THE AMERICAN OUTLOOK.

Auckland Star, Volume XLIV, Issue 58, 8 March 1913, Page 18

THE AMERICAN OUTLOOK.

(By H. H. LDSK.) XL—THE PRESIDENT AlfD HIS POLICY. On the 4th of March the new President of the United States will take office as the executive head of the world's greatest republic. It must be borne in mind that the executive powers of an American President are very much greater than those now remaining in the hands of our own sovereign. He may, in fact, be said to hold all the powers, and, in some few respects, more than all the powers, that in England rest with both the King and his Cabinet. It need hardly be said, therefore, that the personal character and opinions of an American President are of the first importance, especially at a time that is both socially and politically criticaL Woodrow Wilson, the newly-elected President, whose four years' term of office begins in March, is, in some respects, a very interesting personality, and perhaps the more so because he may be called a new experiment in American politics. Unlike former Presidents, he has had very little practical acquaintance with political life. Until about three years ago. indeed, he had taken absolutely no part in political affairs, and was known only as a writer of historical books, and the president of the University of Princeton, in the State of New Jersey. As a writer he had protested very strongly against much of the legislation of his own. State, which had obtained a very bad reputation as the headquarters of the great combinations of capital, which have spread their . octopus-like tentacles over the whole j country for purposes of trade monopoly. The leaders of the Democratic party in iNew Jersey Raw in the strong feeling lof popular indignation that was steadily : increasing in the State an opportunity to defeat the Republican party, which had long controlled the St>ite executive and legislature, and persuaded Mr Wilson, as the beat-'knowln writer against the policy of monopoly within the State, to become their candidate for the office of Governor. Their choice was justified by his election to the office by a considerable majority, and by the election of a representative chamber in the State Parliament, in which a majority was pledged to his support. His record as a State Governor—an officer which greatly resembles for State administration that of President for Federal purposes—has in some important respects been very good, and nobody can reasonably question the honesty of purpose with which he tried to carry out the policy of reform to which he was pledged. It cannot be denied that he succeeded in reforming administration in New Jersey in several very important respects, but it must be added that he made but little progress in the much-needed reform of the State laws dealing with monopolies, and the facilities which they offered for carrying out the plans of the great organisations of capital. The task was, no doubt, a difficult one, but the conclusion of fairly unprejudiced judges seemed to be justified, that with the best intentions, Governor Wilson showed a serious want of initi ative power, and in some cases an absence of determination that might have produced better results during fully three Years of office.

Woodrow Wilson will take office as the representative of the Democratic party, which has tried in vain for the last 16 years to secure the election of | a President of their own party to sue- i coed Grover Cleveland, and give effect to the policy of Free Trade, or some-1 thing like Free Trade, for which the I party has stood, and practically stood in | vain, for 35 years. In Cleveland, it is • generally, if not universally admitted,! bhe party had in most ways a stronger i representative—certainly a man of I more initiative force than the new Pre- i sident. He was less of a scholar, but ! he was certainly more of a natural ' leader of mcn —a quality that may be ! said to be all but essential for anyone I who is to fill the part of a social and ! political reformer. It was not | realised by the American people, or at j any rate by any large part of them, be-1 fore the end of last century, when j Cleveland was President, that any large measure of reform was urgently needed, j Conditions are certainly very different now, and the need of a leader of men | may soon be recognised as an absolute j necessity. It is this fact that makes | the character of the man and his mental constitution a matter of more than common importance. In spite of his somewhat striking personality President Cleveland was unable to give effect to the economic policy which he believed in, because, when it came to the point, he was unable to keep the representatives of his party in Congress together. T%e same difficulty will, beyond all question, confront Woodrow Wilson. The Republican party, it is true, have, ever since the Civil War, been the party of wealth; but there are many of the leading men in the Democratic party who now belong to the millionaire class, and they will certainly be used by the great combinations to hamper, if not openly to oppose, any radical changes in the law that are likely to affect them in their policy of greed.

The Democratic Convention, which met at Baltimore in July of last year, had one feature that was almost wholly wanting in the Republican Convention at Chicago. It was chiefly by the influence of Mr Bryan, who practically controlled a majority of the delegates, that the Convention really discussed the national situation, admitting its serious character, and arrived at a declaration of the policy which the party considered adequate to meet the emergency. The success of the party at the November elections, while it was mainly owing to the great split in the ranks of the Republicans, and the rise of the third party, was partly due to this declaration of policy, accompanied by its frank admission that various reforms were urgently required, and the fact naturally gives special importance to the policy laid down in the party platform. The new President will take up the duties of his office to all intents and purposes bound by the policy laid down. Woodrow Wilson, it is true, during the campaign went beyond the platform on more than one occasion by expressing his personal sympathy with several of the things that were advocated in the platform of the new Progressive party, and the fact may have helped to prevent some Democratic votes from I going to Roosevelt; this, however, has [ often been done before, and means little or nothing after the election is over. Even if the new President were entirely sincere in the opinions he expressed he could do nothing beyond the limits of the party platform. Many of the men elected on the policy expressed in the platform will be sure to find good reasons for refusing to give anything like full effect to it when the time for action arrives; it is practically certain that none of them will go beyond it, whatever the President may say.

The policy of the Democratic party, as expressed in its platform, contained a good many reforms that are much needed at present in America, but with the single exception of tariff reform, none of them can be said to grapple with the great social and economic evils that to-day threaten the nation. The policy of tariff reform does recognise one of the great evils that have in the last ten years been making themselves constantly more generally felt by the steadily increasing cost of living in every part of the country. This has, as everybody in America now believes, been the doing of the great Corporations that monopolise production, transportation, and to a large extent the retail distribution of goods of every kind. Food, clothing, fuel, house-rent, have increased year by year in cost, till it can be shown'without difficulty that the cost of living in any American city is twice as great as it is in any country of Europe, and rather more than twice as great as it was in America itself 15 years ago. Many legislative attempts have been made, especially during the last ten year's, to remedy this state of things by putting some check upon the operations of the great Trusts—the most important of these being the Sherman Trust law, which gave the Supreme Court of the United States the power, on the prosecution of the Government, to compel the dissolution of any capitalist combination using its power to the injury of the public. Experience has proved that the proposed remedy is a failure. In a few cases—a very few, indeed, compared with the number of monopolising Trusts— prosecutions have been successfully conducted, and the Trusts dissolved; in every case the result has only been to change the form of the Trust, and to increase its prosperity. The Democratic platform falls back on the tariff for revenue only as the cure for the great cost of living evil, which is held to be the main cause of the unrest and discontent that are Deeming so threatening. It is proposed to carry on the system of prosecutions under the Sherman anti-Trust law, though it admits that so far these have resulted in failure in the hands of Republican Presii dents. The platform commits the new 1 President and the Democratic representatives in both Chambers of the Congress to legislation that will give large powers of supervision and control over railways, express companies, telegraph and telephone companies doing business in more than one State. For the purpose of I ensuring just results, it commits the President and the party's members in Congress to a preliminary valuation of the property of these companies, and the subsequent fixing of rates on the basis of that valuation. These represent the only three classes of reform dealt with in the platform of the party which has been largely successful at the last election, and these may be said to indicate the policy, and really the whole policy, which the President and ! his supporters in Congress are authorised i to carry out to remedy the evils that admittedly exist. It remains only, with a view to forming a reasonably correct estimate of the present American outlook, to consider how far these proposed reforms are likely to solve the problems that have arisen, j and to afford relief from the evils that I are so keenly felt by the great mass of I the people. . I