The Triumph of Progressivism

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"We Stand at Armageddon"The U.S. Presidential Election of 1912

By Christopher Zehnder

A Falling Out of Friends

tanding only five-feet, ten and a half inches tall, but weighing over 300 pounds, William Howard Taft was the

largest president ever to occupy the White House. So large was he that a special bathtub had to be constructed

in the White House to hold him. But though imposing in girth, Taft was not imposing in character. He was

honest, he was methodical; but he had not the electric personality of his predecessor and friend, Teddy Roosevelt. Taft

was no politician; he was a judge who had never held an elective office until he was elected president. Still, in his own

plodding way, he was intent on carrying out Roosevelt’s program of reform.

SAlmost from the beginning, Taft alienated the progressives --- a bunch that, Roosevelt himself admitted, had

to be kept in line by a strong personality. In choosing his cabinet, Taft selected no progressives; he even replaced a

Roosevelt man, James R. Garfield, with Richard

A. Ballinger as head of the Department of the

Interior --- a move that would cost him dear,

later on.

Taft’s campaign pledge to reduce tariffs

was progressive enough. The issue, though,

became mixed up with attempts by progressive

Republicans to oust conservative “Uncle Joe”

Cannon from the speakership of the House.

When Cannon, Representative Henry C. Payne,

and Senator Nelson W. Aldrich visited Taft after

the inauguration and pledged their support for

tariff reduction, Taft promised, in turn, not to

back those who wanted to remove Cannon.

Aldrich, Cannon, and Payne kept their

promise, in a manner of speaking --- a tariff bill was introduced into the House by Payne and into the Senate by

Aldrich. The problem was, this Payne-Aldrich Tariff placed higher rates on imports than even the tariff of 1897, which

progressives so loathed. Taft suggested some changes in the tariff bill that lowered rates, maintained free trade withthe Philippines, and established a board to study if and how much protection was really necessary – and all these

provisions, and others suggested by the president, were added to the bill. Still, the bill did not reduce tariffs in any

way acceptable to progressives.

Leading progressives, such as Senator Robert La Follette and others, expected the president to veto the Payne-

Aldrich tariff bill; they had, they said, enough votes in Congress to sustain the veto. What was their dismay, then,

when Taft not only signed the bill but even called it “the best tariff bill that the Republican party passed”! The

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President Taft in Springfield, Massachusetts, 1912

© 2003 Christopher Zehnder



progressives were stunned, and the first wedge was driven between them and the president.

Then came the accusations leveled against Secretary of the Interior Ballinger by Gifford Pinchot, the head of

the Forestry Service. Pinchot alleged that Ballinger had given over valuable coal lands in Alaska to the Morgan-

Guggenheim syndicate for its exploitation and private profit. Taft fired Pinchot – Roosevelt’s old friend – in 1911 for

insubordination toward Ballinger and then referred the question of Ballinger’s guilt to Congress. The muckrakers

supported Pinchot and stirred up public opinion againstBallinger. Finally, though Congress exonerated him of any

charges of wrongdoing, Ballinger resigned as secretary of

the interior. For supporting Ballinger, Taft was abandoned

by the progressives.

Ironically, though, Taft’s record for progressive

legislation was as good, if not better, than Roosevelt’s. He

supported the Mann-Elkins Act of 1910 that strengthened

the Interstate Commerce Commission by granting it the

power to suspend transportation rate increases until the

railroads could prove the increases were reasonable. The

number of prosecutions for violations of the Sherman Anti-

Trust Act under Taft’s attorney general were double those

under Roosevelt's. Taft supported two progressive-inspired

amendments to the Constitution, both of which won

approval by Congress during his administration. The first,

Amendment XVI, would give power to Congress “to lay

and collect taxes on incomes from whatever source derived,

without apportionment among the several States and

without regard to any census or enumeration.” The second,

Amendment XVII, provided for the popular election of United States Senators.

In the area of conservation, Taft accomplished much. He set up reserves on federal oil lands to prevent their

private exploitation. Taft, further, asked Congress for the authority to place coal lands in reserve. He established a

bureau of mines to protect the nation’s reserves of precious metals. Taft’s head of the Forestry Service purchased

extensive timberland for preservation in the Appalachians. In his four years as president, Taft accomplished more for

conservation than Roosevelt had in his seven years.

Taft’s chief problem was that he was an inept politician --- and that he was not Roosevelt. Since 1900, real

wages had been declining; while the retail cost of food had risen 30 percent, industrial wages had risen only one

percent. In 1910 came a sharp increase in the cost of living that was blamed on the Payne-Aldrich Tariff. In the

elections that year, Democrats took control of the House of Representatives and made significant gains in the Senate.

In the eyes of progressives, it was Taft who was responsible for this.

The Big Game Hunter Returns

Roosevelt had had what he would have called a “bully” time traipsing about Africa, hunting big game. From Africa he

had gone to Europe, where he and his wife, Edith, were wined and dined by the crowned heads of Europe.

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Cartoon showing Taft welcoming the Payne-Aldrich

Tariff bill



Everywhere he went, enthusiastic, cheering crowds met him. At the Sorbonne in Paris on April 23, 1910 he gave a

speech that, he said, “produced an effect that is really a little difficult for me to understand.” Roosevelt was altogether

flummoxed by how he was received by Europeans. “I have been treated as if I combined the functions of visiting

sovereign, of distinguished stranger with a wide range of intellectual interests, and of popular orator,” he wrote Henry

Cabot Lodge:

The combination has been almost too much. The various sovereigns have vied with one another in

entertaining us … The popular reception, however, has been even more remarkable. I drive through

dense throngs of people cheering and calling, exactly as if I were President and visiting cities at home

where there was great enthusiasm for me … I have been much puzzled by it.

President Taft had an explanation for the enthusiastic reception of the man he still called his friend. “It

illustrates,” said Taft, “how his personality has swept over the world… It is the force of his personality that has passed

beyond his own country and the capitals of the world and

seeped into the small crevices of the universe.”

When Roosevelt returned to New York in June 1910,

his boat was escorted by destroyers, a battleship, and pleasure

craft. Five hundred Rough Riders escorted their former

commander in a parade through the streets of the city. Though

he intended to return to Sagamore Hill to take up duties as an

editor of the Outlook – a magazine that espoused his views ---

the numerous invitations he received to travel around the

country and speak lured him from the comforts of the

domestic hearth into the public eye. In 19 days he made a 5,500

mile tour of 14 states and speechified until he was hoarse.

The Roosevelt that had returned was more radical

than the Roosevelt that had left America two years earlier. During his time in Africa he had refined and developed his

political ideas into what he now called the “New Nationalism.” The centerpiece of his political thinking was what he

called “social justice,” which entailed the reforming of society by political action. “I stand for the square deal,” he told

an audience at Osawatomie, Kansas on August 31, 1910. What did Roosevelt mean by this?

I mean, not merely that I stand for fair play under the present rules of the game, but … for having those

rules changed so as to work for a more substantial equality of opportunity and of reward for equally

good service…. We must drive special interests out of politics.

According to Roosevelt’s more radical views, the rich man “holds his wealth subject to the general right of the

community to regulate its business use as the public welfare requires.” For Roosevelt, the requirements of the public

order required the policing action of the state. To compel politicians to take on business interests and the rich,

Roosevelt now supported the radical measures of initiative and referendum --- and even the public recall of judicial

decisions (though this last one, he admitted, was merely the lesser of two evils). But the guiding principle for

Roosevelt was popular control of government. “The only safe course to follow in this great American democracy,” he

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Roosevelt in Africa



said in Columbus, Ohio, “is to provide for making the popular judgment really effective. When this is done, then it is

our duty to see that the people, having the full power, realize their heavy responsibility for exercising that power

aright.”

Bull Moose“I have had a hard time,” Taft had written Roosevelt in May 1910. “I have been conscientiously trying to carry out

your policies.” Roosevelt, with his ideas of social justice, was growing increasingly critical of his old friend. Taft’s

appointees to the Supreme Court had nullified much progressive social legislation in the states. Pinchot, Garfield, and

their friends now had Teddy’s ear, and their criticisms of Taft widened the

breach between the friends.

In 1911, Robert La Follette and other progressives formed the

National Progressive Republican League. La Follette, who was the

spokesman, became the league’s candidate for the Republican nomination

in 1912. La Follette, though, was unable to build up much support outside

the Mississippi Valley, and in early 1912 he appeared to suffer a nervous breakdown when giving a speech before a national newspaper convention.

The disastrous speech sealed La Follette's political fate, and many of his

supporters abandoned him.

Though Roosevelt had said he “emphatically did not want” the

Republican nomination for president in 1912, the entreaties of La Follette’s

former followers, newspaper editors, and others that he run, coupled with

his disgust at what he thought was Taft’s poor performance as president,

began to win him over to the idea. When seven progressive state governors

wrote him and asked him to run, Roosevelt thought he had no choice. “Iwill accept the nomination for President if it is tendered to me,” he said,

“and I will adhere to this decision until the convention has expressed its preference.” When a reporter in Columbus,

Ohio asked him if he would run, Roosevelt answered, “My hat is in the ring.”

Roosevelt knew that the Republican party bosses would never support his candidacy, so he made sure his

name was placed in the running in the 13 states that had popular primaries (in most states primaries were still

controlled by party delegates). Though he knew that he could never secure the nomination by this means alone, he

thought a show of popular support might convince the national convention that he was the man they better run if they

wanted to win. Whether he felt confident of his chances or not, he went to the Republican convention in Chicago

saying he felt “like a bull moose.”

The Republican convention was divided between supporters of Taft, Roosevelt, and La Follette. Taft and

Roosevelt did not spare each other – Taft accusing the ex-president of wanting to stir up class conflict, and he accusing

Taft of ungratefulness and of biting the hand that fed him. As he had expected, Roosevelt made an impressive

showing in the 13 states with popular primaries, receiving 278 delegates to Taft’s 46 and La Follette’s 36. Still, the

Republican leadership stood with Taft, as did delegates from boroughs in the South. Since the leadership controlled

the seating of delegates, nearly every contested seat was given to a Taft man. The result was that Taft was re-

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Senator Robert La Follette



nominated with 547 votes, while Roosevelt received only 107, and La Follette, 41.

Before the final vote had been tallied, Roosevelt, knowing his candidacy was a lost cause, instructed his

followers to walk out of the convention. They formed the Progressive Party (nicknamed the “Bull Moose Party,” after

their leader), which held its convention in Chicago on August 5. The convention delegates displayed all the fervor of a

religious revival. Roosevelt’s followers paraded around the convention hall singing “Onward Christian Soldiers” and

other stirring songs, and when their leader appeared, they cheered him for nearly an hour. And Teddy addressed them

with the unction of a prophet. Whether they win or lose the election, Roosevelt declared, they “shall not falter,” and

“the movement itself will not stop.” He continued:

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Roosevelt Shot

In Milwaukee, during the campaign of 1912, the crowds that came to hear Roosevelt speak were aghast. Teddy

stood before them at the rostrum, his shirt soaked with blood. “Colonel Roosevelt has been shot. He is

wounded,” had said the presiding officer standing next to the former president.

Shortly before Roosevelt had entered the

auditorium, a saloonkeeper, who had nursed a grudge

against Roosevelt since the days he had been police

commissioner in New York, pulled out a gun and shot him

in the chest. Fortunately for Roosevelt, the bullet hit his

steel glasses case and had to pass through a thickly folded

copy of the speech he would give that night and so was

deflected from striking his heart.

Struck by the bullet, Roosevelt fell; but he quickly

got up. He told the crowds not to hurt the assailant and

then he spat on his hand to see if he were bleeding from

his lungs. Seeing no blood, Roosevelt insisted on

proceeding to the auditorium to give his speech.

Standing at the rostrum and hearing the

expressions of horror from the crowd, Roosevelt said, “I

don’t know whether you fully understand that I have just

been shot; but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose!”

He then held up his speech, showing the crowd where the

bullet went through. “The bullet is in me now, so that I cannot make a very long speech, but I will try my best.”

Despite continuous appeals that he seek the aid of a doctor, Roosevelt spoke for an hour and a half.

The New York Herald later ran a cartoon showing Roosevelt with a bullet-torn sheet of paper in his hand. The

caption read, “We are against his politics, but we like his grit.”

Roosevelt afterwards took the shooting in stride. “I did not care a rap for being shot,” he wrote in a

letter. “It is a trade risk, which every prominent public man ought to accept as a matter of course. For eleven

years I have been prepared any day to be shot.”



Our cause is based on the eternal principle of righteousness … you men who ... have come together to

spend and be spent in the endless crusade against wrong, to you who face the future resolute and

confident, to you who strive in a spirit of brotherhood for the betterment of our nation, to you who gird

yourselves for this great new fight in the never-ending warfare for the good of mankind, I say in closing

… We stand at Armageddon and we battle for the Lord.

Indeed, Roosevelt expected a kind of

Armageddon if Progressive policies were not

triumphant. “If the Romanoffs of our social and

industrial world are kept at the head of our

Government the result will be Bolshevism," he

said, "and Bolshevism means disaster to liberty,

writ large across the face of this continent." To

forestall the triumph of Bolshevism, Teddy and

the Progressives called for the popular election

of United States Senators; the adoption by states

of initiative, referendum and recall; equal

suffrage for men and women; popular recall of

judicial decisions; and automatic Supreme Court

review of any rulings made by lower federal

courts declaring a business policing act of a state

legislature was unconstitutional.

In social legislation, the Progressives favored laws “looking to the prevention of industrial accidents,

occupational diseases, overwork, involuntary unemployment, and other injurious effects incident to modern

industry.” They wanted to give to the state and federal governments authority over the “fixing of minimum safety and

health standards for the various occupations.” They called for the “prohibition of child labor”; “minimum wage

standards for working women”; the “general prohibition of night work for women”; an eight-hour work day for

women and young workers; the establishment of the eight hour day “in continuous twenty-four-hour industries”; and

the “protection of home life against the hazards of sickness, irregular employment and old age through the adoption

of a system of social insurance adapted to American use.” As for conservation, the Progressive platform called for

public control of the “remaining forests, coal and oil lands, water powers and other natural resources still in state or

National control (except agricultural lands.)”

“The doctrines we preach,” declared Roosevelt, “reach back to the Golden Rule and the Sermon on the

Mount. They reach back to the commandments delivered at Sinai. All that we are doing is to apply those doctrines in

the shape necessary to make them available for meeting the living issues of our own day.”

The Campaign of 1912The Democratic Party that met in Baltimore in June 1912 was, as ever, a motley bunch. That a single party could hold

together a coalition of such disparate and even conflicting elements was, in a way, amazing. Progressives, under the

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Roosevelt in Boston, 1912



leadership of William Jennings Bryan; Irish Americans of the large cities of the East and their immigrant cousins; ex-

Confederates and agrarians of the South; old conservative Grover Cleveland types; and the newspaper tycoon William

Randolph Hearst --- all these formed a party that had only once since the

Civil War dropped below 43 percent of the popular vote but had rarely

won a presidential election. The problem had been, and still was, a lack of

leadership.The problem of no leadership plagued the 1912 convention. Since

it was controlled by conservative forces, few thought there was any chance

that a progressive candidate could secure the presidential nomination. But

since the conservatives were divided between three candidates, Bryan saw

an opportunity, and putting all his influence behind the progressive

governor of New Jersey, Woodrow Wilson, won him the nomination on

the 46th ballot.

Wilson, a native of Staunton, Virginia, had for most of his life

been an academic most of his life. In 1902 he became president of

Princeton University in New Jersey and sought to break the culture of

social privilege that characterized the school and make it more democratic.

He was largely unsuccessful. Still, Wilson’s speeches, addresses, and the

articles he wrote won him a national reputation, and in 1910 the

conservative political bosses of New Jersey offered him the nomination for governor. Having won the gubernatorial

election by a large margin, Governor Wilson set out to fulfill his

campaign promise to bring progressive reform to the state.

Little distinguished the platforms of the Progressive and

Democratic parties in 1912. What did distinguish them were their

respective candidates. Roosevelt was an Old Testament prophet

proclaiming the “New Nationalism” amid an industrial wilderness.

Wilson, with his “New Freedom,” said about the same things as

Roosevelt did but sounded less like a revival preacher and more like a

Unitarian minister. The “rule of justice and right,” he said, must

govern the questions of tariffs, trusts, and the demands of labor. With

the high moral tone that characterized him, Wilson said things like:

“we must effect a great readjustment and get the forces of the whole

people once more into play,” and “we need no revolution, we need no

excited change; we need only a new point of view and a new method

and spirit of counsel.” With two progressive candidates, the third

wheel, Taft, appeared hopelessly conservative. For one, he was a poor

politician, and he did not take well to attacking Roosevelt. Once, after

delivering an anti-Roosevelt speech, he wept: “he was my best friend,”

Taft said. What’s more, with his talk of limited government, of the separation of powers, Taft had little chance of

capturing the imagination of the electorate in 1912.

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Woodrow Wilson

IWW Poster



Like Roosevelt, Americans were fearful of “Armageddon.” Eugene Debs and his Socialist party were gaining

steam; in the final vote tally Debs would win six percent of the popular vote, the highest ever for a Socialist candidate

in U.S. history. I.W.W. strikes in Lawrence, Massachusetts, dramatized the plight of textile workers who made only $10

for working a 54-hour week. The reality of such misery was cast in the lurid light of labor demonstrations where

Wobblies waved red flags and sang the communist International –

Arise, you prisoners of starvation!

Arise, you wretched of the earth!

For justice thunders condemnation.

A better world's in birth.

No more tradition's chains shall bind us.

Arise, you slaves, no more in thrall!

The earth shall rise on new foundations.

We have been naught, we shall be all.

'Tis the final conflict;

Let each stand in his place.

The international working class

Shall be the human race.

Such talk convinced many common folk that the nation either reform itself or be engulfed in revolution.

So, in the election of 1912, a progressive victory was almost certain. Roosevelt, though, by splitting the

Republican party had alienated many of his former supporters, some of whom accused him of suffering from

messianic delusions. In November, then, Wilson won the election with a landslide of 435 electoral votes, while

Roosevelt (carrying California, Michigan, South Dakota, Washington, Minnesota and Pennsylvania) garnered only 88

electoral votes. Taft came in third, carrying only Utah and Vermont. The popular vote was much closer: Wilson,

6,285,214; Roosevelt, 4,126,020; Taft, 3,483,922. Perhaps if Roosevelt had not split the Republican party, Taft might have

won the election.

More significantly, the defection of progressives from the Republican party in 1912 proved permanent. In the

coming years, the Republicans would become the conservative party, while the Democrats drew all the progressive

and liberal elements in American politics. Though they won 12 seats in Congress, the Progressive party, with only

Roosevelt to hold it together, could not survive. The election of 1912 proved to be Roosevelt’s last foray into national

politics. He would decrease, while Wilson and the Democrats, increased. Still, the principles of government

championed by Roosevelt would live on; progressivism was here to stay. For that reason, Theodore Roosevelt has

been, for good or ill, one of the most pivotal figures in American history.

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The Triumph of Progressivism