WOMEN AND THE PROGRESSIVE PARTY, 1912

It may seem strange or ironic that women played such an important role in a party nicknamed the "Bull Moose Party," but the Progressive or Bull Moose Party welcomed women into leadership positions as no major party had before. The high status of women in the Progressive Party reflected the party's strong advocacy of women's suffrage and women's rights, and the emphasis that Theodore Roosevelt, the party's presidential candidate in 1912, gave to women's issues. Up to this time, no male of Theodore Roosevelt's prominence and popularity had endorsed women's suffrage, and in 1912 neither the Republican candidate, President William Howard Taft, running for reelection, or Democrat Woodrow Wilson, endorsed women's suffrage on the national level. In 1912 women had the vote in several Western states, but in no state east of the Mississippi River.

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"We were, of course, for woman suffrage, and we invited women delegates and had plenty of them. They were our own kind, too-- women doctors, women lawyers, women teachers, college professors, middle-aged leaders of civic movements, or rich young girls who had gone in for settlement work."

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At the first national convention of the Progressive Party, in Chicago in August of 1912, all observers noted the prominence of women, women delegates, women leaders. The Kansas newspaper editor William Allen White recalled: "We were, of course, for woman suffrage, and we invited women delegates and had plenty of them. They were our own kind, too-- women doctors, women lawyers, women teachers, college professors, middle-aged leaders of civic movements, or rich young girls who had gone in for settlement work."

"Settlement work" refers to the settlement houses in the cities, places where the poor could obtain basic social services, not then available from government. Many social workers, male and female, supported the Progressive Party in 1912.

Indeed, the most famous settlement house leader and social worker in American history, the beloved Jane Addams of Hull House in Chicago, was at the convention, and seconded Theodore Roosevelt's nomination for President. This was said to be the first time that a woman had addressed the national convention of a major party.

The rules of the Bull Moose Party, adopted at the Chicago convention, mandated that four women were to be members-at-large on the Progressive National Committee. This was to insure female representation at the highest levels of party leadership.

In November 1912 Theodore Roosevelt carried two states with women's suffrage, Washington and California (he won six states in all); and in the State of Washington, Helen J. Scott was a Progressive elector.

It was said in the press at the time that she was the first woman to cast a vote in the electoral college-- and therefore in a real constitutional sense Helen Scott may be said to be the first woman who voted for President! However, some reports list women among the Progressive electors in California, and the matter has not been resolved by historians as yet.

In 1913 the prominent social worker Frances Kellor became the director of the "Progressive Service," which was a division of the national party, housed at party headquarters in New York City, that researched issues, drafted bills for Progressive legislators (state and national), issued publications, and provided witnesses for legislative hearings.

It was unprecedented for a woman to have such a prominent role in a national political organization. Jane Addams at this time was serving on the executive committee of the Progressive National Committee. Mrs. Kellogg Fairbank of Illinois, later a member of the Democratic Party's national committee, was a member of the finance committee of the Progressive Party's national organization. The national party also employed Alice Carpenter as a worker for women suffrage and labor issues.

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In 1913 Progressive Party state legislators in Illinois, aided by the dynamic Ruth Hanna McCormick, were able to obtain women's suffrage in the state. This was possible because the Bull Moosers held the balance of power in the state legislature. Illinois was the first state east of the Mississippi to give women the vote. Ruth Hanna McCormick was the daughter of Mark Hanna. Her husband Medill McCormick, was in the legislature in 1913. He ended up in the US Senate. Ruth Hanna McCormick later was elected to the US House.

In 1914 Agnes L. Riddle, a two-term member of her state legislature, was the Progressive Party candidate for secretary of state of Colorado.

The Progressive Party went out of business in 1916, but the cause of women's suffrage was surely advanced by four years of Bull Moose campaigning. Women got the vote everywhere at last in 1920. In later years Ruth Hanna McCormick, after serving in the US House, became the first woman nominated in any state for the US Senate by the Republican Party. Though defeated, she remained a power in that party until her death in the 1940s. In 1933 Frances Perkins was appointed Secretary of Labor by Franklin D. Roosevelt, the first women to serve in the cabinet. In 1912 Frances Perkins had supported the Progressive Party. The legacy is clear. The Progressive Party had opened a door to women, a door previously closed to them by Republicans and Democrats alike.

quotes of Theodore Roosevelt

Excerpt
Progressive tax

No man should receive a dollar unless that dollar has been fairly earned. Every dollar received should represent a dollar's worth of service rendered – not gambling in stocks, but service rendered. The really big fortune, the swollen fortune, by the mere fact of its size acquires qualities which differentiate it in kind as well as in degree from what is possessed by men of relatively small means.

Therefore, I believe in a graduated income tax on big fortunes, and in another tax which is far more easily collected and far more effective – a graduated inheritance tax on big fortunes, properly safeguarded against evasion and increasing rapidly in amount with the size of the estate. – Theodore Roosevelt, speech at Osawatomie, Kansas, "The New Nationalism" (August 31, 1910)

Practical equality of opportunity for all citizens, when we achieve it, will have two great results.

First, every man will have a fair chance to make of himself all that in him lies; to reach the highest point to which his capacities, unassisted by special privilege of his own and unhampered by the special privilege of others, can carry him, and to get for himself and his family substantially what he has earned.

Second, equality of opportunity means that the commonwealth will get from every citizen the highest service of which he is capable.

No man who carries the burden of the special privileges of another can give to the commonwealth that service to which it is fairly entitled. – Theodore Roosevelt, speech at Osawatomie, Kansas, "The New Nationalism" (August 31, 1910)

In every wise struggle for human betterment one of the main objects, and often the only object, has been to achieve in large measure equality of opportunity. In the struggle for this great end, nations rise from barbarism to civilization, and through it people press forward from one stage of enlightenment to the next.

One of the chief factors in progress is the destruction of special privilege. The essence of any struggle for healthy liberty has always been, and must always be, to take from some one man or class of men the right to enjoy power, or wealth, or position, or immunity, which has not been earned by service to his or their fellows. That is what you fought for in the Civil War, and that is what we strive for now. – Theodore Roosevelt, speech at Osawatomie, Kansas, "The New Nationalism" (August 31, 1910)

It is essential that there should be organization of labor. This is an era of organization. Capital organizes and therefore labor must organize. – Theodore Roosevelt, speech at Milwaukee, Wisconsin (October 14, 1912)

It is no limitation upon property rights or freedom of contract to require that when men receive from government the privilege of doing business under corporate form ... they shall do so under absolutely truthful representations ...

Great corporations exist only because they were created and safeguarded by our institutions; and it is therefore our right and duty to see that they work in harmony with these institutions.

– Theodore Roosevelt, December 3, 1901, State of the Union message to Congress, quoted in Roosevelt's biography Theodore Rex by Edmund Morris (2001)

No man can be a good citizen unless he has a wage more than sufficient to cover the bare cost of living, and hours of labor short enough so that after his day's work is done he will have time and energy to bear his share in the management of the community, to help in carrying the general load.

We keep countless men from being good citizens by the conditions of life with which we surround them.

We need comprehensive workmen's compensation acts, both State and national laws to regulate child labor and work for women, and, especially, we need in our common schools not merely education in booklearning, but also practical training for daily life and work. We need to enforce better sanitary conditions for our workers and to extend the use of safety appliances for our workers in industry and commerce, both within and between the States. – Theodore Roosevelt, speech at Osawatomie, Kansas, "The New Nationalism" (August 31, 1910)

Name Position State Dates held office
James W. Bryan
United States Congressman
Washington
1913-15
Walter M. Chandler
United States Congressman
New York
1913-19
Ira Clifton Copley
United States Congressman
Illinois
1915-17 as a Progressive
John Elston
United States Congressman
California
1915-17 as a Progressive, 1917-1921 as a Republican
John Morton Eshleman
Lieutenant Governor of California
California
1915-17
Jacob Falconer
United States Congressman
Washington
1913-15
William Henry Hinebaugh
United States Congressman
Illinois
1913-15
Willis J. Hulings
United States Congressman
Pennsylvania
1913-15
Hiram Warren Johnson
Governor
California
1911-1917
Melville Clyde Kelly
United States Congressman
Pennsylvania
1917-19 as a Progressive, 1919-1935 as a Republican
William MacDonald
United States Congressman
Michigan
1913-15
Whitmell Martin
United States Congressman
Louisiana
1915-19 as a Progressive, 1919-1929 as a Democrat
Miles Poindexter
United States Senator
Washington
1913-15
William Stephens
United States Congressman
California
1913-17
Henry Wilson Temple
United States Congressman
Pennsylvania
1913-15
Roy Woodruff
United States Congressman
Michigan
1913-15
Homer D. Call
New York State Treasurer
New York
1914
Louis Will
Syracuse city mayor New York
1914-16

Nights in white satin
Never reaching the end
Letters I’ve written
Never meaning to send
Beauty I’ve always missed
With these eyes before
Just what the truth is
I can’t say anymore

‘Cause I love you
Yes I love you
I love you

Gazing at people
Some hand in hand
Just what I”m going through
They can’t understand
Some try to tell me
Thoughts they cannot defend
Just what you want to be
You will be in the end

And I love you
Yes I love you
I love you
I love you

Nights in white satin
Never reaching the end
Letters I’ve written
Never meaning to send
Beauty I’ve always missed
With these eyes before
Just what the truth is
I cant say anymore

‘Cause I love you
Yes I love you
I love you
I love you>

‘Cause I love you
Yes I love you
I love you
I love you

Breathe deep the gathering gloom
Watch lights fade from every room
Bedsitter people look back and lament
Another day’s useless energy is spent

Impassioned lovers wrestle as one
Lonely man cries for love and has none
New mother picks up and suckles her son
Senior citizens wish they were young

Cold hearted orb that rules the night
Removes the colours from our sight
Red is grey and yellow white
But we decide which is right

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