Progressive Party (1924)

Like the progressive–bull moose party of Theodore Roosevelt a decade earlier, the Progressive Party that emerged in the mid-1920s was a reform effort led by a Republican. Wisconsin senator Robert M. La Follette led the new Progressive Party, a separate entity from the Bull Moosers. Unlike the middle and upper-class Roosevelt party of the previous decade, the La Follette party had its greatest appeal among farmers and organized labor.

Robert M. La Follette (right) gives his son Bob advice before the Progressive Party's 1924 convention in Cleveland. Library of Congress

The La Follette Progressive Party grew out of the Conference for Progressive Political Action (CPPA), a coalition formed in 1922 of railway union leaders and a remnant of the Bull Moose effort. The socialist party joined the coalition the following year. Throughout 1923, the Socialists [Page 491]and labor unions argued, though, over whether their coalition should form a third party, with the Socialists in favor and the labor unions against it. They finally agreed to run an independent presidential candidate, La Follette, in the 1924 election but not to field candidates at the state and local levels. La Follette was given the power to choose his vice presidential running mate and selected Montana senator Burton K. Wheeler, a Democrat.

Opposition to corporate monopolies was the major feature of the La Follette campaign, although the party advocated various other reforms, particularly aimed at farmers and workers, which had been proposed earlier by either the Populist Party of the 1890s or Bull Moosers. But the Progressive Party itself was a major issue in the 1924 campaign, as the Republicans attacked the alleged radicalism of the party.

Although La Follette had its endorsement, the American Federation of Labor (AFL) provided minimal support. The basic strength of the Progressives, like that of the Populists in the 1890s, derived from agrarian voters west of the Mississippi River. La Follette received 4,832,532 votes (16.6 percent of the popular vote) but carried just one state, his native Wisconsin. When La Follette died in 1925, the party collapsed as a national force. It was revived by La Follette's sons on a statewide level in Wisconsin in the mid-1930s.