Conference For Progressive Political Action - Second Convention

Second Convention

The Second Convention of the CPPA was called for Feb. 21-22, 1925 to consider the formation of a permanent independent political party. The task was virtually insurmountable, however, as the heterogeneous organization had split over the fundamental question of realignment of the major parties via the primary process vs. establishment of a new competitive political body. The railway unions, whose efforts who had originally brought the CPPA into existence, were fairly solidly united against the Third Party tactic, instead favoring continuation of the CPPA as a sort of pressure group for progressive change within the structure of the Democratic and Republican Parties.

The February 1925 Convention was attended by "several hundred delegates" -- a number that will never be know precisely since the body voted for sine die adjournment before the report of the Credentials Committee was delivered.

L.E. Sheppard, President of the Order of Railway Conductors, presented a resolution calling for a continuation of the CPPA on non-partisan lines as a political pressure group. This proposal was met by an amendment by Morris Hillquit of the Socialist Party, who called the 5 million votes cast for LaFollette an encouraging beginning and urged action for establishment of an American Labor Party on the British model -- in which constituent groups retained their organizational autonomy within the larger umbrella organization. A third proposal was made by J.A.H. Hopkins of the Committee of Forty-Eight, which called for establishment of a Progressive Party built around individual enrollments. No vote was ever taken by the convention on any of the three proposals mooted. Instead, after some debate the convention was unanimously adjourned sine die—bringing an abrupt end to the Conference for Progressive Political Action.

Eugene V. Debs addressed a "mass meeting" including delegates of the convention in a keynote address delivered at the Lexington Hotel early in the afternoon of Feb. 21. After the Debs speech, those delegates favoring establishment of a new political party were then reconvened, with the opponents of an independent political party departing.

The reconvened Founding Convention found itself split between adherents of a non-class Progressive Party based upon individual memberships as opposed to the Socialists' conception of a class-conscious Labor Party employing "direct affiliation" of "organizations of workers and farmers and of progressive political and educational groups who fully accept its program and principles." Following extensive debate, the Socialist counter-proposal was defeated by a vote of 93 to 64.

The body voted to allow the chair to appoint an Executive Committee of 5 to coordinate with local organizations in establishing a network of state groups. These state groups were to hold State Conventions and these bodies were to elect delegates to a National Convention "to be held at such time and place as such committee shall determine." These State Conventions were to also elect delegates to a governing National Committee—two delegates per state, one male and one female.

This "Progressive Party" survived for a short time in a limited number of states. It held no National Convention in 1925 but continued an independent existence throughout the 1920s.