Committee of 48
The Committee of 48 was an American liberal political association established in 1919 in the hope of creating a new political party for social reform to stand in opposition to the increasing conservatism of both major U.S. political parties, the Republican Party and the Democratic Party. Named in recognition of the 48 U.S. states to signify the desire to construct a broad national movement, the moderate progressives of the Committee of 48 attempted without success to form such a third party with sympathetic activists from the labor movement in 1920.