Page:The Presidents of the United States, 1789-1914, v. IV.djvu/215

WILLIAM HOWARD TAFT 175 eligible till a makeshift law could be passed to cover the case. For secretary of the interior he named Richard A. Ballinger, of Washington, be tween whom and Gifford Pinchot, chief of the federal forest service, a feud soon broke out, be ginning with a difference of opinion over the national conservation policy, but drifting later into personal channels. In the midst of it Mr. Pinchot committed a breach of discipline for which the president, who had been his warm friend for years, dismissed him summarily from office. A joint com mittee of congress which had started an inquiry into Mr. Ballinger s conduct brought in a divided report, the republican majority acquitting him of wrongdoing, the democratic minority insisting on the opposite view, and the next spring he resigned his portfolio. This incident played a part only second to the tariff agitation in the congressional campaign of 1910, which resulted in dispossessing the republicans of their control of the house of rep resentatives and seriously damaging their prestige in the senate. In the new tariff act Mr. Taft had tried to pro cure a provision for a permanent commission of economic experts, whose duty it should be to in vestigate various industries so as to ascertain the actual difference between foreign and domestic costs of production. By revising their data from time to time, he believed that the commission could