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1 44 LAWANDLOCALPOLITICS
Conversely, the Progressives were having their troubles. The difficulty of getting men to run on their ticket started in April 1914. Press support began wobbling with the failure of such newspapers as the Progressive-Democrat in May and of The Citizen and the Linton Record in June. Beyond that, the lukewarm reception given to the colonel in October indicated a sad loss of popularity for the ex-President and a fatal loss for the Bull Moose cause.
Simultaneously, encouraging things were happening to us. In July a hundred Progressives marched into the Hotel Severin headquarters and met with me in conference; they announced their purpose to take a vigorous part in the Republican campaign. This was a dramatic thing. When certain newspapers questioned what was behind it, these men signed a statement declaring that their action was sfonte sua and totally without influence from headquarters. A similar spontaneous visitation took place in September, when fifty of the leading Negroes of Indianaall active Progressive workers in 191 2— notified me that they were back in the "old" party and assured me that 90 per cent of their people would be voting Republican in November. This delegation represented the best Negro citizenship of the state and included lawyers, ministers, physicians, and one bank president.
A more subtle indication of trends could be discerned in the increasing numbers of Progressives who could be spotted attending Republican organization meetings all over the state. They were not nagged or dragged; they came of their own free will.
These signs of growth were not sufficient to win us the elections in 1 9 14, but they did put us second instead of third. And that election had a striking aftermath: many local officials who had been elected as Progressives publicly announced themselves as Republicans following their election! In other cases, active workers who had stuck with the Bull Moose through the election wrote letters informing our state headquarters that they were with us once more. One of the most important of these was Horace Stillwell, who said that he, for one, meant to pursue his principles from within the Republican party.
Our welcome to all these returned workers was sincere, and we assured them of absolutely equal voice in all councils. This policy— the heart of our Republican organization program— contributed to our growing strength right up to the 1916 elections, when the Bull Moose party faded from the picture. The return to the older party was brought about by the thinking of individual voters and by their leadership, and it was certainly aided by Republican removal of all causes of complaint as to party management. As a matter of fact, the Indiana Progressive organization itself had been guilty of the same dictatorial practices that it had so sharply criticized in the National Republican Convention of 1912.