Abstract

The Week

The article discusses several socio-political issues related to the United States. "I like to affirm that I am an optimist," said U.S. President William Howard Taft in his speech at Berkeley, California. And yet if there is anybody in the length and breadth of this optimistic country that has less occasion than any other to make this affirmation, one should say it is Taft. His unfailing smile has become as familiar a national landmark as were some of the facial characteristics of his eminent predecessor, who himself was nothing if not an optimist. There is cause for national congratulation in the fact that Taft, while visiting the Yosemite Valley, California, last week, was accompanied by naturalist John Muir, who thus had abundant opportunity to talk to him about San Francisco, California's proposed conversion of the Hetch-Hetchy Valley into a water-tank.