ceiving the moral support of many of the progressives
who disliked the tariff act. In January, 1910, the growing controversy
led the President to dismiss Pinchot from the service, for
insubordination, and Congress to erect a joint committee to investigate
the Pinchot-Ballinger dispute.

The Ballinger committee ultimately vindicated the Secretary of the
Interior, but the testimony taken brought out a fundamental difference
between the theory of Taft, that the President could act only in
accordance with the law, and that of Roosevelt, that he could do
whatever was not forbidden by law. Although Taft stood by his
subordinate, claiming that he and Ballinger were both active in
conservation, a large section of the public believed that the aggressive
movement for reform had lost momentum. What Roosevelt thought of it was
impossible to learn, since he had gone to Africa in 1909, and remained
outside the sphere of American politics until the summer of 1910.

The progressive Republicans revolted in 1909 and 1910 against the
domination of the "stand-pat" group, and received the name "Insurgents."
Senators LaFollette and Cummins, both of whom desired to be President,
were the avowed leaders. In the House of Representatives, in March,
1910, the Insurgents cooperated with the Democratic minority, defeated a
ruling of Speaker Cannon, and modified the House rules in order to
curtail the autocracy of the presiding officer. They asked the country
to believe that Taft had ceased to be progressive and had become the
ally of the stand-pat interests. The split in the Republican party
enabled the Democrats to carry the country in 1910, and to obtain a
large majority in the House of Representatives. Champ Clark, of
Missouri, and Oscar Underwood, of Alabama, both aspirants for the
Democratic presidential nomination, became, respectively, Speaker and
chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means in the new House. No one man
controlled or led either party by his personality as Theodore Roosevelt
had done; the rivalry of lesser leaders destroyed the harmony of both
parties, and neither party even approached unanimity in regard to the
great policies of the future. In January, 1911, the Insurgent
Republicans organized a Progressive Republican League for the purpose of
capturing the nomination in 1912 for one of their number, presumably
Senator LaFollette.

The Taft policies differed from those of his predecessor chiefly in the
method of their advo