Part One-Hundred Forty: The 1912 Progressive Nomination
Roosevelt's Shadow: It is difficult to overstate how much of a dominating personality Theodore Roosevelt played in the early Progressive Party. Roosevelt had been instrumental in the emergence of the Progressives from the earlier Populist Party, and served as the first President ever elected by the Progressives. Thus, amid the growing uncertainty of the post-Great War world, it came as a shock to the United States that President Roosevelt would not run for a third term. Roosevelt's reasons were many. He felt he should stick to George Washington's legacy of limiting oneself to two terms as President. Roosevelt, while enjoying his role as the driver of the Progressives, had the foresight to realize that the party needed to have someone else at the helm if it was to survive beyond him. In a 1912 speech announcing he would not run again, Roosevelt was blunt: "a party built and run by just one man will assuredly die with that man." But according to Roosevelt's private diaries, he also was growing stressed with the requirements of the presidency and bored with its confining him to Washington for such long periods. The travels to Europe for the Peace of Vienna had seemingly ignited Roosevelt's wanderlust, and it would be impossible to fulfill it while he was President. So, in February 1912, President Theodore Roosevelt announced that he would not be seeking a third term as President and would step down in 1913.
The obvious man to succeed President Roosevelt as the leader of the Progressive Party was naturally his Vice President, William Howard Taft. Taft, who had been Roosevelt's Secretary of War during his first term and was elevated to Roosevelt's running mate to replace William Hope Harvey. It is commonly accepted that Taft was chosen to replace Harvey so that Roosevelt would have a capable wartime successor if Roosevelt had died. However, Vice President Taft shied away from the early stages of the 1912 presidential campaign. Taft, rather than jumping into the electoral ring to succeed Roosevelt in 1912, traveled to Europe to aid in overseeing the American participation in the Peace of Vienna and the creation of the Weltkongress. Taft was one of the more vocal proponents of the Weltkongress following the Great War, so it was a good move by Roosevelt to ensure the participation in the United States in the initial stages of its formation. Taft, as the Vice President and a former Republican, also was influential in convincing Congress to ratify the American entrance into the Weltkongress as a founding member. However, Taft's travels in Europe sent him away from the potential campaign trail and led to Taft declining to run for President in 1912 upon his return from Europe.
Proponents of Taft claimed that Roosevelt sent Taft to Europe to sideline the potential of his campaign because Roosevelt did not want Taft to run, however a modern perspective shows that this is not true. William Howard Taft, it needs to be noted, had a strong judicial background before entering into politics, and his ultimate goal was to join the Supreme Court rather than achieve any high elected office. While Taft would reach that vaunted position, he also felt that his judiciary experience could be very welcomed in the arbitration of the Peace of Vienna. President Roosevelt apparently agreed with that assessment, and Taft's experience was welcomed very much by Root, Hoover, and Holmes in the peace negotiations. After Taft returned to the United States from Europe, the Vice President dove into his role of selling the Weltkongress to Congress and the American public wholeheartedly, offering little of his opinion on the Progressive primary and presidential race during the campaign.
With both Roosevelt and Taft declining to run for the Progressive nomination, the race for the Progressive nomination was wide open. The open race created the divisions that had been present in the Progressive nomination race of 1904 before Roosevelt had stepped in as a unifying figure, and many of the generation of Progressives who ran for that nomination ran again in 1912. Some newcomers did run, however they did not make it very far. Senator Willis C. Hawley, one of the Progressive supporters of maintaining the tariffs on Britain and Canada after the Great War[1], won the Champoeg primary as a favorite son candidate and came in a close second to Wallace in the Oregon primary. However, Hawley's support in the Northwest did not translate well into other regions of the country. Herbert Hoover, then a young upstart businessman and diplomat, briefly floated a run for president at just 38 years of age, Hoover had made a name for himself during the Great War for his organization of food relief on the Canadian front. Hoover made a splash with the announcement he would run for the Progressive nomination shortly after he returned from the Vienna negotiations and won the Connecticut and Vermont primaries, but his momentum fizzled as the summer wore on. Herbert Hoover's early run would, however, mark a transition point for the man and prepare Hoover for his later and more successful future in Progressive politics.
The two front runners for the Progressive nomination thus were two veterans and founding members of the Progressive Party who had both ran for the nomination in 1904: Secretary of Agriculture Henry Cantwell Wallace and former governor and Senator from Indiana Albert Beveridge. Wallace and Beveridge had become visible representations of the rural and urban wings of the Progressive Party since the party's inception. Henry Cantwell Wallace came out ahead of Beveridge in the primaries, winning those in Demoine, Itasca, and Shoshone. Wallace appealed to many Progressives who wanted a return to the Populists' focus on farmers. Even before his appointment as Secretary of Agriculture, Henry C. Wallace fought to gain support for the McLaurin Amendment to the Tariff of 1902[2] that raised tariffs on agricultural goods. While Agriculture Secretary, Wallace advocated an idea he had spearheaded in Demoine for a state-owned grain elevator to give farmers fair prices for their produce and provide insurance when prices were low. The idea was popular in Demoine and Itasca where both states established state-owned mills and grain elevators, and Wallace continued to advocate farmers' insurance as Secretary of Agriculture.
In a contrast to the rural appeal of Henry Cantwell Wallace, Albert Beveridge was the urban candidate, having been a Congressman representing a booming Indianapolis as well as Indiana's Senator and governor. Beveridge had been one of Roosevelt's earliest supporters in 1904, almost attaching himself to the first Progressive President's hip in every way save being his running mate. He had been a strong proponent of the expansion of American power during the Great War, calling for American entry into the war even before President Roosevelt publicly floated the possibility. In this push Beveridge held a desire for the United States to bring order to the North American continent, and as such Beveridge was also one of the biggest supporters of the annexation of California. Here Beveridge and Roosevelt found common ground, and Beveridge pushed hard for the annexation, though he was out of Congress and back in Indianapolis by this point. As an urban Progressive, Albert Beveridge also desired to increase fairness and regulations for urban industries and living. This included calls for a federal minimum wage, child labor regulations and mandatory primary schooling, and shorter and regular set work hours. Beveridge's speeches were almost socialist at times, with one speech to Indianapolis steelworkers claiming that "large business left to itself brings chaos and ruin, and it is up to the government to rein them in and provide justice to the worker."[3] Beveridge supported the formation of labor unions and other Progressive causes to bring about a more moral society, such as the temperance movement.
Thus, the Progressive convention in Chicago was a battle between the rural and the urban; between the quite literal grass roots laid out by Henry C. Wallace and the top-down approach to achieving a better and more just society from Albert Beveridge. President Theodore Roosevelt had made no formal endorsement prior to the Progressive convention, but it was clear to most observers that the President would certainly prefer that Beveridge be his successor. Roosevelt did after all make his start in politics as a lawman. As the convention opened, the delegates were split. While the urban delegates had increased much in the last eight years, many of the original Populists were still influential in rural regions. For instance, despite the growth of Chicago and Cairo, it was Illinois Congressman Frederick Hinde Zimmerman[4] who led the Illinois delegation and officially placed Henry C. Wallace's name into consideration. The votes after the first ballot were divided, with Wallace slightly ahead of Beveridge while Hoover, Hawley, Georgia Senator Thomas E. Watson, and others gained a scattering of support. The second and third ballots shifted only marginally, with neither Wallace nor Beveridge gaining an advantage.
This went on for another day, but on the sixth ballot, the deadlock was broken. President Roosevelt had arranged to give a speech on the fourth day of the convention. Most people assumed the presidential nomination would be over and done with by then so there was not much thought given to the President's speech when it was originally scheduled. However, as the time of the speech drew near, whispers sprang up over whether President Roosevelt would give a formal nomination that might push one candidate over the finish line. There was little doubt of who that candidate would be, but the question on everyone's minds was would Roosevelt forsake his Agriculture Secretary to endorse Albert Beveridge. To the delight of the Beveridge camp (but not surprise), President Roosevelt indeed gave his endorsement to Albert Beveridge for the nomination for President of the United States in 1912. However, Roosevelt's speech also expressed generous support for the Wallace's achievements serving in Roosevelt's administration. In a so called grand compromise between the urban and rural factions of the Progressive Party, the delegates almost unanimously nominated Henry C. Wallace as Beveridge's running mate.
[1] Yes, that Hawley.
[2] See
this update. Senator Anselm McLaurin of Mississippi proposed a compromise amendment to get the Tariff of 1902 passed.
[3] This is a curious sentiment when put up against the socialist muralist Eugene Victor Debs, who also spent much of his life in Indianapolis. Debs' bright, colorful murals often depicted the solidarity of the worker in achieving justice and prosperity for themselves, rather than relying on others to hand it down to them. Many of Debs' murals can still be seen on the brick facades of Indianapolis, Chicago, and other cities in the Old Northwest.
[4] Frederick Hinde Zimmerman was a Grange member and one of the leaders of the Illinois Farmers' Institute.