The People's Power League was an important Progressive organization, formed in 1892 by James William Sullivan and led by

William U'Ren William Simon U'Ren (January 10, 1859 – March 8, 1949) was an American lawyer and political activist. U'Ren promoted and helped pass a corrupt practices act, the presidential primary, and direct election of U.S. senators. As a progressive, U'R ...

, that was devoted to governmental reforms in the United States in the early 20th century. Ellis Oberholtzer noted that the tradition behind the League reached back to the egalitarian

Pennsylvania Constitution The Constitution of Pennsylvania is the supreme law within the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. All acts of the General Assembly, the governor, and each governmental agency are subordinate to it. Since 1776, Pennsylvania's Constitution has undergone ...

. Both the Pennsylvania radical and the League supported

unicameral legislature Unicameralism (from ''uni''- "one" + Latin ''camera'' "chamber") is a type of legislature, which consists of one house or assembly, that legislates and votes as one. Unicameral legislatures exist when there is no widely perceived need for multic ...

s (a second house being viewed as a protection for aristocratic influences); a mechanism of rapidly replacing elected officials (in the case of the League, through

recall election A recall election (also called a recall referendum, recall petition or representative recall) is a procedure by which, in certain polities, voters can remove an elected official from office through a referendum before that official's term of offi ...

s; in the case of the Pennsylvanians, through annual elections and rotation in office); and a body of elected officials to launch a full-scale investigation into the government at fixed intervals (in the League's case, the People's Inspectors of Government; in Pennsylvania's case, the

Council of Censors A council is a group of people who come together to consult, deliberate, or make decisions. A council may function as a legislature, especially at a town, city or county/shire level, but most legislative bodies at the state/provincial or natio ...

). Other radical leaders associated with the League were Will Daly, George Orton,

Alfred Cridge Alfred may refer to: Arts and entertainment *''Alfred J. Kwak'', Dutch-German-Japanese anime television series * ''Alfred'' (Arne opera), a 1740 masque by Thomas Arne * ''Alfred'' (Dvořák), an 1870 opera by Antonín Dvořák *"Alfred (Interlu ...

, and E.S.J. McAllister. Its predecessor organization was the

Direct Legislation League The Oregon Direct Legislation League was an organization of political activists founded by William S. U'Ren in the U.S. state of Oregon in 1898. U'Ren had been politically activated by reading the influential 1893 book ''Direct Legislation Through ...

. In addition to supporting the Initiative, the Referendum, the Short Ballot (which made more state offices subject to appointment rather than election), Recall of elected officials, and a unicameral legislature, the League also supported proportional representation via

SNTV SNTV may refer to: *Single non-transferable vote, an electoral system in multi-member constituency elections *Sistema Nacional de Televisión (Nicaragua), the Nicaraguan state broadcaster from 1990–1997 *Sistema Nacional de Televisión (Paraguay) ...

according to which every legislative district would be represented by at least two members—those receiving the most votes there—but no resident would be allowed to vote for more than one candidate. According to the PPL's "Proxy" version of SNTV, electors could vote for representatives in other districts than their own (but were still restricted to one vote overall), and those party-sponsored gubernatorial candidates who had been unsuccessful in the last election would be ex officio members of the legislature, required to represent all voters whose candidates had lost in this SNTV election. Progressive author/editor

Herbert Croly Herbert David Croly (January 23, 1869 – May 17, 1930) was an intellectual leader of the progressive movement as an editor, political philosopher and a co-founder of the magazine ''The New Republic'' in early twentieth-century America. His pol ...

The New Republic ''The New Republic'' is an American magazine of commentary on politics, contemporary culture, and the arts. Founded in 1914 by several leaders of the progressive movement, it attempted to find a balance between "a liberalism centered in hum ...

described the People's Power League platform at length in his 1912 book Progressive Democracy. The ''New York Times'' also reported on this proposal in 1912. The League's influence dropped precipitously in Oregon subsequent to a series of failed attempts to put their plans into action via amendments to the Oregon Constitution between 1909 and 1914.James D. Barnett, "Reorganization of State Government in Oregon" in ''The American Political Science Review'', Vol. 9, No. 2 (May, 1915), pp. 287-293

References

Political advocacy groups in the United States {{US-org-stub