[79] Congress by an act of 1907 forbade campaign contributions by corporations, in connection with Federal elections, and in 1910 and 1911 enacted laws providing for the publicity of expenses in connection with elections to Congress.
[80] The Sixteenth Amendment was proclaimed in force on February 25, 1913.
[83] United States _v._ Trans-Missouri Freight Assn., 166 U. S. 290.
Long before the opening of the campaign of 1912, the dissenters in the Republican party who had added the prefix of "Progressive" to the old title, began to draw together for the purpose of resisting the renomination of Mr. Taft and putting forward a candidate more nearly in accord with their principles. As early as January 21, 1911, a National Progressive Republican League was formed at the residence of Senator La Follette in Washington and a program set forth embracing the indorsement of direct primaries, direct elections, and direct government generally and a criticism of the recent failures to secure satisfactory legislation on the tariff, trusts, banking, and conservation. Only on the changes in our machinery of government did the League take a definite stand; on the deeper issues of political economy it was silent, at least as to positive proposals. Mr. Roosevelt was invited to join the new organization, but he declined to identify himself with it.
For a time the Progressives centered their attacks upon Mr. Taft's administration. Their bill of indictment may be best stated in the language of Senator La Follette: "In his campaign for election, he [Mr. Taft] had interpreted the platform as a pledge for tariff revision downward. Five months after he was inaugurated he signed a bill that revised the tariff upward.... The President started on a tour across the country in September, 1909. At the outset in an address at Boston he lauded Aldrich as the greatest statesman of his time. Then followed his Winona speech, in which he declared the Payne-Aldrich bill to be the best tariff ever enacted, and in effect challenged the Progressives in Congress who had voted against the measure.... During the succeeding sessions of Congress, President Taft's sponsorship for the administration railroad bill, with its commerce court, its repeal of the anti-trust act in its application to railroads, its legalizing of all watered railroad capitalization; his course regarding the Ballinger and Cunningham claims, and the subterfuges resorted to by his administration in defense of Ballinger; his attempt to foist upon the country a sham reciprocity measure; his complete surrender to the legislative reactionary program of Aldrich and Cannon and the discredited representatives of special interests who had so long managed congressional legislation, rendered it utterly impossible for the Progressive Republicans of the country to support him for reëlection."[84]