Third Party Poopers

For this week's episode of S̄ī̀ s̄ib pædback Saturday, let's take a look at third-party options in the 1920 presidential election for those voters disenchanted with the choice between the pair of Buckeyes heading up the major party tickets.

"A Question" by Burt Thomas in Detroit News, June, 1920

For the fifth time, the Socialist Party of America nominated as its presidential candidate International Workers of the World founder Eugene V. Debs. Burt Thomas's cartoon, above, was drawn before the Democratic National Convention, when red-baiting Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer was still in the running for that party's presidential nomination.

"There Are Worse Places Than a Front Porch" by Clifford Berryman in Washington (DC) Evening Star, October 11, 1920

Debs would garner 913,664 votes in November, even though he was stuck in the Moundsville Federal Penitentiary in West Virginia, serving a ten-year sentence for sedition on account of antiwar passages in a speech he had given in Canton, Ohio in 1917. Berryman here compares Debs's campaign with the lackadaisical "front porch" campaign of Warren Harding.

"Now It's Triplets" by Billy Ireland in Columbus Dispatch, July, 2020

After they had been turned down by William Jennings Bryan, The Prohibition Party nominated Ohio minister Aaron Sherman Watkins as its presidential nominee. Watkins thus was the third Buckeye on those November ballots where the Prohibition Party appeared.

With Prohibition already the law of the land, enshrined in the Constitution and confirmed by the Supreme Court, Watkins came in fifth in November with 189,339 votes, the poorest showing for the Prohibition party since 1884.

"The Common Nurse" by Winsor McCay in New York American, July, 1920

As early as January 1919, a group calling itself the Committee of 48 (the name referred to the number of states then in the Union) began organizing toward nominating a leftist candidate for president. The Republicans were committed to a conservative agenda of high tariffs on imports and reducing taxes on the rich; yet while the Democratic platform promised to continue liberal policies of President Wilson's administration, they too were beholden to moneyed interests. "Our country is menaced," the Committee of 48 announced, "by the growing power of an autocratic and reactionary minority at home."

"All Aboard" by John Knott in Dallas News, July, 1920

The committee's manifesto, "Revolution or Reconstruction? A Call to Arms" vowed, "It is the purpose of the Committee of Forty-eight to summon from all parts of the country the leaders of its liberal thought and of its forward-looking citizens, to meet in conference. We hope that out of this assemblage of the scattered forces of Americanism will come a flexible statement of principles and methods that will permit effective cooperation with organized Labor and Agricultural workers in the tasks of social reconstruction."

"Look Who's Here" by Bob Satterfield with Edmund Vance Cooke for NEA, July, 1920

A list of those liberal policies included public ownership of transportation, stock yards, grain elevators, public utilities, coal, oil, natural gas, mineral deposits, timber, and water works. The "Forty-eighters" platform called for "Equal economic, political, and legal rights for all, irrespective of sex or color. The immediate and absolute restoration of free speech, free press, peaceable assembly, and all civil rights guaranteed by the Constitution."

"The New Party" by Harry Westerman in Ohio State Journal, July, 1920

Prominent leaders of the group were J.A.H. Hopkins and attorney Dudley Field Malone; other members of note were historian Will Durant and Rush Limbaugh Sr., grandfather of the conservative radio asshole.

"Plenty of Assistant Cooks" by Ted Brown in Chicago Daily News, July, 1920

The Forty-Eighters convened in Chicago on July 10 with the aim of merging with the Labor Party convention scheduled there on the twelfth. They were joined by Single Tax advocates, who pushed for raising public revenue from land and privileges rather than from income and sales. Other participants included the Northwest Farmers' National Council, the Triple Alliance of the Northwest, the Consumers' League, and the socialist Non-Partisan League (off on a tangent about which I would like to go next Saturday. Stay tuned I hope you will).

"Now All Together for Victory" by Clifford Berryman in Washington Evening Star, July 12, 1920

The merger got off to a smooth enough start. On July 13, the Forty-Eighters, Non-Partisans, and Single Taxers voted to merge with the Labor Party. Delegates at the Labor Party convention voted overwhelmingly to accept them in, and the Farmer-Labor Party was born.

"The Frog's Banquet..." by Jay N. "Ding" Darling in New York Tribune, July 16, 1920

But the harmony was short-lived once everyone sat down to work out a party platform. Derided by Illinois Federation of Labor president John Walker as "plutocratic philanthropists, lawyers and professional men who endeavor to solve the problems of the working people without themselves being members of that class," the leadership of the Forty-Eighters found themselves outnumbered by the more radical elements of the new party; even its name was a rejection of Committee of 48 desires.

"Not Conservative Enough for Me" by Clifford Berryman in Washington Evening Star, July 17, 1920

The very next day, the Single Taxers pulled out from the new party over what appeared to be the likelihood of it nominating Bob LaFollette for president, and the rejection of a single tax plank in the party platform. Adopting their own single-plank platform, the Single Taxers nominated Robert Macauley of Philadelphia instead. (He, and running mate Richard Barnum of — wait for it — Ohio would get a measly 5,750 votes in November. By comparison, even American Party candidate James Ferguson, who was on the ballot only in Texas, got 47,968.)

The remaining Farmer-Labor delegates, however, insisted on a party platform LaFollette could not accept: in favor of the League of Nations, Irish independence, recognition of Soviet Russia, and nationalization of all industry and raw materials. He declared that he would not be their candidate. With that, the Forty-Eighters, save for a few western members, also quit the party.

"Getting Nowhere" by John H. Cassell in New York Evening World, by July 23, 1920

John Cassel here makes reference to the America's Cup race underway at the time.

Assessing the damage and answering IFL president Walker, LaFollette confidante Gilbert Roe told the press, "There isn't a more intolerant intellectual in this country than the labor leader is. You must understand you are not going to dictate to the intellectuals any more than the intellectuals are going to dictate to you."

The Forty-Eighters recognized that running their own candidate for President was pointless, but they lent their support to a handful of successful midwestern candidates in 1922 and LaFollette's 1924 presidential candidacy on the Progressive Party ticket.

"The Third Party" by Edward Gale in Los Angeles Times, July/August, 1920

Meanwhile, the Farmer-Labor party drafted Utah lawyer Parley P. Christensen as its standard bearer in the 1920 election, and he pulled a fairly respectable 265,398 votes in November. Would you like to guess which state his running mate was from?