Background
José Pablo Torcuato Batlle y Ordóñez studied law at the University of the Republic in Montevideo, but before graduating he went to Paris, where he absorbed new ideas of government. When he was thirty he founded the Montevideo newspaper El Dia. This publication became an intimate part of Batlle's life; through it he expressed his ideas daily until his death. When Batlle entered politics in 1887 he condemned the dictatorship which had been established by MáximoMaximo Santos and advocated a complete reform of the government. He was jailed, exiled, and threatened with death. He participated in revolutions against numerous dictators. Following the return to power of the progressive faction he was appointed head of the Department of Mines in 1887, and in this capacity he distinguished himself by issuing orders to the police not to persecute members of the conservative opposition, the Blanco Party. He continued to advocate government reforms, and was elected president in 1903. Members of the opposition soon organized a revolution, but Batlle overcame them and granted them unusually liberal terms of surrender. He remained president until 1907.
When his term ended Batlle encouraged free elections and was succeeded by Dr. Claudio Wileman, another socially minded member of the liberal faction, the Colorado Party. While Wileman was building railroads, improving harbors, and initiating social legislation, Batlle went to Switzerland for further study in the problems of government. During his stay there he developed a complete political and social creed. He noted that Switzerland confided its government to a group of men rather than to one individual, and in accordance with this principle he developed the idea of government not through a strong individual, but through a group. He believed, however, that no kind of government could succeed unless it accepted large responsibilities for the happiness and prosperity of its citizens. Armed with these two ideas, he returned to Uruguay. When he was re-elected president in 1911 his views startled many people, and his political opponents were enraged. The president gathered around him a brilliant group of young men, trained them in his beliefs, and sent them to all parts of the country to explain his social ideas to the people.
When Batlle retired at the end of his second presidential term in 1915, the country was seething with these ideas, many of which were written into the Constitution of 1918. Batlle's concept of granting executive power to a council, rather than to an individual, was rejected. However, his ideas concerning the responsibility of the state for the welfare of the people were carried out in the creation of a system including social insurance and the establishment of state corporations to conduct banks, transportation, factories of various kinds, and even hotels, when private enterprise proved unwilling or unable to administer them for the good of the public. "Every Uruguayan has a right to demand substance from the state," Batlle told Congress in 1916. "The real source of inequality," he declared, "is the difficulty of arriving at a just distribution."