Philip Dru: Administrator: A Story of Tomorrow, 1920-1935 is a futuristic political novel published in 1912 by Edward Mandell House, an American diplomat, politician, and presidential foreign policy advisor. The book's author was originally unknown with an anonymous publication, however House's identity was revealed in a speech on the Senate floor by Republican Senator Lawrence Sherman.[1] According to historians, House highly prized his work and gave a copy of Dru to his closest political ally, Woodrow Wilson, to read while on a trip to Bermuda.[2][3][4]
Senator Sherman Discovers the Basis of Political Morality, cartoon published in The Forum (1919)
Book reviews
Dru has been the subject of significant historical review and commentary, partly due to its popularity at the time.[1]John Milton Cooper Jr. writes in his biography of Woodrow Wilson that this political novel is largely ghostwritten.[5] House biographer Charles E. Neu disagrees with this, noting that within the House Papers there is an original manuscript in House's own writing, with another typed draft that has correcting notes.[6]
Historian Paul Johnson wrote: "Oddly enough, in 1911 he [House] had published a political novel, Philip Dru: Administrator, in which a benevolent dictator imposed a corporate income tax, abolished the protective tariff, and broke up the 'credit trust'—a remarkable adumbration of Woodrow Wilson and his first term."[7]
Philip Dru was obviously an expression both of House's ambition and his political dreams and it was an expression of the ideas of the man who had an impressive amount of influence on Woodrow Wilson. Seldom have the elements of a utopia been implemented so soon as the reforms of Philip Dru were; seldom has a utopian reformer been as influential as House was. For these reasons, Philip Dru is a significant political document.[8]
if the author is really a man of affairs, this is an extraordinarily interesting book. It shows how utterly juvenile a great man can be. If he is really an "insider" then we on the outside have very little to learn. ... The imagination is that of a romantic boy of 14 who dreams of what he would do if he had supreme power and nobody objected.[9]
In a mostly positive commentary on the book, Philip Bobbitt argued that it is unlikely Lippmann had so little to learn from the Colonel, noting how eight major reforms from the book, some of them initially opposed by both President Wilson and his Home Secretary Bryan, had been passed into law only 4 years after House became advisor to the President. [10]
Wilson's Secretary of the InteriorFranklin K. Lane noted, according to historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., that there were similarities between Wilson's governing style and the writings contained in the novel: "All that book has said should be, comes about slowly, even woman suffrage. The President comes to Philip Dru in the end."[11][12]
Senator Lawrence Y. Sherman talked about the book in congress, noting its substantial influence.[13] He said:
Here is exhibited the Colonel's whole mental viscera. If there be twilight zones in the biography of 1918, the Colonel's 312 pages of fiction flashed from the watchtowers of 1912 a searchlight athwart the gloaming so any wayfarer can see everything. Suffice it to know Philip Dru is an autobiography of the Colonel himself and solves the Conundrum how to get rid of the Constitution.[14]
Set in 1920–1935,[16] House's hero leads the democraticwestern United States in a civil war against the plutocraticEast. After becoming the acclaimed leader of the country, he steps down having turned the US into “Socialism as dreamed of by Karl Marx”.[17] House outlined many additional political beliefs such as:[18]
Federal Incorporation Act, with government and labor representation on the board of every corporation[18][19]
Public service corporations must share their net earnings with government[18][19]
The book has several characters: Philip Dru is the main protagonist of the story. Other characters include Gloria Strawn and her brother Jack Strawn, John Thor, and Senator Selwyn.
↑ The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace, and the Course of History by Philip Bobbitt (2002), ch. 14 'Colonel House and a World Made of Law'. Quote= "It is unlikely, however, that Lippmann had so little to learn from its author. For by the election of 1916 the following measures dreamt of by Dru had been adopted by the Congress and signed into law: the graduated income tax; a federal inheritance tax; the Federal Trade Commission; the Glass-Owen banking act; the parcel post; a maximum-working-hour law; a significant reduction in the tariff; the creation of a Federal Reserve Bank. ...a Federal Reserve (opposed by both Wilson and Bryan)"
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