121. The platform of the Progres Chicago, August 5, 1912 [616] me at first to the meaning of their opposition to the enactment of any child-labor law. My sympathy, however, has been worn very thin by the deceptions and evasions to which they lend themselves on this subject. Some, no doubt, honestly believe in the validity of the reasons they advance for child labor—it is so easy to believe a theory very much to our own interest-but the majority know better, especially men from the North and East.... For eighteen months I have acted as the special agent for the American Federation of Labor on child-labor legislation in the Southern States. . . . I visited twenty-four mills in Alabama before the ... end of January, 1901. The state of affairs I discovered was truly appalling. In every one of these mills there were children under 12 years of age working from 11 to 12 hours a day. Six mills out of the twenty-four had worked within a year at night. In the spinning rooms, brilliantly lighted with electric lights, fitted with the latest machinery, turning out hour after hour the product which is making huge profits, were to be found little children working from dark until long past dawn, kept awake by cold water being dashed into their faces. The insurgent movement began in the protest of Senator La Follette and a group of reformers in Congress sive party, against President Taft, whose "complete surrender to the legislative reactionary program of Aldrich and Cannon. and the discredited representatives of special interests who had so long managed congressional legislation, rendered it utterly impossible for the Progressive Republicans of the country to support him for reëlection." In January, 1911, these men formed the National Progressive Republican League. The movement gathered strength rapidly. In April the league decided to enter the contest for the presidential nomination of 1912 with a candidate 2 opposed 1 Robert M. La Follette, Autobiography, 1913, p. 476. 2 La Follette, whose "Autobiography" is a full source for the early history of the Progressive movement, was the "logical” candidate, and was publicly indorsed for the presidency by the Progressives in October, 1911. But when Roosevelt, in a speech at Columbus, Ohio, in February, to Taft. When they failed to get control of the Republican convention at Chicago, in June, 1912, they seceded under Roosevelt's leadership and formed the new Progressive party, which carried seven states and polled 4,123,206 votes at the election in November. The platform of the party, adopted at the convention in Chicago, August 5, 1912, is the best statement of the principles of the radical reformers of the new century. The conscience of the people in a time of grave national problems has called into being a new party, born of the nation's awakened sense of justice. We of the Progressive Party here dedicate ourselves to the fulfillment of the duty laid upon us by our fathers to maintain that government of the people, by the people, and for the people, whose foundations they laid. We hold, with Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln, that the people are the masters of their Constitution, to fulfill its purposes and to safeguard it from those who, by perversion of its intent, would convert it into an instrument of injustice. In accordance with the needs of each generation the people must use their sovereign powers to establish and maintain equal opportunity and industrial justice, to secure which this government was founded and without which no republic can endure. This country belongs to the people who inhabit it. Its resources, its business, its institutions, and its laws should be utilized, maintained, or altered in whatever manner will best promote the general interest.1 It is time to set the public welfare in the first place. 1912, came out for the Progressive program, his greater prestige and popularity carried him to the fore as the standard bearer of the new movement. La Follette's bitter comments on his "demagogism" and "mock heroics" may be read in the "Autobiography," especially pp. 480, 543, 551, 700, 740. 1 For the most radical proposition for the alteration of the institutions and laws of a state since the foundation of our government, see the plan of Mr. W. S. U'Ren and the Peoples Power League of Oregon outlined in Herbert Croly, Progressive Democracy, pp. 291-302. Political parties exist to secure responsible government and to execute the will of the people. From these great tasks both the old parties have turned aside. Instead of instruments to promote the general welfare, they have become the tools of corrupt interests which use them impartially to serve their selfish purposes. Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owning no allegiance and alleging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to dissolve the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics, is the first task of the statesmanship of the day. . . . Unhampered by tradition, uncorrupted by power, undismayed by the magnitude of the task, the new party offers itself as the instrument of the people to sweep away old abuses, to build a new and nobler commonwealth. This declaration is our covenant with the people, and we hereby bind the party and its candidates in state and nation to the pledges made herein. The Progressive Party . . . declares for direct primaries for the nomination of state and national officers, for nation-wide preferential primaries for candidates for the Presidency, for the direct election of United States Senators by the people; and we urge on the states the policy of the short ballot with responsibility to the people secured by the initiative, referendum, and recall. . . . Up to the limit of the Constitution and later by amendment of the Constitution . . . we advocate bringing under effective national jurisdiction those problems which have expanded beyond the reach of the individual states. It is as grotesque as it is intolerable that the several states should, by unequal laws in matters of common concern, become competing commercial agencies, barter the lives of their children, the health of their women, and the safety and well-being of their working people for the profit of their financial interests. . . . The Progressive Party, believing that no people can justly claim to be a true democracy which denies political right on account of sex, pledges itself to the task of securing equal suffrage to men and women alike. . . . The Progressive Party demands such restriction of the power of the courts as shall leave to the people the ultimate authority to determine fundamental questions of social welfare and public policy. To secure this end, it pledges itself to provide: (1) That when an act passed under the police power of the state is held unconstitutional under the state constitution by the courts, the people, after an ample interval for deliberation, shall have an opportunity to vote on the question whether they desire the act to become law, notwithstanding such decision. (2) That every decision of the highest appellate court of a state declaring an act of the legislature unconstitutional on the ground of its violation of the Federal Constitution shall be subject to the same review by the Supreme Court of the United States as is now accorded to decisions sustaining such legislation.... The supreme duty of the nation is the conservation of human resources through an enlightened measure of social and industrial justice. We pledge ourselves to work unceasingly in state and nation for Effective legislation looking to the prevention of industrial accidents, occupational diseases, overwork, involuntary unemployment, and other injurious effects incident to modern industry; The fixing of minimum safety and health standards for the various occupations, and the exercise of the public authority . . . to maintain such standards. The prohibition of child labor; minimum wage standards for working women; . . . the general prohibition of night work for women, and the establishment of an eight-hour day for women and young persons; one day's rest in seven for all wage-workers; the eight-hour day in continuous twenty-four hour industries; the abolition of the convict contract labor system; publicity as to wages, hours, and conditions of labor; full reports upon industrial accidents and diseases. . The development and prosperity of country life are as important to the people who live in the cities as they are to the farmers. . . . We pledge our party to foster the development of agricultural credit and coöperation, the teaching of agriculture in schools, the agricultural college extension, the use of mechanical power on the farm. . . . We favor the union of all the existing agencies of the Federal Government dealing with the public health into a single national health service. . . . We demand that the test of true prosperity shall be the benefits conferred thereby on all the citizens, not confined to individuals or classes, and that the test of coöperate efficiency shall be the ability better to serve the public. . . . a We therefore demand a strong national regulation of interstate corporations. . . . The existing concentration of vast wealth under a corporate system, unguarded and uncontrolled by the nation, has placed in the hands of a few men enormous, secret, irresponsible power over the daily life of the citizenpower insufferable in a free government and certain of abuse. ... We urge the establishment of a strong federal administrative commission of high standing, which shall maintain permanent active supervision over industrial corporations engaged in interstate commerce, doing for them what the Government now does for the national banks, and what is now done for the railroads by the Interstate Commerce Commission. . . . ... The natural resources of the nation must be promptly developed and generously used to supply the people's needs, but we cannot allow them to be wasted, exploited, monopolized, or controlled against the general good. . . . Agricultural lands in the national forests are, and should remain, open to the genuine settler.... We believe that the remaining forests, coal and oil lands, water powers, and other natural resources . . . be retained by the state or nation, and opened to immediate use under laws which will encourage development and make to the people a moderate return for benefits conferred. . . . The Panama Canal, built and paid for by the American people, must be used primarily for their benefit. We demand that the canal shall be so operated as to break the transportation monopoly now held and misused by the transcontinental railroads by maintaining sea competition with them, that ships directly or indirectly owned or controlled by American railroad |