t broader
treaties with Great Britain and France, providing for the arbitration of
all justiciable disputes, and for a commission to determine whether
disputed cases were justiciable or not. The Senate declined to ratify
these agreements.

Canadian reciprocity was a part of Taft's tariff program. In 1911, he
called Congress in special session to approve an agreement for a
modification of the Payne-Aldrich rates with Canada. The Democratic
majority in the House of Representatives supported this measure, as did
enough of the regular Republicans to insure its passage. But the
Insurgents opposed it as likely to injure the interests of the farmer.
In September, 1911, Canada rejected the whole measure after a general
election in which a fear of annexation by the United States was an
important motive.

The Taft policies failed to thrill the party or the people. They were
less spectacular than the evils which the muck-rakers had portrayed.
They were constructive and detailed, and aroused as opponents many who
had joined in the general clamor for reform. They interested the party
leaders little, for these were more concerned with their own personal
fates, and were not overshadowed by the President as they had been for
eight preceding years. They were all conceived in the spirit of a lawyer
and judge, and were passed in an alliance with the wing of the
Republican party that was most impervious to the new reforms, and were
hence open to the attack that they were in spirit and intent
reactionary.

In June, 1910, with the Republican schism well advanced, Theodore
Roosevelt returned to the United States. A few weeks later he made a
speaking trip in the West, and at Osawatomie, Kansas, he laid down a
platform of reform that he called "New Nationalism." This was in
substance an evolution from the history of forty years. It assumed the
fact of the development of business and society along national lines,
and demanded that the Government meet the new problems. It believed that
constitutional power already existed for most of the needed functions of
government, and demanded that where the power was lacking it should be
obtained by constitutional amendment. The platform was received with
equally violent commendation and attack. Many Progressives hailed it as
an exposition of their faith. Conservatives were prone to call it
socialistic or revolutionary. It restored Roosevelt to a position of
consequence in public affairs, and emphasized