CHAPTER XL THE CAMPAIGN OF 1912 The National Progressive Re publican League THE National Progressive Republican League was organized on January 23, 1911, with Jonathan Bourne, of Oregon, as president. Its program included a group of mechanical reforms made necessary, its leaders declared, because, "popular government in America has been thwarted, and progressive legislation strangled," by corrupt interests which "dictate nominations and platforms, elect administrations, legislatures, representatives in Congress, and United States Senators, and control cabinet officers." The reforms advocated by the league began with the demand for the direct elections of United States Senators, direct election of delegates to national conventions, and direct primaries for the nomination of elective officers. The initiative, referendum, and recall were included in the list as suitable for State enactment, as well as a corrupt practices act. The movement thus crystallized in a formal organization was the outcome of the experiences of the insurgents in their controversy in 1909 and 1910. Its immediate aim was to capture the control of the Republican Party machinery, to defeat the renomination of Taft in 1912, and to nominate and elect a Progressive Republican. The Republican split presaged by the formation of the Progressive League followed an old line of cleavage. Roosevelt contended with the tendency throughout Taft and his presidency, and until 1904 conducted himself party split as though he expected to become the leader of reform. The schism was founded upon a belief, widespread and genuine, that the people were losing control of their government, and it was accentuated by personal ambition. The selection of Taft by Roosevelt as his heir-apparent was resented by other leaders who were thus debarred from their chance to enter contests for the nomination, and who believed that their devotion to good government was as sound as his. The leaders of this group looked on without regret when Taft showed himself unable to dominate the political situation as Roosevelt had done. Their experi ence with patronage showed them his weakness as a party disciplinarian. He withheld appointments from the insurgent Congressmen and then restored them; and wavered in his statements as to whether he regarded them as within the party or outside. After the defeat of 1910 the Democrats made haste to consolidate their victory and Taft failed to narrow the Republican split. He suffered acute rebuffs upon Canadian reciprocity and British arbitration, while the single schedule tariff bills of the Underwood-La Follette combination caused him constant embarrassment. The Sixty-Second Congress, called in 1911 to pass the reciprocity agreement, remained in session to legislate upon the tariff. The purpose was not to make a new tariff, but to make trouble for Taft A revision of the notorious Schedule K of the PayneAldrich Act was passed by a combination of Democrats and insurgents, and was vetoed by Taft on August 17. "Much has been made of La Follette's offhand statement that it was put together with 'blacksmith's tools,"" commented the Nation upon it. "But they are better than the burglar's tools with something very like which the woolen schedule was got into the Payne-Aldrich act." A farmer's free-list bill was vetoed on the following day and a cotton bill a little later. By these maneuvers Taft was forced into the position of advocating a "stand-pat" tariff policy against the progressive efforts of both Progressives and Democrats. La Follette and the nomination In the autumn of 1911 the Progressive Republican League held a conference at Chicago where it endorsed the candidacy of La Follette for the nomination as President in 1912, and in the closing months of the year the Progressive revolt gained such weight that it ceased to be a forlorn insurrection and gave promise of becoming revolution and victory. Through the winter of 1912 Republicans who had remained indifferent to Progressivism reached the conclusion that Taft could not be reëlected. They reached the conclusion also that Senator La Follette's Progressive leadership was local in character, and lacked the persuasiveness necessary in a winning candidate. They wished to win and as Progressivism promised possible victory, they wished a different leader. "Good judges of political situations were announcing it as their deliberate conviction that La Follette had a fair chance of getting the republican nomination," wrote Herbert Quick. On February 2, 1912, La Follette spoke at a public meeting in Philadelphia. His physical condition was such as to suggest to his hearers that a nervous collapse impended, and his enemies gave it wide publicity. Many of the Progressives seized the occasion to follow Gifford Pinchot and other La Follette supporters, and abandoned La Follette in the hope of influencing Theodore Roosevelt to reënter politics and contest the nomination. During February, 1912, the pressure upon Colonel Roosevelt increased. The Chicago Tribune led in organizing the demand that he become a candidate for a third Roosevelt term. Political friends who saw no way of win- again ning except with him as candidate, urged him to resume the party leadership. Seven Republican governors wrote him a letter urging him to become a candidate. On February 24 he yielded to the pressure and in reply to the appeal of the seven governors announced his intention to enter the contest and remain there until the end. He had become convinced that Taft had fallen into the hands of the conservative Republicans, and that his policies could be saved only by himself. A few days before formally entering the contest he discussed the fundamental reforms in government before the Ohio Constitutional Convention. A flood of denunciation greeted the return of Roosevelt. His old Republican enemies, who had fought him as President, and were enraged at his advocacy of the "new nationalism," denounced him as a revolutionist, as carried away by ambition, and as desiring to get into the White House for life. "Occasionally," he commented upon this attack, "my more gloomy foes have said that I wanted to be a king. I wanted to answer them that they did not know kings as I did. Now, I like those kings, but I don't want to be one because the function of a modern constitutional king... would be the function of a life vice-president with the leadership of the four hundred thrown in. And I think that there are other jobs that a full-sized man would prefer." The third term tradition was brought into the discussion to discredit the candidate. His own declaration of 1904, as well as the unwritten law that had prevailed since the days of Washington, were cited against him. He brushed these objections away by alluding to a breakfast-table episode. "When I say that I do not wish a third cup of coffee, it does not mean that I shall never want another cup." Fight for convention delegates The bitterness of conservative Republicans was more than matched by that of Senator La Follette, sore at the desertion he had suffered, believing that Roosevelt was treacherously seizing his position, and convinced that Roosevelt's Progressivism was only one of words. In the contest for delegates that ensued, the great debate lay between the supporters of the renomination of Taft and the advocates of Roosevelt, while a small but irreconcilable La Follette group pursued them both. The Republican National Committee had called the convention before the Roosevelt candidacy was launched. The Southern delegates as usual were being chosen under Administration auspices, while in States where conservative Republicans controlled, the delegations were instructed to vote for Taft. In a period of less than four months Roosevelt strove to overturn the political habits of a generation, and used as his principal lever the demand for a direct primary, that the people might rule. He denounced the convention system as a mechanism of the bosses, and the Southern delegations as corrupt. Like Andrew Jackson, in 1824, he demanded a reform in order to let his supporters attain their will. As Jackson had then broken up the caucus system, so Roosevelt and his supporters tried to destroy the convention system. His claim that the voters were with him if the leaders were not, was borne out in those States where preference primaries existed or were adopted by special legislative sessions at his demand. In Illinois in April he swept the State, as he did Pennsylvania a little later. His ringing appeals for honest popular government drowned the utterances of the other candidates. In the Southern States, where the Administration controlled all of the party machinery, his friends organized irregular contesting delegations for what Frank A. Munsey called the "moral effect." The Na Committee and contests The Republican National Committee met in Chicago on June 6, twelve days ahead of the meeting of the convention, in order to prepare the preliminary roll, and hear the contests upon more than two hundred tional and fifty delegates. Of the 1078 delegates on the list, Roosevelt possessed 411 instructed for him and uncontested. Of the rest about 250 were for other candidates, Taft, La Follette, or Cummins without contest, and the same number claimed for Taft were contested by Roosevelt delegations. With less than a majority of all the delegates the only hope of securing the nomination lay in inducing the convention to rule out the votes of all contesting delegates upon preliminary organization. In spite of the fact that many of the contests were frivolous in character, all of them were pressed with vigor. As the National Committee filed its preliminary opinion on them, and listed Taft delegates on the temporary roll, Roosevelt hastened to Chicago in person to conduct his fight. He arrived there on the Saturday before the convention met and immediately spoke from the balcony of the Congress Hotel to an enthusiastic crowd that blocked Michigan Avenue, denouncing the quashing of his contests as “naked theft" on the part of the National Committee. The leading members of the National Committee controlled the machinery of the convention and were too old at politics to be intimidated. They had determined to |