November 2018 Auction Ends Thursday, November 8th, 5pm Pacific
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 11/8/2018
Excellent typed letter signed by William Howard Taft, discussing a myriad of issues including his newfound endorsement of the suffrage movement (and, incredibly, his wife disagreeing with him), the ongoing coal mining strike, and also the Treaty of Versailles, which he believes President Woodrow Wilson is grossly mishandling. Dated 11 November 1919, exactly one year after the armistice ending Word War I, Wilson writes to Gus Karger, a journalist friend of Taft's. Written on Taft's personal letterhead, the former President first discusses negotiations to approve the Treaty of Versailles, which would enter the United States into the League of Nations. At this time, the League was very close to passing, but Wilson's rigid position of ''no reservations'' ultimately derailed it -- or as Taft presciently puts it here, a ''fatal blunder'' on Wilson's part. Lengthy four page letter reads in part,
''...the Democrats...are now playing politics, if anybody ever did. Wilson is playing personal politics, and he is sacrificing a great opportunity, to the gratification of his vanity. His especial enemies are laughing in their sleeves at the hole in which he proposes deliberately to step. I wrote to Frank Cobb, of the World, last night, urging him to write Wilson not to make such a fatal blunder. All the credit that he might well receive, should he direct his people to vote for the treaty with the reservations, will be lost, and the majority of the people will not be with him at all. The majority are in favor of reservations - they don't know which reservations...[he's] prompted by his egotism and his personal vanity, and shows how hollow is his real desire for a League of Nations, except as he may be the author and promoter of it and may have it his way...The colossal nature of the mistake it is hard to exaggerate...It is a perfectly characteristic result of Wilson's refusal to believe anything that he doesn't like...I am waiting now anxiously to hear whether the second reservation as to Article X has been adopted in the form agreed upon by Lodge and McCumber...''
Taft then writes about the coal strike begun by the United Mine Workers on 1 November, ''...The news comes tonight that [John L.] Lewis, at the head of the coal miners, has yielded to the mandatory injunction, and has issued a call to his men to go back to work. The only other case in which that remedy was taken, and where it was equally successful, was when I directed Arthur to withdraw his order to the engineers on the Lake Shore. I don't know whether you recollect how well damned I was throughout the country for that order. It must be a tremendous humiliation to Gompers to see that vindication of the court's interference...it was the feeling that the whole country had been aroused against the strike and against labor everywhere...''
Finally, Taft proclaims his support for the suffrage movement, giving women the right to vote, perhaps doing so here for the first time on paper. He writes, ''...I am going to a dinner of the Connecticut Suffrage Association tomorrow evening at Bridgeport, and I expect to make a confession of faith. It isn't important, but I have been gradually reaching a conclusion that it is better to bring on suffrage now. I think the energy and organization of the women during the war were most impressive. More than that, I am satisfied that in the new chase for livelihood by women, unless they do have the political power, the trades-unions are likely to keep them out. I became convinced of that in the National War Labor Board. I think the women have absorbed more fully the principles which should be regarded as established by this war than the men, and that more through the women than through the men are we going to realize the benefit of those sacrifices which the war brought about...My wife does not agree with me and a good many of my friends do not, but this is my conviction...[signed] Affectionately recd...Wm H Taft''.
Four page letter on four separate sheets measures 8'' x 10.5''. Rusted paperclip at upper left and light toning, overall very good condition. A superb letter giving Taft's unedited opinions on important issues of the 20th century.
William H. Taft Letter Signed in 1919 Endorsing (Perhaps for the First Time on Paper) the Suffrage Movement -- Taft Also Criticizes President Woodrow Wilson's Mis-Handling of the Treaty of Versailles
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