Theodore Roosevelt Typed Letter Signed - Amazing Progressive Party Content


Theodore Roosevelt Typed Letter Signed - Amazing Progressive Party Content

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Theodore Roosevelt Typed Letter Signed - Amazing Progressive Party Content:
$5500.00


26th President. Two-page typed letter signed (TLS) \"Theodore Roosevelt\", February 21, 1913, 7x9, The Outlook stationery, sent to Henry M. Wallace (Detroit businessman and member of the National Progressive Committee for Michigan), in full:

Your two letters have just come.  It is now Thursday so it is too late if your convention was held this week.  It is almost impossible for me, with the mass of mail I have, and the very scanty means of keeping up with it, to respond to requests for letters unless I am given ample warning in advance.  Moreover I would not wish to send two letters to be read right after one another on the same subject.  If , however, the convention is for next week, I will be glad to have you quote the rest of this letter.

The Progressive Party has come to stay.  I am as confident as I can be that there will be no compromise, bargain, or consolidation with either of the old parties or old bosses.  I have no question that there are millions of men [and women] in the Republican Party who are progressive in principle.  But just so long as they remain in the Republican Party they doom themselves to impotence.  That party by its actions in June last year, when it stole the machinery of the party from the rank and file, and by its conduct now in putting Mr. Taft forward as a leader and in keeping the same old leaders in control, has shown the utter impossibility of the Progressives ever again amalgamating with it.  We have in our ranks ex-Democrats no less than ex-Republicans.  We are bound to the one just as much as to the other.  Men like Ben Lindsey of Denver, and John Parker of Louisiana, are entitled to the same weight in our counsels as Governor Johnson of California and Governor Bass of New Hampshire.  Let the Progressive Republicans come over to us.  We will welcome them exactly as we will welcome the Progressive Democrats but to ask us to go into either the Republican or the Democratic parties is to ask us to put on our necks the yoke which we have cast off, and against any such proposal I most heartily protest.

TR founded the Progressive Party after his failed attempt to garner the Republican nomination in 1912.  Although Roosevelt had picked William H. Taft as his successor as President, TR was displeased with Taft\'s policies and therefore entered the 1912 primaries.  He overwhelmingly won them but Taft carried the convention spurred by machine men controlled by the pro-Taft conservatives.  Roosevelt, who had threatened to leave a Republican Party that denied him the presidential nomination, now did so, announcing to his supporters that he wished them to wash their hands of a corrupt convention and follow him into a new political organization.

Thus was formed the Progressive Party, which duly nominated Roosevelt as its 1912 standard bearer. TR’s philosophy for the Progressive Party was based on belief in a strong government to regulate industry and protect the middle and working classes. The party’s platform called for women’s suffrage, social welfare and child protection legislation, conservation, workers’ compensation, laws enabling labor to strike, farm relief, required health insurance, new inheritance and income taxes, and improvement of inland waterways. In the election, Roosevelt had the satisfaction of outpolling Taft in both the popular vote and electoral vote, but the split engendered in the Republican vote helped Woodrow Wilson to win the presidency.

After the 1912 loss, the Republican Party sought to bring Roosevelt’s supporters back into the fold. TR saw his mission as the upholding of the Progressive Party’s ideals even as he sought to discourage the splintering of the party itself.  This belief is clearly evident in the letter here, written just months after the election. 

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Theodore Roosevelt Typed Letter Signed - Amazing Progressive Party Content:
$5500.00

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