If you're a modern-day liberal, it's an interesting exercise to look at Congressional roll-call votes from the 1910's--from the "Progressive Era". Congress voted on a number of issues with modern salience, including prohibition, immigration, and women's suffrage. But, as many have written, modern-day liberals won't necessarily find people they agree with very often. For example, many progressive Congressmen were in favor of prohibition, and many conservative Congressmen were in favor of women's suffrage. A few Congressmen, though, seem to have had something like a modern liberal ideology--economically progressive, in favor of women's suffrage, but against prohibition, against the era's restrictions on immigration, and against bans on miscegenation. One such Congressman was Robert Crosser of Ohio, and I thought he deserved a diary.
Note 1: The below is my own stuff, but it's not really original, and I've seen similar analysis in various academic articles. It won't come as any surprise to political scientists or students of the era, but I like doing things my own way sometimes.
Note 2: I tagged this as an Elections/DK Elections diary since I mostly post there, since I mentioned Crosser in a Weekend open thread, and since I do mention Crosser's electoral performance a bit. I also think this sort of history is important to understanding past elections. But if it's considered off-topic I can change the tags.
Why Crosser?:
How did I find out about Crosser (pictured above, in a public-domain picture from his Wikipedia page)? I started, I think, by trying to find past members of Congress who had voted against bad or infamous legislation, and then I just started comparing various roll calls, trying to find admirable politicians. As I said in the introduction, I think this is a useful exercise for modern liberals, or really any modern students of American politics.
For example, let's look at two votes just a few days apart in 1915. The first, on January 11th, was "to pass H.R. 1710", which, an earlier vote makes clear, was a bill "prohibiting and punishing miscegenation in the District of Columbia and voiding such intermarriage". The second, on January 15th, was a vote "proposing to the state legislatures a woman's suffrage amendment to the Constitution".
I think it's safe to say any modern liberal--or really, anyone modern--would agree on the right votes on these two bills. How many members of Congress at the time met that standard? The D.C. miscegenation ban passed 238-60, with some 136 absent or not voting. Women's suffrage failed 174-204, with only 39 absent or not voting. By my count, only 35 members of the House voted the "right" way on both bills--against the D.C. miscegenation ban and for women's suffrage--out of the 296 who voted yes or no on both.
Note: Only 7 Democrats voted against the miscegenation ban at all, including Crosser, and there were some 84 Democrats not voting. Given how many were Northern Democrats, I have to think this was no coincidence. The earlier vote was a procedural vote to "order the previous question"; 26 Democrats voted against all but 2 Republicans against this. Some of these Democrats didn't vote on the miscegenation bill's final passage, some voted for it, and some voted against it.
Crosser didn't vote on ordering the previous question. I am not sure how to treat this procedural vote, but my guess is that those who voted against ordering the previous question but who didn't vote against the ban itself were willing to oppose the ban, but not directly. I'm not sure about Crosser.
At any rate, 96 members voted for women's suffrage and for the miscegenation ban, 25 voted against women's suffrage and against the miscegenation ban, and 140 voted against women's suffrage and for the miscegenation ban. But here are the 35 who voted right:
MN 1 Anderson, Sydney [R]
KS 1 Anthony, Daniel [R]
PA 6 Butler, Thomas [R]
KS 3 Campbell, Philip [R]
IL 11 Copley, Ira [R]
OH -1 Crosser, Robert [D]
PA 10 Farr, John [R]
MA 14 Gilmore, Edward [D]
IA 5 Good, James [R]
IA 9 Green, William [R]
MI 4 Hamilton, Edward [R]
ND -1 Helgesen, Henry [R]
PA 28 Hulings, Willis [P]
WA 2 Johnson, Albert [R]
PA 30 Kelly, Melville [R]
WA 3 La Follette, William [R]
OR 2 Lafferty, Abraham [R]
MN 6 Lindbergh, Charles [R]
IL 1 Madden, Martin [R]
IL 1 Mann, James [R]
WY 0 Mondell, Franklin [R]
WI 2 Nelson, John [R]
ND 3 Norton, Patrick [R]
CT 2 Reilly, Thomas [D]
MA 7 Roberts, Ernest [R]
OH 6 Sherwood, Isaac [D]
MN 5 Smith, George [R]
MI 3 Smith, John [R]
MN 9 Steenerson, Halvor [R]
PA 24 Temple, Henry [P]
IL 10 Thomson, Charles [P]
IA 8 Towner, Horace [R]
MN 7 Volstead, Andrew [R]
PA -1 Walters, Anderson [R]
ND 2 Young, George [R]
Here is an example of the problem a modern liberal faces when trying to find Congressmen they agree with:
A few weeks before, in 1914, there was a vote "submitting a prohibition amendment to the state legislatures for ratification". Of the above 35 Representatives--again, the only ones willing to go on the record for women's suffrage and against a ban on miscegenation--a vast majority, 27 out of 35, voted (effectively) for prohibition, and only 8 voted against prohibition:
OH -1 Crosser, Robert [D]
MA 14 Gilmore, Edward [D]
IL 1 Madden, Martin [R]
IL 1 Mann, James [R]
CT 2 Reilly, Thomas [D]
MA 7 Roberts, Ernest [R]
OH 6 Sherwood, Isaac [D]
MN 5 Smith, George [R]
And, a few months before that, Congress passed the Clayton Antitrust Act. Only one Democrat voted against it, but it split the Republican caucus roughly in half. Despite this, Madden and Mann both voted against it, and Reilly, Roberts, and Smith are't listed as voting. (I am not sure why, as it should be the same Congress--they're not listed as absent/not voting either.)
So you can see how easily Robert Crosser might stand out--along with Isaac Sherwood and Edward Gilmore--as one of a few Representatives that we can verify as having something like a modern liberal's positions on miscegenation, women's suffrage, prohibition, and the Antitrust Act.
But does this make Crosser interesting, or is it just a coincidence? Was he just (for example) a moderate who sometimes voted with conservatives and sometimes voted with liberals? After all, his DW-Nominate score places him as the 132nd most liberal member of this Congress, which hardly sounds like the rank of an interesting progressive.
Who was Robert Crosser?:
To find out, let's move away from roll call votes and into (quoted) historical narratives. This is Crosser's entry in the "Encyclopedia of Cleveland History", which I hope I can quote in full, as it's all pretty interesting:
CROSSER, ROBERT (7 June 1874-3 June 1957) was a Democratic politician who represented the Cleveland area in the United States Congress for 38 years between 1912 and 1954. Influenced by Mayor TOM L. JOHNSON and the writing of Henry George, Crosser was dedicated to eliminating poverty and advocated equal rights for all. Born in Holytown, Lanarkshire, Scotland, to James and Barbara C. Crosser, his family emigrated to Salineville, Ohio in 1881. Crosser graduated from Kenyon College with an A.B. in 1897 and attended Columbia's and Cincinnati's Law Schools, earning his LL.B. in 1901, when he was admitted to the Ohio bar. He practiced law in Cleveland from 1901 until 1923.
Crosser became involved in local politics through his work for Mayor Johnson. In 1910, he was elected to the Ohio House of Representatives and in 1912 he was chosen as a delegate to Ohio's fourth constitutional convention. Crosser won election as Congressman-at-large in 1912 and as representative of Ohio's 21st congressional district in 1914 and 1916. He was defeated in 1918 and 1920 largely because of his opposition to the military draft. He regained the seat in 1922 and held it until 1954, when he was defeated by CHARLES VANIK in the Democratic Party primary.
Although a member of the Democratic Party, Crosser considered himself an independent who followed the dictates of his conscience. He won the nickname of "Fighting Bob" for his soap-box, street corner campaigning and upset victory in the 1912 Congressional election. His political independence resulted in his being passed over for the powerful leadership positions in the U.S. Congress and often cost him the support of the Democratic Party in the primaries. Considered an authority on transportation in Congress, Crosser served as chairman of the Interstate and Foreign Commerce Committee (1948-52) and the first congressional Flood Control Committee. A strong supporter of postal and railroad workers, he authored legislation giving railroad workers security benefits that were the most liberal of its day.
Crosser married Isabelle D. Hogg on April 18, 1906 and they had four children, Justine, Barbara, Robert, and James. Crosser suffered from arthritis and from 1934 was confined to a wheelchair. He died in his home in Bethesda, Maryland, and was buried in Highland Park Cemetery.
Crosser, in other words, had a long career in Congress, and one that spanned some of the most important issues in this country's history. This profile from a
profile by Albert Jenkins of Crosser at the end of his career, in the "Machinists Monthly Journal" puts it well, although such profiles can of course be excessively laudatory:
He has played a big part in the changing eras from the William McKinley-Mark Hanna time when Big Business ruled supreme and workers were "wage slaves," through the "Square Deal" years of Theodore Roosevelt, reaction under William Howard Taft, the great reform epoch of Woodrow Wilson, the "New Deal" of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the "Fair Deal" of Harry Truman.
I'll be quoting at length from this profile as well, but I can't quote everything--there's an interesting account of Crosser's childhood, as an immigrant child of a Scottish coal-miner, as well as Crosser's eventual "conversion" to the progressive movement after hearing a speech by Henry George.
Crosser helped Mayor Johnson in his Cleveland battles. Then, in 1910, Johnson persuaded Bob to run for the state legislature. He was elected and made a great record in the Ohio House. As a result, he was chosen as a delegate to a state convention which re-wrote Ohio's constitution. One of Crosser's greatest achievements in
those years was putting into the State constitution "initiative" and "referendum" provisions, which gave the people of Ohio power to make their own laws whenever they saw fit, and to reject bad laws passed by the legislature. In other words, this made "government of the people, by the people and for the people" a living thing.
The initiative and referendum aren't universally popular among modern liberals, but this is one more thing that marks Crosser as firmly part of the era's progressive movement.
Reactionaries of both parties saw how this reform would hit them, and they fought it bitterly. But Crosser carried it through and his victory gave him a state-wide reputation.
The great liberal sweep which put Woodrow Wilson in the White House also carried Crosser to Washington as a United States Congressman from Cleveland, in 1913. With the exception of four years, he has been in Congress ever since.
In fact, this might under-state the electoral accomplishment Crosser had being elected at-large in Ohio. In 1912, Ohio
cast 41% of its vote for Wilson, while Wilson won 42% of the vote nationally--this was the year of the Taft/Roosevelt Republican split.
I do not know, unfortunately, whether or not Crosser faced two opponents, but I imagine he significantly out-performed the top of the ticket. In 1908, Ohio cast 51% of the vote for Taft, compared to 51.5% or 51.6% nationally. In today's terms, Ohio would have had an even CPVI, but Crosser won the state. Of course, that was only Crosser's constituency in his first election, and after 1914 he held a presumably-safer Cleveland district.
Back to the profile:
Millions of grateful railroad workers, both retired and still on the job, know Bob as the man who, more than any other, won for them their Railroad Retirement and Unemployment Insurance Systems and the repeated improvements in them. Crosser did similar services for the many more millions of workers under Social Security.
[...]
In another great reform, Crosser put more justice into taxation by leading the fight which passed the first income and inheritance tax laws.
Despite bitter opposition from bankers, Crosser helped put through three great reforms of immense importance to all the American people. One was the Federal Deposit Insurance Act. Before it was passed, millions were losing their savings in "busted" banks. Since it was passed, not one depositor has lost a single cent.
Another of these reform measures was the Federal Reserve Act, which gave Uncle Sam some control over the banking system and the supply of money and credit. Before it was passed, bankers could do and did do such things as bringing on depression by "jerking the rug" out from under the Nation's farmers.
The third measure Bob pushed past hostile bankers was the first Farm Credit Act. It broke the money lenders' grip on farmers and saved the latter billions of dollars by forcing reduction of interest rates.
Crosser also helped fight through the Congress laws creating such regulatory agencies as the Federal Trade Commission, which fights against monopoly and price fixing, and protects consumers and honest businessmen.against business crooks.
Of course, through all these years and changing eras, Crosser was in there pitching for laws protecting workers and their rights to organize. He also was a chief author of the "GI Bill of Rights," and many other measures which have meant a lot to Uncle Sam's fighting men and war veterans
I am neither an economist nor a legislative historian, so I don't know the effects of those bills or the extent to which Crosser deserves credit for them. But Crosser wasn't merely acclaimed in this labor journal. Here is a story from Drew Pearson's famous
column, in 1939:
In any collection of Congressional walking-sticks, Bob Crosser's stands unique, which is emblematic of his legislative service in the interest of railroad labor[.] The Congressman from Cleveland carries a stick: A straight stick with a knob at the top, it bears a silver plate with this inscription:
"Presented to the Hon[.] Robert Crosser by the Railway Labor Executives Association in appreciation of his legislative efforts to improve the conditions of railway workers and his valiant services in the battle for human liberty and economic justice for all mankind[.]"
Crosser is one of the foremost railroad experts in the Congress[.] He is ranking member of the Interstate and Foreign Commerce Committee. He fathered the Railroad Retirement Act, the Railroad Labor Act, and the Railroad Unemployment Insurance Act[.] He has an enviable record[.]
The walking stick is much more than a symbol, however; it is also a convenience, for Crosser has a personal transportation problem which no legislation can Solve[.]
For 20 years, his wife has been crippled by arthritis[.] Until seven years ago, the tall, brawny Scot (Crosser was born in Lanarkshire, Scotland) carried his crippled wife in his arms, Then he, too, was stricken with the same ailment, and now he has trouble getting about himself[.] No one would ever guess it, for he is one of the most hard-working members in Congress[.]
This 1915 book by Lynn Haines refers to Crosser as an "independent Democrat who labored conspicuously for Democracy in the District of Columbia and the municipalizing of its utilities". And in 1922,
Pearson's magazine referred to Crosser as a "single taxer and philosophical anarchist" who was "prominent in the initiative, referendum, and recall movement" and who "voted for the Walters bill...the Currency bill...for the Alaska Railroad bill and against Whaley. He voted for one battleship and for the 'gag rule' on the Panama Canal debate, as well as for Panama Canals toll repeal". (I don't know what most of that means, but I thought I'd include it.)
Robert Crosser, then, was a labor-oriented legislative veteran during the New Deal, who was also a fairly important progressive during the Progressive Era, and who nonetheless voted against many progressives--but with modern liberals--on issues like prohibition and immigration. Historians like Howard Allen and Jerome Clubb have written about how the rights of African-Americans and ethnic minorities were not a high priority of many progressive politicians during the Progressive era, but Crosser was an immigrant himself. And he served for decades in Congress despite physical difficulties that I imagine might have taken a great deal of effort to overcome given the state of medicine and transportation at the time.
And I don't think he became conservative with age--here he is voting with Emmanuel Cellar, Jacob Javits, Adam Powell, Mike Mansfield, and Helen Douglas (and Adolph Sabath; see below) on something involving HUAAC funding.
He did vote for the "registration of Communist organizations" in 1950, even though he voted against a seemingly-similar bill two years previously. He also voted for the Espionage Act of 1917, I think, and he also voted for the McCarran Internal Security Act. (That might be related to the 1950 registration bill.)
There are other such votes; I think the sole "bad" vote of his 1950 ADA scorecard is one of the above or similar.
He had fairly high ADA scores in 1953 and 1954, although he did have "bad" votes on admitting Hawaii as a state and on "forc[ing] testimony by grant of immunity", among other issues. There was one "bad" vote in 1949, something to do with a "raid" on veterans' pensions and one "bad" vote in 1948, on the "Wolcott housing bill".
But he seems to have had perfect ADA records in 1947,1951, and 1952, counting "paired" votes and absences in his favor--and this is, again, a man who was first elected to Congress during the Wilson administration. I can't speak to his entire multi-decade voting record, and I don't know much about him beyond what I presented here. But, as I said, I thought he at least merited a diary on a site like this. Let me know if there's something I should know.
Appendix: The Crossing Axes of the Progressive Era
At the start of 1914, the House passed an immigration bill, H.R. 6060. I don't know the all details of this bill, but immigration bills of this period were pretty bad from a modern liberal perspective.
Of the 339 Members of Congress who voted on both the immigration bill and the prohibition amendment:
-96 voted against both.
-14 voted against the immigration bill but in favor of the prohibition amendment.
-66 voted against the prohibition amendment but in favor of the immigration bill.
-163 voted for both.
That means that it's pretty easy to think of the immigration bill and the prohibition bill as being along the same "dimension" or "axis", with voting against the immigration bill being more "extreme" along this dimension than voting against the prohibition bill. This is the basis of methods like DW-Nominate, Ideal, and Guttmann scale analysis.
In other words, extreme "prohibition-immigration (PI) liberals" voted against both, moderate "PI-liberals" voted against the prohibition amendment but for the immigration bill, and "PI-conservatives" voted for both, with only the remaining 14 left out.
Let's compare to the women's suffrage vote, looking only at these Representatives:
-Of the 96 "extreme PI-liberals", only 34 voted for women's suffrage. 47 voted against women's suffrage, 10 didn't vote, and 5 aren't listed at all.
-Of the 66 "moderate PI-liberals", only 16 voted for women's suffrage. 48 voted against women's suffrage, with 2 not voting .
-Of the 163 "PI-conservatives", 82 voted for women's suffrage. 63 voted against it, 10 didn't vote, and 8 aren't listed.
-Of the 14 "errors" who voted against the immigration bill and in favor of prohibition,10 voted for women's suffrage, 3 voted against it, and 1 isn't listed with a position.
If you exclude the somewhat anomalous Southern Democrats (who comprise a great number of the "prohibition conservatives" who opposed women's suffrage) then it's pretty apparent that "PI-liberalism" is either unrelated or actually inversely related to "women's suffrage liberalism".
But, again, there were 34 "extreme PI-liberals" who were in favor of women's suffrage:
IN 13 Barnhart, Henry [D]
IL 9 Britten, Frederick [R]
NY 1 Brown, Lathrop [D]
PA 11 Casey, John [D]
NY 19 Chandler, Walter [P]
NY 35 Clancy, John [D]
OH -1 Crosser, Robert [D]
NJ 11 Eagan, John [D]
MA 14 Gilmore, Edward [D]
NJ 10 Hamill, James [D]
UT 1 Howell, Joseph [R]
CA 4 Kahn, Julius [R]
NJ 9 Kinkead, Eugene [D]
IL 1 Madden, Martin [R]
NY 3 Maher, James [D]
IL 1 Mann, James [R]
IL 4 McAndrews, James [D]
MA 4 Mitchell, John [D]
RI 1 O'Shaunessy, George [D]
IN 10 Peterson, John [D]
MA 7 Phelan, Michael [D]
CT 2 Reilly, Thomas [D]
MA 7 Roberts, Ernest [R]
MA 5 Rogers, John [R]
IL 5 Sabath, Adolph [D]
NJ 3 Scully, Thomas [D]
OH 6 Sherwood, Isaac [D]
NY 36 Smith, Charles [D]
MN 5 Smith, George [R]
NH 2 Stevens, Raymond [D]
IL 16 Stone, Claudius [D]
IL -1 Stringer, Lawrence [D]
MA 1 Treadway, Allen [R]
IL 16 Williams, William [D]
Note how these are not the same 34 Congressmen who opposed the miscegenation ban but favored women's suffrage. Indeed, 16 outright voted for the miscegenation ban:
IN 13 Barnhart, Henry [D]
IL 9 Britten, Frederick [R]
NY 1 Brown, Lathrop [D]
UT 1 Howell, Joseph [R]
IL 4 McAndrews, James [D]
MA 4 Mitchell, John [D]
RI 1 O'Shaunessy, George [D]
IN 10 Peterson, John [D]
MA 7 Phelan, Michael [D]
MA 5 Rogers, John [R]
NY 36 Smith, Charles [D]
NH 2 Stevens, Raymond [D]
IL 16 Stone, Claudius [D]
IL -1 Stringer, Lawrence [D]
MA 1 Treadway, Allen [R]
IL 16 Williams, William [D]
and 10 more are listed as "not voting". Some of them may have opposed the bill by refusing to vote on it, others may have feared the political consequences of a vote one way or the other, and others might have not been able to make the vote--I'm not sure:
PA 11 Casey, John [D]
NY 19 Chandler, Walter [P]
NY 35 Clancy, John [D]
NJ 11 Eagan, John [D]
NJ 10 Hamill, James [D]
CA 4 Kahn, Julius [R]
NJ 9 Kinkead, Eugene [D]
NY 3 Maher, James [D]
IL 5 Sabath, Adolph [D]
NJ 3 Scully, Thomas [D]
and that leaves 8 who voted the right way on immigration, prohibition, women's suffrage, and the miscegenation ban--the same 8 as above:
OH -1 Crosser, Robert [D]
MA 14 Gilmore, Edward [D]
IL 1 Madden, Martin [R]
IL 1 Mann, James [R]
CT 2 Reilly, Thomas [D]
MA 7 Roberts, Ernest [R]
OH 6 Sherwood, Isaac [D]
MN 5 Smith, George [R]
So these 8 at least voted the "right way" on prohibition, miscegenation, immigration, and women's suffrage.
Mon Mar 05, 2012 at 4:25 PM PT: Few things: That Pearson's Magazine article is from Crosser's at-large term, not 1922. Also, Whitty in comments shows that Crosser's 1912 victory was over a split field and tracked Wilson's closely. Also in comments, I mention Buenker, who may have given me the idea of finding a prohibition/immigration axis, since his work discusses the ethnic/religious relationship between those issues.