Crimson Banners Fly: The Rise of the American Left Revisited

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Washington Herald Article on Eugene Debs, May 14th, 1920 - Source: LoC

The sentiment of the delegates, freely expressed, never flew past the executive committee. Convention results were predetermined, always. We had had an organization built up enough to override persistent squabbling from the technocrats and lessen the odds of an uncontrollable power struggle. There can be no doubt that all of it, the ceremony in full, was calculated beforehand. It is easy to flash back with nostalgia and reverence on the early days for that reason. Not all was tranquil, but we knew which direction the wind was blowing. The great majority of the membership was not about to repudiate the Third International any more than they would permit Hillquit's motion and lead the American movement into the ditch.

In the end, the calculations meant nothing: When that madman waved his gun around, he saw to that. All order unraveled and utter confusion and unruliness prevailed, at first, putting to the grave any chance of a serene ceremony. It risked spiraling the party to a dark and dismal place. That man would have grinned all the while. But we did not stumble. We recovered, and in a big way. The loss hit us hard, but the NEC refused to consider an indefinite postponement.
The conference reconvened and a full day was dedicated to the legacy of Eugene Debs. The members, delegates, staff, everyone in the halls, somber with tears in our eyes, looked upon our fallen comrade's spirit and paid due tribute to the mainstay of Labor and American Socialism.

         James Patrick Cannon, House of the Red Sun, 1956

Somewhat recovered from the shock and stun of the paralyzing events of May 12th, the NEC officially reopened the National Convention of the Socialist Party the next morning with stricter security protocols and limitations on non-members. As explained by Cannon's testimony, the speeches and proclamations recited on that day were all devoted to the memory of Eugene Victor Debs. Even if for a moment, the delegates tossed aside their political differences and banded together for a common purpose. Spokespersons reflected on the triumphs of the Labor Movement in the time of 'Gene Debs, from his radicalization in the aftermath of the Pullman Strike to his role in the founding of the IWW. Secretary Wagenknecht provided the lengthiest and more conventional memoriam address followed immediately by a brief yet personal statement from Eugene's younger brother, Theodore Debs, which was read aloud by Indiana delegate John Howard. Yet, the stirring speech offered by one Seymour Stedman, a civil liberties attorney and former two-term Illinois representative, proved instrumental in rebounding and redirecting the purpose of the Socialist convention.

The former congressman too echoed Debs' milestones and celebrated his fallen friend's accomplishments in that regard, but he made certain to do so whilst linking Debs to the greater movements for freedom, peace, and socialism. "Terre Haute hadn't birthed a revolutionary. The change-makers and doers of the world are not born great men. He was matured and transformed by his own observations, by his own experiences. Debs launched the roaring locomotive of history forward only after seeing with his own eyes the profound injustices faced by the American worker. [...] The example is set for us, our candle is lit. We will carry on and we will liberate the working classes of this nation, and of all nations. We are for Socialism because we are for humanity." Stedman was greeted with massive applause for his hastily-reconfigured speech. It appeared the Coliseum delegates concurred with the Chicagoan's emotional message. Others continued in the same manner, likewise extoling Debs' powerful and uplifting personality, his sterling principles, and his unique ability to Americanize socialism in a way easily understood by the average industrial worker. The thematic message was clear: Debs gave his life for the movement and that movement shall go on.

During the remainder of the national convention, the atmosphere and the speakers' rhetoric stayed confined in the realm of gloom and melancholy, though underneath that lied a subtle, raged-fueled undercurrent. Convention goers and sympathetic activists from coast to coast knew the intention of the assassin was to tear the party apart. No other motive seemed tenable. Having survived the arch conservatism of the Depew years and the chaos of the Great War, and thus far endured A. Mitchell Palmer's attempts at a Red Scare, the delegation was hardly about to lie down and allow the moment to pass them by. Per the words of Senator Ashley Miller, "repression in all of its forms is doomed to fail." The ever-determined Socialist Party fastidiously picked up the pieces and bravely proceeded with the nomination. Fortunately, the platform was settled by the end of May 11th. It was designed to work in tandem with the anticipated presidential campaign of Eugene Debs, but the NEC was confident any plausible nominee would benefit similarly to the wide array of unity planks vested in their platform.

Factionalism was strong in 1920. The unity platform incorporated mediated proposals and compromise solutions on everything from wages to war. The Left had an edge due to their NEC majority position, but to reconcile with the party regulars and avoid confrontation on the floor, they adopted moderated positions in certain avenues. Its preamble explained how the political party was merely a vehicle for the working class, and the question of a Workers' Commonwealth was only to be answered by the proletariat. The platform laid out a concise alignment with the Socialist International without maligning the Comintern. It recommended nationalization of all industries for the "welfare of the people," proposed eliminating the Federal Intelligence Authority and abolishing strikebreaking agencies, and demanded the release of Jim Larkin, Benjamin Gitlow, and William Z. Foster from prison. The delegates also voted to do away with a "gag rule" once generously applied against the left-wing minority. Its shortcomings were plain to see. It laid out no legislative plan to "secure full civil, industrial, and educational rights for Negros" despite the inclusion of this wording. A more complex proposal was to be considered on May 12th, but the vote was tabled in lieu of the assassination.

         Harry Braverman, 6th President of the New York Assembly, The Early Socialists: A Prelude to the Revolution, 1969

Undaunted in its quest to fulfill Debs' dream of a Socialist America, the convention moved to the nominating process. Several notable candidates were considered for the presidential slot, among them Miller and Seidel who each fervently declined, but at the urging of the Illinois delegates, Seymour Stedman allowed his name to be placed in nomination. His odds were extraordinarily favorable from the outset. Stedman was close to Debs for over twenty years. They first met during the Pullman Strike, and the two became well acquainted socially and politically from that point on. They were both present at the founding of the Social Democratic Party following Debs' fallout with the Democratic Party and Stedman's with the Populists, and the latter could boast of his perfect convention attendance and deep ties with the Socialist founders. He also worked vehemently for the election of John Fitzpatrick in the Chicago mayoral election and was often credited by the incumbent mayor for helping build his campaign from scratch.

Once Fitzpatrick called for Stedman's nomination, Seidel seconded it, as did Waldman and Lee. It flew over the wishes of some union officials who preferred James Maurer or Bill Haywood, but in the final count, by a landslide of sorts, Seymour Stedman was confirmed the nomination and Theodore Debs was granted the vice-presidential slot. The campaign slogan wrote itself. "For Gene"

SEVENTH SOCIALIST NATIONAL CONVENTION

THE BALLOT: PRES		1st Call		Unanimous		800 DELEGATES
Seymour Stedman ☑		690		800
James Maurer		95
Bill Haywood		12
OTHERS/BLANK		3

SEVENTH SOCIALIST NATIONAL CONVENTION

THE BALLOT: VICE PRES		1st Call		Unanimous		800 DELEGATES
Theodore Debs ☑		773		800
OTHERS/BLANK		27

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The Second Vorwärtsaufstand in Berlin, April 1920 - Source: Wiki Commons

News of Debs' demise spread like wildfire. As a celebrated hero of labor justice and the very manifestation of unionization, millions throughout the country knew of Debs and his work. Whether loved or despised, nearly every American had some notion American Socialist and his momentous influence on the political spectrum over the years. Eugene Debs' funeral train departed at the close of the Socialist Convention and transported the activist's body from Chicago, Illinois, to Terre Haute, Indiana. Tens of thousands of onlookers paid their respects as the mournful carriage traveled the Midwest. Once the train reached its destination, a massive crowd, one matching that of Debs' famed 1913 Madison Square Garden address, stood by at the ready. Stedman, Seidel, Thomas and scores more were present to eulogize their friend, as were Theodore Debs and widow Katherine Metzel Debs.

Debs' role in revitalizing the United States Labor Movement was not unknown elsewhere in the world. Russian Bolsheviks and French Socialists relayed messages of condolence for the fallen radical, as did active revolutionaries from Dublin to Budapest. Out in the plains of Ireland, consistent and violent rebellion boiled over as London showed no inclination to submit to the Vienna Treaty and its unenforceable call for Irish independence. As the Irish drive for autonomy neared its third year, pro-independence advocates exhibited scant signs of a slowdown. Rebels targeted British soldiers and vehicles with bombs and gunfire, and in retaliation the Irish population was greeted with brutal repression liberally employed by the British Army. "It is a crime against all of humanity," declared Sinn Féin founder Arthur Griffith, that the world did nothing as British troops trampled international law. The Central Powers of Europe had also discovered, to the resentment of their respective heads-of-state, that the Great War had unambiguously failed to settle a wide array of ethnic, political, and religious disputes throughout the continent. Despite their unmatched control over the region, these ruling empires found their supremacy challenged in Poland with Commander Rydz-Śmigły's revolution, in Macedonia as Communist revolts raged against the Bulgarian state and Tsar Ferdinand, and within the very borders of the Austro-Hungarian and German empires.

Tens of thousands of ethnic Hungarians, made up of former soldiers, unemployed workers, and students, began enacting belligerent demonstrations in protest of the emperor's hostile, conservative government. Their movement began with spontaneous, disorganized bursts of rebellion, but by 1920 Communist Party leader Béla Kun helped orchestrate a series of disciplined marches in and around Budapest. Communist militias and their social democratic allies put up a genuine fight for control of the city, and whilst doing so galvanized left-wing revolutionaries elsewhere in the empire to do the same. This placed extraordinary pressure on Emperor Charles to reciprocate. Rather than counter with a military response, however, he acted first in the spirit of diplomacy. In order to quell some of the ethnic tensions that had long plagued the multinational state, the autocrat and his advisers hurried an ongoing effort at systematic change. His plan formally dissolved the old Austria-Hungary and plotted the course for a Greater Austrian Federation: A bicameral government governed by Charles alongside an Imperial Parliament. Ten self-governing states would be endowed with the right to hold free and fair elections both locally and to the federal parliament. Béla Kun and his supporters were far from nourished and remained intent on toppling Charles altogether, though his revolutionary philosophy (which counted on Charles' immovability on reform and aid from the Bolsheviks) was irreparably damaged by the emperor's declaration. For now, the idea of state parliaments pumped the breaks on an erupting ethnic crisis in Austria, but time would tell if the strategy rendered the revolutionists disarmed.

A short-lived economic boom in Germany faded from existence by 1919, leading to the slashing of wages on a broad scale and an surge in factorial unemployment. The industrial centers of Munich and Berlin were the hardest hit. Kaiser Wilhelm alone was blamed for the troubling time, and like Johnson in America, he too faced a mountainous rebellion. A mass movement made up of radicals of all stripes coalesced twice in the joint pursuit to democratize the German government. It was named Vorwärtsaufstand, or the Forward Uprising(s). First in October of 1919, then again in April of 1920, the uprisings brought together workers, reform activists, and a smattering of public officials who all opposed the monarchical state and desired a massive restructuring of the German economy. The initial wave petered out on its own, but the second proved a bit more stubborn.

Social Democratic and Socialist revolutionaries, commanded in part by Richard Müller, Rosa Luxembourg, and Paul Levi, led the charge. They threatened to bring down the entire German economy, starting with a citywide general strike in Berlin supported by virtually all trade unions. Wilhelm, high-strung as always, considered Vorwärtsaufstand a personal slight. In brief, he was not interested in relinquishing an ounce of power to the mob of revolutionists. Blatantly inspired by the reprehensible tactics liberally utilized by authorities in the United States, the Kaiser saw fit to unleash his very own "Bloody September," unleashing a recalled portion of Falkenhayn's Bundeswehr onto the uprising. The Berlin General Strike was crushed in no uncertain terms and the uprising failed spectacularly. Its leaders were thereafter arrested, imprisoned, and either forced to death, exiled, or locked-up indefinitely. Revolts in Germany and Austria demonstrated two very different strategies for mass reform and two equally diverse responses, but both events signified to the American Left that they were far from alone.

In the U.S., the economy did manage to somewhat recover since the postwar crunch. International trade was on the rise and consumer demand ticked up slightly from 1919. And yet, none of the underlying issues that spurred the historic strike wave two years prior were remedied. American workers were literally beaten to the point of submission, forced to either work for a pittance in dangerous conditions or face homelessness and death. Food prices fell only by a quarter of a percent since the postwar inflation highs. Wages once raised during the war were nigh universally reduced to prewar rates. Unless bound by state law or an unbreakable union contract, workplace improvements had all but disappeared entirely. Many workers traumatized by familial losses and crushed morale were reluctant to re-ignite the spark of labor rebellion as encouraged by the IWW. Those who voted on the Socialist line counted on the 93-seat congressional delegation to flex its legislative muscles and achieve significant reform through coalition-building. Indeed, the leftmost representatives in Congress worked diligently to craft meaningful, progressive legislation, and consistently warned their right-wing opponents of the dangers of ignoring escalating inequalities. Receptive Progressives and Democrats fought on the side of the Socialists in drafting proposals seeking improve living standards, but their voices were vastly overpowered by an inflexible majority.

Amid a lagging job market, chaos overseas, and starving populace, the Johnson Administration insistently urged Congress fixate its attention on a stalled immigration bill. President Roosevelt had vetoed a 1917 immigration proposal, which in its own terms, limited admittance of undesirables including "homosexuals", "idiots", and "anarchists." To update the Chinese Exclusion Act, it also disallowed any immigrants from Southeast Asia, India, and the entirety of China. An override attempt narrowly failed that same year, but in 1920 a reinvigorated effort to go ahead with the original plan was thoroughly applauded by the new president. The revived iteration imposed even tougher immigration restrictions than its predecessor. The bill played right into the hands of nativists and anti-socialists, setting tight quotas which deliberately favored Anglo-Saxons and forbade certain groups based on skin color, country of origin, religion, and political ideals. It allocated high entry limits from Germany, Austria (for ethnic Austrians and Germans only), and Great Britain, substantially fewer from France and Ireland, even less from Italy and Eastern Europe, and a hard limit on Africans, Asians, Slavs and Jews. Time was running short in the second congressional session set to expire June 5th, and debate on the immigration bill was shaping up to fill all remaining days on the calendar. As thus, not one lone economic reform bill made its way to the floor.

Hiram Johnson, the stalwart of Progress, was not himself exempt from the allure of reaction. It was on his watch that the Executive Branch wrapped itself tight in Red Scare propagandism and empty-headed xenophobia. "They were blind drunk from ignorance," said a former ally to the Progressives. "Their recurrent lies and prejudices about the makeup of the American workforce were blasted so often that it seemed even the administration now believed them. Disdain for the common folk led us to the point that all unrest would be met with the barrel of a gun." Of all the choices in the coming election, Johnson, far and above, had the worst record on worker's rights and collective bargaining. He was commended for but a single achievement in that field. Citing an investigation by the Justice Department into interstate commerce violations by the railroad companies, the president in early 1919 instructed Congress extend the expiration deadline of the Locomotives Act. That achievement fell by the wayside one year later when Palmer abandoned the ICC prosecution and Secretary of the Treasury George Cortelyou confirmed suspicions that the administration would not seek to advance an additional extension through Congress.​
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The Locomotives Act passed under the stewardship of President Theodore Roosevelt. During the war, his government now-freely commandeered railyards and trains for the use of delivering war materiel to the front. Other industries like coal mining and steel refinement lowered wages and rolled-back conditions as demand plummeted following the ceasefire. Railroad workers, protected as federal employees, enjoyed an eight-hour working day and limited union recognition by the Labor Department directly. If privatized and returned to the Rockefeller interests, the railroad industry would be indecipherable from the rest. Cortelyou and Johnson were confident that no one dared speak up in protest of their decision to allow the Locomotive Act to expire, but this move was the straw that broke the camel's back.

Beginning in Chicago, hundreds of switchmen, conductors, and engineers walked out in protest. Hundreds became thousands, and by the end of the week railyard workers of all creeds belonging to a hodgepodge of trade unions engaged in an industry-wide labor strike. New York, San Francisco, Detroit, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Memphis, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. All over, rail workers struck in part inspired by the sacrifice of Eugene Debs and an endless supply of uplifting headlines concerning labor battles in Europe. Palmer leapt on the opportunity. He denounced strikers as criminals, charged their leaders of fomenting Bolshevism, and called for mass arrests, and yet lacking evidence began to raise doubts whether Palmer's accusations were at all justified.

         Beatrice Rohan, The Turbulent Twenties, Released 2004

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Matewan, West Virginia, 1920 - Source: EWV Encyclopedia

Just as the specter of 1918 arose once more to greet the Johnson Administration, further news broke of labor agitation out in the mountains of West Virginia. In the small town of Matewan, disgruntled coal miners, whipped into a rage by the UMWA, unleashed a labor strike of their own in the spring of 1920. The feudalistic Stone Mountain Coal Company dismissed the notion of altering its 'coal scrip' faux-dollar payment system, strong-arming its employees into purchasing tools and commodities exclusively from their own establishments. Such a system virtually ensured the workers' inability to afford (purposefully) overpriced rent costs, thereby trapping them into lifelong debt. Almost thirty years passed since the Pullman Strike, and yet American workers were still burdened with the agony of living in a company town. The UMWA, knowing the inevitability of revolt, offered its support to the Matewan miners and granted them the confidence needed to throw their shovels to the ground. Stone Mountain Co. was none too pleased.

Private enforcers hired by the mine owners responded to the strike by firing its workers, evicting the families from their company-owned housing, and hiring strikebreakers to fill the vacancies (who, ironically, joined with the UMWA in turn). A season-long tension eventually culminated in a shootout known and serialized afterwards as the Battle of Matewan. Gun violence resulted in the loss of ten lives, the occupation of the town by state officers, and the universal recognition of pro-UMWA Police Chief Sid Hatfield as staunch union ally. Sans any recorded coordination, just as Governor Cornwell (D-WV) claimed to settle matters in Mingo County, agricultural harvesters in Iowa and dock workers in the Tidewater region of Virginia also began newfound work stoppages starting around the first of June; The latter commanded by Randolph's NBWA, the largest union of organized black workers in the country. As one union coordinator wrote, longshoremen were remarkably receptive to the intertwined relations between economic and racial justice. "It was automatic," he said, "to associate liberation of all sorts with fighting the capitalists. The capitalist class could no longer use us to defeat organized labor."

Militancy had returned to the menu. Despite fear of a state-sponsored crackdown, demonstrations against poor working conditions erupted from coast to coast. Due in part to relaxed Serbian Flu restrictions, revolution and rebellion in Europe, excitement surrounding the Seymour Stedman candidacy, and the prevailing sentiment that reactionaries in Congress refused to accommodate for reform, pockets of labor unrest popped up time and time again for the duration of 1920. None aside from the railroads were cross-industry and few fancied the concept of a general strike. Therefore, state police were scattered, disunified, and had far more trouble putting down strikes and walkouts than was the case two years prior. Furthermore, even more so than in 1918, war veterans played a tremendous role. They were, by and large, furious over the government's lack of postwar aid to them and their families. Judging by the biographical accounts of famed ex-soldiers Hubert Jacobson and Jack Parkman, many veterans felt a shared sense of betrayal after risking their lives for some nebulous cause. Tens of thousands, having been radicalized by their experiences on the Northern Front and back at home during the events of Bloody September, were prepared to protect the strikers in a show of solidarity. Veterans routinely stationed themselves near picket lines to ward off police intimidation, effectively dissuading overwhelming state repression.

Looking at the picture as a whole, the overall number of labor strikes and work stoppages was fewer than in the 1918 wave, but those strikes appeared better rehearsed and were conducted without direct instigation by the IWW. Public sympathy also seemed to side squarely with the workers, especially in the case of the rail slowdown. According to public polling taken at the height of the railroad strike, though a majority were dismayed at the disruption and eagerly awaited reconciliation, the poll found staggeringly high support for a permanent nationalization of the industry. Among those in support of retaining the Locomotives Act indefinitely, over 60% opposed the re-election of President Johnson. This Chicago Daily News poll specifically asked self-aligned Progressives and 1916 Roosevelt voters whether they planned to support the re-nomination of Hiram Johnson by the Progressive Party. Fewer than half responded in the affirmative. A separate survey found an identical result, compounded by two-thirds expressing an aversion to the administration's hypothesis that the Labor Movement was infiltrated by foreigners and Bolsheviks. These results greatly concerned the heads of the Progressive National Committee who feared a repeat of the midterm elections in the approaching November race. Yet, the incumbent downplayed polling and urged the PNC to do the same.

As Socialists in Congress plead for an extension of the Locomotives Act and Sid Hatfield traveled to Virginia to discuss future arrangements with UMWA President John L. Lewis, Hiram Johnson focused on another matter entirely. Railyard troubles were indeed disconcerting and gunfire out in Appalachia foreshadowed danger ahead, but none of that meant a damn to Johnson if electoral issues were to cut his reign short. Newspaper polls and editorials were perhaps the only true metric of measuring the peoples' will, and whether off-base or spot-on in their findings, the president was not foolish enough to allow egoism to overshadow the political reality. Hearst fell into that trap long ago, and as punishment walked away with a mere nine percent of the Popular Vote. Johnson was willing to prepare for any eventuality, and that included the breakup of the Roosevelt Coalition. He beseeched MacDonald to take command in curbing the latest labor headaches and allowed Palmer the freedom to charge strike leaders at will, but as for the president himself, his time was preoccupied by the campaign. As elucidated by Jay Morgan, the incumbent and his campaign manager opted to explore a mutually beneficial relationship with the second-most powerful Republican in Pennsylvania.

(RNC Chair Brumbaugh) was inclined to accept any solution. Desperation and a hint of madness drove the leader to act in flagrant disregard of the traditionalists and the growing conservative element, all but outright petitioning Johnson to seek the nomination. Conservative critics of today view Brumbaugh's decision making as one of duplicity; a coup devised to overthrow the Republican orthodoxy and the very image of Lincoln itself, for the benefit of a splintered faction of extremists. Others see it not quite as opportunism, but a final try at reviving the party from irrelevance. Only a tenth of the population voted for John Weeks. Brumbaugh himself knew it, writing, "We cannot stand if our legs are cut beneath us." Their best odds to survive counted on recruiting the president and his patriotic legion. [...] Stephens confirmed the deal as legitimate. Johnson supporters, on cue, entered his name into consideration for all twenty presidential primary contests, inspiriting undecided state delegates to cast their lot with the president.

         Jay R. Morgan, The American Elephant: A Study of the Republican Party, 1980

Albeit a standpat member of Roosevelt's Progressive Party from its outset, Johnson believed it was never his predecessor's intention to immutably split the Republican Party. He was utterly convinced that Roosevelt, if offered the opportunity at any juncture, would have gladly accepted the Republican nomination for president. Johnson, ever determined to set his own path, sought in the late 1910s an end to the quarreling betwixt the two factions, and on that quest he discovered an opening in the form of Martin Brumbaugh. William Stephens, the former California governor and newly appointed manager of the Johnson Campaign, brought the two together and recommended an alliance. With few policy differences standing between these men, and each fearing the risks posed to the country by the rise of the Socialists and the IWW in fomenting domestic unruliness, the RNC chairman quietly placed his finger on the scale to assist the president. Brumbaugh, especially in the aftermath of the Chicago mayoral race, did not hesitate for a moment. In late spring, he confirmed the wary suspicions of GOP stalwarts in a statement welcoming amenable Columbians to their national convention.

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The Republican National Convention, June 8th, 1920 - Source: Smithsonian

On June 8th, 1920, swathes of elder statesmen, political observants, and delegates from all over took part in the opening day rituals of the Republican National Convention. Its venue: William McKinley Hall on Lakeside Avenue in Cleveland, Ohio - an all-new facility appropriately named in honor of the recently deceased, multi-term governor and prominent party chairman. Portraits and works of art featuring the late McKinley adorned the halls of the auditorium, setting the stage for an event intent on reminding Americans of the tranquility of nineteenth-century Republican rule. "Tradition was king," explained Jay Morgan. "If Brumbaugh were to succeed in accomplishing the impossible, he believed it best to display throughout the Republican Convention constant reminders of a bygone age. Banners with the likenesses of Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses Grant waved high in the main hall as if to say, "This is what you've abandoned." It was very much like stepping back in time. Brumbaugh specifically excluded all reminders of the last twenty years."

Four years prior to the 1920 RNC, Republicans emphatically rejected an opportunity offered by pro-fusion George W. Perkins to nominate Theodore Roosevelt for president. Delegates chose the long-shot candidacy of Senator John Weeks in a campaign ripe for absolute disaster. With much of the conservative faction humbled and the old Atlanticist faction now irrelevant, Brumbaugh's prospects appeared rosier than Perkins' ever did. It was hard to ignore the slow burn of the Republican Party in the last several cycles. The GOP was mired in an ever-deepening crisis, and now more than ever it seemed excruciatingly unlikely that the standpat conservatives could regain their momentum from the Progressive alternative. Former President Depew, age 86, penned his growing concern for the party in a letter to Henry Cabot Lodge, writing, "If peace cannot be made in Cleveland, the Reds will win at the ballot box. America as we know it will cease to exist." Though a respected figure and among the most influential in the game, Depew alone was not enough to convince the Republican delegation. The convention congregation and the huge pool of delegates, most clad in fitted dress coats and freshly ironed ties, were not the sort to leap at the idea of a unity resolution.

Secretary Lodge and William Stephens, on behalf of President Johnson, personally took part in the RNC and brought with them hundreds of other Columbian politicos as per Brumbaugh's offer. The former Massachusetts senator, perhaps the perfect arbitrator for the circumstances, was equally admired in both Progressive and Republican circles for his decades-long service to the U.S. government. He was heavily involved in the affairs of presidential nominations since his tide-twisting remarks at the 1900 Republican convention, which proved to sink Mark Hanna's hopes of locking down the nomination. This, of course, led to the emergence of Albert Beveridge as that year's compromise nominee. Indeed, Lodge's actions helped pave the way for the last elected Republican president as well as the downfall of William Jennings Bryan. Back in 1900, Lodge learned from Beveridge the unbelievable potency of patriotism as an organizing force. Roosevelt and Johnson found themselves educated on that matter too, each having extensively retooled American nationalism for their own ends. Lodge looked to harness that same power to bring together disparate factions here in 1920.

The state secretary was allotted adequate time to speak to the men and women of the convention, and speak he did. "We are met here to take the first, the most decisive step in the political campaign which is to determine the future of this great Government for the next four years. It is a solemn moment, fraught with vast possibilities of either good or evil. The tempest of war has subsided, but the ocean still heaves and rolls with cresting waves. One passion, one purpose - to save the country, to save civilization, to preserve freedom - rose supreme. It could not be otherwise." To Lodge, the end of one war drifted straight to a new one. He framed the plea to rejoin into a single party as one essential to the survival of the nation. "We can only steady the ship of state by once and for all condemning Bolshevism and making our appeal for support to all who love America. It is the path of Washington, of Lincoln, of Beveridge and of Roosevelt from which the Socialists seek to drag us. Their defeat transcends in important every other question. Without that defeat every chance of the right settlement of the mighty questions before us, so sorely needed now and not later, will depart." Lodge's speech was met with ravenous applause.

The argument above from Henry Cabot Lodge did not in and of itself dispel all partisan bickering and guarantee passage of the unity resolution, but it did bring to the forefront the immense advantage they gave to the far left by splintering (ie; Chicago). Dozens more speakers came and went following the stirring address by the incumbent secretary of state, including a rousing, uplifting twenty minutes from Senator Elihu Root. Two of President Roosevelt's children, New York Assembly candidate Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., and Second Lieutenant Quentin Roosevelt, eulogized their father and saluted, "the defense of America by patriots at home, and on the frontlines." Successive addresses from high-ranking officers, generals, and admirals in the U.S. Armed Forces rounded out the day. Admiral Austin Knight, now retired, stated that although he did not affiliate himself politically with any major party, he had no qualms in endorsing Hiram Johnson for a full presidential term. Only a continuation of the Progressive Party policies regarding military spending and diplomacy would keep the United States safe, in Knight's words. Major General Fox Conner remarked much the same.

The time was nigh for the convention delegation. Lodge's drafted resolution, sponsored by Chairman Brumbaugh, was up for a vote. Some conservatives, angered by the incessant fawning over Theodore Roosevelt by the moderate lineup of speakers, attempted to sway a majority of delegates to vote against the measure, yet time was running short and the votes were coming in fast. Brumbaugh waited nervously as the votes slugged in, knowing his political fate counted on passage. At last, the count was complete, and with well over two-thirds in favor, the Lodge Resolution passed. Thenceforth, the Republican Party formally proclaimed itself allied with disaffected Progressives in the joint pursuit of stamping out the scourge of American Bolshevism. It welcomed cooperation betwixt GOP and Columbian officeholders and regional offices, and heavily implied the need to double-down on fusion tactics to avoid further electoral embarrassment. It did not, however, admit Progressive delegates to the RNC, nor did the resolution mention anything pertaining to amending the rather conservative party platform with input by Columbians. "This was a victory for Hiram Johnson," wrote William Ackerman, "not the Progressive Party."

A brawl for the presidential nomination still lied ahead, that much was certain, though the passage of the unity resolution granted a monumental advantage for Lodge and Stephens. Not only had the delegation approved a sweeping pledge to promote electoral fusion at all levels, but the Johnson Campaign obtained a plurality of pledged delegates through months of vigorous, state-to-state campaigning and fared well in the primaries to boot. In the Republican arena, Johnson's greatest foe of note was Senator Warren Harding. Harding, the GOP Conference Chairman in the Senate, directed a restrained fight for the presidency from his home in Marion, Ohio, running even with Johnson on the primary stage but otherwise failing to make his mark. He based his campaign on optimistic messaging and promises to return to isolation, peace, and prosperity, diligently keeping the language vague to attract general audiences. On the eve of the RNC, The New York Times hypothesized if, "Harding would announce his withdrawal," seeing as, "there is no sign he is getting anywhere." Harding easily won over the Ohio delegates following a unanimous vote by the legislature to endorse the senator, but he was not able to replicate his luck elsewhere. To win, or even come close, he needed a minimum of two ballot calls. With two-thirds in favor of the Lodge Resolution, the Ohioan's shot was kaput.

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President Johnson at North Coast Harbor in Cleveland, June 1920 - Source: Wiki Commons

The third day of the Republican Convention coincided with the neighboring premier of Frank Montgomery and Robert Goldstein's latest film: Doughboys, their follow-up to the enormously popular Spirit of '76. The new picture dramatized the early events of the Great War from the perspective of two young Midwestern farmhands (Richard Barthelmess and William Collier, Jr.) caught up in a post-Yellow Rose hysteria and determined to bring honor to their country. Doughboys, like its cinematic predecessor, sufficiently whitewashed its era to better depict American soldiers as the unambiguous heroes, and furthermore included an ahistorical subplot involving a failed attempt by Pvt. Louis Toussaint (W. E. Lawrence) to encourage dissent and rebellion amongst the troops - echoing Francophobic sentiment not uncommon for the time. President Johnson made it a point to attend the film showing and later reported favorably on the project and its writers. Montgomery and Goldstein's work would go on to be the highest grossing film of 1920, overshadowing D.W. Griffith's famed flop Way Down East.

As the convention guests sung along to George M. Cohan's You're A Grand Old Flag following an opening prayer and the ceremonial reciting of the national anthem, Johnson Campaign engineers and friendly associates to Secretary Lodge and former Governor Stephens hustled to keep a majority of the delegates under their thumbs. Lodge, ever the peacekeeper, sensed some resentment from the conservative faction after the passage of the fusion resolution and consciously looked to keep them in-check to avoid any unexpected disturbances. Knowing the long history of Republican conventions and their unpredictable nature, Lodge and others kept their ears to the ground.

The Harding faction, their chance slipping away, feverishly assembled some last-minute help from the lesser Republican candidates with bound support. They worked to persuade them to support Harding as a conservative alternative for Johnson in the event of a second ballot. They promised it all; Executive appointments, extended campaign stops, luxury banquets. Among their targets, Governor Frank Lowden of Illinois was particularly notable. Lowden actively supported and campaigned on behalf of Theodore Roosevelt whilst condemning oligarchical trusts, but he was the poster child for anti-socialist fear mongering, uplifted the Federal Intelligence Agency as a force for progress, and reportedly urged President Johnson act with more urgency to outlaw the Industrial Workers of the World. He identified as a Progressive, but governed as a Republican. In the 1920 race, Lowden did not endorse, but he did send deputies to the Republican convention to monitor the festivities and report back to the governor. Of all sitting Progressive officeholders, the Illinois governor was the likeliest to stray from the path and endorse a challenger to the nomination.

Lodge and Stephens caught wind of this plan early on, and fastidiously campaigned to stop the Harding camp from unraveling their work. In a private conversation which eventually leaked to the press in the form of "convention gossip," members of the Johnson Campaign managed to win over the undisputed King of the Pennsylvania Republican Party: Senator Philander C. Knox. Regardless of the latter's unfortunate showing as a presidential candidate twelve years previously, the 67-year-old retained tremendous influence within the party, notably among Old Guard conservatives. Johnson wholeheartedly respected Knox and coveted his endorsement, and unlike Harding who felt owed a favor upon delivering Knox's official nominating speech in 1908, the incumbent president retained a strong, personal friendship with the Pennsylvania senator outside of politics. Knox pledged loyalty to the president on June 9th and kick-started a new focal point for the press. Some whispers of a vice presidential offer even slipped into The Plain Dealer, but it is uncertain if that was ever truly on the table. Yet, one thing is for certain. Rumors swirling of a Johnson/Knox ticket generated much speculation and publicity.

This development served to benefit Johnson's odds of capturing the nomination early, but perhaps what sealed the deal were two significant speeches presented on the day of the scheduled balloting. First was the sitting mayor of New York, John P. Mitchel. Mitchel, a nondescript Republican-Progressive, was one of the country's longest serving consecutive mayors, taking office since the retirement of Ed Shepard in 1909 and knee-deep in his third and final term. His speech brought to light the exceptional role of the New York Police Department in containing the tumultuous 1917 Food Riot in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, and assigned blame to the New York Socialists as the party responsible for inciting street riots. He went on to briefly explain his experiences during the 1917 mayoral election and the narrow victory over Morris Hillquit, again emphasizing the strength of everyday New Yorkers in quelling the city's worst instincts. "When prices rose, the Bolshevists attempted armed insurrection. When rebellion failed, the inept radicals tried to have a blue-blooded Bolshevik elected mayor. That too was unsuccessful. Now we are returned to rebellion. Failure, disorder, and destruction, that is their record."

In addition to Mitchel, General Leonard Wood testified to the necessity of nominating Johnson for the sake of curbing the existential, left-wing threat. Knowing a chief sticking point of the standpat Republicans in promoting Johnson revolved around internationalism, Wood moreover spoke on behalf of the administration's foreign policy and their doctrine of 'isolation wherever possible.' "Albert Beveridge shared an appreciation for the United States on the global stage to a reasonable extent," he argued. The U.S. won in its quest for equal treatment in commerce and overseas investment. Simplistic isolationism was impractical as long as the country claimed ownership of its Pacific holdings and loaned billions to the Central Empires. In bridging Johnson's proposed loose association with the European Zollverein to the the rise of a prosperous American Empire and the limitless expansion of her spheres of influence, and furthermore describing somewhat complex geopolitical concepts in a manner easily digestible by the convention delegates, Wood easily captivated the crowd.

Once the time arrived for the balloting procedure, it became evident that the Harding camp and his allies on the convention floor were simply outmatched. Far and away, Johnson was the favorite, and little could be done to prevent an historical inevitability.

SEVENTEENTH REPUBLICAN NATIONAL CONVENTION

THE BALLOT: PRES		1st Call		1100 DELEGATES
Hiram W. Johnson ☑		683
Warren G. Harding		347
Washington E. Lindsey		46
William H. Hays		20
Horace F. Graham		2
OTHERS/BLANK		2

That was that. Conservative outrage was genuine, but despite some expectations to the contrary, there were no walkouts and not one man bolted from the convention hall. Harding was bested, and he had no choice but to accept the rejuvenated mold of the Republican Party - or at least, what was once the Republican Party. President Johnson himself arrived in Cleveland on the evening of June 9th to catch the film premier and, afterwards, oversee the RNC. Courtesy of the extraordinarily intense security protocols and a heavy police presence on-site (a sensible reaction to the catastrophe at the Socialist Convention), he felt safe enough to walk down from an upper chamber in McKinley Hall to personally deliver an acceptance speech for the nomination. The address delivered by the president would permanently alter the Republican Party and, in the eyes of historians like Jay Morgan who chose to conclude The American Elephant with a detailed summary of Johnson's speech, end that political organization as contemporaries knew it.

This is an historic day. As the United States steps foot into a bright new decade, she will be led by a party, and a people, united at last. President Beveridge once said that the opposition confronted every onward movement of the Republic from its opening hour and never achieved success. He affirmed we are following the course our grandfathers blazed. They triumphed in the Revolution to throw off the shackles of indentured servitude to Great Britain, they triumphed twenty years ago to build our expansion economy of the Pacific and the Orient, and now must be our time for triumph. American prosperity in the twentieth century cannot be stopped, and those who wish us ill will meet the same fate of the loyalists and the pacifists.

There is no separation of ideals. They are one in the same and always have been, to assume otherwise is anachronistic. The National Ideal and the Party of One Nation unites us all. Loyalty to one's country, above all and indivisible. Intervention when necessary. Peace and order over chaos and anarchism. Government for and by the people. One man, one vote. It is these principles which stimulates the judgments and arouses the enthusiasm of Americans. We need not stray from this path to greet the new day. Centralization of the Legislature and the Courts risk imbalance, and in the pursuit of securing liberty above despotism I recognize the need to place power in the hands of the people. If we can give to the people the means by which they may accomplish such other reforms as they desire, then all that lies in our power will have been done in the direction of safeguarding the future and for the perpetuation of the theory upon which we ourselves shall conduct this government.

We know well the danger posed to American liberty and democracy by the mad tide of Bolshevism infesting our trade unions and jeopardizing the integrity of our city governments, but a thought must be spared for the equally reprehensible scourge of racial extremism. Despite the demagogues, the idea of our oneness as Americans has risen superior to every appeal to mere class and group, and so I wish it might be in this matter of our national problem of races. A high-grade colored soldier told me that the war brought his race the first real conception of citizenship. The first full realization that the flag was their flag, to fight for, to be protected by them, and also to protect them. He was sure that the opportunity to learn what patriotism meant was a real opportunity for his race. These things lead one to hope that we shall find an adjustment of relations between the two races, in which both can enjoy full citizenship and the full measure of usefulness to the country and of opportunity for themselves.

We proudly claim victory in the war against the infernal Serbian-born illness, and men and women of all corners of respectable politics did their duty to make it so. [...] We face the onset of a second plague, one whose eradication must also be achieved by communities working in tandem with state and federal ordinances. I speak of rampant sedition, a disease most lethal to our National Ideal. The Attorney General of the United States and the whole of the Justice Department is committed to uprooting treasonous activities and purging lawlessness in all forms and wherever it hides. The Federal Intelligence Authority is our greatest asset in achieving these ends, and as I speak men are hard at work investigating criminal networks in our largest cities and corruption in the courts. Attorney General Palmer and I are proud of the work we have done in reducing the rate of crime and curbing anarchist outbursts left unchecked since the close of the war. By presidential order, my administration has made it so all persons selected for employment by the federal government must demonstrate their complete and unwavering loyalty to the United States. I urge all private enterprises to do the same.

         Hiram W. Johnson, Republican Convention Acceptance Speech, Excerpt, June 10th, 1920

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Senator Robert M. La Follette Delivering a Speech, June 1920 - Source: Wiki Commons

Two gigantic forces of American politics met finite turning points at the conclusion of the Republican National Convention. Immediately upon Johnson's nomination and his subsequent speech, it was clear that the Republican Party of old was gone and done with. The conservative gambit had failed, and now with the sitting president essentially hoisted as a standard bearer for their political brand, some reporters questioned whether Republican conservatism could ever hope to mount a comeback. Thus began a theoretical massacre at the Republican National Committee as a victorious Brumbaugh cleaned house, forcing the resignations of some key national party figures. Then-National Treasurer Geoffrey Duncan was a vocal endorser of Harding and made several public statements in opposition to the president. Duncan resigned without issue, as did the equally anti-incumbent national secretary.

Governor Washington Lindsey (R-NM), a business-oriented conservative and third-place finisher in the presidential balloting, privately let his resentment be known at the outcome of the convention and the pervasiveness of Brumbaugh at the helm, but like Harding he accepted the results and pledged to support the president. By all accounts, the GOP electorate was far more open to the idea of fusion than their officeholding counterparts, evident through the splendid performance of Johnson in the state-by-state primaries. Many in the GOP rank-and-file considered the incumbent a thoroughbred moderate and generally held a positive view of his tenure, with some even commending the administration's position on domestic unrest. All residual Republican outrage was relatively minor compared to the conversation brewing on the opposing end.
 
Left staggered by the RNC and frustrated by the president's decision to accept Governor Charles E. Hughes of New York as vice president, remnants of the old, somewhat displaced Peace Progressives were undecided how best to move forward. The nationalist breed of Columbians were easily corralled back to the fold per Johnson's direction, but others were not so quick to abandon their tent-pole organization. Among the furthest left in the 1920-era Progressive National Committee, a prevailing argument in opposition to cross-endorsement/fusion tactics alongside the Republican Party was the simple conclusion that doing so threatened their very existence.  Even if it presently controlled a greater share of seats in Congress, the Progressives, lacking the guidance of Theodore Roosevelt and suffering from a consistent budgetary disparity to the well-established parties, risked sudden irrelevance if it jumped to amalgamate with the Republicans. If the incumbent were to determine platform differences inconsequential and base his reasoning solely on electoral concerns, what purpose would there be in maintaining a splinter party? That very fear, Johnson prioritizing electoralism over all else, was indeed realized.

Two days after the closing of the Republican convention, President Johnson toppled the next line of dominos. At an impromptu meeting made in preparation of their upcoming national convention scheduled for July 1st, a slim plurality of the PNC voted to cancel the event. Speaking on behalf of the president, Progressive Chairman Jacob Falconer, former Washington representative and co-author of the 1914 Preparedness (Falconer-Colt) Act, argued that holding a ceremonial nominating convention to promote Johnson was redundant now that the Republicans took the liberty of doing so themselves. They controversially applauded the ethereal notion of a, "Party of One Nation," a phrase coined by the president in reference to combining the two strains of Republicanism. Of course, this decision flew in the face of everything built up by the late Theodore Roosevelt, but most of the state-assigned delegates concurred with the proposal and quietly allowed the PNC to pass the soul-less measure, thus sidestepping the need for additional debate on the Lodge Resolution, finalizing the milquetoast party platform, and officially pronouncing the nominations of Hiram Johnson and Charles Hughes. No discussion, no debate, and no opportunity for the Progressive Left to voice their objections. For the overruled Columbian faction, this action was a step too far.
 
Back in 1916, the presidential candidacy of Emil Seidel caught the attention of scores of disaffected, working-class Progressive voters, enough to play competitively in the Midwest and some mid-Atlantic states. The old Columbian base, chiefly middle-class business owners, attorneys, reform advocates, and certain social activists, held together regardless for the entirety of the Roosevelt presidency. However, as previously noted in discussing pre-convention polling, Hiram Johnson's controversial decision making throughout his short presidency gradually chipped away at the old voting bloc as reform-minded voters drifted to other tendencies. If one cared for the type of systemic change once proudly embraced by the original class of Chicago Progressives or raised eyebrows at the news of police gunning down striking workers in the streets, one could not, in good faith, remain affiliated with the Columbians. Pressing further, Johnson's choice to, for all intents and purposes, abandon the basis of progressivism to remake the GOP in his image, may have been the final straw. Thousands voiced their displeasure to their local Progressive leaders and state chairpersons, and thousands more mailed letters pleading with the PNC to reconsider. Some detractors viewed fusion as a tool by the wealthy elite to kill reformist legislation, others fretted over the Republicans' stance on internationalism versus isolationism. Even Charles Bryan's The Commoner printed an editorial on the subject, one which shared the outrage of the Progressive Left. "The numbers were small at first," wrote Ackerman, "but that hornet's nest would not stop buzzing."
 
Among those registered Columbians who publicly denounced the PNC were pacifist Jane Addams, former Progressive Chairman Craig W. Wadsworth, widow Helen Newell Garfield, journalist Lincoln Steffens, former New Jersey Senator Franklin Murphy, and, rather significantly, sitting Deputy Secretary of Social Welfare Herbert Hoover. Having been assigned to his post by President Roosevelt at the insistence of Secretary William Wilson, Hoover was instructed to co-direct all health and social services for returning war veterans. Hoover was also known for his oversight of hunger relief programs at the Northern Front, and during the Vienna Conference was an avid advocate for servicing the food and medical needs of the Canadian population in occupied Ontario. He never found his footing once Johnson took over and was oftentimes blackballed; barred from all foreign policy meetings, denied the chance to convince the new president to draw down U.S. soldiers from Canada. Once the fusion issue arose, Hoover feared that Johnson would abandon his inconvenient, nagging Progressive colleagues in favor of mindless yes-men and reckless demagogues like Attorney General Palmer (whom he greatly despised). The GOP was not about to challenge the administration for its atrocities in Toronto and elsewhere. Unlike Hoover who believed it crucial to build an alliance with a democratized, reconstructed Canada, Johnson and his GOP cohorts seemed uninterested in abandoning their lucrative Toronto holding.
 
Hoover departed the White House as realization struck, and the popular public official relegated himself to stay out of the 1920 race without issuing an endorsement. In the same vein, a second, hugely influential Progressive figure called out President Johnson for sacrificing the core tenants of their party: Mr. Progressive himself, Senator Robert M. La Follette. The Wisconsinite positioned himself on the left-wing of the Senate and the party leadership from the very beginning, when he declared Roosevelt the rightful heir of Albert Beveridge and paved the way for political independence. He was the first senator to bravely toss aside affiliation with the Republican Party, and one of the few Progressives in Congress to combat the sitting president on matters of war and conscription. La Follette was frequently at odds with his own party, most notably whilst spearheading the dying isolationist trend but too in opposing Palmer's vicious Red Scare operation, and for this it was cardinal knowledge that his tenure as Senate Conference Chairman would end in 1921 regardless of the congressional results. The rise of corporate-friendly, nationalist Progressives gravely threatened La Follette's standing in the leadership, and undoubtedly, his successor would receive unanimous support from Republicans and Progressives alike. Therefore, the senator found no reason to hold back.
 
Right when Deputy Secretary Hoover was submitting his resignation papers and fellow Peace Progressives scrambled to convince Chairman Falconer to change his mind, Senator La Follette was putting the finishing touches on a speech he intended to deliver to a vast audience in Madison. Albeit humorless in his speaking prose and susceptible to loading his words down with specific facts and arguments, "Fighting Bob" nevertheless hoped to excite his crowd and call them to action. Upon taking the stage, he railed against President Johnson's needlessly aggressive foreign and domestic policies, exclaiming, "No man can beat the life from a social movement with brute force." He beckoned to the careers of Abraham Lincoln and Charles Sumner, "great men," who protected the rights of American citizens to criticize war and the government's carrying out of said war, and contrasted their ethos with Johnson's despotic cracking down of First Amendment rights. He warned that the administration now targeted the court system and planned to do away with the separation of powers if left unchecked. It was not an impossible scenario, he presumed, especially with two major parties at his side. "The Constitution means to guard us against these great abuses. Influencing the composition of the court sets a perilous precedent," just as the Justice Department did by seeking to prosecute peace advocates and union organizers. La Follette brought the argument to its core and implored his listeners to vote against a second term for Johnson, and instead support the only viable alternative as he saw it. To fight the forces of reaction, one must support the "coalition of farmers and laborers," and move as one with the masses. "Progress is impossible unless we oppose the fixers, and marry ourselves to the cause of industrial democracy." Robert La Follette had made up his mind, and Seymour Stedman gained a new ally in his quest to turn the White House red.

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Inside View of the Democratic National Convention, July 1920 - Source: MCall

In the wake of Hiram Johnson's nomination by the party of big business and imperialist expansionism, a certain segment of the Democratic National Committee believed their best path to victory lay in picking up disaffected Progressive voters. This sect gleefully watched the slow implosion of Columbian unity, a fact made evident with La Follette's June address, and now looked to harness it to swing the election their way. Finding the right blend of character and charisma alongside an unquestioning commitment to progressivism was all it required. William Jennings Bryan managed to pull it off in 1896, and William R. Hearst accomplished much the same in his 1908 race. Seeing as public opinion of the Democratic brand appeared to be on the up-and-up, demonstrated handily by their congressional pluralities, now was as good a time as any for the liberal wing to burst forward and lock-in a presidential nominee capable of meeting the moment.

On the eve of the Democratic National Convention, as participants traveled miles upon miles to congregate at the event venue in Denver, the historic Colorado Springs Gazette released a political editorial recounting the pressure placed on the delegates. "The Municipal Auditorium will be playing host to the Party of Jefferson and Bryan. It is the first political convention to take place in our state, and the westernmost site for the Democrats since Kansas City in 1900. [...] John Fitzgerald has won over half of the presidential primary elections, though some have expressed doubt whether the Irishman can win the race. It is the responsibility of the delegates to settle on a candidate capable of defeating the President in November. When the roll of States is called, and each State divides its vote among the field, it must select a candidate able to bring sanity back to Washington." Its duty brilliantly highlighted above, the Democrats dug in starting June 28th, 1920.

Fitzgerald fared very well on the speaking circuit, and his strength in rallying support to the polls in the primary season placed his name high on the list of contenders. Though he flatly rejected the "unsound" basis of industrial democracy and waffled when it came to permanent nationalization of the railroads, the Massachusetts senator fostered a base of support within progressive circles, even going beyond registered Democratic voters. He also won a fair bit of support among the old party establishment, winning surprise endorsements from House Whip Woodrow Wilson and Governor Thomas Marshall. Honey Fitz may have lacked the spirited populism of Hearst and Bryan, but in the current political climate it was hardly astonishing to imagine Fitzgerald as the third Democratic president of the twentieth century. Champ Clark, often perceived by the press as the frontrunner for the nomination, ran a passive campaign boosted not by policy pledges and fancy speeches, but by the traditional Democratic machine. A majority of Kansan and Missourian delegates backed Clark above the field, and nothing would change their mind.

Democratic apparatchiks, contemporary political analysts, and electoral aficionados presumed Champ Clark possessed the greatest chance to be nominated by the 1920 Democratic Party, trusting in the competency of the states to award the crown to the man best suited to defeat the incumbent. Oklahoma delegate James Cobb was quoted predicting as much. "Clark will be our next president. This country has had enough of Columbia." And yet, especially if one was on the outside looking in, the floor of the convention did not whatsoever indicate a healthy majority for the aging politician. State delegations outside of the lower Midwest showed little enthusiasm for any of the individual candidates on the first day of the festivities. By contrast, the crowds rose to life whenever convention speakers railed against Wall Street banking clans or denounced the tide of second-wave immigrants arriving from Central and Eastern Europe. More than anything, however, the audience relished in cutting down the incumbent president.

Speechmakers from all over, not exclusively from the Solid South, reiterated their ire for the Johnson Administration and his "reign of chaos and disorder." It all began with an opening plenary from temporary Chair Homer S. Cummings (D-CT), a skillful orator and trial lawyer. "Hiram Johnson has committed a grave injustice by folding to the demands of the Republican Party and the Republican platform. Reactionary and provincial, that platform the very apotheosis of political expediency. Filled with premeditated slanders and vague promises, it will be searched in vain for one constructive suggestion for the reformation of the conditions which it criticizes and deplores. It is the work of men concerned more with material things than with human rights. It contains no thought, no purpose which can give impulse or thrill to those who love liberty and hope to make the world a safer and happier place for the average man. Johnson has decidedly affirmed he is satisfied with that platform." Others approached the critique from an economically populistic perspective, decrying the president's authoritarian tactics against workers. Senator Carter Glass (D-VA), for example, specifically termed the Palmer raids and FIA intrusion a violation of states' rights. None went as far as to condemn the attacks on socialist organizations nor the president's fabricated assertion that the IWW was "foreign-born," but it was clear from the opening moments of the DNC that the tired Eastern machines had far less influence than they anticipated.

Populism was the name of the game at the 1920 Denver convention. Its resurgence occurred following years of frustrating inaction by the "do-nothing" Democratic leadership in Congress and stemmed from a place of postwar resentment toward the federal government. Moreover, the populist surge was amplified by the nativist undercurrent flooding through the party rank-and-file. Their ranks doubled by radicalized military servicemen, nativists in 1920 composed a far higher percentage of the delegation and the gallery than ever before and constituted a formidable faction. Nativism, which in essence is the fusion of white racial extremism with economic populism, rose like a tidal wave as the immigration debate once more seeped into Congress.  White populists and racial supremacists within the Democrats originally gained a prominent foothold in the South some decades prior, but the shocking second-place finish of Tom Watson in 1916 and the increasing popularity of their ideology led some to imagine a grander vision. This sect despised the sitting national committee, figuring them bought-and-sold by the bankers and financial elites, and planned to do away with them entirely if granted power through the platform debate and nominating process. They won leagues of support by developing a program to transform the party into a squeaky-clean bullhorn for the people, echoing the likes of Hearst and Bryan whilst inserting their own warped ideas to the mix. Throughout the primary process, as the Fitzgerald Campaign patted itself on the back for winning successive contests, nativists and temperance proponents worked to lobby state committees to embrace their own chosen candidates for president. In summation, the battle was far from over.

Upon the conclusion of a grueling debate on the merits of dozens of platform planks (chiefly the addition of a Dry Amendment, one narrowly approved by the delegation), the nominating speeches began. Senator Watson of Georgia rose to submit his endorsee for consideration by the delegates, and whilst doing so galvanized a section of the crowd into a cheering frenzy. "My colleague," he claimed, "is the last, best hope for America as our founding fathers intended. Our nation needs saving, and Coley is the man for the job." With that, Coleman Blease, two-term senator from South Carolina and a pioneer of white supremacy in the modern era, was formally entered into the running for president. James K. Vardaman of Mississippi seconded the nomination with an address of his own, one that glorified the late Ben Tillman and applauded rail workers for standing up to the federal government. Fitzgerald then had his nomination speech delivered by New York's Al Smith, followed shortly after by Judge Alton Parker and Governor James Cox' endorsements of Champ Clark. The balloting kicked off thereafter, yet none met the required threshold for formal selection. Clark was first, then Fitzgerald, then Blease.

TWENTY-THIRD DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION

THE BALLOT:PRES		1st Call		2nd Call		3rd Call		1088 DELEGATES
Champ Clark		321		312		309
John F. Fitzgerald		301		300		302
Coleman L. Blease		250		263		273
Furnifold M. Simmons		60		51		46
Fred T. Colter		42		42		44
Finis J. Garrett		30		35		41
John W. Davis		31		40		41
Joseph W. Bailey		11		11		12
Edwin T. Meredith		10		11		10
William H. Carter		4		3		3
Gilbert M. Hitchcock		3		3		3
Thomas E. Watson		3		3		2
William J. Bryan		3		3		1
OTHERS/BLANK		19		11		1

These results, on the initial ballots, did not bode at all well for either Clark or Fitzgerald. Each now required a serious jolt of enthusiasm to regain their pre-convention momentum, and with Blease coming up the rear, time was of the essence. Favorite son candidates clogged up the ranks and left the first ballot a great deal more crowded than it would be on the second and third. It just so happened that such favorite sons were predominantly from the South and would invariably come to Blease's side. Nevertheless, neither of the two leading contenders fancied working together to stop the unthinkable. Clark's men looked to nibble away at his chief opponent's total now that the primaries were completely irrelevant. Fitzgerald's advocates countered that Clark's failure to secure a win on the first ballot proved his unreliability.

Blease, likely viewed as a loudmouthed bigot to the frontrunners, was not counted on as having any remote shot at winning the contest. It was impossible and unprecedented for a Southern candidate to pull through with a two-thirds majority. If Watson could only muster 305 delegates in 1916, why should they expect much else in 1920? However, Blease refined the rougher elements to Watson's philosophy and garnered a wider audience because of it. In espousing the need to protect striking (white) workers from state-led massacres, better support families of veterans on the financial level, forever outlaw the sale of alcohol, and clamp down on "criminal elements" among immigrants and African Americans (the latter being an explicit reference to the contentious 1918 race riots), he attracted attention beyond the Old South. This devious melding of Hearst-like populistic energy and Bryan-esque pseudo-class-warfare incidentally met the conditions as outlined previously by liberal committee members.

On the seventh ballot, as a weakened Fitzgerald fell to third place and the bonafide threat of an insurgent nativist nominee became evident to all involved in the process, the Southern delegates burst into song with a determined rendition of Dixie. In the next morning's paper, The New York Times relayed the confidence of the Clark Campaign, noting, "they claim to have assurances from enough states to reach a majority." Clark believed his win a foregone conclusion, despite the 16 candidates in the running, yet, "the conditions in the hall demonstrate nothing of the sort." Fitzgerald, on the other hand, recognized his wilting odds and the inescapable anti-Catholic slander hurled at his team. He opted to pull a last-minute stunt to deny Blease the nod with assistance by some of the lesser contenders and regional bigwigs. Representative John N. Garner, former Secretary of War under Hearst and an instrumental figure in Texas politics, worked to persuade his state's delegates, and those elsewhere in the South and West, to champion a compromise candidate in the form of his colleague, former Agriculture Secretary Edwin T. Meredith. Meredith was once a card-carrying member of the Populist Party, but later joined the Democrats to support Bryan. Though not a sitting representative, the Iowan ran with full support by the Iowa Democrats and a smattering of small farmers' groups. Garner and Fitzgerald hoped their dark horse candidate would break through the deadlock and capture the nomination by the ninth ballot. Meredith even attained a short endorsement letter from former President Bryan.

Meredith may have been a rogue outsider at one point, but nothing about his politics appealed to the new breed of populism overtaking the Democratic Party in 1920. He shared little in common with the nativist trend and disliked staking out unmovable positions on touchy topics like temperance and immigration. Some considered Representative John W. Davis of West Virginia a better middle-ground due to his rigid defense of literacy tests and vocal support of the pending immigration bill, but his reputation as a Wet Democrat and an old-school Jeffersonian made the attorney DOA. These poor compromise choices were insatiable to the appetite of delegates hungry for a true-blue, dry nativist. The hugely influential Southern Agricultural Workers' Union had granted its endorsement to Coley Blease by this point, as had a number of sharecropper groups based out of the American West. Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico all lined up behind him. Texas did so as well, plainly ignoring Garner's command. Nothing more could be done. With Fitzgerald having dropped out and surrendered his delegates, the scale began to tilt in favor of Blease. As the balloting procedure went on, Blease's men encountered less and less resistance among holdouts in the Bryan states. For those of whom racialism and religious bigotry was unappealing, the Blease Campaign downplayed that facet in favor of his faux-leftist economic message. In the end, it came down to either a Southern populist or an aging, corrupted, machine politician. Just like that, it was over.

TWENTY-THIRD DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION

THE BALLOT:PRES		7th Call		8th Call		9th Call		10th Call		1088 DELEGATES
Coleman L. Blease ☑		320		402		565		726
Champ Clark		322		300		284		276
John W. Davis		49		71		52		55
Edwin T. Meredith		40		93		78		13
John F. Fitzgerald		298		190		95		12
Fred T. Colter		24		13		7.5		2
Furnifold M. Simmons		25		11		3.5		2
Finis J. Garrett		4		3		1		1
Joseph W. Bailey		3		3		1		1
James W. Gerard		2		1		0		0
Josephus Daniels		0		1		1		0
Oscar Underwood		0		0		0		0
William H. Carter		0		0		0		0
Gilbert M. Hitchcock		0		0		0		0
Thomas E. Watson		0		0		0		0
William J. Bryan		0		0		0		0
OTHERS/BLANK		1		0		0		0

TWENTY-THIRD DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION

THE BALLOT:VICE PRES		1st Call Before Shifts		1st Call After Shifts		1088 DELEGATES
Joseph W. Folk ☑		530		823
James M. Cox		301		170
Robert L. Owen		155		86
Carter Glass		25		5
Charles W. Bryan		18		1
Lawrence Tyson		17		0
OTHERS/BLANK		42		3

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Striking Rail Workers, Summer 1920 - Source: Wiki Commons

With the Democrats' nomination of Coleman Blease for president, the stage was set, and the players took their positions. Disillusioned Northerners within the old bastion of Jeffersonian democracy could do little else but grin and bear the pain, irked to the nth degree over having been outmaneuvered in plain sight. Some took refuge in the fact that Blease's running mate, freshman Senator Joseph Folk of Missouri, was much more in line with the progressive mold and theoretically balanced the ticket. Bryan submitted his formal endorsement in early July, citing the "just and noble" qualities of the party platform. He asserted that the election of a Democrat would, "help this world to abolish alcohol, and after that to banish war. The day is past when the liquor machines and Wall Street interests of the big cities can successfully dictate to the great moral majority of the nation." Although he was personally averse to the selection of Blease, Bryan urged his supporters to brush off the South Carolinian's history of overt white supremacist behavior and past advocacy of lynching. "To let the fate of America fall into [Johnson or Stedman's] hands is the gravest sin one can commit."

It appeared the American populace would be made to decide among three bitterly opposed parties with vastly differing ideologies and conceptions for how best to improve the country. The future of the United States was at stake, and the winner of the upcoming race had the potential to dramatically alter the ship of state's course. Previous presidential contests offered a comparable paradigm, as was the case in 1904 with the ascension of the Progressive Party and in 1916 with the rejection of Bryan's peace plan, but never had the choices all represented such radical shifts. Neither Johnson, nor Blease, nor Stedman professed a desire to return the country to prewar normalcy and stability. None presented a vision of maintaining the status quo. None professed that all was well in the nation. All three of the top contenders outwardly declared that something was severely wrong with the current condition of the United States, and that control of the Executive Branch was of paramount importance in remedying the situation.

Newspapers jumped to dub the general election the "Showdown of the Century," eagerly, somewhat naively, expecting a conventional, serene contest. U.S. Elections were famously peaceful transitions of power, and with the rare outburst or claim of voting irregularity, discrepancies betwixt the candidates were universally understood to be settled squarely at the ballot box. Yet, it was not hard to conceive of a tumultuous road ahead when considering the poor socio-economic health of the country at the time. Essentially, each party sought to convince the electorate that their opposition represented a fundamental danger to their ways of life. Johnson's opponents named him a tyrant and an enemy of the working class, those who opposed Blease waved the bloody shirt and questioned his commitment to the Constitution, and Stedman's foes believed him a stooge for Lenin and the Russian Communists. To make matters worse, the heightened tension of the race took place alongside an upsurge in labor activism.

The Rail Strike, albeit thoroughly demonized by the press and suffocated by the employment of strikebreakers, remained a threat to the industry in pockets across the country. The Locomotives Act had expired on its own once Congress exited its session in June. The Johnson Administration was unmoved by the labor stoppages and redoubled its obligation to privatizing the rails, going as far as to commend the legislature for resisting the temptation to act in defiance of the White House. However, privatization took time, and even if Johnson took it upon himself to expedite the process as much as possible, the duty to complete the task would assuredly fall to the winner of the November election. Therefore, thousands of railroad workers in Cleveland, Chattanooga, Birmingham, and Kansas City refused to give up the fight. Stedman himself appeared at union events throughout the fiasco to celebrate their resilience and cheer on their efforts. At one stop he stated, "It is your labor, and labor of your forebears which built the sprawling tracks from coast to coast. These railroads belong to all men as a public service free of private ownership." He deemed the reinstatement of the Locomotive Act a bare minimum, pledging the introduction of such a proposal to Congress on Day One of his administration.

This call to reverse the law's expiration served as a serious threat to President Johnson and the wealthy interests lined up behind the now-fused Republican and Progressive parties. Not only would Stedman's proposal make permanent the nationalization of the railroads and furthermore legalize the authority of some sixteen labor unions, but it provided for the framework to fully nationalize all public utilities. Such an idea, if brought to reality, would certainly tamper down on the Rockefellers' and Carnegies' oligarchical rule, and potentially revolutionize the entire global economy. Johnson caught on immediately, knowing the inevitability of the "socialistic" unions coming around to endorse the candidate of the Socialist Party. Boosted substantially by the rail, shipping, and automotive industries, the Johnson Campaign fiercely condemned Seymour Stedman's ideas as poison to the American economy.

It was merely a campaigning tactic at first, and not an unfamiliar one to the Left. They named Stedman an enemy of the people, a figure worthy of national scorn. Johnson blasted Stedman's "Bolshevist" program at length, oftentimes connotating nationalization with subjugation. He implored the country deny the Socialists and the IWW a chance to overthrow Western democracy. [...] Palmer traveled town to town with the president early in the campaign. The words of the attorney general were likewise ingrained with fiery charges of treason, espionage, and subversion. Neither offered to American workers any sense of salvation on the horizon, not a nibble of reform apart from tighter immigration restrictions and a roadmap to economic expansion in conjunction with Zollverein. He promised protection. Protection from the demonic Communists and the "Lost Cause" Democrats. That was the core of his re-election campaign at its outset.

         H. William Ackerman, Columbians in Washington: Great Expectations and the Hope of a Nation, 2013

Since the inauguration of Hiram Johnson in August of 1918 and his overseeing of the events of Bloody September, the president was upheld as a hero by a certain demographic of Americans. To those individuals susceptible to the language of the Red Scare and anti-immigration sentiment, Johnson was a symbol of stability and growth in a world otherwise shrouded in danger. Various organizations associated with the promotion of patriotism, predominantly the Roosevelt Defense Leagues and the Societies for Americanism, awakened once again to answer the call of Columbia. The RDL under astute management of Carnegie Steel shareholder Lawrence Cowie Phipps mainly operated as a Pinkerton-adjacent agency for the use of clamping down on labor strikes and labor organizing activities, and during the 1918 wave was instrumental in bringing the Steel Strike to a bloody end. It was ceremoniously applauded by Johnson on multiple occasions for its work in curtailing strikes. This was not the case for the SA. Howbeit similar in their overarching objectives, the SA and RDL did not see eye-to-eye on the proper methodologies needed. In contrast to the professional open volunteerism of the RDL, the SA, by 1920, employed rather vigorous standards for its members and worked beyond the bounds of the law.

Your typical Society for Americanism branch conducted itself as a vigilante group in the late 1910s for the express purpose of putting an end to, "seditious street oratory," and left-wing radicalism. The SA was utilized extensively by Governor William Stephens in raiding IWW offices and, following Theodore Roosevelt's 1918 Pershing Address, took matters in their own hands by staging decentralized and arbitrary attacks on "treasonous" labor union organizers. Its branches grew immensely as Hiram Johnson continuously demanded the American people rise to combat, "dogmatic foes of liberty," and by the end of the decade were a recognizable presence in the streets alongside labor rally-goers. They commonly wore stiff, high-waisted suit jackets with shortened lapels, a look purposefully made to mimic that of the U.S. military in the Great War, and always traveled in gangs of three or more. The SA skulked in the background as election season reared its head, awaiting the president's dog whistle to pounce. Now, with a renewed purpose to stop the rise of American leftism in the polls, scattered SA branches voted unanimously to bound together, "to cleanse the land from Balkan rats, Bolshevik drunkards, and Catholic heathens, to protect the sacred flag of the United States by any means necessary."

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Senator Blease on the Campaign Trail, August 1920 - Source: Wiki Commons

American working classes had endured a rough two years under the stewardship of Hiram Johnson. From the unanticipated losses of both Theodore Roosevelt and James Garfield to the sudden onset of a deadly pandemic, to the disruptive shape of the economy, many Americans were purely exasperated at the thought of a full, four-year term for the incumbent. Regardless of Johnson's constant insistence that this-or-that scapegoat was to blame for the troubling times, the fact of the matter was that the U.S. was in no better condition than it was when he assumed the presidency. For dyed-in-the-wool Republicans, upper-class Progressive voters, and RDL nationalists, choosing to re-elect the president seemed a no-brainer. They trusted in his word and too were utterly convinced of a Pax Americana hovering just beyond the horizon. Others needed convincing.

The Johnson Re-Election Campaign of 1920 was, in its time, the single most expensive electioneering operation in history. Surrounded by special interests and in no shortage of corporate funding, the fusion candidacy outspent its rivals nearly 2-to-1. William Stephens as the president's campaign manager invested roughly $50,000 per day on various expenditures, financing political advertising, surrogate events, and extensive rail travel. Yet the incumbent's greatest asset was not his extraneous spending in the election, but rather the individuals chosen to speak on his behalf. Johnson, after all, as Roosevelt's protégé and chosen successor, inherited the prestige and notoriety associated with wartime heroism. As was the case at the Republican National Convention, prominent veterans of the Great War like Admiral Knight espoused the need to maintain Johnson's rulership in Washington. General Leonard Wood excelled at this task, oftentimes headlining events and gathering tremendous applause afterward. "None could match it," wrote Ackerman. "Wood articulated what Johnson and Palmer could not, that being the merits of unapologetic Americanism and the righteousness of fighting Bolshevism to the end."

On the opposing end of the spectrum, Senator La Follette began speaking out more fervently against the Johnson Administration in the summer of 1920. His initial declaration of war was met with curiosity by the press and praise by the Socialists, but headlines and partisan adoration was far below the aims of the Wisconsinite. La Follette needed his speeches to make waves regularly in order to attract so-called 'Lost Progressives' and gradually chip away at the president's chance of re-election. Only then, he figured, would he have served his purpose. As such, the orator traveled throughout the Badger State in search of reputable allies, fruitful sources of fundraising, and tools to better expand the necessary coalition for a Stedman victory. La Follette also sought to gain the confidence of the Conference for American Progressivism, a Washington-based organization co-founded by the senator long ago. CAP emerging in fierce opposition to the vicious practices of the Johnson Administration and the PNC's self-destruction would gift a bombshell report to the political press. He did eventually persuade CAP to tepidly withdraw support for the president, but its board steadfastly refused to issue a statement of condemnation. Several Progressives did join La Follette along the way, however, including Nebraska Senator George Norris and Chicago City Councilman Harold Ickes, which kept Fighting Bob in the news.

The Democratic Party likewise focused its fire on the White House. Albeit a less grandiose operation than that of the Republicans', the Blease Campaign was extraordinarily active and widespread. Just as they had at the DNC, Blease's proxies highlighted their populistic economic message in areas unreceptive to the race angle, and did the reverse as needed. Blease enjoyed immense support when touring the South, but rather unexpectedly found welcoming audiences in places like Indiana and Ohio. Some of it may have been due to his proposal for a national prohibition law or tighter immigration restrictions, but, quoting Fort Wayne's The Journal Gazette", "all are exhilarated at the thought of an all-new administration. Anyone but Johnson, they tell us." Democratic advocates in this cycle quickly determined it unnecessary to magnify their chosen candidate's qualifications when simply tearing apart the incumbency did wonders for their poll numbers. They preyed on that discovery, and by August their messaging centered mainly on Johnson's faults. Not since 1908 had the Democrats run with such a negative slant, pointing out the innate flaws in the Johnson legacy and deeming him a poor substitute for Theodore Roosevelt.

One of the more famous political adverts of 1920 was an illustration submitted by a Socialist cartoonist and sponsored by a Democratic publication. It pictured Hiram Johnson as a pudgy man in small glasses (not an uncommon depiction for the leader) sailing in a rowboat with a man beside him labeled "Palmer." Their boat was named the S.S. Columbia and it flew the flag of the German Empire. This tiny vessel sailed not on an ocean of crisp water, but one of sludge-like darkness. Below the murky liquid sat piles of human skeletons. Nametags on the drowned corpses read "John, Steelworker," "Mary, Suffragette," and "James, U.S. Army." Pointed toward a monsoon titled "Four More Years," Palmer asks whether the two should dock at a nearby harbor and take refuge. Johnson replies, "The dockworkers are unionized, and we have no bullets!"

When it came to coalition-building and enticing new partisan disciples to their cause, the Socialist Party fared spectacularly compared to the Democratic and Republican-Progressive parties. Seymour Stedman, a relatively unknown figure at the start of the election season, blossomed into a popularized bullhorn for systemic change. It baffled the competition. An eloquent speaker less divisive than any man yet nominated for the Socialist ticket, Stedman easily found his footing and conducted a sprawling campaign worthy of Eugene Debs' commendation. Theodore Debs once more fell into the role of campaign manager despite being named Stedman's running-mate, but in that position orchestrated a momentous effort which crisscrossed populated centers across America. Along the renewed Red Express, Stedman and Debs first traversed the East Coast and the Midwest, gathering momentum in swing cities like Charleston, Philadelphia, Boston, and Milwaukee. They crusaded alongside fellow aspirational Socialist candidates whenever possible, joining their endeavors and boosting audience participation in the process. Above all Stedman worked to associate his quest for political power with that of the labor movement. Encapsulating that association, campaign events would often start late as the Chicagoan routinely stopped the Red Express to converse with laborers in industrial towns.

The Stedman Campaign coalesced perfectly with the U.S. population's deep crave for sweeping reform. It was evident to those not blinded by ideological loyalties that the Socialists in 1920 stood virtually alone in seeking actual progress. With Progressive independence now formally surrendered to the Republicans, no other political faction presented a progressive program free of reactionary caveats. Stedman himself staked out a solid middle-ground position in socialist circles, offering to the nation a social democratic revision of the status quo but not an outright overhaul of the country in the vein of the Bolsheviks or the SFIO. He believed acting as one with the IWW was of crucial importance, but, opposing Haywood's "Union First" doctrine, political action superseded all. Echoing Debs, he claimed, "political action (is) one of the essential means of waging the class struggle. Political appeal has been made our most potent and effective means of achieving the maximum results. The Socialist Platform is sound and complete. All the powers of capitalism are exhausted in vain to misrepresent it. Millions are today sympathetic who but yesterday were hostile."

Socialism under the Stedman/Debs banner attracted swathes of support from a generational demographic who had come of age during the Great War and experienced profound disillusionment as a result. Those born in the final decades of the nineteenth century had grown up in a world void of humanity, one content with sending millions to their certain doom for some alien conception of divine glory. Young women were eminently vocal in their support for systemic change, brought up seeing generations of feminist activists fight on for their basic rights. They were no less enraged by the government's pure contempt for equal rights and universal suffrage. Second-wave immigrants also found themselves trapped by the two parties in alignment over xenophobic law-making, so in a fashion never seen to such a scale, such communities flocked to Stedman and his pledge to prohibit oppression for all.

Stedman was gaining traction faster than any thought possible. Of this Johnson and Blease were not unawares. Defeating him required the correct counterplan and the means to carry it out. While the president doubled-down on the protection narrative, exclaiming without evidence that he alone could save the citizenry from an unruly and insatiable mob, the South Carolinian populist upgraded repertoire with an untried component. Republicans had the courageous General Wood at their disposal, the Socialists fully exploited the talents of orators Upton Sinclair and Bob La Follette, but the Blease Campaign suffered from a severe shortage of national surrogates. Woodrow Wilson broadcasting Democratic affirmations at the Iowa State Fair did not have as meaningful an impact as intended. Blease coveted an emphasis on anti-establishment sentiment, not this wishy-washy vow-making by Washington insiders and do-nothing moderates.

Recall, if you will, his election to Congress was made possible was a result of Bryan Democracy and White Populism, two inherently anti-plutocratic ideals, returning to the forefront of the party. The Populist modus operandi was based on external, decentralized agitation. The Champ Clark elements, those which blanketly insisted nativism was at odds with Democratic votership in the Midwest, were viewed by Blease as the problem, not the solution. Before long, Wilson and Cox disappeared as headliners. Taking their place were two notable entities in the realm of Populist Democracy: The young, fiery Louisiana State Representative Huey Pierce Long and famed Texas Congressman Samuel Ealy Johnson. [...] Blease was nipping at the president's heels.

         Thomas O'Conner, A Radical History of American Politics: Vol. 5, 2016

    

Literary Digest Poll
September 1920

Hiram W. Johnson		35% Pop., 295 Electoral Votes, 21 States
Coleman L. Blease		34% Pop., 208 Electoral Votes, 24 States
Seymour Stedman		29% Pop., 028 Electoral Votes, 03 States
Other		02% Pop., 000 Electoral Votes, 00 States

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Fished Halibut in Eureka, CA, Est. 1920 - Source: ResearchGate

Opinion polling taken at the tail-end of August appeared to showcase a more-or-less even split betwixt the three top contenders for the presidency. To the disbelievers of the day, it was quite the shock to witness Stedman of the Socialists nearly toe-to-toe with the incumbent president of the United States. This phenomenon, compounded by enormous crowd sizes at his campaign rallies, illustrated the public's accelerating, not decelerating, enthusiasm for democratic socialism. Not only had Johnson's incessant demonization of the American Left been ineffective in dissuading such a curiosity, but some signs pointed to the Red Scare proving outright counterproductive. For historian Michael Landis, "With scant evidence to show to merit the Justice Department's crackdown on civil liberties, Palmer resoundingly lost the trust of the American people. Returns depreciated the harder they drove it in, and at this juncture the Left easily whipped up a hardened opposition."

Nevertheless, President Johnson and his accompanying supporters refused to shy away from their election strategy. In the face of labor resistance, notably the resilience of certain pockets of unrest in Virginia and Pennsylvania, Columbian spokespersons ramped up their inflammatory language. They blamed "disloyal unionism" and "Red Labor" for the national woes. Some cited the radical women's movement as a destructive entity as well, with surrogates like Senator Frank B. Brandegee (R-CT) preaching the usual sexist tropes not uncommon for the era. Framing the subject as if the status quo spared the livelihoods of women, he explained "the maintenance of our systems means the exemption of the female sex. Her fragile form, lesser by the nature of love and devotion, risks her very life if burdened by the blight of politics." Brandegee and men likewise aghast at the thought of women entering the realms of social activism and political agitation were unable to reason with a women's movement sprinting to the trenches of revolutionary idealism. They plead to the "wisdom of mothers" to guard their daughters from sin and warn them of the evils of Bolshevik militancy. For the younger generation, however, feminist icons like Mother Jones, Alice Paul, Emma Goldman, and Rose Schneiderman had already disproved Brandegee's ridiculous assertions and uncovered the hypocrisy of blind Americanism.

Combating this trend was of the utmost significance to President Johnson, and of this Senator Harding was of one mind with the incumbent. Running for re-election in Ohio and counting on the votes of all registered Republicans and Progressives, the senator roared his approval for a key component of the president's campaign and based much of his own on the same premise. As part of an overarching, institutional Red Scare program, Johnson granted his full endorsement to sweeping anti-socialist legislation. The proposal, if passed, would expel all registered members of the Socialist Party and the IWW from Congress, and furthermore require all officeholders sign a "Statement of Loyalty." Socialists and Wobblies would forever be barred from serving in the federal government. This mirrored a previously authorized executive order which had mandated all newly hired federal employees voice unwavering support to the U.S. government. Although it practically begged to be challenged in the courts, the anti-socialist concept was different enough from anti-sedition legislation to royally interfere with the electoral ambitions of the left-wing party. As for Harding, polling taken in the summer of 1920 still placed him as a narrow favorite in the senatorial race with 40% of the vote, a far cry from his 56% triumph in 1914 but a satisfactory figure nonetheless.

With the country as divided as ever and fearful hysteria raising suspicions on all fronts, the dam was bound to break. It did not take long for that concrete to rupture. On September 16th, a group of men besieged a local IWW headquarters in Eureka, California. This busy IWW branch was in the process of organizing longshoremen in an ongoing pay dispute. It gained a foothold in the community upon leading some 300 timber workers to victory against the Pacific Lumber Company in 1918, and in 1920 was determined to assist non-unionized dockworkers achieve similar ends. All thus far had been peaceful, but, behind the scenes, a wave of reaction prepared to shut the recruitment drive down. The Humboldt Society for Americanism paraded through the streets of downtown Eureka, rifles in tow, set on intimidating prospective IWW entrants and forcibly putting an end to the union's activities. The mob fired onto the IWW building in military fashion, broke down the front doors, and upon the breach removed two IWW personnel against their will. Both were well-known labor leaders: Oscar and Alfred Thompson. It is widely presumed that the Thompson brothers were targeted for their recognizable leadership positions in the union. Additionally, Alfred, the elder of the two, was a sitting city councilman and a much-hated entity by the mostly unregulated Eureka fishing industry. The SA bound and gagged the brothers, then dragged them behind a Ford truck for several miles. Shortly afterward, the mob lynched Alfred and Oscar.

A makeshift bomb exploded in the IWW building within minutes of the brothers' abduction. Half of the historic structure collapsed inward, culminating in twelve deaths and twenty severe injuries. Six of those killed were not organizers, but rather three timber workers and their wives. As the Humboldt SA vanished from the blazing sight, firemen and paramedics arrived on the scene to assess the damage and rescue all they could. The press was fast to condemn the violence and offer their condolences to those slain, with some criticizing the city government for not taking the proper precautions in dealing with the notorious SA. Local publications commented on the fact that the IWW did not discriminate based on ethnicity or race, noting their partnership with the NBWA and the wide acceptance of non-English speakers into their ranks. Cross-racial solidarity was a significant component of the IWW, after all. Perhaps it was for this cause, they theorized, that the all-white SA aimed its sights where it did.

Johnson had nothing constructive to say about the incident apart from the briefest of memorials. Palmer stopped short of celebrating the catastrophe, determining the lynching an expected outcome of blatant national disloyalty and a side-effect of labor activism. Blease too admitted his feelings on the matter, though for the sake of his burgeoning populist coalition should have stayed out of it. He remarked that the Eureka bombing undoubtedly occurred because of an, "unholy alliance of the races," and more so predicted an upswing in earned violent extremism. He mourned the victims and briskly denounced the SA, but in the same breath suggested the labor movement's commitment to inclusion was equally to blame for the travesty. Evidently, ethnic differences overruled economic and class solidarity for the South Carolinian. This statement proved highly detrimental to the Democrat. For those who fell for Blease's charade, this moment was a wake-up call. Blease's team worked hard to disguise the senator in a veil of Bryan Democracy and old-fashioned populism, insisting that his true sympathies lied with the American laborer, but his remarks on the Eureka bombing revealed the candidate's un-erasable, racially driven underbelly. "If the bombing of a union hall elicited less rage than said union's recruitment of black dockworkers," wrote author Vera Rivers, "fair mediation would prove impossible."

Responses from Johnson and Blease regarding the terrorist attacks on the labor movement revealed precisely where each stood, not that there was truly much doubt. But for the Democratic advocates who felt obligated to actively campaign for the nominee, doing so whilst plugging their ears, the statement was purely indefensible. Former President Bryan refused to come to the Democratic nominee's defense in the latest issue of The Commoner. Democratic Party chairs in New York, Pennsylvania, and Illinois announced their intent to explore redirecting resources from the national campaign (a call some demanded of them at the conclusion of the DNC). "[Huey] Long was out, not that he was ever "in"." explained Rivers. "He pounced on the opportunity presented before him in August, offering to lend his voice to the downfall of Hiram Johnson, a man he termed a despicable, irredeemable murderer. Despite a deep-seated loathing for Blease, Johnson was a monstrous threat. Not one positive word for Blease escaped Long's mouth. The plan changed after Eureka. He'd win a spot in Congress without their help. Long took the open stage in Lafayette, a venue paid for with funds from the Blease Campaign and the Louisiana Democratic Party, and verbosely denounced Coleman Blease until the Democratic event runners realized with a panic what was happening. It is a memory he has looked back on with fondness."

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Socialist Journalist Walter Lippmann, 1920 - Source: Wiki Commons

Cracks in the dam were more visible than ever. In the immediate aftermath of the Eureka attacks, presumably apolitical editors and authors voiced a tone most unfamiliar to their peers. No longer did each preface criticism of political violence with assurances of anti-socialist sentiment. The truth of the matter was that Eureka demonstrated just the latest in a series of assaults on peaceful activists and organizers. The New York Times, which just three years prior wholeheartedly endorsed loyalty tests and accused the SP of fomenting revolution, printed an editorial decrying the Society for Americanism and its shady enablers within the Johnson Administration. It read, "The affairs of September 16th are a symptom of the disquieting troubles laying deep in the fabric of the country. We exist today leaderless, governed by vigilantism and the rampage of the mob. Rising steadily from one day to the next beneath our noses is a movement both dangerous and unchecked."

The Masses, the most widespread socialist magazine in the U.S., sorrowfully reflected on the violence as well. Its articles did not signify a sense of shock, but rather explained the Eureka tragedy within the context of the Johnson Administration's long-standing strategy of manipulating the public and severing the organizing arm of the working class. "[Johnson's] campaign offers no solution to the hungry and nothing to the jobless. It sides with the foes of social democracy at all turns, and admits no fault in stirring the SA to commit its barbarism. Republicans, Democrats, Columbians... their class interests are integrally intertwined. Unionism is their foe. It is no accident that this administration targets immigrants yearning for workplace democracy. It is no accident that class consciousness is met with bloodshed at home and in Occupied Toronto." By cleverly linking Eureka to the use of an imperial foreign policy, this article highlighted how Johnson and his allies may have inspired anti-socialist terror through their endorsement of tactless violence in Canada. If the U.S. Army was justified in clamping down on left-wing, independence advocates in Toronto and elsewhere in the occupied territories, then surely the same justifications applied to the SA doing much the same at home.

New questions arose in the wake of the incidents. Theorists in the mainstream press and other journalistic endeavors pondered how best to interpret the proper meaning of "patriotism." Was it patriotic to grant unquestioning support to one's government, even when in doubt of said government's policies or direction? When zealous nationalists cheerfully engaged in brutalizing and lynching their fellow citizens, were they not willfully insubordinate to Roosevelt's Americanism? In Seymour Stedman's response to the violence at Eureka, he echoed these very questions. Was the strident, ultra-Americanism of the loyalty leagues truly representative of patriotism in the modern era, or "was their reactionary crusade waged in reaction to democracy itself?" He hypothesized that the workers fighting for a decent wage and the radical suffragettes demanding equal rights were more representative of the "American Promise" than "a horde of unruly butchers." Stedman centered his closing argument along those lines, asserting that it was past time to redefine what makes one a patriot.

As the days dwindled down and the time drew nearer for the century's showdown, the three campaigners rounded out their escapades. Blease made his last stand on the outskirts of Baltimore before making the return trip to Newberry, South Carolina. Ignoring sweeping negative press after his Eureka comments, the Democrat focused all fire on Johnson with a smattering of temperance talk to excite prohibition activists and carry them to the polls. Johnson arrived back in Washington on schedule, giving one final speech before a massive crowd at the White House. He named the election a, "choice of life or destruction," and claimed the fabled Pax Americana would be forever doomed if either the Democrats or Socialists were to be given power. The incumbent moreover reiterated the need to beware of fraudulent practices at polling places, reminding the public of the headache-inducing Manhattan Scandal. He called on duly trained individuals to conduct themselves as readied observers, ensuring that all precincts follow the proper local procedures. Partnering with Republican-owned firms and law offices, Johnson's men worked to have enlistees at every corner. Some criticized this move as an intimidation tactic, while others welcomed the security operation with open arms. It is unlikely, in retrospect, that the observers had any meaningful impact on turnout.

Stedman stayed on the campaign trail through Election Day. He ran one last blitz through the Western states, paying special attention to the Southwest and parts of California. He personally attended a memorial service in Eureka, and in doing so was the only major candidate for higher office in attendance. Stedman, who privately wrote pessimistically about his chances in the election, focused intently on shining the spotlight on fellow Socialists running for state and federal office. Should Johnson be victorious, the left's greatest asset would be their presence in the legislative branch. Reactionary legislation would invariably encounter worthy hurdles if the Columbians were robbed of their standing in Congress. More so, seeing as the 18th Amendment to the Constitution shuffled-up the contingent system by granting House members the ability to vote as individuals as opposed to state blocs, control of the lower legislature was of the utmost importance. It was pivotal for the SP to win in as many districts as possible, in addition to locking down those seats barely won in 1918. Yet he seemed to have all the bases covered, from Miller in the Southwest to La Follette and Seidel in the industrial Midwest, Reed and La Guardia in the Northeast, and Senator Holt on the Mason-Dixon line. A failure to rise above the odds would not occur from a lack of effort, nor a lack of party unity.

Political commentator Walter Lippmann of The New Republic, once a registered member of the Socialist Party, illustrated his disgust with the Republican and Democratic contenders on the eve of the election. "Neither (Blease nor Johnson) embody the ideas for which nominally he stands. It is unreal because both candidates are the products of intra-party struggle for control, and the meaning of their candidacies lies in that control. Their speeches and their platforms are concessions to minorities, and pure bewilderment to the majority. Under cover of that bewilderment the work of Theodore Roosevelt and William Jennings Bryan passes into history. Their spirit controls neither party to-day. [...] They operate in a political vacuum, unable to feign the slightest bit of empathy with the working class." Lippmann was unapologetic in his socialist leanings and famed for his “cut to the chase” editorial style. He garnered a wide audience by 1920, and to his contemporary readership was seen as an authority on popular opinion. Lippmann emphasized that only Stedman appeared amenable to the concerns of the public, asserting the degree to which the other candidates capitulated to special interests and pet causes.

Certain skeptics in the printed media sharply disagreed with Lippmann's analysis. The New-York Tribune published a response piece to that of the Times, The Masses, and The New Republic. Written predominantly by the paper's executive editor, arch-conservative Garet Garrett, the article faithfully defended "the president for all Americans" from "mistrust spewing from the autocrats of Moscow." It presented a glowing review of Johnson's presidency and noted that he alone separated the United States from falling into "a pit of treachery, radicalism, and foreign-rule." Albeit plainly obsequious to the whims of the financial elite, Garrett's work did manage to resonate among those yearning for a return to the days of relative peace, order, and carefully-guided conservatism (even though Johnson's reign represented nothing of the sort). Indeed, Hiram's Johnson's strongest asset was his standing as the incumbent as this position had its natural benefits. Even if all was not well throughout the country, some analysts predicted that the nation would reject any extreme diversions from the status quo and, therefore, be naturally more inclined to keep things as-is. This assumption was calculated into all political forecasts of the day, and most arrived at the same conclusion as the Literary Digest: A potential three-way split with Johnson edging out the competition.

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Illinois Congressman Seymour Stedman, 1920 - Source: Wiki Commons

On November 2nd, 1920, Election Day dawned at last. With this electoral kraken having dipped its tentacles into virtually all manners of American life, to describe the environment as stressed is a severe minimization. Not everyone held a firm stance about politics, but the upcoming vote was simply inescapable. All were familiar with the candidates and their varying positions. The entire saga from Eugene Debs' assassination to the attacks on the Eureka IWW was fresh in mind. Hiram Johnson, Coleman Blease, and Seymour Stedman were extraordinarily well-recognized names if the abundance of press coverage was of any indication. A distinct minority lamented the choices available to them on the ballot, perhaps exclusively desirous of an amorphous normalcy, but most of the electorate felt stirred by at least one of the options. By all accounts this election did not lack public enthusiasm, further proven by its unusual, above-average turnout.

Voters flocked to the polls and did so regardless of nationality or ideological orientation. In those states where universal suffrage was authorized on a complete or limited basis (Texas, for example, permitted women to vote for municipal offices but not federal), women showed up in droves to be heard at the ballot box. By 1920, a handful of states still prohibited ballot access to women or forbade them from casting their votes for president. Even then, women's organizations like the expansive Workingwomen's Craft and Industrial Union League and the American Council of Women Voters rallied feminists and suffragettes to lobby receptive politicians. ACWV founder Alice Paul, a prominent icon of the women's movement and an active participant in intra-war peace protests, declared it necessary for fellow champions of gender and sex equality to support the candidacy of Seymour Stedman. She implored all women to unite under the common purpose of electing the leftmost candidate to expedite their goal of securing the equality of rights under the law, otherwise, under Blease or Johnson, their cause would be lost for a generation. She received ample resistance from the conservative end of the suffragette pool but stayed unwavering.

Numbers began piling in from all over as the minutes stretched to hours. Record breaking turnout seemed the name of the game across the country, and at first the reporting went as smooth as one could hope. And then, the first sign of trouble reared. Perhaps sensing the delicate nature of a potential close race, the SA engaged voters directly at a slew of polling places and apparently threatened the entire process. They specifically and deliberately chose balloting areas with known Eastern European-immigrant populations and were clear in their intent to rob them of their voting rights. Some intimidated with rifle-pointing, others blocked entryways. In most cases state authorities shooed the vigilantes away before any violence could break out, or, if present, Johnson's election observers likewise scared away intimidators. Though elsewhere, a devolution into panic and violence indeed culminated. At fifteen sites targeted by the SA, predominately in and around the Chicago metropolitan area, voting was forcibly closed due to either gunfire, the threat of a bombing, or sheer confusion and misdirection. Thousands found themselves unable to vote in the 1920 elections for this very reason, leading to certain precincts having lower turnout reports despite nationwide figures.

Northern and Western branches of the SA directed most of their ire at immigrant communities and religious minorities for "providing the lifeblood of the Communist Uprising," but in the South, the SA added an additional scapegoat to their repertoire. Recovering from the horrors of the Red Summer and its abundance of race riots, black organizations like the NBWA and the NAACP incorporated new resolutions pertaining to voter registration. Achieving equal protection under the law necessitated federal legislation. It was not easy to picture salvation from a decade rife with white supremacist terror, but many activists believed a key first step involved combating the disenfranchisement of black Americans. Their registration drive was a year-long operation, and alongside consistent anti-Jim Crow litigation by the NAACP it succeeded in raising the number of new registrants within the African American community. Yet voting itself was all but impossible. If being blocked, pushed, and/or shoved failed to persuade, some black voters found themselves staring down the barrel of a shotgun. White mobs in Ocoee, Florida, riled up by the local SA, captured and lynched multiple civil rights activists in retribution, and furthermore razed Ocoee's black neighborhood to the ground. All in all, Election Day, 1920, was bloodier than any in recent history as hundreds died merely trying to cast their votes.

In the words of Benjamin McIntyre, "Discontent because of social upheaval is assured in virtually all human histories. When chronicling the whirlwind of grassroots movements and dissent, oftentimes the point of greatest reaction is equal to the moment of convergence." The time was right for a change, or so it seemed. Advocates for justice faced paramount odds and yet endured in the fight. Brutal crackdowns by the state and private interests had not broken the determinism of the rebels, and in November of 1920 these social movements all appeared to assemble with one common purpose. "Its energies bolstered by the unified labor and socialist movements, the Socialist Party, the sole vehicle for sweeping transformation, braced for what they suspected could be an election to remember."

As the votes funneled in at last, the profound divisiveness of the nation turned from a popular theory to a proven, mathematical fact. Early figures did not show any one campaign with momentum above the rest. Most of the "swing" districts of the last few cycles, specifically those which moved wildly from 1912 to 1916, were too close to call on Election Night. This included areas of Suffolk County, Massachusetts, where Theodore Roosevelt encountered a tremendous wave of support after losing Boston to the Republican Party four years prior. Whereas the Columbians stumbled, the Democratic Party fared splendidly in the Bay State's most recent congressional elections. Election forecasters predicted a Democratic sweep on all levels of government in 1920 as a justifiably negative reaction to the Johnson Administration. With the Irish American population discouraged by the Vienna Conference and deflated by President Johnson's policies, it was assumed this group would flood back to the Democratic fold. Yet less than half did so. Despite Senator Fitzgerald's assurances that the need for a Democratic win overruled concerns over their nominee's tainted history, the cities of Boston, Cambridge, and Chelsea remained too close to call throughout the night. Elsewhere, in industrial towns like Lowell and Lawrence, the Socialists conquered the field.

Even with a somewhat warped view of the returns with only partial results available, precincts with high numbers of unionized voters undoubtedly leaned strongly in the direction of the Socialist Party. This held true regardless of state or locality. The presence of IWW offices in dense, urban areas benefited their side immensely as members flooded the polls, but even on city outskirts the SP appeared to outdo the competition. Whether affiliated with the Wobblies or the pro-Columbian AFL, union families appeared to grant their full confidence to Seymour Stedman. Non-unionized voters, on the other hand, may have been more receptive to Johnson and the Columbians. According to historian George Alexander, "The Hiram Johnson Campaign, the single most expensive operation in political history, fared excellently among all groups with which it did not demonize or vilify. Scores of Americans left the Columbian rolls in 1918, but the first results out of the Northeast indicated fewer had abandoned the president than initially assumed." Indeed, the Johnson presidency, unrepentant in their use of mass corporate funding and use of bigoted propaganda, managed to retain some semblance of an audience beyond women, industrial workers, and immigrants. The Republican-backed candidate was unable to hold Massachusetts, but he prevailed in Connecticut, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Vermont, and, apparently, Maine.

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President Johnson with Senator William E. Borah, Autumn 1920 - Source: Wiki Commons

Observing the Popular Vote evolve as the night went on was a curious affair. In the beginning, Johnson and his Republican allies cheered each announced update emanating from a live radio broadcast (a first for the U.S.). Newly counted precincts with high overall totals for the incumbent painted a grave picture for the Socialists and the Democrats. At the moment it seemed the Literary Digest dramatically undercounted Johnson supporters and overestimated the ability of the other parties to remove from power the natural successor of Theodore Roosevelt. President Johnson himself was said to have looked visibly alleviated by results released in the earlier part of the night, noting the abject failure of the Blease Campaign to sew up Indiana immediately upon the closing of its polls. Traditionally Republican states, alternatively, fell to Johnson without much commotion. When an sooner-than-expected Connecticut call augmented his sum by 7 Electoral Votes, the president reportedly reassured incoming Governor Everett Lake (R-CT), "It will be ours by midnight. You can turn off your radio."

Hours later, the standings illustrated a stark reversal. Returns from New Jersey and Pennsylvania did not sufficiently satisfy election officials to judge the end-results one way or the other. States like Ohio and Colorado encountered significant delays, as did certain Illinois precincts under siege. SA terrorism as previously described ground the electoral process to a halt in some of the nation's densest population centers, provoking deadline extensions and mandatory overtime for election workers. As for the confirmed and verified results, Johnson's unquestioned domination of the Popular Vote was now deserving of ample questioning. Factory towns across the country handed Stedman an unprecedented advantage, specifically in Western and Midwestern states more comfortable with the idea of Socialist representation. City residents throughout these areas embodied the core of the Socialist base, and by the night's end it was all but a certainty that Stedman would skyrocket past the commendable, record totals won by Seidel four years ago. Exemplifying this development, the Popular Vote in Portland, Maine, showed a virtual tie between Stedman and Johnson. The incumbent's grip on the Pine Tree State's total vote count lessened as his lead waned by the minute. Early reports of a Johnson victory in Maine were rescinded, and the state's vote soon entered recount territory.

Coleman Blease, while capably holding his own in terms of his overall share of the vote, struggled to make inroads to the same degree as Bryan had in 1916. Former President Bryan made his name in the Democratic Party through his appeal to agrarian field hands, rural populists, and moralist agitators. He tapped into this crowd without a modicum of effort and doing so thrice won him the party nomination. Although he ultimately failed to win the presidency in 1916, Bryan's presence on the ticket was enough to drive these demographics back to the polls. Blease had none of that appeal. The current nominee based his campaign on a similar moralistic outrage and populist fervor, but his notoriety as a rabid segregationist and staunch nativist played rather poorly with the old Bryanites. Blease's social nativism and economic populism won surefire favor with an undercounted sect of voters, but as was the case with Johnson, his controversial positions also alienated some critical components of the party's historical base. Capturing a plurality in Indiana was a steep chore when it never should have been, and in the end, it slipped through his fingers. Vera Rivers explained, "The Democratic and Progressive parties fell into mirrored traps, that is, taking one's votership for granted. Eureka was just symbolic of their inexcusable tone deafness. Broken and abandoned pieces from the fractured Bryan and Roosevelt coalitions had to go somewhere, and so they did."

The turning point was New York. The Empire State's 45 Electoral Votes and its population of three million were heartily coveted by all vital players in this race. Each campaign made extensive use of surrogate speechmaking and political advertising in New York, optimistic that the swing state would embolden their probability of all-out victory. Johnson employed his vice-presidential nominee, Governor Charles Evans Hughes, to fastidiously shore up support ahead of the election. Hughes enjoyed high favorability throughout the state, but the 58-year-old incumbent was no rising star. That privilege belonged to an enormously popular and influential state senator named Franklin D. Roosevelt. Senator Roosevelt, unmoving in his belief that the government must serve the interest of the public, was an active reformer in the state legislature and encompassed the leftmost section of the New York Progressives. He championed progressive action for well over a decade, and therefore labored with the notion of endorsing Johnson, an unmitigated opponent of governmental reform, for a full term. He calculatingly stayed quiet for the duration of the campaign season and refused to answer calls from the president. Not until reporters cornered him and practically demanded an answer did Roosevelt admit, "My vote is for the man who will fight for the common good. Endorsements serve little purpose. We have seen things on too large a scale to listen at this date to trifles, or to believe in the adequacy of trifling men."

Perhaps because Franklin Roosevelt wished to avoid tying himself down to a political adversary in all but party identity, he deliberately chose to resist endorsing President Johnson. He instead skirted around the issue and, as some journalists extrapolated, suggested an interest in Stedman. Needless to say, whether this extrapolation is accurate or not, Roosevelt most certainly did not name the presumed heir to his cousin's legacy. Historians tend to avoid crediting, or blaming, the state senator for the lackluster performance of Hiram Johnson in New York, as it is far more accurate to point to the gradual success of the Socialist Party and the IWW for the result. The five boroughs of New York City denied appeals from both the Democratic and Progressive-Republican presidential candidates. As had occurred in the 1918 midterm elections, city residents loudly voiced their displeasure with the two parties and served them somewhat measly numbers in turn. Downstate unleashed a tidal wave of support for Seymour Stedman, tempered only by the wealthiest neighborhoods. Upstate was more of a mixed bag, but even in Rochester and Buffalo the SP won wide acclaim. Mayor Seidel took 17% of the state's vote in 1916. In 1920, Stedman managed to secure an astounding 40%, thereby shattering the delusion that Johnson would handily walk away the winner of this race.

"(The Socialists) championed not the theoretical, but the material," wrote Thomas O'Connor. "Restoring the national economy and taking on the all-controlling oligarchy was sound policy. To remedy the nation's unequal distribution of wealth was just and noble action. Voters trusted in Stedman and found his backstory endearing. They concurred now was time for a progressive facelift, a political evolution. Not a revolution of the toiling classes, an all-American evolution to bring about a responsive government and communally owned public utilities. On this basis, far from the dreams of Jack Reed, they succeeded."

The shape of this election cleared up as additional results arrived from the closest states, denoting how Stedman seemed to be narrowly surpassing Blease and Johnson in terms of the Popular Vote. Blease pounded down the competition in the Solid South, and Johnson eked out wins in some portions of the West and Midwest, but the story of the night was Stedman's overperformance from coast to coast. The Socialist Party secured razor-thin margins in the Southwest, captured adoration in the Pacific Northwest, and managed to surpass the rest in coal-heavy West Virginia as well as Ashley Miller's Nevada. By the skin of his teeth, Stedman defeated Johnson in California, dealing a humiliating blow to the Californian native. Within their stronghold in the upper Midwest, the Socialists triumphed as never before, edging out the field in Minnesota, North Dakota, and Wisconsin. Johnson stayed on top by a very slim margin in New Jersey and Ohio, but due to heavy involvement from unionized rail and steel workers in Pennsylvania, Stedman was declared the winner of the Keystone State by less than 1%. Finally, when Michigan was called for President Johnson on November 4th and the spotted Electoral Map focused into view, the nation was awestruck by how incomprehensibly accurate the three-way-tie theory had been. As it was, upon the verification of a contentious Maine recount, Stedman held 179 Electoral Votes, Johnson claimed 177, and Blease had 175.

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The Election of 1920: Final Results

[Elcaspar]

This is getting very interesting indeed...

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Campaign Manager William Stephens, Suspected Mastermind Behind the Anti-Socialist Plot, 1920 - Source: Wiki Commons

1913 left a filthy stain on the collective consciousness. Leaderless squabbles, nefarious intrigue, under-the-table negotiating; It suggested blatant and innate corruption. Many Americans, having seen - or rather read of - the nastiness on Capitol Hill during the contingent election requested something be done to avoid a repeat of that brouhaha. The product of that desire for reform was the 18th Amendment to the Constitution. When confirmed into law, it shortened the duration of the so-called lame-duck period by two months, permanently adjusting the official date of inauguration from March to January. The presidential and congressional inauguration dates were moved to January 20th and January 3rd respectively, thereby relieving the outgoing Congress of its potential responsibility to undertake the contingent election. The 18th Amendment also modified the rules as outlined in the 12th. "The House of Representatives shall choose the President; a quorum for the purpose shall consist of two-thirds of the whole number of Representatives, and a majority of the whole number shall be necessary to a choice." From then on, in the event that no one candidate receives a majority of the Electoral College, the incoming House must vote as individual members to decide the next president. This change went into effect and was put to use at the soonest possible juncture - 1921.

         Bruce K. Tedesco, The Constitution: A Living Document TV Miniseries, 2002

Control of Congress was not yet established. Due to an overabundance of voting complications, a sea of litigations from law firms alleging extensive malpractice, and various other delays made as a result of SA voter intimidation, over a dozen congressional seats remained unconfirmed. Of what was decipherable within the pending results, it appeared extremely likely that the Progressive Party would not regain its plurality in the House, although the extent of that damage was not yet known. Analysts expected an expansion in the number of House Socialists because of their overperformance in the Stedman states, but the gap was perceived to be far too wide to utterly topple the other parties. The idea of an equally divided Congress to coincide with the split presidential vote was not entirely out of the question considering the perfect storm well underway, spelling trouble with a contingent election around the corner. A majority, not a plurality, was needed to complete the contingent process, thus leaving the door open for some measure of compromise betwixt the parties. This scenario theoretically brought everyone to the negotiating table in a fair and resolute manner, yet none could deny how agonizing it was to (yet again) be denied a clear-cut conclusion on Election Day.

This uncertainty kept the nation on its toes, and it especially irked the highest-ranking members of the Johnson Campaign. William Stephens privately exhibited incredulity to his peers over the situation at hand. Upon styling the operation and its core themes in the mold of Albert Beveridge with accompanying organizational assistance from the Republican National Committee, the chief orchestrator of the re-election romp trusted in the wisdom of the electorate to make the right decision. His convictions, however flawed, were earnest. He was of one mind with the attorney general that the ascension of Stedman, his "harbinger for Bolshevism", could irreparably damage the state of the union. Both therefore sank everything into the campaign, donating nearly all their professional working hours and spare time to that cause. Ideologues like Stephens and Palmer were dumbfounded by the newfound attractiveness of the Socialists despite their hard work to vilify the very word itself. They shuddered at the thought of a drawn-out election and disfavored the expectancy of a coin-toss contingent race, and of this result were willing to do anything to prevent it. The administration's extra-legal maneuvers began with legally questionable activities of the USIC and FIA. At no point did the upper echelon ponder questions of ethicality; they had gone too far to back off now. With their political careers on the line, Johnson's entire campaign operation prepared to go the extra mile. Mutually, they chose to cross the Rubicon and go all-in.  

Time was of the essence. Per the 18th Amendment, on January 6th, 1921, the newly elected joint Congress was scheduled to meet. Per the legal bounds of the Constitution in its present state, the old legislative class would be tossed out at precisely 12 O’clock noon. Perceptively calculating an entry point, on December 3rd, about one month prior to the certification date and ten days before the scheduled meeting of the Electoral College, President Johnson signed off on an executive order for the 66th U.S. Congress to reconvene for a special session. Using his authority under the Constitution, he called on the House and Senate to return to Washington due to an, "extraordinary occasion." This formal request was fully within his rights and fell within the bounds set by law. The announcement may have come as an unwelcome surprise for the legislators, who now were made to drop their holiday plans and return on this urgent call. Strangely enough, it just so happened that many representatives, particularly those in the president's court, were seemingly aware of the special session in advance and planned accordingly. Once the order did make its splashdown, few were taken aback by the reasoning behind it. The subtext surrounding the "extraordinary occasion" could not have been made clearer: Organize an immediate solution to America's Socialist Problem.

When the legislature followed through and re-opened in no short time (the winter of 1920 was comparatively mild, facilitating travel plans and making the whole ordeal easier to swallow), an agenda was laid plainly and squarely in front of them. Albeit shrouding the truth behind their motives in a Red Scare cloak, the sitting president was appealing Congress to invalidate the candidacy of Seymour Stedman by any means necessary. Contemporaneous notes and various printed recordings relay this to be the case. According to Senator Albert Roberts (D-TN), "The charade is a dying administration's final, pathetic gasp. (Harding and Mann) have done their due diligence and will claim all is being done for sincerity's sake. That wool is too thick to drag over our eyes." Others echoed the contemptuousness laid in Roberts' statement. For Congressman La Guardia, "It is a sham, an insult to the intelligence of the voters." Regardless of the criticism, the upper chamber did not hesitate to act on the order of the day. On December 10th, following two days of closed-door meetings and backroom deal-making, legislation developed by Senator Medill McCormick (P-IL) narrowly passed through the Senate. In short, the McCormick bill proposed making it a criminal offense to espouse the "destruction of the U.S. government". Anyone found guilty of perpetrating this offense would be forever barred from holding federal office. The party responsible for casting initial judgement would be none other than the Federal Intelligence Authority.

Adding in the explicit involvement of the FIA was a precarious matter. Its inclusion was a personal request from Attorney General Palmer but cost the support of certain conservative Democrats who deemed it an infringement on the rights of states. Nevertheless, enough support persisted for the bill to pass and head to the House for further consideration. By this point, word of the controversial proposal leaked to the press, and citizens all over now read about the activities of the 66th Congress. Millions were outraged. An article in The Masses explained, "Twelve state legislatures have enacted, or are in consideration of, so-called Red Flag or Criminal Syndicalism laws. In spite of Becker (v. California) talk of abolishing presumed sedition has not quelled. The Governor of Kentucky has signed a sedition law penalizing by 21 years in prison membership in organizations which advocate sedition or criminal syndicalism. The act makes it unlawful to arouse "strife or ill feeling between the classes." All of these laws conceal their bite under a somewhat inoffensive exterior, but nevertheless rob men of their civil liberty. If Palmer is handed the gavel, and granted powers to assess libel and constructive treason, all men will face persecution." It was no secret why the chief executive was in such a mad rush to hand these broad powers to its Department of Justice. Their target was Stedman, and discharging him from contention was of the utmost priority. Hundreds of publications rightly blasted the McCormick bill as a fearful and cowardly move by an administration in tatters. Beyond an "Anti-Socialist Plot" as one piece judged it, this special session appeared to be dressing the stage to unjustly hand the election to Johnson. Very few took the side of the sitting head of state in this instance, perhaps correctly reading a shift in momentum away from passage of the bill.

The Johnson Administration understood that with the flick of a pen it could prevent Socialism from taking root. If made law, the McCormack Act would embody an answer to Palmer's prayers. Yet a jumble of unresolved issues were severely discounted. First, the Fourth Estate took no time at all in denouncing the measure, swaying public opinion rather fervently against the measure. Second, further news about the incoming Congress suggested a dismal performance by House Republicans, dampening the prospect of a simple contingent win for Johnson even if Stedman were cast aside. Last, and perhaps the most glaring oversight of the paranoid incumbent, the House Democrats were a distinctive beast from the Senate Democrats. Speaker Champ Clark famously agreed to block all anti-socialist legislation from coming to a vote whenever able. Arbitrarily retracting that oath would certainly land him in hot water should the Democrats need support from the SP in the upcoming leadership contest. In any regard, Clark and his colleagues had little reason to work with the unpopular incumbent - a man who willfully burned bridges and accused rival Democrats of fomenting racial rebellion. Moreover, the FIA stipulation brought ferocious opposition from Clark, the massive Southern bloc, and a not insignificant chunk of the president's own party. Minority Leader Wesley Jones reportedly stated he would rather resign than permit the passage of the bill under his watch. These reactions were, of course, made long after the public made its discontent known.

Days slipped by as House members sat on their hands. December 13th saw the official convening of the Electoral College as each state's elected members met at their respective state capitals. Likely as a direct consequence of the profound unpopularity of the special session, two Nebraskan electors abruptly changed their votes, thus propelling Blease to second place and robbing Governor Hughes of any senatorial consideration for vice president. In Washington, Congressman James Mann (R-IL) fought to regain control by whipping encouragement and calling in favors left-and-right, but the resistance he encountered was far too much to withstand. Speaker Clark, upon receiving a well-documented tirade of insults straight from the White House, relayed, "Let [Johnson] walk down here and defend it himself." The incumbent expended all of his leftover political capital and personal goodwill just to get the bill approved by one-half of the legislature, but nothing more would come of it. Despite his good relationship with the Congress, one built from scratch during his tenure in the Executive Branch, the plot and suspected coup concluded in miserable failure. Gone was any last vestige of respectability for the leader among those not subservient to his demands. To make matters worse, this gambit cost much more than a legislative battle. It made permanent the searing rift in the Progressive Party and all but ruined his odds of being re-elected in the upcoming contingent election.

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1920 Congressional Elections

   

Senate
Democratic: 45 (+3)
Progressive: 27 (-2)
Republican: 19 (-3)
Socialist: 5 (+2)

House
Democratic: 129 (-2)
Socialist: 129 (+36)
Progressive: 118 (-9)
Republican: 59 (-25)

  Senate Leadership

Senate President Not Yet Determined
President pro tempore John W. Smith (D-MD)
Caucus Chairman Robert L. Owen (D-OK)
Conference Chairman Albert B. Cummins (P-IA)
Conference Chairman Warren G. Harding (R-OH)
Caucus Chairman Ashley G. Miller (S-NV)

  House of Representatives Leadership

Speaker Champ Clark (D-MO)
Minority Leader Meyer London (S-NY)
Minority Leader Wesley L. Jones (P-CA)
Minority Leader Porter H. Dale (R-VT)

If the events surrounding the presidential election stood out in bold atop every newspaper's headline, congressional election reports appeared right below. Control of Congress was unpredictable and capricious in every regard, not the least of all because of the innate complexity of the multi-party system and the abundance of entangling cross-party alliances and nemeses. Once the specter of a follow-up, contingent race became incontestable, media analysts and political forecasters closely examined each shred of new information regarding the legislative matches. It would fall to the newly elected representatives, not the outgoing class, to engage in the contingent process, meaning these generation-defining elections were of colossal significance. In mid-December, as the country watched the unfolding of the Anti-Socialist Plot, an article in the New York Times foreshadowed, "We sit on the point of a needle, at risk of losing our nationhood and rule of law. [...] Restore the confidence of the people. Restore the people's rule."

State-by-state down ballot results turned out to closely resemble the presidential race. In terms of pure Popular Vote totals, just like on the top-line, the top three or four candidates were oftentimes neck-and-neck with one another. This trend did not equate to welcome news for all parties involved. On the contrary, it meant absolute disaster for many incumbents, and especially the governing party. Progressive officeholders staved off catastrophe in 1918 due in part to the perceived triumph of the United States on the international front and soaring sympathy for the new president in the wake of Theodore Roosevelt's sorrowful demise. Despite those advantages, the ruling coalition faced blowback for the Red Summer and lost seats in both the upper and lower chambers. Now, in 1920, with zero remaining sympathy votes and discernably lessened tolerance for an out-of-touch administration, the Party of Johnson not only proved incapable of regaining those seats lost in 1918 but slipped even further down the rung. It now held 118 seats in the House, a far cry from their 1914-16 highs.

Sitting Progressives endured immense scrutiny during the election season by left-leaning publications for declining to stand up against President Johnson and the unjust treatment of American citizens over the past two years. Apart from the rare occasion, men of the president's party refused to remark plainly their true sentiments on the administration and its controversies. Nationalist Progressives steadfastly defended their leader and profusely derided faultfinders while the leftmost wing skirted around any disputations in hopes of emerging from the ordeal empowered. Neither faction was spared a pummeling at the polls. Samuel D. Nicholson of Colorado was nominated by the Progressive and Republican parties to contend with Senator Charles S. Thomas (D-CO) in November. As a staunch critic of U.S. entry in the war and of its ongoing occupation of Toronto, Thomas was viewed by men like Nicholson as particularly vulnerable. The challenger, an associate of the wartime United States Energy Commission and a Liberty Loan state chairman, catapulted onto the scene and relentlessly attacked Senator Thomas' record on foreign policy and the military. Yet, in the same vein as Johnson, Nicholson spoke very little about legislative remedies to address governmental shortcomings, instead remarking how government must broadly "establish nobler standards of life and conduct." Thomas, on the other hand, put forward a laundry list of socio-economic ideas he thought necessary to be implemented; urging the Selective Service Act be repealed, the Locomotives Act be reinstated, and women's suffrage be amended to the Constitution. Whereas Johnson beat the odds and topped the field on Colorado's presidential stage, Nicholson could not hope to do so. Senator Thomas secured re-election, 40% to 33% (to 27% for the Socialist contender).

Democrats fared well across the board as a middle-ground alternative to the austere nationalists in areas less amenable to the proposals offered by Stedman and the Socialists. Frank Brandegee (R-CT), a multi-term senator from the traditionally Republican state of Connecticut, managed to be felled by prominent DNC official and Fairfield County attorney Homer Stille Cummings (D-CT). Not since the days of Reconstruction had a Democrat been elected to the Senate from Connecticut, meaning Brandegee's fierce opposition to universal suffrage and "labor radicalism" must have broken an unspoken contract with the voters. Oregon Senator William Hanley also faced a tough re-election bout versus former Senator George Chamberlain (D-OR) and regional Union of Bricklayers and Allied Craftworkers organizer Fred T. Johns (S-OR). Hanely was, of course, known as the prime author of the Security and Loyalty bills, two sedition-related propositions which were irreversibly impeded by President Roosevelt's veto pledge. In the course of the campaign, the incumbent bent over backwards in defense of his legislation as Johns and Chamberlain dug into the senator's shortsightedness, but Hanley was simply overshadowed by his competition. Eventually, Chamberlain, upon frequently highlighting his service as Chairman of the Committee on Public Lands and past opposition to the peacetime use of USIC, squeezed ahead of Johns and regained his congressional seat.

In the Minnesota gubernatorial race, Joseph A. A. Burnquist (P-MN) opted to run in defiance of his exceedingly poor polling figures. Burnquist and his ambitions did not survive the foray and was promptly conquered by labor attorney Peter J. Sampson (S-MN) in a three-way contest. The governor egregiously suppressed the antiwar May Rallies, and since made a name for himself as a staunch enemy of the IWW. At a time when the IWW was likely garnering higher favorability scores than the incumbent president, Burnquist was doomed to fail. Sampson, as a Socialist governor-elect, was joined by Wisconsinite William Coleman in making history. Coleman too rose to challenge a marginally unpopular governor and prevailed in an uncomfortably tight race. Fellow Socialists came quite close in California, New York, and West Virginia, but were ultimately unable to rise above the field. The Supreme Court of West Virginia went as far as to rule the 70-year-old SP gubernatorial candidate, Matthew S. Holt, ineligible on the grounds of breaking the state's strict Criminal Syndicalism law by celebrating revolution in France and Russia. This decision was made, coincidentally, in light of two polls that had placed the UMWA official in a close second to the incumbent Democrat. Holt, nevertheless, emerged from the legal battle determined to see the law changed and the court's decision appealed.

Socialist Party candidates for the House and Senate surpassed expectations, thereby keeping in tune with the similar overperformance of Seymour Stedman. Only a handful of incumbent House Socialists failed to be re-elected in 1920, and even these defeats were washed away with gains elsewhere in the country. The Golden State elected two additional SP members to Congress, attorney Thomas Conway in California's 5th District and activist-author Upton Sinclair in the 10th. Sinclair, the novelist known for uncovering poor working conditions in The Jungle, ran a sponsor-free campaign backed solely by Stedman and an IWW local. The adept lecturer knocked-out two-term Republican Henry Osborne to win the seat with a 3% margin, ridding his home state of its final GOP incumbent. Things had fallen so miserably for the California Republicans that the state organization formally joined its offices with the Progressives, and from 1921 on essentially disappeared as a formidable political operation. Senator George Pardee (P-CA), recipient of a presumably undefeatable Republican-Progressive cross-endorsement, found himself on the losing end of his senatorial re-election big. Representative George Ross Kirkpatrick (S-CA), noted anti-war advocate and outspoken critic of William Stephens, won Pardee's seat in a close match-up with former San Francisco Mayor James D. Phelan (D-CA).

A string of Republican retirements may have been the catalyst needed by the Socialists to do as well as they did. Dozens saw the writing on the wall and, rather than be humiliated by some radical upstart, chose to leave their seats open in a more respectable manner. This was indeed true of the New York Senate seat up for grabs in 1920, when the incumbent, Elihu Root, declared his intent to retire instead of running for a second term. Root won the seat from an uninspiring Democrat at a time when Progressivism was at its apex and Hearst's Civic League severed the Democratic base in two. He achieved his ends by taking advantage of the perfect storm - evidently a one-off political miracle. The Republicans and Columbians settled on an inoffensive moderate named James W. Wadsworth, Jr., whose campaign ended just as soon as it began. Somewhat narrowly vanquishing both Wadsworth and Democrat Harry C. Walker was the next senator from New York: Municipal Court Judge Jacob Panken of the Socialist Party. This embarrassment, doubled by Assemblyman Alfred Smith's win in the simultaneous gubernatorial race, was a definitive blow to the solar plexus. The Republican Party walked away from these elections in utter agony. Senate results left the GOP with 3 wins out of 24: Reed Smoot in Utah, William Dilingham in Vermont, and Warren Harding in Ohio.  In conjunction with their 25-seat loss in the House and 10 lost governorships, it was time for the RNC to re-evaluate its existence as a divorced entity from the far more resilient Progressive Party. Its losses paved the way for a much smoother contingent election process, opening the doors for the Progressive left-wing to breakaway and seal the deal for a novel era in American history. For this unintended consequence, in the words of historian Jacob Alister, "Credit is due."

Senators Elected in 1920 (Class 3)

George Huddleston (D-AL): Democratic Hold, 68%
*J. Thomas Heflin (D-AL): Democratic Hold, 70%
George W.P. Hunt (D-AZ): Democratic Hold, 34%
Thaddeus H. Caraway (D-AR): Democratic Hold, 65%
George R. Kirkpatrick (S-CA): Socialist Gain, 35%
Charles S. Thomas (D-CO): Democratic Hold, 40%
Homer Stille Cummings (D-CT): Democratic Gain, 38%
Duncan U. Fletcher (D-FL): Democratic Hold, 71%
Thomas E. Watson (D-GA): Democratic Hold, 90%
Paul Clagstone (P-ID): Progressive Hold, 40%
Ira C. Copley (P-IL): Progressive Hold, 35%
Thomas R. Marshall (D-IN): Democratic Hold, 41%
Albert B. Cummins (P-IA): Progressive Hold, 44%
Joseph L. Bristow (P-KS): Progressive Hold, 42%
James D. Black (D-KY): Democratic Gain, 41%
Edwin S. Broussard (D-LA): Democratic Hold, 89%
John W. Smith (D-MD): Democratic Hold, 41%
Joseph W. Folk (D-MO): Democratic Hold, 40%
Ashley G. Miller (S-NV): Socialist Hold, 38%
Sherman E. Burroughs (P-NH): Progressive Gain, 40%
Jacob Panken (S-NY): Socialist Gain, 34%
Lee Overman (D-NC): Democratic Hold, 55%
James F.T. O'Connor (D-ND): Democratic Gain, 32%
Warren G. Harding (R-OH): Republican Hold, 41%
Thomas Gore (D-OK): Democratic Hold, 38%
George E. Chamberlain (D-OR): Democratic Gain, 32%
Gifford Pinchot (P-PA): Progressive Hold, 37%
Coleman L. Blease (D-SC): Democratic Hold, Unopposed
Peter Norbeck (P-SD): Progressive Hold, 45%
Reed Smoot (R-UT): Republican Hold, 40%
*Carter Glass (D-VA): Democratic Hold, 90%
William P. Dilingham (R-VT): Republican Hold, 50%
Louis F. Hart (P-WA): Progressive Hold, 33%
Victor Berger (S-WI): Socialist Hold, 43%

[Pyro]

Star Building, Washington, D.C., 1921 - Source: Wiki Commons

Epilogue: Master and Apprentice

The following excerpt is referenced from esteemed author Philip Braddock’s The Model Man, a fictionalized biography centered on the later life of a disreputable figure in U.S. history. Set in the period from 1920 to 1931, the book tackles themes of social upheaval and old age melded alongside political intrigue and ideological banter. Braddock's work encapsulates the human element behind the much-maligned subject and received generally unfavorable reviews as a result.

A soft hum hung low in the air. Scattered rain drizzled on the rooftops, silently leaking underneath the main doorway onto the tile. The grim room seem to darken a shade as Jackson absentmindedly dropped the telephone back onto the receiver. He was a ghastly sight, sleep-deprived and plainly malnourished. Word of Adair's concession hit him like a spear through the gullet. Abandoned in a strange world at a strange time and consumed by the responsibility to tutor some penniless creature of frivolity, he pondered whether rekindling ties with an old acquaintance would release him from this slump. But life in the capital was no different, just one blow after the next.

That was it. It would soon be law. Jackson cleared his throat and braced for the explosion. "They've ignored our appeal," the hollowed man whimpered. He stared back at the telephone expectantly. "I have friends in the judiciary, we'll fight this." Adjusting his gaze to the ground, he murmured, "Defeat I'm familiar with, but the disrespect is another matter."

"Were you of the expectation that this infernal government would coddle your request?" snapped the gentleman. "This is politics, Edward. No man in his right mind will succumb to courteousness and petition." He rose and mellowed his tone. "Do you think I made it this far by relying on kinship and loyalty? Trusting in men's sworn oaths? No, my dear friend, everyone and everything is affixed with a price." An icy breeze wafted in the sitting room, interrupting the rant and sending chills through the corridor. "Thomas!" he thundered. "Would you kindly close that damnable window?"

The blank-faced secretary scampered to his feet and duly followed his instructions. These harsh mannerisms jolted Jackson, but the secretary was evidently unfazed. He trotted to the opposite wall without a word, shivered at the brisk air and closed off the crevice. As the window shut hard into its wooden frame, the thankless gentleman went on. "The Reds, here and elsewhere, are much like Thomas: Men who follow Master's orders and do as they are told," he stated, turning once more to face his guests. "It's no secret the socialists are imbeciles, useful fools for the Russian Jews. They'll not stop until American civilization is broken down to rubble. It cannot be disputed - "

"Call it whatever you'd like," interjected the fourth man present with the slightest hint of a Texan drawl. Jackson shot him a sharp look of warning of which the young man pretended not to notice. "It doesn't matter if they've used goddamn hypnotism, the battle is lost when the workingmen are with them." This younger man, brought to the manor at the insistence of his companion, was obviously not intimidated by his host's wealth and prestige. He continued, "The war will be lost too unless we defy their wickedness and strike before the iron cools. How long until our churches are condemned and open worship outlawed like in that Bolsheviki hell?"

"On that point, the urgency, I do believe there is agreement," responded the gentleman. He looked at the younger man and smiled, "You're a sharp one, aren't you? Good. Soldiers like yourself will be the only thing salvaging the fate of America." He paused. "We will survive this law, but the next may prove fatal. Once these wretched Communists seek nationalization, the brick wall we've built in the Senate will prove impossible to scale. The Reds' modus operandi, economic and intellectually subversive warfare, will be turned against them. Their false ideas will sap the moral stamina of the people and the red tide will recede."

"Yes, that was his plan as well," declared Jackson, rubbing his nose with a dirty rag.

"Alexander, God rest his soul, was not half as clever as a walnut. He left this mortal realm as a coward, the same way he lived." The gentleman stalled for a moment. "I've reasoned this out. I know what we can do to end this racket." He took a step and glanced to his right. "Thomas, grab my jacket, if you will." Gesturing back to his colleagues, he remarked with a knowing expression, "Friends, right this way. I believe we're late to our engagement."

[Pyro]

"Book 2" will start soon! Lots more to come!

[YPestis25]

"Book 2" will start soon! Lots more to come!

Really masterful work here Pyro.

Very excited for Book 2!

[Pyro]

Presenting... Book II of the 'Crimson Banners Fly' series!!

[Pyro]

Ford Motor Co. Factory Under Construction, 1914 - Source: Wiki Commons

Prologue: A Dream Unfulfilled

America, the Land of Opportunity. Millions arrived by land and sea to embrace in the warm glow of this promised paradise. Glorified success stories, the never-ceasing Horatio Alger myth, typified a fairy tale life in the New World. Politicians boasted of a Pax Americana, an American Century. Yet the United States in the twentieth century was anything but sturdy and dependable. Neither its politics nor its economy represented the kind of glorious Neo Rome that had enticed generations to take root upon American soil. Behind the glistening curtain hid extraordinary instability, violence, persecution, bankruptcies, and turmoil. Times were hard at the dawn of the so-called American Century, but it took the pounding turbulence of the nineteen twenties and thirties for talk of a bright future to simmer down.

The above quotation is borrowed from an introductory segment in Hard Times: The Struggle of the Workingman. This piece leads the viewing audience into a celebrated historical documentary which explores and contrasts first-hand accounts of various worker demographics from the Southern coal mines to the Northeastern textile mills. It examines not just their lives from a strictly economic perspective but contextualizes the closeness of their communities and measures family traditions carried from long-departed ancestors. The film's creator believed that one needed to learn precisely what was at stake to relate and empathize with the plight of the industrial worker.

To know their routines, their religious practices, and their languages was pivotal in understanding how these men and women ticked. Scores survived in squalor, working to the bone to make ends meet, and an ingrained fear of repression and loss prevented ideas like unionization from taking hold. Some distrusted outsiders and some preferred one-on-one talks with employers. Unionists, from within and beyond these communities, were not always greeted so warmly by an America resistant to working-class solidarity, but eventually the conditions ripened for a massive swing in the opposite direction.

Even before the Nationalist March and the long days of the Troubles, times were rough for the average American family. Hope persisted, however, and the mirage of prosperity stayed in their sights. Theodore Roosevelt swore to his grave that his steps as president would bring about an inevitable commercial boon, a triumph resulting in equitable benefits for entrepreneurs and farmers alike. This proved a severe miscalculation. War, the focal point of Roosevelt's rule, did not bring about the type of market growth he imagined. Or, as it may be more apt to say, any wealth generated by the catastrophe of the Great War was reserved exclusively for the Oligarchy: A tangled web of corporate interests and robber barons all but immune to the restraints of the law and the tepid rulings of the courts. The fading away of the proper Gilded Age did not likewise fade men of profound, unfathomable affluence from positions of power. Trust-busting may have decimated Northern Securities Company and U.S. Steel, but it was all too evident throughout the much-maligned Progressive Era that the wealth was all moving in one direction.

Collective action by organized workers was the sole means to combat the unequal state of things. With government disinterested in taking on the issue, sects of laborers fed-up with a lifetime of workplace oppression took matters into their own hands and fought for justice. Some populations satisfied with lackluster conditions and the brutal burdens of twelve-hour shifts chose not to grab their pitchforks, but others did. Millions engaged in the burgeoning Labor Movement. Rising militancy and class consciousness gradually became a staple facet of American life in many corners of the country, and the rate of enrollment into organizations promoting industrial unionism skyrocketed as never before. This development epitomized the 1910s just as much as the federal government's apparent subservience to business interests. The tumultuous convergence of these competing trends, and the resulting bloodshed, paved the way for newfound complexities and battle lines in the subsequent decade.

Hard Times adeptly encapsulates the transition from labor's "Wild West" in the 1900s and 1910s to its more rigid entrenchment in the 1920s and beyond. The film explores how otherwise sleepy communities were brought together under the ideas of mutual brotherhood and revolutionary upheaval. As its narrator explains, "Solidarity blossomed in the sewers, they say. It arose from the bottom-up. The Labor Act of 1921 had been the culmination of years of hard work. [...] But the wave soon crashed against a brick wall. Richard Morris was mystified by letters from his cousin in Detroit. Having bled for the union and his right to organize the coal fields, Richard could not comprehend the cheery nature of his cousin's words. "At Ford, we are individuals," the letters read, "architects of the future." These curious boasts symbolized something new for Richard, for whom the union and collective action was integral, but millions shared that attitude. In automobile assembly, petroleum refinement, electrical engineering, and dozens more trades unionism was an alien concept and attracted unbridled contempt by management and workers alike."

[Pyro]

Logo of the Socialist Party of America, c. 1915 - Source: Wiki Commons

Part 1: Rebel in Power

Introduction: The Battered Generation: A Snapshot of Embittered Souls

Ours was never lost. Hemingway hated that idea. He said of his "The Sun Also Rises" ensemble that they were not lost but battered - and battered we were. Endlessly. First by that accursed war, then pestilence. Men grappled with political upheaval, unemployment, depression, uncertainty. My cavalier brothers marched to the front while draped in the stars and stripes, and they followed the siren of glory to their graves. Our parents cheered them on and proudly parroted Roosevelt's mission statement: Peace and prosperity in our time. They voted for war, but it was us who drowned in the trenches and choked on phosgene. The scarring pushed some into despair, corruption and aimlessness, yes, but as a cohort we were not lost, simply made to witness the ash-strewn world created by our dutiful leaders. My comrades and I have never forgotten.

         Jeremiah D. Crowley, Quoted in Spare Us Not: Grassroots Activism in the 1920s, 2003

Young men and women coming of age during the turn of the century, in an American period soon judged the Progressive Era, encountered many of the same trials and challenges of their forebearers with a few extra ingredients thrown in. Historians generally have agreed upon the notion that the country's citizenry and its political class exhibited an increasing concern for the public welfare whereas the U.S. since Reconstruction demonstrated an unmoving reliance on laissez-faire policies. This shift was clearly exemplified within both the public and private arenas, however the extent to which such narrative changes benefited the masses is in dispute. Initiatives represented by Roosevelt's Square Deal made a dent in the lives of working families, but most Americans lived beneath the poverty line, suffered poor housing and working conditions, and dealt with a lackluster educational system and nonexistent health services.

Jeremiah Crowley was one of these such individuals, enduring a trouble-stricken childhood and several drawn-out economic downturns. Reverberations from the Panics of 1893 and 1906, as well as the never-ceasing postwar slump, decimated hundreds of industries and put scores of businesses in bankruptcy. As soon as it appeared a recovery was well underway, another travesty would rain down on the working poor. Nothing ever seemed to improve for good. Bread lines faded away one year and reappeared the next. Supercilious bankers swore to the stability of institutions yet crumbled on the whim of a sudden buyout. The nation repeatedly overexerted itself on vanity projects like the Philippine War, costly endeavors in terms of human lives as well as from a fiscal point of view, and the material gains always seemed to escape the men on the ground. For Crowley, the prospect of Pax Americana was a laughable one at that.

Crowley's statement quoted above shines a light on the hurdles of that generation and elucidates the reasoning behind a left-wing undercurrent that overtook the United States in 1920. Starting from the table scraps of disjointed movements and misaligned labor communities, the Socialist Party of America under the stewardship of Eugene Victor Debs cut through the noise and against all odds fostered a genuine American Labor Movement. Together with the Industrial Workers of the World, the Socialists stirred the pot and garnered a solid reputation for class conscious activism over the course of about two decades. The 1920s started with a bang as presidential candidate for the Socialist Party Seymour Stedman overtook incumbent President Hiram Warren Johnson at the polls and, following a rather heated contingent election in Congress, was confirmed president-elect. Needless to say, the U.S. was on the precipice of a decade unlike any other in its relatively short history.

Crowley joined the Socialists in 1916 and thereby became a part of a new cadre of commanders in that organization. Beside the young activist were long-time veterans of the cause like "Big Bill" Haywood and Emil Seidel, radical feminists Rose Schneiderman and Doris Stevens, civil rights proponents A. Philip Randolph and Harry Haywood, and a slew of others determined to see the country change direction. Albeit stymied by rampant factionalism and squabbling, the party members trusted in the guidance of its overall mission and stayed unified even as other competing groups fell apart at the seams. These figures proved instrumental in countless labor battles, and their work was undoubtedly cut out for them upon the arrival of the Red Scare of 1918-20. With the election of Stedman, a new phase was upon them, and the younger generation, embodied by Crowley and numerous others, would be tasked with inspiring hope in the ongoing struggle for peace and freedom.

The fight for the soul of America had only just begun, and to the misfortune of the Socialists riding high with Stedman in office, dozens of interested parties saw not hope and progress in the palm of the U.S., but something else entirely. Something far darker: A twisted vacuum begging for a savior.