William Taft

William Taft appears in the book’s account of Progressive reform as a president who pressed the federal government’s campaign against trusts further than his predecessor, Theodore Roosevelt. His administration pursued corporate cases assiduously, culminating in the 1911 breakup of Standard Oil, and he promoted the federal income tax adopted through ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment in 1913. These measures belong to a wider argument about how political organization can constrain concentrated economic power.

From Populist Protest to Progressive Reform

The reform movement that shaped Taft’s presidency grew out of an agrarian crisis that had afflicted the Midwest from the late 1860s. Farmers organized against discriminatory business practices through the National Grange of the Order of Patrons of Husbandry, founded in 1867; in 1873 and 1874, the Grangers won control of eleven Midwestern state legislatures. Rural discontent later helped produce the People’s Party, which received 8.5 percent of the popular vote in the 1892 presidential election. After the Populists aligned with two unsuccessful Democratic campaigns by William Jennings Bryan, the Progressive movement emerged from their decline, carrying forward concerns about trusts and the influence of powerful business interests.

This pressure translated into federal law before Taft took office. The Interstate Commerce Act of 1887 created the Interstate Commerce Commission and began federal regulation of industry; the Sherman Antitrust Act followed in 1890 and became a major legal basis for attacks on trusts. Farmers were central to this change: nearly all of the fifty-nine pre-enactment congressional petitions concerning trusts came from farming states and organizations. Taft’s record thus formed part of a longer contest in which organized groups sought to make government answer to interests beyond those of corporate elites.

Antitrust Enforcement

The Progressive campaign initially cohered around Theodore Roosevelt, who became president after William McKinley’s assassination in 1901. Roosevelt called for federal supervision of corporations conducting interstate business, especially where monopolistic tendencies shaped their wealth. In 1902 he used the Sherman Act to break up the Northern Securities Company, affecting the interests of J.P. Morgan; further suits targeted Du Pont, the American Tobacco Company, and Standard Oil. He also strengthened the Interstate Commerce Act through the Hepburn Act of 1906, giving the Interstate Commerce Commission greater powers, including authority to inspect railway financial accounts.

Taft succeeded Roosevelt and, in the book’s account, prosecuted trusts even more assiduously. The most consequential result was the breakup of Standard Oil in 1911. The case made concrete the possibility that federal authority could be brought to bear against a corporation whose scale and market power had become objects of political opposition. Taft’s action extended rather than originated the campaign: it followed earlier legislation, organized farmer pressure, and Roosevelt’s use of the Sherman Act.

Tax Reform and the Limits of Concentrated Power

Taft also promoted the introduction of a federal income tax. It came with ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment in 1913, during the transition to the presidency of Woodrow Wilson. In the narrative, antitrust enforcement and taxation are distinct reforms, but both illustrate the enlargement of federal capacity during the Progressive era: government was not confined to protecting existing arrangements but could regulate corporate power and establish a new source of public revenue.

The book places these reforms within a broader institutional contrast. Political institutions determine how economic rules are made and whether citizens can constrain politicians; economic rules, in turn, shape incentives and access to markets. Where political power is concentrated, elites can erect entry barriers and structure economic institutions for their own benefit. Taft’s pursuit of trusts represents a reformist response to that problem, though the account emphasizes a longer process of popular organization, legislation, and presidential action rather than attributing the change to one president alone.

Place in the Progressive Sequence

The sequence continued under Wilson, elected in 1912. His administration secured the Clayton Antitrust Act in 1914, strengthening the Sherman Act, and established the Federal Trade Commission to enforce the new law. Following investigation of the financial sector by the Pujo Committee, Wilson also created the Federal Reserve Board in 1913 to regulate monopolistic activity in finance. These later measures mark the broader culmination of Progressive reform; Taft’s place in that arc lies especially in vigorous trust prosecution and support for the income tax.

The book’s central significance for Taft is therefore institutional rather than personal: his administration helped demonstrate that organized political opposition could translate into federal action against concentrated corporate power. His record sits between Roosevelt’s early antitrust interventions and Wilson’s further regulatory legislation, within a movement whose roots lay in farmers’ collective resistance to unfair business practices.