with a new method had been elected President and intrusted with
the meeting of certain pressing domestic problems. At the moment the
public was more interested in the man than in his method; and not till
the crisis had been successfully passed did popular attention
concentrate on the manner of accomplishment rather than on the things
accomplished.

_Problems at Home, 1913-1914_

One of the passages of President Wilson's inaugural address contained a
list of "the things that ought to be altered," which included:

A tariff which cuts us off from our proper part in the commerce of
the world, violates the just principles of taxation, and makes the
Government a facile instrument in the hands of private interests; a
banking and currency system based upon the necessity of the
Government to sell its bonds fifty years ago and perfectly adapted
to concentrating cash and restricting credits; an industrial system
which, take it on all sides, financial as well as administrative,
holds capital in leading strings, restricts the liberties and
limits the opportunities of labor, and exploits without renewing or
conserving the natural resources of the country; a body of
agricultural activities never yet given the efficiency of great
business undertakings or served as it should be through the
instrumentality of science taken directly to the farm, or afforded
the facilities of credit best suited to its practical needs.

The items had been set down in the order of their immediate importance.
First came the tariff, for the tariff had come to be in the minds of
many Americans a symbol of the struggle between the "plain people" and
"the interests." The Payne-Aldrich tariff, enacted by a party pledged
to tariff revision, had been not only an injury but an insult, and if
any American Presidential election could ever be interpreted as a
popular referendum on any specific policy the election of 1912 meant
that the Payne-Aldrich tariff must be revised. At the time of the
enactment of that bill Mr. Wilson had written a critical article in
_The North American Review_ which expressed a widespread popular
sentiment in its criticism of "the policy of silence and secrecy"
prevalent in the committee rooms when this and other tariffs had been
drawn up and a demand for procedure in the open where the public could
find out exactly who wanted what and why. Joined with this objection to
the methods o