The Birmingham age-herald., 1915-08-02
PROGRESS|VES 10
 FIGHT AS 4 PARTY
 IN 1916 CAMPAIGN
After Three Months Can vass of the West Victor MurdOck Makes This
 Statement

Mt. Pleasant, Ia, August 1.-Vietor Murdock, of Kansas, chairman of the progressive national committee. made the following statement today:
 q have just completed a three months personal canvass of the situa- ton with the progressives in the cen tral west and on the Pacific coast, and after making it I am ready to say flat footedly that we progressives are go- ing Into the 1916 fight as a party, and to win.
 Moreover, a meeting of representa- tives held this month In New York city reported the same conditions in the east that I have found in the west and they are lining up for the next battle. This also is the sentiment of the progressive national committee. We will hold our national convention early and nominate a ticket.
 "The great convention battles of 1916 will not be over candidates, but will be over platforms. The storm will rage, not in the committee on creden- tials, but in the committee on resolu- tions. The Bourbon republican leader ship will not only insist on a standpat candidate. but will fight for an un- stinted and unequivocal indorsement of the administration of William H. Taft and include the Payne Aldrich bill.
 Democrats and Progressives
 "The democratic leadership likewise will point with pride to the equally lamentable Simmons Underwood tariff bill and against a Bryan instruction of the first magnitude will cancel the one term presidential pledge, and other Bryan propaganda, and the progress sives will reiterate and re- emphasize their Chicago platform of 1912. That platform remains the most nearly per feet utterance of the principles of the Abraham Lincoln of modern times
 Both in its protest against the in- roads of privilege fattening on an era of gross materalism and in its practi- cal programme of concrete economic remedies, the progressive platform has become to hundreds of thousands of az gressive Americans the ark of the covenant and there is not a township anywhere without it's group of Critics devoted wholly and solely to its preser- vation.
 frOgreSSlve Tariff Plan
 "The progressives have the right plan for the tariff and other economic issues. including the trust problem.
 The democratic leadership after two and half years of trial, has signal1y failed in solving the nations economic questions. Its tariff law. slammed to- gether under the old log rolling leader ship is utterly unproductive of any of the results previously claimed for it. It's trust legislation founders, its at tempts at development of Amercan ocean going craft have fizzled That this Is the judgment of the voter is amply evidenced by the tremendous ndti-democratic sentiment that has de- veloped at the polls at virtually every election in the last two years. At many of these elections the voter cast a republican ballot because he believed that the republican leadership had learned it's lesson and hereafter would take the progressive path
 Republican Reactionaries
 But now the voters know for a cer- tainty that when the republican lead ership has been restored to power, it has shown more, not less. reactionary tendencies, as is notably evidenced by the actions of the Legislatures in New York, Ohio and Massachusetts. Hand in hand with the progressive proposi- tion to encompass social and industrial justice goes the necessity of solving the great economic problems of the country, not on the basis of political advantage, of which practice both the old parties are infamously guilty but or the basis of service to society
 Everywhere I found those progress sives who made the fight of 1912 with that idea uppermost. eager now to con- tinue the fight. Wherever they have had chance to make good they have done so.
 'The spectacle of republican reac- tion in New York and Ohio, in contract to progressive achievement in Califor mia under Governor Johnson, Is a dra matic portrayal of the need of the new pa triotic party of public service. There fore the progressive party will go on with it's fight straight out and flat footed"