REMEMBER LA FOLLETTE FOR BATTLES WON
Remember La Follette For Battles Won Many Progressive Laws Enacted Through His Leadership in Wisconsin Are Adopted by Other States, Declare Congressmen On Sunday, February 20th, 1927, in the...
...Cooper of Wisconsin: R. SPEAKER, after the many beautiful tributes to the memory of the late Senator La Follette, to which we have attentively listened, I feel, on rising to speak as these memorial services are about to _ close, that there is but little I can add to what has been so appropriately said in honor of the illustrious dead...
...Young La Follette "earned his way" as a student and graduated from the University of Wisconsin in 1879...
...K~ Was part of his strategy, but he always had a constructive proposal for every existing injustice and every Bocial maladjustment...
...With pitiless fact and unrelenting argument he assaulted the status quo in favor of — 1. The seamen's act...
...Lawrence by sixty per cent...
...No man in history ever accomplished anything for his fellow men who was not called this or a worse name...
...and knowing that similar causes arc apt to produce similar effects, he did what he could to prevent the development in this country of abuses long prevalent across the sea...
...LA FOLLETTE, by reason of his study of history and econom- j ics, clearly saw that since the dawn of time there had been a struggle in this world between the oppressed and the oppressor, and that -that struggle took the form of the appropriation of one man's labor by another...
...and that it is wrong not only for the State itself to interfere with such opportunity but also wrong for the State to permit such interference by corporations which are its creatures, or by individuals...
...Supported by a vast army of trusting men and women who rallied under his colors, La Follette never looked backward nor hesitated when the fight was on...
...Kindly, modest, courageous, and strong, he kept faith with himself and with his ideals of what should obtain in our public life...
...He undoubtedly was the most forceful, most fearless, and probably also the most influential exponent of progressive thought in the United States Senate...
...his course, with its exceptional honors, as a student at the university...
...Too ybung to have any part jn the Civil War, his developing intellect met, while a student in college, most of those welfare problems that rose out of the Civil War itself or cut of the changed economic and social life of the postwar period...
...Wisconsin was one of the first States to enact legislation for the protection of the da.ry interests...
...Like Richard the Lion Hearted, he drew the enemy's thrusts toward himself, as he struck blow for blow...
...Probably no American statesman has approached La Follette's record in this matter...
...Of him, truly it may be said — The applause of listening Senate-.* to command The threats of pain and ruin to despise, To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land, And read their history in a nation's eyes...
...Never has the State he so fondly loved and so faithfully served beheld another scene like that when they brought La Follette home to rest in her bosom...
...He believed that — New occasions teach new duties, Time makes ancient good uncouth...
...Forty cats are now used as foster mothers on the island...
...The industrial commission act of 1911 was the first law in the United States which centralized all labor laws in a single department...
...Robert M. La Follette was a man of great Industry, exceptional ability, honest motives, and had an unusally high sense of public duty...
...In 1884, at the age of 29, he was elected to Congress and twice reelected...
...We can best honor him by doing our share to carry on the fight which he led...
...We can well imagine that his emotional intensity came from the French strain in him and that his keen intuitions regarding entrenched wrong were due to the Scotch blood in his veins...
...The struggle and the conflict are over for him...
...A Federal income tax...
...and he numbered among his friends not a few owners of fortunes thus honorably secured...
...Robert M. La Follette had a wonderfully magnetic personality, and I will say that he was the only man in Wisconsin who accomplished the hard feat of cutting deep into the Socialist vote whenever he was on the ticket and whenever we had a man up against him...
...While safety laws and factory inspection did not originate in Wisconsin, Wisconsin was the first State, nevertheless, to adopt the modern type of safety legislation, to compel employers to furnish a safe place of employment...
...But though we opposed him often, I will say in justice to him that he was the most powerful and constructive champion of real democracy the Republican Party has produced since the days of Abraham Lincoln...
...Was he to be a weak, shifty, characterless representative of the people as executive and in legislative halls, responsive to the demands of those seeking to control government for their own interests...
...His many years of public service were devoted to making the Government an instrumentality functioning for the people and by the p?ople...
...In 1880 he was admitted to the bar...
...On the other hand, he told me frankly more than once that for his real progressive measures he could always bank much more on the Socialists in the legislature than on his own men...
...Senator La Follette landed every effort, toward preventing America from being drawn into this war...
...And he knew what we never should forget, that nations, like individuals, have their times of youth, of maturity, and as the history of the past tells us...
...Since then many States have followed Wisconsin's example...
...But the Tife of La Follette teaches us, as does the history of the world from the day when jEschylus fought at Marathon, to the hour when Theodore, Koeraer fell dead in battle for his fatherland, to the later hour when Theodore Winthrop poured out his life blood for the Union, and to the still later hour when Alan Seeger kept his "rendezvous with Death" where "poppies bloom in Flanders fields," that the truest appreciation of literature and art, the deepest love of the beautiful may inhabit the soul at the same time with the loftiest, purest, most devoted patriotism...
...Wisconsin's ad valorem railroad law was not the first of its kind...
...He responded, "Whatever is right is worth while...
...Forcefully portraying existing evils ami with unanswerable arguments his proposed remedies, he brought fellow legislators to his cause, even as at other times with inspiring- oratory he rwayed the multitude...
...A Federal inheritance tax...
...Thus, for instance, Wisconsin was one of the States which had a system for the direct election of United States Senators by the people before the adoption of the sixteenth amendment...
...On February 8, 1915, he introduced a resolution for a conference of neutral nations with a view to securing an early cessation of hostilities among the European nations then at war and to arrange for limitation of armament and the promotion of world peace...
...Their job with a fox litter lasts two months...
...Wisconsin was the first State to make the income tax a practical working measure and a source of real revenue...
...Hi* bark has carried the tired soul to a distant shore from, whence none ever return...
...In a later issue of the Magazine will be published the addresses of Congressmen Fiorello H. La Guardia, Henry R. Rath-bone, George Huddleston, John Morrow, Edward Howard, O. J. Kvale, and James O'Connor.—Editor's Note...
...Then the youngsters are weaned...
...and therefore La Follette believed that the responsibilities of citizenship in this Republic were greater than those in any other nation...
...Only those who were privileged to come into personal contact with him can know what a great, tender heart beat in his bosom...
...The public must be kept informed...
...Wisconsin was one of the first States that passed a civil service law, and even today the Wisconsin law is the most complete and comprehensive...
...I have thought that it might be interesting and instructive for me to attempt to set forth those elements in Mr...
...What constitutes a great man ? A man may be a great poet, a great artist, a great judge, a great statesman, a great ruler...
...La Follette had faith in ideals and the good sense of the common man...
...His work for human welfare will be borne by countless thousands during coming generations, but none will ever bring to that service greater personal powers, higher statesmanship, larger sacrifices, and more sincere love for...
...Midst the greatest throng ever gathered in the capital city of his home State, we laid to rest the weary body that for almost a half century was unselfishly devoted to humanity's cause...
...But nothing in all his life, not all the brilliance of his achievements, had so endeared La Follette to the people, had drawn him so near to their great heart of hearts, as did the fortitude, the patience, the resignation, with which he bore the days of painful struggle with death...
...No pretentious shaft marks that resting place, but the hearts of his people found a living memorial they have affectionately dedicated to the memory of their loved leader...
...Always his argument was against the injustices of an existing or proposed way of carrying on human affairs...
...The legislator who entertains no idea for which some one is not denouncing him might as well stay at home...
...His monumental reeord of public service and high ideals will ever be an inspiration to the liberty-loving people of America...
...He kept everlastingly at it...
...He believed firmly in facts and argument, and decided many of the political procedures of his party...
...It was made compulsory in Wisconsin in 1911...
...We can say of La Follette as was said of Grover Cleveland, "We love him for the enemies he has made...
...Robert M. La Follette's name was without a stain...
...The words "compromise'* and "surrender" were not in his vocabulary, and his courage compelled the admiration of even his bitterest enemies...
...In that very year young La Follette at the age of 25, was elected district attorney...
...How true it is that "one touch of nature makes the whole world km...
...The National Home at Milwaukee, in which are cared disabled veterans of the Nation's wars, practically unanimously voted for the Senator...
...To his chosen life's work he brought prodigious study, clear vision, helpful human sympathy, and a keen knowledge of injustice found in existing conditions, conditions unknown to medieval history...
...He had that most rare of all mental gifts, the ability to reason straight and independently...
...Robert La Follette considered it his public duty to keep his constituents informed on public matters...
...He was constructive, and he had a coherent, consistent view of what human government should be and do...
...Before the passage of that law the railroads used to give passes to members of the legislature and influential politicians in order to make them subservient to their wishes...
...There never lived a man who more devoutly believed that "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty," or more clearly perceived that in these days of intense competition the great majority of mankind are so busy striving to earn a livelihood for themselves and their dependents that they have no opportunity to study underlying principles of government...
...The creation of a department of labor, 13...
...His mind operated with lightninglike rapidity, and it was easy for him to distinguish between sham and truth, right and wrong.~~~He had the power of imagination which is necessary in the make-up of the great public speaker and orator that he was...
...Taking his seat in 1906, La Follette was returned to the Senate and died while serving his nineteenth consecutive year as a member of thai body...
...To me it is a mark of distinction...
...those whom he faithfully served to the end than Robert M. t^a Follette...
...of decay and death, but that there is this difference: In individuals nature plants the seeds of inevitable dissolution, while in nations they are planted by the folly and the wickedness of rulers and people...
...Wisconsin is the only State in the Union which has made an attempt to restore apprenticeship in industry...
...Authorities agree, however, that the Wisconsin ad valorem method is the besC example of taxing railroad property...
...This act was more than a protest — it was a constructive move to furnish a rallying center for those who thought as he did...
...The wartime persecution did not shake the faith of the people of Wisconsin in their sturdy champion...
...Mr...
...Reduction of the flow of streams feeding the main river with cold water, deepening of the main channel and shutting of the ice forming shallows by dams and breakwaters will do the rest, according to Dr...
...He was one of the foremost, defenders of the people's rights against the railroad corporations and greedy capitalists in general...
...Wisconsin was also the first State to organize agricultural high schools...
...But Robert La Follette was more than a protest...
...From every part of the Union came messages of sympathy From the altars of every sect and creeo...
...Washington and Lincoln were so called...
...At no time, however, did his star shine brighter than during the World War...
...H» campaign, once started, was « pereisten* struggle for human welfare and bci-ame a lifelong protest against oppression of his brother man in every walk of life...
...If those who abused and villified this man and tried to bend him to their wills eouW only have had a partial conception of his qualities, what an immense amount of energy they could have saved...
...Kvale] referred, and by his youthful oration on Iago, which won for him the prize in an oratorical contest participated in by the representatives of the universities of four States, and brought him letters of extraordinary praise from Edwin Booth, Lawrence Barrett, and John McCullough, world-famous giants of Shakespearean interpretation...
...Strongly en-trenched monopoly and predatory interests hoped to drive their uncompromising foe into political oblivion during the dark days of the war...
...The people constitute the ultimate sovereignty...
...Lawrence basin will be revolutionized...
...It is reliably reported that 11 of the 13 planks submitted by him Jo the Republican National Convention in 1908 and 15 of the 18 planks similarly submitted in 1912 have been written into law...
...Wisconsin was one of the first three States that enacted full crew laws for railroads...
...that eloquent tongue forevermore silent...
...In spite of the storms of libel ami slander hurled at him in his day his place in history is secure...
...Born in 1855 and passing into the Great Beyond in 1925, the span of his life was 70 years...
...Of sound but not distinguished Hugenot stock that had been joined by marriage to the Scotch, La Follette cannot be explained or understood solely in terms of his ancestry...
...La Follette took with reference to them, and we can form a very accurate judgment as to where he would stand today on any question, if living...
...And now, farewell to our Senator...
...He contended that the Constitution guarantees this right in time of war as well as in time of peace...
...That noble heart is forever stilled...
...When he felt he was right, he was as willing to stand alone as with the multitude...
...Voigt] has intimated — did not have .to ask, they could not avoid, recognition...
...We opposed him not because we deemed Him too radical, but because to the minds of the Socialists these policies were inadequate, half-way measures...
...From the teaching and influence of his mother, young La Follette derived many of the traits that marked his later life...
...Remember La Follette For Battles Won Many Progressive Laws Enacted Through His Leadership in Wisconsin Are Adopted by Other States, Declare Congressmen On Sunday, February 20th, 1927, in the United States House of Representatives, tributes were paid to the memory of Robert M. La Toilette by members of the Wisconsin delegation and by Congressmen Henry R. Rathbone, of Illinois, Fiorello H. La Guardia, of New York, Edward Howard, of Nebraska, O. J. Kvale, of Minnesota, George Huddleston, of Alabama, John Morrow, of New Mexico, and James O'Connor, of Louisiana...
...and that whoever robs the citizen of it, can rob him of any other rights, because he is powerless to protest...
...And so for 40 tireless years, from ocean to ocean and from the Lakes to the Gulf, in the spirit of the Master who long ago proclaimed that God is Love, he eloquently directed attention to these dangers and injustices, and everywhere implored his countrymen to be thoughtful and merciful and just...
...He therefore resolved, early in his career, to fight for the economic equality of his fellow »*ea...
...He was destined to be the gladiator to fight the political and economic battles of his fellow men...
...The plan is novel but Professor Barnes is enough of an authority to entitle it to serious consideration...
...Barnes' plan is adopted and is successful, shipping conditions in the St...
...Berger of Wisconsin: R. SPEAKER, ladies and gentlemen, I shall speak of Robert M. La Follette from the viewpoint of a Socialist, of a Wisconsin Socialist, and of a man who for more than a quarter of a century was the spokesman of an organized opposition to some of his policies...
...The late Senator's heart, now stilled in death, had been filled with the noblest purposes and the highe-st aims...
...He fought for those measures which were consistent with his primary idea, and attacked those which were out of harmony with it...
...Publicity of campaign contributions and expenditures...
...If we apply the above principles to any political questions whatever, we can account for the stand which Mr...
...It was no accident that La P'ollette took up a public career...
...But he was nevertheless profoundly convinced that there is grave danger to the Republic if possessors of special privileges are permitted to make vast accumulations of wealth and power through ruthless disregard of the rights of others—-rights which are the gift of God himself...
...We publish in abbreviated form the addresses of the Honorables Victor Berger, John C. Schafer, Florian Lampert, Edward Voigt, James A. Frear, and Henry Allen Cooper...
...His were none of the adventitious aids by which lesser men are sometimes enabled to build up an ephemeral notoriety...
...He has gone to his reward...
...Wisconsin was also 'one of the first three States which enacted a mandatory minimum wage law...
...This has been copied since by a number of other States...
...In his conception, of course, there could be no economic equality without political equality, and neither could be obtained without absolute honesty in the affairs of government...
...When La Follette decided to quit both old capitalist parties and to lead a third party movement, the Socialists of the Nation indorsed his candidacy — after the Socialists of the State of Wisconsin had silently indorsed him for Senator by not putting up a candidate against him...
...He was convinced that America should not enter the conflict, and with dauntless courage he did not sacrifice these convictions, but made every effort under his constitutional right to oppose America's entrance into the war...
...He also saw clearly that all political questions have an economic background, and that when these economic questions appear in the political arena, they present the age-old struggle to which I have referred...
...Was he to become a public man known as a politician...
...La Follette believed, with Burke, that "To make us love our country our country ought to be lovely," and ho labored unceasingly to make it lovely, not for some, but for all of the people...
...He was an uncompromising foe of corruption and entrenched predatory and mo-nopo'istic interests which desired to control and exploit the Government and the people...
...To him the Constitution was, as the instrument itself declares, subject to amendment...
...He Knew full well that he could not secure all of his proposals at once...
...He had little use for "blocks of ten" and other political paraphernalia...
...In 1900, 1902, and 1904 La Follette was elected governor of Wisconsin...
...False and libelous propaganda in the press and elsewhere sought to brand Senator La Follette as a traitor and to drive him from the pubic service...
...He has passed on, but the record of his unselfish service to the people of the Nation is indelibly written into the statutes and history of the Republic...
...2. The Federal employees' liability act...
...9. Increased powers to the Interstate Com...
...we know that be was called "Battling Bob...
...If I have analyzed La Follette correctly, it is at once apparent that such a course for him was impossible...
...4. The nonissuance of injunctions in labor disputes...
...He envied no man his wealth, if it were the fruit of honest effort...
...The idealism of La Follette's youth was never given up, but it was strengthened by experience...
...Despite his comparative youth, he was given a place on the Ways and Means Committee and had an important part in the framing of the famous McKiniey tariff bill...
...He has made the world a better place to live in...
...This brief outline of La F. llette's lifo ii impressive because in the annals of our country's history there are few with which it can be compared...
...that this struggle was concealed under many different forms, but that in essence it remained the same...
...That never bothered him, because he was so certain in his own mind t"hat he was working for the interests of the whole people...
...Grimly he said to those around him, "Hard fighting makes fast friends," and the millions of followers who implicitly believed in him vindicated the judgment of Wisconsin's great defender of human rights, for by hard contests J»e won their confidence and his own reward...
...He saw that good laws were of no avail if administered by corrupt officials, and he demanded absolute honesty from officials while governor of Wisconsin, and a* a consequence w*e have as clean, if not the cleanest, government in our State as there is in the Union...
...It was La Follette who uncovered the conspiracy to get possession of Teapot Dome and of the California naval oil reserves, although other men received a good deal of the credit for it later on...
...In the summer of 1914 the World War l>egan...
...The simple, unadorned story of his life is his highest, most fitting eulogy...
...If he had been a weakling, no doubt the storm of indignation and persecution which he knew would break upon him in those dark days would have caused him to pursue a different course...
...But all in vain...
...La Follette combined this idealism with capacity in practical affairs...
...Again and again he would assault before proposing the remedy be had in mind...
...Some of the many beneficent laws for which he was either wholly or in large measure responsible have been enumerated by preceding speakers, and I shall not now pause to mention others which could truthfully be added to the list...
...He firmly believed that if his proposals were sound and valid they would be adopted if and when the public knew the facts...
...Wisconsin and Pennsylvania were the first States in which the tuberculin test was used...
...He possessed greater moral courage than any man of his time...
...In my judgment, the outstanding event in the public service of Robert M. La Follette was his courageous stand in the dark days preceding America's entrance into the late World War...
...He also saw clearly that all political questions have an economic background, and that when these economic questions appear in the political arena, they present the age-old struggle to which I have referred...
...A crusader against the modern financial and industrial juggernauts that blunt the sensibilities of men, La Follette raised his standard as bravely and boldly as did ever knight of old who laid down his life on field of battle...
...And now he sleeps in the soil of the State in which he was' born...
...Foxes in captivity are notoriously nervous mothers...
...We do not know in Wisconsin what graft and corruption in public office are...
...As he felt himself drawing near the Dark River, he calmly said to &e anxious watchers: I do not know how the people will feel toward me, but I shall carry to the grave my love for them...
...It was the first State to provide for the nomination at the primary of candidates for the United States Senate...
...Although abused and villified, the spirit of this great man could not be broken, and he-courageously continued to stand for the things that he believed to be right...
...The life of the United States marks the most important political epoch that history records...
...Lawrence river navigable the year 'round...
...Taking his seat in the" United States Senate jn 1906, at the age of 51, he was a seasoned and skilled fighter...
...He believed that our Government was the best in the world...
...All these laws curbed corruption in public life...
...In the seat long honored by an illustrious father they placed his gifted son there to carry on the cause so faithfully defended by him whom we honor today...
...Wisconsin was the first State to forbid the use of the lobbies of the legislative chambers to lobbyists, and compelled them to confine their activities to appearances before committees...
...La Follette was endowed by nature with an abounding love for his fellow men...
...And while Wisconsin was not the first State to enact a child labor law, today it is as advanced as any State in the Union, and has the best enforced law in the country...
...The dream of his life was to have government in this country conceived and administered in terms of the ideals of the Declaration of Independence...
...La Fol-lette's entire career...
...interstate rates when objection has been made by shipper or consumer until the Interstate Commerce Commission decided the case on its merits...
...And we still have the best vocational schools in the country...
...Full well he knew the compromises that are found in the Constitution...
...6. The parcel post...
...In 1905 he was elected United States Senator by the Wisconsin Legislature...
...Catholic and Protestant, Jew and Gentile, a^ cended prayers for his recovery...
...La Follette's being which made him great, and to show how those elements irresistibly found expression in his life's work...
...Woman suffrage...
...While a student he was a college debater and orator of great prominence and promise...
...strain all worth while...
...Wisconsin passed the first compulsory part-time school law in 1911...
...3. The eight-hour day for all Federal employees...
...Voigrt of Wisconsin: R. SPEAKER, Senator La Follette was Wisconsin's greatest son, and history will rank him among the outstanding great men of this Nation...
...H« conducted a great fight to enact tax legislation to make the profiteers pay their fair share of the financial burden of the war...
...Far in front of the vanguard he carried his banner of hope for the workman in the mines, on the farm, in the factories, on shipboard, on the rails, and in every field of humble toil...
...And it is of this that I would say a word...
...And neither State nor Nation has ever known one who loved her more devotedly or strove more faithfully to serve what he thought her highest irttrests...
...Barnes...
...No other Senator or Member of the House of Representatives of that period can show a record equal to his, and he rightfully declared at a meeting held in Milwaukee in answer to a question that he would not exchange his war record with that of any other Senator or Congressman in the United States...
...Accordingly he considered it his public duty to help to the utmost of his power, so to arouse the people to the vital importance of principle that they might never, through ignorance or indifference, permit liberty to be smothered in material prosperity...
...He knew well the deep meaning of the truth that "Not the man alone who FEELS tyranny but also the man who is EXPOSED to tyranny is without freedom," and he demanded that laws and lawmakers be put to the rigorous test of fundamental principles...
...Wisconsin was among the first States to have an effective antipass law...
...And he made that fight, at first, single handed...
...It is due to Robert M. La Follette and to the spirit which La Follette aroused that a number of these measures, most of which were socialistic in their origin, took shape and form and were enacted into law...
...He saw what Goethe discovered in Hamlet, for in his early life La Follette's masterly analysis of the character of Hamlet aroused unstinted praise from America's foremost Shakespearean scholars, A profound student, a lover of truth, scorning deception or its handmaiden, fear, Wisconsin's favorite son entered political life, the Nation's great court, imbued with the same high resolve that actuated Hamlet, to be true to himself...
...That high purpose alone inspired him who in late years often suffered keen mental.and physical pain but bravely battled for his ideals to the last...
...Was he to subordinate his will to that of others...
...La Follette believed in the Declaration of Independence with devotion...
...Schafer of Wisconsin: R. SPEAKER, we meet today to honor the memory of the out-standing man in public life of hia generation, Robert M. La Follette...
...The preceding are only a part of the remedial things which La Follette fought for...
...Our deceased leader was an ardent advocate of the right of free speech, and his utterances on that subject will be referred to as long as our government stands...
...Tolerant and broad-minded, he had among his personal friends many who did not agree with him...
...Let us write' his faults upon the sand and his virtues on the tablets of our memory...
...This danger he sensed with all his being, and sought unceasingly to combat its Insidious control of government...
...merce Commission...
...He therefore resolved, early in his career, to fight for the economic equality of his fellow men.—Congressman Edward Voigt...
...I like to hear Senator La Follette or any other man in public life called a radical...
...They must ever up and onward Who would keep abreast of truth...
...In his long career he never advocated a measure which subsequently proved to be economically wrong...
...There was a no more aggressive and efficient fighter against every kind of corruption in the Congress of the United States in this generation than Robert M. La Follette...
...but I think of a more tender side, of which the world at large knew little...
...And I considered this a great compliment to our Socialists...
...He saw our territory' being rapidly occupied ind conditions beginning to crowd as they have for generations been crowding in the Old World...
...Wr...
...Defeated for Congress in 1890, by a Democratic landslide, which was precipitated in Wisconsin by the passage of a parochial school law, La Follette turned for 10 years to the practice of law and to an extensive study of economic and political conditions in Wisconsin...
...Wisconsin was among the very first to organize an agricultural college in connection with the State university, and also one of the first to organize an agricultural experiment station...
...Thereafter, they get applee or pears for breakfast and a dish of raw o» cooked m?at for supper...
...He had faith in the people of Wisconsin and knew that once they were informed of the truth they would stand by him...
...He carried the torch of truth, righteousness and free representative government for many years...
...He knew full well that the Constitution was but a human instrument for carrying out through government the ideals of the Declaration...
...The voice that once led the way is silent...
...so, on the fox fur farms of Vancouver Island they give the reynard babies to tabby cats to nurse and bring up to the point where they eat meat...
...He heard men loudiy shout approval of Jefferson's "Equal rights to all, special privileges to none," and then saw them acquire—sometimes corruptly acquire—grossly unjust special privileges...
...Those who would serve the people as public officials are responsible for informing, and thereby forming, the public mind...
...The first university extension courses on the English model were organized by the Universities of Chicago and Wisconsin, and Wisconsin is still the leader in that field...
...and if haired could take root in his soul it ; was only so far as to make him properly despise the false and changeful insects of the court and play with them in easy scorn...
...One of the speakers alluded briefly to Senator La Follette's love of literature...
...Wisconsin's experiment has attracted wide attention, and has been commended by both employers and employee...
...In his 43 years as a public servant, dealing as he did with a great variety of extremely complex problems for the solution of which there was no precedent and involved in which were sometimes great financial and moral issues, it is not to be wondered that he made some decisions that now, in the light of experience, seem to people to have been mistakes of judgment...
...It is still regarded as the model law of that type...
...The public press was sometimes too partisan, and so La Follette established his own magazine through which he could talk to his people...
...Lampert of Wisconsin: R. SPEAKER, Robert Marion La Follette, whose life and services we are met today to honor, had a remarkably extensive and distinguished life...
...Time came in 1924 when he stepped outside the ranks of the Republican Party and allowed his name to" be used as a candidate for the Presidency on an independent ticket...
...As a starting point the warmth of Lake Ontario, properly utilized, can reduce the ice formation in the St...
...His great qualities—as the gentleman from Wisconsin [Mr...
...Wisconsin was one of the first States to require lobbyists to register and to file statements of their fees and expenses...
...He will be recognized not only as W.isconsin'8 most illustrious, son but as the greatest champion of the rights of the common people since-the time of Lincoln...
...There is one phase of the Senator's life tliat I do not think has been sufficiently stressed by his admirers, and that is his own spotless integrity, and his demand for honesty in government officials...
...What we say here will soon be forgotten, but what thou hast been and what thou hast done — thy greatness and thy goodness — shall remain thy country's priceless legacy forever...
...Wisconsin is the only State in the Union which has prohibited all night work for women in factories and laundries...
...As governor he secured the passage of laws abolishing railroad passes, compelling lobbyists to register, and limiting their activities to appearances before committees, providing for the publication of campaign expenses, and specifying the purposes for which they could be incurred, prohibiting rebates by railroads, and giving us the direct primary...
...and if decay and death shall ever come to this Republic, they will come through the folly and the weakness of the people alone...
...This personal element was not a policy with him — it was the spontaneous expression of his fundamental human quality...
...There was no limit to his will power in standing by his convictions after he concluded that he was right...
...I do not believe that he could have changed the course of his life if he had resolved to do it, nor do I believe that anyone else could have influenced him to change it...
...He was favored with an intellect of the first magnitude...
...those whom we choose to make and to execute the laws are but servants of the people...
...La Follette, by reason of his study of history and economics, clearly saw that since the dawn of time there had been a struggle in this world between the oppressed and the oppressor, and that that struggle took the form of the appropriation of one man's labor by another: that this struggle was concealed under many different forms, but that in essence it remained the same...
...After America had entered the war, how-ever, Senator La Follette energetically strov« to promote its successful conclusion in th6 highest degree compatible with the preservation of fundamental American liberties...
...Our great progressive leader is no more, but his work lives after him...
...In 1922 the sovereign voters of the great State of Wisconsin overwhelmingly vindicated Senator La Follette...
...Governments are Instituted to secure certain ends, chief among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness...
...It is a fact, nevertheless, that he never advocated any measure except after the most painstaking investigation, and Wisconsin has long been the Mecca of people from all over the world who are in search of advanced ideas in government...
...we know his fighting qualities...
...The suspension of proposed increases in THERE never lived a man who more devoutly believed that "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty," or more clearly perceived that in these days of intense competition the great majority of mankind are so busy striving to earn a livelihood for themselves and their dependents that they have no opportunity to study underlying principles of government...
...7. The physical valuation of railroad prop, erty...
...coupled with his mental equipment, stamped him at once as a peerless debater, oratov...
...but that, like everything else of human origin, it is not perfect and should not be made the object of blind adoration, because there were mingled with its undoubted tlessings what appeared to him serious wrongs and injustices...
...Showered with unbounded love and affection from those he served and a devotion more marked and widespread than fell to the lot of any other American living at the time of his death, his recompense was greater than all mere earthly honors...
...The world is better because he had lived...
...The regulation of telephone and telegraph rates...
...Such men may differ widely in their accomplishments, but according to my conception of greatness, they have this in common: That each is great in proportion to the benefits he has conferred on his fellow men...
...He might have "gone along" and found preferment, but he chose to champion causes that were neglected...
...We know that he was a great constructive statesman...
...The log cabin where his infancy was cradled...
...The election of Senators by direct vote of the people...
...But in a government like ours there are no rulers...
...He was returned to the Senate with a majority of 301,000, the largest ever given any candidate in our State...
...Against the policy of partisan political bartering he set his face, but he also had a constructive attitude and lived up to it...
...Experience soon taught him that ''Heaven is not reached by a single bound...
...Time came in Wisconsin when question was raised as to whether La Follette was really a Republican...
...The suggestion made by the ice expert includes several features...
...Like motives live with men in every age, but La Follette pointed out to his fellow men that grasping avarice coupled with unlimited finan-» cial power and a control of the armies of information are more to be feared in a demo* cratic iiorrfl of government than conflicting1 personal ambitions or ail the ¦warring hosts of the Old World that once wrote the pages ot history...
...He boldly attacked an economic or a social injustice in this country, though long established and powerfully intrenched, believing, as in his very soul he did believe, that neither usage, nor custom, nor anything else however ancient, can justify a moral wrong...
...To none other in all her history has Wisconsin accorded such a funeral...
...He has gone, but will never be forgotten, and will take his place in our Nation's history with George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln...
...He ' backed up his protests with fact and argument so that he well deserved the affectionately be-' stowed, though not always affectionately-used, title of "Fighting Bob...
...Every step of this advance ,was won by merit alone...
...the abject poverty of his fatherless boyhood...
...we know his power...
...He asked no quarter from the enemy, he gave none, yet withal his foeman, human oppression, was impersonal...
...Wisconsin enacted a pure food law as early as 1897...
...I believe it may fairly be said his enduring work in State and national constructive legislation was unapproached by any man or group of men of his time...
...La Follette, scholar, orator, statesman, was "first of all a student of men...
...and leader of men...
...AH of these, and many other measures, became law through the influence of La Follet'e and La Folletteism, while they were, of course, backed up by organized labor, the progressive farmers' movement, and the Socialist Party, However, there can be no doubt that without the sob-it aronsfid bv La Follette most of these measures would never have been ^niiclod into law...
...Thus he will be remembered, this truly great man, of boundless sympathy and undaunted courage, a never-failing champion of the oppressed...
...Added to these natural qualities was a splendid training in literature, history, oratory, economics, and law...
...His active, penetrating mind,' his indomitable courage and unpurehasable integrity, his ceaseless industry and overflowing love of humanity, brought him inevitably into public life, and caused the people of Wisconsin for nearly 40 years, until the day of his passing, to retain him in the service of the State and the Nation...
...There he blazed the way for States and for the Nation to place government back in the hands of the people...
...When calumny, abuse, and misrepresentation in recent times seemed to overwhelm him, with his tired face before me I once asked, "Is the...
...A quarter of centry ago I was at times thrown in close contact with La Follette, together with those whom he drafted to aid in his pioneer constructive w^ork for Wisconstin...
...He learned to attack an existing injustice at its weakest point...
...This man towered above those •round him, and every fiber in him demanded that he devote himself to a cause worthy of hia great ability...
...The man who discovered that the earth is round and the man who discovered the circulation of the blood were denounced as dangerous radicals...
...All his life he was a profound student of Shakespeare, as is in part evidenced by his lecture on Hamlet, to which the gentleman from Minnesota [Mr...
...La Follette was »frequently called a visionary, a radical, and less complimentary names...
...That, as 1 see it, is the fundamental and ever-present thought and motive in Mr...
...If Dr...
...8. The Alaska Railroad...
...5. The creation of a tariff commission...
...But there was another and entirely different side...
...Farewell, great friend of humanity — brave,loyal heart...
...the heroic struggles of his youth...
...Addresses of the five other Wisconsin Congressmen Mere published in the March number...
...It is true that from his early youth he was a lover of the beautiful in literature and in art of every form...
...Icebound PROF...
...Wisconsin established the first short course in agriculture, and organized the first dairy school...
...Shakespeare and Goethe lived when rivalries and ambitions of men, great and small, still played a conspicuous part on the actual and mimic stage...
...his repeated election as Representative in Congress, as Governor of Wisconsin, and as Senator of the United States from that great State — this is familiar to all...
...Governments derive their just power from the consent of the governed...
...Wisconsin was the first State that made it compulsory for employers under the compensation act to insure their risk, unless exempted from doing so .by order of the industrial commission...
...And there is also this to be said, that no one of the laws passed through his efforts was ever declared unconstitutional...
...Accordingly he considered it his public duty to help to the utmost of his power, so to arouse the people to the vital importance of principle that they might never, through ignorance or indifference, permit liberty to be smothered in material prosperity.—Congressman Henry Allen Cooper...
...Bitterly assailed and often misrepresented, La Follette kept the even tenor of his way, undisturbed alike by misrepresentation and calumny...
...Howard T. Barnes, international authority on ice conditions and inventor of the Thermit system for breaking up ice, has recently declared that scientific application of a few simple principles could keep the St...
...No taint of self-seeking, no hint of crookedness, no charge of "turncoat" has ever been uttered against him by his bitterest political -enemies...
...He made a remarkable record and ran far ahead of his ticket when reelected for a second term...
...Assault and proposal — assault and proposal — this was his constructive plan...
...He has more constructive legislation to his credit than any other man of his generation...
...Despite the strenuous conflicts through which he passed in his long political career...
...his brilliant record as a lawyer...
...Wisconsin was one of the first States which enacted workmen's compensation laws, and the Wisconsin law was the first to become effective...
...Step by step he was called up from poverty and obscurity to the position which, next to the Presidency, is the highest within the grasp of human ambition...
...And he sought not only to prevent these from coming, but also, by proper laws, to eradicat* others already here...
...In matters of labor legislation and in legislation for the welfare of the fanners, which, in these cases, means legislation for the betterment of the human race, no other statesman in this period has achieved as much as he did...
...Agitation for an income tax began in Wisconsin in 1903, and a constitutional amendment providing such a tax was adopted in 1908...
...In what manner were the superb intellect, the indomitable courage, the passion for righteousness, the boundless energy of this man to find expression ? Was he to become the servant of others...
...He wanted justice to prevail, and injustice always brought forth his .protest...
...Never has she beheld another such scene as that of the multij» tudes in endless procession during the day and the night and the hours of the morning, passing through the State capitol, where, surrounded by the marble and bronze of the magnificent rotunda, lay her son, the child of the humble log cabin, in the sleep that knows no waking, midst the masses of tear-moistened flowers...
...On the contrary, he admired those who by foresight, industry, integrity, and skill achieved fortunes...
...While millions gazed upon the bow of promise which spanned the political heavens and with the eye of hope saw its still greater glories in the future, ijf suddenly disappeared in darkness, vanished with the life which lent it its radiance...
...He resented injury and wrong, and was ever ready to enter the lists to fight the battles of the weak and the oppressed...
...What many folks never saw ©r knew at all was the fundamental idealism that dominated his life...
...La Follette was a man of unusual vigor, and his physique and indescribable personal* ity...
...Therefore, knowing that avarice ^ has no conscience, he held it to be the true function—the duty—of a free government to be the guardian of industrial equality of opportunity...
...A parliamentary committee in New South Wples, Australia,_recommended the enactment of an apprenticeship law on the Wisconsin model...
...It is sometimes said that literature and art are harmful, in that they tend to make indifferent to affairs of public moment the individuals and the nations by whom they are cultivated...
...With the last throb of life he kept the faith...
...That 5,000,000 men and women, regardless of former political affiliations, cast their ballot for him in the 1924 election, although outside of the Socialist party, which was not organize*: in every State, the progressives had no politics) organization of any kind — showed what a wonderful gTip Robert M. La Follette had on thr imagination of the common people...
...Frear of Wisconsin: ' R. SPEAKER, the great Goethe, analyzing an outstanding figure of Shakespeare's notable characters, says of Hamlet: The mean, the vulgar, was offensive to him...
Vol. 19 • April 1927 • No. 4
