Did Woodrow Wilson read the book Philip Dru: Administrator?

As I noted yesterday, Woodrow Wilson did indeed read the book Philip Dru: Administrator. He read it while on a trip to Bermuda.

I initially found this information while digging through the 1998 revised edition of Philip Dru, which is up to read on the Robert Welch University's website. Here's what it says:

Wilson eagerly embraced the Dru blueprint. Immediately after his election in 1912, Wilson sought refuge in a cottage in Bermuda "to do a lot of thinking." His mediations were guided by a copy of Dru. Professor Walworth points out that "Many of [Dru's] prescriptions for reform ran parallel to those set down in Wilson's The New Freedom: A Call for the Emancipation of the American People."

This paragraph completes with the following information:

That Wilson employed Dru as a policy template was attested by Franklin K. Lane, Wilson's Secretary of the Interior, who wrote in a letter to a friend that "All that book has said should come about... The President comes to Philip Dru in the end."

I quote the 1998 Dru revision because it's available online and quotable. Walworth's book isn't so easily accessible. (Arthur Walworth was awarded a Pulitzer for his Biographical work with Wilson) But at least what you see on page 288 of his book:

While resting in Bermuda after the election and reading Philip Dru, Administrator

That's how the paragraph opens. The revised copy of Philip Dru is accurate.

The quotation of Franklin Lane is also accurate. On page 297 of The Letters of Franklin K. Lane, this is written:

Colonel House's Book, Philip Dru, favors it, and all that book has said should be, comes about slowly, even woman suffrage. The President comes to Philip Dru in the end. And yet they say that House has no power....

Philip Dru is a book that has been entertained by at least one U.S. President, and parts of it according to his own inner circle were implemented. That makes it a pretty important book to become familiar with in the history of progressivism.

For anybody wishing to gain insight into the Wilson years, Philip Dru is a great place to start. In addition to that, one can't help but see a little bit of Dru in Barack Obama as well.

Here is the transcript and audiobook of Philip Dru.

It truely is a shame that the book Philip Dru has become so popular amongst crackpot conspiracy theorist websites, it's not a book filled with black helicopters. It's filled with progressivism.

http://tinyurl.com/8typ8sz