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“Direct Democracy” and Social Justice: The Progressive Party Campaign of 1912*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2008

Sidney M. Milkis  and
Daniel J. Tichenor
Sidney M. Milkis
Affiliation:
Brandeis University
Daniel J. Tichenor
Affiliation:
Brandeis University
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Extract

During the 1992 presidential contest, the press and pundits alike characterized the challenge posed by H. Ross Perot and the political organization he created, United We Stand America, as the most significant assault on the two-party system since Theodore Roosevelt's Bull Moose Campaign. In one sense, this comparison is more penetrating than these observers imagined, for the impressive showing of Perot was emblematic of the candidate-centered, plebiscitary electoral politics that Roosevelt and the Progressive party championed in 1912. Given that Perot ran without partisan attachments and refused to cede authority to the rank and file of a new reform movement, however, the allusion has proven to be as ephemeral as the public opinion polls it relies on. The Progressive party was born during the 1912 election as more than an aegis for Roosevelt's ample desire for power; it embodied the aspirations of reformers whose quest for a vehicle of political, social, and industrial transformation was at least a dozen years old.

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Articles
Information
Studies in American Political Development , Volume 8 , Issue 2 , Fall 1994 , pp. 282 - 340
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

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References

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76. Ibid., 44.

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103. Eileen McDonagh, “The Welfare Rights State' and the 'Civil Rights State': Trickleup Paradox in the Progressive Era,“ unpublished paper, pp. 40–44. Conflicting conceptions of women's equality would badly divide the women's movement in the 1920s and the 1930s. The issue of the Equal Rights Amendment, first proposed by the National Women's Party in 1923 as the next step toward winning full equality for women under the law after the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, became a particularly divisive issue for New Deal social reformers. Supporters of the ERA in the 1920s and 1930s believed that men and women could never be free until laws and custom eliminated sex-based distinctions. Opponents of the ERA believed that men and women were fundamentally different, and therefore concluded that laws that acknowledged sexual distinctions, such as statutes limiting night work or setting minimum wage levels for women, were needed. See Ware, Susan, Beyond Suffrage: Women in the New Deal (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981), 77, 79–80Google Scholar.

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111. Parker to Roosevelt, July 15, 1912.

112. Parker to Roosevelt, July 24, 1912.

113. National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, First Annual Report, January 1, 1911, in “National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, 1911–1932,” Organizational Files, Jane Addams Papers, reel #42.

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115. In part, Roosevelt's position on the southern delegations expressed his view that northern blacks were more fit for political responsibilitiy than their southern brothers. Just as important, however, was his unhappy experience with southern delegations at the Republican convention. Black delegates from the south voted overwhelmingly for Taft—their political lives depended on the patronage that sustained local Republican organizations, and these “spoils” were jointly controlled by the Taft administration and the party leadership in the states and localities. See Theodore Roosevelt to Julian La Rose Harris, August 1, 1912, in Morison, The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt, vol. 7, 589; and Gable, The Bull Moose Years, 62–63.

116. Theodore Roosevelt to Julian Harris, vol. 7, August 1, 1912, in Morison, The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt, 587–90. See also Link, Arthur, “Correspondence Relating to the Progressive Party's ‘Lily White’ Policy in 1912,” The Journal of Southern History 10 (1944): 480–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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118. See Chairman Dixon's statement, Proceedings of the Provisional National Progressive Committee, 233.

119. As mentioned, there had been an additional dispute over the Georgia delegation. But when the contestants from that state failed to appear at the committee hearings, it was voted to seat the regular delegation.

120. Proceedings of the Provisional National Progressive Committee, 51.

121. Ibid., 235.

122. Ibid., 246.

123. Ibid., 213.

124. Ibid., 233.

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133. Black delegates were elected from the convention from Rhode Island, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Delaware, Maryland, West Virginia, Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Arkansas. Progressives claimed that there were more black delegates at their convention than there had ever been in the conventions of either of the old parties. See Gable, The Bull Moose Years, 63.

134. Proceedings of the National Progressive Convention, 127–34; see also Addams, “The Progressive Party and the Negro,” 30.

135. “Know the Truth!: Statement from the Entire Colored Delegation of the National Progressive Convention,” Chicago, August 7, 1912, Progressive Party Publications, 1912–1916, Theodore Roosevelt Collection.

136. Amos Pinchot to Theodore Roosevelt, December 3, 1912, Theodore Roosevelt Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.

137. Gifford Pinchot, “Conservation and the Cost of Living,” 167–68.

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147. See, for instance, Theodore Roosevelt to Charles Merriam, November 23, 1912, in Morison, The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt, vol. 7, 657–59. Perkin's generous contributions to the Progressive party were hardly proof that the trusts controlled it. Indeed, the great bulk of big business executives opposed Roosevelt; moreover, J. P. Morgan, Jr., tried to force Perkins to resign from the United States Steel board because of his political activities. See Gable, The Bull Moose Years, 106.

148. Addams, The Second Twenty Years at Hull-House, 34–38.

149. Theodore Roosevelt, Speech at Orchestra Hall. Chicago, June 22, 1912, 1, 3.

150. A digest of the article is found in “Opinion; The Negro in Politics,” The Crisis, November 1912, 18.

151. Washington even prepared a memorandum on the Republican party's commitment to racial justice for Taft's acceptance speech. See Charles William Anderson to Booker T. Washington, May 10, 1912; and Booker T. Washington to William Howard Taft, July 20, 1912, in Louis Harlan and Gaymond Smock, eds., The Booker T. Washington Papers: Volume II, 1911–1912 (Chicago: University of Illinois Press), 535, 563–65.

152. W. E. B. Du Bois, “Mr. Roosevelt,” 235–36.

153. “Suffering Suffragettes,” The Crisis, June 1912, 76–77.

154. Mowry, “The South and the Progressive Lily White Party of 1912,” 245.

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171. Pinchot, “What the Progressive Party Means to Conservation and the Bread Question.” Special letters were sent to leaders of the women's suffrage movement, female physicians, social workers, and other professionals. See copies of these form letters in “Progressive Party, 1912–14,” Organization Files, File #136, Jane Addams Papers, reel #42.

172. Wilson was opposed to the recall of judges and of court decisions. See his “An Address to the General Assembly of Maryland,” March 7, 1912, in Link, Arthur, ed., The Papers of Woodrow Wilson (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977), vol. 24, 227–36Google Scholar; and “Campaign Speech on New Issues,” Hartford, Connecticut, September 25, 1912, in Link, Arthur, ed., The Papers of Woodrow Wilson (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978), vol.25, 234–45Google Scholar.

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191. Addams, “Social Justice Through National Action,” 7.

192. Croly, Progressive Democracy, 336.

193. The New York Call and Debs cited in “The New Party Gets Itself Born,” 256. Debs, although supportive of political reform, considered devices such as the referendum a very small part of the Socialist party's program. “You will never be able, in my opinion, to organize any formidable movement upon [the referendum] or any other single issue,” he wrote in 1895. “The battle is narrowing down to capitalism and socialism, and there can be no compromise or half-way ground…. Not until the workingman comprehends the trend of … economic development and is conscious of his class interests will he be fit to properly use the referendum, and when he has reached that point he will be a Socialist.“ Letter to the Editor, Social Democratic Herald, November 19, 1898, Eugene V. Debs Papers, Indiana State University, Terre Haute, Indiana.

194. Roosevelt to Sydney Brooks, June 4, 1912, Morison, The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt, vol. 7, 552–53 (our emphasis).

195. Filene, Peter G., “An Obituary for the Progressive Movement,” American Quarterly 22 (1970): 20–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

196. Rogers, Daniel T., “In Search of Progressivism,” Reviews in American History, 12 1982, 114–23Google Scholar.

197. Wilson's acceptance of many elements of the Progressive platform was duly acknowledged by social reformers, many of whom supported his reelection in 1916. In October 1916, eleven of the original nineteen members of the 1912 Progressive party platform committee issued a statement endorsing Wilson on the grounds that he had signed into law all or part of twenty-two of the thirty-three planks of the 1912 platform. “Progressive Voice Raised for Wilson,” New York Times, November 1, 1916, 1; see also Green, Shaping Political Consciousness, 76–79.

198. See Milkis, Sidney M. and Nelson, Michael, The American Presidency: Origins and Developments, 1776–1990 (Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly, 1990), 247–51Google Scholar.

199. Dewey, John, Liberalism and Social Action (New York: G. P. Putnams, 1935), 26Google Scholar.

200. Roosevelt, Franklin D., Public Papers and Addresses, Rosenman, Samuel I., ed., 13 vols. (New York: Random House, 1938–1950), vol. 7, xxviii–xxxiiGoogle Scholar.

201. Report of the President's Committee on Administrative Management (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1937), 53. The President's Committee on Administrative Management, headed by Louis Brownlow, played a central role in the planning and politics of New Deal institutions. Charles Merriam, an influential advisor to TR in 1912, was an important member of this committee. On the link between Progressivism and the New Deal, see Milkis, Sidney M., The President and the Parties: The Transformation of the American Party System Since the New Deal (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993)Google Scholar.