the National Education Association, which was committed to direct subsidies for teacher salaries, on legislation that would have established minimum income expenditures by states on public education. Under the formula devised by the senators and the Education Committee staff, states that spent the targeted percentage yet failed to provide minimum standards per pupil would be eligible for federal subsidies.18 W hat can explain the senator's change of heart? The simple act of learning, gaining greater knowledge of the subject, in large part explains his shift of opinion. Once Taft examined the statistical evi­ dence that demonstrated the inequities in educational expenditures in tiie poorest states, he shifted his policy stance to support federal assis­ tance. Such aid, Taft maintained, was the only possible mechanism for providing underprivileged children with "basic education," espe­ cially for "N egro children in the South." Although the states pos­ sessed the primary educational obligation, the federal government had a "secondary interest to see that there is a basic floor," the sena-

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tor asserted, because "no child can have an equal opportunity unless he has a basic minimum education."19 By early 1946, Senators Taft, Thomas, and H ill were ready to offer their bill to the Senate. This legislation guaranteed federal assistance to all states whose income was insufficient to support a minimum expenditure of $40 per pupil per annum. This benchmark figure enabled thirty-three states to qualify for federal assistance, but offered little or nothing to richer states like Ohio. The senator immediately came under fire from the Republican conservatives, especially in the House of Representatives, for joining the Democrats in an effort to expand federal intervention. But right-wing criticism s of Taft's sup­ port for socialistic alternatives in education did not disturb him. Public education in the United States, he reminded both critics and supporters, "is socialistic anyhow, and has been for 150 years."20 Federal subsidies for public housing constituted a second cate­ gory of social policy in which Taft joined the m ajority Democratic coalition. The senator recognized as early as February 1942 that hous­ ing needs for die postwar era warranted special planning. The follow­ ing year, Taft assumed the chairmanship of the housing and urban redevelopment subcommittee of the newly created Committee on Postwar Planning chaired by Senator George. In this capacity, Taft held extensive hearings during the first half of 1945 on the housing problem. He then reported the subcom m ittee's findings to the full Senate on August 1,1945. As w ith education policy, so with public housing. After consider­ ing the two thousand pages of testimony from the subcom m ittee's hearings, the Ohio senator "concluded that the housing industry was clearly unable to provide low-income fam ilies w ith adequate hous­ ing." Although the report emphasized the need to assist private industry, it also underscored die need for public housing for those at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder. The report called for slum clearance grants, easier Federal Housing Agency loans for home buy­ ers, die creation of a permanent National Housing Agency to super­ vise projects, construction of 1.25 m illion new housing units per year for the next decade, and, most controversially, the federal financing of 500,000 public housing units in the next four years.21 As historian Richard O. Davies has shown, Taft agreed with Wagner of New York and other liberals that "only an expansive public housing program would provide die solution" to the nation's deficiencies in residential housing.22 At the end of World War D, both Taft and leading Democrats voiced their support for low -incom e public housing. President

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Truman's September 6, 1945, Statement on postwar reconversion affirmed the right of all Americans to decent housing. Truman argued that such housing should no longer be considered a reward for indi­ vidual accomplishment, but a right inhering in every citizen, regard­ less of personal income.23 The Ohio senator firm ly believed that the federal government "m ust interest itself" in guaranteeing that every fam ily had a "minimum standard of decent shelter." In opening remarks at the Cincinnati Chamber of Comm erce's January 1946 debate on housing, Taft asserted that this m atter was perhaps "the most im portant" component of a comprehensive social welfare pro­ gram. Even w ith a "free education," a child "m ust have a decent home in decent surroundings" in order "to make the most of his abil­ ities" and enjoy some measure of opportunity.24 Senators Taft, Wagner, and Allen J. Eilender (D-La.) introduced sweeping legislation on November 14,1945. Although the bill passed the Senate in April 1946, it failed in file House of Representatives. Taft waged a three-year war with House conservatives to enact public housing legislation. Even though the Republican national leadership included public housing in fire 1948 party platform, the measure failed to overcome tough committee opposition in fite House, buttressed by intense pressure from the real estate lobby. It was not until the follow­ ing year, 1949, that Congress finally passed the Wagner-Ellender-Taft Bill; President Truman signed it into law on July 15,1949.

Taft-Hartley Conservatism Senator Taft's name w ill be forever associated with the LaborManagement Relations Act of 1947. That final Taft-Hartley legislation, approved by a joint conference committee of Congress, was file prod­ uct of bills sponsored by Senator Taft and Representative Fred Hartley (R-N.J.). Although President Truman had called for revision of the 1935 National Labor Relations (Wagner) Act, it was the Republican Party that took the initiative once the Eightieth Congress assembled in January 1947. Within weeks the Senate's Committee on Labor and Public Welfare and the House Committee on Education and Labor began public hearings on labor relations in America. In April, both Taft and Hartley introduced bills into their respective houses of Congress. Taft was clear about the principles that guided him in the prepa­ ration of the Senate bill. First, he was dedicated to unionization and file collective bargaining process. Second, the senator insisted on a union's right to strike in labor disputes. Third, he believed that file

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parties to collective bargaining should be as free from government intrusion as possible. Thus, Taft, although an ardent anticommunist, cared little in the immediate postwar years about instituting loyalty oaths, enforced by the federal government, as an instrum ent to fight communism in the labor movement. Similarly, he opposed the provi­ sions calling for government supervision of the internal affairs of trade unions and for supervision of w orkers' strike votes on employ­ ers' final contract offers that had been included in the House version of the bill. Taft also had no interest in authorizing the federal govern­ ment to intervene in nationwide strikes. But Taft was no advocate of laissez-faire in labor relations. He believed that the Wagner Act of 1935, and the precedents set by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in its enforcement of that statute, had created an imbalance favoring unions, especially the large industrial unions of the CIO, in labor relations. Taft firm ly believed that the federal government "m ust act to preserve the equal­ ity of opportunity and the equal justice under law that he cher­ ished."25 M ost important, to redress that imbalance and to guarantee the liberty of every American worker, he insisted that the new labor bill define unfair union practices to balance the unfair management practices enumerated in the Wagner Act. Among these banned prac­ tices were jurisdictional strikes over union representation, the estab­ lishm ent of closed (to union membership only) shops, and the prac­ tice of secondary boycotts, economic actions against firm s contracting or associated with the primary firm employing the striking workers. Although he opposed granting broad seizure powers to the president in times of national emergency, the senator was w illing to accept pro­ visions in the labor management bill for federal court injunctions that imposed an eighty-day "cooling off" period when an impending strike threatened to impair the national welfare. Taft orchestrated a masterful compromise in the final legislation. The joint conference committee "elim inated the severest antilabor provisions of the Hartley Bill, including its outlawing of the union shop, the dues checkoff, industrywide bargaining, and many forms of picketing."26 The compromise "Taft-H artley" legislation represented the culm ination of a decade-long quest by conservatives in industry, in the American Federation of Labor, and in the U.S. Congress to revise the statutory code that framed labor-management relations in the nation. The 1947 law weakened the NLRB by restructuring its adm inistration of labor law and by subjecting its decisions to greater review by the federal judiciary; it weakened trade unions by declar­ ing several of their most common practices unlawful, by banning the

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closed shop altogether, and by allowing states to legislate away union security; finally, "it reestablished the right of federal courts to issue antistrike injunctions, in effect amending die Norris-LaGuardia A ct," and empowered the présid ait to declare a national emergency and curtail the rights of workers to strike in "certain industrial dis­ putes."27 The compromise was approved by both houses of Congress, vetoed by President Truman, and then passed again by sizable mar­ gins to override the presidential veto. Taft-Hartley reveals much of the senator's conservatism. M ost important, it demonstrates his embrace of a philosophical individual­ ism, buttressed by an increasingly popular 1940s "rights rhetoric." Taft truly hoped to augment the liberties of individual workers as well as redress a perceived imbalance in the power of employers and unions. But Taft-Hartley also reveals the nature of the senator's anti­ statist and constitutionalist beliefe. The compromise legislation weak­ ened the adm inistrative authority of the NLRB bureaucracy, but simultaneously enhanced the power of the federal judiciary. Taft sought to rein in the bureaucracies of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, restrain die scope of the adm inistrative law created by their rulings, and preserve the traditional role of the federal judiciary in overseeing labor-management relations in America. With the new labor relations law, Taft desired to establish a new equilibrium in industry balancing management and unions. In the three years following the war, he desperately attempted to craft a sim­ ilar balance in U.S. policy for postwar reconstruction. Taft never doubted that America had a m ajor role to play in rebuilding w ar-tom Europe, but feared the long-term consequences to the nation's econ­ omy from a massive outpouring of foreign assistance.

Dollars for Britain The 1946 British Loan provided federal legislators w ith the first major debate over U.S. assistance to Europe for postwar reconstruction. During that summer, die Truman adm inistration negotiated an agree­ ment w ith London for a fifty-year, $3.75 billion loan at 2 percent inter­ est. Eager liberal internationalists in die adm inistration, led by Undersecretary of State W illiam L. Clayton, utilized the loan as an instrument to pry open trade w ithin the British Em pire's sterling bloc. Britain agreed to a number of concessions, including the removal, after only one year, of all restrictions on the free exchange of its ster­ ling currency, thereby ending die system of im perial preference that

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had stood as a barrier to U.S. trade w ith the Empire since the 1932 Ottawa Conference.28 The British Loan debate afforded Taft a fresh opportunity to voice his opposition to liberal internationalism . He criticized the loan as a continuation of the Rooseveltian giveaway policies that in his mind harmed the American position in the global financial markets. Under the regime of Lend-Lease, the senator recounted, the United States had provided free export commodities to much of the world, while the United States still purchased imports at global market prices. The result, according to Taft, was a net balance of trade "against u s," a serious gold outflow, and the accumulation of foreign balances in the United States. Lend-Lease had also resulted in a serious depletion of American natural resources. Finally, he noted that the Truman admin­ istration had begun to turn over surplus property to the British at a fraction of its real cost.29 Taft saw the British Loan as another mechanism to create an unnatural stream of exports to Europe. Such a development created a false export trade on which American jobs would increasingly depend. "It is a purely artificial expansion which cannot be contin­ ued," he warned his colleagues in the U.S. Senate in April 1946. "Sooner or later we must stop lending, and when that time comes the collapse of our export trade w ill throw thousands of our men out of work and accentuate any depression which may exist."30 The Ohioan then generalized from his assessm ent of the British Loan. He asserted that sm aller postwar reconstruction loans to for­ eign nations, combined with the normal expansion of private capital investments and the renewal of tourism, "w ould gradually take up the slack and would create a sound export trade in reasonable vol­ um e." Such a stable expansion of exports was less likely to place American workmen in a vulnerable position come the next economic downturn.31

The Truman Doctrine and the Reconstruction of Europe On March 12,1947, President Truman outlined a plan of assistance to the beleaguered nations of Greece and Turkey. The Truman Doctrine, as file president's approach to the crisis in the eastern Mediterranean has been labeled, pledged the United States "to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed m inorities or by outside pressure," and emphasized the need to preserve "freedom ,

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economic stability, and orderly political processes" by prompt politi­ cal, economic, and m ilitary assistance. The Truman Doctrine departed significantly from earlier U. S. foreign policy by proclaiming a unilat­ eral American approach without recourse to the United Nations when tiie crisis involved vital national interests, by promulgating a new doctrine of containment of communism, and by im plicitly embracing the notion that communist successes in strategic areas of the globe would have a domino effect spreading to neighboring states through­ out the region. Taft recognized that the new doctrine constituted "a complete departure from previous American policy," with the possible excep­ tion of the Lend-Lease program of World War n . The senator voiced "no objection" to loans to Greece for the purchase of basic foodstuffs, for tiie rehabilitation of its war-tom industries, or for its general post­ war reconstruction. "We have done the same for France and other A llies," tiie senator noted. Although the president intended only to finance tiie Turkish army, Taft maintained that Truman contemplated a novel politico-m ilitary position for the United States in Greece with the stationing of "Am erican advisory commissions, and the support of a Greek army." Was not the creation of this "special position" in the eastern Mediterranean, Taft asked, tiie formation of an American sphere of influence? Could the United States object if the Soviet Union then continued its domination of Poland, Yugoslavia, Rumania, and Bulgaria? With this new doctrine, the senator asserted, the United States was accepting de facto "the policy of dividing the world into zones of political influence, com m unist and anti-com m unist." "Perhaps," he lamented, "there is no other course."32 In preparation for the Foreign Relations Com m ittee's hearings on the assistance package, Senator Vandenberg, ranking m inority mem­ ber, requested that Republicans submit questions for administration witnesses. Taft took advantage of the opportunity to pose a set of eight revealing queries. Uppermost on the O hioan's mind was tiie obvious concern that aid to Greece and Turkey might prompt a mili­ tary response from the Soviet Union in the Mediterranean. He also wondered whether a rehabilitated Greek state, w ith U.S. m ilitary sup­ port, could hold its own against a Soviet onslaught in tiie near future. But Taft thought beyond the near-term crisis to the more fundamen­ tal issues of whether the eastern Mediterranean was vital to U.S. national security and how tiie adm inistration could so certainly embrace the domino effect, suggesting that communist success in Greece or Turkey might spur the spread of that doctrine "in other parts of the M editerranean" or bring chaos to the M iddle East.33

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Taft then turned to the nature of American involvement in the eastern Mediterranean. He questioned why, if Greece was threatened by "direct or indirect aggression," the adm inistration did not "h ie a com plaint" at the United Nations. W hat form would American inter­ vention take? he asked. Did the adm inistration contemplate several commissions, each handling such separate tasks as political, eco­ nomic, and m ilitary assistance? And would a single adm inistrator coordinate these various missions? Finally, Taft wondered about Truman's plans for Greek democracy. W hile the American mission is in-country, Taft queried, "w ill we perm it elections to be held?" Would the U.S. government "retire from G reece" if a duly elected m ajority of Greeks wanted the mission to leave?34 Taft's questions to Vandenberg on the Truman Doctrine outline the form ation of the O hioan's conception of selective containment. He believed that the United States should support key nations around the periphery of Soviet influence that were vital to American interests in their respective regions. These key nations, states that Taft would later call "centers of strength," would provide the primary defense against communist expansion. These nations must be able to serve as bulwarks against the domino effect of communism in those regions. Finally, in the years immediately following World War n , Taft urged the United States to be an "exem plar" nation, demonstrating the value of the "Am erican way of living," rather than a "redeem er" nation, imposing democratic institutions around the globe. By the start of 1947 the United States had loaned or granted European states som e $9 billion to reconstruct their w ar-tom economies. Yet those sparks had ignited no revival. Administration leaders feared widespread starvation, languishing trade, and even a descent into another global depression, with an attendant rise in rad­ icalism. Communist parties, especially those in Italy and France, had benefited from the economic dislocation of the war. The key to European economic recovery, in Taft's mind, was a revival of industrial production. Here the Ohio senator concurred with his old mentor, Herbert Hoover. In early 1947 Truman had sent the for­ mer president to Germany and Austria to assess economic conditions. Hoover reported that reinvigorating the productive capacity of the Continent was the "one path to recovery in Europe." He maintained that the European economy was so thoroughly "interlinked" with Germany that "the productivity of Europe cannot be restored without the restoration of Germany as a contributor to that productivity."35 To that end, Hoover contended that the Allied powers had to alter their "level-of-industry" plan. Although the Allies had rejected the

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Morgenthau Plan for the pastoralization of Germany, the victors insti­ tuted a March 1946 program that began reducing German industry to a level that allowed that nation to maintain a standard of living equal to tiie average on the Continent. Under the "level-of-industry" plan, this reduction was accomplished, in large part, by dismantling and shipping the great heavy industry plants of the Ruhr to the liberated nations as reparations. Hoover considered this policy counterproduc­ tive; German heavy industry, he m aintained, was crucial to the eco­ nomic health of that nation and to the region. The reduction of heavy industry meant less fertilizer production, lowering that nation's abil­ ity to produce food, but also cutting its exports to a point where Germany had to im port those same items. Unlike light industry, Germ any's unique heavy industrial base could, according to the for­ mer president, "be expanded to a point where she w ill be able to pay for her im ports."36 Hoover recommended that the A llies "free German industry" from the restrictions of the level-of-industry plan, halt the dismantling and removal of industrial plant (except for arma­ ments factories), return factories to German management, and pre­ vent the separation of either the Ruhr industrial region or the Rhineland from the German state. By late spring of 1947, the Truman adm inistration decided it was time to act. At Harvard University's June commencement, Secretary of State George C. M arshall proposed that America assist Europe in its reconstruction. A fter outlining the grave situation on the Continent, M arshall invited the Europeans to devise a collective plan of economic assistance. The Europeans met within weeks to discuss their needs. In response to M arshall's initiative, the Senate Appropriations Committee asked Hoover to prepare a memorandum on the extent to which the United States could assist Europe and the most effective methods of such aid. In his reply to Senator H. Styles Bridges (R-N.H.), Hoover began by educating the senators on the economics of recon­ struction assistance. The former president contended that although loans often "are visualized as just money transactions," dollars merely represented transfers of goods and services that followed the dollars. In his concluding statement on policy options, Hoover recommended that the United States should define a single policy covering economic assistance to foreign nations and use its agricultural surpluses to feed Europe, even if it necessitated voluntary reductions in food consump­ tion at home. Most important, to restrain inflation at home while assisting Europe, Hoover called on the administration to "lim it pur­ chases of our commodities by limiting gifts and loans."37

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After reading H oover's recommendations, Taft outlined to the former president his fears that M arshall Plan aid would be extrava­ gant and misguided. "I am prepared to support some additional lend­ ing," he informed Hoover, "bu t I dunk it ought to be held down to cover food stuffs shipped to prevent starvation levels of diet, and materials and supplies required to get the European economies oper­ ating." This second category of assistance, he explained to the former president, was needed, "in short, to help diem work harder." Considering the consequences of the British Loan, Taft concluded that it "has been used largely to maintain a higher standard of living in England than was absolutely necessary." The purchase of "m achinery and other goods for rehabilitation" of the British economy, according to the senator, "had been neglected."38 Like Hoover, Taft was concerned about the mounting level of U.S. exports. In die summer of 1947 the U.S. economy was overheating badly with obvious inflationary strains taking their toll. Facing such conditions, die senator rejected the idea that America should export more goods ju st because it could. Pouring out additional U.S. dollars and goods, he observed to his old boss, could be econom ically harm­ ful "either from our standpoint or that of the countries of Europe."39 As chairman of the Republican Policy Committee in the Senate, Taft could not escape the political ram ifications of opposition to M arshall Plan aid. "I am afraid that European nations w ill agree on some global plan and global figure which Marshall may accept," the Ohio senator wrote to Hoover in July 1947, "and then we w ill be in the wrong if we try to cut it down to a reasonable plan." He was also skeptical of die objectivity of the president's newly appointed special committee on European recovery, led by New York financier and commerce secretary W. Averell Harriman. Other than Harriman, a formidable advocate of liberal internationalism , there were few men on die committee who "w ill stand up for their convictions."40 By the end of 1947, Taft was deeply concerned about the domes­ tic economic consequences of European assistance. The Ohio senator believed that Truman's dom estic and foreign policies had promoted inflation at home, expanded die size of a public sector that added nothing to productive capacity or national w ealth, and infused the international monetary system with American dollars. The domestic roots of inflation, according to Taft, were set in the New D eal's efforts since 1933 to raise price levels. The irony was not lost on Taft that after a decade of depression and four years of global war, the Democratic Party's policies of dollar devaluation and chronic deficits had finally succeeded in inflating the economy. New postwar price levels stood

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far above prewar levels; the average cost of living was 65 percent above its prewar level. In his December 1947 address to the St. Andrew's Society of Philadelphia, Taft tried to pin down the specific causes of postwar inflation. A host of postwar factors exacerbated an inflationary trend already set in motion. The wartime accumulation of savings, includ­ ing the Treasury's Series E bonds, postwar increases in new home mortgages, and the great expansion of consumer credit and install­ ment buying, had vastly increased the purchasing power of the aver­ age citizen. Similarly, high levels of commercial bank loans, "proceed­ ing at the rate of 5 billion dollars a year," while necessary to sustain postwar conversion, were contributing to the excess of purchasing power. The cost of government, created by high levels of postwar spending with the corresponding tax burden, also drove up prices. To counter these effects, Taft proposed lim its on consumer credit, reduc­ tions on federal guarantees for home mortgages, cuts in government spending programs, monetary restraints to flatten commercial bank lending, and a campaign to improve productivity in industry.41 But the problem that troubled the senator most was fite impact of exports on the domestic economy. Influenced by H oover's June 1947 analysis and recent economic forecasts, Taft contended that high lev­ els of exports had created scarcity and higher prices in the domestic market. "The most important cause of high prices today," he pro­ claimed in December, "is the tremendous surplus of exports in 1947 and die threatened continuation of that surplus in 1948."42 The U.S. trade surplus for 1947, in which exports outpaced imports by $11 bil­ lion, was clearly detrim ental to price stability in the United States. Taft charged that about $6 billion of "this surplus is clearly inflation­ ary since it rises out of various kinds of foreign credit" from the IMF and World Bank and from dollars accumulated abroad through LendLease or wartime trade. Taft contended that this overseas purchasing power, artificially created by our loan credits, now returned to "com ­ pete for our short supply of many types of goods, without providing any imports to be purchased by our people."43 The M arshall Plan, in Taft's mind, would clearly exacerbate the inflation problem. When General M arshall presented his Harvard commencement speech, the United States had already sent some $9 billion in loans and grants to Western Europe with little to show for it. In the spring of 1947, the Continent lay prostrate, w ith high unem­ ployment, low production, and few prospects for recovery. Congress eventually would appropriate $5 billion for die first year of European Recovery Program (ERP) assistance in 1948. By the end of 1951, $12.4 billion in aid had been funneled through ERP offices.

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According to Taft, a $5 billion aid package would lead to artifi­ cially high levels of exports unrelated to natural levels of world trade. He understood that loans to foreign nations increased their purchas­ ing power in the global m arketplace, led them to bid up the price of U.S. exports of foodstuffs and manufactured goods, and generated higher dom estic prices in the United States. The senator feared that the resulting trade imbalances might destabilize the domestic econ­ omy and choke off postwar prosperity. Taft opted for a m ercantilist alternative utilized by nation-states during the 1930s world crisis. He advocated the maintenance of sta­ ble employment, consistent with equilibrium in the balance of pay­ m ents, through the erection of restrictions on international trade and payments. In the debates over the M arshall Plan, the Ohio senator proposed that the United States lim it exports, "particularly to coun­ tries outside of Western Europe so that they are largely balanced by im ports."44 This alternative, largely unthinkable in the nineteenthcentury tradition of liberal trade and gold-standard exchange, was tiie best way, according to Taft, to assist Western Europe and m aintain economic stability in the United States. In the midst of this debate, Taft again, as at Kenyon College, ran afoul of public opinion. When the senator explained that an excess of demand for commodities, especially foodstuffs, in the American mar­ ket was responsible for inflation, reporters asked him if that meant tiie problem could be partially alleviated if citizens consumed less food. "Y es," Taft snorted back emphatically, "E at less meat and eat less extravagantly." Taft's response, conditioned by his memory of the World War I Food Adm inistration's successful "w heatiess" and "m eatless" conservation efforts, seemed reasonable. But labor move­ ment pickets, liberals from the CIO Political Action Committee, and media pundits skewered the senator, comparing his privileged response to the immortal ("let them eat cake") line from France's Queen M arie Antoinette.45 Although the Truman adm inistration flatly rejected congressional lim its on its foreign assistance program, it proposed to deal with the inflationary crisis w ith renewed controls on the dom estic economy. W hile H arrim an, secretary of com m erce and future Econom ic Cooperation Administration (ECA) special representative, led the tight against export lim itations with vigorously delivered arguments on Capitol H ill, the adm inistration asked for special authority that gave the president the power to allocate commodities, ration con­ sumer goods, and fix retail prices at home. Taft was outraged. In speeches and statem ents, he warned against the destabilizing effect to the domestic economy of vast amounts of

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foreign aid. At St. Louis's John M arshall Club, he observed that die Truman adm inistration had "adopted the policy of scattering dollars freely around die w orld" through government loans, grants, and "every other form of liberal generosity."46 The senator believed that die "m ost important cause" of the 1947 price spiral was die "trem en­ dous surplus of exports in 1947 and the threatened continuation of that surplus in 1948." Taft noted that exports exceeded imports by $10 billion, a result of the inflationary U.S. lending policies that had aug­ mented the purchasing power of foreign nations. He observed that E. D. Nourse, chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisors, had warned that "heavy exports could make more critical the scarcity of steel and grain, thus adding to inflation." The M arshall Plan, Taft claimed, "calls for large quantities of steel and grain." If the nation wanted the European Recovery Program, he bluntly declared, it would have to accept higher prices.47 In late 1947, Taft believed that Truman's reconstruction program threatened to destabilize the American economy. By this point in his career, Taft had clearly sketched his guidelines for dynamic growth within a stable economic setting. Unlike Truman adm inistration M arshall planners, Taft coupled support for entrepreneurial enter­ prise, the key to economic growth and innovation, to a prescription for economic stability. He believed that equilibrium in the four eco­ nomic relationships, essential components of any program of stable growth, was necessary. Accordingly, Taft's prescription called for a continuing balance between wage and price levels, savings and con­ sumption, agricultural and industrial incomes, and spending and taxes. Taft saw M arshall Plan assistance as certain to disrupt the ten­ uous balance in at least two categories: wages and prices and the fed­ eral budget. He seemed most concerned about the potential to drive prices further out of line, forcing labor unions to mount an offensive to move up wage rates. In the wake of the tremendous elevation in living costs since the beginning of the war, Taft found this threat intol­ erable. Nevertheless, he reluctantly supported the full appropriation for interim assistance to Europe in December 1947.

The "Lost Victory" and Republican Principles In the winter of 1947-48, Senator Taft finally gave the subject of for­ eign affairs the degree of study that it deserved from a leader of the opposition party. In a major speech in Detroit, Michigan, Taft blamed Rooseveltian wartime diplomacy for creating much of the Soviet threat. At the great wartime conferences, American leaders had truly

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lost the victory won with the blood of American and Allied soldiers. The Democratic Roosevelt had acquiesced to every Soviet proposal/ and the Truman adm inistration had continued that policy after FD R's death. It was the Republicans, led by Senator Vandenberg, according to Taft, who pushed Secretary of State Jam es F. Byrnes to "get tough" with the Soviets in the immediate postwar years. According to the senator's version of the "Lost Victory" thesis, the Democratic Roosevelt and Truman adm inistrations went out of their way to build up the postwar strategic position of the Soviet Union at the great wartime conferences. At Yalta and Potsdam, U.S. diplomats had accepted Soviet claims to a preeminent position in eastern Europe and disregarded the aspirations of the peoples oppressed by the Soviets in these countries. The senator was appalled that the late president so thoroughly acquiesced in the Red Arm y's strategy for conquering eastern Europe. The Soviets were allowed to overrun the Balkans, conquer Vienna, and drive on to Berlin. The Western Allied arm ies even withdrew from parts of central Europe to allow the Red Army to occupy them. Roosevelt extracted no pledges from Joseph Stalin. Similarly, the American president gave LendLease aid to the Soviets, asking for nothing in return. Finally, Taft was outraged that Roosevelt cared little about the fate of the Polish peo­ ple, for whose freedom Britain and France entered the war in 1939, and never mentioned the disposition of the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. An angry Taft summed up U.S. negotiations with the Soviets: "W hatever they asked, they received and gave noth­ ing in return. Our negotiators acted as if it was a favor to us for the Russians to accept our goods." This new conception of Allied diplo­ macy, the foundation stone for the "Rooseveltian Dream ," to use George F. Kennan's label, was done "to secure the goodwill of Russia as a sincere and w illing collaborator in postwar settlem ents."48 It took a Republican, Taft claimed, to curb this new round of appeasem ent in Europe. C oncessions continued until Senator Vandenberg (R-M ich.) persuaded Secretary of State Jam es F. Byrnes to get tough on the Soviets. From the moment that FDR appointed Vandenberg as a delegate to the 1945 San Francisco UN Conference, the Republicans began to exert influence and rectify the imbalance in Rooseveltian diplomacy. It was at the San Francisco conference that Vandenberg realized that cooperation w ith tire Soviet Union could only be attained after firm , determ ined negotiations. Once Vandenberg gained the confidence of Secretary of State Byrnes, the two men established a fruitful working relationship. To an approving Detroit audience, Taft asserted tirat it was mainly tire M ichigan sena-

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to r's influence that "Anally forced the Administration to abandon the policy of appeasing Russia."49 The Truman Doctrine, the M arshall Plan for the reconstruction of Western Europe, and negotiations for an alliance of North Atlantic nations followed. So, who was responsible for the Cold War? Taft certainly believed that the Soviet Union bore most of the blame (and, after 1948-49, per­ ceived that international communism, under Stalin's direction, posed a grave threat to the security of the United States). But, if the Soviets were the instigators of global tensions and conflict, the Roosevelt and early Truman adm inistrations had abetted their various instigations. On fliese m atters, Taft missed the mark. Armed w ith perfect hind­ sight, the senator had neglected the larger m ilitary context of wartime diplomacy. He had dismissed both the realities of the m ilitary situa­ tion in February 1945 and the perceptions of the Anglo-American leaders at the Yalta conference. Chi the Eastern Front, the massive Red Army had already driven deeply into central Europe and had occu­ pied all of Rumania and large sections of Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary. In the Far East, much fighting remained. Japan still pos­ sessed an army of one m illion men in China, an occupation force of another one m illion men in Manchuria and Korea, and two m illion soldiers garrisoning the home islands. Assessing the Far East, Roosevelt and his advisors must have perceived, in those months before the completion of the atomic bomb project, that Soviet assis­ tance was necessary. Thus, the strategic situation underpinning the Yalta negotiations, in the words of historian Forrest C. Pogue, "did not yet afford Roosevelt and Churchill the luxury of renouncing or foregoing Soviet m ilitary cooperation in Europe and A sia."50 Here, ideology and politics meshed conveniently. Taft, among other Republicans, had branded Roosevelt's "Yalta axiom s" for great power cooperation as appeasement.51 Within two years of Roosevelt's death, however, the grand wartime alliance had disintegrated. Taft never gave Truman the credit he deserved for the "get tough" policy. According to the senator's version of the "Lost Victory" thesis, Truman, like FDR, was only too w illing to play the role of accommodationist until Byrnes, under pressure from the Republican Vandenberg, forced the "get tough" policy on the president and the rest of his adm inistration. Although Vandenberg and John Foster Dulles, the prominent Republican lawyer-diplomat, certainly helped transform Secretary of State Byrnes, other forces, including President Truman him self, whose frustration with the Soviets mounted almost daily during that period, as well as anti-Soviet diplomats in the State Department, were equally influential.

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The Cold War Heats Up Events in 1948 led Taft to reconsider the fight against communism. The Czechoslovakian crisis and the Berlin A irlift sw iftly undermined opposition to the adm inistration's European Recovery Program and its proposals for universal m ilitary training (UMT). President Truman had asked Congress to appropriate $17 billion for European recon­ struction over the next four years. The Foreign Relations Committee, under the leadership of its chairman, Senator Vandenberg, drafted a bill authorizing $5.3 billion for the first year. In March, Taft failed in an effort to cut Vandenberg's bill to $4 billion, fiten reluctantly "agreed to support fite full amount on the grounds that some aid was necessary in the fight against communism."52 The intensification of the Cold War gave new life to proposals for UMT. The Senate, too hesitant in previous years to approve a plan for compulsory service by all draft-age men in the United States, was prompted to reopen hearings on the subject. Taft found him self in the awkward position of supporting the continuation of wartime selec­ tive conscription, a less costly alternative in both economic and polit­ ical terms, rather than universal service. The Ohioan had received considerable criticism for opposing peacetim e selective service in the years before Pearl Harbor. In file months following World War II, file senator had called for a systematic demobilization of the nation's mighty war machine. He believed that the U.S. m ilitary could ade­ quately secure its borders during the immediate postwar era with an armed force of 1.5 m illion men that included a million-man army. In late 1945, Taft had called for a two-year transition to an all-volunteer military. He suggested that a systematic demobilization begin on January 1,1946, that the army terminate conscription, and that it cre­ ate a 1.25-million-man reserve army to back up an all-volunteer army by 1948. He strongly believed that voluntary recruitm ent could be successful if the government established a highly "technical army," substituting the latest m ilitary technology for manpower whenever possible. In the wake of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs, Taft vig­ orously supported greater research into advanced weapons systems and air-atom ic capabilities.53 In early 1948, Taft emphasized the infringem ent on American lib­ erties, the excessive cost in dollars, and the flawed strategic thinking underpinning the adm inistration's UMT proposal. First, to Taft's way of thinking, compulsory m ilitary service ran counter to Am erica's peacetim e traditions of individual freedom. UMT would constitute a m ajor federal government intrusion in citizens' lives, especially the

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lives of young men ju st beginning either career or college. Second, Taft was mystified that the adm inistration would concentrate on building up ground forces to contain the Soviets. The senator, who was beginning to think in asymmetrical strategic terms, questioned the adm inistration's desire to match strength w ith strength. The mighty Red Army, he argued, could only be deterred by air power. Finally, Taft, like many conservatives of the Eightieth Congress who were deeply concerned about the high levels of taxation in die nation, rejected die adm inistration's proposal for a compulsory army pro­ gram to train a reserve of ground forces that would cost w ell in excess of the $2 billion annual price tag of a powerful "seventy-group air force" armed with the latest atomic weapons. Recognizing the harsh new realities of the Cold War, Senator Taft accepted selective service as the lesser of two evils and began looking for capital-intensive strategic alternatives. He was not alone. In 1947, die President's A ir Policy Commission, chaired by Thomas K. Finletter, held a series of controversial hearings at which naval advocates of carrier-based strategic bombing tangled with proponents of a larger air force featuring the new B-36 bomber. The Finletter Comm ission's 1948 report recommended that die nation invest in an expanded air force of seventy regular air groups. A Joint Congressional Aviation Policy Board also advocated a sim ilar aerial deterrent. Throughout much of die early Cold War, Taft had been critical of the Truman adm inistration's ambivalence toward the Soviets. The senator held sim ilar beliefe about die adm inistration's policy toward the Palestine mandate and the creation of a homeland for European Jew s. During the last years of R oosevelt's adm inistration, the Palestine issue was sidelined by more salient strategic problems. In peacetim e, the Truman adm inistration seemed unable to make a firm commitment to a new state of Israel.

The New State of Israel Taft had steadfastiy supported die creation of a Palestinian homeland for Jews throughout his political career. Influenced by the pro-Zionist views of his father, Senator Taft firmly believed that the 1917 Balfour Declaration committed the United Kingdom to a Jewish homeland in Palestine. The Balfour pledge, Taft noted, was not merely a statement of intent, but a "burden" prescribed by the League of Nations mandate for Palestine. A duty to "secure the establishment of a Jewish National Home" was imposed on the British as part of their administration of

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the mandate. Furthermore, in June 1922, the U.S. Congress had adopted a resolution favoring die "N ational Home" in Palestine.54 Taft saw the 1939 British W hite Paper as "a repudiation of those obligations." In this assessm ent none other than Prime M inister Churchill, who had opposed the W hite Paper at its release in 1939, joined die senator. Neither man appreciated the British governm ent's last effort to appease Arabs as war loomed in Europe. The W hite Paper "declared categorically that it was no part of Britain's policy that Palestine should become a Jew ish State."55 Speaking at a March 1944 dinner of the American Palestine Committee, a prominent group of pro-Zionist Christians that included some sixty-eight members of die U.S. Senate, Taft castigated the Allied leadership for its wartime ban on Jew ish immigration to Palestine, which was prompted not by demographic considerations (settlement had certainly not reached a saturation point in the region by 1944), but "because of the fear of antagonizing other Arab States."56 Earlier in 1944, Taft had joined w ith Senator Robert Wagner, die leading New Deal liberal legislator in the Congress, to sponsor a res­ olution urging unrestricted immigration of Jew s into Palestine, w ith the eventual establishm ent of a Jew ish state. An identical resolution was introduced in the House of Representatives. Influenced by Rabbi Abba H illel Silver, the preeminent Cleveland Zionist, and w ell aware of die large number of Jew ish voters in O hio's largest cities, Taft not only cosponsored S.R. 247, but worked to include a Zionist plank in the June 1944 Republican platform . The resolutions brought im m ediate opposition from the Roosevelt adm inistration in early 1944. General M arshall decried the resolutions because he believed that S.R. 247 would antagonize the Arab populations of the region at a tim e when it was m ilitarily necessary to m aintain their cooperation. In a letter to Senator Tom Connally (D-Tex.), chairm an of the Foreign Relations Com m ittee, Secretary of War Henry L. Stim son backed his chief of staff, contend­ ing that m ilitary considerations m ust override political ones during die war crisis. A t that point, Connally postponed the com m ittee's consideration of S.R. 247. President Truman had initially pressed for Jew ish immigration to Palestine. At die Potsdam Conference he urged Clem ent Atdee, the new British prime minister, to open up Palestinian ports, without suc­ cess. In late August 1945, the president publicly called for the British to allow 100,000 Jews to enter Palestine at once. Senator Wagner, speaking for the American Palestine Committee, praised Truman's stance. But die Atdee government persuaded Truman to accept a Joint

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Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry to study die immigration issue. Wagner was outraged. "We need no more facts! We need no more prom ises!" the New York senator informed an audience at the International Conference on Palestine in die autumn of 1945.57 Truman's acquiescence, Taft later charged, marked yet another policy reversal by the American adm inistration on Palestine. In mid-September of that year, Taft and Wagner reopened die case. The Ohio senator queried Secretary of War Stimson as to whether conditions in the M iddle East had changed significantiy enough to open deliberations in committee. The secretary replied that, despite continued warnings horn War Department officials, "political considerations now outweigh the military, and the issue should be determined on the political radier than the m ilitary basis."58 Taft and Wagner dien plunged ahead with a resolution call­ ing for the creation of a Jew ish commonwealth in Palestine. On October 26,1945, Secretary of State Byrnes informed the senators that die adm inistration had no objections to such a resolution. But within three weeks the executive branch announced its opposition to con­ gressional action. On December 10, the president suggested to Senator Wagner that the resolution again be postponed pending the report of the inquiry. N either Wagner nor Taft relented, shepherding the resolution through the Senate Foreign Relations Committee with only one dissenting vote. The resolution won overwhelming accept­ ance on the floor of the Senate, passed without a formal roll call, and secured approval in the House of Representatives a mere two days later. The Anglo-American report of April 1946 recommended allowing the immigration of 100,000 displaced Jews to Palestine, freedom of land sales and usage regardless of race or religion in the region, and Arab-Jewish coexistence under a continuing mandate. The specifics of the subsequent Morrison-Grady Plan, ironed out by an AngloAmerican committee of experts, included a "provincial autonomy" scheme, in which a British High Commissioner would oversee semiautonomous Arab and Jew ish provinces in Palestine, as well as rule directly both Jerusalem and the Negev Desert. Taft was outraged at the British governm ent's February 1947 pro­ posal. Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin called for the creation of a fiveyear trusteeship for Palestine that offered local autonomy to Jewish and Arab communities under a central government incorporating leaders of both groups. The new British plan proposed that immigra­ tion be set at 4,000 per month for two years, providing a new home­ land for 96,000 displaced Jew s from Europe.

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In Taft's mind, the Bevin plan was not a proposal for partition. "O nly a shadow of self-governm ent," he charged, was to be granted to Arabs and Jews. The plan seemed to contemplate a federal state, without specifying which group would rule it. Furthermore, the British proposal failed to address the need to move displaced persons immediately from Europe. At 4,000 per month, Taft noted, it would be alm ost two and one-half years before die Allies had resettled the 100,000 displaced Jew s in Europe.59 Following the failure of die joint Anglo-American efforts, the United States asked the United Nations to appoint a commission and accepted its report recommending partition into two sovereign states in May 1948. In early 1948, however, the U.S. government began to backtrack from its position in support of full sovereignty and opted for a new trusteeship plan for the region. Jew ish leaders were furious. When they proclaimed independence for the new state of Israel on May 14,1948, President Truman quickly offered de facto recognition. Taft correcdy claimed that the State Department had never embraced the UN report, "m ade no effort to get other nations to approve it," and blocked the United Nations from considering an armed peacekeeping force in the region. A UN peacekeeping force, according to Taft, would "indicate to Jews and Arabs on the spot that tiie world meant business when it approved the plan." In an October 1948 statement, the senator recommended that the United States should recognize the state of Israel de jure and grant it a "reasonable rehabilitation loan."60 The senator's unqualified support for the state of Israel waned in his final years. The 1948 Arab-Israeli war led to the dispossession of some 900,000 Palestinian Arabs. These refugees, forcefully displaced from the new Jew ish state, erected temporary housing in Syria, Jordan, and Egypt. Although he apportioned much blame for the refugee situation on intolerant Arab leaders, Taft was clearly disap­ pointed by tiie Israelis. Within a few years, he recognized that regional stability was im possible without a resolution of the refugee problem. In 1953, Senator Taft, convinced that tiie refugee camps had become breeding grounds for anti-Israeli hatred, appealed to the National Conference of Christians and Jews to promote a resettlement program that found permanent homes for the Palestinians.

The 1948 Election During the presidential campaign, Taft commented on the views of Governor Earl Warren, the party's vice presidential nominee, on the

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nature of the two-party system in America. Warren had argued that the nation's two m ajor parties differed only in leadership and orga­ nization, not in political principles. The California governor told his audience that each party had its share of conservatives and radicals, and that citizens cast their vote based on their perception of which party possessed the best leadership; the best organized and led party would be the one that m obilized the greatest number of voters. Taft begged to differ with that widely popular view of American politics. The nation's political parties had always been, and remained, principle-based organizations. Their effectiveness was determined by their ability to mobilize individuals who were w illing to "sacrifice their own views on less important issues" but rally around key prin­ ciples. In the postwar era, the two m ajor parties differed dram atically on their underlying principles. The Democratic Party, dominated by the New Deal liberalism of Senators Wagner and Murray, and Henry A. Wallace, the former vice president, placed the concept of "security" uppermost on its domestic agenda and followed internationalist prin­ ciples in foreign affairs. The Republicans, according to Taft, empha­ sized tire principles of liberty and equal opportunity in economic pol­ icy, social welfare policy, and foreign affairs. President Truman's exhausting whistle-stop campaign, an assault aimed directly at Senator Taft and his Republican colleagues in the "Do-N othing Eightieth Congress," succeeded even beyond the chief executive's expectations. Harry Truman outpolled Tom Dewey by over two m illion votes and claim ed 303 electoral votes to the Republican's 189. The States' Rights ("D ixiecrat") candidate, J. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, and the Progressive candidate, Henry Wallace, each garnered over a m illion votes, with Thurmond grab­ bing 39 electoral votes from his native South. The senator and his wife, M artha, departed for a working vaca­ tion in Europe as soon as the campaign ended. From the S.S. Vulcania, he sent the victor his congratulations, acknowledging that there were "m any matters on which we can agree to disagree," but observing that "there may be some others where I can be of help in elim inating unnecessary legislative difficulties." In reply, Truman claim ed, "You and I understand each other. I know where you stand and you know where I stand too." The president then concurred with the senator, "A s you say we can agree to disagree on certain thing[s] but there are plenty of places where we can cooperate."61 To his closest friends, the senator revealed his deep disappoint­ ment over the Republican defeat. The election was a "calam ity," he confided to Atomic Energy Commission head Lewis L. Strauss from

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aboard his ocean liner. "A ll the old New Deal ideas w ill be revived" in die president's Fair Deal agenda, "and all the old gang w ill troupe back to W ashington." Confronting the realities of a Democraticcontrolled Senate after New Year's Day, Taft complained bitterly that the Republicans would have to face die same tough job once again, "so difficult in the opposition," to defend the nation against the Dem ocrats' agenda. He noted that, had the Republican Party main­ tained its lead in die Senate, it "could easily build up a popular record." In a final shipboard confession to his friend, Taft reaffirmed his belief in the principled nature of American politics and the impor­ tance of issues. "I don't know whether I could have been elected, but I am sure that Dewey could have been if he had put on a real tight on the issues."62 Senator and M rs. Taft spent a month touring Europe. They arrived at the height of die Berlin airlift, a m assive aerial response to the Soviets' blockade of land routes into the city's Western occupation zones. The extension of currency reforms in western Germany to the Western occupation zones of Berlin had prompted the Soviets to sever access. The Western Allies began to airlift food and fuel to over two m illion West Berlin residents. In addition, the Western powers imposed a counterblockade on transit into Soviet-controlled eastern Germany and the eastern Berlin occupation zone. The senator wanted to assess for him self the economic, political, and m ilitary situation on the Continent. He received briefings on die airlift, as w ell as on the progress of the overall German occupation from General Lucius D. Clay, on the general conditions in Europe from the various U.S. embassy staffs, and on assistance and recon­ struction from Ambassador Averell Harrim an of the Economic Cooperation Administration (ECA). He also discussed international relations w ith Ambassador John Foster Dulles, who served as the U.S. representative to die United Nations Assembly in Paris in 1948. Taft drew several conclusions from his grand tour. His "general im pression" was that a Soviet m ilitary attack was unlikely, that com­ munists had "apparently lost ground in Western Europe, at least as an active political force," but that a U.S. withdrawal from Berlin would reinvigorate support for communism. The senator lauded General Clay for the "great jo b " he had done "in dealing with the Russians," contending that he was "entitied to the support of the American peo­ p le." Taft dien labeled the Berlin airlift "a most impressive operation." Although "extrem ely expensive," the senator believed it was neces­ sary if the Western Allies were to maintain their position in Berlin. He had seen evidence that die Soviet blockade had backfired on them,

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reducing industrial production in the "Russian Zone," reducing repa­ rations from the other zones to the Soviet side of the iron curtain, and generating considerable ill w ill among the German people.63 Most significantly, Taft found Europe's economic health much improved. His principal reason for touring Europe had been to assess the effectiveness of the reconstruction program. Much of the turn­ around Taft credited to M arshall Plan assistance, but he asserted that the economic viability of the European states "depends more on themselves than it does on foreign aid." The senator judged that the ECA was "being efficiently operated," that it was "only giving aid where it is clear that it w ill be of real benefit to the ultimate condition of the European countries." Contrary to his initial fears, Taft found that Harriman and his top adm inistrators "do not have any give­ away attitude" and probably would spend less titan was appropri­ ated.64 But the senator pronounced econom ic integration on the Continent a failure. Western European nations were "still in water­ tight com partm ents," he noted, w ith "each one struggling to solve its own problem s." Allied occupation authorities themselves were guilty of keeping Germany isolated, he observed, "and are still doing so in spite of the efforts of the Joint Export-Import Agency to increase trade between Germany and Western Europe." He acknowledged that there had been "som e progress in bi-lateral agreements between gov­ ernments for the exchange of goods," but nothing like the free exchange of goods and services that existed across state boundaries in tiie United States.65 Taft sought to bring some measure of stability to American poli­ tics and political economy during the immediate postw ar years. A fter more than a decade of reform and war, the senator labored to restrain the New Deal order that had emerged since 1933. He suc­ cessfully opposed the full-em ploym ent bill and Senator W agner's national health insurance initiative in order to curb the growth of bureaucracy and spending; in 1947, he led the struggle to reform labor-management relations in industry. To balance restraint with opportunity, however, Taft vigorously supported public housing leg­ islation and federal aid to education. In foreign affairs, the senator unsuccessfully fought the new mul­ tilateral framework for international monetary stability and economic reconstruction, preferring a unilateral American approach to funding the postwar economic rebirth. At w ar's end, his principled opposition to the newly formed United Nations Organization revealed Taft's naiveté regarding great power politics and the bipolar nature of the

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postwar international relations system. The senator's recommenda­ tion that tiie victorious powers erect a body of international law and vest that legal system w ith significant authority demonstrated a rather unrealistic appreciation of the "grand alliance." Franklin D. Roosevelt had no such plans for the new United Nations. The UN, without a new body of law, but w ith a powerful Security Council, became the instrument of great power domination that Roosevelt had intended. By 1947, the unfolding Cold War had moved Taft to a more real­ istic appraisal of foreign relations. It forced the reluctant senator to support m ajor U.S. commitments to Europe under the Truman Doctrine and M arshall Plan. More important, Am erica's assumption of Britain's special position in the eastern Mediterranean prompted Taft to begin thinking in terms of power balances and spheres of influ­ ence. The m ilitarization of the East-West conflict after 1948 would transform Taft into a full-fledged Cold Warrior.

Notes 1. RT Speech, "Government Guarantee of Private Investments Abroad," July 12,1945, in Vital Speeches of the Day 11 (Aug. 1,1945): 635. 2. Ibid. 3. Ibid. 4. Quoted from D. K. Fieldhouse, "The Metropolitan Economics of Empire," in William Roger Louis, ed., The Oxford History c f the British Empire, 5 vols. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 4:111-12. 5. RT to Dick Nielsen, Jan. 30,1946, in Papers c f RAT, 3:124-25. 6. RT Address, "Justice and Liberty for the Individual," Oct. 5,1946, in Papers of RAT, 3:200. 7. Quoted passage horn James T. Patterson, Mr. Republican: A Biography of Robert A. Taft (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1972), 327. 8. Quote from Section 2 (e) of S. 380, Cong. Rec., 79th Cong., 1st sess., 1945,91,377. 9. The distinction between the two concepts is from John W. Jeffries, "The 'New' New Deal: FDR and American Liberalism, 1937-1945," Political Science Quarterly 105 (1990): 397-418. 10. RT, Radio Address on Full Employment, Aug. 7, 1945, in Papers c f RAT, 3:67. 11. Ibid. 12. Ibid., 3:68. 13. RT Press Release, "Wages and Prices," Apr. 28,1947, in Papers of RAT, 3:277. 14. RT Speech, Financial World Dinner, Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, Oct. 2, 1945, LC/RATP. 15. Ibid. 16. J. Joseph Huthmacher, Senator Robert F. Wagner and the Rise of Urban Liberalism (New York: Atheneum, 1968), 320-21; Edward Berkowitz and Kim McQuaid, Creating the Welfare State: The Political Economy of Twentieth-Century

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Reform (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1992), 158-59. 17. Huthmacher, Senator Robert F. Wagner, 321; see also Patterson, Mr. Republican, 432. 18. Patterson, Mr. Republican, 321-22. 19. Ibid., 321-23; quoted material on p. 323; also RT Speech, "Republican Program for Progress," Oct. 19,1945, Speech File, LC/RATP. 20. Quoted in Patterson, Mr. Republican, 323. 21. Richard O. Davies, "'M r. Republican' Turns 'Socialist': Robert A. Taft and Public Housing," Ohio History 73 (Summer 1964): 139. 22. Ibid. 23. Truman's views are summarized in ibid. 24. RT, Opening Remarks, Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce, Housing Debate, Jan. 7,1946, LC/RATP. 25. Quoted from Patterson, Mr. Republican, 356. 26. Quoted from Melvyn Dubofsky, The State and Labor in Modem America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994), 203. 27. Quoted from ibid., 204. 28. Robert J. Donovan, Conflict and Crisis: The Presidency of Harry S Truman, 1945-1948 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1977), 184-85; Thomas A. Bailey, A Diplomatic History of the American People, 10th ed. (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1980), 792. 29. RT Speech, "The British Loan," Apr. 24,1946, in Vital Speeches of the Day 12 (June l, 1946): 500-501. 30. Ibid. 31. Ibid. 32. RT, "Statement about Aid to Turkey and Greece," in Papers c f RAT, 3:260. 33. RT to Arthur H. Vandenbeig, March 18,1947, in Papers cfRAT, 3:264. 34. Ibid. 35. Hoover, Report of the President's Mission to Germany and Austria, quoted in Gary Dean Best, Herbert Hoover: The Postpresidential Years, 1933-1964,2 vols. (Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institution Press, 1983), 2:299. 36. Ibid. 37. Hoover to H. Styles Bridges [chairman of Senate Appropriations Committee], June 13, 1947, Herbert Hoover Papers (Post-Presidential), Herbert Hoover Presidential Library, West Branch, Iowa. 38. RT to Hoover, July 11,1947, in Papers cfRAT, 3:302. 39. Ibid. 40. Ibid. 41. RT Speech, St. Andrew's Society, Dec. 1,1947, in Papers ofRAT, 3:343. 42. RT Speech, "Inflation and the Marshall Plan," Dec. 30,1947, in Papers cfRAT, 3:359. 43. RT Speech, St. Andrew's Society, Dec. 1,1947, in Papers cfRAT, 3:343. 44. Ibid., 3:344. 45. Quoted from Patterson, Mr. Republican, 379. 46. RT Speech, "Inflation and the Marshall Plan," Dec. 30,1947, in Papers cfRAT, 3:355. 47. Nourse and Taft quotes are at ibid., 3:360. As Taft's biographer accu­ rately notes, he seemed confused during the debates over the Marshall Plan, at one point calling for restrictions on foreign assistance to guarantee that Western European nations purchased American manufactured goods (and

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thus supporting domestic manufacturing) with the loan credits—a move that guaranteed competition for increasingly scarce goods in the U.S. domestic m arket Patterson, Mr. Republican, 386. 48. RT Speech, Detroit, Mich., Feb. 23, 1948, in Papers of RAT, 3:403-4; regarding Kennan's assessment of "die Rooseveltian dream " for postwar great-power regional hegemony, see John Lamberton Harper, American Visions of Europe: Franklin D. Roosevelt, George F. Kaman, and Dam G. Acheson (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), esp. 182,191. 49. RT Speech, Detroit, Mich., in Papers of RAT, 3:406. 50. Forrest C. Pogue, "The Struggle for a New Order," in John L. Snell, ed., The Meaning c f Yalta: Big Three Diplomacy and the New Balance of Power (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1956), 34. 51. The distinction between "Yalta axioms" (cooperation) and "Riga axioms" (confrontation) is from Daniel Yergin, Shattered Peace: The Origins c f the Cold War and the National Security State (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977), chapters 1 and 2. 52. Quoted from Patterson, Mr. Republican, 388. 53. RT, "Notes on Compulsory Military Training Speech," [Oct. 1945], LC/RATP. 54. RT Speech, American Palestine Committee Dinner, Mar. 9 ,1 9 4 4 , in Papers c f RAT, 2:533. 55. Quoted passage horn Glen Balfour-Paul, "Britain's Informal Empire in the Middle East," in William Roger Louis, ed., The Oxford History c f the British Empire, 5 vols. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 4:502. 56. RT Speech, American Palestine Committee Dinner, Mar. 9 ,1 9 4 4 , in Papers cfRAT, 2:533. 57. Robert Wagner Speech, quoted in Huthmacher, Senator Robert F. Wagner, 331. 58. Henry L. Stimson to RT, Oct. 10,1944, LC/RATP. 59. RT to G. C. Marshall, Feb. 17,1947, in Papers cfRAT, 3:244. 60. RT, "Statement on Recognition of Israel," Oct. 26,1948, in Papers of RAT, 3:468-69. 61. RT to Harry S. Truman, Nov. 6,1948, in Papers cfRAT, 3:470; Truman to RT, Dec. 16,1948, LC/RATP. 62. RT to Lewis L. Strauss, Nov. 12,1948, in Papers cfRAT, 3:470-71. 63. RT Statement, [Dec. 1948], in Papers cfRAT, 3:471. 64. Ibid., 3:472. 65. Ibid.

Cold Warrior fter 1948, anticommunism increasingly dominated Taft's thinking. During the four-year period between the March 1948 communist coup in Czechoslovakia and the November 1951 publication of his book, A Foreign Policy fo r Americans, Taft came to view the communist threat as both strategic and ideological, foreign and domestic. By the time of his decision to run for the 1952 Republican presidential nomination, the senator had transformed him self into a conservative Cold Warrior. Integral to this new identity was a fundamental shift in foreign and strategic policy views that moved Taft toward a conservative version of globalism that can be distinguished from the TrumanAcheson brand of Cold War liberal internationalism . In par­ ticular, he made the transition from an anti-interventionist advocate of continentalist defense policies to a Cold War advocate of an expansive maritime defense strategy and of a selective containment policy that would build up Allied "centers of strength" at key points on the periphery of the Eurasian landmass.

A

The 1949 Republican Agenda Regardless of his kind note of congratulations to Truman, Taft was bitterly disappointed by the surprise outcome of the 1948 election. For the chairman of the GOP Policy Committee in the Senate, the Democratic victory meant waging another four-year-long war in opposition; the loss of a Republican m ajority made the ordeal even more diffi­ cult. So the senator hunkered down, fighting against those Fair Deal measures that promised excessive federal intru­ sion in the lives of Americans but vigorously supporting legislation in accord with his conservative principles. He 143

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was most supportive of the public housing legislation that Senator Robert Wagner had pressed for over the previous two years. The Wagner-Ellender-Taft program, a cornerstone of Truman's Fair Deal, called for almost one m illion public housing units over a six-year period. Taft again joined Senate Democrats to pass a federal aid to education bill that would furnish $270 m illion in federal grants to supplement public education. But Taft found him self once again in the opposition over creation of a perm anent Fair Employment Practices Committee w ith compulsory powers to remedy discrimina­ tion in the workplace. Similarly, he assailed the adm inistration's con­ troversial Brannan Plan, a m assive program of income supports for agriculture, and a lengthy list of public works projects put forward by Truman to prop up employment during the deepening recession of 1949. In contrast, Taft revealed a constructive conservatism with his sponsorship of a bill to create a national health agency, an alternative to W agner's heavily bureaucratic national health insurance proposal. Taft's alternative was designed to adm inister federal matching grants to states for hospital and medical services. The adm inistration, wed­ ded to W agner's initiative, refused to support federal grants-in-aid.

Domestic Anticommunism To what degree was there a threat of domestic subversion in the post­ war era? Recent disclosures from the archives of the former Soviet Union, as w ell as assessments of the "Venona decrypts" (Soviet diplo­ matic messages intercepted as early as 1939, but not decrypted until after World War II), reveal an extensive communist underground espionage network dating back to the late 1930s in the United States. The Soviet Union employed between 200 and 400 espionage agents, could count on many of the 54,000 Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA) members, and often received assistance from an esti­ mated 500,000 sympathizers nationwide. In the late 1930s, several key New Deal bureaucracies, most notably the National Labor Relations Board, the National Youth Administration, several congressional investigatory committees, the National Research Project of the Works Progress Administration, the Federal Theater Project, the Treasury Department, and the Department of State employed communists. They entered several wartime bureaucracies, including the Office of Wartime Information, the Office of Price Administration, and even the super-secret Office of Strategic Services, forerunner of the postwar Central Intelligence Agency. Did these agents and sympathizers pose a threat? There was never a risk of radicals taking over the federal

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government or undermining the adm inistration's policy initiatives, but there was a risk to Am erica's atomic secrets. There is little dis­ agreement among historians over the reality of Cold War espionage. During die war and immediate postwar eras, the Soviet Union obtained some U.S. nuclear secrets, but the strategic impact of that espionage was never as significant as zealous conservatives dreaded or as insignificant as insouciant liberals assumed. Although Taft had embraced anticommunism throughout his career, by the late 1940s, he was convinced that die CPUSA and other communist parties worldwide were instruments of an international communist movement directed by the Kremlin in Moscow and bent on global expansion. To his way of thinking, diese parties posed not merely an external geopolitical threat from the Soviet Union, but an internal threat from subversion. He advocated a systematic purge of both party members and sympathizers, especially those within die federal bureaucracy. Although he maintained certain specific defenses of civil liberties and academic freedom, the senator believed that the internal threat necessitated a full-scale campaign to force citizens to reveal their communist affiliations, warranted an extensive purge of all Communist Party members from government, and justified a thor­ ough regulation of die party's organization, including registration and bans on voting and office-holding. Later, once the nation's political cli­ mate was more favorable, the senator hoped to purge the remaining radical sympathizers from the government bureaucracy. As early as June 1947, Taft began fashioning a conservative pro­ gram for domestic anticommunism. He initially confronted the internal threat posed by party members. "O ur first effort is to get the Communists out of government," the senator wrote Marrs McLean, the prominent Texas Republican, "and then get the Communists out of the labor unions." If members were driven out of those positions of influence and comprised a marginal "independent party," the senator declared, "I do not have any great fear of them ." But it "would be pos­ sible to outlaw the Communist Party if we could definitely tie it up to Russia." The O hio senator hoped that the Federal Bureau of Investigation, given die proper "intelligent direction," might uncover the facts "which would support this proposition in the courts." If inves­ tigators revealed a connection to the Soviet Union, Taft concluded in his letter to McLean, "the Party should definitely be outlawed."1 Taft feared radical sympathizers, as w ell as party members, within the federal bureaucracy. As early as 1948, the senator identified a group of "m en at interm ediate levels" in both the State and Commerce Departments "w ho yearn for more economic planning for

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the world, and others who still sympathize with Russia in spite of everything that has happened." O f the two departments, it was the State Department that most troubled Taft. In his defense of McCarthy, Taft charged in 1951 that the "greatest Kremlin asset" at the wartime conferences was "the pro-Communist group in the State Department who surrendered to every demand of Russia at Yalta and Potsdam ." In addition to their role in creating the "Russian m enace," Taft main­ tained, these same men, especially those in the departm ent's Far Eastern Division, "prom oted at every opportunity die Communist cause in China until today Communism threatens to take over all of A sia."2 The Ohio senator was furious when the Democratic-controlled Senate failed to investigate thoroughly this "great deal of communism in the State Department." If the United States was "to conduct a real battle against the communist ideology throughout the w orld," he asserted, die nation "should definitely elim inate from the Government all those who are directiy or indirectiy connected with die Communist organization."3 The senator praised the efforts of Richard M. Nixon (R-Calif.), a junior congressman on the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). "Except for N ixon's courage, ability and persist­ ence" in the Cham bers-H iss affair, Taft told C alifornia Young Republicans, "the American people would never have known of com­ munism in high places." Admittedly, HUAC made "som e foolish m oves," but it revealed "quite a lot of Communist activity." After the 1950 perjury conviction of Alger Hiss, who had occupied a significant, yet secondary policy-making position in the State Department, Taft prodded senators to conduct an inquiry to "show what his influence w as" on administration foreign policy. Taft observed that President Truman "says nothing of the Alger Hiss influence at Yalta which led Harry Hopkins and Averell Harriman and him self to speak of Russia as a peace-loving democracy. That certainly is a complete delusion, probably die most dangerous delusion which any of our policymakers have ever em braced." The Democrat-controlled Senate responded with "constant obstruction and refusal of inform ation." A thoroughly frustrated Taft vowed that the Republicans "w ill do what we can on our ow n."4 By die time of die Hiss case, Taft had given up on die goal of out­ lawing the Communist Party. He was uncertain how "to deal with this kind of treason." Privately, the senator admitted "that we cannot make it a crim e to be a Communist or to teach communism." "O n the other hand," Taft wrote Zechariah Chafee, his former classm ate and a prominent civil liberties specialist at Harvard Law School, "it seems

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foolish to let it proceed while we are spending billions" to prevent communist takeovers around the globe. After defending HUAC's actions to his old friend, Taft confided: "Perhaps publicity is the only real w eapon."5 Although committed to anticommunism, Taft harbored doubts about the efficacy of federal government action. In foreign affairs, the senator still possessed a considerable amount of skepticism regarding m ultilateral initiatives. His opposition to entangling alliances and armaments races led him to fight the Truman adm inistration's pivotal 1949 North Atlantic treaty initiative.

NATO, the Fall of China, and the Soviet A-Bomb The ratification debate over the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) brought out Taft's strongest anti-interventionist rhetoric since the Lend-Lease debate of 1941, but also marked a beginning of his shift toward globalism as the Cold War intensified. In April 1949, the Truman adm inistration had successfully negotiated a pact between nine nations of Western Europe, as w ell as Iceland and Canada. The Atlantic pact's controversial Article 5 committed all sig­ natory states to regard an attack against any member nation as an attack against all. "It thus committed the United States—for the first time since its pragm atic alliance w ith France in 1778—to a war in defense of other nations outside the Western Hem isphere."6 Taft offered his critique of the North Atlantic pact on the Senate floor on July 11,1949. After much consideration, he had concluded that the treaty was "inextricably linked" to a m assive m ilitary assis­ tance program to build up the defenses of all the Western nations. Because he believed "that the program is a threat to the welfare of the people of the United States, I shall vote against the Treaty."7 One week after Taft's declaration, a majority of both parties in the Senate defeated an amendment preventing a m ilitary assistance package to Europe by 74 to 21, then approved the North Atlantic Treaty by a vote of 82 to 13. Two months later, Taft led another unsuccessful effort to reduce the amount of the m ilitary assistance going to Europe. It was Article 3, not Article 5, of the North Atlantic Treaty that most disturbed Senator Taft. The treaty's third article stated that "[p]arties separately and jointly, by means of continuous and effective self-help and mutual aid, w ill maintain and develop their individual and collective capacity to resist armed attack."8 Taft knew that meant the United States would arm NATO's member nations. Despite reas­ surances that treaty ratification did not autom atically mean m ilitary

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assistance, the State Departm ent's W hite Paper on the NATO pact observed: "N ot until we share our strength on a common defensive front can we hope to replace this temptation [to attack Western Europe] w ith a real deterrent to war. The North Atlantic Pact is an agreement on the policy of a common defense; its very vital corollary is a program of m ilitary aid."9 Indeed, Taft called attention to the State Departm ent's admission that the arms program was necessary to defend Europe, with or without NATO. The senator dismissed die treaty as merely an adjunct to an enormous m ilitary assistance pro­ gram that would arm eleven nations over a twenty-year time span. Taft claimed that die arms program was not only unnecessary, but provocative enough to undermine the treaty's deterrent function. "The present Treaty," he lectured his colleagues, "is a m ilitary alliance." Indeed, it was a "peacetim e renewal of die old, open-ended lend-lease form ula" of Franklin Roosevelt. According to Taft, it was a "m ilitary alliance, a treaty by which one nation undertakes to arm half die world against the other half, and in which all the Pact mem­ bers agree to go to war if one is attacked." Regardless of die defensive intentions of any alliance, he asserted, "if it carries the obligation to arm it means the building up of com petitive offensive arm am ent." Awakening memories of World War I, he maintained that the North Atlantic pact meant "inevitably an armament race, and armament races in die past have led to w ar."10 The Atlantic pact placed "unilateral responsibility for the fate of Europe" on the shoulders of the United States. With the creation of the M arshall Plan, Taft reminded fellow senators, the United States had embarked on an economic reconstruction of Western Europe, based on the notion that there was no immediate threat of Soviet attack. Now the North Atlantic pact proposed the opposite: a massive m ilitary program to meet an impending Soviet offensive. Always the fiscal conservative, Taft argued that die nation could not carry out both programs; Americans "w ill have to choose whether we give eco­ nomic assistance or arm s." M arshall Plan assistance "has contributed and w ill contribute to peace," he adm itted, but arms programs "w ill make war more likely."11 Taft observed that the North Atiantic pact broke significandy from even the most recent U.S. diplomatic precedents. The new pact differed dramatically, in his mind, from the Rio treaty to which it was frequently com pared. The Inter-A m erican Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance, dating from September 2, 1947, committed signatory nations "to assist in meeting die attack" on other member states. The Rio pact provided for no m ilitary alliances or arms programs, the sen­

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ator recalled. Similarly, NATO not only contradicted, but under­ mined, the United Nations Charter. M ost important, he believed that the new treaty, with its arms program, undermined UN A rticle 51, which guaranteed every nation the right of self-defense "if an armed attack occurs" against it. "I don't think Article 51 extends the actual exercise of this right," Taft told his Senate audience, "to the arming of other nations prior to the occurrence of such an attack." He concluded that it "violates the whole spirit of the United Nations Charter." The UN Charter intended to resolve international disputes peacefully, but the North Atlantic pact "necessarily divides the world into two armed cam ps." The world may already be so divided, he adm itted, but "by enforcing that division" the United States was not acting in the spirit of the United Nations.12 The NATO debate revealed the degree to which Taft's perceptions of the new Cold War realities had distanced him from traditional American anti-interventionism . His acceptance of the global anticom­ m unist crusade in mid-1949 led him to embrace greater American com m itm ents overseas. In his Ju ly Senate NATO address, he announced not only his willingness to vote for an extension of the Monroe Doctrine to Europe but also his support for an indefinite Allied occupation of Germany to preserve the peace and stability of the Continent. The events of late 1949, most notably the communist victory on the Chinese mainland and the development of the Soviet A-bomb, finally convinced Taft that international communism was expansionist and aggressive. The senator interpreted the establishm ent of the People's Republic as an extension of Soviet power across Asia. Throughout the late 1940s, as the Chinese Civil War moved toward resolution, a reluc­ tant Taft had been moving ever closer to the controversial stance of the influential China Lobby, a loose-knit group of publishers (led by Life's Henry Luce), m issionaries, and conservative congressmen. The sena­ tor condemned the Truman adm inistration's 1945 Far East policy, just as he had the Democrats' stance regarding the division of postwar Europe. Senator Taft thought it a "very foolish policy" of paying the Soviets for entering the Pacific War by giving them strategic areas along the edge of the Eurasian landmass. For help "w e did not need," he later observed, the Soviets received Manchuria, the Kurile Islands, and half of the massive Sakhalin Island.13 At the wartime conferences at Yalta and Potsdam, Taft asserted, Roosevelt and Truman had reversed Am erica's traditional stance in favor of equal access in the Far East, "contrary to every principle of American foreign policy since the day of John Hay and the open door in C hina."14

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Taft was an increasingly vocal critic of General George C. M arshall's 1946 China mission and the State Departm ent's subse­ quent China policy. M arshall's objective, which Taft thought was shaped by the pro-leftist thinking of the State Departm ent's Far Eastern Division, was to force Chiang Kai-shek (Jiang Jieshi), head of die N ationalist Chinese regime, to take communists into his cabinet. In light of the 1948 communist coup in Czechoslovakia, Taft believed that Chiang's refusal to accept a coalition government was justified. In die senator's mind, State Department policy represented the relin­ quishing of Am erica's anticommunist position on the Asian main­ land, as w ell as an abandonment of George F. Kerman's conception of containment. The Soviets' successful atomic bomb test helped complete Taft's transition to conservative Cold Warrior. On September 23, 1949, President Truman announced that a "nuclear explosion" had occurred in the USSR earlier that month.15 The U.S. Air Force and Navy had both collected air samples that conclusively demonstrated that the Soviets had successfully developed an atom ic device. American scientists had predicted such a development, but few poli­ cymakers expected such a sw ift end to the U.S. atomic monopoly. The Soviet Union's progress in atomic weaponry triggered a sig­ nificant change in the strategic thinking of both administration liberals and opposition conservatives. Truman authorized the N ational Security Council (NSC) to conduct "a reexamination of our objectives in peace and war and of the effect of these objectives on our strategic plans."16The study, done under the direction of the State Department's Paul H. Nitze, culminated in National Security Council Document No. 68, a tightly reasoned argument for a massive U.S. m ilitary buildup in both atomic weaponry and conventional ground forces. Similarly, Soviet success, combined with the other events of the previous two years, led Senator Taft to a lengthy reconsideration of his "continentalist" strategic thought. What began, in the autumn of 1949, as a simple restatement of his hemispheric defense views based on a massive, capital-intensive expansion of the U.S. Air Force eventually culmi­ nated in a strategy of maritime defense and selective containment articulated first in his January 1951 "G reat Debate" speech, then elab­ orated in his book, A Foreign Policy fo r Americans. Taft's immediate response to the Soviet A-bomb test was a restatem ent of his air-atom ic preparedness argument. On October 5, 1949, he called for the rebuilding of Am erica's air power, demobi­ lized after w ar's end. "The only possible defense" against Soviet nuclear capability, he declared, "is a com plete control of the air." Air

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supremacy would certainly guarantee victory in the next global war. He pressed the adm inistration to "build up our own A ir Force again to seventy groups."17 To counter this new threat, he observed, the nation m ust improve both its offensive air power and its air defense capabilities. The senator remained reluctant to endorse a greater role for America overseas. His doubts about expansion of U.S. foreign assis­ tance programs mirrored his reluctance to endorse a comprehensive m ilitary buildup in the late 1940s. M ost doubtful, to his way of think­ ing, was the Truman adm inistration's plan for economic progress in the newly independent states of the underdeveloped world.

Point Four In the final days of May 1950 the U.S. Senate engaged in a rousing debate over the Truman adm inistration's Point Four program. In his January 1949 inaugural address, Truman had endorsed the United Nations, lauded the Marshall Plan for European reconstruction, announced Am erica's intention to seek a North Atlantic collective security pact, and proposed "a bold new program " of technical assis­ tance to promote economic development in the "underdeveloped areas" of the globe.18 But Taft and others, even Republicans sympathetic to the pro­ gram, opposed what many considered a new program of WPA-style public works projects on an international scale. Representative Christian Herter (R-M ass.), one of the sponsors of the administra­ tion's bill in the U.S. House of Representatives, asserted that estab­ lishm ent of a technical assistance program would have little beneficial effect on the living standards of underdeveloped nations. Desiring to uplift the poorest nations around the globe, Herter believed that "real help could be given in the fields of sanitation, education, labor, agri­ culture, adm inistration, etc., but, in the long run, increased productiv­ ity must be the deciding factor." The kind of productivity increases that raised living standards, he claimed, "com e only through a given amount of capital investm ent plus the technical know-how or techni­ cal skills which go with capital investm ent."19 The advantage of the Point Four legislation, according to Herter, was that it spelled out the minimum conditions under which Americans could expect U.S. capi­ tal to seek investment overseas. Clearly Taft's fiscal conservatism contributed to his doubts about Point Four. In those final weeks before the surprise invasion of South Korea, the Ohio senator already felt the United States was overstretched.

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Robert A . Taft

In early 1950, he declared "w e are already committed to two great inter­ national programs far beyond the financial capacity of the United States." He reminded fellow senators that $3 billion had to be allocated for Marshall Plan reconstruction, still in progress, and $1.5 billion over the next two fiscal years for the new NATO military assistance package. With Congress facing a $6 billion deficit in the current fiscal year, Taft warned, "this is not a time to take on a third great international pro­ gram."2®

Anticommunism, McCarthy, and the 1950 Reelection Campaign Anticommunism had been an integral component of Republican Party rhetoric for decades. In his 1924 campaign for the presidency, Calvin Coolidge had posed the question of "w hether America w ill allow itself to be degraded into a communistic and socialistic state, or whether it w ill remain A m erican."21 Throughout the 1930s, conserva­ tives, especially those within the GOP, had often equated socialism and communism to the New Deal. Once again Taft was the heir to a well-established American political tradition. Taft's critique of the Democratic Party was integral to the conser­ vative Republicans' postwar assault on communism. Under Truman and Acheson, Taft asserted, the Democratic Party was "so divided between Communism and Americanism that its foreign policy can only be futile and contradictory." In Taft's mind, the Dem ocrats' for­ eign policy since Yalta had made the United States "th e laughing stock of the w orld."22 Similarly, the large number of adm inistrators w ith leftist leanings in the offices of the Voice of America greatly dis­ turbed Taft. It was clear that Taft believed that the Republican Party was the only political vehicle to guarantee the continued security and progress of the nation. Republicanism, the senator m aintained, was Americanism. The senator never feared homegrown American socialism , as he did international communism. The Socialist Party advocated a plat­ form that, in Taft's mind, ran counter to the ideals of the "Am erican Way of Life" but presented no threat of aggression from outside or threat of subversion from within the United States. Indeed, Taft's rela­ tions w ith longtime Socialist Party presidential candidate Norman Thomas were cordial. The Ohio senator frequently corresponded or debated with the socialist on timely political issues. Never during his tenure in the Senate did he believe that the party or its candidates posed a threat to the nation. In contrast, Taft did not doubt that the

Cold W arrior

153

communist threat necessitated an active response from the federal government. In a democracy, however, such a response needed a pub­ lic mandate. But, as Taft noticed in the late 1940s, a groundswell of public sen­ tim ent against communists had not yet materialized. Public apathy in die face of what, to him , was clearly a m assive conspiracy dismayed die senator. He perceived "a strange lack of critical analysis on the part of the average citizen" regarding communism. "They simply w ill not take it seriously," Taft declared, "even though the conspiracy has been proved to extend right into the operation of the governm ent."23 In order to counter the threat, Taft advocated strict regulation of the CPUSA's organization and the curtailment of certain rights of its individual members and leaders. The senator believed that the nation's political, economic, and social leadership had to be unified in its opposition to the internal and external danger. Am erica's corporatist approach to policymaking, with its close interrelationship of public and private elites, made conformity to an anticommunist approach absolutely essential. Therefore, to Taft's way of thinking, the continued presence of communists and party sympathizers in the fed­ eral bureaucracy presented a significant national security problem. W hat is most surprising, given Taft's privately expressed reserva­ tions about Senator Joseph M cCarthy's methods, is the O hioan's active participation in the inquisition into the activities at the State Department. In a letter to the Ohio senator, Sam G uidid, a business­ man w ith offices in Peru, questioned the loyalty of a U.S. government bureaucrat, Delgado Arias. Arias was a Puerto Rican who had given up an instructorship at the State College of New York for a position with the Department of Inform ation within the State Department. Guidici, who declared that McCarthy was bringing "very sw ell stuff" into "the light of day," provided Taft w ith "a name in State that I sus­ pect would be worthwhile studying." Although he considered the charge "rather indefinite," Taft passed along A rias's name in a May 1950 memorandum to Senator McCarthy.24 It was this vehement anticommunism that most motivated Taft's opponents in his 1950 reelection campaign. Although his opponent, state auditor Joseph T. Ferguson, was a lightweight contender, O hio's trade union movement and CIO-PAC, industrial unionism 's powerful Political Action Committee, did their best to unseat the coauthor of the 1947 Labor-Management Relations Act. It became one of the nas­ tiest American political contests in the twentieth century. Organized labor kept up a concerted campaign against the sena­ tor throughout the last half of 1950. In August, John L. Lewis of the

THE ROBERT ALPHONSO 'IT'S ON TNI RECORD!” '

HOW WAS TAFT SAVED FROM CONTAMINATION? S »,

HOW DOES TAFT RATE AS A PROPHET? i?«.,

WHEN DID TAFT FAVOR A IOO* EXCESS PROFIT TAX? uu>

HOW DID TAFT VOTE ON HOUSING FOR PARALYZED VETS? iilw
130 "politics of sacrifice" concept, 72 poll tax, 48

237

postwar planning (1942-1945), 77-87,91-103,116-17 Potsdam Conference, 128-30,133, 146,149,192 pottery industry, Ohio, 40 "Preparedness" concept, World War Ü, 55-56 Preparedness Day Parade, 1919 (Cincinnati, Ohio), 16 President's Air Policy Commission, 132 progress, idea of, 5-6,9-11,46-47, 91-94,184,215-17 Progressive Era, 9,102 Progressive Party (1948), 136 public enterprise, 91,112 public works projects, 36,91,144, 151 Puerto Rico, 46,78 "pump-priming" concept, 113 Puritans, 3,12,43-44,211 race, 43-48,94-100; "lower races" concept, 46; "racial uplift" concept, 46-48; racism, 94-100 railroads, 37-38 Reader's Digest, 155 Reconstruction Finance Corporation, 23,30,51-52 Red Army, 129-30,132,162,165 Republican Party, 1,4,6,9-10,12, 16,18,20,22,24,26-30,33,38-39, 41-43,45,52-53,55-56,58,60,71, 76-78,81-82,91-92,96,102,107, 122,128-30,136-37,143,145-46, 152,159-60,172,177,179-85,188, 191,195,201,203,207-8,210-13, 215-17; and progress, 215-17; Chicago Conference of, 78,85; "Lost Victory" thesis and, 128-30; Mackinac Conference of, 82; New Hampshire conference of, 22,24; 1952 national convention of, 181; Ohio and, 9,

12,22

238

"Republican principles," 1 ,2,6,26, 28,43-44,86-87,91-94,111-12, 136,170-72,177,184,196,203, 211,216-17 "Republicanism is Americanism" quote, 45 revenue debates of 1942,74-77 Rhee, Syngman, 215 Rhine River, 19,163,165; Iceland-Britain-Rhine-Cairo-Suez defense line, 165 Rio Treaty (Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance), 148-49 The Robert Alphonso Taft Story (comic book), 154,155 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 6,21-22, 25-26,28-29,33-35,37-38,41, 48-50,53-63,65,71,74,83,86-87, 91-93,95,115,120-21,128-30, 132-33,139,148-49,182,185, 194-95,208,212,215-16; economic bill of rights, 115; fireside chats, 57; "Grand Alliance," 139; "Lost Victory" and, 128-30; "Roosevelt Recession," 37-38 Roosevelt, Theodore, 9,10,20 Root, Elihu, 5 Ross, Charles, 156 Ruhr industrial region, 124 Rumania, 122,130 Ryukyu Islands, 164 Saar, 19 St. Andrew's Society of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 126 St. Lawrence Seaway, 197,200 St. Louis, Missouri, 54,128 Sakhalin Island, 149 San Francisco, California, 111, 129 Saturday Evening Post, 80 Saudi Arabia, 166 Schuman Plan, 201,204 "Secret Agreements" Resolution, 191-92

Index

Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), 93-94 Selective Service Act of 1940,56,87, 131,208 "self-culture" concept, 14 Senate, U.S., 1,3,5,21,28-31,33-35, 43,48,55,60,62-63,78,82,114, 116,118,122,124-25,131,133-34, 137,143-44,146-47,149,151-52, 177,179,186-88,193-95,197,203; Appropriations Committee, 124; Committee on Government Operations, 193; Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, 118; Education Committee, 116; Finance Committee, 116; Foreign Relations Committee, 34-35,122, 131,133-34,194-95,207,212,216; Military Affairs Committee, 55; Republican Policy Committee, 125,143,187 "seventy-group air force" concept, 132,161,172 Sherman, Forrest R, 164 Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890,27 SUver, Abba Hillel, 133 "sixty million jobs" movement, 112-13,209 "Sky Farm" (Cincinnati, Ohio, family residence), 15 small business, 91-94 Smith, Harold, 74 Smith, T. V., 37,42 Social Security, 116 socialism, 92,152 soil conservation, 42 Sorbonne, 15 South (region of U.S.), 46,80, 116-17,180; "Old South," 180 South America, 81,164,200 South Carolina, 186 Spanish-American War, 3,46 Spanish Civil War, 34 Sparkman, John, 195 The Speaker's Handbook, 155

Index

spheres of influence, 19,80-81 Spratley Islands, 34 Stalin, Joseph, 129,185,192 Stanford University, 16 Stanley, George E, 65-66 Stassen, Harold, 78-81 State Department, U.S., 19-20, 42-43,130,135,144-48,150,153, 169,171,187,193-95; NATO White Paper by, 148 States' Rights (Dixiecrat) Party, 136 steel industry, 37-38,197,200-201 Stettinius, Edward R., Jr., 50 Stevenson, Adlai, 182,185 Stimson, Henry L., 55,133-34 strategic materials concept (war mobilization), 56 strategic thought, 4-5,163-72 Strauss, Lewis L., 136-37,186 Streit, Clarence, 78-81 Suez Canal, 164-66 Sulzberger, Arthur H., 66 Summerfield, Arthur, 187 Supreme Court, U.S., 24-25,180 Syria, 135 Taft, Alphonso (grandfather), 9,12, 14-15,21 Taft, Charles Phelps I (uncle), 9,20 Taft, Charles Phelps n (brother), 13, 15,16 Taft, Helen Herron (mother), 13 Taft, Henry Waters (uncle), 9 Taft, Horace Dutton (uncle), 9,14 Taft, Horace Dwight (son), 15,28 Taft, Hulbert (cousin), 64 Taft, Lloyd Bowers (son), 15,28 Taft, Martha W. Bowers (wife), 15, 2 8 , 29,54,136-37,187 Taft, Robert, Jr. (son), 15,2 8 , 200 Taft, Robert Alphonso (1889-1953), 1 1 ,1 3 ,1 7 ,28,108,178,179,182, 198,199; A Foreign Policyfor Americans, 143,150,171,213; "air-

atomic" views of, 161; "America

239

at War" speech, 64-65,77; American Palestine Committee dinner speech, 133; "American raj" quote, 78; birth, 9; campaign for 1940 presidential nomination, 52-57; campaign for U.S. Senate, 1938,28-31; "cold warrior," transformation into, 143-72; corporate liberalism, rejection of, 28,92; death, 203; early career, 16-31; education of, 9-16; European trip of, 136-39; form, 15; "favorite son" status (1936), 22; fiscal conservatism of, 24-25, 45- 46,48,151-52,160,177,184, 189-91,204; Foundations of Democracy, 42; "Great Debate" speech, 150; Grove City College speech, 111-12; ideology of: see intellectual traditions; illness, 202-203; Kenyon College speech, 79-80,84; Memorial Day, 1939, oration, 43-46; nationalism of, 3-4,43-46; personality and public image of, 54; political principles of: see "Republican principles"; racial views of, 46- 48,94-100; "Republicanism as Americanism" quote, 45; St. Louis, 1940, campaign speech, 54 Taft, William Howard (father), 1,4, 5 ,9 -1 0 ,1 2 ,1 3 , 14-15,18,20-21, 39,46,53,81,202; racial attitudes, 46; "wealth as capital" concept, 46 Taft, William Howard in (son), 15, 28

Taft family, 9 ,1 2 , 1 3 , 14-16,28; "Sky Farm" (Cincinnati, Ohio, family residence), 15 Taft-Hartley Act (LaborManagement Relations Act of 1947), 118-20,153,183-84,186, 210 Taft Ranch, 20

Index

240

Taft School (Watertown, Connecticut), 14,29 Taft, Stettinius & Hollister (law firm), 20 Taxes, 37,74-77,93-94,162,190; excess profits tax, 74-77; national sales tax proposal, 74-77 Texas, 20,145,181,185 Thayer, Charles, 194-95 Third World, 79 Thomas, Elbert D., 116-17 Thomas, Norman, 152,193-94 Thurmond, J. Strom, 136 Udelands controversy, 180,186 Hgris Valley, 165 Toledo Blade, 29 totalitarian regimes, 49,65 trade, U.S., 38-43,58-59,100-103, 108-10,124-28 Treasury Department, 24-25,75,144 Treasury Bonds, 24-25,75,126 "trickle-down" economics, 23,30 Truman, Harry S., 107,112,114-15, 118.120- 24,128-30,132,135-36, 139,143-44,146-47,149,151-52, 156,167-70,172,183,186,188-89, 191,201,204,209-10,216 Truman Doctrine, 121-23,139,156, 169,215 Turkey, 86,121-22,166,169,215 "two-ocean navy" bill (1940), 56 Tÿdings, Millard, 90 Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.), 3,57,62-63,79,81-83, 110.120- 21,123,128-30,137-38, 144-50,156,160-62,165-66,168, 170-72,185,192,194,201,210, 214 Unitarianism, 12,14; Western Unitarian Conference Church, 12 United Auto Workers, 79 United Labor League of Ohio, 155 United Mine Workers, 155 United Nations, 82,107,109-11,129,

135,137-39,149,156,197, 200-201,204,209,214; Charter of, 109, 111, 149,200; General Assembly of, 111; San Francisco Conférence (1945), 111, 129,200; Security Council of, 107, 111, 139, 156,209,214 universal military training (UMT), 16,131-32 U.S. Air Force, 132,150-51,164; B-36 Bomber, 132 U.S. Army, 16,56,131,162; all­ volunteer army, 131; Army Air Corps, 56; Army Appropriations Bill of 1940,56; manpower issues ("Great Debate"), 162; National Guard, 56 U.S. Food Administration, 16-18,61 U.S. Information Agency, 193 U.S. Navy, 55-56,59,61,150,156, 161,164; Hemisphere Defense Plan No. 4,61; "two-ocean navy" bill, 56 U.S.S.R. See Union of Soviet Socialist Republics U.S. v. National Cash Register, 15-16 Utah, 186 utilities, 38 Vandenberg, Arthur H., 60, 111, 122, 128-31,210 Vanderbilt University, 85 Vanderpoel, Robert P., 84-85 Venezuela, 164,200 "Venona decrypts," 144 Versailles, Treaty of, 19,83-86,112 Virginia, 185 Voice of America, 171,193-95 voluntarism, 25-28,87-90,94-100, 102,208 Vulcania, S.S., 136 Waddell, Brian E., 49 Wadsworth, James W., 88-89

Index

Wagner, Robert F., 115-17,133-34, 136,138,144 Wagner-Ellender-Taft bill (housing), 117-18,144 Wagner-Murray-Dingell bill (national health insurance), 115-16,138 Wallace, Henry, 74,78-79,112,136 Walter Reed Army Hospital, 202-203 War Department, 55-56,62 War Industries Board, 49,51,71,88 War Manpower Commission, 87,90 War Production Board, 114 "War Resources Administration" concept, 51 War Resources Board, 50 Warren, Earl, 135-36 Warren, Ohio, Chamber of Commerce, 22 Washington, D.C., 18,36,43,55,63, 110,137,188,203 Washington, George: Farewell Address (1796), 2-3,60 Webster, Daniel, 211 Wellington, 1st Duke of (Arthur Wellesley), 167 West (region of U.S.), 185 Western civilization, 158,197 Western hemisphere, 160,164 Whig Party, 1,4,6,12,14,30,45-46, 212,215-17 White Paper on Palestine (British), 133 Wiley, Alexander, 198

241

Willkie, Wendell, 78,85 Wilson, Charles E., 186 Wilson, Hugh, 80 Wilson, Woodrow, 5,10,16,18-20, 51,78,84,88,216 Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, 34 Works Progress Administration, 53, 80,144,151; National Research Project of, 144 World Bank (International Bank for Reconstruction and Development), 100-101,108-9, 126,208 "world federalism" proposals, 78-82 World War 1,15-21,24-25,33,35-36, 49-51,55-56,61,71,81-82,88, 109-10,209; mobilization for, 49-51,55-56; Western Front of, 56 World War H, 33-66,71-103,109, 114-15,117-18,122,131,144,149, 156,208-9; Eastern Front of, 62; industrial manpower for, 71, 87-90; mobilization for, 48-52,56, 71-77,87-90,114-15,209 Yale University, 9,12,14-16,29,196; Yale Corporation (governing body), 196; Yale Law School, 15 "Yalta Axioms," 130 Yalta Conference (1945), 128-30,146, 149,152,185,191-92,194-95 Yugoslavia, 83-84,122 Zionism, 132-35

About the Author

Clarence E. W underlin Jr., who earned his doctorate at Northern Illinois University, is editor and project director of The Papers o f R obert A. Taft, a multivolume, selective edition supported by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission. In 1992, he pub­ lished Visions o f a New Industrial O rder: Social Science and Labor Theory in Am erica's P ro g ressif Era. Wunderlin is an associate professor of his­ tory at Kent State University.

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