1. Progressivism and the Republican Roosevelt, 1901–1912
Chapter 28
Progressivism and the Republican Roosevelt, 1901–1912

2. Marching for Suffrage Prominent New York socialite Mrs. Herbert
Carpenter, bearing an American flag, marches in a parade for women’s
suffrage on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue, 1912.
p636

3. Bound for Guadalcanal,
1942 These troops
were headed for one of
the bloodiest battles of
World War II, in the
southwest Pacific’s
Solomon Islands. America
threw some 15 million
men and the full weight
of its enormous economy
into the struggle against
German and Japanese
aggression.
p637

4. I. Progressive Roots Progressive ideas and theories:
The old philosophy of hands-off individualism seemed out of place in modern machine age
Progressive theorists were insisting that society could not longer afford the luxury of a limitless “let-alone” (laissez-faire) policy
The people, through government, must substitute mastery for drift
Politicians and writers began to pinpoint targets:
Bryan, Altgeld, and the Populists branded the “bloated trusts” with the stigma of corruption and wrongdoing.

5. I. Progressive Roots (cont.)
1894 Henry Demarest Lloyd charged the Standard Oil Company in his book Wealth Against Commonwealth
Thorstein Veblen assailed the new rich in his The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899):
It was a savage attack on “predatory wealth” and “conspic-uous consumption:”
In his view the parasitic leisure class engaged in wasteful “business” rather than productive “industry”
He urged that social leadership pass from these superfluous titans to truly useful engineers.
Jacob A. Riis shocked middle-class Americans in 1890:
With How the Other Half Lives

6. I. Progressive Roots (cont.)
A damning indictment of the dirt, disease, vice, and misery of the rat-gnawed human rookeries knows as New York slums
The book deeply influenced Theodore Roosevelt.
Novelist Theodore Dreiser:
Used his blunt prose to batter promoters and profiteers in The Financier (1912) and The Titan (1914)
Socialists registered appreciable strength at the ballot box (see pp )
Social gospel movement:
Promoted a brand of progressivism based on Christian teachings
They used religious doctrine to demand better housing and living conditions for the urban poor

7. I. Progressive Roots (cont.)
Other reformers:
University-based economists urged new reforms modeled on European examples
Feminists added social justice to suffrage on their list of needed reforms
Urban pioneers entered the fight to improve the lot of families living and working in the festering cities.

8. Melting Pot in P.S. 188, 1910 These immigrant children from the Lower East Side of
New York are dressed in costumes from their native lands and surround their teacher,
adorned as the Statue of Liberty. Schools like this one, flooded with immigrant children
who could scarcely speak English, tried to respect their students’ ancestral cultures
while also cultivating loyalty to their adopted country by teaching American “civics” and
appreciation for patriotic symbols and rituals.
p639

9. II. Raking Muck with the Muckrakers
Muckraking magazines—McClure’s, Cosmopolitan, Collier’s and Everybody’s:
They dug deep for the dirt that the public loved
Enterprising editors financed extensive research
President Theodore Roosevelt called them muckrakers
Some famous reformer-writers were Lincoln Steffens, Ida M. Tarbell
Their targets were:
Corrupt alliance between big business and municipal gov’t., exposé of Standard Oil Company, malpractices of life insurance companies and tariff lobbies, trust, etc.
Some of the most effective fire of the muckrakers was directed at social evils:

10. Room in a Tenement Flat,
1910 Tenement life on the
Lower East Side of New York City
was exposed by the camera of
Jacob Riis, who compiled a large
photographic archive of turn-of the-
century urban life. Many
families counted themselves
lucky to share a single room, no
matter how squalid.
p640

11. Ida Tarbell (1857–1944) in Her Office Tarbell was the
most eminent woman in the muckraking movement and
one of the most respected business historians of her
generation. In 1904 she earned a national reputation for
publishing a scathing history of the Standard Oil Company,
the “Mother of Trusts.” Two years later she joined Ray
Stannard Baker, William Allen White, and other muckrakers
in purchasing the American magazine, which became a
journalistic podium in their campaign for honest
government and an end to business abuses.
p641

12. II. Raking Muck with the Muckrakers (cont.)
The immoral “white slave” traffic in women, the rickety slums, the appalling number of industrial accidents, subjugation of blacks and the abuse of child labor
Vendors of potent patent medicines were also criticized
The muckrakers signified much about the nature of the progressive reform movement:
They were long on lamentation but stopped short of revolutionary remedies
They counted on publicity to right social wrongs
They sought not to overthrow capitalism but to cleanse it
The cure of American democracy was more democracy

13. III. Political Progressivism (cont.)
“Who were the progressives?”
Militarists—like Theodore Roosevelt
Pacifists—Jane Addams
Female settlement workers, labor unionists, and enlightened businessmen
They sought to modernize American institutions to achieve two goals:
To use the state to curb monopoly power
To improve the common person’s conditions of life and labor.

14. III. Political Progressivism (cont.)
They emerged in both political parties, in all regions, and at all levels of government
Their objective was to regain power by:
Pushing for direct primary elections
Favored initiative so that voters could directly propose legislation themselves
Agitated for the referendum that would place laws on the ballot for final approval by the people
For recall to enable voters to remove faithless elected officials.

15. III. Political Progressivism (cont.)
Rooting out graft became a prime goal
Introduced the secret Australian ballot to counteract boss rule
Direct election of senators was a favorite goal to be achieved by a constitutional amendment:
The Seventeenth Amendment, approved in 1913, established the direct election of U.S. senators.
Woman suffrage received powerful support:
States like Washington, California, and Oregon gradually extended the vote to women

16. The Prophet of the Class Struggle, Karl Marx (1818–1883)

17. The IWW Seeks Subscribers, 1911 This poster
aimed to attract subscribers to Industrial Worker,
the newspaper of the Industrial Workers of the
World (IWW). The IWW was a small but vocal radical
labor union that hoped to unify American workers
in “one big union,” irrespective of their particular
jobs, gender, or race. Its motto was “An injury to
one is an injury to all.” At its peak in 1923, the union
claimed 100,000 members, commonly known as
Wobblies, and could marshal the support of some
300,000 more, mostly workers on the docks and in
mines, lumbering, and textiles.
p643

18. Jane Addams and Fellow Pacifists, 1915 Addams cofounded the Women’s Peace
Party in Its pacifist platform was said to represent the views of the “mother half of
humanity.” Although the party initially attracted twenty-five thousand members,
America’s entry into the war two years later eroded popular support, since pacifist
internationalism became suspect as anti-American.
p644

19. IV. Progressivism in the Cities and States
Progressives scored most impressive gains in the cities:
Example of Galveston, Texas: appointed expert-staffed commissions to manage urban affairs
Other communities adopted the city-manager system
Urban reformers attacked: “slumlords,” juvenile delinquency, wide-open prostitution
They looked to German and English cities for examples

20. Progressivism in the Cities and States (cont.)
To clean up their water supplies
Light their streets
Run their trolley cars
They bubbled up to states, like Wisconsin:
Governor Robert M. (“Fighting Bob”) La Follette was an overbearing crusader and militant progressive Republican leader
He wrested considerable control from the crooked corporations and returned it to the people
He perfected a scheme for regulating public utilities

21. Progressivism in the Cities and States (cont.)
Other states marched toward progressivism:
Undertook to regulate railroads and trusts
Leaders were Hiram W. Johnson of California, Charles Evans Hughes of New York.

22. V. Progressive Women
Women were an indispensable part of the progressive army:
Critical focus was the settlement house movement—which offered a side door to public life:
They exposed middle-class women to the problems plaguing America’s cities:
Poverty, political corruption, and intolerable working and living conditions
Gave them skill and confidence to attack those evils

23. V. Progressive Women (cont.)
Women’s club movement provided a broader civic entryway for middle-class women
Women, whose place was seen in the home, defended their new activities as an extension—not a rejection—of their traditional roles:
Thus driven to moral and “maternal” issues
Agitated through organizations like the National Consumers League (1899) and the Women’s Trade Union League (1903), both in the Department of Labor
Campaigns for factory reform and temperance

24. V. Progressive Women (cont.)
Florence Kelley became the State of Illinois's first chief factory inspector:
Was one of the nation’s leading advocates for improved factory conditions
Took control of the newly founded National Consumers League
In the landmark case Muller v. Oregon (1908):
Louis D. Brandeis persuaded the Supreme Court to accept the constitutionality of laws protecting women workers by presenting evidence of the harmful effects of factory labor on women’s weaker bodies
Progressives hailed Brandeis’s achievement as a triumph over existing legal doctrines.

25. V. Progressive Women (cont.)
American welfare state focused more on protecting women and children rather than granting benefits to everyone
Setbacks:
1905, when the Supreme Court in Lochner v. New York invalidated a New York law establishing a ten-hour day for bakers
If laws regulating factories were not enforced they proved worthless—for example, a lethal fire (1911) at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company of New York
By 1917 thirty states had workers’ compensation laws.

26. The Wages of Negligence Officials review the charred remains of some of the
survivors of the catastrophic Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire in Outrage over this
calamity galvanized a generation of reformers to fight for better workplace safety rules.
p646

27. V. Progressive Women (cont.)
Corner saloons attracted the progressives:
Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) founded by Frances E. Willard
Some states and counties passed “dry “ laws to control, restrict, or abolish alcohol
Big cities were generally “wet” due to immigrants who were accustomed in the Old Country to the free flow of alcohol
By World War I (1914) nearly one-half lived in “dry” territory

28. Out of Work and the Reason Why, 1899 This temperance
propaganda from an 1899 magazine illustrates the
role of women in the temperance movement. Alcohol
abuse threatened the stability of the family, still predominantly
considered the “woman’s sphere” in the late nineteenth
century.
p647

29. VI. TR’s Square Deal for Labor
TR feared public interest was submerged in the progressive movement:
“Square Deal” for capital, labor, and the public at large:
His program embraced three C’s:
Control of the corporations
Consumer protection
Conservation of natural resources
First test came in the anthracite coal mines of Pennsylvania

30. VI. TR’s Square Deal for Labor (cont.)
Roosevelt urged Congress to create the new Department of Commerce and Labor (1903)—ten years later it was separated in two
The Bureau of Corporations was authorized to probe businesses engaged in interstate commerce:
This bureau helped to break stranglehold of monopoly
Cleared the road for the era of “trust-busting.”

31. VII. TR Corrals the Corporations
First—the railroads:
Hatch Act (1903) aimed at railroad rebate evil
Heavy fines could be imposed both on the railroads that gave rebates
And on the shippers that accepted them.
Hepburn Act (1906): free passes, with their hint of bribery, were severely restricted
Interstate Commerce Commission was expanded:
Included express companies, sleeping-car companies and pipelines
The Commission could nullify existing rates and stipulate maximum rates

32. VII. TR Corrals the Corporations (cont.)
Trusts—Roosevelt’s opposition:
Trusts was a fighting word in the progressive era
He believed they were here to stay:
Some were “good” trusts—public consciences
Some were “bad” trusts—lusted greedily for power
His first burst into headlines was an attack on the Northern Securities Company (1902):
A railroad holding company organized by financial titan J.P. Morgan and empire builder James J. Hill
They sought to achieve a virtual monopoly
TR challenged potentates of industrial aristocracy

33. VII. TR Corrals the Corporations (cont.)
The Supreme Court upheld TR’s antitrust suit and ordered Northern Securities Company to dissolve
The Northern Securities decision jolted Wall Street
Angered big business
Greatly enhanced Roosevelt’s reputation as a trust smasher
TR initiated over forty legal proceedings against giant monopolies:
Supreme Court (1905) declared the beef trust illegal
The heavy fist of justice fell upon monopolists controlling sugar, fertilizer, harvesters, and other key products
TR’s real purpose was symbolic: to prove conclusively that the government, not private business, ruled the country

34. VII. TR Corrals the Corporations (cont.)
He believed in regulating, not fragmenting, the big business combines
He hoped to make the business leaders more amenable to federal regulation
He never swung his trust-crushing stick with maximum force
Industrial behemoths more “tame” at the end of TR’s reign
His successor, William Howard Taft:
Actually “busted” more trusts than TR
Taft launched a suit against U.S. Steel (1911) but it caused a political reaction by TR.

35. Roosevelt Tames the Trusts Legend to the contrary,
Roosevelt did not attack all trusts indiscriminately. Rather,
he pursued a few high-profile cases against a handful of
corporate giants, in order to “tame” other businesses into
accepting government regulation.
p649

36. VIII. Caring for the Consumer
Roosevelt backed a noteworthy measure (1906) that benefited both corporations and consumers:
The meat packing industry called for safer canned products
Caused by Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle (1906)
It intended to focused on the plight of workers
But instead appalled the public with his description of disgustingly unsanitary preparation of food products
It described Chicago’s slaughterhouses.

37. VIII. Caring for the Consumer (cont.)
Roosevelt induced Congress to pass:
The Meat Inspection Act (1906):
Decreed that the preparation of meat shipped over state lines would be subject to federal inspection from corral to can
The Pure Food and Drug Act (1906):
Designed to prevent the adulteration and mislabeling of foods and pharmaceuticals

38. IX. Earth Control Steps to conservation of US natural resources:
Desert Land Act (1877):
Whereby the federal government sold arid land cheaply on the condition that the purchaser irrigate the thirsty soil within three years.
Forest Reserve Act (1891):
Authorized the president to set aside public forests as national parks and other reserves
Some 46 million acres were rescued.

39. IX. Earth Control (cont.)
Carey Act (1894):
Distributed federal land to the states on condition that it be irrigated and settled.
New day for the history of conservation dawned with Roosevelt (see “Makers of America: The Environmentalists,” pp )
He seized the banner of conservation leadership
Congress responded with the landmark Newlands Act (1902):
Washington was authorized to collect money from the sale of public land in western states
Use the funds for the development of irrigation projects.

40. IX. Earth Control (cont.)
The Roosevelt Dam, constructed on the Arizona’s Salt River, was appropriately dedicated by Roosevelt (1911)
TR worked to preserve the nation’s shrinking forests:
He set aside in federal reserves some 125 million acres
He earmarked million of acres of coal deposits, and water resources useful for irrigation and power
Conservation and reclamation was Roosevelt’s most enduring tangible achievement
The disappearance of the frontier—was believed to be the source of national characteristics as individualism and democracy

41. IX. Earth Control (cont.)
Organizations and societies created:
Result of Jack London’s Call of the Wild (1903)
Outdoor-oriented Boy Scouts of America
Audubon Society to save wild native birds
The Sierra Club (1906) dedicated to preserve the wildness of the western landscape
Losses:
(1913) when San Francisco built a dam in the Hetch Hetchy Valley

42. IX. Earth Control (cont.)
It caused a deep division between conservationists that persists to the present day
Roosevelt’s chief forester, Gifford Pinchot, believed that “wilderness was waste”
Pinchot and TR wanted to use the nation’s natural endowment intelligently—thus two battles:
One against greedy commercial interests that abused nature
And against romantic preservationists who simply were “woodman-spare-that-tree” sentimentality
A national policy was developed of “multiple-use resource management”
Sought to combine recreation, sustained-yield logging, watershed protection, and summer stock grazing on the same expanse of federal land

43. IX. Earth Control (cont.)
Westerners learned how to work with the federal management of natural resources:
Through new agencies, such as the Forest Service and the Bureau of Reclamation
They worked with federal conservation programs devoted to the rational, large-scale, and long-term use of natural resources
Single-person enterprises were shouldered aside, in the interest of efficiency, by the combined bulk of big business and big government

44. Sausage Making, ca. 1906
White-jacketed inspectors like
those on the right made some
progress in cleaning up the
septic slaughterhouses after the
passage of the Meat Inspection
Act in 1906.
p650

45. High Point for Conservation Roosevelt and famed
naturalist John Muir visit Glacier Point, on the rim of
Yosemite Valley, California. In the distance is Yosemite Falls
a few feet behind Roosevelt is a sheer drop of 3,254 feet.
p651

46. Gifford Pinchot Going Trout Fishing The father of the
modern Forest Service, Pinchot championed the concept of
“rational use” as the guiding principle of the federal
government’s natural resource management policies.
p652

47. Lake Powell, Utah Named for the famed explorer John
Wesley Powell and formed by one of the several dams on the
Colorado River, Lake Powell has been a focus of intense
controversy. It drowned the spectacularly beautiful Glen Canyon
but created recreational facilities for countless Americans.
p653

48. Earth Day, 1999 Some fifteen hundred schoolchildren
gathered on the shoreline near Los Angeles to participate in a
beach cleanup project. The “O” here represents planet earth
the children inside it represent the North and South American
continents.
p653

49. Loggers in the State of Washington,
1912 It took the sweat and skill of
many men to conquer a giant Douglas
fir like this one. An ax-wielding
“sniper” had rounded the edges of this
log so that a team of oxen, driven by a
“bullwhacker,” could more easily drag
it out of the woods along a “skid road.”
Skid road (sometimes corrupted as skid
row) was also a name for the often sleazy
sections of logging towns,
where loggers spent their time in the
off-season.
p654

50. Flooding the Hetch Hetchy Valley to
Quench San Francisco’s Thirst
Preservationists led by John Muir
battled for seven years—unsuccessfully—
to prevent the building of a
dam that would turn this spectacular
glacial valley in Yosemite National Park
into the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, which
would provide San Francisco with
water. Muir observed, “Dam Hetch
Hetchy! As well dam for water-tanks
the people’s cathedrals and churches,
for no holier temple has ever been
consecrated by the heart of man.”
Today environmentalists are campaigning
to restore the Hetch Hetchy
Valley by removing the dam.
p654

51. The Machine and Nature These hardy sightseers at the
Grand Canyon in 1911 ironically and probably unwittingly
foreshadowed the mass tourism that arrived with the
dawning automobile age. Soon millions of motorized
Americans would regularly flee from the cities and suburbs
to “get away from it all” in wilderness sites increasingly
overrun by their fellow refugees from “civilization.”
p655

52. X. The “Roosevelt Panic” of 1907
Roosevelt’s second term:
He called for regulating corporations, taxing incomes, and protecting workers
He declared (1904) under no circumstances would he be a candidate for a third term
He suffered a sharp setback (1907) when a panic descended on Wall Street:
There were frightened “runs” on banks, suicides, and criminal indictments against speculators
The financial world hastened to blame Roosevelt
Conservatives called him “Theodore the Meddler”

53. X. The “Roosevelt Panic” of 1907 (cont.)
Results of the 1907 panic:
Paved the way for long-overdue fiscal reforms
Precipitating a currency shortage—showed the need for a more elastic medium of exchange
Congress (1908) responded by passing the Aldrich-Vreeland Act:
It authorized national banks to issue emergency currency backed by various kinds of collateral
The path was smoothed for the momentous Federal Reserve Act of 1913 (see p. 665).

54. XI. The Rough Rider Thunders Out
Roosevelt in 1908:
Could easily have won a second presidential nomination and won the election
However, he felt bound in by impulsive postelection promise of 1904
He sought a successor who would carry out “my policies”:
His choice was William Henry Taft, secretary of war and a mild progressive
He often served upon Roosevelt’s absence

55. XI. The Rough Rider Thunders Out (cont.)
In 1908 he “steamrollered” to push Taft’s nomination on the first ballot
The Democrats nominated twice-beaten William Jennings Bryan
The campaign of 1908:
Taft—“Boy Orator”—tried to don the progressive Roosevelt mantle
Taft read cut-and-dried speech
The majority chose stability with Roosevelt-endorsed Taft, who polled 321 electoral votes to 162 for Bryan
The Socialists amassed 420,793 votes for Eugene V. Debs (see pp ).

56. XI. The Rough Rider Thunders Out (cont.)
Roosevelt branded by his adversaries:
As a wild-eyed radical
Had a reputation as an eater of errant industrialists
The number of laws he inspired were not in proportion to the amount of noise he made
Often under attack from the reigning business lords:
But they knew they had a friend in the White House
He should first and foremost be remembered as the cowboy who tamed the bucking bronco of adolescent capitalism, thus ensuring it a long adult life.

57. XI. The Rough Rider Thunders Out (cont.)
Roosevelt’s achievements and popularity:
His youthfulness appealed to the young of all ages
He served as a political lightning rod:
To protect capitalists against popular indignation—against socialism
He strenuously sought the middle road between unbridled individualism and paternalist collectivism

58. XI. The Rough Rider Thunders Out (cont.)
His conservation crusade:
Tried to mediate between romantic wilderness preservationists
And the rapacious resource-predators
Was probably his most typical and his most lasting achievement
Other contributions of Roosevelt:
Greatly enlarged the power/prestige of the presidency
Helped shape the progressive movement
Opened the eyes of Americans to the fact that they shared the world with other nations.

59. Baby, Kiss Papa Good-bye Theodore Roosevelt leaves
his baby, “My Policies,” in the hands of his chosen
successor, William Howard Taft. Friction between Taft and
Roosevelt would soon erupt, however, prompting
Roosevelt to return to politics and challenge Taft for the
presidency.
p656

60. XII. Taft: A Round Peg in a Square Hole
William Howard Taft:
Had established an enviable reputation as a lawyer and judge
Had been a trusted administrator under Roosevelt
Suffered from lethal political handicaps:
Had not of the arts of a dashing political leader
He recoiled from the clamor of controversy, generally adopted an attitude of passivity toward Congress
Was a poor judge of public opinion

61. XIII. Taft: A Round Peg in a Square Hole (cont.)
His candor made him a chronic victim of “foot-in-mouth” disease
Was a mild progressive, but at heart was wedded to the status quo rather than to change
His cabinet did not contain a single representative of the party’s “insurgent” wing

62. Ex-President Theodore Roosevelt Watches President Taft Struggle with the
Demands of Government, 1910
p657

63. XIII. The Dollar Goes Abroad as a Diplomat
Taft’s foreign policy:
Use the lever of American investments to boost American political interests abroad—dollar diplo-macy:
Encouraged Wall Street to invest surplus dollars into foreign areas of strategic concern to the U.S.
Especially the Far East and the Panama Canal
Thus the bankers would strengthen American defenses and foreign policies—bring prosperity to the homeland
The almighty dollar supplanted the big stick.

64. XIII. The Dollar Goes Abroad as a Diplomat (cont.)
Foreign areas of interest to Taft:
China’s Manchuria was Taft’s most spectacular effort
The new trouble spot of revolution-riddled Caribbean
Wall Street was encouraged to pump dollars into the financial vacuums in Honduras and Haiti to keep foreign funds out
Sporadic disorders in palm-fronded Cuba, Honduras, and the Dominican Republic brought American forces to restore order and protect American investments
2500 marines (1912) landed in Nicaragua
They remained in Nicaragua for 30 years (see Map 29.2 on p. 668).

65. XIV. Taft the Trustbuster
Taft managed to gain some fame as a smasher of monopolies:
Taft brought 90 suits against trusts during his 4 years to 44 for Roosevelt in 7 ½ years
Most judicial actions came in 1911 when the Supreme Court ordered the dissolution of the mighty Standard Oil Company:
It was judged to be a combination in restraint of trade in violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890.

66. XIV. Taft the Trustbuster (cont.)
The Supreme Court handed down its famous “rule of reason”:
Doctrine—only those combinations that “unreasonably” restrained trade were illegal
This action ripped a huge hole in the government’s antitrust net
1911: antitrust suit against the U.S. Steel Corporation
This initiative infuriated Roosevelt
Once Roosevelt’s protégé, President Taft was increasingly taking on the role of his antagonist.

67. XV. Taft Splits the Republican Party
Progressive members of the Republican Party who favored lowering tariffs
Thought they had a friend in Taft
The House passed a moderately reductive bill
Senate reactionaries tacked on hundreds of upward tariff revisions
Much to the dismay of Taft supporters he signed the Payne-Aldrich Bill
Taft called it “the best bill that the Republican Party ever passed.”

68. XV. Taft Splits the Republican Party (cont.)
Taft also proved to be a dedicated conservationist:
Established the Bureau of Mines to control mineral resources
One praiseworthy accomplishment was the Ballinger-Pinchot quarrel (1910):
Secretary of the Interior Richard Ballinger opened public lands in Wyoming, Montana, Alaska to corpor-ate development
Ballinger was sharply criticized by Gifford Pinchot, chief of the Agriculture Department’s Division of Forestry and a stalwart Rooseveltian

69. XV. Taft Splits the Republican Party (cont.)
Taft dismissed Pinchot—insubordination charges
Caused rift between Roosevelt and Taft
The reformist wing of the Republican party was now up in arms
Taft was being pushed into the stand-pat Old Guard
1910 the Grand Old Party was split wide-open, largely due to the clumsiness of Taft
Roosevelt returned to New York and then stirred up a tempest by stumping at Osawatomie, Kansas with a flaming speech
His doctrine, “New Nationalism,” urged the national government to increase its power to remedy economic and social abuses

70. XV. Taft Splits the Republican Party (cont.)
Results of the tensions between Taft and Roosevelt and the Republican Party:
Republicans lost badly in congressional elections (1910)
Democrats emerged with 228 seats, leaving the once-dominant Republicans with only 161
A socialist representative, Austrian-born Victor L. Berger, was elected from Milwaukee
Republicans, by virtue of holdovers, retained the Senate, 51 to 41.

71. XVI. The Taft-Roosevelt Rupture
Now there was a full-fledged revolt:
1911: the National Progressive Republican League was formed
Fiery, white-maned Senator La Follette (Wisconsin) became the leading Republican presidential candidate
February 1912, Roosevelt formally wrote to 7 state governors that he was willing to accept the Republican nomination
His reasoning—the third-term tradition applied to three consecutive elective terms.

72. XVI. The Taft-Roosevelt Rupture (cont.)
Roosevelt, the Rough Rider, came clattering into the presidential primaries, pushing La Follette aside
Taft-Roosevelt explosion was near in June 1912, at the Republican convention in Chicago
Rooseveltites were about 100 delegates short of winning the nomination
They challenged the right of some 250 Taft delegates to be seated
Most of these contests were arbitrarily settled for Taft
Roosevelt refused to quit the game. Having tasted for the first time the bitter cup of defeat, now on fire, led a third-party crusade.

73. p660