Theodore Roosevelt and His Times: A Chronicle of the Progressive MovementHowland, Harold
History
Theodore Roosevelt and His Times: A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement
Howland, Harold
Progressive Party (1912); Roosevelt, Theodore, 1858-1919
The platform adopted by the Progressive Convention was no less a
novelty. Its very title--even the fact that it had a title marked it
off from the pompous and shopworn documents emanating from the usual
nominating Convention--declared a reversal of the time-honored view of
a platform as, like that of a street-car, "something to get in on, not
something to stand on." The delegates to that Convention were perfectly
ready to have their party sued before the bar of public opinion
for breach of contract if their candidates when elected did not do
everything in their power to carry out the pledges of the platform.
The planks of the platform grouped themselves into three main sections:
political reforms, control of trusts and combinations, and measures of
"social and industrial justice."
In the first section were included direct primaries, nation-wide
preferential primaries for the selection of candidates for the
Presidency, direct popular election of United States Senators, the
short ballot, the initiative, referendum and recall, an easier method
of amending the Federal constitution, woman suffrage, and the recall
of judicial decisions in the form of a popular review of any decision
annulling a law passed under the police power of the State.
The platform in the second place opposed vigorously the indiscriminate
dissolution of trusts and combinations, on the ground that combination
in the business field was not only inevitable but necessary and
desirable for the promotion of national and international efficiency. It
condemned the evils of inflated capitalization and unfair competition;
and it proposed, in order to eliminate those evils while
preserving the unquestioned advantages that flow from combination, the
establishment of a strong Federal commission empowered and directed
to maintain permanent active supervision over industrial corporations
engaged in interstate commerce, doing for them what the Federal
Government now does for the national banks and, through the Interstate
Commerce Commission, for the transportation lines.
Finally in the field of social justice the platform pledged the party to
the abolition of child labor, to minimum wage laws, the eight-hour day,
publicity in regard to working conditions, compensation for industrial
accidents, continuation schools for industrial education, and to
legislation to prevent industrial accidents, occupational diseases,
overwork, involuntary unemployment, and other injurious effects incident
to modern industry.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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