JFK+50: Volume 7, No. 2391
WILSON: THE MOST POWERFUL RULER IN THE WORLD?Washington, D.C. (JFK+50) One hundred years ago today, August 5, 1917, Congressman Medill McCormick* submitted a summary of the "extraordinary authority...bestowed" on President Woodrow Wilson.
The Chicago Daily Tribune reacted to the summary by saying...
"War and Congress have made Woodrow Wilson the most powerful ruler in the world."
The newspaper argued that the President's power had been increasing since the beginning of the world war and had been augmented with greater speed since the U.S. entered the war.
Mr. McCormick's summary described the powers the President was given by the following legislation...
1. Food Bill
2. Bond Issue
3. Espionage Act
4. Urgent Deficiency Bill
5. Public Law No. 2
6. Public Law No. 12
7. Appropriations
8. Trading With the Enemy Act
Congressman McCormick served in the House of Representatives from 1917 to 1919 and the United States Senate from 1919 until his death in 1925.**
*Joseph Medill McCormick (1877-1925) was born in Chicago, IL & attended the Groton School. JMM graduated from Yale in 1900 where he was a member of the Scroll & Key. His grandfather was owner of the Chicago Daily Tribune.
JMM was a war correspondent in the Philippine Islands in 1901. He married the daughter of Senator Mark Hanna (R-Ohio).
**The CDT reported on 2-26-25 that Medill McCormick had been "found dead in bed at his Hotel Hamilton apartment" & that the death was ruled as a result of myocarditis which is caused by acute dilation of the heart.
The Senator was scheduled to retire on 3-4-25. A later finding revised the cause of death as suicide.
SOURCES
"Wilson Granted Greater Power Than Any King," The Chicago Daily Tribune, August 6, 1917.
"MEDILL M'CORMICK IS DEAD," by Arthur Sears Henning, The Chicago Daily Tribune, February 26, 1925
Joseph Medill McCormick
Moffett, Chicago (1925)
