The People's Power League was an important Progressive organization, formed in 1892 by James William Sullivan and led by
William U'Ren, 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 consisting of one house or assembly that legislates and votes as one. Unicameralism has become an increasingly common type of legislature, making up nearly ...
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 voters can remove an elected official from office through a referendum before that official's term of office has ended. Recalls ...
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
The Constitution of the State of Vermont is the fundamental body of law of the U.S. state of Vermont, describing and framing its government. It was adopted in 1793 following Vermont's admission to the Union in 1791 and is largely based upon the ...
). Other radical leaders associated with the League were
Will Daly, George Orton,
Alfred Cridge, 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 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 polit ...
of
The New Republic
''The New Republic'' (often abbreviated as ''TNR'') is an American magazine focused on domestic politics, news, culture, and the arts from a left-wing perspective. It publishes ten print magazines a year and a daily online platform. ''The New Y ...
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