Louis Ludlow, a self-described “Hoosier born and bred,” was an author and correspondent for Indiana and Ohio papers who became president of the National Press Club in 1927. Ludlow is one of the few examples of someone successfully maneuvering from the press gallery down to the floor; he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1928.
A progressive Democrat, Ludlow sponsored anti-lynching legislation and throughout the next decade introduced a rudimentary Equal Rights Amendment drafted by the National League of Women Voters. But responding negatively to the schoolmarm globalism of Woodrow Wilson, in 1924 Ludlow described himself as a “Democrat nationally and a Republican internationally.”
That commitment to non-interventionism abroad—a sentiment more commonly found among Republicans than Democrats at the time—inspired the proposed constitutional reform that bore his name.
The Ludlow Amendment was a two-part constitutional amendment that would have radically shifted responsibility for American foreign policy from Congress to the people. Section 1 stated that unless the United States was attacked or invaded, Congress could not declare war without a majority vote in a nationally held referendum. Section 2 necessitated that after war was declared through this method, all property necessary to wage war such as yards, factories, supplies, and even employees would be conscripted by the government (with a reimbursal rate to private owners not exceeding 4 percent of the tax value).
“The second section curbs the activities of those who encourage and create wars for financial profit,” Ludlow explained. He was deeply affected by the U.S. Senate’s investigation of munitions manufacturers and whether their influence contributed to the Wilson administration’s decision to enter the First World War.
“On reading these hearings one has a sense of utter shame that there are creatures who call themselves business men who are such strangers to the common impulses of humanity that they eagerly, by bribery and chicanery whenever necessary, promote wars to slaughter their fellow beings for the sake of filthy dollars,” Ludlow continued, even comparing their behavior to Judas’ betrayal of Christ for 30 pieces of silver.
Ludlow trusted the mass of the people to be less influenced by lobbies, hysteria, and war propaganda than the handful of politicians in Washington. “It is unfair to expect the Members of Congress, after all of the atmosphere of war has been created, to resist the terrific pressure and propaganda for war, thus subjecting themselves to the taunts and charges of treason that are always hurled at those who do not go along with the leaders in such circumstances.”
“This most vital of all questions should be decided not by the agent but by the principal, and in this case the principal is the 127,000,000 people who comprise the American nation,” Ludlow said. During a national radio address, he pointed out the incongruity of what did and did not require democratic input: “You can cast your ballot for a constable or a dogcatcher but you have absolutely nothing to say about a declaration of war.”