can
citizenship. If you wish me to make the fight I will make it, even if
only one State should support me."

Thus ended the first act in the drama. The second opened with the
gathering of some two thousand men and women at Chicago on August 5,
1912. It was a unique gathering. Many of the delegates were women; one
of the "keynote" speeches was delivered by Miss Jane Addams of Hull
House. The whole tone and atmosphere of the occasion seemed religious
rather than political. The old-timers among the delegates, who found
themselves in the new party for diverse reasons, selfish, sincere,
or mixed, must have felt astonishment at themselves as they stood and
shouted out Onward Christian Soldiers as the battle-hymn of their new
allegiance. The long address which Roosevelt made to the Convention he
denominated his "Confession of Faith." The platform which the gathering
adopted was entitled "A Contract with the People." The sessions of the
Convention seethed with enthusiasm and burned hot with earnest devotion
to high purpose. There could be no doubt in the mind of any but the most
cynical of political reactionaries that here was the manifestation of a
new and revivifying force to be reckoned with in the future development
of American political life.

The platform adopted by the Progressive Convention was no less a
novelty. Its very title--even the fact that it had a title marked it
off from the pompous and shopworn documents emanating from the usual
nominating Convention--declared a reversal of the time-honored view of
a platform as, like that of a street-car, "something to get in on, not
something to stand on." The delegates to that Convention were perfectly
ready to have their party sued before the bar of public opinion
for breach of contract if their candidates when elected did not do
everything in their power to carry out the pledges of the platform.
The planks of the platform grouped themselves into three main sections:
political reforms, control of trusts and combinations, and measures of
"social and industrial justice."

In the first section were included direct primaries, nation-wide
preferential primaries for the selection of candidates for the
Presidency, direct popular election of United States Senators, the
short ballot, the initiative, referendum and recall, an easier method
of amending the Federal constitution, woman suffrage, and the recall
of judicial decisions in the form of a popular review of any decision