Kenneth MacKay
The Progressive Movement of 1924
Chapter XI
Defeat and Desertion
ALL the forebodings of the Progressives were confirmed on Election Day. The resounding ratification of Administration policy and endorsement of the status quo probably even exceeded Republican expectations. The peculiarities of the American electoral system, which translate a decided trend towards one candidate into a “landslide triumph” were again, as in 1920, functioning. Sooner than ever before, the American people knew the outcome as the radio broadcast news of the Coolidge lead mounting higher and higher. The following table gives the total national results :[1]
Popular Electoral No. of States Total no. of votes cast ...... 28,647,709 .... .... Coolidge .................... 15,275,003 382 35 Davis ..................... 8,385,586 136 12 LaFollette ................. 4,826,471 13 1 Others .................... 160,649 .... ....
Before analysing the totals for the various candidates, it would be well to consider the significance of the light vote cast. It is estimated that 56,925,000 persons were eligible to vote in the 1924 election. Only slightly more than fifty percent of the electorate availed itself of its civic privilege and duty. Approximately twenty-eight million Americans, who had the right to vote, were insufficiently aroused, despite the third party movement, and all the determined activities—of both partisan and non-partisan groups—to make an effort to get to the polls on a day warm and sunny throughout most of the nation.[2]
An historian of the ’Twenties has made a pertinent comment on the apathetic attitude of the American people toward political issues :
So engrossing was the complex life of business, and so exacting the obligations of a life of pleasure, that politics was no longer needed as a popular amusement or topic of conversation. The decline of politics is curiously parallel to the contemporary decline of the pulpit and in both cases the fundamental cause seems to have been simply that people in general preferred the automobile to the affairs of church or state.[3]
Neither the peril of the Supreme Court, so clearly discernible to Mr. Dawes, nor the predatory plots of the monopolists whom Mr. LaFollette would so willingly destroy, were able to compete in public interest and attention with the lure of a drive in the country or another round of golf.
The LaFollette vote reached a total of 4,826,471 of which 3,797,974 were cast as Progressive votes, 858,264 as Socialist, and 170,233 as Farm-Labor votes. LaFollette electors, under some party designation, appeared on all state ballots except that of Louisiana where it was necessary to write in the names of the LaFollette supporters. 4063 such votes were cast in Louisiana. In five states, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, Missouri and Oklahoma, LaFollette electors appeared separately under both Independent (or Progressive) and Socialist designations.
The minor parties (except the Progressive) played an insignificant role in the 1924 election. Herman P. Faris, the Prohibition candidate, polled 57,551 votes, more than half of them from the two states, California and Pennsylvania. Frank T. Johns and the Socialist-Labor ticket secured 39,400 votes. Gilbert O. Nations, depending upon the anti-Catholic elements in his American Party, received 24,430. The Communists turned out 36,386 votes for W.Z. Foster, at the head of the Workers’ Party ticket. The old Single Taxers, now called the Commonwealth Land Party, were able to get only 2,882 votes for William J. Wallace. Many Single Taxers, no doubt, cast their ballots for LaFollette.
Where did the LaFollette vote come from ? What was the composition of the Progressive vote ? What conclusions can we draw about the five million votes cast for LaFollette and Wheeler ? How much support did the Socialists provide ? In 1920 Eugene Debs, as Socialist candidate for the presidency, received 919,799 votes. Allowing for the increase in the whole vote in 1924, we can credit LaFollette with one million Socialist votes in 1924. This would include about 150,000 votes in addition to those cast for LaFollette in the Socialist column. It is reasonable to assume that a considerable number of Socialists, through necessity or preference, voted for LaFollette in the Independent or Progressive column. How many votes did LaFollette receive from the farmers or “agrarians” ? The Progressive vote in the Granger states and on the Pacific Coast was 2,957,570. Deducting from this an estimated Socialist vote of 425,000 (slightly larger than the Debs vote of 1920) we arrive at a LaFollette farm vote of 2,530,000. Add to this the vote—compact and organized as it was—of the Railroad Brotherhood. (there might be a printing error here, a line could be missing) 1,100,000 votes to be credited to various liberal and protest groups like the American Federation of Labor, the Committee of Forty Eight, and the independent voters.[4] It is likely that Railroad Brotherhood support accounted for more than 200,000 LaFollette votes inasmuch as the influence of the railroad unions extended into the ranks of labor beyond their own affiliates.
What effect did the Progressive vote have upon the major parties ? From which of the old parties did LaFollette draw more heavily ? In 1920 the distribution was as follows :
Candidate ............ % of Total VoteIn 1924 the results were :
Harding .................... 60.2
Cox ........................ 34.4
Others (inc. Debs) ......... 5.4
Candidate ............ % of Total Vote
Coolidge .................... 54.0
Davis ....................... 28.8
LaFollette .................. 16.5
Others ...................... .7
Thus it would appear that the injection of the Progressive movement resulted in the following decreases :
....................... Decrease in % of Total Vote
Republican .................. 6.2
Democratic .................. 5.6
Others ...................... 4.7
These over-all figures on the whole country are apt to be misleading. If one breaks these results down into sectional percentages, distinct regional characteristics in the election become obvious. To observe this, note first the 1920 figures for the various sections of the country.
In 1924, the results were :
Region Republican Democratic Others Pacific Coast ............ 63.3 25.2 11.2 Mountain ................. 61.4 35.1 3.5 New England ............ 66.1 29.1 4.8 Middle Western ....... 65.1 29.2 5.7 Middle Atlantic .......... 60.5 33.6 5.9 Southern .............. 40.3 55.3 4.4
Region Republican Democratic Others Progressive Pacific Coast .......... 55.2 10.8 1.5 32.5 Mountain .............. 50.4 21.4 .. 28.2 New England .......... 63.2 26.4 .6 9.8 Middle Western ....... 55.6 23.2 .6 20.6 Middle Atlantic ....... 56.9 29.2 .7 13.2 Southern ............... 34.4 59.1 1.0 5.5
Two conclusions can be drawn from a comparison of these tables. First, the Republicans suffered most, as a result of the Progressive campaign, in the Mid-West, the South and New England. Second, the Democrats were hurt most on the Pacific Coast and in the Mountain and Middle Atlantic sections. If one considers these losses in terms of electoral vote potential, it becomes apparent that, for the greater part, the Republicans suffered in those sections where the result was already a foregone conclusion, as in the South. The Democrats, on the other hand, lost valuable “pivotal” votes to the Progressives in those parts of the country where (like New York and California) it is imperative that the Democrats score the victories that mean the difference between winning and losing the national election.
It is interesting to conjecture whether Davis’ electoral vote would have been larger if LaFollette had not made the race. There seems little doubt that the Democratic candidate would have been able to obtain more electors but still a number woefully insufficient to carry the election. President Coolidge won thirteen states by a plurality rather than by a straight majority. These states were Arizona, Idaho, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah and West Virginia. Without question, if the battle lines had been strictly bi-partisan in these states, some would have chosen Democratic electors.
When the LaFollette candidacy had been announced, in July, 1924, Davis and other Democratic leaders were of the convinced opinion that the third party movement would adversely affect the Republicans far more than it would affect the Democratic party. After the election, Davis was sure that the LaFollette candidacy had produced exactly the opposite effect and that it had considerably helped the Republicans.[5] The election results confirm Davis’ conclusions. Unlike Coolidge, the Democratic candidate was a minority victor in only one state, Oklahoma.
In his home state of Wisconsin, Senator LaFollette won easily, with votes comfortably ahead of the combined totals of his opponents. LaFollette secured more votes than Davis in eleven other states : California, Idaho, Iowa, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Washington and Wyoming. In each of these states, Coolidge ran first. In thirty-six states LaFollette came in third. The twelve states in which LaFollette ran better than third accounted for 19.1% of the presidential vote of the entire country. But these dozen states gave LaFollette 42% of his total.[6] In these same states, LaFollette’s vote was 36.4% of the vote for all the candidates. In these states the LaFollette popular total was 2,208,655. The popular vote in the same area for Davis was 508,064 or 25% of the LaFollette figure ! Certainly one of the salient facts of the 1924 election was this wholesale desertion of the Democratic party by the Mid-West and Trans-Mississippi section. Obviously Westerners who had voted Democratic in previous elections were attracted by the campaigning of the Progressives. The voting behaviour of these Western voters in 1924 suggests that the Democratic party members in the West are not nearly so anchored to their moorings as the Democrats of South and East. Westerners have utilized the Democratic party as a vehicle through which to register their protest. When a more forceful instrument of protest is available, they have no hesitancy in deserting the party. The essential negativism of a third party which merely transfers the protest vote from an old party to a new one, without submitting a program of common action upon which the dissident elements within the new party can agree, is likely to afflict any reform movement with a fatal paralysis.
The extent of this shift from the Democrats to the new political grouping provides the key to the election in the West. In highly important California, the Progressives polled 424,649 to an insignificant 105,514 for the Democrats. Washington gave LaFollette 150,727 to 42,842 for Davis. The alacrity with which the West supported liberal Democrats in the 1930s was matched by its reluctance to support a conservative in 1924. Ewing’s comment on the poor showing of the Democratic national ticket in the West is especially pertinent :[7]
One cannot say that the West was particularly concerned over the deadlock at Madison Square Garden between McAdoo and Smith forces. But there is one thing sure—the western democrats wanted a liberal candidate. When John W. Davis emerged as the eleventh-hour choice of the convention, the West was definitely lost to the party. He wore none of the West’s liberal colors and they treated him as they had treated Parker and even Grover Cleveland.
The analysis made of the distribution of the vote in terms of county areas by Professor Macmahon discloses the ecological and geographical factors which play so important a role in sectional politics.[8] With the exception of the Wisconsin counties, LaFollette carried only one county (Clinton, in southeastern Illinois) east of the Mississippi. But the Progressives ran second in 25 Illinois counties, in 20 in Michigan, in 10 in Ohio, in 9 in Pennsylvania, in 2 in New York and in 1 in New Jersey. The location of these counties in highly urbanized and industrialised sections is, of course, more than coincidental. In the industrialised north of Illinois and the urban fringe of Lake Erie, from Michigan to New York, clustered the bulk of the LaFollette counties. In Alleghany County, in Pennsylvania, containing the tremendous industries of Pittsburgh, LaFollette ran close behind the Republican candidate, with four times as many votes as the Democrat.[9] In Monroe County, New York, the great city of Rochester scored heavily for LaFollette. In New Jersey, the textile centers of Paterson and Passaic were the source of LaFollette’s chief strength. Professor Macmahon remarks cogently upon the gratifying results for the Progressives in these sections.
In nearly every one of these areas some influence had been at work in advance of the campaign, preparing at least the raw materials of organization, like the longstanding movements of social reform and labor leadership in Cleveland, the constant efforts at organization on the part of the Farmer Labor Party in northern Illinois for over five years, the unusually strong interest of the Pennsylvania State Federation of Labor, under Mr. Maurer, in politics and in Rochester, the movement which at the same election returned Mr. Jacobstein to Congress with combined Democratic and Socialist endorsement. The spotty character of the LaFollette vote in the East was not accidental.[10]
The election confirmed the apprehensions of those who began to fear, as the campaign progressed, that organization is of such primary importance to the success of an American political party that the improvised machinery of the Progressives would prove woefully inadequate on Election Day. In those sections of the country where established reform groups like the Socialists were functioning on behalf of the LaFollette ticket, the results of the election were not too disappointing. Where it had been necessary for the Progressives to organize themselves, the election totals usually reflected the hasty, ill-conceived or defective methods of local organization.
A comparison of the election results of 1912 and 1924 discloses, of course, how much more successful Teddy Roosevelt was in accumulating votes, especially electoral votes, than was Senator LaFollette.[11] Roosevelt’s 88 electoral votes, from the states of California, Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, South Dakota and Washington, may have disappointed his Bull Moose followers, but they provided a better showing than LaFollette’s meagre thirteen electors, the Wisconsin total. In popular votes both Roosevelt and LaFollette ran better than the count in the Electoral College indicates. In 1912, Roosevelt obtained 4,126,020 votes out of a total of 15,031,169 or approximately 27% of the whole vote. In 1924, LaFollette’s vote was 4,826,471 out of a total of 28,647,709 or approximately 17%. The Progressives of 1924 fared much worse than the Bull Moosers in the East and South. The following comparisons of the third party percentage of the total vote indicate this :[12]
................... 1912 .... 1924
Maine ............. 39. ..... 5.9
Rhode Island ...... 21.6 .... 3.2
New Jersey ........ 37. .....10.
Virginia ........... 16. .... 4.6
North Carolina .... 28.5 .... 1.
Tennessee ......... 22. ..... 3.5
What happened in these states was representative of the whole East and South. The story was different on the other side of the Mississippi. In six states, all of them in the West, the 1924 Progressives obtained a bigger chunk of the state totals than had the Bull Moosers. These states were Idaho, Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota, Wisconsin and Wyoming.
The relative showings of Roosevelt and LaFollette again emphasize the importance of organization in American politics. When Roosevelt broke with the G.O.P., he took scores of local bosses and state machines along with him. They paid off in Election Day dividends. Roosevelt’s was not so much a third party movement as it was a national schism within one of the old parties, neither more permanent nor enduring than Teddy Roosevelt’s high resolve to fight the bosses of the Republican Party. Roosevelt’s Progressives had other advantages : the almost limitless financial resources of such ardent supporters as Perkins and Munsey, the sometimes fanatical devotion and support of prominent Republicans and Republican newspapers.
One of the numerous faults of our anachronistic Electoral College system is the readiness with which it conveys the false impression of a political landslide. The Congressional results in the 1924 election did not sustain the appearance of an overwhelming Republican endorsement, so vividly suggested by the electoral totals. The Democrats, in Congress, incurred a net loss of two Senators and twenty-four Representatives. The regular Republicans gained three Senators and fifteen members in the lower house. The “Progressive Bloc” lost a Senator—Magnus Johnson losing to Congressman Schall in Minnesota—but gained two members in the House, one of whom was Fiorello H. LaGuardia, who had, by this time, definitely repudiated the Republicans and publicly joined the Progressives as a self-labeled “Independent.” No one, in the New York area, had more actively and unequivocally supported the LaFollette-Wheeler ticket.
So the election had effected a shrinkage in the ranks of the Democrats and anti-Administration forces, but certainly no indiscriminate sweep from office such as accompanied, for example, the Franklin Roosevelt victory in 1932.
A perusal of a map showing the election results in 1924 will quickly disclose the sectional nature of the LaFollette strength.[13] Of course, an analysis in terms of states, such as Table I, will always overlook important but elusive patterns of local political behaviour.[14] Nevertheless, for our purposes, the state lists are a fairly trustworthy guide to the 1924 election. When the votes were counted, it was the West and Midwest which had evinced more than a passing interest in the Progressive campaign. Several general conclusions may be drawn from this. First, it is evident that the old spirit of Populism and political rebellion was not dead. The 1924 vote of the West can be taken as substantially a “protest” vote against Coolidge, rather than as any commitment to a doctrinaire third party. The second conclusion is that the urban center of “labor politics” in 1924, like Cleveland and Rochester, represented little more than precarious political islands, isolated by a sea of Republicanism. So long as the Electoral College is retained, these small dots of liberal-labor revolt may be safely overwhelmed by the Republican votes of their middle-class neighbors in the suburbs and country districts. The alternative to defeat, for these groups, is to effect a pragmatic alliance with the state and city bosses of the Democratic party, with the long view in mind, perhaps, of eventual control as labor refines its techniques of political action.
The major concession to the third party advocates at the Cleveland convention had been a promise for a conference—after the elections—to consider the advisability of forming a new party. It was thought that the propitious time to launch the party would be after the diverse elements within the progressive movement had been welded together by the unifying force of campaign work and battle.
The following resolution had been adopted by the Cleveland delegates :[15]
On the 29th day of November, 1924, the National Committee shall meet and issue a call for a special National Convention, to be held in the latter part of January 1925 at such place and such definite date as the Committee may decide.
The object of the Convention shall be to consider and pass upon the question of forming a permanent independent political party for National and local elections, upon the basis of the general principles laid down in the platform adopted by this Convention.
Although delayed several weeks, the Convention met in Chicago on February 21-22, 1925, at the Lexington Hotel. About three hundred delegates arrived representing the various organizations and groups of labor, farmer, political and non-partisan movements within the CPPA. The roll-call voting strength of each of the organizations was based on the number of members within the particular group represented. As on previous occasions, the convention was presided over by William H. Johnston, Chairman of the National Executive Committee.[16]
This convention was to be very different—in temper and mood—from that of Cleveland. This time—as Morris Hillquit pointed out—"the delegates had come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.”[17] The two opposing groups within the progressive movement had come to a very definite parting of the ways. The railroad men had made up their minds. They had abandoned the third party experiments, immediately after election.[18] The American Federation of Labor had gone on record at its El Paso national convention against further support for a third party. The Executive Council of the AFL National Non-Partisan Political Campaign Committee had applied the coup de grace when it reported
the launching of third party movements has been proved wasted effort and injurious to the desire to elect candidates with favorable records. The 1922 and 1924 Political campaigns definitely determined this fact. Experience therefore has taught labor that to be successful politically, it must continue in the future, as in the past, to follow its non-partisan policy.[19]
The American Federation of Labor had lost no time in saying good-by to its friends of the campaign. Moreover, the American Federation was publicly stating that it had made a mistake !
The union men who had come to Chicago still hopeful that a third party would be created realised full well that any action they took would have to be taken as individuals, not as union representatives. The attitude of these unionists still loyal to the third party idea was well expressed by William Johnston. “As president of one of the labor unions, and as one who believes in a new alignment, I could not speak for my organization as such. When the Machinists joined the union with which I happen to be connected as president, they did not concede to me the authority to come into a meeting of this kind and commit them to any party. Personally, I favor a new political alignment. I see no hope in the old parties.”[20] If Mr. Johnston could see no hope in the old parties, neither could he nor any other delegate to the Chicago conference see much hope of starting a new one. The shades of night were falling fast over the CPPA; and as the delegates arrived, it became more apparent that this special convention called to form a “permanent political party for national and local elections,” this convention called to preside at the birth of a new party, was, in greater likelihood, to officiate at the interment services of the expiring LaFollette progressive movement.
The Chicago convention turned out to be an amicable agreement to disagree. The Socialists wanted to form a proletarian party. The unions were tired and already committed to returning to the fold of the old parties. The Western agrarians were preoccupied with local politics or entranced by the rising price of wheat. The net result was the dissolution of the temporary coalition which had been created in 1922 and had continued to exist, amorphously and haphazardly, through the presidential election of 1924.
There were three distinct groupings at the Chicago meeting : the Socialists, strong for a dynamic program of political action; the unionists, who felt that their fingers had been burned in the 1924 campaign and were now anxious to return to the traditional Gompers’ policy of non-partisan behaviour; and, finally, the Northwesterners, agrarian and LaFollette supporters. The latter were almost as enthusiastic as the Socialists over the prospect of organising a new party but they were suspicious of the Socialist plans to organise the new movement along economic, rather than geographic lines. The agrarians and LaFollette people already had their organizations and they had no intention of scrapping them. “Vocational” and “functional” representation within the party sounded too much like the new-fangled and slightly alien nomenclature used by the Eastern intelligentsia, impractical visionaries from Greenwich Village or the editorial office of a left-wing weekly.
It was a foregone conclusion, when this final session of the CPPA convened, that the union men would not co-operate. The AFL report, the expressions of opinion in the labor press, the statements of labor leaders, all left little doubt. When the editor of Labor, the official newspaper of the Railroad Brotherhoods arrived in Chicago, he hastened to tell the reporters that “formation of a new party at this time would be futile.”[21] Some of the leaders of the Brotherhoods were even opposed to attending this convention which they had, a year before, so specifically and earnestly promised the third party advocates.[22] Arriving in town the day before the opening of the CPPA conference, the Brotherhood leaders, after a lengthy executive meeting, decided by a vote of 9-6 to take part in the convention.[23] There was no question of participation; merely whether to pay the CPPA the courtesy of attendance. Truly the unions had drifted far away from the third party idea ! Johnston, of the Machinists, was the only trade union leader to stand by the idea of independent political action at the Chicago meeting. And so a mainstay of the progressive movement was gone; the brotherhoods were attending the meeting merely to wish their comrades of 1924 a fond and friendly farewell. The Progressives were losing their most compact element. The New York World headlined its story on the proceedings of the convention, “Debs and Hillquit Inherit Wreck of LaFollette Party.”[24]
There was no rancor, no recrimination, as the labor men departed—just a certain sense of poignant sadness. The men who had, together, fought the good fight had come to the parting of the ways. The “practical” men, the “hard-headed” men, were leaving. The “starry-eyed idealists” remained behind to carry the torch. And, to more than one spectator, the drama of the moment did not go unnoticed. Debs, the old crusader, feebler for having arisen from a sick bed, made one last desperate attempt to avert dissolution of the progressive coalition.[25] Years later, Morris Hillquit still vividly recollected the scene when the veteran Socialist leader pleaded with the labor men to stay.
It was a particularly moving moment when the aged Eugene V. Debs rose to address the gathering. He had taken a leading part in the organization of the railroad workers during the early period of their struggle. He had worked for them unselfishly and untiringly in the days of their weakness and poverty and had suffered persecution and imprisonment in their behalf. And now, as he stood there, tall, gaunt, earnest and ascetic, before the well-groomed and comfortably situated leaders of a new generation, he seemed like a ghost of reproach from their past and calling them back to the glorious days of struggle and idealism.[26]
This was Eugene Debs’ only appearance before a CPPA gathering. Little realising how numbered were the days of the old Socialist leader, the assembled delegates were nevertheless a hushed and attentive group as Debs began his speech. Almost as though he were aware himself that here was one last opportunity to reaffirm his faith in the Cause for which he had devoted his whole life, Debs revealed the creed by which he had lived :[27]
——. Do you know that all the progress in the whole world’s history has been made by minorities ? I have somehow been fortunately all of my life in the minority. I have thought again and again that if I ever find myself in the majority I will know that I have outlived myself. There is something magnificent about having the courage to stand with a few with and for a principle and to fight for it without fear or favor, developing all of your latent powers, expanding to the proportionable end, rising to your true stature, no matter whose respect you may forfeit, as long as you keep your own.
— If a labor party is organized, it must expect from the beginning to be misrepresented and ridiculed and traduced in every possible way, but if it consists of those who are the living representatives of its principles, it will make progress in spite of that, and in due course of time, it will sweep into triumph. So I have learned to be patient and to bide the time, —
Other Socialists joined Debs in his futile attempt to enjoin the labor leaders. In what Lewis Gannett called “one of the finest speeches I have ever heard,” Morris Hillquit called upon the unionists to carry on and to organise with the Socialists in a third party.[28] Sometimes scornfully, sometimes emotionally, Hillquit scored the attitude of the labor men. “If five million voters were not enough, will you wait until we have swept the country ? ... Did you start your trade unions on that practice ? Did you wait until the workers in the different industries clamored to be organised ?"[29]
All that remained to be done was to pronounce the CPPA officially dead. After a lengthy and inconclusive discussion of the general question, “Shall there be formed a Progressive party ?", the business of the first day culminated in the motion made by Mr. Shepherd, of the Conductors’ Union, “that this Committee (sic) on Progressive Political Action adjourn and that those who desire to organise a new or third party, whatever they may term it, may assemble in this room at eight-thirty tonight.”[30]
The action suggested by the motion offered the only practical procedure under the circumstances. Formal adjournment of the CPPA would preserve appearances and avoid embarrassments. The union men were saved the ordeal of getting up and leaving the meeting. Individual delegates, who could not have divested themselves of their representative capacity in the non-partisan CPPA, were free to accept the invitation to convene later in the evening in the “new” conference.
Upon unanimous adoption of Mr. Shepherd’s motion, the CPPA expired at seven p.m. on Saturday, February 21, 1925. With the exception of the officer-delegates of the railroad unions, nearly all the delegates reassembled at eight-thirty to consider the formation of a new party. Appropriate motions were passed transforming the gathering thus assembled into a Progressive convention. A motion by Mr. Arthur Garfield Hays, “be it resolved that this convention declare itself a convention of delegates to a new independent political party,” was unanimously adopted.[31] William Johnston continued to preside over the new gathering, just as he had in the CPPA meetings, after making it clear that he had no mandate to represent his union in the formation of a third party.
On the grounds that the rank and file of the electorate should be given an opportunity to participate in the formation of a new political party, the convention deferred action on either creating a new party immediately or upon naming it. These tasks, presumably, were to be the responsibility of the delegates to a convention to be called sometime in the autumn by action of an executive committee. This committee was to be headed by William Johnston, the chairman, who was empowered to choose four members to serve with him on the committee. The four chosen by Mr. Johnson were Mrs. Basil Manly, Washington, who was also to serve as Secretary, Dr. Mercer G. Johnston of Baltimore, Mrs. Mabel Costigan and Hartwell Brunson, both of Washington.[32] The chairman had purposely chosen Progressives residing in or near Washington in order to meet more frequently.
Even with the Brotherhood delegates departed, there was still disagreement among the Progressives. No sooner had the supporters of a new party reassembled at eight-thirty on the evening of February 21 than a new cleavage appeared—this time between the Socialists and agrarians. Getting the cart somewhat ahead of the horse, the delegates sharply divided on the issue of representation in the forthcoming autumn convention of a party not yet born or christened ! The new clash was precipitated by Hiliquit’s motion to allow party organization along economic, or vocational, lines, as well as on a geographical basis.[33] This motion squarely presented the question of group representation versus state autonomy in the formation of the new party. The matter was referred to a committee appointed by the Chairman, in effect postponing the battle over economic or geographic representation until the second and last day of the conference. On Sunday the action of the committee in upholding geographic representation was endorsed by a roll call of the delegates, 93-64, and the Socialists had lost again.[34]
The breach between the Socialists and the agrarians over party structure revealed again a basic difference between the Socialist and Western elements within the progressive movement. The Socialists, anxious to emulate the successful British Labour Party, found support for the idea of functional representation among the radical needle-trades workers.[35] It is interesting to conjecture how much of the Western opposition to the Socialist proposal derived from the realization that—now that the railroad unions had left—the radical clothing workers were the only unionists in the movement. The Westerners wanted a Progressive, not a Labor, party. They became suspicious of the motives of the left-wingers. The Socialists were tactless to suggest that the new party call itself “The American Labor Party.” It was at least fruitless for the Socialists to lay so much stress, in their speeches, upon nomenclature misunderstood by the West. Eastern radical leaders have never fully comprehended the reaction of the Western farmer to Marxian terminology and methodology. Nothing could be more exquisitely designed to chill the enthusiasms of the average Western delegate to a political convention that the lexicon of Marxism. An observer at the Chicago gathering noticed their antipathy to Socialist orators whose accents betrayed foreign birth.[36]
Having deferred any action on the actual formation of a new party until autumn and having placed its precarious future in the hands of an executive committee, this assemblage of Progressives adjourned on Sunday, February 22. Actually, with the CPPA dissolved, the prospects of a new party seemed more remote than ever. The task of Johnston’s executive committee was almost hopeless.
The organization established by the Progressives in February, 1925, provided a graceful means of slipping into oblivion. Although Mr. Johnston’s inexhaustible store of energy and optimism had not deserted him, there was a hollow ring to the clarion call sent out by the “National Progressive Headquarters of the New Political Party” on March 6 of that year. Progressives everywhere were called upon to “prepare for 1926” and “be ready for 1928.”[37] In reporting the “accomplishments” of the Chicago meeting at which the CPPA had been dissolved and the framework of a new Progressive Party created, William Johnston, as Chairman of the new party’s Executive Committee, needed eloquence and faith to revive the flagging spirits of the men who had followed LaFollette.
Sporadically holding meetings of the national committee and vainly attempting, in the face of insuperable financial obstacles and the growing prosperity of the Coolidge Era, to organise a convention of America’s liberals, the small band of Progressives carried on until the end of 1927. In this, its last stage, the leadership of the progressive movement reverted to the middleclass reformers and intellectuals who had, as members of the Committee of Forty Eight, been so instrumental in laying the groundwork for the CPPA. William Johnston, seriously ill, yielded the chairmanship of the new organization to Mercer Green Johnston (not related), a Baltimore neighbor of J.A.H. Hopkins, and himself one of the most forceful and crusading figures within the Committee of Forty Eight.[38] An Episcopalian minister by profession, Dr. Johnston, devoted by conviction to lofty ideals and high standards of conduct, was about as far removed from the utilitarian opportunism of the average political party chairman as one could imagine. The names of other officers and members of the National Progressive Headquarters—Peter Witt of Cleveland and Mrs. Gordon Norrie of New York, Vice-Presidents; Dr. Donald Hooker of Baltimore, Mrs. Mabel Costigan of Washington; Mr. Arthur Garfield Hays and Mr. Oswald G. Villard, both of New York—reflect the sectional character of the group. The progressive movement had declined into a small nucleus of earnest, literate reformers, with both the “practical politicians” and the Marxians absent.
National Progressive Headquarters had been charged, at the February meeting, with the responsibility of calling a convention at which the new party would be officially christened and a nationwide organizational framework constructed. It became Dr. Mercer Johnston’s difficult task to prepare the “call” for this convention. Much more cognizant of the financial and organizational problems involved in calling a national convention than some of his colleagues, Dr. Johnston, with the approval of the national committee, sounded out state units and liberal groups on the advisability of holding such a convention and on the extent to which they would be willing to contribute towards its expense. As Dr. Johnston feared, state correspondents were not nearly so enthusiastic for a national meeting involving work and money. Representatives of only seven states endorsed the convention idea and agreed to contribute it it.[39] Disappointed by the meagre response, the committee decided to postpone the call to convene.[40] The Declaration of Progressive Faith, composed for the National Committee by Oswald Garrison Villard and Peter Witt in 1926, was destined never to be read before a party convention.
Legatee of a variety of political and administrative headaches bequeathed by the defunct CPPA, Johnston’s committee deserves commendation not only for its efforts to preserve the spark of progressivism, but also for the manner in which it manfully shouldered the unmet obligations of the CPPA. By raising several hundreds of dollars itself and through a generous contribution from the railroad unions, National Progressive Headquarters, under Dr. Mercer Johnston, paid off the greater part of the ten thousand dollar debt inherited from the CPPA.[41]
Several issues of The Progressive Bulletin, official organ of the new political group, were issued from headquarters in Baltimore in 1926. Various efforts were made to effect a union with the Farmer-Labor Party of Minnesota, one of the few vital progressive units functioning, in the late ’Twenties. But it was not enough. Labor had returned to the protective folds of the old parties; the Socialists, unconvinced by the sincerity of their 1924 associates, had moved back to their position of uncompromising Marxism. The vigorous voices of protest fell on ears deafened by the comfortable blandishments of Coolidge prosperity. The legendary figure in the White House, with his magic formula for accomplishing much by doing nothing, was gaining the blind devotion of an ever greater multitude of Americans. It was not yet 1929.
In such an atmosphere, with Coolidge’s world too much with them, National Progressive Headquarters sadly gave up the ghost on November 3, 1927. On that day, with only three members present, the motion to adjourn sine die was carried.[42] The motion had been preceded by a long consideration of correspondence from progressive leaders throughout the country, most of which indicated that no worthwhile purpose could be served by continuance of the national Progressive organization.
In a letter sent to all members of the Executive Committee on January 3, 1928, Dr. Johnston pointedly explained the reason for the decision to dissolve the Progressive organization :[43]
. . . First, as to the decision reached at this meeting to adjourn sine die. At no time since I became a member of the Committee appointed at the Chicago Convention with Wm. H. Johnson as its chairman has it seemed possible to carry out the duty imposed upon the Committee. Both before and after the chairmanship devolved upon me, I was wholly ready to go as far as the hard facts our Committee had to face warranted. We sought in vain to find facts more favorable than those that hemmed us in. Only by ignoring the facts could our Committee have gone ahead and called a National Convention. If there remained in any mind a last lingering doubt of the truth of this, it was dispelled by reports and letters presented at the meeting of November 3 . . .
In an expression of deep faith and prophetic perception, Dr. Johnston concluded his final report with a poignantly sincere command for progressives to stand fast.
.... The adjournment of the Executive Committee of National Progressive Headquarters does not mean the end of the Progressive Movement—by no means. It still possesses elements of great strength. The power exercised by the Progressives in Congress was never greater than it is at this time. Sooner or later the principles for which the Progressives fought in 1924 will assume definite militant form.
Little could Dr. Johnston, or anyone else, on that morning when the obituary of the 1924 progressive movement was prepared, know how soon the cautious conservatism of a Republican Administration would be rejected by a weary and hungry electorate. Little could anyone, in 1928, appreciate how quickly and how completely militant ideas of political and social change would catch hold in an America overwhelmed by the greatest economic distress in its history. The seeds of progressivism had not been destroyed; they lay scattered, to grow and to be nourished in the tragic soil of depression.
1 From Covsens, T., Politics and Political Organization, Table 43. Unless otherwise noted, figures on the election of 1924 are taken from official sources.
2 A National Get-Out-the-Vote League was enthusiastically supported in 1924 by the women’s clubs, service organizations, etc.
3 Slosson, W.P., The Great Crusade and After, p. 92 (American Life Series, ed. by Schlesinger and Fox). This political indifference lends weight to H.M. Robinson’s indictment of the “Twenties” in his Fantastic Interim.
4 See the analysis of this election in Keenleyside, H., “The American Political Revolution of 1924,” Current History Magazine, 21:6, Mar. 1925, pp, 833-840.
5 John W. Davis to the author, May 24, 1943.
6 Basi1 Manly, Eastern Campaign Manager for the Progressives, recalls Senator LaFollette, early in the campaign, drawing a line on a map to include Wisconsin, the Northwest and California and remarking that in that area was his political strength. Basil Manly to the author, June 16, 1943.
7 Ewing, C., Presidential Elections, p. 99.
8 Macmahon, A., “Political Parties and Elections,” Special Supplement to Political Science Quarterly, Vol. XL, 1925, p. 51.
9 Robinson, E.E., The Presidential Vote, 1896-1932, p. 308.
10 Macmahon, A., op. cit., p. 56.
11 See Parzen, H., A Comparative Study of the Progressive Presidential Campaigns of 1912 and 1924, Unpublished Thesis, Columbia Univ., 1926. An enlightening comparison of the Bull Moose and 1924 Progressive Movements in Maine is offered in Elizabeth Ring’s “The Progressive Movement of 1912 and the Third Party Movement of 1924 in Maine,” University of Maine Studies, Series II, No. 26 Univ. of Maine Bulletin, Jan, 1933, p. 53. Miss Ring points out that Maine farmers, frightened by the threat of competition with Canadian lumbermen and potato farmers, strongly supported Coolidge.
12 Parzen, H., op. cit.
13 See Appendix #6, Maps I and II.
14 5ee Appendix #5.
15 Proceedings, CPPA Convention, July 4-5, 1924, Vol. II, p. 265.
16 Report, National Progressive Convention, Chicago, Feb. 21-22, 1925, National Progressive Hdqtrs., Washington, D.C.
17 Hillquit, M., Loose Leaves from a Busy Life, p. 321.
18 Labor, (Washington, D.C.), Nov. 15, 1924.
19 American Federationist, 32:1, Jan. 1925, p. 55.
20 Report, Nat. Prog. Convention, p. 3.
21 New York Herald Tribune, Feb. 22, 1925.
22 Edward Keating to the author, Nov. 15, 1943.
23 New York World, Feb. 21, 1925.
24 Ibid.
25 Proceedings, CPPA, Feb. 21-22, 1925, Part I, p. 105ff.
26 Hillquit, M., op. cit., p. 322.
27 Proceedings, Part I, p. 105.
28 Gannett, Lewis, “A Party Struggles to be Born,” Nation, 120:3113, Mar. 4, 1925, p. 240.
29 Ibid.
30 Proceedings, Part I, p. 108.
31 Proceedings, Part II, p. 24.
32 Locomative Engineers Journal, Vol. 58, No. 8, Aug. 1924, p. 8.
33 Proceedings, Part II, p. 28.
34 Proceedings, Part II, p. 100. The Hillquit motion had taken the form of a minority report of the committee, tabled by 93-64.
35 The Advance (official organ of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers) (New York), Feb. 27, 1925, p. 6.
36 Gannett, L., op. cit., p. 240.
37 See “Greetings to Progressives Everywhere,” letter distributed from National Progressive Hdqtrs., Washington, D.C., Mar. 15, 1925 (Marsh papers).
38 Minutes, Meeting of Executive Committee, National Progressive Hdqtrs, held at Baltimore, Md., Jan. 16, 1926, (M.G. Johnston papers).
39 Minutes, Meeting of Exec. Comm., Nat. Prog. Hdqtrs., Baltimore, Md., Apr. 10, 1926, (M.G. Johnston papers).
40 Ibid.
41 Minutes, Meeting of Exec. Comm., Nat. Prog. Hdqtrs., Baltimore, Md., Feb. 20, 1926, (M.G. Johnston papers).
42 Minutes, Meeting of Exec. Comm., Nat. Prog. Hdqtrs., Washington, D.C., Nov. 3, 1927, (M.G. Johnston papers).
43 Report of M.G. Johnston, Chairman, to members of Executive Committee, National Progressive Headquarters, Jan. 3, 1928, (M.G. Johnston papers).