National Expansion
Congress which met in 1911. In the fall of 1910 Mr. Taft urged further tariff reform in the shape of a reciprocity treaty with Canada. Although that would have been in accord with established Republican policy Congress failed to enact it. Thereupon Mr. Taft called a special session of the new Congress immediately upon the expiration of the old and renewed the proposal. It was readily passed by the House, the Democratic majority accepting the Republican doctrine; and it was also passed by the Senate, though by the aid of Democratic votes; the dissentient or “insurgent” Republicans opposing it because they thought it would be unfavorable to the agricultural interests of the West.
This reciprocity measure did not go into effect, because of the retirement from power of the Liberal party in Canada which had favored it. But its adoption by Congress was accepted as proof that the Republican party was getting ready to make a radical readjustment of the tariff, though unfortunately it revealed the presence of serious dissension within that party; the culmination of a certain disagreement between its progressive and conservative wings, which had existed for a number of years. The efforts of Mr. Taft to mediate between the two were unavailing and when the time came to nominate his successor a disastrous schism occurred. The conservative wing of the party renominated Mr. Taft and Mr. Sherman on a platform reaffirming the established principles of the party and the progressive wing organized itself into the Progresssive party and nominated Theodore Roosevelt for President and Hiram W. Johnson of California for Vice-President on a platform which in many details was substantially identical with the Republican, but which
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