Dear Amos:
All right. I shall send Perkins your letter and this answer.
I certainly do not regard Mr. Perkins as the "titular head" of the party, and I know he does not so regard himself. Therefore I do not feel that we need bother ourselves about his remaining in such a position inasmuch as he is not in it now. He is not the titular head; the trouble is that he is so efficient that wherever he is he attracts attention. Flinn is our other man of the same powerful business type; he has more political knowledge; if he had been in Perkins' place he would have done admirable work, and would have been, if anything, even more viciously attacked than Perkins was. On the other hand I emphatically feel that he should remain as chairman of the executive committee. Now, my dear Amos, you speak (what I know you feel) with great sympathy of the task that I am trying to carry through, the task of taking a part in leading a great movement and in keeping its supporters together and planning for the future. Moreover, I absolutely agree with you that this Progressive Party, with its thousands of earnest men and women giving their strength to the cause of humanity, and with the millions of struggling people who see some hope in a cause dedicated to economic justice instead of to politics, offers something very fine and very full of possibilities of real usefulness to our country. I moreover agree absolutely with what you say as to the Progressive Party's claiming to be something different from and better than the old parties, and standing not only for political victory but to establish social and economic justice. As you say, our purpose is to free the industrial slave as Lincoln freed the chattel slave. But I utterly differ with you as to your belief about the source of the dangers with which we are threatened. I believe that our vote would have been cut in half at once if we had not been able to persuade two or three millions of good men and women that we were not engaged in an assault on property, or in wild and foolish radicalism. I believe that the suspicion that we were over-radical, were jeopardizing property and business, cost us a million or two of votes. I further believe that if we put out Perkins, and then did the only logical thing by putting out all the men like him, we should gain one or two hundred thousand votes and lose two or three millions. I mean in all sincerity that I think that if the policy you advocate had been adopted at the outset of this campaign - for of course Perkins is simply a symbol, and it is idle to put out Perkins if you don't put out all the men of the same stamp - that we would have been a rival to Debs in the running, and would have lost every particle of power to fight for a good cause.
In your letter you say that Perkins had acted conscientiously, disinterestedly, and with no thought of personal advancement. I can add that he is in absolute and entire sympathy with our attitude toward the trust problem as it is set forth in our platform, as I have set it forth in my speeches, and as men like Jim Garfield, Joe Alsop and Ben Lindsey understand it. I know of no point as regards the trusts on which Ben Lindsey and Perkins disagree, for instance. If Perkins is all right, if he is fighting valiantly for the common cause, then we should be worse than foolish to throw him over. Perkins and Flinn have both been peculiarly valuable men to our cause. I have the utmost confidence in the zeal, the disinterestedness, the high purpose of both, and I know the efficiency of both. I am proud to have them as my friends. I do not believe we could have made any fight to speak of if we had not had them, and men like them, with us. One is attacked only as the other is attacked. I stand by both with my whole heart.