The group, commonly known as the "Forty-Eighters", became one of the key constituents in the Conference for Progressive Political Action in 1922, a movement culminating in the independent candidacy of Robert M. La Follette for President of the United States in 1924.

[1] The first published call to establish the organization read in part: "Despite America's splendid success in a war waged against foreign autocracy, our country is menaced by the growing power of an autocratic and reactionary minority at home.

We stand in danger of losing many of the liberties and advances won in the course of our national development.... "Centralization and autocracy are increasing rapidly in the organization of governments, in the control of credit, and in the determination of public opinion.

"It is the purpose of the Committee of Forty-eight to summon from all parts of the country the leaders of its liberal thought and of its forward-looking citizens, to meet in conference.

We hope that out of this assemblage of the scattered forces of Americanism will come a flexible statement of principles and methods that will permit effective cooperation with organized Labor and Agricultural workers in the tasks of social reconstruction.

"[3]Planning on entering the political fray for the long haul, the Committee of 48 opened a headquarters office at 15 E 40th Street in New York City in June 1919, with J.A.H.

[5] On September 22, 1919, the organizing committee pegged St. Louis, Missouri as the location at which the founding conference would be held and slated December 9 to 12 as the dates for the event.

[6] The conference passed resolutions calling for the retention of American railroads under government control for a two-year period, requiring that Congress submit any future declaration of war to a direct vote of the people, urging the Blockade of Soviet Russia be immediately lifted and all American forces withdrawn from that country, and demanding that "political prisoners and all imprisoned in violation of their constitutional right of free speech" be immediately released.

The gathering brought together the Committee of 48 with representatives of the Single Tax movement, with a view to further combining with the convention of the Labor Party of the United States, due to start in the same city two days later.

[9] The unification effort was quickly on the rocks, however, as two days of preparatory meetings of conference committees of the two organizations proved unable to agree upon a common program.

Hopkins, Allen McCurdy, and Amos Pinchot, and a more radical segment of newcomers hailing largely from the Western states, the most prominent spokesman for whom was lawyer Dudley Field Malone.

"[2] In McCurdy's view, unification had failed owing to the failure of the convention to accept the desires of "the responsible leadership of the Committee of 48" to establish a "great coalition party" of "believers in American progress," in which organized labor would play only a part.

"It is the conviction of the leaders of the Committee of 48 that the rank and file of the workers of the United States of America do not know what guild socialism is, do not believe it when they know what it is, and will not follow a political leadership which has this end in view.

[10] The failure of the Committee of 48 to establish a viable new progressive capitalist political party owing its own ideological timidity was foreseen even in 1920, when one discouraged Single Tax adherent noted of the failed unity effort of July 1920: "[J.A.H.