August 7, 1912 — Progressive Party National Convention, Chicago Coliseum, Chicago IL

I rise to second the nomination, stirred by the splendid platform adopted by this convention.

Measures of industrial amelioration, demands for social justice, long discussed by small groups in charity conferences and economic associations, have here been considered in a great national convention and are at last thrust into the stern arena of political action.

A great party has pledged itself to the protection of children, to the care of the aged, to the relief of overworked girls, t the safeguarding of burdened men. Committed to these humane undertakings, it is inevitable that such a party should appeal to women, should seek to draw upon the great reservoir of their moral energy so long undesired and unutilized in practical politics — one the corollary of the other; a program of human welfare, the necessity for women’s participation.

We ratify this platform not only because it represents our earnest convictions and formulates our high hopes, but because it pulls upon our faculties and calls us to definite action. We find it a prophecy that democracy shall not be actually realized until no group of our people — certainly not 10,000,000 so sadly in need of reassurance — shall fail to bear the responsibilities of self-government and that no class of evils shall lie beyond redress.

The new party has become the American exponent of a worldwide movement toward juster social conditions, a movement which the United States, lagging behind other great nations, has been unaccountably slow to embody in political action.

I second the nomination of Theodore Roosevelt because he is one of the few men in our public life who has been responsive to the social appeal and and who has caught the significance of the modern movement. Because of that, because the program will require a leader of invincible courage, of open mind, of democratic sympathies, one endowed with power to interpret the common man and to identify himself with the common lot, I heartily second the nomination.

Source: Modern Eloquence, A Library of the World’s Best Spoken Thoughts, Vol. VIII, ed. Ashley H. Thorndike, (New York: P.F. Collier and Sons Corp., 1925), pp. 1-2.