The Progressive Democracy of James M. Cox

The Progressive Democracy of
James M. Cox

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Title: The Progressive Democracy of James M. Cox
Author: Charles E. Morris
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THE PROGRESSIVE DEMOCRACY OF JAMES M. COX
by Charles E. Morris Secretary to Governor Cox

CHAPTER I
THE NEED FOR A DOER
There come times in the affairs of men which call for "not a forgetful
hearer, but a doer of the work." Such a time is at hand. A great war, the
most devastating in history, has been concluded. Its moral lesson has
been taught by its master minds and learned in penitence, we may hope,
by the erring and wrongly willful. But the fruits of victory are
ungathered and the beneficence of peace is not yet attained. The call
arises for a "doer of the work."
Two great political parties in the United States, both with splendid
accomplishments behind them and both with grave mistakes as well,
have attempted to respond to this call, and America, whose proudest
boast is that it has always found a man for every great occasion,
chooses between them. It is a solemn and serious hour. For it has been
America's special fortune that its great teachers and leaders and doers
have been found at just the proper time.
This knowledge of the certain right decision of our country is, we
might almost say, a part of its very fiber abiding with the persistency of

a fixed idea, a part of the heritage of the nation, scarcely needing to be
taught in the schools, obvious even to the casual student from an alien
land. For our historical records glow with the stories of the appearance
of the man; and the thought of a friendly destiny seems not easy to
banish. Time has given so often either the inspired teacher of the word
or the doer of the work that there is more than a faith and a hope, nay
almost a conviction, that it cannot fail now when the agonized appeal
of the world beckons America to complete her high mission to
humanity upon which she embarked when she threw her power and
might on the scales in war.
Those who insist that the fulfillment of that mission lies in keeping the
solemn promises make in France, accepted by friend and foe alike, for
a League of Nations to end war, to see that retribution becomes not
blind vengeance, to set the tribes of the earth again on their forward
journey, present as their leader James Monroe Cox, Governor of Ohio.
A party of traditions, a party that has directed in every critical period
save one since the Republic began, has said that he meets the
requirements of the time. That party chose him because of his record
for doing, because there was an inner conviction that he could enter
upon a still larger field with a growing, an ever-expanding capacity.
This, too, furnishes a fitter chapter in the history of country and party.
For the wise selection of men, even obscure men, has been the tower of
our national strength. America had her Thomas Jefferson to expound
for all the world the real underlying truth of her Revolution. The
equality of rights and duties spread from a dream of philosophers to be
the doctrine of warriors for freedom. There was her George
Washington to hold together the tenuous bands of freedom. She found
her James Monroe to lay the foundations of the doctrine that stern
moral precepts forbid the violation of sovereign rights of the nations.
She