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“Direct Democracy” and Social Justice: The Progressive Party Campaign of 1912*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 December 2008
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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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References
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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.
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