no effective political medium through which to express their economic demand... "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." 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. Hopkins of Morristown, New Jersey, former chairman of the National Executive Committee of the National Party, in the role of Chairman. A more nebulous "General Committee" back of the organization included a number of marquee names of the American mainstream liberal movement, including historian and philosopher Will Durant, attorney Dudley Field Malone, pacifist minister John Haynes Holmes, and writer and academic Robert Morss Lovett, among others. To gauge public interest in its efforts, the Committee of 48 circulated some 30,000 copies of a survey to progressives around the nation inquiring as to their views on the need for a new political party and polling them on who should lead such a political ticket. Some 21,000 surveys were returned to the organization, loudly voicing approval of a new organization to challenge the dominant Republican and Democratic Parties and endorsing the candidacy of Wisconsin Senator La Follette as their preferred nominee for President. 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. Some 300,000 copies of a pamphlet entitled A Call to a National Conference were distributed in preparation for the event. National Conference Over 500 persons attended the organizational conference of the Committee of 48, which was gaveled to order on December 9, 1919. That gathering unanimously adopted a first platform for the organization as well as a set of resolutions on various issues of the day. This platform was envisioned as a working draft, to be discussed by the public in preparation for a formally delegated political convention. The platform approved by the December national conference of the Committee of 48