Description:

William Howard Taft
Pointe-au-Pic, Quebec, Canada, August 30, 1919
William Howard Taft Discusses the League of Nations and His Personal Income
TLS
WILLIAM HOWARD TAFT, Typed Letter Signed, to Gustav J. Karger, August 30, 1919, Pointe-a-Pic, P.Q., Canada. "Confidential" typed at top of first page; with interlinear emendations and a handwritten 30-word postscript by Taft. 4 pp., 8" x 10.5". Stains from paper clips; general toning.

In this lengthy letter, former President Taft discusses the League of Nations with his close friend, journalist Gus Karger, in Washington. Writing from his summer retreat along the St. Lawrence River in Quebec, Canada, Taft offers observations about Republican opposition to the Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations, especially that of Republican Senators Philander C. Knox of Pennsylvania, Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts, William Borah of Idaho, Hiram Johnson of California, Frank B. Brandegee of Connecticut, and Albert B. Fall of New Mexico. He also comments about Andrew Carnegie's proposal of a pension fund for former U.S. presidents. At the time, Taft was a member of the faculty of the Yale Law School, but two years later, he would be appointed Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Excerpts
"At this distance it is a little difficult to judge, but it would seem as if Knox and Lodge and Borah and Johnson and Brandegee and Fall were digging the hole they are in deeper and deeper. They really run the danger of compelling their own party to disassociate itself from responsibility for them in their course. Of course this view may grow out of my earnest desire in the matter and may not reveal a sense of proportion which a fuller and closer intimacy with the situation would give me...." (p1)

"I am worth in invested funds, stocks, bonds, etc., $245,000, and I have insurance policies mostly paid up amounting to $45,000. I have a house and property up here, which would increase my estate to about $300,000. I have now an income from investments of about $12,000 a year. This with the salary I get as a Professor at Yale, and the income I get from my editorial and lecture work, is quite enough to enable me to make my family and myself comfortable. I don't care to accept money from a man like [Andrew] Carnegie as a pension for public work done, because I think pensions ought to come from the Government and not from a private source." (p2)

"I expect to go on earning what I can by reasonable work until I am too old to work." (p3)

"Now I have gone into this statement with you as one of my intimates. I might add, as part of the history, that Mrs. Taft and I had accumulated about $25,000 through some things she had from her father and my savings, together with a life insurance which now amounts to $45,000, or a little more, and I received $25,000 from my mother's estate, which made a fund of $50,000 when I entered the Presidency. I saved a clean $100,000 out of the Presidency, and since I left the Presidency I have saved and invested, including this place which I own up here, something more than $100,000." (p3)

[Postscript:] "I am delighted to hear that Mrs Karger is on the high road to recovery.
"Charley & wife and baby daughter are to be here tonight if all goes well."

Historical Background
The Covenant of the League of Nations was established as part of the Treaty of Versailles, signed in June 1919. The Covenant consisted of a preamble and 26 articles. It created an international organization, headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, that was dedicated to preventing wars through collective security and disarmament and settling international disputes through negotiation and arbitration. The League of Nations continued to operate until it was dissolved in 1946 and replaced by the United Nations, which included the United States among its founding members. The League had 42 founding members, and 21 countries joined later, though it never had more than 58 member countries at one time. The Soviet Union became a member in 1934 but was expelled in 1939 for invading Finland.

Although President Woodrow Wilson was one of the architects of the League of Nations, for which he received the Nobel Peace Prize in October 1919, he was unable to convince the Senate that the United States should join. Wilson returned from Paris in February 1919, eager to submit the Treaty and Covenant to Congress for its consent and ratification. Although there was strong popular support for the league, opposition in Congress and the press was growing. A Senate Republican coalition led by Republican majority leader Henry Cabot Lodge wanted a League with the reservation that only the Senate could take the United States into war. Critics objected most strenuously to Article X, which required all members of the League to assist any member threatened by external aggression. Isolationists in Congress considered the article a direct violation of American sovereignty and were opposed to further U.S. involvement in international conflicts.

Lodge also served as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. On November 19, 1919, Lodge's committee reported the treaty to the full Senate with 14 reservations, and the Senate for the first time in its history rejected a peace treaty by a vote of 53-38. When the Senate reconsidered the Treaty of Versailles on March 19, 1920, the 49-35 vote in favor of joining the League fell short of the necessary two-thirds majority required by the Constitution. The refusal of the United States to join the League substantially limited its power and credibility. In November 1920, Warren G. Harding was elected president on a platform that opposed joining the League of Nations.

In 1912, industrialist Andrew Carnegie offered to endow a fund to provide a $25,000 annual pension for former presidents, but Congress questioned the propriety of such a pension. Carnegie's offer prompted the introduction of legislation to provide benefits to former presidents. Congress did not act on the idea until 1958, when it passed the Former Presidents Act, which provides a lifetime pension, transition funding, staff and office space, medical insurance, and lifetime Secret Service protection.

William Howard Taft (1857-1930) was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, and graduated from Yale College in 1878. He received a bachelor of laws degree in 1880 from Cincinnati Law School. After gaining admission to the bar, Taft worked on the Cincinnati Commercial newspaper full time, covering local courts. After a brief stint as an assistant prosecutor, Taft was appointed to the Superior Court of Cincinnati in 1887. In 1890, President Benjamin Harrison appointed him as Solicitor General of the United States, a position he held until Harrison appointed him to the United States Court of Appeals, where he served from 1892 to 1900. He was Governor-General of the Philippines from 1901 to 1903, then Secretary of War under President Theodore Roosevelt from 1904 to 1908. In 1908, he was elected President of the United States as a Republican over Democrat William Jennings Bryan. After his defeat in the three-way election of 1912, Taft joined the faculty of the Yale Law School from 1913 to 1921, when President Warren G. Harding appointed him as Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, a position he held until his death nine years later.

Gustav J. Karger (1866-1924) was born into a Jewish family in Berlin, Germany, and came to the United States with his parents in 1873. He was educated in Ohio and studied law. He served as city editor of the Cincinnati Post before moving to Washington in 1899, where he served as a correspondent for the Cincinnati Times-Star. In 1908, he served as Republican candidate William Howard Taft's personal press agent during his successful presidential campaign. He also played a prominent role in the 1920 campaign of Warren G. Harding. For a time, he served as president of the National Press Club. At Karger's funeral, also attended by President Calvin Coolidge, Chief Justice Taft was one of the honorary pallbearers and offered a tribute to the press about his friend.

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