Charles Sumner Bird and the Progressive Party in Massachusetts

ONE of the outstanding leaders of the Progressive Party in Massachusetts was Charles Sumner Bird. As the party's gubernatorial candidate in 1912 and 1913 and its principal financial supporter, he was instrumental in developing an organization that for a few years seriously disrupted the usual political balance in Massachusetts. As a businessman, Bird had little experience in the rough and tumble of politics prior to 1912. But he campaigned with the enthusiasm of a convert once he had become convinced of the righteousness of his cause. While his political career was too brief and ultimately too unsuccessful to attract national attention, it has significance in illustrating some of the problems of Progressive Party leadership in an eastern, industrial state. The Roosevelt revolt in Massachusetts followed a period of mounting political unrest and Republican reverses. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Massachusetts was generally considered to be a safe, conservative Republican state and an unlikely area for a political uprising. Senators Lodge and Crane controlled a powerful organization which successfully thwarted any efforts by insurgents to revamp the Republican Party along more liberal lines. But by 1910 the Lodge-Crane machine had become decidedly vulnerable to the assaults of muckrakers and an aroused electorate. The Democratic Party, relatively united for the first time in years, won the governorship in g1910o and again in 1911. Eugene Noble Foss, the new governor, was a former Republican and the first Democrat to hold the office for two successive terms since the early 1890's. Foss directed his attacks primarily against Senator Lodge who, more than any other individual, was held responsible for the blocking of reform and the diminished popularity of the Republican Party. In January, 1911, Lodge barely missed being defeated in his bid for re-election to the Senate, after the most

Political science · American History and Culture · Race, History, and American Society

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