27 - Progressive Party of 1912
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How Capitalists Rule/27:
THE REPUBLOCRATS SERIES
Part 27:
PROGRESSIVE PARTY OF 1912
By Vince Copeland
[With this article, we are resuming the series on "Republicans and Democrats: How Capitalists Rule in a Capitalist Democracy." The last article in the series appeared in the Workers World of Dec. 17. It described how political "kingmaker" George Harvey got Woodrow Wilson the Democratic nomination for president in 1912.]
The only genuine third party in the 1912 election was the Socialist Party, whose candidate was the famous labor leader and folk hero, Eugene V. Debs. It represented a real break with the two old parties and advocated a qualitative transformation of society.
What concerns us here, however, is its role as a goad or gadfly upon the two old major parties.
The "third party" in 1912 that got all the publicity and a large amount of campaign money was the Progressive Party, which was formed immediately after Theodore Roosevelt's failure to get the Republican nomination. Its mass was made up of progressive Republicans, with a rather wide fringe of progressive Democrats.
This party did get more votes than the traditional Republican organization. But, in turn, it was beaten by the Wilson Democrats. Roosevelt would undoubtedly have won the election had he run on the Republican ticket. With a few breaks, he could have come in first even on the Progressive ticket. The breaks, however, did not come his way and, as we have shown, this was hardly accidental.
MORGAN MONEY FLOWED
Unlike the campaigns of most third parties, that of the Progressive Party was pretty well funded.
According to Ferdinand Lundberg--and also to Roosevelt's biographer, Henry F. Pringle--the U.S. Senate Presidential Commission of 1913 revealed that the Republicans garnered $1,071,549 and the Democrats $1,132,348. But the Progressive Party also received a large amount of money, roughly commensurate with the two old parties. George Perkins and Frank Munsey between them raised $500,000, much of it thought to be given in cash by J.P. Morgan himself. In addition, Munsey spent $1,000,000 to acquire the New York Press, a morning paper which he used to back Roosevelt (and sold shortly thereafter at not much of a loss).
Some of the above $500,000 was known to be supplied by James Stillman of the National City Bank (now Citibank); Elbert H. Gary of U.S. Steel; Daniel G. Reid, founder of American Can (and also a director of several Morgan-controlled railroads and banks); and Robert L. Bacon, a former partner of Morgan. The hand of J.P. was thus bigger than a cloud on this horizon. (Lundberg, "America's 60 Families," page 112)
While the program of the Progressives was really progressive for the time, it was clearly--especially in retrospect--just built for summer weather, that is, the summer of 1912. Its advocacy of votes for women, for example, was several years ahead of the actual passage of the women's suffrage amendment. But the question was now preoccupying millions of people. And Roosevelt only supported it in "a bored sort of way," says Pringle. It is only necessary to remember Roosevelt's early diatribes against women getting the vote to realize how "political" this demand was as far as he himself was concerned.
But the general platform also included the following points: recall of unpopular judicial decisions (but not recall of judges, as originally projected), progressive legislation for women and children, a worker's compensation law, a limit to the sweeping character of anti-labor injunctions, farm relief, health insurance in industry, inheritance and income taxes on the rich, and some limits on TR's own favorite hobby horse, the big naval program.
Among TR's many speeches during the 1912 campaign was one in Columbus, Ohio, where he endorsed recall of judges who had made anti-democratic decisions on labor injunctions, etc. But when he got a lot of flak from big business, he reversed himself.
"This speech, incidentally," says Lundberg, "like all those Roosevelt ever made on public questions, was reviewed and revised in advance by the magnates. The hidden editor in this case was E.C. Converse, president of the Bankers Trust Company of New York" (another Morgan institution). (Lundberg, p. 112)
The Progressive Party convention was held in Chicago early in August. Roosevelt had prepared a speech of 20,000 words--which he mercifully cut down to 10,000 for its actual delivery. Senator Albert Beveridge of Indiana, whose lyrical praise of imperialism we have already quoted, opened the convention on Aug. 5 with another long and literary speech.
Whereas no law was actually laid down, Roosevelt assured everyone that the program would be enacted if the party won, because he and the other candidates would bind themselves to its implementation. The old parties, he said, "are husks with no real soul within either, divided on artificial lines, boss-ridden and privilege-controlled." He should know.
The Progressive Party, he promised, "would put forth a program which should be a contract with the people and we shall hold ourselves under honorable obligations to fulfill every promise it contains as loyally as if it were actually enforceable under penalties of the law." (Quoted in Henry Pringle, "Theodore Roosevelt," pp. 396, 397)
ONE LIBERAL'S POLITICAL IMPOTENCE
Amos Pinchot later wrote a "History of the Progressive Party." (Much later, in fact, perhaps because he was embarrassed by the dismal failure of the biggest hopes and discomfited by the rather impotent, although quite radical, role that he himself played.) He was a guiding spirit of the Progressive Party, if by that title we are to understand the spirit of the words rather than the essence of what the party was really about. It was he who fought the hardest against making George Perkins--the former Morgan partner--chairman of the body's executive committee. And Pinchot demanded the most radical planks in the platform.
The enthusiasm for all this was something to behold. The main slogan was, "We stand at Armageddon and we battle for the Lord." And they streamed out of the 1912 convention singing "Onward Christian Soldiers" ("marching as to war," etc.).
Many of the most enthusiastic leaders, however, including Pinchot and especially Robert M. La Follette, who had expected to be the party's presidential candidate himself, were quite wary of Roosevelt's promise to stick with the party and run again. But they went along.
Within four years, TR had scuttled the new party and dashed the hopes of millions. One key to his thinking lay in his reply to a lengthy letter from Pinchot calling for him to repudiate George Perkins. Said Roosevelt:
"I believe that our vote would have been cut in half at once if we had not been able to persuade two or three millions of good men and women that we were not engaged in an assault on property or in wild and foolish radicalism. I believe that the suspicion that we were jeopardizing property and business cost us a million or two of votes. I further believe that if we put out Perkins and then did the only logical thing, like putting out all the men like him, we should gain one or two hundred thousand votes and lose two or three million."(Amos Pinchot, "History of the Progressive Party," NYU Press, New York, 1958, p. 192)
This private letter was not published for decades after the event. It probably illustrates Roosevelt's real thinking on "progressivism."
As long as Roosevelt's letter was, it left something out: that of course there would have been many fewer votes without Perkins, because the campaign fund would have been so much smaller! But it also illustrates what everybody takes for granted--too much so, in fact. It could be called the political drive for short-term profit, for getting elected right away at the first shot of a new party's launching. And that drive, with its expectations and illusions, means quick death to any third-party movement.
COMPLEX AMBITION
In fairness to Roosevelt as an individual fighter, however, it should be said that his complex ambition was not the slightest bit phony insofar as his own willingness for personal sacrifice was concerned (if we leave out the concept of political sacrifice).
Just before making a speech for the new party in Chicago, he was shot by a crazed man on the street who, as he fired his pistol, muttered something against "third terms for anybody."
Roosevelt, scheduled to speak just minutes later, insisted on giving the speech without knowing whether the shot was going to prove fatal or not. "I am going to ask you to be very quiet and please excuse me from making a long speech. I'll do the best I can, but there is a bullet in my body. I am not hurt badly," he declared, although he could not have known how bad the wound might be. "I have a message to deliver and will deliver it so long as there is life in my body." (Quoted in Pringle, p. 399)
It later turned out that the bullet, although piercing his lungs, had been deflected enough by his eyeglass case to save his life. But he couldn't know this at the time and continued to speak, refusing all assistance. Amid great confusion, with cries in the night and strong men weeping, he spoke his piece and then went to the hospital.
Well done, TR!
-30-
(Copyright Workers World Service: Permission to reprint granted if source is cited. For more info contact Workers World, 46 W. 21 St., New York, NY 10010; via e-mail: ww%nyxfer@igc.apc.org or workers@mcimail.com.)
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