Jasper County Democrat, Volume 19, Number 42, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 August 1916 — WILSON A PROGRESSIVE BEFORE PARTY WAS BORN [ARTICLE]

WILSON A PROGRESSIVE BEFORE PARTY WAS BORN

Eighteen months before the birth of the Progressive Party, Woodrow Wilson, then Governor of New Jersey, gave this definition of a Progressive and so classified himself in an address before the Kansas Society of New York, January 29, 1911: “By ‘Radical’ 1 understand one who goes too far; by ‘Conservative’ one who does not go far enough; by ‘Reactionary’ one who won’t go at all. P suppose I must be a Progressive, which I take to be one who insists on recognizing new facts, adjusting policies to facts and circumstances as they arise."

Under Democratic influences during the six-year period since standpatism was overthrown in the House of Representatives in 1910, ninety per cent of the program of reform advocated by the Progressive Party has been enacted into law. “Invisible government,” which is now making desperate efforts to “come back,” has been driven from power under President Wilson’s administration and will have no place in Washington so long as he is in the White House.