One of the most fascinating decisions Jane Addams ever made was to enter the fray of partisan politics and back Theodore Roosevelt’s Progressive Party bid for the Presidency in 1912. She had endorsed political candidates before, but her participation as a delegate to the Progressive Party Convention in Chicago, her role in seconding Roosevelt’s nomination, and her stumping for and writing of a series of articles in support of the Progressive Party ticket and its platform was historic. It was a bold move for Addams. It raised many eyebrows. And although there is no evidence that it jeopardized Hull-House’s patronage, it went decidedly against the general philosophy of reform and charitable organizations whose livelihoods depended upon support from across the political spectrum.
When she stood on the stage of the Coliseum in Chicago at the Progressive Party Convention on August 7, 1912, Jane Addams explained to the cheering crowd why she supported Roosevelt and the Progressive Party:
I rise to second the nomination, stirred by the splendid platform adopted by this convention.
“Measures of industrial amelioration, demands for social justice, long discussed by small groups in charity conferences and economic associations, have here been considered in a great national convention and are at last thrust into the stern arena of political action.
A great party has pledged itself to the protection of children, to the care of the aged, to the relief of overworked girls, to the safeguarding of burdened men. Committed to these humane undertakings, it is inevitable that such a party should appeal to women, should seek to draw upon the great reservoir of their moral energy so long undesired and unutilized in practical politics—one the corollary of the other; a program of human welfare, the necessity for women’s participation.
We ratify this platform not only because it represents our earnest convictions and formulates our high hopes, but because it pulls upon our faculties and calls us to definite action. We find it a prophecy that democracy shall not be actually realized until no group of our people—certainly not 10,000,000 so sadly in need of reassurance—shall fail to bear the responsibilities of self-government and that no class of evils shall lie beyond redress.
The new party has become the American exponent of a world-wide movement toward juster social conditions, a movement which the United States, lagging behind other great nations, has been unaccountably slow to embody in political action.
I second the nomination of Theodore Roosevelt because he is one of the few men in our public life who has been responsive to the social appeal and who has caught the significance of the modern movement. Because of that, because the program will require a leader of invincible courage, of open mind, of democratic sympathies, one endowed with power to interpret the common man and to identify himself with the common lot, I heartily second the nomination.”
The following day, Roosevelt sent a long telegram to Addams:
“I wished to see you in person to thank you for seconding me. I do it now instead. I prized your action not only because of what you are and stand for, but because of what it symbolized for the new movement. In this great national convention starting the new party women have thereby been shown to have their place to fill precisely as men have, and on an absolute equality. It is idle now to argue whether women can play their part in politics, because in this convention we saw the accomplished fact and more-over the women who have actively participated in this work of launching the new party represent all that we are most proud to associate with American womanhood. …”
The week was a whirlwind, but Addams was, perhaps surprisingly, enjoying herself. She was all in on the campaign, writing her sister Alice Haldeman on August 9:
“You may have seen by the papers that I have become a full fledged ‘bull moose’ and this morning accepted a place on the National Committee. I am sending you a copy of speech of acceptance which really explains my attitude better than anything else does.”
On the surface, Jane Addams’s quick jump into partisan politics made a great deal of sense. The Progressive Party’s Platform was in alignment with her reform work and her values. In a series of syndicated articles she published in the fall campaign, she explained in great detail to the American public why the Progressive Party was right for women, workers, immigrants, and Black Americans. In one of those articles, Addams attempted to explain her conversion to partisan politics:
“When I try to write down the steps by which I became a Progressive, I am inclined to trace them first to the gradual discovery that philanthropic effort everywhere, is merging into civic effort. In fact the line between philanthropy and politics is so constantly changing that it is very difficult to know when the given step has been taken, which carried one from the first field into the second.”
Addams had come to understand that philanthropic work was, indeed, political work. By necessity, real reform required legislative force. Her alliance with the Progressive Party was rooted in that belief and, in her eyes, this new national political party stood soundly upon a foundation of reform. However, could Addams have supported the Progressive Party’s platform without jumping in with both feet? What made her go all in on Roosevelt, a man she had just two months prior called “wabbly” on woman suffrage? She had never before been involved in a presidential campaign. What was different in August 1912?
I cannot get into Jane Addams’s head, but I believe that the extensive woman suffrage campaigning Addams had done all spring in Kansas and Wisconsin inspired her decision to become a “Bull Moose.” She was frustrated and losing patience. As she wrote in an article in The Survey on June 1, 1912:
“The comfortable citizen possessing a vote won for him in a previous generation, who is so often profoundly disturbed by the cry of ‘Votes for Women,’ seldom connects the present attempt to extend the franchise with those former efforts, as the results of which, he himself became a member of the enfranchised class. Still less does the average voter reflect that in order to make self-government a great instrument in the hands of those who crave social justice, it must ever be built up anew in relation to changing experiences, and that unless this readjustment constantly takes place self-government itself is placed in jeopardy.”
It is true that when Theodore Roosevelt agreed to support an equal suffrage plank in the Progressive Party Platform and to personally support woman suffrage, Addams was willing to lend her reputation, her writing talent, and her valuable time to the presidential campaign. She recognized this historic opportunity to be part of a new reformed-minded national party that had a chance to win the election. Behind a seasoned politician like Theodore Roosevelt, the Progressive Party would put the issues she cared about most deeply on the national stage. The party platform included fifteen distinct social justice issues that Addams had championed, from the prohibition of child labor to support for the eight-hour workday to the favor of labor organization. Most critically, however, was the Progressive Party’s pledge: “to the task of securing equal suffrage to men and women alike.” For Addams, the plank of equal suffrage was more than icing on the cake, it was the imperative to ensure all the rest of the party’s aims. And so, even as she could not vote, she became a political animal, a dedicated Bull Moose for the presidential campaign of 1912.
It is also true that Addams surprised herself by the excitement the campaign roused for her. A day at Progressive Party headquarters in New York City in late September, making campaign telephone calls, was particularly fun for her. To put ala Teddy, Addams was deee-lighted to be a Bull Moose. En route to Indianapolis for a campaign speech, she wrote her sister on October 14: “I am quite enjoying my campaigning and especially my trip [to] N.Y.”
In addition to spending her summer vacation in Maine writing campaign articles, Addams served as chair of a Progressive party women’s committee in Chicago and as a member of the Cook County Progressive Committee. She delivered speeches and attended campaign rallies in Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New York, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota and Wisconsin. She wrapped up a western campaign swing in Kansas City on November 4 and was back home at Hull-House for election day.
On the night of the election, when the results were in, Roosevelt wrote Addams from Oyster Bay:
“Now, my dear Miss Addams, I wish to tell you how very much your support in this campaign has meant to me personally. We have fought a good fight; we have kept the faith; we have gone down in disaster. Yet I certainly feel that it would have been wrong for us not to have fought exactly as we did. At any rate, you may be sure of one thing: I shall conscientiously do my best so to act in the future that you shall not feel regret that you supported me in this campaign.”
Jane Addams had no regrets. She wrote Roosevelt on November 20 that she hoped to see him the following week at a Progressive Party Meeting in New York City:
“Perhaps I may have an opportunity to tell you then the tremendous impulse the campaign has given to social reform measures in which I have been interested for many years, but which have never before seemed to become so possible of fulfilment as at the present moment. I had never dared hope that within my lifetime thousands of people would so eagerly participate in their discussion. I am sure you have been in a large measure responsible for this outcome, and I shall hope to have a moment to discuss the subject with you in New York.”
Theodore Roosevelt had lost the election, but Jane Addams had had one hell of a ride.
Results of the Presidential Election: November 5, 1912
|
Woodrow Wilson |
Theodore Roosevelt |
William Howard Taft |
Eugene V. Debs |
Progressive Party Campaign Articles by Jane Addams (all available in the Jane Addams Digital Edition):
The Progressive Party and Safeguards for Working Girls, August-September, 1912
The Progressive Party and the Protection of Immigrants, August-September 1912
The Progressive Party and Woman Suffrage, September 1912
The Progressive Party and Organized Labor, September 1912
The Progressive Party and the Disinherited, August-September, 1912
The Progressive Party and the Negro, November 1912
The Steps by Which I Became a Progressive, September-October 1912
My Experiences as a Progressive Delegate, November 1912
Be like Jane Addams, phonebank for your candidate. Get informed. Get involved. And don’t miss out on the opportunity Jane Addams did not have in 1912, VOTE!
Other Sources: Lewis L. Gould, Four Hats in the Ring: The 1912 Election and the Birth of Modern American Politics (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2008); Sidney M. Milkis, Theodore Roosevelt, the Progressive Party, and the Transformation of American Democracy (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2009); “‘Lady Moose’ Ready for Real Campaign,” The Inter Ocean (Chicago), Aug. 13, 1912, p. 4; “Progressive Women Campaigners in Town; Miss Jane Addams at Bull Moose Headquarters,” New-York Tribune, Sep. 26, 1912, 7; Jane Addams Diary, Statement on Theodore Roosevelt, May 11, 1912; Votes for Women and Other Votes, June 1, 1912; Progressive Party Pamphlet, ca. August 5, 1912; Nominating Speech for Theodore Roosevelt, August 7, 1912 (version published in the Congressional Record, 62nd Cong., 2nd sess. (Appendix), vol. 48, pt. 12, 564-65); Theodore Roosevelt to Jane Addams, August 8, 1912; Jane Addams to Sarah Alice Addams Haldeman, August 9, 1912; Theodore Roosevelt to Jane Addams, August 9, 1912; Jane Addams to Harold LeClair Ickes, September 27, 1912; Jane Addams to Sarah Alice Addams Haldeman, October 14, 1912, Theodore Roosevelt to Jane Addams, November 5, 1912; all in Jane Addams Digital Edition.
Note: This post is the first in a six-part series discussing Jane Addams’s political alliances and engagement in presidential elections from 1912 to 1932.
Stacy Lynn is Associate Editor of the Jane Addams Papers Project.